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WK41
Dec 19, 2023 14:35:31 GMT
Post by rockefeller on Dec 19, 2023 14:35:31 GMT
A nod to SF, but that, for me, didn't really fly. A planet where magical impossibilities, even beyond the impossibility (i.e., inexplicability) of existence, are common. So, basically, fantasy, and fantasy bordering on YA. It's a rollicking adventure of special powers and curses, but directionless. I lost interest in the plot and characters fairly early on, skimmed to the predictably open ended finish. Technically, it's tight. Just wasn't engaging (or meaningful) enough for my jaded sensibilities. In fairness to the VC, fantasy, at its best, at its most poetic, is a tough sell for me. It never seems to have any sort of symbolism or metaphorical layer. Reads made up, and (here?) made up on the fly. Given all this MC's ailments, I want to ask if maybe he was jabbed one too many (and one is too many) times. I guess another problem for me with this cap was that the MC is not responsible for his problems or their solutions. Shit just happens to him, and teaches nothing. So it's into the Porthole's magical realm with it. Given this VC's impressive CV, I'm guessing this is an older work, a trunk story. Which is fine, some of my own favorites have never found homes. Homeless, there is hope.
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WK41
Dec 19, 2023 21:31:36 GMT
Post by rorschalk on Dec 19, 2023 21:31:36 GMT
Hey Rox,
We gonna get canceled on substack or what? The mendacity is just maddening, Big Daddy. No? Anyhow. This is concerning the cap Nueu? Right?
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WK41
Dec 20, 2023 14:27:50 GMT
Post by rockefeller on Dec 20, 2023 14:27:50 GMT
It is. What makes you think SS is going to cancel us? If so, I'd take it as a compliment. And canceling cuts two ways. I think Anheuser Busch learned that the hard way.
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WK41
Jan 8, 2024 14:37:51 GMT
Post by rockefeller on Jan 8, 2024 14:37:51 GMT
Even though I recently read in a comment on Zerohedge by a retired policeman that, while a dog will sit by its deceased owner until it starves, a cat will eat your face, I still, like the MC in this "Basement Dogs" cap, prefer cats. (I swear so much I sometimes wonder if I have some semi-manageable form of Tourette's.) It has the ring of truth and experience, and I'd be surprised if much of it wasn't autobiographical, albeit suffused with imaginative musings, multiple fronts, conflicts and challenges loosely interwoven in the way of life. It spoke to me. It did not waste my time. It deserves further consideration. Let's see what our aquatic and pastural gatekeepers have to say. Send in the Fish. Send in the Bull.
The only nit that leapt out at me was,
"...or decide to go back to school and become an account." accountant
But then I was enjoying it too much to wear my editor's cap.
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WK41
Jan 20, 2024 15:31:35 GMT
Post by rockefeller on Jan 20, 2024 15:31:35 GMT
Interesting, this Kumari cap: about 98.6 percent character study, with the other 1.4 percent plot, or story, or stuff that happens; the melody that makes you want to hum along. So it was the quality of prose alone that kept me from skimming until maybe the 12th or so page. The POV's a little confusing. Mostly it seems to be either tight limited 3rd, deep in MC's head, or even omniscient since the narrator seems to know more, be more detached and objective than simple 3rd person would support. But then there's a paragraph or two on page 4, set in a bar, where a 1st person (I) observer presents. Weird bit of head hopping, but again, all but forgiven by the confidence of the prose.
Thing is, it's neither really rich nor metaphorical enough to qualify as poetry, and so wants for some order of interesting events. A little painting, a shower and possibly a sex scene (wasn't sure) just weren't enough to engage me, to bring me to care how her journey for self discovery does (or didn't?) pan out. She needs to be challenged by something more than her internal questions and conflicts. This might be the first time I've ever reread a VC's bio and, in this case, story synopsis to see where the author was coming from and what she (no need to share preferred pronouns here) thought the piece was about. So it is with a heavy heart and considerable conflict that I'm delegating this clear labor of love and intelligence to the Deluge beyond the Porthole. Please, if you ever resubmit here, and I hope you will, remember, deep down, we are children.
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WK41
Mar 7, 2024 15:04:35 GMT
Post by rockefeller on Mar 7, 2024 15:04:35 GMT
Set in a royal "adjudication chamber" various low echelon locals defend their improper use of magic before some magistrate. Not unlike those matters which local 220 SEIU took to arbitration after the 3 stages of grievance had inevitably failed to resolve back when I chaired for the union at Sunnyside Home. Like sleeping on the job, refusing to wear white shoes, or putting old residents into too-hot baths. Here, in this fantasy yarn, the powers that be like to keep a tight rein on spirit summoning and other unnatural meddling. It's well written, with clean prose and fine description. Some nice medieval world building rife with credible vernacular and occasional ties to the modern world with terms like "birth by knife" for Cesarean. Given my oft confessed aversion to the fantasy genre and borderline YA cap, I'm inclined to porthole it with appreciation. But now, suddenly, I feel a twinge of guilt that my personal biases and dislikes might be standing in the way of work with potential. So, let it ascend that those with keener eyes and opener minds may adjudicate.
Saw the odd quote tag punctuation thing: “Like every citizen.” Aitan admitted.
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WK41
Mar 23, 2024 14:17:07 GMT
Post by rockefeller on Mar 23, 2024 14:17:07 GMT
I just got this really nice Australian leather wallet Ms. Rocks picked up at the Op Shop the other day for like a dollar or something. Made me wonder why someone would donate a perfectly broken in, expensive wallet to a second hand store. Half expected to find a few hunnies in it. All I can figure is someone died, probably alone.
After reading my upstairs colleagues' review of the previous cap, I feel like a dunce. Admittedly I didn't try super hard to suss out the plot, just fired it up on prose and instinct. Or maybe even guilt. This old gatekeeper doesn't have the juice (or time) for yarns he once did. Stories ain't like painting or music, things you can glance at or enjoy while you're doing something else. A typical 5k cap, you gotta set aside a good hour of uninterrupted concentration to properly vet and review. Even a finely written cap like this Self Storage thing makes demands. But unlike that African fantasy, I think I got what happened. But really it's more of a philosophical piece on how and why we leave our subtle marks on the world. Metaphysical forensics of sorts. Kind of touching. Kind of makes me want to take a closer look at this new used wallet of mine.
Anyway, I'm sending this one up too, and not just because I think I'll learn more about it.
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WK41
Mar 29, 2024 14:22:37 GMT
Post by rockefeller on Mar 29, 2024 14:22:37 GMT
"Everyone says time travel is a troupe..." Actually I've never heard anyone say that till now. Some do say it's a trope, however. Which just goes to show that even cover letters need to be edited.
As do submissions, of course.
"A group of young men sat in a circle, drinking beer; they’re coats wrapped tightly around them to fend off the cold spring wind." their coats
"Andy stuck his discovery in the pocket of his hoodie..." Something "about the size of a basketball"?
Didn't really get into this one. Time travel, like fantasy, is a tough sell for me. Too rife with paradoxes and absurdities. If there existed a future that could eventually be traveled back from, where is everybody? A form of the Fermi paradox, no? Time would become meaningless, the past endlessly rewritten. Feeling a solipsist vibe now. And sticking a couple gently retarded (and I don't mean "the R word" here in the medically diagnostic, extra chromosome sense, but more in the sense that it got my grandson suspended from school for a day for using as an adjective for an idea) characters whose serendipitous discovery of this alien technology's first inspiration was to send sandwiches back. I wouldn't call this science fiction at all really, since there's no nod to science, as in to how this basketball sized thing works, how it distinguishes your shoes from the floor you're standing on. Or even what time is (a direction in space?). And... if one could travel backwards into the past, the past is then changed, and so also the future from whence one came. Another universe entirely? This trope has been pretty thoroughly traversed. Okay, okay, I get that this is really more a humor piece. Maybe that's what didn't really work for me. Afraid I'm going to beam it into the Porthole, but which might contain a Tipler cylinder whereby it might be mathematically transported billions of years into the past and billions of lightyears away into some causally disconnected region of the universe where it will be properly appreciated by another, hopefully more intelligent, being.
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WK41
Apr 11, 2024 18:36:21 GMT
Post by rockefeller on Apr 11, 2024 18:36:21 GMT
8 or 9 characters introduced in the first paragraph, ending with, "Banerje’s wife and son Radhesh" Depends whether his wife's nameless or he married his son.
I read a little further, but was listless and confused. The prose is clean, but the tropes are too familiar, almost secondhand.
Let me explain. Caught a gut flu thing a week ago, and now I have a kidney stone. Haven't eaten (or shit) in days. Tried to book an appointment with our new GP, but was told it'd be a couple months as he's busy meet-and-greeting his thousands of new patients. So went and sat in emerg the other night, where, surprisingly, our new GP, who's busy as a one-armed paper hanger with his new practice, and not a trauma specialist, was the only ER doctor. During our meet-and-greet with him back in November, he told us that the "vaccines" had no adverse events, and, despite having interned in a "Covid hospital" in Louisiana (killing folk with ventilators while withholding effective medications like Ivermectin) said he'd never heard of the VAERS. After 6 hours of watching him at his computer every time the doors to the back opened, and some home flipper/renno show on the TV in a loop, at 3 am I told the triage nurse I was bailing. She said I should come back if my condition doesn't resolve itself. I said, "Why?" Anyway, between the stone and my gut, didn't sleep well. Ms. Rocks took off with some grandkids for Philly for a big pool tournament at 4 am that morning, but which isn't the only reason I left the ER at 3 am. Our whole medical system is nuts. I mean, I'm in for a kidney stone, and the first question the triage nurse asks me is, "Have you been vaccinated against Covid?" I wanted to rant further on the whole stupidity of her question, the "vaccines" and our medical system, but just said, "What? No. Never." Anyway, all this just to say I couldn't really get into Karemazin's Conception cap, which I'd been planning to read when I had some free time, like now. Too much explaining. I even have a vague deja-vusy feeling I've seen this one before, though really it was probably only something similar. So I'm portholing it. Would I have enjoyed it more if I weren't lingering at death's door? Certainly. But enough to send it up? No, I don't think so. My apologies to the VC for what's not a very helpful review, I'm sure. There's no period at the end of the last sentence of the first paragraph. That's all I got.
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