The Steam fee of 30% for just being a market place without marketing is unjust. Now think about it that only 5% of the games on Steam just make it above the 100.000 USD line. It's a great passionate hobby but the reality is that 93% never ever release a game on Steam again.

why do competitive pokemon fans pretend like theyre any funnier than casuals

I'm gonna spell this out because this issue is deceptively subtle: 1. The Steam client and infrastructure is somewhere between "not that hard" and "trivial". It's a download service attached to a payment processor with a smattering of services on the side. Cloud providers handle all the infrastructure these days. 2. Steam takes 30% of gross revenue; ostensibly for the privilege of using these services, but in reality it is purely to get access to the massive Steam userbase. 3. Steam users love Steam and having their whole library in one place. It works. It's dependable. It has sales and cards and achievements, oh my! 4. PC developers have no option but to distribute through Steam or lose the vast majority of sales. Not releasing on Steam destroys the business model. 5. Therefore, no amount of competition will ever unseat Steam. People post-hoc rationalize this with memes about how gracious Gabe is. And how brilliant their services are. But realistically, no avid Steam user wants other stores to succeed. The mere existence of other stores risks splintering their precious collection. They are "all in" on Steam. Invested. Even if an alternative were objectively better, by whatever metric you care about, it would still be of no interest to Steam users. They would in fact find it to be a problem and a threat to their investment. Competition in this space is not only uninteresting to most Steam users, it's actively denigrated! The CONSEQUENCE of this situation, is that 30% of all gross revenue is siphoned out of the PC games industry into a black hole. It doesn't recirculate into studios. It doesn't pay any bonuses. It doesn't fund any sequels or DLC. This is a particularly insidious tax because it's well hidden. It's a second order effect. Most Steams users don't know, and the few that do never consider the aggregate effect this has on their favorite hobby. It's undeniable that, at this point in history, Valve could EASILY lower the distribution fee while maintaining healthy margins. But they don't have to. Users are locked into Steam and therefore developers are stuck paying 30% of gross revenue to Valve. The irony is that Steam users, the very ones maintaining this unbreakable stalemate, would benefit the most from a better financed game development ecosystem. I don't think this is fixable. It's just sad.

You know, call me a Doylist but I think part of the issue here lies with Rowling, and a plot thread she’s working out that doesn’t always have the practical implications that she wants. Because mostly everyone’s right: Ron has horrifying robes because the family is poor, which is part of his insecurities and indicative of a number of ongoing plots within his family. Goblet of Fire, after all, is also the book where the Twins seriously consider blackmailing a powerful individual for investment capital and Percy makes a fool of himself trying to impress his boss, setting the stage for his fall out with his parents in Book 5. Ron’s dress robes, as minor a problem as they really are in the grand scheme of things, are a reminder of the material lifestyle his brothers are all trying to escape. And because Ron is fourteen, he doesn’t have the perspective to sit down and go “hey at least I’m not an orphan like Harry here.” But if you stop and think about it for a moment, why did the robes in question have to stay the way they were bought? Think about it: Molly is a lifelong champion of domesticity and the household arts. She’s very good at at least one physical domestic craft (knitting). What are the odds she doesn’t know any sewing spells, particularly with seven children to clothe on a budget and the attendant necessity to mend any rips and tears in clothes that children acquire? Molly also knows what’s going on at Hogwarts this year before Harry and his fellow students do, as Arthur and Percy both work at the Ministry and the latter has probably been working on the last-minute details of the tournament for the past few months. She almost certainly knows when Ron needs the robes by, and it’s not immediately after he arrives at Hogwarts. So wouldn’t the practical thing to do be to say, “Don’t be stupid, Ron, of course I’m not letting you go out like some out-of-sorts time traveler. I’ll modify the neck and cuffs after the lot of you are out of my hair and send them along in a few weeks?” People alter second-hand clothes all the time; it should be the obvious step to take. Even Ron managed to take the lace off, although he didn’t do it well. But the point was to drive home how poor the Weasleys are and how the children feel encumbered by it, rather than to apply an ounce of common sense to the problem. And I think that one’s on Rowling.

#malfoy #malfoid

no one's cooler than her

she clocked his ass and we didn’t give her enough credit

Thank you for hiring me.

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My problem with the Malfoid trend is that you have to actively ignore Ginny and the Weasely family to pretend it elevates the story in a meaningful way. While movie Ginny is lacking, book Ginny fulfills the archetype of young love. She became enamored with Harry between book 1 and 2, and that youthful affection grew after he saved her life. She pines after him until she realizes she has to move on, and Harry only comes to his senses when he sees her with someone else. Bar that, Molly Weasely was the mother Harry never had, and Fred and George were his older brothers long before he married into the family. We *already* have a found family, we don't need the Malfoys to fill that role. You guys are acting like Malfoid solves a problem in the Harry Potter canon, when that problem has already been solved twice over.

I wish there were more people like Mr. Bradbury, who instead of just whining in his corner, was an absolute chad and wrote a book to cure his dissatisfaction with complaining.

Harry spoke to Ginny like 4 times in the whole series. I didn’t even know who the fuck she was the first time I read it, I had to go and ask my teacher about it

The reason the Malfoid thing works, aside from everyone writing her as a tsundere, is that it’s the slow burn enemies to lovers trope over the course of all seven books. It also solves the issue of Draco never getting a proper redemption arc.

How would you change the Harry Potter book series?