When you first visit wars of compassion(woc), you can’t help but notice how simple and clean it looks. Empty, in a way, devoid of frills and decorations. Minimalism at its height. Some might find it a sign of the blogger’s incompetency or laziness, but others might, like me, find it refreshing.
woc is not your typical personal blog. There are less things-that-happened and more personal opinions and thoughts on a wide spectrum of things, from The War to music to sex. Another big distinction is that Ryan writes every entry like an essay by itself. He uses a more extensive vocabulary than most bloggers under the ‘personal’ category do, and the effect is at once stiff and formal, and also coherent and charming. The winning point of woc lies in the subtle, sometimes heavily veiled sarcasm and slight exaggerations of Ryan’s entries. He is a little quirky, he is straight-faced deadpan, he is cheeky in a sophisticated way. Occasionally there are pictures that may be related, some quite mysteriously, to the entries. Ryan never captions them. They make a nice distraction on the otherwise barren site, though.
As mentioned, the design of woc is bare, simple black and white. Even the title is just the three words spelled out in plain black font. The archives are located at the bottom of the page, along with a total of three links and a tagboard.
woc is not for everybody, certainly not for those wanting to take a glimpse into a person’s everyday life. It is good, intelligent reading, however, and will bring a chuckle or two.
wars of compassion