Flybywrite's picture
Flybywrite from Rocky Point, Long Island is reading The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky, by Stephen Crane March 12, 2013 - 11:52am

I've got to admit in the aftermath of my last "grand" thread appearance in Dwayne's latest bit of busy business, about how many projects its advisable to have on the fire at once, I had a kind of emtotional reaction.  The way the focus came onto my glorious writing style...again, was stunning.

I looked at how I came into the Lit Reactor during a long sabbatical from the threads, and saw I had put on a kind of advertising campaign about what an egregious overwriter I was and then set out to prove it.  Which even though that was no part in the tone of the creation of what came down, back in Dwayne's empathy/sympathy thread, was like taping a Kick Me In The Hole sign to my ass.  

But this time around it was much different.  It was simply disheartening to get sandblasted into the hybrid crature FlybyPort after an at least in my opinion, attempt at being constructive about the topic. Recently, to my friend Fport who is a unique individual who also takes a lot of fire for sometimes having to be explicated, I expressed a suspicion.  My guess is I'm pretty well above the median age in here, which means that fortunately I've developed the frozen tundra of curmudgeonly-old-bastard to refer to.  Symptomatic of this many may have noted my astonishing style has remained more or less unaffected by the many quips between goodhearted and black I've pretty much just endured to this point.  However, old man reptilian scales might not be true of the next much younger "windy woman or fellow" to appear in this furnace.  Which I'd imagine might happen any day now, that is if he or she hasn't arrived today. So why not cut it out with the destructive public spears for someone you never have and do not wish to contact in any way, about a writing related topic? 

Thanks to a somewhat troublesome memory, after discovering the existence of this new creature FlybyPort, I recalled it was also in Dwayne's  empathy/sympathy thread of all places, where the topic vanished and I ran into my first cyber-thrashing.  Odd, this world. That old thread if I also recall correctly, which I do, began with its esteemed creator and another member going down parallel tracks in a debate.  It lasted, approximately forever, and ironically I felt given the subject the participants never got a single inch closer one side to the other.

But my first whipping boy thing in that thread I have to admit did upset/disturb me,  I heard from some sensible people with more experience in this fray, that the rules by which people proceed in each other's actual company for the most part in actual civilization can come off.    There was some constructive and even generous stuff too in the beginning, because I did come in kind of crazy on those first posts and even my biography was stupid-long.  However, most of the "critique" I received was a consensus all nodding their heads to each other in the prevailing wind and taking any manner of ill-mannered liberty they felt like.  That's just the wrong thing under any conditions, and a particular a consensus of seven, eight or nine hoary elders came down like a sort of acid rain on my way of thinking and glorious writing style.    

It seemed at the time that perhaps in their haste to write the next witty thing, or to move on to the next project, they did not seem to either recognize or care very much about what to me was so clearly the case.   So, my guess is, largely unnoticed, I withdrew to work on something I've finished which is in part a reaction to that experience.  

Anyway, this lambasting-lampooning without (except for a few people who have become friends) any reflection or interest in what I'd write about any topic at all became an even more intense thing that kept my "olb-noob" jaw dropping in subsequent threads.. A few of the things written were generous, constructive, but anyone at all sensitive to subtext or tone would easily discern most of them were in joke-it-up attack mode.  

It was more when my role as the constant object of negative observations and jokes continued into subsequent threads in which I was soon able to detect myself as the lone object of the fun. But just like on a 7th grade playground where an object of ridicule has been chosen the nasty and implicitly condescending can seem ok just because they're so damn funny.  But stored energy from this early experience was why the instantaneous resumption of hostilities at a lower level in my return to the threads became a Popeye moment.  I've already done flight, in general I don't counterattack; but this latest nonsense after four months off that even any imbecile ought to be able to see is so flagrant, I guess has got me guzzling spinach.

I am aware that at my worst I can easily migrate into the land of the incomprehensible.  But I don't find that's necessarily a rare thing, amongst writers.  So I do so hope this next thought is comprehensible, in the sense that no one should need to break their head over anything to understand that a hallmark of concerned, loving, familiar communities would be when people take turns as the objects of jokes. When that's the case, the participants really do mean to cajole each other toward improvement.  But that is not what I have experienced inside this general community, by any stretch. No, not at all, and not from my first appearance in it until now.

I can shorten my sentences, when I feel like its the right time.  So I'd like to check in on myself and will leave room for a simple question.  Am I being oversensitive to what I read.  Because I do think it is true I have been a little oddly twisted up by my new maker and his consultant on my new status as a conjoined oddity, Mr. Jeffery Grant Barr and Dwayne. In this absolutely disgusting FlybyPort bit of business and the ensuing muse about on and on and on and then "odd" and then "odder still," am I just a little too impressionable or something?  I can concede its being in the realm of possibility, so if its possible anyone's still reading this please let me know if that's how you feel.

Maybe it's true that this just a bloodless scientific experiment under discussion by a brilliant pair of more mercifully separated and productive spirits?  Was it their genuine concern for the hybrid creature's brighter or perhaps half as wasteful literary future that was being expressed at a great and imaginative depth, in this typical sci-fi hypothesis regarding Flybywrite's and Fport's (who is my friend on this site) interchangeability?  Because if so, really, thanks again; how kind for two really,really busy and forward charging men with ever so many projects in the fire, to devote a few generous seconds to their hypothetical creation.  I know I'll always treasure the moment I read about him-him.

Because really, how could I have been more pleased after four months off to see the topic of the thread change, and focus on me, and then double its stupid, nasty pleasure in doubling up the repetitive object of the same kinds of tired-ass, hideously redundant observations and jokes, that have now made already well over one hundred appearances in these threads..  

But no critique and not even of mean-spirited crap that advances nothing but its own cause, is complete without a suggestion. For instance, when I'm not too busy at work converting the universal into an indecipherable wasteland, I like to gossip about some of you in private where nobody gets hurt, and with friends like F-Port.  So if you should happen while flying by to the next thing on the busy schedule, happen to notice a consensus has focused negatively on a single object, and maybe even on particularly rare occasions, a hybrid object's flaws, why not in anticipation of less crusty/stubborn new members with a tendency or in some cases magnetic pull toward overwriting, reserve the vitriol for the private realm?  Simply contact any nodding head in the consensus who'll be 100 % accessible to whatever the funny, funny dribble is, privately, and then just laugh your asses off to your heart's content there in your own little mailboxes. 

When I do get around to whoring for Gorilla in the Midst, as part of that I want to pave the way in the authors section, by posting a couple of quotes from a writer whose far more interesting and depth seeking than I'll ever be, and who during an unforgettable stretch of his writing career once created a to me unfrogettable character named Hilarius the Executioner. 

     

 

 

 

 

avery of the dead's picture
avery of the dead from Kentucky is reading Cipher Sisters March 12, 2013 - 12:22pm

So if you should happen while flying by to the next thing on the busy schedule, happen to notice a consensus has focused negatively on a single object, and maybe even on particularly rare occasions, a hybrid object's flaws, why not in anticipation of less crusty/stubborn new members with a tendency or in some cases magnetic pull toward overwriting, reserve the vitriol for the private realm?  Simply contact any nodding head in the consensus who'll be 100 % accessible to whatever the funny, funny dribble is, privately, and then just laugh your asses off to your heart's content there in your own little mailboxes.