#im into essays and academic writing

[daubigny-stan]

there's this fanfiction that I'm super obsessed over that will never be finished. it's Catch Perfect by the (in?)famous George Devalier. yes it's a Hetalia fanfic please shame me, it's probably my subconscious reason for taking geography in college. anyways this fic... god I would give the world to see it finished. many praise Devalier's veraverse fics as his finest works but this one for some reason is so special to me.

I think what's so special about this fic to me is how sincere it feels? how real it feels? the veraverse series was the author's interpretation, their assumption about how gay couples in europe would be like in WW2 - obviously they weren't there for the actual thing. but his modern AU fics feel... tangible. a real "write what you know" situation. the author was probably a young, gay man who was into romcom, you could really feel that he wrote from his own experiences, from people he knew (although he never explicitly said anything about himself, geogre devalier is notoriously mysterious even as one of the most fanous hetalia fandom figures).

and when you read this fic, analogizing it to let's say a half eaten corpse, only part of the body is whole. but you can see the bones of it! every chapter is titled after poker terminology and strategy, and they kind of link to each of the main character's personalities and you could guess that they potentially foreshadow something. you could tell which body part went where! and it kills you even more because you want to see so bad what the whole body looked like. you are able to tell where the arc is going, probably figure out that it'll have a happy, cheesy ending like his other modern AU fics but you want to hear geogre write about it so bad.

it's about human!Sweden, a tapped out poker player who is forced to move into a student sharehouse (with the rest of the Scandinavia gang) because he lost his entire everything on poker (he is also the age of a uni student, but he doesn't go to uni). and it's this fic about 5 gay guys (and 2 other guys) living in one house and hijinks ensue, mostly around their own crazy personalities. i love how gay it is, it isn't just some "they just happened to be gay" or being gay is just not a thing that's just there in the world. there's these hints of homophobia as experienced by these men in the 2000s (presumably), there's the gay culture written out, it's just a real treat to read. if i had the time and energy i would research poker just so i could finish the fic for myself even though that wouldn't be enough because i know anything i write will be leagues below devalier

[tennessoui]

also i passed literally all my midterms with flying colors (basically A+'s if grad school did A+'s) (or gold star stickers if grad school did gold star stickers)

(they should)

and all my midterms were just essays and all my professors who graded my essays said my essays were very well-written and well-structured and had high readability

and im like thank you thank you i've written like a million words of porn for the internet. i know my adjective noun verb placement very well

[rookflower]

on one hand yeah this is the kitty cat book fandom where at least 95% of the people here are just here to draw funny cats or for nostalgia reasons and it's really not that deep, there is nothing wrong with taking a critical backseat on this one. but on the other, the amount of people in the fandom who seem to genuinely believe that children's literature and xenofiction are both somehow inherently unworthy of any form of criticism whatsoever, to the point where random tumblr posts casually identifying shit like.... themes.... and narrative trends... is looking into things way too deeply and makes you a bad or stupid person in some way because "they're just cats", gives the literature student in me such a headache

[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!

[simcardiac-arrested]

wait, that elias?

[bmpmp3]

sorry to be a bit of a hater but i do wish youtubers weren't so scared of making their videos just like, "reviews", whys everything gotta be a "video essay" all the time. every day my recommendations are filled with 40 minute videos titled "_____: An Underrated Masterpiece" where the first like five minutes are reading the wikipedia definition of "masterpiece" in a somber voice with dramatic themed text on screen. please just tell me how good or bad you think something is and use the rest of the runtime to explain why. you dont need to put on all these airs

[writterings]

me with my 18 year old students that i teach at a college

[rapidhighway]

venting like an idiot

the main reason i dont wanna go back to uni is that i feel like i've completely embarrassed myself last year. idk, i feel horrified at the thought of returning and looking these people in the eye. i didn't do anything, i was lazy and barely finished my projects and the only way to redeem myself somehow would be to come back with some new energy and work hard. i didn't even really get a job this summer because i really wanted to rest, cause i thought i would drop out. and i just feel worse, i feel even more tired

[chiquilines]

Yeah yeah genderswap kiribaku are getting me through the week what about it

[gun-chucks]

HI, I WOULD BE VERY INTERESTED TO READ YOUR PAPER (when its finished i mean. hope its going well, i wish you the smooth writing flow of a wordsmith and many easily accessible relevant references)

so! sorry this took forever but the paper is done and has been done since may- here u go

[glamfellens]

me pointing at aloth with arcane scholar: did you know him

[broke-on-books]

Need to watch my favorite movie again sometime soon

[discobrainrot]

Do you think Kim would have danced with Eyes?

Kim is a man who takes his job seriously. He jokes with the player (re: "Do-eth thou also thorough inventories?" and "Daba-doop-doop-dead" interactions), but that doesn't erase his dedication. He hates pinball but trained for nine months to be a champion to crack a case. Regardless of the more complex moral questions about his commitment to the RCM and real-world philosophies for/against policing, he is devoted.

Was Eyes just as duty-bound? Was he straight-laced? Was Kim the loose canon between them? Would Eyes have joked around using police codes?

If you convince Kim to dance in the church, you can tell him it's a "Code 31 Emergency." He'll question how you're dancing on a busted leg if you've already done the tribunal. But he doesn't stop you. You can tell him you're undercover or that you "have become dance, destroyer of worlds." No matter what you say to him, he just says:

KIM KITSURAGI - "Good for you!" He looks around the church hall. "Rock on, then..."

You can tell him the Code 31 Emergency is "not enough Kim [on the dance floor]." A passive Suggestion check reveals that hearing you say that cheers him up. He smiles.

Did Eyes make him smile? Did he go to great lengths just for a sidelong smirk? Did he want to cheer Kim up on his worst days? Or was he content with a partner who felt a grim sense of obligation to Revachol and her people?

If you pass the next red check, you can either pull rank on him or tell him that he'll face a disciplinary hearing if he doesn't dance. When he does dance, if you've already done the tribunal and have high enough Esprit De Corps, you get the following insight:

ESPRIT DE CORPS - Part of him is amazed you're both able to just *dance* after all these horrifying events in Martinaise.

Is he amazed because, despite it all, there's joy here? Is he stunned because he never would have done it before, especially after the events preceding it? Does it remind him of a partner he lost? In the days after, does he ask himself what's different this time?

Do you think Eyes would have danced with Kim?

[fruitsofhell]

Writing my college application essay VS writing a 1000 word essay on how I and the fandom interpret Meta Knight's character in the games

[thedisablednaturalist]

Unfortunately all chatgpt is good for is interview/job application stuff which I think says a lot about the hiring process as a whole

[sevenines]

academia is so unserious because this is a real thing that got published