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WK37
Mar 15, 2023 17:37:08 GMT
Post by rorschalk on Mar 15, 2023 17:37:08 GMT
[The rorschalk sidles onto the crystal cave holding ONE NIGHT AT THE BAR and COMEUPPANCE in his two hands. The glassy columns of clear ice shot through the cavern hold vague reflection of the floors former incarnations. A figure slumps in one, seemingly smoking as he shakes his head and plays with his tie. In another, a figure sitting in the lotus position levitates above a cat at reposed or perhaps it is a bear skin rug shrunken to the standard deviation. Turning slight toward the camera, the Rorschalk breaks the 4th wall]
Here, you enter the coils of the Monkey.
Here, my power was born.
Here, all things are possible...
...and all things meet their opposites.
If you wish to follow, know that such knowledge as will be on display in the deeper regions of this place may blind and burn you.
[He pauses as if listening to your reply]
Then blind me and burn me you say? Well all righty then. Follow me!
[He skips down the winding trail ignoring the precipitate drop on either side like a child carefree at play, turning like a screw into the stifling Earth deeper and deeper down, still down like a wintering shrew, steady as she goes with cap in hand]
Down the aery mountain, Down the rushy glen, we daren’t go ahunting, for fear of little men…
[So saying, he’s arrived at an outcrop of flat land, bereft of dangerous cliff dwelling drops under the sway of howling banshees. Kneeling at the outer most boundary of the shelf inside the airy cavern, he lays the cap down]
This blessed plot, this golden realm, this place we called the Haunted Disco, tis namoore Though wholly changed in aspect this place is still the floor.
Awake! There is capital to assess for the rare and precious mettle that breeds capital gain! Avast!
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WK37
Mar 23, 2023 14:50:52 GMT
Post by rockefeller on Mar 23, 2023 14:50:52 GMT
Speaking of pirates and capital gain and all that, if anyone with any understanding of derivatives and a kind heart had read my last review, they'd have probably messaged me and said: Just FYI, buying puts does not cancel or in any way balance selling calls since they're both bets the equity will tank, so, if goes down you win, but if it holds or goes up, you lose everything you paid for the put options plus on the stock, which you covered in the money. I get that now, and a lot of other dumb mistakes options traders make, like trading on the wrong strike date, or accidentally selling naked calls. But I still don't really get creative writing as a metaphor for the markets. Unlike with stock options, creative writing is not a zero sum game. Everyone can lose, albeit more time than money, but money too if you fall for writing contests and other pay-to-be-read scams. We write for love, for our muses, to connect to others, not to fleece them.
Of course, mistakes can be made in any venture. E.g., Howley's cover letter for his Broken Home trunk story might be one of the worst I've ever read. Not badly penned, but poorly chosen sharing. Like if you aren't that into this particular piece, or writing in general and haven't been very successful at it, maybe don't mention this. It put me in a captious frame of mind for reading the work itself, which, though seemingly carefully formatted and edited, I began skimming and then bailed sooner than I might otherwise have. Life's too short. Fantasy's probably my least favorite genre, maybe because of how little research is usually entailed. But the main problem for me was the pacing. Except the opening, which maybe looks around too much, once the interview starts, it doesn't look around enough. Slow and linear. Ping-pong dialog with an overabundance of tagging text. There's a hook. Like what qualifies the narrator to be a ghostbuster? And who/what is this supernatural entity that rifles through drawers and scratches children's faces? But not enough to keep me going. Maybe if he were sharper, more opinionated and knowledgeable, shared a few succinct anecdotes of prior encounters, instead of just pulling on the hook... Or if the cover letter wasn't just so depressingly self deprecating...
Hey G-man? I wonder what your take on this one would've been. You seem to read every word of everything passed your way. Wanna help me pull the porthole open? Maybe you can give it a glance as it flies helter skelter into the deluge.
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WK37
Mar 30, 2023 14:50:08 GMT
Post by rockefeller on Mar 30, 2023 14:50:08 GMT
Despite a massive info dump, a lengthy exposition, I enjoyed the opening pages to Sanders' Comeuppance. Even thought it might've had a chance of expiring in the money. As a hard SF aficionado, I did wonder how schlepping all Earth's undesirables to the stars could have possibly been warranted financially. No mention (I can recall) of the cheap FTL tech that made this doable. But with our physics so advanced, I have to think we'd have just shrunk them into microscopic entities or uploaded them into a VR not unlike the one we are probably all currently stuck in. Or just euthanized them, put them out of our misery, like we do in Canada. But then questioning sci-fi's science and politics is not a bad thing. The genre, like existence, like "reality" itself, never seems possible, rarely makes sense. And the writing is tight, imaginative.
But then, at the end of page 3, with the scene and background firmly and eloquently set, when the narrative per se actually begins, I lost interest. Some self-important government asshole getting richly deserved comeuppance was satisfying (though perhaps not as satisfying as seeing Fauci and all his ilk guillotined someday). But the story's just too small, delivers too little, relative to the opening promise. So it is with respect, I'm passing on this one, submitting it through our Porthole into The Deluge where it may mutate into only God knows what, a place not unlike K-19, as I understand it.
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WK37
Apr 7, 2023 14:21:52 GMT
Post by rockefeller on Apr 7, 2023 14:21:52 GMT
Found this little bulge on my lower right ab the other week. No clue how long it's been there, is only really noticeable when looking down, and then only because the area isn't as symmetrical as I remember. A quick google suggests it's an inguinal hernia. According to one medical website, "They mostly affect men or people assigned male at birth (AMAB)," and, "may cause visible scrotal swelling in people with testicles." WTF? All this just to say to female-to-male transexuals, You're still not really dudes? Anyway, this language-demolishing wokeness bums me out more than understanding I might need surgery someday, assuming the Canadian medical system, already on the ropes, is still functioning.
Which might've put me in a less than ideal frame of mind for vetting Doris's "Life is Sacrosanct: Xoar" cap. Though a colon in any title is a huge plus, shows literary cajones, even in those without testicles (i.e., AFAB). Apparently it's been languishing in someone's inbox here for nine months now, the gestation period for humans with reproductive capabilities (apologies from our medical establishment to all you male to female mutants, you're still dudes).
So, even though my little cat-litter-filled lift-top desk is piled with unread cap, I bumped it to the top of the queue. On the plus side, it appears meticulously edited. The only spag thing I stumbled across was, "It was the vanguards time to test their skills," which is missing a possessive apostrophe. Some of the SF tropes are a little cliche, like referring to a year as, "a single full rotation of this planet over [sic around] the Sun [sic sun]." The vocab, too, struck me as perhaps a tad over thesaurus-ized. E.g., I had to google "meotopes" which is the plural of, "a rectangular architectural element that fills the space between two triglyphs in a Doric frieze."
But the biggest problem for me, besides that I'm not really into fantasy and the genre's typical want of meaningful metaphors and symbols, was its objective POV. I almost always hate this detached, fly-on-the-wall point of view. I need to know who's telling the tale, and why. If by the 3rd or 4th page I still don't care about any of the characters (or species, or life forms), I'm gonna skim.
And so, despite some really beautiful description and rich (to turgid) language, it is with a heavy heart (and elongated testicles) that I'm consigning it to The Deluge.
Given the VC's obvious writing abilities, I'm going to suggest she (or whatever the preferred pronoun) recast it in the limited 3rd, or even 1st, person. Also, given the amount of dialog, let characters speak in more varied and identifiable voices. And, finally, try to generate more specific parallels to and analyses of the myriad problems facing our species today. Though in all fairness, it did embarrass me to be human as does the status quo.
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WK37
Apr 14, 2023 16:32:19 GMT
Post by rockefeller on Apr 14, 2023 16:32:19 GMT
Word from an ex-colleague in the ATM software biz, whom I still exchange emails with, is that the Rona's running rampant in their now fully and mandatorily vaccinated workplace. Guy who does our taxes said it's only the multi-jabbees calling in sick in his office. And yet... and yet... despite ample evidence the shots do zip except to weaken your immune system, e.g., induce "immune tolerance" according to one of the more recent studies I've seen, I hear the Walmart pharmacy advertise free Covid-19 vaccination on the PA this morning while grabbing stuff for the restaurant. Speaking of medical mistakes, I then read that, after letting medically mutilated, male-to-girly "transgender influencer" Dylan Mulvaney promote their product, Bud Light parent company Anheuser Busch Inbev is down more than $6 billion in market cap.
None of which has anything to do with this Flo's Diner cap, except maybe the word "cap," and that it all put me in a kind of head-shaking, who-needs-fiction-anymore frame of mind, in thinking about it, which I more or less (okay, less) read the other day and has been festering my clown-world subconscious. It struck me as the sort of long-ass piece that's been excerpted from a novel that never panned out. We have a diner, which my wife runs and I just do as I'm told. If she dies first, no way am I remotely trying to keep it going. So I can relate to this restaurant guy's problem re the loss of his Flo. But I had a hard time getting into it. It was all so banal. Even after the circus crew shows nothing much happens. The MC ends as he begins, sort of pathetically missing Flo. So, no.
It's all so subjective. I stress this a lot, and hope VCs appreciate how little my enjoyment of their work has to do with the quality of the writing. I don't even know how to suggest "fixing" it, except maybe to say, get to the point sooner, or even, make the point clearer. Like, what was the point? Grief is painful? Don't eat out? Join the circus? Here, as is often the case, I'm more interested in how the story came to be than the story itself. Still, no.
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