#whitespring automated recording

[whitespringbunker]

swarmed by stereotypical anime waifu 'ai girlfriend' ads whole time i'm like. Anyone got any modus x reader

[murdochstavern]

[Welcome to Robco Industries (TM) Termlink]

Booting Welcome Message...

Initializing...

>Play Holotape Recording

Recording Transcript:

Hello! Name's Murdoch, owner of "Murdochs Tavern" out here in post-war Appalachia near Gorge Junkyard, downhill and southeast of Vault 76. Need a spot to get a drink, a bite to eat or just some sort of safety in this confusing and rough world? Well c'mon down and pull up a seat at the counter (or slide into a booth) and relax for a spell. We got music, food better than the Whitespring, gamblin' machines, damn good automated security, more time to kill than a legless Protectron and plenty of people to talk to. Enjoy yerself!

[lhs3020b]

The Other Fallout 76

Despite all the many, many problems, there are some interesting things in Fallout 76. (This is probably the real tragedy of FO76 - it feels like there is a good game trying to squeeze through the cracks. I reckon another six months in development, and Bethesda could have had something quite decent on their hands. As it was, well ... yeah.)

Two things stick out for me...

1. FO76 implictly-confirms that the pre-War US was fucked.

What I mean by this was, from the previous installments, it wasn’t entirely clear if doom was fore-ordained. The wind turbines and the solar power plant in FNV - owned and run by Poseidon Energy, no less! - had seemed to imply that there had been an attempt to pivot to a low-carbon economy. Also there were a few bits in FO4 that seemed to imply that the outside world, pre-War, may not have been quite as bad as we’d been led to believe. (The Norwegian container ship, the terminal talking about holidays in Ireland, and so on.)

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps if the US had a few more years, they might have made the transition ... except there were never going to be a few more years.

The economic situation in Appalachia was very clearly self-destructive, and self-inflicted self-destruction as well. The local government were pushing dysfunctional automation, without making any effort to alleviate the resulting mass unemployment. The area also clearly had an exploding problem with inequality - compare the luxury of the Mega Mansions to any of the cities. Predictable consequences of this included widespread social unrest, combined with some dysfunctional law-enforcement.

And there’s that letter you find in the Charleston capital building, from the President of the United States, who is gushing about the Governor’s automation program - and wanted to extend it to the rest of the country.

If that had happened, it would have killed them off, even without any bombs falling. Unemployment means reductions in consumer spending, which means fewer people buying all these hyper-automated companies’ products. Said companies start going bankrupt, adding to the unemployment and poverty. Also then, faced with a collapse in their own consumer demand, the companies who make the bots will start going bust - and, suddenly, no more robots. So all the automated goods and services will no longer be available, at any price.

We know from FO76 that this would have included “floor-level” services like agriculture and raw materials. When the thing that stops being available is food ... yeah, your economy is fucked.

Essentially, the US was about to give itself a sort of Keynesian death-spiral. The problem was the system itself - and also the pursuit of short-term self-interest by the people at the top, which was diametrically-opposed to the collective good of society.

TL;DR they were fucked. They couldn’t save themselves because they didn’t want to.

(While the parallel isn’t exact, the miniature social implosion of the Enclave bunker near Whitespring does echo the above cycle - and, significantly, the bunker ended with everyone in it dead.)

((It’s also, uh, exactly what we’re doing right here with climate change. So there’s a cheery happy fun-time thought for you.))

2. The Overseer

The other little thing I like is the Overseer. Because FO76 is basically the first time that a Vault Tech Overseer has been presented as an actual, sympathetic human being with complex motives and a believable personality. (Well, there’s also Vault 81 in Fallout 4, but that’s a bit of a special case.)

As you find and listen to her holotapes, the Overseer basically does come across as a reasonably-decent human being. She’s not a perfect person - while she sees through it eventually, her apparent blindness to Vault Tech’s flaws does stretch belief a little. There’s a definite sense that she may have been good at picking the right time to “look the other way” - particularly given all the skeevy stuff they were doing semi-openly at VTU, which was also her alma mater.

However, she’s not the cartoon monster that a lot of other Overseers have been, and the change is welcome. She’s someone who is trying to do what they think is right, and has paid a price for many of the decisions she made. She clearly regrets what happened between her and Evan. She also develops distinctly mixed feelings about Vault Tech - it’s clear that she’s learning things too as she journeys across Appalachia.

It’s all the more impressive because this is done through random recorded holotapes that you find, rather than through normal interaction.

(There is also a small glimmer of hope that the Overseer might have survived. The last tape, that you find at Mountainside Bed and Breakfast, sounds quite ominous - but, there’s no body. She might still have got away.)

[whitespringbunker]

pre and post shit hitting the fan modus should have at least subtly different designs. methinks

[whitespringbunker]

finally becoming a real artist not as in improvement but just having a doodle i know damn well sucks whole ass get more notes than the stuff i actually put time and fuss into

[whitespringbunker]

art Will be happening again eventually i'm just in the emotional and physical washer-dryer thumping loudly against the sides every couple seconds. You understand

[whitespringbunker]

cringe warning

modus and nixie. To me

[whitespringbunker]

society if i liked and made normal things and characters

[whitespringbunker]

need someone to smack me with a very big stick so i finish my backlog of 76 art before i become self aware

[whitespringbunker]

sick to bastard death of myself on levels you would not believe. But at least there's the videogame

[whitespringbunker]

get so close to dissuading myself out of my stupid as fuck ship when the cringe hits but that's the devil talking

[whitespringbunker]

spins around on swivel chair for dramatic effect but i do it a bit too hard and rotate several times. i think perhaps you don't have to make such a great big goddamn deal about how much you don't like x r.eader fic

[whitespringbunker]

'i want to draw my humanization idea for my fictional crush :333' i say looking at peeled animatronics for inspo

[whitespringbunker]

universe throws gay robot thoughts at me and i throw them down to nixie twice as fast

[whitespringbunker]

very funny to be seriously considering some sort of internet detox while knowing 76 isn't gonna be part of that for a minute

[whitespringbunker]

hard to comfortably draw a niche fave when i'm not only way too invested in them but mutuals with the like 3 other people who give a fuck. look how i massacred OUR boy </3