people I still want to stab over a decade later:
Creative Writing Professor at a former college: Welcome to creative writing! By the way, you will not write fantasy, ghost stories, pranormal, or science fiction in this class, as this is a creative writing course.β
What the ever loving fuck is withΒ βcreativeβ writing professors who think that speculative fiction of any stripe ISNβT CREATIVE?
I still remember my own creative writing teacher telling me this because he saw the Terry Pratchett book on my desk and got this smug smirk on his face like βaha, gotchaβ. He had the nerve to pick it up and call it βpopularist fictionβ, like somehow being popular and easily accessible made it less inherent in intellectual value.
I had it in my back pack because I did my final thesis on the evolution of mythology and folk tails into fantasy and sci-fi and the societal importance of telling stories (before anyone asks, no I donβt have it, I lost it when I moved continents), and I used Terry Pratchett because there wasnβt a single humanitarian issue the man did not touch on.
Which I told him. And then he kind of floundered and went βah, well but, itβsβ¦well I mean itβs not exactly high browβ, like neither the fuck was Shakespeare or Dickens you self-important turnip. Dickens was literally selling his stories by the chapter. He was the popular author of his time. Shakespeare was too, he fucking made up words and phrases all the time because the language he needed to express himself didnβt exist in the way he needed it too.
Intellectual elitism is nothing more than a hold over from class warfare and the belief that only certain people should get to be truly educated. And it needs to be smashed.
And God knows Shakespeare loved dick jokes more than he probably loved breathing.
