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senotsuri · 3 years

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Way back when, I posted an image of an OC, who fairly recently got a full name (she only had a surname back then.) So, with Eliza’s name finally figured out, I realised I hadn’t actually given my overview of the game that spawned her; Champions of Vestroia.

Time to lose my mind, I guess.

Some fore-knowledge before we get into this.

I am, by all means, a legacy bakugan fan, not a reboot fan. I’ve only seen one double episode (the become-smaller-child episode, which was cute, and Outer Demons, which has a super good premise, but the execution is. something.) By all accounts, CoV is essentially my introduction to the world of the reboot, and I’ll come to this later.

I played both the first game (Bakugan Battle Brawlers, specifically the Wii edition), and the... third game (Defenders of the Core, shortened to DOTC, also for the Wii. The second game, for anyone curious, is Battle Trainer, a DS exclusive.) This will come up later, of course, but I want to point out these two as they’re basically my control group for the quality here (not for the battles though; different battle system and all.)

I am incredibly stay-at-home. A lot of people I know irl I don’t have contact with, and most of them don’t live in my city. This is only important when it comes to the protagonist and literally no one else in the game, but I thought I’d mention it anyway.

So the game begins with the character creator. This is pretty standard stuff, honestly. My one issue with it is just-- this is probably my fashion sense speaking, but the fashion in the game is very... for lack of a better term, naff. There aren’t many options that look good, personally speaking. This is ignoring the issues where the protagonist loses their name, mid conversation, or is referred to as if I chose the male option instead of the female option. These issues are likely just oversights, by all accounts, but talk about jarring.

The first time you see your character is where 3. comes in. The protagonist, no matter what you chose (I have two save files, in case there was a difference. There isn’t), will always be a football/soccer player. Are you one of many, many people who isn’t sporty, who is trying to play as themselves? Sorry, your character is sporty, and you can’t do anything about it.

In the legacy games, this was never really a problem; your character was never seen doing anything other than brawling and interacting with other characters. Whether they played sports, or stayed indoors and wrote fanfic, the game let you decide on that for your character, by not having them do either of those things: your character only battled, or snuck around in DOTC’s case.

Once you stop playing football, you get to run to your best friends, and I guarantee you, you won’t immediately guess who they are unless you somehow already knew.

I mentioned BBB and DOTC being my control group on quality. Bringing the character creator back into this, the NPCs are laughable in quality. Any character who has the same model as you (older child. There are only two other model types: adult, and younger child) will look like a remixed version of your character. Had it not been for some characters having special eye shapes, you could practically cosplay any character in the game, because they were made the same way you made your character.

This includes your two best friends.

You could easily make the same character (minus clothes) as one of your best friend characters, without knowing it until you saw them.

While, yes, BBB and DOTC had the characters from the legacy anime in them, the fact that your best friends are nigh indistinguishable from any other character in the area, because you could easily make any of them in the character creator, isn’t... great.

Speaking of that. Characterisation is questionable, to say the least. Whatever bakugan you have in your first slot will answer to you the same as any other bakugan you have in your first slot. If you started off with Howlkor in the front of your party, and you replaced him with, say, Barbetra, Barbetra will act the exact same as Howlkor did, and it’s really something.

There’s only (?) Armoured Alliance bakugan in the game, other than Dragonoid, Pegatrix, Trox, Hydorous, Nillious, and the afforementioned Howlkor. That’s a small roster, by all accounts, so having varied dialogue depending on the bakugan would make sense.

The characterisation of the other characters is also a little funky in places. Your best friends don’t brawl, and I honestly forgot about them for a portion of the game. The tournament brawlers are practically as faceless as the villain minions, and the villains- oh the villains...

Preston. I don’t like Preston, at all. He’s a villain from the moment you see him, and the whole “try to find Preston” section in Helena Heights makes me want to punch someone. When you fight him in the Parasol HQ, his dad being the CEO, it’s fairly clear that Preston is little more than a tool for him. Sometime later, you fight Preston again, this time as the final tournament’s final battle, and he’s laughably weak compared to the other challengers. Remember, this kid fights you with Leonidas.

You’d think Leo would be good, but I’ll get into the butchering that happened to my death dragon later.

Anyhow, he fights you, assuming his dad will enjoy him defeating you. With the power of you’re the player character, you beat him, he hands all of his bakugan to you, and gives up on brawling for good. Kinda.

The next time you see him... hoo boy. In Old Town, on the way to defeat dear detestable dad, you come across Preston. He offers you help, and when player character is understandably suspicious, Preston complains that... one of his toys was taken away because you beat him, and now he wants Revenge On Dad.

I wish I was joking. His revenge, by helping you defeat his dad, isn’t because he’s obviously neglected by his dad (company taking priority over him, the CEO’s son), and then is used as a minion to try and get rid of you. It’s not out of bitter feelings because his dad doesn’t care about him, no, it’s because his dad took his ball away.

What’s worse is how player character reacts: “Oh! :) You’ve learned that bakugan aren’t just tools! :) Yes you can help me, despite the fact that you learning this sounds less than genuine and definitely not last minute! :)”

This is a level of stupidity I’ve only seen in DOTC Mira when Spectra tricks her into giving him Drago. He’s literally sulking and moping about over his ball, and then he sees the player character, immediately being manipulative so that player character can take down his dad for him.

Leonidas also forgives him, and has the same reaction as the player character.

Speaking of Leonidas! I think everyone’s been excited for Leonidas in general - we all love a shark headed death dragon, and we wanted one in the reboot for ages.

I refuse to call reboot Leonidas Leonidas. This is like the Shun Kazami debacle, but one I’m substantially more angry about.

Leonidas, in BBB, was untrusting of everything, wanted to throw down with everything in sight, had no fear of anything because “I don’t fear weak [humans]”, and literally came from hell. He eventually grew to trust you and others, to calm down and enjoy himself at his own pace, and was willing to have help from others, showing anyone around him that his origins aren’t the be all and end all about him.

Leonidas, in CoV, is immediately trusting of the first human who showed a hint of kindness, has a weakness to all attacks in the game, comes from Vestroia (not the Doom Dimension), and forgives the human who threw him away when he didn’t win the battle against you for him.

Ignoring the fact that Leonidas just doesn’t look good in CoV, I’d say he got bastardised. That’s not Leonidas, it’s just a dragon with the same name.

The main villain is the CEO of Parasol, an energy company that, assumedly, used to use solar power. Upon finding out that bakugan battles give off incredible levels of power, they turned to using bakugan, forced to battle, to generate power. These guys literally dug into someone’s house to try and get Leonidas. They’re evil.

On the topic of the battling for power generation; this has a decay effect on Vestroia, as it happens, as battling energy would usually go back into Vestroia, which would be recycled and reused.

The CEO doesn’t bend the knee to you until you break him, which is undoubtedly nice for a villain; I was honestly expecting him to give up, but he doesn’t. You beat him into a corner.

But as my introduction to the world of BP, through CoV, is lackluster at best. Obviously the game is meant for those who have seen the reboot, and don’t mind being completely disconnected from the story, because CoV is self contained, and Dan only shows up to be the tutorial giver (as a jpg, no less).

From what the game tells me about the setting; bakugan are often exploited by adults, bakugan do not like adults because of this, but can’t tell when a human child is manipulating them, unless another child removes them from that situation (the lack of agency here is somehow worse than in the legacy series, who knew).

Despite bakugan being around for 18 years in the setting, no one seems to be aware that they’re living beings, other than the main charcter, as if BP humans are equivalent to Legacy’s Vestals. I was already aware of Vestroia and Earth sharing a location in space, but the fact that drilling deep enough causes bakugan to appear on Earth seems... really weird? Schrödinger’s Bakugan Summoning Pit, but they exist on every digging site possible. Bonus points to all bakugan being able to speak, and they do speak a lot, but only to the player and whoever is around the player in a cutscene.

I’m missing a lot of things, such as battle items being the worst sometimes, I’m aware, but at this point I’m tired of rambling, so let me end off in a comparison.

CoV has, in my opinion, the same replayability levels as Pokemon Shield; I couldn’t replay either game to the end, and I wouldn’t recommend either to anyone unless they were desperate for a new game to play, and had nothing else to chose.

#Bakugan #CoV #Bakugan Champions of vestroia #I had Feelings today #I give CoV a 4/10. personally #I think me being a legacy fan doesn't help it. but I don't think any of those biases actually held the game back?#Shoutout to the one kid in Oldtown who says something about the state of the economy. and makes the player character enter a mild panic #the kid is like. 6. the player character is maybe twice their age #The kid says it with a smug face too I wish I was making this up #I think his name is Rusty? I could be wrong #Bonus: I don't think Player Character has a house #There isn't a single house you can enter. not even one labelled as yours. all you have is your hideout. which has a clothes rack??#I'm almost convinced that's exactly where they live and that's it #Extra bonus to the ventus centipod you find when picking a flower. a flower that gets a guy to quit his job on the spot without a care.#sir. sir where is your sense of responsibility. sir--#Also it's like. half one in the morning--

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twdmusicboxmystery · 4 years

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Insights From the Talk Dead to Me Podcast

Okay, I teased everyone over the weekend that I’d have a lot to talk about today, and here it is. There was SO much interesting information in this podcast.

New Mexico Symbolism

TD isn’t by far the only ones to connect the New Mexico symbolism. On the podcast, they talked extensively about that and about how it will probably play into the sequel. One theory they had (and I hope they’re wrong) is that they think Aaron will get Rick’s comic book death. They think it would mess with Daryl’s head so bad, it would “run him out of town.”

Personally, I don’t think Daryl would leave JUST because Aaron died. For all the reasons many of us have already talked about (him taking care of Judith and RJ, etc). If anything, I think it would make him want to stay more and look after Gracie as well. I really don’t want Aaron to die, though. Unfortunately, it would make sense for him to die, what with him being such a heavy Beth proxy so often, but I’d really like him and Beth to meet first. Just my head canon, but I can’t help it. And they may have a point about Rick’s CB death, given that Aaron has already lost his arm.

Why Extended Seasons Instead of Just Doing S12?

You know how I keep saying it’s weird that they’re doing this massively extended S11 rather than just breaking it into S11 and S12? Yeah, this podcast told me why, and it makes perfect sense. In a nutshell: many of the actors’ contracts expire after S11. AMC doesn’t want to renegotiate everyone’s contract for only one season.

And that’s something I’m positive has changed. If they were going to season 15, they would have just renegotiated the contracts, no problem. But since they’ve decided to end it now, it would have been WAY more inconvenient. And the people on the podcast made a good point, saying that if the actors’ agents find out the show REALLY NEEDS them for one final season, they’re gonna come back with astronomical demands. And given the state of the world, covid, etc., those kinds of monetary demands really could tank the final season. So, I’m glad to know that. It makes tons of sense.

Let’s Talk AMC’s Social Media Practices

So, several of these people who do the podcast correspond with AMC regularly for social media reasons. They talked about how they’ll often press the AMC representatives they talk to for more information. For the most part, they get the same, vague promises we all get from Gimple. “We’re working on a script.” Or the classic, “I don’t know any more than you,” crap. But these podcasters said things might have changed logistically with the Rick Grimes films as well. You know how back when Rick left, Gimple said they’d be doing a 3-film trilogy? Well, apparently, people have begun to notice that ever since then, and especially since CoVid, any time anyone close to the shows references the Rick Grimes films, they talk about them in the singular, not the plural. The Rick Grimes FILM, not the Rick Grimes films. And the podcasters think it’s because the show is playing it by ear. Due, again, to financial concerns, maybe they’ll just make one film and see how well it’s received before deciding to make another. Obviously, I disagree with that idea. I do think things might have changed, the same as them ending the series after S11, in that they might use something other than films to continue Rick’s story. But I think they have a specific story to tell and they’re going to tell it, one way or the other.

I also think they got a bigger backlash about the films than they were expecting. People really threw tantrums about the idea of having to pay money to see it in the theaters. People are just used to getting it free on TV, and I think the reaction took tptb by surprise. Anyway, now with CoVid, and theater attendance WAY down, and heaven only knows where we’ll be in a year, it wouldn’t surprise me if AMC and Gimple are rethinking that tactic. Maybe they’ll only do one film and then segue Rick into another series. Either his own, or the Daryl/Carol one. Kirkman ended the comics in the summer of 2019. That was AFTER Rick’s last episode. So I’m willing to bet that all the changes and shuffling started as soon as the comics ended. However it happens, it does show that more than one thing is being shuffled behind the scenes due to CoVid. But listening to this gave me a huge epiphany that I became illogically excited about, lol. It was nothing they said, but just me thinking through the implications of all of this. I’ve always believed Rick would return in some way. And even though I’d be totally cool with him having a reunion with his kids in one of the Rick Grimes films or whatever, I’ve always had a sense that he would return to the series, despite them telling us he wouldn’t. Well, as I said yesterday, the idea of him returning seems much less likely now that we know they’re ending after S11. But…something occurred to me. Gimple has adamantly said Rick won’t return to the TWD series. He’s never said anything about him not moving to any spinoffs. *mic drop*

Thoughts About the Daryl/Carol Spinoff

Nothing too groundbreaking here, but they did say that the Donnie shippers are super frustrated, which I’m sure is true. They said the Caryl shippers are happy, but not too over-the-top happy about it. (Their words. I really couldn’t say whether that’s true or not.)

They also said that, given how much the show has told us there won’t be romance between them, it will either be the ultimate reward for the Carylers (if they get together romantically) or the ultimate tease (if they don’t).

So, my point is that, outside the hardcore shippers at least, most of the fandom isn’t really thinking this is going to be a romance thing with Carol and Daryl. And because of that, they’re wondering where the show could possibly go with Daryl and Carol. Like, they’ve explored their relationship as far as they can and they’re questioning whether this series revolving around them will be worth watching.

Now, if we didn’t know what we know or hadn’t theorized what we have, I would agree whole-heartedly with that. There has to be more to this spinoff than just Daryl and Carol running around killing zombies together. Even the GA is a little confused about this and thinks there must be more to the story. And, you know, there will be.

Coda Replay (And We Didn’t Even Realize It!)

This came together for me from multiple sources. I have an Ask in my inbox that I haven’t answered yet. It’s from a Nonny who obviously wrote in when the big news broke. He/she says that AMC announced the end of the series and the spin off…and then deleted the post. I wasn’t sure what to make of that, because it doesn’t seem to me like anything’s been deleted. At least on Twitter, the post with the press release and the announcement is still pinned to the top of the account. And probably different click bait sites have reported on it. So they don’t seem to be trying to hide it. I didn’t really know what to make of that, except maybe one of the posts was deleted for logistical reasons (typo or something) and then reposted, and the Nonny just thought it was suspicious when really, it wasn’t. Then I listened to this podcast. And guess what? One of the clickbait sites that was slated to give the announcement, IGN, posted it like two hours early…and then deleted their post.

One of the women they talked to used to be a social media manager for AMC. She isn’t anymore, but she worked for AMC for several years. And they asked her about the “leak.” She said that she felt badly for the company that leaked it early. She said when there’s a big announcement like this, there are dozens, maybe hundreds, of moving pieces behind the scenes. Basically, AMC has a whole network that they coordinate to release the news all at the same time. So, it didn’t surprise her that someone, every so often, messes it up and releases it early. It’s just a lot people and moving parts to keep track of. So like maybe, if they were supposed to post the announcement at 8am central time, maybe they posted it at 8 their time, which was too early. That sort of thing. And okay, I guess that makes sense. But there’s just one problem with that explanation. The EXACT same thing happened with this announcement as happened with Beth’s fate in Coda. One of the companies released it too early.

(I’m sure this is the post Nonny means that was deleted: because it was released too early.)

That’s why, the day the news of the show ending broke, people were talking about “rumors” of TWD ending before the official announcement was made. Between that, and all the references we’ve seen (‘bringing characters back from the dead,’ and ‘the six episode coda,’) I just don’t think I can believe in good faith that this was a coincidence.

A little more about AMC social media accounts.

This just confirms what we’ve suspected for years. This woman said she was one of many social media managers. But all that means is that she “managed” several of AMC’s social media accounts. As in, she posted on them and interacts with fans and comments.

She in no way, shape, or form had any say about what was posted or when. She specifically said that such things were WAY above her paygrade. She suspects that such decisions went all the way up to Gimple and Kang. Like there’s someone who follows them around, and when one of them says something needs to be posted, that person texts all the social media managers and they post it. Boom. The writers 100% control what goes out on social media. What it is, what graphics to use, how it’s worded. Everything. #TDforthewin!

She also said that if someone leaks the news early, everything is reconfigured and they quickly shore up to protect the narrative and make sure everything is correct and appropriate. Very interesting.

He also asked her if she thought IGN did it intentionally or on accident. She was obviously being careful not to throw too much shade, but you could tell she definitely thought it might have been done intentionally. Oh, and also? The podcast guy said he knew about the leak because he had to wait until a certain time (I want to say 8:30 am, but I don’t know which time zone) before he posted about it. AMC told him what time and he made sure not to sleep in so he wouldn’t miss it, but he logged on and people already knew because of the leak.

So once again, even this podcast, who claims not to be directly affiliated with AMC (even though they totally are) is getting posts, directions, etc. from AMC. And that’s important with what I’m about to tell you, because the people on this podcast have definitely mentioned Beth in suspicious contexts more than once. And this podcast was the farthest thing from an exception.

Talking About Beth Randomly

That leads me to my final and the biggest thing that stuck out to me about this podcast. Let me first say that I generally like the podcasters and their attitudes toward the show. For one thing, none of them are pro-Caryl. Most of them like Carol all right, but don’t want her and Daryl together romantically. Obviously, I like that.

Unfortunately, they were kinda being punks about Beth in this episode. They went on a little TD-bashing session. As I said the other day, they didn’t mention TD by name or anything, but it was more of a “did you know there are people out there who think Beth is alive?” kind of thing. And they were being really sarcastic about what they thought about that. But the entire discussion still felt SUPER suspicious to me. They were talking about the OTHER spinoff. Not the Daryl/Carol one, but the “Tales of the Walking Dead” one where they’ll tell the back story of deceased characters. One of them asked who the others would like to see back stories of. Out of nowhere, one of them yelled, “Beth!” Seriously. Out. Of. Freakin. Nowhere. And then they basically started making fun of TDers. They talked about how there really are people out there who think she’s still alive. Then one of them said “those people” think that Beth had a twin sister we never knew about and she’s the one who got shot and Beth is still secretly alive. I had to chuckle and shake my head at that. Maybe there’s someone, somewhere in the fandom who thinks that, but I’ve never even heard anyone argue that before. Have you? He then called people who believe that a great big pile of stupid. So yeah, obviously they were being punks. But the conversation about Beth went on and on. One of them said they hoped AMC did a Beth back story in that spin off series, just to mess with the heads of the people who think she’s still alive. And then someone else replied that she doesn’t have a back story to tell because we know it all already: farm, prison, Grady. (I’m sorry; who’s one big pile of stupid to NOT notice the missing 17 days in S5?) Even though they were basically laughing at us, it just felt really deliberate and contrived. And then, one of the women says, “I hope she shows up in The World Beyond.” Seriously? After that, they finally kind of went, “Anyway…” and moved on. But they didn’t even mention any other names in answer to the question about who else they wanted to see back stories for in that second spin off. They ONLY talked about Beth. I siriusly sat there with my jaw hanging open because again, it just came out of nowhere, and they mentioned her—extensively—in conjunction with BOTH spinoffs AND threw in TWB. Just saying.

You know how I said earlier that they claim not to be affiliated with AMC, though they totally are? Well, technically these people are part of Skybound. (Upper left corner of the picture below.) So in that way, they aren’t directly AMC. But we all know Skybound has posted MANY suspicious things about Beth over the years. And as I established above, they’re definitely being fed what to post by AMC.

So I feel like that applies here as well. It’s almost like AMC told them to mention Beth in some way, even if it was by way of making fun of people who think she’s alive. So they found a way to bring her up in conversation. And hey, maybe these podcasters really don��t know about Beth’s return. Maybe they think AMC wants them to make fun of or dismiss the idea of her return. But either way, they contrived a way to talk about her, and they would only have done that if AMC told them to. Okay, I’ll shut up, now. That podcast just totally rocked my world. Thoughts?

#beth greene #beth greene lives #beth is alive #beth is coming #td theory #td theories #team delusional #team defiance #beth is almost here #bethyl

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rigelmejo · 4 years

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Listening-Reading Method - Example and Summary

If you would like to try the Listening-Reading Method with Daomubiji:

I’ve made a list of materials to use. The mtlnovel site’s english translations are not ideal, but they are in small chunks to glance at and are from google translate probably (so as good as making a parallel text yourself with machine translation). Also, mtlnovel uses traditional chinese for it’s raw text - which is enough for me even though I’m more comfortable with simplified, since I’m mainly using the parallel text for Step 3 (and so the chinese text is just to keep track of the audio as it lines up to the english translation). For step 2 I am using the original daomubiji.org site. This version on mtlnovel is only needed if you want a parallel text.

If you’re okay using 2 texts, then just use the dmbj original site for the chinese text, and the english published novels either in kindle or print format for the english text. For Step 3, you would use primarily the english text and try to open up the chinese text copy if you lose place with where the audio aligns to the plot.

Audio Material:

Audiobook - I believe this one is longer, more complete, and it reads slower and more clearly: https://m.5tps.me/play_m/1410_48_1_1.html

Audiobook on ximayala - this one is incomplete but I believe in progress, it reads faster and more slurred BUT I think its useful for Step 2. To get used to real native speech speeds and how in real speech people talk a bit less clearly - on a second listen though, I could hear everything perfectly, so the narrator’s voice is still pretty standard in the sense its as good as some voices in drama dubs: http://xima.tv/mPWuED?_sonic=0

*Other audio options. If for some reason you have no access to the above, or if they disappear, in a pinch a machine generated voice will probably be better than nothing. Options include Pleco Reader’s automatic reader voice (which is fairly good about correct word pronunciation, although the rhythm of sentences is not always natural). I have used that to listen to things before, and it is relatively helpful. It also allows you to control speed - so its very good as an intermediate listening step if you need something ‘slower’ at first. Another option is Talkify. This website it free, just paste in the daomubiji.org webpage. I’ve used it to read dmbj before and it sounds useful enough, I’ve also used it to read my own fanfictions back to me when I’m walking or hiking and trying to refresh what I wrote so I can do the next chapter - and except for names, the voice reader worked very well. In general I’d recommend talkify if you ever want something audio to listen to, and have no better human made recordings: https://talkify.net/web-reader-read-any-website-aloud

Text Material:

Parallel text on mtlnovel. To get the parallel text version you must - create a free account, then on the chapter page click ‘Settings’ at the top and turn on ‘RAW’ so you see traditional chinese over the english: https://www.mtlnovel.com/daomu-biji/chapter-1-seven-stars-lu-king-blood-corpse/

Original Text. You can use Pleco Reader, or an in-web-browser pop up dictionary to lookup words as you read through this in Step 2, if you’d like to learn any new words in step 2: http://www.daomubiji.org/1.html

English literary translation is the published novel. This is available as ebooks or as a print novel. I own the print novel. Print and Kindle edition available here: https://www.amazon.com/Grave-Robbers-Chronicles-vol-1-6/dp/1934159379/ref=sr_1_1?crid=25A1XI175ECCN&dchild=1&keywords=the+grave+robbers+chronicles+set&qid=1599926362&sprefix=the+grave+robbe%2Caps%2C165&sr=8-1

*Free english translation - if you want a fast easily accessible free version, it will be a machine translation. Either use mltnovel’s dmbj version (you can turn off RAW if you only want to see the english). Or, just go to the daomubiji.org site and either right-click in Chrome “translate to english” or go to baidutranslate and have that machine-translate the webpage.

*A note on using machine translations: Both machine translations have their own set of flaws, I find both to get the translations wrong in slightly different ways. Both are relatively followable though, if they’re your only options. I would highly suggest knowing an overview of chinese grammar before looking at a machine translation - I found that with all machine translations, they mess up he/she/it a lot, they mess up if something is just being labelled a noun/nickname (instead saying ‘child’ or ‘head’ or ‘team’), they mess up if something is a name or specific object (proper names get weirdly wrong-pinyin translated, and objects that could be both proper names OR regular nouns get confused - for example Fei Ye in Silent Reading ‘Master Fei’ is often translated as Grandpa Fei, and ‘Captain’ Luo as in police captain, is translated as Team Luo. In dmbj, things like ‘3rd kid’ are translated as if they were proper names instead of the words ‘3rd kid,’ and ‘experienced men squatting down’ gets translated as ‘Tofus mound’ in chapter 1 since I’m guessing it looked like a ‘name’ to the machine translation.) So having some basic chinese knowledge, and seeing a parallel text first, will help you catch these clear errors and ignore them. Using a human translation such as the published books, or fan’s translations, will be better in the sense these issues will be largely removed.

A refresher, on what the Listening-Reading Method is:

Step 1 (optional, but helps with context, so recommended unless you already are familiar with your chosen story): Read the story in your Language 1 (a language you know well, english in this example).

Step 2 (optional, if you are already comfortable with the language you are studying’s speed of speech and hearing the boundaries of words/sentences): Read through the story in Language 2 (a language you are learning, chinese in this example). Focus on keeping your eyes lined up with the words as they are spoken, on following the text as the audio plays along. Focus on noticing the different sounds in the language, the word boundaries, the phrase and sentence boundaries. At this step, you do not need to actually look up and define every word you don’t know. The focus is on getting familiar with the audio sentences and getting used to hearing it as sentences and words. You may, if you desire, look up word meanings as you run across new words, but this is optional. I personally like to do this step twice - once with a machine-audio like Pleco reader, so I can stop and look up/replay word audio whenever I am curious about specific words. Then the second time with human narrator audio, not pausing the audio at all and just following along as I read. If I struggle to follow along, then I listen/read again until I can easily look at the words as I hear the audio without losing my place.

Step 3 (the only mandatory step, and can be done immediately if you’re comfortable with both context and listening to the language-you’re-studying already): Read the Language 1 (english) translation, while listening to the Language 2 (chinese) audio. You can either use a parallel text with both languages - so that you can reference the Language 2 lines when you lose your place/want a clear visual match up to what you hear. Or you can use only the Language 1 text. The goal is to match the translation (the ‘definition’) with audio you are hearing, so that you can make the connection that what you hear ‘means’ what you’re reading. So far from my experience, I would say Language 1 only text works better when the audio is shorter or of simpler content, because its harder to get ‘lost’ and lose where the audio matches up to the Language 1 translation. The longer the audio, the more a parallel text helps prevent you from losing your place between the audio versus the equivalent Language 1 translation. Also, the more you have already looked up definitions in Step 2 Language 2 reading, then the less likely you will be to get lost as you listen-read in this Step 3. Ideally, try to listen without pausing. Attempt to match the meaning of the Language 1 (english) sentences you’ve just read, as you hear the equivalent audio Language 2 sentences (chinese). Your goal is to see the meaning in real time of each word you hear, since you’re visually looking at the translation right before/as you hear it. Ideally, this should create a situation where most of your input is now ‘comprehensible input.’ Mainly just focus on trying to keep the text translations you read roughly matched up in your mind with the audio you hear. You will notice you are starting to comprehend/understand some of the L2 (chinese) phrases and words. You may repeat a section over a few times, or you may simply progress on to the next paragraph/page/chapter as desired. Over time, as you get more input, you should start to comprehend more of what you’re hearing. As you comprehend more, you should be able to match the audio with the equivalent english translation easier. As you do this, you should free up some of your ‘focus’ so you can start picking out what each specific WORD you hear is the equivalent english translation of. I would recommend testing this method with an easier learning material first - I tested this with chapter 1 of The Little Prince. But any short story with both language texts, and audio, will do. If its easier, you will reach the point quicker where you can start purposefully focusing on matching what you hear to specific translation definitions as you read - which is the point at which you are actually LEARNING new words/phrases in the language you’re learning. If the text is so complex you’re easily getting lost, then it will be harder for you to do this at first - and it will be harder for you to tell if that’s what you’re doing at all. Once you know HOW to do it, then go to a harder long text and attempt to do the same thing. With harder texts, you may find that at first you need to do Step 3 a few times on a single section of text, until its easier for you to keep track of your place in the text aligned with audio - and THEN work on the actual task of matching what you hear to it’s translation/definition. Even with the easier material, I did step 3 twice on one section of text, because the first time I was too lost to properly follow the text with the audio. Also - you will likely notice that your audio does NOT match up perfectly with your translated text (either they changed some sentences in the translation, or the audio is based on a different original text version etc). So a second listen through of Step 3, you’ll be able to anticipate those parts and not get lost because of them. The person who shared the Listening-Reading method suggests working through long texts (like long novels) from start to finish. Perhaps by page or chapter sections of text (if you need to do Step 1 and 2 first). Then they suggest going through a book a few times in Step 3. They say you will notice you comprehend more as you get further into the book in Step 3, and by the 3rd time through the book you should comprehend nearly everything. Based on their suggestions, I would say you will start to notice on a small scale if this method is giving you progress once you are several chapters in. And if you are on your second Step 3 trip through a story, and STILL do not comprehend much - then either you did something incorrectly (probably step 3) or this study method just is not helpful for you. But do not expect near-perfect comprehension until at the minimum towards the end of the story, or at least after a few full progressions through the story.

***Lastly, if all else fails: just doing Step 1 and a modified version of Step 2 is literally just a great study strategy to read in a target language, so you can utilize those parts to make this adventure into trying L-R not a total waste, even if L-R doesn’t work out for you. For modifying Step 2: you would just do one sequence of Step 2 where you DO look up every word you need to in order to understand that version of the text. That is basically reading in your target language for the goal of comprehending the actual main meaning and gist of the plot, with definition look-up. Ideally, you’d at some point want to also do the rest of Step 2 - the focus on using it to match the audio with word and phrase boundaries, and get used to the speed of the language. If you are good enough in a language already to follow the main gist of a plot just by reading with NO lookup - then step 2 will already probably count as extensive reading, which probably benefits you to a degree. And the focus on matching audio to text will help bring your listening skills up to your reading skill level. As far as I can tell, Step 3 just seems to be a different way to do that ‘intensive definition lookup of all words you don’t know’ in a way that has no stopping or pausing, is more fast paced, and incorporates listening skills into it, than traditional intensive-reading word lookup. So it makes sense why Step 3 feels very intensive and requires a lot of focus - if you’re doing it right, it probably feels as intense as intensive reading. (If you do step 3 wrong, it will probably feel just like listening to an audiobook in Language 2 in the background - you’ll hear things you already know and get better at recognizing them, but not understand anything extra over time). But unlike intensive reading, you will be also adding in listening comprehension practice, and you’ll be doing it VERY FAST. Having tried out L-R, it feels much faster paced and therefore motivating than intensive reading - since constant word lookups in traditional intensive reading can easily make it feel like you’re hardly reading/progressing. Also, the intensity required to pick up new words in Step 3 means that STEP 1 IS VITAL. You must already understand the key story points BEFORE starting step 3, you must already have context! Otherwise, you will be repeating Step 3 a few extra times because the first time around you might mainly just be reading the translation to pick up the initial plot/context. Now, if you’re cool with repeating Step 3 a few extra times, that’s fine. But if you want Step 3 to feel less ‘intense’ on its demand of your focus, then already being familiar with the source story material is ideal. Step 2 is also vital IF you realize that you’re losing your place in the text vs audio too often in Step 3. Otherwise, again, you will have to do Step 3 a few extra times (or pause/restart audio multiple times) in order to make sure you can match your place in the audio with your place in the translation. The ability to match audio to translation, was what I had the most difficulty doing, when trying to do L-R with daomubiji (since the audio is so long).

#rant #study method #listening reading method #listening reading #l r method

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yusuke-of-valla · 5 years

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Actually, for those plot holes, plenty of them... aren't holes. I'm submitting this instead of sending asks bc that'd be a lot of asks.

1. when did it say there's no reception? Sae gets a call right outside the interrogation room. It is weird for there to be reception so far underground but apparently there is. It is a police station, makes sense they'd want their phones to work everywhere in the building.

2. It only requires audio the first time you go there. You're able to bookmark a location like a normal navigating app, and then you just have to click the bookmark to go there. Futaba SPECIFICALLY said this was how it was done; she simply made the app think the bookmark was activated.

3. when they first go into Sae's palace, they aren't in their uniforms. They're not perceived as threats unless they're in the CASINO specifically.

I got nothing for the next bunch. 6 was probably Sae and Futaba pulling strings? For 9 she must've known of how to avoid people and cameras, I guess. I doubt there were a lot of people around, and actually Futaba could probably just loop the cameras since she can do basically anything. Government servers? Psh, child's play.

10. Ryuji's the only one who was like "haha gotem" that we saw, and he's Ryuji. He simply believed WHOLE-HEARTEDLY that it worked. He was being OPTIMISTIC bc he had faith in everyone.

11. They didn't go to the REAL interrogation room, they checked out the one in Sae's palace to make sure it looked decently real enough. Obviously they couldn't be sure though, but still.

12. Got nothing but I don't remember when that was mentioned, so.

13. They DID dissolve, it was just delayed. Is it weird it was delayed? Sure. But they did dissolve after Akechi left the room.

14. again, when did it say no reception? And why did that have to take place before he left the metaverse?

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TUMBLR LET ME KNOW WHEN PEOPLE DROP INTO MY INBOX CHALLENEGE.

Anyway, post being referred to here

So I haven't replayed or rewatched that scene recently to really give my opinion on things, but I can see both of your points on a fee of these

1) + 14) because these are kinda the same point: While it's true it's established that Sae gets a phone call down there, the point might be that they shouldn't because they're 8 floors underground. I mean, I barely get reception in my dorm which is on a hill in a city.

2) I haven't played the game recently enough to weigh in here

3) OP's point might have been that after the testimony and Sae coming to the realization that Goro's a suspect, she should be wary of him and that should change her cognition of him, the way in Futaba's Palace the PT could intially approach in their normal clothes, but then got seen as enemies and had to wear their thief clothes in the same area. So an argument could be made that Ren told Sae Goro was the traitor, she should think of him as an enemy, and this he should change into his thief attire regardless of his proximity to the Palace.

6) maybe Futaba would could pull strings? I know the conspiracy said they would falsify a death certificate anyway.

9-11) IDR enough

12) I remember Morgana mentioning this but I assumed Ren told him. This does circle back to how they ranked up if the real Ren wasn't there though.

13) Yeah they do dissolve but there's no reason for the reaction to be delayed that long, nor for there to even be blood. No other cognitive person has behaved like that and there's no reason for that to be different here other than Goro would figure everything out otherwise.

14) I already mentioned this but tbh that scene would've been better if there wasn't reception and we were spared that exposition dump.

So yeah there are definitely things I'm willing to suspend my belief for (the cellphone reception, the body, and Sae getting out of there unnoticed) then there's stuff that's iffier like Goro's thief attire that could be argued either way on account of the Metaverse not being real and thus we can't say for sure how it would have worked in this case, but then there's stuff that completely breaks my immersion like the cognitions behaving nothing like any other example we've seen so far for no reason other than plot and to pull a fast one on the player.

Generally speaking, I feel like if you're writing a complex plan like this you don't want to be overly-reliant on the audience going "logically I know that's weird but I'll bite because i'm interested" because if you make the audience go "wait what" too many times that'll break their immersion and they start picking at the little things.

#alto replies #shevi-hime #submission #i'm not sure if I'm going to want a specific tag for this

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thearkhound · 5 years

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Weekly Famitsu #572: Metal Gear Ghost Babel interview

The Game Boy Color version of Metal Gear Solid, otherwise known by its Japanese title Metal Gear: Ghost Babel, is one of the better-received side-entry in Konami’s stealth action game series. It wasn’t just a half-baked cashgrab, as was the case with many Game Boy games that happened to share their title with a popular console or PC game, but could’ve easily been a worthy successor to the prior 2D Metal Gears (particularly Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake on the MSX2) had it been made before the original Metal Gear Solid.

Prior to the release of the game, producer Hideo Kojima and three key members of the development team (Shinta Nojiri, Ikuya Nakamura and Tomokazu Fukushima) were interviewed for an article published in Weekly Famitsu #572 (December 3, 1999). This interview would later be posted online on the Twitter account Game Dankai 198X, which specializes in reposting magazine articles from Famitsu and other Japanese gaming magazines. The following is my translation of the interview.

PROFILES

Hideo Kojima - The father of the Metal Gear series, nicknamed Kantoku (Director) by his staff. He serves as producer for Ghost Babel.

Shinta Nojiri - Director of Metal Gear: Ghost Babel. Mr. Kojima calls him “our own Keanu Reeves.”

Ikuya Nakamura - In charge of everything related to the game’s imagery such as the pixel art and the screen design.

Tomokazu Fukushima - In charge of the writing. He also co-wrote the original Metal Gear Solid with Mr. Kojima.

INTERVIEW

Famitsu: Let’s start by telling us why you decided to make this new Metal Gear for the Game Boy.

Kojima: It was a few days before the release of Metal Gear Solid (henceforth MGS1) on the PlayStation. The game was already being well-received overseas, so we received a request from Europe asking us why weren’t making a Game Boy version too. They’re crazy over Metal Gear in Europe, so we decided to give it a shot.

Famitsu: So it was a development request from overseas? It’s rare for a Japanese game to be developed under such circumstances.

Kojima: That’s right. We were about to start our research on the PlayStation 2 around that period as well. While the PS2 is pretty good in terms of visuals and sounds, I wanted to be bold and re-explore the question of “what is a game”. Naturally we couldn’t use polygons. but I thought we would re-evaluate the essence of Metal Gear in sprite form.

Famitsu: Were there any concerns during the planning phase?

Nojiri: Since Ghost Babel is for a portable game platform, we designed the game around those circumstances. That’s why we went for a stage-based format for example. But in the end I think we ended up ignoring the limitations of the Game Boy by cramming too much stuff, didn’t we? (laughs)

Famitsu: The graphics are really pretty.

Kojima: The pixel art was by Nakamura, who also did the textures in MGS1. I’m willing bet there’s nobody in the entire Konami Group who draws pixel art as well as he does. However, his lifespan decreases little by little for each pixel he draws. (laughs) Since it’s a skill that can only be passed from one master to one student, he’d better train a successor soon or we’ll be in trouble.

Nakamura: I’m already dying. (laugh)

Famitsu: (laughs) But seriously, there’s a limit to what can be expressed on a Game Boy. Was it much harder than working on something on the PlayStation?

Nakamura: No, not really. The original Metal Gear released on the MSX back in 1987 was already a 2D game. However, we aimed to create a game that wouldn’t feel dumbed-down to players who already experienced MGS1.

Famitsu: I see. Were you also concerned of MGS1 while writing the story as well?

Fukushima: In order to not betray the expectations of the fans we made up to this point, we wrote the story with the idea of being worthy of the series while also surpassing all the previous games. However, I’ve been told it’s a bit too intense in some parts (glances at Mr. Kojima while stating this).

Kojima: Indeed, the game’s story is way more intense than anything I’ve written (laughs). The concept designs and such were also pretty amazing. Among the bad guys there’s a guy named Slasher Hawk who ate manatees. Naturally that idea fell through.

Fukushima: No, it wasn’t a manatee. It was a dugong (a similar-looking kind of marine mammal).

Famitsu: They both look alike (laughs).

Kojima: By the way, I know the two dolls that Marionette Owl is always holding have names. What are they called?

Fukushima: They’re Osan and Koharu. (everyone laughs) [tl’s note: These names are references to main character’s wife and lover respectively from the Japanese play The Love Suicides at Amijima]

Famitsu: The Metal Gear series is known for its strong themes that it tries to convey to players through their stories. Is it the same with Ghost Babel?

Kojima: Not having a theme in this game would be like running around a public park holding a knife. Allowing such a thing would be dangerous. That’s why after we allow players to play around with a weapon, we preach to them at the end and say to them “this is how you use that knife.”

Famitsu: I see what you mean with that statement.

Kojima: But I was a bit worried. The main demographic for Game Boy players in Japan are elementary children who are used to the worldviews of games such as the Goemon series. I was a bit worried about what kind of direction this Metal Gear would take. What players expect from a Metal Gear is not a cartoon version of Snake who lives in a world with a trivial story, but a realistic Snake who goes through a thematic story. So we stuck to the same hardboiled approach from before.

Fukushima: That’s why the scenario we wrote for the game goes beyond what people expect from a Game Boy game. It’s a story full of betrayal and conspiracies.

Nojiri: It’s not just the story. We also designed the graphics with that same mentality.

Nakamura: Instead of drawing in a strange cartoon style, we intended to respect the worldview of Metal Gear with every pixel we applied.

Kojima: The characters move really firmly on the Game Boy’s small screen. They really come to life I should say.

Nakamura: I think there’s more animation in this game than there has ever been in any other Game Boy game to date.

Kojima: Snake’s bandanna even flows into the air when he runs. Fhwaa!

Famitsu: Wow, that’s really detailed!

Kojima: The way the characters move have considerable realism to them. Even I was surprised when I saw them the first time.

Famitsu: How complete is the game in its current stage?

Kojima: I would say the game is around 50 to 60 percent finished. But each portion of game is considerably complete.

Famitsu: Can you tell us how many stages will be in the game?

Nojiri: Currently we’re planning 13 stages. The game basically revolves around infiltration and avoiding conflicts by hiding, but the objective varies depending on the stage. For example, you might have to infiltrate in darkness, demolish a building or fight a boss depending on the situation.

Famitsu: That’s quite a variety of objectives.

Nojiri: That’s the idea.

Kojima: Moreover, if you clear stage once during the story mode, you can choose to replay that stage with a different objective. The way to defeat a boss or the number of enemy soldiers you encounter and such might be different.

Famitsu: I see. It sounds very similar to the VR Training mode in MGS1.

Nojiri: It’s something of a separate bonus mode. A VR Training mode is also being added to the game.

Famitsu: Speaking of which, there’s around 180 stages planned for VR Training mode. That’s quite a lot. When I heard that number for the first time, I thought it was a mistake.

Kojima: That’s because we specialized in doing such stupid things. (laughs)

Famitsu: Stupid things…?

Kojima: Isn’t the Game Boy meant to be played outside? When you’re commuting on a train or in a car, there’s a time limit before you reach your destination. That’s why we planned lots of simple ways to play the game under such conditions.

Fukushima: There are things we ported from MGS1 and things we made specifically for this game.

Famitsu: I already feel full just hearing that.

Kojima: We haven’t revealed it yet, but there’s also a versus mode that uses the link cable that’s really fun. I can’t talk about the rules yet, but it’s an absolute blast! You’ll be thinking “I can’t believe playing against another person can be this fun.”

Famitsu: Are there any words each of you might want to give to our readers as we conclude this interview?

Nojiri: Purely as a action game, I think we ended up producing a fun one, so I hope many people will enjoy it.

Fukushima: I think Ghost Babel has a very different tone compared the usual Game Boy game. Nevertheless, I hope people will still play it since it’s a fun game.

Nakamura: Even though it was for a portable game machine, I drew the game’s pixel art with the intent to challenge its hardware limitations. Please look forward to it.

Kojima: I’ll be happy if many people after playing this game will ask themselves “what is a game?”.

The four developers discuss the creative urges they have for Ghost Babel. Even as they smile, there’s a sense of severity towards the game’s development.

#metal gear #ghost babel #hideo kojima #tomokazu fukushima #ikuya nakamura #shinta nojiri #konami #game boy #famitsu

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afreakingdork · 3 years

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Review: Resident Evil Village

So, just to set the stage here. I’m obsessed with Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. I first played it when I was home sick and beat it within two days. I then immediately replayed it to go through the Zoe ending which, in retrospect, might not have been worth it. I then followed through my partner’s playthrough which I tangentially refer to as me playing through it and, finally, I replayed it in preparation for Village. I just love everything about it. I love the enclosed space of the Baker estate, I love the characters, and I even love the story despite the many silly plot holes. Keeping that in mind, I found Village to be alright. I was not immune to the big lady hype. I was really excited to be back as Ethan. If we’re talking about my playthrough specifically, I found starting the game to be a treasure. It really sets a great tone for the story and I loved seeing how everything had changed in three years with Mia and Ethan. My joy and curiosity were cut short when I got totally bodied by the lycans in the village. For whatever reason, I could not figure out that I was just supposed to run away from them and kept dying. It was so stressful I actually put the game down for a day after dying a few times because my nerves were shot. I moved through the game what I considered to be an average pace. I made sure to ‘turn’ all the rooms blue and my total run time ended up being just over 15 hours. Of that time, I probably spent at least 7 hours in Castle Dimitrescu, a little over an hour on each House Beneviento, Moreau’s Reservoir, and the Stronghold, and finally finishing pretty much a majority of the rest of the game at Heisenberg’s factory.

Now that all the details of my gameplay are out of the way, my thoughts on the experience are below!

Which brings me to my two biggest problems with the game; the first being pacing. The amount of time spent on Castle Dimitrescu vs. House Beneviento is staggering. I love House Beneviento. It’s the exact kind of enclosed space puzzles that I adored about Resi7. The baby is objectively one of the scariest things I’ve ever encountered in a video game and I was truly, heart racing, terrified playing it, but jumping into that after Castle Dimitrescu is a wild difference. Honestly, all four dominions don’t feel like they share the same game. There’s a wild tonality shift between each area that felt really disjointed. There’s also a ton of little nit-pick things I have, like why are pots breakable, but only at Castle Dimitrescu. I’m not talking about the item vases; I’m talking about regular pottery that can be broken in pretty much every room along with the windows. It’s so strange because every other area has the identical item crates so why is Castle Dimitrescu an exception? The assets for pottery from Castle Dimitrescu are used in other areas, but they are no longer breakable. It’s a weird consistency problem that just goes in line with the inconstant tone.

I don’t know if this is common, but my other issue with the game is I genuinely believe that the game is out of order. I truly believe that they meant for Castle Dimitrescu to be the second to the last level, but after the Lady Dimitrescu hype, they moved her up in the game so everyone could experience her as soon as possible. Think about it; you spend hours wandering about Castle Dimitrescu and defeating the Lady all before you even get the dialogue from the Duke about who the four lords are and what they do. On your way out of Castle Dimitrescu you pick-up your first meat items before you’ve even unlocked Duke’s Kitchen. Resource-wise, House Beneviento and Moreau’s Resevoir have very few items to pick up in contrast with Castle Dimitrescu, which I posit is because they were meant to sequentially go first. The amount of ammo you pick up in Castle Dimitrescu is insane. It was so much, in fact, that a majority of the ammo I picked up in Castle Dimitrescu ended up not getting used until the Stronghold. From a visual standpoint, the Castle is such a visual focal point in the game, it seems wild to just knock it out and lock it up in the very beginning. Also, when you take into account the Castle’s logs about their Cadou experiments, they are the only location to not mention the Cadou. It’s almost as if they specifically had to take that phrase out, because you hadn’t learned what it was yet. You also don’t hear about Cadous in House Beneviento, but that makes more sense story-wise. As opposed to the other lords, Donna isn’t really experimenting on individuals with Cadous because she is instead experimenting with her hallucinatory power that was caused by the Cadou. The other lords are actively serving Mother Miranda by trying to create more viable subjects, while Donna is just mostly keeping to herself outside of the occasional overwhelming loneliness that pushes her to ‘call for playmates.’ My ideal order of the lords starts with Moreau because the Reservoir is the most linear of all the domains (and because I think blowing the House Beneviento load immediately would skew perception of what the game would be). You then tackle Beneviento next as a way to show the player how far this game’s reach can go. Then you enter the ever-looming Castle Dimitrescu and pick up all the details and ammo you need to then hit the Stronghold and then Heisenberg’s factory. Think about how well the game would have flowed, were you to just alter the order some.

Outside of that, there are a ton of little gameplay aspects that are sloppy. When you switch between weapons, there is a roll animation that means 1. Ethan can have two right hands up at any given moment, or 2. Ethan can have 3 hands total if you switch from a one-handed weapon to a two-handed one. When you try to dock after using the boat, you have to wait for the sliding animation of the boat getting back to exactly the right position before you disembark. When you’re talking to Chris in Heisenberg’s factory the game has to cut to black to get Ethan to sit in a chair, when it didn’t have to do that when we were talking to Heisenberg when we first get to the factory. The button combination to block and then push back an enemy was extremely finicky if the enemy wasn’t in the 100% perfect position. There were so many times when I would block and then have the prompt pop-up to push back and I would execute and Ethan would just stand there because the enemy was, usually, too close to him, which is wild because you would think that’s exactly what you need to push them back. The sound effects are omnidirectional. What this means is that when Lady Dimitrescu is walking around it sounds like she is everywhere because no one programmed the sound to not go through the walls. This is something that is taken care of in Resi7 which makes it all the more baffling that it is not in 8. When I heard the growl of a lycan or the flapping of a samca I would spin around wildly because the sound was coming from all angles. It made especially the Stronghold super annoying to play.

This is a personal thing, but it really drove me crazy how many times Ethan just sat there and took attacks in cut scenes. So many times he was still holding a firearm in his right hand and doesn’t even try to aim while enemies (particularly Lady Dimitrescu) maim him. Another personal thing is what is up with Lady Dimitrescu‘s daughters? There are detailed notes on how the Cadou and Mutamycete work differently on different individuals, but there are like no details on why the Daughters are bugs? It’s never specifically stated how Dimitrescu went about her experiments. We know it was an injectable, but was it Cadou? We know for a fact that the Cadou is large. Moreau was separately, surgically putting the Cadou into people’s bodies and then maybe injecting them with wolf blood. Donna split up her one Cadou between her dolls to puppet them and Heisenberg was using a Cadou-powered reactor which was quite large to power his Soldats. Also, as opposed to all other areas, Castle Dimitrescu is the only one with what can only be described as zombies (they’re actually called Moroaica which is like when was that established?) as the rejects of the injection, where everywhere else it’s lycans. Then, the three viable candidates of the injections turned into what looked like house flies and then reformed in a human-esque body, but is really a mass of flies for the Daughters?! At least they gave Alcina a blood disorder to explain her height and vampire tendencies, but the Daughters don’t get this treatment at all. It’s just bizarre.

Something minor I haven’t stopped thinking about is just how enormous baby Rose is. There’s even throw-away dialogue at the Winters’ home about how she is outgrowing diapers that are meant for her age at an alarming rate. Even the maternity photos of Mia show her stomach is way bigger than the average person pregnant with a single child. It’s wild because nothing about this ever comes back in any way, shape, or form. Rose is just a big baby and it’s not a big deal.

Also, WHY IS CHRIS ON THE COVER AS A LYCAN?! 1. That never even happens and 2. Chris isn’t even in the game that much!! I get that we can’t put faceless Ethan on the cover, but why not a picture of... I don’t know... THE VILLAGE! IT’S ONLY IN THE TITLE FOR FUCK’S SAKE AND IT WORKED FINE ENOUGH FOR 7!

#review #video game review #videya games #resident evil #resident evil village #resident evil 8 #me

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guildwarsstartrekskyrim · 6 years

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Things I want in Guild Wars 2

Many of these things are cosmetic, some are based on lore, others are just desires that I’d love to see happen because they’ll make me (and my characters) happy (because Flintlock deserves to be happy).

Player housing

Player housing is different than the home district. It’s a house, in some place like Claypool, Garenhoff, maybe Triskel Quay or some other place throughout Tyria. If you’re a Norn, maybe it’s just some out of the way spot in Snowden Drifts or Wayfarer’s Foothills. Maybe it’s something out in the Town of Nolan or further afield in Ebonhawke. These naturally wouldn’t be houses that you build (though, that might be a cool option), but an existing house that a player could buy. Of course, there’d have to be a lot of them. It’s probably a given that anything like this would have to be account bound and once you buy a house on one character then it’s there for every character. But you could decorate your house any way you’d like. Have a garden, perhaps a crafting area that are specific to the crafting traits that the character you bought the house with has (as an example, Flintlock has cooking, leathworking, huntsman and artificing as her crafting abilities, those would be the crafting tables or areas available for every character on that account).

Personalizing the Home District

While player housing would be awesome, I know for a fact we already have something like that with the home district. Salma in the Reach, Hero’s Canton in the Citadel, and so on. And ArenaNet has given the players a lot of toys to put into their home districts. A M.O.X. that you can talk to, plays music and gives whitty remarks about all the cats. The cats, as previously mentioned. Harvesting nodes, from wood to leather to ore to the bounty board that will go out and find items for you once per day. They even have the new gardening stuff for the home districts, and you can purchase certain harvesting nodes that are based on last season’s Living World zones such as the berries from Bitterfrost or the oysters Siren’s Landing. But there’s a lot more that could be put into the home districts. Some might be redundant, however, because a crafting area already exists close by to each home district. But it’d be nice if crafting areas spawned based on your character’s crafting skills. They already have NPCs show up based on the personal story. For example, in Shani’s version of Salma, there’s no M.O.X., but there’s Hylek in the area near the tavern. For Flintlock, there’s no Hylek, but there’s a M.O.X. and in the alleyway near the tavern is a lone grawl. So it might be something which could be done with the crafting. It’d also be nice to have the items placed in the home district be placed in areas that aren’t the default. Like if I want the harvesting nodes for the ores and plants next to the tavern instead of the chests that spawn for the airship, the auric chest and the chalk covered equipment. Maybe I want those in the alleyway. Things like that.

The ability to replay the personal story

We all have the ability to replay the LS chapters and even the Heart of Thorn and Path of Fire mission story steps. A lot of it helps in obtaining certain achievements so you can complete certain collectibles. But we can’t with the original personal story. And while many might not care about that, I have some fond memories of the personal story. I’d love to go back with now 20 year old Flintlock so she can show Tybalt how much she’s grown since 16 year old Flintlock hung out with him. Or, here’s an idea; let us play the personal story with different racial characters just for fun. Have Flintlock join in and play through the human story or the norn story. Sure, you can do that now by teaming with someone to play through their story steps, but I’d really like the chance to experience it myself.

Recognition of the races

This one may actually be a lot to ask for, but it’s a complaint I had about the lead up season to Path of Fire. Especially in the chapters that introduced Lake Doric and Siren’s Landing. While the entire Shining Blade story step that ushered your character to become a member of the Blades was great, and if you played a charr that was brought up at some point, it did feel a touch like an afterthought. Throughout the entire story with Queen Jennah, nobody said anything about the fact that you might be playing a charr. It really would have felt immersive if Queen Jennah, who’s goal has been a peace treaty with the charr, would have made some comment on the fact that a charr in the Reach is a step in the right direction. Or even meeting Minister and Lady Wi, should your character be a member of the Order of Whispers. It would have been nice to have seen some sort of discussion between the Lady and your character. I realize there’s all kinds of cutesy references made throughout Path of Fire regarding different races, such as the Elonian child speaking to the asura and the asura desperately wanting a discipline golem, or the fact that I hung out near Augry Rock for a week near the one encampment because I kept thinking of stories for Flintlock Burnfur and Flint of the Anvil Warband.

Bookshelves

Let’s face it, our inventories are getting crammed with books thanks to the number of pages and collections that we’ve been seeing in the past few seasons. I’d love to see either one of two things; the first would be bookshelves that you could place in your home district. Maybe in an outdoor library or perhaps in one of the existing buildings. But all of the books you collect with characters on your account would appear there on the shelves when you’ve completed the achievement. The other option is that the books disappear from your inventory once you complete the achievement and are placed in a tab on your hero sheet. Call it library, where you can view the books whenever you like. But having said that, something else that would be neat to see is a book you could buy from a vendor that’s blank. That you could write in and it would be your personal journal. Fill it with whatever you like, it could be your PvP ranking or how you’ve done in WvW or it could be story notes for your character or in Flintlock’s case recipes. The book would have a limited word count and when it’s filled it gets place on your personal bookshelf in your home district. This book would be different than the in game collectibles, as it could be something other players could come and read (not take, just read).

I know that there’s a lot of work that would entail placing all of that into the present game, but I think it’d be some cool ideas to play around with. I’m probably not the only one who has had these ideas before, and there’s others that might have some other ideas of their own. I think it’d be cool to share.

#Guild Wars 2 #GW2 #ideas #neat stuff I'd like to see

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twdmusicboxmystery · 5 years

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5x03: Humbug’s Gulch

Hi everyone! I’m just gonna dive right in today. ***As always, spoilers abound in this post for FTWD 5x03. Don’t read until you’ve watched! You’ve been warned!***

This episode of FTWD (5x03: Humbug’s Gulch) was awesome! I loved watching it because there were so many important symbols and set ups. I'm loving where this is going.

So, we start with our group traveling around, trying to take down all of the Red Rover walkers and marking where they are on a map. As they mark them, they realize that it's a perimeter of walkers tied up around an area of land in the center. They have no idea what's inside the perimeter of walkers. So, kind of an intriguing mystery.

One of the first symbols that caught my attention was that when they mark the locations of the walkers on the map, use Xs inside of circles. (X Theory.) It would only be that, if it had only been Xs. But they drew an X within a circle. Remember, we saw this exact symbol around Morgan on a tree in Coda. What that tells me is that

1) whatever's going on in the season, we can connect it to Coda. That's number one. And

2) whatever they’re planning for Morgan in the season has been planned since Coda and S5. That's awesome.

Also, remember the X within the circle is sort of a skewed version of the coda symbol. A coda is more of a T, straight up and down over circle, but the X is like a version of it that’s been turned on its side.

This episode is called Humbug Gulch.

It’s the name of the Western town they go to, which I’ll talk about more in a minute. But I looked up the meaning of gulch. It can be a V-shaped valley formed by erosion. It may be a small stream or dry creek bed and is usually larger in size than a gully. It just reminded me of the dry riverbed in 5x10, Them. If you keep looking at the definition, it means different things in different places, but is often associated with water. The actual definition of humbug is deception or something that's not true. Which is why Ebenezer Scrooge always said, “Bah, humbug.” It's his way of saying something is ridiculous or that's untrue. And of course, the most famous pop culture reference of the word humbug IS Ebenezer Scrooge saying it. Which makes it a Christmas reference as well. So, we have a reference to Christmas, and something that has to do with water and something we saw in Them.

In terms of the show, the phrase would literally mean ‘deceptive gulch.’ Something about this town they went to is deceptive. The meaning of the title, other than the fact that they went to a place called Humbug Gulch, wasn't obvious. But I’ll come back to this.

They mentioned a gas station when the group talked to each other over the walkie-talkies. John also mentioned their luck turning (Luck Theory). We saw a windmill at the Gulch, much like the one on Herschel's farm in S2. In most been a common symbol since then, and we usually see it in conjunction with Beth symbolism.

The intro was kind of interesting. It basically just showed a wind storm and a rolling tumbleweed. I wasn't sure what that meant. But as we get into the episode, John and June do have to wait at a windstorm. So, the reason for that became obvious as the episode progressed. Then we heard just a snippet of a voice on the radio. There was a lot of radio talk in this episode, and what happened at the end had a lot to do with speaking over the radio. When I heard that in the intro, it reminded me a lot of the phantom voice we heard at the end of TWD 9x16. I don't know for supposed to be connecting those, but I couldn't help but hear similarity there.

So, we had a heavy similarity here to 6X16. While attempting to take down one of the rows of Red Rover walkers, someone starts firing on John and June. They jump into their car and run for it. They ended up going to a little Western town called Humbug Gulch. This is one of those Western tourist attractions. Apparently, John used to work at one—not this specific one, but another one in a different city—so he knew what it was. Even though it was a tourist place, he knew they’d find real guns there.

I totally didn't register this on my first watch, but when the re-watch came on, I heard it, and my mouth dropped open. Right before he being shot at, John remarks that there must be some “serious people” behind these this perimeter walkers. June then says, "We’re serious people too." When they jump in the car, John says his line again about these being serious people. Obviously a Sirius/Dog Star reference, and it’s repeated three different times.

I’ll jump forward to mention that we saw Dwight in this episode. At this point we can't prove the Sirius reference isn’t about Dwight and Sherry, but I don't think the two of them necessarily qualify. They didn’t go out of their way to make the audience think either one was dead. In fact, they kind of went out of their way to set up this story of Dwight searching for Sherry, which suggests the opposite. I'm really hoping this means is that something about this arc will lead to the original character associated with Sirius symbolism. (Beth).

They get to the town, and we see some more interesting resurrection symbols. There’s a carousel with bright yellow horses with blue saddles that the camera focuses on for a minute. There’s also a light colored horse statue. (Looks like a palomino.) So, horse theory. And the light colored horse represents Beth and resurrection (“You’re still alive.”)

John leads them upstairs to a gun locker. June picks the lock. Inside, they find guns and ammunition. @wdway noticed little tins, two green and three yellow (both Beth colors) inside of it. Even more exciting, we see ammunition for .45 colt. Remember that issue 45 of the CBs is the one where Andrea is resurrected from the dead.

We also saw an “Exit” sign over the door, which reminded us of the one in Beth’s cell in 4x01. And the bag June carries out of the building has a B on it. Just saying. ;D

They had all kinds of fun with their Western themes in this episode. It was a really obvious old West/Outlaw/Sheriff kind of situation. So that alone is significant. John and June get the guns, but a windstorm picks up. June wants to wait it out, but John doesn't. He wants to make a run for their van and try to get back to the group. We thought John's bandanna looked an awful lot like Daryl's black bandanna from season four. An interesting callback, given all the other symbols.

When they make a run for the car, the phantom shooter starts firing at them again. John eventually comes face-to-face with him and June hits him over the head. Guess who? Dwight.

We've known we’d see Dwight this season, but I was still excited to see him. His first question to John is, "Where is she?" Naturally, John has no idea who he's asking about, but we, the viewers do. We know he's looking for Sherry.

Random detail, but I have to say I think it's adorable that John calls June, “June Bug.”

As I said, we saw something of a replay of 6x06, Always Accountable (major Beth symbolism episode). We had John and June doing their own thing, and then phantom people started shooting at them. That's exactly what happened to Daryl, Sasha, and Abraham at the beginning of 6x06. They were returning from Operation Lead the Walkers Away, and were fired on by unseen people. In that case, it was the saviors who fired at them, looking for Dwight. Then, in the same episode just a little while later, Daryl met Dwight. Here, it was Dwight (previously a Savior) who fired on John and June. Only a few minutes later, in the same episode, they met Dwight. Don’t tell me episode parallels aren’t a thing, y’all. ;D

In the next scene, we see a deer crossing sign. Yet another indication of possibly someone coming back from the dead. Again, this COULD be a Sherry and Dwight thing, but I’m not convinced of that. Unlike with Glenn, Rick, and Beth, they haven't gone out of their way to make us think either Sherry or Dwight died. They merely disappeared from TWD. Also, keep in mind that this wasn't an actual deer that we saw get shot. It was a deer crossing sign. It may not represent an actual resurrection, not like the deer we saw around Rick in 5x12. But it's a symbol of the resurrection arc. I'm interpreting it as something about Dwight in this arc leading to a resurrection.

Another call back to 6x06 comes when Dwight wakes up. He basically has the same conversation with John and June that he had with Daryl in 6x06, protesting that he held the gun to their heads and he didn't understand why they would help them after that.

He said that same thing to Daryl in 6x06, about how he tied Daryl up and put a gun to his head and kept prisoner overnight, yet Daryl still came back to help them. Lots of callbacks to a Bethyl-heavy episode.

We also see lots of infinity symbols here because of Sherry’s notes. And granted, we saw them between Dwight and Sherry before, so it’s nothing new. But still interesting, all things considered.

I also think it's interesting the way they set this up. Because John looked for June (they are also Bethyl proxies) John completely understands the lengths Dwight will go to to find Sherry. He's probably the one person in the world who would have given Dwight a break over this and even helped him find Sherry. I’m just saying the crossing of Dwight’s and John/June’s stories required a lot of planning and has probably been in the works for some time. I’m positive when the writers wrote John and June’s story for last season, they already knew the two of them would cross paths with Dwight/Sherry.

We noticed John and June played piano music to distract the walkers so they could escape. Not only a musical reference, but we can tie it to 4x01, in which they used music to lure the walkers way from the Big Spot. And of course Beth specifically played the piano in 4x13, Alone.

Rather than escaping to his car with June and John, Dwight ran to their van, which by then he'd shot the tires out of. They talk to him on the walkie and he finally admits that Sherry has left messages for him as she travels. The last one he found was written on the registration for a van that looks exactly like the one John and June were driving. That's why he opened fire on them in the first place. He thought that was the car Sherry one drove, which was why she left a note for him on the registration.

Okay, this gets super-interesting at this point. Look at this scene with Dwight in the van. Remind you of anything?

It looks exactly like the scene where Aaron and Daryl got caught in the wolf van in 5x16.

Walkers all around trying to get in, him trapped with no way out, and then Dwight has a moment where he more or less gives up.

He basically tells John to go on without him, giving up both on the idea of getting out alive, and on his search for Sherry. This is a combination of a couple of things. We could compare it to Daryl in 5x16. They had no way out and Daryl insisted on sacrificing himself so Aaron could get away. He was willing to die right then to save Aaron. Maybe even wanted to die because he was still so down about Beth. Of course, Aaron insisted that they would work together to get out, and then Morgan—*clears throat* MORGAN!!!*—saves them.

Something similar happened here. Dwight is alone in the car. He gives up, even looking at his gun as though he might shoot himself, but John and June talk him out of it. June tells him that giving up his search for Sherry would be just as ethically wrong as hurting someone. I think it's interesting that it's June—the once missing woman—who convinces the depressed man not to give up. Very Beth-ish. Then they help Dwight escape the van by shooting the walkers and creating a clear path for him. Much like Morgan did for Daryl and Aaron in 5x16.

Some of the dialogue was also important there. June says Dwight doesn’t feel like he deserves to find her and find happiness again. Dwight says it doesn’t matter if Sherry is alive or dead, because he’ll never find her. Never be able to make things right. He says that’s “who I am now.” Making things right is a callback to what Daryl told him to do in 8x16. I also think this dialogue could apply to Daryl at various times after he lost Beth. Interestingly, “Who You Are Now” is the title of the first episode after Rick disappeared (9x06) so we have a connection between this arc and what’s happening on the main show.

The other thing that this really struck me is that Dwight gets a version of Beth’s suicide arc. It obviously wasn't as long or protracted as hers, but the difference between Dwight in this episode and Daryl in 5x16 is that Daryl tried to sacrifice himself for something noble (saving Aaron). He didn’t simply decide to give up and shoot himself. So, this felt a lot like Beth’s suicide arc in TWD S2. Back then, she really did just want to give up and die. Much like Beth, Dwight came through his depression with a new resolve to live and find Sherry. Again, very Beth-ish.

Another detail I didn’t catch until the second time through? Remember that colt .45 I mentioned earlier, which points to Andrea surviving her gunshot wound in the comics? It was that gun Dwight contemplated killing himself with. John gave it to him to shoot walkers. Coincidence? Yeah, really not.

After rescuing him from the van, John tells Dwight he had the wrong car. He compared the VIN number on the registration to van’s VIN number, and they don’t match. Obviously, the make, model, and color of the van are exactly like the one Dwight was looking for, but he just so happened to find the wrong one.

I think all this car stuff is super interesting. Given that we think Beth was left in a car, and that we often see clues in car license place plates and car trunks, it’s just interesting that there's a car arc going on in this season of FTWD. Registrations have lots of numbers and letters in them. And the fact that he found the wrong car? I think that's significant. I wonder if something about this will end up playing out as part of Beth’s arc as well. They left her in the “wrong car” somehow. I have no idea, really, but it’s fun to contemplate the possibilities.

At the end of this episode, Dwight and Morgan meet and recognize one another. Morgan is instantly accepting of Dwight and he officially joins their group. One super-subtle thing I caught here was that Dwight went to Georgia before going to Texas. He just mentions it very briefly in passing, saying “Once she hit Georgia, everything seemed to drive her this way.”

No way that’s a coincidence. They could spin it many ways. Maybe Dwight already ran into Beth in his travels. Maybe he was wrong about Sherry going to Texas and will eventually return to Georgia. Maybe she’ll head back to Georgia for some reason and he’ll meet up with her then. Either way, this arc is subtly pointing back toward Georgia. And Grady, which we can only assume is still standing.

He tells them that he's never been inside the perimeter of walkers either, but he's walked all around it. He takes them to one particular place where they plan to break through and see what's on the inside. Just before they do, they hear something on the radio.

I haven’t mentioned Alicia’s minor arc this episode because it has less to do with Beth symbolism. She hears the kids they met in the first episode on the radio and keeps calling out to them, promising to help them in asking where they are. At one point, she hears Annie and Dylan talking on the radio, with Annie telling Dylan to hide because she can see “them.”

We don't know who “them” is. It's definitely interesting because it's the name of episode 5X10, so we could see it as another tie to Beth. It sounds like there are bad people that the kids are running from. In the end, the kids radio and ask Alicia to meet them at the truck stop where Morgan's group originally took them.

So, Morgan’s group doesn’t break through the Red Rover walkers right then, which means we can after little longer to see what's inside the perimeter.

On the way back to the truck stop, they see the van the kids were driving. Inside, Dylan is laying on the seat. He looks hurt, or perhaps just sad. He’s covered in either mud or blood (probably both) so it’s hard to say how injured he is. But he’s alone. Annie and Max aren’t with him.

The most interesting symbolic thing about this is that we once again have Morgan finding someone inside a car who's hurt. It’s pretty much the biggest symbol of Morgan finding Beth in a car that we have, and we've seen it many times now. Alicia asks Dylan where his brother and sister are, but he doesn't really say anything before the episode ends.

Then it cuts to Max and Annie putting up Red Rover walkers. So, as it turns out, these kids are the ones tying them across the roads. I'm of two minds about what this might mean.

The show implies there's nothing inside the perimeter of walkers. The kids just put them up to keep strangers away from the area. But I don't know if I believe that's true. Maybe these kids are just super- smart, but I don’t see them going to this kind of trouble to protect…nothing.

I also don’t think they could have put the walker heads up on the billboard by themselves last episode, and there’s still the question of who took Al. I don’t think it was them. In fact, Max says he wants to find out who took Alicia’s friend, so it wasn’t them. So overall, I'm not sure what to make of this yet. But it makes the mystery of this place intriguing and I'm excited to see where it goes.

So once again, we don't know if "them," is really a group of baddies, or just something created by these kids. I'm not even sure which one I hope it is. Having something crazy inside the perimeter of walkers would definitely be a cooler plot twist. But if there's really nothing there, the reference to Them becomes purely symbolic, which is good for us, too. Also, I’m wondering if the “humbug” in the title perhaps refers to the way in which these kids are deceiving Morgan’s group. Not sure how that will pan out yet, but it’s interesting.

Some final symbols: we saw Max drawing on a map and I noticed it said, “Broken Bridge.” So, not only Bridge Theory, but I feel like that’s a connection to Rick’s bridge in TWD S9.

So yeah, I really loved this episode. Lots of fun set-ups and I'm super excited to see where this arc, both with Dwight and with this perimeter of walkers, goes. Because they used Xs within circles to represent the perimeter of walkers, I really hope whatever is within the perimeter will lead to Beth. Thoughts?

#beth greene #beth greene lives #beth is alive #beth is coming #td theory #td theories #team delusional #team defiance #beth is almost here #bethyl

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daynamartinez22 · 3 years

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Weekly SEO Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 335

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 335 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.

Announcement

Welcome everybody Hump Day hangouts Episode 335, also known as 335. Today is the 14th of April 2021. Get the whole game here. So we are going to give our greeting Say hello to everybody. Got a couple of announcements to go over and then we are going to jump into your questions. If you’re watching live. Go ahead, you can add your questions on there and just say What’s up? Say hi. Let us know you’re alive and still kicking. If you’re checking out the replay, come join us live sometime it’s every week at 4 pm Eastern at semantic mastery comm slash HD questions. Let’s see her nine you are first on the list here today. How are you doing man?

Cool, why don’t they What did they do? I’m good, man. I’m good. Good, happy to be here. Whether it’s still nice. Here, when Osiris we’re heading into the cooler season, but it’s good. Everything’s good.

Cool. What’s going on in Facebook ads lands these days, what’s the biggest Oh, it’s crazy, man. It’s crazy. It’s insane. Like, there’s a bunch of changes coming up. But you know, we’re still looking good. There’s a bunch of changes when it comes to privacy. When it comes to specifically, apple, iOS, you know, anything that has to do with with with that environment, there’s going to be higher privacy and force, which I think it’s cool. But it’s also, you know, a challenge for us marketers that are trying to, you know, develop or deliver relevant ads to people. So other than that, you know, it’s looking good on we are we’re finding our way through it. So it’s challenging as you show, you know, that’s the name of digital marketing.

So, fair enough. Bradley, how you doing today?

Good, man. super busy. Lots of lots of good things going on. Just a lot of things on the horizon that are starting to pop and it’s just been good. So glad.

I think you were talking yesterday, don’t let me spoil a beat or spill the beans here from not solely talking about this, but I think you were working or you’re working with some members in the mastermind for some sales type of stuff.

Yeah, we started the last Thursday was kind of like the orientation meeting. But you know, we have many mastermind groups. In the mastermind. I’ve had one that I’ve been hosting for probably close to three months now with anybody that’s new, that does marketing and real estate either for their own real estate business for investment purposes or for flipping or for if they doing marketing services for realtors or real estate agents. And we do that once every two weeks. But then I just started another small mini mastermind it’s meeting every week on Thursdays now for anybody that is doing a lot of heavy prospecting in sales for their own agency. Because I want to, you know, get better at sales myself. And so we’re, we were going on a 40 starting tomorrow is our 40 to 42 weeks of consecutive mini accountability groups meetings every Thursday, where we’re going to be talking exclusively about prospecting and sales methods and you know, just in trying to get better at that so I’m really looking forward to it at the end, you know, 42 weeks is going to take us all the way until January of 2022. And you know, we should all the members of the group which I think there’s six of it plus six plus me right now, we should all be better at sales by the end of that for damn sure.

So, let’s say if you’re not you guys all got a problem. But yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah, more Bradley’s talking about if you’re not in the mastermind, we regularly form we tried to do it about quarterly form small groups and kind of the mini masterminds if you will racing to get more one on one time. And we’re going to be starting that back up again pretty soon. So if you’re not in the mastermind, you’re thinking about joining now’s a really good time to get in before we start forming those up because once we do that we wait for another you know, quarter, and then we’ll do it again.

So Alright, Chris, how are you doing today?

Good. So happy that spring is here. Like temperature is up and down like it is in April but things are pretty good.

Good deal, man. All right, Marco. What’s the weather report?

It’s the rainy season in Costa Rica. Catch it? Oh, looks awful.

It’s horrible. It’s horrible. It’s overcast. And it’s a little bit cooler than usual. So I have my air conditioning turn up to 72 I think it is. And I don’t I don’t want to get too cold. Right. Is it comfortable? But yeah, you know, we have to suffer through these. Through these horrible seasons in Costa Rica. It’s either dry, or it’s raining everywhere. So life is what it is. Can anybody say? GMB posting service? Oh, was I supposed to say that?

Somebody today I know. The VA that I trained to write for me according to Jordan training, which I’m not going to mention live Of course, nothing of that is ever going to get out but we write for both the bot and the person we write for the entity and to try to get the person’s click. So the VAT is trained for that is actually writing templates. And they’re tuned that as far as you can tune 1500 characters, you can domain entity and some supporting. But it is being they’re being set up that way. And that’s so they’re going to be well written, everything is going to be checked and double-checked. But of course, if you should happen to be getting that service, you should always edit your content according to what your message is, right? If so, if you see something that shouldn’t be, you can send it back to us. However, it is we’ll work it out. But it’s going to be up to me. The best way to do it has always been getting people in the GMB as managers and get them to post from the GMB. I’ve never been a fan of auto posters. And we recently had some issues with some auto posters where the API was tagged as dirty by Google. I don’t like mentioning names. I don’t like saying what who or what, let’s just say that when you get people like Rob, our partner in crime and MGYB, and then the heavy hitter club involved in anything, an IP is gonna get muddied up, it’s gonna get dirty. All right. So if you know that, you have things that you care about, why would you put that through a risk of that nature, where it could be tagged as dirt. Now, we didn’t know this until now, but my whole system has always been getting them added as managers in the GMB and they post from the GMB. They add images. In the GMB videos. Everything gets done inside the GMB. Fortunately, I’ve only had a couple of suspensions during this whole time. So something must be right about adding the person as the manager in the GMB. Of course, it’s mostly the GMB the one or one of the times that I did get suspended, it was a, it was added as a post office box with the street address. Those are usually are generally known as legit, right. But they do carry a risk. And one of those risks is if it gets suspended, it’s kind of difficult to get it verified again or to get the suspension lifted. And anyway, there you go. It’s coming. It’s another thing to be really excited about. We just continue to add what people need in MGYB to write their ship, which is what we’re all about, right? You should read your ship, make money, change someone to help you make more money, lather, rinse, repeat, making the system making money should be a system.

Oh, yeah. Well, if you’re new to us, if you’re new to Semantic Mastery, you’re new to MGYB and you want to find out more about what Mark was referring to there, find out how to shield your site, don’t worry about algorithm updates, and you can find out what the hell the SEO shield is because I guarantee you’re gonna hear it like 10 times today. So head over to SEOshield.com it’s a free training, it’ll explain a lot of this stuff. Plus, it’s actually got training in there about how you can apply this stuff. If you’re looking to take things a step further beyond that, grab the battle plan, alright, that’s step-by-step processes for SEO, all the stuff we do in check out that battle plan dot semantic mastery calm. And for those of you who are like us, if you’re an agency owner, or you’re just a consultant, running a small team, and you want to get more clients, you want to grow your business, write more revenue, and you want to steal your team, then to x your agency is what we recommend you to check out and that’s at 2xyouragency.com and we’ve already mentioned the mastermind on top of the mini masterminds on top of the webinars from everyone here on top of the community, that that’s just where you’re going to get the best and quickest turnaround on information and a peer group is second to none. So if you’re looking for that, whether you have a digital marketing business, again, whether you’re a consultant or maybe even have a brick and mortar like some of our members do, you can find out more about that a mastermind dot semantic mastery.com Let’s see. Last but not least, I wanted to mention POFU Live. So this is year four. Are that right guys? Yeah. I think so.

No, it is four because yeah, last year, we didn’t do it. We did a virtual event. So that’s why I didn’t register. But yeah, this is

Yeah, I was like wait a second. So POFU Live we settled, we were able to schedule this in. So it’s gonna be the last weekend in September 2021. So that’s going to be the VIP day on the 24th. And then we’re going to have to go hard on 25th 26th. With ourselves with some amazing guest speakers, it’s gonna be a ton of fun. I was really happy this last year, the feedback was probably the best out of the last three years, which we were really happy about going virtual, of course, you know, we weren’t sure. But we did that feedback was great. Everyone got a ton of value out of that. We’re gonna be opening up tickets for that pretty soon, as usual for those of you who are taking action and grab them faster will definitely be a kind of a pre-launch or early bird offer. So make sure you take advantage of that and we’ll be sharing more information about that over the coming weeks and then over the summer too. So Stay tuned for that. Anything else you guys before we drop into the questions.

I just wanted to mention real quick that, you know, it’s crazy because you said the peer group is second to none in the mastermind. And I agree. And it’s funny because one of our longest members had kind of gone dark for quite some time, but he remained a member. And just recently, the last few weeks or month and a half or something like that he’s resurfaced. And he’s been participating a lot in the group and joined the mini mastermind with me. And he’s also joined a small accountability group that I hold with a couple of other members on a weekly basis. And it’s, it’s just great to see, he’s been with us since like day one. And so for, you know, somebody to be all these years and in this still participate with the group, it just goes to show you that, you know, it is a good peer group to be in guys. So I would recommend you do it. definitely get access to the small groups and all that. So, alright, well, I’m gonna grab the screen, and let’s get into it. We’ve got several questions already.

We can see your screen.

Should We Avoid Using Billing/Credit Card/Address Info Between Projects To Avoid Footprints In Google Suite?

Okay, good. Thank you. It looks like Justin is the one that we’re starting with cases, I just listened to a video where Bradley was talking about adding a G Suite account for all new projects with their own billing information. Okay, are we supposed to avoid using the same billing credit card address info between projects to avoid different footprints? Excuse me? And if so, what’s the most practical way to do that? I don’t, I don’t, I don’t use different billing information for G Suite stuff. You know, for client stuff, they do it right. But for my own stuff, I use my same information, because it’s me that’s required to pay for the billing. I’ve never had an issue with it. I know I’ve heard other people say that they have. But I’ve never had an issue with having multiple Google workspace accounts. It’s never caused me any problem whatsoever. So I’ve got like, literally, well, well over a dozen, I can say that I don’t know if I got two dozen yet. But well over a dozen workspace accounts that I pay for $6 a month, every single damn month for every one of them. But there’s a benefit for it. And most of those accounts make me quite a good amount of money. So there, it’s totally worth it. And I’ve never had any trouble with having the same billing information. So I’m not sure which video you were watching Justin but I don’t have any problem with it. That doesn’t mean that it can’t potentially create a problem. Maybe somebody else here has had a problem with it.

Marco I’ve you know, I’ve never had problems, but I use multiple credit cards I get like I get people to give me something like a $500 credit limit. So that you can use it in ads and all these different things. And the only pain with that one is having to update it. Like every time the card expires, you do have to update the information, but you just hire a VA to do to make all those changes. Okay, that’s how I do it. I know, I know, you do it your way, you’ve never had trouble, I do it my way. I’ve never had problems.

We’re good. Next, Gordon says. And by the way, guys, if you are worried about it, a lot of credit card companies will allow you to create virtual credit card numbers where you can like, they’ll give you a unique credit card number for one specific account so that you’re not using the same account number across all the different things that you sign up for several credits, you know, a lot of credit card companies will offer that as an option now. So they’ll give you it’s all tied to the same card, the same account, but they give you virtual credit card numbers. So that might be an option you can look into if you’re worried about that.

The only problem with that one is if you’re using it with Google ads, and for some reason, the virtual card gets declined. everything related to that card will then get declined, including the main card really well that yeah, that’s an issue and I know someone that it happened to, which is why I’m mentioning it.

What Is The Reason Why You Have Different Link Building Approach For Yelp And GMB Listing?

Okay. So Gordon’s up longtime Gordon and he says, Hey, guys, I believe you mentioned previously that we can blast a ton of backlinks directly to a Yelp listing and get it to page first page of Google search results. Yeah, it’s been a few years since I’ve done that, but that used to work incredibly well. He says if it’s not in a super high competitive niche or area without getting any Google penalty, wow, for GMB listings, we should, of course, use our way as Google Drive stack from MGYB or web 2.0 sites as tier one buffers so as not to incur any Google penalty. So I was wondering if you could explain what is the reason that Yelp and GMB are different in that respect? They’re not. You can I mean, you know unless Marco has something to say differently. You can just hammer away to Google the GMB profile with you know, just like you can a Yelp listing. So I’ve not had any trouble with that either. Is there anything that I’m misquoting here Marco or no, that’s a misinterpretation of what we said? We said, Oh, all bets are off. And when it’s Google when it’s a Google property, you Yeah, I mean, in GMB, a GMB listing is a Google property. It’s on Google subdomains on the maps, subdomain. All of the business domains are on a Google-owned domain, that business site has a lot of power, man, you’re shaking, a lot of power, those posts will push a lot of power. So no, all bets are off, though they get hammered. They get hammered. We’ve never made a distinction, the only place where I’ve made a distinction is just leaving the money site pristine, never hitting it directly. Because you want that to get links, naturally. However, whatever that means, but in a natural manner, so people are going to link to it, people are going to share it, people are going to do whatever the whatever it is, naturally, you want that to happen to the money site, where off-page and through Google, as I’ve said, or through something that that really powerful, you know, to be a really powerful domain like Amazon, MSN, Yahoo, just whatever YouTube or YouTube is, is a Google property anyway, but you understand what I’m saying? Yeah, it has that high trust and authority. According to Google, not according to vanity metrics are third-party metrics. But according to Google, they’re not then hammering it citations hammer those yellow Yeah. Yellow Pages all hammer them S3 @ID, all of your tier one assets, hammer them. That’s what we say. Leave your money site, pristine. I know Bradley likes to go with press releases to the money site. I don’t recommend that unless you know what you’re doing. Because it’s going to mean hundreds of links to whatever that page it is that you’re linking to. So you better know what you’re doing. Other than that, I don’t see any problems. How’s he any issues?

There you go. And yeah, so I was gonna disagree with what Marco said it Yeah. When we talk about using our drive stack and you know, syndication networks and all that as buffers, it’s for any money site or money page that you’re trying to push. You know, you don’t want to but when you’re hitting the GMB website, the Google Maps URL, GMB, or Google Site know those kinds of things, you just hammer away. So okay. By the way, this is good. This is good because this is a question about press releases. And I wanted to kind of touch on what Marco just said, You know, I do use press releases to link sometimes to the money site. When I do though, you know, it’s always a naked URL or a brand anchor. That’s it. Like, it’s either a naked URL, or it’s a brand anchor if I’m going to use an anchor text, which is okay, for the money site, but that’s it like I don’t do any keyword rank links using, you know, so keyword anchors from press releases directly to the money site. However, you can use keyword anchors in press releases when you’re linking to an SEO shield property, for example, or GMB. You know, an asset for example. So, you know, again, it’s, it’s about very strategically using press releases, but um, I do like using press releases as an actual link-building tool for my money, you know, money site stuff, so.

What Are The Best 3 Links URL And Anchor Text To Submit When Filling Out The MGYB Press Release?

Alright, so the next question was from Ron, he says, when filling out the MG y b press release form, for best results to boost Google rankings for a service-oriented keyword page, like domain comm slash general contractors fail Fairfield, California, and help boost my Google My Business Page, general contractors, Fairfield CA is the keyword I’m wanting to rank for number one, what are the best three links, URLs or three links to submit? And the anchor text? Okay, well, as I just mentioned, if you’re going to link directly to your money site, to that to that particular page is like in that example, then I would leave that as either just a make a URL, so the URL is the anchor, right, or a brand name. And that’s it like nothing else. If you’re going to link directly to the money site, okay. One of the best three links, well, it’s not necessary to always put three links in there, you also have to consider what you’re doing. If you go to Semantic Mastery, excuse me, youtube.com/semanticmastery, you can search for in search our channel, use the channel search feature and search for press release SEO or PR silo stalking, any one of those terms, and you can go through and watch and maybe we can even drop the link in here on in the chatbox. But there’s a webinar that Marco and I did ship probably close to two years ago now about how to silo press releases together. And that’s a very, very powerful way that’s kind of what I’ve been doing now for many, many months, is just doing PR silos. And we talk about exactly how to do that. So it’s not necessary to you know, you can still use three links, but you got to think about what you know how you’re splitting up the PageRank or the link equity that you from those from the press release. And it’s better to try to limit your URLs like I try not to do more than two Links now and press releases, I was doing three for a long time, but I really just stick to two now. And that’s always because it’s one to my target property and one to the previous press release in the silo. That makes sense. And we talked about that in the press release silo webinar. So if you just go check that out, it’s really it’s on our channel. And it’ll help you to get better at understanding how to use press releases in it, as you know, just to stack them in a silo order or fashion, if that makes sense.

All right, I’m on record, I’ve always recommended links.

Yeah, and that’s what I��ve been doing now for months. So, and I agree. And usually at the top of the silo, I only have one link in the press release. And that’s to whatever the target is, and I’m trying to push the power to you know, and contextual doesn’t make it an I’m gonna drop you some more knowledge. mega contextual doesn’t make it a naked URL. Contextual works much better for creating the semantic relationships that we’re looking to create at the top of the silo, Papa silo. Yeah,

yeah. But remember, don’t do that. If you’re linking to your money page, right? Do that linking to one of your SEO shield properties don’t. So again, if you’re linking to your money site page as the top of the silo and the press release silo, then you want to use a naked URL or brand anchor in that case, I would probably go with a brand new anchor Well, except that your naked URL has your keyword in it here. So that could be a way to do it too. So but just like I said, Be careful what you’re doing with the press releases, if you’re going to be linking to your money page, just stick with either naked or brand anchors, naked URLs, or brand new anchors. As far as the best three, like I said, that I select. Typically, it’s going to be an SEO shield asset, you know, the G site mirror page. So the page that has been mirrored after the page that I want to promote on the money site, except it’s on the G site if that makes sense, or GMB or, you know, whatever it is that I’m trying to link to. But if you’re going to do two links, then it would be whatever your target is that you’re trying to push the most power to. And then usually to one of your other tier-one entity assets, one of your other branded entity assets within the SEO shield, syndication network, GMB website, g site, Google Map URL, any one of those, if you’re trying to push maps, like in the local three-pack, then I would recommend linking to your whatever your target URL is, again, if it’s going to be your money site page, then so be it. But as the second link, I would always link to either the GMB website or the GMB map URL. And I’m gonna I know that was one of your questions, what’s the best URL to link to there? I’m going to show you how to find that in just a moment. Okay. As far as anchor text, as I said, if you remember, if you’re linking to SEO showed assets or any tier one branded entity asset, you can use keywords. And that’s what Marco just said is actually better. That’s more powerful than naked URLs. So your anchor text is going to be whatever you want it to be. So for example, general contractors, Fairfield VA, I would probably word it slightly to where it reads naturally, like, you know, General Contractors in Fairfield, California, or in Fairfield Kat ca and use that as an anchor text to link back to, you know, again, your GMB website, or your GMB map URL or something like that. Okay. Marco, do you want to comment on that while I show him how to find that URL?

No, no, that’s fine.

So if we go to like, if I just do a quick search for big bamboo marketing, there, it comes up. And when if you do a brand search, you get a knowledge panel to pick up here. Then there’s a Chrome extension. It’s called gather up. So gather up Chrome extension, and you just click that, and right there is that that’s the maps URL that you want to use. It’s the dub dub dub dub google.com, slash maps, question mark, CID equals URL. Does that make sense? And again, it’s called a gather up Chrome extension, just go to Google and search, gather up Chrome extension, go add it to Chrome, and then go do a brand search for the brand that you want to grab that URL from. And when the knowledge panel appears, you can also do it inside of Google Maps. It won’t give you the Google writer review URL if you do it inside of Google Maps. But if you just do it for standard Google search, and the knowledge panel appears, you’ll get both of these URLs. And that’s the URL you want to use. Okay. It’s a good question.

How Do You Find The Right Google My Business Link To Submit?

All right, number three. Oh, how do you find them? So how do you find the right okay, and should it be one of the three-link URLs? Well, it can be but also remember, if you’re buying press releases from us press advantage allows you to add a Google My Business map to the organization page when for that brand right for that company. And one of the options is to embed the GMB map into the press release. So, you know, you can link to that map URL if you’d like but you can also just opt to have the map embedded, which is typically what I do okay.

What Is The Best Practice To Optimize The Image For SEO Purposes?

Okay, moving on the number, what is the best practice for the image filename. The image with the keyword with the best practice for the image, again, if you’re doing maps is to use the use, or trying to rank locally, or whatever is to use the URL of an image that’s already been published on your money site. So like, if you’ve got a page, in this case, your general contractors, Fairfield ca page, whatever image you have on that page, that’s already been optimized. Hopefully, you’ve already optimized that image, the file name, the metadata, all of that stuff’s been optimized geotagged and everything and it’s been added to the page on your money site, then add the image through the URL, because then what press advantage does is it publishes the press release, using the source URL for the image source from your money site page. So now you’ve got your website, your photo, that is a media file on your website, which has now been syndicated out to hundreds of press releases, you know, published on a bunch of different news and media sites. So it’s pushing credit back to your money site, image URL if that makes sense. So that’s what I do. And then likewise, if you don’t want to, if you’re not linking back to, you know, you can also use an image from a from Google My Business, for example, from your Google My Business profile, you can embed an image from there using the image URL there. So just think about where it is that you’re trying to push the power to. If it’s all trying to push the power from the money site landing page to the location landing page, then use the image URL from that page. If it’s that you’re trying to push maps, grab an image from maps, make sure it’s been geotagged before you upload it, but then grab the URL from maps and use that as your embedded image URL. Does that make sense? And then for keywords, I just usually put whatever keyword I’m trying to optimize for. And then I put by like, the letter B y, and then the brand name so that I’m creating that association between the brand and the keyword.

Any comments on that? Yeah, one of my press releases will have my logo. Another one of my press releases will have the logo from the GMB. So it’ll be it’ll create that relationship between my GMB logo and the logo on my website. And then I’ll just keep adding images that are part of my entity from around the web. So, however, many press releases are in my stack, that’s the number of images that are going to go out, they’re all going to be related because I’m going to be claiming all of those in my same as the information in the schema. The idea here is to reinforce all of these entity relationships that we’re creating all of these brand relationships that we’re creating. So I’m going to use my logo, I’m going to use the GMB logo, I’m going to use images from the GMB and images from my website and related images. So I’m going to have between three and seven press releases before I start my next stack, and so on until I read it. And then if it one of the ways that you can also do it is you can do like an image and bedroom to continue creating those relationships to continue powering up your images. And you’ll pop an image carousel with joy. So when someone does a brand search, you’ll get that nice image carousel, you get a nice video carousel if you have videos. And then that adds. So the reason for this and why I like doing this is because people will often when they look at if they’re going to hire your service, they’ll do a brand search, what is this company about? And when they go in, I only want them to see my stuff. So I want to pop all that up for them. When they come to that you’ll see people doing the brand search when they come they do the brand search and they see everything that’s related to wherever they click, they’re gonna land on one of your properties. And if they click on it, hopefully, they’ll go to a CTA. So you’re always trying to create a way for that person to convert. It’s not just the idea of creating the relationship or whatever. There has to be, like, a purpose behind all of this. And the purpose behind it all is to try to convert as many people as possible trying to get them to click trying to follow that call to action. Yeah.

Yeah, and it’s interesting if you notice, if you do a lot of GMB stuff, you’ll notice there’s a lot of brand searches that come in GMB insights, you’ll see that a lot. And what I’ve kind of discovered is that you know, and I guess this has been known, but it’s, it’s interesting to see it more and more and more recently, but um, I think a lot of people will when they do like a generic search for, you know, a keyword search for a service or whatever, and they find the company that they’re going to contact. Again, in my case, it’s pretty much all Tree Service stuff now. So if they can’t find a Tree Service contractor through a generic keyword search that they’re going to call to request an estimate from, they oftentimes will go do a brand search before making the call. And so the and so it’s really interesting, but in GMB insights I see all the time now, that brand searches are one of the top keywords that are used to trigger the maps listings. And it just makes you wonder who’s doing all these Brand searches. And it must just be that people were kind of being conditioned to go look at what else is being said about the company before calling them, especially for contractors. So, so you remark up. Yep, yeah. And so here’s the other thing, this is what I was talking about. So here was an image just from big bamboo marketing example, that was the URL. So you can see it’s in the actual, you know, domain, but this could be the embedded image in the press release. And then there was one that I just took from a this is a GMB post from Semantic Mastery. And if you just click on a GMB post image and click copy image address, that’s what it looks like. And so you can also look at that’s a Google user content domain that’s already been associated with your brand. It’s tied to it because it knows where it’s been placed. And so that’s a very powerful thing to do as well. So, those were really good questions, by the way.

What Is The Best Practice To Optimize A YouTube Video?

So we’re gonna keep moving. What is the best practice for the YouTube video? title name with the video with the keyword? Yeah, I mean, it depends on what you’re trying to do. I don’t do a lot of video SEO stuff anymore, but I still optimize them the same way that I did years ago, in which I always do the primary keyword, then a separator, and then the brand name. That’s how I did it. It works to give them the link to YouTube silo Academy, and it’s only seven bucks. And I think it’s why T dot silo dot Academy,

I’ll grab the link and put it on there.

Yeah, go grab that, man. , this is one of the best investments, you can make only seven bucks.

A tip right there. Beautiful. Now you don’t see my fat face on there anymore, either. Now, I had to replace that I saw it like six months ago, and I was like, holy shit. I was almost 300 pounds at the time I recorded that sales video. Anyway, Alright, moving on. Those were really, really good questions. Um, okay, and you can embed a video into press releases, they don’t get embedded on all of them. But you can add a video URL to a press release.

Why You Teach Your SEO Methods To Others Instead of Keeping Them To Yourselves?

Okay, Bb’s up with a list of questions. What’s up, baby says, Hey, guys, why won’t you rather keep all of your methods to yourself and telling it to others? Why do you teach this? Why do you want this kind of income stream? Then rather hammering your methods for you only? That’s a good question. I mean, originally, when we got started, it was just the well, it was all of us that you see here today. But we had got together through a forum that another like mastermind that we had joined, which was basically a forum, it was supposed to have a webinar once per month, which didn’t end up panning out. But we were all paying $200 a month to be a member of this particular, like mastermind community type thing. And it was mainly just access to a forum. And we would all chat often in, you know, in the forum. And I ended up deciding that I wanted to create a weekly accountability group so that we could just meet on a weekly basis unit at the time as Google Hangouts and, and just kind of share what was working, what wasn’t working, and just learn from each other. And so all of us connected and as well as many others, and we would just start meeting every single week. And what happened was, it was funny, but we at you know what, before we decided to monetize it and turn it into a business, I think we had on any given week, roughly 25 to 30 people show up every week, but it was really like just a handful of us it was us and a few others, there’s probably about seven, or probably about eight of us that would constantly be sharing every single week, and talking and sharing and talking and sharing, everybody else would just show up and listen, which was fine. But uh, you know, after the original group that we had all joined in, we’re paying $200 a month for wasn’t providing what it had promised us. You know, we decided at some point, we realized, like, hey, we’ve got we’re putting out better information than what we’re paying $200 a month to be a part of. So why the hell don’t we monetize this and turn this into a business? And so that’s what we did, we formed Semantic Mastery. Before we actually became a corporation, we went out and kind of just, we just started trying to develop an idea of how we were going to monetize stuff. And then you know, took a few months before we actually incorporated and we had to work out you know, we lost a few that were originally going to be partners with us, but it ended up being just the five of us. And part of it was because you know, it was there’s so much that we can’t do at all like in other words, even if everybody that comes and watches these webinars on Hump Day hangouts wanted to get into specifically Tree Service marketing, there are enough damn Tree Service contractors in the United States alone, that there’s enough for all of us. There’s a big ocean of money sloshing around out there and there’s not really any one of us can do at all. Do you know what I mean? There’s enough room in the space for all of us is my point. And so there was really no reason for us not to share some of our methods and techniques, especially because you know, in this industry, you guys know there’s a lot of garbage, there’s a lot of shit that gets pushed out there. And our methodology was always such that and this was what we literally developed a semantic mastery on was that we would only teach stuff that has been proven that we’ve proven and because each one of us has our own digital marketing businesses and various forms, we have a vast amount of experience. And we only share what we know, to work with our own projects on our own clients and such so that it makes it not risky for our members and our students. And that was part of the reason that we wanted to do it was to kind of help to, you know, provide some good stuff out there among all the bullshit if that makes sense. And so, and it’s just stuck, you know, this is not my primary source of income. But it is been good to us to me, you know, and so that’s part of the reason we do these free on every single week is so that we can give back to this industry, which has been having treated me well over the years. So that’s my take on it. Let’s say you. Yeah,

I’m thinking about this. And from the numbers that I know. I think it’s at least $4 trillion that was spent online. only online shopping last year, fortunately, how much of that? Do you need to be happy? Or how much of that deep? I know to want? Want? This is like a really heavy word? How much do you need? Yeah, I want to I want the entire trillion. Well, I’m sorry, I’m not greedy like that. I’m happy with a piece of the pie. I’d love to compete. So I don’t mind people coming on with it. As Bradley said, there’s plenty of room in the Tree Service market if you want to get in it. But not only that, if you want to compete with me, you’re more than welcome. Let’s see, let’s see, we have an even playing field because I’m giving you the same information that I use to get results. Now, let’s see who wins because at that point, now we’re at war, or how what I see as war, and I’m at war with you if you’re my competitor, and I’m going to do all I can to knock you off, man. Because of the date, there’s only room for one, number one, and I’m going to try to get as many of that to three of those other positions in the top 10. to knock you out. I mean, and it’s just, it’s but that’s my competitive nature. But I’m also saying I’m not a person who comes, from scarcity. I don’t like that I don’t like people who look, there’s only $4 trillion. I’m like, holy crap, 4 trillion, only in online shopping. That doesn’t include how much money is traded online, how much money there is, for example, for example, in the service sector, and all these other things that take place online, you can do so many other things online, other than having an e-commerce site or an affiliate, you can provide services, you can provide services for service providers, so many different things that you can do. If a person comes into my neck of the woods and they want to compete, then you’re more than welcome. So BBD and the answer is like I don’t give a shit. I want people making as much money as they can off Google and of the other search engines ones that once they dominate Google, go ahead, go after going after whoever else you want to go after because it doesn’t make a difference. You’re not taking money or you’re not taking food off my table, by me sharing my, my methods, my systems with you by making them available by this being an income stream. And I laugh when I see that because this is free. We don’t make any money off of this. This is free stuff. So if we had any kind of scarcity mentality, we wouldn’t even be doing this. So you wouldn’t even have this available for you to come and ask this question. And then not only that, like my main source of income isn’t Semantic Mastery. It’s not MGYB it’s not the heavy hitter club. And in fact, I do Hump Day hangouts because it’s fun because I enjoy I’d like to talk shit. I’d like to share information. I like for people to know the bullshit that they’re being fed in other SEO groups. And I like to give back to the SEO community that has given me so much. During the time that I’ve been online, which is 18 years 18 and counting right now. So that’s my acid is that scarcity. It’s fun. And there’s plenty of money to go around, man. Plenty. Yeah, I agree. I mean, as I said,

I think it’s fun and also, this might sound cliche, but over the years we’ve had many students or members, because like I said in the mastermind, I don’t consider those guys students or those folks, students there. They’re members, right? Because they’re colleagues essentially. And we’ve had many of our members or whatever that have over the years become very, very successful. And, you know, they’ve given us some credit for that, obviously, it’s them that does the hustle, we’ve just provided them information, but they had to apply it, and put in the work and everything else. So it’s them that did it, but we had some part and we’ve been given credit for that at some level and helping them to succeed. And that’s, that’s very rewarding. It really is, that’s part of the reason I got into doing this just to help encourage other people to make a change in their life, you know, to get over the rat race, you know, working just over broke, right jlb having a job being just over broke and doing something to secure their own financial future, or at least give them more control over their own financial future. And that’s what, that’s part of the reason I got into doing it. Because, you know, I spent many years literally behind a computer screen studying in in testing for, you know, 14 1516 hours a day, before I started making any money. And then once I started making money, I wanted to be able to help other people to do that, as well. And on all of us, my partners, and I all have that, you know that that desire to help others where else we wouldn’t behave done this all this time. And that’s what I was pointing out up here 335 episodes, this is the free webinar that we do every single week. So that’s well over six years, we’re going on close to seven years now. Which is insane. So anybody else wants to comment on that? Adam, Hernan. We got time.

I think you guys kind of, you know, a combination of all of that. Yeah, you know, it’s fun. And, you know, sharing this is definitely a part of it. And I think over the years I have moved more into that non-scarcity mindset. You know, there’s so much out there and you know, there’s so many ideas I pray even gone even further was just like, yeah, we could share all day because so few people are going to take the time to implement things done. And it is work right. You know, when it comes down to it, you got to steal from Marco do they do, right? You can listen all day, but if you don’t implement it doesn’t mean shit. So yeah, it was it is fun. I like getting on here and talking. And you know, I’ve just thought it’s funny if you guys go back a few years in the archives on YouTube and check us out and are you know, I especially would be like, Hey, guys, like, Hey, I’m Adam. Now it’s like, man, screw it. I want to talk to people. Let’s do this stuff. Good.

Yeah, SCR our new since we got time guys up, we don’t really have any other questions coming through. But SCR new, you know, the member who’s an instructor for syndication Academy. She, when we were launching that a couple a few weeks ago, she and I got on a zoom call to record basically the sales video sales letter. And, and she was super nervous. And it was funny, because she was like, you know, I don’t know if I can do this, blah, blah, blah. And I was telling her, I was like, Yeah, you’re gonna get better, don’t worry about it. Like, honestly, you’ll get better. It’s just, it’s just like anything else, you get better at it with time you get more comfortable doing it.

And I remember, that’s what I was talking about the YouTube silo Academy. That was one of the very first few products that we launched. And, you know, I was close to 300 pounds at that time, it was a real close-up headshot, and it was just my fat face talking into the camera.

And it’s so funny because as Adam says, you know, you look back and it’s like, wow, we’ve come a long way I’m so much more comfortable talking to you on a webinar and such now. So yeah, it’s been interesting to watch kind of the progression of all of us. And we still we’re still here, we’re still doing this every single fucking Wednesday.

I mean, again, 335. We’re going on seven years now. So you know, I’m proud of us for doing that.

Are Your Methods Invulnerable To Google’s May Core Web Vitals Update?

Alright, last question. And we’re gonna wrap it up a little bit early unless somebody else posted another question. Maybe says, Does your method when I take a hit from the May update about core web vitals? I don’t know. Most likely not big. I mean, we’ve been fortunate with the methods that Marco mainly has developed, you know, with this semantic, semantic SEO, essentially entity based SEO, that we’ve been able to just slide right past all the major updates for the last several years, which is why we just keep sticking with what’s working instead of trying all these new things. That, you know, because we were we’ve enabled very fortunately to our methods have escaped any problems with all the major updates that have occurred over the last couple of years, for sure. So I don’t expect to see any difference, but we don’t know until the rollout is until an update is rolled out whether it’s going to affect we can again, BB that’s a purely speculative question. And we’re not going to speculate on that. But my assumption is that we will do just fine. But we will find out for sure when it happens. Let’s say you Mark II, I’d like to give him my answer because it’s my standard answer. BB. If I could answer that question, what I would do today is jump on a plane to the US and get on that Mega Millions and hit it and never look back. I forget what is it some ridiculous 300 million 500 million? And I’m out? See? That’s if I could answer what Google is going to do tomorrow. Because we don’t know, like day to date, much less what Google is going to do in May. What I can tell you is that up until now, our method has always been worry less SEO, it’s entity-based, we focus on the entity, everything goes towards that part of the algorithm. And what I have seen from what Google is testing for my Google is rolling out my Google has rolled out is that art, activity, relevance, trust, and authority, will trump anything. And I can almost guarantee that art, if you do this, right, if you have the entity set up properly, if you have all the bases covered, and if you have all of the pillars as we’ve always had it up, that’s going to overcome any negatives that you can get from PageSpeed, or from the core web vital. That doesn’t mean that you ignore the core web vital, because why ignore them if they can give you an additional boost? Yeah, but as far as negative, out, the way that we do it since we’re focusing on the entities has always avoided any of the negative aspects of the algorithm. And I think that as long as you’re sending good signals, you’re always going to overcome any negatives that could happen. Now, is this going to hold true into the future? I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m gonna wake up tomorrow. How can I answer what do am going to do in May? I can’t say whether I’m gonna be here in the next five minutes, 10 minutes, whatever. I hope I am. That’s all I can say. And that’s all I can work towards. I can all I’m gonna do is continue doing it do I do into the future? And should google changes should web core vitals, make a difference? That will just adjust it so that we incorporate core web vitals into everything that we do? And that’s how we that’s how we’ve always done everything. We’re just we didn’t start out with the SEO shield. We said we started out with Syndication Academy. Everything that you see today has been building off everything else that we do. It was IFTTT SEO Yeah. Then that wasn’t as strong as it should be. We unquote we went and see okay, how can we make it better? Okay, RYS Academy, RYS Academy reloaded @ID we incorporate more into syndication Academy Coco genius. Yoshi, what’s a local? Yeah, local GMB Pro. But with the SEO shield, PR Pro, local PR Pro with local GMB Pro with the SEO I mean, this everything has been building one, one or the other. This didn’t happen overnight. So should anything happen overnight? When this rolls out, we’ll go take a look and see what happened. And we know what it is. So we just adjust for it. It’s very simple. Yeah.

All right. So I guess we’re gonna wrap it up. But a shout out also that should have said this earlier to Adam. He posted in the Slack channel with SCR instructor from syndication Academy, a really, really good find, which I’m not going to reveal here because it will be revealed in one of the upcoming syndication Academy update webinars, but I played with it. Adam, just because you mentioned it. And um, I’ve got some tests, I want to run with that. But I could see the value of it immediately when you said that. And even on the free account. They are publishable, by the way.

So how standing? Yeah, so I’m a partner with them. And they gave me some training. And I was like, Huh, this could apply outside of productivity. Let me absolutely again. So I’m looking forward to that. So yeah, I guess SEO be given an update to the syndication Academy members. And yeah, that’s a good one. So I just want to give a shout-out for that, because I even took time out of my day, which I really didn’t have time to play with it today. But I was just like, oh my god, that sounds amazing. So I went in and played with it, and I could see how we can do some pretty nasty stuff with that. I’m gonna test with it a little bit.

What Is Digital Marketing In A Nutshell?

So the last question just came in. an unknown person says, Can you tell me what digital marketing is? In a nutshell? Yeah, it’s marketing. Online. That’s what digital marketing is. is marketing online.

Advertising delivered through digital channels if you want to get taken, yeah, but who wants to get you know, the way that I’ve thought about or I had heard a definition of, you know, marketing is one too many. Sales are one to one. That makes sense. So marketing is sales to many and sales. Sales are one to one. I’m sorry, marketing is one too many and sales is one to one. And so Mark Mark digital marketing is just marketing, in any of its forms, but online, right. That’s the way that I look at it. So Okay, thanks to everybody for being here, a mastermind with me tomorrow, as well as the real estate, excuse me, the sales mini mastermind starting tomorrow is the first of 42 weeks. So if anybody wants to join that join the mastermind and we can talk about

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