https://www.notion.so/Manual-Scripts-b1e207cc2a234b18b9cc953c8c6a02c3

I chose Kevin’s Task 4 post as my second linking assignment. Kevin wrote a poem inspired by the protests taking place in Los Angeles as part of the Black Lives Matter protest. Kevin and I were both inspired by the events taking place in the United States around June 1. We both commented on the events taking place and sentiment around police. The last similarity though is that we used handwriting to create the manual script.

After the similarities I mention above, Kevin and I differ in the reasons we chose to write by hand, the approach we took to the manual script, as well as the platform that we used to post our tasks. First I will talk about the differences in why we chose the handwriting option in this task. Kevin mentions that handwriting allows for him to manipulate the space on the page more. This was effective for his writing product as he wanted to control how much white space he left in each part of the page. I chose handwriting because I feel it is something I am very comfortable with and I feel like it allows for a real raw reflection of someone’s thought process.

Another difference we had was the approaches we used when completing our manual scripts. Kevin chose to do a poem centered around sensual language to convey the feeling people in Los Angeles would have. He paired that with the names of people in the US who had called police officers on black people in the US even though they had done nothing wrong. His poem was powerful as it called to light those who were abusing the job of police officers. I focused on police officers in a different way in my approach to the manual script. I wrote a reflection on why I felt these longstanding issues around race and police were not solved yet. I focused primarily on the precedence that has been set in the US up to now and how there were no high profile cases of police hurting or killing a black person and being sentenced. The element Kevin mentions around who calls in the police and why is something very interesting to note. What if police weren’t called because of the suspicion that a real $20 bill was fake? Maybe George Floyd would still be alive today.

The last difference I will comment on is the difference in blogging platform. I used the WordPress blogs which I would say fits the traditional mold of a blog, particularly the layout. Kevin used a platform called Notion. I think for his purposes of spacing out the photos of his manual poem and controlling the space (something he mentioned as an effect of handwriting as well) the notion platform functions well. The only reason I prefer WordPress is the location of others’ comments. For some reason seeing the comments before Kevin’s post made me feel like it was a spoiler of sorts. I prefer to read someone’s blog, then see what others had to say regarding it, which is how I have set my blog to be.