Oh god you're right, he did drown him for the brewery. Only to throw it away and suddenly become vegan, perhaps to throw people off the trail. Anne deserves to know the truth, and she deserves the brewery too. If anyone deserves to throw it away it's her.

I'm just here to support the disgust for the shaming items congrats staff bye

I don't really have a problem with more vegan/vegetarian items being added to the site, but I do agree with a lot of others that it could have been handled in a different way rather than an event. I like the food items for my achievements, but I think they could have been added to the main shops (or a new main shop could have been opened) where these items are available year-round rather than as an exclusive event.

I try to buy cruelty-free, vegan, and eco-friendly in many areas of my life (cleaning products, makeup, etc.) but it is simply not possible for me to go full vegan/vegetarian in diet due to money, availability of products in a rural community, and a rare health condition and the medications I take to control it that interfere with my nutrient uptake. So while I tried not to take this festival personally as it is just a game, I did feel that it was kind of pushed in my face and it is an event that I (unwittingly) feel excluded from.

I, too, think a sustainability festival would have been a much better idea and would have been more inclusive to all players on the site, as well as have been more educational and informative of the plights the world faces. The food trucks, local farmer stands, items made from recycled products, etc. would have been good storefronts, and I think a game similar to Birdwatching where we collected pieces of trash around the site and traded it in would have been nice. The vegan/vegetarian items could still have been included (if they didn't already have a year round shop which I still think is a better idea), but the entire event wouldn't have been exclusive to that lifestyle. I think this would have opened up more options for non-food items as well as there seems to be a lot of complaints about the lack of them.

I agree that a sustainability and/or alternative diets festival would have been better rather than just vegan.

Gunter himself has been vegan for almost two years already, so I'm not totally surprised by the changes, just kind of disappointed in the selection (though I've never really been a big fan of Alegarten anyway, so), and I mean, he's still selling beers so I don't really think he's "thrown the Brewery away" just changed it.

But I do find it kind of ironic that he adopted a goat and it caused him to suddenly go vegan even though he straight up murdered his brother ¯(ツ)/¯

Reminds me of what I said earlier. It's sad when people try alternatives to help the environment but it actually does more harm than good.... But it sounds like harvesting things such as Agave honey isn't practical until we figure out a way to get what we need without harming the bats that eat it. Or perhaps we need people who can serve as "beekeepers" for those bats?

That news post for the Well-Hung Meat was very dark. Well-done!

Honestly, if the artists were running out of ideas for Alegarten, I'd have just said end the holiday permanently. I realize though that isn't necessarily the best solution. But I don't think it would be any worse than changing what was a European-based holiday into a trendy topic. I'm fine with veganism. I'm fine with vegetarianism. I'm fine with omnivores. I agree, we could always use more items to promote diverse diets; but don't make a holiday around it, or turn an existing one into it, with the excuse being "site lore" (I'll come back to that shortly). Release those items as you normally would with other items.

As for site lore, I do love how it's progressed. It's nice to have lore progression without the need for a plot. However, it is glaring that all this information is now out there, but the other NPCs don't know about it still? How? Who is the news for then? Users? NPCs? Both??

Well someone get Titania McGee on the case, lord knows best news girl needs something juicy to report. I know, it's all fiction. But unless we're gonna get a mini-plot involving court room shenanigans (jury duty, anyone?), I dislike it being open-ended and letting Gunter get away with murder. We can all agree a crime is a crime, murder especially no less, and justice should always be served. Besides, how does Subeta's justice system work? Throw us a bone, it would flesh out the site even more! I bet the court is down on the west side of Centropolis, guess we'd have to wait for the new map to confirm that~

It's a crapshoot. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Same would be happening with a pride festival event if Subeta did one. There's nothing wrong with acknowledging minorities. But it's important, in my book, to include the majority as well. Again, if Subeta did a pride festival event next year, I would advise to not leave out heteros. After all, isn't the point to treat all minorities as normal as the majority?

tl;dr: my own 2 cents, don't expect anyone to agree with me. Mostly this is me just musing and getting my internal thoughts out in written form.

Wouldn't it be a good idea to consider re-wording some of the descriptions then? Since they've really bothered the userbase, couldn't we make them a little more lighthearted? I know the purpose of the change was to provide some alternatives and give a sub-set a voice but I wish it wasn't at the expense of another group. :(

Just to add my 2 cents worth. And since I couldn't have said it any better, I'm just going to quote

If you claim you have nothing against someone but continue to complain about how wrong their lifestyle is and how dumb they are for their philisophical ideals, you clearly have a problem. If you didn’t we wouldn’t be having this conversation. This is a fantasy game. Lord forbid a minority group has a holiday on a fantasy game website that doesn’t hurt you in anyway. The animals talk on this site and can be NPCs. If there’s an NPC festival about not eating fantasy animals, how does that affect you in anyway. Lambasting vegans and vegetarians is no different from them lambasting carnists and omnivorous. Proclaiming it puts you down because the minority gets an equal field to shout crap is an argument still used today to keep minorities in general down. It doesn’t matter how minor a debate it is. You could be a base player in a room full of lead guitarists and they’d proclaim giving you a base solo would step on their toes, or maybe they give you that base solo but they all get to have a solo too in the same song because they think the majority should always be included too even though theres 15 other songs on their album where they get their own guitar solo.

If you claim you have nothing against someone but continue to complain about how wrong their lifestyle is and how dumb they are for their philisophical ideals, you clearly have a problem. If you didn’t we wouldn’t be having this conversation. This is a fantasy game. Lord forbid a minority group has a holiday on a fantasy game website that doesn’t hurt you in anyway. The animals talk on this site and can be NPCs. If there’s an NPC festival about not eating fantasy animals, how does that affect you in anyway. Lambasting vegans and vegetarians is no different from them lambasting carnists and omnivorous. Proclaiming it puts you down because the minority gets an equal field to shout crap is an argument still used today to keep minorities in general down. It doesn’t matter how minor a debate it is. You could be a base player in a room full of lead guitarists and they’d proclaim giving you a base solo would step on their toes, or maybe they give you that base solo but they all get to have a solo too in the same song because they think the majority should always be included too even though theres 15 other songs on their album where they get their own guitar solo.

A one off Neugarten as part of the Gunter plot would be fine by me.

I think this festival could get boring if was year after year, though. I like the idea of a sustainability festival instead. Maybe Esther and Emma could organise it with Gunter having a vegan stall as part of it.

Perhaps other NPCs could join in. What kind of ghastly items could Bubbles come up with if he had a go at creating vegan food? A Subeta version of Rafflesia could be an ideal ingredient - the result smells like rotting flesh and could even taste like it so it's the Unliving's version of quorn. :D

I would rather Neugarten completely severed the tie to Oktoberfest and was re-imaged as something new. It might even be good to give it a new name.

I love the suggestions thrown around this thread about a Renaissance Festival. That would be so utterly amazing.

If next year is still going to promote alternative eating, I'd like to see it branch out. I'm surprised how few vegetarian NPCs we have in relation to vegan. So some vegetarian foods would be nice. I'm sure there's a lot of other diets to draw from too: paleo, keto, kosher. All have their pros and cons, and myriad of reasons why people choose to live that way.

I'd also love to see more of the friend trio of Nico, Manwar, and Liz.

But more than that, I want that Renaissance Festival. Please?

I'm very late to this, but anyways… Very informative thread! I have nothing against the vegan lifestyle, I have even enthusiastically been trying a lot of vegan food myself as I have a friend who is vegan. However, it is true that it is certainly not the ideal lifestyle overall - I think the best option is to grow food yourself and support local farmers. I was talking to an organic farmer a few days ago and he metioned that it can be catastrophic for (organic) farmers if people stop eating meat as this is the main source of income for many farmers, because plant based foods can't generate a lot of income even if they are produced in the best way possible (old breeds, completely organic etc.). Based on that and many other things that have already been mentioned in this thread, I don't like people who declare vegan is the only way to go and want to force other people to adopt their style of living. And I did get this feeling from some of the items of Neugarten. I don't mind too much as it was only a few, but I would like that the event gets a new/slightly different theme in the future. I love both suggestions about sustainability and also medieval festival. Why not combine these two topics: a festival celebrating old, much more sustainable ways of producing things? Like a craft market? It could also be combined with new methods of sustainability of course, but a combination would somehow hold a much larger potential of items/themes.

I'm in favor of the previously mentioned feedback that some Neugarten ingredients would be fun to have as Fantine Baking ingredients.

People do spend that much on baking ingredients here in Subeta, especially the yeast/baking powder/baking soda that nearly every Fantine recipe calls for. With freezing, railway transport, continental canals, canning etc. in RL many seasonal delicacies aren't seasonal anymore, or are only considered so because of tradition. But maybe in Subeta there could be some recipes that you could make out of season, but which you would pay other users who have stockpiled them a whole lot more for the privilege instead of sP-sinking for them in-season.

It is a known feature of the game of Subeta to make users wait patiently. Zombiefans must wait until Survival to get new Skins. Battlers wait all year for the Morostide Challengers. They're fun and worth the wait! Bakers can wait all year for the Neugarten ingredients for Neugarten specific recipes, because Baking With Fantine is also fun.