#central city is better

[centralcitizeningotham]

Which one is worse, the rogues in Gotham who all hate each other and get citizens caught in the crossfire, or the unionized Rogues in Central City who cooperate to make everyone's life worse?

Gotham. For sure.

At least the Rouges are respectful and have bedtimes.

I found a henchman in my kitchen trying to steal my appliances at 2 am.

[swiggity-swexual-i-am-asexual]

I’m just saying, if you’re going to have a college or university in such a car centric country and are located in a car dependent city, maybe you should be legally required to have at least one parking spot per student.

[lupismaris]

Word of advice to anyone who wants to move to Baltimore (which you should it's a lovely fuckin town) - when we say Smalltimore we aren't fuckin playing shit will be passed around by "a little birdy" and someone you ran into once at gay [insert activities] may end up knowing your parents/boss/nana/besties/doctor but more importantly those nosy goddamn birdies are gonna pick a little talk a little cause at heart this place is 250+ small towns sewn up into a harbor port without adequate supervision

[givemewallywestorgivemedeath]

K but the fact that Wally and Hartley are working together in a state-of-the-art, bajillion dollar funded, relatively unsupervised, sci-fi science lab??? Sure, they work in different departments and on different floors but HELLO?!? The hijinks potential is astronomical!!!

These two are probably the worst people to have unsupervised in a lab setting because they will just do whatever the fuck they want and it will work and that's the worst part. Hartley and Wally would create the portal guns from Halo on their lunch break because it looked cool and then they wouldn't even consider the consequences of what they've just unleashed upon the world.

Wally was building time travel devices as a child. Hartley was building mind control devices as a child. Considering consequences isn't really their forte.

God, I sure hope that building has good supervisors.... and insurance. Lots of insurance.

[ctl-yuejie]

the projected results for germany are fucking dismal

[whitefangz]

cannot stand when i see anti-zoo (the thing. the place. not the other thing) sentiment and people are going "well endangered animals should be in zoos yeah but ALL the other animals should be free :/" and its like. what a random hill to die on LOL i don't get it. you cannot, the vast majority of the time, free an animal that is accustomed to life in captivity. Do you guys think they should just open the gates and let the black bears at your local zoo run off into the street because they aren't endangered. I don't get it. this is not a talking point based in realism

[oblako]

should i apply for this job even tho the office is in the outskirts of the complete opposite side of the city...

[nopes-and-dreams-and-nightmares]

Okay I’ve been making the fanart I want to see in the world Next stage is to make the merch I want to see in the world

[tovaicas]

one of the things that more consistently annoys me abt map design in this game is how disconnected so many zones feel from the world itself

[notebooks-and-laptops]

Why Fenris could Never Cameo in Dragon Age: The Veilguard

In the run up to Dragon age: The Veilguard, I was almost certain that Fenris would be our main legacy character from previous games. Not only has he been central in the comics released between DAI and DATV, he is an escaped Tevinter slave who's plot revolved around magisters, magic and the structural prejudices surrounding elves in Thedas. Not only that, but he's canonically in Tevinter killing slavers currently so he's geographically in the right place for us to meet him.

About halfway through the game though, it was clear to me: Fenris could never cameo in The Veilguard. Because he'd break it.

How the Veilguard treats Thedas is...odd to me, to say the least. I will be writing another post about how much I adored the expanded big lore in this game (the titans, ancient elves were spirits, where the blight came from etc.) and yet while these large lore expansions worked for me, the actual culture of modern Thedas is entirely softened, its sharp edges filed down until it's a sanitised fantasy world devoid of what made the franchise so vibrant and compelling in the first place.

So let's start with Fenris and slavery. In all three games, the reality of slavery is pushing at the corners of the world. In DAO Loghain allows Tevinter Magisters to enslave elves in order to raise money for his war effort. In DA2 Fenris is fighting to be free from slavers who will not leave him be, let alone the reminders that the city was built by slaves which are everywhere. In DAI one of the two possible mini-bosses is Calpurnia who was a slave, and characters such as Gatt and Dorian both show us how much slavery is tied into Tevinters culture and success.

But DATV the first game actually set in Tevinter where we get to see the famed Minrathous...it's like the game purposefully wants to avoid the issue. I can feel it tilting the camera away to not allow me to see. Slavery is mentioned, but never talked about in depth or as a specifically ELVEN problem in Tevinter. This might have been done to be less problematic, it feels ignored.

We are in DOCK TOWN. We are at the DOCKS. You would think that slaves from all over Thedas who are being smuggled and bought by various groups would be everywhere. You would think that the injustice in dock town would be partly built on the back of ships we've seen in the comics crammed with elves in chains. This is the world Dragon age set up for us. And yet...nothing. zilch. A tiny easily skippable side quest where we free a couple of venatori slaves, but only one of whom is an elf.

None of our Tevinter characters seem to have been influenced by their culture even a little bit when it comes to how they view elves; there is no moment when Neve fucks up and says something prejudiced, no moment when Bellara or Davrin are distrustful of her for being a Tevinter mage.

The same goes for Zevran; a character who epitomised the issues with the crows. The crows have consistently been characterised as very morally dubious assassins who kill for the highest bidder and who buy children on the slave market and torture them as they grow in order to assure that they reach maturity able to withstand torture without giving away a client's name. Zevran is very explicit about the fact that if you fail a contract your life is forefit.

Nobody responds particularly to you if you're an elf. Nobody trusts rook less for it in Tevinter. Nobody treats Rook any differently. Even DAI had better mechanics for this; with nobles in Orlais less likely to trust you as an elf.

Considering one of the main plot points of this game and what makes Solas sympathetic is the fact that he was fighting against the slavery of ancient elves...you'd think the game might want to mirror that in modern Thedas. It might want to show us how characters fighting to end slavery in Tevinter are similar to Solas and how the society Solas fought against was similar to the one that characters we love such as Fenris have fought against in modern Thedas. Maybe we'd want to explore how in a world of slavery like this, how could the answer NOT be to tear it all down? Maybe we should have that option at the end of the game so it really can chose whether we agree with Solas and his plans or not.

Adding Fenris to this game would entirely break the game because Fenris refuses to allow you to look away from this horror. He is a sympathetic character who had to learn to trust mages again because of course he didn't trust them. Of course he didn't. Fenris wouldn't allow the camera to shift focus because he's literally covered in the lyrium scars that show how slaves are used as experiments in Tevinter. Fenris WOULD question Neve on how she feels about elves and slaves. Fenris WOULD have things to say about Lucanis and the crows (let alone the fact Lucanis is an abomonation). So he could never be in this game; he'd drop a bomb on it's carefully constructed blinders to the very society its supposed to be set in.

And yet, in DATV, the crows are presented as...a found family of misfits and orphans? The politician who opposes the crows having absolute power in Antiva is framed as a comically evil idiot who doesn't understand that the crows are ontologically good. Yet...they're NOT. Crows in this game act more like a secret rebel group than an assassin organisation. We see no crow taking contracts with the VERY RICH venatori magisters despite being hired killers. We see crows just refuse to kill people despite having a contract because 'its crueler to leave them alive'. The crows don't feel like the crows here, they feel like a softened version of a cool assassin group who are cool because they wear black and purple.

Our pirate group are also sanitised; the Lords of Fortune are good pirates who only steal treasure that's not culturally significant. Theyve clearly read the modern critiques of the British Museum and have decided to explicitly stop anyone levelling similar critiques at them. There is no faction of the Lords of Fortune who aren't like this, no internal arguments about it. Everyone just. Agrees. And is able to accurately tell what a cultural artifact is vs. what treasure that you can have yourself is. Rather than showing us why a pirate stealing cultural artifacts might be bad (like in da2 where such a situation literally causes a coup and a war) it just tells us it's bad. But also pirates are cool so we still want them in our world.

This issue seaps into Thedas and drains it of any of the interesting complexity and ability to SAY anything that this franchise had before this game. It becomes a game about telling and not showing rather than the other way around. The games have ALWAYS asked questions about oppressive structural systems and their interplay with society, religion and culture and how these things can affect even the most well meaning character. Dragon age at its best IS a game about society and how society functions both for and against it's characters and what happens to societies built on cruelty and indifference. The best bad guys dragon age has given us are those who are bad because they embody these systems or have been shaped by them. Our main characters have had to wrestle with questions surrounding how to exist in these systems, fight against them, learn and grow.

Yet every group you come across in DATV is sanitised and cleaned up to the point of being as non problematic as humanly possible. None of our cast of characters have to wrestle with where they came from or the world that shaped them. None of them have to confront their own biases. They start the game perfectly non-problematic and end it that way too.

And this just...isn't what Dragon Age has been in the past. It isn't why I love the franchise. The whole game just felt, in a way, hollow. And this was a CHOICE and it is why the legacy characters are few and far between. Too many dragon age characters are just too...angry and complex for this game. You can feel them pulling their punches on this one. I have to imagine they did this because they didn't want to be criticised or have too much controversy? But I think it honestly goes far too much in the other direction and just makes it bland.

I can't imagine what I say here will be unique, but it is the basis for a LOT of my other thoughts on this game so I wanted to get it out of the way first. The softened Thedas and characters make this game by far the weakest in the franchise.

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

The Bronx Zoo has just released Flaco's necropsy results.

He was not thriving, as the people championing the ideal of "freedom" claimed.

He was poisoned.

He was sick.

He was suffering.

"Freedom" would have eventually killed him. A building just happened to do it first.

"Postmortem testing has been completed for Flaco, the Eurasian eagle owl that was found down in the courtyard of a Manhattan building a little over a year after his enclosure at the Central Park Zoo was vandalized on February 2, 2023. Onlookers reported that Flaco had flown into a building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan on February 23, 2024, and acute trauma was found at necropsy. Bronx Zoo veterinary pathologists determined that in addition to the traumatic injuries, Flaco had two significant underlying conditions. He had a severe pigeon herpesvirus from eating feral pigeons that had become part of his diet, and exposure to four different anticoagulant rodenticides that are commonly used for rat control in New York City. These factors would have been debilitating and ultimately fatal, even without a traumatic injury, and may have predisposed him to flying into or falling from the building. The identified herpesvirus can be carried by healthy pigeons but may cause fatal disease in birds of prey including owls infected by eating pigeons. This virus has been previously found in New York City pigeons and owls. In Flaco’s case, the viral infection caused severe tissue damage and inflammation in many organs, including the spleen, liver, gastrointestinal tract, bone marrow, and brain.   No other contributing factors were identified through the extensive testing that was performed. Flaco’s severe illness and death are ultimately attributed to a combination of factors—infectious disease, toxin exposures, and traumatic injuries—that underscore the hazards faced by wild birds, especially in an urban setting."

The naturalistic fallacy kills animals in horrible ways. The romanticism of what humans want to think of as a "free, wild, pure life" cannot be allowed supplant the reality of injury, sickness, and death. Releasing captive animals (or keeping them from being recaptured) because it's "better" for them to suffer untethered than live a healthy, safe, captive life is inhumane and horrific.

Flaco's life didn't have to end in pain, sickness, and suffering.

Flaco's death didn't have to be tragic.

But once the idea of "freedom" entered the chat, Flaco's fate was unavoidable.

[american-railroading]

Say dontcha know me, I’m your native son

Good Night, America How Are Ya

[terrestrialnoob]

Delilah has been transferred into the bigger and better funded Central City Zoo! Of course Danny's invited to come visit her, he's specifically one of the few people allowed to be in the same physical space as one of the worlds deadliest wild animals, specifically, the most violent and aggressive species of gorilla. All because Delilah, at some point, convinced herself that Danny is her baby and she pretty much refuses to hurt him in any way. She will groom him, and share her food with him, and sits him down to teach him her signs, and play very, very gently with her weak human baby, even though she insists, through sign, that he's very strong. The primatologists always lose their minds when Danny visits, as Delilah doesn't let any other human ape of any kind within five feet of her without a sedative. Depending on her mood, she might even try to keep Danny safe away from other humans. He's her baby, you see.

Unfortunately, the new World's Deadliest Gorilla exhibit attracts the attention of Grodd. The hyper-intelligent meta-gorilla wants to use the worlds deadliest gorilla to get vengeance on the Flash for ruining his world domination plans, and he doesn't really care if some human child gets hurt in the process. In fact, that'll probably hurt the Flash more.

[clearlyaginger]

I'm about 6 unanswered job applications from killing myself

[radiates-confusion]

More Worldbuilding!

Ok, Ok, with the fuckery that is everything that's going on that I'm having to keep track of, This is no longer a 30 day, nor prompt based, thing, It's me making sure even my midnight thoughts are tracked, and also using social media to hold me accountable to actually get work done.

On that lovely note, I have made progress on the landmass that is where Campaigns take place! Man, When I tell you tryna work out how many days travel 3 hexes took drove me crazy, I mean crazy! I almost messaged my DM cause I just couldn't work it out from the book! I worked it out eventually, after working out that I could find a destination 180 miles away, put it inot google maps, and then just have that tell me how long it would take to walk there! I think I'm probably gonna make it slightly longer to each place but uhh anyway:

I decided to roughly map out the areas controlled by like, each major city, kinda like....Idk, each county in the country??? Anyway, here it is!

(And we have the hexmat in use too!)

I *also* jotted down roughly the times between each major city, as I said, I think I'm gonna rejig it a bit, but I thought I'd at least make sure I had an idea of how long it took to currently get where!

Voila!

I had a lot of fun spending my evening doing this, and look forward to spending more time (hopefully if I get the time, as my evening is already occupied with not-my-usual-activities TvT) on this tomorrow/today!

[possiblynotpayingattention]

OP is asking the real questions

Who the fuck cares about The Tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise— I would like to speak to the idiot who purchased a plot off of Space Zillow in the middle of Coruscant within sight of the Senate Building and decided to build a minimalist Kushite/Mughal styled temple for space monks with deadly glow sticks.

You just know Coruscant's city planners all collectively screamed at the sight of the Jedi Temple when it was newly built.

Why tf is the Jedi Temple on Coruscant? That’s like the fucking Vatican being in Vegas?