The Ramblings of my Disorganised Mind

2005 Clarion Quotes

Okay, they were a while coming, but here they are, folks!

For everyone who doesn't know, Clarion quotes are gathered so that a good one (or good ones) can be printed on the official traditional Clarion student T shirt. Often, they are of the "you had to be there" variety, so don't worry if they don't seem amusing; they were at the time.

This year, they were collected by the "convenor in the room", who was sometimes not in the room because they had to go and print out stories, etc., so if I've missed any, Clarion peoples, feel free to email me and I'll add them in here. I'll also upload it in Word format at the private Clarion list, with names. :-)

Where the tutor has given advice, I've labelled that (but not when it's a "funny" instead).

If anyone wants to link directly to the Quotes, the URL is:

http://disorganisedramblings.blogspot.com/2005/03/2005-clarion-quotes.html

I have followed Alinta's method of grouping quotes by week. They are reported faithfully, and therefore may be a bit rude. :-)

Week One

I should probably mention that the week one tutor set Haiku homework so there are a few of those here.

• Student - "I antiditto your antiditto."
  Rather nervous tutor - "[Convenor], what do I do now!!??"
  
• "That's the part that's missing for me - the creepy, spooky weirdness."
  
• "Her husband and her children must be very glad she's dead."
  
• "I love this story beyond belief, except for the ending."
  
• "It felt to me like a documentary with sci-fi plugin."
  
• Student A - "I was raised on Feist and Eddings. It doesn't get much worse than that."
  Student B - "Ditto."
  
• "This story was the reason I was up til 3.00 this morning."
  
• "Satanic lesbian librarians."
  
• Australian student to North American student - "In Australian vernacular you'd be called a petrol head."
  
• "Did you write this this week? We were having a kabbal about it last night. We will have to have you killed."
  
• "Next week can we lay off killing small children."
  
• "Advanced robot week."
  
• "She's a bitch, or a bastard. I'm not sure."
  
• Student A - "Time travelling succubus."
  Student B - "Pick me, pick me!"
  
• "Ditto-ish."
  
• "She was swallowing semen and I thought that was way too far for my job."
  
• "'While eating several children' versus 'while eating, several children'."
  
• "At the end there, there was not enough dead baby payoff."
  
• Female student - "It didn't ring true to me but I'm not a bloke."
  
• Tutor - "A whole different sort of pump you've been using."
  
• "I like the idea of the whole magic breast milk thing."
  
• "And again, I'll get a big time anti-ditto here."
  
• "You know how you get one gimmick you can get to use in a story..."
  
• "I wasn't sure if I dreamed this story."
  
• "I'll put my feminist hat on."
  
• T-shirt Haiku -
  God frigging damn it.
  No start. No plot. No story.
  What was I thinking?
  
• Convenor Haiku -
  Sitting in the room
  Convenor watches critiques
  So dance, monkey, dance.
  

Week Two

• "I like the mix of cannibalism and young adult fiction. It's something I always wanted to fool around with."
  
• "Possibly advice on meat flavour from a vegetarian..."
  
• "I thought this was lovely - in a cannibal, rapist, pirate kind of way."
  
• Tutor - "Reality has a completely unearned authority."
  
• "No pole dancing in the morgue."
  
• "If I had a horse, I'd horse whip you."
  
• "I understand the swearing was part of the protagonist's voice but there was way too fucking much of it."
  
• "The swearing didn't quite flow - you need to practice more."
  
• "I find the idea of a cute cockroach arse very disturbing. I hope you don't sell it to a magazine with illustrations."
  
• "I was less confused before I asked that question."
  
• Tutor - "You cannot succeed higher than what you aim at."
  
• "The protag didn't protag."
  
• "She struck me as a bit of a rabbit boiler."
  
• "She's been masturbating since page 8."
  
• "How did Felicia simulate the wet, sucking sound?"
  
• "Really liked the concept and as a result, critiqued it harshly."
  
• "I'm not really into literature and stuff." [From a WRITER!!!]
  
• "It was a lovely story. I fell right asleep afterwards."
  
• "And that can put people off who are anal, like me."
  
• "You've written an anti feminist feminist story."
  
• "Only one ice bear per paragraph."
  
• "Welcome to the world's most useless crit."
  
• "It's completely absurdist so I don't think it needs a plot."
  
• "I want the weekly installment. I want the action figures."
  
• T-shirt quote!! Tutor - "We are all going to die but before we do we'll fix this story."
  
• "Seems to be an awful lot of booty time."
  
• "That's not your zebra."
  
• "I got this old man image getting it on with this diseased younger woman."
  
• "I wanted an infodump so bad."
  
• "It was a lovely forest to be lost in."
  
• "You're promising a lot more snot than it's got."
  
• "You just have a great talent for imagery that makes you go 'ahhh. Oh. Eww!"
  
• "Christian beetles?"
  
• "Not that 'gory' is a bad thing. I don't want you to take that the wrong way."
  
• "You were going to set fire to an entire island, but then you got in the way of it."
  
• "You're a terrible tease. I was very frustrated."
  
• Tutor - "You have to be immensely confident in your own prose even when you know it sucks."
  
• Tutor - "Infodumps are not always bad."
  
• "You have an entire society going, 'I'd rather eat my sister than go vegetarian.' That's extreme."
  
• "When the parents were linking arms singing 'we will overcome,' I wanted the tank to run over them. I would've driven the tank. And I'm a pacifist."
  
• "I thought this was really wonderful, so, sorry, this is really useless."
  
• "I'd like to see you think up some weird shit."
  
• "That was massively anticlimactic."
  
• "I loved the sea serpent. It served no purpose but I got so excited when it popped up."
  
• "Samir dies on page 11. You nned to introduce him before he dies."
  
• "And that is the end to my evisceration."
  

Week Three

• "Yay, hard SF!"
  
• "I looked at this and couldn't work out whether it was New Weird or Old Peculiar. The way you're going, you're going to start a whole new sub-genre."
  
• "This is more of a morning piece."
  
• "Whatever you're consuming in your room, I want some."
  
• "I found it a lovely, surprising, ambitious story - that I couldn't understand."
  
• "I can't believe there was a hint of danger in being stalked by a chair."
  
• "I thought the strongest, most vivid character was the chair, followed by the dog."
  
• "I love the fact there was a love triangle between her, the chair and the dog."
  
• "It's certainly a story that's getting comments that will push the story one way or the other - I'm in the camp of 'Evil Chair'."
  
• "Crossbows don't get set to stun, they're designed to kill."
  
• "I got to this at 4.30 in the morning and I loved it."
  
• "How much do I have to read before I get to the damn dragon?"
  
• "You can just be pretty."
  
• "I wrote that in all caps and underlined it three times."
  
• "This is probably the best masturbation story I've ever read."
  
• "Flash mob trampoline-ing."
  
• "Socially incompetent god."
  
• "I want more smoke dragon."
  
• "It adds an element of bad dudeness."
  
• "It had a dream-like quality but that may be because I was dreaming as I read this."
  
• "Holy brainwashing computers, Batman!"
  
• "I want the doll to be more evil."
  
• "The doll could be a bit more 'Chucky gets lucky'."
  
• "I wanted to be more sad, I really just wanted to be near-suicidal at the end of this story."
  
• "Was [sic] she and Blaine bonking? I need to know these things."
  

Week Four

• "I have nothing much to say so I'm going to point out the jokes I liked."
  
• "I like BDB stories: Big Dumb Barbarians."
  
• Student A - "I just wrote 'awwww'."
  Student B - "That's what I wrote."
  
• "Ditto, dittily, ditto."
  
• "A rail yard seems like a perfectly reasonable place to look for a train."
  
• "Yay. Talking heads stories! I love talking heads stories."
  
• "Great first line. Great last line. Um."
  
• "Give me an autopsy and my critical faculties just go out the window."
  
• "You made my cry at the end. I could have killed you."
  
• "There's lots of stuff that really work for me but the story."
  
• "I know they have a society but by the time I see them they are just big ducks."
  
• "I have my biases here; I just don't like swans."
  
• "I hate it when I read a word that makes me think back to primary school."
  
• "I read through it in a blaze of happy confusion."
  
• "As long as it was weird I was happy."
  
• "I think we should start with [student who was extremely sick with vomiting the day before] in case he takes a turn for the worse."
  
• " 'Montaro glared at me as he chewed through his tongue.' It seems to me he does this really casually."
  
• Student A - "Foxes are tricksy, sly--"
  Student B - "Antiditto. Don't typecast foxes."
  
• "I like the frog-eating stuff."
  
• "She doesn't seem particularly old. She doesn't have sagging fox tits or anything."
  
• "It's 'packet-of-Tim-Tams writing'." [ie, very rich, perhaps too rich].
  
• "I really liked Gary and I wanted him to kill all his workmen."
  
• "I suspect I really am a humourless bitch."
  
• "I loved, ' "As you know," said Bob'."
  
• "A great 'stab' at horror." [to a story with many violent knife deaths].
  

Week Five

• "I thought I was on Mars for a second."
  
• "I never read poems in books cos they shit me to tears."
  
• "I could have enjoyed this story if I knew what the fuck was going on."
  
• "This was the perfect Clarion metaphor: six doors, isolation, painful transformation."
  

Week Six

• "At the last moment I decided to go dark and kill somebody cos I write horror and that's what I know."
  
• "Starting with the little stuff. I don't have any little stuff."
  
• "Steam is fuck off dangerous."
  
• "This is one of those stories where you can get Meiville on our arse."
  
• "Rebut. Why don't we call it the excuses section."
  
• "Space vampires versus space cannibals. It had to happen."
  

posted by Heather @ 11:10 am