Off Topic: Seeing Red



Conflicts between players are bound to occur on occasion. Scenarios may differ, but a significant part of it entails differences in personalities. In a possible series of colored articles, I want to discuss one of the more misunderstood colors, red. I can relate on many levels due to my personal casting cost having quite a few red mana symbols. If I were to pick a card to represent myself, it would be Dominus of Fealty. On certain occasions, I am completely blue. Others, I am a mix of both. Then there are days when I am on fire, bridges are burned, hard work goes up in smoke and the entire world seems bathed in red. Logic swirling in a pool of emotion can feel quite schizophrenic.

Emotional, not Rational

My wife would typify a red card. Her casting cost would consist of RRRRRRRRRRRR. The majority of her decisions are driven by her emotions. Decisions about what to eat for supper isn’t about what we have in the cupboard or what we can afford. It is about cravings. It is about she feels like at the moment. I feel like I have made so many trips to the grocery store I should call the Guinness Book of World Records: Way too often, what she wants to eat is not in our home. There is no rationale, it is what she desires. I utterly fear the day we decide to have children. I have heard of pregnancy cravings. Shivers go down my spine when I think it could conceivably get worse.

We just moved and our possessions are slowly making their way out of the boxes. On top of other multiple activities, we are quite busy. My last article I had to quietly sneak off from time to time to write it. If I weren’t careful, a grunt would notify me of the evil eye staring through the back of my head because she has yet to find her toothbrush. The response had me bowing my head in shame and returning to the duty of unpacking. So, the other night I got off from work, pulled up my sleeves and went to town with unpacking along with canning peaches, cleaning the garage and doing laundry. The clock eventually revealed it was two o’clock. Mathematics proved I was only going to get four hours of sleep before the most annoying sound in the world would awaken me to another workday. Logically, I should go to bed for some rest. My wife had other plans. There was supposed to be a fantastic meteor shower that night. She began the feeble attempt of luring me into the car for a ride to the dark countryside. The idea was supposed to be romantic.

Since the hour was late, I spent the next sixty minutes trying to convince her with the facts of my need for sleep. The problem was I tried to convince her logically. I pointed out the facts of the time, calculated the hours, and the amount of physical labor I had already put in that day. With a very unhappy wife, I eventually tucked myself under the blankets. If I would have been smart about it, I should have argued with her emotionally by saying I really wish I had time to spend a wonderful time outside watching the falling-stars. I fondly remember the times we spent doing such a thing in the past, and it deeply saddens me to go to sleep. Now, I am talking to her emotionally. Doing so may have produced an added hour to my sleep and a happier wifey poo.

A piece of advise for all those guys out there. When your wife, girlfriend, or whatever is arguing with you when she is in a highly emotional state, don’t try arguing with her logically. All you’ll end up with is a bucket of tears and a cold night on the couch. What you need to do is argue with her emotionally. Irrational, it is because emotions are by their very nature...illogical. Love may be the most illogical of them all. So much so, we have countless stories from Helen of Troy to Romeo and Juliet. The lengths I have seen people go through for the sake of love can be dumbfounding. Therefore, the next time you are in an argument with a person from Venus, speak irrationally.

This is what I found most amusing about the whole M10 rules change showdown. A few posters would go on to flame about the rules changes and the fact it will be the death of Magic. In typical form, the opposition created very articulate and elaborate responses. Sure, the retorts were very logical and factual, but they failed to connect to those players on an emotional level. A person could be confronted forever with countless facts until beaten into submission. However, the emotional needs of the upset player still aren’t being addressed. Further discussion on the forums may have benefited about talking about their feelings towards the changes instead of lambasting them with facts.

Amplify

Over the years, I have learned to be careful on the amount of emotion I unleash. To often, I shock players with my emotional outbursts. A showcase of this would be me dropping a dice on the floor and shouting darn in frustration. An opponent across from me looks shocked and may ask if everything is okay since I am so upset. My face expresses confusion on why they think I am so upset. I am only very slightly irritated. Upset is me going home to shout my lungs out for seven days while I toss every Magic card I ripped into tiny pieces of my personal collection into a fire-pit in the backyard. After the fire has been extinguished, I would beat the ash with a sledgehammer till exhaustion then finalize the whole thing by pouring liquid human waste over the burnt embers. Now, that is pissed.

If you aren’t red by nature, let me put it to you this way. Take a 1 to 10 scale for any kind of emotion. When you are at a five for happy, you might be simply exerting a smile. A red player at the same level of happiness will express it a higher visible or audible level. Take your five and multiply it by five. At a ten, multiply it at ten. Our expression is exponential compared to how we are actually feeling. Some may think of it as mentally unstable. I like to think of it as passionate. Different cultures vary in how passionate they express their emotions. Irish and Hispanic lineages are some of the more lively of the bunch. In college, I shared a tiny dorm room with an exchange student from Taiwan. It took Tom a while to adjust to my explosive personality. The street went both ways. For some time, I thought my roommate was a cyborg. The scenario was a classic clash of cultures with each of us learning from one another. In the end, we still became good friends despite our differences.

On the flip side, I had to get used to the fact people suppress a lot of their expression. In my days of innocence, I was shocked when a friend suddenly blew up at me because I wasn’t being supportive. All that time, my friend was struggling. I never thought anything of it for my friend wasn’t showcasing his emotions like I do. From such an experience, it has taught me to explore and watch for the little things about people. The reality is we only see the tip of the emotional iceberg. Hermes Web by Jerry Fjerkenstad for the psychology geeks. In order to see the deeper parts of people, we need to explore it by taking off the outer layers by probing with questions. Only then will we get to the inner feelings of the person.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Highly emotional people get a bad rap. Society has a strong stigma against the expression of one’s feelings unless in certain organized situations. It is thought people who express themselves as unstable and unable to maintain a grip on reality. Control supposedly equals mental health. The tide is slowly retreating from this line of thought. Research has shown emotions actually help people make decisions. A lot of decisions in life lack a clear answer. People who lack emotion have a more difficult time making some of those decisions. Situations may include stopping to help somebody stranded on the road, buying flowers for a loved one for no apparent reason, volunteering or deciding between two different sodas.

Emotions drive people to do nice things. Grabbing a blanket for chilly date, surprising a lover with a homemade romantic dinner and volunteering as First Responder. These activities do not provide a logical benefit. They do not add any physical value. I suppose a person could argue it is because they care. Well, caring is an emotion. The same can be said about giving away cards from a personal collection. I have given away cards over my playing career. Why? It makes me feel good, especially when it is people with smaller collections or new players. Cyborgs may have great difficulty understanding the concept. The logic is not there.

The bad side of emotions is when the results have unwanted consequences. Getting ticked off at the boss and telling him to stick his foot up his @$& is not the best of decisions. Emotions definitely have a double-edge sword quality. It is a matter of controlling those urges. The trouble is when the loss of control results in the journey of finding another job because the current employer decided to fire me for my outburst. I’ve never been fired for a slip, but I have regretted some of my highly emotional decisions.

The dark side of it all is when emotion completely trumps logic. I have witnessed way too many instances of Magic players having screaming matches and getting into fights. As an audience member, those situations can be extremely uncomfortable and awkward. A couple of times have been about ego and the beating of chests to prove alpha status. Often the situation is just emotional. With luck, an alpha steps up to the plate to intervene. Even though I appreciate the effort, the failure is when logic is utilized to try to dissipate the feud. If the fight were logical, this trouble wouldn’t be happening in the first place.

Emotional Attachment

A big obstacle for red players to overcome is avoiding emotions. When building decks, I have the habit of falling in love with a certain card and try to force it into the sixty cards. It is agonizing to detach myself. Prowess of the Fair was one of those cards. I so desperately wanted it to work in an elf deck. The benefits were obvious. Over and over again, the card proved itself to be inadequate at least in the past environment. My brain told me to take it out, but my heart said I had to include it. Decisions such as those can be tough love. In the end, I sometimes listen to reason and remove it.

I have witnessed how emotional attachment has kept more than a few players from being successful at Magic. New players fall in love with an archetype and refuse to move on when the deck is no longer viable. While writing the article, my inner geek can’t help think of Star Wars. Oh, I won’t go there. I will let you make your own Jedi references. In all seriousness, building decks is not about pet cards. They either work or they don’t.

All Tapped Out

Phew, writing this article has me emotionally spent. Done, no more, I have nothing else to give. If you can take anything away from the article, try in the future to tap into a player’s emotional mindset. By being able to understand a player’s feelings can take you a long way. Yes, a lot of this game is right or wrong, black or white, but just sometimes, it makes absolutely no sense.
0
CurseSiteUser's avatar
CurseSiteUser

Comments

Posts Quoted:
Reply
Clear All Quotes