Post #3623220
2026-04-11 17:08 UTC
@KurtHohmann@writing.exchange Not at all! That might have been true at some point, but today, we're all a bunch of nerds. We grew up reading, and we didn't pick up Chaucer when we were five.
My friend and colleague who studies modernist poetry has also published a major work on fantasy, is working on a book on science fiction, cowrote an article with me about Alan Moore, and fuckin' loves zombie movies. He's one of many examples.
When I tell academics I'm a comics scholar, they say, "Wow, that's so cool!"
Replies (1)
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@orionkidder@writing.exchange 2026-04-11 17:11
@KurtHohmann@writing.exchange What I will say is that we watch and read and play games differently than most people. It's like watching sports with an athlete. We're not inherently smarter than anyone else. We've merely been trained to look for certain things that most people don't look for. So when I read, eg, Wells' MURDERBOT, I'm analyzing what she's doing with gender, how she's depicting neoliberalism vs. democratic socialism, how she's implicitly defining "human" against MB's nature as a sec-unit, etc.