[ BUY MY BOOKS! Witch-Girl Season One | The Bridge Across the Sky (Amazon) (Kobo) (Goodreads) ][ Stories: Witch-Girl (Read from the bottom of the list), The Canon ] [ Poetry: All Poetry; ( ♥ ) ( ⚔ ) ]
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[ red_a02 ] Shuzhen – The first episode was a lot of fun, cos it had an interesting cocktail of sexual tension and smooth fight choreography. This episode is like the awkward aftermath...
27 Aquarius 13 18:13
[ vermilion_2 ] YAPX – I understand that most of your stories are dialogue-based and heavy on retorts and counter-retorts. This one felt unnecessarily circular. It starts with a cool premise: a killer/villain/vigilante uses Lent to swear off something that should be second nature to him (I suppose), and then talks about a story. The link between the two (giving up killing & the story) isn’t a 100% fit. Maybe instead of “let me tell you a story”, it could be “hey, you see I even passed a guy up for death today!” or equivalent. Something to drag Lorelei into the banter and the premise. // That’s my only complaint. I’m not a big fan of dialogue-based stories, but I can make a exception for this.
14 Aquarius 13 08:03
[ 130204 ] YAPX – Good pace, good characters, great dialogue. The thing I like best is a combination of the three: how you build up their pseudo-relationship through all that back-and-forth exchange. Somehow, you craft a unique, strange relationship: from any one point in the story, both of them are manipulative, victimised and hypocrites - though not all at once. // On word choices, I felt you could change the word “janitor” (“cleaner” or “uncle” would’ve given a different, but more acute local flavour to it). Mostly because, it’s connotes an added level of difference through: class. Whether or not you intended it, by portraying the “janitor” and “student” you bring out the fact that he’s stuck there socially in all sense of the word. It made the part where he says he reads books during weekends completely out-of-context and weird. // Also, there’s too much “sliding” in and out of the room. Not sure if that’s intentional repetition, or just a lack of other words. // I thought that the girl’s own background is pretty compelling. Even after everything, I can’t tell if she’s speaking the truth. Because I’m all for unreliable narrators and characters, I can still find her well-thought out. But other readers might lose patience or wonder at her sudden change of heart at the final moment.
04 Aquarius 13 08:48
…more…
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Fuck Playworks – Crimes Against Literacy ♠ 18 Ta♉rus 2k8, Sun Lord’s Day ♣ |  |
So, I received a few free issues of Playworks. I got like five pages into an issue before I got so horrified at the piss-poor writing that I decided to blog about it instead of reading on, before I feel compelled to claw my eyes out (which I believe could be rather painful).
This is from the APR 2008 issue, from their “Inbox” section, a reply to a letter from “Simon Cowell.” They noted that they cleaned up Simon’s letter because it was “just grammatically incorrect.” This gives the impression that these guys understand the rules of, you know, grammar. This is a false impression.
Thank you, for your kind words. Sorry, we don’t mean to be sarcastic, but that comes with the job, really.“Thank you for your kind words” does not have a comma. After the apology for being sarcastic (presumably in reference to the thanks), they go on to thank the letter writer a few more times. By the end of which, I really can’t tell if all of the thanks are meant to be sarcastic. And doesn’t that second sentence sound awkward?
Unfortunately, unlike sarcasm, being able to write doesn’t come with the job.
Pretty good points you’ve made. Oh, thanks again, for picking up our mag. We really do appreciate to have new readers discovering our little baby. Of course we all have our own opinions and some readers might like our content and some might not. Some might like parts of it while hating other parts.“Really do appreciate to have”? Seriously?
“Of course” should have a comma after, and the last line seems awfully redundant, but both points are debatable.
So, Simon, thank you for writing in and giving us your opinions, which we appreciate. But next time please do use your real name, not because we want to send some rouge Russian operatives your way, but to actually send you our goodies that we give out to our Letter of the Month winners.And this is the best one, “rouge Russian operatives.” Yes, Russian spies wearing makeup.
Possibly, they mean to be sarcastic and use “rouge” to mean “red,” to mean “Commie.”
Or perhaps they mean “rogue”?
And the last line is just totally awkward, like people who make out on the train.
That’s the start and the end of their reply. I can’t bring myself to type in the in between bits. In addition to not knowing how to use a comma (remember kids, commas may look like the sluts of the punctuation world, but they’re meant for more than casual text), the whole thing reads like an exercise in padding (increasing the word count with frivolous, redundant, and just plain repetitive sentences; also, boring). It’s bad enough we get padded blogs, now it turns out mags do it too (Confused about Things That Should Have Padding? Remember this little line – “Bras, not blogs”).
Okay, this may seem terribly pedantic, but I really think that people who are paid to do a job should do it to a minimally acceptable level. What I mean to say is, professional writers should be able to write. One minor mistake is one minor mistake; a cumulative slew of them is just plain inadequacy. Inadequacy is unpatriotic. And bad for your skin.
Why are people so tolerant of bad writing when they aren’t forgiving of bad singing or bad acting, or pretty much bad anything?
It’s one thing if a blog is poorly written, and you don’t have to be Vanity Fair, but a magazine should, at the very least, have an editor. If you’re going to use “we” as a self-reference, at least two people should have read the thing before it went to press, unless, of course, you’re royalty. I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt and assuming it was only read by one guy, because if two people had read that before it went out, those guys really suck.
And, well, if the magazine is meant to read like a blog, all informal and shit, err, why don’t people just read blogs for free?
The only good thing about this is that I was considering submitting an article to them. Thank God I didn’t, I’d be mortified if I made a grammar error and it went to print, because these guys sure as Hell can’t catch it. I don’t think they can catch anything more subtle than the flu.
I don’t know. Maybe it’s supposed to be like that. Maybe they’re aiming to join Teenage, you know, appealing to teenagers, gaining street cred by committing crimes against literacy. I cant write for nutz, dawg. Respect.
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Is there a line that I could write
Sad enough to make you cry?
All the lines you wrote to me were lies.
