Month: March 2016

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.