Aries: The great stone aeries hewn from the very rock of the mountaintops. Inaccessible, except to those with wings. The roosting halls are littered with bones and empty suits of armor.
Taurus: The colossal secret workshops hidden deep withing the mountains. The great water-wheels lay motionless, the aquifers clogged by scrap and corpses, massive bellows stoking forge fires that have long since gone out.
Gemini: Sprawling garden temples teeming with life. Doorways sealed shut by tree roots, an entire river redirected to pass through the center now flows over the aqueduct walls, carpeting the old holy carvings with moss and river grasses.
Cancer: A graveyard. A grove of sacred trees, each planted in the bosom of a departed soul. The walls have crumbled and the groundskeepers have been dead for centuries. A black ram watches you from a nearby hilltop.
Leo: The courtyard of a long dead philosopher king. Marble statues in dramatic poses, missing limbs and finer features. Wildflowers reach towards their ankles. All encircled by the remains of a palace, only the foundations are left.
Virgo: A temple to the winter itself. Grand feasting halls and warm hearths. Vaulted ceilings built so high the priestesses tended to their own indoor forests. The place is frozen white now, colossal pine trees reaching through the stone to the winter sky.
Libra: An apple orchard. The ground is covered in little pink blossoms. The cider press still wanders the grounds, grinding intruders to a fine golden mulch.
Scorpio: The hanging rock. An altar to the sky. The perch where souls are taken to the next life. The tree of hooks is bare and rusted by the sea salt air. The ground is long since picked clean. Sea birds dont dare to rest here, lets they be mistaken for gruesome bait.
Ophiuchus: A college built into the cliffside. Rolling green hills and ivy cascading over the facade like a waterfall. The great doors are locked. Lavender grows from the window shutters.
Sagittarius: The great stone shipyards. Scuffs on the colossal walls tell of imperious warships and merchant fleets. The locks are stuck closed. Willows grow from the dry docks. The lighthouse watches on.
Capricorn: A ramshackle town built above a sewer cistern. Tiny homes made from trash and driftwood. A schoolhouse, a hospital, even a courthouse, all slowly sinking into the mire.
Aquarius: The grounds where the carnival was held. Nothing but grass and stars now.
Pisces: The site of an old battle. Grass uproots the cobblestones. Countless weapons are thrust into the earth, the hilts tied with red cloth, listing gently in the wind.
I was in 1st/2nd grade grade when the big Pokémon boom of the late 90s-early 00s happened. It was HUGE. Every kid was into it and we’d watch the show and play pretend and collect the cards and bring our game boys to school to trade Pokémon during recess. I was lucky to have supportive parents, but I remember how teachers and other adults would scoff and say how tired they were of Pokémon, how annoying and juvenile it was and how they couldn’t wait for us to “get over it already”. I might have been young, but I still remember how much these kinds of comments bummed me out. Why in the world are we being mean to little kids who like Fortnite
Why are you comparing pokemon to fortnite???
Because… Fortnite is very popular amongst children at the moment? And there are adults who dismiss it in the same way other adults did when Pokémon was big, calling it stupid, saying the dances are annoying, how much they can’t wait for the “fad to be over”, etc. It’s pretty much the same scenario.
Fortnite has a lootbox system that is glorified gambling, and can cause patterns of addiction in even adult minds, and that is in fact its intended goal in order for the game to make money from microtransactions. That’s how all games with lootboxes function. That’s how they draw in their customer base and squeeze more money out of them.
Like, I don’t judge kids who enjoy Fortnite. My little cousin plays Fortnite.
But last week, my little cousin also stole his mother’s credit card and spent about a month’s salary on microtransactions without his parents’ knowledge.
Modern gaming has become vile and predatory in ways that we didn’t have to deal with as children.
And we shouldn’t be mean to children about this, but we should definitely be coming down on these companies like a pile of fucking bricks.
Delicious.
Finally, some PROPER FORTNITE CRITICISM
Re lootboxes fortnite vs pokemon.
Trading card packets.
My favourite pokemon was a fucking charizard. And I was into pokemon from the beginning. A 1st edition charizard? 130 dollars. Attempts to buy it via packs? Hundreds of dollars.
Like it’s easier to prey on kids and shit now because online purchases but…. they still preyed on kids back in the pokemon days.
Pokémon was just one link in the chain, albeit a pretty massive one. But… 90s kids! Remember dropping what is, now that you think about it, literal hundreds of dollars on Magic cards about five bucks at a time? Remember how the original rules explicitly encouraged you to gamble your cards against your friends’? Or how about pogs, which did the same thing and had a very strict schoolyard coolness ranking system?
80s kids! Remember these?
Remember how you filled them one pack at a time?
In digging up this image, I found out that the two companies I remember putting these things out had been doing it for decades before, just for sports stuff.
Selling gambling to kids is nothing new. What’s new is finally recognizing it as an evil practice rather than an annoying fad.
also… fortnite only has lootboxes in the PvE mode, and they’re awarded literally for wiping your ass, like they’re handed out over nothing
fortnite battle royale, the PvP mode that everyone likes, doesn’t actually have any lootboxes in it. it ONLY lets you buy skins from the shop which you can extensively preview before purchasing
i similarly fail to see how “game has lootboxes” means “yes we should be arrogant and dismissive directly in the faces of children who like stuff”. ok cool, you have a reason to not like fortnite – stop being an asshole to children. stop leveraging this One thing to staunchly continue to be rude to kids? stop.
1) This episode was about the TARDIS team stopping someone else changing history, so it didn’t take away from Rosa choosing to do this all on her own and
2) that, especially in the current climate, we got an episode about how breaking an immoral law is the right thing to do
And that sometimes, if allies want to help, the best thing they can do is sit down.
teakepp 