Reading Comprehension - Tumblr Posts
A beginners guide to media literacy, comprehensive reading, and how not to be a jerk. Please reblog to help spread the knowledge.
Merlin: Where are your knights? I have a new training session for them and you!
Arthur: Sword, mace, crossbow?
Merlin: No.
*slams books on the round table*
Merlin: Reading comprehension!
Gwaine: Aw, come on! That’s not necessary!
Merlin: The other day you all almost died because you couldn’t understand a cryptic message/ riddle from a mad sorcerer! You all should thank me for solving that problem!
Gwaine: Yeah, but, reading? Nah.
Percival: That’s not what I’ve signed up for when I became a Knight of Camelot.
Leon: I had hoped these days have been past me.
Merlin: You all wouldn’t know what to do with a book if it hit you in the head!
Arthur: Easy now! No weaponising of literature.
Elyan: Weaponising? Yeah, I could put metal clasps on those corners!
Merlin: Shut up! All of you! And read!
Gwaine: No wonder you got Poet on that ‘Are you a Soldier, Poet, King?’ quiz.
Merlin: Fuck you, Gwaine!
Gwaine: I certainly would..!
Arthur: WE ARE NOT HAVING THE ‘WOULD YOU FUCK YOUR CLONE’ DISCUSSION AGAIN!
Lancelot: *peacefully reading from the beginning*
5 things your character can't do while speaking
Choke. Just think about it, seriously. Think about what choking is and imagine speaking while it’s happening. That would fuckin’ hurt, man.
Hiss. Look, it’s just not possible, okay? No matter how “evil” you want your character to seem.
Snarl. Animals snarls. The Beast from Beauty and the Beast snarls. The Hulk snarls. You know who doesn’t snarl? PEOPLE WHEN THEY’RE SPEAKING.
Shriek. Come on, 99% of the time, “shriek” is not the word you want.Let’s face it: if you put an exclamation point at the end of the sentence, your reader gets the picture. Don’t bring to mind banshees and screaming toddlers.
Sneer. I’m not even going to bother explaining this one. “SNEER” ISN’T EVEN A SOUND.
all goofing aside I genuinely don't understand the urge to reimagine Taylor Allison Swift as a secretly queer icon when the pop music scene(TM) is like. literally overflowing with women who actually like women. Gaga and Kesha and Miley and Halsey are right there. Rina Sawayama and Hayley Kiyoko and Rebecca Black and Kehlani and Victoria Monét and Miya Folick if you're willing to get slightly less top 100. Janelle and Demi for them nonbinary takes on liking girls. like what are we doing here. like I'm not even saying you can't enjoy Taylor but why would you hang all your little gay hopes on her.
im taking media away from some of u guys until you can pass a 6th grade literary analysis test
The reading comprehension and overall common sense on this website is piss poor.
It’s true and you should say it.
People seem to be very invested of late, increasingly in the past few years, of the concept of things needing to be “perfect” to be praiseworthy.
The number of reviews, posts, etc that are titled something along the lines of “flawed but great!” Or “not perfect but still good!”
It’s impossible for anything to be “perfect”, that doesn’t exist. But people feel like they have to tear things apart and criticize them to the moon and back before they’re allowed to voice their approval.
We’re so stuck in this perfection-culture in which something is either perfect, or it’s horrible and never should have been interacted with to begin with it’s always been awful and disgusting and anyone who likes it is stupid and should- (fun fact! Anything in the former category will eventually be examined deeper and inevitably relabeled as the latter because, again, perfection doesn’t exist!)
A piece of media: This is a complex story where no one is evil and no one is a saint. People are a reflection of their world, their life experiences and trauma. Morality depends on context from which you view the character. You are not supposed to find every character good or even likable. You can take sides and find real life parallels but the biggest point is to make you think and maybe recognize the flaws in yourself as well as the goodness in those you hate.
Tumblr: okay so THIS is the bad person and THIS is the good person. This is the oppressor and this is the oppressed. This is the abuser and this is their victim. If you like this EVIL character you are clearly the same as my asshole dad who reminds me of this character. Not taking a moralistic stance on a fictional story means you are amoral. Analysis is actually about figuring out who the bad-est person is so you can disavow them and who the good-est person is so you can root for them. The media you consume reflects your values and the characters you find interesting are clearly the ones who are exactly the same as you.
🔊🔊 END STAGE DISCOURSE!! END STAGE DISCOURSE!! WE HAVE ARRIVED AT "FICTIONAL SEX IS COERCIVE BECAUSE CHARACTERS ARE BEING FORCED TO DO THINGS BY THE AUTHOR"!!!! 🔊🔊
How can I read a piece of media in bad faith, when there’s so much good about it, the characters are so earnest, the story has beautiful themes, the storytelling give me goosebumps, when it’s clear that the creator has put their whole being into it, when it opens my eyes to different perspectives and thoughts? I could never willingly go into a story with a negative opinion, not when there’s so many more ideas to discover, understand, and learn.
Powers Greater Than Hatred
There are two passages that are often quoted of Daenerys from A Game of Thrones. The first, and most popular, are the final sentences in the novel.
As Daenerys Targaryen rose to her feet, her black hissed, pale smoke venting from its mouth and nostrils. The other two pulled away from her breasts and added their voices to the call, translucent wings unfolding and stirring the air, and for the first time in hundreds of years, the night came alive with the music of dragons.
It’s easy to see why these final lines are so often quoted within the fandom. They are poetically powerful; this is an impactful arrangement of words that have an emotional punch. The final chapter stands as some of George’s most poetic writing he has ever done. It is filled with mythology that has been lacking in the novel up to this point; for most of A Game of Thrones, the supernatural is related to long dead legends or psychedelic visions that make it hard to grasp exactly what they were meant to entail. The final chapter, the return of the dragons, turns the supernatural from vision quest into a tangible, real thing. And most importantly, this passage uplifts the book; it showcases that there is a reason to hope, that the dark turn after Eddard Stark’s execution is not what the series is about. Instead of leaving on a melancholic note, the novel ends with hope and wonder for what the future will bring.
I am not going to talk about that passage today. I want to talk about the second passage, one that I feel speaks much more closely to the themes that George is trying to hit with the series. This is from one of the final paragraphs of Daenerys IX, in the moments that build up to when Daenerys must euthanize Khal Drogo. Even when Daenerys is so full of despair, George still give us reason to hold onto hope:
She told herself that there were powers stronger than hatred, and spells older and truer than any the maegi had learned in Asshai.
The second half of the passage is directly rooted in the emotional context of the scene. Mirri Mazz Dur had used shadow magic to both rob Khal Drogo of all sentience and intelligence, as well as killing Daenerys’ son Rhaego in the womb. Most of Khal Drogo’s khalatar, his army of warriors that was the mightiest and largest in all of Dothraki recent history, had splintered and broken apart under a dozen different warlords. Daenerys is lost and alone for allies save for the exiled Westerosi knight Jorah Mormont, who has his own selfish wants in staying close to her.
It is the first half that George establishes an important thread that he weaves throughout the series. Evil has its limits. Hatred, corruption, all of the sins of the world, there is a point where they are undone. This theme is manifested in the fourth book of the series, A Feast for Crows. Tywin Lannister has been murdered by the son he has abused for all of his life, and the Lannister regime that he betrayed and murdered to build is falling apart. The book is not just a reference to all those that have died over the course of The War of the Five Kings, but to the Lannisters. House Lannister itself is the feast for crows. It is a tower of dominos and it has started to crumble. All of the petty evils of that house is finally crashing down. Evil has limits. Evil is undone. There are powers greater than hatred.
Paint that contrast with the Starks and the Targaryens. The swords of the North are riding to rescue “Ned’s precious little girl”. They don’t know that the little girl is not Arya Stark but Jeyne Poole who has been forced to masquerade as her to preserve her life, but that doesn’t matter. The fact that the Northern lords, even after being decimated at the Red Wedding, even after being forced to submit, will ride and fight and die in memory of Eddard Stark, that matters. Even after Daenerys flies away from Meereen on Drogon, her people are fighting against the masters in her name. It matters that they believe in her cause. It matters that the freemen will fight and die to make sure their children will never know what it means to be a slave.
A Song of Ice and Fire is often painted as a cynical, bitter response to fantasy. It is the forefather of the grimdark subgenre. That is an erroneous attribution. The books remind us that there are powers stronger than hatred. Of course there are scenes that have grit to it, and it can be bitter at times, but the saga is never cynical. It doesn’t say that there is no meaning to the good fight.
If watching the fall of House Lannister should say anything, it would be that evil will always devour itself in time, and eventually, good and decent people will pick up the pieces.
with tumblr teaming with ai, ai is just gonna have even worse reading comprehinsoin
I make posts my sized to read because my reading comprehension literally hurts me.
Seriously, I get eye strain if I don’t space shit out.
By Jupiter, I've found the origin!
The reading comprehension and overall common sense on this website is piss poor.
Exactly 💯
When we say Islamic invaders, we never means current Islamic population living rn in India
Do you think Indian Muslims should not be part of the country?
This is their home, and they deserve to live here. Speaking about past invasions and current crimes doesn't mean I think Indian Muslims shouldn't be part of the country. Innocent people shouldn't have to suffer for their ancestor's crimes.
Interesting how my blog speaks about Hinduphobia, and you jump to conclusions like these.
yall wtf are you guys talking about everyone uses median for average income. Nobody's including billionaires, that would be stupid. I just looked up median income and it's abt 68K. 24k is barely liveable, that's just straight up not possible
Anybody else love to read so much but have horrible reading comprehension? Like if the author doesn’t clearly state what’s going on without any weird metaphors I just genuinely can’t keep up. It feels like I’m just floating around confused trying to grasp the rare words in the paragraphs that actually mean anything to me. Trying to filter out the descriptions and cool stuff and just figure out which character is where. :/ kind of sucks when I get a new book I’m excited about but it’s too above my reading level
