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image 1: screenshot from Pokémon anime showing Gary Oak petting his evee.

I think it must be, at least partially, because, people hate the imperfect victim. Its easy for so many people to sympathize with someone who never lashed out. Less so for people to sympathize with people who are angry and lash out. Even though its a perfectly sensible reaction to being hurt over and over. I'm sure most people would like to think they would simply never.

Closest match: Argentina silus genome assembly, chromosome: 11 Common name: Greater Argentine

Because rye wasn't domesticated like other cereals. It was a weed with enough of a passing resemblance to wheat and barley that there was accidental gradual selection for similarity to crops, which meant larger seeds. At which point rye still mostly stayed as a weed, but a arable (useful/edible) one. And then (after thousands of years of arable weediness) it was intentionally cultivated, likely due to its frost resistance and ability to grow in poorer soil than it its ostensibly higher nutrition domesticated competition, becoming a regionally vital crop. The cultivated strain continued to hybridize with its weedier/"earlier" rye relatives in the wild in a way that was hard to control, leading to a high level of genetic diversity (until relatively recently) compared with other grains.

I'm just saying that at some point, maybe a couple years into the road trip, maybe not until linguists dig in post-nutrient crisis, Rocky, who on day two (2) of their collaboration/friendship, was informed the bipedal leaky space blob's name was "Elegant movement" and duly provided the eridian tranlation with the same sense of amusement that new Merry Men got upon meeting Little John, who called him that name in literally every possible emotional register from sarcastic glee (watching sleep-deprived 'elegant motion' trip on its own feet for the 4th time that day) to great and terrible fear (rocky was not actually thinking about dramatic irony while watching Elegant-Motion be thrown to the wall and lay there unmoving while its body weight crushed its lungs, but he did maybe think about it with dark humor later) to unfathomable love, gratitude, shock, relief, thankfulness (at a certain point a funny nickname ceases to mean anything but that person. Grace is here, Grace came back, Grace is here!), Rocky is going to find out that was not in fact the only translation for his name.

Preferred piracy site is down again unfortunately. So this update isn't as long as it could be.

I have been making a list (since 2022 if you can believe it) of reasons that Gotham is the most cursed city (merging canons across soft resets, video games, movies, cartoons, and more) that so far includes:

●There are over 100 different gangs or crime families in Gotham according to an unnamed Gotham PD officer. Real life Chicago has 55 distinct gangs or crime families.

●The city has an extremely high crime rate (Gotham is the third for mundane crime. Hub City and Bludhaven are numbers 1 and 2).

●In-universe polls have public opinion of Hub City being the worst city in DC US, Bludhaven being the second worst city in DC US, and Gotham being the third worst city in DC US. My personal feelings is that it is a case where humans will build a dam to fight mother nature, but can't give a damn to fight human nature. Hub City is considered worse than Gotham because most issues in Hub City are because of humans, while Gotham's issues are primarily supernatural and environmental.

● The city has barely legal tax haven laws, which is the reason why so many rich people live in Gotham and how Bruce Wayne funds Batman without breaking any tax laws (In multiple canons, it is stated mostly by Lucas Fox that the only reason that Batman has gone unidentified for so long is due to Gotham's tax haven status. The only two Batmans who specifically don't pay their taxes are Lego Batman and Harley Quinn Show Batman).

●Gotham has massive government corruption (most of Hush's billion dollar donation as Bruce was embezzled, there has been 10+ cases of the mayor or council taking bribes [I stopped counting], the mayor has been a villain a couple times, the mayor has been a super villain at least thrice [Joker, Poison Ivy and Arkhamverse], and regular corruption too).

●According to Oracle, Gotham's phone system is ancient, having not been universally updated in decades, leading to an odd mismatch of systems that is unreliable and time consuming to tap or trace.

●The city has a smog problem so bad that the Flash can't run at full speed without wheezing (Speed Force is not sufficient to deal with the bad air in Gotham. The canon reason is that Speed Force scales off personal speed, so users need to pick up speed for super speed. People using the speed force also move at 'normal' speed in regards to themselves, mainly to ignore the practical problems of super speed. So, users need to breathe but cant get a full breathe in Gotham. It is kind of stupid, especiallyconsideringthe Flash has been shown to hold his breath to run across space.).

●Multiple bioweapons have been deployed in Gotham (Clench Virus (officially named Filovirus), two different zombie viruses, O.M.A.C. virus, some of the stuff Doctor Death creates, etc).

●There are more guns than people in Gotham. Guns out number people in ranges from "not defined but a lot" to 10 to 1, mostly due to smuggling, depending on the canon. For comparison, IRL US has approximately 1.3 guns per person.

●There is a military weapons testing laboratory just outside of Gotham that suffers frequent robberies (seriously, I know the writers want goons to have military tech, but was this really the best they could think of?).

●There is a Biosafety Level 4 Research Lab in Gotham that specializes in studying bioweapons. Other than a few times that Doctor Death took over, it has actually not been used to make bioweapons and has been focused on cures and treatments.

●Gotham has the most unexplained disappearances of people of any city in DC US.

●Gotham is home to a massive human trafficking ring that spans Gotham, Hub City, and Bludhaven (potentially more, but not stated directly). The ring has a special focus on trafficking women and child for sex slaves.

●Multiple slums exist in Gotham: Bowery [originally a set of housing projects that turned to feral dogs to keep rent low], the Canals [Also known as the Canal District, it was once a straight up slum on a set of small islands off one side of Gotham connected by small bridges and a portion of the main island that served steam boats heading up and down Gotham River, it somehow has managed to decrease crime and become the romantic hotspot of Gotham. It is still high crime, high population of homeless buskers/panhandlers, and the waters are toxic, but it actually has tourism.), Narrows [a section of Gotham that was damaged in a fire and had people build back with no consideration for property lines or streets, making it literally narrow], Dockside [a smuggling hub that is mostly dock workers], Lyntown [a section that was decimated by the earthquake and never repaired. Has no running water or electricity], Little China Town (ethnic Asain slum. It is a hold over from when Gotham was a sundown town. Despite its name, multiple ethnicities from Asia are concentrated there, not just Chinese. Also, some canons have actually had it recover from being a slum), Throatcutter Hill (Also known as Cherry Hill, it is claimed to be the most violent area of Gotham by Harley Quinn), Rookery a (planes and munitions factory district that fell to ruin after a weapon went off. Afterwards, it became a shanty town housing tens of thousands. Then a second unknown disaster reduced it to only several hundred with no explanation. Now has eldritch issues that aren't really explained and has the most disappearances of any place in Gotham.), the Cauldron (ethnic slum, mostly Irish), the Bottoms (the place you go when you hit rock bottom), the Lows (the place you go when you can't go any lower), Riverside (a slum along Gotham River. Most residents survive off what they can fish out of the River. This includes bodies.), East End (ethnic slum, mostly Italian), Crime Alley (once known as Park Row. Was originally the good side of town, but eventually became a high crime area), Hob's Bay (There is a Hob's Bay in both Gotham and Metropolis. Both cities share the bay and both cities have a slum with the same name. Hive of smugglers and is built along the old docks), Toxic Acres (once known as Pleasant Acres, but was the site that a disposal company "hired" by Ace Chemicals dumped chemical weapons. The few people who live there are considered mutated even by Gotham standards), Hell's Crucible (a slum known for fight clubs and cults), the Village [the slum that attracts most of the homeless or poor magical beings of Gotham], the Underworld [This is more of a shanty town set up by homeless in the sewers than a slum], etc.

●Gotham Bridge (Gotham actually has three and only three bridges that connect it to the mainland. All three of them are referred to as Gotham Bridge for some reason, even if they have official names) has collapsed at least four different times (mainly due to corruption and fraud when building a new one or repairing it. It is not clear if one of the three is prone to collapse or if all of them have had a collapse at different times) and had all three blown up several times ( all three were blown up by President Luthor, two of the three blown up by Bane, and one of the three blown up by the Architect at different times).

●Gotham is the most densely populated city in DC's world (depending on canon, it has a population of between 8 and 10 million and a foot print of between 315 and 350 square miles. This population density is roughly equivalent to real life New York. Either the writers didn't think to check real life, or the writers incorrectly assumed that New York was the most densely populated city in the world.).

●Gotham has been taken over by criminals/villains and had the government forced out (as defined by the government no longer being in power and requiring the federal government to retake or isolate the city, even if Batman does most of the work retaking the city) multiple times (Deacon Blackfire once, Bane thrice, Scarecrow once, Joker six times, Ra's Al Ghul twice, etc).

●Gotham subway and rail system are cursed to be unreliable and never on time (this may be a joke, but given that it involves Gotham, I have doubts).

●Hotel Terminus is a living building that attracts and preys on the desperate that torments the people staying there with visions of their mistakes and the building burning. It feeds off the negative energies and tries to cause suicides or death in general. Dying on the grounds allows the building to steal the soul away from the afterlife, allowing the hotel to torture its residents for all eternity. The reason for the building being this way is unknown, but the only unconfirmed theory is that it is a piece of land from hell that somehow managed to end up in Gotham.

●Gotham City Council has ways (that are never really explained) to keep federal inspectors out of Gotham (only specific examples are the FBI and OSHA).

●Gotham has a high suicide rate compared to the real world.

●Gotham has a major drug abuse problem. Beyond regular drugs, there are also assorted super drugs, such as Randolph Porter's Venom (a cut and reconed precursor to Bane's Venom. The writers eventually decided that Bane should not be a mindless brute and make his own instead of buying it. Experimental versions were sold in Gotham. Effects are superhuman strength and decreased mental capacity), Floronic Man's super weed (it causes extreme THC effects and drastically increases the effects of existing mental illness), Bliss (depending on canon it is either a mushroom sourced drug that is similar to Heroin or hallucinatory mind melding drug that The Brain used to form a pseudo hive mind that was sourced from teenager's spines) and custom drugs made by Poison Ivy (tailored to individuals, the drugs were highly addictive and used to control powerful people. This was used as a way to get around Batman identifying her mind control sex spores).

●Gotham has a homelessness problem.

●Gotham has an even worse homeless children problem (Gotham has 1 in 5 children homeless, compared to 1 in 7 in real-life New York. I get that the writers want to make it seem reasonable Batman could keep getting new Robins, but at a certain point, it is ridiculous).

●Gotham has a lot of child labor happening (exact numbers are never given, but a lot of children work and die in factories).

●Between 20% and 50% of Gotham is built on reclaimed swamp ground and below sea level depending on canon (for comparison, 50% of New Orleans is below sea level in real life).

●Gotham has a series of dams, levees, and sea walls that are barely maintained and in generally poor condition.

●The vast majority of smuggling on the Atlantic Coast comes through Gotham (which is part of the reason there are so many drugs and guns in Gotham).

●Gotham has a very tough and kind of cruel college that creates super villains. A lot of the Batman rogues gallery got their diplomas there, taught there, or are otherwise linked to there. Hugo Strange (psychology professor), Harley Quinn (psychology degree), the Riddler (bioengineering, psychology, and political science, depending on canon), Professor Pyg (Medical degree from Gotham University), Poison Ivy (Biology and botany), Doctor Death (studied plagues at Gotham University), Scarecrow (psychology professor), Two Face (law degree), Mr Freeze (professor and did cryogenics research. What he was taught was never specifically covered), Catwoman (sports scholarship for gymnastics. Degree not stated), Maxie Zeus (history professor), Penguin (implied he dropped out due to lack of funds to pay for college), Kiteman (studied Wind at Gotham University), Manbat (Biology professor and researched bats at Gotham University), and probably more all have a link to the school. While there are multiple other villains with degrees, they are not said to have been from or linked to Gotham University.

●Gotham General Hospital is corrupt, has used and sold patients for illegal medical research, and was involved in an insurance fraud scandal (this doesn't even factor in the sheer number of times it has been burnt down, blown up, or taken over by organized crime).

●Gotham is slightly radioactive due to a poorly maintained nuclear power plant that is currently in use (it is still within habitable limits, so Gotham City Counsel is ignoring the issue).

●Most of the city is slightly radioactive due to a failed nuclear power plant that is not in use and abandoned (Gotham is still within habitable limits. Note that this is a different power plant from the still active but poorly maintained nuclear power plant).

●The city also had radioactive fallout from when Chemo destroyed Bludhaven. Gotham, despite a third radiation source, is still claimed to be within habitable limits.

●Multiple mad scientist labs are legally there (Gotham intentionally has very few laws mandating ethics or limits of research).

●For an unknown reason, Benedict Arnold is important to Gotham and has his own monument (this isn't really all that bad, but it is still slightly bad that a traitor is important to the people of Gotham).

●Gotham holds the record for most continuous days of criminal violence (54 years) and Batman cried when the ongoing record ended (to put it simply, there was a 54 year stretch where there was at least one violent crime each day that was investigated by the police). There is no real world equivalent for violent crimes. In the real world, extreme weather leads to crime not happening. People see extreme heat, hurricane, blizzards, or other weather and decide it is not worth it to leave their home and commit crimes. In Gotham, even when there is alien invasions or worse, people still get out to commit crimes.

●Gotham is first in DC US for police brutality (it was once joked that Harvey Bullock is responsible for most of the claims. The only reason he hasn't been fired is due to the mortality rate for Gotham Police).

●The Gotham Police Department has quite frankly a ridiculous casualty and death rate (half of new recruits never get through the first year, and less than 1 in 20 make it five years without being crippled, killed, or transferring out). While I could not find the individual city breakdown, the US, as a whole, has an annual casualty rate of about 0.0113%. Gotham has a police casualty rate that is about 450 times higher than the real world.

●Gotham has the most corrupt or second most corrupt (depending on the run, either Gotham is the most corrupt with Bludhaven second most corrupt or Bludhaven is the most corrupt with Gotham the second most corrupt) police department in the DC US (one canon even goes so far as to have only one honest cop in the Gotham PD).

●Four different coroners in Gotham have been drug addicts, one was selling bodies illegally, and two were serial killers (no necrophilia that I know of so far).

●Gotham Academy, the best and most elite boarding school in Gotham, is cursed, haunted, or otherwise problematic in so many ways it would need its own small list (so far, a demonic Monk who was head master and killed kids for immortality [note, he did not specifically need to kill kids, he could have killed anyone who was innocent and good, he just chose to kill kids], three different ghosts, a Court of Owls weapons lab under it, mysterious tunnels, a bloodline demon witch being named Calamity, another curse to bind the families that killed Amity Arkham to the school, and a cursed book titled *Book of Old Gotham*). Remember this is the best and most elite school in Gotham (also the Wayne Foundation has sponsorships and scholarships for low income children to go to this school. This is because it is the best school in Gotham and Bruce attended the school. I really want to know about the worst school in Gotham).

●Gotham Cathedral (building started in the 1790s and finished in the 1980s) was modified to funnel souls to hell by the demonic monk that was also the Headmaster of Gotham Academy. The massive shifting of souls would have helped him get out of his own deal with Satan by hiding his soul in a flood of souls and then trading all the souls for his own. While his plans failed, the church still stands and interferes with the flow of souls to the afterlife (this specifically doesn't send souls to hell since it is not active, but does delay souls from moving on to the afterlife).

●Commissioner Gordon's serial killer son, JJ Gordon, may have tainted baby formula with a chemical that causes psychopathic disorders in hope of making a generation of serial killers. It is uncertain if he was successful, but up to several thousand babies in Gotham could have been exposed.

●The legal system is extremely dysfunctional (there is no death penalty in most canons, so everyone goes to either Blackgate or Arkham, both of which are prone to escapes).

●The Underworld Court, a neutral ground for crime families and supervillains to sue each other for interfering with each other's schemes, try traitors for betraying the various bosses, and negotiate hits in each other's territories, exists.

●Most meta humans are sent to Arkham because it is considered more secure than Blackgate and has fewer escapes (seriously, do Blackgate villains just walk out the door?).

●Arkham had a literal revolving door installed by Jimmy Olsen as part of a prank war against Batman.

●The bay around Blackgate is described as infested with vicious, man-eating sharks.

●The Gotham Fire Department is so underfunded and/or corrupt that they take bribes to not show up to fires and extort people to pay them before they put out fires.

●Batman has specialized suits for dealing with vampires, zombies, dragons, werewolves, demons, New Gods, Old Gods, magic users, giant monsters and eldritch horrors. While not directly terrible, it implies something about the threats in Gotham.

●The Dark Garden (a living eldritch sub dimension that exists to create predatory dark gods) preys upon Gothamites in an attempt to capture the eldritch being Jane Smith (a dark god who rose above her base nature and who really just wants to be happy and human in the light) and has preyed on people in that location since before Gotham was a city.

●There is an Old God's corpse (this old god is leaking forbidden knowledge that causes people to lose their humanity slowly and do ever more depraved acts in pursuit of knowledge) buried under Gotham.

●There is a living old god named Barbatos (special note, some canons have instead made him into an aspect of Darkseid dedicated to making Batman suffer and Gotham worse or a cross dimensional god trying to create Gothams to climb to better dimensions in hopes of reaching the true Earth) who is bat themed and has his own underground Gotham city (he spreads a corruption encouraging violence and vengeance).

●The Bat Tribe, Miagani, existed on the land that would eventually become Gotham. While they unfortunately went extinct, they had some rituals that influenced Gotham to develop Bat themed protectors (possibly in a boot strap time loop) because the Man Of Bat (a time displaced Batman), the avatar of their Bat God (who also might or might not be a time displaced Batman), saved them at multiple points across time. They also have a Bat God that exists in the current time that may be either a time displaced Batman that somehow became a god or an alternate time traveling version of Barbatos that is somehow a good person (note, this is a theory put forth by Riddler. The real identity of the Bat God is unknown). While all of this is not necessarily bad, it does contribute to Gotham's weirdness.

●There may be a summer home for the King in Yellow in Gotham (this is a rumor from the insane Bat Old God Barbatos. To my best knowledge, the King in Yellow has never directly appeared. Also, Barbotos is known for lying about a lot of stuff).

●The door that the various old gods came through is mostly shut (emphasis on mostly, stuff leaks through). Also, multiple eldritch cults across several canons want to open the door.

●Gotham is built over a portal to the Dark Multiverse. The Dark Multiverse is a series of malformed worlds created when a hero falls to their worse nature, worst fears, or to their own nightmares. These worlds are flawed and decaying. These worlds also feed off healthy realities to prolong themselves, mainly through spreading evil and corrupting heroes.

●In some canons, the Joker might or might not be a self perpetuating idea that infects the next person in line for or compatible with the mantle if the current Joker dies. Those Jokers claim they have plagued humanity for centuries, though the various Batmans think they are lying. Depending on the canon, the new Joker is either the one who killed the former, the next person in Gotham to have a One Bad Day then fail to resist, or the next person exposed to ultra concentrated Joker Chemicals after the current Joker dies. Batman who Laughs is one of the most famous characters infected with the Joker self perpetuating idea.

●There are four versions of Old Gotham (some have other names, but they are all annoyingly called Old Gotham) under the city, depending on canon (a twisted eldritch version of Gotham that is buried deep under Gotham that is usually but not always linked to the bat old god Barbatos, Ghul's Wonder City, a mechanical nightmare that houses Ghul's Lazarus Pit and high tech centuries old weapons, an Old Gotham that was abandoned and buried due to a witch's magic, and an Old Gotham that just sank into the swampy island due to poor construction). Modern Gotham was built over the various Old Gothams.

●Gotham has a foundation of massive stones and pieces of buildings kept in place with lead mortar to prevent it from sinking into the swamp again. This massive foundation is never really explained how it is built and would have been massively expensive. Of course, the lead is leaching into the ground water.

●In a RWBY crossover, it was established Gotham is so miserable that it attracts Grimm (creatures that feed on negativity) from a different dimension. The Grimm have never shown the ability to cross dimensions before or since.

●Dracula either moved to Gotham or had his tomb forcibly moved to Gotham. After Van Helsing slayed Dracula, either Dracula's body was moved to Gotham due to natural leylines that would strengthen the seal and prevent resurrection or Dracula's body was moved to Gotham due to the blood shed and evil hastening his rebirth.

●The blood of the average person in Gotham is so polluted that it is slightly toxic to vampires.

●Dracula's tomb attracts vampires to Gotham. These vampires end up sickly and weak due to the poor quality of blood they can hunt.

●Gotham was built on the grave/resting place/home of a warlock (Doctor Gotham), who is both alive and dead at the same time (cursing the land to be a place of constant misery to fuel his power). His presence brings out the worst in people and can force people to commit evil acts (specifically the insane). Every evil act strengthens his magic and presence. This creates a feed back loop where Doctor Gotham can't be stopped without fixing Gotham, but Gotham can't be fixed without stopping Doctor Gotham.

●There is evil floating in from the Jersey Pine Barrens (this evil floating in decreases empathy and encourages devilish behavior). Also, the Jersey Devil may occasionally hunt in Gotham, but this might just be an urban legend in Gotham. As far as I know, the Jersey Devil has not made an appearance and has only been referenced by an unnamed crazy side character.

●A literal Hell Gate is under Gotham (it is mostly sealed, but leaks enough evil to make demons feel at home. It is never stated what effect this evil has on normal people). If the Gate is ever fully opens, then every soul in Gotham will be pulled into Hell and Armageddon will begin. The Satanists want to open the Gate.

●There is a smaller personal portal to Hell maintained by Jason Blood for emergencies. Sometimes demons brute force through his personal portal.

●Etrigan once compared the smell of Gotham to Hell (Gotham apparently smells of blood, ash, Brimstone [sulfur] and suffering to the Demon Etrigan or he was just exaggerating to make a rhyme).

●16 greater demons are sealed under or within Arkham (a demon lord and their court). They are in most canons buried or imperfectly sealed under Arkham and spread a corruption that encourages the seven deadly sins.

●Thomas Jefferson and friends, while partying, accidentally summoned a Lord of The Pit (demon), and, not knowing what to do, buried it. Depending on the canon, this demon is either corrupting the foundation of Gotham as a whole, or is under Arkham. This singular demon is not related to the Demon lord and his court in most canons.

●In a different canon, Thomas Jefferson and an Occultist Cult summoned Barbatos to create a bat-human hybrid to secure their power for all time. Barbatos takes up residence in the Occultist Temple (buried under Gotham) and fundamentally warps Gotham through the centuries so that Gotham would mass produce bat themed people to eventually create the bat-human supernatural hybrid Thomas Jefferson wanted, allowing Barbatos to fulfill his end of the deal and thus allowing Barbatos to claim the whole universe as his. The city can never cease to be a bat themed people manufacturing city until the perfect hybrid is achieved.

●Arkham is cursed by its founder, Amadeus Arkham, to prey on the minds of people in the building, driving them even more insane so that no one is ever healed (note that some canons link this to the demons while other canons have them as stand alone curses affecting the building at the same time). This was done mainly because he has a hatred of the mentally ill due to abuse suffered at his mother's hands.

●Arkham Asylum is haunted by Elizabeth Arkham, the mentally ill and abusive mother of Amadeus, because she is hunting for her son after he murdered her and disguised her death as a suicide. Because she can't find her son, she mostly attacks doctors in hopes of driving them insane as a "punishment" for their "crimes."

●Arkham was cursed to make doctors and nurses crueler by Asmadeus in the few canons he didn't murder this mother in, mainly so that the mentally ill would always be "punished" to make sure his mother would always suffer. Unfortunately the curse did not end with his or his mother's death and affects doctors and nurses in modern Gotham.

● According to a prophecy, the apocalypse is probably going to start in Gotham or Metropolis. No one knows which apocalypse will end the world or when it will happen, though.

●Gotham is the location of a crack in the Door to the Afterlife (this is mostly connected to Deadman. Also, this makes it harder to pass over and makes it easier for the dead to affect the living in Gotham).

●The line between death and life is really fuzzy in Gotham because of other Deadman shenanigans and some other stuff going on in Gotham (this makes it harder to die and harder to kill people).

●It is the second most haunted city in DC USA (they kept New Orleans as the most haunted).

●The StarHeart, a relic of willpower related to the Green Lantern Corps was sealed in Gotham for a while, projecting the "evil" side of willpower to influence people (note that the evil side of willpower is just the aspects of willpower the Guardians of Oa did not want in their main rings and was safely used by Alan Scott, so I am not entirely sure what the effects of it are).

●There is a strange aura that weakens green lantern power constructs in Gotham (this may be related to the StarHeart being sealed in Gotham for a while).

●It is built on a cursed Indian burial ground (cursed so the dead never find peace and blight the living).

●Gotham was cursed in the 16th century by a wizard monk to attract dragons. These dragons are enraged by the curse and are encouraged to destroy Gotham.

●Gotham was cursed by an ancient shaman (the writers never bother to define what this curse does, so it is just a generic curse). In some canons, the ancient shaman is Decon Blackfire, but in others it is just a random shaman.

●There are 666 minor demons in Gotham who just live regular lives with regular jobs while waiting for the apocalypse (Baytor, former King of Hell, is the most famous and is a bartender to make ends meet). After Baytor was dethroned from King of Hell, he and all his supporters were exiled to Earth.

●Space and time are not quite right in Gotham after the Infinite Crisis Superboy punch. This led to the return of Jason Todd and made it so time moves just a little faster or slower depending on location in Gotham, and a few buildings are not the correct interior dimensions. The variance is supposedly small and mostly unnoticeable.

●Gotham exists in a state of "Temporal Disruption" due to the various time travel and other time weirdness (it was never explained what this means practically, but it does not sound like a good thing, so I am including it).

●Gotham is cursed by Zeus (this curse is why Gotham has, on average, 320 days of rain or overcast skies each year. Everyone is affected by SAD all the time).

●The sewers are infested with unusually vicious mutant rats.

●The sewers have a breeding population of mutant sewer alligators.

●According to Bedbug (a bedbug and mind control themed villain) Gotham is infested with genetically engineered bedbugs he created (good news, his engineered bedbug out competed the normal bedbugs. Bad news, his engineered bedbugs breed faster, are harder to kill, and can be used for mind control).

●Gotham, despite being in New Jersey and having extremely cold, snowy winters, somehow, despite all logic or reason, has a native vampire bat population (The writers have never bothered to explain how the bats survive the winter and have never even provided a BS explanation. Seriously, the writers could have thrown out any explanation, but never bothered. There are half a dozen good reasons already that would have only required a single panel to confirm but the writers have given no reason. The furthest North that **any** vampire bat has ever been found is in Southern Texas).

●Gotham River and Bay have mutant fish (the fish are adapted to survive Gotham Bay and River water. Also, the Joker once dumped a chemical that caused fish to grow a Joker smile. Yes, these fish are still eaten).

●The Bowery, one of Gotham's many slums, has a vicious feral dog problem (the residents encourage and protect the feral dogs to keep rents low. Rent lowering gunshots don't work in Gotham, but rent lower vicious dogs are a thing in Gotham).

●Gotham is built over mysterious ruins from a lost civilization that the sewers run into and are a part of (the sewer alligators breed there and the ruins are seen as the Gothic and unusually large portions of the sewers).

●Tunnels were built during the Cold War to connect every major building in Gotham in case of war (these tunnels are not maintained, destabilize the ground, and allow for convenient escape paths).

●Gotham is blessed/cursed by a nature goddess from New Genesis to keep the toxic stuff in so that Gotham doesn't pollute the world.

●Gotham is cursed by Memento (a powerful demon), using vestiges of past tragedies, to suffer the past as new horrible events (this means that Gotham is stuck with revolving tragedies).

●Gotham was cursed by Spectre along with a blood curse from slain Native Americans to be a place of blood and vengeance (this was almost an Old Testament turn everyone to salt style curse, but it was weakened at the last moment).

●Gotham was cursed by a witch to both bind the Wayne family to Gotham and make Gotham suffer. This was partially Bruce's fault due to time travel shenanigans.

●Gotham was cursed by Deacon Blackfire (this curse was supposed to drain life from Gotham to give Blackfire complete immortality, but it is incomplete and half broken, so it does something but no one knows what).

●There is a massive active fault line (this fault line can produce a quake that was 7.6 on the Rictor scale) under Gotham.

●There is a magic well (this well makes regular magic easier to cast and makes Gotham attractive to magicians like Zatanna) in Gotham.

●There is also a chaos well (chaos magic is the opposite of regular magic. The well makes chaos magic easier to cast and makes Gotham attractive to chaos users like Klarion the Witch Boy) in Gotham.

●There is a magic shop that Zatanna frequently buys from in Gotham that has questionable morals and an inhuman shop keeper.

●Gotham is built on a leyline nexus, causing it to attract magical beings (this led to the creation of the other "Mayor" of Gotham, currently Simon Dark. The other Mayor is supposed to keep all supernatural or magical beings in check while they are in Gotham).

●Due to a failed Poison Ivy plot, the grass in Gotham may be evil and aware.

●Russian mobsters with Russian backing who are trying to make Gotham worse in hopes of conquering Gotham (not sure why they would want it).

●There is a second group of Russians (not related at all to the first group) who are trying to make Gotham worse so the US looks bad and Russia looks better by comparison (I really want to know how bad DC Russia is that Gotham makes it look bad). KGBeast helped with later stages of their multi-decade effort.

●Gotham has a weak dimensional wall allowing influences from the Phantom Zone (the infamous prison sub reality/dimension that has the worst of several aliens species shoved into it).

●There is a bottomless pit under part of Gotham that leads to the abyss (also, the being in the abyss occasionally like to watch Gotham).

●There is also a different bottomless pit that smells of dirty underwear established by the Lego Batman movie (yes, this is a joke and true. I did say it was a merged canon list).

●There is a Dionesium pit under Gotham (Dionesium is a supernatural mineral that causes mental instability, mutation, delusions, and super powers. Some canons go so far as to link all superpowered meta humans to Dionesium and claim that Superman's spaceship drug a cloud of it to Earth). This pit also has toxic contaminants (what toxic contaminants specifically has not been mentioned).

●Due to attempted mining of the Dionesium pit, Gotham was contaminated with Dionesium dust at least twice.

●The Dionesium pit is also leaching Dionesium and other toxic minerals into the ground water.

● Gotham River and Bay water is so polluted that Aquaman can't swim in it and it can not keep Atlanteans alive (note, goat milk is 87% water and, in a somewhat cursed panel, it is established that goat milk is enough water to keep Atlanteans alive. Either Gotham water is less water then goat milk or there is at least one of the pollutions that is toxic to Atlantians).

●Scarecrow fear toxins are in the water (at low enough levels that it only causes paranoia).

●Trace amounts of shed Clayface is in the water (this pollutant causes bodies to twist and mutate, or causes cancer depending on the story line).

●Trace amounts of Hugo Strange's monster man mutagen is in the water (this causes growth, decrease in intelligence, increased strength, hair growth, and claw formation at full strength. It is not stated what the trace amounts actually do to Gothamites).

●Trace amounts of TITIAN (a mutagenic chemical that transforms users into Bane like monsters) in the water.

●Trace amounts of Crioxin (a nerve agent made by Ace Chemicals that causes people to feel no pain, go insane, and develop slightly enhanced bodies) is in the water of one of the slums (Toxic Acres. Note that there are other chemical weapons dumped there, but Crioxin is the only one that gives super power adjacent abilities, so it gets a special mention).

●Joker chemicals are in the water (the chemicals cause mania, unstoppable laughter, and death at full concentration, but in the diluted form just causes mania and involuntary smiling).

●Gotham has a higher than normal number of Lazarus pits (the pits offer revival, healing, and immortality in exchange for decreased empathy, decreased humanity, and an obsessive desire to continue living at all costs).

● Lazarus pit runoff is in the water.

●The Marsh of Madness is up river from Gotham in some canons (this marsh causes delusional homicidal madness and ego mania).

●There is Marsh of Madness runoff in the water.

●Slaughterer Swamp is up river from Gotham in some canons, though most canons have either the swamp or marsh but not both (this swamp causes violent undead, preserves life in a twisted mockery of all that is holy and has a very evil zombie named Solomon Grundy).

●There is Slaughter Swamp runoff in the water.

●Thomas Wayne may or may not have accidentally released psychoactive drugs into Gotham's water supply (may or may not mainly because the writers keep swapping back and forth on it).

●The tap water is barely considered water by Aquaman's hydrokinesis (and Aquaman can freely manipulate soda, which is 90% to 95% water. Gotham tap water is more or less thin sludge). Aquaman can specifically sense it, but is unable to manipulate it in the slightest.

●Gotham suffers from extreme levels of pollution due to being in a barely regulated industrial zone (it is legal to dump industrial runoff in Gotham River).

●Lego Gotham has multiple giant pipes dumping toxic green and purple acid into the sewers.

●There is runoff from an unnamed well that causes increased physical abilities in exchange for homicidal violent impulses (aborted Bane plot thread from before they decided Bane should just use chemicals in his Venom).

●There are trace amounts of Bane Venom in the water (because the well was cut. Also, the Bane venom causes slightly increased physical abilities and anger issues in the diluted state).

●Gotham tap water is barely purified river water (mainly because if the water treatment plant gets too Gung Ho and purifies the water too much, they get water and a black liquid that is extremely dangerous and expensive to dispose of. So Gotham City Council decided to only have them clean the water until it was probably reasonably safe-ish).

●Gotham River has its own version of Nessie (Gotham River Beast) that may or may not exist. It lives in Gotham River, but no one knows what exactly it is or if it is actually real (earliest mentioned sighting is in the 1920s by mobsters, but to the best of my knowledge, it has never been directly shown in a comic and only serves as background lore. It did get a cameo in The Doom That Came to Gotham).

●Gotham has an evil real estate agent who sells failed amusement parks, theaters, and other buildings to criminals (named The Broker).

●Gotham has a slightly evil carpenter (named Duffy) who specializes in death traps (her villain name is the Carpenter).

●Gotham has a slightly evil crafter who makes novelty weapons (called the Maker. The writers really went deep on these names. Note that this Maker has no relation to the Marvel Maker).

●There is a set of bars that caters to desperate people trying to get hired on as Super villain goons.

●The Court of Owls has an underground white walled labyrinth that is used for executions and entertainment. The labyrinth is full of traps and other dangers. When the Court doesn't have people they want to execute, they kidnap random people to watch them die in their death maze for entertainment.

●Poison Ivy, as an avatar of The Green, has stated that The Green see Gotham as an infected wound upon all life (it is not clear if this is the Green's opinion, Poison Ivy's warped view of its opinion, or a mix of both, because, unlike Swamp Thing, Ivy is a flawed avatar).

●There are so many lead pipes and/or paint that Superman can't see through most Gotham homes and apartments (also note that at one point, the fumes from leaded gasoline blocked Superman, but hopefully that problem has gone away).

●A lot of homes and buildings may be filled with asbestos (this is according to Firefly, so it might not be fully accurate. The pyromaniac would probably blow the problem out of proportion).

●There is an aura of despair and negative emotions that is slightly grating to psychic individuals (exact cause unknown).

●There is an Atlantis Leviathan who is fated to flood the world under the docks (there are apparently seven of them and the Atlantic Ocean's is under Gotham's dock. As far as I know, the Leviathan has only been referenced once as the reason for an Aquaman team up and has never made a direct appearance).

●Gotham, as in the city itself, is aware, intelligent, and has an unhealthy interest in the Bat Family (Tim Drake in particular) and interacts with Gotham through its assorted Voices such as Mayne, The Veil, and a couple others (special note, it is implied but not confirmed that the Joker can sense Gotham as a Voice, but intentionally chooses to abuse Gotham instead of helping like the other Voices). Depending on canon this is because of either an improperly sacrificed woman, a demon possessing the city that was warped by Gotham, or just a confluence of everything happening in Gotham.

●While not exclusive to Gotham, Kryptonite is used as an underworld currency so a fair bit goes though Gotham.

●The dimensional wall (4th wall) is extremely thin, allowing Many Angled Ones (readers) to see into Gotham and occasionally influence Gotham.

●Gotham both has an unusually high concentration of new heroes and an unusually high number of hero deaths each year (tragic backstories are really common in Gotham). One of the canon reasons why Batman doesn't like new heros in Gotham is because he is tired of seeing them die.

●Batmite exists, and he intentionally stirs up trouble in Gotham in a misguided attempt to help Batman semi-frequently.

●Gotham has a weak dimensional wall in regards to the 5th Dimension (where Batmite is from, also referred to as the imagination dimension) so Gotham can be affected by the imagination of people at a very weak level.

●It is easier to access Demios Oneiros, the City of Dreams, from Gotham than anywhere else in the DC universe. Dream believes that this is because Gotham is where dreams and nightmares meet in reality. Dream (an Endless who loves sentient beings because they dream new dreams. He also rules over all dreams and regulates dreams.) technically has a cult in Gotham, but they don't worship him. Instead, the cult got confused and chose to worship Insomnia, thinking he was Dream.

●Due to the various villains like Mr Freeze and Poison Ivy's plots, the ground is unstable and the sewers are damaged.

●In not just one, but two different canons, the founders of Gotham made a deal with a primordial evil (once a demon and once an eldritch being) for help establishing Gotham (in exchange for all the souls in Gotham at a future point long after the founders were dead and a portal that would let the eldritch being come though fully into Gotham's reality making a new plane that is hostile to all but eldritch beings, respectively).

●The DC US government once cut off the city from the rest of the US temporarily instead of helping to recover Gotham after an earthquake (see No Man's Land. This one is hard to explain).

●Gotham and Batman exist in a quasi-time loop, where if Batman dies, fixes Gotham, or other conditions occur, Gotham and Batman resets under different conditions. This leads to the multiple canons of Batman as each canon is an independent but linked reality. Fixing the city just leads to a new reality where Bruce Wayne experiences a tragic event in Crime Alley that causes a costumed person to be active in Gotham (note, not always Bruce. Sometimes Bruce doesn't even survive). This is due to higher dimensional beings (writers).

●Hugo Strange may have worked with an unknown government agency to improve the genes and bodies of everyone in Gotham to create perfect soldiers (it is not stated if this project was actually successful, but some of the earlier experiments did escape into Gotham).

●The various things in Gotham somehow came together to create The Body, a hivemind of evil soil that wanted to take over Gotham (do note it is implied that Batman destroyed them all, but I am including it because if the soil can spontaneously come alive and be evil, it needs to be on this list). The Body could absorb people and replace their body with its soil, adding another mind to itself, but due to the link between all minds, could not stand the under developed minds of babies or children (to keep up appearances, the Body was buying children from the Penguin to keep up appearances).

●Gotham citizens, while not being meta humans technically, are empowered by everything going on in the city and are no longer baseline humans by CADMUS standards (standard thugs in Gotham are as strong, fast, and dangerous as soldiers who went through basic training. Peak Gothamite is Batman).

●The Gotham Rogues and Gotham Knights (Gotham's football and baseball teams) have a horrid track record and are regarded as bad teams, having never won a championship (yes, this needed to be after the more than human bit). Also, fun note, Bruce Wayne is a Baseball fan as part of his cover in a couple canons.

●Trigon maintains a small force from his cult to watch or he directly keeps an eye on Gotham due to the fact that the end may start there and due to the fact Raven sometimes stays in Gotham (this gets a special mention because he is more involved personally than the beings other cults worship).

● Due to maximum block limits, cult section will be divided. There are at least 22 different cults: Satanists (they worship literal Satan. Funnily enough, while various demons have claimed the moniker, the actual Satan has not made an appearance and might be dead, killed by the other demons in hell), Occultists (not true worshipers, but are willing to serve various occult beings in exchange for power), Order of Saint Dumas (evil Catholic Crusaders who insist they are the true Catholic Church. Want to destroy the human race to trigger the Second Coming or to create a society free of sinners depending on canon. Prefers bioweapons as tools to do that), Cult of Balam (this is a weird one. It is a Mayan Doomsday cult that is another bat god. Balam (who is insane) the god thinks Bruce is the reincarnation of Balam the priest and thinks that Bruce will end the world for him. Bruce being the reincarnation makes no sense because Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Cortez, Hitler, and Pol Pot were also reincarnations and Bruce was alive for some of them. Also, Balam translates to jaguar in the Mayan language and not Bat. It is never made clear if the writers made a mistake or something else, but the whole thing seems like a mess),

The Olympians (cult based around Maxie Zeus, an insane history teacher who thinks he is the embodiment of Zeus or Zeus himself cast to Earth. Probably not the actual Zeus, but he knows things that Wonder Woman thinks only the real Zeus would know and has traces of Zeus' ichor [his blood was good enough to be a sacrifice to free the children of Ares. This is actually not that uncommon as most people have Zeus as an ancestor]. His followers think he can grant access to Elysium Fields after death), Cult of Chubala (drug cult of a Vulture God. Requires blood sacrifice from its followers or he sends them to a version of hell where they are eaten by rats for eternity. It has never been established if Chubala is a god living in Gotham or just has a cult present), Neo Nazi Doomsday cult (not just Neo Nazis, a Neo Nazi apocalypse cult. They want a nuclear war so that they will rise from the ashes as rulers. Worked with Atomic Skull briefly.), Cult of the Dream of the Endless (Insomnia does not like them or recognize them as his, but the cult does worship him. They think the Dream is all that is real and worships Insomnia because of that. They are really, really wrong on multiple levels, as while Insomnia has powers linked to Dream of the Endless, Dream is a completely different being with no direct link to Insomnia. Dream realizes they exist, but doesn't care about them enough to correct them.),

the KKK (yes, I am considering the KKK a cult. The DC version is extremely pro eugenics), Cult of Ghul (useful idiots who worship him as a god that he doesn't want around all the time. They are kept separate from the League because they are very disposable), assorted cults dedicated to Batman (The only Batman themed cult that has appeared more than once, that I know of, is the Bat-Men. This group worships an unwilling Batman and keeps returning. Batman has had to disband them at least twice. They think Batman is an angry bat god that has come to purge Gotham. Beyond that, several times various groups have worshiped Batman for various reasons. Batman does not like being worshiped to any degree), Cult of Baal (Doomsday demon who claims he is owed all souls on Earth. Can only be summoned on special Halloweens through a complex ritual. Is generally thwarted by demons who use his summoning as a renewable demonic energy source), Old God Cult (technically speaking there have been at least 9 different eldritch cults, but they are effectively the same in different canons. They want to open the door fully to see the "Truth" that the eldritch beings are), Cult of Doctor Gotham (people who actively try to make Gotham worse in hopes the Warlock they worship will grant them great power. So far, Doctor Gotham has never even recognized them as existing, but he does benefit from them, as the worse Gotham becomes, the more powerful he becomes and the more he can make Gotham worse.),

Cult of Trigon (extra planner conqueror who fathered Raven. He is what happens when a demon becomes a god and starts devouring realities. People worship him as the inevitable conqueror and want to hasten his entry), Cult of Barbatos (insane Bat Old God, sometimes an aspect of Darkseid. His followers want to ascend to a greater form, an insane bat human hybrid that exists in massive pain and rages against all life), Cult of Blackfire (Blackfire claims to be a native American Blood God. He offers 'immortality' in exchange for his followers serving him. The immortality he offers is actually being sacrificed to him so that their blood is eternally supporting his immortal blood. He generally preys on the weak with nowhere else to go by offering food and shelter, before moving onto cult behaviors), Cult of Geo Populous (another end of the world cult. Wants to end life to create a new world of magic that they rule. Are mostly involved with necromancy and soul magic), Religion of Crime (they worship evil as the only logical truth and think kindness is actually just lying. As such, people who are evil must know the truth and be worshiped. They are known for doing various sadistic things in search of enlightenment),

Children of Dionysus (Also known as the Cult of Chaos. Some canons have Children of Dionysus as a branch of the Religion of Crime while others have them as separate cults, so I am counting them as separate cults. They believe they are the true evil and that all other evil is a shadow of themselves), The Order of Shiva (they worship Shiva as a battle goddess. They pursue martial perfection so that they may fight Shiva and die to her glory), and a generic cult from the Silver Age that never specified what they worshiped (a lot of chanting, a lot of candles, and an attempted human sacrifice. Nothing else really happened). Also, there is another Bat God that was worshiped by the now extinct Miagani. While this Bat God is alive in Gotham, I do not count him with the cults due to the fact he has no living worshipers.

●There are at least 4 different shadow governments. The line between cult and shadow government is weak in Gotham. I put the Court of Owls (extremely rich and depraved people who are more concerned with their sadistic pleasures than anything else. They want to keep Gotham bad so they can continue enjoying death battles, drugs, torture, and other evil acts without being caught. They use their own billions to do so), Black Glove (splinter group of Religion of Crime. Are less concerned about the religious side of it and more concerned with world domination. They enjoy gambling about if the group can make various good people crack and turn evil), League of Assassins (they are a group of assassins who serve Ra's Al Ghul. Their goals are a mix of profiting by taking contracts and "protecting" civilization through murder and mass killings. This side is mostly due to Ghul's insanity from Lazarus Pit over use) and Leviathan (a splinter group of LoA. They believe that Ghul is too far gone and too insane, so they have a sometimes willing Talia as their nominal head. They still have the same core beliefs as the LoA, but want civilization to continue because they can only make money in a civilization) in this group.

●Bruce Wayne donates massive amounts of money and other resources in hopes of fixing Gotham with money. The exact amount ranges from several billion each year to the equivalent of several small countries' GDP each year. All his programs have the net effect of keeping Gotham treading water and, despite his best efforts, are drained by corruption, embezzlement, and fraud. It is stated that he (across canons) invests in at least 9 different housing projects, public transportation, gymnasiums for under privileged children, thug to employee programs to help people stop being super villain goons, has been the number 1 donor at the Policeman's Gala for 5 years in a row, has a massive fund to support museums and art in Gotham, an after school youth enrichment program, free chronic illness hospital care, free emergency room care, a fund to get bullet proof vests for all Gotham Police (unfortunately, the vests that were bought were subpar and the police chief pocketed most of the money, so a lot of officers got shot), free college education (at the college that makes super villains), a special assistance fund for victims of violent crimes, a special fund to help Gothamites afford childcare, a special fund for Gothamites to afford elder care, several homeless shelters, at least one battered women's shelter, several orphanages, a system of 82 food banks to cover every Gotham slum, a program that pays for the therapy of Gothamites, a green city initiative (this was actually sabotaged by Ace Chemicals to the point Bruce was accidentally paying to help them dump waste and not clean it up), sponsorships and scholarships to Gotham Academy (which is somehow the best school in Gotham) for orphaned or homeless kids, medical debt relief programs (a corrupt doctor at Gotham General Hospital stole most of the fund), a lawyer network for the poor, free drug rehab, a work release skill training program to help regular criminals become good citizens, and a network for people escaping from human trafficking. Despite all this, Bruce is only keeping Gotham from getting worse.

●And worse of all, it is in New Jersey (try reading a Batman comic and give everyone a Jersey accent). Fair note, some earlier canons had Gotham in Connecticut or New York, but modern Gotham is in New Jersey.

If anyone knows anything else wrong with Gotham, let me know, and I will update my list. Yes, I do know my list is so monstrous that it requires a lot of scrolling.

Also, side note, but if anyone needs my list commented on Reddit, just drop my user name. If anyone needs my list on a site that is not Reddit, please shoot me a link. I like to read the comments that tell me of new and terrible things I have missed about Gotham.

Because my List has grown to the size where it no longer fits on Notepad and requires two Reddit posts, I am going to add a related list (mainly because length will not be a concern again until it approaches 3 parts), why people stay or move to Gotham (merged canons):

●DC US has a rocky coast line, the three best ports are Gotham, Bludhaven, and Metropolis, in that order.

●Gotham's tax haven status requires the rich to spend a couple of months in Gotham to get those massive tax breaks.

●Bruce Wayne's social programs have made it so that Gotham is the best place to get back on your feet.

●Rent is extremely cheap in Gotham. Depending on which source, it ranges from lowest average rent in DC US to a four bedroom two bath house in Gotham having a monthly mortgage comparable to the monthly rent for a studio apartment in Metropolis.

●DC US is in a semi-permanent depression, driving people to the only cities doing well. Which just happens to be cities with Superheroes. This is also used to explain how cities that get nuked, invaded by aliens, or otherwise destroyed get repopulated and is not Gotham exclusive.

●Gotham has steady no questions asked or taken dock work. Anyone can get a dock job by simply walking up and asking, regardless of criminal history or anything else.

●Gotham actually has one of the best colleges in the country that has a lot of scholarships (mainly due to the Wayne Foundation), so a lot of poor but skilled students end up going to the college that is linked to a lot of super villains.

●Gotham's major tourism draw is crime tourism. Iceberg Lounge sells T-shirts and knick nacks. There are slum tours to see the worst of Gotham. There is Slaughterer Swamp tours to see the evil (one such tour got killed by Grundy). There is a tour to see Joker's greatest massacres. It is really weird to think people pay to see where people died or to watch them suffer, but real life Chicago has slum tours.

●Gotham is only a 30 minute to an hour barge ride from Metropolis, so it is possible to commute from Gotham to Metropolis for work.

●Gotham, due to lacking mandated ethics laws, is a hub for research and development second only to Metropolis.

From there the political aspect of it got picked up by climate doomerist types who pushed it as an antidote to the impending apocalypse. Alas, being fanatically worried about climate change seems to have fallen out of fashion since COVID for whatever reason. I believe a lot of these people have moved on to walkable urbanism and anti-AI movements.

And the aesthetic side of it started off with a particularly influential Tumblr post from 2014 that had quite a few neat ideas. All of those were sanded down over time into a vision of skyscrapers with moss and solar panels, coupled with some recycled cottagecore material and a bunch of Ghibli screencaps.

And then Chobani comes in and makes a yogurt commercial that's just futurist luxury automated cottagecore in a Ghibli aesthetic, complete with some vague handwaves at a spunky DIY attitude and a whole bunch of small-scale renewable electric generators. And from there the movement, whatever it was, merged with "Frutiger Aero" and completely fell apart into bland nothingness.

Praxis itself? It looks like disability activism. It looks like attending local town council meetings. It looks like diving into super specific debate on local law requirements on water-permeable surfaces percentage. It looks like keeping in contact with local priest to snoothly distribute furniture from well-off middle class finishing renovation to 18yo orphans ageing out of the system. It looks like negotating with local cultural activity center how to organise half-illegal craft workshops because paperwork for fully legal ones excludes the most neglected demographic. It looks like lobbying for health insurance to put "replacing batteries in the implant surgery" on the list of covered medical services, so people don't need to surgically replace whole implants. It looks like million other specific things.

People who got inspired by solarpunk tend to spend some time looking at art, then turn around, ask "okay but what can be done now that I can engage with" and then go do it. And then what they do stops looking like solarpunk aesthetic.

Of course there's also that thing that before Covid, lots of climate collapse containment issues were literally "we know that business-as-usual is cheapest short-term but can we focus on how it's killing us long-term". Covid era showed that business-as-usual is unsustainable now, mid-term and short-term and today and yesterday; and also that goverments can simply decide to act and it create tangible effects. Suddenly, it wasn't "solar would be better if your gas import was ever endangered", it's "we build all the solar for yesterday because we cannot afford keeping to gas". Creating inspiring narratives is optional when cost of business-as-usual is visible to naked eye. Lots of people who used to share inspiring pictures of solar on background of green hills either went to install solar and negotiate specifics of grid inclusion, or moved on to the next issue.

Central idea of solarpunk aesthetic was to give people tools to imagine sustainable future; to create visual and narrative shorthands allowing people to engage with vision of non-apocalyptic future.

Central idea of solarpunk philosophy is that apocalypse is anything but inevitable and the main challenge isn't lack of means and tools, but widespread cultural pessimism. You cannot change anything if you believe change is impossible. Therefore, for change to be possible, you need to envision the world that can be changed.

Basically, if solarpunk art convinced anyone that there is achievable alternative to doom, it have already succeeded.

You absolutely can merge in one all the issues ever discussed in context of exploring how sustainable climate-proofed non-capitalistic world can work and how it can be achieved, with the attempt to design a distinctive and consistent visual language for it.

And you absolutely can blame whichever aspect of that merged entity for the fact that detailed fact-based solutions are difficult to derive from visual language or using visual design tools.

Also what if the thing we are accusing them of, the thing we are forming a mob over, is really, really, really, really bad? Surely angry mob triggering accusations are rarely made explicitly to trigger angry mobs.

Aro and ace exclusion was like this, they'd say "Asexuals are basically straight, they can just pass as straight, nobody cares if they want to fuck or not, there's aromantic straight man invading Pride, there are quirky asexual straight girls pretending to be queer, asexuals are appropriating Stone and oppressing lesbians."

Bisexual exclusion and it was all, "Bisexuals are basically straight, they can just avoid oppression by being straight, these fucking bisexual women are bringing their homophobic straight boyfriends to pride, bisexual women are appropriating butch and femme, and they can't say dyke, those are lesbian only terms, bisexual women are oppressing lesbians."

And now it's like, "Trans men are basically cis. They can just avoid oppression by saying they are men, these fucking trans men are dangerous rapists who can pretend to be women to avoid consequences, trans men are appropriating T4T, and they can't say tranny, and can't say they were once "eggs", those are trans woman only terms. Trans men are oppressing women."

This isn't even all, transmeds also fit this bill, their enemy is just "the transtrender menace."

Like here we are again, rooting out the fake queers, policing them, traumatizing an entire community, and when we all get embarrassed about how we fell for yet another fucking queer moral panic, the damage will be downplayed, nobody will learn anything and we'll move onto the next secretly privileged queer group who needs to be annihilated in order to defend some poor defenseless women who cannot possibly defend themselves from these ugly mannish straight invaders... huh, wait a second.... why does that sound so familiar?