#teachers helping teachers
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PLEASEEEE you cannot convince me that Poseidon going "in all my years of living, it isn't very often that i get pissed off" isnt the same thing as your elementary teacher going "in my 20 years of teaching, i have never had a less well behaved class".
#shitpost#epic the musical#epic the ocean saga#epic the musical shitpost#poseidon#it isnt very often that i get pissed off 😒#girl please u sound like u get mad at anyone whos not ur fav for breathing too loudly#honestly dont know how these people make it thru 20 years of teaching#like ur missing the point of being a teacher#nurturing ur students and helping them grow#HELP WHY IS THIS SHIT GETTING NOTES LOL#top post
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Come check out my store on the Teachers Pay Teachers site
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Mr. Fenton is a competent teacher. Almost too competent.
If Mr. Daniel Fenton had any more than a BS (with a minor in education), Tim would’ve flagged his profile as a potential Rogue. That’s the way of most charismatic academics, at least in Gotham. (Got a PhD? Instant watchlist.) Instead, he’s Gotham Academy’s newest celebrity, as a young, passionate, out-of-towner substitute while the chemistry teacher’s on maternity leave.
Tim gets the hype. Fenton seems to genuinely love teaching, and is invested in the welfare of the student body. He hands out bananas during exam week, hosts a “study habits seminar” each month to coach effective learning strategies, and the third time Tim falls asleep in his class, he even pulls Tim aside to ask if he’s doing okay. With all the late work he accepts and the protein bars he sneaks Tim, he’s every teen vigilante’s dream teacher. He could’ve been Tim’s favorite.
In fact, Mr. Fenton was Tim’s favorite. Up until Tim walks into Mr. Fenton’s chemistry classroom for a forgotten textbook, an hour after the final bell.
On the board where tallied scores for today’s review game had been kept, “THE CHEMISTRY BEHIND DR. CRANE’S FEAR GAS: ANXIOGENICS, NERI’S, & YOU,” is now scrawled. A detailed diagram of the human endocrine system projects in front of a small crowd of adoring and attentive students.
Fenton is wrist-deep in the skull cavity of an anatomical model. A short tug, and out pops the brain.
It’s plastic. It’s fake.
Tim identifies the nearest emergency exit.
Fenton turns to the door, and in the dark classroom with the projector illuminating half his face, his eyes almost seem to flash red. “What’s up, Tim?” he asks. His friendly grin is too big for his face. “I didn’t know you wanted to join the Just Science League!”
[OR: Danny’s a science teacher at Tim’s school. Gotham’s a pretty wild place, even for someone who grew up a superhero in a ghost-infested town, so he takes it upon himself to start a club teaching kids how to manage themselves in the event of a crisis. These Gothamites are pretty hardy, but a little extra training never hurt anybody! And he suspects one of his students might be a teen vigilante, like he’d been, back in the day. As a senior super, it's Danny’s duty look out for him! Surely, this is the subtlest and most appropriate way to give the kid pointers.]
[Tim immediately assumes supervillain.]
#Danny can’t help being creepy it’s just the way he’s built!!#I like to think Lancer did these things for Danny when he was in HS#and now Danny's emulating Lancer :)#Passing it on!#Tim is paranoid but also like he is SO CLOSE to graduating so like. Does he even want to report this shit to Batman. What if the next chem#teacher's a jerk and Tim fails the class and he never gets his stupid diploma. Bruce already is insisting he finish out HS and maybe get#an ABA before he's allowed back into the company#and Jesus Christ does Tim hate school. He'll worry about Mr. Fenton's burgeoning army of Science Honor Society Rogues on his own time#dcxdp#dpxdc#prompt#tim drake#danny fenton#in case I write more of this let’s tag it uhhhhh#misunderstood mentor au#kipwrite
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everything is totally fine and DANDY
#art stuff#hollow knight#hollow knight fanart#hollow knight art#meme#hollow knight meme#quirrel#hk quirrel#lurien#lurien the watcher#white lady#hk white lady#ghost#little ghost#the knight#hk little ghost#herrah#herrah the beast#monomon#monomon the teacher#hornet#hk hornet#pure vessel#hk pure vessel#pale king#hk pale king#this was crazy fun to draw#thanks to the people (and you know who you are) who helped me with this#character placing hard
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reminding everyone that the in-universe problem with The Doctor and The Master isn’t “ooo horrible nasty enemies who hate each other and don’t get along and fight all the time but are also in love”
the problem is that they get along. the problem is that they can’t stop themselves from falling naturally into a rhythm of riffing off one another and enjoying the other’s company. THAT is the problem. the problem is that it works and that’s the thing that caused all their issues. they like one another. they just click.
#doctor who#thoschei#the doctor and the master#the master#twissy#they’re also the two worst people on the planet(s) l#lol#it’s the person you can’t help having chemistry with#they almost don’t have a choice#they both know it too#sometimes one of them will pretend it isn’t true but it is it’s the very much mutually understood truth#the problem is they just like one another a lot#not even in a romantic way#even tho it’s romantic lol#they just LIKE one another !!!#what was that thing stephen moffat said#companions bring it up all the time too. it doesn’t make sense why the doctor lets them get away with so much. it frustrates every companio#when they see that the truth of the matter is that the doctor just LIKES the Master#the two kids every teacher sits intentionally far far far away from one another lmao
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10 year old me: poor percy, school is so hard :(
23 y/o me, with an education degree: somebody get this kid an IEP. who hired this school’s staff
#rick riordan#percy jackon and the olympians#percy jackson#fr tho like#why was nobody helping him#even the mortal teachers shouldve at least tried
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No one wants Steve and Eddie to get together more than Eddie’s creative writing class who will collectively ripping their metaphorical hair out if they have to hear another long description of a king in need of rescuing.
Well, everybody but Steve.
Steve - who is only in this class because they wouldn’t let him take personal finance three years in a row - has not pick up on who the king is based on and will openly interrupt Eddie halfway through a story to be like, “This guy again? Ugh, he sucks.”
“He doesn’t suck!”
“Uh, yeah, he does? He’s mean for no reason and like, apathetic to his knights terrorizing people,” Steve adds. “Also he’s ugly. You keep describing him and he sounds ugly. He has a big nose. No offense, Jessica. The court jester should kill him.”
“Thats the point, Harrington,” Eddie scuffs. “He could be better if his court wasn’t full of idiots.”
“Then make him better,” Steve scuffs right back. “You’re the narrator.”
“I’d love to.”
The entire class thinks, so would we.
#Steve hearing someone describe him verbatim: Wow this guy sucks and we should kill him#This does not help Eddie’s crush. he loves a heated debate#Steve isn’t a bad writer but it’s clear that he’s writing the stuff he presents the morning it’s due#his is a lot of monsters as a metaphor (according to the teacher)#but is actually like the actual description of last fall#steve harrington#eddie munson
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The Autism Urge to be Helpful
The Autistic Teacher
#autism#actually autistic#the urge to be helpful#some might think it’s fake#I hope some don’t think I’m TOO helpful#helping others can leave us vulnerable#we unique why of thinking#some of us have a strong sense of empathy#but it’s ok to have little or no empathy#neurodivergence#neurodiversity#actually neurodivergent#feel free to share/reblog#The Autistic Teacher (Facebook)
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every day i learn something new about logan sargeant and his racing career, not just about his performance in f1 but in f2 and previous series, too. and every day i end up so sad because he genuinely has so so much potential and can do so much but he keeps being give a poor hand of cards. this guy out qualified his teammate in f2 TEN TO FOUR. and who was his teammate?? liam lawson. liam joined redbull’s driver academy in february of 2019 while logan only got to join an f1 team’s driver academy in october of 2021. that team was williams. which, as we know, hasn't exactly been the best performing team in recent years. oscar piastri got to join an f1 team’s driver academy in january of 2020 (the renault sport academy, later rebranded as the alpine academy). liam and oscar both got the opportunity to do f1 tests for YEARS prior to their f1 debuts in 2023. liam had 4 and a half years of experience in f1 cars before 2023. oscar had 3 years of experience in f1 cars before 2023. even if it was just testing and practice sessions, it's still something.
what did logan get? one measly fp2 session, post-season testing, and then jumped right in to pre-season testing in 2023. he already had a seat in williams then, so with the experience from before the pre-season testing in 2023 he got to do maybe 800km of testing in an f1 car. the others — in this case i mean oscar, liam, and heck even nyck de vris — had opportunities to drive f1 cars and gain experience for YEARS before logan. if you look at nyck de vris: he got signed to the mclaren young driver programme in 2010. he joined the audi sport racing academy in 2016. granted, he left the mclaren programme in before the 2019 season and left audi after the 2019 season, too. but he then went to mercedes as a reserve driver and tester for 2020 and afterwards. this means he got just about a DECADE AND A HALF of teams putting their time and energy into training him to join f1.
logan got a year. one. single. fucking year. that is entirely incomparable to the other rookies from 2023, who had so much more experience before hand. and yet logan was jumped into f1 and the expectations were so high for a guy who hasn't had the chance to train and learn and gain experience.
and yet when we look at the 2022 f2 season, logan sargeant, a rookie, was 1 point off from his teammate —the one and only liam lawson — scoring p4 in the championship. he outqualified his teammate 10 to 4. he was the first american to win an f2 race (that is, of course, following the rebrand from gp2 to f2, but regardless, that’s still an important thing to note and an achievement of his that should be celebrated).
logan sargeant has so much potential and if only williams would show him a little more faith unlike what they’ve been doing, if only they’d give him the same upgrades as alex, if only they wouldn’t force him to drive a car 15kg overweight from that of his teammate’s car, if only they wouldn’t force him to use outdated rear and front wings from the season prior. then perhaps he would have a chance to show what he can do. perhaps if he wasn’t stuck in a team with a crap car who have shown zero faith (which has been vehemently obvious since the circus in australia) in him and made him absolutely miserable, a shell of himself — which you can clearly see in recent interviews and photos of him — then maybe he’d be able to show how good he really is. and maybe if williams hadn’t been so adamant about taking him out of f2 so quickly and let him develop for one more year, we’d be seeing headlines that say “logan sargeant, first american f1 driver on the podium since michael andretti in 1993.” and perhaps we could even see him winning races.
no matter what someone says about his current f1 performances — though most base that solely off of where he ends up on the grid rather than looking at his actual driving and seeing how good he is as a driver considering the crap circumstances he’s in — logan sargeant is a better driver than what everyone says. he is trying so insanely hard to get a car that is miles off from the rest of the field to place as high as humanly possible. no one can say that if you put another driver in that car that logan is driving they'd be doing better than he is now. the fact is, they wouldn't be. he's been given an absolute tractor and is expected to score points when that car isn't built for getting in the points. and yet logan managed to get p10 in the miami sprint race — which should be recognized and commended. because he was in an awful car and he absolutely shined that day. that was just the start of showing what he could do. but he hasn't been given the same resources as alex, those being the upgrades, so what more can he do compared to what he's doing now?
and i am actually sitting here crying as i type this because this is a driver who is giving it his all even when the entire world is against him, even when his entire TEAM is against him, and he is persevering to the best of his abilities. and i know exactly what it’s like to sit here, wanting to reach for your dreams and show everyone how good you are, but to have only your closest friends and family on your side, rooting for you. what it’s like to look everywhere around you and see everyone calling you crap and saying you should quit and that you aren’t and never will be good enough. to look around and see your closest friends and family cheering for you, yet feeling like crap because you aren't doing as well as you would want, feeling inferior to everyone around you.
news flash: logan sargeant is and will always be good enough. he just needs the opportunity to show it, and williams is ruining that for him.
and yes, i will defend him with my life. people who try to say otherwise can try to do the same hours — the WEEKS — worth of research that i’ve done about logan and his career because he IS a good driver and HE DESERVES BETTER.
any hate comments towards logan will be deleted, because i have neither the time nor the energy to deal with that and argue with logan haters. i've said all of what i know and can remember about him and his career above, and will add what i can as time goes on and i remember something else or learn something new. if you have the time to hate on logan, you have the time to do your research and examine the fact that he has the potential to do well, but is not in a position for that because of the abhorrent circumstances he is currently in.
thank you for coming to my ted talk. edit: i'd also really recommend reading this twitter thread!! it goes into some more depth on logan and his f2 / f1 career, and even a little bit about his f3 career. it's very informative and articulates much of logan's career and why he is a better driver than many believe very well. https://x.com/herrocult/status/1795747913588761027
#logan sargeant#f1#williams racing#ls2#logie sargeant#logan sargeant rants#i will actually go to war for him lmao#like genuinely he deserves sm better#and people can't help but look just at the surface level rather than really looking into him and his career and analyzing his driving#it's so ARAGHAGRHAGRHRAGH#i will always defend him.#logiebear#YES I CALL HIM LOGIE BEAR AFFECTIONATELY BECAUSE HE IS SO DEAR TO ME#logie bear#i've literally fought my teacher over him i'm that adamant about defending him
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Hullo! I’ve been watching a bunch of your Timelapses and I was wondering how do you always come up with the colours for your pieces? They’re always so cohesive and pleasing to look at (I almost exclusively work in greyscale so if I’m using colour it’s always a lucky guess and it never looks quite right)
Hey there!
I have to be honest that most of the time I don't actually know what I'm doing and that I have no idea how most of my pieces are gonna turn out. My work process is usually based on "Fuck around and find out", haha. I'm happy to know that it apparently doesn't come across that way, though.
A lot of it comes very naturally to me simply because I've been drawing non-stop for so long, but I can give you some small tips that really help me:
1. Have as many references as possible!
Here's what my reference sheet looked like for the Jayvik piece:
It helped me a lot to understand the overall color scheme I wanted to convey. Lots of very cold tones, pinks and very light blues and greens. These colours sorround Jayce and Viktor throughout all of season 2 and I wanted to keep them, especially since in my piece they are lying in the glowing hexcore.
Don't shy away from using references, get as many as you possibly can! Look at other poeple's art too and try to understand how they work with colours.
2. Work with complementary colours!
Since I paint a lot of romantic illustrations I want them to look pleasing and comforting, which I can accomplish by using complementary colours! You see this a lot with couples that are blue and red coded, for example. And I wanted to do the same thing in the Jayvik piece! For that I used the highlights in their hair!
Viktor's highlights are a soft pink hue.
While Jayce's are a soft blue hue.
The colour wheel works perfect for figuring out if two colors compliment each other because they are literally right across from one another!
3. It doesn't have to be true to life.
Pretty self-explanatory, but I thought I'd add it in here anyways. It's important to understand how colour and light works, but you don't always have to follow the rules. Does the rim light look cool but it makes zero sense? Who cares! Keep the cool rim light! Just have fun and fuck around.
4. A little trick to make your life easier!
I'm not excatly the best at colour theory, I still struggle with it quite a bit, but here's a little trick I like to use from time to time:
If you want all your colours to look coherent, take one specific color as your flat colour. Choose a hue that you would like your piece to have. Like this:
Now you choose whatever colours your characters have and paint them in. For example, here are the skin colours I chose for Jayce and Viktor:
Looks off, right? These colours don't fit the overall piece at all. So what do we do?
Turn down the opacity! It's that easy, wahoo!
I went from 100 Opacity to 72 for this specific illustration. And look at that!
It's so much nicer already! Now you know what colours to use as your actual flats! Just repeat this with every other part of your illustration and you'll have a great starting point. :)
I really hope this was helpful! I'm not an actual teacher and I don't have a proper illustration degree, so some things might not be completely accurate, but I thought I'd try my hand at this anyways!
#teacher han is at it again#if I talked bullshit forgive me#I just hope I was able to help at least a little bit haha#I'm always happy to give some tips!#art process#art tutorial#color tutorial#colouring#illustration#tips#my art#arcane#jayvik#tutorial#anon#ask
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bro fuck it im workposting. i did illustrations, i storyboarded, i directed. I did many cool things in 2024 and millions of people all over the world saw em. that has to count for something
#brawl stars#marcia#i dont workpost because i am deeply aware nobody here is here for brawl stars but on god i#i work and i create and its real#and there is a part of me thats ashamed because i know that brawls is not. like its not league of legends you know?#league of legends is something you post about#about the skin you helped create or sculpted#or the splash art you painted#its has that... value that is obvious even in the eyes of a person who has never played league#its a very mature visual language that historically calls for respect#meanwhile presenting brawl stars art feels like showing my anime girl oc to an art teacher#even mentioning an illust i created for a skin announcement for brawl stars feels so#so dollar store#so laughable#like noone would take me seriously#it feels like when you say you're an artist and then a person asks to see your art#and you show them and they get that soft soft look in their eyes that informs you that they had an image of who an “artist” is in their hea#and that you did not live up to it but all they'll say is 'oh thats nice'#bro help me im doing art elitism to myself#how can i simultaneously believe that art can be anything and yet only neoclassical realism has real value#i want to be creatively free yet all i do is fear the unimpressed looks of strangers
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Modern Shen Twins AU
SJ teaches literature and reading at a 'prepare for university' level. He's evil, always gets tons of complaints, but the school can't argue with the results. (And systemic child abuse, tiger parents,etc, etc)
Well, his totally platonic 'roommate' Yue Qi gets in a bad car accident and SJ has to be a full time carer, but the school won't give him time off, so he calls in didi to cover for him at work.
(SY's main job is freelance consulting and he's gotten a lot of lucky big jobs so he's okay on money and can sub for a while)
Anyway, the school staff are fooled bc SY has listened to ge complain about them enough to aim enough spite and snark their way, but the students think they're having a stroke
Teacher Shen is suddenly treating them like his own precious puppies (though his marking standards and expectations are the same)
LBH is cooked in two days.
Day one, he thinks it's a trap.
Day two he gets a head pat and it's all over.
#svsss#in his resulting obsession lbh discovers the twin thing and breathes a sigh of relief#he then decides he'll help good teacher Shen keep up the ruse as long as necessary#does lbh consider poisoning SJ and or YQ to prolong yuange time? yes#does he actually do it? who's to say
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You look sporty today! 🏀🏈⚽️
#doodle#stardew valley#stardew valley alex#stardew alex#he’s such a gym bro#but like the healthy positive himbo kind yknow#its all about the grind and the gains bro#but make it healthy at your own pace#i lowkey feel like he’ll never go pro mostly because he’s had an knee injury#but he goes back to college after a gap year in junior year but for like sports medicine#and maybe he part times as a gym teacher/works as a zumba intructor for the ladies of pelican town#either way sports medicine and he adopts like a super healthy mindset and would be able to help shane and his recovery process
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will peter be like an older brother to miles in lof ?
absolutely he is
there's about an 11 year difference between them (Miles is 14, Peter is 25), so it's a lot more like the older brother type of relationship that Peter has with Tim (despite Tim being his uncle). Peter has mentored(ish) other young heroes by this point (mostly in the Bats' universe) but since Miles is another Spider-Man, Peter takes up most of the responsibility in making sure Miles is safe and teaching him the ropes. That's HIS sassy child genius, thank you, and he's not a sidekick, he's Spider-Man.
He was also adamant that Miles tell his parents immediately, and gets along great with Rio and Jeff.
Which is HILARIOUS to me because at this point in time, Peter has built up a persona for the public eye just like the Bats did. In Rio and Jeff's eyes, they're gobsmacked that the clumsy, scatterbrained, and "scaredy-cat" kid that Tony Stark adopted a while ago is Spider-Man. (Technically, none of this is a lie. Because Peter is a terrible liar unless it's For the Jokes, and often comes across this way even if he hadn't meant to.) They're wondering how he pulled that off since he's the same age as Spider-Man, who is known to be an Avenger, and associates in the same circles as Peter. It helps that Peter and Spider-Man have been in a social media war, and that Peter works at the Daily Bugle that is known for disliking Spider-Man. Peter's been taking lessons for years atp to keep his identity safe. Which is also bonus points to Peter, because the two can tell that secret identities mean everything to him, but he told them who he was in a heartbeat (literally the very first thing he did when he found Miles).
In other words: Peter was ecstatic to become a teacher for his own matching superhero kid and it's one of the most important bonds in his life. That's his baby brother now!!
#erinwantstowrite#ao3#ao3 fanfic#leap of faith ao3#peter parker#leap of faith catch me if you can#leap of faith#miles morales#peter parker is a GOOD mentor#a great one even#he takes that shit so seriously despite it looking like he's always just telling jokes from an outside perspective#you know those folders you go home with when you're a kid#the ones where your teacher puts stickers and talks about how your day/week went and your homework#peter has one of those that's really just a journal written to make it look like miles is taking after school classes with him at SI#and miles has to give it to his parents to look over#“You got three gold stars today!”#“yeah 'cause i didn't get blown up :)”#“that's my boy!”#rio was like “wtaf” at first but she quickly was like “oh so if anyone is gonna help miles stay alive it's this kid”#thank you for the ask!
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Stupid Inkmare teacher AU idea that I stole somewhere
#I am not good with clothes#Ink and Nightmare are married and has too much time on their hands after the truce and decides to become teachers in a random modern AU#With the help of the AU's Creator after some convincing and attempts to act normal in front of everyone in said modern AU#Ink is an English teacher while Nightmare is a history teacher#I do not know jack shit about teaching#and neither do they#Ink has 5 kids#Nightmare is the father of only one of them#ink sans#nightmare sans#inkmare#nightink#nightmare sans x ink sans#ink sans x nightmare sans#utmv#sans au#fanart#doodles#digital art#artists on tumblr#my art#digital fanart
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Hello. Sorry if this a stupid question u can ignore if u want.
How can someone get better at media analysis? Besides obviously reading a lot.
Im asking this bc im in a point where im aware of my own lack of tools to analyze stories, but i don't know where to get them or how to get better in general. How did you learn to analyze media? There's any specific book, essay, author, etc that you recommend? Somewhere to start?
I'm asking you because you are genuinely the person who has the best takes on this site. Thank you for you work!
it sounds like a cop-out answer but it's always felt like a skill I acquired mostly thru reading a ton, and by paying a lot of attention in high school literature classes. because of that I can't promise that I'm necessarily equipped to be a good teacher or that i know good resources. HOWEVER! let me run some potential advice to you based on the shit i get a lot of mileage out of
first off, a lot of literary analysis is about pattern recognition! not just pattern recognition in-text, but out-of-text as well. how does this work relate to its genre? real-world history? does it have parallels between real-life situations? that kind of thing.
which is a big concept to just describe off the bat, so let me break it down further!
in literature, there is the concept of something called literary devices - they are some of the basic building blocks in how a story is delivered mechanically and via subtext. have you ever heard of a motif? that is a literary device. it's a pattern established in the text in order to further the storytelling! and here is a list of a ton of common literary devices - I'd recommend reading the article. it breaks down a lot of commonly used ones in prose and poetry and explains their usage.
personally, I don't find all the literary devices I've learned about in school to be the most useful to my analytical hobbies online. motifs, themes, and metaphors are useful and dissecting them can bring a lot to the table, but a lot of other devices are mostly like fun bonus trivia for me to notice when reading. however, memorizing those terms and trying to notice them in the things you read does have a distinct benefit - it encourages you to start noticing patterns, and to start thinking of the mechanical way a story is built. sure, thinking about how the prose is constructed might not help you understand the story much more, but it does make you start thinking about how things like prose contribute to the greater feeling of a piece, or how the formatting of a piece contributes to its overall narrative. you'll start developing this habit of picking out little things about a text, which is useful.
other forms of in-text pattern recognition can be about things like characterization! how does a character react to a certain situation? is it consistent with how they usually behave? what might that tell you about how they think? do they have tells that show when they're not being trustworthy? does their viewpoint always match what is happening on screen? what ideas do they have about how the world works? how are they influenced by other people in their lives? by social contexts that might exist? by situations that have affected them? (on that note, how do situations affect other situations?)
another one is just straight-up noticing themes in a work. is there a certain idea that keeps getting brought up? what is the work trying to say about that idea? if it's being brought up often, it's probably worth paying attention to!
that goes for any pattern, actually. if you notice something, it's worth thinking about why it might be there. try considering things like potential subtext, or what a technique might be trying to convey to a reader. even if you can't explain why every element of a text is there, you'll often gain something by trying to think about why something exists in a story.
^ sometimes the answer to that question is not always "because it's intentional" or even "because it was a good choice for the storytelling." authors frequently make choices that suck shit (I am a known complainer about choices that suck shit.) that's also worth thinking about. english classes won't encourage this line of thinking, because they're trying to get you to approach texts with intentional thought instead of writing them off. I appreciate that goal, genuinely, but I do think it hampers people's enthusiasm for analysis if they're not also being encouraged to analyze why they think something doesn't work well in a story. sometimes something sucks and it makes new students mad if they're not allowed to talk about it sucking! I'll get into that later - knowing how and why something doesn't work is also a valuable skill. being an informed and analytical hater will get you far in life.
so that's in-work literary analysis. id also recommend annotating your pages/pdfs or keeping a notebook if you want to close-read a work. keeping track of your thoughts while reading even if they're not "clever" or whatever encourages you to pay attention to a text and to draw patterns. it's very useful!
now, for out-of-work literary analysis! it's worth synthesizing something within its context. what social settings did this work come from? was it commenting on something in real life? is it responding to some aspects of history or current events? how does it relate to its genre? does it deviate from genre trends, commentate on them, or overall conform to its genre? where did the literary techniques it's using come from - does it have any big stylistic influences? is it referencing any other texts?
and if you don't know the answer to a bunch of these questions and want to know, RESEARCH IS YOUR FRIEND! look up historical events and social movements if you're reading a work from a place or time you're not familiar with. if you don't know much about a genre, look into what are considered common genre elements! see if you can find anyone talking about artistic movements, or read the texts that a work might be referencing! all of these things will give you a far more holistic view of a work.
as for your own personal reaction to & understanding of a work... so I've given the advice before that it's good to think about your own personal reactions to a story, and what you enjoy or dislike about it. while this is true that a lot of this is a baseline jumping-off point on how I personally conduct analysis, it's incomplete advice. you should not just be thinking about what you enjoy or dislike - you should also be thinking about why it works or doesn't work for you. if you've gotten a better grasp on story mechanics by practicing the types of pattern recognition i recognized above, you can start digging into how those storytelling techniques have affected you. did you enjoy this part of a story? what made it work well? what techniques built tension, or delivered well on conflict? what about if you thought it sucked? what aspects of storytelling might have failed?
sometimes the answer to this is highly subjective and personal. I'm slightly romance-averse because I am aromantic, so a lot of romance plots will simply bore me or actively annoy me. I try not to let that personal taste factor too much into serious critiques, though of course I will talk about why I find something boring and lament it wasn't done better lol. we're only human. just be aware of those personal taste quirks and factor them into analysis because it will help you be a bit more objective lol
but if it's not fully influenced by personal taste, you should get in the habit of building little theses about why a story affected you in a certain way. for example, "I felt bored and tired at this point in a plot, which may be due to poor pacing & handling of conflict." or "I felt excited at this point in the plot, because established tensions continued to get more complex and captured my interest." or "I liked this plot point because it iterated on an established theme in a way that brought interesting angles to how the story handled the theme." again, it's just a good way to think about how and why storytelling functions.
uh let's see what else. analysis is a collaborative activity! you can learn a lot from seeing how other people analyze! if you enjoy something a lot, try looking into scholarly articles on it, or youtube videos, or essays online! develop opinions also about how THOSE articles and essays etc conduct analysis, and why you might think those analyses are correct or incorrect! sometimes analyses suck shit and developing a counterargument will help you think harder about the topic in question! think about audience reactions and how those are created by the text! talk to friends! send asks to meta blogs you really like maybe sometimes
find angles of analysis that interest and excite you! if you're interested in feminist lenses on a work, or racial lenses, or philosophical lenses, look into how people conduct those sort of analyses on other works. (eg. search feminist analysis of hamlet, or something similar so you can learn how that style of analysis generally functions) and then try applying those lenses to the story you're looking at. a lot of analysts have a toolkit of lenses they tend to cycle through when approaching a new text - it might not be a bad idea to acquire a few favored lenses of your own.
also, most of my advice is literary advice, since you can broadly apply many skills you learn in literary analysis to any other form of storytelling, but if you're looking at another medium, like a game or cartoon, maybe look up some stuff about things like ludonarrative storytelling or visual storytelling! familiarizing yourself with the specific techniques common to a certain medium will only help you get better at understanding what you're seeing.
above all else, approach everything with intellectual curiosity and sincerity. even if you're sincerely curious about why something sucks, letting yourself gain information and potentially learning something new or being humbled in the process will help you grow. it's okay to not have all the answers, or to just be flat-out wrong sometimes. continuing to practice is a valuable intellectual pursuit even if it can mean feeling a tad stupid sometimes. don't be scared to ask questions. get comfortable sometimes with the fact that the answer you'll arrive at after a lot of thought and effort will be "I don't fully know." sometimes you don't know and that can be valuable in its own right!
thank you for the ask, and I hope you find this helpful!
#narrates#thanks for the kind ask! i feel a little humbled by your faith in me aha#this may be a bit scattershot. its 2 am. might update later with more thoughts idk#nyway i feel like a lot of lit classes even in college don't tell you why they're teaching you things that might feel superfluous#hopefully this lays out why certain seemingly superfluous elements of literary education can be valuable#the thing esp about giving theses and having a supporting argument... its not just because teachers need to see an essay or whatever#the point is to make you think about a text and then follow thru by performing analysis#and supporting that analysis w/ evidence from the text#u don't have to write essays but developing that mindset IS helpful. support ur conclusions yknow?#anyway thanks again hope it's illuminating
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