I know litcrit isn't for everyone And That's Fine but god it makes me so frustrated when someone responds to a piece of analysis with "I don't like that and it makes me uncomfortable so therefore it's laughably wrong and you're crazyyyyy for saying it." the classic example of this is how straight people often respond to basic queer readings ("lmao they're literally just friends you're clearly a virgin loser who's never had normal friends before"), but I'm also thinking about how fan people on tumblr sometimes respond to analyses that imply unpleasant things about characters they like or vice versa ("that scene doesn't mean anything it was improv it was a mistake they kept it in by accident it's obviously irrelevant it's distasteful to acknowledge you're actually the weird one for bringing up something so fucked up"). in my ap lit class in high school we had a substitute come in on the day we were supposed to discuss seamus heaney's "blackberry-picking" and he got absolutely scandalized at a bunch of seventeen-year-olds telling him that this poem about picking blackberries had a lot of uneasy sexual subtext, he told us we had twisted dirty minds, then when our regular teacher came back the next day she said "yeah that's exactly what the poem's about."
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