#also uploading this from the website hopefully its not fucked??

[bunnyyyuu]

I'M WITH THE BAND — touya todoroki smau

includes: band au, bassist! touya + guitarist! keigo + drummer! tomura + lead singer! reader, probably ooc...

warnings: fluff, crack, suggestiveness, swearing

[sarah-blue-eyes]

2020 In Review

Hoo boy, here we go.

[Ok just before I begin. I had this queued to post in the first month of January but it doesn’t seem like that ever happened haha. Better late than never I suppose!]

So I am a nostalgic bitch, and since 2011, have loved to make memory boxes for each year, where I put trinkets and memories into a shoebox. This year I have continued that tradition, but I have also kept track of my happy memories throughout 2020 in my planner. This was done with the intention for me to upload a year-in-review sort of thing in hopes that maybe like, 3 people max on this god-forsaken site will read it. This sort of reminiscence was inspired by my friend @a-lbeit​, who has done these for a few years now and me, as a slut for nostalgia, was encouraged to do the same back in January (I think? What even is my memory at this point?)

2020, as it has been for many, was a very shit year, and I am no different. I would safely say that this year has undeniably been the worst I have lived through. But I am here. I am present. And I have made it through some of the darkest times to face 2021 with a new sense of hopefulness. Keeping track of my happier memories has been something that has truly got me through this clusterfuck of a year, so I am glad that I can finally go through them all again and share them with you.

Read it, or don’t, I don’t give a shit what you do with your time, but if you do, I hope that you aren’t bored to tears. And I hope to keep myself accountable to continue to do this for years to come.

Buckle up, grab a hot drink and a snack and get comfy, because this is a JOURNEY.

January:

· Kicked the new year off with hosting a 1920’s themed party with some of my closest friends at my family home at the beach. Had fun with drunk SingStar, playing What Do You Meme, creating a playlist with everyone’s top 3 songs of the decade (it was a bangin’ playlist I must say), and just overall drinking too much and having a riotous time

· I remember going to the beach New Year’s Day (as is tradition in Australia) and playing ultimate frisbee in the shallows and completing a crossword puzzle on the sand (I am a 75-year-old woman, it is just a fact of life)

· I also had my friend Kirsten from South Australia stay with me for the New Year’s period and it was lovely to have a guest over! I haven’t spoken to her much this year, she sort of fell off the face of the planet, but I hope she is doing ok.

· Went town to Torquay (a beach town in Victoria) for the 6th time for Beach Mission, which is essentially a holiday program for kids in preschool-year 9 where we run activities for them. It’s a Christian-based program but the aim isn’t to convert the kids or anything like that, it’s more to show God’s love to them through our actions and how we as Christians live our lives. It’s also a convenient way for parents to dish their kids off for a few hours too haha. This was my final year of being a part of this program, and I am so pleased to have made so many memories and (hopefully) impacted many children’s lives during my time there

· I remember going on a late-night beach walk with my boyfriend Josh, talking about what the year had in store for us. We were just sitting on the beach, as you do, and I saw a shooting star. I can’t remember what I wished for (if anything) but in that moment, life was a dream.

· The week after beach mission I started at my new internship! It was for a place called KidsCo, who run school holiday programs at workplaces, so parents don’t need to take time off work to look after them. I helped with client relations and a lot of behind-the scenes stuff. I really loved it there

· On the very first day of my internship I remember there was torrential rain, and the train home was delayed by like, an hour or so lol

· One of the best parts about interning at KidsCo was that they were the official child-minding service for the Australian Open. I make an effort to go each year, but I was lucky enough to get free ground-entry for me and a guest for the duration of the event. I went quite a few times and got to take my mum and Josh along as well.

· Saw my only concert of the year, The Veronicas, at the Australian Open. When I say the moment the violin riff at the start of Untouched absolutely went the fuck off is an understatement. Grade 5 me would have cried (and 23 year old me did a little bit too tbh.) Yet another of one of my “all-time-favourite-songs” that I’ve had the pleasure of hearing live. (I also went through the year feeling sad that this was the first time in 11 years I hadn’t gone to a concert, but this one certainly fell through the cracks)

· Started planning my trip to the UK to see my twin sister, and best friend, Jess

· Went away to Rye for the Australia Day weekend #changethedate. An excellent time with excellent mates, and went to the beach pretty much every day and got mindlessly sloshed every night

· Listened to the Triple J Hottest 100. I think 4 of my picks made it in, which was pretty good

· Continued my job as the office manager/events coordinator at my church

February:

Basketball started back after the summer break for my two different teams, The Vikings and The Wildcats (honestly such a highlight of this year with how the rest of it ended up going)

As a team-bonding activity at KidsCo we hired a boat for a few hours and I got more drunk that I had been for a while. It was a very fun time jetting down the Yarra, waving drunkedly at the people jogging by

For Valentine’s day Josh and I had an indoor picnic with our favourite food! The weather was shit for Feb, hence the indoor nature of the picnic

Saw Shrek the Musical with two of my closest pals, Bec and Katie (I honestly forgot that this happened in 2020 hahaha) but it was ICONIC

Had a Jackbox night with The Boys

Had my cousin Amy from England over for dinner! I hadn’t seen her in 5 or 6 years, so it was so lovely to connect again like no time had passed at all

Went to Healesville Sanctuary, a lovely conservation park which focuses on preserving and educating its visitors about Australian animals, with Amy

 Went to mini-golf for a friend’s birthday on the leap day. He technically celebrated his 6th birthday which was excellent

Saw Cody Ko and Noel Miller live with Bec and Katie

Finished working at the church office to make room for the potential job opportunity at KidsCo

March:

Ahhh March, you shitstorm of a month. This is where everything started going downhill.

The first thing of note that happened this month was me injuring my ankle at basketball, which had me out of action for a few weeks. It was especially bad because I was nearing the end of my internship and was hoping to do my best work so that I would be chosen to stay on as an employee, but had to take a week or so off to rest my ankle. My ankle would continue to be tender and sore for most of the rest of the year

Went away for the Labour Day long weekend with the family

Finished up my internship at KidsCo. Honestly was lead to believe that I would be staying on as an employee and felt sort of betrayed after all the work I did for them, but whatever

 Had a party at Bec’s house to listen to Triple J’s Hottest 100 of the Decade. One of my favourite songs was number 1 which was a pleasant surprise

Went down to the holiday house for a few days just to have so me time and sort myself out

Animal Crossing New Horizons came out haha. Honestly was one of the highlights of this year though. I stayed up until midnight so I could download it as soon as it was available because that’s the sort of person I am  

Mum’s birthday dinner with Dani, one of my best friends, and her girlfriend Amy

Went for a hike at Sugarloaf Reservoir with Josh and got spooked by a mob of kangaroos

April:

My mental health started really taking a downward spiral this month for multiple reasons which I won’t get into here, but this is more a note to my past self to say that it will all be ok I guess? Idk I just felt like this needed to be here

Did my ankle badly again on Good Friday

Watched the Overwatch League live with my friends and just memed in the livechat lmao

WARNING - this is a bit TMI but I am going to share anyway since it was a big part of this year, and if you are reading this you are either a stranger or a good friend so I really don’t care lmao: This month I also started to get bad pains in my uterus, like, not period pains but deep, stabbing pains. This continued on for the next few weeks without me doing anything about it, except for increasingly getting stressed about it, although I will talk a bit more about this later.

Josh and I celebrated our 6th year together which was ~wholesome~

Called my friend Ashley from the US and just caught up. It was nice to see her face again. She is a good egg. I haven’t talked to her since but I really hope she’s ok.

May:

Watched Star Wars with Josh and his family for “May the 4th”

Started a volunteer job at Kivuli, a non-for-prophet that is based in Kenya, and started helping out with their website and social media stuff

Zoom movie time with my friends, we watched How To Train Your Dragon I think? Athough everyone was talking over the movie so I didn’t really get anything out of it

Played Scattergories (one of my favourite games) with Bec and Jess on zoom and just wrote really stupid and funny answers and I remember this being just what I needed

Went for a long walk with mum and one of her friends and her daughter on a track we don’t usually go on, which was a nice change of scenery

Went down to the holiday house for the first time in forever since restrictions were eased, at least for a little while lol, with the fam

Went to Portsea for a walk along the beach with Bec and her husband Trevor

Did an online trivia night that night with a big bunch of friends

Had a doctor’s appointment to see what was goin’ on down there. Honestly freaked that it could be something REALLY bad. Got booked in to have an ultrasound the next week, so at least I’d be finding out what was wrong soon.

The day after I got my results was the 21st of May, the day my mum and I were meant to be flying out to the UK to see my sister and her boyfriend. It was already hard enough a month or so before when I had to cancel my flight, but this day was so SO difficult. I can’t remember the last time I cried so hard. I am so blessed to have a boyfriend like Josh though. He was by my side the whole day, and held me as I cried. Oh man I am crying as I write this now, it was such a hard time but I know I will see my sister again.

And then the day after THAT whole ordeal was my birthday, which was meant to be spent in London with Jess but it turned out to be the first birthday we’ve had apart. This day was also hard, but made better by being with loved ones and having dinner at my grandma and grandpa’s house. Grandma’s roast potatoes make everything better.

Went to Geelong to see the other side of my family, it was so good to see my nan again. I love her very much.

Went to the Briars with Bec and went on a lovely nature walk and saw a lot of little wallabies and even an emu

Had an ultrasound and my pain turned out to be a 10cm wide cyst!!! So fun!!!!! Thank the heavens it wasn’t a child. I was so relieved. It is still in my body so that’s cute tho.

June:

Applied for a bunch of jobs, and even got a few interviews! Still no job.

The absolute highlight of this month, and maybe even the whole year, was going away to Lake’s Entrance and Yarram with mum, dad and Josh. It was so good to go to the country, I love country towns so much and the wildlife and nature is so beautiful in the eastern part of Victoria. If you ever get the opportunity I recommend going there!

We ate so much nice food and just relaxed. It wasn’t a perfect replacement for not going to Europe, but it was something at least.

Did more work for Kivuli which kept me busy

Went to Bec’s house to bake a cake. She came out to me as bi this day too, and the cake was coloured like the bisexual flag!

Started a short course through the university I went to in Facebook for Business. It was a great way to build up my skills.

Played Animal Crossing with Dani’s little sister, Tami, a very wholesome time

Looked after Josh’s dog Jed while his family went away for the weekend (also went into the start of July) and was honestly the greatest time

July:

Halfway through the year. Thank fuck.

Had another job interview

Went on lots of walks

Was just generally cold

Did a lot of cleaning

Painted the downstairs rooms at church, which took a few days and a lot of back pain, but it’s cool to think that I was able to contribute my energy and time to something while I was not feeling good at all

The restrictions were tightened again, meaning that I couldn’t go further than 5kms away from my house, except to see Josh, so this was a really lonely time for me.

Really got into Masterchef with mum this season. They had all returning contestants from other seasons so that was really fun to watch.

Got and assembled a new couch upstairs that I can say I actually own myself. I absolutely love it.

More walks, despite the cold

This was a very uneventful month, but that’s ok!

August:

Had a call with the hospital I’ll be having my cyst surgery with. It was good to know that things would be started. I had to have a blood test and a second ultrasound then put on the waiting list for surgery. Still no sign on when that will be happening though 6 months later. Just so lucky to live in Australia where all of these appointments are free.

Went for a really nice long walk with Josh. Got shat on by a bird.

Did lots of stuff around the house, just tidying and watering the plants and sorting through my wardrobe to purge all the clothes I grew out of

Had an online Switch games night with some friends which was fun. We played Smash Bros. and Mario Kart and just had a great time!

Ok this sounds super lame but my favourite podcast, The Jenna & Julien Podcast, finished forever which came as a surprise and was just really sad. I really hope it comes back one day.

Did my tax return lmao

Baked rice puff/marshmallow bar things

Made an ASOS order to fill my happiness with material things. Did get some cute clothes and lingerie tho 😉

More games with Bec and Jess, we played Golf With Your Friends this time

Had a cocktail night with Josh, where we just made a bunch of fun cocktails and got drunk. I can’t wait to live with him so we can do this all the time.

Lots of Kivuli work, as we are planning for our 10th anniversary fundraising event

September:

Baked cookies, which was something I did a lot at the start of lockdown but sort of drifted away from. I absolutely love to bake.

Started working for Media-Wize, a small PR company that was started by someone I know at church.

Started playing Among Us at the start of the month

So many Among Us nights omg, just call me queen impostor please

Did my induction for Media-Wize

Got  n e r v o u s  because I kept getting things wrong in my new job. I always seem to fuck up the good things and opportunities that I get

Did a livestream reading of The Great Gatsby on my friend’s Twitch stream. It was really fun and something I had never done before. I voiced Tom Buchannan, which was interesting but cool to sort of get into the character. I hope to do something like this soon.

I burnt my hair while cooking dinner and had to give myself a haircut lmao. It was the first time since 2018 that I had cut it so it was a long time coming anyway.

So much Media-Wize work. It felt good to finally be getting paid to do a job

Got locked out of my bathroom so I had to climb up the laundry chute to unlock it from the inside, all because a fly outsmarted me (it’s a long story… and honestly best told by speaking it)

October:

Had the Kivuli 10th anniversary livestream. Lots of work went into it and it was so much fun! It’s incredible that a non-for-profit that has benefitted so many children and families is still going strong. Such a blessing to see.

Dad’s birthday, and we had a picnic with grandma and grandpa and saw them for the first time since lockdown was somewhat lifted

Walked to Beasley’s nursery with Josh and got a coffee. This was the first proper, not McCafe coffee I had had in months and it was SO good

Played Animal Crossing with Dani

More Among Us, a theme for the last few months of 2020

Watched the AFL Grand Final. Wasn’t super exciting this year tbh, especially since we couldn’t have a BBQ or party or anything, but hopefully next year will be different

Nearly moved out of home with a friend of a friend, but since I didn’t have a job, didn’t think it would be a wise decision. Would’ve been nice though

Did some more Media-Wize work. I haven’t been given anything to do since this time though, so I don’t know what’s going on with that? They really be ghosting me tho.

Applied for JobSeeker so I would at least be getting a little income

New Jackbox came out, and had a games night with The Boys playing all the new games

Voted in the local election

Went to Westerfold’s Park with Josh for a lovely long walk

Played lots of The Sims 4 (but tbh I have been doing this all year)

November:

This month things sort of started to turn around, as Covid wasn’t hitting my state hardly at all, so I was actually able to see family and friends again!

Went to my old primary school with Dani and played basketball and just shot around and talked. She also came over for dinner. It was so nice, and she is a true friend.

Had a picnic at the park at the top of the street with my dad’s side of the family, all together at last

Melbourne Cup Day, not that I really care but it’s nice to get a day off. Went on a day trip to the Dandenong mountain range. It was so, so nice and bought some lovely little things from local shops, went for a bushwalk and had a bakery lunch

Went to the park to throw the frisbee and kick the footy around with Josh and his friends, although they are my friends too tbh

Had a picnic with a group of friends that I hadn’t seen since January, so it was so, so good to catch up with them and have a delicious BBQ dinner

My favourite online comedy group, Aunty Donna’s Netflix series came out! Had a virtual watch party with a few friends and binge watched it all in one go

Had lunch with grandma. This used to be a weekly occurrence but for obvious reasons was put off for this year. I absolutely adore her and every lunch we spend together is so precious to me

Went to Kyneton with some of the family as another day trip

Christmas shopping time again. So weird to be at the shops and feel sort of normal? I went 4 different times in the span of a week and a half haha

Josh’s birthday! We went to this maze place with has a bunch of big mazes and other fun activities. It was such a perfect day. Then we had dinner with his family.

Got a letter from the IRS saying that I needed to provide them with proof of identity, so that was fun trying to sort that out. We love the outdated US tax system <3

Went to a bridal shower for my friend Katie

Went for another hike with Josh to the mountains

Drove down to Geelong for a friend’s wedding and stayed at my nan’s house

Had a pub dinner and Jackbox night while down in Geelong with The Boys

A good friend of mine was leaving to live in Japan for two years, so I went to her house one last time to say goodbye and chill in her pool and just hang out

God why is it so hard to get a job?

December:

Omg we have made it to December. It truly is a miracle with how this year went tbh. And if you have read this far, thank you but also, how little of a life do you have?

Went to my friend Katie’s wedding. Sort of surreal to go to a wedding during a pandemic but it was fun and I got to see a lot of friends I hadn’t seen in a while

Enjoyed the hot weather and went to the beach a number of times with a variety of friends

Went Christmas shopping, and just shopping in general since it was safe to and shops had finally opened again

Got a job at a talent agency where you get gigs as a paid extra in TV shows and movies, which was pretty cool! I even had a professional photoshoot to get headshots done, something that I had never done before. Glad that I could get some pictures to use on LinkedIn though haha. Still haven’t been cast in anything but here’s hoping.

Had dinner and drinks with Josh, Bec and Trev in the city for the first time since it reopened. God I love Melbourne so much. It is just so magical on balmy summer nights. This was such a special evening, and was so good just to be in the city again

Had a lovely day with Dani, starting with breakfast and then going on a hike before the weather got too hot. We went to Sherbrooke Forest, a place I hadn’t been before, and it was incredibly beautiful

Had a number of job interviews this month too, none of which got back to me which was annoying :/

Now it was heading into the time where every weekend is packed with Christmas do’s so I’ll just collate them in this point. Lots of drinks were consumed and many delicious roast dinners

Had our annual Christmas Carol’s service at church. It was a blessing to be back in the building for the first time since March, and to be able to do something I love (singing) with some of my best friends was the best

Christmas eve I went to my grandma and grandpa’s house (on dad’s side) to help them set up for Christmas lunch. Spending time together just the three of us is so special, and I am so glad I was able to come over and just chat and be in their loving presence. Then that night I went to our 11pm church service to bring in Christmas day. It was a great service and was great to see our kick-ass minister give a sermon face-to-face.

Ok here we go, Christmas was a doozy, let’s go. So Christmas lunch was, as I said, with my dad’s side of the family, which is always a great time. Cracking open crackers and fighting over who’ll get the bottle opener or nail clippers is always a highlight haha. But we had the fucking best roast potatoes I swear. I need to know what my grandma puts into them because I could genuinely eat 20 of them and still have space. Then the rest of the afternoon was spent in a food coma until I went to Josh’s house to spend dinner with his family. Another delicious meal and great banter was what I needed, although I can safely say that I put on at least 5 additional kilos after that day.

The next day the fam and I headed to Geelong to see my mum’s side of the family. Was a great drive down and I listened to all of The Avalanches new album which had just released. Easily the greatest album of the yeah hands-down. So we spent lunch there and absolutely stuffed ourselves with more food. Three Christmas meals really took a toll on me, but I am just blessed as it is to have a loving family and food on the table.

The next day dad, Josh and I headed to the beach to spend that weird time between Christmas and New Year’s. To get there we took the ferry that goes from Queenscliff to Portsea, which is always a fun time, since we don’t often go from one side of the bay to the other (if you don’t know the geography of Victoria I apologise lmao). Mum didn’t come with us as she had some symptoms of Covid, so went home to isolate and get tested. Thankfully she tested negative and she joined us the next day.

Once I got back home I had to prepare the house for my friend Jono who was visiting for new years from SA. Many last-minute chores and cleaning was done haha.

New Years Eve! Went to pick up Jono and my other friend Sarah from the airport and dropped Sarah off at her accommodation and ended up staying there with Jono for a while as this was where the New Year’s party was going to be. Although, in true Victorian fashion, our premier announced that there was going to be a limit of 15 visitors at any house from 5pm that night. Excellent. We love a last-minute change of plans. So we had lunch and spent the afternoon at my friend’s house before heading to a local park to chuck the frisbee and kick the footy around. We also had our second annual NYE trivia competition, which my team lost by 1 point!! Dang I get so competitive, but we will win next year, I can feel it. The new year came through uneventfully, we were in the middle of a game of Scattergories or something like that when someone changed the channel on the TV to see the Sydney fireworks across the screen and like, 4 second left of the countdown. I gave Josh a bog ol’ smooch and gave my friends a big hug. We had done it. 2020 was defeated.

Conclusion (damn this really be an essay tho)

This year was undeniably the hardest year I had ever been through. Going through unemployment for the majority of the year and having no sense of purpose hit me hard but I am entering 2021 with the hope and willingness to get on track with my career. And I think I will be successful. A lot of truly awful things happened around the world this year as well, with the devastating bushfires at the start of the year, the powerful BLM protests, Coronavirus absolutely destroying lives and many, many other global events but through it all, here we are. I hope you all keep well this year and that your 2021 is infinitely better than your 2020.

Song of the Year: Tangerine – Glass Animals

Album of the Year: We Will Always Love You – The Avalanches (I CANNOT stress this enough, but you absolutely must listen to this album!)

TV Show of the Year: The Mandalorian - Season 2

Movie of the Year: Bombshell (the only movie I saw at the cinemas so didn’t have much to go with)

Memory of the Year: Going away with my family and just enjoying time away with each other

Thank you for reading this, if you’ve made it this far, you’re a real one <3

[tripstaysnoided]

Flow Just Like Water

Story and writing-related transparency update and my many shames...

The Question on Everyone’s Mind

“Hey you haven’t updated No Stars over Uptown in almost a year...”

Hmm, I hate it when you’re right. (This section has been rewritten ad-nauseam to curb back the bitchiness by the way)

So back in early/mid 2018, the idea was to divorce Uptown from a person who influenced it (and myself) heavily. She was my most important audience member, the closest friend I ever had, and unfortunately someone who used her power to bully, ostracize, and hurt others with my help. I cut contact when the hurt + some self-awareness finally reached me. Apologies were made and I feel like my work will never be done with it, but there was still Uptown.

Between censored comments, entirely recasting Axel’s save, different plot threads, and a load of disclaimers, there was nothing that would scrub her influence from the story. There was no way to cleanly drop everything because of how deep her influence went. It disgusted me to look back at it, and I had to private the blog because I feared what it endorsed, even if just in the past.

I pulled back from that sims writing community. I had its main thread on the Official Forums removed too (I guess if that was a mystery to anyone). It was a surrender that I never wanted to do, but I had it in my mind that if I was gone, then she wouldn’t be there either. Uptown became this cursed item, and as I quietly retired it, I noticed that she went quieter too. Not gone, but enough to make me sleep easier at night and even occasionally say hello to old friends.

And I hope deep in my heart that no one else is getting hurt in my place, but now this is gonna haunt me all day huh!

The two paths forward...

1) Complete Uptown rewrite that I’ve been threatening everyone with all year. While it won’t ever be clean because I can’t undo time, I do have a sound outline for a story that is much more true to my actual vision and how I’ve evolved, with a few necessary boundaries in place that are going to be there for all stories moving forward: no more casting calls and no more collaborative efforts. I am not going to open myself up to this happening again, even if the people have changed.

2) Same as above, but I continue the original Uptown as a favor to loyal readers alongside the rewrite. I would try to put the effort into it that I initially did, but with no promises on an update schedule and no advertising. I did ask myself “is there Patreon but without pledging money, just the private posts function” but it could operate as part of a private forum, a members-only part of a website, etc.

Also readers of the original would be beholden to a rule of “don’t spoil the rewrite for new readers, c’mon guys”. I mean, not really, but it is a good courtesy to extend to people.

Priority on this isn’t high but you at least will see what is!

I will probably make the blog public again either way due to the many broken links on my Tumblr but we’ll see. There are other things to deal with as I shall list!

Where Life’s Been Regardless

Been spending more time with my grandpa every weekend. Life’s pretty good and he’s warming up to my dogs.

Shiny New Webbed Site

Cucumber Fields Forever is a site I own now. We have a full domain, cucumberfieldsforever.com, a blog with one post, and the framework needed to host stories the way I want to and still through WordPress. The functionality of likes, comments, and following should still be the same but you know...I’ll take feedback too...

The main blog still has an undefined purpose though I do have drafts sitting around about:

The maybe/maybe not hoax band that was on the Metal Archives and the history of Funeral Doom Metal.

The curious case of when Sims 4 babies get their genetics and my only collaboration (read: was talking about it with a friend and might quote her if needed, it’s actually a bit of a doozy)

Amazon.com’s fake dried udon noodles, an actual issue by the way.

Things I’m reading! (This’d be a monthly feature if so)

For the sake of unity, I am thinking of solutions for hosting old and shameful content there including Uptown and for the real fans in my followers feed, Eight Cicadas...a world I totally have plans for too (not really). I don’t want them to be front-and-center, and that’s why I mentioned forums/members-only content. I finally have that power! Maybe.

Ooooh but what are the costs? Not too much to handle, that’s what. 😉 (Like really, I don’t need any hand-wringing about this, I can manage my finances)

Project Queue (In Order of Confirmedness)

Outrun the Scythe: have you seen me post out-of-context Sims 3 pictures? Did you want more? Did you hope it was Linda in Custody? If the answers are yes, yes, and “meh, whatever you want”, then you’re in luck.

Outrun the Scythe is a Sims 3-based tale of a young gay man and his zombie grandma, as they are both offered separate roles of being the undying intermediaries between the world of humans and the influence of a race of space daemons. It’s pretty familiar if you’ve been following me pre-Uptown, taking some cues from stories I’ve kept under lock and key like Eight Cicadas, The Chains of Lyra, and the not-so-locked-up Ironstar Immortals (of which Outrun is just the direct sequel to sans any retconning...ah the smell of early 2013 and performative heterosexuality)

Ah, back to my roots.

It’s a hybrid of gameplay, story, and lore about my little race of daemons with a lot of my own idiosyncrasies that I’m not really ashamed of: basing it off a super-polarizing Sims 3 challenge from a site I moderate, using a lot of EA’s pre-made townies and their genes, lots of unnecessary posemaking, stupid references. It’s a comfort to have in my roster.

While the first few chapters are in the middle of revision, I have around six in the queue and will be making this public when I have ten. I’m guessing December then?

Undocumented Black Widow Challenge: I just did this for fun/forum kudos (yes, in fact I have joined many forums), there was going to be a short story but it was quickly becoming something against my code of ethics. I mean, sims die and all. (read: I had to choose between “heterosexual widow” and “widow with some same-sex marriages that still end in tragedy, reinforcing negative stereotypes to the public for the sake of me not getting bored and detached during gameplay” so there were no good choices. Except for her affair with the mailwoman, 10/10) I hope to finish this before October ends and get my medal on Boolprop, I’m pretty far through it all. I might upload the sims involved anyways. This is for TS4.

I mentioned it because it’s keeping me busy. But not for long!

NaNoWriMo 2020: Dipping my toes into that again! It’s not sims-related, just a tale of lesbians, nosy neighbors, a haunted beach house, and some light murder and kidnapping. And I actually got my brother to scout out locations for me this weekend. If there’s any demand, I can share chapters as the rough drafts are finished, especially for the sake of proofreading.

Not saying I’m publishable, but wouldn’t it be nice? Will keep me occupied for much of November.

Untitled “Dear Diary” Challenge: Tired of feeling left out of the fun on the Boolprop forums, their “Dear Diary” challenge was the one that appealed to me the most on first glance. Why? Probably once I found an idea that let it be set in the early/mid-2000′s to begin with and explore some interesting characters through diary entries (which I have mixed feelings on as a literary device but I think that’s just me saying “well I didn’t like Dracula”, yes you get bonus points for writing it like a diary)

Also writing is the one skill I’m good at across multiple games. Wanna hear me bitch about the cooking skill tree in TS4 or riding in TS3? I’ll spare you.

I guess I could have included “spending time on Boolprop with old and new friends” in where my life has been. It’s a nice lil community if also a place with its own idiosyncrasies as well. So it doesn’t feel like I’m promoting another community if/when I make a thread there for Outrun the Scythe, I want to have a couple chapters of this ready to go by Outrun’s release, though it’s not gonna be the highest priority compared to it nor as long because I think I can blast through the gameplay quickly.

This one will be played in TS4 due to it having the easiest writing skill/I dunno variety is the spice of life. And hopefully another December release.

Defunded or Forgotten?: Oh shit I actually released stuff in 2020 and told no one? I do have a “mortifying ordeal of being known” sinking feeling whenever I get a site hit because it’s not my best work (but good enough) and veered sharply into issues I may be over my head in, though I try to be a good noodle with research and listening. Maybe hiding is bad after all.

Being based off a very flawed and incomplete Sims 3 challenge I found in the annals of the Official Forums, there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes work just making sense of things. And I’m scared of working on reconstructing the house but I haven’t abandoned the project yet. The story has eight chapters so far and is pretty game-based with some additions here and there. Scared of how long it could be though!

Date for this unknown.

Untitled Sunlit Tides Decadynasty: another year-long abandoned TS3 project with a much stupider reason why. Last update was about Hua getting ready for her wedding, and I wanted to do some poses for a bait-and-switch wedding chapter because to put it mildly, her real one was an absolute disaster.

Blender decided to fuck up its interface again, I got discouraged (this probably does account for some of the Uptown delays too), and when I decided to plow forward, it was for other projects instead.

Meanwhile I played all the way to Gen 5′s teenhood and the only thing stopping me is time (it takes almost 30 minutes to load the file right now, though they’ll be looking at moving towns in a couple gens) and maybe fear of the Logic skill.

Date for this also unknown but it’s easy to pump out updates once I’m in the groove for it. My third heir had a difficult life so maybe I’m just trying to bury it.

Also I just noticed the view count there was really good and probably because I linked it here on Tumblr last year. Thank you so much guys. I can’t really fret over views on Carl’s forum these days thanks to the years-long death spiral pretty much every forum anywhere has been riding on. But it’s a nice surprise. And it’s an alright little challenge recap to read during your lunch break or whatever.

The Wawas

I figured I’d end on the real news everyone wants! Both the chihuahuas are a year and a half now and reached their adult size around a year ago. For the most part, they are happy and healthy dogs.

[kelleyish]

Ughhhhhh I had a whole post written and Tumblr ate it.  Fuck.

The highlights were:

It was my birthday this week.  I’m now officially 42, the age I kept thinking I was all last year, for some reason.

I am looking forward to my 43rd birthday being a great one. I’m hoping this next year will continue to lead me where I’ve been heading for the last half of this one - to a place where I’m much thinner, hopefully in better financial shape, and ready to begin really living my life again.

In stark contrast to these plans, I’m currently eating Cheez Its and drinking a Mt. Dew. They’re both so fucking good, too.  

I’ve had a bit of a rough week, still not feeling 100% since my cold last week.  It ever so slightly has inched me off the wagon, but I’ll get back on here in a second.

Someone stole my credit card number and tried to charge like two thousand dollars to AT&T.  So I had to get a new card and change all the stuff I had billing to it automatically.  Pain in the ass.

My parents and I are driving to Austin tomorrow to go see both my brothers.  It was my younger brother’s birthday the day before mine (and my sister’s, they’re twins).  It’s set up to possibly be a terrible time, there’s already drama going on about where we’ll eat dinner tomorrow night.  Restaurant choice has been a decades long thing in our family... I thought we were over it, but apparently not.

I just got finished dyeing my hair a few minutes ago. Gotta cover up those 42-year-old grey hairs.

It was an interesting week on the transcription website.  Someone uploaded literally thousands of clips, each a minute long, of people ordering at McDonald’s drive thrus.  They are apparently rolling out an Alexa/Siri-like technology, where you give your order to an AI system instead of a person. I spent several hours typing out stuff like “Yeah, can I get uhhhhhh...20 piece nugget and two McDoubles?” Thrilling stuff.

I saw two movies this week - Midsommar and Stuber. They were both good in their own ways.  The former I saw because I liked Hereditary, and it’s from the same writer/director. I went in expecting a fucked up movie, and that’s what I got. Stuber was a little formulaic but still funny, I enjoy both Dave Bautista and Kumail Nanjiani. 

Finally, to end on a bit of a down note... Chip’s old Memphis friends, who are still my friends, are on a bike trip together this week.  There’s a yearly group bike ride across the state of Iowa, and they went to participate in it.  It takes 6 or 7 days and it’s about 450 miles of bike riding.  They look like they’re having fun, which is awesome, but it just hurts to think that if Chip were here, he definitely would have been with them right now.  I mourn the loss of Chip’s life because I miss him, but also because of all the things he’s missed. All the bike rides he didn’t get to take, hockey games and movies he didn’t get to watch.  It sucks and I’ll never really be over it.

[projectalbum]

Art is Resistance. 149. “With Teeth” (Halo 19), 150. “Year Zero” (Halo 24), 151. “Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D” (Halo 25), 152. “Ghosts I-IV” (Halo 26), 153. “The Slip” (Halo 27) by Nine Inch Nails

The 6-year gap between Nine Inch Nails studio albums saw the Internet become truly ascendant in popular culture, for better and worse.

Napster took a bite from the music industry and was put down like a mad dog. The Pirate Bay first unfurled its flag. Radio play and music videos were still the main avenue for displaying the wares of major label musicians to the general public, and success was still measured in units of CDs sold, but more and more people were becoming hip to the underground access provided by a DSL modem.

But the power of the Web to empower artists and connect them to their fans still evaded most of the recording industry; honchos and artists alike were largely clueless. Trent Reznor, the big ol’ nerd, was a notable exception. Posting on early message boards on Prodigy, embracing torrents, creating an online gateway for the band’s fans, leaking material from the archives, experimenting with an optional-pay release, even being an early adopter of Twitter— it was a white-hot fiber optic cable running through the life of the band. While this technological engagement didn’t always translate into sales (The Fragile was considered a financial disappointment), it was a 21st century incarnation of the connection between what the artist creates and how the audience consumes it, internalizes it, and hopefully finds some emotional release in it.

This uneasy alliance between organic emotion and technological chilliness is reflected in this era of Nine Inch Nails’ aesthetic, both musically and through the packaging. Where Downward Spiral and Fragile dealt in decaying earth tones, the releases starting with 2005’s reemergent With Teeth (#149) are shades of blue, black, ghost white, and slate gray, dirtied up by belching factory smoke, or distorted by broken pixels and lines of computer code. The songs are likewise colored by pulsating synth accents, digital distortion, hums and drones and beats. The instrumental stems for Reznor’s compositions were offered up to remixers both professional and amateur, so that even the boundary of artist and audience member became liminal. He had his carefully constructed versions of “The Hand That Feeds” and “Only,” but suggested that there were infinite alternate permutations to be created at the click of a button. For the once angry, brooding Prince of Industrial Rock, it was downright egalitarian.

“All The Love In The World,” a title that might suggest a big-hearted power ballad on a cornier band’s track list, is in Reznor’s hands an electronica-inflected paranoid dirge. Where crunchy guitars would have provided the backbone in the past, here woozy piano figures are the main melodic backup to the vocal, before shifting into driving major chords to signal minute 3’s complete tonal transformation. With its layers of harmonizing Trents, it’s completely unlike anything else in the band’s repertoire, but it was the perfect next course to stimulate my appetite. And then Dave Grohl’s superhuman drumming on “You Know What You Are?” kicked me through the door. The wailing chorus presented an aggressive musical release for me that I’d never had access to before.

“Right Where It Belongs,” the keyboard-driven closing track, is spooky and introspective, and one of the best songs in NiN’s catalogue. A stripped-down, electric piano and vocal version, originally exclusive to the Japanese release but eventually uploaded by Reznor to his website, captures that dark night of the soul uncertainty even better. This recording made its way into the end credits of my senior thesis film, at the point where it was obvious it wasn’t going to go anywhere and that I should at least put copyrighted stuff I liked into it. I also set a live version against grainy deleted footage from Pink Floyd - The Wall, a mashup I figure ol’ Trent would appreciate (the idea was to then do the reverse, matching “Hey You” to the visuals cut together for NiN’s stage show, but the result wasn’t as compelling).

I don’t have any supporting evidence, but Year Zero (#150) may well have been the first time I ever plunked down money for a physical copy of a NiN CD. Also lacking sufficient empirical backup: I’m convinced this speculative fiction about an increasingly plausible American dystopia represents some of Reznor’s strongest songwriting. Inhabiting characters like a brainwashed foot soldier, an underground Resistance fighter, a religiously-inflamed demagogue, even a judgmental alien intelligence, he moves away from the diary page introspection that could occasionally curdle into lyrics of questionable taste (Sorry, please don’t slip on all the tears I’ve made you cry).

The release of the album was notably attached to a labyrinthine “Alternate Reality Game” campaign, with in-character websites, USB drives hidden at concerts, and music videos with secret messages, adding plot strands and world building to the lyrics. (I missed the boat on all that, but the work that the same marketing company did for The Dark Knight was sure something to experience.) All of which would be near-impenetrable, if the actual music wasn’t so compelling. You don’t have to read the wiki pages to feel the apocalyptic beats and glitchy cacophony of “HYPERPOWER!,” “The Good Soldier,” and to pump your fist to the chorus of “Survivalism.” “I got my propaganda / I got revisionism” hits harder in a time, 10 years on from the album’s release, in which the most powerful voices in the U.S. government disregard reality on the reg, occasionally try to downplay the Holocaust. “Capital G,” a gleefully sociopathic near-rap by the forces of greed, could soundtrack one of Paul Ryan’s dead-eyed workout photoshoots.

“In This Twilight” and “Zero Sum” are the shattering two-part coda, in which the squabbling remnants of humanity face the end, whether by divine intervention or nuclear fire. The first juxtaposes crunchy, distorted percussion and fuzzed-out bass with perhaps the most perversely light and melodic vocal performance Reznor has ever delivered. He’s singing about encroaching extinction, but in a blissed-out religious reverie, optimistic for the afterlife. The character at the center of the closing track is not so sure: this is the End of this ridiculous human experiment, and we’ve brought oblivion on ourselves. “Shame on us / For all we have done / And all we ever were.” There’s the Nine Inch Nails nihilism we know and love!

Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D (#151) filters the previous album through Hip-Hop and EDM, to uneven effect. The collection of remixes never quite sustains the highs established by the first two tracks: Saul Williams’ fiery rap verses turn the instrumental “HYPERPOWER!” into a polemic against a legacy of American violence, “Gunshots by Computer,” while modwheelmood frees the vocals of “The Great Destroyer” from the squealing synth breakdown and creates a whole new paranoid anthem. While it’s also interesting to hear the Kronos Quartet reinterpret “Another Version of the Truth,” the rest is largely skippable. The physical set includes a DVD with the multitracks for the original Year Zero recordings, so you too can fuck with the raw materials! (I’ve been trying to remix things for years, and I’m awful at it, but it’s fun to hear the individual instrumentation.)

After freeing himself lyrically from his old methodology, the next release from Reznor eschewed words and melody completely. Ghosts I-IV (#152) is nearly 2 hours of ambient experimentation, a precursor to the Oscar-winning film scores with Atticus Ross (a few tracks were literally reworked for The Social Network, and several others continue to be licensed for film and documentaries). The buzzsaw distortions, dark piano chords, oddly organic synthesizers, and industrial beats identify it as a NiN record even in the absence of vocals. Though good luck recommending your favorite tracks, with titles like “26 Ghosts III” and “09 Ghosts I” not exactly sticking in the memory.

The Slip (#153), originally released free of charge, is more of a return-to-form. Arguably too familiar— it’s essentially With Teeth Part 2, but leaner and meaner. It’s not held in especially high regard, but it was there right at the outset of my fandom, and as such I continue to have a soft spot for it. I even bought the physical copy after years of listening to the decent quality MP3’s. “Discipline,” with its uncommonly funky bass line and high hat-favoring drum beat, is my number 1 “trying to sneak it onto a party playlist but not very successfully” NiN song. Along with the following track, “Echoplex,” the dark dance floor vibe is a preview of the sound Reznor and co would explore with How To Destroy Angels. “Lights in the Sky,” “Corona Radiata,” and “The Four of Us are Dying” create a kind of suite, insinuating and ethereal. I can understand if you bow out of that middle, 7-minute-and-33-second, ambient track before the library sample of fighting cats kicks in. But “LITS” is Reznor’s sparsest, prettiest piano lament, announcing the eminent “retirement” of Nine Inch Nails as a touring/recording entity.

Wave goodbye. They’ll be back.

[dontlookdown]

Nick’s Favourite Music of 2018

In the time that I’ve been doing these yearly round-ups (ten years(!), although my first list was literally just a list), they’ve gotten a bit easier to write. It probably helps that I’ve done actual planning-ahead for the last couple of turns. The one thing that doesn’t get any easier is these introduction posts.

2018 was, and I don’t think this is a controversial stance, shit. I joked this time last year that 2017 was best summed up as “further complications”, but 2018 was fucking something else. I’m resisting the urge to list my grievances, because I doubt I’d ever stop. It’s exhausting to even think about attempting to take stock of everything that happened. To cap it all off, the website I’ve published these posts on since the very beginning had a panic attack regarding the sexual content that some people were uploading, and decided to address the situation in the bluntest way possible. This isn’t something that affects me directly (there’re no nudes in my blog. Hell, I felt anxious about including a photo of myself with clothes on that one time), but it affects people I look up to and care about, and a good portion of my audience for these things. I’ve considered leaving the site entirely in solidarity. I still might. It might be time that I focused more energy on writing a bit more frequently anyway, and setting up a new home for my work is a good starting point. Demi Lovato believes in me. We’ll see.

But for now, let’s focus on the reason that you clicked on this link in the first place: the music of 2018.

It was a good year. It was also a strange one for me. Whereas in previous years there were always one or two big standout albums or songs that held my attention for months on end, this year I really had to dig deep and re-listen to a heap of stuff to remind myself of what had actually left an impression on me. The critical consensus was all over the place too. The end-of-year lists I’ve seen from various outlets over the last two months have been the most diverse I’ve seen for as long as I’ve been paying attention. There were a few names they had in common, but they all featured a lot of unique choices. Hopefully you’ll feel the same about mine!

Sticking to my familiar rules (20 songs, no repeating artists) always means that there’s a couple of gems that don’t make the final cut. 2018’s wide breadth of musical talent means that this is the longest ‘honourable mentions’ list I’ve ever done! Here they are:

Beach House – Lemon Glow

Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally’s seventh album was probably my most re-listened album of the year. They’ve always been a band with a sound that rewarded repeat plays, but this release seemed to have its own gravitational pull that kept me coming back to reappraise it, despite finding it a little overwhelming on multiple occasions. “Lemon Glow” absolutely excels as a lead single. Those gravitational waves are in full force here, a light electronic throbbing acting as the thread I kept trying to follow to the end.

The Beths – Little Death

The Beths were a late discovery, and welcome breath of fresh air after I’d been deep in a fog of more ambient sounds. If you’ve been looking for a vibrant, punchy rock band to brighten your January, I highly recommend them.

Jenny Hval – Spells

Part of my planning process this year was learning to accept that I don’t always have the words or ability to explicitly pinpoint what I like about particular songs. This track is just nice. I like the way it glides along, building up ever-so-slightly as it goes.

Joey Purp – Elastic

Joey Purp followed up iiiDrops and “Girls@” with even-more-minimalist trap. This is straight no-nonsense fire. Add it to your dance playlist. And if you don’t have a dance playlist, make one!

Kali Uchis - After the Storm (feat. Tyler, The Creator & Bootsy Collins)

Kali Uchis’s debut Isolation proved her to be an artist with fantastic taste. It’s a lot easier to nail a woozy sound that throws back to the work of Parliament-Funkadelic when you get one of the original members involved. I also want to highlight Bootsy’s use of the amazing line “Look both ways before you cross my mind” which, incredibly, is a phrase that no one seemed to have coined before George Clinton dropped it on To Pimp a Butterfly in 2015. It’s a line that perfectly encapsulates the P-funk mood, and it’s less than five years old!

Let’s Eat Grandma – Ava

Let’s Eat Grandma’s (no, I’m not sure how I feel about the name either) second album split focus between spacey synth-pop journeys and straightforward piano ballads. “Ava” is one of the latter, beautiful with lo-fi touches (listen closely and you can hear the rain falling on the recording studio windows). Enjoy this track now, before someone sticks it a Christmas advert for a shop.

Madison McFerrin – Insane

I’ll save you the Google. Yes, Madison McFerrin is the daughter of Bobby “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” McFerrin and, yes, she also has a unique talent for vocalising. Musically speaking, this track comfortably sits in-between the work of Sade and Solange.

Post Malone & Swae Lee – Sunflower

Among the many, many accomplishments of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is this cut from its soundtrack, a Post Malone track that I actually like!

Robyn – Missing U

Robyn’s been one of my favourite pop artists for a while now, so I really, really wanted to love her big return. Sadly, I’m not quite there yet. The music on Honey is lot colder than I’m used to, most likely by design to reflect the change in Robyn’s (and the world’s) mood in the years since Body Talk. “Missing U” is the closest thing the album has to a big hook-y single like “Call Your Grilfriend” or “Dancing On My Own”.

Spiritualized – I’m Your Man

J Spaceman approached his final album as Spiritualized with as much brassy gusto as he did twenty years ago. A gorgeous send off.

Arctic Monkeys - Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino

I understand the disappointment some people had when was released and sounded nothing like AM, but I think those people lost sight of the bigger Arctic Monkeys picture. The lounge-y, Pulp-y sound of Tranquility Base is something that Alex Turner has been hinting at since the Submarine soundtrack. I heard the album several times and, while there isn’t any standout track that makes everything make sense, I’ve never been bored listening to it.

Jon Hopkins – Singularity

Bleeps, bloops, beats and bliss. Jon Hopkins continues his reign as one of the premier electronic musicians.

Pusha T – Daytona

The hardest, sharpest (and shortest) hip-hop album of the year. A reminder that King Push’s skills as an MC haven’t dulled, and neither has Kanye’s skill as a producer. Ye was crap, though.

Tierra Whack – Whack World

An interesting experiment to debut with, Whack World is a 15 minute album with 15 tracks, all unique in their sound, and all with their own music video (presented as one 15 minute film). Few of the tracks are long enough to stand as songs on their own, but they weren’t designed to be. These are concentrated blasts of pure creativity, and deserve to be supported. Besides, there was something really cathartic of seeing Tierra cheerfully singing “Fuck Off” while gleefully snipping balloons free of their strings. “Pretty Ugly” was my personal favourite.

Angélique Kidjo – Remain in Light

This was a nice surprise that popped up on my Spotify Discover. Remain in Light by Talking Heads is one of my all-time favourite albums, a moment when the band fully embraced an Afrobeat influence and stretched it as far as they could. But what if an actual Afrobeat musician had recorded that album? The answer is Angélique Kidjo’s full-length cover album, another Spotify Discover, uh, discovery. A fascinating, and highly danceable, rework. Tracks like “Once in a Lifetime” were already rays of sunshine. Kidjo’s arrangements turns them supernova.

Justin Hurwitz – First Man

2018 was an equally cramped year for films too. First Man seems to be getting ignored by the major awards, which is a shame as it was one of my favourites of the year. (Hey! If you’d like to see me expand on that thought, you consider subscribing to our film podcast, Sunshine Cinema Club! We’re about to cover our top ten of the year! First Man will be one of them!) I’m especially disappointed that people aren’t talking about Justin Hurwitz’s score, which combined the saddest instrument in the world (the theremin) and the gentlest instrument on the world (the harp) to create the loneliest soundtrack of all time. The perfect accompaniment to a story of a man, emotions dulled by grief, faced with the infinite possibilities of space travel.

As always, I’ll be posting about the twenty entries on my list across the next twenty days. Here’s the Spotify playlist of the final twenty, sequenced for musical effect.

In the past, I’ve updated the Spotify list as the entries go up, acting as some sort of musical advert calendar, keeping future songs under wraps. It’s since occurred to me that this method isn’t actually useful to anybody. Nobody cares about spoilers when it comes to this list, and it’s a big ask for people to keep tabs on a blog and a playlist for three weeks. So, consider that list a preview for what’s coming up and a chance to wonder how I’m going to justify sticking Drake and a black metal band on the same list! (I won’t. Accept my weird, varied taste in music!)

Lists from previous years can be found easily using the tag “best+of+20xx”. See you tomorrow!

[sparklymilks]

@thinkofanime💕 Hope its less stressful on shopify. plz hit me up if you have any more problems, i am literally a scarecrow crammed with mostly useless photography info

thanks so much :( the saddest thing is that i’m actually feeling a lot happier w/ the photographs i’m taking now - they look a lot better now that i know what a flash diffuser is (i’m using cling film lolol) (and also using a flash is basically a necessity during the winter months in Fucking England, will be easier in the summer) but that when i upload them they look like fucking glitch art and it’s making me well up just thinking about it omg... no response from etsy still

also ty... shopify is BEAUTIFUL and i might give it a few months anyway, it costs $30 as a flat rate (for the basic stuff which is all i need) which feels like a lot but my etsy bill never is less than 30 dollars so i mean it isn’t really a lot - but i don’t know if i’d sell anything on shopify really b/c as i said before etsy has such a massive share of people looking for doll stuff. but hopefully i can use my insta/fb/tumblr to my advantage w/ that if i do indeed stick with shopify

@akai-luna You can do this! Everyone needs help every so often so try not to feel bad and if that website is better make some posts linking us to your store on there. I'm one of those people that more often than not will take a look and see what you got.

argh thank you... i know logically ofc everyone needs help sometimes and times is hard... but it’s so hard to feel positive when things like this happen and  i feel like things were going so well & now i don’t trust them to get better again bleugh

[tylerbiard]

Words, probably

Apologies for the cryptic title.  I couldn’t think of anything clever.

So, like, serious question -- is everyone just planning for the demise of Tumblr?  Is there a set date in mind?  Even though most of the Tumblr community has already migrated en masse to Instagram, those that do remain seem to be increasingly trying to nudge people along to following them on Instagram.  And it’s often not even a simple mention, it’s like a whole post with a screenshot of their Instagram account to really hammer home the idea.  And then reposted, and reposted, in case, y’know, you missed it the first dozen times.  Others have moved to posting directly to Instagram and using Tumblr for syndication through cross-posting.  These people, in my experience, don’t tend to check their Tumblr and merely put in the bare minimum of swiping “share to Tumblr” when posting to Instagram.  At that point, in my head, I think, “why bother?”

We get it.  Tumblr’s dead.  The few that remain are here for the end times.  But for those of us remaining, like myself, please do let me know if the rest of you are preparing for a specific shut-off date for Tumblr.  It’s unfortunate social networks don’t really make comebacks the way Apple has, because I did really like the core ideals of Tumblr, but it’s too late now.  The world has moved on.  The only hope is for some improved, updated, but independently created Tumblr-esque platform to rise in the future.

For now?  We’ve got Instagram.  And Snapchat.  And the dinosaur that just won’t die, Facebook.

I like Instagram, and I want to love it.  It’s got a sleek interface, good UI, and a very engaging community.  With things like Stories and even geotagging, it’s shown to be a very versatile platform.  It even has something that Tumblr really half-assed -- commenting!  The thing that holds me back from really jumping full-on into Instagram (even if it seems like I already have) is the atrocious desktop interface.  Windows now comes with an Instagram app and I gave it a shot.  It’s actually got most of the features the mobile app has, except for uploading (this is different on Windows phones and tablets, I believe).  The problem is, like most Windows “apps”, it is slow and really, I’m on a desktop with a full browser, I don’t need another “app” open.  Apps feel like an odd fit on regular computers, in my opinion.  Needless to say, I tend to still browse Instagram on my browser when on my computer, which is inherently limiting and I no longer understand why Instagram continues to tie itself exclusively to mobile.

It’s not like I didn’t understand it before.  Instagram started as a fun little app for posting mobile snapshots in real time.  Cool.  But thing is, it’s 2017, and I’d really love it if Instagram stopped trying to force its 2010 ideals on us in 2017; the platform has moved on to become so much more than that.  I’d even say it needed to in order to become the little darling of social media it now is.  I get that the focus of computing is now on mobile and I get that Instagram wants mobile snapshots first and foremost.  But really, it’s 2017, 99% of people now exclusively shoot with their mobile phones, so incorporating a full desktop browser experience with uploading capabilities won’t really change the share of mobile photos vs regular photos uploaded by very much.  Look at Facebook, it has desktop uploading and yet most of the stuff on there is uploaded via a mobile phone.  Let Instagram evolve and don’t keep it pent up in a corner.  Because for creatives, having a full browser interface would be a huge boon and even for regular users, it would make just browsing Instagram a la Facebook or Twitter so much more user friendly.

I could even say the same for Snapchat, really.  You could have an actual website and most traffic would still come from mobile, but the website wouldn’t be that hard and would be useful for many people.  Hell, most computers now come equipped with webcams and really, they’re not all that conceptually removed from mobile phone cameras.  It seems like Snapchat and Instagram are drawing an arbitrary line in this regard.  You could just as easily post a live video to Instagram or a new snap to your Story via a webcam, if it were made available and would allow these platforms to be more versatile and immersive.

The other thing Instagram really needs to get going is clickable links.  This would allow it to take a lot of share from Facebook (although Zuckerberg may not want that) and would open up links to news articles, which is one of the bigger things that still draws me back to Facebook.  Honestly, if Instagram had a full desktop interface and clickable links, I’d probably cease to use Facebook.  I’d still keep it just in case, but I’d hardly use it.  I’d keep Tumblr maybe, just because there’s some different stuff here and this is a good platform for writing.  That, or I’d just move to writing somewhere like Medium or Wordpress.

It seems like things have sorta reversed.  Rather than getting mobile technology to work with computers, it’s now computers trying to work with mobile.  Makes sense.  More people use mobile more often.  But it puts creatives and professionals in an awkward position because their work is best done on a computer, but it needs to get to a mobile audience to be seen and yet minimal effort is made to synchronize the two easily.  The one exception is the cloud.  But drag and drop files?  Forget it.  Allowing uploading on a desktop for social media that has huge, burgeoning audiences and is primarily mobile?  Not gonna happen.

This post is kind of a mess; my title is as cryptic as this post is rambly.  I’m not sure where I’m going with this, but I’m not really loving the current social media paradigm.  Nothing really sticks out as *the* platform for me, though Instagram is closest, which carries an asterisk with it for me.  Part of me just wants to fuck off from all social media.  I already find Facebook incredibly toxic and am trying to ween myself off of it.  Still trying to figure out why everyone wanted me to be on it.  It’s not a terrible platform but it’s just not for me.  It’s useful for some networking and for groups and messenger.  But platforms like Instagram and Tumblr I recognize the merit in both in terms of networking and sharing but also in terms of just finding cool content to be inspired by.  And for something like Snapchat, it’s just about having fun, which I can appreciate.  Hopefully we start to see more synchronicity between mobile and desktop, particularly in allowing desktop to even have a seat at the social media table.

At least mpdrolet is back.

[writingsubmissions]

UFC on Fox 23 Preview

WHAT'S HAPPENING: *It wasn't much on paper, but in practice, UFC's offering on FS1 over MLK weekend wound up being perfectly fine, even though the ending was pretty much a total bummer. As a lot of people expected, Yair Rodriguez pretty much styled on B.J. Penn before becoming the first man (at least in UFC) to knock him down, eventually landing a ridiculous amount of blows on the ground against the Hawaiian legend before it got stopped, and leaving all of us wondering exactly what the hell we're doing here. The weird part is, in some ways Penn actually looked better than expected, at least technically - he had some brief early success clinching Rodriguez up, and landed a few solid strikes at one point based around his jab, but he just looked so old physically that the optics were absolutely awful, particularly once Rodriguez figured things out and was basically hitting Penn at will. It's kind of amazing looking back that Penn was once UFC's welterweight champion, given how small he looked here - nowadays, his natural weight class may be bantamweight, let alone featherweight. But anyway, Penn looked old even in his last fight two-plus years ago, so this was just...really, really bad. Anyway, who knows where we go from here - Rodriguez is now among the ranks of fringe contenders at featherweight, even though it's still unclear exactly how good he is - he's obviously talented and probably a top ten fighter or so at worst, but one does get the sense that there's a level where his dynamic but not particularly strategic style gets figured out and stifled. Though, on the other hand, there are guys like Anthony Pettis who can ride that all the way to a championship reign before it happens, so maybe Rodriguez is just in that class of fighter. And as for Penn, he should probably hang it up, moreso now than ever, but this is also the third or fourth straight fight of his where people have been saying that. *And a bunch of other fights happened, nothing too amazing, but also nothing too bad. Going through the rest of the main card, the biggest thing about the co-main was that two of the three judges seemed to be the only people in the building who thought Joe Lauzon beat Marcin Held, and this included Lauzon, who immediately started shaking his head after the decision was read for him and used his post-fight interview to make clear that he lost the fight. It was a bit of an ugly one, as after Lauzon had some success early, Held mostly just out-wrestled him and neutralized everything he did - on the one hand, Held didn't really do much with a lot of the advantageous positions he had, but on the other hand, Lauzon also didn't really do enough to win the fight either. Ben Saunders won a perfectly fine fight that could've gone either way that there's not much to say about, and I suppose the biggest win on the main card went to Sergio Pettis, who solidly won a fight over John Moraga and suddenly finds himself as sort of a contender. Sergio's sort of taken the complete opposite path of his brother Anthony - while Anthony burst onto the scene as a dynamic phenom, Sergio went through some struggles early in his UFC career and got kind of written off before putting together a really steady, well-rounded game and racking up decision win after decision win. So Pettis is now one of the best rising young fighters at flyweight, but unfortunately in a division with a champ that's currently cleaning house, that basically makes me worry that UFC doesn't rush Pettis into a title fight just for a lack of other available options. *As far as the prelims go, well, we already have 2017 submission of the year pretty much wrapped up, as Aleksei Oleinik hit one of the weirder ones in UFC history, an Ezekiel choke on Viktor Pesta while being fully mounted. On the one hand, Pesta probably should've seen it coming, as Oleinik already has close to double-digit wins via Ezekiel choke in his long career, but on the other hand, it's a strange choke that you don't really see often, and I don't think anyone expected it, least of all Pesta. As far as other standout performances, BJJ stud Augusto "Tanquinho" Mendes made good on his blue-chip prospect status, getting a narrow win over Frankie Saenz in a fight that looked like it was being set up for a Saenz victory. Although he's lost three straight, Saenz is a good fighter, so hopefully they hang onto him, especially since this was the best fight of the night. When it comes to other notable stuff, heavyweight Walt Harris looked good in picking apart fellow prospect Chase Sherman, Nina Ansaroff finally got her first UFC win with a one-sided performance over Jocelyn Jones-Lybarger, and Devin Powell continued the curse of Dana White's reality show, "Lookin' For A Fight", losing a one-sided decision to fellow debuting fighter Drakkar Klose. It's a funny one, that, particularly since it's Klose that's the projectable athlete and fits much more in the mold of who Dana White has personally signed, rather than Powell, a reedy brawler-slash-scrambler. *Well, Conor McGregor against Floyd Mayweather has progressed from "completely not a thing" to "almost completely not a thing," per a bunch of people. I'm assuming this basically has to do with WME-IMG looking at pay-per-view numbers for 2016, realizing that their biggest pay-per-view year ever was built on the backs of McGregor, Ronda Rousey, and possibly Brock Lesnar, and then realizing two of those people are gone and panicking about how to top it. The big thing a few weeks back was Dana White doing a radio appearance and offering Mayweather and McGregor $25 million each for the fight. This was dismissed pretty much immediately, given that it's less than Mayweather's made for a fight in years, and Floyd soon said as much, laughing off White as someone he used to remember carrying his bags. And to make the offer even stupider, $25 million is about twice as much as McGregor has made for a fight in his career, so you're pretty much telling McGregor his market value is double what he was already making, and now he has even more leverage to use that against you. Good work all around. Also, in a side note that should probably just be tagged onto this story, Nate Diaz applied for a boxing license in Nevada and is apparently close to getting it, so who the hell knows what long game the Diaz brothers are trying to play. *Bellator had a show. Tito Ortiz tapped out Chael Sonnen, who looked awful off the gas, in what was Ortiz's final fight, so now Sonnen is damaged goods, even though he'll be able to talk people into watching. I mean, the card did a really good rating, so there's that, but it never feels like Bellator is building momentum towards anything. Paul Daley kneed Brennan Ward's face in, so that was pretty cool, at least. *The Ultimate Fighter is coming back for a twenty-fifth (and perhaps final?) season, and the coaches have been announced - new bantamweight champ Cody Garbrandt and former teammate (and former bantamweight champ himself) T.J. Dillashaw. As long in the tooth as TUF is, these seasons start to live and die more and more based off the feud between the two coaches, and with the bad blood from Dillashaw's departure from Team Alpha Male, and Garbrandt replacing him as the top young fighter in the camp, this should be a good one. The two are slated to fight sometime after the show wraps, which will probably wind up being UFC's big July pay-per-view this year. As for the cast, it's going to consist of former TUF fighters, including some who are on the UFC roster, but none of the names leaked are particularly inspiring - either middle-of-the-road UFC roster guys like Zak Cummings or James Krause, guys who are past their prime like Joe Stevenson, or just fuck-ups there for personality who can't really fight, like the infamous Junie Browning. So...that'll be something. *A whole bunch of news is going on about various camps. First of all, it looks like the Blackzilians camp is pretty much no more after almost a year of rumors - team owner Glenn Robinson was going through issues with his main company filing bankruptcy, and apparently as time went on, this started to affect the camp. So, basically, a lot of the coaches, including striking coach Henri Hooft, and a lot of the team's best fighters, like Rashad Evans, Anthony Johnson, and Kamaru Usman, have all set up shop at Combat Club elsewhere in Florida, which essentially looks like the Blackzilians rebuilt under a new name. Meanwhile, the Blackzilians' main rival, American Top Team, lost one of its own mainstays, as former welterweight champ Robbie Lawler has surprisingly left the camp, where he pretty much revitalized his career, in favor of somewhere to be determined. And in a pretty interesting move, heavyweight Travis Browne has moved from the Glendale Fighting Club to Black House - it's interesting mainly because Browne is the boyfriend of Ronda Rousey, and moved to her team once the two started dating, and given how much of a hard line Rousey keeps when it comes to loyalty, this really does suggest that Rousey is done with Glendale coach Edmond Tarverdyan. On the plus side, at least the I.R.S. no longer considers Tarverdyan a fraud, as he's settled an ongoing case for a reported $160,000. *So the death knell for UFC Fight Pass may have come, as Eric Winter, head of the service, left after eighteen months on the job. Winter was a bit of a coup when he was hired from Yahoo! Sports, and he really did an awesome job with UFC's streaming service, getting the whole website re-designed, making sure a whole bunch of fights got cataloged and uploaded, and often making sure that the service would get one of the better fights on the card, as the "Fight Pass main event" was a landing spot for a lot of really excellent fights. Winter's stepping down to spend more time with his family, and it appears to be his decision, so it's unclear exactly where Fight Pass goes from here - 2017 has already been a bit down, since it looks like we're back to the service just getting the bottom-tier fights for the first two cards of the year, but then again, both of those cards have been so thin that that may not exactly be an indication of anything. *UFC re-booked Jessica Andrade and Angela Hill for the upcoming Fight Night in Houston, and it looks like this may portend an interesting change in UFC's drug testing policy. Basically, Hill, who was cut from UFC in 2015 and then spent 2016 moving up the ranks and becoming Invicta strawweight champion, was tabbed as a late replacement to face Andrade at UFC 207, but wound up falling victim to a quirk in the language of the drug testing policy - basically, anyone who was formerly in the UFC drug testing pool would be subject to a four-month window of testing before being allowed to fight again. This was to prevent guys from basically fake retiring, juicing up, and then suddenly returning, though, the rule only really initially came to light when UFC waived it to sign Brock Lesnar, who kind of wound up doing exactly that. Anyway, UFC I guess finally realized they could set the rules here and waived the rest of the four months for Hill, and the statement in which they did so included a note that apparently UFC and USADA are working to change this policy, so that fighters who are cut involuntarily from UFC aren't subject to these waiting periods, which would also make previous UFC fighters available once again as late-notice replacements. Good, smart stuff. *And now just a bunch of notes to wrap things up. UFC is currently off Russian TV, which is a bit odd as the company is seemingly set to expand into Russia as much as they can - basically, UFC I guess has left negotiating up to a third party who is demanding a much bigger contract from their Russian TV partner, and said network is balking. This all sort of feels like UFC's attempt to expand into China, which was scuttled as a bit of a disaster after a failure to understand the complex national politics going on. Invicta held another show - a good one as always - headlined by Megan Anderson beating Charmaine Tweet to become interim featherweight champion, basically the top true 145er out there with Cris Cyborg dealing with drug test issues. Anderson then called out the Holm/de Randamie winner, and given that the Australian prospect has marketable good looks and can beat the piss out of people, we should see her in UFC sooner rather than later. World Series of Fighting postponed their next show to a date a few weeks later, suggesting things aren't that great at everyone's favorite byzantine MMA pyramid scheme, and French prospect Tom Duquesnoy finally signed with UFC. Duquesnoy's topped prospect lists for years, and he's currently both the bantamweight and featherweight champion of BAMMA, one of the top promotions in Britain. Duquesnoy's reportedly had an offer on the table for years, but was just waiting until he felt ready to make a run in UFC, and even though he's just 23, apparently that time is now - I look forward to seeing what he can do. ------ BOOKINGS: *There's some actual pretty big stuff that's been announced, but let's do the usual run-through chronologically. First, as mentioned above, the Super Bowl weekend show in Houston added a fight between strawweight contenders Jessica Andrade and Angela Hill in a fight where Andrade will pretty much lock up a title fight if she wins. It'll be interesting to see what happens if Hill takes it, though - UFC just sort of threw her to the wolves as a 1-0 kickboxer in her first UFC stint, but she's improved greatly since then, and this would be a hell of a statement in a return. Plus with a few injuries on the card, some undercard fights got changed - with Sheldon Westcott out, Niko Price comes back from his debut win over Brandon Thatch to fight Alex Morono, Volkan Oezdemir will become the first Swiss fighter in UFC history when he steps in as a replacement against Ovince St. Preux, and with Evan Dunham and Johnny Case both hurt, their original opponents, Abel Trujillo and James Vick, will square off. And I guess to make up for the loss of a bout in that Trujillo/Vick shuffle, UFC added a late-notice heavyweight bout, with Anthony Hamilton facing the debuting Marcel Fortuna. *From there, we head to Brooklyn, where UFC 208 got a viable co-main to seemingly round out the card, as Anderson Silva will surprisingly return to take on Derek Brunson. The matchmaking makes sense if you figure the two are close in the rankings and Brunson was the best guy available for Silva to face on the date, but it's still a weird fight. Brunson isn't exactly a dream fight, someone UFC seems to be looking to build, or someone that Silva can just beat, so it's sort of minimizing the asset that is an Anderson Silva fight at this point, but it's still an interesting matchup to see exactly where both guys stand at middleweight from a purely sporting standpoint. Unfortunately, UFC 208 also wound up losing two fights in order to bolster the Halifax card a week later, but more on that in the next bullet point... *The original headliner for Halifax was supposed to be Junior dos Santos taking on Stefan Struve, but with Struve hurt and a search for a replacement turning up fruitless, dos Santos has been taken off the card entirely (more on him in a bit) and the new main is Derrick Lewis taking on Travis Browne in a fight originally slated for Brooklyn. It's not the biggest main event, but UFC actually wound up doing a good job filling out the rest of the card after a few weeks of radio silence. In what one assumes will be the co-main, Johny Hendricks will be moving up to middleweight to take on Hector Lombard, in a matchup of guys who badly need a win to rebound from a really rough 2016. Plus there's some other fun stuff - Liz Carmouche and Sara McMann will square off at bantamweight in a fight between two veterans who are suddenly relevant again, and with Gilbert Burns injured, Paul Felder's bout at UFC 208 has been scrapped, and he instead faces Canada's Alessandro Ricci here. Plus there are two fights in UFC's "let's get some Canadians on the card" division: British Columbia's Ryan Janes takes on Gerald Meerschaert at middleweight, and Halifax-based featherweight Gavin Tucker makes his UFC debut against Sam Sicilia. *And then there's stuff for March! The nightmare is finally over, as everything's finally agreed to, and Khabib Nurmagomedov and Tony Ferguson will face off at UFC 209 for the interim lightweight title. It's a hell of a fight between two excellent contenders, and the third time UFC has tried to put this fight together, but the whole interim title thing does feel a bit cheap since Conor McGregor is still fully healthy - this really seems like a deal where WME-IMG is just seeing the upside of having two title fights on a card without realizing that a second title probably doesn't really mean anything if it's just sort of made up, and if anything it just sort of hurts the drawing power of belts in the long term. One could say this is what UFC needed to do to have this fight go five rounds, but, well, they can just sort of arbitrarily decide that anyway. So that's the lone new fight for UFC 209, while the card the week after from Brazil added four undercard fights. Bethe Correia returns to face Marion Reneau, Jussier Formiga and Ray Borg square off in a fairly relevant flyweight fight, and in a fairly interesting featherweight bout, original TUF Brazil winner Rony Jason takes on Canadian prospect Jeremy Kennedy. Plus, UFC has signed TUF Brazil 3 alum Paulo Costa to debut on this show - he was initially matched up with Alex Nicholson, but Nicholson got hurt almost immediately after that fight was announced, so instead Costa faces South Africa's Garreth McLellan. And then we go to the London card, which still doesn't have a main event, but added two more undercard bouts to seemingly fill out the card - Tim Johnson and Daniel Omielanczuk square off at heavyweight, while bantamweights Lina Lansberg and Veronica Macedo square off in a bit of cruel matchmaking - Lansberg just fought Cris Cyborg at 145, while Macedo is so undersized for the division she might even be better off at strawweight. *UFC's still filling out stuff for March, but UFC 210 and UFC 211 are already set - 210 will be taking place in Buffalo on April 8th, while 211 heads to Dallas on May 13th. There's only one fight announced so far for Buffalo, and it's a good one, as Gegard Mousasi looks to keep breaking through in this latest run at middleweight by taking on former champ Chris Weidman. But it looks like UFC might be loading this one up, as there's a few big fights rumored for this card - the strongest one seems to be that this is where Daniel Cormier will finally defend his belt against Anthony "Rumble" Johnson, but there's also some whispers that the Jose Aldo/Max Holloway featherweight title fight may take place here, as well as a fight between Frankie Edgar and Ricardo Lamas, although all of that has yet to be confirmed by someone that credible. And as for Dallas, this all seems to be preliminary, but apparently the targeted main event is Stipe Miocic defending his heavyweight belt against Junior dos Santos, who I guess between Cain Velasquez's injuries and Fabricio Werdum feuding with UFC over money sort of wound up skipping the line, though JDS also has a win over Miocic in a pretty fun war that took place at the tail end of 2014. Also, there's two more bouts apparently set without a date just yet - as mentioned above, Cody Garbrandt is expected to defend his bantamweight title against T.J. Dillashaw after this coming season of TUF, and apparently Joe Rogan let slip that Anthony Pettis's return to lightweight will be against Russian striker Mairbek Taisumov. ----- ROSTER CUTS: 1) Tim Kennedy (18-6 overall, 3-2 UFC, last fought 12/10/16, L vs. Kelvin Gastelum): Longtime middleweight contender Kennedy retired, which had been brewing for a while, leaving behind a sort of complicated legacy. Kennedy kind of seemed like someone everyone could get behind - a former military sniper who earned a Bronze Star, Kennedy would fight between military commitments before being able to fight full-time as his career started with Strikeforce. And Kennedy had a ton of success as mostly a grinder - he would come up short in title fights against Jacare Souza and Luke Rockhold, but Kennedy was a solid third in Strikeforce's middleweight division, earning wins over guys like Robbie Lawler and Melvin Manhoef. And when Kennedy's UFC tenure started, it looked like he was pretty close to earning a title shot himself - he got a deathly boring win over Roger Gracie to start, but followed that up by knocking out Rafael Natal in the main event of a fight at Fort Campbell, which was a cool moment, and then getting another main event win in one-sided fashion over Michael Bisping. But Kennedy lost a fight to Yoel Romero in controversial fashion in late 2014 - Kennedy seemingly had Romero on the ropes at the tail end of round two, Romero's corner used a bunch of tricks like "forgetting" to take the stool out of the cage to buy Romero time to recover between rounds, and an obviously frustrated Kennedy took his eye off the ball and got knocked out in the third round. That loss and the way it happened seemingly broke Kennedy's will to compete in MMA for a bit, as he took about two years off and made an occasional bad headline. Kennedy spent his hiatus doing some weird reality show where he was hunting Hitler, and would just spend a lot of time in the alt-right sphere of things, appearing on shows with Alex Jones and firing off the sporadic crazy post on social media, highlighted by one where he talked about killing women and children while in the military, circling it all back to show that having PTSD is a choice, essentially calling those who suffered from it mentally weak "pussies." Just...gross stuff. So Kennedy finally returned in 2016, at first slated to fight Rashad Evans at Madison Square Garden, but after Evans had medical clearance issues, Kennedy wound up taking on Kelvin Gastelum this past December. And Kennedy looked like his old self, overpowering Gastelum for a bit, but that lasted about a round, as Kennedy suddenly gassed, and basically got wrecked before the referee called things off in the third round. So about a month after that, Kennedy retired via social media, and, say what you will, it looks like he'll be focusing on efforts to help unionize MMA fighters - hopefully that becomes a positive part of his legacy. 2) Jocelyn Jones-Lybarger (6-4 overall, 0-3 UFC, last fought 1/15/17, L vs. Nina Ansaroff): Jones-Lybarger announced her retirement a few days after her loss to Ansaroff, although honestly, she was probably getting cut after a 0-3 UFC record anyway. Jones-Lybarger, a former basketball player out of Arizona, is obviously an athlete, and was a solid pickup by UFC in late 2015, given that she was coming off a win against solid vet Zoila Frausto to cap a 5-1 record. But she never really showed much, as she seemed to struggle to impose her game against UFC-level athletes, even as the matchmaking sort of moved her down the ladder - a debut against top contender Tecia Torres did her no favors, the follow-up against Randa Markos was just sort of a sloppy affair, and a bout against Ansaroff, who was 0-2 in UFC herself, was just mostly a one-sided beating in her hometown. ----- UPCOMING UFC SHOWS: 2/4 - UFC Fight Night 104 - Houston, TX - Dennis Bermudez vs. Chan Sung Jung, Alexa Grasso vs. Felice Herrig 2/11 - UFC 208 - Brooklyn, NY - Germaine de Randamie vs. Holly Holm, Derek Brunson vs. Anderson Silva 2/19 - UFC Fight Night 105 - Halifax, NS - Travis Browne vs. Derrick Lewis, Johny Hendricks vs. Hector Lombard 3/4 - UFC 209 - Las Vegas, NV - Tyron Woodley (c) vs. Stephen Thompson, Tony Ferguson vs. Khabib Nurmagomedov, Mark Hunt vs. Alistair Overeem 3/11 - UFC Fight Night 106 - Fortaleza, Brazil - Vitor Belfort vs. Kelvin Gastelum, Edson Barboza vs. Beneil Dariush, Mauricio Rua vs. Gian Villante 3/18 - UFC Fight Night 107 - London, England - Corey Anderson vs. Jimi Manuwa 4/8 - UFC 210 - Buffalo, NY - Gegard Mousasi vs. Chris Weidman 5/13 - UFC 211 - Dallas, TX - Stipe Miocic (c) vs. Junior dos Santos ----- UFC on Fox 23 - January 28, 2017 - Pepsi Center - Denver, Colorado Even though UFC's slate for early 2017 is fairly disappointing in the wake of them loading up big shows in November and December, they did well to put together a solid card here, as the company continues to sort of nail down the Fox format. We've got a photogenic fight on top that may determine a title contender, the biggest test yet for what could be UFC's next great heavyweight, and two really solid action fighters. And even the undercard is pretty solid - the top two prelims are pretty strong, and while things rapidly go downhill after that in terms of relevance, thankfully a lot of the card is prospects with some upside, rather than low-ceiling veterans matched together due to there not being much else to do. At least on paper, this card looks like it could be the highlight of the first two months of the 2017 calendar, so hopefully it comes through in practice. MAIN CARD (Fox - 8:00 PM ET): Women's Bantamweight: (#1) Valentina Shevchenko vs. (#2) Julianna Pena Welterweight: (#5) Donald Cerrone vs. (#12) Jorge Masvidal Heavyweight: (#7) Andrei Arlovski vs. (#10) Francis Ngannou Featherweight: Alex Caceres vs. Jason Knight PRELIMINARY CARD (Fox Sports 1 - 5:00 PM ET): Middleweight: Sam Alvey vs. Nate Marquardt Bantamweight: (#4) Raphael Assuncao vs. (#7) Aljamain Sterling Welterweight: Jingliang Li vs. Bobby Nash Light Heavyweight: Henrique da Silva vs. Jordan Johnson Middleweight: Alessio Di Chirico vs. Eric Spicely Light Heavyweight: Marcos Rogerio de Lima vs. Jeremy Kimball PRELIMINARY CARD (UFC Fight Pass - 4:00 PM ET): Flyweight: Alexandre Pantoja vs. Eric Shelton Lightweight: J.C. Cottrell vs. Jason Gonzalez THE RUNDOWN: Valentina Shevchenko (13-2 overall, 2-1 UFC) vs. Julianna Pena (8-2 overall, 4-0 UFC): Welcome to the new normal, as this fight, which UFC has been trying to put together for a while, will probably determine Amanda Nunes's next challenger in the first fight of the post-Rousey era. And it's a pretty excellent fight, pitting striker against grappler in what's becoming a rarer and rarer matchup of the two obvious top contenders for a title. Back in late 2013, when Julianna Pena pretty much ran through the rest of the TUF 18 cast to become the first female Ultimate Fighter winner, there was some thought that she might be facing Ronda Rousey for the belt sooner rather than later - for one thing, she looked good in her fights, but with marketable good looks, a friendship with Rousey blood rival Miesha Tate, and a division that was still in an early state of flux, Pena had all the tools to work her way up the ladder in fairly short order. But that got derailed almost immediately thanks to a massive knee injury suffered before her first post-TUF fight, and things have gotten sort of weird from there. In the cage, Pena has done her job well enough since coming back, running through Milana Dudieva in her comeback fight and then getting wins over Jessica Eye and Cat Zingano, but outside of the cage, she hasn't really connected with the fanbase much, and if she has, it's been quite negatively. Essentially, if Pena pops up in the MMA news, it's usually for one of two things - either one of a surprising amount of bar fights she and her teammates seem to find themselves in, or just some weird comment where Pena apparently thinks she's a much bigger star than she actually is, demanding a title shot and just pretty much making it clear with every fight that we should be thankful she's fighting rather than holding out for a title shot she thinks she's already earned. All that talk is well and good, but there's a point where it becomes more delusional than anything, and Pena's probably past that - unless she manages to win this fight, of course. On the other side of things, Valentina Shevchenko just sort of quietly became a contender in pretty quick fashion - she came in as a late injury replacement on the last card of 2015 and beat Sarah Kaufman, and then had a performance that looks even better in retrospect against Nunes, becoming the second fighter to last fifteen minutes with the current champ and winning a fairly one-sided third round in a close decision loss. From there, Shevchenko was seemingly expected to be a set-up win for Holly Holm to rebound against after losing the bantamweight title, and I could see the logic - Shevchenko is primarily a striker by trade, and Holm had already theoretically proven herself to be the best striker in women's combat sports, but after a slow start, Shevchenko pretty much figured Holm out standing and then started to use her wrestling, earning an increasingly lopsided win and establishing herself as a top contender. So, yeah, this is a really fascinating fight - Shevchenko's proven herself to be a top-tier well-rounded fighter in just a little over a year in UFC, while Pena's still somewhat of a question mark, and it's unclear if she's truly at the level of a title contender, or just sort of at the top of the next tier. Pena's two most recent fights, those wins over Eye and Zingano to get her into this spot, are just weird ones because they're so one-dimensional - either Pena or her opponent just keeps looking for the clinch and to grapple, and Pena's been able to win narrow victories by using strength and positioning to do just enough to win. But she's really unproven on the feet - outside of some flailing punches early in the Eye fight that did not look good, there's just not enough to go on to call her striking game anything other than a question mark. Add in some questions about how good those wins over Eye and Zingano really are - Rousey's fall from grace has sort of shown that we're in the middle of an evolution process in women's MMA, and Eye's losing streak and Zingano's flat last few fights suggest those two may be on the wrong side of it - and there's just a lot of uncertainty around Pena's resume, though she's enough of a talent where any skepticism should also be laced with some optimism. Pena definitely still has a shot to win, particularly after re-watching Shevchenko's fight with Nunes - I remembered it being a lot closer of a fight before Nunes got tired and Shevchenko took over, but Shevchenko did struggle a lot early when Nunes was able to get her to the ground and get on top of her, and that pretty much figures to be Pena's gameplan. One would think that Shevchenko should just be able to keep the fight standing and probably handle Pena rather easily on the feet, but if nothing else, Pena's last two fights have shown she can usually get the fight where she wants, although that comes with the caveat that Zingano, and Eye in particular, have some questions about strategy. A Pena victory is certainly possible, but I just have too many concerns to call it, so I'll say that Shevchenko wins this rather handily, in fact keeping things on the feet and just out-striking Pena - I'm assuming Pena is better than some of those flailing punches she showed in the Eye fight, because if not, a quick finish is certainly on the table, but instead I'll say that this is more of an extended beatdown, finally ending late due to a TKO stoppage. Donald Cerrone (32-7 [1] overall, 19-4 UFC, 6-3 [1] WEC) vs. Jorge Masvidal (31-11 overall, 8-4 UFC, 5-1 Strikeforce, 2-1 Bellator): A fun fight here, as Donald Cerrone, as always, is keeping busy, and good on Jorge Masvidal for calling his shot. It's pretty impressive how quickly Cerrone regained his momentum in 2016 - after losing a lightweight title fight in one-sided fashion to Rafael dos Anjos, Cerrone pretty much seemed eternally cemented as UFC's top non-contender, a fan favorite who was probably better off fighting whoever's available as soon as possible and putting on a good showing rather than trying to make a focused run for a belt. And, well, Cerrone's sort of split the difference - he moved up to welterweight just to take another fight that eventually wound up being against Alex Oliveira, and with that his striking has taken another leap forward, as he became the first man to knock out Patrick Cote, the first man to knock out Rick Story, and the first man to cleanly knock out Matt Brown, quickly becoming a contender once again despite not really changing much in his approach to taking fights. At the moment, Cerrone doesn't really seem to have a clear path to a title shot, with Tyron Woodley and Stephen Thompson scheduled for a rematch, and the winner likely to get Demian Maia, who's holding out for a well-deserved title fight, so, as "Cowboy" is wont to do, he's just taking whatever fight is available, so here he is in his hometown against Jorge Masvidal. Credit to Masvidal for being a smart man, since while many fighters just say they'll fight whoever UFC puts in front of them, Masvidal straight up called out Cerrone after his win over Jake Ellenberger this past December, putting a fight on management's radar that nobody else was probably thinking of at the moment. Masvidal's had a strange career - he came up in the same Miami street-fight scene that birthed Kimbo Slice and turned into a pretty solid, well-rounded fighter, fighting all over the world in Japan, the nascent days of Bellator, and Strikeforce before landing in UFC. But Masvidal's also ridiculously frustrating - he's not much for overall fight strategy, and even when he's winning a fight based off his talents, he has a bad tendency to start coasting, making his wins closer than they need to be and even sometimes turning them into losses. Anyway, this should be a solid win for Cerrone - he has some flaws, particularly when dealing with fighters who can pressure him like Brown did, but I really don't have any faith in Masvidal to do what he needs to do and keep winning rounds - plus even the grappling game is sort of a wash, as both guys are underrated on the mat. I'll give Masvidal the benefit of the doubt that he's tough enough to survive all three rounds with Cerrone, since he hasn't been knocked out since 2008, even though Cerrone's on a streak of breaking formerly unbreakable chins. So I'll say Cerrone wins a clear decision in a fight that's fun and never quite reaches blowout status. Andrei Arlovski (25-13 [1] overall, 14-7 UFC, 0-3 Strikeforce) vs. Francis Ngannou (9-1 overall, 4-0 UFC): A really, really fascinating fight here, as Francis Ngannou is the rare blue-chip heavyweight prospect, and he has a shot to become a legitimate contender way quicker than anyone could've really anticipated. Ngannou was always viewed as someone with potential, as the Cameroonian fighting out of France is a giant mountain of a man built like a NFL defensive lineman, but he was only about two years into the sport when UFC signed him in late 2015. But, well, Ngannou wound up being a natural when it comes to picking things up, as you can trace a clear line of upward progression through his four UFC fights. In his first bout, against Luis Henrique, Ngannou mostly got taken down at will before uppercutting Henrique's head into the bleachers, and by his next fight, against stud wrestling prospect Curtis Blaydes, Ngannou was stuffing takedown after takedown without much of a problem. After a quick showcase win over Bojan Mihajlovic, Ngannou showed last month that he's somewhat scarily already learned submissions - Anthony Hamilton tried to clinch up with him and wear him out, but Ngannou just grabbed a kimura and basically took Hamilton, who's a large man himself, down by sheer force, getting the quick tap. So Ngannou is pretty much the prospect to watch at heavyweight, especially given that he's one of the younger fighters on the roster at age 30, though there's still a bunch of questions to be answered when he goes into deeper waters, like how he responds to getting hit and exactly how he'll deal when facing higher level athletes that he might not have such an obvious advantage against. It'll be interesting to see what type of a challenge Andrei Arlovski offers him, particularly as his career is sort of sputtering after the luck of his UFC comeback run has started to turn the other way. A former UFC heavyweight champ over a decade ago, Arlovski was sort of left for dead after a run of four straight losses in Affliction and Strikeforce from 2009 to 2011, three of which came via vicious knockout - basically, the book was out that Arlovski suddenly had a glass jaw, which at heavyweight is pretty much a death sentence. But Arlovski quietly rebounded a bit, racking up wins in various promotions, though when UFC re-signed him in 2014, it was still seen as little more than a novel signing for depth in an extremely thin division. But the next two years saw Arlovski make a run towards an unlikely title shot - it included deathly boring decision wins over Brendan Schaub and Frank Mir, but Arlovski also scored quick knockouts of Antonio Silva and Travis Browne that, admittedly, haven't aged particularly well. And in 2016, the luck pretty much ran out - Stipe Miocic ran through him in just 54 seconds en route to his own title shot, Alistair Overeem knocked him out, and while a loss to Josh Barnett was less one-sided, Arlovski eventually got tapped out late there as well. As it is, Arlovski's pretty much just a fringe top-ten fighter at this point - while he's not particularly physically imposing anymore, he makes up for that by just knowing what he's doing; despite the recent knockout losses, Arlovski's done a solid job of protecting his chin, especially compared to where he used to be, and he basically has a much better sense of physical space and technical striking than at any point in his career. So there's the chance that, by being the smaller and quicker guy, Arlovski can just use his veteran savvy to avoid danger and pick Ngannou apart - and hell, given that we haven't really seen Ngannou get hit, that may also turn downhill quickly into some sort of a knockout. But, more likely than not, Ngannou will probably use his athleticism to hit the great equalizer and put Arlovski's lights out. I do think Arlovski's a bit underrated here - Arlovski's currently between a three- and four-to-one underdog, and he really could just make Ngannou chase him and wear him out in an ugly fight - but I'll say Ngannou in fact does get another first-round knockout and makes the win look a lot easier than it actually is. Alex Caceres (12-9 [1] overall, 7-7 [1] UFC) vs. Jason Knight (16-2 overall, 2-1 UFC): UFC pretty much always opens up the main Fox card with a good action fight, and with this one, they've done it once more. Alex Caceres is a frustrating talent, since while he has a bunch of skills and often puts on an exciting show, it's unclear whether or not that's all coalesced into anything all that good. Caceres was more notable for his "Bruce Leeroy" persona rather than anything he really showed in the cage on season 12 of TUF, but UFC still saw fit to pick him up thanks to his potential. It took a bit for that gamble to pay off, as Caceres started 1-3 in the UFC, but it eventually did, as Caceres soon reeled off a five-fight unbeaten streak that was mostly over the lower reaches of the bantamweight division, but culminated with what was a big win at the time over Sergio Pettis. And even the fight that snapped that streak, a July 2014 loss to Urijah Faber, was considered a plus performance at the time for Caceres, since he gave a much better showing than expected from a non-contender. And then, well, the wheels came off a bit - Caceres lost in an upset to Japanese vet Masanori Kanehara, and then got blown out of the water by Francisco Rivera, causing Caceres to move back up to his original weight class at featherweight. Results have been mixed - after an obvious tune-up win over Masio Fullen, Caceres looked outstanding for two rounds against Cole Miller before almost losing the fight a few times in the third, and his main event fight against Yair Rodriguez over the summer was a strange one, as both guys just sort of did stuff without much of an overall plan, with Rodriguez mostly getting the better of things. And that's sort of still Caceres's game - he just kinda does stuff, even if you can see him mixing things up and picking his shots a bit more than he used to. On the other side of things, we have Mississippi's Jason Knight, who's quickly making a name for himself as a featherweight prospect to watch. After a completely nothing UFC debut where Tatsuya Kawajiri just kept taking him down, Knight showed out in his sophomore effort against Jim Alers, showing a propensity for trash talking, volume striking, and basically just not giving a fuck that led to him getting the moniker "Hick Diaz" in some circles. And he pretty much followed that up against Daniel Hooker in Australia this past November - Knight just throws a lot of volume and doesn't particularly care what you do to him, showing some Southern machismo the whole while. And I think that's going to throw Caceres off - while his performances are inconsistent from fight to fight, or hell, even round to round, they're still mostly predicated on dynamic bursts of offense, and I figure Knight is just going to get in Caceres's face, overwhelm him with punches, and just sort of prevent Caceres from gathering his bearings about what he's going to do next. I doubt Knight finishes him, since he hasn't shown much knockout power in the UFC to date, but I still think it'll be a fairly one-sided, but still pretty fun, decision win. Sam Alvey (29-8 [1] overall, 6-3 UFC, 1-1 Bellator) vs. Nate Marquardt (35-16-2 overall, 13-9 UFC, 1-1 Strikeforce): A solid enough fight here between veteran middleweights that could wind up in a pretty brutal knockout. It's nice that Nate Marquardt settled into a late-career niche and UFC figured out what to do with him; after a long stint as a middleweight contender and lower-tier card main eventer in UFC, then a brief run in Strikeforce, Marquardt's second UFC run was just sort of getting depressing. Marquardt lost four of five fights upon his comeback, and save a win over a similarly shot James Te Huna, it looked like Marquardt had just suddenly finally gotten old, as knockout artists like Jake Ellenberger and Hector Lombard destroyed him rather quickly, and younger, more athletic guys like Brad Tavares and Kelvin Gastelum made him look old and completely done as a fighter. But Marquardt was able to knock out C.B. Dollaway in a fight that seemed set up to be an easy win for Dollaway, and after being run through by another young athlete in Thiago Santos, UFC seems to have finally gotten the hint, realizing that Marquardt is a greatly diminished athlete, but still a dangerous veteran with knockout power, and putting him against fellow veterans in fights he can actually win. God knows there's enough non-athletes at middleweight. So anyway, after a brutal knockout of Tamdan McCrory, Marquardt returns to try and make it two straight against "Smilin'" Sam Alvey, who had a bit of a breakout in 2016. Alvey's always sort of been a weird cult favorite on the UFC roster, a giant, goofy ginger with a permanent grin that walks out to Train and gives these weirdly enthusiastic post-fight interviews, where he just sort of rants and raves about how great things are, including [insert city here] and calls out his next opponent. Alvey looked like he might be on the cut line after coming back from a broken jaw and losing to Elias Theodorou in June, but instead Alvey wound up fighting three times in under four months - his wife, always in his corner, and seemingly always pregnant (and a former America's Next Top Model winner - live the life, Sam), had another child, so he's gotta pay the bills - and has racked up three straight wins over Eric Spicely, Kevin Casey and Alex Nicholson. Alvey still doesn't have a ton of upside, but at least he seems to be carving out a niche, particularly since UFC seems to be putting him in more prominent situations on cards recently. This is a super-weird fight to call - Marquardt is still dangerous and has veteran savvy in spades, but sometimes he looks just awful out there, although that may just depend on his level of competition. And Alvey just has a ridiculously weird counter-striking style that's extremely low-percentage, but still works for him - Alvey just basically refuses to engage first, and just sort of hangs back and waits for an opening where he can blast his opponent with a power punch down the middle. When it works, it's an awesome knockout, but when it doesn't, things can turn into sort of a slog, as Alvey just kind of neutralizes his opponent while doing nothing himself. So this could go any number of ways. I sort of discount the possibility of Alvey winning via knockout, since I think Marquardt has enough experience to not give him the opening, but if this is one of those fights where Marquardt looks shot, that's entirely possible. So I could see this turning into a war of attrition where Marquardt isn't really able to do much, Alvey chooses not to, and this goes to the cards; but, I'll actually say that Marquardt is able to find an opening at some point and nail Alvey with a knockout shot, plus there's always the possibility that Marquardt just takes things to the ground, which he hasn't done in a while and doesn't really seem to be Alvey's strong suit. But as far as an official prediction, I'll take Marquardt via second-round KO. Raphael Assuncao (23-5 overall, 7-2 UFC, 3-2 WEC) vs. Aljamain Sterling (12-1 overall, 4-1 UFC): A really well-made and interesting fight here, pitting two fringe bantamweight contenders badly in need of a win against each other, as well as continuing the streak of Aljamain Sterling's fights being a little bit lower on the card than they probably should be. UFC's never really seemingly made him a priority, but Sterling's been a blue-chip prospect pretty much since he came onto the scene - Jon Jones comparisons were inevitable, given that Sterling's also a lanky black athlete who wrestled in upstate New York before starting in the same gym as Jones, but while it's not really an apt comparison in terms of style, it was looking pretty suitable in terms of results for a while. Sterling was pretty much using his wrestling at will to just keep running through opponents as he moved up the ladder, and after tapping out Johnny Eduardo to finish out his UFC contract, it seemed like the world was Sterling's oyster. But for whatever reason, MMA promotions just don't really seem to see much in Sterling, who's a charismatic and talented guy - Bellator reportedly didn't even make an offer, and while he got a pay raise from UFC, it still seemed low for a future marketable contender. And then things hit a further snag last May - in a bout against Bryan Caraway that seemed set to build Sterling towards a title shot, Sterling just sort of fell apart after a dominant first round, getting tired and showing a whole bunch of holes in both his striking and his takedown defense. Thankfully, Sterling's still at the point where he can fix some of those mistakes, but it was a concerningly poor performance late in that fight, and "The Funk Master" badly needs a rebound win against Raphael Assuncao, the dark horse of the bantamweight title picture. At the end of 2014, Assuncao seemed pretty much set for a title shot - he's sort of bland and won't get anyone excited, but he's damned good, and was riding a 7-0 record, all in the UFC, after cutting to bantamweight, including a win over then-champ T.J. Dillashaw. But an injury forced him out of a slated fight with Urijah Faber, and a long layoff pretty much killed all the momentum of Assuncao's career - he didn't return until UFC 200 after twenty-one months on the shelf, and even then there were rumors he fought injured while losing a rematch to Dillashaw in a fight where Assuncao still looked sort of good, but clearly lost all three rounds. Losing a fight to Dillashaw is no shame, but given where his career is and the fact that, frankly, he's not the kind of guy who'll get fans clamoring to see him in a big fight, Assuncao badly needs all the wins he can get, including one here. It's a really well-matched fight, but at the end of the day, I think it really just comes down to if Sterling can get Assuncao to the ground and keep him there, and sadly, I'm not really all that optimistic. Caraway just seemed to blow Sterling's game wide open, showing that at least as of last May, if you pressure Sterling and can counter his single strikes from a distance fairly effectively, he doesn't really do a whole hell of a lot while playing defense. And while Assuncao may not have the type of footwork to pressure Sterling quite like Caraway did, Assuncao's main strength is his ability to counter on the feet, so unless Sterling's patched those holes in his game (which is in fact completely possible for a talent like Sterling), the striking game figures to be all Assuncao. And Assuncao's takedown defense has pretty much been on point - Caraway and even Dillashaw, two talented wrestlers, weren't able to do much with him, and even when they got Assuncao to the ground, he pretty much popped right back up. Admittedly, Sterling might wind up being at another level, but again, it's somewhere else where I'm not optimistic. Despite my pessimism, I still give Sterling a shot here - mainly banking on his solid coaching at Serra-Longo and the fact that he's a top-flight kind of talent - but everything on paper favors Assuncao, so I'll say the Brazilian takes a clear decision. Jingliang Li (11-4 overall, 3-2 UFC) vs. Bobby Nash (8-1 overall): This could be a pretty fun fight, but I say this as someone who's a big fan of Jingliang Li, the one decent fighter to come out of UFC's now-abandoned efforts in China. And Li's not just decent by the low standard of Chinese fighters, he's pretty solid overall, as he could easily be 5-0 in the UFC - his loss to Nordine Taleb was a close split decision, and he was winning a fight against Keita Nakamura before getting caught in a last-ditch submission attempt. At first, Li lived up to his "The Leech" nickname, mostly being a one-dimensional wrestler, but he's developed a pretty solid boxing game over his UFC career, flashing some good technique and knockout power. After a few opponents fell out of fights on a few different cards, Li winds up here in Denver to fight Michigan-based newcomer Bobby Nash. Nash seems fine - he looks like an alright-enough athlete and has some solid striking himself, but honestly not a ton stood out, at least at the moment. That's alright enough for now, since Nash is just a little over two years into his pro career, and he seems like he could at least stick around if he's matched up against lower-level UFC opponents often enough, but I don't think Li is that. This should be a fight where Li is controlling most of it, since Li should be the better striker and the better wrestler, but the saving grace for Nash is that Li's defense is still quite poor in pretty much every area, and Nash has shown fight-ending ability both in terms of knockout power and submissions. But I expect Li to just do what he wants unless he gets stopped, and given that another negative for Nash is that I really didn't like the way he reacted to getting hit, sort of backing up to collect his thoughts, I'll call for Li to stun him early and move in for the kill for a first-round knockout. Henrique da Silva (12-1 overall, 2-1 UFC) vs. Jordan Johnson (6-0 overall): A perfectly fine light heavyweight bout here. Henrique "Frankenstein" da Silva has kept busy, with this being his third UFC fight in under four months, but it's hard to tell if he's actually any good - he didn't come into UFC with much in the way of expectations, and while he's had an alright amount of success mostly through sheer aggressiveness, all save one of his UFC fights have come against debuting opponents, and the level of competition doesn't seem to be all that high. So da Silva looks to rebound from the lone loss of his career, a submission to Paul Craig, against yet another debuting fighter, top light heavyweight prospect Jordan Johnson. A former wrestler at both Iowa and Grand Canyon University, Johnson's pretty much a raw grinder at this point, though he has some submission skills, and seems to have taken to striking well enough that he's been on a lot of top prospect lists at 205. And Johnson's done about as well as could be expected, getting six wins without a ton of trouble, and doing so in RFA, one of the top regional promotions you can go to in the US. This isn't quite a gimme - since Johnson's still just under three years into his pro career, I do have some questions about how he can react if da Silva decides to go into Frankenstein mode and just charges forward with little regard for defense - but Johnson does have enough wrestling skill, and da Silva has enough defensive liabilities, that I can just see Johnson grinding out a fairly one-sided decision by winning round after round, with a possibility of him getting a submission at some point. Alessio Di Chirico (10-1 overall, 1-1 UFC) vs. Eric Spicely (9-1 overall, 1-1 UFC): A neat fight here at middleweight. It's hard not to root for Eric Spicely - he came across as an easy fan favorite on season 23 of TUF, since he's overcome a pretty horrible amount of adversity, leaving a broken home as a teenager, pulling himself together after the death of his girlfriend in a freak canoeing accident, and just eventually got his life on track. But despite being a pretty solid fighter and making the final four of the season, there was some concern he wouldn't get a contract - Spicely's sort of a pudgy, physically unimpressive guy, and his grappling-heavy style seemed like something Dana White would really hate. But Spicely did wind up getting a shot, losing in what was honestly pretty embarrassing fashion via quick submission to Sam Alvey, and that seemed to be that for Spicely's career in the UFC. And, well, it was supposed to be, but a funny thing happened - in the whole purchase of UFC by WME-IMG, apparently the paperwork to terminate Spicely got lost in the shuffle. So, come August, Spicely apparently got a call explaining just that and offered him one of two options - to get cut, or to fight Thiago Santos, a top-fifteen fighter with destructive power, on about a month's notice in Santos's home country of Brazil. Spicely took the latter choice, and, wouldn't you know it, wound up out-wrestling Santos and scoring a first-round submission, getting one of the biggest upsets in UFC history, and the biggest one (at least per betting lines) of 2016. Good on him. So after that, Spicely returns a few months later to fight Alessio Di Chirico, one of UFC's recent signings out of Italy, a country that's increasingly starting to build a MMA scene. Di Chirico's solid - he seems to be a strong athlete, and has some solid boxing, though his grappling game is still a little bit of a question mark (at least at a UFC level) and he still seems rather raw overall. So this pretty much boils down to a striker-versus-grappler fight; Spicely obviously wants to get things to the ground, since that's the only place he's had any real high-level success, and Di Chirico should be able to take this if it remains standing. Di Chirico seems to have some decent takedown defense, with the caveat that Spicely might be the best wrestler he's faced to date, so I'll call for the Italian to mostly keep this on the feet and win a decision, though this is really a coin flip of a fight. Marcos Rogerio de Lima (14-4-1 overall, 3-2 UFC, 0-1 Strikeforce) vs. Jeremy Kimball (14-5 overall, 1-1 Bellator): This is one of those fights that doesn't really mean a whole hell of a lot, but pretty much exists to be a fun brawl, and I'm okay with that. Not a ton was expected of Marcos Rogerio de Lima off of TUF Brazil 3, but "Pezao" has done well enough for himself, getting over .500 in UFC by pretty much just being aggressive as hell and always searching for the finish, which has wound up with all five of his UFC fights ending in the first round one way or another. He was slated to face John Phillips, yet another Conor McGregor teammate being signed by the UFC, but with Phillips having visa issues, the late-notice call went to local Colorado fighter Jeremy Kimball. Not a ton of recent footage is out there on Kimball, but his M.O. seems to be the same as de Lima's - to just hit the other dude in the face really hard, and worry about the rest later. So these two guys are probably going to swing bombs at each other, and since de Lima's been doing it at a higher level, I'll say the Brazilian takes it by first-round knockout. But this is really just a fight wherever who hits the first big bomb wins it. Alexandre Pantoja (16-2 overall) vs. Eric Shelton (10-2 overall): This most recent season of TUF - built around flyweight champions from promotions all over the world competing in a tournament for a title shot against UFC kingpin Demetrious Johnson - was the best in years in terms of talent, but for whatever reason, UFC didn't really sign a lot of guys off the show, I guess figuring that since a lot of other top promotions don't have flyweight divisions, they could afford to be patient. But these two guys, both standouts on the show that made it to the final four, got the call and square off here. Brazil's Alexandre Pantoja, then the champion of top American promotion RFA, was the top seed on the season (even if most people beforehand did favor the eventual winner, Tim Elliott) and didn't really do a ton to dissuade that - while the Nova Uniao product wasn't all that dynamic on the show, he showed he could hold his own pretty much anywhere and do well against whatever opponent came his way. On the other side of things, Eric Shelton, an Illinois native who was the champion of Midwestern promotion Caged Aggression, pretty much came out of nowhere to go on a run through the show - Shelton was relatively unknown and seeded at number fifteen, and then just used his athleticism and a high-level wrestling and grappling game to impress time in and time out, even going close enough with Elliott that the decision easily could've gone the other way and sent Elliott to the finals. It's a hard one to call, but as a general rule, it's better to go off of pre-TUF resumes rather than the results during the season, which can be a bit fluky, so for that reason I favor Pantoja to get a decision, since he has more experience and a better camp behind him. But Shelton's gotten here by outdoing expectations time after time, so him doing so once more is entirely possible. J.C. Cottrell (17-4 overall, 0-1 UFC, 1-0 Bellator) vs. Jason Gonzalez (10-3 overall, 0-1 UFC): Somewhat surprisingly, this is the one clear fight on the card that's between two guys that are definitely on the cut line, as both lost their UFC debuts in rather one-sided fashion after coming in as injury replacements. Oklahoma's J.C. Cottrell stepped in on short notice and lost to Michel Prazeres via decision on the Holm/Shevchenko card this past summer; Cottrell's game is typically built around using his wrestling to set up spots where he can jump onto a submission, but I'm not really sure it'll work at a UFC level, and Cottrell looks like the sort of "quadruple-A" fighter who can take care of a lot of guys in smaller promotions but will struggle on a major stage. On the other side of things, we have California's Jason Gonzalez, who came in with a little bit of hype after a decent stint on TUF 22 and a career as a finishing machine on smaller shows - Gonzalez is a gigantic lightweight with knockout power, and has a pretty dangerous submission game to boot. But he got shockingly knocked out in the first round by Drew Dober at UFC 203, casting into doubt exactly how much success Gonzalez will have, since Dober isn't exactly a knockout artist. Still, he's impressed me more than Cottrell, so I'll say Gonzalez gets the second-round knockout, though it's hard to have a ton of confidence in either guy at the moment.