[Dragaera] Striving towards Paarfiction...

[Jerry Friedman]

--- Davdi Silverrock <davdisil at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Jan 14, 2008 8:40 PM, Jerry Friedman wrote:
> >
> > Also, the point of the description is or should be to say why
> > the speaker doesn't like the souvenir.  "Buttonless", "plain",
> > "distinguishable from an undergarment only by the text you are
> > doing me the honor of reading", etc., can do that; "tunic"
> > doesn't.
> 
> Hm.
> 
> So while my current idea is to put it:
> 
>  "was the plain and simple garment that you see before you, which, you
> perceive, is a short, bland, buttonless tunic of sadly cheap and
> common fabric: this very shirt.",
> 
> Would you recommend striking "tunic" and shortening it to:
> 
> "was the plain and simple garment that you see before you, which, you
> perceive, is short, bland, buttonless, and of sadly cheap and common
> fabric: this very shirt."
> 
> ?

Yes, and shortening it further.  I think you need only one
of "plain", "simple", and "bland"; Paarfi seldom piles up
synonyms.  And my inner Paarfunculus doesn't like "bland" in
this figurative sense.  I still think "sadly" is obvious and
should go, but you won't be able to comply with every suggestion.
(I didn't say that about "sadly" before, but I took it out of my
version.)

DD-B asked whether "Too long, didn't read" wasn't the point.
To me, this can easily reach a length where people won't
even start reading, thus losing any point.

If you want to make it longer, your suggestion of "pretend"
was at just the right spot.  If I were doing this, I might put
that in and take out the luxuries of the trip--"at no small
expense" implies all that--as well as shortening the description
of the shirt.  Among the Paarfisms, "you perceive" strikes as
the least important.

> >  while I'm imagining the wearer of the T-shirt as someone who speaks
> like a
> > character in Paarfi.
> 
> I believe that I am tolerably agnostic on the matter of exactly who is
> speaking...

Except that he's a gentleman of the House of the Hawk?

> > Now that I've put in my last two cents,
...

Sorry.

Jerry Friedman



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