#not a moral failure or a sign of weak character. just a reality.

[seaglassdinosaur]

Something about how Haymitch continues to drink. That he never ‘fully’ recovers, even though there are plenty of opportunities through and after the series when his access to alcohol is cut off. Something about him perhaps seeing the act as pointless because the damage to his body has been done, but being content with the time he has left.

Something about Haymitch being able to care about people again; allowing himself to care about Katniss and Peeta and not having to fear losing them or anyone else ever again. That he finds a hobby, a constructive and meaningful way to spend his time that not only reminds him of Lenore Dove, but was prompted by the people he has around him. That he finally feels safe enough to open up about and remember everyone who was taken over the years. That he’s able to heal some through this.

Something about how Haymitch’s pain doesn’t go away, but he’s able to find peace with it through these practices and people, and is able to forgive himself and feel forgiven by those he lost.

[onlylifeordeath]

I put James through a personality test and this is so important to who he is as a character. I’m posting not only the results but what they mean.

These are the results James received from the 16Personalities Test, which can be found here and I encourage others who want further insight and/or a concise personality description to take this. It is very well done.

RESULTS

ISTJ-A:  Introverted Observant Thinking Judging–Assertive ( the Logistician )

[ More details below the cut. ]

Introduction

My observation is that whenever one person is found adequate to the discharge of a duty... it is worse executed by two persons, and scarcely done at all if three or more are employed therein. –– George Washington

The Logistician personality type is thought to be the most abundant, making up around 13% of the population. Their defining characteristics of integrity, practical logic and tireless dedication to duty make Logisticians a vital core to many families, as well as organizations that uphold traditions, rules and standards, such as law offices, regulatory bodies and military. People with the Logistician personality type enjoy taking responsibility for their actions, and take pride in the work they do – when working towards a goal, Logisticians hold back none of their time and energy completing each relevant task with accuracy and patience.

Logisticians don’t make many assumptions, preferring instead to analyze their surroundings, check their facts and arrive at practical courses of action. Logistician personalities are no-nonsense, and when they’ve made a decision, they will relay the facts necessary to achieve their goal, expecting others to grasp the situation immediately and take action. Logisticians have little tolerance for indecisiveness, but lose patience even more quickly if their chosen course is challenged with impractical theories, especially if they ignore key details – if challenges becomes time-consuming debates, Logisticians can become noticeably angry as deadlines tick nearer.

Associate With Those of Good Quality if You Esteem Your Reputation...

When Logisticians say they are going to get something done, they do it, meeting their obligations no matter the personal cost, and they are baffled by people who don’t hold their own word in the same respect. Combining laziness and dishonesty is the quickest way to get on Logisticians’ bad side. Consequently, people with the Logistician personality type often prefer to work alone, or at least have their authority clearly established by hierarchy, where they can set and achieve their goals without debate or worry over other’s reliability.

Logisticians have sharp, fact-based minds, and prefer autonomy and self-sufficiency to reliance on someone or something. Dependency on others is often seen by Logisticians as a weakness, and their passion for duty, dependability and impeccable personal integrity forbid falling into such a trap.

This sense of personal integrity is core to Logisticians, and goes beyond their own minds – Logistician personalities adhere to established rules and guidelines regardless of cost, reporting their own mistakes and telling the truth even when the consequences for doing so could be disastrous. To Logisticians, honesty is far more important than emotional considerations, and their blunt approach leaves others with the false impression that Logisticians are cold, or even robotic. People with this type may struggle to express emotion or affection outwardly, but the suggestion that they don’t feel, or worse have no personality at all, is deeply hurtful.

...For It Is Better to Be Alone Than in Bad Company

Logisticians’ dedication is an excellent quality, allowing them to accomplish much, but it is also a core weakness that less scrupulous individuals take advantage of. Logisticians seek stability and security, considering it their duty to maintain a smooth operation, and they may find that their coworkers and significant others shift their responsibilities onto them, knowing that they will always take up the slack. Logisticians tend to keep their opinions to themselves and let the facts do the talking, but it can be a long time before observable evidence tells the whole story.

Logisticians need to remember to take care of themselves – their stubborn dedication to stability and efficiency can compromise those goals in the long term as others lean ever-harder on them, creating an emotional strain that can go unexpressed for years, only finally coming out after it’s too late to fix. If they can find coworkers and spouses who genuinely appreciate and complement their qualities, who enjoy the brightness, clarity and dependability that they offer, Logisticians will find that their stabilizing role is a tremendously satisfying one, knowing that they are part of a system that works.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Logistician Strengths

Honest and Direct – Integrity is the heart of the Logistician personality type. Emotional manipulation, mind games and reassuring lies all run counter to Logisticians’ preference for managing the reality of the situations they encounter with plain and simple honesty.

Strong-willed and Dutiful – Logisticians embody that integrity in their actions too, working hard and staying focused on their goals. Patient and determined, people with the Logistician personality type meet their obligations, period.

Very Responsible – Logisticians’ word is a promise, and a promise means everything. Logisticians would rather run themselves into the ground with extra days and lost sleep than fail to deliver the results they said they would. Loyalty is a strong sentiment for Logistician personalities, and they fulfill their duties to the people and organizations they’ve committed themselves to.

Calm and Practical – None of their promises would mean much if Logisticians lost their tempers and broke down at every sign of hardship – they keep their feet on the ground and make clear, rational decisions. Peoples’ preferences are a factor to consider in this process, and Logisticians work to make the best use of individual qualities, but these decisions are made with effectiveness in mind more so than empathy. The same applies to criticisms, for others and themselves.

Create and Enforce Order – The primary goal of any Logistician is to be effective in what they’ve chosen to do, and they believe that this is accomplished best when everyone involved knows exactly what is going on and why. Unclear guidelines and people who break established rules undermine this effort, and are rarely tolerated by Logisticians. Structure and rules foster dependability; chaos creates unforeseen setbacks and missed deadlines.

Jacks-of-all-trades – Much like Analyst personality types, Logisticians are proud repositories of knowledge, though the emphasis is more on facts and statistics than concepts and underlying principles. This allows Logisticians to apply themselves to a variety of situations, picking up and applying new data and grasping the details of challenging situations as a matter of course.

Logistician Weaknesses

Stubborn – The facts are the facts, and Logisticians tend to resist any new idea that isn’t supported by them. This factual decision-making process also makes it difficult for people with the Logistician personality type to accept that they were wrong about something – but anyone can miss a detail, even them.

Insensitive – While not intentionally harsh, Logisticians often hurt more sensitive types’ feelings by the simple mantra that honesty is the best policy. Logistician personalities may take emotions into consideration, but really only so far as to determine the most effective way to say what needs to be said.

Always by the Book – Logisticians believe that things work best with clearly defined rules, but this makes them reluctant to bend those rules or try new things, even when the downside is minimal. Truly unstructured environments leave Logisticians all but paralyzed.

Judgmental – Opinions are opinions and facts are facts, and Logisticians are unlikely to respect people who disagree with those facts, or especially those who remain willfully ignorant of them.

Often Unreasonably Blame Themselves – All this can combine to make Logisticians believe they are the only ones who can see projects through reliably. As they load themselves with extra work and responsibilities, turning away good intentions and helpful ideas, Logisticians sooner or later hit a tipping point where they simply can’t deliver. Since they’ve heaped the responsibility on themselves, Logisticians then believe the responsibility for failure is theirs alone to bear.

Romantic Relationships

Logisticians are dependable through and through, and this trait is clearly expressed when it comes to their romantic relationships. Often representing the epitome of family values, people with the Logistician personality type are comfortable with, and often even encourage traditional household and gender roles, and look to a family structure guided by clear expectations and honesty. While their reserved nature often makes dating Logisticians challenging, they are truly dedicated partners, willing to devote tremendous thought and energy to ensure stable and mutually satisfying relationships.

Happiness and Moral Duty Are Inseparably Connected

Blind dates and random hookups are not Logisticians’ preferred methods for finding potential partners. The risk and unpredictability of these situations has Logisticians’ alarm bells ringing, and being dragged out for a night of dancing at the club just isn’t going to happen. Logistician personalities much prefer more responsible, conservative methods of dating, such as dinner with an interested coworker or, in their more adventurous moods, a setup organized through a mutual friend.

Logisticians approach relationships, as with most things, from a rational perspective, looking for compatibility and the mutual satisfaction of daily and long-term needs. This isn’t a process that Logisticians take lightly, and once commitments are established, they stick to their promises to the very end. Logisticians establish foundations, fulfill their responsibilities, and keep their relationships functional and stable.

As their relationships transitions into the long-term, Logisticians gladly see to the necessary daily tasks around the house, applying the same sense of duty to their home life that they do in the workplace.

While this may not translate into particularly exotic intimate lives, Logisticians are dependable lovers who want very much for their partners to remain satisfied. It takes patience on the part of more adventurous partners, but if different activities can be demonstrated as equally or more enjoyable than those already within Logisticians’ comfort zones, they are perfectly capable of trying something new.

However, emotional satisfaction can be another matter. While Logisticians are able to provide surprisingly good emotional support, this only happens when they realize that it’s necessary, and there’s the rub. Logisticians are not naturally receptive to others’ emotions, not unless they are stated clearly, and a partner usually only says “I’m angry” when it’s too late to address the initial grievance.

Let Your Heart Feel Their Afflictions, and Give Proportionally

People with the Logistician personality type can get so caught up in the belief in their correctness, in “winning” arguments they thought were about facts, that they don’t realize their partner may have viewed things from a perspective of consideration and sensitivity. Especially with more sensitive partners, this can be a huge challenge for the relationship. Ultimately though, Logisticians’ senses of responsibility and dedication set the tone, and they spare no effort in noting to this distinction moving forward, the consequences having been demonstrated as real.

While Logisticians’ staid approach may seem boring to some, there is an undeniable attractiveness to it, though felt perhaps more by respect and admiration than emotional passion. Logisticians’ shells hide a strong and quiet determination and reliability, rare among other personality types, which can benefit even the flightiest personalities, allowing them to stay connected to the real world while still exploring new territory. Partners who share the Observant (S) trait are the best fit for Logistician personalities, with one or two opposing traits to create balance and to expand Logisticians’ sometimes overly isolated world, such as partners with Extraverted (E) or Prospecting (P) traits.

Friendships

Logistician friends are not spontaneous. They are not talkative, or particularly playful in their affection. What Logistician friends are is loyal, trustworthy, honorable and dependable. Others may come and go with the ups and downs of life, but Logisticians stay by their friends’ sides no matter what, with a deepness of commitment that other types may not even believe is possible.

True Friendship Is a Plant of Slow Growth

Logisticians are a very methodical personality type, and this loyalty isn’t given away lightly. Often slow to make friends, Logisticians usually end up with a smaller circle, but they consider that circle to represent a promise to be there for the people they care about, and Logisticians’ promises are not easily broken.

Expressing emotional affection isn’t one of Logisticians’ stronger skills, but they nevertheless find ways to show it. As Socrates said, “To be is to do”, and Logisticians’ follow-through, their willingness to take action as a show of support, stands in for their words.

These actions convey a sensitivity that many fail to see, but it is a quality that Logisticians’ friends come to admire and depend on in the long years of their friendships.

But all of this sounds terribly serious, and indeed it only shows the one side of Logisticians and their approach to their friendships. The other side knows how to stop being quite so staid, and especially in the company of joyful and talkative Extraverts (E), Logisticians enjoy relaxing and having fun with a good discussion about work, life, and current events.

People with the Logistician personality type don’t like conflict, and this applies to how they select their friends as well. Seeking out friends with similar principles and opinions, Logisticians most often befriend other Sentinels personalities, who are likely to share their perspective and world vision. While they are unlikely to become friends with substantially different types – it simply takes too much energy to bridge the communication gap – Logistician personalities still recognize and appreciate others’ strengths and qualities.

Knowledge Is the Surest Basis of Happiness

In fact, as if to prove the point, Logisticians almost always have at least one Intuitive (N) friend in their inner circle, despite the disconnect the two perspectives bring. These are very much relationships built not on mutual understanding, but out of respect for their mutual differences. Logisticians marvel at Intuitives’ breadth of thought, being very much in tune with their own intelligence, while Intuitives admire Logisticians’ realism and dependability, something they are often hard-pressed to find in themselves. Knowledge, as always, is the great equalizer.

Parenthood

As parents, people with the Logistician personality type are often the most comfortable. Their sense of responsibility and honor blends well with a tradition that has been in place since time immemorial: to raise one’s children to be respected, contributing members of home and society. As with most commitments, Logisticians do not take their roles as parents lightly, and will make it their work to ensure that this tradition is upheld to the highest standard.

This doesn’t always come easily for their children though, as Logisticians tend to be strict, with high standards and expectations. Logistician personalities establish stable, clearly structured environments for their children, always with an eye on helping them to develop a sense of place in society, and to fulfill useful roles.

A clear sense of hierarchy is a part of developing this identity, and Logisticians work just as much to ensure an appropriate respect for authority as they do with family and societal structure.

All this loyalty, devotion and structure are of little use though when Logisticians’ children need the warmth of emotional support. While Logisticians can be sensitive towards those they care about in their own way, it’s hard for younger children and especially adolescents to recognize this tough love for the love that it is. Often Logisticians need to rely on a more sensitive partner to fill this role and mediate between rational purpose and the more ethereal sense of emotional well-being.

Success Is Owed to Our Parents’ Moral and Intellectual Teachings

People with the Logistician personality type are strongly principled, valuing patience and hard work, qualities children often struggle with. Nevertheless, Logisticians’ children are expected to meet these standards and share these values, for their own good. This approach often bears its fruit in the long run, but Logisticians must keep in mind that their approach creates natural barriers and distance that often leave their children wondering if they’re on the same team.

Taken too far, or with mutual stubbornness, this may even set in as a permanent state in the relationship, something both Logistician parents and their children ultimately regret. It is best for Logisticians to embrace and hold to their own values, but to also recognize that each person has their own goals, and to meet their children halfway in attaining theirs. Combining their natural devotion and purpose with this flexibility in support of their children’s own vision leads to a sense of mutual respect and accomplishment that any Logistician parent would be proud of.

Career Paths

While many personality types may be comfortable with flexible work as consultants and sole proprietors, Logisticians are much more focused on building long-term, stable careers. That’s not to say that Logisticians can’t do that sort of work – many find themselves thinking about what’s on the other side of those cubical walls – but what they crave is dependability, and that is reflected in their choice of work perhaps more so than in any other part of their lives.

Have No Other View Than to Promote the Public Good

The facts support this, as the most common careers among people with the Logistician personality type revolve around institutions of respected tradition, authority, security, and established consistency. Careers as military officers, lawyers, judges, police officers and detectives are all very popular among Logisticians. This makes sense, as they not only offer the stability that Logisticians seek, but are in line with their principles and conservatism, establishing clear societal roles.

Logisticians of course aren’t limited to these organizations – there are many other roles that utilize their reliability, objectivity and sharp eyes. When facts and logic are out of place, Logistician personalities swoop in as the accountants, auditors, data analysts, financial managers, business administrators and even doctors that identify, report and correct the issues at hand.

Most of these careers have Logisticians working alone, which is usually their preference, but when teams are necessary, they are best defined by clearly outlined roles, responsibilities and work environments.

Nothing is quite so challenging for Logisticians as ongoing debates about who is responsible for what, resulting in work that’s shoddily assembled – or worse, incomplete.

Logisticians have strong opinions about how things should be done, and if things are shuffled too often, people with this personality type can become surprisingly vocal about their opposition. It’s important for Logisticians to remember that even the most traditional and stable career paths can and need to change as time goes by. It is much better to accept this with grace than to develop reputations of being enemies of new ideas.

Business Discourse Should Be Short and Comprehensive

Logisticians may also struggle with the increasingly open and social requirements of modern work life. Being somewhat bad at sensing others feelings, Logisticians’ “just the facts” attitude can be downright alienating when it comes to more sensitive personality types. This applies not just to coworkers but to customers as well – service positions like retail sales and waiting tables, as well as more emotionally demanding careers such as psychiatry are, generally speaking, a terrible fit.

The ideal career paths feature a trend: they place facts above feelings and allow Logisticians to uphold the hard standards that are the backbone of society. Rules are the basis for everything people take for granted about modern life, from the social contract that smooths relationships, to the laws that protect peoples’ most basic safety, to the constitutions and treaties that govern nations. People with the Logistician personality type take on roles as the defenders of these ideas, in big ways and small, and are rightfully proud of it.

Workplace Habits

When it comes to the workplace, Logisticians are almost a stereotype for the classic hard-working, dutiful employee. In all positions, the Logistician personality type seeks structure, clearly defined rules, and respect for authority and hierarchy. Responsibilities aren’t burdens to Logisticians, they are the trust that has been placed in them, an opportunity to prove once again that they are the right person for the job.

On the other hand, the change that comes with assuming those new responsibilities, or in losing old ones, is often a significant struggle for Logisticians. This presents itself differently in different positions of authority, but it is one of Logisticians’ most significant challenges to overcome. The usual insensitivity common to all Thinking (T) types is also a running theme here, something many people with the Logistician personality type choose to focus on in their personal and professional development.

Logistician Subordinates

Logisticians crave responsibility, which makes them the go-to subordinates for odds and ends and unpopular projects. Often seen as jacks of all trades, Logistician personalities can competently tackle any project that comes with a manual. On the other hand, this makes them reluctant to give up responsibilities even when they are overburdened, or when there are better people for the job. The seriousness in Logisticians’ approach to their work makes them surprisingly sensitive to criticism, leading to a sometimes vexing level of inflexibility.

Their stubbornness aside, or perhaps because of it, Logisticians are quite possibly one of the most productive subordinates – they respect authority and hierarchy, and have no problem following orders and instructions. Punctuality is unlikely to ever be an issue, either in terms of showing up to work on time, or in terms of meeting project deadlines. While Logisticians may need clearly set steps and well-defined responsibilities, they are exceptionally loyal, dedicated, meticulous and patient in completing their work.

Logistician Colleagues

Among colleagues, no one can be trusted more to ensure that projects are finished on time and by the book than Logisticians. Quiet and methodical, people with the Logistician personality type keep cool when the going gets tough, but expect their colleagues to share their approach. Significantly different types, especially more emotional ones, baffle Logisticians with their need for emotional support and openness, or capacity for dropping something, half finished. To Logisticians, either something’s been done right or it’s been done wrong, and sugarcoating it or walking away isn’t going to fix it.

Logisticians value peace and security in the workplace, and the easiest way for this to happen is for them to simply work alone. Innovations, brainstorming, theories and new ideas all disrupt this comfortable state, and it takes a great deal of respect on Logisticians’ part to acknowledge their validity. Once the details have been laid out and a plan of implementation established though, Logisticians are an indispensable part of the team in putting these ideas into practice.

Logistician Managers

Logisticians love responsibility and the power resulting from it. Pressing themselves hard to meet their obligations, Logisticians regularly go above and beyond their duties, and expect their subordinates to act with the same level of dedication. At the same time, Logisticians’ preference for doing things by the book, adherence to hierarchy, and general aversion to innovation makes their subordinates ride a very thin line when they do – stepping out of bounds must be backed up with just the facts, and results.

It is said that it is better to do first and ask permission later – it’s difficult to say whether this applies to Logisticians, as they are very intolerant of their subordinates’ failures to meet their obligations, and one of those obligations is to stick to the plan. Believing that truth, at least as far as they see it, is more important than sensitivity, Logistician personalities are capable of laying down hard criticism, and their willingness to make tough decisions can make perceived insubordination the final trespass.

Conclusion

Few personality types are as practical and dedicated as Logisticians. Known for their reliability and hard work, Logisticians are good at creating and maintaining a secure and stable environment for themselves and their loved ones. Logisticians’ dedication is invaluable in many areas, including their own personal growth.

Yet Logisticians can be easily tripped up in areas where their practical and methodical approach are more of a liability than an asset. Whether it is finding (or keeping) a partner, learning to relax or improvise, reaching dazzling heights on the career ladder, or managing their workload, Logisticians need to put in a conscious effort to develop their weaker traits and additional skills.

[akria23]

Boy Who Ran W/ Wolves -Derek

Note: Okay so if any of you have paid attention lately…my computer crashed right as I got near the end of this thing like on the 30th of last month so I wasn’t able to post this. It was mad frustrating cause that was the perfect day to post given the release of the interview and everyone chatting – but bad shit happens I guess. I hope you guys like this one cause I’ve spent money to get back and get it out to you guys. Without further ado…

Starting off let me say this, Teen Wolf is a show that had a lot of potential and when we say that we mean, we saw what they could’ve done and didn’t do or we saw what they wanted and failed to do. I have no interest in filling in the many craters that riddle this story. I have no interest in reimagining Scott McCall. There is no saving grace to that caricature. And by this I don’t mean that Scott is the devil but that he is so poorly written I don’t see anything worth salvaging. Personally as a person who has seen the show flop and squander as it lost its mass popularity, I think it would’ve been easier for writers like Jeff and his team to create the Boy Who Ran with Wolves narrative instead of the so called Teen Wolf narrative that they majorly dropped the ball on.  On a standpoint of where the writers failed their own show, I always answer from the very start. Do I think Teen Wolf could’ve been an amazing show? Yes. Do I think it was…

The writers were full in the ego and light in the skill department. They couldn’t handle criticism making them unable to admit faults within themselves, or the work they produced. The hardest knock they took was being unable to adapt. I’m not sure if the show runner just had such an ideal of what he wanted before starting this show, that when met with a chink in the metal frame he buckled and demanded they all take the tumble with him or if pride was so high in the drawing room that during that time they found they would rather self-destruct together. I can’t really speak on the possible malfunctions that took place behind the scene, only the chaos that it created on the screen.  

               The writer’s decided to center the story on young Scott McCall, and while this wouldn’t be a problem if things were different, if they’d actually built a character, it can’t be said to be a wise decision under the circumstances.  It’s been stated many times that Scott is a weak character that lacks the tools to carry a series - a movie possibly, but never a show. For some reason the drawing room was more inspired by its side characters instead of its lead, to be fair this is many-a-writer’s downfall. This is why I find it simpler to explore this story with the framing of different characters, not just the two I’m going to focus on.

I’m going to explain The Boy Who Runs with Wolves (BWRWW) narrative as a story set with either Stiles or Derek as the protagonist. This doesn’t necessarily mean the story is set with them as the narrator, because the story could seriously be done through a third person teller (think Michael in QAF). BWRWW does however shift the perspective of the story. It has a more formulistic structure that the writers should have found easy to work upon. Both characters come filtered with the needed elements to push a story forward.

Given Derek’s back-story he’s an obvious candidate for a protagonist. Starting off he has the compelling family history. The Hales have a legacy in Beacon Hill’s they were protectors of that land, supernatural creatures who stood between the human world and their own. This works as not only a goal and a motivation for Derek, but also creates a minor if not a major theme for the show. The original Teen Wolf of course played with the aspect of human/wolf (or supernatural) but never in a way that was set in stone, or with an overarching message. The Hale legacy could’ve given the audience a view into the supernatural world that Teen Wolf could never afford. The goals of the Hale family could only promise meetings of the outside creatures…given introductions into those creatures and their world in a way that made sense while still keeping the focus on the main - wolves. It’s not a history Derek is even really aware of, so as he’s introduced into who his family really was and the things they had to do, we the audience are therein introduced to those realities. I always think about charmed and how they were witches that knew nothing of their history. Their only access to knowledge of this new world they had to navigate was a book of spells with info on some of the many creatures. The reason this is so brilliant is because you never want to give your protagonist someone or something that can give them all the answers. It mucks the story and frustrates the audience when the protagonist doesn’t listen. This was often the issue with Teen Wolf. They gave Scott Derek, a Wolf mentor so to speak, a mentor he often refused to listen to or used and abused on occasion. Even with Buffy, which Jeff foolishly thinks he mirrors, they didn’t give her a slayer with the keys to the castle – her mentor could help her along the way (while also having his own duties and things that sometimes muddled her goals because he was her watcher [layering]) but not just roll out all the answers, or the how to(s). That’s not to say your protagonist shouldn't meet the failure of naivety, or the wilds of adolescence, but for it to be a main frame makes it a difficult line for your audience to walk and therefore continue to feel for said character. Walking room should be for error, not stupidity. So while Derek would have knowledge on his supernatural bearings, to a point, it’s these other facets that pick up the slack. Also you have the wolf to human aspect that can still be absorbed through stiles (the human) and even Scott who would have been demoted to a fitting position given his lack of layering (new wolf).

The external growth/struggle speak for themselves. Stepping into the shoes parents – more so his mother- having to deal with the way that still connects him with them. Finding out truths and things he’s never known, some of which he probably should never know. The realities of everyday battles and the constant chance of losing what he’s gaining. Because the show only highlighted his mother, and in such a way that gave the audience this very direct perspective on their relationship I think its unavoidable to create a reimaging without that concept and without that shadow being a part of his motivation.

Okay, let’s back up a bit for part two because I want people to understand where I’m coming from and where I’m going when I break this stuff down. If the top half (Family History) creates Derek’s eternal struggle then the second half creates his inner one, and therefore also that growth. Often times to create a character’s emotional line and characterization, a writer gives the character something to overcome, something that happened prior to the main story but very much influences the main story – using Michael Hauge’s concept I’ll refer to this as the Wound. The wound builds the characters Belief, sometimes of themselves or the outside world, sometimes both. Again for repetition, the belief is just that, a strong belief the character has because of his wound. The character’s belief creates their Identity – a Mask that covers their true Essence so they no longer feel weak/vulnerable. Essence is the person they really are, it’s their better side that they hide. Their new identity makes them think they’re protecting themselves but usually it’s just standing as a block to what they really want.

Above I’ve structured out Derek’s characterization, give or take with the fact that Teen Wolf cut out his middle structure and then wanted to only lean loosely on his mask nor did they really commit to his wound. Anyway starting from the left – Wound. I’m gonna do one line at a time so you can see how they connect. The first layer of Derek’s wound would have been Kate’s betrayal, not the fire itself but the actual set up and manipulation and forethought she had to have going into this and how she used him. Kate’s actions would have then created a belief in him, and fairly so, this would have been the toxicity humans are capable of. The creatures who call his kind unacceptable, but committed the worst of acts against them. This leads the character to his mask, in Dereks case a form of prejudice where humans stand. You want something that’s natural, but creates authentic tension. Make your character human by giving him contradictions and ripping the moral carpet from under him and see how he sticks his own landing. Derek having issues with humans because of his own experiences does just that, and also gives him a growing point and ties to the Human – Wolves concept. Teen Wolf did start off with Derek showing some signs of prejudice with humans, at least with Stiles who he didn’t seem to think much of at all. But the show ended that pretty quickly without ripping something great out of both sides and leaving something magnificent on the screen. Derek’s second and major wound would be the trauma he blamed himself for. The fault he finds in himself leads to the belief that he is undeserving of anything…good. This of course leads to his new identity his mask, which for Derek is Isolation. When I say isolation I don’t just mean cutting oneself off physically I mean the things he starts to do to keep others out. Adult Derek is different from pre-wound Derek. He’s stoic - closed off, violent, silent and so on. He doesn’t seem to revere his own life, quick to throw himself in front of danger…so much so that fans at one point felt he had a death wish. And this is where contradictions come in very hard, and you want them to. Because even under a mask something of our true essence is always accessible. So even though there was this new stoic Derek at times we could see ‘old Derek’. We could see the Derek that longed for family and connection despite thinking he didn’t deserve those things. Tension in this is that even as he fights he has a need and that need will go toe-to-toe every time. For example, Derek turning the teens. He deep down he’s lonely, he yearns for that connection, for unity. But when he creates this makeshift group he still caters to his own mask, not treating them like the family he knows he wants. No, because of his own beliefs, because of his past teachings he tries to teach them his own ways to protect themselves and that doesn't help because that’s not what either side needs. His Tragic Past plays as his internal struggle, where he’ll grow from the inner outward. The tragic past that created his present identity branches out to the things that help set free his Essence, the Romantic Subplot & his individual Development Arc.

His tragic past, instead of being fodder for torture, becomes Derek’s personal story that weaves back into the main story. His past acts as a two part concept branching out to create his personal development arc one way and a possible romantic subplot the other. Starting with the development arc, Derek was shown a darker side of humans with the actions of Kate and those who partnered with her to create the Hunters. Derek has reason to have issues with humans, this creates a friction with his family’s legacy. How can he be expected to protect the very thing that destroyed his life? So on that route you of course not only have to have him deal with the concept of humans but also the hunters themselves. I think Teen Wolf could have done wonderful things with the Argents and the wolves and have them not only come toe-to-toe but also be forced to face each other in the realization of what the war has caused them and question a possible reconciliation, for some, if any.

This ties with the romantic subplot. Subplots are important in a long piece, you’re promised to have at least one. A subplot is a minor story that runs parallel alongside the main-plot and or weaves into it. It’s a way to add layers and therefore complexities to the story. A romance subplot of course is just a minor story of romance that takes place alongside the main story. I saw a graph of The Hunger Games that broke down its subplots so I’m gonna use that movies to make it simple. The main plot (question) in the Hunger Games was – Will Katnis survive the hunger games? The romantic subplot (minor question) in the Hunger Games was – Will Katnis choose Peeta or Gabe (think that’s his name)? There were other subplots in The Hunger Game series but it’s the romantic one I’m focusing on. So for BWRWW – Derek Version the romantic subplot would be something near the same – Will Derek overcoming open him to a relationship with Stiles. This romantic subplot closely weaves throughout the main plot because it’s dependent on Derek achieving his internal goal.  Back to the human – wolf subject and concept of the Derek’s story, which would play a huge part in their story. Because Derek had this view of humans, this prejudice so to speak, a mistrust not only of humans but his relations with them since both his priors went terribly wrong. As a writer the thing is then to question that connection, if their theme together is trust how is that gonna be exploited in story? Does trust in Stiles really make him stronger, or does the unbiased outlook on humans leave him open to danger? I talked about the cycle in part one, the themes that made up his levels of love – love/loss, fear, trust, fault, intimacy, fragility, betrayal – so how do those things intertwine and play-out. What are the other weak concepts that will make Derek balk – like fear of losing someone as he’s done so often before? How do you have him face betrayal again, overcome it and reassess fault? VoidStiles. The Sterek relationship has similar markers of the past but highlight very different things. Intimacy for example, whenever we see Derek and Kate it’s a sexualized thing where she’s reminding him what she used against him and what she views as weakness on his part. This seeks the question of what does Derek now see intimacy as; a tool? How do you highlight that within Stiles and Derek’s relationship the subject of intimacy is ‘reborn’. Their moments shine on positive emotions and connections. A comforting hand in the time of need. Something as simple as a different kind of touch to try to awaken (closed fist to open palm, and hesitancy). To just being comfortable with someone touching you, showing a trust and a comfort level with that person. Even in lack of touch the intimacy is still there, as it is in the dream sequence. This is why I say Stiles is the only option for Derek to love. He singularly being who he is and the two coming together literally forces Derek in a position where he has to make a choice and therefore give him a chance to grow and thereby show his True Essence. You see the old him start to come back as Stiles sarcastic nature rubs off on him and he takes more liberty with relaxing his stoicism. He’s forced to realize that he can sit on the sidelines telling himself what he doesn’t deserve or can fight for what he wants. Derek being so sacrificial becomes a problem for Stiles who has come to care for his wellbeing in all ways. He can never 100% go back to his so called old self because he’s experienced things but the natural parts of him, the parts he hid away to make himself unable to be hurt, those things have been retained. The thing he really wants, having a family is an assessable thing – through building it himself. The romantic subplot helps develop Derek to his full potential. It matches the subject of wolf- human and exploits that concept in the best way giving the story many plotlines and avenues. His internal arc matches with his eternal one but with enough friction to carry the story to fruition.  

It’s important to have your hero’s external goals battle their internal. This makes the hero human, makes the audience not only empathize with him but makes them root for him/her. It makes the climb to being a hero more conceivable. Going back to the wound to identity concept, Michael Hauge puts it like this,

“When characters are traumatized by experiences, they formulate beliefs about the world that will protect them from ever again experiencing pain of those wounds. For example, Judy Hopps, the rabbit, in Zootopia receives a beating from a predator when she was young, this leads her to believing predators are actually just inherently bad – despite what she preaches to the outside world.”

 A writer has to take its character’s experiences into consideration. The things we’re set upon believing have a reason, an experience tied in, a thought, a feeling behind it. Too pretend otherwise, is to error. You don’t wanna give your character a random belief out of nowhere just because it places the story where you, the writer, needs it. That’s cheating, a high handed way to make instant heroes. You never want to have an instant hero…it’s like instant romance, the audience feels cheated and the so called ‘hero’ falls flat and is deemed unworthy – Scott McCall.  You also never wanna give your protagonist a weak struggle. Simply saying “I don’t want change” is not enough, it’s just seems selfish if said change has expanded on your character’s life and skills instead of just brought negativity. If you now have skills that can protect you and others, crying danger is just side eye worthy because simple humans live a life of danger too. This is why layering is such a necessity. Conflicting the hero in his outside world is only half the battle and means next to nothing if his mind isn’t conflicted too. It’s like courage – courageous is not someone who is unafraid being willing to do the thing, it’s someone being afraid and yet willing to face/overcome said fear to do the thing. It’s more interesting to observe the latter than the former. It’s the same with being a Hero, the audience wants to observe that journey, they are living vicariously, that’s the only way they too get to the feel of being a hero.

As a writer, this is what you want. Things should never be easy for your protagonist. Things should never fall to a protagonist just because they’re the protagonist or the lead. Opposition and obstacles creates character. As the protagonist stands in front of a problem, it’s his reaction to the issue and what he decides that tells the audience who he is. This is something Teen Wolf never understood. You can have every character play mouthpiece to how great your character is, how much of a good guy he is…but if actions ain’t showing the same thing, then it’s not believable for the audience.  With Derek, the story stands a chance. You have a protagonist who has real obstacles on both sides – external and internal. Your protagonist job isn’t to be all knowing, or all powerful, or all saying, it’s to be growing, to be in the process of developing. It’s about someone who is able to take something from his experience, from his journey and cycle that and give it back. The reason a lot of people are so in love with Derek, is because we’ve seen him. No one told us who he was, he showed us, and we then saw what he could’ve become.

Things & characters Given Derek V:

             Nogitsune/VoidStiles: Can you imagine the damage and the wreckage the nogitsune aka voidstiles would have given this relationship, given both their internal struggles. The trickster who liked to play mind games, having all of this vulnerability at his feet. On one side you have the wolf rebuilding his faith in humans through his relationship with a human. One the other you have Stiles who has worked on this platform of gaining that trust and now he’s possessed by something that uses him to lie and manipulate. That’s tension! That’s conflict. Authentic character paths. That’s good TV. And if they wanted to bring him back like the show did – ugh – it would’ve have actually made since for him to be someone’s fear since he would’ve been the concept of Stiles being everything negative to a Derek that needs him to be the positive. When your characters stand as a frame that keeps each other standing you have to push them to the edge and make them look at the reality of having that all ripped away. The Nogitsune would have done that for this relationship.

               Ending: On one hand I think I would’ve loved seeing the torch passed on to Boyd. I think it would’ve been grand to see that kind of image and that placement for Boyd considering where he too started off. It’s an appropriate ending to have Derek finally graduate to a place where he can pass that job down (after having actually did the job) on someone else as he moves forward. On the other hand, I watched Teen Wolf have Stiles leave to join the FBI and I wonder if that’s really fitting. If Stiles himself doesn’t fit in the town of Beacon Hills stepping into the shoes of his father. Protecting the home he’s ever known and being a line between these two worlds. Stiles is an excitable person, someone who honestly finds joy in the workings of a case, I sometimes wonder if regular human cases would be enough for him. It makes sense for him to try to work his way to power in that town, continuing that work while having an ear to the community and how those around him response to incidents and or cover up the real happenings. I don’t know, it’s just an aspect that my brain goes back and forth with.

               Younger Derek: I think I would’ve enjoyed a longer plot for young Derek than just coming back for some more Kate torture. In fact I think many plots could have branched into this level and been used as a frame to take us back to Derek's childhood in way that was different from just the norm flashback. I always hated that the way the writers wrote the set up meant Young Derek and Peter didn’t really get to interact.Considering the fact that Tyler H was leaving, they could’ve slotted that actor for a minute.

               Liam & Theo: I’ve grown to like the thought of these characters but then with Derek being the focal character…I’m not sure they would have a place. I say this because Liam is just a better thought out Scott. He starts off naïve and comedic but falls into his line – this is probably cause he’s a side character and that all fits there. And with Theo, his come on would not at all fit with the sterek storyline. Because their theme is trust it would have to be something undeniable and grand in scheme to come in and put mistrust in there (which is why I said voidstiles) and you only want to do that once, to overdo it or to do so weakly would just undermine the relationship. I don’t know how they’d have to mend Theo’s entrance but even then, his interaction with Derek would be mega different from his one with Scott. It made sense for him to come in and tell Scott he was gonna come in and take over his shit he don’t know what he doing…but with Derek at that point it would just be laughable. The only way I see maintaining these characters would be to give Scott his own pack.

               Lydia: I honestly don’t think she should be a part of the Hale pack…or any wolf pack >.> Not in that way. I think she should be focused on her own powers and growth but still helping out when she’s needed. This is nopt about her having or not having a love interest because personally I never subscribe to the ‘this female don’t need love bs’ it’s just about her placement within pack. You can be family and not have to make that leap. I think the show could’ve done great things with Lydia and they failed. I personally would have liked to see her and Derek bond more, I don’t think even going with Stiles as his love interest would have tipped that possibility of that friendship because I don’t think Derek would have been jealous of that old feeling that was never returned. Its stiles past, just like he has a past. Lydia is a capable woman and I think he would’ve seen her for the asset she is.

               Malia: Who?

Things I thought would be interesting:

Stiles and Derek body switch

More Derek Papa Stilinski Interaction

Danny the hacker – Like they just threw the homie away even though he would’ve been a bomb asset!

Lydia and Peter interaction – People might not like that, but being around one another brought aspects I like about each character. I personally like Peter fucking with Lydia because it always brought out a fiery side of her and forced her to deal with a challenge.

If we had to have Malia – she sure as hell would not be a hale but I would put her on the lgbqt spectrum, given her a more believable story and put her with Kira.

True wolf bullshit obsolete

More Erica and Boyd backstory and for them not to have turned her into a sex kitten but a female whose body had been fighting her now having the chance to be more than healhy

Some actual dealing with Peter and Derek’s relationship and the things Peter has put him through

I would’ve def left Derek as young Derek for more than an episode.

Awkward Derek flirting with Stiles – I can’t picture it so I wanna see it lol

Note: So obviously I didn’t include Stiles part in this, I’m eight pages in sooooo decided there will be another part. I’ll probably also talk about how I personally would have liked to see their relationship transpire in that part. I did want to go over how different the human-wolf-new new wolf thing could have been different dependent on the focal character, but at this point I don’t even care nor do I wanna talk about Scott too much because he will be tagged and his fans get pissy and I don’t care about Scott enough to fight for him much less over him. Nor do I generally partake to those fans because the majority are people who like to waste time fighting over him and blaming fandom for the shortcomings the writers created instead of taking it to the board and fighting for him and I find that concept too illogical to entertain. So while making these Articles I try to remain as honest in my opinion as possible while cutting out a lot. Also before people een start let me just say yes, I know the trauma isn’t always used as a foundation (wound is) but for Derek and even for Stiles I think that remains a starter point. Truama isn’t often used in genres like adventure, it can be but it’s less common. In romance its more often even when its not the pov character – for example Pride & Prejudice movie. Elizabeth’s belief system doesn’t come from trauma but from rebelling the teachings of growing up as a woman in that time. The wound however that creates her personal issues with Darcy is in his slight towards her. For Darcy his outlook on the poorer kind comes from a trauma necessarily of his own, but in the trauma of someone he cared deeply for (his sister). Yeah, I got a video of them play on my second screen so they were the example and I love them so. The point being I’m not saying it HAS to be but that trauma is in part Derek’s starter pack. The wound however, is usually a must. I don’t know if I should say the next and final (hopefully) part is gonna be shorter…cause I said that bullshit last time and it was a lie…BUT it should be shorter cause I won’t have to explain everything that time around. Other than that, let me tell you…I was supposed to have posted the final article and the first chapter of my Sterek fic on the Finale day…that didn’t happen. I didn’t finish my fic and the article turned into part one. So I’m not sure if I should finish the chapter first since I’m starting to think I’m using these articles as procrastination or if I should just write the Stiles one and get it out the way. We’ll see but something should probably be done by the end of next week cause it take me so long to do this simple shit >.> I tried to put most of this text under a hide thing but I couldn’t figure that mess out so my apologizes to all the people who had to do the intense scroll!

Teen Wolf Articles

Scott McCall

Stiles Stilinski

Derek Hale

Sterek: Foundation

Sterek: BWRWW: Derek

Upcoming: Sterek BWRWW: Stiles

[ruminativerabbi]

Elul Conventions

Like most of you, I suspect, I’ve spent last week and this week floating in and out of the nightly Democratic and Republican convention coverage on television. I suppose political conventions are always three- or four-day-long infomercials pitched primarily at undecided voters, but somehow seeing it all (or mostly all) unfold on Zoom has made that feel even more acutely to be the case. Still, what was I expecting? Conventions are hardly the context in which politicians candidly and openly discuss their shortcomings, weaknesses, failures, or moral flaws. (That never actually happens, of course, at least not in public, let alone on television—only it somehow doesn’t happen even more acutely in the context of these massive quadrennial conventions.)

Just as I suppose also does every other American, I really do understand that it’s all about selling the product. It’s just hard for me to watch night after night without feeling just a bit like Diogenes the Cynic. One of the greatest Greek philosophers, he was as peculiar a man as they come. He declined a salary for his teaching and preferred instead to beg for coins in the marketplace. He chose not to live in a normal home, but preferred to sleep at night in a broken human-sized ceramic jug owned by the local Temple of the goddess Cybele and provided to him as the most basic lodging imaginable. He owned one single item, a clay bowl…until he realized he could scoop his food up with his hand and eat it that way, whereupon he smashed his bowl as a way of divesting himself of what he now saw as a superfluous possession. His most famous stunt—one among many—was wandering around Athens in full daylight with a lit torch in his hands. People would see him behaving so oddly and ask what he was doing, which was the whole point: he would then look at them and explain that he was out searching for an honest man. After two weeks of watching convention television, I know exactly how he felt!

Maybe it’s Elul. Of all the months of the Jewish year, none is as special—to me personally, at least—as Elul. Admittedly, it’s not an obvious choice. Elul has no holidays, no special days at all. For rabbis of all stripes, myself absolutely included, it is a time of frenzied writing and rewriting as the horrible prospect of having to stand up on Rosh Hashanah and not have the most compelling, interesting, and uplifting sermon possible ready to go looms large on the terror-horizon. On top of all that, I’ve almost always lived in places where it is beastly hot and humid towards the end of August, thereby making even something as normally refreshing as going for a walk to clear your mind and re-organize your thoughts a minor misery. And yet, despite it all, Elul is still my absolute favorite month, the month I look forward to all year. And that is for one reason only, really: because Elul is our national month of introspection, of self-scrutiny, of the kind of soul-searching that comes naturally to almost none and yet which is at the heart of the way in which traditional Jews prepare for the holiday season.

It is not a particularly pleasant undertaking, this effort to look deep within. And yet it can also be satisfying and inspiring, even encouraging. Indeed, the very thought that we are not prisoners held in place by the various negative character traits we’ve developed over the decades is the single most invigorating idea I grapple with each year.

Like most people, I claim to hate that feeling of being mired in a slough of my own making. But that’s only what I say to the world—that I hate feeling trapped in my own life—but the truth is that, like most people, I actually revel in that sense of being trapped, of living in a maze I’m not quite bright enough to exit, of having no real choice left in life but to accept who I am and to be the man I’ve become. After all, if I have no choice but to play with the cards that I’ve somehow dealt myself over the years, then why not just accept myself as I am and be done with it? Nothing is more satisfying, after all, than feeling optionless, therefore noble and rational in accepting how things are without whining or wasting endless amounts of time trying to alter immutable reality.

And then Elul comes along and says—wordlessly, in that weird out-of-language way that time speaks to its prisoners, which is everybody—Elul comes and informs us without saying a word that that isn’t really how things are, that we actually aren’t slaves at all. And that Elul-based realization is the lens through which I’ve been watching these last weeks’ political conventions.

The point of the conventions is to make you want to vote for a specific party’s candidate this November. That’s why they promote their nominees so aggressively: to inspire the undecided to decide for their ticket by depicting its occupants as all the things they party-czars have concluded undecided voters want the most to see in their leaders. Interestingly for parties so completely different in terms of their approaches to most things, these qualities are not all that different. And so are both candidates for president depicted by their promoters as having basically the same set of virtues: courage, compassion, insight, unbounded patriotism, and integrity. But, for all I also esteem all those things, what Elul makes me want to see in a candidate more than any of the above is a deep, abiding sense of humility.

I want a candidate to speak about the COVID-pandemic and say, look, I’m not a physician, let alone a trained epidemiologist. I’m not a scientist or a researcher. I’m a politician. And therefore I admit openly that I don’t really have any idea how to deal with this nightmare that has come upon us. But I will find people who actually are experts, who actually are trained professionals, who actually do have some ideas about how best to tackle the challenges that the pandemic has thrust upon us…and I will follow their advice. I will listen carefully. I’ll ask all the questions I can think of, but when a consensus emerges among our nation’s brightest and most qualified scientists about how to deal with this national catastrophe that has already taken so many from us, that consensus will be the basis for national policy.

My mother used to tell me that the sign of being a truly smart person is knowing what you don’t know. I doubt the teenaged-me knew what she was talking about. Or maybe I did on some level, but I doubt I understood just how profound a point my Mom was actually making. In the fifth act of As You Like It, when Duke Frederick’s court jester, a man named Touchstone, recalls the old saying according to which “the fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool,” he is saying more or less the same truth that my mother wanted me to embrace: that the key to wisdom is understanding how little, not how much, you know of the world and then acting accordingly.

Politicians are neither economists nor historians, neither scientists nor anthropologists. And that is precisely why the key quality necessary to negotiate the various straits in which the nation finds itself is humility. To understand the racial politics of our day requires a profound understanding of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American history…with a good background in the culture of race as it evolved even earlier on as the nation’s founders were creating the Constitution.  To understand the Middle East in all of its complexity requires not merely understanding the byzantine process that eventually led to the imperialist nations of Europe—and foremost among them France and the U.K.—carving up the Levant and creating make-believe nations that suited no one’s interest but their own, but a serious grounding in ancient history as well and, at that, in the various events of late antiquity of which the ethnic reality of today’s Middle East is reflection and development. To understand the potentially catastrophic effects of global warming—on the weather, on the sea level, on the quality of air and water, and on the potential for world-wide cataclysm within the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren—to understand anything at all about the environment requires not only a background in geology, climatology, and physics, but—even more importantly—an overall understanding of how the various branches of scientific inquiry come together to create a cogent picture of what the next century might bring to our beleaguered planet.

No one—with no exceptions at all—is a master of all those domains, let alone of all those I’ve just mentioned and all the others I haven’t. Politicians, as noted, are neither scientists nor scholars. Perhaps that’s how things have to be. (That the German chancellor actually does have a doctorate in chemistry merely makes her the exception that proves the rule. But even Mrs. Merkel doesn’t have training in any of the other disciplines mentioned above.) Nothing feels easier than “just” saying that and moving on to moan about something else. But Elul teaches us differently. Knowing what you don’t know is real knowledge. Wisdom always rests on a foundation of profound humility. Promoting yourself as possessed of a meaningful plan for the future at the same time you seem unable honestly to evaluate your own lack of training in more or less every single one of the disciplines necessary to develop a game plan rooted in reason—that is just bluster and self-promotion. Elul doesn’t teach us to evaluate people who function without any awareness of their own limitations unkindly. But to lead the nation, the would-be leader needs to face the future with self-effacing humility and with a commitment to seek counsel from people who actually are entitled to their opinions. Nothing more! But, if a candidate wants my personal vote in November, also nothing less!

[creativesage]

(via 10 Reasons Why a Mentor Is a Must | Inc.com)

From not making certain business decisions to fostering certain partnerships, a mentor can help guide you through your entrepreneurial journey.

By John Rampton

As an entrepreneur, it's exciting to go it alone and create something on your own. However, the reality is that, while you have a great idea, you may not know exactly what you should be doing with your business at which times to develop it into a sustainable business.

I've had several mentors over the years and learned a large amount of valuable lessons from each and every one of them. From not making certain business decisions to fostering certain partnerships, a mentor can help guide you through your entrepreneurial journey.

Here are ten other reasons why you need someone like a mentor:

1. Mentors provide information and knowledge. As Benjamin Franklin said, "Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn." When I was starting out, I had no idea what was involved in running a business, including making a business plan, budgeting, handling daily operations, making strategic decisions or running a marketing campaign. With a mentor there from the start, I tapped into a wealth of knowledge that got me up to speed faster and shortened that learning curve.

2. Mentors can see where we need to improve where we often cannot. Movie maker George Lucas noted, "Mentors have a way of seeing more of our faults that we would like. It's the only way we grow." They will always be brutally honest with you and tell you exactly how it is rather than downplay any weaknesses they see in you.

This constructive criticism that my mentor offered helped me to see things in myself that I could not recognize. I appreciated that insight because I didn't want someone to pad my ego. (Well, I did want someone to pad my ego, but I had to decide that the business was more important.) Instead, I wanted to know exactly where I was lacking so I could improve those areas.

3. Mentors find ways to stimulate our personal and professional growth. Another famous movie director explained, "The delicate balance of mentoring someone is not creating them in your own image, but giving them the opportunity to create themselves." My mentor would often pose questions for me to think about and ask me to come back with answers later.

He would also set various goals for me and let me loose to see if I could accomplish them on my own, all the while watching from a distance to see how these projects helped me to develop. He then made a point to sit down and tell me what he'd observed about me through the project process, what he thought was worth keeping - and definitely what he would immediately throw out. He also focused on character and values, which nurtured my personal growth as well as my leadership abilities.

4. Mentors offer encouragement and help keep us going. Inspirational entrepreneur Oprah Winfrey stated, "A mentor is someone who allows you to see the hope inside yourself." They are there no matter what and offer moral support sprinkled heavily with cheerleading. There were times that, if there wasn't a mentor there for me, I could have easily, "caved-in," emotionally, or given up on the business. However, I had a mentor and each one I had wouldn't let me stop but provided the encouragement and guidance that gave me hope and confidence that I could do whatever was asked of me.

5. Mentors are disciplinarians that create necessary boundaries that we cannot set for ourselves. I experienced a lot of tough love from my mentor. He did this because he understood that being an entrepreneur can be challenging when it comes to self-motivation and self-discipline. He took on this role of parent to teach me good work habits and provided the boundaries for me to work within. This solidified my work ethic, sharpened my focus, (I really missed some important essentials), and clarified my priorities in a way that I could not do on my own.

6. Mentors are sounding boards so we can bounce ideas off them for an unfiltered opinion. When I started, I had numerous ideas for all types of business ventures and products. I relayed all of these to my mentor who then helped me see which ones had potential and why others were better left alone. I appreciated his candor because I might have otherwise pursued a business idea that had no legs.

7. Mentors are trusted advisers. In the world of business, it can be hard to know who to trust - and that you can trust someone, especially with proprietary information or intellectual property. Since he was an objective third-party with no stake in any idea or venture, he was happy to let me know what he thought. In return, I knew that he would keep everything I told him confidential rather than sell it to someone else or steal an idea from me.

8. Mentors can be connectors. Playing a dual role of teacher and connector, a mentor can provide access to those within your industry that are willing to invest in your company, offer their skills and expertise, introduce you to talent that can fuel your business and help you get closer to your target audience. My mentor willingly shared his network with me, taking me to events and making introductions that led to many opportunities I would not have otherwise had.

9. Mentors have the experiences you can learn from to prevent making the same mistakes beginners make. Starting a business is challenging enough, so if you can skip doing things the hard way, why wouldn't you? A mentor has been there, right where you are, and has made numerous mistakes that they can now use as a basis for helping others to skip the devastating effects of not knowing.

I am all about doing things smarter, so my mentor shared many stories about the mistakes he made along the way that became learning lessons for me minus the pain and lost resources that come from making those mistakes.

10. Mentors are free, which makes them priceless in more ways than one. Typically, a mentoring relationship will grow organically through connections within your industry and network. A mentor does not do it for the money. Instead, they are driven by the satisfaction of helping another entrepreneur, paying it forward from a similar experience they had when starting their own business.

I feel fortunate enough to have had this experience and am now in a position to return the favor to others that are just starting out. Not only is the price right, but your mentor is also providing priceless access to everything noted on this list and more.

Having a mentor is not a sign of weakness; it shows you are smart enough and are driven enough to succeed.

[Entire post — click on the title link to read it at Inc.com.]

***

You’re working on your goals, and your team’s goals. We can help you spring into action and develop a real plan that you can implement in a smart way, so you’ll start seeing results immediately, before you feel discouraged. If you feel that you’ve already gone off-track, we can help you get your focus, courage, and motivation back.

At  Creative Sage™, we often coach and mentor individual clients, as well as work teams, in the areas of change management, building resilience, making personal, career or organizational transitions — including to retirement, or an “encore career” — and facilitating development of leadership, creativity and collaboration capabilities. We also work with clients on work/life balance, finding purpose and meaning, focus and productivity issues, and how to present themselves and their ideas more effectively in professional situations.

We guide and mentor executives, entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, artists, and creative professionals of all generations, to help them more effectively implement transition processes, and to become more resilient in adjusting to rapid changes in the workplace — including learning effective coping techniques for handling failure, as well as success. We work with on-site and virtual teams.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you would like to discuss your situation. You can also call us at 1-510-845-5510 in San Francisco / Silicon Valley. Let’s talk! An initial exploratory phone conversation is free. When you talk with me, I promise that I’ll always LISTEN to you with open ears, mind and heart, to help you clarify your own unique path to a higher vista of success.

              ~Cathryn Hrudicka, Founder, CEO and Chief Imagination Officer of Creative Sage™, Executive Coach, Consultant, and Mentor.

***

[sammgreer]

Torment Tides of Numenera

What a treat this is. Are you bored of Dungeons and Dragons? Goblins and elves? All that usual fantasy guff? Well look no further than Tides of Numenera for a flawed but thoroughly refreshing RPG.

The game can't be mentioned without noting that it is a spiritual successor to the lauded cult classic Planescape Torment. An isometric RPG whose penchant for philosophy and bizarre world building rightfully earned it a place as one of the greatest RPGs ever made, though one that was not all that influential.

Enter Tides of Numenera. The question at the heart of Planescape was “What can change the nature of a man?”, exploring fears about immortality. Tides' central question is a little more conventional, “What does one life matter?” but it's one that's made poignant by a rather nuanced exploration.

Set in the Ninth World, a version of Earth in the far, far future after hundreds of civilizations have risen and fallen, where strange entities have visited from other dimensions and the soil itself is strewn with the remains of advanced, now ancient technology. It tells the tale of the Changed God, an immortal being who lives on by hopping to a new body whenever he grows bored with the old one. But when he does, the old body develops a consciousness of its own and becomes a castoff. 

You play as the most recent of these “children”, The Last Castoff and enter this story in the middle of a centuries old conflict. Not all the Castoffs are friendly towards their “father” and many have taken arms up against him. All of it has something to do with a terrifying foe named The Sorrow which hunts down and removes these castoffs from existence in pursuit of the Changed God himself. It's a delightfully odd premise you find yourself in but one with clear stakes that anchor the strangeness.

Tides of Numenera borrows the core pillars of Planescape. Like the Nameless One, protagonist of that game, the Castoffs are relatively invincible and can recover from most fatal wounds. This means death does not always lead to a game over screen but instead can become the starting point for a divergent path or reveal whole new quests all together. Failure seldom means simply loading your last save and this makes for not only a less frustrating game but one that is frequently surprising.

Notably combat is now turn-based, ridding us of the fiddly frantic clicking of the original where the combat was rather tiresome and the weakest aspect of the game. Whilst the new system is much easier to manage and navigate it ultimately still winds up being the weakest part of the game. The effort system, in which player's can choose how much of a finite resource to expend on actions, multiplying their effectiveness, is novel yet feels a little underdeveloped. At the outset of the game it's an awkward barrier to success since you're simply limited by the tiny amount available to you, necessitating rests between every encounter. By the game's end however you have such a vast pool of effort to draw on that later encounters can often feel trivial. Perfectly functional but the combat's never engrossing in its own right.

Thankfully though, Tides is much like Planescape and you can almost always avoid combat all together, utilising deception or persuasion in conversations to achieve your goals. This feels more rewarding anyway, outwitting an opponent instead of merely manipulating stats and a welcome alternative to the combat heavy titles that dominate the genre.

It is almost entirely text with a few voiceovers for key scenes so if you're used to the modern productions of Bioware or CDProjekt, this might seem a little arcane. Sadly it also means some key moments of drama are relegated to what's read rather than shown on screen. Not too much of a problem when the writing is as frequently engaging as this but old fashioned in a way some might not be up for.

Unlike all too many CRPG successors and revivals of the past few years, Tides is restrained and tries to keep itself to a paragraph or few sentences instead of endless walls of text. Furthermore, it puts personality and character up front, keen to keep you engaged with people instead of exposition dumps. And it must be said, almost every character in this game is bursting with personality. There are psychics, ghosts, creatures that converse with smells and one of your potential companions is a woman connected with every version of herself in every parallel reality. So many characters could be the basis for their own tale and yet here they are, brushing shoulders with a world as bizarre as they are.

Where Planescape was a drab world, obsessed with the morbid and dripping with black humour, Tides of Numenera is far more colourful and varied. Some of those familiar elements are there but the Ninth World is a more diverse place, encapsulating various genre tropes but also many ideas of its own. A coastal reef seemingly composed of fallen starships and ancient ruins. A city constructed out of the living flesh of a gargantuan creature. Like the characters that inhabit them, each of these locations would be worthy of a whole game but here they are, a single step in a tremendously varied adventure.

There are engrossing side quests in each one of these places that are never ever simple fetch quests and always with substantial plot. Murder mysteries involving a cannibal cult, hunts across time and space and sometimes just a polite conversation with an immortal man-made killing machine. All of which emphasise player agency, offering several possible solutions and never making obvious perfect solutions nor judging your for whichever resolution you seek. There are consequences for you choices of course but the game itself never passes judgement though some of your companions might. Assuming you even keep them around, seeing as you're free to travel alone should you desire. It brims with imagination but crucially there are thoughtful ideas propping up this entire mad world. There are depths and questions worth asking in all of its experiences, most notably in the main quest itself.

Your adventure starts with the simple goal of escaping and perhaps defeating the Sorrow, the inter-dimensional entity that chases you and your brethren. This conflict extends throughout the whole game, as you are introduced to each side in the debate over the rights and wrongs of immortality and your existence. It's never quite as mysterious or alien as Planescape (no floating skulls for company here alas) but with much clearer stakes from the outset, I was hooked from beginning to end. 

No matter what strange landscape I was exploring and however lost amidst the customs and rules of that particular space I was, I at least knew what my ultimate goal was. It's a clarity that allows them to be more daring in the oddness of the locales and characters you meet along the way. That breadth of imagination was wonderful, a rich alternative to a gaming genre that is frequently bogged down in the same Tolkein-esque tropes.

And it's a story that's told rather well, pacing each reveal just carefully. You'll likely see most of the important twists well in advance as I did but the execution is still top notch. I cared about my companions, I cared about the plot and I believed in what was at stake. The ending's well sign-posted but still feels like it comes a little soon. I wanted to see more of this world before it was, meet more new faces. I suppose that's a testament to what they've done here, leaving me wanting more. It does end perfectly however, with a final choice that I expected from the start but which had quite a different meaning by the time I got to making it.

“What does one life matter?”. I had an answer at the start that truthfully, didn't change too much over the course of the game. I still hesitated for many minutes over each choice mind. But Tides of Numenera did help me better understand why I thought this way and how many games can claim to tackle such things?

Already I'm planning a subsequent playthrough, keen to see what quests I missed and which characters I never met, of which I'm aware there's a few. Whilst it doesn't bother me, others may find the weak combat a little discouraging as there's little room to experiment with varied character builds or classes. You are The Last Castoff and aside from a choice of gender, there's little room for variance save for the choices you make in the story.

For me, Torment Tides of Numenera is a very cool game, a bizarre tale told well and with clarity. It has charm but also depth, concepts of morality and philosophy that are told with care and imagination.

Whether you've been waiting for a follow-up since Planescape or you've just grown a bit tired of conventional fantasy, I'd give Tides of Numenera a go. I hesitated, having bounced off so many CRPG revivals but this one is the real deal. Despite a flawed combat system, it's an old-school story driven RPG built with a modern audience in mind. And what a story it has to tell.

[rolandfontana]

The Real Culprit in the Central Park 5 Convictions

Netflix reports that 23 million subscribers signed in to watch When They See Us, the mini-series that dramatizes the harrowing experience of the five wrongly convicted young men now known as the Central Park Five.

At least 23 million pundits have published their reactions to the series, too.

Their prescription is straightforward.

First, exorcise from public life the demon prosecutors, Linda Fairstein and Elizabeth Lederer, who supervised and presented the case. Fire them from their teaching jobs; cancel their book contracts.

Second, replace the demons with angel prosecutors.

What could be simpler? The problem is, it won’t work.

The important question raised by all the writing, blogging and podcasting is whether anyone is really serious about preventing a repetition of the tragedies that the series recounts.

Dispensing with Fairstein and Lederer is fine with me. While the going was “good” (that is, when things were moving in the wrong direction for the innocent defendants) both Fairstein and Lederer reached for and basked in the limelight.

But by now the two women have entered a special category of individual—along with, say, Richard III, Eric Trump, and Simon Legree—that we maintain principally to provide the rest of us with a delectable opportunity to savor our own moral superiority.

Putting them aside removes a dangerous distraction.

Systems, Not Devils

To begin with, the notion that Fairstein and Lederer are uniquely evil suggests that the Central Park Five were uniquely victimized. The fact is, the Central Park wrongful convictions were system failures in which many people—cops, defenders, judges, forensic scientists—had a hand, either by making a mistake or failing to catch one.

There was substandard evidence collection work, and there were dangerously outmoded interrogation techniques. There was poor crime scene analysis. Confirmation bias and groupthink characterized the investigation; bureaucratic silos impeded information sharing. A kind of fatalistic lethargy seemed to mark the defense. The specially appointed trial judge took a see-no-evil approach to the prosecution’s case.

And, yes, there was there was an absence of critical thinking by the lawyers directing the prosecution team.

Beyond these frontline deficits, there were the people who hired, trained, supervised, assigned, and funded (or didn’t) the practitioners—the people who created the environment.

Fairstein and Lederer were not swashbuckling renegades in their office; they were respected pros.

As Diane Vaughan said of the Space Shuttle Challenger launch decision, conformity, not deviance, was at the root of the problem. We have to come to grips with the fact that the Central Park Five fiasco was not the work of a pair of sociopaths— not a once-every-30-years lightning strike. These wrongful convictions were very much “normal accidents”.

The shortcuts and “workarounds” that When They See Us makes so clear in hindsight are what we could expect from individuals trying to make sense of their roles under extreme pressure to produce.

And we have to face the reality that the pressure to produce in the Central Park Five case was generated by a public attitude, by the broad societal stereotyping of young black men: a chronic weakness available for exploitation by the Donald Trumps of the world.

In the hysteria following the attack on the jogger, the racially biased coverage set Fairstein and Lederer up as candidates for angel status; it was the innocent defendants who were cast as the devils—or, at least, as Paul Butler points out, the apes.

These features took spectacular form in the Central Park Five case; but the same features are operating to a greater or lesser degree in hundreds of lower temperature, Kalief Browder, cases every month, with Fairstein and Lederer nowhere in sight.

The New Prosecutors’ Challenge

The point of all this is not to mitigate Fairstein’s and Lederer’s mistakes. It is to argue that when Kim Foxx, Larry Krassner, Rachel Rollins, or the other “progressive prosecutors” ride into town on the handsome white stallions issued to them by the commentators, it will be grossly unfair to expect any one of them to deal with all of this by waving a wand.

Reform-minded prosecutors can improve some things by taking action unilaterally within their own offices. They can, for example, raise the internal charging criterion from “probable cause” to “beyond a reasonable doubt.” They can order their staffs to provide open file discovery. They can decide as a matter of policy to avoid steps solely designed to enhance plea bargaining leverage.

For example, they can refuse to seek “trial tax” enhancements to sentences.

They can develop an internal culture that devises sentencing recommendations based on a careful consideration of the community safety implications of failing to address offender substance abuse, mental health, and educational and housing challenges, and that does not default to “longer is better” sentencing posture.

They can recognize that we are heirs to a long and pervasive history of racial bias (both explicit and implicit) and do what they can to train staff to be alert to those issues.

But the criminal justice system isn’t a simple linear, sequential process from crime to conviction. As the Central Park Five experience reveals, criminal justice is an extraordinarily complex environment in which scores of practitioners, in a dozen separate but interacting silos, are attempting to make sense of a cloud of swirling, overlapping, often contradictory influences.

Getting things right requires more than a chivalric individual moral code. It requires collaboration with numerous other practice communities and insight into the working lives of the people within them.

That is why leaders in the earliest generation of “progressive prosecutors” like Milwaukee’s John Chisholm and San Francisco’s George Gascon provided essays to the National Institute of Justice’s volume Mending Justice supporting the idea of all-stakeholders, non-blaming, learning reviews of criminal justice events that can reveal the connections—and the failures to connect—that are endemic to everyday criminal justice life.

Chisholm’s experience in convening a group of 30 stakeholders to learn from the mistaken release of Markus Evans, a Milwaukee juvenile who almost immediately after release killed a teenage girl, showed him that only these all-stakeholders collaborations can reveal the information gaps that prevented anyone with decision-making power to understand fully what was happening.

In effect, all prosecutors are entangled in a system that, as Diane Vaughan observed of the pre-Challenger NASA, embodies a “structural secrecy”: a system that threatens to keep secrets from itself.

This “structural secrecy” will remain a challenge to even the most ambitious prosecutorial reformers, and, paradoxically, it will be a greater challenge as our new data-driven environment generates more and more information.

In a forthcoming article , Andrew Guthrie Ferguson meticulously unpacks the implications of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance’s innovative “intelligence-driven prosecution” scheme in light of the constitutional requirement that evidence favorable to the accused must be turned over to the defense.

The powerful architecture of centralized data collection which Vance’s approach mobilizes was not designed to identify the exculpatory and impeaching material that prosecutors are required to provide to the defense.

Ferguson’s specific focus is on compliance with the discovery rule requiring disclosure but it seems pretty clear that evidence of innocence can unintentionally (but routinely) be converted into a “weak signal” that inevitably disappears from the screens of the practitioners making the decisions, just as the warnings about the effect of unusually low temperatures on the launch rocket’s “O-rings” on the eve of the Challenger launch faded into the background.

Everyone has some of the information; no one has all of it.

Think about how easily that could happen when an alibi was at issue.

Linda Fairstein has taken a pugilistic attitude toward the current attempts to demonize her, but it is hard to believe that—back then—she would not have welcomed the information about the actual rapist, Matias Reyes, that was somewhere in NYPD files but never foregrounded in the investigation.

James Doyle

Maybe she would have come to the same conclusions. Who knows? But it would certainly have been by a different route, and the odds in favor of accuracy would certainly have been improved.

The issue here is not the bad character of one prosecutor, or the better character of his or her replacement.

The question is not “Who” but “What” can be changed. The next prosecutor will need help with that one.

James M. Doyle is a Boston defense lawyer and author, and a frequent contributor to The Crime Report. He welcomes readers’ comments.

The Real Culprit in the Central Park 5 Convictions syndicated from https://immigrationattorneyto.wordpress.com/

[tyed-togetherby-godsandchoice]

Eiddwen Answers

Myers-Briggs: ESTJ-T (The Executive) Executives are representatives of tradition and order, utilizing their understanding of what is right, wrong and socially acceptable to bring families and communities together. Embracing the values of honesty, dedication and dignity, people with the Executive personality type are valued for their clear advice and guidance, and they happily lead the way on difficult paths. Taking pride in bringing people together, Executives often take on roles as community organizers, working hard to bring everyone together in celebration of cherished local events, or in defense of the traditional values that hold families and communities together.

Ennegram Type: Type 1/3 I must be orderly/planned to survive. I must be impressive and attractive to survive. Hogwarts House: Slytherin Congratulations! You have been sorted into Slytherin, the house of cleverness. You have have ambition and you are very resourceful.

House colors: Green and Silver House ghost: Bloody Baron House head: Professor Snape House founder: Salazar Slytherin House animal: Snake

Homestuck True Sign: Arrius Famous Artwork: The Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo You're an epic, sprawling masterpiece who knows about everyone and everything. People always come to you for information and advice, because you contain multitudes. (Of dicks.)

Friend Group Member: The Cool Aunt You're the cool aunt of your friend group: You've been there and done that, and you do not give any fucks. You're a natural leader, but you do not care about group drama nearly as much as the mom does. And while the mom might be the planner, everyone comes to you for advice (and to complain about Mom). Other cool aunts: Sophia Burset, Dumbledore, Samantha Jones.

Pyschological Archetype: Archetype 5: The Seeker/Warrior Your inner seeker wants to explore the unknown. You have a strong intuition that there is something bigger and greater beyond your own reality. You embrace learning and are ambitious, although your perfectionist nature sometimes reaches too high and you end up disappointed. Your inner warrior is courageous, tough and always persistent. You aim to bring meaning to your own life and to others’ through your actions and behavior. You are often over-competitive at the expense of other people, but it’s a part of your desire to always succeed.

Life Goals: Search for a better way, winning Fear: Conformity, entrapment, weakness, failure Response to Problems: Escaping, fighting if the reward is great enough Life Tasks: See the world, be a strong person Personal Gifts: Autonomy, ambition, identity, courage, discipline Personal Pitfalls: Inability to commit, chronic disappointment, arrogance, ruthless

Temperament: Choleric Your temperament is choleric. The choleric temperament is fundamentally ambitious and leader-like. They have a lot of aggression, energy, and/or passion, and try to instill it in others. They can dominate people of other temperaments, especially phlegmatic types. Many great charismatic military and political figures were choleric. They like to be in charge of everything. However, cholerics also tend to be either highly disorganized or highly organized. They do not have in-between setups, only one extreme to another. As well as being leader-like and assertive, cholerics also fall into deep and sudden depression. Essentially, they are very much prone to mood swings.

Dere Type: Himedere Similar to Tsundere, only you wish to be treated like a princess. You can be really harsh and downright mean, you wish to have things done for you. Yet you can be really kind and sweet.

Moral Alignment: Chaotic Good A chaotic good character acts as his conscience directs him with little regard for what others expect of him. He makes his own way, but he's kind and benevolent. He believes in goodness and right but has little use for laws and regulations. He hates it when people try to intimidate others and tell them what to do. He follows his own moral compass, which, although good, may not agree with that of society. Chaotic good is the best alignment you can be because it combines a good heart with a free spirit. However, chaotic good can be a dangerous alignment when it disrupts the order of society and punishes those who do well for themselves.

Disney Villain: The Evil Queen

Love Language: Acts of Service Can helping with homework really be an expression of love? Absolutely! Anything you do to ease the burden of responsibilities weighing on an “Acts of Service” person will speak volumes. The words he or she most wants to hear: “Let me do that for you.” Laziness, broken commitments, and making more work for them tell speakers of this language their feelings don’t matter. When others serve you out of love (and not obligation), you feel truly valued and loved. [Mun’s Opinion: Honestly, Eidd’s answers are s p o t o n. He can be spoiled, demanding, and overly aggressive but he is kind hearted and protective of not only himself but those he cares about. His MTBI type is a little different, though I agree with it completely – he just rejects the idea of ‘tradition’ because of his past, but being a natural leader and an organizer of large events for the community is pretty much his passion. Eidd is such an extrovert and I honestly adore him despite his need to be in control and for freedom. Hogwarts house, Ennegram, Homestuck, and Artwork honestly struck me as the most scarily accurate: I’ve always said he was a Slytherin or a protective person, but the extent that it repeats affirms his character and what he really prioritizes. The artwork made me laugh – he really is a fountain of information and he does of access to multitudes (of dicks). Homestuck was really important to me for a while, so reading all of that and knowing what I know now is kind of just like “wow… yeah, that makes total sense.” What made me laugh was the friend group member, the Disney Villain, and the dere type. While I had my suspicions, now I can blast “World is Mine” male version and laugh hysterically as well as whenever I see a Samantha Jones joke, just because it fits his way of flirting really well. His vainness and his petty nature really made me giggle when he got the Evil Queen, though I was hoping that he’d get Hades but you know. I can dream.Overall, Eidd’s consistency as a muse and character baffles me everytime I take a quiz or answer questions as him – he’s one of the few that really knows himself and is confident about it. I think it shows too uwu ;; ]

[eryllecordero-blog]

Life is a joyous journey – a road towards God. In this life, there are long and short roads, smooth and rocky ways, crooked and straight paths. Many roads would come as a person journeys through life. There are roads that lead to fame and fortune on one hand, or isolation and poverty on the other. There are roads to happiness as there are roads to sadness, roads toward victory and delight, and roads leading to defeat and disappointment. Just like any road, there are corners, detours, and crossroads in life. It is the person journeying that chooses which path he would take. In one’s personal journey towards his “goals”, road signs are inevitable. They are there as substantial help so as to reach his aims in a more efficient way. They work as a guide to lead the person where he chooses to be. In my pilgrimage towards Jesus, there are those influential persons who became my “road signs”. When I am nowhere to be found, they offer guidance; stressed, they give comfort; confused, they recommend simplification. God must be very generous to me for bestowing abundant caring parsons that continuously help me towards Him. Among the caring persons in my journey, I consider my parents as my first “road sign”. In my early childhood years, I could still vividly remember that during Sundays, we go as one family and attend the Holy Mass. My father would be in the front – at the side of the altar serving as an acolyte and lector. My mother and I would seat near the choir loft so as to join in singing. I remember admiring how my mother would silently kneel and fervently pray before the mass. Prayer is very much indispensable in how they raise me as their child. They would not just “speak” of its advantages but they themselves would pray earnestly so as to teach me its importance. This “awesome” family activity of conversing with the Lord inculcated in young mind the value of trust. My mother would constantly remind me to put all my fears, joys, and wants to God through prayer. My parents would constantly hear my prayer before going to sleep. It is through their selfless act of care and guidance that which develop my character. It is through their faith-in-motion that made me realized the importance of being a “good boy”. Being real parents, they taught me about what is right and wrong, to distinguish between them and to choose the good. Rearing a child to become a good priest is a vocation. Yet, there is no school that teaches one how to become as effective parents for him. But despite the absence of a formal teaching in parenting, good parents manage to raise their son to pursue this chosen vocation. It must be God’s grace and guidance of the Holy Spirit that help parents to be able to give what is best for their son’s vocation. Parenting involves more than just the meeting of the sperm cell and the egg cell. It involves a certain level of readiness in all aspects of one’s personality. This includes physical, emotional, social, intellectual, spiritual and moral character. Parenting is a lifelong responsibility. It is more than just providing for a child’s physical needs like food, shelter and clothing. It is providing tender, loving care. Bringing up a son to be a priest is a heavy cross to bear. It involves a real sense of sacrifice in both sides of the parents. They must be a great source of strength and perseverance for the child to deepen his vocation. A dedicated life for prayer must be their center. This includes going to mass, praying the rosary and having a deep intimate relationship with God through prayer in a regular basis. I do believe that the examples of my parents are the primary roots of my vocation to the priesthood. Implicitly, they cultivated my inner desire to be with Jesus. They did not push me to enter the seminary; my parents vivified the possible first steps toward the road to Jesus, one of which is priesthood. When I was in Grade V, I became a member of the Altar Servers of our Parish at Narvacan. I literally enjoyed the firsthand experience of serving in the Holy Eucharist. Back then, I thought that it is better way of participating in the Mass than setting beside my family. A year later, through the encouragement of my parish priest, Fr. Vicente Avila, I decided to undergo the processes needed to enter the Minor Seminary in Vigan. Unfortunately, I was not able to pass the entrance examination. However, with the grace of God I believe, He used Fr. Vet to intervene with the decision of the Seminary formators so as to accept me to study there. The Rector back then, Fr. Arthur Amian, considered me. Seminary life was my baptism of fire. It is where I had defined what first time really means; from studying my lessons alone to the development of athletic skills, from singing to the playing of instruments, from being intrapersonal to the being interpersonal, from being the boss to the being a follower. When I was in the Minor Seminary, my formators really emphasized the value of prudence as a primary battle gear in acquiring self-discipline. Fr. Felix Costales most of the time reminded us of his favorite line, “do the right thing at the right time in place with the right disposition”, whenever we had a rector’s conference. Fr. Amador Foz highlighted the importance of prayer in our day to day living. They also gave due importance on being hard working and studious. From my College Seminary, the formators, most especially Fr. Adalbert Barut, urged us to make San Pablo “the best seminary in the world.” He said that to be able to reach that goal we aimed at the seminary - we must be the best seminarians first. And to be the best seminarians ourselves, we must improve daily. In my stay in San Pablo Seminary, I envision myself to be fully human: loving, integrated, responsive, authentic disciple of Christ, fully directed and motivated to pursue the vocation to the priesthood. I consider it as my road sign towards my Ultimate Good. However, the needed commitment toward this goal is not easy; it is not just a walk in the park. There were those moments wherein I fell short towards my goal. The most hurting experience I had was the result of my evaluation after my second year of stay in the College Seminary. In the end of the school year, my formators recommended me to undergo regency. I was evaluated to possess hide-and-seek mentality, authority hung-up, and laziness. Our Vocation Director back then was Rev. Fr. Lester Plana. He assigned me in Cervantes, Ilocos Sur, for a year of exposure there. It was a blessing in disguise because I was not only helped in how to deal with the said issues; it was also a moment of consciousness awakening to the realities of the life of a priest. Through the examples of Fr. Ernesto Juarez, Jr. and Fr. Ramelle Rigunay, I realized that the life of the priest is not easy most especially when he is really concern with the social realities of the faithful. Yet, I’ve come to appreciate the social and spiritual importance of a priest. Moreover, when I was able to encounter and live with the poorest of the poor and the oppressed in Cervantes that I have come to realize the value of this vocation to the faithful. I witness how the priest became a source of inspiration and hope for the downtrodden. My Regency was primary event that made me affirm that priesthood is where my heart really belongs. I experienced peace within that I was not able to see any place else. Indeed, I was able to appreciate the importance of this vocation on the brink of losing it. I saw and experienced personally the hardship of the life of a pastor through my priests-companion. Yet, I was neither alarmed nor panicked by the difficulties of priestly life. In fact, my enthusiasm to follow Jesus’ footsteps was even strengthened because of the reward it will offer, Jesus Christ. However, when I thought that I would really pursue priesthood straightforward, Ms. ______ came into my life. We became friends when I was in third year philosophy and entered an exclusive relationship the year after. This was the major crossroad in my life. Confusion came to me. I cannot decide whether to continue my vocation journey or to take another path, the path towards married life. I cannot have the best of both worlds. Firm decision must be made. Well, it was not an easy task back then! Yet, my heart dictated that it is best at peace in the road towards priesthood. Indeed, leaving Ms. ______ behind was the most hurting experience I had in my seminary journey. But then, I remain firm and contented with the choice I made. My desire to become a priest leaded me now to the road of Immaculate Conception School of Theology. The demands of seminary formation here require a lot of physical, mental, psychological, and spiritual efforts and sacrifices. They are not easily done because my whole being is necessitated to participate. Yet, I consider my present life here as joyous and gratifying. Even if there are some moments that the demands are hard to bear, I am still able to smile. This smile shows that I am at peace in the seminary. Being here fills up my heart’s deepest desire to stay close with the Lord and serve Him. Seminary life cultivates in me the values of a true pastor modelled in the Person of Jesus Christ. Here, I am being formed spiritually, intellectually, pastorally, and humanly so as to be ready to the demands of priesthood. Moreover, seminary life deepens my confidence to God’s will that I may function well as a refined human person. I consider the help of the Holy Spirit as the primary agent of formation. I am also aware that I should take full responsibility of all my actions in this life of formation. This is what I would like to envision my vocation as priest to be – a life of service to God and His people towards Salvation, Kingdom of God, Heaven, Jesus. However, looking at myself right now, I see myself still not worthy to be a priest. I have my own weaknesses, struggles, and failures. Yet, I do believe in the grace of God. I put everything under His fraternal grace – I surrender everything under His care. Above all, I do believe that He will never leave me, that I could draw inspiration and strength from Him as long as I open myself and do participate well to His will. Hence, if I will persevere in reforming myself, He will grant me the Grace needed for the ministry that I aspire towards the Kingdom. I'm pretty sure that the path towards the priesthood is where He wants me to be. Well, I'm not a perfect seminarian. I'm struggling to be one. I'd like to be one. I fall very short of my own expectations of myself. However, I'm so sure that God is faithful and patient. I'm very sure that He is going to see me through! And that realization keeps me going in this journey.