#I watched the first episode of the fallout show | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mutfruit-salad · 2 months

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Long post ahead. My full thoughts on the fallout series. TW for references to Sexual Assault, racism, antisemitism. It's not particularly in depth here- but I do reference specific acts of violence done in the show.

I've had people insinuate I'm only mad because I'm a New Vegas fan, because I think they retconned the lore. I'm not upset at the fallout show for its dubious lore additions and reworks. I think they're quite bad in places, but they're by far the least of the show's problems.

This isn't a case of a New Vegas fan mad they messed with my game in a way I didn't like.

Please refer to literally any of my posts pointing out the racism and antisemitism in the show. They brand a black man in episode 1. They named the enclave scientist after a real life holocaust survivor and then spent most of the show lobbing around his decapitated head like a volleyball.

But I'd like to consider other elements of the show. View it as a whole.

Consider the inherent misogyny of having a female main character whose entire character arc is just her getting abused for 8 episodes. How the trajectory of her character revolves around not giving up on the humanity of the man who waterboarded her and sold her to organ harvesters. A female main character who is raped in the first episode and watches her entire community get brutalized and who comes out of it completely unphased- still as plucky as ever- just worried about her dad.

Consider the horror of having a black woman be the one to drop the bombs. Consider the horror of her leading a council of elites who have infiltrated and taken over the US government. Consider the ways this group is presented and shown, the ways every fault of the US government in the series is offloaded onto a shadowy group of elites.

Consider how the capitalist critique of the show only goes so far as saying there's a secret organization of bad people who must be purged. The antisemitism and conspiratorial nonsense inherent to that premise.

Consider the rampant classism with the show's depiction of Wastelanders as either animalistic monsters or too stupid to live.

Consider the ways the show punishes nearly every act of kindness- the ways the world rewards might-makes-right authoritarians.

Consider the way the NCR collapsed offscreen because a disgruntled husband was mad his wife left him, and how after it collapsed the army immediately became raiders and the survivors became blood drinking cultists. Don't give me "it's just shady sands that collapsed" because the NCR was a developed nation. If one of their cities blew up, they would send aid. They would assist.

Consider the way the show constantly uses sex crimes as comedy and horror- the incest jokes and the "chicken fucker" bit, and the Vault 4 monster impregnation and the main character's rape in the first episode.

Consider the ableism of the treatment of ghouls, how every ghoul is now a ticking time bomb, how Lucy helps free a small dementia-riddled old ghoul woman from a medical torture facility and then is immediately punished with the woman trying to inexplicably murder her. Thaddeus openly talks about ghoul exterminationism and it's never a joke or a bit- he just says it and nobody reacts or says anything.

Consider the way the Vault 33 town councillors use real world progressive talking points about restorative justice and prison abolition and multiculturalism- meanwhile Norm advocates for the death penalty and a closed society. How Norm is shown as good and righteous and the vault dwellers range from deluded to damningly stupid- how the mere concept of restorative justice is made a farce because the NCR raiders are screaming about eating organs and murdering people 24/7.

Consider the way they removed the Boneyard, and the Followers of the Apocalypse by extension. In New Vegas we heard about the Followers operating a university in LA. It's gone now. Not destroyed by bombs- but written out of existence because the Boneyard never existed, and Shady Sands is in its place. Consider what that says about this world- that the group most dedicated to peace and rebuilding has been surgically excised from the narrative- destroyed more wholly than even the NCR- written out of existence entirely.

This is the single most reactionary fallout story that has been produced. By a fucking country mile.

Whatever lore critiques there are should be secondary. The storytelling is reactionary in ways I straight up have not seen from other Bethesda entries in the series. It is cruel to a fault, and depicts a world that is incapable of healing or growing- where the best you can do is hold onto that small spark of goodness while every bit of the society around you tries to murder it out of you. This isn't a story about rebuilding, or about postwar politics, or about society- it's about dueling warlords and might makes right attitudes and grimdark views of the nature of humanity. It's fallout in aesthetics alone- and it's perhaps the most hateful thing I've seen come out of this series outside of the actual neonazis in the fanbase.

Whatever hope there is in Moldaver's final moments looking out over the glittering ruins of LA is undercut by the knowledge of what came before. What was destroyed. And it's undercut by the Brotherhood's totalitarian control. It's not hopeful, it's the bare minimum of survival. It's all the progress of the postwar world, 200 years of humanity and history, reduced to just barely getting the lights back on.

In the intro to fallout 1, "War Never Changes" is used as thematic glue. It ties together two concepts- past wars- and present capitalism and militarism.

Ron Perlman describes the Roman Empire, the Spanish conquests of the Americas, and the Nazi regime- and then he says "war never changes" and uses it to connect those past atrocities to the modern world of the setting- to the war that ended everything. The phrase existed to link the resource wars and their ensuing fallout to all the crimes of empire prior. War never changes wasn't a hard and fast rule of human nature- it was a specific condemnation of America.

Lonesome Road even ends with the phrase refuted. War Never Changes. But men do, through the roads they walk. There is hope. That's what this series has always been about. The Master died at the end of fallout 1 and said "leave while you still have hope."

In this show, the black woman Vault Tec exec who ends the world says the phrase. It's stripped of all meaning. Just a generic throwback because it's a famous phrase in the series' history. It's not a condemnation of America, it's a celebratory thing. Vault Tec toasting to the end of the world.

What a thing to see this series become. What a thing to see celebrated.

#fallout #fallout new vegas #fallout show #this has gotten more feedback then I was expecting #and i'm glad this is resonating with some folks #turned off reblogs cuz i cant actually deal with the response this has been getting at this point 👍

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paper-mario-wiki · 1 month

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alright look i know my following is not the target audience for this kind of post but i wanna at least point something out about a scene in the Fallout show that i haven't actually heard a single person point out or comment on.

spoilers ahead.

in the scene where the ghoul is rewatching his old movie, specifically the scene where he originally protested about killing the villain.

the first layer is the obvious one: he is talking directly to himself. "you were strong, ugly, and you had dignity. i'll give you two out of those three." he remembers what happened at that shoot just as clearly as we did, and after he literally tells himself to his face "you're strong, ugly, and have no dignity" followed by him killing the man he originally wanted his character to save. this, of course, coming DIRECTLY after the person he sold into slavery earlier that day sparing him with life saving medicine while he's on the ground and telling him to his face that he only lives on because someone stuck to their humanity. very heavy! i bet he feels like shit, which he probably should because he's kind of a jerkoff! (but in a cool way that i like to watch)

the SECOND layer is the one i find way more interesting. the phrasing of his final line we didn't hear before was so dripping with importance that it felt like i was reading RPG dialogue and story relevant words were highlighted. "i hope you like the taste of lead you commie son of a bitch". as we'd already seen in episode 3, he despises vault-tec for everything he knows they are responsible for while he was their face. moreover, it's made clear that he doesn't just resent himself for being used for their image, but he resents the fact that he was the face of the propaganda which drove the war fever that caused the end of the world. the wild west ideal caricature of masculine wisdom from the movies as the spokesperson of the company who stood to profit from the purposeful decimation of the human race. he became The Ultimate Jingo.

and i really enjoyed how brief yet informative that detail was! i really enjoyed how the directors tell you what the characters are thinking intuitively and effectively through the camerawork and those little details make the whole thing a lot more fun to mull over and consider as a part of the whole of Fallout! i think it's neat.

#text #fallout show #im not joking when i say ive considered recording a podcast that's just a rifftrax over the episodes of fallout #but instead of making jokes i just do like. a reverse directors commentary.#i do an audience commentary where i point out what all the shit means and how cool it is

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commonwealthcass · 1 month

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Greetings again

i was wondering how deep you got into the Fallout show and if so what do you think of it so far? since im a bit mixed, mostly due to me being a FNV fan and just weirded out by some decisions in the show, but what do you think, also how Cass would react to this new Ghoul, also wanted your opinion on Raul

Hey there! I’m actually a big Fallout NV fan myself and, tbh, I was very skeptical of the series when I first heard that it was in development. Video game adaptions don’t have the best track record and initial shots had a lot of people making speculations about sneak peeks we were given like Lucy visiting a town that some people thought looked like Megaton. I went into watching the show without any expectations and was pleasantly surprised at how faithfully they had tried to make it - it’s good for people who aren’t familiar to Fallout but also had enough nods that give us long-time fans a treat. I’ve had a couple friends say they were sharing the show with their parents and grandparents, which I think is pretty neat!

I think so long as you keep the mindset that this is its own thing. The last episode exceeded my expectations and I’m looking forward to the next season but I get it might not be everyone’s cup of tea. Still, I do think that the showrunners did do a good job of constructing something that feels like it would belong in the universe.

Raul was my buddy in NV and I loved his story arc. We find him pretty self deprecating and suffering from survivors guilt when we find him in Black Mountain. Getting him to open up about it and take on the vaquero outfit I felt was really rewarding. Probably the companion I traveled the most with besides Boone.

Also, I think Cooper would, in typical Cooper fashion, would definitely make a big impression for sure…

#fallout 4 #hancock #ghoul #cooper howard #ask #preacherofwishgranter

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sophie-frm-mars · 2 months

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Into the projected corn field

I dunno I just feel like before I can even form an opinion on the Fallout TV series I have to do something to try and get through the haze of disgust, emptiness, anger, nausea and desperation that I feel sitting at home alone watching a TV show based on the insipid corporatised franchise that was based on the highly original and artful world in which one of the (and then two of the, and then New Vegas of the) best games ever made were set in. I'm not feeling any of those feelings at the show, I just have to feel all those feelings before I can feel any feelings about the show, because everything being made is Intellectual Property instead of art, and we've spent all this time discussing AI art when everything being made is already being made by the algorithmic logics of capital. All the same things we find troubling in the idea of inhuman heuristics deciding what art is produced and how and by who are already true - we aren't watching a show about the hubris of our society and nuclear annihilation because someone (anyone) thought there would be something poignant to say in it, something to explore in our moment, we're watching it because Amazon executives knew that if they made it we'd watch and go "look, ghouls! like in the thing! and mutants! like the thing from the thing!"

The original Fallout games were made in and around and after the neoliberal end of history, the ultimate period of peace and prosperity in western capitalist society and imagined an absurd world based on the penultimate period of american imperialist peace and prosperity playing out into an almost inevitable post-apocalyptic nightmare world where the same rubrick of control and domination that led to the destruction of society in the first place constantly tries to reassert itself over a hobbesian wasteland full of strange, silly, kind, funny, odd people whose human tendency towards care and altruism makes an endless mockery of the kill-or-be-killed nature of the wasteland that mocks it right back.

In the first episode the vault dwellers gather in a simulated corn field. It's an actual corn field, they're growing actual corn in it, but the horizon and sky are projected onto the vault walls to create the only wider world the subterranean human beings will ever see, and I just... hope that someone gets what I hope anyone ever gets out of art no matter how it's produced. I hope it makes you realise that love and the revolution are the only meanings in being alive, and I hope you get that from Rothko and I hope you get that from EpicLlama's Midjourney feature film sponsored by Dogecoin, and I hope you get that from Akira and I hope you get that from Spy Kids 3D. I just think about being in a moment right between the pandemic and the collapse of the conglomerate capitalist empire watching people on a screen seeing a better world projected on a screen and I feel gut wrenchingly alienated from other human beings, but I acknowledge that could just be me.

How am I supposed to feel about Walton Goggins' performance as a half rotted rubber cowboy man? I don't fucking know man. My opinion is this show is making me derealise.

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amygdalae · 2 months

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watched the first ep of the fallout show. its not good but like i had a lot of fun being a hater and talking abt fallout lore n shit with my friend while watching it, so it has that in its favor. my biggest takeaways after the first episode are thus:

shamefully failed to suppress the urge to pog when they namedropped Grognak the barbarian like 15 seconds into the show. whole thing was peppered with references designed to invoke peoples fallout nostalgia. i wont lie it got me a few times

kyle maclachlan babygirl what are you doing here

needs to be so so much grimier

they wanted me to cream my jeans at the power armor sooo bad but they made it look kind of stupid. (and also not grimy enough). im so tired of the brotherhood of steel

i like the ghoul guy, I can live with him being too conventionally attractive i guess, but his voice is just straight up a normal guy's voice and that made me the angriest. he should at least sound like hes gargling marbles

the girl character's 'fiance' looked like if Jerma was a skarsgard brother

soundtrack was good (mostly just because it was just songs that were in the games already, but still). instrumental scoring was actually not too bad imo, seemed fitting enough

very very predictable plot beats

made me just wanna go play a fallout game tbh

I'm 100% going to keep watching it because im a disgusting bethesda shill who loves to shovel hot garbage into my mouth like a filthy hog (and because my friend's mom has an amazon subscription)

i am genuinely curious to see where it goes. goes without saying i resent the irony of a fallout series being made by amazon and dont think its something that needs to exist, but reviewing it as a show i think it has some potential to get interesting. gonna see how i feel after watching more

#fallout show spoilers #i mean for the first episode but still idk

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miraculouslbcnreactions · 1 month

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It's weird to expect lb to be able to read cn mind and called her a bad partner for it. But it's even weirder for lb to ignore cn WHEN HES OBVIOUSLY IN DISTRESS and not called her a bad partner for it because I think called her a bad partner for ignoring it is understandable and justified especially since she consider herself as his boss.

Every time I bring up this conflict, I try to make it clear that I don't think Ladybug was blameless, I just think Chat Noir's writing was worse. Let's walk through the problem to show what I mean.

Season four stars with Marinette extremely stressed by her new Guardian status. In Truth and Lies, the first episodes of the season, we get this:

Ladybug: Will you cut it out with the practical jokes? I could have really hurt you! Cat Noir:(answering while hanging by the yo-yo) M'lady, the only thing that really hurts me is when you make me go on patrol by myself. (sighs, relaxing his posture) I even missed your little angry pout. Ladybug: Sorry, Kitty Cat, I'm a bit over my head at the moment. (pulling him up) Cat Noir: I bet! "Guardian of the Miraculous", big name, big responsibility!

This is also the start to Chat Noir communicating poorly. In this episode, he's straight up told that Ladybug is in over her head and he never once asks how he can help. In fact, we even get him saying this when asked how he feels about the change:

Truth: Cat Noir, tell me what- (interupted by Ladybug throwing a present at Truth) Ladybug: (covering her parasol with foil) ...do you think about my new role as guardian! Cat Noir: If it doesn't change things between us, then I'm good with it!

So not a great start to the season. I know people focused on Adrien's terrible treatment of Kagami in these episodes, but this Ladynoir dynamic was actually what rang alarm bells for me. I kept waiting for Chat Noir to offer his support since it was really, really obvious that Ladybug was in over her head since she was late to patrols, the last season literally ended with her losing her mentor figure, and, you know, she straight up told him that was what was going on?

The next episode is Gang of Secrets in which we see Marinette out her identity to Alya. I get why she did this, she needed support and her partner doesn't seem interested in giving it, but she can't say that for certain because she never asked him directly and she should have. Trusting Chat Noir over Alya would have allowed Ladynette to maintain the security of her secret identity - a thing she claimed was more important than ever - and to honor their partnership. At the very least, she should have told Chat Noir that Rena Rouge was now a full time holder so that he could account for that in battle and to minimize the fallout by owning up to her mistake asap. The longer a lie goes on, the worse the truth will hurt.

To Ladybug's credit, she does eventually acknowledge her mistake after the Scarabella incident:

Ladybug: You... must've been pretty surprised to discover there was another holder! (Silence. She sits beside Cat Noir.) Ladybug: I'm really sorry, Cat Noir. I should've told you. I mean, if I found out that you told someone about your secret identity, I'd... probably be upset, too. I'm really sorry I hurt your feelings.

This is a decent apology. She doesn't try to absolve herself of wrong doing. Instead, she acknowledges that what she did would hurt her, too, if the shoe were on the other foot. The only thing she loses points on is the fact that she doesn't tell him about Rena Furtive.

However, instead of agreeing with her and telling her that she has hurt him, Chat Noir says that she did nothing wrong and never once brings up how their weakened partnership is bothering him:

Cat Noir: You didn't hurt my feelings. You did everything right. Paris will always need a Ladybug superhero to watch over her. It's just... I realized that if one day that hero wasn't you, m'lady, since we don't know each other's identities, that means... I'd never see you again. Ever. And now, I just don't know if I can bear it.

This is the thing that I hate about this arc. The reason why I say Ladybug is blamed for not reading his mind. Especially because, three episodes later, we get Rocketear, which gives us this:

Cat Noir: Everyone has doubts now and then, (looks down) even me... Ladybug: Is everything okay, Cat Noir? Cat Noir: Yeah, yeah. (prepare his fist) Pound it! Ladybug: (fistbumps) Pound it!

Rocketear is the episode where Nino outs that he and Alya know each other's identities while acting like Ladybug said identities weren't a big deal even though that is very much not what happened. You'd think that Chat Noir would want to know the full story, but instead he just lies and says that everything is fine.

So we have two situations where the show allowed Ladybug to give Chat Noir a chance for clear and open communication and both times he turns her down.

What's worse is that he clearly starts making up stories in his head, leading to Kuro Neko, which starts with Adrien avoiding a fight on purpose as some sort of shit test. He then gets upset when Ladybug... doesn't lament his absence on national TV?

Clara: (from TV) By the way, where's Cat Noir? You've saved Paris without him quite a few times recently. Are you two at odds with each other? Carapace, Pegasus, Vesperia and Pigella: (from TV) Pound it! Ladybug: (from TV) Of course not, it's just that... umm, he's a partner like any other! The most important is to pick the best superheroes for each mission, with or without Cat Noir. No matter what, we've got a great team and we'll always be here to save Paris. (Adrien is shocked.) Adrien: (turns off the TV and sighs) "A partner like any other..."

Dude, what did you want her to do here? Complain that you flaked on her? Make Paris feel less safe by saying she doesn't know where you are? Imply that the fight was barely won without you? What are you doing? Plagg, you are completely failing as a mentor right now.

The shit test continues as Chat Noir goes to meet up with Ladybug now that the battle is over, arriving just as Ladybug has finished instructing the team on what to do:

Ladybug: Come on, guys! Hurry up before you all detransform. I'll meet you at rendezvous points. (The heroes jump away in different directions, and Ladybug starts typing something on her Yo-yo.) Cat Noir: Hey! Meow are you, m'lady? Ladybug: Great, thanks, but I gotta go retrieve all these Miraculous. Cat Noir: I could lend you a paw to help save time. Ladybug: Thanks, kitty cat, but it's a guardian's job to do it. Cat Noir: I know who some of them are, remember? I was there when you first gave them their Miraculous! Ladybug: You don't even know where their rendezvous points are, I don't have time to— Cat Noir: Playing cat and mouse is my forte, you know— Ladybug: (yelling) If you wanna save me time, stop wasting it in the first place! (Cat Noir gasps. As Ladybug swings away, Cat Noir clenches his fist.) Cat Noir: And take my Miraculous back when you're done!

So Ladybug doesn't publicly chastise Chat Noir for missing the battle and rejects an offer to help because of very legitimate timing concerns, leading to Chat Noir quitting because she failed his stupid, petty, childish tests. Realistic writing? Yes. Writing that paints Ladybug as the one in the wrong? No.

Going into this episode, Ladybug has no idea that things are messed up between them even though she has actually kept communication lines open. She asks him if things are okay, but he lies. And when he's ready to quit? He plays stupid games and wins a stupid prize. It's really not shocking that the next scene sees Ladybug totally baffled by what just happened:

Plagg: For a while now, you've been neglecting this camembert— I mean Cat Noir, and going on adventures with the all other cheeses! Ladybug: But he should be happy about it, it gives him more time off. Plagg: Cat Noir doesn't wanna have time off, Ladybug! He is in love with you! And your persistent calling on all the other heroes has broken his heart.

And how is she supposed to know that, Plagg? Was she supposed to assume that her partner was lying when he said he was fine? Because she did ask and he said that nothing was wrong. But something was wrong and it lead him to build up a story in his head, reading nonexistent intent into her actions, all of which is toxic and unhealthy communication.

I cannot stress how common this shit is. I've seen it so many times and I will own that I've done it in the past and wound up getting no support when I needed it because I'd directly told people I didn't and they committed the heinous crime of... believing me.

Here's the other thing, there are times when I'm in distress and legitimately don't want or need help. Times when I just need to be alone for a bit. So if someone asks me if I'm okay during those times, I'm probably just going to say, "Yeah, I just need a people break" or something like that. That's why the Scarabella scene is so bad. Ladybug can see that Chat Noir is in distress and he gives her a fully plausible answer: I'm not upset with you, I'm just saddened by the idea of losing you. And she believes him because why wouldn't she?

Same goes for Rocketear. It's reasonable for Ladybug to assume that Chat Noir is just shaken by the fight. She has no idea about the bombshell that Nino dropped right before the fight. She doesn't even know that Nino and Chat Noir are actually close friends, making this fight a lot more devastating than it looks at face value. Her actions here are not objectively wrong. They're only wrong if you know the whole story, including Adrien's needs. Things that she cannot know unless Chat Noir uses his words to tell her things.

I cannot over stress how much season four is a textbook example of denying yourself support because you cannot communicate your own needs. Is it an understandable character flaw for a character with Adrien's background to have? Yes. Absolutely. 100%. But it's still a character flaw. This season desperately needed an arc about Adrien learning to tell people what's wrong. Not because he's the only one in the wrong here, but because things cannot get better when Ladybug has no idea that she's hurting him. (Nino has no idea either, but let's keep our focus on Ladybug.)

One of the most important things you can do for your own mental well being is to dismiss the idea that your needs are the same as everyone else's. Everyone needs different amounts of attention and values different behavior based on things like their upbringing and life events.

I get the feeling that I'm wired pretty similar to Marinette. At least, it influences how I write her because I can go months without talking to my best friends and still call them my best friends, a trait we all share because two of use are artsy introverts and two of us are moms to young kids, which allows for very little free time. Meanwhile, my SO and his best friend spend hours on the phone almost every week. I swear that those two go into withdrawal if they don't talk at least once every seven days. If months went by without them talking? Something would be very wrong, but the exact same time gap isn't even remotely concerning when it comes to my friends. It's something my SO and I had to figure out when we got together because I need a lot less attention than he does. But we communicated and found a balance that we continue to work to communicate about so that he doesn't feel neglected and I don't feel overwhelmed by too little me time.

What I'm trying to say is Marinette wasn't horribly wrong for assuming that Chat Noir was telling her the truth or that he liked having a larger team so he had less responsibility. Those are reasonable assumptions. Especially since he never actually indicated that he wanted more responsibility until he was ready to quit and decided to shit test her by pushing for more to do when she was stressed and on a timer.

I do think that she should have offered it to him before that or - at the very least - the show should have clearly stated why she didn't do that since it apparently had nothing to do with Chat Blanc trauma like we all thought it did. I'm not saying that she's blameless or perfect or that there weren't things she could have done better. It's just really hard for me to look at Chat Noir's behavior in season four and go, "Oh yeah, he's the injured party here. Ladybug holds all the blame and did everything wrong." She did many things wrong, but generally speaking, she owned her faults and tried to keep communication channels open. Chat Noir chose to ignore those chances to talk or otherwise try to express his needs in a clear and understandable manner.

We'll end with one final point to drive this home: You said that she's his boss. Well, if my boss asked me, "is everything okay with the project?" and I said, "yes" while freaking out about the upcoming deadline that I'm probably going to miss because he's given me too much work, the issue is not all on my boss. It's on both of us. Him for overloading me and me for not telling him I'm overloaded. You could even argue that it's mostly on me because I'm the only one who can properly gauge my own ability to do a given workload. As soon as it was too much, I should have said something. And if I don't feel like my boss is approachable? Then I should quit. But that isn't the situation I'm in and it doesn't appear to be the one that Chat Noir was in, either. He wanted to stay part of the team, he just totally failed to tell Ladybug how being on the team was making him feel.

People magically knowing what you need and how you feel is a myth. I promise you, most people in this world do not want to cause you pain, but if you cannot clearly express when someone is causing you pain, then you will continue to get hurt by people who would be very happy to not hurt you if they actually knew that their actions were causing you pain.

#ml writing critical #ml writing salt #adrien deserves better #marinette deserves better #I do give Luka a bit of a side eye for not getting involved after Wishmaker though #Dude's supposed to be some sort of empath and he's at his best when he's in a mentor role #He should have been allowed to be Adrien's Alya since Nino is clearly not suited for the role #Season four my belothed #kuro Neko salt #ml season 4 salt #you cannot expect someone to correct their behavior when no one is telling them that they're behaving badly #And no one calls Marinette out so of course she doesn't change her behavior!#She is shown to be willing to change when prompted too #She only knew that something was wrong post Scarabella because Alya told her #Do you really think Marinette was aware that she was hurting Chat Noir and just willfully kept doing it?#Or is it more likely that she just didn't know because no one told her?#Feel free to give Tikki some blame too because she's been a real shitty mentor for a while now #which breaks my heart because I love Tikki and Plagg and want them to be good mentors

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sasusc · 26 days

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Decided to rewatch Fallout for all the little bits and details missed during the first watch. Currently watching Episode 3.

They showed us this scene with Cooper and Barb...our introduction to Cooper's wife. She was at the snack table outside the studio waiting for him to finish filming. Cute little pretend meet-cute flirting. She offers him a treat to try with this quote:

And he does this when he takes it from her. I need a gif of it! I only grabbed a screenshot.

He makes sure to rub his finger against her when he takes it.

I wonder if this little finger touch is something they do a lot? Just a tiny bit of affection and love to the other? And if so, how did he feel when Lucy bit his finger off? Was he reminded that it was this finger that he used to do this with his wife? Because we know Cooper Howard loved Barb... Even if his marriage when downhill, I dont think he fell out of love with Barb. He just couldn't get over what she was planning with Vault-Tec.

And now he's got Lucy's finger in it's place. A finger that never touched Barb.

This little honest exchange has so many levels.

#fallout #fallout tv series #cooper howard #barb howard #the ghoul #lucy maclean #vaultghoul #ghoucy #rewatch

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emmcarstairs · 25 days

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“Well, dear Father,” she said, “as you insist upon it, I beg that you will bring me a rose. I have not seen one since we came here, and I love them so much.”

— Beauty and the Beast

One of the things that struck me as interesting when I first watched Fallout, was the name choice for Lucy's mother — Rose. I believe it's a very symbolic and deliberate choice, adding to the show's Beauty and the Beast motif.

In the classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, Beauty's father angers the Beast by taking a rose from his garden. In exchange for his life, the Beast requests one of his daughters; the one who is courageous enough and loves her father enough to come willingly to his castle. Thus, the rose is the incident that moves the plot forward and the reason why Beauty meets the Beast in the first place.

Well, this is very similar to what happens in Fallout, albeit in a more intricate way.

We are first introduced to Lucy's mother in the very first episode when Lucy tells her father that she wishes her mother was at her wedding. During the show, we see glimpses of her mother and she's always surrounded by vegetation and sunlight.

The inciting incident that triggers the plot in Fallout is Moldaver's attack in Vault 33. Eventually, we learn how the Raiders gained access to the neighboring Vault 32 from the surface. It was thanks to Rose's Pip-Boy. (Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe this is the first time her name is ever shown which puts an even greater emphasis on it.) The question of how they obtained it, is left for the last episode.

Finally, the fate of Shady Sands is revealed. It was none other than Lucy's father who found Rose, took the children back home, and destroyed the once lush and populous city. He literally plucked the rose from the garden. His action led to Moldaver raiding the Vault, using Rose's Pip-Boy, and consequently, Lucy bravely leaving the Vault to look for her father, meeting the Ghoul in the process.

Coincidence? I think not.

#IM SHOOK #lucy maclean #rose maclean #vaultghoul #ghoulcy #fallout #fallout prime #fallout meta #beauty and the beast

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arainywriter · 1 month

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me after watching the fallout show

me reacting to maximus in the first episode: oh... oh, he's a little crazy

me reacting to maximus in the last episode: IF ANYONE EVEN LOOKS AT YOU WRONG, I WILL BEAT THEM TO DEATH WITH MY FISTS, I SWEAR TO GO-

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me reacting to the ghoul in the first episode: oh... oh, he's a little crazy

me reacting to cooper howard in the last episode: I need that man in ways that are concerning to feminism.

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me reacting to lucy throughout the whole show: i've only had lucy for a day and a half, but if anything happened to her, I would kill everyone in this room and then myself

#fallout tv series #fallout series #i love them your honor #vaultknight #fallout maximus #fallout lucy #fallout ghoul #fallout cooper howard

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tleeaves · 2 months

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Folks going "WHAT they made a show about the Fallout franchise?? I've been hearing people say Bethesda messed it up, but I haven't watched it myself, so I'm going to trust the word of other people -- some of which also haven't finished watching it" is driving me insane.

Being a hard core fan of something obviously brings with it a lot of passionate feelings when adaptations come into play. Of course, there's going to be people going "but in 8 episodes of the first ever season they made, they didn't explore Theme C or D, didn't introduce factions E and F and G, and because the source company is notorious for its scams, we and everyone else who's a TRUE fan should hate it".

The Amazon Original series Fallout follows the videogame franchise of the same name. It is a labour of love and you can tell by the attention to detail, the writing, the sets, and YES THE THEMES ARGUE WITH THE WALL. It's clearly fan service. I mean, the very characterisation of Lucy is a deadringer for someone playing a Fallout game for the first time. She embodies the innocent player whose expectations drastically change in a game that breaks your heart over and over again. Of course, she's also the vessel through which we explore a lot of themes, but I'll get to that.

There're some folks arguing that the show retcons the games, and I gotta say... for a website practically built on fandom culture, why are we so violently against the idea of someone basing an adaptation on a franchise that so easily lends itself to new and interesting interpretations? But to be frank, a lot of what AO's Fallout is not that new. We have: naive Vault dweller, sexy traumatised ghoul that people who aren't cowards will thirst over, and pathetic guy from a militaristic faction. We also have: total atomic annihilation, and literally in-world references to the games' lore and worldbuilding constantly (the way I was shaking my sister over seeing Grognark the Barbarian, Sugar Bombs, Cram, Stimpaks, and bags of RadAway was ridiculous). Oh, and the Red Rocket?? Best pal Dogmeat? I'm definitely outing myself as specifically a Fallout 4 player, but that's not the point you should be taking away from this.

The details, the references, and the new characters -- this show is practically SCREAMING "hey look, we did this for the fans, we hope you love it as much as we do". Who cares that the characters are new, they still hold the essence of ones we used to know! And they're still interesting, so goddamn bloody interesting. Their arcs mean so much to the story, and they're told in a genuinely intriguing way. This isn't just any videogame adaptation, this was gold. This sits near Netflix's Arcane: League of Legends level in videogame adaptation. Both series create new plots out of familiar worlds.

Of course, those who've done the work have already figured out AO's Fallout is not a retcon anyway. But even if it was, that shouldn't take away from the fact that this show is actually good. Not even just good, it's great.

Were some references a little shoe-horned in to the themes by the end of the show, such as with "War never changes"? Yes, I thought so. But I love how even with a new plot and characters, they're actually still exploring the same themes and staying true to the games. I've seen folks argue otherwise, but I truly disagree. The way capitalism poisons our world, represented primarily through The American Dream and the atomic age of the 45-50s that promoted the nuclear family dynamic -- it's there. If you think it's glorifying it by leaning so heavily into in the adaptation, I feel like you're not seeing it from the right angle. It's like saying Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck glorifies the American Dream, when both this book and the Fallout franchise are criticisms of it. If you think about it, the post-apocalyptic world of Fallout is a graveyard to the American Dream. This criticism comes from the plots that are built into every Fallout story that I know of. The Vaults are literally constructed to be their own horror story just by their mere existence, what they stand for, what happens in each of them. The whole entire show is about the preservation of the wrong things leading to fucked up worlds and people. The missions of the Vaults are time and again proven to be fruitless, unethical, plain wrong. Lucy is our brainwashed character who believed in the veritable cult she lived in before she found out the truth.

So then consider the Brotherhood of Steel. I really don't think it exists in the story to glorify the military. We see just how much the Brotherhood has brainwashed people like Max (also, anything ominously named something like "the Brotherhood" should raise eyebrows). Personally, I don't like Max, but I am intrigued by his characterisation. I thought the end of his arc was rushed the way he "came good" basically, but [SPOILERS] having him embraced as a knight in the Brotherhood at the end against his will -- finally getting something he always wanted -- and him grimly accepting it from all that we can tell? Him having that destiny forced upon him now that he's swaying? After he defected? If his storyline is meant to be a tragedy, it wouldn't surprise me, because Fallout is rife with tragedies anyway. And a tragedy would also be a criticism of the military. That's what Max's entire arc is. It goes from the microcosm focusing on the cycle of bullying between soldiers to the macro-environment where Max is being forced to continue a cycle of violence against humanity he doesn't want to anymore because a world driven to extremes forces him to choose it to survive (not to mention what a cult and no family would do to his psyche). Let's not forget what the Brotherhood's rules are: humankind is supreme. Mutants, ghouls, synths, and robots are abominations to be hated and destroyed. If you can't draw the parallels to the real world, you need to retake history and literature classes. The Brotherhood is also about preserving the wrong things, like the Vaults (like the Enclave, really). They just came about through different method. The Enclave is capitalism and twisted greed in a world where money barely exists anymore. The Brotherhood is, well, fascism plain and simple.

Are these the only factions in the Fallout franchise? Hell no. But if you're mad about that -- that they're the main ones explored, apart from the NCR -- I think you're missing the point. These themes, these reminders, are highly relevant in the current climate. In fact, I almost think they always will be relevant unless we undergo drastic change. On the surface-level, Fallout seems like the American ideal complete with guns blazing that guys in their basements jerk off to. Under that surface, is a mind-fuck story about almost the entire opposite: it's a deconstruction of American ideals that are held so closely by some, and the way that key notion of freedom gets twisted, and you're shooting a guy in-game because it's more merciful than what the world had in store for him.

I mean, the ghoul's a fucking cowboy from the wild west character he used to play in Hollywood glam and his wife was one of the people who helped blow up America in the name of capitalism and "peace". There are so many layers of this to explore, I'd need several days to try and keep track and go through it all.

The Amazon Prime show is a testament to the Fallout franchise. The message, the themes? They were not messed up or muddled or anything of the sort, in my opinion.

As for Todd Howard, that Bethesda guy, I'm sure there's perfectly valid reasons to hate him. I mean, I've hated people for a lot less valid reasons, and that's valid. We all got our feelings. But the show is about more than just him. My advice is to keep that in mind when you're judging it.

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