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blackswaneuroparedux · 3 years

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Anonymous asked: I really enjoyed your book review of Sebastian Junger’s Homecoming. Perhaps enjoyment isn’t the right word because it brought home some hard truths. Your book review really helped me understand my older brother better when I think back on how he came home from the war in Afghanistan after serving with the Paras and had medals pinned up the yin yang. It was hard on everyone in the family, especially for him and his wife and young kids. He has found it hard going. Thanks for sharing your own thoughts as a combat veteran from that war. Even if you’re a toff you don’t come across as a typical Oxbridge poncey Rupert! As you’re a classicist and historian how did ancient soldiers deal with PTSD? Did the Greeks and Roman soldiers even suffer from it like our fighting boys and girls do? Is PTSD just a modern thing?

Part 1 of 2 (see following post)

Because this is subject very close to my heart as a combat veteran I thought very long and hard about the issues you raised. I decided to answer this question in two posts.

This is Part 1 and Part 2 is the next post.

My apologies for the length but this is subject that deserves full careful consideration.

Thank you for your lovely words and I especially find its heart warming if they touched you. I appreciate you for sharing something of the experience your ex-Para brother went through in coming home from war. I have every respect for the Parachute regiment as one of the world’s premier fighting force.

Working alongside them on missions out in Afghanistan I could see their reputation as the ‘brain shit’ of the British Army was well deserved. They’re most uncouth, sweary, and smelliest group of yobbos I’ve ever had the awful misfortune to meet. I’m kidding. The mutual respect and the ribbing went hand in hand. I doff my smurf hat to the cherry berries as ‘propah soldiers’ as they liked to say especially when they cast a glance over at the other elite regiments like HCav and the guards regiments.

Don’t worry I’ve been called a lot worse! But I am grateful you don’t lump me with the other ‘poncey’ officers. Not sure what a female Rupert is called. The fact that I was never accused of being one by any of those I served with is perhaps something I take some measure of pride. There are not as many real toff officers these days compared to the past but there are a fair few Ruperts who are clueless in leading men under their charge. I knew one or two and frankly I’m embarrassed for them and the men under their charge.

I don’t know when the term PTSD was first used in any official way. My older sister who is a doctor - specialising in neurology and all round brain box and is currently working on the front lines in the NHS wards fighting Covid alongside all our amazing NHS nurses and doctors - took time out one evening to have a discussion with me about these issues. I also talked to one or two other friends in the psychiatric field too. In consensus they agree it was around 1980 when the term PTSD came into usage. Specifically it was the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-lll) published by the American Psychiatric Association in 1980 partly because as a result of the ongoing treatment of veterans from the Vietnam War. In the modern mind, PTSD is more associated with the legacy of the Vietnam War disaster.

The importance of whether PTSD affected the ancient Greeks and Romans lies in the larger historical question of to what extent we can apply modern experience to unlock or interpret the past. In the period since PTSD was officially recognised, scholars and psychologists have noted its symptoms in descriptions of the veterans of past conflicts. It has become increasingly common in books and novels as well as articles to assume the direct relevance of present-day psychology to the reactions of those who experienced violent events in the historical past. In popular culture, especially television and film dramas, claims for the historical pedigree of PTSD are now often provided as background to the modern story, without attribution. Indeed we just take it as a given that soldier-warriors in the past suffered the same and in the same way as their modern day counterparts. We are used to the West to map the classical world upon the present but whether we can so easily map the modern world back upon the Greeks and Romans is a doubtful proposition when it comes to discussing PTSD.

Simply put, there is no definitive evidence for the existence of PTSD in the ancient world existed, and relies instead upon the assumption that either the Greeks or Romans, because they were exposed to combat so often, must have suffered psychological trauma.

There are two schools of thought regarding the possibility of PTSD featuring in the Greco-Roman world (and indeed the wider ancient world stretching back into pre-history, myth and legend) – universalism and relativism. Put simply, the universalists argue that we all carry the same ‘wetware’ in our heads, since the human brain probably hasn’t developed in evolutionary terms in the eye blink that is the two thousand years or so since the Greco-Roman Classical era. If we’re subject to PTSD now, they posit, then the Greeks and the Romans must have been equally vulnerable. The relativists, on the other hand, argue that the circumstances under which the individual has received their life conditioning – the experiences which programme the highly individual software running that identical ‘wetware’, if you will – is of critical importance to an individual’s capacity to absorb the undoubted horrors of any battlefield, ancient or modern.

Whichever school one falls down on the side of is that what seems to happen in any serious discussion of the issue of PTSD in the ancient world is to either infer it indirectly from culture (primarily, literature and poetry) or infer it from a comparative historical understanding of ancient warfare. Because the direct evidence is so scant we can only ever infer or deduce but can never be certain. So we can read into it whenever we wish.

In Greek antiquity we have of course The Illiad and the Odyssey as one of the most cited examples when we look at the character traits of both Achilles and Odysseus. From Greek tragedy those who think PTSD can be inferred often point to Sophocles’s Ajax and Euripide’s Heracles. Or they look to Aeschylus and The Oresteia. I personally think this is an over stretch. Greek writers do; the return from war was a revisited theme in tragedy and is the subject of the Odyssey and the Cyclic Nostoi.

The Greeks didn’t leave us much to ponder further. But, with rare exceptions, the works from Graeco-Roman antiquity do not discuss the mental state of those who had fought. There is silence about the interior world of the fighting man at war’s end. So we are led to ponder the question why the silence?

This silence also echoes into the Roman period of literature and history too. Indeed when we turn to the Roman world, descriptions of veterans are rare in the writings that survive from the Roman world and occur most often in fiction.

In the first poem of Ovid’s Heroides, the poet writes about a returned soldier tracing a map upon a table (Ov. Her. 1.31–5):

...upon the tabletop that has been set someone shows the fierce battles, and paints all Troy with a slender line of pure wine: ‘Here the Simois flowed; this is the Sigeian territory, here stood the lofty palace of old Priam, there the tent of Achilles...’

This scene provides an intimate glimpse of what it must have been like when a veteran returned home and told stories of his campaigns: the memories of battle brought to the meal, the crimson trail of the wine offering a rough outline of the places and battlefields he had experienced. The military characters in poems and plays show a world in which soldiers are ubiquitous, if somewhat annoying to the civilians. Plautus, for instance, in his Miles Gloriosus, portrays an officer boasting about his made-up conquests – the model for the braggart in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum – and Juvenal complains about a centurion who stomps on his sandalled foot in the bustling Roman street.

Despite this silence, compelling works have been written that interweave vivid modern accounts of combat and its aftermath with quotes from ancient prose and poetry. At their best, these comparisons can illuminate both worlds, but at other times the concerns of the present-day author are imposed on the ancient material. But the question remains are such approaches truthful and valid in understanding PTSD in the ancient world?

So if arts and literature don’t really tell us much what about comparative examples drawn from military history itself?

Here again we are in left disappointed.

According to the Greek historian, Herodotus, in 480 B.C., at the Battle of Thermopylae, where King Leonidas and 300 Spartans took on Xerxes I and 100,000-150,000 Persian troops, two of the Spartan soldiers, Aristodemos and another named Eurytos, reported that they were suffering from an “acute inflammation of the eyes,”...Labeled tresantes, meaning “trembler,”. It is that Aristodemos later hung himself in shame. Another Spartan commander was forced to dismiss several of his troops in the Battle of Thermopylae Pass in 480 B.C, “They had no heart for the fight and were unwilling to take their share of the danger.”

Herodotus again in writing about the battle of Marathon in 490 B.C., cites an Athenian warrior who went permanently blind when the soldier standing next to him was killed, although the blinded soldier “was wounded in no part of his body.” Interestingly enough, blindness, deafness, and paralysis, among other conditions, are common forms of “conversion reactions” experienced and well-documented among soldiers today

Outside the fictional world, Roman military history tell us very little.

Appian of Alexandria (c. 95? – c. AD 165) described a legion veteran called Cestius Macedonicus who, when his town was under threat of capture by (the Emperor-to-be) Octavian, set fire to his house and burned himself within it. Plutarch’s Life of Marius speaks of Caius Marius’ behaviour who, when he found himself under severe stress towards the end of his life, suffering from night terrors, harassing dreams, excessive drinking and flashbacks to previous battles. These examples are just a few instances which seem to demonstrate that PTSD, or culturally similar phenomena, may be as old as warfare itself. But it’s worth stressing it is not definitive, just conjecture.

Of course of accounts of wars and battles were copiously written but not the hard bloody experience of the soldier. Indeed the Roman military man is described almost exclusively as a commander or in battle. Men such as Caesar who experienced war and wrote about it do not to tell us about homecoming.

It seems one of main challenges when we try to see military history through the lens of our definition of PTSD is to first understand the comparative nature of military history and what it is we are comparing ie mistaking apples for oranges.

The origin of military history was tied to the idea that if one understood ancient battle, one might fight and, more importantly, one might lead and strategise more effectively. In essence, much of the training of officers – even in the military handbooks of the Greeks and Romans – was an attempt to keep new commanders from making the same mistakes as the commanders of old. Military history is intended to be a pragmatic enterprise; in pursuit of this pragmatic goal, it has long been the norm to use comparative materials to understand the nature of ancient battle.

The 19th Century French military theorist Ardant du Picq argued for the continuity of human behaviour and assumed that the reactions of men under the threat of lethal force would be identical over the centuries: “Man does not enter battle to fight, but for victory. He does everything that he can to avoid the first and obtain the second....Now, man has a horror of death. In the bravest, a great sense of duty, which they alone are capable of understanding and living up to, is paramount. But the mass always cowers at sight of the phantom, death. Discipline is for the purpose of dominating that horror by a still greater horror, that of punishment or disgrace. But there always comes an instant when natural horror gets an upper hand over discipline, and the fighter flees”

These words offer insight to those of us who have never faced the terror of battle but at the same time assume the universality of how combat is experienced, despite changes in psychological expectations and weaponry, to name but two variables.

Another incentive for scholars and researchers is to turn to comparative material has been the growing awareness of the artificiality of how we describe war. A mere phrase such as ‘flank attack’ does not capture the bloody, grinding human struggle. Roman authors – especially those who had not fought – often wrote generic descriptions of battle. Literary battle can distort and simplify even as it tells, but if the main things are right – who won, who lost, and who the good guys are – the important ‘facts’ are covered. Even if one intends to speak the truth about battle, the assumptions and the normative language used to describe violence will affect the telling. We may note that the battle accounts in poetry become increasingly grisly during the course of the Roman Empire (perhaps owing to the growing popularity of gladiatorial games),while, in Caesar’s Gallic War, the Latin word cruor (blood) never appears and sanguis (another Latin word for blood) only appears in quoted appeals (Caes. B. Gall. 7.20, in the mouth of Vercingetorix, and 7.50, where the centurion M. Petronius urges his men to retreat). The realities of the battlefield are described in anodyne shorthand. In much the same way that the news rarely prints or televises graphic images, Caesar does not use gore, and perhaps for the same reason – to give a sense of reportorial objectivity.

Another element in the interpretive scrum is a given author’s goal in writing an account in the first place: Caesar, for example, was writing about himself, and he may have been producing something akin to a political campaign ad. Caesar makes Caesar look great and there is reason to believe that, if he was not precisely cooking the books, he did give them a little rinse to make him look more pristine. Given the many factors that complicate our ability to ‘unpack’ battle narratives, Philip Sabin has argued that the ambiguity and unreliability of the ancient sources must be supplemented by looking at the “form of the overall characteristics of Roman infantry in mortal combat”. Again the modern is used to illuminate that which is obscured by written accounts and the “the enduring psychological strains” are merely unconsciously assumed.

These legitimate uses of comparative materials have led to a sort of creep: because military historians have used observations of how men react to combat stress during battle to indicate continuity of behaviour through time, there appears to be a consequent expectation that men will also react identically after battle. This creep became a lusty stride with modern books written about the ancient world and PTSD.

After I finished my tour in Afghanistan I read many books recommended to me by family and friends as well as comrades. One of these books is well known in military circles - at least amongst the thinking officer class - as an iconic work of marrying the ancient world and the modern experience of war. I read it and I was touched deeply by this brilliant therapeutic book. It was only months later I began to re-think whether it was a true account of PTSD in the ancient world.

This insightful book is called Achilles in Vietnam by Jonathan Shay. Shay is psychiatrist in Boston, USA. He began reading The Iliad with Vietnam veterans whom he was treating. Achilles in Vietnam, is a deeply humane work and is very much concerned with promoting policies that he hoped would help diminish the frequency of post-traumatic stress. His goal was not to explain ancient poetry but to use it therapeutically by linking his patients’ pain to that of the Iliad’s great hero. His book offers a conduit between the reader and the experiences of the men that Shay counsels. In the introduction to this work he makes a nod to Homerists while also asserting the primacy of his own reading:

“I shall present the Iliad as the tragedy of Achilles. I will not glorify Vietnam combat veterans by linking them to a prestigious ‘classic’ nor attempt to justify study of the Iliad by making it sexy, exciting, modern or ‘relevant’. I respect the work of classical scholars and could not have done my work without them. Homer’s poem does not mean whatever I want it to mean. However, having honored the boundaries of meaning that scholars have pointed out, I can confidently tell you that my reading of the Iliad as an account of men in war is not a ‘meditation’ that is only tenuously rooted in the text. “

After outlining the major plot points around which he will organise his argument, he notes, “ ‘This is the story of Achilles in the Iliad, not some metaphorical translation of it”.

The trouble was and continues to be is that many in the historical and medical fields began to rush to unfounded conclusions that Shay, on the issue of PTSD in the ancient world, had demonstrated that the psychological realities of western warfare were universal and enduring. More books on similar comparative themes soon emerged and began to enshrine the truth that PTSD was indeed prevalent throughout the ancient world and one could draw comparative lessons from it.

Perhaps one of the most influential books after Shay was by Lawrence Tritle. Tritle, a veteran himself, wrote From Melos to My Lai. It’s a fascinating book to read and there are parts that certainly resonate with my own experiences and those of others I have known. In the book Tritle drew a direct parallel between the experiences of the ancient Greeks and those of modern veterans. For instance, Xenophon, in his military autobiography, presents a brief eulogy for one of his fallen commanders, Clearchus. Xenophon writes that Clearchus was ‘polemikos kai philopolemos eschatos’ (Xen. An. 2.6) – ‘warlike and a lover of war to the highest degree’.

Tritle comments:

“The question that arises is why men like Clearchus and his counterparts in Vietnam and the Western Front became so entranced with violence. The answer is to be found in the natural ‘high’ that violence induces in those exposed to it, and in the PTSD that follows this exposure. Such a modern interpretation in Clearchus’ case might seem forced, but there seems little reason to doubt that Xenophon in fact provides us with the first known historical case of PTSD in the western literary tradition.”

Arguably in the West and especially our current modern Western culture is predicated at baulking at the notion of being ‘war lovers” as immoral. But such an interpretation speaks more of our modern Christianised ambivalence towards war; to the Spartans and Athenians the term would not have had a negative connotation. ‘Philopolemos’ is, in fact, a compliment, and the list of Clearchus’ military exploits functions as a eulogy. There are points where his analysis does not adequately address the divergences between ancient and modern experiences.

For all the talk of our Western culture being rooted in Ancient Greece and Rome we are not shaped by the same ethics. Our modern ethics and our moral code is Christian. There is no such thing as a secular humanist or atheist both owe a debt to Christianity for the way they have come to be; in many respects it’s more accurate to describe such people as Christianised Humanists or Christian Atheists even if they reject the theological tenets of the religious faith because they use Christian morality as the foundation to construct their own. Many forget just how brutal these ancient societies were in every day life to the point there would be little one could find recognisable within our own modern lives.

Now we come to third point I wish to make in determining where the Greeks or Romans actually experienced PTSD. This is to do with the little understood nature of PTSD itself. As much as we know about PTSD there is still much more we don’t know. Indeed one of the most problematic and complicated issues is the continued disagreement around the diagnosis and specific triggers of the disorder which remain little understood. We have to admit there are competing theories about what causes PTSD but, in terms of experiences that make it manifest, there are essentially three possible triggers: witnessing horrific events and/or being in mortal danger and/or the act of killing – especially close kills where the reality of one’s responsibility cannot be doubted. The last of these was strongly argued in another scholarly book by D. Grossman, On Killing, the Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (1995).

Roman soldiers had the potential to experience all of these things. The majority of Roman combat was close combat and permitted no doubt as to the killer. The comparatively short length of the gladius encouraged aggressive fighting. Caesar recounts how his men, facing a shield wall carried by the taller Gauls, leaped up on top of the shields, grabbed the upper edges with one hand, and stabbed downwards into the faces of their opponents (Caes. B. Gall. 1.52). As for mortal danger, Stefan Chrissanthos in his informative book, Warfare in the Ancient World: From the Rise of Uruk to the Fall of Rome, 3500BC-476AD, puts it this way: “For Roman soldiers, though the weapons were more primitive, the terrors and risks of combat were just as real. They had to face javelins, stones, spears, arrows, swords, cavalry charges, and maybe worst of all, the threat of being trampled by war elephants.”

Such terrors are regularly attested. During his campaign in North Africa, Caesar, noting his men’s fear, procured a number of elephants to familiarise his troops with how best to kill the beasts (Caes. B. Afr.72). It should also be noted that it was not unusual for the reserve line to be made up of veterans because they were better able to watch the combat without losing their nerve. Held in reserve, they had to watch stoically as their comrades were injured and killed, and contemplate the awful fact that they might suffer the same fate. This was not a role for the faint of heart.

However, while the Romans certainly had the raw ingredients for combat trauma, the danger for a Roman legionary was much more localised. Mortars could not be lobbed into the Green Zone, suicide bombers did not walk into the market, and garbage piled on the street did not hide powerful explosives. The danger for a Roman soldier was largely circumscribed by his moments on the field of battle, and even here, if he was with the victorious side, the casualties were likely to be light: at Gergovia, a disaster by Caesar’s standards, he lost nearly seven hundred men (Caes. B. Gall. 7.51). In his victory over Pompey the Great at Pharsalus, his casualties numbered only two hundred (Caes. B. Civ. 3.99).

So we are left with the disturbing question: were the stressors really the same?

This is the part where I also defer to my eldest sister as a doctor and surgeon specialising in neurology and just so much smarter than myself.

My eldest sister holds the view in talking to her own American medical peers that despite similar experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq, British soldiers on average report better mental health than US soldiers.

My sister pointed out to research study done by Kings College London way back around 2015 or so that analysed 34 studies produced over a 15-year period (up to 2015) and found that overall there has been no increase in mental health issues among British personnel - with the exception of high rates of alcohol abuse among soldiers. The study was in part inspired the “significant mental health morbidity” among U.S. soldiers and reports that factors such as age and the quality of mental health programs contribute to the difference between the two nation’s servicemen and women.

She pointed out that these same studies showed that post-traumatic stress disorder afflicts roughly 2 to 5% of non-combat U.K. soldiers returning from deployment, while 7% of combat troops report PTSD. According to a General Health Questionnaire, an estimated 16 to 20% of U.K. soldiers have reported symptoms of common mental disorders, similar to the rates of the general U.K. population. In comparison, studies around the same time in 2014 showed U.S. soldiers experience PTSD at rates of 21 to 29%. The U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs estimated PTSD afflicted 11% of veterans returning from Afghanistan and 20% returning from Iraq. Major depression was reported by 14% of major soldiers according to another study commissioned by RAND corporation; roughly 7% of the general U.S. population reports similar symptoms.

It’s always tough comparing rates between countries and is not a reflection of the quality of the fighting soldier. But one finding that consistently and stubbornly refuses to go away is that over the past 20 years reported mental health problems tend to be higher among service personnel and veterans of the USA compared with the UK, Canada, Germany and Denmark.

However my sister strongly cautioned against making hasty judgements. And there could be many variable factors at play. One explanation is that American soldiers are more likely than their British counterparts to be from the reserve forces. Empirical studies showed reservists from both America and British troops were more likely to experience mental illness post-deployment. It was also worth pointing out that American soldiers also tended to be younger - being younger and inexperienced as well as untested on the battlefield, service personnel would naturally run the risk of greater and be more vulnerable to mental illness.

In contrast, the elite forces of the British army, such as your brother’s Parachute Regiment or the Royal Marines, were found to be the least affected by mental illness. It was found that in spite of elite forces experiencing some of the toughest fighting conditions, they tended to enjoy better mental health than non-elite troops. The more elite a unit is or more professional then you find that troops tend to enjoy a very deep bonds of camaraderie. As such the social cohesion of these fighting forces provides a psychological protective buffer. Not for all, but for many.

More intriguing are new avenues of discovery that might go a long way to actually understanding one of the root causes of PTSD. According to my sister, recent research carried out in the US and Europe and published in such prestigious medical journals as the New England Journal of Medicine (US) and the Lancet (UK), seems to establish a causal link between concussive injury and PTSD.

One recent study looked at US soldiers that concerned itself with the effects of concussive injuries upon troops after their return from active duty during the war in Iraq.

Of the majority of soldiers who suffered no combat injuries of any sort, 9.1 per cent exhibited symptoms consistent with PTSD. This allows a baseline for susceptibility of roughly 10% of the population. A slightly higher number (16.2%) of those who were injured in some way, but suffered no concussion, also experienced symptoms. As soon as concussive injuries were involved, however, the rates of PTSD climbed dramatically.

Although only 4.9% of the troops suffered concussions that resulted in complete loss of consciousness, 43.9% of these soldiers noted on their questionnaires that they were experiencing a range of PTSD symptoms. Of the 10.3% of the unit who suffered concussion resulting in confusion but retained consciousness, more than a quarter (27.3%) suffered symptoms. This suggests a high correlation between head trauma and the occurrence of subsequent psychological problems. The authors of the study note that ‘concern has been emerging about the possible long term effect of mild traumatic brain injury or concussion...as a result of deployment related head injuries, particularly those resulting from proximity to blast explosions’

Although these results are preliminary, if confirmed they have profound implications for anyone trying to understand the nature of warfare in the ancient world, especially the Western world.

So why does it matter?

In Roman warfare, wounds were most often inflicted by edged weapons. Romans did of course experience head trauma, but the incidence of concussive injuries would have been limited both by the types of weapons they faced and by the use of helmets. Indeed the efficacy and importance of headgear for example can be deduced from the death of the Epirrote general Pyrrhus from a roof tile during the sack of Argos. It is likely that the Romans designed their helmets with an eye to blunting the force of the blows they most often encountered. Connolly has argued that helmet design in the Republican period suggests a crouching fighting stance (see P. Connolly, ‘The Roman Fighting Technique Deduced from Armour and Weaponry’, Roman Frontier Studies (1989). However my own view is that the change in helmet design may signal instead a shift in the role of troops from performing assaults on towns and fortifications when the empire was expanding (and the blows would more often rain from above) to the defence and guarding of the frontiers.

While the evidence is clear that concussion is not the only risk factor for PTSD, it is so strongly correlated that it suggests that the incidence of PTSD may have risen sharply with the arrival of modern warfare and the technology of gunpowder, shells, and plastic explosives. Indeed, accounts of shell shock from the First World War are common, and it was in the wake of that war that those observing veterans suspected that neurological damage was being caused by exploding shells.

For soldiers of the Second World War and down to our modern day, an artillery barrage is like an invention of hell.

As one American put it in his memoirs of fighting the Japanese at Peleiu and Okinawa, “I developed a passionate hatred for shells. To be killed by a bullet seemed so clean and surgical but shells would not only tear and rip the body, they tortured one’s mind almost beyond the brink of sanity. After each shell I was wrung out, limp and exhausted. During prolonged shelling, I often had to restrain myself and fight back a wild inexorable urge to scream, to sob, and to cry. As Peleliu dragged on, I feared that if I ever lost control of myself under shell fire my mind would be shattered. To be under heavy shell fire was to me by far the most terrifying of combat experiences. Each time it left me feeling more forlorn and helpless, more fatalistic, and with less confidence that I could escape the dreadful law of averages that inexorably reduced our numbers. Fear is many-faceted and has many subtle nuances, but the terror and desperation endured under heavy shelling are by far the most unbearable” (see E.B. Sledge, With the Old Breed at Peleiu and Okinanwa, 2007).

The psychological effect of shelling seems to result from the combined effect of awaiting injury while at the same time having no power to combat it.

There is another aspect that I alluded to above which is the psychological and societal conditioning of the Roman soldier. In other words a Roman male’s social and cultural expectations of his place in the world. Feelings of helplessness and fatalism were probably a less alien experience for most Romans – even those in the upper classes. In general, the Romans inhabited a world that was significantly more brutal and uncertain than our own.

This another way of saying that the Roman and 21st century combat are very different in a variety of ways that subject the modern soldier to a good deal more stress than the legionary was ever likely to suffer. And the Roman’s societal preparation – his life before the battle – was far more robust than that we enjoy today.

Take infant mortality. In the modern developed world, our infant mortality rates are about ten per thousand. In Rome, it is estimated that this number was three hundred per thousand. Three-tenths of infants would die within the first year, and an additional fifth would not make it to the age of ten - 50% of children would not survive childhood. Anecdotal evidence supports these statistics: Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, gave birth to twelve children between 163 bc and 152 bc; all twelve survived their father’s death in 152 bc, but only three survived to adulthood. Marcus Aurelius and his wife, Faustina, had at least twelve children but only the future emperor Commodus survived.  

Then look at how that child grows up. The typical Roman child would be raised in a society that readily accepted ultra-violent arena entertainment, mob justice, frequent and bloody warfare as a fact of life. This was reinforced by religious and societal encouragement to see war as natural and beneficial, open butchering of food animals, a total lack of support structures for the poor and less able.

Compared to the legionary our modern soldier has been protected from such realities to a greater degree than at any other point in history, and will thus be far less well prepared for the horror of a warfare that contains far more stress factors than for a man who might fight a handful of battles in his military career, with long periods of relative calm in between, state of war notwithstanding. Modern special and elite forces training often emphasises the brutalisation and ‘rebuilding’ of the recruit in readiness for this step into darkness, but it seems likely that no such conditioning would have been needed two thousand years ago.

I would argue that we experience war very differently from the way the Romans did. Our modern identity is defined far more by our Western Christian heritage than our Western Classical roots. They are in fact world apart when it comes to ethics and morality. Consider the fact that when we talk of war and killing today we often do so through conflict between our civilian moral codes – which offer the strict injunction not to do violence to other human beings – and wartime, when men are commanded to violate such prohibitions. It is a terrible thing to try to navigate ‘Thou shalt not kill’ and the necessity of taking a life in combat.

It is sometimes the case that the qualities that make the best soldier do not make the best civilian, a point amply attested in Greek poetry by heroes such as Heracles and Odysseus.

The Romans, for their part, celebrated heroes such as Cincinnatus, who could command effectively and then leave behind the power he wielded to return to his humble plough. It is important, however, when evaluating combat and its effects in the ancient world, that we do not read our ambivalence about violence onto the Romans. They inhabited an empire whose prosperity was quite openly tied to conquest.

As M. Zimmerman writes in his academic article, “Violence in Late Antiquity Reconsidered’ (2007), “The pain of the other, seen on the distorted faces of public and private monuments, or heard in the screams of criminals in the amphitheatre, reassured Romans of their own place in the world. Violence was a pervasive presence in the public space; indeed, it was an important basis for its existence, pertaining as it did not only to victories over external enemies but also to the internal order of the state.”

Violence then was both the means and the expression of Roman power. The Roman soldier was its instrument. The Roman warrior then would have brought a different perspective to lethal violence, and would have had a far more restricted moral circle to his modern counterpart – his friends and family, clan, patron and clients, as opposed to millions of fellow citizens via the internet and social media.

Part II follows next post

#question #ask #PTSD #war #roman #greek #classical #legionary #spartan #mental health #depression #trauma #warfare #british army #mental illness #homecoming #soldiers #combat veterans #veterans

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claraxbarton · 3 years

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Probably literally no one wants to read this, but on the off chance anyone wants to CHOOSE to read my thoughts on fanworks in relation to traditional western culture and not merely be subjected to them via DM during an innocent (though angsty as all hell) convo on the parallels between Stucky and Destiel well, here’s 1700 words on it:

—-

Actually. And here’s the thing that works so damn well with both bucky/Steve and Dean/Cas is that there is no clear “damsel/hero” dichotomy that we see in classic heteronormative relationships.

But like.

The thing about fan fiction, and AO3 specifically, is that it primarily features homoerotic and homoromatic relationships between two cisgender white men. Yes that is changing- mostly thanks to the rise of KPOP (the surprise lord and savior of 2020) and Hulu and Netflix optioning East Asian movies and television series to spread those narratives. Which is an entire thing on its own because so many of those like- is it Untamed? Feature homosocial environments and thus- the point is. The landscape is changing and yay.

But AO3s success is largely predicated on two main ships: Stucky and Destiel. Yes there are others that are huge and continue to grow, but these are the two that I feel (with no data or research to support my assertion) helped AO3 take precedence over ffnet as THE site for fan work hosting.

Now, the contradictory thing about fan work, the thing that is so often described as hypocritical and/or fetishizing is that the majority feature two cisgender white men engaged in homoerotic and/or homoromantic relationships when the majority of the readers and creators of fan works are neither.

Data supports the supposition that most fan work creators and consumers identify as non-male. And in that subset the majority identify as female.

Simply based on generic population data, the correlation can be made (again no effort put into googling this because I have sewing to do) that the majority of this group is likely cisgendered heterosexual (white) women.

However, fan works and fan engagement are a proven community for fans who do not ascribe to the heteronormative gender binary or heterosexual and/or heteroromantic relationship structure and are, in fact, not just white. Again- imagine numbers that are factual because sewing.

Fandom is not unique to entertainment media. We can trace it back to, well, as long as we can trace it back. What are the Venus of Willendorf statues of not fanart? The Parthenon? Egyptian funereal pyramids and their contents? Renaissance art in general? Is the King James Bible not a “fix it” for the previously canonical literature (that’s a hot take don’t come for me.) (you could also consider the King James Version an attempt at song fic).

In more contemporary culture, we have sports fandoms- primarily male dominated. Primarily cisgendered heterosexual white male dominated.

The fandom culture of sports fans has been described as that of collectors and curators- they want memorabilia and statistics and gatekeeping actions often require proof of knowledge or commitment via possessions.

Meanwhile, entertainment media fandoms- such as those experiences on AO3- are more creative than curatorial. Instead of efforts to organize, delineate and create hierarchies within fandoms (yes this happens but is not the overriding force), these sorts of fandoms seek to create fanWORKS and fanCOMMUNITIES. Yes, fantasy sports leagues exist and so do sports teams fan communities. But I ask you, where in sports fandoms is there a GISH?Or an AO3?

The reality of contemporary western dominated culture (entertainment,sports,economic,political, artistic and philosophical) is one that features white cisgendered heterosexual men at the apex-

Both as creators and consumers despite prevailing realities in population and cultural zeitgeist.

As such, most western dominated fandoms are homosocial: dominated by one group, that of white cisgendered heterosexual men.

All that is to say, most star athletes are straight white dudes. Most movie stars are straight white dudes. Most politicians. Most wealth holders and distributors. Most creators.

Why? Because patriarchy. But the WHY isn’t the point of this long ass word vomit.

It’s the So What?

Sports fandoms are the territory of these same homosocial networks.

But media fandoms are the territory of those NOT at the top of that hierarchy.

While the CONTENT and the original content creators remain part of that homosocial white cisgendered heterosexual group, the consumers of media are largely NOT OF THAT GROUP despite what the content creators may desire or believe (see: the creatives behind supernatural and their ridiculous ability to convince themselves that their core demographic are straight white dudes 15-40).

As such, content that features the patriarchy is primarily heterosexual, heteronormative, racist (acutely or passively), misogynistic, homophobic, homosocial and, well, lacking.

Take, for example, MCU and Supernatural as franchises. Our main characters are primarily white dudes. White dudes who mostly interact with other white dudes, whose “tribes” (brethren, compatriots, coworkers) are also white dudes. Yes, smurfs exist- the token woman or non-white person. Sometimes even a queer person (gender or sexual, though very, very rarely gender queer).

The fact that whenever our “heroes” interact with anyone outside their tribe or homosocial group they are almost inevitably evil, dead or about to die is telling. How many women die in supernatural? How many people of color? How many villains in the MCU (and while the X-MEN franchise isn’t necessarily within the MCU because Hollywood, the queer coding within X-MEN is encyclopedic) are queer coded?

Now, I’ve said repeatedly that heterosexual and heteronormative relationships are the mean within such media. Our white dudes bang white ladies, love white ladies, but act like manly white men and don’t put romantic feelings ahead of things like patriotism and pain unless they have “earned” the right to such (a trial that often involves a lot of deaths that are never addressed or given recourse. See:endgame)

Bros before hoes is more or less the rule of western mainstream media.

As such, relationships that demonstrate respect, trust, vulnerability, compassion and resiliency are almost always homosocial: or they are between two bros (no homo) and not between a man and a woman.

You trust the guy at your back, not the woman because you 1. Want to bang her 2. She’s probably going to die 3. She’s a damsel 4. Seriously she’s probably going to die.

Which all means: most of the well developed characters and relationships within mainstream western media are homosocial- they exist between two members of the same group. In our case, those straight white bros (which of course within supernatural can sometimes be taken literally in the case of Wincest).

Which means, the consumers of this media- mostly not white straight cisgendered dudes- are left with content that doesn’t represent who they are or what they want or even can aspire to.

So what’s the solution? Collect data and memorabilia? Sure why not.

OR: use your beloved media, those well developed characters and relationships, to create something new.

Fan work.

We circle back, at last, to the idea that fan work creators and consumers can be hypocritical or contradictory by creating works that feature that which they are not- these white dudes in love (romantic, sexual) with each other.

This supposition suggests that creators and consumers are using the characters and situations in fan work as replacements for what they lack in heterosocial relationships- either in media or in their own lives. Or, put another way, fans replace either Bucky or Steve with themselves and image the other to be their “love” interest.

To an extent, this may be true. That both parties are usually written to have male genitalia while most fans do not is where so many of the hypocritical and fetishization issues come into play.

But the reality is, fans are working with what they are given. Most fans don’t have dicks. A generous portion of fans don’t want to engage with dicks is sexual ways (or engage in sex at all) (and it must be emphasized that the majority of works on AO3 are rated T not E).

But the value in reimagining, subtextualizing, or deconstructing the mostly platonically presented homosocial relationships in western media as homosexual or homoerotic or homoromantic is not (for the most part) about fetish or about placeholders and substitutions for the fan.

It is about creating fanwork that reflects the society a fan lives in or wishes to live in.

Just as the sports fan will go to a bar and paint themselves blue and deride the Yankees because they want to envision a society that upholds a white cisgendered male patriarchy, media fanWORKS are created because we do NOT have a society that values romantic or erotic relationships between equals (for in traditional western society the only equal to a white cisgendered man is another white dude).

So, at last, a return to Stucky and Destiel.

The relationships created in fanWORKS between these two aren’t simply those where one is the “‘man” in the relationship and the other is the “woman”.

Yes those fanWORKS exist.

But most utilize the strong bonds of trust and respect and vulnerability and dare I say shared experience to create romantic and erotic relationships that are both more complex and more realistic than those actually portrayed in the same media.

In Stucky, we see Steve save Bucky and Bucky save Steve. We see Bucky hurt Steve and Steve hurt Bucky. We see their positions as EQUALS as a means by which to create a world where fulfilling relationships can exist that do not automatically restrict one (or more) parties to that of “chattel”.

The same is true of Destiel.

And both relationships feature key similarities within the original media that make for such rich possibilities.

Castiel saves Dean from hell. Castiel is brainwashed by the patriarchy to view Dean as lesser and even to kill him (this happens multiple times).

While Steve saves Bucky from Azzano, it is Bucky who saved Steve for almost their entire lives before that point. And after that point the two go back and forth to save each other. And let us not forget that Bucky was ordered to kill Steve but “he knew me”.

Dean and Castiel go through a similar ping pong match of saving each other.

This isn’t just about being equal in strength- it’s about being equal in vulnerability.

Which, to belabor the point, doesn’t exist in mainstream media’s romantic or erotic relationships nor is it widely taught or reinforced in western culture as a whole.

In conclusion.

Stucky and Destiel can save the world.

But probably KPOP would do it better and faster and cooler.

—-

Totally feel free to engage with your own opinions. Because I have to go sew now but later? Later we should talk friends and foes.

#fandom #meta #critical #fanfiction #fanfic #fanart #mcu #supernatural #SPN #stucky #destiel #Steve Rogers #captain america #bucky barnes #winter soldier #dean winchester #castiel #deancas

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simpsonsnight · 4 years

Text

Episode #579

WHAT THIS?

Treehouse of Horror XXVI Season 27 - Episode 5 | October 25, 2015 Wanna know something that sucks a bunch? That promo image isn’t even from the episode proper. This is actually pretty common; a promo image is composed of assets from the episode to create a scene that resembles a scene from the episode. But here’s the thing; the opening sequence does feature Frank Grimes. The only problem is that it’s a fucking John K guest animation, so he looks nothing like himself. It looks atrocious. This leads me to believe that it may have been a last-minute redo of the scene, and that they originally did a version of it in the regular Simpsons style, maybe? Anyway, everything John K has done since Ren & Stimpy is unwatchable, and I’m not just talking about sitting with the fact that he’s a pedophile rapist. This one was publicized a lot cuz it features Sideshow Bob capturing Bart and finally murdering him. That’s not a spoiler per se; his story primarily has to do with the aftermath of the murder. The second one is a parody of Godzilla, and then eventually it’s a parody of the remake, and then it turns out he’s real. Oh he’s played by Homer. The last one is a parody of the movie Chronicle, which luckily I worked at a video store when it came out on video, so I actually saw like, every movie from 2011-2012. Then I punched a hole through the door to the office and didn’t show up to work because I was too embarrassed for being pissed. Are any of these particularly good? I guess the Sideshow Bob one is alright. But, no. ESPECIALLY the dogshit John K opening. Jesus Christ. It’s just embarrassing how awful he is. I wish animation people would stop sucking him off. He only only likes getting sucked off by middle-schoolers. So, at the end of the Chronicle one, Maggie starts playing with landmarks from Springfield, and it seems like she’s doing something that is going to like, be a clever thing? Like she’s rearranging a bunch of stuff. Then I realized all she’s doing is treating stuff like it’s one of those baby toys where you put smaller and smaller plastic hoops over a plastic peg. And you watch her do it like “okay what’s she doing, where’s the pay off” and then its like “oh that’s all she’s doing? okay.” I had to rack my brains to figure out what it was cuz I don’t currently own a baby.

THE B-SODE:

Robot Chicken: "Smurf-tastrophe!" (segment) Season 3 - Episode 13 | November 11, 2007 So, spoiler for the Sideshow Bob segment. I was so sure that there was an Xavier Renegade Angel episode where he creates a cloning machine and a murder machine and feeds a never-ending stream of clones into it. And maybe there is! But it’s also another Simpsons Halloween episode. I’m fucked! Anyway, this Robot Sketch is about Gargamel finally getting to eat smurfs cuz of Hurricane Katrina or something. Fairly funny, even though I hate Robot Chicken.

Mary Shelley's Frankenhole: "Maly Sherry's Hyralius! Mutant Monster!!" Season 2 - Episode 9 | March 18, 2012 Hey, y’all remember Frankenhole, right? It’s a Dino show! This was a fun one, it was about Ken Jeong yelling at the camera for being accused of playing too many coo-- AHHAHAHAHA I can’t say that!!!! oh man, I got myself good with that. I almost said a slur. Anyway, Ken Jeong played too many ching-chong guys and he pissed off a buncha knobs and then made this episode. Epic much???

Mad: "iChronicle" (segment) Season 2 - Episode 26 | April 23, 2012 This show sucked, right? Anyway, they did a spoof of Chronicle. Ever seen THE SOURCE? aka THE SURGE? It’s from like 2002 and I think it was supposed to be a rip-off of THE FACULTY, but it actually accidentally is more like Chronicle, except less fun (Chronicle is pretty fun. Well, the second act is fun). Anyway, my wife is an extra in it

#simpsons #season 27 #treehouse of horror #robot chicken #mary shelly's frankenhole #mad

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animatedminds · 4 years

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Sonic! He Can Really Move

So, the Sonic movie has turned out to be rather decent. Not surprising, given that the buzz way back before the redesign was that the plot was good, it was just the visuals that needed divine intervention, but having seen it myself and being such a huge Sonic fan that I myself have a dream of pitching a Sonic television program one day, I had to see it for myself... and I was not disappointed. I’ll try to keep them down, but this is a reaction/review and will have the occasional spoiler. Keep warned.

First and foremost, the basic plot is very ubiquitous Hollywood cliche. You know the one: rather than adapt the actual story of an animated/video game character, the studio puts in a plot where said character is forced into the “real world” and has to have an adventure with a mundane everyman, wackily upending their lives. On a bare bones level, there’s not much new about the plot: if you’ve seen Smurfs 1, you’ll probably know what the progression is going to be. However, whereas most other versions of this plot are evidently rooted in a lack of respect or faith for the source material beyond brand recognition, the opposite could not be more true for this movie. For one, there is an actually well constructed reason for this plot to be taking place (in fact, if not for a couple things I’ll mention later and - most notably - the way the plot ends, I could even buy some of this story actually having taken place in the games’ backstory, and given that SEGA is pushing the “separate human and animal world” concept for Sonic with dubious claim that they’ve been doing it all along, it’s possible - in fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if this plot was actually SEGA’s idea), but even that works primarily because of the second point here: that the movie is still from Sonic’s perspective - still Sonic’s story - all the way through, which is unique for this setup. The human buddy has a plot, a pretty engaging if textbook one, but it’s a subplot made to better characterize him. His plot is still largely filtered through Sonic’s perspective (and Sonic’s through his, to some extent), making the whole kind come of as a bit different than usual - especially since Sonic is so endearing.

I’ve seen him described as “obnoxious, but in the endearing way that a child can be,” which is pretty accurate. He’s definitely written as younger than usual, still getting used to himself and the world, treating everything with a wide eyed ignorance but a strong sense of idealism that makes him fun to watch no matter how cocky he is. Something especially that hit me is the way he views the world: despite my use of “mundane” earlier to describe the human world here, something I despise about a lot of media today is the narrative that if you’re a regular person, you’re a nobody who exists to get out of the way of the somebodies of the world - that normalcy is the anathema to the exceptional. It’s something I’ve come to dislike about The Rise of Skywalker more and more as I think about it, and it’s pretty much everywhere in fiction. But not here. You’d expect an adaptation of Sonic to be arrogant and disdainful of others - he’s not like that in the games at all, but adaptations love to change him into that kind of character. But here? Sonic loves being able to do anything. He loves doing the cool stuff, he loves doing the mundane stuff. He treats sitting on a barstool or sitting around eating donuts with the same excitement as riding a motorcycle, and is portrayed as someone enjoying life for the first time.

He reminds me a lot of characters like Wander or Snoopy, who symbolize how true freedom is the ability to experience everything you can and delight in all of it, even if it’s something other people would dismiss as beneath them. And this ideology was a very good idea: it’s one of the main things that makes Sonic so lovable here. Without it, he may well have come off as far more annoying.

Carrey is fantastic as Eggman / Robotnik (and yes, he is referred to as both). They nail the ‘silly, but not at all harmless or unthreatening” angle that makes games Eggman such a great villain - he’s highly dangerous and also a delight to watch. Plus, ideology wise, he is the opposite of what I’ve just described: he considers himself above normal people, openly disdains people who just try to live their lives and succeed on their own, and believes the world belongs to him because he’s exceptional. He’s a perfect contrast to Sonic, and he only gets more and more awesome as the movie goes on. My favorite shot in the whole film is a bit towards the end where he unveils an entire weapon system on Sonic, and the shot goes red as lights and klaxons fire up, with just his evil grin in the center. I can’t resist a good villain shot.

Other stuff. Sonic is fast. Incredibly so. This isn’t the games’ momentum based Sonic who has to build up to top speed, has relatively normal reaction times and only goes a couple hundred miles per hour once he gets there. This Sonic is more akin to Fox’s version of Quicksilver, or the Flash: able to think faster than a drop of water can hit the ground, and move accordingly. This was clearly put in for humor and setpieces, but... it’s not the best idea imo, as super-buffing a character for a gag tends to. It kind of undercuts the idea that Sonic is ever in danger, since in the action scenes he’s always running slower than we’ve seen him go in other scenes. And he’s already pretty strong in comparison anyway: this Sonic has electric charge powers that give him a super mode capable of seriously incredible damage, with nary a Chaos Emerald in sight. At this point, I’m half expecting him to be revealed has a Captain Marvel-esque “absorbed an Emerald’s power” backstory in the sequel.

And yes, I’m pretty sure there’s going to be a sequel. This movie has two - count ‘em - two obvious sequel hooks, and is making bank. SEGA rolled out the mat for this - there’s even a SEGA specific movie studio intro, which gives off the impression they’ll be doing a lot more adapting in the future (how about a decent HOTD movie?).

And TBH, I wouldn’t mind at all. There’s a lot to be unexplored. Sonic’s world is very empty thus far - the movie canonizes certain areas as having been in other regions (Green Hills, as apposed to Green Hill, in human world for example - whether the name is an intentional nod to the Game Gear version or just a coincidental twist is unknown. Mushroom Hill, or something similar, is meanwhile in a completely different region), plus we get blips of echidnas and maybe even myth arcs, plus a certain character that only pops up in the Stinger.

There’s a lot to look forward to, and as a Sonic fan I’m pretty here for it. Here’s hoping it can improve on what it’s done so far and be even better in the inevitable #2. But as for me: recommended.

#sonic the hedghog movie #sonic the hedgehog #sega #doctor robotnik #doctor eggman #jim carrey #paramount pictures #ben schwartz #recommended #movie reaction #movie review #animated minds

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iron-fam-stan · 5 years

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iron dad au headcanons when tony stark recused nebula from abusive adoptive father thanos

Sorry that it took so long to answer! It's more of a fic than anything else.

(A/N It's a Human Nebula AU and I Headcanon her to look her actress Karen Gillian. She is like 10 give or take here)

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Nebula didn't really know what to think of the whole situation playing out in front of her. What she did know, was what she is feeling even if it was a mess of feelings twisting inside her like aggressive snakes fight for dominance.

Fear, confusing, relief, guilt, anger, revenge, panic and anxiety - just to name a few. These emotions made her stomach twist and her head hurt. More that it already did.

Nebula thanked the stars that the bleeding had stopped with the stitches. But most of her pretty red hair was now gone. Her beloved red hair that her father never dared to touch before.

Before this afternoon. In public even!! Which shocked nebula to the core. Normally her father took his anger, about his failed attempts of making "a better world" through what is basically genocide, out on his children in privat.

Most on her though. She always had been the punching bag and the tag along for financial gain. Nobody liked her, but she doesn't have anywhere else to go.

Her sister Gamora always had been her father's favourite and therefore got the least of his anger. Nebula resents her for it, but also wishes to be closer to her sister.

But Gamora doesn't seem to care. So nebula wouldn't dare bare herself like that.

So Nebula tried to survive. Tried to keep to herself. And as invisible as possible.

She studied hard and got good grades. She tried making herself useful. But Gamora always was better than her. Making Nebula a failure in being able to be as good as her sister.

But today her father really had snapped (pun intended). Nebula didn't really know nor understand what exactly set him off. Maybe it was a lot of things not going like her father wanted them to, or maybe she did something completely wrong without noticing or maybe both. Or Something entirely different.

Nebula never pretended to understand her father and his thinking process.

Nebula was stuck in her head she didn't hear her name being called. She jolts and looks up. Right into the eyes of the kind stranger that saved her.

Calling him a stranger would be wrong. Nebula knew who he was. The Tony Stark. One of the most famous person on the planet, a genius and the owner of Stark Industries. Her father's former biggest rival in terms of weapons.

Her father hated him and Nebula immediately liked him, primarily to spite her father but only to herself. She would never say that out loud.

But the more she watched him from afar the more she liked him more than her father and most of his associates. He may totally be drama queen. Nebula has seen enough of his public speeches and appearances to know that without anyone telling her. She always found it be distracting, but only has theories on what it was supposed to distract from. She could easily emphasize with that.

"Smurfette" Tony Stark kneeled in front of her. His famous sunglasses in his breast pocket. His eyes now free of barriers were soft and glassy and sad and kind and solely focused on her eyes and not the top of her head. Concern was clearly visible on his face.

Nebula felt she would burst in ugly tears and sobs if she even opened her mouth for a second. So she just looked at him confused.

'Smurfette?' she seems to ask with her face. Because Tony Stark points at her Smurfette shirt and smurf blue jeans she is wearing.

She totally forgotten about that. Smurfs, how she loved them. They were a big, blue happy family without anyone getting left behind. And Nebula always wanted a family were everybody loved everybody.

She holds back a sob. "Sshhh. Sssh. Nebula everything will be fine." Stark says softly to her. His hands hover awkwardly over her, because he isn't sure if she would be ok with him touching her. She shakes her head.

Nothing is going to be fine. As soon as she is going to be alone with her father again, everything is going to so much worse than is was already. A sob escaped this time.

"You're not going back to Thanos. Not as long as I am alive." Stark determined, unrestrained hatred for her father clearly audible in his voice. Nebula's head shoots up, her eyes wide with shock. "What would you think about me and my fiancee looking after you until we find a best solution for you. One that makes you feel safe and loved? How does that sound like?"

Nebula could only state. She was sure she misheard him or something. This can't be real. She always dreamt about a way out. But she never thought she would get. This has to be a cruel joke or something. Because why would someone ever care about her.

"Nebula? Hey. What do you say? Of course, If you don't want to live with me, I would find the best possible foster parents for you. Just say something, Smurfette." Stark says to her with a encouraging smile and so, so kind and loving eyes. "it's your choice."

Her head hurts, her eyes are watering and her whole body is shaking. But for some reason she believes him. Because he has been nothing but nice and kind and attentive and considerate to her without making her feel pitied. No makes her feel seen and worth at least some human decency.

And Nebula loved it. She only got a little of this kind of attention and she already decided she couldn't and shouldn't live without it. She trusts him. She didn't know why, but she does. She believes or wants to believe that he will find the best for her. Because he has been nothing but kind and nice and loving to her. So Nebula takes the plunge and throws herself into his arms and starts sobbing.

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I hope you like it!

#iron family #iron dad #tony stark #nebula #iron man #pepperony #avengers endgame #marvel #avengers #mcu #marvel cinematic universe #my fic #ask

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heatherofthenight · 5 years

Text

Reaction to Julia

I have absolutely no idea what’s going on with fandom right now. My Mac has decided that it doesn’t want to play nice with any apps or browsers despite my attempts to clear caches. Meh. We’ll see if it can hold steady for the two minutes I need to post this.

As always this is 1) primarily about the good ship D&A, and 2) shallow.

Deran & Adrian on the Deck

Adrian must’ve been hammered from the party if he didn’t know something was up with Deran. I enjoyed the little eyeroll/sigh he gave when Deran huffed inside; wishing Deran would just use his words instead of leaving? I think he changed his tune once Deran started talking. Deran is completely turned inside out by what’s happening and it doesn’t help that his partner knows just enough to be dangerous but not enough to understand how very, very bad this could be. Not just in terms of doing time (I’m pretty sure Jack and his Crew wouldn’t be pleased to see Adrian) but for his overall health status (breathing vs. non-breathing).

Mirror Symbolism: How cool was the camera angle showing Adrian’s reaction to Deran’s words through the mirror? It was not only aesthetically interesting but I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to mean something. Here’s the little bit I know about the symbolism of mirrors but I would love to hear more theories.

Mirrors reflect light. They reflect the world around us. Spiritually, light can mean illumination, awareness, wisdom—mirrors reflect truth. In psychology mirrors often symbolize the threshold between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. Do any of these apply to Adrian in Season 4?

I first noticed the use of mirrors in Janine (S4, E1) when Adrian left the bed and stared at his reflection in the bathroom after lying to Deran about why he’s not doing well in competitions; I interpret this scene as the mirror reflecting Adrian’s lies, to Deran but not himself, and he doesn’t like what he sees. Adrian again looks in the bathroom mirror during Know Thy Enemy (S4, E7) after Pope scares the shit out of him at the beach house. It feels like he’s searching for truth—does Deran want him to leave? Does Deran’s family know what he’s done? In Julia it’s not Adrian staring into the mirror—it’s Deran. This might be a stretch but I think Deran is seeking out his light, his truth, and that’s Adrian. Remember when Pearce asked Adrian if he thought Deran would give up his life for him? I think in this scene Deran has made his decision—yes, he would do anything to keep Adrian. I wish we could’ve gotten more out of this scene instead of Deran stalking away without giving--or receiving--comfort.

Shallow observation: When Adrian realizes that Deran’s not supposed to handle him in a fun way, he gives such a wide-eyed look that, in that moment, I was struck with his resemblance to a Precious Moments figurine. I think some of that is due to how his pupils bleed into his dark blue eyes giving him a doll-like appearance but he also has a knack for communicating naivety in his expressions. Oh, and I would like to add that it was nice to see Adrian going barefoot at home.

Deran Visits Casa Craig

Renn hugging Deran again—that gives us more history about Renn than any words could. Craig read Deran the riot act for not wanting to hold Baby Nick. TBH, Deran looks extra rough at the moment so I’m not sure his declining to hold Nick was a bad move. I wasn’t sure what to make of Craig’s response to Deran’s request for passports. He was preaching family first but Deran pulled the ‘please do it for me’ card and Deran is family. This makes me think of Exit Strategy when Pope said he was always there for family; maybe Deran can count on his brothers to back his play?

The Drop

Up until this scene I wasn’t sure if Deran had requested one passport or two (I think my TV must have especially shitty sound, or he just has a low voice, but sometimes I can’t hear what Jake is saying) but I then it hit me: Deran was definitely saying goodbye to his baby, The Drop.

Craig & Baby Nick

Is there anything sweeter than a guy gone on his burrito baby? These two are adorable. And we got confirmation that Craig was getting passports and he wanted them to be a little worn and less shiny so at least he doesn’t want the guys to get caught.

Run!

Very fitting music in the that scene. Frist Smurfette ran to Colin’s psycho brother and then Deran asked Craig to make sure everything’s okay at The Drop before he takes off. When Craig wants to know how long Deran will be gone, like a week, Deran confirms just until Adrian is settled; if these two make it out I don’t foresee Deran thinking Adrian is settled. Ever. They will be joined at the hip (or other body parts).

Frankie & J

This chick sure knows how to stroke the male ego. I thought J was smarter than to fall for her lines. Maybe he’s going to turn things back on Frankie? J certainly doesn’t like women.

70’s Color Schemes & Not So Happily Ever Afters

Smurfette’s dream home had me giggling with the harvest gold and avocado greens. Did I miss the burnt orange? That was the trifecta of 70’s decorating. Although I don’t remember mint fridges. She always liked Oceanside! Andrew after Colin’s favorite hockey player! It’s too bad her one-true-love bled out in front of her. Could you picture Smurf acting crushed by the death of a loved one like Smurfette was back in the day? No, me either.

Pope & Angela

I liked the exchange between these two. Angela: No do-overs. Pope: Why not? Makes me hope Pope will give Adrian a do-over when the time comes. Pope’s insistence on honesty is very interesting to me—is that also going to extend to Smurf?

Parting Thought

I politely requested tears, cuddling and sex. I was denied all three in this ep. Come on, writers—don’t fail me now!

#deran x adrian #Adrian Dolan #deran cody #(shallow) review

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overwatchleaguereport · 6 years

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Overwatch: I Made a Smurf Account For An Experiment

As OWL takes a breather, I thought I would write about some topics I rarely touch. As I wrote them, I realized they all shared a common theme.

As such, I now officially declare this “Finding Peace In Overwatch” Week. I hope you enjoy this, the first of three installments!

To begin with, I’d like to talk about Overwatch’s competitive mode and the experiment I ran regarding SR.

A General History

For the last three seasons, I have hovered in the low platinum range. No matter how much I’ve flexed, no matter how much I’ve one-tricked, I have not been able to rise in the ranks.

Initially, I blamed myself. But no matter how well I played, my teams would often contain toxic players, unskilled players, poorly positioned players, or even players who obviously didn’t understand counters. While I admit I was sometimes the potato of my team, for most games, I played my role and played it well.

I felt extremely frustrated the longer this went on. I began to doubt the effectiveness of the ranking system around the same time everyone else in the fandom did.

As Season 9 wore on, and my SR hovered just above Gold, I started thinking more about the theory that my MMR had something to do with my struggles.

The Idea

MMR, short for Matchmaking Rating, is a statistical value many video games use to determine player skill. In Overwatch, MMR is a secret, hidden number, and is usually only lost or gained by playing modes like Quick Play.

A popular theory regarding Overwatch’s SR system is that it is intricately linked with the hidden MMR system. In essence, if you have high MMR, it is hypothetically easier to rise in the ranks because the game secretly thinks you deserve to be in those ranks. If you have low MMR, the game won’t award you as much SR if you start to climb above that secret MMR.

For me, this made a lot of sense. When I picked up Overwatch on its launch week, I hadn’t played many shooters in my life. Whenever my friends watched me play Quick Play, they would literally double over laughing at how bad my aim was. I couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with Symmetra’s primary fire. It was only after consistent, dedicated play that my aim started to improve. Shortly after I felt confident in my own abilities, I switched from Quick Play over to Competitive and rarely went back.

Because I was such a garbage player at the beginning, it made sense to me that my Overwatch MMR was low. It made sense that I could have been held back by my own noobish gameplay from the early days. But I wanted to be sure. I wanted to know. Was my invisible MMR potentially holding me back?

So I decided to test the MMR/SR theory.

I decided to create a Smurf.

My Background

I play Overwatch primarily on console, specifically the PS4. My main account is called AmasWatch, which you can view here. I named the account after the novel I self-published.

For further reference, I wanted to outline my specific history in every season of Overwatch. Note that I did not participate in Season 1, as I didn’t even want to know how bad I was at the time.

My Rankings for Each Season

Season 2

High: 2223

Final: 1994

Season 3

High: 2404

Final: 2404

Season 4

High: 2435

Final: 2259

Season 5

High: 2500

Final: 2500

Season 6

High: 2893

Final: 2589

Season 7

High: 2503

Final: 2197

Season 8

High: 2633

Final: 2502

Season 9

High: 2650

Final: 2517

The Smurf

Because I was playing on console, it was easy for me to create a Smurf. All I had to do was make another free Playstation account and log into Overwatch. I named this Smurf OWLERGuy.

My goal was to play my very best. I didn’t want to take advantage of less-skilled players, like the fifty-eliminations-per-match Widowmakers that prey upon my wife down in Bronze. I wanted to be matched with players of my same skill.

It took me the better part of a month, but I leveled up OWLERGuy to the necessary Level 25 about a week before the end of Season 9. I took a break from that account for a while, instead enjoying Retribution and other arcade games on the AmasWatch account. Then, once Season 10 began, I began my placement matches.

Placements

My goal was to do my placements first for the Smurf (OWLERGuy) and then for my main (AmasWatch). I did all twenty matches over the course of a week and a half. The results went as follows.

OWLERGuy:

Win – Win – Tie – Loss – Win – Win – Loss – Win – Win – Win

Final SR after placement matches: 2969

Top Three Heroes (According to Career Profile)

Moira – 1 Hour

Junkrat – 15 minutes

Reinhardt – 6 minutes

AmasWatch:

Win – Win – Loss – Loss* – Loss – Loss – Win – Loss – Loss – Loss

Final SR after placement matches: 2442

Top Three Heroes (According to Career Profile)

Moira – 1 Hour

Orisa – 20 minutes

Reinhardt – 11 minutes

*Our team had a leaver after the first round.

My Initial Conclusion

Aha! I thought to myself. My MMR was holding me back on my main account!

I was very pleased. I was only one or two wins away from my first ever Diamond rank. With my excellent winning streak, I was sure I would reach it in no time.

So I played five more games. The first match, someone left ten seconds in, and the game was cancelled. The same thing happened in the second match.

My third game resulted in a loss. My team picked poor counters, and I wasn’t surprised by how it turned out. What I was surprised by was my SR loss. In a single game, I went from 2969 SR to a 2918 SR, a 51 point drop. This was in stark contrast to my main account, where I never gain or lose more than 25 SR at a time. What was even more surprising to me was that I had 20,000 healing on Dorado as Moira. I felt a performance like that should cushion the loss in SR a bit.

For my fourth game, I saw a similar outcome. I had about 16,000 healing on King’s Row with Moira. We lost the game. I went from 2918 to 2865 SR. I didn’t perform nearly as well for my fifth game, where I only had about 5,000 healing on Moira. We also had a guy who was raging before the game even started, and I think that brought the whole team down. Either way, it didn’t matter. My SR was now at 2818, far below my main account’s career best, the 2893 SR I achieved in Season 6.

I knew I could go and play more games on the Smurf account, see if wins award me the same amount of SR as losses take away. At the same time, I believe I have my answer to the MMR question, at least according to my personal experience.

My Final Conclusion …

There’s a saying that Overwatch placement matches are simply normal competitive matches where you can’t see your SR gains and losses. I had quite the collection of wins for my Smurf’s placement matches, and I’ll admit, I was hard carried for a few of those matches. I think those wins alone helped bump me up to that high platinum rank, but the game knew I wasn’t performing at the level I should have been. As such, when the losses came, I really felt the hit.

Had I continued playing in like manner, I’m sure my Smurf’s SR would have stabilized in the low platinum range, just like where my main account usually lies. And honestly, now that I’ve done this experiment and looked at my skill from a more objective mindset, I’m not surprised.

… I Deserve My Rank

Compared to most people, I am a hardcore gamer. Sony sent me an email at the end of this last year, telling me I spent 1500 hours on my console over the course of 2017. That’s nearly 30 hours a week, almost another full time job. Over a fifth of that time was spent just playing Overwatch.

But 300 hours over the course of a single year is barely any time at all compared to the amount of time Overwatch’s Grandmasters, Masters, and even Diamond players put into the game.

Though I sometimes take breaks from the game, I’m currently averaging about 7-12 hours of Overwatch a week. In contrast, the Overwatch pros put more than forty hours a week into the game. Anyone wanting to rise toward their level has to be putting in a comparable amount of time.

And I, simply, am not.

Where I Found My Peace

I have a family, I work more than forty hours a week, and I write these blogs on the side.

In that light, I should be proud of my rank. I may not be among the top 15% of all players, but I’m doing pretty well for someone who barely puts any time into the game, comparatively. And I bet your rank reflects the amount of time you’ve put into the game, too. So own it!

I hope this post was helpful, and I hope it helps you be proud of your rank.

Zachary out!

Hey! If you like esports, be sure to visit my other blog, Clash Royale League Report! Today’s latest post should be out now!

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iamthegaysmurf · 6 years

Note

I saw your follower post. It’s so deserved! Your Spooky Road Trip fic was AMAZEBALLS. How did you pull all of that research together? How did you even write it? It’s so great.

Thank you so much, anon! I just feel truly grateful to have such wonderful followers. You guys give me feedback and encouragement and ask me important questions and even send me silly things from time to time. Honestly, it’s more than I ever could have hoped for! :D

The research for Spooky Road Trip was definitely a process. lmao

When I first got tagged to write this prompt, I knew I was going to have my work cut out for me. I wanted to give Waverly and Nicole sort of a standalone, monster-of-the-week type adventure for just the two of them, because I’ve always felt like they make an incredible team when working together. Both intellectually and physically. The “brains vs brawn” thing was an extremely important concept I wanted to include.

So, with that being said, it was time to start looking for the right monster. I studied up on myths surrounding desert environments, the majority of which were primarily grounded in Persian mythology. The one that stood out to me the most was the ghoul, which I definitely liked, but then the question was… How do I make this fit?

And that’s when I began searching legends and lore specific to the region where they would be road tripping. And I discovered that the American Southwest is flooded with incredibly rich folklore. Some of the stories I read were fascinating. I worked as many of them into my story as I could – even as red herrings – but, seriously. If you ever get the chance to read up on some of the history and legends surrounding the deserts and the settlers and the Civil War and the gold rush, I promise you won’t be disappointed. :)

When I found the three legends that all had such similar elements, that’s when I knew that I’d found my story. Obviously, they wouldn’t all fit together in their original form, but I thought that with a bit of tweaking and modification, I could blend them into one single, larger tale that would make for a good story. Then it just became a matter of filling in the blanks.

I think one of my favorite parts of the research was going in search of an acceptable fiancé for Marisol (credit to @piratekane for choosing her name, btw). He was originally going to be just a standard guard for the stagecoach. And then for a while, he was going to be Pinkerton, hired by the people that had lost their haul.

But then an amazing opportunity presented itself… What if he was a U.S. Marshal? I knew that I didn’t want to actually turn this adventure into a BBD case. That would have been too coincidental, even for me. But I thought it would be a really neat lead-in for the story of the ghost being held captive. Plus the extra added bonus of him having heard of Wyatt Earp. ((I’m aware the dates are a little off for that to have actually been true, but. As I said. I had to take a bit of creative license with the rest of the story, so I figured a little wouldn’t hurt here, too.))

And that’s when the hunt began. Because, sure, I could have just fabricated a U.S. Marshal. But, honestly… where would have been the fun in that? lmao

I researched pages and pages and pages of Marshals from roughly the right time period and roughly the right area. (Pirate laughed at me because at one point, I randomly screamed into our chat “WHY ARE ALL OF THE GOOD AND INTERESTING MARSHALS FROM ARIZONA?!”)

But then I found him. The perfect Marshal. John Hicks Adams. He was from the right time frame. He was from California. He served time as both a Sheriff and a Marshal. And he already had an incredible history with the Mason Henry Gang, known for robbing stagecoaches.

He was more perfect than I ever could have hoped for. His own personal built-in nemesis just added that much more weight to the story I wanted to tell with the ghostly legends.

I never really dreamed that I would get so attached to his character. But the more I wrote about him, the more I began to see the opportunity to have him be a parallel reflection of Nicole. It just… I felt like he (and his literal undying love for Marisol) made my story so much stronger than it started out to be. I would be lying if I said it wasn’t difficult for me to write the part when he was killed. I accidentally got more attached than I thought. lol

Anyway. I’ve rambled on long enough about this. Sorry for that. But needless to say, the rest is history. Once I had all of my players lined up and fleshed out, and the legends pieced together to make a single cohesive story, all that was left was actually writing it.

I was a little nervous about being able to pull it all together. About the pacing, and keeping things interesting for you guys without revealing too much of the facts too quickly. About building the suspense in a natural and organic manner. About the payoff of the major action scene not being a let down after all of the build-up. And, of course, about the resolution and breaking of the curse. (And then also the bonus epilogue, and whether or not you guys would feel like it belonged, or if it was an unnecessary addition.)

But, thankfully, I got an incredible amount of support from @piratekane, who did everything from help me iron out some of the smaller details of bringing everything together, to kicking my ass daily to make sure I would hit my deadline in time. And also some amazing encouragement from @belikebumblebee, who didn’t get to know the story in advance, but still took the time to just help keep me motivated and encouraged when I was doubting myself. This story seriously wouldn’t have happened without the two of them. So be sure to drop them a little love, too. Tell them the Smurf sent you. ;)

And that is how the Spooky Road Trip came to be.

#ask and answer #anon #spooky road trip #wayhaught #my fiction #smurf rambles #writing #mine

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airoasis · 5 years

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Kirby the Attorney (Tournament of Champions, Pt 1)

New Post has been published on https://hititem.kr/kirby-the-attorney-tournament-of-champions-pt-1/

Kirby the Attorney (Tournament of Champions, Pt 1)

(funky tune) – From She-Ra to Mothra, nerds are hooked in to a number of things, but there is anything they love primarily else, and that’s correcting persons. That is Um, actually. (upbeat electronic tune) becoming a member of us today, now we have Shane Crown. – howdy there. – we’ve got Jon Gutz Gutierrez. – Kapla. – And Ally Beardsley. Put that factor back where it got here from Or so aid me, so help me (laughing) – We are not able to use that, we should not have the rights for that, we do not have the rights for that, We shouldn’t have the rights for that! Good, here’s a fun factor about this episode is that each one three of you at some point have either received an episode of Um, clearly, or tied for first in Um, simply. And that is gonna be the case for our next two episodes as good. The winner of this episode will face these winners in a ultimate tournament of champions. (dramatic track) match of champions! (laughing) well, you have got all been here before. You could have all received one earlier than. So you know what’s going on right here, however in case you don’t, these are fallacious statements about the matters that you recognize and love.It can be up to you to buzz in and proper me, your corrections need to be preceded by using the phrase um, surely, and you can interrupt me whenever you wish to have. How’s every person feeling? – i am pretty excellent. – confident. – Little fearful, i would say. – Uh-huh, all right. – Going up towards champions. – Yeah. – Hmm. – it is champions in very tremendous charges. – Yeah. (laughing) – Who knows who you were competing towards final time you received? It would have been a bunch of dumb-dumbs, don’t roll tape! Do not imply that I known as anyone a dumb-dumb! (laughing) we can roll correct into it then with our first question. – convey it, Trapp. – here we go. – i will deliver it. (laughing) i’ll carry it straight to you. – I wasn’t all set for any person bringing it. (laughing) – it’s 5 a.M. And i am on one. – i have lived my entire lifestyles now not bringing it, a very slight manner, that is type of how, that’s why i like a number of these things, so, if someone’s going to be bringing it– – carry it! Deliver it! – okay, right here we go. – I simply do this all exercises. – Yeah. (laughs) – fingers on knees, bring it! – female Smurfs are particularly infrequent in the Smurf village.Actually, the fashioned animated sequence has simplest three female Smurfs: Smurfette, Sassette, and Nanny Smurf. This is when you consider that feminine Smurfs are born only once each 30 years. (dinging) – Um, in reality, there’s a Momma Smurf. – Momma Smurf? (laughs) Momma don’t, no. – there is a Papa Smurf, is not there a Momma Smurf? – you’ll suppose that is a exceptional parallelism, but no, Papa Smurf is just, he is a single papa. – Oh. – Yeah. – I keep in mind that episode, the place they relatively dive into him eating by myself– – a very distinctive episode.- Off of his belly. – he is got like a spouse beater on, his hat is like hung up within the corner and similar to, I don’t know– – consuming noodles. – Yeah, ah, Brainy Smurf I feel is the only one who’s gonna make it on this planet. (laughing) No, no, that’s fallacious. (dinging) – Oh, Shane beat Gutz to it. – Um, truely, there are simplest two female Smurfs. – No, that’s fallacious. (dinging) – Gutz. – Um, sincerely, Smurfs don’t seem to be born, and Smurfette and the feminine Smurfs weren’t born either. And Nana Smurf, I cannot don’t forget the origins of, but Sassette and Smurfette were both created with the aid of Gargamel’s magic so they may be now not born each 30 years. – that is right for the most phase. – Wow. – I feel there probably some blunders in there but you might have what I was going for, which is that Smurfette used to be created by means of Gargamel, isn’t born, Sassette I think was absolutely created through other Smurfs who have been using Gargamel’s magic (laughing) however feminine Smurfs mainly need to be created through magic in an effort to exist. – frustrating Smurfs. – Oh yeah, most likely. – I keep in mind reading that Peyo was fairly sexist throughout the creation of the Smurfs.- sure. – and so they requested him like, can you, we ought to come up with stuff that Smurfette can do. After which he was once like, why, I mean he, she already tempts the other Smurfs and explanations issues, that is ample. – Oh my god. – after which they are like, well they have got to be more proactive, he is like, what do you, is she a fitness center teacher? (laughing) You might categorical– – Oh my god. – Yeah, yeah. Plenty of problems there. Good, that may be a factor for Gutz on deep Smurf lore. So we can transfer on now, this is form of a common sci-fi alien related question. A recurring feature of alien invasion experiences is the invention of a banal weakness of or else invincible aliens. Within the Animorphs sequence, Yeerks are pushed insane with dependancy if exposed to instant maple and ginger oatmeal, the aliens in Mars assaults are vulnerable to the selenium in Head and Shoulders shampoo, and the aliens in indicators are destroyed when they come into contact with water. (dinging) – Gutz. – Uh, the aliens in Mars attack are usually not weak to head and Shoulders shampoo, they’re vulnerable to the yodeling of I suppose Waylon Jennings, or nation song.- i do not consider you said um, truely, is that correct? – Oh, oh! – Oh! (dinging) – So i am not going to say some thing, i’m now not gonna divulge whether or now not you’re right or no longer, but I can’t give you the point. Shane? – Um, really, the aliens in Mars assaults (laughing) are weak to tune, I believe it can be simply music. – Gutz was more correct than you are, but you stated um, really, I-I-I, (dinging) this appears like a travesty– – Um, really. – Yeah? I’ll provide the– – In signs– (laughing) – you are identical to, they’re obviously approach wrong. – they may be each means off, let me easy this up, ok? (dinging) Um, honestly. – Gosh, what a, what is just right here, what is simply and correct in this screwy, screwy world, ‘cos Gutz was once without doubt extra right, but well, what you stated used to be now not flawed. I guess Shane, you get the factor. This feels bad, however here we’re. – I don’t know why I modified it, either. (laughing) ‘Cos he stated it was proper.I was once like, let me see if i can be extra correct. – Let me see if i will be more correct by means of being much less exact. – I was seeking to justify stealing the factor ‘cos I felt unhealthy about stealing the factor, I was like, oh, if I steal i will be able to at the least add some thing to it. – it is like a dumb high schooler finding out what plagiarism is for the primary time, the place it’s like, if i change one phrase that is quality. – Yeah, yeah. – Um, no, good, i will provide the point, it’s the aliens in Mars attacks are weak to an extraordinarily special tune, it’s a yodeling country music, however that, the tune is Slim Whitman’s Indian Love call, you obtained the precise identify flawed, you just mentioned tune, which is most of the time unfaithful, nevertheless it was by means of that, it used to be a precise track, i guess i’m going to give you the point, even though– – I said simply track.- simply track. (laughing) – specified in how indistinct it used to be. – I think it was once, just tune. – well we are going to still give you the factor, a non secular point for Gutz which doesn’t imply some thing but which you can as a minimum have the delight that you just were a little bit bit closer than Shane was once. And we will be able to– – We’re all tied up i guess, it looks like we’re all three of us– – good, good, keep on a 2nd. – Whoo! – good– – Tight! – here is a query, here’s a video game associated question for all y’all. One of the crucial most famous Nintendo characters are named after actual people.Mario is known as after Mario Segale, who used to be Nintendo of the usa’s warehouse landlord. Kirby is named for American attorney John Kirby, who defended Nintendo in a lawsuit. Princess Zelda was named after artist Zelda Flannery, who created several iconic Nintendo sport covers. (dinging) – yes, Ally? – Um, certainly, Kirby was no longer named after a attorney. Kirby was once named after some thing else. (laughing) that’s the one that is fallacious! – A vacuum. (laughing) Er, no, actually, Kirby was once named after– – damn! – the united states lawyer John Kirby. If, however, you can look at Kirby and spot that guy appears like a legal professional, correct? Do-dee-do-do-dee-do-do, your honor. – I do think like I had shirt of Kirby protecting a briefcase. – it’d be, it you have been like, if you happen to bought arrested, and you are like, I desire a attorney, you gotta set anything, and then like Kirby walked in, and it might just be like, hmm. – i might be like, fuck yeah! (laughing) – simply sucks it. (sucking air) Grows a choose’s wig after which had a nice little gavel.- This sounds first-rate. – That’d be all proper. – Yeah! – They’ve gotta make Kirby authorized games. (laughing) – There might be Kirby: regulation and Order. – within the crook justice system, er, no, that is mistaken. (sucking air) – Yeah. (laughing) (dinging) Gutz. – Zelda wasn’t named after the artist– – You gotta say um, actually, my man! – Oh, um, surely! (laughing) I simply went by means of a irritating– – you’re killing me right here! – I simply went by means of a irritating finding out experience. – Ally just did not want Shane to get yet another point. (laughing) – Gonna have a coronary heart attack, it’s 5 a.M. Gutz! – I’ve forgotten the lessons of the show already. Um, truly, Zelda wasn’t named after that artist, she used to be named after 1920’s bon vivante Zelda Fitzgerald? – that is entirely proper, you had been ending with a little of a bet, however yeah, Zelda Flannery is just a identify I made up, it’s no longer an artist who did something.And in fact Zelda used to be named after Zel, yeah, 1920’s wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda Fitzgerald. – Wow. – Makes me particularly desire a flappers of Hyrule like Zelda version, simply love it’s all set in like 1920s Jazz Age the us. (Ally scats) – You have to assemble the elements of the Algonquin circular table! (laughing) – Bunch of fairies with like lengthy cigarette holders. – sizzling! – that’s a point for Gutz, you gotta be careful for these um, Ally’s no longer gonna look out for you each– – I can’t guard you for much longer, ok! – No, i can depend on you, right? – someday you’ll be able to be all grown up and that i won’t be around to shield you. – I gotta go to work son. (laughing) – good, we will be able to transfer on to our subsequent assertion right here. Kubrick’s 2001: an area Odyssey, based on the Arthur C. Clarke novel of the equal title takes location generally on Discovery One, a spacecraft managed close to wholly with the aid of the computer HAL 9000. (dinging) – Shane? – Um, actually, the name of the ship isn’t Discovery One. – what is the title of the ship? – Oh no, I proposal you were gonna ask some thing like that.- Yeah. – Uh. (laughs) The identify of the ship is Curiosity 12. (laughing) – well, i’ll say that is now not what’s wrong with it, I simply wanted to peer what you may wager. (laughing) – Oh no! – I desired to see if you happen to would have a exceptional fun reply for what a spaceship possibly, so no, it’s actually referred to as the invention One. (dinging) – Gutz. – Um, clearly, thank you. (laughing) it’s no longer established on the guide with the aid of Arthur C. Clarke Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick developed the story together, and neither of them established it on each and every different, they only came out even as. – that is right, yeah. It wasn’t that they, it used to be, the screenplay and the unconventional have been written at the same time, they usually both shared authorship credit on it. – Fuck, that is crazy. – i do know! – Yeah. They just labored on it both together.- So it’s a movie novelization. – it’s an ouroboros of like a novel established on a film and a film founded on a novel, they each orbit each and every different. – It was once simply born from nothing. – yes, it just got here to be. Well, that is a different factor for Gutz. And this brings us to our first bright query. – Whoop! (tinkling) – Now, bright questions, like bright Pokemon, worth the same number of elements, just a little special, a bit of bit rarer, despite the fact that as one in every of our viewers stated, it is not the designated identical rarity at which vivid Pokemon occur, is some distance more common than the rarity of bright Pokemon. We’re no longer changing something, but thank you for that. (laughing) There are technological sounds throughout materials of sci-fi, it is as much as you to determine the piece of technology that you’re listening to when you hear these sounds.Whoever can determine the most bits of tech will get the one factor for this brilliant query. Cool? – Cool. – first-class. – first-rate. Let’s hear that first sound. (melodic whirring) (dinging) – I think that is the subsequent new release transporter? From star Trek: the next generation? – that’s, yeah, I failed to even need that much specificity, I used to be simply watching for the transporter, energizer, however yeah, yeah, yeah, that is correctly what that’s, and yeah, what, I, more often than not preface this, for bright questions, you don’t have to say um, truly, you didn’t anyway however still first-rate, it’s still pleasant. It can be a shiny question. – Ha ha ha! – i’m pronouncing it simply on account that i’m now not gonna be here perpetually, some day you’re gonna be in your own, you’re gonna be– – Like I gotta go to work! – you’re gonna be correcting someone, and that i won’t be there, and i must comprehend you are– – I work in the safety shack! (laughing) (twinkling) – And that is it for this preview of Um, in reality. In the event you liked it, there’s a whole lot extra ready for you on Dropout, go to Dropout.Tv to start your free trails today.I am Mike Trapp, reminding you to get your pets spayed and neutered, and to get you zombie pets obliterated. Zombie pets, they may be not the pets you cherished anymore, they are long gone, they’re long gone, kill them, kill them. (twinkling) Spelling in English is rough enough, spelling in si-fi and fantasy, even harder. So we’re gonna provide you with a reputation of whatever from science fiction and fantasy. First person to spell it appropriately will get the point. Your word is Paarthurnax. (hip-hip beats) .

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batterymonster2021 · 5 years

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Kirby the Attorney (Tournament of Champions, Pt 1)

New Post has been published on https://hititem.kr/kirby-the-attorney-tournament-of-champions-pt-1/

Kirby the Attorney (Tournament of Champions, Pt 1)

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weekendwarriorblog · 3 years

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The Weekend Warrior 6/11/21 - IN THE HEIGHTS, PETER RABBIT: THE RUNAWAY, INFINITE, UNDINE, HOLLER and More

This is going to be a tough week to deliver a full column just because I’ve been so insanely busy doing other things for my real job. More on that below, but first, I totally screwed up last week. I totally left out a movie I had been looking forward to, without realizing it was released last Friday, since I didn’t have it on my release list. I ended up inadvertantly leaving it completely out of my column. Bad Ed. (This week's column is brought to you by Ian McNabb's new album "Utopian" -- a fantastic new extra-length offering from the former Icicle Works frontman -- that just means that I was listening to it while writing this week's column. No $$$ was exchanged.)

That movie I missed last week was UNDINE (IFC Films), the new film from German filmmaker Christian Petzold, who has made some fantastic films, including Phoenix and Barbara. It reunites Petzold with the stars of his last movie, Transit, Paula Beer and Franz Rogowski. It’s a fairly bizarre film that plays around with myths about water nymphs, but it takes some time before you realize that’s what it’s about since it follows Beer’s Undine, as one of her relationships ends and another begins with an underwater diver. After winning the FIPRESCI Prize and the Silver Bear for Ms. Beer at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival, it’s now playing in select theaters, including the IFC Center and Film at LIncoln Center as well as on digital and VOD platforms.

The film starts with a conversation between a man and a woman, Undine and Johannes, the latter who is breaking up with the former. From there, we watch a rather strange relationship build between Undine and a diver who she meets when a fish tank explodes all over them in a coffee shop. Yeah, it’s one of those kinds of movies. But Undine is one of Petzold’s more romantic films even if it takes an artier and dreamlike approach to show this romance unfold, and then it just gets weirder and weirder and more enigmatic. Water is definitely a recurring theme in what I could only really call a female power fantasy, but you know what? We’ve seen so many male power fantasies, it’s kind of nice seeing this sort of thing from a female viewpoint, and Beer is quite amazing -- well worthy of the accolades she’s been receiving. Undine is a fine addition to Poltzold’s growing filmography, although it didn’t hit me quite like Phoenix did, and I’m not sure I’d race out to see it a second time.

Before we get to this week’s new wide releases, this week also begins the 20th Anniversary Tribeca Festival -- note the absence of the word "Film" -- which as luck would have it opens on Wednesday with the World Premiere of the biggest and widest release of the weekend, the Jon M. Chu-directed musical, IN THE HEIGHTS (Warner Bros.)! I really haven’t seen much from it yet, so I have very little to say at this time. Hopefully, I’ll have time to watch more over the next week and a half.

In case you haven’t heard, In the Heights is based on the Lin-Manuel Miranda musical that preceded Hamilton, and it focuses on the Washington Heights area of NYC, primarily the LatinX community that has lived and thrived there but is dealing with things like gentrification destroying it. The movie stars Anthony Ramos (from Hamilton and A Star is Born) playing Usnavy, a bodega shop owner who dreams of returning to the Dominican Republic and reopening his father’s snack bar. He also has eyes on the beautiful Vanessa (Melissa Barrera), who wants to move downtown and get into fashion. Meanwhile, Nina (Leslie Grace) has returned to the neighborhood from college and she reunites with her ex Benny (Corey Hawkins) and that relationship is rekindled. Nina’s father (Jimmy Smits) is a big shot in the neighborhood, running the car service, but he’s been selling it off to pay for Nina’s school.

I already reviewed the movie here, but reviews are generally great with 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, and people have been chomping at the bit for this movie to be released after it was delayed nearly a year from 2020 due to COVID. Although Lin-Manuel Miranda only has a small role in the movie, he’s probably going to be the film’s biggest selling point, especially considering how many people watched Hamilton when it was released on Disney+ last summer -- that, too, was originally intended for a theatrical release.

For director Jon M. Chu, this is his first feature film since Crazy Rich Asians, which was a huge box office hit, but it also had a similar cultural impact of what is expected from In the Heights. It opened with $26.5 million in 3,384 theaters in August, 2018, but then it had massive legs over the course of the summer to gross $174.5 million total. While it didn’t end up getting the awards love many expected, it did help to make the likes of Constance Wu, Akwafina, and Henry Golding bigger stars, as well as boosting the careers of Gemma Chan, Jimmy O. Yang and other Asian-American actors. One can presume that In the Heights will do the same for Ramos and a few others, although it’s still too early to see if it will have legs when it’s so easy to rewatch on HBO Max.

The movie is one of the summer’s big buzz movies that should continue to bring people back to theaters with the positive reviews leading to inevitable positive word-of-mouth among a moviegoing audience that for a long time brought a ton of business into theaters.

I feel like In the Heights could make a play for $30 million this weekend even with the knowledge that it’s also playing on HBO Max. It just seems like a lot of people are going to want to see this in a theater with other people, and frankly, it’s been so hot outside, especially in New York, that it’s going to be a great option to see in theaters in order to get some much-needed air conditioning, if nothing else. But expect it to do well enough among audiences to have some significant legs, although I’m a little hesitant at calling it to make $100 million even with restrictions being reduced and more theaters opening every weekend. I’d love to see it happen but for now, I’ll stick with around $80 million for its domestic gross.

Also opening wide this week is the family sequel, PETER RABBIT 2: THE RUNAWAY (Sony Pictures), which has also been delayed a number of times since COVID hit. Once again directed by Will Gluck (Easy A), the sequel had a plum Easter release last year or maybe that was this year. Honestly, I don’t remember. In the sequel, Beatrix Potter’s popular literary character Peter Rabbit (voiced by James Corden) has to contend with the couple from the first movie, played by Rose Byrne and Domhnall Gleeson, are getting married, and Peter’s feeling a bit put-out, because he’s considered the “troublemaker” among the bunny family of Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Benjamin (voiced by Margot Robbie, Elizabeth Debicki, Aimee Horne and Colin Moody). He ends up running away (duh) and getting in with a group of London animal crooks, including the rabbit Barnabas (voiced by Lennie James from Fear the Walking Dead), who may have been friends with Peter’s father.

I only first watched the first Peter Rabbit movie, originally released on February 9, 2018, earlier this week before watching the sequel, and honestly, that first movie was much better than I expected and better than it should have been, and I probably could say the same for the sequel. I generally love Rose Byrne, and oddly, I like James Corden voicing Peter Rabbit more than I have other things he’s done. Maybe it’s just that Beatrix Potter’s character works even when put into a modern setting where Byrne seems to be playing a version of Potter who ends up getting a big publishing deal with David Oyelowo (another actor I like) playing the publishing big wig who wants Bea to change things. It’s just as funny seeing Peter fighting with Gleeson’s McGregor for the film’s physical humor to help sustain a second movie.

Actually, I kind of liked that Gluck’s movie is kind of wholesome rarely going for the easy laughs or things we’ve seen in far too many animated movies (slow-motion and bathroom humor, for instance), and also having jokes that only the parents will laugh at. The film is also quite a technical marvel because mixing CG characters with live action ones is something that rarely turns out well (see Sony’s Smurfs movies, for instance) but CG production house Animal Logic, who also did Happy Feet and The LEGO Movie, really now how to give these furry, cuddly creatures real physical attributes that makes even cynical adults like myself completely believe in them.

Let’s get to some box office thoughts. The original Peter Rabbit movie opened with $25 million, which is pretty good for a family film from the before times. More importantly, it made $115 million in domestic theaters as it lasted through the summer, which shows that kids and families really loved Corden’s take on the popular children’s book character. Even though these are different times, and we are not seeing that many movies opening with more than $25 million, the success of the first movie means that kids will probably not be too old to want to see Peter Rabbit’s new adventures.

I think this one can probably open with $14 to 16 million when you realize there isn’t very much competition for family audiences, at least nothing PG, because even DIsney’s Raya and the Last Dragon is now on DIsney+. (Okay, there's also Spirit Untamed, but that proved to be quite a non-starter, and this seems like an easier sell to a wider group of kids and even adults.) That and the fact that Peter Rabbit 2 isn’t simultaneously on streaming should give it a strong play for second place this weekend, and don’t be surprised if it has similar legs to make $60 million plus just in theaters alone.

Also being released fairly wide is the Deon Taylor-directed horror comedy sequel, THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR: MEET THE BLACKS 2 (Lionsgate), which probably wasn’t screened for critics in advance. I’m not quite sure how wide Lionsgate is planning to go with this, but the original movie opened in over 1,000 theaters in April 2016 and made $4 million its opening weekend and $9 million total. One can assume that the first movie was popular enough to create an audience for the second movie that hasn’t really had what we used to call an “urban comedy” in quite some time, particularly since Paramount’s Coming 2 America ended up streaming on Amazon. Since audiences are generally trying to get back out to theaters, it’s safe to assume that the audience for this kind of comedy feels the same. I probably could see this opening with around $3 million, but it’s hard to say without having a definite theater count. I’ve become quite a big fan of Taylor in the years since the first movie, so I might even venture out to see this if I have the time.

Directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring Mark Wahlberg, the sci-fi action movie INFINITE (Paramount+) was supposed to get a theatrical release but is instead being dumped to Paramount+, and sadly, dumped is the operative word here, because it pains me to say that the duo behind Shooter and other cool movies I’ve enjoyed have made a very, very, very, very, very bad movie.

The fairly ridiculous premise -- which to be fair is based on a book called “The Reincarnationist Papers” by D. Eric Maikranz -- involves a cadre of people known as Infinites who can remember everything from their past lives. There are “good Infinites” called Believers, and “bad Infinites” called Nihilists who are sick of living through their pasts so they just want to make the whole world burn.

Wahlberg plays Evan McCauley, a good “Infinite” even though he only remembers part of things from the past, and he’s thought to be the reincarnation of one of the Believers’ leaders named “Heinrich Treadway,” who we see die in a car chase through Mexico City in the film’s opening. Treadaway’s mortal enemy is Bathurst, played by Chiewetel Ejiofor, who wouldn’t mind finding and killing Treadaway first because he has an “Egg” with great power that can help end the world.

Okay, the premise could definitely be interesting, despite being an obvious Highlander rip-off, but unfortunately, it becomes very obvious that a movie like this constantly needs to explain to the viewer why this premise is “so cool,” and whenever anyone does try to explain anything, it just sounds incredibly stupid. We’ve seen so many sci-fi action movies like this one, and frankly, I was a little surprised that this one didn’t star Bruce Willis, because it definitely seemed like his thing. (Anyone remember Surrogates? That movie’s director, Jonathan Mostow, is STILL in directors’ jail!!) But more importantly, it reminds me of a much better version of the same idea that was just released, called The Old Guard, which … what the fuck?!? … also starred Chiwetel Ejiofor!! (At least in that one, he doesn't have a ridiculous accent and isn't chewing up every single bit of scenery.)

Yeah, it’s hard to forget that you’re watching an inferior version of The Old Guard when Ejiofor is RIGHT THERE, but this one combines a lame attempt at world-building with some surprisingly decent action scenes, but it’s also hard not to think that Fuqua -- and I say this as one of the director’s biggest fans -- was trying to do his own version of The Matrix. But any opportunity to do something cool in the action realm is destroyed as soon as we get more “splaining” about this world, a lot of it done by Jason Mantzoukas as the Artisan, a mad surgeon who also explains things in a confusing way that it never helps. He’s also the film’s only attempt at humor, and he’s done far better in other things. The film’s only real female character, Sophie Cookson’s Norah, is so bland and generic that you quickly forget what she’s bringing to the movie, if anything. (As you watch the movie, you realize how smart it was for Chris Evans to get out while the gettin' was good.)

By the time it gets to the final climax, we get a somewhat decent final battle on an airplane between Treadway and Bathurst, but by then it’s too late. We get some horrible narration before the movie ends with a set-up for a possible sequel will not make ANYONE (particularly critics) happy if that sequel does indeed happen.

Infinite makes it obvious that remembering one’s past lives could only be made much worse by having watched this movie in one of them. This is horrendously bad, awful crap.

A big release on the streaming series side of things is Marvel Studios’ LOKI (Disney+), the first episode of which is on the streamer now. I’ve actually seen the first two episodes and they’re interesting. Essentially, Loki has been captured by the Time Variance Authority (TVA), an organization that exists outside time and is charged with making sure that variant timelines and people aren’t created by things like Loki’s stunt in Avengers: Endgame where he got out of the Avengers’ grip using the tesseract, essentially changing his own timeline. I watched the first two episodes and thought they were pretty good but not the OMG THIS IS THE GREATEST THING EVER!!! that everything Marvel does seems to get from the rubes calling themselves “film critics.” I liked seeing Hiddleton returning as the characters, because he’s quite good as Loki, although Owen Wilson (as TVA agent Mobius) basically seems to be playing himself and not really doing anything particularly memorable. Because of that, Loki comes off as a buddy comedy with a lot of conversations between Loki and Owen Wilson, so if that’s your thing, then maybe you’ll like Loki, but maybe it’ll also get better over the next few episodes as WandaVision did. (I mean, one thing I can say as a positive is that the Marvel Studios/Disney+ series have been much more watchable than the Netflix/Marvel series, because I didn’t get through a single one of those.)

Chris Appelhans’ animated WISH DRAGON (Netflix) was originally going to be released by Sony Pictures since it was produced by Sony Pictures Animation as a Chinese co-production, but for whatever reason, it’s now going to be on Netflix. I haven’t had a chance to watch it yet but hope to get to it soon.

Also now on Netflix is Mark Raso’s thriller AWAKE, starring Gina Rodriguez as Jill, a former soldier in a world that’s been hit by a catastrophe that wipes out all electronics and eliminates humanity’s ability to sleep. Jill realizes that her daughter may be the key to salvation but isn’t sure if she wants to sacrifice her to save the world. Again, another movie that I just couldn’t find the time to watch if I wanted to get my work done for Below the Line. (Things are very busy right now because Emmy nominations take place over the next couple weeks.)

Jessica Barden (The End of the F*** World) stars in Nicole Riegel’s indie drama, HOLLER (IFC FIlms), playing Ruth Avery, a young woman who sees her acceptance into college as a way to get out of her dreary Southern Ohio town. She decides to take a job on a dangerous scrap metal crew with her older brother (Gus Halper) while stealing metal at night in order to pay her way to college, and she finds herself torn between her future and her family. The movie also stars Pamela Adlon as their mother. After premiering at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, Holler will be released in theaters and digitally and On Demand this Friday.

I actually thought this one wasn’t bad even though it treads on rather familiar indie drama territory of wanting to get out of one’s town and get out into the world. Obviously, Barden’s presence is what really drives the film, because she is such a fantastic presence. I especially liked her in Jungleland, but this shows what she can do in a full-on leading role. While I wouldn’t urge anyone to race out to their local cinema to see Holler, it’s not a bad debut feature from Riegel, who built it out from a previous short, which feels somewhat obvious.

I was able to see Prano Bailey-Bond’s CENSOR (Magnet) at Sundance earlier this year and found it to be a nice creepy video nasty. It stars Niah Algar as Enid Barnes, a film censor who watches and rates horrible low-budget horror videos but who is also obsessed with finding her missing sister and seemingly finding a clue in a particularly strange horror film. Censor will hit theaters Friday and then be on digital on June 18, but I’ll have to watch it again to remember if I liked it for more than Niah Algar’s performance.

Starting on Friday up at Film at Lincoln Center is a special “Big Screen Summer: NYFF58 Redux” which is basically showcasing a bunch of movies from last year’s New York Film Festival, which was mainly held virtually, but now you can finally see many of them in the FilmLinc theaters, running from June 11 through August 26, and it includes things like Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe Anthology” (which haven’t been screened theatrically in New York other than at drive-ins). Click on the link above to see when any of your favorites or ones you missed will be screening.

I didn’t get a chance to watch Ty Roberts’ adaptation of Jim Dent’s novel, 12 MIGHTY ORPHANS (Sony Pictures Classics), but it opens in Texas this Friday and then nationwide on June 18. Starring Luke Wilson, Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, Wayne Knight and Vinessa Shaw, it tells the story of the Mighty Mites football team of Fort Worth, made up of orphans during the Great Depression who barely had shoes or football but with the help of legendary high school coach Rusty Russell (Wilson), gave up a lucrative position to teach and coach the orphanage team. Rusty developed strategies that would allow the scrawny team to beat much bigger players on the football field. I’ll probably try to write something more about this next week.

Some of the movies I just didn’t have time to write about include:

QUEEN OF SPADES (Dread) SUBLET (Greenwich) ASIA (Mnemsha Films) UPHEAVAL (Abramorama) THE MISFITS (Highland Film Group, The Avenue) QUEEN BEES (Gravitas Ventures)

Next week’s big release is another sequel, THE HITMAN’S WIFE’S BODYGUARD (Lionsgate), but also Edgar Wright’s documentary, THE SPARKS BROTHERS (Focus Features), will be released after its festival run.

#The Weekend Warrior #In the Heights #Peter Rabbit 2 #Holler #Undine #Infinite #Movies #REviews #Streaming

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thesmashcake · 4 years

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Staying Sane While Editing Photos

The first thing I need to say before we get into this blog is that I believe photo editing is a fantastic way to enhance the creative vision you had in you head when you took the photo. For that reason I love editing my photos in Adobe Lightroom/ Photoshop and I think editing can be the cherry on top of any well crafted image. But, if we’re being completely honest I do have those days where I’d rather gouge my eyes out with a spork than sit behind my monitor for 6 hours straight.

I have been editing photos in Photoshop professionally since 1999 and in that time I have had many a day where I caught myself staring blankly at a box of sporks thinking “In the valley of the fed-up photo editors, the no-eyed man is king”. In order to save you from becoming a pale shell of your former self that hoards sporks and calls them “my precious” I’m going to throw you a lifeline. Here are my 5 tips to keep from going crazy while editing photography. I have developed these “sanity hacks” over many years and I use them daily. I’m using a few of these tips right now as I write this blog.

Editing can be extremely bad for your body

Before we begin, I really want to beat the dead horse so you guys understand just how bad extended photo editing sessions can be to your long term physical, mental and hormonal heath. According to the Mayo Clinic sitting for long periods of time has been linked to the following health issues:

Increased blood pressure High blood sugar Excess body fat around the waist Abnormal cholesterol levels

They went on to say that too much sitting overall and prolonged periods of sitting also seem to increase the risk of death from cardiovascular disease and cancer.

Read the full article by The Mayo Clinic

Now that I’ve scared the hell out of you, let’s get to my list of tips to help you be happier and healthier while editing your photos.

Tip 1- Get yourself a record player.

As I write this blog I’m listening to Weezer on an honest to goodness vinyl record. I started listening to records while editing my photography because I think records just sound better than digital. My decision to listen to records was purely fueled by nothing more than audio snobbery but I quickly discovered a hidden health benefit. Records can only fit about 20-30 mins of music per side before you have to get up and flip them over. That means that twice every hour I have to stand up and walk over to the record player, giving me a much needed break. Of course while I’m up I do things like visit the restroom, talk with my coworkers, grab some water and so on. All of this adds up to about 5-10 minutes away from my desk twice every hour. Can anyone guess how often the Mayo clinic recommends you take a break from sitting at your desk? Yup…every 30 mins.

I’m currently listening to a Bluetooth record player that connects directly to my noise canceling wireless headphones. This is the only way to edit because I get the intoxicating pop and crackle of vintage vinyl while my state of the art headphones filter out distractions like traffic, ringing phones and annoying coworkers. If you work at home the same set up filters out dogs, children and annoying spouses. When I really need a break at home I pretend to be editing my photography while listening to David Bowie and sipping a nice Merlot. Daddies need breaks too.

For those of you interested in picking up a Bluetooth record player here’s a nice entry level player. Don’t forget to include some records with your order so you’ll have something to listen to when it arrives.

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Tip 2- Learn the lingo, gringo

There is nothing that’ll turn your brain into a giant quivering pile of tapioca like than a marathon Photoshop session. If you’re about to punch in for a six hour shift of editing and are at all concerned about pudding brain, then you need to stay mentally engaged. One of the best way I found to stay mentally engaged while photo editing is to learn a new language.

This is something I discovered this year and I’m kicking myself for not thinking of it sooner. Every time I sit down to edit photos I simply ask Alexa to open the Daily Dose app on my Echo Dot and I learn Spanish while editing. It’s a brilliant way to stay mentally tack sharp while utilizing the otherwise wasted time I’d be spending sitting at my desk. You’re stuck there anyway, you might as well learn a new skill. The best part, aside from being able to communicate with millions of more people on the planet, your brain won’t ooze out of your ears... Oh, and did I mention that the Daily Dose language app is FREE? (Free is our friend!)

For those of you that don’t have an Amazon Alexa you can pick one up for around $25.

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Keep Your Hormones in Check

So far we looked at tips for keeping your body and your brain healthy during epic editing sessions. But what about your hormonal health? This is often the most overlooked aspect of health when it comes to the negative effects of a prolonged photography editing. Many of you have probably suffered from the effects of a hormonal imbalance due to prolonged photo editing and just didn’t realize it.

When we edit photos our computer screens are adversely affecting our body’s Circadian Rhythm. The National Institute for General Medical Sciences describes circadian rhythm as “physical, mental, and behavioral changes that follow a daily cycle. They respond primarily to light and darkness in an organism's environment.”

Without going to deep down the rabbit hole: our body uses the light around us to decide when it’s time to be awake and when it’s time to sleep. It does this by taking in how much light is available and what color that light is. As photographers we all understand that the color of natural light changes throughout the day from blue light to golden yellow at sundown. By bombing our eyes with blue light from our computer screens at all times of the day or night we are confusing our brains and really screwing up our hormone levels.

Every feel restless, depressed or irritable after a long Photoshop session? Now you know why. To get the whole scoop on your Circadian Rhythm check out this blog by Mental Health America.

Fortunately there are a couple of things we can do to combat the side effects of screen gazing and the first one just happens to be FREE. (I love free)

Tip 3-take a short walk in the sunshine.

I do this once every day and it really helps me feel more grounded during marathon editing sessions. (Makes the puppy happy too.) Combine this with flipping over your records every 30 minutes and it will really help you keep your sanity.

Tip 4- wear blue light blocking glasses when editing at night.

When you edit at night your computer screen is telling your body that it’s daytime and I find it hard to sleep after a nighttime edit session. So I simply wear a pair of cheap blue light blocking glasses and when I’m done editing I can sleep like a baby. Just remember to take them off momentarily when doing color correction otherwise your skin tones will be a bit smurf-ish.

Don’t Forget to Keep your business healthy

While the four tips above are designed to keep you healthy, this one is all about keeping your business healthy. It will also keep you mentally engaged so consider it a twofer. The next time you sit down to edit why not spend that time learning new business strategies, or marketing or researching SEO strategies. You know, all of those things you should be learning but never have the time necessary. Well, you’re going to be stuck in that chair for a while so why not have Alexa read you a business book on how to find more clients.

Tip 5- Download audio books on business from audible

Using the Audible app Alexa can read you any book in the audible library. This is hands down one of the best ways to get the most out of your time spent editing. I’ve said it in my blogs many times and I’m saying it again. I believe that for every hour a photographer spends learning photography it is imperative that they spend an equal amount of time refining their business skills. This is a great way to squeeze in those hours while not giving up the little things like…sleep. The best part: when you sign up for audible your first book is free.

I recommend checking out this audio book. It completely changed the way I viewed and approached my work life. The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss

Conclusion

Editing for extended periods of time can be down right unhealthy. Add some fast food on the way to shoots and the next thing you know, you’ll be headed down the path to premature aging, obesity and possibly worse. So now is the time to protect your health by establishing good habits that protect both your mind and body. These are just a few of my healthy editing habits that I use daily and I really hope they help you. If you have any healthy editing hacks that might help other smash cake photographers, please share them in the comment section.

Until next time guys I wish you happy and healthy editing, Daniel

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lindafrancois · 4 years

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5 Best Strength Training Workout Routines For Beginners (Home & Gym)

Want to get strong like this smurf but don’t how to start?

In this Beginner’s Guide to Strength Training (part of our Strength 101 series), you’ll have both the confidence to start getting strong with resistance training AND a plan to follow.

These are the exact strategies we use with our Online Coaching Clients to help them start strength training, and I’m excited to cover everything you need.

Let us help you start strength training! Learn more:

We’ll be digging into the following:

How do I start strength training or resistance training?

Which strength training program is right for me?

5 best strength training workouts for beginners.

How much weight should I lift?

The 9 best strength training exercises.

How to know you’re doing an exercise properly (form checks)

Strength training for weight loss.

“Just TELL ME what strength program I should do.”

By the way, we’ve combined this article along with the rest of our strength articles into a “Strength Training 101: Everything You Need to Know” guide.

Grab it free when you join the Rebellion by putting your email in the box below.

Download our comprehensive guide STRENGTH TRAINING 101!

Everything you need to know about getting strong.

Workout routines for bodyweight AND weight training.

How to find the right gym and train properly in one.

How Do I Start Strength Training?

Welcome to the first day of the rest of your life.

You’ll look back years from now and thank “Past You” for starting strength training today.

And I promise, you WILL strength train today.

After all, strength training or resistance training doesn’t need to be scary or overcomplicated!

Strength training really comes down to two things:

“Movement of any weight against “resistance”(including your body weight) – Doing ANY exercise that pushes your muscles outside of their comfort zone, forcing them to rebuild stronger to prepare the next challenge.

Progressive overload: doing slightly more than last time (lift heavier weight or do 1 more rep) consistently. Your muscles will have constantly have to adapt and rebuild themselves stronger.

That’s it.

This means if you drop down and do ONE knee push-up right now, technically you’ve done a strength training workout.

It also means if you then do TWO knew push-ups tomorrow, then you are officially following a strength training routine.

In other words, YOU CAN DO THIS.

Now, there are many different “strength training” and “resistance training” paths.

Like a “skill tree” in a video game (with branching paths and progressions), you can progress up one path, and mix and match movements from others depending on the situation.

These paths depend on your goals and what equipment you have available to you.

Here are the types of strength training:

BODYWEIGHT TRAINING

Bodyweight training is simply doing an exercise in which your own body is the “weight” you are “lifting.”

Duh.

This is the BEST place for anybody – regardless of weight or age – to start their strength training journey.

Why is this the best place to start? Two big reasons:

#1) You always have your body with you (unless you are a ghost, in which case, this is awkward). This means you can work out ANYWHERE with bodyweight training:

Our Beginner Bodyweight Workout Routine in your living room.

Our Hotel Workout in a hotel (obvi).

Our Park Workout in a…well, you get the point.

#2) Using your body for resistance training is the most “human” thing ever! By learning to push and pull and hang and squat and lunge, you are doing what your body is literally designed to do.

By getting strong with bodyweight movements, you’re making yourself antifragile and less injury prone.

Bodyweight training isn’t as easy to ‘scale’ the difficulty as some of the other strength training methods (“put more weight on barbell”), but you can get REALLY strong with just bodyweight training.

For example, you can start with knee pushups, then go to regular push-ups, then elevated push-ups, then even up to things like handstands and handstand push-ups.

You just have to know HOW and WHEN to scale up (we can help there too).

Let us create a bodyweight training program for you!

DUMBBELL TRAINING

Dumbbells are a great first step into the world of weight training and strength training:

Most gyms will have dumbbells, even if it’s a basic gym in your apartment complex.

A set of dumbbells doesn’t take up a lot of room, which means you can have a pair at home without a large footprint.

Dumbbells make it easy to add difficulty to a bodyweight movement: holding dumbbells while doing lunges, for example.

Dumbbell exercises can be less intimidating than barbell training for some, and are a step towards barbell training.

Dumbbells have an added stabilization challenge, and will point out muscle imbalances pretty easily (“oh my right arm is stronger than my left arm.”).

You can scale easily. Once the 10 pound weights become too easy, pick up the 15 pound ones!

KETTLEBELL TRAINING

A kettlebell is essentially a cannonball with a handle on it. They come in any weight imaginable, they don’t take up a lot of room, and can be used in dozens of ways for a great compact workout.

Our 20-minute kettlebell workout has 8 simple exercises you can do with just one weight.

Although there are “adjustable kettlebells,” you’ll most likely be working with a single kettlebell, and then adjusting your movements for “progressive overload” (making the workout slightly more difficult each time).

If you are a member at a gym, they’ll probably have multiple kettlebells that you can use to level up.

BARBELL TRAINING

Regardless of sex or gender age, if your goal is to get strong quickly, use 20 seconds of courage and get comfortable training with a barbell (I’ll help you, I promise):

“Progressive overload” is easy – you simply add weights to either side of the bar, allowing you to progressively lift more and more weight each week.

It’s much easier to go heavy safely – especially for lower body movements like the squat and the deadlift.

The biggest downside to barbell training is that in order to train at home, you need to have purchased a squat rack, a barbell, a bench, and enough weights for your house or garage (which can be an expensive investment, especially when starting out!).

If not, you definitely will need to join a gym.

WHICH RESISTANCE TRAINING PATH IS RIGHT FOR YOU?

Not sure which path to pick? You’re not alone – this stuff can be overwhelming. Check out our 1-on-1 Coaching Program. We get to know you and your goals, will check your form via video, and make adjustments based on your progress!

Let us build a strength training workout for you that fits your busy life! Learn more:

Which Strength Training Program is Right for Me?

So, what’s the best workout program to start as a beginner?

Realistically, it’s the one that you will actually do.

Barbell training might be optimal in terms of building pure strength quickly, but if you don’t see yourself actually getting to the gym regularly – or you’re too self conscious to enter the free weight section (for now) – no problem!

Start with bodyweight training.

Conversely, bodyweight training might seem convenient and easy to start now, but if you can’t motivate yourself to work out at home, you might be better off joining a gym.

So let’s get you a workout program!

As we cover in our “How to Find the Perfect Workout Plan (for you)”: MOST beginners will be best served by following a “full body” or “total body” routine, 2 to 3 times per week, with a day of rest in between each workout.

This full body workout will have 4-5 big compound movements.

A compound movement is an exercise that recruits LOTS of muscles simultaneously and forces your body to work in unison.

An example would be the barbell squat, which recruits every muscle in your core, butt, and legs to work together to lift the weight.

This is WAY more efficient – and effective at building pure strength – than doing 5 different isolated leg exercises.

Why do 5 exercises when 1 exercise will get you better results in 20% of the time?

To answer your next question, let me tell you about how many sets and reps you should do as a beginner! As we explain in our “how many sets and reps” guide:

Reps in the 1-5 range build super dense muscle and strength.

Reps in the 6-12 range build equal amounts of muscular power, strength, and size.

Reps in the 12+ range primarily build muscular endurance and size and also cardiovascular health.

Many beginner strength programs will encourage you to keep things simple and just do 5 sets of 5 reps for each exercise in an effort to optimize progress as a beginner interested in strength gains.

I personally encourage people to aim for a weight that they can lift for 8-10 reps. This gives you a chance to really work on your form and lift safely!

The max lifts will come later, my friend. You gotta learn to walk before you can run!

“Staci, which workout plan is best for me?”

It depends on your goals!

If your main goal is general fitness and fat loss, doing a circuit training workout will likely help you reach your goals (make sure you see our section below for “strength training for weight loss”).

If your main goal is to get stronger and/or put on muscle, following a more traditional, pure-strength style gym workout is going to get you there faster.

TRUTH BOMB: ANY strength training workout will help you reach nearly any goal provided you do two things:

Eat correctly for your goals too. How you eat will account for 80-90% of your success or failure when it comes to weight loss or bulking up.

Increase the difficulty of your workouts. This is that “progressive overload” stuff we were talking about earlier. Doing 1 more bodyweight squat, lifting 5 more pounds, or completing your circuit 10 seconds faster than last workout. By forcing your body to constantly adapt, your muscles will never get complacent and have to keep burning extra calories and rebuilding themselves stronger.

Depending on your current situation, and how quickly you’re looking to cut through the “trial and error” and get expert guidance, I might have an interesting solution for you.

We have a pretty killer 1-on-1 Online Coaching Program here at Nerd Fitness. You’ll work with a coach that will build a workout program for your body type and goals, check your form to make sure you’re doing them safety, and even help plan out your nutrition too.

We help busy people transform from newbies to strong badasses! Learn more:

The 5 Best Beginner Strength Training Programs

“Alright Staci, are there any ‘out of the box’ beginner workout programs I can start following now?”

Yup! Let me share with you some of our suggestions:

Here are 5 resistance training workouts you can follow TODAY. Pick the level that you feel most comfortable with, and then level up when you feel ready:

#1) BEGINNER BODYWEIGHT WORKOUT:

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Our Beginner Bodyweight Workout has a variety of rep ranges to promote endurance, strength, and cardiovascular health.

Complete one set of each exercise and then moving directly onto the next exercise:

20 body weight squats

10 push ups

20 walking lunges

10 dumbbell rows (using a gallon milk jug)

15 second plank

30 jumping Jacks

Repeat for 3 rounds

Want to stick with bodyweight training? When you’re ready to level up, check out our advanced bodyweight training circuit.

Otherwise, you can move onto weight training when you feel comfortable!

#2A) BEGINNER NERD FITNESS DUMBBELL WORKOUT

If you are just getting started with dumbbells and you’re looking for a beginner workout program to follow, this is our Level 3 Gym Workout, “Dumbbell Division”:

10 goblet squats

10 push-ups

10 dumbbell rows per side

I knew you’d ask, so here is Goblet Squat video explanation (from the Nerd Fitness Academy):

And here is our video on how to do dumbbell rows:

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#2B) BEGINNER NERD FITNESS KETTLEBELL WORKOUT

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Our Beginner Kettlebell Routine is a workout you do anywhere you have room to swing a kettlebell.

So, probably not in a phone booth or a closet or a bathroom stall. But other than that, pretty much anywhere else.

Complete 3 Kettlebell Workout Circuits:

8 Halos (each side)

10 Goblet Squats

8 Overhead Presses (each side)

15 Kettlebell Swings

8 Bent Over Rows (each side)

6 Front Rack Reverse Lunge (per side)

#3) BARBELL TRAINING: 2 DAY WORKOUT SPLIT

As we cover in our “how to train in a gym” guide (where we take you from “lost sheep” to “barbell badass”), this routine is a much more focused weight training, strength building workout that gets your feet wet with barbell training. Click on ANY exercise to learn how to do it properly.

NF BEGINNER BARBELL STRENGTH WORKOUT: DAY A

Do 3 rounds of:

10 barbell squats

10 push-ups

10 bodyweight rows

NF BEGINNER BARBELL STRENGTH WORKOUT: DAY B

Do 3 rounds of:

5 barbell Romanian deadlifts

10 push-ups

10 dumbbell rows per arm

WHAT ARE SOME OTHER POPULAR STRENGTH TRAINING PROGRAMS?

#1) “Starting Strength” is considered the gold standard beginner barbell weight training program by many. We highly recommend you pick up the actual book if you are serious about barbell training – it’s one of the most important training books you can ever read.

#2) Strong Lifts 5X5: A solid workout program that starts you out very slow, with just the barbell, and helps you master form before you get too heavy. It also keeps things VERY easy with “do 5×5.” Strong Lifts has been around for a long time and is a solid program.

#3) Jim Wendler’s 5/3/1: This program allows you a little more freedom to do exercises that you enjoy, or work on personal weaknesses, because you choose some of the assistance work.

Note: You can modify any of the barbell training programs to be done with dumbbells, if that’s what you have at home!

Lastly, you can always write your own workout plan! I wrote my own workouts for a decade and it taught me a LOT about training and health.

We do have our own 1-on-1 Online Coaching Program where you’ll work with a coach that will build a strength training workout program for your body type and goals, check your form on each exercise via video, and even help you plan out your nutrition too.

If you want to learn more about our coaching program, you can click in the box below: Want step-by-step guidance and form checks? Learn more:

How Much Weight Should I lift?

We have a FULL resource on how to determine your starting weight for lifting, but I’ll give you the gist here.

The simple to learn but tough to implement answer: lift enough so that you can get through the set, but not too much that you have NO fuel left in the tank at the end.

And then, try to lift sliiiightly more than last time.

How much weight should I start with?

If you are using dumbbells or a kettlebell, always err on the side of “too light” versus “too heavy.” You want to learn the movement correctly and build correct form.

If you are training with a barbell, ALWAYS start with JUST the bar, no matter the exercise (By the way, a standard barbell weighs 45 pounds).

“How fast should I add weight to the bar?”

Here’s what we teach all of our coaching clients: add the minimum amount of weight each week you can, even if you THINK you can lift more. It’s better to finish a workout full of momentum and say “I can do more!” than defeated and saying “that was too much, crapola.”

Think of it this way, even if you are adding just 5 pounds per week to the bar, within a year you would be lifting 300+ pounds!

So go SLOW. Team NF’s Steve even bought little half pound weights and increases many of his lifts by just 1 pound per week. It’s a big part of how he transformed (jokingly) from Steve Rogers to Captain America.

And if you are looking for this content in easily digestible form, make sure you download our free Strength 101 Guide when you join the rebellion below:

Download our comprehensive guide STRENGTH TRAINING 101!

Everything you need to know about getting strong.

Workout routines for bodyweight AND weight training.

How to find the right gym and train properly in one.

The 9 Best Strength Training Exercises to Learn

If you’re new to all this “strength training” stuff, hopping into a program and going from zero to sixty might be a recipe for failure.

Instead, be patient, and take the time to learn these movements first.

I’m going to share with you the 9 best strength training exercises that every beginners should master (scroll down for full video and explanations!):

1. Push-up: uses every push muscle in your body (chest, shoulders, triceps)

2. Bodyweight squat: uses every muscle in lower body (quads, hamstrings, glutes, core)

3. Bodyweight row: works every “pull” muscle and helps prepare you for a pull-up!

4. Pull-up or chin-up: the best “pull” exercise in history! Everybody should have a goal to get their first pull-up.

5. Bodyweight dip: advanced “push” movement that targets your push muscles (chest, shoulders, triceps) in a different way than push-ups.

6. Barbell squat: the best bang for your buck on muscle building. recruits nearly every push muscle in your whole body, and great core workout.

7. Barbell deadlift: the favorite exercise of every coach at Nerd Fitness. Uses every “pull,” leg, and core muscle in your body.

8. Barbell benchpress: as basic and powerful as they come. Uses every “push” movement in your upper body and can get you strong as heck!

9. Barbell press: press the bar above your head! targets shoulders and triceps more than chest.

Click on any of these exercises to get a FULL explanation of the movement, step-by-step:

1) The Push-Up: The best exercise you could ever do for yourself when it comes to using your bodyweight for push muscles (your chest, shoulders, and triceps):

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2) The Bodyweight Squat: This exercise serves a dual purpose: it is the foundation for building strength AND helps build proper mobility. If you are going to ever do barbell squats, you need to work on hitting proper depth with a bodyweight squat first!

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3) The Inverted Bodyweight Row: Until you can get your first pull-up or chin-up, these exercises are GREAT to start building your pull-muscle strength: your back, biceps, and forearms.

4) The Pull-Up and Chin-Up: Once you can support your bodyweight above the bar, the world becomes your playground. No strength training routine should be without pull-up or chin-up work! (Click here if you can’t do a pull-up or chin-up yet?)

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5) The Bodyweight Dip: As you start to get stronger with push-ups and need to find a way to increase the challenge, consider doing dips – warning: these are very advanced, but incredible strength building exercises.

And now we’re into the best weight training exercises:

6) The Barbell Squat: Probably the best exercise when it comes to building strength and muscle throughout your whole body. It also burns crazy calories and makes life better. This is a MUST:

7) The Barbell Deadlift: Maybe the best exercise of all time. Actually no, it IS the best exercise of all time. It’s certainly the most primal: “pick the weight up off the ground. Done.”

This is a very technical lift, so make sure you read our article on how to do it with proper form:

8) The Barbell Press: Press a barbell above your head. This recruits all of the muscles in your chest, shoulders, and arms in order for you to lift the weight over your head.

As a bonus, you need to really flex and brace your core, which gets those muscles working too.

9) The Barbell Bench Press. Lie on a bench, and lower a barbell until it almost touches your chest. Pause, and the press it back up towards the sky. Repeat! And get strong.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it: commit to trying ONE of these movements in the next week. Use 20 seconds of courage, recruit a friend who has lifted or trained before, and try your best.

And if you want somebody to help you put these into a workout program, teach you HOW to do these movements properly, and have the confidence to know you’re training correctly for your goals…

Let us create a workout program that fits your busy life!

How to KNow you’re doing a strength training movement Properly (Form Checks)

Always start out with just your bodyweight and make sure your movement is correct!

If it’s a barbell movement, use a broomstick (or PVC Pipe).

If it’s a dumbbell movement, use two sections of PVC or something else that is light and small to simulate a dumbbell.

When it comes to movements like squats, deadlifts, pull-ups, bench press, your form is crucial. Develop good habits with lightweight and you will save yourself months of frustration later and will protect you from injury.

If you’re struggling with certain elements of a movement, don’t get frustrated! Just understand that you’ll have areas in which you can improve.

How do you know if your movement is correct?

Do regular video form checks! Record yourself and watch the video.

Alternatively, an expert reviewing your specific movement can be invaluable.

If you’re looking for someone who can do video form checks, provide feedback, and adjust your workouts based on your progress, you can check out our 1-on-1 Online Personal Training!

I’ve had an online coach for 4 years and it’s changed my life.

Never wonder if you’re doing a movement properly! Get form checks from our coaches:

You could also get expert guidance in person: Look around at your local strength and conditioning gyms and see if you could hire a coach (here’s how to find a good personal trainer) for one or two sessions just to go over the basic movements.

If you can’t do either of those two options, no big deal! Videotape yourself and compare it to the videos here in the articles. You can also post your video to the form check section of the Nerd Fitness Forums.

When I started, I really liked practicing all of the movements at home because I could watch a video online at the same time as I was watching myself do it in a mirror.

Strength Training For Weight Loss

So you’re looking to lose weight, and tired of hours of cardio (me too).

And you’re wondering if strength training for weight loss – by following one of the workouts in this guide is a viable solution.

Or, gasp – will strength training make you too bulky? (SPOILER: it won’t)

Yes, Strength training will help you lose weight IF you do two key things for effective weight loss:

Calorie restriction: eating fewer calories than you burn every day

Strength training with progressive overload (picking up heavier stuff)

As we point out in our “Cardio vs Intervals vs Weight Training” article, strength training is the MOST efficient method for weight loss.

Not only that, but you can find study after study after study that shows you the benefits of strength training for weight management when combined with “calorie restriction.”[1]

As I cover in our “Why can’t I lose weight?” article, here’s why eating a caloric deficit and strength training is SO magical when combined:

When you strength train – by picking up something heavy – your muscles are “broken down” during the exercise itself, and then they rebuild themselves stronger over the next 24-48 hours.

Guess what happens during those 24-48 hours?

Your body will divert as many calories consumed as necessary to “Rebuild Muscle!”

It also diverts additional calories to “Burn as Fuel” to handle this increased “muscle rebuilding” activity.

Which means two amazing things:

Your metabolism is revved up for this time period, burning more calories than normal.

Rebuilding muscle is a calorie taxing activity!

Not only that, but when you eat a caloric deficit, your body doesn’t have enough calories to fuel all the day’s activities. In these instances, your body will pull from your stored fat to make sure all the work still gets done.

This is the trifecta of physical transformation victory:

You get stronger and keep the muscle you have.

You burn through the fat you’re trying to get rid of.

You’re decreasing your body fat percent and keeping your muscle = look good naked.

In other words, strength training + eating right is the BEST path for weight loss out there! And yes, in certain situations, you can actually lose weight AND build muscle at the same time.

So how do you put this into practice? Pick one of the strength workouts in this article. Calculate your daily caloric needs. Learn about healthy eating. And start.

In other words…

Pick up something heavy, and eat a vegetable.

These are the types of things we work on with our 1-on-1 Coaching Clients: helping them lift weights confidently and eat correctly for their goals! Let us help you:

Let our coaches create a custom strength training and weight loss plan for you!

“Just Tell Me What Strength Training Program to Follow!”

Okay! Unless you are collecting underpants, you should now have a workout program you want to try out!

“Staci, this is a lot, can you just TELL me what to do?”

Okay fine.

Here are the steps again for you:

STEP ONE: PICK YOUR WORKOUT PATH:

A) If YOU ARE TRAINING AT HOME. Pick one of these 3 based on what equipment you have:

Beginner Bodyweight Workout (no equipment)

Kettlebell Beginner Workout

Dumbbell Division Workout (Level 3 of Gym Guide)

B) IF YOU ARE TRAINING IN A GYM: Amazing! I love gyms.

Read our “How to train in a gym” guide and go from Level 1 to Level 6 over the next month.

STEP #2: TRY A NEW EXERCISE: In addition to following a workout program, I’m gonna push outside of your comfort zone – that’s where real growth happens.

Learn ONE new movement this week.

Pick one of the exercises below and try it out!

How to squat

How to deadlift

How to bench press

How to do the overhead press

How to do a pull-up

How to do a push-up

How to do an inverted row

Here are 42 bodyweight exercises you can too.

STEP #3) HIRE A YODA: If you are somebody that just wants to be told exactly what to, how to train for your goals, and are good at following direction, consider hiring a coach.

I’ve been working with an online coach since 2014 and it has changed my life – and I do this stuff for a living!

Read our guide on “Is a personal trainer worth it?”

Consider the NF Online Coaching Program!

Let us help you get strong, every step of the way! Learn more:

STEP #4) JOIN THE REBELLION! If you like how we do things around here at Nerd Fitness, we’d love to have you in our community of misfits, mutants, and rebels!

Download our comprehensive guide STRENGTH TRAINING 101!

Everything you need to know about getting strong.

Workout routines for bodyweight AND weight training.

How to find the right gym and train properly in one.

No matter what you do today:

Don’t be afraid of doing anything wrong – truth be told, the majority of the people in the gym don’t have any idea what they are doing, and are just as nervous as you are!

Muster up your 20 seconds of courage if you need to, and let me know in the comments how it goes!

What questions do you have about getting started?

So, what’s the biggest thing holding you back from starting strength training?

-Staci

PS – Check out the rest of the articles in our Strength Training 101 series:

Strength Training 101

Strength Training 101: Finding the Right Gym

Strength Training 101: How Much Weight Should I Be Lifting?

Strength Training 101: How to Build Muscle Quickly

Strength Training 101: How to Squat Properly

Strength Training 101: How to Deadlift

Strength Training 101: How to Bench Press

Strength Training 101: How to Do a Pull-Up

Strength Training 101: How to Do a Bodyweight Row

Strength Training 101: How to Do a Dip

Strength Training 101: How to Overhead Press

photo source:Jacob: Gymn Bunny Smurf, William Marlow: Assorted Weights, Kaleb Fulgham: Dumbbells, W_Minshull: Stormtroopers in Gym, Lego Lifting, Rainstorm, Kristina Alexanderson: Teddy Love, Jason Ternus: Stormtrooper Pushups

Footnotes ( returns to text)

Like this study and this study and this one.

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