#lit crit shit

[kevin-day-is-bi]

Thinking about how connected Jason and Tim are. You can't buy a copy of Death in the Family without it being paired with A Lonely Place of Dying. Tim's first appearance is trying to fix things after Jason died. Jason's first appearance as coming back from the dead is holding Tim at knifepoint. They're the only two of the bats to wear red. Kon mentions that Tim is wearing a uniform similar to Jason. Every storyline that Tim is in from 1989-2005 mentions Jason somewhere. Jason's biggest source of rage with Bruce is that he let Tim become Robin. Both Tim and Jason idolized Dick as Robin. The Robin that broke Bruce and the Robin who had to put him back together.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

The idea that it is Bad and Terrible and you are a Bad Person when your stories involve real life events or are set during real life events, especially real life events that are most of a century ago, may be one of the weirdest and worst takes I have ever seen in my life.

[roguetelepaths]

So, Please Join Us by Catherine McKenzie is the most misogynistic fucking thing I have ever read. Thank the good lord Cthulhu that it was a short book because I would not have wanted to waste any more time than necessary on it.

It starts out as "wow, this women's networking group sure is intense and a little bit high-control" which is always an interesting premise, I love me a good rich person cult, but then it rapidly becomes "and now the leader of the group is trying to rig a sexual assault case against this one particular CEO so she can take over his company". The moral of the story seems to be that community between women is inherently suspect and only heterosexual marriage can provide true satisfaction in life, seeing as she ends the book waxing poetic about how supportive her husband is when he's been denigrating her career and pressuring her to step back and have babies with him for most of the book.

I've long thought that the obsession with high-control groups in recent fiction at least partially reflects the anxieties we have about seeking community in an increasingly individualistic world— what if we reach out and try to connect, and it goes as wrong as it could possibly go?— and I really have to give this book props (derogatory) for marketing itself as a feminist thriller but answering the question of "what if we attempt to seek community and it goes horribly wrong" with "then we must retreat to the safety of the traditional family".

[abeautifulblog]

Grading it on a curve what does that even mean 😵😵😵 is that positive or negative???

Thaaaaat would be a negative. 🤣

Like, to be sure, it was better than season two -- but that's a low fuckin bar, and that's kinda my point. That people have calibrated their expectations for this show, and they are holding it to very, very low standards these days. 😅

(I've got a longer post about S3 on the backburner, but I'm still putting my thoughts about it in order.)

[farewell-in-veil]

guys i need motivation to. draw my silly scenarios

[artbyblastweave]

Which Fallout game would you recommend to someone who's played none of them?

Depends on how you like to spend your time. Discounting a couple wild-swing-and-miss games that are only dubiously canon, Fallout games can be roughly grouped into the West Coast games- a trilogy composed of Fallout, Fallout 2, and Fallout: New Vegas- and the Bethesda-headed East Coast Games, consisting of Fallout 3, Fallout 4, and Fallout 76 (the last of which is a multiplayer game-as-service that I don't own a machine powerful enough to play. I hear mixed things.)

The east coast games lean heavily into Bethesda's house style- big, lovingly-crafted open worlds, a heavy focus on exploration and environmental storytelling, satisfying dungeon-crawl-based loot loops, and so on. They aren't well written and from 4 onward they aren't terribly deep RPGs. In particular I can recommend 4 as a fun romp that's quite accessible from a gameplay perspective but a really bad showing of what the rest of the series is about thematically- a lot was lost in a push for mass market appeal. If you liked Skyrim there's a good chance you'd like Fallout 4, except I'd argue wholeheartedly that Skyrim had worldbuilding as a priority to a much greater extent than 4 even at its nadir. It's set in Boston, if that sweetens the pot at all. It did for me.

By contrast the west coast fallout games are in fact actively well-written and invite engagement from a lit-crit perspective. There are themes and shit. Of the west coast trilogy I'd recommend Fallout: New Vegas (and I'd recommend it above Fallout 4), in no small part because It's the only one of the three created in a 3d engine (the first two are top-down isometric) and it strikes a decent balance between the open-world go-anywhere philosophy of an elder scrolls game and the meaningful-choices-they-thought-of-everything RPG sensibilities. The only minor downside is that It's an indirect sequel/finale in regard to the first two games, which means there's a significant number of callbacks, returning characters, and returning factions that are rendered slightly more legible by having played the first two games. But not much more legible- you get the gist of everyone's deal just by playing and talking to everyone. There's also a decent amount of jank on numerous fronts because it was basically commissioned as a spinoff game in under 18 months but taking that mulligan into account it sort of becomes even better, pound for pound. Play this if you liked Disco Elysium and want to play a game that's significantly less heavy than that on all fronts but also lets you be a cowboy and get in shootouts with Fascist roman larpers and robots and shit. Play it even if that doesn't sound good. Play it. Play Fallout: New Vegas. Play it

[transmutationisms]

Your understanding of succession is very nuanced and I find reading your takes very enriching! All I wish is to have your literary analysis skills. If you could share where you started in understanding topics like psychoanalysis, bodily fluids as a symbol, using political lens to understand lit, or anything like that, that would be much appreciated! Sorry if this has been asked before, if you could direct me to that post I’d appreciate that

hi! i wouldn't consider myself any kind of expert in lit crit and i think it's something i continue to get better at just by doing more of it. so i'm not sure how helpful i can be here lol. but, some texts that have probably formed theoretical foundations for my reading of succession are:

history of shit, by dominique laporte, tr. rodolphe el-khoury

water and dreams: an essay on the imagination of matter, by gaston bachelard, tr. edith r. farrell

psychoanalysis of fire, by gaston bachelard, tr. alan c. m. ross

marx's 1844 manuscripts

anti-oedipus: capitalism and schizophrenia, by gilles deleuze & félix guattari, tr. robert hurley, mark seem, & helen r. lane

body fascism: salvation in the technology of physical fitness, by brian pronger

'malthus and the evolutionists', by robert m. young

the birth of biopolitics: lectures at the collège de france, 1978–79, by michel foucault, tr. graham burchell

discipline and punish: the birth of the prison, by michel foucault, tr. alan sheridan

faces of degeneration: a european disorder, 1848–1918, by daniel pick

capitalist realism, by mark fisher

three essays on the theory of sexuality, by sigmund freud, tr. james strachey

society of the spectacle, by guy debord, tr. donald nicholson-smith

le paris moderne: histoire des politiques d'hygiène, 1855–1898, by fabienne chevallier

we have never been modern, by bruno latour, tr. catherine porter

the arcades project, by walter benjamin, tr. howard eiland & kevin mclaughlin

french modern: norms and forms of the social environment, by paul rabinow

[burningvelvet]

on cancel culture, tumblr, lit crit shit, paranoid reading, and some observations on blogging about byron & the shelleys —

every day someone comments on one of my posts about old dead writers with the most insufferable and reactionary takes disguised under a veil of liberalism. go read eve sedgwick's essay on paranoid reading & reparative reading, and learn how to enjoy things!!! why are you trying to cancel people who died 200 years ago? stop!!!

9/10 times they've never read the writer in question, they just hear that these writers were problematic and without using their own critical thinking skills, and having done zero research, they readily condemn them. no real appreciation for literature, no real appreciation for history or culture. and if they do have these, or if they have done research, it's entirely biased, already marked with judgement (aka exemplary paranoid reading).

i think it's very interesting that percy shelley and lord byron were getting cancelled in their own time period left and right, and now they still face cancellation attempts for some of the same reasons, only now more often at the hands of self-described progressives who feel they do so for the "right reasons."

a major problem in discourse (both in and outside of academia) is that most people do not understand the difference between "criticism" in the academic sense (which is synonymous with "discussion," "analysis," "engagement") and "criticism" in the colloquial sense (synonymous with "condemnation" or "harsh judgement" or even sometimes "attacking").

so when we start talking about literary criticism, some misinformed people automatically seek to cancel every dead writer, burn every book, and disregard all of history, even the progressive bits, because they simply don't care, and think that they are being "critical" and that this is a good thing, when they are using the wrong definition of the term to begin with. if i taught a class on literature the first thing i would do is make the distinction between these two definitions.

a lot of people approach dead writers or old writing in bad faith (paranoid reading). they automatically denounce The Olds for being problematic, and then proceed to believe they are morally superior for their own lack of depth.

percy shelley is one of the most progressive and forward-thinking figures of his generation and it's honestly a miracle that we still have access to some of his works which were literally burned in his own lifetime, but that his friends and most importantly his best friend, his wife mary shelley, carefully preserved during his life and long after his death even in the face of social ruin and censure, because they recognized his immense merit and they desperately loved him and his work. this is a beautiful thing!!!

this isn't the narrative a lot of people prefer, though. a lot of people would have mary shelley, instead of being the publisher and defender of his works as she was, be forced into the role which she herself openly derided, of being percy's unwilling bride, victim, who merely tolerated him, who was herself either repressed or oppressed by him. nor is nuance allowed in this narrative.

this narrative is based on a reactionary stance disguised as progressive. that all women writers are mere victims to the men around them. nevermind the fact that mary shelley's husband was one of her biggest encouragers (as well as her trusted proofreader and editor; and all this also goes for her father godwin, but to a lesser extent, as one could more easily make the argument that godwin did emotionally neglect mary).

paint all male writers as abusive control freaks, and all female writers associated with them as their weak-willed puppets, all based on their biological sex and a surface-level analysis of their biographies. these people are arguably just as bad as the sexist pseudo-scholars who have claimed that percy actually penned the entirety of frankenstein and used mary as his puppeteered pseudonym. as if mary never sought agency of her own and never possessed a modicum of it!

for a fair analysis on percy and mary's connection, i highly recommend Anna Mercer's "The Collaborative Literary Relationship of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley" and her interview by Mathelinda Nabugodi for a TLDR version.

i find it interesting that my posts about percy shelley's personal life are not only much more popular than my similar posts about byron (probably due to percy's surname; the mary/frankenstein connection) -- but also that i see way more criticism against percy than against byron.

i think this is partly due to their portrayals in the ahistorical 2018 mary shelley biopic film (see: graham henderson's blog posts on this topic) wherein byron was somehow portrayed as less of an asshole than shelley (which i never would have thought possible had i not seen it). & maybe it has to do with interest in & misconceptions about mary in general. but this is surprising because in many regards, percy really is much more likeable and progressive than byron.

i once had a person hating on byron and trying to argue with me entirely under a post about percy shelley which had nothing to do with byron. whenever i try to critically engage with this sort of backlash on my posts, it is utterly pointless. none of them are interested in or respectful of the opinions of others, nor are they receptive to facts or nuance or engaging with any material in any mature or serious way.

it's especially difficult that they mostly comment on my more popular joking posts/memes, bc that sets up a false pretense for me or my blog to be taken unseriously, when i do take academic figures & topics seriously. my blog is a place for me to unwind and joke about literature, yes, but it's not like i'm just mindlessly joking about writers i've never studied. a lot of people assume that i'm genuinely ridiculing writers when i playfully make fun of them, so they take it as an invitation to do the same, when that's not my case at all.

— back to the percy/byron comparison: in the history of my blog posts, i've seen probably 30+ percy haters and maybe 5 byron haters. as i said, this is honestly bewildering. there are way more justifiable reasons for hating byron than there are for hating shelley.

if we're speaking solely in terms of political, creative, & ideological stances between the two, (and there are hundreds of books/essays comparing their lives/works/philosophies,) i agree and disagree with both of them on various topics. they're both extremely complex writers/thinkers/figures and very different people, despite having been friends.

but if i'm comparing them biographically speaking, if i had to let one of them babysit my children, i would choose percy 10/10 times. if i had to live with one of them, i would choose percy most of the time, although either of them would be tough as a roommate for different reasons.

but overall, percy was a bit more decent biographically speaking, though that doesn't make him a superior writer (percy himself wrote numerous times that he felt byron was creatively superior to him, but morally inferior). and i think most people who've researched the two would agree that percy is the more moral poet by most standards.

for these and many other reasons, it seems apparent to me that the majority of people who hate percy are often parroting the rhetoric of others & not actually thinking for themselves -- which mary endlessly wrote that she despised, as she devoted so much of her time and energy to defending her husband's moral character from critics, so it's especially disappointing that most of the anti-percy sentiment comes from mary shelley fans, who don't even realize how much effort she put into publishing his work and transcribing it as his pre- and posthumous amanuensis.

[wellofdean]

Hello there! I've happened to read this post of yours and I just loved it! You've brilliantly articulated what I've been trying to explain about Supernatural, specifically about one of its most fascinating (at least to me) themes, that is the contrast between the nuclear and the queer family. In the post you've also mentioned "the backlash against the Joseph Campbell Monomyth-style mode of storytelling" and I got super curious since I've been trying to find some resources about alternatives to this type of storytelling. I was wondering if you could be so kind and share the names of some authors, or even some books/papers/articles about this "backlash". I just thought to take my chance and ask you but if it's not okay by you by no means ignore my request :)

thank you anyway for sharing your thoughts on that post, again it was brilliant! Have a nice day ^_^

Hello! Thank you so much for the compliment on my post!

When I say 'backlash against the monomyth', I am talking about conversations in the film school, and with other students, but some of them, as I mentioned, have gone on to make films that set out to subvert the Hero's Journey model of storytelling.

I personally love this piece:

Film Crit Hulk has a bit of a schtick that he's doing and yes, he writes in ALL CAPS, but he's kind of brilliant, actually, writes for some very serious publications, and this is a pretty brilliant summary of the kinds of conversations I heard and had in my University days and just after with members of the Lit and Crit fandom (which is what academics really are) and my then-aspiring filmmaker friends, and with people who were actively involved in shaping careers in Hollywood storytelling.

This is also good:

This is also really worth a read, and talks about the way the monomyth "displays ethnocentric, sexist, heteronormative, and cisnormative biases and it encourages people to ignore the ways in which stories are fundamentally shaped by the cultures and time periods in which they are produced."

As for alternatives, I will now tell you about a book I absolutely love, and cannot recommend highly enough, and that is Jane Alison's book Meander, Spiral, Explode.

EXTREMELY worth the read. Absolutely wonderful.

I also really like Relating Narratives by Adriana Cavarero, which you can read online, here, which is about selfhood and narrative, and actually is not fully relevant, probably, but it's awesome, so I include it.:

Enjoy!

[fuckmeyer]

I'm slowly being consumed by a tenant of wildfell hall au in which Edward is Markham (equally bratty and spoiled) and Bella is Helen (suffering but strong morals). I also feel like you would eat this for breakfast, lunch, and dinner because if all the symbolism in the book. you're crit lit shit queen around here.

BESTIE GUESS WHAT I GOT MY PAWS ON

thank u for the suggestion!!! so excited to read it and maybe do a lil Tenant x Twilight lit analysis 👀👀👀

[theinheriteddutchess]

As inspired from this post

I present you the Simbo:

Not quite a himbo, he killed too much for that, but a variation of a simp.

Job tasks include:

Simping

Not talking when you're beloved talks

Standing pretty

Standing next, or most likely behind, your beloved

Agree with everything beloved does, or say

No thoughts, heads empty

Sprout compliments about beloved even years after the relationship ended

Not once a negative word about them!

The answer to everything is: beloved

If only they were beloved!

They'll settle for being beloved's truest, most devoted warrior

Look at beloved with heart eyes at all times

Get different haircuts to please beloved even if none are working to gain them back

Kill for beloved

Sit in the dark and brood about having lost beloved

Simbo; a lifestyle not many can accomplish.

[sketchystalker]

Okay. This is going to be the semester that kills me

First up, my literary criticism class has an essay due every. single. class. And hey it's a class that starts at 1:30, so plenty of time to do it in the morning, right? Nope! Due at midnight the night before. So I have to fully understand these complex texts talking about things that already go over my head enough to write a paper about it and somehow get it done way before the normal time I'd get it done at (because I am a big homework after midnight do-er). I have like zero time this weekend (because hey, it's my birthday and it's the first week of classes so you'd think I'd be able to have some time off) and my professor decided to add on a 25-30 minute video lecture to the assigned Plato reading (due with an essay Monday at midnight) that she already advised us to start two days ago, and another textbook reading on top of it.

Second, the class I had to beg to get into because my other class dropped last-minute apparently is 8 weeks, and is designed just like an online class, except I have a mandatory in-person lecture twice a week at 8:30 AM. I literally could have just taken the online class and saved time probably. It'll be nice I guess when it's term two and I don't have 17 credits going but it's going to be so much to balance initially.

Third, my grantwriting practicum. It's only three credits, but I'm spending 6 hours in the lab every week working on it because they want us to do all of our work in the lab. But I am such a slow writer that I know I'm going to have to do work outside of that time too. And the issue is that I don't get to use that time to prioritize something that may be more important at the moment, I'm stuck writing grants on all three of my most busiest days (which are right next to each other, giving me little time to do any homework for the classes that meet Tuesday/Thursday. And guess when my lit crit class meets? My Tuesday/Thursdays are literally 8:30 AM-5 PM with only an hour off for lunch. And then I have homework right after).

Fourth, I decided to take a piano class because "oh it'll be fun" and "who knows if you'll have space to take it senior year. Just do it now while you can" and yeah it should be fun, but I'm supposed to practice 30 minutes every day? There's no way. It'd be doable if I had a piano where I lived but I don't so there's no way.

And then my other two classes would be fine and doable if I literally just didn't have lit crit. But they're both English as well, and one is a 3 hour night class meeting on Wednesdays (once again giving me no time to do my Thursday homework), requiring about 150 pages read every week. And the other is variable speech/story/poem/etc. lengths but, knowing this professor, they'll have to be closely annotated. So no skimming for me if I'm short on time.

On top of that I have work, where I am now going to be one of two people among a sea of new hires (and that second person only started like three months ago and apparently makes people really uncomfortable). And I'm in charge of certifying all of them. And until that day happens, like months from now because the process actually takes forever, I and that other guy are the only ones who can give the hour-long tours. So that's 9 hours of my week right now (a majority happening during my Tuesday/Thursdays)

And I'm also the president of a club that I have no idea how to really run. There's so much shit I have to do up-top, like getting certified, making a whole budget that's extremely complicated and I don't know how to do, and start planning and holding meetings, all by a really soon date.

Plus I still have boxes I need to unpack and lists I need to research and send to my mom and apply for studying abroad before September 12th and my oven takes over an hour to pre-heat to 400 degrees which makes cooking anything impossible so I have nothing I can easily make and eat and I still need to confront a professor I've been avoiding and someone wants to interview me and I'm avoiding that email and I'm worried I'm not going to be making enough money this semester because I don't have that many hours and if I don't see my friends I get sad and lose all my motivation to do anything especially schoolwork and I have a stupid fucking 4.0 that I've maintained for this long I literally don't know how to lose it like how do you do an assignment and turn it in that isn't all of your effort ever and how do you know if you miss assignments that you aren't actually going to get a negative 500% grade in the class and I'm trying so hard to have a good semester I need a good semester after last semester I need to stay academically minded and excited to do it but I'm not going to get any exercise which naturally is going to make me sad because moving your body is good for you and feels good and i just don't have time and I said yes to a dnd campaign this semester?????? what the actual hell when i am going to have the time to do that and i want to start reading the illiad right now and i want to watch a movie every week and I think I am actually going to die

[chaoticliterarystudying]

getting some basic reading done for my lit crit 1 class this morning. trying to stay motivated to do shit.

[nobylu]

Lancer session 4 started off with the gang realizing that between a hostage in the med bay, a broken NHP casket, and the size three monster corpse that we obtained via snowboarding avalanche grapple and bullet to the head, that we were running out of ways to carry our shit. Luckily our avalanche brought us back to the crater that we found the NHP casket in, so we treated it as a pre-made hole to put our treasures. We slapped a mono-Chan LLC sticker on the monster corpse and buried it in some snow before returning to our actual quest: finding some lost mechs. We then realized that we were too focused on getting hot chocolate and meditation tracks for our mission and that we forgot to ask literally anything about the mechs we're supposed to be finding, which means they could all be 1/2 size mechs in the belly of our slain monster. We scan it and find nothing but we do find out that it got shot with lasers.

We proceed up a mountain and get whacked with a snowstorm. We carry on despite 3 hex visibility and 10 hex max sensor range, before we stumble across a field of broken mechs and dead pilots. We hear someone asking for help, right before the broken mechs begin to rise. Battle ensues: mono-Chan LLC V Zombie Mechs.

Highlights of this ongoing battle: Viv focused on finding the hurt pilot by scanning quadrants. Brick, Ash, Hendrick, and Diederik were lit on fire by nanite swarms reminiscent of a Balor - Diederik had a mental breakdown over that and his personal swarm threw a fit over the chassis of their chassis being damaged. Diederik used his superheavy to destroy an armored mech that got summoned by a witch mech and accidentally crit, dealing a whopping 20 damage reduced to 17 by its 3 armor. Brick put himself in the hands of Ash who unleashed a barrage of missiles around him after he went on a killing spree, as is the right of an honest, working class man like Brick. Jacques used his core ability to help keep some safe.

[farewell-in-veil]

hey does anyone wanna write me two short paragraphs on books theyve read recently ill give u art in return

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 3/7/2023

soooooo there's another classic Dad Movie character ive adopted bc ive decided he's bisexual

listening

Black Hole Baby by Superorganism. i would put a marker down and say this is the sound of the summer but this came out last summer :/ the very flat (slightly chiptune?) delivery of the lyrics combined with the hyper bouncy...squelchy??? lasers? is extremely fun. this song is neither creepy nor wet but it is viscous bc u are on a spaceship partying as a black hole is Getting You

listen. anything that starts off with subway chimes and the following lyrics is going to be good. these are good song choices in my mind.

I've been eating fruit I've been sleeping well when I can

the bridge in the middle with bits and pieces of radio hosts shouting them out-- i could take it or leave it. i do like how this band namedrops themselves constantly. it's like an oil painting at an estate sale with a huge legible signature at the bottom.

-

reading

i have read about three-quarters of raymond chandler's oeuvre (hardboiled detective/film noir author and screenwriter of note) this week. i cannot in good faith recommend these books because they contain some of the worst excesses of their time, which is good bc this is not a review series.

sometimes, i'm watching or reading something and i decide it would be a good tuesdaypost candidate. i hate the term consume but it's the quickest descriptor here, so bear with me. if i am consuming a work based on the recommendation of a friend, it changes how i consume the work-- i'm on the lookout for the elements they used in their pitch. if i'm consuming a work to write an article or paper (rare these days) i'm stopping halfway through to take notes, i'm rewinding to catch details, i'm delving into interviews, i often fully rewatch or reread. if i'm liveblogging something i am mostly on the lookout for humorous and/or gay bits. if in the middle of something i catch myself thinking "ooh this would be good to talk about for the tuesdaypost" that introduces another like, film or lit crit level to the rest of my time with the work. it's very difficult to turn that part of my brain off.

when i am reading things just for me, none of that is there. i am fully immersed, my disbelief is suspended. i am not thinking about anything else but the story that is being told to me. ive spent a great deal of time with these books this week and it feels weird not to talk about them, but they are something i really enjoyed that was just for me.

i honestly don't know how to unpack my enjoyment of works that (at times) reflect the quite extreme racism of their author-- the one that grabbed me the most, Farewell My Lovely, contained some of the most callous and exceptionally cruel shit i've ever read. it also contained some of the most fascinatingly complex inner workings of an extremely closeted bisexual guy with ptsd i've ever read. i don't know how to talk about these books in an interesting or balanced way.

even if i did know how to unpack these things, the brief and light weekly roundup post on goddamn tumblr dot com (home to no nuance whatsoever) would not be the venue. this is an anti-review, in a way.

-

watching

a fuck of a lot actually bc i'm really trying to crank out this baby blanket and podcasts aren't really doing it. same username on letterboxd if u want to see early drafts of this tuesdaypost section.

i watched many films that came on two vhs tapes when i was little, bc charlton heston was one of my mom's favorite actors. i did not see spartacus when i was little but i did see the entirety of ben hur AND the ten commandments before i was eight. i can't make that make sense either.

anyway i have a soft spot for epics but only when i am actively doing things with my hands. this one has a more interesting making-of story than the actual movie, imo. this one also had oddly christian overtones, for being set in a time where christ and christianity did not yet exist. like many critics of the time, i have no strong feelings about mr douglas' acting. i really, really liked the soundtrack-- a delight to hear the love theme in context after hearing it in a thousand different soundtrack theme compilations!

-

playing

nothing that wasn't a phone game i've already talked about

-

making

five and a half repeats!!! i am aiming for ten repeats plus some sort of i-cord border so this is roughly halfwayish

i took this in broad daylight after a meeting like "if i knit more tonight i'll take another photo" and then i didn't knit any more tonight i read a bad western and halfheartedly liveblogged it