#it's very bethesda of course

[violet-dragongirl]

I dunno I think story pacing is going to be a bit odd and too long in Starfield

[gr0undswell]

reading a former bethesda employee (Jean Simonet)'s blog and i thought these two entries were really cool :-) it's nice to be reminded of the work that goes into systems that most players would never think twice about and i think the pride and enthusiasm with which he speaks of it is really endearing!

"I joined Bethesda about two thirds of the way through the development of Oblivion. Not long enough to have an entire system to my name, but enough to have had a small, visible impact.

I implemented various minor AI features for the game, but the one thing that really stood out was that I gave the characters 'shifty eyes' !

The characters in Oblivion would already look at you when you talked to them, and sometimes blink, but never look away. It was creepy. I was asked to add a little bit or randomness in the eyes, and so I took the opportunity to tie their eye movement to their disposition.

If a character was happy, I would animate their eyes up slightly and of course down when sad. When angry I would give them really fast saccades. When scared, they would look left and right. All very simple stuff, especially by today's standards, but it added a tremendous amount of life to the NPCs."

"Skyrim is probably the game I enjoyed working on the most at Bethesda. Not only because it was the first Elder Scrolls game I worked on from beginning to end, but because it was the one where I had the most opportunity to add my own touch.

Along with significantly improving the Pathfinding system I had begun work on for Fallout 3 (including a complete overhaul of how it interacted with the animation system, or how it handled quadrupeds), I was able to add a completely new aspect to the game itself, namely the critter system.

Butterflies, Dragonflies or fish weren't supposed to be in the game, or if they were going to be, they would simply be animated meshes, because the actor system of the game couldn't support that many new intractable entities in the world.

I created a small actor system that relied almost entirely on scripting for lightweight processing. This way, butterflies to would have their own (extremely simple) AI and interact with the world, landing on objects, running away from the player, etc... all under the control of designers and artists. By removing the hurdle of needing programmer time to add new behaviors, the critter system spread like wildfire and pretty quickly every world artist in the company was adding small animals to the world."

[blind-betrayal]

Paladin Danse, the Brotherhood, Autism, and not being a person

dragging myself back to my forgotten fallout blog to rant abt how people seem to talk abt Danse's whole deal (which means. a lot of things. he has a lot of deals going on), by which I mean the fact he is more of a tool and not a person to the Brotherhood who is largely taking advantage of him, and people talk abt Danse being autistic (which I fully and whole heartedly believe is completely unintentional by Bethesda, but nonetheless very well written and present, so much so I consider it vital to his character) but never how both of these work in combination.

Been getting really into ENA lately, and a lot of ENA Dream BBQ seems to focus on the fact ENA is not so much a person but an entity doomed to toil forever, to LITERALLY die and even give pieces of herself away (her arm to enter the purge event) to complete whatever job she's been assigned, and is functionally more a tool than someone with personhood. So of course I have to make this about my favorite fictional man, an action I realize would get me taken outside and shot but I digress.

Back when I was active I had some semi well received takes on his character (such being largely de-desensitized and much more worldly than he is often depicted by fans-- come the fuck on, bro lived in the CAPITAL WASTELAND. Arguably one of the most inhospitable locales we see in the series, from my understanding) so maybe I've talked about this before but I think Danse's character suffers from being confined to the affinity conversations, particularly in regards to Cutler, who I feel is much more vital to understanding why Danse is the way he is than we're allowed to get info about.

He and Danse ran a junk shop in the CW, Danse-- who is a synth, who came into this world as a full-grown adult, with fake memories of a fake childhood and fake backstory (possibly the Railroad's work?), and as such we know (and later, he knows) Cutler was, most likely, Danse's only relationship (whatever you interpret it as, friend or lover) and thus only tether to the world outside himself. The shop and Cutler was his place(tm), what keeps him from being any other wasteland drifter. Cutler is probably everything to him. Cutler wants to join the Brotherhood, Danse follows, Danse likes the structure and sense of purpose because he's autistic. Then Cutler is gone, and all that's left is the Brotherhood with an environment perfectly suited to his neurology and with no tethers to the outside to ever make him even think of leaving them. There's nowhere and nothing outside of the Brotherhood for him, of course it becomes his life. Of course they're happy to have him, their little soldier who listens to their dear leader and follows directions so so good and follows the rulebook to every minute word and will never ever think of leaving or questioning them. Why would he?

I fully believe Cutler was real, as I feel like if he wasn't, Danse would talk about how he had to beg (beg!!!!!! he had to fucking ASK for them to look for the missing team Cutler was a part of, as if we had any reason to doubt their soldiers are units, not people) to look for Cutler or just mention that missing team at all and would have his fellow soldiers be like what the fuck are you talking about dude that did not that happen. Like he'd totally know. As such, him being gone left Danse in the perfect position to be fully modeled into whatever the Brotherhood wanted of him. Notice how he (which he even later acknowledges!) fully expects you to just...follow in his footsteps and wholeheartedly believe in and follow the BOS's ideology? Like doesn't even question that there could be a reality where these guys are wrong? How he full send believes synths are just machines and struggles even when finding out he is one, and thus forced to face they are in fact people with memories and feelings and personalities and identities and relationships? The BOS is just his objective reality.

He views himself as a tool because they view him as a tool, he is a Paladin, he's his squad's leader, his feelings and wants don't matter, just the mission and keeping his people alive. Not that he doesn't care, if anything we're shown that he cares so SO much. He cares so much about Haylen, about you. If you romance him, he's nearly sick with worry about you getting hurt, you leaving, doing something wrong to you. He just doesn't really know what to do about it or how.

He doesn't even consider having wants or desires for himself, unaware he operates as an extension of the BOS, not as a person who merely sorta agrees with them or just wants 3 meals a day and a place to sleep in exchange for shooting some guys.

Hell, the only time we see him break out of this is once he knows he's a synth, and thus forcibly ejected from the BOS and all he knows and believes in. Only then does he go "wait? what the fuck? I'm a person?". Note his utter offense at Maxson implying he knew he was a synth and was a purposeful spy and traitor, how even worse to him than being sentenced to death is having his faith in them doubted, his usefulness to them doubted. He's happy to let the player kill him, because it would be a continuation of their ideals. But the second his servitude to the Brotherhood, which he values above all else, including his personhood, getting questioned? Now he's upset!

Hell, he's even dehumanized OUTSIDE of the Brotherhood! See this comment from Piper when Maxson reveals him being a synth:

(Girl what the fuck + you are not immune to propaganda + she is sometimes accidentally complacent or even actively participating in the same discrimination she is trying to stop btw and I love that yum yum yum writing so good sometimes)

Dehumanization of autistic people is nothing too, take this really good chunk of an article I found trying to gather my own thoughts together for this post:

"Here’s a classic by Ivar Lovaas, an early pioneer most associated with the current therapy most aggressively recommended for autistic kids, Applied Behavioral Analysis:

You see, you start pretty much from scratch when you work with an autistic child. You have a person in the physical sense—they have hair, a nose and a mouth—but they are not people in the psychological sense […] One way to look at the job of helping an autistic kid is to see it as a matter of constructing a person. You have the raw materials, but you have to build the person."

"You have a person in the physical sense—they have hair, a nose and a mouth—but they are not people in the psychological sense […]"

Hmm...sure sounds like something a commonwealther would say about a synth, huh?

Besides, identity confusion is very much a thing to those with autism: both in regards to themselves as a person, but also about themselves as part of society. Danse is very lost and listless after Blind Betrayal, and furthermore with the knowledge he's a synth, that he's artificial and thus inherently different from many people around him, despite looking and sounding like them. He's just different, a feeling likely not new if we assume him to be autistic, and when we consider the multiple times in canon he describes struggling with interacting with others and understanding their feelings and actions. Being a soldier gave him an easy, simple, digestible answer to this confusion: he's a soldier. A soldier's conduct gave him a playbook to interaction and his own actions, an objective, structured way of life. It was made to appeal to him in every way, and was probably almost therapeutic.

He is, in my opinion, the perfect victim.

My point in vomiting words isn't to like, try to exonerate him btw. Any sort of "hes actually an innocent cinnamon roll who did nothing wrong!!!!" Danse depictions equally piss me off. Regardless of BOS brainwashing (they're a cult to me and always will be) or victimhood or diagnosis, he IS an adult and responsible for his own actions, and his discrimination and violence against non-humans and participation in BOS acts...but I also think it's just as shallow to imply he just, is a normal well adapted adult who agreed with the BOS bc he's a discriminatory ass, and not due to being the exact type of person who is incredibly likely to be victimized by an entity such as the BOS, and what the isolation of a person can do to them. ESPECIALLY considering him being a synth-- he is (whether accidentally or not or both) an active participate in the discrimination of his own kind, of people like him...is that not kind of spectacular, very interesting (and considering it's Bethesda...possibly unintentional?) writing? Especially when I feel we get very few examples of synths who are anything except perfect victims until like, Far Harbor came out. I just think this is a very interesting chunk of his character that barely got explored but exists to at least some extent, and I'm disappointed to seemingly see largely unexplored or under explored in fandom materials.

[artbyblastweave]

The Fallout 3 Numbers Station Creepypasta is interesting to me, because it swings wildly from being fairly effective to cartoonishly inept, for reasons that are both easy and illustrative to pinpoint.

(For those unfamiliar, the premise is that through an opaque and poorly documented series of in-game actions, it's possible to turn the in-game radio in Fallout 3 into a numbers station; analysis of the numbers produced by that station reveal dated snippets of information about events yet to come, with an abrupt cutoff point for the dates that implies something apocalyptically bad is coming down the tubes.)

The setup of the thing is actually very effective, because it's written with intimate knowledge of the two relevant idioms- the online fallout fandom, and conventions of online walkthroughs. Part of it is that a numbers station of any kind is extremely compatible with the apocalyptic tone and tenor of Fallout 3 in particular, which already uses abandoned, looping broadcasts as exploration hooks at multiple points, so something like this being buried or dummied out is at least somewhat plausible. There's further verisimilitude in that the supposed triggers for the broadcast station involves killing fan-favorite NPCs and bypassing content in a way that harkens to the banging-rocks-together mode of experimentation that players do in bethesda sandboxes when they've gotten bored. The information about how to trigger the worldstate is written with the familiar cautious uncertainty of someone who's been crowdsourcing information from an online community- certain and uncertain triggers, a difficulty distinguishing between intended steps in the process, unintended bugthesda jank, and normal game states that only seem relevant because you're currently over-scrutinizing everything. All-in-all, written from a place of clear familiarity with how these kinds of easter egg hunts tend to go.

Where it fucks the dog, of course, is that the decoded messages about future events are entirely too on the nose, tip their hands too readily that the world is going to end, and generally don't in any way resemble actual human communications. The only remotely effective component is the closing detail about how there appears to be a specific cutoff date past which there are no new communications to pick up on. The potential tension of which is taken out back and shot by the fact that one of the decoded transmissions involves someone staring into the camera and exposition dumping about how scientists fucked up and the universe is unravelling. It's also delivered in a different register from the front half of the piece- they don't stick the landing on marrying the more believable GameFAQs-speak with the clunkier narrative descriptions of the decoded messages.

All this to demonstrate that being able to construct a framing device with verisimilitude is actually a largely different skill than being able to give whatever's behind the curtain verisimilitude. DrB0sch is an example of a project that sticks the landing much more effectively, initially presented within the familiar idiom of low-rent early-oughts youtube walkthroughs about idiosyncrasies that are almost plausible before spiraling into deepcut creepypasta insanity that's nonetheless in strong conversation with the source material. It probably helps that it's got no prose to trip up on

[hometoursandotherstuff]

I kind of love this unexpectedly moody 2013 mansion in Bethesda, MD. It has pops of white and gray rooms interspersed with the black, but it's very well done. 6bds, 11ba, only $23.5M. I wonder if millionaires will like it- it's coming to the market June 23rd and they haven't painted it light gray or white. Yet.

I don't mind that it's black, b/c it's beautiful and it's new, so they haven't ruined anything.

Check out the grand staircase. Love the black runner against the white stairs.

I love how the colors of the art match and give off a golden glow.

Gotta have that black baby grand piano. This room has gray wallpaper and wainscoting, but it features a creamy leather Chesterfield sofa and pops of white.

Gorgeous den. They provided a closeup of the heavily veined marble fireplace. Nice.

The books even coordinate and I wish they would've made the gold ceiling more coppery. (Not that it matters what I think.) Did you know that designers actually buy old books to match clients decor?

The kitchen's white with a big black island and white hanging lamps. It's nice, b/c the black & white theme can be carried thru, or it can be given pops of color.

Lovely every day dining area is bright and has a view.

An intimate little sun room with a great view.

Love the little library and it has a terrace for going outside to read.

Stairs to the lower level. Note the griege walls- an HGTV new standard in decor. Interesting light fixture- it looks like a starfish.

These stairs look like they come out of nowhere.

The large entertaining space consists of an extensive bar, seating, plus tables & chairs.

And, of course, there's the wine cellar/tasting room. This is one mansion that I actually like.

Outside, there's a wonderful infinity pool with a bridge.

Blue lights in the pool coordinate with the chaises.

Look at the waterfall.

She's beautiful inside and out.

That's the historic Potomac River going by.

1.93 Acre lot, so it's almost 2 acres.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/6699-Macarthur-Blvd-Bethesda-MD-20816/37166434_zpid/

[kittykatkatelol]

How ghouls work, the ghoulification process, and more below cut - aka extremely long description of ghoulification that Bethesda was too much of a coward to give us

disclaimer, I am well aware this probably isn't how Bethesda made ghouls work in fallout canon, but it is how they worked in my canon.

Ghoulification happens to many in the post nuclear world that is fallout - it happens for one reason, and one reason alone. Radiation. Though I am sure most already knew that, but if you didn't, there you go.

You have a certain threshold of how much radiation you can have in your system without becoming a ghoul. There are 4 thresholds total: From human to ghoul, from ghoul to feral, from feral to dead. Once you hit a threshold, there is no reversing it. No cure. Once it is done, it is done, and you have to learn to manage it best as possible. The likeliness of a cure for being a ghoul, is extremely, EXTREMELY unlikely. The only reason I don't say it's impossible, is because it is fallout, and weirder things have been achieved.

Well, Faraday, I hear you ask, how do you know when you've hit a threshold? To that I say, you don't lol. Well, kind of. If you have geiger counter, then you'll know when you hit the first threshold of becoming a ghoul, as your counter will not stop ticking. But for most, who don't have one, you don't know until you start getting symptoms.

What are these symptoms, Faraday? There are many, the vary from person to person, ghoul to ghoul. The symptoms everyone gets are intense weight loss in the span of a short period of time with no change to diet, hair loss, bloodshot eyes, patches of unusually dry skin. The ones that vary are coughing, usually coughing up blood, becoming sickly, often ill with fevers, vomiting, shakes.

There are of course more, but these are the most common. Patches of this dry, rot like skin will most likely start on your hands, feet, or face, as those are the places most likely exposed to radiation first. Though, for me, it was my upper arm, as that is where I injected the experimental radiation drug. It starts where the radiation was first exposed and it spreads.

So you start seeing the signs that you are becoming a ghoul, is there anything you can do to slow the process? Actually yes. Radaway. BEFORE you go down a bunch of radaway, listen to me very closely, radiation is now your life force. Even if you are still in the very early process of becoming a ghoul, you are still a ghoul. Radaway will kill you if you take too much all at once. Radaway will make you even weaker, even sicker, but it will postpone the ghoulification process. It should only be done if you are in a genuinely unsafe place for ghouls to be, such as the Brotherhood of Steel, or Diamond City, to name a couple examples. You will have to be hooked to a radaway 24/7 to keep from becoming visibly a ghoul, but you want to hurry up and get away from that dangerous place as it can and will kill you.

The process can take anywhere from a week to multiple months depending on how long you keep up the radaway. You can probably go for over a year, but at a certain point it just isn't worth it to keep taking, it's only going to get worse and worse the longer you take it. The normal I'd reckon is a month or two.

When you reach a certain point of radiation intake, the initial ghoulification hell will be over. You will still have some aches and pains and some really bad days, but the main hurdle will be done and you'll feel pretty much how you did before becoming a ghoul. Yay. What now you ask? Well, anything. You might look different, but you have the same capacity of doing things as a human can. You're healing is different, but overall, you can keep doing what you were doing with little repercussions. You don't heal with stimpaks that well, so radiation will be your new healing method. Ghouls vary in how they look, hair loss if dependent on how much radiation they have in their system and how far along they are. No one keeps their hair, a rare few will keep facial hair, but most are bald as a cueball everywhere lol. You will not gain weight, there is no such thing as a big ghoul, or a muscular ghoul, you are thin, you look malnourished, and I don't think there are any exceptions. Some lose their nails, some don't, some become extremely rotted, some have very minimal rot, some pure black eyes, some are just bloodshot - looks vary from person to person, ghoul to ghoul. No experience or appearance will ever be exactly the same as anothers.

You will not catch diseases from animals or humans, your organs will not fail, cigs won't cause lung damaged, you will not feel things properly anymore (aka if you get shot it will be considerably less painful than it is supposed to be. You will be ""immortal"" - a term I use quite loosely since there are plenty of downsides to make up for ""immortality"".

To keep in mind, there are still 3 other thresholds. Radiation is your lifeforce, but too much of a good thing still exists. Too much will make you start going feral. How to prevent this is by have two days a year where you settle down, and take a radaway to flush your systems and reset things. It's going to be hell, it's going to feel like when you first became a ghoul, you are going to be fatigued, ill, and in a lot of pain. But it will be worth it to avoid going feral. Another thing, when you go into an extremely radiated place like the Glowing Sea, take a Rad-X. It won't flush your systems like a radaway, but it will limit how much radiation gets thrown into you.

How to tell if you are going feral? I honestly don't know too much. Amnesia, having big chunks of memory gone. Strange behavior. Headaches, twitching. I don't know what it feels like, but when friends went feral, that was seemingly the symptoms. Again, no cure, once you find out you are going feral, the best solution is to put yourself - or have someone else - out of your misery. To go feral is to become a zombie, it is better for everyone, including yourself, to just end it before it gets to bad.

Ferals don't live long, we all know this. You see one, you kill it, that's just how it goes. But they are capable of living a decently long time, like any ghoul. The final threshold is death, ferals can't do anything to stop radiation intact. If a bullet won't kill them, radiation will.

And yes, we could smell. Not too well, but we could still smell and breathe in through our noses before anyone asks.

I think that is about everything I can think of, if anyone has any questions I will do my damnedest to answer them.

[badkarma1998]

Hey kid.

Yeah you.

You wanna read a long winded conspiracy theory for 2008 classic open world first person RPG Fallout 3?

Ok so I know it's been literally 17 years, and we all know that Bethesda has questionable writing, but I was thinking about a revalation I had recently at 7pm in a Dell Taco drive thru.

So I was replaying the main questline, and as anyone who's played Fallout 3 50 times over knows, it goes as so:

you leave Vault 101, you go find your dad, and then he dies like 1 quest later when the Enclave shows up to steal Project Purity. And as we all know, you watch your dad die (along with everyone else whos standing in the death chamber with him) from a massive release of radioactive gas from behind a thin pane of glass. You watch it happen, it's infuriating sad and sucks and you run away devastated to go continue the game's second wild goosechase.

And as we all know, when you do find the GECK in vault 87 and the Enclave ambushes you, who shows up?

Fuckass Colonel Autumn.

Who, if you'll remember, was standing right next to your dad in the radioactive death chamber when it filled with radiation and death. Who very clearly falls over dead right in front of you, but then somehow shows up fully alive to abduct you a few quests later.

Which is, ya know, bullshit?

This man has like 5 voicelines, and gets to cheat death while I get to have secondhand daddy issues, but sure, ok Todd.

So of course, I start thinking of possible explanations, cuz it's been a few years and I remembered he kidnaps you and all that, but I was thinking "surely he was standing outside the chamber when James starts the project purity meltdown", only to confirm that, no. You clearly watch him die.

And again, it's totally unfair that your dad dies but this two second bad guy gets to live? To antagonize you for a lil bit until you beat his ass like an hour later???

I digress

So I'm thinking ok, how does one survive radiation that intense?

It'd be obvious if he was a ghoul or a mutant, so that's out. And the only other thing I could come up with would be if he were a robot.

And then, because it's a fresh playthrough, I remember the android questline in Rivet City I've been ignoring. A quest that I basically wrote off as a teen because it was before Fallout 4 came out, and I didn’tcare about what a Commonwealth was until Dr Li left for it. But synths are very much an established thing in 3. Sure, the events take place about a decade before 4, so the tech is a little less advanced. But Harkness is living a full unsuspecting life as a man convincingly enough that Zimmerman can't find him. The synth technology is proven to be at a state where theyre indistinguishable (enough) from people. Sure, the institute is way north and it's a biiit of a strech to think there's two androids that made it down to DC, let alone that one of them is inexplicably in the hands of the Enclave leading it in a position of power. But like, it's not impossible right?

So I go to reddit, cuz I wanna know what the real answer is before I get too lost in my little theory.

And I just

Yall

I know Fallout 3 gets a bad rep. And like, in many ways it deserves it.

This is one of those times it deserves it.

Because Todd Howard's underpaid typewriter monkeys would really have my ass believe that this middle aged man storms a research facilitly the second it becomes operational after 20 years. Then, with no idea the lead researcher is a self destructive idealist, this man preemptively last min doses himself with an experimental never before heard of strain of rad-x he happened to bring with him, and that actually makes him immune to the lethal rush of condensed radiation that he had no way of knowing was about to kill him.

Now. Idk about yall. But I think its much more believable that say, a rouge institute scientist steals a synth, then runs away to join the Enclave down south. and maybe the actual living man that was Colonel Autumn sees an opportunity for immortality of sorts, and does everyone's favorite scifi trope, and uploads a copy of his brain into the convincingly human robot body. And either the original Autumn dies in project purity, or he was dead before, but the synth Autumn has no idea he's a synth and is just acting like he never died.

Its a stretch, sure. It's got some holes in it, of course.

But the alternative is the only known dosage ever of extra strength rad-x pm

Now, imagine that one reaction of the guy in the drive thru talking to the fast food worker, and hes got the sunglasses taped to his head and the worker looks horrified. Except the fast food worker was inside assembling my wife's carne asada fries while I ranted to my steering wheel.

[white-spectre]

Thoughts on The Similarities Between Morrowind and Dune

(and a personal analysis foreword)

----

I've been struggling lately with the idea of wanting to create things, but having a complete lack of aptitude for most forms of art. Within the last few years, I have noticed a huge decrease in my typing ability, reading comprehension, and overall articulation that concerns me, and I think depression is a huge factor that I try to work on as often as I can. I don't get any fulfillment or sense of creation from my work and life has felt so overwhelming and dull lately, but I guess I would consider writing as one of my better talents overall. Seeing something completed feels nice, and once I start on a project, I will usually see it through. Even if it is something that has probably been hashed out a million times, but I love analyzing my little blorbos sometimes and Tumblr is THE place to spout into the void. Already I've written a paragraph and only had to correct about 200 mistakes so here we go... (Spoilers for both Dune and Morrowind of course).

In this analysis, I will provide a little history of both works for people who are unfamiliar with one or the other, and compare similarities and differences. I want to make it very clear from the beginning that Dune was published many, many years before Morrowind, and that I believe that many aspects of Dune helped shape the concept of Morrowind's lore, but I do not believe that this was extensive to the point of plagiarism or intellectual property theft.

Dune was published by Frank Herbert in 1965, which was the first of 6 novels in the original series. The series was later expanded upon by Frank's son Brian Hebert and currently includes 30+ novels set in the Dune universe. The series is set in our universe approximately 20,000 years in the future, and take place mostly on the planet of Arrakis, or Dune, as it is called by the native people. The story follows the members of House Atreides and their contested lordship of Arrakis. The young Atreides heir, Paul, is the culmination of a millennia-long eugenics experiment by the Bene Gesserit, an organization of women with mystical abilities and training. Paul is believed to be the Kwisatz Haderach, one who is able to see all potential futures. Following the decimation of the Atreides-held city on Arrakis by a feuding house, Paul seeks asylum with the native Fremen population. Their belief in the Lisan Al-Gaib leads them to believe that Paul is their messiah, and they later overthrow the invading House Harkonnen and restore Paul Muad'Dib as the emperor of Dune.

Morrowind is the third installment in the Elder Scrolls video game series, and was released by Bethesda in 2002. The game is set in Morrowind, one of 9 provinces of Tamriel. The story follows a slave, released without explanation by the Emperor, to the remote island district of Vvardenfell. The former slave/adventurer is given the task of working with an operative of the Blades, the Emperor's guard and spy network. The spymaster Caius has the adventurer obtain various accounts of the native prophecy of the Nerevarine, a reincarnation of a legendary hero that will unite and save the people of Morrowind from an ancient evil, the Sixth House. As the questline progresses through many trials, it becomes clear that the adventurer appears to fulfill the prophecies, and culminates with the adventurer defeating the lord of the Sixth House, Dagoth Ur, and freeing the people of Morrowind from the blight.

Both Morrowind and Dune rely heavily on storytelling from the perspective of an outsider to learn the ways of the native culture. Paul learns the way of the Fremen as he traverses Arrakis as a means of separating himself from his previous way of life and understanding the prescience that he will one day lead the Fremen in a galactic Jihad; the Adventurer learns the ways of both the Great Houses of Morrowind and the Ashlander tribes in order to lead them in fighting the Sixth House and Dagoth Ur. Both native populations have a far-reaching history of nomadic, tribal origins. Both view their respective empires as invading forces to be repelled.

Both stories use lost and forbidden knowledge as a key plot point, with the Adventurer retrieving the Lost Prophecies of the Seven Visions and Seven Trials, Knowledge forbidden by the Tribunal Temple; and with Paul ingesting the Water of Life to obtain memories of the lives of past Reverend Mothers of the Fremen, forbidden to any male.

This ties in with the use of religion as a means of control in both stories. In Dune, the Bene Gesserit are said to "seed" planets with a doctrine that they believe will advance their goals in the future, which ultimately leads to the Fremen belief in the Lisan Al-Gaib and the rise of the Atreides Empire. In Morrowind, the Tribunal have persecuted the Dissident Priests for their teachings that the Tribunal only attained godhood through deception, and maintain strict control over what the Temple preaches. Both Vivec and Paul Atreides later regret the ritualistic practices of their following, and both admit that they allowed ritual and habit to corrupt the practice of their worship.

The province of Morrowind and the planet Arrakis are both viewed by the outside world as savage, inhospitable, and mostly uninhabited land. In Morrowind, the Empire has fairly recently come to the island of Vvardenfell, and most Imperial forces consider the island to be a wild, rural backwater of the world. Tension is high between the native Great Houses of Morrowind and the Empire, with very little or no contact between the Ashlander Tribes and the Empire. In Dune, the native population initially remains hidden from the Imperial forces that seek to harvest the planet's resources, and the few that have contact with House Atreides are seen as dangerous and alien in their practices.

There are other similarities that I can't articulate very well because it is getting late... Alia's possession by Baron Harkonnen in Children of Dune mirrors Dagoth Ur's seeming possession by the proximity to the Heart of Lorkhan, Paul's reliance on Spice as a means of prescience mirrors the Tribunal's reliance on the heart for their godhood and so on.

I am by no means a professor of literature. This is not meant to be a definitive list of similarities. I just had some thoughts on the similarities for a while and it's been tickling me to write them down. I apologize if I've transposed some words or missed the right verb form, my brain just does that now :/

[galaxyprintvaultsuitfics]

Hey , sister . If you're up to it , could I please request a Preston period fic ? Thank you !!!

I just realized you specifically mentioned a fic but I also wrote headcanons, very sorry myspace-apologist (insert sad emoji here)

Ugh love any requests for Preston. Literally so underrated and had his incredibly interesting backstory and character arc screwed over by Bethesda's coding.

ANyways.

Preston Garvey Period HCs Fluff Warnings: Period and menstruation stuff

We all agree he had a bunch of siblings growing up right? I always feel like he’s very youngest child coded, and that specifically he has 3 older brothers and 1 older sister. Is that relevant to this? No. But he is written as having had at least one sister in this. How did his parents survive with 5 kids in the wasteland? No idea.

Anyways,,,

Preston Garvey is probably the single-best person in the entire Commonwealth to go to about your period other than perhaps Curie. The ball of sunshine that is Preston Garvey just wants everyone around him to be happy even at the cost of himself.

He grew up in the Commonwealth wasteland, and so nobody had the time or resources to be shy about issues of menstruation, and so while he never experienced it personally, he’d heard plenty about it from his family and friends. He helped out enough as a kid to know the proper ways to clean blood from fabric and handled more than his fair share of supply runs when a sibling needed or craved something.

He was also a Minuteman, an organization with no gender or sex restrictions, and it’s unlikely they had much opportunity for rest regarding things such as periods. I’m sure he’s seen every kind of period-induced mood swing known to man (and is terrified of the consequences after witnessing the rage one of his fellow Minutemen entered when a group of raiders dared to interrupt their nap).

AKA Preston Garvey has seen it all. All meaning everything period-related that is.

He seems like the kind of guy who (if he lived in the real world) would have a period tracker app on his phone where he copies the data from his partner’s app so that he can be aware and surprise them. Literal angel.

Have a craving? Preston is there. Within reason of course. He will lecture you if you ask for any alcohol or non-pain-related chems. He does so out of love, and he’s really trying his best. However, he will get you ten boxes of sugar bombs if it’s the last thing he’ll do.

Regardless, he will still have a mini panic whenever he catches a blood stain on your clothes. What can he say? He’s a worrier before anything else.

Some you as the Sole-Survivor headcanons (aka mentions of pre-war culture and stuff, and being in cryo-sleep):

Pre-war society seems to be heavily gendered and occasionally restrictive, and so I can imagine periods aren’t exactly a super normal topic, especially not between a man and woman! Curse the thought!

If you aren’t shy about your period, you might be surprised at first by his – by your standards – rather blasé reaction, but you’ll quickly adjust and, if anything, be grateful that he’s understanding and normal about the whole thing.

If you mention pre-war attitudes about periods and menstruation, believe me that he will look like you just told him the sky is not blue. He will go on a speech about how “that’s ridiculous. It’s a normal process. What, did you folks not talk about eating either?” before proceeded to shake his head with polite disdain.

If you’re on the shier side, however, especially if it’s influenced by pre-war society…

When you seem to never mention periods around him, he doesn’t pry. It’s the post-nuclear fallout, and so it’s plenty common that people miss or stop having their periods entirely for a variety of reasons. (Especially if he knows you were literally in cryo-sleep for like 210 years)

It isn’t until he wakes you up one night, terrified that you’d reopened a wound or had hidden an injury that you had to awkwardly explain you were on your period and you managed to leak in the weirdest way. He is much more chill than a pre-war person would expect, and you can rest assured he’ll be even more of an absolute angel over the course of the next few days. After telling you that you could’ve just told him, of course.

Believe that the two of you will discuss the topic in-depth next time you get a chance, and Preston will assure you until he can drive the point home that it’s nothing to feel strange about, and that he’s seen it all.

Preston knocked on the door to the General’s quarters with a gentle hand.

You’d locked yourself in there the previous evening, and while he knew he couldn’t dictate the actions of a grown adult, he could damn well worry about you. Lord knows he couldn’t stop worrying about you if he tried.

Regardless, here he was, clearing his throat as he listened for any movement beyond the door. After a few moments, he heard some grumbling and shuffling before the recognizable sound of old locks being pulled open in an old door. You opened the door a crack, before recognizing the knocker as Preston and stepping aside to let him slip through the crack. He shut the door after himself, careful to not let it shut harshly on its squeaky hinges that desperately needed a look-at by a proper repairman. The door could wait for tomorrow, though. Whatever was going on that made you look so tired took priority.

“General? Are you alright?” He questioned, clenching his fist to ignore the urge to inspect you for injury.

“If I explain, do you promise to just call me Y/N instead?” You joked, though the humour didn’t make much difference in your expression, your face haunted by comparatively pallid skin and dark circles under your eyes. Preston frowned when he noticed this.

“Sorry, just force of habit.” Preston said, “Either way, something is clearly wrong.”

You nodded, his words appearing to have appeased you.

“I got my period. I’ll be fine, but it sucks right now.” You explained, returning to your bed where a veritable nest of blankets and pillows had formed, not with intention but rather the chaotic sleeping patterns and habits of someone in regular pain.

A few empty boxes of your favourite snack stood on your end table, as well as a metal flask. Preston narrowed his eyes at the flask. When you noticed this, you explained, “Oh, I’ve been using it as a heating pad. If I miss anything pre-war, it’s heating pads. I put some hot water in a flask, and it works well-enough.”

Preston made a mental note of this so that he could prepare and keep ready a steady supply of hot-water-filled flasks for you next time this happened, or to suggest it to his friends.

“Do you need anything else right now? I can see if we have anymore of your favourite snack in the kitchen.” Preston Offered.

You shook your head. “I’d like your company, if anything.”

Preston was more than happy to fulfil that request.

As you two talked, he began to slowly clean your quarters. He walked over to the pile of empty boxes and swept them into his arms, where he carried them to a nearby trash can. Wordlessly, he fluffed your pillows and untangled your blankets. When your room was as clean as it could get without Preston leaving, he sat next to you on the mattress, gently brushing a hand through your hair.

He continued this, listening to your ramblings as he gently massaged your scalp, until you finally slipped into the relief of sleep once more. He smiled at your relaxed face, the tension in your brow dissipating.

TLDR: Absolute angel sunshine darling wants you to be happy. Yay! Period sucks. Oh no ☹. But Absolute angel sunshine darling good so now you happy too. Yay!

[crazycurly-77]

A beautiful day - pt. 2

"...maybe I can be your family...if you want?"

These were his words. You stood there and just looked at him. That couldn't be, you had to be dead or laying in bed dreaming. Or your mind and ears were just playing tricks on you.

Then suddenly everything around you went black and you fainted. Gibbs was just able to catch you as you collapsed. He picked you up and carried you quickly to the ambulance.

"Paramedics! Quick! She just collapsed and is unconscious!" Gibbs called to them and laid you on the stretcher outside of the ambulance.

They examined you as best they could and then told the worriedly waiting team Gibbs that everything was okay. It seemed to be just a reaction to the pressure wave. Nevertheless, they took you to the Bethesda Hospital for further examinations and observation.

When you arrived at the hospital, you were immediately taken to the examination room and doctors rushed over, but after a short time the head doctor came to your colleagues who were waiting in the corridor and told them that everything was okay.

“We have treated her wounds, which are fortunately only superficial. The pressure wave must have hit her hard, which is why she became unconscious, but she will probably come to soon.”

The doctor put his hand on Tony's shoulder, who was standing next to him, and smiled “don't worry, everything's fine.”

That was good to hear, but there was someone who needed the comfort more than Tony. This someone was none other than Gibbs, who nearly stood beside himself, because of worry for you. So the team leader asked “Can we go to her?”

“Yes, of course. Down the corridor on the left, last room.”

While the doctor was answering Gibbs' question, your boss was already running towards your room. He absolutely had to see for himself that you were really okay.

The team shared his wish and ran after him.

You were pale and partially bandaged, but otherwise you seemed fine. There were no monitors or tubes connected to you. That was a good sign and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

Now that they were all convinced that you were fine, everyone headed home until only Ducky and Gibbs were left.

“Don't you want to go home, too? She's in the best hands,” Ducky asked his old friend and gently placed his hand on his shoulder.

Gibbs just shook his head “I can't, Duck. I have to stay with her.”

Doctor Mallard nodded understandingly and also went home.

Now you two were alone in your room. Gibbs pulled up a chair next to your bed, sat down on it with a deep sigh, took your hand in his and began keeping watch at your side.

He would have sat next to you as long as necessary, but luckily you woke up again after 3 hours.

You looked around and realized that you were in the hospital and Gibbs was sitting next to your bed, holding your hand and sleeping.

You had never seen him so relaxed. Sleeping, he seemed somehow sweet and peaceful. At this thought, you couldn't help but laugh quietly.

If he knew that you had just called him sweet in your thoughts...

... he would be very happy about it, but you didn't know that. At least not yet. 

You gently squeezed his hand to wake him up - and it worked.

He was awake immediately and your eyes met.

"I didn't want to shock you so much that you fainted," he explained immediately with a good-natured wink.

To which you replied with a broad grin and a "You're simply stunning," always holding his gaze.

That was your thing, your dynamic. Stick together and tease each other like two good old friends who have been through a lot together.

The two of you burst into loud laughter at your joke, which the doctor in the hallway heard. He came in, asked how you were and told you that you could go home the next day.

That was very good news. You were allowed to work too, but only at your desk. And there was no other option, because as soon as you entered the bullpen the next day, Gibbs held your transfer papers under your nose and said with satisfaction, "You're now working for me as an explosives expert. Advisory work, no more defusing."

You could only stare at him, because you hadn't expected that a transfer would be possible so quickly. But hey, he was Jethro Gibbs after all, he could make a lot of things possible.

But as you were about to go to the only empty desk in the room with the papers in your hand, Abby came running and called excitedly: “Gibbs, Gibbs, Gibbs! I found something very interesting!”

He turned to her and asked: “What, Abs?”

“There was baking powder on the bomb!”

Surprised, you went to her “Baking powder? Are you sure?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

Concerned, you turned to the boss: “I think I know the builder of the bomb.”

Immediately his analyzing blue eyes turned to you with the silent request to continue.

“During my training there was a student who always used baking powder. He had a thing for the TV series MacGyver from the 80s.”

“So what?” Gibbs wanted to know.

“He went crazy during his training and preferred to build bombs rather than defuse them, which is why he was sent to a psychiatric hospital. But by the looks of things he is probably free again,” you informed him worriedly.

That was apparently the last clue Gibbs needed: “His name?” he asked immediately.

“Adrian Turner”

“McGee, address!” he asked him immediately to research it.

Tim did a quick search on the computer, found the suspect, and Gibbs and Tony were on their way to arrest him, while you stayed in the office and Tim had to look after you.

(To be continued...in the last chapter 3)

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Tags: @ilovemark1951, @hobby27

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[artbyblastweave]

Whatever else I may say about the writing of Fallout 3, Oasis is excellent on every level. Genuinely totally siloed from the main quest and the rest of the game world's communities, isolated from any area of the game world that you'd be likely to pass through on your way to another quest objective (maybe Fort Constantine, but you'd still have to detour pretty heavily.) Despite that, allusions to the place are seeded throughout the game- Three Dog talking about it on the radio as an urban legend, a single insane wastelander ranting about it before dropping dead in front of you. One of your rewards for completing the Arefu quest is that you'll have a cluster of locations in Arefu's general area marked on your map if you hadn't found them already; one of those locations contains an exiled, berserk Treeminder with coordinates to Oasis on his person, albeit without any explanation of what Oasis actually is. Actually finding the place is a very self-directed activity even if they hand you everything you'd need to get there. I feel as though there's a level of restraint on display from Bethesda here that you wouldn't get for settlement with a named quest these days- an asset as visually unique as Harold would absolutely end up with top billing in the main quest, you wouldn't be allowed to miss him. And anyway, once you get there, I dunno, there are interesting parallels. Inasmuch as Fallout 3 has any kind of actual deliberate theme, I'd argue that the theme is that you can't run from your problems, and you can't stick your head in the sand. A lot of the settlements you visit over the course of the game have the vibe of a whole bunch of people who are just sort of holed up and waiting to die, even the outwardly successful ones like Megaton and RIvet City. The entire main plot is triggered by James deciding to try and do something about the state of the world instead of just waiting to die of inbreeding along with everyone else under the Overseer's thumb. Everywhere you visit is experiencing some kind of watershed moment- something's gotta give. And then you get to this place that's outwardly a pretty sweet setup, but only because they're obscure- and that's not sustainable. You found this place, other people are going to, the only actual choice on the table is on what terms they're going to come into contact with the outside world and on what timetable. The possibility of reforestation is complementary to Project Purity; they make a big point of the fact that Harold can't do jack about the irradiated water even if the restoration of greenery would still be a major net positive. And it's not hard to draw a connection between the ending where you convince Harold to keep living because the Treeminders are dependent on him, and the whole "abandonment issues" beat that the Lone Wanderer is given room to have with their own father- you don't get to duck out on the world that easy, James Number 2. Lots of interesting little parallels swirling around in there, if you're an overly charitable apophenic such as myself

[arsene-ee]

Can we talk about how both Preston Garvey and Wyll Ravengard are pretty much the characters that get treated the worst by their respective fandom? (Also Ik I'm being incredibly Biased here because I love both of them dearly)

Cuz like both tend to be called incredibly bland and are often times just overlooked. While both of them are incredibly complex character (as complex as a bethesda character can get in Preston's case)

Preston is consitently the butt of the same boring ass Joke. "hAhA aNoThEr SeTtLeMeNt NeEdS yOuR hElP, hAhA sO FuNnY" and yes I get it the line is incredibly repetitive, but every characters' dialouge gets repetitive with time as well. The reason this line is so repetitive is that Preston is pretty much the only Questgiver for the Minutemen for a huge part of the game, while other factions like the Railroad (and I assume the BoS) have multiple characters that give you quests. Lorewise Preston being the only quest giver for the minutemen makes sense due to him being like one of the few survivors and all (and the other characters wouldn't really make sense as quest givers, well maybe sturges but he's busy hammering the walls).

Preston has so much interesting lore if you take the time to listen to him, He feels so much survivor's guilt about what happened in Quincy. HE BELIVES HE DESERVES DEATH FOR GODS SAKE.

And I'm still so upset about how he's treated by the fandom, although I do mainly blame bethesda's lazy ass writing. (Also let's not forget that X6-88 is often completely ignored)

Now to Wyll, the love of my life, my babygirl. Wyll was extremly neglected by Larian's writing with him only having about 8.5h of content according to this reddit post. which probably has a lot to do with the fact that he was rewritten very close to release. Wyll is not boring, Wyll is not bland, Larian just didn't want to do him justice compared to other characters (Cough Cough Astarion Cough Cough 12.75h of Content Cough Cough) due to the response to him in EA being low. And let's not forget that up until Patch 7 his dialouge was bugged (apparently), it shouldn't have taken this long to fix it, but Larian was probably busy Animating the 1000000th Astarion cutscene (And don't even get me started on the racist white guy). Wyll didn't even get his own outfit like the rest of the Party (well Lae'zel is wearing Typical gith armor but you rarely encounter them, I recall like 3 or 4 times you actually wearing that armor) Wyll got the basic ass Warlock outfit, and yes it might make sense if you put it as "Well Wyll doesn't have anything anymore, he probably bought or got what was quickly available" well yes but then Astarion should wear some rags or something or at least more plain clothes cuz Cazador most likely would not pay for his clothes to get fixed or get fancy clothes for him, it was just Larian neglecting Wyll again.

And just like Preston Wyll is an incredibly complex character if you take your time to get to know him. His pact causes him pain (mostly mentally n all that) it got him disowned yet he doesn't regret taking it. Wyll was a menace of a Child, almost accidentally robbing a bank, reading smut when he was too young to read such content and then during the game reciting that shit in public. He is incredibly corny and he is proud of that and he fucking fangirls over Minsc. Wyll doesn't even hate his father for disowning him (I'm not saying Wyll should hate or forgive his father, I believe their relationship is incredibly complex), he only speaks rather fondly of him. (also if I see one more person stating Wyll is a Tiefling/Modding Wyll to look like a tiefling I wyll throw hands, he is not a tiefling he is touched by the hells. Same goes for the damn bloodstone eye mod, it's not supposed to be a bloodstone bbg lies about it). Wyll has been under Mizora's close watch for 7 years of course he wants to take romance slow.

Unfortunatley in both offical art and fanwork Wyll tends to be replaced by Halsin or straight up forgotten and in the offical art he does appear in he is often just glued to Mizora (yes I get that a Warlock pact is Binding blah blah) like in the offical art book where every character's alternate design is shown, just not Wyll instead it's Mizora. And I hate it, yes someone may percieve him as bland/boring when they just put him in camp and just don't interact with him, hell if that was a reason to call a character boring I could call Astarion boring but I'm not.

I understand that "good" characters might not be everyone's cup of tea but holy fuck it sucks so much that all the characters I like are just ignored.

The main difference between Preston Garvey and Wyll is that Prestion is the butt of a lame joke and at least is somewhat acknowledged within the fandom, while Wyll just tends to fall behind (Just like X6-88). Both of them are overshadowed by other characters in the game. Preston, Wyll and X6-88 are all pocs and all of them are overshadowed by/less popular than white/white read characters. it's honestly exhausting to see, especially for Baldur's Gate 3, when I see that Larian does indeed respond to fan complains in their content ("Fixing" Tav's expressions for Abuser Astarion kisses...dark romance has ruined fandom).

There is nothing much there can be done about Preston's lazy writing since fallout 4 is pretty much ancient by now (it's like 8 years old so almost a decade). But Baldur's Gate 3 has only turned one (1) year old recently and modern games get consistently updated, it would not be hard for Larian to just add more content for the characters that have less content and make the amount of content each character has kind of equal, hell I would write them the Wyll content for fucking free.

This casual racsim in fandom spaces, whether it's intended or not, is scary to see especially with the curent rise of right wing extremism in western countries (I'm mainly talking about germany here since that's what I can talk about, actually being from such a right wing extremist state).

[seththepotate]

I dunno, I feel like people saying the Fallout show retconned New Vegas are making a *lot* of assumptions based on a few tiny pieces of info.

It's a very self-contained story. We did not learn much of anything regarding the outside world of the current West Coast besides what was important to our characters. Our main characters are a Vault Dweller who of course knows nothing, an apathetic Ghoul who if you don't remember, spent a lot of time prior to this season imprisoned in a casket underground, and a BoS initiate who was plucked out of Shady Sands as a child. Three people who either do not know or do not particularly care about the NCR or its dealings.

*Shady Sands* fell. Not the NCR as a whole. Also it's implied that Shady Sands maybe was not the capitol when it fell ("the FIRST capitol of the NCR). But yes I will agree that the fact of it getting destroyed by Vault Tec bullshit kinda sucks.

I've seen people say New Vegas looks like a ruin? And yeah sure it doesn't look perfect but:

For one it's a wide shot from very very far away and let's be real, NV never looked amazing aside from the casinos. It is very very weird that the surrounding area (camp McCarren, the outer vegas ruins, etc) aren't really present but also let's remember the reason so many big locations were so close were due to map limitations with the game. In the show the scale of these places is much more in line with real life.

For two, even if it is a ruin, Fallout: New Vegas *itself* gave many potential near future issues that could plague the city. Divide Storms, the Cloud, Tunnellers, continued problems with Fiends, hell even the Legion could have still caused problems depending on what ending ends up being canonized. We just don't know yet. And I'm sure we'll find out.

This series so far seems to be really leaning into accepting the past non-Bethesda Fallouts (really liked seeing the original 10mm) and I'm sure we will see some really great shit in the future seasons.

Just my two cents. Maybe season 2 will come out in three years and prove me wrong but I think some people are jumping the gun on their outrage.

[malwaredykes]

I know you mostly post about fnv but I'm curious to know whats your opinion on the other fallouts?

fallout - really Really REALLY good. unforgiving, yes, takes some time getting used to. not without its flaws of course. for example i couldnt for the life of me figure out some very basic shit at first because the UI was designed by rodents i think. very Very engaging once you get past all of that. phenomenal first entry in the series. music, plot, worldbuilding, themes, major characters, mwah. mwah. They Dont Make Em Like That Anymore and there are many good reasons for it but time passed doesnt disappear so you can always play classic fallout.

fallout 2 - thing get weird. some of the highest highs, some of the lowest lows. the highs are really high though. unfortunately has a particular kind of needless edginess to it that gets extremely tiresome. "heeheehhee SECKS *begins to warp violently* heeiiuhehyehye" type. bizarrely racist and misogynistic at many points. contains some of the best voice acting moments in video game history. at many points its just very very tedious, like if with fo1 at some points i was like Well this is kinda rough, with fo2 there were stretches of the game where i was like What the hell am i even doing here Who are these people what is this crap. the enclave as this games evil fucked up faction is so great i love how theyre gradually introduced and then shit hits the fan. has a lot of texture to its worldbuilding and some really good fun moments but again it goes off the rails so much. i rly need to replay it but every time im like God do i really have time for this. i love that you drive a car

fallout 3 - weird fucking game. some truly unjustifiable design and worldbuilding decisions despite having also introduced a lot of rly good things. fun gameplay i mean its that classic falloublivionrim buggy grimy versatile ps3 pure brick ass gravel gamebryo bethesda. VERY funny to have so much of the games plot be like I Gotta Find My Dad like girl i dont care about my dad he can go die. oh wait he does. it has what i call The Martin Septim Problem and i think its kind of self explanatory. fawkes best boy hes my little birthday boy. fun to explore and do your own thing and discover whatevers going on out there. i HATE the brotherhood of steel in fallout the third. i HATE the enclave in fallout the third but i dont think it even comes close to how much i hate the brotherhood of steel in this game and what precedent it set for the rest of bethesda fallout. these creeps. im supposed to find any of this awesome? fuck no. oh also im ENDLESSLY amused by the prologue its like a nightmare sequence akskfnckxjnc. im being BORN?? ive just slid out of my mothers WOMB and CERVIX and VAGINA and theyre bringing up a screen to show her what an ugly monstrosity im gonna be when i grow up and shes like Waoww and she dies??? im a TODDLER? Release Me. Unhand Me You Fool. oh also that sequence where youre in a CRAZY SCIENTISTS SIMULATION is so stupid i love it

fallout 4 - havent played it for longer than 15 minutes (made me barfy). everything i learn about it is bizarre. like WHAT the fuck happens in that game. your old wrinkly son tells you youre stupid and dont need to know anything hes doing and then is like im dying can you take over for me??? also the intro is truly something i mean i dont mind having Some backstory to my character but youre saying i had to be straight married with a baby and living in a nice suburb, with a robot house servant? fuck no

everything else i havent played and have no real Thoughts about

[thegrunkiest]

This has quite literally kept me up at night so I need to discuss with the mathieu council ™... because the brainrot got me bad. I really wish they had out fleshed out Mathieu's reaction more toward the end of the questline where you can drop his mother's head in front of him - yknow, beyond just being a fun little easter egg.

I know the HoK/soon-to-be-listener is probably waiting for a better opportunity to strike but realistically there is no damn reason to risk the lives of any more Speakers after that irrefutable proof... 😭😭😭

Almost surprised he doesn't go more apeshit after you just drop it in front of him... maybe he is really trying to keep it together since he is so close to the Nightmother but... and hear me out... I really want to imagine what happens when the hok stares him down with a deadpan face before just... throwing and kicking the head around I'M SORRY

OH MY GOD this is a beautiful thought process. This is unlocking memories because I think I once saw a drawing by someone depicting that very same scenario and Mathieu is just standing there vibrating with rage and a millisecond away from imploding. I might have to scour around for that later.

For the serious side of the matter though, I do agree, it feels really off for his reaction to be so tame. While he does have self-control, like when stating in his diary he stopped himself from killing Lucien on the spot when he was nearby, there's also stuff like the Serpent's Wake massacre because the sailors called him a mean name. And of course there's Maria. Killed his girlfriend because she reacted like any normal person would to seeing a rotting head as the centerpiece of a Mother Worship Shrine. I would imagine stealing that head and desecrating it by dropping it on the floor would be considered an even bigger insult than how Maria acted. Because it creates such a big plot hole it sadly really just feels like a troll-y, non-canon detail. Or it could be canon the silencer is just... dumber than a pounded thumb. I mean they don't even have enough basic reading comprehension to identify different handwriting.

Tbh the only reason I imagine he doesn't become straight up hostile when you drop the head is because Bethesda maybe thought killing him at Applewatch wouldn't be as much of a cinematic end to the DBh questline as meeting the Night Mother, where there's that sense of stakes of "Oh Sithis, you must stop him now or this will be the end of the Dark Brotherhood." ignoring the fact NM is literally invulnerable to his damage in game.

It really is part of a list of Alternate Pathways That Could've Been in Oblivion. Just alone in the DBh I often wonder the what-ifs of: if you were given a choice to notice the changed handwriting and go to Lucien early, or the choice of a lawful good or anti-hero/villain redemption pathway and ally with the law and/or Mathieu himself and destroy the Brotherhood. As much as I fixate on the DBh it does feel like there's a lot of squandered potential to flesh it out so much more, in so many ways.

To return to silliness though. It would have been hilarious if they kicked it up a notch on the easter egg angle and when you drop the head you're locked into a non-skippable cutscene where Mathieu fuckin Dark Souls one shots you like this or somethin:

[wintercearig12]

I have been having some thoughts about how TES VI is going to tie up the story of the LDB. In particular, I was thinking about Tharstan in the Skaal Village. He was there during the events of the Dragonborn DLC, as he wanted to write another book on the Skaal people.

So, I am wondering whether this book in TES VI may be how the fate of the LDB is revealed to us. In Oblivion we can hear dialogue from NPCs discussing the rumour that the Nerevarine had gone to Akavir, and Sheogorath's dialogue in Skyrim confirms that he was the HoK. It is very likely that the LDB will end up in Apocrypha, as this would be a neat way to 'get rid' of someone so powerful, and Bethesda clearly prefers that their protagonists disappear. This book would be a good account for the LDB's end, particularly as Tharstan would have been vaguely aware of what was going on. He was present when Storn died, and Hermaeus Mora appeared. In fact, he even makes this comment during the killing scene: "By the gods... I've never seen anything like it... I, uh... I don't think this will go in my book."

This of course suggests that he won't write about these events, but, maybe he'll change his mind, after all he does seem to take some interest in the dragon priests; guiding you around Vahlok's tomb, and reading the inscriptions of what happened between Vahlok and Miraak. Also, Storn's death in itself is significant, completing the Skaal's prediciton/prophecy that Hermaeus Mora would one day win their secrets. As Tharstan is writing a book about the Skaal and their history, their traditions, why wouldn't he write about this?