#tiny herb

Have a name accurate Vaccaria redesign:

Tiny Herb's bastion of strength, the little wildflower witch ✨

chapter 2 : lingering wounds

this chapter really writes itself. all i have clearly in mind is a conversation between Qiao Yifan and Wang Jiexi. i have thought of writing the remaining All Stars, but the conversation ends up much bigger than i expected. definitely more angst and hurt-comfort, which is me going back to my roots lol. it also makes it harder to find a proper ending. after scrapping some rough ideas, this is the end result that i am pretty satisfied with.

this chapter can be said an analysis of Tiny Herb. and I know how risky it is, and it's rather hard to avoid bias. but Tiny Herb is among the teams that we do have more knowledge of their inner workings from the novel. and i must admit, while i admire Wang Jiexi and his dedication to Tiny Herb (fangwang is also one of my fave pairings), for me current Tiny Herb is not impressive... and its future is worrisome.

my bad impression did indeed start with the way they handled Qiao Yifan. it can be summed up as a mere mismatch between Qiao Yifan and Tiny Herb. that our Yifan is unsuitable for Tiny Herb and vice versa. that ultimately Tiny Herb is an employer and workplace, that this kind of thing does a common occurrence. no one is at fault. we just happened to be spoiled with teams like Happy and Blue Rain who are in comparison very flexible and inclusive. (then there's God Ye, who stands tall above the rest, who notices things that the Magician doesn't)

but i cannot help but disagree.

in my experience as an employee (or capitalist slave lol) who ends up studying about business&management, human resource is the greatest investment a company or any business can have. it can make or break the business. so usually, HR recruitment and training get a lot of attention, if not a priority. so it's no wonder that all teams will have their own training camps, so they will have easier time to mold and pick their future team members. especially there's an obvious quota or limitation of how many people can be in the team. then there's also nature of the teams, which highly requires ability to adapt and to work with others. this should make being promoted to the team very difficult. the ones who did get to be a member of the team, even though only a sub, should be the cream of the crop.

Qiao Yifan is no exception.

this is clearly implied in the novel when it's mentioned that he has only played Glory for a year by the time we got to know him (Ch147). only further strengthened with how quick he adjusts to Ghostblade class and to rough diamond Happy in the new server.

However, Qiao Yifan has never played an official match, to the point that all pro players and the All Stars' audience have no idea of his existence in Tiny Herb. and by then half season have passed.

half season!

(forget how strange the timeline is, s8 is a mess)

that's such a waste of time and money. seriously. HR is an investment because the result will not show immediately. HR is also costly because they put a lot of money into developing the people into what the company need. recruiting a fully developed talent (transfer) is expensive, so it's usually more cost effective to acquire from universities (training camp) and develop them in the company (the team).

how can you develop your team member without giving them experience??? especially when it's highlighted throughout the novel, through many pro players, how important experience is. how it's the only way for a rookie turn into a veteran.

not only it doesn't make sense from business standpoint, it also doesn't make sense from team standpoint. by benching Qiao Yifan, Wang Jiexi has crippled his own team, reducing the potential strategies he can use. and by not giving him a chance to grow, thus reducing his chance to stay, requiring Tiny Herb to seek and acquire and train/introduce another new person, adding another new variable into the team that might end up the same.

then there's Wang Jiexi's thoughts of Qiao Yifan.

Wang Jiexi already couldn't see any value in keeping Qiao Yifan in the team. He also knew the kid was having a hard time meshing with the team. Perhaps if he wasn't in a Champion team and in some other no pressure mid-tier team, he might be able to make some progress? -Ch144

made worse with the rare time Qiao Yifan shows any negative feelings towards others.

"How lucky... to be instructed by a god-level player like captain so often..." Qiao Yifan silently thought. -Ch145

on my the first time reading it and on my reread, these words still rub me the wrong way. first, it's so cold and ruthless. he strips down Qiao Yifan to his value to the team. okay, we can accept that it's necessary in such highly competitive environment that is Glory. you cannot just add all good vegetables into the shopping cart, just like Ye Xiu said. second and my greatest source of vexation is that he knows that Qiao Yifan is not meshing with team, but his solution is to put Qiao Yifan in an environment with no pressure? really? true to his magician, title his reasoning doesn't make sense, which irks me so much. because it doesn't seem he bothers to know the reason why.

teamwork requires everyone to work together. it's a relationship of mutual trust and respect. it takes all sides to make it work. from his thoughts, it gives me the impression the fault lies in Qiao Yifan for being weak, for buckling under the pressure, thus not gaining trust and respect from his teammates for them to willing to work with him.

the least kind explanation for his way of thinking is that Tiny Herb's self-sacrificing values are taken to the extreme. considering he has changed his playstyle for the team and the championship, he really cannot fathom why the others can't. the less kind explanation is that being a genius make him unable to understand others who are not. the kindest explanation is that he's too busy to instruct the substitutes personally, which is reasonable considering Tiny Herb's overdependence on him, so he cannot really see the problem in Qiao Yifan. he might leave that job to his vice captain, which unfortunately for Qiao Yifan is Deng Fusheng, who might not even fully understand why Wang Jiexi assigns Qiao Yifan an Assassin account to properly instruct him.

it might also be all of them. if we think kindly of Wang Jiexi, he might be aware of his shortcoming, so he relies on his vice captain in developing and training the rookies. Fang Shiqian is particularly good at this, as seen from the main roster that used to have Fang Shiqian as the vice captain. case in point, his attempts in recruiting new member for his team after Fang Shiqian retired are by acquiring developed talents: Xu Bin, an exchange with Li Yihui, Tang Rou and Qiu Fei who have been personally instructed by Ye Xiu.

this kinda explains his cold rationality. and the way he handles Gao Yingjie. whose personality is not much different than Qiao Yifan. it really gives an impression he really doesn't know how to deal with such a different personality compared to his own. that's why he takes such an extreme approach, by losing publicly against Gao Yingjie, which i don't think it's well thought out.

it might be just me, but in my own experience in teaching people (and also from Ye Xiu/Happy and Wei Chen/Blue Rain's example), in order to build confidence it's not really that complicated. just let them gain experience, let them try and fail, but also make sure they know that failure is not the end of the world, that they have the team's support and understanding. that's it. others might scorn them, but the team will have their back. call it tough love. call it a balance of care and cruelty. everyone's a beginner at first, even geniuses. meanwhile, Gao Yingjie is too well-protected. he's kept from hardship too much. that's why i've got the feeling that Wang Jiexi's approach has a high chance of blowing up on his (and Tiny Herb's) face.

and also why future Tiny Herb is worrisome, because it's not only the team who is overly dependent on Wang Jiexi, the whole club, too. it can be minimized if Wang Jiexi stays after retirement... but i feel he will be as decisive as his predecessors. Gao Yingjie will have such big shoes to fill, if not too big.

then there's the team environment.

particularly among the reserve players, which eerily reminds me of Excellent Era's training camp, which might be what Ye Xiu's also thinking with his comment of role model and crutch to Wang Jiexi after the match.

Is he saying that I've been working too hard all this time? But when you were in Excellent Era, weren't you also giving your all to carry the team on your shoulders? Wang Jiexi watched Ye Xiu's retreating silhouette. -Ch1334

in the later match against Thunderclap, it seems that Wang Jiexi does stop trying too hard and let himself being isolated from the others in order to reduce the dependence and in the playoffs against Samsara, it suggests that the younger members manage to make a turnaround. that it bodes well for the future of Tiny Herb.

but here's the thing. it only shows hope for the current main roster of the team. the subs? they don't really have the proper mindset. it's shown in the way they barely worked together and then lost against Lord Grim and co., in the way they made excuses, made worse with Xiao Yun's behavior when he's being the most senior, the one considered as half-main roster and half-sub, but also always being sought to be replaced by Wang Jiexi. no wonder he acts out, bullies are often insecure. this paints a rather grim picture of the championship team environment that Wang Jiexi (and Tiny Herb) creates, and also the double standard he's shown in the different way he treats Gao Yingjie compared to other rookies.

there's a ticking time bomb right there.

the problem might even lay deeper, or start sooner in the training camp. this is a high possibility, considering how Qiao Yifan got promoted despite his unsuitability and how Wang Jiexi is always seen looking outside the team for potential talent.

that's why i come to the conclusion that Tiny Herb's future looking grim. being a rich championship team in the capital, they might manage to draw high-quality talents, but if they are unable to develop them... they might be left behind other teams with better team environment, championship team or not (Thunderclap, for example).

[Image Description: A drawing of Vaccaria flying on his broom while dropping powder.]

Happy birthday to Wang Jiexi 🎉

Happy belated b-day Wang Jiexi~ Was lucky enough to draw an SR before so here it is with TL below. He’s such a good husband daddy ^^

“Hello? It's me, Wang Jiexi. Oh, I'm still abroad transferring flights. It'll be a few days before I can come back, but I've bought some presents and sent them by express post already. They should arrive this afternoon. Help me receive them, and distribute them to everyone. Don't worry, I've written their names on each package so you won't make a mistake. Xiaobie's is a new model of foreign headphones capable of charging by solar energy. Yingjie's is a local protective talisman which can increase luck. For Xubin, I have a handknit scarf, and fridge magnets etc… The present for you…? Yours is… here with me since it's a secret for now. It's more interesting if you open it after you receive it. Stop guessing. See for yourself after you get it~ I have to board so I'll hang up now.“

☞ The King’s Avatar: Character Aesthetic | Liu Fei (柳非)