Written by Pramika Kadari As an English major, I’m nervous to admit that The Hunger Games: Mockingjay is one of my favorite books in the world because it’s labeled as a young adult book. In the world of readers, many look down on YA books as being childish, trashy entertainment, or simply not intellectually stimulating.…
Read MoreLike, Read, and Subscribe, Please! : The Promise of Transmedia Storytelling
Written by Skylar Epstein The year is 2012 and Joss Whedon’s Avengers just came out. You, as an avid comic reader, go into the theater wielding comparisons to the comics, ready and willing to fill in the backstory of each character for your less informed friends. Then it’s 2013, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, a spin-off…
Read MoreFinding A Respite from The Pandemic in Don DeLillo’s Underworld
Written by Abdallah Hussein The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic is an unusual, tragic, and (most relevantly) suffocating circumstance. Going into 2020, I was optimistic at the prospect of the undiscovered, but I could never have imagined myself isolated in my home for unearthly amounts of time, knowing one unlucky excursion out my front door could result…
Read MoreOral Storytelling in Tabletop Roleplaying Games
Written by Scotty Villhard After a hard-fought battle, the five companions share a moment for their fallen friend, Usk, a lizard-folk who once roamed the swamplands. Roska, the half-dwarf-half-orc freedom fighter, says a prayer to the gods of her fathers. Od, a fishman exiled from his home, remembers the night his family went missing, while…
Read MoreComing Together When The World Falls Apart
Written by Lindsey Ferris With the songs from the musical Come From Away still playing in my ears, the memories my parents have shared over the years of 9/11 comes to mind and I’m left again in awed silence of how the world responded to the devastation. Working off the baby fat from her last…
Read MoreThe Generation of Nostalgia: Vaporwave, Piracy, and the Internet
Written by Leah Park On one of my perusals through social media, I came across a viral video that depicted a character from The Simpsons teaching a self-defense class. However, instead of playing the dialogue of the scene, the clip played a funky pop song called “Selfish High Heels” by Yung Bae. The song was…
Read MoreKnight Terrors: Horror in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Written by Natalie Nobile Hey, when you were assigned Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, did you try to get out of reading it by using one of the films as a cheat sheet? But then all the films sucked? Well buckle up buttercup, because there’s a new adaptation on the market, and it’s coming…
Read MoreWe Cannot Watch Scottish Gaelic Die
Written by Abbey Bartz Whenever I meet someone new in Scotland and they hear my tell-tale American accent, they always ask what brought me to Scotland. I tell them that I am studying Scottish literature at the University of Edinburgh, and, specifically, that I am interested in the Gaelic language and its literature. Their next…
Read MoreLiterary Lessons from Stand-Up Comedy
Written by Sara Cline I’ll be forthright: I’m a stand-up comic. That means I’m absolutely biased in my argument that stand-up comedy should have a place in the literary canon, alongside the likes of prose, poetry, and drama. To my credit, I was a fiction-writer, poet, and English major before I ever stepped foot into…
Read MoreWill You Accept this Narrative? The Techniques of Storytelling on The Bachelor
Written by Kayla Bollers “Alaya, will you accept this rose?” “Of course.” Peter Weber hands Alaya the group date rose. Cradling the freshly cut stem between two fingers, Alaya exchanges a knowing look and heartfelt smile with the man she’s falling for. The couple leans in for a warm embrace. But her softly murmured “Thank…
Read MoreCuriosity, Killed: The Deeper Meaning of Cats
Written by Natalie Nobile One of the stranger things Tom Hooper said about Cats (2019) was that it was “about the perils of tribalism” (Vulture). Director Hooper, you are a bold one. Unfortunately, between all the CGI and Jason Derulo and catnip and snot, Hooper’s ‘message’ seems to have failed to reach the audience. To…
Read MoreFrom Stone Tablets to eBook Tablets: In Defense of Good, Old-Fashioned Paper
Perhaps printed books kill trees, but honestly, can you think of a more noble reason to die? Trees probably dream of the day they will be cut down and will become vehicles for human knowledge and imagination. They are probably more than willing to make the sacrifice.
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