one of my greatest victories, to this day, was taking a writing class where they endlessly dunked on “genre fiction,” writing a story in their beloved “magical realism” style, and getting a solid positive response from the professor for it
I just really cynically threw in like “yeah, their parents argue, and sad girls in snow, they’ll eat that shit up” and they 100% did
take that, you pretentious dipshits. I can do your style, but I guarantee you couldn’t do a sick-ass chuuni-dipshit tabletop if your life depended on it
“just wallow in sadness for a bit, you fuckers love that shit”
the only good thing about that class is that it introduced me to “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction,” which I really like but have never quite been able to successfully deploy
@Felthry an essay by Ursula K. LeGuin, which I found pleasantly thought-provoking https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ursula-k-le-guin-the-carrier-bag-theory-of-fiction