Young Writers Society

Everything? You want to know it all?...Where to begin? Not from the beginning, I don’t think. I do not want to bore you with the details of things I regret, or memories collected whose origins I forget. Let’s skip the courtesy, shall we?

They first called me “Creator.” I do not know what that means; I only shape them, free them. Tear a thousand ideas from the fabric of my mind and shake them into existence. My actions are not so much done out of choice than a compelling necessity; an action which leads to a reaction. And then a chain, each answer a burst seeking to out-compete its predecessor. They are the result, and “Creator” is what they call me.

They also say that I know all (this is not a digression). Every name of every thing, person, animal, scent, sound. Every reaction and the single action that started it all. Why they live and die, and where they go when their lives are done. I do not understand why they believe I know these things. They say they were created in my image, I say in the image of an idea lingering in the recesses of my mind. If they do not have the answers, then why should I?

So they call me Creator. And once, I think I had a name that was my own, self-given. But time rots all those things that are not the strangeness of honey, like oranges and eyes (and memory) and time has taken mine. If I once knew what, who I was, I might have a better answer for my creations than just because. So I take on a name that is not my own, perhaps to feel that I am not alone or perhaps in redemption of that for which I cannot atone.

I am Creator, and this single fact is the starting point of everything.



The strive for perfection is the reason you still exist.

I do not refer to you specifically, of course. All of you People are naturally imperfect, there was never a fall, or a mistake, but a nature-born path you were fated to take. Everything you do is only an echo of your failed creation, everything is spoilt and two-sided. You were not, are not, will never be perfect. Never.

It is not your fault, but Its. Yes, It, that thing you persist in calling “creator” (also Satan, Boogeyman and Product-of-Imagination. You People and your names).

It thought you perfection, believes Its own deceit every time. Until the years pass and Time rots hopes and dreams and vision so that finally, It sees. What is perfection but a delusion, a twisted reflection of thought and deceitful illusion? And It abandons you, once again, to dream for a thousand years of solitude and awaken to begin a tired, doomed cycle.

You think I am bitter? Yes. I am.

There was perfection once. And then some were born to serve, and weighed down the world. Next It made those who were born to lead, and they brought down this perfect world to its knees. And you know the rest.

Yes, I am bitter. But only because I envisioned a single world greater, from which your “creator” has made myriad imitations to form a bland, imperfect sea. So think of me as you will; I am not you, you are not me.

I call myself Manikin. I do not care what it is you call me, as long as you quickly leave. I made a paragon world from whose shadow came the first tidings of imperfection.

Let me be bitter in regret, that I have at least my mind to my own.

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As mentioned in the title, these viewpoints are fragments of the project I am working on. I've actually only discussed it with one YWSer, and I'm not sure if I'm going to post anything else (save perhaps one full chapter) here until I'm well into the novel. Either way, thanks for reading! Let me know what you think.

Tiger

Not a fan, this seems so harsh and offensive to Christians and their beliefs, and just seems like such a melancholy view of the universe. I would hate to live with a view of life that resembles this, it would be horrifying, I honestly don't know how I'd do it. All that being said, the actually writing wasn't poor, it was actually well-done, just the content was what ruined it for me. Nonetheless, a valiant effort, Never Stop Writing... Ever.

~49~

Yeah, as I Christian I'm not sure I like this. It was very well written, and I admire your effort. I wouldn't say this is offensive, I just don't completely agree with it. However, as to the writing, it was really good. My only question is on the second part. Why do you suddenly call God It? It makes it sound like you switched point of views. Except, then you are suddenly narrating in first and third person. Which is very confusing and makes it sound like there are two people talking. So, you might want to fix that or make it clearer. Anyway, you're a good writer.

Just to be clear: this is not the Christian God I am referring to. I am a Christian, and I'm not trying to offend anybody. Creator is referred to as "It" because that is the only gender-neutral third person pronoun acceptable in the English Language. Creator is genderless, not male or female, and "It" is used to reflect that. But the Creator, whose viewpoint is the first (the second is a different character) is not the Christian God.

Come on guys judge everything on it's individual merit instead of firmly deciding ' This defies my set of beliefs - therefore it can't possibly be a credible, readable story.' I thought this was a startlingly original story. I really can't think where you might have drawn inspiration from? I don't see this spanning over anything much longer, particularly novel length. And if you managed to spread it out that much it will be tricky to keep the readers and to keep a consistent and flowing story - it can be done, I'm just not sure if you are there yet.

So for what it is, it is really good. Well done and I look forward to seeing where this heads.

I think I'll add a small note at the top of the story, just to clear-up this misunderstanding. But anyway, thanks for the reviews, people.

I'm an open-minded Christian and take no offense to this, at all. In fact I find it interesting because these type of things (ie. who created God, what does He think of us, etc.) come into my mind constantly, and yet I'm never able to articulate them into such a fascinating and somber style. Yes, maybe this is melancholy, but it could also very well be reality. As you say, we aren't perfect, and the strive to be? Maybe that is what keeps our race going. The numerous deep-seated questions you raise are definitely controversial, and yet I found them to be completely compelling. Whether this is our God you write about or not, I think it says a lot about us. I hope you continue.
Keep writing,
StoryWeaver

To Ignatius and Caley: remember, my dears, that we are in a forum called "Fantasy Short Stories". I cannot think what gave you the idea that Tigersprite was writing about the Christian God, or, for that matter, about our universe.


The criticism I can make on this, Tigra, lies in two words: "perspective" and "ineffability". You see, it is impossible, at least for us, to fully know everything about anything. For example, let's take a metal box with a little carving of a dragon on it. What can we say about that box? Well, it's metallic, it's about five inches in every direction, making a cube, and one of the sides has a dragon on it. But is that everything we can say about it? No; what about its relationship to people, how its carving inspired some guy to write a book which features a little box with the carving of a dragon? What about its relationship to, say, the Sun, and how an unfortunate reflection off its polished side caused a chain reaction which eventually resulted in a coronal mass ejection? What about how it appears in the fifth dimension? The eighth? We can only describe so much from our perspective with our meagre senses and our mortal biases and still have our description be true. Every object is a source of infinite information.

Which brings me to my second point of ineffability. A creator being like yours, presumably creating all that is known and all that is unknown, has to account for every single aspect of this universe, this universe full of little boxes five inches in every direction with little dragon etchings on their sides. This being has to account for the infinite information every single object holds. We could never do that, but this being can -- and so its thought process should not be understood by insignificant gnats like ourselves. It should be impossible to describe in human words -- that is ineffability.

So my problem is that you write your Creator like it is a human being. It can communicate intelligible ideas to us, and it has human feelings. None of this is justified, and he(?) does not deny creating the universe, so what exactly is he?

Your one saving grace is that he claims not to know everything in existence, which makes me think him more an architect rather than a full-on creator. Like he created the egg expecting a chicken, and the universe blossomed into a beautiful white swan, beyond even his own understanding. I like this suggestion, and I think that's what you were going for. However, I would like to see a little bit more background on this being in order to confirm my suspicions -- and something as important as this should probably be discussed in his introduction.

In either case, I'm very glad to see you writing again, and expect more excellent writings out of you soon. Best of luck.

Your philosopher,
cC

I think I just kind of found love.

Your writing and voice is superb. Everything flows beautifully and I do enjoy the idea of this being, or creator. That being said I wish to talk about the creature in general. Your characterization is very bitter as stated, which is chill, but I shortly learned that reading the words of this character almost bored me, for it seemed almost redundant due to the bitterness of it all.

I have actually done a similar prologue like this, but mine wasn't a creator but a fallen vessel of the creature who was spiteful and full of remorse. That piece made me discover that readers really don't like reading that over and over again. No matter how superb your writing is, it will be drowned by the melancholy and make the reader lose interest. Especially in a piece like this with no dialogue or action. It is mainly the thought process of a God. What I believe you can do you assuage this is maybe lighten up a bit.

I don't mean like, crack jokes or anything, but do as cC recommended and make the Creator more non-human. Make his thought processes distorted and almost unfathomable. Make it interesting to the reader by writing something they have never read anything relatively like. By making him less human though, the reader's may lose their connection to the character though, so I would recommend having moments of similar human thought processes, mainly processes of emotion.

Your piece can either target the feelings of anger at this being who thinks they are worthless or create passion and sympathy for a creature who has been deemed not good enough and created a mal-formed world. Do this by directing the reader through different thought processes.

Overall, I think this story is a perfect length for what you are going for. Any longer and you would have lost me. You don't have to change anything, for honestly, I like it the way it is. But you might think about the things I said. Either way it is sick.

Go Team Red! For Gryffindor!

~Incognito

hello. allow me to present the special review-a-la-lowercase,* just for you.

this was an interesting read, my friend. you have some really interesting concepts here, honestly, and they certainly make me curious to read the rest of this project of yours. ;} each line of this made me think, and each time I read over the piece I notice more meanings. and if I allow myself to read this slowly and let my mind stray while reading, I find myself finding some really intriguing tangents that I can take. there were a few nitpickish things here and there, but I have a feeling you're not really interested in hearing about those (though let me know if you'd like me to come back and point them out) so I'm going to just do an overall review today.

while this piece does have a lot of really positive aspects to it, I feel it falls short of being great. I have to agree with Incognito that it fails to hold my attention. I have read it through several times now, but I'm having a hard time thinking about it and I don't think (though I very well may be wrong about this) that it's just me. it feels like what you are trying to say is too big for what you are writing. it is too big for me to understand just by reading this piece. it's too big for me to get my head around in a piece so small. and so I walk away feeling like I didn't really gain anything except some nice images and sentiments, because the bulk of the meaning is simply too big.

and it's also hard to digest this piece because it's virtually all telling. I hate to bring out the old 'show, don't tell' mantra, but as cliché as it is, it has a lot of truth to it. this piece is hard to grasp because it feels sort of like reading a textbook: I'm being fed these really interesting things that I really do want to learn about, but I have to concentrate very hard to ingest them and even afterwards I think of this more as a reference than something to be read once or twice and absorbed.

I think what a lot of this boils down to is that this piece is not complete. I assume the rest of your project isn't more of this. I assume there is more showing and less telling--or at least enough showing to balance out this telling. and I'm sure that in the context of the rest of the project, this piece would be more readily digestible. with all the meaning, it lacks a certain surface-appeal that will pull people to it.

I think that what Incognito and carbonCore were alluding to with changing the voice is the same as what I'm saying about showing vs. telling. personally, I don't think the voice needs to be more supernatural. that would be one way of achieving that surface-appeal, but it's not necessary, especially because--who knows? maybe in your world gods aren't so different from humans. so, I don't think the voice needs to be changed that way, but if you want this to work as a stand-alone piece, I'd say something about the telling of it has to be made somehow more gripping.

I've already recommended a hundred thousand kingdoms to you, right? like, a billion times? well, if you haven't read it yet I definitely suggest it. your writing reminds me so much of hers, it's uncanny. and she deals with the border between humans and deities really elegantly.

of course, all this is just about how this works as a stand-alone, so since it isn't a stand-alone I'm not sure how helpful it will be to you--but it's the best I can do, not seeing the rest of the project! *hint hint*

anyhow, it's good to read your stuff again. please do pm me with any questions or the like.
a

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*except the english first person singular subject pronoun, because having that lowercase makes me look like a newb. oh, and people's names because I don't want to be disrespectful.

I think I love you.

Also, if these are just fragments, I think I would be interested in reading the larger project. After all, the way you present these ideas are absolutely fascinating, and there are so many good ideas that are brought up. I think the reason why many people are kind of disturbed by this writing is because it makes you wonder who God is. And frankly? That's a good thing to wonder.

So I definitely like this.

I would like to say that although I am Christian, I really enjoyed reading this. I think it's an interesting viewpoint to take, and I don't find it offensive. Besides, it's not like you were like, "This is all God is, and this is how I think He is, and really he's just nothing in particular blah blah blah..." I mean, I do not think you said anything offensive. Maybe that makes me a bad Christian, but I don't think so, and I don't think God would think so. I like to think He has a sense of humor. (This would've developed after His angsty teenage years in the Old Testament.) And besides, I wouldn't be surprised if God was more on the bitter and cynical side nowadays, with the way we're abusing this world He gave us. I know I'd be bitter, if I were God and could see the whole extent of all the horrors we're committing. (Luckily I can't, so I'm able to believe that people are basically good and just screw up a lot, etc.)

So anyway, this is probably a weird Christian view to take, but I'm weird, so whatever - but I do not find this at all offensive (at least so far); just interesting. I would read more, if you posted it. If I read further and find something offensive, I will just tell you...but I'll be nice about it, because that's how I roll.

The only thing that confused me a bit was when you switched from "me" - Creator - talking clearly about himself to the references to "It" - is "It" still supposed to be Creator, and if so then why is Creator suddenly referring to himself (herself?) in the third person? Or is It, I don't know, "evil" or what we call "the devil" or something? You may want to make that clearer.

~Blue