How To Write An Essay

Hey there kids! It’s Demi, back again for writing tips! It’s almost time for school to start, so you know what that means - essays! Oh boy! Here are my very own notes on writing essays, for my own reference while writing and compiled through experience and by express instruction of my amazing AP English teacher. You can look at them and try to keep them in mind, or alternatively print them out and keep them around for reference while writing and editing. I have more for my own reference in my handy-dandy file folder, like essay rubrics and commentary on other essays so I wouldn’t make the same mistakes again. Most of the key elements from those things have been used in my essay writing tips. Moving on, first the tips if you’re confident in your method, and then I’ll outline some steps for writing a literary essay. If you’re writing a research paper, you’ll want to do things a little differently, but that’s not too hard when you know your way around a good essay.

- Start with a strong thesis. Don’t use something obvious; try to have a little creativity and insight. Don’t go overboard (Ross from MacBeth is secretly a witch!) but look for a way to make your own interesting conclusions. Your thesis should also be very clear and extremely well written. Your thesis should be the strongest sentence of your entire essay. It is the most important one, so pay attention to it. Rewrite it as many times as necessary.

- Start your paragraphs with topic sentences. These are basically a mini-thesis that introduce the subject of your paragraph. To test your topic sentences, combine them with your thesis to create a small paragraph. If this paragraph works well and sums up the major points of your essay, congrats! You’ve got nice, strong arguments to support your original thesis.

        Example from a short essay I wrote comparing Jane Eyre and Elizabeth Bennet, from Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice respectively: While the author’s styles of writing may differ, the protagonists of Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice share many common features. First and foremost, Jane Eyre and Elizabeth Bennet are strong female characters, both self-assured and determined to be the equal of the men in their lives. After initially rejecting the advances of their future soul mates, Jane and Elizabeth are unable to forget the chances they were given. When they are finally married to their respective husbands, both characters are sublimely happy.

        There’s a slight jump between the second topic sentence and the third, but overall I think that’s a pretty decent paragraph to sum up the main points of my essay. It flows well enough, and it establishes what I’m going to write about, and then elaborates my key arguments. If you have something like this, you know for sure that you’ve got good topic sentences. Then you just need to add good paragraphs onto them!

- Have textual support for your arguments - plainly put, use direct quotes to prove you aren’t pulling things out of your butt. You can use quotes from your source material (book, play, whatever you may be writing about) or quotes from things you’ve researched - as long as it’s related to what you’re trying to prove. Being able to back up your argument with real references will make you look smart, and smart people are sexy.

- Analyze the quotes you’ve sprinkled throughout your essay. Don’t just throw them in there - explain why you picked them, or what they mean and whether or not you agree with them. That’s a little secret - you can quote someone making the opposite argument that you are, and then proceed to prove them wrong. You don’t need to, and in fact shouldn’t, just research things that go along with your argument. Providing a counterpoint, and why it’s wrong, will improve the overall argument of your essay. It’s very easy to make a biased essay, so researching the opposite point of view will help tie things together. You’ll be able to refer to every other point you’ve made, and then make a few new ones.

        Secret PROTIP: You don’t need to quote an entire block of text, or even an entire sentence. You can grab pieces of a quote and integrate them into a sentence just to avoid having to think and sound like you know your stuff.

        Example from the introduction of my Animal Farm essay: The other animals believe that “with their superior knowledge it was natural that the pigs assume leadership” (17), yet they never question the decisions made by the pigs. By following the pigs like figurative (and literal) sheep, the residents of Animal Farm allow the totalitarian regime to flourish unquestioned and unopposed.

        First sentence: Quote integration. See how I got out of actually writing a sentence by quoting the novel? Shows I know the book well enough to incorporate it, and just sounds nicer than whatever I would have written. Also sets up an argument for later.

        Second sentence: Thesis. The topic was the importance of questioning leadership. Important things to note: literary devices. Always a plus for making a shiny thesis statement. Your thesis statement should be catchy and flashy, enough to stand out in your reader’s mind. They should know it’s your thesis, and remember it too.

- Use transitions. Don’t just go straight into a new topic without any kind of obvious connection between the two. This will also help your essay’s organization - if you can’t connect two topics, don’t put them beside one another. Your essay should flow naturally from one thing to another. The final sentence of your paragraph should end things in a way that brings it into the first of your next paragraph. Sentences should also have transitions - however, yet, honestly, moving on, things like that. Google it if you don’t know what they are. Don’t overuse the same transitions repeatedly - every second sentence shouldn’t start with “however, …”, so have a bit of variation. Google a list of transitions if you want to add some variety.

- There are two components to the “sound” of your essay: the style, and the voice. The voice is simple enough, and something to be determined by the purpose of your essay: there is the academic voice, the jovial voice, the sarcastic voice, etc. Your audience determines your voice. This should stay the same throughout your entire essay, and you’ll notice that any time you stray from that it will be very strange for your readers. If you’re writing a serious, academic paper, don’t try to make a joke like you would with your friends. If you’re writing a funny internet article for your funny internet friends, don’t try to sound like a genius.

        Style, however, is something that can vary from sentence to sentence. A short sentence with simple words, or a long, overly wordy sentence. You can use both in your essays, and in fact, you should, because if you have a three page essay with only twenty sentences, you’ve done something wrong. Likewise, you shouldn’t split each of your sentences into three tiny ones because you think it looks cooler to have that many periods. Mix it up and show that you’re capable of writing the way you need to, rather than just the way you want to. Sometimes, a long, flowery sentence is perfectly called for. Other times, tiny, choppy sentences are the way to go. Experiment enough and you’ll find the proper times for both.

- Avoid hyperbole. Should be pretty obvious; don’t exaggerate. Don’t claim that the book you’re writing about is the best book ever, or that Shakespeare is the “most famous playwright of all time” (actually Shakespeare I’m really happy for you and Imma let you finish but x was greatest playwright of all time - OF ALL TIME) or whatever. This is something most people do by default to kiss their teacher’s bum and try to get a good grade, or at least increase their word count. But it sounds better if you rewrite it realistically, I swear.

- Avoid clichés. You may think that it sounds cool to say something your dad says, like “it’s better than a kick in the butt with a frozen boot, you know!” but it doesn’t really add anything to your essay. Usually you can take them out and replace them with something shorter and clearer, which will be better for your essay in the long run. Trust me on this one.

- Take out extra adjectives/adverbs. You don’t need to fully describe the darkness of Grimdark Depthless Land of Eternally Black and Sunless Darkness. Something is not both large and huge. Few things are hugely large. See what I’m getting at? Don’t repeat yourself for the sake of word count or emphasis, at least in this way. Repetition is still a literary device and you can use it that way if you want. But extra adjectives aren’t really a good way to write and make a point, rather you’re over-emphasizing a point you’ve already made.

- Take out extra prepositions. At, under, on, in, of, in the, etc. “In the bedroom under the bed that’s on the floor in the house of the murder.” It makes it very hard to understand what exactly is going on, so try to rewrite your sentence and avoid having multiple prepositions unless you absolutely have to.

- Avoid using a “passive voice.” Try not to use words such as: am, are, was, were, be, been, being. Typically, words like that are used to make a sentence overly formal and make your point sound weak. “The poetry of the 18th century was typically written by aristocrats, but now it is being written by people who are far less well off, many of whom have never even been waited on hand and foot.” What, exactly, am I trying to say there? Who knows? You may not want to go to this level of nitpicking over your vocabulary, but removing these words and rewriting the sentence will be a rewarding challenge if you can find a better way. It makes your arguments tighter and just… it’s something you only notice as a complete overhaul. Entirely passive to none at all.

- Some word nitpicking. Much like passive voice, these are words to avoid using if you can. Much like passive voice, you can use them if you can’t possibly rewrite the sentence. Much like passive voice, your entire essay will sound better if you can avoid using them. Words to avoid forever: is, has, there, it, this, thing, have, had. It can be really hard to avoid them, and especially at first you will find them EVERYWHERE. But the more you work at removing them the less they’ll even work their way in. You will, in all honesty, become a better writer in the course of a few essays if you can rewrite your sentences to avoid them. Much like passive voice. Compare your passive, it this thing have had, essays to your ultra essays and you’ll be so happy inside.

- Something you can always add is literary devices. Some choice ones that won’t be out of place are parallel syntax (that whole “much like passive voice” thing up there), metaphors, allusions. Actually that’s pretty much it on the list of literary devices that aren’t too literary for an essay. So use those if you can.

        1. Pick a topic without being too broad or too narrow in your focus. If you aren’t very particular on your subject, you’ll get too much useless information. if you’re too specific, you won’t find enough information to make good arguments. Use your own judgement.

        2. Do a small amount of preliminary research, enough to have a slight idea of your subject. Chances are you already know something about it. Use this to create a very rough initial outline. First, create a basic thesis, with a little originality. Then give three example supporting arguments you could use for that thesis. Having an idea of what you can write about will help you pick out key information when you do your research.

        3. Armed with your outline, do in-depth research on your topic. There are two strategies here, depending on your time management skills and how early you’ve started to work on your essay. The long-term strategy is to find a lot of sources of information, without reading them until you believe you have enough to pull you through your essay. The short-term strategy is to check out each source and then find another as soon as you’ve finished with what you’ve found. With the long-term strategy, you won’t actually look like you’ve accomplished much until you start working on your information. With the short-term strategy, you know exactly how much information you have and how much you’ve accomplished at any given point in time. The main difference is that with the long-term strategy your essay will come together all at once, while the short-term essay will be a work-in-progress at all times.

        Regardless of what order you plan to gather your information in, when you do start looking into your sources, you will have to take extremely good notes so that you can actually use them to write with. Read through the article (or section in a book, or whatever) and jot down some small notes, then on your second pass write down everything that could possibly be useful in your essay. Copy down quotes that could be useful in your essay, and small phrases that could fit easily into what you write. Repeat the process with all the sources you’ve found. The basic structure of your essay should revolve around these notes. You will be relaying and explaining the information you find, so look at it like a painted Easter egg or something. The squishy insides are the information you’ve found, while the pretty shell around it is what you’ve written using that information. Nothing in your essay should come without information to back it up, and there should be some sort of reference to your research quite frequently. You didn’t make this stuff up, so your writing shouldn’t be the most important part of the essay. All you’re doing is collecting it and putting it in a nice little package, so make sure you wrap it up nice and neat.

        If you’re writing an essay about a book, your process should be slightly different. You probably won’t have time to read the book twice, and even if you do you probably won’t feel like writing afterwards. Your goal then should be to identify and isolate as much useful information as possible on your first read. Use highlighters, post-it notes, write chapter summaries, whatever works for you, so long as you can find the information you need. The more you identify as being useful, the easier it will be to write your essay. So take your time reading, and even if you don’t know what your essay will be about, pick out things that could be useful. You may end up needing it, or you may not. But the more attention you pay, the better your essay will be.

        4. After you’ve finished your research, you will likely have several pages filled with notes and scribbles on your various sources. That’s good. Now, you should have all the information you’ll need for your essay. All that’s left is to put it together. So, now that you have all your information, go back to your outline and evaluate the information you found. If you have a better thesis, start with that. Then look at your arguments and build as many as you need, based on the information you have to work with. If you can’t prove a point, don’t make it. This may not be your final outline, because you may start writing and find it doesn’t make sense, or you can’t argue a point as well as you might like. If you do decide to change your outline again, congrats, you know what you’re doing. Don’t try to fluff up a paragraph just because you need to write a certain amount, because it’s only going to bring your mark down. If 5% of your essay is based on having x paragraphs, you’d be better off losing some of those marks than writing a crappy essay. Of course, you shouldn’t need to worry about that, but what I’m trying to say is that you should write a good essay, whether it’s too short or too long. If it’s good enough, your teacher shouldn’t care whether you met the proper criteria.

        5. Now that you know what you’re going to write, it’s time to decide how you like to write. There are two different strategies here, and I would suggest trying them both to see what works for you, but if you have a gut feeling about it, go for what you like best. One strategy is to write your body paragraphs first, and then complete an introduction and conclusion afterwards. The other is to start with your introduction and write your essay in the order it will be read. I’ve done both, and each has its own benefits and drawbacks. I’ve had good and bad essays with each: waiting to write your introduction and conclusion can mean you have a really strong intro and conclusion that go well with your body paragraphs, or it can mean you have amazing body paragraphs but no strong thesis or conclusion to tie them together. If you get tired when you finish writing your essay, or run out of time, you don’t really want your intro and conclusion to suffer for it. If you write your introduction first and your conclusion last, you may end up having to change your introduction or having a weak conclusion that doesn’t fit what you’ve written. On the other hand, it may help to direct you when you’re writing your body paragraphs. It’s honestly up to you based on your writing style, so try them both and see what you like.

        6. When writing your introduction, your thesis should be absolutely clear to the reader as it should make an obvious point and establish the goal of your essay. The rest of your introduction should briefly outline your body paragraphs, and make a few observation that you’ll revisit in your conclusion. You want to get people interested in what you’re writing, so be interesting.

        The basic format for your body paragraphs should be: topic sentence, lead in to some kind of proof or example, your proof/example, then an explanation and analysis of your quote or reference. Add more proof as needed. The analysis is important, because it’s what your essay is really about; it’s you explaining what you’re actually talking about, and why you included the information you’ve included. Organize your body paragraphs in a way so that they flow nicely into eachother.

        Your conclusion is like a modified version of the introduction, now that you’ve tried to prove your point. Restate your thesis in a slightly different format, and explain the observations you’ve drawn from the information presented. This is where you make everything click, if it hasn’t explained itself yet. By reading your intro and conclusion, someone should get the key points even if they don’t really have all the information. If you think it’s incredibly important, mention it in both the introduction and conclusion.

        7. Now, your essay is done! This final step is optional, but highly recommended. You could just call it a day and hand it in, but I would recommend reading through it yourself and editing it as you see fit, then passing it around to anyone you know who might be able to help you proof-read it before handing it in. If your teacher will do this for you, get them to do so as well before you finalize your essay. The more input you get on your essay, the better it will be. When you have a finished product, the heavy lifting is basically done. Edit and revise as you see fit. Then hand it in and wait for the good news!

        Some other things you could research to improve your arguments in your essays are logical fallacies, annotation strategies (for writing essays on books or other long material), poetic devices (for literary essays), writing style problems (for adjusting your style based on your needs; one example is that passive voice is good for writing lab reports, while not so good for an english essay) and, well, anything you find your lose marks for repeatedly. Your goal should be to identify problems in your writing and correct them in the future. That’s why I’ve kept all my essays from this past year, to compare my original, less-than-stellar attempts to my later essays. Examining my older essays shows the problems with my writing style and mistakes I make repeatedly, so now I know to avoid them in the future. When you can do the same, well, you no longer need anyone else’s help to improve your writing.

BE EXCELLENT TO EACH OTHER

I almost bought a shirt last night saying BE EXCELLENT TO EACH OTHER, and nothing else. Either a black shirt or a red shirt, with white text on both. But the text was the ugly “metal” kind so I didn’t end up wasting $25 on it.

I do agree with the sentiment, though.

So now I climb that mountain, to see what I can see…

Today was pretty good day. I felt better this morning, after yesterday stopped existing, and even got to sleep in a little. When I got out of bed, I had sausages and a bagel and it was pretty good. Then I had some pizza and leftover cake (from someone else’s party, even) for lunch and that was pretty good too. Then I played some more Scott Pilgrim with my brother, or occasionally without him because I was able to pwn everything by myself. That was pretty good.

        Shortly after four, I left home to get to the club (or bar? how do we distinguish between the two?) where I’d be seeing The Holly Springs Disaster along with Architects and Structures. I was led to believe the doors opened at 5 pm, so I arrived around 4:30 pm. There was a small group of people waiting outside, but they were clearly not getting in soon. So I sat outside for an hour, before deciding I should probably get in line. It had doubled in size at this point, but that wasn’t saying much. I proceeded to wait in line for another hour and a half, until they started letting people in a bit before 7 pm. That was pretty not good, actually, but apparently things were going according to schedule so I just had the wrong schedule. In the end, the line stretched around the corner and down a fair ways on the next street, so it was pretty good that I got there when I did.

        Once inside, I waited for half an hour while Structures got their stuff together. They’re from Toronto, so I’m willing to bet most of the people in the building had seen them six times before, and nobody was all that excited just yet. They played, oh, four or five songs before leaving the stage. Less than half an hour in total. They tried to encourage a circle pit at one point, but that was quickly ruined by hardcore dancers. There were plenty of people already wearing their shirts, but that didn’t equate to interest I guess. Their vocalist was pretty ok live.

        Another half hour of setup before Architects started to play. Hailing from Brighton, UK, their vocalist was pretty good live. Many people were excited for them, so I guess they’re decently well known. So in their little British accent, they encouraged everyone to sing along and get excited. And they did. At one point, the entire basement of the place was shaking from the music and everyone jumping almost magically in unison. Again, they called for a circle pit, which once again quickly dissolved under the assault of windmilling arms and floor punches. While they also only played for a little over half an hour, it was still pretty good.

        Shortly before 9 pm, The Holly Springs Disaster began their setup. Everyone chanted their name, and because we’re Canadian, we said “eh” instead of “oi” to space things out a little. This was pretty good. When they started to play, the crowd took over singing duties and this was pretty good. I ended up beside a huge guy with enough enthusiasm to match his size, and he basically used up all the space available. If someone was in front of him, he’d lean backwards to headbang and pump his fists over the shoulder of whichever random person was unfortunate enough to be ahead of him. But this was still pretty good. They basically played every song they ever wrote, if you count a medley of their original EP as multiple songs. They did a cover of My Hero by Foo Fighters, a couple more songs, and then pretended to leave the stage. The crowd called for one more song, so they finished the night with Up In Smoke, which I’m pretty sure was literally the only other song they had to play. They did play one of their unreleased songs, Godzilla, which may once have been named King Kong, or could be something entirely different. But the moral of the story is that it was pretty damn good.

        I bought shirts for Structures and Architects that are pretty good.

        Pretty good kind of day.

I didn’t get around to it last night, but I meant to write a post about my day yesterday including the dream I had that morning. Seeing as I probably didn’t go to bed until after midnight, although I forget when it was. So read on while I tell you of the amazing dream that I had, and don’t forget that as cool as it sounds with me writing out what I remember, it was ten times as cool originally.

        The basis of the dream was that an extremely advanced alien race was slowly abducting random humans, and most of us didn’t remember anything about it. So who knows what kind of experiments they were running. However, every person they abducted gained at least a basic telepathic power, depending on their natural aptitudes. We all became connected to a telepathic sort of hive mind, allowing us to communicate with eachother by thought as well as hear eachother’s thoughts. Not many people knew about it, though, because they were too absorbed in their own thoughts to listen in on the thoughts of others. For most people, we would need to consciously tune out of ourselves in order to hear other people’s thoughts. People who don’t tend to think much, though, spent all of their time unconsciously listening in on the thoughts of anyone and everyone who happened to get abducted.

        So in my dream, I was unaware of what powers I might have because I didn’t know I had been abducted. I’d heard stories about it, though, so it wasn’t a crazy abstract concept that would make me go crazy if someone sent me a telepathic message. So the start of what I remember about my dream is that I was laying in bed, and apparently fantasizing about someone or another. Then, in my head, I hear my brother’s voice telling me that T-Snap (a stupid guy I used to know) was enjoying my thoughts. So I was like damn, I don’t want him hearing my thoughts! I hate that guy! So then I started trying to censor my thoughts and think about unimportant stuff, though I don’t remember anymore what I was thinking about. My brother sent me some more messages to explain why I hadn’t seen him in a long time, and somehow managed to communicate to me that he had gained the ability to teleport to places the alien race had set up thought harvesting devices for their own teleportation, including their grand library of infinite knowledge. So he went there and learned all kinds of crazy stuff and developed, like, every telekinetic power ever.

        At some point during all of that I actually woke up and continued laying in bed trying to censor my thoughts and seriously debating the idea of speaking all of my thoughts out loud. While anyone nearby would be able to hear them, that would probably mean fewer people than all the people who could listen to it if I thought it in my head.

        Then eventually I rolled over or something and realized I was no longer dreaming.

——————————————————————–

        My grandparents brought our dog to us this past weekend, and so far she’s working on settling in. Because I’ve been outside working with my grandfather, and she loves him to bits, and because I hang out with her a lot (I leave blankets or clothes on the floor, and she makes herself a nice little bed out of them) she loves me a little less than him, so when we’re outside working she wants to be outside with us. Unfortunately, this means that she’s barked at and scared a few people who got too closer to our property. First it was our neighbour, as he was going into his house, and the thing about my dog is that she sounds like an attack dog twice her size in terms of weight. So he was pretty much terrified and didn’t stick around long enough for me to apologize after I brought her back home. This was her first act as the new Neighbourhood Menace.

        Yesterday, though, she was even worse. Back home, we left her out front on her leash for a couple of months when we were at school, and she was bestest buddies with the lady who delivered our mail. When we moved her leash out back, our mail lady asked us where she went, lol. So I know she’s not a vicious beast, you just have to acknowledge her as opposed to running off in fear. If you stop and say hi, she’ll warm up to you. If you run away as fast as you can, she’ll think she did a good job of defending her family and mark you as a target for the future.

        Unfortunately for our new mailman, he chose the second option. I had her on her leash under the carport, where we were hiding from the sun, and he walked by on the way to our neighbour’s house. She started barking and made a mad dash for him, and I pulled her back. Then she tried to go under the table we were sitting beside and nearly knocked it over, nearly pulling me over it in the process, which probably only scared the mailman more. So we’re definitely going on his mental list of crappy houses to deliver to, and if it happens again we might end up on the list of houses with dogs to look out for. But we’re working on fencing the back yard (it already has a hedge and a fence around most of it, so we just need to close it off) so she’ll be pretty harmless when we finish with that. Either she’ll be inside or have no way to get out of the back yard, so she shouldn’t scare anyone too badly.

        So that’s how my dog has become the Neighbourhood Menace within less than a week. Nobody around here has a big scary dog, so it’s somewhat new to these people to have her around. At least we’ll be protected from the big scary criminals here in the big scary city. Ain’t nobody gonna mess with something that sounds like her.

———————————————————————–

        So the basic thing you need to understand about my grandfather is that he does whatever the hell he wants. If he doesn’t know how to do it, he’ll learn. He’s an electrician by trade, and he’s been working since he was six years old. He’s now 73. Skills I can confirm that he has: carpentry, car mechanic, boat mechanic, plumbing. Who knows what else he’s taught himself to do. I have stories to confirm all of those things, like how he built the house he and my grandmother STILL live in to convince her to marry him, or how he helped build a $400,000 modified hydraulic dump truck out of $30,000 worth of parts. But the moral of the story is that he’s basically the handiest handyman ever, and he’ll drop by to fix whatever problems you might have without any question of repayment. They live in New Brunswick, but he plans on coming back here (a 12 hour drive) after he collects some supplies back home, so he can redo a lot of our ancient and terrible electrical work. Chances are he won’t be back as soon as he thinks he will be, but I expect next time I see him I’ll learn how to install a new circuit in my house and which tools to use to drill through a concrete foundation.

        Yesterday, after finishing the construction of a handmade sliding gate for our deck, he began work on new handrails for the steps going off the back of the deck. Underneath one of the old rotted ones was a small hornet’s nest. Rather than think “bleh hornets better work around those” like a mere mortal, he smashed it open with a hammer and crushed three of the hornets that were inside one by one. There may have been a fourth, but again, it was a small nest. Then he wiped the dead hornets off the deck and got to work putting that new handrail on.

        This is the man who inspired my middle name, and I’d feel like such a badass if I built a house to convince a girl to marry me. If only it was the late 1950’s and there was land basically everywhere for people to spontaneously build on.

This post has several pre-requisite knowledges that you must have in order to find it remotely funny. Number 1: Watch anime, or at least know what it is. Number 2: Know what a “bad dub” is, whether you’ve watched it yourself or watched youtube clips of particularly embarrassing shows.

        Now, on average, most immigrants will continue speaking their original language after they move. If the children were born in Canada or the US or wherever, usually their parents will teach them their language (even if they speak english themselves) and they’ll speak that to eachother. Apparently, not everyone does that. Some of them try to improve their english by speaking it all the time. As with most people learning a second language, they don’t speak it as easily as someone who’s been speaking it all of their life. Engrish, lolol, etc.

        Now, the thing about learning another language is that not everything translates perfectly. If you’ve watched a bad dub, you know what I’m talking about. In Japan, they have a thing for using sounds rather than words. Rather than yell “Oh my god, Jason! Nooo! Jason! Oh my god!” they will instead yell “AAAAAAAAAAAH” for a minute and a half. While things like “ugh” and “meh” are relatively common in english, we don’t have an easy equivalent to a lot of their exclamations.

        So, this all comes together in one hilarious incident when I was in Home Depot today. An asian girl was standing near the entrance to the store, alongside a very disinterested asian girl fiddling with an MP3 player. A slightly older asian guy brings a huge cart in the door, and the first girl yells (what I assume was) his name, surprising everyone in the vicinity. Then she runs towards him and jumps on the cart, plonks herself down and sits cross-legged on the cart. Then she yells “eeeeeeehhhhh I wanna go for a cart ride!!!!!” at which point everyone is like wtf r u doin? Even the cashiers were leaning around their stall things to take a look. Then she looks at the second girl and yells “sister! join me! we’re going for a cart ride eeeeeeeee!!!”

        It was just such a perfect moment. My grandfather and I looked at eachother and he just shook his head, a little dismissive shake along the lines of “I have no time for this foolishness.” I didn’t want to laugh because it would just ruin it. But like, just hearing her speak with the right words in the wrong way like any crappy dub, and the other girl’s expression, and the whole spectacle of it. I swear if someone dubbed real life it would be the greatest thing ever.

        PS: Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World: The Game is a fun side-scrolling brawler like any you may (or may not) have played before, with a lot of neat little features that are probably pilfered compiled from all over video game history. Also it’s really great as a co-op game. You can revive and heal your teammates, or pick them up and use them as weapons. You can work together for super attacks and combos, and you can lend eachother money to purchase power-ups and healing items. Should your teammates suck and fail to help you, you come back as a ghost and can steal their extra lives to revive yourself. They don’t get to say no!

        Also as a word on how awesome this game is, Scott’s late-fees are an actual thing in the game. As in you go to the video store and there’s a $500 item called “Scott’s Late Fees.” I don’t know what paying them off does, but it has to be awesome. Also I bought a game called Speedy the Porcupine and it gave me +50 speed so I’m awesome now. I was $8 short of buying Never-Ending Fantasy :(