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You unbelievable egregious selfish human.
I don’t know, but I can’t help but take that somewhat personally.
The primary issue with this entry lies not in its nonsense per se, but in its infidelity to the art of literary nonsense itself. Read, for example, Hey Diddle Diddle:
Hey diddle diddle, The cat and the fiddle, The cow jumped over the moon. The little dog laughed, To see such a sight, And the dish ran away with the spoon.
Every word is in English, as your story is, but this poem has the sense to structure its nonsense in a way that imitates its more sensible contemporaries. You get the impression of narrative without understanding how that narrative hangs together.
Or examine Jabberwocky:
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.
While most of this poem is not written in sensible modern English, it does accomplish its task by deftly using fake words to create an impression of meaning that can be followed throughout the poem. Many readers develop a habit of deciphering unknown words by using context clues and comparing those unknown words to known words. Jabberwocky might max out those capacities, but it only barely exceeds them.
Or, heck, even take my own Lunnas Ache as an example:
Lunas freet lambded on the iand schorses. Three bellystains loystered along the rain.
While this might not be sensible English, it gives you plenty of clues to the potential meaning of each word: “Lunas” could be a possessive with apostrophe purposefully omitted to imply plurality, “freet” is free and feet, “lambed” is lamb and landed, your guess is as good as mine for “iand” (possibly iambic and land?), but “schorses” is definitely shore and horses.
If you want to do some proper nerd sniping, you need to carefully consider the boundary between randomness and psuedorandomness. Ideally nonsense literature is not true nonsense. It’s a story viewed from many angles at the same time, creating a narrative while also ameliorating the distinctive qualities of traditional narrative device.
Okay, so, elephant in the room: this is noise.
I don't mean that as critique but as description. I use the word in a technical sense, like when we talk about "signal to noise ratio". Signal is the communication of meaning; the absence of meaning is noise. This communicates nothing to me and I would be hard pressed to argue that it communicates anything to anyone.
It is entirely possible that you are trying to use that lack of meaning to make a point about art. However, it is also entirely possible that you are not. My goal in Writeoff judging is to assume good intentions because it is easy as a reader to substitute our own biases and intentions and meaning for that of the author's -- and when there is no distinguishable meaning, that principle ends up working against you, because the only interpreted meaning in this piece comes from that which I assume.
(>>Dolfeus Doseux has great advice if the intended effect was literary nonsense.)
I say this after at least a modest effort to interpret the text. I read the story end to end. I attempted to extract some themes from the more coherent sentences (e.g. "Silly younster relaxes so others shape everything good. Devil lies so often", which might point toward an underlying metaphor if it was supported by anything else in the text). I attempted some light steganography: first letters of words, sentences, etc. So if there is an attempt to communicate obfuscated meaning here, all I can say is: it failed to do so for me.
Accordingly, I have to bottom-slate this. I will continue to assume good faith, though, in the sense that I will choose to interpret this as an experimental text which did have a point the noise failed to communicate; and I hope we learn that that was the case.
I don't mean that as critique but as description. I use the word in a technical sense, like when we talk about "signal to noise ratio". Signal is the communication of meaning; the absence of meaning is noise. This communicates nothing to me and I would be hard pressed to argue that it communicates anything to anyone.
It is entirely possible that you are trying to use that lack of meaning to make a point about art. However, it is also entirely possible that you are not. My goal in Writeoff judging is to assume good intentions because it is easy as a reader to substitute our own biases and intentions and meaning for that of the author's -- and when there is no distinguishable meaning, that principle ends up working against you, because the only interpreted meaning in this piece comes from that which I assume.
(>>Dolfeus Doseux has great advice if the intended effect was literary nonsense.)
I say this after at least a modest effort to interpret the text. I read the story end to end. I attempted to extract some themes from the more coherent sentences (e.g. "Silly younster relaxes so others shape everything good. Devil lies so often", which might point toward an underlying metaphor if it was supported by anything else in the text). I attempted some light steganography: first letters of words, sentences, etc. So if there is an attempt to communicate obfuscated meaning here, all I can say is: it failed to do so for me.
Accordingly, I have to bottom-slate this. I will continue to assume good faith, though, in the sense that I will choose to interpret this as an experimental text which did have a point the noise failed to communicate; and I hope we learn that that was the case.
This looks as if the author was playing First Letter, Last Letter. The fact that there is some structure encourages me to look a bit deeper to see if I am missing something more. But assuming I have to look that deep to extract meaning, I still have to say that what works as a puzzle may not work at all as a story.
>>Dolfeus Doseux
>>Oblomov
>>horizon
>>Ion-Sturm
>>GroaningGreyAgony
>>Monokeras
So, just a theory here... this is someone posting automatically generated text. As it's getting something approaching english, I'd suspect some sort of markov-chain generator, similar to the "gibberish" generators used to try and defeat spam filters.
If it isn't that, then author, congratulations, you scored worse than spam.
>>Oblomov
>>horizon
>>Ion-Sturm
>>GroaningGreyAgony
>>Monokeras
So, just a theory here... this is someone posting automatically generated text. As it's getting something approaching english, I'd suspect some sort of markov-chain generator, similar to the "gibberish" generators used to try and defeat spam filters.
If it isn't that, then author, congratulations, you scored worse than spam.
I think I've got this. It could use some proofreading, and I'm not sure about all the stylistic choices--it's hard to tell dialogue from narration in some places, for example. But I'm impressed by the originality of the plot.
The opening tension is strong, with one character being chastised by another for somehow ruining the party's new weapons while camped at a vital save point in the south half of the dungeon. Now they'll have to run into the boss battle tonight and end the Dancing Goat's reign of terror with their bare hands.
There's some comedy as the speaker tries to get the attention of the rest of the party as they eat grapes and set up shelter for the night (stirring up a nest of metallic mechanical rats in the process. Eek!) I don't know if the section about the shelves was entirely necessary, and I don't know how or why the merchant/horseflesh buyer would have those supplies with them.
It's not a big deal, though, because the next sequence with the party surfing in on wise old turtles is truly epic. I like that the canid shifter chose to do her own thing and run free, but had to deal with the consequences of hitting a patch of nettles.
I might get some static on this, but I think the giraffes are symbolic. And I guess the whole Dancing Goat thing was just a team building exercise?
I started getting overwhelmed at this point, unfortunately. There's just a little too much going on here for a minific.
The opening tension is strong, with one character being chastised by another for somehow ruining the party's new weapons while camped at a vital save point in the south half of the dungeon. Now they'll have to run into the boss battle tonight and end the Dancing Goat's reign of terror with their bare hands.
There's some comedy as the speaker tries to get the attention of the rest of the party as they eat grapes and set up shelter for the night (stirring up a nest of metallic mechanical rats in the process. Eek!) I don't know if the section about the shelves was entirely necessary, and I don't know how or why the merchant/horseflesh buyer would have those supplies with them.
It's not a big deal, though, because the next sequence with the party surfing in on wise old turtles is truly epic. I like that the canid shifter chose to do her own thing and run free, but had to deal with the consequences of hitting a patch of nettles.
I might get some static on this, but I think the giraffes are symbolic. And I guess the whole Dancing Goat thing was just a team building exercise?
I started getting overwhelmed at this point, unfortunately. There's just a little too much going on here for a minific.