Thank you, I appreciate that a lot. I will be posting some more pretty soon. I normally write novels. This was my first time starting and completing a short story.
I have 3 more in the pipeline right now. Hopefully I can post them by end of the month.
I'm over engineering the heck out of it. My editor is neovim, which I use for work and to write software too. I write markdown, but it's not just markdown.
My stuff is somewhat inspired by the SCP wiki in style, so I'm making it a website with fancy styling via CSS and so on, using Jekyll in the backend.
It's a lot of fun and I keep learning more about web dev stuff, but even though I spend a large part of my day today working on it, I hardly wrote any new content. But I have a fancy fake login form for classified data, nice colors and a search feature now.
Just in case, does anyone know a good markdown editor that with good integration for languagetool, or alternatively one that runs in the browser?
I wanted to like this piece as it shares so much with my own childhood but it’s hard to connect with in the third person, especially as it’s confused between poetry and prose. Its first person title “My time in Arcadia…” doesn’t prepare you for the arms length, peering-through a window at the subjects in the third person that follows. What I assume is actually a personal reminiscence doesn’t come across until you later switch person to the first.
Also, the repetition of “Arcadian Youth” was fatiguing. I think I’d read Arcadia 7 or 8 times in a few paragraphs and, especially since “Arcadia” connotes; idyllic, quiet, peaceful, oneness with nature, splendour, harmony. Up late, killing buddies on the Xbox doesn’t say “Arcadian” to me which I think is the crux of why I don’t think this piece works.
Perhaps you’re using “Arcadia” as it sounds similar to “arcade”?
Arcadia is from Greek, after a province In antiquity known for its unspoilt wilderness, named after a nymph who was a hunter and king of the area.
Arcade is from Latin, “arc” as in archway, since in France arcades were indoor streets with vaulted, arched ceilings. I think both words have deeper roots in meaning “bow” but in a modern sense, they’re very different. It came across as a tenuous, poetic verse being forced upon me every few sentences that added nothing but a touch of confusion. And the Latin section titles regarding the Greek location, given this piece is hardly Virgil, is somewhat pretentious.
You write well and I honestly think you could turn this into something compelling by renaming to “Arcadian Youths” if you’re attached to it, dropping all other instances of that phrase, perhaps bar one near the end, dropping the Latin (as it serves no purpose to the text except noise), change the first half to first person from third (and stick to it!), tidy up your tenses (and stick to past tense!), then you can bring us to present at the end while you reflect.
As a Bildungsroman, the psychological and moral growth that stems from the fear and relief of finding Jake is a transitional moment; when Arcadia turns to Arkansas; when the simplicity of life fades into reality and all its complexities. You could lean on that; the fact the story is what you remember so well from those nights of gaming, and how you yearn to return, perhaps before Jake was lost, makes for a compelling and insightful read.
I appreciate you taking the time to read the peice and your sincere feedback! I won't make any changes to the piece now, as I consider it finished (even if flawed), although I will incorporate your feedback into my future writing; especially the bit around tenses and perspectives, something I need to work on across all my writing.
I can see how the references to Arcadia may be perceived as pretentious, was a risk. The original reference comes from the title of the painting "Et in Arcadia ego," which is the first chapter's title. Specifically, the second popular interpretation regarding nostalgia.
"...this second version shifted the focus from a warning about the inevitability of death to a contemplation of the past and a sense of nostalgia."
Plus, yes, it sounds like Arcade (lol) and it's used in a similar fashion in a manga/anime I enjoy titled "Space Captain Harlock: Arcadia of my Youth." In the essay's sense, we view our youth as Arcadia -- the golden age of splendor when everything was grand and intoxicating; a place in our mind we try to get back to.
The second chapter is a reference to 'unaware' (or maybe 'ignorant'), and refers specifically to Jake living in my (or maybe his own) Arcadia but being unaware of it (considering his condition), the third chapter title simply continues the Latin naming convention with "My Golden Years." So, yes, maybe a bit pretentious.
I appreciate you taking the time to read the peice and your sincere feedback! I won’t make any changes to the piece now, as I consider it finished (even if flawed), although I will incorporate your feedback into my future writing
I'm probably a bit late replying, but I got banned from my previous instance for some reason, no way to contact anyone or ask what I (supposedly) did wrong. Hopefully you see my reply.
I can't even imagine "writing" a video game. It seems like one of those things people might think "anyone could do that", then when they try to, they can't.
At the moment I'm writing songs (music and lyrics), and working on a conlang. I hope to combine the two in the future.
Shoot me your old username and I'll check it out.
Technically, deletion would need to be done by your old instance admins, although with federation, that content is also everywhere in the fediverse and might not be completed deleted.
Also, the only way I can reply to people is through the website version - none of the apps are letting me reply. They show errors every time. I'm on Android. Would you have any idea why? It's like Lemmy is fighting to reject me haha. 😔
Hmmmm, you don't seem actually banned, but .ml probably didn't skip 0.19.2 which had a bug that required to clear cookies and whatnot before logging in would work postupgrade.
Which is one of the main reasons why we hadn't upgraded yet, fixed in 0.19.3, but I'm not sure of the behavior of you don't skip 0.19.2.
Anyway, try logging into your account in a browser, in a private navigation window to be sure, I would expect it to work.
At least you don't seem banned to me...
If you used an email at sign up you should be able to reset your password using the "forgot my password" link when logging in.
If there's still an issue, you'd have to reach out to an admin on lemmy.ml.
Whether that's restoring access or deleting your data.
Maybe @cypherpunks.
@Anywhere the modlog for that account shows that it isn't banned (except for from one community). If you have an email address associated with it you can use the "forgot password" function to reset its password, but otherwise there is no way to recover it.
Yea I guess there's no other way to really confirm it was your account without an email. Not that I doubt your story or anything, but restoring access without verifying email would open up a boatload of account hijacking shenanigans.
No problem vent away. After months of not writing I finally started up again today. Don't give up. Me I have been a slump because had 4 stories that I was editing. I love writing but editing drains me. But as of today I put 8 new pages together on a story and I am ready to finish other story I had started.
Only advice if you want any is write anything even only a page or a paragraph. Just by starting that little bit might be all you need to get the gears going and you be back to writing before you know it.
I use vim as my text editor. Its good if you find using a mouse distracting.
There is a steep learning curve and most people use it for programming. However i can give u a copy of my vimrc file and you can use the novel writing plugin in that file. :)
Joplin. It's Markdown based, supporting math, tables, Mermaid diagrams, and more. You can organize notes into notebooks, including sub-notebooks, as well as with tags. The desktop app supports full text seach. And it has open-source apps for desktop and mobile, and it's easy to set up synchronization between all devices using standard cloud storage (I use free Dropbox), which is encrypted whenever it's not on your devices.
Joplin was on my radar for a bit, but haven't thought much about it since I'm using obsidian.
The paid sync is kind of a rip off IMHO, but the CouchDB local sync works just fine. Plugin ecosystem is probably what gives me the largest number of niche features.
Really cool. I wish they would have included more modern sci-fi series though. As nice as the classics are there are some amazing contemporary authors. Peter F Hamilton, Adrian Tchaikovsky, and Alastair Reynolds come to mind.
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