Goad23 Apr 2005

Listen, this is how pathos works: exaggeration kills it. Big giant concepts kill it. Feel desolate? describing the world as a vast empire of desolation will not make us relate to your sense desolation. We can look around and see for ourselves that the world is not a stygian yard of nightmares; everything is not dead; nothingness does not have claws (how can nothingness have claws? nothingness is nothingness. Re-read Sartre and try to actually understand him this time instead of inanely using some of the words he uses). So when you describe the entire universe as somehow for some reason having as it's sole purpose the mirroring of your particular bad mood or bout of depression WE DON'T BUY IT.

Little details create pathos. Describe the one little mournful detail in a generally indifferent world of sunny days and rainy days that occur at random; celebrations, wars, funerals, weddings, parties & columbus high school massacres that all occur at random with absolutely no regard for the psychological state of one teenager (I truly truly hope you are still a teenager) who's obsessed with darkness and paints his fingernails black. That one little detail that's personal is what will capture our attention, make us relate to your sense of desolation.

You are not goth. Fear of Garbage is goth -- good goth. The difference between you and her is neatly captured in the difference in your nicknames.

Yours: there's only one Prince of Darkness, or Prince of the Void. You are not him. You're a depressed teenager. A bazillion other depressed teenagers have already used your nickname in a bazillion dungeons & dragons game. It's so utterly non-original that you'd have seemed quirkier and more alienated if you nicknamed yourself Bob.

Hers: Fear of Garbage, abbreviated to F.o.G. It's clever, and unique. It refers to the character of her writing on multiple levels -- both in its full & acronym form. And it manages to be at least as instantly recognizeable as goth as "Prince of Void" but without seeming pathetically absurd.

If you intended this pome as a description of the last level of Diablo III then forgive me, I suppose it works reasonably well in that role. Though there's no mention of those things that eat corpses and then spit them at you. But it has absolutely nothing to do with the actual world that we actually live in. Not even metaphorically.