#you might have noticed that I'm not a fan of the school literature canon

[elijasz]

There is one thing about this that's important to note. As teachers or educators, we are in positions of power to choose literature for those we are by law obligated to take care of and protect. Thus we HAVE TO be aware that we don't know what certain topics might do to people. I personally recently got subjected to a 1,5 hour long conversation about child sexual assault, described in graphic detail and discussed exclusively by men because ALL women felt uncomfortable. I dissociated for the rest of the day and felt fucking awful after sitting through that. So I asked the professor to please include content warnings. Next time the topic of child sa came up more than half of the course wasn't present (including myself) because we've been exposed to enough of that ourselves. We instead chose to read the rest of the book we were talking about and avoided these parts until we were ready to read them.

It's important to recognize that some people aren't able to handle these topics when we throw them at them. Because in education we choose the time and setting they get confronted with it. Not them. And that isn't okay. They should get to choose when they are ready for it on their own and it simply shouldn't be mandatory to read out certain things, or just read certain books, in class.

Give your student a list of chapter specific content warning and if there is a topic noone wants to talk about because its not something they are ready for, skip it. Or even better: Include them in your decision process on literature. Offer them the books you want to talk about and alternatives and FULL content warning lists, and then have them choose. And if your group is very split on the topic, maybe find an alternative or organise split classes. As in one week one group works on the book and the other reads their book during class time and one week its the other way around.

If we really keep all texts available (and I understand the premise but I'm still critical of the topic, even though I agree with it) we have to include safety measures so those in positions if power cannot easily dictate what others read/consume. We don't get to decide that on our own. That's the student's choice as much as ours.

“Authors should not be ALLOWED to write about–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative

“This book should be taken off of shelves for featuring–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative

“Schools shouldn’t teach this book in class because–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative

“Nobody actually likes or wants to read classics because they’re–” you are an anti-intellectual and an idiot

“I only read YA fantasy books because every classic novel or work of literary fiction is problematic and features–” you are an anti-intellectual and you are robbing yourself of the full richness of the human experience.

[szecretary]

info about my blog under the cut, if you’re the kind of person that needs to know. have a nice day 💜

non-exhaustive list of obsessions: avatar the last airbender, legend of korra, the kyoshi novels, voltron: legendary defender, the camp half-blood chronicles, the all for the game series (and anything that is to my fancy at any moment.)

about me and my blog. 

you can call me kay ✨

i am on ao3 as kuarahy. i've only written for two fandoms so far.

english and spanish, mostly english unless necessary.

i spend a lot of time analyzing canonical aspects of the shows i watch, trying to figure out why they resonate with me. i also like exploring fan-generated ideas that could fit in there and make sense in context.

i studied literature for a bit and never got over it, you can expect a lot of overly enthusiastic rambling from me because of this. i have a passion for storytelling and literary theory, but i am not an expert on anything i talk about.

i’m here to talk about things that make me happy, and i value respectful discussions about the less-than-perfect aspects of the content i consume, so if you’re of the Everything Wrong With school of media criticism, then this is not the place for you. 

fandom stuff.

i love ATLA and TLOK equally.

i’ve read a fair share atla/tlok comics and consider them all canon, if you like to pretend they don’t exist, this isn’t the blog of you, friend!

i REALLY like the kyoshi novels. i’d give f.c yee a hug if i could.

i unironically like all 8 seasons of VLD and i still find many positive aspects even with the mess they made. yes i will still praise these positive aspects. no i don’t care about the ship wars. 

ocassional marvel/percy jackson/hadestown posting.

i have most harry potter/marauders and related content tags blocked. i am slowly going back to this childhood interest but i don't wanna be overly exposed to it just yet. i am curating my own experience, but this doesn't mean i'll be upset if people i follow don't tag things properly. this applies to every piece of media i consume.

a very recent obsession of mine is the all for the game series, i try to be good at tagging but i'm not always successful, and this series has a lot of triggering content embedded into it. please be careful when navigating my ramblings about it.

on shipping.

you will notice that i post about various ships in my blog. this might seem strange if you’re used to people only blogging about their otp to the point of making their “rival ship/notp” a dni criteria. this does not happen here. i don’t mind shipping, i think it's fun, and i will even reblog shippy fanart, mostly because i’m a sucker for romance and pretty art. that is the extent of my enjoyment of most ships, both canon and noncanon. i like romance, and it’s fun to read and write idiots falling in love in different ways and worlds, but it's never too serious for me.

my love: [ insert phrase ] tags are for all kinds of relationships, not just romantic ones.

i don’t take shipping seriously enough to entertain discourse about it. these characters are paper dolls to me. idk how else to make this more clear, do not come here to argue about ships or how or why some might be the worst thing to exist on this planet since global warming. i am a grown adult who knows how to discern reality from fiction. i've got a job and other stuff to worry about, DO NOT even try.

anti behavior of any kind is a bad investment of your time, pal. 

my url is a play on szeto and secretary, because i’m a tired college student and he’s the closest thing to that, as the only nerd avatar we know of. 

that’s all~ if you want to be mutuals and even friends, my inbox is always there. 

[darkvolley]

i'm a newbie to kh but familiar with the general patterns of 2000's-era fandom, and tbh i'm kinda glad I came in at the end of kh when the canon characterizations are more complete than the scraps y'all had to live with... I definitely wouldn't have been able to handle all the "p*do vexen" and "bootlicker saïx" and "10-year-old-with-comically-exaggerated-ADHD demyx" jokes, even if things like "TWILIGHT ISN'T LITERATURE" was funny as hell to middle school me XD

I was kinda late to the KH party myself but I was on deviantArt and YouTube a lot so I still got the main brunt of it. Especially since I did read the Saix Puppy comics and watch Demyx Time. I don't even know when those happened, I just know I was super into them in 2012.

But every fandom had to deal with the flanderization the most back then. The Yu-Gi-Oh! fandom seems to still be reocovering from all that even to this day, mainly with how much Ryou's character is still corrupted, but that might just be since Ryou is hard to grasp due to his limited screen time. But, I've noticed that even in relatively new fandoms nowadays you don't see it as much anymore. Even in the Servamp fandom, which I believe the manga started in 2012, I've noticed lots of fans are young girls and yet, little to no flanderization for any Servamp characters. So I seriously do think fandom as a whole has matured. But of course now there's the modern downsides in fandom like purity culture, but... I don't wanna touch that subject. I'm too afraid.

But ya know what, "Twilight isn't literature" transcends time and all fandoms and probably has the capability to unite us all together, lol. I think I'm lucky that I somehow managed to avoid any P*do Vexen tho. I don't recall ever seeing that but I've heard about it and uuhhh... Yikes™. The worst one to me tho was Demyx. He had a major focus in both those series and like, when you're 12 it's funny cuz ya don't know any better, but like... what was done to Demyx's character was just downright terrible. Especially in the SP comics. I don't wanna get into that topic but... Demyx being characterized as an innocent/idiotic 10 year old with several adults around him being very obviously predatory is like, 100 times more Yikes™ 😬

But like, at the same time there's a level of nostalgia to it all. Like, I wanna go back and rewatch all of Demyx Time after KH3 cuz that thing is still genuienly really funny and dare I say, peak comedy. I still find it hilarious that no one could understand Luxord just cuz of the British accent. And with Served, even to this day I think Larxene revealing that it was her the whole time cuz Marluxia took her boots(I think thats what happened) is so hilarious. And I can still hear Zexion saying "I'm not five, you asshat." in my head! I'm cracking up just thinking about all this!

So like, I think we can all still enjoy it as a nostalgic thing as long as it stays in the past and we know better now. Like, acknowledge the very obvious bad things and just not repeat them in modern fandom.

Did I go off topic again? See, I just, fuckin. Go on these rants. And I don't need to be talkin about this and yet here we are! It's fine, it's fine, it's fine. We're done, no more of this topic. Discussion closed.