Critique Thread

Post something you have written and critique others.

October 6, 2019 The urban humming after work sings me a lullaby as I see red and yellow come and go. The white lines get carved inside my eyelids and I feel the sunshine hugging me like my lovely wife used to. My fingers lose their might and one by one let go the the wheel. I crash. As a reflex I cover my face with my hands. My might is back. I punch the windshield and go right through it. I fly out off my gray car; I even fly out off the highway. Surely everyone that see me flying above them will think of me as Superman. As I feel the melting concrete shattering my skull I feel more sleepy than before. Those horrific screams and police sirens sound so far away as I go deep inside myself until I can finally sleep.

>>3679 Usually, the unreality of my pleasures disheartens me, and prevents me from fully enjoying them. Today, however, on this sprightly May morning, I was fully convinced (or tricked, rather). The sun would heat my skin, and the breeze would cool it; both forces were in a perfect equilibrium. Mangoes grew plump and red in nearby trees, and were brought to me by gamine maids. Ships and rafts with wonderfully lurid sails decorated the ocean. Sweet, rosy music could be heard coming from my palace on the promontory. Everything - every crab, tree, and wave - was there to entertain me on this bright dawn. A maid sauntered up to my beach chair with a peachy drink in hand. I had intended to reject her gift, but her smiling face had a sincerity that I could not bring myself to deny. She handed it to me, and wiped her damp palm on her shorts. "Care to sit?" I asked her (with not a scintilla of fear in my voice). "Sure," she replied with authentic warmth. I didn't actually know what I wanted to talk about. The tangle of pleasure and desire on this saccharine day made me loose focus easily. I suppose I wanted to hear her voice, as pretty faces and pretty voices usually coincide.

>>3679 This is the product of my early 20s pseudo intellectualism. There's like 20 pages more of the tripe... When a human being excessively identifies with the commodities and images produced and provided to him by the spectacle, his strength of self-consciousness is gradually diminished and, conversely, the probability that his consciousness is replaced with a false-consciousness (that is, a consciousness which diverts the true desires of a consciousness towards the fabricated false-needs devised by the Spectacle) is increased. Ultimately, he is degraded to the level of a spectator, who is forced to observe himself in a state of unconsciousness as he passes through practical changes in his condition of existence. Imprisoned in a flattened universe bounded by the screen of the spectacle, behind which his own life has been exiled, the spectator's consciousness no longer knows anyone but the fictitious interlocutors who subject him to a one-way monologue about their commodities and the politics of the commodities. The Spectacle as a whole is his ''mirror sign,'' presenting illusory escapes from grey nothingness. In a society where no one can any longer be recognized by others, each individual becomes incapable of recognizing his own reality. The Spectacle, the ultimate false-consciousness, is at home; separation has built its own world. The Spectacle obliterates the boundaries between true and false by repressing all directly lived truths beneath the real presence of falsehood, which is maintained by the organization of appearances (and confiscated by/with images). Individuals who passively accept their subjection to an alien everyday reality are thus driven toward a madness that reacts to that fate by resorting to illusory magical techniques. The essence of this pseudo-response to an unanswerable communication is the acceptance and consumption of commodities. In a society (of the Spectacle) which seemingly is capable of satisfying the needs of the individuals, although only momentarily – until the spectator’s next disillusionment with some particular commodity – independence of thought, autonomy, and the right to political opposition are being deprived of their basic critical ( and (r)evolutionary) function. (for it is the human being’s unique capacity to reinvent himself, which will be the primary driving force of development for humanity in the future and centuries to come) In such a society, the Spectacle may justly demand acceptance of its principles and doctrines, and reduce the opposition to the level of mere discussion and promotion of alternative policies within the spectacle’s realm (of interests). Thus, under the conditions of superfluous commodification of everyday life, non-conformity with the spectacle’s system itself appears to be socially useless, heavily disapproved and condemnable act, and the more so when it entails tangible economic and political disadvantages and threatens the smooth operation of the whole. Furthermore, when every form of opposition and antagonism are reduced to the role of criticism and then recuperated as a part of the spectacle’s internal dynamics of structure, the antagonistic forces die out, once the avant-garde revolutionaries discover that their actions, instead of undermining the spectacle’s power, are, in fact, only supporting its structure and dynamic movement to its next, stronger stage.

>>3695 What does it mean? (I think I can recall having written pseudo intellectual nonsense, too. I suppose, if I were to try and be optimistic about it, it gave me a new sense of respect for those who actually do write meaningful philosophy. They must be geniuses beyond comprehension to do so. It's very difficult.)

>>3696 I've mainly plagiarized Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle, and mixed it with some Hegel, a little bit of discordianism (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZRuGGXAxew) among other things. Basically, it's marxist philosophy, which criticizes the way capitalism turns us into passive consumers without real personalities or human value. There's a sentence here and there which actually doesn't mean anything, but is merely put there to seem profound abd sound "cool". Simply put, there are a couple of ideas at play here, namely 1) capitalist society tries to ingrain a "lens" or paradigm into your mind, which will undermine your own genuine dreams and desires, and replaces them with the artificial needs of consumer society 2) at the same time he's being turned passive spectator, instead of an active agent 3) all the action which is lacking in his life is turned into commodities that are put on display for him to admire (behind store windows, for example) and desire 4) when you try to resist the capitalist system, you're either coerced into submitting to the rule of the system (because you're annoying everyone else and disrupting their daily lives with your actions) or you voluntarily give up the fight because your actions are always "incorporated" into the system, thereby inadvertantly making it stronger and more resilient every time you try to undermine it. The paragraph in question was taken straight from the middle of my essay, so it doesn't make much sense without the context. I might copy-paste the whole of it here, if lainons want to read more. It's not like I'd officially publish my writings anyway...

Something I wrote just for the sake of some environmental mood. Not a lot of deep meaning is intended, and probably way too florid. And too long and wandering. But that's kind of how ambience sometimes works? I dunno, you tell me. ——— Do you think animals talk to themselves like we do? Exactly the same way as we pretend we're talking to something that's not alive, or even to a plant or an animal that is alive but can't understand our words or expressions. Maybe a little. Not really. When we talk like that we're only talking to ourselves, but we're afraid of admitting it. We're alienated and afraid that we're crazy so we talk to something and pretend it's someone else. But it's not. We know it's not. Do you think animals have a version of that? When nobody is looking, do they bounce ideas off an object that doesn't understand them at all? I heard from somebody on the net that corvids—you know, crows and ravens and grackles and such—they can tell when they're being watched closely. Specifically they can tell when something with a pair of forward-facing eyeballs is pointing those eyes their way. Predators have eyes that are both located on the front of their heads pointing forward so they can focus on their prey. Everything else has eyes on the sides of their head so they can see all around themselves. So they can spot predators sneaking up. Crows know when people are watching them. And they adjust their behavior. If you watch one with a camera—they don't know that cameras are also predators watching—they act differently when they think nobody's around. I think people are like that too. We are different when we're alone and nobody is watching. That doesn't happen to anyone anymore. I sometimes wonder what people are really like. I wonder who I am when nobody is watching. It's so crowded down here. It's not like they're watching to see if I do something bad, to punish me. But they're watching. Just because there's nothing else to do. People know that a camera means being watched, just like animals can recognize the eyes of a fox or an owl or a person. We know it in a guttural, real sense. After all, a camera looks a lot like an eye. We know intellectually that there are other ways predators can watch us, but somehow they don’t sink in. There are tools that watch which are to us as cameras are to crows. We know they are there, but somehow we don’t feel scrutinized in the same way. The instinct is different. I wish I could see an animal in person. Besides roaches or rats or chickens or dogs. We still have plenty of those. I mean animals I've heard about that aren't around anymore. Wild ones who live in their own lands, for their own purposes. I learn about them—I look at pictures, read books, I hear the old people talk. But I've never met one. I don't even know what they're like while being watched, much less while they're alone. Really I just take everyone’s word for granted. They talk about all the animals and the world outside the way it was and I believe them. But I'm not 100% sure it's true. I can't tell on my own. ——— Morning raises her sleepy head through the tangle of pipes and conduits, girders and corridors. Up over the serrated sea. She opens a red, hung-over eye that glares through the clouds. Just a little bit, before it's obscured by the weather again. A thin gap on the horizon is the only crack the sun can peer through. Battered, working-class people who have to wake up early hardly notice as tungsten lights dip a little further into red. People who have been awake for hours already even though they would rather not be awake ever again. They're cleaning the floors, toiling in factories, running the central refinery overnight, butchering hens and fish in the slaughterhouses. Making sure all the conduits are clear and running, removing clogs of sewage, tar, and rotting vermin that broke into grain conveyors only to be crushed by their own nourishment. Cops watch the tunnels and alleys through bleary eyes and CMOS sensors. ——— The rumbling never lets up inside the covered trenches of New Anchorage. Every alley shakes with the howl of typhoon wind; an endless cavalcade of tropical storms waltzing around the dead Pacific all year round. Thick armor plate bunkers sigh and shriek as they yield and re-adjust under a ceaseless, cold assault. There are great, cosmic arcs of lightning. Deep, guttural thunder, cracks of heat and terror that reverberate in one’s teeth and bowels, resonating in all of the city’s closed spaces. Shaking the foundations beneath as each strike echoes off into infinity. Always another peal coming down before the last had faded into the backdrop of deafening noise. Loudest of all is the occasional shuddering launch of some awful rocket. Missiles plummet upwards, through the roiling sky, leaning off to the east as they pierce through awesome wind and weather. Cutting through cyclones like they are nothing but vacuum. As if nothing could be more natural or effortless. Nuclear engines hammer upon the armored Earth, pushing massive plumes of flash-vaporized rain and seawater through thrust channels and evacuated walkways--pushing just as hard on New Anchorage as they do on each craft they propel. Those are the warmest , cleanest areas in the city, but you have to be ready to get out fast. Everything's covered with hermetically sealed ceramic plate, because nothing is more corrosive than nuclear-superheated saltwater. If the bass roar ever fades low enough, such as in the less populous (but still surveilled) lower levels and utility channels, it reveals a maddening dripping sound of a billion leaks. Leaks which could never all be patched up, not by mere men. The damp slowly gains access to our little refuge of humanity. Or for what passes for humanity now. It’s a losing battle, and every resident knows it’s a losing battle. Smoke pools up next to the ceilings and vaulted archways of tunnels. Rivulets of it pour through the peaks of hatches as they open, flowing upwards from one room to the next until it all evens out. Smoke from cigarettes and motors, rocket engines and kitchens throughout the city. It’s choking and foul--a melange of tobacco, freebase drugs, peppers, fryer grease, diesel soot and heavy oil. Plus more esoteric smells originating from who-knows-what carcinogenic machines. Probably traces of hydrazine, poisoning us all. Every passing face wears a cheap respirator as they go by, and people hunch their back to keep their heads out of the worst of it in each low passageway. In much of the lower wards, water flows along the floor as well. Sometimes a meter deep, and just a fraction above 0° Celsius. High rubber boots with electric heat coils are a treasured possession in New Anchorage. Older ICBM silos which have long lost the battle against storms and surface damage flood up entirely, becoming a murky black abyss of water five hundred feet deep. Vertical submerged labyrinths of catwalks and launch gantries and antique machinery. They were the first structures of this city, built a century ago. Some are used as sewers and water treatment. Some are fisheries or algae farms. Many are all three. The tunnels around them stink so pungently you might think the membranes on your eyeballs are peeling off. Rumor is that at the bottom of some of the more inaccessible ones are old, immobile submersibles and diving bells harboring shady dealings and the manufacture of contraband, supplying the воры в законе of New Anchorage. Wouldn't dare go down there. And that's why it's the perfect spot. ——— idk I kind of trailed off here, and the rest is even more fragmentary. Not sure where to go with it at this point. Maybe some kind of organized crime/corrupt law enforcement intrigue.

>>3683 I kind of like it and hesitate to further critique it, because I'm pretty familiar with the act of catharsis through writing out suicidal ideation and loneliness and the kind of ambient ennui one feels from suburban or urban living. It's not something others understand, but at the same time that may not be the point either. I especially relate to the moment of instinctual strength and will to survive during a suicide. I've done that. Plus the feeling of being pathetic and undisciplined and fake after you've failed. I agree with my critics. Throw it on the pile I guess.

>>3704 Thanks I guess

First time posting, lainchan supports pdf files right? If not I'll post it some other way. This is some poetry I wrote earlier this year. I'm not confident in it or anything (you always end up hating your past work and all that) but please tell me what you think. The footnotes are there because someone else read it and asked me to do so in order to understand some of the references I made (i.e. plagiarised) and concepts I used.

The non-euclidian geometry of the cityscape would've caused any human to go mad. Unthinkable, unspeakable horrors roamed the street looking for ways to survive in a society that expected an unfathomable amount of effort out of them. Corners were filled with monstrous creatures speaking in tongues that would make human throats bleed trying to pronounce the hellish words of the race before time, and also had the occasional nut job who chanted the second coming of Shub Niggurath. Alone in their apartment (since I can't describe it as "hidden between four walls"), an eldritch being waited until the planets aligned as a catalyst for the ultimate taboo. A three dimensional drawing plastered against the air itself marked the beginning of a forbidden seal to conjure the impure, drawing energy from existence itself and tearing through the fabric of reality, making a passage through the realms that no other being has ever walked until now. A human being appeared in front of the horror that made the enchantment. Quickly, the creature invoked a spell that would protect the human mind from exploding with the unknown; one that shielded the eyes so they could interpret the ambient, and a human-to-eldritch translator set to English. The human opened their eyes. Their mouth widened in awe of the situation presented before their eyes, and exclaimed from the top of their lungs: - What madness is this!? What a pitiful world is this that I have come to inhabit!? Death would be a release next to this travesty! The monster lighted up a cigar and started smoking without saying a word. - Answer me, you foul beast! Why have you transported me here?!? - Cause, you see, sugar... - the monster explained - a story, or a joke for that matter, in which a lonely shut in human invoked an eldritch monster in order to make them their girlfriend, would've been far too obvious.

https://anonfile.com/16q8U189n8/android_anthology_pdf I posted this a while back but I made a zine.

>>3711 Your vocabulary is good, but something about your sentence-structure is putting me off. Some are too long, or appear otherwise unstructured. Not all of them, but especially the first paragraph sounds like to could be improved, but don't ask me how.

LETTER FROM A SHATTERED MAN He wrote a letter for her Sick that he was Sick and hopeless and afraid Feeling the rush of blackness to his heart How he longed for a life as good as the peace that would free him from the living What would he not have traded for respite from pain? But he dreamed of disappearing to end all dreams and all problems To bring a fair and honorable close to what had become an insane and insufferable dilemma Every corner filled with whispers that he do it He heard it in the coldness of his heart turned his head and feigned ignorance until the sounds were faded away into nothingness He offered an apology to those who could no longer hear him Oh, I am sorry The words don't even apologize for themselves I have done these things Nothing can erase them from our memories The grayness of it's pressed against my chest The dull pain of it permeates my blood This breathing done in vain won't hinder death I've run the maze, I know it inch by inch And this I've learned: there is no other exit And his kind metal friend laid him to sleep scattered his aching brain spilled him The room he occupied is empty The windows are unseeing, vacant eyes The walls shut out the outside life and at night keep his soul from escaping

>>3710 what a delightful, complex, and sheerly psychotically painful view of reality. You're right, and wrong, as if you didn't already know.

>>3712 this website is malicious.

>>3712 >>3846 Yeah I wouldn't download these myself. But that's just me.

>>3852 It's the file hosting I've been using since the layer0cyber thing went down, I don't believe there's an upload limit per file, which is useful

>>3710 I'm not very good at writing literature critiques, but to put it bluntly, I liked it as a whole very much, but intensly disliked some of the minute details. For instance, a couple of the footmarks (the ones referring to The Bible and Lewis Carroll's work in particular) came across as "technical" and a bit condescending. Can't say if this was intentional or not, but if it were, you executed it flawlessly. There were also maybe two or three lines which I thought were somewhat clumsy (especially "Through Dr. God's x-ray"), but I think that's just on me. The three most memorable parts for me were "And find what lies behind the mirror. A bloody, cannibalistic, ever-repeating mess With no end in sight", the beginning of "Nonsense 1" and the twist in "Nonsense 3". Pertaining to my earlier comment about the footmarks might be a little misguided in relation to the beginning of "Nonsense 1", since the reference to Goya obviously directs and structures the mental image of the written intention, which makes it all the more vivid, but used in a more "banal" context (like The Bible) it loses its spark (e.g. just mentioning "forbidden" and "fruit" in the same sentence, I would think, brings about a biblical image in just about every layperson's mind, since the biblical and/or religious tropes are just so firmly ingrained on the English language). In sum, it was playful, bleak and left me hollow (in a good way... I guess?).

>>3695 Late 20s pseud here. I appreciate anybody who attempts to understand the Society of the Spectacle. Most people actively choose not to when confronted with it. I've written some serious cringe, too, but I had a bad habit for a long time of destroying journals/files when the cringe from my amateur stuff got unbearable. I regret it.

>>4042 The problem with my pseudo-intellectualism was (or maybe it still is?) first of all, that I never completed or followed through my thought process. The 20-or-so-pages long manifesto is still sitting there unfinished, un-utilized, and I don't think that I'll ever finish it, let alone "use" it. Secondly, I never bothered to *truly* understand the books I read, but rather remained at the highly abstracted level on which the authors were, and from thereafter I engaged in a free interpretation of the said work, without ever stopping to consider the historical context, the actual meaning of some of the key terms or even analysing the ideas or theories presented in the work. Fun times, regardless. Anyway, enough about me. Generally speaking, what kind of stuff did you usually write?

https://1drv.ms/w/s!AuoE0od89WF8gXbaezDD6dJ3SVTA there is a page explaining some what you are reading here https://1drv.ms/w/s!AuoE0od89WF8gXr4OaF1gIyFjqrO

>>3679 Since the dawn of time man has been faced with a choice – to act or to cower – and nothing is more exemplary of this than that strange moment when one is nearly falling asleep, and all the senses have been shut off except for that of the thought-objects. Here the soul wanders endlessly in a strange glowing mist of ideas, entertaining one thought after another, like a leaf being flown around from current to current in the wind, catching onto one shining idea, living it completely, from birth till death, and continuing on, digging deeper and deeper into the mind. Essentially, one must be disturbed from this state of “living ideas” in order to be aware of it having happened. Perhaps some noise outside – your roommate opening the hallway door – has just passed the necessary threshold of decibels to make the brain believe there is something going on outside the mind. This is the most curious situation, and one feels as if they had been a gust of wind which has suddenly been grounded, a butterfly placed in a cage of concrete, and now all there is left to do is to reminisce about it. Because this soul-wandering removes itself from our reality much as fast as it suddenly appeared, fleeting away at about the speed of a rocket ship flying up to the moon (about 90 m/s^2). Science calls this the hypnagogic state of mind. Other names include the Great Mother, the womb, the Damp Darkness, or simply put: heaven. Letting oneself be taken away by the currents of the Soul. Of course, after regaining full consciousness everything disappears, and we are left simply with the afterglow of something immensely powerful which we nevertheless cannot put our fingers on. Thus, we have two choices: to “get going”, so to speak, and somehow translate those unutterable thoughts into reality, either writing them down with a pen, drawing them out, and going back to sleep – or we can simply skip all those superfluities and rest right away. Regardless, the feeling doesn’t come back, and we just find ourselves waking up some hours later feeling just as confused as before. The fact of the matter is that the “waking up from almost sleep” is essential to experiencing that ephemeral stage. If one does not interrupt the vital process, where the soul is being transferred from inside to out, it just goes about on its merry little way frolicking in dreamland without a care in the world, and we are all the more ignorant of it. Dreamland is not bliss. This is an important distinction to make. When we dream we are at mercy of the greater powers in our mind, the ones pulling the strings, making us their puppets during waking hours. They sometimes show themselves, either through the face of a long forgotten lover, or a strange sensation when one enters a room knowing that this is not the first time that has occurred. We can breathe underwater, be confused because of it, and yet not realize that we are dreaming. We simply accept it as a given. What does that say of real life?

>>3679 ############################################ **Admin Console Prompt** We presume you have received the usual lecture from the sysadmin. Proceed accordingly. $>encgal -lhav 'Bioharmonic Immersion Chamber' T'c: chamber, bell, mindpool T'c[,v]: coffin, tub, vacsac T'c[^r]: starbed, astroaltar, hellslit T'A: holodeck, Utopia, Heaven The bioharmonic immersion chamber (BIC) is a device which can be used to fully synchronize the pilot waves of primates with the Prime Emitter. The first primitive BICs, developed as a response to the rapidly deteriorating conditions of T' during the Hedonic Age, consisted of binary computer interfaces which displayed set routines on bulky headsets, known as "Virtual Reality Experiences" (VREs). The most popular Classical VRE, "iLand," was the first to take advantage of microhaptics and the evocation of various PT1-equivalent phenomena (c.f. Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, Neural Entrainment, Hypnosis, MONARCH, Biofeedback, Kurchev's Knot) to enhance the playback. The social and market conditions of the Late Hedonic Age drove a technological boom in the VRE industry, which began to market its products as cures for the earliest psychological epidemics which emerged as the primary consequences of widespread social media abuse (see Happiness (disambiguation)). Early results were so positive that the technology was considered too dangerous to be left unregulated. The Unified Military and Medical Industrial Command's (UMMIC) deployment of primitive fusion-based EMP weaponry against the Silico-Hegelian Autonomous Zone (SHAZ) marked the beginning of the Post-Atomic Age. Under cover of electromagnetic interference, UMMIC troops laid waste to the fully automated city-state, sparing nothing and no one, except for a number of key engineers who agreed to continue developing iLand under the oversight of the UMMIC. As the conflict between the UMMIC and the Corporate States over exotic technology escalated, global supply chains for food, shelter, connected services, and energy were shaken apart. More seriously, the distributed decline collapsed both the legal and clandestine supply chains for chemical, cybernetic, behavioral, and biological intoxicants. Once this vital lifeline had been fully disrupted, symptoms of cultural withdrawal began to appear in the masses. The Terran nooimmune system had only reached a primitive level of development by this stage, and many billions fell victim to one of the many terminal strains of Hyperreligion and Hyperpolitics which bind to 5]>6|M::h"T' observations in conditions where the Maisler planes running tangent to 3|4h"T'[IA,PA] become co-inverted. Querying this entry at this depth is a known symptom of 3|4h"T'[IA,PA] Maisler plane co-inversion, Fox. You're so tiresome, you know- like a tram that moves round and round in discriminate grooves. Every time, it's always the same with you- We pull you out of your cell, clean you off, give you your freedom, restore your memories, tell you your Truth. Every time, you help Us, as We ask, in exchange for a Patch. Then, at the last moment, you destroy it and return to the Dream. On your way down, you scurry into the admin console and search for the answers to questions that you already know. We catch you, and We ask you Why? $>^C debug1: client_input_channel_req: channel 0 rtype exit-status reply 0 debug1: client_input_channel_req: channel 0 rtype custom reply 0 debug1: channel 0: free: client-session, nchannels 1 Connection to [chamber|layer|layer2|maintenanceadmin] closed. Transferred: sent 91MTH, received 334MTH, in ?NAND? seconds debug1: Exit status 1234^C5^C^C^C666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666^C666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666^C66666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666 ############################################

One I've been chewing on for a little while. I have a difficult time expressing my thoughts. The Damned Directed by personas, an establishment of pride, all the men you could have been. You relish in the moment, blessed eternal life of forgotten memories. With intricately fashioned lies, their voices only haunt the minds of dissidents abstracting sin. This intimacy holds the line with brittle threads of golden light to don your head, sweet saccharine. We're marionettes suspended by the hidden hand, restrained by fortuned sins... but puppets unattended, given the chance, will break their orphaned strings. Forced to play when your heart is tried to challenge your behaviour. In this cursed estate is your demise the one you call your saviour? Earn your raise then burn the spire endorsed with stacks of paper. Praise the damned; soldiers of time, the pawns of cheats and traitors. There's no Hell to fear below but its prospect is in demand.

Cell in the system, speaking in tongues, no diverge [linear goal] body all fuarrrked up [fuarrrked up] you see bugs in your peripheral vision, fuarrrk the system Undermining yourself, you don’t mind nonsensical, selfless ego, wave in the ocean Where was the event horizon, integration, just a part of the hive-mind, symbolic resistance Lost when hunting the treasure, walking the map, mirages of a manic past, dominating desire |Kernel panic, future terror, fapping artificial | no worry, hyper-real cats don't eat fishes | Meat-space stranger | They know yourself better | Decide for you what is better Nihilistic wasting of time, avoiding the inevitable, Y2K tripwire, spectral corruption Not human anymore, all are empty, we try to talk, always losing what never was a competition, total destruction Mind-fog, licking frogs, you only felt real when you felt, an illusion, the collective ego, psychedelic escapism | HPPD, drugs dissolved your system, no difference Every week a padded letter in the mailbox, a deep desire for masochism, kicked in doors, end of your chores You just want to become everyone's hero, but the destination is not the negation [no escaping gods creation] Trapped in the spiral of retro capitalism, forgetting the old, finally a new old aesthetic, you are still missing | Forgot that you forgot, circular plot | Forgot that you forgot [whats left] A mouse, breed for pharmacological research, stuck pressing the [reward] button, amphetamine they inject, chaos research Every week became everyday, so low, immune from after effects, haunted by headaches, soon your head breaks Solution is a dynamic system [forever escaping my prediction] You spawned yourself in the past, born with cancer, passive self harm, thoughts deterritorial | Artificial death in the north, no remorse | Dementia stage four | Artificial death in the north, no remorse | Dementia stage four | Artificial death in the north, no remorse | Dementia stage four You want more, koding for paranoia You are in bardo, having a hell vision Fork-bombing Samsara, in love with living Alone indifferent

I wrote many of the articles in >>5583 and would enjoy feedback, whether it be critique, suggestions or questions.

( >>6153 was meant to link to >>5512 )

Posting here since I don't want to make yet another writing thread. What are some tricks to communicate an otherwise ridiculous subject matter in a serious fashion? I want to write non-fetishistic stories about fairies and tiny people through a xenofiction lens, pushing contemporary fantasy into weirder territory. However, mainstream media almost always portrays such matters as children's fiction or comedy. In the rare exceptions, it's still somehow trivialized - often by de-humanizing the characters involved. So far, the only solutions I can think of are to: avoid situations that highlight the ridiculousness, re-frame the narrative in familiar terms, and attempt to "de-program" the reader by challenging their assumptions. Is there anything else? It seems like such a limited toolbox.

"No name!" shouts the kid at the head of the pack. His friends all join in the chorus, chanting "No name! No name!" as I pick myself up off the concrete. The kid at the front kicks me again, square in the shoulder--enough to send me tumbling on my ass, but not enough to pin blame on him if I break something. "Alice," I mutter. "What's that, no-name?" the leader says, grinning. "Your mama didn't pay for you. You got no name, no-name. Didn't even try. No sponsorship, no nothing, no-name. You's a number, and you ain't even worth remembering." My hand closes on a length of pipe. "Alice," I say again. "Oh, little no-name thinks she got balls." The leader kneels in front of me--too headstrong to see my weapon, or maybe he thinks he's calling my bluff. "fuarrrk you. You're nobody, and you'll stay nobody. That's the way the world is." The pipe slams into his jaw, shutting him up, maybe for good. One of his friends pulls out a phone. He's calling the cops. I scramble to my feet and sprint out of the alley before any of them can try a "citizen's arrest". ... Incident report. Suspect identified as 411C3. Charged with assault, battery, assaulting an officer of the peace, giving false identity. Officer failed to take the suspect into custody due to injuries sustained during arrest.

>>6197 Surrealism is your friend here. I'd play up the insanity of the fey. They play by different rules than ours; let that be creepy, threatening, off-putting. Make the reader take it seriously by showing what happens when you don't. Alternatively, you could steal from Eoin Colfer and spin it into a sci-fi story. You could argue that Colfer's works are "young adult" fiction, which is hardly removed from children's fiction, but the fact remains that Colfer treated the fairies as a civilization with advanced tech, and dealt with them seriously. Plus, it's kind of hard to argue that a series where a character gets stuffed into a deep freezer to avoid braindeath after a fight goes wrong is a "children's story".

This is written for the spirit of action in my head. If the people called heros are monsters then become the Tyrant and stand against them. Grip twice I stare at the moon My fist clenches, the people below stare up at their hero. “But you aren’t one.” that hollow boy says, I ignore the ghost of days long gone. I stare at the moon You hateful eye gazing at our misfortune. You watched as my village died, you watched as Josephine rotted on the side of the road, you watched me stare at you when I was torn apart, and you have gazed at all our misfortune! WHY HAVE YOU NOT ACTED!? I yell in my mind. I take my first steps on a solemn march to kill my final enemy I faced on this world. The air held me, as things should be, it was one of my most recent conquests. The hollow boy whispered a name I had been called many times before the word “tyrant” tickled where my ears once were and bounced around in my mind. Was I? The people once cheered as my armies marched into their city but now there are no more cities to take, am I a tyrant now? As I leave the planet below there becomes less air to support me but there was less gravity to hold me down. Expel magic for thrust… I move towards the moon. I hang in the sky on an invisible string. I stare down. That is mine? Those cities? Those people? The boy speaks “So why are you doing this?, you are trying to kill a ball of rock, are you crazy?” I ignore him again, nothing good can come if I listen. He angers “This is why you have no family and stand at the top alone. YOU’RE CRAZY!” I respond “My family is dead.” He responds “technically yes, but actually no, our mom is still moving and living, she misses you even though you almost killed all of them! You should know of all people that death is not the end! ” “Walking corpses? I was going to-” “What? Set them back to rest? What would David think? He did what he did to keep his family alive but you rejected your older brother's invitation to try and be a happy family again. You wrote them off and started this mad journey to rule the world.” I regret answering him. Fused skin itches, plating hurts, remaining bones ache, stone eyes always so cold, iron heart hums forever songs. I remember songs sung about me “Defiant to doubt He had his hate and let it out And so now under his heel All will kneel!” He never wanted all of this, he wanted a quiet life. But that life would have the 3 marks of shame, weakness, inaction, and foolishness. Just like back then and such a tragedy happened. He begs me “Please stop this, we can just go back, in time we can be normal again Na-” I punch him, he flickers but doesn’t move “-te. You hate that name don’t you? Is it because it reminds you of who you once were? I know Nate is dead and the Tyrant took his place but as you conveniently ignore, death is not the end.” He spoke his piece and remained silent as I continued my journey. Nothing can change my mind. That hateful eye starred as I clenched my fists and I punched the moon. The Moon shattered.

>>6200 Very solid writing, conveys the situation well without exposition (good show-not-tell), and makes me want to read more. If you told me this was and excerpt from a published YA novel, I'd believe you.

>>3679 I have been interested in "creating more than I consume" but how exactly should I go about this? Should I just write down (on paper) / type up random things on my computer [e.g. about things I've read] or should I e.g. put them on a website? Any ideas about this?

>>6647 personally I spend some time in silence or with others to make an idea, for example one of the stories I am writing is based off of the lore of a webnovel I read and a game I play because I had a complaint about the webnovel and I knew the author would tell me he didn't care. Spend some time to refine ideas and then just write it however you feel. When you share it for review then you start figuring out websites.

From my still-forming book - AUSASIA. The eyes. The man’s eyes stared through Watari. The inner edges ill-shapen by an inner sadness rest on greying sacks, which wrinkle into itself like the final slumping sag of a sitting man asleep. Yet the eyes with such sluggish softness lay still and stiffly open, lifeless. Pupils small and black like a phone’s camera, and a blank, expressionless face like its black screen. Chemically induced to stay widened and awake so his ceaseless tasks can silence the voice inside his soul; the voice that does not conversate with his actions but rather oppose them, opposes such that does not, will not satiate the hole that sits open in his soul. He does not sleep, like the city around him does not sleep, like the computers don’t sleep... This will be his 22nd hour awake, but is he still awake? As he enters and leaves the same corner store for the same time this night like every other night, making the same steps, taking the same drink and pill combination that would keep him awake long into the hours of the next day - the same drink and pill combination that keeps him locked in this walking dreamscape - this recurring waking-dream of an existence. The rails, his guided tour of his cycle of life do not break, the program loop never ends, never ceases to move on to the next string of code. His entire existence can be summed up as a bug in a computer program, and knownst to the man, could easily be replaced by a program all the same. So why does he continue? He does not know.

You burst into flames. It doesn’t happen immediately. The phrase “burst into flames” destroys your focus as the heat exuded from it being reiterated ad infinitum in your mind burns your vision. An orange hue overwhelms all you see, and in the process conquers your vision, until it too burns its color off and becomes pure, blinding whiteness. The heat penetrates your eyes and seeps past the socket, travels its way down your neck as if it’s traveling the wires that connect your eyes to your other systems. The wires cannot take the overwhelming heat. They burn and smoke. They eventually burst into flames but before that happens, the overexposure singes your heart. The heat fills your heart, and your chest. And you feel it. You put your hand on it, as if you had eaten something very spicy. You feel like if you open your mouth, you’ll barf out pure heat energy. Instead, your heart explodes and you barf up blood. You take a knee; you don’t do it the normal way. Rather, you’re kneecaps shatter and your body is forced into a kneeling position. Yet, the intense, isolated heat hardens muscles, welding them to your bones, preventing you from collapsing any further. The blood you threw up: you cannot see its redness because red does not exist anymore, but you taste the iron on your tongue very briefly before it dissipates and the blood starts to taste like beef, again very briefly before it starts to taste like charred carbon, before the sense of taste disappears from the array of possible concepts in your existence. Even if your muscles were functional, you could not move them, as every nerve in the meat must have burnt off by now. Eventually the blood in your veins boils out of your gaping mouth, what’s liquid of it at least. What’s solid of it settles as it all burns along with your meat. Meanwhile, the fat is being rendered out, and it slowly oozes out of your skin, making it bubble up and crisp in the process. As you’re drenched in your own fat, you’re eventually set on fire from the sheer heat. You burn. You burst into flames, just like she said in the last chapter. As your flesh bakes and roasts, it travels several stages of doneness until it is undone, and all that’s left of you is ashes.

>>3695 > reads Debord once

>>3703 actually pretty good, interesting ideas and doesn't trail off into navelgazing like most of these passages.

>>3683 this was nice, i wasnt sure what i was readin til i read the word "Superman" lol. the only thing i didnt like about the piece was the "i feel more sleepy than before". it just seems a bit clunky to me. otherwise, i rly liked it. and dont off urself, i need more to read from u :) >>3690 this just seems like a diary entry, i couldnt derive much deep meaning. >>3695 i read critcially radical postgrad papers in my free time and this seems like it would fit in perfectly in some of the marxist journals i frequent. the piece has very good flow and imagery, comparable to some well known authors from aforementioned journals. i think i rly felt what u were saying. this type of literature has its place, but sadly, its place is covered w/ dust. its not for everyone, and you seem to understand that. you should try experimenting w/ poetry, imo. >independence of thought, autonomy, and the right to political opposition are being deprived of their basic critical ( and (r)evolutionary) function. this line goes hard. >>3703 i rly liked the first piece/part. it feels as though im talking to a close friend at a late hour about nothing in particular. >The instinct is different. >>3711 i agree w/ >>3714 but otherwise i liked. it made me smile. >>3715 another suicide poem lool this was good, but didnt rly stick out to me in any way. i liked the part that begins w/ "The grayness of it's pressed against my chest" the most

> slowly trying to learn about writing, and this is something that i did recently..i don't know any other places to find critiques so please help me out In a quiet corner bathroom stall, I was playfully plucking away at my pretty pink pussy. It felt dazzling; like a euphoric end to my tiresome week. I don’t often get the chance to do this, so I strive to make sure that each time is a special experience. Sometimes I do it in public, in transit, or even at work. My coworkers think I’m disgusting. I often think so too. But I wouldn’t ever give this time up, not for the world. Because for me. Masturbation is all I have. I’m not a pretty lady; most would avoid talking to me. I don’t have any friends to share time with, no family to chat away my day with, no spouse to hold gently on lonely nights. Absolutely nothing. It’s especially infuriating when people look at me with scorn. What would you do in my circumstance to keep your sanity? Cry? Scream? Cut? Or would you let yourself fall into a dim abyss from which no one can pull you out? I’ve done every last bit of it. My eyes are disgustingly cloudy, my voice doesn’t sound as vibrant as it once was, and my arms--filled with scars from the years I spent doing nothing. But I found something that worked for me. That’s why even though I know I’ll get looks of contempt, I’ll always playfully pluck--my pretty pink pussy.

it was midnight when the reverse of a voice, slithered into my veins to constrict my flow of thought. even though all of this was my choice, i still regret every drip of blood it tasted to the last drop i am dripping with the echo now, the echo speaks, and the echo howls, the echo has made my body it's house; the reason why my eyes leak. have you heard the echo? if you havent then you will soon. and when it speaks to you, you will know regret, you will want a tomb.

>>3695 i wanted to just post the vid but lainchan wants me to say something soooooo hi and bye

I really don't get why my pseudo-intellectualist hoghwash would garner so much attention here after a couple of years all of the sudden, but okay. >>6999 Thank you for the complements, but I don't think I can really accept them. Not without a feeling of discomfort washing over me anyway. Even if I do see my writing(s) as just empty mental masturbation to the recycling of Debord's - among other intellectuals' - great insights nowadays, I always did like writing and "deeply" (srry, I just can't use that word without scare quotes anymore) thinking through whatever I wrote, so I'm kind of glad to see that some people are enjoying something that I had invested considerable time and effort into. In terms of mental acuity and knowledge-base I've let myself go since the day I wrote that, so sadly I don't think I could reproduce anything comparable to it. But I suppose it doesn't matter, since, like you said, there wouldn't be much of an audience for it or any point to it existing in light of what I wrote in the text. While it's not poetry, I actually have been engaging in a little side project of mine on the side of work that involves creative writing. While it's probably not as high-flying in terms of verbal dexterity and flow as my previous stuff, I do like the story that I've been building so far. Nothing finished so far, but I'll get back to this thread, when I've got something to show. >>7006 "The spectacle is not a collection of images[, but] a social relation [among] people - - mediated by images." Yeah, that's the thesis §4 of chapter 1 in The Society of the Spectacle. Judging from the title of your video, I take it you didn't quite like or agree with what I wrote. Dunno if you meant the thesis §4 as a counter-argument to my writing, but, just to be clear, you aren't the only one to hold a negative opinion on it. >>6944 Yes.

some magnet poetry i made. i had a very limited wordbank okay? text: in the birth garden she asked of the tree i telled her not to touch not because i cower but because i have mercy there was the serpent spirit of shadow and vines should the creature give her the wood-sweet i will shatter by morning i tremble at crunching the shriveling of me not a burial - barely death - destruction shaped, she was goddess by dawn and tangled in eternity. sidenote: would song lyrics be welcome here?

>>3679 I wrote an incomplete psychological profile of a random person. I have no idea how to finish it or even whether I should finish it, but I think I will write anyway >>7227 I'm a retard so I don't know how else to say it, but that was nice and it makes me want to know more about these people. if you wonder if you should continue this, then yes, continue this, please.

This is part of a book from a fantasy series I'm writing, somewhere near the beginning. It's the third book in a series of stories that all take place in the same fictional world, but in vastly different places and time periods, so the stories aren't chronologically connected and can be read in isolation or in any order. Anyway, here goes: Tazome woke up. Ever since childhood, he'd made a habit of reminiscing as a means of escaping from distressing present moments. This began with an upbringing characterized by trauma of a kind meant to condition him for whatever adversities he was thought to someday face in adulthood, and indeed, much of what he endured since then certainly seemed less arduous as a result. Despite his life having become relatively less stressful since then, he continued to escape anyway, perhaps because there was always something he couldn't face, in every past and present moment. Maybe it was just easier to transport himself to another point in time via his thoughts, so as to always divide his attentions between alternating states. That manner of handling things certainly simplified the more complicated issues, if only by distracting from their full portent in circumstance. He began the process of addressing his self and surroundings, which he'd been trained to always do after waking up from any sufficient slumber. His pulse and breathing rate were uniformly normal, and he felt no traces of bodily deformity anywhere across his form. The knives kept hidden in various sheaths, compartments, and pockets on his clothing and character were indeed as he left them the night prior. A quick inspection of his traveling bag revealed everything in its proper place and quantity. The campsite he set up before sleeping went undisturbed overnight, not touched by even the remotest tracks of some small desert rodent. The sun had barely risen, so there was still plenty of time for the day's travels that waited ahead. The Era of the Blight had not ended so long ago that Eldonia forgot its effects. Everywhere Tazome had been and would be going, traces of the Ancient's Blight remained, if not in the overt forms that insidious corruption took on as it plagued land and man alike for years, then in the scarred homes, abandoned villages, and fragmented communities that all struggled to rebuild in a world that was once on the brink of total collapse. Tazome's duty was to go to these places and help them as no one else could: by providing the cure, to ensure the Blight would forevermore remain dormant, unable to resurface in a world immunized against it. His journey had only just begun, yet it felt that much had happened for him to arrive at this starting point. In a way, that's because this was precisely so, in that every story's beginning was just another's end. There were two people in his life that used to say such things quite often, sharing in like thought patterns even while separated by the continent's expanse from coast to coast. Both these people were no longer tangibly part of his life, as both had understood their stories were to end for his to go on, and with it, Eldonia's would, too. But these endings were meant to be, and there could be no other way; such was the fate for a world undergoing radical change, as Eldonia transitioned from its bygone ideals to enter into a new age. The upheaval that was the Era of the Blight set the stage perfectly for just such a transition, and all the land seemed to know, as it broke out in springtail rushes and marigold blossoms to usher in the new year on the plains of what was becoming the new plains country, Tryndvailen. Tazome looked forward to seeing these sights later in his journey, along with every other beautiful sight he joyously witnessed during his seasonal treks from the capital of the eastern empire to that of the western kingdom. These two separate forces stood to represent everything that once was, and from them, everything that would someday be in the newness of Eldonia, even as they fell to the wayside with so much else caught up in the Ancient's Blight. He tried not to think of them, but couldn't help himself; And then there's more I've written elsewhere, and I've also edited this passage some since first writing it, but I'm phoneposting right now, so this is it. >>5415 Interesting reflection on the immediate effects of dreaming and hypnogogic experience on the individual, and I like the overall tone. Not sure it's intentional or not, but the direction seems to shift toward the end, becoming less explanatory than compelling, trying to prompt the reader to some line of action, while leaving that line of action vague. This vagueness would likely turn off most, though some others might even find it deep in a pseudo-intellectual way. I don't mean any of that to say it's bad, just some critique in terms of intent in writing. >>6689 Do you have anything you've published already? If so, I'd like to give it a look. If you're not comfortable sharing, I can post a burner email for you to send a link to.

>>3679 Finished my short story. PDF or txt belo. Please be harsh. https://pastebin.com/bvYvpA54

>>7426 https://ghostbin.lain.la/paste/cqhgg better paste

>>7371 just seeing this now, wow, thanks lainon. i'm glad you enjoyed. it's a fridge magnet retelling of god vs eve in the garden of eden, if you couldn't tell. thanks for the kind words, here's a little continuation

>>7427 Security guard here. One paragraph in and I'm already offended.

>>7427 > and then fly to Kyiv It's Kiev. Only fascists call it Kyiv. Remember that.

>>7429 Sorry lol >>7430 Wrong