(no subject)

[flemmings]

Why do people indicate pairing and rating for a drabble? Is some fangirl going to go ballistic about 'you made me waste 30 seconds of my time reading a pairing I *loathe*!!???' Or have the wackymono not realized that stating half the information gleanable from a drabble beforehand immensely reduces the punch of the story? 'This is a joke about a dog who walks into a bar, and the punchline is a pun. So a dog walks into a bar...'

Comments

[xsmoonshine.livejournal.com]

Ahaha. You made me paranoid! I went and checked my drabbles. ^^;

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Sorry. That wasn't addressed to the many drabblers I know personally, just an irritated aside about something I read in a community.

It reminded me of a Cavafy poem I vaguely recall, based on a line in a Byzantine history. I think the original line was the title and Cavafy then restated the thought in modern Greek, which is doubtless very effective if you know Greek. (Eg title is a line from Piers Ploughman, which is /impenetrable/ middle English, poem restates it in modern: no problem.) But Cavafy's hapless translator had to turn both parts into English and used the same words to do it in, which left you reading the same sentence twice and going Yeah, so what?