#with the ncr he's just like. broken. like this is a Fundamentally Broken Person | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

astrovagrant · 6 days

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fallout show final notes (attempting to keep this Short because i can and will keep going if i'm not mindful)

firstly: people who liked it getting mad at people who didn't and going "eugh fnv fans are so crazy" is silly. there are legitimate grievances to take with the show, which i will do in just a second. i'm sure there ARE fnv hardcore fans out there who are spitting mad because they didn't actually learn one of the most important lessons of fnv (the status quo must be broken continually to improve) - the shady sands bit isn't necessarily strictly bad BECAUSE it changes something fundamental about the ncr. i also don't think the show was going out of its way to spit on fnv as a whole Necessarily - there are too many nods and the fact that house is around at all just adds to that. it's not a todd dick contest, i think they were doing it in good faith, the fact remains that they still didn't do it Good.

so here are the things that i actually didn't like, now that we all got our kneejerk pissed off "group x says y and they're WRONG for that" reactions out of the way. SPOILERS spoilers Spoilers.

dealing with vault tec mysteries isn't actually a bad thing - kind of interesting inherently. however: vault tec AKA a group of Shadowy Elites is Responsible For Everything is so. pointed look at camera.

vault tec bearing sole direct responsibility for bombs dropping (and having that suggested to the board of shadowy elites by a black woman no less) is truly the least interesting progression point for fallout lore as a whole. we're going to ignore the war as a whole and The US Government in favor of corpo responsibility offloading.

lucy's dad being a freezy pop who nuked shady sands landed on a broken ankle because they're serving us Nuke Revelation with a side of Nuke Revelation. and it's all the same company. WOAHHH can it get ANY more interconnected!

i started straight up guffawing at ghoul mom reveal. pleasssseeeeee god

moldaver had so much build up as an interesting character and then got wasted on being the vaguest possible revolutionary who then died way too soon. hello? why is she dead already? what was the fucking point of the flame lady cult? why open this can if you were immediately gonna discard it? why isn't lucy's mom moldaver? CHRIST.

i dislike the attempt at new ghoul lore that just seems ultimately pointless? like ghouls as a concept were not Advanced in any way with this lore. i did like the pause to provide empathy with the feral ghouls, was a nice touch. buuuut Big Drug Energy is nothing to me and loss of discussion of radiation effects on a changed being that now lives in harmony with radiation is a sad loss for fallout as a setting imo.

i don't dislike ghoulman cooper. i think his character Concept is inherently very funny and good for its irony, except they didn't even use the irony at all? the myth of the american cowboy and The Western, the poison of american individualism, the sad reality of bouncing from one big lie (american exceptionalism esp in a time of war) to another one (ads for vault tec aka selling the end of the world) was instead turned into Oh No, My Wife (Black Woman) Is Actually Pretty Evil And I Forsook My Good American Boy Values For Her! and then just being a right bastard in the postwar.

bethesda will never be tired of Privileged Person Is Subjected To Horrible Degenerate Wasteland. lucy's character arc is supposed to be That (But Look, She's Still Good, Because She's A Good Vault Girl!), but it mostly just involves her being actively tormented in various situations. idk i don't think she should have to forgive cooper's humanity or lack thereof just because she's So Nice. character arc implied but not executed in a way i find noteworthy.

maximus. face in hands. he's literally maybe the most interesting character on the entire show. the brotherhood even got portrayed as an Actual fucking cult (which it IS. this is the best thing the show did imo). but for WHAT? for a CHARACTER ARC OR DEVELOPMENT OF ANY KIND? nope! he isn't even given the grace of a full scene where he actively realizes and says out loud or internally like. hey. maybe brotherhood............. is bad for me? and others? he goes back to the bos again and again to take his punishment, but still has to be Part of them for the final encounter. and doesn't even get to go with the "you have nothing to lose but your chains... Of Morality" duo at the end. i just want so much more for him & i feel like he's being squandered by the end of the season. i have 600 more things to say but i'm gonna shut. up

shady sands hot take: the ncr needed to be challenged and have the status quo shifted. by a random pissed off prewar man w too many resources being divorced? not really useful to change the worldstate in a meaningful way, to be honest. nuking the capital of the ncr not inherently bad. there being zero power-seeking (on behalf of other factions) behind it happening, NO factions fighting over the scraps (THE NCR WAS MORE THAN ONE CITY), and everything just smoothing back out into bethesda-preferred shantytowns and empty wastes where society isn't what you really have to care about, just your individual morality, is a big yawn for me. we've been here and we've seen this and it comes off worse in a tv show than a first person rpg.

of course all the survivors of shady sands immediately did a cult *from inside a vault* where they smear nuclear corpse ashes on themselves. and there don't seem to be any other survivors of note, just those ones.

i have many more things to say but let's cap it here.

final notes: so many of the things in the show feel like they were done for setpiecing shock value (can you BELIEVE it's ALL CONNECTED? here's some fun unexpected gore) (i actually don't mind the gore bc it's pretty falloutcore but sometimes it's like. okay we get it, shit's crazy in the wasteland!) rather than for actual coherent 'let's advance the world of fallout and its themes and lore' reasons. i understand that they were doing an external-to-games timeline and kind of a mishmash of elements, hence why i'm not bothering to complain about stuff in the show feeling Too Similar to game events - bc i don't really care about that. i care about it feeling like fallout and doing things actually meaningful with fallout's core themes, and at the end of the day, i don't really think i got that.

#steps off soapbox. farewell friends and lovers

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myrcella · 5 years

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1 to 5 for aries & 21 to 25 for eden? 💗

aries

1. Does your character have siblings or family members in their age group? Which one are they closest with?

she had one little brother, william, best known as “bullet” because the two are born and raised raiders and they always have monikers instead of their real names. like, aries is ariella but she would probably stab you if you didn’t have permission to call her that hahaha

they were generally close, average enough siblings. she loved him dearly, of course. he was caught in ncr crossfire when they apprehended their family; seven or eight years old when he was killed.

2. What is/was your character’s relationship with their mother like?

again, just average, her mother was a bit strung out on chems and just not really that bright -- but they loved each other, they were loyal to their family

3. What is/was your character’s relationship with their father like?

aries’ father was called hellraiser and he couldn’t half shout when he was angry, but he wasn’t angry to the kids and if he was it was because he was bred in violence and so were they, all of them being on the outskirts of civilisation and he being a scion of the great khans who eloped. her papa taught her how to shoot a gun when she was very young, making sure she could defend herself if she ever needed to. he promised he’d be there, and then in the next breath he wasn’t -- thankfully, aries was everything strong her father was and more. she loved him fiercely

4. Has your character ever witnessed something that fundamentally changed them? If so, does anyone else know?

aries had a lover, gold, and they were planning to come clean off all the shit: stop thieving, get honest courier jobs, cultivate some crops, wean off the drugs that were burning holes in their pockets. but when she came back from one of those honest shifts, their little wip homestead had already been discovered by the ncr. it wasn’t reduced to a crisp but it was burning steadily, the embers stayed in her mind, and gold’s beaten/charred corpse. a big fuck you to trying to come clean huh

until of course her mind was basically wiped with the amnesia benny gave her -- so no one will ever know. but that flickering, those little embers at the vestiges of her consciousness might still be there.

5. On an average day, what can be found in your character’s pockets?

lol this is gonna be gross: condoms, food wrappers, jet, ammo, probably a tumbleweed and a clown wig for all anyone knows 🤷 OH don’t forget the dozen dinky dinos she stole lmfao

eden

21. If something tragic or negative happens to your character, do they believe they may have caused or deserved it, or are they quick to blame others?

eden rarely blames herself. she’s a self-pitier. everything is always the broken world’s fault, or her father’s for rendering her so without gumption.

22. What does your character like in other people?

transparency, bravery

23. What does your character dislike in other people?

just on the flipside of the above, dishonesty and cowardice

24. How quick is your character to trust someone else?

not very quick -- even with eden’s eventual best friend, angel, she’s very finicky around her for a long time. she sleeps with one eye open even though angel and her mother are so harmless. it feels like everyone has an agenda ever since her world turned upside down in vault 101. who can she trust? if she cannot even trust the home that bore her?

25. How quick is your character to suspect someone else? Does this change if they are close with that person?

kinda answered half of that above

#oc: aries #eden #thank youuu maria <3 #highoverseer

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