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media-illiterate · 2 months

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Fallout 4 Alternate Timeline

Because @datura-tea asked about my tags on this post, and I already have it sitting in my wips folder, I thought I'd post my alternate timeline of events for Fallout 4! It always bothered me that the Commonwealth is still so underdeveloped while the West Coast has trains and a working electical grid. So I tried to come up with a coherent narrative of how it could have backslid into its current state.

Timeline under the readmore because it is, not short.

2077: The Great War occurs. The surviving students and faculty of CIT take refuge in the institute’s underground particle-physics labs, locking the rest of the wasteland out. They live in fear of being discovered by other survivors and raided for their tech, making them paranoid and isolationist.

2097: Building on prewar research, CIT survivors complete development of their Mass Relay teleportation device. Dubbing themselves simply as The Institute, they fully wall themselves off from the surface world and embark on an ambitious plan of underground expansion, scavenging what they need from the surface.

2131: The Institute develops gen-1 synths to act as surface operatives, mostly removing the need for Institute personnel to go to the surface. Now mostly insulated from violence, the Institute much more callous and combative towards surface dwellers.

2163: The Institute isolates samples of FEV from the air, and begins a program of carefully controlled mutation. The resulting supermutants are found lacking, and the program is put on hold.

2176: The Commonwealth People's Government is formed from several prominent settlements. The new nation takes steps to protect its people from the Institute’s aggressive scavenging methods, earning its ire. Though the institute takes steps to try and destabilize the CPG, their new gen-2 synths prove insufficient for the task.

2177: Reactivating their FEV program, the Institute begin producing supermutants from kidnapped wastelanders and releasing them into the commonwealth with the intent to destabilize the CPG. Through careful false-flag attacks using disguised synths, they manage to spark a state of war between the mutants and surface humans that will last for more than a century.

2180: The newly formed Commonwealth Minutemen, a volunteer citizen’s militia created by the CPG, help drive off the initial wave of supermutants from central Boston.

2180-2224: Tensions between the Institute and CPG continue to escalate. Though the efforts of the Institute’s FEV project hampers the young nation’s expansion, the supermutants are too disorganized and scattered to topple the government. Faced with an increasingly cohesive and rapidly developing CPG, the Institute begins work on its Gen-3 synth infiltrator project.

2225: The Institute discovers information on Vault 111. Preparations are made for an expedition to recover a pristine pre-war genetic code from one of the pre-war vault dwellers in cryostasis.

2227: The part where they murder your spouse and steal your kid happens.

2229: An early model synth infiltrator "malfunctions" in downtown Diamond city, exposing the existence of Gen-3 synths to the world. The cause of the malfunction is never found, though escaped synths often claim that it was an intentional suicide-by-cop.

2230: Realizing the security threat posed by the new Gen-3 synths, mid-ranking members of the CPG's nascent spy corps founds the town of Covenant over top of an abandoned tunnel network. Posing as a new settlement, almost no one outside the project know its true purpose: the town is actually a front for researching a method to discern humans from Gen-3 synths.

2233: The Institute begins its infiltration of the CPG using upgraded Gen-3 synths, killing & replacing key individuals at all levels of power. Though paranoia about synths continues to build, most fail to anticipate just how far the tech has advanced.

2235: The Institute finalizes development of an advanced model of Gen-4 synth, dubbed Coursers. Incorporating FEV and cybernetic enhancements, Coursers form an elite corps of assassins that eliminate anyone who learns about the Institute’s plans.

(Side note: I think coursers should have been so much weirder)

2237: Having completed their infiltration of the CPG, the Institute kicks off their plan to topple the CPG.

August 4: The Executive Chair of the CPG council, Robert Gray, is assassinated by his secretary in broad daylight. During the assassination and subsequent arrest, the secretary loudly declares that the Chair has been replaced by an Institute Synth.

August 12: Scandal breaks out as evidence of massive financial corruption is leaked to the public. Protests occur across the commonwealth as the full scope becomes clear.

August 26: A special election is held, and voters elect minister of transportation Patricia Weiss as Chair. She delivers a hawkish election speech warning the Institute to back down.

September 10: A portion of the CPG stages a coup, using claims of mass election fraud as justification amid mass public unrest. They capture most of the CPG council members, and declare them traitors to the people of the commonwealth. Weiss escapes and sets up a government-in-exile out of Quincy with the remaining CPG military. She issues a two week ultimatum to the coup’s leaders, demanding that they release the counselors and surrender.

September 20: Before the date of the ultimatum passes, the CPG council is executed via mass firing squad in the CPG council chambers. Public dissent boils over into active civil war. The Minutemen quickly declare neutrality, but their attempts to protect outlying settlements are hampered by the widespread violence and lack of volunteers.

October 30: Under the guise of a ceasefire negotiation, the coup regime arrests Weiss. She is put through a kangaroo court and hanged as a synth infiltrator, to the shock of the public.

November: Multiple settlements withdraw from the CPG as the violence escalates, Bunker Hill and Goodneighbor first among them. The CPG civil war begins to peter out as both sides lose support, and numerous CPG military units defect to become raiders in search of pay.

December: Loyalist forces gain the upper hand, begin a reign of terror style purge of the remaining CPG officials, and declare the coup defeated. Weakened by the withdrawal of numerous settlements in reaction to the violence of the purge, the Loyalist government promptly collapses. Remnants of the rebel CPG forces attempt to declare a new government out of University Point, but fail to attract any major settlements.

2238: The CPG totally collapses. The remnants of its military forces, both loyalist and rebel, defect to the gunners en masse; many, disillusioned with military life, become raiders. Only the Minutemen command staff, operating out of Fort Independence, remain cohesive.

The collapse of the CPG ushers in an era of violence lasting decades as raider warlords exploit the chaos to carve the Commonwealth up into bandit fiefdoms.

Rumors begin to circulate that several of the key players of the CPG’s collapse were secretly synths. In truth, the entire chain of events was planned to a T, and leaders on all sides had been replaced. Only the Minutemen were overlooked, being seen by the Institute as just ragtag volunteers.

Several synth infiltrators defect from the Institute, seeking a way to free themselves and their peers. The organization they found will eventually grow into the Railroad.

Covenant, its secrecy miraculously intact, becomes radicalized by the fall of the CPG. Their methods become more desperate and more barbaric as time goes on.

2240's: The Minutemen begin rebuilding support for the CPG among the populace, striking back against the raider warlords and defending settlements from their depredations.

2250: Supermutant attacks increase sharply as the Institute releases more and more mutants onto the surface in an attempt to stop the Minutemen from reforming the CPG.

2274: After weathering two decades of freaquent supermutant attacks, Fort Independence finally falls at the hand of a mirelurk queen; unknown to anyone on the surface, this was the work of the Institute, who used their advanced signals technology to drive the creature into a frenzy.

2282: General Becker dies, leaving the Minutemen leaderless. The militia quickly declines, becoming disorganized and factional; raiders quickly exploit the chaos.

2285: Disgusted by his role in the Institute’s FEV program, Doctor Brian Virgil sabotages the program, mutates himself, and escapes into the glowing sea with the accumulated research. Distraught by the sudden lack of new reinforcements, the commonwealth mutants face an extinction crisis. Many begin to question their way of life, among them a mutant named Strong.

2288: The Sole Survivor wakes up.

#I don't think this is perfect but I do personally think it has a lot more coherence than fallout 4's baseline story #The Institute being both totally disconnected from reliant on and genuinely terrified of the surface would go a long way to explain things #Coupled with dehumanization and insulation from the consequences it becomes very clear how they would turn out Like That(tm)#Explaining the massive amount of raiders as being a bunch of competing bandit warlords also makes way more sense than 'its just like that'#This would preferably go with a remake of the raiders as. y'know. a bunch of competing bandit gangs rather than a bunch of violent randos #The power vacuum being artificially maintained by the Institute so they can continue to use the surface like a larder ties it all up nicely #fallout 4 #fallout 4 meta

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spider-man-2o99 · 9 months

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ok i’m still On Break do not take this post as a sign that i’m like. Actively Tumblring again yet because i’m still not, 4 the most part, but i have had my ear to the ground for special interest things, of fuckign course, of course, bcuz i’m me, and i. just. i am .i’m so fucking sorry to all the new SM2099 comic fans who are only just now realizing just now how dire the straits are, here, LMAO. it has been this way for Years. earnestly and from the bottom of my heart i love spider-man 2099 so much and also nobody on the goddamn planet Cares About Him At All or can even fucking write him half-decently unless every single celestial bodie in the fucking milky way galaxy comes into perfect fucking syzygy, i think, i think, i think. why did u think we (me) had a psychotic episode after that fuckin movie dropped. fucksake. lord above. because it’s all always “ohhh being yourSELF and telling your OWN story your OWN way” until you Look A Certain Way and ARE A Certain Way and Have Symptoms That Look Frightening and Don’t Move Around Like ‘Normal’ People Should Move, fuckin’ freaky-ass creature beast-thing, and so on and so on and so on, Christ all-fuckin’-mighty. gets tiring. but. anywaygs.

it is far easier to be destructive, than constructive. so. ahem. sorry. refocusing. it seems quite simply that just yet another goddamn story missed the point that 90s future spider-man is a story about very plainly and simply loving each other as people. it’s a story about a severely depressed, miserable, cynical little man who finds new reasons to live in every kind person he meets, and there is an open earnesty to that, if nothing else, that no movie can take away 30 years later. anybody can decide to try and be a better person than the one they were yesterday, and that is goddamn important. to portray anything otherwise was an unfathomably cruel decision, on sony’s part, and as soon as we got trailer evidence that they were leaning into his more “intimidating” features back in ~dec. 2021, i.. pretty much Knew it was what they were gonna be doing with him. why wouldn’t they? i mean. who actually even cares about this obscure nobody, right? c-listers are the tried-and-true adaptational chameleons, anyways; they sure suckered in dumbasses like me, who still took blind hope in hook line and sinker, thinking he’d be important to the film, or at the very least portrayed sympathetically to his 30 years of established comic history as a character who is consciously aware that he is an adult survivor of fucking child abuse. but. c’est la fucking vie, i guess.

#talking tag #atsv #spider-man 2099 #i predicted All Of This and i am SO TIRED OF BEING RIGHT THAT I WANT TO THROW MYSELF IN2 THE SUN ABT IT :))))#i WANTED to be wrong. /CHRIST/ i wanted to be wrong so goddamn bad #articulation isnt at its peak rn. how do i even- /bridge/ the breadth of this gap. wwoof man like. just.#i just. did yall think i started writing the dissection fic with extreme violation + dehumanization themes Just Outta Nowhere?? y/k???#y’KNOW. haha. i am Intimately Aware firsthand with how years of it without reprieve shapes a brain over time. and. writing helps.#hhahaha. lord. id just go back 2 how i was Raised if i wanted 2 Constantly Hear so many ppl talkin abt how much they want evry Like-Me dead #(not-- not. not Like That. not in the nasty-ass too-online Way or whatever disgusting Assumptions that could Imply. im just a basket case.)#chroist.#not even . not even getting into the whole ‘also comic sm2099 is canonically staunchly anti-cop yet movieboy is weirdly fashy’ Thing.#i already Have a migraine im NOT getting into that right now #(holding back tears) wwelp looks like these next Seven Years Of Terrible Public Perception r gonna b long and suck so bad :))#ok goodbye again now im going back to frolicking morosely in the Fields . be safe drink some water be kind to urself and others. mwah.

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