#Danse rambles

[fallout-drabbles-n-stuff]

Okay so maybe I am writing that Danse AU in very small tidbits that will be very much out of order but just walking through the whole process here…how old should Danse actually be? Like logically speaking. I put him at late 30’s but could he be older? Paladin Brandis is likely in his 50’s and still a part of the Brotherhood so idk. (Also greying beard Danse is something I love picturing)

[nukacourier]

genuine question, what do you mean by babying danse?

I like him quite a lot and seen a considerable amount of content, but I might've just not noticed?? what you're talking about specifically

What I mean is people basically pulling the "he's my baby boy he'd never do anything wrong" shit. And the way people talk about him (calling him a "himbo", and as said "baby boy", saying he's just a sad guy who's misunderstood, etc) reads deeply as infantilization especially considering. As said. He's a grown man who literally upholds fascist ideals and only left the Brotherhood because he'd literally die otherwise

I'm not saying people aren't allowed to explore a softer side of him or theorize how a redemption arc for him would go. But the way I often see him (mis)characterized as being a stupid, gentle, "doesn't know what he's doing is wrong :(" type of guy REEKS of "autistic people are basically like children and don't know if they're doing something bad", especially since I've seen people on multiple platforms claim him and Maxon are "son and father figure" despite him being older than Maxon, just because he's subservient to him and they're vaguely friends

(But since fans read him as autistic OBVIOUSLY that means Maxon is like a caretaker for this poor misguided soul and not literally his boss and commander /sarcasm)

Like. If you haven't seen this stuff, good for you. But basically every time I've seen a post about him that isn't tearing into him for being a BOS member is basically like what I mentioned in one degree or another. If you actually look at the way people talk about him, it becomes obvious

Plus, you notice this when it's not just one character this happens to. I've seen it happen with Arcade (thankfully that's died down in recent years), Preston, and currently Maximus from the show. Just an endless cycle of people denying autonomy from characters who are read as awkward and/or autistic

(I'm sure other people would have more examples on hand. So if you do, feel free to reblog this and add them)

[wassertoffatom]

Just thinking about Mavis and Johnny from Hotel Transylvania and their “zing” and now I’m imagining misc companions having their “zing”

For example companions like Deacon, Mac, and Nick who have all lost someone: one day they meet sole and they feel their "zing" but are in such denial because they had already lost someone who meant the WORLD to them. They deny and deny until they physically can't resist not being with sole.

For companions like Danse, Cait, Curie, Gage: they think its bogus. They think its something that parents tell their children at bedtime with other fictional stories. Cait and Gage just don’t believe in those things and Curie and Danse are just too "logical". I think Dans and Gage would come around a lot faster than Cait and Curie. Cait is just too damn stubborn and Curie can’t feel out her feelings as well a others (she gets better)

Hancock would believe in it but l think that he would be very self critical about it. If the "zing" happened to him he would just be like "I took way too many chems that I'm now making this up" or the classic "sole is too good for me, it must've just been a fluke.” It wasn’t, but sole would definitely have to pursue Hancock a little to he him convinced that it wasn’t a mistake.

Preston is all for it. He's pretty hopeful and idealistic which makes him a firm believer of the concept.

Piper is a little more tricky than Preston but I think she's very much into the concept too.

[dykedvonte]

what do you think Danse does to keep himself busy after blind betrayal, specifically if he's living in sanctuary? I just love your takes on him a lot haha

I think Danse is very lost in any settlement but especially Sanctuary. It was the first and very close-knit at that with the small group the Sole Survivor founded it with. Each time they would invite a new companion to live there it was like adding a pillar to the community and represented what the Minute Men stood for when it came ot uniting and protecting the commonwealth as one. I am not going to say it's cliquey, in fact I feel like SoSu and Preston/Sturges would go out of their way to make newcomers feel welcome but for Danse that is very different.

He (from my playthrough experience) is one of the later companions. I ran around a lot and got a good portion of the companions and their quest before act one was done. He is also one of the few companions who openly thinks lowly of life in the commonwealth and certain citizens (if not all citizens to an extent). He did not introduce himself to Sanctuary to make friends or roots. So when he gets stuck there under the SoSu's "orders" (not letting him rot in sorrow in some random bunker) he doesn't have any comfort or companionship, in fact, I think he has more tensions and beef tbh.

I imagine the first weeks or even a month or two were rough. I don't think it is stated enough that like Danse went to that bunker intending to follow Brotherhood protocols and kill himself. SoSu may have convinced him not to in the moment but with someone like Danse, so rigid and stuck in an ideology even after it spits in his face, it's not unlikely he has a weird guilt about being alive at first. It doesn't help that I know in my heart that a few of the more petty or insensitive companions or settlers would tease him about it (playful meanness) thinking he was adjusting well (or not caring) to the Sanctuary life and coming to terms with his identity. Sometimes they go too far and it's easy to tell he's gotten back into the headspace, looking at his reflection, trying to remember concrete dates for his memories, etc..

I have this head canon that SoSu recognized this pattern as they had to have immense survivor's guilt (especially after being in Kellogs brain) about surviving the vault. They had the same idea about making things "fair" for the other vault dwellers and Shaun was the only thing between them and those thoughts for a while. For the first weeks it was a lot of SoSu monitoring him and making sure he was adjusting and not falling back into that thinking, y'know the whole "I am a disgrace and abomination against the Brotherhood and humanity. The only thing I can do to no longer sully the honor of either is to kill mys-" Like stopping that with minor distractions.

It would be a lot of small work and building projects and patrols for lost scavengers or to make sure no one is stalking the place. It's nice for him for a while, he's getting social interaction and he's not dead in the eyes of at least one Brotherhood member, especially one of as high rank as the SoSu. But it's also really unhealthy. Danse was trained and raised in a militaristic pseudo-religious faction. As much as there seemed to be casualness towards comrades there was a strict structure and order. He shoves the SoSu into that role and probably gets nick-named as their shadow during this period.

They are his only goal as he has nothing else and it shows bad. The rest of the settlement notices he trails after them and only really does his own thing when it's part of a task he was doing for, with or assigned by the Sole survivor. It's not an obsession with them specifically but he has lost his entire understanding of life and this is the one thing that stayed concrete. He does what he's asked of because following the Sole survivor has at least kept him belonging somewhere and why mess that up?

I am sure SoSu is not oblivious and is actively trying to figure out how to get Danse to start socializing and trying to actually settle into the community but for the time being Danse would treat himself like the machine he perceives himself as; Overworking himself as he believes machines don't need the same amount of rest, isolating himself and mostly trying to not have a mental breakdown every time he get into the power armor that is very much not his issued Brotherhood of Steel tech. He openly does this in respect of the General who hates it and makes everyone else uncomfortable.

this was very long just to say I think Danse just works himself to the bone all day and purposely puts thoughts in his already fragile psyche that everyone hates him and only tolerates his presence to not seem Synth-phobic and the Sole survivor's favor.

[rad-hound]

How is it at all fair that you can romance Paladin Danse, but not Nick Valentine???

[moonwaterart]

Paladin Danse: I hate Ghouls. They’re the scum of the earth and must die.

Also Paladin Danse: I’ve only known Billy Peabody for two minutes and if anything happened to him or his parents, I’d kill everybody in the room and then myself.

[ghost-qwq]

Music I think Fallout characters would listen to

(Butch, Veronica, Benny, Boone, Vulpes, Deacon, Danse, Curie, MacCready)

Fo3 (Butch...)

Butch: okay do I need to say that he listens to rockabilly????? He just... He does. Idk he seems like he'd like the Koffin Kats or something. ,, idk Brian Setzer kind of dude,, Stray Cats too

FNV (Veronica, Benny, Boone, and Vulpes)

Veronica: oh if you gave this girl ANYTHING she'd listen to it... Ngl tho she feels like a metal and punk girl...

Benny: if you think he listens to anything other than 50s/60s you're wrong. He likes the classics and refuses to listen to anything else

Boone: like... dad rock... that's all I'm confident about

Vulpes: Imma be fr with you, I think this freak doesn't listen to music. If he DID it would be some indie band and he'd be so annoying about it

Fo4 (Deacon, Danse, Curie, and MacCready)

Deacon: I'm so fr he feels like he would listen to Weird Al,, like that's all I can think of. He's a Weird Al fan 100%

Danse: we already know he likes country and bluegrass!! He's a Marty Robbins fan probably,, idk he feels like a cowboy country kind of guy. Big fan of sad cowboy songs

Curie: she likes classical music but is so intrigued by all kinds of music, she'd listen to everything at least once

MacCready: he probably kinda likes Rockabilly because of Butch but he definitely prefers rock classics

[amazinglyegg]

Fallout 4 companions as which Don't Starve Together character they'd main:

Cait: Wolfgang, and eats all the food so she can stay permanently mighty. I would say Wigfrid but she's too much of a team player, Cait's gonna run off and die unprepared and then whine if she doesn't get revived immediately

Curie: Webber. Cute little spider boy who can befriend spiders and make them friends with the team!! What's not to love?? Also enjoys being helpful to the team by getting a ton of silk and eating all the extra monster meat.

Codsworth: Warly 100%. He takes the work the others are too lazy to do and stays at camp the entire time. Probably has an list of every single crockpot recipe beside him while he plays.

Danse: Wilson. He doesn't get the point of picking a character with disadvantages and thinks having to jump through hoops to manage character-specific issues is ridiculous. He'll never play as anyone other than Wilson.

Deacon: Wes would be too obvious so I'm going with Winona. Doesn't go to base ever, people don't even know he exists, but whenever the team goes to fight a boss he already has a complex cheese setup with catapults and meatbulbs or something. Minmaxes everything.

Gage: Willow. Burns down the chests when his sanity gets low and gets banned immediately.

Hancock: Probably Wortox??? He wants to be a little freak of some sort, that's for sure. Completely abuses his teleports out of laziness and never actually uses his souls responsibly.

Longfellow: Chooses Wickerbottom, dies to Charlie on the first night, then turns off DST and plays Shipwrecked instead. Picks Woodlegs. Still dies on the first night.

Maccready: If not Wolfgang, he probably hears X6 talk about meta strategies and plays as Wanda! Finds it very entertaining that an old lady is one of the strongest characters, and not having a health meter makes him feel much stronger than he really is.

Nick Valentine: Picks Woodie randomly at the character select screen without reading his description, gets pretty attached to Lucy and the easy wood supply. You can imagine his shock on the first full moon.

Piper: Refuses to pick a main for the longest time and goes down the entire list every time she dies, until she reaches Walter. She just CANNOT part with Woby, no matter how much she sucks at playing as him.

Preston: Wendy! He needs Abigail to help him with fights, I doubt he's very good at games. Definitely says he's going on a quick supply run then gets sidetracked by helping pipspooks. He can't just IGNORE them!!

X6-88: W8-78 would be the expected one (same naming scheme!) but I doubt X6 would enjoy having to run around and scan rabbits with Jimmy. He'd probably pick some minmaxer like Wanda or Wolfgang and ruins rush day 1 or whatever. He totally follows an online guide and ragequits when he realizes picking a "meta" character =/= automatic win.

[mentat2gh0ul]

Danse is hot and all I agree but I think (and I speak for all the Hancock fans here) that if a man doesn't look like the corpse of a mole rat then what's the point? Bonus for charisma.

[3584-tropical-fish]

hello fish! what ballets do u associate w vallerina? (& if you have specific clips can u link them pls?)

Hi morgan!!! I love having excuses to talk about ballet, thank you so so much for asking :D

I think The Rite of Spring (original title: Le Sacre du Printemps) is definitely the most fitting. The music is by Igor Stravinsky and original choreography was by Vaslav Nijinsky, but his choreography has since been lost, so I'm going to link the Joffrey Ballet's recreation, with choreography by Millicent Hodson. It is set in prehistoric Russia, and is about the sacrifice of a young girl (referred to as The Chosen One) in order to bring about the spring. And well. I feel like that theme of being chosen for some sort of great honor that is actually incredibly horrifying is quite fitting for Val.

The whole ballet is only about 30 minutes, but the Chosen One is chosen at the 18:28 mark, and she begins to dance herself to death at about 24:20

I've noticed that a lot of people reference Swan Lake, when they do vallerina art, which I'd guess is probably because it's one of the tragic ballets that is firmly in the public conscious and there's that Black Swan movie, but you know what people are right for it! A person is forced into a shape that doesn't fit them, is made no longer human, and its full of drama and death. Odile has this charm to her that is so fitting for Val, and I think this variation works nicely to get that energy across:

Though I also need an Odette clip, so here's the finale where she turns into a swan:

However, even more fitting for Val, I think, is the The Dying Swan by Mikhail Fokine, set to Camille Saint-Saëns's Le Cygne from Le Carnaval des animaux. A swan song if ever there was one, a final bow for Val, trying to escape but not quite able to.

I think to close out my collection of ballet blancs I am legally obligated to also include Giselle (or, Les Wilis). A story about a girl who was wronged by her lover and dies, joining the ranks of all of the other undead women who were wronged by their lovers - the Wilis.

Paul Taylor's Esplanade I just think is fun, and the frantic vibes of it and the use of classical music are fitting for Val

Also for vibes I will share After the Rain by Christopher Wheeldon!

For the life of me I cannot find a video of Septet by Merce Cunningham, but that uses Trois morceaux en form de poire by Erik Satie, so I associate it with Val because the music that plays when she talks about wanting to be a ballerina is another Satie piece.

Anyways! That's a lot, hopefully you enjoy them, and thank you again for asking!!! If nothing else I hope more people can come to appreciate Rite of Spring as a Val ballet, because out of everything I do think that is the Most fitting

FUCK hang on im gonna throw this juliet variation in last minute this is fun too

[gophergal]

Actually hold the fuck up. Fallout fandom. Why aren't we talking about the parallels of Harkness, Paladin Danse, and Nick Valentine more?

[nukacourier]

Why am I seeing people calling Maxson a "father figure" to Danse on tiktok

Like. You guys know he's only in his early 20s right?? And Danse is like the same age (or possibly older)??? I feel like this is a case of the fandom taking a character that's largely seen as autistic by fans (Danse) and infantilizing the fuck out of him because of it

[capcollector]

i really wanna do some sorta big post-game story to kinda conclude the BoS arc in the commonwealth. bc the way it’s set up currently, even tho the minutemen are the ones who have a handle on the commonwealth, the brotherhood still exists and still like. wanders around. does their own thing. on vaguely neutral terms. but there’s this very clear bitterness they feel towards everyone involved and how things played out. and i wanna explore that. i wanna actually delve into the fact that the BoS is fucking awful

like i hate how easily maxson backs down from things like sparing danse. it feels too easy. and similarly if they really hate synths that much, would they not still try to take out the railroad? would they not try to impede the railroad’s ongoing operations to help survivors in the wake of the institute’s death? they’re armed to the teeth so what’s stopping them from just trying to take the commonwealth for themselves if they truly believe they’re the righteous ones.

[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.

[rad-hound]

Thinking abt ValenDanse again.

[vikingqueer]

good morning everyone, you should listen to episode 1 of dracula: the danse macabre