/lit/ - Literature

>>15087621
people should not be allowed to write or speak before the age of 25

>>15087621
My masters thesis was pretty bad. Then I had to defend it while hangover as fuck in front of a tribunal, which was not my brightest moment.

I wrote an "analysis" of Antichrist by von Trier that basically just spewed IMDb trivia. The professor said that it was the best one he had ever read ever since he created the assignment. I saw him in the hall after I turned it in before the class started and he started doing the "We're not worthy" bow motion unironically.

>>15087669
>Then I had to defend it while hangover as fuck in front of a tribunal, which WAS my brightest moment.

>>15087621
Why would I go to a concentration camp for years going 10s of thousands of dollars in debt?

>>15087957
KEK

>>15087968
poorfag cope

>>15087991
Lol as if. I make $40,000 starting and never have to be owned or indoctrinated

>>15087647
*35

>>15087621
Painkiller Black edition is fucking sick I would write a paper on it

Class actions, only 12 people. Small. Take home midterm worth 10%. Take home final worth 90%. Forgot the due date for the midterm, finished it in three hours and turned it in so I’d only be docked 20%. Get the grades back, median was a 28, high was a 43, I got a 4. For shame. One of the deans calls me in. Says I should drop, I don’t need the credit to graduate. Tell him my pride and financial aid say otherwise. He says I’ll need an A on the paper to even pass because of the curve. Tell him thanks but no thanks. Spend 2 weeks of finals working on the final take home a few hours each day. Turn it in. Know I could fail and it won’t effect my graduating. Be bitter about the whole experience. Get grades back a month later. It’s a B+. Redemption arc complete.

>>15087621
I wrote a story as a freshman that was ostensibly fiction but was just something that happened to me (gimme a break, all shitty freshman do this).
It was me attempting to embrace Stirner and egoism after witnessing a violent crime and being rebuffed by the police for trying to report it, but ultimately rejecting Stirnerian ethics because I couldn't get over the urge to keep "doing the right thing" no matter how much I failed to rationalize it.

I vaguely remember writing a 16 page essay on 4chan memes ~two years ago

>>15088174
souns pretty good

Mine concerned a Hegelian line of attack on the similarities of English common law and Constantinople law, which Marx certainly appreciated. But that attack was accompanied by another, more likely, interpretation: Marx thought Hegel was teaching that only the Protestant religious ideology had the substance of pure law, and was therefore "bourgeois", that is, subject to the pressure of an upper-middle class.

>>15088451
I doubt it. I wish I kept any of that stuff, I was just going through a hard time and also falling for /lit/ memes.

>>15087621
I wrote an essay on Mulholland Drive, Film Noir and Lacan's concept of The Mirror Stage (lit student, not film). This scene specifically is what tied it altogether for me. I got a first and a fairly high mark for it, but I'm ashamed to say the essay itself was pretentious and overly complicated. Looking back I kick myself for writing it more than any other essay because Lynch's films do not deserve to be reduced to such disgusting theoretical analysis, they should be taken as-is without some poncey student acting like they've got him figured out.

That said, I'm convince Lynch knows far more about psychoanalysis than he lets on. There's just too many parallels, fuck

>>15087621
A number of years ago, a university application essay prompt asked me to write a letter to an inanimate object, so i wrote this autistically serious love-letter to my electric guitar... I’m surprised I still had the word doc lol.

>Thank you for being the most tonally, physically, and aesthetically pleasing guitar I’ve ever had the privilege to own. There’s something about your maple fretboard with a unique, dark brown grain pattern that nearly resembles coffee stained paper- but in a beautiful way- that I haven’t found in any other guitar. Your neck, middle, and bridge pickups produce the most distinct yet equally rich and vibrant tones that sound fantastic no matter the amplifier or genre I choose to play. Glossy coating on your fretboard makes it feel like I’m fretting strings on top of polished marble that I can effortlessly glide across.
I know there have been rough times. Sometimes I get frustrated when you fall out of tune after a day, or when a string snaps after I frequently but unintentionally abuse it with violent bends. Sometimes those very same nine gauge strings shred my fingertips when I venture above the twelfth fret. Sometimes I’ll get upset with you for buzzing at the fifth fret, even though I know it’s not your fault; I’m just too scared to further tighten the truss rod for fear of breaking your neck, warped by an unfamiliar and dry climate. But in the end, I’m fond of far too much about you to stay frustrated over minor inconveniences. It’s remarkable how well your frets have stayed perfectly in line with the edge of your neck, your electronics are grounded properly and never produce unwarranted buzzing over an amplifier, your tuners are remarkably durable, et. cetera, et. cetera…
I’m well aware that you’re a better guitar than I am a guitarist, and any musical limitations I experience whilst playing are the result of my own inabilities and weaknesses, not yours. So thanks for everything. Except the shredded fingertips.

>>15088592
If I could go back in time i’d kill my younger self for writing shit like this

>>15087872
holy shit...

>>15087621
Shit I rushed and didn't proofread an hour before turning it in. Sometimes these were A papers but also sometimes filled with spelling and grammar errors with the theais hanging by a thread. I found the only professor who really saw through my bullshit was my classical literature one and the only A paper I got was comparing greek tragedies and comedies because I quoted aristotle outside of our source material.

never got to write a paper because I'm a STEMfag

>>15088000
I took a class called Race and Gender in American Cinema in which I used Ancient Alien phrasing multiple times and wrote a paper on the historical patriarchy and feeling of national superiority parallel to America and the Americas as a whole using both Crocodile Dundee films. I got a 97 but wasn't indoctrinated to anything. If you're clever you can just subtly mock it the entire time.

>>15088589

i agree re: lynch films and that sort of collegiate "heres why X symbolizes, heres what Y means" kind of analysis. susan sontag's got a great essay, "against interpretation" that i rec. everyone is completely obsessed with breaking shit down, and it only keeps getting worse. its so weird.

>>15088589
Agreed. Lynch directly opposes analysis. He works openly in the realm of half-finished ideas and aesthetic associations.

>>15089071
>>15089091
Thanks for taking it easy on me. I'm familar with that Sontag essay, its part of the reason why I later dismissed my own essay as bullshit. You might like to know I finally watched Inland Empire a couple years later and got filtered hard, I didn't have a fucking clue what to make of it. Serves me right for thinking I have any kind of grasp on Lynch's praxis. Theres simply no way around it, the man eludes explanation, no matter what retarded youtubers like to think

>>15087872
Fucking kek why would he do that

>>15089941
>the man eludes explanation, no matter what retarded youtubers like to think
Spoken like a real retarded youtuber and fuck the two onions boys above you.

>>15089071
I think the spirit of that Sontag essay is valuable but I've always felt like it was a hedonistic way to justify not engaging with art intellectually. Like I get it's not useful to get hung up on the "meaning" of a work but I feel like symbolism is still a valuable way of appreciating certain aspects of art, and no work of art can be reasonably engaged with without some kind of interpretation, however one defines that.

>>15087621
I shat out an essay once when I got myself stuck in a meme Native American lit class where I compared some shitty contemporary Native poet's work to Blood Meridian basically as an excuse to write an essay on Blood Meridian. I was too chickenshit to imply that the white man's book was better or more sophisticated, though, so I gave a third grade level analysis of BM in order to make the Native poet look better. I got an A and later transferred out of that school.

>>15087621
I wrote a paper about being lonely but that was a 101 course so it doesn’t count
I also wrote a Marxist analysis about Rip van Winkle but that was a joke (and I still got a 95 on it)

>>15087872

lmao he sounds like a top lad

>>15088592
This is actually based as fuck. I mean it's not great, but you managed to turn off your cynical inner critic for this and that's the most important skill for almost any creative activity. Embrace the cringe bro.

My mother was getting her bachelors in nursing and had to take an elective history 101 course. I have an MA in classical history so I wrote a five page paper on the origins of the Peloponnesian War for her. I have found I can't really write an intentionally bad or dumbed-down paper, so I went full autismo in that small page limit after being accustomed to 15-25 page papers as my normal requirement.

Two days after turning it in, she received an email from the professor talking about how refreshing it was to receive a genuine college-level paper, that it was a distinct pleasure to read, and that he wanted to meet up for lunch at the school dining hall and discuss some of the ideas in it.

I had been writing all her discussion board posts as well since the contrast would be too obvious between the papers I would be submitting and her boomer-posting so I also had to write her emails and basically told the guy I worked full time, went to school full time, and had children to care for so I would try to carve out some time after classes were over.

Never messaged him of course.

Idk but something I always think about is instead of writing "latter", like former and latter, I wrote "ladder"

>>15090212
>I also wrote a Marxist analysis about Rip van Winkle but that was a joke (and I still got a 95 on it)
Was Rip the proletariat and his wife the bourgeoisie?

>>15087621
>Hell and Damnation
>not the original version of the game
wtf bro

>>15090496
Yes.

>>15087621
Critiqued the federalism and the separation of powers in America through an analysis of Hobbes' Leviathan and The Federalist Papers.
The argument went completely over the marker's head. She couldn't understand what I meant by the 'bifurcation of society', and circled uncommon words I'd used with just question marks, pretty embarrassing for her.

>>15087621
I only wrote one paper, it was for a film studies class, and the professor ended up liking the subject I picked a lot so I was happy with it.
I certainly could have done a better job with it, but I don't recall anything particularly embarrassing about it beyond my own lack of writing skill.

>>15090685
Post the paper so we can see if you're a pseud or not

>>15090685
If you can't define your terms from the outset, you only have yourself to blame.

>>15090685
>thinking big words make you smart and not how effectively you can distill profound ideas into something understandable for the masses

>>15090757
>understandable for the masses
Someone hasn't read Strauss.

>>15088702
Lol same

Good stuff in this thread.

I think my worst one was when I wrote a paper in Michael Moore's Roger and Me and tried clumsily to call-out his rhetorical and propagandistic corner-cutting, going so far as to defend the GM CEO for moving a plant to Mexico.

>>15087621
Probably the one I'm writing right now.

>>15090757
>the masses
>mattering

>>15088702
You’re not missing anything. 99% are total garbage not worth researching. It’s meaningless hoops to jump through to justify the system.

>>15087621
> embarrassing
well I wasnt embarassed but you lowly niggers might have been in my place
I submitted something along the lines of "all homeless people should be put into concentration camps" paper, and also added some stuff about forming SS (I dont remember what it stood for in my paper) squads from young men who would patrol the streets and load homeless people into vans. The gist of it was that getting caught first time homeless people would be put into concentration camps where they would be taught a blue collar skill - woodwork, plumbing, working with metal, cars, something like that. Also they would be treated for any illnesses they might have and drug habits too. Then they would be released into society again. If they got caught second time - they would be put into concentration camp again. If they got caught third time - it's death.

I dont know how much I got on that assignment, because I never picked up my graded paper as I dropped the class some time later.

>>15088702
Writing papers is not fun. Thank the good lord Jesus Christ each and every day you didn't have to write one. They're nothing like writing fiction or nonfiction, as they have a strict deadline and you almost always have that feeling of "its not good enough" even if you get a good grade.

>>15088702
And that's a good thing. Writing exams with exercises with objective correct answers is 1000000000000000 times better than writing papers having to adhere to dumb standards and getting judged on presentation and formatting of the paper instead of the contents. Fucking academia and the fucking kikes, all a bunch of shit outside of true sciences with objective truths.

>>15089980
Based, I don't understand this absolute midwit desire to pretend that not intellectually engaging with art is actually totally the smarter choice.

>>15088589
> they should be taken as-is without some poncey student acting like they've got him figured out.
fucking pseud nigger lmao, lynch is a hack, and so are you.

>>15087872
Humanities were a mistake.

>>15087621
>write a paper on how local education reform doesn't work
>include data regression to back up my analysis
>prof says it's shit
>cut all the low outliers out of the dataset to change the results
>change the conclusion to say it works
>get a 95
It's frightening how biased academia can be sometimes

>>15088592
>nine gauge
Cringe

>>15087621
>on the bus to class (takes about 15 minutes)
>suddenly remember a paper is due
>pull out my laptop and write up some bullshit about a resurgence in Manx separatism
>next day, professor returns paper
>marked F ("0")
>"There's no such thing as Manx separatism"
>"I thought you were better than this"
cringe

>>15087872
You're a boring zoomer

>>15087621
I'm not ashamed of a single thing i have written. And if i could, i would go back and write them all again a hundred times more.

>>15092655
Lmao is this bad on purpose?

>>15087621
my final english paper for my 101 class nearly caused me to fail the class

I forget what the prompt was. I mostly followed the prompt but I also wrote the dumbest, cringiest stuff including several "jokes" at some points in the paper that were completely off-topic and just retarded.

Anyways, I submitted the paper, thinking everything was good and summer break was here. I had an A in the class up to that point so I had no worries.

then I get an email from the teacher, basically telling me that she won't even grade the paper because it's obvious I didn't take it seriously. Because a final paper is required to pass, she threatened to fail me if I didn't re-do it.

so I re-write the paper the same day, turn it in, and my grade went down from an A to a B. but I'm glad i passed

>>15087621
Random assortment of interviews, murderer notes, detective testimony 10 years later, etc etc. Basically random perspectives, notes, and evidences of a serial murder ordered randomly. I was working on WAY too big of a canvas that needed way more time and length than I was allowed so I just turned it in as it was. First, Second, Third perspective thrown in with random notes of the detective and murderer, eyewitness reports, interviews and etc etc. It was honestly a great idea but I got absolutely sick of it as the more I wrote the more I had to order and I had no ending so clutched some aphoristic theme throughout and just made it somewhat ambiguous. My prof. was very favorable of most things I wrote so I like to think he went through the whole thing in an attempt at making sense of the whole thing but really it was just a bloody mess(*wink*).

I

>>15092724
> (*wink*).
cringe, nigger

>>15092684
It has to be bait with all the malapropisms, or it was written by someone irredeemably retarded

freshman year in high school I had to write a paper comparing a character from To Kill A Mockingbird to a historical figure, and I only half remembered the book. So I compared Aticus Finch to Ghengas Khan.

I don't remember my grade but I think it managed to pass. All my papers from jr year through college were absolute gems. I even managed to get by my mandatory feminist studies class writing a paper that trashed three YA novels for girls.

my reddit bio

>>15092785
> Ghengas
stupid nigger you're one quick search away from not bastardizing the name of your ancestor

All of them, anon.
For my English seminar capstone project I wrote a paper on patriarchal oppression in Eveline. I chose that topic because it was easy. And the paper was utter dogshit. But I probably squeaked out with a low C.

>>15092724
Sounds interesting at the very least.

>>15092553
it depends on if the artist wants deeper interpretation or not. personally I don't care about art that's made with some deeper meaning that you have to find out since it places more emphasis on the meaning rather than the art itself. so while abstract art and some experimental films are fun to talk about, they're not that interesting to take in.

>>15092618
Kek

>>15092785
i sincerely thought that book was tequila mockingbird until i had to read it in 10th grade

>>15092789
You need to go back. There’s no coming back from that level of faggotry

>>15092584
>>cut all the low outliers
>including outliers
pseud

>>15092818
do you have any idea how many fucking spellings there are of that niggas name? In Japan they call him Jingas Kan.

>>15090410
Its your chance to finally dress as your mom and fuck men like you have always dreamed of.. you fucking creep

>>15093088
That's irrelevant. Genghis Khan is the accepted spelling in English language. In Japan they also call Japan Nihon, but it's still Japan in English.

>>15090238
I agree, this is the trait lacking from most self proclaimed artists. It shows an understanding of growth and humility, and that the person took a risk at some point (all admirable imo)

>>15093198
In that case I just don't give a shit.

>>15092538
Writing papers are comfier than actual studying. Strict guidelines and deadlines help stop me from procrastinating.

>>15093198
Chinggis, Chingis, and Jenghis are all common spellings too. In any case suck a fat dick presciptivist faggot.

>>15092437
how pretentious can you be?

>>15087647
People should not be allowed to communicate

>>15092789

>>15088179
Probably better than most mainstream/pseudo academic crap on the issue desu, anon, that should be some consolation (pic related, but at least she cute)
t. actual academic

>>15092789
>Why yes, I am a pretentious but ignorant pseud, how could you tell?

>>15092560
My grade says otherwise, faggot. also LYNCHed

>>15092553
I never claimed that was the case for all art, just that some things don't need to be taken apart to be appreciated. That sontag essay is a good intellectual justification for not engaging critically with art, its definitely worth a read

probably thinking that I was ever going to get a decent grade on my high school presentation on why "equal opportunity" programs were shit. I had yet to learn how to stfu, fly under the radar, and give the teacher what he wanted

>>15088718
every single paper I've ever written since high school has had a reference to the industrial revolution. it's been a lot of fun and challenging at times

>>15087621
A parallel between Nietzsche's superman and Dostoiévski's idiot. How both are the pinnacle of opossite moral paths. I got the idea after reading that Nietzsche consired the Jesus portrayed by Dosto as a hero figure. It needed 45 pages, I just translated a bunch of articles from unknown universities.

>>15087621
>oh snap

I wrote my BA dissertation on 4chan

I cringe thinking back on it

>>15092500
I've proposed using homeless people to sort waste once. One girl became butthurt and wrote a fierce rebuttal of the idea. But I still don't see anything wrong with it.

Wrote about the roots of American extremism and its unique link to revolutionary history. Looking back, I picked a pretty clever topic to dodge the progressive trap that was laid for us. Thank God this was before the “alt right” existed.

Professor was a Marxist garbage human. Total mass immigration apologist. Dutch cunt.

I tried to prove that two characters in A Wild Sheep Chase were the same.

Around 6am, 4 hours before the paper was due, I realized I was wrong and their wasn’t enough source material to prove this. I didn’t have enough time or energy (from the all-nighter) to bullshit some sort of “Parallel Mirror” theory with other characters.

I’ve successfully scrubbed the result from memory.

>>15094548
I re-read it and while it's not bad, it feels woefully outdated.
Made me recall this perverted feeling of pleasure I had while writing it. I only did it ironically so the praise felt even better afterwards.

>>15094843
Any chance you could post an anonymized version, anon? I'd be interested in such things, but all the mainstream analysis is moralising PC tripe...

>>15095916
I'd have to translate it into English

>>15096029
Oh right, too bad; what language is it in originally?

>>15087621
Every single thing I've turned in to a creative writing class, especially the pieces that were praised.
My professor told me that hating my work was a good sign because I have higher standards to work towards instead of stagnating, though.

>>15094653
This doesn’t sound that bad. It’s not groundbreaking but it’s a nice way to fill up some pages and consider some timeless human questions about morality, religion, finding meaning in life, etc.

>>15094673
What was your general thesis/argument? I hope you only said nice things about us

>>15094622
I’ve read the Sontag essay and I find it to be thoroughly unconvincing. Where does interpretation end? How is one able to reasonably separate form from content? It just feels like a hedonistic excuse to talk about high culture without actually saying anything meaningful about it and I’ll never understand why Sontag gets her clit sucked so hard for it.

>>15094721
Is there a worse feeling than doing writing and doing more research and realizing your thesis is completely retarded?

>>15092437
Even you, a self-proclaimed intellectual, are still part of some mass that doesn't matter

>>15096228
I wrote it in Hungarian, and the language was extra retard friendly, carefully explaining the terminology the site uses, adding some historical and cultural background. It was supposed to serve as an introductory piece to the site's culture.

>>15087621
It was on a ethnic culture and I basicly has to do an intext citation every sentence because I could do nothing more then rephrase the sources I was reading. The prof thought I was trying to insult him. To be honest I had no idea what I was doing wrong or right,

>>15087872
He was probably roasting you

>>15096539
Being confronted by someone who knows more and realizing your thesis is retarded is far more painful than discovering it on your own

>>15098038
Én elolvasnám magyarul is anon

I wrote a whole paper about Near Eastern leaders and the smack-talking letters they exchanged between each other, directly comparing them to the potshots that Jay Leno and David Letterman took at one another, with citations from actual Letterman/Leno shows. The point was somewhat well made with an intentional ironic edge and I got an A, with the professor remarking that it was the only interesting paper he had read in about 3 years.

>>15098162
A másik dolog az az, hogy kézzel írtam és csak egy alig olvasható fénymásolatom van belőle, mert az eredeti archiválták.
Mert amúgy tizenegyedikes év végi vizsgadolgozat volt LOL etikából mert megegyeztem a tanárral hogy inkább írok valamit mintsem hogy bejárjak arra a szarra

>>15092789
I use that same picture of Cato on a website :)

>>15088000
>40,000
>not poor
pick one

>>15098038
Ah yes, a bit out of my field desu! Still, I'm sure you could get it published somewhere, with a few modifications