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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   3700 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 7, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I posted the other reply before seeing this, and I think this answers some of my questions. My own community is chock full of artistically inclined people, it has way more talent than money, but especially more of both talent and money than organizational capacity.

They'd never reach Ayn Rand levels, but maybe a book would be centered around a poor mother and the child she refused to terminate or something. Build a good story like that, build a narrative people can apply to their own lives, and you may save thousands from abortion, and make them heroes in their own minds too.

That does not sound like a good idea. I'm on the same side of the issue, I don't even dislike all preachy novels (I liked Pollyanna, actually), and my first thought was "ugh". And unless you're absolutely brilliant, ugh is enough for nobody to ever see your work, no matter how much their pastor pushes it on them at the Christian bookstore. I would have to think longer about why I have this reaction, but it's related to reading "Christian girls novels" in my youth, and pattern matching to that.

My own community is chock full of artistically inclined people, it has way more talent than money, but especially more of both talent and money than organizational capacity.

Talent as in artistic talent? My point was that conservative artists are far more likely to turn their skills towards safe, reliable careers than progressive artists are. To be honest, unless you have some truly exceptional people in your community, the fact that they're artistically talented and poor to me means they're either not that talented or not that conservative. The people I'd want to fund are those who put their families before their passions.

As far as organizational capacity, again, that's because the good organizers went into business rather than activism (as they should).

That does not sound like a good idea. I'm on the same side of the issue, I don't even dislike all preachy novels (I liked Pollyanna, actually), and my first thought was "ugh". And unless you're absolutely brilliant, ugh is enough for nobody to ever see your work, no matter how much their pastor pushes it on them at the Christian bookstore. I would have to think longer about why I have this reaction, but it's related to reading "Christian girls novels" in my youth, and pattern matching to that.

I think you're imagining something much more extreme than what I had in mind. The story would star those two, and that would be that; it would otherwise just be a story about some other thing. I just wrote a short story along those lines (actually far more obvious imo) and nobody on Reddit caught on so I'm pretty confident this is doable. It's not rocket science, it's just stories that don't celebrate evil. Tolkien's works would more than qualify if written today.

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