Project Battle Fury Week 16: 20% less Body Fat, 100% more Mask

Good news, everyone!  It turns out eating less makes you thinner.  I've maintained a diet of about 1850 calories, still taking in around 150g of protein a day.  Here's what I've got to show for it.

Weight on top, % fat on bottom.  Note the sharp bend around the
June mark, when I started counting calories.

Being roughly on track with the original plan, I started whacking away at Juggernaut's mask, too.  Lots of supplies were gathered.  The general technique was done with the help of a Youtube series of a dude putting together his Iron Man mask, with some extra pointers from the stickies by some Halo peeps over at the 405th.

Sliph managed to get Juggernaut's model out of Dota and into Pepakura Designer.  From that I printed out a paper pattern, which thus far has been hot glued together, soaked in polyester resin, and partially reinforced with fiberglass.  Here's how it's looking so far.

 

Fiberglass is seriously some magical stuff, but the resin stanks awful and, in this hot weather, gunks crazy fast.  I had an adventure trying to wash the crap off my hands the first day I used it.  On the bright side, the mask is already ultra-hard.  Once I finish glassing the thing, I'll apply some bondo body filler to shape it up and prepare it for painting.

I also picked up some brown suede to make his inner pants out of, and some black EVA foam mats to cut for his leg armor and belt.  We have some elastic scraps and other things laying around to sew in to give his lower legs that "flaring" look.  On top of that, 15 square feet of fake fur is on its way via the wonders of Amazon Prime.  I still have to buy the plastic to make the sword, some buckles, and maybe some other little things.

I haven't updated with anything particularly interesting as of late since I've had my hands tied with making the mask and other things.  I briefly considered writing a piece on why it's important to call Dota anything but a "MOBA," but I can't decide if it's really as important as I'm making it out to be.  Personally, I think the MOBA term is meaningless, artificial, and awful-sounding.  But, it's here to stay, and people will call these things what they want to.

Stats:

Weight: 184 lbs

Body Fat after discovering the scale recommends explicitly against weighing oneself right when one wakes up in the morning: 20%

Squats: 276.5 lbs, deloading again soon

Bench: 154 lbs

Overhead Press: 125 lbs (though deloading to 113 next time)

Deadlift: 320 lbs

Power Clean: 135 lbs

Pull-Ups/Chin-Ups: All over the place, trying to teach myself to pull from a dead hang without jumping or kipping.  Got at least 2/1/1 on pull-ups today in this regard.

4 Months in Progress Photo:

Beautiful or Badass? Don't Fuck It Up, Natus Vincere

Over the past year or so, geek culture has seen a massive influx of awareness and understanding with regard to the treatment of women in gamer/geek culture.  Thanks to prolific web artists, actors, and bloggers, the movement is more well defined than ever before, and the true problems in our culture have been thoroughly identified and marked.

I don't know how in-tune Natus Vincere is with the Western Feminist Meta, but judging by their mostly oblivious announcement yesterday, I'd wager they missed the boat.

Now, if I haven't already lost you because you cover your balls and flee at the sound of the word "feminism," here's a cheat sheet if you don't quite get what it's about yet:

• Feminism is a movement about equality. Period.
• We only still call it feminism because women get the short end of the stick 4 out of 5 times.  Both genders are impacted by feminist issues - male sensitivity comes to mind for men, but countless more issues exist for women (rigidity in family roles, sexual roles, body image templates, rape, you know the drill).
• Feminism is not about restricting freedom of choice or speech.  No one is stopping you from making your sexualized all-girl teams, putting up booth babes at your convention, or writing your damsels in distress.  Feminism is just calling you out on how these tropes promote a status quo that is unfair to women.  (It'd be nice if damsel in distress wasn't a default role.)
• Geekdom is a culture about welcoming strange people and their love for strange things.  Geek feminism is about erasing any judgments we might pass on a geek's love for something simply because they are a woman.

The Beast

Yes, the top comment reads "Why
are they not in the kitchen?"

We know that women compose a very small portion of competitive gamers.  The proportions are so bad, some tournament organizers create additional sideshow brackets that ban male entrants.  These brackets exist because, while we want to see more women in eSports, it sadly turns out that the few highly talented women that do currently exist aren't on the same level as the "god-tier" teams of gamers.  So, to promote visibility of female gamers, the organizers invite skilled women exclusively to a separate show where we can be assured a female team/player can make it to the quarter/semi/finals and take the cup.

Here's the double edged sword:

• Spectators get to see that, yes, women do in fact play video games and are teh hardcores about it, supporting the idea that women can be gamers just like us.
• Spectators see that women have to have their own bracket just for them, reinforcing the notion that women are not and may never be at the same level as men.

Na'Vi's female team announcement plays the same part as a female tournament bracket, and then makes it worse.  Na'Vi.5BeautifulGirls is a great way for an organization with international presence to promote the role of women in eSports.  But the team has a birthmark. A taint.

In the back of everyone's mind is the notion that Na'Vi.5BG was not created to be "the best of the best," but to be "the best of the girls."

Every all-female team will suffer this prejudice until geek feminism's goal is reached.  Na'Vi.5BG has the opportunity to make this happen, but so far, Na'Vi's PR guys (gender intentional) are doing a pretty terrible fucking job:

"Natus Vincere present DotA2 female team"

"From now on, five beautiful girls will represent the ranks..."

On top of that, Na'Vi don't link to their Dota profiles, share any stats, or make any effort to identify these girls as any more than six pretty faces.

At least the goddamn Siren let us know what roles they played.

Kiska, PerfectVoid, or whoever is leading the team charge: demand some fucking respect from the PR guys and tell them to get their act together.  Left on its current course, Na'Vi.5BG is more of the status quo.  If you truly want to give a "substantial boost" to women in eSports, your team needs to demolish the notion that you are merely "the best of the girls."  Call interviewers out on bullshit questions.  Demand that they ask you the same sorts of questions any other male pro player would get.  Call your PR team out when they try to play up your looks or femininity to tantalize their teenage male viewership.  I hope someone in your team has a passion for feminism, because there's a lot of ass that needs kicking out there.  I'd rather you be known as five badass girls instead.

To Na'Vi's general management: You have the chance to make this more than a gimmick.  But only if you stop treating your players like a PR stunt and put some effort into praising these women as gamers.  Your PR department should treat them with "honor and dignity."  It's not their job to prove the worth of women to you.  It's your job, Na'Vi, to give your players Na'Vi's god-tier honor they deserve for being talented gamers, and to give them the respect they deserve for daring to change the world.

And, finally, to the rest of us: promote the ideal.  Make sure it's known that skill, not sex, makes the gamer.  I hold the Dota 2 community to a higher standard.  Higher than the abhorrent fighting game community, and higher than the low-brow LoL community.  This is a community of intellectuals (relatively speaking anyway), surely you understand the impact of this whole thing.

Someday, I hope to see a team of ambitious young men and women holding the Aegis of Champions high above their heads, together, in the glory of Benaroya Hall, in the shadow of the Gaben, in the glistening light of the IceFrog, as they shed beautiful tears for the blossom of the glorious seed they planted.  Such seeds need water.

Project Battle Fury Week 12: Crossing the River

3 months in now, 3 months to go.  Can't say it's going to be easy.

Looking up fitness advice is frustrating.  Everyone has their own idea of how to manage the "perfect" routine - the perfect diet, the perfect exercise, the perfect philosophy.  However, one's personal goals may not line up with the goals of the adviser you've met on the Internet.

My goal is to put together a Juggernaut costume, and to look the part as best as I can.  A lot of people said I should just change my goal - I could've dressed up as Storm Spirit, for example, who requires a bit less fitness.  What I've learned is that at a certain point, you have to draw a line between "doing things the right way" and "doing what you want to do."  I certainly could dress up as Storm Spirit.  I certainly also could forsake the cosplay entirely and just get huge.  But those aren't things I want to do.

So, let's talk about Juggernaut.  Valve have done an amazing job with character design, in that you can spot Juggernaut a mile away.  If I want to cosplay Juggernaut as best I can, then the first thing I need to do is be instantly recognizable as Juggernaut.  Which means, in order of priority:

1. The mask.
2. The armor, fur, and sword.
3. The silhouette.

Out of all these, only #3 is really dependent on fitness.  On top of that, it's less important that I get my muscles up to Juggernaut's size, and more important that I get the shape of my body in line with Juggernaut's.  Which means one thing:

It's time to cut.

I plan on staying with Starting Strength, but dropping my caloric intake and cleaning up the last remnants of my diet.  I've done a pretty good job of cutting sodas and candy out of my diet, so far.  The only sugars I get  are from more natural, less junk-y sources.  However, I still leave some room for flat bread, the occasional fried food, and the like.  For the next 3 months, I'll be cutting those out.

I'm going to tackle this by stocking up on easy, healthy foods I know I will eat - nuts, for example.  I have the great fortune of working at a company that caters lunch and fruits, so I can be more selective for some of my weekday meals.  Plus, I'll continue drinking the Isopure I've been using.  The overall philosophy here is to focus on what I can eat, and make sure that what I can eat is filling, but no longer feel compelled to eat for the sake of bulking up.  It also helps that my medicine slightly suppresses my appetite.

If everything goes as planned, my strength gains will slow and/or stall, but I should expect to see my fat to drop.  Research suggests that a caloric deficit is the One True Way to drop fat, but as long as I keep lifting and eat healthy (proteins, fats, fiber, etc), I should be able to drop it without losing the bit of muscle I gained over the last 3 months.

Weight: 191.8lbs
Fat: 25%
Squat: 285lbs (likely deload incoming)
Bench Press: 145lbs
Overhead Press: 120lbs
Deadlift: 305lbs
Power Clean: 125lbs
Chin-Ups: 5/3/3, kipping furiously
Pull-Ups: 4/3/2, kipping equally furiously

3 Months progress!

Project Battle Fury Weeks 9-10

Nothing to see here folks, besides some stats.  Been busy the past week or so sorting out my new car (!!) and working on a (probably overcomplicated) card game for Tabletop Deathmatch.  Maybe I'll write a post on the card game, but I'm still paranoid because it occupies a space that few other card games do, so I want to keep it stealth-ish.

I had to reset on my OHP and Bench Press the past week, but that's a good thing.  I get to take a second stab at bumping my numbers, this time with better form.

Stats:
Weight: 192.8lbs
Fat: 24.6% (this thing is so noisy)
Squat: 277.5 lbs
Bench Press: 140 lbs (deloaded from 155)
Overhead Press: 110 lbs (deloaded from 120)
Deadlift: 300 lbs (attempted 305 today)
Power Clean: 115 lbs

Project Battle Fury: Week 8

Nothing interesting today folks, apart from a progress pic.  Here're the stats.

Weight: 194.4
Body fat: 23.8%
Squat: 265lbs
Bench: 150lbs
Press: 117.5lbs
Deadlift: 290lbs
Power Clean: 95lbs

2 months in!

Project Battle Fury Weeks 6-7: The Divekick Transform

Hey all, sorry I've been late.  I've been ultra busy the past two weekends: Weekend 7 was spent working on a card game prototype, and this last weekend I've been daring ludums with a couple friends.

The Heart of It All

There's this super cool game called Divekick coming out this summer.  It's half-parody, half-love letter, and 100% fighter.  I absolutely cannot wait for the release.  I've traditionally loved the idea of fighting games, but mostly hated their execution.  Games like Street Fighter and Soul Calibur pit two minds against each other in a test of mental agility, but until you've mastered the combos and memorized the moves, you don't get an invitation to the mind games.

This is precisely why Divekick is so fascinating.  Divekick strips away everything but the real competitive heart of the game.  It's a digital Double Irish to evade Sirlin's "time tax."  You don't need to shell out $150 for a hypercompetitive controller (though you can if you really really want to).  You don't need to spend your nights and weekends drilling combos and memorizing movesets.  You just jump in and get straight to the battle of wits, which, to me at least, is far more fascinating than a professional's ability to execute his unbreakable half-hit combo.  Divekick is a pure test of players' ability to read their opponent and react to an ever-changing situation.

What if we took this concept and applied it to other games?  I discussed with some friends of mine this abstract concept of the "Divekick transform" (or the DKT, if you will).  A Divekick transform is a function that projects multiplayer games into an intensely simplified form that highlights the competitive essences of the game.  It does this by simplifying unimportant elements that are overcomplicated (to reduce distraction), removing redundant elements, and most importantly, by minimizing non-competitive choice. "Non-competitive" in this context refers to user decisions that are made independently of decisions your opponent makes, which we can trivially divide further into two categories:

• No-ops: decisions in which all options are equally effective (regardless of the opponent's actions), and
• No-brainers: decisions in which one option is the most effective (regardless of the opponent's actions).

Our first example, Divekick, is the result of a DKT applied to Street Fighter (or to it and its contemporaries).  The combo system in Street Fighter, while difficult to execute because of tight timing constraints, is ultimately a non-competitive choice, and is thus removed.  Hitting the second button in an unblockable combo is a no-brainer, because there is no reason not to execute it.  Additionally, the wide cast of players is also removed, because while it provides diversity in playstyle, the characters are (supposed to be) designed such that they are evenly matched against any other opponent, making character-selection an unnecessarily complicated no-op.

Divekicking Dota

So, what does a Divekicked Dota look like? Well, to determine that, we need to argue about what choices in Dota are non-competitive, and what mechanics are most important to the game.  Here's the result of one possible DKT:

• If melee heroes weren't artificially compensated for their short range, there would be no reason to choose them over a ranged hero.  So, let's stick with just one or the other.
• On top of that, heroes are effectively sets of abilities, so choosing between heroes is a no-op, so long as the only choice we leave is a sufficiently diverse hero.  For this example, the only hero available will be Skeleton King. Skeleton king has an excellent range of abilities: Hellfire Blast allows him to gank and disable.  Vampiric Aura allows him to take a more support-based role.  Critical Strike allows him to carry.  Reincarnate, while arguably a no-brainer, can still be foregone to gain more effectiveness in a role that doesn't expect to die frequently (take Blast and Stats, for example.)
• The asymmetrical map has a generally minor effect on gameplay, and is unnecessarily complicated.  We'll make the map rotationally symmetrical then.
• However, the uniqueness of Dota's safe, middle, and hard lanes offer interesting choices with regard to inter-lane dynamics, so the asymmetry between safe and hard lanes will be preserved.
• Lanes spawn more frequently, but only have one melee creep in each of them.  Keeping it simple.
• Jungle creeps can arguably stick around, because the decision to farm the jungle offers a low-risk, low-reward alternative to laning.  The jungle creep spawn types should probably be limited to one per camp difficulty, to limit distracting complexities.
• Now that everyone is playing Skeleton King, most item choices are no-brainers, though many of them were no-brainers before then.  Here are some (but not all possible) notable omissions from a Divekicked Dota shop:
• Boots. Boots are a no-brainer.  The choices offered by boot upgrades are still competitive, but what they offer can often be substituted for with other items.  Leaving them in would mostly serve to complicate things.
• Wards - maybe.  Purchasing wards are also a no-brainer.  If you can afford wards, you should buy them and plant them.  Period.  Without observer wards, sentry wards also become irrelevant.  However, there is some merit to the opportunity cost and placement of a ward.  I don't particularly think leaving this component of the game in is too vital to communicating the spirit of Dota, but some do.
• Most upgrade components.  If the upgrade components to an item are mundane, there's nothing interesting to be gained from leaving them in.
• Most carry damage items.  Dota offers many different ways to increase your effective DPS.  Leaving in Armlet and Crystalis might be interesting, since they each have their own times at which they are effective, but more than 2 or 3 damage items in the game gets distracting.
• Keep the runes, but potentially ditch Roshan.  Many tactical decisions must be weighed when deciding to go for a rune, and on deciding how to best approach it, and it would be a shame to omit this from Dota.  However, Roshan is generally a no-brainer decision, and his tactical value is not particularly interesting.  This is up for debate.
• Now that we've radically simplified the game, we can, Divekick style, radically simplify the controls.  Left click Hellfire blasts.  Right click attacks (and denies).

Naturally there are a ton more simplifications you could make to the game, and there are also other directions you could take the game to further emphasize other competitive components of the game.

Limitations of the DKT

The DKT naturally robs a game of its thematic weight and much of its metagame.  It also strips away any entertainment value gained from the interactions of potentially complex, esoteric circumstances.  However, if done correctly, what should be left is the pure competitive essence: nothing but player-versus-player interaction.

I think the real value in executing a DKT would be that the resultant projected game could be used to allow inexperienced outsiders to understand what makes the game so fun.  It massively lowers the barrier to entry, and allows the layman front-row seats to experience the competitive thrill of the game.  I'm sure someone could whip up a server mod to give it a spin.


Weight: 194.2 lbs
Fat: 22.3%

Squat: 255 lbs
Bench Press: 145 lbs
Overhead Press: 117.5 lbs
Deadlift: 280 lbs
Power clean: 95 lbs

Project Battle Fury Week 5: The Facade of Defeat

One of the advantages of suffering from poor short term memory is that you never manage to remember your losing streaks.

Losing sucks.  Everyone knows this.  And few things suck as hard as losing at Dota.

Dota is a kind of game where losing is incredibly painful experience.  First a mistake is made, but you're still not quite sure whose fault it was.  So you get frustrated at both pubbers and friends and swing the blame bat around.  They didn't stun.  Their build is awful.  They aren't warding.  Blame comes back around at you, and you lose your concentration.  Maybe you start forgetting your own stuns.  Maybe you start picking fights you know you can't win.  Maybe you keep trying to "rush" that desolator that you swear will turn everything around.  All this comes to pass, and you're left in well wondering why there's no concede button.

Well, defeat is unavoidable.  Half of all played games of Dota are lost.  If you're new to Dota, most of the games you play will fall into at least one of two sucky categories:

• You go 0 and 7 and get stomped over, or
• Some prodigy (read: smurf) singlehandedly facerolls the enemy team.

Defeat happens to be a reward of sorts, though.  We never learn so much from the games we win as from the games we don't.  There are an infinite number of ways a game can play out, and our mind is a limitless well of planning.  Only by losing can we trim those creative branches that bear no fruit.  So, then, how can we make defeat suck less, so that we may rule out our bad ideas more quickly with less frustration?

Anger management

Defeat is not the enemy - anger is.  And anger does not come from defeat.  They both come from the same place: from a loss of control.

What feels bad is not the fact that you have been defeated, but the fact that you have lost this control, be it control over your own actions or the actions of others.  The second situation above is maddening even if you win, since you doubt your own contributions.  I know that I am most angered by situations where I feel I know what the "right" play was but was unable to act it out.  I believe we get angry to attempt to intimidate control over others, or "faulty" modules of our own self, but generally all it does is cloud our judgement.

So then, if anger comes from a loss of control, then to quash anger we must get ourselves back in control.  Here's my take on how to avoid anger so you can lose gracefully and learn to be better:

1. Communicate calmly and without accusation.  Anger begets anger, since everyone wants to micro their allies, but nobody wants to be microed.  You might have luck with a common technique where, instead of asking your allies to change how they behave, you communicate in terms of how you personally feel.  For example, instead of yelling at the supports to ward, say something about how you personally can't farm or gank because the map is dark.
2. Focus on what you can still control.  If you think your teammate is feeding or playing poorly, forget that you want to micromanage them.  Do everything you can to help the team out, regardless of whether or not you think you're supposed to do it personally.  Zone in on your own hero instead of the others.  If you're a support, just start warding and counter-warding instead of trying to back up your aggressive ganker.  If you're short on cash because you keep losing it, spend it on something cheap that will keep you in the game (like drums or a bracer).
3. Play with your friends, no matter how much worse (or better) they are.  Pubs don't trust you, and you don't trust them.  You won't ever feel like you have control over them unless they really open up or you lead by example, and in Dota, usually only one player in each pub game will present the level of skill required to gain trust.  If you play with (and be nice to!) your friends, you can calmly direct them, and this will keep you focused.
4. Accept that any failure may in part be your own.  Even if you made every right decision for your hero, Dota's nature as a team sport means that it's up to everyone to scrape all the data and communicate.  You may have been able to explain to the rando what was wrong with his build before he started feeding.  You may have been able to call miss on a lane that wasn't yours.  Realize that, the next time around, you may have more control than you think.

If you want to learn Dota, you must come to terms with defeat.  To get good at a game, you must know what can be done better, and only in the throes of defeat can you learn how to get better.  This is going to sound cliche, but it's a lot like weight lifting.  Your muscles don't get stronger from lifting weights they can easily push around, they get stronger when you lift weights that break them down.  After a good bowl of meat and some rest, they rebuild back stronger than before.  And that's where the real victory lies.


Weight: 194.9 lbs
Fat: 26%

Squat: 225 lbs
Bench Press: 130 lbs
Overhead Press: 110 lbs
Deadlift: 255 lbs
Power clean: 75 lbs

(No missed sets this week! Woo!)