You want to know why some people write long overblown angst-ridden fics stuffed full of useless description and overwrought action? I'll show you!
Wildly throwing open the polished rosewood portal that stood between the darkened narrow hallway and his capacious moonlit bedchamber, Vincent uncaringly flung his slender beautiful body relentlessly into the enormous firelit room. Soft scarlet light seemed to emanate softly from his immense carmine eyes, currently glossy and shining with a diamondesque liquid that could only be helpless tears welling up from the darkest pits of his very soul; his delicate ruby lips were stretched tight in a paralyzed rictus, a veritable paroxysm of soul-destroying rage and overwhelming angst-ridden despair. "Woe!" Vincent cringingly proclaimed in his trembling aching need-filled voice, the single meaning-laden word dripping with all the beautiful pain that the delicately-featured vampire had hidden away, lo these many painful lonely years of torment. "Woe! Cloud! I am henceforth undone! No more shall your handsome spiky blonde claws of infidelity carve their hideous runnels in my throbbing aching heart! Lo, prepare thyself, thou who were once beloved of me but hence no more! For I shall send thee to the flowing viridian Lifestream from whence you came! Torment me no more, o beautiful scourge of my loins and heart!"
The beautiful blond head of the tall fit turgid SOLDIER raised itself from the plump feather-stuffed white silk pillow. The beautiful hide of his slender high-cheekboned face, tanned and hard, unmarred by the least scar, was streaked with the pearlescent trails of victorious tears long pent up and now no longer unshed; his enormous sapphire eyes glowed with unspeakable triumph and vengefulness. "Strike me not, vampire! For he who is my new beloved, Sephiroth, shall avenge my mako-infused life's blood if I am so much as scratched by the slender sharp tip of one of your gleaming golden claws! Sheathe your anger as once you sheathed yourself in me, and begone to your crypt to rot in the dank dank darkness! I forswear thee, get thee hence!" And the beautiful blond warrior threw back his wildly-coiffed head and began to cackle with glorious triumphant laughter!
Slowly, Vincent pulled himself erect, blood throbbing in his high cheeks. He trembled wildly, swollen with rage, livid with justice; his long slender white fingers gently stroked the long hard trigger of his gun and ejected a bullet straight towards the tender heart of his breathlessly waiting lover, silencing that victorious sinful laughter for all time, although its cruelest echoes would sound in his pitiful head for hundreds of lonely bloody years to come.
Then, the spent gun slipping from his softening fingers, he secreted tiny salinated droplets of purest water from his glowing viridian orbs of sight. "Why, oh why, o my beloved one! Why?!" the betrayed vampire screamed shrilly to the uncaring heavens, the gleaming manicured glossy claws at the tips of his thin fingers clawing mercilessly at his indrawn wan cheek, leaving supple crimson ribbons of vital lifeblood in their cruel wake. "Without you, my love, I am as nothing! Oh, wait for me, wait for this poor despairing soul, I shall end this pitiful pointless existence of mine once and for all! I am coming to join you in the cool azure Lifestream, where we may meld as one for the rest of uncaring Time!"
From outside the huge dilapidated white-painted mansion, looming darkly over the dark town of Nibelheim, in the dark of night, there was heard a sound most ominous and yet most short: the flat cracking report of a gun as it ended the overlong existence of the angst-ridden despairing vampire, once named Vincent and now named as dust. Perhaps the star-crossed lovers might find pleasant respite in the Lifestream, now; perhaps now, yes, there might at last be blissful rest for the vampire in the firm strengthful arms of his youthful blond lover!
Do you have any idea how much FUN that is? I burst out laughing at least five times writing that! I had a wonderful time wracking my brain for more adjectives to stuff into this poor sausage-skin of a fic... it's fun to completely ignore quality in favor of quantity and a thesaurus! Try it and see!
Okay, so I could be wrong. Maybe people write overblown overangsty ficcage because they're just not very good writers, and they feel the need to thrust mood into your face and scream "LOOK! MOOD!". Or maybe they keep thinking that they'll never write another story after this one, so they'd best put every word they like into this one... I don't know. I haven't the faintest.
Everybody's got to write some way, I guess. Some people write that way. Maybe they should breed with those terse fanficcers who can't write a description or a dialogue to save their lives, and let their children write a happy balance for a better tomorrow...
Replies: add your comment: currently 10 comments
This is beautiful. Beautiful in everyway because it is true. *buries her face in a deep violet scarf of satin, stained with the fragrant blood of her lover whose lips were like two delicate petals of a red rose in bloom, and weeps*
Posted by lea @ 08/20/2001 05:10 AM EST
My gods. That was hilarious. I've read worse prose, yes, but not often. *grins widely* Good job, Moon. Oh yeah, and just for the record, I'm not evil -_^.
Posted by Nathan @ 08/20/2001 08:05 AM EST
You are too. You're a bloody NATHAN, Nathan.
Rereading this, I note that I completely forgot what viridian means, halfway through the fic. Viridian is a perfectly adequate word to describe the Lifestream, since it means bluish-green, but it's NOT a perfect word to describe Vincent's red eyes two painful paragraphs later.
Therefore, I either forgot what viridian meant halfway through, or I made a glaring continuity error. Either one of which... uh... only serves to subtly reinforce my point about bad fanfic. Yeeeeah, that's it.
Oh, and I rewrote the shooting paragraph in the middle slightly and entered it in the Bulwer-Lytton tortured prose contest. I'll never win, but I might do okay in one of the subgenres. BWAH hah.
Posted by Mooncalf @ 08/20/2001 05:54 PM EST
. . . YES! Oh yes, oh yes. Now THAT is writing! *is studying Shakespere in english at the moment*
. . .
Anyway. Excuse that. *points to previous comment* This was VERY funny, if painful to read. And it was, for once, an excersize for my vocabulary. It needs a good jogging if I'm to keep my rep of "The human dictionary/thesaurus" Heh. Really, I liked it, for mothing much else but the flowery language. ^_^v
Posted by Evil_Quistis @ 08/21/2001 12:43 AM EST
My eyes started bleeding halfway through the first paragraph.
I can't take any more.
DAMN ED!
WHY DO YOU MAKE ME READ THESE THINGS?!
Posted by Amy @ 08/21/2001 01:20 AM EST
The worst part is that I know people who roleplay like that.
Imagine sitting there in the middle of a scene waiting for someone to spew 15 lines of thesaurus abuse just to get their character to order a drink. >.<
Posted by Ed @ 08/21/2001 01:20 AM EST
There are people who DON'T roleplay like that...? O_o ...kidding. I've spent too much time in AOL roleplay already...
Anyhow, I've thought that sludgily adjectival writing is a phase people go through as they learn to write... most start out dry, are told that they should describe more, then pile it on till the story collapses. Or they've just heard that descriptiveness is good and pile it on right from the start. Either way, it all makes me want to go around with a superhero-style magical red pen and edit valiantly left and right... ^_~ It's much more fun if it's *intentionally* done, and this WAS funny, painfully so... The fact that there are umpteen fics that presume stuff this descriptive is GOOD... isn't so funny. :P
...damn, rambled again. Sorry! Red pen!
Posted by StB @ 08/21/2001 04:12 PM EST
One guilty problem that I have myself is getting carried away, so I think I know what you mean, Moon. Sure, it can be fun to go all-out into loooooonnnng and descriptive tangents in writing, but I try to beware of that for fear of boring readers. Now true, if you're READING, then there must BE words to READ, but you know...it can still be boring an uninteresting, so I try to watch that. But I think you do very good jobs, Moon, and clearly the masses are amused! ^_^
Posted by Wolf @ 08/21/2001 04:20 PM EST
Ditto to Wolf's post. 'cept I just keep going and going and going ... and when I show my work to anyone, I wonder why they start whimpering and clawing at their faces...
Although I do think you put a few metaphors in there that were nothing less than dirty. ;3
Posted by Yscaldine @ 08/21/2001 04:56 PM EST
My god, that was fucking hilarious. My problem is I can't think of enough adjectives to save my life. M y favorite was the "glowing viridian orbs of sight" ^_^
Posted by Kyrn @ 08/28/2001 05:11 AM EST
