#*down I still will sometimes forget

[fusionsprunt]

compared to his previous body, is hunter way taller than gideon¿ by how much¿

by this much...

[smultronviol]

Ppl going "waaahh unpopular opinion but Alice is kind of annoying and obnoxious and I don't think I'd like be her friend irl" is so funny to me bc like.

God forbid a cast of characters be multifaceted and have actual flaws and unpleasant aspects other than "grr angsty hero" and "whoops i'm so clumsy". Sometimes character dynamics and arcs need to be prioritized above "who would i personally be niceys with irl"

2. bro just WAIT until you hear about season 1 jon lol

[thedreadvampy]

sometimes I forget that my experience has been. um. not 'your experiences are not universal' vibes but more like 'your experiences are EXTREMELY atypical'

[dykedvonte]

why do you hate Joshua Graham or Honest Hearts so much?

This DLC and character represents a bigger issue with fandom spaces I have but particularly fallout fandom in general.

Fallout tends to tackle a lot of topics controversial and not. The first two games it’s heavy cause they are the most satirical and direct with how anti-war, nationalism and etc… they are. 3 loses this as it’s very clear once you play or learn about all the games that Todd and a bunch of guys at Bethesda just liked the 50s post apocalyptic aesthetic and refuse to actually critique the ideals of the time period like the earlier titles.

New Vegas is the game that really gets back into it a degree it almost seems like it’s taking too much on. There are things done exceedingly well while other things are done horribly wrong . I’ve made posts about it before and plan to make a big series of posts (it’s a lot of writing) but my biggest gripe is with Honest Hearts and all the gross and white savior esque depictions it has of indigenous peoples. The entirety if FNV does not do the injustices faced by indigenous people correctly on any count. My two biggest complaints are with the Khans and the tribes in Zion but I’ll talk about the former on a different post.

Both characters of Daniel and Joshua are the most accurate depiction of white saviors I’ve seen and I hate how the DLC tries to justify and defend them. The DLC treats Joshua like this man who has repented for his past actions when he is just retracing his steps after his cruelty bit him in the ass. He was one of the worst parts of the Legion and it is all but explicitly stated that if you don’t force him to be non-violent he will turn the tribes of Zion into the legion 2.0. The Dead Horses and the Sorrows are horribly infantilized by both Daniel and Joshua who both use them for self serving purposes guised by religious duty. The White Legs are the horrible stereotype of violent and savage indigenous and I personally think a lot of their interlinking with Ulysses, his hair and Ulysses character in general are distasteful and very telling of how BIPOC or POC where involved.

But outside of the game it’s the weird obsession people have with these characters ideologies and trying to make them seem more interesting/philosophical than they are. Tumblr is an echo chamber and many fans of Fallout are not the people on this site. Many people are not educated in the issues these characters convey and how poorly they do or used these characters as a poor introduction for their takes. Contrary to what a lot of people believe in, fallout has a prediomeny white cis male fanbase. More importantly a large portion of the fanbase is white.

You can joke how FNV made you trans or see the numbers on post/fics or diverse headcanons but these are kiddy numbers compared to the millions that consume the franchise and aren’t in those more aware spaces or don’t engage in the spaces the same way someone like me does/has to. Their views shape a lot more than people realize and it’s exhausting to be in a space where people don’t correct the more subtle yet toxic aspects of it but also adopt them into some weird quirky view point on the characters or issues. Some people don’t realize and some people don’t care.

My main issue is just the idolizing of these sort of thing in this fandom space and people try to acts like a game like fallout whose tagline is “War never changes” and has never had a game not revolve around political or militaristic factions issues isn’t that deep or doesn’t relate to real issues. I think it’s mainly caused by how over powered you can become and how you can strong arm your way past these learning moments as majority of people who play this game do play it as a power fantasy where they can do so as they please (which of course, go ahead it’s fun) but never take in parallels or lessons in the story as if it was just another first person shooter.

Also like another personal gripe is Cazadores spawn like hell whenever I’m there and I have not found a mod that works to mod them out so I have to play Indigenous Racism the DLC while getting jumped by giant wasps WHILE helping Mormons. Like I cannot catch a break.

[angelpuns]

Body hurts and brain 2 fuzzy to draw so y'all know what that means ( go to bed early time)

[spotaus]

Thinking about Orchid and her connection to my take on Gender (because this was meant to be about her and the Crew but it just devolved into a character analysis kinda??? More trauma-dumping maybe???) This is very much an oc/personal rant so feel free to ignore it 🫡

So, Orchid started off as a character I didn't really think much of (hear me out this is going to be relevant) because I wanted to add a 'girl' character but didn't know what to *do* with her, y'know? She was always going to be the strongest one there, she had the odds stacked in her favor with her parents. She was always going to be the gloomy side-character to match Reset's energy. But I think she's gone through every stage of Generic Woman I could possibly find.

At first she was angry and abrasive (think Fell!Sans) where every other word was a curse and she was likely to throw the first punch then laugh as she kicks her enemy while they're down. This was when Reset was a cartoonishly self-centered villain whose goal was simply to prove others wrong. Then Orchid became a sort of sisterly figure. This was short-lived, but she was the one comforting people who Reset would torment, but would ultimately follow his orders, because at this point he was actually a danger and sadistic. And then there was the phase where the story mellowed out and she became the token Goth Girl who, yes she was strong, but was heavy on the 'whatever' energy. Then there was her Era of deep self-loathing and anxiety about her worth that held her back and made her a much more timid and meek character who would only lash out on occasion.

Now, Orchid is the best of those iterations I've written yet. She's calm, level-headed, and a natural leader. Her father raised those traits into her. But she's very reactive, and can be silly, and when she's comfortable it's likely that air of importance transforms into something more comfortable and familiar. She laughs loudly and grins wide, she likes loud video-games but loves to read in the quiet. She's extremely disciplined, and normally no one can get through her tough exterior besides her best friend, Reset. She does what she does for her own enjoyment, sure, but she's thought of every angle and makes her choice to help Reset and control the others with her whole chest. She still worries she won't live up to her invisible expectations, and that and her loyalty are her two driving forces.

I know that Orchid is important to me because she's the longest-running female oc I've had. I have a rough relationship with womanhood/girlhood and I know looking back that Orchid recieved every ounce of my distaste for being a woman that I could shovel into her. That never made her less of a character, she was actually always one of my favorites, and rarely was she a 'punching bag oc'. I just... projected onto her a lot. And she's a good sign of how I've learned who I am. I've decided that my own femininity is something I could live without. I'd rather not associate myself with it, and I'd like to leave it in my past, focusing on a future where I'm not tied down with any gender roles or expectations. That won't happen, but I've come to terms with it myself. Orchid though? I figured out through her that I don't have to hate women characters. My own distaste for my circumstances doesn't mean I have to push it onto my characters (on God I've never expressed anything rude to actual people, that'd be rude as hell and uncalled for, but I have a bad habit of disliking fictional women in media). So, Orchid is a well-roubded character finally. She has motivations abd goals and a *lot* more depth than I ever expected her to. She's happy with being a woman, she's content. She's not treated differently for it in unfair ways by those she cares about, so she doesn't mind it. She likes to wear pretty outfits and lets Reset add bows to her ribbons. She doesn't let being a woman hold her back in the slightest.

So, yeah. Orchid is one of my babies. If I ever leave this Fandom behind for good, she's one that's coming with (Ichor, Orchid, and Pretender all have human designs I can use elsewhere lol-) but in the meantime I'll just rotate her around in my brain for a while longer.

If I'm right, she's been with me for nearly 5-6 years and I went through a *lot* with her as an outlet. So, she's kinda just like an old stuffed animal. A lil ripped, matted fur, maybe a stain or two, but there's a story there and that makes it important beyond belief.

[nympippi]

Bruce Yamada post revival!

Here’s the sweet and lovable baseball player!!! He enjoys baseball, and soft jazz!

I tried to make it seem like he’s thinking of spaced out because like canon Bruce has the most memory issues post revival, he has trouble remembering numbers, dates, faces, and sometimes names. It frustrates him, so to keep his mind busy he pops rubber bands on his wrist, and he writes in a memory book!

He’s still very sweet but I think dying put a damper on his personality, he’s spacey, aloof, and calm on most days and sometimes he’s cold, bitter, and mean on worse ones. Those are the days where he can barely remember he’s alive.

I tried to keep it similar to canon with him having his memory and own sense of self being altered because like all the others I think dying left a serious impact on his mental health and psyche.

One thing didn’t change though!! He’s a major nerd for baseball and is an absolute natural at it!

[alluralater]

get ready for how sexy i’m gonna look this fall. no one is prepared and i’m telling you. do whatever you need to do. slay your demons. confer with your gods. jack it one last time. get ready. i’m about to look so good

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

Im saying to myself, “it’s ok, it’s not like there’s THAT many fans” when I know dang well there IS that many fans and it WILL crash…😭

yeah... Yeah....

[orcelito]

Wild that anytime I post an update a lot of people read it and are even excited about it and have their own thoughts and reactions to it that I'll never know.

Comments are only the very tip of the iceberg with it. And I am Very grateful to commenters for letting me in on it. But in the same way that I'll be excited with my friends when a fic we love updates, it's likely that Other people enthuse with Their friends when my fic updates. And it's just so strange. An experience I'll never have access to.

Everyone's relationship with my fic is unique. So many different people with so many different circumstances and preferences... and the number of people that have told me that my fic is one of their favorites, some even saying it's their Favorite favorite... every single one of them have their own relationship with my writing.

It's just interesting to me. I think and think and think on my writing. I have my plans for basically the entire fic, the way I want it to end already thought out, all the major plot beats and the relationship progressions, All of that thought out. I love my writing so very much, but I'm on the inside looking out. This is my mechanical horse, and I'm in here laying out the groundwork and pulling levers and constructing limbs, puttering away making the horse move. Forever and always, my relationship with it will be more intimate than anyone's, and yet more clinical. Because I know it better than the back of my own hand, but I'll never have the experience of reading it fresh. Of reading it without knowing everything that's going to happen from now to the end and beyond. I won't have the thrill of the plot twists I have planned, the delight at seeing things progress, the horror at seeing things go wrong...

This is my mechanical horse, and I'm making it move.

I just always wonder what it must be like to see it from the outside. I hope to others that it's a pretty horse.

[bass-alien]

.

[jacksprostate]

So what advice WOULD you have for people who might suspect themselves to be autistic, especially those who can’t get an official diagnosis? /gen

Yeah sure, under the cut!

My philosophy focuses around problem solving and improving circumstances rather than focusing on getting or following the path of a diagnosis. So the first thing I recommend if you feel you're struggling, is start actually writing down things you struggle with. Big or small. And then for each, start making a plan on how to mitigate or remove your struggles. Obviously, easier said than done. Lord knows it takes a lot of time, effort, and discipline. However, the biggest thing, is keeping a mindset where it is: you have struggles with x. But this is not a permanent thing, this is something you can work on. You may not be as naturally adept as some people, but this is a challenge and you can face it and improve how it affects your life. This is something that has to be done whether you follow the whole diagnosis route or not, because it's the requirement for living, lol.

I will give an example from my own life.

Firstly, I have always very much struggled with food intake. Eating is something of a chore to me, a lot of food is repulsive (less so than before, thankfully), cooking is a lot of energy. Eating healthily is even more of an issue since you have to make and eat so much more of less calorically dense foods. Over the past 4 years, I've improved a lot though, though it has been trying at times. First, I catelogued my issues. My biggest issue is due to eating little, I wasn't getting enough calories, and I was always tired and weak. I was often sleepy, struggled to concentrate. I was on the verge of being underweight but considered not — yet, I had pretty life impacting symptoms. It was actually thought that I had more severe problems due to all the deficiencies I had. So, the first thing I did was seek out high calorie food that I could use to at least increase my energy. Preferably avoiding outright junk food, but basically, I started routinely trying to eat a meal with lots of carbs once a day. As my energy slowly increased, I started trying to fit in healthier snacks and whatnot, but ultimately (even now!) my goal, 100% is just making sure I get enough calories that I'm not tired tomorrow. It was difficult, especially since my appetite was so surpressed hunger didn't really come back until like 6 months in. Nowadays I do get hundry but still find it unfortunately easy to ignore, though I'm a lot better with it. Anyway, focused on high calorie foods. Once I had more energy, I worked on *cooking* high calorie meals. Literally, just like pasta. Noodles with poor man's pesto (garlic, basil, parm, salt). Ramen. I still eat that like once a day lol. My new challenge is shifting that a bit but it's a work in progress. Anyway, while I regressed some sometimes, I started regularly cooking a very very low effort meal once a day, and eating smth that made sure I had energy for the next day. A lot of my symptoms improved even though my diet was still essentially shit. Then, I also worked on taking a multivitamin. I am very bad at sticking with medications so frankly this is still on and off for me, but I'm planning on incorporating it into my morning routine before work and that should help. I did do this consistently for a while, and this helped. All this happened over 2-3 years. If I ever ate out, I made sure to get something with meat and vegetables since I knew I wasn't getting it at home. Now, my most recent success is I've started managing to meal prep and bring lucnhes to work. I do really simple air fryer chicken and rice/couscous, or fried rice (good for veggies). So far I've managed to consistently bring food, which is a goal I've never dreamed I'd be able to manage on my own! Super awesome. I also found 'drinking' my meals is easier sometimes, so I found smoothie mixes I can tolerate that have more nutritious things. And I do that sometimes. Anyway, I'm finally at the point where the struggle is less eating, and now more expanding my consistent cooking and making myself a better diet. But that is SIGNIFICANT success compared to where I was originally, when I wasn't cooking and I was barely eating and it was physically impacting my life in a way that made it much harder to claw my way out of. But, despite it taking a long time and having a lot of backsliding, I was able to significantly improve.

This sort of thing can be applied to mental health stuff, social stuff, etc. Basically, identify your issues, identify solutions — long term goals but also specific short term steps that will get you there. And then keep trying. Even when you fail. Even when you give up for a long while. Even when it feels like it isn't working. Keep trying. And eventually you'll have made progress even without realizing.

I also applied something similar to trying to work out how to socialize well. Which may be applicable for you. The best thing you can do in my experience is watch people, be confident, and try to pay attention and learn how to interpret people's comfort levels and what's common casual topics of conversation and what's not. Yes, it's hard, and it's usually not intuitive, and that's a big part of why you may feel you are autistic, because this seems entirely foreign in a way it's not to other people. But it is a skill you can learn. At this point, I can hold a conversation with my coworkers, even if we don't have much in common or if we have differing opinions or whatnot, I can have a good lunch conversation and come off as 'intense, but nice'. Which is a good thing to aim for. Like with the eating, I recommend a lot of reflection and efforts to catelogue and identify areas of struggle and how you can observe and practice improvement. The more you do all this, the more it will genuinely become less manual and more automatic, like driving a car. There's a lot you think about when you first start driving, that you aren't consciously thinking about 5 years later. It's the same way. And also, try not to take your fuckups too personally. And some people just won't like you. It is what it is. Just keep chugging.

I know, it is easy to sit here and be like "why should I have to figure out and stick with common topics of conversation? I'm not into those :/" Lord knows, I always felt dumb and out of place whenever people bonded over sports. But what these common topics are, their purpose is essentially like a little olive branch, a thing the person is offering to try and make it easier to chat by commiserating over a common thing, whether it's a issue, a thing yall like, or something else. I'll probably never manage to follow sports teams and I don't want to, but I will nod along as some guys talk and commiserate when they express feelings about wins or losses. The point is to bond. That's why the weather is such a huge topic. Small talk serves a huge purpose! The more you become familiar with how to casually hold a conversation with someone you don't know well over one of these topics, the easier it'll be, and most social stuff develops from that sort of thing. As you bond over the olive branch topics, you can flesh out anecdotes and experiences and personal stuff as you become better friends with people, rather than throwing it all at someone at once and hoping they catch and like you. It lets you sort of get a feel for people, and you can keep it at the small talk level instead of just not talking at all or immediately proceeding to best friends mode. It's a comfortable middle.

I also really recommend, for anyone, engaging and developing a fondness for the world around you, and practicing having appreciation for everything. It has helped my mindset and capability to keep trying. I really recommend learning to identify some category of things in nature in your area, because you'll feel more grounded in the world, you'll see more detail, and the world will feel less threatening.

[anglerflsh]

your post about being non binary is literally so real i remember agonizing about my gender and being like "awe i wish i could use they/them pronouns that would be really cool and awesome and id love that a lot. too bad i cant!!!!" yes. yes you can.

as far as your own personal identity goes you can do whatever you want forever I think

[sorrowsaint]

im going to bed

heres a song i like goodnight

[dan-crimes]

LMAO so funny thing is everyone knows the whole Sonic and Shadow looking alike thing is total bullshit and I totally agree those comments they try to pull in the games and show(s? I'm not technically a Sonic fan I dunno if it's multiple) make basically no sense to me but then my Mom comes in while watching Sonic Prime and says "So what, Sonic has a brother or something?" and this whole other world has opened up to me and I've seen the truth of it all

[baconcolacan]

D’you ever think about communication errors??

I’m unearthing a cringe memory but, there was a time I ate out with some very beloved friends of mine. In the middle of it, I asked one of my dear friends to ‘pass the meat’ in English, which was not our mother language.

And my dearly beloved friend, looked at me innocently, and said “Uh, sure! I’ll do it cause we’re friends! ^^”

They cut the pieces of meat that was already on my plate…..and tried to spoon feed it to me……

the communication failure was ASTOUNDING

Anyway, I’m giving Tord this cringe memory now. He does the spoon feeding, happily might I add. You can assign who he does it to in your head.