This is your brain on dungeons

like yeah yeah power conflict theory and all that but you aren't really answering what the person said. They never said anything about equality or how to address inequality. Their problem is with the lack of love - so you need to challenge them on that principle that more love is more gooder

For personal context, before I went to the '98 Burning Man festival, one of the things I'd read from a couple different journalists was that "everybody" runs around naked. Which, fine by me, I'd already spent a lot of time in clothing-optional spaces, I'm not fanatic about it but it's nice.

So I got there early and set up a public shade structure on one of Black Rock City's main roads and spent most of each afternoon just watching the crowds go by. I don't remember seeing more than one actually naked person the whole week. I think a topless woman passed by my intersection maybe every half an hour, sometimes once an hour. So why in the hell were people, normally pretty smart and observant writers, coming away with the impression that everybody was naked?

Then I remembered an unrelated passage from Joel Garreau's great book about the history of the outer-ring suburbs, Edge City. Mall developers told him flat-out that they tried to keep the crowds in their malls less than 5% black. Not because they themselves were racist, but because they had determined, experimentally, that if more than 5% of the people in the mall are black, the median white shopper will wrongly describe the mall as at least half black, as mostly black. And not a few of them would describe it, at 6% black, as a mall where "only black people go." Why?

Because, emotionally, they were still upset over the last one when the next one came into view.

picking up stray puppies

playing board games 

making paper airplanes out of official documents and throwing them around the room

counting the colonel’s love letters

hooking Havoc up on dates

dreaming of miniskirt armies

sleeping on the job

sleeping on the job

sleeping on the job

sleeping on the job

sleeping on the job

sleeping on the job?

[whispers] sleeping on the job

drawing on official military documents

drawing on Mustang’s FACE

cleaning… poorly…

snapping candid photos of the colonel on break

getting so distracted by an order to observe Mustang that all other duties get neglected

getting distracted from THAT distraction to bicker about Havoc’s love life instead

making shadow puppets and telling ghost stories (On duty. Reminder: this is ON DUTY. The Amestrians are paying TAXES for this).

hijacking rich peoples’ cars at gunpoint

dating the enemy

writing terrible song lyrics

bestowing a dog with a military ranking

ignoring reports on terrorism and kidnapping… to instead harangue Mustang about “having” a child

performing plays

legitimately ditching work. since when does a base’s top-ranking officer need to be around?

Is… is that Mustang passed out in a bar? That’s Mustang passed out in a bar, isn’t it? 

Okay. I mean. The excuse may have been false THIS time, but the fact it’s an ACCEPTABLE excuse brings its fair share of questions.

flirting 

forming the Eastern Command Paranormal Investigations Squad 

…….only to be collectively outsmarted by one (1) dog

this

I… I don’t want to know

Yeah. Sometimes it’s better not to know.

I love these guys.

A Summary: Team Mustang.

Vestan Loyalists/Resistance with a captured C-60 Kerberos and donated LSA Gilgamesh on routine patrol. Some headcanon embellishments: 1. I hated the idea that the Vestan Resistance was just called the "Vestan Resistance" so I instead called them the Vestan Democratic Army (ΔΣΒ). It wasn't until I posted this in a discord where the GM told me they were formally called "The Loyalists"

2. Their symbol is an olive wreath and their new flag for the Sovereignty, should they win, would be an golden olive wreath on a deep, vibrant green background.

Pilot art is wonderful but I love seeing setting pieces like this too.