Okay /lit/, stick it to me. I'm looking for opinions o

Prose seemed dull to me.
The ending is shit because the main character is a bit of a miserable shit. He's making a really edgy observation and that'd be fine if there was any deeper thought put into it but he just sort of chimps and out and storms off without reaching a gratifying conclusion. That might have been the point but I'm too autistic to tell.

The writing itself is fine. Go write something in the same genre with a mary sue main character and you'll make some money.

i don't get the ending at all. what happened?

also, is the shitty, loose grammar deliberate characterisation? it seems strange put together with his wide vocabulary, unless it's meant to convey that he's a lazy, messed up dude with a lot of weird knowledge from wandering.

>>8868453

OP here, thanks for reading.

I don't dig how the writing can be fine when the prose is dull. Would be great if you could elaborate on that.

>>8868472
Well, he found a couple of survivors who just kept living like before. They still work, they still got money and choose routine over freedom.

About the grammar: I'm not a native English speaker, so that might have to do with that. I wanted to express that he's basically a bum without any motivation, but then slowly changes into someone who might actually know what to do with his life. What exactly would you change?

Thanks for reading to you, too.

>>8868472
The way I understood it, the MC found a community of people that setup a capitalistic system nearly identical to pre-apocalypse society. Then he gets really upset that they aren't going full tribal because he's a juvenile anarchist and he fucks off into the wilderness.

>>8868493
>how can writing be fine when prose is dull
Literary garbage passes as 'fine' right now so even though your prose is dull it's still passable and the average reader would enjoy it.

>>8868497
Well that's perhaps the most crushing critique I've gotten so far. What's dull about it? Is this a general problem or did you find some passages better than others?

>>8868507
It read very matter-of-factly to me. Like you're just trying to paint a picture in my head without thinking about what that picture is supposed to be conveying.

My critique isn't nearly as harsh as it sounds. Your prose is easily above average in terms of what the average reader is expecting. My standards are just too high.

>>8868510
it's not really about the prose, but the content

the story is nihilistic at its core. a lot of people die, for no reason. the protag isn't even self aware of the magnitude of what was lost. he dreams of apocalypse, without knowing the real meaning of the concept, only desiring it because of a juvenile need to get back at his school bullies. but it's this same estrangement with his peers, family, and probably society in general that ensures that he can't get satisfaction from it being destroyed. their corpses don't even shock him. he's disinterestedly disgusted with them the same way one is disgusted by dirty dishes. and so they just litter the streets, matter of factly, having no effect on the reader.

you could probably salvage this by introducing elements of danger. maybe he tries to drive recklessly and narrowly survives. maybe he trips on glass and gets cut, and cries out for help and realizes he is alone. as it stands he doesn't encounter any serious challenges that risks his life.

i think you're trying to make a satirical jab at modern man's atomized, disconnected mode of life, and how he seeks to "transcend" himself through prepackaged self improvement routines in the absence of a higher purpose, but the story doesn't seem to be self aware of it, because it doesn't seem to rise above the level of the mc. which makes it as juvenile as him. at the end, he doesn't even learn anything about himself and the world, aside from his supposed library knowledge that is stated but not shown.

>>8868690

I feel as if I've just been analyzed by a shrink.

But seriously, I really could squeeze something out of that. I had hoped to move the focus away from the mc, but failed utterly. Your insights into his psyche never occured to me on this level. That, plus your opinion on the ending, might lead to a better draft of this piece, even though I'm not a fan of the idea to put him in danger.

Thanks.