Sour grapes

[devi]

The shortlist of winners for a story competition I entered has just come out. It is probably Bad and Wrong of me to be looking over the list of titles and thinking an awful lot of them are trite-sounding rubbish. I mean, "Somebody's Mother"! "The Summer's Day"! "Saturday's Kiss"! What is it with the 's thing? And "The Great Plains of Africa", ew. I really hope that's meant ironically. Though "The Happiest Mosquitoes in Breson" does sound quite interesting.

Fear Me, competition judges! Pass me over and I'll... I'll... mock your shortlist on my blog! Oh noes!

(Mine was called "We Wait In Joyful Hope". I like nicking chunks of prayers.)

Oh well. Insert standard grey-weather/stuckness/eye-strain grump here, then it'll be out of the way.

Comments

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Hmm. It'd be interesting to hear what others who don't know the context think of it. I find it very hard to separate it from the context in my head.

Does it really lead you to think that the story will be straightforwardly about some people waiting joyfully and hopefully for something nice?

[several-bees.livejournal.com]

I wasn't familiar with the context. It didn't sound "straightforwardly about some people waiting joyfully and hopefully for something nice", though that might be because it was in a livejournal entry about other people's annoying titles, I suppose. It did sound slightly vapid, though. I think most longer-than-a-couple-of-words quotation-y titles do, when free of context.

[ravenblack.livejournal.com]

The same amount so as Grandma's Bloomers or whatever that one was called, mm. Not knowing that you wrote it, of course, but if you'd put that title amongst the horrible ones, it would have looked horrible too.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Which reminds me that I shouldn't be assuming the stories suck on the basis of their titles, of course :)

[evilrobotshane.livejournal.com]

I didn't know the context and concur that it seems pretty catchy and meaningless.

Now I do and think you should be in the Saw Doctors, you big post-Catholic you.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Catchy? Do you mean un-catchy? I think catchy's a good thing...

[evilrobotshane.livejournal.com]

It is a good thing. It's like Where Angels Fear to Tread, or Ashes to Ashes, or Deus Ex, or The Harder They Fall. A bit of something, that doesn't make any sense out of context but sounds cool. And possibly has deeper meaning if you know the context. Tread lightly, says Sean Bean.