Talk:Fables/@comment-15881997-20130820003933/@comment-24432447-20150202092618

Mr.Zalgopasta:  despite your last comment being over a year ago, I stumbled upon this pasta and felt inclined to comment. I realize that the desire to defend one's writing is incredibly difficult to resist. Admitting that something didn't work as you intended even more so. But this didn't work. Not like you seem to have intended.

When an author writes something, he (usually) intends to communicate certain ideas and themes through structural choices, as well as choices in the plot itself. That these choices further some idea or meaning is the core of authorial intent. Authorial intent is a fine thing; people who ignore it are foolish (though that is a discussion for some other time).

But authorial intent is only an argument that can be effectively used when the choices the author made successfully further the intent of the author. When those devices do not succeed, as is--in my opinion--the case with your story, attempting to deflect that criticism by blaming the reader for not getting it (essentially what you've done in your comment) rings hollow. If the reader is unable to come to the conclusions that you, the author, intends solely from the story itself, then those things you were attempting to do have failed and need to be approached differently.

The main point you make in your comment is difficult to parse. Were you attempting to write a story that begins creepy but ends up being something unexpected? If so, then I would suggest heeding DaleGribble88's (somewhat poorly phrased) advice and increasing some of the creepiness. Or were you, rather, trying to totally subvert the genre of the creepypasta by writing something not at all creepy. If that is the case, may I suggest submitting this to a more appropriate place for such writings, something like "Chicken Soup for the Creepy Pasta Reader's Soul". Because someone coming to a creepypasta wiki is in the right to expect something creepy. (Don't get me wrong:  I'm all for subverting some of the ridiculous tropes that have become codified in creepypastas.  Specifically, I'm all too willing to see an ending that does not imply death or madness.)

I'm not even going to address your point-by-point analysis of your own work's meaning and why you did certain things, because that goes back to what I said above:  if the reader does not get what the author intended solely from the story, then the author has not succeeded in his goals. This applies equally to every one of your points. I can see, reading it after reading your comment, where you tried to do those things. But if your comment wasn't there, I would have had little clue from the story itself.

Again, I realize that the desire to defend one's work is significant, but as a writer it is only through accepting that not all of your works will succeed--at least without significant and lengthy rewrites well beyond what you may have already put into this--that you will get better. Had I read a creepypasta that successfully did all the things you listed as having attempted, I would have read a creepypasta worthy of far more than just a wiki entry.