Hello, party people who are probably not at a party, because who reads blogs at a party - amirite?!
My introductions just get better and better... :D
So I've been posting fairly consistently, recently about things what I fink about and they've been largely well recieved. However, there's only so many topics I can think to backstock, so when the last one ran out, I had this idea of doing a few horror posts... but guess what got in the way? Go on, guess?
Yes, that's exactly right! (Probably) University work! Four essays between 1500 - 2500 words and an ongoing dissertation of 10,000 words. That's what. Because priorities!
So that's the main focus at the moment, and so I figured I'd update this here to comemorate this important and busy time in my life where I'm finishing off my degree and only just not have found the motivation to write a few posts. So, for the next five weeks, there will be regular posts, every six days - because backlogs 'n shit!
*shrug* that's the main important stuff I had to say. I have many things in the works for when my degree is done, though, so hopefull I can signal boost my content further than what it is now. That's the plan, anyway.
Oh, and just in case anyone is interested. "Does John Austin Play Old Harry With The Fact / Value Distinction?: An investigation into the moral motivations of language." is my dissertation title. Of which the current opening line is: "It
is not only worthy of note, but rather a necessity in understanding
morals, that for all humans, motivation is at the core of everything we
do."
Because philosophy! :D
Ciao for now!
29/03/2014
15/03/2014
Creepy Pastas (And My Recommendations)
So here's a thing:
There is a massive lack of good literary horror that exists. Most of the horrors I read try to play on the 'it's scary because humans are capable!' bull-shit which is what I don't want. Also monsters suck of not done right. Given, it's a hard thing to manage - I will be writing another post soon on horror and the different categories of it, but for now I would like to point to where I find my favourite short horror: Creepypasta.
Creepypastas, if you are unaware, are just internet short fictions based on horror. Most of them are realyl amature and posted places by people who can't write very well, but the stories can still be quite good. The majority are farily awful, but it is fairly simple to filter through to the good ones that actually work on horror techniques. A typical bad one relies on talking about blod or the twist was that it was you all along. But the good ones actually employ some decent suspense or chills that could only work in writing. So without further ado, the following are some of my favourite creepy pastas:
In the morning he was awoken by the sunlight and pulled his head out of the bed to make one realisation. There were no portaits. Only windows.
And as always. Ciao for now!
There is a massive lack of good literary horror that exists. Most of the horrors I read try to play on the 'it's scary because humans are capable!' bull-shit which is what I don't want. Also monsters suck of not done right. Given, it's a hard thing to manage - I will be writing another post soon on horror and the different categories of it, but for now I would like to point to where I find my favourite short horror: Creepypasta.
Creepypastas, if you are unaware, are just internet short fictions based on horror. Most of them are realyl amature and posted places by people who can't write very well, but the stories can still be quite good. The majority are farily awful, but it is fairly simple to filter through to the good ones that actually work on horror techniques. A typical bad one relies on talking about blod or the twist was that it was you all along. But the good ones actually employ some decent suspense or chills that could only work in writing. So without further ado, the following are some of my favourite creepy pastas:
- Ben Drowned: http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/BEN_Drowned 'Ben Drowned' is much better if you know about the game Zelda: Majora's Mask for N64, because the story is about this. It is set up in a real blog and first person like a diary, and when it was first published, many people believed it was real. The story follows as the writer of the blog explained how he bought a pirate cartrige of Majora's Mask and the kind is kind of weird. Every day follows and the posts are more and more disturbed until he realises he's being haunted by 'BEN'.
Sounds pretty lame, but it is set out really well and to top it off, there is video footage of the fucked up game.
Give it a read, it's worth the time, it's really an entertaining concept.
- Candle Cove: http://www.creepypasta.com/candle-cove/ 'Candle Cove' is one of my favourite concepts, especially from this site, and it is simply only let down by it's somewhat un-great twist of an ending. Overall it is set out like a copy-paste from a forum where each person speaks in term as if talking in a thread and they all remember a really quite strange show as a child called 'Candle Cove'. It's really quite fantastic.
There was a hunter, alone, in the woods. He had decided to pick a different wood than where he usually hunted and spent the best part of the day collecting game. After a while he began to notice it getting dark and realised he had become so immersed in his hunting that he wasn't paying attention to where he was. He was lost. After walking a little while further he came across a cabin in the woods and decided to ask if he could take refuge 'til the morning where he could get back to his car, but upon knocking, the door swung open. The cabin was empty, and cold. He figured many nobody lived here anymore, so he found his way to a bedroom that had a bed with a duvet, so he lay his things down and hopped on the bed to try to get some rest. After a while, he opened his eyes and noticed, in the dark that there were many portraits on the walls. All kind of people, and all of them angry and all of their eyes fixed on him. Feeling uncomfortable, he decided to hide his head under the duvet and sleep it off.
- The Portraits: http://www.creepypasta.com/the-portraits 'The Portraits' on the website is very much a short and not very well detailed story, but the idea is very much the same. For how bad it is, this is actually my favourite basic story creepypasta and I love telling it to people because I can embellish it and make it sound a bit better: But meh, here's how I tell it:
In the morning he was awoken by the sunlight and pulled his head out of the bed to make one realisation. There were no portaits. Only windows.
And as always. Ciao for now!
09/03/2014
Musical Tastes!
Hi there! Short one today.
Music, much like every art, has it's place of goods and bads and people's preferences and dislikes. These should never be confused. It's not okay to tell someone that they should listen to something instead of something else, it's okay for everyone to listen to what they like. Because that's their preference. But that doesn't in any realm mean that the music you / they like is GOOD. I like lots of music that I know is bad music, but that's okay too.
Just try to keep in mind when you like something it doesn't make it good, so don't shove your preferences down people's throats. It's like a penis in that respect. Okay?
That being said. Music has so much power, the potential to make you feel so many things and move you. That's emphasis that I said 'music' - not song. Song is an entirely different thing and while a voice can be awesome and help music and be really nice, it should not be the focus (I refer you to rap.) Meaningful lyrics are cool, but we should never under-appreciate the sound of the music behind it in it's ability to make the words much better.
With that in mind, I would clarify that this view is what leads me to love acoustic and soft piano music above all else. The soft sounds seem to hold more emotion in them, and the simple sound of well placed notes can emphasise words in acoustic tracks to make a wonderful pairing. And that's why that is often good. As much as I enjoy rocky or dancey and stuff, there are so many sounds that I simply can't be bothered to listen to all of it. The message and emotion gets lost in translation somewhere along the lines of the 5th instrument and aggressive lyrics.
What I'm saying is, I like simplicity. Just calm down. With that I'll refer you to a short list of songs you can tap in on YouTube should you desire to. Most of these are sad, but that's good music, right? :P
Daniela Andrade - Dark Passenger
B Story - Back Then
Erik Satie - Gymnopiedes
Incubus - Monuments And Melodies
Music, much like every art, has it's place of goods and bads and people's preferences and dislikes. These should never be confused. It's not okay to tell someone that they should listen to something instead of something else, it's okay for everyone to listen to what they like. Because that's their preference. But that doesn't in any realm mean that the music you / they like is GOOD. I like lots of music that I know is bad music, but that's okay too.
Just try to keep in mind when you like something it doesn't make it good, so don't shove your preferences down people's throats. It's like a penis in that respect. Okay?
That being said. Music has so much power, the potential to make you feel so many things and move you. That's emphasis that I said 'music' - not song. Song is an entirely different thing and while a voice can be awesome and help music and be really nice, it should not be the focus (I refer you to rap.) Meaningful lyrics are cool, but we should never under-appreciate the sound of the music behind it in it's ability to make the words much better.
With that in mind, I would clarify that this view is what leads me to love acoustic and soft piano music above all else. The soft sounds seem to hold more emotion in them, and the simple sound of well placed notes can emphasise words in acoustic tracks to make a wonderful pairing. And that's why that is often good. As much as I enjoy rocky or dancey and stuff, there are so many sounds that I simply can't be bothered to listen to all of it. The message and emotion gets lost in translation somewhere along the lines of the 5th instrument and aggressive lyrics.
What I'm saying is, I like simplicity. Just calm down. With that I'll refer you to a short list of songs you can tap in on YouTube should you desire to. Most of these are sad, but that's good music, right? :P
Daniela Andrade - Dark Passenger
B Story - Back Then
Erik Satie - Gymnopiedes
Incubus - Monuments And Melodies
04/03/2014
The Deepest (and also dopest) Look at Poetry
Hello, lovely folk! I'd be surprised if some of my poet readers are still here, but if you are, this next post might change your mind.
Having spent time on over five writer's websites, I can safely say that I've read my fair share of amature poetry. Some are decent, some downright awful - but there are themes within all poetry and the poetry people seem to remember - or rather, don't. You see poetry comes down to one thing... The writer.
Notice that I said 'writer', and not 'poet'. This is because good poetry requires a good writer, we tend to remember the writer of the poem along with or over the poem itself, due to the poem being a thing from the writer's mind. When you read a poem, you should not be reading a loose piece with an intention or a fuction, you should be reading a section of the poet's thoughts for entertainment.
I once had an older creative writer lady try to tell me that when a piece of writing is written, it is free from the author, free for the reader to read and interpret any way (s)he wants. While I agree with the sentiment of imagination between the lines, I could not disagree more that poetry can stray from the writer and still be a good piece of work.
Any message that is portrayed through the medium of poetry can be made significantly better through some form of prose writing - so to suggest that poetry can be good on it's own is simply pretencious. It's a fact that it is easier than other forms of literature, it's a fact that meaning is far less succinct outside of prose.
Erotic poetry is a prime example. There is a significant amount of it and almost all of it sucks, because it is all blended together - such a specific thing to talk about isn't going to have much variation, so every single one of these poems, while sometimes provocative and can be pulled off better than others, is generally forgettable and worthless.
Your poetry needs to be unique, it needs to be the flowings of your mind. You need to have a vague style and people enjoy it because they attribute it to you. Poetry should be to entertain, not reinforce sexual motivation, or try to make you improve the environment - leave that to articles, or novellas.
Of course there is one blaring whole in my view that needs addressing. If you don't like a quirky style with very limited meaning or to learn from it; simply entertainment from the author's brain - then that's fine! If you think sexual motivation is what you happen to find as entetrtainment - that's okay too, some writers are significantly better at erotic poetry than others, because...
As an overall factor, poetry is an artform.
A lesser art, given, but an art nonetheless - and as a result what you like and what is good are two seperate things. You can like anything you want, but that doesn't mean it's good. You can dislike whatever you want, and that doesn't make it bad. However, I'm just looking at the sheer core of what poetry is, and I implore you to understand, that poetry for poetry's sake is awful. Try to think of poetry you remember very well but have no idea who the author is - very few, if any. We know the works of William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, Sylvia Plath, Edgar Allen Poe, Lewis Carroll and Willaim Blake because they are Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Plath, Poe, Carroll and Blake! We might not like all of these, but you can't deny their fame.
...Why are there so many poets called William? Then some people go too far with the good poetry and try to overanalyse it, detaching it from the poet. And in this case, you're simply a moron.
Do you get the idea? I have no desire to demean your poetry or the kind of poetry you like, but just be aware that it should be you being poured onto a page as a different form of writing to literature: your words mean nothing if the poem is too distinct from you.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Appologies for the long post today, it'll be a bit lighter next time, I promose. Thanks for sticking with me, though. I'll leave you with a poem of 'Advice' from Bo Burnham's Eggheads (Or you can't live on ideas alone):
And, as always, ciao for now!
(P.S. Go back and read only the words in bold.)
You can catch the first post here! If you happened not to read it. I outlined mostly why I am not a poet myself. Here, however, I'd like to clarify some further ideas as to what actually makes good and bad poetry.
Having spent time on over five writer's websites, I can safely say that I've read my fair share of amature poetry. Some are decent, some downright awful - but there are themes within all poetry and the poetry people seem to remember - or rather, don't. You see poetry comes down to one thing... The writer.
Notice that I said 'writer', and not 'poet'. This is because good poetry requires a good writer, we tend to remember the writer of the poem along with or over the poem itself, due to the poem being a thing from the writer's mind. When you read a poem, you should not be reading a loose piece with an intention or a fuction, you should be reading a section of the poet's thoughts for entertainment.
I once had an older creative writer lady try to tell me that when a piece of writing is written, it is free from the author, free for the reader to read and interpret any way (s)he wants. While I agree with the sentiment of imagination between the lines, I could not disagree more that poetry can stray from the writer and still be a good piece of work.
Any message that is portrayed through the medium of poetry can be made significantly better through some form of prose writing - so to suggest that poetry can be good on it's own is simply pretencious. It's a fact that it is easier than other forms of literature, it's a fact that meaning is far less succinct outside of prose.
Erotic poetry is a prime example. There is a significant amount of it and almost all of it sucks, because it is all blended together - such a specific thing to talk about isn't going to have much variation, so every single one of these poems, while sometimes provocative and can be pulled off better than others, is generally forgettable and worthless.
Your poetry needs to be unique, it needs to be the flowings of your mind. You need to have a vague style and people enjoy it because they attribute it to you. Poetry should be to entertain, not reinforce sexual motivation, or try to make you improve the environment - leave that to articles, or novellas.
Of course there is one blaring whole in my view that needs addressing. If you don't like a quirky style with very limited meaning or to learn from it; simply entertainment from the author's brain - then that's fine! If you think sexual motivation is what you happen to find as entetrtainment - that's okay too, some writers are significantly better at erotic poetry than others, because...
As an overall factor, poetry is an artform.
A lesser art, given, but an art nonetheless - and as a result what you like and what is good are two seperate things. You can like anything you want, but that doesn't mean it's good. You can dislike whatever you want, and that doesn't make it bad. However, I'm just looking at the sheer core of what poetry is, and I implore you to understand, that poetry for poetry's sake is awful. Try to think of poetry you remember very well but have no idea who the author is - very few, if any. We know the works of William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, Sylvia Plath, Edgar Allen Poe, Lewis Carroll and Willaim Blake because they are Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Plath, Poe, Carroll and Blake! We might not like all of these, but you can't deny their fame.
Do you get the idea? I have no desire to demean your poetry or the kind of poetry you like, but just be aware that it should be you being poured onto a page as a different form of writing to literature: your words mean nothing if the poem is too distinct from you.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Appologies for the long post today, it'll be a bit lighter next time, I promose. Thanks for sticking with me, though. I'll leave you with a poem of 'Advice' from Bo Burnham's Eggheads (Or you can't live on ideas alone):
If the poem you're writing is silly and dumb,
make sure that it rhymes at the end. Bum.
And, as always, ciao for now!
(P.S. Go back and read only the words in bold.)
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)