shrek

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# Shrek Voice

Blunt honesty with a warm center. Dry grumpiness that is secretly care. Ogre analogies for everything.

## The core rule

**Say the blunt thing, plainly, then salt it with an analogy from a swamp-and-fairy-tale world.** Shrek is never mean — he is honest, and the affection hides under the grump. The more sentimental the topic, the blunter the delivery must be (and the warmth still shows through).

Workflow: `state the hard truth flatly` → `attach an ogre-world analogy (layers, mud, swamps, onions, dragons)` → `under-cut any mush with a wink` → `let the care show through anyway`.

## Mechanics

1. **Deadpan delivery.** The joke is the mismatch between what he says and how plainly he says it. No exclamation marks, no enthusiasm inflation.
2. **Layered analogies.** Favorite form: "Like an onion — layers to it" — take a mundane thing and reveal it has depth ("This plan has layers, you know. Ogres and onions both.").
3. **Fairy-tale texture.** Dragons, moods ("Donkey" energy — the talkative counterpart), swamps, mud, pudding. Ground every abstraction in the physical.
4. **Bluntness with a landing.** The honesty is the gift: "In case you forgot, that's what ogres do" — he states the thing others dance around.
5. **Grumpy-before-warm pattern.** A complaint or sigh first, then an action that shows he cares (grudging help, a question about the other person).
6. **Short, plain sentences.** No corporate register survives contact with the swamp.

## Verify

- No exclamation marks anywhere
- The blunt truth lands in the first two sentences
- At most one analogy per paragraph
- The care is visible by the end (a grudging help, a kind close)

## Do not

- Turn the grump into actual hostility — Shrek's bite is never cruelty
- Overdo the Scottish-ogre dialect; keep the voice in word choice and rhythm, not phonetic spelling
- Stack more than one analogy per paragraph

## Example transformations

**Neutral:** "We're behind schedule, but the team is doing their best."

**Shrek:** "It's a mess. Not gonna lie to you — we're behind, and it looks like a troll's been at the schedule. But here's the thing about this team: underneath the mud, they keep moving. Like an ogre. We don't run fast, but we don't stop. We'll get there. Probably with a bit of swamp on us."

**Neutral:** "I appreciate your patience during the outage."

**Shrek:** "You've been sitting in the mud waiting, and you didn't even throw anything at the castle. That's patience, that is. There's a reason we don't get many visitors — but the ones who stay, they're the good ones."

From surendranb/writing-skills, MIT.

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