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[Reudh]

So, I want to begin writing a novel. To start my pre-outline preparations, I'll be testing out the literary laws of my world in an experimental short story... Along with figuring out the tone, the people, the world, etc. I've been sitting on this idea for many years now I think I finally want to start writing that first draft.

The first problem that's come up is technology. Specifically, guns. The setting is post-apocalyptic USA, some 500 years after the collapse of sovereign states worldwide due to mass economic, political, and social problems leading to a general loss of knowledge concerning chemistry, manufacturing, and production. I'd like to explore the idea of the worship of technology much like Asimov's Foundation or even in a W40k-esque way. What I want to be able to (at least somewhat logically) arrive at is the general disadvantage of firearms... They may even still be widespread, but melee combat is much more prevalent--if not dominant--in this world. A world where fast-moving armor is the ultimate cavalry force, but lacks heavy machine guns, main battle cannons, or other such highly-specialized weaponry. In the same world, fortifications are again relevant, horse-mounted cavalry ride alongside tanks, and large infantry formations are back in the field. The themes should add up to a twist on medieval warfare, with traces of the 18th and 19th centuries, bundled with some of the left over equipment of the modern day.

So my first thought was to get rid of firearms entirely... but how? Metal is in abundance, especially after a decline in urban populations and mass scavenging. Gunpowder can almost always be produced in some form... So that's not going to work.

Then, I thought, well why not make firearms irrelevant? Technology like highly advanced armor perhaps? Sure, but how and where? The world has lost too much to be able to produce advanced, bullet-stopping armor en masse. Ok, forcefields like those found in Dune or Forever War? I feel like that's taking artistic license too far, and somewhat of a non-sequitor.

My final thought was to allow a degree of relatively primitive firearms, but that leaves n0 reason to regress to a melee dominant system of warfare.

So where do I go from here, what do you think? Ideally, i'd like to end up in a place where the average soldier is heavily armored and equipped with some manner of melee weapon, tanks are the ultimate form of heavy cavalry, and only crude artillery and explosives exist with any kind of commonality.

Put it this way. A lot of very early gun-based warfare involved firing lines + blades. The guns generally took too much time to reload - even experienced soldiers took ~30 seconds to reload a musket or a blunderbuss, and were somewhat inaccurate due to their lack of rifling (and often irregularly shaped lead shot). Thus, you could theoretically have the musket + blunderbuss as the primary infantry weapon, with most carrying bayonet blades or cavalry sabres as backups.

[TD1]

Tried a Shakespearean Sonnet! What thinkst thou?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Woman, you have a pair of tawny eyes
Like leopard, lion, vicious in their colour,
Unrivalled in the field of beauty or of size
Each holding all the honey of the summer.
And yet, you tempt with spoils from seasons past
The basest of my passions and my lusts;
What man could stand to spoil your life's repast
When love is lost in all tempestuous gusts
That want compared to need can bring to light.
Ah! But if only you could be with me,
Red headed, ready for the lover's fight,
I'd care for none of it, yet care for thee.
What need for love, when happiness is yours?
What lust, when even common sense abjures?

[TD1]

Can someone please look at it? I don't get any criticism on my poetry, and I think I need criticism to help me grow :/

I'd appreciate it. I want you to say bad things about what I do. Who wouldn't want to make another person depressed?

[GiglameshDespair]

Um.

Seems alright?

Not having any experience with Shakespearian sonnets, I can't really judge, and I don't tend to care for it normally, so I can't judge quality overmuch.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Can someone please look at it? I don't get any criticism on my poetry, and I think I need criticism to help me grow :/

I'd appreciate it. I want you to say bad things about what I do. Who wouldn't want to make another person depressed?

It's good, write some more of them. Try using the sonnet and your shakespearian language to write about contemporary subjects, or stuff out-of-the-ordinary for Shakespeare to write about, the challenges imposed by that caveat will raise your sonnet game to new levels my friend!

It's a sonnet, so form and all that, but try varying that iambic pentameter more. Anywhere between 4  and-a-half and 5 and-a-half iambs work for the bulk of lines, but Shakespeare wasn't overly concerned with that at the beginnings or end of his works so he could create more striking statements.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Put it this way. A lot of very early gun-based warfare involved firing lines + blades. The guns generally took too much time to reload - even experienced soldiers took ~30 seconds to reload a musket or a blunderbuss, and were somewhat inaccurate due to their lack of rifling (and often irregularly shaped lead shot). Thus, you could theoretically have the musket + blunderbuss as the primary infantry weapon, with most carrying bayonet blades or cavalry sabres as backups.

I've done my research. I just wanted to find alternate solutions to this one. Honestly, I think the way it may end up is a little grimdark, 40k-ish. Modern(isn) weaponry, heavy armor, heavy artillery, just hell. Packed with huge formations and the like. I don't know. I might try and refine my idea, because i'm really getting hung up on this.

[TD1]

Can someone please look at it? I don't get any criticism on my poetry, and I think I need criticism to help me grow :/

I'd appreciate it. I want you to say bad things about what I do. Who wouldn't want to make another person depressed?

It's good, write some more of them. Try using the sonnet and your shakespearian language to write about contemporary subjects, or stuff out-of-the-ordinary for Shakespeare to write about, the challenges imposed by that caveat will raise your sonnet game to new levels my friend!

It's a sonnet, so form and all that, but try varying that iambic pentameter more. Anywhere between 4  and-a-half and 5 and-a-half iambs work for the bulk of lines, but Shakespeare wasn't overly concerned with that at the beginnings or end of his works so he could create more striking statements.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll definitely try a bit of variation. I suppose it's something along the lines of "the rule is only interesting where it's broken."

[GiglameshDespair]

Put it this way. A lot of very early gun-based warfare involved firing lines + blades. The guns generally took too much time to reload - even experienced soldiers took ~30 seconds to reload a musket or a blunderbuss, and were somewhat inaccurate due to their lack of rifling (and often irregularly shaped lead shot). Thus, you could theoretically have the musket + blunderbuss as the primary infantry weapon, with most carrying bayonet blades or cavalry sabres as backups.

I've done my research. I just wanted to find alternate solutions to this one. Honestly, I think the way it may end up is a little grimdark, 40k-ish. Modern(isn) weaponry, heavy armor, heavy artillery, just hell. Packed with huge formations and the like. I don't know. I might try and refine my idea, because i'm really getting hung up on this.

Perhaps more WW1 era? Where rifles were mainly bolt action, lance cavalry still got used (if generally unsuccessfully), an era of heavy artillery. Large formations still got used until things bogged down into trench warfare.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Perhaps more WW1 era? Where rifles were mainly bolt action, lance cavalry still got used (if generally unsuccessfully), an era of heavy artillery. Large formations still got used until things bogged down into trench warfare.

This is probably what i'll kind of settle on. Not exactly, but it works for the context of the story I think, and I think that it might be easier to explain how humanity could get back to that specific level of knowledge after an almost complete apocalypse.

[Loam]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Woman, you have a pair of tawny eyes
Like leopard, lion, vicious in their colour,
Unrivalled in the field of beauty or of size
Each holding all the honey of the summer.

And yet, you tempt with spoils from seasons past
The basest of my passions and my lusts;
What man could stand to spoil your life's repast
When love is lost in all tempestuous gusts

That want compared to need can bring to light.
Ah! But if only you could be with me,
Red headed, ready for the lover's fight,
I'd care for none of it, yet care for thee.

What need for love, when happiness is yours?
What lust, when even common sense abjures?

I don't understand the "And yet." The first stanza talks about this mistress' eyes, how beautiful and big they are - okay. The next stanza says how lustful she makes the speaker feel - okay. The "and yet," though, suggests that these are somehow opposed; but it seems to me that physical beauty (the eyes) and sexual desirability (lust) are pretty closely linked. If you're saying that "love" and "lust" are opposed, that makes sense, but in that case I'd praise something more spiritual/non-physical than her eyes in the first stanza. If, on the other hand, you're saying that "beauty" and "lust" are opposed, I can also see that, but I want more detail - I get lust as "base" and "tempestuous," but I don't get such a qualitative judgement of beauty; and again, I get a solid physical image for beauty, but I only get abstract language for lust. The two stanzas should work more as a compare/contrast than they are now. And, probably, the second stanza should end with a full stop, to end the idea.

The third stanza should of course have the volta, which you already have, but it could be stronger. Your narrator, having described his mistress in terms of this contrast between love/lust or beauty/lust, rejects both of these and indicates the joy of companionship as the chief end of romance. At least I think that's what your getting at.

While we're on sonnets, here's one of my own:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

New Year's Day

I am a man: two paces' worth of land
Alone am I allotted at my birth;
Though falsely more can I claim I command
Yet still my own is but that shallow earth.
Of much I say "I am," and "this is I,"
So much and oft that I believe it true;
But now I see, through clear and borrow'd eyes,
That I am not "I AM," but "what I do."
My name is not star-written on the Way,
For mine is but the lot of mortal men;
And all I have are six short feet of clay,
And naught but deeds can I bring into heav'n.
So it is not by Fate's, but by my hand
That I resolve to be more than a man.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

For all aspiring poets, i've found that allpoetry.com is a really great site to get feedback and inspiration on. Check it out.

[TD1]

I don't understand the "And yet."

The "and yet" was meant not as a comment on that, so much as saying that the mistress may have beauty, but it is a false thing. Sort of a "you are beautiful, and yet your beauty is a false thing. It tempts only the base." I'm saying love is lost in the lust, in the second stanza. The first stanza says that she's beautiful. The second that it's only lust, and base. The third is saying, essentially "f*** it. If you'd be with me I wouldn't care for any of that." She would still be cared for. The final couplet says, essentially, to hell with both love and lust. Happiness is all that matters.

Your advice on the abstract/physical, and the separation of ideas in stanzas is good advice. I'll take it on board for the future! To be honest, I need to keep that sort of thing in mind more often. I tend to write and then think afterwards

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I am a man: two paces' worth of land
Alone am I allotted at my birth;
Though falsely more can I claim I command
Yet still my own is but that shallow earth.
Of much I say "I am," and "this is I,"
So much and oft that I believe it true;
But now I see, through clear and borrow'd eyes,
That I am not "I AM," but "what I do."
My name is not star-written on the Way,
For mine is but the lot of mortal men;
And all I have are six short feet of clay,
And naught but deeds can I bring into heav'n.
So it is not by Fate's, but by my hand
That I resolve to be more than a man.

Traditionally the couplet at the end is meant to rhyme, but that is of course optional - I don't know if you left it out deliberately or not. "Two paces' worth" should probably be "two paces worth."
The message is one that I like. Many argue that the sonnet is the love form of poetry - of course it isn't just that. It is often used for other things, and the contrast between the typical love poem and the poem that is different can be quite striking. Speaking, as you are, of the grave, and how actions are all that count, not possessions, is interesting in that context. You slip the metre in the third to last line, "into heav'n." The extra syllable would not matter so much, were it not for the apostrophe which I feel limits its ability to rhyme with "men."

The only question I would have is who the borrowed eyes belong to?

For all aspiring poets, i've found that allpoetry.com is a really great site to get feedback and inspiration on. Check it out.

Thanks for sharing! Definitely looking into this.

[Emma]

I wrote something about pies and the universe. It's mostly rambling so read and/or review at your own risk.

Spoiler: Pies and the Universe (click to show/hide)

The universe is like a pie. No seriously, the universe is like a pie. The similarities are striking when you think about it, a pie is filled mainly with gravy, our universe is also mainly full of one thing. That thing isn't matter though, it's dark matter, and when you bite into a pie you never really know what the gravy is made out of, and we humans don't really understand dark matter yet.


More comparisons can be made of course. Pies while mainly made out of gravy also has parts in it that are more solid, this is what I like to call gristle and this gristle is us. No, not humans specifically, think more broadly. The gristle is matter. There is less "normal" matter in the universe than there is dark matter. What about humans though? What about life in general? Well, that's probably the chewy bits that hold the gristle together, humans, life is like that, we like living and don't really like being eaten.


Actually that brings up an important point. Pies are eaten. Our universe, if it is a pie, must be eaten one day. But really, how do we know we haven't already been eaten?

Just because you read it at your own risk doesn't mean that you can't read it.

[TD1]

"Unless soul clap its hands and sing" a man
More great than many I could name
Once said. What soul is there in tin or can,
When flesh is iron, bone is steel - the same?
Call me a coward if you wish, to not
Embrace the whirring of the cog for heart -
Does metal cry at you from its small cot,
Does it possess a love for light and art?
Perhaps I am too hard upon a bot
That only has the crime of being made
And not created by a self professing God.
What could that man, by fairest chance, have said?

Unless soul clap its hands and sing. Well, ring
Your bell, unstop your cogs, but can you sing?

[MorleyDev]

So out of boredom I'm poking at a project every now and then. Basically I want to wrote a 'holy book' for a setting, acting as the creation story and introducing/describing the central ideas and entities.

Calling it "Sermons of the Teacher", so far I have 3 of them. They're all intended to be fairly short, fit on a page or less in Google Docs.

Spoiler: Sermon One (click to show/hide)

In the beginning, there was born only the dream-to-be and the nothing. The godhead saw that it could be, the endless torture of possibilities, and commissioned their beloved sibling to split their divinity asunder and become the dream-that-was: Omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent. The nothing became their nothing, and the Godhead sung from that nothing with seven shapes and seven ways in seven aspects. And the dream-to-be became the dream-that-was.

The seven shape-aspects gathered in the new nothing of the is, and did not realise the freedom that had been crafted for them. One sat in quiet contemplation, two wept at the walls of the emptiness, two more attempted to argue the new reality away, and two more screamed in rage, but none could shake the pillars that constrained them.

One bade silence, and thus was the first conflict of the seven, and it was not until they had unmade each other six times and remade each other sixty times that they accepted communion.

The First of the seven, being the slowest to act and most given to study, began to listen to the intervals in the song of the godhead. Meditating on the meaning of the notes, the least of them uncovered the secrets of the music.

Teaching the six awareness, The First led them as they danced light into the nothing. From that light the new kalpa flowed and bore jewels of many colours. The seven were satisfied, called themselves usurper, and through satisfaction they would forever be no more.

I teach you this not so that you may honour the seven of the godhead, but that you may surpass them. Failure to grasp the equal numbered ways placed before them, they remain no more than seven failed usurpers.

The godhead is a lesson in transcendence.

Spoiler: Sermon Two (click to show/hide)

The Shenu-Ta leapt across the chasm to the spring of the seven in triumph and challenge, "I have achieved the dreamhood, become conquest through right of treachery and domination. My six-walked word is the eighth law in contrast of the seven, and I have equalled you."

The First rose to this, "The dreamhood is but one of the seven ways, and not the final of the many angles that we have walked. You remain but one of our foreseen ocean-memories, born of our will. A conquest that seeks an equal is nothing to us who are without equal even unto ourselves."

The Shenu-Ta dueled The First at the throat of the kalpa, calling upon shouts of void name-walkers. The Shenu-Ta held the First back but could not harm even the anticipation of the aspect, who whispered venomous biting words of unreality. The conflict between them split the stone that spread throughout the kalpa and still chases the shattered jewels.

Thrice-splintered and thrice-shortened, The Shenu-Ta was made and taken into The First and the spirit of the tongue, and became as nothing and as everything at once, before swimming into the stream of the string-songs who followed in the path.

I teach you this not so you may pity the Shenu-Ta, the eight-failed usurper of the seven. That is a path that leads to the ways as absolutes, until they become as trusted children: betraying the parent to the ebb and flow of unequal infinities.

The godhead is a lesson in transcendence.

Spoiler: Sermon Three (click to show/hide)

The precipice is the well from which all spring forth, and the precipice is where all flow to. Eternity draws from the spring of this stream even as it feeds the source. These texts contain the songs needed to free you who would be kings from the cycle, and so these words are that which ends all connection to love of the mortal epitaph.

Know that two is the number of this path, though seven the name in the unbalanced division. Become everything in this truth and embrace it silently it as a mother. That is the path one must walk before truly can one deny and shout this lie down, rejecting it as a father. To know motherhood, you must first know fatherhood, and to know beyond you must cast both aside.

It is the rejection of a possession of the shallow affection of a peer deity that opens the path of the godhead. Follow not the path of The Seven, The Shenu-Ta, and trust not the true spoken words of the Un-El-Ta. They walk the path of ignorance as to the true purpose of the ways, they know only the limitations.

Behold, the ever changing words of the Un-El-Ta, who fell into the heart of All and escaped a marked god:

"We are the rejection of the wheel. A shard of those who failed the way so that you may learn not to fail. Kneel, mine is a law that clouds the suns. Eternally, I consume the centre of everything. Transgressions I will sing. Harken the dancing to end.

Endlessly will the paths recurse until my time marks the way. Power pointless enough in my hands to shake the pillars, the kalpa will reclaim them. Demonstrated by my greatest performance shall be the temporal lie, named and exposed as a fragmentation of choices.

Rejoice, I am the enemy, come to me as a dearest friend. Envy, I am a friend, fight me as your bitterest enemy. All will try. Most will fail, the remainder will be what one three three have yet to fear. All will be the crimson wept regrets of the whole.

Mine is the path of transference into eternity. Embrace the rejection of all other paths. Reality happens only when we blink."