u/Sensitive_Complex375

Hello!

I am very new to Massage as a whole. I first became invested in the field after I discovered that I wanted to move away from a job within Healthcare (Because of all the red tape and regulatory bodies that get in the way of being able to enjoy my work), and thought that Massage would be a nice outlet for me to build physical skills that would allow me to heal others in a way that centers more around the “whole person.”

So, starting last summer, I began studying Massage and bodywork through The Complete Guide to Modern Massage by Ryan Jay Hoyme (Wonderful entry level book by the way) and researching potential schools in the Central Valley, near Atwater California that I can go to in order to gain certification to practice. I came across a few schools, but the National Holistic Institute (Specifically the Modesto campus) was the one that caught my attention. It had campuses all across the Central Valley, has more than the required amount of 500 hours in the course in order to become a CMT, and was notably the very first massage school to be accredited within the state of California.

However, my mother was not a fan of me going to NHI, primarily because it is a for profit institution. Normally, I would have objected and said “not all for profit schools are diploma mills,” however, my mom followed up with that she wasn’t opposed to me going into the field of massage, simply that she would like me to go to Merced College and get a job using my certification from there before choosing to pursuit massage.

This makes me upset due to the fact that Merced College does not offer any massage certification or courses to speak of, and it is because of that that I might feel like I will be wasting two years of my life doing something just because my family wanted me to, instead of following what would be best for what I want to do.
I do not plan on staying in California either, eventually I want to move abroad to British Columbia to become a bodyworker or spa therapist over there, avoiding the red tape that would usually come with being an RMT.

So, my question is, is NHI Modesto an actually legit school? Can any Californian Massage specialists vouch for the legitimacy of the institution? Can any Californian or British Columbian Bodyworkers or CMT’s tell their experience of what it’s actually like being one? If I am absolutely forced to go to Merced College first, what can I do so that I am ready to go into Massage once I get my degree and have the funds to pursuit Massage? What can I do to fork up the funds for tuition now? What does a salary for a CMT in California and a Bodyworker in BC look like?
I am just really worried of losing my passion or want to go into Massage, and have to accept servitude within a Massage-adjacent job that does not truly give me the freedom and connection that I want out of my lifetime job, and wasting a couple years of my life earning a degree that is not going to serve me long term.

The race starts at Thurso in Caithness, Scotland, and ends at Penzance in Cornwall, England.
There are an ample amount of coal/water/fuel/electricity stops for Thomas and whoever he is up against, and they are allowed anytime either engine is running low.
Outside modifications or boosts in speed are not allowed such as extra kinetic energy from consists or the jet engine.

Round 1: RWS Thomas

Round 2: Seasons 1-12 Thomas

Round 3: Seasons 13-24 Thomas

Bonus Round: Who’s the fastest real or fictional machine that composite Thomas could beat in a race?

Hello!
This is the Dedede main that’s been posting on this sub every so often.

It’s getting pretty deep into the summer and since my last post about 0-deaths, I have been studying the game harder to try and raise my win rate and beat better players. To be more specific I was studying up a bunch on Link, how he uses boomerang, the timings of falling and rising nair’s, how to ledgetrap him better, that sort of thing. The reason why I because I was scheduled to face Adot, the best Link in Kentucky and is currently ranked as an HM in the states PR. I’ve made it my end-all-be-all goal to beat them in at least one set in the small online weekly. So, I spend a couple hours a day that week and around 5-6 hours (Practically from when I woke up to when the tournament began) watching VOD’s on him over and over, analyzing their habits to try and dissect how a Dedede player like me could beat him.

And I did.

I barely lost the winners-finals 2-3 which I was exasperated about, but I was absolutely ECSTATIC when I beat them in Grand Finals in a very even 3-2 victory! I didn’t even care that I lost the True Grands run back and didn’t get first at the tourney, that very moment showed to me, directly, that I can beat PR players if I tried hard enough, and worked hard enough.

And, I’m gonna be 100% honest, I wasn’t super happy that I won against Adot in one of those sets because it proved that I was good at Smash Ultimate. It was because that moment proved that I could win with a character that I love for more than for how they are on a play style, design, or meme basis.

I was a Kirby fan long before I played smash competitively. It began when I revisited my copy of Kirby: Triple Deluxe when I was around 12 or so years old, and ended up having a blast with it. Afterwards I bought Kirby: Super Star Ultra and it all snowballed from there. Dedede was always my favorite character in the series because of his redemption arc and how he was able to show just as much love for others as much as how much he was able to love himself. Nowadays I’m more confident in myself than I have ever been, and I partially attribute that to me being so attached to the King of Dreamland.

However, starting in around 2022, I was unsatisfied with being just “another fan” of the Kirby series. I wanted to do something “special” for the franchise, to commemorate my love for the video games that played a big part in making myself who I am today. I tried many different avenues that other fans usually take such as Fanart, Fan Fiction, Remixes of songs of the series, but all of these seemed too complex or unfamiliar to me to pick up. It was after all three of these creative arts failed that I thought about competitive Smash Ultimate. I already watched VOD’s for fun, I already played Dedede for fun back in Smash 4, so why not try to get serious with it, while playing my favorite character?

That’s what lead me to where I am as a player now…and it makes me feel really isolated, in a way.

Not in the way in that I am embarrassed or ashamed of the reason that I do play Smash, but alone in the sense that no one else seems to talk about, or even acknowledge, how some competitive smash players might be playing the game because the character they use holds a special place in their heart and still does today. I am the only person I know who plays Dedede because he’s the proud, self-made king from a series that I have been a fan of for years. Everyone else seems to play him because they saw memes of him in Kirby: Right Back at Ya and think he’s funny, or because they wanna main the most “self-depreciating” low tier and Dedede was that for them. This doesn’t just go for Dedede either, I feel like this is the case for all characters in smash history. I know that, naturally, smash players play smash characters for smash-related reasons, but sometimes it feels as if people don’t show respect those who don’t play smash for smash, but who play smash to represent something outside of it.

My question I want to ask here is, how do I deal with these feelings of “character loyalty loneliness?” Is it a feeling that will just fizzle away the better I get at smash because I will understand more of what people are talking about with Dedede? Should I just ignore things that try to bring me down about this? Is there anyone out there who can relate to what I’m experiencing?

Things such as “play who you want if you’re not at top level” have always brought me down about this.

Some characters serve as absolute bastions of love, peace, harmony, and unrelenting courage. But which of these characters is the most pure hearted of all?

The characters evaluated will be:

Kirby (Kirby)
Usagi Tsukino (Sailor Moon)
Son Goku (Dragon Ball)
Superman/Clark Kent (DC)
Madoka Kaname (Madoka Magica)
Twilight Sparkle (My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic)
Steven Quartz Universe (Steven Universe)
Jesus Christ (The Bible)
Jonathan Joestar (JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure)
Aang (Avatar: The Last Airbender)

Round 1: Each character is hooked up to a lie detector and given an interview by a completely neutral person or representative, being asked about very personal questions about their life, relationships, and activities. The lie detector is an incredibly technologically advanced one that does not activate based on physical signs of stress, but activates based on what the character actually says, or is thinking of saying. The one who the lie detector detects last is the one who passes the test. Both the characters and the interviewer have infinite physical stamina to keep talking, but if the interview goes on for more than 72 hours, it will be stopped.

Round 2: Each character will be placed in a simulated scenario in which they are a pretend cook and server at a fast food restaurant. The only rule of the restaurant is that “you can’t say no to the customer or suggest something else that is not exactly their order.” They will be giving out Burgers with varied toppings, fries with varied amounts of salt, 8 different soda foundation drinks, chicken nuggets, mozzarella sticks with varied amounts of cheese, and hot dogs with varied toppings. The burgers and hotdogs cost 10 dollars, the fries, chicken nuggets and mozzarella sticks cost 6 dollars, and the drinks cost 3 dollars. The orders will get increasingly more complicated and specific on the customers’ part. The last character to break the central rule of their restaurant will pass. Every character has infinite physical stamina.

Round 3: Each character is tasked with being transported all the way back to their first appearance, with all of the knowledge that they have garnered over the past years of their lives still with them. They are tasked with speedrunning redeeming every single villain that they have encountered thus far. If they have not encountered any villains that they have directly redeemed, they will be given some of their worst canonical relationships and be tested to see if they will be able to get them on their side. They each have a 2 hour time limit, have infinite stamina, will be transported right next to the villains at their worst, and success will be measured based on the time it took for redemption, and if they couldn’t do it within those 2 hours, that is an even greater knock against their score. The redemptions must be done without any form of fighting or combat, yet the characters cannot die or be injured in any major way.

Bonus Round: All the Allies, friends, or otherwise acquaintances of the characters will be briefly interviewed about how exactly “good” their heroes actually are. Success will be based on how well and how many of these interviewees see their hero as a “pure hearted” individual.

Hello! This is the Dedede main from before!

I’ve recently gotten out of a major improvement plateau, and feel like I’ve really come out into my own in the past week since I’ve implemented a consistent training routine of mine. I’ve started doing parry drills and those have started to show up in elite smash matches and even in tournament sets!

However, there is one major thing that started to come to my mind about certain characters, and that is the true 0-deaths that certain characters have. My capabilities in neutral have greatly improved due to my targeted practice against falling and rising aerials, but despite that, these deadly combos have ticked me off in recent times.

It started when I was doing my nightly elite smash matches, and I was actually matched up against Yogi, the best Rob in NorCal and is currently ranked #18 in the region. In neutral anyway, I was keeping up with them, and despite the fact that it would’ve been a clean sweep if it was a bo3 or bo5, I quickly turned the momentum around to win a few games of my own! However, with the games that I lost, this Rob was seemingly always hitting those true arm rotor 0-deaths that I had completely forgotten about, and it made me discouraged and upset, but I kept playing anyway until they decided to quit the matches. I was glad I now knew I could compete confidently in my region, but there was this lingering sense of doubt in my mind.

A day later, tournament weekend came, and it just so happened that Osh9 (Currently ranked 103 in North America and one of the best Mii brawlers in the world) attended my bracket and was the #1 seed no less. Winning my first match 2-0, I mentally prepped myself and watched some vods of theirs before I started the set, and I was actually seriously competing with them too! A ranked NA player, and I was genuinely making them come to me, forcing my Gordo’s onto them and taking hold of the stage! It was an even 1-1 going into game 3, and we went last stock, but this guy just kept on hitting thrupper combos whenever I felt totally secure in neutral. It was something I couldn’t really get over, especially since it was a close set. Then Osh9 entered the same online tournament as I did yesterday, and was also placed in the same pool too, and the same thing happened again as yesterday, but even worse due to my nerves. I didn’t even win a game.

So thats why I’m making this post. I realized that neutral isn’t actually what’s hard to play most of the time, it’s the ability to prevent/escape these types of combos and optimized punish routes, so that you can secure these types of wins. I learned the tough way that these can be really demoralizing, both in terms of trying to escape them, and not letting them get to your head.

I wanna know: How exactly can you SDI out of or prevent these, and if you do get caught in them, how can you bring the game back and stay level headed?

I’m talking:

Mario ladder and fair combos
Luigi 0-death
Falcon up air - knee of justice combos
Peach/Daisy 0-death
Ice Climber 0-deaths
Meta Knight up air/dair - fair/bair combos
Rob arm rotor 0-deaths
Mii Brawler thrupper 0-deaths
ANY Ken/Ryu/Terry combo
Bayonetta 0-deaths
Steve NIL combos
Kazuya 0-death
Sora nair loops

Even just implementing how to deal with these would be a huge help to me, even if I probably won’t need it until I become globally ranked.