#literary criticism

[elljayvee]

Genuinely don't know what it's called but there's a particular way of violating reality that doesn't work. For example, I am willing to accept an omegaverse university AU of nearly any fandom you care to name (except, for some reason, Sherlock, because I have an inexplicable hatred for unilock). However, a lot of Star Wars university AUs specifically fail on this aspect: they make Anakin an engineering PhD student and Obi-Wan something like literature or classics, and then they make Anakin his TA or GA.

You can't do that. Absolutely not. Anakin is unqualified for that and a university would not do it in any case. A university would literally hire a junior or senior undergraduate workstudy student to do as much of that work as possible first. They would do NOTHING other than do that and make the prof do all his own grading.

Is there a name for "I will accept [wild fantasy premise] but not [ordinary wrong thing]?" Please tell me there's a name for this. Probably someone who studies lit will know? I'm a systems person I don't know from lit theory just like Anakin

[riding-with-the-wild-hunt]

revealing of many things perhaps that the ‘you don’t know what you married’ fairytale trope contains such marked thematic differences between male and female protagonists… the selkie, animal wife/swan maiden, and lamia motifs being associated with the heteropatriarchal terror of perceived-feminine interiority; that if you don’t materially force your wife to stay, she might one day be gone, that there are things about her you don’t know and may not be able to understand. while female-focused versions of the structure—bluebeard, the robber bridegroom, fitcher’s bird, mr. fox, and so on—encapsulate the very real danger of abuse without recourse to anything but one’s own cleverness: the common fear that the person you marry and know might turn out to be a stranger after all, or that you may be forced to marry without even superficial knowledge or choice.

[theweeklydiscourse]

The problem with male love interests nowadays is that they’re not characters. They’re just good-looking lamps that exist to shine a light on the designated reader-insert heroine. Like…romantasy authors love giving their male characters these lofty responsibilities (e.g. princes, kings, dukes, resistance leaders,) but don’t give a damn about what those roles mean for the characters. Their status doesn’t say anything about them, it only exists to give the heroine status by extension. He has power, so she has power. But that’s all there is to it. This makes these love interests extremely dull and reduces them to one-dimensional cheerleaders for their heroines.

[thetransfemininereview]

How To Read A Trans Fem Writer

an essay, an instruction manual, a trans fem writer manifesto, a plea, and a prayer by Maya Deane & Kai Cheng Thom

Hello my wonderful followers, please signal boost the hell out of this incredible and timely piece by Maya Deane and Kai Cheng Thom. Thank you 🩷

[jstor]

Dana Elle Murphy on Black Feminist Criticism - JSTOR Daily

An interview with Dana Elle Murphy, whose work explores how drafts, fragments, and literary lineages expand our understanding of Black women

In JSTOR Daily's latest Ask a Professor interview, Dana Elle Murphy, Assistant Professor of Black Studies and English at Caltech, reflects on Black feminist criticism as a practice that moves across genres: poetry, theory, drafts, festivals, fragments, and memory.

Murphy asks us to reconsider who counts as a critic. In Foremother Love: Phillis Wheatley and Black Feminist Criticism, she positions Wheatley not only as a poet but as a foundational theorist and describes the process by which Black women’s writing becomes criticism, archive, and theory. She also reminds us that fields are dynamic. Writing circulates beyond the university and later “trickles back” in new forms.

Returning to drafts and ephemera—materials not always read as “scholarly”—Murphy shows how a single crossed-out word can unsettle critical consensus. An inserted “we(?)” in a Lucille Clifton draft complicates a poem long understood to remain in the third person. An added word in pencil, an excised line, and other details open new questions about collectivity and evidence.

In the interview, Murphy emphasizes humility and flexibility, acknowledging that claims can change and that error, multiplicity, and revision are generative practices.

Pedagogy threads through the conversation, too. She speaks of students “calling in with love” and recalls the idea that “a good teacher makes him/herself obsolete,” a vision of teaching that centers transformation over authority.

If you’re thinking about drafts, theory, archives, or the classroom as a collaborative space, this interview offers a lot to carry with you.

[alexanderthejustalright]

I feel we need more animated adaptations in modern society. And I don’t want them to be made for kids either (looking at you animal farm cartoon adaptation with Seth Rogan )

I want a animated illiad adaptation

I want an animated great gatsby in the style of old Disney cartoons like 101 Dalmatians

I want an animated don quote

I want an animated Dracula,Frankenstein, Jekyll and hide.

These all might exist and if they do tell me but I wanna reiterate that I don’t want any of these to be for children. I want to see them get made for adults so they don’t get dumbed down or cartooned.

I understand not all children’s media is dumbed down for children brains but stuff will be taken out and most classics and books are more gory then people realize and so they’d have to be censored.

The illiad is a war so it’s a gory mess

In great gatsby someone gets hit by a car gatsby is shot and his killer kill’s himself.

don quote kills a sheep I’m pretty sure and makes many colorful threats

think of all the body horror in the classic horror that you read.

I say all this cause I want more cartoons that are adaptations not ment for children and i can consume.

(if any of these animated adaptations exist please tell me)

[svan-medea]

So I don't have the words to explain this, but I will try to make my point somehow here.

Can we talk about how Rick Riordan read about demigods and inmediately chose to call them half-bloods?

First of all, it's not a word that ancient Greeks used: those who were considered "superior to mankind, but inferior to the gods", to say it somehow, were called demigods or heroes. Pretty sure it started being used during the Middle Ages, as... literally, as a term, to call those who were of "mixed race" during the colonization of America. It originated from that, and it many negative connotations: pretty sure it could be considered a slur. And he KNOWS this. At least, I want to think he does. I mean, explain this:

Yeah, Rick, it's good that you wanna point out the discrimination Indigenous and African people suffer, but I think Piper' and Carter's discomfort with that name could be erased by simply not calling them that. It is really unnecessry. Sure, you could add a scene in which someone calls demigods that, be it with ill intentions or just as a misconception, but both ways could serve to show the characters' upsetness before such name.

Don't you think, Rick, I don't know, it comes to my mind... that there are better ways to call the children of gods? I believe that throwing this word around like it's nothing in a children's book is... questionable, to say the least. It minimizes what the word half-blood meant. What it was used and is still used for.

"Oh, but he does call them heroes and demigods!" Oh, so he IS able to not use a racial slur for his literal childrens book, huh? Not to mention, he STILL called it "Half-Blood Camp" and the term that is used the most is still that one.

I've counted just The Lightning Thief, but the word half-blood is said like 60 times, the word hero is said like 50 and the word demigod is said only 6 times.

I really wanna just become an editor in that fuckass book and change all the half-bloods for demigods.

[prokopetz]

Doylist analysis of Moby-Dick is fun because on one hand, Ishmael is intentionally written as full of shit about a great many things, and on the other hand, Melville himself is also full of shit about a great many things, so every time Ishmael is full of shit you get to play a game of on what level is he full of shit?