evidence that ancient paleolithic venus statues were made by women who were examining their own bodies and sculpting them from their own point of view, not, as previously assumed, exaggerated features from an outside perspective
This is literally it, though. If anyone is wondering why ME Andromeda was a such a wreck, it’s because EA couldn’t care less about single player games, since they want to make top dollar simply by basically providing gambling in multiplayer games that isn’t illegal for minors (yet). The reality is that EA and Microsoft saying this has little to do with “the lack of success” of single player games and everything to do with them being money hungry. EA recently stated that it was shelving Mass Effect for a while because they felt reviewers and gamers were “mean” to it, basically trying to shift guilt of a shoddy, unfinished product onto the consumer so they can continue on their nonsense.
It reminds me of Hollywood and how often it would say films with female protagonists wouldn’t sell, and to anyone with half a sense of analysis, it was plainly obvious that they would sell well, but that studios didn’t want to bother, which was their problem. They kept trying to tell audiences what they wanted: white washed movies, sexist movies, etc. and, thankfully, the audiences responding by letting those shitty films flop and making the ones with female leads and black leads huge commercial and critical successes.
That’s one of the main problems with our current form of capitalism. It isn’t really about supply and demand, it’s about creating a false demand and telling consumers where to put their money instead of listening to their needs. This kind of stuff kills creativity and passion for creation.
The US game industry was also trying this in a big way with Japanese games back in the late 00s, early 10s. They bought all these articles in game mags saying the Japanese game industry was “dead” and that no one in the US liked Japanese games or even “Japanese-style” games. Meanwhile, the Wii’s sales were crushing theirs, game importation to the US from Japan was skyrocketing in the wake of the end of region-locking and rapid growth of import infrastructure and import-focused sites, and games like Sengoku Basara(the first US release of which was Historically butchered by its US publishers and regionalizing team), BlazBlue(a highly technical and super-polished fighting game), and the Disgaea series(A tactical/strategic RPG game that Western RPGs could learn A LOT from, but that’s another post) were, with zero US press, gaining impressive State-side followings.
The recent closure of Gothamist and DNAinfo are another excellent example of this from journalism. Ricketts and some in the Press are trying to pass it off as a matter of profitability, and thus as the result of insufficient demand, but the truth is Ricketts didn’t want to have to negotiate with his workers because he felt “paying for everything” included purchasing the autonomy of those he employs. The Gothamist family of sites(they did local reporting for, I think, 7 major cities, US and international) was profitable, but all of them were shutdown, and their archives of local journalism endangered, simply because their “owner” didn’t like unions and the New York office voted to unionize. Which, how is that even legal; you can’t(officially; but they get around it) fire an employee for being pro-union or for joining a union, so how can you close down a business for unionizing? Pro-Capitalists will often say Private Property is the foundation of capitalism, but here you have a sustainable, slowly growing business, successful and supported by a profitable audience of consumers, destroyed by it. Here you have the “Free Market” they profess to value so highly being ignored and over-ruled for the sake of holding one man’s right to do what he likes with “his property” sacrosanct. And those 7 communities pay the real price for it in lost memory, alongside the 115 employees and their families in lost employment, lost security, and suddenly precarious lives.
I actually like the “throwing clothes at it” better cause now I’m picturing Grandma stomping out of the house at 3 AM in her slippers, arms full of clothes and facing down this horrible, snarling beast.
And then she just starts flinging clothes at it like “GODDAMN IT JEFFERY IT IS THREE IN THE FUCKING MORNING YOU GET YOUR PANTS ON AND COME BACK INSIDE RIGHT THIS MINUTE”
Everyone knew that the Widow Grumly’s granddaughter was a werewolf. She was bit by one and the prayers from the priest held it off for a little while, but she started going strange. Started saying things that didn’t make sense. And the next full moon… she was gone.
We all expected blood and murder, but for a while everything was mostly normal. The hunters and woodsmen, they’d see a big damn wolf sometimes, and find the leftovers of deer, but nothing came close to being what everyone told us a werewolf would be. No livestock dead, no attacks on people. It was a mercy, for the Widow Grumly asked after her grandchild every chance she could. Poor thing kept asking for her grandson; bedridden as she was, we hadn’t the heart to correct her. They’re fine, we said, not hurting no one.
Not until the wolfhunter came.
Talk spreads, as talk will. And he followed the talk, the hunter in the fancy clothes and the cape of scraps of wolf fur. Were-wolf fur, if he was to be believed. He offered to kill it for us, and we declined. He decided to kill it for himself, and we declined. Didn’t matter much- he set out anyway, calling for Jemma. That was her name, Jemma.
We found him dead as a doornail, throat ripped out as neat as you please.
Well, a man turns up dead and Authority will poke it’s nose in. Doesn’t matter if it was self-defense. No one listens to a werewolf, much less a peasant werewolf, not when a wealthy fool gets himself killed. Soldiers combed the woods and found nothing. Eventually they gave up, figured she had moved on.
She hadn’t.
The evening the soldiers were all cleared out, the Widow Grumly coerced the blacksmith’s sons to carry her outside, to the edge of town. She had a bundle of rags in her hands, shirt and trousers that had seen better days. We tried to tell her that Jemma might not be Jemma no more, and that killing people can turn the nicest were’ crazy no matter the reason.
She said nothing.
When the moon came up, the whole town heard her calling from her nest of blankets and pillows, there in the road.
“Jeremy! Jeremy, you come home now! I’ve been patient long enough! If you don’t come home for your birthday I will come get you with a leash!”
Those with windows facing the road watched the black shape come forward. Watched it nose the clothes the Widow held. Watched it change.
He goes by Jeremy, now. The Widow had family connections to a local pack, and when her grandson didn’t want to pretend any more, she called in a favor. Apparently, if you’re willing to wait a year or so, you can change how you look, a little at a time. Jeremy has hair now in places Jemma didn’t, and his voice broke a couple months back. The priest don’t like it, but he doesn’t complain too loud. Not after the hard winter, when Jeremy was bringing in the only meat the town saw. The hunters still say they’d trust his nose, four-legged or not.
With each change back from wolf, more of the man shows through. And the house of Grumly has never smiled more.
stop believing that you ran out of time to shape yourself into who you want to be! stop believing that its ruined! stop believing you don’t have potential! you are not a fixed being! you have endless opportunities to grow.
And even if you can’t see a way to it now, preserving yourself and listening for the unknown day when you can is still a good deed.
becoming a better person isn’t a sudden and dramatic change. it’s something you do with small actions every day. you ARE a better person than you used to be. it’s like watching a tree grow: you don’t notice it when you’re close.
also like, you know those trees that are on a hill and have crooked, bent trunks? sometimes trees lose their footing and they tilt over as the ground shifts around underneath them. but they just keep growing upwards towards the light, making new branches and figuring things out a year at a time. there are trees that fall over entirely and just start again with goofy horizontal trunks. no matter how old you are or where you’ve fallen, you can still change yourself a year at a time.
12+ hours: hell yes. decadence has a name and it is ME. the dream. im marrying my bed you’re invited to the wedding. i might feel groggy and angry for the rest of the day when i actually do get up but WORTH IT.
12+ hours (ALTERNATE): i am deeply clinically depressed and approximately three (3) inches from death at any given moment
11-10 hours: ideal. im functioning at perfect 100% capacity my body and mind are a well oiled machine. im ready to knock out all my errands and chores in under an hour, work a full day and then study that language im trying to learn
9 hours: good! i could have slept longer, but getting up was no great horrifying trauma either
8-7 hours: the “””””medically recommended amount””””” for adults, but in reality more like a “fine, i GUESS” amount. normal mild levels of angst at having to get out of bed
6 hours: silent unceasing internal groaning for at least the first hour after waking. dont expect any kind of quality conversation for the first 2 or so hours. ive got a Less Than Medically Recommended Amount Of Sleep, that means im a martyr right???
5 hours: pretty unpleasant. feels gross. expect a moderate crash during the late afternoon. this is the first number that is considered worthy of entry in a college student sleep-measuring contest. altho if you try to enter with 5 hrs dead-eyed hordes will instantly materialize from the bushes and one-up you “5 hours??? HAHA SWEET SUMMER CHILD. I HAVENT SLEPT IN 3 YEARS”
4 hours: a Very Poor Decision. deep seated, incoherent rage upon waking that persists up to several hours. consume large amounts of your stimulant of choice, but you’ll still feel like a cave troll. constant aftertaste of chemicals and regret
3 hours: half awake half walking in some astral plane haunted by the wails of the newly-dead. children and animals fear the emptiness in your vacant eyes. a very respectable entry to any sleep-measuring contest. you’ll still get beaten by the “2 hour” and “all nighter” people, but everyone knows this is Bad
2 hours: you can get up, but only by rending your soul from your physical body in a paroxysm of agony, since it will refuse to leave the bed. you are now soulless and will feel absolutely zero emotion until sometime in the late afternoon/early evening when your soul returns and ALL the emotions will hit at once, leaving you alternately sobbing or creepily hyena laughing
1 hour: you fool. you imbecile. your hubris and weakness has brought you to this point. they are coming. you cannot escape. why didnt you just stay awake. why didnt you just pull the all-nighter. the strength of your no-sleep headache threatens to stab through your skull like an ice pick. all you can taste is blood. they are comi
0 hours: THIS ACTUALLY ISNT AS BAD. HAHA I’M NOT EVEN THAT TIRED! WATCH ME DOWN 15 MOUNTAIN DEWS IN 15 MINUTES. I CAN FEEL MY HEART BEATING IN MY EARS ISNT THAT WEIRD. WHAT DO YOU MEAN MY EYES ARE BLOODSHOT AND I CANT FOCUS, IM COMPLETELY NORMAL RIGHT NOW. GUYS I CAN HEAR COLORS.
I can’t tell if this is serious or not, because it’s plausible yet absurd.
I’m utterly serious.
On the subject of Dril’s identity, wikipedia says:
Jacob Bakkila, one of the writers behind the similarly absurd and popular Horse_ebooks Twitter account, claimed to have been hired for a project by the person behind dril.[5] According to Bakkila, dril’s author is a graphic designer who lives somewhere in the New York metropolitan tri-state area.[5] John Herrman and Katie Notopoulos at BuzzFeed speculated that dril may be a collaborative project or that Bakkila himself was behind dril.[5] Bakkila denied the rumor that he was dril, but said dril was “a friend” and that dril had contributed to the Horse_ebooks sequel, Bear Stearns Bravo.[6]
At some point, people apparently made a connection between Dril and somebody called Paul Dochney, at least partially due to a linkedin page which shows Dochney’s contributions to Bear Stearns Bravo. Apparently there were further connections as well, to do with old accounts and comparisons of artwork, etc. I’m not up to scratch on the precise details of that, but an old tumblr reblog from 2014 from somebody claiming to know Dril also lists his name as being “Paul”. Why is this relevant to Hiveswap, you ask? Here’s part of the Hiveswap credits:
In addition to this, it’s worth noting that one of the 205 twitter accounts that @dril follows is Cohen Edenfield, the lead writer of Hiveswap.
Also, I spoke to somebody who did audio effects work for Hiveswap shortly after the Act 1 release, and while they seemed to not be entirely privy to the details they also brought up a connection. Now that we know that Dril is working with Hussie for certain and is a contributor to the new SBaHJ book, I think it’s pretty much confirmed to be legit at this point.
just moving along like everyone else 