#screwing up

[book-empire]

"But what if I make a mistake?" Gilan threw back his head and laughed. "A mistake? One mistake? You should be so lucky. You'll make dozens! I made four or five on my first day alone! Of course you'll make mistakes. Just don't make any of them twice. If you do mess things up, don't try to hide it. Don't try to rationalize it. Recognize it and admit it and learn from it. We never stop learning, none of us does."

-Erak's Ransom by John Flanagan

Who else has a Gilan in his mind who's screwing up the most ridiculous things?

[xproblematiquexx]

Hey! Guess who found me 2 weeks ago passed out on the toilet seat ODing, needle still in my arm, my stash of dope near me and paraphernalia scattered all around? My bf!

Yep I’m fucked 🥲

[entrapdaknation]

The Patron Saints of Screwups

I’m a screwup. Throughout life, I’ve made mistakes that have left me embarrassed, frustrated people around me, and undermined others’ confidence in my competence. Screwing up leaves a deep ache in your very sense of self, creating anxiety about your capabilities.

One of the things I appreciate about the Area 88 manga is that many of the protagonists are screwups. Several characters are haunted by unintentional mistakes that cost lives, ruined relationships, and destroyed their careers. More and more, I draw comfort from characters who aren’t hyper-competent, who do make mistakes. Cataclysmic mistakes. Humiliating mistakes. Blood-stained mistakes. Suddenly, carrying luggage to the wrong hotel floor or getting a group lost on a hike doesn’t feel so embarassing.

Area 88 reminds us that making mistakes is part of the human condition. In the fictional world of Area 88, even intelligent, grounded, well-trained people can be screwups. Its characters teach us how to live with being fallible.

However, Area 88 also reminds us that must learn from our screwups and respond to them in appropriate ways. Characters such as Saki, Hoover, and Kanzaki remind us how not to do so, exhibiting the flaws of overcorrection, stagnation, and overconfidence, respectively.

Saki Vashtar: Royally Screwing Up

As a member of the Asranian royal family, Saki sought to faithfully serve his country and his uncle, King Zak. When Asran was plunged into civil war by his father, Prince Abdael, Saki sided with his uncle and strove for an end to the conflict.

In his capacity as a fighter pilot in the Asranian air force, Saki once led a squadron in combat against anti-government jets. He was hesitant in his commands, and the result was the utter defeat of his squadron, with Saki as the only survivor. He had failed as a soldier, a leader, and a patriot.

The military defeat was implied to have created a rift between Saki and King Zak. Distraught, he lacerated his own forehead in front of a horrified Zak as penance, resulting in his X-shaped scar.

This military failure left a wound on Saki’s soul. He transformed into a vengeful warrior prince, obsessed with defeating his father’s forces. His desperation took the form of ruthlessness, most clearly shown in his leadership over the Area 88 mercenary corps. For years, Saki threw bodies at the enemy, indifferent to the high casualty rates. He participated in a system of debt bondage that kept the mercenaries in a “company town” arrangement. When he learned that Shin was recruited through illicit means, he offered sympathetic words but no action. When an underage mercenary, Kim Abba, somehow got into the mercenary corps, he did not eject the child soldier. Fairness, ethics, international law — none of it mattered to Saki as long as he could use the mercenaries to make up for his past screwup and win the war.

Saki is both an example of how to cope with screwing up, and a warning of what not to do. After failing catastrophically on the battlefield, Saki didn’t give up. He remained a leader, acted bravely, took risks, and fixed his unblinking gaze on the mission. However, in his desperation to make up for his screwup, he lost his soul. His arc reminds us not to overcorrect, and not to lose sight of the bigger picture, when making up for our screwups.

Hoover Kippenburg: A Steel Ace with Feet of Clay

Hoover Kippenburg was one of the fighter pilots in the Area 88 mercenary corps, and was respected by his colleagues. The Steel Ace, as the others called him, came from a family of accomplished fighter pilots and had a successful career as an aerial commander in NATO. His leadership style earned him the trust and admiration of Shin, Carlisle, and others.

Readers learn that Hoover wasn’t as sterling as he seemed. After a heart-pounding dogfight with Wolfpack, Hoover revealed to his colleagues that he was responsible for a deadly accident during his NATO days. Years before, during a NATO training exercise over Mont Blanc, Hoover flew his fighter jet toward the sun. His fellow pilots, flying in formation behind him, mistook the sun for his aircraft’s afterburner. One by one, they crashed into the mountainside. “I killed them,” Hoover confessed soberly. Guilt and shame over the accident haunted him, reminding him of the fragility of human life.

Hoover illustrates how competence and incompetence, Steel Ace and screwup, can exist within the same person. Even the most admired and successful people we know have made mistakes, and thus we aren't uniquely fallible. It helps to have perspective when we screw up!

That said, it's important that we learn from our screwups so as to become better people, something that Hoover completely refused to do. Instead of starting a new career that would have let him cherish human life after seeing its fragility, Hoover became a hired killer. The soldier who grieved over the senseless deaths of his colleagues chose to work as a mercenary who inflicted senseless death every day. Instead of using his guilt to transform himself into a better man, Hoover stagnated.

We never learn why Hoover chose mercenary life over a new path. Was starting over too daunting? Was it because being a fighter pilot was the only thing he knew how to do? Did he miss military life so much that he would enter a senseless war just to regain it? Whatever his reason, he was a hypocrite, failing to learn from his screwup. He chose familiarity over growth.

Satoru Kanzaki: An Inflated Ego that Never Bursts

The chief villain of the manga, Satoru Kanzaki, thirsted for power in the business and political sphere. He grasped for power incessantly, leaving human wreckage in his wake. When his violent end came in the final issue, he had ruined countless lives, devastated countries, and directly or indirectly caused thousands of deaths. Through it all, he screwed up over and over again.

Repeatedly, Kanzaki overestimated himself. He juggled too many balls. He failed to anticipate the actions of opponents and allies alike. He believed himself to be too cunning, too powerful, too well-connected to ever face consequences for his villainy.

Over and over, his plans came crashing down. A Yamato airline crash caused by Farina's inferior parts threw his corporate takeover into a tailspin. Taeko's research got him arrested for tax evasion. Backstabbing among the Project 4 leaders, and a turn of the tides in the Asran civil war, reduced his business ambitions to dust. Project 4 mercenaries such as Macburn and Sela turned out to have minds of their own. Shin, the man whom he repeatedly tried to kill, survived everything Kanzaki threw at him and slew him in the end. Whenever Kanzaki plotted, he later failed, until he could fail no more.

At any point in the manga, Kanzaki could have paused and reflected. He could have recognized his pursuit of power as a fool's game. He could have realized that he wasn't as competent at business and geopolitics as he thought. He could have assumed a new identity and tread a different path, one suited to his skill set that would keep him alive. Unfortunately for everyone in the story, his ego was too bloated for self-reflection.

Kanzaki's screwups teach us how to prevent our own screwups. We must ask ourselves if we're playing to our strengths, if we've thought through our plans, if we've done enough preparation before embarking on a course of action. If we allow pride to blind us, we'll fail to see our deficiencies. Additionally, we must consider how our actions will impact other people. If we treat people poorly, as Kanzaki did, our relationships will crumble. If we treat others as disposable, karma will come at us fast.

[unsung-idiot]

some quick drawings of little Soos I made a while ago

[selfdiscoverymedia]

24-40. Sara Screws Up

Sara’s View of Life with Sara Troy, on air from October 1st “It happens—we screw up, make mistakes, and all we can do is own them, apologize, and learn from them. But don’t beat yourself up over it. We’re human, and growth comes from those missteps. Acknowledge it, make amends where you can, and keep moving forward with the wisdom gained. Life’s journey isn’t about being perfect; it’s about…

[gbeckla]

Maricopa

We arrived in Maricopa April 2.  Uncle Bill thought it was funny that we came from Maricopa, Arizona, to Maricopa, California. “Just think about how many people will get a kick outta that one,” he said. “I’m going for a run,” I said.   Dad glanced up, not at me.  Near me.  “Go up along Klipstein to the highway.  Open Country.”  I took off. * The streets were flat and dusty, cracked asphalt…

[chloesimaginationthings]

The FNAF Vanessas meet their younger selves..

[isjasz]

Stellar death

[slothmonth]

I agree that "in Germany your boss legally has to provide you with work while you're at your job" is a bit funny considering the German stereotype. But I am really annoyed at people who act like this is some horrible hypercapitalist thing on that post about pushing people out of their jobs by just not giving them anything to do. When really it's very basic worker protection (within the context of German emplyment law.) Because under most circumstances you can't just be fired from your job. Your employer has to provide a reason for firing you if they want to get rid of you. You also have a right to specifially the work you were hired to do.

So your boss having to give you appropriate work makes illegal any of the following:

a) Making you clean toilets instead of (or in addition to) the clearly defined office job you agreed to do

b) Not giving you work and then firing you for not doing your work

c) Waiting for you to crack under the intense boredom of having to stay on one place with absolutely nothing to do for eight hours a day while your coworkers are roped into it to shun you (or hate you because for some reason you're the only one who doesn't have to do any work) until you quit "voluntarily"

or d) waiting for you to crack under the aformentioned pressure until you do what the people in the notes said they'd do, like watching movies or doing a second job instead which is something you then can be reprimanded and fired for

[serenityquest]

[fuckingshitupjacket]

I may have just made my life's work

[iamnmbr3]

Really wish people could learn the difference between a plot hole and a character making a mistake. Just because the character messed up doesn’t mean the author did.

[ghost-bxrd]

Prompt:

Oliver Queen and Bruce Wayne are childhood best friends.

Green Arrow hates Batman’s guts.

That animosity— and his aim to subtly piss Batman off at every turn— results in Green Arrow and Red Hood collaborating on a trafficking bust.

This somehow results in discovering that the Red Hood is his best friend’s supposedly dead son.

Oliver doesn’t know how he’s going to fix this, with Jason refusing to want anything to do with either Bruce or the Batman of Gotham (who everyone knows is dating the former)… but one thing’s for sure:

He needs to bring the kid home. Oliver can’t bear to watch Bruce suffer any longer when the cause for it is sitting at his kitchen table, alive, and stuffing his face with waffles.

[katyagraveyard]

no lips? solution: bite :)

[egophiliac]

IT WAS ERIC AFTER ALL!!!! I'm so glad we got to meet him (before Vil snaps him away with those Infinity Gauntlets) (can't wait to see what happens when we get the matching Infinity Tiara to go with them, there will be no survivors)

(sorry to be so slow/rough lately, just got a lot of stuff on the ol' brain at the moment! alas, if only I could spend all my time drawing incredibly stupid characters I mean I do but)

[pointman74250]

Here is how you control your fears:

Don’t let them control you.

Influence you, sure, but not control you. Because if you do, you really will fuck up.