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Taeke posted:As a teen I read a lot of fantasy and of course started to come up with my own poo poo with the aspiration of one day actually writing it down (which never happened.) One of those ideas was about a fantasy world where there's a huge wall of ice in the north that protects the people from the undead horrors beyond, lmao. gently caress you george
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Oct 14, 2023 23:09
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tokin opposition posted:The western canon is trash for old people, fascists, and pretentious idiots Unlike your posts, which are just trash to everyone.
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Oct 14, 2023 23:12
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Wuthering Heights is great. It's basically just the world's gossipiest servant telling the story of a monstrously malicious guy getting mad and vindictively destroying the lives of three generations worth of a couple families out in the moors. Yeah there's a love story involved and some commentary about the status of women at the time, but overall it's just an exploration of how extremely awful people can be.
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Oct 14, 2023 23:42
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Most literature with a capital L seems to be about how horrible people can be, how good people can be, or both, and I am here for it. Also, whales.
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Oct 15, 2023 00:11
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Read Pynchon
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Oct 15, 2023 00:19
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Tenant of Wildfell Hall continues to be the best book by a Brontë, and also the one that gets taught the least in schools. Austen and Dickens are taught more, in part because it's harder to associate their social critiques with modern social issues.
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Oct 15, 2023 00:24
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Taeke posted:I did a BA in English lit and had to read a bunch of that stuff. Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, etc.
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Oct 15, 2023 01:57
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Phthisis posted:Wuthering Heights is great. It's basically just the world's gossipiest servant telling the story of a monstrously malicious guy getting mad and vindictively destroying the lives of three generations worth of a couple families out in the moors. Yeah there's a love story involved and some commentary about the status of women at the time, but overall it's just an exploration of how extremely awful people can be. EDIT: Still way better than Heathcliff or Hindley. People that go 'actually Nelly is the true villain' are like. Maybe reading a little too deep into her being an unreliable narrator. PetraCore has a new favorite as of 02:04 on Oct 15, 2023 |
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Oct 15, 2023 02:01
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Phthisis posted:Wuthering Heights is great. It's basically just the world's gossipiest servant telling the story of a monstrously malicious guy getting mad and vindictively destroying the lives of three generations worth of a couple families out in the moors. Yeah there's a love story involved and some commentary about the status of women at the time, but overall it's just an exploration of how extremely awful people can be. It's much worse when you're sitting in a room with the most empty-headed people in the universe who squeal over any tiny little positive action and don't seem to notice any bad things happening. An actual comment: He gave her crocuses, how sweet! What's a crocus? A flower? Oh how sweet! Meanwhile I understand what I am reading and am loving miserable. And my teacher is like "Well actually maybe nobody was bad, it's the servant who's jealous and lying!" And I wanted to never read a book again. "Ah yes, the part of the story you really hate because everyone and everything is terrible? What if that isn't even true in the metafiction of the novel?? huh??? Bet you don't feel like you are wasting hours of your precious life now!" gently caress Wuthering Heights. I think English/Lit is just an exercise in making as many people as possible hate books, even people who constantly read books and love books. PetraCore posted:People that go 'actually Nelly is the true villain' are like. Maybe reading a little too deep into her being an unreliable narrator. goddamnit my English teacher was one of those Midnight Voyager has a new favorite as of 02:12 on Oct 15, 2023 |
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Oct 15, 2023 02:07
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The treatment of physical and mental health is pretty accurate for the time as far as I gather. But yeah, relying on the public domain has been terrible for education. Maybe we can at least start with Sherlock Holmes.
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Oct 15, 2023 02:13
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https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1713127097802134004
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Oct 15, 2023 02:20
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I'm pretty sure he didn't mean "you're known primarily as a Harry Potter fanfic writer" as a backhanded compliment but hoo boy
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Oct 15, 2023 02:26
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PetraCore posted:one narrator is an idiot while the other is too close to everything that happened to be anything like an objective party I do love Wuthering Heights and honestly this is one of the best parts of the book. The narrator comes in as this total idiot from the city who is enamored by the "intricate" lives of the people out in the country, which is actually just a whole bunch of people with not much going on in their lives manufacturing drama and making a total mess of everything for no real good reason. I feel like there's almost a Jerry Springer-esque aspect to it. I'm definitely in the camp that finds it fascinating how in-tune with (perceptive to?) humanity and social dynamics the Brontë sisters were, given how supposedly secluded they were.
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Oct 15, 2023 02:27
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I read Dracula a few years ago and it's still rad. There's some pretty spooky parts even for a modern audience. Also the book has a cowboy in it.
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Oct 15, 2023 02:29
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don longjohns posted:Most literature with a capital L seems to be about how horrible people can be, how good people can be, or both, and I am here for it. Star Trek 4 isn't that good.
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Oct 15, 2023 02:33
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The Saddest Rhino posted:I'm pretty sure he didn't mean "you're known primarily as a Harry Potter fanfic writer" as a backhanded compliment but hoo boy The guy he's responding to is primarily known as a Nazi; his fanfic is just secondary
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Oct 15, 2023 02:36
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I was reading Dracula and the Invisible Man and Frankenstein and that sort of thing at the same time Wuthering Heights was making me suffer, and my teacher absolutely could not comprehend that my for-fun reading level did not mean I would love the Brontes. She absolutely could not understand the difference. Any Dracula adaptation that makes Jonathan Harker boring or leaves out the cowboy is written by a coward.  Also anyone who actually looks at Twitter, watch out, they've been circulating a loving paid ad showing a dead baby.
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Oct 15, 2023 02:39
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Yud*, a Harry Potter fanfic writer, *Better known for other works
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Oct 15, 2023 02:40
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Jfc
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Oct 15, 2023 02:49
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"Cruelty for its own sake is key to the wellbeing of Israel. Furthermore,"
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Oct 15, 2023 02:51
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Taeke posted:I did a BA in English lit and had to read a bunch of that stuff. Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, etc. yeah i am the same and the two units that clicked the most for me were Shakespeare and american lit. shakespeare was really relevant bc i was doing linguistics also and american lit was the only subject in my course that contained books not written by dead white people. there was some good stuff in there but drat there was a lot of boring poo poo too
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Oct 15, 2023 02:54
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I finally appreciated Shakespeare when I took an English class that covered works of his other than Romeo and Juliet. I realized I just don't like Romeo and Juliet, but lots of his other stuff is pretty good, actually.
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Oct 15, 2023 02:57
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tokin opposition posted:Yud*, a Harry Potter fanfic writer, Weirdly I think he might be best known for that work specifically
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Oct 15, 2023 03:03
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Midnight Voyager posted:It's much worse when you're sitting in a room with the most empty-headed people in the universe who squeal over any tiny little positive action and don't seem to notice any bad things happening. An actual comment: He gave her crocuses, how sweet! What's a crocus? A flower? Oh how sweet! But yeah, Nelly is, imo, not trying to lie but also biased about every single person in the story she's telling and harder on people she dislikes than ones she likes. There's no 'she's making everything up', though, other narrators provide independent verification of exactly how uncomfortable and weird the atmosphere is at Wuthering Heights. If there's zero truth in what she's saying, then what does anything even matter? It sounds like you had the most miserable setting to try to read the story, and also it just wasn't the kind of story you found entertaining because a lot of it is just abuse all the way down. Ghost Leviathan posted:The treatment of physical and mental health is pretty accurate for the time as far as I gather. But yeah, relying on the public domain has been terrible for education. Maybe we can at least start with Sherlock Holmes. Phthisis posted:I do love Wuthering Heights and honestly this is one of the best parts of the book. The narrator comes in as this total idiot from the city who is enamored by the "intricate" lives of the people out in the country, which is actually just a whole bunch of people with not much going on in their lives manufacturing drama and making a total mess of everything for no real good reason. I feel like there's almost a Jerry Springer-esque aspect to it. PetraCore has a new favorite as of 03:13 on Oct 15, 2023 |
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Oct 15, 2023 03:06
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Lol, xAI is looking to generate a fan fiction to surpass My Immortal
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Oct 15, 2023 03:22
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PetraCore posted:Some people get really into the theory Heathcliff is Mr. Earnshaw's bastard son and that's the reason the dude adopts him and then favors him and I'm like. My guys. That's not supported by the text. Maybe, though for a lot of people it's very 'Why the gently caress did he bring him home then?' but then apparently it was just a thing for rich assholes to adopt random poor kids off the street like a pet.
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Oct 15, 2023 03:35
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Midnight Voyager posted:I was reading Dracula and the Invisible Man and Frankenstein and that sort of thing at the same time Wuthering Heights was making me suffer, and my teacher absolutely could not comprehend that my for-fun reading level did not mean I would love the Brontes. She absolutely could not understand the difference. I've always felt that science fiction (including the foundational classics by Shelley, Wells and Verne) is a big blind spot in the typical literature curriculum for students. I guess it isn't considered serious enough to be "real" literature. But in high school, when I was being bored out of my skull in English class by Winesburg, Ohio, at lunch I was getting my MIND BLOWN reading things like Rendezvous With Rama and Foundation entirely on my own. Back when I still entertained notions of writing fiction, I joined a writers' circle. When my first turn to submit came around, I offered up a science fiction short story. Its premise was that we're simulating a universe in a computer, but whoa, it turns out our whole universe is itself just a simulation being run in a computer, and that computer's universe could be a simulation too, etc. etc. and who knows how far up or down the chain goes. Of course, my story was neither the first nor the best to tackle this idea. (Hell, Futurama just did a take on this exact concept a few months ago.) But one member of the writers' circle got her MIND BLOWN by it. This was an intelligent, well-read woman in her thirties, and honestly a much better writer than I was. But she had never read any real sci-fi, because everybody knew that was all kid stuff, not "real" literature. I almost felt guilty that my silly little story was what popped her science fiction cherry, but at least I got to recommend some authors and titles for her to explore the genre.
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Oct 15, 2023 03:38
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Maybe, though for a lot of people it's very 'Why the gently caress did he bring him home then?' but then apparently it was just a thing for rich assholes to adopt random poor kids off the street like a pet. Like drat maybe make more of an effort to figure out what language he's speaking and what his name is. Still, as far as I interpreted it, it's very much that Mr. Earnshaw was a strict father but a good man and Heathcliff's circumstances tugged at his heart enough he felt responsible, and then he openly favored Heathcliff to try and make up for whatever circumstances left him starving on the street in the first place, while holding his biological kids to stricter standards because he felt they had a decent enough upbringing to Know Better. It ends up being a hosed situation that does a lot of damage, but I wouldn't blame Heathcliff for any of it in terms of the 'he fucks up 3 generations of a family' thing, because Mr. Earnshaw literally just picked him up and brought him home.
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Oct 15, 2023 03:43
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Powered Descent posted:I've always felt that science fiction (including the foundational classics by Shelley, Wells and Verne) is a big blind spot in the typical literature curriculum for students. I guess it isn't considered serious enough to be "real" literature. But in high school, when I was being bored out of my skull in English class by Winesburg, Ohio, at lunch I was getting my MIND BLOWN reading things like Rendezvous With Rama and Foundation entirely on my own. This post is gonna haunt me for reasons
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Oct 15, 2023 04:07
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Some serious nerdiness going on itt
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Oct 15, 2023 04:40
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Kit Walker posted:Catcher in the Rye perfectly captures the mentality of a very specific kind of teenager in a very specific period of history and it's pretty good for that but it's not actually pleasant reading. It's also funny how often it's assigned reading for high schoolers considering the book is basically pointing a mirror at them and saying, "lol, this is you. You're like this and you suck" Steppenwolf is a superior Catcher in the Rye. So, you know, still has it's problems. But it's definitely better.
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Oct 15, 2023 04:54
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Powered Descent posted:I've always felt that science fiction (including the foundational classics by Shelley, Wells and Verne) is a big blind spot in the typical literature curriculum for students. I guess it isn't considered serious enough to be "real" literature. But in high school, when I was being bored out of my skull in English class by Winesburg, Ohio, at lunch I was getting my MIND BLOWN reading things like Rendezvous With Rama and Foundation entirely on my own. Ursula Le Guin has some great quotes on this, and how serious and professional critics come off as blithering idiots having their mind blown by like, Harry Potter, because the snobbery over 'genre' fiction just means they have massive blind spots to entire fields and series, and gushing over Harry Potter comes off as a gourmet food critic gushing over buttered toast going 'Where has this been all my life?!' Ghost Leviathan has a new favorite as of 05:19 on Oct 15, 2023 |
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Oct 15, 2023 05:16
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...! posted:Some serious nerdiness going on itt  CREATIVE CONVENTION IS LEAKING
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Oct 15, 2023 05:17
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I can post more cspam if you want what if instead it was Galestine and it was only for the ladies
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Oct 15, 2023 05:18
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Deformed Church posted:English classes just suck at teaching english. Midnight Voyager posted:I think English/Lit is just an exercise in making as many people as possible hate books, even people who constantly read books and love books.
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Oct 15, 2023 05:25
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i dont know what Wuthering Heights is, but I assume its title is the source reference of the Dogman comic, Mothering Heights.
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Oct 15, 2023 05:29
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tokin opposition posted:I can post more cspam if you want We don't want that
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Oct 15, 2023 05:29
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One of the other issues with english lit classes is even stuff that in theory would be appealing to kids is often taught in ways that completely miss the point. Though ironically I think the 90s Romeo + Juliet movie we got shown in class was probably the best way to do it. That movie is fun. Leonardo DiCaprio is pretty much cheat codes for casting Romeo. And the guns are great.
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Oct 15, 2023 05:37
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Ursula Le Guin has some great quotes on this, and how serious and professional critics come off as blithering idiots having their mind blown by like, Harry Potter, because the snobbery over 'genre' fiction just means they have massive blind spots to entire fields and series, and gushing over Harry Potter comes off as a gourmet food critic gushing over buttered toast going 'Where has this been all my life?!' I would love to read that, if you happen to have any links or quotes handy.
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Oct 15, 2023 05:38
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Tiggum posted:The problem is much bigger than that. School is bad at teaching. You've got too many kids, at too wide a range of ability, for teachers to be able to effectively engage with any of them, and the system is built around standardised tests and metrics that would prevent the use of any kind of individualised learning paths even if the teacher:student ratio was significantly improved. Everyone has to do the same thing at the same pace and focus on the same things to make sure the test scores are high enough that the teacher and school don't look bad. And this is the selling point that homeschooling wingnuts use to demand we abolish the department of education. Because it's the one talking point really hard to argue around. You'll inevitably come off as insisting the problem is not enough government while they present options like school choice or homeschooling as much more reasonable alternatives. Also probably totally coincidental I'm sure but every one of these pro homeschool wingnuts inevitably has some prodigy of a student that excels in such a relaxed environment. I'm not suggesting the institution of homeschooling is inherently bad necessarily here, but rather that it often shines when the argument for the promotion of public schooling can have so many shortcomings as you've accurately described.
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Oct 15, 2023 05:41
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