u/Action_Unlucky

I'm not even talking about kids nowadays who use AI to write their entire essays. I mean simpler, more subtle stuff like built-in suggestions to finish sentences, autocorrect, and kids copying and pasting information from Google summaries. Everybody ends up sounding the same, so I can't really even assess their understanding. I miss grading twenty essays for The Outsiders and seeing all of these weird typos, patterns, and strange circular logic that varied from student to student. They all had these unique, undeveloped styles that hadn't been corrected yet. Now, with everything being spoon-fed to them, all their styles are blurring together. It's a silly reason I'm glad there's been a recent trend of schools going back to pen and paper.

I’m an ELA teacher. Believe me, I get it. Kids are years behind, behavior can be horrendous, parents can be awful, teachers are exhausted, attention spans are shot, and some students will sit there doing nothing while you practically beg them to engage.

Audiobook support made more sense when most kids could actually follow the narrative. But if a student already struggles to process what they’re reading, how is nonstop narration supposed to help? The information just washes over them. They miss something, can’t go back at their own pace, lose the thread, and zone out. The text is exactly what lets them stop, reread, struggle through a sentence, and actually process it. They may struggle with the text and, in some cases, not even have the skills to get through it, but it's still the only way to ensure they can do all of this at their own pace.

I know failing huge numbers of students isn’t feasible. Schools would stop functioning. But enough teachers need to eventually say fuck this. If the book is too hard, force the issue for an easier one. Scaffold heavily. Give more time. It might not work, it might even go horribly and result in a bunch of kids failing. But make them read. Even if they hate it, even if they refuse, even if they struggle enormously. The expectation has to remain. Otherwise, kids learn that if they resist long enough, the work disappears. 

As I recall, Alex is dropped off at a rural bus station or something, right? I remember an extended opening scene where he sleeps on the bench after dark and hears things in the woods. Then the next scene is his uncle picking him up in the morning. So what happened? Was he just left on the bench overnight, hahaha? I might be totally misremembering this, but I remember thinking it was bizarre.

Okay, very weird question. I’m writing a Sonic fan musical for fun, and I’m hoping to put it online around the end of the year. It’s gotten kind of out of hand at this point. It’s two acts, like 20 songs, full script, demos, all of that. I play piano, and I’ve written all the songs myself, so I’m basically trying to give each character their own musical sound.

I’m rewriting some stuff right now, and I want to give Silver more to do/sing, but I cannot figure out what his music should sound like. For reference, Sonic's music is mostly 90s ska/2000s indie rock, like Less Than Jake and Mighty Mighty Bosstones. Tails is more nerd rock, Weezer/They Might Be Giants/Flobots kind of stuff. Shadow gets the huge dramatic Les Miserables type songs but with heavy guitars and kind of a Green Day punk thing crossed with opera.

Silver is the one I’m stuck on. I’ve thought about electronic, post-rock, maybe some combination of those, but I also don’t want to just do “future guy with synths” because that feels too easy. What kind of music do you guys hear for Silver? Any bands/songs/genres that feel right?

I probably can't go back next season now, but I will happily answer any questions.

Maybe they could even do a poll for the community, lmao.

Okay so I came up with an entire season of Survivor with Ed, Edd n Eddy characters. I'm including the whole boot order, idols, jury, winner, etc.

The prize is a million dollars and a lifetime supply of jawbreakers.

Tribe #1 - Chunky Puff: Eddy, Edd, Kevin, Plank, Jonny, Marie and Nazz

Tribe #2 - Pudding Skin: Rolf, Eddy's Brother, Ed, May, Lee, Sarah and Jimmy

Yes, Plank is a contestant. While Jonny is still in the game, production lets him carry Plank into the voting booth and basically cast whatever vote Plank "tells" him to cast because they're both active players.

This becomes an issue after Jonny gets voted out. They let Jonny stay around as Plank's interpreter because otherwise Plank can't communicate with anyone, but they won't let an eliminated contestant go into the voting booth and fill out another player's ballot. 

Production basically argues over these rules and eventually just gives up.

So if Jonny gets voted out, he can still tell everyone what Plank says at camp and Tribal, but he can't participate in the actual vote since he's eliminated. Since Plank can't physically write a name himself, he just forfeits his vote every round from then on. Nobody really cares because it's Plank. Why not go to the end of the game with a piece of wood that you know you can beat?

14th: EDDY

Eddy approaches Survivor exactly like you'd expect. Within a few hours, he's appointed himself leader, is promising people cuts of the million dollars, trying to control the rice, and treating the tribe like one of his scams. Edd sticks with him obviously, but everyone else is already sick of it, and he goes 5-2.

Ed is on the other tribe and is genuinely upset when he finds out. He asks if they're allowed to vote Eddy back into the game.

13th: SARAH

Sarah actually isn't terrible at Survivor when she's calm. She understands loyalty, she's manipulative, and being Sarah gives her the useful advantage that everyone is scared of making her angry.

Unfortunately, Lee makes Sarah angry.

Sarah gets completely fixated on getting her out and becomes impossible to reason with, so everybody decides Sarah has to go first. She leaves 4-3.

Jimmy was Sarah's closest ally and takes it way more personally than anybody expects, which is basically the start of his villain arc. Early on, you assume Eddy's Brother is going to be the main villain of the season. Instead, Jimmy slowly becomes a tiny, catty reality-show psychopath who contributes nothing physically and is somehow one of the best players there.

12th: JONNY

Jonny's problem is that you cannot tell him anything. You give him one piece of information and ten minutes later Kevin knows, Marie knows, Rolf knows, etc. There's also this running thing where whenever Jonny says he has an idea, the idea sucks, but whenever he starts with "Plank says..." it's terrific Survivor advice.

Jonny eventually gets pissed at Plank over something, refuses to do what Plank is telling him, does his own batshit crazy plan instead, and gets himself voted out.

That's when the Plank voting problem starts. Production keeps Jonny around to translate for him, which everyone hates because they're still using rice on a guy they already voted out. Jonny isn't allowed to cast Plank's ballots anymore because he's no longer a contestant. So Plank loses his vote but still gets carried everywhere by Jonny, who continues yelling "PLANK SAYS..." every five minutes.

Edd also finds the Hidden Immunity Idol around here.

11th: LEE

There's a swap, and Lee immediately tries to take control. Jimmy quietly finds a Hidden Immunity Idol while all of this is happening. Nazz meanwhile ends up in probably the best position in the game without really doing anything flashy. She's athletic, useful, loyal, everyone likes her, and people actually believe what she tells them. She holds enough people together to get Lee out right before the merge.

At this point Nazz looks so obviously like the winner.

10th: NAZZ

By the merge, people have started figuring out that something is up with Jimmy.

Nazz, Kevin and Edd compare notes and realize he's been quietly getting information from everybody since Sarah left. Different people think they have their own thing going with him, he seems to know about votes he wasn't supposed to know about, and he keeps somehow staying out of the line of fire. They basically come to the correct conclusion that Jimmy is scheming his ass off behind the scenes. It's also early in the merge, and some people don't want to rock the boat, so he seems like the easiest consensus vote possible.

Nazz, Edd, Kevin and Ed vote Jimmy. Jimmy has Marie, May, and Eddy's Brother. Rolf has decided Eddy's Brother is some kind of great dragon that must be slain and votes for him completely on his own.

Jimmy pulls out his idol, wipes the four votes against him, and sends Nazz home.

That's the moment everyone realizes Jimmy isn't just being sneaky, he's actually really fucking good at Survivor.

Earlier Jonny had been running around telling everyone Plank said Jimmy had something in his pocket.

They ignored him.

9th: KEVIN

Kevin is basically built for Survivor until he starts getting too comfortable. He's great at challenges, useful around camp, and has decent instincts. Then he starts acting like captain of the tribe and telling people what they're doing instead of asking. Jimmy sees where this is headed before Kevin does and gets Marie, May, Rolf, and Brother together.

Kevin gets blindsided 5-3.

He's obviously pissed about losing, but he almost seems more bothered by the fact that Jimmy was the one who got him.

8th: MAY

May starts the season miserable and wanting to go home. People make fun of her for it, which just makes her stubborn enough to stay. She never becomes some mastermind or anything, but people start liking having her around. She hasn't really screwed anyone over, she's sympathetic, and without noticing it, she's becoming somebody who might be really hard to beat at the end.

Marie realizes this and knows she has to cut her own sister eventually.

Eddy's Brother wants May gone too, except because he's an asshole, he can't just blindside her normally. He reassures her over and over that she's safe, gets her really comfortable, and makes the whole thing more humiliating than it needs to be.

Marie votes May out, but she's already pissed watching her sister leave crying, and then Brother laughs about it afterward, and Marie just goes feral on him. That's basically the beginning of them openly hating each other for the rest of the game.

Plank had already told Jonny that May was dangerous because nobody was mad at her.

Everybody laughed.

7th: ROLF

Edd, Ed and Rolf finally think they have Jimmy. Jimmy gets three votes, then pulls out another idol because apparently this little bastard found the merge Hidden Immunity Idol too.

All three votes disappear and Jimmy, Marie and Brother send Rolf home. Rolf leaves with this weird grudging respect for Jimmy.

6th: EDDY'S BROTHER

This is my favorite part because Edd and Marie temporarily become allies. Marie has been bothering Edd the whole game in her usual way, flirting with him, bullying him, calling him her boyfriend, messing with him, etc.

Eventually, Edd actually snaps at her. He basically asks why she always has to do this, why she can't ever talk to him like a normal human being, why she and her sisters have spent their entire lives making the Eds miserable.

And for once Marie doesn't immediately laugh at him.

If anything, she's impressed. Double D actually standing there and telling her off interests her a lot more than him running away. They both want Eddy's Brother gone. They're both worried about Jimmy, and Edd starts thinking that maybe Marie actually respects him now.

She does.

That's the problem.

Marie's version of respecting Edd is basically, "ooooh, this could be fun." She starts liking the idea that the two of them could get to the end together and she could beat her "boyfriend" at Survivor. That's romantic to her. Edd thinks they've finally established some boundaries while Marie is actually having the time of her life.

They work together on the Brother vote. Brother and Jimmy think they're getting Edd. Marie lets them think that, but makes sure enough gets back to Edd that he knows to play his idol. Brother and Jimmy vote Edd, Edd and Ed vote Brother, Marie throws her vote on Jimmy. Edd plays the idol, and Brother goes 2-1. Edd thinks this is his big move. He finally stood up to Marie, and he pulled off this huge idol play.

Marie is perfectly happy to let him feel that way, but in confessionals you realize she was using Edd the whole time.

She let Jimmy and Brother target Edd, got Edd scared enough to burn his idol, got Brother out, and still kept herself in a position where both Jimmy and Edd wanted to work with her. To Edd it's this huge breakthrough in his Survivor story. To Marie, it's also fun to beat her "boyfriend" at a game he doesn't realize she's beating him at yet.

5th: ED

Ed has no idea what is going on.

His strategy is mostly someone saying who they're voting for and Ed going along with it. Somehow this works incredibly well because he's ridiculously strong, wins a few immunities, and everybody loves him. He also keeps comforting people after blindsides, so half the jury loves him.

Edd eventually has the horrible realization that Ed might actually beat everybody at the end. So he forces himself to vote out his best friend.

Ed is genuinely hurt when he realizes Double D voted against him and cries, and Edd takes this about a thousand times harder than Ed does. Edd spends the rest of the game turning it into this enormous moral crisis in his head and rehearsing the apology he's going to give Ed if he reaches Final Tribal.

The Final Four are Edd, Marie, Jimmy and Plank.

4th: JIMMY

The final immunity challenge is one of those endurance challenges where you have to stay almost completely still, which obviously means everyone is fucked. Jonny loses his mind cheering from the sidelines while Plank literally does nothing. Plank wins immunity. Plank chooses Edd to sit next to him. Marie and Jimmy go to a tiebreaker firemaking challenge, Marie wins, and Jimmy finishes fourth after finding two idols and terrorizing the entire merge.

So the Final Tribal Council participants are Edd, Marie, and Plank.

Edd looks like he should win. He's had the big growth story all season. He learned how to take risks, got more comfortable lying when the game required it, found an idol, made moves, eventually got himself to the point where he could even vote out Ed.

Then he has a shitty Final Tribal Council defense.

Edd over-explains everything and makes his game sound a lot cleaner than it actually was. Marie keeps cutting through it and pointing out what was actually happening. Eddy's Brother vote is especially brutal because Edd talks about it like his signature move and Marie basically explains that she was quietly setting half of it up behind his back.

Then Edd finally gets to apologize to Ed. He's spent days imagining Ed being furious with him and starts giving this whole emotional explanation about betraying his best friend because of the game.

Ed is basically like, okay.

Grins.

That's it.

Edd has spent several days convincing himself he committed the ultimate betrayal and Ed got over it almost immediately.

May asks Marie why she voted for her and Marie doesn't try to dance around it. May would've beaten her. May is still hurt, but she's also still Marie's sister. She votes Marie.

Then somebody asks what they'd do with the million dollars, and this is where things completely change.

Marie has an actual plan.

She's not going to blow the money. Nope. She's going to invest most of it, keep a wedding fund, and use enough to make staying close to Edd financially sustainable forever. If he goes away to college, she can move nearby. If he moves again later, she can follow him. Edd has always hoped that, at some point in adulthood, he can simply get away from Marie Kanker. Marie explains that a million dollars means she can afford to never let that happen. 

At first, Edd obviously thinks Marie cannot win. Giving Marie Kanker a million dollars is an existential threat to his future. 

But then it suddenly occurs to him that his winning might also be terrible. 

Marie has spent the last few days getting increasingly into the idea that she and Double D made it to the end together and she gets to beat her "boyfriend." If Edd beats her instead, in front of everyone, for a million dollars, she's going to take that personally. He knows what happens when she feels humiliated. He could win Survivor and spend the next twenty years having Marie show up at his house because she's still pissed he beat her. At this point, the million dollars starts feeling much less important.

The jury is split. Nazz and Ed are voting Edd. May and Jimmy are voting Marie. Kevin and Eddy's Brother are voting Plank. Brother is partly voting for Plank because he would rather hand a million dollars to an actual piece of wood than give Marie the satisfaction.

Rolf has the deciding vote and cannot make up his mind. Eventually he explains that in his village, when there is disagreement over who should lead, tradition requires them to defer to the wisdom of the village idiot. 

He turns to Ed and asks who he should vote for.

Ed looks over at Edd. Edd looks at Marie, who gives him a crazy, menacing look. 

Suddenly, Edd understands exactly what he wants. 

He points at Plank. Ed happily tells Rolf to vote for Plank. Rolf accepts this immediately.

And Plank wins 3-2-2.

3rd: MARIE (had more votes cast against throughout the game than Edd even though she tied him at Final Tribal Council)

2nd: EDD (see above)

1st: PLANK

Edd is relieved. Ed has accidentally saved his life. Marie doesn't get a million dollars to finance her lifelong Double D campaign, but Edd also doesn't personally beat Marie and give her a new reason to torment him forever. He's thrown away a million dollars and considers it a sensible option. He says he learned a lot about himself from the experience and other nonsense like that.

Eddy never lets him hear the end of this.

Unfortunately, Marie thinks the fact that Edd was willing to sacrifice a million dollars because he's that afraid of her is hilarious, so he's not exactly free.

Jonny, meanwhile, grabs Plank and runs around screaming because Plank is now the Sole Survivor.

And the stupidest part is that Plank played a really good game.

If you pay attention to what Jonny says Plank thinks, rather than what Jonny thinks, Plank is right constantly. He spots Nazz as a threat before the merge. He catches on to Jimmy. He knows Jimmy probably has something before the first idol play. He warns everyone about doing it again before the second one. He sees why May is dangerous. He understands that Marie is using the Brother feud strategically. He clocks Ed as the person everybody is going to like at the end. Then he wins immunity and chooses Edd, who proceeds to completely implode at Final Tribal and eventually decides he'd rather Plank win than deal with either possible outcome involving Marie.

Nobody notices Plank is masterminding the shit out of everybody because all his strategic advice is communicated through Jonny, who usually screams it while waving Plank in someone's face.

Everybody in the game thought they could beat him at the end. 

And then Plank wins.

Hi, I’m a 32-year-old guy, and I’ve never been attracted to anyone, romantically or sexually. I’ve never had a crush, gone on a date, or kissed anyone.

Both men and women have flirted with me or told me they liked me, but I never had any feelings in return. I’d usually say something dumb or make excuses because I didn’t know how to reject them without hurting their feelings. A few friendships ended because we couldn’t figure out how to make things normal again. I’ve tried to be intimate before, but I couldn’t get aroused because I wasn’t feeling anything toward the other person. Everything works when I’m alone, but I’m not fantasizing about anyone. My mind is basically blank. When another person is involved, nothing happens. I’ve had my hormone levels checked too, and everything was normal.

I assume I’m aromantic and asexual, although the terms still confuse me sometimes because I see asexual people online who regularly have sex. I care about people deeply, though, and could see myself sharing my life with someone, but I’ve never understood why caring about someone so often comes with wanting sex. Has anyone here been in or come across a relationship that was basically a very close, committed friendship without any of these things? What was it like?

Some background first: I taught eighth grade at a very strange charter school with awful academics. A lot of the kids barely turned anything in, couldn’t write a sentence with punctuation, and had vocabularies so limited they sometimes couldn’t even carry on a normal conversation with each other. They just didn’t know enough words to explain what they meant.

But what really shocked me was the parents. At conferences, I showed them the little work their kids had turned in. I figured we’d talk about tutoring, extra help through the school, literally anything. Instead, at least five parents just smiled and said some version of, “Well, he really enjoys your class and he’s having a lot of fun.”

Like... okay? He can barely think for himself, but at least he’s happy? The wildest one was a mother who said she pulled her daughter out of public school because the teachers there “asked too much of her.” She preferred this school because “the teachers are her friends.”

Obviously, I want kids to enjoy school, but we are supposed to teach them too. Has anyone else gotten responses like this from parents? What would you even do in a situation like this? How are you supposed to deal with parents who don’t seem to care that their child can barely read or write? Is there anything you can realistically do, or are you just supposed to help the kids when you can? The whole thing really rattled me and left me scared for the future.

For some people, getting married and having kids isn’t just one way to live. It’s the foundation of how they see adulthood. That’s what a normal, meaningful life is supposed to look like.

So when a lot of people say, “No, actually, I’m happy without that,” and find fulfillment through friends, art, music, travel, work, charity, or whatever else, it seems to genuinely bother some of them. Not because anyone is attacking them, but because something they assumed was universal isn’t. I’m sure there’s plenty of obnoxious anti-natalist stuff posted here too, and that’s equally ridiculous. But a lot of it is also clearly people trolling, because they know exactly how easy it is to piss this subreddit off.

And I don’t buy that everyone here is sincerely terrified about the collapse of civilization. Sure, there may be economic problems as society adjusts to lower birth rates, but society will survive and adapt one way or another. That still isn’t a reason to tell strangers how they should live their lives. Most parents do not care this much about whether random strangers have children. They have their own kids, raise them, and get on with their lives. Honestly, I think the vast majority of parents would read some of the stuff posted here and think it was insane.

And a lot of the talk about ancestry, legacy, and the future of mankind just sounds like ego dressed up as some grand moral cause. You probably work in IT or construction or something. Why are you talking about your lineage like you’re the last surviving heir to a Game of Thrones house?

Have they just walked away and forgotten about it? It's just so weird to see the site deteriorate with nobody stepping in or saying anything.

I’ve started working on a couple of musicals over the last year, and it made me curious if anyone else here has tried writing a show. This can mean actual playwrights, lyricists, composers, etc., but also people just making stuff casually for fun. If you have a project at the moment, what’s it about? I’d genuinely love to hear what other people are working on.

I’m referencing both official and fanmade content. Games, comics, everything. Which characters do you think are difficult to write effectively?

For me, I would say either Shadow or Knuckles. Shadow because you either risk making him too edgy/cringy as an antagonist or too out-of-character/cooperative as an antihero. I think Knuckles too because his character has so many conflicting versions. His personality and even the way he speaks in a lot of iterations are completely different.

Curious to hear what you think.

I've been out of education for four years now, mainly because my first year was so bad. I taught middle school right after COVID, so to say there were challenges would be a massive understatement. I did well in my student teaching because I had a really good mentor teacher and students who, for the most part, were pretty well-behaved. Then I started teaching on my own, which went terribly.

I literally couldn't keep the students' attention. They would yell at each other and talk over me to the point where I couldn't even explain what we were doing or answer any questions. It's like they decided on the first day that I had no authority and just ran with that. I tried so many intervention strategies (emailing home, contacting the principal, contacting the supervisor, etc), but the general attitude from the adults involved seemed to be, "You're a first-year teacher, they're just testing you. You'll figure things out as the year moves along."

The most annoying part was that whenever anybody visited the classroom (principal, supervisor, other teachers, etc), the students would act completely well-behaved. I'm obviously not going to get hung up on middle schoolers' choices, but it was pretty discouraging to get up every morning and deal with that. I tried to explain what was happening to the administration, but they acted as if I were speaking a different language and just seemed satisfied to have my body in the classroom. I don't think they ever fully understood how bad things had gotten.

My students vandalized the classroom. They destroyed books. They took videos of me and posted them on social media. By the end of the year, I was so burned out that I just couldn't bring myself to apply to another teaching job. I couldn't imagine what going through a whole other year of that would do to my mental health.

Anyway, fast-forward, and I'm at the point where I can't go back to school for financial reasons and am trying to find a job to support myself. I haven't had much luck anywhere else, so I might actually have to go back to teaching and find a way to make it work - I know it's absurd, but I just don't see any other option for me at this point. I'm in too much debt with lots of medical expenses.

Did anyone else completely bomb their first year of teaching and bounce back? I really enjoyed student teaching, but my actual teaching experience was horrendous, and I'm worried about being in a position where that same situation could realistically happen any year. Maybe I should just face the fact that this isn't for me, and the teaching landscape right now isn't for everyone? Not sure what to do.