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silveradeptChallenge #12 invokes the victory theme and asks us to play it loud.
This is perfectly timed, as this morning, I got caught by the curse of large numbers. You know this one. It's the "of all the people in the world, there will be sufficiently large numbers of them completely convinced they are right in all things. A sufficient percentage of them will believe that others should be subjected to their 'objectively correct' opinions, and if you have produced enough works/posts/etc. eventually one of them will find one of your things to spray their opinion all over and you have to decide how you want to handle them." Even with the vast numbers of works and users around on AO3 and the Internet in general, this phenomenon is at least as common as finding two people with the same birthday in a stadium of sports fans. (This is without any kind of "engagement" algorithms that put people who are likely to engage with each other, positively or negatively, in each other's pathways.)
So the first win today is that I'm not rising to the bait, which included being accused of having ideological purity overriding all sense and logic, mental health issues, "delusions," and never enjoying any book that I've read, all because I put out works demonstrating that a series I enjoyed as a youngling had many more problems to it than I had noticed at the time. With citations from the text, no less! I'm going to let this particular trolling attempt pass on through, let the person make all the comments they want, and then silently delete the comments and block the user without the engagement they crave, a simple reminder that to play that game, there are supposed to be at two players, and the opening moves from this player are insufficient. It is the benefit of age and wisdom. Or age and treachery, perhaps. After all, I am sufficiently aware of how these spaces work to know that insulting the person who has control over whether your comment gets seen or not is generally a losing move, and therefore I can do something that might cause them to silently rage at how they were dismissed and nobody acknowledged their inherently superior position. Treachery!
Although, if it is treachery, it's the same kind of treachery that allows me to do things that children don't conceive of. When all the children set themselves up as a team and add on additional CPU players to their team, they're very confident they can beat me, since they have numerous advantage , seven against one. And yet, somehow, I not only beat them, but handily and repeatedly. How is that even possible? Well, children, I've been playing this game and this character for longer than you've been alive, and therefore I know more than you do about how the mechanics work, and the ways that I can engage in crowd control and how to use the items to my benefit. (It also helps that the character I've chosen has ways of reflecting attacks and who does extra damage and kockback when they hit the sweet spot, and with seven opponents all trying to crowd me, that's seven opportunities for a sweet spot with each swing) I can score many points for each one I lose, and that means I end up winning, because the rules also work in my favor. Treachery. (And victory, too.)
There are some other victories to celebrate, personally and fannishly. My Yuletide fic made it over 100 kudos, mostly because of the good fortune of being assigned a popular Yuletide fandom. It's the only one I did in that year that made the century mark. (I'm sure I'd get more kudos and more hate if I didn't have the buffer of anonymity periods for exchange works, so the ones that were related to big fandoms have sufficiently fallen off the main page when they are revealed.) I got some very nice comments on that and all the other works that I produced that year. (And some hate, because again, the curse of large numbers.) I finished all the things I started, which is also pretty cool to say that I did.
Personal wins are much more about finding new ways of thinking and continuing to grapple with several of the maladaptive coping mechanisms and systems that I have built for myself over time, based on the way other people have reacted to me and the time that I spent in a relationship that was unhealthy for me. The December Days series from 2023 goes into more detail about some of those negative thinking patterns and the ways that I've been working through them or around them. Considering that I'm no longer an early career person who has many disruptive events happening in their lives, but instead have home improvements that will take a decade to pay off and be used for decades afterward, most of what's left for me to do is to obtain all that experience and wisdom that other people are going to assume I have as I get older and keep doing the things that I have been doing. And, perhaps, with luck, persistence, and the occasional bit of courage to move in the direction of things I do want, to continue building a happier life for myself despite all of the things that I have done (and that keep happening around us) that have been learning experiences along the way.
Tell Us about a Personal Win.
Share whatever wins you’re comfortable with telling us all about. Found a new fandom that makes you light up? One of your creations has earned more kudos than you dreamed of? Wins from life, new job, new school, new adventure? You have a couple of wins you want to celebrate, we want to hear about them. Share a win or two so we can cheer for you.
This is perfectly timed, as this morning, I got caught by the curse of large numbers. You know this one. It's the "of all the people in the world, there will be sufficiently large numbers of them completely convinced they are right in all things. A sufficient percentage of them will believe that others should be subjected to their 'objectively correct' opinions, and if you have produced enough works/posts/etc. eventually one of them will find one of your things to spray their opinion all over and you have to decide how you want to handle them." Even with the vast numbers of works and users around on AO3 and the Internet in general, this phenomenon is at least as common as finding two people with the same birthday in a stadium of sports fans. (This is without any kind of "engagement" algorithms that put people who are likely to engage with each other, positively or negatively, in each other's pathways.)
So the first win today is that I'm not rising to the bait, which included being accused of having ideological purity overriding all sense and logic, mental health issues, "delusions," and never enjoying any book that I've read, all because I put out works demonstrating that a series I enjoyed as a youngling had many more problems to it than I had noticed at the time. With citations from the text, no less! I'm going to let this particular trolling attempt pass on through, let the person make all the comments they want, and then silently delete the comments and block the user without the engagement they crave, a simple reminder that to play that game, there are supposed to be at two players, and the opening moves from this player are insufficient. It is the benefit of age and wisdom. Or age and treachery, perhaps. After all, I am sufficiently aware of how these spaces work to know that insulting the person who has control over whether your comment gets seen or not is generally a losing move, and therefore I can do something that might cause them to silently rage at how they were dismissed and nobody acknowledged their inherently superior position. Treachery!
Although, if it is treachery, it's the same kind of treachery that allows me to do things that children don't conceive of. When all the children set themselves up as a team and add on additional CPU players to their team, they're very confident they can beat me, since they have numerous advantage , seven against one. And yet, somehow, I not only beat them, but handily and repeatedly. How is that even possible? Well, children, I've been playing this game and this character for longer than you've been alive, and therefore I know more than you do about how the mechanics work, and the ways that I can engage in crowd control and how to use the items to my benefit. (It also helps that the character I've chosen has ways of reflecting attacks and who does extra damage and kockback when they hit the sweet spot, and with seven opponents all trying to crowd me, that's seven opportunities for a sweet spot with each swing) I can score many points for each one I lose, and that means I end up winning, because the rules also work in my favor. Treachery. (And victory, too.)
There are some other victories to celebrate, personally and fannishly. My Yuletide fic made it over 100 kudos, mostly because of the good fortune of being assigned a popular Yuletide fandom. It's the only one I did in that year that made the century mark. (I'm sure I'd get more kudos and more hate if I didn't have the buffer of anonymity periods for exchange works, so the ones that were related to big fandoms have sufficiently fallen off the main page when they are revealed.) I got some very nice comments on that and all the other works that I produced that year. (And some hate, because again, the curse of large numbers.) I finished all the things I started, which is also pretty cool to say that I did.
Personal wins are much more about finding new ways of thinking and continuing to grapple with several of the maladaptive coping mechanisms and systems that I have built for myself over time, based on the way other people have reacted to me and the time that I spent in a relationship that was unhealthy for me. The December Days series from 2023 goes into more detail about some of those negative thinking patterns and the ways that I've been working through them or around them. Considering that I'm no longer an early career person who has many disruptive events happening in their lives, but instead have home improvements that will take a decade to pay off and be used for decades afterward, most of what's left for me to do is to obtain all that experience and wisdom that other people are going to assume I have as I get older and keep doing the things that I have been doing. And, perhaps, with luck, persistence, and the occasional bit of courage to move in the direction of things I do want, to continue building a happier life for myself despite all of the things that I have done (and that keep happening around us) that have been learning experiences along the way.
no subject
Date: 2024-01-24 01:54 am (UTC)