Ophidian Unconquered: This is a seriously well written piece, both in content and style. The interplay of metaphor and short stabbing sentences, often devoid of articles, makes for the fang and talon of the protagonists. I am a big fan of using sentence and paragraph structure to further capitaise on the intricacies of the words. To be honest, I nearly thought I'd written it myself 🙂 One thing did bother me though - And I may be wrong - but should this be 'came' instead of 'became'? She became to accept his complex nature, his duality. I'll wait until the end of the competition to find out I guess. Either way it does not detract from how impressive a piece this is, pretentious to a tee and finely crafted to boot. Well done!
The Winning Entry: I love the sheer arrogance of the first few sentences, the pretension flows from this piece in droves. If I had to guess at who the author was, I'd say he really did just jot it down in his lunch hour without really thinking about it and I think that real-life attachment makes it all the more convincing. I love this sentence: You are witnessing (not literally as I’m here and you’re there as the quicker among you may have noticed) the writings of a genius. If I had to say a bad thing about it, it would be the title. I fear the author let themselves down here, since the piece doesn't IMO benefit from such an obvious double bluff.
To My Readers: Strangely enough I find this piece leaves me with an almost identical impression as that of the previous one. In this I suppose it achieves (albeit accidentally) the title of pretender most efficiently. If there is any difference it is that it cares even less than the previous entry did. It's almost dead with attempting to make an impression and in a competition, to not compete is truly the realm of the pretentious git. Nice.
Well done everyone and I'd love to talk some more about the entries with the authors once the results are announced.
1. The Floating Girl
2. Ophidian Unconquered
3. To My Readers
There was an everyman feeling to The Floating Girl that made me smile. The prose took me into the picture and provided one of the little escapes that reading bring us. I was there - if for only a moment. Thank you and well done.
I have read Ophidian Unconquered several times now. That alone says something about how much I enjoyed it. The work was very creative and a writing that should be archived for the ages. We all leave bits behind when we leave this earth to go on to whatever is next. This author has left something I will remember.
Writers are second only to academics when it comes to pretension. I was pleased to see To My readers and that one of the writers took on this and poked a bit at the profession. I raise my glass to Quirinus Goldbaum; can't wait for your next book to come to paperback.
Originally posted by dottewellYou lost me after the first sentence. I don't understand why people have to write about things that make no sense using long words that nobody can understand. I've read about six definitions of Pretentious so far and it looks like the dictionaries are making things up, If I had a longer span of attention maybe I could
Have your competitions. Pretentiousness still will not be caged. It is like a wind; it rattles through the forums, sweeping over the world, creating anew.