#at least he’s reading history books

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

it's funny that not until i was flipping through reference material in the norton edition of the turn of the screw i got from the library did i make the connection that perhaps american literature's most famous ghost story was written by a guy whose brother was an active member of the society for psychical research

[austin-friars]

they need to invent a tudor story where bishop gardiner isn't like 100% the villain. yes i am aware that he wasn't perfect but really who was. i don't think he was any less / more evil than his peers but he is one of the major villains in so much tudor media...unless it's mary i centric. and mary i centric media is like ...practically non-existent unless we're painting her as a villain. and then both of them are evil LMAO

[welcometogrouchland]

i was gonna make a whole seperate post about how context and art seems to imply that the ex boyfriend that got stephanie pregnant was at least 18, if not older, when she was 16/15, which is kinda squicky (i mean not if she's 16 really, but 15 yes) but in my journeys on the Stephanie Brown wiki (real and delightful thing that exists) i discovered the batman chronicles #22 where her UNCLE HITS ON HER???? i think that's what we're meant to get from it anyway the dialogue is subtle (the art is not imo). AND I. WAS NOT EXPECTING THAT. STEPHANIE YOU CAN START AS MANY GANG WARS AS YOU WANT WITH YOUR LIFE THE WAY IT IS WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK

[the-heron]

how do you think things started. Did Bridgens or Peglar make the first move? Was it before or after John began tutoring him?

Brought up in the book, actually! He taught Peglar how to read while they were on their Beagle voyage and when they came home, he sought Bridgens out again for more lessons. At some point after finding him again, Peglar made the first move on him.

From chapter 28, the first of a handful of Peglar POV chapters. Despite the book being... the way it is, I do like how it does these two. If you were to read any part of it, read chapters 28 and 50. My suggestion to you heehee

[deathlonging]

wait scream the satanic verses is no longer banned in india bc they couldn't find the court order issuing the ban and they only realized this during the 2024 case challenging it? thats so fucking funny the persistent horror of bureaucracy has been deeply unserious since its inception

[curseofpower]

Currently imagining Tetra being so horrifically bored stuck in Hyrule's basement that when Ganon showed up and ripped the door open to kidnap her she was just like "Oh thank fucking god."

[clove-pinks]

Another one down on the 2025 to-read list, and what a read it was. There are a few questionable things about this book, starting with the choice to use the c. 1818 portrait of Richard Mentor Johnson attributed to Matthew Harris Jouett on the cover. It doesn't look much like his other portraits and depictions, and frankly I wonder if this is one of Johnson's seven brothers. Compare with his 1818 portrait miniature by Anna Claypoole Peale, which clearly resembles his later portraits.

Although he was very involved in politics before and after his military service in the War of 1812, Colonel Johnson's big claim to fame was being the man who (allegedly) killed Tecumseh at the Battle of the Thames in 1813. (Personally I think he did, basing my conclusion heavily on the testimony of a young soldier in the British 41st Regiment of Foot who was no fan of Colonel Johnson.) Johnson promoted this as much as he possibly could, to the point that he was campaigning into the 1840s as the Slayer of Tecumseh and little else. The title of Dr. Petriello's book references a quote from John C. Calhoun, who snarked that Johnson was a political dead weight because "the days of heroes are over." (Calhoun also called him "a mass of stupidity, vulgarity, and immorality." Yeowch!)

So much of Johnson's life is obfuscated by political narratives, both for and against him, that it's difficult to say what he stood for besides craven self-interest. He endlessly tried to secure government contracts and political favors for his brothers, nephews, and family by marriage. He promoted the ridiculous Hollow Earth Theory of Captain John Cleves Symmes in Congress—to secure contracts for his brothers to supply a Hollow Earth Expedition, not because he was actually that stupid. (Alas, doomed expedition fans, he never got anywhere with it, although the Johnson brothers are behind the "costly failure" of the 1819 Yellowstone Expedition. )

In what is arguably his finest moment, Colonel Dick delivered his Sunday Mail Report to Congress in 1830, successfully promoting mail delivery on Sundays despite religious opposition (as Petriello notes, his stirring speech was probably ghostwritten.) He was celebrated as a defender of the separation of church and state, although knowing everything else that he stood for, I have to question if this was due to Christian evangelical organizations of the time being associated with anti-slavery activity.

He also championed the elimination of debtors' prison—again, looking out for family connections. His support of military veterans and their families may have been more sincere, due to his personal experience as a disabled veteran. Johnson never fully recovered the use of his left arm and hand, and he walked with a limp. It's astonishing that he even survived his wounds in rough field conditions, and I wonder if his steep decline in mental and physical health in his last years was related; the man was chock full of lead.

The part of his life that earns Johnson the most notoriety in the 21st century—his common-law marriage to a mixed race Black woman who was also enslaved by him—is not the main focus of this book, although the political fallout is an important topic. Johnson clearly had a number of children and sexual affairs (with both white and Black women), and that gets short shrift despite Petriello including a jibe from a political opponent that Johnson deserved "much credit for this astonishing increase of population in the Western States."

The book ends on a hopeful, sympathetic note: "Despite his personal foibles, character flaws, and occasional corruption, his mark on American history overall should be recorded as a positive one." ...Frankly I'm not so sure about that, although it's difficult not to feel some empathy for Johnson, after reading so much about him. (As I read this book I constantly dug up Petriello's citations, even reading an entire god-awful 1836 play about Richard Mentor Johnson).

But that makes it even harder to read about what a terrible person he was: an ardent defender of the rights of enslavers, and groveling Andrew Jackson fanboy who helped pass legislation supporting the Indian Removal Act (better known as the Trail of Tears). It was just blow after blow—any kind of unethical and cruel stance in early 19th century US politics, and you can bet the Johnson family was involved. (Literally, they called them "The Family" like an antebellum mafia with more racism).

[nururu]

I realized my disconnect when it comes to talking about one piece, and why I always say I like talking to dudebros more even if they're the worst... Is, I like to analyze literature. I like to analyze the source material and the canonic information. Shipping and stuff is for fun but I see it separately. The intersect bc canon inspires fanon but fanon CANNOT change canon.. I don't mix the two things especially not when I'm doing analysis... So I'll say things that are factual and ppl who are stuck in their headcanons or personal biases will think I'm saying something bad. What I'm saying isn't good or bad. It's not judgmental of the character I'm talking about. Nor is it a bias bc I like them/dislike them. I'm analyzing odas writing and his intentions as an author and what he's trying to say and portray. Most ppl online are too caught up in headcanons and personal bias while having no media comprehension and they think that I'm attacking their made up fanon stuff..... Noooo..... You're over there playing pretend and I'm over here doing analysis. We are not doing remotely near the same activity. They don't always need to intersect. Anyways it's hard to have genuine analytical conversations with ppl fully indulged in fandom and fanon. The only group of ppl who doesn't do that are dudebros but also... They get hung up on other stuff that doesn't matter too. Idkkkkkkkkk.

[dazzelmethat]

I humanized Jaken for an Edo era historical fiction au that lives inside my head. I've been trying to settle on a face for him.. Independent of him being human or yokai he needs to be able to have a very expressive face.

[petrichorpetals]

So I finished reading Babel and I have thoughts tm

Spoilers under the cut:

So I'll begin this with I went into Babel expecting to love it! And I love the magic system, I love the world building that we do and it had me 100% sold in the beginning. But at about the halway point, cracks started to form. I love the idea of Hermes and I do love the heavy lifting that the book does to make this as period accurate as possible. I feel like the point that the book honestly lost me for the first time was when Robin covered for Victoire and Ramy when they were stealing for Hermes. I hate how Robin doesn't play off innocence at all and immediately folds once Hermes even gets so much as mentioned. I hate that he has to do his own mental gymnastics over justifying giving up one singular safe house that never has any ramifications. I hate how Victoire and Ramy immediately get mad at him for not telling them about Hermes even though they know how secretive Hermes is, and I additionally hate how long it even takes for them to have this conversation other than not now Letty's around.

And Letty. Oh how I could go on about Letty.

I feel like my biggest complaint for this book is probably the lack of character development. We hardly ever get Robin's thoughts and opinions on things and in the beginning, that's intentional. He doesn't want to think too hard about difficult things like the professor being his father or even small details on how he feels about his friends besides they simply are. The book tries to explain how they're actually really good true friends when it's glaringly obvious they're friends of opportunity. Ramy is well described and is honestly the character with the most personality in this book. Letty is constantly being excluded from talks either because she's white so she "won't understand" so they never bother to even try to explain, or because she doesn't know about Hermes. I'll save her rant for now but it's both unsurprising that the girl literally named Victory and a descendant of Haiti, the nation that successfully led and won a slave revolt and the option for self governance, was the one to continue on the narrative despite her having honestly less character growth than Robin. Robin as well didn't even feel like Robin at the end, he just felt like we shifted Griffin's character onto him without doing much to support it. I can understand becoming jaded with the world, but the boy that was so wracked with guilt over killing his father suddenly shifting to I'm okay with active murder and slaughter of innocents is too hard of a right. Especially when he was so terrified by griffin doing it!!! Robin left Hermes explicitly because all of these ideas of suffering were so far away that he can't see them to feel compassion towards these people's problems, yet at the end he martyrs himself for this same cause???? We did a full 180% shift without the groundwork or explanation. We started killing off characters without fleshing them out any beyond a name and occasionally a tragic backstory we'll drop 2 or 3 chapters before they die at BEST. Most characters exist as just strawman puppets that we can tug around for plot. We spent so long occupying the tower and I couldn't tell you anything about the end occupants of the tower other than two of them were maybe dating???

Far far too much time was spent trying to shoehorn in our political agenda to the point where all subterfuge and metaphor gets thrown out the window in favor for saying colonialism is bad. What's worse is that it's even a political agenda I agree with! It would have been better if we have characters actually living out the tragic circumstances that we're told they find themselves in other than them being vaguely talked about as things like "Yeah no this shop refused Ramy and I entry" and never expanded on other than that empty statement. I'm not saying that you have to write out a whole hate crime but you can act out some of the microagressions. I think the worst part is that the few microagressions we do get acted out never got any weight... like the scene where Robin gets invited to hang out with the rich nepo baby kids and they treat him as an exotic toy. Robin literally just tells them off, steals their booze, and absconds from the interaction facing no consequences other than a bruised ego. The boys don't retaliate in any way. (As a side note: I do really enjoy how Robin kept comparing his situation to certain Cantonese words towards the end and I desperately wish he was doing that the entire book.)

Another major complaint I have with this book is there's 0 nuance. It's all excruciatingly quite literally black and white. I think Abel is the only confirmed white person besides maybe the professors (who we never get race described to my knowledge) that doesn't turn out to be an asshole. Additionally, we've been led to believe that this system is hundreds of years old and we have no people of color in positions of power? None that are considered British citizens? We're told that the live translators are in high demand and Babel has associates everywhere around the globe, and yet Victoire claims that there's no one that looks like them in a position of power and that they'd never be considered British. As someone that adores that kind of history, I can tell you for a fact that it's untrue. They might not have been 100% treated with the same respect if they weren't light skinned enough to pass but there's been black men with positions of power within Britain. There's probably a lot more people just hiding their ancestry that can pass as white. They even bring up the fact that Robin can pass better than Ramy like!!! There's no one that really waffles back and forth between these worlds like Robin did in the beginning. It's either you live out your life normally and you're acknowledging all the harm done around you and you're okay with it or you fight a losing battle and suffer because of it.

And if that isn't the biggest complaint I have with the book. It honestly felt that by the end nothing fucking mattered at all!!!!! Robin even acknowledges that even by destroying the tower, it's just symbolic and they'll rebuild it later. There's no change to the system at all beyond death at a large scale. It gives such conflicting messages. The parliament was still going to vote to go to war against china, all of hermes basically got destroyed in Britain, and yet the girl named Victory escaped to go find the resistance elsewhere????? The book acts as if the tower going down was one final act of defiance but it went down because like Victoire said, Robin wanted to die. I also hated the way that we waved around Griffin's letter to Robin and once Robin refused to read it the first time it became blindly obvious he never will. Victoire doesn't even tell us what it says other than how she read it and Griffin tells Robin about assumingly their younger brothers also by their father.

But one of the biggest missed opportunities came from Robin's name. His real name was stolen from him by his father and he was forced to become Robin. Robin tries to reclaim back that part of himself by rejecting his father but he never tells the audience his true name. It's even hinted in the book that he remembers it still, and yet he dies with us only ever knowing him as Robin. Honestly it should have been a ceremony with Hermes of reclaiming back the heritage stolen from you by reclaiming your own name. It'd work for security too since when pressed for associates, they can't give up Robin if they only know him as Xiu Ling. It would have added so much depth to the characters if Victoire named herself that. There's so many missed opportunities that this book had that it ignored in favor of trying to advance the worldbuilding and push the story's morals.

Okay I've talked around her for long enough. It's time to talk about Letty. There's so much going on that it's hard to figure out where to start. I think parts of Letty were written well. I think the book accurately was foreshadowing the way that they were purposely leaving her out of the loop. The way she occasionally had to dress as a man to have any respect. You can see the way they isolated her on purpose and I agree that in her position I would have gone a little mad as well. But then we have her indoctrunated into Hermes and the way they weren't looking for her in conjunction with the professor's murder like they were the other three. That one honestly made no sense, (beyond the obvious trying to foreshadow her betrayal) but something that genuinely made me angry was the scene where they were actually being honest with Letty about how people are being racist towards them and Letty started crying for them. Robin says a line that was the equivalent of "It's funny how we told her about all the horrible stuff we deal with and we've become the ones to comfort her" and it immediately pissed me off. Yes I understand that this is meant to be synonymous with white guilt and white people making themselves the center of poc narratives, but it doesn't fully work here. It's not always shown, but they do make an active effort to hide how badly they're treated to Letty since she "doesn't understand" without making an effort to educate her. Of course she crying! She's being told that her best friends in the world are being treated like shit when she actively forgets how the world views them as nothing more than their skin color. Letty has never been shown to be actively racist, just borderline maliciously ignorant. And some of the things that they get mad at her for "not noticing" are things that happen behind closed doors that she couldn't have been aware of???? Like the professor wanting Victoire to wear slave chains thing. It's a fucked up thing that we as an audience cry along with Letty when we find out about it. By insisting that Letty shouldn't be crying for her friends, you insist that the audience shouldn't either. I really don't know what response they expected out of her. They literally describe Letty as basically having a "delicate sensability" and yet they expect her to basically go :/ damn that's fucked up anyways how about lunch? Did they want her to passionately write the schoolboard? You're telling her a pitiful story and berating her for being willfully ignorant, of course she's going to cry that she never noticed! Society had also trained her not to notice to begin with! That shit needs to be unlearned from the impassivity ingrained in us by society.

But Letty's betrayal. Other than her loose foreshadowing that we were talking about earlier, it honestly comes from nowhere. Letty later tried to justify herself that they were threatening violent and criminal acts but the only one actively doing that was Griffin. Everyone else at Hermes only tolerated his violent tendances and agreed to them only as a last resort option. They were literally about to leave to go spread out pamphlets for god's sake, not start an active blood war like she tries to say. Also what was her fucking plan there? They're planning on being potentially violent so I'm going to stop it with more aggressive violence? I really really don't buy the part of her being an admiral's daughter so she's a good shot. Her father was negligent towards her to the point where he barely taught her anything, there's absolutely no way that he taught his DAUGHTER how to shoot. They also tell us this fact as though we ever saw Letty shoot a gun before this scene. The reasoning that her friends were indoctrinated into almost committing violent criminal acts is a solid one, but I genuinely don't get the sudden shift of valuing being patriotic over her friends that she'd previously professed she'd die for. Telling the police because she's worried for them is one thing, but actively coming back to lead the charge and shoot one of them is another. And especially her shooting the boy that she liked???? I'm with Victoire and Robin in asking Why????????? It's so out of left field entirely. But I will say that Robin is assuming a LOT when he tries to say that she shot him because he didn't like her back. You could tell that wasn't the full truth, but we'll never fucking know because Babel is allergic to characters having moral nuance so she just says that she killed him and didn't mean to. Letty and Robin both experience such hard right shifts in personality by the end that they're unrecognizable.

I always do this thing when I read media where I describe what the reading experience is like and for Babel it was like being constantly on a slow moving train passing by set after set. Large swatches of the story felt like a montage rather than a story we could see taking place. It felt like a slideshow of events shoved together. I truly believe that if this book was several novels and we learned to go heavy on the character work and development as well as adding conflicting narratives within the story it would easily be a 5 star book. Give the characters a personality beyond their suffering and make them less of strawmen from their culture. Like for fucks sake, we showed a Chinese girl on exhibit whose feet were bound and just went isn't that fucked up lol anyways and just moved on. We were being told that the girl is just a spectacle to be gawked at, but that's exactly what the narrative treated her as too! These characters don't exist beyond their suffering they endure and have no personality beyond that. We have a political regime that is actively harming its citizens, no longer passively, and people just go about their day as usual uncaring about the destruction around them. The British can put up with passivity but the effects of the seige on Babel made it to where they could no longer passively not care. They went into this tower with no plan and honestly it would have gone better with the pamphleting!!!! It had the same effect!!!!!!!! The bad press and social outcry would have pressed them to doing something, but the narrative decides that the government just doesn't care. You can really tell that at the end the author didn't know what to do with the story so they decided this is the best course of action. It's also blatantly obvious that Griffin was originally meant to be the main character, the author got hit by writers block, tried to write out the story from another perspective and liked that one better. Griffin's sudden death to Sterling wouldn't have as much forced backstory otherwise.

[catominor]

This Years Thoughts On Reading. tbh

the past year i read a lot more than i had in quite some time. to be fair, i didn't finish most of the books i started, didn't start most of the books i want to read, and spent most of my time wasting time on social media still (i don't know why i can't stop doing this. i don't even enjoy it past a certain point). i didn't do well in my university classes. but for a really long time i've found it very difficult to read at all, even to read fiction. i read a lot of fiction (by my standards) this year, especially historical fiction set in ancient rome (though i also read some other good books, favorites among which are probably queer by william burroughs, night side of the river by jeannette winterson, and invisible cities by italo calvino. i also read quite a few short stories and a bit of poetry), i read or started /some/ nonfiction, i read or started /some/ ancient literature, and i had a poem and a short story published in my university's poetry journal and newspaper respectively...

but, really, i feel a little in over my head. i don't really feel like i can do this, by which i mean i still don't think i'm trying hard enough at university. i feel behind everyone else, despite the fact that since i've transferred to a different university having done 2 years before, i still have this and another year before i graduate. even though most of the people in my year will be 2 years younger than me i feel like i am behind them (did i mention that i did badly on my exams last year?)

especially before university i was never a particularly good student, honestly (i was like. a C average, though in my 3rd and 4th years of high school i started to try a little harder) and i think i spend a lot of time now fruitlessly wishing that i had tried harder and taken more of an interest in things. i still wish i tried harder. i still wish that passion was enough to fuel me to actually focus on filling out my historical reading. i wish i just didn't feel so stupid sometimes, honestly. sometimes i'll open a book that's a bit dense or technical and it just makes me feel like the biggest idiot in the world. i wish i was better at articulating my thoughts. i also wish i understood literary analysis or criticism. in a lot of ways now i feel dumber than i was a few years ago, and i don't know why.

[teh-nos]

[fideidefenswhore]

In November and December, he dismantled her household, dismissing her attendants one by one, beginning with [Lady] Pole. Catherine's supporters blamed Anne. It was simply to please her, they murmured, that Mary was to be demoted. It was even said that she would be shut up in a nunnery, or forced to marry a nonentity. And when Henry gave New Hall and its park to Anne's brother, George, and his wife, Jane, as their new country estate, it seemed that such fears might prove all too true.

Children of Henry VIII, John Guy

[llycaons]

imo the novel and donghua both have a lightheartedness to many of their scenes that almost comes off as bizarre, jarring when you consider what else happens in the story. they jump between arcs and tend to abruptly shift tones, and the scenes that are supposed to be happy often come off as extremely irritating. to me. might have been a translation issue? meanwhile cql has committed many timeline crimes but I'll always prefer its more serious tone and gravitas, which makes wwx feel like a more grounded and realistic character and makes the dramatic scenes hit so much harder

[devilsskettle]

nellie the biologist and keiko oh i’m there with u…. now i have to read sourdough

sourdough is a very good book but i will warn you that lois is a much more likable and mentally stable character than nellie, the biologist, and keiko! still i cannot recommend the book enough, let me know what you think when you read it!

[deathsmallcaps]

Replying to tags but then I ran out of room and I think i was if not cooking then at least microwaving

#dude when I was in 6th grade I read #the veldt #and at the time it disgusted and genuinely scared me because I was #just so surprised that people - children! - could be raised to be so heartless #idk if I read it for the first time as a 23 year old it would scare me so much #but goddamn

#I think we're both people who are *at least* good at literacy but we're both a little too STEMmy #to look at it the way some English teachers want us to? #like they want people to go from 'damn that's fucked up → what themes are the authors trying to explore here → what about the world #made them think of that and perhaps what are they trying to get us to consider and think about and perhaps change' #obviously not all writing is a fable with a moral at the end #but a lot of good writing has some sort of central belief that it wants the reader to consider

#(I struggle in creating that with my fiction ugh and I think a lot of booktok books do too and it bugs me that we have that connection)

#but anyway #I think you and I'd first reactions are like #’that's horrible → how can we prevent that specific problem from occurring again' #like take the lottery. my (and maybe your?) first reaction is like 'that's horrible → they should ban the lottery' #but the English teacher is going to want us to think 'oh gee okay so this is a commentary on traditions. why would this tradition be started #/necessary? does the lottery reflect the overall morals and sensibilities of the overall society (aka fond of the death penalty etc). #what sort of tradition might this mirror today? connecting to historical events and the fact that the person stoned and the author were #women. aka the gender commonly stoned for witchcraft in New England #do you think that's related?' etc etc etc wrapped in metaphors and shit. and tbh that's how I learned a lot of my religious and political #philosophy as well as history. I really like Thomas swift's 'a modest proposal' (satire) for that reason.

but that was NOT my initial #thought process for English class. I had to be heavily trained into thinking that way and often my first instinct is to not engage with the #metaphor an just go straight to the logic/sensible answer. blah blah blah. I really respect lit and history teachers as a profession but boy #do I not want to teach it because I would be so slack on writing the kinds of questions that would get the kids to engage with the meta. #once I got a piece I got it but it was a struggle every damn time. because I had to get over my feelings of well why didn't they just not #do that'

the biggest one I can think of is 'song of Solomon' by Toni Morrison. I think my senior AP English teacher wanted us to really #consider authors and characters of color (he was white but it was 2018-2019 aka Trump era) so he taught us othello and TM. othello is a #little easier to understand because iago is just being a little bitch about a Black foreigner getting a promotion and a hot wife and no longer being able to convince himself that he was better than Othello

But TM’s main character Milkman? Unlikeable, spoiled little shit who doesn’t give a damn that he’s the 1 percent of his marginalized community and he’s frittering his privileges away so hard that it literally induces suicidal and murderous tendencies into the people around him. Among other things.

It took me foreverrrrrr to engage with the text beyond GOD I HATE THIS GUY but once I was able to examine his psychology and the mean flip side of ‘if you want to fly, you have to get rid of earthly attachments’, which he does at the end of the story.

Was it a chore? Absolutely. But have I ever forgotten the story or the literary tools it gave me? No.

Maybe I’m just speaking for myself in this longass response - you and I usually talk animals and men not books 😅 - but yeah every English class is full of these annoying stories that are meant to rattle one’s brain and I REALLY avoid rattling lmao. Tbqh again I respect lot classes but I’m glad they’re over lmao

But anyways I listened to Levar Burton’s podcast ‘Levar Burton Reads’ from start to finish, and he once read (as a three parter) Toni Morrison’s Recitatif. It’s the story of two girls, one Black one white, who grew up around and with and against each other during the mid 1900s.

I didn’t know what the story was getting at, aside from the surface ideas of the American Civil Rights Movement and privilege and stuff. But LB usually asked questions or briefly mentioned the author’s main idea at the end. And when he did? HOLY FUCK.

If you ever decide to listen to it (I’ve never gotten my hands to a print copy so idk if they usually have some sort of author’s note at the end to ask the reader this question)(I love LB’s voice he’s a pleasure to listen to if you listen to Recitatif) please @ me and tell me if it also blew your mind and made you consider how you viewed the POV character of the story.

Because it blew my mind and made me really consider why I assumed things about the pov character. Im not going to say anything further because I feel like I’m spoiling the point but yeah.

Anyways again this could be just me but I’ve always had trouble moving on from the straight solution mindset. When I was 12 I was in a model UN and I was told to write a report about Togo and its healthcare issues. I took this to mean that I had to research the common issues there (such as unclean water and mosquito bite diseases) and then come up with solutions.

It was incredibly embarrassing to do all that and then hear every other group explain their countries healthcare issues and WHY (historically, monetarily, etc) their countries struggled with such things. And my ass went up there and talked about affordable mosquito deterrent changes to water sources and cheap water cleaning services.

I didn’t realize it then but like. It perfectly exemplified my lack of instinct to subtextually interact with instructions and prompts.

And the thing is. May the universe bless and boost the fucking lit teachers out there because my poor students are entering math class with lit skills 6 grades under where they should be and are genuinely unable to interact with straightforward STEM instructions. My college had every ed major take a ‘teaching literacy’ class and sure I passed but the thing is. I’m not really the person that’s supposed to catch these kids on that subject. I’m supposed to be a secondary math teacher. So a lot of the advice in that class simply wasn’t applicable and I wish it was!!! I’d be happy to help in that subject but also I WAS TRAINED TO BE A MATH TEACHER. AND MOST LITERACY AND LANGUAGE DIFFICULTY COURSES ARE NOT DESIGNED WITH STEM IN MIND. (Which is why I want to learn enough Spanish that I can teach kids learning English math as well because that’s an area that doesn’t get a lot of crossover and a lot of kids fall through).

Well this turned into a ramble goodnight lmao. I’d say this was a decently microwaved thought track lol