Pop Culture Grammar Bytes: Its Vs. It’s

What does pop culture (cartoons, manga, comics, anime, videogames, books, TV shows, movies, etc.) have in common with grammar? A lot more than you might think! This month, we're using pop culture to examine the difference between it's and its...

New Years Special: Reflecting on a Year of Your Blogs Part 4

In celebration of the New Year, I'm sharing out my favorite posts from 2017. These posts are all written by talented bloggers around WordPress, and I hope that you enjoy them as much as I did. Today, we're taking a look at blogs from June and July...

Holiday Community Collaboration Question: What About Stories Makes You Happy?

I don't know how December came up so quickly, but here it is, shepherding in all of its warmth and holiday cheer. Whatever holidays you celebrate this season, I'm wishing you wonderful ones. In the meantime, I wanted to celebrate and hear from YOU in another community collaboration project...

Celebrating 50 Followers! Come Share Your Favorites Collaboration

Pop Culture Literary is celebrating 50 Followers by celebrating YOU! I wanted to use this opportunity to invite you to share your favorite pop culture narratives. Talk about your current or all-time favorites from any pop culture genre (games, movies, cartoons, anime, comics, etc.). Share what you...

A Beginning: Discovering Literary Elements in Castles and Everyday Places

Back in high school, I never considered myself much of a reader or writer. Sure, I loved reading manga and challenging my writing skills in anime RPG forums, but it was all non-academic to me. My teachers always seemed disappointed or disinterested in these hobbies, so I wrote them off as being purely entertainment. It wasn't until years later that I made the connection that my hobbies could be studied and used for growth and academics...

Theme Delivery Service

Themes give creative works their personality. You can’t play a video game, read a comic, or watch a show without running into some sort of theme. When romance blossoms in a particular shoujo anime, or a character proves that staying true to yourself works better than faking your personality, you’ve got theme. For a deeper understanding of this literary device, let’s take a look at the 1989 film Kiki’s Delivery Service...

Raising LGBTQ+ Visibility Through Pop Culture (Part 1)

One of the biggest concerns for the LGBTQ+ community involves visibility and positive representation in the media. Wider representation benefits the movement, as well as allowing individual members of the community (especially youth) to see themselves portrayed positively in the world around them. I wanted to start the month off with a post highlighting various creative works that contribute to this visibility. In my selection process, I tried to choose works that represented a wide variety...

Symbolism Bonus: Rise of the Guardians

While discussing Over the Garden Wall, we took a look at a few specialized symbols from the show. I know that symbolism can take a few tries to understand, so I wrote this as a follow-up to explore a specialized symbol in another work. Let’s take a look at Rise of the Guardians...