rivet-city-rebel

[rivet-city-rebel]

who’s up here gobposting

[rivet-city-rebel]

Okay but it was probably a tunnel snake who wrote that, its fair to assume it was Butch but anyone who hung out with him for a majority of their youth can’t be all that bright either. I’m just chocking it up to the local ‘gang’ being a bunch of idiots, well-meaning idiots, but idiots.

[rivet-city-rebel]

"Ammo isn't cheap, you know. Can we just pay you to play dead?"

I know, the Deacon girlies (gender neutral) have been starving lately. @some27-url and @please-do-not-perceive-me got me thinking about Him again. Have a little snack.

Interested in a commission?

[rivet-city-rebel]

Sighhhhh

[rivet-city-rebel]

Hey there! Joshua Graham is mid-ghoulification underneath those bandages, which is why his burns never seem to 'heal' properly despite all the things he's claimed to try to fix them. The wrappings keep his festering skin protected, but also hide the horror of it so that he doesn't have to truly face what he's becoming. I mean, what are the religious implications of becoming a ghoul? I think he's long accepted that there's no place in heaven for him, but just what sort of eternal punishment is a life that never ends? Especially for a man like Joshua, who has directly caused so much harm and now has to live in the world that harm has caused FOREVER?

[rivet-city-rebel]

Fallout semi-realistic artists who use procreate drop your brushes please. Bonus points if you use it for the absolutely fucking deliciously textured linework ya’ll do.

[rivet-city-rebel]

I think it looks really good at the minute and I think I’m done thank you for everyone who got involved in the process I really appreciate it

[rivet-city-rebel]

One of the light-touch worldbuilding/storytelling/dramatic irony moments I really enjoy in Fallout: New Vegas is everything to do with Aurelius of Phoenix, the Legion Slavemaster operating Cottonwood Cove. Nested bit here, right? On first glance it seems like psuedo-Latin gibberish, something grandiose but divorced from meaning, like a lot of the Legion guys- but then you do the double take and realize it's a cognomen, a nickname Romans would receive based on great achievements or conquests-e.g. Scipio Africanus- and that implicitly this is the guy who helped sack the actual former city of Phoenix in Arizona. Stealth Future-imperfect trope, disguised at first glance because "Phoenix" is already a kind of grandiose mythologic-sounding word. And when you realize that, right, it's suddenly very funny, for the same basic reason The Republic of Dave is funny- grandiose terminology juxtaposed with a mundane name from the world we recognize. If it were Aurelius of Boise, Aurelius of Cincinnati, right, there are cities you could use in the pairing that would cause it to parse as much more of an explicit gag. So now it's silly in the way everything about the Legion is silly. But then it wraps back around to actually kind of unnerving, because first off, basically it's an offhand implication of something very nasty having gone down in Phoenix, A City From Real Life That We Recognize, in order for him to have gotten a whole Cognomen out of it. And second, it's obviously not a coincidence that his name doesn't sound dumb. Caesar isn't gonna let a subordinate quote-unquote "earn" a cognomen unless it's useful to him, unless it enhances the brand somehow, and having a guy named "Aurelius of Phoenix" walking around, well, it does do that! It feels calculated. It's not the kind of name that's downstream of cultural decay and half-remembered information. It's another example of how Caesar micromanages his slave army down to their very names, and how he lifts random superficial elements of Roman culture on an ad-hoc basis without integrating any of it on a deeper level. A lot going on, with this one guy's goofy name!

[rivet-city-rebel]

Random tumblr posts complaining about lack of lying guy in the tags: ALL CAPS YELLING.

Me with approximately 8,383,649 drawings of him on my phone that I've been too scared to put on the internet: ok.

So let's start it off easy, I guess...

[rivet-city-rebel]

Theres a fucking guy who looks EXACTLY like MacCready (if he wasn’t severly malnourished) working at my local grocery store AND HE’S GOT A VERY SIMILAR NAME. HE COMMENTED ON MY FALLOUT SHIRT.

[rivet-city-rebel]

POV: UR COMPANION HAS THE BRIGHTEST BLUEST EYES IN THE WASTELAND.

[rivet-city-rebel]

idgaf that centaurs used to be people that’s my ouppy gog

[rivet-city-rebel]

made this for the death bunnies community but i think i’m funny so here you go

[rivet-city-rebel]

it is my experience that people with dermal implants and eyeball tattoos and 34 visible piercings are the sweetest people you'll ever meet and will cry if they see a pigeon with a broken wing. it is also my experience that clean-cut people in polo shirts with perfect smiles will vote against your rights and say the most disgusting things imaginable once they think you're out of earshot.

[rivet-city-rebel]

You know, this constantly bugs me because I genuinely don’t know. Is Desdemona a code-name or as leader, does Des just never leave, making a codename a moot point?

If its a codename theres some loaded symbolism about allyship and lack of agency in her choice that makes an interesting character

If its not, her parents hated her. Granted, I doubt any wastelanders are cracking open baby name books but at the same time, Desdemona (a name meaning Ill-fated) isn’t exactly common enough that they’d be coming across that naturally in the wastes.

Regardless, it feels pretty purposeful and I want TO KNOW THE DETAILS.

[rivet-city-rebel]

I just saw this comment under a tiktok of Boone and it's taking me out

[rivet-city-rebel]

i love the theory that fallout didn't just stagnate in the 1950s, it returned to it. not just out of nostalgia, but desperation.

as the world fell apart, oil drying up, war time anxiety piling on and trust eroding, the government needed something familiar to sell.

and what better tool for control than the most sanitized, era of “american values” they could find?

aesthetics of nationalism, conformity, mccarthyist paranoia, all dressed up in chrome and smiles. it wasn't a freeze in culture, it was a calculated reversion.

the mythologization of a golden past becomes the scaffolding for fascist ideology. not because that past was ever real, but because it can be weaponized

myth, dressed up as memory.

in fallout's case, that myth is the 1950s. not the messy, violent, contradictory 50s that actually existed, but a state-manufactured fantasy of chrome smiles, and "american values." a world where conformity is virtue, fear is patriotism, and war is just another product.

because when people are scared, you don't give them answers:

you give them slogans. mascots. marching tunes.

you roll out project brainstorm, an actual pre-war initiative, and start pushing "covert and overt messages of extreme patriotism" into every corner of pop culture. comics. toys. music. sports.

whatever it takes to wrap the war machine in a smile.

prewar's retrofuturism isn't just for the vibes. it's state-sanctioned denial. it was a tight wrap around a dying empire, and the more things fell apart, the more they clung to that futile image.

like if they smiled big enough and said “apple pie” enough times, the oil crisis and global collapse would just blink away while the world burns behind it.

it's the same old rot, lacquered in vintage.

a country that chose the past over the future, and got exactly what it asked for.

not progress. not reform. just reruns of a dream that never existed.

and then it ended, the only way it could end:

with a country so in love with its own mythos it pressed the button waving a flag in one hand and a nuka-cola in the other.