With all the timely resolution-speak that this time of year brings about, let's face it: there are some personal areas, so-called "buttons", that are near impossible to re-align. OK—not impossible, but really difficult given who we are. These buttons make for the classic of classic characters, whether described by the Greek plays or by Shakespeare's, portrayed in Akira Kurosawa's films or Tennessee William's plays. I'll go as far as suggesting that you can't have a real story without at least one character having at least one button (that could strike you as an "uh. duh.").
Re me: I've got a fantastic one: guilt. My parents were Extraordinary (Pavlov should have sat at their knees) when they began the construction of my relationship with guilt. For years I could be guilted into almost anything. And then when the pendulum swung, it was a total 180 — try to guilt me now and feel the wrath that is at the volcanic core of ayesinback. Until I start feeling guilty about my reaction. Tra la la.
So what's yours?
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Comic Talk and General Discussion *
Your Fatal Flaw
My anxiety. : (
I'm working on it but it's kept me from doing a lot of things, and I'm sure will keep me from doing more in the future. Anxiety is a terrible flaw, it's like your body is betraying you. I don't feel like a weak or unmotivated person, but I'll want to do something exciting, or tell someone off, and then I start getting panicked and can't go through with it.
It'll get better but I'm sure I'll always be an overly anxious person.
So what's yours?
I have feelings like a robot. I recognize when I ought to care but I generally do not! However I can mimic appropriate responses. Also I have laser eyes.
Let's see, what else? Sometimes I do things before deliberating too long on them. Posting, purchasing, starting projects, etc. So sometimes I end up owning things I regret or half-finished stuff lying around. Also, I am a huge procrastinator. I don't like to do things til I either really want to or really have to. So those two are why I have a bunch of half-finished, non-updated comics lying around!
I should probably try and change all of those, but whatevs. I have a whole year.
So what's yours?
I have feelings like a robot. I recognize when I ought to care but I generally do not! However I can mimic appropriate responses. Also I have laser eyes.
Let's see, what else? Sometimes I do things before deliberating too long on them. Posting, purchasing, starting projects, etc. So sometimes I end up owning things I regret or half-finished stuff lying around. Also, I am a huge procrastinator. I don't like to do things til I either really want to or really have to. So those two are why I have a bunch of half-finished, non-updated comics lying around!
I should probably try and change all of those, but whatevs. I have a whole year.
I relate to most of this, but i wouldn't call these my fatal flaws.
My fatal flaws are my crippling fear of failure and futility. Also a real lack of empathy.
It's difficult for people to trust me to do tasks.
I think it sorta kicked off in '07 when I started an art course. It killed my productivity stone dead like a speeding 4x4 through the fog with bull bars.
Why? It might have been a number of things. The stress of constantly going in and out of psychological assessments? My poor health at the time? Dealing with several traumatic incidents? The niggling fact that I was merely on that course to make up numbers, being from a less privileged background and classed as disabled and feeling like I wasn't getting treated like everyone else for it due to the constant, suspiciously positive, feedback?
Regardless of which of these things it was. I still haven't gotten around it. And since most of the work I've had to do for college for the past two years has been art related, I'm just not doing the work. I'm sitting staring at a blank page for three hours and any slight disturbance puts me off track and I have to start over again in my head from scratch.
For comparision, I used to go through three A4 sketchbooks a month. Now I go though one a YEAR as a rough average. And my art quality has greatly diminished in that time. I'd say early 2009 was my tiny peak before a massive trough.
I've waited three years to get on my course. I got a chance to repeat my first year because of illness making me miss several whole weeks and the fact that the tutors believed in me. And I'm letting them all down as well as myself.
What's worse is the fact that it's all because I had difficulty reading and understanding the first unit brief. I tried so hard to keep up but I just couldn't read and understand it and the two other guys I was working with in the group had and still have dodgy attendance. I was tested for dyslexia in November only to be told that I didn't have it but still required a coloured overlay to read things but it ONLY works on black and white text. The handouts are black text on a yellow background. And black and yellow was the worst possible combination in my cerium test.
Ironically, they print it on that paper so people that have dyslexia can read it better. And I'm always close to ripping my hair out just looking at it.
Anyway, I kept putting off the task trying to do other work but I was told to complete that, trying catching up with it alongside the other work and so far I've still not finished work I should've had done two months ago. If I don't get stuff done by March I'll end up off the course altogether.
My willful ignorance.
Inasmuch as I pride myself as a seeker of truth and as someone who goes wherever the evidence leads me… in some areas of my life I am just stubborn and willfully ignorant.
How many times does this lesson need to be taught to me?
YOU
DO
NOT
TRUST
YOUR
SOUL
TO
ANYBODY!!!
Cult leader? Family? Some girl?
Same shit different pile.
If anyone tells you they love you (regardless of what type), take it with a grain of salt. Next time someone tells me that, I'm gonna be as skeptical as some James Randi atheist who is still gonna be skeptical even though a mountain of evidence is presented before me.
Now I guess I need to write that boldened text repeatedly on a blackboard while wearing a "dunce" cap like those kids in detention or something. lol!
I feel like a FUCKING MORON!!! > <
I am just too good looking.I hear ya :(
For me it's that I can tend to have control freak tendencies (about stuff I produce, personal image etc) and also a bit of a perfectionist.
People often blab about 'perfectionism' as if it's a good thing- it's not, it's a sad, pathetic trait.
If you're a perfectionist it means you are a dickhead who takes too much time over things, over-eggs the pudding and finds fault where there isn't any.
But overall I think I'm generally pretty normal, average and ordinary despite all that. Most silly neuroses are pretty universal.
I am a carbon based lifeform: cells, organic tissue, biological matter - however you look at it, these things are not built to last. Ultimately, the sum of all my hopes, fears, dreams and schemes will wither and fade into dust and that is pretty much my fatal flaw.No, I think It's that you're a smartarse.
…buuut that's also why we love you…
So there we have it- flaws can also be assets! Who'd a thought?
Being alive my fatal flaw is that one day I will die.
That being said it's MY BIG MOUTH (cue Jackie Gleason) and at the same time not saying anything. Passive-aggressive.
Then there's being too empathic. I have to actively work on turning it off and being a little robot or else I dissolve into tears about everyone.
I have very low self confidence.
As much of a flaw as it is, it makes me strive to do my best or better than my best since my best is never up to par in my unconfident eyes. I have to catch myself and put on the play acting when I'm in job interviews because they'll ask "Can you do this?" The answer deep down is "I don't know but I'll give it my best effort." The truth is, I've never missed a deadline. I've never failed to complete a task. But I always THINK I will. I also think I'm ugly and awkward, which is all part of that too. I try to do a good job faking confidence in public, though, because I hate to be someone that stands out. I'd rather fade into the woodwork, and to do that, one has to smile and act normal and comfortable.
Oh, and yeah, empathy kills me too. Everything makes me cry, and it's especially annoying because I don't want to be seen crying, so I act like a statue until I can find some privacy. I have lost sleep over the issues facing friends of friends – or foreign governments – or endangered species.
I am a terrible procrastinator. I try to decide on the best way to go about something and the best time to do it, but time keeps passing by and I keep rearranging the schedule until I end up having to rush towards the end, and the little voice in the back of my head starts in with "The way you planned it was a lot better, wasn't it? Yeessss…"
If I had the motivation I would replicate the Sistine Chapel on a grain of rice (in 3 days), but that's the other issue. I have to have constant motivation and inspiration to make something happen. If people start throwing putdowns and such at me, although it doesn't really hurt me, it seems to show in the stuff I do. I guess I have a mindset of "if they don't care, I don't".
So I guess I should resolve to actually do stuff.
So there we have it- flaws can also be assets! Who'd a thought?
YOU'd a thunk it. Truly, some of these flaws would be considered by an observer as charming if not outright attractive.
That's a flaw?
So you care?
< I don't like committing unless I'm sure> Doesn't that make you incredibly dependable?
So in a world of ducklings searching for something to imprint on, you guide the way? *ducklings vis a vis DrunkDuck — one apropos slam drunk dunk*
Granted, the above might be turning "that frown upside down" (I HATE that phrase), but you folks have read Shakespeare, right? Maybe I should have written "tragic flaw". *head shaking*
So Kudos to leet — now THAT's an epic flaw. But I suspect it's not permanent.
Main flaw? Pure unattenuated fear. I'm afraid of just about everything.
Over time I've learned not to let it rule me (without meds!, yay willpower!). I still grapple with certain fears of failure, authority, and some social situations. Its like permanent stage fright, often to the point of paralysis. Had to be hospitalized once from a panic attack I had during a routine speeding ticket, I'm usually pretty lonely because I can't seem to ask out women I like, almost jumped of a building when I had a bad grade in college, that kind of thing.
Secondary? Hypertension. The stress of fighting my constant anxiety and the frustrations I experience with life combined with a family history of heart problems mean I take blood thinners to avoid bursting a vessel.
Or let's go the pessimistic approach and say that all character assets are flaws when they are excessive.So there we have it- flaws can also be assets! Who'd a thought?YOU'd a thunk it. Truly, some of these flaws would be considered by an observer as charming if not outright attractive.
. . . all character assets are flaws when they are excessive.Aw — you edited out some very good examples. Regardless, I agree with your above. When characteristics are present but are of minor incidence, they can be seen as quirks, and can even be endearing. Even when more than minor, for observers, they can still be positives.
But for those who carry those characteristics and who have to learn to accommodate them even when willpower flags, then those characteristics can become actual flaws.
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