Poor Fallout 4 really went completely unremembered outside one funny video that got memed. Nothing intentionally in the game really charmed people like Fallout 3 or New Vegas did and it seems like very few people felt they could get any higher entertainment value out of it than Monster Factory did and it faded from public consciousness.
And I don’t remember anything else about it standing out to me as a game either, but it sucks and makes me very sad because if only Fallout 4 had been more culturally relevant perhaps it would have been able to elevate scorpionflies from obscurity.
Imagine a world where the first video game to feature this insect actually took off enough that they became common knowledge, especially from all the people who might assume the “stingwing” is just a cool made-up monster until they learn it was just lifted 1:1 from an actual animal, THEN they learn that the real animal’s tail is not a stinger at all but the male’s genitalia. It could have gone so viral. But they blew it. They put it in a game that people were just okay about. They RUINED scorpionfly’s big chance :(
AKA, a "bad ending" au where libby cannot leave point lookout and ends up rotting from the inside among the vines and the bugs and al the inhabitants of the swamp!! yippee!
Listening to Sting of the Wild by entomologist Justin O. Schmidt right now. I'm at the chapter about Tarantula Hawks, the wasp with one of the most painful stings in the insect kingdom. Intrigued by his description of their vibrant metallic hues, I had to google them to see what they look like:
And I thought to myself, hmmm, this looks familiar...
Aha, I know where I've seen this before!
I had to confirm with the Fallout wiki that I wasn't misremembering, and sure enough, it was Tarantula Hawk (Latin name Pepsinae) DNA that Dr. Borous spliced to create Cazadores in Old World Blues.
And if the sting of a regular, normal sized Tarantula Hawk is unbearably painful to the point that nobody who gets stung can retain motor control, I dread to think what a Cazadore sting must feel like.
the only color picking sheet i have ever made in my life, and it was for a guy i wanted to sell for like 15 bucks but was never confident enough to do💔
did some doodles, thought I’d share. been feeling some natural vibes recently, and apparently some doodles on what I thought a spritebot could look like in Fallout: Equestria that isn’t a slightly modified eyebot model.
I really like the tree buildings and the cliff-face looking building on the top right — I imagined it’d be the height of a six-story building with terraced gardens that took advantage of rain runoff. ask me more if you want, i just love thinking about solarpunk shit like that.
I don't know about you, but I want to fill Yes Man's chassis with centipedes.
You know what, Anon, not my first thought when it comes to Yes Man. Would he even be able to feel things in his chassis? Do Securitrons have sensation? Besides! Why would you want to torture him? He’s there to help you! Not that he can say no, giving you instructions on how to open him up before you dump the insects in. Baffled, but compliant.
I’ve been wanting to redo the cover art for First Instar for some time now, and I finally let myself. Hopefully it scans visually as a high rise office. Rambling under the cut.
If you’re interested in The Anatomy of Melancholy, the most recent chapter’s always pinned on my blog, and a table of contents link is at the top of it. All likes and reblogs welcome. (Extensive CWs for horror esp. body horror, drug use, insects, and miles of characters with grey-to-scalding karma including the MC. I try to label CWs as thoroughly as possible at the beginning of each chapter: do heed them. There’s two DDW chapters in First Instar, and I mean that warning very strongly, especially as I illustrate these things from time to time. This fic is not suitable for minors or the squeamish.)
I didn’t break up AoM by Instar until about halfway through Second Instar. Lexington & Concord was supposed to be a placeholder until I thought of something better. Location wordplay’s going to be the common tie for all five Instars, I think, and I like this subtle change a lot.
I really liked the original 2019 cover when I did it, but I didn’t think it was all too representative of the fic itself. Too, it’s the first book of the pentalogy: it’s deserving of something a little more intense than what I had, now that I’m more capable of putting it together. That, and I really needed to include the visual detail that he’s a wheelchair user. For being one myself, I sure don’t draw them as often as I’d like.
I’d never really been happy calling the DDW chapters “Rexford Press” because it suggests ‘Choly ends up with a printing press in Goodneighbor, and at this point I seriously doubt it. The Rexton Nova’s his typewriter, owing to his Naked Lunch roots.
I promise I’ll do a revision pass soon and add footnotes and author’s notes to the first two Instars. Thanks for sticking with me almost five years now!
Local DM disappointed and upset* that his players keep breezing through his dragon encounters using Wall of Force.
Sorry Dad, you were the one who wanted us to go to Level 20 in this module only designed to go to Level 15. Sorry the game starts breaking once you hit a certain point. Sorry we're more interested in our new tower than fighting another dragon.