Emperor, Defined / Discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page Emperor, Defined.

FleshMaddAvalon 22 Oct 2024 12:50

the continuation of my piece Emperor, Flesh that combines the series to set it within the world of Harkonnen and Ankulus.

Big ups to my critters, Nona and Xexnon <3

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I watch the yonder hills
See foodwrenches toil in dust
Let their cacophonous calls
Rend our bodies to rust

UncannyClown 22 Oct 2024 21:31

the body horror doesn't rouse much of anything in me, but i'm willing to upvote on the strength of prose and descriptive language, though there are some minor grammatical errors and overuse of sentence fragments throughout.

Din-Bidor 25 Oct 2024 16:49

Wow. I'm impressed. Strong biopunk taste at the beginning – very reminiscent, I think, of the elegance in films like Crimes of the Future. Then the vampiric shock at the end, and that sweet aftertaste of having read something light, gory and refreshing. Well done.

Spoddetman 27 Oct 2024 14:20

I agree with UncannyClown here. The body horror is descriptive, but it feels sort of… purposeless. Maybe it's because I haven't read the preceding pieces, but this didn't really do much for me. In the absence of a larger thread of meaning, it comes off as sort of shock horror (which I'm sure you didn't intend). I was also distracted by the few minor grammatical and spelling errors, but those are less of an issue. Novote.

minmin 28 Oct 2024 16:15

I think this could have been a movie or a painting.

Maxyfran73 29 Oct 2024 03:01

God, this was good. I like the strength of the meatspeak here, this sort of carnomancy of the body, on how the thoughts combine and intertwine with the happenings, and it all leads to the heartbreak, to the lover's bloodletting. Strong stuff, especially for the length of the piece.

+1

zipzipskins 29 Oct 2024 20:56

it has the same punchy immediacy that i have come to expect from you. i think you needed a fine-toothed comb sort of critter to snag some of the wayward spag issues that i felt like detracted a bit from the readability. i do think a bit much hangs on the understanding of the context of the other stuff you've done but that's a very difficult balance to get right in pieces that slot in a series. overall, i enjoyed reading it and i think you managed to fit a lot in a small space. +1

as an aside, your links to your other pieces in your author post are broken!

Last edited on 03 Nov 2024 17:53 by zipzipskins Show more

Snapdragon133 05 Nov 2024 05:07

I am conflicted with this piece, because the prose is really good. Super descriptive, creative to a T. It is nasty as all hell and fully completes what it sets out to do. But, and I believe I struggled with this on the last Emperor piece, I still am fighting against this feeling of purposelessness, as Spod says. Unlike the previous piece, there is that religious aspect, which could be seen as a why. However for me it acts more as just a method rather than the reason she does all this in the first place. I like that you do not lead/tell me to, despite the awfulness of some of her actions, agree or disagree with her. This vagueness is generally beneficial, but I feel like you need more of a motivation here. Despite those critiques, for me this piece does a ton of stuff right, so I'll still be upvoting