#skill prioritization

[salemoleander]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[tizzymcwizzy]

these are my final illustrations for a writing/research class and my topic was on hustle culture and the romanticization of overworking,,

it's okay to be kind to yourself!! your value doesn't come from how productive you are, i promise, you get to determine your own worth, and sometimes it's just not worth hurting yourself to achieve your goals

[legionofpotatoes]

star wars outlaws

[kindnessoverperfection]

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

[notthesaint]

The nosk tag is dead for a long time ever since I am inactive and it's Halloween which is the month of the spooky

Nosk....our Halloween bug icon is forgotten.... Jack Skellington hallow knight edition is dead... Hollowbrine our great friend in deepnest that offers free budgie jumping lessons to lost kids in deepnest is DEAD.....

[roseluwakcoffee]

Sometimes I think I write Kyoko too much like a cold, hard detective for being a literal teenager/young adult, but then I remember at the age of 13 years old she canonically doused herself in vodka and threatened to light herself on fire if the killer didn’t reveal themselves

[stars-in-a-jam-jar]

God Tumblr must be public transportation because you people are Driving Me Insane-- PEEK AND PEAK ARE *TWO DIFFERENT FUCKING WORDS---*

[blue-thief]

just watched a high school hip hop/street dance competition and dudee i swear to god one of those teams got robbed of their victory 😭😭

[scribefindegil]

saw a deeply rancid take this morning about how amatonormativity isn’t real (especially in slash fandom contexts, lol) because all mainstream media focuses on platonic relationships so what do we even want. and was tempted to write a big thing breaking down the various prejudices at play in the way society (and thus the media reflecting it) refuses to treat women and queer people and other minorities as Real People deserving of stories, and how this leads to all this media focused on men whose only meaningful relationships are with other men in a way that does nothing but support amatonormativity along with every other status-quo bigotry. but actually i think this sums it up:

Mainstream Media to Aros (& those who believe in their beliefs): You’re platonic because you value friendship. I’m platonic because I hate everyone who isn’t a cishet white man. We are not the same.

[myinterestsvary-writes]

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

[sakitenmaenjoyer]

it's so funny how everyone brings up that tsukasa starved himself for a role, but nobody brings up the fact that he

1) ate the day of the audition to be in top form

2) went out to eat with wxs in part 2 of his card story

[t-u-i-t-c]

major coping happening here

[autisticlancemcclain]

smth came up fic postponed till tmrw sorry guys

[unfortunatelyilikebnha]

PULLED FOR CHASCA ON ALT AND GOT JEAN INSTEAD…YAAAAAAAAAAAY JEAN ON BOTH ACCS NOW :D!!!

[inactive5537]

I could start a conversation on how a good deal of personality disorders seem to arise from a child being unable to grow out of their childish worldview due to an unsafe environment, but I'm not sure if Tumblr is ready for that