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Episode 59: Tiana, Artificer Angel of the Weatherlight, and Impostor Syndrome
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Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome to the Goblin Lore Podcast!
In our fifty-ninth episode, the whole goblin crew is battening down the skyship's hatches as they try to get a handle on Impostor Syndrome and how it relates to Tiana's story in the "Dominaria" arc.
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You can find the hosts on Twitter: Joe Redemann at @Lorethos, Hobbes Q. at @HobbesQ, and Alex Newman at @Mel_Chronicler. Send questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to @GoblinLorePod on Twitter or GoblinLorePodcast@gmail.com.
Opening and closing music by Wintergatan (@wintergatan). Logo art by Steven Raffael (@SteveRaffle).
Goblin Lore is proud to be presented by Hipsters of the Coast, and a part of their growing Vorthos content – as well as Magic content of all kinds. Check them out at hipstersofthecoast.com.
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Transcript
Introduction to Goblin Lore Podcast
00:00:15
Speaker
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome to another episode of the Goblin Lore podcast.
Exploring Imposter Syndrome through Tiana
00:00:19
Speaker
Today, we're going to come need to talk about a topic that the goblins have some personal experience with, imposter syndrome. We also want to take a look at a pretty recent addition to the magic lore, a character named Tiana, who is an angel and mechanic, who's part of the new weather light crew on Dominaria. I think her story has some really good angles to look at the topic of imposter syndrome. But first, we need to introduce ourselves and answer our opening question.
00:00:46
Speaker
So I'll go first. The question is, what's something you've been working on? Maybe something new, maybe not, that you're still not super confident about. And as we're recording this, we're getting really close to the month of November. So something that I am going back to is I'm going to try to do NaNoWriMo, which is National Novel Writing Month.
00:01:08
Speaker
I wrote my first novel, I think it was nine years ago, started it at NaNoWriMo and finished it in January. I wrote a second after that and spent some time kind of writing things and never quite finishing anything after that. It's been a few years since I've really
00:01:25
Speaker
I've done fiction writing, but in the interim, I've done some writing for magic content side, I've done some with the podcast and things, and I think I'm ready to get back to doing that, but I'm still not feeling really confident about it because it's been a while, and I kind of petered out because I just hit a wall.
00:01:46
Speaker
was really struggling to get through and so I definitely have some concerns about that for this month but I've got good support network with friends and a couple of us are gonna do NaNoWriMo together and I'm looking forward to our first meetup in a couple of weeks after the month starts and we've all started
New Projects and Veteran D&D Sessions
00:02:05
Speaker
writing. Oh that's awesome you guys are kind of doing almost like
00:02:09
Speaker
writing support group I mean you guys are doing this kind of a yeah we're doing a little writers group I think there's three of us and and I've got some other friends too who I met at local writer things who I think are also part of the local like more organized NaNoWriMo scene so I've actually seen one of them this weekend I'm gonna be talking to her just to kind of
00:02:27
Speaker
figure out how that works and if that's something I want to participate in next month or not. Even if I'm not, they have some resources and things that I may take a look at. But I also realized that I didn't actually introduce myself. Hi, I'm Alex Newman, found on Twitter at Mel underscore chronicler. Now we'll pass it on.
00:02:50
Speaker
Is this the first episode since that we've done together as a group that we have two of the three of us with new handles? I believe it is. So if you had not heard that handle after my name before, that's because I just changed it. That must be yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. We're feeling all fresh and clean. Look at that.
00:03:10
Speaker
And I'm going to be the other person who has not changed their handle. So I am HobbsQ. I can be found on Twitter at HobbsQ. What I am working on currently actually is I am helping one of the psychology interns get up and running Dungeons and Dragons groups for veterans with social anxiety.
00:03:33
Speaker
And this is a brand new project. The VA historically has been a bit hesitant to allow nerdier things or just not, I don't know, just I don't think kind of they haven't been as open to it. It took me a while I got a Magic the Gathering group.
00:03:54
Speaker
quite a while ago for it was about four or five months and there was a lot of pushback veterans aren't going to want to play this veterans don't like magic and I go okay you guys have never lived in San Diego near a base where all of them come in and just drop lots of cash on games so I was kind of shocked when the student approached me
00:04:17
Speaker
and leadership said, you are the person to go to about this topic. I want to get this group going. She had thought about it. She is a new DM. And I was also like, cool. Yeah, I am the perfect person to do this of the staff here, except for the guy who has his Dungeons and Dragons blog post that I know about now.
00:04:43
Speaker
But yes, I would love to do this. And I've now had to kind of take on this project and I'm helping out with kind of also, I don't play Dungeons and Dragons. I have never played a campaign. I've gone through character creation sheets and that's about it. And I feel like I'm being looked to as the expert on all things nerdy now within our hospital.
00:05:04
Speaker
Fairly and though I like uncomfortable because I'm like, what is this bombs? This intern is going to be able to find me out is not really being a Dungeons
Home Repairs and Self-doubt
00:05:15
Speaker
and Dragons person. And they're going to know that I was just saying yes when I shouldn't have been. So you were just a fake nerd. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. A fake nerd. So, yeah.
00:05:26
Speaker
That's a lot of pressure. Well, and I'm, I'm Joe Redman. I can be found on Twitter at Lorthos. I am also a new handle. Uh, that's L O R E thos. Uh, and I don't think it's, uh, it's, it's not something that I have.
00:05:44
Speaker
much experience with that I'm doing in the exact opposite way, Hobbs, is what you're talking about. I don't have much of a perception of the scope of what I need to be doing with the thing that I don't feel super confident about.
00:06:01
Speaker
I feel like some exposure to nerdiness helps. Magic at least is like a paper version of D&D, so you kind of know some of the references. For me, it's owning a house and being handy around the house.
00:06:20
Speaker
I am not the kind of person who is like always the fixer up or sort of like I am gonna grab my toolbox and get under the hood of my car myself. I would much rather just pay someone to deal with it. But the fact of the matter is we're you know needing to now pay for a mortgage and
00:06:43
Speaker
And, you know, all these other sorts of things. So money is not something you can just throw around if you don't have it as a person needing repairs on the house. So when our screen door falls off on our patio,
00:06:59
Speaker
Now it's up to me to figure out, okay, how am I going to do this thing? And I've gotten very friendly with YouTube lately, you know, YouTube tutorials, but it's still kind of like, you know, even the simple thing of like, okay, I need to patch the drywall in here. And now I need to paint it. And I know that this is the paint that we use to paint this room.
00:07:20
Speaker
But I really sure hope that it's not going to dry a different color. I am freaking out right now. And so all of this, like, I don't want to. I am paralyzed to death about messing up our house. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah. Or like faucets. I don't know anything about that. I just used them before. Now I have to fix them.
00:07:45
Speaker
Faucets, am I right? You just sounded like a really bad Seinfeld episode.
00:07:51
Speaker
Or just about any sitcom where someone, you know, who is the straight care, you know, the straight man character of the show is like, I have a comedy routine. And then it cuts to them on the stage and they just say some line like that. Like FISH, you know? Faucets, huh? And then it goes back to the rest of the show. No way should I own a house. I don't know how to handle that.
Tiana's Journey in Weatherlight
00:08:13
Speaker
Could be responsible for it. Got to clean it. Got to raise it.
00:08:17
Speaker
teach it things, gonna pay for its college tuition. It's not getting any cheaper. So before I start asking what type of degree you think your house would get, we're gonna move into the star circle and actually talk about what we're here to talk about. So as I said at the top, we want to talk about Tiana. I do want to make a quick note, I think
00:08:44
Speaker
There's a lot going on in her story. There's definitely elements of looking for a place to belong and a loss of identity and other sorts of things like that that kind of share a border with imposter syndrome but are not necessarily the same topic. But I still think it gives a good springboard to talk about the topic of imposter syndrome. And so Tiana, if you're not familiar with her, was introduced during Dominaria. She
00:09:12
Speaker
Her story, by the way, gave us a quick insight into how angels of the Saren variety kind of come into being, which was neat. It was worth those casts. It was cool to see that.
00:09:24
Speaker
And apparently her creation, and just kind of part of the Saran church, was triggered by the prayers of mortals. In this particular case, for her, it was mortals who lived near what they call the Great Machine. It was a massive irrigation system, probably from well before their time that
00:09:48
Speaker
is what allowed them to live where they were living. And so Tiana came into the world eager to battle the forces of evil and ready to take the fight to the cabal and anyone else that needed a good fight. But that's not what she was tasked to do. But so she took that in stride and went to, OK, I will protect this machine to my last breath. And if this is a thing that needs protecting, hey, I'll probably get to fight somebody during it.
00:10:18
Speaker
Then she found out that the machine was actually destroyed by the cabal while before she had finished forming and being ready to go out in the world. So that left her with nowhere to go, nowhere really to be. Yeah, I mean it kind of set her up to an awkward position, this whole
00:10:41
Speaker
what she was created for, a mission in life, her narrative about herself is gone before she even has a chance. Exactly. And so this led to her kind of doing odd jobs for the church because she's still an angel. She can go out, you know, and
00:10:57
Speaker
beat people up when that needs doing. So she's still a three three with flying and vigilance. That's right. You don't want to mess with that. I have to go to high school. Mascot was a syrup. So the fighting angel thing just makes a lot of sense to me. There you go.
00:11:13
Speaker
So she ended up getting assigned to help Joyra because Joyra was going to... she had found the remains of the Skyship Weatherlight lost during the apocalypse and she was going to pull it out from underwater where it had been sitting for a while and try to repair it and rebuild it and
00:11:35
Speaker
Due to a very long tangent, I don't want to get too deep into it, but the power core of the ship is sacred to the Church of Sarah, and it's all Ursa's fault. So they wanted an angel. Also known as the subtitle to our podcast. To the entire show, yeah. Yeah, God and Lore podcast. It's all Ursa's fault. Yeah, it's the subtext of every episode unless it's the actual text of every episode.
00:12:01
Speaker
In which case it's a both and the subtext It's kind of like the blame Canada science of just
00:12:13
Speaker
So she went to help, you know, on behalf of the church because they wanted an angel there to make sure the power stone was being taken care of and that it was in good order and things. And so she went to help after they got the ship out and started to regrow it with a hullseed that Joyra got. And Tiana discovered that she really enjoyed this work. She began to do engineering work and help to rebuild the ship.
00:12:40
Speaker
And she just kind of knew what to do with it. And she chalked it up to just kind of natural stuff or whatever. It's not a big deal.
00:12:52
Speaker
But as time went on, it really became clear that she wasn't just safeguarding this site. She was actively participating and being a part of the rebuilding of this ship, and that it wasn't just some natural things, but this was from Sarah, that she had insights into the machines and the workings of this machine.
00:13:16
Speaker
Well, and if I can jump in here, the power stone core of the weather light was essentially Joyra thought it was dead when they recovered it, but then Tiana reaches out and touches it and it immediately activates and responded to her. Not only did she feel this innate tug to it, it seemed like the weather light was reaching out to her too.
00:13:45
Speaker
and she definitely was denying it and saying, oh, no, no. Arvad was a former Benelish knight, I believe, in the course of battling the Cabal and protecting Benalia and the Church of Sera, which is in Benalia.
00:14:05
Speaker
He was converted into a vampire by the Cabal, sort of as a sick joke because they're seen as evil by the Benelish and all this sort of stuff. So just a little bit of background for this quote, this little passage here from the Dominaria story. Arvad seemed surprised. I didn't think you were a battle angel. I thought you were an artificer angel. Tiana frowned. No, there aren't any artificer angels.
00:14:34
Speaker
but you're the one directing all the work. He tapped his ear. There are a few good things about my condition, but the improvement, sorry, there are a few good things about my condition, but the improvement in my sight and hearing is one of them.
00:14:47
Speaker
I don't have any official angel skills, I'm not supposed to be working on the engines, but I just, Tiana waved her hands trying to explain it. Sarah is giving me the knowledge of where things are supposed to go, I can see how everything is supposed to work. If Sarah is giving you that knowledge, then it's an official angel skill, Arvad said. Tiana wasn't sure why she wanted to argue the point. It might be some inborn loyalty to the great machine destroyed though it was. But that's not my purpose.
00:15:13
Speaker
What is your purpose? I was supposed to guard a great machine, but it was destroyed before I got there. I was born too late. The church doesn't know what to do with me now. Watching over the power stone was my first real mission. Arvad nodded toward the weather light. That's a great machine. Tiana sighed in exasperation. But it's also not my assignment. Sarah is giving me the knowledge to help rebuild it, but the weather light is not my reason for existence.
00:15:38
Speaker
And this is the kicker. Just because your original reason for existence was destroyed doesn't mean you can't get another one.
Defining Imposter Syndrome
00:15:45
Speaker
Believe me. And he saw that she was really uncomfortable with this entire conversation because
00:15:52
Speaker
She's basically trying to argue with this whole idea that I don't know. No, no, no. I love this idea of official angel skill, too, by the way, like just official, not stop doing things unofficially. OK. Right. This is well, this is like what do they call it? Like black ops angel. Yeah.
00:16:10
Speaker
Stay in your lane. Okay, but is that a topic for another episode where we just go through all the official angel skills? And but I what I like is the idea that she still thinks it's well Sarah's giving me the knowledge I don't have these abilities. They're not mine. This is not what I was born for. This is not my purpose
00:16:31
Speaker
And our badges are like, okay, but literally, everybody's listening to you about this. Like, you know, like, I can tell what people are watching, I can tell what the machines are doing. It may not have been your purpose at some point at one point, but it is now.
00:16:49
Speaker
Right, and Tiana keeps saying too, like, oh, well, it's not, and I know we'll get into this a little bit later, but she keeps sort of denying that she has an affinity with the weather light, saying like, oh, well, Sarah is giving me this knowledge. Sarah is doing this.
00:17:05
Speaker
Well, yeah, maybe, but also she's doing it through you, if anything. So, yeah. It's kind of a pattern with imposter syndrome too. Anything, I mean, and this could go into other sorts of cognitive dissonance and things too, but it's like you try to explain away anything. So she's trying to explain away every single reason why this is an official thing and this could be her purpose or it is her purpose. And she's like, well, but what about this?
00:17:33
Speaker
And what about this little thing and coming up trying to explain away everything positive sort of in that?
00:17:40
Speaker
category. And it totally sounds flat. It totally falls flat.
Personal Experiences with Imposter Syndrome
00:17:46
Speaker
You know, it's one of those, we've all, whether it was us saying them or somebody, you know, near to us saying like, oh, well, I didn't do it all. I got a little bit of help with and we're like, yeah, okay, you did 99% of the work. So that doesn't hold water at all.
00:18:04
Speaker
oh well but i did it on a tuesday and i should have done it on a wednesday okay well that doesn't matter you still did it but i you know they all just sound like really bad hollow excuses yeah and she can't recognize that
00:18:18
Speaker
I think of Chris Farley when he was like, Oh, you know, in, in Tommy boy, it's like, Oh, I just wanted some chicken. I was just messing around. It's like, but that's a salesman skill. And it's the same, like, you're like, you did the thing and now you're coming up with all these reasons why, well, no, I didn't really do the thing. The thing was done by me, but there's all these circumstances that you don't understand and I do explain them to you. What are the official salesman skills, by the way? And, and it may not be a physical thing. If you can sell an idea.
00:18:46
Speaker
Just like Arvad's trying to do. I like it. Comes full circle. And speaking of Arvad, that kind of brings us back to another passage I have here. So a little bit of context for it too. There was a phoenix because they were near Shiv, I assume. Like maybe they were near something else. Do you remember Joe?
00:19:04
Speaker
I don't have the top of my head. I'll look it up. You're one of those fiery places. So some of Phoenix came out and was attacking the site. And both Arvad and Tiana responded just immediately and went to fight the Phoenix and get it to leave the area to both protect the people and to protect the weather light.
00:19:27
Speaker
And then after, this is a passage from after that fight. So it says, there were a lot of things Arvad could have done with Tiana dead and the camp in chaos. He could have fed on workers fleeing the camp or stolen the power stone and run off with it. Instead, he acted exactly how a Benelish knight should have.
00:19:47
Speaker
And Tiana had acted exactly like a guardian angel. The weather lights the guardian angel. The thought of the sky ship being destroyed had almost destroyed her. She knew now she would defend it to the death. Is this what you want, Sarah? Tiana asked, but there was no answer. Maybe because she already had her answer. When Sarah had empowered her sword with enough force to kill the Phoenix in one blow.
00:20:13
Speaker
joy would return Tiana would offer to serve her to serve on her crew with the weather light. It wasn't the purpose she'd been born for but it was the one she wanted more than anything. Yeah and I think that this shows that there are a number of things that Tiana is kind of dealing with throughout the Dominaria story. I mean of the things that we see her growth is actually
00:20:34
Speaker
probably the story that I enjoyed most from Dominaria. I am saying this completely because they ignored Squee, so I hate every other aspect of it. But we have our first passage in which we kind of see imposter syndrome. We see what we're going to be getting into for our world-world topic, but we've already discussed this. This is this idea that I don't belong here. This isn't my purpose. This isn't my point.
00:20:59
Speaker
You know, I got to explain this away because that's not who I am. And then we're seeing her move into choosing a new role. And it's that idea that she is choosing it and she's taking the role on. And I think that the second passage really sums that up nicely.
00:21:15
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It is making that active choice, like you're saying, rather than passively allowing things to sort of wash over her one way or the other. Let's talk about what imposter syndrome actually is. We've been hinting around it, which is pretty perfect for the idea of imposter syndrome.
00:21:38
Speaker
I will say I think we're extremely qualified to talk about this and it's very unimposter syndrome. Which conversely makes me feel unqualified to speak to it. So do you want to give a definition or should I give this a crack? Go for it. We'll tell you how you're wrong.
00:22:02
Speaker
Because I'm going to be wrong, of course. So I can't get this right. Because imposter syndrome is a feeling that you're going to be found out. That's kind of the best way I can encapsulate it, that you're doing a thing that you know you are not qualified to be doing and someone's going to catch on at any moment and call you out. It's a little more complex and there's a lot of other little elements to it, but that's kind of the dramatic
00:22:32
Speaker
you know, explanation that I have of it. I think there's a lot of other little elements of sometimes you just feel like you don't belong in certain circumstances where, of course, everyone welcomes you, but that doesn't really register. You're feeling like you don't belong. For some reason, you're explaining this away or whatever. It can also be, if you're doing something, it often happens when you're doing something new. I know it gets talked about a lot in writing circles.
00:22:59
Speaker
So I talked about it in the opening, don't know, a decent amount of writing and that is, it seems like everybody gets imposterous syndrome at some point. And I kind of, I want to go into that a little bit later, why I think that might be, and some of the causes of that.
00:23:15
Speaker
So how did I fail? What did I do wrong? You had nothing. I mean, you actually hit the key things of what I associate to be with imposter syndrome. So imposter syndrome, I have always heard it. We actually talk a lot more about it, even from the perspective of
00:23:33
Speaker
becoming a psychologist. So it is something that is talked about throughout all of our training is this idea that you are going to feel like you don't belong. You can have all the training that's necessary in the world. You can easily be the right person for the job. You can be the expert in the room, but you are going to feel
00:23:55
Speaker
like you're not, like you do not belong in some way. And I think like Alex said is that you're going to be found out. I mean, this is the idea in a lot of psychology and we've heard it in med school. And this is this idea that, you know, somebody is going to find out and it's going to all come crashing down.
00:24:13
Speaker
You are never supposed to be here. Yeah. Yeah. Like, like, I mean, to the point where like somebody is going to determine and realize that I didn't belong in grad school for a PhD and I'm going to be right about to defend my dissertation, which I never should be allowed to have been done in the first place. But right at that moment, somebody's going to realize it. And the last six years of my life are going to come crashing down and I'm going to be left with nothing.
00:24:41
Speaker
And I will tell you that this- That's not dire or dark. No, I mean, but I think of imposter syndrome as really being dire and dark. It really is just, it is, to me, it isn't just kind of like, oh, yep, I'm not good enough. Right. It really is, I don't belong and somebody is going to find out.
00:25:01
Speaker
Well, and I think I can talk a little bit about this real quick, is I felt very strongly, and I believe I talked at length with you two about this when I was teaching, I felt very strongly like, oh, I am not qualified to be up here. And frankly, I'll be real honest with this, the school that I was teaching at didn't disagree with me, because I only taught for one year.
00:25:28
Speaker
But it was one of those things where every day was a battle and every day was frankly a failure. And I am one of the people who attests very much of my learning and my success in anything to the fact that I've failed so much.
00:25:49
Speaker
Prior like I am very okay with failure on a lot of levels but that year was one of the hardest personal and professional years of my life because every day I had to get up in front of you know a room of 25 kids eight times a day and
00:26:05
Speaker
completely fail not productively fail and it was just kind of like I'm not good enough to do anything like at the end of it it was very much a meta like a what's what's the word an existential sort of like crisis of I probably shouldn't do anything professionally ever
00:26:26
Speaker
It takes that overextension. I know we're all kind of sharing our personal examples. One for me is when I became an actual psychologist, you basically leave one day as a student and you go away for a weekend and you come back. In my case, I did go 75 miles away to another VA, so they didn't really know me.
00:26:51
Speaker
It can get even worse when you work at the place you then trained because everybody knew you as a student. Like five days before they knew you as a student, you walk in the door and you're now an independent practitioner allowed to just be responsible for everything on your own. And you don't feel like you belong. Like I had to walk into a room full of people on my new first job.
00:27:11
Speaker
who didn't want a psychologist there. It was on an acute unit that had like a locked unit that had never had a psychologist. It was a medical model. They didn't really want one necessarily. They didn't know what I was doing there. And I had to walk in to that environment already feeling like I didn't belong and then act like the expert in the room.
00:27:33
Speaker
Now in my field, I was the expert in the room, but yet I still felt like this is just, I am now fully licensed, fully independent. I am a big boy. And my first thought was somebody is going to find out and they're going to fire me. Yeah. And it, it exempts from me, which was much friendlier circumstances to be in. Um, but it was really a, a.
Professional Contexts of Imposter Syndrome
00:27:59
Speaker
turmoil for me for a little while until I realized that nobody cared and they were all just happy I was there. Happened, oh boy, a bunch of years ago now all of a sudden. 2015, why wasn't that just last year? Anyway.
00:28:14
Speaker
Besides the getting old comments, so at GP Charlotte in 2015, I went there because I started writing for a magic website you can't access anymore. It fell off the internet. Then the writers decided to meet up there because that site was going to fall off the internet. And we've created our own site that has also since fallen off the internet.
00:28:38
Speaker
um but we all met up there because a bunch of people were down there and some others it was a quick easy trip and it was not as easy for me but i made it
00:28:46
Speaker
Um, and it was a lot of fun. Like we met Friday night as a, as a podcast and we are not as podcast as a site, you know, all the content creators. And we had a lot of fun, but then Saturday, um, there was going to be a big podcast or dinner and I had spent the day hanging out with a fellow who was in magic podcast for a while. Hasn't been lately. So people may not be familiar with Jack LaCroix, but he was there. I was hanging out with Jeff good, uh, friend of his, the two of them did a podcast at the time and
00:29:13
Speaker
We were hanging out, we were playing Cube with Jeff, who actually, incidentally, is the one who introduced all of us in the being able to scream together aside. Thank you, Jeff. Yeah, it was fun hanging out with them. But then they were going to go to the podcaster dinner and they were podcasters. The whole time, they're like, yeah, okay, we're going down. We're going back from the hotel room. We're going to drive back to the venue. Then I'm like, well, at this point, they're going to say good night to me and send me on my way because I'm not a podcaster.
00:29:42
Speaker
And then we got there in the park like, all right, we're heading this way. So I started following them. And then it's like, oh, yep, this is when they're going to turn around, like, we're gonna get to the restaurant, they're gonna turn around and say, sorry, Alex, you can't come. You're not a podcaster. Nope, I walked right in there. I sat down next to Mike from the mana pool. And we saw sort of talking in the whole time and trying to figure out why no one's kicked me out. And
00:30:01
Speaker
Then we end up with like 30 people from like five or six different podcasts and took over multiple tables spanning like a big chunk of this restaurant. It was a great time, but for like an hour sitting at that table, I'm like, why am I even here? Like, this is a big joke. I don't do any podcasts. I just write magic articles. I'm a content creator, but not a podcaster. So I don't belong at this podcaster dinner.
00:30:28
Speaker
Well, you're right. And not that you weren't enjoying yourself, but you felt like, like you didn't belong there. Not, not, not that I don't, you know, I shouldn't be here as in like, I don't want to be here. It's I'm having too much fun. Wait a minute. Someone's going to rain on the party.
00:30:44
Speaker
Yeah, I can't laugh too loud at somebody's joke or they're going to realize I shouldn't be here and they're going to get out of the restaurant halfway through eating my food. The podcast or dinner security is going to be right. Pounce me out of the mellow mushroom. Yeah, like the mannipool people are just going to come over and just literally manhandled me out of the room. Right. Yeah. Well, I mean, so I will say that we had our own kind of
00:31:10
Speaker
experience with this when we started doing this, right? Oh, yeah. I mean, we Minneapolis was so GP Minneapolis was last year, last year, but like two episodes into us starting the show. I mean, it had not been very long since we that we had been doing this. So at that point, we
00:31:36
Speaker
We... I mean, this is how we felt. We conned some...
00:31:43
Speaker
people, like some podcasters, I mean, some amazing cosplayers. And other content creators. I still felt that way even with Biblivore Orrick and Morgan. Oh, yes. Right. So we even started off the weekend. We did a lot of content creation for us at that point. And Morgan's from here and worked at Lodestone and we knew her. Yeah, I knew her. I did a cube event with her at a friend's house or something. Yes.
00:32:13
Speaker
Shoutout at MTGValkyrie and at Bibley Vore Orc, what up.
00:32:17
Speaker
Right. And then we went from there where we did this amazing, great episode to on site where we actually. Interviewed for, yeah, for four cosplayers, cosplayers, you know, and players who in this community are big names, especially compared to where we consider ourselves and how we feel. Yeah. Like these are people that we don't that we look up to and we reached out
00:32:44
Speaker
and asked them basically, do you want to be on the show? And they said yes. And we all kind of had this like just really deer in the head, like kind of like, oh, wait, they actually said yes. We didn't think this far ahead. No, no. What killed me was while we were recording.
00:33:05
Speaker
Aaron Campbell, who is one of the people who I started listening to podcasts because of her show, walks up, pulls Hobbes aside, and says, what do I gotta do to be on your show? Yeah, this show that just started, what do I have to do to be on it? What do you mean? Yeah, we're not about to be like, we'll have our people call your people. We're like, yeah, when do you want to be on them? Like now? Like now? OK, cool.
00:33:34
Speaker
right now, because we don't even, you know, like, I mean, it felt like uncomfortable in the sense that it was kind of like, okay, so where where's the joke is, are we carry at the prom? Great, right. Which is a reference for you. Timely for Halloween for all of you out there. Yeah, but it's good. Carrie is spooky season. Yeah. It's a Stephen King movie. It was like his first one. But yeah, go. She gets tricked into going to the prom and, you know,
00:34:04
Speaker
Yeah, hi Jinx and Sue. Hi Jinx and Sue, you haven't seen it. I remember having breakfast with you two and literally saying, I believe all three of us said this in paraphrased different ways, but who let us do this? Who signed off on letting the three of us do a show and getting to talk to these people?
00:34:28
Speaker
Who was dumb enough to think this was a good idea? Who just had that sandwich between two other more important pieces of paperwork? Even in this ridiculous analogy, we're not important enough for someone to notice us to mistakenly let us do something.
00:34:46
Speaker
And it all just sort of, you know, when you peel back that stuff, we started realizing like, okay, we do maybe have something to say, you know, maybe there's something to that. I think that was one of the latest realizations was maybe we do actually have a valid point with any of the things we contribute.
00:35:03
Speaker
I think we realized too that a lot of the kindness that was being shown to us early on and still is, frankly, because the magic community is a fantastically warm and generous community. People want to help. People want to be friends with you. People like you.
00:35:26
Speaker
The astonishing thing for me lately is that anyone actually listens to our podcast. Like seriously. And some of that is I spent a year and a half writing magic articles that I'm fairly certain. I mean, obviously somebody read them. I know like my editors read them, but I'm fairly certain few other people did. The website got some traffic, but none of the websites got a lot of traffic.
00:35:50
Speaker
And the whole thing is with my social anxiety and stuff, I kind of just pretended that that didn't exist. It was a shock for me when I went to Charlotte and I busted out a commander deck. And head editor of the site, Jack, is like, oh yeah, I know that deck. Because I wrote an article about it. I'm like, how do you know this deck? This is the first time we met in real life. It was like, oh yeah. Yeah, I totally wrote about this deck. And apparently you read the article. Who reads? Who does that?
00:36:18
Speaker
What type of editor isn't just a paper grammar? Yeah, that was my first reaction. I was like, oh, I guess somebody probably did read it. Like, I wrote it. It got posted on the website. I didn't do that. Yeah.
00:36:29
Speaker
So I mean, we've kind of shared now what imposter syndrome, what's it, what it can look like. Now I want to kind of discuss a little bit about why this topic. So Alex, you had this topic idea for a very long time. It's kind of ironic that we're not getting to it till now. Um, just, I felt like there was part of it, not even fully intentionally, but just like an avoidance piece of kind of like, I really want to talk about this. It's a really important episode and I don't want to mess it up because I'm going to, if we do it.
00:37:00
Speaker
And they'll say that there was a legitimate thing, like with our episodes, you know, the structure of our show, we have a real-life topic and we have a game topic and we try to have these things, have some good connections where we can draw parallels.
Overcoming Imposter Syndrome: Community and Therapy
00:37:13
Speaker
There was some legitimate, like trying to find a good match for it, but we had the Tiana matchup for, it's been months. We've kind of been sitting on this episode after figuring that out.
00:37:24
Speaker
The hilarious part about the fact that we've been sitting on this episode now is the fact that this topic is everywhere lately. I mean, this topic is just, it really is just all over the place.
00:37:39
Speaker
What was interesting the phrase on Twitter? It's it's wild and and yeah friend of the podcast Titus Lunder has been posting a ton about it and just trying to be transparent with hey, I'm an artist who's getting published in this huge game and I still don't feel like I belong here most days like yeah, yeah, and I think that that's the reason we wanted to talk about it was because That idea that this is
00:38:10
Speaker
something that can strike you no matter where you fall on the spectrum of kind of talent, fame, what your experience actually is.
00:38:20
Speaker
And I thought about when I kept seeing it from people like Titus and proxy guy and these people that I know struggle with this, but then in the back of my head, I justify my own imposter syndrome by being like, well, if they feel it, well, I obviously really am an imposter in the magic community. Now, maybe that doesn't extend to other areas of my life, but it definitely extends to Lake here, right? Because.
00:38:46
Speaker
Yeah. Well, and that's, that's kind of related to, let's say one of the other lies that imposter syndrome will tell you too, that if you hit success at a certain threshold, it will go away. You will have made it. I don't know if you heard me capitalize all the words in that, but you have made it and now it, you know, you'll feel as if you have
00:39:03
Speaker
made it. And it'll be fine. You'll have all the confidence you need. And it's like, that's, that's not how it works. And I can tell you from just from our experience doing this podcast for a little over a year now, there are things that happen that you don't ever expect where it's like, Oh, this is what making it feels like. And then, you know, you'll still be and then like in the five minutes later, you'll be like, Oh, but I can't believe
00:39:25
Speaker
that, you know, anyone actually listens to us. What do we even have to say of value? And from the the writing world, the Writing Excuses is a podcast done by Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Howard Taylor, and Mary Robinette Kowal. And they, this is a topic that I know comes up on their cast. It's a thing they talk about. I've not been following the show lately. I know there's some other people who've been on the show too. But it's a lot of big writers have talked about it for years, which as
00:39:54
Speaker
has been helpful for me to some degree, cause I had some awareness of it, but even having some of that awareness, then, you know, several years later I start doing magic content and I end up falling into some of those same cycles. Yeah. And, and I think too, there's a difference between you don't have, you feel like you don't have the experience or, um, technical know-how to do something. And so you're going to set out to educate yourself and, uh, more,
00:40:24
Speaker
experience more is so that you can do the thing there's a difference between that and The sort of the paralyzing imposter syndrome because that's something where I used to you know I used to write fantasy football content and the way that I feel that that Industry has gone is very heavy analytics and database stuff and
00:40:46
Speaker
to where basically you have to have a sense of basic coding in order to really be on the cutting edge these days. I just don't have that. I can tell a good story through numbers, but I don't really have the data background I think needed to be on the cutting edge of that. I also want to make a delineation between
00:41:11
Speaker
imposter syndrome and self-doubt, whereas I think they are very closely aligned. And we were talking about kind of this idea of self-doubt as I associate a lot more with depression, kind of the negative cognitive beliefs that you have above yourself. And imposter syndrome really does come back to a fear. There's a fear-based component of it that takes it above self-doubt in the sense that is, and I just want to hammer this home.
00:41:38
Speaker
We've said it like 12 times, but you are going to be found out. You are going to be discovered. You know, I mean, I think for me as a podcaster would be like somebody would be discovering that we're doing this podcast. They're going to realize that we shouldn't have been allowed to have it. We never should have given any of you a podcast and somehow they're going to find a way to shut it down or really just expose us online for the frauds that we are. And nobody is ever going to listen to us again because everybody will now know that we should never have been doing it in the first place.
00:42:06
Speaker
Which is different than like, I don't really believe in myself. Right. There's there's a lack of confidence. It's necessarily right. Yes. One of the ways I like to conceptualize like like imposter syndrome or kind of one of the causes of it is
00:42:22
Speaker
You always know kind of the back scenes of your own stuff. You know when you're kind of just throwing something together and waving your hands. But it's kind of like a Hollywood set. If it's done well, people in the front don't know that it's not real. Or at least it looks good enough for like, yeah, that's a great movie. That's fine. It doesn't need to be a real house. You've told a compelling story.
00:42:48
Speaker
we understand that, you know, there's some extrapolations, there's some machinations that happen behind the scenes, and we don't need to understand them. But you behind the scenes, you're just panicking because you're like, I didn't put this together very well. And they're gonna know. And then I'm not gonna be able to do this ever again. And I think that that so now that we're talking about kind of now that we know what imposter syndrome is, we know,
00:43:12
Speaker
kind of how to identify it, what do we do from here? What you just described, Alex, is kind of the idea behind the whole philosophy that people have heard of, of fake it till you make it.
00:43:23
Speaker
That really is the idea that you kind of the things we're talking about when it comes to imposter syndrome are skills and skills can be taught and skills can be practiced. And it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to do them well. But the idea behind fake it to you make it is you put that face on you go out there, you act like you belong. And part of what you're talking about Alex is
00:43:45
Speaker
people probably won't notice that you don't, you made a mistake or you don't, even if you don't belong in some ways, they're not gonna fully notice because you're probably able to exude that or you're able to fake it. And that's the idea behind learning anything is you, I have to go in there and act like when I meet somebody that I have met somebody with the same problems as they have, and I have helped them thousands of times.
00:44:13
Speaker
Yeah, we always said that to the students that I taught theater to is the audience doesn't have the script. They don't know. They don't know what went wrong. They only know if you acknowledge it. I also want to say, too, one of the things that I really rely on to help keep me away from that sort of what I think of as paralyzing fear that imposter syndrome can bring
00:44:40
Speaker
is is having a an impartial soundboard as much as possible a sounding board excuse me so um whether it's somebody that you know that you've worked with before that you know will give you an impartial and an objective opinion for me it's well it's you too on a lot of things but also uh my best friend who i have written a ton of creative projects with like short films and stuff i know that he's not going to
00:45:09
Speaker
BS me on things. He's going to give me actual feedback and be really honest with me. Not hurtful, but he'll be blunt and know that I want to create the best work that I can possible.
00:45:26
Speaker
And on top of that too, I mean, it's kind of the whole reason, frankly, Hobbes, that people who go to psychology, you know, go to psychologists, is because they need somebody who can step out of their personal life and say, I have no reason to lie to you. You are there to help them. And that's it, not to just make them feel good, you know?
Linking Tiana's Story to Strategies
00:45:50
Speaker
Yeah, I have to tell people that part of coming to therapy is actually in some ways asking me to make you feel uncomfortable because I'm asking you to do things that you don't necessarily want to do, but you recognize there's a need for it.
00:46:06
Speaker
Um, yeah, these are, these are both really good. Um, one of the reasons I like figure till you make it as, as a thing that I've used on, actually I've used both of these, but one of the aspects how I like a little sub note that I want to make about figure till you make it is that's actually just how you get good at things.
00:46:24
Speaker
You just do the thing and then you'll learn and get better. And so just like, OK, I'm just going to like pretend I'm going to fake it as best as I can. You'll just naturally improve if you stick at it. Right. And you'll learn possibly more efficient ways to do it than people who are following by the book sort of doctrine ways of doing it because you're just teaching yourself what the most efficient thing is, you know.
00:46:52
Speaker
And what works for you? I mean, organically, this podcast has developed that way. I mean, I did not study any podcast theory. I asked for some advice on microphones, but I mean, I didn't, you know, structure wise, we came up with something and we've kind of refined it. And I think that we've gotten better, but those early episodes were about just recording it and just getting the episodes recorded.
00:47:18
Speaker
praying that there was something usable for Joe to find in there and then that enough people would listen that we could feel justified to keep going.
00:47:28
Speaker
Yeah, I remember the first episodes were like, let's just talk long enough at the thing until it gets done. And then we kind of figured out the structure. Like we've got this, you know, show note template that Joe has since built for us that has these segments and things. None of that we had at the beginning. No, we had some of those pieces. Those kind of came out of us working the process. Yeah.
00:47:49
Speaker
But we didn't have that specific structure early on, we just figured out what, you know, kind of, well, to be honest, I remember, Joe, you even approached me about the podcast, and I think we both were having a hard time explaining what it was supposed to be. And then the three of us get together and start to record and out of that first episode or two, we really figured out a good rhythm and
00:48:09
Speaker
and kind of what we were trying to talk about. And I love that we do this. This is one of my favorite things to do is to get on here and talk to the two of you and yeah. I mean, still building from that, we have show notes. We also have concepts that we've thought about. We're still
00:48:34
Speaker
I think, once again, it's meta, organic, genuine. We're still, for the most part, flying off of what we're thinking. It's about that. Now, interestingly, I want to tie this back to Magic the Gathering and the topic. Tiana's story is actually exactly what Alex was just describing. She had to find the role or what her narrative was. And it was something that, at the beginning, she was going through the mechanisms of knowing she was supposed to be there.
00:49:03
Speaker
She had official angel duties, didn't know what they were because the reasons she had been created were no longer valid. Yet she stayed around and she actually just developed by being there and doing over time.
00:49:19
Speaker
Doing is probably one of the best strategies that you
Continuous Improvement and Conclusion
00:49:23
Speaker
mean. So let's get Empire of the Strikes back because we also had a Star Wars trailer. Yoda's statement is do or do not. There is no try, which is hung up in my office, which is this idea that the concept of trying is actually
00:49:38
Speaker
not what's important, it's doing or not doing. Now doing or not doing does not mean that you're going to be successful. It doesn't mean that it's going to work. It means that you took action. Trying as itself, and this is a concept that's taught in what's called acceptance and commitment therapy, or some of those therapies that are based in more meditation and mindfulness, is this idea of try to think of the concept, wow, I just use the word horribly, because I want you to think of the concept of trying.
00:50:04
Speaker
Well, do you try to take a basketball shot in your head? So I want you to picture yourself going through this entire motion, you're at the free throw line, and I want you to try to take a free throw. Okay, so pretty quickly, this falls apart when we realized that as soon as the ball leaves your hand, you are no longer trying.
00:50:26
Speaker
because trying is like you're doing. Now trying I'm always like I do this in my office you can't see it right now but I'm kind of like up and down the air like what is the ball leaving my hand is it not leaving my hand that's trying. Right. Letting go of the ball is doing it tells us nothing about the outcome.
00:50:43
Speaker
Well, and so yes, and that is an awesome, I love that concept, that's super cool. And I always, for me, having a background in theater, I have always kind of like thought, I've learned a lot from watching Buster Keaton films and Charlie Chaplin and all those, the Marx Brothers, all those old slapstick comedians from back in the day in silent films and all that sort of stuff.
00:51:13
Speaker
The big thing that they constantly do constantly their humor is based on Failing and so this is this is the other the end result that's not success but like constantly they're slipping and falling and then getting back up and slipping and falling and getting back up and That to me is one of the coolest things too about this is one one way is just to do and then be okay and this is obviously advanced technique, but I
00:51:40
Speaker
You do, and then when it doesn't work, be okay with it and learn from it and then take that knowledge back into the second, you know, do. I won't even say the second try, the second attempt, the second action of it. And then you might still slip and fall, and that's okay.
00:51:57
Speaker
Because I mean, I think it was Charlie Chaplin who said specifically, like one of the funniest things is watching somebody slip on a banana peel time and time again, only to get up, look down, see the banana peel, step over the banana peel, smile to themselves confidently, take another step forward and drop into a manhole. But that is success in one way because you are building a funny scene, you know?
00:52:26
Speaker
So I think it's just kind of this thing of you're gonna fail and it's gonna be okay. There is always another step after this.
00:52:33
Speaker
Looking from the writing world, too, and there's a lot of writing advice, and there's a lot of different things, and a lot of it comes down to what works for you, but it's also helpful to just have things and kind of try stuff out. But that's kind of the whole point, is use this, see if this works for you. And learning from failure is so important, because when you're writing a 50,000, 100,000, 200,000-word novel,
00:53:03
Speaker
You're going to get a lot wrong. It's not going to be some mistakes. You're going to get a lot of mistakes. I wonder. I was going to ask you just now, Alex, as you're saying this, how many words do you think you've written for your novel, for your first novel that you ended up not using?
00:53:22
Speaker
Oh, I'm not going to use any of it. I am entirely rewriting the novel. In fact, talking, I sat down with my friend, Bo, and I've entirely reworked the story. I have several of the same characters, but there's a big difference in the backstory of the main character, which sets off a huge difference in the actual journey that characters go on during the story. So I have a 60,000-word first draft that literally zero is being used. I have...
00:53:50
Speaker
It's an outline. As a discovery writer, which basically means I can't write an outline. I figure out the story as I'm writing it. I also have several drafts that I started and never finished. At this point, I have at least 80,000 words thrown at this novel that I'm literally not using.
00:54:13
Speaker
And then I still have a new draft to start writing, and we'll see what happens with this. But by writing that, and something I like to say, and I don't know, someone else probably said some better version of this because of phosphorus syndrome.
00:54:29
Speaker
A big thing in writing is there's always editing. You can always fix it in post. Fix it in post is a Hollywood thing, but it's like fix it in your next draft. You can't fix something. You can't edit something that hasn't been written. You have to do the first step and write it down
00:54:49
Speaker
even knowing there's going to be a lot of mistakes and issues with it, because then you can go and start fixing those mistakes. Or in my case, and people who have similar writing style, you can start to learn what the story actually is and who these characters actually are, so that you can mostly throw this away and start again.
00:55:09
Speaker
And Alex, I want to make you feel uncomfortable by pointing out that Thomas Edison actually said, I have not failed 10,000 times that I have successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work. Yes. So somebody much, much smarter than all of us has already said it. They're they're really you were right. You were right. For just a moment, I thought you were gonna say someone much, much smarter than you.
00:55:31
Speaker
I'm glad you are, see, and this is, I think, part of the imposter syndrome thing. Actual Hobbs is much kinder than the Hobbs in my head sometimes. I think actual Hobbs is kinder than what most people think actual Hobbs is. Well, and to be fair, actual Hobbs is much kinder than Thomas Edison because he electrocuted an elephant. It was to make a point.
00:55:58
Speaker
I mean, point received. The point being that... No, no. He was better than Tesla. I was going to say, that's right up there with the people who like to say, you know, technically correct is the best kind of correct. Or Nicol Bullis might actually be the hero of the story. Yeah, like all of those people. These are not related. One of those was correct. But which one will let the listeners decide?
00:56:30
Speaker
That's our show. You can find the podcast at Goblin Lore Pod on Twitter, or email any questions, comments, or concerns to goblinlorepodcastatgmail.com. If you would like to support your friendly neighborhood Gobslugs, you can do so at patreon.com slash goblinlorepod.
00:56:47
Speaker
This episode of Gobbled Lore was hosted by Hobbs Q, where you can find on Twitter, at Hobbs Q. This episode was written and co-hosted by Alex Newman, where you can find on Twitter, at Alexander Newham. Engineering, editing, and production for this episode by Joe Redemann, where you can find on Twitter, at Findhorn. That's F-Y-N-D, Horn.
00:57:08
Speaker
Our music is by Wintergatan, where you can find at vintergatan.com. That's wintergatan.com. Logo by Steven Raphael on Twitter at stevenraffle. Goblin lore is a presentation of Hipsters of the Coast, which you can find at hipstersofthecoast.com or at hipsters MTG on Twitter. Thank you all for listening, and remember, goblins, like snowflakes, are only dangerous in numbers.