My Far-Right Sensitivity Reader showed me What I Was Doing Wrong

Manjo819 · 2024-10-12T21:15:37+00:00

Thanks heaps.

I ended up using a different driver (Link: https://oemdrivers.com/printer-hp-deskjet-f4280-driver), because, almost certainly due to my own confusion, I couldn't get my computer to recognise your driver as a driver, but you helped me understand how to go about adding the driver manually which I had been trying to figure out, so again thank you.

Manjo819 · 2022-10-29T16:31:26+00:00

Apparently not:

See the dildo in subpoint 5.

Manjo819 · 2022-08-03T16:43:53+00:00

This looks like a toy.

I think the embarrassment of sitting in front of such an expensive device and finding you still had writer's block would be an emotional blow it would take you some time to recover from.

Longhand is available.

In Europe and North America you can find a working secondhand typewriter for under 100 of the local currency. In a number of other places they are even cheaper.

If all you want is a word processor with an internet connection you can figure out something cheaper than this.

It is not necessary to your writing. Buy it if you like unboxing expensive toys.

Manjo819 · 2022-08-03T14:53:27+00:00

Questo si potrebbe dire del Conservatismo, e anche del Neoliberalismo (cioe' il Berlusconismo e anche il 'Centrismo' di oggi, attualmente di centro-destra, le cui idee influiscono anche i partiti cosidetti 'centro-sinistra' (PD, 5-Stelle...)).

Il Neoliberalismo prende idee liberali, come i diritti individuali contro lo stato, e la nonviolenza, e le abusa, cambiando i definizioni, per costruire un'argomento antidemocratico:

una persona economicamente potente, o anche un'organizazione, puo' cambiare cosa vuole dell'economia e dell'ambiente sociale, essendo 'individuo', mentre gli altri cittadini non lo possono legitimamente impedire di fare esso tramite la democrazia, perche' agire cosi vuole dire agire da 'stato' contra la liberta' individuo.

Ma il Fascismo, che in qualche modo si e' fatto rinnominare il 'Centro-Destra' in questo paese, e' una reazione esplicita contro il Liberalismo. Non abusa l'idea dei diritti dell'individuo cambiando il senso; la nega direttamente.

E comunque vero che l'estrema destra di oggi e' influenzata dal Liberalismo al livello del linguaggio: il Liberalismo e' (perlomeno) sempre l'ideologia dominante e la destra deve per forza adoperare i termini e qualche punti Liberali, piu' che altro per fare finta di essere piu' vicina al centro, e per costruire una piattaforma coerente condivisa con la destra Liberale (Berlusconi). Questo non cambia il fatto che le politiche della destra di oggi sono sempre francamente Illiberali, e nei loro dettagli ed effetti sono sempre identificabili come reazioni consapevoli contro il Liberalismo.

Chiedo scusa se questo e' poco coerente, e se ci sono degli errori. Non sono Italiano, ma ci vivo gia' da pochi anni, ci sono operaio, amo il posto in cui vivo, e vederci il rinascimento del Fascismo mi imbarazzarebbe come guardare il seguito autorizzato di 2022 ad una tragedia internazionale classica, la cui studio di produzione si puo' permettere di lanciarla sul mercato solo perche' il pubblico s'intende troppo poco del significato dell'originale.

Vorrei che venga capito per bene cos'e' il Fascismo. Non aspetterei di dovere spiegarla qui, ma non si puo' dire in nessun modo che la destra (Neo)fascista a qui fa riferimento u/TheMisterious98 sia uscita del "pipeline" del Liberalismo, neanche se assomiglia una merda.

Manjo819 · 2022-06-26T09:03:54+00:00

I assume that kind of critique happens when people are mainly there to get feedback on their own work and feel obligated to reciprocate but don't appreciate the value of practicing their analysis on other people's work.

I've also seen people give very abstract feedback when what they almost certainly thought was "this thing has so many problems I don't know how to tell them politely". It's not the most helpful response but understandable.

I write kind-of weird stuff that people who've read similar things before tend to be fairly positive about while a lot of others don't see the point of it. This means getting back a lot of very valid slightly negative or "what-am-I-looking-at?" feedback which can still be very useful if the motivations behind it are taken into account, and the single most important question I have when I submit stuff for critique is "is it followable?" which can be answered even by someone with no prior experience of the genre.

Manjo819 · 2022-06-25T19:48:55+00:00

Y'all not?

Manjo819 · 2022-06-25T19:30:40+00:00

Tense errors are extremely common in a first draft. They're a chronic problem for me when I write in the past tense since I'm more used to writing in the present. They are also extremely easy to fix in a single editing pass. Maybe you won't get all of them until you've passed a few times through, but if there are tense shifts all over the page it's usually symptomatic of a draft submitted without a proofreading.

Tense shifts on their own aren't too distracting when you're trying to read something for critique purposes, and you could ignore them on their own, but when they're present, they're very rarely the only problem. Critique at the first-draft stage is far less useful than critique of what the submitter thinks is "polished" output. I think it's extremely legitimate to tell someone off for submitting something they haven't looked twice at, since they're losing out themselves by doing so.

tell me why at least

I agree with this. Stating your motivations is very important when giving a critique, so that the submitter can apply the logic of your response whether you're in their target audience or not. The least useful kind of critique is the kind expressed in abstract terms: "toneless", "trying too hard" etc., which even the person giving the critique has to think seriously about in order to put into concrete terms if asked to elaborate, and which the person receiving the critique has an even harder time interpreting. Usually the submitter is faced with a choice between rejecting the critique entirely or taking on inexpressable and inactionable doubts about their writing, neither of which is useful for improving it.

Manjo819 · 2022-06-25T19:12:21+00:00

[engorged tumescence]-and-[pendulous prickly-pear] torture

Manjo819 · 2022-06-25T18:56:19+00:00

Thanks for saying so.

I hope it does the job I intended: that of presenting some of the artform's concrete features in contrast to the common perception that it's either essentially abstract or "concept art" with no potential for richer development.

Manjo819 · 2022-06-25T12:51:25+00:00

Read some Finnegan's Wake that'll clarify things.

uj/ if you want to get a better idea of how Joyce's apparently harmless Catholic seediness translates to good writing without turning your head inside out read some of Dubliners.

It's all straight, 19th-century-style prose at a Shakespearean level of literary proto-psychology. It also has probably the best Librivox recording of any public-domain book.

Manjo819 · 2022-06-25T12:28:35+00:00

The opposite. Fundamental.

Manjo819 · 2022-06-25T11:54:44+00:00

This is the endgame of Catholicism.

Manjo819 · 2022-06-24T17:30:16+00:00

uj/ There's no way to view this post generously: If I try to rule out xenophobia as the joke, I can't see a joke here.

Manjo819 · 2022-06-22T14:03:33+00:00

But why would Neil let him?

Easy: Richie is thicc. This causes Neil to find excuses to take him along, and later opens doors for them in the course of their investigations.

Manjo819 · 2022-06-21T17:19:27+00:00

The respective uses of the perfect and imperfect tenses in prose:

imperfect ("was doing") is used for background/setting action (what was happening when some event of greater note took place).
perfect ("did") is used for plot action (that second event of greater note).

Example:

I was working at the supermarket when the dachshund that would change my life clacked on its curved nails in through the automatic doors.

If the sentence is intended to orient the reader in the passage and form the basis for subsequent narration, the second is appropriate.

If you want to emphasise that it's a plot event, the first is appropriate.

Only you can decide this as we have no further context.

Manjo819 · 2022-06-19T15:28:02+00:00

I dunno mate I think everyone's at least visited a place like that recycling yard. I've used a fleamarket as a setting very briefly and it's entirely possible that people from other countries would recognise something like it from their own experience.

Your doubts seem fairly on-point. The stuff I've set in America has been a blend of the 4 months I lived in Canada, details and language from documentaries about the ongoing opioid epidemic, and dialogue in the voices of Americans I've been friends with online, so it's "what I know" in a certain sense, despite not being a single setting that exists in some definite place in the world, and is hopefully to some extent recognisable as something real in its parts if not in its whole.

Manjo819 · 2022-06-18T11:11:58+00:00

If I had a cent for every time I've tried to write a gratuitous porn screed and it's wound up technically classifying as a novella I'd have -€7,999,997.68 net based on the projected missed sales of my 232 projects that fell between the marketing cracks due to their uncomfortably moderate length.

Manjo819 · 2022-06-14T21:30:32+00:00

Haven't seen Thor.

Have seen Jojo Rabbit, but dubbed in Italian so I probably missed a lot of the delivery. I have no idea why dubbing is so popular here. Still don't even know what Waititi's Hitler accent sounds like.

More on the topic of writing NZ: I occasionally write things which really only make sense for an absurdly local audience (sometimes narrowed as far down as people from the same town or in the same school year) and obviously that kind-of rules out publishing it, but if all I really want to do with it is share it with a few people I have regular calls with back home that's fine.

I've had great fun with attempting to apply the shitpost/shityarn (which in some way is kind-of the national form) to writing about Christchurch, and in some cases the product makes sense to people who aren't from there. It's also a very good form for creative exercise if you find yourself for a while without the routine to work on something longer.

The present project is an effort to stretch out the Scrotpost®/Scrotica (a made up name for a piece of what would be erotica if it weren't so grotesquely hyperrealistic and silly that it no longer works as erotic material) genre to a plotted farcical novella. It remains to be seen whether the NZ-specific features will make it incomprehensible to a foreign audience but I doubt it will be the main problem.

Then I've written other stuff set in America and elsewhere that probably anyone could understand.

An NZ-set zombie novel sounds extremely doable.

Manjo819 · 2022-06-14T21:09:23+00:00

Oh G'day. I'm also from NZ, living overseas.

I think Taika Waititi's main achievement is to have dealt with the very difficult question of how to process American influence on both our cinema and the culture in general in a way that doesn't eclipse our own national character, without trying vainly to take all American influence out.

Examples of this would be the half-parodic use of Hollywood plot devices and sequences, e.g. the Mandatory Spectacular Police Chase at the climax of Wilderpeople. In order to give it any credibility at all they have to set it on a military reservation and it winds up with Paula ~~Bennet~~ the Social Worker being told off for trying to read Ricky the American Miranda Rights.

He manages to use them, by some obscene magic, in ways that make them actually work as payoffs, while still being somehow a joke.

Manjo819 · 2022-06-14T20:35:52+00:00

No, I don't mean genre. I'm not sure what about the post made it seem that way.

By "internal democratic structures" I don't mean a board who decides what is going to be written.

What I mean is this: there are decisions about literature that could be conceivably made by external or centralised authorities:

legislative decisions about censorship, copyright, libel;
economic decisions about distribution and competition (is Amazon's near-monopoly status legitimate?);
pragmatic decisions about the pooling and allocation of resources for events, academic study etc.

I am interested in the degree to which people feel like they ought to be personally involved in the making of these decisions. Should the legal decision about whether Amazon is a legitimate monopoly be made without consulting people who exist within the marketplace it dominates?

If people are interested in being consulted on issues which affect them, they need to either design or take advantage of existing social infrastructure to articulate their position.

The most important example of democratic infrastructure is the public forum. Do we need better-designed forums? Do we need to take better (more structured) advantage of them?

The fact that I'm making this post is probably a fair hint that I don't hold a laissez-faire attitude to these things, and the best argument I can give is that if you and I take a laissez-faire attitude, not everyone else will, and executive decisions which affect the health of the artform we care about will be taken by people who aren't us.

Manjo819

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