Back at it?

Posted on by terrifible

I started this while out of work. I had been laid off and wanted to write something longer than tweets. I was also trying to keep it clean enough that if job prospects really wanted to see my writing skills, I had something to show them.

Then I got a job. Hurray! And I promptly stopped writing here. It wasn’t planned. It just happened.

But my ideas keep happening. I keep wanting to write. So I’m going to start up again. I don’t know how often or about what. But there’s now a WordPress icon on my tablet (that I bought to celebrate getting a job). That means there’s no excuse not to.

What am I going to write?

Well, we got a Nintendo Switch during March break. And our local library has Switch games to borrow. I will likely write quick reviews as my 7-year-old son and I play them.

I’m sure there will be more quick gaming character idea sketches. I’m part of two sporatic gaming groups which means I have too many rules and character ideas in my head and not enough chance to play any of them.

After that? We’ll see. Likely a lot of puns and other terrifible jokes. You’ve been warned.

The Captain and the Kid

Posted on by terrifible

Imagine a “What If” about Captain America and Spider-Man as partners. After waking up to the modern world, Cap reads the paper about this Spider Menace and decides to help. After a usual hero fight, they team up.

Picture a young Peter teaching Steve about the modern world, and Steve teaching a lost boy how to be a man.

New focus

Posted on by terrifible

So…I didn’t get the job last week. From the feedback I received, I was beat out more a broader range of skills and more technical background. Very frustrating but out of my control.

In many ways, that interview was a victory: my first tech company interview! It gave me hope that more interviews like this might happen.

But it does feel a bit like a pyrrhic victory. After 9 months of searching and over 110 applications, that was the first tech company interview. My applications are pretty evenly split between tech and insurance, and I’ve had only one interview in either field. What makes these two fields similar is their abundance in this region, and my lack of industry experience. I’m getting beat out because I don’t have industry experience, but how do you get experience if no one will hire you?

This week, I’m going to try and change my focus. I’m researching the marketing agencies in the area and sending in applications. If my search for marketing jobs has been failing because of applying to industries I have no specific experience in, maybe I’ll have better luck just focusing on marketing.

If nothing else, I’m trying to avoid insanity by doing something different instead of repeating unsuccessful action and hoping for a different result.

Post-interview: the waiting and expectations

Posted on by terrifible

Last week, I had a job interview. I was very excited. It’s for a local tech company with a 10 year history that is looking to rapidly grow.

I did all the preparation I could in a few short days. I researched their products. I combed through their website and social media to have questions and ideas. I made a cheat sheet for all the acronyms. I practiced answers to those interview questions you always hate, like “tell us about a time you failed…” I was ready.

I think it went well, but it didn’t go as expected. I had forgotten how intensive their online application was. I had already answered all those interview questions you hate. The system had rated my answers well, so I was brought in. This interview was more about the personality fit. So it went about as well as I can control. We both know that I can do this job and we barely even talked about that.

Now I wait. Interviews were being held Friday and Monday. Today it is Tuesday. Decisions will be made by the end of the week. It all comes down to personality fit. I think we got along well but that doesn’t mean that one of the other candidates won’t get along better. I won’t know until later in the week. I wait.

I’m excited! I would really like this job! I mean, yes, after 9 months of unemployment I want almost any job. But I really like this company. I could do well there.

I’m trying not to be too excited. I’m trying to not plan how I announce I have a job to family and friends. I’m trying not think about the celebration spending spree I’ll probably go on: dinner out, new clothes, maybe a tablet.

Tempering expectations is hard. There’s only a 1 in however many people they’re interviewing chance that they pick me. Probably 6 to 10 people. Maybe less. I want to be ready for the bad news email or phone call. So I try to distract myself. I’m trying to still apply for jobs instead of taking the whole week off waiting hopefully. But I’m having to make myself do it.

I tell myself that even if they don’t pick me that this is a victory and it is. Of the 100+ jobs in tech and insurance that I’ve applied to in the past 9 months, this is the first interview. They picked me. I made it through the screening process. More will come if this job doesn’t pan out.

I wait. And I try not to get too excited. This is my week.

 

Let the Wookiee win

Posted on by terrifible

A Star Wars marketing problem
or Let the Wookiee Win.

Lately, I have a problem with Star Wars marketing.

It’s not that it’s everywhere. Disney is doing what it was already amazing at with a property known for it’s product placement. Good on ’em!

It has nothing to do with representations of female characters. Well, not directly. I completely fall on the side of we need more female characters, toys, stuff for kids of both genders. Leia is awesome! Rey kicks 9 kinds of ass! I’m sure Jyn Erso will be great. There need to be more female SW characters, in fact more than 1 per film in major roles. More female aliens beyond Twi’leks would be great too. But I’m getting sidetracked.

What bothers me is that in all the branded merchandise there is an imbalance in the Force. From the Dark Side you get Vader, Kylo Ren, Boba Fett, Storm/Clone/First Order troopers, and sometimes you get Maul these days. For the Light Side you get Yoda, Chewbacca, R2-D2 and C-3P0. Notice what’s going on? The Dark Side has more “main” or important characters. The Light Side has the secondary characters. I love them all and they all get some great moments, but the aged master, the walking carpet, and the droids are not main characters.

Why is this? The easy answer is licensing and image rights. Marketing a character’s face based on an actual actor is much more expensive than a droid, helmet or alien. When you’re plastering your characters on as much merch as you can, you go with the cheaper option to maximize profits. That’s not going to change. Also, there’s a long history of toys and drawings made to look like a specific human being being terrible.

I’ll admit this bugs me as a parent but that I am also conflicted because of my history with Star Wars. Such a focus on making the bad guys cool feels odd to me, but I have no evidence to support that it makes kids worse off. I’m also a firm believer in having toys of the bad guys for your kids so the good guys have something to fight. A good guy is only as awesome as the adversary he overcomes. My conflicts revolve around always liking the bad guys myself. When I collected the Star Wars CCG in the late 90s, I always wanted to play Dark Side decks. TIE Fighter was my go-to game, not X-Wing. On any strategy game that allows you to choose, I usually enjoy playing the Empire more. Commanding Star Destroyers is fun. See? Conflicts.

So what’s the solution? Either elevate an existing character to more prominence or create a new masked or alien protagonist character.

Masks. Bad guys get masks because it is more menacing, and shooting legions of helmeted fodder is easier psychologically because they can seem like they’re not real people. I get that. A good guy with a helmet or mask for battle would make sense in-universe. Combat armor exists. It shouldn’t be just for bad guys. Sabine in Rebels with her Mandalorian roots seems like an attempt at this but gets lost in the mire of being a female character. (Remember, I love female characters and want more of them.)

A new alien protagonist would be great to have but unlikely. For story telling purposes we tend to focus on human characters. We, as humans, identify with them. From a technological, film making, and acting standpoint, we’re unlikely to get a prominent alien.

But we already have a prominent alien that we don’t  properly use: Chewbacca. Chewie is awesome but always gets overlooked. He’s half of the greatest smuggling team on the Outer Rim, but it’s Han that’s known for making the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs. No medal for the Battle of Yavin despite being one of 6 people to survive active engagement in it. Yes, I’m counting Vader. The Falcon wouldn’t have taken off from Hoth at all without him. He hijacked the AT-ST at Endor that turned the tide of the land battle. When the Falcon lands at the Resistance, Leia hardly says hello after years apart. When he returns after Han dies, Leia confronts the girl who knew Han for days instead of his lifelong partner! Yes, we can’t understand what Chewie says. That’s only a problem because they never give us subtitles and instead have to have a character who reacts to him. But come on!

Chewie is awesome and deserves more focus. Make him a main character. Let the Wookiee win!

 

 

Talking about job hunting

Posted on by terrifible

On other social media, I’ve been talking about my ongoing job hunt. Not much on here and only in passing on Twitter. Okay, mostly on Facebook.

There are certain schools of thought that say you shouldn’t talk about job hunting.

For some, it will jinx getting interviews or offers. I don’t really believe that. If karma is preventing me from getting interview and job offers, I’m pretty sure it’s for things worse than and unrelated to discussing the job hunt.

Some companies will search social media to see what a person is saying about a company. This is actually a thing. I’m always very careful not to mention specifics about companies I’m applying to. I may mock part of a  job posting if it’s got something bizarre or if the job gets repeatedly posted in a short period of time. But I don’t link to it or mention the company name. And if I’m mocking a posting, I’m probably not applying anyway.

Many people don’t talk about job hunting because they don’t want current colleagues knowing that they want to jump ship. I totally get that. But since I am sans-job since the lay off, that’s not really an issue.

I’m going to keep talking about the job hunt simply because it’s a big part of my life right now. It’s a source of stress and frustration. Talking about it helps me cope. Friends reacting, offering sympathy and offering help makes it suck less. I thank you all for putting up with it.

Also, if I didn’t talk about it, I would probably not use social media as much. It can be tough to only post about happy things. Otherwise all you’ll get is half-baked reflections on games and superheroes. Maybe a bit on cooking or being a dad. If I don’t talk about the bad things too, I’m not really being me.

 

New Spider-man costume!

Posted on by terrifible

I try not to be just another angry nerd on the internet. But here I am reacting to the new Captain America: Civil War trailer. I like it!

The new Spidey mask is a lot less bug-eyed than what we’ve seen since the mid-90s. Good.
I’m not sure how I feel about the shifting size of the eyes we see in the trailer. Yes, it is more expressive than a static look and feels more like the comics and cartoons. But it’s hard for me to suspend my disbelief compared to the other costumes we see in ‘realistic superhero movies’. I look at it and ask “How do you do that?”
I don’t envy anyone who has played Peter Parker up to this point because of the mask. It completely blocks your face and most modern actors have no training with mask acting. There’s a reason Spider-man movies spend as much time without the mask as they do and find a way to damage it for the final confrontation: actors want their faces to be seen.
Wow, that costume really is tight spandex. It is very pulled right out of the comics. We’ll see how that works out. In general, I’m okay with how costumes look in live action super hero properties since the first X-men movies. They generally look like something a person would wear. If you go looking for some type of combat you’re going to wear something you can move in and something that protects you. Most costumes in the comics are tight spandex because of art limitations and their evolution from circus costumes. When you’re trying to show how muscular someone is and you’re pumping out art on a deadline, you draw a body and you colour it. You’re not really thinking about the practicality of how it would work because people suspend their disbelief. In live action you have to think about the person wearing it and the people around them. I’m okay with that.
Also, costumes got really crazy in the 90s. Yes, they were crazy before that but google Rob Liefeld. I’ll wait. X-men Apocalypse makes me nervous because we’re getting into that era of costumes and I’m not sure I want to see that come to life.

How do we save Batman?

Posted on by terrifible

This post from Screen Rant sums up a lot of my problems with the direction of Batman, and other superhero adaptations. Read it through, but the short version is that for too long people didn’t see the satire of Frank Miller’s Dark Knight and Alan Moore’s Watchmen. This lead to shoe-horning dark, edgy and violent characterizations where they didn’t belong to keep up and cash in. This led to comics and superheroes being realistic and more “adult” and therefore not for kids. As if something being “for kids” means that adults can’t enjoy it without feeling guilty.

I dislike Frank Miller’s Batman. I dislike the influence it has had. I can’t argue with the story direction of it. Seeing your parents gunned down in front of you could totally lead to Angry Ninja Batman, as I call it. It could lead to brutal violence and not trusting anyone to the point of always having counter measures at hand for even your “friends”. But it feels very limited in story possibilities compared to what I refer to as Detective Batman.

Detective Batman is still a rich, super genius in peak physical form who is driven to deliver justice. He starts his one-man war on crime to protect others from the tragedy he suffered. But gradually he sees that striking fear into the hearts of criminals isn’t enough because it also leads to being feared by those you’re trying to protect and to being hunted by the justice system you’re trying to help. So he finds allies in James Gordon and Lucius Fox. By working with the police by giving them clues they couldn’t get themselves, it leads to arrests and convictions and the city being safer from regular crime. That it also leads to more extreme criminals is a story for another time.

But in my mind the thing that really saves Batman from himself is a kid named Dick Grayson. Robin was initially introduced as a plot device so that Batman could have someone to talk to (think Watson to Holmes) and to appeal to younger kids. I think we need to bring back Dick Grayson to save us from Angry Ninja Batman.

Dick Grayson is one of my favourite characters in comics. Despite having the same backstory as Bruce, he ends of having real friends, making his own family with the Titans, and even having several positive romantic relationships. There’s a joke that his super power is still being friends with his exes. He’s a positive character that really can’t happen with Angry Ninja Batman. Because Dick helps change Angry Ninja Batman into Detective Batman.

Batman fails to save Dick Grayson from the tragedy of losing his parents. Feeling guilty about this, he takes the young acrobat in. As Alfred spends time with Dick (because Bruce is off on his crusade), he sees a kid very similar to the young master he raised but with more compassion. Alfred convinces Bruce to spend time with the boy and it changes and challenges Bruce. He sees the chance to be a father figure to this kid but he ends up learning more from his young ward. He teaches Dick to fight and stealth and to be a detective. But Dick teaches Bruce how to be human, and trust, again. Without Dick Grayson, you don’t get a Batman who can think outside his own pain enough to join with other heroes to save the world, to join/found the Justice League.

Angry Ninja Batman limits the stories you can tell to stories “for adults” instead of having stories that adults can share with their kids. If Pixar has taught us anything, it’s that you can tell stories for both. I really dislike how Miller-inspired Batman has become such the default in Batman media. I say this as a parent who wants to share these characters with his son, but also as a fan who wants more people to be able to experience these characters regardless of age.

Two geeky thoughts

Posted on by terrifible

Two quick geeky thoughts that I may later expand on:

  1. Marvel’s Civil War
    I will be very interested to see how they make Tony’s side sympathetic. In the comics it was like they didn’t even try. If you were for Registration, you were on the wrong side. Really, any side that involves hiring super villains to help apprehend resisting heroes is the bad side.
  2. DC’s TV vs Film
    I am really appreciating Supergirl and Flash (and to a lesser extent Arrow this season) for being a place to tell happier stories. Unlike the films were they are concentrating on the grimdark, Frank Miller-inspired Angry Ninja Batman and Disconnected Alien Superman. It’s nice to be able to have both sides accessible and not have the grimdark be the default interpretation.

Cover letters

Posted on by terrifible

Looking for work is some of the hardest work you will ever have to do. Maybe not physically anymore, but emotionally it can be really tough.

The part of applying for jobs that can take the most out of you is writing cover letters. You know, the letter you write that tells the company how you fit their job description and how excited you are to work for them? You want creative writing samples: just look at cover letters.

You want to find something personal to connect to either the company or their product. You need to let them know how much you want to work for them. You want to work, but it’s really hard to know much about a company from their website, social media and any press they may have.

Sometimes it’s really hard to be excited about a company or their product. How much do you love carpeting and flooring? Did you have a life changing event involving pairing sink and faucet designs? Did you meet your partner while picking a case for your smartphone? “We both reached for the MegaDefensor model. Our hands touched. Our eyes met and we knew. We knew that by both longing for the ultimate in device protection that we also shared a similar worldview…we shared a soul.”

Can’t I just say “You have a job posted requiring X experience. I happen to have that experience and would like to be paid to use said experience. I’m sure I will learn to love your company.”?