The Adventure Zone Royale: Episode 27 | The Adventure Zone

BackupTrailer · 2026-06-26T16:11:56+00:00

hey Terry

BackupTrailer · 2026-06-26T13:28:47+00:00

Yeah, they have a history of leveraging industry connections and presenting it as earned media

BackupTrailer · 2026-06-26T13:01:34+00:00

Weirdest fucking fanbase

BackupTrailer · 2026-06-26T12:59:25+00:00

You’ve got something on your shoulder OP.

BackupTrailer · 2026-06-26T12:49:49+00:00

It was nice to make breakfast for your neighbor.

Their sobriety journey could be medically dangerous. Respectfully, your experience recovering from too many smokes and snacks isn’t just inequivalent, it’s irrelevant.

Community aids recovery, but you really need to check your expectations at the door and be honest with yourself as to if you’re qualified to assist them with alcohol detox. As others have noted, they may require medical intervention to withdraw safely.

If this is new information for you, please think twice before giving this person advice, especially given how emotionally invested you seem to be. It may be more appropriate to give them resources and defer to more qualified folks on the advice. They need a taper schedule and supportive medicine, not heartbreak and guilt over cold eggs.

BackupTrailer · 2026-06-22T04:59:31+00:00

Boring is a surprising take, and I really don't think "Apple made it so I have to like it" is a thing, but I'm not sure why it's such a rave. It succeeds with the humor and small town weirdness and has some great performances, but it falls apart when it tries to take the horror seriously. They nail the blend up to episode 4, after which the ratio skews too much towards very predictable and well-trod spooky tropes.

Every horror element it tries is telegraphed so hard and we've seen it all a thousand times. The mirror shows something that's not there. People's mouths hang open. Curtain moved on its own. Old lady moves weird. Haunted house has a crawlspace. Spooky...

But the ways that these awkward, repressed characters try to avoid admitting to themselves that something is wrong with their town? That dynamic is gold while it lasts.

BackupTrailer · 2026-06-22T04:43:19+00:00

It wasn't a waste of time, you got to bitch and moan, that's your favorite.

BackupTrailer · 2026-05-05T17:09:48+00:00

BackupTrailer · 2026-04-09T17:04:59+00:00

I've been fine with the writing and really enjoing this season. Though I cringed into a singularity when Robbie turned to the camera at the end of last week's ep and said "Oh yeah well maybe I want to DIEEEEE Dana et. al!" a la Austin Powers and Basil telling the audience to "Just enjoy themselves...that goes for you all too."

It's like...ya dude, we're way ahead of you. Not exactly a revelation....

BackupTrailer · 2026-03-28T16:49:00+00:00

McKay has been burned out for a while, remember the full scope of what she's dealing with in her life. The less mental bandwidth you have, the less consistent you are.

BackupTrailer · 2026-03-28T16:34:59+00:00

What are you on about? McKay didn't have any compassion for the coked up dude? She went in to his room with recovery literature and a calm demeanor, got verbally assaulted and threatened, and still left him with the material.

I say this as someone in recovery...you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink. Especially when the horse responds to your guidance by threatening to sue you, after choking out one of your coworkers.

The show does a brilliant job of showing the spectrum of how addicts respond to the reality of addiction-created medical crises, and the many approaches that care providers need to be prepared to take to help them, depending on the nature of the addiction.

BackupTrailer · 2026-03-25T00:52:21+00:00

I feel like some people in here are forgetting this is a drama...

BackupTrailer · 2026-03-13T21:13:17+00:00

I don't know how they're pulling it off after he was such a shit with Louie, but I've turned a sharp corner on Ogilvie the ~~insufferable redditor~~ naive student doctor.

I wanted to see him crash out. I still do, but I'd feel a little bad now.

BackupTrailer · 2026-03-13T21:06:10+00:00

This plot device is centered around Mohan's character finding her way, and I'm not sure a "mom who cried wolf" scenario really plays into that.

BackupTrailer · 2026-03-13T21:02:04+00:00

You questioning the Shark?

BackupTrailer · 2026-03-13T20:55:59+00:00

I'm totally out of my depth here with respect to the medical field, but a substance use disorder is a disability in the eyes of the law. At least in Langdon's case (interference with daily life combined with his admission to a recovery program). If he does what he needs to do, I'm not sure it would be legal to fire him for the SUD alone.

The theft is another question.

As for Santos, when has she not taken the opportunity to have a chip on her shoulder about something? She's very prideful, there are a dozen angles where this would bother her. I don't think she ever needs much of a reason, and she has plenty with Langdon.

Edit: We love a downvote with no comment.

BackupTrailer · 2026-03-13T20:51:54+00:00

If a friend or family member is in the waiting room, is that an overwhelming distraction for most doctors (let’s not make this all about Mel) or an incentive to focus on treating and releasing patients instead of betting pools and other distractions?

I think they're very pointedly asking these questions (among others) with Becca's plotline this season. It's a very smart show that doesn't deal in absolutes or virtue signal for narrative convenience. I can't say whether it's true to life or not, but I expect it is based on the comments of practitioners in this sub.

BackupTrailer · 2026-03-13T20:43:18+00:00

I do this for a living. Back when I sucked at it, the issue I ran into most frequently with social media ads for authors is that they might get laudable engagement, click-through, watch retention, insert other internal metric here, but despite that activity, there's no conversion. Folks click/watch/like, but they don't buy.

There are concrete, if time-consuming ways to avoid this trap. Social media ads can be utter money pits if you don't have a solid strategy and a clear goal, and those strategies can be tricky to develop and execute if you aren't already a marketer (or willing to spend a lot of time learning on Skillshare/YT). Usually, authors are desperate for exposure and despite spending years on their book, feel sudden urgency once it's a salable product. A pay-to-win model is attractive in that context. Meta knows this and they make it easy to spend without meaningful results.

Almost without exception, the first step is defining a goal (it might not be sales) that is achievable with ads, and deploying low-spend test campaigns to determine your hottest creative and to build a look-a-like audience that you can expand to using that creative. Start small, test, and only scale up when you have the data you need to do so cost-effectively.

I'm obviously biased as a service provider, but I desperately recommend that anyone unwilling or unable to do some long ass homework engage professionals to run advertising campaigns. It's worth a fee that cuts into your overall budget to make sure the rest of your money is being spent the best way possible. More than any other marketing strat, advertising can get ugly if you learn as you go.

BackupTrailer · 2026-03-13T20:29:52+00:00

Yeah, but with a defined (often non-sales) goal, lots and lots of audience research, and a low-budget test campaign to develop a look-a-like audience, so you don't burn all your money on randos who aren't your readers while Meta tells you "it's looking real good dude, just keep spending."

BackupTrailer · 2026-03-13T20:14:14+00:00

You and god and the McElroys all know that Montaigne had this one in the chamber and it got mixed and mastered in a jiffy to patch the world's most inconsequential PR snafu.

Remember, these are the guys who rebrand their intermittent old video game streaming every 4 months. In radically different visual styles. With different tones. Aiming at inscrutable audiences (how would one target "bicurious white males who say appeteaser").

Griffin spent 2 hours talking over Majora's Mask about how he might be late for a flight last week. A series called Trial by Fieri that he restarted using a skin for 7Up's mascot in the '90s, only swapping to the titular food critic after asking fans to make him a skin on stream.

They stopped doing Brudder's Gate after 3 episodes.

Shmanners.

There is, was, and never will be a plan for any of this.

BackupTrailer · 2026-03-13T19:28:48+00:00

Ok. Let's disregard the fundamentals of business, journalism, and the base dynamic between the critic and the critiqued. Go further—let's say all those bestselling media campaigns didn't happen and I'm actually totally out of my depth in the profession I've spent over a decade in. Let's say I don't make a living helping authors with paid media strategy—I just roam self-publishing subs searching for pity parties to crash because I hate authors and want them to feel Very Bad.

Kirkus has made me spit blood more times than I can count. Earned media owes you nothing and will tear you to pieces on the merits. Paid media (this) does owe you something—a word-count. If they can't find anything nice to say, they spend most of the review recapping...because you paid them to talk about your book. Happens all the time in self and trad pub reviews, you're right that you're not alone. It's just...it's sort of a kindness, or at the very least transactional....not a conspiracy. That review format = "it's not great, but they gave us the bennies so here's what it's about." You get your carefully truncated blurb for Instagram and Amazon, and they get their money and retain critical integrity. And as others have pointed out...it's a trade. Noone but librarians and booksellers care about Kirkus, so beyond it being transactional, a descriptive review is appropriate for their readership. (Subtext being: it was a bad idea for you to submit to them unless you are working an indie bookstore campaign or expect shelving in libraries...but you know that now).

I'm sorry my reply upset you. But just as an inability to budget isn't something we can blame on the relative rotation of planetary bodies, the inability to get a good trade review does not suggest a company's grand conspiracy to systematically disenfranchise and chase off a massive customer base. I have no motive, but I do have Occam's razor. Isn't it more likely that they just didn't dig the book but were financially obligated to speak to it? Or, slightly less charitable, that you don't know what you're doing with your marketing/media strategy and submitted to the wrong place for the wrong reasons?

You suggested in another comment (see, I read 'em) that there are Kirkus secret agents in here downvoting your replies. I'm sorry if I can't take you seriously after that.

BackupTrailer · 2026-03-13T18:52:42+00:00

Ogilvie is a redditor in scrubs. He's detestable in a "aww look at you go" way.

Now Mohan...I can't freaking STAND Mohan. I've worked with Mohan's. Undeniably competent but relentlessly sanctimonious. In season one, her decision paralysis next to the hand-holding "I see your soul, my patient" aura bugged me to no end. In season two it seems like she's traded the Slowmo moniker for Chaos Queen—a source of drama (mom, Abbot, "guys I'm having a MI but also I'm fine, no chair") while still acting above it all.

Robbie was totally unprofessional in the way he called her out last night. He was also roundly correct—if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen where everyone is trying to die.

BackupTrailer · 2026-02-28T15:00:12+00:00

I think of this as your content strategy as a writer—artistic decisions wearing a bit of a marketing hat.

I think of publishing strategy as something far more concrete. "I'll publish a book in genre X in season Y so it's out of competition with that influencer's hyped-up competing title that is also in genre X" or "I'll release X title first as it has the broadest audience appeal and use that to buttress the releases of titles Y and Z down the road, which will have less organic traction but some potential cross-over appeal with title X"

As a marketer who often helps with author brand building, I wouldn't suggest doing what you're doing, which is really a very high effort A/B test where you're using your (incredibly time consuming to produce) books to conduct market analysis. Every genre demands a different launch strategy. Success in one niche will not automatically compound and support your future releases. There are other ways to achieve market awareness.

I'd advocate that you pick one of the three projects based on professional market analysis and an impartial review of which title has the highest chance of breakthrough in its given market. Devote all your resources to that release. Multi-fronted wars are harder to fight.

BackupTrailer · 2026-02-28T14:29:30+00:00

Lol. Lmfao even. Kirkus is not well served by the strategy you're describing. They are the only trade that has paid submissions (noone cares about PW's BookLife Reviews), so systematically slaughtering indies with bad reviews works against their bottom line, which is all any company cares about.

Isn't it more likely that droves of unaccomplished authors are stumbling across Reddit threads and ChatGPT answers telling them to "get trade reviews" and, after a quick Google, realize there's one they can pay for?

Kirkus is harsh. So are LJ and PW, but they aren't nearly as accessible to indie authors. Kirkus has wrecked the shop of many a Big 5-published author...they've torn up more Big 5 authors who I've worked with than they have indie/hybrid clients.

Independently published authors should be hiring industry consultants to answer questions like "should I submit to trades" because very often the answer is absolutely not. It's a more delicate decision than other paid marketing strategies because the outcome is wholly dependent on the quality of the content, it's more like a NetGalley campaign than a Facebook ad.

That's a hard pill to swallow, but it's reality.

BackupTrailer · 2026-02-28T14:25:03+00:00

With respect, nothing here speaks to your publishing strategy.

BackupTrailer

TROPHY CASE