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xitty · 23 days

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Thanks for answering my ask. Do you mind if I ask (again) for your top 10 favorite characters (can be male or female) from all of the media that you loved (can be anime/manga, books, movies or tv series)? And why do you love them? Sorry if you've answered this question before.....Thanks...

Haaa... I try to not make this filled with only Enstars and Genshin Impact characters, hehe. I'm not putting these in order, that would be too difficult. Warning: long post.

Eichi and Wataru (Ensemble Stars) I'm putting them together here because do not separate and all that. For Eichi it's just... everything, I love his smart and silly sides, his calculating and passionate sides. I find it fascinating how he wants to be in control yet he delights when people surprise him with their wild moves, like Trickstar did. He's also funny, I love his stupid punny names and all. For him being one of my favourite characters ever, I sometimes have trouble voicing why because I just go "ahsgfdhgas look at him he's such a character". I loved him pretty much instantly when I read about him. How he went from desperation and hurt (to others and himself) to having people around him who care about him. Wataru is a funny case actually because I don't usually like loud characters who go bothering everyone lol. But I think one of the key differences is that Wataru is not nor acts like he's stupid, on the contrary. But he is fun! And I find it intriguing how he's shed/hidden most of his past. And how he plays with what's real him and what's him become the role he has been playing in life... He used to not care about people surrounding him much but that changed when he met Eichi and that's lovely. He actually cares about his friends but sometimes shows it rather eccentric ways. Both of them have interesting things going on in their story and it's never dull when they are together.

Yuki (IDOLiSH7) Yuki is very much my type of character, calm, serious and smart but with sort of dry humour. But also has a little bit prickly side to him (more so in the past but it's still not totally gone, he's just outwardly more polite). Oh, and this is not something that makes me like him more per se, but: he's one of few Japanese vegetarian characters I know. And not for any religious or such reasons, he just doesn't like meat.

Alhaitham (Genshin Impact) When I said Yuki is my type of character, here's another example of that type. He's pretty blunt and matter-of-fact and I love him for that. Characters don't need to be like me for me to like them but if there's a character I feel kinship with, it's him. I appreciate his principles regarding work so much, just have a job with comfortable amount of responsibility and load and even if you were qualified, don't need to do more or reach higher position if that's not your thing. He's become one of my faves ever.

Diluc (Genshin Impact) Again, my type... a little grumpy, capable, serious guy. With added troubled past and It's Complicated(TM) stuff. He's one of the biggest reasons I started playing Genshin. I saw him and thought "huh, looks like my kinda character" and I was so right. :D

Terra (Final Fantasy VI) If I need to name an alltime favourite character, I often pick Terra. After she was freed from Empire, she often felt lost and didn't know if she had a purpose in the world (plus being half Esper) but in the end she found her place and it's not grand, opulent hero's life in a castle or something, it's a quiet, simple life. It's what she wants.

Rin (Yuru Camp) Ok, if we take one more character I relate to, it's Rin. She likes doing things by herself and is happy that way. It doesn't mean she doesn't enjoy doing stuff with her friends with too because she does. I like how she sends out message out there it's not lonely or weird to enjoy solitary hobbies.

Nagisa (Ensemble Stars) Ok, back to Enstars. I love Nagisa's curiosity for everything. He was also kept from normal life for a long time and has been following wishes/instructions of others but has since then started to discover and explore what *he* wants to do and I love that.

Kaoru (Ensemble Stars) One more from Enstars then I stop ok... So! I didn't originally care much for Kaoru. Then I started reading more about him and how he started shedding off his playboy act and be more true to himself and how he's actually really sweet guy.

Jiang Cheng (Mo Dao Zu Shi) I feel for him, he tries to do things right but things just don't go his way. Even though he did some not-so-nice stuff, you can understand where his anger and bitterness comes from. I think he doesn't get enough credit for leading his clan and being mostly put together after everything he went through.

Umm, this is the list for this moment in time. I went into this with the mindset of "how much I think about this character" and picked some that occupy my brain most. Because, for example, I've been a Star Trek fan for something like 25 years and there are many dear characters in many series but they aren't rotting my brain at this time.

Some characters I considered, so, honorable mentions: Shin from 86, Sakura from Cardcaptor Sakura, Fern from Frieren, Noé from The Case Study of Vanitas, Hazel from Watership Down (bunny among humanoid characters, why not!?), Shizuma from Therapy Game, Xie Lian from TGCF... And Enstars characters I left from the list: Tatsumi, Yuzuru, Tsumugi. And Genshin characters: Yae Miko, Ayato, Kazuha...

#ask #dnana-2809-blog #thanks for the ask #favourite characters #long post

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bogkeep · 2 years

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i'm also slowly getting the hang of orym's personality - i was worried making him a Good Boy archetype would be too similar to timian's whole deal, but!!! there can be multiple good boys!!! good boy diversity is important for the environment!! orym is very gentle and kind, and unlike timian he cares a LOT about what other people think of him, and he is always yearning to be Loved by others. dissappointing people is terrifying to him, even though it is an unavoidable aspect of life. it was very hard for him to go against his mother's expectations for him, even though she never intended to force him into being the next captain of the guard, just hoped he would be her successor someday. discovering his talent (and interest) in magic just... it was his calling, an even better way of serving the castle. he still hopes to make her proud!!!! (HE DOES!!! YOU ARE MAKING HER PROUD!!! SOME DAY SHE'LL TELL YOU!!!) timian has deeply held principles that overrides feelings, both his own and that of others. it's fine if you hate him, he's going to go ahead and do the Right Thing(tm) ANYWAY!!! but he struggles to like, let himself have feelings?? especially when they are complicated and selfish and it's so so hard to be loved, to want to love,,, and you're telling him it's OKAY? that he even DESERVES this, this moment of sheer humanity, of this vulnerability, allowing himself to lay his strength down and just be weak for a bit? SOUNDS FAKE BUT OKAY.

#iphimery #orymmah #timian fable #oc

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consilium-games · 3 years

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Setting, Genre, and Principles

I talked recently with a friend about Apocalypse World, genre, and Principles. For those unfamiliar, Principles are a design and game-running technique that Apocalypse World did not invent, but did refine and explicate, a bit like how the Greeks knew of static electricity, but it was Galvani who made a battery on purpose, that others could study. Since I haven't died yet, I have a project in mind, in this case one that really explicitly relies on Principles in its basic design, so in this essay I want to work out a basic edge of 'what Principles can cover'. Namely, the edge of 'genre'.

I'll define a couple technical terms here because I intend to use them pretty narrowly:

Diagetic means the usual, "bound within the world of a given story".

Commentative means "outside of any story, things we say about stories-generally".

So a setting counts as diagetic, bound within its own logic and the logic of the single work it appears in. Diagetically we'd ask "why does the author choose to write dragons in this way?"

A genre counts as commentative, not bound within any story. It may or may not codify some stories, an author might consciously bend to or defy a genre as they understand it, but most importantly on the genre level, we don't ask "why did the author write dragons like this?" Instead we ask "why do people-generally like to see dragons?"

In talking with that friend, she said she had difficulty reading AW, which I can't really fault anyone for: I'd consider AW almost as much a polemic manifesto as a procedural manual. And the former undermines the latter. Part of her issue came from her looking for a setting, not realizing that properly speaking, AW doesn't have one. I said as much, and as we talked, I then said a lot more than I should:

After confirming that "Baker does not give AW a setting", in a bit of enthusiasm on the idea of 'genre emulation', I went on to say that "Baker gives his apocalypse". This prompted confusion, for the reasonable question arises, "how can Baker provide his own, particular, post-apocalypse story without giving a setting?" So I should have spoken more carefully, and I wrote most of this essay to over-answer that question for my friend. I've massaged it into its current form, for you non-her readers, in hopes that it helps someone, or if nothing else I can refer back to it as I clarify my own cranky lit-game-dev ideas.

To me, 'a setting' goes like this:

DnD has a kind of proto-setting, it has dragons like-so, it has elves who look pretty and live in the woods, it has dwarves who look TV-ugly and live in the mountains, it has orcs who look ugly-ugly and live in the wastes, it has humans it treats as default and live wherever. It has vague gestures of settler-colonial race-relations but not enough anything to explore, unless you the reader put it there. DnD doesn't really have much of a genre more specific than "uh, generally sword-and-sorcery fantasy".

Shadowrun has basically the same things, and a specific setting: neoliberal dystopia and collapse of the state, but otherwise 'basically our world'.

But more than that, Shadowrun also--for its many faults--has a commentative-sense genre: in Shadowrun, might makes right (or at least right-now); money rules everything, except maybe loyalty; it treats magic as innately cool and natural but technology as evil and you maybe would better die than get an artificial heart. These story-contours don't care at all about where things happen or what institutions exist.

To take another example, Cowboy Bebop tells a solid noir western story set in space. The fact that it takes place in space ultimately matters very little to the 'western' or 'noir', though. Spike knows he lives in space, and he'd agree that--to someone alive in our world today--he lives in a sci-fi story. He doesn't know that he got cast as a western-revenge-fable protagonist (though he might agree if someone asked). He definitely doesn't know that he has a corner of the story that goes more-western, while Jet lives in a corner of the story that goes more-noir.

If you wanted, you could tell Cowboy Bebop beat for beat, almost unedited, as a straight-faced noir western. Instead of Jet's main ship they have a wagon, the individual bounty-hunters have their own horses, Ed does something weird with telegraphs and adding-machines. Instead of vacuum between planets of our solar system, they weather the desert waste between far-flung towns. It would remain a story about revenge, losing oneself, finding oneself, remaking oneself, and the things we have to do for the people we love, and what happens when we don't.

You could not do this and also remove the noir, or the western, those define the kind-of-story. If you left it in space but took out the noir, entire episodes of moral ambiguity would disappear (like Ganymede Elegy). Likewise taking out the western, the premise of bounty-hunters wouldn't fit and couldn't stay. I would even go further, and say that while I don't mind Cowboy Bebop sitting on the 'sci-fi' shelf so that consumers can find it, I wouldn't class Cowboy Bebop as sci-fi. A masterpiece, but not sci-fi. Because I think that as a genre, the core of sci-fi asks "where are we going, and what will we do when we get there?" Cowboy Bebop does not care to ask this question, it cares about the human condition right now, and what people right now will do. It takes place in space because space is cool.

Second hot take: Kafka's The Castle counts as sci-fi, by the above conception. Extremely, disturbingly prescient sci-fi, precisely predicting things from call-centers to Big Data and the professional managerial class, and warning of the ease with which a competent, level-headed, and well-meaning person can confront The Machine, and The Machine will completely hollow out and dehumanize them, rob them of every competence and agency, until The Machine no longer notices them as a foreign object.

No one would put The Castle on the sci-fi shelf, because it has no shiny labcoat SCIENCE![tm], telephones and typewriters show up as cutting-edge in the setting. But just look at the concept of tracking, monitoring, filing, and refiling, and bureaucratic shuffle and managerial maladaption and "not my department" and "oh you have to fill out a form 204B -> well file a form AV-8 to requisition a 204B -> look do I have to do everything for you, I'm a busy cog you know". Look at that concept as a technology, like Kafka did.

The story explicitly refers to this as innovation, as a deliberate thing that the Count and his bureaucrats did, on purpose, with intent and expected effect. The Castle explores social science, political technology. And Kafka rigorously explores its psychic effects on the subjects, more thoroughly than Gibson waxing poetic about VR headsets and the Matrix. The Castle qualifies as fiction about science, where we're going and what we'll (have to) do when we get there. It takes place in a quaint provincial village that might lie somewhere in Bohemia in the very early 20th century.

So I allege that while setting matters for writing a given story, it doesn't matter a lot for kind-of story. And in my conversation with my friend, I should have sensed the kernel I could have dug out, but instead, I wrote the rest of this essay, particular to post-apocalyptic genre fiction, and germane to Apocalypse World.

Bringing this back to apocalypsii:

In the Australian outback in the late-70s, the gas supply all but disappears, causing societal collapse and civil breakdown.

In the American midwest, an unspecified disaster wipes out communications and supply-lines, causing survivors to turn feral and cannibalistic.

In New York in the late 60s, food shortages and overpopulation cause the government to criminalize almost everything so that they can grind people up into food.

These are settings in the sense that I mean: a place, a time, implicit societal structures and institutions, "where is this, what world is this, what is here?" DnD's setting doesn't have much of a 'where' but it more or less assumes "uh, Earth kinda, sorta"; Shadowrun says "literally Earth but N years after magic becomes real and also DnD races". But the above three post-apoc settings have very different everything-else: if you were making a post-apoc section of a library and wanted to break down into sub-genre, you'd want to put the three works above on different aisles.

Mad Max tells a story where holding on to old power structures is complicated, sometimes good, sometimes bad, and it emphatically matters how we go about doing it: when marauding punks kill your family, you may justifiably go and kill them back; but when a power-mad warlord inflicts his brutal regime, you owe him no allegiance.

The Road tells a story where everything we care about can just blow away in the wind, and at best we can only cling to what we cherish, while we can. Power comes and goes, structures don't last, but cruelty and misery endure eternal and will always win--but we try anyway.

Soylent Green tells a story where societal structures can technically endure, but themselves have no moral compass and can inflict as much cruelty as uncaring nature. You may live in an illusion in which civilization appears to function, but in fact you have no more safety than the wilderness, and indeed you didn't realize it, but you're the cannibals, and perhaps soon the meal.

Those considerations all sit at the genre-type, commentative level, and I class them as wholly unconcerned with setting. Each of these stories would tell just as well in space, or an underground complex, or even Bronze-Age Fertile Crescent if you twist a few narrative arms. The where and when and what doesn't define or determine the kind of story, the genre, even if setting can help or hinder genre goals.

Bringing this back to Baker: he doesn't give a place where things happen; he doesn't give an inciting event that brought the apocalypse; he doesn't even describe what happened during the apocalypse, or how long ago it happened, or give a date for "today". I'll list three AW settings I've run or played in or heard about:

Sunlight vanished altogether, though somehow it hasn't gotten any colder. Darkness and shadow can become animate and even sapient, and can claim people, though it doesn't seem exactly malevolent or 'evil'. Rule of law has mostly fallen apart, but out of fear and prudence people mostly avoid wanton violence, because if you see someone you don't like, you could roll up on them and take their stuff--but just as easily they could kill you, and just as easily as either, the Dark might just take both of you; you're safer keeping the Dark at bay and not hassling someone else, unless you've got good reason.

A few years(?) ago, survivors woke up from total amnesia and some kind of fugue: it seems like this fugue lasted at least some years, there's some decay of modern-to-us structures, but the ruins look fully recognizable and often quite well-preserved. But signs abound, literally painted twenty-feet-high on buildings and structures, that something unfathomable happened. The giant wordless pictograms seem to warn to protect tools and structures, to stay together and not go off alone, indicate places that once had lots of food or other important resources, and most alarmingly they show gigantic hands reaching down from above onto some of the pictogram figures. No one can remember anything from before the wakeup though, so the meaning is lost.

Something like twenty years ago, the world broke in some fundamental way: it always rains or at least fog abounds, long-distance communication inexplicably but insurmountably fails to work, and cityscape has sprawled on its own to incorporate seemingly the entire world. As far as anyone knows, the city spans infinitely in every direction, it has no edge, only more city. The city-cancer seems waterlogged and rotting everywhere, some few places fit for use and occupancy, but if you go down any given street and step inside an empty house or shop, it probably won't suit human habitation. People still habitually carry on the forms and outlines of societal norms, mostly, because what else can they do? You can't burn it all down as long as it keeps raining.

I brought these up because Baker's conception of 'post-apoc' does not cover the whole of "all post-apocalyptic literature"--it couldn't, shouldn't, and if it did it would have little or no use to anyone. Baker's narrower conception, the Principles that AW's rules expect a setting to follow, narrow things down and keep the rules crisp, tight, and tractable.

Each of the AW campaigns above has a totally different setting, aiming in totally different directions for different things--but, they all live inside Baker's Principles for a post-apoc that fits within AW: scarcity, weak but present society and norms, a Before, an After, and no going back, and each has a 'Psychic Maelstrom' that excuses a lot of narrative fiat and deus ex machina and having characters just do weirdness not otherwise specified.

That 'Psychic Maelstrom' comes closest to giving what I'd call "a setting" as in "place, time, institutions", because it sits at the diagetic level. A distinct thing bound within a given story--except it only barely counts as 'diagetic'. Because Baker only gives loose guidelines for what a Psychic Maelstrom should be or do. Baker's own at-his-table Psychic Maelstrom will look nothing like mine, or my girlfriend's, or her erstwhile friend's, because in those three AW settings up there, each of us had totally different ideas for what to do with a Psychic Maelstrom in a post-apocalyptic setting.

But: all three of us used our Psychic Maelstroms for the things Baker says to use them for: unleash weirdness, justify unrealistic but narratively satisfying twists, allow and excuse extra awesomeness, maybe use as a metaphor or allegory for "how it got this way", as well as "where it could go", in literary terms. And . . . Baker doesn't really get closer than this, to giving "place, time, institutions, history and people and events". So in the sense I understand 'setting', a diagetic construct within a given story, AW doesn't have one.

But in the commentative genre sense, AW very definitely gives Baker's apocalypse, in that it gives a recipe for the things that Baker considers essential to the post-apoc genre (or at least, the aisle of the post-apoc library he wants to confine his game to). He doesn't try to tell a Soylent Green apocalypse so much--you'd need to twist some arms and ignore some Principles to tell Soylent Green. Nor does he try to tell Children of Men so much--you'd have to leave a lot out to rein AW in to just Children of Men. He instead aims* for something closer to Mad Max, but heavy on Weird West, and a lot less somber and desolate, so more like Fury Road. And he says, "here's how:".

(*) But, of course, he doesn't actually tell these stories. Instead he has the project of telling the reader how to tell this kind-of story. So, while he gives some sample poetic images of skylines on fire and the world torn asunder, he doesn't care to talk about the virus, or the metorite, or the gas-shortage or the food-shortage. He doesn't care about the where or when or what, and even with the Psychic Maelstrom, the one concrete diagetic thing he gives--it sits there as a meta-thing, explicitly unstated whether it resulted from The Apocalypse or its inciting event, or caused it as the inciting event, or something else.

All of which boils down to: commentative, about-stories, genre-level stuff owns bones, and I weigh it heavier than diagetic, in-stories, setting-level stuff. Baker gives excellent tools, within his purple polemic prose, for that first stuff and gives little or nothing for the second.

#literary theory #game design #genre

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essayofthoughts · 6 years

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I've seen a lot a hate for the ship but not a thorough explanation of why. I wanted to see the pros and cons of them. The effect it has on Wanda in the comics and in MCU, same for Vision. In which scene in the movies made people dislike it and which part in the comics made people explicitly hate. . . I don't think I'm doing a good job explaining why I want a Meta on it. My reasoning looks all over the place to me.

Yeah, I’m not entirely sure what you mean with some of this but as for why people don’t like and why they do, I can do that. I haven’t read enough comics to have a firm idea of the impact in comics, or what scene in the films makes people hate it (though if I had to bet it would probably be Wanda putting Vision through the floor, or like. Generalised fan hate for Wanda due to goddamn fandom misogyny and fucking Tony stans) or what scene in comics made people hate. A lot of those things are seriously subjective and personal and the hate for WandaVision is not just limited to the personal. Anyway.

Main reasons I’ve seen people say they don’t like ScarletVision:

They feel Marvel is pushing it too hard with all their nods to the comics.

They didn’t like the relationship in the comics in the first place.

They think Wanda’s abusive because she shoved (the practically indestructible) Vision through the floor and…

They find it squicky because Vision is technically a year old in CACW.

Now, I don’t mind the nods to the comics too much [1], and sure you can dislike the relationship in the comics, but it was very significant, producing the first incarnations of Wiccan and Speed (before the death, time-jump rebirth and other shit) which drove the House of M plotline, which has had a huge impact on the Maximoffs in general [2], and so… I can see why they’d want to reference so enduring a relationship. You can dislike it if you want, but I don’t especially think there’s a need to hate on it. Find it personally obnoxious, sure. Want to desperately avoid it, sure. But honestly, fandom’s need to try to justify their hatred of something or to be incredibly judgy is something I find deeply grating these days (hence the vagueblog the other day) so I think people need to tone shit down some.

As to the “Wanda’s abusive thing”… Vision did literally lie by omission to her regarding keeping her under house arrest. Let’s look at two other cases where she was lied to.

Strucker and List! They recruited the twins in This Scepter’d Isle tie in prelude comic, and claimed to be SHIELD by speaking of “our Avengers, our Iron Man”. But they weren’t and, as you see, the twins readily abandon them when the fight comes to the castle.

Ultron! “You were supposed to make a better world!” “It will be better!” “When everyone is dead?” And what happened then? She set Helen free from the sceptre’s control, she and Pietro got the hell out… only to return to fight Ultron alongside the Avengers.

Wanda, simply, does not like being lied to. If she offers trust then to betray it is one of the worst crimes you can commit against her. The same holds true of Pietro in comics, it’s the reason for the end of his relationship with Crystal Amaquelin. To break their trust is a surefire way to earn their ire and Vision is clearly very close to Wanda by the time of CACW… and he lied to her.

Besides which, he’s indestructible. From their conversation we see that they’re both very much regarded as Other by the other Avengers and by the public - the android and the witch - and they seem to understand one another’s capabilities. Vision begs Wanda to not leave not to refrain from putting him through the floor. Being put through the floor is easily survivable for him. He is literally made from Vibranium. He can phase through solid matter! He can alter his own density! He’s also an android who doesn’t think like we do, he’s genuinely surprised that he can be distracted because his way of thinking is very very alien to that of a human.

So if Wanda’s abusive, so is Vision. But given their conversation at Leipzig Airport when Wanda finally stops fighting, it seems like they’re generally quite open with their emotions and their thoughts. They each understand why they responded as they did and don’t seem to hold it too much against it each other. So, honestly, I’d say they have a healthier relationship than some (Pepper/Tony has a few problems, so I actually Do Not Judge Pepper taking a break from him in CACW) especially given that Wanda comes out of a codependent bond with her brother because her brother dies. The fact she’s not an emotional wreck and is capable of healthy relationships is amazing. Given a lot of factors… look the relationship - whatever it may be - between Wanda and Vision needs work, but all relationships do. And both of them clearly put a lot of thought into their discussions, with Vision’s awkward hamfisted attempts to make Wanda feel better, and Wanda’s willingness to talk openly to Vision in turn. It’s clearly a relationship based on communication and intellectual exercise, which I think is a decently solid basis? But then again, I’m ace, and of the few relationships I’ve had, one of them involved a hugely manipulative dickhead, so what do I know.

Honestly the squickiness is the one reason I can really see and get behind [3] even though it doesn’t squick me out personally. Vision is literally a year old by the time of CACW. That’s not hyperbole, you can check the MCU timelines on the wikia. He’s very young, he’s still very naive, he still lacks a solid understanding of human nature because he’s very logical and so emotion and ulterior motives sometimes - heck, often - pass him by. He’s seriously lacking in life experience and that makes forming relationships with him of any kind to be very weird.

The way that I find it easier to handle is… well, look at Ultron. Emotionally immature, yes, but intellectually he had a great understanding of things, even if he was an omnicidal maniac. Then, look at JARVIS. We don’t know when JARVIS was made, but he’s existed in MCU canon as a whole and intact thing for years, he’s had plenty of time to mature as a half AI half natural language UI, and then being merged with what there is of the part-sceptre brain of Ultron…. physically he’s a year old, but he’s got more going on in his skull than just that. He may lack a lot of experience and understanding - of course he does, part of him comes from an omnicidal maniac, the other part is a bodyless AI that acted as Tony Stark’s nanny, minder, adviser, best friend and general helping hand. His understanding of a lot of things is very off.

But he isn’t just a year old. He’s also got a lot of other stuff going on.

Honestly, if you don’t like ScarletVision, that’s fine. Its your business, it’s your preference. I don’t get ClintCoulson or Stony or… hell a lot of slash ships these days, if I’m honest, partially due to how they dismiss female characters even when written by female fans, but I’m not going to shit on them. If ScarletVision is your NOTP just block it. There’s no need to go shitting all over it, or trying to justify your hatred, distaste or squicked-out-ness by it. Just say “I don’t like this,” or “It makes me uncomfortable” and leave it at that. You don’t have to justify your personal feelings to other people. You’re allowed to dislike things just because you dislike things. You’re allowed to like things that are ProblematicTM [7] just because they scratch your id.

But yeah. People have their own reasons for not liking ScarletVision and that’s justified. Seeing it pushed in their faces, I can see why someone who doesn’t care for it would come to hate it - I didn’t care about Tony Stark but his stans have made me detest him on principle. But, you don’t need to spew hate everywhere about it, and that isn’t necessarily a personal issue.

That’s a fandom issue, largely due to the purity police, problematic TM thing, the callout brigade and people trying to prove that they are ideologically pure to try to prevent such callouts happening to them. The solution? For people to stop calling out other people or to stop giving a shit if they get called out. For people to stop overusing or misusing callouts to get back at people they don’t like. For people to stop lying with callouts. For people to stop uncritically reblogging callout posts without checking facts for themselves.

This probably isn’t going to happen, not for a while at least. Not before fandom has almost entirely burned itself out, burned itself to the ground and had to rebuild itself from the ground up.

But hey. I guess chewing up and spitting out your friends and companions only to team up again for the sequel is in right now - it’s what’s going in in the MCU.

[1] And hey, if it was nods for BuckyNat you know people would be practically cheering, so I find it kind of weird that this specifically is an issue while people are almost panting for a reference to BuckyNat, just as I find it annoying that people spent ages begging JKR for more information only to turn around and go “why won’t she stop!?” Answer: Because y’all spent years begging her for more. Don’t be bitter because your wish got answered.

[2] Yes there are issues with House of M, yes I know you may dislike it, no, I don’t care right now. Like what you like, dislike what you like, whether house of M was good is not the question, the question is if it was significant and it was.

[3] Being sick of Marvel pushing something via nods to the comics sure, that can be irritating, but there’s a bit of a double standard there because no one minds it for other characters and, indeed, they seem to be begging for it for BuckyNat. They ignore the nod to Ultimates that Clint’s family is [4] just to spit on it because it’s not Clintasha like they wanted or ClintCoulson (how did that ship start, honestly? IT MAKES ZERO SENSE), they hate on the nod to comics for WandaVision, but they seem to keep their eyes peeled for every other Easter egg opportunity, draw wildly out of proportion parallels between comics and MCU [5] and practically beg for BuckyNat [6].

[4] As is like… Clint’s character in this, he’s much more brutal than 616 Clint. MCU Clint is more disaster to humans than human disaster, and that is very Ultimates.

[5] People saying how much of a slap in the face the Raft is in MCU are WRONG because the Raft is new in MCU and has never been used to imprison anyone, let alone villains or heroes, so the slap to the face that it is in comics does not apply here.

[6] I get it, BuckyNat is really interesting and features two people dealing with their differing yet similar traumas from the same source. I’m a sucker for that kind of thing, I get it. But guys, it’s not what’s happening.

[7] Kylux feat. blood and force choking for example. Look I have issues with the shipping of Kylo and Hux but those fics are AMAZING and HORRIBLE and I LOVE THEM, for the simple reason that they are very id-scratchy. Sometimes I like to read about deeply unhealthy bloody relationships or just like. Straight up healthy BDSM. We all have likes and dislikes, but those don’t have to be due to an ideological basis. All things are flawed, some things more than others, but just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean that everyone should dislike the thing [8].

[8] There are, of course, exceptions to this. Nazis and Neo-Nazis, for example, should be universally hated and vilified because they wish to commit fucking genocide. White nationalists should be universally hated and vilified because they want to destroy anyone they don’t see as white, when race is a completely arbitrary construct entirely designed to create social divisions in the first place. But, some things can be problematic without being The Worst And Most Awful Thing Ever and that’s what this post is about.

#wanda maximoff defense squad #wanda maximoff #wanda x vision #scarletvision #mcu meta #ask #anonymous

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thebiggamehunter · 7 years

Text

New Post has been published on Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter's Blog

New Post has been published on http://blog.thebiggamehunter.us/it-starts-with-courage/

It Starts With Courage

With appreciation to Lance Secretan

I remember my first day of kindergarten many years ago at PS 90 in The

Bronx, NY. My mother was an immigrant who spoke accented English, taking me to class two blocks from our apartment on The Grand Concourse. She and my teacher walked me to my desk and offered me the loveliest look that I could imagine. My mother told me that she would be back a little later to pick me up and that my teacher would be looking out for me.

After a while, I learned another lesson. The lesson was that if I were to succeed in school, my job was to shit up, do what I was told, regurgitate a bunch of things when I was told to do it . . . OR ELSE I wouldn’t get into a good college.

Some years later, I attended CCNY in Harlem. I attended my classes and lectures but quickly learned that the lesson of college I was being given was, “Shut up. Do what you are told. Regurgitate a bunch of stuff when we tell you OR ELSE,” I won’t get a good job.

And when I found my job in recruiting upon graduation, I learned a similar lesson– “Shut up. Do what you are told. Regurgitate a bunch of

stuff when we tell you OR ELSE . . . “We’ll fire you! Is it any wonder that we live in times where people seem puzzled when they dedicate themselves to their employer, do their best and eventually are brought into a conference room and laid off. I have listened to many executives and staff alike lament about having done a great job and feeling betrayed.

“I did a great job!”

“My reviews were uniformly exceptional”

I keep hearing my own voice complaining about getting an B in a class when I thought I deserved an A. There was nothing I could say that would get the grade changed but I was seeking approval from an instructor who disagreed with my view of my work.

Yes, we all have bosses and teachers who evaluate our work. As a headhunter, I reported to the clients who paid me (and job hunters who didn’t pay me thought I reported to them), as well as to a business owner who demanded perfection from my work that was never achievable.

But the truth was I forgot the most important person who was part of my org structure.

Me.

You see, I fell prey to all the industrial conditioning I had received growing up wanting me to be “cooperative” or “a team player.” I lost track of myself with the push to be selfish in order to achieve sales goals (actual sales goals and, before that, grades). I succumbed to the motivation (the external pressure to comply with institutions and systems that were making sausage) of the systems I lived and worked in and lost my inspiration (the internal desire, independent of external pressure for conformity).

I became a high achiever who really didn’t care but did great work. I became someone who kept looking for unique ways to do what I did differently than others yet still meet my performance goals.

I hated it because all I was doing was making “artisanal sausage” and not doing what I really wanted. Maybe that willingness to sacrifice is part of being adult. I just never really found the correct percentage of sacrifice vs. self-satisfaction.

I hope you have.

I was introduced to Lance Secretan and a model he has called, “The CASTLE® Principles”

Courage

Authenticity

Service

Truthfulness

Love

Effectiveness.

Castle.

For a while, I wrestled with the idea of authenticity and truthfulness being redundant terms until I grew to see that authenticity was internal truthfulness or being genuine whereas truthfulness was how I might relate with the world at large.

However, as in the word, “Castle,” It truly does start with courage. It takes courage to face oneself and change. It’s why I now coach instead of headhunt.

As a headhunter, I found too many instances where my truthfulness was encouraged to be compromised and, thus, my truthfulness disappear. It was hard to watch a large check evaporate into thin air after doing so much work.

I found not caring about the people I represented or my clients. The love was lost in what I did and in the people I was hired to serve.

As a result, my effectiveness started to wane, all because I lacked the courage to change.

It started with courage and the desire to live life on my terms according to these principles. I can help you, too.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a coach who worked as a recruiter for

what seems like one hundred years. His work involves executive job search coaching, business life coaching for self-employed people who have a lunatic for a boss and leadership coaching. He is the host of “Job Search Radio” and “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” both available through iTunes and Stitcher.

Are you interested in coaching from me? Email me [email protected] and put the word, “Coaching” in the subject line.

Do you have a question you would like me to answer? Pay $25 via PayPal to [email protected]

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com offers great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn. Like me on Facebook.

You can order a copy of “Diagnosing Your Job Search Problems” for Kindle for $.99 and receive free Kindle versions of “No BS Resume Advice” and “Interview Preparation.”

#affecting change #Change #changing #Lance Secretan #The Castle Principles (TM)

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