#something ANYTHING else to market

[thefrogdalorian]

Going to be very off-topic for just a sec, but given how that campaign is all over my dash, I feel like I can't go on ignoring the emotions it provokes in me. Plus, since this is such a common struggle, I hope that maybe some of you can relate and I want you to know that you aren't alone at all.

If you're also struggling with your emotions over this and you need someone to talk to in confidence, I'm here for you. I understand.

Anyway, warning for mentions of alcohol abuse below the cut:

It's always fascinating to me how alcohol is marketed as this positive thing which brings you happiness and a great social life. When in reality, it often destroys relationships and lives and is, by definition, a depressant. It is a substance which often leaves you unhappier, fatter, lonelier, weaker, sicker, poorer...

And also, do you ever notice how it's never marketed around the taste (because it's literally poisonous and due to social pressure, we have to trick our brains by drinking it enough times that we eventually convince ourselves we actually like the taste of poison)?

It's always about sharing a beer with friends at the beach or enjoying a glass of wine with a meal. Never about how delicious it tastes...

While you may crave the feeling of being drunk, do most people really enjoy the taste and that's the primary reason why they drink? Is that the main reason given at AA meetings/rehab clinics? Do you ever hear alcoholics say: "I couldn't stop drinking that beer because it was just so crisp and refreshing!"

No, of course not. Alcohol is primarily used as a social crutch, or as an escape from one's problems. Dutch courage, social drinking where you feel giggly, giddy and tipsy... until one day you realise you can't socialise without it and it transforms from enjoyment to dependency, hopefully before you permanently damaged your organs...

Anyway, this isn't me being puritanical. I'm not mad at these campaigns or those who star in them, because at the end of the day, celebrities will always take cash from questionable sources. Money talks. Always has, always will.

It's merely an observation on the life this campaign 'sells,' as someone who has decided to break the generational cycle of alcoholism in my family and has been sober for 18 months now.

And a way for me to sort through my feelings and vent my own emotions around these kinds of campaigns. I don't miss alcohol and I don't feel tempted to drink whatsoever, but it's everywhere and there will remain a danger for the rest of my life that I could forget everything I've learned about alcohol. I don't want to lose sight of why I walked away from this destructive drug which is so widely accepted. When the truth is it is far more harmful to you than many illegal drugs.

If you enjoy alcohol, I truly hope you have fun with it in moderation. But I hope you can also stop and recognise the risks involved each time you reach for the bottle. The slippery slope you may be on which there is a danger you don't realise you've been sliding down until you're at the bottom, looking back up. And I hope you realise that what these advertising campaigns show are never rooted in the reality of what this substance can do to you.

If you start drinking that beer, it's far more likely you'll end up with kidney damage than you will ever get to share a cold bottle of it on the beach with that actor you love so much...

[sergle]

you bitches have got to watch Scavengers Reign if you haven't yet, i'm only a few episodes in and it's already completely unlike anything else i've ever seen

[mustbebunnys]

Is Maya & Carina’s house so ugly because Carina was like ‘we’re renting the first house available, punto’? Because that kitchen…she would never.

Like does it have good bones? Will they remodel at some point? I’m sorry, I just can’t suspend my disbelief on this one lol

[moregraceful]

I name all of my snake plants after Baltimore Orioles players because...I don't know why I do that.....anyway Adley (she/her pronouns according to my parents) and Adam Jones are making the trip with me but Chris Davis is TOO BIG FOR THE CAR and I'm so sad now. That was my emotional support snake plant through my FMLA leave. He has seen the worst of me (mental illness, forgot to water him for a month) and survived. Now he's like four feet tall and I have to leave him behind because he is so big that he takes up more than a third of my luggage space in the car 🥲 I took such good care of him that now he has to live independent of me. Goodbye Chris Davis I will think of you fondly as I encourage Adley to grow big and strong.

[bonefall]

You may have answered this before, but how are you handling characters that don't believe in starclan, like mothwing and cloudtail? Personally I thought it was interesting when reading the books, considering cloudtail, but only to a point because it's very hard to write atheist characters in a setting where there's undeniable proof of the gods/spirits/etc. Like, how did they explain the literal forces of heaven and hell battling on earth??

As An Atheist Myself ™ I have a lot of feelings about the two of them. I think the short answer is just that in a setting where gods are literally undeniable facts of life, "Atheism" looks more like Dystheism, the belief that they exist, but are not worthy of worship.

That seemed to be the conclusion at the end of Mothwing's... i forgor the name of her novella 💀Mothflight's Blaspheme Boogie. It's actually why it's one of my favorite novellas, I really like the way it closes out with Mudfur trying to sales pitch StarClan's goodness to her, she doesn't buy a fucking penny of it, and ultimately concludes that the comfort it provides to her Clanmates is valuable to them but doesn't have to be for her.

So that's how I want to handle them. They have an outsider perspective to the fact that this is a theocracy, based on gods that can be vindictive and vengeful. Scourge/Iceheart is also joining these two, he actually is going to have a minor but important role in Squirrelflight's Horror as a ghost basically giving insight to what happens when you don't worship StarClan when you die.

With him and Mothwing I really know what I'm doing. Mothwing is insight to Leafpool, especially in TNP where she is now a POV, and observing how the though of StarClan influences the behavior of the cats around her. Scourge is killed in the Great Battle and serves as a ghost to witness their trial. Cloudtail...

Cloud's still evolving. He's going to be a supporting character with Ferncloud in her SE and exploring the feelings he has towards Ashfur, now his apprentice, becoming a villain. How he did his job perfectly, raised him with a deep respect towards the warrior code, and that lead to the person he is today. How he couldn't have done things "better" because this DID raise him the way his society expected him to.

But his dystheism is kind of secondary to that. I think the story I've got for him is fine so far, but it needs more of an 'ending' that I can't decide on until they finally kill him in the main books.

[elibean]

yk it kinda sucks realizing you're not particularly good at any one thing

[torchickentacos]

[fluffypotatey]

I see your cryptid nightmare Merlin and raise you, cryptid-by-association Hunith. Like, it's canon that other magic beings have an innate ability to sense Emrys, and she's spent almost 20 years being surrounded by his magic, so now she just has this unseen aura of Not To Be Fucked With, By Order Of Emrys. On market days, she takes a shortcut to the next town through a Very Haunted Forest and it's like:

Dryad 1: Bro, there's a human in our forest, the fuck?

Dryad 2: Bite your fucking tongue, Carl, that's Hunith.

Dryad 1: Whoa, Emrys's mom?

Dryad 2: Emrys's mom. So put your fucking roots down and be nice.

Dryad 1: Oh, shit, yeah, totally, my bad.

Dryad 2: She's really nice, too. Watch. Hi, Hunith!

......

Hunith: *hears the trees rustling without a breeze*

Hunith: *raised a child that regularly spoke to plants, bodies of water, and animals*

Hunith: Good afternoon, lovely day, isn't it?

........

Dryad 1: Oh, she is nice!

Dryad 2: Told you.

A sorcerer in the market town sees Hunith come strolling idly out of a forest that has a Known history of trying to Actively Murder Trespassers and is just like, "What the actual fuck?"

i moved my queue 2 hours later because i didn't want this to get drowned out because YES

we've now seen cryptid eldritch horror that is emrys aka merlin, but anon is asking the right questions. who does the cryptid horror better? who started it first? who is ignorant to the abject terror they insight on magical people because of how they surround themself with???

why hunith of course!

[farmersliga]

btw it’s pathetic to me when artists do a ‘world tour’ but it’s literally just north america and europe. just say ur worldview is western-centric and go

[daughterofzeus-the-novel]

I know some of classicsblr dislikes the way Madeline Miller modernized the Illiad for Song of Achilles but I loved Circe and I'm really liking this one so far

[piplupod]

are you the most annoying person in the world or do you just need to eat something: a memoir by me

[despair-tea]

"should fighting games remove motion inputs" has always been the wrong way of looking at things. Should there be different input styles? of course! diversity for the genre is a good thing... and there HAVE been games without motion inputs for a long time.

But you look at a game like SSBM (an insanely popular, well-selling game that's still played today*), and it turns out that that game is way hard to play at any competent level for reasons that have nothing at all to do with inputting a quarter-circle.

Even if the special moves are easy to perform, there are going to be techniques that are difficult. Even basic things like "dash into up-tilt" (you have to turn around and make sure you don't get dash attack or up-smash, both of which will get you whiff punished) or "shorthop into back air" (you jump a little and hit back + A. or back-C. but actually hitting a moving player with it is another thing entirely! and whoops, you accidentally did a full jump so silly) are barriers from controlling your character the way you want. Meanwhile more traditional fighting games like DNF Duel or Pocket Rumble get passed up by exactly the audience that says they want simpler-to-input fight games.

Ultimately, I don't think the ease of use alone will make for a lively game that "casual audiences" will get more invested in (and if they get more invested, they're not casual anymore, right?).

That said, I think games like DNF, MBTL, and SF6 are extremely fun to play with Baby Beginner** players. The rules are more clear, they can use more of the tools immediately, and it's easier to see how they can have fun the next time.

This part is the most critical, to me. It doesn't matter if they're hardcore or casual - the moment a player decides to give up on your game forever is the moment they stop growing and their part of the game stops growing. 'Coz fight games are living things. They only live while we play them; simply acknowledging their existence without getting your hands dirty and playing the game does nothing for the game itself.

Personally, I want every game to thrive. That's why I play everyone's game. If I want other people to indulge me and help keep my games alive, then I need to pitch in and help bring their game to life, even if it's just a little bit. Are you playing your game in the corner of your locals and no one wants to challenge you? I'll fight you. Hit me up any time.

I'll accept any challenge, especially the ones I'd lose. All is for the sake of the culture!

*: nintendo may have deleted SSBM from the culture so sorry if no one's playing melee tomorrow **: a player who has just gotten their hands on the game or who has never put any serious effort in. maybe they "just want to mash buttons" or maybe they're picking up a game seriously for the first time ever and have just started their journey. at any rate, an important part of the community. not to be mocked.

[actual-changeling]

my brain: haha college au go brrr how about we write this. sit down. plot. write. you know you want it

me, with my like twenty wips already:

[karinyosa]

one realization i’ve had is that a lot of the models for masculinity and/or manhood that i kind of gravitated to when i was younger were not the most typically masculine. it’s weird having things in common with other transmascs but also very clearly going for different things. like i feel a kinship with you but sometimes i think we’re not quite the same. also been a reminder of like what kid me was actually going for when i dressed and acted The Way i Did in middle school

[eddis-not-eeddis]

I ran out of lemon juice (what even is my life) so my next batch of firewater will have to be made with a mixture of lime juice and vinegar.

Woe is me.

[torgawl]

unpopular opinion but a ship being queer coded doesn't make it compelling