So whether it’s karate or MMA, I never understood for a long time why people with disposable income and a car never cross trained outside the gyms they were a part of.
Shit I had no consistent income or a car and I still tried to cross train! My parents helped me train with my teacher Rick, giving me rides there, but they didn’t support cross training, I had to handle that.
Most people around me other than professional fighters didn’t like to cross train at other places. And even those professional fighters did it mostly for different partners to roll and spar with, not to expand their skillsets.
It always baffled me. If your school is weak at ground fighting, why not cross train at a BJJ place? If your take downs suck, why not visit the university for wrestling or Judo? If your striking is weak why not do Kyokushin or muay thai?
If you’re working as a security guard, why not do some RBSD to gain tactics and awareness which won’t come from MMA?
Well I was stupid. I didn’t understand why.
Now to be fair, alot of these people were like me, independent with no responsibilites, with more money than I had, lacking mental health issues I had, and were able to drive around, yet they still didn’t cross train or expand, didn’t supplement training their schools lacked, and they had no reason not to other than comfort level.
And despite being mostly broke, kind of crazy and retarded, and having no car, I still tried to expand my skillets, and many years later I have more knowledge and even performance surpassing them.
But even more people were married with kids. They really didn’t have the time or energy to do more than one school, and a specific schedule at that. And while intellectually I got they were busy, I never emotionally understood, never had the full depth of empathy for it.
Getting married was the first time I realized training at two or three different things is hard. BUt I still managed to train regularly.
Then having a baby, I can only train to make money, and that’s the only reason I can justify even doing martial arts without causing problems at home.
I have a young friend who says I should drop in and do BJJ with him, at one of the best schools in western Canada, since my current gym lacks hardcore competitive grapplers and is more self-defense and hobby oriented. Ten years ago I would have jumped to train at such a place so often.
But I literally can’t. I have to spend time with my wife and daughter, and the free time I do have, I need to fill with clients to teach MMA and Karate(Hopefully soon RBSD and security once that is formalized for me)
I can’t do it. I want to. But I can’t.
And again I think he and others intellectually get it, but the reality of it really isn’t there until it happens to you.
So I want to apologize to everyone I might have judged or was frustrated with for not constantly going places to supplement holes in their game or their schools. I never realized how much babies and wives can really take up time.
The writing and other stuff:
Even now with a wife and kid, writers block isn’t much of a problem for me, rather being meticlous in editing and having to spend time doing heavy rewrites is my problem, even now. Though rewriting and writing was waaaaay easier before having a family.
Thing is though, I can’t help people or be collaborative like I used to. There was a friend who wrote beautifully but wrote slowly, had a hard time getting going writing her scenes. I would sometimes start a scene or write a whole scene and then she would edit it or polish it until it worked for her story. She was supposed to help me with my writing, but clearly didn’t want to put the work in. I didn’t mind, because I was gladly able to help, freely.
Fast forward with wife and kids, and I can’t help like I used to. For a while I still helped consult, edit and write scenes for the girl, I did so by justifying to my wife that she would help me get my book off the ground quicker. But she basically felt reading my stuff or even offering ideas was too much work, all she can do it help polish the style after it’s done. But I am not done rewrites or editing, not going to be for a while.
As a result, I essentially just couldn’t justfify helping her to my family anymore, as clearly I couldn’t use the excuse that there is a back and forth where there was none. I can help her, but only after my book is done and she starts polishing it, then I can justify to my family that I can work on someone else’s project.
Thing is, she asked me many times to just put my daughter in a play pen and give her toys. If you’ve ever had kids, it doesn’t work like that. They demand attention and can freak out if not regularly engaged with a mother or father. She really didn’t understand why I couldn’t just put the baby aside and work, it’s not that wasy.
There was another friend who liked to talk about Islamic myticism from a Shiite perspective. Smart guy, but kind of crazy like most genius’s are.
Thing is he wonders why I don’t spend hours on the phone with him anymore, and once when talking I said I had to go because my daughter needed me, but he said just hold your daughter ant talk.
Again….doesn’t work like that. Babies want to get up and down, want attention. They cry, grab things, smash things. It’s not easy at all.
Plus those little fuckers are pretty heavy. Nine or ten pounds but just holding them so carefully so they don’t get hurt starts to wear on you. Not easy to do that talking and babysitting.
I was the worst offender of them all. I never used to understand why people couldn’t even talk on the phone with a wife and kid. They could never explain other than they are busy, but to me they are at home hanging out. Are they busy?
So I often complain a great deal about BJJ culture and BJJ as a sport. But the fact is I am more of a BJJ player in my grappling than the wrestling and SAMBO I admire.
If you read the history, you’re own identification with an art you do fades when you’re faced with the truth…if you’re open minded.
Thing is, today we see Sambo from Dagestan and Chechnya as the foremost art for MMA and even no holds barred, as combat sambo has even less rules than MMA. People have called Khabib and his family a modern day version of the Gracies. They say that we’re having another martial arts revolution, but Sambo instead of BJJ.
The question is, why did this happen in 2020 and not 1980s or the Early UFC in the 1990s?
The explanation given generally is that BJJ was the foundation of MMA, then wrestling and striking, then mostly MMA being it’s own thing with a bias to wrestling, and Sambo fit that because it already competes with striking and grappling, Sambo is said to have evolved with MMA.
“Yeah Sambo used to suck in the early UFC. Remember Oleg Taktarov? He was an average fighter and would get killed today. Sambo has clearly evolved.
Thing is though, did Sambo evolve? Or did we simply not see it’s best? We know Oleg Taktarov did Sambo, but he wasn’t a champion. He infact fled the communist government, he wasn’t sent here to the west to represent his country, relations between Russia and the former soviet union were still not warm with the West.
Russia wasn’t sending it’s best people, what was in the west was largely low level guys and amateurs.
Even more telling is the fact that Abdul Manap(Khabib’s father) was known to have been a champion as far back as the 70s, during Bruce Lee’s era. We know about Bruce Lee because he’s a western movie star and icon, while Abdul Manap was a soldier, military instructor, and combat sambo practitioner.
It is said that Khabib’s old MMA style(before the Tibau fight) was almost identical to the way Abdul Manap used to fight in Combat Sambo. Khabib wasn’t as evolved as he was near the end of his career, but he schooled really good grapplers and strikers, including a BJJ champion in an MMA fight in Brazil.
It cannot be argued that Sambo evolved with modern MMA because of BJJ. Clearly it always had these tactics.
But it doesn’t matter if Sambo always had these things, because most of the world was not exposed to it due to political divides between the former soviet union and the west.
Fedor was a product many years after the Early UFCs and Khabib many years later.
But hey Adeel, before BJJ, most grappling was top game. The guard game wasn’t very good.That includes Sambo.
I’ll admit, BJJ players most likely have better guards than most Samboists, even the best Sambo practitioners. Brazilians Jui-Jitsu as an art lives in guard retention/attacking and passing guard. You can say guard defines BJJ.
But while BJJ undoubtedly is the art you want to study for using and attacking guard, Sambo does not have the crappy guard game people think it does. People often think combat sambo grappling is largely judo with strikes.
Thing is, while Sambo players don’t have guards and grappling counters to guards like BJJ, the guard game in Sambo is more developed than Judo or early Catch(Which didn’t do much since the moment your pinned you lose)
I saw a match 10 years ago where a young nineteen Khabib rolled with a BJJ black belt in BJJ rules. Sometimes Khabib got reversed and was on his back, in a guard. Now normally if a BJJ player is in the guard of a non-BJJ player, they pass that shit and wreck. But Khabib often would sweep and reverse the BJJ player.
Now maybe that example is bad, because Khabib loses the match, he nearly got subbed. But he displayed good grappling off his back against a BJJ black belt in his youth.
In his MMA fights Khabib and his cousin Islam both would often roll to their back to lock in subs, if they lose the subs, they almost immediately sweep, submission attempt, or attempt a get up. If they get countered, they wrestle up.
I noticed the Sambo guys always do something when they are taken down or bottom, they don’t hold the guy in closed guard like most fighters or BJJ players, they don’t stall. They are constantly active, and more often than not, they get out or get back on top.
It seems like I’m saying Sambo has a better guard than BJJ, which contridicts my earlier statement. But it doesn’t. You can’t judge Sambo just on one family.
BJJ does have a better guard game.
But Sambo isn’t shit in it’s bottom game. Fedor, remember him? He used to be very submission heavy, getting armbars from weird positions, even when in side control. He certainly showed he could grapple well off his back.
It’s natural to expect Sambo to be less comfortable on it’s back than BJJ because Sambo has a heavy influence on getting the take down and holding position once it’s done to setup strikes and submissions(Combat sambo) but someone in a combat sambo competition has to be on their back, and unlike Judo there is no eventual pin score, so they had to develop a game there.
And Khabib and Fedor had a very active guard and bottom game.
I could go over some stuff people already have. Needless to say, Squid-Game is a big hit, and beloved by both critics and audiences alike.
I will focus on one point however: How Squid game has a blatantly heavy critique of capitalism, yet was beloved not only in capitalist societies, but by conservatives.
Now some conservatives deny the blatant criticism of capitalism in the show, reviewer Critical Drinker made an off hand comment about how people writing Op-Eds on the anti-capitalist message are largely inserting politics into it.
But I mean come on, it basically uses narrative to argue common critiques of capitalism. The fact there is a false choice, everyone ‘volunteers’ into the game and are allowed to leave with a majority vote. But then they all come back because they are just that desperate for cash, society forces them to view a physically and psychologically horrible game is worth it.
Debt for instance is a very big problem in South Korea right now, and almost every character in the show is in debt. Medical bills is another theme, two characters go in to pay for their own or someone else’s medical bills.
I mean the God damned writer himself said he was making a criticism of poverty and society, he came awfully close to saying this is about the horrors of capitalism without using socialist lingo.
That said, the fact people who love capitalism could watch this show and enjoy it so readily is proof of brilliant writing.
As front and centre the economic woes of the contestants are, everyone has a history and a background. Every character a personality, and they form such powerful relationships with eachother, enough that one can weave the message of economics into who they are.
I would not go so far to say it’s socialist, one of the main characters wants to get her mother across the North Korean border to South Korea. Yes there is a line where one character asks “Was life better here than in North Korea?” and the Character pauses uncomfortably, implying it might not have been better. Yet many more episodes afterward, this character is adamant to want her mother to be taken to South Korea. She sure as hell doesn’t want to go back North with her brother.
Yet all this is woven into character, and it’s not preachy. Every character is not wearing a Mao suit waving the star and sickle. They are a-political as most citizens in a country are, they are not political radicals. They see society as it is, something they can’t change, and thus are just trying to deal with it. That’s most people in the world, most human beings are not radical socialists, Islamists, or Nazis. Most people don’t feel this overwhelming sense that society can be different, to them life is life, and you just deal.
That is why even conservatives could absolutely love a show like Squid-Game. Because even if we ourselves have politically radical streaks, most of our family and friends certainly are not.
And if you’re already a radical left wing revolutionary, you’ll love Squid Game because it largely champions your politics.
People who do martial arts often need a reason to do what they do.
The combat sports guy would say stuff about how MMA or boxing is the ultimate test of manhood, that it’s proven to be the best method of combat and thus they want to be strong. They will talk about the high they feel when they fight.
The RBSD person likes to talk about personal safety, how they don’t want to be vulnerable, how they want to be empowered.
The traditional martial artist will sometimes attribute their system to be a RBSD(Which many are) or they will go into an isoteric explanation. I have a friend who became a buddhist/Shinto type person due to studying Japanese martial arts. Budo to him is very important, and I don’t blame him. It truly brings him a wonderful balance that he needs in his life.
Thing is though, while many of these reasons are valid(Depending on history and lifestyle) the real reason people do martial arts is they enjoy it.
Think about it.
The combat sports person that wants to prove his strength could do the same through power lifting or joining the army. The high they get can often be found in many sports describing similar sensations. Even golfers claim to experience a euphoria as they compete.
The RBSD person that wants personal safety just has to look at the date of their own corner of martial arts to know how unneeded it largely is. Depending on how financially well off they are, they can move to a safer area, avoid bars or anywhere else people get intoxicated and mix, and generally focus on non-physical skills to defend themselves like awareness, boundary setting, mental toughness. Those are often more important than the repetition done in the dojo or gym.
The traditional martial artist who gets spiritual fulfilment through training can get the same through art, writing, making music, reciting poetry or shooting videos, making sculptures or having sex.
The benefits these people get from martial arts all comes down to one thing, they enjoy it. Being strong, having fun, feeling safe, having a spiritual experience through martial arts is a reult of a joy we have from it.
Yes sometimes there is more to it, you live in a war zone or terrible place with little access to guns. But largely we simply enjoy it.
Sometimes the reasons we give to why we do it seems like LARPING to me.
But you know what? The extra reasons we say we do martial arts is part of the fun, one reason it feels good. So if it’s LARPING, it’s all good.
So when people think of Brazilian Jui-Jitsu they immediately think of the Gracie family. They think of Royce Gracie in the first UFC defeating bigger stronger men(Usually using footwork and distancing not taught in most BJJ academies today) along with the narrative of Matsuda Maeda teaching the Gracie family Jui-Jitsu, which they then refined and turned into what would today be Brazillian Jui-jitsu.
It’s often claimed the Gracies alone were given this gift by Matsuda Maeda and them alone. But the fact is when Matsuda Maeda taught other people beyond the Gracie family BJJ. And despite what the Gracies claim today, Maeda’s Jui-jitsu wasn’t all that different from Gracie Jui-Jitsu. THey didn’t modify it nearly as much as they claim they have. Maeda was a student of Dr. Kano, who would eventually found Judo. There is video of Judoka like Kimura, Maeda, Mifune doing DeLa Riva guard and x guard in old grainy footage of them grappling.
With this fact in mind, it wasn’t the gracies that developed a ground focussed art, that was done long ago. The Gracies simply helped preserve the Ne-Waza(Ground fighting) judo eventually tossed out due to the olympics. And the gracies were not alone in that preservation.
Luis Franca for instance was one of the men that preserved old Ne-waza and helped develop Brazilian Jiu jitsu along with the Gracies, and helped essentially take Judo, largely removed the standing portion, and created what we know as BJJ today.
The thing is the story doesn’t just end there.
CLASS DIVIDES: HELIO TEACHESTHE WEALTHY, FRANCA’S LINEAGE TEACHES THE POOR.
The narrative is that Helio Gracie largely taught wealthy people because they wanted that money and Carlson was more likely to teach the poor, though still loyal to his family. But that’s an oversimplification. Carlson still largely prefered wealthy local and foreign students, just far less married to class than his brother.
The real person to spread BJJ to the poor in Brazil was Oswaldo Fadda, a student of Luis Franca. After he got his black belt from Franca, he would teach in people in parks and public places, the poor, the needy.
He also liked Leg locks. The gracies did not, they regarded it largely as a low class poor persons technique for those that do Luta-Livre.
Fadda’s students challenged the Gracies and basically leg locked the shit out of them. That’s right, long before Danaher Death Squad, BJJ had it’s leg lock game exposed from within. But despite his cringe social views, seems like only Renzo seemed open to adapt and evolve.
These conflicts largely were divided in class. It was seen as rich vs poor. If you follow some of the citations in Fadda’s wikipedia links, the Gracie students yelled “Shoe-maker” when leg locks were attempted, a dig at the lower class students of Fadda. They said this even after leg locks were used to defeat them. No wonder leg locks only exploded in BJJ in the modern era, considering most lineages are Gracie ones, and thus extended wit that is their disdain of leg attacks.
(Though not the topic of the article, my lazy ass research for this blog post showed that Helio and the Gracies lost way more matches back in the day than just Kimura. We only heard about Kimura beating Helio because it was caught on camera.)
Look everyone likes money. I get that. If the Gracies wanted to be paid for their hard work, it makes sense. The problem is there seemed to be an almost darwinian view on the lower classes of Brazil. And frankly, I don’t think that’s incidental. The gracies may look a bit tan, but they are descended from wealthy scottish merchants, they identify as European.
So Helio was linked to fascists, he supported the Brazillian fascist party. I don’t think he’s racially supremacist in the direct sense, he trained a black man in the form of Valdemar Santanna. But he clearly held some of the socially darwinist views of fascism.
And it doesn’t help that when his own black student Santanna defeated him in a match, black Brazillians said “Santanna got revenge for his people” as Helio wasn’t known to have a high opinion of black people. According to the link I posted below(With many citations) Helio and his students kept using racial slurs against Santanna.
And the fact Carlson essentially ran defense for Helio makes me question greatly his role in uplifting the poor, for he clearly defended his families politics. There was a rivalry between Helio and Carlson, and if Carlson’s daughter is to be believed, Helio really stabbed Carlson in the back. But while they were alive, they seemed to generally back eachother up from outsiders.
And even if I’m wrong, it’s clear Oswaldo Fadda did much more work to spread BJJ to the poor, disabled and black than Carlson did. Most lineages found among people who grow up poor in Brazil can link back to Franca, usually through Oswaldo Fadda.
WHAT CHANGED?
Lots of stuff changed. And nothing.
Unless someone deeply researches it, the world generally thinks the Gracies learned Jui-Jitsu from a japanese man and then created a totally knew art, all within themselves, with no other brazillians involved. They largely don’t present themselves as classist, though it is worth noting that BJJ is popular in western and wealthy countries, usually the Gracie lineage. Although more demographics are now doing BJJ, it’s still got a very upper class class culture. Muay thai in thailand tends to be very working class, boxing tends to be very working class. But MMA culture and BJJ culture tends to have more of a sense of elitism to it, even as MMA has gone past the Gracies, one has to be on good terms with them to make it into the UFC even today, as they have the connections.
Now I’m making lots of absolute statements here. Charles Olivera for instance is the lightweight champion as I write this, someone who grew up in the favelas. He was dirt poor. Well known for his grappling. And his lineage is a Gracie lineage, and the Gracies haven’t exactly shunned him or attacked him. Clearly the classism isn’t a big part of who they are anymore. I don’t think most of them are particularly racist either on a fundamental level, though based on Renzo and other Gracie comments, they don’t think Systemic racism is a thing. But many people deny it on a cultural and systemic level, so it’s not exactly a shocking reveleation there.
On a technical level, many seem to still shun Leg locks, though they won’t ever talk about it on class based terms. Rickson recently came on Joe Rogan and claimed Leg locks don’t work because two people good at them neutralize each other, a strange statement since leg locks have evolved past Sambo guys rolling around trying to get a leg lock first. There are games around just escaping and defending them by players not even good at it or vice versa. Brian Ortega is an amazing BJJ practitioner taught by Rener, with many submission wins in the UFC, but if he can’t get a submission on, he gets pounded when people posture in his guard. He does not roll for ankle locks to keep the punches off, a skill valuable in modern MMA ground work like Ferguson or Olivera. He could have easily done it with volkanovski. Maybe he would have still lost, but he would have dealt with the ground and pound better. The fact he didn’t defend against Ground and pound by rolling for a leg lock shows it’s not a coincidence his teacher is Rener Gracie.
Ironically on a technical level, Renzo Gracie is the most open minded. The Danaher Death Squad were given their blessings by Renzo, the most leg lock heavy grapplers in the submission grappling world. Renzo seems clearly proud of John Danaher as a coach, considering how much he praises him and what he produced.
Renzo did quote some fascists, and he’s pretty socially conservative. But is he racist? Doesn’t seem like it, at least not directly. He did apologize about quoting fascists. Though there seems to be a very odd culture among the Danaher DeathSquad.
GRACIES STILL DESERVERESPECT
This may seem generally like an anti-Gracie post, and in some ways it is. But frankly, despite the fact they were not as historically undefeated during their golden years as they claimed, they still generally spread BJJ world wide a bit more than Franca’s lineage through Fadda. Yes they still make disproven claims such as 90% of fights going to the ground or how the first UFC is proof BJJ is the best in style vs style, ignoring the fact that they minimized the presence of wrestlers, or the fact that Sambo players in the UFC at the time were not high level, Abdul Manap and his students from Dagestan certainly weren’t getting invitations, not that most could afford it.
Yet for all those caveats, they still won a number of no holds barred tournaments with people trying to hurt them, represented by a 150 pound guy, not even the best their family produced. It doesn’t change the fact that if you walked up to a random BJJ school, chances are it’s not going to be from Fadda, but one of the Gracie chains.
Hell I really do think Rickson Gracie’s invisible Jui jitsu is a legit thing, subtle mechanics that make the most basic looking stuff to work on high level grapplers. Rickson’s 400 street fight record probably is shit, yes he makes crappy excuses not to do leg locks. Yet many world class BJJ practioners talk about how amazing he is at rolling, how he manages to improve so much using regular students. He’s even inspirational, the fact he gets better by leaps and bounds largely mostly by teaching rather than rolling with monsters.
Infact if it wasn’t for their anti-Leglock stance, I much prefer the gracie mindset and general approach to BJJ than modern sports jui jitsu. The only thing I like about modern Jui jitsu is the amazing leg locks, because it’s easily used in MMA to defend against ground and pound. Otherwise the Gracies general approach to holding position, grinding people down, patiently moving in increments is generally much more conducive to vale tudo and fighting.
Even guard pulling was much more dynamic in how they did it in all out fights compared to modern BJJ.
Every writer who actually knows some kind of process knows that polished, beautiful writing rarely flies off he page without some kind of editing. If someone edits as they write, the style is impeccable but the production is very slow making deadlines hard, and often still might need content adjusted.
As a result, in most writing circles they would say you have to ‘kill your babies’ which is write a rough draft and then have it edited for content, then maybe delete or entirely change entire passages. You’ll get this advice from almost anybody who’s written or published anything.
Problem is, it’s actually very hard to do.
Most people will write something rough. Then go over it two or three times themselves, slightly editing content but also spelling and grammar. They do this two or three times before letting anyone even see it. I get why they do this, they don’t want want their writing to look like my blog posts, which are hardly edited at all.
This is though, that is a great deal of work sunk into something. So when you finally show it to beta readers and editors, and they all hate something or suggest getting rid of it, or they have suggestions but you can’t make it work….it becomes very hard to just delete and rewrite or delete and discard.
I went through some professional writing courses for fiction and non-fiction. I have some friends who actually have degrees in these things. Both my experience and theirs is they don’t even touch spelling, grammer or style in the first edits. They only edit content. And then rewrites are only content. Only when you’re not going to change the content and structure does style, spelling and grammer get adjusted. As a result it makes it much easier to just throw stuff out and rewrite.
I tell people this process and many writers who never had experience in professional writing get offended or even hostile toward it. There are people who are much more skilled writers than me, that can’t look at a rough draft if the grammer and spelling is off. They want everything edited first and polished. Infact most people are like that.
Yet they wonder why people often don’t listen to their suggestions, because by the time it’s infront of them, they spent hours fixing how it reads rather than what it is, and thus editing is slow, and suggestions are not nearly as warmly accepted.
It seems at the more professional level, they don’t care how fun it is to edit, just that it’s fast. So you read a script while it’s absolute garbage with your friends and editors to know exactly what you want first. They don’t want to have to edit writing mechanics only to have it erased or completely rewritten to do it again.
The key it seems to ‘killing your babies’ in writing is to make it feel like it’s not wasted time. It’s worth it, it’s a guide, a plan. Why would you try and make a guide, a roadmap presentable for the public when it’s not meant for the public? It’s just a template.
People I’ve worked with wonder why I have so many damn rough drafts sitting around, how I can write so much so quickly, and why I can send things to an editor so quickly. That’s because I make sure my editing is in stages. I don’t mix and match them. I tell people it’s going to look ugly because I want to hire a copy editor for mechanical errors. Why should I go over them myself?
Even among experienced writers, there is a sense something must be polished before it’s actually polished. If you talk to them they say ‘of course not’ and all that. But then when they edit or look at other peoples work, they seem to focus on how clean something is, and often ignore content when that’s the real problem. But then they complain they can’t write and meet deadlines. They see prolific writers and wonder if it’s some kind of secret.
There is a resistence to look at writing as raw ore that needs to be refined. People think it’s all metal working.
And for that reason, people can’t kill their babies. THey think their throwing out a finished product, their inspiration, their heart and soul. You can blame them and say they are mistaken, but they aren’t wrong. They did put their heart and soul into it, because we as a collective expect them to do that through all stages of writing. We expect them to be inefficient with the process, and then we are surprised that when it’s found imperfect they don’t want to get rid of it.
If people want better quality writing, they should expect writing to be bad and ugly in the early part of the process.
In a novel series I am writing(Which I hope becomes adapted to comic and animation one day)
I’m probably on my fourth rewrite. Beta readers will point out word choice or grammer, and i ignore it in rewrites and focus on content criticism. I’m very close to my finel set of rewrites, and once I see ONLY polish issues, then I am going to reword and make the writing more ‘proper’
Why? Because sometimes you’re not rewriting four times, sometimes it’s twenty. And if you seperate writing mechanics from plot,character, pacing in editing, it goes by waaaaay faster.
If you don’t do this, you end up with people like George RR Martin who never fucking publish.
Related to my last post about how T.V. shows about cosmic entities and forces will power them down from either the soarce material or in general, the excuse is often because audiences can’t suspend belief, even if it’s something related to things they actually believe or are raised to believe. This is spitting in the face of Anime being in mainstream culture now, such as DragonBall with characters busting planets or games like Asura’s wrath being in vogue.
Related to this is character designs. You have shows about Angels and Demons like super-natural, and how do they look like? A dude in a trenchcoat. Now I don’t mind Mischa Collins in super-natural, he’s very facial expression as Castiel is entertaining, and in earlier seasons it mensions his true form will burn out your eyes. But man they don’t even TRY to show it, or even have a picture. Writers said they wanted demons and angels to have the faces of actors so we can relate to them and actually like them.
But the REAL reason is that actors want to be famous, and want their faces everywhere in T.V. shows in movies. Makes them more money, and feeds the ego. I don’t agree that make up or make up and prosthetics like in star trek make the viewers not relate to them.
But in the buffy universe, they had a Character that was a goddess. Not Glory, she was boring. But in the Angel show she used the form of their dead friend, and the show did a great job with make up and costume. SHe had a cool character design, she looked cool.
Was there a problem then of viewers relating to the characters?
An even better example is THE MANDALORIAN. We barely see that fuckers face other than a few times in the first two seasons.
Everyone loves Mando. Everyone loves the actors covered in make up and special effects, they are memorable iconic roles.
Did viewers have a hard time relating to Mando? Hell even baby Yoda. Everyone loved baby Yoda and he was just a fucking puppet!
People do not have problems relating to characters covered in make up, CGI, or hiding behind a mask. The guy wearing a motion captures suit and voice for Golem from Lord of the Rings got a damn award for it. People love Golem. That is not the reason hollywood has boring character designs.
It’s because the god damned actors want their faces everywhere.
We live in a secular society, we live in a society where parents without any creed or religion, or even belief in a supernatural are raising children that are generally good people and generally productive members of society.
There has been much good in critique of religion, I admit this even though I consider myself an orthodox Muslim. The ottoman empire did crappy things, Muslims need to admit that. Catholics need to admit that despite how bad the Mexica/Aztecs were, the Iberians basically did terrible things including cultural genocide. Not to mention residential schools. As for protestants, don’t get me started on right wing evangelicals, calvinism and prosperity gospel.
So yeah, critique of religion can be good, or even warranted.
And pop culture/media is a good way to do it. Sometimes they do it very well, but other times they don’t. I’m mainly going to talk about where they screw up, though I will give an example of where media does a good job attacking religion.
First I’m going to talk about the show ‘Preacher’ which is based on the comic by Garth Innis. Now anyone who knows anything about Garth Innis will tell you his comics are not exactly subtle, it’s full of constant weird sex jokes, violence to the point it’s absurd. And constant blasphemy. I don’t think Innis himself tries to present most of his work as high brow.
Yet in interviews, while he seems proud of his teenage edgelord humour and violence, at times he seems to imply his critiques of religion are profound, or what he does in his stories are great statements.
The Amazon live action version of Preacher feels like an adult animation cartoon with sex and violence acted out in live action. Meaning it feels like a faithful adaptation of Garth Innis’s work. Now considering it’s a work called ‘Preacher’ written by an avowed atheist, most people can guess where it ends.
I knew that starting to watch the show, full well knowing most likely God was going to be the villian in the end. I was curious how these characters would overcome God, and how they would answer questions of human suffering and the afterlife.
The problem is the show acts like it’s so clever bringing up questions challenging belief in God and religion, as if no one has a response, as if no one asked these before. Yet these questions that have been debated by philosophers, thinkers and theologians in most of the worlds thiestic religions, and there are some decent responses, even if you don’t agree with them.
Now most of you who watch and read preacher will say, “It’s not meant to be smart, it’s dumb. YOu said it yourself” which I agree, it is intentionally stupid. But man on these topics the goofiness of the show is suspended, and we’re given an impression in the narrative there is some grand statement.
But hey, pop culture isn’t even considered literature by many, so why don’t I judge it by it’s pure entertainment value?
I guess I will!
NITPICKING BEFORE DEEPER CRITIQUES: THE SCALE OF SHOWS LIKE PREACHER AND SUPERNATURAL ARE TOO SMALL
Frankly I find some of the ideas lazy, especially the scale. The scale of God is small, the scale of the Devil is small. The scale of the angels and demons. In older periods of hollywood there were budgetary restraints on special effects and sets, no such thing as CGI. As a result that affected the scale of the story teling.
But this show was made in the beginning of the Trump era on Amazon. They got decent budgets. Yet Angels can’t bust planets like Dragonball characters. God isn’t like the living Tribunal in Marvel or even much like Thanos. Satan isn’t tossing celestial bodies like toys. They have this character called the Saint of Killers with a cheap backstory that you can find from survivors of war torn regions in the world, one of many. Nothing unique. Yet somehow this guy shoots God in the head, with a gun. This guy doesn’t seem to move faster than sound or light.
Even if the Saint of Killers can kill anyone, why didn’t God just move the fuck out of the way? Or dodge the bullet? He’s God! Speed was created by him!
Supernatural intentionally made God very slimy, but they didn’t have to make God completely stupid and weak either. Hell Supernatural was a great show, but the character designs were basically just acors wearing regular clothes, they really didn’t take advantage of their budget, and they really screwed up commentary on the introduction of the darkness, the ‘divine female’ aspect of God. They could have done a great commentary on how Judaism, Christianity and Islamic cultures erase concepts of divine female.
To kill God, these shows often have to power him down, or make him way to anthropomorphic.
If you’re going to make GOd into a mythological being like Zuess, you might as well go the route of Asura’s wrath. In Asura’s wrath Chakravitrinan(God) throws solar systems and super-novas at the main character, and Asura(The hero) smashes the shit out of it and beats the shit out of God, without a plot McGuffin, without powering him down.
Look at taht shit! THe hero is fighting gods the size of the earth, and he blows them the fuck up! Why the fuck can a small game from Japan do that, but not Hollywood with all it’s money?
Japan ‘killed God’ without making God weak.
A good critique ofReligion: Lucifer Comic and even the show.
First lets talk about the comic: Neil Gaiman is the author, known to be a highly respected writer. Unlike Garth Innis he isn’t known to be juvenile, nor is his religious critique pretentious. In the comic Lucifer is a rebel against God. He doesn’t make people do evil things, though he has no real love for humanity. The comic is about people asking Lucifer to do favours, make dreams come true, desires. Lucifer int his comic is a real powerful being, he can do almost anything as he is second only to God.
(This comic does not have a problem with scale. The comic is aware of the fact that biblical Angels and God make reality warping characters like Galactus or the living tribunal look weak)
In the comic we examine issues like free will, examine how God sometimes unfairly restricts it through religion, how maybe we should sympathize with Satan since he’s rebelling against a tyrant with absolute power. God however isn’t petty or crappy like in Preacher or Super-natural, he’s largely absent. We know he’s not completely bad or tyrannical, yet some of Lucifer’s critiques are valid. God really didn’t value freedom as he wanted, humans really did self sabotage, and frankly Satan wasn’t entirely wrong in being sceptic toward humanities place. More over it answers why God doesn’t help us, because God believes we don’t need him, the comic however kind of proves he is needed and God maybe made a mistake being so hands off.
The Lucifer T.V. show on the other hand is…fun. But very much full of issues. Angels for instance are more like X-Men characters than things that can move planets out of orbit like the bible. It’s not exactly the most thematically rich show, and it’s insulting it says ‘based on the comic by Neil Gaiman.’
But what’s great is, you see it genuinely critique God, God can’t answer the critiques and it’s obvious God makes mistakes. Yet people who believe in God are not blind fanatics, at least not all of them. It points out the bible often has a very biased narrative on life, showing life is much more complicated than what religion says it is. It even shows that God maybe did love Lucifer, his true calling is to rehabilitate people. It makes GOd look like a good guy, but clearly shows disagreement with traditional Christian and Muslim narratives of what hell is supposed to be and why one goes there.
But man the God and Angels in this show are shitty. A nuclear bomb is more grand and great, more worthy of worship than them. They had a hollywood budget and yet again were afraid to show the scale of GOd and Angels. DO they think viewers can’t suspend disbelief? All of them went to church or are in a religious culture. They know the scale it’s supposed to be. It’s not a bad idea.
Midnight Mass: A very good critique of religion and God.
(Scale is not a problem in Midnight Mass since God and angels are not direct antagonists)
When Midnight Mass came out, a vox reporter claimed it was bad horror because horror is enjoyed by anti-religious and counter cultural people, and the show was too pro-religion.
So I watched Midnight Mass and did not understand how anyone could come across this show and think it was pro-religion. The main villain is a priest and fanatical woman, the entire plot is technically a blasphemy of sacraments from the catholic church. Religious fanaticism leads otherwise good people into believing something clearly evil is from God. But the show is nuanced, and then I realized the authors problem was the fact that nuance was precisely her problem.
Midnight mass is not Rick and Morty or nihilistic horror movie that drips with hopelessness, filled with every religious person being evil or two faced, or everything that seems good is profane.
The show has many scenes, like a Muslim character refusing to drink, but the narrative pointing out alcohol can be used for both good and evil. Booze being the stand in for religion. Many times you see how people have suffered deeply and greatly, and belief in GOd and even the Church brings them great comfort, even wisdom. You see how many of these people, even the villains have improved lives by religion, even if the show points out that it’s largely false and can lead to bad things. It even points out God is much more than what we think God could be, constantly musing on the nature of God. It implies perhaps life begins at conception when an otherwise secular character mourns the loss of a fetus, saying the pregnancy saved her life, brought her happiness. She makes a speech of how heaven is not just harps and clouds but love, and she hopes the baby she lost exists in that place of love, which probably bothered many ardent pro-choice people. The ending is a clear indication of people basically hoping for forgiveness and facing death with the concept of God as a comfort. It’s a very sombre ending.
And yet despite showing positive traits of religion and Catholicism, the show ultimately shows the ‘atheist’ characters were right. One of the last monologues can be either interpreted as vaguely pantheistic, but mostly a version of well known Atheist Carl Sagans take on metaphysics, his famous ‘we are all star stuff’ or ‘star dust’ take. This one relates it to God, that we’re all energy, God is all the energy of impulses in our brain, our memories all going into a pool of the universe, which is God. It essentially is a materialists views on metaphysics that is the closing monologue, the optimistic view of the otherwise sombre end. This speech was done by the same woman who wished her lost baby was in a heaven full of love.
I mean the villain was a priest using catholic ritual to turn people into vampires. How exactly is that pro-religion? Because not everyone was a monster who followed it?
Bad critique of religion: The Chilling adventures of Sabrina
So CW and WB shows don’t just do a bad job making critiques of Religion. They do a bad job simply making T.V. shows. But unlike PREACHER which is cartoony but fun and enjoyable, Sabrina at least initially tried to take itself seriously. Yes it was campy, but it really thought it made profound social statements. That’s why EW, WB, CW shows have such bad reputations. Because they are simultaneously campy yet take themselves seriously.
The religious critique in the show comes from the Church of Satan, which is basically a reverse catholic Church, with similar structures, right down to a Dark Pope. Yeah it’s campy, but the show tries to make such deep statements about it.
For instance, it’s largely male led, and when woman get married, they have to be willing to offer themselves sexually to Satan himself. It constantly alludes the church and organized religion is sexist, which is not an inaccurate critique, lots of religions including so called hippie ones like Buddhism and Hinduism are sexist even if someone does not identify as a modern feminist.
The thing is though, the show doesn’t create Satanic equivalents to the complex laws and commandments that Church life has to tackle the issues of sexism. Never once talks about old laws where witches were hunted, old realities of a by gone time where strict gender roles may have once been a utility, but clearly now just used to keep woman down.
Infact, it doesn’t even do a good job of that, as it touches on the actual Catholic Church and protestant christianity being intolerant, but if the Church of Satan is the opposite of everything the Catholic Church and Protestant christianity teaches, why isn’t the sexism of the Satanic church much different?
It’s possible for the Church of Satan to oppress woman, but using the opposite methods of the Church. Such as giving them leadership where the church would not, but the way to get that leadership ultimately serves a male idea of a liberated female, not a womans. Woman are not expected to be virginal in the church of satan, but perhaps the counter to a churches view of it, is that woman are not allowed to be virginal. Like the Church, autonomy is removed.
(The show is written by a man, so liberation is essentially coached in these terms. But not in the church of Satan, but against it)
And once again, Scale is a problem. The show never ends up portraying God, though it’s indicated he exists, as his followers show up and fight. But it does show Satan, and wow, Satan is a big disappointment.
We at first see Satan is practically like God, he can grant wishes and the like, even bend reality. But when we actually get to see him, he kind of just sucks. Satan looks like some pretty guy with wings. That’s not bad, but his other form is basically a horned man with goat legs. They don’t play with his multiple roles, they don’t show Satan as crafty and subtle. He gets taken down by a bunch of kids, during the time the show still showed promise of being good.
Once again, a problem with scale.
Then the show stopped caring and it sucked in general.
Last statement: Asura’s wrath
Honestly, just watch the cutscenes of that game or play it. The best portrayal of a dude killing gods and God ever.
You can see why humans in that game worship the gods and GOd. Because they actually do GOdlike things.
And unlike Supernatural, they don’t just look like random actors but have cool Character designs.
God can blow up galaxies, and he still gets punched in the face! Unlike preacher he doesn’t get shot by some inbred redneck. This fucker would dodge the bullet and cast the redneck back in hell.
Khabib is not a perfect person or even a perfect martial artist. He has areas he’s weak at, etc.
Hell when I saw him fight Edson Barbosa, I thought the way he just plodded forward would get him countered against McGreggor.
But when Khabib fought McGregor, he didn’t plod forward, he controlled the distance very well. But even Khabib himself says his striking works because he combines it with his take down attempts. He isn’t striking like GSP was.
But one critique I don’t think is valid by salty McGreggor fans is the fact Khabib would start losing if without a cage, if he fought in a ring like some ONE FC fights or like Japanese MMA.
I understand why they say that. You watch many of Khabib’s fights, he drives them to the cage, smashes them, pins them against it. Gets his dagestani handcuff and does his ‘smesh’
But frankly, he doesn’t need the cage.
People need to ask themselves why Khabib developed this strategy in the first place. In his early career he just took guys down, he didn’t focus on the cage nearly as much. It was early in his career he fought Tibau, before he had that cage heavy style.
Notice Khabib doesn’t shoot for the take down here? Modern Khabib would. But before? He didn’t want to be agains the cage.
The reason being is that up until this point in his career, Khabib’s had more success taking people down in the centre of the rings he fought in or the cage than against the wall. Tibau actually used the cage very well to keep himself standing against Khabib.
Back in the old days, people would talk about how the cage helps keeps fighters up, how if they are taken down they shoulder walk up the cage, or brace against it to stop the take down. Even today most fighters use the cage to stay up or to get back up. Many good wrestlers and BJJ players have lost fights due to the cage keeping people up or helping them get back up.
Infact, most people try to get opponents away from the cage to finish take downs. Like this.
Behold Stephen Thompson halfway getting up against Gilbert Burns, a very good BJJ player. And a few times he did use the cage to get up. Something he could never do in the centre of the cage or in a ring.
This hilarious thing happened as Thompson started leaning to get up.
The only reason the cage now is seen as ‘bad’ for someone defending a take down is due to the fact Kamaru Usman, Daniel Cormier and Khabib know how to use it against their opponents. They arn’t just good wrestlers, but ones that figured out how to get take downs off the cage.
The only reason Khabib is taking people down against the cage is because that’s the first place most MMA fighters go to when someone has arms around the legs or hips. They use the cage. Tibau stuffed Khabib’s take downs precisely because it was a better place for him, Khabib had no answers.
The fact is most grappling training takes place in a ring and not a cage, whether wrestlers, Judoka, Sambo players or BJJ players. There are no walls in most grappling matches across various styles. If someone gets a good position or has leverage on you, the more space you have behind you, the more likely you are to be taken down. That is because you have no structure, nothing to ground out on.
The cage on the otherhand is like another floor, it’s another form of balance and stability. Another thing for a grappler to fight against when an opponent is leaning or pressed against it.
Justin Gaethje was a division one wrestler, known for his take down defense in MMA.
Here is what happened when Khabib went for a takedown against a very good defensive wrestler…well away from the cage.
Not only did Khabib take him down, but the first place Gaethje goes to is the cage. Because he knows if he stays in the centre of the ring, it’s not good.
KHabib has shown he can keep people down and pass guard without a barrier.
I got news for you guys. If you can’t get back up on the cage, you’re certainly not getting back up away from it.
He does not have side control, yet they can’t get up without him passing guard.
Although it may not seem like it, fighters are better off going to the cage when fighting Khabib than staying in the open in a grappling exchange.
Yes it’s another article talking about the cross over between athleticism and skill.
We are talking Peng and plyometrics. I miss doing plyometrics, if i wasn’t so broken I would do them.
Now lets get into it.
If someone has done Pa kua, Taiji or Hsing I, there are concepts of aliveness that cross over to all three martial arts.
One big thing in Taiji in particular is Peng. It’s described and translated as many things, often as constant expansion. The sensation however is often related to the stretching sensation when the body is perfectly aligned, or the compression of a spring to ‘bounce’ things off. It can be used in punching to add power, or it can be used to push. One friend of mine Dillon uses it do drive and disbalance when doing lazy double leg take downs.
Jesse Encamp never uses the term “Peng” but he talks about the way sport karate fighters bounce is done better if it’s a constant drop then catch, to create a spring that sinks into gravity instead of being high on the balls of the feet.
And maybe some Taiji practitioner is screaming at his screen right now saying I definded Peng wrong and I am infact talking about another mechanic. Okay whatever who cares. You do understand my description right? I hope you do. It’s in many systems, though chinese internal arts in particular largely harness this elastic springy way of using alignment.
It’s often assumed it can only be harnessed through careful sensitivity and awareness of the body, and then can be harnessed and utilized not just in a fight, but everyday life.
I agree that to be able to actually weaponize it, one must understand the structure and mechanics of peng.
However it’s possible to do it without ever doing it on purpose, to actually improve it when you DO understand it on a martial arts technical level.
You guessed it: Plyometrics.
I got this clip from Dillon, and I don’t know if he considers Peng and Plymetics the same(I will cover where they are different later here) but this clip demonstrates training well outside of internal martial arts using the spring/stretch mechanic.
Now in the context of the video he’s not trying to exercise his quads like a plymetric exercise. Plymetrics recruits lots of muscle, it can be very exhausting.
While the exercise in the video takes energy, notice he’s only got as low as he needs to jump, to get the spring that is needed. He’s not trying to engage his muscles like a proper plymetric exercise, to train them to explode.
But when you hear people talk about ‘proper form’ with plymetrics, it’s almost always alignment, and usually the form involves and absorption and spring. THe ‘peng’ or the ‘jing expression’ of the peng is a component included in the muscular work out.
Eventually when happens is what we see in the video, with just a light coil, a person can explode from their legs, farther than they ever could before doing plyometric exercises. The ‘peng’ component can be done with greater effect, with far less effort, the involvement of muscles are far more efficient, more like ‘technique’ than strength.
The reason plymetrics work isn’t that it’s applied exactly like it would be done in the exercise, with trying to exhaust the muscle, but whatever is needed. And often what is left over is a natural elasticity and explosiveness, achieving through exercise what martial arts gets through training.
Of course translating that into skills involves actually learning the skills.
But once you understand the mechanics of something, you realize it’s often something that can be trained.
Taiji people shouldn’t look down on athleticism but see where athletes achieve though work or genetics what they do through skill.
A taiji person who does plymetric work would benefit greatly in their art. Wang Ziping used to jump in and out of holes he dug.
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