The historical figure I chose was Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France during the French Revolution. The reason I picked her was because I’ve done a lot of research on her in the past as she’s a fascinating woman in history, so I had a decent idea about her story.

I started with the Twister because I already had an idea about what I wanted to do. Marie Antoinette is famous for saying “Let them eat cake” in response to learning about the poor and hungry people of France. However, there is no record of her actually saying this, and the phrase actually originates from a text that predates her queenship. I thought I’d play off of this a little, but make it seem like she was joking. Marie Antoinette, though she spent lavishly in her early years as Queen, didn’t waste as much money as she matured. The phrase “don’t lose your head” is a nod to how she and other noblemen and women were executed during the French Revolution via guillotine.

For the Fakebook, I tried to be as historically accurate as possible, so I looked up some biographical information about her. Even the hobbies are based off of things that the Queen was actually fond of doing. The profile picture and the cover photo are both public domain images I found using CC Search. The cover photo is a picture of the Palace of Versailles where Marie Antoinette lived after she married Louis XVI.

I tried to make the posts historically accurate, too, by looking up the dates of when things happened. Most of the posts are dated exactly when the events described in them happened with the exception of the necklace. There isn’t an exact date for this, but records indicate that it happened in the year I included on the post.

I found working with these tools was somewhat difficult. Twister wasn’t too bad, but I would’ve liked more options to customize, unless I just didn’t see them. Fakebook was almost infuriating to work with because occasionally, I click somewhere on the page and then it wouldn’t allow me to edit anything else. This was before I had enough posts to save anything, so I lost my work once or twice when I was only halfway done. It really frustrated me and made this assignment way less fun because I basically had to do it multiple times. I doubt I’ll work with these tools willingly again, but I can see their value in a classroom setting, though their interfaces are pretty dated.

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