#English class system

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Friendship is something to be built up carefully, by people with leisure, it is an art, nature does not enter into it.

Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love

[tuttle-did-it]

@svartalfhild

I caught this as well. And I’ve always felt it’s not an OR situation, but an AND situation.

A) I always assumed that it was the futuristic equivalent to ‘my dad works on the docks but I got into Oxford through scholarship. I don’t want the lads to know I’m on scholarship, so I’m staying silent and hiring a dialect expert. Within two weeks, I’ll have a better Oxford accent than any of you, even the locals.’

And

B) it is concretely canon that Julian‘s father never thought Julian was good enough. Instead of learning to love his son for the person he really was, his father literally set out to change absolutely every single thing about him to mould Julian into the ‘perfect’ son. Like, down to his fucking atoms.

The emotional house-sized weight that this just suffocates Julian with almost made that stupid reveal worth it. That his own parents found Julian was so impossible to love, so broken, they had to turn him into a different person down to the molecular level?

Yeah, okay. I mean, that’s a special fucked up level of childhood trauma. How do you even begin to process this? How can you ever trust them— that if you do something else they don’t like, they won’t put you back in that chair to ~fix~? That is a special form of child abuse.

And Sid played that perfectly. It’s clear Sid hated the main reveal about Bashir (many of us did). But the emotional horror of knowing that the only way your parents could love you was to completely rewrite who you are? Yeah. Sid pulled that off.

But back to the accent specifically: the fact that both of these scenarios are not only possible, but equally probable? It’s a beautiful and yet subtle subtextual storytelling that leaves the audience room to fill in the conversations that must have taken place for this to happen.

Also, both scenarios are EXTREMELY British (even more specifically, ENGLISH). Upward mobility of class through education and accent is VERY common in England.

There are parents who will scold their children if they speak with a lower-class (poorer/immigrant areas) accent, even if they have that lower class accent themselves.

There are kids who will do anything to rewrite their own biography so that no one knows they’re really from the wrong side of the tracks by upgrading their accent to a more posh or less regionalised accent so they don’t sound like their parents.

I don’t know if this was the choice of the writer, the casting director, the actor who played his father’s acting choice, or even Sid saying, ‘You know what? Can we cast someone with a lower class accent?’ But it felt extremely intentional and EXTREMELY English. And bonus points of this was a combination of input from several people.

Regardless, this was a brilliant decision, and this seemingly tiny detail adds SO MUCH more to Julian and his identity.

Also, last thing I will say. I think it’s obvious that this issue between Julian and his parents has deeper ramifications considering Bashir is so strongly coded (and confirmed, depending on which writer you ask) as Autistic, and is canonically Queer (depending on the writer you ask).

These are relevant, fascinating and valid readings into the ramifications of neurodiversity and queerness needing to be ‘fixed’ for the comfort and convenience of neurotypical cis-hets before they can love their ~broken~ Autistic Queer child can hit home for a LOT of us.

I'm surprised that I haven't come across anyone else talking about how fascinating it is that Julian Bashir and his father do not have the same English accent. Like, the implications, y'all.

Julian sounds much more upper class than his father, which would seem to indicate one of two things, either:

a) Julian adopted his accent to deliberately distance himself from his father.

or

b) Julian learnt his accent at a young age at the insistence of his father to further his air of sophistication.

Either way, it certainly adds another facet to Julian's Parental Angst.

[aro-culture-is]

Aro culture is appreciating this blog and the mods 💪

:)

[qoldenskies]

You dropped out of school?????

yeah, i went and got a GED. it was because i had unmedicated adhd as well as what in retrospect was probably just a mix of undiscovered dyscalculia (i cannot do basic addition, it made math impossible) and also. idk ocd. i genuinely still cannot identify the source of my problem, because starting 2021 i just began to have severe panic attacks every single day i went to school. and i dont mean one, i had up to three or four a day. the second i felt slightly frustrated or overwhelmed i'd just start crying and wouldn't stop, and we tried things like a 504 (which most of my teachers didn't even adhere to, even when i told them i had it lmao) or even putting me on antidepressants and it didnt work, unfortunately.

in retrospect its just such a shocking thing to me, because ive been out of school since 2023 and it doesnt feel like its something that happened, like,,, to me. i'd say that i might have trauma around school, but its not a traumatic subject to talk about. you dont need to give me any condolences i have a very clinical view on it. im happy i dropped out!

[annyankers]

the problem with gaining knowledge is that i now have a new villain origin story.

so i've just BARELY started my victorian england research to try and be as biblically accurate when Doing Things and i'm closing in on the end of the menswear section of this book and i now know that william's costuming is DISASTROUSLY WRONG.

for starters by that time men cross-class were wearing black and darker colors a LOT of the time for a very practical reason. there was so much fucking SOOT in the air in towns that having a suit like we see him in for both 1880s flashbacks would be just impractical. by the time we see william the coat length is also going up.

^note how he looks like the "mature man" than the younger one.

length in the first flashback can probably be somewhat forgiven because it's a party but at the same time he and like, all the guys are now likely UNDER dressed. if a bitch is in an evening gown a man is in an EVENING SUIT!!!! color is STILL not fucking it.

^ the kinda shit he REALLY would have been wearing while getting rejected on main in 4k.

and you can be all like "oh!!! but what if they're like, not the kinda rich that can afford it!!!!" THIS IS WHAT YOU WOULD SPEND THE MONEY ON!!!! HE'S AN UNMARRIED MAN HE HAS TO BE A LEAST VAGUELY ON TREND OR YOU'RE FUCKED AND YOU CAN'T GET A DOWRY INFLUX TO THE ESTATE!!!! also there's this STAGGERING invention called TAILORING!!! the coats are getting shorter? well okay i'll just have my coat bottom brought up and my trousers brought in! shit you could even look into redyeing a suit like that if you were REALLY thrifty.

basically i am in hell but i'm also not at all surprised btvs is rarely ever good at the history stuff.

[daz4i]

forgive me for surely sounding dramatic but i feel like a lot of people's gotchas for when someone says something kind of out of line ("you say that but can't even ask for ketchup" "this is why you failed english class" are examples that come to mind) are like. not full on ableist but definitely smell like it. like perhaps these aren't as funny things to say as you think. you're just making fun of things people genuinely struggle with for many possible reasons that aren't related to their online behavior in any way

[aq2003]

im taking a shakespeare class this quarter and for my first assignment i get to write about richard ii and i am beginning to feel genuinely physically ill from how excited this is making me

[meezer]

it hurts me deeply to my core to not do the very best I can and get really good results. and it's likely going to disappoint people I love. but like. I think I'm gonna have to bite the bullet, accept that I'm not gonna pass some classes, and just focus on the other shit. goodbye literature class.

[izzymrdb]

A lot of people ask how I learned how to write so well, and quite honestly the answer is that I paid attention in English class.

Yeah, no, there was practice but the things that people praise me the most about are not things you learn to add via practice, it’s things you learn by analysing blue curtains. It’s learning to analyse the small details and learning that those small details are what create an interesting story. “Sometimes a clock just ticks” A clock will always tick but you will only pay attention to the clock when you need to. Your character will not check their watch until they need to. The setting will not reflect the character unless the author makes it. The curtains are blue because the character is sad, because why else would I describe the world if it doesn’t have meaning?

Chekhov has a gun and it’s called basic reading comprehension skills. The bullet is good writing skills.

[cogentranting]

Having the worst kind of sick day (one where I have to attempt to get MORE done than I do in a normal work day)

[lesbianshepard]

i love finding people i went to high school with on twitter because so many of them will post things and then go "i can't believe they didn't teach us this in school 😱" like buddy, they did. i was literally in social studies with you during that lesson.

[all-seeing-ifer]

not to make posts that i know for a fact will get screenshot to hell and back if i'm unlucky enough for them to blow up but man seeing 99% of posts on this website about "media literacy"/literacy in general is like oh we are notttttt getting serious conversations about education reform are we

[msharmonycobel]

me when the downstairs staff in Downton Abbey were devoted to the Crawleys, always thought they were right and had their whole lives revolving around them: ugh, this is unbearable, I hate the class system, JFellowes knows zero poor people

me when the downstairs staff in The Gilded Age are devoted to the Russells, always think they're right and have their whole lives revolving around them: so true, besties 💖💖💖

[ratbastarddotfuck]

Answering your tags in the children’s rights post, no, not where I attended school (US public school). I wasn’t even aware the UN made a document about it until now, which is unsurprising for the US but nonetheless aggravating

every day I learn something more horrifying about the US education system.

I'm pretty sure we read the children's rights when I was in grade 5 here in Australia? so I would've been 8 or 9 or so. I have no idea if this was standardised so really idk what I'm surprised about. but man that was something that built a foundation of autonomy for me as a kid that I could fall back on when I was scared... I have the right to safety. I have the right to xyz. seems important I think.

[ishikawayukis]

reading something that is oddly translated can truly ruin a book

[ghost-poppy]

So, my little sibling who is in high school has been getting an influx of teachers who use ChatGPT to make their assignments and has been feeling like they haven't been taught how to do certain things correctly.

If anyone feels that they need tips for studying or some aspect of English/History, please comment because I'm making some guides to help them and I'd be glad to post it on here.