Parochialism and ponies: a review of BaroqueNexus’ When Towers Fall · 7:38pm Feb 28th, 2013
Whenever I get into an argument with someone, I sometimes undertake it as an act of self-flagellation to force myself to read their shortest story and review it. I am drawn insatiably to argument and conflict, and when I argue or fight I pursue the subject and my opponent with the highest levels of ferocity; often, once the initial rush has faded, I find myself feeling absolutely terrified at the limitations my human emotions force on me and consider that my nature may only be overcome by ferocious atonement.
I've already been blocked by the poor man - after all, when all one has is pone calling pone mediocre is beyond the worst of sins - but I should hope that by providence that some of what I have said may convey itself to his eyes.
Also, I needed an excuse to snowclone the following sentence.
BaroqueNexus’ When Towers Fall: Yo soy justo y comprensivo, un crítico de lo más tierno, si cometes pecadillos arderás en el infierno
I must admit I have a hard time feeling especially bad about 9/11.
Whoops. There go about a hundred followers.
In any case, I have a hard time feeling super, especially bad about 9/11; I feel the pain of almost every human tragedy in existence, obviously, but given that a great part of my nation’s intellectuals was systematically exterminated by an American-backed nation fairly recently I find it incredibly difficult to find it an atrocity that bears history-booking on its own demerits.
One might now be wondering how my sociopathy plays a role in this review, and one might be asked to hold his bloody horses because there is in fact a rather serious problem here.
It seems to almost be a general rule that it’s mostly Westerners who are given the right to write anything that isn’t purely regional. After all, anything I write is essentially Asian literature, just as anything a lesbian writes is lesbian literature or anything a furry composes is somehow by some token some kind of ‘furry’ music¹.
This is what happens, I believe, when an American writes regional literature.
It isn’t American because it focuses on America. On the contrary: a great many cultures are known to themselves because foreigners wrote on them. It’s American because of the sheer casualness with which it treats its Americentricity².
You see, the deaths of three thousand Americans is an interdimensional disturbance; the deaths of twelve thousand Gujaratis in January, not so much. If we’re being particularly anal about the difference between manmade and natural disasters, perhaps we could easily draw comparisons to the hundreds of thousands dead in Iraq due to American sanctions before their invasion (because bread and ink can be used to make nuclear weapons) or the three hundred and fifty thousand violent deaths in the Second Congo War (let’s not forget the five million auxiliary deaths) or the various atrocities committed by God knows who and to whom on Earth in very recent history.
Only Americans emit a life-signature: let us take this to be the basis of our critique, and dwell on it no longer. After all, we can’t say that Derpy never helped the mother of a soldier of the Lord’s Resistance Army overcome the loss of her child.
(Besides, of course, that Derpy seems to think this incident atrocious beyond her expectations, suggesting a lack of prior events.)
Let’s talk just play along for now, like a good Anglophone³.
I can’t call it anything but sentimental. I find false sentimentality to be awful, of course, but I’m not sure I can even call this false; the deep sense of grief echoing through the American psyche in the light of the 9/11 attacks is anything less than awful and even if it seems so thick as to be false, surely the appearance of falsity cannot be attributed to falsity itself?
I must admit that if one looks past how American it is, it’s a charming tale about how simple gestures can mean quite a great deal right up to the point that I found in it something that induced in me such a basely human sort of quiet intellectual outrage I cannot quite express purely in the English language.
She smiled and took a step through the portal, but just as she was about to leave, she turned around and looked at me, and her eyes were straight. She said something to me.
When towers fall, people rise.When towers fall, people rise.
When towers fall, people rise.
Ahaha, get it? When towers fall. That’s the name of the fuck you, what on earth gave you the slightest clue that that would be anything I could possibly even I’m not even joking that’s so horrendous I cannot quite believe that anyone would somehow attempt to perhaps justify or something else maybe the I’m so discomfited with this that I cannot quite express what on earth were you thinking?
You know, I can understand how this might seem remotely acceptable to certain people and how I might be overreacting.
I can, really; I mean, when I told my elder sisters about Gandhi’s tendency towards nuking in the original Civilisation, they wouldn’t listen to the programming error explanation: they insisted it was an American plot to associate nonviolence with nuclear proliferation and build public support for the Gulf War⁴.
Yes.
So I’m aware that I may be reading too deep into this. Perhaps Derpy was not in fact suggesting that the impact of the 9/11 attacks can somehow be ameliorated by the heroes it made.
I’m not even American; who am I to be angry at a 9/11 first responder’s subjective idea on the tragedy, in any case?
Well my dad was in New York in the time, and I was 6 years old, so no. Not really. But it affected me as much as it affected everyone else.
Perchance: have you ever had your sense of decency struck with such intense force that its spilt fluids have congealed thick enough to chew?
It’s a bit pleasant, really, having a concept in you strong enough to feel physical. A ragetulpa, if you will.
In any case, besides the numerous comma splices it seems to be a fairly mediocre example of poetic prose; mawkish at times, certainly, but otherwise maintaining its position above utterly awful and below somewhat less than acceptable. Its imagery of the attack is somewhat evocative—there are no specifics, so it does seem a bit too uninvolved and article-based—and there is overall a feeling of artificiality about it: sentences like ‘that was the evil heat from a firey monster that claimed the towers’ strikes one as the sort of thing a ten year old might write pressed for time. The firefighter is anonymous and while that does create a sense of synecdochery the nonprovision of his name seems a bit of a contrivance⁵.
Overall, the story appears to be somewhat out of place on an international site. It really might have done better as a poem entirely and been done better without ponies; it might have found its place in a column in a local newspaper somewhere in that form and done quite well, and might even have provoked a nice letter or two to the editor even in its pony form.
As it is, however, I must admit that if I were pressed to ascribe to it a single subjective adjective, the decision would be quick and it would be simple:
Disgraceful.
1st March 2013,
Yishun, Singapore¹ I’m sorry, but I just can’t take that idea without a heavy dose of qualifying adjectives.
² Perhaps a quote from the eminent Orhan Pamuk—that writer who I love less for his plodding writing and more for his erasure of any notions to originality I might ever have had:
Perhaps the best way of belonging to a city, a country, or a sea is to have no knowledge whatsoever of its boundaries, its image, or even its existence. The best İstanbullu is the one who has forgotten that he is one. The most authentic Muslim has no idea of what is Islamic and what is not! It was when the Turks did not know they were Turks that they were pure Turks!
This is part of the essay ‘A Guide to Being Mediterranean’, quoted from the book Other Colors; it's a great read, and I suggest getting it if you can.
³ If there is a notion I’ve personally noted differing between many of the foreign and Anglophone internet communities, it’s a very noticeable tolerance of taking casual regressivism seriously: when someone says en Argentina los llamamos negros que matan por un celular and gets eighty thumbs up, ¿era necesario poner negros? gets forty, as opposed to the far negatives, spam-tagging and ‘WELCOME TO THE INTERNET NEWFAG’ an Anglophone community might give it.
⁴ Also to attack the basis of Indian independence.
⁵ The writing of this paragraph—a perfectly unsentimental, straight-faced sentence—provoked a somewhat physical feeling of revulsion in me throughout its conception and the beginnings of its labour, as if a detail of something this awful couldn’t be expressed in unemotional language but must be railed against at every opportunity.
I must admit I disliked the story, if only because it involved one of the more innocent fan favorites in the middle of a rather unfortunate event that occurred more than ten years ago, and was set up to be a decent tearfest. Which it failed at, frankly.
On another note, I understand what you mean by not feeling post-911 wave of general sorrow. Besides not being in the country at the time, one of my friends had a rather interesting time in the public school system for a few years after the fact due to commiting the unforgivable sin of having ancestors who once roamed Arabia. So, there's that, I guess.
First of all, I'd just like to clear something up.
I'm Canadian. I don't give two shits about anything that happens in America.
But dude, not cool.
Me, I'm one of Brex's armada of mindless followers. I'll defend the man to the ends of the earth, so what I'm about to say may seem less poignant than if it came from someone else.
Fuck you. Fuck you so much.
You admit that you got into an argument with him. Then you went and read his single most provocative work.
Good God.
This isn't a review, this is you being childish, followed by a confusing anti-America rant.
Just go blow yourself up, okay?
874491
I read this along the lines of "how dare you belittle a horrible occurrence..."
Not anti-American. It's anti-false!emotionalism.
I despise the cult of 9/11 and would never read a story related to it.
I felt more nausea and rage when I saw the fat, writhing maggots dancing around the White House on May 2nd (that was also the day I lost my final scrap of faith in both America and mankind).
Leaving that aside, I think this is the first negative review you've written where you included a paragraph about the good parts. I guess the flames your blogs provoke are starting to change you. Ah well, it looks like this one will provoke a good cat fight anyway.
874598
No one said the emotions weren't genuine, just that they were cloying and silly, demonstrating a lack of perspective.
I don't like the way people obsess over 9/11 either, but I have no trouble believing that they actually feel that. It's just nothing I can sympathize with and it feels misguided when taken from its original context.
Speaking of, I notice Amit didn't go for the very low hanging fruit of US drone strikes (every male between the ages of 16 and 60 is a terrorist/militant) or the politics of assassination, or the general harm of global capitalism. Americans crying over 9/11 maybe legitimate emotional outpouring, but it is also selfish, jingoistic and blindly regional, which is the gist of the review.
What's the difference between a cow and 9/11?
You can't milk a cow for 12 years straight.
874491
Well, I'm from Elm Street, and I don't give two shits about anything that happens on Oak Lane. I heard someone over there got robbed last week. Serves them right. Damn dirty Oakies. Thank God I live on the next block over, where it's safe, forever.
Wait, someone from Elm Street got robbed? Oh, that's just Mr. Johnson. He's got an odd-numbered address. I've got an even number, so I don't give two shits what happens to the odd numbers. They're all a bunch of weirdos anyway. I mean, it's right in the name. Odd.
Seriously, first you pull the "If you're not from my country then I don't care about you" routine, then you imply that anyone who disagrees with you about 9/11 is a suicide bomber.
You embody the worst American stereotypes better than anyone I've ever seen on this site.
We should switch nationalities. I"m told Toronto is nice.
874605
The talking horse anus is right! No, seriously, this is your best review so far, Amit. It's negative but not needlessly so. Good work
Now I'm just going to go off the rails and address the big issue at hand:
HERE COME SOME OPINIONS
I think I can sum up the American response to 9/11 thusly: "How could this happen here?"
It was a terrible human tragedy. But there were greater human tragedies that same year which got nowhere near as much attention from our media, because they did not happen to Americans.
Whenever they announce the death tolls for the Iraq or Afghan wars, it is always predicated on the number of Americans killed. "Two hundred Americans were killed in Iraq this week." How many Iraqis? How many of our allies? How many civilians? Irrelevant. Not news.
Now part of this is just human nature. You feel more empathy toward people who you consider to be "like you." I just wish it weren't so damn enshrined in our culture. I wish we would stop acting like an American life is worth more. Or at least acknowledge when people who aren't Americans are killed en masse, and pay them some respect, as well.
Also, maybe we could bomb fewer people, you know, not be part of the problem.
We mourned the dead after 9/11, as well we should have. But the real national outcry wasn't for them. It was for the death of a beautiful delusion: the belief that we were above this sort of thing. Other countries get hit by terrorists, but not us. Other countries are so poorly defended that crazy men in turbans go around blowing up their buildings all day long, but not us.
A little piece of American exceptionalism died that day, and that was very upsetting to some people.
I'd just love it if we could find a way to destroy that entire concept without anyone dying.
So hey, I heard you folks liked to talk about My Little Pony. My favorite pony is Pinkie Pie. She bakes cakes and sings songs.
874491
Look, I'll just say upfront that me and Amit don't exactly see eye-to-eye (I think we rarely, if ever, have), but with that being said...
Take your own advice, bro.
874491
Oh yeah? Well, the tuerie de l'Ècole polytechnique interested me more because of Marc Lépine's manifesto than the fates of the individual victims, and I find it great that Denis Lortie is on parole!
I'm a terrible person.
La illaha illa allah fluttershy rassoul-allah.
(the funny part is that it was Muslims who perpetuated the genocide and Muslims who were the victim of it and my own Hindu parent who was in Hindu West Bengal, not Bangladesh, so I'd imagine it's like having an estranged brother get raped and beaten)
Allons, butthurtyons ! Formez vos bataillons !
It's a particular sacrament unto man that there exist people with tastes so esoteric they might well be duck fetishists.
As much as I can't find it in my heart to detest him, he seems to me to be a profoundly selfish, egoistic, non-self-aware, self-justifying young man with overwhelmingly below-acceptable prose and I must admit that I'm perversely pleased to find that the sort of person who would unfollow me for him (three people so far) have been purged from my follower's list. If you'd stayed I'd be stuck in the trap of feeling somewhat like Robert Fisk, endorsed by Bin Laden for my objectivity.
875333
If the infidel doesn't admit Twilight Sparkle is best pone I will go to New York and toss a paper aeroplane into the North Tower Fountain. You have twenty-four hours to respond to my demands or you will soon see the comments on Fox News poking fun at my lynching.
875573
well that's just mean brah
876073
I love this song.
insert unrelated anecdote here
So I was playing Resistance and Liberation. I was running down the stairs singing that song on voice chat, when all of a sudden two Germans pop out into the doorway, one of them going oh my god shut up. I shoot both of them with my Garand and start reloading, at which point a third German comes in, shoots me in the hand so my gun drops and then goes in for the kill with a pistol. I have no pistol, of course, but nonetheless I pull out my fists and punch him to death while he tries in vain to kill me, screaming AMERICA, FUCK YEAH all the while.
It took half a minute to kill him with my fists. He had two guns and I punched him out of every shot.
america, fuck yeah
876325 ... Wow, you really are an asshole, aren't you?
876354
Even though I am nothing more than a beast, don't I have the right to live?
>given that a great part of my nation’s intellectuals was systematically exterminated by an American-backed nation fairly recently
What are you talking about?
875333
You know, your little Elm Street analogy reminds me of the arguments I saw on a video of 9/11 synched to the song "It's Raining Men". I was five when 9/11 happened and I found the video when I was ten. Of course, as horrified as I was, I knew that the video itself was inevitable. It was the screaming in the comments section that bothered me. Obviously, there were the righteously indignant, some who were just yelling "MURIKA" the whole time, and some affected by the event who were understandably outraged. It was the ones who tried to justify the video who sickened my ten-year-old self in a way that was less patriotic and more plain human.
I distinctly recall that the biggest justification was, "If it happened in any other country, you wouldn't care, or else you'd be laughing right along with us." Now, I could understand that because I could understand that things are funnier when they don't happen to you, and it's hard to mourn the loss of someone you never knew. I would've agreed if they hadn't also said, "Because of that, you have no right to feel bad or get angry." Or at least, something along those lines. It would have been extremely pretentious for anyone to have said that.
(I'm pretty sure at least one person did, though.)
It was that line of thinking that disgusted me. It wasn't because it offended my American-ness, but because it was so hypocritical, callous, and naive, all at the same time. The Americans weren't allowed to feel sorry for themselves just because some guy assumed they wouldn't feel sorry for anyone else? Well that would be stupid because nobody would be allowed to feel sorry for themselves. That would be stupid because by saying that, that guy was essentially giving up his own right to self-pity. That would be stupid because I would want to mourn the death of my own father, not his, and if he never knew my father, I wouldn't expect him to mourn with me.
I can't lie and say that the little eagle in my brain wasn't ruffled at all, but it was all the hypocrisy that really offended me. I can never stand it when someone can so easily contradict themselves, yet act so morally superior at the same time. These people were doing this while also laughing in the faces of people legitimately affected by tragedy while telling them that they were wrong for feeling bad. My ten-year-old mind couldn't handle it.
So yeah, that was seven years ago and it made me question the legitimacy of human empathy for the longest time. I just had to get all that off my chest.
Applejack
876526
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Liberation_War#Atrocities
876536
Hell of a story. That sounds damn near infuriating. I'd be right there with you in such a situation.
My favorite 9/11 reaction took place at a video store the day of the event. In a wonderful example of the mundane overwhelming the extraordinary, my mother, who was devastated by the attacks, sucked it up and went with me to the video store because some movie she'd rented was due that evening.
Hardly anyone was there, but then this large bearded man barges in, walks right up to my mom like he knows her, and says "This is IT. This is the worst thing to ever happen in the history of a lifetime. Any day now they're going to come parachuting in! I hope to God you all own more than one gun."
"Can I help you?" says one of the clerks.
"ARM YOURSELVES!" he replies, and walks out.
That stuck with me. This man was HUGE. He could have beaten the crap out of everyone in that store if he'd wanted to. And he was absolutely terrified. And his means of dealing with his fear? "Everyone! Grab a gun!"
I think I understood violence a bit better after that.
876325
You tell that story with enough panache, use some clever language to obscure the fact that it happened in a video game, and you could be president one day. We've elected people on a lot less.
Sometimes, I wonder why people are like this. Y'know, I come across some really bad fics every now and again, but I don't write a 'I hate everything about one of you, so I'm gonna hate all of you argh' blog post about it. 'Cause that's what you sound like. If your gonna do a review on a story, review the fucking story. Keep you beliefs out of it. This is a literary site, not a place for you rant about how you hate someone, or something, just because you got into an argument. Its kind of sad actually. Grow up.
So about 80-90% of that review wasn't even relevant to the story. You went off on tangents and failed to actually discuss the story.
You should try again and actually review the story. I'd like to know what you think about the story, not 9/11 and the various emotions it gives people.
This
reviewbutthurt rant full of whining is so poorly written and pompous it makes me laugh.0.01/10'000
This horrible attempt at trolling will most likely be forgotten, and nobody shall give a fuck.
Well, I stumbled into the wrong storm, but let me toss out my opinion anyway.
I try to have faith in people. Having sent enough of my own stories through the submission cue, I know a bit about how the mods think and I doubt they would have allowed When Towers Fall if it was was intentionally hateful or trollish. For what my thoughts are worth, I don't believe it is, either. Overall, I think that your summary of "Disgraceful" seems a bit harsh.
So, let me get this straight. Your issue with this story, and the impulse behind this rage-filled, contemptuous blog post has more to do with the author's personal beliefs and perceived political stance than an actual criticism of the story?
What I understand from this is that, someone gets into an argument with you... ending either in you being blocked and/or your opinions dismissed, and the thing you do is, you go to their user page, choose one of their stories randomly (as long as it's short) and then proceed to do your best to diminish them (with carefully selected words that give your opinion more authority than layman terms would...) and yet, the blog remains, disclaimer aside, proclaiming how this person is next to nothing in the grand scheme of things.
I fail to see the truth in this. It's a blanket and deceptive statement as any. Everyone has the right to write something that isn't purely regional. If someone judges the merit of the work based on the author's location and decides to classify it as 'regional' work, it's the person's limited understanding rather than the overall judgement of the population at large.
So, the issue and anger is because he chose to use 9/11 over another, horrible disaster? I understand your reluctance to feel overwhelmed with grief by 9/11, but that seems to be a little flimsy when it comes to the issue here. Perhaps, if instead of simply denigrating a tragedy because the author did not reference another, you could have just mentioned that it was not the worst in human history, nor the only one.
You know, I give up. This is basically an anti-Americanism post, not a critique of a story, and should not be presented as such. While your own opinions about the validity of pro-Americanism are your own and I'm not going to attempt to change your views on them or even criticize them, I do feel compelled to point out that this reeks of what Anglophones call 'butthurt' over being blocked and not acknowledged as the ultimate wisdom.
I'm all for harsh, well thought out reviews when they don't have the simple objective of trying to put someone down and can actually offer some help or indication to the author of what could be improved. What I see here, is little more than cyber-bullying.
You criticize with exquisite language the author himself, by name, using the excuse that their story is 'crap' (if we put it bluntly) and proceed to use that as an excuse to tear at them with unusual viciousness for all that you can infer through the well-established technique of literary analysis (and essay writing) which consists of little more than grabbing something you don't like, pushing it to the extreme and using it as an indirect pedestal for your hypothesis.
I think, Amit, that you should rethink your approach.
Also... something feels off about that sentence. I'll just mention it.
877973 This.
877973
Couldn't have worded it better.
OP, you should be ashamed of yourself. This is not a review, it's a cleverly disguised author-bash. BaroqueNexus may have pulled off some stupid and offensive crap in the last 24 hours, but this is unacceptable.
You honestly should apologize to him for this "review".
Oh, and the story itself? To be honest, it wasn't that bad. It had a guy coping after the events of 9/11, going home after a long, stressful, emotional day, coated in ash and debris STILL in the air after the attacks, with the grief of losing a family member and close friend in the attacks... and when he gets home, he finds Derpy, who proceeds to comfort him and helped him cope with the events.
Explain to me how this is a bad story? Explain to me how it was offensive? In the same logic, is a story about a firefighter who lost friends, family, and colleagues in the towers coming home and crying in his wife's arms about it and trying to cope with the events an offensive story? The answer is hell no. I could understand if this was a story version of that picture portalz0r has on his page of Derpy bouncing on the raincloud and crashing into the towers... but it wasn't. It was Derpy helping a person dealing with unbelievable grief cope.
Do you know what that kind of grief feels like? Do you understand what those people went through? This is a touching story, not an offensive one.
Oh, and then after you call him bad for writing this story... you bash on the people affected by the event you're bashing him for using?
files.gamebanana.com/img/ico/sprays/unclesam.jpg
Oh one thing, I noticed you picked out the line:
You'd be surprised how accurate this was. The towers fell, and the ENTIRE country rose up, angry and ready to unleash a can of whoop-ass on whoever did it to us. We banded together and helped each other, helped those who were affected, helped the widows, the orphans, and everyone else affected...
Baroque, while I didn't like the bullshit from last night... This shit wasn't good, and you didn't deserve this. I read your story, and I liked it. It was adorable and touching. Not only that, I must commend you on your balls to use 9/11 in the first place.
877973 878081 All of this. I'm disappointed that on a website with the core principle of "love and tolerate" this kind of blog was posted. This kind of hate does not belong here on a website about colourful animated ponies.
878081 And this.
Amit, what are you doing?
877973 I now love you.
877973 Go Wanderer D.
876325 With what I just saw up there, you're not a gentle critic, neither comprehensive or just. You're being a asshole with this review. I know what's 9/11 even though I'm not American myself, and I do acknowledge what happened there. But there's no reason for you to be a complete asshole to someone. You're not a gentle critic, you're being very harsh. Also, I don't see any point in writing anything in Spanish in a review whose Author only understands English, what.. are you trying to hide something from the author? You're clearly insulting him too. Also, I don't think making any kind of sin makes you have your very own ticket to hell, you're very wrong there. You're over valuing yourself, like if you're a review God or something, no, you're a harsh critic, and just accept it.
Racist bastard. Please die.
-Blitz
878514 I think the word "critic" should only apply to people who have something helpful or insightful to say. This guy isn't a critic at all, he's a demagogue.
878174 You mean you didn't already?
878531 Indeed.
Edit: Wow, you noticed my edit. Nice.
878514 Racists are people, too. They're just dumb, ignorant jackasses.
Yeah, go eat a bag of dicks.
878569 When you run a top-secret intelligence organization for a bit, you tend to learn how to see when people edit their comments on fanfiction websites.
878577 Razor wire dildos.
878582 Oh, you.
878585 Oh, me.
A flood of people who haven't read the review, getting angry because a mediocre writer with friends has had his writing attacked?
I can't imagine that I'd call myself surprised.
877702
It's a great deal when I find that someone doesn't actually come close to getting something I've written. It's not an anti-American rant, as much as you'd like it to be. I attack the story as much for its dismissal and misrepresentation of the tragedy as much as its failure.
Of course I go off into tangents. That's what I do. If you think that prose has no relevance to the real world and cannot be interpreted in the greater context of society and its moral ideas, I'm sorry for whatever society you grew up in that should have ingrained in you a mindset so blatantly anti-artistic.
877709
pro circlejerk 10/10 would lol again
877973
878140
878174
878341
I understand why you might see this as a personal attack, but I'm afraid that's just projection. I'm perfectly capable of isolating a story from its author.
I've mentioned above that I do in fact attack the story for its misrepresentation and highlight quite well its good points. I usually expect people to read things before attacking them, shouldn't I?
878081
It was a bad story because it was genuinely bad. I might well rather have read Twilight.
I like, in any case, how you think World War I was justifiable because Germany rose up to take its revenge on Europe.
(and the jews can't forget the jews)
878514
878570
So, did you read the quotes surrounding that - it's a Youtube comment - or did you space-bar through it?
You appear to have a certain lack of ability to interpret irony. The thing itself is a quote from a song:
La violencia no la admito, ni el sexo con condón
Si te veo practicando uso mi rayo de protón
Hago múltiples milagros para poder divertiros
Hago fiestas en mi cuarto a solas con monaguillos
Yo soy justo y comprensivo, y un robot de lo más tierno
Si cometes un pecado arderás en el infierno
879280
I never said it was anti-American. Not sure where you got that impression from my comment. Maybe you should work on your reading comprehension?
...And I just died of laughter.
879298
I must have confused your comment with the fifty just like it. Feel free to cherrypick, in any case; I'm certain Mo Yan would die of laughter just as well should you tell him the same.
879280
I did read it, which is why I fail to see the exact relevance of your diatribe when it comes to the story itself. Other than a few instances of quoting and simply reacting with mostly derision, the whole thing is an attack on the author's perspective and a very obvious liberal interpretation of his beliefs or the intention behind his words, of which I believe you are reading too much into.
Hell, the opening line alone indicates what you are going for. Allow me to give you some perspective. If you were to have mentioned that the story was about 9/11 first and then mentioned how the thing itself was not really something you considered relevant, it might have actually read like a critique on the story, rather than on the fact that it is about 9/11.
You proceed to compare human tragedy, which is in itself in poor taste, and then vaguely reference his story a couple of times, preferring instead to attack the perceived idea of what it is about rather than the story itself. In essence, you are criticizing not the contents of the work itself, but your idea of what it represents. In other words, you're not pointing at a failure to communicate, but rather a failure to please you with a meaning of your choosing or liking.
You might have noticed that I highlighted part of your quote. Let me elaborate as to why:
The opening line of your whole rant.
I'll be blunt. You are doing this because you got angry at him. It's a reactionary 'review' which is nothing more than an attack at his intelligence and personal beliefs disguised behind pretty words and pretense.
So, don't try to hide behind: "Oh, you clearly didn't read what I wrote." when it's painfully obvious what you were going for.
879361
I spend quite a bit dwelling on the story itself near the end, and every bit of the social explication is based entirely off of how objectionable his story is in itself. The story spends quite a lot of time being critiqued on its own merits, and I don't see how anyone who's read the review would get the slightest notion otherwise. I don't go into his beliefs: I go into the beliefs the story implies, intentional or not.
Thank you for telling me about myself. I have been truly enlightened by your piercing critique of my personality. Surely I should accept your narrative of my emotions more than I should my own.
879447 Glad to be of service.
879451
It's brilliant to see a person trying to end something he's lost with a shallow one-liner based on a cherrypick.
So, after telling me what to feel should the white man tell me how to dress and what language to speak and what form of government to adopt? You seem to be very proud of your capability to tell others what to think, after all.
879461 I just don't see the point of telling the wall that it's chipped when it's clear it can't do anything about it. Go. Be merry.
877973 >something feels off about that sentence
It says "earth" when it should say "Earth". Perhaps that is the problem?
879280
When did I justify that at all?
I am confused as to what you are talking about.
879280
Hah? what the fuck is a circle jerk.
879461 Wanderer is Mexican.