#was looking for a new wrestling pod and I'm so happy I found this one!

[stay-safe-pixieboots]

Discovering @tunneltalkpod is the greatest thing that has happened to me

[electricshoebox]

I'm interested in 5, 10, and 20 for Anthony!

Ooh thanks so much!

5. Guilty pleasures So, I know this might be a little cliche in the Fallout world, but Anthony does have a serious weakness for comics. It’s one of the very few things he loved in the Old World that’s survived, and that he can still connect with to remember better times. He’s always used comics as an escape, even as a kid. He wanted to be that hero, that person that people respected and saw good in and found hope in. And that drive was part of what led him to the army, and then part of what led him to become the person that he’s become since waking up in the Vault. So there’s something deeply personal about comics for him, in a way he’s still kind of embarrassed about. His wife used to kind of tease him about his comic book collection, not unkindly, and even though Preston shares his love of them, he still has trouble not feeling self-conscious about it.

10. Fears/phobias Anthony doesn’t really have any particular phobias. But he does have a crippling fear of failing people. He’s always had a people-pleasing quality, and sort of a hunger for approval, but the post-war world has dialed that up to eleven and thrown some trauma on the fire. He feels extremely responsible for his wife’s death, even though he was literally trapped in a pod. He wrestles a lot with wondering if he should’ve been the one holding Shaun, so maybe she would have gotten to live instead. Things had already been sort of rocky in their marriage, so for it to end on that note triggers a lot of guilt. He also feels like he failed Shaun, like not being able to protect him or stop him from getting taken was partly on his shoulders. So building up the Commonwealth, working with the Minutemen, it’s all an effort to make a better world for Shaun to come home to, to make up for what he had to go through. Subsequently finding out who Shaun really is and what he does... well, that’s a whopper. But yeah all this to say: he takes on people’s needs like their his own personal quests, even if he can’t reasonably solve all of their problems. He still feels the drive. And he’s terrified of failing them.

20. What-ifs/Alternate Timelines Oh this is interesting. I’m not 100% sure how to answer. I guess I’ll go from the perspective of if the bombs never fell? I think, had he continued on in the Old World, he and Quinn (his wife) would’ve divorced within a few years. By the start of the game, Anthony’s been taken off active field work and put into an office to do translations and code breaking. He probably would’ve continued until the end of the war, whatever that looked like, telling himself he was still doing good work, even as he continued to question the army and their methods. But I think he would’ve eventually gotten fed up, and probably tried to find something else, which would’ve probably been difficult, given the rampant anti-Asian prejudice. So I think he would’ve felt pretty adrift, and without Quinn and Shaun to come home to (Shaun would live with Quinn and Anthony wouldn’t really fight it, just content himself with shared custody), he’d be pretty lonely. I think he would have been pretty miserable. And not that things are great in the new world, but I think he’s had more motivation to find his place in it, and to make something of himself. He’s less beaten down by the society and authority around him. 

There’s also, of course, the alternate timeline where he did die in the Vault, and Quinn was the one to survive. I actually played her game before I played his. Quinn takes to the new world with a lot less baggage than Anthony, and I won’t say it’s less traumatic, but she’s not as mentally fractured by it. Anthony struggles a lot with derealization and dissociation after the Vault, constantly believing he’s in a dream or that he’ll wake up or something. Quinn accepts her reality quicker than he does, and just sort of comes to the point of, “Okay. This is what happened. I can’t change it. So I better get used to it and figure out where to go from here.” She also comes to view it as kind of a second chance. She of course mourns Anthony’s death, she’s heartbroken to lose him, but she also does find herself freed of a marriage that was on the rocks and that she wasn’t really happy in. So she kind of lets loose a little bit, too. Not dangerously, but she’s not going to turn down drinks and she tries some chems here and there, and finds some casual hook-ups. She eventually finds her way to Goodneighbor, and meets Hancock, and there’s an immediate spark. They seem to understand each other in a way that she hasn’t had in her life in a long time, even before the war. I could go on. I don’t want it to sound like Anthony’s death liberates her, that’s not how she sees it, it’s just that she makes the best of the situation and lets it grow her into a person she’s happier being in the end anyway. She ends up ignoring the Brotherhood altogether (she’s had enough military in her life, thanks), and she helps out the Railroad and takes charge of the Minutemen for awhile, but in the end she’s happier not really being a figurehead of any particular faction, she just wants to help Hancock make Goodneighbor into the vision he has for it. 

Oh man, that got long, sorry for rambling! But thanks again for the ask!

[Send me a number and a character and I’ll give you a headcanon!]