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May. 5th, 2006 12:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickMore sock. I started the toe decreases.
The rest of my life is, at the moment, less interesting than the socks.
Today at work, I mowed grass. This was neither challenging, new, nor interesting. I have mown grass since I was big enough to push a mower and I've done it on some of these properties since that time. I think we can safely say that the thrill is gone on that front. However, today was a nice day for it just the same and the lilacs are in bloom everywhere so it was a fragrant mowing. I'd really like a lilac in my yard, but I've tried twice and they keep fucking dying on me. if I try again, it's going to be with an uprooted sprout from one of Sue's purple ones on Richard Street. I am not paying money for another lilac even if the russian cultivars in the catalog are really pretty.
While I was out mowing, I also looked at SJ's yard, which needs to have some work done on it by someone who gets wet for landscaping. (That would not be me, but I may wind up doing it. It would be nice if I could sucker a relative into helping...)
We picked up the trailer for the backhoe and moved the backhoe to the back of 216 so that we can start to take away the stone wall and replace it with landscaping brick things to make a proper terrace. My truck does a pretty good job of moving the backhoe and trailer around, so yay on that front. Also as an added bonus, I now have trailer-brake controls for on my truck that will be compatible with a horse trailer if I ever get one of those.
I was supposed to check in with 219 #4, who has not filled out their housing paperwork and has no way of paying the rent *other* than mooching off the government. I was also supposed to look at the second floor at 321, who moved out and stiffed us for April's rent. We have their deposit, but they gave no notice and paid no April rent and we got keys May 2. *sigh* Lamers. I just hope they didn't trash the place to boot.
I had brussels sprouts and rice for dinner. I contemplated making something I could take to Sheep and Wool because apparently the food there is quite expensive and I would feel guilt for spending more than about ten bucks on food but despite the contemplating, I didn't come up with a firm plan on that front.
The raspberries are sprouting out real leaves that I can see from more than six inches away. The strawberries are maintaining their happy outlook on life. New for today, the freebie sunflower seeds that I planted (six of them) have three showing sprouts that hopefully I can raise above cotyledon status and transplant outside. I hadn't mentioned the sunflowers much prior to this because they weren't *doing* anything to discuss. (How do seeds know that they've been planted? Sunflower seeds don't sprout unless they're planted. They stay unsprouted all winter long so that you can feed them to birds and stuff. Is this a moisture thing? It's gotta be. There's no light down in the ground. Possibly it's also a temperature thing.)
I took a brief look at the porn![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ladyivy recc'd to me the other day and got about three paragraphs in before I started up the snarkmaster 2100. Basically, either I wasn't in the mood for smut or the author's prose stylings drove me right up the wall. I'm not complaining about written smut as a genre, mind. I'm a fan, honest. The problem, if you will, is that I have to be in the mood for it AND it has to be dressed in prose stylings that I can tolerate in large doses. There is an inverse relationship between my smut-readiness and how snippy I will get about the prose stylings. Allow me to share with you a sample of what happens when I hit something that just doesn't gel for me...
The actual fic is in plain text. The snarky inner voice preventing me from Building a Fantasy is in italics. Because I'm not being very kind, I didn't credit the author or her website. I don't really want to defend my remarks on why said smut didn't fly for me and I don't have any especial interest in slamming the author. It's not *her* fault I'm a pedantic bitch. Besides, her smut clearly works nicely for people other than me because it was recc'd to me. As much as I'd like to pretend to be the ultimate authority in such things, I'm trying to spend more time in the reality-based community these days. To that end, I must admit that not everybody likes what I like.
**************
What he thought of when he looked at Lex, was skin. Skin. Nothing sweet and normal and neighbourly. Just skin; wet and sweating. For him.
Well. You've got four non-sentences in the first five. This does not bode well.
Which made him feel very grown–up. And turned him on faster than anything else he had ever imagined. It was all pretty weird.
Well, that's not a sentence there to start the paragraph. After that, you start a sentence with "And" which generally doesn't impress me. Sentences are not made by putting a capital letter at one end and a period at the other. There's more to it than that.
It wasn't as if he had ever seen enough of Lex to make the fantasy real. Apart from head and neck, hands and a glimpse of his arms up to the elbow, that was it. Lex kept himself covered up, private, in the same way he avoided too much bodily contact. Though Clark wasn't the king of huggers, even he noticed the difference. The standing back, the wariness. Especially the look–but–don't–touch, arrogant sexuality.
I'm having a problem with the sentence-to-nonsentence ratio, here. I understand the desire to create a mood, but the thing is that you use nonsentence thingies sort of like frosting decorations on top of cake. There has to be, and this is important, some cake underneath. You can't pipe the entire thing out of frosting.
Clark certainly noticed that.
Thought about it. Thought about Lex full–stop.
No. Is this a parody fic? You know, this style of prose would be way, way too easy to parody. We shall all breathe a sigh of relief that I'm not in a mocking mood.
The distance fascinated him. To the point where he realised that Lex's obvious reluctance to be touched was part of his own need to force the issue. To touch him and make him want more. A kind of reverse therapy where he could make Lex feel better. Taking away the distaste for being touched by touching him. A lot. Or maybe he had just been reading too much for his Psych homework.
The previous paragraph has one sentence that passes the strict contructionist's test. I can't take off points for using "A lot." as a sentence when I do it myself but there are five other unacceptable sentences in that paragraph. The ratio is looking like shit, people.
In his fantasies though, the ones he had late at night in darkness when he was sure his parents were asleep, Lex was his to play with. Hooray! A sentence! It's a good sentence, too!The touching was for Clark, and there wasn't an iota of spurious care in it. Spellcheck is fully enabled, captain. Just lust. And his own need to understand Lex from the skin inward and outward. All those secrets, that mystery. Grammar shields are down, though. He wanted it. Wanted to own it. I could *so* mock this. It doesn't *look* like a parody... He certainly couldn't imagine Lex giving his guarded self up. Not willingly. He fucked from a position of command, that was a given. The mind boggles. I am fully willing to gag, blindfold, and suspend disbelief in pursuit of getting my rocks off, but precisely what does "position of command" fucking look like? Lex letting someone else take control? No way. Lex meekly letting someone else have free rein? He'd curl his lip and that would be that.
Especially if that person was a boy. And only sixteen — though very close to seventeen really. And someone he thought of as a younger brother.
Even if that boy had suddenly started to have wild fantasies about fucking him.
A sentence, a sentence, my kingdom for a sentence! (Yes, I realize that what I have there is not a sentence. Irony is good for you.)
An image that made Clark hard, instantly. In public. Which made him blush. And hide his head in his coffee.
None of these really makes me very happy. I guess the dooflicky starting with "And" might qualify as a sentence but I don't generally like sentences that start with the word "And". Yes, I know that I do it. It's different when I do it. I'm an English major and we got special training and I'm ALLOWED. I'm doing it for valid stylistic reasons, damn it all. I don't hit you with it twice or three times in the first three hundred and eighty-five words of my fic.
***************
This was where I stopped reading. *sigh* It wasn't working for me. I had no problem whatsoever with the general concept. I'm right up to speed on Clex smut. I've read a fair amount of it, even. I'm also quite up to speed on the whips-n-chains aspect of this particular fic, a feature I generally find more of a selling point than a drawback. The prose, though, caught in my throat (yeah, I did pick that mental image on purpose.) and distracted me from the actual meat (I'm not even remotely sorry) of the fic. For the most part, what I want in smut fic is unobtrusive prose, prose that disappears into the background so that I can build the story in my head. Given the relative rarity of unobtrusive high-quality prose, though, I'm guessing that it's not particularly easy to achieve.
The rest of my life is, at the moment, less interesting than the socks.
Today at work, I mowed grass. This was neither challenging, new, nor interesting. I have mown grass since I was big enough to push a mower and I've done it on some of these properties since that time. I think we can safely say that the thrill is gone on that front. However, today was a nice day for it just the same and the lilacs are in bloom everywhere so it was a fragrant mowing. I'd really like a lilac in my yard, but I've tried twice and they keep fucking dying on me. if I try again, it's going to be with an uprooted sprout from one of Sue's purple ones on Richard Street. I am not paying money for another lilac even if the russian cultivars in the catalog are really pretty.
While I was out mowing, I also looked at SJ's yard, which needs to have some work done on it by someone who gets wet for landscaping. (That would not be me, but I may wind up doing it. It would be nice if I could sucker a relative into helping...)
We picked up the trailer for the backhoe and moved the backhoe to the back of 216 so that we can start to take away the stone wall and replace it with landscaping brick things to make a proper terrace. My truck does a pretty good job of moving the backhoe and trailer around, so yay on that front. Also as an added bonus, I now have trailer-brake controls for on my truck that will be compatible with a horse trailer if I ever get one of those.
I was supposed to check in with 219 #4, who has not filled out their housing paperwork and has no way of paying the rent *other* than mooching off the government. I was also supposed to look at the second floor at 321, who moved out and stiffed us for April's rent. We have their deposit, but they gave no notice and paid no April rent and we got keys May 2. *sigh* Lamers. I just hope they didn't trash the place to boot.
I had brussels sprouts and rice for dinner. I contemplated making something I could take to Sheep and Wool because apparently the food there is quite expensive and I would feel guilt for spending more than about ten bucks on food but despite the contemplating, I didn't come up with a firm plan on that front.
The raspberries are sprouting out real leaves that I can see from more than six inches away. The strawberries are maintaining their happy outlook on life. New for today, the freebie sunflower seeds that I planted (six of them) have three showing sprouts that hopefully I can raise above cotyledon status and transplant outside. I hadn't mentioned the sunflowers much prior to this because they weren't *doing* anything to discuss. (How do seeds know that they've been planted? Sunflower seeds don't sprout unless they're planted. They stay unsprouted all winter long so that you can feed them to birds and stuff. Is this a moisture thing? It's gotta be. There's no light down in the ground. Possibly it's also a temperature thing.)
I took a brief look at the porn
ladyivy recc'd to me the other day and got about three paragraphs in before I started up the snarkmaster 2100. Basically, either I wasn't in the mood for smut or the author's prose stylings drove me right up the wall. I'm not complaining about written smut as a genre, mind. I'm a fan, honest. The problem, if you will, is that I have to be in the mood for it AND it has to be dressed in prose stylings that I can tolerate in large doses. There is an inverse relationship between my smut-readiness and how snippy I will get about the prose stylings. Allow me to share with you a sample of what happens when I hit something that just doesn't gel for me...The actual fic is in plain text. The snarky inner voice preventing me from Building a Fantasy is in italics. Because I'm not being very kind, I didn't credit the author or her website. I don't really want to defend my remarks on why said smut didn't fly for me and I don't have any especial interest in slamming the author. It's not *her* fault I'm a pedantic bitch. Besides, her smut clearly works nicely for people other than me because it was recc'd to me. As much as I'd like to pretend to be the ultimate authority in such things, I'm trying to spend more time in the reality-based community these days. To that end, I must admit that not everybody likes what I like.
**************
What he thought of when he looked at Lex, was skin. Skin. Nothing sweet and normal and neighbourly. Just skin; wet and sweating. For him.
Well. You've got four non-sentences in the first five. This does not bode well.
Which made him feel very grown–up. And turned him on faster than anything else he had ever imagined. It was all pretty weird.
Well, that's not a sentence there to start the paragraph. After that, you start a sentence with "And" which generally doesn't impress me. Sentences are not made by putting a capital letter at one end and a period at the other. There's more to it than that.
It wasn't as if he had ever seen enough of Lex to make the fantasy real. Apart from head and neck, hands and a glimpse of his arms up to the elbow, that was it. Lex kept himself covered up, private, in the same way he avoided too much bodily contact. Though Clark wasn't the king of huggers, even he noticed the difference. The standing back, the wariness. Especially the look–but–don't–touch, arrogant sexuality.
I'm having a problem with the sentence-to-nonsentence ratio, here. I understand the desire to create a mood, but the thing is that you use nonsentence thingies sort of like frosting decorations on top of cake. There has to be, and this is important, some cake underneath. You can't pipe the entire thing out of frosting.
Clark certainly noticed that.
Thought about it. Thought about Lex full–stop.
No. Is this a parody fic? You know, this style of prose would be way, way too easy to parody. We shall all breathe a sigh of relief that I'm not in a mocking mood.
The distance fascinated him. To the point where he realised that Lex's obvious reluctance to be touched was part of his own need to force the issue. To touch him and make him want more. A kind of reverse therapy where he could make Lex feel better. Taking away the distaste for being touched by touching him. A lot. Or maybe he had just been reading too much for his Psych homework.
The previous paragraph has one sentence that passes the strict contructionist's test. I can't take off points for using "A lot." as a sentence when I do it myself but there are five other unacceptable sentences in that paragraph. The ratio is looking like shit, people.
In his fantasies though, the ones he had late at night in darkness when he was sure his parents were asleep, Lex was his to play with. Hooray! A sentence! It's a good sentence, too!The touching was for Clark, and there wasn't an iota of spurious care in it. Spellcheck is fully enabled, captain. Just lust. And his own need to understand Lex from the skin inward and outward. All those secrets, that mystery. Grammar shields are down, though. He wanted it. Wanted to own it. I could *so* mock this. It doesn't *look* like a parody... He certainly couldn't imagine Lex giving his guarded self up. Not willingly. He fucked from a position of command, that was a given. The mind boggles. I am fully willing to gag, blindfold, and suspend disbelief in pursuit of getting my rocks off, but precisely what does "position of command" fucking look like? Lex letting someone else take control? No way. Lex meekly letting someone else have free rein? He'd curl his lip and that would be that.
Especially if that person was a boy. And only sixteen — though very close to seventeen really. And someone he thought of as a younger brother.
Even if that boy had suddenly started to have wild fantasies about fucking him.
A sentence, a sentence, my kingdom for a sentence! (Yes, I realize that what I have there is not a sentence. Irony is good for you.)
An image that made Clark hard, instantly. In public. Which made him blush. And hide his head in his coffee.
None of these really makes me very happy. I guess the dooflicky starting with "And" might qualify as a sentence but I don't generally like sentences that start with the word "And". Yes, I know that I do it. It's different when I do it. I'm an English major and we got special training and I'm ALLOWED. I'm doing it for valid stylistic reasons, damn it all. I don't hit you with it twice or three times in the first three hundred and eighty-five words of my fic.
***************
This was where I stopped reading. *sigh* It wasn't working for me. I had no problem whatsoever with the general concept. I'm right up to speed on Clex smut. I've read a fair amount of it, even. I'm also quite up to speed on the whips-n-chains aspect of this particular fic, a feature I generally find more of a selling point than a drawback. The prose, though, caught in my throat (yeah, I did pick that mental image on purpose.) and distracted me from the actual meat (I'm not even remotely sorry) of the fic. For the most part, what I want in smut fic is unobtrusive prose, prose that disappears into the background so that I can build the story in my head. Given the relative rarity of unobtrusive high-quality prose, though, I'm guessing that it's not particularly easy to achieve.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-05-05 12:03 pm (UTC)It's not just the non-sentences that are losing me as an audience. They're just the easiest thing for me to articulate. In truth, I can work with non-sentences if I'm sufficiently motivated on other fronts. For an example, you can check out Building a Fantasy, which has a lot of non-sentences in it. As it happens, it has more non-sentences than I'd actually remembered it having. Even so, that fic works for me to the point where I didn't really get how many nonsentences there were until I re-read it for the purposes of comparing it to this one.
The fact is that quite a lot of prose (including my own) fails to stand up to my tastes when I'm in pedantic bitch mode. The most salient difference between Miko no Da's fine fic and the less-fortunate example of non-sentence construction, above, is that Miko no Da's has a real solid first-person narrator. Not only does he have a pretty decent voice, he sounds about like I imagine Youji would sound. It works well enough for me to *want* to buy into it. Authors who can manage to make me want their world to be real can get away with one hell of a lot on the structure front.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-05 07:04 pm (UTC)