Good morning, John.

June 6

@AprilMaybeNot: You'd think that if space aliens built me from scratch to help them conquer a planet I would be coordinated enough to not close my boob in a door. And yet...

John, I think it is finally time to discuss the "Hank Made His Main Character Close Her Boob In A Door" discourse. Four years ago, on the menwritingwomen subreddit, with 5,100 upvotes, spaghetti121199 says, "Happens to me all the time. From Hank Green's "An Absolutely Remarkable Thing."" And posted a screenshot that is no longer viewable because the Internet is not forever. Now in my favor, the person who posted this on the subreddit said, "To be fair, the women characters in this book are, on whole, generally really well written."

Now, John, one of my very favorite parts of writing my books was talking to experts. That gave me perspective that I couldn't possibly have. Experts, for example, on what it's like to be a woman. You know, women. And did any of those people highlight the fact that it would be, in fact, quite difficult for a woman to close her boob in a door? Yes, actually, they did. More than one of them was like, "Hank, I don't know how would a woman close her boob in a door?" There is more than one way to do research. And this is what I had done when I wrote that tweet. I searched for boob in a door in quotation marks on Twitter, and I found hundreds, hundreds of people who had closed their boobs in a door. Many of them, yes, expressing a great deal of surprise that this occurred.

Back in 2010, this person says, "Alison: "Don't you hate it when you shut your boob in a door?". Has anyone else had this?!"

Marni says, "I just shut my boob in a door."

Cammy says, "Anyone ever slammed their boob in a door? No? I'm the only one? Figures. Well I hope you never do it because it frickin' hurts."

"Crack my head on a corner and shut my boob in a door all while trying to write nick a letter."

FunkyEarthChild, "Shall we talk about how I slammed my own boob in a door?"

I don't know how these women are closing their boobs and doors either. I don't know what it's like to have a boob, let alone two. I just know that they just like April May. And this is the cool new German edition. It's called The April Story. Well, maybe I can read to you how to say this in German. "mir nicht eine meiner Brüste in einer Schiebetür einzuklemmen, und doch..." This actually just came out this week. Tell all your German friends about it. Thank you to my German publisher for continuing to give it life.

Now, if you continue scrolling up on this Twitter page, in addition to the actual people slamming their boobs in doors, we get people who are talking about boob in a door discourse.

Kate says, "I love when you can tell a book was blatantly written by a man. How would you even come close to closing your boob in a door? How is this possible. Ladies, let me know if you've ever closed your boob in a door."

Like, they will come as a pair. "How does one close one's boob in a door" And then Jess is like, "I just pinched my boob in a door." 

And of course, it then becomes a conversation. And now, whenever someone closes their boob in a door, they feel like it's necessary to let me know about it. Here's a situation where this person closed their boob in a door, and then a person pretending to be a character from my book tweeted at another person pretending to be another character from my book saying, "Alert the press." This one was this week. "Well, Hank Green, my roommate, closed their boob in a door. Thought, you should know."

Ultimately, I will go to my grave defending my main character's ability to close her boob in a door. I don't know how it's possible, but I know that there are people all over the world who have figured it out. I liked the boob in a door tweet because, on its own, it does several different things at once. In that tweet and in much of the book, she is doing this balance between trying to get people to pay more attention to her, to get more status, to get more influence, to get more power, while simultaneously in the exact same moment, being like all these people who think that I'm big and important and powerful. They're all ridiculous. I'm just a silly little girl who important things happen to happen to. Writing a book from the perspective of a character who is a woman, which I've never had the experience of being a woman or of being seen as a woman. You know you're gonna get stuff wrong, which is why it's great to talk to people and have them read it before the book comes out so they can give you feedback. And I'll tell you what, I've never had, like, a frame in which to ask the question, like, "What's it like to be a woman?" quite like, read this whole book about a woman's life and tell me what I got wrong. There are things from those conversations that I had while researching the book that I have taken away for the whole rest of my life. In my second book, one of the characters has trauma to their face, which is visible to people around them. I have no idea what that's like. So I got to talk to Phyllida Swift, who is both a person who has had her appearance change, in her case, due to a car accident, and is also the CEO of Face Equity International.

The world is so cool and full of so many different perspectives. It is amazing that we get to see those perspectives in various ways. Honestly, it makes me want to write more fiction. In the meantime, John, two things. Number one, the Nerdfighteria Census is out today. Please, if you can go and answer the Nerdfighteria Census questions, it's the top link in the description. Every year for the last, I don't know, ten plus years at this point, we have done a census of this community where people tell us what they like about what we're doing, what their lives are like, what we should do next, what the community's priorities are. It's long, but also, I hope it's fun. And also, I do a census analysis on Hankschannel, where we dive deep and find out all kinds of weird and fascinating things about folks in this community and also the social Internet in general.

And thing number two. Merch drop. We're having a merch drop. Here's the things from the merch drop. You can finally rep the red deacons. We got that dubious advice shirt. We got. We're here because we're here in a spiral. We got John's original, the test monologue from the very beginning of Crash Course from Linda Liu. And there's mugs and even a dubious advice notepad. All of that. And a link in the description. And again, census link in the description. Fill it on out. Have a good time!

John. I'll see you on Tuesday.