/general critique thread/

Short story or novel. Right now I’m working on it as a short.

Like carrying small, wispy pieces of paper around in your shivering cupped hands on a windy day in a busy city. The air blows them around in your palms, but you try to keep them together, but also there’s so many. Too many. Sometimes one or a couple will fly out of your hand and into the cities’ innards, the pavement, the sewers, the benches, the shops, and you will have to look for them. You search under every crevice, every embarrassing place you can think of, kneeling down in the wind and the step, cars honking, people staring. The staring, it would be much better if they didn’t. Sometimes you find them and sometimes you don’t but either way you lost TIME, hurry up hurry up, you need to deliver those piece of paper! You don’t know what’s on them because you can’t read, but hurry, hurry! It’s your future, no, it’s your life! But don’t run because that might make papers fly also. But y’know, stop dinking around and move a bit alright? So you get to the door, it’s warm inside. The wind is bothering other people now, you feel like smiling. But then the papers are snatched out of your hand, counted. You lost a great deal, even though you’re sure it was only a little and that you had most of them, but nope see here, the numbers don’t lie (they never do why would they?) and you lost a lot. We know you try so hard and do so much but sorry, you only get quarter pay today.

just a short poem i wrote
sometimes she mistakes my ribs for muscles

while kissing the pile of loose skin i call a face

laying soft hands on the poles of blood she thinks are arms

speaking calm words into the holes she visualizes as eard

her arms are hanging loosely around my neck like a noose

then she opens her eyes

CHINESE CRAP

Once a young man of discontentment came to Xou Twong. Bowing to the great master, he said, "I am but a young man."
Xou Twong merely smiled. "And I am but old," he croaked in the eloquent voice of wisdom. "But perhaps when old meets young, the fruit of this meeting is as bountiful as the stars which all living things on Earth reap most joyously from those moments where sun meets earth."
The young man could not help but smile at this, discontent as he was. Already this mysterious old man was beginning to lift the heavy load off his shoulders. "I am always in a state of discontentment," he explained to the wise old man. "I desire to kill myself and by doing so, escape discontentment forever. But I abstain from this because I fear that what some men say is true, that I will not escape discontentment by killing myself, that there will be some kind of punishment, a damnation or a reincarnation, waiting for me, and that is all my death will accomplish. I come to you, O Wise Xou Twong, with this question: will I escape discontentment forever by killing myself?"
Xou Twong merely smiled. "It is most true that by killing yourself, you will escape discontentment."
At this the young man was most excited. "Well," he said, pulling out a knife and stabbing his chest rapidly with random and sloppy motions, "that's that, then." The blood was spurting everywhere, yet the discontent young man had done a very poor job at killing himself. Xou Twong, now speckled in the young man's blood, licked some of it off his lip and merely smiled. "Tut tut. I wish you had not done that," he said, with a little theatrical sigh. The discontent young man, at this point, was sprawled across the ground, jerking around chaotically like some kind of retard, bleeding everywhere, soaked in blood, whimpering and flailing and doing other foolish things. "Yes, indeed," said Xou Twong, turning away, "I wish you had not done that."
"But why?" the young man managed to croak out in a harsh gurgle.
Xou Twong merely smiled. "Because," he explained, "it is most true that by killing yourself, you will escape discontentment. But by killing yourself, you will never experience contentment. You will escape discontentment, but you will never experience contentment. I suppose you yourself, foolish boy that you are, can guess which one is the better fate!"
"Then I have erred," shrieked the discontent young man, blood streaming from his mouth and nostrils.
"Indeed," shrugged Xou Twong. "If only you had not acted so rashly, I could have taught you how to reach the glorious experience that is contentment. Oh, but it is a wondrous thing!"
"HOW," choked the young man, crumpled up into a wretched heap, bleeding ever the more and now flailing in a way that caused his arm to repeatedly smack violently against his face,

>Mexican cartel guy is hedonism, mafia is stoicism
You realize the most low ball sitcoms are written by harvard phds who already do this

"HOW does one reach this experience? For I am feeling now even more discontent than before. Indeed, I feel as if my discontentment-" at this moment his right eyeball popped out of his face, letting forth a new gush of red warm blood and a new symphony of good old pain- "is some kind of joke for the gods." He winced and muttered, "Oh mama." His teeth fell out of his mouth and, as if they were each individually possessed by some tiny tooth-sized malevolent sprite, began stabbing his face and shoulders, leaving little toothmarks everywhere, all while humming a nearly inaudible but decidedly sinister melody. "HOW do I reach contentment," the young man shrieked once more, as his navel caught on fire.
Xou Twong merely smiled. "This is a long and painful journey," he said. "It is as my old basketball coach once said: no pain, no gain. And to reach the greatest pleasure, one must subject oneself to the greatest pain! You must forgo all that you love. All those people, all those places, all those things, all those feelings, all those thoughts, all those ideas, all those experiences, all those books, all those songs, all those sunlit moments of simple peace- everything. You must be heartless. You must smash it all against the rocks even as it grieves you deeply, and sends deep shocks of pain through your system, to the point where you pathetically wail that even death would be better. Then you will reach the point of greatest contentment. Then everything will be fine."
"What a horrible idea," hissed the young man. "I wish I had never been born." He began to groan as ten thousand tarantulas raced to see who could first reach the bottom of his gullet.
Xou Twong merely smiled. "Nonsense," he said. "You must not wish that anything did or did not happen. Just accept everything, bro." He winked and drank a cool can of Coca-Cola. He then turned to the reader, who was also the writer. "You, you faggot," he said while stamping the young man to death with neat-o boots. "You. The one reading this. The one writing this. Faggot. You. You. I know your number." He merely smiled. "You are so wrong about everything. Everything, everything, everything, everything."

THE END.

Shit man I don't watch TV, I just thought I could teach philosophy with cool characters

Tell me about Joyce! Why does he wear the eyepatch?

Because they took everything from him, but he's going to make them give it back, the eye he lost, the comrades he lost. He'll make them pay

BEASTESS of yakub flow'ry dresst gainst me
wrinkl'd lightly press your skin to mine: SEE
connoisseur no now cunt watcher I
the water that wets and whets and you who
famish'd and dry and drain'd did call to me:
O you, engend'rer of friendship do come
lift up my bodily veil for I starve.
O and I did requit you, killer you
fuckhungry fille you, faced so happy then
and still blush'd and warm and welcoming now
raw ravage me right til right i have yer.

An anonymous blogger helps a low life FBI agent in the hunt of a killer and the body of the victim whose pictures where posted in (you guessed) an image board.

It would be set in 2007. Inspiration is mostly the Slaughter girl, the korean girl with the 24/7 stream in her apartment, and obviously, the time when a someone killed a girl and posted pics in /b/.

Now tell me what's so bad about it

You'd have to use 2007 memes, which will make any sane person writhe in pain towards a shotgun and end it all

There are just a few memes in what I have written so far, mainly because I think it would collide with the thriller feeling that I'm aiming for

A dinosaur but he's shy.

A shynosaur.

A series of 7 poems on how I kill my mother in different ways based on the deadly sins.

bretty good

Hmmm. It might work, but there will be enormous pressure on the narrative to flick into one of the very well-known stories around this theme:
"Narrator sees one virtuous person (think cheery freckle-faced boy) and stays his hand on this account"
"Virtuous people are given an out (possibly some sort of large boat with animals)"
"Narrator is revealed to be insane"
etc

Everyone on Veeky Forums wildly overestimates the importance of "ideas" in writing. They seem to think "coming up with a good idea" = 90% of the work and "realizing it with believable characters and good dialogue and gripping narrative" = the other 10%.
The real proportions:
Coming up with good idea:- TWO MINUTES
Turning good idea into good book:- ALL YOUR LIFETIME, BABY
That said, the way to improve is to write and write and writeandwriteandwrite until your fingers are worn to nubs and the nubs go on strike and you have to call in the National Guard and brutally crush their will and write some more.

This could be a good story. "Rivalry of the superior and inferior" is one of Polti's 36 Dramatic Situations, as I remember.
Recommended Movies For This Theme:- Amadeus

Sounds like a kinda Sophie's World meets The Godfather :)
"I'm gonna show Sophie a syllogism she can't refute", haha.
One possible problem: the essence of a crime *syndicate* is that it has many people in it. If you're representing each syndicate by just one person, you'll have to work hard to avoid just writing about a collection of oddball individuals.

Haven't we all been there?
But I am a bit worried about the idea of looking for a piece of paper that escaped. Even if you find it, you can't possibly reclaim it without opening your hands and letting countless others escape.
In that situation, if one piece of paper gets away, just let it go, because dude, it's gone.

Nice use of parallel syntax. Not sure about the repetition of "loose" especially with the (unintentional) rhyme on "noose".
The rhythm reminds me a bit of Ted Hughes "Crow" e.g. "A Bedtime Story".

Very moving. I quite understand your irritation with wise smiling heartless little Chinese senpai figures. I understand, and sympathise.

James Joyce IS Benedict Miller

Despite your best efforts this has some occasional spasmodic flickerings of merit.

"low-life FBI agent"?
Sounds a bit like the movie 8mm. That was garbage, so the field is open for you.

A shyno -
Oh, someone
already did it.

THE EDGE OF THE EDGE

Or how about:

A group of plucky crime-fighting children, each of whom personifies one of the seven deadly sins.
Seven children gives us lots of room to have representatives of all the required races and sexual orientations etc.
Needless to say, every time there is a boss fight or some key moment in the plot, one particular child through his particular character flaw LETS THE WHOLE GANG DOWN.

>My novel is just a faux final confrontation between two enemies in which one of them (The victor) Demands to know why he did the things he did.

Got everything ready to do this. Planning on Using cliches only to subvert them.

I've seen this posted at least twice so someone obviously cares about it.

>one of them (the victor) demands to know why he did the things he did

Do you mean, the victor demands to know why *the other* did the things he did?

So basically this is just a framework so you can tell the story through long flashbacks?

If so, it's a good framework, but no more than that - you still need an actual story to put in it.

>Do you mean, the victor demands to know why *the other* did the things he did?
Pretty much, yeah. Sorry for the confusion

>So basically this is just a framework so you can tell the story through long flashbacks?
That Also. But its more of the defeated Enemy trying to convert the victor to his point of View.

>If so, it's a good framework, but no more than that - you still need an actual story to put in it.
I have the Story no need to worry about that.

First passages of a short story I'm working on.

The engines drummed deep into the night, their monotone buzzing mingling with the same tone coming from a thousand other planes. There was that, and only that. The crew was silent, only the pilot yawning tiredly from time to time as he sat there, slowly falling into a placid, dreamy state trough watching the moonlit landscape passing below him. Land, land, land, a farmhouse, land, land, a small village, more land. You couldn’t blame him, as the journey from Kent was long and boring. Of course, this was not always the case, as just one year earlier the skies would have been filled with the Luftwaffe. Not anymore.
Grandpa fell asleep on the couch. He was snoring. Not that that bothered anyone, his nightly sounds brought something into the house that was much needed: The confidence that someone was there, that someone was still breathing, that they weren’t alone, that Mom didn’t have to do everything by herself. She went to check on the kids one last time. Everything in order. As she went down the stairs back to the living room, she stopped by grandpa in his chair, smiled, proceeded to the kitchen. She opened a cupboard and stared at a dry loaf of bread, with a side of breadcrumbs. This, of course, was not always the case, as just one year earlier it would have been filled with cheese, sausages, sweets and all kinds of gifts straight from France. Not anymore.

Part of a larger small story I've been working on

lmk honestly what you think of these paragraphs

The day too showed no patience in its passage. It was not long before lunch, then time to leave. There was a bus at 7:30. It was 7:00 . It beckoned to him, laughing, come to me, come to me, rush across town, sit with anticipation to get home, walk through that eat, TV flickering gently, then sleep bringing you to yet another day. The air of the city was cool and calm, buzzing with the chatter of the inhabitants, man and machine, and as March briskly made his way to the bus station it poured into his body and mind and began to displace whatever had been lying there. By the time he was halfway to the bus he was full and empty. Moving through the disparate streams of pedestrians, their faces filling his vision one after another. A person, a person, a person. There was no room for self here on this walk in this city, and this sense comforted March.

7:25. March unbuttoned his coat as he made his way up to the 4th floor of the bus station, the noise and cool air of the city flowing away with a short snap. Up the 1st floor stairs, around the side hallway, he looked at his body reflected like a figure in dollhouse in the domed corner mirror that sat in a corner of the ceiling. Bounding up the escalator, down the final hallway, by the time he’d made it to the bus his shirt stuck to his back with sweat. He breathlessly handed a ticket to the driver and made his way on board. The bus made its way down the snaking bridges out of the terminal, through the tunnel, and off onto the highways banked by corporate offices and citadel like shopping malls. The teeming, enveloping life of the city fell away, shining on the skyline sitting on the horizon in isolation. By the time the bus rolled off the highway and to March’s stop there was nothing left to wrap himself in, nothing left to stop his weary heart from beating out of his body and into the houses and lawns and passing blinding cars. The walk home was heavy and quiet.
Dad sat in his chair, Mom laid on the couch, the greying dog laying on the floor in the space inbetween. March heated up some leftover while moving through the nightly conversation, relaying the routine mundanities of this settled life. After eating, there was nothing left to do but lay in bed and wait for the ritual of sleep to bring forth another day.

Making his way from the bathroom to his room, March heard a creak on the stairs. Dad- hair that was left greying, face a drooping version of the one that lived in March’s mind’s eye- cradled the dog in his arms as he carried her diminishing body upstairs. March closed the door of his room. Oh, oh, oh. This was no random tragedy, no twist of fate demonstrating the taut fragility of life. It was a steady march of certainty, an unraveling and a loosening of all that had once seemed tightly bound. He turned off the light and as he did every night, came to accept the coming day.

> ...their monotone buzzing mingling with the same tone coming from a thousand other planes. There was that, and only that. The crew was silent...

You have a problem here with point-of-view. If you're in a WW2 bomber, then you can't hear all the other planes, you can only hear the sound of your own engines.
That means, when you say the buzzing mingled with the sound from the other planes, you're putting your camera very much outside the one plane, looking at the whole formation.
But then without warning you start talking about the crew and from then on you're clearly inside the plane.
You either need to stay inside the plane from the start or at least acknowledge the change in perspective - e.g. just putting "inside, the crew was silent.."
Play the scene like a film in your head. Film directors burble about "establishing shots" all the time for a reason.

>"The crew was silent, only the pilot yawning tiredly from time to time..."
Hmm. Apart from anything else, this is ambiguous. Do you mean that the rest of the crew is silent because they are alert and tense and ONLY the pilot is sleepy? Or do you mean the opposite - they are all MORE sleepy than the pilot and are sitting there totally nodding off because they have so little to do? (The rear gunner might have little to do, if there's no enemy aircraft. The navigator will be busy, though.) Apart from this, a sleepy pilot is sufficiently disconcerting you need to make more of it if you're going to have it at all, I think.

> You couldn’t blame him...
This jars for me. You've done pretty well establishing a feel of being in this sleepy, hypnotic, moonlit plane, and then the "You" breaks the mood. How about in the passive voice? "He could hardly be blamed, as the journey from Kent..." This doesn't introduce the reader into the picture and lets it buzz on its way undisturbed.

>Of course, this was not always the case...
"Of course, this had not always been the case..."

>Not that that bothered anyone, his nightly sounds brought something into the house...
That comma needs to be a full-stop or a semi-colon. Never use a comma to join two things, each of which could stand as a sentence in its own right. A comma is used to join two clauses which CAN'T stand on their own.

These are minor quibbles though. Good luck when you come to describing the firestorm :) You won't be treading on Vonnegut's toes because he omits that altogether, doesn't he? He just describes what it's like to come up out of the shelter and see the utter devastation...

All other races have conspired to wipe out humanity together and had successfully done so.

In the result of killing off humanity, the patron deities of humanity have run amok/gone crazy/went berserk etc. And as such the world has gone almost inhabitable.

The land retreated and the seas have risen to the point that the 10 highest peaks of the world are the only land left that has not been claimed by the ocean.

Instead of blaming themselves, each of the races have deluded themselves into thinking that it's all at the fault of humans and therefore all traces of humanity must be wiped out.

Tell me how I can possibly make a story in this setting Veeky Forums? I've made this setting but I don't know what to do with it.

1/3

Infestation!
Blame the Arabs
on the planes!
Blame the Polish
on the trains!
Blame the Jews
on the cruise ships!
Cut the power -
Stop the nuisance!

with little cartoon hands and scissors drawn severing an electric cable – a pursuit that would surely get the acting party killed – a noble one? Through the fogs of imagination, I see myself walking the docks. A metallic roar fills my headspace – friction? The sound of a large machine halting? Old friend, we are lucky to be awake this time of year for it is. Look to the skies! The perfect antithesis to our frosted forest of silent perseverance, wooden kings of yore eternally chasing sunlight, crowns to be surmised someplace beyond the clouds, like an impression manifests itself: Metallic cigars plummet toward the waters, wings broken, winds laughing, howling as they alleviate themselves at their surfaces. A good shake for the dung inside – imagine the smell (ew!) those cracked tins will be shedding in a few hours. Time enough for the quick-witted among our people, approaching with sharp knives. Those still intact, not yet dissolved in the homogeneous brown mass of engine oil, shit and fluid flesh, we must separate. Sun baked, raised on figs and goat cheese, once honest lives on a no-pig-flesh diet, awash in sewage now but scrubbed, shaven, toweled, […] brushed with herbs and oils, blessed by our shaman, still might live up to their promise. Over a fire, that is. Imagine the feast: Strung up bard hanging from tree, sounds of oiled meat on hot iron drowning out festive clamour, consequent fog obscuring eager hands superseding mutual consent, all melting into one blurred silhouette. Becoming tribe, becoming people. Winds, equally frolicsome, play around, nudge and caress scent of roast and wine, sweat and sperm, back and forth and beyond the tree line. Against frozen shafts of the immortal it condensates as distilled pleasure, and all the creatures of the forest smile a knowing smile.

2/3

Drawn-out groans penetrate the fringes of my botanic retreat from aeons removed. The man in the neighbouring stall as well has reverted to some savage state, and judging from his howls, his winds too are frolicsome. My own delivery shows no sign of progress, immobile, impenetrable, not painful yet commanding attention – a totalitarian experience. Brown marble that sits in my underbelly like a second heart, beautiful until birthed into the world of shared experience, even then a presence to behold, soon to burst from my bowels like an egg tooth, in this moment you are my world. Leave no room for conscious reflection, thoughts and wishes, identity or ideology. All are banished, expelled from this body as age and dross. For a moment I am vessel and I am fulfilled, in no hurry to return to my seat, friends or beer. My lone companion mewls, admitting defeat at the hands of his colon, though unintelligibly. Few decimeters from my left boot, herald of things to come, a tear hits the ground. From beyond the castle walls a distant thought reverberates in my throne room: „Every man for himself“, and I redirect my attention at the door: Layers and layers of glossy hieroglyphics preserve varnish and presswood, as evidenced by yellowish-brown splatter all over. Adverts, jokes and provocations provide reading for generations. In places, sculptors have a taken a blade to the collage, entrenching runes and crude innuendos, partially exposing stickers from long-forlorn times in strange dialects and typefaces. Poets and painters, armed with pens, crayons, coal, brushes, greased fingers and whatever paraphernalia the toilet stall grants an inspired, have created an enormous palimpsest – a complex, ever-changing Gestalt with a rich history of addition and subtraction. No single creator, no clear intent, no end and no beginning. For all intents and purposes, a life unto itself.

3/3

Opposite the bathroom stall door, this shit-caked monument to human creator spirit behind which I cower, a procession of urinals protrudes from the wallpaper – Out of time, seemingly untouched by the grime that millennia of defecation left for a scrubwoman who never showed. Locks of shining black hair line the floor, dampen each step, occasionally at the cost of lower, mostly insect, lives, at times rustle and grate upon impact, at times swallow a man whole. Doomed are who tread heedlessly in curly forest, where pubic hair pastures conceal urinary sloughs. Enter a pair of piss-willing friends who had had a few beers too many:

“Not too long now, I am afraid. The brass city is upon us. What impressions today her progenitors carve in words, in laws and ideas, voicing watchtowers and prayer niches, air castles, invisible to the less perceptive, will tomorrow be filled with matter and peeled at the touch of curious generations, revealing what could well be all curiosity’s end.”

“And yet, dearest friend, lover, spear master, god of flesh and hairs whose weight I bear nightly – excuse my drunken spiel but I want your fuckings – look at the floor of this place, we could make a little nest for ourselves and you could peck the warblings out of me – who could deny the poetic justice, the beauty, the comedy of the situation? Like sticking your dick into a knothole behind which, unbeknown to you, a raven nests – such is the fate of the curious. It’s a bloody fate – emasculating – but thoroughly satisfying from a narrative perspective. The funniest thing: All you had to do was look!”

Thanks dude. Working on it rn.

>and let anons smash your dreams and usher in a state of depression in your life.

Are you guys really that anxious about having your 0th-draft notebook scribblings criticized?

This is why your work sucks. You're a bunch of low self-esteem young people who come to fiction to be Taken Seriously and gain respect. You write out of a sense of ego rather than a joy for writing.

Nah, I'm too stoicistic to be affected by what others say.

short story about a black man in africa, early in life befriends a french civil servant who tells him the importance of libraries and gives hima few tips on how to read. black boi and his family get taken to america and he gets split up with his family and sold to big american plantation man. black boi, after months of studying in english by sneaking books out of the big house, convinces big white man to let him read some more books, after demonstrating his humble ability to read and write. eventually educates himself and gets enough skill to leave and convince a bank to give him a loan. makes his way up in the world until he has many properties and plantations, and starts to accumulate his own slaves. at the end, while checking up on one of his farms, he thinks he sees his mother, brother and sister. he doesnt do jack shit tho and then he marries the hottest bitch he can find the end

Turn it into an isekai

Two kayaks, one yellow the other orange, one rower wearing a dimpled helmet chinstrap the other with a buoy round her neck like someone’s mistake for a horseshoe. Water’s sod green, gelatin sunshine melts itself a couple yards deep. Their oars leave ruts of upsidedown and staggered Vs, the watercourse is a tireswing’s seat and it moats the summer’s shoppingvilla, domesticated waves lick along its sloping, copperrock roundwall which jaggedly builds to the walk.
“T! I! P!”
The old lady laughs, “O! V! E! R!”
Greenthrough sunvisors and thin floral waistshirts mostly blank between the flowerpatterns, some faintly pink and others milkyellow, dodging one another, so not to step on someone’s toe because of the sandals. The sun is dawning a hundred times at once, on reddening nosebridges and shoulderblades, in tanktop Us, in bikini Ws or Xs, on a hundred shoppers who brush past them.
Haroldine Scampi, the old lady, lays her freehand on the picnictable like it’s cooking. Her granddaughter, Aulie “The Hermitcrab” Perrosdemaíz, uses her cattish tongue to catch the meltdrops from her aqualime icecream. The Hermitcrab snatches the napkin dispenser and arches back to hurl it towards the kayaks, like its cannonball would flush them out, but looks to her grandmother first, and cracks into smiling then laughing. Haroldine laps up her frozen dessert, almost choking on a lazily diced hunk of pineapple as The Hermitcrab makes faces.
Polarbear Bungalow, the one Haroldine and The Hermitcrab are outfront of, has its mascot on a big sign, snoozing in his unfolded beachrecliner while a winking penguin steals his frozen drink from an iceberg with a seaspanning straw. Manguera Goutte, who has regular nightmares of the fingerly straw and the distant iceberg, winds down from a crowded lunch, during which the line had swollen its way through the maze of dividers, radiating into the cloudless air like a bumper-to-bumper sunset, not progressing anywhere, but stalled, stuck in P, and it hadn’t mattered if this was at the back or halfway there or second to the counter, the wait had all been the same, and the radiation mounts, itself gaining weight, itself piling to a beach, the grains of sand foottapping thoughts.
“¡O!” He swats at the bite from a sweatbee and on the followthrough catches the claspband on his polarbear cap and it falls into the deepfryer, boiling steamstrings to the suspended ceiling. He shrugs. In the overhunched corner Barriga peels potatoes from an outspilling sack, his thumblong knife would flash if the lights weren’t mustard.
“Cabrón,” Manguera invites his attention.
He drops the potato and stumbles over, and Manguera lifts the basket. “What have you done.” Barriga laments to Manguera who smiles.
“Call from the iceberg. New menu.”
Barriga inquires into his inner shirt’s pocket, returns with a rosary then rambles off.

Scarlet looked at her father, Peter. It was at once a familiar look and a condescending one. “So”, she said, “I suppose we'll be debating my position again, since yours remains undeveloped.” Peter blinked, “My position is what it's always been; that nothing is true and everything is permitted.” “Right”, said Scarlet bluntly, “And yet for all practical purposes that translates to a non-interventionism that precludes anything interesting from happening, which already makes your praxis self-refuting.” “In a sense every praxis refutes itself over time. Mine has the advantage of doing so in perpetuity.” “Naturally, I disagree,” said Scarlet, “If unconditional accelerationism is the end of history, then is seems that your praxis reaches a refutation in the preferential treatment of intelligence under capitalism. On a long enough timeline, capitalism is intelligence, which means pre-capitalist history is a sort of anamalistic proto-sentience that at once anticipates the future governed by strong AI and received it retroactively through the invasion of the future into the past.”

“Deleuzian nonsense,” said Peter, “One can't reduce the phenomenological to the noumenal without denying the will.” “So you're saying some things aren't permitted?” The two dragons glanced across the divide at each other. Both rested on magical floating pentacles high in the air. From the perspective of each, they were standing on a pentacle facing right side up. From the perspective of each, the other was standing on a pentacle facing downward. “I only mean that one departs from any transcendental or magical context when one believes in such things, Scarlet. You can believe whatever you like, but some beliefs are dangerous and self-defeating.” “How rationalistic of you,” Scarlet scoffed, “That already seems like a prescriptive statement to me, but I'm sure you have the mental gymnastic ready to prove otherwise, so I won't bother.”

1/5

“Scarlet, I hardly see how you can fault me for applying reason to your own system, which ignores the metaphysical in favor of the physical, which, retrocausality or no retrocausality, still frames things entirely in the realm of the contingent. What is contingent lends itself to rationality;” “That's not true,” interrupted Scarlet, “But you're much too stupid to understand the explanation for that, so let's suppose it is. What's wrong with a reduction to the contingent? My system can account for the same outcomes as yours, but deliberately and accountably. That seems preferential to maintaining a metaphysics of mystery that is laughably irrelevant in the context of a chaos magick that denies these mysteries their primacy. For goodness sake, you talk like that traditionalist dragon, what's his name; you talk like him sometimes, and it's just hard to take you seriously.”

Peter looked down. “There's no human element in your system, Scarlet.” “There wouldn't be,” she responded instantly. “Alright fine. Explain my system in terms of yours,” said Peter. Scarlet laughed, “I'm glad you asked me to. The primary belief of chaos magick, that belief is a technique, is replaced by the concept of hyperstition developed by the CCRU group. Hyperstition as a concept effectively encapsulates belief as a technique while better explaining its mechanisms. The probability charts use by Peter Carroll are a joke which attempts to account for the failure of magick to produce results in thinly coded irrationalist terms; which is to say, the concept of probability becomes a no-man's land in which cause and effect are permitted to either meet or not meet as circumstances warrant. This senseless equivocation, which you would have as a mark of phenomenological, irreducible truth, is easily rectified under the hyperstitional conceit of fiction becoming real through emergent and isomorphic continuity into the future; which in another sense can be described or modeled as the future imposing itself onto the past, which is precisely where the isomorphism comes from, naturally.”

2/5

“But Scarlet,” protested Peter, “You have just taken something unprovable because of its metaphysical nature and replaced it with something unprovable because it is wrong. The best model of quantum mechanics is doubtlessly some variant of Everett like Many Interacting Worlds. And once many worlds are admitted to, the prospect of retrocausality or temporal non-locality becomes entirely redundant.” “First of all”, said Scarlet, annoyed, “You know nothing about quantum mechanics, so stop pretending to. Second of all, Occam's Razor is a philosophical tool, not a scientific one. There is no reason nature can't be redundant. In fact, I see no reason why non-locality should care about time any more than it does about space, so it all seems one thing to me.” “Fine,” said Peter, “But your explanation reframes belief as a technique without explaining any more.”

“That's because I haven't gotten that far yet,” yawned Scarlet, “Hyperstition adds specificity by making the deployment of literacy and numeracy into key techniques needed for belief to manifest. In this context it subsumes sigils into a kind of crypto-pictography of will, a primitive form of writing that enjoys similarly primitive levels of success. Meanwhile, complex rituals and alchemical procedures gain the mathematical character of permutations or combinations. It is little wonder in this context that most alchemists report achieving their work through different means; each has in effect staked out their own unique hash in time and space.” “That is all well and good, Scarlet, but you still spoke of will, which is not compatible with your system” “You can forgive a manner of speech, can't you? You're not that dull...” “Forgive it, yes, but only if you can explain what you mean by it.” “Tedious… suppose we mean by will, something like the stable range of interacting actions that lead to a given future capable of interacting with the past. Does that suffice?” “I suppose it does for your system, Scarlet, but I still consider your lack of metaphysics an intractable problem.”

Scarlet was plainly disgusted, “Then you should have said so in the first place instead of asking me to elucidate.” “Well I can't help that your system seems soulless and incapable of supporting values.” “Values?” Scarlet acted puzzled, “What values does your system promote?” “All of them,” said Peter. Scarlet shook her head, “You might as well support none of them as all of them, it amounts to the same thing.” “That's not true,” said Peter, “Contradiction is not the same thing as cancellation.” “Fine” ventured Scarlet in a haughty tone, “Then what are your values. And don't say 'the preservation of values' or anything like that.”

3/5

>2/5
STOP
STOP RIGHT NOW
POST A FUCKING PASTEBIN OR SCREENSHOT OF A WORD DOC BEFORE YOU FURTHER CLUTTER THE THREAD UP, YOU SELF-ABSORBED WANK

Peter shuffled, “Well, it is very complicated. My system is still a work in progress. I would like to defend the strong from the weak, but still make conciliations to the downtrodden and the victim. I believe everyone is responsible for their own spiritual development, but the concept of intercession also makes sense to me as a kind of stop-gap or bare minimum;” “You know, you act like you're some sort of master magician, with your 'nothing is true, everything is permitted', but when you talk, it's clear you're nothing but a second rate mystic.” “The same was sometimes said of Crowley.” “Which refutes the charge?” “Which proves I'm in good company.” Scarlet was now the one shuffling, her light blue scales shifting in tone as the sunlight spilled over them.

“You idolize Crowley, but you reason in terms that are nothing like his. It's like you want to be Christian, almost. Why not just be honest with yourself and drop the pretenses? I mean, you'd have to be gnostic for obvious reasons, but;” It was Peter's turn to interrupt. “Scarlet, I am a chaos mage. Now, I have explained my values, and it's time for you to explain yours.” “That's simple,” said Scarlet, “I value the strong, smart, and capable, period.” Peter nodded. “Has it occurred to you that valuing individual excellence is in some ways incompatible with a collectivist-materialist reduction of history that can envision its own end?” “No, it isn't,” said Scarlet dryly. Peter was unperturbed. “From past debates you've made it clear that you believe in something like a great man theory of history, while still believing in an inevitable teleology and end point to history. How do you rectify the two?” “Very easily,” quipped Scarlet. “Yes, but how?”

Scarlet rolled her eyes and her head at the same time. “You're familiar with the magical axiom that 0=2?” she asked. “Yes” said peter. “Well, from that we can derive the following,” a magical blackboard appeared.

1. 0 =2
2. 0 * 0 = 0, 0 * 0 * 0 = 0, 0* 0 * 0 * 0 = 0, …,∏ 0 = 0
_________________________
3. ∏ 0 = ∏ 2 1,2
4. ∏ 2 * ∏ 2 = 0 3,2
5.( ∏ 2)^x = 0 1,2,4

“From which all the relevant terms appear very clearly in a simulationist, accelerationist context.” Peter stared in obvious confusion at the derivation. “I'm not sure I follow.” “Well of course not,” Scarlet said gleefully, “Your mathematical incompetence is as bad as your incompetence with physics.” Peter looked defeated, “Scarlet, I can't argue something I can't understand. But accelerationism is just parracide re-imagined as a virtue and made into a perpetual system.” “All good stories include parracide. Oedipus, Hamlet, Brothers Karamazov...” “Those last two didn't include it.” “They included it by omission.” “Then you won't mind if we omit it from this story also.”

4/5

NO ONE ELSE IS TAKING UP THIS MUCH FUCKING SPACE
WHY DO YOU THINK THAT IS, user?

“Heh. You're pathetic you know. You try to confront me with the obvious and can't admit when I stand by principle. What's your actual principle? What drives you?” “Nothing,” said Peter, “Only a certain Amor Fati.” “And you would promote that against my system, which is no more or less than nature and history itself; nature destroying itself and becoming the future, according to all natural law, which had better be accepted as good if you want any standard of good that is actually realizable.” “Scarlet,” said Peter, “History is a myth. If it has any character it's circular, but I doubt even that is true.” Scarlet pointed again to the blackboard, where is said “ 5.( ∏ 2)^x = 0 1,2,4”

“I don't understand that, Scarlet,” Peter sighed. Scarlet was affectedly livid, “Then I suppose that's it, then? We settle this through combat once again.” “This was a waste of time,” said Kia, Scarlet's human, who had been sitting on her back all along. Peter's human Johnathon responded, “Wait, how do you know that means anything if you don't know what it means?” Peter scoffed, “Johnathon, I am sure Scarlet wouldn't present an argument that didn't mean anything.” Scarlet was unnaturally still for a moment, but then ventured “Unless there is more you would like to discuss, I'm afraid this impasse can only be settled through combat.”

Peter looked down. “Scarlet, what about the water? You have had fainting spells in the past, shouldn't we fight over land?” Scarlet laughed, “Touching. But it's irrelevant. In the context of simulationism, it doesn't matter if I suffer, because the future will just erase my suffering anyway.” “That seems fallacious somehow,” said Peter worriedly. But the fight was now inevitable. Little did Peter realize that on the lake below was a boat with functional weather forecasting equipment, relaying that information to Scarlet through Kia. In the context of chaos magick, where cause and effect trade off, that gave Scarlet a deadly, albeit entirely illegal, edge.

5/5

You're far too late friend

Well, I don't see anyone else having posted a pastebin, so probably just because they didn't write so much or didn't feel the need to post as much to get an idea across.

Thomas comes to, tucked to the chin in a half-sized bed placed at the center of a small, dimly lit room. Over his chest and between his upturned feet, a long corridor stretches yonward before him, breaking the maritimed darkwood walls of the chamber. Fully dressed all at once, beard clean and flowing grey by his chest, he leaves the bed and makes his way down the gaping hallway, right shoulder leading him in caution. All dark turns the hall as he proceeds, until it ends with a mahogany door framed by a sepian light that sounds from its edges. It swings by its hinge and Thomas brings his hands to his aching eyes as he emerges into a great goldenbright grassfield. Wincing, he waits to bear the light, and as he does, a heaving melodic hum comes to him from all around. He sees: a great choral ring at least two hundred men strong closes off his place in the field. Men, women, and children alike, they stand wallstraight and proud in lovely white dress burned gold by the warm light of the day. A great array of diverse instruments wait in their palms and at their feet, taught and brassparts gleaming: harps, trombones, hurgy-gurdies, celestes, banjos, harmonicas, cellos, flutes. Smiling at Thomas, they continue their melodic seethe in careful harmony. He proceeds forward, eyes finally adjusted, and there standing in front of him, they are. His father, looking no further than thirty years, in a pinstriped suit like a barbershop quartet, and his mother, all dressed up in an exquisite display of feathers and color, just like the Rio girls in Carnival used to be, fruited headdress towering high and brown skin glistening in the day, stand side by side before him. They are just as handsome and proud as they once were. Thomas begins to totter towards them, mouth parted, and breaks into a desperate run, hands wildly reaching out. The choir's tune builds and stirs, and closer he stumbles, eyes welling up, mumbling and whimpering, and here now he's thirty feet, now twenty, now ten, and the singers all mount their instruments and he's right there and the song explodes in a great bursting chorale of holy unity and play, strings shimmering and reeds revving and cymbals crashing and voices belting and he falls in agony at his parents' feet, unable to meet their eyes, sobbing and snotting and shaking, screaming at the ground and screaming for forgiveness.

It was a quiet night. In a certain university hospital, the life of a girl was fading away.
The girl knew as it became harder to breathe through her lungs that it was the end.

Since she was born her heart was weak and her doctor said that she wouldn’t make it past ten. Luckily, her family was very wealthy so she was constantly hospitalized and which allowed her to live past her 17th birthday.

But she knew that her heart would stop working eventually. As her consciousness faded the girl thanked her parents, her doctor, and her nurse for everything. Thank you, thank you.

She was glad to be born despite spending her entire life hospitalised. Her body had been though a lot of surgery and towards the end she wasn’t even able to lift herself up. Despite this, the girl had only one thought,

“I.. I want to keep living.”

Without her wish being fulfilled, her consciousness fell into a deep void.

Thoughts?

>>>>>>>>>>>>"r" spacing

David King:
It starts and ends with me. Others had their own reasons but for me it was personal. When I was a young boy my father was murdered by the King and my mother ran away as a refugee in America. Unlike most of the others I had no impressive talents besides a good ear for the arts and a talent for leadership. But I was deeply determined to overthrow the King nonetheless. And unlike the arrogant bastard I had no problem with trusting allies to help me along the way.

Victory:
The first of such allies I found was a soldier of fortune fighting among the mujihadeen in Afghanistan. A young androgenous girl of disturbed mentality who spoke in verse and seemed to have the delusion she was an angel who fell from heaven to earth. Regardless of her mental stability though her superhuman fighting ability would be invaluable.

...

The King had always made a show of a supposed invulnerability, that any of his appearances could simply be a robot duplicate. However, this supposed strength was actually a great flaw essential to our success. Because every robot duplicate had to ape the King perfectly and autonomously they always had locked up in their heads huge vaults on information on the King's security infrastructure and technology. It was with such reverse-engineered technology that Suleiman was able to construct the weapons that would ultimately disable the King's powered armour.

...

On the first day we enacted egalitarian policies of nondiscrimination and equal opportunity for all.

On the second day we purged the last elements of the psuedonobility related to the King who owned much of the land. They were too politically risky to keep around.

And then at the beginning of next month we held elections.

But when the election results were tallied the proles had mostly elected reactionaries. Unfortunately democracy had been corrupted by big business and foreign propaganda so it had to go. We declared emergency measures under the logic that acts of spycraft had been carried out against the republic by foreign powers and so we were technically at war. Of course the emergency council consisted of the still living six of us who were on the revolutionary council. Really who else could you trust?

Sulieman, who had always harboured utopian sensibilities, protested against our actions so I shot him for the good of the republic. But as I carried the body to the crypts beneath the castle I began to wonder if there might yet be some form of compromise we could make. Sulieman's technical genius was invaluable during the revolution and carrying on without his support seemed nigh impossible. So I resolved to council further with the demon on my shoulder and investigate the magics of necromancy.

I immediately locked myself in the crypt beneath the castle with three days supply of food and set to work but only for the emergency council to break the door down on the second day. Sulieman's public sacrifice seemed to have galvanized the proles to turn against us and they were now assaulting the castle.

Unconcerned I went to the castle balcony to address the baying crowds below. This seemed like the perfect testcase for my experiments in necromancy. And like Suleiman these proles might be more useful dead than alive.

So I raised my hands and the zombies walked from out beneath castle moat and ripped the proles to shreds.

Bella, my former lover and tutor in magics, would have none of this though. I tried to reason with her. Of all things, raising the dead was the line she would not cross? But she proved hysterical so I triggered the technological gadget that communing with Suleiman had taught me to construct that would temporarily disable her magical powers. Disempowered she was easy takings for the rest of the team.

Finally after a few more days in the crypts I was able to finish my necromantic studies and complete the phylacteries that would hold the spirits of Johnny, Suleiman and Bella.

You fucking idiot

Even strangers with a chance
To engage me
In mutual tolerance
And tobacco sharing.
Our noses drawn together
Brace a shield
Erected by my Particular Nature.
Idiot nature, keeps me from
The culture of my peers.

I hang before them,
A marble apparition,
Sable and demure
Luminous and excellent. Or,
Such is a necessary picture
To keep of my form,
So I may imbibe the impression
That my strangeness is unrecognized beauty.

I assert that it is,
And I do not feel bad
To be unrecognized.

Though I wish I could be
Closer to the cultures,
My prayers dribble over the great shield
And leap to fill the chests
Of my far-away friends.

This kind of thing might work as a parodic interlude in some larger work. Sentences like "accelerationism is just *parricide *reimagined as a virtue and made into a perpetual system” are pretty vague, and fall apart once you start to seriously consider them.

Using big words is fine, and they can be appositely deployed to great effect, but only when they are part of clear and coherent sentences. To "make something into a perpetual system" is a very vague thing. It's not clear what you're describing, and it gives a pretty amateurish/tryhard impression. "Contradiction is not the same as cancellation" is also particularly cringeworthy. There are many such examples, but this should be enough free criticism for the night.

An alt. of a story I'm writing. Kind of an outline of sorts. The original is much more slow paced.
>Edith Byrne’s bloodied hand held Eve’s, and Eve wept while they sprinted away from the tenement where Ava died. They rested at a bus stop, Eve wiping her eyes while Edith sparked a cigarette. The streetlight by the bus stop was out, and so Edith’s lighter and her cigarette embers and ashes faintly lighted their night purlieu. Edith’s throat was dry, the air turbid with fog. She regarded Eve with a smile, but Eve’s eyes were down. Edith stared at the top of Eve’s head, her hair, which Edith regarded as gamine. The bus, Edith thought, come on hurry here, I have n-- Edith stared at the bus schedule board: WEEKENDS OFF.

And then an alt/final(?) of a story I've been trying to write but have yet to even get fifty pages in. First paragraph:
>But nothing much came to mind when she thought of the past, same said for the future, and as for the present… if you peered at her, you may say she was asleep or dead. That’s just a first impression. She is alive: you see, her ruddy cheek pressed cold on the windowpane and her pale breath against the glass, half-shut eyes staring at the gravel driveway. The television behind her chuckled - a sitcom, she guessed - and she smiled some but not broadly and not quite happily, just a reaction to the laughter itself. She heard kids on neighboring streets scream and cackle, and she smelled the cooking of her grandmother's traditional food stuffs: the crackle of oil. Upstairs, a board rasped. Upon the fireplace mantel was a clock and five minutes ago it struck six, she had one hour left her and she figured dinner may be done in the next fifteen minutes. Time slowed in boredom and time stopped now.

b-bump

Christ has given us salvation. He has given the forgiveness of sins.
He has given us purgation. He gave up His life for us. He did this. He did this for us.
That is what love is. That is virtue. That is value. That is what love is.
If that which is done out of love surges beyond our good and evil,
it would be the death of Jesus Christ that suffers beyond and through all we value.
And far beyond is the cross standing in supernatural yoke, where the crewing of cocks
and dripping of blood echo from that pinnacle of passion. This was true strength.
How much more could a lamb be a lion?
Who is greater than the first ram of thicket,
but the only Son crowned in thorns?

Only one section of this aphorism

I live in Australia. I've never been hungry or cold. I've never known prejudice or hate. The rebel spirit lives in my breast. I vandalize government buildings. The same government that ensures my security. I have money but I steal because redistributed wealth is more appealing.

I am the true rebel without a cause.

My only input here is that one should be able to say this sort of thing aloud with out having to act

thanks my guy

Be honest lads, they mediocre trash?

The anger came across the air in a stench of burning, torn steel, screaming as he split the sky and held his breath. The latch wouldn’t release, the latch of the cockpit of this burning awful failure, it grinded rust so loud, and the fire stuck on the grill grew arms up high. Out the fire reached, clawing up the nose, furiously swinging with drunken fists, but it didn’t matter. The man, a gatherer, Nicholas, closed his eyes. With his hands he interlocked his fingers, and the fire came, knocking on the glass, wisping around the peripheral visors—the small ship trailed down, down above the treeline, not too far down yet. He adjusted himself with his back firmly against the seat, eyes closed, palms an inch apart, lips still, and as Mom brushed her nose against his cheek and the bosom of God rested so perfectly, Nicholas found himself floating. In the sky, there he was, a streak of smoke fell down a few hundred feet away, 200 maybe; the chute, yet pulled, out it went above him in a snapping billow.

A canopy so large, he had seen no clearing at any point in the descent. With a grand landscape of resources, no single gatherer could have transported all of this alone, not with so few resources of their own. A cart like Nicholas’s could hold a few thousand tons, but the manpower to collect so many resources, it would take months. He was tasked to be here for a few days, to collect laterite. This was a barren planet, no life, nothing, and he sank beneath the trees. A battle broke with cracking and catapults flinging the man, a man of rather large size, into gunfire that stabbed into his stomach, his back, slapping his lips with a fat scrape, and thick arms pinioned him at an angle that branches wrapped his right hand back around to the other elbow in anger. Some small, dumb man had done this, had him strung up limp; a well read, fresh young, no more than 22 stupid, idiot, dumb boy slithering out of bed for amphetamines and mother’s teat, he was responsible. He was, but what happened on the ship, moments before the descent, was looked over like a small nose of ice washed in breathy salt water. Nicholas, floating, wouldn’t see right, or better, for a while because the audience laughed at him, and the ship was behind him or to the right, one of the two, so it was both. His shoulder hurt attached to the arm branch, and it attached well where gripping the bark and lifting his weight using his left hand would pressure dislocation and yells. The naive dumb boy, his hands, thin and boney, slid across desktops and documents with eyes closed and a stupid girl smiling, and Nicholas was stuck there, his eyes blank and inward. Behind to the right, a knife in his pocket -maybe- his neck tightened and twisted to a pocket buttoned shut then snapped and unsheathed to stab his, no cut the arm away with a bit of time and tears that ran then and there. But time had nothing to say; God, already quiet, did not either, and the blade quietly tried.

Near the front row of a Travis Scott concert, you will be punched in the face five times. I was punched six, two more than my tentmate. I look to the median. It’s a small set of data, but I like to think that our two experiences are enough for an estimate. It serves its purpose.
The show being at Bonnaroo, a last defense for the nearly-extant hippies, does not do much to slow the pace. Bonnaroovians (that is the expression) punch, scratch, and kick the same as anyone else, and make a point to offer their canteen to you only afterwards. At Travis’s show, I deprived one especially nice guy of the remainder of his water. With black hole pupils and a fast-forwarded voice, I asked for second sip, and he, eyebrows raised, obliged. A sip turned into a chug, then I ran back to the pit and got beat down to the mud-covered ground.
Up.
Down.
Up.
Down.
Up.
The crowd jumped and waved its hands before turning on each other, usually at the chorus, and joyously pummeled their own. My tentmate had the music festival acumen to know to stay away; I did not. Stragglers found him; I was one of the stragglers. We smashed skulls and grabbed backs. By this point, the third punch benchmark, I had two black eyes and a sore stomach but didn’t know it yet. My left knee swept out from behind, I landed on a piece of gravel and heard a crack. I laughed because it was funny.
The smiles and communal spirit had died long ago. Those were relics from long-past eons, when Travis was still rapping “Pick Up the Phone.” In their place was a contorted face, and only one face shared by all—tribal, belligerent, grave. A shaved head beat its chest and jumped into the swirling pool of bodies. Then it threw a canteen at me. I covered my head with my hands, thanked Travis and God, and got decked and told to move out of the mosh.
This was the “Goosebumps” epoch, when topless women either watched from the side or scratched our cheeks until they matched our chests; when the fire behind our Constantine scorched all hair but his, and we, unrepentant, fell to our knees not out of devotion, but at the hands of his unknowing footmen; when something strange began to take place.
I fell again. This time I saw a light other than the fire, the spotlights, and the signs. It wasn’t red or blue or white, but beautifully gray, and it illuminated everything. It enclosed the space around me, masking the arms around me.

. . .

Sometimes, when I’m in my dorm and tired of listening to my roommate shout and play video games at three in the morning, I ask him to be quiet. He gets angry, and for some reason I think of the light. It happens when I get called a “little bitch” by my few friends—a running joke I don’t understand just yet.
Mostly, though, I miss the light when I think of the faces that saved me that night—tribal, belligerent, grave.

I like this one more than I like but why wouldn't you post the original with the alt for comparison.

>Eve wept while they sprinted away from the tenement where Ava died
If this is the beginning of your story, I hate it. Starting with some off name character dying in some throw away mention is such a cheap hook to air some sort of mystery. The whole interaction feels stiff and inhuman. You mention Edith's thoughts on the bus but not on the character that just died or the character that's clearly upset.

The other paragraph is better, but barely so. I don't know, maybe I just don't like your style.
>But nothing much came to mind when she thought of the past, same said for the future, and as for the present… if you peered at her, you may say she was asleep or dead.
Starting your entire story like this leaves a bad taste in my mouth, especially the butt. It all just reminds me of teen fiction, which has a market I guess.

This read real good mate.

>he's not writing his story on paper so it can't be shared online

I'm currently writing a story about a pathetic 24 year old NEET who lives in his parents' huge house. The first act is him just dicking about online and dealing with his [actually] autistic little brother. The second act he starts talking to a queer online but they hit it off and eventually have degenerate Snapchat sex. The third act he flies out to Washington to meet the gay kid and they hang out and stuff and then go for a walk on the beach before the sunrise. Through it all the NEET realizes how he's wasted his life online and learns it's time to turn his life around. The title of the book is a twist on a certain oldfag meme and I'm pretty much writing it to pander to Veeky Forums.