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kchasm · 1 year

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Ryu Number: Xerxes I

Xerxes I, also known as Xerxes the Great, was the ruler of the Achaemenid Empire from 486 BCE until his assassination in 465 BCE. At the time of his ascension to the throne, the Achaemenid Empire ran from the eastern end what's now Pakistan to the west end of what's now Turkey. You might notice that that's about the same amount of empire in about the same location as Alexander the Great had—that's because Alexander the Great was the guy who took over the Achaemenid Empire and made it not-so-Achaemenid anymore.

It was awful big, is what I'm saying.

But let's be honest: You probably know Xerxes I better as the Bad Guy with the nose ring in that one weird Spartan hagiography Gerald Butler was in. Fugging Miller.

Anyway, Xerxes I almost certainly has a Ryu Number of 2, and definitely not a Ryu Number more than 3, but there's some stuff.

The problem with finding a Ryu Number of Xerxes I is that 5th-century-BCE Persian monarchs don't show up in video games that often, for some reason. He makes a historical appearance in the Assassin's Creed Odyssey DLC Legacy of the First Blade...

...but unfortunately, Odyssey takes place too far after the times of myth and legend for anyone big enough to be a Minecraft skin in Greek-mythology-inspired DLC to show up.

It doesn't help, either, that in Assassin's Creed lore, all the "gods" were just members of a Precursor Race pretending to be gods, a la Stargate. No, that's not "Hera," that's a jerk Precursor Person who's taken on the identity of "Hera," all the better to lead mankind around like a clowder of schmucks. She's pretending to be Norse elsewhere. Don't fall for it.

(There's also A Minotaur, which feels like it ought to connect via that Minecraft skin pack, but if I'm understanding the Odyssey lore correctly—and I very well might not be; holler at me—the minotaur the player encounters isn't actually the Minotaur from the myth we know and love, but some random other guy who subsequently got his hands on the Precursor Technology that turns you into a minotaur. Yeah, everything is Precursor People in Assassin's Creed. It's kind of disappointing.)

Of course, you can still get to Xerxes through Odyssey if you want to—a handful of historical characters who don't have Minecraft skins show up—but you'll need an extra step. And if we're going to have an extra step anyway, I'm going to go for the route that doesn't need Assassin's Creed, partially because I haven't played the games yet but mostly because I'm still really disappointed about the Precursor People thing.

Which means, unfortunately, it's back to Miller.

I'll say this: For all that 300: March to Glory is Not A Very Good Video Game, it left me the impression that someone behind the scenes actually did the bare minimum research into the Greco-Persian Wars. Persian commanders Hydarnes and Mardonius make appearances (if only to provide something unique to hit), and Mardonius even survives the movie-equivalent events of the game until an epilogic, post-movie level that takes place during the Battle of Plataea—which is, indeed, where the historical Mardonius bit it. It's not much, but I had to watch the whole dang thing, so I'll take what I can get. Gets me more names for The Chart, besides.

As for connecting this game to Ryu, you can, of course, count on the Ol' Dependable of Games With Historical Figures:

...Or maybe you're not a fan of Anime And Things That Look Like Anime, in which case, try this, instead:

I'm not sure I can explain how weird Spartan: Total Warrior is—by which I'm referring to its existence more than anything in the game itself, though the content's pretty weird, too. For context, Total War is a series of strategy games featuring a combination of turn-based strategy, resource management, and real-time tactical control (so sayeth Wikipedia). There are a coupla Warhammer entries in the franchise, sure, but the vast majority of the games focus on real, historical campaigns and factions.

Spartan: Total Warrior, on the other hand, is a hack-and-slash that took one look at a history book and immediately took a pair of shears to it. The story starts in 300 BCE: The Roman Empire, led by Emperor Tiberius, has conquered almost the whole of Greece, with only Sparta remaining, and Leonidas leads his men into battle to oppose him. Later, the Romans reveal a superweapon powered by the imprisoned Medusa. Sejanus, Tiberius' right-hand man, is a powerful necromancer who kills and resurrects Castor's brother Pollux. One mission involves protecting Archimedes, leader of the Athenian resistance, from assassination.

To quote someone on Discord, this is a game supposedly set circa 300 BCE that "has one side led by a king who died 200 years before, and the other by an emperor who reigned 300 years after (never mind the fact that Rome was still a senatorial republic)." If you forced a too-serious historian to play this game they'd end up on the floor in a frothing heap of rage and/or despair (actually, someone should totally do that; I want to see the Greco-Roman history version of Jonathan Ferguson having to analyze the firearms of Team Fortress 2).

Oh yeah and Beowulf is there.

At some point you've got to appreciate—no, admire, even—the Xena:-Warrior-Princess-level decision to just Don't Worry About It.

And now that we have finished with the indisputable, let us proceed with the first of the hinky. Which is to say: Let's look at God of War: Chains of Olympus.

Chains of Olympus begins with an attack by the Persian navy on the Greek Attic peninsula (where Athens is, incidentally). The opening sequence features (among a whole lot of faceless Persian mooks) this prone-ish fella, who doesn't quite get to operating a ballista, irresponsibly leaving the work for Kratos instead.

(Credit: Migeman)

Inspecting the body after all the local ruckus is over identifies him as "Eurybiades," the "leader of the Athenian army."

Eurybiades was—according to historical record—a real person, though God of War doesn't exactly nail it on the head. Herodotus (who historians depend on more due to him being one of a Very Small Number of sources rather than anything to do with actual reliability) names Eurybiades as a Spartan who, during the second Persian invasion of Greece, was given command of the Greek navy due to some political whatuppery (the Spartans said that if a Spartan didn't lead it they'd be Awfully Uncooperative).

Following this bit, Kratos confronts the King of Persia (identity unspecified), who is apparently personally leading the invasion himself, which seems dumb but was apparently the norm back in those days. I bet we'd have a lot less wars if we made our Presidents actually serve on the front lines whenever they started feeling belligerent.

(Credit: Ibid.)

Anyway, Kratos kills the King of Persia, because if the King of Persia killed Kratos the game would be a lot shorter. Now, there's no watertight confirmation that this is the second Persian invasion—the first one also featured attempted Persian inroads into Attica, and was recent enough that it's not inconceivable for Eurybiades to have shown up, there, too—but if this is the second Persian invasion, and that is the King of Persia that was King of Persia during the second Persian invasion, then that King of Persia is Xerxes I.

And now, I think, you peer up at me, gaze beseeching. "But KC," you say, anxious and afraid, "Xerxes I didn't die during his invasion of Greece! After Greek victory at the Battle of Salamis, Persian forces were forced to withdraw from Attica, including Xerxes I himself, after which he focused on lavish construction projects until he was assassinated fifteen years later for unrelated reasons! He didn't die in the Greco-Persian Wars at all!"

To which I say: You know who else didn't die in the Greco-Persian Wars? Eurybiades. And you know who definitely didn't die in a fit of paranoid, obsessive overwork in the heart of a monumental statue of Apollo on the isle of Delos?

What I'm saying here is that God of War's relationship with historicality is fleeting at best, so maybe Don't Worry About It here, too.

(Incidentally, if it's the first Persian invasion of Greece that Kratos is mucking around in, then that king is actually Darius the Great, who also didn't die in Greece in real life. Darius is in Civilization V, though, so getting his Ryu Number is a lot easier.)

And speaking of Civilization, I've finally come to the shortest route I've found that, for all its likeliness, isn't as definite as I'd like, which is why I've saved it for last. You know how Civilization works, I think—you play a historical civilization (with a historical leader to match), and go up against other historical civilizations with their leaders. Like Darius, just now—he's your leader if you decide to play as the Persians.

Civilization III is like that...but unfortunately not as much like that as a fellow'd prefer. Sure, it's got its civilizations and leaders...

...But there's the occasional glaring unspecificity that's apparently there to make life difficult for me in particular. Yeah, sure, Montezuma here is most likely the second one—the one everyone knows, the one that had the real bad experience with Spain—but are you sure he isn't the first one instead? Like, absolutely sure? The instruction manual doesn't say, you know. How sure are you? Sure enough to bet a dollar? Two dollars? Fifty dollars? Your firstborn child? Why would I want your firstborn child, anyway? I don't want to look after a child; that's literally more work for me.

The Persian civilization exhibits the same problem here. Yeah, of course that's Xerxes I! If the team behind the game is picking out a historical figure named Xerxes to represent the Persians, it's got to be Xerxes I. But at the same time, there's technically nothing saying this isn't Xerxes II, a separate 5th-century-BCE Persian ruler of the Achaemenid Empire. I mean, it's terribly unlikely, seeing as Xerxes II ruled for 45 days before being killed by his half-brother, who ruled for six months before being killed by his half-brother, making him Not Exactly The Sort Of Individual You'd Put The Spotlight On, but Mahatma Gandhi and Joan of Arc are the leaders of Indian and French civilizations in this game, and that's weird, too. Gandhi was never the Prime Minister of India or anything like that, and Joan of Arc was a military leader, not a monarch.

Still, if you're willing to follow the reasonable assumption that the Xerxes here is Xerxes I, then the path that results is pretty dang optimal:

...If this is how you found out that Mahatma Gandhi is in Minecraft DLC, I'm sorry.

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let-me-luve-you · 3 years

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T-Shirt Quilts

Jared Padalecki x Reader

Summary: Every year the SPN crew does Secret Santa and this year you get your best friends name.

Warnings: Secret feelings, fluff, if there is angst you have to squint to see it i think

Word Count: 2,190

@spnchristmasbingo

MASTERLIST

SPN CHRISTMAS BINGO

You watched as Jessica, a PA, walked around carrying a basket with names on paper for the annual Secret Santa. You’ve been working on the set of Supernatural for a few months. You still didn’t know everyone so you were hoping you got someone you knew.

Secretly you hoped it was Jared. You’ve had a huge crush on him since you guest starred last year on two episodes. You stayed in touch between your days on set last season to when you started a full time role this season. It helped that you both live in Austin. Jared quickly became your best friend over the months, but you still harbored those feelings.

Jessica walked up to you and smiled at you. ”Once you draw, let me know who you got so I can write it down. And don’t worry, us PAs have different bowls. My name is in another one.”

You smiled at her and reached into the bowl. You picked up a piece of paper and opened it.

“I got myself?” You looked up at Jessica who was laughing.

“Put it back and draw again.” She said as her laughter died out. She held the bowl up to you once again. You put your hand back in the bowl and grabbed another paper.

You kept your face neutral as you read the name quietly to Jessica since the person you got was a few feet away. “Jared. I got Jared.” You smiled at Jessica as she smirked while writing his name down. Your heart was racing because you wanted to get him something special. More special than what you already have stored in your closet back in Austin.

Jared walked over to the both of you. Jessica smiled at him.

“Jared, have you drawn for the Secret Santa?” Jessica asked holding up the bowl. Jared shook his head. He reached into the bowl and smirked as he read the name. He turned to show Jessica and she smirked again as she was writing. “Well you guys have fun shooting your next scene. I’m off the rest of the day.”

“Bye Jessica. Merry Christmas.” Jared said. You smiled and hugged her as you wished her safe travels. Jared turned to look at you. “I have a few hours until I have to film again and I know for a fact you are here way to early since you are doing evening shoots. So would you like to accompany me to a movie and a nap in my trailer?” You laughed and nodded your head.

That weekend you were walking around shops trying to get an idea for Jared when you walked past a craft store. You walked in just to see what they had. As you walked further into the store, you saw all the quilt supplies hanging on a wall and laying on shelves. An older woman approached you.

“Hello dear, are you looking to make a quilt or are you looking to have one made?” She asked.

“Um… I’m not sure.” You replied honestly. “I don’t even know what pattern I would want.”

“Well let me just tell you more about what we do here so you can decide if you would like one. Holidays are coming up and it would be a lovely gift.” She led you towards the table that had a pamphlet on it. “We do patterns, we do quilt square patterns, and we do t-shirt quilts.”

“What are t-shirt quilts?” You asked genuinely confused.

“They are quilts made out of t-shirts. We cut the shirt into a square and then we put them together like a quilt square pattern. And if you don’t have enough t-shirts to fill a complete quilt, you can add some fabric.”

You thought about all the Always Keep Fighting shirts Jared had given you over the summer. A few from every campaign he had done. Plus you had other Supernatural shirts based off of Sam you could add. “I think you just helped me figure out my Christmas gift for a friend. How long does it take you to make the quilt?”

Normally it would take us a while, but with the holiday season, we would have it done in a week.” She replied happily that she might have made a sale.

“And what time do you close? I have some shirts I would like to turn into a quilt.” You said. “Do you do weighted quilts?”

“We do. It will cost you extra though.” She said. “And we close at nine tonight.”

You smiled at her. You told her you would be back in a bit. Just had to run home to grab the shirts. She smiled and said she would be here to help you when you got back.

You almost ran to your car to hurry. Jared was due to be at your apartment later that evening when you finished shopping. You didn’t want to risk him seeing you home and think it’s okay to come over. You ran into your room once you unlocked your apartment. Quickly opening your dresser, you grabbed one of each campaign. Then you went to the closet to grab the Supernatural shirt. You locked your apartment and rushed back to the shop.

“I’m back.” You said smiling. Linda, the kind lady that helped you earlier led you to the quilting room to design the front of the quilt. After aligning the shirts how you wanted them, she led you to the fabric section to select something for the back. You smiled when you saw a plaid design that just screamed Sam Winchester. “I really like this. It matches the person who is getting this.”

Linda smiled at you as she saw your eyes light up thinking about the quilt and the person it was going to. “This will be a big quilt. Probably around six feet.”

“That’s perfect. The guy I’m getting this for is 6’4.” You said with a laugh.

“I’m sure he will love it. I will give you a call when it is done.” Linda said. You smiled at her and left the store.

Two weeks later you were carrying your wrapped box into the building where the SPN Christmas party was being held. You discarded your present and walked towards Jensen.

“Hiya Jay!” You said. He turned and smiled at you. He wrapped you in a big hug.

“How’s my girl tonight?” He asked as he pulled away.

“I’m doing good. How are you? Ready to see the family?” You asked back.

“Better now that you're here.” You both laughed. “Of course I’m ready to see the family. It’s been a long week. Just glad I get to spend a few weeks with them without any interruptions.”

“I bet. I can’t wait to come see them on Christmas. I miss the little ones.” You said. You jumped as arms wrapped around you from behind.

You relaxed when you heard, “I miss them too. I’m spoiling them. Nearly all the presents under my tree are for them.” Jared said.

“Dang it Jared, I told you not to buy them anything.” Jensen said annoyed. But you noticed he wasn’t too annoyed based off the smile on his face.

“Okay guys. We have the presents to hand out, so please grab a seat.” You heard of the sound system, which stopped Jared from replying to Jensen.

Presents were being handed out by the PAs that did the drawings. Jessica handed you and Jared presents with a smirk before she turned to Jensen and handed him his.

Jared laughed as he felt how heavy his was. “Someone went all out this year. Or I got bricks. Not sure.” Jensen laughed in response.

You noticed Jared was side eyeing you as you were side eyeing him. You were nervous to see his reaction. When given the signal to open the gifts, you slowly opened yours as you also watched Jared. Jared ripped into the present. He pulled the quilt out and stood up to unfold it so he could observe the whole thing.

“Oh my gosh.” You heard him whisper. You looked up to see tears in his eyes. Jensen looked up when he heard his best friend.

“What is it?” Jensen asked. Jared turned the quilt so Jensen could see the Always Keep Fighting shirts lining the front. “Looks like there’s a note with it.”

Whenever anxiety gets the worst of you, remember to Always Keep Fighting. This is your fighting blanket. It is a 20 pound weighted quilt to help you calm down when you feel like you’re out of control. Thank you for being the best role model for people around you and the people around the world. You deserve the world Jared. AKF

Jared read the note out loud. Jensen smiled and started tearing up too. He knew the battles Jared had and he was touched by the person who gave Jared this gift.

You smiled at the two of the gushing over the quilt. You finally turned towards your gift and opened it. You pulled out a photo album. It had a picture of you, Jared, Jensen, Misha, and Alex on the cover. You flicked through the pictures. Some were cellphone pictures of you with the crew and cast, some were behind the scenes photos taken by the on set photographer, and some were from conventions. Each page had a quote on it and each quote related to the photos on those pages. You were amazed by the work someone put into your gift.

As you continued to look through the photos. Jensen and Jared smiled at you. Jared noticed your tears building and sat by you to look through the picture with you. He was surprised you hadn’t noticed his handwriting yet.

“This year we decided to let each other know their Secret Santa now instead of waiting a few days. So please go find your person.” Bob announced over the system.

You looked at Jared as he looked at you.

“Do you like it?” Jared asked.

“I love it. This gift is beautiful. Did you do this?” You asked him. He nodded his head. You smiled bigger. “I will cherish it forever. Thank you.”

“Did you see the last couple of pages?” You shook your head no and Jared flipped to the pages for you. You noticed the majority of them from your time during the summer with him. Some you didn’t recognize. You smiled as you thought these were pictures Jared snuck of you.

“You really are amazing Jared, thank you.” You said giving him a hug. Letting it go on longer than normal.

“Did you get me the quilt?” He asked. You nodded. “It’s the best gift I’ve ever gotten. What made you think to do that.”

“Was shopping around and Linda, the one who made it, gave me the idea.” You said. “I was worried you wouldn’t like it. I didn’t figure you would want a blanket for Christmas.”

“Are you kidding me? This is the best. I love it. I’m going to use it all the time. Why make it weighted though?”

“Weighted blankets are supposed to help when you feel anxious. It’s supposed to help make you feel grounded. Figure you would need that when things get overwhelming.” You said. Jared smiled at you.

Little to yours and Jared’s knowledge, you were being watched by everyone. They had set you guys up to get each other. Hoping you would both admit your feelings to one another.

“Y/N, can I tell you something.” You nodded at the taller man.”Seeing this blanket and seeing how much thought you put into it makes me have to tell you this today. I can’t hold it back anymore.”

“Okay. What is it?” You asked.

“I like you Y/N. I have since you guest starred.” He said nervously.

“Well I wish you would have said something sooner, because I feel the same.” You said back.

“Really?” You nodded. “Since you guest starred?” You nodded once again. “You could have said something too, you know.” You laughed and leaned towards him. Jared pushed a piece of hair behind your ear and leaned in. His lips just hovering over yours. “Is this okay?” He asked.

“Yes.” You whispered so quietly, Jared wasn’t sure he heard you. He leaned forward and finally connected your lips in a soft kiss.

The room erupted in cheers. You both pulled away, remembering your surroundings.

“About time you two.” Jensen said. “If all we had to do was make you secret Santa partners, we should have done that a long time ago.”

“You guys planned this?” You asked.

Jensen nodded, “Yeah. I was the one that mentioned it because I was sick of hearing about your feelings for one another but neither of you telling each other.

Jared laughed as he pulled you closer, as everyone else went back to their conversations. Jensen silently watched his best friend and someone who is becoming like a sister to him.

“I’m kind of embarrassed.” You whispered to Jared.

“Don't be.” He said looking you in the eyes. He gently grabbed your chin and brought your lips to his. “Merry Christmas Y/N.”

#spn christmas bingo #spn christmas bingo 2020 #supernatural christmas bingo #supernatural christmas bingo 2020 #jared padalecki #jared x reader #jared padalecki x reader #jared padalecki rpf #secret santa #jared padalecki one shot #jared padalecki imagines #jared padalecki fanfic #jared padalecki fanfiction #spn rpf #supernatural rpf #spn christmas

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rpmemesbyarat · 3 years

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RP meme from Scream Queens Ep 4 "Haunted House" (Note: Offensive content, use at own discretion)

A girl died in this tub.

There's no record of any of these names except for one.

Oh, my god, there's two of them!

I own Halloween. It's my jam.

Halloween is the most important day of the year. It's the one day on the Gregorian calendar where you're allowed to go around terrifying children and not be branded a psychopath.

I am a future network news anchor who's super classy and has almost no fat on her body.

A lot of my fans are, like, friendless dumpy coeds at this or that nursing school in one of this country's various national armpits.

They put down their hot pockets and bask in the warm glow of what it feels like to love me.

I went shopping with my comatose grandmother's credit card and bought presents.

Oh, my god, it says my name!

I hope the severed leg brightens up your trailer park.

You're a bright light in my life, and I wanted you to know how much you impress me with your frumpy spirit.

You are so devastatingly mediocre and adorable!

I can't wait to see you in person, but before that, I'd like to see you post this all over social media, to exploit it for my own gain.

Aah! It's a rotting jack-o'-lantern!

Aah! This box is just filled with blood!

She got me a razor apple!

I stole this cadaver head from an ophthalmology student just for you.

You're the most important person in the world.

So you didn't see anyone in a red devil costume entering or leaving the house?

Are you coming to the precinct pig roast this year?

Come on, she's obviously the killer!

Do you mean to suggest I changed out of my nightgown, strapped myself into a skintight pleather red devil costume, climbed out a second-story dormer, and shimmied to the ground with a chain saw before entering a window I had left open, tried to kill you, then leapt out the window, climbed back up the wall, changed back into my nightgown,

and raced downstairs, all in the course of about 90 seconds?

Clearly that's got you a little freaked out.

I'm not gonna hold any of this against you, and I'm gonna let you be my date for the faculty Halloween party.

Attempted murder!

A guy was almost killed tonight, okay?

Now, no, I'm not a detective, hell, I ain't even a cop, but what I am is somebody who watched every one of those Cosby mysteries, okay?

See? Dismemberment!

I am so sorry that I pushed you out of my car and drove off real scared.

I just can't believe that How To Lose A Guy In 10 days is your favorite movie, too.

In precisely two and half minutes when we go in there, you let me do all the talking.

What are you dressed as?

Oh, you have a squirrel. Don't see that much anymore.

Breakfast is almost ready, we got meat today.

What can you tell us about that night?

Now, we will keep your name out of it, of course.

'm a vault,

And to get in this vault you need a key. Now, you may ask, a key to what? It's a key to meaning. Once you've found the meaning, you don't need the words. You know what I'm saying?

Please, continue with your story.

Have any of you ever heard of "negligent homicide"?

We need to dispose of this body on our own. Now, I've got everything we need in the kitchen to make sausages out of her.

I'm gonna go downstairs, shut this party down, and then we'll get the body out of here.

Somebody has to watch after the baby.

Can you at least turn on the radio?

Just leave the details to me.

We can't just act like this never happened.

She's the devil, that one.

I looked at that baby up close. I know my peas and carrots. That baby was a girl.

Your support doesn't matter.

My campaign needs a theme?

My pumpkin's drunk.

I'm hosting a haunted house to raise money for sickle cell anemia.

Why are you holding a fund-raiser, though?

I don't think you understand the magnitude of the miscalculation you just made.

I can assure you you will not be winning an election anytime soon. And when you lose, I am gonna make it my lifelong passion to destroy your reputation.

You're a stuck-up little sociopath, and everybody in this room knows it.

It might behoove you to recall that everyone here witnessed you actually murder someone

Just sharpening knives.

Put the knives down.

I don't know what came over me.

How very adolescent of you to think of this.

It vaguely smacks of something my six-year-old sister would be excited about.

It's the most disgusting disease in the history of mankind.

You get it when you don't even understand the most basic tenets of oral hygiene.

Just give the dang thing its pot of gold already!

I ain't got no candy!

Bet you're a sexy dirt-covered girl. That's what I bet you are.

Sometimes I come out here and I just rub my hands on the gravestones.

I get you more than anyone.

I also find the thought of dead bodies extremely arousing.

I just don't understand why I have all these dark feelings.

You know, I just think our generation's had it too easy, you know? We haven't seen enough horrible stuff. There's no awesome diseases randomly killing people. There's not really any awesome wars to go off to and witness horrific things you can't unsee. We, like, pulled out of all of 'em.

Sometimes I just don't even feel like I'm living, you know?

The only time I feel anything is when I'm thinking about chopping up a body.

And here you are, saddled up with an uptight girlfriend who freaked out for no other reason than the fact that you just wanted to fantasize about having sex with her lifeless corpse.

Oh, my god, I got a total chub right now.

Not scary enough.

She'll let you in the back door.

What could be scarier for an adult than a child coming to murder them?

Isn't that all of our greatest fear? That the pain, the regrets, the mistakes of our youth will destroy us in our adulthood? That we can't escape our inner child. One we would rather forget, but who, at the end of the day has all the power.

Why are you lying to me?

Something does not make sense.

You got to give me more here, okay?

I don't understand what you're getting at.

Are you on bath salts?

Why are we even here?

This house is haunted.

There's a legend in this neighborhood about a woman who wailed about her dead children. And this was the house she lived in.

These dumb ol' kids are smoking crack.

I think it's incredible what you can find out with just a quick trip down to your local library.

This can be one of the rooms for the haunted house.

What exactly do you plan on doing at this haunted house?

I was thinking we could blindfold folks and make 'em put their hands in a bowl full of grapes we peeled, so it'll feel like eyeballs.

I think the reason you want to have a haunted house party is 'cause a haunted party is like a buffet for murderers.

Yeah, yeah, you can just go around killing anybody you want and ain't nobody even gonna even notice.

Just like you chopped the arms off that dumb-ass golf guy.

Why do you have it out for me?

So now you look at me and see everything you could've been.

I hope you have a good time at you haunted party and get to murder lots of folks.

You have this way too thought out.

Isn't this kind of nice?

My sense of personal identity is completely external.

I really don't have much to offer.

I've found that my particular style of speaking and gesticulation is extremely off-putting to most boys. And girls. And anyone.

I need to eat. My blood sugar is crashing.

I'm tired of depriving myself of joy and sustenance.

I may die at the end of a serial killer's blade, but I refuse to die hungry.

Which one of you ladies would like to be my costume for Halloween? I'm going as "dude having awesome sex with you."

I mean, what in the hell's wrong with the world where a guy can't even whistle at a chick just to tell her she looks hot?

I recently took a women's studies class. Yes, because it was a requirement, but I learned a lot anyways. Like the culture that says it's okay for a man to objectify a woman for her appearance is the same culture that pressures girls as young as ten to have eating disorders.

So you're basically saying I'm the one responsible for making you look hot?

When you treat us like meat, you're no better than him!

I'm not really sure how you got my number, but I like how you took the initiative and texted me where you wanted us to meet.

Do you think you're man enough to take me inside that house and attack my crack?

I'll sure this house has an amazingly romantic basement.

Hey, so, uh, a little awkward since we're about to bone down and everything, but, um, what's your name?

Smells like roadkill.

I've never been so scared in my whole life.

All right, if we go to the police, they're gonna see I'm still rocking a mad sidepipe, and they're gonna think I had something to do with it.

We have to warn people.

All right, everybody listen up! All of your lives are in danger!

There are dead bodies! Dead bodies. Real-life dead bodies.

Did you say dead bodies?

Those are like the most lifelike dead bodies I've ever seen.

Is that a real dead body?

There are five dead bodies in that house. Laid out in horrible and deliberate macabre poses.

You are not leaving this house tonight.

You make it harder and harder to believe that you're not the killer.

I found out something really interesting, and now I have a theory.

Everything is weird about that story.

I mean, it's too big a coincidence.

We have to figure out who that woman was.

#rp meme #rp memes #rp starters #roleplay memes #roleplay meme #roleplay starters #scream queens

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ghosty-schnibibit · 4 years

Text

much earlier in the day than usual taz liveblog! ^o^

the only reason this is going up so early is i haven’t slept yet lmao, i fixed my sleep schedule for about a month and then went right back to being nocturnal.

i've spent the last four nights or so staying up til around ten in the morning binging the magnus archives (i'm about halfway through season three right now) and enjoying the hell out of it. for anyone who followed me bc of my taz liveblogs, rest assured i'm still going to be keeping up with graduation and taz in general :P

without further ado, here we go!

i fucking forgot about “thundermen”

awww, argo made friends with the kitty ^u^

snippers my sweet prince

"i think i take a great deal of delight in that" fitzroy you lil bastard man ilu

clint asking the important questions here lol

you've just described hell travis

did clint already forget the name of the school

jesus that's depressing argo

god i wish i'd had a gary during college to remind me of stuff

i vill tell you the story of melon

i love firbolg and argo so much, they are my favorite best of friends

aww firbolg ; _ ;

fitzroy i am suspicious of where your folks even are

yes fitz get your cloak back you silly boy

i love firbolg so much holy shit

i hope we get to see the boys hang out over spring break, that sounds like a fun episode

"that's good narrative!" travis ilu

oh god the capitalism owl is back

“i vill not do this thing” mood

justin's about to hit us with that sad shit i just know it

called it ; _ ;

... well damn that made me sadder than i expected

i'm still very suspicious about that dog

fitzroy you dumb little shit ilu

make sure higglemis isn't pulling a sazed lmao

you are being very paranoid fitz but that’s okay

"you don't curse well" he's a good sweet boy

jesus christ fitz maybe don't say this to the dude in charge of the school

fitzroy my sweet boy what is your deal, please tell us

... so fitzroy basically wants a venue to prove himself to be a good person that doesn't revolve around performance and artifice. he wants a way to gain power on his own merits without relying on status to boost him up, and felt knighthood was a better way to accomplish that than going to a school where he’s basically being trained to fit a specific role in life

i can see where higglemis is coming from with his worldview given that he's been forced to play second fiddle to his brother for so long

i have a sneaking suspicion that hieronymus thinks he can better manipulate or keep fitz under his thumb in the villian track

fitzroy you dumb himbo baby, my sweet stupid son who i love so much

well that was fucking tense as hell, jesus fuck

yes, on to my sweet boy

c r e e e e e p y

ilu jackyl

why would he want a pocket watch though?

i feel significantly better in argo's ability to do challenge this now that there aren't any life altering consequences

this is going well so far

argo this is such a dumb plan, you are smarter than this my boy

"i'm drawing a word picture" ilu clint

argo this is a dumb and bad plan and you need to roll for this!!!

clint my sweet son

yeah!!! that is how it works!!!

A R G O W H A T T H E F U C K

i cannot fucking believe that worked holy shit

idk if it's just because the creepy voice is gone but i'm trusting jackyl more and more

ARGO WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING

take your caffe back to chicago

he got a fuckin tattoo holy shit

what is this reference justin

argo is deeply committed and i love it

this whole bit has been so good

oh damn that was quick edit, holy shit, i didn't even realized we were going into the money zone

there we go, there's the regular intro, i missed it

yay! my favorite girl's birthday :D

awww, argo and firbolg being bestest buds is so wonderful

a knight's tale is the only one of those movies i've seen, please juice don’t dunk on me like this

i know i keep saying this over and over but i love their friendship so much, it warms my heart dearly

fitzroy my sweet boy, he cannot cuss for the life of him

"as partners" y'all

i love them so much, my sweet loves

god this is cute as shit, i am sold, i am sailing away on the fitzrain ship

... argo were you about to give her the same thing???

argo where the fuck did you- oh okay, nevermind lol

oh firbolg my sweet son

oh my god this is the best holy shit

rainier is my sweet darling girl and i love her so much

i need art of this so bad this sounds so cute

argo why are you busking at your dear friend's birthday party

good god argo really is shaping up to be the magnus of this campaign in terms of rolling and bonuses

yay! festo is back :D

what was that noise travis

festo is going to dance with the wee crabby, i love this so

WHY IS THERE DUBSTEP NOW

i need this as a ringtone asap

i am so bad with names, is buckminster the nice one or the malfoy one??? oh yay good he is the nice one

oh no, what happened to leon? D:

"he wouldn't leave me!" ... are they together?

gross griffin, gross

yes! show love to your sweet crab!

i love these sweet dumb friend boys

oh dang, so the blacksmith professor is in the group too??? interesting

not liking that emphasis on "when someone needs stopping," this is extremely interesting but i'm worried about the narrative implications of this, vís a vís argo being made to turn on his friends

this is so powerful, wow

i'm gonna cry but in a happy way ; u ;

oh snap this is already so cool, wow wow wow

how many teachers are in on this, dang

WAIT WHAT??? why do they want dirt on fitzroy?????

so higglemis was the one who controlled him???

"you may forget" WHAT IS GOING ON

OH FUCK, HIGGLEMIS WHAT ARE YOU UP TO? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO SWEET LEON???

dang there was a lot of development this ep, plot and character-wise! i’m very worried for literally all three of my boys, but also very excited to see what travis has planned from here on out now that some conflict appears to be brewing!

see you guys next right thursday~ ^u^

#taz #taz spoilers #the adventure zone #taz graduation #ghosty liveblogs taz #i can't believe i'm actually posting a liveblog within four hours of the ep going up #this has got to be a new record of some sort for me lol

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angelrinisadork · 6 years

Note

What’s your favorite Resident Evil game? Also what are some of the things you don’t like about RE7?

This will be a boring answer because it’s the most common one, but it’s Resident Evil 4. But I can’t help it! 4 was action horror done right (something 5 and especially 6 failed to understand) and RE4 Leon is peak Leon.

Sigh…as for 7 there are a loooooot of things I don’t like about it. I don’t want to get into them all. But for one thing I hate the setting, I hate how it feels like RE in name only, I hate the enemies (seriously we went from zombies to FUNGUS MONSTERS ARE YOU KIDDING?!), I hate how it feels like a rip off of Silent Hill instead of being you know-RESIDENT EVIL, the characters are mostly bland-especially Ethan. They don’t feel that interesting to me, they don’t grab at me, and the first person thing is really annoying also because it takes me out ironically more than pull me in. In the old games we had fixed camera angles, from 4-6 and Revelations we had over the shoulder…so not only cutscenes, but in gameplay I felt like I really got to know the characters. Some games work in first person perspective, and yes I’m aware the creators originally wanted the first game to be first person but I don’t care what was originally considered, this is the 7th game. It’s supposed to be a continuing story. Yet we have nothing but new characters and a complete plot that feels so disconnected to the whole universe and they lazily connect things through “oh look at this easter egg here” or just slapping “Redfield” at the end. ALSO THAT GUY LOOKS NOTHING LIKE CHRIS! Oh and seriously, Chris is with Umbrella? Are you kidding me?! I don’t care if the DLC explains it finally among other things in the story, IT’S BAD STORY TELLING WHEN YOU ARE PURPOSEFULLY LEAVING CONTENT OUT OF THE STORY JUST TO HAVE IT IN SOME AFTERTHOUGHT EXTRA! ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT PLOT POINTS!

Basically to make a long story short, it felt like another run of the mill horror game that at times felt like a Silent Hill rip off when it wasn’t being so generic that was lazily tied in to Resident Evil to desperately claim it’s not a Resident Evil game in name only (when it is), the main characters are boring, the setting is boring, the monsters aren’t even zombies or more highly evolved versions of the zombie virus stuff like in 4 and 5 (I may not like 5 but at least it was trying to be consistent and instead of ripping off silent hill they were instead being a resident evil 4 rip off…BUT HEY AT LEAST IT’S STILL RESIDENT EVIL THEN IRONICALLY).

Is 7 better than 6? Oh without question it is, in every shape and form. Better boss fights, better mechanics, not a mind-numblingly dumb plot, the heroes are for the most part consistent in characterization, and it’s actually horror and not just an action movie with zombies…(however it’s not really hard to be better than Resident Evil 6 so that’s not exactly setting the bar high)

But here’s the thing…as bad as 6 is, as far as 6 strayed from the feel of Resident Evil…6 at least was 1) TRIED to tie things into the overarching continuity (again it tried, it still sucked but it didn’t lazily slap in easter eggs and references and go SEE PROOF THIS IS IN THE RE UNIVERSE GAAAAIZ), 2) at least had returning characters a long with new ones, 3) Chris looked like Chris even if he was OOC for half his campaign, 4) HAD ZOMBIES NOT FREAKING MOLD AND FUNGUS, 5) as dumb as the characters acted half the time AT LEAST THE MAIN HEROES HAVE PERSONALITY AND AREN’T BLAND AND FORGETTABLE, 6) As bad and terrible as 6 is and make no mistake it’s bad and terrible…7 to me is mostly forgettable. 6 while awful and irks me to no end, IT’S MEMORABLE! Even the things I hate about 6 I can at least remember every DUMB STUPID THING! I was so bored with 7 that I actually FORGOT some of it’s plot holes that normally would piss me off to high heaven normally with other games. I saw a video that was explaining some of it’s plot holes then I suddenly remembered the dumb and was like “OH YEAH THAT IS STUPID WTF?!” But it’s just so dang forgettable!

And it wasn’t even that scary to me either, it felt so generic scary like every other horror game I’ve ever seen in modern years. It’s so jarring to me because I recently have been playing Resident Evil Revelations, and like….everyone praised that game when it came out but NO ONE TALKS ABOUT IT ANYMORE! Everyone goes all “Oh! 7 brought it back to it’s roots finally! We finally have a game for the first time bringing us back to the survival horror roots!” UM?!?!?! DID WE COLLECTIVELY GET AMNESIA AND IGNORE REVELATIONS 1 & 2?!?!?!?! Okay I hated Revelations 2 but that’s not the point, the point is we have 2 games! 2 freaking games that brought us back to the survival horror roots of the older games that did it BEFORE 7! Stop pretending 7 did it first because it didn’t!

Also Resident Evil Revelations is quite honestly a perfect game imho! I mean we have returning characters and new characters, we have a new setting (like seriously being trapped on a cruiseline with new types of zombies in the middle of the ocean is TERRIFYING) that is unique to the series but tries to tie into the overarching continuity. We have the over the shoulder camera angle from the newer games but the haunting and unnerving tone of what could pop at you around the corner and the overall scary feelings from the older games! It honestly felt like a perfect marrying of what I love from Resident Evil 4 (and the few good things about 5) along with the things I love from the older games.

It’s perfectly fine if people disagree with everything I’m saying but I freaking love Revelations and ignoring it in favor of acting like 7 is what brought us back to our roots first is a crime AND I WILL NOT HAVE THIS

#g00doldboy #Erin does responses #unpopular opinion #anti re7 #anti re6 #anti rev2 #anti re5 #re4 #re rev #resident evil #sorry it took me forever to answer this #i'm bad at noticing when I get asks and answering them sometimes...many times...nearly all the time...*nervous laughter*

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theabominableblogger · 6 years

Text

Rewatching “Revenge of the Sith”

Ohhhh yeahhh, I’m going there.

My apologies in advance because this post is so long...

*silently boogies out to 20th Century Fox jingle and ends up throwing popcorn everywhere*

*mouths along to opening theme*

WAR!

“Evil is everywhere.” Dude, this is Star Wars we’re talking about...

Just a heads up, I am so freaking glad that we have The Clone Wars because honestly, it has a lot more flowing character development when it comes from jumping from “Attack of the Clones” to this movie, especially Anakin.

Lens flare!

Holy snot how many Republic ships are there?!? Did the Separatists come with every single ship imaginable? Is that why?

Aaaaand that’s a dead body.

The hell are those things?

“Nothing too fancy.” Says the man [Obi-Wan] who dramatically drops his robes whenever possible.

*imitates the buzz droids*

“IN THE NAME OF-” Finish the sentence, Obi-Wan!

R2′s taser thingy looks like the Twelfth Doctor’s sonic screwdriver.

What if they didn’t notice the shield in time?

Boom! End of saga. Cue end credits music.

Ohhhh this asshole.

WHAAAATTT’SS THE SITUATION, CAPTAINNNN???

*imitates the droids saying “Roger roger”*

How come Anakin and Obi-Wan aren’t getting jostled around when the elevator car first stops?

*quotes the entire “No loose wire jokes” conversation in the elevator*

Is that the same freaking chair that’s gonna pop up in “Return of the Jedi?”

Anakin and Obi-Wan fight Dooku but every time their lightsabers clash, it’s Obi-Wan going “Hello there”

Did Dooku just backwards kick Anakin away? Oh my God...

DEW IT

*Anakin kills Count Dooku* Well done, prequels. You done didn’t use your Christopher Lee effectively enough.

ALL BATTERIES FIRE, FIRE!

Wilhelm Scream!

*imitates droid saying “Reversing stabilizers...”*

Holy crap, you can actually see Grievous’s face kind of twitching with anger when he commands the droids to level out the ship. Dang.

Freaking Obi-Wan’s little yell of horror when he wakes up...

*ugly cackles*

*quotes the entire ray shields scene*

I cannot freaking believe that the TV show took the time to make freaking sure that Anakin never met Grievous until this movie.

Actually, yes I can. They have a goddamn script continuity department.

How come one of them didn’t take one of the electrostaffs?

The Separatist flagship just tore in half when it entered the atmosphere and yet I remain completely unfazed.

“8 plus 16...” Pfftt, what the heck does that mean?

Guys, I think I found the origin for the Dramatic Hair Flop of Angst in TCW

Pretty sure that’s the Millenium Falcon at the bottom hangar

“Oh, I’m not brave enough for politics.” *cough cough*

Obi-Wan gets a whole freaking bus to himself. Chaos will ensue.

How has no one noticed Padme just hanging out next to one of the pillars?

“There were whispers... that you [Anakin] had been killed...” Really?

Anakin’s reaction to Padme telling him that she’s pregnant is actually really good.

Wasn’t there like a deleted interaction where Anakin first accused Padme of sleeping with someone else while he was gone but then they decided that was not that great of an idea?

The music that plays when Grievous exits the shuttle is pretty sweet

*imitates Grievous saying “Yes, Lord Sidious?”*

*claps with each word* This is not how you write romance, [George] Lucas!

Oh I didn’t realize that you could actually hear Anakin’s robotic arm move when he puts his face in his hands

“How long is it gonna take before we start being honest with each other?” You [Padme] should have asked that before you two got hitched in the first place.

Ladies and gentlemen, the absolute worst therapy lesson in the history of Star Wars: Yoda telling Anakin to basically get over himself and accept the sudden, incoming death of the people he loves.

“What must I do, Master Yoda?” MOTHEREFFING IGNORE HIM!

“Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.” NOOO, OH MY GOD...

There’s actually a whole video by Pop Culture Detective that went into detail how terrible the Jedi Council were when it came to giving Anakin emotional support.

“Be careful of your friend Palpatine.” And your pal, Friend-patine.

I just noticed that there are less chairs in the Jedi Council room

“The Council doesn’t like it when he [Palpatine] interferes with Jedi affairs.” Then why the heck don’t they confront Palpatine about it?

Holy crap, I just realized that this movie came out 13 years ago.

“Hold me, like you did by the lake on Naboo...” Was that really “holding” though?

Anakin’s delivery of “At last!” sounds like Darth Maul when he said “At last we will reveal ourselves to the Jedi” in the first movie.

This entire opera scene should be a dead give away to Anakin learning about Palpatine being the Sith Lord. The minute Palpatine even said the word “Sith” should have raised a few red flags...

This entire Darth Plaguesis explanation is so good and ominous. Just the minute Palpatine finishes the story and tells Anakin that there are other ways to gain that sort of power, you can just gradually feel the dread setting in for the rest of the movie. You just know something bad is gonna happen (besides Anakin becoming Darth Vader)...

Look at the way Obi-Wan’s sitting in his chair!

Oh my God... the Wookies just did a Tarzan yell...

Headcanon: he’s [Anakin] checking for updates about the Siege of Mandalore

OK, everyone craps on the Utapau storyline with the fight scene between Obi-Wan and Grievous but I actually think this is one of the best parts in the movie.

I love the design for the Pau’ans

GUYSSS I LOVE BOGA SO MUCH YOU HAVE NO IDEA!!!

Someone get me a plush animal of her on my desk pronto!

HELLO THERE!

GENERAL KENOBIII... YOU ARE A BOLD ONE...

That pose though!

That spinning helicopter move Grievous does while stalking toward Obi-Wan was always really cool to me. A little extra, but still cool.

ARMY OR NOT... YOU MUST REALIZE... YOU ARE DOOMED!

Oh I don’t think so!

*imitates Obi-Wan using the Force to throw Grievous*

Wait, so how many times has Cody had to hold onto Obi-Wan’s lightsaber when Obi-Wan freaking drops it?

Death Star plans?

Big question: so how old is Anakin here? He’s 19/20 in “Attack of the Clones” and there’s at least a one or two year time jump in S3 of TCW.

Yo, that means he was like late 30s/early 40s when he died in “Return of the Jedi.” Well shoot, man...

Yeah, Obi-Wan, let’s freaking kick the crazy homicidal cyborg. Great idea.

Is Grievous just covered in gasoline or something because he just went up in flames *snaps* just like that.

Ohhhh this scene with Anakin and Padme looking at the windows of their respective places is really good...

Look at freaking Anakin here!

George Lucas deserves any and all sins for the bad dialogue for Anakin because Hayden Christensen can really act when he’s not given any dialogue and he’s just told to react.

So, with that, henceforth, there shall be no dissing Hayden Christensen on my blog.

I AM THE SENATE!

Dramatic window break!

Palpatine’s lightsaber just freaking deactivated as soon as Windu kicked it out the window

Wowwww... the prosthetics on Palpatine look.. bad....

UNLIMITED.... POOWEEERRRRR!!!

I just realized that Anakin kind of walks over to Palpatine on his knees before he pledges himself to Palpatine

Why Darth “Vader” though? Is there any special reasoning for that?

AN: Holy crap, there’s an hour left and Anakin has just turned to the Dark Side...

Pfftttt....

THESE SHOTS THOUGH

Man, I need to download more tracks from this soundtrack...

You can tell that that’s green screen behind Cody

*in best Palpatine impression* Execute Order 66!

Nooooooooooooo, Boga!

Aaaaand everyone dies and it sucks now!

Ughh, Aayla Secura...

NOOOOOOOOOO PLO KOONN!

What planet is that?

Here’s my question: in Rebels, how the heck did Thrawn get Gree’s helmet? Was there an imperial campaign out on Kashyyyk and he found it somewhere?

That small matte painting shot of the Jedi Temple burning is actually really pretty now that I see it again

Yooooo can we talk about this padawan though?

Kashyyyk has twin moons...

So what happens to Chewie after this and before the Han Solo movie?

Heeeyyyyyyy I know that kind of ship!

“Have faith, my love [Padme]...” Uhhhh... Padme should have picked up on how... off that line was

How has NO ONE in the Senate (besides Organa and probably Mon Mothma) picked up on Padme’s pregnancy?

*imitates Palpatine* Mustafaaarrrrr....

“Could be a trap.” It’s Star Wars. There’s always a trap.

What’s that planet right next to Mustafar?

Random xylophone scales!

Yoda is taking no prisoners!

Where are the lightsaber/balster holes in the younglings? Yoda said that they were probably killed by lightsaber so where are the marks on their bodies?

Yellow eyes...

“So this is how liberty dies: with thunderous applause.” Best. line. Ever. Someone send flowers and chocolates to Natalie Portman.

“I've recalibrated the code, warning all surviving Jedi to stay away.” Aaaagghh and we see it in Rebels and in the Last Padawan comic!

Don’t mind me casually dying

I just noticed that gradually throughout this movie, you can see Obi-Wan get grey hairs in his sideburns

*Obi-Wan sneaks onto Padme’s ship to Mustafar* Where did he come from?!?

“You [Darth Vader] have restored peace and balance to the galaxy.” *in best Anakin voice* OK... now what?

“And together, you [Padme] and I [Anakin] can rule the galaxy! We can make things the way we want them to be!” Wow, “The Last Jedi” is just smackin’ me in the face right now

Anakin... you’re breaking my heart!

That is just extremely bad timing on Obi-Wan’s part

YOU HAVE DONE THAT YOURSELF!

Your new Empire?!?

DEMOCRACY!

“Only a Sith deals in absolutes.” A what?

That’s a pretty nasty lisp you have there. Might wanna do something about that.

You know how this Yoda vs. Palpatine fight could be more amazing? Just add helium

Honestly, for the BIG DEAL fight between Anakin and Obi-Wan, it just goes on for a little bit too long.

Plus when it’s intercut with the Yoda vs. Palpatine, the latter is way more entertaining (hello, two most powerful peope going head to head with actual Force lightning being involved?)

Are they [Anakin and Obi-Wan] just kicking each other with the Force now? Wow...

NOT EVEN HITTING EACH OTHER!

Seriously, they’re just banging their lightsabers together and calling that a fight. C’mon... actually try to hit the opponent!

Duel of the Fates!

*Palpatine throws the Senate chairs at Yoda with the Force* So I threw the Senate at him!

Honestly, you could cut out this whole balance thing on the sinking balcony and mining buildings/walkways

Commander Fox?

ExPLOsions...

Noooo... cut this out...

“Into exile, I [Yoda] must go. Failed, I have.” And yet people complain about Luke doing the exact same thing in the sequel trilogy

You’re not even trying to hit each other!

FROM MY POINT OF VIEW, THE JEDI ARE EVIL!

IT’S OVER, ANAKIN! I HAVE THE HIGH GROUND!

YOU WERE THE CHOSEN ONE!

“You were my brother, Anakin. I loved you.” Uuuggghhhh....

I actually read somewhere that Ewan McGregor actually asked George Lucas to change the line to past tense instead of the original present tense. Which is sad, so thanks Ewan.

Can’t you just put out the fire with the Force?

How did 3PO and R2 get an unconscious Padme on board?

Where is this?

*Palpatine’s shuttle lands in Coruscant* It was a dark and stormy night...

Y’know, at this point, me comparing Anakin being repaired and transformed into Darth Vader and the creation of Frakenstein’s monster is almost inevitable at this point...

Stupid question, but what’s the significance of the names “Luke” and “Leia” concerning the themes present in the movies? Or is that up to people like me who enjoy the meta to find that out?

He [Darth Vader] just killed that medical droid next to him...

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Do not want....

“...[Qui Gon] learned the path to immortality...” In the TV show!

I like how the last line in this freaking movie is “Oh no!” and it’s from 3PO...

Triceratops rams!

The design for Padme’s funeral garb is actually Iain McCaig’s favorite concept art

How did they develop TIE fighters so quickly?

Oh my God, the dude they got to play Tarkin... oh God...

Definitely not Peter Cushing

*gasp* Leia’s theme!

Random eopie noise!

Oh my God, “Binary Suns”...

Obi-Wan’s like “Great, now I gotta help a pair of random, separate Force-sensitive teenagers and their astromechs in the near future...”

Wait, they put Ewan McGregor in top billing?

“With Samuel L. Jackson as Mace Windu” Thamuel El Jackthson!

Holy crap, I forgot Joel Edgerton plays young Uncle Owen

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jspark3000 · 7 years

Note

Hi J.S. Park! I've been reading your book "What the Church Won't Talk about..." because I am currently struggling a lot with stuff and on top of that feeling a very dry season with God. I honestly love reading through your thoughts and stories on tumblr, and reading through this book has brought me a renewed perspective on things- so thank you J.S. Park for being a light in so many lives! I don't know if you have written anywhere on it before- but have you ever shared your thoughts on shame?

Hey dear friend, thank you so much for your encouragement and your kind words. I really needed them today; it’s been a discouraging time. Also the book you’re referring to is here for anyone interested: http://www.amazon.com/What-Church-Wont-Talk-About/dp/1502529564/

Here are a few thoughts about shame:

1) Shame is a very poor motivation for long-term change.

Shame is that sick physical feeling of being washed through with a debilitating shiver; emotionally it can be an internal bomb of embarrassment, grief, anger, or regret; psychologically it feels like losing self-worth and value. We try to escape this feeling as much as we can—it’s an awful, nauseating, dizzying flush that your entire body recognizes on impact.

Shame is socially weaponized to coerce others into “doing the right thing.” Other times, it’s just to make someone feel like a terrible person, like they could never do any good. In the best case scenario, “shaming” would create the desire to reflect and change their ways for the better. It provokes a sort of social conformity in which you must fall in line for the common benefit of everyone else.

You can see shame tactics being weaponized everywhere. Think of every “public shaming” blog, made famous first by Tumblr, that calls out your fave celebrities for being problematic or mocks the guy who uses the entire four-chair table at Starbucks. Think of books like Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother or movies like Whiplash. Think of the model who was recently charged for “fat-shaming” (the actual charge was invasion of privacy, and rightly so). Think of this recent method to help quit smoking, in which if you relapse, you donate the amount of money you’ve saved off cigarettes to a campaign that you hate (this combines shame with aversion). Think of a typical evangelical preacher, who uses fear, shame, and fire-and-brimstone to manipulate you into “getting right with God.” Think of terms like “slut-shaming, virgin-shaming, gay-shaming”—and the list goes on.

In the short term, some studies show that shame can make change. However, other studies show that shame is destructive and does permanent long-term damage.

I believe that shame doesn’t really work as a motivation for long-term change. All it does is modify behavior to look like it’s conforming, without actually getting to the root of the issue.

For a great talk about shame and vulnerability, watch Brene Brown’s TED Talk, the most watched TED Talk of all time. Her research is the absolute seminal work on this topic.

2) Shame and guilt are two entirely different things.

You’ve probably heard this by now, but guilt is saying, “I did something bad,” while shame is saying, “I am bad.”

It sounds like splitting hairs, but our approach to both can have entirely different outcomes.

If we can adapt to guilt—”I did something bad”—then we can focus on the how and why of the behavior and even internally change our motivations.

If we adapt to shame—”I am bad”—then there’s no room to look at how and why we do things, and instead can only use punishment and external deprivation to make change. This is turn only makes us craftier and more likely to suppress our true motivations without changing them.

We’ve all seen this before. You can have two people who attend church sit side-by-side who look exactly the same: they show up on time, they donate to charity, they bring coffee and donuts, they read their Bible everyday, they mow your lawn for free. But one is motivated by the anxiety of possible punishment and always compensating for a terrible gap inside them, as if they’ll always be found out. The other is motivated by doing good purely for the good in itself.

Of course, our motives are very messy and never this clear-cut. We could be a blend of both. But the next time you mess up, pay attention to your thoughts and feelings. Do you feel guilt or remorse or even anger about the thing you did? That’s more or less normal. Or do you disproportionately beat yourself up and wish you could disappear for a week? There’s probably buried shame that’s been carved into you by condemning voices over a lifetime—and really that’s no fault of your own. Many of us have been indoctrinated since birth to only respond to shame, and so we’ve become maladaptive.

3) Shame, despite its damage and ineffectiveness, still points to something deep and true.

I believe shame points to something very real about our human nature: that we know something is desperately missing inside, and we need no less than the divine to be made whole. Underneath our attempts at glamour and glory and prestige, we’re dreadfully naked underneath. The feeling of shame, whether that feeling has come about by right or wrong methods, points to our constant imperfection, that visceral longing that we’re always reaching for something just outside our reach.

So when someone says, “Don’t shame me!” or “Shame doesn’t work,” they’re absolutely right. Shaming doesn’t address the actual need. It only bludgeons someone into good behavior, and only works as long as the bludgeon is there. When it’s not, the behavior just regresses and reverts. The human spirit is a rubber band, always trying to snap back into place.

But to say “Shame is a lie” is actually false. When someone shames someone else, they’re not creating a feeling, but exposing a feeling that points to a human truth. We fall short. We’re incomplete. We’re not whole.

In other words, The person who does the shaming is in the wrong and it won’t work. The person who feels the shame should recognize that this feeling points to a deep human need for wholeness and goodness, and should not ignore these implications.

4) As a Christian, I believe that Christianity both exposes and solves our shame problem.

On one hand, it’s too easy to say “shame is bad and evil,” as if the feeling itself must be banned from culture. The thing is, a world without any shame would be a dang shame. If you swing the pendulum too far this way, then there’s no accountability or justice—and in my opinion, I think it’s become harder to find people who can genuinely admit, “I was wrong, I’m sorry, and I hold myself accountable to doing better,” and then following through. Socially and politically, it seems almost impossible these days for anyone to embrace their shame as a reality which must be confronted.

On the other hand, everyone lives with shame, and it’s a terrorizing, anxious burden in the basement of our hearts, often filling us with such dread that we 1) over-work ourselves to death, 2) hide our true selves under a mask of smiling conformity, 3) reinforce our pride to avoid any self-correction, or 4) stay terrified in the dark of making any moves at all. All these options end in spiritual implosion.

In the Christian worldview, shame points to my sin, and sin is the human condition of both my selfishness and emptiness. When I feel shame, it’s simply one more thread that traces back to the very real problem of humanity.

In a perfect Garden, we once had no shame at all, because we had all the wholeness and validation we could ever want. But ever since our disconnection from God, we’ve all been clawing back to Eden, and sometimes, someone points at us and laughs. The pointing and mocking are wrong, but the clawing is our very real struggle for the divine love we once had. It is, like Genesis 3 says, a kind of curse, or perhaps a poisoned sickness, in which we’re trying to find the remedy. And culture says, Do this and that and the feeling of shame will stop. But it never stops. It only changes the behavior and not our nature.

When Jesus died on a cross, he was exposing the high cost of our sin. This is what it takes to claw back to Eden—you’d have to beat yourself up to the point of bloody shreds. Jesus placed himself under the cost of our curse, so that now and eternally, we’d know that our shame was revoked. He did this out of love, but even better, out of grace, a costly love. When Jesus resurrected, this was showing he didn’t just pay a cost, but he also wants an eternal relationship, a relationship without shame. Think of that. He not only died for sin, but came back to live with us, walk alongside us, love us into who we could truly be.

Think of every other relationship you’ve ever had, whether it was with a person, with money, beauty, reputation, sports team, housing association, government, church, career. If you fail those things, they will shame you, and even if you change for them, they have you by the neck, and you’ll still feel unfulfilled. It’s a constant balancing act with unstable, unpredictable forces. These idols promise wholeness, but crush you the second you fail.

With Christ, if you fail him, he’s already taken the shame. He’s already forgiven you. And when you follow him, he actually fulfills you. There’s not an ounce of punishment or penalty in him towards you. He is purely grace. His love is such that, if you mess up, he already knew it was coming, and so instead of compensating for all the mess before, you can actually become who you are meant to be in Him now. No other person, philosophy, system, or interaction offers such grace when you fail.

And only grace, in the end, is the pure motivation that causes true heart transformation. It may take longer, but that’s why it’s grace. Shame is like laying down bricks that never grow, but only keep shape. Grace is like planting seeds, that push through the dirt to the sun, so that your whole being is different. With shame, you only change for what it looks like. With grace, you change because you want to, because you can’t help but look at a savior and be tenderized and galvanized towards His goodness.

— J.S.

#waylandheat #guilt #shame #religion #faith #psychology #Christianity #Jesus

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hicks-and-homos · 7 years

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I am upset about the gay subplot in beauty and the beast

I saw beauty and the beast last night and it was magical and I was so excited for lefou’s little gay subplot because like yeah representation in a major disney movie how #progressive

but like

I am so upset about it and obviously spoilers so you have to click the thing

okay WHAT the HECK was that even.

let’s start this journey right from when I read a post on facebook from one my conservative high school friends about how upset they were that lefou was gay and like “don’t mess with the classics” “whats the point of him being gay” “just keep him straight” and all that dumb crap. so anyway they linked to an article with an interview with the director and i can’t find the article BUT

the director was basically like “yeah we think lefou is kind of a boring, two-dimensional character so we thought to ourselves: what if we added a story about this character really dealing with certain aspects of himself, and coming to a realization at the end of the movie? I won’t spoil anything....but there’s a scene at the end that will really charm our audiences ;)”

so i was like well dang OKAY nice disney

and in the back of my head i thought to myself “ok self don’t get too hype because the way that interview went, it looks like disney is really milking this gay thing because like WHAT a good marketting ploy”

right? because like im not claiming I know ANYTHING about effective marketting campaigns but I do think I know enough about how people think that I can say that adding some #controversial garbage to the movie would stir a lot of people up, getting more people talking about the movie and posting about it on social media, and add a whole different level of interest that wasn’t previously there. AND people who wouldn’t normally go see a movie musical about a classic disney princess would probably be more inclined to go see it if it’s some groundbreaking controversial movie featuring the first openly gay disney character.

so im like “okay there’s a chance this is a marketting strategy but whatever at the end of the day even if they made lefou gay to make money, at least its a gay character”

so i saw the movie (which was so so great it was full of magic and i loved emma watson and ewan mcgregor and audra macdonald and whoever played the beast and gaston also the special effects were unreal)

and the entire time lefou was on stage I was basically like “oh man hes gonna be so gay im ready hes gonna be gay af oh man here we go” and at that part in the beginning where he talks to those girls and is like “it’s never gonna happen, ladies” i was like “well okay the gay guy being in love with his straight best friend is kind of an overused trope but whatever representation is representation” and then every scene he was in I was basically like “OH MAN WHAT GAY STUFF IS HE GONNA DO NOW”

but he just never did any gay stuff at all. he didn’t do anything romantic toward anyone. but I still had hope. like the same hope i had for the patriots during the superbowl. and like how my hope for the patriots payed off in the end, i knew my hope for the groundbreaking first gay disney character would pay off in the end, just like the director hinted at.

AND THEN.

AAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNDDDDD THEEEEEEEENNNNN.

LITERALLY NTOHING HAPPENED. I might be mistaken, but I think the “gay” ending that would “charm” audiences was when lefou is showing ACCIDENTLY dancing with a guy for literally half a second.

for those of you who are cool with the spoiler I need to explain what I saw (thank goodness I saw it because if i blinked i would’ve missed it):

basically its the end of the movie belle and the prince are at their wedding audra is BELTING the title song and there’s this huge ballroom dance scene. everyone is dancing with everyone and like switching partners and all that. And during one of the partner switches, lefou manages to accidentally start dancing with another guy.

and in the 10-15 frames that was shown of that encounter, literally NOTHING romantic happens. the vibe is not “oh im dancing with a guy and like wait he’s cute?? and i like it?? could i possibly be gay? am i learning about myself?”

NO ITS NOT THAT.

the vibe is “oops silly me! I’m a secondary character and my only character trait is that im silly josh gad who plays exactly one character in every project ive ever been in! of course a goofball like me would misstep and start dancing with a guy because two guys dancing together is a JOKE that we should LAUGH at but not THINK ABOUT because in the time it took to read this sentence the moment passed because it last about .2 seconds!”

SO BASICALLY YALL

I WAS HECKING RIGHT ALL ALONG

The whole “lefou is gay but its a secret” thing was a marketing ploy. and like a successful one too. People were gonna see BATB anyway, but I’m sure more people were planning on seeing once there were movements to boycott it and all that garbage. It just generated interest and disney made money.

WHICH TRUST ME WOULD BE TOTALLY OKAY IF lefou ACTUALLY had a gay subplot!!!!!!!! Whatever!!!!!!! Generate all the interest you want!!!!!! but like.......have the thing we’re interested in?????

Because since there WASN’T any gay subplot, Disney made money by essentially LYING to people and using FALSE ADVERTISING and literally EXPLOITING the gay audiences who spent money to see the first ever gay representation in a disney movie.

so anyway this is a pretty long post about something thats ultimately pretty small and i get that but I’m still like upset about it. And I get that “its a childrens movie it doesn’t matter” and “it was a still a good movie it doesn’t matter” but i dont really want to spend the time to write about why it does matter. this is mostly just venting.

Overall, really good movie 8/10, but still pretty upset about this.

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immaculate-benediction-batch · 7 years

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"IT'S ALL FINE" - QUEERBAITING IN BBC'S SHERLOCK... By J. Elizabeth The stage is set. The curtain rises. We are ready to begin. Series four of BBC’s Sherlock, that is. We are only a few weeks away from the promised land. After three years, not including last year’s special "The Abominable Bride," we will finally see our favorite consulting detective back in action. The fandom is certainly in need of some beekeepers because we are abuzz right now. As we celebrate this award winning, international hit show, it’s only fair we talk about its flaws. And there are flaws, let’s not kid ourselves. From how it handles female characters to its lack of people of color, it could be better, despite the best intentions from the showrunners. The flaw I’d like to talk about now is the excessive amounts of queerbaiting. What is queerbaiting? Well, it’s a term used by queer fans of media to call out TV shows/movies/comics/etc that intentionally insert queer subtext or "add homoerotic tension between two characters to attract more liberal and queer viewers with the indication of them not ever getting together for real in the show/book/movie." So how does Sherlock do this? Let’s talk about the obvious "jokes" first. In the very first episode, Sherlock Holmes mistakes John Watson’s questions about his relationship status to be a come on, or that’s how mainstream audiences are supposed to perceive it, anyway. And I laughed when I first saw it four years ago before I realized what it was I was laughing at: the absurdness of a gay relationship between iconic literary characters. John having to defend his "not gay"-ness becomes a running joke that appears in literally every one of the nine episodes. And every time, Sherlock, the man who John himself has stated has to have the last word, never corrects anyone’s assumptions about them. In that very first conversation over dinner where John questions his sexuality, Sherlock says women are not his area and that he doesn’t have a boyfriend. The whole thing is written to keep his sexuality ambiguous. If it were just jokes, that would be one really crappy thing, to poke fun at homosexual relationships in that way. But there are genuinely stark, emotional moments that cannot be a joke, and if they are, that is exceedingly cruel. For example, in the original canon, Irene Adler was Holme’s one exception to his disinterest in women. In the BBC version, Adler is a lesbian dominatrix. She has a conversation with John in which she accuses him of being jealous of Sherlock’s attention on her. John, once again, defends himself by exclaiming “I’m not actually gay.” Irene responds with “Well, I am. But look at us both.” John doesn’t respond to that. Is that a joke? I’d like to note that John repeatedly says he’s not gay. Which he’s probably not but, guess what, gay and straight aren’t the only sexualities. Later on in the series, John flips his lid when he finds a woman, Janine, in 221B after he’s moved out to be with his wife, Mary. This is a very funny moment, because John and I had the same expression at seeing Sherlock kiss a woman. This funny moment gets a little harder to laugh at later on, before John knows it’s a sham, when he sees Sherlock propose to Janine. He looks so happy for him! I can’t get into all the nuanced exchange of looks or phrasing or how they costume Sherlock’s parents the same way Sherlock and John dress (whoops, I guess that one snuck in there), but there are overt references to a perceived relationship by characters within the world. Mrs. Hudson believed them a couple for years, and she is the Queen of the Foreshadow. But I don’t have time to mention how Sherlock pasted John’s head on the body of the Vitruvian man, or how he literally brought himself back to life after being shot by Mary to save John, or how he was reading John’s blog post on how they first met when he O.D.’d on the plane ride to his inevitable death (I did it again, dang). Of course, how we perceive acting or costume choices are objective. The Kuleshov effect proves that. So it makes sense that if a bunch of queer people were watching this show, they’d see parts of themselves in it. And guess what, a lot of queer people are watching this show. Queer women, to be more precise. A show as massively popular as Sherlock attracts a very diverse audience. But if you look at the hardcore fandom, a vast majority are women and/or queer identifying people. What results in all these queer people being attracted (or baited) to this show is a space for them to exist without the social constraints of being out in normal life. What fandom has done for me, personally, has given me a space to think in terms of queerness as if was not something strange about me but the norm in that environment. It rewired my thinking and helped lessen my own heteronormative behavior in my art and life. This space is full of artists and writers who are exercising their craft where they feel safe to do so. This space is full of academics who study media and LGBTQA+ issues within it. And that is a beautiful, amazing thing. So it hurts all the more when the showrunners, Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss (the latter being a married gay man) dismiss the queer side of the fandom. Sometime after the 2016 San Diego Comic Con, Moffat and Gatiss did an interview that directly addressed the perceived relationship between John and Sherlock. It wasn’t pretty. Moffat, clearly passionate about the topic, and frustrated at the way his words have been twisted, “It is infuriating frankly, to be talking about a serious subject and to have Twitter run around and say oh that means Sherlock is gay. Very explicitly it does not. We are taking a serious subject and trivializing it beyond endurance.” - With an Accent Trivializing it. I wish to express to Moffat that this level of representation of a bisexual character is far from trivial to me. I get a distinct feeling that the creators see the John and Sherlock pairing fans as straight, young girls who want to fetishize male queerness. I can’t help but wonder if the creators would be more accepting and less harsh to fans if we were queer men instead of queer women. Mark Gatiss goes on to say: “Don’t blame us for things that aren’t there. It is infuriating. We get pilloried for these things as if our show [...] has to have the shoulders to bear every single issue and every single campaign point. You can’t do that. It’s our show, they’re our characters, they do what we want them to do, and we don’t have to represent absolutely everything in that ninety minutes.” Gatiss is correct in saying they don’t have to represent absolutely everything. He’s right that they don’t have to bear every issue on their shoulders. I believe that’s what every other show would say as well. But because of that, everybody is saying “We shouldn’t have to be the only ones to tackle these issues,” and nobody is actually doing anything about it. Sherlock has a real opportunity here to have its own chapter in queer media history, but why should they bear that weight on their shoulders, right? Even if they go with the flow and stay safely in the status quo of straight relationships, I’d be able to handle that if they didn’t talk to fans who wish otherwise so harshly. Also, is anyone going to remind them that John Watson and Sherlock Holmes aren’t really their characters? They’re writing and producing high quality fanfiction, but they’re men, so it’s not trivializing when they do it. Moffat says the whole pairing is making a serious topic into “something extremely silly.” My sexuality is not silly. Wanting to see a major television and literary character portrayed with the same sexuality as me is not silly. Maybe they’re right. Maybe everything we see isn’t actually there. Maybe they were all just gay jokes. Maybe we’re the assholes for blowing these jokes out of proportion. Then again, maybe this is some next level form of gaslighting, telling us we’re a bunch of wackadoos for interpreting this little exchange at John’s wedding... as anything but a happy look between best friends at one’s wedding. Look at these guys, totally thrilled about all the life decisions that led them to this point. No pain or regret here. You don’t even have to make it canon, just don’t talk to us like we’re stupid, teenage girls insulting you with our enjoyment of your show. Enjoying it so much, in fact, we are dying to see a part of ourselves validated in that world. And even if this was some elaborate ruse and they really are planning on making this pairing canon, this treatment of the queer and/or female fans isn’t justified. You can't talk down to us like that for the sake of a storyline reveal. It’s much more likely this is just a textbook case of queerbaiting. I hope I’m wrong and Sherlock ends up on the right side of queer media history, but that interview made that hard to believe. Sherlock will end up in queer media history, though. That much is certain, and the fandom can take credit for that. It’s up to The Powers That Be to choose which context it will be discussed in. Regardless, series 4 is coming and no matter what happens, no matter what Moffat and Gatiss say, this is our show too. Not just theirs. Nothing can take away the art we’ve created, the stories we’ve written, or the friendships we’ve made. No matter what happens, your identity is valid. Let this be an inspiration to all you future creators out there, to bear on your shoulders the issues others are afraid to. To challenge the way stories are told. To challenge whose stories get told. Be inspired to do more. To do better. One day, you and I both will be leading the industry, will be the future rulers of media, and... http://www.thefangirlinitiative.com/2016/12/its-all-fine-queerbaiting-in-bbcs.html?m=1#comment-form

#sherlock #queerbaiting #johnlock #john watson #stephen moffat #queer

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goodra-king · 5 years

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Transcript of Creating a Winning SEO Strategy

Transcript of Creating a Winning SEO Strategy written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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John Jantsch: Hey, this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by rev.com. We do all of our transcriptions here on the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast using rev.com and I’m going to give you a special offer in just a bit.

John Jantsch: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Brian Dean. He is the founder of Backlinko.com a place where you can get actionable SEO advice. In fact, I so highly endorse it and his work, that you can find my picture on the homepage saying so.

John Jantsch: And he’s coming to us today from the little country of Genovia, somewhere in Eastern Europe. So, Brian, thanks for joining me.

Brian Dean: Hey, good to be here John.

John Jantsch: You missed the joke. Where are you really calling from?

Brian Dean: I’m in Lisbon.

John Jantsch: In Lisbon.

Brian Dean: I was just going to let it slide. I was like…

John Jantsch: Genovia is a fictitious country, surely you know this, in Princess Diaries with Anne Hathaway. Great movie.

Brian Dean: And Andre the Giant.

John Jantsch: So no pop culture reference. Just went right by you.

Brian Dean: I would keep those out of the rest of the interview.

John Jantsch: I did actually have a question, this is my own curiosity, a lot of SEO folks do… you have a lot of clients in the U.S. I’m assuming.

Brian Dean: I actually don’t do client work.

John Jantsch: Oh, right. You have gotten out of that.

Brian Dean: Just courses.

John Jantsch: So if somebody was in your shoes or just even somebody like myself. I live in Kansas City, Missouri. I have clients in Canada and different places. What’s the best way to localize results? In other words, if you’re trying to check on results and track results, sometimes it’s a little challenging if your IP address is in Kansas City, Missouri. I was just curious if you were doing work for U.S. companies, are there tools out there that would or hacks that would allow you to kind of see what people in Kansas City, Missouri would see or people in Canada would see?

Brian Dean: Yep. Yeah, there’s a couple ways to do it. If you just want to get U.S. results and you’re not that concerned with the very geographic area like a state or a city, you can use a site I use all the time. It’s like if you open your browser and it suggests the top sites you go to, this is how much of an SEO nerd I am, it’s called proxysite.com. I wouldn’t even link to them in show notes, John. It’s kind of a shady site, but what it is basically is it’s like a web proxy so you can go to Google, use an IP address that’s in the States and search through it, and the cool thing is is that it’s not a VPN so it doesn’t have your browser history or any of that stuff implementing it. It’s almost like a virtual machine, like you’re using some other computer so the results are really good. They’re just totally unaltered by anything else. When I think of where do you rank, that’s for me the gold standard.

John Jantsch: Yeah, because a lot of times people don’t realize your browser history. I search all my favorite sites all the time and so in my view of search, they’re going to probably rise to the top, aren’t they?

Brian Dean: Oh definitely. That’s a big part of it, especially a page that you’ve visited before, Google will bump that up big time. You definitely want to go… that’s the easiest way because you can just check. If you want to get really into the nitty gritty, like someone searching in Kansas City, you can use a VPN, like… I don’t want to endorse any, but there’s tons of them. You can just find the city and state that you’re in or near and then search through an incognito window in Chrome or a private window in Firefox, and that’s basically what that person would see if they search for that.

Brian Dean: Rankings fluctuate all the time and all that stuff, but you’re getting a really good idea of what it looks like.

John Jantsch: I’m bummed out sometimes because I see pages of my own. I think, oh look, that’s ranked really high and then I do an incognito and it’s like not on page one anymore. I’m like dang it.

Brian Dean: Yeah, that happens to me. That’s why I go to ProxySite because it’s really fast and I only check through there because then I don’t have that… I’ve had that happen to me a million times.

John Jantsch: We’re in the middle of 2019 when we’re recording this show and you have a new course, or you’ve relaunched your course on SEO training. I guess the question, just because there is some evolution going on all the time, what’s kind of new big news in the world of SEO in general?

Brian Dean: I’d say the big shift that’s happening right now is user intent and Google’s ability to measure that and the importance of creating your site with user intent in mind. Basically what that means is the better your site can match what someone wants when they search for something, the higher it’s going to rank. All the traditional stuff like including your keyword on the page and getting links and having a brand and all that stuff will still help you, but at the end of the day, Google is getting really good at figuring out what people want from a search and making sure those results get bubbled to the top and those that don’t drop.

Brian Dean: Actually, over the last year we increased our organic traffic by like 80% just by going back to old content and totally changing it for user intent. To give you an example, we had a page that was optimized around the keyword SEO campaign, so John when you think of someone searching for SEO campaign, what do you think they are looking for?

John Jantsch: I would say that they are probably… they could be looking for somebody to run the campaign for them, they could be looking for an example of a campaign maybe, they could be looking for tips.

Brian Dean: Exactly, yeah. It’s good that you said that because there’s no one user intent usually for a keyword, there’s multiple. If I’m searching for keto desserts and you’re searching for keto desserts, we might want two different things, you know what I mean? There’s always going to be multiple user intents, but the point is what I had on the page didn’t really satisfy any, so it was… what it was was one example of one link building strategy, not even SEO. Just one guy how he did a link building strategy that I had taught and how it worked for him. I kind of shoe horned that keyword in there because I knew that people search for it and all the other traditional stuff, and it ranked for a while.

Brian Dean: Then about two years ago, it looked like the page got penalized. It went from top five to nowhere and it’s been hanging out in the third page ever since. I was like man, what’s happening? It has the keywords, it has links, it has all the traditional stuff, but it didn’t match user intent. People searching for SEO campaign were landing on it and they wanted what you said. They want an example, they want some sort of template, they don’t want a link building case study. It doesn’t make any sense. So I went back and totally reconfigured the page where now it’s a step by step how to create an SEO campaign.

Brian Dean: I included some of the stuff in the old post in there, just so I didn’t have to delete it all, but it’s literally 90% different and now it ranks number one for that keyword. Literally the next week it was number one. Google was able to measure, people reacted to it differently, it had the updated date which helped it get a temporary boost, and it stuck because it satisfied user intent.

John Jantsch: And you just said a whole bunch of things there that I think come under the category of going back and repurposing your content, because there are a lot of people that listen to folks like you and me and they started blogging a long time ago and they’ve got 100 blog posts that they wrote 10 for the last eight, ten years that they haven’t really gone back and looked at. They haven’t seen ways to sort of internally link them and so I think for a lot of folks, they could get a huge boost just by going back and refreshing old content, couldn’t they?

Brian Dean: Definitely. I would even put that under the category of what’s big right now in SEO, because I just came across an agency that’s all they do. They’re an SEO digital marketing agency. At the end of the day, it comes back to SEO as you know. They’re basically an SEO agency and all they do is update your old content. They position it a little differently. They do X, Y, and Z because there is kind of a lot to it, but the point is that when you sign up as a client they don’t create any new content for you, they don’t set up your social media, they don’t optimize your site.

Brian Dean: All they do is go back to your old stuff and reoptimize it and make it a better fit for user intent, and they’re getting awesome results because it’s so much faster to do that than to start from scratch and okay, let’s come up with 100 keywords. Let’s hire freelance writers. Let’s make sure we have screen shots and then publish it slowly over the course of weeks and months. You can do it in days and you’ll get a huge lift on some important pages.

Brian Dean: I would even put that in the category of what’s working right now at the top, and if you combine it with updating it but also saying how can I make this better and better match the keyword what someone wants, it’s a winning combo.

John Jantsch: I would add to that restructuring too, because I tell you where we’ve gotten huge, huge mileage is by taking that content, updating it, but then linking it all together, I mean in a logical way. So creating what I’ve been calling hub pages that are like the ultimate guide to local marketing and I basically create it as an outline or a course table of contents almost and then link all that content back together so that it becomes a little separate hub on the site and I think that that restructuring, we aren’t even doing as much as we should be doing to refresh the content, but just that restructuring immediately sends it through the roof.

Brian Dean: Nice, yeah. That’s another thing is the internal linking. I’m not… I usually don’t… I would say I don’t recommend internal linking but I don’t say you don’t need to internal link, because most sites don’t have the authority to make it worthwhile. Duct Tape Marketing does because it’s a huge, respected site with tons of links and it’s been around a long time. So when you internal link from page A to page B, it’s sending a lot of link authority to page B, but with most people they just internal link and nothing’s really going around. You know what I mean? It’s like a pipe with nothing in it.

John Jantsch: I was going to say the further part of that though is the structure. It’s not just an internal link. I mean, you’re right, those are nice, but we’re setting these up almost as table of contents for a topic that makes sense. I mean there’s probably 2000 words on that page, but then links off to in a very logical way. I think what a lot of times people, we get so fixated on the SEO value and we forget sometimes about the utility of that for the person who actually comes to that page who then clicks on 10 pages, bookmarks it, shares it, dwells on it for an hour, and I think that to me that’s the part that sometimes people miss when we start talking about SEO is that when you get actual users what they do on the page is so important as well.

Brian Dean: Yeah, that’s a really good point. It’s almost like a resource page 2.0 that you’re creating. The page itself has content to help you but it’s an intro to something greater, your other resources that you already have. Yeah, I’m looking to do more of that myself. I did a little bit of that, I have a guide called how to learn SEO, and it does link out to some other sites but it’s mostly my own stuff and it’s for that exact reason.

Brian Dean: If someone wants to learn SEO, I didn’t have a page to send them to be like here is the stuff you need to read. There wasn’t one place to send them, so now there is. So yeah, it’s a really good idea. I plan on actually doing more of that for these different topics, because that worked really well, kind of similar to what you saw when we approached it with this is a valuable resource, but more importantly it links to all this other stuff so it’s like one stop shopping.

John Jantsch: And then as you pointed out, we do link to some external resources and then we’ll reach out to those external resources and say, “Look at this amazing page that ranks really highly and we linked you. You ought to link to it,” and amazingly some of them do.

John Jantsch: This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by rev.com. There are so many ridiculously valuable reasons to order transcriptions. You can write entire blog posts, heck, you could write an entire book by just speaking it and having Rev put together a transcript that you can then just bring on home. I mean, if you want to record a meeting so that you have notes, again, over and over, there are so many good reasons. If you just want to take notes when you’re listening to something and you just want to record those notes and get it. It’s amazing what the reasons you could find for doing this.

Rev gets those transcripts, as I said, they do our podcast. They get those transcripts back to you lightning fast and I’m going to give you a free trial offer. If you go to rev.com/blog/dtm and that will be in the show notes too, but you’re going to get a $100 coupon to try them out and I suggest you do it.

John Jantsch: Let’s debunk some myths. Are there any myths still hanging around from kind of first version of SEO that people are still propagating?

Brian Dean: That’s a good question. I mean, there are so many the issue is choosing one. I mean there’s 100. The thing is SEO, it got people kind of crazy. You were kind of getting there before when you’re saying you’ve got to remember users at the end of the day, but it’s easy with SEO stuff to completely forget users and just kind of act crazy. I was there. I’m not coming from a judgmental place because when I started in SEO, I launched my first site in 2008. I lived in a little apartment in New York. My favorite marketing book was Duct Tape Marketing. I had it in my bedroom believe it or not back then. And I was SEO, you need to do SEO. I didn’t even think about creating an awesome site, creating awesome content. It was all about tricking the algorithm and I didn’t really break that bad habit until 2012.

Brian Dean: To answer your question, I would say the number one myth that people have is that Google likes a site that has a lot of content coming out all the time, this kind of big site, fresh content, need a lot of content myth that Google somehow has this preference for these big sites. It’s really not true. I’ve worked with sites that pump out 10 articles a day. I’ve worked with some that publish once a week or once every two weeks and there’s no correlation. It’s all about creating stuff that Google users want.

Brian Dean: Sometimes if you can swing it, like if you have a staff and you have a writing staff and you have an editorial process, you can put out multiple pieces of content a day that all check those boxes, but for most small businesses, including mine, it’s better to stay small.

Brian Dean: I’ll give you a good example. Like you mentioned, John, we just had a launch in my course and to do that we sent a lot of emails so we didn’t publish anything on the blog for about a month now, or three weeks, almost a month, and organic traffic has actually stayed remarkably consistent across the month. It’s like 0.5% higher than it was before without publishing anything. So Google doesn’t care that we didn’t publish anything because everything we already have is satisfying users and it continues to rank and that’s where most site’s traffic come from. I’m not saying don’t publish anything ever again, but the idea that you need to have this pedal to the metal publishing philosophy, I think it does a lot more harm than good.

John Jantsch: It actually taught people to publish crap.

Brian Dean: Yep, exactly. That’s what it came… exactly. Because it was Thursday and you’ve got to publish on Thursday and you don’t have anything good to say so it’s five reasons why X is important type of stuff. Yeah, and because it did actually work for a while. There was an update called Google Caffeine back in the day, it was probably 2006, that did give a preference to not just fresh content but sites that were putting out stuff, but then blogs blew up and it didn’t make any sense because every site was doing that. It didn’t need to be in the algorithm anymore.

John Jantsch: Yeah, and it really became important for them to start focusing on quality, them being the search engines, to focus on quality and I think that that probably goes more towards this idea of less but better.

Brian Dean: Yeah, exactly. Because you think Google 2006, 2007, if you searched for a really niche keyword, like how to write a press release or something, there were some results but there weren’t that many. They didn’t have 10 awesome results to put on the front page. Now they have plenty. It’s all about curating the best 10 and if you just put out the 50th best, you’re going to be in 50th place in Google, but if you work the extra mile to make the best, you have a shot of hitting number one.

John Jantsch: Okay, Brian. Not of course in the last 10 years or so, but did you ever put any words on pages and make them the same color as the background?

Brian Dean: No. That was one thing I… I’ve done black hat stuff, but I never did that.

John Jantsch: That was always my favorite. You’d go look at a website and you’d look at the source code and you’d go what is all this stuff?

Brian Dean: They just had the same keyword like 100 times.

John Jantsch: But you couldn’t see it.

Brian Dean: No, I never did that. I’ve done blog networks and whatever. But if it worked, I would have done it but by the time I got into SEO that was already kind of old hat.

John Jantsch: Since you mentioned blog networks, Google has explicitly said they’re a no-no, particularly… there are some ideas that it’s good content that’s curated but there certainly are people that are doing it just as an SEO play and Google is saying no, no, but it challenges… they can’t police it that well and it works. So how… I run across small business owners all the time that have been sold stuff like that that Google is saying we don’t approve of that, but it’s hard to sell them off of it because they’re like, “Well, look at the results it’s getting.” How does one sort of handle the fine line between what works and guidelines?

Brian Dean: It’s a tough one and the funny thing… good rule of thumb that I like to keep in mind is when Google says not to do something it’s because it works. If it didn’t work, they wouldn’t have to warn you, right.

John Jantsch: But I guess it would also eventually signal that they’re going to spank you eventually, right?

Brian Dean: Yeah, it’s kind of a shot across the bow. They warned people for years before 2012. They had an update called Penguin that just destroyed websites, including my own from back in the day. But at the same time they wouldn’t warn against it. So if they’re saying don’t do this, it means it’s working. If it is, they know it and they’re like, “Hmm, well we can’t really stop it with the algorithm so we’ll warn people until we figure something out that the algorithm can do.”

Brian Dean: What I would say to people is just the risk usually isn’t worth it. What I like to do, I usually say, “You know what? It’s up to you.” I don’t want to get on my high horse and start telling people what’s right and wrong. I say, “Look, it’s your business, it’s your site, it’s your call. If I were you, I wouldn’t risk it because what you’re doing is you’re getting a tiny boost in organic traffic and a lot of times compared to what you would do if you put in the same effort with white hat stuff, but you have this sort of Damocles above your head that one day you could wake up and it goes to zero and as someone that’s been through that, I can tell you it’s devastating.” That usually at least plants a seed where they’re like, “Hmm, maybe there’s something to not doing this.”

John Jantsch: Yeah, and it’s a shortcut that is probably zero benefit for your customer and there are a lot of businesses out there, the SEO folks, they’re trying to get their folks to rank, that turns into customers, but that’s the way I always view it is like is this something that would make my site more useful to customers and if the answer is just flat out no, I think that’s a pretty good rule of thumb too.

Brian Dean: I agree. Another one I sometimes… I don’t know where I heard this but it was basically like white hat SEO is when, which is a legit way to go about ranking, is where you could show Google everything you’re doing and they’d be fine with it. Anything that’s not that is probably a black hat. Like you’re getting away with it, but if Google did some sort of audit that shows everything you do with SEO and there was something you couldn’t show them, that’s probably something you should get away from, in my opinion.

John Jantsch: I wonder if we could take about five minutes, and I’m going to put you a little bit on the spot for a case study type of idea, because you can read a book how to do SEO, but the fact of the matter is what your business does, what your business objectives are is going to dictate maybe what your priorities should be in SEO. So for example, a B2B national company that sells say like software as opposed to a B2C local company that does I don’t know, basement waterproofing. Their SEO needs, challenges, priorities are probably different. Given that example, could you kind of say, “Yeah, that national software company needs to focus on X, Y, Z, whereas that local company probably needs to make sure they focus from an SEO standpoint on A, B, C.” Is that enough for you to kind of give us some guidance?

Brian Dean: Plenty. Yeah, the B2B software company I would 100% focus on creating content that your customers, around keywords that your customers search for. You’re a SaaS company, you hopefully [inaudible] and customers all the time. It’s a matter of figuring out what they’re searching for when they’re not searching for your software.

Brian Dean: So HubSpot is a great example. Very few people are searching for CRM software or CMSs, the stuff that they actually sell. Most people that are HubSpot’s customers are small business owners that are searching for stuff like how to get leads, how to blog, how to run Google ad words campaigns, how to run Facebook ads, all that stuff and HubSpot has completely crushed by almost ignoring these buyer keywords, which are only a tiny [inaudible] focusing instead on these information [inaudible] in front of their customers as a lead and then closing them on the phone. That’s the whole business model and it works really well. That’s what I would focus on as a B2B sales company, just tons have grown this way but HubSpot to me is the best example because they’re just absolutely crushing it.

John Jantsch: I think the key there is they focus not… because nobody wants what we sell. They want their problem solved and so they focus on what all the problems are, particularly problems early in the journey that can sort of endear them and get them [inaudible] who are these HubSpot? That’s a real key. Most websites are optimized for that person who’s got their credit card out ready to buy because they think your product or service solves their problem and I think they miss the entire journey up to that point.

Brian Dean: Those people, and you should have pages on your site dedicated to them, but it’s a slice… it’s a tiny drop in the ocean. If you look at the number of people who search for CRM software versus how to get customers, it’s like 10,000 to one. So for every one customer you’re going to get from this direct credit card in hand type of person, you can get hundreds from the how to get leads and how to get customers. It will take a little longer, you’ll have to nurture them, but that’s where the real money is.

John Jantsch: HubSpot is a great example. So on this B2C, this basement waterproofing company that just does business in their town, what do they need to focus on?

Brian Dean: They should focus 100% on local SEO, so Google Local, not… creating content makes no sense for them. For people searching for how to finish a basement or how to prevent leaks and all that stuff, a lot of companies do that because they’ll take the HubSpot approach and apply it to their local business and it just makes no sense. They just put out…

Brian Dean: I had a guy email me last week. It was a locksmith and he emailed me with this article, oh, I’m a locksmith and I just created this awesome post that I know people will share if only I could get the word out. What should I do to promote it? I don’t know, I was kind of bored, so I checked out. I looked at the post and it was like five ways to not get locked out of your house. Like the stupidest thing I’ve ever read. Something like don’t forget your keys and just nonsense. First of all, no one would ever read that, but even if it was good, it wouldn’t really help him. You know what I mean? He’s in a local area and the odds of that person in that area searching for him, needing a locksmith, it just doesn’t… the stars just don’t align.

Brian Dean: I’d focus on Google Local and getting awesome reviews. At the end of the day, [inaudible] sorry. Google My Business, they change their name every week, but yeah, the one they’ve stuck with lately Google My Business, so local SEO. So people searching for your business in city. The reviews are a big part of that and [inaudible] are part of it but you don’t need [inaudible] nearly as many to rank. Instead of like HubSpot creating a blog about this and that or about basements and man caves and all this stuff I’ve seen people do for basement companies.

Brian Dean: All you really need is like one or two pages that people will want to link to. It could be a list of places to visit in your town. It could be… it’s just link bait. Customers will never probably even see this. If they do, they’ll be like, “Oh, this is great. This is helpful.” Things to do in your town or other vendors or have a partnership or go to an event or speak at your chamber of commerce. These are all things that aren’t really content as we usually see it. They’re just pages to get some links that can help your overall website rank higher. That should be the goal for that company.

John Jantsch: Yeah. Unfortunately for a lot of businesses, particularly the consumer businesses, if you’re not showing up in that maps listing, which is kind of small these days.

Brian Dean: It’s a three pack now. It used to be seven. It was called a seven pack and now it’s a three pack. There are instances where you can do, like if people search in Google Maps, you can somehow, it depends on what they’re searching for, you can see more than three, but you’re right, John, for most keywords that are directly in Google if you’re not in the top three, you’re kind of invisible.

John Jantsch: And the 70% of people that are visiting those sites on a mobile device today, that’s the whole screen. It makes it even tougher. I think you’re absolutely right. I’ve been saying it for years and Google now… I do think they’re set on this one because they’re actually investing in it and adding to it and tweaking it so I think… in fact, here’s my prediction. I think they’re going to start rolling out features to make that a social network. In a community, I think your clients are going to be able to actually talk to each other at some aspect through your Google My Business page. That’s just sort of my prediction.

Brian Dean: That would be interesting. So more than just reviews, they’d actually be able to say, “I had this problem. Did they help?” Things like that.

John Jantsch: Exactly. They’ll have the question and answer feature, they’ll have the upload your finished your basement to it. I think they’re going to make it… I don’t know if it will ever be a social network, but I think that’s going to be their approach to network small businesses together.

Brian Dean: Cool. Yeah. I could see it.

John Jantsch: One… this is unfair because this is my last question I’m going to ask you and we could have done a whole show on this, you’ve invested a lot recently in video and so again, thinking of those two… let’s just use those two B2B, that SaaS company and that waterproofing company, how would video help them in telling their story and their SEO play?

Brian Dean: The B2B company, it would be really similar to the content strategy. The only difference would be what are your customers watching on YouTube, instead of what are they searching for on Google. But it’s the same idea. There’s a huge difference, in some cases, between those two things. Because YouTube is a big search engine, yes, but most of the views on YouTube come from people browsing around, come from suggested videos, the home page, so it’s important to create videos around what people tend to watch and not just what they search for, so both.

Brian Dean: With the B2B company, it’s a SaaS company, I mean it depends on what it is, but you basically take those same topics you found for your blog content and see if people are watching that stuff on YouTube. If so, great. If not, it’s time to get back to the users and kind of figure out what they’re watching on YouTube. As long as it’s somewhat related to your business, you can do well.

John Jantsch: Can you do keyword research while just using YouTube for that type of thing or are there some tools that somebody needs to employ to kind of get that discovery made?

Brian Dean: You mean to find search volume, people searching or people browsing?

John Jantsch: Yeah, what people are actually looking at.

Brian Dean: So for the search volume stuff, there are some tools that can do it. Google doesn’t really provide YouTube search volume really so they do impressions and things like that. It’s tricky to know how many people have searched for something on YouTube. It’s not like the Google keyword planner where they tell you a range. It’s really… there are some tools that can guesstimate but none are super accurate.

Brian Dean: What I like to do is just look at how many views those videos have on that topic. If you search for how to write a press release and the number one video has 3800 views and it was from five years ago, it’s probably not… no one’s watching that stuff. But if it has 200,000, it’s like oh, well there’s something here. That’s usually how I determine whether to make a video. If there’s already a video on that topic that’s done well, that’s a good sign.

Brian Dean: So for the basement company, what I would actually recommend is looking to see if there are any keywords that people search for in your local area that have videos that show up. This is an old trick that used to work and it still does in a lot of local areas. I see lawyers use it a lot where what they’ll do is they’ll basically create a keyword optimized video about their service or maybe more helpful, like how to help with the situation, and then the YouTube video will rank in Google results. Then you have two results in Google, you have your three pack or regular organic and then you have YouTube.

Brian Dean: So what people would do for example with a basement company, a lot of times they would create this fluff two minute video about how great they are, show the guys go into the house, hey, how’s it going, go downstairs, they’re fixing the basement, it’s amazing, they fixed it, blah, blah, blah, and you can have some of that stuff but it shouldn’t really be a commercial. It should be some content that is helpful and will keep people engaged. That way YouTube and Google see that people are engaging with the video and they’re more likely to put it on the first page.

Brian Dean: That’s more of a play to get on Google. It’s not really like you’re trying to get in front of your target customer while they’re watching videos. They’ll only need you if something’s wrong with their basement and they’re not going to remember your video from two years ago. It doesn’t work like that, but if you could show up on Google, it’s another spot, more real estate for your business which is important at that point of purchase time.

John Jantsch: Yeah, and then of course that person probably should be buying some ads, too. But that’s a topic for a whole other day.

Brian Dean: Oh yeah. That’s true.

John Jantsch: Well Brian, thanks so much for joining us. You can find everything about Brian Dean at Backlinko. It’s like link with an O dot com. Anywhere else or any other resources you want to share today, Brian?

Brian Dean: No, that’s a good one. I would head over there and hop on the newsletter. That’s the only thing I’d recommend.

John Jantsch: Yeah, and take a look at how Brian structures his site and focuses on his site because you learn a lot just from paying attention to that. So Brian, great to catch up with you and hopefully all is well and the weather is good in Genovia.

Brian Dean: Thanks, John. I’ll remember that for our next podcast.

John Jantsch: Take care.

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lorettalivingston6911 · 6 years

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Taylor Swift, Rose McGowan, & Terry Crews Open Up About Sexual Assault & Victim Blaming In These Time Interviews!

I look younger now than when I was in my early 20s

With Time honoring "The Silence Breakers" as their 2017 Person of the Year, it only made sense for them to sit down with some of the voices who have been speaking up about sexual assault and harassment!

As we previously reported, the #MeToo founder Tarana Burke joined Alyssa Milano on Today to speak about the anti-harassment campaign, and now we're hearing from more stars!

In a rare interview, Taylor Swift actually opened up about her sexual assault lawsuit after she was allegedly groped by a radio DJ in 2013, as Rose McGowan continued to speak up about Harvey Weinstein, and Terry Crews sharing his thoughts on victim blaming.

Related: Is Taylor Shading Kim Kardashian Back?

Starting with the songstress, she explained why she felt it was so important for her to report the alleged assault, telling the glossy:

"At the time, I was headlining a major arena tour and there were a number of people in the room that saw this plus a photo of it happening. I figured that if he would be brazen enough to assault me under these risky circumstances and high stakes, imagine what he might do to a vulnerable, young artist if given the chance. It was important to report the incident to his radio station because I felt like they needed to know."

And added how she felt having to testify, including watching her mom, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2015, be harassed in court:

"When I testified, I had already been in court all week and had to watch this man's attorney bully, badger and harass my team including my mother over inane details and ridiculous minutiae, accusing them, and me, of lying. My mom was so upset after her cross-examination, she was physically too ill to come to court the day I was on the stand. I was angry. In that moment, I decided to forego any courtroom formalities and just answer the questions the way it happened. This man hadn't considered any formalities when he assaulted me, and his lawyer didn't hold back on my mom—why should I be polite? I'm told it was the most amount of times the word 'ass' has ever been said in Colorado Federal Court."

As for any advice for fans, Tay divulged:

"My advice is that you not blame yourself and do not accept the blame others will try to place on you. You should not be blamed for waiting 15 minutes or 15 days or 15 years to report sexual assault or harassment, or for the outcome of what happens to a person after he or she makes the choice to sexually harass or assault you."

In case you're wondering, the 27-year-old's alleged assaulter, David Mueller, still hasn't paid her the $1 from her countersuit:

"When the jury found in my favor, the man who sexually assaulted me was court-ordered to give me a symbolic $1. To this day he has not paid me that dollar, and I think that act of defiance is symbolic in itself."

Dang!

Rose also shared her story, talking about her attacker, the disgraced movie producer:

"I've been speaking out about this man for twenty years. This monster specifically. I don't like naming his name. Everybody knows it. I think some people get the faces and the names they deserve. But this process for me has been getting people ready to listen. I look at it as if I was human trafficked. But for a lot of money, for years, internationally. If you can have an agent, a manager, a lawyer or the monster negotiate how long your breasts can be seen for, and then they profit off it, is that not it?"

The 44-year-old expressed how she felt when Harvey's history of alleged sexual assault and harassment became public with more and more articles:

"It's intense. For the last ten months while I was juggling these pieces, I was also being sued or harassed. People don't understand what it's like to be terrorized, when all you're trying to do is stop rape. I have ex-Israeli spies after me. I have monsters everywhere. In the last two years, I don't trust anybody who's inserted themselves into my life. I can't. I can't afford to because that's really life and death for me at this point. They tried to silence us, and they burn us at the stake, and that's what they do. But I won't let them. Most of my work—the movie I directed, Dawn; my upcoming book Brave; the album I have coming out—all these things, it's like I'm making it for posterity. To be studied because, these people, at the end of the day, I think they would like to kill me. The bigger picture here is that he's the monster of everybody. He's what the boogie man looks like in every industry. And if you can slay that one, we can slay all of them. Yeah—collateral damage sucks, but also, don't rape. Don't sexually harass. Don't f*ck with my life. Don't f*ck with another woman's life. Don't f*ck with that little girl. Don't f*ck with that old lady. Just get the f*ck back. That's generally my message."

The actress continued, revealing how the assault has affected her:

"I had to go finish filming a movie for the rapist after I was attacked. And for seventeen years of my career, everything that came out of my mouth was something a man wrote for me to say. Why am I leaving my body to play a two-dimensional version of myself? For a man's pleasure. For the man shooting me, for the man editing me, for the man directing me, for the man producing me, for the man selling me. It's really a sick industry."

And talking about the response she received from being so open about it, she candidly shared:

"I had amazing support the two days following the release of the Times piece. Dead silence, of course, from people in Hollywood. Jessica Chastain eventually retweeted something a couple days later. But it was deafening. And I never expected any bravery from this place. They've never been brave... People forget that there's a human behind this. Someone who is very hurt and wronged. But that's okay. It fuels my fire. They really f*cked with the wrong person."

Terry has had his own experience with it, as he's currently suing William Morris Endeavors agent Adam Venit for an alleged sexual assault which occurred at a Hollywood party last year.

Going into detail about why he decided to go public with claims his genitals were groped, the actor said:

"I'd actually just read a comment someone made on Twitter about one of Weinstein's accusers. It went something like: She's just looking for attention and a payday. It really affected me. I couldn't stop thinking about it. I remember going to my phone and I started writing. And I couldn't stop. What it became was this sixteen-tweet missive from me. I just remember having to say what I felt. I was really angry because these women were being discounted. These women were being discarded. Their pain was just—it was nothing. I wanted to join in. I wanted to say something. I wanted to support. But I did have to let these women know they weren't alone. And that I understood. My whole mission was to give them strength. Don't accept the shame that people are giving you. Because that's what it was. They were being shamed. They were being victimized again. I just couldn't stand for it."

Crews described feeling "free" after sharing his story, adding:

"Until men stand up and say, 'This harassment, this abuse, these assaults are wrong,' nothing will change. If I was silent, it would mean I'm consenting to all of it. I always have felt women have been able to take care of themselves, 100%. But men need to hold other men accountable. That's my thing... You need to be held accountable for the things you say, the things you do. What it came from is literally a belief that as a man you are more valuable than a woman. The reason I have the authority to say it is because I was like it. I truly believed I was more valuable than my wife and kids. Until I had a major paradigm shift in my own life—it was like I hit rock bottom in order for me to see that I had it all wrong."

He's also not standing for the "witch hunt" narrative in Hollywood either!

"If it's not a witch, it's a witch hunt. If there are actual witches there, we need to stop them. I have people coming to me saying, 'Hey, man. You could ruin this guy's life.' Very clever. That's a very clever thing to say. But he ruined it when he did it. All these people need to be disciplined into knowing what is acceptable and what isn't. The only way to do that is by holding people accountable every time. This is something that gives my life meaning."

These stars can't be silenced!!

And we hope they can inspire other victims to speak up, too!

Read more from Taylor HERE, Rose HERE, and Terry HERE!

[Image via Derrick Salters/FayesVision/Apega/WENN.]

you'll never know what you'll find in all of these celebrity items

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latoyarubalcava3546 · 6 years