I couldn’t make individual gifs of this whole this so MADE A VIDJEW FOR YEW GOIS ! I didn’t know what else to make of my animation, so I decided to make it into a little quick tutorial. Hope it helps!
because of this post, I purchased the Fruit Quake Dew
now, I shall describe the Experience
.
First of all, it smells very strongly of nutmeg, with notes of ginger and mace, which is. unexpected. Not the sort of thing one associates with Mountain Dew.
The flavor is…
uh….
Gimme a minute. It’s familiar, but I can’t pinpoint it yet.
So the main point is that it tastes absolutely nothing like Mountain Dew; if I were blind taste testing this and someone told me, ‘This is a seasonal flavor of a major soda brand,’ I would never guess what brand it’s supposed to be, and I have been a regular consumer of various flavors of Mountain Dew for over twenty years. (Come at me brah, Code Red is delicious.)
I’d quickly rule out Pepsi, Coke and Dr. Pepper, because it doesn’t have the typical carbonated cola afterburn mouthfeel I get with those, but my mouth is still very much like “?????”
After drinking more of this than I’d care to admit, I think I’ve nailed down the taste: it tastes like they used the flavoring syrup from Robitussin and added it to slightly-flat ginger ale.
This tastes like the kind of thing you have to drink when you’re ill in the winter and yarfing up a lung while battling a sour stomach at the same time, but without the vile semi-metallic medicinal taste to it.
There is a strong fruity flavor, but it’s that cloying artificial cherry-grape mashup particular to every children’s cough syrup my parents ever had to force down my throat, with maybe a hint of cranberry. Once the forward assault of the fruit flavor starts to subside, the nutmeg and ginger come in, and they linger in the mouth, in a way I personally find unpleasant, but somebody else might enjoy.
(Side note: I truly cannot communicate how powerfully the Fruit Quake Dew is scented, I’m sitting two feet away from the open bottle and can still basically taste it, that’s how strong the smell is.)
CONCLUSION: I’m sorry to report, there are people that will probably enjoy this. This tastes like Mountain Dew’s attempt to court the folks who like cranberry ginger ale. This tastes like if a tryhard youth pastor tried to reverse engineer a straight-edge version of Lean for a ‘community outreach’ holiday party in a middle school gymnasium.
Somebody, somewhere, somehow liked this enough to greenlight it for production; there must be a market for it beyond curious masochists.
I am not the market for this beverage. I will not be putting this in my mouth ever again, but. I would consider buying another bottle specifically to force friends and loved ones through a blind taste test, because I believe the resultant face journeys would spark joy for me.
This is both a delightfully detailed account of the flavor of Mountain Dew’s fruitcake soda and a hit you took for the team, so I thank you. “Robitussen flavored flat ginger ale” is high on the list of ways I’ve ever seen any foodstuff described, and “If a tryhard youth pastor tried to reverse engineer a straight-edge version of Lean for a ‘community outreach’ holiday party in a middle school gymnasium” is powerfully evocative.
Also thank god I don’t have to either find or consume this.
moleskine makes people hate pens and is probably a huge part of why so many people give up on good pens.
to folks who might not know, moleskine is extremely famous AND infamous. they are hardcover notebooks with elastic enclosures. they are expensive, and sold everywhere from pharmacies to bookstores, and does collaborations with a variety of brands including james bond and pokemon. moleskine has tried to establish itself as a luxury notebook, which it technically is.
as long as you do not write in it.
moleskine paper is wholeheartedly shit. it is complete fucking garbage. you might wonder, what makes good paper? well the first thing is how well it can be written on. good paper can handle ink well. good ink handling means clear, solid lines without any feathering (fuzzy spreading), not bleeding through the page, and not ghosting. basically, you want paper that can do crisp lines with a variety of different inks and be used on both sides.
moleskine does not do that. anything more than a ballpoint or pencil will look fuzzy and gross and bleed right through the fucking page. the paper is shit. and that makes people think their pen is shit. and ballpoint pens can be seen on the other side of the page.
common knowledge is that fountain pens, rollerball pens, gel pens, felt pens, and more work better on good paper. good meaning good with ink. but when many people think good paper without knowing any better, they will reach for a moleskine notebook. because moleskine is expensive and advertises itself as good and is widely available. so people try out actually good writing implements on this shit paper, see how bad it works, and then blame the pen.
fountain pens, gel pens, and rollerball require much less pressure than ballpoint pens. they are ergonomic. easier on joints, easier for chronic pain. and moleskine makes people give up on them. nobody wants shitty bleeding feathered lines.
in the united states, our ideas of good paper and good stationery in general are extremely warped. so much of this is because paper here fucking sucks. a lot of paper performs like moleskine. there is shit paper at all price ranges. but you can pick up caliber brand paper (the ones that say made in vietnam) from cvs and have infinitely better performance for pennies. even though it looks low quality, caliber paper (vietnam) can even handle calligraphy ink clearly. bad paper makes people hate good pens and bad pens make people hate writing.
another thing really important to mention, a lot of people think thick paper is always better. this is extremely wrong. in terms of being able to handle a wide variety of inks clearly and cleanly, some of the best paper in the world is tissue thin (tomoe river).
do not buy moleskine. even if the stand is right there. they have some of the worst paper you can get at that price point. expensive paper is not always good paper, good pens need good paper, moleskine paper makes good pens seem awful, and moleskine is something you should only give to someone you loathe.
God Moleskine is such a frustrating product, and as an aspiring stationer, I hate that it’s so popular in North America. They’re beautifully constructed, yes, but god the 70gsm paper that they use is SUCH GARBAGE when it comes to inks wetter than a ballpoint pen. They do offer heavier paper - 100-200gsm weight - but only in extremely expensive, large, or difficult to find products.
Leuchtturm 1917 produces great sketching books and, if you get their 120gsm notebooks, they hold up to inks fantastically. Their standard notebooks come in 80gsm paper, and that does hold up to fountain pen ink much better than Moleskine, but while you do get much less feathering and bleeding, there is still some bleedthrough with wetter pens.
Now, if you want the finest fountain pen paper I’ve found in a notebook format, you want Maruman’s Mnemosyne 183. It’s also an 80gsm paper, but it’s treated and laid in such a way that there’s no feathering or bleeding, even with a very wet fountain pen.
That said though, honestly the best notebook I have, in terms of accessibility, expense, and quality of paper, is a Brandz United notebook that I got for my birthday a few years back. It’s not anything special, in terms of paper weight - I can’t find anything concrete, but it feels like 80gsm to me - but it barely feathers and you need to really saturate the page for it to bleed through.
Also, if you’re looking for loose paper, I highly recommend Tomoe River’s paper - so fine and thin you can practically see through it, but it holds ink like a sponge, doesn’t bleed, has no feathering, and is smooth as glass. For correspondence, though, I am a fan of G. Lalo’s Pur Vélin, which is a 125gsm 50% cotton and 50% wood pulp paper. It’s absolutely beautiful and has just enough grain to it that there’s a super pleasant tactile feedback when you’re writing.
And if you want to go a lil’ bit fancy with gorgeous designs (and I mean GORGEOUS designs), look up Castelli.
My current fave. No feathering, no bleeding, works perfect with ballpoint pens and with fountain pens, and the paper is super smooth. I’ve literally written novels in these fuckers. Also: cheaper than moleskine.
@jimtheviking already mentioned Leuchtturm; I’m adding Black n’ Red, Clairefontaine and Rhodia.
All have better paper than Moleskine, which has been milking its early reputation for years while product quality went downhill. Now they’re just another Lifestyle Accessory for people who shop by brand-name.
1. You are responsible for your own media experience.
2. There is such a thing as a healthy level of avoidance towards topics that make you feel unwell or even (in a real-life clinical definition of the term) trigger you - but you are the one to actively take care of what you view.
3. Avoiding does not mean policing others.
4. You have no right to tell artists to censor themselves - you may criticize what others do, you may dislike it, that’s fine - but actively asking for censorship when you could easily unfollow or block a person just makes you look incompetent in your use of the internet.
5. Do not give people on tumblr or /any/ website the responsibility for your emotional well-being. Because these people do not even know you so no, you have no right to ask them to take care of you.
6. Content creators are not your parents and owe you nothing, not even a breakdown on why their content isn’t problematic. You don’t get to demand a dissertation denouncing any and everything unhealthy in a piece you don’t like. Move on.
7. Tagging is a nicety but not an obligation. You can message people, politely, and ask them to tag things, and many people will, but understand that it’s their blog and they aren’t obliged to say yes. Unfollow and block when you need to. Circling back to number 1, you are responsible for curating your own experience.
8. Don’t be a jerk. Remember at the end of the day, there are actual living, breathing people behind each screen name. Don’t say anything you wouldn’t say to someone’s face in real life.
Fortunately, there is a very, very easy way to drive brands off tumblr.
Don’t follow them.
Yeah, they’ll likely blaze some posts. The smart ones will blaze shitposts. Don’t reblog them. Don’t reblog, don’t follow, just let them lurk around the edges of tumblr. That’s the whole joy of tumblr, honestly - the lack of algorithm means that they can’t game the system. They can’t force their way in front of your eyeballs.
Brands here are like vampires - they can’t come in unless they’re invited. Don’t let them in.
Dennys only succeeded here because we allowed it to, if you want to avoid the adpocalypse keep supporting our local home grown shitposters and ignore any attempts from corporations to create a dennys 2
tomgirlhysteria-deactivated2023
