What doesn’t kill you gives you EXP

       One of the aspects of poetry that my classmates mentioned that they disliked was its indirectness. Why don't [poets] just say what they mean?" they ask.     In this blog post, I hope to explain why this viewpoint is utterly inane, nonsensical, and foolish.      …     What? I said what I meant. What's the issue here?     But that's clearly not what's meant by "say what you mean," right? Or is it?     Think about it. Are people always direct? Do they say exactly what they mean, all the time? Obviously not. Maybe it could be argued that society would be better off if we were all completely honest, but that's besides the point. We have to look beyond just the words in our conversations. We must consider tone, context, relationships, and personality when thinking about what someone is saying. Kind of like analyzing a poem, or literature in general.     But putting real life aside, losing ambiguity in ...

The books and plays we've read this year have been quite different, but they've all shared one thing in common: their treatment of female characters. The books I read as a child were mostly modern children's fiction. As such, they were divided fairly equally between male and female protagonists. It didn't matter if the main character was a boy or a girl, or both, for books with multiple protagonists. They were equally as capable of overcoming any obstacles placed between them and their goals, no matter how insurmountable they seemed.  I suppose I took that for granted. All the books we read this semester, excluding the book club one, have had male protagonists, with women being reduced to side characters and love interests, without any of their own goals, dreams, or even interests outside of their relation to a male character. This surprised me, but in hindsight it shouldn't have been surprising at all. For most of history, women have been devalued, looked at as sol...

 Scene I: Blank Void   Enter Vaguely Human-Shaped Silhouette. Vaguely Human-Shaped Silhouette: Hello. My name is Generic Tragedy Protagonist. I am known for being the smartest, most rational human ever to exist, who never makes any bad choices whatsoever. I am also male, despite being only vaguely human-shaped, because we all know that the sole purpose of women is to be other people's wives or mothers--or both at once--with no agency of their own. Besides, women are too nice to have a fatal flaw like a tragic hero, and too delicate to handle the devastating consequences of their actions. But it's not like it matters, when men are the protagonists of the world, and women just side characters.  A crowd of people who have appeared from nowhere stare at him with narrowed eyes. What? What are you looking at me for? The crowd vanishes. Enter another Vaguely Human-Shaped Silhouette, this time with a feminine appearance. Female Vaguely Human-Shaped Silhouette: Hello. My name is G...

 No. Thank you for reading my blog. Be sure to subscribe, and I’ll see you in two weeks with a new topic- —Hey! What? —You can’t just end it like that! I just did. —I mean, it’s not a good idea. Why not? —Because you haven’t explained your reasoning. Why would I need to do that? —Because people won’t know how you reached your conclusion otherwise. Do you expect them to read your mind? Yes? Obviously. —Uhh...write it like they can’t, then. Why? Because you said so? —Yes. All right. Let’s start over. The meaning of life has been an ongoing debate for thousands of years without reaching any clear answer. Answers have been proposed from many different perspectives, from psychological to philosophical to religious, all radically different, and different cultures and people have different beliefs about the answer. A related question is whether life has a predetermined purpose; that is, if we were created for a specific reason. But wait! —What? Why do we want our life to have a purpose an...

Table of Contents I: Introduction and Exit West II: Czechoslovakia and the Hyphen War III: Saving Sourdi and Hetalia Part I What makes us different? This is a question we’ve all asked ourselves in one way or another. Whether it’s appearance, personality, or beliefs, the differences between us are hard not to notice. These differences are clear from the beginning in Exit West, a book by Mohamed Hasin about two people in a city going through civil war. The two people in question are Nadia and Saeed, who are contrasted from their first appearance together. When Saeed first tries to talk to her, asking her to have coffee together, Nadia coldly rejects him, ignoring his attempts to be friendly and start a conversation.  As well as differences between their personalities, Nadia and Saeed differ in their belief systems as well. Saeed is religious, but Nadia isn't, and because of this, their beliefs about love and relationships are different. He wants to get married, but she isn't sure...

A few months ago, thanks to TV Tropes, I discovered Hetalia, a webcomic that has been adapted into an anime and manga that can best be described as "a comic about anthropomorphic countries that, despite being immortal and centuries or millennia old, are still dumb and bad at everything."  The comic uses these country personifications to deliver humorous accounts of history as well as discussions of culture and international relations. Although it can be a bit...weird at times, it's usually a lighthearted comedy. As part of our work on character analysis, I would like to talk about one of the characters in this comic: Prussia.  The defining character trait of Prussia is that he is a loud and passionate person who loves to talk about how awesome he is, shown most clearly in the 2009 April Fools blog, literally called "The Site of My Awesomeness:" Source This contrasts him with the other Germanic nations like Germany and Austria, who are much more reserved and seri...