#i almost went even more meta and brought in the concept of the author to it but i felt that was a bit much

[crazyw3irdo]

“Jesus christ man what the FUCK” - my brother

glad you all enjoy it :3

made a uquiz

[sneakerdoodle]

On Second Citadel and unity

It was interesting to me that, after making Junoverse a very poignant gender utopia (and general lgbt-utopia, too), Kabert went ahead and made their second storyline so heavily centered around bigotry and discrimination (dealing with topics of ableism, mysogyny, homophobia). now, obviosuly, Junoverse is not even remotely free of inequality, and as far as the mentioned topics are handled this utopia is not disability-friendly, with prosthetics not being readily available with no charge, which, like many other things, strips people of their autonomy, turns them into a rich man’s plaything. But here inequality is arguably explored from the point of exploitation of one human being by another, of abuse of power (interpersonal and social-scale). Whereas Second Citadel opens with an episode about two knights - a disabled one and a woman one - both of whom struggled for similar reasons, so there is supposedly little power imbalance here. And yet they do not see eye to eye, even more so, one of them furthers the other’s discrimination. We can speculate that that’s Sir Caroline’s effort to fit in - strengthen the sense of her hard-earned belonging by othering someone who never got that right to belong. Which doesn’t make it any less infuriating and damaging, but sets the tone of the story very well. There is no strong thriving off the weak. There are just people infinitely rejecting one another on the basis of their differences, often under the weight of their own rejection.

The topic of ostracization and discrimination is tackled in almost every arc of SC, but the idea of othering extends beyond it. The central conflict, the ongoing war is between monsters and humans - and while we’re more familiar with the human side of it, while we may learn more about the history of their conflict and who wronged whom first and worst, for now we’ve seen both humans and monsters express deep disgust for each other and one another’s way of living. And then the same happens on a smaller scale, within one species: we see the mutual disdain between Northerners and Southerners. Sir Caroline is different not only as a woman but as a foreigner; the Cinderclasp episode made it far too clear that the attitude to foreigners in the South is no better. 

And all of that unravels against the backdrop of pretty phrases about unity that get repeated over and over. “Strength in Unity”. “Two in unity, simple, strong”. I believe those are not instruments of irony, however, but keys to the central message, echoes of this societies’ past and - hopefully - foreshadowing of their future.

Sir Caroline twists the meaning of that unity in order to keep her authority:

ANGELO: Sir Caroline, I really don't think-- CAROLINE: What is the primary edict of our Citadel, Sir Angelo? ANGELO: Strength in unity. Of course. CAROLINE: And the sooner you all remember that, the safer humanity will be in these Northern Wilds. Hypocrites. The lot of you. Unified only when it’s convenient. No better than monsters in that way: greed governs all, and everyone just does what they want to get what they want. If you just listened to authority, real authority, you might actually be safe.

And that happens to highlight what unity is not: giving up one’s autonomy and approach and unique competence to fit into someone else’s model of desired reality. 

Here Damien’s words about perspectives come into play. However labored and uncomfortable they were, showing his inability to not fixate on what separates others from him, they are important as a piece of the meta puzzle: they make us think of inherent value of different experiences.

DAMIEN: My kind, kind friend. I agree that it is a shame that we cannot trust these men. They would be valuable allies, as Sir Caroline was – for moving through the world as she has, in a life quite different from ours, has clearly gifted her with ways of thinking that you and I would never come to. ANGELO: Very true, very true. DAMIEN: And so I am certain that given Marc’s...situation, he too must have a perspective of great value in our mission. But the simple fact is that he cannot be trusted.

The importance of these lines is backed up in Lady of the Lake, when Caroline is instructed to use specific characteristics of her subordinates and turn them into strength that would aid the mission. We are told over and over that true unity is in embracing our differences, valuing them and working together to make these differences work in everyone’s favour. 

There is something to be said about quite careless exploitation of Damien’s neurodivergency of course, but that is once again the warped verison of true unity, showing what unity is not, but also simultaneously giving us some idea of its potential. At the core, behind Sir Caroline’s personal errors, the message is kinder, broader. We are told again and again that the importance of the unqiue approach, unique way of thought, unique operation of our minds can enrich our shared experience and cooperation beyond measure.

So when later on Sir Caroline instead tries to suffocate any challenge to her authority, any alternative point of view, it comes as the biggest whiplash.

And of course, when discussing the monster-human antagonism in this vein, the Moonlit Hermit arc gives some truly invaluable material. Rilla and Arum’s interactions are strongly based on the differences of their approach to the world, with Rilla’s being a rational one and Arum operating on what can be called intuition, spiritual sense and probably instinct. He despises attempts to rationalize the free broad flow of the universal energy.

And what we see is two of them coming together, sharing their views of the world and finding something useful, fascinating, beautiful in the point of view that seemed so unthinkable before. That culminates in the truly breathtaking scene of their discussion of the nature of music, whether it’s magic or math:

RILLA: I mean..why can’t it be both? ARUM: Nonsense. RILLA: No, I mean...maybe that’s what makes music special. It uses these predictable scales and measures and combines them with some unpredictable, something-- ARUM: Magic. And what comes out isn’t really either. It’s...more.

“It’s more”. Can’t overstate how hard this hits. And the parallel between this theory and Rilla and Arum’s relationship is more than on the nose, proving to us once again that the idea of unifying our different experiences and perspectives as something incredibly valuable, something that creates something new, rich, priceless, that is more than just a sum of the two, is central to the narrative.

What is interesting to me in the Moonlit Hermit arc is the distinction that is made between the monsters and the humans. Humans are supposedly rational while monsters speak of magic and the Universe - what a fun narrative is that! Monstrous spirituality... And then later on we have Damien raging at his saint, yelling “It is only monsters who listen to their heart above all!” - but apparently it is not. 

The new season offered some helpful context to that, specifically - the Thought Stream. Obviously referencing the Tarot, it has four suites resembling the Minor Arcana while what can be called the Major Arcana is not a part of the deck usually but something that appears unpredictably (specifically: Olala’s card that does not belong to the Wilds, Wastes, Frosts or Mirrors suit). 

The four Tarot suits (Swords, Cups, Wands and Pentacles) represent different areas of our life, separated: Intellect, Emotion, Spirituality/Creativity and the Material. Mind, Heart, Spirit and Body.

The four suits also correspond with the four elements. And Water is the one corresponding with Heart, with our emotions. I do not think it to be a coincidence that Saint Damien - the one encouraging his follower to listen to his heart, teaching him tranquility i.e. not losing oneself in the stream of emotion, the one teaching how to let one’s heart guide not stir - has water and the waves as his symbol.

So if Damien is Heart, Rilla is definitely Mind: she is analytical, a determined problem solver. I believe Arum represents the Wands: the Spirit and the fire - and that it is a symbol connected to monsters’ society in general. 

Wands suit deals with passionate creation, with realizing one’s vision, bringing something into the world. That seems in line with the monstrous philosophy in general. They talk of one’s place decided by the Universe, they say one is justified in their actions as long as they truly do what they want, follow where their passion guides them. There is quite a bit of hypocrisy there as we can see in the Spiral Sage arc, the monster society may just be keeping the platitudes while giving in to the power of the strongest no matter the Universe’s place for the weak - but the ideal is still there, and it is one Arum seems to follow wholeheartedly. (Hence his interpretation of Damien seemingly abandoning his path as a lack of character.)

The same idea - one’s place in the Universe - is brought up again in the first part of “The Fool in the Garden of Death”, showing this belief spreads beyond monsters’ society, into the Western Wastes. None of the elements, be it Heart or Spirit, are strictly one species’; however, we’re dealing with different cultures and ways of life people are most accustomed to, prioritizing different aspects of life. And we’re being shown that maybe engaging with each other is what those cultures are supposed to do.

The Thought Stream’s deck is made up of four suits corresponding with four ends of the world, four parts of it. Where in Tarot we have aspects in Thought Stream we have places. This reinforces the concept of different aspects of life, different ways of approaching it, corresponding with specific societies. 

Each of the suits is given an identity, but all of them make up one deck.

After all, what’s one aspect of a being without all the rest? Reign of just one’s Mind, Heart, Spirit or Body - how long can it last before turning destructive?

True strength is in balance of different elements - in unity that recognizes the value of each of them.

I have a theory that the ideals of the Second Citadel are the forgotten and revamped mottos of the beings of Fort Terminus: “two in unity” being not two partners but two worlds, monster and human, coming together to create something that is more, something new and powerful and full of potential. Capable of building something as impressive as the Bridge. I also have a theory that the Bridge is a parallel to the Tower of Babel. Which brings us to the idea of a divided world unable to see past the differences between societies, and through that losing the power that unity used to give it.

Showing the world where difference is shunned and leads to ostracism, where people that come from different places fail to acknowledge each other’s humanity and refuse to embrace their differences, where two species fail to accept the other’s way of living and deny the enemy their humanity/monstrosity, the Second Citadel storyline is offering a greater value as an endgoal: embracing difference and diversity, seeing strength in what sets us apart from each other, and recognizing that we all complete one another, like the four aspects of our own being, like four pillars upon which the sky rests. Deny one single pillar’s importance and wait for it to come crashing down on you. It says: to know true strength, we should welcome any and all experience, all of the unique perspectives, celebrate the differences that make our shared existence so much richer and make us so much more capable to deal with challenges of life. Strength in unity - not in uniformity.

[the-master-cylinder]

SUMMARY Claire Ward hires private investigator John March to look into the increasingly bizarre activities of her husband Charles Dexter Ward, an esteemed Rhode Island chemical engineer. Through a series of conversations with John, Claire reveals Charles’s recent unexplained isolation in their carriage house, his sudden uncovering of his family history, and their visitation to an abandoned ancestral farmhouse near Pawtuxet where he found a painting of a man named Joseph Curwen, to whom he bears an uncanny resemblance. Since these events, Charles has purchased and moved into the farmhouse, leaving Claire without explanation.

Upon investigating, John finds that numerous deliveries are made to the farmhouse, and inquires about them to Charles, who is evasive; Charles explains that he is undertaking routine chemical tests using animal cadavers. Shortly after, an elderly man in a neighboring home is found brutally murdered, only a few remnants of his bones left in the house. Police assume he was attacked and eaten by an animal, but John is skeptical. Claire and John go to visit Charles together, and find him pallid and speaking with an archaic affect. They attempt to extract an explanation from Charles, but he simply tells them he is on “the edge of greatness”, and that in six weeks’ time, they will understand.

Claire agrees to have Charles committed to a hospital. Doctors find his metabolism to be inexplicably high, triggering ravenous hunger, and attribute his change in demeanor to hormonal issues; however, they are unable to explain his craving for blood and raw meat. Meanwhile, John uncovers a diary in the carriage house from Ezra Ward, Charles’s fifth-great grandfather, dated 1771. The diary explains how Ezra had an affair with Joseph’s wife Eliza, and that Joseph had been practicing necromancy in catacombs he constructed on his property. After a flood penetrated the catacombs, the townspeople discovered a grotesquely malformed creature in the river, which they burned alive. The diary ends leading up to the townspeople’s raid of the Curwen house, and Eliza’s admission to Ezra that she was pregnant with Joseph’s child; Claire, John, and John’s assistant Lonnie surmise that Charles’s biological great-grandfather was actually Joseph, not Ezra.

John and Lonnie decide to search for catacombs on the farmhouse property with Claire. They uncover the entrance in the house’s basement, and inside the catacombs find a laboratory and half-grown creatures in wells; Claire also discovers Charles’s briefcase. They attempt to flee but are attacked, and Lonnie is killed by one of the creatures. John leaves a bomb in the catacombs, and he and an injured Claire escape with the briefcase before the house detonates. John takes Claire to the hospital where she is sedated, and the doctor informs him she is pregnant.

John goes to visit Charles in the psychiatric institution, and confronts him with the briefcase, which he discovered filled with human bones. He accuses Charles of in fact being the 250-year-old Joseph Curwen, who successfully found a way to conquer death through his necromantic experiments. Joseph admits his identity, and confesses that the bones in the suitcase are those of Charles, whom Joseph killed after Charles raised him from the dead. He explains his plan to regain his health and eventually be discharged from the hospital, after which he can impersonate Charles. Joseph attempts to cannibalize John, but John pours the restorative potion from the laboratory over Charles’s bones. Charles’s skeleton reanimates, and begins to tear the flesh off Joseph, before the two disappear in a cosmic explosion.

DEVELOPMENT Two facets of Lovecraft’s work create problems for filmmakers, who must not only wrestle with expanding his short stories to feature length, but must also find a cinematic method of conveying the sense of malign cosmic conspiracy underlying many of his later plots. Perhaps the closest anyone has come to capturing Lovecraft is Roger Corman’s THE HAUNTED PALACE (1963), which, despite its Poe title is actually a previous adaptation of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Though Corman retained little of Lovecraft’s plot, many of the author’s more outre concepts survived, and Corman’s visual style was a fair approximation of Lovecraft’s literary voice.

THE RESURRECTED was initially written as a spec script by Brent V. Friedman, whose interest in adapting Lovecraft was piqued by the work of Stewart Gordon. “I didn’t really start reading Lovecraft until I noticed that RE-ANIMATOR was based on his story,” recalled Friedman. “I went out and devoured everything I could by him. The one story that struck me as having filmic potential was The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, because there’s so much there. His stuff is mostly short stories I saw some great little ideas, but I didn’t see a film in any of them.”

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward is one of only three short novels that Lovecraft ever wrote. At approximately 120 pages, its length seemed optimum for translation to the screen. Noted Friedman, “Because I was so naive at the time. I thought, ‘This will be easy to adapt.’ It was very difficult. The way the novella is written is just how the title implies—it’s written as a kind of objective look at this strange experience. There was no real main character. Unless you want to make a documentary, that doesn’t hold up.”

Friedman set about adapting the novella without being aware of Corman’s film. “I didn’t see it until after I’d written the script I didn’t realize what it was based on until someone told me,” admitted Friedman. “It’s an interesting little film, but it’s a very different version.” After several drafts, Friedman managed to dramatize Lovecraft’s tale well enough to show the script to producers Mark Borde and Kenneth Raich, who took it to Toni Scotti of Scotti Brothers Pictures. In looking for a director, Borde sent Friedman’s script, then titled SHATTERBRAIN, to Dan O’Bannon through a mutual friend. The choice was appropriate: O’Bannon’s RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD had been an effective low-budget directorial debut; perhaps more importantly, O’Bannon’s ALIEN, though an “original” screenplay, captures many of Lovecraft’s more visual concepts probably better than any official adaptation, particularly in the sequence exploring the alien planet and derelict spaceship.

Coincidentally, O’Bannon had already been trying to adapt Lovecraft’s novella, and he brought many of his ideas to the script. “My script is relatively different from the film,” said Friedman. “I set up the main character as a psychiatrist examining Ward. The thrust was how the case affects this psychiatrist. He’s coming from a scientific background, thinking there’s a rational explanation, and takes on a case which makes him rethink everything he believes. After finding out there’s a supernatural explanation, he ends up going slightly crazy.

“When O’Bannon came onto the project, he had been trying to write a script from the same material, and he felt that he had never cracked the third act. He read my script and said, You’ve solved a lot of the problems, but the way I’d always had it in my mind was the main character’s a detective.’ If he was going to get involved with the project-which everyone was very keen on-he wanted to tell the story his way. Everyone was skeptical at first, because my script was getting good response. O’Bannon wrote out a 15-page treatment to show how you could integrate parts of my script with what his idea was.

Rejected Creature Design

“I can’t even tell you what a thrill it was to find out he was involved with the project.” Friedman enthuses. “In just the past six months that I’ve been working with him. I’ve probably learned more about writing than in the previous 26 years of my existence. It’s almost as if, until that point. I was just winging it.”

“Dan’s thinking was this story naturally lends itself to a detective because there are so many clues to be discovered. It looked good on paper, but the execution was a lot trickier than he had made it seem. The toughest thing was to keep the detective not only intellectually involved, but emotionally involved. Dan’s idea was to involve him, a la CHINATOWN, with the wife—which works on a certain level but on another level becomes distracting.”

The change in lead characters resulted in a change of title as well. “The word ‘shatterbrain’ is actually a Middle English term for crazy,” explained Friedman. “It was more relevant in my original script, because the psychiatrist came unglued. It does sound a little like a B-movie, but at the same time it evokes a certain image, so it was appropriate. I pushed for it long into post-production-people got very bored with my suggesting it. THE RESURRECTED, to me, gives too much away. Once you meet the three main characters -well, one of them’s been resurrected, and it’s not too hard to figure out which one!”

PRE-PRODUCTION Devising a photographic look that would capture Lovecraft’s tone fell to cinematographer Irv Goodnoff, who went through an interesting audition process for his director. “There was one other director of photography interested,” said Goodnoff, “so Dan gave us an assignment to bring in what we thought our interpretation of the script would be.

I went back and studied a number of painters that had the flavor of what H.P. Lovecraft felt like, expressionistically speaking. I brought in 30 books, marked out with the pictures I liked. About a week later, I got a phone call saying Dan wanted me.”

Pre-production lasted from June to October 1990, followed by seven weeks of principal photography in Vancouver, Canada, which doubled for Lovecraft’s beloved Providence, Rhode Island. The Bridge Studios, which cover almost 50,000 square feet, provided ample space for the construction of a labyrinth of tunnels where dwell the ghastly results of Curwen’s experiments.

“It’s a contemporary piece, but there’s also the 18th century and the whole world of the catacombs, so, in essence, the picture has three looks,” explained Goodnoff. “We used two different film stocks: Kodak for most of it, and Agfa for the period scene. The Agfa has a more creamy pastel look; the Kodak is much higher contrast with a denser black.

I try to create a flavor and a feeling. Sometimes, a third of the screen is black, and there are shafts of light. When you’re doing horror, you don’t show everything. Dan O’Bannon told me, “You set an expectation for the audience. Then you make them wait, and you make them wait, and you make them wait. When you finally suggest that they see something, they’re going to be scared.’ That was basically our approach.

“It was the most difficult job I’ve ever had to do. The scheduling should have been nine weeks, but we only had seven. We wrapped principal photography just before Christmas. It was one of those deadline days. The plug was being pulled at midnight. I’ve been on a couple of pictures like that: because of bonds people, financial and contractual things, one minute over 12 means you’ve blown it. Those bottom-line people have no grace in a lot of cases. We had three different units going. I was running from one to the other, checking, then shooting my own unit. It was a 14-hour marathon.”

Sarandon with O’Bannon

“Charles Ward is basically a well-intentioned, good man who is led astray by a desire to conquer this great scientific problem that his ancestor has posed. It’s kind of a parallel to Frankenstein: a good man who is consumed with something that he shouldn’t be messing with. The big theme here is basically “Don’t screw with death.”  – Chris Sarandon

SPECIAL EFFECTS The premise of the story is best summed up by a passage Lovecraft quotes from the alchemist Borellus: “… from the essential Saltes of humane Dust, a philosopher may … call up the shape of any dead Ancestour from the Dust where into his Bodie has been incinerated.” Typically, Lovecraft refers to the results, when not all the “essential Saltes” have been gathered, simply as the “livliest awfulness” without ever describing them in detail.

Such restraint doesn’t work on the movie screen, according to Friedman. “He didn’t really show you a lot,” said Friedman of Lovecraft. “In a book that’s almost scarier, because the reader uses his imagination to fill in the blanks. In a film you can’t just keep talking. Ata certain point you have to deliver the goods. The way the script plays is you get up to the point where he left off and then you have to start creating on your own.”

Coming up with specific designs for Lovecraft’s livliest awfulness fell to Masters, who took his initial inspiration from Friedman’s script. “There were incredibly bizarre descriptions which I had a lot of fun interpreting,” said Masters. “When it finally came to materializing these, O’Bannon would show me books of paintings by Francis Bacon, who I’ve always been a fan of. He would express himself in these imageries, these strange concoctions of paint and color and light rather than form and shape. Dan really got into talking about the character rather than the form, so it was an interesting challenge to come up with a design. What we tried to do is take the human form as groundwork and completely distort a certain aspect of itas long as there’s something the audience can grasp, it’s quite frightening. We designed about 30 monsters; in the film there are about five. I’ve still got reams of designs that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to use for anything else because they’re so weird.

The effects unit during principal photography was directed by supervisor Todd Masters because O’Bannon was on a tight schedule. “Dan would take a sequence all the way up to where the effects jumped in, and he would finish off a sequence,” said Masters. “He would leave us the middle. My crew worked nights, mainly for sound reasons we didn’t want to cause troubles with the other unit. We had to match a similar camera style. Things marry very nicely.”

“We’ve done more tricks on this film than on any other I’ve ever worked on,” said Masters. “We have monster suits, remote-control animatronic characters, puppet heads, stop motion, and pneumatics. We had a set of prosthetics on Chris Sarandon for a good portion of the end of the film. You can’t tell he’s wearing anything—they match his face-until we turn on the lights. It’s networked with fiber optics, so it gives the illusion that his veins are glowing when he comes to his climactic end.”

“For most of the monsters, I was given a long leash,” Masters explains. “O’Bannon started coming down with quite a strict design on one creature that I called the ‘Darwin monster,’ which in one of the early drafts of the script was actually supposed to be Darwin resurrected. As the script developed, that monster kind of got pulled all over the place. Some of the earlier maquettes had some really wild designs, but O’Bannon finally just said, “Well, you know, what I really want to see in this movie, which we haven’t done yet, is a half-skeletal body-being that these are supposed to be resurrected corpses with its other half this kind of swollen, amorphous, elephantitis looking guy.’

“I was never too excited about that,” Masters admits, “just because I always thought it was more interesting when [the Charles Dexter Ward character] made these mistakes out of these corpses’ ashes–they didn’t always come together in the right place, and would elongate and do strange things. Dan wanted something that was a little stricter, closer to human, so he actually sat down and pencilled out this sketch which would eventually become this monster, and I did a maquette and a variety of sketches to hone in on what he was trying to get.

“It’s a pretty neat monster,” Masters concedes, “but it’s not my favorite in the film, because to me it’s too much of a solid substance. Many of the other ones are so disturbing and so amorphous that it’s difficult to put your finger on exactly what every piece is.”

I though there are a number of creatures in The Resurrected, Masters points out that there isn’t an overabundance of gore for gore’s sake-although there are some healthy sprayings of blood.

“That’s one thing that Chris Sarandon and I were really trying to steer away from,” he clarifies. “I’ve never been a fan of gore, and I don’t really care for splattering walls with blood even though I did splatter two sets with blood for this film. Actually, one day I flew in from LA, got off the airplane, and Dan came up to me and said, ‘Do you have a lotta blood?’ I said, “Well…yeah.’ And he says, ‘Well, do you have lots of blood?’ It’s like, ‘I don’t know.

Extensive visual effects, supervised by Todd Masters in post-production, helped the ambitious nature of screenwriter Brent Friedman’s evocation of the horror of Lovecraft. Though many of the effects in Friedman’s script were deemed too expensive, Masters-originally hired to produce makeup and physical effects-sought to find a way to retain them, working closely with production designer Brent Thomas.

“Thomas really pulled rabbits out of his hat,” said Masters. “He loved the project from day one. He and I would get together after office hours at the studio and sit down in the hotel bar to concoct ideas. That’s how the movie turned into such a crazy fiasco. We thought the whole idea of Brent Friedman’s script was so bizarre and wonderful that we kept wanting to play.

“Every time something was pulled away from us, because there wasn’t money for this monster or that set, Brent Thomas and I would figure a way to put it back in. We didn’t want a film that has small production value. Horror films deserve all the scope and scale they can get.”

The horror that was to be resurrected by detective John Terry early on in Curwen’s laboratory got axed so Masters’ effects unit could afford to rent a studio to work in. As a low-cost stop-gap director Dan O’Bannon suggested that Terry resurrect just two fingers, “a goofy idea,” said Masters, who came up with a believable, low-budget finger monster concept instead. “We had to keep fingers in it,” said Masters, “so we turned this thing into almost a crab monster with fingers, an eyeball, and some external organs.”

After principal photography wrapped, Masters and producers Mark Borde and Kevin Raich viewed a rough assembly to determine what effects were still needed. What was originally intended to be a few weeks of rotoscoping expanded to six months, four shooting miniatures and another two adding opticals. “The producers really wanted it to be an effects-filled film,” said Masters. “We made sure that we kept the budget down. I’ve coordinated a lot of visual effects in the past. Since our eyes were looking through the camera, and our eyes only, we cheated to hide all the expensive stuff just inches out of frame.”

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One amusing episode involved a four-foot-high balsa wood miniature of Curwen’s mansion, rigged to explode. “This was part of Ted Rae’s unit—he did two miniature shots in the film,” said Masters. “We had it set up in Ted’s parking lot, waiting for nightfall. As I was painting part of the chimney, I heard these little cracks in the structure. As I was ready with the final dab of paint, a big gust of wind came and blew the whole thing down! What a nightmare! Ted and I jumped underneath the house and tried to hold it up, but we ended up having to recreate the whole building in a day and blow it up the following night.

“Everybody that worked on this film put their blood into it,” Masters summed up. “It turned into a labor of love for a lot of us-which I know sounds cliched, but everyone was really pulling for it, and it shows in the film.”

The extensive post-production schedule turned out to be a hindrance for composer Richard Band. “They made about eight edits the night before my recording session,” said Band. “That’s a composer’s nightmare, but all too common these days.” Band came up with a synthesizer score that boasted a full orchestral sound. “To have done this score with an orchestra would have cost $400,000,” said Band. “The producers have resigned themselves to a synthesizer score.”

Summed up Friedman, “I think we retained more Lovecraft than any other adaptation I’ve seen. We didn’t just use the concepts as springboards for our own story. In fact, there’s one scene lifted word-for-word, dialogue-wise, involving the first time you see Curwen posing as Ward, and he’s talking this strange 18th century speak. So there’s some place where Lovecraft is completely intact, and there are others where liberties were taken. It’s not as grossly amusing as REANIMATOR and FROM BEYOND. It takes a much more serious, Gothic slant. In the end, I wish we could have made my original script, but I’m still happy we made something.”

CAST/CREW Directed Dan O’Bannon

Produced Mark Borde Kenneth Raich

Written Brent V. Friedman

John Terry as John March Jane Sibbett as Claire Ward Chris Sarandon as Charles Dexter Ward/Joseph Curwen Robert Romanus as Lonnie Peck Charles K. Pitts as Ezra Ward Megan Leitch as Eliza Lauren Briscoe as Holly Tender

Special Effects by Jason Barnett    … prosthetic effects David P. Barton  … prosthetic department head (as David Barton) Julie Beuscher   … prosthetic effects Bryan Blair  … prosthetic effects Evan Brainard    … prosthetic effects Kevin Brennan    … prosthetic effects Jeffrey Butterworth  … first assistant special physical effects (as Jeff Butterworth) Scott Coulter    … prosthetic department head: Todd Masters Company, Inc. (as John Scott Coulter) Bernhard Eichholz … prosthetic effects (as Bernie Eichholtz) Earl Ellis   … prosthetic effects: Todd Masters Company, Inc. Kevin Flemming   … special effects photography Thomas Floutz    … key effects makeup artist (as Thom Floutz) Mark Garbarino   … prosthetic department head Karin Hanson … prosthetic effects Marty Huculiak   … special effects assistant Timothy Huizing  … prosthetic effects (as Tim Huizing) Gil Liberto  … prosthetic effects (as Gilbert Liberdo) Geoff Martin … special effects key grip Todd Masters … special effects unit director Mike McDonald    … special effects gaffer (as Michael McDonald) Kevin O’Leary    … special effects assistant Gary Paller  … special physical effects coordinator Dennis Petersen  … special effects assistant Tom Price    … special effects assistant (as Thomas E. Price) Jonas Quastel    … special effects first assistant camera Robert Sheridan  … special effects assistant Mark Sisson  … prosthetic effects James Slavin … prosthetic effects (as Jim Slavin) Chris Spouler    … special effects assistant Candace Van Woerkom  … prosthetic effects Andrew Vincent   … special effects lamp operator Scott Wheeler    … prosthetic effects Shawn Wilson … special effects assistant Andre Bustanoby  … prosthetic effects (uncredited)Visual Effects by Bret Alexander   … visual effects miniatures Jim Aupperle … visual effects director of photography Asao Goto    … visual effects miniatures Dave Gregory … optical effects supervisor Todd Masters … special visual effects Jeff Pyle    … visual effects miniatures Ted Rae  … additional miniature / visual effects director of photography Marc Tyler   … visual effects miniatures David Williams   … additional optical camera: Illusion Arts (as Dave Williams)

CREDITS/REFERENCES/SOURCES/BIBLIOGRAPHY Cinefantastique v22n06 Fangoria#106 Fangoria#112 Gorezone#22

The Resurrected (1991) Retrospective SUMMARY Claire Ward hires private investigator John March to look into the increasingly bizarre activities of her husband Charles Dexter Ward, an esteemed Rhode Island chemical engineer.

[singingwordwright]

can you talk a little about what brought you, as a published author, back to writing fanfic. also what was your inspiration for your One Easy Answer fic/universe?

Hi there.

I’ve pretty much always been a fanfic author, ever since that day when I was 12 when my current beta @roseglass asked me how I would re-unite two ex-lovers in a story and thus began our six-year journey of writing Riker/Troi fanfic long-hand and snail-mailing it back and forth to each other after she moved away.

So it’s not like I ever intended to turn my back on writing fanfic, even once I published some of my original work. These days there’s a lot of crossover between the two, and my publisher, in particular, @riptidepublishing, specifically seeks out authors of fanworks and was started by someone who is very active in fandom.

For a few years, my mind was more in a place of generating original stories than it was in fanfic mode. Now the pendulum has swung the other way, in part because I’ve lost–or at least misplaced–my ability or desire to write sex scenes, and erotic romance was sort of my wheelhouse as an author so now I really can’t produce the sort of content most readers of my original works would expect from me. When I do get back into original writing, unfortunately it’s probably going to have to involve starting from scratch in a new genre with a new pen name to make a break from those expectations.

In the meantime, though, there’s this lovely show and this lovely ship that has brought me back into fan writing and consumes incredible amounts of my creative energy. And at least I’m writing something (also the last time I was this inspired with my fan writing, it ended up sparking my inspiration for original writing, which I’m hoping will happen again.) 

Now, as for what inspired the One Easy Answer concept/universe, the short answer is that I emailed @roseglass one day and said “I want to write an arranged marriage AU that isn’t, like HUGELY AU, it’s still mostly canon, but with a twist” and she said “that’s a fine idea, go for it!.” (Actually, it may be more accurate to say I wanted to READ a mostly-canon arranged marriage AU and realized the only one I could find had long-since become an abandoned WIP so it was down to me to write it.)

And in truth, I never got that thing I wanted initially. I WANTED a situation where Alec and Magnus didn’t become familiar with each other or fall in love until after they were married. But if I wanted that and still wanted to keep it close to show-canon, I would have had to have them getting married…oh, around maybe 1x04 or 1x05?

Like, I imagine the scenario would have been that the backlash from the Clave over the unsanctioned raid on the Hotel Dumort came in the shape of the Clave being afraid that Robert and Maryse’s children were going down the road of Nephilim supremacy the way their parents had, conducting “special missions” the way the Circle had, and in order to prove that wasn’t the case, Alec had to marry a Downworlder. That’s how that story would have looked, if I’d gone that route.

But for some reason, that premise didn’t occur to me until later. What occurred to me at the time I decided to write this arranged marriage AU was that I needed to pull one thread from the tapestry, and watch how it unraveled.

I’ve always been a tremendous fan of the idea of parallel universes, or that a universe exists in which each possibility to becomes reality and redirects the course of events in that universe (this is probably the teenager who got her first exposure to genre TV with ST:TNG popping up, actually.)

So I wanted to construct a universe in which the split point between show!canon and my!canon was Magnus backtracking on his promise that he wouldn’t approach Alec about their relationship again.

Now, I adore 1x12, don’t get me wrong, but let’s be honest. Ghost!Ragnor (or Magnus’s imagined construct of his recently deceased friend) convincing Magnus to change his mind and try one more time was almost bordering on deus ex machina. At least, so it seemed to me.

Like, we’d never seen anything in the show indicating that Magnus–or anyone else–tended to get wise counsel from ghosts, nor had we seen anything indicating that Magnus tended to have imaginary discussions with his lost or absent friends. So this idea that he was conferring with Ragnor and it shifted his determination to let Alec go after his last attempt to talk to Alec had failed, was…highly convenient and sort of came out of nowhere. It was the last-minute miracle solution to an unresolvable dilemma.

So I decided to explore what would happen if Magnus had stuck to his guns. Maybe he never received his visit from the Ghost of Warlocks Past, or whatever. But Magnus never wavered in his determination not to pursue Alec any more. 

Now, the first question is: would that mean Alec didn’t call off his wedding? Possibly, and I’m sure there could exist yet another parallel universe in which he didn’t. Maybe I’m cheating a little, but I like to believe that even without Magnus there, staring him down, Alec would have come to his senses before he crossed the point of no return.

So yes, Alec called off his wedding.

The next event where we might have seen ramifications of Magnus not interrupting Alec’s wedding is in the scene where Alec walks in on Magnus and Camille. 

Magnus, not having had the recent refresher course from ghost!Ragnor on why Camille is Pure Evil, is probably much more vulnerable to her manipulations and less wary of her. Maybe even inclined to seek comfort from someone he once had feelings for, no matter how bad he knows she is for him. He’s perhaps not going to be as unwilling a participant in that kiss as he was the way things happened on the show.

Which is what majorly shifts things into parallel reality territory, because it puts a rather effective kibosh on Alec approaching Magnus and saying, “hey, you were right, I chose not to go through with the wedding, let’s see where this thing we have between us might go.”

Because imagine how Alec was feeling that day after his wedding. Like, yeah, he’s concerned about the Hodge running off and giving the Mortal Cup to Valentine thing, but setting that aside, he did it! He cancelled his wedding. He came out to his parents. He prioritized his own happiness. He’s got to be chomping at the bit wanting to run to Magnus, tell Magnus what he’s done, and ask for another chance. But when he finally gets the opportunity to see Magnus again, he finds Magnus in someone else’s arms.

Ouch.

From there, it’s a cascade effect, isn’t it? Alec, hurt and stinging, is going to want nothing to do with Magnus, so all the events of season 2a feel the ripple effect of them not only NOT building their new relationship, but actively avoiding each other whenever possible.

Sure, Magnus keeps Alec alive in 2x03, but probably only because Izzy begged him to and because he feels guilty over what happened with Camille. Alec doesn’t nearly kill himself in 2x08 because he’s not being influenced by the spell at Magnus’s party, but he and Clary have still not found any sort of conciliation after Jocelyn’s death. Without the framework of their relationship, Alec remains ignorant of Izzy’s yin fen addiction because Magnus doesn’t clue him in during the events of 2x09, which means nothing stops Raphael feeding on Izzy that night, which becomes its own very dangerous situation. So now these events between Alec and Magnus have influenced events between Raphael and Izzy because without his confrontation with Alec, Raphael doesn’t have any reason to confess his feelings for Izzy. And so on, and so forth.

I just find it a fascinating study in how one event can influence so many other, and that’s really where the inspiration came from.

I deviated a bit farther from that original “one event causes ripples that influences others” mission statement in A Separate Peace, because for one thing, some of the events of season 2b (like the body swap plot) wouldn’t have worked in the canon I had established. Also, after season 2b, I decided one thing that was really missing on the show was character agency. So I decided to take an approach where the characters drive the events instead of vice-versa.

I also decided to make it an attempt to fix things that were bothering me about the show, such as the fact that the show leans heavily on “situationally convenience incompetence” (and hyper-competence, at times) wherein a character either becomes a total blundering idiot or the most awesome person to ever do A Thing depending on how tidily it moves things along in the story. 

Alec being more competent in his due diligence to vet Sebastian doesn’t actually CHANGE anything, except that it shows just how terrifyingly devious Sebastian is. Alec being competent forces Sebastian to be MORE competent. Which is frankly awesome because that’s the way it should be. You shouldn’t have to force your heroes to be dolts in order for your villains to pull the wool over their eyes. You just need your villains to step up their game and be that much craftier than your heroes.

I decided in A Separate Peace to fix the fact that there seemed to be storylines for Aldertree and Robert Lightwood that might have been set up initially, but never went anywhere, either because the show didn’t have time to include them, or because the actors were unavailable. If you’ve read my metas there were some really obvious clues laid down in both cases and there was just…no follow through. It was frustrating and I had the ability to work all that in and frankly it was some of the best plotting I’ve ever done.

The final thing I decided to tackle with A Separate Peace was the fact that the obligatory adherence to book canon relationships is getting in the way of the fact that, on the show, the characters are demonstrating insane chemistry that those pro forma relationships will never allow to flourish.

Wow. This ended up being really long. Sorry, nonny. I hope this answered your question?

[peanutdracolich]

Peanut Dracolich Watches Horror: In the Mouth of Madness

So I went into this film knowing that it was part of John Carpenter’s unofficial Apocalypse Trilogy and... had some Lovecraftian theme. Oh and that it was generally better received than Prince of Darkness. As well you hear about it and it’s almost always ‘it’s good you should watch it’.

So what can I say about it... It’s good you should watch it. Ok I actually think of the three I enjoyed it the least. It is probably a better film than Prince of Darkness but the faults in PoD are things I can forgive and once you can do that the film is more fun. Of course they are problems, and ultimately In the Mouth of Madness really has what is probably the more interesting story. Also I got interrupted at some bad places to be interrupted which doesn’t help.

If you like Lovecraft and are fine with things that feel a bit meta I’d say this could be a real good one, even if you aren’t it could still be alright. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly below the cut (and spoilery as always).

The Good:

The Music: Ok actually I’d say of the John Carpenter horror films I’ve watched (sans Vampires as I don’t consider it horror or remember it) it has the weakest score. After It and The Exorcist though its use of sound stood out. So maybe this is really just ‘the mediocre’ but I noted it.

The Meta Element: There’s definitely something meta to the plot and it’s awesome for it. I like the concept and the idea behind it. The entire feel is beautifully Lovecraftian though actually with more of a Robert Chambers feel than H. P. himself.

The Flow: Not really sure this should be good and not something else, but in ways the movie’s ending is a good sort of anti-climax. And the shift from the more action filled horror to the sheer madness of the end was thematically nice.

The Uncertainty: I am unsure about this film. I sort of want to watch it again to figure out what I think about it. For a film dealing with the themes it was, this sort of uncertainty is what it wants to induce (minus the uncertainty about its quality) so it was nice.

The Bad:

The Acting: I don’t know no one really sold me on their roles, and that was problematic. It wasn’t really horrible acting, but it definitely weakened the movie. And was probably its greatest fault.

The Cheesiness: While not as cheesy as Prince of Darkness the film certainly felt cheesy. Not horribly and unbearably so, but at the same time it was a type of cheese I don’t enjoy as much so the smaller amount still got to me more.

The Ugly:

The Monsters: The special effects feel much less impressive than The Thing’s, not like they moved backwards, but like they were a good bit lazier with better technology. Still not ultimately bad, and actually really fitting for what they sort of maybe were.

This Film Brought to You By Stephen King: Ok, not really, but at first Sutton Cane seems to be a Stephen King stand in (as opposed to Lovecraft King) and the references to ‘most read author in the world... ...sells even more than Stephen King’ feels like a Stephen King ad. Given the plot in a way this works to its favor, and also just in ways makes the film more fun while being early enough to not disrupt the suspense too badly, so I can see why they did it, but it might have been a bit much.

[dreamofcentipedes]

What do you think about the clowns? What's their goal? specially Uta, he works with furuta but he's friends with yomo too, why nico helped kaneki's group, it's all very confusing :(

The role of a clown is to provide entertainment for entertainment’s sake, and that is exactly what the Clowns do. They push the story along in the directions they find the most entertaining. 

The Clowns are essentially hedonists; their goal in life takes the form of a sadistic pleasure in watching chaos unfold. So basically, the Clowns are fans of Tokyo Ghoul. They are the readers (and often the authors) within the story itself, detached from everything and everyone as they manipulate them for the sake of their art. Just look at how Roma appreciates Kaneki in the exact same way we did - enjoying his suffering from a detached perspective as an artform. When she says, “I won’t lose to any tragedy!”, she even describes Kaneki’s meta-rebellion against the genre of his story, his attempt to escape the tragedy he’s been written into.

They are literary analysts, meta-writers, and the representatives of the fandom - but because they’re inside the story itself, their fascination comes across as psychotic rather than insightful. Nico has the same fascination with Kaneki, noting his despair is what makes him beautiful. 

Here Nico states the detachment the Clowns draw between themselves and other people. You can either live beautifully - an artform and subject of a story - or you can live for beautiful people and be the writer of that story, directing them down the path of their struggle.

Uta makes for another great example of this. Tokyo Ghoul’s utilisation of extreme character development is one of its most fascinating features - can we really blame Uta for thinking so too?

He is an artist, after all. Uta goes on to talk about how he enjoys being so involved in the story because it’s lonely ‘on the edges’. 

As well as this being Uta openly acknowledging how he went from a side character to someone much more important (Clowns are so meta), he also admits his hedonism stems from loneliness. The easiest way to escape a tragedy is to become an author of it (or so they think). Donato is not so sentimental - his hedonism stems from purely evil intent.

The clowns all manipulate the transformation of characters in various ways. In the original series, their sole interest is in Kaneki, Uta’s “special customer”. Judging from the conversation below, it seems that this interest comes from an awareness that Kaneki is being reared as the One-Eyed King, since Nico starts talking about Kaneki immediately after the concept behind the King. Furuta, as a newer member of the Clowns, is at first unaware.

Furuta drops the steel beam on him (though unintentionally), Uta makes him his creepy mask, Itori convinces him to go to the Ghoul Restaurant, Nico helps Yamori abduct him, Itori leads him to Kanou, Nico gives him information about Aogiri, Donato encourages Amon to find him, Uta encourages him to see Yomo (and thus Rize). All of these events push Kaneki along in his development, first to his transformation into Shironeki, then towards his loss of conviction and his ‘death’. 

In :re, while still interested in Kaneki, they start playing with other major characters as well. Uta plays mind games with Mutsuki (Kaneki’s successor in tragedy), first at the auction, telling her that nobody will come to rescue her, leading her to desperate action which results eventually in her giving into her repressed desires and eating from a corpse, and again at the Clown Siege, making her snap entirely. He also attempts to manipulate Hirako and Suzuya, and he sends Kaneki his mask to help unlock his memories. Donato gets Haise to think more deeply about his amnesia and he breaks Urie, forcing him into becoming a Ghoul. Nico has brought Goat’s attention to the Great Wheel Act, and I believe that him seeing Kaneki at the party was why the Clowns were at the Auction in the first place - because they knew Kaneki would be there. See Uta’s reaction to Kaneki’s screams.

Like he’s found what he’d been looking for. If a character is skirting around an abyss, a Clown is always there to give them a helpful push.

Nico helping out Goat shows that the Clowns’ allegiance is solely to the most interesting turn of events, the same allegiance is us readers. But it’s not always easy being a Clown. You need to be able to draw that sharp divide between subject and observer that can allow you to enjoy people you know suffering from a detached perspective. Nico has mastered this; his emotion at Yamori’s death seemed sarcastic at best, and he’s happy to leave Roma in Goat’s hands. But his is where Uta falters somewhat. He does care about Yomo quite deeply, and this is expressed in his neck tattoo: nec possum tecum vivere, nec sine te (a quote from Ovid, albeit jumbled around a bit, and a hint that he’s a Clown; most meta-characters in the series are well read).

He’s struggling with fully detaching himself from this world to be a true Clown. He can’t live with Yomo because he is a true Clown; and he can’t be a true Clown because he can’t live without Yomo. I think one day he and Yomo will meet in battle, and he will be forced to decide…and I think that he will choose beautifully. He will die a tragic but beautiful death at the hand of his loved one; both author and character at once, like he has always been.

This dichotomy applies to Furuta as well. But rather than being attached to a person (his ‘love’ of Rize being just a part of his power complex), his goals are concrete, physical, and specifically within the world of the story rather than the abstract and metaphysical pleasure the Clowns derive from manipulating that world. He is a subject only playing at being an author, and that will be his undoing. Furuta’s only on Team Furuta at the end of the day, manipulating his many affiliations to further his ambition. But he’s fooling himself in believing he controls the Clowns, as Nico has already proven. Furuta is not playing the Clowns, the Clowns are playing Furuta, and they will cast him aside as soon as they stop finding him amusing.

In fact, the set-up’s already in place for his downfall when he made the hubristic move of hiring Akihiro Kanou, someone almost certainly in league with the Clowns. Roma’s presence in Kanou’s lab speaks volumes, and as much as Kanou talks about breaking open birdcages, the scorpion-butterfly on his wall says a lot more about his true nature - he takes abstract pleasure in watching things transform.

The Clowns were the ones who enabled Furuta into dropping the beam on Rize and Kaneki, providing Kanou with his ideal kakuhou and a ready test subject in one fell swoop. And Kanou has just created around 100 supersoldiers - not to mention he’s the one keeping Rize in her tank. If Donato decides he wants to control the story in a more direct way and take the throne for himself, Furuta will be easily cornered by his own Oggai, and when he rushes to see his love, he will find the tank empty, and a hungry Rize waiting to take revenge.

[lydiastormborn]

title: a blast from the past

ship: jaykyle

summary: jason gets kyle's friends to talk about his early days as a green lantern. It ends up being really embarrassing. kyle retaliates by roping jason's siblings into calling out his past costume choices.

as they say, all is fair in love and dragging your significant other down.

a/n: @ anon who encouraged me to write this: thanks have fun with this meta shitpost callout fic

[on ao3]

After all this time, Kyle should know Jason better than that. He should have expected something like this.

His first indication is the fact the apartment isn’t quiet when he gets back; by all means, Jason should be already out on a patrol. Then Kyle notices an impressive collection of shoes and jackets in the hallway, which are definitely not his or Jason’s, and he slowly creeps into the brightly lit living room.

Guy is the first one to take note of him. “Hey, talk of the devil! Look who finally came.”

Kyle squints at the faces that turn into his direction, trying to make sense of what he’s seeing. Guy and John look way too comfortable sitting in a couple of armchairs Kyle is pretty sure Jason got from a garage sale; Jason himself is seated on a couch between Connor and Donna, on whose left there’s Roy.

Kyle doesn’t have a good feeling about this, but he tries to play along anyway. He quirks an eyebrow.

“Is it my birthday today or something?” he jokes, glancing at a table full of various snacks and beverages. Jason can be a surprisingly good host if he wants to.

Jason gives him a toothy grin that worries Kyle. “You wish,” he says. “It’s just, you know how you always tell me I should try to make nice with your friends?”

“Actually, I mentioned that maybe once --”

“So this is me. Making nice. Having a little chat,” Jason explains, stretching his legs under the table.

“Really,” Kyle says flatly, not buying it. “Strange how you failed to mention it’s happening tonight. Also, you’ve literally known Donna and Roy longer than I have.” When Jason just shrugs, completely unbothered, Kyle sighs and makes himself a puffy, comfortable armchair; their apartment is rather sparse when it comes to furniture. They rarely have so many guests at once.

“I suppose Wally isn’t coming?” Connor asks then and Kyle almost falls off his seat.

Jason cocks his head. “Oh, West? I called, but he’s pretty busy tonight. Said maybe he’ll drop by, but it’s unlikely.”

Roy laughs. “You should be happy. All this food would be already gone.”

“Yeah, probably.” Jason looks back to Kyle and he’s smirking again. It’s starting to become unnerving. “He told me some interesting things, though.”

“So, what are you guys talking about, again?” Kyle tries, feeling awfully out of loop.

“Jason wanted to hear some stories from your early days as GL,” John tells him mildly.

This is… not really what Kyle expected. He’s confused.

“Specifically, he asked for embarrassing stories,” Guy clarifies with a shit-eating grin.

“Like, I knew you were a loser from the moment I met you, but the things I’ve heard today, wow.” Jason shakes his head. “There’s so much I didn’t know.”

Oh. Okay, this isn’t looking stellar, Kyle supposes.

“Yeah, before you came I was talking about what an irresponsible greenhorn you were during your short tenure with Titans,” Roy says and snorts. “Coming on time? Taking training seriously? These were strange concepts to you.”

“Well, and you had a dumb costume back then,” Kyle says before he can think better of it.

Roy crosses his arms over his chest. “Oh, getting cheeky, Rayner? This much haven’t really changed.”

“He did have some problems with authority and keeping quiet when he should, didn’t he?” Jason asks, turning to Connor.

“Well, that’s true,” Connor says because he’s honest like that. “Kyle was… rather a hothead. So much that he re-defined who’s the impulsive one in Green Arrow and Green Lantern’s team ups.”

“Come on, I wasn’t that bad,” Kyle protests on a principle.

Connor looks at him like he’s grown a second head. “And that time we went looking for you father? That was a fiasco on many fronts, if not all.”

Kyle winces at the mention of that; it kind of really was.

“Including when you tried to show me how to flirt, I’d say. It almost got us arrested.”

Oh, no. He remembers that, too.

Jason looks intrigued. “Care to tell that story?”

“There was this waitress. Christie, I think,” Connor starts, easily ignoring Kyle’s throat slash gesture. “When she brought our orders, Kyle took his shake from her and held her hands in his to warm them up.” Guy snorts into his cup. “He said something about never listening much to what other people have to say, but that he’d be willing to give her a chance to… convince him.” Roy is outright giggling now. “They were interrupted by her father who was from the police, though. That’s how we ended up getting into a fight with police officers.” Connor tilts his head to the side and sighs. “I admit, I had no romantic experience back then, but I found this display somewhat strange and uncomfortable to watch.”

“Someone’s flirting skills just got dragged,” Roy comments over the laughs and Kyle knows his face is red.

“For the most part, whenever Kyle, Wally and I would go out somewhere, and there would be women, it usually ended up backfiring at us somehow,” Connor adds.

“Oh, come on, you literally didn’t have to do anything and they were all over you, anyway!” Kyle exclaims.

Donna’s eyebrows raise. “That’s petty, Kyle. Jealousy doesn’t suit you.”

“Honestly, though, can you blame him for thinking with his dick sometimes?” Guy asks blatantly.

“You’re so not helping my case right now,” Kyle tells him, pinching the bridge of his nose. He turns to John who remained quiet through the antics. “John, back me up. I wasn’t that bad, right?”

John, looking slightly amused, says, “You know I have nothing bad to say about the work you did as Green Lantern then, Kyle.” And as Kyle lets himself feel a twinge of hope, John continues, “I do remember the first time we met out of costumes, though.”

Right. Kyle can’t have nice things.

“Ah, I remember that as well,” Donna says with an acute grin. Kyle turns to her with a pleading expression; at one hand, he’s glad they’re past their, well, past and can bring up things from that time, but he’d prefer if she didn’t do it right now. “Your neighbor Allison seemed quite keen on posing for you in nude, didn’t she?”

Guy dramatically gasps and Roy chokes on his drink. Jason looks affronted. “Seriously, Kyle?” he asks, disbelief clear in his voice. “Doing something like that while you were in a relationship? With Donna, out of all people?”

“It was just an artistic exercise!” Kyle stresses even though this excuse sounds as weak as it had back then, if not weaker.

“And then you said something like, ‘Well, I’d feel better about finding you with some attractive naked guy if you had a sketch pad in your hands’,” Donna adds, doing quite a good impression of Kyle’s voice.

He sometimes regrets his friends have such good memory just as much as he regrets the things that came out of his mouth.

“Okay, this happened, I can’t deny,” he says eventually, running a hand through his hair. “And thinking back to it, I realize it looked bad…”

“Just like that time I came to find Jade hanging off of you as your new flatmate?” Donna asks, not pulling her punches.

Kyle doesn’t even know how to counter that. It’s good Donna missed that part where he found Jenny under his shower and later had a fight with her brother over a misunderstanding concerning her underwear.

He winces internally. These things really make him look bad, now that he looks back to them.

“Wow,” Jason says, tapping fingers against his thigh. “I really would have felt an urge to kick your fuckboy ass if I knew you back then, wouldn’t I?”

Roy laughs. “Yeah, I have a feeling you two wouldn’t like each other very much.”

“Luckily for us, Kyle grew up since then,” Donna says with a small smile. Kyle takes it for what it is; if Donna wanted to, she could have brought up more things from the time they dated.

“We all make mistakes,” Connor adds.

“Green Lanterns more than most of us, apparently” Jason comments dryly. To John and Guy, he says, “No offense.”

Both sullen and embarrassed, Kyle watches as their guests start leaving, pointedly ignoring their jabs and goodbyes. Jason gets to cleaning up the table; it seems like he’s in far too good spirits as for someone who just found out about a lot of cringeworthy shit his boyfriend used to do. It annoys Kyle.

“Are you going to sit in your fake armchair and sulk all night?” Jason asks finally, standing in front of Kyle with his hands on his hips.

“You did this because I forgot to clean the bathroom this week, right?” Kyle asks instead, after turning it over in his head.

If anything, Jason looks even more amused. “Try again,” he tells him.

“Was it because I crashed your patrol with Robin and Lark the other night? I swear I didn’t actually mean it this time.” Jason shakes his head. “Okay, so… because I painted memes on your back when you were drunk last week and then shared it on snapchat?” Kyle risks asking.

Jason blinks. “You did that?” He looks thoughtful for a moment. “Well, I guess it explains the texts I got the next day.”

“Come on, I’m running out of ideas here,” Kyle says. “Like, it can’t be because I accidentally mentioned to Alfred I found your secret cigarette stash?” Kyle narrows his eyes when Jason remains quiet. “Oh my God, it’s that?”

“Ding-ding, someone hit a jackpot,” Jason announces in a deadpan voice.

Kyle throws his hands up. “It was over a month ago!”

“Didn’t you know? I can hold a grudge. Ask Bruce. And besides,” Jason adds, jabbing a finger at him, “since I don’t smoke anymore, it’s not a secret stash, it’s an emergency stash and you outed me like that, to Alfred, no less. Geez, Kyle, thanks for nothing.”

“I literally can’t believe you,” Kyle tells Jason as he starts walking towards the bedroom.

“Right back at you, mister ‘there are guys who make embarrassed to have a Y-chromosome, but I’m not like those jerks’,” Jason calls back without even turning around.

It takes Kyle a moment to place this particular blast from the past. Once he does, he facepalms. “Damn, Donna,” he mutters under his breath.

And because he’s a responsible adult, Kyle, still sitting in his comfy, not-real armchair, starts plotting his revenge.

…

When Jason steps into the living room at the Manor, he does a double take and feels a strong urge to leave immediately.

The long table from the dining room was moved in at some point, so Kyle, Tim, Dick and Damian, sitting behind it now, look more like a jury than anything else. On one of the sofas, propped up on some cushions, there’s Cassandra, reclining like a cat, and she waves at Jason with a grin upon spotting him. He narrows his eyes at her and turns his attention back to the table.

“Well, this looks like a staged intervention,” he comments dryly, leaning on the doorframe. “I have no idea for what reason, though.”

“Close, but that’s not it,” Dick answers airly. “It’s a bit late for an intervention, in all honesty.”

“But it’s not too late for a… discussion,” Kyle adds and Jason has a hunch what “discussion” means in this case. “About some of your rather misguided costume choices.”

Jason blinks at them once, twice, then starts laughing. “Hey, seriously? This is how you want to get back at me? Couldn’t you come up with something better? I mean, you realize who you’re sitting with, right?” Jason gestures to Dick who, to his credit, doesn’t even move, except for a tiny twitch of a muscle in his jaw. “I’d say this merry company will make this whole show lose some of its credibility.”

“Stop using Grayson’s dark fashion past as means of distraction, Todd,” Damian says, straightening in his seat. He still looks relatively small compared to the others. “We’re here to discuss yours.”

“Okay, well then, squirt. Hit me up with what you’ve got,” Jason states cheerfully, walking into the room and taking a seat in one of the vacant chairs. “I mean, it’s not like you’re gonna drag me for the Robin suit, are you? Not my fault Tim was the first one to actually show some, you know, common sense and campaign for actual pants.”

“Yeah, that was wise,” Tim agrees thoughtfully. “But that wouldn’t be fair indeed. The costumes that came after, though, they were all up to you, weren’t they?”

“I guess,” Jason answers, careful now.

“Great,” Dick agrees and opens -- is that a folder? “Remember when you came back to Gotham to become a crime lord? Dressed like that, no less.” He flashes a picture.

Jason smiles a little, almost nostalgic. “Ah, right. Those were the times.” Then, he glowers at them. “Hey, but I will have you guys know this was a look, okay? Minimalistic, sure, with a black leather jacket, but still.”

“Ignoring the fact it doesn’t look like it did much as a protection factor,” Damian comments, glancing at the photo, “I suppose this… outfit was the least heinous out of the ones you wore back in time.” The others nod.

“Hey, what’s that supposed --” Jason starts, but Tim cuts him off.

“Anyway, are we going to talk about that time when Jason was posing as Nightwing in New York? We don’t have pictures, but --”

“No,” Jason and Dick say in unison. Kyle’s eyebrows climb high on his forehead. Tim and Damian stare, visibly confused.

Jason makes an eye contact with Dick and is briefly thankful this is something they both agree on.

Dick clears his throat. “It would do no good to bring that up,” he says, his expression somewhat pained. “Let’s just say that Jay looked okay… till a point, I guess,” he finishes lamely. Jason grits his teeth quietly.

“Okay, that was weird, but maybe I don’t want to know the details,” Tim states after a moment of prolonged silence and shuffles through some pictures. He pulls one. “Hey, remember your murder Batman outfit?”

Jason groans. “Well, now I do, unfortunately.”

“What kind of a cowl was that supposed to be?” Damian sneers. “Like a close helm. You did take the knight part to the heart, didn’t you?”

“Glowing eyes were such an overkill,” Dick muses.

“Well, okay, I can admit it was kind of bad.” Jason throws his hands up in the air. “But I didn’t trouble myself with fancy designs then, alright?”

“But you sometimes take time with your costumes,” Tim says, almost nonchalantly. “I mean, that time you came to Titans Tower to kick my ass?”

Jason feels his eyes go comically wide when he realizes what Tim is referring to. He leans out of his chair. “No, hang on, that didn’t happen like that --”

“Oh, but it did,” Tim interrupts and, sure enough, flashes another photo.

“Now, this is a photoshop or something --”

“No, it’s not, Donna confirmed that,” Dick says without missing a beat.

“Traitor,” Jason whispers and glares when Tim speaks up again.

“You know, I’ve always wondered, did you sew the costume yourself? Like, I know they sell adult-sized Robin uniforms...”

(“They do?” Damian perks up. “What for? Shouldn’t we charge money for that?”

Kyle coughs. “You’re probably too young to know.”)

“...but it didn’t really look like one of the manufactured ones.”

Jason closes his eyes for a moment and sighs internally. So this is how it feels like when your past comes back to haunt you. He’s almost sorry for doing that to Kyle the other day.

“If you must know,” he says finally, “I did sew it myself. The ones they sell are usually of such a shitty quality, it’d probably tear at a stitch before I even threw one punch.”

“I knew it,” Tim mutters triumphantly and isn’t that kid just plain weird.

“Well, that was kind of extra,” Dick states, scratching his chin. “Then again, it’s Jason we’re talking about, so…”

“Dickie, you wanna go?” Jason offers lightly.

Kyle snaps his fingers. “Well, I wasn’t around for most of these, but here’s a thing that tagged along from our multiverse trip.” He points at something which Jason thinks is a sketch.

Tim makes a displeased noise in the back of his throat. “I thought we agreed we’re not bringing in Red Robin,” he says, irritated. “I am wearing it now.”

“Yeah, but it kind of suits you, I guess?” Kyle tilts his head to the side. “I mean, except for the fact it looks like a rip-off of Dr. Mid-Nite.”

Jason snickers. “Still better than comparing the cowl to a dil--”

“Jason,” Dick says, a warning in his voice.

Tim’s expression is pinched. “Is that what you guys think of it? Really?”

“Well, then again, you can’t be exactly blamed for that,” Jason says, shrugging. “It’s another mantle you picked up after me. Like, haven’t you had an original idea in your life, kid?”

“To be fair, you weren’t the one who came up with it, either,” Kyle butts in before Tim has a chance to snap.

Dick looks pensive. “Actually, you’re the one who kept claiming already used identities, Jay. I mean, Robin, Nightwing, Red Robin, Batman? Even the Red Hood.”

Jason opens his mouth to argue, then closes it, and opens it again. Eventually, he grumbles, “Are you done having fun at my expense?”

“Never,” Damian replies with a smirk. In a dramatic move that probably runs in his blood, he selects another photo and throws it across the table. “We have this atrocity left.”

“Oh, yeah,” Dick agrees. “That was bad. Like, real bad.”

“As the Internet would say, cursed outfit,” Tim adds.

“You’re talking about the one I had when Dickie was running around as Batman?” Jason asks, running a mental check in his head. “It wasn’t that bad.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Kyle stares at him. “I mean, disrespecting white-red-black color scheme like that, Jason? It hurts my eyes to even look at the pictures.”

“That skull at the front… Was it supposed to give off, like, metal vibe or something? It kind of made you look emo,” Tim continues flatly.

“And the cape going with it was just tasteless,” Damian states. “Shouldn’t be there in the first place.”

“Plus, red guns, they were really tacky. And the worst of all, the helmet.” Dick massages his temple. “How the hell could you think it was a good idea? You criticize Tim’s cowl, but do you know how bad this looked like? It was hard to take you seriously, I swear.”

“Later I changed the helmets and ditched the cape,” Jason tries to defend himself.

“Well, yeah, thanks to that you went from absolutely terrible to still terrible.”

“Like, seriously, Jason, this is a whole lot of bad costume choices,” Tim says, gesturing to the pile of pictures all over the table. “What even did you do with these things?”

Jason shrugs. “Most of them I keep in a storage I have in East End --”

“That’s what you keep there?” Kyle asks, shock audible in his voice.

“Among stuff like weapons, yeah.” Jason looks at him, frowning. “And what did you think I keep there?”

“I don’t know, another library of books? Old motorbikes? Not monstrosities like these.”

At that, Cassandra laughs. Truth be told, Jason forgot she was even in the room with them, with how quiet she kept through this… ordeal. He looks in her direction and freezes.

“Cass,” he says calmly, evenly. “Is that a camera?”

“Yes.” She pats the device propped up on one of the cushions. “Recorded for Stephanie and Barbara.”

Jason gets up from the chair. “Cass, give me that camera,” he says, still eerily calm. She grabs it, jumping over the backrest, one eyebrow raised in a challange. Jason adds, “Please.”

“Sorry, little brother, but no,” Cassandra answers and a moment later, she’s already across the room. Jason is fast, but not as fast as her; in the doorframe, he almost collides with Alfred.

“Master Jason,” the butler says, a hint of disapproval in his voice.

“Sorry, Alfie, but this is a matter of my dignity,” Jason explains hurriedly, trying to pass him. Alfred only arches an eyebrow just like Cass had moments ago. There’s a slam of the door somewhere down the hallway.

“Not that I do not find this matter important, of course, but I believe, sooner or later, we must face consequences of our actions. Besides,” he adds, over the roaring of an engine coming from the outside, “I believe this is a sound Miss Cassandra driving away with Master Duke.”

Jason swears loudly and turns back to his boyfriend and brothers who are laughing shamelessly (even Damian, that little demon, can’t hold back a grin). He honestly hopes they all end up falling off their chairs on their sore asses.

“You better hope you get a call up to space, Rayner,” Jason says sweetly. “In case you forgot, we’re scheduled for our monthly sparring session day after tomorrow and you’re gonna get your ass handed to you six ways to Sunday. And you won’t like it, I assure you.”

…

(bonus.)

A few days later, battle dust has mostly settled and the morning finds Kyle in the kitchen, making pancakes. He’s humming a song and it takes him a moment to realize someone is standing behind him. He turns around, ring ready.

“Shit!” he exclaims, almost dropping the spatula. “Artemis? What are you doing here? How did you even get inside?”

“Magic, of course,” the Amazon says, like it’s obvious. Well, Kyle supposes it is. “Is the Little One here?” she asks with a strange, almost pained expression on her face.

“Yeah, in the shower.” Kyle frowns. “Did something happen? Should I get him?”

“No, by all means,” she replies immediately. He is confused until Artemis asks, “Do you know the location of his storage?”

Kyle stares at her for a moment and snorts. “I take it you’ve seen the video.”

“Pictures as well.” She clenches her jaw. “Some of these things need to be disposed of immediately. Bizarro and I will see to it.”

“But you won’t destroy like, everything, right?” Kyle asks, just to make sure; he’s already sold on the idea.

Artemis gives him a flat look, one that reminds Kyle that as much as he may like Jason’s teammates, he keeps his distance for a reason. He rattles off the address.

“Thank you. Your cooperation is appreciated,” Artemis says.

“This conversation never took place and I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Kyle responds easily and turns around to flip a pancake. He thinks he hears Artemis chuckle before she’s gone again.

Jason is gonna kill him for this, sure, but at least Kyle will go out doing the world a favor.

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

Time, space, body, and writing: power and care

Hey @mittensmorgul and everyone else, we need to talk about the theme of time in this season - I think it’s one of the biggest themes that have been brought along during the season so far, and in First Blood, imo, it has become even more evident.

There’s the obvious past/present dynamic in regards to Mary, her life with John and her past as a hunter, Dean’s memories of her (and hey, we’re going to have an entire episode on the time of Dean’s memories... at least two episodes about Cas’ past, and possibly his memories of it specifically...) and in general the entire theme of the perception of the past vs reality of the present (reality/perception being one of the biggest themes that course though the entire show since the beginning, but the theme has had a shift: we started with Sam’s visions of the future, now we have gotten to the theme of one’s perception of the past, but I guess this could be matter for another post).

But we also have a subtler way time features in the season, less about the past and more about the present-future: we have Mary saying she needs time when she decides to be on her own, Sam saying families sometimes do better after some time apart when he’s discussing it with Dean, agent Camp (the older prison guy in First Blood, I had to look his name up, I missed it in the episode lol) saying that it’s a matter of time before Dean and Sam will crack with the isolation, Dean keeping track of time with the incisions on the wall to count the passing of the days...

Speaking of the incisions, I think it’s relevant that Sam is seen coping through physical exercise, i.e. relying on body, while Dean does that though the keeping track of the days, i.e. relying on time. I believe Dean probably did some exercise during those six months or there’s no way he could do what he did after escaping if he went six months without any physical activity lol, but the show chooses to show Sam doing it, while Dean is shown making the incisions on the wall, and I believe that’s relevant. In fact, Dean is also shown shaving, which is also a way of coping connected to taking care of the body - in this case, appearance, which fits in the long theme of mirrors (also something to be talked about, as the mirror in the cell was very crappy and deformed the reflected image...).

So they use body and time in order to deal with being enclosed in such a small space. Space is also a thing in this season; I wrote something (or planned to? who knows at this point) about Mary saying she needs time and later Dean using the word space instead; Magda’s story was about being confined in a hidden space, the body of the ghost in The Foundry was hidden in an enclosed space inside the house... and of course the prison story, which is all about space, with the spacial confinement and the importance of the location of the prison itself.

Body, time and space are the dimensions studied by Michel Foucault in regards to the dynamics of power that take shape through the details - what he calls microphysics of power. To keep it short and simple, how do schools, prisons, hospitals etc work? Through a series of apparently small dispositions in the organization of time and space and the management of the bodies of the people in there. Your body is kept enclosed in a very defined space (the school desk, the cell, the hospital room) and your time is precisely organized (classes, management of activities in a prison, schedule of exams and tests in a hospital). All of these things seem innocent enough, but together they create a system that places you inside a huge mechanism that wields power over you.

It’s not just about institutions; the way all the spaces around us, the way our time is articulated, pretty much everything about our bodies (as feminist, queer, disabled theories well explain) conveys some kind of power dynamic. It’s not a coincidence that marginalized groups have a long (and not over) history related to institutions like hospitals, psychiatric institutions, and prisons (the lines between which are not always so clear, because a lot of principles behind their functioning are the same) in addition to discrimination and issues in the school system: modern Western society has invented those institutions as mechanisms of power through normalization: schools teach the same things to everyone, hospitals cure you so you become healthy - aka “normal” again, prisons are for criminals, aka people who are not normal (what’s criminal in modern Western society? ...yeah.)

And the normal, of course is also one of the biggest themes of the entire show, together with its twin concept, the natural. But I don’t want to digress too much.

Ah, I should probably mention that Michel Foucault was a gay man. (It probably doesn’t come as much as a surprise, right?) He was extremely politically active on a lot of the fronts of the social fights of the 70s, from psychiatry to racism, and his work contributed to push towards reformations in fields like the prison system. His work is still influencing feminist theories, queer theories, and a lot of other fields, and it keeps being a fertile ground for new developments!

I’m not saying Dabb has Foucault’s philosophy in mind, but I’m not saying he doesn’t.

(In case you’re wondering, Foucault caught AIDS while frequenting BDSM bathhouses in San Francisco and passed away in 1984. He had a very good time, though.)

This post got a lot longer than intended. Actually I didn’t even mean to talk about Foucault when I started. What happened.

Anyway. Let’s get back to Supernatural, kind of.

The hold of the power dynamics of society is strong and we can’t think of just get free of them with a snap of our fingers, but Foucault proposes strategies to get a little free of it as individuals (I’m not explaining it very well but I’m starting to run out of brainpower sorry).

Basically, what Foucault proposes as a strategy against society’s crap is what he calls care, i.e. a work for the improvement of the self - it’s a complex topic and if someone is interested I could elaborate on it some other time, but the aspect of this theme in Foucault that I believe is most interesting for this kind of analysis is the important Foucault places on writing as a technique for the care of the self.

Of course writing is one of the big themes of the show. Chuck/God as a writer, Supernatural books, tablets, Metatron’s new scripts... we know how the thing goes. Now, this season has placed much focus on the written work of the Winchester family par excellence, John’s journal, the word of the “god” of the family, the ripping of whose “script” (his conditioning) is pretty much Dean’s story in the show (with a side of Sam’s but for different reasons, c’mon we know what Dean’s story is about).

And now we’ve had a new character coded in a way that connects him to Metatron as “script writer”. Mick’s “let me paint a picture” speech is directed in the same way as Metatron’s “what gives the story meaning” speech (both technically speeches to a character but framed as a speech to the audience in a super hyper meta operation), and of course they both use a typewriter.

So we can deduce that Dabb has also placed his own stand-in character in the show, after Kripke’s God and Carver’s Metatron (with Robbie Thompson’s masterful contribution especially in connecting Carver’s narrative with Kripke’s God). It sure is soon to see how exactly Mick will work as the current showrunner’s meta character, but I am pretty sure 12x09 establishes him as it (him or the administrative/strategist/theoretical side of the British Men of Letters in general, i.e. the people who write - literally or in the sense of giving directions and establishing principles and lines of conduct). It’s likely that in this case Dabb’s stand-in will be some sort of anti-author, but again it’s too soon to make statements.

So, back to Foucault, writing as care, i.e. improvement of the self with the objective of happiness, i.e. creating sense/meaning. Supernatural’s meta undercurrent has been about meaning - Metatron’s experiments with storytelling, the author’s approval of transformative work in Fan Fiction, the confrontation between Chuck and Metatron. John’s journal has also been about meaning, the meaning of Dean’s self, Sam’s self, now Mary’s self (and of course their selves in relation to one another, because self is constructed via interpersonal dynamics). The apocalypse has been about Team Free Will rejecting a pre-made meaning that others wanted to impose on them; the tablets have all been smashed (by Cas, the character that maybe more than anyone has been looking for a sense of self). Hell, every piece of writing has been important, from Dean’s farewell letter when he planned to say yes to Michael to his note to Sam after becoming a demon... and recently even texts, with emphasis on the fact that Cas has learnt making them last season, and now Mary has. Writing is a theme we should also think about.

This post has probably gotten long enough and it’s almost midnight so I’ll just finish it by suggesting to collectively look into this themes; power (and resistance - power and resistance are two sides of the same coin, one isn’t without the other and one is where the other is) through the management of body, time and space, and resistance in the form of care (as seeking of sense/meaning) through writing.

[id0l-atry]

Eliminate Your Fears And Doubts About SEO 2019

First of all, allow us just quickly define exactly what Localized Search Engine Optimisation (Local SEO) is. Local SEO is definitely basically the optimising your site to perform better within the particular search engines by allowing this to be found for your key phrases which relate to the region by which you're located. UnGagged Greater london is really a 2-day SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION & Digital Marketing conference of which takes place June 11-12th, using one-day intensive masterclasses on August 13th. These ‘quality updates' are very reminiscent of Search engines Panda updates and often influence many websites at the exact same time - and often these types of concentrate on demoting similar ‘low-quality' SEO techniques we have already been told Panda focuses on. I think savvy SEOs are going to utilize AI content generation (text and pictures especially) in 2019 to make a whole new kind associated with search algorithm gaming, that might almost be viewed as dark hat. This course covers how in order to build strong links for much better SEO. SEO companies ensure that will your site has all associated with the SEO Internet marketing like as business improvement, localized item sales, high quality online era and the rest. 2018 brought many adjustments to the world of SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING, including a few new protocol evolutions through Google. An expert Seo agency may help any dimensions of company take full advantage of web marketing and raise the likelihood associated with actual sales while simultaneously enhance brand awareness one of the particular audience segment. Recently we were speaking about the subject with the friendly agency in Valencia plus we directed to this entrance of Search Engine Journal along with the 20 questions that need to be done to any SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION or SEO agency that desires to hire.

But undoubtedly, the acronym many people ask about is SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, or search engine optimization. Between this plus 2017's Best SEO Campaign prize from the UK Search Honours, it's clear the world is usually starting to recognize Elephate because one of the most trustworthy SEO and Content Marketing firms in Europe. To understand how SEO functions to improve search rankings, we're going have to break it lower a little. Whichever way you choose in order to categorize keywords, one of the particular most important steps in SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION does keyword research. Some good examples of White Hat SEO consist of optimizing META tags, putting key phrases in URLs, submitting sites in order to directories, making sitemaps, obtaining hyperlinks on related sites, and developing keyword-optimized content. An SEO Executive optimizes internet sites to create them show up increased on search engines like search engines and gain more website website visitors. Nevertheless, the brand-new trend in SEO is ideal for long-tail keywords and even more conversational searches. SEO is the great marketing tool for the particular websites promoting their businesses on the web. Still, the keyword element of SEO is becoming progressively difficult with Google Adwords concealing volume data. Making use of advanced Search engines semantic search algorithms, we link the gap between old college SEO and the new articles marketing. Tug has been appointed specifically to roll out a multi-lingual internet marketing campaign using its knowledge in international SEO and PAY-PER-CLICK. Content written simply by customers gives sites legitimacy plus it earns SEO juice each from manual and automatic ranking systems. Throughout 2018, this trend is in the rise and if a person invest in making your internet site mobile friendly you will appreciate higher search positions in 2019 as well. When making a web site for Google in 2018, a person need to understand that Search engines has a long list associated with things it will mark websites down for, and that's generally old-school SEO tactics which are usually now classed as ‘webspam‘. Besides getting social plus having a good time, your own social media profiles can favorably affect your SEO efforts. Since so many people trust in voice search being the pattern in 2019, I, Nicole Bermack (this article's author), am coining the word VSO - voice lookup optimization. Intelligent brands and agencies are changing new SEO, social and articles marketing strategies to join their particular customer conversations. Search engine marketing (SEO) is the art plus science of getting pages in order to rank higher in search motors such as Google. A person can audit your page's SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION health, compare SEO metrics intended for a number of pages, plus analyze both external and inner links on any given internet page. Content companies that will offer SEO content creation providers are experts in creating content material that are not only enhanced for search engine rankings yet also add value for your own business in terms of brand name awareness, customer engagement and enhanced sales. A several of the popular keyword study tools are Wordtracker, SEOMOZ Key phrase Difficulty Tool, SEOBook Keyword Device and Google Keyword Tool. Thankfully, SEO allows webmasters to supply clues that the engines may use to understand content. Because less as 20% dentists within a city hire SEO expert s who really wants that shift within their Google ranking. The particular analytical part of the SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is about tracking organic key word positions, website traffic and the engagement in Google Analytics, Site owner Tools and many other specific tools. Mobile SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is nothing than a regular SEO, creating content and marking to be able to remain out online. SEO rankings are placing excess fat than ever upon what users have to state. The Search System will help you to evaluate your keyword rankings, CTRs, feasible Google penalties and many various other useful data for technical SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. Blog posts, guides, whitepapers, situation studies, videos, and social articles all need to include the particular right keywords for social plus SEO. For even more detailed information on the make use of of keywords on your internet site visit SEOcious to will discover many other important factors included in having your web web page in the top 10 entries on the search engines. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, search engine optimization is just about all about search engines, search motor result page (SERP), search rank, online visibility, and quality visitors. If your site has about 5-10 niche key phrases that are extremely targeted yet not very competitive, your SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION pricing is going to end up being quite less. Keyword studies about obtaining those terms so that a person can use them properly within content optimization and SEO within general. Just as content only isn't enough to guarantee SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION success, SEO alone isn't more than enough to ensure that people may find and engage with your own articles. While intense SEO may involve complex site restructuring along with a firm (or consultant) that will specializes in this area, right now there are a few simple actions you can take yourself in order to raise your search engine ranking. Since we prepare to enter 2019, keyword creation for SEO professionnals will become less important. Obtain the training you need in order to stay ahead with expert-led classes on Seo (SEO). Learn how to create articles, learn how to create some simple HTML, and the particular learn the very basic concepts of SEO, and you may make money online using SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION and article marketing to obtain your web site (you only require one from each website) shown on Page #1 of Search engines (forget Yahoo as well because the rest) and you can get loads of visitors that will web page. If your website will be made up of lower-quality entrance type pages using old SEO-techniques (which more and more branded as spam in 2018) after that Google will not index almost all of the pages as properly as your website ‘quality score' is probably likely to become negatively impacted. This particular is beyond website content, but great user experience has become a lot more and more important in solid SEO rankings. Given that lookup engines have complex algorithms that will power their technology and every person's marketing needs are unique, jooxie is unable to provide specific SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION advice to our customers. All of us think SEO in 2019 will discover a shift to focusing a lot more on user intent, problem resolving, and hyper locality in purchase to capitalize on the carried on rise of voice search. Private demographic information would come in a great deal handier in 2019 as much as the ranking of key phrases is concerned. Links are one of the particular most important SEO ranking elements. However, more advanced that will readers will recognize the reduced quality of sites employing dark hat SEO at the cost from the reader experience, which usually will reduce the site's visitors and page rank over period. So - THERE IS SIMPLY NO BEST PRACTICE AMOUNT OF HEROES What's So Trendy About SEO 2019 That Everyone Went Crazy Over It? any SEO could lay down since exact best practice to GUARANTEE a title may display, in full in Search engines, at least, since the search little title, on every device. While getting as many pages listed in Google was historically the priority for an SEO, Search engines is now rating the high quality of pages in your site plus the type of pages this really is indexing. Jerrika Scott, Digital Marketing Specialist with Archway Cards Ltd, also feels in voice being the craze of 2019 rather than 2018. Today, regardless of all the hype about regardless of whether SEO is dead, we discover that organic search is nevertheless one of the highest RETURN ON INVESTMENT digital marketing channels.

Every advertising SEO blog is usually talking about online video advertising and every third company professional you talk to is intending to shift marketing dollars to a good online video campaign. ” Simply by 2019, video is expected in order to account for 80 percent associated with all web traffic. Don't set it and neglect it. Take time to review your SEO keyword strategy every single few months to make certain it's still relevant and attaining the final results you want. Stories are a easy method to do marketing, you simply need to include some custom made images or text in purchase to let people know they will could swipe to click plus see where you can obtain a skirt, grill, buy SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, or anything else you're attempting to pitch to the public. Jana Granko, PR (public relations) head from SEMrush - one of the particular top marketing tools of the particular world - believe that within 2019 AI (artificial intelligence) would certainly change the way people lookup for keywords. In fact, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is simply one part associated with every successful digital marketing technique, but possibly the most essential part. These are called SEO standing factors. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is the art and technology of driving the most skilled visitors to your website simply by attaining high search engine outcomes. In Digital SEO Land, Rintu Biswas a professional SEO expert within Kolkata will assist you to be able to build quality backlinks to your site. This ‘what is SEO‘ guide (and this whole website) is not about churn and burn type of Search engines SEO (called webspam to Google) as that is too dangerous to deploy on a actual business website in 2018. A greater number associated with people will stick to tone of voice search, so SEO specialists may need to adjust to this particular relatively new kind of lookup. Seo or SEO is usually a powerful method to generate targeted traffic to your web site and hopefully increase your bottom part line. Whilst many marketing tactics rely upon you reaching out to your own audience, SEO gives you the particular power to achieve people whenever they are actively searching away information related to your solutions and products. Light hat SEOs the actual suggestions of Google and other research engines like google. As Google's search engine outcomes become increasingly monetized and some other platforms such as Amazon plus YouTube gain more SoV plus search volume, I think we are going to overdue for the focus associated with SEO to shift far through Google. Traditional SEO is definitely focused on building (keyword relevant) links and (keyword relevant) content material. The main reason could possibly be sometimes misunderstood is because which whole Internet underbelly of alleged SEO companies that you may pay to link to your own site on their networks associated with low-quality articles. However, before we obtain to our main event, I actually must note that after our own 2017 edition of SEO developments launched last year on Lookup Engine Journal, we heard the couple of complaints about simply how long it was. After that your boss tells you you aren't accountable for search engine marketing (SEO), too. Michael jordan Harling, SEO Specialist at Roman Blinds Direct, agrees with the particular consensus that voice search may be the trend in 2019. The number a single reason for using video upon your site to improve SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is to increase the quantity of time users remain upon your site. Search engine optimization had been but still is fascinating in order to me. The SEO placement regarding any size business begins along with proper web site optimization, a good excellent link building strategy plus a well planned online advertising plan. One section of focus for higher marketing and SEO performance within 2018 is the confluence associated with content, influence, and social. This can be helpful for SEO, as it helps avoid search engine crawlers from becoming confused by syntax or affirmation errors, and leads to even more accurate indexing. Stop thinking in terms associated with SEO vs. content marketing” plus start exploring how well these people perform together. (Give it a try tone of voice search using OK Google through your cell phone and inquire "What Is BlowFish SEO" ) In the event that all remains as it will be, Google will read out loud most about my company in the short to the point method, These cards are formatted in order to fit the screen of your own cell with no scrolling upward or down. Although SEO is really the time-consuming process but believes myself, if you work well along with dedication and trendy techniques, the particular combined results of on-page plus off-page SEO holds you upon the top with rank #1 for a specific search outcome. Fairly lately, I've seen a resurgence associated with on-page SEO factors making the difference searching engine rankings.

SEO differs from local research engine optimization in that the particular latter is targeted on customization a business' online presence therefore that its web pages is usually going to be displayed simply by search engines when a consumer enters a local search regarding its products or services. The challenge for webmasters plus SEO is that Google does not want business people to rank regarding lots of keywords using autogenerated content especially when that creates A LOT of pages upon a website using (for instance) a list of keyword variants page-to-page. In time, the range between social media marketing management, channel growth, and SEO will be considerably blurrier than it really will be today. In 2016, SEO experts have got determined which factors are nearly all likely to affect your SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION rankings. Customers and marketers will need in order to begin implementing multiple forms associated with digital marketing tactics including compensated search, social media marketing, nearby SEO, in addition to SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION if they hope to control a given Google SERP. Before beginning with this, the SEO experts should visit your organization and realize each and every aspect associated with your company so that they will can help your achieve your own marketing goals. What really matters in SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION in 2018 is what a person prioritise today to ensure that will in 3-6 months you may see improvements in the high quality of your organic traffic. Mobile will account for 72% of US digital ad invest by 2019. With internet customers who use their mobiles in order to search on the increase, since an SEO consultant it can make sense to get a look at the particular effects SEO marketing is putting on search engine optimization. The sole purpose of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Services is to improve your own search engine ranking. Guarantee redirected domains redirect through the canonical redirect and this too provides any chains minimised, although Help to make sure to audit the backlink user profile for any redirects you stage at a page just such as reward comes punishment if these backlinks are toxic (another type of Google opening up the particular war which is technical seo on a front it's not really, and in fact is speak, to building backlinks to your own site). In order to smoothen out the software system interface problem, the web developing team as well as the particular SEO specialist work together in order to build the major search motors friendly programs and code that may be easily integrated into the client's website. They will possess to find SEO expert internet sites, who will help the company owner's site have many clients in internet marketing. This is due to the fact they are not SEO helpful and can affect your positioning significantly. These SEO crawler programs are similar to Google's own crawlers and will provide you an overview showing exactly how your page will perform within SEO rankings. Google is making certain it takes longer to discover results from black and white hat SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, and intent on ensuring the flux in its SERPs centered largely on where the searcher is in the world during the particular time of the search, plus where the business is situated near to that searcher.

I believed it as simple as a good example to illustrate an factor of onpage SEO or ‘rank modification', that's white hat, fully Google friendly plus not, ever going to trigger you a issue with Search engines. So when you want to get began which includes basic SEO, the particular first thing that I would certainly recommend would be choosing the set of keywords for every page on your website. Away page, SEO has contrasted along with it. Undoubtedly, off page marketing is all about link developing, but the quality links plus content. Via a direct incorporation of Google's Search Console, Siteimprove SEO helps you understand how the particular world's most popular search motor and its users see and—more importantly—find your website. On Page Ranking Factors — Moz's on page ranking elements explains the different on web page elements and their importance within SEO. Surprisingly enough, some sort of lot of SEOs out presently there do tend to underestimate the particular power of Google Trends This tool has a separate "YouTube search" feature, which hides below the "Web search" option. An SEO agency may work together with a organization to provide an added viewpoint, when it comes to knowing and developing marketing strategies intended for different sectors and various sorts of business websites. Given the ratings and search volume, SEO may drive considerable traffic and network marketing leads for Grainger. SEO stands for research engine optimization - that very much has stayed the same. But they keep on altering their algorithms making it hard to rely on one specific tool for SEO optimization Plus today you could have a good appropriate rank which may not really last in the coming 6 months. If you work in research marketing, you'll know that SMX is one of the greatest search engine marketing conferences associated with the year, covering topics which includes SEO and PPC. SEO is conducted each on-site and off-site via various resources that are the existence of your web identity associated with different social media platform plus prominent display of your home page's link on other well-reputed web sites. Our unique data science-driven SEO & content marketing platform can help your eCommerce business find out millions of dollars' worth of earlier untapped organic search marketing possibilities. On the other hands, if the website doesn't make use of any digital marketing strategies or even SEO services, no one troubles to search for pages plus pages on Google just in order to find your website and check out it. Some dentists, who have Blog9T got tried applying SEO, have not really been very successful in moving their website to the best of Google search engine. Prior to we do, let's check away a couple essential areas intended for SEO: social media and cellular. SEO can price between $100 and $500 for each month if you do this yourself with a keyword analysis tool. This SEO guideline explains acquiring links from exterior domains. Let's review the fundamentals of SEO (search engine optimization). SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is conducted on the knowning that webpages rank because associated with how relevant a webpage is definitely to a search query plus how many links point in order to that webpage. Business professionals try to rely on these SEO techniques regarding optimization wishing for a larger profit.

Generally there are a few fundamentals that will can help boost the technique, but SEO, or seo, is definitely hardly ever considered. While employing the services of a great SEO agency can get a person good marketing copy for the particular website and an effective make use of of the related keywords, getting a brilliantly designed website will certainly help a lot when this comes to attracting people plus even the search engines in order to your website. You are able to get into important SEO-related data like the particular page title, description, and key phrases for every page or a person can have the system immediately populate this data depending upon a document name or additional fields. SEO has become broadly adopted as an online advertising strategy due to its effectiveness. Creating high-quality content along with SEO in your mind through the beginning boosts search presence. In contrast, dark hat SEO is about attempting to take shortcuts and video game search engines. You may also use Google Analytics in order to find SEO keywords for content material optimization. Keyword research is the particular process SEOs value to discover what search queries consumers get into into a search engine regarding a given topic. Within today's rapidly shifting world, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION techniques can change on the dime—and the worst part is usually that you might not also know it. Hacks that can have won you a front-page result as recently as 2016 are not only obsolete today, but they may even harm your website's rankings. Off-page SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION targets increasing the authority associated with your domain through the act associated with getting links from all some other websites. Regarding: Search Engine Journal's flagship meeting, SEJ Summit, is dedicated to offering SEO pros the actual require, with an agenda of unique, first-run presentations covering the newest SEO and PPC tactics through renowned experts, plus excellent network opportunities. SEO combines official research engine guidelines, empirical knowledge, plus theoretical knowledge from science documents or patents. This will be a half-day workshop at LeadsCon that will be designed in order to give attendees an end-to-end watch of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), how it works, and concrete things they can do these days to improve their SEO efficiency. After the Search engines Panda algorithm appeared, SEO specialists realized just how much key word frequency and density matters. SEO means optimizing your content articles so it shows up a great deal more often in search results. 33. With social media systems like Facebook diminishing visibility associated with companies and brands, SEO (as well as paid promotion) is usually becoming critically important for generating traffic to your social stations. 2019 dates TBD. ). Why go to: One-track conference full of forward-thinking, tactical sessions in SEO, development marketing, the mobile landscape, analytics, content marketing and more. ” Don't miss the LeadsCon Meeting in Vegas, March 4-6, 2019.