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chaosintheavenue · 3 years

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Fallout Van Buren: The Basics

I have a lot of time on my hands at the moment, and entirely too much Van Buren information floating around in my head, so I decided to make a post summarising the main details of the game Van Buren could have been for those who want to know more about it, but would rather not trawl through pages and pages of design documents.

First up, for those that may not know, Van Buren was the codename of what would have become Interplay’s Fallout 3, had it not been cancelled during development. All that has ever been released is a tech demo with glitches galore and no direct relation to the intended plotline, some concept art, and a bunch of incomplete design documents.

Please note that, as a lot of planned content was scrapped even before the game itself was, some artistic interpretation is necessary to make the storyline flow, so some parts of my summary are my own personal takes on stuff.

(Warning: this is pretty long. Also, be aware that the New Plague gets involved in Van Buren a lot more than it did in any published games, so proceed with caution if you’re trying to avoid that sort of thing)

Plot overview:

The player character would start the game, in full Bethesda style, as a prisoner in an NCR prison. Choosing the crimes that had led to their imprisonment, and whether they were innocent or guilty of them in reality, was likely going to be part of the character creation and skill selection process.

At the start of the game, the Prisoner would wake up one day in a new cell in the automated, robot-managed Tibbets Prison. This prison was under attack by a group of rogue NCR soldiers led by a very skilled, but also very evil, scientist called Victor Presper. Many of the robot guards were damaged and weakened by this attack, and in the confusion some prisoners, obviously including the player, would have escaped.

Once away from the prison, the Prisoner was free to explore the map looking for more information on this Victor Presper, and would most likely end up wandering from place to place and completing a bunch of side quests for people they met along the way, as most Fallout protagonists do. More info is given on some of the locations they might have travelled to below!

At some point, the Prisoner would become aware that a large robot was pursuing them. This robot was ARGOS, controlled by the AI running Tibbets (ODYSSEUS), and its mission was to retrieve and recapture the escaped prisoners. If ARGOS did capture the player at any point, it would return them to their cell. Their original, still-damaged cell, which they could immediately escape from again. Yeah, nice work, ARGOS and ODYSSEUS…

Over time, the player would start to notice that the NPCs in locations they were visiting were becoming ill, and many would die. Somehow (it’s never specified how), it would be revealed that Tibbets was not just any prison, but a quarantine prison, and that all inmates- the player character included- were carriers of the New Plague, and had been spreading it to every location they visited on their travels.

(Quick lore break here: if you’re unfamiliar with the New Plague, its Wiki page is here, and you can find previous posts of mine about it here and here. Warning for detailed descriptions of illness, blood, death mentions, and parallels with current circumstances in all of these links!)

From here, the Prisoner had to round up the other escaped prisoners and return them to the facility to prevent further outbreaks- either by convincing them to return by various means, killing them and dragging their bodies back, or alerting ARGOS to their locations. Along the way, clues would appear that Presper was behind the whole fiasco, and was still working at odds with the player’s aims (as one design doc succinctly puts it, ‘that bastard is up to something’).

The overall main aims of the Prisoner (well, a Good Karma one, at least) would be:

To stop Presper

To cure the New Plague

To establish trade routes between settlements, likely involving getting the old trains network and running again. Of course, if done too early in the game, this would speed up the spread of the Plague…

Eventually, the Prisoner would find and confront Presper in space, on board a pre-war ballistic orbital missile base (aptly named B.O.M.B.-001), which still contained live nuclear warheads and had been activated by ODYSSEUS once the New Plague started to spread again. Presper’s plan right from the start was to activate this orbital base, then use its missiles to ‘clean the slate’ of the wasteland, so to speak, then start over with his own vision of humanity. The ending would have involved the Prisoner either launching the warheads at settlements they’d visited during the game, or blowing up the satellite with themselves on board to spare the wasteland.

Locations:

Boulder Dome- a pre-war science facility in Boulder, Colorado. Has a lot of New Plague information, making it a very useful location for more scientific Prisoners to work on a cure. Also contains a handful of environmental suit-wearing scientists who spend their days completing maintenance tasks to keep the Dome in working order, waiting in decontamination tunnels, and usually being generally mistrustful of one another. Yes, this is definitely Fallout, not Among Us!

Burham Springs- a former mining town in Utah that has been permanently burning for years. Home to the Gehennas, who will make an appearance below

Denver or Dog Town- a city of dogs. Let me repeat myself, a city of dogs

Hoover Dam- was going to be a large settlement, nothing at all like the version in New Vegas

New Canaan- a town of Mormons on the Great Salt Lake, as mentioned in New Vegas. Wouldn’t have had much significance in the overarching Plague plot as far as I can tell, but it takes a more central role in my own tweaked OC storyline because I saw an opportunity to tie VB and NV together through its characters. This location was cut during development and replaced with a smaller settlement called Jericho, but the mentions of New Canaan and complete silence on Jericho in NV mean that the New Canaan information is generally considered to be ‘more canon’

The Nursery- a pre-war facility that’s essentially a contained nature reserve to the extreme. There are lush green trees, clean water, and pre-war animals here. Also, the famous Harold would have made an appearance

Reservation- formerly Los Alamos (a real-life nuclear testing facility). Now a ghoul settlement, and also intensely radioactive. Almost a combination of the Glow and Necropolis or Underworld

This was just a brief summary of my personal favourites, but there are many more locations too!

Some of my favourite pieces of concept art:

(All taken from the Fallout Wiki)

Boulder Dome!

Gehennas!

Hoover Dam!

Reservation entrance!

I feel like this post wasn’t the most coherent, so if I made no sense or you want to hear about the planned storyline, locations, and companions in more detail, I strongly recommend Retcon Raider’s series on YouTube!

You’re also very welcome to ask or chat to me about any aspect fsghgf! That said, there are some areas of the lore I know a lot about (namely, the main storyline, the Boulder Dome, New Canaan, and anything remotely tied in with the New Plague stuff), and others that I’m not as familiar with just yet, so I’m not exactly an ever-flowing fountain of VB knowledge lol.

#fallout van buren #new plague #fallout lore

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thevaultturtle · 4 years

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I got one for you: Companions react to Sole getting so caught up in helping others they forget to take care of themselves and get proper sleep and it ends up biting them in the ass

Companions React to an Exhausted Sole Survivor Falling into Danger

Notes: First request on this blog! It’s also my first companion react post, so let me know what you think about it!

Warnings: None. It’s just under a cut because it got a little long.

Exhaustion wasn't something thatSole was completely unfamiliar with. They had faced it many times intheir pre-War life, especially after Shaun had been born, and becauseof that, they didn't think anything about facing it again.

Thatwas a mistake.

Inmost cases, exhaustion wouldn't have got you killed in a pre-Warworld, but in the post-apocalyptic nuclear Wasteland, it would getyou killed in almost every scenario. Sole learned that the hard way.

Afterlearning the truth about Shaun and the Institute, helping people wasone of the few things that kept Sole going in the new, unforgivingworld that they found themselves in, and they dedicated their everywaking moment to it. If they had to go without food or sleep to doso, so be it, so long as they helped everyone that needed it. Soledidn't necessarily consider themselves a hero, but they knew that theworld would never get better if people didn't help each other, andthey would give anything to fix the world so people could livepeacefully again.

Thiswas Sole's obsession, and although it was born from good intentions,it was still dangerous, not so much for others, but for Sole.

Ithad been days since Sole had properly slept, and as much as theytried to deny it, they were running on fumes. They were so dead seton making it to the next settlement to offer them help, that theydidn't even notice the feral Ghoul wandering out of a nearby ruinedbuilding, but it sure as hell noticed them, and before Sole knew it,they were being pushed to the ground, the feral's decaying handspoised to tear at their face.

Therewas nothing that Sole could do, and they closed their eyes, bracingfor their impending death and the eternal slumber that they wouldfall victim to, sure that nothing could save them, but then a bulletrang through the air. The feral fell dead, and Sole looked aroundthem, only to see their companion rushing over to them…

Cait

She will quickly take the feral's place, kneeling over Sole and yanking them up by the front of their shirt so they have to look her in the eyes while she yells at them.

She's pretty pissed, needless to say.

There aren't many people that Cait trusts and cares about in the world, and seeing one of those precious few nearly torn to shreds because they refused to take care of themselves will set off a righteous fury in her like nothing else could.

She's tempted to punch them for their negligence, but by some miracle, she restrains herself.

She will make them rest before setting out again, and she won't take any objections to that. Sole will sleep whether they want to or not, even if she has to indulge herself in that punch to make it happen.

Curie

"Oh! Why did you not say something?"

It's actually a bit surprising that she let Sole get to this point, because with all of her medical knowledge, Curie is no stranger to the signs of exhaustion.

Maybe Sole just hid their symptoms a little too well, but whatever the case may be, she'll be putting Sole on a bit of a lockdown for a while at the nearest bit of shelter that she can find.

She'll monitor them herself for that entire time, and she won't medically clear them for travel until she is 100% sure that something like this won't happen again.

She will also insist on giving Sole more frequent checkups for that same reason.

Danse

"I expected better from you, Soldier."

He's mostly just disappointed in Sole.

He expected them to take better care of themselves, especially while they had such an important mission (taking down the Institute) that they were so close to finishing.

He expected more from them as a member of the Brotherhood, and he hoped for more from them as a friend.

His disappointment mainly stems from his concern for their well-being, and he will put a halt to everything that they were doing until Sole rests.

He will also make them get a checkup from Cade when they return to the Prydwen, and he'll make sure that they don't budge until Cade clears them for travel again, because he refuses to let another comrade and friend die on his watch.

Deacon

He'll hide it well, but Deacon is actually really worried about Sole.

Before the feral incident, he tried to sneakily get Sole to take a break, complaining that he was tired and that he was the one who needed a break instead, but that obviously didn't work.

He was trying to spare their pride since he knew how important helping others was to them, but after the feral almost clawed their face off, the gloves will come off and he'll finally say something to them.

"Look buddy, you need a rest. You won't be able to help anyone as chewed up minced meat."

His tone will be completely serious, and that in and of itself is enough to make Sole rest for a bit.

He'll keep a close eye on them from then on out, and if Sole gets any worse, he'll bring them to Carrington, and he'd really like to avoid that, for several reasons.

Hancock

"And I thought I was tripping pretty hard."

He'll keep things jovial because he doesn't want to make Sole feel any worse than they already do, but he's undeniably worried about them.

"You need an upper, buddy?"

He won't actually give them chems, but he sure as hell will take some himself, and those chems will definitely be downers so he has an excuse to make Sole stop traveling for awhile.

The chems will conveniently last until he thinks that Sole has had enough rest, and he will repeat this performance as often as necessary until Sole starts taking care of themselves again.

MacCready

"Do you want to get ripped apart by ferals?!"

The situation hits him pretty hard at a deep level, for obvious reasons.

Mac feels like he can never truly repay Sole for what they did for Duncan, and in that split second before he took the feral out, he was afraid that he had truly and utterly failed the person who saved his son, in the exact same way that he failed Lucy.

It hit him hard, and it hurt.

He's relieved that he was able to save them in time, but he's pissed that the situation happened to begin with, so he'll berate Sole for a bit until he calms down.

He won't necessarily make Sole take a break, but he will take point on whatever it is that they're doing, regardless of any objections that Sole might have.

Nick Valentine

"Look, we can't have you sleepwalking your way through the Commonwealth."

His reaction is pretty calm, but that's not because he's any less concerned than any of the other companions.

He's worried about Sole, but he probably saw this coming a mile away.

He has strong memories of human Nick working himself to a similar point of exhaustion, so it wasn't hard for him to see this coming, and he was ready for it because of that.

He also knows how stubborn Sole can be when it comes to helping others, so he figured they'd need to learn the hard way why they had to keep taking care of themselves.

Needless to say, with his own personal lecture to go along with this hard-learned lesson, Sole will gladly take a rest before they move out again.

Old Longfellow

"You're not gonna survive out here for long if you don't rest some time, but if you want to keep goin’, I won't argue with you."

He also knows that Sole will have to learn the hard way, so he pushes them to keep going.

He thinks that this is the best time for them to learn this lesson, too, since they're already shaken up from the feral, and he also knows that they'll still be safe because he's watching their back.

He'll keep pushing them until they finally break down and can't keep going any longer.

He'll make them realize just how truly miserable they feel, and just how open they left themselves because their senses were dulled by their exhaustion, pointing out that if it hadn't been for him, the same thing would have happened again numerous times.

He'll be straight to the point with all of this, and it'll be more than enough to make Sole realize that he's right, and that they need to rest to help people to the best of their abilities.

Piper

"Take it easy, Blue! I know you're itching to help people, but you kind of have to stick around and, you know, stay alive to do that!"

She's a little exasperated that Sole put such little thought to their own wellbeing.

Like, it utterly baffles her that someone who focuses so much on every little problem that everyone else has could be so oblivious to their own ailments.

She'll tell them that, too, in a long, frustrated rant that Sole is bound to fall asleep during, and even if they don't, she'll still rant long enough that they'll have had plenty of time to unwind a little.

It's certainly not a conventional method of getting Sole to take a break, but it's undeniably effective.

Porter Gage

"Why the hell are you lookin' so weak, boss?!"

He's pretty disappointed and pissed that Sole let themselves get into such a poor position.

Weakness has a very high price in the Wasteland, especially when you're running around with raiders, and Gage would rather Sole not have to pay that price, not just for their sake, but also because he would probably have to share in that expense, as well.

He knows that he can't let something like this happen again and that Sole needs to shape up, so he'll tell them that, and he won't leave any room for argument.

He will also tell Sole that they need to stop wasting their time on helping a bunch of weak nobodies, but he knows that's a bit of a long shot. He can still try, though.

Preston Garvey

"General! Are you alright?"

Just pure concern right here.

Preston knows what Sole is going through because he's been through it himself.

He understands that unbrittled need to help others because that same need haunts him every day.

He also knows what that need can lead to.

His failure at Quincy broke him, and he almost didn't make it through that. He doesn't want Sole to go through the same thing, especially when the Commonwealth depends on them so much.

He'll practically beg them to rest, telling them that they'd never forgive themselves if they failed to help someone because they neglected to take care of themselves, and that is bound to strike an emotional chord with Sole, especially once Preston makes the connection to Quincy and his own struggles.

X6-88

"Unacceptable. We're leaving. Now."

X6 thinks that helping Wastelanders is a waste of time anyway, so he will have no issue relaying Sole back to the Institute at the first sign that there's something wrong with them.

Looking out for Sole is his priority, his mission, and he won't fail in that mission, no matter how much Sole argues against it.

Strong

"Hmph. Human weak. Never find Milk of Human Kindness like this."

Strong is on his own mission and he won't let a little bit of exhaustion get in the way of that.

If Sole can't keep going to do what they need to do and to help him with that mission, then he'll just carry them so they have to help him anyway.

Sole might as well just catch some sleep while he does that.

Ada & Codsworth

Ada: "Sir/Ma'am! I cannot advise that you go any further."

Codsworth: "Oh, Sir/Mum, I do wish that you would get some rest! I'm worried that you won't make it home at this rate!"

These two have pretty similar reactions, in that they will voice their concerns, but they won't actually do much to stop Sole if they want to keep going since they both have an inherent desire to serve and follow orders.

However, with how often they voice this concern (especially Codsworth), Sole will probably rest just to get them to stop.

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falloutforties · 4 years

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Five Years {Chapter Two}

Description: Nora meets some new friends, and encounters some of the worst creatures the wasteland has to offer. But it’s no big deal, really. Lemons into lemonade, right?

Warnings: Again, no real warnings for this chapter aside from language and some violence.

Note from the Author: This story is also on ao3, if you’d rather read it there, but I will continue to post it here as well! Writing and publishing this story has given me something exciting to do during quarantine, so I hope that someone sees it and also finds some excitement.

II. BAD RADS

From the second she hit the ground, she decisively ignored the pang in the soles of her feet and sprinted across the mottled street, dodging upturned cars and pieces of unsettled tar that littered the road. The thing was moving fast, faster than she would ever have imagined, sweeping great gusts of wind across the city as it moved.

It was beautiful in an incredibly terrifying way, she had to give it that. If it were stuffed and displayed behind a glass case in a museum, she would have gawked at it, but it wasn’t stuffed, its heart was still beating, and she was losing stamina.

“Fuck it!” She shouted and hoisted the mini-gun onto her hip with a wretched groan. Everything she did hurt her physically, but the thought of being ripped limb from limb by the creature seemed to hurt more, so she suffered the massive bruise that would certainly grow from her hip bone into her ribcage where the mini-gun sat spinning idly.

“RED BUTTON!” Screamed Garvey from the museum’s balcony. “THERE’S A RED BUTTON! PRESS THE RED BUTTON! RED BUTTON!”

He kept repeating it, over and over, and it took her mind a few seconds to process before she spotted it, and the mini-gun began to whir at a frightening pace. As it heated up, the creature lunged towards her with the bloody debris of a raider stuck between its teeth and on its horns, dripping bits of lung onto the street. She could have vomited, but there was no time. She would have to reschedule.

“GET FUCKED, YOU SLIMY BASTARD!” If her plan didn’t work, she would have looked foolish screaming such harsh words just before getting ripped apart. They would have been excellent last words, but they wouldn’t look very pretty printed on a marble tombstone. Much to her surprise, and the aesthetic benefit of her epitaph, the gun began firing right into the monster’s chest, finally sending it sprawling out across the street.

As the ringing in her ears died, she watched the monster’s enormous chest heave ragged breaths as it died. The mini-gun still spun in front of her, ready in case the monster had a friend, but the streets grew an eerie quiet that replaced the ringing with a stale, audible silence.

“Fucking shit, fuck, fuck, shit, fucking fuck,” she muttered. The mini-gun finally gave way and crashed into the gravel beneath her as her knees buckled, sending her face-forward into the rubble. She heard Garvey’s feet hit the pavement and the frantic calls of Sturges behind him.

“I’m fine, guys,” she assured. In her mind, she was waving her hand at them as a sign of life, but her physical body was unaware of her intentions as it lay limp and crumpled like a rag doll. “Don’t worry, I’m alive. Just a little tired. Just gonna take a little nap here, right on the road. No worries, no worries.”

“Get her off the ground, Sturges, we’ve got to get her inside.”

“I’m on it, boss.”

She felt Sturges’s roughened hands scoop beneath her armpits, hoisting her from her pathetic position into his arms. She vaguely understood that this was the first real human contact she had in so long, but she couldn’t help but feel embarrassed by it. She imagined Nate’s face, scornfully watching her as another man carried her to safety.

“Thank you,” she said as she was set on a cushion on the lobby’s floor. The Minutemen surrounded her, watching to see if her eyes would shut permanently. “I’m fine, folks. Don’t worry about me.”

“That was some show, ma’am. I’ve been handling a gun as long as I can remember, but I don’t think I would last that long against a Deathclaw.”

“Is that what it’s called? Man. I guess that makes sense, though.”

“Never seen a Deathclaw before?”

“Nah, never had the pleasure,” she intoned with a dreamy smile. Nora was just happy to be alive, even if it meant she might live to see another Satan-Lizard hybrid. The sight of Preston Garvey sat in front of her with a concerned expression on his kind face made her swell with pride, and Sturges posted by the front door made her feel safe. She liked the wastelanders. She liked all the people she’d met— she even liked the raiders, in a weird way. Everyone was plucky and happy to just be alive.

“Once you’re feeling up to it, you ought to come with us. We heard of an old neighborhood close by that would make a good spot for a settlement. Sanctuary Hills. Appropriate name, huh?”

“Are you sure this is a good idea, Garvey?” Marcy questioned from her place against the far wall. “We might be safer holed up in this place.”

“We’ll never know unless we try. Sanctuary might be exactly the kind of place we need.”

“Sanctuary will be good for you,” Nora interrupted, and Garvey turned to her in surprise. “I used to live there. Before the war, that is.”

“The war? What war?”

“The war. It’s a long story. I’ll tell you when I’m not at death’s doorstep, but I think Sanctuary Hills would be a perfect home for the Minutemen.”

She closed her eyes and pictured the little settlement in her mind, but for the first time, she saw it as it was, the wrecked little suburban paradise that sat just below the looming hill of Vault 111. She saw the skeletons of houses and the spindly arms of irradiated trees that grew through the empty windows. She saw the empty beds, the dirty halls, the rusted doorframes. And she saw life in that. She saw Preston Garvey stepping lively down the neighborhood streets at night with his hands in his pockets, whistling a song no one knew the name of. She saw Marcy and Jun huddled together in bed on a cold night, listening to the crickets chirp in the woods outside.

There was life in Sanctuary Hills. It was hidden in the darkened corners of ruined houses, but it was there, and it was perhaps even more meaningful than before the war.

“Alright then. Everyone rest up. By morning, we’ll move on to Sanctuary Hills.”

On the afternoon of the next day, she sat cross-legged on the floor of her Sanctuary home, where she once would have kneeled on the sticky plasticky linoleum, scrubbing at grout because the Hawthorne’s were coming over for Sunday brunch the next day, and they would be keenly inspecting the grout.

Recently, she had been practicing a train-of-thought exercise in which she let her thoughts go wherever they wanted. Most times, she kept a strict adherence to thought-rules. She couldn’t afford to think with too much sentimentality or hope, because the word no longer conformed to such things, but she allowed herself moments of wildness when she felt that her feelings could no longer be restricted to the dusty back corners of her head.

My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare. I had to cram so many things to store everything in there.

She wondered where she would be in five years, and for the first time, she seemed to notice that her prescience did not extend to the rest of the year, even. She would just have to wait and see the next morning, and then the next, and the next, until she woke up and knew she would die.

Assuming she would be alive in five years, would she have wasted away? Turned to chems in her misery, taking hits of jet between grand Nietzschean thoughts about the meaninglessness of life? Would she succumb to the horrors of radiated life, her skin beginning to pool in rough gauntlets down to the tips of her fingers?

I do have to admit— being irradiated enough to glow green would look cool as fuck.

Fuck, fuck. FUCK.

She loved swearing. Even in her head, it felt liberating. Before the bombs fell, she had never once swore aloud, much less for people to hear. The language of the wasteland was beautifully rough, and she loved hearing even the most profane raiders spit vitriol at her, even as she shot back from behind an old Gunner’s barrier.

“FUCK!” She yelled out loud, with a smile. She wasn’t sure if Codsworth heard her, or if he was appalled at her sudden outburst of foul language, but she didn’t care. He would understand.

She wondered errantly if he was programmed graciously enough to be able to swear so violently himself.

If Codsworth said ‘fuck’, that would make this whole thing worth it, I think.

It had been three weeks since she had pulled herself from that damned vault, and so far, she had to give the Nuclear Apocalypse credit. It had really done a number on good ole Planet Earth, and it was certainly creative in its exploits.

Two-headed cows? Beautiful, brilliant, exceptional storytelling. Conceptually, it was all very nice. In practice? She thought it could do better.

Three weeks out of cryogenic storage, and the worst the wasteland had done to her thus far was get a switchblade stuck in her leg, which she in turn stuck into a raider’s leg. She was turning radioactive lemons into radioactive lemonade, and it was spicy in ways that lemonade shouldn’t be, but at least she wasn’t dead.

“Mum,” Codsworth interrupted her train of thought as he meandered into the living room. He had a few spots of rust on him now, an addition she was sure would infuriate him if she knew whether he was able to see himself in a mirror.

He’s not a vampire, he’s a robot. Of course he can see himself in a mirror. Just like he can see me.

“Hi, Codsworth,” she replied. She stood up from the floor and her joints creaked. That was a fun new problem that came with being over 200 years old, she had discovered. Her joints now sounded like the sputtering of an old car engine. She wasn’t built for this apocalypse business.

“Your friends from Concord have arrived, and their leader requests your presence.”

“Thank you, Codsworth.”

She wiped a stray tear from her eye that she hadn’t been aware of prior and headed towards the door to see her new ragtag group of friends making their way across the bridge to Sanctuary Hills, the Red Rocket Truck Stop looming behind them.

She hadn’t been completely useless in her three weeks in the wasteland. In fact, Nora was quite proud of herself. She had always wondered if she would survive in one of those tacky zombie movies that ran on weekends on Channel 42— “The Commonwealth’s Home for All Things Sci-Fi and Horror!”— and now she knew for a fact that she would survive.

In three weeks, Nora had restored the necessary parts of her old Sanctuary home, given her old robot butler a dusty bowler hat, traveled to Concord, beat the Ever-Loving Shit out of some giant glowing cockroaches, fought a Satanic Lizard, and met a really cool dog. The dog was now sleeping in a little red doghouse she had moved to her front lawn.

She had always wanted a dog. Having a baby, Nora had once thought, would be a gateway drug to getting a dog. That was Pro #4 on her list of Pros and Cons of baby-having. Now, she could have a dog, totally baby-free.

Take that, Nate.

As soon as Preston stood square-shouldered before the first house on the street, a menacing roar of thunder split the sky, and nauseous yellow clouds rolled in over the horizon. Nora wanted to think that it looked like the end of the world, but the apocalypse had already happened. This was just another awful thing she would have to live through.

She stood up and gazed at the sky under the shade of her palm as Garvey approached.

“Radstorm coming,” he mentioned casually.

“Radstorm?”

“Radiation storm. Bad news for anyone without a gas mask.”

“Radiation storm,” she muttered under her breath. “Of course there are radiation storms. What do people typically do during a radiation storm?”

“Stay inside, if you can. In your case, I would recommend getting a good sleep. You don’t look so good.”

“You sure you don’t need my help?” She asked, praying that the answer was no, but she couldn’t bring herself to go to sleep without at least asking. Damned maternal instincts.

Preston chuckled, “No, you go ahead to sleep, ma’am. You’ve already done more than we could ask for.”

Nora wondered if she would be able to sleep in her old bed. She hadn’t even tried, opting always for the Hawthorne’s old queen bed, now doubly-stuffed with Bloatfly larvae in the seems. Every time she walked into her old bedroom, she had to walk down the hall, and when she walked down the hall, she had to walk by Shaun’s room.

The child haunted her in so many ways, and she decided, after breaking out of a high-security vault and killing a Deathclaw in the middle of Concord, perhaps she was more able than she thought. She was going to find that child. Shaun was going to come home.

#deacon x sole survivor #deacon fo4 #fallout 4 deacon #fallout 4 fanfiction #female sole survivor #also i've never tagged a fic before?#if anyone is reading this and has tips on how to properly tag a fic... let me know bb

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things-we-used-tc-share · 5 years

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I just wanna set the world on fire

Warnings: Gun mention, violence mention, post-apocalyptic surroundings, cussing, alcohol, cigarettes, death mentions

Ships: Logicality, Prinxiety.

Plot: In a post-apocalyptic world, two brothers make strange acquaintances, one must live with the knowledge that one day his lover will not be able to consciously think, nor remember him.

((I’m trying something...very different with this one, sort of a Fallout 4 AU I guess? For those who aren’t familiar with the Fallout series, I’ll give a little back story before you read the fic. It’s based in a wasteland after nuclear bombs have been dropped and the remaining humans, and subsequent monsters created by the radiation, have to survive. Fallout 4, in particular, is based 200 years after the bombs have dropped in Boston))

((Edit, also: In the Fallout Universe they have things called Stimpaks that heal all health and Radaway which takes away the radiation, as these are mentioned.

As Patton is a Ghoul in this fic I should explain Ghouls are humans that have taken A Lot of radiation damage, resulting in skin scarring, either black eyes or very pale irises with the white parts red, and very gravelly voices, some Ghouls become feral early on in their lives, some manage to stay normal for the majority of their lives, but as far as I know eventually all Ghouls become feral canonically in Fallout lore so I thought it would make some good angst.))

((Edit 2: A sequel too this with a VERY angsty ending, which is alluded too in this fic, will be posted on A03, and if anyone wishes too read it please PM me for the link))

“I don’t even get why up here,” Patton sighs, closing the box of Stimpaks and setting them beside him as he sits cross-legged on the roof of the old gas station they had turned into their personal fortress. Logan pulls the cigarette out of his mouth and watches the sky turning red as the night approaches.

“It’s a nice view,” He replies with a shrug “Where are the others?” Patton shuffles closer and leans his head on the other man’s shoulder, pulling his spiked goggles off his head as he does.

“Roman’s checking the turrets, Virgil is putting out the fires for the night,” Logan nods and offered Patton the cigarette, which is politely declined the same way it always is. He usually replies with something along the lines of ‘I’m dying fast enough as it is Logan, without your cancer sticks’. Insinuating they were ever Logan’s in the first place, occasionally he’ll buy a pack, most of them are piliged off dead raiders. Patton didn’t want a dead man’s cigarette either.

“I wonder what it was like, before the war,” Patton hums quietly, the clattering of stairs makes them look up, Roman and Virgil smiled tiredly at the two, placing their weapons down next to the Stimpaks and sitting down next to Logan and Roman.

“Buildings were probably in one piece,” Logan says gently “The sky probably looked blue, instead of grey, green or red, people probably didn’t have to use Radaway every day,”

“I’ve seen pictures,” Virgil says softly “In some of the vaults, I saw pictures, they were black and white but, the roads were all together, not just muddy and cracked, the trees all had leaves, there were flowers and real vegetables,” He stares longingly out at the devastated world, he wonders if nature cried as much as humans must have the day the bombs dropped. “Children were children, probably, they were unlikely to have to learn how to use a gun before they were 5 years old, and animals were...different,” They look down from the roof to their dog, who was barking aimlessly at leaves. “Although dogs didn’t look different, there were smaller dogs though, I guess only certain breeds made it through, cos I only see big dogs,”

They’d found Dogmeat wandering around on his own and he didn’t seem to have an owner, so they (Patton) decided they all had a new pet. “People looked happier,” Virgil finally finishes, grabbing a beer off of Logan and cracking it open on their designated rock. “But it was people who ruined it all in the fucking end, greed, spite, and too much power bestowed in obnoxious leaders,”

Roman steals one of Logan’s cigarettes “Human arrogance, and I guess we’ve gotta pay for it, if we’re even human anymore really, most of us have got more radiation than DNA,” He looks exhausted, his hands full of oil and dirt, with scratches over his arms and face from the days work. He leans his head on Virgil’s shoulder and the younger presses a kiss atop his hair, before yawning.

“Ain’t gonna be fucking anything left of us, eventually, we’re all gonna be ghouls one day,” Ghouls, although initially human, were so damaged by the radiation that their brains begin to rot away, leaving them feral. At that point, there’s no choice left but to put a bullet in them. When the Sanders brothers, Logan and Roman, had found Virgil, he’d been fighting off seven of them at once. Roman had said he’d always known he’d fall in love with a sharpshooter.

Virgil took down all seven of them in under three minutes. Logan had been suitably impressed and asked the other if he would like to join them, strength in numbers after all. It took less than a week for him and Roman to become...whatever it was they were. They were all running on borrowed time, after all, it had come as no surprised to Logan when his brother had taken interest in the black-haired wildcat of a man. He was ferocious, deadly, good with a gun, and could put a bullet in an enemy two seconds before the enemy has even noticed he’s there.

Roman likes men that he knows could kill him, as it so appears.

It had come more of a surprise when Patton joined their little group, and he was running off even more borrowed time. Because Patton was not as Human as the rest of them.

The youngest was a Ghoul, a non-feral Ghoul, who they’d found in an abandoned house of an abandoned town, eating freshly cooked meat and purified water. Virgil had pointed a gun at him and the other had asked if he’d like some water.

For a Ghoul, he had a sense of humor and was hopelessly naive. He’d grown up alone from the age of 5, knew how to use a gun but preferred to just run away, and spent most of his time scavenging corpses for food. He was acutely aware that a day could come where he no longer had a brain and therefore tried to live as if he had nothing.

Then he met them. Virgil had been so shocked about been asked for water that he actually lowered the gun “I...what?” He asked, and Roman laughed. Logan raised his eyebrows and Patton held up the glass of water.

“I built a water purifier in the nearby lake, so I have a lot of water, as long as there’s rain!” Roman refused to stop laughing, but took the glass of water anyway. “I’m pretty good at building things, I find a lot of pre-war schematics in the places I uh...borrow from,”

“Can we keep him? Please?” The younger Sanders brother had begged his partner and brother, “Also this water actually tastes like water, not mud, guys please?” Logan drinks some of the water, walking around Patton with a concentrated stare.

“He’s a Ghoul,” Virgil finally fills in the silence, gesturing at him “Feral or not, he’s still a fuckin’ Ghoul,” Roman pouts and Logan waves his hand at the two of them before they start bickering like the old married couple they'd never see to be.

“We could do with someone who's good with mechanics,” Logan finally says “Roman’s useless at everything, and me and Virgil can’t make heads or tails of anything remotely requiring an engine, as much as I hate to admit, I think this Ghoul could actually be useful,” Patton blinks his pale white eyes, and beams. Roman cheers.

Humans weren’t fond of Ghouls, or really anything, not even other Humans most of the time. This wasteland had made everyone a fear, and outside the fortressed walls of the nearest city, the Commonwealth was not an easy place to try to survive. Virgil didn’t trust Patton at first, he’d snap at him a lot, Logan asked him to stop and sort his attitude out, but surprisingly Patton came to Virgil’s defense. “It’s alright,” He said, putting down his tools for a moment. “Humans are supposed to be scared of us, it’s instinct, it’s a natural reflex to us because we’re terrifying when we turn feral,” He sighs, “And one day it happens too us all yanno? One day one of you are going to have too...” He falls quiet “But anyway, it’s not his fault, he’s right to be scared of me, and I don’t expect kindness from Humans ever, I’ve spent most of my life dodging bullets and not firing at me is the most kindness I’d expect out of any of you,”

Logan goes very quiet and he thinks he sees Patton differently now, all Humans held a pre-conceived idea of Ghouls, that they lacked sentience. Patton didn’t lack sentience, nor compassion or empathy. He sat amongst people who he was convinced were afraid of or hated him, and created things for them to use and protect themselves knowing, in the long run, it might be the things they use against him one day. For once in his life, his heart twinged, and he had no idea how to respond.

Virgil eased up after that.

It came as even more of a surprise when Logan and Patton became more romantically involved, it was a long process, as the two of them could not have been more emotionally disconnected from the world in terms of romance if they tried. Logan had been the one to swallow his pride and admit it, despite his long history of refusing to do just that.

“I need to talk to you,” Patton, who had just finished building a turret for the third entrance too their settlement, hums in response and sets down his screwdriver, pulling his goggles up from his eyes and resting them atop his messy brown hair (That’d been another thing, Logan had never actually seen a Ghoul with hair before, it had intrigued him).

“What’s up, Lo?” The turret beside him sparks slightly, he hits it and it begins to whir into life, “Sorry, that’s better, what did you need?”

“I needed too...confess,” He’s stood rigidly still, scratching the back of his neck. “I appear to have... realized...” He trails off and coughs, trying to understand why it was so hard to form words in this situation. Patton raises his eyebrows. “Look, matters of the heart are not my forte,” Patton chuckles.

“I can see that, smoothskin,” Logan had initially, thought smoothskin to be an insult to Humans, but somehow when Patton says it, it sounds affectionate. “My eyes might be fucked, but I’m not actually blind,” Logan smiles despite it, but it quickly falls as Patton’s does “But, you do understand the...consequences of loving a Ghoul, right?” His face looks sad, even his eyes somehow, look haunted. “You do understand one day I’ll...I’ll turn feral?” Logan nods.

“I’ve considered this,” He says softly “But, the day will come one day no matter what, so why not make what’s left of our lives worth it?” Patton smiles and nods.

“Yeah, alright,”

Virgil had dropped his gun in surprise when he’d been told, Roman had been mid-drink of water and choked. Logan shrugged, and Patton patted the younger Sanders’ brother on the back to help ease his choking. Later, Roman and Logan would have a lengthy conversation on whether this was a good idea, although he simply adored Patton and all he created, “One day one of us are gonna have to put a bullet in him, do you understand that Logan?” He spoke frantically, running his hands over his face. “One day he’s going to turn Feral and there’s nothing we can do about that, the radiation is eating his brain,”

“We don’t know for sure Roman, the Rad-X and Radaway could be helping, and how is it any different from losing one of us to a gunshot? Every day, we risk our lives, but at the end of it we don’t just push each other away, would you give up Virgil if it was the same situation?” Roman falls silent.

“Of course not,”

“Exactly,”

So now, the four of them drink on top of the gas station, smoking a cigarette and drinking as if the world is always ending. Patton’s scrap pile of torn apart robots and cars glints in the setting sun, whilst the turrets whirred quietly in the deathly silence. Four men at the end of the world, whilst the radio with only one station crackles with music.

“I don’t wanna set the world on fire,

I just wanna start, a flame in your heart,”

@analogical-mess // @unikornavenger // @mycatshuman // @creativity-killed-thekitten //@theresneverenoughfandoms//@charmingprincey//@aclickonapostwillchangeyourlife//@heck-im-lost //@k9cat//@stilljittery//@romansleftshoulderpad //@sanderssideslibrary //@max-is-tired//@therealmoshar//@punsterterry//@trashypansexual // @miserykillme

Add yourself too my taglist: Sanders Sides/Thomas Sanders

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1dfangirls35 · 6 years

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The Fallout Chapter 1

After nuclear war leaves the world in shambles, Charlotte Breslow finds herself simply trying to survive, until an unexpected stranger reminds her of what it means to live again.

Read on Wattpad

Chapter 1- 463

463 days. 463 days have passed since the world as I knew it ended. It has been 463 days since I last saw my parents. 463 days since I last binged on Netflix. 463 days since I wandered through the grocery store, checked my email, or navigated through the lovely Los Angeles traffic.

I pull out my notepad from inside my worn black backpack. Its once light blue edges now wearing down to a dusty tan color. The spine binding beginning to loosen, enough so it doesn't quite stay open. I flip to the inside cover and trace my fingers over the "To our dearest Charlotte, may your journey await" in my mother's swirly script.

I flip to the page I've marked last, with the edge bent slightly inwards. 463, I write in bold print. Wednesday, July 15th, 2020. I stare at it for a moment, letting it sink in. Wrapping my head around those numbers, that date. It was the only thing that I had to grasp onto anymore after all.

"And what day would it be today?" 463 days ago I would have jumped at the sound of my little brother Luke's voice behind me. Today, I don't even bother to turn around.

"Today is Wednesday, July 15th," I respond.

"Well then happy hump day Charlie!" Luke pulls off some obnoxious dance move and I roll my eyes. Sometimes Luke's sense of humor was the only thing getting me through the day.

"Happy hump day Luke," I respond back with a grin, although we both knew there was no such thing as hump day anymore.

I shove the notebook back in its assigned pocket for safekeeping, and begin to gather my belongings. There wasn't much anymore. The blanket my grandma knitted for me before I left for college. The hairbrush that kept me from developing a rat's nest at the nape of my neck. The small pillow which had a hard lump I couldn't quite get rid of. My backpack, which carried things that I didn't dare use. The duffle bag where Luke and I kept all the necessities, soap, Pork and Beans, matches, and of course Oreo Cookies. Today the bag felt a little lighter, which meant that once again we were growing low on the very items keeping us alive.

"Where to today?" Luke asks as he slides into the drivers seat of the maroon Honda Odyssey we lovingly referred to as Gertrude. I was always the navigator, because apparently my six months post graduation living in California had given me the knowledge to navigate its every where about.

"Liam told me to check out Pomona. He said they found some good stock ups there last week."

"Where's he been anyway, we haven't seen Harry and him in ages." Ages was a bit of an exaggeration, it had only been 12 days by my records, but twelve days out on our own seemed like so much longer.

"Twelve days. It hasn't been ages, its been twelve days,." I partly snap. Luke always had a small level of distrust in Liam,Harry as well. He argues I don't know either of them well enough to be trusting our lives to them. I argue that in this time there isn't anyone else left to trust our lives to. "Remember I told you they were going to follow that lead on the safe zone Liam heard about."

"You mean the safe zone that Liam made up?" Luke says back with a roll of his eyes.

"It very well might be out there Luke, what do you want to do wander around this wasteland for the rest of your life?" Luke grows mute at my comment, and I wonder if I've come at him a little too strong. Death had become quite a sensitive subject considering recent events.

"Let's try Pomona today. We are going to meet back up with Liam and Harry on Friday," I say. If you had asked me 463 days ago who would be the leader of the group of four survivors in a nuclear fallout, I definitely wouldn't have volunteered my name. Hell, I wouldn't have even counted myself as a survivor. But a lot has changed in 463 days, that's for certain.

********

The Spears Ridge neighborhood was marked by a large, multi-tone rock on the corner of the street. A large sign indicating a new neighborhood was usually a sign that it would be a good location. Neighborhoods with signs were like that, full of well-stocked cupboards and closets. Luke slowly turns Gertrude around the corner, driving slowly as I look ahead for any sign of others.

The streets look deserted, and from what I could tell they hadn't been touched for a while. We pull up to a large brownstone at first. After one more survey of the area we decide this is a good place to start. Luke and I each grab a duffle and head towards the door.

As we approach the front door, Luke checks the door frame for the key. I scour the mat and under the flower pots.

"Got it," Luke exclaims, holding a small silver key in his hand. That's one thing I'd learned being out here: everyone had the same hiding places for their spare keys. Luke slides the key into the lock and I soon hear the satisfying click that means we have access.

Walking in we can see its been left fairly untouched. There's a slight disorder that was no doubt a result of the warnings we heard 463 days ago. But there wasn't any disorder that suggested someone else had been here to raid through the closets.

"Jackpot," Luke says aloud as he opens a pantry full of canned goods. I head upstairs and raid the bathroom, finding ample soap, shampoo and even some badly needed lotion. I find the closet of a young woman, and am so pleased by her clothing tastes that I snag a few outfits, pushing them into my bag.

"To the next one?" I ask Luke as I walk back down the stairs. He gives me a head nod and we make our way towards the front door once again. We barely take a step out the door when we hear it. The noise that even 463 days hadn't erased the response of my hair standing on end. The sound of a gun shot.

"Don't move," I reach out to grab Luke's shoulder holding him in place. We hear incomprehensible shouting, but no more gun shots. Seconds later we hear the sound of one car race down the drive, my heart stops for a moment as they rush past our vehicle, but luckily they don't seem to notice. Another vehicle rushes off behind them. We wait a few minutes, trying to return our pulse to a normal rhythm. The road becomes silent once again.

"So I guess we better head back then," Luke says grabbing for the keys in his back pocket.

"Why would we do that?"

"Why wouldn't we? You heard those gun shots. Someone else was here," I can tell by the paleness of my brother's face that he had gotten a little spooked. I should have thought that through before going to a high profile neighborhood that Liam suggested. When Liam heard things, others did too.

"Luke, listen to me," I grab my brother's shoulder in a reinforcing grasp. "Someone else was here, but they are gone now. You heard them race off didn't you? They left, two vehicles left. We will be fine," Luke takes a deep breath. "C'mon," I say standing to my feet and slinging my black duffle across my shoulder once again.

The next house doesn't have much. The following looks like they hadn't even moved in. We walk up to the third house. When Luke tries the door its already open, not atypical. We walk in and observe the surroundings. Its a bit of a mess, but when we open the kitchen cabinets we find that nothing has yet been looted. There's enough food in there to last us months.

"We might need another bag," Luke says with excitement.

It's while we are filling the second bag to the brim that I hear it. A loud crash from the upper level. We instantly freeze. Luke looks at me with his "I told you so" eyes. I bring a finger to my lips and draw out the knife that I carry at the back of my belt nowadays. You could never be too careful anymore, especially after what happened when Liam and I went to Beverley Hills .

I begin to creep up the stairs, knife in hand. It's then that I hear another thud, the sound of a body hitting the floor. "Shit!" The voice echoes through the hallways, its deepness has a strange noise to it, almost resembling an accent. I put my back to wall as I reach the top of the staircase, and hold the knife to my chest. Then, taking a deep breath, I reveal myself to the person sharing the house with us.

Next Chapter

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mikemortgage · 5 years

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Fallout 76 review: Buggier than a wet Saskatchewan summer

Score: 4.0/10 Platform: Xbox One (reviewed), PlayStation 4, Windows PC Developer: Bethesda Game Studios Publisher: Bethesda Softworks Release Date: November 14, 2018 ESRB: M

Fallout 76 is quickly becoming a cautionary tale in how not to make games.

In an attempt to capitalize on the growing popularity of online and cooperative play, Bethesda Game Studios opted to make the latest entry in its long-running and very popular series of post-nuclear apocalypse games an online multiplayer experience. “Fallout with friends” is what people were calling it (including me). This sparked instant hatred among fans who love dedicated single-player games and saw the move to online play as a betrayal. These players were never going to enjoy Fallout 76, no matter how it turned out — an early warning sign that the game was headed for trouble.

But the problem with Fallout 76 isn’t that there are other people in the world with you as you play. Servers limit the number of players in each instance of the game’s huge world — four times that of any previous Fallout — to just 16, and as a result I’ve rarely run across anyone else while playing. When I have stumbled upon someone else they’ve almost always behaved well, by which I mean we simply ignore each other (I’m just as uninterested in Fallout multiplayer as it seems most other players are). Worries that I would be relentlessly attacked by other players, or that they would relentlessly destroy any camps I built have proven for naught. The handful of times I have seen antagonizing players in my world — they’re handily marked on the map with a big red WANTED symbol, meaning that they’ve attacked another player — I’ve simply blocked them so they couldn’t see where I was.

Granted, online play does introduce some issues not present in solo games, such as the inability to play without an Internet connection, to pause the action, or to do nifty things like slow down time during combat. These are bummers, sure, but not deal breakers.

The real problem with Fallout 76 — and one that will prove an absolute deal breaker for many — is that it is buggier at launch than any other game I’ve ever played.

Fallout 76 is shaping up to be Fallout with friends

He said, she said: Pokemon: Let's Go, Pikachu!

Hitman 2 review: When more of the same isn't so bad

I’ve encountered missions that I couldn’t complete because of a key object being glitched. I’ve fallen through the world’s floor into empty space. I’ve had the game freeze and kick me out countless times. I’ve seen all location and objective markers disappear from my map, making it impossible to do anything. The brown bag containing all of my loot where I last died has been rendered invisible, impossible to collect even when I’m right on top of it. Holotapes often won’t play when I pick them up. Recently repaired weapons sometimes become broken again for no reason. My action point meter sometimes remains full even when I’m running or encumbered (at least this last one is a help rather than a hindrance).

I could keep going, but you probably get the picture. Fallout 76 feels like a game months or more away from being ready to launch to the public. It’s not even properly optimized for performance. Hiccups where enemies freeze and then jump a few metres closer or to the left or right are commonplace — this despite looking like a five-year-old game not even close to being on the same graphical level as open-world contemporaries such as Red Dead Redemption 2 and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.

All of this said, it does feel like Fallout. Don’t let the game’s more hyperbolic detractors convince you otherwise. It’s not like Bethesda’s other online experiment, The Elder Scrolls Online, which feels almost nothing like the single-player Elder Scrolls games. Everything from collecting resources and crafting gear to using and upgrading power armour to jamming around on your Pip-Boy — the series’ iconic wrist-mounted computer — will be instantly recognizable to returning players. Even movement and combat feel pretty much the same as in past games.

What’s more, the artists have maintained the franchise’s always appealing retro-futuristic visual style. And most locations are loaded with discoverable lore that provides further insights into the series’ fascinating alternate history world, in which just a few key collective cultural decisions in the 20th century sent America down a different path than the one we know today. Expect familiar plot threads exploring massive corporate corruption, exploited workers and consumers, and a blind faith in the promise of technology even greater than that which we feel today. Finding and following these stories — presented primarily through computer logs, handwritten notes, and audio recordings — is one of the highlights of the game.

But even this typically robust part of the Fallout experience isn’t as strong as it has been in the past, likely due to Bethesda choosing not to include any human non-player characters in the world. This was done so that if you see another human in the world, you’ll know it’s being controlled by a player. But the upshot is that there are none of the towns, lone survivors, or enclaves that add so much flavour to other Fallout games. It makes for a big, empty, lonely, and almost uniformly hostile world in which virtually everything you run across — supermutants, ghouls, robots, crazed semi-humans known as the scorched — is trying to kill you.

If you’re wondering why there are no humans in West Virginia — an area of the United States spared a direct atomic blast, according to Fallout history — that’s explained as the story progresses. We run across plenty of places where humans lived after the war, and some seemingly emptied of survivors not all that long ago. Finding out what happened to them is a primary part of the tale that unravels as you progress. The forensic investigation is interesting at times, but it’s not as fascinating as the living human-driven stories of other games in the series.

More’s the shame, given this game’s promising milieu. It takes place just 25 years after the war, making it the earliest entry in the Fallout chronology. Plus, the bunker from which players emerge is the famed Vault 76, long known to be the only one of Vault-Tec’s scores of bunkers designed to function as a legitimate nuclear shelter meant to preserve humanity without any hidden psychological experiments performed on its population. There was an opportunity here to grow the Fallout fiction in powerful new ways, but Bethesda’s self-imposed narrative constraints result in too many stalls and false starts.

There is something about Fallout 76 that is keeping me coming back, albeit not nearly as enthusiastically as I’d have hoped. The fresh lore is definitely part of it — like many, I harbour a dark fascination with Fallout’s dystopian universe, and I’m always keen to eat up more of it — but I also enjoy the franchise’s simpler pleasures, such as discovering whatever might be over the next ridge, scrounging for supplies, and crafting new gear and mods. I just like surviving in the wasteland.

I can’t recommend Fallout 76 to more than a handful of people. A niche few will still be drawn to it, perhaps out of curiosity, a completionist’s need to devour all things Fallout, or, like me, a morbid desire to simulate life after the end of the world. For everyone else, hold onto the hope that Bethesda learns a lesson from this failed experiment.

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edgeasaurus-blog · 6 years

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Suburbicon, 12%: Jesus Christ...

So I just saw “Suburbicon” and I am in awe! I didn’t think there would be a film that came out last year that was worse than “The Snowman”, and I still don’t know if it is; I’m not sure if sheer disappointment compared to the rage I felt at “The Snowman” is clouding my judgment so for now I am leaving them the same rating.

So with that disclaimer, lets get into this shit show!

Positives: Trying the save the ship...

- Most of the actors were completely adequate with the exception of Matt Damon, who I feel was phoning it in; maybe after realizing how this film was going to turn out.

- Oscar Issac is always a win.

Negatives: Sinking like The Titanic!

One of the problems I had going into this film is my love for the 1950′s aesthetic and setting. I love this setting and I attribute this to Bethesdas Fallout games and style, and from the trailers “Suburbicon” seemed to utilize the same forms of marketing, which got me very excited. The trailers show then nuclear family, the idealistic post war optimism and the general nostalgic feel from the 50s/60s. Its done to such a high caliber much like the Fallout games that for a moment I thought I was about to see the post-nuclear wasteland come to life on the silver screen. The trailer then devolves into a stylistic but basic trailer but it was enough to get me excited for the film. I think this is a testament to how powerful and how abused the medium of trailers are, with “Suburbicon”, “The Murder on the Orient Express” (Which I will not be posting about at risk of suicide from fear of reliving that film) and “The Snowman”, trailers can be so well crafted now as to completely change and mislead audiences. This could be argued that its a masterful form of marketing, because with these films; with the exception of some actors, the films don’t seem like passion projects or art, they seem to be made purely to get the masses in seats and take their money or save a dying film before release. I don’t mean to get preachy but its just a thought I had... I mean, we all remember the Suicide Squad trailers... So now I will get into the modern day masterpiece that “Suburbicon” is:

The Plot: Fuckery of the Highest Regard

“Suburbicon” has a problem, very similar to “The Snowman” where it doesn't seem to know what the fuck it wasn't to be. Is it an nostalgic look at the 1950′s life? Is it a murder mystery which keeps you on the edge of your seat? Is it a look into the twisted mind of an unhappy man? Is it an interesting crime film full of action and suspense? Is it a look into racism in the 50′s/60′s and the effects that segregation and bigotry can have in small communities? No. Its all of these things done very very poorly. So I am going to try and dissect this mishmash of a plot and story threads and try to explain how and why each of them do not work alone or in conjunction with each other.

Is it an nostalgic look at the 1950′s life? Short and sweet; the 1950′s setting is completely wasted and pointless. The aesthetics and marketing are done very well, so credit to the set designers and location scouts etc, but it serves no purpose. This film could've been set in modern day at much less cost and the narrative wouldn't change, more is less, the setting seems only to be in there to sell tickets and look pretty, wasted opportunity.

Is it a murder mystery which keeps you on the edge of your seat? No, not really. After the murder the reveal is basically ‘revealed’ immediately, that it was the father who hired the two hit men. Oops, spoiler warning... No but fuck off fuck spoilers, don’t see this film. Seriously though, the film is marketed as some crime mystery but its painfully obvious even before the reveal. Like if even the trailers are going to heavily indicate the big reveal to your shitty mystery, why would you act like its this big thing WHEN YOU FUCKING REVEAL IT 15 FUCKING MINUTES, AFTER THE MURDER FUCKING OCCURS!.. Sorry I got a bit agitated there, I think this film has damaged my psyche, we’re even getting meta here as if I’m really speaking to you rather than this being a piece of text written by a bitter man you found on the internet... But speaking of a messed up psyche:

Is it a look into the twisted mind of an unhappy man? The film actually showed some glimmer of promise here, Matt Damon is a good actor regardless of any preference you may have, his portrayal of the Father in this film is similarly unhinged reminiscent to his character in Christopher Nolan's “Interstellar”. Its a shame this wast properly executed. It essential comes down to his character wanted to fuck Julianne Moore so had his wife killed.. woo..

Is it an interesting crime film full of action and suspense? Not really??? The film is pretty boring honestly, with the only scenes of suspense being sort of worry for Damon's son? See how I used “sorta”, kinda shows my complete indifference here. At the very least its not interesting, there isn't much action and my suspense was waiting for the film to end. Bottom line? Boring.

Is it a look into racism in the 50′s/60′s and the effects that segregation and bigotry can have in small communities? Haha... Hahaha... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! FUCK OFF! The film basically puts a fucking carrot in front of its audience and says: “HEY LOOK A BLACK FAMILY BEING ATTACKED, YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD!” This was done appallingly, its a cheap shot at the audience to get an emotional response that serves no purpose but to to get said emotional response! Its not only a wasted opportunity with the 50′s/60′s being a prime time to tell a story about racism, segregation and bigotry in America, but its almost disrespectful in its portrayal and manipulation tactics. There is a time and a place, this was neither, this was borderline offensive and manipulative.

Everything Else: B.O.R.I.N.G

- Cinematography: The cinematography was boring and uninspired. There were maybe two or three shots in the film that I enjoyed but the rest was an over abundance of basic camera angles and an over reliance on shot reverse shot.

- Soundtrack/ Original Score: Boring generic bollocks, little to no use of music from the time period, another wasted asset from the time period the film uses pointlessly.

- Performances: As previously mention, performances were fine, Damon felt constrained, Julianne Moore was rather flat, Oscar Issac was completely wasted and his scenes and dialogue were some of the only enjoyable moments in the film.

- Design: The costume design, set design and effects were great, shout out to this side of the production team; Bethesda, if you ever decide to make a fallout film, please get these guys on it!

This film is a boring ride with so much wasted potential it hurts. The worst thing is that people seem to actually think this film is good. They think its insightful, that its clever and intriguing. Some people even seem to think its portrayal of racism is done well. I just don’t understand people sometimes, this film will be a waste of your time and energy, don’t see it.

Thank you for reading, now fuck off and go do something productive.

trailers problem

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falloutforties · 4 years

Text

Five Years {Chapter Three}

Description: It’s another kind of filler chapter, because I’m a sucker for travel tales. Nora makes her way to Goodneighbor, not without complications. Deacon is in this chapter, if you squint.

Warnings: Language and a bit of violence.

Note from the Author: I personally like it when authors post songs that accompany a chapter, or songs that they listened to while writing a specific scene. Some that inspired my writing/editing of this chapter are: Collapsible Lung by Relient K; Oh My God by Kaiser Chiefs; Younger by The Mountain Goats. I know some people have seen this story on ao3, but I don’t know if anyone has seen it here yet. If you’re passing by and want to read it, I hope you enjoy!!

III. WASTELAND CHIC

200 years in cryogenic storage had not done wonders for her figure, and she assumed that the radiated food of the wasteland was not going to do anything for her either, but at least her butt looked somewhat nice in the vault suit she still wore. She had barely had time to check herself out in the shattered remains of a bathroom mirror before a swarm of Radroaches piled in through the broken window. She cursed and pulled out her baseball bat.

It was a rusty metal bat, one she’d found in someone’s quondam backyard and wrapped with an old chain-link fence, and it was horrifyingly coated with fluorescent blood, but it was effective, and she had developed a kind of affection for it. She had even started to refer to it as Honey.

She had started her day off right with a delicious meal of roasted roach and a bottle of flat Nuka-Cola.

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day! If you want to be a Terror of the Wasteland, you have to eat like a Terror of the Wasteland!

She longed for a proper bowl of Sugar Bombs, with or without the added Communism and subsequent commentary from her…late husband. She would have eaten a raw box of Blamco Mac & Cheese at that point. In fact, the steady crunch of the raw shells might have been a comfort to her.

But the wasteland was unforgiving, and the spit roast she’d restored behind the Red Rocket Truck Stop would have to suffice. Dogmeat seemed to enjoy a nice roasted roach, at least. When she had set out from Sanctuary Hills, the dog had followed right on her heels, his tongue hanging out and his eyes too big and wide for her to say no.

And she had to admit that a life on the road didn’t sound half-bad, especially with a pup at her heels, biting the ankles of mole rats and raiders alike.

They could’ve made a radio show about me, she thought with amusement. The Lone Wanderer: stalking the wastelands with her trusty sidekick! Or… maybe I’m the sidekick.

Preston Garvey had assured her that she was welcome to stay in Sanctuary, and that she could live on the settlement under the protection of the Minutemen, but as soon as she felt the pang in her heart that told her to find Shaun, she had to refuse the promise of safety. She knew now that she couldn’t settle down until she had found her child. Her child.

Before, it had always been the child. It could have been any child sleeping in the back room of her house, and it would have unnerved her just the same, but now it was Shaun. It was the tiny little thing that had listened to her ramble endlessly about her troubles and had never once judged her. It was the little human whose small, puffy hands had gripped her hair to pull her closer.

She still wasn’t a fan of babies in general, but Shaun— Shaun didn’t seem so bad.

Nora hadn’t even known where to start looking for him until the old lady with the drug problem had given her a prophecy.

“How did you know where to look for your baby?” “Oh, the old lady with the drug problem gave me a prophecy.”

She recognized that her methodology was not scientifically viable, but it was something to go on, and the world had already proven to her that it was sufficiently fucked up enough for her to trust an old woman with a drug problem who gave her a prophecy.

Diamond City.

Where that was or how she was supposed to get there, she had no idea. All she had was the meager voice of the Diamond City Radio host who stuttered through her pip-boy as she slung her bag over her shoulder and set off on the road past Concord. She quite liked the guy. He had a real genuine way about him— not like the pre-war radio hosts, or the newscasters. Chip Harris from Channel 5 News Hour would have laughed at the Diamond City guy, but Chip Harris from Channel 5 News Hour didn’t survive the nuclear apocalypse, so he wasn’t in a position to criticize anyone.

“So… someone told me… which, I know is not a great— a great news source,” the man said, his voice pitching wildly like a pre-pubescent boy. “But. Somebody told me that… someone else saw someone… a person… an alive person… coming out of that vault up north. Vault 11? Vault 111? Something like that. Anyway, here’s Billie Holiday.”

She smiled to herself. Perhaps she should have been shocked to hear herself mentioned on the radio, but she reveled in the idea that someone had seen her, watched her stumble like a newborn deer in the wasteland sunlight, and thought she was news-worthy.

She had gained a new skill, one possibly more useful in her current situation than her unusual prescience, which was the ability to rob corpses. She didn’t like that she had acquired that skill, nor did she particularly wish to brag about it, but it certainly had helped, as she now wore arm bands, leg guards, and a chest wrap made from sturdy leather. They reeked of someone else’s blood until she had washed them in the creek and let them soak in the sun, though they still didn’t smell particularly good.

Tucked tight in the strap of her chest piece were a few fresh stimpaks, bought from a trader she had met just off the Sanctuary bridge.

“You might need these,” he had said jovially, not reacting to the confused expression she gave him. “The world isn’t like it used to be.”

She had watched him walk over the bridge behind her, his bald head bobbing from side to side as he whistled a tune.

The world wasn’t like it used to be. It was stronger.

Before the war, the world had been a fragile, cowering thing. Planet Earth was shriveled like a frightened child in the corner as its children raged on, sewing the ground with their vile progress. She saw the world in the vibrant colors of her neighborhood— the powdery blues of her house, the bright yellow cardigan she wore over her finely-pressed green linen dress. Every house in Sanctuary was painted bright. There was no disguising the neighborhood, there was no attempt at maintaining the natural appearance of the creek below. The world belonged to the humans.

Now, she saw the world in the creeping roots that shattered the roadways, spindling outwards towards the woods. Sanctuary Hills was now hidden away by the gangly trees that sheltered its broken thatched roofs. The creek had branched into two tributaries which ran parallel to the little neighborhood. She felt rejuvenated by it, felt that if the earth could experience such a grand rebirth, she could too.

The world wasn’t like it used to be, and neither was she.

She was thriving.

Her pip-boy chirped and crackled as she wandered closer to the city that had been looming in the distance. She wasn’t quite sure where she was— her map was no good for determining places she had never been, and she had never quite been good with directions.

A man’s voice sputtered through the tiny speaker, “Calling all Silver Shroud fans! Calling all Silver Shroud fans!” And she laughed at the excited announcement. Silver Shroud fans? In this day and age? It seemed impossible, but obviously, there was someone out there who held tight to such pre-war luxuries.

When evil walks the streets of Boston, one man lurks in the shadows…

The croon of the silver-throated narrator played perfectly in her head as if she had just heard it that very morning. Nate hadn’t liked the Shroud— something about the dangers of vigilante justice— but she had listened to it, almost out of spite. She imagined the Silver Shroud breaking through their paneled front windows, spilling silvery glass all over the pristine living room carpet, and pointing one long, gloved finger towards Nate, saying, “Stop being a dick to your wife, you fiend!”

“Come to the Memory Den in Goodneighbor!”

Nora didn’t know what a memory den was, and she didn’t know where Goodneighbor was, but it all sounded quite nice.

“Any place called Goodneighbor has to be good news, right?” She asked Dogmeat. He let out a sharp ruff in response, and she took that as a yes. “Goodneighbor. Next stop, Goodneighbor.”

She liked the sound of it on her tongue, so she said it aloud a few more times. It was certainly more fascinating than Sanctuary Hills or Westing Estate or any of the other quaint little pre-war neighborhoods she had visited in her previous life. Goodneighbor was a city that advertised its greatest assets, and she could picture it in her mind. A plucky little town full of kind faces, good folks sweeping the streets and helping the needy.

She never would have expected what she found in Goodneighbor, nor the batshit insanity that now roamed the streets of Boston, lurking in the shadows of abandoned buildings and fronting in the middle of the road brandishing pistols. The Silver Shroud was nowhere to be seen, but there was evil, walking the streets of Boston, just like the narrator said.

Nora ducked as the thing swiped a huge green arm above her head, nearly knocking it right off her neck like a golfball from a tee. The lumbering mass of human-like features had spotted her creeping down a side-street and decided that it was going to, presumably, eat her. She had no idea of its intentions, aside from violently smashing her to bits, as the thing repeatedly warned her.

“SMASH YOUR BRAINS!” It screamed as it lunged for her head once again. She pulled the 10mm from her waistband and backed away, trying to assert some distance before the thing could smack her again. It had already landed one hit to her shoulder, and the stinging was getting worse by the second.

She tried to fire a round of shots into the thing’s chest, but the 10mm she had scavenged from the bowels of Vault 111 was clicky and rusted, only allowing her about a 50% chance of producing a bullet. Luckily for her, she also had a 50% chance of living through the day.

The Big Green Bastard wouldn’t kill her, but she didn’t like the idea of being maimed, either, and she was almost sure that something in her body was already broken.

When she finally produced a shot, the piercing bang rang out through the street, and she suddenly worried that the sound would alert other enemies to her presence in the alleyway.

What if a thousand more of these Big Green Bastards come pouring in, all of them trying to SMASH MY BRAINS?

She didn’t have time to fully assess the concern, as a fat splintering board was now soaring towards her skull at an alarming rate. She hunched over into a ball and, for lack of a better term, rolled out of the way. She had never once heard of the Silver Shroud doing something that asinine to escape an attacker. The Silver Shroud would have pulled out his trusty machine gun and mowed the Green Bastards down.

But, then again, the Silver Shroud did not have to deal with Big Green Bastards.

With a heaving grunt, Nora planted a hit on the side of the thing’s head with Honey, and it made a splattering thwacking sound. Green skin and horrifically human red guts spattered the alley’s brick wall behind where the thing now lay unmoving.

Nora had learned not to assume that anything unmoving was dead. Even though the thing’s skull was split wide open with a cracking cavern growing on its right side, she couldn’t be sure that it wouldn’t shove the other half of its skull back into place with one huge, meaty hand and continue thrusting towards her.

“Holy shit, Dogmeat,” she whispered to the pup who now lay exhausted by her feet. Despite her better judgement, she crossed her legs beneath her and sat on the dusty ground, absentmindedly scratching the space between his ears. “You ever seen one of those things? That’s not fun. That’s not the way I wanted to spend my afternoon.”

Dogmeat whined and rested his head down onto his crossed paws. Nora hummed in affirmation. The two would have to find Goodneighbor by night, because if they didn’t, she was positive that she wouldn’t wake up the next morning. Her shoulder burned awfully now that she was resting. The adrenaline of the fight had kept her pain receptors muted, but now they flared violently enough to blur her vision. As much as she didn’t want to stand, she knew she had to move on.

Her legs creaked as she stood, tugging Dogmeat by the neat red bandana she had tied around his neck, signaling that it was time to go. He whined but complied, his eyes watching the waning sun burn blood orange across the Boston skyline as if he too knew what it meant.

Goodneighbor was close, she was sure of it. She could see in the distance a flickering neon sign that flashed a dazed purple over the top of a brick wall.

Goodneighbor. The Memory Den. The Silver Shroud.

She repeated the mantra over and over until it became her only lingering thought, like Dorothy stumbling through the woods, arm in arm with her ragtag group of friends. Lions and Tigers and Bears. Oh My!

Goodneighbor. The Memory Den. The Silver Shroud.

Goodneighbor.

The Memory Den.

The Silver Shroud.

#deacon x sole survivor #that's the only tag i'm putting for now #bc i can't keep track of more than one tag ;)

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