#anyway moving on to fallout 76

[vault81]

bored so ig I'll rank the fallout games and their dlc

[evilyesman]

finally drew my fallout 76 oc.....if you guys see me (obstag00n) on there you should give me stimpaks PLEASE give me stimpaks...and yes he will become a ghoul once they drop that update x

More info on him under this ! :3

Crooner with humble beginnings from before the war, Cosmo became famous for his smooth voice and magnetic personality. He was originally supposed to be in Vault 74 but because they were over capacity he was moved to 76, lucky for him.

He was invited to a Vault because of his work for the U.S government, unbeknownst to the public he worked as international spy while on various tours for his music. He didn't really *want* to, per se, but the government didn't give him much of a choice. He has a large burn scar on the left (his right) side of his face because of an altercation while first arriving in the Vault. Because of his espionage being, obviously, unknown to the public, people assumed he was just allowed into the Vault because of his fame and fortune. This assumption lead to a fight with a fellow Dweller and ended with him getting boiling water splashed on his face, yeouch !

Though he enters the Vault age 25, he exits 50 years old. During his time there he picked up some medical knowledge by working in the Vault's clinic. (Though he would've preferred to stay a performer, the demand for singers after nuclear annihilation is admittedly low.)

After leaving Vault 76 he sets out on his Reclamation Day journey, learning about The Horrors all the while. He meets a few upper-class people who invite him to stay with him in exchange for performing at their bars, and he is ultimately forced to choose between a life of luxury and helping the people of the wasteland. He chooses the latter because of the guilt he couldn't shake, and joins up with the Responders. He eventually learns about the Scorched Plague and devotes his time to finding a cure for it. His time in the wasteland and a significant lack of RadAway is what eventually turns him into a slightly scorched Ghoul, to his dismay.

Anyways so yeah classic trope I love of "Arrogant rich and famous guy is forced to become humble again" xox...he had a good heart all along he was just very overconfident and a little bit of a jackass, x. He's not very physically strong but he can charm the socks off a Deathclaw. He's also not too thrilled about becoming a ghoul, having always been a little obsessed with his appearance but he learns to live with it.

[shatter-song]

I suppose if anyone here wants to know my opinion on issue 76, particularly with the Diamond Cutters (since just about anyone who follows me knows I care about them a lot), then look under the read more

(edited: pointed smth out that I thought was odd)

you.

buddy you are not the main protagonist /j

fr though, I think the most common misunderstanding was that Silver was on the team when really, he was just training with them once

I do like that he got the ball rolling along since it was pretty obvious that, without some kind of push, none of them were going to actually talk. that's kinda realistic, I mean how many times has someone avoided talking about how they're doing and no one bothered to ask any further? not the best comparison but it's clear that communication is poor with these guys. someone had to be upfront about it I suppose

this moment is very sweet too what else needs to be said really

now... onto this

frankly, I'm glad that Lanolin apologized here. Silver and Whisper undeniably deserved one

I just find it kinda weird that it's hardly acknowledged beyond a simple thanks from Silver?? Whisper doesn't even react at all

aside from Jewel, hardly anyone at all actually has any kind words for her actually. (YURIIIII) not even Tangle

it seems like the writers kinda just. shoved the mess/blame all onto Lano. so unless this gets addressed in a later issue, this is just kinda upsetting to me

like, she's apologizing for being lied to. who does that? the whole point of communication is to reach an understanding and work towards a united goal and clearly Tangle and Whisper not saying anything proved to be vital to the situation

so that's. upsetting. to me in particular

I mean it's not like Tangle is obligated to Lano in any way but again some ACKNOWLEDGEMENT would've gone a long way

now this scene

I'm... actually kinda interested where they take this?? I have one scenario planned out in my head (probably not gonna go in that direction, considering this is a comic targeted to a younger audience) and the writers had to have realized by now that they're being repetitive with Whisper at this point (right? RIGHT???)

oh and Belle is here too, great stuff, love you kiddo

so, conclusion:

maybe a temporary split up is necessary to come back stronger than ever! it's upsetting to see, but with so many things to worry about—Mimic, Clutch and Eggman, the fallout of the Restoration—dividing the work and such is probably a necessary evil. they all could do some serious work on their communication anyway

so, things I'd like to see: an apology to Lano from Whisper and Silver, an actual conclusion for Whisper from her trauma and Moving On, Lanolin and Jewel (yuri :D) getting more cool moments (like fr), and just. trying to become a little more functional team. at least try

[mllemaenad]

So – Bethesda broke Fallout 4's script extender. Because of course they did. What better way to celebrate the release of your new TV show than to stall people's ongoing playthroughs? Excellent work. I don't even want an Enclave quest. It's Creation Club nonsense, so it won't actually be a proper quest anyway.

I want to finish my Sim Settlements 2 playthrough. Ugh.

So while I'm waiting for the dust to settle on that, I thought I'd give Fallout 76 another go. I am rebuilding my mod list for Fallout 3, but that's a work in progress. And Fallout 76 is right there.

I created a new character, because I haven't played this thing in ages and I know they've changed a bunch of the mechanics. And oh - ha. I mean, I had thought from the beginning that creating a game without NPCs was a terrible idea, because it's hard to invest in saving an empty world. But the addition of them makes playing the game's original main quest a distinctly bizarre experience.

I don't mean that I'm suddenly pro-empty world. Not at all. In general the presence of factions and personalities and people you can care about it a good thing.

But when they made this game, the writers and quest designers were given "empty world" as a parameter within which they had to work. And they did.

It's sort of an interesting, even bold, choice for a storyline because it does not allow you to feel good about yourself at all. Most Fallout games do. Oh, you can play evil if you want, sure, and there are a handful of side quests that are genuinely no win scenarios. But mostly? You can save the world. And you will probably have a better experience if you try to: there's more to do when you talk to the NPCs and deal with their problems rather than just murdering everyone and taking their stuff.

But Fallout 76 is just judging you.

I keep thinking about its promotional song – that really upbeat cover of Take Me Home, Country Roads, and all the imagery in the old trailer, about rebuilding and looking to the future. But all of that is functionally a lie, and the key lines in that song come towards the end:

I hear her voice in the mornin' hour, she calls me The radio reminds me of my home far away Drivin' down the road, I get a feelin' That I should've been home yesterday, yesterday – Take Me Home, Country Roads

You should have been home yesterday. You should have been home a thousand yesterdays ago. This story is all about the past, and a rebuilding effort you neglected to join. It hits you with the guilt straight away, as the very first place the game takes you is an old outpost of emergency service personnel who just kept on doing their jobs after the bombs fell. It's their notes and recordings that teach you how to survive.

Of course you encounter less pleasant people later: raiders and Enclave, and honestly I have little patience for any iteration of The Brotherhood of Steel. But even there, you can see that the misunderstandings and conflicts and general fuck ups might have been resolved with a competent mediator.

And that is exactly what you are. You're a Fallout protagonist. You don't have the time to spend ten years sitting in a lab, but you excel at travelling from town to town and dealing with whatever obstacle is stopping a faction from moving forward. Fallouts 1-4 and assorted spin offs have taught us all that.

Even in universe, Vault 76 is stated to be full of literal geniuses. It is packed with doctors and scientists and engineers: exactly the people the world needed to deal with a combination of plague and environmental crisis.

If you were there, you could have fixed this.

But you were not there. You were sitting comfortably in a vault, while other, better people tried to save the world.

And they were almost there. They had a vaccine. Even with everything, they had a vaccine. They did the work, they had a plan. As you play through this quest, you stand upon the shoulders of giants at almost every stage, implementing the very last step in a plan that really does work. Had they lived, even a few months longer ... but they didn't, and you did nothing to help them.

It wasn't even necessary to spend 25 years in that vault, as it is abundantly clear that the area around 76 has been habitable this whole time. Challenging, sure: I am in no way suggesting that it was an easy existence. But it was not instant irradiated death.

Every other Fallout protagonist steps out of their vault (or other entry scenario) in time to make things right. Maybe just in time, but nevertheless. They walk into a fractured world and get to work. But not you. You took the easy route.

How proud are you of that Best Dental Hygiene award now?

Given that it is set so close to the Great War, and deals with first generation survivors, it gives one of the best looks at the cynical cruelty of Vault-Tec: when they talk about rebuilding the world, it only means rebuilding for its own benefit and profit. Anyone not part of their plan is more than welcome to die in a hole.

It ties in very nicely with the television series, actually. Lucy laments that she was waiting to rebuild the world, but it all happened without her - and Vault-Tec actively tried to destroy that new world (and at least up to a point, seems to have succeeded). Her people waited over 200 years, but it didn't take that long. Twenty-five were quite enough.

But with the new version ... I mean, it really takes the sting out of it. It looks like everybody had a few rough years there, but it's all turned out fine. There's a burgeoning civilisation here, with homesteads and caravans and trade. I can't go two steps without an NPC asking to borrow a bobby pin, and even the raiders are more territorial than outright destructive (although – is nobody going to go up that completely safe little hill and give poor Miguel a funeral? Come on guys, clean up the damn corpses).

The tragedy of the whole thing, and the weight of your own inaction, is largely gone. You can't reshape the world and still make the same impact with that narrative.

I don't know, I guess I just can't quite get behind the whole multiplayer-ness of the thing. The world can't really change as you complete quests. You can't really rebuild. But likewise, if the world does change, it has to change for everyone at the same time, regardless of where they are in the story.

It could still work, I think, if you could play through that story and then see the caravans come over the hill, and start to rebuild the world.

Because that might feel a bit like redemption.

[pinkopalina]

hello! happy birthday!! 💗💝🤗 hope you're gonna have an amazing day and treat yourself to a nice cake or something sweet.

what's something youve been enjoying lately? i saw you mention fallout but m not familiar with the franchise, have you been playing the games? :] <- i feel like an auntie asking about interests knowing nothing about them

I appreciate you so much! I'm gonna go to an arcade and one of our favorite restaurants to eat out tonight!

ooh yes I appreciate you asking about it! you can be my old auntie any time! fallout is one of my favorite franchises!!

so when I was in college (uhhhh a little under 10 years ago) Sam played a lot of fallout 4 and that's how I got into it, too. however, my friend felli had also liked fallout and had played some of New Vegas and 3 while I was over at her house when I was even younger, in high school. I just didn't know they would mean more to me later on.

right now, the game I've been playing a lot of is fallout 76. it's different from the others because it's the first one that's online, mmorpg. it also changes and updates which is kind of cool, like, there was an empty Barn location and then there was an update where they closed it and put a sign on it that said a family was going to be moving in and then the next update there were more characters in there and there was like a new side quest and stuff for them. this is probably common, usual, standard, and typical of games like overwatch and world of warcraft and stuff, but this was the first time fallout had done something like it.

which for me has ups and downs. I pay the extra monthly clown fee to get game perks because it's worth it since I'm addicted to the game and play it way too much anyways 😂 my favorite things to do are events, so I can earn in game currency to get camp decorations and outfits. it's always about looking cute. I do also like to cook, even though the mechanic in the game is nowhere as sophisticated as even legend of Zelda on the switch. and lastly I love to do events with other players because I main melee, and there are some where I can really help out and show off and shine because being melee is the offbeat path. most people use the game like an FPS but I prefer to treat it like a sandbox.

thank you for asking about my favorite game and letting me rave about it! ☺️🥰🎀🥳

[keanbeanproduction]

My World Building I guess!

I wanna be completely honest in the project I was going to talk about today. Just a little absent minded recently been really into fallout 76 and getting all the challenges done before stuff happens I guess. 

So I guess I could talk about a few of the worlds I built which I just gave them titles. It helps me keep them all together, and if an idea doesn’t fit with the world, I can always just give it to another one or I just keep it in a little note documents makes it a lot easier to just keep them all together. 

Sounds Messi had it is at some point it is but this is how I like to do it and anytime I add something new to lore. I just put it in the document with the world and then I go back and I kind of just put the stuff together that is connected, which I plan on, transferring all to an actual world building program. That’s the kind of like I’m one of those trees look like a family tree with ideas connected with each other and stuff like that.

So anyways, the one I’ve been talking about the most will always be my fantasy world one. I’m currently working on that is set an a world that doesn’t really have magic just technology is the magic or was used as magic kind of like how alchemy had very real science to it, but you know was misinterpreted as magic, and sometimes just considered just science. But it will have a lot of like a hill have minor love crafting elements to it later in the story with the main original three races, which are talked about as myth or legends that created other races, or taught other races how to do science and then they said in the lore that they are from the star so they are aliens, but I won’t explain it fully. I want to leave some to the imagination of if they are aliens or not or, what other races are aliens.

As with the Fae that exist in the world, a lot of the powers. They have such as mind controls up or even their arms and limbs being blades are based on real world, animals and phenomenon with animals. They just evolved to be that way, and are actually protectors of nature, a kin to like fantasy druids than anything else which I kind of like that idea and take a little inspiration from the borrowers. If anyone remembers that book, they like to collect things from races that are much bigger than that they aren’t exactly tiny.

Continuing on about the Fae, they range from mammal to insect like what that seems to be the main two that people have seen in the world which I’m just gonna keep it like that because it’s a lot easier to explain that Fai are kind of a mammal looking or they look like insects or crustaceans.

Which I plan to give Fae their own story in the universe that is separate from the dragon story, which dragons where they came from will be explained way way later since a lot of information about the original three races that helped grow other civilizations then just disappeared like nothing ever happened will be explained through myths and legends, but since I don’t have a plan for them just yet or I’ve already planned it who knows no one will really know if any myths or stories about them are true because I love them I’ve just been re-edited or made to fit certain cultures in the world.

But let’s take a step back from the fantasy little world I have and move onto one a little more interesting a little more sci-fi, which also really isn’t that specific I got a few that are kind of sci-fi, but this one has no magical elements, fantasy, races, or stuff like that it’s more in kin to cyber punk or prototype. I would even throw in a bit of that one game. Oh yes infamous where are you have the conduits in their powers.

I do have a few world that actually use magic about my own take on Magic since I don’t really have that many universities more or less universe called. I just called the horror universe that I kind of just have more or less for my stories that just don’t send anything I can just put them on the same world, and they kind of are all on the same logic of the world, but continuing on with this little Syfy one which I call GORES.

Which actually does mean something in the universe, but I’m not going to say it just yet it’s basically takes place in a world where genetic edit in and all of that sort of stuff is very common to the point where a company genetically makes mascots for businesses. As well as genetically altered celebrities and bands, which actually is what the story follows it follows, following one of these genetically altered creatures, whose band members were killed after they were deemed useless and outdated but as well, the company isn’t exactly good shocker, right?

Nope they go full umbrella on everyone else, and turns out all of the genetic things they may have basically kill switches inside that turn them into murderous rampage in monsters, with weapons that are biologically a part of them going for prototype and Akira on people.

I don’t want to spoil too much, but it’s very gory splatter Feste with other sci-fi elements, including psychics telekinetic’s psychokinesis all that sort of stuff mutants in a world that I would say, is kind of like Dredd almost minus the weird magic.

That’s pretty much that on that universe don’t want to go into too much detail and spoil a bit for the writing. Or on the rest of the little writing projects that I have planned out or I’m just saving for a rainy day I don’t plan to make all of them just it’s fun to have them around and think about them recently I did get an idea for one after watching RoboCop as well as watching a video on the game manhunt.

That universe would be one of my darkest and most somewhat realistic settings overall, just a very disturbing time, but I wouldn’t go overly edgy with it.

Well, thanks to those who actually read my entire little rant. I was having here and I plan to post may be a member to today as well but hope y’all have a wonderful day bye-bye!



[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 6/13/2023

very games-centric week

listening

this opening bit samples bowie's life on mars and sounds like a piano cover of a half-remembered but still beloved childhood anime. like the kind you had a set of two VHS clamshells for but only episodes 4-6 and 10-12. it goes on the "lofi beats to data and entry to" playlist. spotify

-

reading

fallow week

-

watching

the folks at waypoint games, formerly vice's leftist games vertical, BOUGHT THE BRAND FROM VICE and are rebranding as remap. i wish them all the fuckin best and i hope they succeed but i feel like we have maybe six months of this before one of them goes literally bankrupt from a doctor's visit bc healthcare is such a fuckin nightmare in this country. im simply not excited for starfield. i am not interested in corporate nasa

anyway i enjoyed their commentary, excited for compulsion games' southern gothic action/adventure spellcaster South of Midnight

neutrally optimistic about obsidian's Avowed, bc i do love obsidian but i do not love sword and sorcery rpgs

there's airships in microsoft flight simulator so i may genuinely buy one month of gamepass to try that out

capcom's path of the goddess looks fucking gorgeous but i have never played more than half an hour of a capcom game and i expect i never will. is this topdown? is this isometric? what the fuck is the gameplay mode??? who could FUCKING say

also there's a new jersey fallout 76 expansion coming at some point. in real life i hate atlantic city and i don't really how know this will look or play differently from point lookout. i don't know if i want to play a much-reviled cash cow mmorpg just to get postapoc jersey lore. if this leads up to 5 being set in nyc im going to be real pissed off. go somewhere DIFFERENT. there are DIFFERENT PLACES on the east coast!!! blease

-

playing

viddy game can consistently turn my brain off enough that i forget im moving cross country in two weeks and can forcibly relax my body for twenty mintues at a time between packing boxes. so there's been a lot of pomodoro-ing, or my version which is: pack until i get so anxious i physically cannot pack anymore, go have a snack, go play twenty minutes of a video game, and then go pack until i am on the verge of a panic attack again. this is not healthy but all my books are packed. all of these were free on epic at some point btw which is why i own them

the first time i played Airborne Kingdom, i lost track of time and beat it in one sitting in eight hours. the second time i played Airship Kingdom, i replicated that exact experience. i have allied with all the kingdoms and have like two hundred souls on board but am not QUITE selfsufficient enough to take on the northern/artic sea DLC. stay tuned. soundtrack in this thing is great.

bounced VERY hard off Close to the Sun, a bioshock-lite i put about four hours/three levels into. a huge gilded age cruise ship where the science has Gone Wrong would normally be catnip to me, but the game did brutally kill the player character's sister in front of me in an unskippable cutscene so we're done with that game now THANK YOU. it is very slow, which i do like in a game that gives you this much stuff to look at, but there is no gamma control. this game is so fucking dark. i played it in a dark room with no lights and it was still too dark.

pinged off the typing exploration game Epistory despite its charming art, bc fast and accurate typing is something covid has taken from me.

rediscovered Carcassone (online) which is great bc i love Carcassone and own a physical copy of the board game but no one else in my life loves it. tile-building countryside-building game, seconds to learn, etc. thank you board game review even though there are no meeple in their natural habitat (the board) in this picture

-

making

it's gonna be putting things into boxes for the forseeable future (the next week) and then living out of them for a while (the next two weeks after that)

[uss-edsall]

One thing I've liked with fallout 76, it's got good decent environmental storytelling in it. It's better at it than Fallout 3, 4, dare I say even New Vegas in some cases.

Fallout is famous for an environmental storytelling thing. It's all of the skeletons who are found in funny poses, or all the teddy bears found in weird places with weird things. They are more injokes than anything else. What they imply is that in a world so full of corpses and shattered civilisation, still picking up the pieces two hundred years later, respect for the dead is wholly gone - life can be ended in a blink and raiders especially would move skeletons into odd positions for their own amusement. Particularly in some places, they don't even care enough to sweep the skeletons out of the building. Unfortunately, this is so prevalent it stops being meaningful and comes off as just a dumb joke, but it's the best example of 'environmental storytelling everyone knows about'

I can point to two games immediately which have setpieces that give good environmental storytelling: Halo 3 ODST and, oddly, ArmA III's singleplayer components

Halo 3 ODST is built on this. The entire thing is in some form "The Rookie is using the shattered debris of the city to make a fanfic of what he thinks happened to his squad." There's at least one sequence in Buck's mission where you can find a shotgun at the end of a hallway, with a dead marine and several dead brutes. Hmm, wonder what happened there

ArmA III… -Contact DLC has some interesting environmental stuff. You can find a dead body on a road with a blood trail back to an unlucky squad, in the midst of which a meteorite landed, with one (mortally wounded) person surviving the initial impact. Additionally you can repeatedly encounter the spetsnaz team you later ally with, doing shifty things -A scenario added as part of a part-celebration and part-charity drive includes a small church. If you approach it you suddenly hear a pair of gunshots, and you can find two dead officers (which is automatically radioed in, and dismissed as two war criminals who probably saved the executioners a bullet) - and they have a written note that sheds doubt on the righteousness of your cause -The Laws of War DLC is really good for this too - it's about picking up the pieces and deciphering what exactly happened in this one town.

Anyway, going back to 76. All four of the modern fallout games - 3, NV, 4, 76 - depict the remnants of the nuclear war. 76, being set in 2102 just 25 years after the war, has the best possibilities for this, as not too much has been disturbed, not too much has changed, like the rest that are set two centuries later. They clearly recognised this too and put in great effort on it. On the nuclear side of things: vehicles in a traffic jam trying to get to vault 76; crashed vehicles. The number of APCs with open rears: they would've been shielded from the initial blasts inside of these CBRN-capable vehicles. At least one site where there's a dead soldier's body, on an overlook, situated where they could've looked out at one beautiful view one last time. For a less military focus, all of the signs in Beckley, the destruction clearly related to the violent suppression of a Union protest; the massacre of Watoga a day before the nukes flew after an attempt to subvert the robots gone wrong; the sheer devastation of the area dedicated to mining as nobody was around to tell the automated machines to 'stop', etc A sign on the side of a piece of large electronic equipment saying "this does not have a brain, use your own" because yeah, robobrains exist, the robots themselves are practically AIs, that's a kind of warning you need in an environment of mass automation

I'd say this emphasis on environment to tell story is largely because of how 76 was designed. It was initially built to not have humans, right? Only machines, if I recall correctly. So how do they compensate for the loss of human NPCs? (The answer is they couldn't and added them back in, but nonetheless) Part of it was putting in more focus on environmental storytelling. It's a little thing, and in the grand scheme of things it's not all that important. But it's a part of games' details I really like

Environmental storytelling is best described as "a story that is willing to let you miss it" but I always feel excited when I notice something.

[simplegenius042]

Please, I'm very curious about No One's Safe At Home and What Happened To Vault 76? 😃

Ah yes, I'm glad those two have caught your attention.

What Happened To Vault 76? is a Fallout 76 fic that is the fifth installment of the A Radioactive Calamity of Love, Bombs & Gore series, but technically the prequel which predates the other five fics.

Essentially, a Resident of Vault 76, Vega, sleeps in and misses out on everyone entering the world after the bombs dropped 25 years beforehand. After Vega leaves the vault, Vega learns that she was left behind on purpose, because for a lack of better words, she's the worst. Vega takes offense to this "treachery" and decides to go out and hunt down her fellow residents as well as Vault 76's Overseer (who she develops a rather cringe unhealthy obsession over). The Scorched and the raiders hardly phase Vega, nor do the super mutants. However, she does bump into two odd strangers; Matthias "Mason" Talos and his brother, Arcane Urias. They're odd because the Scorch doesn't seem to affect them like it does everyone else, and there's also the fact of their inhuman strength and off human appearance. But Vega takes the opportunity to gaslight, gatekeep and manipulate these guys into helping her kill the rest of her former compatriots. On the trio's journey, Mason gets more skeptical of Vega's word, but Urias takes an awful lot of interest in the Scorched and its origin. That's all I got for now.

However, No One's Safe At Home is a Welcome To The Game franchise fic apart of The Silver Chronicles. It's essentially the origin story for an OC of mine, a key character in La Última En Pie and Old Dusk (two Silva Omar centered fics), named Gavin Turquoise.

In the Silva centered fics, Gavin is a lawyer with connections to the criminal underworld, but not because he works for them, merely because he monitors who he wants to put away for good. Anyway, in No One's Safe At Home, it reveals that before Gavin was a lawyer, he was a former benefactor of shady organizations turned vigilante who got sick of the injustice that the worst people alive kept getting away with, especially after his little nephew (who Gavin had personally became a male role model to) was taken by said people, and started hunting them down. He found two connections between all of them; The Dark Web, and an organization called "the Ministry". So Gavin made it his life long mission to wipe these people off the face of the Earth. Not only to avenge his nephew, but also so Gavin can rig the "Game" in his favor, take the benefits of the power and rebuild this empire into something more honorable (as it has deviated so, so far from what it used to be).

In essence, this is like a revenge story where one of the benefactor's of the Dark Web is personally punched in the gut by the organization he helped rise up, taking away and likely killing his nephew (or worse) and now Gavin wants to get rid of the source of the stains that corrupt the vision he had for this empire and rebuild from the bloody foundations he'll leave behind. The story is also about Gavin choosing to get his revenge but not perpetuating the cycle by rebuilding an organization that's very nature is to cause misery to others, no matter how honorable he tries to make it.

In other words, Gavin kills the most disgusting and worst people to exist and it is so satisfying.

I've put together a bit of the beginning of the fic down below:

Vigorously tapping on the keyboard, he shifted his attention to the time and date at the bottom right corner.

3:17 AM... 23rd of October... only seven more days left.

While the contents of the Red Room held no value to him, tracking the livestream would allow the location to be given away. Give him an ample opportunity take another sick fuck off the list.

He just had to go deeper.

Moving to browse on another degenerate site, Gavin paused. He glanced to the bottom right corner once more, attention caught by the white arrow next to the wifi indicator.

A GPS tracker, he recognized, How long had THAT been there?

Without wasting any more time, Gavin pushed himself out of the chair and reached to turn the computer's power off. But he stopped, thinking it over.

On second thought... I do have an opportunity here.

Gavin moved away from the computer, and walked over to the light switch, flicking it off. Darkness embraced the room, with the only light bathing inside this void coming from his computer screen.

Gavin brought out a hiking pack, placing it on the chair, and moved to the other side of the room, hand reaching for his most effective tool, eyes on the window.

He waited in bated breath, back against the wall as he waited for the window to inevitably open. He listened out of the cues he had honed himself to recognize for the past twenty-three days; the soft knocks, the footsteps on gravel, and even tugging up the windows.

Gavin's adversary did not know his identity yet; if he had, Gavin was sure he'd stop being lured out to the same neighborhood for the past twenty-three days.

From what Gavin overheard between Miss Lydia and Mr. Adam's call, Gavin's tracker didn't have a known name. Simply referred to as "the Kidnapper". Though creativity was lacking, the crimes were quite horrific. A masked man from Russia with ties to a sex trafficking ring, kidnapping women to subject them to horrors hidden from the law's eye.

He hears low grumbling. Gavin watches as the silhouette of the monster himself shadowed the moonlight, the dreadful figure of a beast shaped as a human. Gloved hands as black as the empty caverns that should house his soul, hands that have ripped innocent women in the wake of night away from their lives, gripping the window and dragging it up, up, up.

Gavin wasn't idealistic; he knew if he killed this man, it wouldn't hinder the trafficking ring in the slightest. But Gavin was sure of two things; one less woman will be awake and afraid at night, and one less monster would be walking amongst society. And Gavin was going to take so much satisfaction from this.

[redphienix]

it still bothers me how badly fallout 4 fucks up the entire point of creating a character in like the dumbest possible ways.

like we can easily go on and on about how 3 doesn't do a good job, but can we please take 2 seconds to appreciate how much better it does it than 4?

For modern fallout (not counting 76 because taste) obviously NV is the one praised the most for how it handles that, but even that has a couple big fuck ups but at least those fuck ups are primarily located in the "self insert DLC" and its various base-game foreshadowing, beyond those blights on it NV is fantastic at it!

NV is like "You WERE someone, but who the fuck knows? Literally (ignore terribly written Ulysses) no one knows who you are. The only two people in the entire world (roughly) that remotely know OF you (House and Benny) LITERALLY only know you as a courier.

You could have been literally anyone, but whoever you were is dead now. You don't remember them, and due to life saving surgery you don't even know if you look anything like how you used to. You could have been important, or no one, but whoever that person was they went through like ego death (if I'm not mistakenly using the term wrong) by virtue of complete and irreparable memory loss.

FRESH START!"

then 3 is like "You have an identity, you were raised in this vault, here's flashes of what that life was like (it was ""vault standard"", ""middle class white-washed-no-flavor-or-culture-beyond-American styled""), now you're 19 and your dad left which is a bit of a mystery to solve. Also you've been villainized by the tyrannical overseer. Guess you're in a whole new world you know nothing about filled with intense dangers beyond your sheltered upbringings understanding. Fresh (ish) start? Where's dad?"

It's worse in comparison to nv because of the obvious "You're Still A Kid With These Memories Of Life And A Dad No Matter What" but at LEAST it does "fish out of water fresh start" as the primary motivator. You're thrust into a world and figure out where and what to do based on who you decide to be- with the primary "lore explainer" for that freedom being "You're 19. You're just starting your life, it's coming of age but with nuclear bullshit"

So 3 does like, coming of age "You're young so nothing is pinned down!" (except what we pinned down).

But then 4 is like.

"Let's not give a single rational inch of logic to explaining how the player's character can be "The Players" character".

you're either a military guy or an attorney.

you're a fully grown full ass person with a history and character

any attempt to be 'different' can only ever be described as 'I guess my character decided to throw away all that they were for this decision, that's the only way to justify going from default to my decision in this scenario'

you have a son that is the entire reason for your existence here.

you have less than no reason to care about any of what you see beyond "where's my son"

you're also very stupid- just the most dog shit stupid character ever made

also you're voiced :) we limited what you can say SUBSTANTIALLY

Enjoy Being Sole Survivor, we did all the hard work of character creation for you!

like 4's PC doesn't give a single thought towards how to justify being used as if they are a clean slate- they treat "American Military Family" as a universal default slate and then limit your options to prevent making it too shocking when you deviate from it (which just makes it MORE shocking when you can just do some stuff that makes no sense). And then they gave you a direct quest 1 motivator that demands the entirety of who your character is as opposed to "Kid finds themselves in a new world so they'd probably look for their dad but maybe not" with 3.

I don't like it.

I don't love 3s either by any means, but it's incredible to see that it looks so much better in comparison because AT FUCKING LEAST they took the time to go "Well, like, you're a kid. You're life doesn't even start until you move out anyway, that's basically what explains the rest." 4 literally couldn't.

4 tries desperately to copy NV's "Whoever you were is dead now" but mistakenly believes "The world you once knew is dead now so you can be whoever!" to be the same, it's not, it makes for deranged character motivations.

[nukalurk-queen]

Here’s an updated Appalachia map courtesy of Bethesda showing some new no-C.A.M.Ping zones. Might want to think about moving if you are set up at one of these locations. (also a good hint into where you might want to explore once Wastelanders goes live...)

[procrastilate]

hello again, i made a thing.

is there anything in particular anyone wants to see in the gap?

i’m not fussed whether it’s specifically sTuDyBlR related. i’d be happy and very willing to research/learn about something obscure.

i’m in a bit of weird place atm and i’m hoping something like this would benefit all of us. i miss learning, but i find it difficult to do without a smidgen of direction. i feel like researching random suggestions and compiling words is a more productive use of my time than playing pc games and thinking about the futility of the human race.

i’ve been trying to find stuff relating to the units i’d be doing if i get to uni but it is all very vague and i don’t know what to be looking at in particular. i found the list of textbooks but there’s a lot of them and it says it’s only parts of each and like ?????? which parts?????

anyway, any suggests/smidgens of direction would be much appreciated.

i hope you’re all doing okay

stay safe x

[the-chosen-none]

Harold’s Accidentally Horrifying Vault

Okay, so I’ve made a post here before several months ago alluding to what I picked up on about Vault 29, which is where Harold came from, and I also made a post about it on the classic Fallout subreddit a while back, but I’ve decided do a deep-dive into it here because it is a perfect example of how different writers presumably not communicating with each other plus writers treating something obviously bad as not being that big of a deal accidentally created something way worse than what they might have originally intended. 

True, most of it comes from Van Buren and the Fallout Bible, the former becoming very different for New Vegas and the latter being more of a suggestion that writers can use or discard, but a reference to what became of Vault 29 in New Vegas seems to me like it was meant to be an Easter egg for the fans who knew about Van Buren to tell them that this idea created for Van Buren still exists in canon one way or the other. 

So basically, Vault 29′s experiment was to put a bunch of kids between 5-16 without their parents to be raised by machines and see what would happen. Depending on if you look at the Fallout Bible or VB, the parents were either originally with the kids but they were elderly and died off soon afterwards, or the kids were separated from the parents immediately. I’m going with the latter, since the former is pretty stupid. I’m skipping a lot of other story stuff surrounding 29 like the whole Derek Greenway part, but this is the gist. 

Then, a terminally ill woman who had her brain uploaded into a computer system named Diana Stone learned about the experiment and was horrified, so she took it upon herself to take over the Vault’s computers and raise the children herself.

However, rather than doing this purely out of kindness, Diana decided to play god and raise the children to believe that she was a divine being. When they left the Vault, Diana set up a village for her flock to live in, and much like Arroyo, the so-called “Twin Mothers tribe” would pretty much cosplay as Native Americans, in this case the Anasazi, to live in an agrarian society away from the rest of the world. 

My memory is a little fuzzy on what was supposed to happen in VB, so correct me if I’m wrong, but because your player character was a carrier of a plague, they had to find a way to cure it, and so by helping Diana re-establish herself as the ruler of the Twin Mothers, she would help you out, and the cure had to do with the fruits growing from the tree on Harold’s head. 

As far as I know, Diana was supposed to be seen as a good person, or at least helping her continue to keep the Twin Mothers in isolation is supposed to be the “correct” decision, even though she started a cultural-appropriating cult which she made herself the spiritual leader of, keeping her people ignorant of the outside world. It really IS Arroyo all over again, except at least Arroyo eventually abandoned their former way of life. 

Okay, so most of this has yet to be acknowledged in canon... however, Ulysses does mention the Twin Mothers in NV, and that they were either absorbed or destroyed outright by Caesar’s Legion. Like I said, I think this was meant to be an acknowledgement to the fans who had followed Van Buren’s development, so we can assume that the general outline of the Twin Mothers’ origins could be canon. 

Before I move on, I should acknowledge that Vault 29 did get a reference in Fallout 76, where a university student bemoans the thought of having to work with supposedly spoiled teenagers from affluent families, though because this character was not actually working with the Vault when she talked about it, we can assume that she’s not entirely correct in her assessment of the Vault, since the Fallout Bible pretty clearly stated that it was both young children and teenagers in there.

Anyway, so Harold came from a cult? That’s not great, but maybe it doesn’t sound quite horrifying to some of you yet. Oh, I haven’t even gotten to the worst part!

You see, the final piece of canon information about Vault 29 comes from the Tell-Me-About function from FO1 where, if you ask Harold about his Vault, he says that the people had to leave because there was too many people and not enough food and water to go around. If we consider the FO Bible, it says that Harold, and presumably the rest of the residents, left in 2090, 13 years after the War. 

A Vault originally made entirely of minors had to leave in just 13 years because of overpopulation, and remember, due to the nature of the Vault’s experiment, these children would have had to be selected before the War, and it wasn’t a case of random people from all over running inside... 

At best, Diana ignored what was going on and let the kids run wild because she wanted them to be free-spirited and one with nature and all that, OR she deliberately manufactured this overpopulation either to make as many people as possible for her cult or as a controlling method, real cults have been known to set up marriages and make the victims have children to discourage them to leave. 

It’s honestly pretty likely that the writers of Van Buren either forgot or had no knowledge of the Tell-Me-About line, and if they had included the Twin Mothers more in New Vegas, it’s likely that they would have ignored it, but because they have not yet talked about them in more detail within canon, what we’re left with is pieces that have accidentally created something both more disgusting yet interesting than the racist-sounding original idea for Van Buren.

Poor Harold. It’s amazing he turned out as kind and somewhat well-adjusted as he did.

[nightingaelic]

POODLES IN THE WASTELAND

i jest I jest

But 👀

What about pets? Either ones companions would have or a very uncommon one that someone wouldn’t think was a good pet, BUT IS. Deathclaws you can ride like a pony, mole rats that want belly rubs, cazadore’s as cattier pigeons! What are your thoughts?

Or like, Danse or Piper or Fawkes with something hilarious Idek ignore me

Oooookay, here’s my comprehensive list of companions - ALL companions, across Fallouts 3, 4, New Vegas and 76 - and their (headcanon) choices in wasteland pets. I’ll give a little explanation for each - particularly as many of these companions are transients and don’t have the luxury of owning a home to keep pets at. Also, I feel like most of the companions, while they might not necessarily like pets, would be somewhat fond or at least respectful of the pets of the Lone Wanderer/Courier/Sole Survivor/Vault Dweller, like Dogmeat and Rex. 

Bighorners

Lily Bowen: Everyone’s favorite super mutant grandma is already an experienced shepherdess in Jacobstown, and she’s more than willing to tear some night stalkers apart to keep her herd safe. If that’s not love beyond the norm for wasteland livestock, I don’t know what is. She’s probably given all of her bighorners names after the characters in the television reruns she used to watch on holotape in Vault 17, like Grace and Audrey and Lucille. 

Brahmin

Raul Tejada: Actually spent a decent part of his pre-war life living on a ranch, so he knows that most brahmin don’t deserve being labeled “irritable” just because people don’t know how to read their body language. I think he’d follow wild brahmin herds around a bit on a whim and keep them from coming to any harm, especially the little ones. He gives them names like the cattle he grew up with, Corazon and Gordo and Blanca. 

Rose of Sharon Cassidy: Doesn’t truck with the wild herds, but she knows that part of the success of a caravan lies with how well they treat their pack animals. All of her caravan’s brahmin have names - Penny, Magic and Sprinkles - and she’s careful to pair them up with drivers who are patient and work well with their various personalities. 

Cats

Butch DeLoria: While Butch ultimately decided to leave Vault 101 behind, I don’t think he would ever truly lose his fear of radroaches after what they did to his mom. Having a little friend to warm his bunk in Rivet City and pounce on intruders would probably set his mind at ease, maybe a black tomcat with one ear named Pepper. He might even gift his mom a kitten when he next comes to visit. 

Star Paladin Cross: I don’t think Cross much sees the use of an animal that doesn’t contribute to the community it lives in, like most of the Brotherhood of Steel. Cats, however, are excellent at pest control, even if the rats are bigger nowadays. I think she’d give the resident cats at the Citadel some pets in passing, and she’d smile when she has to extract playful kittens from inside her power armor frame. She’s especially fond of the cat colony’s matriarch, a scarred old tabby named Gemma. 

Curie: Upon her transition into a synth body, Curie is overjoyed with most animals and their new willingness to approach her for attention. She especially loves cats because she can pick them up and better feel their fur and purring. Her favorite cat is an orange stray in Diamond City that she calls Claude. 

Piper Wright: A companion for Nat when she’s out adventuring, an unbiased friend to bounce the latest opinion piece off of before going to print, and a lap-warmer for when you’re typing up the latest article about the exploits of the Minutemen - what’s not to like? The Wright family cat is a slippery, elegant calico named Sugar Bomb. 

Preston Garvey: While the Minutemen forts and settlements definitely lean more toward keeping dogs around for security purposes, I think Preston likes his pets quieter and less likely to bowl you over in excitement. The one most likely to sleep with him in his bunk at Sanctuary is a grumpy gray gentleman named Anchovy. 

Deathclaws

Veronica Santangelo: If anyone is crazy enough to swipe a deathclaw egg from a nest and try to hatch, rear and train a personal killing machine named Izzy, it’s Veronica. This will probably just alienate her from her Brotherhood chapter even more, but I’m sure she would take special care to make sure that her usual Mojave Wasteland haunts take a peek through a scope to see if the approaching deathclaw has a human on its back before taking a shot. 

Dogs

Clover: I don’t think Clover gets out beyond Paradise Falls much, so the only animals she’s used to are the dogs the raiders bring around when passing through. She probably has favorites among the usual visitors and enjoys tossing them bits of meat when she’s allowed to get away from Eulogy and Crimson. If liberated, she’d probably get at least three of her own dogs to watch over her while she sleeps: One small dog to carry with her, a Pekingese or Pomeranian descendant named Coco, and two large dogs to follow through on intimidation and protection, a mastiff named Rock and a Doberman descendant named Roll. 

Jericho: Jericho doesn’t deserve a dog but he’d probably have one around anyway to sniff out caps caches and hidden loot after he’s shot everyone in the vicinity. Some slinky beagle mix named Dewey, probably. 

Fawkes: I don’t think Fawkes would be picky at all about what kind of dog he’d have. He strikes me as the type who would adopt any half-friendly mutt he ran across. I do think he would have a bit of a soft spot for friendlier mutant hounds, though, and maybe view their mutated circumstances as similar to his own. He’d also be absolutely amazing at playing fetch. Just imagine how far he could lob a stick or ball. All of his dogs would have literary names too, like Byron and Agatha and Edgar. 

Craig Boone: Though he’s a bit of a prodigy at sniping, Boone knows his limitations when it comes to spotting hidden enemies on the horizon. I can see him having a hound dog at his side to find the more elusive ones and help him get rid of them faster. Maybe a bloodhound mutt named Bravo. 

Cait: Doesn’t like people, but she adores dogs. Having had the life where she’s been abused, exploited and forced into slavery, she’s keenly aware that those like the ones who took advantage of her treat dogs much the same. She’s very protective of any dog she encounters and is very likely to punch you in the face if you so much as look at one wrong. She’d probably name any pup she adopted Lucky. 

Hancock: Honestly, he’s just a fan of any animal that is happy to hang out with you whether you’re drunk, high, fighting raiders or patrolling downtown Boston. The Goodneighbor strays know him as the guy who always has mirelurk jerky in his pockets. His favorite is a rough-and-tumble, black-and-white spotted cattle dog descendant that he cheekily calls King George. 

Robert MacCready: He’s not quick to trust dogs, but once he’s sure they’re not a threat, they’re one of the few critters around which he’ll relax completely. He’s still a little wary of them around Duncan, but any dog that’s a part of his family is more or less his son’s permanent babysitter. 

Nick Valentine: Dogmeat is also basically his dog. The two have a history of working cases together, with Dogmeat just turning up whenever a trail goes cold and leading Nick to the evidence he needs to reopen his investigation. Nick doesn’t know how or why Dogmeat does it, but he’s not about to ruin a good thing. 

Strong: I don’t think he would turn down a ferocious mutant hound as a friend. He’d probably feed it mole rats and call it something like Killer. 

Foxes

Beckett: This former raider has a love-hate relationship with a fox that keeps going through his trash. He affectionately calls him Lil’ Bastard. 

Sofia Daguerre: Having crashed back to an earth she doesn’t recognize, I think Sofia would be tickled that the foxes of Appalachia have basically stayed the same despite the bombs. I can see her leaving dinner scraps out on her porch for one that she sometimes spots in the foliage, and slowly coaxing the critter to come into the light. She names her Scarlett once she finally convinces her to eat out of her hand. 

Mega sloths

Settler forager: I would not be at all surprised if this man ran into a mega sloth in the Mire and decided to try befriending it. The creature, probably surprised at this old guy’s nerve, decided to accept the handful of leaves he offered and grew slowly more fond of the guy’s persistence. It doesn’t know its name is Fergus but it does know that if a human is wearing overalls, it’s probably not a threat. 

Mole rats

Deacon: Alright, hear me out. Deacon has a fondness for underdogs, and mole rats are about as underdog as they come. I think Deacon thinks these little guys are cute despite their wrinkles and buck teeth, and I think he sees the value in having a tunneling pet that likes to collect shiny things. One of his deep cover hideouts is in an old tunnel system in the northern Commonwealth, where he hangs out with a young mole rat named Henry. 

Owls

Raider punk: This radio operator got wind of an abandoned nest of owlets in Appalachia early on in his career and, being the nearest to the report, decided to rescue the little guys. Now he has three owls that occasionally drop in at his camp to hoot and accept handouts: Nona, Decima and Morta. While he’s still fond of them, he’s usually disappointed that they aren’t the Mothman coming to visit. 

Rad chickens

Yasmin Chowdhury: Ever the opportunistic cook, she picked up the practice of raising chickens from the settlers at Foundation and has four hens of her own: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. The “ladies,” as she refers to them, give her a constant stream of eggs for omelets. 

Ravens

Settler wanderer: This gal has an affinity with birds, who are always on the move like her. She admires their ability to be untethered and let the wind take them far and wide. Nevertheless, she likes to scatter corn when they come close to her on the road, and formed a sort of friendship with a particularly handsome specimen that she calls Tornado. 

Wolves

Old Longfellow: This guy is the epitome of the meme about dads not wanting pets and then instantly falling in love with whatever animal enters their life. He probably found an injured wolf pup in his travels around the island and took pity on it, nursing it back to health in his cabin. It’s still got a bit of a twisted paw, but follows him around and listens like any other dog and answers to the name Lamoine. 

Yao guai

Porter Gage: I bet this guy adopted an orphaned bear cub and raised it by hand. Now it’s so big that even if Gage thinks he’s an easy target for other raiders due to his age, he’s much less likely to get singled out than he thinks because he has a yao guai following him around like a puppy. The bear’s name is Fuzzy Wuzzy. It has no hair. 

No pets, thanks

Charon: Too likely to accidentally wind up in the line of fire. 

Sergeant RL-3: Too easily corrupted by Communist influences. 

Arcade Gannon: Too much time spent getting in your way. 

Codsworth: Too likely to make messes. 

Paladin Danse: Too many wasted resources. 

X6-88: Too much of a liability. 

Ada: Too easy to lose when on the move. 

Solomon Hardy: Too unsanitary. 

[robobrainmurdermysterytheatre]

Scrolling the ol’ dash today I saw at least a couple of reblogs about organizing writing IDK if it was from the same person or if several people are struggling with this because IT IS A STRUGGLE. I started out my now 85k word fanfic (which is still a rough draft still and honestly probably will be for all time and eternity but it’s fun to write) in Google Docs. When I got to about 30-40k-ish words I was struggling because I write things out of order. I jump into the middle of the meaty action and messy feelings and figure out the rest. Or I’m working on an earlier chunk of the story and I’m like - I can fit in a callback to this in this other scene in the future, let’s go back and add that. Since its a Fallout 76 fanfic sometimes I’m playing the game and end up a place or do a quest and I go “Fuck! I know what my story needs now! Right in the middle of these two scenes I’ve already written!”

So, belated announcement, I got a new job a little while ago and I work with authors. Big career change to go from school custodian to what I’m doing now, lol. I love it and I’m happy. ANYWAY, one of my clients mentioned Scrivener. So I asked @thuumwrestler​, who has an actual whole college degree and a novel in progress and is a real writer, what they thought about Scrivener. They said the learning curve for it wasn’t worth it and in my research I found out you have to pay money for it. Pfft.

So I googled free alternatives to Scrivener because *all* I wanted to do was to be able to divide up the story so I can easily find the different sections of it and add, move, do whatever to those different chunks easily. I decided to try SmartEdit Writer as a starting point to compare the different programs I found and got it right on the first try!

LOOK AT THIS:

This is only like a third of the story, if that, hence why I really needed this lol.

So, the way it’s intended to be used is each folder is a chapter and each page is a scene. I don’t have chapters, just vague chunks. My “scenes” are sometimes like 1-5 page scenes, but I have at least 1 that’s a 10k word chunk probably closer to a chapter because I started something and couldn’t stop for 3 days. You can leave notes like you see above - I have a note for “Treehouse Town” because I needed to remind myself I need to actually write that part because I skipped it over to get to the next part.

When you’re writing in it, it works just like any word processor. Another cool feature is you can open multiple scenes in tabs and flip between them:

VERY helpful when I’m referencing something from another scene.

There’s WAY more functionality to it than what I use it for. You can keep track of research and notes in it’s own separate little window.

It’s not a resource hog on your computer. I tried to put the 40k word version of my fic into LibreOffice and froze my poor lightweight little laptop. I never have a problem loading the story up fast at 80k words in this. It’s also software on my computer, not in the cloud like Google Docs so I can take my laptop wherever and write, if I have internet problems, I can still write.

When you’re done (or to create a backup) you can export the whole thing as one file!

I also got @thuumwrestler​ to use it and they approve!

I wish I was getting paid to plug this but I am just really delighted and wanted to share how helpful it was to me in case other people are struggling!

You can check it out here: https://www.smart-edit.com/Writer/

[kingofthewilderwest]

I think Dean should write the collective HTTYD fandom a fandom-centric apology for THW's cinematic apostasy. I don't see why moviemakers can't start doing something like that.

I know sometimes we vent because we need to vent. And I imagine you might have seen my own vent/constructively critical posts for parts of the HTTYD franchise I don’t care for. But with all kindness, if you’re speaking seriously here, please rethink what you said.

There’s times for moviemakers to make apologies and there’s times to let things be. I appreciate apologies for situations like major representational blunders, oversights regarding real-world issues of cultures and minority groups, instances in which you fucked up the actors and crew behind the scenes, etc. At that point in time, your film has created a lasting negative effect on the public’s perception of people groups, and you’ve legitimately hurt people by perpetuating negative stereotypes, inaccurate ideas, poor work conditions, etc. Your movie has social consequences.

But if it’s a matter some fans didn’t find the story “quality”, didn’t care for several narrative directions, thought they botched a few plot points.... we can all move on. Don’t harass the creators over this, just move your life onward. Your artistic tastes didn’t match the creators? That happens. Everywhere. It’s life. It’s how the creation process happens. What are we going to do, demand apologies from every creator who makes a box office bomb? No. Goodness gracious, please no.

Even when creators wrote their heartfelt best, not every story will be a resounding critical artistic success that resonates with every audience member, and we as audiences are not entitled to that anyway. This is not how art works. Some things will just, fact of life, turn out better than others. I’m an artist. Sometimes my drawings look good, sometimes they don’t, whatever. We make our work, we share it, we progress to our next project. 

Frankly movies are more interesting in how they’re a broad range of “good” to “bad”, and how different viewers subjectively rate that “goodness” and “badness.” Sometimes I might even prefer to watch “junk” movies with their thirty plot holes and corny dialogue because I feel like chilling on the couch and not thinking and enjoying the comfort this level of quality brings. It still has enjoyment value, the creators have a right to make it, and no apologies are like...... needed if someone else doesn’t like the corn.

Does a fanfiction author need to apologize if 80% of their readers don’t like it, but 20% made it their favorite story? No. The fanfiction author wrote their art, potentially for themselves, and it still has merit in the community. The 80% of people for whom the story isn’t written can find something else to enjoy.

Cult classics come out of films where most people didn’t like it, but a small group did. Cult classic culture is awesome. We’re so blessed to have movies like these.

And like. For the record. THW certainly isn’t my favorite part of the HTTYD franchise, but it’s got a 7.5 IMBd rating, a 90% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes with an 86% audience score, and a 71 Metacritic Metascore with a favorable 8.0 user score. There’s 369 positive user scores on the site, 56 mixed, and only 13 negative. I get you’re frustrated and venting—that’s valid—but if we’re talking at any level objectively, there is no “Dean DeBlois fucked over the entire fandom.” There isn’t. There’s tons of positive reception. There’s just as much constructively critical reception from peeps who find and enjoy the good, too. This movie’s the trilogy’s weakest installment, yes, but even then, it’s sure better than half the 3D animated movies in contemporary theatre. And it sure as Helheim got a favorable response from the majority of people who saw it. I know we get in our bubbles in tumblr (which’s frankly half the fun! ^^), and I see a lot of THW criticism still, but we are not the full picture of fan reception.

We can constructively criticize it, talk about where it might have failed thematic elements in the rest of the franchise, and our feedback in reviews and social media is voice enough. In a world where social media shortens the distance between audiences and creators, we’re already living in a world where they’re impacted and listening too much to us... with baaaaad repercussions. Frankly it’d do the world good to reestablish more distance and boundaries between artist and consumer.

From everything I’ve heard, Norm of the North is a travesty with no soul. The Hidden World is a let-down for people who expected insubordinately good quality, but still got a decent movie. This isn’t a Fallout 76 fiasco where the company repeatedly delivered objectively subpar products that required multiple major technological fixes, refunds, product remakes, or other forms of apology. We need no apology from Dean DeBlois. We should not want an apology from Dean DeBlois. We are in need of maturation and are unable to handle a basic fact of how popular art gets made and received if we try to demand one. And Dean DeBlois has no reason to give one.

Moviemakers are not servants to the emotions of a minority of people who just didn’t like how a story turned out. Even if that story made plothole or thematic or characterization errors.

Take care and have a good one, friend.