#Academically Speaking

[classicslesbianopinions]

does anyone have resources for learning how to read german very quickly.

[beforeimdeceased]

my friend who i flirt/fight with said she wanted me to do some fanfic based us and she’s so academic rival!abby coded so enjoy some texts courtesy of my frenemy with benefits

[swordsonnet]

Hallo mein Name ist Ebenholz Dunkel'heit Demenz Raben Weg und ich habe langes ebenholz-schwarzes Haar (so habe ich meinen Namen gekriegt) mit lila Strähnen und roten Spitzen das bis zur Mitte meines Rückens geht und eisblaue Augen wie durchsichtige Tränen und viele Leute sagen mir, dass ich wie Alma Unterwindseite aussehe (A. d. A.: wenn du nich weist wer sie ist dann verpiss dich von hier!). Ich bin nicht mit Gerhard Weg verwandt, aber ich wünschte ich wäre es, weil er ein verdammt heißer Feger ist. Ich bin ein Vampir, aber meine Zähne sind gerade und weiß. Ich habe blasse weiße Haut. Ich bin auch eine Hexe, und ich gehe auf eine Zauberschule namens Schweinwarzen in England, wo ich in der siebten Jahrgangsstufe bin (ich bin siebzehn). Ich bin ein Grufti (falls das euch nicht klar war) und ich trage vor allem schwarz. Ich liebe Heißes Thema und kaufe dort alle meine Klamotten. Heute zum Beispiel trug ich ein schwarzes Korsett mit passender Spitze drum herum und einen schwarzen Leder-Minirock, rosa Netzstrümpfe und schwarze Springerstiefel. Ich trug schwarzen Lippenstift, weiße Grundierung, schwarzen Augenkonturenstift und roten Lidschatten. Ich ging aus Schweinwarzen raus. Es schneite und regnete, also war keine Sonne da, worüber ich sehr glücklich war. Viele Popper starrten mich an. Ich zeigte ihnen den Stinkefinger.

[ramenwithbroccoli]

not to be controversial on main, but i really do feel like way more people would enjoy maths if someone properly explained it to them & they didn't have a hanging threat of failing an exam above their heads

[averlym]

litany of the martyrs (click for better resolution!)

[lorephobic]

literally nobody asked for it, but here's my list of saltburn essays that i've slowly been drafting over the course of the last week which WILL be required reading for anybody trying to engage with me about this movie. my very personal saltburn 101 syllabus just dropped

A Wolf in Deer's Clothing: Saltburn's Attempt at Innocence

an examination of party costumes and our character's last attempts to masquerade as something they're not: felix—an angel, all-forgiving and all-knowing, something to be worshiped; and oliver—a prey animal, prey to class-divide, prey to saltburn, prey to felix.

thoughts about oliver specifically are loosely organized in my #bambi tag

A Midsummer Night's Mare: Farleigh Start as the Ultimate Victim of Saltburn

a farleigh character study, about the ways he was mistreated and manipulated at saltburn, about fighting to stay alive and the scars left behind by knowing when to give in

alternatively titled "QuickStart", may be adapted into a conclusive essay specifically focusing on oliver and farleigh's relationship

The Eye of the Beholder: On Saltburn's Voyeurism & Violence [working title]

how wealth and class pushes the catton's toward the volatile reality of being able to look, but not touch. on desire and the lack thereof, and portraying yourself as an object to be desired

may end up as two separate essays on wealth and aestheticism but i'm pushing toward a conclusive essay about the intersection of the two, which i feel is at the heart of saltburn

alternatively titled "Poor Man's Pudding: A Melvillian Approach to Saltburn's Class", again, may be adapted into it's own essay

Gender-Fluid: A Study in Sexuality and Saltburn's Desire to be Dry

a deep dive into the bodily fluids of saltburn and how oliver upsets the standard of men who are just so lovely and dry. on the creative choice to lean into the messy wetness of sex and desire and the audience's instinct toward repulsion

a celebration of the grotesque and an examination of why we would label it as such

least developed of the four, heavily inspired by @charnelpit's lovely post about the fluids in saltburn

if anybody is actually interested in any of these, i can work toward something closer to a finished piece instead of just bullet points and quotes in a google doc, but mostly this is so i can share my very brief takes on a multitude of themes in saltburn that have been haunting me

edit for people seeing this in the future: all posts about my essays are being organized into my #saltburn 101 tag if you’re interested in following these through to development!

[beforeimdeceased]

ACADEMIC!RIVAL ABBY 🇫🇷✈️🏨

what can i say? i missed academic!rival abby…

academic!rival abby has a very serious problem with her tongue, which she usually has to make up for with her muscles.

her figure towering over the crude and judgmental woman that had formerly been in front of you. suggesting that your ideas were pathetic and impractical. that no one would ever let you do anything in their offices, except for file paperwork.

abby can see you’re taken back, biting down into your tongue. stunningly holding composure. you excuse yourself to the bathroom and end up walking out into the cold night.

“you wouldn’t know smart if it smacked you in the face. your company is crumbling, i’ve seen your stocks, and let me tell you something about impractical. impractical is you thinking you’re an entrepreneur when you’re really just a disgrace and a forever COO.”

after reading the poor woman to filth, she’ll come out to find you: crouched down holding your face in your hands. “hey, what’s the matter? don’t let that idiot get you down.”

“she’s right though. i’m not cut out for this. i’m not like you. you’re gonna be a doctor someday and i’ll be stuck with my head in the clouds.”

and she’ll remain silent for a moment, crisscrossing her legs and joining you on the ground. the bottom of her pricey dress pants ending the lives of a small family of large ants.

“you are the smartest person i know. and you have the most brilliant ideas. you’re going to go farther than anyone i’ve ever met because you have the heart for it. you have the heart for anything.”

you look up at her and she smiles, running the pad of her thumb over your cheek to catch a tear. “and that heifer in there is about two more dr miami sessions away from looking like a lab experiment.”

you laugh and her heart goes warm.

📒📂✏️⁺｡˚⋆˙📏📐✍

the first time you and abby, who had formally been your rival, sleep together it’s passionate and heated. on a school trip to paris, funded by the lovely mr anderson himself, she ensured that you were bunked together. you’d seen a slip in your grades (from 99 to 98, god forbid) and you planned to study until your eyeballs fell out of your head.

“i don’t understand why you’re working yourself to death!” her voice will travel from the hotel room’s bathroom to its lounge area where you resided. “you’re already smart.”

“you don’t get it abby. i need to be smarter. god i’m so fucking tired.” is a frustrated sigh. she’ll mumble something along the lines of i told you so— just go to sleep and you’ll turn around to argue with her. surprised to see she’s standing over you with a serious look on her face.

“you being up is keeping me up. you need to chill the fuck out.”

“don’t tell me what i need to do anderson. you need to get out of my fucking face.”

you’re both breathing heavy and leaning in. the air around you seems to push you closer together, your lips clash. it’s as if igniting a flame, her hand on your lower back deepening the kiss. you humming because it feels so good to be in her care. she’ll pull up for air and you both look at each other like “what the fuck did we just do?”

but it wasn’t bad, something you both can agree on. all the way to the bed when she cups at your clothed cunt, making your legs shake. “this why you all tense? just haven’t been touched right?”

you nod and try to let out a breathy “yeah.” but it’s caught in another kiss as her hands pull up your shirt. her tongue toys with your right nipple while her thumb plays with your left. working at the bundle of nerves building in your stomach.

she’ll move her head back up to your neck to leave sweet wet kisses, a couple hickies in the mix. you’re so wound up you think you might fucking explode. you needed her so bad it was making you sick.

“abby please. please fuck me i need you.” you whimper into her ear. she shifts gears, nearly tossing you off the bed from how quickly she changes positions. kissing your cheek before going further down. “don’t worry, i’ll take good care of you.”

and ofcourse whatever that night was, it was big hush hush. whatever happens in paris, stays where?

[gabessquishytum]

Thinking A Lot about how Hob hung onto his "working class" accent all the way into 2022. So subtle and yet so meaningful. Huh.

[ruotsalainen-kettu]

Langblr!! This popped up on r/AITA and I'm confused so I gotta ask

Context is that a teacher used the Spanish versions of their (American? Wasn't specified but read like it) students names and wouldn't respect that she didn't want to be called anything but her actual name. People made it out to be common that language classes give you a new name which I've never experienced.

[chaotic-archaeologist]

Hanukkah and Finals Week

or: Burning the Candle at Both Ends

Tonight is the fifth night of Hanukkah. It also happens to be the first day of finals week at my university.

We celebrate Hanukkah as the festival of lights, that time when oil that should have only lasted for a day managed to burn for eight. We fry things in oil and light candles to commemorate the miracle.

I've been thinking about this a lot.

Because the thing is—he whole reason Hanukkah is even a holiday—that the oil burning for so long was a miracle. It should not have lasted for as long as it is. Resources are not infinite.

This is also the time of year when students (and especially grad students) are expected and encouraged to burn the midnight oil and the candle from both ends.

Resources are not infinite.

Sometimes, during situations like this, I use a candle to remind myself of how much I've been working. The rules are simple: light the candle when you start working, blow it out when you're finished. Now the candle is a physical manifestation of the time you have spent working.

Maybe you see where I'm going with this.

Be kind to yourself this finals season (and be kind to your instructors and TAs). Give yourself credit for the work you put in, not just the results you achieve. And if you're really, really not in the position to get a full night's sleep, at least remember that just closing your eyes for 20 minutes to rest makes a huge difference.

[stylographic-blue-rhapsody]

I was deep in my drunk feelings when I made a joke post threatening to write about episode 5 symbolism and mizu, but then enough people said "where is the essay" so I am here to ramble as requested 

in ep 5, the tale told in the puppet show spliced with the flashback sequence of mizu’s marriage identifies mizu as not only the ronin, but also the bride and, with tragedy, the onryō. I would argue that mizu is also depicted (in a less linear fashion) as the phoenix itself, and will circle back to this thought later

mizu is first presented as the ronin, the warrior with a singular purpose. as the ronin’s lord is assassinated by the rival clan, mizu’s mother is killed in the house fire. the ronin swears his revenge, and dedicates his life to this cause. through his childhood and into his young adult life when he departs from swordfather, mizu is exclusively the ronin. he is not the onryō yet, demonstrated in his honorable unwillingness to harm the men who stab him and throw him out of the shop even after he insists that he wasn't looking for a fight in the first place

the ronin is only able to rest and put away his mission when he meets the bride, the lover. however, mizu’s bride is not literally another person she meets. the bride is not mama, or mikio, but the lover mizu discovers in herself, the one allowed to bloom in place of mizu-as-ronin. mizu’s growth into the bride from the ronin occurs over time, but solidifies in the moment when kai is gifted to her by mikio, paralleling the taming of her own distrust and expectations of being hurt. (side note, giving a nod to effective use of color: the bride puppet, dressed in reds and oranges, has matching coloring to the gifting scene, as it takes place in autumn)

mizu’s transformation into the onryō happens in two parts, beginning with the slaying of the bride and completing with the slaying of the ronin. the betrayal by mikio and mama kills the softness in mizu, kills the lover she has allowed herself to become. mizu-as-onryō retaliates by killing the ronin: the part of himself that hesitates before striking, that part that cares for honor. in not intervening in mama’s death and then murdering mikio in turn, mizu kills the ronin in himself, slaughtering it in retribution for the dead bride

mizu is both the bride and the ronin, peaceful lover and noble warrior, until he is not—he is the onryō, only the onryō. episode 5 opens with the narrator saying, “no one man can defeat an army, but one creature can.” only as the onryō, and not as the ronin or the bride, does mizu have the force of will and capacity for violence it takes to singlehandedly overcome boss hamata’s thousand claw army and protect the brothel

mizu’s identity and place in the world is a constant dialogue. he is too white to have a respectable place in japanese society, but is also seen by abijah (our stand-in for white british society) as filthy and corrupted. he is not perceived as enough of a man to walk through life wholly as one (madame kaji’s comments about his apparent lack of sexual desires, his bones breaking “like a woman’s” under fowler’s hands, his disregard for honor and recognition as a samurai). she is also not enough of a woman to exist peacefully as one with mikio (she is a swordsman, an accomplished rider, bad at domesticity; “what woman doesn’t want a husband?” mama chastises)

the moment when mikio rejects her completely following their spar is a particularly poignant narrative beat about tolerance of “the other” in gender presentation: mikio can accept her as a woman only until she bests him at manhood, at the sword, at violence. she is Other in that she is physically strong, a poor cook, able to wield a sword. these traits are all tolerable to mikio, also an outcast, so long as she is not so Other as to be a man. but her swordsmanship bests his, and bests his in the way the sun outshines a candle. it is too Other, and therefore she is not a woman. she is a monster to him, the onryō, even before she kills the bride and the ronin in herself

(( as an aside, this series does a very good job at discussing the oft-challenging relationship between race and gender (e.g. that it is difficult for mizu to live as a biracial man, but would be deadly for her to live as a biracial woman), and demonstrating how queerness of identity complicates that relationship even further—but that’s a topic for a different post ))

as the narrative has been building on this idea that mizu is both the ronin and the bride, the man and the woman, japanese and white, episode 5 concludes with the heartbreaking reveal that, although mizu is all of these things simultaneously, he has had these identities beaten out of him by tragedy and cruelty and his own self-loathing hand

but mizu does not stagnate as the monster. we return to the metaphor of steel: too pure and it becomes brittle, breaking under pressure. mizu is a sword, a weapon that he has forged for the sole purpose of revenge and blood, but he has excised too much of himself to successfully deliver on his goals—he is not the ronin or the bride, he is the onryō; she is not a woman or a man, she is the onryō; the onryō is nothing but pain and vengeance—and so it breaks

“perhaps a demon cannot make steel,” mizu says. “I am a bad artist” 

swordfather replies, “an artist gives all they have to the art, the whole. your strengths and deficiencies, your loves and shames. perhaps the people you collected… if you do not invite the whole, the demon takes two chairs, and your art will suffer”

to be reforged, mizu must not only acknowledge the impurities she has beaten out of her blade, out of herself, but lovingly, radically accept them and reincorporate them into the blade, into herself. he adds impure steel—the people he has collected, with their own dualities—to the sheared meteorite sword: the broken blade that fit so perfectly in taigen’s hand (the archetypal ronin, but a man seeking happiness over glory), the knife akemi tried to murder mizu with (the archetypal bride, but with ambition for greatness), the bell given to ringo and returned to mizu in broken trust (the man unable to hold a sword, but upholding samurai principles of honor and wisdom), the tongs that honed mizu’s smithcraft under swordfather’s guidance (the artisan, a blind man who sees more than most). to make of herself a blade strong enough to see her promises through, she must hold her monstrosity and honor and compassion and artistry in equal import

she is the onryō, and the ronin, and the bride, and all the people she has collected.

with this we finally come to mizu as the phoenix. mizu undergoes many cycles of death and rebirth, both in the main storyline and the flashbacks into her life leading up to the present. often, mizu is juxtaposed against literal flames—the burning of his childhood home, swordfather’s forge, the fire as he battles the giant in the infiltrated castle, the heart sutra forge of her own making, the climactic second confrontation with fowler. not every death/rebirth mizu undergoes is thematic to flame, of course. the fight with the four fangs, spliced with the rebirth ceremony of the town, for example, or the deaths of her ronin-self and bride-self, giving rise to the onryō

he is the phoenix, unable to truly die: every fatal combat he pulls back from the brink, reborn over and over in the wake of failure and setback. in episode 1, mizu prays for the gods to “let [him] die.” not to help him to face death unafraid, not to die with honor or victory, but to die at all. mizu has experienced death a thousand times over, but not once has it stuck

(( as a parting aside: the ronin’s rage at the phoenix clan for killing his lord parallels mizu’s self hatred of his mixed heritage (which he believes to be the thing that killed his mother), and so the ronin’s quest for revenge against the phoenix clan is mirrored in mizu’s quest to kill the white part of himself as best he can, by killing the white men who could be his father ))

mizu, the ronin. mizu, the bride. mizu, the onryō. mizu, the phoenix.

[beforeimdeceased]

˚ ༘♡ ⋆｡˚ academic!rival abby masterlist

ੈ✩‧₊˚ headcanons

ੈ✩‧₊˚ “there are a twenty other open seats in this library, so why did she have to sit next to you?”

ੈ✩‧₊˚ “academic!rival abby has a very serious problem with her tongue, which she usually has to make up for with her muscles.” (ꕥ smut at the end.)

ੈ✩‧₊˚ “don’t see how you expect to pass if you’re always missing class”

ੈ✩‧₊˚ “laugh like i just said something funny.” (ꕥ smut at the end.)

ੈ✩‧₊˚ “heyy hot stuff”

[sherdnerd]

My number one classics ick is when a scholar will just insert untranslated passages of Greek and Latin into their paper. good job on the artificial inaccessibility you guys, glad you were able to gatekeep the field so none of those dirty peasants may learn stuff. its just for us cool guys who speak Greek or Latin

[cpericardium]

To clarify some chatgpt in school thoughts: the reason I don't agree with the sentiment that students chatgpting their assignments means the assignments are poorly designed is that I think it's misidentifying what the issue is, at least at the university level. I have not encountered a colleague or other professor who was at all worried about not being able to tell when a student was using chatgpt or about accidentally giving an ai-written paper an A. In fact, in training, we were told explicitly not to be on the lookout for chatgpt, to just give the paper the grade it deserved and explain why using the rubric. Chatgpt assignments generally don't slip through the cracks at this level (though I'm sure you could find some overworked/inattentive/indifferent professor/grad TA to counter this). They just get a 0. Personally I allow students to resubmit for a reduced grade because sometimes once they find out they can't get away with it, they actually do the work and know to ask for additional support. I don't actually enjoy failing students!! I'd rather work with them so they understand their own thoughts are more valuable than a text generator's!

I DO think the argument makes sense at the high school (and before???) level because USAmerican high school teachers are often overworked and underpaid. There, the assignments may very well be badly scaffolded. That's precisely where the students learn they can get away with subpar work and unfortunately where they should be developing critical reading, writing and argumentative skills. Then when they get to college, they either don't know how or don't have the confidence to organize/articulate their thoughts in a way they think the professor wants to hear, so it becomes safer to 1. use chatgpt with a slim chance of passing or 2. use chatgpt and fail, but fail knowing it wasn't really their work so it wasn't them getting rejected

[shona22]

Professor Hale fics...save me Professor Hale fics....