• 0 Posts
  • 8 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 25th, 2023

help-circle




  • I’m currently halfway through Tchaikovsky’s Shadows of the Apt series and I’m enjoying the plot but finding his writing style a bit tedious at times - excessive rehashing of events that happened like two chapters ago, overembellished emotional dramatics, and painstakingly spelling out every single character’s internal monologue like it’s a Jane Austen novel.

    I know CoT was written later, so I’m wondering if his tone/style has developed a bit? He has cool ideas, I’m just wishing he’d trust the reader enough to get a bit more ‘show, don’t tell’ with his writing…



  • ‘Delighted’ is a strong word, but two come immediately to mind:

    First was an acquaintance I knew in high school, we had a few mutual friends but I don’t even remember his name tbh. The one and only occasion he was ever nice to me was while off his face on molly; the rest of the time he was an erratic, unpredictably destructive asshole who I just avoided. Around age 17ish he wrapped his motorcycle around a lamp post and that was that. Of course there’s a chance he might have mellowed out and grown up into a decent human being eventually, but far as I’m concerned he made the world a safer place by removing himself from it.

    Second was a housemate who seemed harmless at first but turned out to be a compulsive liar with severe gambling problems - claimed to play poker professionally (he did play at comps, just wildly exaggerated his track record/earnings) and work at a local radio station (total fabrication). Amongst various other fuckery, he ran dipshit scams like selling nonexistent gaming consoles on eBay with our real home address/phone number on his profile, stole and pawned a bunch of our stuff, lied about paying his share of rent/bills while hiding our mail until we got hit with disconnections and eviction warnings, and then skipped town when it all unravelled and we threatened to go to the cops. Last we heard he was still up to his old tricks, and I know wound up serving time for tax fraud.

    A decade or so later he was abducted and murdered in some kind of drug-related dispute, and his body still hasn’t been found. It’s a shitty way to go and I wouldn’t wish that end on anyone, but he clearly hadn’t learned anything or grown a conscience in the time since we parted ways, so it’s a comfort that he won’t be able to hurt anyone else now.