#why the heck is writing IDs for myself so much harder than for others???

[kalon-confessions-blog]

Hello my dears,

[asap if you will tree]

phew okay so please please bare with me on this, it's going to be long and rambling and im sure it will jump back and forth a lot so you've had a fair amount of warning :p

im going to start off with the long "essay" posts from yesterday, just to kinda get my foot hold on things c: and guys please understand that in writing this i am really not trying to come off as rude or attackful or anything, and i apologize if i do or if i come off overly "unprofessional" it seems a lot of the time when i try to be super professional i come off as condescending or cold and when i try to be a bit more relaxed im just being silly or unprofessional.

"artists not doing anything for months and then getting to come back whenever they want, taking up a slot that could’ve been an active artist filled with energy and vigor to create instead."

I've seen this mentioned a lot ,, the whole slot thing. the thing is guys, that we don't have a set number of "slots" on staff ,, really we base what we think we need on how efficiently the staff we currently have is functioning. I know recently [the last month or so] things have been a little slow but you have to remember that it was the end of the year, many staff members [and heck people in general] we're busy with finals/vacations/family/the holidays and a whole slew of other things. Bringing in more staff during the holiday season because there a bit of a dip in activity doesn't really make a whole bunch of sense in my opinion because its just the natural ebb and flow of how things go, it happens every year. 

"nursery slots being weeks and even months overdue while dozens of personal work and things for other people get put out"

I'll be the first to admit ,, this is actually a bit of a problem ,, it doesn't happen with every artists but I do understand that sometimes owed work gets forgotten, especially when the artist keeps taking on more and more in an attempt to keep up with demand that the community has created. we are aware of this, and myself and Karmel have been discussing it for quite awhile and throwing ideas back and forth for a way to manage it ,, at the time I think we have a pretty solid solution and it after a bit more discussing and working out the kinks it should be able to be implemented fairly soon and shouldn't take too long to see the effects c: i do apologize to anyone that has been on the brunt end of having to wait. one thing you can always do though is message the artist directly to see whats up, and if you don't get an answer then you can always come to myself or Karmel [or if you're noticing something that you aren't a part of you can even submit it to us anonymously via ask or tumblr!!

"hardly anyone but a handful of artists having hm customs open almost constantly, and i’m sure we all know why that is, other than the few artists who genuinely can’t open slots right now."

HM customs have always been a bit of tricky situation since it was switched so that only offical team members could do them and I do apologize that it was never fully explored how to best impliment this system. in the beginning i dont think it was set up to handle a community the size of which we have and hasn't ever really been revised to help fix it. with that being said though we do have a fancy new thread you may want to check out !! its still in the works as all the artists find their spots but there are already several artists who have started using it if you would like to keep track. its called the <a href="http://www.chickensmoothie.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=87&t=3701780">Kalon Artist Alley</a>!! essentially every artist on the Kalon team has a post here and they will be able to detail what work they are open for, lay out what projects they currently have, and list any examples or prices [as they may apply] for their work! with this it should make it a lot more easy to find an artist that is open to HM customs and browse just who you might want to partner with!

"staff not responding even to help questions until it’s irrelevant or the other person completely forgot they even asked. not enough nursery artists who are actually active to compensate for the rise in kalon members looking for batches."

I do apologize for any questions that have went unanswered! Its really unfortunate that we've gotten this reputation, but I do swear to you that it is never intentional! Sometimes I so wish I could just show you guys a day in the life of the staff chat, it is honestly off the hook 24/7 with people chatting about all kinds of different business from questions to designs/growths/rule breaking and a whole slew of everything in between! And often times our inboxes are just the same, I know mine is! Things fall through the cracks sometimes in a community so big and id be willing to bet that more often than not we actually have discussed the question at hand and it may just be that the conversation rolled over to something new that distracted the original staff member handling it from responding to you and then never picked it back up. that is something that we will have to start working a lot harder on, but like i said, it is absolutely never intentional that we are forgetting responses. if you dont hear back usually within 72 hours it is absolutely okay for you to resend the message or to send it to a new staff member !!

"staff don’t have an obligation to be active since if they aren’t, they don’t get the activity rewards, but again, like i said in a previous point, artist activity is a serious issue that isn’t taken seriously enough, or at all. if people aren’t active but get on to post maybe one kalon every few months, that’s an issue and needs to be talked to with the person. if they can’t get on enough to post kalons more than every few months, maybe they should take a break and someone who can be more active can be brought in."

like you mentioned, i kinda touched on this one in the first response, however I would also like to point something else out. while i dont consider Kalons to be a business and myself and Karmel dont run them as such, even if you are looking at this from a real world employment there are actually a lot of different levels of activity that are acceptable!! normally you have full time ,, part time ,, and PRN [as needed] employees all working for the same company. my artists are just like that in a lot of respects and its completely unfair to say they dont deserve compensation for what they do when they are able to do it. they aren't taking up a slot from anyone else and they are still providing amazing designs and input into the community ,, heck a lot of the time when an artist is unable to make designs they are still active in the staff chat and in other areas that may not be their primary duty as an artist.

" staff apparently being too big to manage properly"

[cutting this one a little short]

you are absolutely right !! we have said this a lot and that's because we really do mean it !! and when we talk about staff being too big to manage we dont actually mean that all those names are just too much, we mean that the active people that we are currently managing is quite a lot !! looking back on our activity documentation for the last 6 months there has consistently been an average of 30+ active artists working !! and that not even including our mods or myself and Karmel ,, for two people who have adult lives off the internet that is a lot to manage and we are trying our absolute best while still not spreading ourselves too thin because then the issues that you have already expressed just become more exaggerated when we have to provide them with even less attention than we already do. and while we think that the staff we have right now is very strong and putting out a lot of work already [did you know that last month alone over 200 designs were put into the community just from the nursery and main adopts ?? and over the last 6 months over 2,000 designs were?] we have opened the nursery search again and may soon be opening the main artists search as well to alleviate some of the demand that you guys are throwing out there c: 

I'm not going to quote any of the last point as its quite long but to a degree I would like to agree, just in all honesty. I haven't been able to be a real part of the actually community for quite some time since becoming a co-owner and in that time from the position i am in I have seen a lot of stuff. I know that it may seem like no body cares but really I think the issue is just in a community this large in general it can be hard to find a foot hold. now im not making any excuses for those that go out of their way to ignore everyone or only talk to their friend group, but I do also know a lot of people that try their hardest to talk to new people or as many people as they can. i wish there were some easy clear cut way that I could address this and have it fixed in just a couple of days but the sad truth is that you are right, this is more than just what we as staff can tackle by ourselves and really takes the effort of the entire community but we are trying to promote it !! our events have shifted from just token grabs to be more development and cooperation based and often offer or require the interaction with community members that you may not know !! while I dont have any wonderful news for how we plan to fix it please know that we see the rift and we do want to fix it ,, if you or anything really has suggestions or just wants to talk about the experiences that made their introduction to the community better/worse i would honestly really urge you to come talk to me or any staff member. i promise you for all the anxiety it can cause to message one of us we are really just a group of massive dweebs and our side chat would definately prove that. we don't ever aim to make anyone uncomfortable or to be rude when responding to you guys and i apologize if it has ever come off that way when dealing with one of us with Kalon related things. one good thing about such a big staff is that if you have an issue with one of us you can always find someone else <3

Im sure i've missed some stuff and i know i had origianlly planned to address more than just the essay posts but its getting late for me and I have a really big day tomorrow ,, so if ive missed someone or you guys have anything else you would like to have addressed I would actually really urge you to send it on over to the Kalon tumblr. you can find it at kalon-adopts.tumblr.com [where this was submitted from] !! i vagued it earlier but yeah !! its brand spanking new and still under a lot of construction as far as  coding and the like goes but it is functional !! as much as i despise the premise of both of the confessions blog i have realized that Tumblr has become quite an ingrained part of the CS and Kalon community and I would love to continue engage with you guys over it. I know its not the same as the confessions blog but hopefully you will feel more at ease contacting us anonmously there or just sharing your views and opinions in general c: we plan to eventually link the blog on our CS pages once its compeltely set up so please keep in mind nothing explicit will ever be allowed to be submitted there.

ack so yeah here's my really long and drawn out submission that i promised earlier c: i hope you guys read a bit of it and maybe understand a bit more now. i know sometimes it can seem like the staff is being really quiet and maybe not doing anything at all but i can assure you that we are always abuzz and honestly we are just about everywhere listening to just about everything and in some way or another almost all complaints are brought up and discussed. we may not post or announce every little move we are making but i cross my heart and pinky promise that we are working tirelessly to try and improve this community for you guys and for ourselves ,, we love this species and we know that without each and every one of you there wouldn't be anything for us to love so we want to make it as friendly and functioning as we can. all i ask is that you give us a little understanding and patients and i promise you are going to see the positive outcome <3

[also please forgive any mistake its late for me and im tired and not the best at typing anyways lol]

-Wicced!

[illegiblewords]

Right now I am honestly tired as heck just out of work but I think I am figuring out a writing thing so gonna type that here.

I’m basically in the kind of :I position rn where besides on and offline responsibilities and social stuff I have:

1) A novel I am supposed to be working on through July, which is properly outlined and I feel pretty good about.

2) A fun D&D campaign that I’m :> over.

3) A new idea that hit me in the head like a sack of bricks like a day or two ago.

#3, literally it’s the second time in my life that kind of situation has happened. I don’t normally have ideas where the concept just sort of gets vomited out in a weird detailed state. But after a late af night at work apparently that was what had to happen and I ended up scribbling notes for that for like five hours into some stupid time at night/morning.

Honestly, prob some part of me had been low key preparing for that to happen. I’ve been toying with the idea of doing a thing involving multiple fantasy races (main novel isn’t about that) and then when I hit D&D that basically unclogged a bunch of concepts that had previously been mushing together and they sort of exploded out in a much more articulate way than originally planned. I can see pieces of what I’d been vaguely considering before floating around.

And now I have to deal with it. :[

One of the parts I’ve been very D: about though is cast.

Let me tell you dudes, I actually talked to a dear friend who is a pro editor about writing and she gave me some advice I try to keep in mind. That advice was to not make such ungodly huge casts.

This isn’t because I can’t make solid characters with huge casts or stories can’t be told with huge casts. It’s because I’m a goddamn crazy person and whenever I try to set up a story I end up doing horrifyingly detailed levels of worldbuilding and literally with notes of like eight generations of personal ancestry and all the social circles of every single character and then when you have casts of like 60 people that goes into the sphere of hundreds of pages of OUTLINING and it’s hard to get started. Not even fucking exaggerating. My main novel I basically have two points of view (so I’d list main cast is like two people) and less than ten significant cast members because I know I’m like this and I deliberately looked at myself in the mirror and was like NO URBAN YOU NEED TO STOP.

This novel, the original main cast size I had in mind was going to be like nine. As in, the people traveling together having an adventure was going to be be nine. I would still have had to do all the “npc” types and make backstories and motives for their asses.

I realized at some point this was excessive and did that whole look-yourself-in-the-mirror thing and went DO YOU REALLY NEED A MAIN CAST OF NINE URBAN THAT SEEMS PRETTY EXCESSIVE, and so then proceeded to look at my cast and be like “DEFEND WHY THIS PERSON NEEDS TO EXIST AND IF YOU CANNOT THEN FUCK THEM”.

Basically, self-amputation is an important part of writing my friends. It really is.

So step one, there were a series of stern conversations with myself that amounted to “DO YOU REALLY NEED A SUBTERRANEAN HALF-ELF BARD URBAN?” “Well I mean I don’t know it might raise neat questions and I have so many guys in the cast and I’d like to balance things–” “DO YOU REALLY NEED A SUBTERRANEAN HALF-ELF BARD URBAN?” “… No, not really…” “SAY HASTA LA VISTA BABY” Then rinse and repeat with a bunch of other characters.

For the record, I try to do this same process when I go shopping too. It is not always successful but I do use it. In this case I was fortunate and I succeeded in whittling the main cast down to six members, which is still big but not obscenely big.

When I was younger, I used to use tv tropes as a guide to try and help myself figure things out not going to lie. As an older and more experienced writer lady I know that tv tropes does a lot of focusing on the superficial bits of writing but not so much the reasons for those superficial bits that actually let you do important structural work. Still, I did have a look back at cast calculus to see what those were in case it gave me an idea of how to approach the issue of making dynamics and fleshing out characters and doing the pacing with a situation like this.

The answer wasn’t there. But it did help me get my fucking head together, so credit where it is due.

TV tropes talks about five man band a lot, which is basically a structure of leader, person to direct foil the leader, someone intellectual in the group, someone physical in the group, and mediator of the group. It’s not actually said that nicely, they have some admin there being a royal turd focusing on “wah the mediator has to be a gurl” instead of character dynamics. Annoying and useless for storytellers but w/e. They also talk about how sometimes you get a sixth person tacked on and usually that person is an edgelord of some kind who reforms.

Superficial stuff, not that useful. But some person made a note that made me stop and just explained the whole goddamn thing for me clearly.

The sixth person usually acts as a second foil to the leader.

Huh.

So basically, shit’s like this. I’m pretty sure I heard at some point that humans are only really able of fully comprehending numbers up to 3 at a time. It’s not that you don’t know there are bigger numbers. But like picture a bunch of dots or something, they usually break into 1′s, 2′s, or 3′s. If you imagine four it’s like 2+2 or 1+3. If you imagine five it’s like 2+3 or 1+2+2 or something. Grain of salt me on this I am not a mathematician or a scientist, but I do remember hearing this is a thing.

If you look at the way cast calculus tries to break shit down on the tv tropes website, they follow this more or less. Duos you have person A and person B contrasting their qualities, they end up bouncing off each other and creating a balance. Trios you have person A and person B with that structure but then person C is also there and is a kind of mediator role. Id (impulsive and a bit selfish)/ego (aware of reality)/superego (morality or intellect) with ego as mediator if you wanna go old psych. With groups of five, the setup is leader/right hand (contrast), then mind/body (another form of contrast, doesn’t strictly need to be that probably but it is one), then mediator.

2+2+1, or you can attach the mediator to either group of two and have 3+2.

Huuuuuuh.

So six, though. What the fuck are you supposed to do with six?

3+3 my dudes, and 2+2+2. AND, if you aren’t gonna be lazy and shallow and just blindly mimic what people have done before without understanding it (disclaimer: I have in fact been lazy and shallow and blindly mimicked what people have done before without understanding it many, many times) you gotta be able to switch the party members in each subdivision and explain where they stand with the dynamic so you don’t have any redundant bits or hiccups and all the relationships read distinct.

So basically:

Character A

Character B

Character C

Character D

Character E

Character F

You gotta be able to explain:

ABC, DEF, AB, CD, EF first. Then ABD, CEF, AD, BE, CF, and so on.

Reasons larger casts get harder, you have more shit you have to figure out with fucking math. Cut corners at this and the risk of you having two characters who are basically the same person and have a boring nonsense dynamic you don’t know what to say about goes up.

But Urban (you say as my levels of insane analytical bullshit continue to climb), haven’t people figured this shit already??? A-Archetypes happened yeah, so theoretically some older and more mathematically/instinctively gifted storytellers in the past figured some shit out. Wasn’t there a thing about the sixth person being some kind of douchecanoe edgelord? Why not just go with that and pray it sticks?

See I figured that trick out my dudes. I figured it right out. The douchecanoe is a trick. Secretly, that douchecanoe has a hole and that hole is flooded with more math.

Why do you need a douchecanoe? Well, we said earlier–usually they show up and turn out to be a second foil to the leader. So you got leader, foil A, foil B. One is gonna be mediator (probably the leader) and then each of the others will be a pole of some kind. Id, ego, superego is one way of putting it but so is idk idealist, realist, cynic. You can go a lot of routes with this. For mine I have ends justify the means, ends never justify means, and maybe both sometimes depending on the situation. It’s all foiling. And depending on who you have in which position you will have greater or lesser levels of contrast or parallel going on. I could have ABC and DEF be id, ego, superego respectively but then I try ABD and in that setup D is ego/mediator compared to A and B or something.

Basically, you have a team who is mostly pretty heroic overall, the person jumping in being either a moral extremist in some ways or being extra impulsive about what they want is a way to increase the range of morality on the whole and offer more foiling opportunities. I'd like to say though that isn't the only way to do it. If you have an asshole teammate in a group of five and then send in a sixth person, that sixth person could stand out for being really decent too. It's basically about generating a big moral contrast, especially between the leader and their direct foil.

But what about shipping? Opposites attract is one thing but isn’t birds of a feather flock together also a thing? And isn't shipping is just another form of character dynamic? What the hell does that do to all this horrible math? The thing is, opposites attract and birds of a feather flock together always, by nature, have to be trends. Not absolutes. Otherwise you get selfcest or two people with nothing to bond or relate over at all. Practically aliens. Any contrast you create between characters must also parallel in some other way and vice versatile. And ye both still work. It's good general policy to always have some level of foiling AND some level of paralleling between each pair of cast members that is distinct.

Also, as a bonus--why do people think casts of four are tricky? Basically when you are doing groups of four every single character has to be equally foiled and paralleled by every other character in some way. The balance of similarity and difference is real precise and can be a little tricky to wing.

But yeah, seven and higher cast numbers scare the hell out of me especially since they don't break evenly into subgroups within human comprehension limits. I think it's still doable but Jesus.

[thebiggamehunter]

New Post has been published on Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter's Blog

New Post has been published on http://blog.thebiggamehunter.us/changing-your-paralysis-to-change/

Changing Your Paralysis To Change

Everyone knows that making change is one of the scariest things we deal

with as adults. We recognize and acknowledge a need to make a life or professional change and then find it impossible to do anything about it.

Why does it become hard?

Conflicting Responsibilities. We have our current career. We have a family or trying to find someone to date or be in relationship with We want to have a little fun in life and, heck, there is that new series on (Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO, Hulu, etc.) and there is no time.

Fear. Change involves risk. As adults, we don’t often recognize fear. We couch in pop culture terms like “procrastination” or “anxiety” to disguise the very fact that we are afraid of doing something new.

Habit. Imagine driving a bus on a one lane dirt road. Every bus drives on the same path and the rut in the road becomes deeper and deeper as more buses travel in the rut. That’s what happens to many of us as we start to think of our lives and our careers. We are driving on the same rut as every other bus.

I Don’t Know How to Change. Closely coupled with “I don’t know how to change,” is “I have to figure it out by myself.” Add to this is “I don’t know where to start,” and you have a very powerful cocktail for inertia.

We Know How to Trick Ourselves.  I was working with a group recently and a man said something that sounded like he was changing his intentions for change after so passionately advocating for the very change the week before. I asked, “I’m confused. Does your fear tend to send up a signal of danger that causes you to change your plans?”

“Yes,” he said. “It’s probably the biggest way I trip myself up and stay in the same place.”

My recent article on “Stuck:  Deciding Between Resignation, Perseverance and Acceptance in Your Career” struck a chord with many people about their feeling of ennui and frustration in the workplace. The interesting thing I heard from the LinkedIn messages I received was frustration—anger directed at oneself instead of at the party that should be the recipient.

The need to inhibit one’s responses is a well-learned condition for most employees. No one should act out of anger and harm someone but there needs to be institutionally approved ways for employees to express themselves when they are angry.

Which takes me to the question of what should you do when you are paralyzed and unable to make a change.

How do you move forward and attain what you want professionally and personally?

Decide who you want to become. You are going to need to change as a person in order to change your career and life. What sort of change do you want to make in yourself to have the life you want or the career you want?

Decide what you want to do over the next 90 days. Major changes may involve longer periods of time than 90 days but certainly there are large chunks you can carve out in 90 days.

Why? Why do you want to engage in this effort? What difference will it make to you and your life to make this change? It is important to connect with the deep reason for doing this by asking yourself, “Why,” to your first three answers. Why does this matter to you? Go deeper.

What can you do (each day, every other day, this week) to move the needle forward in the direction of what you want to attain over the next 90 days?

Start telling people. When I trained to run the New York Marathon, I told people I was going to run New York. They got very excited for me at the beginning and excited for me in the last few weeks before I ran it about what I was doing. Knowing myself as I did, I knew I needed that extra boost at the beginning to get started and at the end and but would need to rely upon myself in the middle.

Get support. It is so much harder to do things like this by yourself than doing it with others. Hire a coach. Join a group of people who also want to achieve something in their lives. Just don’t do it alone.

After one week, review how you did. Most people dread the word “accountability” because it has become weaponized by businesses and government to punish people who make certain mistakes. Instead of accountability, review how you did and ask, “What did I learn from this,” whether you accomplished it or not. Maybe you could have done more. Maybe it was easier than you thought. Maybe you bit off more than you could chew. No matter what outcome you attain, ask yourself what you can do to move the needle forward and advance.

It starts with the courage to face the truth. You are going to have to expend effort and make change as well as the wisdom to know you need support to do so.

  © The Big Game Hunter, Inc. Asheville, NC  2017

  Note: I will be launching an online group in January to help people advance their lives and careers. If you would like information about the group pre-launch and would like to join a new group on Facebook to prepare for January, email me at JeffAltman@TheBigGameHunter.us and in the subject line, put the phrase, “Facebook Group.” I will message you when we are ready.

  Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a coach who worked in recruiting for what seems like one hundred years. He is the head coach for JobSearchCoachingHQ.com and NoBSCoachingAdvice.com. He is the host of “The No BS Coaching Advice Podcast,” “No BS Job Search Advice,” and “Job Search Radio.”

Are you interested in my coaching you?  Email me at JeffAltman@TheBigGameHunter.us and put the word, “Coaching” in the subject line.

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For more No BS Coaching Advice & encouragement, visit my website.