(To be clear, now that I am in my fourth year of my English degree, I have developed an appreciation for all the above authors. At 17, though, it was quite difficult to have such an appreciation).

In my first year, the only English class I signed up for was the introductory English course—appropriately named “What is Literature”—because I had been enticed by rumors that we would be studying Hamilton by Lin Manuel-Miranda and BBC Sherlock in class. I didn’t have much expectations coming into the class, given my prejudices about university-level English, but I thought it was worth a shot if it meant that I could write about Burn for a grade.

As it turns out, “What is Literature” was not simply a quirky title the professor came up with for the class. All twelve weeks of this class literally revolved around attempting to create a definition for literature.

At first blush, it is easy to create a constrained definition around literature. You could argue that literature is books. But, in that case, what about poetry? If we said that literature is books and poetry, what about short stories that are never bound into books? And if we said that literature was all of the above, what about shorter pieces of text? Visual art? Games and movies? Would only the “good” and “critiquable” things count? How could anyone decide what qualifies as “good” or “critiquable”? How could we possibly put appropriate constraints on the definition of literature?

By the end of that class, we never managed to define literature. It was quite clear that the intention of the class was to demonstrate that literature is something that cannot really be defined. But, despite us not making much progress on a solid definition of literature, I came out of that class a new person. I was a newly declared English major with a renewed sense of appreciation for what could be literature, with a new outlook on all the art and the creations around me that could be appreciated and analyzed and ruminated over.

As such, in this article, I invite you to open your preconceptions of what literature is, and consider some of the following art forms when choosing your next read.

✸ Video Games ✸

Would it surprise you to know that the same professor who hosts the “What is Literature” class every Fall also hosts a series of courses called “Video Games and Literature”?

It would be a lie to claim that I have always played video games. Though I was never without my red DSi in hand as a child, it was a hobby that came and went as I got older. Sometimes, I wonder if it was because I lacked a community of girls to share it with. Now that I am older, and surrounded with some amazing friends who enjoy playing the same kinds of non-competitive games that I do, I think I have found a renewed appreciation for it.

Video games hold this unique quality as an art form in that it is reactive. Some people would argue that the uniqueness of video games is that it is interactive, but you could argue that one could interact with any piece of media by annotating it or analyzing it. The uniqueness in video games comes in its ability to react back at you and reflect your decisions in the art itself.

Because of the reactive nature of video games, it opens up many avenues of analysis. As the reader-player—with your own unique experiences, perspectives, and capabilities—you are part of the art. As part of the art, you continue to actively shape the art and your experiences throughout your playthrough, making your experiences and analysis of the game separate from all others.

I understand that many readers may be quite apprehensive about playing games, especially since many games require certain motor skills and reflexes that are built from years of gaming, but I would like to suggest a few games I deeply enjoyed as a not-so-skilled gamer that may be of interest to a reader!

✧ Ace Attorney: My favorite game of all time! Ace Attorney is a visual novel murder mystery that is perfect for fans of mystery and thriller books. Though the game may seem pretty whacky on the surface, it can get quite dark and serious. If you enjoyed shows like BBC Sherlock or books like Uketsu’s Stange Houses/Pictures/Buildings, you might enjoy Ace Attorney!
↳ Gaming skill required: ★☆☆☆☆
↳ Literary quality: ★★★☆☆

✧ Hades I: This was one of the games I played as part of the “Video Games and Literature” course I took. Hades is a game about attempting to escape the underworld, performing a reverse katabasis as Hades’ son to discover the truth about your parentage. Though Hades presents a very steep learning curve for new gamers, the game is designed in a way that makes failure feel like a part of learning. This game is so good that there are entire research papers analyzing how the game play and narrative interact with each other. However, even just from a pure enjoyment standpoint as a reader, Hades has some absolutely gorgeous writing, especially in its dialogue.
↳ Gaming skill required: ★★★☆☆
↳ Literary quality: ★★★★★

✧ Omori: Admittedly, I have not finished Omori even though I bought it 4 years ago… but I wanted to put it in because I have played ~10 hours of it, and it brought me to tears multiple times, even though I’ve barely scratched the surface of the game. It’s a story about grief and mental health, and was particularly popular during COVID-19 for fairly obvious reasons.
↳ Gaming skill required: ★★☆☆☆
↳ Literary quality: ★★★★☆

✸ Musicals ✸

Like video games, I feel like people often have stereotypes about what kinds of people listen to musicals. However, unlike video games, I feel like there’s a larger overlap between musical listeners and readers. I personally enjoy listening to musicals, as opposed to just listening to one-off songs, because each song builds into the next song, and crafts a beautiful narrative. There’s also the additional layer of being able to see the musical performed live, which I think adds so much to the experiencing of musicals as an art form.

I am by no means the biggest musical fan, though I enjoy the few musicals I do listen to an abnormal amount. As a result, I cannot give that many musical recommendations, but will instead highlight the few that I feel very intensely about!

✧ Hamilton: I don’t know if it’s possible to start a list of musical recommendations without Hamilton. I think nothing will ever touch the absolute genius that is Lin Manuel-Miranda, especially in terms of writing. Hamilton is so good that I wrote two essays about it for the introductory English class I referenced in the introduction of this essay. No one can touch Hamilton in terms of word-play.

✧ Hadestown: Yeah, of course the English major musical recommendation list was going to have Hadestown! What did you expect? I think Hadestown is an interesting interpretation of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, especially since most of the oldest variants of the myth (like Ovid’s version) contain a silent Eurydice that has minimal agency. I also particularly like the play’s emphasis on circularity—the idea that there will always be reimaginings of the myth and how they inevitably ends in grief/failure/loss—because it feels quite meta!

✧ Caesar the Musical: A less popular one that hasn’t been finished yet, but one that I deeply enjoyed listening to! Caesar the Musical has this really distinct, jazzy sound to it that I really enjoy, and would likely appeal to readers because it is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. I also love the emphasis on the all-female cast, which I think is an interesting contrast to Shakespeare’s all male cast (at the time, it was unconventional for women to act, so men would often play women!).

✸ Live Plays ✸

I believe this may fall into a similar category as musicals, but watching live plays is truly a life-changing experience. I only got to watch my first live play when I moved to Toronto, as my hometown doesn’t have many live performances. I think there’s a certain charm to seeing everything being done manually: props are moved by stagehands, completely practical visual effects, painstakingly handcrafted sets and personally sewed costumes. The level of detail that goes into performances is something that will always amaze me, and is the reason why I keep coming back to see more plays!

The experience of watching a play live, as opposed to seeing a recording of it online, is also vastly different. There’s something special about being amongst an audience—laughing and reacting alongside them—that cannot be replicated when you’re seeing a recording alone in your bedroom. It’s almost like watching a movie in a cinema as opposed to watching it alone. Something about being in community and enjoying art together is magical.

Though the availability of live plays will vary depending on where you live, I want to highlight a few places in Toronto where you can watch live plays, often for a very affordable price!

✧ Canadian Stage: Canadian Stage hosts an outdoor Shakespeare play in High Park every summer. This year, I went to see their production of Twelfth Night, which completely blew me away. The acting, the staging, and the deep sense of humor that the cast has was wonderful to see, and exceeded the very high expectations I had for my favorite play of all time. Tickets came out to be 35 CAD per person for General Admission, which I thought was very reasonable!

Canadian Stage also hosts multiple other plays throughout the summer, though they are more expensive than the Shakespeare productions in the summer.

✧ University of Toronto: Many students at the University of Toronto come together to produce plays throughout the year, which I find incredibly impressive considering how much work is involved in rehearsing and setting up a play. I’ve been to a production of The Crucible at Hart House, which was well worth the 10 CAD I paid for it. The acting was absolutely incredible considering the limited time they have to rehearse, and the set looked incredibly realistic given the budget constraints of a student production.

Everyone can buy tickets to a UofT production, not just students or alumni. I think it’s incredibly slept upon, and more people should come to these shows! Two Instagram accounts you can follow to stay up to date on University of Toronto productions are @hhtheatre and @trinlovestheatre !

Outside of video games, musicals, and live plays, there are still so many other forms of literature I didn’t mention, including museums, fanfiction (and other derivative work), music, movies, anime, conversations with other people—the list would be endless if I attempted to list it all down. I find that many people tend to be purists about what should be considered literature, even excluding certain novels, poetry, and short stories because they aren’t “good enough” to qualify as literature. Personally, I find this take to be reductive, and narrows your appreciation of the many forms of art around us.

I hope you consider my list of recommendation, and think of the other forms of literature around you that you may have dismissed previously.

✸ What can you learn from them?

✸ What new things can you see once you consider something a form of literature?

✸ How can it expand your perspectives?

✸ What do you discover when you open your mind beyond a restrictive definition of literature?

I hope you enjoyed this article! It ended up being far longer than I anticipated, because I have so many things to say about the renewed appreciation I’ve had for art since expanding my definition of literature. This is particularly true for literature that has been historically relegated as “unserious” or “childish” by academics and often excluded from deeper analysis. I do intend to talk more on this topic on my Instagram account and Substack, because media means so much to me and has allowed me to grow in immeasurable ways!

I know that my relationship with writing and posting on Substack has been quite fraught, but it is something I want to commit to going forwards. I often struggle with wanting to stay on-theme (or I guess you could say “on niche”) with my Substack, but I enjoy writing about whatever is on my mind rather than sticking purely to analytical work. I would love to know your thoughts on this style of conversational and personal writing, and whether you would like to see more of it going forwards!

For now, I will leave you here. I can’t wait to see you again in my next article (˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶)

With love,

Nat / @turnaboutcafe

✧ For more regular musings on media and my life as an English major, you can follow my Instagram (@turnaboutcafe)!

In episode 2, there is a relatively long dinner scene, where the apprentices (save for Agott) sit in the dining room and enjoy a meal together. When Coco exclaims that the stew is incredibly tasty, Tetia remarks that Qifrey is a great cook. As Coco continues to praise the food, Qifrey responds humbly, mentioning that the local sourcing of the food, the freshness of the produce, and where he bought the supplies contributed to the taste of the food.

The reason why this scene surprised me isn’t because it depicted a man cooking (after all, most of the men in my life do cook). The reason why it stood out to me is because the scene wasn’t treated as just a filler scene to set the comforting tone of the atelier. Instead, the scene demonstrated Qifrey’s domestic and caregiving role in the household, and the extent of his knowledge in both roles. This scene felt important to me, because it seemed to hint to me that Kamome Shirahama would treat the idea of gendered roles and expectations with sensitivity and care throughout the narrative.

Care, especially within the domestic sphere (as opposed to the public, breadwinning sphere), has historically been linked with the “feminized private sphere”, relationships, and emotionality. Though there is nothing intrinsically or biologically feminine about doing domestic tasks, it has always been socially determined as a woman’s job. This includes a wide range of tasks that keeps a household running, including cleaning, managing household resources, and cooking. Interestingly, once a (supposedly) feminine task enters the public, breadwinning sphere, it often becomes male dominated. Cooking is a major example of this—though it is often culturally assumed to be a woman’s task, professional chefs tend to be overwhelmingly male.

Because of the assumption that care is a feminine task, men are often given a pass from acting as caregivers. Jordan (2018) suggests that there are two reasons why men are allowed to be “care-free”: because they are assumed to be protectors of the vulnerable, and because they are assumed to be the primary producer (breadwinner) of the family.1 These assumptions of which genders should take on which role are harmful to everyone regardless of gender, primarily because they force individuals into conforming to specified roles regardless of interest, capability, or willingness. These gender roles often shape the way family systems are depicted in media. Importantly, gendered assumptions do not only harm heterosexual families; gender roles can easily be, and often are, imposed on queer families as well.

I think that Witch Hat Atelier provides a wonderful example of how care can be reimagined in a family as a task free from gender roles. Though people often joke that Qifrey is a single father of four, I think it’s important to recognize that Olruggio functions as the second parental figure to the apprentices. I argue that Witch Hat Atelier resists such gendered expectations of care not by depicting her male characters as responsible for stereotypically feminine tasks, but by depicting both Qifrey and Olruggio as responsible for the public, breadwinning sphere and the private, domestic sphere in equal amounts, rather than relegating responsibility for each sphere to one character.

My analysis will not include any spoilers for the main manga series, and it will only include spoilers for the anime up to episode 5. However, it will include spoilers for the Witch Hat Kitchen spinoff up to chapter 3. If you have not read the Witch Hat Kitchen spinoff, do not fret! The manga panels I introduce in this essay will not spoil anything from the main manga series.

The Domestic as Masculine

The first scene I want to unpack is the aforementioned dinner scene in episode 2. I think Qifrey’s depth of knowledge about ingredients and cooking is important because it extends Shirahama’s presentation of subverted gender roles. Rather than merely showing Qifrey cooking, Shirahama links his ability to cook to the practice of domestic care—he cooks for his apprentices; his knowledge of ingredients and its nutrition is for the health of his apprentices; he practices a form of domestic care that men are typically given passes on. Because Shirahama links Qifrey’s love for cooking and depth of knowledge to domestic caregiving, rather than something he does purely out of personal interest, it makes her subversion of gender roles feel intentional and well thought out.

Qifrey’s passion for cooking is further fleshed out in the Witch Hat Kitchen manga, where the main cast (usually Qifrey and Olruggio) cook meals during their down time. In the first chapter of Kitchen, we gain more insight into Qifrey’s love for cooking. When he finally has time to make a meal for himself and Olruggio, he refers to cooking as a “more sophisticated [delight]” after an entire day of magic making. Magic-making, the skill that is the center of our main characters’ fascination, can be linked to the public production sphere, given that it is Qifrey’s main profession and (presumably) the way he earns money. Yet, one of the strongest characters we see in the Witch Hat universe claims that the domestic task of cooking, often undermined due to its link to the private and feminine sphere, is more sophisticated than magic.

Though this is a line that is used simply to introduce Qifrey’s love of cooking to the readers, I think it is important because it emphasizes to readers that domestic chores, even in the face of something as fantastical as magic, is not less than or unimportant. Thus, Shirahama not only subverts gender roles by making her male characters cook, but by recognizing that care is often depicted as unimportant in the face of productive, public work.

It is also notable that most of Witch Hat Kitchen revolves around Qifrey and Olruggio cooking as an act of nurturance, either for the apprentices or for each other. This is most evident when Qifrey thinks about all the dietary preferences he has to account for with his apprentices: he is fully aware that Tetia can’t eat spicy food, that Agott prefers milder dishes, and Reiceh won’t eat a meal with vegetables that are too large. In a society where masculinity is often defined as not being perceived as feminine, whether it be through caring, cooking, and the submissiveness associated with both acts, Qifrey’s role in the atelier is largely defined by his care and knowledge about his apprentices.

Aside from cooking, nurturance and care is also present in Qifrey and Olruggio’s magic specialties. The first time we see Qifrey’s specialty in water magic is when he hands the water dispenser to Coco. Though in later episodes Qifrey’s magic is used for combat, this first introduction of masculine magic (i.e. magic done by a man) as nurturing sets the tone for how magic is depicted throughout the series.

Olruggio’s fire magic specialty follows the same pattern. Initially, I assumed that Olruggio’s fire magic was intended to complement Qifrey’s water magic: a combative specialty to contrast a nurturing specialty. However, Olruggio’s magic is first presented to us in a similarly nurturing way when he dries Coco off using his warming ring contraption. Rather than fire being presented as a weapon, the hearth and warmth of fire is emphasized. Furthermore, Olruggio’s specialization in fire magic (or, perhaps more aptly, warmth magic) is implied to be related to Qifrey’s fear of water and getting wet. Magic, a skill that is linked with the public, productive sphere in Witch Hat, is linked to caring for others, rather than the capitalistic and mechanized associations we tend to have with the productive sphere in our real world.

Resisting Heteronormative Idea(l)s of Complementarity

Shirahama’s reimagining of gender roles in care and nurturance is particularly successful because it avoids falling into the pitfalls of heteronormativity. Most media that attempt a feminist take on masculinity and gender roles often fall flat because they simply make female characters take on stereotypically masculine roles, and vice versa for male characters. These representations fail to be particularly meaningful because it simply reinforces the idea that each gender should have a role, even if it subverts what we commonly see in a patriarchal society.

Other pieces of media also often assume that stereotypically masculine and feminine gender roles are complementary, where each gender must take on one specific kind of role to have an efficient household. Klinth (2008) argues against this notion, suggesting that complementary notions of gender reproduces “traditional notions of gender, contributing to a situation where women and men have different duties and responsibilities”.2

Some readers may erroneously assume that the main family in Witch Hat are automatically free from such gender roles, given that both parental figures are men. However, same-gender pairings are not automatically free from the reproduction of gender roles either, despite both people being the same gender. This is particularly common in fan spaces, where fans may insist that one person in the pairing must be the masculine/dominant one and the other must be the feminine/submissive one.

Witch Hat resists these pitfalls of heteronormativity by having both Qifrey and Olruggio take on similar levels of responsibility in both stereotypically feminine roles, like cooking, and stereotypically masculine roles, like magic-making. This is most clearly presented in Chapter 3 of Witch Hat Kitchen, when Qifrey panics in the middle of the night because he forgot to make the apprentices lunch for their field trip the next day. Rather than insisting that either Qifrey or Olruggio take on the domestic sacrifice of staying up to cook lunch (a burden often carried by mothers), both of them end up staying up to make sandwiches for the apprentices. This display of partnership shows what is possible when we stop coding certain tasks as feminine or masculine, and instead assume the burden of each role equitably.

Sharing the burden of both gender roles is also demonstrated in Witch Hat Kitchen through resisting the idea that one parent must sacrifice hedonistic pleasures for the sake of the family. In Chapter 2 of Witch Hat Kitchen, Olruggio makes custard puddings for everyone in the middle of the night, but only manages to make five puddings due to the lack of ingredients in the house. Upon realizing this, he resolves not to have a cup for himself, even if he made the puddings in the first place. After the apprentices wake up and have their puddings, Qifrey offers the last pudding to Olruggio. Despite the offer, Olruggio lies to Qifrey, telling him that he already had a pudding the night before. Olruggio’s white lie and sacrifice of such pleasures is something I find mothers typically do, especially in the context of food.

However, the chapter doesn’t end at Qifrey accepting Olruggio’s lie. Instead, Qifrey calls Olruggio out on the lie, saying that it would be impossible for Olruggio to make six puddings with only two eggs. In the end, the two resolve to split the pudding in half so they can both enjoy it.

The first thing that stood out to me about this scene is Qifrey immediately catching Olruggio’s lie because of his knowledge of what ingredients were available in the kitchen. As I argued before, Qifrey’s taking on of domestic tasks extends far beyond simply cooking: he also takes on the mental load of knowing what is in the kitchen, and what can be made with those ingredients, a task that is typically assumed to be feminine. In this chapter, both Qifrey and Olruggio are highlighted to be equally involved in domestic tasks and the mental load of running the household.

The second thing that stood out to me in this scene is its resolution: rather than one parent having to take on the stereotypically feminine role of sacrificing the pleasure of custard pudding, they resolve to split the pudding, allowing them both to enjoy the remaining food. Though Qifrey tells Olruggio that Olruggio’s ability to “always think of others’ needs before [his] own” always impressed Qifrey, this chapter makes it clear that both characters show a level of care, nurturance, and consideration towards each other that is often only expected of women. Additionally, Qifrey’s note that Olruggio’s consideration exists both in his “work” and “in the kitchen” further emphasizes how both Qifrey and Olruggio take on stereotypically masculine and feminine roles, showing what is possible when we stop thinking of tasks as exclusively gendered and instead take on an equitable load of both.

Concluding Thoughts on Magical Men

Witch Hat Atelier, in terms of its feminist qualities, is one of the most well-done narratives I have seen in a very long time. There is so much more to say on the topic, including the inclusion of canonical queer couples and non-normative family structures, but I decided not to include it in this essay to avoid spoilers for those who have not read the manga. Once I have the energy to reread the manga, I hope to make a companion piece addressing Witch Hat Atelier’s depiction of masculinity in the manga!

However, no narrative is perfect. My one qualm with Witch Hat Atelier is that it falls into the trope of the absent mother, which is particularly common in fairy tales and fantasy stories aimed towards younger audiences. Coco’s mother is effectively dead by the first episode, and Agott’s mother is implied to be neglectful of her. I haven’t come up with a satisfactory explanation on why mothers and feminine-presenting parental figures have been mostly absent throughout the series. However, I do wonder why mothers lack a presence in the story, given how many demographics are represented in Witch Hat Atelier.

Despite my criticism, I do still think that Witch Hat Atelier has one of my favorite depictions of what parenting could look like in a family setting that lacks an assumption of what roles each gender should take on. In doing so, Shirahama allows us to imagine a more equitable and egalitarian world where nurturance and provision aren’t coded as feminine or masculine, and people are instead expected to take on responsibilities in both spheres. I would love to see this feminist concept expanded to other domestic circumstances in the Witch Hat Universe, and I look forward to seeing what Shirahama cooks up next for our little magical family of six!

Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to play Hades (half a decade later than everyone else on the planet, it seems). I was practically strongarmed into it because it was a necessary reading for a course I was taking on video games and literature. Even then, I put the game off for weeks, refusing to play it for myself until I realized I would probably have to write my midterm essay on Hades since I hated every other game that we had covered in the course up to that point.

Part of the reason why I avoided playing Hades until I absolutely had to was because it didn’t mesh well with my preferred genre of gaming. As a roguelike, Hades necessitates failure and repetition. It is impossible to experience a game like Hades without it. Though the game can theoretically be done without dying a single time, as some players have proven, you would lose the core experience and narrative of the game by playing that way. Knowing this, as someone who hates not being good at things on my first attempt, I had a gut feeling that Hades would not interact well with my personality.

However, given the title of this article, you could probably guess how I ended up feeling about Hades.

A brief summary of Hades (2020)

Hades follows Zagreus, the son of Hades, as he attempts to escape the underworld in search of his mother. For most of his life, Zagreus was led to believe that he was the son of Nyx, rather than the son of Persephone. Upon learning the truth, Zagreus begins his attempts to escape the Underworld, performing a supposedly impossible reverse katabasis to find his mother and learn more about his parentage. As the player, you fight through randomly generated dungeons, earn power-ups, and attempt to reach the surface without dying.

As a roguelike, Hades’ gameplay is defined by death. If you die during your escape attempt, you must start your run again, losing all of the temporary upgrades you received in your last run. The path to the Overworld isn’t short either—most players will have to fight through roughly 40 floors, with increasingly difficult bosses and enemies dotted throughout the run. Most people, like myself, take about 20 attempts before successfully defeating Hades and escaping the Underworld for the first time. I say “the first time”, because, once you successfully escape the Underworld and find Persephone, we discover why Zagreus is stuck in the Underworld with Hades and not in the Overworld with Persephone: as a chthonic being, Zagreus cannot spend more than several minutes in the Overworld without perishing. As such, even when you succeed in escaping, Zagreus will eventually die, and you will find yourself at the beginning of your escape journey once again.

Hades has two resolutions that most people consider to be the “end” of the game. The first ending involves convincing Persephone to come back to the Underworld and reunite with her family, which requires players to successfully escape the Underworld 10 times. Each time Zagreus makes it to the Overworld, he will meet his unceremonious end, and the player must repeat the cycle until Persephone is convinced to come back with him. The second ending, sometimes referred to as the “true” ending, requires the player to improve their relationship with the various Gods and Goddesses of Olympus, who you can only meet through journeying out of the Underworld. Regardless of which ending you aspire to reach, an absurd amount of runs through the same set of dungeons are required. Predictably, at the end of each run, Zagreus will die, and you will return to the point from which you started.

What is the point of repetition if we inevitably fail at the end of it?

The first time I discovered what happens once you complete a successful run in Hades, I was baffled. The concept of repeating a game 20 times before making a successful attempt at escaping, only to be sent back to the beginning after you did everything right, seemed absurd. I couldn’t begin to imagine why people would spend hundreds of hours playing the same exact game, only for them to fail at the end regardless of how well they completed it. No matter what you do, you will never experience a traditional success at the end of the run—Zagreus will die, you will return to the House, and the only option you have is to do it all over again. The game, and the escape attempts, never reach a true resolution.

The game itself brings your attention to this incessant act of repetition. When you meet Hades at the exit of the Underworld for the second time, even he doesn’t seem to understand the Zagreus’ repetitive attempts, stating “even if I don’t slay you myself, you’ll simply perish when you cross that threshold there. And yet you still persist?”. Though the question is posed to Zagreus, it is undeniable that Hades’ recognition of the repetitive play-cycle is posed to the player as well in a metareferential way. Why do we feel so compelled to repeat the play-cycle of Hades, even once we know every boss that will appear, every enemy attack pattern, every possible chamber? Why do we repeat this cycle, even if we know that failure waits for us at the very end?

To answer this question, we must first interrogate what it means to fail in a video game. Even to non-gamers, in-game death feels like the simplest way to define failure. The construction of “death = failure” is difficult to resist, not only because most video games code death as failing to succeed, but also because we spend a significant amount of our real lives attempting to avoid or delay death. Because of this typical definition of failure, every run in Hades might seem like a failure to a third party, given that Zagreus will always die at the end of a run, even if he successfully makes it out of the Underworld.

However, given that some people have spent upwards of 100 hours repeating this same gameplay loop, it’s clear that this isn’t how players perceive the repetition in Hades. The repetitive act of attempting a new escape in Hades is addictive because the quality of a run is not defined by its pre-determined end, but rather the things that occur during a run. Collecting new resources, discovering a new strategy, and having new dialogues with recurring characters can easily make a run feel like a win, despite the looming threat of death at the very end of it.

I would even go so far as to argue that Hades is a game that is particularly addictive for gamers who tend to avoid action-heavy games in favour of narrative-heavy games. Every death in Hades rewards players with new dialogue, opportunities to interact with new characters, and the possibility of meeting a different set of characters in the House of Hades or during your run. The point of repetition, despite inevitable death, is because we crave those non-normative means of success; dying is not failure, but rather an opportunity to try and find different variations of success.

“… And yet you still persist?”

“Why… Why do you keep showing up? In spite of knowing that the outcome shall be the same as how it always was?”

– Hades, when you fight him for the eighth time

“And yet you still persist?” has been a quote that stuck with me since I first saw it in game, which you probably knew already because I’ve referenced it four separate times in this publication already. I particularly love this quote because it perfectly encapsulates one of Hades’ core messages: if you failed to reach the point you intended to, despite everything that suggests your predetermined failure, you must still persist.

This message is even more poignant when you reflect on the circumstances of Zagreus’ escape attempts. The literal embodiments of Fate, who are capable of determining the future and communicating it to the characters in the game, have informed Zagreus that he can never remain alive on the surface for longer than a few minutes. To add insult to injury, Zagreus’ reverse katabasis is a feat all other characters claim to be impossible because it has never been done before. The quote is so powerful because it accurately reflects the absurd, yet admirable, quality of Zagreus’ tenacity. Against all odds, and even against Fate itself, he continues to persist.

One of my favorite scholarly readings of Hades is by Kit von Campe, who analyzes the game through a queer lens1. Von Campe argues that the repetitive gameplay loop of Hades, with Zagreus’ predetermined death, can be defined as “queer failure”. This is not because Zagreus is a queer character who is failing (which is what I originally thought it referred to…), but because Hades rejects normative ideas of success in video games. The game actively rewards players for dying/”failing”, whether it be through progression in the narrative, new resources, or simply by providing players with the opportunity to try again. By rupturing these normative logics of success, Hades challenges our typical sensibilities of what success should look like. Rather than framing death as failure, player death is slowly reconstructed into something to have fun with and find joy in, rather than an indictment of skill.

Reading repetition and failure in Hades through a queer lens also seems to be thematically appropriate for Zagreus, who spends most of the game queering others’, and even the Fates’, prescribed expectations for him. When Zagreus first unlocks the Fated List of Minor Prophecies, a list of prophecies decreed by the Three Fates, he laments the concept of fate: “not this determinism thing again…”. He spends most of the game queering his father’s expectations of success by attempting to escape the Underworld, he queers Persephone’s beliefs that she would not be able to return to the Underworld without starting a divine war, and he queers our expectations of how to succeed in a video game. The repetition of Hades is addicting not only because of the quality of the game, but because of how it fits into its overarching themes of carving a future for yourself in spite of normative expectations placed upon you. As such, continuous repetition is not only a means of chasing rewards, but also a personal promise to try again, even if others determine success to be far out of reach.

Just… one… more… run…!

Though Hades is far from being rooted in real life, I find its core theme of repetition to also be undeniably linked to the kind of habitual and repetitive world we find ourselves in today. Though the repetition in our daily lives is a symptom of late-stage capitalism, it is difficult to truly break repetition if you intend to pay rent and thrive as a member of society. Being truly content with repetition is also difficult, given how much newness is marketed to us as a required component for an exciting life.

Hades was one of those life-altering pieces of media for me because it directly engages with the idea of reframing how you view your repetitive experiences. In the game, you will always follow the same path, fight the same cast of bosses, and proceed through the regions in a predetermined order. The newness associated with each new run is purely a product of how you reframe and approach your attempt: do you want to try a new boon combination? A new keepsake? Perhaps a new weapon? Nothing about the experience is structurally different; the only difference is how you choose to approach it.

I also think it’s quite serendipitous that a game about repetition and reframing your experiences with routine came out during the height of the COVID-19 lockdowns. Though Hades was in development well before lockdowns began, I think its release coincided perfectly with a period of time where most people were confined to small spaces and forced to engage in the same routine, with little room for change. Perhaps one of the reasons why Hades was so successful, aside from its many technical merits as a video game, is because it prompted players to shift how they engaged with routine and repetition. Rather than attempting to chase newness, the player is encouraged to find new ways to reframe existing repetition.

Damn, I love this game

Before being forced to play Hades, I regularly complained about the lack of life-changing media I’ve experienced as of late. Because of the sheer amount of books and media I enjoy on a daily basis—and because I am in the depths of an English degree—I may have become overly critical of how creators present their themes to their audience. This often makes it difficult for me to consider a piece of media truly life-changing. Before Hades, the last thing I categorized as life-changing was Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, which I finished in the Summer of 2024.

To me, Hades is life-changing not because of its narrative, smooth gameplay, or art-style, but because of how it reframes its core roguelike mechanic of repetition. Rather than creating a difficult game for the sake of difficulty, Hades ensures that the often-frustrating repetition in roguelikes is baked into its core themes, making it feel intentional rather than merely a necessary component of the genre. The game’s embracing of repetition, through metareferential nods to it in the dialogue, makes the theme feel complete, rather than just an element of the narrative.

I am now in the depths of Hades II, which somehow managed to be an even more perfect game than its predecessor. Though I have not played enough of it to make any comprehensive commentary on it, I adore everything the Supergiant Team has done to expand the Hades universe. So, if Hades (or Hades II) is still on your wishlist or backlog, please take this as your sign to play it!

Farming sims are often relegated to a “lesser” category of games, alongside visual novels and walking sims, because they typically do not fit the cultural idea of what a video game should look or feel like. Heavy combat, high-stakes, and mechanically difficult encounters are ludic elements that gamers often assume are integral to the video game genre, leading to the sidelining of games that may be described as “cozy” or “low-stakes”. Of course, not all gamers do this. However, the prevalence of this mindset is evident when cozy gamers hesitate to call themselves “gamers, for fear that they are not “enough of a gamer” to be able to call themselves one. This is not an unfounded fear, seeing that cozy gamers are uniquely criticized online for not being a gamer because they “only playing cozy games”, whereas gamers who only play first-person shooters rarely receive the same criticism despite only playing one genre of video game.

Because cozy games are so often sidelined, there tends to be the assumption that cozy games are mechanically easy for all players. Of course, I won’t make the claim that any cozy game is as difficult as something like Dark Souls, but I think that the assumption that cozy games are easy for everyone tends to exclude those that are newest to gaming, especially when they find supposedly easy games difficult.

One game that comes to mind for me in this discussion is Stardew Valley, arguably the most famous cozy game of all time (sorry, Animal Crossing fans). As someone who has been playing games since I could properly press buttons on a DS, I found Stardew Valley to be a relatively easy game most of the time. However, saying that the game was always easy would be a lie. Fishing can be an incredibly ludicrous and high-stress 20-minute phenomenon when you’re chasing legendary fish; rushing to get past level 100 of Skull Cavern before passing out was an exercise in intense strategizing and resource management; figuring out where the hell the golden walnuts on Ginger Island were was terrible, especially since I banned myself from searching the information up online. Despite my well-developed sensibilities of the conventions of a farming simulator and how used I am to the mechanical experience of fighting and moving around given my history in gaming, there were times where Stardew Valley was frustrating and difficult for me, despite the typical assumption that cozy gaming is always easy for everyone.

Gaming Sensibilities and Accessibility

The assumption of certain games being easy for everyone can serve as a barrier for entry for people who want to try gaming for the first time. I think this is especially true for women, who were often excluded from gaming spaces as children, but may want to get into the activity now that they have the money, time, and interest. It’s easy to get frustrated when games that are marketed as easy and accessible turn out to be difficult; since you failed at the “easy” game, it’s natural to assume that gaming isn’t for you at all.

I think a lot of gamers take for granted how much a history of playing games contributes to the ease at which you pick up a game. Razbuten’s Gaming for a Non-Gamer series highlights this perfectly. When he makes his non-gamer wife try out his favourite games, he realizes that certain things which come easily to him, like moving around a map or intuitively knowing what actions can be done in a game, are skills and sensibilities that are built through years of playing a variety of games, rather than something humans are innately capable of.

Because of this, I think games like Sun Haven, which make no assumptions about what players can or cannot do, are a wonderful study in how some games can be an easy entry point into gaming.

On-Screen Help

The first thing that struck me about Sun Haven is its lack of a traditional tutorial. In most farming sims I’ve played, I’m usually stuck in a long tutorial sequence where I learn how to hoe the land, plant seeds, and milk cows. Rather than forcing me into a tutorial thinly veiled with a narrative, Sun Haven allows the player to explore on their own, providing helpful pop-ups on the left-hand side of the screen when a certain control becomes relevant to the player. For players that have never played games before, I think the pop-ups are significantly more helpful than long tutorial sequences, because it breaks up the information that players need to know rather than having the town mayor or other relevant character info-dump instructions onto you. Furthermore, by placing the tutorial in context of the player’s natural actions, the information becomes immediately relevant and implementable, solidifying it in the player’s memory.

Repetition in the help menus also contribute significantly to Sun Haven’s accessibility for new players. Whereas most games provide players with a tutorial only once, Sun Haven repeats certain pop-ups every time they become relevant to the player’s actions. I think this repetition is particularly helpful for new players, whereas traditional tutorials fail to provide players guidance when they forget certain things. Of course, once the player has familiarized themselves with the game, the pop-ups can start to get annoying. It is possible to disable the pop-ups in the settings, providing more advanced players the flexibility to play without being bothered by instructions.

Aside from the pop-ups, Sun Haven also makes the game more accessible for players by providing instructions on how to use certain items when the player hovers over the item in a shop or their inventory. Though some players may think that having this for every item may be excessive, I think it serves as a helpful way to remind newer gamers of the conventions of certain buttons (e.g. right click typically allows you to eat an item) and allow them to build gaming knowledge that may come easily to more veteran gamers.

Lastly, I think Sun Haven does a wonderful job at reminding players of the use of each button when relevant. For example, when you approach an object that you can interact with, the game will show a small “E” on the screen, reminding players that “E” is the button associated with interacting with an object. This is quite similar to how Breath of the Wild presents interactable objects, and I think it’s a great and subtle way to get players used to the different mechanical controls present within a game.

Customizing Difficulty for Players

Another thing that struck me about Sun Haven is the ability to customize what kind of experience you want to have with the game. You can customize things that I never even thought about, including if pests show up in your farm, if monsters deal damage to you, and if disruptive natural events happen in your land. These settings can obviously make the game easier for newer players, but it also allows all players to customize what kind of experience they want to have with the game. If players simply want to make a beautiful farm without polluting it with scarecrows that will ruin the aesthetic, they can turn off pests. If players hate the experience of combat and mining but still want the resources to decorate their home, they can make themselves invincible.

Though some may argue that customizing these elements ruin the balance of the game, I argue that being able to customize these elements allows you to customize your gaming experience to suit your experience level and personal interests. For a farming simulator like Sun Haven, where the goal is to enjoy your gaming experience rather than to beat a certain level or to speedrun, I think balance matters far less compared to whether the game serves your gameplay needs in the present moment. The ability to toggle certain functions on and off, rather than having to commit to certain settings when creating a save file, offers further customization as your mood or skill levels change along the course of a save file.

Gaming Balance

The one criticism I have to offer for Sun Haven is how overly simplified certain aspects of the game are. This is most obvious in the game’s romance mechanic, where I was able to raise an NPC’s heart count to the 15 hearts required for marriage before the first season of the game was over. Every time I gave him a loved gift, his heart meter would increase by a full heart, which is the fastest I’ve ever seen a heart meter raise in a farming simulator. I think for something as simple as giving an NPC a gift, the game could benefit from making the experience more prolonged, especially given that there are only so many date events and dialogue options that the character can have. I also think that having to invest a large amount of resources and time into dating one NPC tends to increase the emotional investment of a player towards the NPC, allowing for a more emotional experience when playing the game.

Should All Games Be Easy?

Though my essay may make it seem as if I argue that all games should be easy, customizable, and accessible, I don’t think this is true. Just like how I see value in games like Sun Haven, which are accessible and customizable for new gamers, I see the value in absurdly difficult games that require tenacity and high mechanical skill to master. I think there is room in the gaming industry for both, and having both as potential options for players allows them to ease into gaming and learn what style of gaming they are most drawn to.

Though Sun Haven is not perfect, nor do I think it’s the best game of its genre, I think it has some standout mechanics that make it accessible to even the newest of gamers. Additionally, since it is a relatively light game that runs with no issues on most of the newer Mac models, it can be financially accessible for newer gamers who do not have the resources to invest in more powerful technology!

The 2010s saw the decline of the standardized test as a measure of competence in American college applications, and for good reason. No shortage of studies and articles suggest that standardized test scores correlated greatly with socioeconomic status and access to resources. There was also an increasingly prevalent argument that standardized tests failed to measure the qualities of an “ideal” and “intelligent” university student: someone that was excellent in their field, a visionary, and a perfect soldier of capitalism, among many other things.

With this decline, many American universities began to emphasize the “holistic” university application process. This system posits that university applicants should be measured on their non-academic achievements, promoting diversity and excellence outside of academic success. Though in theory this system seems more equitable, given its many definitions of success, it is painfully obvious that measures of non-academic success remain highly correlated with access to resources.

However, I do not intend to discuss the inequity of the holistic application process in this essay; I think it’s low-hanging fruit, and something that many people are aware of. Instead, I want to turn to the effect that holistic application processes has on youth, especially socioeconomically privileged youth, in the way they conceptualize volunteerism, inequity, and altruism.

Pre-acceptance

One of the main components of the holistic application system is the personal project, which many people argue is basically a necessity for getting into a T20 school. A personal project can be anything imaginable, from a personal blog to the cure for cancer. However, most personal projects take the form of non-profit organizations, where individuals choose a world issue to solve or an underserved population to help. In theory, such projects have the capacity to make significant change in people’s lives. In practice, however, these kinds of project tend to do more harm than good, especially once the individual receives admission to the school of their choice.

One pitfall of many personal projects begins with its intention. Though impactful youth projects do exist, many personal projects begin with self-serving intentions, especially if an individual’s first introduction to non-profits is through the university application process. This is particularly true for the most privileged of students who have no shortage of financial resources to hire admission counsellors. Though there are no studies that corroborate this claim, I have personally observed many admissions counsellors frame starting a non-profit primarily as a means of getting into university, rather than a means of giving back to society. This sort of framing is pushed from a very young age, especially for the most ambitious of students who may begin crafting their college applications from the tender age of 12. I find that the framing of volunteerism as a means of furthering your own ambitions, as opposed to helping others, has changed how youth in privileged spaces engage in volunteering and altruistic acts. Rather than focusing on their community, youth volunteering has slowly shifted to focusing on the self.

The ethics of starting a non-profit to get into university also gets dicey when we consider how marginalized populations are impacted and marketed by these projects. One indicator of success for a personal project, according to some university counsellors, is the project’s visibility. This often manifests as a social media account or website documenting the project. One thing that I find particularly dodgy about such things is that it tends to use photographs and videos of marginalized populations to illustrate the goodness and impact that the university applicant has had on the community. It further feeds into the idea that youth non-profits should be centered on privileged youth, rather than the marginalized populations they are meant to serve. It is also difficult to know how many marginalized people within these photos consented to being marketed in such a manner.

This is further complicated by race and class, especially if documentation of the project begins to give off a sense of white/rich saviourism. Most students who have the time and resources to start non-profits are typically privileged by their economic status and geographic luck. Projects that focus on “saving” marginalized people in countries outside of the applicant’s home country are particularly weird, especially since these projects tend to focus on countries in the Global South that have been ravaged by White colonialism and framed as helpless and poor by Western media. Oftentimes, such international projects are led without cultural awareness or sensitivity, compounding the issue and further feeding into the idea of white/rich saviorism.

The continuity of projects is also something that often falls short. If personal projects are framed primarily as a means of getting into a university, what motivation does a student have to continue the project past their acceptance? The current framing of personal projects emphasizes short term personal gains over the development of altruism in youth, creating problems for the longevity of youth non-profits. This is particularly dangerous if an organization donates significant resources to an underserved community for multiple years, only to stop once its founder gets into university, leaving the community with a drain in resources.

Obviously, personal projects do not have to be shallow to be successful. If anything, personal projects that are meaningful and personally driven are probably more likely to see success in the university application process. However, when you are young and have limited time outside of academics, socializing, and growing up, the most optimal path is often to create a seemingly high impact project with the least amount of time and care spent as possible. After all, if a non-profit is framed simply as a means of getting into a university rather than a way to nurture individual passions and help others, why would one opt for the harder route, even if it is more meaningful?

However, it would be remiss to place the blame of such issues on individual youth. The holistic university application system, and the adults that surround it, makes it difficult for students aiming for top universities to escape the shallow youth non-profit pipeline. The application system itself has all but publicly announced the necessity of such non-profits to get into a highly ranked university. This creates unimaginable pressure for students to conform to creating non-profits at the impressionable age of 14 to 17. For the foreseeable future, this system is difficult to uproot, especially as universities continue to deprioritize standardized testing and emphasize “holistic” candidates.

A less obvious source of pressure comes from educators and parents. Particularly within rigorous high schools with impeccable records of sending students to top institutions, there is a subtle, but omnipresent, pressure to live up to the reputation of the school. This manifests in many ways, from high schools posting their graduating class in order of how highly ranked their university acceptances are (yes, this is something that actually happened in my high school when I graduated), to parents comparing university acceptances whilst making snide comments about how one person outperformed another. Whereas the systematic pressure to engage in shallow volunteerism is a result of the holistic application system, the cultural pressure to do so begins much closer to home.

Unfortunately, a disproportionate amount of the pressure falls on individuals who intend to use university as a means of achieving a higher quality of life for themselves and their family. Given that higher education is a primary means of achieving social mobility, conforming to the system, even if they may have personal qualms with it, is one of the simplest ways a person can secure a better future for themselves (i.e. admission into an American university—a problematic assumption in itself, but something that will be saved for a different piece!). As such, it is difficult to blame individuals for the system and culture they are situated in.

Post Acceptance

I also believe that the framing of volunteerism as a means to personal success has a significant impact on how people view the act of volunteering once they are older. Even after one has achieved admittance into a prestigious university, the framing of volunteering through a capitalist lens does not end. Volunteering is often purported as a CV-padding stepping stone to achieving capitalistic success, often in the form of summer internships or full-time job offers.

Because volunteering often has a lower barrier to acceptance than internships and full-time jobs, many university students are advised to volunteer as a means of gaining work experience, before pivoting to internships or full-time jobs. This can be in the form of volunteering for non-profits or even working for a university club. Again, this framing loses the core ethos of the altruism associated with volunteering, that is to give up time and resources to help others at no expectation of return. This framing centers the self rather than the other, completely antithetical to the purpose of volunteering.

When the intention behind volunteering becomes capitalistic, we slowly lose core tenants of the activity, including community and altruism. It makes us hyperfocus on how we can get ahead, rather than slowing down and considering how we can help others around us. It creates a sense of shallowness and the expectation that every action we make must personally benefit ourselves, especially financially. Though there are many things to blame for the rise in individualism and loss of community, I believe that the capitalistic framing of volunteerism is a major factor to consider.

How do we move forward?

If you are a high schooler reading this…

Especially if you are not American, understand that the holistic American application system is not the only path available to you. For the most part, many schools outside of America provide a more affordable higher education experience at a similar quality level without expecting you to cure cancer.

If you are set on going through the holistic American application process for one reason or another, realize that no university acceptance is worth creating a shallow non-profit that capitalizes on marginalized populations for your personal gain. It is possible to engage in the non-profit space in a way that is meaningful, and it is wonderful if you can do so. However, be cautious of how you approach your projects, and ensure that you are centering the people you are working with rather than your own gain.

If you would like to contribute to the communities around you, find a local non-profit working on a problem you are passionate about and find a way to contribute to their work! Many non-profits need more manpower. Once you learn the ropes, you can always talk with your superiors to find ways to get more involved in the organization, especially if you are particularly passionate about their cause!

If you are well past the university admissions process…

Find time to give back to your community; volunteering shouldn’t end when you have nothing to gain from it. There are likely many local organizations around you that would love your time and effort, even if it is just 1-2 hours per week. As an English and Psychology major, I’ve personally really enjoyed volunteering in the youth literacy, research, and education space. I had quite a lot of fun tutoring high school students for their literature exams during my summer break. I am by no means increasing world literacy rates, but being able to impact even one person is something that is incredibly gratifying to me!

Volunteering is also not limited to working in an established non-profit. There are many ways to connect with your local community, from helping your friends watch their children for an hour while they run to get groceries, to offering to walk your elderly neighbor’s dogs. There is a certain joy that comes from contributing to your community that cannot be replicated, no matter how much money or resources you may have. I encourage you to seek out that joy and see how community blooms from it!

I entered the study community as a passive viewer around its inception in 2015, when Tumblr was still alive and kicking. StudyQuill and tbhstudying had just started their YouTube channels, excessively buying mildliners and brush pens were all the rage, and everyone was raving over handwritten notes. Though the community, at times, was more focused on the aesthetics and performance of studying than studying itself, you could still feel that many of the posts were motivated by some personal love for productivity, studying, and learning.

If you look at the online study community today, much has changed. Most of the people who ran the OG study accounts have since graduated high school and university, causing a (reasonable) shift in their overall content. Self-help productivity bros have slowly encroached the community, replacing calligraphy notes with red pill content. The aesthetics and soul of the community as I knew it in 2015, for better or worse, has mostly died out.

However, the one thing I couldn’t help but notice was the sheer amount of AI sponsorships that has completely overrun the online study community.

These days, it feels like you can’t spend 2 minutes scrolling through online study content without being slapped in the face by an AI sponsorship. These “study AI companies” cover everything imaginable: they’ll read and summarize your scientific journals for you, they’ll turn your notes into flashcards, they’ll give you a perfect study schedule. They’ll even tell you the optimal time to shit in between study sessions!

(Okay, that last one might be a lie).

The rise in companies and start-ups turning to AI to revitalize their businesses isn’t something that I’m particularly surprised about. Since ChatGPT entered the public consciousness in 2022-2023, every company seems to have found a way to incorporate AI into their products. However, what I am particularly concerned about is what this shift towards promoting AI in study communities is indicative of. Of course, the people running these study accounts have every right to decide what sponsorships they decide to take (get the bag, I guess?), but at what point does promoting AI products to do everything for you begin undercutting the entire purpose of these online study communities as a whole?

Is it really that problematic?

Online study communities have historically striven towards promoting learning, both in academic settings and non-academic settings. Though the community has perhaps failed at times to do so in its early days because of its focus on aesthetics, a self-awareness in its own failings was somewhat present. By 2018-2019, there was a considerable amount of content from popular study influencers that focused on deinfluencing you from purchasing expensive study products, like the iPad air.

These days, however, there seems to be limited critical awareness of what the online study community is promoting through AI. Whereas the early generation of study influencers were fairly self-critical over the aesthetic consumer wave of their era, I’ve only ever seen one study influencer who has openly critiqued the excessive amounts of AI sponsorships in the online study community (shoutout to Jacinda, I love their STEM academia content).

These days, study accounts now seem to be more interested in promoting convenience through AI products, rather than promoting study skills or an interest in life-long learning. Instead of teaching you the most effective ways to read scientific literature, many study accounts will simply tell you to upload it into some website that will spew out a 3 sentence summary. Instead of teaching you the principles behind organizing information to improve learning, they’ll tell you to throw your lecturer’s slides into some app that will perfectly create neatly packaged flashcards for you. Yes, it’s convenient to do so. Yes, it allows you to get a larger volume of work done. Yes, it makes life entirely easier. However, the online study community’s addiction to convenience ruins the vision behind learning as a whole.

Learning is meant to be difficult. It’s meant to be effortful. It’s meant to be a skill that is continuously honed and sharpened. The hour it takes for you to read a piece of scientific literature develops your ability to read more efficiently. The two hours it takes you to make your own flashcards from your lecturer’s slideshow teaches you important skills in organizing information and prioritizing main ideas. Though the process of learning is often seen as an inconvenience, there is a reason why educators are constantly encouraging students to study the “inconvenient” way rather than just chucking things into AI. Skills and knowledge can only be bred from effortful practices.

What I particularly dislike about the amount of AI sponsorships in the online study space is that it diminishes the value of learning new things. It diminishes the value in inconvenience. It diminishes the value in putting effort into things. When major study accounts rave about how they can make flashcards in seconds by feeding their lecturer’s hard work into an AI (which, by the way, is unethically giving up your lecturer’s hard work to the AI overlords!!), they tell their impressionable audience that there is no purpose in learning how to trim down and synthesize large amounts of information. When someone with 500k followers talks about using ChatGPT to form the outline for his essays, they tell their audience that avoiding effortful critical thinking is the way to get an A+ in their classes. It doesn’t even matter if the post comes with a disclaimer to not use AI for plagiarism or cheating purposes — the sponsorship itself sends a different message, and far too little study accounts are cognizant of the impact that can have on younger audiences.

The promotion of AI by study influencers also communicates to its audience that the only purpose in learning is producing a specific output. Though it’s undeniable that AI can be a tool for learning in some cases, a vast majority of the AI products I see being promoted by study influencers focuses on creating a specific end product rather than aiding students in the learning process. Prioritizing output and diminishing the value in a difficult process that makes up the vast majority of most students’ lives tells students that how you get to an output doesn’t matter. When it comes to learning, this is simply categorically untrue — no student should feel as if investing in the learning process is useless, and no student should feel like only the final output they produce is important.

Why the shift towards AI?

As much as I hate to blame everything on capitalism, it does seem to be the core of many productivity-related issues. The shift towards AI to produce obscene amounts of output seems to indicate to me a shift in the amount of work we are expected to produce each day. Often times, value is ascribed to us by the amount of output we are capable of producing. So many people online love saying that those who fail to learn how to use AI will inevitably be left behind by others that embrace it, because they will be able to produce more results. But why exactly do we as individuals need to produce more output? Why do we have to increase our efficiency in everything? Why are we expected to move faster than we already are moving? We already currently live in the fastest era of humanity — is there really benefit in going any faster?

I would also like to make the argument that the rise in red-pill/self-help-bro content has also contributed to the shift towards AI in the study community. For those who are unaware, red-pill content usually refers to a subsection of the internet where men preach misogynistic ideals and incredibly odd ideas of masculinity, which often overlaps with self help and study content online. Unsurprisingly, this genre of study influencer often preaches the importance of output over everything, and achieving maximum efficiency as a means of achieving enlightenment. Slowly but surely, I’ve found that these ideas of prioritizing output and linking masculinity/self-worth to one’s productivity seems to have leaked into the content of other study influencers. And honestly, who can blame them? The audience craves convenience, they crave a way to succeed in an output-driven society, so influencers feed them exactly that. It’s a vicious cycle, and it’s difficult to see how to collectively break out of it as a community.

Tiny acts of resistance

Whether we like it or not, the online study community has a major influence on how many young students approach learning and academia, and the things that major accounts promote have a huge influence in what students will be using to learn. If you are a study influencer who is reading this, please do not underestimate the power that lies in the sponsorships you decide to take. I recognize that many of you need to put food on the table with these sponsorships, but there are so many other wonderful companies you could be promoting and earning your wages from. AI companies go after study influencers because they know that a vast majority of them have impressionable audiences who want convenience. When influencers accept those sponsorships, it sends a message to AI companies that this community is vulnerable, and can be benefitted from. If you are a study influencer, refusing such sponsorships is an act of resistance in itself.

If you, like the vast majority of us, are not a study influencer, one of the best things you can do is critically engage with the study content you see posted online. Most study influencers are normal people (albeit with huge platforms) who are susceptible to biases, have their own life experiences, and may accept questionable sponsorships for one reason or another. Though they have a moral duty to not fuck you over, you also have a duty to actively think about what you are consuming. Critical thinking is an act of resistance, and often times its our only avenue of resistance — you should never let anyone tell you otherwise.

As individuals, choosing to live a slower life and to deprioritize output can also be an act of resistance. With how fast the world moves, and how much output we can produce with the state of modern technology, there is really no conceivable reason as to why we should be going any faster. It’s okay to not write an essay in one day. It’s okay to spend more than 10 minutes writing an important email. You are meant to struggle and stumble through life, not to produce perfect outputs at predetermined times. Live slowly, live freely — it is okay to be imperfect and human.

At the end of the day, I cannot tell you what to do (or not do) with respect to AI. But I hope this has at least prompted you to think twice about when you are using such tools, and how it may influence your ability to think on the long term. The funny thing about the brain is that it loves to get rid of neurons that are no longer in use (look up synaptic pruning!), so every time you feel like not reading that paper or not writing that essay or getting a bot to write your email, please remember that your neurons are the price you pay for your convenience.

Some final thoughts

I could honestly go on and on for pages about all my thoughts related to AI, from its environmental impacts to its ethical impacts, but I felt that those topics have been adequately discussed by others who are far more knowledgeable in those fields than I am. I wish more people would talk about how harmful AI can be in education, and how, as it stands, it harms students more than it helps them.

From my personal experience, it is 100% possible to juggle a fulfilling and busy life without AI. Since I entered university 2 years ago, I have only used GenAI a single time, and I did not submit any of the output it gave me for my assignments. I work a job, I volunteer at multiple causes, I have a 3.98 GPA with a full course load, I spend my weekends with friends, and I don’t use GenAI because it goes against my personal values. Don’t let anyone tell you that it isn’t possible to live a successful and happy life in this world without GenAI, because that is a categorically false statement.

In the future, I want to write more about GenAI, specifically about how people are conflating the push against GenAI with Nicholas Carr’s famous critique on Google. If this article reaches many people, I just know that someone is going to compare me to Carr (whose article I wholeheartedly disagree with; I love Googling things <3) — please wait for my next essay on GenAI before you make that comment.

Other than that, I would love to hear your opinions, regardless of whether you agree with me or not!

I hope you enjoyed reading this! I intend to post longer essays like this twice a month when possible. If you enjoy cultural commentary, random thoughts on books/media, and reflections on academia/student life, you might enjoy some of the other things I’ve written <3

Thank you so much for sticking around until the end of this essay. I look forward to writing the next one!

With love,

Nat (@turnaboutcafe)

It would be surprising if anyone hasn’t heard some variation of “the curtains were just blue” joke. It was a long-standing internet joke that gained popularity in the 2010s, and it seems that everyone has heard some variation of it. For English majors, it usually manifests into jibes about how unemployable their degree is. However, despite the mindset being wildly proliferated during Tumblr’s peak, a separate side of the internet has begun pushing back against it, raising questions surrounding the purpose of literature. Should we be reading for pleasure, or reading to gain a sense of understanding of the world? Or, as many people enjoy reducing it to, are you an anti-intellectual or an intellectual? Do you read classics or contemporary romance? Are the curtains just blue, or do they symbolize some sort of melancholy feeling?

Many of these arguments fail because they conflate the reading for pleasure/understanding debate with unrelated stereotypes, two separate things that cannot be equated. It isn’t inherently anti-intellectual to read contemporary romance for pleasure, and it isn’t inherently intellectual to read classics for a greater understanding of the world. The harm of the “the curtains were just blue” line of thinking isn’t that people refuse to deeply analyze their books for symbolism or deeper themes; it’s that people refuse to acknowledge that all forms of literature and language, like every form of art, subtly influences our beliefs and mindsets about the world, even if we don’t explicitly recognize it.

The general ire towards the blue curtains likely begins in high school literature due to its failures in teaching media literacy. High school English classes often fail to teach us that language is an important tool, and we must understand the ways in which it influences us if we intend to be informed people. Instead, so many academic institutions choose to excessively focus on minute symbolism without taking the time to teach students why such attention to detail is so important. Admittedly, there are no statistics to back this up, but much of high school literature can feel meaningless to the average student because we are never given a greater reason as to why literary analysis is applicable in our day to day lives. Why would any student care for something that seems to lack a greater, more practical application?

As an avid high school literature essay reader (which just means that I seem to be the go-to English major senior to approach for essay feedback), I find one similarity between all the essays I read: everyone seems to be particularly good at analyzing the meanings, the symbols, the themes that a novel has, but no one seems to take a second to wonder why these things are important. Yes, environmentalist organizations love using green in their recyclable products, because it symbolizes nature, but why is it important? How does this influence the way we perceive the product? How does it push us to do something? In many subtle ways, literature and art pushes us to do things we wouldn’t otherwise do, and learning to identify these things and how they influence us is precisely why we need high school literature classes. Ironically, this is the one thing that high school literature classes often fail to do.

Inevitably, the bulk of high school students that do not end up as English majors grow tired of the minute, meaningless analysis that high school literature classes often force you to do to score well. As an English major, even I grew tired of it after graduating high school, and only rekindled my love for analysis well after starting university. In return, this model of education breeds a population that resists the possibility of language as a tool for influence. The problems within high school English classes are plentiful enough to warrant a separate essay, but my message to the “curtains are just blue” demographic is this: I promise that there are so many ways that language influences us in our daily lives — it is beautiful, and useful, to know the ways in which it does

We can take contemporary examples to illustrate how language influences our perceptions of world events. Are the events in Gaza described as a war, a conflict, a genocide, or an ethnic cleansing in the headlines you read? Though some may consider these terms interchangeable, it isn’t difficult to see how these different terms would shape different beliefs about the genocide in Gaza, even if you only skim the headlines of news articles over morning coffee. Even my decision to use the word “genocide” instead of “conflict” or “war” indicates my political stance on Gaza, and could in turn influence your perception of the situation. As so much of our understanding of world events hinge on others reporting those events to us, it is becoming increasingly important to be able to identify and understand how language can be used to aid understanding, or as a political weapon. To be an informed citizen is to be able to understand how we can be misled at every turn.

News articles and reporting aside, art and literature provide a similarly deep influence on our beliefs, even in books that may be considered unworthy of academic analysis. Despite the deep divide online between contemporary readers and readers of classic novels about their reading habits, they ironically tend to agree on one important (and false) fact: that classic novels contain a wealth of information to be analyzed, and contemporary fiction was written purely for entertainment. Both sides inevitably make the same mistake despite claiming to support opposing sides of the debate: that the blue curtains mean something melancholy in classics, and the curtains are just blue in contemporary novels. This simply leads to the mistaken belief that only certain kinds of language can influence us.

The truth is, language does not have to be artistically or technically acclaimed in order to subconsciously influence our beliefs. Any piece of language, no matter how unserious or minute, can do so. As a result, any piece of language can be worth a second thought, and perhaps many more thoughts after that. It is fairly apparent, and well documented, that reading fiction plays an important role in the development of empathy, particularly because reading fiction is a simulation of social interaction, making it increasingly important to critically think about how commonly dismissed contemporary novels may influence our perceptions of our own lives. After all, our lives are equally contemporary.

Of course, on the flip side, the contemporary romance genre in particular has widely been criticized for romanticizing toxic, abusive behaviors, especially within relationships. Though I wholeheartedly agree that this is a problem evident in contemporary romance novels, I don’t understand why criticisms of problematic writing often seems to be particularly directed towards the romance genre; many classics are wildly problematic, even for the period it was written in, and many writers of contemporary classics still subtly uphold archaic and oppressive social structures in their critically acclaimed books (looking at you, Murakami). Yes, romance novels can be incredibly problematic, but it seems to be hypocritical to only elevate these kinds of criticisms towards a singular genre, instead of acknowledging that it is a problem in all sorts of genres and criticizing such displays of misogyny with equal fervency.  

If anything, the widely criticized problems within the romance genre simply indicate a further need for such books to be scrutinized in the way that classics are, for such books to be considered equally worthy of analysis and a second thought. It’s easy to think that “the curtains are just blue” when reading such palatable novels, to dismiss problematic novels as so-called trashy romances, but as we read, it’s important to consider how such content, in the most subtle, subconscious ways, could translate into our beliefs and behaviors. When we consider how the rise in popularity of morally gray men and the romanticization of abuse in novels of all genres may influence young readers’ perception of romance, it doesn’t seem so trashy or unserious anymore, does it? Subconscious agendas and beliefs will always find their way into all writing, and it’s more important than ever that we stop dismissing certain texts as unworthy of critical consideration.

However, despite my heavy focus on the need to analyze and critically consider language in all forms of literature, I would like to point out that the value of reading doesn’t merely lie in the message that the writing carries, even if we should never forget the potential influence of language. Entertainment, joy, and discovering a community are also equally valuable things to derive from literature outside of meaning. Both classics and novels can fulfill very different values in your life depending on your intent when reading them, but the value of one does not diminish the value of other; these are not mutually exclusive things. Regardless, reflecting on the influence of language in art consumed for pleasure can have on you personally remains important, even if it seems like a piece of art exists for no other reason but hedonistic consumption. 

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