I’ve Seen A Lot Of Posts On My Dash Tonight About Users Who Are Threatening Suicide, With Other Tumblr

Hot take: Actual literary analysis requires at least as much skill as writing itself, with less obvious measures of whether or not you’re shit at it, and nobody is allowed to do any more god damn litcrit until they learn what the terms “show, don’t tell” and “pacing” mean.

What Fandoms Need To Know About Literary Theory

A lot of the controversy and toxicity in fandoms today comes from people who assert that their perspectives or interpretations are superior to all others, that there are certain inarguable facts about a character or story, and anything that contradicts that is “bad” or “wrong”. As an English teacher, this bothers the hell out of me. Here’s why:

In the world of literary criticism, we call the perspectives from which we approach a piece of art “lenses”: we might look at something through a queer lens, a feminist lens, a marxist lens, etc. The reason we have this term is because it is necessary to acknowledge that we are approaching the work with a specific focus, and anything we determine about the work will be affected by that focus.

A lens warps your perspective: it emphasizes some things and blurs out others, makes some things disappear but might make visible what was before unseen. The best, most interesting, most amazing parts of analysis come from working with these lenses, but we cannot forget that our perspective of the work is being affected by the lens we choose to use.

In short: When you are looking for something specific, you are more likely to find it. A feminist lens will reveal feminist themes; an LGBT+ lens will reveal LGBT+ themes; a psychoanalytical lens will reveal mental health themes; and so on. All of these could use the same evidence to support them. All of these are valid.

Fandom creators make fascinating, profound, valid assertions about their media that are thoughtful and possible, but too often, they don’t realize that their theory – indeed, any theory outside of the established canon – is not the absolute truth. They become more concerned with having the “correct” interpretation and don’t realize that in true analysis, all of these interpretations can be simultaneously valid, even if they contradict each other.

The text – in this case, the show / game / film / novel – always supports multiple different perspectives, readings, and interpretations. One interpretation of the evidence is not the only interpretation of the evidence, because there are so many diverse perspectives to come from.

And that is a good thing! If there was one absolute truth, fandoms would have nothing to draw and write and create! Multiple perspectives exist, and that is okay. If we start insisting that all interpretations come from one perspective, that is extremely limiting and even discriminatory.

Fandoms should stop looking for an absolute “truth” that does not exist, and start celebrating all of the possible interpretations and perspectives that analysis gives us.

I did more knitting for this pie crust than I have on my actual knitting WIP in the last week

crisp glass of water moodboard

Powerfull life lesson.

hey, don’t cry. -12 bottles of beer on the wall, ok?

hey. don't cry. 99 bottles of beer on the wall. okay?

Alternate article for enabling gpedit.msc (for windows 10 and 11 home) I found it more straight forward.

I got a laptop with Windows 11 for an IT course so I can get certified, and doing the first time device set-up for it made me want to commit unspeakable violence

Windows 11 should not exist, no one should use it for any reason, it puts ads in the file explorer and has made it so file searches are also web searches and this cannot be turned off except through registry editing. Whoever is responsible for those decisions should be killed, full stop.

Switch to linux, it's free and it's good.

“In 1404, King Taejong fell from his horse during a hunting expedition. Embarrassed, looking to his left and right, he commanded, “Do not let the historian find out about this.” To his disappointment, the historian accompanying the hunting party included these words in the annals, in addition to a description of the king’s fall.“

LMFAOOOOOO rip to that guy

fresh, clean no-terf version for reblogs!

Your mom and aunts aren’t on tumblr.  Please warn them about this as well.