#it’s the idea that counts or whatever

[deckoftrickcards]

beautiful wife drawing

[bongosinferno]

A devastating and confusing thing about the Fallout setting, when you explore the pre-war aspects, is what the creators think about pre-war America. In the first games we only get hints of the pre-war world, but they seem to be some sort of wild fascist nation invading Canada. In Fallout 1, the first thing we're introduced to of the pre-war society is seeing a soldier shoot civilians and laughing.

Now, for the first 2 games and New Vegas we don't really know much. What we know is that there's a fascist military group known as the enclave who were a sort of US deep state even before the war, and that the government teamed up with corporate interests to preform vaguely MKULTRA-ish experiments with the Vaults. Basically, the government was an extreme version of the 50s American jingoism and McCarthyism.

This is well and dandy, I guess issues come up more when we get to the later games, especially 4, where it seems like none of this extreme plotting and societal civil unrest which would exist is seen. The society as presented in 4 also seems quite progressive, gay people are featured in the opening, and none of the baggage of say, civil rights not existing are included. Now on a baseline, I don't want settings to be more conservative, homophobic and sexist etc., but it becomes a very confusing setting when it's displayed both as this jingoist extreme thing with fascist tendencies aswell as a progressive place where everyone is seemingly equal. If you're focusing on the 50s as your setting, and American nationalism in the 50s, then you can't have McCarthyism spoofs and anti-communism as a societal paranoia norm while also general equality is the norm without misunderstanding why McCarthyism and nationalist jingoism is bad. A massive harm done in anti-communist paranoia is how it degrades and vilifies any progressive movements (women's rights, civil rights, homosexuality) as being morally un-American and therefore connected to communism. To ignore this just makes any critique of MacCarthyism and jingoism weird!

Basically, pre-war America in Fallout 4 becomes this both sides thing where America is both pure and equal and white fences in every instance that we see as the player (the intro), while also supposedly being this dystopic MacCarthyist hellscape that's broadcasting gladly about their war crimes in Canada, and wants to root out communism. I guess the only fix for this issue without getting into the fine print like they had to do is just not to focus too much on the pre-war world.

[xxplastic-cubexx]

idec anymore. sending this out into the wild

[cloud-ya]

ggz apparently had monster hunter among its other countless collabs while hi3 only had like 3 collabs all these years....we could have new himeko

[asexual-shelly]

[arc852]

Gosh, I have no idea how I'm going to put this into words but I'm gonna try my best.

I have a lot of feelings about Jimmy's canary status and such.

For four seasons he has been the first out, he's the canary. He signals the start of the end and for four seasons that was very true. And Jimmy hated it. He hated being out first everytime. Everyone around him either pitied him or made fun of him for being out first and Jimmy started to hate himself for how bad he was at the game.

And then came Secret Life.

As we all know, he wasn't the first out. And he was ecstatic. Even after dying second not ten minutes later, he cared more about the fact that he wasn't out first. He claimed the curse was broken and now we continue to see this into Wild Life.

Now, where am I going with this?

I think the Watchers are doing this on purpose.

There has always been something about Jimmy that the Watchers have clung on to. And up until this point, I thought the Watchers despised him. I mean, being the one cursed to always be out first, to be the one that warns your friends of their deaths, that's not fun. That's straight up torture.

But now, I don't think they despise him. I think they see to use him.

Think about it! The Watchers, for four seasons, have pummeled Jimmy's self confidence into the ground. Has made everyone see him as a loser. He started getting hopeless, started feeling like nothing was ever going to change.

And then it did change, in Secret Life, and he wasn't out first. Now, being out second is really not any better but it wasn't about that. Jimmy was starting to feel like, maybe he could actually do this! Maybe he could even win.

And then session 3 of Wild Life happened.

The Watchers did this on purpose. They gave him hope by not being out first in Secret Life and then let things get crazy in session 3 of Wild Life for Jimmy. Jimmy had it pretty bad in session 3 and I know a lot of us didn't have a lot of hope for him after that. Of course, session 4 went a different way than we were all expecting but again, that kind of plays into things.

The Watchers have torn Jimmy down, given him a little hope, and then tore him down again. And they did this to get Jimmy right where they wanted him.

Because Jimmy, before session 5, prayed to the Watchers. He asked them, begged them to please not let him be out first. To please let the canary curse well and truly die.

And they answered.

And Jimmy wasn't out first.

And now Jimmy is putty in their hands.

[puppetmaster13u]

Thinking of cryptid Batfam and them like, pretending to be straight up feral. Like never speaking human language or anything and building up their vigilante outfits to look as natural and Creachur as possible. You know what, give 'em wings and such too. Mechanical ones that started more like gliders but developed more and more into proper ones as they tested things.

But I just want justice league or other Outsiders (Potential crossovers perhaps?) to venture into Gotham to investigate the really high crime-rate, or maybe it's after No Man's Land where they're trying to figure out what happened. Only to start hearing whispers about these beasts that appear each night.

[nelyoslegalteam]

"average mirkwood citizen gets haunted 3 times a year" factoid actualy just statistical error. average mirkwood citizen gets haunted 0 times per year. The Union of Murdoc, who live in the woods & get haunted over 10,000 times each day, are an outlier adn should not have been counted

[snakes-on-skates]

is this anything

(clarification for the "freedom" thing: they arent helping free others out of the goodness of their hearts, either doing so by proxy when completing their goal or using them to help complete said goal. they are still going about it in a selfish way and i dont mean to imply they actually care about the people and/or creatures being freed.)

[yarrowleef]

did anyone else know The Last Unicorn had a sequel??? i didn't know that

anyway, i want whatever tf molly grue and shmendrick have going on

[aliusfrater]

the spnisms of walker r literally everywhere in that damn show. jensen (barely) had the winchesters and jared created a whole different show and used the same core themes

[sesamestreep]

“requiem for methuselah” crazy ass episode for many reasons. Kirk is being fully insane, like I don’t actually think, even controlling for how quickly and easily and readily he seems to fall in love with anybody at the slightest encouragement, that he’d go that bonkers for that android woman he just met while everyone on the ship was this close to dying, but that’s neither here nor there, because in the background you’ve got an equally but much more subtly insane episode for Spock, who extremely uncharacteristically admits to experiencing an emotion (or nearly experiencing, whatever) and that emotion is ENVY of all things. And then spends the rest of the episode warning Kirk away from this new love interest (something that doesn’t usually happen, even when Kirk has very inadvisable love interests) and is, in the end, the person who accurately identifies that Rayna’s competing love for Kirk and Flint is ultimately what overwhelms and destroys her with the most killer line in maybe history???

And then to wrap it up we get an equally uncharacteristic sort of denouement scene (TOS loooves to cut an episode off right after the actual climax, leaving little time for falling action or character reflection, or to stick a sitcom-y button on the end where the gang all smiles and laughs at their misadventures and everything resets to zero, which is not a criticism, it’s just the style of that era of tv, honestly) where Kirk is literally miserable over Rayna’s death (again, kind of unusual for a lot of his love interests, he tends to be able to move on pretty quickly) and Spock goes to see him and he falls asleep right in front of Spock (also odd) and then when Bones comes in to give the final word on Flint, Spock waves him off from waking the Captain (tender) and Bones gives him that awful speech about how it’s sadder that Spock can’t even imagine the love Kirk felt for this random android woman than it is that Kirk lost her in the first place (debatable but also rude) and how his great tragedy is that he can’t love at all like they can and how all he wishes is that Kirk could forget about all of this and move on. AND THEN, to have Bones leave and Spock go over to Kirk and very gently, tenderly, reluctantly touch him and put his hand to his forehead and tell him to forget and HAVE THAT BE THE END OF THE EPISODE??? What am I supposed to do with that??

[iamumbra195]

If Ashlyn Banner was a character in a typical magic manhwa she would be the cool mage that remained isolated in the tower for over a decade without any sort of human contact until they were forced to due to the MC’s stupidity or in her case, Aiden’s shenanigans.

She would subsequently be roped into the chaos against her will, all while trying to figure out how to properly interact with real people after all this time and trying to protect this rag-tag group of people with varying backgrounds from certain death.

Aiden would be the crown prince who hated his position and responsibilities after the war so much he decided to become an explorer. It was a risky business with so many unexplored magical lands so it was right up in his alley but his parents only agreed to let him go if he brought his cousin Ben with him as a companion. Ben would be the powerful knight who was heavily traumatized and rendered mute during the war, working on finding himself once more while he and Aiden explored the world together.

Tyler would be the promising young knight who's trying to gain some prestige in order to take care of his family. Taylor would run the repair shop their dad left them but struggled to find a lot of customers due to the stigma that a woman couldn't possibly be strong enough or smart enough to do good repairs. The repair shop was incidentally right across the flower shop Logan's parents ran while he studied something with math or science at a fancy school and occasionally came by to help.

And the Crane Cult are the Big Bad™ that are using a blood sacrifices to call on the power of a higher being or something like that. And they wear bird masks of course.

Ashlyn vs Maverick in a magic duel, when?

Kinda Part 2: Here

[feelo-fick]

i had a vision last night. smile. ^_^

[casual-praxis]

"Praxis stop making AU's only to abandon the concept immediately" challenge: Failed.

Here's a wip of something I probably won't actually finish since the concept is so far outside Four Swords it's basically its own thing.

I've been listening to Tales from the Gas Station again and it got me wonderin' how I could throw the Four Swords boys into a similar scenario, and somehow we got this concept from it, despite having no basis in either media.

Vio wouldn't even be the protagonist technically--just a recurring secondary character who turns out to be only slightly better than the actual antagonists.

He also dies at the end of everything, so there's that too.

More rambling below the cut for anyone interested. It turned into a mini-fic on accident, whoops.

From what I managed to cobble together while staring into the oven at work and giving myself an eye-strain headache, the actual "main character" is Blue, and they all work at either a very slow gas station or a very slow food establishment.

There's a weird cornfield right behind the building that's kinda funky if you look at it wrong sometimes, but that's pretty normal for their town. Lotta strange things in that place. Weird happenings all around.

So obviously since business is basically a graveyard all the time, the best way to pass the time would be to dare someone to go into that weird af cornfield, right? Yeah, makes sense. Which is why Blue nominated Red.

Of course, Red doesn't want to go in the weird cornfield--it's almost dark out, and the corn smells strange, and what if he gets lost, and, and, and--Blue doesn't care. Get in the cornfield, Red.

And so Red goes. And he's gone. And he's gone. And, huh, it's been an hour. Did he actually get...oh, nope there he is.

Red returns, but he's acting a little...weird. After being in the weird cornfield. Probably not connected in any way. But just to make sure, Blue asks if Vio's also getting weirded out by weird Red.

"That's not Red," Vio insists, but that's stupid. Vio's being stupid, and Blue tells him as much.

"What were you even expecting?" Something funny, probably. Not...whatever this was. It was like Red had found a twelve-pack of five-hour energy drinks out in the maze and decided to chug the whole dozen.

"So he'd be dead."

He's not dead! He's probably just...spooked stupid, or something. He'll be normal Red again tomorrow. Yeah. Once the nerves wear off, he'll stop being so...hyped about life?

"Huh, funny that. Guess what rhymes with Red."

Shut the fuck up, Vio.

And so, the wait for normal Red's return begins.

A day passes; still being weird. Another day goes by. Not much difference. Soon, a week has passed, and Weird Red seems to be here to stay.

Honestly, Blue is not vibing.

Sure, Normal Red kinda pissed him off, but at least he was genuine! ...probably. He was kind, at least. Not this... saccharine, doe-eyed...thing pretending to be Red. It wasn't even doing a good job at it! Red would never forget to water the fake plant in the window! He loves that stupid piece of plastic like only an overly empathic idiot could.

Vio was right. They had a corn demon among them or some shit. The real Red was probably still wandering in circles out in the cornfield, he had to be. And since it was kinda, sorta...maybe Blue's fault that Red was lost, he should probably be the one to go looking for him.

It was a little strange how the fake Red seemed to disappear after Blue told Vio his plans, but so long as he didn't get ambushed by the thing out in the field, he was golden. Or, well, he was Blue, but you get the point.

With that in mind, he bravely entered the weird cornfield on his lunch break. Because surely, Red was just a little lost and not...

Oh fuck.

"Wonderful." A cold hand grips the side of his face, dragging his reluctant gaze away from the mangled... His vision blurs, barely making out the familiar silhouette of-

"You found the body."

Vio.

Why was-?

"It's so sad," Vio intones, tightening his hold as Blue resists. "The guilt must be eating you alive, huh? This was your idea, you know."

What-

"How sad," he repeats, as if attempting to empathize. "You made a mistake, but it's okay. I've already taken care of the doppelganger."

An unnaturally purple fluid drips from the corner of Vio's mouth as he speaks, nearly iridescent in the evening light. Just the sight of it is enough to activate Blue's fight or flight response, but despite his struggling, Vio's grip doesn't falter.

"I can repair the rest, too, if only you forget this ever happened." Vio smiles, disarming and kind.

It doesn't reach his eyes.

Blue's mind blanks. The bitter taste of...something burns his throat. He tries to remember what it was he last ate, but he can't seem to think straight anymore. What was he doing again? He can't seem to remember, and-

Blue opens his eyes.

Red is staring at him in obvious concern.

Apparently, he'd zoned out in the breakroom again. Weird. He's been doing that a lot lately for some reason. Oh well. He couldn't afford health care, so that issue was just going to have to sort itself out.

He decides to spend the rest of his break trying to get that gross bitter flavor out of his mouth, while Red goes to water that fake plant he still hasn't realized is plastic.

All is as usual in their weird ass town.

Then again, Blue can't really remember a time when it wasn't weird. Like seriously, who planted a cornfield behind their store? It never seemed to die or go out of season...super fuckin' weird.

Maybe he should go poking around in there one day--er, actually, something about that idea just made the bad taste worse. Yuck. Maybe not.

--

This was not supposed to read like a fanfic but that's just how it ended up manifesting, my bad.

Here's some rapid-fire notes to make this a little more coherent:

+ Blue (and Green, though he didn't appear here) both tend to ignore anything supernatural that occurs. Both of them have had their memories altered by Vio on several occasions, but only because they keep winding up in situations that require it due to brushing off the signs.

+ Vio is a spider demon inhabiting this weird little town because of the sheer number of supernatural happenings. The way demons operate here is a little strange, they're constantly seeking out other supernatural beings to kill and consume their souls for power. This town is basically just Vio's territory at this point, enter at your own risk.

No one knows he's a demon, and he's constantly pushing the limits just to see when someone'll notice. Very frequently he'll say something along the lines of, "I'm completely normal" or "I'm human" mostly unprompted.

His saliva contains venom, of which can be used to erase the memories of anyone who gets it in their body somehow. The amount of memory lost depends on the dose, but Vio never ends up needing to erase more than a few days at most. He usually just spits on his fingers and shoves them in someones mouth to administer. (If he tried hard enough, he could neutralize the effects, but he doesn't have a reason to. For now.)

+ Red actually did die here. No amount of memory manipulation was going to undo that. Vio was still able to bring him back, but he's not really human anymore. His soul basically belongs to Vio now, but seeing as Vio wants him around, he allows Red to remain as some kind of will-o'-the-wisp given human form. Red does know Vio is a demon because of this, but he isn't going to say anything.

If Vio were to die and his was consumed by another demon, Red would die as well. So it's a good thing Vio's soul isn't consumed when he dies. :)

+ Shadow shows up in town at some point and starts working at the same store as the others. He's there under the orders of Vaati, but mostly he just wants to fight Vio. They have history, though it differs depending on who you ask.

After befriending everyone, he decides to go against Vaati, who's goal is to take the town as his territory to reap the benefits. This culminates in a massive fight between the minor supernaturals and Vaati's forces, and Shadow and Vio vs Vaati himself.

They manage to defeat him, but in one last bid to take Shadow down with him, Vaati lashes out with the last of his power, hurtling a sharp piece of debris from the battlefield at a weakened Shadow. Vio intercepts it, because of course, and though he's able to stop most of it's momentum, he's still down two of his mechanical spider legs, and it pierces through his weak point (chest gem) despite the other two.

There's a brief moment where they make eye contact, kinda just in disbelief, before Vio's physical form dissolves and all that's left is his purple soul. Shadow has to fight his natural instinct to consume it for power, and instead hold it gently as he returns to the others to let them know Vaati was gone now, his soul shattered and scattered to the wind.

+ I have no idea if any romantic relationships would be present here, but at the very least Blue and Red are soft for each other in some way (post cornfield). Shadow's feelings for Vio definitely aren't straight, though Vio's feelings are a mystery even to him. And Green's around here somewhere. Zelda too.

All of this was thought up in the span of like two hours so it's not very coherent, but it's what I've got so I offer it to y'all in place of actual cohesion.

Oh, also Vio's probably going to get revived. Shadow gets to be the one doing the resurrecting for once. Just gotta find those Vaati soul shards and shove them into Vio's. I'm sure it'll work out fine.

[queenerdloser]

okay there are some revenge stories where the "you're losing yourself to revenge you need to choose forgiveness instead :(" argument actually has some merit, but tbh every time a character has brought that up in count of monte cristo i'm in my corner shouting THEY PUT HIM! IN A DUNGEON! FOR 15 YEARS!