#Anti-English Lit Class

[kyliaquilor]

I mean, yes, but also 

1) it’s a class assignment, you need to read more than 30 pages

2) your presentation of your argument lacked sources and proper argumentation on the *why* behind it

3) As much as I agree with you that the shit you usually have to read in a HS English Class is terrible and bad, “I hated it” is not actually an analysis that you can present in an English Lit class.

#Grumping #There is Such a Thing as Being Too Woke #And those people on that post mostly are #Rolling My Eyes #American Education #education #Anti-English Lit Class #Anti-The Very Concept of Literature with a Capital L

[musicalchaos07]

Do you ever think about how Milkvan's constantly complain that Finn is a bad actor and looks unhappy/pained/not romantic in the monologue scene and feel so bad cause it's like babes you are SO close to getting it

#and then they go right back to Stranger Things: Teen Mom Version #anyways pay attention in English lit class kids sometimes the curtains are yellow for a reason #stranger things #anti mileven #Byler #< target audience

[h4n4h4n4nomi]

FRANZ KAFKA CAN SUCK MY DICK. THE TRIAL SUCKS AND SO DOES METAMORPHOSIS. YOUR WORK ISN’T INTERESTING IF YOU GO WOULDN’T IT BE FUCKED UP IF THIS HAPPENED AND THEN PROCEED TO WRITE THE ONLY WAY THAT SCENARIO COULD PLAY OUT LIKE THATS INTERESTING. OH A GUY TURNS INTO A BUG WHAT EVER WILL HAPPEN?? HE DIES AS A BUG AND NOTHING HAPPENS TEE HEE. Waste of my goddamn time. I’m so sorry if y’all like Kafka and more power to you if you can, I just… can’t stand him. I’d ask y’all to convince me otherwise but it’s not gonna happen and I don’t want anyone to waste their time just like I wasted my fucking time reading this aughhh. Anyway Franz Kafka hatepost over.

#franz kafka #anti Kafka #metamorphosis #english #lit #the trial #I literally have to read this for a class and I went yeah I’ll lead a discussion on this #wait isn’t this by Kafka? hmm I really didn’t like the Trial #ah well I’m sure it’ll be fine NOPE

[yourdyingwish]

Hi! I saw your post about the blue curtain thing and I was wondering what was wrong with their interpretation. I haven't taken an english/lit class in years so a lot of it has slipped my mind, and the way they explained it seemed to make sense to me (especially because I tend to intentionally do something similar for imagery in my own writing).

I just posted a pretty long explainer a second ago about this because obviously I was being flippant when I posted the original screenshot, but basically: there's nothing inherently wrong with using an author's biographical details to inform an interpretation of a piece of literature. Death of the Author is something else entirely. Some people who have never read Barthes' original essay and have maybe only heard the phrase or concept seem to think that Death of the Author is a methodology in which you ignore the author's life in favor of your "own interpretation," which is somehow always right. This could not be more wrong. But to step back, let's talk about why that original post was limiting to the practice and art of criticism (I'm going to use this instead of 'wrong') because that was your question. At the core of that original post is, in fact, basically the same limited line of thinking present in the post I was talking about. (Btw no shade to OP–I care more about the 40k people who seem to agree with them, they might have changed their mind or not articulated themselves well, I've been there). Let's look at the original curtains are blue post and this post side by side.

Putting the rest of this under a cut because it gets long

The left is a version of the original idea in the "curtains are blue" post, and the right is the post I had an issue with which seems to basically be saying that real academic literary analysis doesn't actually try to match color symbolism to meaning, and instead focuses on autobiographical details of the author's life.

If this is true to OP's experience or the experience of those reblogging the post, I hope they high-tail it out of whatever program they're studying in. The issue with both of these posts, besides their general anti-intellectual undertone, is actually their emphasis on "correct" or "real" interpretation of a text, or one that is understood as "right" by some kind of invisible cabal of criticism-theory referees who all want to tell you "what the author really said." This is, among other things, a very juvenile approach to criticism. I think the reason that this type of sentiment is so popular on tumblr is that, frankly, a lot of people on this website are in high school or early college, and have an adversarial relationship to their English teacher/professor, who grades them on how well they can analyze a text based on sometimes arbitrary criteria. It makes sense that they would see themselves being graded on their criticism as "right" or "wrong" and interpret that there is such a thing as a single interpretation of a text that is "right" or "wrong."

However, that's not really what is or should be happening in upper-level/higher education. A high school English teacher trying to teach their students about color symbolism in the Great Gatsby is simply trying to impart one possible methodology of criticism to their students and enable them to repeat the same basic critical moves that one critic, at one time, has made, because grasping the basic ability to adopt a methodology and employ it is a foundational skill for analysis. However, public schools in America can't and don't take the time to explain that this is a methodology, so many students who are tumblr-aged walk away with this idea that their English teachers or even their professors have an extremely narrow view of what is "true" in a text. Often, exposure to one methodology will leave them with the idea that this is the correct methodology, when what they should have been taught first is that obsessing over what is "correct," especially related to truth from the author, is the one thing you shouldn't do. This is why the second post is just as bad: it says that actually, it's not symbolic interpretations from the author that matter (as in 'the author meant for the curtains to just be blue'), but an author's biography which, buried under psychoanalytic layers, can be revealed as a generator of meaning (as in 'the author's mother died in a room with blue curtains'). Both of these things are irrelevant because they, probably through the above process of intellectual alienation caused by grades I mentioned above, are focused on what the author intended as being a source of truth within a text.

This is what Death of the Author makes an attempt to deconstruct, and why I mentioned it in my original post. Barthes wrote his essay at a time when theory and criticism in general was undergoing seismic shifts following two major world wars & a huge variety of other cultural undercurrents in middle of the 20th century. Many things that had been taken for granted up to that point were suddenly being reconsidered, in particular the idea that texts, art, or even language itself has a central "truth" or meaning. Massively simplified, this is one of the core tenets of post-structuralism, and you can definitely say that Barthes was a post-structuralist thinker. When Barthes wrote that the death of the author is the birth of the reader, he was simply pointing out that the assumption many centuries of Western criticism is built on–that the author is the primary meaning-maker within a text, simply because they wrote it–is wrong. I believe this is true. Some people say death of the author is a "methodology" of criticism, but to me it's actually more like a door you have to walk through in order to do really good criticism. If you free yourself from the idea of a "correct" interpretation of a text driven by authorial intent, what you're left with is the really thrilling, life-giving work of criticism: drawing connections from within and without the text, and treating it as a living document whose meaning changes over time. What I think people don't realize is that poststructuralism, either formally or in practice, is the basis for most of the literary theory we embrace and consider valid. That is NOT to say that some French dude in the 1950s invented feminism or post-colonial theory, or even paved the way for it. Instead, you could easily say that marginalized people were already approaching critical analysis in a variety of ways based on their lived experiences, and it was the academy which had to catch up. There are a lot of more complicated theoretical thoughts people have had on this, which aren't relevant here really. But I think it's worth pointing out that Death of the Author is, by my measure at least, very good to do, and is VITAL to do if you've spent most of your adult life having weird, watered-down versions of symbolic, biographical, or psychoanalytic theories of interpretation pounded into your head by overworked English teachers. I feel like I should make it clear, BTW, that what I'm saying about why I think Death of the Author is a useful text or concept and what Barthes is saying about authorship in the essay itself are two slightly different things. Barthes' investment in overturning authorship at least within the confines of this brief essay is a lot more related to him proving out his theories of poststructuralism in general than it is to opening doors to totally new forms of interpretation. In the essay he is essentially saying that the nature of texts is the nature of language itself, which is that they are completely constructed, culturally determined, and therefore open to endless interpretation. This is a beautiful idea and one I embrace fully. A lot of Marxists, queer theorists, and others rail against this at least in part, because if you stop there, you're still functioning within a very limited paradigm. You've probably heard it before, the move is basically: "everything is a construct, so nothing matters" as opposed to the feminist, critical race theory, queer theory approach, which is to say "the things we consider to be true are constructs; what narratives or modes of being exist to disrupt those constructs?" or a more Marxist/materialist approach which is to say "this is a construct, and someone constructed it because it benefitted them to do so."

But I think the original essay really is beautiful. I'm going to quote from it here:

Once the Author is distanced, the claim to "decipher" a text becomes entirely futile. To assign an Author to a text is to impose a brake on it, to furnish it with a final signified, to close writing. This conception is quite suited to criticism, which then undertakes the important task of discovering the Author (or his hypostases: society, history, the psyche, freedom) beneath the work: once the Author is found, the text is "explained," the critic has won; hence, it is hardly surprising that historically the Author's empire has been the Critic's as well, and also that (even new) criticism is today unsettled at the same time as the Author. In multiple writing, in effect, everything is to be disentangled, but nothing deciphered, structure can be followed, "threaded" (as we say of a run in a stocking) in all its reprises, all its stages, but there is no end to it, no bottom; the space of writing is to be traversed, not pierced; writing constantly posits meaning, but always in order to evaporate it: writing seeks a systematic exemption of meaning. In summary: the reason I think we should engage with texts at all is not to find a single meaning. It's not to prove out what the author said or what they didn't say. Instead, when we engage with literary criticism, our goal should be to simply say something as clearly as we can, based on the methodologies available to us. To ask "What is this? What is it doing? How is it doing it, and why do we care?" is a fundamental, beautiful question and the source of pleasure to me as a reader. Art isn't autonomous, and exists in our lives criss-crossed with social and political forces which change over time. When we can untangle the knots around a work of art, we discover ways to articulate ideas that might be impossible in other contexts. To only untangle the knot of authorial intent does ourselves, and the text, a disservice.

#mouseiero

[anti-dazai-blog]

Second Anniversary Special

As many of the long-time followers of this blog know, I originally started out on the classic literature side of tumblr, which is what lead to my venturing into bsd. As an homage to my roots as a classic lit enthusiast, I’ll be going through all the works that I’ve read written by bsd authors:

The Spider’s Thread by Akutagawa

This short story is brought up in a lot of animes, which is unfortunately the most likely way western bsd fans. I could make an entire separate post of commentary on how the American school system doesn’t cover most foreign literature (outside of English [as in from England] and French works), and that is an absolute travesty. However, that’s not what we’re covering right now. 

Anyway. The Spider’s Thread is a very short story—like two pages at most. You can go read it now. For all the other entries I plan on rating the novels out of 5, but this one’s truly too short to rate. If you wanna read it you can find a hundred pdfs online. The same probably goes for most works of classic literature, so. Go wild enjoy the wonderful world of free online pdfs.

The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe

I was probably assigned other works by Poe, but this one is most likely his most famous short story. I was assigned it in middle school/high school/ and at least twice in college. Again, very short short story—you can read it in a few minutes tops. 

5/5 for the sole reason of it aligning with my personal sense of humor. I get that it’s not supposed to be funny, but unreliable narrators are and will always be hilarious to me. I love a guy insisting that he’s not crazy while he’s off murdering a guy. Cask of Amontillado-core protagonist. Funny because E.A. Poe also wrote Cask of Amantillado. I’m out here starting to suspect that E.A. Poe just really loved writing his unnamed unreliable narrator protagonists.

Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

I’ve never read Tom Sawyer, but in 11th grade my class read Huckleberry Finn. 3/5 because I don’t like the way it was taught in class, but I did enjoy analyzing it more than some other books we did. 

Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky

Currently reading it so I can’t give much feedback, but so far I’d like this guy (Raskolnikov not Dostoyevsky) to meet Meursault from The Stranger. If anyone’s made this crossover, please send it to me. And if not and you wanna go make it yourself—please I’ll love you forever.

Dracula by Bram Stoker 

I mean we’ve all done Dracula Daily. Or at least I’ll assume you’ve heard of it. 5/5, Mina’s best girl, Quincey’s best boy, I have very basic opinions but I’m standing by them.

--Bonus

The Stranger by Camus

Meursault the prison is clearly named after Meursault, the fictional character who famously goes to prison, right. We’re all on the same page about this, right? 

Anyway if you’ve never heard of or read the stranger, [spoilers] it’s about this guy who kills a guy for no reason (“it was just so hot outside, idk what happened but now there’s a dead guy, this is a good enough criminal defense right? You’re not gonna send me to jail for just this one little mistake---oh you’re giving me the death penalty? Ah. I see.”) Solid 4/5—points deducted for being a little slow by some parts (although I can’t vouch for how it is in the original French, this was only my impression from the English translation I read)

—————

After making this list, it’s clear that I haven’t read too many books my bsd authors, so next years my anniversary special will be more about the classic literature I have read. I do plan to keep posting until then. So please enjoy another year of the anti-dazai blog!!

#Anniversary special #Once again I’m about 10 days late #I think the same thing happened last year #Alas the drawbacks of creating a blog right before final assignments start being due #Bsd #akutagawa #mark twain #bram stoker #fyodor dostoevsky #edgar allan poe #albert camus #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs #Not proofreading this just gonna post #Desperately trying to get a post out on the date I promised to post by

[daidonzo]

Chapter 1 - Anti-Hero [Chishiya x Reader]

You had been living in Tokyo for less than a year when you found yourself in the Borderlands.

Luckily, you spoke Japanese quite well because you had studied it since you were a teenager, having been a fan of manga and anime from a young age - which was what lead you to look for exchange studies in Japan. It was expensive, and your good grades only managed to get you a scholarship that covered close to half of it, but your parents were supportive enough that even though you came from a middle-class family, you were able to fulfill your dream.

But suddenly, every single person in the city disappeared just as you were coming out of a coffee shop.

After crying, sobbing and screaming hysterically for what seemed like hours, you found a fancy office building where power had not been shut off. You approached it visibly confused but eager to find someone, something, that would explained what had just happened.

There was a single phone left in a table by the entrance, with a sign saying "PICK ONE!" behind them. First thing you thought was that you could probably use it to call your parents. Surely whatever was affecting Tokyo couldn't have reached your home country, right? You ran towards it, but when you picked it up, the phone lit up and you found only two apps were available: GAME and VISA, no signal whatsoever. What kind of cruel joke was this? Maybe if you went to the highest floor…

You climbed the stairs, because what else could you do?

You arrived at the twentieth floor to find that it was filled with people, maybe 10 or 11, who eyed you either suspiciously or with something that resembled… fear? Why? You opened your mouth to talk, grabbing a young girl by her arm, too scared to demand answers politely…

REGISTRATION HAS CLOSED.

The voice startled you and you looked around, trying to find the source of it.

"What the…" You started in your native tongue, seeing the girl whose arm you were holding started to cry. What was this?

The voice continued to explain the rules of a game. Simple, really, a game of logic but you were never too good at those and the language barrier was really something you started to worry about because - what if you were missing a certain clue? Also, you had 30 minutes to solve it, individually as you each had to give an answer in a separate room, otherwise, it would be GAME OVER. Okay, so you would lose a stupid game? If you won, would you get clues as to what was going on?

A 40-year old man came close, with a sly smile, looking at your from head to toe. He licked his lips before he asked, in Japanese, "Poor girl, you probably don't understand anything of what's going on, huh?" You looked at him, careful, unsure of whether you should show him that you actually understood everything that he was saying, as well as what was going on. "You don't wanna die, do you?"

Sweat was running down your spine. "What do you mean die?" you wanted to ask, but preferred keeping quiet, wanting to see how the situation unfolded before doing anything. The man in front of you was also not making you feel comfortable, quite the opposite. Just as the thoughts were running through your head and you were starting to feel the panic settling in, a young woman around your age went into one of the office rooms, confidently, apparently to give an answer, but you could not hear it - maybe the rooms were soundproof?

Blood splashed the office window.

You wanted to scream, but were too shocked to do anything. How was she killed? Something or someone must have been inside the room with her… It was not until later that you would find out you had to give your answer with a gun pointed directly to your face.

Nausea overcame any feeling you could have possibly felt, and you had to throw up. Afterwards, while cleaning your mouth with the back of your hand, you looked at the man, who now was laughing maniacally, and spoke in the most broken English you could manage. "Sir, I don't want to die… I don't understand… Can you please help me?" The smile he gave you told you he would indeed help you, but only for a price. You were absolutely disgusted.

But you were going to get through this, no matter what.

No point acting like a hero with your life on the line.

#chishiya alice in borderland #chishiya x fem!reader #chishiya x reader #chishiya fanfic #chishiya angst #chishiya #aib chishiya #chishiya fic #chishiya x you #chishiya x y/n #shuntaro chishiya #chishiya shuntaro #Spotify #as much as you want

[catgirl-catboy]

I feel like most antis have lost sight of one of the most needlessly repetitive lessons of English Lit class:  Author’s purpose. 

Most fiction is written with the purpose to entertain.  

Most nonfiction is written to inform the reader of something.  

A bit of an oversimplication, but lets go with it.  If I pick up a romance novel, it is quite likely the author wrote it because they wanted to tell a story.    It will likely have a lot of conflict, because that is frequently what drives the plot of romance novels.  If they wanted to write a book about how to get a girlfriend, they would have written a nonfiction book.

If I were to try and seduce my crush in the same way our emotionally repressed protagonist did, I would be both cringe and an idiot.   Even if instead of a romance novel, I picked up a guide titled “Romantic Relationships for Dummies” I should still decide for myself if their advice is worth following.

If some fool picks up a murder mystery and thinks it exists to inform them, why should it be everyone elses problem.

#I am devolving into a motherfucking english teacher #proship #anti anti #proshipper #profic #profiction #proship safe #proshippers please interact #pro shippers #pro shipper #pro ship

[liverpool-enjoyer]

"the color of the curtains is just blue" is an anti-intellectual argument. maybe pick another one?

also colour is important for setting mood and theme for lot's of works so maybe don't put in an english lit prof if you don't understand it yourself.

my brother in Christ if you read the tags youll realize i said word for word: "yes the color a the curtains is important." i also said that i thoroughly enjoy the small details such as the one mentioned.

"anti-intellectual??" dude rlly thinks hes in debate class. an "intellectual" knows that speaking anonymously makes your argument less credible, as it makes you look like,,, how do you say,, a fuckin coward

[queenerdloser]

im literally begging every teen who complains about classical lit they were taught in high school to like wait a few years and go back and re-read that shit when you’re in your 20s and 30s. like. i absolutely think you can get and love the classics as a teen, but i do feel like there are so many books that just hit different as an adult. your worldview is so different, your connection to real life is more vivid, and the stuff that maybe flew over your head or seemed boring or unimportant in books actually hit. i also just think it’s really important to read classics outside of the classroom setting in general like - yeah, read it for fun! i don’t care if it takes three years to finish or if you only listen to the audiobook or you just end up not finishing it, but i feel like part of what helps make a connection to these books is discovering it yourself, with nobody holding your hand or pushing you along. (this is not anti-english class!!! english class is SO necessary and wonderful and teaches you so many good essential skills.) 

idk like the anti-intellectualism surrounding reading cults (here’s to looking at you booktok) is honestly mind-numbingly frustrating and the refusal to see any inherent worth in the classics because the last time you read them was when you were bored and frustrated in your 10th grade english class is..... stupid. read them again as an adult! read them again for fun! there’s so much shit i hated as a teen i love now and yes that also applies to books by stuffy white men! 

#liveblogging life #this is specifically about the grapes of wrath #like i Did Not Like steinbeck in high school and specifically had zero interest in of mice and men #to the point where i have struggled for years to pick up this book #and like im reading it now as an adult and god!!!! steinbeck Gets It in a way that is fundamental and beautiful #idk i really do think like... you can give books another chance you know? just bc you hated it in english class #doesnt necessarily mean it's actually a bad book or that you'd hate it if you read it again later in your life #also this is a pro-classics blog lmao i love the classics!!!!! #like we need to EXPAND the classics to include more than just stuffy white straight men #but just because a book is old or difficult to read or requires more than surface level critical thought to understand #doesnt mean it's bad #which is a WILD thing to be defensive about but thats just the anti-intellectualism book culture of today for you!!!!

[feydrautha]

anti-shippers are so ridiculous they literally ignore/try to change the way english works so that pro-ship, instead of meaning 'for/supportive of shipping' or 'shipping positive' as the 'pro-' prefix works in english, means 'problematic shipping'. also tho i'm unhappily reminded of an american in my class who called biden a nazi and said the usa and europe are being run by nazis, and then a sentence later was complaining about antifa as the enemy to refer to the same people. like... antifa? short for anti-fascism? ok...??? changing the meaning of things so you can be Righteous™ in your outrage is messed up

esp when you consider that anti shippers as a term exists bc antis began calling themselves that (or just plain and simply said they were anti [insert ship they hated]) and long before there was the term proshipper it was "anti-anti" until they pretended they were getting harrassed and called names which prompted all those obnoxious "anti? oh you mean a decent human being that is not a pedophile?" posts, as if you little wrynecks didn't come up with it in the first place

either way, twitter and tiktok are singlehandedly the two worst things to have happened to fandom in the recent years and as someone who has a deep loathing for tiktok, it's hilarious watching stuff like "you should say comship if you like messy ships but Acknowledge They're Problematic" [cue five minutes of eyerolling and barely suppressed melodramatic chuckling] be all over in fandom discourse and you know that some 19 y/o who's skipping on their lit assignment for this just pulled it out of their sleeve.

we should all just return to dreamwidth for all i care for, or block every annoying person on tumblr

#anonymous #asks

[pettyprocrastination]

i think one thing those anti-intellectualism posts always gets me on is their reasoning on why classics shouldn’t be taught and should instead be replaced with ya fiction or even fanfiction. 

Because 1. As an English major myself, multiple lit classes I have taken have focused on modern literature, female authors and authors of color. Other classes focus on depiction of disability in literature, queer authors and poets and what have you. Of course the availability of such courses varies from university to university but I think the point stands that if you’re an English major today you probably won’t be reading just classics. 

and 2. This weird belief that because it was written recently, it doesn’t hold racist beliefs. It’s an odd  (false) sense of superiority a lot of (white) ya reader and authors have that confuses me given the many many many criticisms of a lack of representation in ya fiction as well as the poorly depicted stereotyped side-characters of color and queer side characters, as well as the oversexualization and aggression of men of color in such stories. 

And 3. As a black woman that has been in fandom spaces since she was old enough to know how to google search, racism is absolutely prevalent in fan spaces and fanmade works, so the belief that “we should study YA fiction and fanfiction because the classics were made by old racist misogynists” is an incredibly juvenile and ignorant way to solve the issues of higher education. 

#tj talks #higher education is TEEMING with elitism and classism and racism #but putting fanfiction into the curriculum isn't gonna solve it #representation in the curriculum however? important #and many college are MAKING efforts to do so!! professors are fighting to have these classes!!!! #but yeah that mindset of 'the classic are racist so i only read ya fiction' is so...not correct lmao #and NO that isnt a face nor charicatured mindset because I know many people who DO this and its perplexing #but spoilers: theyre all white

[samsnerdcorner]

Review: “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain

Rating: ★.5/ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

The first time I read Huckleberry Finn was when I listened to it as a german audiobook in early 2021. If I had known, that I would have to suffer through it again for my english lit class just one and a half years later, I probably would have skipped that first read.

It’s probably not very hard to tell, but I’m not a fan of “the great American novel”. The german version was quite easy to listen to, I even fell asleep during it once or twice, but even back then the story didn’t catch me in the slightest. Nothing about the story of an uneducated, naive, thirteen year old boy who grew up with racism deeply engrained in his brain interests me. He never comes to the conclusion that by helping Jim, his african-american slave, he could do something good. In that way I don’t see how this is an anti-racist book, as many scholars claim. Is the average reader supposed to catch onto the subtle hints? Especially the young ones, the kids? I doubt it. 

In the end, Huckleberry Finn doesn’t even really stand out as the good guy, because as it turns out, Jim was free all along. So what is that telling us? Racism will solve itself, if all the racists die? We can take immense efforts to help the opressed, but in the end, it’s in the mind of the racist if he stops being one or not? (ok, this passage might have been a little passive agressive, but seriously, was that really the best thing Mark twain could come up with? Was it to not upset his white, southern audience?)

As a non-native speaker, I found it insanely hard, to read some of the passages written due to the dialect that is used. However from a linguistic viewpoint it is an interesting detail that I don’t want to criticize. The more educated characters such as Tom Sawyer speaking a variant closer to the American standard is really well-thought through and probably the reason why I didn’t give this book a plain 1 star rating.

I cannot wrap my head around the fact that instead of finally laying the focus on African-American literature in literary studies, we still mostly talk about the same books written by white men over and over again. While remembering which works had an impact on the development of literature is important, getting stuck on them, and especially treating them as something that they simply are not is not the move academics think it is. It is time to let Huckleberry Finn die.

#huckleberry finn #mark twain #tom sawyer #classic literature #book review #rant review #english lit #academia

[dirtytransmasc]

so, I'm an English Lit nerd, and I had to read a poem for an essay, and jesus christ did it remind me of Billy. (I'm gonna shorten it here and there, but the poem is The Heart and the Fist, by Rudy Francisco)

~~~

...

'The Mexican government confiscates approximately 30,000 illegal firearms per year.'

When the guns are taken they get dismantled and...used to make other types of weapons that will later be utilized by their military...Pedro Reyes, an artist from Mexico City, convinced his government to donate the guns to him and he turned them into musical instruments.

...

Which is you say a weapon will always be a weapon,

But we choose how we fight the war,

And from this I learned that even the most destructive instruments can still create a melody worth dancing to,

And sometimes don't we also call that a battle?

I wonder how long it took to convince the first rifle that it can hold a note instead of a bullet but still fire into a crowd and make everyone move.

When I was 6 I was taught how to throw a punch,

And in the 80s that was the Anti Bullying Movement.

The first time one of my classmates took... (it) a little too far I remembered my training,

So I turned his nose into a fountain.

...

I remember staring at my hands the same way you stare at a midterm when all your answers are correct.

I didn't know what class this was,

But I did know I was passing,

And isn't that what masculinity has become?

A bunch of dudes afraid of their own feelings,

Terrified of any emotion but anger,

Yelling at the shadow on the wall,

But still haven't realized that we're the ones standing in front of the light.

We learn how to dodge and jab.

We learn how to step in before we swing.

We learn that the heart is the same size as the fist,

But we keep forgetting they don't have the same functions.

We keep telling each other to man the fuck up

When we don't know what the fuck that even means.

We turn our boys into bayonets,

We point them in the wrong direction,

We pull their triggers,

And then we just ignore all the damage they're doing in the distance.

The word repurpose,

It means to take an object and give it amnesia.

It means to make something forget what it's been trained to do so you can use it for a better reason.

I am learning that this body is not a shotgun.

I am learning that this body is not a pistol.

I am learning that a man is not defined by what he can destroy.

I am learning that a person who only knows how to fight can only communicate in violence,

And that shouldn't be anyone's first language.

I'm learning that the only difference between a garden and a graveyard is what you choose to put in the ground.

You see, once, I came across a picture of a strange-looking violin.

The caption said that it was made out of a rifle.

I thought to myself, 'Someday that could be me'."

~~~

if that isn't billy hargrove, I don't know what is, especially that last line. it hurts to think of him in that position, wanting to change, string at this once deadly, now delicate instrument, and seeing himself in it.

#billy hargrove #stranger things #dirtytransmasc

[or-pheus]

i truly do believe the whole ‘fanfic is better than classic literature’ discourse, stems from the American Education System.

Because think about it. The biggest group of ppl who read fanfiction are probably teenagers, or young adults. These teenagers are probably in a highschool english class that is introducing them to classic literature in a less than constructive or interesting way. Your english teacher is gonna make or break your appreciation for classic lit at that point.

When I was in 9th grade, the way my english teacher went about explaining the symbolism in the books, and how much work she gave us regarding it, turned me WAY off. Because i felt like i couldn’t enjoy the book, or find meaning it in for myself. I had to search for what she wanted from it. I couldn’t interpret it in any other way. I couldn’t read the book for the sake of reading it or finding it intellectually stimulating, I had to read it because we had a quiz over chapters 1-5 on friday. I memorized key plotpoints, events, and character attributes, purely chapter by chapter, robotically. Not in any way that really flowed cohesively with the story or symbolism or overall message, because that wasn’t important. What was, was my grade on that quiz.

And on top of that, a lot of the required reads that are considered classic lit, ARE BORING BOOKS. It’s really difficult to force a teenager to relate to a dead old white guy writing about a completely different time, and FOR a completely different audience.

 If you’re english teacher does not attempt to make any of the lessions fun, or interesting, intellectual, or thought provoking and instead insists you just...write a paper on symbolism that THAT english teacher picked out, of COURSE teenagers are going to be turned away from it!

 of course they’re gonna go for fun fanfiction that features their favorite characters, characters that they relate to, with plotlines that they find fun, and they relate to!

(now obviously im not account for all types of literature here! ive just noticed this discourse tends to flow towards anti-classic lit takes. There are so many wonderful published works that can be just as interesting, and more fun to read than fanfiction! and you should definitely read books! but there’s also nothing wrong with teenagers reading fanfiction, and you’re not morally, or intellectually superior for dunking on them for doing so!)

#long post #fanfiction #classic literature #books #discourse #fan fic

[holdharmonysacred]

Been seeing one of those posts about anti-intellectualism going around and while I agree that the other examples cited are bananas (who looks at Picasso’s stuff and thinks he’s a renaissance artist????), I’m gonna have to call foul on the one complaining about people studying YA and fanfiction in English class, because that specific point sounds like it’s mocking some genuine arguments that got unfortunately mangled in the game of social media telephone. Because usually when someone’s seriously arguing something like that, it’s either

A. people genuinely wanting to study YA lit, fanfiction, and other forms of popular literature like comics or video games as genuine artforms worthy of analysis, critique, and respect (with this version usually happening at a higher academic level like university or “trained academics going ham”)

or B. people wanting to use YA lit as a teaching tool and springboard for kids to use to start learning how to read and analyze texts, usually because most of the stuff we consider classics today genuinely suck as material for Baby’s First Literary Analysis.

And the thing is both of those are legitimate points to be had! For point A, these forms of popular media are still genuinely worth studying and analyzing, and while there’s genuine issues with the subcultures around these forms of media, the media itself is still worth taking seriously and talking about. A text being made for kids or teens doesn’t mean it’s therefore worthless, university classes that talk about literature for kids and teens aren’t stupid, what the hell are you guys on about? How are you guys gonna work in the kids and teens departments of your local libraries if you look down on those types of literature with a sneering disdain?

And for point B, this is a genuine problem with English classes in public schools! A lot of classic texts suck as reading material for kids and high schoolers these days because either schools aren’t equipped to really teach them (you can’t teach Huck Finn to your class of kids if you’re unable to step in and stop said kids from using the book as an excuse to be horrifically racist), or because the texts themselves just haven’t aged well and don’t match the target reading level anymore. Alice in Wonderland is kid’s literature for example, but it’s not the best text to teach to kids nowadays because most of its jokes just aren’t relevant or obvious to modern kid audiences anymore (whereas an adult might find the books hilarious because they have an advantage in Comprehending Ye Olde Texts that kids don’t have). No one’s saying Huck Finn is irredeemably bad and should never be taught ever again, what people are saying is that it’s a terrible text to use as Baby’s First Introduction To Antiracism, and there’s far better texts written by actual POC who would be better suited to that particular purpose. Huck Finn can and should still be taught, but its failure to age with grace means that it’s better suited for college-level courses that can actually grapple with its material.

and also....... We already teach YA texts in schools???? We literally already teach YA texts to kids in schools. That’s literally what books like The Giver and The Outsiders are - they’re YA novels. Teaching YA texts to kids in schools isn’t remotely a new concept, it’s something we’ve been doing for decades. Really this whole argument is just about updating the reading lists to include more recent novels from the 2000s and 2010s, in which case something like The Hunger Games would be a perfect choice because it matches the relevant reading levels while also being thematically dense enough to use to teach literary analysis. This literally isn’t as bizarre a situation as you guys think it is, I beg you all to take English classes for once in your life.

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