#I highly recommend watching his video on how to fix the pacing of the first three volumes

[ordinaryschmuck]

What I Thought About The Mitchells vs. the Machines

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is up there as one of the best installments of the MCU. Sure, the action and CGI sucks, and the season finale could use a bit more polish, but there is so much more of what it does right. It brings up an engaging discussion through Karli; the bromance between Bucky and Sam is incredible; Zemo's surprisingly a riot, and U.S. Agent is a character whose inner psychology is something I would like to study. Plus, the series really dives deep into the themes of race and the realistic hesitance that comes with making a black man Captain America. It's easily an 8/10 series that is worth an in-depth discussion.

But f**k that s**t, because I'm talking about The Mitchells vs. the Machines instead!

I know it might be questionable that reviewing a movie starring a predominantly white family of idiots saving the world instead of the TV series about the powerful journey of a black man taking the mantle of an American icon...but this movie is fun, alright? And yes, I'm going to spoil it to explain how. So if you still have a Netflix account, I highly suggest you check it out when you have time.

Because, random people on the internet who most likely won't read this, this Ordinary Schmuck who writes stories and reviews and draws comics and cartoons is going to explain why The Mitchells vs. the Machines might just be my favorite film of the year (steep contest, I know).

WHAT I LIKE

The Animation: Let's get this out of the way right here and right now: If a single person ever tells you that this movie has awful animation, or the worst animation they have ever seen, just go ahead and assume that person is an idiot. Because holy hot cheese sticks, does this movie look amazing!

Say what you want about most of Sony Pictures Animation's movies, but you have to admit that they nail making a CGI movie looking like it could be in 2D. And The Mitchells vs. The Machines is the peak of that style. Every character in nearly every frame looks like they could work well if the movie was hand-drawn, and I love it. I am addicted to seeing films that look 2D with a 3D makeover because there has to be ten times the amount of effort to get that look just right, what with modeling each character in unique ways to nail that style wherein a hand-drawn film, you could just, well, draw it. Not to mention that the cell-shading and certain hand-drawn elements also add to the aesthetic.

Plus, there is so much attention to details, such as most of Katie's character model being covered in sharpie, or how you can see a hint of Eric and Deborabot 3000's drawn on faces even though their black screens are showing something else. Seriously, you can listen to any criticism this movie gets, but don't you dare let someone get away with telling you that it looks awful. It doesn't. It's incredible, and I SO wish that I could have seen it all on the big screen.

The Comedy: On top of being incredibly well-animated, this movie is also incredibly funny. Like, really funny. I shouldn't be surprised since it's made by the same people responsible for Clone High and The Lego Movie, but yeah, I found myself laughing, chuckling, and snorting with nearly every joke in the film. Not every joke works, to be fair. But because of the fast-paced humor, the bad jokes are almost immediately followed up with better ones soon after. What's even better is that the writers know when to take a break with the humor and let some surprisingly compelling drama take over. And even then, when there are jokes during the dramatic moments, they add sincerity to the scene rather than take anything away. Looking at you, The Amazing World of Gumball...I mean, I love you, but sheesh, you need to learn to let a solemn moment play out.

Anyways, the comedy is hilarious. And while I won't spoil every joke, I will go over some bits that might have gotten to me the most.

Katie Mitchell: Let's just go ahead and add Katie Mitchell to the list of characters I highly relate to on a personal level (which is getting longer by the minute, hot damn). But jokes aside, I really like Katie. Her love and desire to make movies is something I identify with, and her goal to just go to a place where she feels like she belongs is easy to understand. Trust me, if I found out there was a group of weirdos who like the same things I do and enjoy the things I make, I’d be willing to pack everything I have and go to them as fast as possible too. Plus, I feel like a lot of us can relate to a character who lives in a household where people question if our career goal is something we can make a living with. I remember two years ago when I told my aunt that I wanted to make my own animated series, and her reaction is a little too similar to Rick's when Katie showed him her movie. They mean well, but sometimes it's for the best to have a cheerleader rather than a critic, especially if that person is family.

Now, Katie isn't perfect as her enthusiasm can get a little annoying at times, and her desire to leave can be conceived as a little too harsh as well. Still, she's pretty cool and serves her role as a protagonist pretty well...also, if the movie gets a sequel, let's hope she and Jude become cannon by then. GIVE KATIE A GIRLFRIEND, DAMN IT!

Aaron Mitchell: But as great as Katie is, it's this goober that earns the reward for my favorite character. At times it looks like Aaron is nothing more than a source of comedy, but he handles some dramatic moments really well. Partial credit goes to Michael Rianda for that one. Yeah, having a child actor would have made Aaron sound more like a kid, but no other voice could have fit him better than what Michael offers as he comes across as weird but never obnoxious.

Also, let's give the writer points for making a character who is clearly neurodivergent. Yet also refraining from having him be annoying or useless to the rest of the cast. No one ever really disrespects or belittles Aaron and instead chooses to work with him rather than against him. Especially Katie, who forms a solid sibling bond with Aaron as a fellow weirdo. It's genuinely sweet to see, and I loved every minute that the writers showed that just because someone acts on a different wavelength doesn't mean they shouldn't be treated any less because of it. You get that with Katie, a little bit, but I see it much more with Aaron, for some reason. And I love him every minute, so that’s a win.

(Plus, I may or may not have had a dinosaur phase when I was younger, so go ahead and add him to the list of relatable characters too.)

Rick Mitchell: This is probably a character you will either love or hate, and I can see both sides of that argument. Because on the one hand, I really like Rick Mitchell. His motivation is clear and understandable from the first set of home videos with him and Katie, both near the beginning and the end. Sure, he messes up a lot, but he is still a man who cares deeply about his daughter, as well as his entire family. He gets to the point where he would make great sacrifices for all of them, especially Katie. Plus, it's just pleasant seeing a cartoon dad who isn't a complete idiot or overprotective regarding his daughter's love life.

However, there are times when Rick comes across as an irresponsible d**k. When he does things like smash the family's phones without telling them or giving them screwdrivers for "presents," you're either gonna find that funny or you won't. Personally, I enjoy Rick and his antics, and I have no problem with irresponsible cartoon dads. As long as they don't cross the line toward Modern-Peter Griffin territory, I've got no problem with dads like Rick, who I believe has never even got that bad. Still, some people might think differently, and I can't blame them. Because after getting great cartoon dads like Greg Universe, I can understand if some people won't be interested in characters like Rick Mitchell.

Rick’s and Katie’s relationship: Alongside the top-notch animation and gut-busting comedy, Rick and Katie's relationship is what I consider the movie's most essential asset. These two are the main characters of the film, and as such, they develop through each other. And what's crazy is that they have very conflicting goals. Katie wants to escape and be with her people, where Rich just wants one last chance to have a good memory with Katie before she leaves. To do so, they first have to understand each other. Katie has to learn why Rick is so desperate to spend time with her, and Rick has to realize why Katie is, well, Katie. What I love most about it is that they try. These two don't spend the entire movie arguing and being at each other's throats until a sudden "Oh" moment in the end. No, there are actual moments when they genuinely try to understand one another and fix their relationship. It's nice to watch, and I especially love when it cuts to Linda and Aaron celebrating each time Katie and Rick get closer to each other. When recommending this movie, I'd say come for the animation and comedy, stay for the phenomenal relationship building.

Monchi: There are probably people already comparing Monchi to Mater or the Minions due to being a comic relief with nothing else to add...but gosh dangit, do I love this little gentleman. Maybe it's because I'm a dog person, but I find Monchie to be incredibly adorable, and I will fight anybody who disrespects this king of kings. Probably not physically, 'cause I'm a wuss, but I will verbally. So WATCH IT!

“HeLlO. i Am DoG.”: Have I mentioned that this movie is funny?

Rick’s videotapes of him and Katie: And right there. Rick's motivation for everything is set in stone through a solid case of visual storytelling.

PAL: The writers do almost everything they should have with this character. PAL might not have the most creative evil plan in the world, but to me, a villain can have a generic scheme as long as they're funny. Thankfully, PAL is funny. Not only is the idea of a smartphone ruling the planet hilarious in all the right ways, but Olivia Colman delivers such a great cynical energy that the character needs. The way PAL reacts to people explaining why humans are worth living is just the best, and her flopping around in a fit of rage successfully gets to me.

If I had to nitpick, I'd say that I wish PAL had more of a meaningful resolution to her character. The movie builds up that she makes a big deal about Mark dropping her, so it feels weird that neither of them really get any actual closure with each other. I'll get more into that in the dislikes, but I wish PAL had more of a fitting end than just dying after accidentally getting dropped in a glass of water. Other than that, she's a great comedic villain for a comedic movie.

PAL MAX Robots: These guys are the funniest characters in the movie. Half of it is the bits of visual humor, while the other half comes from the solid line delivery from Beck Bennett. Especially with Bennett's and Fred Armisen's Eric and Deborahbot 3000. These two are definitely the comedic highlights, as nearly every line they say is both hilarious and kind of adorable at times. And just like with Monchi, if you dare disrespect these characters, I will fight you. Because they are funny, and I will not hear otherwise.

PAL demonstrating what it’s like to be a phone: Have I mentioned that this movie is funny?

(Don't disrespect your phones, kids. Otherwise, they'll try to take over the world.)

PAL turning off the Wi-Fi: Again, have I mentioned this movie is funny?

“I love the dog. You love the dog. We all love the dog. But at some point, you’re gonna have to eat the dog.”: It's the sick jokes that get to me the most. Everyone booing Rick afterward is just the cherry on top.

Attack of the Furbies: Have I. Mentioned. That this movie. Is funny?

Seriously, if you haven't lost your s**t during every second of this scene, then you never had to deal with the demonic entity that is a Furby. In a way, I commend you. But you also don't get to appreciate the comedic genius of all of this. So I also weirdly feel bad for you.

The Mitchells deciding how to celebrate: You don't have a real family if you spend more time arguing about how to celebrate after saving the world than you do about how to save the world. I don't make the rules. I just abide by them.

The PAL MAX Primes: There's not much to say about them. The PAL MAX primes look and act pretty cool, are brilliantly animated, and raise the stakes while still being funny at times. I love 'em, but I don't have much to analyze with them either.

The origin of the moose: ...I'd make the "I didn't need my heart anyway" joke, but to be honest, it's still shattered after WandaVision.

(For real, though, this is a really effective scene that establishes why Rick makes a big deal with the moose and why he might feel hurt that Katie is willing to disregard it completely)

The Theme of Technology and Social Media: There's a theme about how family is important, and working hard on making things work is worth the effort. But that's a bit too generic for my tastes, so instead, I'm gonna talk about the equally important message this movie has about technology. Because as twisted as she is, PAL makes a great point. The technology we have today helps us in a variety of ways. It's especially useful with sites like YouTube, allowing content creators like Katie to reach out and share their voices. The only issue with technology is how people use it. Take note that the main reason why the Mitchells stand a chance against PAL is by using her own tech against her. Yes, over-relying on all the advancements around us can be dangerous, but if we're smart with how we use them, we can get by just fine. This movie isn't about purging all technology like most robot apocalypse stories are. Instead, it's about using it correctly and not being helpless sheep the second the Wi-Fi gets turned off. Which might just be the most unique thing this movie has going for it story-wise (more on that later).

The Climax: The Mitchells vs. The Machines has everything that I think I climax should have. First off, it utilizes callbacks and jokes that I wouldn't have thought twice on actually coming in handy for how the Mitchells win the day. But showing that Monchi causes the robots to malfunction turns a pretty "eh" joke into a solid case of foreshadowing.

Second, everyone does something. Some characters do more than others, sure, but the fact that every Mitchell, even Monchi, has a hand in beating PAL and her robots is a great sense of writing to me. It shows that you really can't cut anyone from the main cast, as they each add value to how they are essential to the plot. Even Aaron, who arguably does the least in the climax, still manages to be the catalyst to what is easily the best scene in the movie. Speaking of which...

Linda Kicks Ass: By the way, that's the actual name on the soundtrack. I'm not even kidding. Check it.

Anyways, for the most part, Linda seemed like a decent cartoon mom. She's insanely supportive but still has the common sense to keep her foot down, like agreeing with Rick to stay safe in the dino stop the second the apocalypse starts. A pretty fun character, for sure, but nothing too noteworthy...but the second she loses her s**t, Linda Mitchell frickin' SKYROCKETS to the best-cartoon-mom territory! Believe me when I tell you that seeing her slice and dice robots like a middle-aged female Samurai Jack is as awesome as it is hilarious. Does it make sense how she can suddenly do this? No, but at the same time, who gives a s**t about common sense?! Because this moment was epic, and I don't think I'll ever get tired of watching it over and over again.

Rick Learning How to Internet...Again: I consider this the funniest moment in the movie. Trust me, the Furby scene is a close, close, CLOSE, second...but I think this scene was funnier.

The final goodbye: This is what I'm talking about when I say humor adds to the dramatic moments. The Mitchells saying "I love you" in moose is pretty funny, but it's also a sweet moment given that this is absolutely how this family of weirdos would say goodbye to each other. And, yeah, I got a little misty-eyed during this scene. Especially when Rick saw Katie pocketing the moose. That s**t just cuts deep, man.

Alex Hirsch Voices a Character: ...That's it. I look up to Alex Hirsh as everything I want to be as a creator, and the fact that his name is on this movie fills me with joy. He's also a story consultant, so that can also explain why the movie turned out as great as it did...although there are some imperfections.

WHAT I DISLIKE

Katie-vision: What's Katie-vision? Well, throughout the movie, we get to see how Katie views the world as there are these hand-drawn elements that look like effects Katie would add if she was the one who made the movie. At times it can be subtle and cute, like when this little beating heart appears when Katie is talking with Jude and her other friends. It's when the movie is in your face with Katie-vision does it get annoying. Like showing how Katie is lying about being certain she can drive up a vertical ramp or signifying what is the Rick Mitchell Special. Even if you justify that this would be how Katie would edit the movie, it still doesn't change how obnoxious these moments can be. For instance, Monchi is justified to be essential for the plot, but that doesn't mean people won't hate him...I'll still fight them if they do, but that's beside the point.

I can totally accept this being a personal issue, as I'm sure some people enjoy it. As for me, I think Katie-vision works best when used subtly instead of crudely.

The Meme humor: It's something similar here. Because some people like meme humor...but I don't. To me, it just dates your story if you reference memes even once. Now, a show, movie, or book being partially dated is nothing new. We Bare Bears, a series that I love, reference memes, apps, and social media constantly. Yet, the show still has a timeless feel to it as it doesn't rely on those references too much. The Mitchells vs. the Machines doesn't rely on memes as much either. But even then, that doesn't make a difference about how annoying that gibbon monkey joke was. Seriously, what the f**k was that? And how is THAT the joke that gets used twice!?

Underutilizing Mark Bowman: It really bothers me how this guy barely does much. I mean, Mark Bowman is the main reason that anything happens in the movie. Because he mistreated PAL, Mark acts as the catalyst for events to come. So the fact that he could have been written out the second PAL takes control doesn't make sense to me. It's worse since I could see more potential with his character through his relationship with PAL. These two could be anti-Rick and Katie, as Mark and PAL show what happens when people disrespect their family. So separating them halfway through the story, and keeping them as such, is a huge mistake as it results in neither having a proper resolution to their arcs. Like I said, Rick and Katie develop through each other, and the same could have happened with Mark and PAL. It doesn't, making it something that I can't help but feel disappointed about.

The Poseys: These are characters I feel like work better with multiple appearances. Sure, they only have the one joke about being a perfect family, but at the same time, you can make a joke like that work. Look at Yvonne from Shaun of the Dead (Which might just be my favorite movie). That's a bit-character whose only purpose is showing how better she is than Shaun despite being in an eerily similar situation. But she works well as we constantly see how great she's doing in every instance we see her. The same could be done with the Poseys, as using a similar joke for one scene is underutilizing great potential to make an already good movie into a better one.

Plus, if you're gonna shoehorn in a romance between Aaron and Abby Posey, the least you could do is have more than one scene developing that...just saying.

Katie’s and Rick’s “Oh” Moments: I want to make it clear that I actually like these scenes. They're well written and effectively emotional. My problem is that they also happen two seconds apart. There's nothing wrong with having a character realize the error of their ways through a tear-jerking moment. It's a popular tactic for a reason. And given how both Rick and Katie are the protagonists, they both need their own "oh" moment. But you gotta space them out, as it makes things easier to see the emotional manipulation that you're clearly trying to pull on the audience. They work, but putting them back to back is an issue easily solved with at least two minutes of padding, not two seconds.

Katie’s Death Fakeout: This is one of the few instances that a joke doesn't work in the movie, made even more annoying with the fact that I could see the punchline a mile away and kept thinking, "Just get to it already." I'm pretty sure no one bought this, especially when Katie didn't look like she could have gotten killed in any way after throwing PAL. It's poorly handled and proof that even the funniest comedies have a stale joke every now and again.

Nothing New is really being done here: Keep in mind that in terms of style, this movie is incredibly innovative. And here's hoping future animated projects can take notes. But narratively speaking? Yeah, there's nothing really new that this movie is offering.

A story about how technology will be the death of us? Been there.

A story about a group of idiots miraculously saving the world? Done that.

A story about a father forcing their teenager on a road trip so they can spend quality time with each other, thus ruining the teen's chance of hanging out with their girlfriend? Believe it or not, I have seen A Goofy Movie...multiple times...both as a kid and as an adult.

Now, I have no issue with a movie's plot being a bit by-the-books, and in some cases, cliche. If done effectively, and if I still have a good time, I don't think there’s much to complain about. And there isn't with The Mitchells vs. The Machines. The problem lies with that I'll forget this movie along with the dozens of others like it in a couple years. Which might just be the biggest issue any film can have.

---------------------

Overall, I'd give The Mitchells vs. the Machines a well-earned A-. It has nitpicks, sure, but it's still a blast to watch. It might not be innovative or groundbreaking as movies like the last Sony Pictures Animation movie, Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse. However, it is fun. And when the world is burning down around us, it's nice to have a fun movie that can distract us from all of it. So feel free to log in to Netflix the next time you're in the mood for a film that is great for the whole family. You won’t be disapointed

(And I will talk about The Falcon and the Winter Soldier pretty soon. I just needed to get this out of my system first.)

[cytarabi]

Hey! I've become a huge fan of your fics on ao3. I wanted to know how do you push out so many beautiful chapters so quickly? What's your writing process like? I'm working on a big JB fic, which I'm trying to finish timely, but high quality. Always like to see how other writers do their thang! Thank you!

Hi! I remember your name!! <3 Thank YOU for the question and praise, that’s so sweet!!

I love seeing how other writers do their thang, too! And I’ve found it can be very, very different for each author.

TLDR I write a lot of my fic ahead of time. I outline the entire fic, chapter by chapter before I start writing. I use several tools to speed the process and/or to make it more artsy fartsy.

I’ve found that I’m a “plotter” and not a “pantser” (two main ways of writing, unless you hate being labeled lol.)

Plotter means that I prefer plotting out most of the story before I write the details. Here’s been my process for my multichapter fics:

1) I come up with an idea and let it brew! I think about key scenes or dialogue I love and I jot them down in my phone on Google notes. Write down your ideas, you’ll probably forget them.

2) During this brewing time, (for As Black As Thunder and my next fic) I take the time to read, read, read. I read works and jot more notes! I have an entire Google doc for Rebecca by Daphne de Maurier where I wrote down her tone usage, figurative language and summary of each chapter. I can’t tell you how much this has helped get me in the write TONE for the work. Tone is SO important. Readers reading a thriller will expect thriller beats! Deep Fried Drinks was a rom com, so the verbs, adjectives etc are very different from creepy Gothic. When I started As Black As Thunder (ABAT), wow, it was hard to nail the tone at first. But by the second half of the fic, I’m fully immersed in it and it’s much easier to create the tone naturally. Without using inspiration, I don’t think it would have turned out as well. For ABAT, I think I took two weeks of no writing, when I’m used to writing every day. It was hard not to write, but wow, was I ready when I started!

3) When I’m ready to outline, I do! I open a google doc for the fic and start throwing everything I can think of in there. My ABAT doc was only like three lines for 6 months... lol! I’ve only just started looking into story structure, so my older fics are all wonky. BUT for ABAT and Deep Fried Drinks, I tried to follow story structure for plots. First act, second act, third act, character arcs, etc. My longest fic, Time Stops, dropped a bunch of readers in the middle and I think it’s because my middle SAGGED majorly. I didn’t try to follow a structure, just sort of plotted it out how I wanted to, and it was probably very repetitive and boring. For ABAT, I plotted a mid point turn to spice things up, chose things to make the character more proactive, etc. I highly recommend Ellen Brock on Youtube for any plotting advice. She’s an editor, and I’ve learned so much!

4) Organize plot into chapters, write key notes for chapters and fill out background info. The first two are self explanatory, but the third is my favorite! One thing that speeds my writing (I have no idea if people do this or not) but I have lists. So many lists! For ABAT, I have lists of common outfits for characters (I usually hate writing about outfits but I’m glad I wrote more for this work). I also write the character arc for each main character. For ABAT, I have the following for Brienne:

Brienne 

Symbols: white crocus flower (purity, youthfulness, sensitive to rain), White begonia, Small birch saplings struggling for light

Goal: serve public, be idealistic, honorable

Lie: (hidden for spoilers)

Truth: (hidden for spoilers)

Flaw: stubborn, idealistic, watched her father get fame and respect for his engineering, wants to do the same thing and do it perfectly, doesn’t understand systemic racism 

Motivation: serve people, be accepted by the public, belonging, abandonment

Stakes: public rejection, Tarth name on the line, mockery, insanity, failure

So when I think about a curve ball for Brienne at any point of the story, this character section helps me stay true to character. I have a section for Brienne, Jaime, Cersei and Missandei. Cersei has a larger section because she’s a villain... ;)

In addition to this section, I also write down their personalities and strengths. You know, like if they went to an interview lol. For example, I have Missandei have the following strengths: 

Missandei

Adaptability: able to adapt

Intellection: introspective and appreciate intellectual discussions

Consistency: all people should be treated the same

Futuristic: fascinated by future

Learner: loves to learn

I ALSO have an emotion worksheet and this is SO USEFUL. They say in writing: show that the character is angry, not tell the reader. WELL, IDK about you but I can’t keep track of all the little quirks characters do and yet, I want them to be consistent. If while writing a scene, I sometimes think, “Hmm what is Jaime doing if he’s in awe right now?” I search for “awe” at the top of my fic, and bam, I have options, more or less. For a lot of emotions, I brainstormed ideas based on character traits, arcs, Gothic tone etc. I fill all of this out before I write the first chapter. 

Here’s an example of some emotions I have for ABAT:

Emotion List (remember to have introspection, unique perspective) 

Awe:

B: wrinkle deepened between brows, parted lips, fixed gaze, stands still

J: arched brow, open mouth, stare, goes closer

C: lowering chin or raising chin, goes closer

M: adaptable, quick to react

Deceptive:

B: looking away, walking away

J: scratching ear

C: smiling, neatly placed hands

M: long blink

Thoughtfulness:

B: staring off, quiet, daydreaming

J: staring at object important to him, twisting pencil or object in his hand, squeezing his hand

C: squeezing hand, staring at object she wants to get rid of or improve

M: daydreaming, staring off at her own outfit—it’s foreign

5) Now the fun part: writing! I used to write with scene structure outline, but I think I’ve grown off the training wheels. But it really helped me in Deep Fried Drinks to plot out the chapter scenes ahead of time, and I used Ellen Brock’s proactive and reactive videos to help me out with that. I throw on some music to get me in the mood of the story and I write during my kid’s nap, about two hours every day. Sometimes I’ll write at night, but lately I’ve been too tired to do that. My tip for this part is to try and figure out what you want to improve. What are you good at, and what could you improve as a writer? My first fics had like zero figurative language. Awkward. This takes a level of awareness that’s hard to reach but watching or researching creative writing technique really helps me. For example, I used to NEED to write all five senses out for each chapter ahead of time. Now it comes naturally to me! I would say now my main issue is phrasing? Pacing? And I need to tone down the melodrama for my next work....... lol! I write, write, write--and usually, I write 60-90% of the fic before I start editing!

6) Editing. Fun fun fun. I don’t mind editing, I just don’t think I’m that GOOD at it. I try to read through my chapter twice and edit as I go. I look for things I want to take out or add, look for show vs tell, formatting, etc--do things make sense? Did I miss anything? In ABAT, I’ll write something in chap 20 that I need to start in chap 18, so I’ll go back and make a quick note to “add part about document somewhere in this chapter” so I don’t confuse readers. When I edit chap 18, I’ll add that line or paragraph in. It’s all an intricate web! I also have a list of vague words I try to eliminate or replace with stronger words (I have more words if you want them). I found that I have certain words or phrases that echo a lot, like “while”, “turned around”, “turned” or “did not”--now I search for these phrases/words and try to change them:

Get rid of vague words, fix by explaining more:

Some 

While

Thing

Stuff

Very

Really

Big/small

Good/bad

Simple verbs: had, was, went

Got/get

Few

Several

What

Do/Did

It

Like with all writing “rules”, they can be broken, but it helps to know why they are rules. I steered away from adverbs, and I think it improves my writing. Other writers have different prose and adverbs work so well--it all depends on your style! If I find these vague words in dialogue, for example, I almost never change them because dialogue is usually freaking vague lol!

7) Beta reader(s)! I honestly think this work is better than my other stuff because I have a newer beta reader, theunpaidcritic!!! *I bow* She’s literally an expert so it’s SO helpful for me in every way--I can’t fangirl about her enough. If you’re struggling to get a beta reader, I recommend joining a JB discord (transformative werk is my favorite discord, and there is a beta read request thread) or post a request on reddit!

8) Post! Once you’ve edited and gone over beta reader notes, it’s time to post! Congrats!!!!!!!!!!

For time reference, I started this process around mid-May for ABAT, and I will be done by early September. Maybe I’m just a fast writer? Compared to angel-deux, ha, I look slow. Everyone is different! Please let me know if you have any other questions, I am ALL about helping out! :) <3 <3 <3

[rwby-rants-and-theories]

Fatmanfalling is a necessary evil.

[sanguinarysanguinity]

You made that amazing vid, Something Good, and know so much about various Holmes adaptations. What less-known adaptations would you recommend for watching and where to find them?

Oh, gosh, so much of this is a matter of personal taste! For myself, I like a competent, capable Watson, a Holmes that feels human joys and frailities, and a strong, affectionate relationship between them. So, things I love that deserve a bigger following:

Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson (1979-1980), starring Geoffrey Whitehead and Donald Pickering, is one of my two favorite discoveries from making the vid. Holmes is reserved but warm-hearted (and excellent with children!), and Watson is strong and active, with much to contribute to the partnership. (There’s a little bit of a through-line where Watson teaches himself Holmes’ methods, getting better and better at it as the series progresses.) Furthermore, the Holmes-and-Watson dynamic is lovely, with lots of affectionate, teasing banter. (In fact, Holmes can barely stop trolling Watson for long enough to solve a case!) Honestly, this is my comfort adaptation, the one I’m mostly like to put on when I’m blue or anxious and want to feel better. 

(Also, Holmes and Watson wear eyeliner, and who doesn’t need a Holmes or Watson in eyeliner?)?

If I understand its history correctly, it never aired in the UK or the US (and thus is far better known in Italy and Germany than among anglophones); further, it was tied up in a rights battle for yonks, so the only DVD release that I know of is dual-language German. But if you can tolerate somewhat-deteriorated VHS rips, most of it is available on YouTube. (Try this playlist, or this one.) I love it well enough that I gave myself the German DVD for a birthday present: it’s region-free, so it’ll play on both US and UK machines.

名探偵ホームズ | Sherlock Hound (1984-1985). Charming and sweet and silly (omg, Moriarty and his over-the-top mecha!), this is my other big favorite from making the vid. This is Japanese anime (the original six episodes were directed by Miyazaki, before the project got tied up in a rights battle and he moved on to the other things), set in a steampunk universe where everyone is a dog. (Except for Moriarty, who is a wolf.) Hound himself is hands-down one of my very favorite Holmeses: courteous, warm-hearted, human in his frailities, passionate in his defense of his clients, and with a child-like joy in his calling. Watson is fierce and growly and stubborn but also very warm-hearted, and the two of them are smitten with each other. (And both of them with Mrs. Hudson. Everyone loves Mrs. Hudson: even Moriarty!) Moriarty is ridonk over-the-top and I adore him: a brilliant inventor but a sad disaster at criminal masterminding. If you want more info, I have a longer post on Dreamwidth about why I love it, complete with links to various moments in the series.

If you’re in the US, the whole thing is available on the studio’s YouTube channel, although they have the episode order wrong and a few eps misnamed: start with “The Four Signatures” and continue to “The Mazalin Stone,” then you’re fine with playlist-order thereafter. Outside of the US I have no idea how to lay hands on it, sorry.

If you do subtitles, there are three Russian adaptations that are well worth your time: 

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson (1979-1986) aka “Russian Holmes” 

My Dearly Beloved Detective (1986), and 

Sherlock Holmes (2013) aka “New Russian Holmes”. 

The original Russian Holmes (1979-1986) is much like the Jeremy Brett Granada series in its loving regard for canon, and is similarly well-respected. Livanov and Solomin are a charming Holmes and Watson, and I honestly like their Reichenbach better than Granada’s. I find it a little slowly-paced overall, but if you’ve finished Granada and want something similar but with its own take, this is a solid choice.

My Dearly Beloved Detective is… gosh… a female-centric tragi-comic satire, maybe? It’s a bizarre little film, but I am fond of it. Its premise: all of England, much taken with Conan Doyle’s stories, cried out for a Holmes and Watson of their very own, and Shirley and Jane were hired to fulfill the need; unfortunately, Scotland Yard is jealous of Shirley’s and Jane’s success, and conspire to take them down. The film has as devoted a femslash following as you might expect, but I don’t think it will spoil too much if I warn you that nearly all the fic is pining or fix-it or both.

New Russian Holmes is a subversion of the original Russian series, where instead of a romantic fog-and-gaslight Victorian London, we get something much more gritty and Dickensian. I adore this series’ willingness to get down into the muck and wrestle with Holmes canon, but a lot of people hate it for that very same reason, so ymmv. I will say, however, that Panin is one of the very best Watsons running, and anyone who disagrees is categorically wrong. 

All three of these (and more besides!) can be found via @spiritcc, who is part of a fan-driven subtitling team that has heroically provided English subtitles to a variety of Russian Holmes adaptations. Masterpost for video and subtitles here.

Mystery Queen (2017) is a Korean drama that was released too late for us to use in the vid, but ugggggghhhhh it hurts me that it’s not in there. Holmes is an adorable, sweet, scythingly sharp housewife who is studying in secret against her family’s wishes to become a police detective; Watson is the highly-decorated police detective that she ends up collaborating with. I cannot convey how much I adored the first season: on the one hand, emotionally complex cases that ripped my heart out; on the other, fanservice slathered on with a goddamned trowel. (In the first episode, Holmes and Watson went from meet-cute to Three Garridebs in seven minutes flat.) I just. I mean. It’s a hard-fought Holmes-and-Watson relationship, but good god I love them each and together, and by series’ end either one would walk through fire for the other. I haven’t watched season two yet, but I have high hopes for it.

You can watch it with English subtitles on Vicki.com: Season 1 and Season 2.

And that’s my starter list of favorite lesser-known Holmes things – I hope you find something here you like! If there’s a specific kind of thing you’re looking for, let me know and I’ll try to make you a rec – this fandom is large enough that there’s a Holmes and Watson for nearly any taste. ;-)

[lintheotaku]

Watched Anime Genre

Watched List: Isekai 2016-Present 

Anime:  The Rising of the Shield Hero 

Plot:  Naofumi Iwatani is an otaku that is summoned through a book as 1 of 4 heroes to the world of Melromarc, to stop the Waves from destroying the world. Betrayal and ruined reputation causes Naofumi to be shunned by the people of Melromarc as well as the other heroes, forcing him to fight the Waves in his own way, all because he bares the shield. Pros: One of the more unique isekai animes out there. Instead of just one hero, there are four heroes, each from different versions of Japan. Instead of having a quirk or completely overpowered from the beginning, the main is instead knocked down to his lowest, resulting his not so heroic approach to situations. Gradually he begins to trust those closest to him and out of the bunch, he is the most grounded person and grasps reality far better than his fellow heroes. Cons: Pacing can feel a bit slow in the anime since there is a lot of small things building up before you get to the next big thing.(omg I want to knock some sense into the other heroes) And the anime tends to throw in a tad more details to make it feel as those Naofumi has a harem than it really is. (the one filler moment actually contradicts a detail the following canon scene) Personal Rating:  ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥  ♡ [4.5/5] Comments: With the pacing, it’s perhaps better to be reading the manga. And since this is originally a Light Novel, I HIGHLY recommend watching AniNews’s youtube channel on Rising of the Shield Hero: Skipped Content as it helps fill in gaps not placed in the manga and/or anime. 

Andddd I really can’t wait for the Scythe Hero to appear in ep 22<3

Anime: KonoSuba: God's Blessing On This Wonderful World! Plot: “When high schooler Kazuma Satou dies, his given the choice to be reincarnated in a fantasy world much like a video game and be granted one item or ability. But can a dimwitted Goddess, explosion craze crimson demon,  masochist crusader, and a lucky/unlucky adventurer to defeat the Devil King?” Pros: A very clever and humorous adventure with a group of misfits. Cons: There were a few points that felt a bit much or overly done. *cough*Aqua*cough* but luckily goes back into genuinely funny scenes. Too easily can turn into perverted moments for a non harlem type series. Personal Rating:  ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥  ♡ [4/5] Personal Thoughts: Honestly can’t help comparing Megumin’s ability to another light novel character. Agnis, from Adventures of Duan Surk, a fire sorceress that can only use high level fire magic and passes out after each use.  Except in Megumin’s case it’s Explosion magic. Besides that, and the quite troublemaking goddess- this series is unique enough as a comedy of misfits trying to live in a fantasy RPG world.

Anime: Re:Zero - Starting Life in Another World Plot:  “ With the biggest crisis of his life being summoned to another world and no sign of the one who summoned him, things become worse when he is attacked. However, when he is saved by a mysterious silver-haired girl with a fairy cat, Subaru cooperates with the girl to return the favor.” Pros: A series with mix of carefree moments as well as suspenseful.  Cons: Subaru can have some very unlikable moments, other times you can feel your heart being torn to shreds to the point you wonder how would you fair in his shoes. Personal Rating:  ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥  ♡ [4/5] Comments: Seriously Sabaru- Forget Emilia and go for waifu-Rem! TTATT

Anime: Saga Of Tanya The Evil Plot:  “An unnamed atheist Japanese salaryman, in the moment of being murdered by a disgruntled subordinate who he had fired due to poor performance at work, is confronted by a entity that could stop time which he refers to as "Being X" or god, who condemns the man for not having 'faith'. He is sentenced to be reborn in a world that is similar to World War I Europe, mixed with early aspects of World War II and magic, in an empire torn apart by countless wars with all nearby countries.”  Pros: Seeing the main getting bested and even frighten by “Being X” in an endless mind game while in a world in middle of war. Cons: ... uh what else is there to this series? Like how is the plot still moving? Personal Rating:  ♥ ♥ ♥  ♡  ♡ [3/5] Comments:  I’m not much into war types but this was alright I suppose. Not terrible, not a fave, and not memorable.

Anime: Overlord Plot: “When the shut-down time arrives, Momonga finds that the game hasn't vanished. Instead it appears as if Yggdrasil has been recreated as its own reality along with its various NPCs having been brought to life while Momonga has been trapped in the form of his game avatar, leaving him unable to use the normal player functions, such as General Message, or even to log out. With no other option, Momonga sets out to learn if anyone from the real world is also in this new world with him.” Pros: Curiously await what the future holds in Ainz’s adventure in this fantasy world and his NPCs seeking control of the world in his name. Cons: Albedo needs to dial back just a smidge. Personal Rating:  ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥  ♡ [4.5/5] Comments: Don’t get attached to anyone outside the Great Tomb of Nazarick . 

Anime: Isekai Quartet Plot: 12 minute comedic episodes of characters (Overlord, KonoSoba, Re:Zero, and Saga of Tanya the Evil) are sent to another world to survive ‘school life’. Pros: Ever wonder what it would be like to have different series come together and temporarily work together at school? Wanna see what character would get along and their reactions? Yep, this would be the show for ya.  Cons: Episodes are too short! Once you finally get somewhere interesting, it gets cut to the next episode. Personal Rating:  ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥  ♡ [4.5/5] Comments: Best way to watch this series is to binge tbh. It’s actually a lot of fun seeing the mains becoming friends and understanding their strengths and weaknesses. 

Anime: That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime Plot:  “Satoru Mikami, an average 37 year old office worker from Tokyo with no girlfriend, is stabbed to death by a passing robber. After making some requests during his death, he is reincarnated in another world as a slime with the ability known as predator (which can devour other creatures and obtain their abilities)” Pros: Unique concept of an overpowered little slime Cons: Personal Rating:  ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥  ♡ [4/5] Comments: I really need to watch the rest of this series TTwTT

Anime: The Wise Man’s Grandson/Grandchild Plot: “A young salaryman dead in an accident was reborn in another world filled with magic and demons. As a baby, he was picked up by the patriot hero "Sage" Merlin Wolford and was given the name Shin. He was raised as a grandson and soaked up Merlin's teachings, earning him some irresistible powers. However, when Shin became 15, Merlin realized, "I forgot to teach him common practice!"” Pros: comical moments and fun action scenes. Interesting uses of knowledge from past life. Cons: Um... when/why did this become a gakuen life show? Why should we care about the very generic classmates that add little to nothing to the plot besides the crown prince? .... and you call that romance? Personal Rating:  ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥  ♡ [4/5] Comments: Has a very strong start and I REALLY WANNA LIKE it but I’m starting to lose interest whenever Shin isn’t using his magic in a battle as everything tends to be ‘oh noes we can’t let the world know of Shin’s gifts’ to ‘Look what Shin did for us!’ in the next instant.... everything looks pretty at least.

Anime: How NOT To Summon a Demon Lord Plot:  “Takuma Sakamoto is a hikikomori gamer who is mysteriously transported to the world of his favourite MMORPG, Cross Reverie, with the appearance of his own character in the game, the Demon Lord Diablo. The two young girls who summoned him, the pantherian Rem and the elf Shera, attempt to use a spell to make Takuma their servant, but due to his passive "Magic Reflection" ability, the spell rebounds, and both end up with magic collars stuck on their necks, thus becoming his slaves instead. With a serious case of social anxiety, Takuma decides to act like his character while interacting with others, and makes use of his high stats and vast knowledge of Cross Reverie's lore to survive in his new environment, traveling along with Rem and Shera to look for a way to remove their slave collars while helping them with their own, personal issues that led them to summon him in the first place.” Pros: The comedy and Diablo’s battles are satisfying to watch. Cons: The not so subtle ecchi moments, in particular one ritual scene that was... a bit much personally. Personal Rating:  ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥  ♡ [4.5/5] Comments: If you don’t mind watching ecchi stuff, you’ll have a fun time with the story and overpowering battle moments.

Anime: Death March To The Parallel World Rhapsody Plot: “Ichiro Suzuki is a 29-year old gaming programmer who was tasked with fixing several bugs in two MMORPGs his company is preparing for publication. After taking a nap, he mysteriously wakes up in a parallel world that resembles some of the fantasy RPG worlds he had worked on, as a 15-year old named Satou Pendragon. However, before he could grasp his current situation, an army of lizardmen ambush him and launches an all-out attack on him. In desperation, he uses all three of his special 'Meteor Rain' attack options (a quick fix he added to the game for new players which kills all enemies in the vicinity) at once and wipes them all out.” Pros: A very casual journey of a character with too much exp points and money. Cons: Everything always works out in the end. Is a harlem REALLY needed here? Personal Rating:  ♥ ♥ ♥  ♡  ♡ [3/5] Comments: It’s a nice laid back Isekai series. I just wish the Elf arch had more of challenge and thrill, and the very cliche harlem girl gimmicks doesn’t make the relaxing scenes all that pleasant. Guess I was really hoping more to the story? I mean it has potential just doesn’t go there quick enough.

Anime: In Another World With My Smartphone Plot:  “ Fifteen-year-old Touya Mochizuki is accidentally killed by God. As an apology, God allows him to be resurrected, but since he cannot send him back to his old world, he instead reincarnates him into a fantasy world along with a single special request. Touya uses his request in order to bring his smartphone into the new world with him, which God modifies so that the phone will function in the new world. God also greatly amplifies Touya's physical, magical, and cognitive abilities to a certain degree as a further apology for the inconvenience of killing him. Taking full advantage of his second chance at life, Touya befriends many different people, mainly females and high-ranking people in the new world. He begins to travel from country to country, solving political disputes, minor quests, and nonchalantly enjoying himself with his newfound allies.” Pros: Visuals are pretty Cons: What was meant to be ‘basics’ in magic turns out to be the over power ability of knowing all affinities, thus you’re the strongest being in the world. There’s little to no consequences for his actions... everything always works out because of his op ability and the number of girls grow.  Personal Rating:  ♥ ♥ ♥  ♡  ♡ [3/5] Comments:  This is straight up a LITERAL harem anime.  I’m having to stop watching after episode 12 as it reveals he’ll wind up with 9 wives by the end of the series. Given how everything is hunky-dory and the girls are just being unreasonable- yeah- lost interest.

[aleuay]

I was super excited for given! I have never read the manga or seen anything about it so when it came out I was hyped but the first episode was so pretty and felt pretty well paced for a anime but the last couple of episodes (some had good moments) were kind of badly paced and also the animation was kind of disappointing. I am a huge fan of pretty anime so I was disappointed in how the animation kind of plummeted. I think the reason yuri on ice was so popular was because of the fact (1/?)

that the animation was pretty good (yes it had its moments of really bad animation mostly was the skating was happening) but it was so well in the way they established character development and didn’t just give us to character that we didn’t really know. With given a lot of people don’t really know about sato, they know he dated someone and they killed themselves but we don’t really know anything else besides “he loves music” the same with ubeyo (I don’t know how to spell his name lol) he is pretty basic as well. He’s a prodigy and really likes music but was getting bored before sato rekindled that love of music, but once again we don’t know anything about him besides really just that. It’s hard to get into characters that you don’t really connect to or care about. I think they could have paced it better and did better animation (in my opinion) I mean look at demon slayer, when you watch that animation you can’t help but be amazed and want to watch more. Also demon slayer characters are interesting and different, complex and with given its kind of so far at least sato who is shy and has a hard time expressing emotions and ubeyo who is expressive and in your face about how he feels. The manga of given looks better and I do want to read that but so far given anime is kind of just eh in my opinion but I do hope it gets better! Have a good day!OH and last thing the music in the anime given is good! Just thought I would end on a positive!

Hey anon!

So, I’ve been reading the manga alongside the anime (but not reading past the episodes), and the pacing issue actually stems from the manga itself. It feels a little too fast, and the anime actually did an alright job at fixing that - but you’re definitely right. If the anime had been completely true to the manga, we’d be one or two episodes ahead in terms of story. As for the animation, I see what you mean - the animation is really well done when it comes to the music instruments (a good number of scenes are accurate in terms of IRL finger placement/strumming) - but outside of that it’s somewhat lacking. Despite the little things you mentioned, I’m still excited and absolutely in love with the show - it, and the manga it originates from, is doing what a lot of (and I hate using this term) BL manga/anime fail to do.

I highly recommend reading the manga with the show, because it tells you more than the anime has been able to do. Like, I was wondering about why Mafuyu was on the stairs to begin with - aside from sleeping ofc. The manga shows that both Uenoyama and Mafuyu claimed that spot for naps and neither were exactly happy to find out their secret spot was found out (whereas the anime only shows that Uenoyama was grumpy about it lol). I think the anime is trying to tell the story almost entirely from Uenoyama’s perspective, likely due to Mafuyu’s past being secretive and whatnot (more 𝑑𝑟𝑎𝑚𝑎!).

If I had something negative to say about the show, it’s definitely the fact that editing with it is slightly annoying cause of the color palette (I try to color my videos/gifs in a pleasing way, but the oranges are super overpowering in this show lmao).

Thank you for your ask(s)!             

[hubskitchen]

Hub’s Kitchen Episode 5: Dragon Ball FigherZ Review: The Game Dragon Ball Fans Need

Hey guys, Hub here again, and welcome to Episode 5 of Hub’s Kitchen. Today, I’m gonna be reviewing Dragon Ball FighterZ for the Playstation 4, Xbox One, and Steam. I apologize for not being active for a good while. Blame college and my okay-ish midterm grades and me getting them up for that. I’ve been wanting to talk about FighterZ for a while, and oddly enough, I didn’t think I was I gonna talk about Dragon Ball so soon on this blog. I’ll get to the point: I’m a casual Dragon Ball fan. I haven’t read the manga, but I have watched the original Dragon Ball anime as well as the Dragon Ball Z anime (well Kai anyway because fuck having to watch 291 episodes). Dragon Ball is not a masterpiece in story-telling, nobody’s gonna argue that it is. However, the fighting and character interactions make up for those shortcomings (except for GT. Fuck GT). That, and Dragon Ball Z Abridged. Watch that, it’s amazing. I have played a few DB games before, mainly the first and third Budokai games and the Legacy of Goku games on the GBA, but I haven’t played that many games from the franchise. Anyway, enough with the stalling, it’s time to review Dragon Ball FighterZ!Oh, and be prepared to see names and storylines that might not be familiar to you guys, since I’m not sure if my followers know anything ‘bout Dragon Ball.

STORY

Dragon Ball FighterZ takes place within the Dragon Ball Super timeline (aka, in between the Buu saga and Peaceful World arc from Z). When exactly? I don’t really know. I’ve seen conflicting reports from saying it takes place after the Universe 6 arc but before the Goku Black arc, other say it takes place before the Tournament of Power. I’m gonna say it takes place before the Goku Black arc, but I think FighterZ is non-canon anyway, much like the DBZ movies. Anyway, because of strange energy waves that are disrupting their power, the Z-Warriors lost all their power (or strength) and are now on the same level, and believe me, for some characters, that is a good thing ‘cause it won’t be another Goku show (That’s what GT is for). The Z-Warriors also see that a soul is trapped inside the main character of the arc (yes, I’ll get to this), and that by linking with that soul, it allows you to fight alongside the Z-Warriors. Elsewhere, there’s a new character: Android 21. All we know from the Super Warriors arc is that she resurrected some of the classic DBZ villains using the Namekian Dragon Balls, like Frieza and Cell, and plans on doing… things to them. I won’t go into spoiler territory because that’s just one of the three stories. Yes, you heard me right. FighterZ gives you three stories to play. The Super Warriors arc, which focuses on the heroes and Goku being the main character (I mean, he is Goku after all), the Villain arc, which focuses more on the villains and Frieza being the main character (man, Super really loves Frieza. Not that I mean, but still), and the Android arc, with Android 18 being the main character. Having three stories in a fighting game, a genre not known for story? Sounds awesome, right? It does… until you actually play the story mode.

Okay, so here’s the biggest problem with the story mode: There are three, fucking stories in this game, and all of them last roughly four hours long. Doesn’t sound bad yet? Well, throughout the story, you move your characters throughout different points on a map, with limit amount of movements. That never becomes a problem, so ignore that. The bad part starts with the clones. As you’re moving along map, you have to fight clones of the characters, and this gets old faaaaaaast. By the time I got to the Android saga, I was so fucking done fighting clones that I had to listen to different music, podcasts, and have something on in the background because I needed something to keep me going. That’s a huge shame because the cutscenes and the character interactions are great. Whenever you enter a fight with certain characters, you’ll get a cutscene to trigger. Let me just say: Anything, and I do mean anything with Cell is fucking gold. Go look up videos of Cell in this game. He’s fucking amazing. It’s just that having to play 3 stories, fight clones the entire time, and for roughly 12 hours too gets tedious and boring fast. It’s easily the weakest part of this game.

PRESENTATION

Dragon Ball FighterZ looks and sounds fantastic. The Unreal 4 engine was used brilliantly, and the game almost looks like it came straight from the anime. The game even lifts direct pages from the manga and anime, like the Father-Son Kamehameha and the Family Kamehameha, and they look beautiful. The characters animate well in cutscenes and on the battlefield, and many of their signature moves (take Krillin’s Destructo Disk or Kiensan for you weebs out there), look fantastic.

The soundtrack is also pretty good, if a little reliant on hard rock. Then again, I love hard rock, so I don’t mind. Sadly, because of this, the music can all blend together, and the character themes are often ignored. A lot of the character themes are great. My personal favorites being Goku, Yamcha, Hit, Gohan, and Vegeta.

The voice acting is solid too. FighterZ allows you to switch between Japanese and English, and as much as I love Masako Nozawa’s take on Goku, I’m more of a Sean Schemmel guy. Anyway, both voice casts do a great job. Got not much to say about that.

GAMEPLAY

If you’ve played Marvel Vs Capcom 2, then you’d understand how Dragon Ball FighterZ works. For the uninitiated, first off, get initiated, but more importantly, DBFZ is a 2D 3v3 style fighting game. What that means is that you have a team of 3 characters and you can tag them in and out of battle. You have your combos, tech, assists to help you in battle, super meter that allows for heavy-hitting attacks, all that good stuff. In an interesting twist, FighterZ is designed as a fighting game first, and a Dragon Ball game second. Most of the time, it’s the other way around. A lot of Dragon Ball games try to capture the feeling of the anime, even down to the gameplay. From what I’ve seen, the Tenkaichi, Raging Blast, and Xenoverse games tend to do this fairly well. While that’s well and fine, I tend to prefer a simple 2D fighter with Dragon Ball characters.

One thing that sets FighterZ apart from something like Street Fighter is that FighterZ decides to make things simpler for new players. The game has an auto-combo system. What that means is that you can press a button (let’s say square for example), and you can get a combo from that. While this is good for introducing players into the game, it’s gonna get their asses kicked if they try to spam auto-combos online. It’s recommended that you get into practicing the game’s mechanics, which the game’s first story in the story mode helps you come to grips with. Or you could try learning the mechanics in the practice mode.

The roster for FighterZ is pretty solid, but if you’re spoiled by the likes of the Budokai Tenkaichi games with their huge rosters, FighterZ might disappoint you. It has everyone important (Goku, Vegeta, both Teen and Adult Gohan, Frieza, etc) to characters from Super like Hit, Goku Black, and Beerus. The game is getting DLC, and the first two characters confirmed are Bardock (father of Goku) and Broly (one of the most popular DBZ movie villains, and is, to quote his abridged movie, is a “literal giant fucking baby”).

Like every fighting game these days, Dragon Ball FighterZ has an online mode. Sadly, this review will not be going over that because I have not played any of them yet ‘cause I don’t have a Playstation Plus subscription at the moment and need to renew it. From what I’ve heard, the online has had several problems, from games losing connection, to having a hard time finding matches, etc. Doesn’t help that the game has this stupid lobby system that you have to be online for. Sure, there’s an offline lobby, but it’s still kinda lame that the game has to have an online lobby to begin with. There recently was an update that I heard fixed some of the problems, as well as adding a Party Mode of sorts, but again, ‘cause I don’t have PS Plus, I can’t verify if that’s the case for me.

OVERALL

Dragon Ball FighterZ is definitely a welcome addition to both Dragon Ball and fighting games in general. While the story mode was a bust outside of great character cutscenes, and the game having some noticeable online problems, FighterZ excels in the most important area: the fighting. Fast-paced, frantic, and easy to play, you don’t need to be a Dragon Ball fan to enjoy this game. I highly recommend it.

And that’s it. Sorry for the lack of depth, but I wanted to try to be quick and to the point with this review, seeing as how it was my first game review. Anyway, on the next episode of Hub’s Kitchen, I’m gonna review my second movie on this blog, and one I’ve had requests for. That movie, is Coco. ‘Til next time guys. I’m Hub Pie, and thanks for reading!

[mybumpbirthandbeyond]

Grit

I didn’t think I’d be writing a blog again so soon after the last two, but there’s been plenty going on and it’s easier for me to write about how I’m feeling at the time. I mentioned my consult with Antony, Gráinne and Lyndsey in my last blog. It was originally meant to be a follow up to my in person consult with Gráinne, but it turned into a more practical consult with me doing various exercises to see if they were still viable. Remember those crunches with a double leg lift that Antony loves so much? I thought they were definitely gone, so how I ended up doing exactly that I’ll never know, but Antony is a master at proving to you that you’re capable of so much more than you think and before you know it, you’re doing something you had no idea he was asking you to do in the first place. I was lying on the floor doing headlifts and before I knew it I was lifting my legs knowing fine well that they didn’t agree with my back and I probably wasn’t overly comfortable with the idea. I did a few full press-ups, decline press-ups and various strength exercises. Most were, thankfully, easy enough. The press-ups I already knew from what Gráinne has said were a no so I was at peace with that. I know I won’t be doing them fully again until I’m postnatal. We talked through how I was feeling about the prehab programme but thankfully I was feeling better about that because Gráinne has been so thorough in going through what was and wasn’t on the table. Lyndsey was seeing me the following week in person and she was also going to be checking things exercise wise so I was feeling pretty relieved all round. It was weird that it had been 7 months since I last saw Lyndsey in person. I was there every couple of weeks for 10 months then just stopped. We were confined to the treatment room as opposed to the gym, but there was still enough space for me to be put through my paces. This time we were joined by an MSK student in his final year. Lyndsey had filled the student in on my case before I arrived - she said they’d basically been through Instagram 🤣 It was weird having someone know the stuff I had done then ask me questions about it because it was their first time seeing it. I didn’t mind at all, but the questions were actually quite thought provoking for having just met him! He asked me how I felt finding out I was pregnant - was I scared? I said no my fear was actually surrounding my progress not my pregnancy. He asked about chin-ups. I laughed and said no more chin-ups until the postnatal period. We went through any exercises we weren’t sure of from the consult the week before as well, which really helped to reassure me what I could and couldn’t do. One of the most important things I took away was something I had had on my mind even before I fell pregnant. What would happen to me after birth? Before Covid in Fife, it used to be that there was ranking system of women who were priorities to be seen on the ward by pelvic health physios. I didn’t know that until I saw Lyndsey and she recommended I speak to patient relations. We know already I ranked at the bottom of that list in my first. Somehow I didn’t think that would be the case this time but everything had probably changed. Lyndsey said they weren’t on the wards at all now but I wouldn’t be forgotten about - she would be contacting me within a week and seeing me ideally between 4-6 weeks.

That makes me think a GP check in my case is pointless. Certainly from my experience anyway. I have a few friends who are GPs and also mums so I know their checks are thorough, but I can’t help thinking there should be a checklist for a GP - any stitches/wounds should be checked; breasts for engorgement, mastitis or thrush; possible diastasis so referrals should then be made; mental health/well-being checks, and they should last longer than bloody 10 minutes if they need to! There may already be a checklist, but I doubt it from hearing so many women say it was a waste of time. My own experience was I directed the GP to my stitches, I told her I still had symptoms of thrush that hadn’t that that hadn’t cleared up, and that I had a separation so she would need to refer me. I can and always have been able to advocate for myself - others can’t and it’s those people we need to help.

I came out of that consult feeling really positive - between the exercises I was given by all three physios, there was quite a bit still on the table and they were happy with how everything looked. I’ve also started online pregnancy strength and fitness classes with Lorna at Ur Mama Strength and she is excellent. She had previously very kindly given me tips and strategies to work on for my chin-ups which helped massively. I go into a bit more about classes below, but basically it’s two classes per week at 45 minutes each which is perfect to slot in with prehab and keep me active.

The problem is how I’ve been feeling. Lazy is one thing I’ve alluded to, but I’ve not just felt lazy - I’ve felt guilty. I’ve gone from doing my rehab most nights and pushing myself hard, to almost not being able to bring myself to do prehab. I almost can’t admit that out loud. I feel like I’m hiding behind my written words but if the truth be told, if I recorded a video saying exactly this, I would be ashamed. It’s the closest I am to speaking directly to my physios and admitting I haven’t done what I said i’d do. I’m not holding up my end of the bargain. My face is going red even writing that. I know they know I’m hard on myself. I know I am. I watched someone say they felt guilty early postnatal not doing something. When I get to that stage this time? I absolutely know I will berate myself endlessly. No amount of support or telling will fix that. I know exactly the faces and words all three would use to tell me to give myself a break and that’s why I think the world of them, but I know it doesn’t matter. I can’t and won’t be able to help it. Part of it is when I do eventually get to doing something, another exercise is modified or removed altogether and I’m left feeling like I’ve missed my opportunity because that exercise is now benched. I said the other night I swore when I lost a few exercises and I wasn’t joking. When that happens, if I’m honest, it takes me minute to accept it.

When people are given help, it blows my mind that they don’t follow it. What biggest motivator is there than getting your body back? I felt guilty not doing pelvic floor exercises for gods sake and there was really nothing wrong with my pelvic floor 🙈 it’s me who’s to blame if things go wrong. I may have been proactive and advocated for myself to get help, but now I have it, what use is it unless I hold up my end? You don’t need to tell me to work hard. I’d rather die than be considered lazy. Bit dramatic maybe but I’d certainly die of embarrassment. Feeling lazy is bad enough! I thought I didn’t care what people think of me. To some extent that’s true - the people who don’t matter I don’t care. But the people who do matter to me, it’s everything.

Obviously I can’t push myself hard in pregnancy but I feel like consistency is still important. The classes with Lorna have been a godsend from that point of view - structure and routine. Lorna knows my story and she absolutely knows her stuff. She is without doubt one of the most highly qualified, diligent, and one of the best as far as I’m concerned. As much as it speaks volumes as to how far I’ve come that I can know what is right and what isn’t, sometimes just checking in on a more routine basis with someone far more qualified than me is reassuring. I may have come a long way in terms of rehab, but this is now prehab and a pregnancy with an existing, significant diastasis. Not exactly something I feel comfortable with in the slightest. I’m confident in that I know my body, but even then it’s thrown me some curveballs this time that I’ve struggled to understand.

That’s why I value my consults so much. That’s why I have lived and in some respects still live from one consult to the next in my journey. It goes without saying that I take much more from these than just exercises. I’ve said it before, but this is an opportunity to have questions answered, to speak my mind and know that my three physios are the ones who get it when no one else does. How do you feel when someone understands how you’re feeling and can not only say the right things, but can reassure you because they know everything you’re going through?

This is not just a mechanical thing - fix my tummy and send me on my way. I’m broken in more than a physical sense by this. Initially in those early days there was just so much other shit going on it took a back seat. I thought it would take time but that it would be sorted one way or another. I kept pushing feelings away until I broke down in March. That night I was doing my exercises but I couldn’t fight the feeling I was overwhelmed. It was the stupidest thing that set me off. Initially I was angry which powered me on at first, then I just collapsed in a heap crying on the mat and couldn’t get up. No one knows that. I then resented rehab and refused to do it for a few nights. Probably indicates how bad I was hurting. I got a message the next day from Gráinne out the blue asking me about some questionnaires to fill in. I know she won’t take this the wrong way given everything that was going on but I almost didn’t reply as quickly as I do normally. I didn’t want a reminder that day because I still felt hollow. Somehow, without going into massive detail, it came out and she made me feel 100 times better. That’s the importance of getting the right person, or in my case, the right team. They’ll pull you back from the brink again and again.

As much as I value my consults, it can be uncomfortable talking about your feelings. Knowing it’s as close to face to face as you’re going to get. Knowing it’s recorded and will be made available for others to see and analyse. I don’t in any way begrudge that it’s public. I think it’s fantastic because the more public this is, the more people this helps. Having three of the most incredible people listening who are so understanding and so supportive is invaluable, but it can still be hard to be honest. I have developed what I consider to be a close relationship with all three of them, but it’s still difficult. I don’t wear my heart on my sleeve and I don’t articulate my feelings often. I bottle things up even to my nearest and dearest. I sometimes rewatch the consults and think we all get along so well and a lot of the time there’s quite a bit of banter and plenty of laughs. I couldn’t be more grateful for that. However, any time I’ve hit a dark place, I always thought it might be valuable to share it, but by the time we have a consult I’m past it and then it would just seem like dwelling. I’ve probably been able to analyse my feelings more in retrospect and hopefully that has still helped people understand, but it’s probably not a true reflection on how I really felt at the time. Nobody needs to see me cry that’s for sure, but I do worry that I’m painting some kind of rosier picture sometimes. I guess that’s why I still write these blogs. This is how it all started of course, but you need to see the whole picture to understand. Sometimes the armour I’ve built up hides the cracks.

My next consult is a virtual one with Lyndsey and then I’m seeing Gráinne in person should everything stay as it is pandemic wise. I know when I see the ultrasound I’ll know how much my ‘laziness’ may have impacted on my muscles and linea alba. It will thin again and the muscles are bound to separate, but I have to do all I can to maintain strength and mitigate the changes as much as possible. That’s probably another reason I’m feeling guilty.

So I guess this is an apology to my physios for not holding up my end of the deal. I can’t promise it won’t happen again or that I won’t falter. This pregnancy seems to be different in terms of how I’m feeling day to day. What I can promise is, that I will more than make up for it on the other side - that I won’t just promise, I’ll guarantee. After all, they know better than anyone that this is a marathon, not a sprint.

[allenmendezsr]

Laptop Repair Video Course - 11 Hours Of Hd Video - Best On Web!

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Laptop Repair Video Course - 11 Hours Of Hd Video - Best On Web!

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Just a one-time payment of $67

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[iamkellyadams]

Attention Women Over 25: Still Struggling To Lose Belly Fat – Flavor Pairing Really Works?

Hi, I’m Carly and this is my story which I’m proud to share and probably can inspire you to take action and finally achieve the dream body you always dreamt for.

On this very page you’re going to discover a hidden fat loss trick i.e. ‘falvor-pairing‘ which when implemented along with a simple 2-minute ritual will trigger an awe-inspiring female transformation.

I discovered this transformation Cheat-Code that over 93% of people still have no idea exists after my life threatening experience which triggered a flood of what scientists call the weight-loss doubling molecule that lay dormant inside even the most stubborn female metabolism!

Which is why my friends, my family and even my doctor were shocked- when this sequence of events not only ended my battle with hypertension, pre-diabetes, endometriosis, and even depression…

…. and compelled my body to initiate a 22-hour-a-day fat burning sequence that grew stronger with each passing day!

Before you read on…

I highly recommend you to watch the video below, sit back relax to hear and see this incredible story… How at almost 40 years old, I eliminated 100 pounds of confidence-stealing, energy-sucking and potentially life-ending body fat. And finally got to live my ‘happily ever after’ reversing all signs of hypertension, diabetes and depression.

All while managing to lose 12 dress sizes and 23 inches of my waist … Shrinking from a whopping 42 inches all the way around – down to only 26″ inches! Watch this video below and I promise to reveal my full transformation along with the secret “Flavor Pairing Ritual” aka “Carb-Pairing Ritual” I used to melt away over 80 pounds faster than I ever thought possible-without pills or depriving myself on the latest fad keto, calorie counting, satisfaction stripped diet…

Those women who decide to watch this video till the end will:

See, hear, and experience an almost unbelievable transformation story

Reveal a life-changing, time-tested technique that a tiny country half way across the world uses daily

Discover a truly unexpected method hiding right under our noses that 93% of people have no idea exists…

I’m sure you can see how worthwhile it will be today to sit back, relax, watch and listen.

The truth of the matter is, I am not a great writer, I am ok but that’s not enough when you’re on a mission to spread this unique & easy fat loss trick to as many women as possible on the internet.

So for me to try explain this story and this method to you through this article is a great opportunity but I found an even better way… I was able to put this video together. And I’m pretty proud of it.

(Video plays in a different window)

My Promise To You

I guess my promise to you today, woman to woman, is that I wouldn’t have put in the 100’s of hours it took to create this if I didn’t think it would be of great benefit.

I can’t make some sort of “guarantee”, because we can’t “get time back”. But hey, if a relatively small time investment today could teach you even just one thing that you can take forward to get more healthy, wouldn’t it be worthwhile?

So, if you’re tossing up whether to go and grab your headphones right now and settle in, then I say “GIVE IT A SHOT!”

You’ve got nothing to lose!

Power of Hormones

This is no secret hormones plays a major role in our lives, but what you might not have realised we women are worst effected.

As our body transcend from one phase of life to another our hormones completely goes topsy turvy leaving us on the mercy of these life altering hormones. Hormonal imbalances occur when there is too much or too little of a hormone in the bloodstream.

Because of their essential role in the body, even small hormonal imbalances can cause side effects throughout the body.

3 Fat Hoarding “Evil-Step-Mother-Hormones”

Today I’m going to focus on your I.C.E hormones (i.e. Insulin, Cortisol, and Estrogen) also known to be 3 fat-hoarding, “Evil-Step-Mother-Hormones” who inevitably “lose their way” in our mid-20’s.

I will show you can make rogue hormones once again be become the “fat-burning queens” and starts running like clockwork.

Let me explain…

These 3 hormones play crucial role in a women’s health, metabolism and weight loss.

They do numerous jobs around the body, but let me give you a quick run down…

➢ INSULIN: Transports energy to the cells that need it and quite often to the cells that DON’T need it when there is excess sugar floating around in your body.

➢ CORTISOL: released into the body at times of stress. During exercise cortisol can help increase fat burning, but having chronic high levels of cortisol is a recipe for snail pace fat loss and stubborn levels of belly fat.

➢ ESTROGEN: gives the female body it’s womanly characteristics, but if the ratio of estradiol + estrone are out of whack, then losing fat from the hips, butt and thighs is going to be an uphill struggle.

And this is where I hit a jackpot, and learnt to fix the I.C.E. hormones. I went on to lose 84 lbs, drop 12 dress-sizes, burned 23 inches of fat off my waist and hips, and finally got my life back using a simple 2-step ritual a.k.a ‘The Cinderella Solution‘ that got my hormones to play together nicely.

I cannot describe what’s it’s like to actually FEEL something start to work from the moment you start all the way until you lose your last pound…

The Transformation Cheat Code

It was exciting and shocking, when I stumbled upon this easiest ever female fat loss technique!

I just could not believe myself, and even those 500 odd women first to try this new technique. They all replicated my results, some even had better results than me…

It was unbelievable how science could have missed such an important discovery hidden in plain sight which has the power to transform lives for thousands if not millions of women around the world.

You would be surprised to know how easy is this ‘flavor-pairing’ technique is and how these principles kept women of this small country thinnest and healthiest as compared to anywhere else.

Whether you want to believe or not it was a God’s plan, “luck” or divine-intervention…

… Having my 209-pounds, disease-saturated and confidence-starved body hit the floor that morning WAS my fate.

And to be honest,

I’m glad it happened

Because it allowed me,

A once clinically obese and exhausted pre-diabtic mother with hypertension on the verge of losing everything…

to stumble upon this “weight-loss doubling” ritual… that triggers a relentless fat-torching “domino-effect”

Buried deep inside even the most shattered metabolism.

➢ All it takes, is a diet-free solution that re-wires and re-awakens your Scientifically-proven 22-hour-a-day weight loss magnification systems.

And even THOUGH those powerful systems went dormant for you the moment puberty ended, undeniable recent top-level university investigations now verify THERE IS a fat-burning “sleeping-giant” inside you and by end time we are done today…

Together you and I will have given it a giant-sized kick in the butt that screams,

‘GET BACK TO WORK’

But before all this happened…

I mean, like even before I started gaining all that weight in my mid 20’s…

… that every woman falls victim to the shadowy Metabolic-Villain that forces the 3 hormones that kept you fit, youthful, healthy and happy when you were younger,

To literally funnel floating fat-cells into every single area exposed by your bathing suit.

…all while introducing you to a lifetime struggle with body-image, while locking in your weight-management hormones to ‘storage-mode’.

And even though none of this is our fault because nobody, not even our doctor warns us about this when we’re younger… Unless of course you are one of the lucky 8% blessed with near-perfect-genetics…

As women we are ALL VICTIMS of this fat-hoarding 30-year sentence…

The one that dismembers your metabolism form the end of puberty all the way through menopause.

However if it wasn’t for that fateful day not-so-long ago…

I could have never discovered these kindergarten-simple “Flavor-Pairing” rituals from a tiny island 6000 miles across the ocean…

But bodies and lives of over 16787 other women just like you, in the last year alone.

Because the truth is,

You are literally only one unusual step in an unexpected direction away from knocking over the big fat-loss domino that’s standing you and the body you’ve been dreaming of.

Just like Susan did at 53 years old…who used a of all things, A ‘carb-pairing’ ritual to channel a Fat-Flushing current…

Forcing 48 pounds of fat from her body while allowing her to recover the youthful glow lost in her 20’s…

Or even ladies with once-silent metabolism, like Kelly who lost 52 pounds.

Using the salty-sweet flavor-pair that revs up fat-burning by over 200%…

THE BEST PART IS,

Sadly, you’ve never heard of their secret because it’s so closely guarded by their top gatekeepers.

It wasn’t until a few highly respected doctors and government officials broke their code of silence that I was able to unleash that flood of age-reversing enzymes,

Allowing me to reclaim my body, my energy, my husband

And as you can see here….My Youth!

Luckily these battles with weight and body image inspired me to open my own special-place devoted to those looking to reclaim the health, happiness and confidence that had abandoned them so long ago.

Pretty soon after opening my first weight loss center a ‘buzz’ began to circle around the city…

➢ It’s Your Turn Now, Get The Blueprint Here

The Discovery

While we were looking for the perfect weight loss solution everywhere, it was already in practice for 100’s of years. Probably being couple of centuries old, a simple ‘flavor-pairing’ ritual which made this small island country the slimmest, longest living and most disease-resistant country…

However if it wasn’t for that fateful day not-so-long ago….(my near death experience). I could have never discovered these kindergarten-simple ‘Flavor-Pairing’ rituals from a tiny island 6000 miles across the ocean…

…. that not only had the power to transform my body –

But bodies and lives of over 16,787 other women just like you, in the last year alone.

Because the truth is,

You are literally only one unusual step in an unexpected direction away form knocking over the one big fat-loss domino that’s standing between you and the body you’ve been dreaming of… (This is your chance to join the revolution – click here for all the steps and instructions)

The Moment Everything Changed

That alone got my attention but what really took my breath away were the statistics that backed up these claims from world’s most respected health authority:

Japanese women live to an astonishing average of 87-years-old,

A record number that has continued to climb since the 1960’s.

That’s over 10 years longer than we get to live here…10 YEARS!

Can you imagine getting an extra decade on this planet with your loved ones?

But the Japanese were also named the most “Disease-Resistant” & “Happiest” country as well. These women had uncommonly low rates of dementia, depression, heart attacks and strokes.

So not only were they living longer,

But for the last half-century, their quality of life was dominating ours as well.

As I’d later find out,

The Japanese had made one simple “alteration” to their eating habits 62 years ago.

And it was this subtle,

Yet profound adjustment that super-charged their immune systems

With the unique hormonal-synergy needed to produce “Warrior-Antibodies”

That actually fought tooth-and-nail against disease and obesity.

It turns out that Shoku-Iku (which translates to Nutrition Architecture)Is a set of guidelines, broken down into extremely simple food and flavor-pairing rituals.

The primary goal of each pairing was to create“hormonal and metabolic balance to promote health, well-being, strength and happiness from within”.As I mentioned before, here we do the exact opposite.

The scientists explained that in North America we literally try to “attack” obesity, disease and depression from the outside With what they called “Shotgun-Approaches” like the diets, exercise routines and pills we’re all used to.

Back In 1966, as the fast-food craze hit America…

…The Japanese Government instead passed laws To make their “wellness from within” Flavor-Pairing Rituals and Shoku-Iku, the country’s mandatory Nutritional Platform.

So while we quickly became the fattest, sickest and unhealthiest country on the planet, The Japanese just kept losing weight while living longer, happier more fulfilling lives,

All because of a simple, yet metabolically explosive set of Flavor-Pairing rituals they adopted over 50 years ago.

And that’s what really gave me peace of mind that flavor-pairing was the key to unlocking the female fat-loss code…

… This wasn’t some pill being concocted in a lab or “get-skinny-by-yesterday” diet dreamed up by some TV doctor … Without any long term testing to see if it actually worked or more importantly, if it was safe.

This was 50 years of proof combined with 2 billion people living leaner, healthier longer lives.

And did I mention that Japanese women consume more carbohydrates than any other country as well?!?!

In fact,

They eat almost double the carbs we eat here!

From there we began to examine other nations that topped the list for “Healthiest Countries” like Spain, Switzerland and Australia.

The team and I dug deep to uncover their secrets for living these ultra-healthy, lean and long-lasting lives

Focusing specifically on weight loss and how they actually maintain such lean and slender figures.

Pretty soon a shocking pattern began to emerge…

The women who lost weight the fastest and those who were able to maintain such desirable life-long figures

Free from the stress of and guaranteed failure of dieting,

All practiced simple rituals that paired the right foods and flavors throughout their day.

The cutting-edge research proved

(Video plays in a different window)

We were shocked because even though these simple, zero-cost rituals had been undeniably proven,We had never seen the indisputable evidence until now…

It turns out there’s a despicable reason for hiding the key to unlocking the female fat-loss code…

It’s the same reason you haven’t heard about it from those TV doctors, social media weight-loss gurus, fat-loss infomercials or even your own doctor…The truth is simple…Our government can’t tax easy fat-doubling rituals and pharmaceutical

And supplement companies can’t make money off a simple flavor pairing trick that signals around-the-clock weight loss!

Because these strategies cost only pennies-a-day and are so extremely simple…

…The weight-loss industry wants to keep them locked away and buried. And if you lose the weight extremely fast, like you will this time, they can’t hook you with another fad-approach…

…that kills your dreams and empties you and your families pockets yet again.

And I’ll tell you right now,Once you hit your own weight loss goal, That 20, 30, 40 or even 100 pounds,It Just feels like an “added bonus” compared to knowing that you’ve just bought yourself extra time on this planet with your friends and family.

However, how you feel about that lady you see staring back you in the mirror each morning can be pretty powerful,

So I should give you a glimpse of what you too can expect when the weight just starts falling off… Starting tonight!

I’ve got good news for you if you are a woman who refuses to give up and finally start living your own Cinderella Story inside

THE BODY YOU DESERVE

The Cinderella Solution offers an easy to start, simple-to-follow cure using Flavor-Pairing rituals that hit the “reset-swtich” on your metabolisms 3 key fat-burning hormones; Insulin, Cortisol and Estrogen.

The product is digital and images are for visualization only

THE CINDERELLA SOLUTION

Our research that spans 60 years of proof, Combined with the results from 10’s and 1000’s of women across the globe have already proven that ladies like you are only step away from signalling a supercharged fat-loss doubling effect within your body.

If you want to watch the fat float off your body in the next 3 weeks, you simply need to re-ignite your 3 fat burning hormones to create a fat burning domino effect from the inside out.

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The post Attention Women Over 25: Still Struggling To Lose Belly Fat – Flavor Pairing Really Works? appeared first on Get Health Remedies.

[qwertsypage]

RisingStack in 2018. Highlights, Best Blogposts & other Achievements.

To give you a snapshot of 2018 at RisingStack, we collected some of the key stats, and also the best stuff we wrote this year. Enjoy!

--

2018 has been a challenging, and an incredibly fast-paced year at RisingStack, but luckily it was fulfilling & surprisingly fun as well.

Just a few achievements to mention:

We doubled the size of our engineering team, provided development / consulting services for ~25 companies ranging from early-stage startups to Fortune500 enterprises, and trained more than 400 developers across the Globe about topics such as Microservices, Node.js, React & Kubernetes. (Protip: Check out our next microservices workshop in Berlin!)

Giving back to the developer community remained a key priority in 2018 as well at RisingStack.

On this blog, we continued to write tutorials about topics that excite us (mainly JavaScript, Kubernetes and Software Architecture). We created a long-form case study as well about scaling a Node.js app to millions of users, and we tried ourselves out in live-streaming React development.

Also, we continued engaging the local developer community in Budapest with our meetups, conference workshops & webinars.

Thanks to the great articles created by our engineers, our blog reached around 1,6 million developers in 2018 - a little bit more than in 2017.

Take a look:

Case Study: Serving Millions of Users in Real-Time with Node.js & Microservices

In this article, we shared the story of fixing a nasty bottleneck in our clients' large-scale Microservices infrastructure. We managed to speed up a single user-facing system fivefold, so the product became able to serve 4000 requests per second.

This case study provides insight into how we tackle problems at RisingStack, and you can also learn about investigating performance issues and scaling a microservices architecture - written by Mate Huszarik & Peter Czibik.

Deploying a Stateful Application Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) or on Google Cloud Kubernetes Engine

In this articles, Kristof Ivancza & Tamas Kadlecsik guide you through the process of deploying a stateful, Dockerized Node.js app on Google Cloud Kubernetes Engine and AKS! As an example application, we used Ghost - the open-source blogging platform where we run the RisingStack blog.

D3.js Tutorial: Building Interactive Bar Charts with JavaScript

Recently, we had the pleasure to participate in a machine learning project that involves libraries like React and D3.js. Among many tasks, Mate Huszarik, senior engineer at RisingStack developed few charts that help to process the result of ML models like Naive Bayes in the form of a line chart or grouped bar chart. In this article, he presents his progress with D3.js so far and shows the basic usage of the library through the simple example of a bar chart.

What is Kubernetes & How to Get Started With It

When our clients ask us to create a highly available distributed system, we usually recommend Kubernetes, because it's easy to use and even though it has a steep initial learning curve, it's still a lot more simple than other competing orchestration engines.

From Kristof Ivancza's article, you can learn the basic concepts of Kubernetes so you can have a modern, safe and reliable production infrastructure in the cloud without handling all the hassle of old DevOps solutions.

Yarn vs npm - which Node package manager to use in 2018?

With the v7.4 release, npm 4 became the bundled, default package manager for Node.js. In the meantime, Facebook released their own package manager solution, called Yarn. In this article, we dive into what these package managers offer, what's the difference between them, and how they evolved.

Let's take a look at the state of Node.js package managers and what they can do for you! We also try to help you to pick one between npm and yarn!

Building a React App from Scratch

Bertalan Miklos, our senior engineer decided to build a React app and live-stream the process.

In the 1st episode he bootstrapped the app with Create React App and made a few pages with Material-UI and his own React stack.

The 2nd episode is about authentication, UX and offline optimization.

In the 3rd & 4th episode, Berci covered form handling and authentication, then he revisited protected routes, implemented snackbar notifications and made some subtle UX optimizations.

In the final 5th episode, he added the final touches to turn the app into an offline-first mobile friendly Progressive Web App

AngularJS to Angular - a brief history with some tips to get started!

Angular is one of the most well-known solutions for SPA (single-page application) development besides React and Vue.js. It has been around for almost 10 years and it has gone through countless adjustments since then. The first version of the framework - AngularJS - started back in 2009 and laid the foundation of present-day front-end application development.

How to Debug a Node.js app in a Docker Container

In case you're wondering: "Why should I acquire this knowledge?" The answer from Tamas Kadlecsik is simple:

Most of the time you can be well off running your app on your local machine and use containers only to sandbox your databases and messaging queues, but some bugs will show themselves only when the app itself is containerized as well. In these cases, it is very helpful to know how to attach a debugger to the service.

While containerization, in general, is a very powerful tool - and here at RisingStack we always start new projects by spinning up the needed infrastructure in a docker-compose.yaml - it can be tricky to reach the enveloped Node process if you don't know how to do it.

Consumer Driven Contract Testing with Node.js & Pact

Making sure that we're not breaking our clients' code is a real challenge in the world of APIs. As full-stack software consultants working with growing microservice architectures we have to feel the pain of both the server and client. In this video, Peter Czibik, senior engineer at RisingStack presents a clean way to make sure everyone stays happy, and things don't break (or at least we know ahead of time if they are).

Those who watch the keynote will be familiar with the concepts of contract testing and will get to know a small library called Pact that can help integrating it into their current software development workflow.

Node v10 is Here - Feature Breakdown!

Node.js follows a release plan where every major release is cut from the master branch in every 6 months. In every October, new odd-numbered versions are cut and the latest even-numbered release transitions to the LTS plan. Each year’s April marks the date of the new even numbered release and today is the day when Node v10 is cut from the master.

In this article Tamas Kadlecsik, CEO of RisingStack takes a look at the new features Node 10 brings!

8 Tips to Build Better Node.js Apps in 2018

In the previous two years we covered best practices for writing and operating Node.js applications (read the 2016 edition & 2017 edition). Another year has passed, so we revisit the topic of becoming a better developer in 2018 January! In this article, we collected a few tips that we think Node.js developers should follow, like:

Use async - await

Get acquainted with import and import()

Get familiar with HTTP/2

Get rid of code style controversies

& more..

8 Tips to Build Awesome React.js Apps in 2018

New year, better code: mind these React.js best practices by Bertalan Miklos to improve the quality of your code. This post is a short collection of essential React.js tips and tricks for 2018.

Why Developers Love Node.js & what's their main issue with it? Survey Results.

In early 2018 we surveyed our readers to gain insights on what Node.js is used for & why developers still love it. Our secondary goal was to figure out what are the most severe problems they face with Node, and what are the most underexplained topics around it - so we could continue writing tutorials that really help moving forward with JavaScript, Microservices & Kubernetes (just like we did it in 2017).

We were also interested in the infrastructural aspect of running Node.js apps in production, so we asked our readers to share where they deploy their services, what are their preferred front-end technologies, what kind of databases they use and which flavor of JavaScript they prefer.

As a result, 539 devs who use Node in production shared their opinion.

Does your Business Really Need a Mobile App?

This article was written by Daniel Gergely, full-stack developer at RisingStack who makes the case of building Progressive Web-Apps instead of costly native mobile apps.

Git Catastrophes and Tips to Avoid Them

In this post, Janos Kubisch highlights some git features that might be less used/known, but can end up saving your @$$ when things go south in the codebase.

Read the post if you'd like to learn about..

amending,

reverting multiple commits (or even merges),

and proper git housekeeping.

Meet my Free, Local API Server for your Front-End Adventures (written in Node.js)!

Let's close 2018's article list with Robert Czinege's open-source project.

TLDR version: Robert created a free API service you can run locally using Docker. This API service can be used as a data source for your front-end project since it has all the necessary basic functions needed to learn or experiment with different front-end frameworks.

2018 in Pictures :)

That's all Folks!

RisingStack in 2018. Highlights, Best Blogposts & other Achievements. published first on https://koresolpage.tumblr.com/

[inerginc]

GTM Smart Grid http://ift.tt/2eJlQnQ

By almost any metric, California leads the U.S. (and perhaps the world) in the amount of distributed energy resources deployed -- and in the development of a regulatory framework to integrate those resources into the grid.

That's why Greentech Media landed in San Francisco last week to explore California's Distributed Energy Future (CDEF) with 300 of our industry colleagues and friends.

In the words of GTM Senior VP Shayle Kann, "It's why we're holding this conference here and why it matters so much." Kann noted that almost everything GTM covers revolves around three transformations in the structure of power delivery:

Decarbonization

Decentralization

Electrification (of transportation, heating, etc.)

CDEF focused mostly on the decentralization piece and the role of distributed energy resources (DERs).

A video archive of Shayle's presentation (and the entire CDEF event) is available for GTM Squared members. A highly distilled version of his talk follows.

(Squared members also get to read Jeff St. John's recent masterpiece, "A Blow-by-Blow Guide to California’s Unfolding Distributed Energy Future.")

Globally, utilities are taking this seriously

Kann stressed that that this transformation should not be framed as utilities versus decentralization. In fact, utilities are embracing the change and investing at a strong pace -- with $3 billion put into DER companies so far, and $1 billion invested in 2016 alone.    

Most of these investments go into the "direct customer energy management" bucket. These are technologies and services that are sold directly to residential or commercial customers, such as load control devices, demand response services and energy efficiency measures.

"Utilities want to maintain the customer relationship and serve their customers better if they can, so they're investing in direct customer energy management solutions," said Kann.

Utilities are also investing in distributed solar. "You've seen a lot of utilities and their affiliates investing in...[and] unregulated subsidiaries of utilities buying distributed solar companies."

So far, this has been utility affiliates buying commercial solar developers. "For example, Edison International bought SoCore, and is wrapping it into Edison Energy, their newly formed group to offer a broader suite of customer energy management solutions to large customers."

"Duke Energy bought a commercial solar developer. NextEra Energy bought a commercial solar developer. AES just bought a commercial solar developer. So, this is clearly a trend within the U.S. Energy storage is also emerging here as well. If we're going to be putting a bunch of behind-the-meter energy storage on the grid, utilities want to play a role in that."

Distributed energy resource management systems, or DERMS, constitute another area in which utilities are making a significant number of investments. 

Utility affiliates with the broadest DER portfolios

Four of the five utility affiliates with the broadest DER portfolios are European.

Kann said, "It's worth noting that European utilities are ahead of the game here, relative to North American utilities. Distributed energy is a little bit more mature in Europe than it is in the U.S. Germany was the first big residential solar market, for example. It's got a much longer track record there than the U.S. does."

The state of distributed energy in the U.S. starts with solar

"Solar is not the entirety of distributed energy resources...but I honestly do not think we would be having this conversation if it weren't for the fact that we've had such a boom in distributed solar in the U.S. That acted as...the tip of the spear for a lot of these conversations about dramatic transformation," said GTM's research leader.

"2016 was by far a record year for solar in the U.S. We installed almost 15 gigawatts of solar in this country. That's up 95 percent over 2015. So, the market basically doubled year-over-year."

Much of this boom was expected, and part of the rush was to earn an expiring federal Investment Tax Credit that ultimately ended being extended. Most of that was utility-scale.

"Distributed solar in the U.S. did grow last year. The residential solar market did grow about 19 percent. Commercial solar market actually grew closer to 50 percent. But, it's still dwarfed by how much centralized solar we're putting on the grid. That's probably going to remain true for the next couple of years."

But Kann raises this question: "If decarbonization is your primary goal, does that necessarily mean you need a ton of distributed energy?"

He suggests, "You might. You might want both. But, as it exists today, most of the decarbonization that's occurring in the U.S., and this is also true globally, is coming from large, centralized renewable energy generation."

But despite that, distributed energy is growing pretty fast in the U.S.

We have 1.3 million solar customers behind the meter in the U.S. today -- that's residential and commercial customers who have operating solar projects on their roof or on their property.

We have about 1,900 behind-the-meter energy storage installations. Obviously, that's a much smaller number. It's still a nascent market, despite all the attention we pay to it. But it's growing at a fairly rapid clip, and that's a much bigger number than we had in 2015.

We have about 570,000, almost coming up on 600,000, plug-in electric vehicles that are hitting the roads today, all throughout the U.S. 

California is the DER linchpin

"California is consistently a leader across technologies. California represents 49 percent of all the distributed solar that's been installed in the U.S. It represents 49 percent of all the distributed storage that's been built in the U.S., it represents 47 percent of all the plug-in electric vehicles in the U.S." California is also a leader in advanced metering infrastructure, smart thermostats and fuel cell deployment.

"But, the reason why California is so important in addition to just being a leader is that what happens in California will certainly reverberate through the rest of the country. It's impressive to see how explicitly folks in other states and at the federal level are willing to say that."

"Here's an example. Acting FERC Chairman Cheryl LaFleur, in reference to distributed energy resource aggregation, said, "We'll be closely watching California, which now has five DER aggregators signed up. We're figuring out how they integrate them into their market, and can probably learn from that in order to decide how far to go."

"This is a FERC commissioner at the federal level basically saying, 'Well, we're going to watch California.' So that places a lot of pressure on what happens in this state. It means if we get it right here, you could imagine [the same model being duplicated] in other parts of the country. If we get it wrong, it might set the rest of the country back."

73 acronyms and 3 buckets

In November the California Public Utilities Commission published its California DER action plan.

"It's a super valuable guide if you are getting lost in the weeds of everything that is happening in this transition. It's on the CPUC website, and I highly recommend it to anybody who hasn't checked it out."

"The other thing I like about it is that it basically frames all the myriad issues that we're dealing with in three buckets. I think it's a useful frame for the conversations that we're having today.

"The first bucket is rates and tariffs. If you're going to be putting a lot more distributed energy on the grid, you have the big question of how you charge customers for electricity. How do you change the rates that have been largely generally flat -- not locational, not time-based? How do you make rates reflect...cost of service? How do you make them enable distributed energy resources to find the places where they will have the most value? And, similarly, tariffs, when you are feeding power back in to the grid from a DER technology, or when you are saving power, or when you are shifting load, how does that get compensated?"

He continued, "The second is a bit of a mouthful. It is distribution-grade infrastructure, planning, interconnection and procurement. This one basically says we have one system, or we have historically had one system for thinking about the distribution grid, planning for it, making sure that it remains reliable and operational and trying to do so at least cost."

Kann went on: "The third category is wholesale DER market interconnection. Say you fix the other two things -- you still have this opportunity where there's a wholesale market...and you have all these new distributed resources that are very small. They're too small individually to play in this wholesale market, but when aggregated, there's interaction there. They can potentially...be able to drive some value from the wholesale markets. They should also be, in some cases, optimized to when the wholesale market is sending them a signal that there is a need."

As Kann acknowledged, "This stuff is really complicated. [...] One way to...show the complexity of all this: That California DER action plan that I mentioned. It's easily the best document that I've read about what's happening in California; it's the simplest, most straightforward thing you can possibly find to see all of the different regulatory activities that are going on. It's 10 pages, which is impressive -- they were able to fit all of that into 10 pages. But the 11th page is an appendix that has a list of 73 acronyms [used in] the first 10 pages. [...] When you have a 10-page document that requires 73 acronyms, that's a sign that the market is pretty complex."

Do distributed energy resources reduce emissions?

"There's another question that relates back to the decarbonization component to this, which is whether distributed energy resources reduce emissions. You might think that they do, and certainly a lot of the DERs that we talk about, they seem like they would inherently reduce emissions.

"Energy storage is a good example of this (and this is going to be slightly unfair, so I'll put a big caveat on it, but I just want to use it as an example). In November, there was the first impact evaluation of the Self-Generation Incentive Program in California, which supports energy storage behind the meter. One of the things it looked at is, during the system peak, the times when the system is peaking, the top 100 to 200 hours of the year, are those energy storage systems charging or discharging?

"Now in a world where your goal is to reduce emissions, the answer should be obvious. Storage should always be discharging at system peak. What you want to do with energy storage is deploy it at the times when you can reduce peak generation. And that was indeed true for the performance-based incentive projects. But the non-PBI projects, in aggregate, were charging during peak hours on the system, which is exactly the opposite of what you would want if your goal is to reduce emissions using energy storage," he said.

This was from "an early wave of projects, 2015 energy storage projects, of which there are very few. In addition to that, it had to do with how the incentive was structured and how demand charges are structured. A lot of these systems are being implemented to reduce customer demand charges. If you don't design the demand charges so that they align well with system peak, then you might end up with a situation where, for the customer, it's more economic to charge during a peak hour despite the fact that it doesn't make sense from a system perspective," he said.

Kann continued: "So this isn't to say it's going to continue to be this way for SGIP projects in California, but I do think it's just emblematic of the fact that you need to be thinking about what you're trying to optimize for and then designing each one of these individual programs and acronyms to get to a place where you're achieving the ends that you are trying to reach."

On a more positive note...

"Nowhere else in the country is it as clear that the decentralization trend is real and not going anywhere than in California. It doesn't seem inherently obvious to me that everywhere will go through this transformation, but California certainly will."

"There's an interesting contrast between the two states in the U.S. that have taken this transition most seriously, California and New York. New York has this REV initiative that's generated a ton of attention, and California has the acronym soup, and so in some ways, they're heading in the same direction, but I think they've come at it from sort of opposite angles."

"New York started with a pretty simple and straightforward vision statement. REV was launched with lots of fanfare, saying, 'Here's what we intend to accomplish out of all this.' Then it spent the past three-plus years trying to implement that vision, and at every step of the way, [they're] discovering more complexity. And so REV keeps getting wider and wider and just running into little roadblocks along the way, and so I think there's actually been a fair bit of frustration. Not to say that REV won't ultimately be successful in New York, but players in the market there are a little bit frustrated with how the process is going today, because it feels like every time they take a step forward, they take another step back."

"California's sort of gone the opposite direction. California quietly built up all these individual little components of a distributed energy transformation and then eventually tied it all together into...the cohesive vision that we are building toward within that. It doesn't necessarily mean that California's going to be more successful in that endeavor, but I think in some ways it is a little more positioned for success as a result of having done a lot of the complicated, hard work earlier and then building it up into a bigger picture."

***

The Revolution Will Not be Televised