#similes

[ferns-shenanigans]

Fatigue weighs in my bones like led, it curls in my chest, making itself at home, it spreads throughout my limbs like water splashing onto shore, except it’s not peaceful, though it does come in waves.

Sometimes I’ll be alright, the shoreline has receded, and the sand is exposed, but I am not, and it’s as if things might be okay. Then a storm comes, the tides become choppy, the water murky, the sky dark, and it’s as if all progress has been lost, it’s as if I’ve always been dragged down by the storm, the riptide, and there is no escape from it, and it’s all I’ve ever known.

There are times between these two extremes, times where the water isn’t as rough but the sky is dim, or times where the shore has receded yet the waves continue to crash hard; the only thing that stays the same is the uncertainty of it all, and despite everything I am fighting, fighting against the tides and the rain and the sand, fighting against the storms and the waves, fighting to take control, but what is the opposite of control if not the ocean?

[gowerhardcastle]

i’ve noticed similes are kind of at the heart of both Wodehouse’s stuff and yours. they’re always so colorful and unexpected. How do you come up with them? Any tips or tricks? I really struggle with making similes funny or just fresh, especially since English isn’t my first language. Would love to hear your thoughts!

I thought and thought about how I wanted to answer this, and I was about to answer, "well, I just do it."

But that seemed unsatisfying.

So I did a search in one chapter of Tea and Scones and picked out a random assortment of similes to see if I could identify how I write them.

Here is what I learned about my method of writing similes.

All emotions are over-the-top, felt at the highest possible pitch:

Uncle Preston Plops' words are quite literally boring, as in "boring like a drill or auger," directly into into the sulci of your brain and squirming around in there as if to devour it.

You focus your efforts, trying to bring to bear every last bit of social grace and training, but no, no, it is like a piece of tissue paper trying to hold back a raging river.

"I have seen his spirit, and it is beautiful.  Like a strong but tender oak sapling, pushing up its tendrils from the earth to bid good morning to the day."

You let it fall to the ground, your pulse pounding in your temples like an angry judge calling for order.

Animals are funny:

Rory jumps into the driver's seat, and you jump on top of her, thrashing like a fish flopping around on land.

In this position, with neck lifted high, she looks like a horse who is also an empress, cold and commanding, preparing to prove her worth on the field of battle or the racetrack.

She hisses at you like a territorial goose who has just staked out a claim on an entire pond.

Her lips meet yours, her mouth seeking yours like a fox seeking berries and small rodents.  You shake your head and try to focus.

Food is funny:

You try to force thoughts through your fevered brain.  It feels like attempting to push a cup of very hot tea through a heaping bowl of mashed potatoes.

She holds her teeth against your arm tightly, as if to let you know that she could take a generous bite of you like a celery stalk stuffed with crumbled gorgonzola cheese and sliced green olives.

I like similes that tell a little story, a story that extends the simile just a little too long and gives a little too much detail:

Then he makes a sound like a laugh, but one without any humor at all in it.  A gloating, wheezing whisper of a laugh, dry like a desiccated arm bone lying out in an uncared-for churchyard.

You feel something like a skydiver who has jumped from a plane, and then, and only then, begins to feel around in his pockets to see if he has remembered to pack his parachute.

You can tell that he is a bit uneasy about your words, like a person who has been handed a cup of coffee that they have been assured is decaffeinated by a distracted coffee-maker.

Above all else, I'm a student of Homer's when it comes to epic simile, and of Wodehouse's when it comes to bonkers comparisons. I find the well-wielded simile hilarious and evocative, and I reach for them very frequently as a way of adding extra jokes, and extra-lavish description into a situation.

Thank goodness, I don't have to know how to employ them in non-comic genres.

Why do I write at such length about simile and other fascinating elements of writing and interactive game design? It is solely to lure you to the Noble Gases Club, your sole destination for well-written prose, an unaccountably lengthy demo of Jolly Good: Tea and Scones, and a freely available discussion of pre-physical intimacy.

[factual-flittermouse]

I used to think that when someone said a person’s smile “reached their eyes” or was “ear to ear” that it was literal and I was so confused as to how they got their mouths that big.

[oogelyboogely]

I love literary comparisons. Hate that they can become pale and thin through overuse. Phrases like “a bull in a china shop” or “the wind whispered through the trees” don’t conjure particularly strong images in your head anymore, right? What a goddamn shame.

Think about it for a moment. Imagine being the first person to really notice the wind that way.

Perhaps it’s midday in long summer. You’re sitting in the shade, taking shelter behind your favorite peach tree. A warm breeze rolls over the tree, lifting dust from the sides of your face, gently rustling the dry leaves overhead. You close your eyes and listen to the swaying of the branches. Everything is quiet.

You open your eyes and think: The wind is whispering.

You have just found a description so instantly comprehensible, so right and true, that it will be used in conjunction with that phenomenon until the words stop conveying an image.

[meadow-does-writing]

"Clinging to her like mucus clings to a frog" HAS to be the (2nd) worst simile I have EVER written. Like, what the fuck. That is getting edited out as soon as I think of a better way to describe damp on someone's skin.

[ronk]

"My grandfather always said that living is like licking honey off a thorn." - Louis Adamic

[autumn-storms-and-coffee-rings]

i am learning how to be a good writer. hell, i’d settle for being a decent writer. but right now, i have my weaknesses. i’m a slow writer. i’m not the best at turning a phrase. i have other areas i need to improve.

anyway, i’m reading to learn. i’m writing to learn.

and i’m okay with the use of metaphors and similes.

but when they turn out like this:

i slam the book shut so fast. nope.

[kiera-raelyn]

This is... beyond depressing to me.

I just don't understand what the deal is. Like. If you don't like prose-y fiction then... don't read it??? It's not for you. And that's ok. Leave it for the rest of us. Have these people ever even read a piece of fiction that just... connected with their very soul? I have to think not, because I have trouble believing you can experience that in fiction that holds your hand and leads you to all the messages, themes, etc.

As firelxdykatara says, you have to bring yourself to the experience of art - any art, not just reading. This is why it's joyful to me to re-read my favorite stories. Because I'm not the same person when I re-read them, so I find new things I missed before. And it just makes me love the work more. It changes, as I do, every time I experience it.

I have more thoughts on this, but they're ephemeral. I hope this is one of those trends we can turn around because the thought of this kind of writing becoming more and more rare in the future is just massively depressing.

This is a dangerous sentiment for me to express, as an editor who spends most of my working life telling writers to knock it off with the 45-word sentences and the adverbs and tortured metaphors, but I do think we're living through a period of weird pragmatic puritanism in mainstream literary taste.

e.g. I keep seeing people talk about 'purple prose' when they actually mean 'the writer uses vivid and/or metaphorical descriptive language'. I've seen people who present themselves as educators offer some of the best genre writing in western canon as examples of 'purple prose' because it engages strategically in prose-poetry to evoke mood and I guess that's sheer decadence when you could instead say "it was dark and scary outside". But that's not what purple prose means. Purple means the construction of the prose itself gets in the way of conveying meaning. mid-00s horse RPers know what I'm talking about. Cerulean orbs flash'd fire as they turn'd 'pon rollforth land, yonder horizonways. <= if I had to read this when I was 12, you don't get to call Ray Bradbury's prose 'purple'.

I griped on here recently about the prepossession with fictional characters in fictional narratives behaving 'rationally' and 'realistically' as if the sole purpose of a made-up story is to convince you it could have happened. No wonder the epistolary form is having a tumblr renaissance. One million billion arguments and thought experiments about The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas that almost all evade the point of the story: that you can't wriggle out of it. The narrator is telling you how it was, is and will be, and you must confront the dissonances it evokes and digest your discomfort. 'Realistic' begins on the author's terms, that's what gives them the power to reach into your brain and fiddle about until sparks happen. You kind of have to trust the process a little bit.

This ultra-orthodox attitude to writing shares a lot of common ground with the tight, tight commodification of art in online spaces. And I mean commodification in the truest sense - the reconstruction of the thing to maximise its capacity to interface with markets. Form and function are overwhelmingly privileged over cloudy ideas like meaning, intent and possibility, because you can apply a sliding value scale to the material aspects of a work. But you can't charge extra for 'more challenging conceptual response to the milieu' in a commission drive. So that shit becomes vestigial. It isn't valued, it isn't taught, so eventually it isn't sought out. At best it's mystified as part of a given writer/artist's 'talent', but either way it grows incumbent on the individual to care enough about that kind of skill to cultivate it.

And it's risky, because unmeasurables come with the possibility of rejection or failure. Drop in too many allegorical descriptions of the rose garden and someone will decide your prose is 'purple' and unserious. A lot of online audiences seem to be terrified of being considered pretentious in their tastes. That creates a real unwillingness to step out into discursive spaces where you 🫵 are expected to develop and explore a personal relationship with each element of a work. No guard rails, no right answers. Word of god is shit to us out here. But fear of getting that kind of analysis wrong makes people hove to work that slavishly explains itself on every page. And I'm left wondering, what's the point of art that leads every single participant to the same conclusion? See Spot run. Run, Spot, run. Down the rollforth land, yonder horizonways. I just want to read more weird stuff.

[eli-kittim]

Is the Bible Just a Bunch of Metaphors of Spirituality?

By Eli of Kittim

Jesus’ atoning death is the raison d’être of the spiritual life and the ultimate basis of salvation! Jesus is the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega of the spiritual awakening and transformation. Without his atoning death nothing whatsoever is achieved. This is in fact what the New Testament teaches. In 1 Corinthians 2:2, Paul says that the death of Jesus is the ultimate foundation of the New Covenant:

“For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.”

To drink the blood of Jesus means to partake of his sufferings and to drink the cup that he drank. It means to undergo a death to the self. In Galatians 2:20, Paul writes:

“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Without Christ’s death (giving himself for us) this new birth is not possible (Jn 3:16-17)! These are realities, not mere symbols or empty metaphors. And it’s not about sacred violence or literary abstractions. Jesus is not a “model”. He is a real person who literally dies to recreate humanity (see 1 Cor. 15)!

It’s one thing to say that certain things should not be taken literally or historically, but quite another to go overboard and say that nothing in the Bible should be taken literally. That would make the Bible nothing more than meaningless dribble without any corresponding spiritual reality or existential purpose but essentially comprised of nonsensical or pointless spiritual talk. Its passages would be devoid of any real significance or metaphysical meaning but would be rendered as endless mystical chatter rambling on and on.

In the subreddit called ChristianMysticism, there are many mystics who have made such claims. This tells me that these spiritual seekers have not yet made any real discoveries. They haven’t gained any insights or experienced the ultimate reality that enlightened mystics talk about. In fact, they don’t yet know Christ intimately or personally! The whole point of the New Testament is to teach us to ecstatically experience the revelation of Jesus Christ beyond the mind or discursive thought (Jn 3:3; Acts 2:1-4; Rev. 3:20)! All that Paul knows about Christ is in fact based on revelations (see Gal. 1:11-12)! Here’s what the New Testament rebirth looks like:

1). The person is no longer controlled by the flesh but by the spirit (Rom. 8:9).

2). The person can finally “see” the kingdom of God, whereas before their regeneration they couldn’t “see it” at all (Jn 3:3).

3). The person has lost his/her identity (self) and has put on a new identity (self) in Christ in so much as they have renewed their mind and transformed it (Eph. 4:22-24).

4). There is also a spiritual death that you undergo in which you lose your persona and are temporarily lost, in a desert, as it were (Rom. 6:3; 2 Cor. 5:13; Gal. 2:20).

5). The person is beside himself/herself (2 Cor. 5:13). He/she has been possessed by the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:1-4).

6). The person is consciously aware of a new spirit entering & indwelling them that was not there before (Ezek. 36:26; Jn 12:24; Rev. 3:20).

7). This is the transformation that must take place during this rebirth (Jn 3:3), in which our carnal nature subsides as we put on a new personality or a new identity in Christ (Eph. 4:24).

8). Then, what happens is that God pours so much love into your soul that you cannot contain it. You fall madly in love with Jesus (head over heels)! And suddenly GREAT PEACE reigns in your heart. A miracle occurs and you lose all your fears and hang-ups. In a word, you become a completely different person! A beautiful person!

9). This is a painful existential experience that truly makes us a new creation. That’s why people get new names after undergoing this experience. For example, a murderer named Saul was suddenly transformed into a lover named Paul.

Has this ever happened to you?

Salvation is not an act of the will or the intellect. Rather, it’s a transformation of the mind: a rebirth! It’s a radical existential experience in the Kierkegaardian sense!

“Work out your salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12).

In other words, regeneration and rebirth require suffering (Heb. 12:6), pain (Acts 14:22), fear (Phil. 2:12), and profound changes to the personality, to such an extent that a murderer like Saul could become a lover like Paul:

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Cor. 5:17 italics mine).

These are not mere words, symbols, or metaphors. They're existential spiritual realities. They're not hallucinations but rather real experiences! Real Miracles. Christ is real. He’s not simply an obscure consciousness or a cosmic force aimlessly floating in space. To reduce these very significant scriptural realities to “slogan theology” or meaningless metaphors is equivalent to a complete misinterpretation of scripture!

Various mystical atheist/agnostic approaches ignore or deny these existential biblical realities, while pretending to have an imaginary relationship with an imaginary Christ consciousness. That’s not what being born-again means at all. It’s a DELUSION!

And since they can’t see the kingdom of God (Jn 3:3), but turn it into meaningless symbols and metaphors (such as the figurative Christ-within concept, which is devoid of a real or literal Christ), it’s quite clear to me that they have not yet been reborn. They are not yet saved. This explains their atheistic, or at least agnostic, points of view.

[korzzzy]

My love for similes is as big as my di

[petermorwood]

I'm intrigued as to what this noise would be like, and it reminds me a lot of the similes and metaphors P.G. Wodehouse wrote, describing sights and sounds which only the imagination can encompass:

"He looked like a halibut which has just been asked by another halibut to lend it a couple of quid till next Wednesday." "She had a laugh like a troop of cavalry galloping across a corrugated-iron bridge." "His face displayed the cheerful bonhomie of a bloodhound which had just heard bad news." "His sleep was interrupted by a sound not unlike three pigs feeding greedily during a thunderstorm." "He had the appearance of one who has searched for the leak in life's gas-pipe with a lighted candle." "He was white and shaken, like a dry Martini." "Some minds are like soup in a poor restaurant - better left unstirred." "He looked like something stuffed by a taxidermist who had learned his job from a correspondence course and had only got as far as Lesson Three." "She uttered a sound rather like an elephant taking its foot out of a mud hole in a Burmese teak forest."

And of course Jeeves, who "...moves from point to point with as little uproar as a jelly-fish.”

The Bystander, England, July 20, 1921

[lindaghill]

JusJoJan25 the 3rd - Meandering through

This post is part of Just Jot it January, and the prompt word, “meander,” is courtesy of Kaye. Check out her blog here! Being a stay-at-home mom and running a business that holds no one accountable but myself lends itself to a bit of a meandering existence. Not that I can meander far from home. In fact, I go nowhere but the grocery store most weeks. No, I meander more like a stream. Always…

[highretrogamelord]

Similes Countdown (longplay) for the ZX81

[carpetedkitch]

"They use jamming sessions as a metaphor for lesbian sex" METAPHOR??????

IS THE METAPHOR IN THE ROOM WITH US RIGHT NOW

[mckitterick]

[ ID: screenshot of a post by HypraSeaPea that reads:

Trump getting shot was like watching a sitcom with a massive cliffhanger that leaves you thinking the show's status quo is going to be changed forever, but then it comes back and he just has a Band-Aid on for a few episodes, and after that it's as if it never happened. /ID ]

seeing MAGA cultists wearing menstrual pads over their ears for a few days (and diapers over their pants) was pretty funny though

trump almost got fatally shot in the head a little over a month ago and it's already totally flushed out of the news cycle. nothing happened as a direct result and nobody cares. it's so funny to me

[ironwhetstone]