magicoleanders

[magicoleanders]

i feel like high school/middle school sitcoms set the unrealistic expectation of being able to have lunch time outside

[magicoleanders]

a completely anticipated but still irritating aspect of teaching lit is how quickly these kids shut down when they encounter words they don’t know or when they can’t figure out what’s going on right away. we’re doing “Young Goodman Brown” tomorrow and I fear I’m going to have to take at least 10 minutes just to explain what happened before we actually discuss it

[magicoleanders]

my first lit class was so funnnnnn teaching this is what I’m meant to do I think 🥹 and one of my students has a service dog so puppy in class all semester!!!

[magicoleanders]

first day of classes is tomorrow and suddenly I own no tops that are weather appropriate, make me feel confident, and aren’t too scandalous for teaching 😭

[magicoleanders]

well the thing is i don’t mind coming across as an earnest fool if the alternative is to be mean for the sake of being mean

[magicoleanders]

love this genre of post

[magicoleanders]

[magicoleanders]

1999 The Sun The Moon and Stars

Greg Mort

[magicoleanders]

i hope you're ready for even more stuff from a 15 year old YA book series cause it's what i've got

also everything has the same background shade cause i've been working off the same procreate file and finally hit the layer cap

[magicoleanders]

what if your doppelganger loved being you more than you ever loved being yourself. they're better at being you and everyone loves them and it feels almost selfish to want your life back. i want clone horror but the horror is that the thing trying to replace you is also the person you always wanted to be.

[magicoleanders]

i’ve been reading the haunting of hill house 🫣

[magicoleanders]

some organizations working on the ground in gaza right now

gaza soup kitchen

the sameer project

salam charity

watermelon relief

[magicoleanders]

"All I need," said Tony, "is a desire so strong that the world, all of the world, has got to bend itself and forget itself and break out of its circles and rock itself crazy, all to do what I want, and there's got to be a great crash when the ground under me crashes itself wide open and the fire inside is forced to crawl away from my feet and the sky too turns back so that there is nothing above me and nothing below me and nothing in all time except me and what I want."

Shirley Jackson, Hangsaman

[magicoleanders]

see what you get on this quiz about your risk of joining a cult. please answer honestly, not what you wish were true of you!

[magicoleanders]

"dante's divine comedy is fanfiction" is just such a boring claim. it fails to say anything interesting about either the divine comedy or fanfiction. and in fact it actively discourages actual analysis of the text by simplifying the whole thing into something more understandable to the modern reader at the expense of real engagement. it attempts to answer interesting questions the text in the most boring way possible.

why does dante chose to include himself as the protagonist? "well it's self-insert fanfiction!" why does dante chose virgil, a pagan poet, to be his guide through the christian afterlife? "that was his celebrity crush!" why did dante chose to put [italian political figure] in [insert circle of hell]? "oh it's just wish fulfillment"

just boring interpretations. these are all real questions that can be asked about the text and that have been asked about the text and that have been answered in more complex and interesting ways. not everything can be shoved into a more familiar context and it's not interesting to approach them that way.

also, it's not interesting to approach fanfiction as just "anything influenced by mythology/prior fiction/history/religion/author's own life/etc" because that would make just about everything fanfiction. and i think there are interesting things that can be said about fanfiction (why it emerges, its relationship to the original text, development of fanfiction-specific tropes/style, etc) but in order to have those conversations we do have to first set sensical parameters about what fanfiction is

let's all hold hands and approach texts with more nuance

[magicoleanders]

Hm i wonder why i feel so disconnected? *watches from afar* *watches from afar* *watches from afar* *watches from afar* *watches from afa

[magicoleanders]

yummy star gouache painting