#baulk

[leynaeithnea]

Vocabulary Captive Prince taught me

#63

baulk

shy away from, hesitating or unwilling

p. 35

[causeknight]

I have BAULKED at the price of Insomniac's Spider-Man 2

I was excited for the new spider-man game and half hoping someone would buy it for my birthday. But after it became clear I was gonna have to get it myself I looked at the price and-

WHEN THE FUCK DID NEW GAMES START COSTING £70?!

Even when I found a 15% off deal I had to pause for a moment.

Nearly £60... It's cheaper but... That's STILL too expensive!

Now I understand things are going to cost more over time due to inflation. I understand how the price of a new game in 2008 being £39.99 and a new game in 2023 being £69.99 are actually about the same when you consider how the value of the pound has changed over the past 15 years. Except... Is it the same?

Those cheap bastards are ripping me off! Ok, maybe buying it for 15% off is still worth it, but consider that the state of modern gaming right now means after only 2 months or so, prices get slashed anyway. Here's a couple examples of games that released earlier this year just to prove the point:

Star Wars: Jedi Survivor - April 2023 - £38.99

Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - May 2023 - £47.99

Street fighter 6 - June 2023 - £39.95

Xenoblade chronicles 3 - April 2023 - £37.99

Pikmin 4 - July 2023 - £39.99

Hopefully I've proven my point here. It's highly likely given current trends that spiderman 2 will be at least £20 cheaper by the time Christmas has come and gone. Hell, it may even do that just before Christmas.

To be honest, anyone with modern gaming as a hobby could have told you all of this, these dramatic price slashes after only a couple of months have been commonplace for a few years now. But the reason I made this great big long post is because I was genuinely shocked at the initial asking price. I don't think they can afford to go any higher than what they're asking for right now.

Time to learn a new word! Baulk - definition: To hesitate or be unwilling to accept.

In economics, customer baulking is a concept where a customer sees the price of an item and immediately passes on it. The item is too expensive for them and they don't even TRY to consider if the price is justifiable. If the thing you're selling is consistently getting people baulking at it, then it's not going to sell enough units to be profitable. If you're familiar with the "laws of supply and demand" then you should understand why this is a problem.

I'm concerned that the modern video game industry is going to shoot itself in the foot repeatedly by setting the prices of their games so high at launch that their week 1 figures are going to give the shareholders heart attacks.

I'm not saying £70 isn't a reasonable price (despite... the rest of this post heavily implying otherwise) but what I am saying is I think they've hit the maximum limit of reasonability.

There will be people who think the price of Zelda: tears of the kingdom is too high, even now. There will be people who are willing to buy games new at £60. I'm one of those people, I bought the star wars game I listed earlier, on day 1, for around £60. But the sheer AUDACITY to look me square in the digital eyes and ask £70 for a new game... That's my tipping point. To the extent that I don't even want to buy it at £60 anymore, I'll just wait.

If £70 becomes the new launch standard then I will baulk at every single new release until the prices start to go back down. I sincerely hope you'll join me.

[yesterdayiwrote]

Y'know what, I'll say it... George Russell isn't a 'PR robot', and the only reason people believe this is because he's actually got a relatively weak and amateur PR presence around him...

Let's not forget, a lot of these drivers, especially some of the more beloved ones, genuinely do have very large PR and branding teams around them, whose entire job is to manicure their image so precisely and carefully that you as the public believe it's natural and effortless. Some of them have huge PR agencies handling their image. Lewis, Lando, Daniel, Charles, Alex... all fan favourites and whaddya know... all have huge agencies handling their public image.

George wants to be liked... they all want to be liked, but actually he's one of the few drivers in top teams who doesn't have someone specifically dedicated to driving his PR presence. His sister seems to handle his diary and act as his assistant.

The reason George looks like he's trying so hard to adhere to a specific image all the time isn't because of an overabundance of PR influence, it's actually because of the opposite.

He's polite and he's well spoken and also a pretty intelligent guy. He has a very methodical and professional way of speaking which can read as rehearsed, but the reason you can clock when he's trying is because his PR 'machine' is a bit of a slapdash homemade affair with all it's inner cogs exposed, unlike the slick, well oiled and smartly packaged ones some of his peers have working for them.

He's not 'unlikeable' because he's a horrible person, and when you ask people why they don't like George, the 'PR Robot' excuse often gets wheeled out, but I think the main crux of the issue is that people have become so conditioned to accept the PR generated ideal of what 'humble and down to earth' should look like, that they find it hard to comprehend when someone doesn't quite fit into it in the way they think they should. He's not painfully unnatural, he's humanly awkward...

[oregaymi]

thinking about gender again

[velnica]

C'mon folks, Asexual and Deviant DO NOT belong in the same fucking scale. Allosexual does, and Deviant can be safely consolidated into Kinky anyway (especially in fandom terms they are broad enough to encompass both), so why in the hells is this highlighted line in here then?

I get that this is for fictional characters, and by all means make the most sexually deviant OC you can, but to put that kind of sexuality classification in the same scale as Ace is just not on. It reeks of both purity culture and complete misunderstanding of sexual attraction in general. If you are not asexual doesn't mean you're suddenly headlong into being a sexual 'deviant' who seeks gratification through means that are atypical/taboo. Besides, I'm sensing the implication that being Ace means you are boring and plain if the opposite side of it is literal deviance. Do better, please.

[Image ID: A partial screenshot of a popular OC alignment chart/template specifically aimed at Romance. The headline says "Romantic Identity" and there are scales for things such as "Shy/Confident" or "Jealous/Understanding." OP of this post has highlighted the scale that says "Asexual/Deviant." She has issues with this particular line.]

[saintartemis]

This is why you don't make archaeologists angry. We got mad trowel skills and plenty of places to chose from to hide the body.

[notquiteaghost]

i know word count doesnt map to character count so when svsss says the original novel is 20 million words long is that meant to be 20 million characters (reasonable but still 'longest novels written' wiki page worthy) or is it actually meant to be ten times as long as the longest novel ever published (again according to lists on the internet) ?

[small-spark-of-light]

they’re all dumb asses(affectionate)

[witchstone]

are hummingbirds just not scared of people

[pantsaretherealheroes]

have the people who write the flatshare ever rented property?? how is this man having to be told that yes, ripping chunks of paint off the walls will cost your deposit??? How do they botth think they're allowed to repaint the wall a totally different colour??

[patrice-bergerons]

i am british spelling all the way these days but every time google docs tells me to change ‘balks’ to ‘baulks’ a piece of me dies a little

[irregardlessshorthair]

[nyxire]

actually jjk was made to make everyone suffer but specifically gojo and by extension every child he has ever so much as considered caring for

[actionplatformer]

I knew about the concept of baulking before the Defunctland Fast Pass video but ever since then sometimes when I baulk I get the image of a little dot bobbing away from a queue it won't tolerate

[i-am-become-a-name]

I want to know about tenses please!! also seven tegan

okay, so tenses was lurking in my desktop writing folder and I haven't opened it in yonks (18/5/2020, to be exact): what it is appears to be a list of, well, tenses, in French.

le conditionnel passe (the past conditional – used to express an action or event that would have occurred if some set of conditions, stated or implied, had been present – (j’aurais aimé – I would have loved (them had I known))

le futur antérieur (the future perfect – used to express a future action that will have already taken place when another future action occurs - (j’aurai aimeé – I will love them (once something has happened))

If I'm remembering somewhat correctly, this was going to be a jumpy around Time War fic, possibly about Fitz and Eight? Maybe I'll finally write about the Gally Four, but shout out to 2020 for thinking I'd remember exactly. xD

-

As for seven tegan well..... it's semi related to a comment in A Death in the Family about the Doctor's calendar, and more specifically to the audio Afterlife.

I think she'd baulk at five coming back for her end implied by the Gathering. She'd send away Michael, and if five came back, she'd send him away too. But she deserves someone to hold her hand, but I think she shouldn't know who it is. 😭 "And, the only thing she truly wanted, (it wasn’t the only thing, she wanted to live, she wanted Michael here even though she’d sent him away, she wanted she wanted and she wanted) he never looked at her with pity in those dark eyes. The nurses and the doctors on this ward, always subdued, quiet, like they were all already dead. But she was Tegan Jovanka, damn it, the world would know when she died, if only from the collective decibel level going down."

[falinscloaca]

shit or am i just gonna make ANOTHER sideblog