#skill prioritization

[salemoleander]

Chaos vs. Patronage: How Life Series winners grapple with skill disparity

As the Life Series has gone on and matured into more noticeable patterns, some winners have pivoted to a mentorship/support role to their chosen 'champion'/ a favored player.

Scott spent Limited Life as a duo with Martyn, and then joined a high-skill group in Secret Life that ultimately saw him sacrifice himself trying to get Gem the win. Pearl spent Secret Life with her stated goal being one of her teammates winning, pivoting to support Scar at the end when they'd died. Now in Wild Life, she has outright stated her intent to support Impulse to get the win. (Scar supporting Jimmy in Wild Life may also fit this pattern; we'll get to that.)

In contrast, winners Grian and Martyn² are not sticking to that single-minded attempt to get a player to win, whatever it takes. They will express support for teammates winning, but generally do not take actions that would worsen their own chances of winning/surviving to help a teammate. They aren't playing "meta", which here means putting all their resources into one person.

These two categories of behavior ultimately reflect the Winners' approaches to answering the question of how to balance disparate skill levels in the series cast. (Second half of writing + footnotes under cut.)

Grian has spent game after game altering mechanics & playing with randomization to try to level the playing field without directly intervening against specific players.³ Martyn is invested enough in the narrative/story that making less-than-optimal decisions isn't hard for him or atypical (this is the player who beelines for the Nether every single season).

It seems like Scott and Pearl realized they're very strong players and are interested in nerfing themselves more actively... but they still don't want to throw the match. The compromise there is to put their effort & skill towards helping another player achieve victory.

A case could be argued that Scar is moreso the former group by nature (he's similar to Martyn in his penchant for making entertainingly bad decisions that render nerfing unecessary). However, after witnessing multiple seasons of Scott & Pearl acting as mentors, seeing them compete head-to-head in the game he ultimately won, mentorship now seems like a normalized route to take once you're a winner.⁴

¹ Unsure if BigB in LimL counts? They were a duo, but Scott fomenting Martyn's win seems to be what kicked off Pearl's dedication to support another player.

² Cleo is a winner but they do not fit this analysis for a variety of reasons I don't want to get into. So I won't, bc this is a tumblr post & not an academic paper. Ignore that there are footnotes and an academic-ass title

³ Grian seeing Scott win: "Oh no I've created an unbalanced game. Ok lets randomly assign players together to try to balance things... why has RNG betrayed me?!" RNG does not stop betraying him btw. I have another post in draft about this but it's kind of nuts how dedicated Grian is to Not Rigging The Game Even A Little.

⁴ Incidentally imo this is what will force Grian in the next few games to either end the series, create dual winners/some other atypical win structure, or bust his ass trying to get a second win & break that taboo. Based on his game design so far, he can put up with a bit of interference, but ultimately will not abide "we all do schoolyard tradesies on who gets to win until everyone gets one".

[bberry005]

tbh to me what makes samira mohan and victoria javadi such good indian american representation is that they don't feel like they're just there to be indian american. yes, lots of indians in the US are doctors (and we see that accurately reflected in the pitt!), but a lot of the time, their stories are told in a one note way. you know, the stereotypical way you expect indian people to be represented in mainstream US television.

the thing is though, samira and victoria don't fall into that. you can tell that they're indian and that being so is important to their characters, but that's not the central factor. instead, cultural norms in indian american communities shine through in their essential character traits. hard work, respecting your parents, eyes on the prize attitude, a strong work ethic, and academic and professional achievement of the highest level are all things that indian americans value strongly, and you can see it in samira and victoria without it being handed to you. their cultural values and upbringing inform their characters, but its not so in your face it doesn't feel real. and mainstream american television always makes asians robots or messy failures, so just seeing two indian american women be so refreshingly real is so beautiful to me

also there's something wonderful in samira being the character with research focused on racial health disparities in the ER. when people in the US think about racialized healthcare, they don't often consider asians and asian americans in that assessment. the way we as asians face healthcare discrimination is different than other minorities in the US, but it does still exist and it's extremely prevalent. and samira studying that makes me so happy. and yeah, victoria is the progidal indian child, but her storyline frames it in a way that displays the way she (and many other successful indian american women) are at tensions with their family for pushing them so hard to be so successful and not allowing room for much else. it feels like victoria's story will play out with nuance rather than her just completely rejecting her family as many stories do end, and it's such a good way to subvert the genius asian character stereotype to me.

[fairylando]

The way Lando (and Carlos) immediately go back to each other after having a hard time and being down needs to be studied. They probably find comfort in each other due to the fact it reminds them of much simpler days aka their McLaren era. They’re soooo Call it what you want by Taylor swift coded

this is exactly how i look and feel like whenever they try to convince us that they're "just rivals" and nothing more until one of them retires, and then go and do this everytime.

[thetwilightroadtonightfall]

a sequel to the “I MISS MY BLORBO SO BAD!!!!!!” gifset because wow guess what guys I STILL MISS HIM VERY BAD!!!!!!

[kindnessoverperfection]

ADHD really does put everything at equal levels of importance, huh? Like I'll have an email I need to write that'll take maybe 10 minutes, and getting that done will alleviate 6 months of stress. Then I'll notice a sock on the floor I need to put away. Then I'll get the strong conviction that it's up to me to cure cancer. And my brain will tell me that I need to do all of them at once, start and finish them all in the time span of 0 seconds, and my executive dysfunction will throw up its hands and do none of the above.

[legionofpotatoes]

star wars outlaws

[burstingsunrise]

although it may come as a shock based on the content of my blog i am in fact a functional adult with a full time job in stem who is somehow entrusted to manage other humans.

and i have something very important i would like to express to any of my college-ish followers who may be entering the full time workforce soon.

think of the resume you submit when you apply for a new job as a fic you just opened on ao3. you see a wall of text, you zone out. you can't process any of it. you back out of the fic and find something you can make sense of.

the lesson is: please please please for the love of god do not apply for a job with a resume that's more than three pages long MAXIMUM. i can tell you from experience literally no one is reading all of that and all it does is make it harder to understand your actual skills and experience.

[magenta-somethings]

studying to be a teacher. and ai keeps popping up again and again and again. my classmates use ai. my teachers use ai. we’re allowed to use ai in our assignments. and like. i get it. i get it. you can’t stop people. might as well at least get people to admit it in a statement at the start. regulation is often more effective than prohibition. and the workload teachers have means you often don’t have time to do everything you need to do. and ai can help lessen that workload. i get it. but. what’s the point. what’s the fucking point!!!!! fuck!!!!!!!!!!!!!! why are we even doing this. why are we even teaching if what we can do can be done by ai. why are we are expecting kids to learn from materials we couldn’t even be bothered to create. the artificial intelligence isn’t even intelligent!!! fuck!!! what’s the point.

[sieglinde-freud]

god i fucking love fire emblem fates

[myinterestsvary-writes]

you guys gotta stop making me think about ambereve. it’s so fucking good, shut up, ugh

[ann-jujimi]

When I get into a fandom I'm in it for a long time, not moving on from the feelings or the love of the characters and various permutations of ships, and right now the MLC and TGCF tags are giving me life, helping me drag myself through the last weeks of this school year with a smile on my face.

[noisytenant]

the basic building blocks of project management skills are sort of definitionally useful--they're literally "how to get something done". so i hate how PMing is defined by the Paid Occupation of project management and dominated by corporate sensibilities when it should be seen as a set of fundamental life improving skills.

[cowboyviolence]

I believe in a subset of "the system is what it produces" which is something like "the student learns what the class teaches"

Sometimes a class teaches you intro to chemistry. And sometimes a class teaches you when it's time to bullshit a little

[davidisnotmyname]

hey so did you guys know I’m stupid and completely forgot physical instrument also determines your base health

[lordgeneralsix]

people struggling w kcd need to forget how every other rpg works you will save yourself the frustration by expecting it to be easy