people on this website be like “it’s actually school’s fault that i don’t know how to read because i wanted to write my essay on the divergent trilogy and that BITCH mrs. clarkson made us study 1984 instead. anyway here’s a 10 tweet thread of easily disproven misinformation about a 3 year old news story and btw, who is toni morrison?”
i KNOW most of y’all are lying about being in the gifted program as children because none of you could pass the basic reading comprehension assessment they give third graders today
this post is mean and I never read divergent or whatever the fuck but 1984 sucks and is rape apologism so if somebody wanted to write about divergent or whatever good for them
this reply is like literally exactly what op is talking about lol. like firstly ops point isn’t “1984 is good”, ops point is that analysing complex stories teaches you how to form opinions and think for yourself. and like secondly in 1984 you’re supposed to think damn it’s fucked up that he’s thinking that way about her, i wonder if this ties in with the central theme of “a society like this will fuck you in the head”? (this is the thinking for yourself part). like do you think orwell just put that in for fun? do you think that just because winston is the protagonist you’re supposed to agree with everything he does?
You know I feel like this post just gave me an epiphany for what is wrong with how Tumblr Fandom/Internet Fandom responds to media-or not *wrong* but makes it very hard to respond to anything but a morally correct, and heroic protagonist.
When an English teacher, or reader, taught or picked up 1984, it wasn’t with the intention they were going to love the protagonist. They picked it up with the intention of reading a whole story and trying to grasp the theme or catharsis from the story. If the protagonist was a *shitty* person it played into the the themes or the story, because it wasn’t about morally judging the book or *liking* or feeling attachment to the protagonist. Sometimes and often times, books were just about gaining another perspective.
No one read Lolita expecting to endear, or like, or be inspired by Humbert. You are supposed to be upset by his behavior, you don’t read Lolita with the intention of being inspired. You read it to learn more about what the fuck is going on inside someone’s head when they behave like that. How children get sucked into abusive situations. Or read “The Great Gatsby” not because they want to fall in love with Gatsby or Nick, but to better understand and analyze the experience of the 1920s or destitution of the American Dream.
A lot of internet and fandom culture has changed that though. When we say something like “I love the Great Gatsby” it comes with the idea or association that means you must *love* or relate to one of the characters. And maybe you do, but the first assumption is not longer about the quality of the work or themes, or cathartic impact-it’s about character admiration. And with that character admiration, in tumblr stan culture, or kin culture, or exalting characters with fanart/romance/so on you don’t just ‘admire’ or find that character ‘compelling’ it now translates to ‘you LOVE that character’ or you ‘DIRECTLY relate to that character.’
You can’t say “I love how Humbert is written, it’s so fascinating and dark”, without it directly translating you somehow relate to a child abuser or condone his actions. Taking in media has become an act of worship and connection. We no longer watch meant to just see the story as a whole, we watch expecting to connect to a character and if we offer them our “worship” as it’s become, as opposed to just attention or interest study as it traditionally was, it means we are condoning the character or saying we directly empathize with all their actions.
I think that’s why there is often now so much fuss over *toxic* characters or not. Or whether that classical novel is showing good or bad things anymore. We’re treating the characters as people we should love or want to draw or write about. Sometimes a story is just about getting the the theme or catharsis or learning another perspective. We don’t NEED to like the character. Or we don’t HAVE to like a character to be impressed by how they’re written or intrigued by their behavior.
I think if internet culture could learn to view stories as small insights into other lives or single takes of one perspective instead of purposeful moral inspirations we’d be a lot less worried about how toxic or not toxic they are.
Seriously!
And this is where “unhealthy relationships” in fiction come in too. Well-written, complex stories of bad relationships aren’t supposed to be good and healthy examples. If it’s held up that way (Twilight), then the issue is the writing and the writer. Unhealthy relationships in, say, Anna Karenina are obviously unhealthy but they are, to misquote James Joyce “portals to discovery.” You can know that a fictional relationships is seriously bad and still find it interesting. Psychology! Complexity!
Also I want to add that some characters (Humbert Humbert is a good one) are written so that if and when you find yourself sympathizing or saying “Yeah, I know that feeling” you’re supposed to stop and consider that. Not in terms of “I am a sick individual and deserve to die.” but more like “is it possible to have compassion for terrible people?” and “what is it in our culture or my upbringing that makes me think like I do?”
I’ve heard way too many people say “I will never read Lolita because of what it encourages” and I just…you’re missing the point? Completely? Like, you’re so missing the point that it’s almost meta? You’re not supposed to like Humbert??? You’re supposed to either be like “wow, gross, dude” or “oh fuck, wait, why do I have even 1 thing in common with this guy?” Nabokov is not going to be straightforward with you!
It’s like the jokes about being mad at your teacher for asking why the sky is blue in a certain book. Maybe there really is a reason. Did you think of that? For a bunch of people who’ll write thesis-length defenses of your favorite ships and trace down one instance in one minute of one episode of the 15 season show to prove that you’re right, it concerns me that you’re not as willing to look at a lot of other things with any depth. To say nothing of multi-chapter fanfic.
If you surround yourself with only good and pure and wholesome media approved by the purity-culture police, then you just don’t get to do a lot of introspection and I think that’s kind of a shame. I feel like it really limits your view of the world.
I dunno. There’s a weird kind of anti-intellectualism disguised as protection and good intent sometimes. Or it feels like the kind of prudishness that labels some books “dirty” and the people who read them equally disgusting, but just relies on social ostracism to enforce the labels. You know, “Think of the children!!”
Anyway, I’m going to go read some dirty, dirty literature now. Like 1984.
The reason why children and teenagers should be exposed to somber, disturbing works of literature, like 1984, Lolita, Maus, Gulag Archipelago and a host of others is precisely 1) so that they are aware that there are disturbing, harmful and downright evil things, people and phenomena out there, always have been and always will be, and 2) so that they can study them second-hand, with the help of an adult perspective of a teacher/editor, and 3) arrive at their own conclusions and coping mechanisms. Because closing your eyes and ears does not make you immune, quite the contrary - it only makes them more vulnerable and fragile.
It literally doesnt make sence, both have the same value, they’re both $30
I think the failure of many people to grasp an incredibly simple, barebones metaphor is demonstrating implicit bias very well
This dude straight up stated the fucking answer and still can’t understand it, because he’s expecting the answer to be his own views lmao
No im not expecting anything its just a badly frammed metaphor
Bro you said the answer. Both have the same value despite different sizes. It’s simple. Basic. Elementary.
But it never says that, it just asks you wich one is greater and the text ends there, wich leads you to thinking that one indeed has greater value then the other, and that the one with the greater value is the answear
It asks you which one has the greater value and what is the answer to that question?
Im not about to argue over a focken tit size metaphor
Never underestimate the lack of reading comprehension on this site lmfao
So actually these photos were taken by the kid’s uncle, Alphonse Bertillon, who was a French police officer and inventor of the mug shot. These photos were just taken as a joke, probably when Bertillon was developing his mugshot technique and needed someone to practice on.
No actual two-year-olds were arrested in the creation of these photos!
“1880s nostalgia” with a pic from 1993 yes of course
There was also an 1893
From people thinking a toddler was actually arrested, to people somehow misreading “1800s nostalgia” as “1880s,” to this person thinking a fucking daguerreotype was taken in the 1990s… this whole thread was a ride I didn’t expect to take today.
This is worse than the math post
Just to rectify a little thing: the baby isn’t mentioned to be 2 years old but 2 months old (“âgé de deux mois”, mois means month in french).
Have you ever seen a baby
ok yes moismeansmonths, but the number there is twenty-three (aka roughly two years) not two
what two-month-old is that size with that much hair lmfao
In my experience two year olds can only manage one or two pears before slumping to the floor like fruit bats too heavy to fly, so that’s the next part of this very simple post we should focus on
I can’t believe this two-month old teenager from the early eighteenth century ate an entire fruit bat. I’m glad they spent the rest of the 1875s in jail.
Modern audiences confused by the vileness of countless literary characters is so funny. They actually think escapism and self insertion were always the point of protagonists. That was the commonly assumed point of *children’s* protagonists. Characters in novels for grown ups were supposed to be interesting because they were different from you and you were quite often supposed to despise some of their thoughts and actions.
