#(which also incidentally would be great counterpoint to her implication that genre fic is inherently inferior somehow)

[fweet-prince]

I’m still frustrated with my professor for suggesting that pop fiction is Less Than and if we wanted to be good writers we should be reading the Great Classics partly just because ugh but also she approved of me reading Lord of the Rings which is Literally About The Value Of Stories That Aren’t Literature™️, where the Fellowship cope by singing deeply important, culturally-ingrained songs alongside Bilbo’s silly little poems, where the first Great person the hobbits meet (aside from Gandalf) is a guy whose whole deal is singing songs that hardly mean anything and he saves their lives twice with it (I understand why Tom Bombadill was cut from the movie but he is Thematically Relevant), where the world is literally saved by an undereducated gardener who hasn’t read the classics reminding Frodo of the stories they’ve shared because ultimately stories are a way we connect with the world around us and a way we find ourselves and keep ourselves and if you’re gonna smugly use me as an example of what my classmates “should” be reading it’s a hell of a thing to directly contradict a major theme of said thing, huh!! I am Literally majoring in storytelling and LotR was a big part of launching me on that path and a major major part of that emphasis is about stories that aren’t Literature ma’am did you know you have pushed perhaps my single biggest button

#bloop #I spoke up in class of course I wasn’t about to let my classmates think I was that kind of pretentious #but I was much more polite about it lmao #and now I’m writing half-trashy fantasy for that class out of spite <3 #Lord of the Rings is a book about how Sam hearing Legolas’s song and saying oh that’s nice I’d like to learn it :) #Is a significant response to a work of art and Is something that makes art important #because if a story reaches someone at all it’s doing it’s fucking job! #even if the way it reaches someone is ‘oh pretty’ or even just entertaining them for a couple hours! #other specifics she brought up include! #trashing Star Wars (which I could go off about I don’t even like it that much but it is ABSOLUTELY valuable) #(also trashing Star Trek implicitly since she got them mixed up and said it made no difference #and I could go off just as much about why Star Trek is Also valuable) #lauding Shakespeare and Dickens (who both wrote primarily for people to say ‘oh fun story!’ and not do Literature to) #and *bizarrely* lauding Anne Rice for having drawn inspiration from The Classics™️ when vampire chronicles is *absolutely* trash fiction! #(which! if it wasn’t clear! is not an insult! because trash fiction is great!) #I just want to fucking. sit her down with a copy of Station Eleven and not leave until she’s read it #(which also incidentally would be great counterpoint to her implication that genre fic is inherently inferior somehow) #how about you read this book where Shakespeare and Star Trek keep people alive in the apocalypse and then maybe you’ll calm down