drawing possibly one of the funniest moments in the book. chain… must chain……. quote below !!!!!

drawing possibly one of the funniest moments in the book. chain… must chain……. quote below !!!!!

my mom is in fact aware that dandelions exist. she temporarily forgot the name and there was some miscommunication.

the truth is actually weirder

she’s aware dandelions look like this

she is familiar with this flower. she knows the name of this flower. she declines to believe, however, that these are also dandelions

she does not believe these are the same plant. I tried to explain, and she thought I was either misinformed or lying. so I asked her what exactly did she think the yellow ones were called?

gosh I enjoy this website

YOU DO IT ON ONE OF THESE! OBVIOUSLY!!!

and that brown end? the hard bit? pencil sharpener. or sharpened with a blade. are you following me? now, attach six of those to a harpy.

My gut response to the description is that it feels bad. However, something I am willing to admit is that it's very evocative of the shape of the claws. Bananas are known for being particularly curvy, and I think an emphasis on the curve of a bird's talon can be a good extra flair as opposed to a plain "claws shot toward me."

The problem is that any added sense of vivid danger from emphasizing the curve of the claws is lost in the comparison. Bananas are notoriously not sharp, and are in fact very easily squished (even by accident).

The sentence tries to amend that failing in the imagery by specifying the bananas are "sharpened," but that's a) a confusing image because no one does that and b) undermines the sense of danger even more than if it were just "claws like bananas," because most would imagine the process of "sharpening" a banana to turn it to mush (as nicely demonstrated by @transastronautistic in zir addition).

(photos from their attempt at sharpening a banana (and no, the attempt on the frozen banana wasn't much better, even if it wasn't mush))

If we wanted to make a comparison that emphasized the curvature of the talons without diminishing the sense of danger, perhaps we could go for something like a sickle. It's sharp, strong, and has an even more distinct curve than a banana.

HOWEVER.

"Like sharpened bananas" isn't inherently an unusable description. Depending on the context and what the author is trying to achieve, it could very much work.

I'm assuming this is for the sequel to Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die, which is a very funny book that often derives its humor from overly drawn out or absurd descriptions.

(All the chapter titles are like this, and it's not just funny, it also pays off in a cool way later in the book)

The oxymoronic nature of "sharpened bananas" lends itself well to this tone, along with how it characterizes the POV that is producing this out of place imagery. I don't know the context of this scene, but if it's a largely comedic one with little sense of danger, being narrated by a character who is either so food or sex obsessed that their descriptions are hijacked by bananas even in danger, then this descriptor works! It's descriptive of the claws and especially the POV character, with the added benefit of being a very memorable and funny line.

However, if this is supposed to be a scene where you want the reader to be genuinely concerned for the well being of the POV character, then I don't think it works. The contradictory imagery immediately takes the reader out of the scene, because they have to stop their reading flow to understand what the claws are even supposed to look like, and keeping up momentum is really important to pacing action scenes.

the snake was not a liar. texture is like, super important to me and raw eggs are very Texture so i had another one, and then another one, and then another one, and eventually i ran out of eggs.

i had like, fifteen raw eggs.

i didnt really know how to explain this momentary madness to my wife, so my Plan was to put all the eggshells into a grocey bag, and then throw that grocery bag in the dumpster, and if she never noticed that would be Excellent and if she noticed immediately i could lie and say that the eggs went bad.

except i cant lie very good, and of course with murphys law being such, i got salmonella.

so i threw up a lot and my wife asked me what poisoned me so and i tried very hard to dodge the question but i was oozing shame like oil from a room temperature cheese and eventaully i gave in and told her everything and to her enormous credit she was more flabbergasted than actually upset. she did make me promise to not eat any more raw eggs, which i have stuck to, and she gives me weird looks during nature documentaries now as if desire was the only thing keeping me from eating thousands of pounds of krill anyway i made a joke earlier about being able to eat my age in eggs and my sister in law in law made a drawing to comemorate the moment and also because it was my birthday. she's excellent. thank you 10000000% @cintailed. you should all visit her page and admire her work.