Tag: Megamind Complex

The People of Stranger Things

{Dunda dun da… Babum babum bababum bumbabumba bababumbaba bumbum} The music starts and red lights appear in darkness, angles slowly revealing flickering words, and my heart grows fluttery.  This is my best description of an intro that I refuse to skip unless under duress.  Because it gives me a sense of the ride I’m starting on, of a story that feels somehow both intimate and distant, both like childhood and like falling up into the stars.

It’s really funny to me that the only two group-dynamics character spotlights I’ve fully done up to this point have been scary works (Marble Hornets and this), because that makes it seem like a large proportion of the things I watch are scary and Lovecraftian, which isn’t the case.  I do think H.P. Lovecraft was a boss, taking his INFP(ip) Great Pumpkin Distraction and turning it into a powerful catalyst: using the sheer terror that an IP feels at the all-consuming size of an endless cosmos, and turning it into a beautiful humility before a world outside of your control, bowing to the eternity that might otherwise have swallowed him whole.  That is an epic example of how to properly last-step, imo.

So yes, I do actually really love Lovecraft (and using the word “really,” you’ll find if you stick around for long).  But scary stuff… I’m usually “eh” about it at best. So I guess that’s why, when I find a work that truly encapsulates the awe that I believe reality has behind the curtain, while concurrently making me fall in love with characters that are so real and alive you never want to let them go, I just can’t help sharing the emotions that such works evoke in me.

Honestly, as I embark on this journey to convey the individuals I see when I watch Stranger Things, I find myself quite daunted.  There are just too many moments I care about, too many facial expressions that evoke more than I could ever say in a post, no matter how ridiculously long this one is sure to be.  I’d be terribly embarrassed if anyone could see my YouTube history of late, and how many times I listened to “Should I Stay or Should I Go” by the Clash, or interviews with the cast, etc. etc.  Because it comforts me, which is an odd thing to feel about a scary show, but it’s true.  The *people* of Stranger Things comfort me.

Because, sure, there’s the things everyone talks about—Eggos, walkie talkies, big hair, bikes, and Christmas lights—and I love all those things about Stranger Things, I do.  But those things would mean nothing without the people who make those things matter; the characters who make you laugh despite danger and cry because, it doesn’t matter if you never saw the 80s (I can claim 5 months and 5 days in the 80s) or if you don’t have supernatural predators stalking you, long before the journey is over you want these people to be your friends.

Guys, this show is beyond epic. Continue reading

Type Specializations: What Makes *My* Type Special?

There’s an age-old outlook, put blatantly by Syndrome of The Incredibles in his Moriarty Fear, that if everyone is special, then *no one* will be.  To this longstanding catch-22, I offer the following rebuttal:  What if everyone is special in a way that is both utterly unique and utterly essential?

What if, like colors, genders or flavors, Personality Types create a beautiful cornucopia of complexity and balance, where each member contributes to the whole, an equal and necessary component, without which there would be a gaping hole?  And what if becoming special is simply a matter of owning who you are and choosing to pursue the very thing *you* love most?

These are Type Specializations.

This topic is one of my very favorite things about personality typing because it’s so wrapped up in what every type *is* and not only what every type specializes in, but what *drives* every type.  It’s easy to focus on cursory traits that may or may not come with a certain type – yes, ISTJs are usually fond of rules and yes, ENTPs often like taking risks; yes, INFPs spend a lot of time exploring inside their own heads and yes, ESFJs can often be found being great hosts and hostesses – but why?  What is that common thread that laces itself through a personality type?  What means the world to *your* personality?

Type Specializations are made up of two components, Scope and Objective. Continue reading

Comment Response: Of INFJs, Principles of Typing and Characters that *POP*

The other day, I got a fantastic comment on Type Heroes: INFJ – The Paladin by a cool INFJ named Match.  In addition to comments about liking the blog in general, he brought up some great questions about why I typed some of the characters in the INFJ collage the way I did.  Because it was a fantastic and well thought out comment, I thought it deserved a well thought out response.  I started typing and this behemoth came out.  Rather than try and fit it into like 50 comments all broken up, which would end up feeling like I was spamming everyone on my own blog -_-, I decided to turn it into a post that might set the precedent for future response posts that deserve this kind of care and attention.

I hope you really wanted that reply you asked for, Match 😀

Intro and Principles of Typing 

Okay, important things first: Match is a really cool name!  Can I just say that?

Also, I’m *so* happy you’re enjoying the blog!  The things you said about Hercules Syndrome and the stick figure post make me feel giddy 😀  This is exactly why I write and it thrills me to know it’s working and that I’m touching individual people.  That’s really my purpose as an ENTP, helping people see their own individual potential and know how to reach for it; helping people be awesome in their own unique ways 🙂

You brought up really excellent points about those individual characters.  I also *loved* what you said about people making personality typing about cut-and-paste horoscopes!  I couldn’t agree more.  I think the one principle I’d like to bring up before going into specific character typings is that, while you’re obviously looking past the surface of types and I can tell you don’t type shallowly at all, it’s important to remember that personality types are a measure of the way a person *thinks* which ends up resulting in their actions, but *isn’t* their actions.  I know you know that principle, but it’s easy to forget that when other people are judging by the surface.  It’s easy to forget that two people may make the *exact same* decision for *entirely* different reasons.  Make sense?
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How to Make Good Decisions While Still Being You: Intro

My second semester of college, I needed a class that was a few more credit hours but nothing I looked at seemed quite right.  I was taking everything I could that semester for the major I wanted (probably the eighth major I’d settled on) and I would have been happy to just focus on classes I actually cared about, but I had a partial scholarship that required a certain number of credit hours, so I had to take something.  Rather than a fun class, I felt obligated to take something useful and my eye fell on a class called “Life Planning and Decision Making.”  I told my INFJ (who was my ex-boyfriend at the time) that I finally decided to take the class when I couldn’t decide whether or not to take the class.

While that was funny and ironic, the class was an amalgamation of bullet-point “always/never” instructions, which seemed far too over oversimplified to apply to my real life.  That, plus the depressing novel I was supposed to read for it that made me feel like life was meaningless, and the real life things I was dealing with, which the class was certainly no help with, made it so I wanted to be spending my mornings anywhere else.  I ended up having a panic attack and just stopped going to the class and flunking it because I thought if I dropped it, I’d lose my scholarship.  Say what you will about my decision not to stick with the class, but the point is, taking the class in the first place was a bad decision.
Not everyone makes decisions in the same way, nor should they.  The whole point of personality typing is realizing that we all think and process the world in different ways with different strengths.  Most “Good Decision Making” advice you can find, whether in the form of books, classes or even religions, is written from an EJ perspective.  While there is nothing wrong with EJ’s making decisions in an EJ manner, there *is* something wrong with the implication that *everyone* should make decisions their way.

Since EJ’s put action first in their cognitive process, it’s their greatest strength; understanding consequences and which action to take based on what they want the result to be.  So when EJ’s say “To be a good person, you need to take this specific action,” it often works for them because their actions are more likely to reflect their intentions.  But since the other types don’t specialize in action the same way, telling them specific action usually *doesn’t* work for them.

For IJ’s, while they’re the next best at taking action, being told what to *do* limits their ability to find nuance in the action they plan on taking, which they draw from their strength of understanding widely applicable principles.  Being told what to do specifically limits their unique ability to see the big picture and the direction actions will lead within that picture.

For P’s, their attention is supposed to be on exploring the world, rather than directing it; it’s what *makes* them Perceivers.  For IP’s, their greatest strength is understanding details and situations, drawing conclusions and knowing when they’re missing information.  That conclusion-drawing is EJ’s biggest weakness and they’re notoriously bad at knowing when they’re missing details that could potentially change their entire understanding of a situation.  An IP following strict directions of action gives up their main strength and ends up ignoring important details that only they can see.

And it’s poor little EP’s that get the biggest shaft in an EJ decision-making culture.  As understanding specific action and consequences is EP’s greatest weakness, an EP trying to follow a list of specific actions they’re supposed to take just gets confused and looks like a total idiot… as most EP’s look like these days.  One need only brave looking at YouTube comments or at the quintessential dumb teenager to see just how confused the EP’s in our culture are, because *no one* caters to their unique and non-inferior way of decision-making.

EP’s unique and foremost strength is people-exploration, meaning observing individuals as whole entities and making character judgments based on reading people’s intentions, starting with their own.  Ironically, EP’s are usually told that making character judgments is mean because often for especially TJ’s it is, because blanketing a person’s character needs to be done with extreme nuance.  But EP’s with their constant reception of information from others, *have* to determine who is a worthy source, otherwise they’ll just act more confused and stupid.  I speak from experience 😉

And in an oversimplified action-based culture, even well-intentioned EJ’s get shafted and restricted from using their own remarkable strength of knowing intrinsically which action will get them and their group where they want to be by understanding consequences; if someone has already been there and made their decisions for them, EJ’s can end up applying an action that may work in one scenario to an entirely different one where the same rules don’t apply.

So how should *you* make the best decisions for *your* unique life without neglecting *your* greatest strengths?  In a way that is entirely unique to your personality type and the way you take in and act upon the world.  I’ve broken this down into three parts, so that you can utilize all the tools you need for your own special decision-making process.  They are:

Part 2 – Playing to Your Strengths
Part 3 – How to Be Sure *You* Are Making the Right Decision

With these tools, understanding that who you are and the way you think is not only valid, but absolutely necessary and needed in the world, you can feel empowered to move the world and your own life in the direction you want.  You never have to feel trapped again.

The Personalities of Marble Hornets

Today I have for you a typing that is particularly special to me.  Not only is Marble Hornets my very favorite webseries ever, but it is in fact one of my favorite things to watch ever.  I have to say right now, I’ve never liked horror before in my life.  Why is Marble Hornets different?  It’s all about personality.
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ENTP Megamind Complex – definition

 

“No matter how hard I tried, I was always the odd man out, the last one picked, the screw-up, the black sheep… the bad boy.  Was this my destiny?
Wait.  Maybe it was!  Being bad is the one thing I’m good at!
Then it hit me: if I was the bad boy,
then I was going to be the baddest boy of them ALL!”
Megamind

“Megamind Complex” is a classic ENTP coping mechanism.  ENTP’s, whose primary focus in life is exploring what people can become, long for nothing more than to be great.  If an ENTP lives in a culture where the way they explore is frowned upon, often rather than surrender those possibilities, an ENTP will give up hope of becoming a “good” larger-than-life person and will instead spit in expectations’ face, deciding that if they can’t be good, they’ll be the best at being bad.  It’s a way for an ENTP to close up and pretend they don’t care that no one really sees or likes them for who they are and they’re likely to protect themselves by pretending they never wanted to be considered good in the first place.

Examples:
Neil Caffrey, White Collar
Flynn Rider, Tangled
Han Solo, Star Wars
and so many more…

Click here for an in-depth look at ENTP, “The Swashbuckler”!

Type Heroes: ENTP – The Swashbuckler

All the typings and observations in this post are based on definitions and information presented in the aLBoP Guided Tour 😀 So if any of it bugs you, please go read that before leaving me a grumpy comment… Or, you know what?  Let’s just skip the grumpy comments!  Have a nice day! <3

ENTP
The Swashbuckler

“Never tell me the odds!”
Han Solo, Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

The ENTP Swashbuckler does what works.  Adapting their plan, disregarding the rules and following their gut.  They may seem unpredictable because they’ll start fights sometimes, run from them others; be brutally honest one moment and charmingly secretive the next.  This is because they observe first and act later (as all EP’s do) and so they themselves might not know until the moment they decide (after they’ve observed as much information as possible) what they are going to do.  Often, while they figure it out, they’ll be making clever quips and banter.  This is a way to stall for time while they decide what to do, learn more about their opponent and surroundings from the reactions they receive… and enjoy just how clever they are.  And though rules aren’t always their cup of tea, you can be sure they follow their own code, which is usually doing whatever it takes to become the larger-than-life person they *want* to be.
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Disney Typed: Megara

ENTP

“I’m a big tough girl. I tie my own sandals and everything.”

“I thought my heart had learned its lesson.  It feels so good when you start out.
My head is screaming get a grip, girl!
Unless you’re dying to cry your heart out…”

 

I love Megara from Disney’s Hercules.  She’s dynamic, clever, well drawn and the closest thing to a Disney princess ENTP girls are ever going to get.  Eh, we’re one of the rarest female types so we’ll get over it.*  Plus, she’s awesome!  So yay.

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Disney Typed: Hercules

 

INFJ

“I have often dreamed of a far off place,
where a great warm welcome will be waiting for me
and the crowds will cheer when they see my face and the voice keeps saying,
‘This is where I’m meant to be.'”

“I want to become a hero, a true hero.”

 
Disney’s Hercules is one of my favorite characters to reference when helping people understand INFJ’s, because he’s just *such* a classic example.  He typifies an INFJ archetype which I love so accurately, I call it Hercules Syndrome… as of right now.  Seriously, I just named it.

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