Blough City

Blough City is in many ways a city in opposition to Bluff City although it is still a casino town. It is constantly in the time period between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, although it rarely snows due to its warmer climate.

The atmosphere of Blough City is described as hierarchical, oppressive, repressive, and “capital B bad”. The communication is similar to the There Is No Greater Love era of Bluff City, with most communication done via text rather than vocally.

After the holiday parade, things in Blough City began to get tougher - there are new nightly curfews, new prohibition laws, more cops on the streets, with “deviancy [...] more illegal than ever”, but also the streets of Blough City have become narrower, songs are missing a beat,and people’s memories (especially of the parade) are hazy.

People living in Blough City rarely refer to it by name, instead calling it “the city”, "the metropolis”, or “around here”. It is sometimes refereed to as Blue City.

The style of the city is close to 1940s-1950s post-war Americana, and is closer to East Coast/LA than Atlantic City. It is described as "wide in space but stuck in time".

The beach is to the west, with a boardwalk that goes on "forever", with suburbs that change into urban sprawl and back again over and over into the horizon.

All the buildings of Blough City are "cut from the same cloth" due to the Cultural Trust's restrictions on what kinds of buildings are allowed. The names of businesses are also restricted, with generic names being used for different locations (Pizzeria, Piano Store, etc). All of the interiors of these building "types" are the same.

Blough City is less corporate than Bluff City, with gambling halls instead of casinos, less chain places, and more amusement piers along it's infinite boardwalk.

To the west, is the ocean and to the north, as the highways and cliffs.

There is no real “out of town” for Blough City the way there is for Bluff City - out of town in always non-specific.

The criminal enterprise in Blough City is mostly done by or with the aid of superpowered individuals.

Areas of Blough City

• Standard Town
• Countinghouse
• The Thicket
• Blough City Boardwalk
• Taffy District
• The Diner
• The Courtyard

Business Types/Locations in Blough City

• Pizzeria
• Grocery Store
• Ice Cream Parlour
• Bar
• Movie House
• Lounge
• The Grand Canary Hotel
• The Park Zoo

1920s era/Effect of The Tunnel Project on Blough City

Due to The Tunnel Project, Blough City has become “increasingly unmoored” in time. It has also begun to effect the city's "normal" effects - for example, Grouse and The Champ can both read and write the language while in Blough City.

Time has also become hazy in Blough City, as though the people there are “in the same moment over and over again”, with the except of little escapes that are valued by the people who live there. Every escape is framed as an excess, with people not discussing them openly. A subdivision of the police known as the Mysterious Phenomenon Department (or ‘Myst’) is developed to hunt down those with superpowers who break the law (it also employs those with superpowers themselves to aid this).

Although the areas the were previously seen remain, They have changed in appearance, most notably The Thicket, which shows no signs of the previous construction. The city itself is also less dense, spreading out further towards the hills.

The movie industry (as seen in Messy Business) is also not as advanced as we saw, with most of the culture that had previously been happening in film now occuring in the radio space.

After the arrest of Hollis Whitaker, the downtrodden of Blough City felt somewhat empowered, beginning to be more open about their differences and confident in helping one another out.

Bluff City

Blough City is connected to Bluff City via shunt points throughout the city, which Concern agents use to travel between the cities.

In Hard Luck, it is implied that there is a “time difference” between the Bluff and Blough, with Blough City being a day ahead of Bluff City.

Known Shunt Points

• Pizzeria
• The stairwell door at the top floor of 2-22 Countinghouse (to access it, close the door, turn around, open the door again) - this is a temporary shunt point only
• The waterway shunt point to Bluffington (accessible via Exit 7 towards The Thicket, past a bunch of suburban complexes, towards where the desert meets the wetland, in a canal where the water behaves more like the ocean that a canal. It is an underwater tunnel, with chipped white tiles and is described as "scary and dark".