#also the belt is just a placeholder for something closer to the actual belt

[serjaimelannister]

finally said fuck it i'm gonna be ys cover joanna for halloween idc if two people get it !! and the first pieces of the costume i'm putting together came today i feel so Alive

[dumbassdep]

WIP whenever!

@deputyash @strangefable @cassietrn & @inafieldofdaisies all tagged me to do WIP Wednesday over the past few weeks 😬 but it's 10 minutes into Friday for me so it's a whenever with apologies for the somewhat giant delays! 💙💙💙

This WIP isn't art or writing it's cosplay cause that's what I'm working on! I do have a little written thing coming together but it's all in my head, almost fully formed but I haven't done any typing. Oop.

Anyway! I'm working on a Gale BG3 cosplay & wizard robes for my Dark Urge wizard Mercy. At the same time cause they're the same robes, Mercy was a test of the pattern & it turned out fantastically so it's time to start on Gale. I like to cosplay my video game boyfriends. Don't judge me.

My girl - my boy (who gets a reference photo instead of a glamour shot)

Bunch of WIP photos with commentary below the cut!

Patterning this belt made me want to cry so many times but Gale's is now done except the press studs to close it & Mercy's is ready to be riveted together tomorrow.

Front & back view of Mercy's robes! They were supposed to be a practice really but I went a bit nuts, overlayed a floral black lace over a colour shift purple for the sleeves, same purple for the little sash-y thing on the front. Metallic copper for the back panel/belt & gauntlets (which are nowhere in any photos cause I haven't patterned them yet)

Mercy is a necromancy wizard so I wanted dark & a bit creepy, so the purple/green shift was perfect. It's curtains I picked up from Savers a while ago. The lace was also thrifted yeeeears ago from a theatre sale, black was destined for some forgotten project, Jedi robes maybe? I only bought the copper leatherette for these robes, very good job if I may congratulate myself a little. ☺️

Closer view mostly cause I love how this shows the colour shift in the purple. The gold buttons are temporary placeholders til the actual fastenings arrive, ordered them from an Etsy store called IllustrisModels! 2 sets one for her, one for him.

Finally, & I know this one is boring, fabric choices for Gale! It's a purple linen, a red velvet & 2 brown suedes, the darker one the belt & gauntlets are made of & a lighter brown for the shoulder/back piece. I did have to buy the linen for this & linen is expensive but it was on sale. I realise I'm talking a lot about purchases for seemingly no reason, I had a goal this year to destash as much fabric as I could instead of buying fabric but I did give myself allowance to buy some cause specific projects need specific things sometimes!

That's it! That's my current project! With a lot of rambling. I'm excited to get them done & have nowhere to wear them. But I might wear the black robes out to lunch or something if we go somewhere fancy. Technically *not* cosplay. Just *inspired* and therefore acceptable. Says me.

[causemufins]

Yes Yes Yes! all of this! Man's probably struggled enough with connecting Aelita's video chat onto his desktop in his dorm room with the wifi being that messy. It also explains why the forest sector had the visual downgrade from 'sunset foliage' to 'greenscreen roads'

He finds a file at one point that reveals that sector 5 is still using the placeholder textures. He turns them on, gets one of the others to check the place out, then they decide that no, blue is fine and let's never speak of this again.

The reason why he can't make a duplicate of any coding he does (like when Odd accidently found a way to bring Aelita to the real world, but they had to use it on Yumi) is because the super computer freaks out with half of the supposedly one time use stuff. It's not that he can't replicate it or copy it, it's that the computer runs it, but forgets to pull whatever trigger says its finished running, and trying again just goes 'nooooo it's already doing that. let it stop then you can' and jeremie is this close to yelling at the computer not just in his mind that "No, it is not running. It has not been running for ages. Just run it!"

That's also why the Skid can't be reused if it gets destroyed. The computer is just like "Nope, it exists already, we can't have two." And while I know Evolution doesn't actually exist(/s), but if it did exist and the Skid was back and i never actually watched the totally theoretical episodes to know what the actual reasoning was, it would be that after trying to find solution after solution, trying to figure out how to maybe bring it back, Jeremie finally gives up and tries the stupid, unlikely to work solution of calling the file skidbladnir_copy and THAT'S what works.

Jeremie redesigned all the models for the others saying it was to give them an upgrade or whatever, but really it's because somehow he deleted all their models and had to remake them. Part of why they all have the same element of the belt thing is because they were just copy pasted onto their models. The one exception is Yumi, and she has such a big change because Jeremie started with her, made the whole model, then regretted it and cut corners here and there with the others.

Meanwhile, the moment the forest sector had it's... second incident in season 3, Jeremie already started using spare time remaking it, so when they needed a new copy of lyoko, it didn't take as long as other things because he didn't need to build on the spaghetti code that was already there. he had a bit of a fresh start. some stuff still acted the same because of habit, like sending them in 3 meters up, but a good chunk became easier because it was his code.

That's part of why he can spawn in the vehicles closer to the ground and under where the others will appear, because it's his code and he made it so he knows how to use it

all of this is part of why he writes his manual for the others to use and why it is so thick. It wouldn't need to be, but instead of writing a single line of code for something that would only need the one, you need 15 or so because the straightforward way doesn't want to work! The only time you can use a singular line of code is when it's like when that one person on youtube tried making a game with a single line of code. please why is all that information in a single line aaaaaa.

I like the headcanon that Jeremie actually had a lot of battles during the fight with XANA...except most of them were really mundane, incomprehensible to anyone else, and against the supercomputer itself.

I mean, the whole thing was built by one guy, who probably made his own programming language for it, in 1994, while actively in the process of going insane. It was a marvel! A masterpiece of technology far beyond its time! And its codebase was probably spaghetti on top of spaghetti on top of a dumpster fire. Hence Jeremie having a love-hate relationship with first the computer and then Franz Hopper himself, constantly oscillating between "wow! how did you do this?!" and "oh god, how did you do this?"

The scanners and RTTP work nigh-perfectly because they were thoroughly tested, and Lyoko itself mostly runs very well, but also there's a pebble in the forest sector that cannot be removed or all the textures turn into checkerboard for no discernible reason, everyone's models have loaded in missing any kind of physics at least once, all of the shaders broke at some indeterminate point right after Aelita was first materialized and he still has no idea how that happened, why can't he spawn anything less than three meters above the ground without it ending up IN the ground, yes those are two rocks inside of each other stop giggling, what do you MEAN THERE'S A MEMORY LEAK, WHERE IS THERE A MEMORY LEAK, WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME SOMEBODY CLEARED THE TEMP FILES ON THIS THING, WHERE EVEN ARE THE TEMP FILES THIS SYSTEM MAKES NO SENSE--

He keeps having to ask weird programming questions on internet forums and laments that he has to know an equal amount about 3D physics rendering engines and QUANTUM PROBABILITY MATHEMATICS to make the thing work. Plus he tries to do some things remotely, but his laptop can't run half the supercomputer's programs, and the other half he's remote editing over terrible 2006 school-wide wi-fi that craps itself every time some 10th grade bozo down the hall tries to pirate anime.

[alexanderessex190973ba2bcollab]

Collab Project - Second Animatic and Extended Research

For today’s session, I worked on improving my animatic just a little bit to help showcase what kind of imagery I want to show as well as my research and development towards the model of the character too. I’m thinking for my Monk character that he’s going to be a combination of both realistic but also fictional design as whilst I like the basic nature of the clothing that traditional monks wear, I feel I would be missing out so much from looking at the designs of the more fictional designs like the Dungeons and Dragons depictions of a Monk.

I first started researching into the potential accessories for the Monk to wear across his body or carrying with him on his body to vary up his design a bit rather than just looking like a basic monk. These were a belt, pouch and tenedrals that flail off the hips of the Monk. Whilst a lot of these detail;s are very fantasy styled, I researched into a more traditional accessory that Monk actually carry with them in real-life that being Chiang Mai Umbrellas/Parasols that they carry on their backs and lean on their shoulder. The umbrellas symbolised being connected and understanding your true self which enforces the idea of individuality that monks posses. In relation to my principle ‘Passion’, everyone’s passion is blinded to everyone differently which the umbrellas are more of a reminder to help you understand that you won’t find yourself or find your passion without working on yourself to find your true self. 

Accessory Mood Board

Umbrealla Mood Board

Once the mood boards were completed, I then began to do some very expressive drawings in Photoshop based off my feelings that I’ve gained from researching those mood boards and visulise them as quick as possible to get that flow across. Because these drawings were experimental, I was incredibly loose in what I did as I din’t go back to rub out mistakes and just kept on going with what I already had down on the page. Through doing this, I had so much fun quickly coming up with character ideas based off my research as my absolute favorite character as the man in the middle holding the umbrellas as the composition felt so nice in the image. I think that drawing and the one above it are very close for what kind of look I would like to achieve for the final character design.

In addition to completing some sketches, I also featured next to it a lil mood board of the types of drapery that I imagined the character to be wearing around his body as well as a little reference for when I was sketching out the characters on the page. 

After I did some more research and development on my character, I went back to my first animatic and improved upon it by adding the MASH network to it to get a sense of how I plan to implement something like it into the sequence. Obviously this wouldn't be the final look of the MASH network as I plan to have it be a long energy stream that the monk will rise up into it once he’s achieved his flow and found his Passion. Going back to the exercises we did, I felt like the Dynamics exercise was most appropriate for the look I wanted to achieve or at the very least, a placeholder look for the animatic. Trying to get it the way I exactly wanted was a bit tricky as the more subdivision cubes I made, the laggier it was to do in Maya which I wasn’t too sure what the cause of it was per say but i still managed to make a workaround by having the camera bit closer into the scene. Other than painting these cubes black, that was all the changes I ended up doing for the sequence.

Group’s Thoughts and Jon’s feedback

Presenting the animatic to everyone, everyone was really impressed by the MASH network animation and how it filled up the screen which was really great to hear. On top of that, Jon really liked my perspective and camera shots of the sequence I created and the lead up to the MASH network which was really reassuring to hear. Looking back on it all, I think I want to experiment with it just a little bit more before I do any mass modeling just yet just so I know everything will come out as it should.

[flauntpage]

Stipe Miocic: King of the Heavyweights

In twenty years of the UFC heavyweight title, no one has defended the crown three times. When a new heavyweight wins the belt the fans can’t imagine them losing—Brock Lesnar was just too big, Cain Velasquez was just too technical, Fabricio Werdum was just too technical, times two. All of them suffered crushing defeats and dropped the belt shortly afterwards. And yet Stipe Miocic is on the cusp of pulling off that elusive third defense and he seems to be rather under-appreciated by the UFC’s ravenous fanbase.

Miocic is understated in the cage and in the media. Fans don’t queue around the block to see him at the press conference and this isn’t even his day job. Despite his sterling knockout record and victories over big names, some still see the Ohio fireman as something of a placeholder champion while the average age of the heavyweight top ten creeps closer towards 50. When Cain Velasquez throws up a wheel kick fight fans lose their minds, but Miocic has been painted into the mundane roll of a good wrestler with a jab and a great right hand—the old "wrestle-banger." No razzle-dazzle, just meat and potatoes punching and shooting. But the truth of the matter is that Miocic’s minimalist "move set" serves to shine a light on just how great an adaptive fighter he is in the cage.

The heavyweight division doesn’t tend to be the standard bearer for technical and tactical brilliance. Most heavyweights have one or two remarkable skills or techniques which carry them into the world’s elite. But there is a difference between being "basic" and being a minimalist. Don’t misunderstand, there are plenty of top heavyweights who are basic, but while Stipe Miocic uses the same four or five techniques or "moves" over and over again to best everyone they put in front of him, it’s the tactics that make the difference.

Roy Nelson – The Big Right Hand

In June 2013, Roy Nelson was a hot ticket at heavyweight. Three back-to-back knockouts had Nelson in the running for a shot at the heavyweight title. Then UFC 161 fell apart and Nelson was brought in to add some much needed star power. Nelson was slotted in to replace Sao Pelelei against the unheralded Miocic, returning to action for the first time since the Stefan Struve knockout. Just a few weeks earlier Nelson had cornered Cheick Kongo and starched him with an overhand along the fence. This was when Kongo was being billed as a world class striker. Miocic had no world kickboxing titles to his name, but he proceeded to give Nelson a boxing lesson.

Rather than hanging around on the fence as Kongo did, Miocic consistently circled out to his right side, shooting his left arm out across Nelson in a leverage guard as he did so and keeping his left shoulder high. Each time Nelson wheeled around to follow him, Miocic would drop a vicious right hand on him. Where Nelson’s defense when other fighters have out-maneuvered him was that it didn’t feel like a fight but more of a sparring match, there was no excuse here. Each time Nelson took his foot off the gas, Miocic would get in his face with the jab and the feints—keeping Nelson under stress and preventing him from taking breaks.

Where Matt Mitrione and Dave Herman got too confident against Nelson, Miocic made no such mistake. Nelson had caught both Mitrione and Herman on the counter, but when Miocic wanted to step in on Nelson, he stayed alert. He desensitized Nelson with feints, and when he committed his weight to the right hand he would duck out or change the angle, sometimes resulting in this gorgeous quarter turn that looks more like something from the arsenal of Willie Pep than some a 250 pound mixed martial arts fighter would do.

Over three rounds Miocic drew out Nelson’s money punch, punished him for throwing it, and kept the heavyweight contender paralyzed between exhaustion and passivity.

Mark Hunt – Counters and Bursts

Mark Hunt’s career resurgence coincided with a move to a more counter based style of striking. Rather than going after opponents and opening up his hips, Hunt will make opponents come to him and look to nail them on the return. The counter left hook is a favorite, along with the cross counter—an overhand across the top of the opponent’s jab—and to deal with a wrestler the counter right uppercut works a treat.

Miocic immediately got to work desensitizing Hunt’s counter instincts with feints and jabs. Hunt was given the choice—swing wholeheartedly each time Miocic promised that he was stepping in, or wait a little longer to discern if the strikes were real. Feinting the jab, doubling the jab, anything Miocic could do to get Hunt out of position and himself close enough to strike without opening up.

On several occasions in the first round Hunt became uncomfortable with the feints and jabs and decided to swing at Miocic first, whereupon Miocic countered excellently.

In the opening seconds of the bout, Miocic bent down and snatched up a single on Hunt. It wasn’t subtle and Hunt immediately exploded up to his feet, but that wasn’t the point. From that point on, each time Miocic bent a little at the waist Hunt’s hands would drop and Miocic could come up jabbing. Any time Miocic got Hunt jabbing back at him, he was in on Hunt’s hips again.

Hunt’s counters never found the mark and he quickly became too tired and beaten up to be any real threat. By the final round Hunt was just surviving and Miocic was still thriving.

Stefan Struve – An Actual Giant

Stefan Struve is seven feet tall and, while it is true that you can’t teach that, his coaches have also been unable to teach him to use it. Struve stands out as something of a misstep in Miocic’s largely unhindered career. Miocic’s team came up with a great strategy to deal with Struve, they had their man maintain the range, slip inside of Struve’s punches, and bang the giant’s body. Nowhere else has Miocic shown so much bodywork.

The only problem was that it overcomplicated the problem. Banging the body on a man that size would be perfect if there weren’t a way to deal with Struve that is so much easier. Struve is almost allergic to pressure and will run himself backwards onto the fence. He is also far too happy to trade in the pocket—meaning that both men’s hands and one man’s head are whizzing around at six feet off the ground while Struve’s head is hanging out in the open, a foot above the exchanges. Stepping in, crowding Struve, and trying to take his head off has proven successful for a number of his opponents, but Miocic made a boxing match out of it anyway.

In the third round an errant finger found Miocic’s retina and soon afterwards the fireman was knocked flat for the only time in his career. This remains the only unavenged loss of Miocic’s MMA career.

Fabricio Werdum – Overwhelming Pace and Volume

Fabricio Werdum was the hot property at heavyweight before Miocic. After emphatically outworking Cain Velasquez, fans found it hard to believe anyone could get the better of Werdum. Werdum’s striking was herky-jerky, but his constant aggression was a killer. Working in flurries of one-twos and body kicks, Werdum would force his opponents into a shell, then work the double collar tie to score punishing knees. In fact Werdum just did the same thing to the promising young heavyweight, Marcin Tybura. In a division of front runners, Fabricio Werdum breaks wills, and getting put on the back foot against Werdum soon proves disastrous.

Miocic came out low kicking and jabbing, and making a very obvious effort to avoid prolonged exchanges.

A lovely counter low kick followed by Miocic fumbling for the right hand—a bad habit of his we will return to in The Tactical Guide to Miocic vs. Ngannou.

Picking at Werdum from the outside, Miocic looked to counter each time Werdum over-extended—a constant feature of Werdum’s career. When Werdum landed a decent shot he did what he always had done and attempted to push his advantage—give Werdum an inch and he will take a mile. As Miocic circled out, Werdum gave chase and ran onto a short right hook which sent him down on his face.

The fight could have done with being longer, and excuses for Werdum’s misjudgement were rife in the following months, but Miocic’s team put together an excellent gameplan which denied Werdum the chances to put together strikes in flurries without having to overcommit to stay on top of Miocic. In the course of a couple of minutes, Werdum had already attempted to bum rush Miocic with his chin served up on a platter half a dozen times.

Junior dos Santos – Wickedly Fast Hands

Junior dos Santos stands out as the sole rematch on Miocic’s record. Miocic lost a competitive first fight to dos Santos in December 2014, scuppering the momentum he had built since the breakout performance against Nelson in 2013. The gameplan for the first bout seemed to be in the template of what Cain Velasquez had been able to do against dos Santos in their second and third bouts. Miocic ducked in on dos Santos’s hips and drove him to the fence, holding him there for short periods and striking not to tremendous effect.

As the rounds progressed, Miocic slowed a little more considerably than dos Santos and got wilder. Pursuing dos Santos along the cage in the third round, Miocic was dropped by a hook and the fight began to turn and dos Santos took the decision in a Fight of the Night winning performance.

After Miocic rebuilt and won the heavyweight title in 2016, dos Santos was booked as his second defense of the crown. This time, however, Miocic didn’t look to wrestle. In that first bout Miocic’s most successful work came landing punches as dos Santos broke from the clinch and attempted to circle off the cage. Instead of holding him to the fence, Miocic needed to box dos Santos along it.

Junior dos Santos’s footwork is excellent—along one plane. His boxing is more akin to fence—stepping in and out on a straight line. He can move laterally but he loses track of where he is in the ring after almost every exchange. This means that dos Santos only knows he needs to circle out after his rump has hit the fence. As retreat is dos Santos’s main means of defense, being along the fence is pretty disastrous for his style. Miocic kept his back foot along the Octagon wall and stepped in to uncork right hands when he felt the time was right.

When dos Santos broke to circle along the fence, Miocic hooked from the direction that dos Santos was moving into, creating perfect and powerful collisions. Rather than a five-round war, dos Santos was knocked out in two minutes in a perfect example of a team learning from their successes and mistakes.

The Shadow of Ngannou

Stipe Miocic faces a stiff and largely unknown test in his third title defense. Francis Ngannou is a tremendous hitter who seems to improve technically in leaps and bounds from fight to fight. But Ngannou is still rough around the edges and there are a heap of things he hasn’t been asked to deal with yet—first among them being a competent boxer. After watching Andrei Arlovski and Alistair Overeem run chin-first onto Ngannou’s counters it will be refreshing to see a fighter with a proven history following solid fight strategies try his hand against the French colossus. Perhaps Miocic gets smoked and the UFC heavyweight title curse continues, but it won’t detract from the fact that in Miocic’s run through the heavyweight division is a case study in "basics" being adapted to get the job done against a wide variety of styles and skills.

Jack wrote the hit biography Notorious: The Life and Fights of Conor McGregor and scouts prospects at The Fight Primer .

Stipe Miocic: King of the Heavyweights published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

[amtushinfosolutionspage]

Stipe Miocic: King of the Heavyweights

In twenty years of the UFC heavyweight title, no one has defended the crown three times. When a new heavyweight wins the belt the fans can’t imagine them losing—Brock Lesnar was just too big, Cain Velasquez was just too technical, Fabricio Werdum was just too technical, times two. All of them suffered crushing defeats and dropped the belt shortly afterwards. And yet Stipe Miocic is on the cusp of pulling off that elusive third defense and he seems to be rather under-appreciated by the UFC’s ravenous fanbase.

Miocic is understated in the cage and in the media. Fans don’t queue around the block to see him at the press conference and this isn’t even his day job. Despite his sterling knockout record and victories over big names, some still see the Ohio fireman as something of a placeholder champion while the average age of the heavyweight top ten creeps closer towards 50. When Cain Velasquez throws up a wheel kick fight fans lose their minds, but Miocic has been painted into the mundane roll of a good wrestler with a jab and a great right hand—the old “wrestle-banger.” No razzle-dazzle, just meat and potatoes punching and shooting. But the truth of the matter is that Miocic’s minimalist “move set” serves to shine a light on just how great an adaptive fighter he is in the cage.

The heavyweight division doesn’t tend to be the standard bearer for technical and tactical brilliance. Most heavyweights have one or two remarkable skills or techniques which carry them into the world’s elite. But there is a difference between being “basic” and being a minimalist. Don’t misunderstand, there are plenty of top heavyweights who are basic, but while Stipe Miocic uses the same four or five techniques or “moves” over and over again to best everyone they put in front of him, it’s the tactics that make the difference.

Roy Nelson – The Big Right Hand

In June 2013, Roy Nelson was a hot ticket at heavyweight. Three back-to-back knockouts had Nelson in the running for a shot at the heavyweight title. Then UFC 161 fell apart and Nelson was brought in to add some much needed star power. Nelson was slotted in to replace Sao Pelelei against the unheralded Miocic, returning to action for the first time since the Stefan Struve knockout. Just a few weeks earlier Nelson had cornered Cheick Kongo and starched him with an overhand along the fence. This was when Kongo was being billed as a world class striker. Miocic had no world kickboxing titles to his name, but he proceeded to give Nelson a boxing lesson.

Rather than hanging around on the fence as Kongo did, Miocic consistently circled out to his right side, shooting his left arm out across Nelson in a leverage guard as he did so and keeping his left shoulder high. Each time Nelson wheeled around to follow him, Miocic would drop a vicious right hand on him. Where Nelson’s defense when other fighters have out-maneuvered him was that it didn’t feel like a fight but more of a sparring match, there was no excuse here. Each time Nelson took his foot off the gas, Miocic would get in his face with the jab and the feints—keeping Nelson under stress and preventing him from taking breaks.

Where Matt Mitrione and Dave Herman got too confident against Nelson, Miocic made no such mistake. Nelson had caught both Mitrione and Herman on the counter, but when Miocic wanted to step in on Nelson, he stayed alert. He desensitized Nelson with feints, and when he committed his weight to the right hand he would duck out or change the angle, sometimes resulting in this gorgeous quarter turn that looks more like something from the arsenal of Willie Pep than some a 250 pound mixed martial arts fighter would do.

Over three rounds Miocic drew out Nelson’s money punch, punished him for throwing it, and kept the heavyweight contender paralyzed between exhaustion and passivity.

Mark Hunt – Counters and Bursts

Mark Hunt’s career resurgence coincided with a move to a more counter based style of striking. Rather than going after opponents and opening up his hips, Hunt will make opponents come to him and look to nail them on the return. The counter left hook is a favorite, along with the cross counter—an overhand across the top of the opponent’s jab—and to deal with a wrestler the counter right uppercut works a treat.

Miocic immediately got to work desensitizing Hunt’s counter instincts with feints and jabs. Hunt was given the choice—swing wholeheartedly each time Miocic promised that he was stepping in, or wait a little longer to discern if the strikes were real. Feinting the jab, doubling the jab, anything Miocic could do to get Hunt out of position and himself close enough to strike without opening up.

On several occasions in the first round Hunt became uncomfortable with the feints and jabs and decided to swing at Miocic first, whereupon Miocic countered excellently.

In the opening seconds of the bout, Miocic bent down and snatched up a single on Hunt. It wasn’t subtle and Hunt immediately exploded up to his feet, but that wasn’t the point. From that point on, each time Miocic bent a little at the waist Hunt’s hands would drop and Miocic could come up jabbing. Any time Miocic got Hunt jabbing back at him, he was in on Hunt’s hips again.

Hunt’s counters never found the mark and he quickly became too tired and beaten up to be any real threat. By the final round Hunt was just surviving and Miocic was still thriving.

Stefan Struve – An Actual Giant

Stefan Struve is seven feet tall and, while it is true that you can’t teach that, his coaches have also been unable to teach him to use it. Struve stands out as something of a misstep in Miocic’s largely unhindered career. Miocic’s team came up with a great strategy to deal with Struve, they had their man maintain the range, slip inside of Struve’s punches, and bang the giant’s body. Nowhere else has Miocic shown so much bodywork.

The only problem was that it overcomplicated the problem. Banging the body on a man that size would be perfect if there weren’t a way to deal with Struve that is so much easier. Struve is almost allergic to pressure and will run himself backwards onto the fence. He is also far too happy to trade in the pocket—meaning that both men’s hands and one man’s head are whizzing around at six feet off the ground while Struve’s head is hanging out in the open, a foot above the exchanges. Stepping in, crowding Struve, and trying to take his head off has proven successful for a number of his opponents, but Miocic made a boxing match out of it anyway.

In the third round an errant finger found Miocic’s retina and soon afterwards the fireman was knocked flat for the only time in his career. This remains the only unavenged loss of Miocic’s MMA career.

Fabricio Werdum – Overwhelming Pace and Volume

Fabricio Werdum was the hot property at heavyweight before Miocic. After emphatically outworking Cain Velasquez, fans found it hard to believe anyone could get the better of Werdum. Werdum’s striking was herky-jerky, but his constant aggression was a killer. Working in flurries of one-twos and body kicks, Werdum would force his opponents into a shell, then work the double collar tie to score punishing knees. In fact Werdum just did the same thing to the promising young heavyweight, Marcin Tybura. In a division of front runners, Fabricio Werdum breaks wills, and getting put on the back foot against Werdum soon proves disastrous.

Miocic came out low kicking and jabbing, and making a very obvious effort to avoid prolonged exchanges.

A lovely counter low kick followed by Miocic fumbling for the right hand—a bad habit of his we will return to in The Tactical Guide to Miocic vs. Ngannou.

Picking at Werdum from the outside, Miocic looked to counter each time Werdum over-extended—a constant feature of Werdum’s career. When Werdum landed a decent shot he did what he always had done and attempted to push his advantage—give Werdum an inch and he will take a mile. As Miocic circled out, Werdum gave chase and ran onto a short right hook which sent him down on his face.

The fight could have done with being longer, and excuses for Werdum’s misjudgement were rife in the following months, but Miocic’s team put together an excellent gameplan which denied Werdum the chances to put together strikes in flurries without having to overcommit to stay on top of Miocic. In the course of a couple of minutes, Werdum had already attempted to bum rush Miocic with his chin served up on a platter half a dozen times.

Junior dos Santos – Wickedly Fast Hands

Junior dos Santos stands out as the sole rematch on Miocic’s record. Miocic lost a competitive first fight to dos Santos in December 2014, scuppering the momentum he had built since the breakout performance against Nelson in 2013. The gameplan for the first bout seemed to be in the template of what Cain Velasquez had been able to do against dos Santos in their second and third bouts. Miocic ducked in on dos Santos’s hips and drove him to the fence, holding him there for short periods and striking not to tremendous effect.

As the rounds progressed, Miocic slowed a little more considerably than dos Santos and got wilder. Pursuing dos Santos along the cage in the third round, Miocic was dropped by a hook and the fight began to turn and dos Santos took the decision in a Fight of the Night winning performance.

After Miocic rebuilt and won the heavyweight title in 2016, dos Santos was booked as his second defense of the crown. This time, however, Miocic didn’t look to wrestle. In that first bout Miocic’s most successful work came landing punches as dos Santos broke from the clinch and attempted to circle off the cage. Instead of holding him to the fence, Miocic needed to box dos Santos along it.

Junior dos Santos’s footwork is excellent—along one plane. His boxing is more akin to fence—stepping in and out on a straight line. He can move laterally but he loses track of where he is in the ring after almost every exchange. This means that dos Santos only knows he needs to circle out after his rump has hit the fence. As retreat is dos Santos’s main means of defense, being along the fence is pretty disastrous for his style. Miocic kept his back foot along the Octagon wall and stepped in to uncork right hands when he felt the time was right.

When dos Santos broke to circle along the fence, Miocic hooked from the direction that dos Santos was moving into, creating perfect and powerful collisions. Rather than a five-round war, dos Santos was knocked out in two minutes in a perfect example of a team learning from their successes and mistakes.

The Shadow of Ngannou

Stipe Miocic faces a stiff and largely unknown test in his third title defense. Francis Ngannou is a tremendous hitter who seems to improve technically in leaps and bounds from fight to fight. But Ngannou is still rough around the edges and there are a heap of things he hasn’t been asked to deal with yet—first among them being a competent boxer. After watching Andrei Arlovski and Alistair Overeem run chin-first onto Ngannou’s counters it will be refreshing to see a fighter with a proven history following solid fight strategies try his hand against the French colossus. Perhaps Miocic gets smoked and the UFC heavyweight title curse continues, but it won’t detract from the fact that in Miocic’s run through the heavyweight division is a case study in “basics” being adapted to get the job done against a wide variety of styles and skills.

Jack wrote the hit biography Notorious: The Life and Fights of Conor McGregor and scouts prospects at The Fight Primer .

Stipe Miocic: King of the Heavyweights syndicated from http://ift.tt/2ug2Ns6

[eloquentbaboon-blog]

Imperfect Rhyme: The Perfect Solution

Ah, there you are - you’ve just written the most amazing riff, using the most surprising chord structure, and sung a vocal melody that would make angels weep. Now, if only you can find that perfect lyric then you will have finally written the PERFECT SONG. Let’s see…this is all about that heartbreaking love affair you had last June. What rhymes with June?? I know, MOON!! There. That was it. That was the moment you lost everybody’s interest. It’s gonna be hard to play your next gig over the sound of the entire audience snoring so damn loud. Don’t buy bigger amps, don’t get some Björk-style Tesla coils that will zap sleepy fans into submission (tempting as that may be). The solution is blessedly simple, you don’t have to use perfect rhyme.

Abandon Reliance on Perfect Rhyme, All Ye Who Enter Here

Rhyming is part and parcel to songwriting. Rhymes make your lyrics more memorable, they allow the lines to connect, they can impart a flow to the words – they bring a sort of musicality even in the absence of music. But cliche rhymes will cause that flow to bleed out – they wear on the listener’s attention span until it trickles away. There’s only so many predictable couplets an ear can withstand before the brain simply tunes it out as so much noise. Moon/June, rain/pain, miss/kiss, hand/understand…zzzzzz. Worse, as a writer you can fall into a trap before the song’s even finished by allowing the meaning and direction of the lyric to be dictated to you:“But, these are the only words that rhyme! I had to write it like this, I’m sorry!” You should be sorry, hypothetical songwriter. You should be.

Ok, we’re gonna talk a bit about the nuts and bolts of language now, but hang in there it’s worth it. Just get a little phonetic knowledge under your belt and you’ll never be short of options when writing again. When we talk rhymes, 99% of people think of perfect rhymes. We all know it when we hear it: sound/round, here/beer, June/moon. In short, perfect rhyme occurs when the final vowel+consonant combination between two words is identical. The vast majority of cliche rhyme crimes are committed because of the desperate search for these perfect rhymes. Now I’m not saying all perfect rhymes are cliche or that you should never use perfect rhyme, but once you abandon reliance on it and learn how to look for more unexpected rhymes, your verbal palate will expand exponentially and your songwriting prowess will level up. Then the next time you finish a song you might think: “No that isn’t a perfect rhyme, but yes that is closer to the actual meaning of the song I set out to write and hey whaddaya know it’s actually something I’ve never heard before, isn’t that clever? Won’t all the people love me now I’ve written something truly original? End Scene”

 Be Friends With Family

There are several different ways to find a thoroughly satisfying imperfect rhyme, but for the moment we’re going to stick with what’s known as Family Rhyme. Family rhyme is a type of imperfect rhyme that occurs when two words have the same final vowel sound but only a similar sounding consonant.

Family rhyme relies on using sounds that are closely related to one another phonetically. Essentially, it’s as close as you can get to perfect rhyme without technically being perfect. And now, time for a visual aid:

(Note: This chart shows the sounds of consonants in English but in no way reflects how these sounds are actually spelled. For example, the sound of the g in fragile is represented on this chart by the letter j – because English is a language with a long and complex history and often the spelling makes zero phonetic sense. Don’t think so? Here are some other words with the letter g: rouge, bulge, hug, rough. Yeah, that’s what I thought. Oh, add “thought” to that list too.)

This little chart groups consonants in the English language by the way in which the sounds are made and what mouth/tongue position is used to make each sound.

The different columns reflect the 3 different ways these consonant sounds are made – either by allowing for a build-up and release of air (plosives – explosives!), by restricting air as it passes through the mouth (fricatives – think friction), or by resonating the nasal cavity to form the sound (nasals – mmmawp?). Sounds that are formed the same way are called companions.

The top row of voiced consonants are formed when the vocal chords are engaged, the unvoiced consonants are formed without using the vocal chords.

To demonstrate the difference, take a deep breath and breathe out slowly. Now being sure to keep your mouth in the same position, alternate saying “Uhhhhh” while you exhale with saying nothing at all (“Errrr” if you’re British. See, arbitrary spelling!). That’s you engaging your vocal chords. Now try saying “Duh-duh-duh-duh” and then say nothing at all while continuing the same mouth/tongue motions. The “duh-duh” sound is the voiced plosive “d”, the “t-t-“ sound you get from disengaging the vocal chords is its partner “t”. Yeah, you guessed it. Voiced/unvoiced sounds that appear directly opposite each other in the chart (partners) are made using the same mouth/tongue position.

The completionist in me wants to give an example for each sound. Left to right starting with the voiced row: rob, rod, gig – sieve, budge (j), baThe, forces (z), deluge (zh) – seem, seen, sing. Unvoiced: tip, pit, pick – sniff, hatch, bath, trips, splash.

And Then…?

So, how does all this newly found linguistic knowledge help get you out of the rut of relying too much on perfect rhyme? Well, if you can’t find a non-cliche perfect rhyme or need a word that more closely conveys the meaning of the lyric as you envision it, start by searching for a word that has a partner sound to the one you want to rhyme. And, like in life, if you can’t find a decent partner, you should at least be able to find a decent companion. Companion rhymes can be just as good.

Hypothetical Songwriter Finds a Hypothetical Rhyme

Let’s look at an example of this approach in action by coming up with some alternatives for the second line in this couplet (Copyright 2016, by me. I would’ve used an actual famous human’s lyrics, but that would’ve cost money so…womp-womp)

           You say my ambition isn’t serious enough

           You call it a flaw [when I laugh at stuff] Ok, so we’re gonna wanna to fix the obvious placeholder “at stuff” here. Enough/stuff is a perfect rhyme, it’s just a terrible line. We’ll start by listing perfect rhyme options. The sentiment of the lyric is dealing with an overbearing or overly-critical lover. Perfect rhymes for “enough” include:

bluff      cuff       huff       scruff     buff       fluff       puff       snuff chuff     gruff      rough    tough

Hmm, nothing great there.

You call it a flaw when I call your bluff – could work, but there’s no context in the rest of they lyric. What bluff? What are you talking about?

You call it a flaw when I dress too rough. Meh, that’s ok, but it’s a superficial criticism and doesn’t cut as deep as the line could. And it’s a bit awkward.

You call it a flaw, and that’s just rough. Another indifferent solution – just doubling down on the meaning of the previous line without adding any interesting nuance. Also by changing the subject of the criticism, it detracts from the momentum of this section.

You call it a flaw when I’m not tough. Ok, that does work. It’s a bit simplistic, but let’s see how the rest of the section develops.

Right, time to move on to the partner. If we look back at the chart we can see the consonant directly opposite the final f sound in our word enough is the voiced fricative v. So we’re looking for words with the same vowel sound as enough, but ending in v.

above   dove     glove    love      shove

Not a lot going on here either.

You call it a flaw when I fall in love. Hey, good line – makes zero sense in this context though.

You call it a flaw when I’m a dove. Ok, makes sense, but a bit out of place. Someone is usually called a “dove” for their political beliefs.

That’s about it there, how about companions? Always start with the nearest companion/s and expand out from there – the further away you get from the original sound, the more imperfect the rhyme becomes. First up, ch:

clutch   crutch   much    such     touch

Better options here.

You call it a flaw when I use a crutch. Ouch! In the literal sense of someone actually having the gall to criticize you for needing a crutch to walk, that’s pretty good. However a “crutch” can also be a metaphorical one – like maybe, alcohol. So, yeah that could be a flaw indeed. Too vague.

You call it a flaw when I laugh too much. Good. And the closest one yet to the meaning of the original line.

You call it a flaw when I need your touch. Yeah, also an overly harsh criticism so it works in that sense. But “need your touch” is a cliche phrase, and this exercise is all about avoiding cliches so…Next!

Next companion, th:

doth (American accent only…)

Yeahhh, moving on – s:

bus, cuss, discuss, fuss, impetus, plus, radius, stimulus, us, adventurous, ambiguous, analogous, anonymous, arduous, assiduous, blasphemous, boisterous, cancerous, chivalrous, courteous, curious, dangerous, delirious, dubious, envious, fabulous, furious, glorious, hilarious, humorous…

There are actually hundreds of words that could possibly fit here – seriously, give it a moment and you’ll realize these are just a few examples. So very quickly we’ve gone from 12 not-so-great perfect rhymes to literally hundreds of imperfect rhymes with varying degrees of meaning and subtlety, and weeding out the obvious duds still leaves us with dozens of directions the lyric could go. It’s much easier to find a needle in a stack of needles. Our job now is simply sifting through the options to find which needle works best.

I’ve settled on either:

           You call it a flaw when I laugh too much

or:

           You call it a flaw when I’m hilarious

Now to try the two in the context of the whole bar:

You say my ambition isn’t serious enough You call it a flaw when I laugh too much You tell me I’m week, ‘cause you’ve seen me cry And I never lay the law down for you to comply

vs

You say my ambition isn’t serious enough You call it a flaw when I’m hilarious You tell me I’m week, ‘cause you’ve seen me cry And I never lay the law down for you to comply

Difficult to say. Although I love the self-deprecating humor of when I’m hilarious, the fact that it produces the internal rhyme with serious almost makes it flow too well. It’s gonna be another 4 lines before the listener gets a true end-line perfect rhyme, and when I laugh too much makes that payoff bigger by more effectively delaying gratification, and it still manages to flow.

Decisions! And this is just the first batch of words with potential, there are still more to try – we haven’t considered ­sh or any of the companions voiced counterparts yet. Hopefully this example proves the point – with just a little applied phonetic knowledge, there is no shortage of options.

Loose Ends

Moving on from the example above, let’s quickly address why L and R sounds are missing from this whole discussion. Well, L and R stand a bit apart from the rest of the English consonants, phonetically speaking. In fact the only close relationship they have is to each other so the options when trying to find a suitable rhyme can be limited. If you’re having trouble, rewriting the line by ending with a different word might be best.

And lastly, rhyming vowels. The good news: words that end in vowel sounds usually have no shortage of potential perfect rhymes. I, she, you, they – we could go on all day. The bad news is: that’s all you get! There’s no such thing as an imperfect rhyme for an isolated vowel sound.

Tools

To truly get the best results from this method, you’re gonna need a grown-up rhyming dictionary. I know what you’re thinking: “But, aren’t there websites that do this for me? Why do I have to think about it?” Well for starters, there are no websites out there that cover everything, especially the more complex compound rhymes. And really the most thorough solution is to use both, of course.

By ‘grown-up’ rhyming dictionary I do NOT mean a simple, most often worn out, list of perfect rhymes. You need one where the words are organized by sound – in other words, phonetically. I whole-heartedly recommend The Complete Rhyming Dictionary, edited by Clement Wood. You should note, though, that this is an American dictionary and therefore everything is grouped according to that accent. Fear not! Many if not most modern singers tend to mimic a flat Midwestern American accent when they sing anyway (yes they do, it’s fine, it’s just a style and there’s historical context to consider), but even if you’re in the outside set that sticks to their regional guns, this book is arranged by sound. Your rhymes will still be in there. And be sure to read the introductory material, it’s worth taking time to familiarize yourself with how the book works. Good luck!