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Have you ever seen a peacock in full flight?
I do not own these pics. They were sent to me in an email. But I thought I’d share with you all because they’re just AMAZING.
DRAGONS
I feel so stupid I didn’t know they could fly, I thought they were like CHICKENS, I never questioned it because these pictures never circulate, I am WAY OVER MY HEAD.
refseek.com
www.worldcat.org/
link.springer.com
http://bioline.org.br/
repec.org
science.gov
pdfdrive.com
Worldcat is my bestie and my one true love!! Not only does it tell you what library a book is at, but it also price compares different used book sites against each other for easy view! It's how I got Tarot For the Master for $10!!
Oh, and since I have your attention: z-library (books and textbooks) and sci-hub (gatekept scientific journal articles.) I just ripped a textbook for class off z-library and snatched a required reading from sci-hub. Life is good and education should be accessible at every stage and station of life.
information wants to be free
@thesightofthestarsmakemesmile
THERE’S A SEARCH ENGINE FOR THAT
And it’s called SearXNG. It’s a metasearch engine, so it takes information from whatever providers you select and presents it to you as Google might but without ads or tracking, and you can pick which sources it searches, so you could only search Wikipedia and scihub and worldcat and whatnot by default
The implication of Victor being an undergrad in the novel is incredibly funny because, yes, it explains so much of his behavior and audacity, but it also means Victor's apartment could've been some sort of student housing, which means there were other undergrads living there, too.
Which means when Victor wakes up to the Creature standing by his bed like ☺️, and Victor freaks out and runs away, the Creature could have ostensibly wandered into the hallway after him, only to be met with a pack of incredibly drunk-after-an-all-night-1818-rager yet well-meaning frat boys.
Who were so blasted that they were just like, "Dude, what, do you play rugby? Holy shit, he's fuckin' huge, look at this fuckin' guy! Absolute unit!" And they all whooped and hollered and just ushered the Creature into their dorm to keep the party going.
And the Creature was just like, "?????" but very pleased to find other people vaguely shaped like him, so he lets them because he may be just minutes old but he knew early on all he really wanted was one (1) buddy and now there's, like, a herd of them and they're all having a blast.
When the guys inevitably pass out, sloshed beyond all sense, he just sits and waits for them to wake up and when they do, later that morning, he's poking at one of them to make sure the guy is still breathing, and the kid wakes up and yells for a second and squints at the 8 foot-tall (rugby???? player????) guy in their dorm and is like, "Shit, what is that?"
And another one squints at him and goes, "I don't fuckin' know, bro, but he can throw us so hard. Did you see how David just...fuckin'...flew out the window last night? Just hurled David like it was no big deal. That was awesome."
David groans and puts his head under his pillow because his headache is awful but he lets out a pained, muffled, "that was awesome" in agreement.
So in a rare case of wholesome frat boy camaraderie, this herd of college roommate boys, all of whom are dumb as rocks but well-meaning, just take the Creature in because, "There's this huge fucking monster guy and it's the coolest thing we've ever seen."
This would possibly mean the Creature is socialized to be a dumb-as-rocks frat boy, but because I cannot allow that to happen and because there is no universe in which he would not be into poetry, he somehow also gets socialized by liberal arts majors and is just as Sensitive™, it rubs off on his frat buddies, who start saying things like, "No, man, it's Sturm und Drang, it's, like, the fuckin' vast rolling of the soul that, like...fuckin' eschews Enlightenment rationalism."
But some of the boys' lingo inevitably rubs off on the Creature so when, months later, Victor comes back to get all of his things with Henry post-mental breakdown, he bumps into a crowd of rowdy guys playfully jostling each other, and that crowd includes an 8-foot tall dude in a letterman jacket holding a volume of Goethe in one hand and a tankard of beer in the other, and he scoffs down at Victor and goes, "Accursed Creator! Why didst thou abandon me in my hour of need? Fuckin' lame."
And all his buddies go, "Yoooooo!" and high five.
The Creature in class getting perfect grades as his frat boy besties cheer him on:
THIS!!! @thewhiitelotus ! This is the thing! Look me in the eye and tell me ANY undergrad wouldn't be stoked beyond belief to befriend an immortal promethean monster. "He's like a mini kaiju, he's like the fuckin' Hulk, he can recite the entirety of Paradise Lost by heart, he rules."
I would like to add: Victor's professors - who he argued were wrong and knew less than him - would probably find out about the mad-science-project-turned-student (attending on Victor's student payments?).
They would almost certainly like him better. Not because they're okay with an amalgam of human corpses brought to life by unholy means, but because having an undergrad try to tell you that they know your own subject of expertise better than you is fucking insufferable.
And since Victor was very clearly not following proper lab procedures or the scientific method, there is no proof that Victor is responsible for this. Could have been a fluke. Or God. Or someone else's inappropriate science project. Annoying flunkers who think they know better than the teachers get no extra credit for creatures they can't prove they created. Also, Mr Frankenstein? You're ...son? Is a much better student than you were.
out: Cassandra of Troy speaking in mysterious metaphors and oracle verse
in: Cassandra of Troy talking like uncle Colm from Derry girls so she’s so boring that nobody takes anything in
im sobbing op

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On Dentists
So I can’t brush my teeth. Like, it’s the worst kind of hell. I went to the dentist for a cleaning today and I told the hygienist this, and she was wonderfully helpful.
There are some incredibly soft toothbrushes available- namely, post-surgical brushes. Running them under hot water makes them even softer.
She told me that you don’t really need to use toothpaste- it’s mostly marketing. The foam gets to me, so that is really reassuring.
She gave me two particularly soft brushes and some xylitol gum. Trident is a market brand of xylitol gum, which helps with your teeth and can make your breath smell better.
The whole purpose of brushing is to disrupt plaque buildup. You don’t need to brush twice a day, every day with toothpaste if you brush correctly- little circles, focusing on near the gums (where most plaque builds up). So if you’re having a bad sensory day and can’t brush at all, it’s not the end of the world.
Hell, you don’t even need a toothbrush if even the post-surgical ones are too harsh. Going over your teeth with the same motions using a washcloth is enough.
She wants to find a fluoride rinse that has a taste I can stand (peppermint is the only mint I can stand) but she’s not particularly worried about it.
I go to Dr. Barr in Chicago. If you can get to the State St. Macy’s, his office is nearby. He’s very kind and patient and really understanding of my needs as an autistic person. The hygienist, I don’t know her name, announced everything she was going to do before she did it, and stopped frequently to see how I was doing.
This is really the only positive dentist I’ve ever had- past dentists have been too rough and not bothered to help find ways I can actually brush.
Basically this is a glowing recommendation for Dr. Barr’s office if you’re autistic, afraid of dentists, or have sensory needs. This is a recommendation even if you don’t have any of those things.
Im actually crying i feel like this post was reblogged for me oh my god oh my god oh my lord thank you
You can also dilute your mouthwash and use it to swish around if it burns. My dentist does this so consider it dentally approved
If you were feeling guilty about your brushing habits, either due to sensory issues, pain, allergies, executive dysfunction, or just plain fatigue, here’s what you need to know about what is and isn’t necessary if your dental care!
The thing that abled people who advocate for the disabled community don’t get is that there are times when disabilities/accommodations clash. Horribly.
Like I spent years having to come up with a solution to get therapy dogs into a series of residence halls. Why years? Because we had to decide who got to stay and who got to leave: the people who needed therapy dogs or the people with severe allergies to animals. Who got the alternative housing?
Things like fidget toys might seem great for some disabled people but having them in the room could be distracting/overstimulating for others. The same goes with stimming. It can’t be helped but neither can the anxiety that another person in the room feels as they watch/hear it. Additionally, something like a weighted blanket might immediately calm one kid down and send the other one into a panic attack due to the claustrophobia it causes. (*Points to myself*)
Every Metro bus in New York City has a series of seats at the front that can be lifted up to accommodate people in wheelchairs but if I’m in one of those spots then someone with a cane/walker has to journey even further to sit down.
The flashing lights of a fire alarm are there to help deaf/hearing impaired but if they’re not properly timed, they can also cause a person to have a seizure.
The worst part about all of these is that there is rarely a concrete solution that makes everyone happy/safe. And I’m not here to offer any because I don’t know them. I’m just here to remind you all that as you’re taking your education/health classes, as you’re reading your textbooks, as you’re preparing to go be an advocate, just remember that there is rarely ever such a thing as a one-size-fits-all solution to advocacy and that something you do that can help one disabled person might actually hinder another.
Food for thought.
I have heard this referred to by some in the disability advocacy profession as “duelling disabilities” and it’s definitely something I wish people would be more mindful of when discussing accessibility.
another useful term is “competing access needs” or incompatible access needs.
“Dueling Disabilities” is more fun to say, but “Incompatible Access Needs” is better for a spirit of cooperation.
i think you can be 40 and have a coming of age narrative
”I have this artistic idea but not the skills to achieve it to the standard I want.”
congrats! Now you have a motif! A recurring theme! A focus for your art! Something to haunt you!
Seventeen still lives of dandelions? Three hundred poems about grief? A sketchbook dedicated to your grandmother’s house? Two books trying to unravel the complexities of familial relationships?
Don’t let the fear of it not being perfect on the first try stop you from being Weird About It!
Please view Hokusai's gradual working towards The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, over a period of 39 years.
An early exploration of the themes Hokusai would keep coming back to is Spring in Enoshima, done in 1793 when he was 33. The wave is small and there are no boats, but Mt Fuji is clear in the background, and Enoshima is in Kanagawa, so we are clearly beginning to work towards something here.
A second pass, eleven years later in 1803 when he was 44. The title of this one begins to get more familiar: The View of Honmoku Off Kanazawa. It has a towering wave over a smaller boat, but Mt Fuji is not present, and the boat is considerably larger and has a sail. But the feeling of danger in the wave and the smallness of the boat are here, and of course the general composition is definitely recognizable.
This is A View Of Express Delivery Boats, done in 1805, merely two years later at age 46. Here we find the wave and the boats almost exactly as we'll find them in The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, though Mt Fuji isn't present, and the location is uncertain. And it's a good picture! The wave is threatening, the boats are small -- but the feeling of "ocean" isn't really there yet, is it? It's unlikely this picture would have become a classic for the ages. But that's okay, there's still time.
And here we have it, a full 26 years later, done by Hokusai in 1831 at the age of 72. The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, one of the most recognizable pieces of art in the world. The boats are there, the mountain is there, the wave is there, and the FEELING is there. He did it! He reached the apex of his ongoing motif and theme!
Or did he? Because the whole point of a motif is not that you're striving to get to the perfect version of it, the one idealized image you carried in your head all along, and when it is done, you are also done. Hokusai is on record at the age of 73 saying he'd only just begun to feel like he was learning how to draw things properly, and that "if I keep up my efforts, I will have even a better understanding when I was 80 and by 90 will have penetrated to the heart of things. At 100, I may reach a level of divine understanding, and if I live decades beyond that, everything I paint — dot and line — will be alive." He had drawn The Great Wave, but he didn't believe he was finished -- he thought that he was still just beginning to get started.
And he wasn't finished with his ocean motif, either. Please check out his Mt Fuji At Sea, done in 1834 at the age of 75.
It's all there; Mt Fuji, the ocean, the wave. The boats are gone, but replaced with birds, flying with the wave instead of fighting against it. It's not as famous as The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, but that's not what motifs are for -- each successive work does not have to surpass the previous in terms of success, especially in terms of external success. They're there for you to keep playing with, keep remixing and re-experiencing, for as long as you think you have something to say.
I also want everybody to know that Google and most of the internet think that all of those paintings bar the last one are called "The Great Wave Off Kanagawa", so I had to do a sort of middling deep dive just to find their actual names. And then I was like "I don't think those translations are very accurate", so I went on a second quest to retranslate them, which was particularly difficult with painting three (A View Of Express Delivery Boats) because for some reason he titled that one entirely in hiragana, and it's all archaic words that were very hard to chase down without their corresponding kanji. Google suggested "the push-off is a transportation route", which wasn't particularly helpful.
All of which is to say that I probably spent a bit too much time on all of that, but it was fun; and at least I know what those paintings are called now.
Completely disable Copilot in Windows 11
You too can get the satisfaction of maiming or killing a spy embedded in your organization.
HELL YEAH DESHITTIFICATION!
For everything we do here, please be sure to be careful with what you edit, and restart your computer to lock things in. If you don't have access to the Group editor, (likely to happen if you're on base windows) you can do this as well by opening your Registry Editor app, then inputting this after your 'computer' or whatever the initial segment is. (Mine is computer. If I just try and paste the below string it gets SO mad at me)
\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsCopilot
Navigating to your "turnoffwindowscopilot", hit modify, and set the value data to 1.
If done correctly, it'll look like this.
While we're at it, you can also get rid of the integrated search, (or that thing where it searches the web when you search anything, whether or not you want it to) and such through regedit as well.
Integrated search will have you going to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer
Navigate to your "DisableSearchBoxSuggestions" bit, if you don't see it, you can make it by right clicking and creating a new registry D-Word key of that exact name. Edit the key, set it to 1. It'll look like this if you do it right!
To get rid of Windows Spotlight, (The thing where it pulls up ten billion pages on windows start page, shoving ads in your face and cluttering everything) we go to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\DesktopSpotlight\Settings
And set "Enabled State" To 0. If you do it right, it'll look like this!
Disabling edge on startup will also help a fair deal with processing speed and the like. This you can do in all sorts of ways, the easiest being turning it off entirely on startup through settings in the like.
If you want to kill it *entirely*, though? :)
In regedit, run along to Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft
Navigate to your MicrosoftEdge key subcategory. If you don't see it, you can make one! Note, this is a KEY, not a d-word. *inside* that subcategory, we want to either make or find the D-Word key of PreventLaunchEdge and set that to 1 in the same way as all the others. It'll look like this.
Aaaand while we're here, I'd HIGHLY recommend shanking Killer Networking Services. It's just bloatware. (Ostensibly it's supposed to monitor your network bandwidth and even things out, but that really means it's constantly monitoring and pinging things, which eats up the bandwidth you DO get, and also chunks your computer's processing power.) Getting rid of it entirely is borderline impossible, since it's set to redownload on regular updates and intel is very pushy with its updates.
This you can do by opening your Services.msc, which basically shows you all the background stuff that Windows does. Find Anything with Killer in the name, right click it, go to properties, and disable startup. It should look like this, if done successfully. It will probably reenable itself in time/in later updates for windows, but it's a quick fix. I'd also check your TaskScheduler app to make sure that nothing's scheduled to open up there, either.
If you CAN completely kill Killer services through uninstalling and the like, I would warn that at very least for my computer, the only ethernet/lan support applications that are available ARE Killer's. When you download updates, you really do have to do it manually and ONLY download the ethernet services, or just be cool with not having Lan functionality.
One last thing, not a shit application but is a shit service. If your computer's constantly overheating or just warm, you likely have Turboboost enabled. (Default setting that you can't change) If you want to be able to turn it off and drop your temps by like 40 degrees, in Regedit go to
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\PowerSettings\54533251-82be-4824-96c1-47b60b740d00\be337238-0d82-4146-a960-4f3749d470c7
(Note- This isn't the string copy paste from the reddit thread, this is mine that does the same thing. If my string doesn't work for you, check the reddit thread string. If that doesn't work either, you can follow the path and find it pretty easily. Probably has like, one letter of difference somewhere. The bits all start the same, though, so it's easy to find.)
and go to "attributes". Set the value from 1 to 2, and now in your advanced Power Plan settings in control panel, you'll be able to *see* turbo boost and turn it off.
It'll look like this, and in power options, a successful disabling of boost should look like this.
Turning off quick startup's also a good call, since that basically stops your restarts from actually shutting things down properly.
GOOD LUCK OUT THERE YALL. MAKE SURE TO CLEAN YOUR PC!
I would like to once again recommend to you all Winero Tweaker, a free program that lets you adjust a bunch of windows settings with a single click instead of digging through 30 different setting screens and registry entries.
There's well over a hundred settings, here's just a few of them:
(sorry the classic taskbar option no longer works with current windows 11 version)
Fair warning: This is a powerful tool which means it can also do some damage if you don't know what you're doing, but every setting comes with an extensive explanation, as you can see in the Ads and unwanted apps screenshot.
This tool will even turn windows 11 from a bloated mess into a (more or less, this tool isn't magic) usable operating system.
Some tech advice for you all from my personal blog. I figured the more people see this the better, and I got a lot more followers on this blog.

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I think the Hunger Games series sits in a similar literary position to The Lord of the Rings, as a piece of literature (by a Catholic author) that sparked a whole new subgenre and then gets blamed for flaws that exist in the copycat books and aren’t actually part of the original.
Like, despite what parodies might say, Katniss is nowhere near the stereotypical “unqualified teenager chosen to lead a rebellion for no good reason”. The entire point is that she’s not leading the rebellion. She’s a traumatized teenager who has emotional reactions to the horrors in her society, and is constantly being reined in by more experienced adults who have to tell her, “No, this is not how you fight the government, you are going to get people killed.” She’s not the upstart teenager showing the brainless adults what to do–she’s a teenager being manipulated by smarter and more experienced adults. She has no power in the rebellion except as a useful piece of propaganda, and the entire trilogy is her straining against that role. It’s much more realistic and far more nuanced than anyone who dismisses it as “stereotypical YA dystopian” gives it credit for.
And the misconceptions don’t end there. The Hunger Games has no “stereotypical YA love triangle”–yes, there are two potential love interests, but the romance is so not the point. There’s a war going on! Katniss has more important things to worry about than boys! The romance was never about her choosing between two hot boys–it’s about choosing between two diametrically opposed worldviews. Will she choose anger and war, or compassion and peace? Of course a trilogy filled with the horrors of war ends with her marriage to the peace-loving Peeta. Unlike some of the YA dystopian copycats, the romance here is part of the message, not just something to pacify readers who expect “hot love triangles” in their YA.
The worldbuilding in the Hunger Games trilogy is simplistic and not realistic, but unlike some of her imitators, Collins does this because she has something to say, not because she’s cobbling together a grim and gritty dystopia that’s “similar to the Hunger Games”. The worldbuilding has an allegorical function, kept simple so we can see beyond it to what Collins is really saying–and it’s nothing so comforting as “we need to fight the evil people who are ruining society”. The Capitol’s not just the powerful, greedy bad guys–the Capitol is us, First World America, living in luxury while we ignore the problems of the rest of the world, and thinking of other nations largely in terms of what resources we can get from them. This simplistic world is a sparsely set stage that lets us explore the larger themes about exploitation and war and the horrors people will commit for the sake of their bread and circuses, meant to make us think deeper about what separates a hero from a villain.
There’s a reason these books became a literary phenomenon. There’s a reason that dozens upon dozens of authors attempted to imitate them. But these imitators can’t capture that same genius, largely because they’re trying to imitate the trappings of another book, and failing to capture the larger and more meaningful message underneath. Make a copy of a copy of a copy, and you’ll wind up with something far removed from the original masterpiece. But we shouldn’t make the mistake of blaming those flaws on the original work.
Me: Fuck, the paper towels I want are on the top shelf.
The Sir David Attenborough That Lives In My Brain: Being smaller-than-average presents an added challenge to foraging ... but necessity is the mother of invention. A little creativity turns a baguette into a tool, and voilà--
(paper towel roll falls on my face)
Sir David Attenborough, pleasantly: Success.
I just know that my trigonometry teacher would do numbers on here. He's a bloody brilliant mathematician who can do calculus in his head and a great teacher, but also has some of the strangest mannerisms of any person I have ever met.
He refers to everybody, regardless of whether he has known them for years or is meeting them for the first time in his life, as "Smoke." The first time he addressed me as such, I thought he had me confused with someone else. But, no, as it turns out, I am Smoke. My classmates are Smoke. The other faculty members are Smoke. His wife is probably Smoke, too.
He seems to have code words for everything, and refers to various classroom objects as "the dude." ("Take the dude, Smoke." Translation: "Take the hall pass, [insert name].")
He also randomly substitutes words for letters of the alphabet, but...it's not the actual phonetic alphabet. I came in to take a test early while he was lecturing to another class and randomly heard, "So, we have buffalo hide over two equals donkey."
In a similar vein, I was completely lost during my first lecture because he exclusively called one hundred eighty degrees "buck eighty." (I'm aware of this now, but it threw me off at first.)
Most confusing of all, he repeatedly refers to something as "the juice," but I have yet to ascertain what. All I have gathered so far is that it appears to be a more abstract noun than "the dude."
I just know that this man is going to permanently alter my speech patterns.
kids deserve so much more respect and it turns out that saying that is a great way to locate the horrible people in any community <3
you'll say something as simple as "no child deserves to be hit" and people will crawl out of the woodwork to explain why they should be allowed to beat a 6 year old for spilling some water
you'll say "i think it's weird that adults literally have control over when children are allowed to use the bathroom" and up pops a teacher to say that when they're not shouting at the kids they teach, they're trying to stop them from hiding in the bathrooms
you'll say "i think children shouldn't be forced to eat food they hate" and here comes someone who feeds their kids plain rice and boiled chicken (while eating a nicely seasoned stirfry) claiming that it's okay actually and kids shouldn't be allowed to taste things
you'll say "i think kids should have bodily autonomy" and in comes someone who pierced their babies ears before it was even 24 hours old, frothing at the mouth because their kid wanted a haircut and thats somehow an insult
children are an oppressed class and everyone should be looking back at their own childhoods and making sure they don't ever make a child feel the same way they felt.
every now and then I see someone talking about children making noise in public with this VICIOUS hatred and it's so disturbing. like no we should not ban children from coffee shops what is wrong with you. they're people.
also, banning children from spaces has the neat side effect of often banning young women from those spaces, as most childcare is still provided by women. and honestly once you stop to actually THINK about what a hatred of children means in a society where children are mostly reared by women, it becomes so easy to see all the lines where hating children crosses into misogyny. because it's the parents fault for not controlling the kid and making them quiet and calm, right? it's like how dads who wear matching outfits with their kids are cute dad goals but women who do it are being childish. women who talk about their kids online are told that they're "mommyjacking" posts and "no one wants to hear about your spawn" but men who talk about their kids are devoted fathers.
9 times out of ten people who say they hate kids hate mothers just as much, and don't even think about fathers. because to them, children are detestable and women are the ones who look after them. it's a woman's fault that they, random observer, are having to deal with the terrible inconvenience of a child making noise.
It turns out that actually standing by "men and women are not inherently very different" is a reliable way to bother absolutely everyone. Left or right, cis or trans, feminist or misogynist, all cling to the binary for dear life.
From the replies on this post:
im of this opinion too women and men are more similar than they are different. In terms of emotions, if you remove societal indicators and like, the fact that men are raised with inherent privilege... we're just humans.
It's weird how human emotions are described differently based on gender. Like, imagine two people from the same gender fighting over a third person from the other gender. The way two women fighting over a man is perceived (catty, letting a man divide them) vs two men fighting over a woman (trying to assert dominance, treating the woman as a prize) even If it's the exact same behavior. Some people look a completly normal human emotions and behaviors (liking to spend time with friends, liking to talk, feeling suffocated, wanting to show your economic status through material things, being jealous, being envious, being more open to new people if they make you laugh, not always being able to be honest about not being ok) and twist it to fit in gender roles somehow

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The biggest misconception in public schools is that literary analysis is about proving you can be right or wrong about a book you read
Literary analysis isn’t about the book
It’s not even about being right
It’s about performing an investigation and presenting your case to the jury
It doesn’t matter if your defendant killed that guy or not. If you can convince the jury he didn’t, you’ve won
And the incredible life skill of spinning bulletproof bullshit out your ass with a handful of facts and a prayer is soooooooo much more valuable than anyone’s ever gonna tell you
If the average tweenager knew that good media analysis meant you could force your English teacher to admit that fuckin- (rolls dice) What’s Eating Gilber Grape is a metaphor for (rolls dice again) Why the crack cocaine epidemic is good actually- we would have far better literacy and critical thinking skills as a nation. And I stand by that
You could develop the magical psychic and illusory power to force the middle aged bitchfuck who makes you raise your hand and beg for permission to take a shit accept the premise that Cocomelon is a subversive and scathing artistic commentary on the pitfalls of modern democracy. Chat GPT essay engines are stealing this from you
The most significant lesson I ever received in Literature classes was that everything is actually about abortion.
My regular teacher was out for the day, so the “this guy works here but nobody quite knows what he’s supposed to do” substitute was in for her. His name was Mr. Moony. I suspect, knowing more now, that Mr. Moony was the special education coordinator for gifted and talented students. But that’s all besides the point.
The only thing that mattered about Mr. Moony for this story is that every student knew you never learned anything when he was in, because he was always batshit insane. He would completely disregard plans, throw them away, and tell us to do something different.
When he came in, we had just finished reading Waiting for Godot. We were well on our way to an AP Lit exam, tired and worried, and we had a practice essay coming up based on this play. And he said, “you’re all burnt the hell out, so I’m going to write an essay for you.” We all cheered because, hell yes, a lecture day. We didn’t have to do shit. We could all tune out and stop caring.
And then he started going.
We were enraptured. This man deconstructed the two act play into a masterpiece, quoting ancient literature on theology and God, as well as personal details about the author, to reveal to us all that, actually, Waiting for Godot was the author’s roundabout way to show the anguish behind the politics of the pro-life/anti-choice movements, and the author’s criticisms of abortion.
He went on for a half hour, writing faster than we could really keep up with. By the end of his rant, we were all nodding along. At the end, he slammed his hand on the board and shouted “ABORTION” to really make his point.
“So, do you all think that’s what this story is about?”
The majority of us nodded, myself included. And this man looked at us, scrunched his face like Kermit the Fucking Frog, and went, “no the fuck it’s not. I made all that up.”
There was a beat of everyone feeling like their time was wasted. Some students very frustrated because they were trying to take notes and just realized it all was fabricated. One or two who were angry about being woken up to him shouting abortion.
And then he looked at us. “How many of you only believe it’s about abortion because that’s what I just told you to think?”
Quite a few raised their hands.
“Then I did English good.”
The rest of the time of class was spent with him teaching us various styles of analysis, though sadly my amnesia has claimed most of this part from me. I remember my belief in English being entirely shaken at this point. But at the same time, I also got what he was saying, and it opened my eyes to new things.
There is no right answer in literary analysis. There’s just answers people want to hear, or answers that are compelling, or answers that aren’t those things. The answer that Waiting for Godot was about abortion was not something all of us wanted to hear, but he made the answer sound compelling — and so we were riveted.
My next essay I wrote for that class was about the setting of the play, and how the entirety of Waiting for Godot centers on the anxieties of losing the modern family — and even modern life as we know it — to technology, and via that idea, the climate crisis.
I got a 100%. My teacher highlighted my (thankfully anonymous to the class) essay, particularly because the first sentence was “compelling,” due to my absence of proper grammar rules; I’d started it off by just saying, “trees.”
That was the day I really knew I loved English — not just enjoyed reading and writing, but genuine love of playing with the language. And it’s this love that I try to instill into my students.
How did you get so good at writing??? Did you take classes? I feel like you should get paid all the money for this! (I subscribe to your website!)
after i dropped out of high school i found a torrent of like 5GB of OCRd romance novels and i read like 3 romance novels a day for a while
read enough romance novels and you will realize that they live or die entirely on technical skill. if you are new to romance novels then even bad ones can dazzle you with novelty but by the time you are on your 30th historical fake engagement between a bluestocking and a rakish duke you can grade them and you know when they've failed. when two books have what should be the same main characters hitting the same plot beats, but one of those books is delightful and the other fucking sucks, you learn some things. some books are bad and still delightful. other books are good but they just don't hit. you start to see the seams in the bad ones. 'oh, this is a weird out of character moment because she wanted to have the kabedon moment and didn't know how to get there'. 'she didn't want the ust to end but couldn't think of a better reason than this deus ex cockblock.' that kind of thing.
you could probably do this with other genres but i like romance because the plot is two people fall in love. that's it. everything else is set dressing. if you can figure out how to make that work you can carry it over into whatever other genre you feel like. mysteries would give you a different skillset around plotting that i don't have.
anyway after that i wrote a lot.
i said it in my original tags but i want to talk out of my ass and say that one place that a lot of current romantasy falls short for me is that it ends up being written by people who mostly read other romantasy without going back to the original genres of romance and fantasy. it's like a 'learn the rules before you can break them' kind of thing. you have all these magical macguffins to hit the tropes but can you make me believe that these characters have chemistry without that? is there chemistry, or did you tell me they're fated mates and now i'm supposed to assume this fight is sexy? does the fantasy aspect exist for anything aside from the magical macguffins? i'm not going to throw stones from inside my house made of worldbuilding designed to make all my fetishes happen, but the really fun part is when the lore spins out of control and you end up really going in depth on linguistic anthropology things that aren't relevant to the makeouts.
and the other thing is that you can't really sub in fanfic for this. plenty of fanfic takes characters from other genres and plops them into romance, but it's not the same. a good romance novel says, "here are two characters. you may know their archetypes, but you don't know them. you are going to get to know them, and you are going to love them, and you are going to want them to love each other, and when they love each other you are going to be happy for them". i love a rakish duke. when a man who's never had to do his own laundry is slutty as fuck that's my shit. but you still have to make me like him. you can take that archetype and make a guy who fucking sucks. most fanfic will not impart to you any knowledge about how to make a reader like a guy from scratch. you already know that guy. that's the whole point. fanfic with as much character building as an original work is the exception, not the rule.
the whole reason i get catty about fics that just make a different guy is that... you've made a different guy. i don't know who this guy is and i don't like him, and you haven't bothered trying to make me like him, because you slapped another guy's nametag on him like a cheat code. it's cool if you did make me like this new guy, but why is he wearing that other guy's nametag if no other aspect of him is present?
read the genres you want to write, obviously, but there's a reason the shitty comphet romantic subplot is a cliche. it's because romance is its own skillset, and if you try to fit romance in your thriller when you only read thrillers it's probably going to be the weakest part. if you want an ensemble cast then chemistry between characters is important regardless of whether they're going to fuck about it.
#this is also what i call the Star Wars Problem (although: wide category lol)#but i mean specifically the thing where george lucas watched a BUNCH of westerns and samurai films and ww2 flying ace films#and then made a space movie ABOUT high points in those other story forms#because he knew those pulp genres inside out and knew what bits he needed to hit in RAF Dambusters pulp when he added laser swords#or in western saloon showdowns when he added spaceships#but then you fast-forward a few decades and people are making star wars movies ABOUT other star wars movies#and like not many of those scenes are going to hit that way - they just wont have the chance#they’ll be a copy of a copy and the emotion is going to degrade like the worlds crustiest reformatted ocr PDF#or a xerox of a xerox of a xerox#they’ve ceased to be about the feeling generated by the Form and have become simply the Form in isolation (via harrietvane)