A Love Divided by Thaddeus Halstead, a Great Gatsby fanfiction

I've found a travesty of a story - A Love Divided - which purports to go so far as to rewrite the ending to The Great Gatsby. How dare they?

Quote :

He couldn't get Nick's last words out of his head: "Your worth the whole damn lot of them."

No, no, no. F. Scott Fitzgerald was a master of the English Language. You do him not only a disservice, you all but mock him by using such awful grammar.

Quote :

That meant a lot to Gatsby. No one had ever really complimented him before. Sure, everyone had thanked him for his parties - at least those who knew who he was - and for showing them around or taking them to dinner, but no one had genuinely complimented him.

This type of analysis isn't supposed to actually be in your story. It's supposed to be left up to the reader to read your story and draw these conclusions. You haven't the faintest idea how to write.

Quote :

"Daisy... Daisy... How I love to love my Daisy..." Gatsby murmured aloud and hauntingly.

As opposed to what? Murmuring silently? That's impossible. It's also out of character. It's just out of character enough to be odd but just in character enough to pretend to be an analysis of Gatsby. Awful.

Quote :

A jarring crash broke the silence and shards of glass flew in all directions. One piece clinked off of the table and imbedded itself into Gatsby's cheek.

Unless you applied an unnatural amount of force to whatever object this is, physics don't work that way.

Quote :

Gatsby's fingers delicately touched the front of the picture, careful not to cut himself again.
"Now dead. Just like the rest of them." Gatsby muttered bitterly.

Full of pretend depth, unlike the true depth in the Great Gatsby. You're less than a shallow imitation of F. Scott Fitzgerald. I wouldn't even go so far as to give you a proper comparison to him. Ridiculous.

Quote :

With tears still leaking from his eyes, he stepped into the hall. Through the window, the tall grass waved farewell in the wind. Gatsby sighed again and carefully walked up the winding stairs to his bedroom. The finely polished rail was smooth underneath his lingering hand, as he walked up step by step. Memories flooded in, making him gasp and smile at the same time.
In his elegant bedroom, with its bed and fluffed up pillows, and its neatly drawn curtains, Gatsby grabbed his bathing suit and in no time was changed and ready for the pool. He lay the pink suit across the bed and noted that the wet spots were now almost completely dried up.
Sprinting down the stairs, Gatsby, graceful as a dancer, jumped into the shimmering crystalline water, soaking the towel laying keenly on the lawn chair adjacent to the pool.
As the sun sank below the horizon forming all shades of yellow and red and purple across the sky like a painting, Wilson was creeping through the lush foliage that surrounded the mansion.
Just as Wilson was brushing his way through the hedge, Gatsby remembered that he had never gotten a call from Nick. He stopped doing backstrokes and wondered what he was doing at noon.

Way too much detail for so little action. The reason F. Scott Fitzgerald went into such depth of description was because everything in The Great Gatsby had at least one kind of double meaning to it.

Quote :

Daisy ran up the drive right towards Gatsby. That was when all havoc let loose.
"Gatsby!" she cried, her arms open wide, reminiscent of Gatsby opening his arms to the green light so long ago.
"Daisy!" he answered.
A shot cut them off, and Daisy fell, a smoking hole in her chest.
Gatsby turned to the perpetrator, a wave of sickly anger and fear and surprise on his face.
"What have you done?!" he screamed.
Wilson answered in a shaky, husky voice. "I just killed Gatsby," and leveled the gun to his head, and blew his mind out.
Standing in disbelief, and having not heard a word that the killer had spoken, Gatsby knelt by Daisy. He held her close in his arms and wept bitterly.
"Daisy... Daisy..." he moaned over and over, half hysterical.
Daisy's face was pale, the colour having drained out when the bullet hit. She was feeling no pain, her whole body was becoming numb. It spread from the bullet wound outward.
Gatsby cradled her dying body, muttering maniacally. She coughed hollowly and struggled for words. Her breath was coming in short rasps, but her words were clear.
"My... my love. I didn't... didn't mean..."
Gatsby shushed her.
She didn't notice. "I didn't want to... to leave you... I... I..." She never finished her sentence. The flames in her eyes had died out, they were still now, and forever would be.

This is so clunky and cluttered that it's almost impossible to tell what happened. I only figured out that Gatsby – not Daisy – survived by reading the next section of the story.

By writing a short story where Daisy – not Gatsby – died, you have completely changed the meaning of the entire novel. You have robbed it of what it sought to do. It is no longer about the American Dream, it is a muddled tale of no great significance. I am insulted for F. Scott Fitzgerald.

You're the opposite of funny and that makes me a sad panda :<

OMG, this is awful. Who would bother to write Great Gatsby fanfiction? It wasn't even a good book... It wasn't as bad as Shakespeare, but it was still boring as all heck.

I'm starting to worry that you're for real.

Lolita? Is that you? [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

I apologise if you don't like my review. Lolita was a great novel but I fail to see what it has to do with the topic here.

Is this person for real?

Alea Iacta Est wrote:

I've found a travesty of a story - A Love Divided - which purports to go so far as to rewrite the ending to The Great Gatsby. How dare they?

To be honest, I found the Great Gatsby to be one of the most boring pieces of literature I've ever read. Which leads me to the book's central meaning: it's about boring rich people living boring, trite, and meaningless lives. I'm sure F. Scott Fitzgerald had some sense when he wrote it- hell, it's preaching against the excess of the 1920s, but it's one of the most boring books I've ever read. I can't relate to the characters at all. It's like being stuck in a room with people who are all "WELL I AM INTELLIGENT AND YOU- POO ON YOU, PROLE! YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT GOOD LITERATURE IS AND GOD FORBID YOU HAVE ANY FUN! FUN IS NON-CANON!"

That's when I crash their party.

Anyway, Alea... may I call you "Alex"?

Quote :

No, no, no. F. Scott Fitzgerald was a master of the English Language. You do him not only a disservice, you all but mock him by using such awful grammar.

You're always on a loop. "Oh, the grammar is awful!" Excuse me while I dangle my participles in your fucking face.

Yes, I believe in layman's terms it'd be called "teabagging."

In b4 "Oh I'm offended!" reply.

Huh. I guess I'm the only person in this thread that actually enjoyed this book. I can see how it would put some people to sleep, though, but at least it's fairly short, unlike, say, "Crime and Punishment" which had to be boring and long.

But wow, this fic blows.

B-but I loved the Great Gatsby. It's one of my favourite books.
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Nihilist, you just had to phrase that post in such a way that defending the book would make me come off as an elitist asshole, didn't you?