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im a real fallout fan. i only like realistic lore, like the gunner faction. because when you think about it, in this fucked up fallout world, they really would use guns. maybe that’s too “edgy” for some of you, but i looked it up, and they had guns in classic fallout! by the way, you ever noticed how the prewar food should have gone bad by now? that’s really unrealistic. you say it’s a joke about preservatives but realistically they don’t last that long so it doesn’t work. even still, to me, fallout 4 is good, even though there’s an unrealistic part (the food should be expired). tunnel snakes rule

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it’s kind of crazy that both fallout new Vegas and fallout 4 have the same driving force for the first half of the narrative (find the guy who wronged you and make him pay) but Benny is so much more memorable and narratively interesting than Kellogg.

It’s a matter of a strong character foil versus a weak one, in my opinion.

Benny and the courier are very much alike. They are both ambitious people who are willing to do anything possible to stack the odds in their favour. Honestly, Benny and the courier are the same card, reversed.

The Sole Survivor and Kellogg are also intended to be character foils. The game tries to convince us of this with the scenes in Kellogg’s mind, where we see that he ‘isn’t so different’ from our protagonist after all. But we don’t know anything about Kellogg other than his backstory. How can he parallel the protagonist if we don’t know which traits he has? Which traits the two of them share?

(As a side note, I wish Fallout 4 had touched way more on the ‘Man/Woman Out of Time’ thing. The protagonist being frozen in the past + Kellogg being functionally immortal would’ve been really cool to explore! Especially in the context of grief!)

In the end, I think the reason Benny is a more powerful character foil is that he doesn’t disappear from the world when you kill him. The chairmen can mourn him, House will comment on it, and even NPCs across the Mojave will talk about Benny’s death!

In Kellogg’s case, the protagonist is basically the only person who knows he even existed! Once he’s dead HE’s DEAD! He disappears completely from the narrative! As soon as you leave fort Hagen, the game doesn’t bother looking back.

that’s why Benny is a more haunting force for new Vegas; particularly an independent courier. You are Benny’s legacy because you are what he leaves behind whether he likes it or not. People remember him as the couriers victim. Meanwhile, nobody remembers Kellogg at all. The memory of who Kellogg was dies with you, and you can choose to forget him.

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To be clear, it doesn't actually matter if FNV got "retconned" by the show or not.

I'm already seeing people on social media post screenshots of Emil Pagliarulo's tweets where he confirms that FNV is canon to the show, but that was never what I was upset about. In fact, I didn't even notice until just now that the year that the "Fall of Shady Sands" happened the same year as the First Battle of Hoover Dam.

The thing is, even in the most generous interpretation: that FNV did happen, the writers just can't keep track of the year when it happened (an embarrassing mistake by itself) is still terrible, because that means that NCR and New Vegas got offscreened, and the events of FNV ended up not mattering worth a fuck. The way the writers handled this still speaks of immense disrespect towards Obsidian's work on the game.

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[Jun 25, 2021] “Silver-tongued, gunslinging, chain-smoking Jane. My Courier from a current playthrough of Fallout: New Vegas.”

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Since we're excited about ghouls, here's a 2023 ref sheet of my boy Andrei

He looks mean, but he's not. He just has zero social skills. He is soft and squishy and treats his pet molerat like the princess that she is

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my social incentive to get people upset and riled up about the fallout show is the same social incentive i had when i wrote about the tragedy of x6 -- recognize that this fucking company doesn't care about Black characters, Black fans, Black history. this is a directed post.

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I think people forget that when you headcanon characters as any minority, you still have to put care and thought into it even if it’s just for fun or just for laughs.

Having a high diversity count in your headcanons doesn’t actually automatically equate to you being safe or progressive. You could just as easily be doing some pretty violent bigotry without realizing it. I see this happen really, really often- people trying to maximize their spread of minority headcanons and committing to some heinous stereotyping in the process…

Sometimes characters just have traits that make them fundamentally incompatible with X, Y, or Z minority headcanon. That’s fine. Please do not step into the jaws of a bear trap just because you want to look like a good leftist or something. I promise headcanoning the abusive male predatory pervert character as a trans woman will not make you look good on the sheer basis of having a transfem headcanon. In fact, you look worse now. Please stop that. I am avoiding you.

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mornin', wasteland

some 15 bucks would make a positive difference for my family today, if you have any change. stuff is tight and chaotic because we're moving. id like to be able to buy groceries for my wife today

it's my birthday in two weeks but i could rly use a solid now, if you're inclined. no pressure🌸many blessings🔮

p-ypal.me/atlpond cash.-pp/$swordquest v-nmo:@swordquest

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While we're discussing thematic failings and racism in fallout stories, I'd like to link a very good essay on the presence (and lackthereof) of indigenous people in New Vegas.

Please please please give this a read. I know it's an ao3 link, so it may seem less serious, but it's very well done and 100% worth the look.

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hshsfhdhshshs yall look at what @rosy-landamara made irt bethesda's treatment of Preston

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its not fucking KOSA censorship to ask the majority white fanbase to question why the majority white creators of a MASSIVE fucking franchise have an obsession with showing very specific kinds of racial violence and dehumanization against Black people, particularly Black men. but yeah. whatever. enjoy your franchise slop whitey

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as a Wretched East Coast Fan i will always always side with Stuck Up West Coast Fans wrt the themes and functionality of fallout as a series because frankly in comparison (and excluding some of my longtime mutuals) i have never felt more scrutinized and unwelcome than in hypersensitive 3/4/76 spaces that see any frustration or expressions of negativity at the state of the franchise as an attack on community wellbeing.

seeing a passion of mine for the past 10 years -- digging into the worlds of fallout and their political explorations, or lack-thereof -- be reduced to "fandom wank" and an inability to let people have fun is disheartening. and honestly demeans the exceptional amount of time, energy, and thought me & MANY others have put into piecing together lore and themes and creating interpretive meta.

i understand this seems like A Lot for people who may have just started following me but this is not the first nor will it be the last time well-established critiques of the later fallout games made by people of color or queer people have been reduced to fandom drama and im kind of fucking sick of it. and honestly im kinda tired of being nice about it

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a development team that looks like this could not possibly have any preconceived biases against Black people. noooo way. its just a mistake that all of the Black people in fo4 are slaves or named after fascist colonizers or murdered or stereotypical conspiracy freaks. there is no way that the reality of this team is reflected in the art they create over and over and over and over and over and over and

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how am i even alive in this game?!

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Fun fact I named someone in my fic todd. He's otherwise unmentioned and dies a painful death