i ran a super smash brothers club in high school and we literally had to shut it down for this reason. like the class that used the room after us was complaining that the room was unusable
It’s a minor pet peeve, but it is everywhere today so errrr…. please keep in mind that “Rest in Peace”/RIP literally comes from a latin phrase and is a very very deeply Christian expression.
When talking about the departed, Jews say “may their memory be a blessing.”
So please, when talking about a dead person who is Jewish, try to keep in mind that RIP is a Christian phrase.
I learned something today, so I’ll pass it on so someone else can learn too
This Finnish magazine had a thing teaching kids Internet safety and it has scenarios with the characters and you have to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ based on whether it’s correct or not.
Uncle Scrooge publishes a lot of advertisements for his companies on the Internet and writes articles about money, but he also has a habit of arguing with Flintheart Glomgold on message boards and taunt him. “As long as my name isn’t on the messages no one will know it was me”. Is Uncle Scrooge correct?
Today is Leelah Alcorn’s birthday. This beautiful soul, whose time in this world was cut short with her own hand, pushed by those who pushed her true self away, she will live on in our hearts. Please never forget her, and who she really was. And in that, please remember her struggle, and know that that same struggle carries on as a burden on thousands of trans-teenage shoulders. Support those you know, and never push them away. Hold them close and raise them up.
We love you, Leelah. Rest in peace. November 15, 1997-December 28, 2014
I think the best piece of character design advice I ever received was actually from a band leadership camp I attended in june of 2017.
the speaker there gave lots of advice for leaders—obviously, it was a leadership camp—but his saying about personality flaws struck me as useful for writers too.
he said to us all “your curses are your blessings and your blessings are your curses” and went on to explain how because he was such a great speaker, it made him a terrible listener. he could give speeches for hours on end and inspire thousands of people, but as soon as someone wanted to talk to him one on one or vent to him, he struggled with it.
he had us write down our greatest weakness and relate it to our biggest strength (mine being that I am far too emotional, but I’m gentle with others because I can understand their emotions), and the whole time people are sharing theirs, my mind was running wild with all my characters and their flaws.
previously, I had added flaws as an after thought, as in “this character seems too perfect. how can I make them not-like-that?” but that’s not how people or personalities work. for every human alive, their flaws and their strengths are directly related to each other. you can’t have one without the other.
is your character strong-willed? that can easily turn into stubbornness. is your character compassionate? maybe they give too many chances. are they loyal? then they’ll destroy the world for the people they love.
it works the other way around too: maybe your villain only hates the protagonist’s people because they love their own and just have a twisted sense of how to protect them. maybe your antagonist is arrogant, but they’ll be confident in everything they do.
tl;dr “your curses are your blessings, and your blessings are your curses” there is no such thing as a character flaw, just a strength that has been stretched too far.
This is such a fabulous flip side of what I’ve always known about villians. That their biggest weakness is that they always assume their own motivations are the motives of others.
aceofsquiddles 