Category: Character Spotlight (Page 1 of 2)

aLBoCal, and a Post about Depression, Hope, and Foo Fighters

December 6, 2019 / Calise Sellers

Hello my neglected, yet not-forgotten loves ❤️. I’m not going to roll around in sackcloth and ashes about how long it’s been, nor am I going to make promises that I might not be able to fulfill. I do however have a thing for you. It’s a post!

Most of you might not know that I started a personal site last year, A Little Bit of Calise (or aLBoCal, because “aLBoC” sounded dumb). As my self-titled aLBoP spinoff, its purpose was never to replace aLBoP, by any means, but to be both a place I could blab about me-related, personal topics, and as an on-ramp to aLBoP, where people can get a taste of what we offer over here without feeling overwhelmed by jargon. The hope is also that new people, who might not be interested in mainstream personality typing might find it, while Googling other topics.

But it’s still aLBoPy writing (because, hello, that’s still what I care about day-to-day, and let’s face it, it’s not like I don’t talk about myself plenty over here 😉).

And almost all the posts up to now (which isn’t many) involve the Four Sides of Calise, which are a silly, ongoing thought experiment, helping me to explore myself. And if that’s not cognition related, I don’t know what is.

The Data geek, the people-loving Obs glitter-pop princess, the Paradoxitype Greek goddess, and the oh-so-edge succubus– QUEEN OF MEGAMIND COMPLEX! 😈 *Ahem*

But really why I’m talking about it now, is because I just posted a post over there called Learn to Fly: My Thoughts on Depression, Hope, and Silliness, through Enjoying Foo Fighters (because apparently I hate writing titles that search engine optimization want anything to do with). But it’s basically a half-step between aLBoP and aLBoCal. It started as a silly post talking about music I was getting rapidly obsessed with, and ended up being a reflection on rising from the ashes of our lives, by looking at how the band Foo Fighters rose from the ashes of Nirvana. There’s bits here and there about cognitive types and how they affected people’s choices, like cognitive cameos, if you will.

But it’s about my exploration of where hope comes from, if silliness is disrespectful when people are hurting, and why fakery hurts people. It’s about people doing people things 🤷. So if that’s what you come here for in the first place, then I think you’ll love aLBoCal, and this post.

…there’s also a lot of cross dressing. Do you have any clue how often the Foo Fighters cross dress? Omigosh it’s so often guys!

So please give it a try. It took a whole lotta love. If you’re an aLBoPer, I think you’ll love it.

<3 Much love,
Calise

Here’s a taste of Learn to Fly: My Thoughts on Depression, Hope, and Silliness, through Enjoying Foo Fighters…

When I started writing this post, I was really struggling with why this was worth talking about. You may have clicked on this post because of the serious topics mentioned in the header, but that’s not why I started writing this. Like most things in my life, this little project started as a result of me enjoying people to a silly degree. There’s a lot of silly stuff in this post; there’s stick figures, there’s looking at how the Four Sides of Calise enjoy music (from my angsty gothic succubus side to my lollipop-glitter princess side), there’s a lot of me going googly over how much I love men (in and out of women’s clothing), there’s a lot of 90s/00s nostalgia, and me watching music/concert videos way too closely.

And I started writing all that silly, basically because it wouldn’t leave me alone; my passion rarely will. But I was seriously just screwing around. I pictured the brief stick figure comic at the end of this post and thought I’d just preface it by how much I’ve come to love this music lately. Honestly I was just having fun talking. But as I was trying to quick-finish this post over a weekend (pfffft, when am I going to learn that I suck at brevity?!?) I was just struggling on repeat with why the &@%$= writing this mattered.

Like seriously, why the zombie (we’re making that an expletive now, roll with it) should anyone care that someone named Calise likes certain types of rock music, or gets really excited about the facial expressions someone makes while playing the drums?? And even more than that, why would anyone want to read something blissfully dancing around in silliness while the world just sucks right now?

Most of the people I know are having a “hard year.” I literally cannot enumerate the number of people I care about who have or are currently struggling with heavy bouts of depression or anxiety. And the number of times this year alone I’ve heard phrases akin to “I thought we’d be together forever,” as I’ve seen relationships come to an abrupt and heart-wrenching end. People are in serious stomach-plunging freefall right now.

So who am I to be happy??

Read the full post here

The People of Stranger Things

July 13, 2018 / Calise Sellers

{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

Elsa and Aladdin Give Each Other Advice – Belated January Thank You Video

March 16, 2016 / Calise Sellers

In typical aLBoP fashion, this video turned out much later, much longer and much sillier than anticipated. The requested video was Queen Elsa from Frozen and Aladdin giving each other advice… and well, you can see the rest.

Click here to learn more about becoming an aLBoP Patron. Click here for more on Anakin Angst. And don’t forget to give us more video suggestions and desktop wallpaper suggestions!!!

Much love,

<3 Calise and Justin

Typing Tutorial (plus Character Spotlight!)

August 23, 2015 / Calise Sellers

Hey! This is Justin! Since I’m gonna be doing a lot of Phase 2, it’s probably good for me to say hi. It’s been awesome getting to talk to you guys over chats and emails, and I’m excited to finally get to do some character spotlights!

For this first one, we’re going to be focusing especially on how to type people. A lot of you have asked for help with typing people yourselves, so let’s walk through the process!

We’ve also convinced a couple of stick people, Gwen and Phil, to sacrifice their dignity and show us how *not* to type. They’re going to do their best to type correctly, using oversimplified, stereotypical methods and definitions, and we’ll see how they do.

For this tutorial, we wanted to type a cool, engaging character who’s also kinda obscure. That way, we shouldn’t have to worry much about preconceptions of the character’s type. We wouldn’t want to start out with Darth Vader, say. (We’ve seen Lord Vader typed as pretty much every single type :P)

That’s exactly the sort of subjectivity that we’re excited to get past here! Regardless of whether we’re typing someone’s behavior or their cognition, if it all ends up coming down to subjective arguments over what type they are, then there’s something wrong with our methodology. A reliable, repeatable, useful science needs to be objective, no matter who’s looking at it.

This kind of independent objectivity isn’t something a lot of people would associate with personality typing. All too often, personality typing gets misused as a vague, horoscope-ish way of boiling people down to a simplistic little list of traits that could really be true of almost anyone. Gwen and Phil are gonna demonstrate how this vagueness doesn’t work. Aren’t you, guys?

We, on the other hand, are all going to show these two the consistent roots of cognitive typing. We’re going to walk through how the cognitive definitions of the letters leave no wiggle room for subjective fudging; once we know how the letters work at their root, then every typing becomes clear.

So who’s our lucky, obscure victim for this demonstration? Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I give you…

…a peacock.

But not just any peacock. This is the nefarious Lord Shen, the brilliant and, in my estimation, very charming villain of Kung Fu Panda 2. Yes, there really is a movie called Kung Fu Panda, if you didn’t know. Two of them, actually, with a third on the way. And they’re really fantastic, with excellent themes told in a skillful way, and very good plot structure, and also very pretty. Continue reading

Personalized Typing: Mr. Darcy and the New Email System

March 1, 2014 / Calise Sellers

{Insert fanfare here!} You asked and we’re delivering! The new and improved, customized *just for you*, aLBoP Personalized Typing System!!! Now *you* can get personally typed according to the typing principles found throughout A Little Bit of Personality, and get personalized advice on how to apply things like Paradoxitype, Cognition Steps, Type Specializations, and how to be a Hero in your own unique way to *you* in your own life, with your own unique talents and struggles. Pretty cool, no?

{Update: Due to lots of wonderful demand, the aLBoP Personalized Typing system has been updated! Find all the details here! Now, instead of Personalized Personality PDFs, we have made the universally applicable Cognitive Orientation Guidebooks (COGs), and then if you want to chat about how your cognition applies to you personally, you can chat on the forums So feel free to read ahead and especially to read our personalized help for Mr. Darcy, but just be aware of the new system. :)}

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

November 9, 2013 / Calise Sellers

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?
Continue reading

The Personalities of Marble Hornets

August 11, 2013 / Calise Sellers

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.
Continue reading

A.I. Typed: Robots and Their Personality

July 17, 2013 / Calise Sellers

Androids, computers, robots; call them what you will, they’re all A.I., artificial intelligence. Though the messages their stories tell may vary, throughout the years bots have won our hearts, made us laugh, made us think and freaked the crap out of us. Their quest to be a little more human represents humanity’s quest to be even more than that. This is a salute to both A.I. and humanity in all its varied hues.
Continue reading

Disney Typed: Hades

April 9, 2013 / Calise Sellers

ENTP

“We dance, we kiss, we schmooze, we carry on, we go home happy. What do you say? Come on.”

“I’ve got 24 hours to get rid of this bozo, or the entire scheme I’ve been setting up for 18 years goes up in smoke, and you are wearing his merchandise?!?”

It takes a special individual to have buggy yellow eyes, spiky teeth and flame hair and still be able to bring sexy back. This is Hades, Lord of the Dead. Hi, how ya doin’? Is it any surprise that Hercules’s Hades is my favorite Disney villain?

There were just too many good Hades quotes so I had to narrow them down to my favorites. Though they aren’t nearly so smooth if not read in James Woods’s voice. Apparently before he came to the part, Hades was just menacing; not wise-cracking and quick on the draw.
Continue reading

Disney Typed: Megara

April 7, 2013 / Calise Sellers

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.