I Know Now Where Sindar Draweth His Inspiration

[ellyssian]

Yes. Unfortunately.

It is in the... I hesitate to call it "prose" or "fiction" or anything good... featured in this post (don't clicky at work; when you die of laughter or sheer pain of bad writing, they'll write you up posthumously for reading stuff that's not safe for work at work...) by vandonovan...

It's got to be.

I mean, really, two pages describing the sexual attractiveness of a character, that's just a bit much. "Her tongue was a ferret," and "Her thighs were geese" would sound completely, well, wrong, just by themselves, but when you put them in context: "Her tongue was a ferret, an anemone, a fox caught in the teeth of a tiger." and "Her thighs were geese, pythons, schooners." ~ it's then that you really start to wonder how the author ever got published.

"Her face had the fragrance of a gibbous moon."

Hmmm... so that's what that stench is...

Comments

[purdypiedad.livejournal.com]

Whoa. Suddenly Song of Solomon's metaphors seem understated and trite...

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

Don't forget that they're at least somewhat applicable. "legs as pillars of marble" seem to work a bit better than legs of sailing ships. =)

[purdypiedad.livejournal.com]

I don't know. "Your breasts are gazelles..." seems a little odd to me. :-p

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

Hey, that must be the origin for the "nice rack" comment...

:: ducks ::

Although I don't know if they call gazelle horns a rack, that might just be reserved for antlers...

[cissa.livejournal.com]

EXACTLY what I was thinking!

[nebris.livejournal.com]

*icon comment*

Upon Reflection

[nebris.livejournal.com]

Ya know, if you told a women her thighs were schooners, she'd probably stab you.

~M~

Re: Upon Reflection

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think most of what the author went on about would not be considered flattering under most circumstances. You'd be lucky to get away with just a stabbing if you tried to use any of those lines! =)

lucky to get away with just a stabbing

[nebris.livejournal.com]

And I had just posted about self torture over my own writing. ;D

~M~

[d2leddy.livejournal.com]

So her face smells like cheese?

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

Oh, and that's one of her better attributes.

Her fingers were the speed of fish.

[luis-mw.livejournal.com]

Well, according to reports from Apollo astronauts, gunpowder is the most common description.

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

So sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate.

That's so hot it's explosive.

[tewok.livejournal.com]

That's a pretty amazing piece of writing.

Not necessarily good, but certainly jaw-dropping.

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

I think it just might have been a seed for Sindarian stuff.

[tewok.livejournal.com]

Looks like it might, but there aren't enough fluids.

(You had to use that word, didn't you?)

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

Well, the rape scene on the next page wasn't included in the post. There may be fluids there, one can never tell.

And, truth to tell, one doesn't really want to.

[tewok.livejournal.com]

Not this one, either.

[sage-and-sea.livejournal.com]

ROFL - thank you for posting a few bits, since I can't clicky right now.

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

"Her spine was a ladder, a rod; it was a chain, a canal, it was a caravan."

"Her ribs were a niche, an alcove, an apse; her stomach was an idol in the niche, alcove or apse, an effigy, a phantom."

"Her shoulders were fieldstones; they were the white square stones of which walls are made."

"Her feet were springs, marmosets or locusts; her toes were snails, they were snails with shells of tears."

-- because you can't clicky, there's a few more gems for you. You don't have to thank me, I know I don't deserve it.

[sage-and-sea.livejournal.com]

*choke*

It's like it was done by a randomly-generated-noun program, for crying out loud. None of this makes any sense.

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

I know!

It either makes no sense whatsoever or creates very unflattering images ~ for instance, he compares something to a wheat field newly harvested, which one commenter has indicated means "rat-infested stubble, basically" (I'll leave it to the imagination as to which part of the body this is describing, which should narrow down the choices quite a bit... =)

[cissa.livejournal.com]

With a blessed touch of thesaurus abuse! Oh the marvel!

[bardiphouka.livejournal.com]

Bulwer-Lytton goes pr0n?

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

If only it was a single, opening sentence...

[blood-of-winter.livejournal.com]

roflcopter @ work

i cant believe he used "pubes"

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

The comments over there have much back-and-forth, and I think the accepted answer was that he had intended to mean "pubis", which would make more sense with the singular forms that follow.

It is surmised that an editor "corrected" that for him.

Of course, it's also surmised that the editor couldn't stand it and didn't read this bit, which is why it made it into print. Or that the editor had been blackmailed into leaving it in.

[phantom_wolfboy]

Are you sure there was an editor? Do we know who the publisher was?

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

Ace. 1992.

[phantom_wolfboy]

That's really, really sad. We can at least hope that Ace has had a complete turnover of personnel in the decade-and-a-half since then.

[blood-of-winter.livejournal.com]

or maybe Ace was in between skilled editors?

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure how much skill would be required. I'm thinking even a tiny smidgen of skill could have helped delete 90% of those two pages. Not to mention the rest of the book (the next four pages are now posted ~ it doesn't really get any better).

[blood-of-winter.livejournal.com]

maybe by some glitch in the publishing system, it never passed across an editor's desk..

or perhaps it was printed in an alternate reality. Due to this unfortunate happenstance, civilization collapsed when the eyes and brains of all literate persons exploded. The force of the explosion and the collapse opened a wormhole, and all remaining copies were dumped into our unsuspecting bookstores. Thankfully, in our universe, we are so used to drivel and crap in our books and TV that we've become immune to even the most brain bleeding works and thus we are left to discuss on our humble LJ

This would also explain Twilight

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

This would also explain Twilight

Ouch. (But in a good damn-I-agree-with-you way!)

[patrixa.livejournal.com]

Are you sure the quoted writing was supposed to be taken seriously? Is the author pulling everyreader's leg?

Or maybe it's proof that a herd of monkeys typing hours on end will NOT turn out Shakespeare?

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

It's book two of a fantasy trilogy, and there is no indication that it was meant to be taken any other way.

Follow the link and read the whole two pages. Just have a bar of soap, or bleach, or industrial strength sulfuric acid handy to scrub your brain cells clean afterward.

[patrixa.livejournal.com]

Well, I did; I was moved to tears. Couldn't you hear the giggles and guffaws?

I followed the comments, too -- well, 4 pages of them and then gave up. Wonder if all this blogging on it will increase sales.

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

The comments were quite entertaining. You really have to get to the 6th page, where the discussion of what the story would have been like if Spikenard had x-ray vision takes place... =)

[pecosdave.livejournal.com]

That's some real drech. I've read some bad stuff to. That makes some of the government technical manuals I've read seem almost readable.

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

I'd wager it makes the tech manuals not only readable but entertaining, to boot! =)

[slamlander.livejournal.com]

It only proves one thing; That it doesn't take quality to get published, only a good agent. Lookup Tad Williams (Green Angel Tower - about 50% good story and 50% pure tedium) some time.

There was once a time when Publishers hired Editors that actually edited. These days they are simply the market-droid coordinator.

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

I've read the Tad Williams stuff ~ didn't think it was all that bad (although I must admit, I did want some parts to move a bit quicker).