Edit: It occurs to me through numerous exchanges that any work of art, attempted or official, should stand on its own merits when attempting to present its message.
Celestia was written for someone who understands art far better than I could, and at their behest, I will try to let it speak for itself.
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I liked your story. I like that it did confuse me a little yet part of me seemed to get it. People rarely feel just one emotion at a time and I got the sense of multiple emotions and layers to the characters that you chose to write. Looking forward to future works of yours
I was skeptical going into this blog post, as these kind of things tend to be written in a huffy manner, but you make sense.
I haven't read Celestia yet, but I know from previous stories that you are a good writer, and what you express here seems reasonable to me.
And as a side note, I love it when stories use words I do not understand because they need to. It makes me break out my dictionary and learn new things. And sometimes that one word is just right, and any other word just wouldn't have the same impact or feel.
I'm still not sure whether you're a genius or completely insane.
266470
Maybe both. That's a good sign.
> and certainly don't brandish 'readability' as a cause for the simplification of language.
You know we would never accept this excuse from someone submitting to EqD.
I didn't have any problems with your vocabulary, but your syntax in Celestia was exhausting. When reading feels more like decoding, that's not an enjoyable experience.
266559
Man kind creates two things.
Tools, which have an inherent purpose to the means of survival. The word "survival" in on itself has been twisted as we grow into an era of dominance. Survival is now just another socket in the overall description of efficiency. How we go about "doing" things. But, there is something that we create that neither has purpose, nor place.
Art. Traditionally, art is not a tool. Like tools in the overall scheming of "survival", even art changes. Today this is common as we see things as art for money, the monopolization of artistic prowess constricting into two categories. Materialization and purpose. To each his own, and every individual has a different "purpose" for art. Art is not a tool. It isn't something that you can replicate in the millions and near to exact in each one just for the linear consistency of purpose.
Art is an emotion. Why you do it and how you do it falls to the individual. It has purpose but only to that person. But why is it that I am explaining all of this?
Simple really. It isn't so much as decoding art, because that is physically impossible as art is done with a purpose variability, where it has so many meanings and they can all change within then blink of an eye simply because the author thought it so. It is, ultimately, interpreting art. And that is all art has ever been. Interpretation. He wrote this with the emotion of disgust towards a concept in human anthropology. Was it for us? Was it for the world? Will the world ever understand the underlying message?
The answer to these? Who knows. It falls under interpretation. As for "Enjoyable experience". Now that is convoluted subject. Well, at least I had a fun ride :T
266645
>It has purpose but only to that person.
I disagree. Literature is the communication of ideas through prose from the writer to the reader. If the writing only has meaning to the writer, then it shouldn't be a story, it should be a diary entry. Good writing effectively communicates to the reader, and part of that is keeping the reader engaged in the narrative.
If art only has meaning to its creator, why should anyone else care about it? Why would the creator show it to anyone?
266685
If the intent of the creator is inherent in the orchestration of the art's presentation then it achieves its purpose regardless of accessibility, and perhaps because of it.
A discussion on the semantics of art is probably inherent to the purpose of my desire to write this story in the first place, but I'm adamant that the inscrutable nature of its composition is necessary to convey the emotion meant to be evoked at any given section of the reading. Unnecessary embellishment of description is one matter when digesting prose, deliberate rhetoric and metaphor that encapsulates its own creation is entirely another.
"I won't be going into a dissertation on each individual aspect of the story's construction"
Darn.
266685
I spoke of purpose. Whether the reader develops a purpose for the piece isn't entirely cohesive to the nature of how art is made and what purpose it is made for. Like imagination. When I was a kid, I had a lot of imagination. It was fun and awesome to come up with things and though it would have been nice to have shared my imagination with others, my imagination was for myself because it was somehow ultimately meant for me. I guess art is imagination come to life. At least as simple as I can describe it without confusing others and myself. If others like it, then yeah that's a bonus, but making something for the sole purpose for others to enjoy? It would be the same as calling it a tool.
We are all just a little hard to understand, and some people will understand us differently, but those who understand us favorably are, in some cases, the fuel that drives a passion that supports imagination. A big circle jerk :D
266685 Of course, you're perfectly free to not like it personally.
However, I would have to disagree that he or she shouldn't have shared this story. I don't get the impression it was shared for attention or to be artsy for artsy sake but the story was shared... just to share the writer almost and quite a few seemed to have been able to connect with it.
I think part of what makes this story is that you probably will not understand everything presented in it. I believe that makes it more real. We cannot ever fully explain ourselves and our complexities and the numerous motivations which influence our actions and words. (especially with girls like me
) In real life we cannot always explain every detail so why can't writing reflect that occasionally?
I think what works is that comes across as different things to different people because there is no clear, set in stone lesson or message to this story. Modern theater does this a lot where they present a message that can be read multiple ways and mean something different to each viewer yet it can be powerful. It's not better or worse really it's just different
I'm probably thinking too much into this though. lol
266703
An inscrutable story conveys nothing. If your readers can't interpret what you're writing, how do you expect them to react to it emotionally?
>A discussion on the semantics of art is probably inherent to the purpose of my desire to write this story in the first place,
I don't think you understand what the word 'inherent' means.
>If the intent of the creator is inherent in the orchestration of the art's presentation then it achieves its purpose regardless of accessibility, and perhaps because of it.
This is what I disagree with most of all. If you haven't communicated something to the reader, you haven't accomplished anything with your writing. It might as well be noise in the wind.
266857
I'm just going to link this in response to the noise comment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3l_hy33-1Yw
266871
I fuckin' love dubstep, but I'm more into dubstep-inspired industrial hip-hop, when I'm not listening to exotic electronica.
266857
What I meant by that 'inherent' comment is that a discussion on the very nature of art mentioned is what provoked the creation of this story, and the meta-narrative that is its foundation is entirely akin to the subject of 'the validity of art as a means of expression versus a product digestable by its audience'
If someone is capable of reading the english language they're just as capable of discerning the literal meaning of what I've written as I was to write it - the fundamental difference here is whether or not you believe the text is understandability of the text detracts from its message. In case it isn't clear from the story's narrative, large sections of it are meant to be difficult to parse, which is designed to evoke an emotion in the text and reader observing it of the same confusion the character narrating is feeling.
At risk of breaking down too much of the story, the whole thing is designed to be an exercise in non-linear narratives, which are difficult to understand by design. It's that level of scrutiny and complication in their construction that attempts to provoke a deeper understanding from the reader.
First thing that popped into my head: Eschew Obfuscation -- Employ the Vernacular.
The fact that you wrote an objection to being called pretentious with post-graduate-level vocabulary suggests a certain insecurity that doesn't help your case. If you wrote your story to be deliberately heavy-handed and convoluted as part of its tone, that suggests you are capable of communicating in a more natural, conversational manner. But you didn't.
Is it really so hard to speak to folks as if you were discussing something over coffee, rather than defending your dissertation? If your ideas are genuinely clever, they won't lose any value if they shed their armour of pseudo-intellectual wordmail. Professors can speak to professors over lunch without including footnotes. Some of the most brilliant thinkers and speakers and wits I have ever had the pleasure to hear and read deliver their ideas with astounding simplicity and lucidity; that's what MAKES them brilliant.
To be blunt: You come across as scared of being seen as dumb if you just write in plain conversational English. And that seems silly to me, since you clearly have enough intellect to assemble these incredibly verbose screeds.
So... uh, relax, dude. No one will take away your degree if you use a word with less than seven syllables.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And as for the story itself, I would point you to a piece of advice from Kurt Vonnegut, who I daresay is several orders of magnitude greater a writer than either of us:
Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
You can have all the most erudite, philosophical and thought-provoking ideas ever, but if the reader feels as if they are doing you a huge favour wading through your work and is left feeling unrewarded or irritated even if they know all the cumbersome words you use, then you have failed to entertain your readers. You have failed to engage them. You have failed to successfully convey what you set out to convey. And blaming the victim in this case - saying "You DARE express dissent? Your pedestrian mind simply failed to recognize MY TOWERING GENIUS, PEON!" - doesn't change that. Are you really implying that anyone with the wit to decode your purple prose is GUARANTEED to like it, and anyone who doesn't merely feels that way because you're smarter than them? Bad form.
When you write, you aren't making a gift to the world that it should bow down in thanks for. You are asking someone you don't know to sacrifice a little of their very, very finite life to absorb what you have presented. You are humbly asking THEM for a gift that can never, ever be replaced: time.
Think about that.
Oh, and lastly: This.
Emotions follow from knowledge, and if the knowledge is conveyed in an abstruse way, then there can be no proper emotional impact. Instead of profound thoughts, the audience is left groping for an undefined message to a non-sequitor structure of a story. It's not the words or style of writing that has me confused, its the contradictions, vagueness, and jerks that leave no clear message for me to enjoy or contemplate. It felt like there were a myriad of hands tugging the story in different directions along its path. Explanations to why the characters felt the way they were feeling were seldom, and it read more like musings of the author forced through two characters in the loose context of static circumstance. I shouldn't have to venture flimsy conjecture or force myself to keep reading - in hopes that a latter segment is elaborated on further along - to enjoy a short story. There is an implied contract when publishing to a wide anonymous audience - and the foremost condition is that the content and theme of the story is comprehensible. The fact that you admit your story is open for arbitrary interpretation is a breach to that tacit contract.
I apologise, grand master wordsmith, god of literature, the mightiest of the minds, the king of the philosophers. Now I see the light and realize the error of my sinful ways. Your skill is grand! Your work is a masterwork among masterworks! Tolstoy, Tolkein, and George Orwell are mere children compared to your literary might!
Oh NTSTS, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
Now that that's out of the way, I'd like to point out one thing before I begin.
Your story was pretentious. This does not mean I support anti-intellectualism. I despise anti-intellectualism with the fury of a thousand dying suns. However, that doesn't mean I'm going to lie. If it looks like a dog, barks like a dog, and smells like a dog, I'm going to call it a dog, not an award-winning literary masterpiece.
Now I'll list the reasons why I dislike your story.
Your story relies on gimicks. You have the abstract title picture. You have a one word description. You have your description to the right of your title picture in the featured list. Your chapter doesn't have a title. You have rainbow text. Your story is an image, so you have a word count of zero. All these are cheap attempts to get more views by making your story a special snowflake.
Your diction was horrible. Yes, you showed off a very big vocabulary, good for you. Unfortunately, your word choice was horrible at conveying what they characters meant. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if you had a thesauras at your side when you were writting this.
Your story was full of fake depth. You had flowery non-sequiters, fragment sentences, and irrelevant musings that seemed deep and philosophical, but were actually meaningless.
I dislike your story's meaning. I'm not judging your meaning based on how you presented it, I dislike it on it's own merits. 'Celestia angsting over immortality' has been done to death, and I've already seen a million and one 'immortality sucks' fics. In fact, all this stuff about Celestia being emotionally numb and horribly bored just seems contrived. Seriously, if she's so bored why doesn't she take up a hobby? Why doesn't she go and explore the stars? Why doesn't she try to create another immortal being to give her company? Why doesn't she try to master all the world's languages? She could spend her spare time calculating the digits of Pi! She hasn't had enough time to try everything. Mein gott, I have ADD and I wouldn't get bored that easily!
I'm vulgar, I'm disrespectful, I'm rude, I'm a jackass, and I lack a college degree. That doesn't mean your story isn't a poorly written, pretentious mass of pseudo-philosophical ramblings.
If you put your story on FiMfiction, people will criticize it regardless of whether or not you want them to. If you don't want criticism, then don't post it or improve your writting based on that criticism. As commenters, we have a right to point out what parts of a story suck, even if that includes all of it. It's obvious that you care what people think about this 'art', otherwise you wouldn't have posted this blog entry.
Well, I really liked Celestia.
I didn't feel like the language used was a gimmick, or something to draw attention to itself. Those were complicated emotions being described and required complicated language to attempt to describe them. And I might be far off here, but I kind of thought, especially in the case of Celestia, that having that level of language at your disposal and still being so limited in how she expressed herself was an important aspect of the story. And if I'm totally missing the mark in this, that's okay. Have you ever discussed a poem with someone, or a song, and gotten something totally different from it than they did? That is a strength of this kind of poetic storytelling, not a weakness.
There is a certain amount of vagueness in the story, some talking around things that might be able to be said in a collection of simple sentences, but would not have nearly the same level of meaning if they were. (And could they really be? I'm not so sure.)
I loved it for its depth of feeling and almost scientific look at the emotions of the characters, or indefinable, very human thoughts. And I don't think it's quite fair to accuse the story of having "fake depth." I mean, you could say that about any work of art. The 'depth' you find in something like this is as subjective as the work itself.
Okay, I just found the quote (Thank you, Internet!) by Anthony Burgess that I think says what I wanted to say about why I think the language employed in Celstia is fine how it is and dumbing it down (or 'making it less pretentious' if you will) would be to no avail. [Burgess wrote A Clockwork Orange. The entire novel is written in a slang of his own invention, called Nasdat.] "Nasdat, a Russified version of English, was meant to muffle the raw response we expect from pornography. It turns the book into a linguistic adventure. People preferred the film because they are scared, rightly, of language." Now, I don't believe that the language used in Celestia was meant to shield the reader from the subject matter of the story. (Though human emotion and yearning can be as dangerous and powerful as any of the violence and sexuality contained in Burgess' novel.) In fact, I think it was trying to do just the opposite. (Again, I'm not privy to the author's intent, but this is what I felt when reading the story.)
The part of the quote I thought was particularly applicable was where he said that people liked the movie better because they were scared of language. It's true. And I like how he said that they were scared "rightly." I am disappointed at the reaction to something like this, which uses language which is a little higher than the majority of fanfiction, but not unapproachably so. I wouldn't even call it purple prose. (Maybe a little pink?
)
Which reminds me of another quote from a writer I like. (I'm on a roll!
) This one is from Madeline L'engle. (She wrote A Wrinkle In Time, among other cool stories.) She said, “We think because we have words, not the other way around. The more words we have, the better able we are to think conceptually.” This is why a story like this one should be written with this level of language. It's about thoughts and feelings, and we actually have words to attempt to describe these things and we ought to try and get some use out of them. Some writing is elegant in its simplicity. But some can be elegant in its complexity. And if it chases away some readers, that's okay. And if some people just don't like it, not because the language scared them off, but because they just didn't like the writing, that's okay too. But calling it 'pretentious' is more of an attack on the author, as if there's some kind of snobbish motivation behind the writing. If there is, I didn't feel it come across in the story.
Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed your story and the way it was written. The so-called "gimmicks" like the abstract cover and such are what caught my eye and gave me a chance to read it in the first place, which kind of makes them a success. (And really, they do tie in to the themes of the story.) Thank you for sharing Celestia with me. I loved it.
I get it. you manipulated language to make meaning. You just didn't do, you know, the whole "writing an interesting story" part.
after reading your story twice, I've come to the following conclusions: 1. I understand the theme, and how it is reinforced by the aesthetic decisions you made. 2. The story is boring as all hell.
Your topic is one too intangible to be of any interest. Your prose is rambling and circuitous (although you could probably argue that is yet another asthetic decision.)
If you look past the purple prose, the colored text, and the rambling stream of consciousness, and the musings on "understanding", all you have is celestia angsting over immortality, and twilight angsting over her insignificance. nothing happens. On every level, the only emotion this story evokes is boredom. from the prose, to the plot, to the theme.
It's rather fitting that your story contains a word count of zero. Because by the end, you've conveyed absolutely nothing novel, interesting, emotional, or thought provoking. All we got is purple prose disguised in rainbow text.
I expected at least a narrative about ponies, but I didn't even get that. Congrats on wasting my time.
I sincerely appreciate the effort you've put into this, but effort doesn't necessarily translate into quality.
267208 this guy said everything I did, except better.
Here's a reddit thread that offers even more insight into "Celestiac
I wonder if the critics of this have heard the advice, "Show, don't tell"?
If you're chatting with someone, if you're presenting news, if you're writing an instruction manual – in all these cases I would demand clear phrasing and word choice, because your aim is to convey facts. But when you're writing a story, conveying facts is, at best, a secondary aim. The primary aim is to evoke thoughts or emotions in the reader.
And you don't do that by stating a series of events. You do it by burying the story, forcing the reader to do the work of engaging with it.
In your typical fic, this only goes as far as "describing the scene". But taking the principle further and couching the story in symbolism and streams of consciousness isn't a bad thing. I feel that it was a pretty good thing in this case.
...But maybe I'm just saying that because I didn't so much as notice the vocabulary. It didn't use any horribly exotic words. Just scholarly ones. Twilight and Celestia are both scholars; it felt entirely in-character for their correspondence. And as for the structure, I've already made comments about how I enjoyed unraveling it.
266940
>If someone is capable of reading the english language they're just as capable of discerning the literal meaning of what I've written as I was to write it - the fundamental difference here is whether or not you believe the text is understandability of the text detracts from its message.
Being overly verbose isn't bad because the reader won't understand it, it's bad because that it's mentally exhausting to read.
The human brain is wired to like periods of rest balanced with periods of excitement or tension. Good Story pacing follows this format. And good sentences follow this format.
So why do we need periods of rest?
The human brain needs periods of rest because being in a constant state of excitement or tension makes us weary. The issue with purple prose, is that it makes our brain have to call on more complex dialogue frequently, and the reader is forced to read it with a constant state of tension. This has nothing to do with knowing the word's meanings or not. It has to do with how frequently the word comes up in the language itself.
You could equate it to a video game with "constant action" (hint: those suck for this reason)
Secondly, as I stated before, the philosophy in your story is fairly tropish/not groundbreaking. It might make people who never/rarely think about philosophical questions think, but as far as philosophy goes it was quite low brow.
Lastly, I don't care how artistic you're trying to be, your one word synopsis is terrible. Don't force the reader to open your story to have any idea about it. I honestly think your story should have been rejected on the grounds that it doesn't have a synopsis.
So no, I wasn't confused. Yes, I get the effects you were going for, but unfortunately your execution was just off.
My question is, do you have any idea why it came up as 0 words? <.<
267399
It's an embedded link to an image of text.
267317
The word choice does a poor job at conveying the meaning. It doesn't sound like what someone would think and it shattered my suspension of disbelief in 10 seconds flat. The words do not help the author convey a deeper meaning. Honestly, the concepts are simple and unambiguous. No, the superfluous flowery language only serves to muddle the meaning that our immortal lord and savior here was attempting to convey.
I must agree with all the other people on the wordcount. The story has many words, yes, but it says nothing.
NTSTS, I award you no points, and may god have mercy on your soul.
I've been thinking about this. In one sense that I'm thinking about it at all is a success on your part, but I'm thinking about it not because I'm interested in the story but because I'm interested in literature and what makes stories tick. Celestia doesn't tick.
Words CAN be incredibly meaningful and change people's lives. Words can grant an author a form of immortality and ensure their ideas never die. In this sense, writing something with purpose and meaning is one of the most important things anybody can ever do.
The word pretentious is thrown around here. Celestia isn't pretentious. Pretension is about intent, not end result. Celestia is, to put it bluntly, dull. The writing is in and of itself frustrating. That's not a good thing. If your content is frustrating--if you can get the reader shouting through your words to the characters and events--that's fantastic and you've done a great job. If people are shouting at the words themselves, then the idea isn't getting through. That's a failure.
The really great novels, the classics, the ones people remember for the entire lives because they really made a difference, do something very different from Celestia. They're enjoyable. You can read 1984 as a story and you aren't worse off for it. It gives the deeper meaning not through hammer-fisted force, but by encouraging the reader to think about it because it's enjoyable. It's not frustrating to read. It gets the concept across to the reader nicely, it doesn't force them to claw it out.
I find no enjoyment in reading Celestia, and that's very much to its detriment. The idea of immortality and the pains of an immortal is not an idea that needs that level of obfuscation to express. If a story isn't interesting, or enjoyable, then why should you expect people to have any desire to look deeper? If somebody has no wish to find out what you're talking about, that's not necessarily a failure on their behalf.
I don't say pretentious, because I respect you as an author and person enough to know that wasn't your intent, but I can't call the story a success, either.
267317
> Twilight and Celestia are both scholars; it felt entirely in-character for their correspondence.
Sorry, but no. Being educated doesn't mean you turn into a Blank Verse Robot. I have degrees in Psychology, English and Journalism and I can still speak naturally -- even to people I admire.
THIS is how Twilight writes:
Dear Princess Celestia, my friends and I all learned an important lesson this week: Never judge a book by its cover. Someone may look unusual, or funny, or scary. But you have to look past that and learn who they are inside. Real friends don't care what your "cover" is; It's the "contents" of a pony that count. And a good friend, like a good book, is something that will last forever.
Your faithful student, Twilight Sparkle.
That is a private letter to a being Twilight knows is a good hundred times her age. Even then, Twilight speaks, and writes, in clear, concise and casual sentences. She uses larger vocabulary only when there is no suitable simpler alternative (such as when she discusses azimuths and optics in It's About Time). Even at her most formal (such as when she discusses "the precipice of disaster" in the pilot), she remains conversational in her delivery.
Twilight likes efficiency, clarity, logic and organization; she is NOTABLY impatient with the intangible, metaphorical, abstruse and ambiguous. Why would being Hot For Teacher suddenly turn her into some emo poet who can't state anything plainly? She might crumple up a hundred drafts, but anything she kept would retain her natural and plainspoken-yet-intelligent tone.
For example, which one sounds more like Twilight -- This:
"Being afraid of your own thoughts is an alien sensation I'm not comfortable with. When they jump and leer at me from behind corners of my consciousness, twisting in directions I can't foresee and striving as hard as possible to defy definition and explanation."
Or this:
"I'm not used to being afraid of my own thoughts. I trust my mind to be orderly and logical, but it's like these ideas are twisting and turning out of control all by themselves. It scares me, Princess."
Okay, allow me to let someone else speak for me, who can put this into words far more eloquently than I could hope to. The following is an excerpt from the book How NOT to Write a Novel, by Sandra Newman and Howard Mittelmark. It's not intended as a copyright infringement.
The Puffer Fish: Wherein the author flaunts his vocabulary
Beginning writers often believe that the true genius uses only words from the furthest reaches of the English language, the darkest recesses of the dictionary, the sort of words that cannot survive on their own in any natural environment.
Sorry; this is not writing. This is showing off, and nobody likes a show-off.
There are of course things you would write that you would not say in conversation ("I said, bewildered"), but words that draw attention to themselves by their rarity draw attention away from the story you are telling and remind the reader of the author and his thesaurus. In a worst-case scenario, a game of ping-pong develops between the author's thesaurus and the reader's dictionary.
[...]
This is not to say that you should write with one hand tied behind your back, making sure that you only use language accessible to a fifth grader. There is nothing wrong with making the occasional reader occasionally reach for the dictionary. However, the only legitimate reason to do that is if the word you have chosen is the best word to express the idea. Generally, saying "edifice" instead of "building" doesn't tell your reader any more about the building; it tells your reader that you know the word "edifice". (The underlined part is emphasized in the original text.)
Side note: the chapter headed "Gibberish for Art's Sake" also makes a few excellent points that relate to the fic (in particular, that the first purpose of writing is communication), but I've stolen enough of Newman and Mittelmark's ideas as is.
267518
To be honest, I must say that the story is entirely pretentious: its author is entirely focused on seeming eloquent and grandiose and cultured that he flicks aside criticism as misunderstanding, uses obtuse mediums and petty tricks and unusual formatting to obsfucate the meaning of his generally unimportant, overtrod, mundane point and has spared no expense in his choice of dictionary.
I cannot help but feel that he knows what he is doing very well, and I admire him deeply for it; he has learnt how to make the mediocre feel intelligent, the simple feel him intelligent and the intelligent (and the simple, and the mediocre) pissed enough to come along and cast aspersions on him. I honestly think that just for having the massive balls and total lack of self-respect needed to attempt and sell clothes to the Emperor.
This isn't mere dullness. It is dullness focused into pure, absolute pretension. For Celestia's sake, I wrote Twilight Discovers Literary Analysis; I, least of all people, would want to admit that anyone could ever be as pretentious as me. But even I don't have the enormous non-gender-specific gametogenic organs needed to debase myself to this extent purely to create controversy.
He is the Überkitschstein, and I cannot help but take a second of silence simply to respect him.
267820
What I mean by "Pretension is a matter of intent" is that it wasn't NTSTS's intention to impress anybody. Pretension isn't the right word, though I agree the *feel* of it is similar. There must be a word for it, but I can't come up with one. I don't use pretentious only because I think that'd be an insult to the author and I respect him too much for that. Nor can I, on the other hand, congratulate him on it.
266645>>267828
There is a word for this. It's pedantry. Which derives from pedant.
Pedant is defined as such: One who exhibits one's learning or scholarship ostentatiously.
It isn't suitable for an author to say, "People don't like my story? Alack! We artists are so misunderstood!" But nor is it suitable for a reader to personally attack an author because they didn't like the techniques employed in a story.
Some of the criticisms I'm seeing here are perfectly legitimate. Others less so.
267492 The concepts are simple and unambiguous. So what? I've never read a story that exposed me to a concept I found complicated. Maybe it's the mathematician in me, but most concepts are simple when you get down to it. If all stories were reduced to their concepts, FiMFiction's database would be a fraction of the size, and it would be a very boring site. Also, the entire field of Literature Studies would disappear.
The word choice would do poorly at imparting facts, but that's not what the story's trying to do. It's trying to evoke thoughts and emotions. Personally, I didn't get a lot of emotions from it, but I did think.
267564 You can still speak naturally (where you're apparently defining "naturally" as "not like that") but that doesn't mean you always do. You use very different terms when discussing psychology with your peers than when chatting with a mate down at the pub. Even aside from necessary jargon, it's pretty common for people to unconsciously exaggerate their vocabulary in scholarly contexts, and stress or emotion exaggerates that tendency. (I recall the time a neighbour fell through a rotten deck and my father – normally a very curt, practical man – in his stress started talking about "lacerations".)
When a character uses long, bizarre thesaurus words to speak on a day-to-day basis just to show how "smart" they are, I get as annoyed as anyone else, because that's not how intelligence works. That doesn't mean that the use of long words is always wrong, given a context. And I didn't have to reach for a dictionary once while reading Celestia, so it can't be that bad. I was never made to think the author was using a thesaurus.
The metaphors and poetry are a different issue from word choice. I can concede that those are out of character for Twilight and probably for Celestia, and that hurts the story. Although they do add a bit to structural complexity – that is, they add to the fun of unraveling the piece.
267681 I think "the first purpose of writing is communication" is narrow-minded, unless they're using quite a broad meaning of "communication". I don't write stories to tell people things, and I don't read stories to be told things. I do both for entertainment. Celestia entertained me in the same way a logic puzzle does.
268148 Everyone who writes and actually goes and publishes their stuff does so in the hopes of finding an audience. Everyone who reads other people's works does so in the hopes of finding something in there, preferably something new. I think that's what "communication" means in this context, and being reminded of the nuts and bolts of a story (or any medium, for that matter) gets in the way of that. Of course I don't need to be bold-facedly told every single intention the author has, and every single belief they hold dear (that is, in fact, another chapter in HNTWAN; several, come to think of it), but when form outshines content, something has gone wrong in the opposite direction. There is such a thing as taking "show, don't tell" too far, especially when the general moral arrived at eventually is as relatively simplistic as it is here. The fic would be fine as it is if it managed to break new philosophical ground, but I don't believe it does that.
As an aside, it does say "first purpose", not "only purpose". And I enjoy logic puzzles as much as anyone, but they're not what I read fiction for, especially not fanfiction, and especially especially not MLP:FIM fanfiction. Oh, and please do tell where I went about personally attacking the author for what he/she did, as you so eloquently imply with your first paragraph. "Nobody likes a show-off"? That's not an attack, that's a truism - and everything else is not attacking the author, but his writing. A fine distinction, perhaps, but the one that differentiates a legitimate complaint from an ad hominem.
267208
Regarding the use of an image, I think it's pretty nifty, considering I don't usually read with a white monitor background. I can respect an author enough to read in the 'print' they would like their audience to view it in. But don't get me wrong, I agree with most of your points
268524
The image can be excused as a pun on how neither letter was sent (Which doesn't make sense, as Celestia can't reply to a letter she never got). The formatting can be exucsed too, I guess. It just seemed like they were using a gimmick rather than trying to be clever, what with all the other gimmicks that were in use.
268148
While this is true, these concepts have been done before numerous times. There isn't anything unique. Yes, everything can be broken down into simple concepts, but you're either lying or delusional if you say that all stories are equally unoriginal. For example, Fallout Equestria is more original than a stereotypical mary-sue self insert HiE fic.
Wow, I'm impressed.
Not at the story itself, though I don't hate it like some folks here do, but at the immense reaction it's garnered. It's both befuddling and inspiring in equal measure, not to mention a little exciting.
Here you wrote something abstract and unusual, but not particularly engineered to evoke such a response (at least I don't think so). It's not an overt trollfic, nor is it some sort of compelling adventure or heart-wrenching tragedy, or some pandering comedy. On the surface, this story appears to be little more than carefully planned artistic ventilation, designed to get your mind running and probably re-fresh your thoughts (by you I mean you, NTSTS).
And yet, it's provoked a wide range of responses, from near-worship to outright disgust, and it's provoked these responses in spades (and from some very busy people as well)! It's incredible the amount of debate and pondering that has come from the fic that it leaks over onto a related blog post.
I personally have an opinion about the story (albeit a not very strong one), but I'm too busy basking in the sheer exchange of intelligence here between what are some really big names on this site to even care about mentioning it.
All of that said, I have to admit that your blog entry here is pretentious as fuck.
Just let people react as they do, if you think they're misinterpreting your work, then that means you're doing something wrong. Like I said, I have a pretty neutral opinion of the story itself (leaning on the favorable end), but musing about how no one understands you and how people are calling you out for being "pretentious" or "contrived" isn't going to get you anywhere; people are going to think what they think based on the story itself, and may change their minds based on their own review. Also complaining about how people don't understand you just sounds whiny. 
267828
To tell the truth, this entire song and dance seems built for the sole purpose of garnering attention and of effecting an artistic image of himself. I find it unlikely that someone would act with such pretense lacking an ulterior motive.
269379
It could certainly seem that way, I agree, it's only because I know NTSTS that I disagree.
The ignorance radiating through the internet is disgusting. We use synonymous terms not as a means of self-endearment, but as a more accurate way to describe our exact intentions. Anyone who hasn't the capacity to learn these new words or even make the slightest effort to has no business even belonging to literary community. Obviously some are just simply frustrated at the complexity presented to them in this work of art, and they simply feel the need to lash out due to their inability to comprehend the stories content. Pay no mind to these fools, for you have created something worth creating and for that, you have my approval (not that it means much).
This blog post reminds me of the time a reader wrote to Harlan Ellison, asking him for an autograph, and Harlan wrote back a several-page rant about how authors are too busy writing masterpieces to sign autographs for readers. Typed.
You can't expect us to treat your story, appearing on fimfiction, the way we would treat something found in Norton's Anthology of English Literature. From our perspective, not knowing you, the probability is almost 1 that your story contains no deep meaning, that the color usage is random, and that it is all basically unedited stream-of-consciousness.
I began reading the story, and it struck me as deliberately avoiding making meaningful statements. The problem isn't big words; the problem is that it keeps circling around the edges of things, the way religious fanatics do when they have something trivial or inane to say but want it to sound deep. I'm not going to read the entire thing, or study it, unless someone shows me evidence that there is something interesting about it. That could mean someone I already greatly respect telling me "This story is really worth studying". That hasn't happened. It could also be a lot of people in the comments making interesting observations. That hasn't happened either. Or it could be you, giving some clue as to its meaning or organization, rather than whining for 1,165 words without telling us anything about the story.
And I'm not asking about the core meaning. I'm asking about the technique, the structure.
I say, put up or shut up. If there is a reason for using a picture and no synopsis other than to game the feature box, if there is an organizational scheme to the use of colors, if there is a reason for interleaving different voices, give us a clue. If you don't, even if you are a great misunderstood artist, it is your own fault.
I don't resent the story because I don't understand it. I resent it because I work hard and write good stories, which are ignored because it is so hard for readers to find and discern quality when the feature box can be exploited and when some authors take advantage of the gullibility of their readers to impress them with obscurity. And I resent you not because you use long words, but because you treat us, your readers, with disrespect. Your words, here and in your comments, drip with superiority and condescension. And I believe that authors have, if not an obligation, at least a justified self-interest in banding together in cases like this to decide whether this is something good, or just some new way of misleading the masses; and exposing it if it is the latter.
266703
>A discussion on the semantics of art is probably inherent to the purpose of my desire to write this story in the first place.
Great! I'd like that. Please, discuss the semantics of art. You haven't done that yet. You've only talked about how we should talk about the semantics of art.
269635
Your ARROGANCE is disgusting. Get off your high horse.
The ignorance is in assuming that "length = value" when it comes to words, lumping yourself together as a "we" with the world's supply of intelligent writers without backing that claim up, and assuming that if someone is bored or simply not entertained, that they must be undereducated.
Has it occurred to you that they might understand, and yet still not LIKE, the work? Have you considered the possibility - even just the POSSIBILITY - that the work might really just not be any good? I'm not even saying that's the case; I'm saying it's a dick move of MASSIVE proportions to declare that that's IMPOSSIBLE.
The less-intelligent wrongly assume that "smart people use big words". Intelligence can shine through even in a tiny handful of syllables (and it often shines even brighter in those cases), and as you just illustrated, ignorance can taint a much longer paragraph just as easily.
Shame on you.
269953 Not once did I question the power of simpler, smaller words. They have all the relevance of the "big words". I don't believe that I said anything about the - non-existent - superiority that longer words posses. I merely stated (and I may have implied otherwise) that synonymous terms are more accurate at communicating the authors true intentions.
I still believe that if someone is too ignorant to look up a word they don't understand and see fit to show their frustration at such a triviality via negative feedback towards the story/author, that they shouldn't be reviewing or rating stories, unless they truly thought the work was good or bad regardless of the word choice that conveyed it. No, I feel that's a perfectly justified outlook on such things. Call it arrogance if you please, but I feel otherwise.
270437
Well now I'm curious - and so are a lot of folks, judging from some of the other comments.
Please explain the author's "true intentions". You must know them, right? I mean, you know that these words work best to convey it and shouldn't be replaced with simpler, smoother, more conversational letters (even if said substitutions would make the letters read more like Twilight's canon written "voice"), so you have some insight to back that up, right?
You're not just conceitedly blowing smoke to suggest a level of knowledge you don't actually possess, right?
Of course not.
So by all means: read NTSTS's mind for us. Explain their decision. I'm all ears.
Asking me to "read NTSTS' mind" is absolutely ridiculous. I will however, try my best to convey to you what the story means. Only the true author can tell whether I am correct or not, so if my answer does not satisfy you, ring him up and ask about it. If perhaps, my interpretation of what is going on in the story is inaccurate, then I'll "get off my high horse" and accept that my intelligence is sub-par to your own and any and all who read, and disliked this story.
Here goes:
Twilight is very confused.She is confused by the world around her, and by the emotion of love itself. She seeks understanding from her mentor/mother-figure, and is anxious about asking, for she feels she has wronged Celestia with all of her doubts. It's obvious that Twilight is ver distraught while writing this letter, and seems to have gone slightly insane from her musings.
Celestia explains to her that such a knowledge isn't as black an white as Twilight had hoped it to be. That not even she could give her the answer she was looking for. That such things were beyond even her.
If this interpretation doesn't satisfy you, or wasn't what you felt was meant, feel free to contact the author inquire about it, as I stated before.
And honestly, I didn't mean to offend, merely to state that the story was good, and that people shouldn't hate on it because they thought the words were to big. I'm not writing you this because I fear that I may be incorrect and look like a fool. If I am wrong, than I accept that and apologize for my earlier arrogance. Let's not argue. I acknowledge all the points you have made. I was just a little offended about some of the flames this story received and showed my support for the author.
270571
You show a lot more maturity than I expected in that last graf there. Even in its bad moments, this fandom is a cut above.
But I didn't ask for a summary. My (sarcastic) point was asking how exactly you were so SURE that this story's purple prose was NECESSARY to the telling of the story, and that simpler, more in-character dialogue was NOT up to the job. Point is, I don't think it was at all.
If a writer wants to get the readers into Twilight's library (her actual, canon library), they don't describe it as seventy feet tall and made of brushed steel with neon signs. Likewise, if they want readers inside Twilight's HEAD and HEART, they should write Twilight's words in such a way that Tara Strong's voice rings in our ears. Otherwise, it's just FICTION, not FANfiction.
But still, as I said, I am relieved and appreciative to see you step back and reconsider your slightly... shall we say "verbally violent"... delivery. You do someone far more favours puffing them up than by putting their critics down.
The ignorance radiating through the internet is disgusting... they simply feel the need to lash out due to their inability to comprehend... Pay no mind to these fools... NO.
Let's not argue. I acknowledge all the points you have made. I was just a little offended about some of the flames this story received and showed my support for the author. YESSSSS.
Huh? Now what happened? The original post has vanished, instead we get treated to two lines of explanation.
Um...yes. That should go without saying. I'm a little astonished that an established member of a fanfiction writing community would only at this point realize this, but as they say, better late than never. What exactly would the alternative be? That a work of art should be judged solely by its surroundings and the creator's intentions? Those are not usually known to the recipients.
I still believe the things I wrote earlier, but I feel bad for saying them so sharply. It was childish of me to imagine that could be helpful, regardless of whether it was correct. Sorry.
273558
The correct use of the phrase "a work of art should stand on its own merits" is that a work of art should not need extra explanation, not that it should not have explanation. He/she is trying to invoke the positive associations with that phrase, while actually saying something different: He's not going to explain it, despite our requests.
275088
Any explanation would be pointless, in the same way that explaining a joke would be pointless. Metaphorically speaking, it's also pointless to debate whether it is the joke teller or the listener who lacks a sense of humor.