#everyday skills

[calcedon79]

Hello everyone, I need your swarm knowledge, so to speak:

Next year I have half an hour every day to discuss things with the students in my class (14/15 year olds) that could be useful to them later in life. Things from understanding subscriptions and contracts correctly, household math, making professional phone calls to complaining appropriately somewhere. In other words, everyday skills.

(Yes, I know that the parents should actually be responsible for this, but just assume that the parents aren't interested or can't get their own lives together)

Do you have any more ideas? Not manual skills (there are relevant courses for that) but other things that you wish someone had taught you?

Let's hear it.

[elumish]

One way to build your writing skills--a way that I would argue is necessary if you ever want to write original fiction for publication--is to write from the point of view of, and with the focus on, a wide range of different characters.

it's really easy to fall into a rut when writing the same character or characters all the time, or even the same type of character all the time, where characterization tends to become muscle memory as much as anything else. You know what that character will do, so you know what characters of that type will do, so you know what characters will do, so that's what your characters do.

And when you don't have to think about it, you don't build--and can start to atrophy--those muscles required to do detailed, specific, engaging character building. What does it mean for this character, in this time, to do or experience this thing. What are the myriad of things that have built your character up to being who they are, and how do those things (individually and in aggregate) impact the choices that they make, the actions that they take, the reactions that they have, and the people that they engage with.

What can end up happening--and I see this all the time in published fiction--is that authors end up only being able to write 2-3 character types of each gender, and it all feels a bit samey.

Without opening a book by so many authors I have read, I can predict with a fair amount of accuracy what most of their characters will act like, because it's kind of the same across the board. Even when they start distinct, they end up drifting towards the same personality/character types like carcinization.

Writing from the point of view of/focusing on a range of characters (especially if they are different genders, of different backgrounds, with different wants and fears and habits and interests and personalities) forces you to actually be specific in your writing, if you want it to be any good.

Your 15-year-old B-student who really wants to spend their time playing rugby shouldn't sound like your 45-year-old businessman with a penchant for collecting Star Trek action figures who is trying to plan the perfect anniversary for his wife and neither of them should sound like the 23-year-old who spends their time going out at nightclubs and showing up a little bit hungover at work and worrying about finding a job that will let them move out of the apartment they're sharing with three other people.

Practice, and then practice some part, and then keep practicing. Write different characters, ask yourself if you're writing a character a certain way because you think they would be that way or because it's just habit, and be specific.

[ablankboredtoinsanity]

Spock trying to meditate but it's Touch His Tit Tuesday

a humble offering for @self-made-purgatories

[atalienart]

✧*:･ﾟArt summary 2024

2014-2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021

[pikhachu]

girls when their issues get dismissed as anxiety for the millionth time

[turtleducsk]

recharging ❄️

[vanilla-poisons]

No matter how funny you think you are you will never be funnier than Jamil doing a whole fucking ballroom dance routine on accident and then falling over in despair while mentally saying “without thinking…MY DANCING SOUL!!”

[baklavagyna]

trying to get my art pussy back in working order so here’s a little rolan moment

[blackbackedjackal]

One of the best and worst representations of Black people in modern anime. Both of these were released in the same year (2019).

[aro-culture-is]

aro culture is getting really annoyed with the relationships unit in your sociology class because the whole thing is just 100% amatonormativity.

:\

if think your teacher, professor, and/or TAs might be interested in discussing the concept, I have some idea of bringing up the topic?

I'd personally say something like, "Hi, During our section in sociology around relationships, I couldn't help but think it would be interesting to discuss how a sociological theory called "amatonormativity" might relate to these lessons. I gathered a few sources from the professor who coined it, a thesis written on it, and a law review written about the connection between it and laws in the USA. There's some connections between its use in feminist thought and in queer theories, and I'd love to know your thoughts about it. I personally was thinking of when [specific statement] was said, and how I would apply this theory. I hope it's as interesting to you as it is to me."

Coiner's current webpage: https://elizabethbrake.com/amatonormativity/

Thesis: https://vc.bridgew.edu/honors_proj/330/ (click download in upper right hand corner for the PDF, depending on the individual it may be worth downloading and sending that rather than a link)

Law Review: https://uclawreview.org/2022/06/09/amatonormativity-in-the-law-an-introduction/

[louismygf]

some louis tomlinsons i never posted ^_^

[akai-akai]

Imagine going to the carnival with Simon.

Gender-neutral reader.

Let's say he's on leave and there's a traveling carnival heading through town so of course you drag Simon along with you, naturally. Coerce him into buying you both corndogs and lemon shake-ups and funnel cake and play all the carnival games, and he definitely gets frustrated when he can't land those god damned rings on the bottles.

But then you spot it a few pop-up stands away. A massive stuffed animal that you absolutely need to take home. And just your luck, it's one of those arcade-like shooter games, so you're turning to him with the biggest puppy eyes you can manage and asking him so sweetly to win it for you.

And ohohoooo boy, as soon as you point it out to Simon, he's on a fucking mission. Slaps the money down in front of the vendor, gets in position, and he looks so bloody attractive when he's so focused and effortlessly hitting target after target with the cheaply-made, unreliable toy rifle. He even adjusts for the off-center scope while you watch excitedly behind him.

The vendor has to stop him short before he wins the entire fucking wall of stuffed animals and pool floaties in one round, and then they get the comically large stuffed animal off the rack for you and Simon takes it and turns to you with a smug look, his dark and brooding demeanor contrasting with the cartoonish and comically large prize in his arms.

You take it from him happily as you both make your way back to his car, the silly thing taking up the entirety of the back seat.

"Hope that thing doesn't replace me in bed tonight," he grumbles, amused.

"I'd never," you say to him. (It ends up in bed with you anyway, but he's possessive enough that he'll scrap with the bloody thing to spoon with you. You'll wake up in the morning with the stuffed animal mysteriously having ended up on the other side of the room.)

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inspired by my ex-military uncle scaring that poor carnival game vendor in a shooting game at our local carnival last week winning a giant pink orca for a little girl (the same uncle who blew a giant hole in the ground with a firework on the 4th of July)

the last part's inspired by that "me and my girlfriend and her life-sized body pillow" meme that was circulating fandoms a while back

[mccallhero]

killian jones + the instincts of a survivor

[haliaiii]

Al haitham stuff

[crzakioo]

WE DON'T HAVE ASSIGNMENTS TODAY SO..

(have tired Kinito, he hasn't slept for days.)

chat do we fw with this Kinito design... 😍

Best work yet, won't lie!!

[kangals]

Kep did a demo run of the CGC test yesterday, he did really well and only failed on 1 step (1.5, kind of), which was the distance stay. that was actually where I expected he’d fail, he struggles a lot with stays (combo of poor impulse control + FOMO). and he half-failed the “greet a stranger” part because he did try and jump up at first, and then the person we were using was like “oh I just ate a bag of chips” and used her other hand to pet and he stayed sitting, so we’re not sure if he was jumping bc rude or bc he smelled snacks.

he gets a final run opportunity next week, so we’ll try and work on practicing his stays more and see if we can make enough progress to get it done. if he still can’t do it I’m not too pressed, I think at that point it’s just a matter of letting him grow up a bit and regain some brains. he did really well on everything else (no barking! what an experience) so I’m still pleased overall!