Well IIRC, Ogre once wrote a letter to Cat Fancy where he talked about how little Bobo likes to play with a tinfoil and string invention he calls “stringfoil”.
Genius is pain.
You know, if he wrote like an idiot (OMG! im so bumd! 
), he’d get shot down. So he writes like an intelligent person–whether or not his prose is overblown, it’s at least fucking intelligible–and he…gets shot down. What gives? Sure there’s a middle ground, but there’s also a hell of a lot of ground that constitutes worse-than-purple prose.
Someone who didn’t get the gists of it, or just didn’t like it had several choices: You can roll your eyes and sigh to yourself about how very much more intelligent you are than he is. You can snicker and move on, patting your own back for your incredible restraint at not absolutely vomiting on the screen. You could post something mildly encouraging without fawning. You could even, as I nearly did, post something like, “Scylla, really? Did you REALLY get lost, or are you being metaphorical? Because, you know, my brother really DID get lost in the woods once, and damn near never got out, and it was a real bitch. So, good luck either way.” (Call me literal, but that was very nearly the gist of my first post.)
Writing something doesn’t, and probably shouldn’t, make everyone fair game, because we aren’t writing in a forum designed for literary critique. If everyone who keeps saying that really believed it, every post in the pit would be followed by nothing but complaints and bitching about misspellings and poor punctuation and badly constructed sentences. My God, I knew we’re all geniuses and published writers and all, but we don’t need a fucking symposium about writing skills every time we read a post.
Arrrgh, could that RedFury be any more annoying? It’s not enough that he had to be a total ass to me in that thread about tort reform two years ago – now he’s posting his flowery MPSIMS shit in my BBQ Pit!!! He might as well have used smileys or flirting!!!
And look at all those stupid sheep lapping it up, giving him attention, as if he were the second coming! I can write better than that, and nobody pays any attention to me! He’s just like that bastard Doug Hoolihan who totally robbed the Most Popular title in the yearbook from me by going around telling everybody about my undescended testicle.
That guy needs to get knocked down a peg, and I’m just the one to do it. I’d better open up a new guest account, so no one will know that it’s really me and hold it against me. It’s the only way to be safe from all those cowardly pussies who get so wrapped up in a message board. Nah, on second thought, fuck 'em. I may be a totally impotent shit in real life, forced to suffer petty grievance after petty grievance and filling with rage but unable to express it, but I’ll be damned if I let anyone tell me how to post on a message board I pay good money to use!!! God-damned fucking cunt moderators!!!
Nice typing, faggot!
Now if only there were a way I could go around and get high-fives from my internet pals for posting such a witty comeback…
No, you have it backwards, we are not friends of Scylla. I only personally know two people in this message board. For all I know Scylla might not even exist, maybe he’s a figment of my imagination, but… I have enough common sense and humanity left in me to know that kicking even complete strangers on a when they are down is not kosher. Specially over a matter so petty as writing style. It has nothing to do with being friends.
MG
Still not a published author.
Fine. That’s your opinion, seems well supported by your personal judgement if you ask me.
I don’t need any professionals to tell me what quality writing is. I am capable of judging that for myself without any need for ratings from self-acclaimed experts.
So now good writing must be clean and precise (however you define those terms)? Are you a published author? Do you have a red marker?
Of course they are not being objective. It hardly seems appropriate to go around attacking people because of their writing style when they are venting. Do you give literary critiques to every OP in the Pit, or just the ones you got a hard-on for? You’re free to do it and someone else is free to call you on it, unless they are breaking THE rule. I think it’s a worse offense to be a pompous ass.
I don’t know, think I must be Jinxed or something. The first time I ever do a Grapist joke and he/she/it surface from the depths. Still I thought the Purple Prose linked in nicely, and I was getting sick to the stomach with how much bad blood there seems to be on the straight dope these days so I threw in a stoopid joke.
All I have to say is, Whan that Aprill with his shoure soote, the droughte of March hath perced to the roote…
I’m totally changing my contact email for this board from schnoogywoogybobokitty@catfancy.com.
Yeah, actually, it should be.
My criticism of Scylla’s writing style was that I didn’t understand what he was getting at. I still think that’s a valid criticism for any kind of writing, from venting to ad copy.
I don’t doubt that you honestly believe that to be true. But the important thing to remember is that we have no way of knowing what was going on in his mind as he wrote those words. Scylla is the only authority on his thoughts and motives. We just speculate.
But would it be a negative thing if Scylla had tried to find some relief in expressing himself with carefully chosen words? No one would have criticized a blues musician for playing it out of his system or an artist for putting her anguish on canvas.
I would expect that sometime later music and art critics and ordinary people might have a go at the results. But I just cen’t imagine anyone having their priorites so screwed up that they would say to the blues singer at the time, “Sorry your baby girl died, but that song really sucks, man.”
This sentiment would be a hell of a lot easier to buy if we hadn’t witness both you and Lezlers act like total pricks to others in the past. I guess the ideas of just plain being kind to others and not being a jerk are matters of whether or not it is a person you like.
You ain’t fooling anyone with your holier-than-thou bullshit so knock it off.
No. This is the part where I don’t really care about your motivations or reasons. Your actions are unprovoked and unreasonable.
If you don’t like my style, you’re free not to read it. You’re also free to bitch at length about, but then I’m free to dismiss you with contempt.
Thanks Debaser. That was really very very nice of you. I’ll send the 50 bucks now, and next time try to be so obvious 
Seriously, I do appreciate that.
I also appreciate the comparisons to James Joyce, and Sam Clemens. Even if it’s just “He’s no Sam Clemens,” It’s pretty cool to even be mentioned in the same sentence.
I don’t really know either of those posters, but I’m still left wondering what your point is. Are you saying that they’ve been convicted of assholery, and can no longer make a statement and have it judged on its own merits? ‘Cause if there’s an asshole court that can mete out such punishments, I got some cases I want on the docket.
W.
Still published and sporting a huge cock
Ooh, I’ve got a huge cock, too.
I keep it in the top dresser drawer for when the hubby’s out of town.
I am simply saying that it is hard to take their “let’s be nice like Jesus” comments seriously when they have been assholes to others in the past. I think the old cliche’ I am looking for is “practice what you preach”.
Surely, I can’t be the only person in the world who hates Tears in Heaven?
But seriously, I haven’t said anything against Scylla personally. You won’t find a single post of mine in the original trainwreck thread. I just read some stuff about this offboard and it made sense to me. I’ve been careful not to make this personal. I’d also ask you to bear in mind that everything I’ve said, would be my opinion no matter whose post I was criticizing.
Damn, I was really hoping for that asshole court thing. I’d like to see someone have to wear a scarlet sphincter.
So, by your estimation they are hypocrites and should be dismissed, and this is based on what you interpret to be past transgressions that I must take on faith because no proof is given? Seems a bit harsh. What’s behind door number two?
Ah, glad to see that all my accusations of embittered jack-asses nursing age-old grudges against strangers over the internet were totally off-base. I have to confess that I don’t know who the fuck you are, Diane. I can only assume that the alleged prickishness in question was either in my pissing contests with gobear or my run-in with Demo that was like a year ago. The former has been more than run into the ground already, and the latter was settled and forgotten by any offended parties long ago. So why don’t you tell me what else you got?
Or better yet, why don’t you tell me why you didn’t bring it up with me then? Were you waiting for me to start a heartfelt confessional thread, so you could jump in and say “Ha-ha! Fuck you, loser!” Or is it that you don’t have anything substantive to say in defense of shitting on someone when it’s inappropriate, so instead you have to get all indignant and sputter “Well… well… you can be an asshole too!!!”
Perhaps you’re confusing being “nice” with being “kind.” Being “nice” means holding your tongue and talking sweetly to someone, even if you’re thinking she’s a total bitch. Being “kind” means giving people a break when it’s appropriate, and giving them hell when they’re legitimately fucking up.
It has fuck-all to do with “a person you like,” because I’ve said several times the whole clique mentality is high school bullshit. I barely know who Scylla is anymore than I know who you are. But still, because I’m basically a kind person, I recognized that he was having a tough time and decided to cut him some slack and move on. And when people decided to dump on him for stupid, petty reasons, I decided not to be nice to them. That distinction make any sense to you?
Apparently, my “holier-than-thou” routine isn’t bullshit. I really am better than you.
I don’t have a personal grudge against Scylla. In fact, I’ve taken his side a couple times here on the board. But generally, I don’t like him. Not because of his writing style, but because of the content of many of his posts. What I see is a pretentious snob and a bully. Not a bully here on the boards, but what else am I to make of someone who brags about how, IRL, he punked his wife by ignoring her when she was begging him to acknowledge her, punked her again by tricking her into thinking she wouldn’t get the car she’d ordered, and punked his family by getting them to touch the electric fence against their better judgement?
I didn’t get that the “promises to keep” OP was a cry for help, or whatever it was, until the responses prompted me to read it again. When I did reread it, I reacted according to Chris Rock’s line about a homeless person with a funny sign: a real homeless person is too hungry to be funny. Likewise, someone who’s really hurting is too distraught to be all philosophical and shit.
It seemed to me that Scylla is on an upswing right now, having dealt with much of whatever he was obliquely referring to in his OP. And that’s great, but if he’s getting better, does he really need so much sympathy now? I don’t wish him ill, but my reaction to his OP was basically :dubious: