I’m over halfway though my second semester of school and it occurs to me that I haven’t posted anything about my new classes. Time to remedy that, I guess.

I have two classes this semester that I didn’t have in the last one. They’re both English classes, one an Introduction to Prose and Fiction, the other a Reading Popular Culture class. Each class has its ups and its downs, the ups mostly being that they introduce me to new works and then discuss them. The downs being all the same stuff I’ve complained about in other posts about school.

I really don’t enjoy literary analysis. No, that’s not entirely accurate. I don’t enjoy doing literary analysis because I’m told to. If I read something and I’m struck with some opinion that I’d like to discuss, just try to stop me from sharing that opinion (and I’ve picked up plenty of things for writing such opinions in essay form that I quite appreciate). But in these classes you’re expected to force yourself to come up with some opinion and then dress it up like you’re not just doing some homework, but like you actually care. And, furthermore, you’re supposed to frame your essay as though you’re certain about this opinion you’re pretending to care about. You can’t say “I think John Authorington’s use of a radioactive lobster is pretty neat because he also used a giant red monster the other time Protagonist Joe was nervous. I wonder if there’s something to that. Let’s look at the evidence…” but you are absolutely expected to say “Authorington uses the radioactive lobster, and other red monsters, to represent Protagonist Joe’s nervousness FOR ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN JUST LOOK AT ALL THE PROOF…” I don’t care for that. I hate pretending that any of my opinions are absolute certainties even when I care about them. When I’m making up crap just to pass an assignment and I’m expected to act like I’m so committed, I feel terrible about that. At least if I could write about stuff I had an opinion on, I’d be able to at least put some gusto into my arguments.

I suppose the argument from the school’s point of view is that they’re trying to teach you how to do analysis of things you do care about, but they have to teach you somewhere. If you don’t find something to opine about in the works that the teacher is teaching, you can’t expect to get to switch to something the teacher doesn’t know just because that’s what you want to write about. My rebuttal is “Fart sound, middle finger, don’t care, shut up.” It’s the same thing that’s bothered me time and again: I don’t care if the school can tell if I’m learning, I care if I can tell that I’m learning. I know, I know. School doesn’t work that way, I know, but the fact that “school doesn’t work that way” is not a reason for me to stop complaining about it. It is, in fact, the reason I keep complaining about it.

These classes have got me to read a number of short stories and stuff, though, which has been nice. And a couple novels too. Tarzan of the Apes and Oroonoko. I might, conceivably, have wound up reading Tarzan someday, but I had never even heard of Oroonoko, so I’m glad I was introduced to it. I like reading books.

A comic about some guys on their phones having a conversation:

With the power to create an unbreakable sphere of pure force around himself, Forcefieldo is a member of the Strange Squad, the world’s foremost superhuman explorers. When not on missions with the Miami-based superhero team, he returns to his home in Nairobi to fight crime there.

Forcefieldo is a pretty generic superhero. That is kind of the point, though. Forcefieldo is a Kenyan, but that is not represented at all in his superhero identity. Far, far too often in comics when a character is from any country other than America, or any ethnicity other than white, they’re some stereotype. There are exceptions obviously, especially as time goes on and more characters are created, but, man, it’s crazy how many not-exceptions there are. So anyway, this is my attempt to add one more to the exception pile.

For the record (there’s a record, right?), Forcefieldo and the Strange Squad are both from my old notes. The Strange Squad in particular was my Fantastic Four rip-off team, though my version progressed from the 60s to the present (well, the 90s, which was the present at the time) and recruited new members as others came and went. Forcefieldo joined the team in the 90s. I’ll probably have more Strange Squad characters show up this year, since reaching into my notes will usually be quicker than thinking up someone new.