#this episode saw that point and immediately pole vaulted over it

[avelera]

So @jamiekb asked for an info dump on this. Keep in mind, I haven't seen to the end of the show yet so they could absolutely be setting up characters as Wizard of Oz parallels in order to subvert them post episode 5 but in no particular order:

The easy ones first:

Lucy = Dorothy. She wears a blue outfit, she's a wide-eyed innocent who comes from a midwestern cornfield and first embarks on her quest after encountering a "witch" (Moldaver) though the Fallout show gives Lucy a lot more agency than Dorothy gets by giving her the quest from the beginning to go find her father.

CX404 = Toto, another easy one. The fact that there's a dog companion in this at all should be a hint for people that this is a Wizard of Oz setup.

The Scarecrow = The Ghoul. We first meet him in a corn field, where he's been imprisoned/stuck, in Oz he's stuck on a pole as a scarecrow, in the show he's stuck underground. He even resembles both the book and movie version of the Scarecrow, with his missing nose resembling the Scarecrow's painted nose. (I'm too lazy to go get images for all this but they're easy google searches.)

As for the classic set up of each companion wanting a heart, a brain, or courage, it took me a second to figure this one out but it became obvious once I realized.

What do zombies classically want?

Brains.

Hence I think when translating the Wizard of Oz to the Fallout show, this might have been what inspired the writers to make the Scarecrow parallel a ghoul.

The Tin Man = Maximus

Obviously to me, the Tin Man is Maximus. For goodness sake, he wears a suit of metal armor and his primary sin in the story is heartlessness. He doesn't care about others, even his own friends, and he kills without remorse until his encounter with Dorothy (Lucy) helps remind him how to care again.

The biggest single hint of course is that Dorothy/Lucy first encounters Maximus/the Tin Man when he's "rusted" shut, or rather, locked inside his armor. That's such a direct reference it almost doesn't need saying.

However, there's a bunch of deeper cut references too for this parallel:

Maximus and Thaddeus in the "apple orchard" - in the Wizard of Oz movie, you might recall that right before they find the Tin Man, Dorothy and the Scarecrow have apples thrown at them by sentient apple trees of ill intent (it almost looked like they were setting up a gag of having Thaddeus be the self-throwing apple-trees by still being up there, but the scene moved on and felt like more of a nod.

Now, what people might not remember fully from the book is that the Tin Man rusted stiff in an apple orchard. So I immediately loved the scene with Maximus and Thaddeus in the "orchard" because it seemed such an overt nod to that scene

The Tin Man also quarreled with a figure known as the Tin Soldier in a later book, who became all tin from similar circumstances to the Tin Man (chopped up by his own sword because of a curse instead of chopped up by his own axe) which also seemed to echo Thaddeus and Maximus to me.

When Maximus first got shot he didn't seem to bleed, but as he began to show more empathy towards Lucy, he began to bleed and pressed his hand over his heart, almost as if the return of his caring for other people made his heart begin to pump blood again.

As for who is the Cowardly Lion, I'm not sure yet at this point in the story. My suspicion is that it's either Norm or Chet, possibly a combination of the two since Chet acts more like the Lion but Norm has more of a hero's journey of finding his courage.

Oh! And when we first see Vault 4, I turned to my partner and said, "It's going to be the Emerald City, just watch. If it's all in shades of green, I'm right." And sure enough! Green all over the place in Vault 4 in the brief glimpse I saw, and I grinned like crazy.

Remember, in the original book/movie, the Emerald City is where Dorothy receives her real quest, which is to kill the Wicked Witch in exchange with the Wizard for going home. Since Lucy's quest is different, I imagine in Vault 4 she's going to finally get a better understanding of why everyone is hunting for that dang head.

I might add to this post if I see more things but suffice to say, I see lots of little nods to the Wizard of Oz beyond the basics of the film version, which has been delightful.

So I’m about 4 episodes into the new Fallout show and I gotta say, it’s not just including references to Wizard of Oz, it’s including DEEP CUT references to the Wizard of Oz book and I say this as someone who read all 14 of the books as a kid

[blookmallow]

s-squishysquibbles replied to your post: ok im apparently psychic and daphne DOES ACTUALLY...

I literally did not know rollar coasters were ever a stereotypically “manly” thing lmao

it was like... at the beginning there was a kid joking to his friend like “haha dont be such a GIRL” bc he was scared to go on a ride (despite the fact that there were....girls... riding behind them... who were fine...) and then daphne was like “ugh who wants to go on some dumb ride and make yourself sick. only a BOY would like that” but then she finds out she loves rides, and it has nothing to do with making herself sick/anyone being sick, and she was never scared in the first place, and velma’s just kinda There, so im not really sure what point they were trying to make either 

[uniformbravo]

god free! is such a dumb goofy series i love it like shit gets real sometimes but when it comes down to it it’s just a bunch of dumb goofy teens living their lives together?? i have compiled a list of my favorite examples from s1

makoto: *enters haru’s house uninvited, walks right into the bathroom while haru’s in the bath, presumably naked* hey haru: ....................................hey LIKe he just.... Accepts that this is happening, theres like a solid like 2 seconds of him just staring at makoto like he’s debating within himself whether to Say It or not before almost tangibly going “fuck it” & just going along w/ it*

haru & makoto & nagisa going “is it really okay to dig up our old trophy if rin isn’t here? idk it just feels wrong w/o him” only to find out that rin not only beat them there but also fucking just went ahead and dug it up by himself hfjdkjgd

haru having some kind of sixth sense for sugar apparently??? when nagisa throws “salt” on them he like tenses up all dramatic & goes “this isnt salt........................ it’s sugar” like ok????? just gonna let that one go i guess

rin having sharp teeth for absolutely no fucking reason

haru & rin not noticing the fucking pool they're about to race in is empty????

haru straight up rejecting their encounter with rin & trying to convince himself they all hallucinated him like huh? what? rin?? haha impossible he’s in australia there’s no way he couldve been at the swim club last night. no theres no such thing as airplanes he’s gone forever. yes im sure

rin going back to the old swim club again bc the first time his melodramatic brooding was interrupted by those old elementary school Goons showing up so he needed a do-over

nagisa skinny dipping in samezuka’s pool??? an apparently prestigious competitive swimming powerhouse that trains up future professional gold medalists, reigning champions of interhigh swim meets near and far in that same water & nagisa just jumps the fuck in dick out no fucks to give whatsoever???? this bitch

haru literally only showing up to both the old swim club and samezuka academy for the pools, it’s literally the equivalent of college students showing up to any given event for free food (and the fact that they had to break in both times, these Rowdy-Ass Teens)

rin showing up just in time to interrupt their illicit pool activities bc he Sensed Them

haru wearing his swimsuit under his clothes literally everywhere despite reportedly not having actually swum since middle school (except for in the ocean during summer, but it’s like the middle of spring rn?? is he just doing this in way advanced preparation? is this the equivalent of people who start posting abt halloween in july)

gou showing up to haru’s house bc apparently she just Knows where he lives (also haru hearing the doorbell & immediately submerging his head in the bath bc he’d rather drown than have to answer the door #relatable)

rei calling haru “haru-chan-san” upon first meeting him bc “haru-chan” is what nagisa has been referring to him as so that’s his sole point of reference but he also has to add his own honorific too bc come on

haru being instantly pissed at this random new fuck for calling him not only -chan, his Least favorite honorific, but now -san on top of it too??? Outrageous (and this is the same guy who reportedly “hates water,” a completely unacceptable sentiment that should under no circumstances be allowed anywhere near their team in the first place- honestly from haru’s pov it’s like “oh so this is the guy who hates water huh, this hot shit” & then the hot shit’s all “you must be haru-chan-san” he probably just immediately sees red ghdjsjf)

nagisa’s whole “we need this guy bc he has a girly name just like us it’s fate” thing even tho rei’s already in the track club doing pole vaulting that he’s obviously been training v hard to be able to do is such a stupid anime bullshit motivation & my favorite part of it is that their plan for recruiting him basically amounts to the whole gang of idiots showing up to all of rei’s practices and staring at him intensely from the corner until he joins them, like,,,, think of this from rei’s perspective he’s just minding his own business trying to perfect pole vaulting & these fuckers have fixated on him for no apparent reason? he can’t even swim???

rei going so far out of his way to avoid admitting to nagisa that he can’t swim that he comes up with this bullshit philosophy about “humans evolved from the water so why would we regress and get back into it??? Checkmate y’all are fucking idiots now leave me alone” (& also the effort & passion he puts into the delivery, the overdramatic gesturing hfhhddjf rei are u sure u don’t actually belong in the drama club)

after all that, rei up and deciding to leave the track team (even tho he literally structured his daily schedule around it, went running in the mornings & everything, read books n shit) to join the swim club bc haru just looked really, really cool while swimming that one time

haru legitimately having a hard time choosing between like 5 of the exact same swim suit

when they’re trying to figure out why rei can’t swim & haru’s like “the water doesn’t like him” & nagisa’s immediately like “poor rei-chan :(” like hfkglfkj he just Accepts

rei being so frustrated with his inability to swim that he blames it on his speedo & is very convinced that buying a new one will somehow solve all of his problems (& everyone else just going along w/ it like ok i guess it’s time to go swimsuit shopping then)

haru, the owner of the previously mentioned 5 identical swimsuits, joining in with everyone else to go shopping for even more swimsuits, and picking out another one that looks just fucking like the other 5 he already has

nagisa being told that he can’t put their ugly-ass bird mascot on the swim team uniform so he puts “secret iwatobi-chan” on the back of the shirt that will be hidden beneath the jacket as if that’s not Blatantly what he was told not to do (also the fact that anyone entrusted the handling of the uniforms to nagisa, the exact kind of person who would do exactly that kind of thing)

(ok this one isnt rly goofy but haru just bit his ice cream & im so intimidated rn??)

rin’s fucking 6th sense for haru again???? “smells like mackerel”????? i truly cannot handle this one (haru & company are looking in at samezuka’s practice through the window & rin’s just like “HUH what the fuck is that who’s there i smell Mackerel” like????? oh my fucking god)

amakata “we don’t have enough money for a training camp” miho renting herself and gou a room at a lodge on the beach?????? power move

this goddamn show having a fun ~spooky~ haunted house adventure right after everyone almost fucking Died

haru’s story about his “first love” being about a fucking waterfall igmgkdjkg

rin jogging on the beach the next morning & stopping by the tents like “who r these fuckin dumbasses camping right on the shoreline” & then he turns around and there’s haru & his band of swimming idiots

rin waiting in the hallway at the interhigh in case haru comes by so he can casually get up & have a Cool And Dramatic confrontation w/ him where he brags how he’s gonna beat him in their upcoming race (which, even better, he purposely entered himself at a lower skill level to be able to do while probably his whole team went “uhhhh are u sure abt this lmao we’re kind of trying to be the best here” & hes just like “yeah yeah its fine it’s gonna be so fucking cool just wait”)

haru apparently also having a Rin Sense where he just Feels that rin is there, watching him about to swim (although now that i think about it that bright red hair is probably a fuckin beacon, i bet literally everyone looked over at him the second he stepped out of that doorway- that and the massive aura of Teen Angst surrounding him at all times)

the whole thing with nagisa & rei’s operation at the summer festival to keep haru from seeing rin? first of all is v cute but they get so into it fjdhgkdj fucking dumb cute kids playing secret detective mission texting each other Classified Intel about the location of their targets while also trying to hide it from haru & makoto (who eventually find out bc nagisa is literally the worst liar ever while also already being the most suspect little shit out of all of them by nature)

rei getting so caught up in the detective shit that he ends up following rin out of the festival entirely & into town where the purpose of his pursuit in the first place is irrelevant bc haru’s not gonna suddenly happen upon rin at the elementary school?? rei is such a nosy bitch i love him

rei being such a nosy bitch that he inadvertently fixes the emotional turmoil that has been building between rin & the others unresolved for years

rin texting gou to get rei’s number bc he needs to have a Serious and Dramatic conversation w/ him but he didnt have the chance to exchange contact info the last time they yelled at each other behind the school

rin sitting alone in samezuka’s bus bc they banned him from swimming for being too obsessed w/ haru & he needs somewhere to Sulk

rin finding some random tree outside the swim meet & being like “this reminds me of that tree from elementary school” bc hes a nostalgic bitch like that

haru being able to find rin bc he saw the same tree earlier and went “wait, rin’s a nostalgic bitch, i know Exactly where the fuck he went” & Sure Enough

iwatobi getting themselves disqualified bc they wanted to swim w/ rin in an official race like??? i know it’s an emotional & satisfying moment but miho chewing them out for it afterward is so fucking funny like objectively this team was doing rly well & then suddenly went “u know what, we do what we want, this red guy is ours now” & the judges went “hmm............... no”

in the v last episode when theyre all just sitting in a classroom w/ rin having him pretend to introduce himself as if he were a transfer student like theres absolutely no reason for this, theyre just goofing off together and reconnecting after having lost each other for so many years & it’s so dumb & heartwarming & the perfect way to close off the season & im crying i really do love this show i love these characters so much what a dumb cute goofy heartfelt show aaaaaa free is a treasure

*from the very 1st point: i know there r cultural differences to take into account where it’s probably not as big a deal for makoto to walk in on haru’s bath time in japan as it would be in like, america & the real issue haru takes w/ this happening is that his one little place of refuge in a world w/o water is being breached by this annoyingly persistent guy who not only interrupts his coping time but is actively trying to get him to leave it for “important” things like “going to school” and “not being late” & the extended pause is really him registering this unpleasant situation & trying to decide if it’s worth it to fight for his solitude, ultimately deciding it’s not worth the energy and begrudgingly accepting makoto’s outstretched hand, though he vocalizes his displeasure by rejecting his -chan bc no one who pulls him away from the water is someone he can call a friend, not even his like. actual friend. only friend. either one

anyway i love free bye