Daily Entertainment

[themightyspazz]

From gavin62truck:

If your pup is employed, how did they get their job? Did they go to school for it? Was there an application process or an interview involved? What made them the best candidate for the position?

Also, fair warning: after this weekend, I'm going to be giving away Thursday-Saturday DE responsibilities - this time on a permanent basis, sad to say. (Just remember that the last weekends of the month are ATP and test run weekends.) First come, first serve!

Comments

[inlovewithwords]

Henry: Is not employed. One could argue his job is to be the motivator for other characters' actions. He got the part by being the special snowflake scion of two important families and adopted by a third powerful entity.

Eriond: is not employed as such, but he definitely has a job. The interview process was approximately, "A blind girl makes a choice which frankly should have been bloody well obvious because no matter what the characters say, good and evil are unequivocally delineated, Eddings you failed at writing gray areas."

Lois: has a hilarious work history of fail. Before she dropped out of university, she absolutely was dead set against journalism. She's currently at the Daily Planet. ABOUT THAT. She did a year or so with a tabloid, mostly because they were the only ones willing to buy the first real article she wrote. The interview for the DP job basically went, "What is this bizarre story about an alien space ship," "I can't print this but I admire your guts and willingness to follow through and stand by this without sounding like a total nutjob," and "Hi, I'm the editor and I'm a rich young guy and you're hot." I hate to say it, but while she didn't use this to her advantage per se, it did totally motivate Grant a bit. Qualifications? Natural talent for writing, drive, knack for finding the story and getting into trouble, etc., and a pretty attractive and overpowered alien keeping an eye and ear on her. ...AKA being Lois Lane.

And ahahahahaha tl;dr about Tavi will be incoming, because his employment is a thing.

[fairy_fixit]

The only one of mine that has a job is Fairy Fixit. There us evidence that another fairy, Fairy Nuff, studied medicine at PoxStead College, so I headcannoned that Fixit studied Teleportation Network Engineering there as well.

There were most likely several candidates for the job since what kind of school can afford to graduate only one person from a program of studies once in a great while? Well, some can. Anyhow, since the job is centered in Zanaris instead of some remote location, there was probably a good amount of competition for it.

Being a serious teleportation nerd and having scrimshaw and ivory carving as a hobbies are what got her the job.

Huh... now that I think of it, Fixit probably was underlings...

[bjornwilde]

Anton Gorodetsky went to college and studied computer sciences. He did quite well until he discovered he was an Other so it only seemed natural for him to work in the computer department of the Night Watch. He was quite happy there as well. Then his boss decided he needed some field experience and he hasn't been the same since.

Jessica Drew was taken in by HYDRA (after spending her preadolescence and adolescence in a coma) and trained to become the perfect assassin. She decided she could do better things with her life and so ran away, went to college and became a private investigator. HYDRA, SHIELD and the super hero life kept pulling her back though, until she gave up and became an official super hero. Carol Danvers might have had something to do with this also.

Hank McCoy caught the attention of the CIA when he graduated from High School at 13. They opened doors for him and he went to Harvard. Upon graduation, he joined up and became a inventor and technician.

[sdelmonte]

Knox did time as a copy boy at the Gotham Globe, and worked his way up from there. He is from the last generation of reporters that were not expected to go to college, let alone J-school, and looks at anyone who follows that path with suspicion. He probably had a simple interview process with the usual steps, but nothing noteworthy.

Kirk got his current position - the one he's about to lose, as I move through Star Trek VI - by being a total dud as an admiral and being demoted to his one true place in the world. He entered Starfleet by applying to the academy and impressing the right people (and having the right connections).

Howard Stark inherited his grandfather's aviation firm. No application process there. And he is totally the right man for the job.

Gibbs is a pirate. Pirates don't do job interviews.

Cy is a college student and a superhero. Not paying jobs.

Charlie waltzed into a TV station many years ago and said, "hire me, I am telegenic." Being in a small city with few reporters who fit that bill, he was hired without any experience. The journalistic skills came later. Unlike Knox, he respects J-school grads.

[whatisastiles]

Pirates don't do job interviews.

Now my brain has been infected with the idea of pirate job interviews, which would be HILARIOUS.

[street_sparrow]

Yes, they do. Gibbs is the interviewer. :D

[sdelmonte]

Fair point. (You should have a Norrington icon for such emergencies.)

[whatisastiles]

Carol Danvers is the only one of mine who has or has ever had a job. Her first career was flying fighter jets for the US Air Force. She enlisted in the USAF after high school, got a college degree, and rose quickly through the ranks. Her successes in the air for led both the CIA and NASA to recruit her for jobs. Later, she edited Woman magazine, a post she earned in a traditional interview process. She did well at that job because she wouldn't take any shit from J. Jonah Jameson, her boss.

She's currently a full-time superhero, and there's definitely no traditional recruitment process to be an Avenger. You just get asked to join because you're awesome, which Carol definitely is.

Stiles is a full-time student. Right now his 'job', such as it is, is keeping his dad and Scott alive and healthy. My headcanon is he'll probably go into law enforcement like his dad.

[deadman_pirate]

Oh man. Now I want to see Skaði working retail, under some magical compunction not to hurt anybody no matter how bad the customers might get.

This guy here was in the navy, because his father was in the navy, and he was born and raised aboard his ship. Piracy was the next logical step.

Uther got into being a pirate mercenary bodyguard/whatever his actual title is because freelance badassery doesn't really offer stability. Here, he still gets to see the world and murderize people what need it, and then go home. Oh, and study.

Jack and Butch just kinda fell into their respective criminalities. Poor families, not a lot of other options around, and neither one can really go straight at this point (though Butch tries let us not speak of Bolivia)

Weyland and Loki do what they do because it's what they are. They've both got moderately entertaining short-term-human-job stories though.

Judah got his job railroad surveying because he was young and healthy and willing to go out there and do it. Then he started his own business making golems, because he's good at it, right place right time lots of money.

And Wonderella got her job through sheer nepotism. Her mom was the first Wonderella, and made her take over when she retired, and she stays with it for the sweet sweet merchandising cash.

[ashen_key]

Nataliya Romanova was talent-spotted aged fourteen* - the NKVD saw a use for a teeanger who picked up Romanian in the middle of a siege, and who'd been killing a lot of people. Her actual schooling came after the war (during the rest of the war, there was translating and codes and radios), both spy-academy (with an application process that involved doing her best to kill the guy testing her) and studying linguistics at Moscow State University. Her current job as admin and translator for the KGB over in Khabarovsk owes more to her degree than the Red Room.

Natasha Romanoff didn't exactly apply, but there was an interview! It was the kind of interview where they were trying to decide if they should hire her, or shoot her. Good times. She qualified due to her history with the KGB showing that she's an excellent professional, her recent behaviour showing that was she trying to make up for the last thirty-odd years as a freelancer, and because she's functional enough to be hired. SHIELD can be veeeeery pragmatic.

*which means, yes, her whole thing about starting around aged seven was technically a lie - but in other ways, growing up underneath Stalin is PERFECT training for a spy, so, it wasn't really a lie!

...

Spies.

[ceitfianna]

Will: Robin made him his squire instead of turning him in for being a thief then when Robin was made an outlaw, he followed him.

Charles: In his current job as consultant to the CIA, Moira found him and he was fascinated by the chance to find other mutants. Then there was Erik and it kind of grew from there.

Moist: He ran away from home at age 16 as he was born and found out that he was a good thief and over time became a con man. I have a story I want to write at some point about the person who taught him some of being a con man but he learned a lot on his own.

William: His family owns a ranch, he works the ranch, its that simple, but his job as head of the family happened when his father was killed at Contention.

Jane: She doesn't really have a job other than helping her family.

Demeter: Its who she is, being a goddess works that way.

Sameth: Its in his blood and he's meant to be Wallmaker.

Tumnus: Lucy's trust and since then he's been an advisor to the Pevensies.

The Pirate King: He ran away to be a pirate and then was good at it.

[damncompass]

I'll take the Daily Entertainments. Saturdays might be a bit later than the rest of the week, but I enjoyed doing them. :D?

[minkhollow]

Cata joined the Assassins' Guild sometime in her teenage years, because she wanted to.

Sam was taken to the Guild by a couple of existing members at five, after he went ballistic on a dude who was raping his mother and stumbled out of the resulting house fire.

Claudia got her job by hacking a government facility and kidnapping a federal agent! She doesn't recommend following this trajectory. She knows damn well she's lucky it didn't land her in jail.

Apollo is a god; your argument is invalid. (He did, however, get the 'sun god' part of his domain from the Romans.)

Imp... probably still thinks he walked into the chip shop and asked if they were hiring. But he really got his job by way of Death and Susan meddling in the music with rocks in mess.

Regulus is a student, so he technically has no job. When he does, it'll essentially be a job he inherits thanks to his family's societal position. He'd do something at the Ministry regardless, to keep from getting bored.

Red doesn't have a job as such. If she ends up with one it'll be because Snow gives her some kind of official court position.
Ruby got her job by way of a curse. THANKS, REGINA.

Woolly got his job because a lady came into his parents' business waving a sword around and shouting in an unfamiliar language, and he got the sword away from her before she hurt anyone.

[gavin62truck]

Tommy applied to join the FDNY after high school. He had to pass both a written and a physical exam to enter the Fire Academy. I know the process in the late 1970s/early 1980s is different from what it is today, but I don't know much of the specifics. However, I do know that probationary school was much shorter back then-- just six weeks of instruction and basic training, while the rest is learned on the job.

Tommy and his cousin Jimmy were both hotshots while in probie school. They were competitive (with each other, and other probies), and if they weren't at the top of their class they would've been near it. After graduating, Tommy was assigned to a firehouse on the lower west side of Manhattan. (There's no interview, the powers that be just throw you into a house and it's up to you to click with the chief and crew.) Then, after several months of honing his skills there, and probably already gaining a reputation as a daredevil, he transferred to Truck 62/Engine 99 in Harlem to work alongside Jimmy.

[hecu_marine]

Shephard is currently employed as head of the extremely small nascent Marine Corps, and also as the commanding officer of the Borealis, which he still thinks is exceedingly weird. His original training involved the same boot camp that every new recruit gets put through at Parris Island, and later they sent him off for Scout Sniper training at the Quantico facility. The wiki article on the subject can give you a better idea than I about what he was put through, training-wise. He said in one of his threads in Voodoo's world that he maxed out his scores at the SSBC, so he probably paid a hell of a lot of attention during training. Somewhat later he was tapped for the Hazardous Environment Combat Unit, which involved a hell of a lot of extra training in agent detection and identification, casualty search and extraction, technical rescue, personnel decontamination, and emergency medical care and stabilization of contaminated victims. Plus the tutorial level of Half-Life Opposing Force and some training in indoor urban combat as specified in his pre-canon journal entry.

[student_of_impossibility]

Very late now: Tavi arguably has three jobs (and names, sigh secret identities) and all three have somewhat different answers...

1) Public: Captain Rufus Scipio, First Aleran Legion. Public qualifications: enough rank not to be a basic soldier for years, barely existing magic. Hypothetically he got the commission after a tour of duty (almost like school, right?). Promoted from lowest ranking commissioned officer to captain (colonel/low-ranking general) due to every other officer being dead/incapacitated. The end of book 3 basically served as internship/interview for keeping the job.

2) Semi-public, semi-private: spy for Gaius Sextus, formally trained during Aleran version of higher education. Qualifications: incredibly smart, resourceful, ruthless, and devoted to Alera. Application/interview: read Furies of Calderon. Gaius Sextus was not letting anyone else get the useful tool. In fact, #1 was actually an undercover assignment. After all, no one is an officer on their first tour, not even High Lords' children...

3) Seekrit, getting more public, but Tavi isn't consciously aware: Princeps of Alera. Qualification that gets him the interview: being Gaius Septimus' only child. If he hadn't been highly competent and into politics, Sextus might not have acknowledged him or passed on the Crown. He might have just let Tavi stay in safe, obscure survival; Sextus buried enough of his family to want that. Maybe. Except that qualification got Tavi the long test that is the first three or four books. Stunning success at jobs 1 and 2 (manipulator and commander) cement Sextus' willingness to actually acknowledge Octavian's legitimate claim.

...Or they will in the not-too-distant future. There's a schedule.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen is employed as a Paladin of the Brotherhood of Steel, holding the position of chaplain and energy weapons specialist. Most of her religious training was accomplished in Vault 101; they test the kids for their lifelong jobs at age 16 there, and it's my headcanon that while many of them stay in the classroom until age 18, many of them get sloughed off to on-the-job training. Ellen spent a lot of her study time with Reverend Avellone instead, learning counseling, theology, philosophy, and other necessary subjects. She would have been ordained somewhere around age twenty or so, depending on how well he felt she'd learned the material, and taken over the Vault chaplaincy after Avellone retired, but canon happened. While canon does not actually show any Brotherhood of Steel chaplains per se, I've handwaved that the guy in Lyons' Pride who talks about releasing supermutants from their torment and considers the use of his rifle to be an act of prayer has served as one in the past, and that they all have actual combat duties with the chaplaincy as a side thing. The Brotherhood religion is primarily philosophical and focused more on tech and the human spirit than on anything deific, but given that they're recruiting outsiders in Elder Lyons' chapter, it was probably deemed wise to have somebody specific to minister to newcomers' spiritual needs as well as making sure they got the right philosophy. Ellen got most of her training for that from Knight-Captain Colvin in Lyons' Pride, as well as from several of the Scribes. As for her energy weapons training, that was mostly field work building on a foundation laid by a lifetime of conventional weapons use (BB gun at age ten, real firearm training from Bryan Mills, Annabelle Newfield, Master Chief Petty Officer John-117, and Voodoo, etc.).