Apr. 23rd, 2015

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Getting to know more people

Having a wider circle of acquaintance, a wider variety of people of different personalities, cultural backgrounds, expertise, careers, etc, is actively good, because it broadens your experience more than anything else, and in knowing people from a wider pool of potential friends, makes it more likely you'll meet people you get on especially well with.

Getting to know fewer people

Conversely, some people are easier to get to know than others. Like, two people who are equally interesting, equally nice and have equally much in common with you -- you will probably find it easier to get to know the one who already has a common language with you.

And less obvious differences can also be important. There are people I know I don't think it's their fault and I don't think it's my fault, I just rub them up the wrong way or they rub me up the wrong way. Or people who are perfectly pleasant and I'd be happy to share a room with, but we don't have almost anything in common to talk about or do. Or sometimes you just have incompatible communication styles.

And sometimes we've become close anyway, and got used to what each other actually mean, not the superficial problems. But also, sometimes, when I choose who to include on a more-personal posting filter, or who to hang out with, I choose people I know it's easy for me to get on with, because I only have so much "overcoming communication hurdles" energy and I want to spread it around where it will do the most good. And when I cut out active trolls from my LJ, I also accepted that it was ok if I lost people I liked but just wasn't that close to, and on balance that hopefully made it more welcoming for most people. And kept comments from people I sometimes find it difficult to get on with but are always really interesting.

Caveat

With the obvious caveat that you have to be honest about why you find it hard to get on with someone. If you just ALWAYS find it difficult to get on with anyone who disagrees with you at all, you have to recognise your perspective is going to be skewed by that, and if you have the energy to do so, it would be preferable to be more open to different people and different opinions.

This is why ever not getting to know someone wasn't obvious to me. Because I used to find it difficult to start to get on with most people, because it took me a long time to learn small talk skills, and because I was nerdy and didn't meet a lot of other nerdy people until university, etc. So if I stopped trying to socialise with someone because it was difficult, I would almost never socialise with people, and I wasn't happy with that. So I forced myself to socialise with people, which worked pretty well. But left me full of the geek fallacy "never exclude people, ever" that told me I had to get on with everyone.

Like, if someone find it hard to get on with anyone for reasons which are no fault of their own (they don't speak the most common language fluently, they have difficulty getting about, etc) that's a time you should practice "don't exclude" if you can, because else everyone will avoid them :( But if someone is just difficult, it's good to try to include them but you should accept you can't always pour an infinite amount of energy into it. And if someone is horrible, you can try to include them (but not at the expense of excluding other people). And if someone is perfectly ok but gets on badly with you it's ok to say, maybe we can have nice lives while being courteous but not close to each other.

Conclusions

I don't know if this is right, but the contrast between those two things appeared in my head in a conversation with Liv. That it's always good to try to get to know people, but it's also ok to be selective, you don't have to get on with everyone instantly in order to go on getting to know more people. And conversely, it's fine to say sometimes it's not worth pouring in a lot of effort into getting to know someone, and that can be a path to being more outgoing and welcoming, not less outgoing and welcoming.
jack: (Default)
Once Upon a Time, Series 1

Borrowed from ghoti and family. Thank you!

I saw the pilot ages ago and thought it could get a lot better or a lot worse, but when I mostly saw it, it got a lot better! The basic premise is that an evil queen's curse sends all the fairytale characters to a town in the real world without their memories. Each episode forwards the plot in the real world, while also filling in the backstory of one or more of the characters from before the curse.

The backstory parts are amazing. They take the basic story outlined in the first episode and add more and more history to the characters, that never undermines what was previously established, but for all of the characters adds a lot more detail that make them a real character. Especially the evil queen, and even more so, Rumpelstiltskin, played amazingly by Robert Carlyle, they become so rich, multilayered characters.

I don't even fault the magic! Despite mostly being "make it up as you go along" style of consistency, it's usually plenty clear what you need to know, and rules like "true love can break any curse" are explored like the three laws of robotics, not ignored, but returned to and expanded.

Unfortunately, I wasn't as sure of the real-world plot: I loved the characters and the setting, but it felt like the plot was treading water a bit to get everything else to catch up. Even when dramatic things happened, it felt like it had to keep propping up a status quo where Regina was mayor until the end of the season.

I know lots of friends loved it (with some caveats), I'm interested to see how season 2 goes at some point.

King and Joker

Has been on Liv's shelf for ages and ages, and I liked the sound of it, but it was now until I finally read it.

I enjoyed it a lot. It's an alternate history where the british royal family were more like the dutch royal family, reduced in prominence, and establishing the little domestic relationships of the central family and the people close to them, framed by practical jokes that become more serious and turn into a murder mystery.

I do echo Liv's caveat that although well done, it's aggravating that the spanish and scottish dialects are spelled phonetically :(

Necessary Beggar, by Susan Palwick

I have very fond memories of this as it's a book I picked off Liv's shelf when I was visiting her in Stockholm, when I wanted something interesting but not too mind-stretchy (I think the previous I read was Ted Chiang :)) It didn't have a big effect on me at the time, but it's grown on me a lot in retrospect.

A family are exiled to Earth from a great city in a parallel fantasy world, arriving in a refugee camp. It takes the metaphysics as read and concentrates on the characters and their relationships to each other, and in learning to settle into American life. It's easy to get into, but carries you away with a lot of love for the characters, the trade-offs in adapting to a new culture, and the background mystery of the original crime which is slowly resolved.

Apparently she has written some other things, which I didn't think to look for before: I have ordered her collection of short stories.

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