amazing
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The back to back exquisitely in the first sentence makes me grind my teeth
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I’m sorry but … there’s a difference between sloppy repetition and deliberate repetition and that’s obviously the latter
like your critiques are good in the abstract but none of the specifics hold water
It reads as both deliberate and sloppy. It’s not good writing, but it is an imitation of good writing. Other parts of the game have better writing.
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Felix I think you just like bad writing
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Ive been reading it as ‘planescape: tournament’ all this time
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why are all these comic book guys in love with this particular online arena shoot them all up franchise?
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there are absolutely certain kinds of purple prose that work for me in context. I have a new yorker subscription. tides of marinara goes for a weird balance of earnest (frequently to the point of grieving) in its subject matter and narrowly playful in its prose that, honestly, I can’t see many people without my tastes and consumption habits enjoying, but I don’t think any of the examples that tulpa picked out are terrible as such.
They’re pretty bad. “Exquisitely” twice in the same sentence isn’t clever playfulness, it’s just lazy.
well it’s what gary said
look, if you’ve got to turn in a million-some words for a game, reusing an adjective in an adjacent clause at least has an affect
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That effect is “making every single professional editor loathe you forever”
I think you’re taking the position here that you can’t break formal rules of writing, except I know that you don’t feel that way when it’s a more substantial or creative break, which is again why I am characterizing it as narrowly playful. I like it! why it turned out so much as something I’d like is a mystery!
Yeah honestly it is a mystery, because “exquisitely” twice in the same sentence is like chewing tin foil to me. If they were meaning to be intentionally playful with repetition it would be a lot more deliberate. At least, I would be a lot more deliberate.
Since it doesn’t feel intentional, the writing comes off as “we handed this to our teenage son who reads a lot of Brandon Sanderson novels”, which lacks the sort of mischievousness I’d want from pulpy, self-aware “taking the piss” writing.
i wouldn’t say “deliberate” so much as “belabored”
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yeah it’s basically the opposite of what people want from “good pulp” the way that’s usually thought of, and is nearer in tone to a lot of things that are widely accepted as bad by the same audience, which you would think is the audience most likely to buy the game
small wonder that “would you like a late-period Ian McEwan novel that was also like half ghostwritten if it at least had different and better things to say than Ian McEwan” was not a question on a lot of people’s minds
I guess this must be what it’s like to be on the other side of enjoying wotl &co.'s voice
or at least I’m trying to see it that way. I don’t feel like wordcount elevates writing this thin and stilted to “purple” and “playful” and I’m getting lost in the gymnastics employed to suggest that this is successfully targeting an apparently hyperspecific intentional-unintentional affect that nobody else can seem to even recognize or define generously other than Felix
I will pull out some other examples but they’re from an endgame save so I’ll be careful about it
Patrick Rothfuss is an adult now!
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Perhaps in body, but not… in spirit
1 Like