Like Olives

A lot of you may know Drizitche from his frequent comments here at Ask, and those who do also know that a little Driz goes a long way. As desensitized to conflict as I am, I still suck air in through my teeth when he plops down a particularly spite-filled comment, waiting inevitably for others to tear into him like barncats surrounding a bag of milk.

Good times.

On his own, he’s not "accessible" or "user-friendly", but he is clever...he’s also, at times, both poetic and extremely emotive; the blackness of his template reflects the blackity-blackness of his black, black heart, and this blackness expresses itself with a tremendous amount of wordiness.

Hell, calling Driz "wordy" is like calling an international jewel-thief "sneaky": neither description fully conveys the true nature of the beast. Some of these posts are long enough to unfurl and let roll from the top of a building with enough left over to pool in a rumpled mess on the sidewalk. I, though, can’t fault him for his loquaciousness; I was guilty of many of the same things when I submitted my own blog for review: over-intellectualized (in my case, though, it was pseudo-intellectualized) writing that had to be more RIGHT than readable, a need to not just find the proper word but also the least recognizable one, and a problem wherein I was taking life just a little too seriously.

Once I had figured out what I was writing for, I figured out how to write what I wanted, and this only came in retrospect; at the time, I believed that I was a god among men, writing REAL works of art with unmatched sincerity and leaving footprints of patronization and elitism whenever I posted. I would say that Driz feels the same way if I wanted to speak for him, which I don’t, and that the similarities I personally see in our writing might just be my own solipsistic leanings sashaying out into the light. What I DO know is that once I got a bunch of those I-don’t-give-a-flying-fuck-whether-you-like-me-or-not posts out of my system, I moved on and found that my writing had become looser, freer, better.

This is going to look patronizing now matter which way I try to spin it, but Driz has a bucketload of talent - I think he just needs to figure out who he wants to read his work, and how he wants to hold the attention of those readers. To alienate an audience of any kind is one of the more enjoyable aspects of writing, strangely, and though sometimes the wheat does indeed need to be cleared from the chaff, an unrelenting onslaught of slight punches to the gut isn’t quite as effective as one well-aimed hammer-crack to the sternum.

Driz can rankle, oh yes, but he’s sincere, and his misery seems to stem from longing rather than just grouchiness; he wants things to be right, and writes from a hole of contempt because they aren’t. And it’s not like he isn’t funny; I just wish he was funny more.

I’m going with on this one because, on top of everything I’ve mentioned in that mixed-bag of compliments above, he is in possession of a gorgeous header...but knowing that the above-rating might make him next-to-insufferable on our comment-boards, I’m also adding an ‘cause, you know, tough love, brainiac.