December Days 2022 #12: Fierce
Dec. 13th, 2022 12:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradept[What's December Days this year? Taking a crowdsourced list of adjectives and seeing if I can turn them into saying good things about myself. Or at least good things to talk about.]
Here's a great example of a word not gaining a moral dimension until it is in context. (Except in the slang definitions.) Because I have been asked to look like the heavy for someone when going into a situation where they needed someone who looks intimidating. Or someone who looks like a man so other men will say the important information in my presence and not try to sell a car based on something other than whether it's a good car or not. In those situations, being fierce is a good thing, to frighten away those who would attack.
In others, it's not such a good thing. I definitely don't want to be cruel or violent in my workplace and with my target audiences, and being threatening around them isn't going to be much better. I think my best approach is that I'm the friendly person who goes to bar for them so that if I have to make an ask that's not really asking, the change in demeanor should be enough to get what I want because it's serious time. The time where I had run out of fuse and roared at those who stood on my very last nerve that day, I felt terrible about having done it immediately afterward.
Getting frustrated and shouty happens a lot more outside of work, partially because one of the things that comes along with variable attention stimulus is strong and sudden mood shifts. And while I might feel better after a vent in the moment, because of the situation of my household, I usually feel terrible afterward for having let my temper get the better of me. I wish this were one of those situations where I could apply some of the things I've learned through work and the question there, but if it's something where I should be able to do it consistently and I'm not, or I'm trying to do a relatively precision trick on a controller meant for an eight year-old's hands, or if I'm just having a bad RNG run, those things can make for grumbles or worse. My ex insisted to me that I only had fun when I was winning, based on how things went, and refused to believe me when I said it wasn't about swimming or loading, but about whether or not the inputs I thought I had put in were recognized and executed by the machine, or about a bad steak of luck. Sure, getting upset about things you can't control seems odd to people with more NT brains, but if you listen, you'll find out that it's often about fairness, a concept that an RNG really knows nothing about at all. And neither, really, does a player whose objective is winning rather than enjoyment. A manual I once read about the process but which one does "git gud" explicitly said that too be the best at a game, you have to adopt the mentality that if the system permits it, it's legal, even if it wasn't what the designers intended, and that anyone who says it isn't fair or insists on playing by some other rule than "if its doable, then it's legal" is a scrub who will never git gud, because they believe in silly concepts like fairness instead of victory by any means at your disposal.
And yet, those same people who have adopted the idea that all competitive edges are to be exploited and the only worthy opponent is the one who believes the same way wonder why nobody likes playing with them and nobody wants them to be the face of the competitive game scene. (The Stop Having Fun Guys are aptly named, shall we say.) My ex wanted to paint me as one of those people, and it was a surefire way to get me additionally irritated, since it usually also came with an admonishment that I needed to learn how to lose better. I can lose perfectly fine, but if it's the kind of game where things get out of hand fast and there's little I can do but wait out my remaining turns until someone wins, all while I keep rolling terribly or otherwise not making any progress, I'm going to keep losing interest in the game and being frustrated by it. I need games that don't allow for runaway situations because of good luck or bad luck, and games that don't punish you immediately if you haven't already figured it what the optimal play strategy is.
That's an interesting sidebar to fierce, because I'm sure there were times where I appeared to be fierce about things my ex chose not to understand. (She believed she was right and did not generally think much of other opinions or arguments that conflicted with her belief that she was right.) The fierce that I'm most interested in is the last slang definition, which sounds like the newest one to join, given how difficult it has been for people to be non-straight, non-cis, and not discriminated against to the point where they hide themselves instead of taking pride in who they are. It's also a definition that feels associated with communities of color at least as much as it is queer communities, so I'm not sure how much of fierce I can achieve as someone who doesn't look visibly queer and definitely is white. I can strive for it, with the understanding that I may never reach it. If I do, it will probably be from having done a lifetime of good work without looking for cookies for the bare minimum.
In the right context, fierce can be good, so I hope to have good fierce context and to be fierce in good contexts.
- fierce (comparative fiercer, superlative fiercest)
- Exceedingly violent, severe, ferocious, cruel or savage.
- Resolute or strenuously active.
- Threatening in appearance or demeanor.
- (slang, Ireland, rural) Excellent, very good.
- (slang, US, LGBT, fashion) Of exceptional quality, exhibiting boldness or chutzpah.
Here's a great example of a word not gaining a moral dimension until it is in context. (Except in the slang definitions.) Because I have been asked to look like the heavy for someone when going into a situation where they needed someone who looks intimidating. Or someone who looks like a man so other men will say the important information in my presence and not try to sell a car based on something other than whether it's a good car or not. In those situations, being fierce is a good thing, to frighten away those who would attack.
In others, it's not such a good thing. I definitely don't want to be cruel or violent in my workplace and with my target audiences, and being threatening around them isn't going to be much better. I think my best approach is that I'm the friendly person who goes to bar for them so that if I have to make an ask that's not really asking, the change in demeanor should be enough to get what I want because it's serious time. The time where I had run out of fuse and roared at those who stood on my very last nerve that day, I felt terrible about having done it immediately afterward.
Getting frustrated and shouty happens a lot more outside of work, partially because one of the things that comes along with variable attention stimulus is strong and sudden mood shifts. And while I might feel better after a vent in the moment, because of the situation of my household, I usually feel terrible afterward for having let my temper get the better of me. I wish this were one of those situations where I could apply some of the things I've learned through work and the question there, but if it's something where I should be able to do it consistently and I'm not, or I'm trying to do a relatively precision trick on a controller meant for an eight year-old's hands, or if I'm just having a bad RNG run, those things can make for grumbles or worse. My ex insisted to me that I only had fun when I was winning, based on how things went, and refused to believe me when I said it wasn't about swimming or loading, but about whether or not the inputs I thought I had put in were recognized and executed by the machine, or about a bad steak of luck. Sure, getting upset about things you can't control seems odd to people with more NT brains, but if you listen, you'll find out that it's often about fairness, a concept that an RNG really knows nothing about at all. And neither, really, does a player whose objective is winning rather than enjoyment. A manual I once read about the process but which one does "git gud" explicitly said that too be the best at a game, you have to adopt the mentality that if the system permits it, it's legal, even if it wasn't what the designers intended, and that anyone who says it isn't fair or insists on playing by some other rule than "if its doable, then it's legal" is a scrub who will never git gud, because they believe in silly concepts like fairness instead of victory by any means at your disposal.
And yet, those same people who have adopted the idea that all competitive edges are to be exploited and the only worthy opponent is the one who believes the same way wonder why nobody likes playing with them and nobody wants them to be the face of the competitive game scene. (The Stop Having Fun Guys are aptly named, shall we say.) My ex wanted to paint me as one of those people, and it was a surefire way to get me additionally irritated, since it usually also came with an admonishment that I needed to learn how to lose better. I can lose perfectly fine, but if it's the kind of game where things get out of hand fast and there's little I can do but wait out my remaining turns until someone wins, all while I keep rolling terribly or otherwise not making any progress, I'm going to keep losing interest in the game and being frustrated by it. I need games that don't allow for runaway situations because of good luck or bad luck, and games that don't punish you immediately if you haven't already figured it what the optimal play strategy is.
That's an interesting sidebar to fierce, because I'm sure there were times where I appeared to be fierce about things my ex chose not to understand. (She believed she was right and did not generally think much of other opinions or arguments that conflicted with her belief that she was right.) The fierce that I'm most interested in is the last slang definition, which sounds like the newest one to join, given how difficult it has been for people to be non-straight, non-cis, and not discriminated against to the point where they hide themselves instead of taking pride in who they are. It's also a definition that feels associated with communities of color at least as much as it is queer communities, so I'm not sure how much of fierce I can achieve as someone who doesn't look visibly queer and definitely is white. I can strive for it, with the understanding that I may never reach it. If I do, it will probably be from having done a lifetime of good work without looking for cookies for the bare minimum.
In the right context, fierce can be good, so I hope to have good fierce context and to be fierce in good contexts.
