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Comments
the problem is, deliberately making something awkward to read is
well
awkward to read
If Youth, throughout all history, had had a champion to stand up for it; to show a doubting world that a child can think; and, possibly, do it practically, you wouldn't constantly run across folks today who claim that "a child don't know anything." A child's brain starts functioning at birth; and has, amongst its many infant convolutions, thousands of dormant atoms, into which God has put a mystic possibility for noticing an adult's act, and figuring out its purport.
Crazy, man.
Fair enough, but it then comes off as rather contradictive with the point behind it.
I got some fantasy writing down. It's also me trying me hand at romance.
Input appreciated.
Ahmagawd you have a tumblr. *follows*
*reading*
/fuckyeahdoublepost
so after barfing out my soul from that Kyuubey bodypillow on your dash
I really enjoyed the read, which is saying something since nowadays it's usually only fanfiction that commands my attention. But you managed to encapsulate their personalities through dialogue in a relatively short block of writing, and your dialogue is excellent, particularly Kritya. To be even more specific, when she got really fucking angry over them calling her magic "witchcraft", her immense anger over the disrespect shown towards what she is capable of really cemented its importance to her as a character-defining aspect.
The character names are all rather distinct (Molly, Jericho, Kritya), so I'm sure there's got to be multiple worlds involved, or at least regions? They're quite a colorful bunch.
On a technical note, it looks pretty clean with only a few very minor corrections needing to be made here and there, which I would happily bring to your attention should it please you. I don't wanna just be like "ahaha WRONG WRONG WRONG" in your grill and stuff uninvited, even though I wouldn't be as blatant anyway, ahaha~.
The romance was subtle, as it should be in its beginning phase, as was depicted. Kritya is super flirty and cunning, or at least that's my first impression, but she's got a tough streak too, so it'd be interesting to see how she develops.
Most important of all though is your style is naturally very nice and engaging and that's one of the hardest things to be taught. You're quite talented~ *envious*
I prefer "devilry".
I'd echo what Waltzy said. It could use some revision to clean up the prose a bit, but I wouldn't make any shattering revisions if I were you. Fine tuning and such, and ensuring that as much information as possible is conveyed naturally through narrative rather than explanation (although you're pretty decent at that in a general sense).
I think what you have to do, Malk, is simply write more often. You've got the spark, it just needs some rounding out at the edges. Your ideas are strong, and your execution of them is promising, but I know you'd be even stronger as a writer if you just committed more time to it. Try having multiple projects going at once.
Or hey, I just had an idea. What if we started a bit of a "club"? We each have to do a minimum amount of words per week, and then we present our work to one-another for criticism. So it could be like a friendly competition as well as a way to grow creatively in parallel.
Oh you have a tumblr? What's your username?
Also, correcting grammar is certainly welcome. I did the piece in a big swoop so I know I'll have to go through and make the needed corrections.
^I actually like this idea.
good idea, Madassalex.
I should point out that gameplay is much more important to a game than a story.
I thought this was the whole point of this thread before dying?
With that said, I'd be up for reading, not sure if writing.
Designing gameplay doesn't necessarily require programming.
In any case, it's not very difficult to learn a programming language like Python or Ruby, and while that wouldn't really be suitable for programming an entire game in, it'd certainly at least get you somewhere, and if you are interested in making games you should have at least some kind of programming experience/ability.
I'd be up for the club thing. Don't know what I'd write about yet, on account of I'm saving my better ideas for college, though.
Hm, I can post in here.
So, you know what TV Tropes does with people. Even I wasn't immune, started some ventures into writing. So you can guess I started an Opus Magnum Epic Fantasy Series (TM). Got to some twenty thousand words, then reality caught up with me, smacked me up the ear, and made me see what crap I was writing. But you know, actually without lil' Gypsie I wouldn't get to two thousand. So there's someone to whom I need to pay my respects. But back to the point. So I had this moment of "it doesn't make sense!", and stopped writing to first think how to bring the sense back. In retrospect it wasn't that good an idea, as I stopped writing and didn't come back, save for one or two snippets. Had I kept on writing, I'd just have to throw out large blocks of text at moments, but the whole thing would move forward. But I got some ideas, at least. To put into this story, and for other stories. Perhaps, if I force myself to get back to writing, I will write one or two short stories and continue the Opus Magnum Epic Fantasy Series (TM).
Short stories seem to be the oft-ignored way to go, if you ask me.
Right now I'm trying for 'scenes' which will then become stories.
Cheat people! use anachronic order for everything you write. And then deny your readers an actual intro for as long as possible.
Get Ronka to come here from BTL.
The hero of this story is a poor knight coming back home from a scholarship, haunted by borderline delusions of things from beyond darkness and sanity.
Good luck, Alaric.
>Cheat people! use anachronic order for everything you write. And then deny your readers an actual intro for as long as possible.
I've been thinking of making that a part of the story, often flashbacking to Jericho in his younger days but I worry it would mitigate the romance and make Kritya less important that she's supposed to be.
Bluh, I haven't written a word in over a month.
motivation is a bitch
But Forzare that was 14 there!
Seriously, just sit down and fucking plop something out.
Even if it's shit, it's something and it's progress.
And Forz, it won't hurt to write; worst case is, you realize the draft is shit and rewrite it, but even that means you've got your bearings.
So, um, I've been throwing ideas around after a rather annoying day
but whatever. Input most appreciated, as usual.
I came upon the restaurant right around 6:00 PM. I was feeling kind of numb and nervous. I mean, I only met this guy once and I didn't exactly feel like going to the nearest waiter and go, "Hey, can you fetch me the owner so we can talk?". On the other hand, he did invite me in and was probably waiting. All I could do is demonstrate some courtesy and come.
Taking some long strides and feeling as if I was somehow the center of the room (Even though nobody was observing me), I decided to sit in the nearest empty table. I was hoping that Lorenzo, the waiter who talked to me yesterday would be the one who came upon me today with the menu. No such luck. A girl came instead. Petite, ravenhaired, somewhat perky and nervous. Couldn't be over 17.
"Hey, um, I just wanna say that if you want any recommendations on what to ask from the menu, then you can ask me", she said in a shrill voice.
Then I remembered that the guy I was coming to meet did mention something about having the girls helping him around with the early set up of the restaurant and attending the customers. And I knew that this was my chance.
"Hey, can I speak to your dad, please? We...arranged a meeting of sorts, today"
"sure. What's your name?"
"Juan Carlos. Yours?"
"Milena"
"Nice to meet you, Mile. Anyway, I'll have some mate, if you don't mind"
"It's not in the menu, sir"
"Don't call me sir, I'm hardly older than you."
"It's still not in the menu"
"Your father invited me today with the...shall we say, promise of some mate"
"...I should talk this out with him, then"
"Indeed you should"
I didn't really like this Milena. But then again, I don't like most people. I still managed to maintain a semblance of courtesy, if only because she was the easiest way of talking to someone. Not like I outright disliked her, but there was something that didn't sit quite well with me. I don't know. I guess I'm just nervous by nature or something.
Either way, I couldn't help but envy her and her father. They managed to get away from Argentina and "come to the city of their own dreams", as he had told me last night, when I came to eat here with my friends and family. It was funny, all it took was us mentioning "mate" to Lorenzo for him to go for the owner. Turns out they were both Argentinians who came to Barranquilla. The owner, Matias, had created this place because he liked cooking, apparently. Lorenzo came here to study and he needed money and a job for his own personal expenses.
It's funny, I've travelled a lot and I've found myself meeting plenty of folks from my own country. It's a nice feeling, knowing that even far from home, we can still recognize when someone is from home. It means we still haven't forgotten, I guess.
Anyway, Lorenzo was hired and he worked as a waiter, attending customers, bringing in the food and whatnot. He didn't talk with an Argentinian accent, though. My friends didn't understand this and asked, nay, demanded him to talk with an accent from Rio De La Plata. I did understand it, though. he had gone away from that Buenos Aires and he had been here for five years. He probably had only heard one Argentinian speak in all this time, and it's not like you can simply adopt an accent just like that. He also probably felt at home more in the country that was teaching him and bringing him up, helping him and nurturing him. I don't know, it was a guess, but it was a familiar feeling. I mean, I'm not exactly from here, you know? Or there, for that matter
Anyway, as I was thinking all of this, I felt someone putting their hand on my back:
"My friend! You came! I really didn't expect you to accept my offer", said Matias, with a thick Argentinian accent. He extended his hand in order for me to shake it. I stood up, shook it, and said, "I wouldn't dream of missing on some delicious mate, Mr Matias."
"Oh, please, don't call me mister. Matias will do"
"Works for me, and it seems it works for you, too", I said, with a big smile.
"Haha. Anyway, our mates should come in a bit. Let's talk while we wait, shall we?"
We sat down and we started talking. There was something so fatherly about him. I felt at ease and comfortable talking to him. But it wasn't as if I was talking to my father, someone who I always felt was superior to me in terms of some sort of imaginary hierarchy that I can't quite describe. Nah, I felt like I was talking to someone equal to me. Probably because, for all intents and purposes, he was equal to me.
Eventually, of course, we came unto the topic of "Why was I leaving and what did I expect to do outside of the country?". A topic I normally hated because I felt like I had become a damn tape recorder. But I had come upon someone who had actually done it. Someone who had left home and found home somewhere else. I had always wanted to do that. Not because I hated it here. In fact, regardless of where I go, Colombia has always been the country I loved the most and the one I remembered most fondly. It was where I grew up, it was where I learned how to be happy with myself. But it is also a place that simply wouldn't let me grow further than that. I knew that sooner or later, I'd have to go and leave. And I'd prefer for it to be sooner, to be honest. I wanted to find home early so that I didn't have to find myself thinking later on that I had wasted my time here.
I told Matias all of this, more or less. I can't remember the details and how did I exactly say it, but I do remember that by the time I had finished, Milena came with two cups full of mate. She served them carefully and I took my first sip in 12 years. It felt great. that tingling warm crawling through my body that I hadn't missed till the moment I drank it was one of the most genuinely pleasing sensations I've felt in my life. It brought me back memories of simpler times, too. Of playing around Argentina's park, walking down its streets, holding my mother's hand and simply taking it all in. I was nothing more than a kid back then, and all I remember are landscapes and how I felt. And it felt damn good.
As I was drinking my mate silently, Matias was just stirring it. I stopped drinking and was about to ask what was wrong before he spoke up.
"My friend, I think you need to understand something very important. It doesn't matter where you are or where you will be. All that matters is that wherever you are, you can call it home. People constantly talk about this 'home' as if it was only one place in the world. You know what I say to those people? Bullshit. Home is nothing but wherever you lay your head home after a tough day. Home is wherever there is warmth and comfort awaiting you. Home is nothing more than a place where you can live without feeling as if you didn't belong. Home is not a place that will accept everything you are, though. Home is not a place that will give you eternal happiness. Home is wherever you want it to be"
I couldn't help but treasure these words. I had already thought about all of that, really. But sometimes it's good to hear someone say it out loud. To know someone agrees without you having stated it first. To know that maybe, you're not the only one who thinks like that and that regardless of how everyone disagrees, you can always go back to that moment, where you met someone who said it better than you could ever hope for. However, I felt like I did have to say something.
"Heh, you reminded me of this Borges quote a while back..."
Of course, I had to go and quote someone. I couldn't help but mentally smack myself.
"As I think of the many myths, there is one that is very harmful, and that is the myth of countries. I mean, why should I think of myself as being an Argentine, and not a Chilean, and not an Uruguayan. I don't know really."
"Heh, I hold that quote very close to my heary, actually. I used to read Borges a lot when I was your age. It's funny. Most teenagers read Crime and Punishment, Steppenwolf, that sort of stuff. And I was that kid who just read about lost and impossible libraries, worlds made of thought and so on. He spoke in a language that was beyond any mere tongue. He spoke from heart to heart."
"Quite so, my friend. Quite so"
I drank and finshed my mate. Happy that I had my ideas cleared up, I had finally answered his question about what I intended to do:
"I intend to live in Argentina and study. Hopefully, I'll find a home there, the same way I found it all those years back."
He smiled, gave me a pat in the back and took the cups away. When he came back, I was taking my wallet from my pocket, and he just shook his head.
"no, my friend. It's on the house."
"Many thanks for everything, Matias"
"You're welcome my friend. Remember what I said and hopefully come back. After all, this is also your home if you want it to be"
I shook his hand and left, feeling reassured that I was doing the right thing and that I am going to find many places I could call home. And hopefully, never have to choose between them.
Oh wow, Juan wrote. Critique incoming.
In the mean time, I did some more with Kritya and Jericho and I really need to give a title for this story.
Double postan.
So I feel bad for not having a lot of critique to say, but l like how the dialogue hits each person and causes an engaging reaction. It takes a bit of time to get where it's going but I suppose that's part of the point? In any case I think as personal piece it's very strong.