secrets of the enclave (dantooine fp/story)

Oh Boy another field trip with annoying sith

altho krovos is probably just grumpy she can't be with her gf so i'll let her off. rivix is on thin fucking ice however

with all the saboteur options in this story bit it's actually more frustrating bc i Just Know that nothing willever go anywhere with it

one thing i will say for swtor tho is their environmental artists are top tier.

WHY IS THE RAKATA TEMPLE MUSIC PLAYING. this is the dantooine enclace YOU EVEN HAVE THE RIGHT TRACK IN GAME ffs

oh krovos is convinced malgus gives even a single blue fuck about the empire this is adorable. babygirl you are not very smart are you

leeha :D

oh. oh rivix refuses to listen to you if you tell him to play nice. rare elusive bioware character with a spine. god dammit bioware stop making me like your characters

oh okay i guess leeha's in schroedinger's morturary as well now huh.

it's funnier tho than it has any right to be that krovos and malgus have a Force Bond. even if, granted, everything that would be needed for it was retroactively added with this story chunk, but. quality bioware storytelling

im assuming the same is also true of someone who babysits the pc pub side as well. really considering it's the pc who keeps having to spank him it's them he should have that bond with but i guess you have to include for non force users so

(nah im not even commenting on the revan stuff like. yeah i knew it going in and yeah its shit but at this point i cant muster anything much beyond tired disapproval)

i kinda don't. entirely hate the little thing where you're sending companions off on missions across the galaxy? but like. i dont love that it's filler cutscene content. a more involved mechanic along the lines of xiv's squadrons or sto's duty officer system where you can send npc parties out on missions for rewards/alliance xp could have been an interesting addition (kotfetet era mostly) if only bc it would. 1. give the illusion that you're actually Commanding shit and 2. some purpose to these npcs you're otherwise just collecting to take up space in your base, but. that would require like. effort and i don't think bioware broadsword have had the resources to add such a system since before f2p. (then again they're adding this new companion unlock grind with the current patch so idk)

but apparently this was the last real Content before lots which i dont have unlocked and. honestly part of me just wants to just sub for a month so i can gripe about how terrible it will inevitably be

i know that the launch stuff at least is largely considered underwhelming but like. my expectations for this game are somewhere in the gutter so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

but. i will revisit that thought in the morning lol

SWTOR: The trees of Dantooine

I have played this fp a thousand times- I am so mad at myself for not getting this sooner! I love Dantooine!

It's like this btw. In case you were wondering.

Now that I'm on the subject of Writing That I've Done And Need To Archive On My Website, I think the best writing I've done recently is probably that Soul Blazer short fic, followed by the Hivallion/LotRO shorts which I actually went back and read recently and I was like "Oh, these are so cute".

I don't know why but I find LotR a little intimidating as a... Thing To Write In so I never really attempted anything that might resemble a more formal kind of fic. 🤔 I don't know if I ever will? Maybe? If I can ever get over the feeling that I'm taking a dump in Tolkien's church, maybe LOL

The Ultima 7/Serpent Isle fics I did more recently were okay. Like they're... fine! I don't hate them. I even like them a little. They're not grrrrrrrrrreat but not like anything that makes me want to vaporize everything I've ever written out of pure shame. I think with "Meadowtron" I was trying to create a kind of worldbuilding framework in which I could do like a little character ensemble series. I know not many people are familiar with Ultima anymore so I really wanted to make something that my friends could enjoy reading even if they haven't played the game. Along those lines, I created an introduction that elaborates on the setting I was going for: Basically, it's a postgame, semi-Fix-It AU comedy that sees the survivors of our bogus journey trying to scratch out a living in Moonshade. Rather than focusing on the Avatar and her companions, this story would flesh out the less-developed NPCs of Serpent Isle. I still really want to make this a reality and do at least ONE story in this setting (I have one outlined in full), but over the past few months I've kinda psyched myself out of writing fics completely so I'll need to find a way to trick my idiot albatross brain into starting it. 🤪 Maybe I'll make the main characters in Hero Forge, that might get the ball rolling (or not, but hey, it'll be fun so)...

I guess when I think of "purely self-indulgent fun" I immediately think of Ultima. Old old old habits never die I guess.

I think out of all the fandoms I've been in, FF14 was probably the most frustrating in terms of lost potential. Specifically, writing Nero fics—I started and abandoned SO MANY FICS. I had a lot of ideas that just never came to fruition, maybe because I had too many ideas and got overwhelmed, or because the ideas themselves were all half-baked anyway. I'm thinking it was some accursed combination of the two; the fact that I finished (and published!) anything at all is a GD miracle.

The Secret World was so much fun. I think it's the first and maybe only fandom I've been in where I actually felt like a part of the fandom, and like not some leering dork on the sidelines making unwanted commentary. I'll always treasure the time I had and the friends I made there. I'm not 100% sure yet how I'm going to organize my loose and chaotic collection of Secret World stuff on my website but I'll have to think of something.

Ah yes, I did write a few Dragon Age fics too! Inquisitor Arlen was so so funny. I'm not sure where I have these stories saved but if I can find them, I'll make a space for them on the website too. Same for Elder Scrolls I guess?? That's going pretty far back but I'm sure this stuff still exists somewhere, even if it's just in some weirdly named text file.

Yes, anything that's on my AO3 will go on the website, including the Portal stuff eventually though I am not looking forward to having to reformat/repost all those fics again LOL Well, at least I have the markup this time...

Asking for the gardens and the library was a really nice touch. It is after all what pisses of El the most: how much cool stuff they create and keep for themselves. It should be shared.

.

I had an idea for a premise to a post-apocalyptic story about 3 Jewish kids who grew up in this traditional secret community. They leave that leave the community to explore apocalyptic world and meet warlords and get into trouble.

It was based off of this news video I saw once of this enclave of traditional Jews in a city who taught their own children and forbade them to leave the community. They only taught them the Torah and not evolution or anything. They justified this out of fear of being exterminated by Gentiles.

lol ok well if that's how you feel about new users on bluesky i can simply unfollow you :)

darth malgus is entirely right about the empire btw but the fact that his multiple betrayals are the reason i have to run the longest and my personal least favorite flashpoints in all of swtor is the reason we're archenemies.

WAIT ALSO PHOEBE/AUTUMN 🤕😭

i forgot i answer this sowwieeee

okay but like i vaguely considered it YEARS ago but it was like some au. it wasnt like romance or whateva just some mentor type thing? idk he found her interesting cause she was from a vault and near enough radiation-free which to be just wanted to experiment on her but he masked it behind genuineness and kindness like hey let me just take half your blood for our research :) and phoebe being phoebe bc she craves that authourutibe figure to tell her what to do after her dad dies shes like okay 🤭. autumn promised they’d distributive water better than the bos but down the line phoebe gets more and more brainwashed by autumn and the enclave that she doesn’t realise theyre not doing project priority the way it was meant and by that point she’s in too deep autumn has her in his grasp </3

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.

so i got the enclave radio mod for kicks and as much as i love it, all i can picture is courier six just like jamming out to like the saints go marching on or some shit and arcade just having trauma flashbacks in the background but unable to say anything lest he reveal his secret identity.

like the courier turns to arcade like "isnt this one such a banger? also what's america?"

meanwhile arcade is like in a 1000 yard stare thinking about the tragic cost of his comfortable upbringing

Eventually the courier realizes something's up and she thinks he just really hates this kind of music and turns radio new vegas back on.