Because I can, have some pictures of ladies in the snow.
Lady reindeer, that is. In Planet Zoo.
I started a new franchise-mode game. My plan is to eventually have three smallish zoos in the franchise -- one tropical, one desert/grassland, and this one, which is in a taiga biome and will have taiga, tundra, and temperate animals. Across the franchise, I want to focus on breeding high-quality endangered/critically-endangered/extinct-in-the-wild animals to release to the wild, and I want to have all of them living in environments that are as natural-looking as possible, keeping visible habitat barriers to a minimum and not focusing so much on stuff for guests beyond the basics to keep them somewhat happy in order to keep money coming in. To the extent possible, I also want to build very large habitats with multiple species living in them, both for naturalism purposes as well as for interspecies enrichment bonuses.
So do you see any habitat barriers in these pictures? No. No, you do not. They are there, though. Especially because this habitat isn't close to finished yet, so one side of it will have ugly barriers until I build the hard shelter that I need to build for my ladies here. It also needs a lot more terrain painting and plantings and stuff. But, I'm quite proud of the terrain sculpting so far as well as how I've concealed the barriers in ways that blend in with the surroundings.
And no, reindeer aren't endangered, but since I'm just starting out, I don't yet have the resources to buy the kinds of animals I ultimately want to breed. I managed to find my ladies here in the online market, and they have decent appeal to bring in guests money. They each have decent-to-good genes, so once a decent-to-good male shows up in the market, they can start making with the babies. Eventually, the herd of reindeer will move to a multispecies habitat, where they will live with a herd of Przewalski's horses, a herd of takins, and some Bactrian camels, and this habitat will be taken over by a pack of timber wolves.
I do have a male red panda that I managed to catch in the market for an affordable price waiting in quarantine, and red pandas are actually endangered. And also incredibly adorable. But, he'll be staying in quarantine until I finish the reindeers' temporary habitat and let some cash build up. And then I'll keep my fingers crossed and hopefully find a female red panda with decent fertility for a price I can afford. That's half the difficulty of franchise mode, really, especially if you want the more endangered animals.
Anyway, yeah, if you don't see me for a while this'll be why. LOL Maybe I'll share some more pics as I go, though. Because I can.
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Just gotta gush here;
I'm DMing my first oneshot next Friday and I am SO excited and SO scared! It's for my fellow grad students in the lab, including one newbie who has never played any TTRPG before, so I'm. Very Nervous about that. But she requested a Christmas theme, so even though I don't care for the holiday I had Ideas and I'm just.
Having SO much fun trying to balance encounters around a low-level, inexperienced party, and making battlemaps, and instead of minis we have candy instead (I've got a surprise Big Chocolate Santa to destroy if they decided to go for a boss fight), and loot tables for Santa's Workshop (with cheeky references like a Ring of Invisibility addressed to one Frodo), and integrating backstories into this as best I can, and figuring out how I'll vaguely keep things on track, and preparing some music (including old favorite Wrath of the Lich King and Narnia tracks) and JUST!!!
WOW this is so much fun but so nerve-wracking!
Santa's elves unionized, so he sacked them and replaced them with gingerbread men constructs... which attracted mimics.
Seeing the cookie-carnage, Santa fled with his bare-minimum number of reindeer, abandoning the workshop a week-ish before Fantasy Christmas.
A dragon, finding this wealth of gold and toys unclaimed, decided to move in with her goblin entourage, and obviously everyone thinks she ate Santa. The dragon, meanwhile, is quite happy descending into her deep winter slumber knowing her hatchling has a toy-hoard to keep it occupied. And as for the goblins, they have gotten in touch with their artistic side and are throwing themselves into making toys.
Also the mimics are all very small toys and keep eating goblins that are out of sight. And really want to eat that baby dragon.
So that's what three adventurers are going to walk into after braving the blizzard to 'save Christmas'. What happens next? Up to them!
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Ok, going to add to the "Trans Noelle antlers" discourse.
First, disclaimer this is all just for fun and stuff not telling you that Noelle is or is not trans, just had some thoughts after thinking what causes antlers to grow.
Let's go through the debate cycle again.
"Noelle is trans because she has antlers."
"Noelle is a reindeer and both male and female reindeer have antlers."
"Male and Female reindeer loose their antlers at different times"
I want to add another step to that cycle.
"Would HRT affect when Noelle sheds her antlers?"
From this paper, testosterone lowers when male reindeer are about to lose their antlers, but those that are castrated (and thus dont have any T in their system) actually keep their antlers over the winter in the long run. The study also shows that hormones like estradiol are likely what lets female reindeer keep their antlers into spring.
Now this can mean many things for Noelle. If Noelle is on HRT, she would likely have a similar Antler cycle to IRL female reindeers if she like cycled her hormones or something.
(Basically similar to how some folks try and change their hormone doses to match a menstrual cycle, except for Noelle this would be a yearly cycle and not monthly.)
Or, maybe Noelle doesn't cycle her HRT, and in that case idk what would happen. Maybe she'd lose her antlers later then male reindeer, but earlier then female ones. Maybe if its high enough it would keep her antlers for longer, or prevent them from shedding or something? Idk I just skimmed the article and I feel like I'm already doing to much to research a lesbian deer girl from a video game.
Even if Noelle was on puberty blockers, then she'd at least keep her antlers for the winter, like male reindeer without testosterone.
(Also, if Noelle was a deer and not a reindeer, then hormones/blockers would likely prevent her antlers to grow in the first-place once they've been shed.)
Now I guess there's one more question, if Noelle is trans, would she be able to access HRT or puberty blockers?
Well, Rudy at least supports her identity, so he likely wouldn't have any problem with Noelle medically transitioning.
If Mayor Holiday was transphobic, and had the authority to keep Noelle from gender affirming care like Hormones or blockers, you would think she'd also put her hoof down on her daughter presenting femme too. (and Rudy might have something to say if his transphobic wife tried to prevent his daughter from transitioning.)
Money likely wouldn't be an issue seeing as Noelle's mom's the mayor, (and has been for awhile) and even then the large ornate gate at their house makes me think that Holiday's are on the richer side.
Only way I could see Noelle being trans and not on Hormones or Blockers is either if she for some reason didn't want them, or if Hometown is located in some transphobic country or municipality that banned trans-kids from accessing gender affirming care, and the latter honestly seems a little too depressingly real for a Toby Fox game.
(Insert something plagiarized from Shadow of Roserade's video on UT/DR's queer joy.)
Now, dispute all this arguing and stuff I think there's one factor we're ignoring here; we're assuming that reindeer monster biology and IRL reindeer biology are analogous.
We don't know how monster reindeer antlers work. Maybe all reindeer monsters have them, but they don't shed them so we cant use antlers to determine if Noelle is trans. Maybe AMAB reindeer monsters grow antlers, their permanent, and Noelle got hers before medically transitioning meaning she'd need like "antler reduction surgery" or something to remove them when she's older.
All the above theorizing means is that if Noelle has a similar antler cycle to IRL female reindeer, it doesn't mean she's cis because HRT can affect that.
There's no way to confirm if Noelle is or is not trans unless like more concrete evidence shows up in later chapters, like estradiol tablets in Noelle's room or something.
The most we've got is unused sprites for Noelle's room in queen's mansion that show pill bottles (Shown earlier in this post). This is still not enough as we don't know what these pill bottles are. They could be anything from anti-depressants to medicine for Rudy! (also the fact the sprites we're never used.)
TL;DR, there's no way to tell if Noelle's trans or cis, and trying to track when her antlers shed is futile as HRT would likely effect that.
I'm still going to pretend she's trans though as I love the headcanon for no particular reason. (spoiler alert, the reason is I'm trans!)
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