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I think this has been posted on here before but this one always makes me laugh

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One time in highschool our teacher said that it was never under any circumstances okay for a boy to hit a girl and I asked “not even in self defense?” and he said “no” so I pointed to the kid next to me and said “so if I just started whaling on this guy then he’d just have to take it? What the hell” and he was like “you two have had the same homeroom for three years do you not know his name” and I was like “that’s not the point right now” and Mr. K if you’re out there reading this I’m still mad about it

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let's just quickly check in with how things are going for the Le Pen family in 2025

January 7th, 2025:

March 31st, 2025:

NICE!!

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hey gamers I’ve started watching star trek does anyone else see the romantic tension between captain kirk and mr. spock

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Mister Rogers

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I’ve been listening to the people in the apartment below me have arguments for two years now and I still can’t figure out what language they’re speaking. The best I can narrow it down is like if Portuguese and Hebrew had a baby. Is that a common pidgin combination

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No Other Land (2024 🇵🇸 Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Ballal, Rachel Szor)

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So my problem with most ‘get to know your character’ questioneers is that they’re full of questions that just aren’t that important (what color eyes do they have) too hard to answer right away (what is their greatest fear) or are just impossible to answer (what is their favorite movie.)  Like no one has one single favorite movie. And even if they do the answer changes.

If I’m doing this exercise, I want 7-10 questions to get the character feeling real in my head. So I thought I’d share the ones that get me (and my students) good results: 

What is the character’s go-to drink order? (this one gets into how do they like to be publicly perceived, because there is always some level of theatricality to ordering drinks at a bar/resturant)

What is their grooming routine? (how do they treat themselves in private)

What was their most expensive purchase/where does their disposable income go? (Gets you thinking about socio-economic class, values, and how they spend their leisure time)

Do they have any scars or tattoos? (good way to get into literal backstory) 

What was the last time they cried, and under what circumstances? (Good way to get some *emotional* backstory in.) 

Are they an oldest, middle, youngest or only child? (This one might be a me thing, because I LOVE writing/reading about family dynamics, but knowing what kinds of things were ‘normal’ for them growing up is important.)

Describe the shoes they’re wearing. (This is a big catch all, gets into money, taste, practicality, level of wear, level of repair, literally what kind of shoes they require to live their life.)

Describe the place where they sleep. (ie what does their safe space look like. How much (or how little) care / decoration / personal touch goes into it.)

What is their favorite holiday? (How do they relate to their culture/outside world. Also fun is least favorite holiday.) 

What objects do they always carry around with them? (What do they need for their normal, day-to-day routine? What does ‘normal’ even look like for them.) 

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Nostalgia is wanting to reach back and hold the happiness, without the sadness. A fine dream, but the grief has always been there, impossible to escape. So often, happiness is shaped by it. Grief is not noble, is not something that creates beauty, but it shapes the world around it. Enough sadness in an era will become a force of its own, inseparable from the beautiful things people carve out from it.

The 1970s were haunted by World War 2. That sadness is not evident in Rankin Bass movies, yet—to be in the 1970s means to be haunted in a way we cannot be today.

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The blanket blepper...........

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wow! your understanding of this character is so. . . Unique! just wondering by the way but when was the last time you directly interacted with the source media

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got bored after exams and decided to invent a new school of philosophy by taking five opinionated and well-read friends with wildly differing views and doing a road trip where we discuss for the entire drive for ten days while visting cities with historical significance. every time we agree on something we write it down. it's day two and the words ontology and materiality have already lost meaning. the only two points we have after thirty hours of driving are that the earth and the moon are not the same place but exist in the same reality and that democracy was invented (point in time pending). it's going great

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Ok but like. What the fuck is there to do on the internet anymore?

Idk when I was younger, you could just go and go and find exciting new websites full of whatever cool things you wanted to explore. An overabundance of ways to occupy your time online.

Now, it's just... Social media. That's it. Social media and news sites. And I'm tired of social media and I'm tired of the news.

Am I just like completely inept at finding new things or has the internet just fallen apart that much with the problems of SEO and web 3.0 turning everything into a same-site prison?

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Training my parents to be funnier

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The biggest misconception in public schools is that literary analysis is about proving you can be right or wrong about a book you read

Literary analysis isn’t about the book

It’s not even about being right

It’s about performing an investigation and presenting your case to the jury

It doesn’t matter if your defendant killed that guy or not. If you can convince the jury he didn’t, you’ve won

And the incredible life skill of spinning bulletproof bullshit out your ass with a handful of facts and a prayer is soooooooo much more valuable than anyone’s ever gonna tell you