MGTOWs completely lose their sh*t over a gif of a toddler on a cell phone

@Falconer

Time’s all wonky in Fallout.

There’s a lot not to like in Bethesda’s worldbuilding. Recent editions of the Elder Scrolls franchise exhibit related issues. Its the sort of multple-author extended-universe plot decoherence that seems to afflict superhero comic franchises, too. I think I’m allergic to it.

I might revisit the good old days and play FO2 again, and feel sad that the original devs didn’t get to make a sequel.

Molly Pitcher!

I was Molly Pitcher for Halloween once as a kid. I was going through a phase of nerding out over the Revolutionary War era. She was pretty awesome:

“A woman whose husband belonged to the artillery and who was then attached to a piece [cannon] in the engagement, attended with her husband at the piece for the whole time. While in the act of reaching a cartridge and having one of her feet as far before the other as she could step, a cannon shot from the enemy passed directly between her legs without doing any other damage than carrying away all the lower part of her petticoat. Looking at it with apparent unconcern, she observed that it was lucky It did not pass a little higher, for in that case it might have carried away something else, and continued her occupation.

I bet these asswipes spend all their time complaining about how their ex-wife won’t let them have custody. No fucking wonder, when they call a random toddler a cunt and make threats of violence and genocide!

Falconer | December 8, 2016 at 9:02 am
That’s it. From now on, every single one of my Fallout characters are going to be women just to spite FalloutFan2 FOREVER AND EVER AMEN.

All of my Sole Survivors have been badass scarred up women so far. <3

I even had a backstory for my first Sole, Alex Blackwood.

She was a top-notch prosecutor who took no shit and everyone knew it. She worked really hard to help take down some of Eddie Winter's associates, and eventually one of them took it a bit…personal. He attacked her outside of the courthouse with a knife, scarring up her face.

Meanwhile Corvo Blackwood, her husband (who I regret doing the Brotherhood run with SO MUCH), was a medically discharged soldier who was trying to re-acclimate to civilian life. He had suffered severe burns over most of his face and torso, and the needed procedures pretty much put him out of action, though he did get a medal for what he did to earn them.

His buddy got him a job as a bailiff at the courthouse, where he sorta fell for Alex as he watched her in the courtroom. He never had the nerve to talk to her due to self-esteem issues due to his burn scars, but was on duty the day she was attacked while walking out the door. She had smiled and waved at him only seconds before, and he was the first one on scene and did his best to do first aid before the ambulance got there.

Thankfully, her wounds were superficial, though they scarred her. Corvo was feeling really guilty, so he visited her in the hospital immediately after he got done talking to the police.

He asked her how she was feeling, and fretted over her face (again, self-esteem issues compounded with the fact that he thought she was SO LOVELY and was just a;skdfa;dkjf around her). She just grinned at him and told him "Nah, scars are cool. Besides, I get to tell everyone I got these in a bar fight!"

And that's when Corvo was like "I'm going to marry this woman."

Because not only was she okay with his scars (and hers), but lawyer puns.

So yeah. I put WAY TOO MUCH THOUGHT into this.

Seriously. I had been thinking I would do a Brotherhood run at one point, but that’s getting to be as unlikely as my doing an Institute run. I’d have to mute my conscience hard.

Well, if you’re not going to play a Brotherhood quest I SUPPOSE YOU WON’T MIND IF I SPOIL IT FOR YOU SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO IT.

(Srsly, spoilers tho.)

So, the Brotherhood quest is you getting your power armor and running around with Danse for most of it, and even after playing, I still don’t understand some of the fandom’s infatuation with Danse and Maxon. Like yeah, they’re good looking, but they’re fucking nazis.

So, you get the thing that the Railroad needs to decode, and they’re the only ones that can do it. Maxon orders you to take it to them and work with them. Great. I can do that.

How do you repay them for their help? You take a squad of Paladins and fucking raid their base and murder everyone inside.

Oh, and later when you get inside the Institute, Maxon orders you to emotionally manipulate and lie to your long lost son so you can get inside and convince Dr. Li to come work on the giant robot from Fallout 3 so you can take Liberty Prime to go destroy his life’s work.

Oh, and when Maxon figures out [[MAJOR SPOILERS HERE]] from the Institute information you gathered that Danse is a synth, he accuses you of knowing this and hiding it from him and once you convince him that you’re as clueless as he is, he orders you to go and kill Danse. Straight up. And other members agree with this decision, save for the lady you meet at the beginning of that questline who asks you to just figure out what’s going on. She’s one of the good ones. Still a part of a group of nazis, but at least a little more tolerant.

So you go and find Danse where she tells you they planned to meet up if you get separated, and he’s just like that whole scene when Woody rescues Buzz from the tea party.

Literally. This.

He’s begging you to kill him because he’s an EVIL SYNTH and at that point I was just doing whatever I could to fucking piss on Maxon’s orders, so I was like “No, you get to live.”

Eventually I convince him to just run away and never return, and we leave, and then that motherfucker Maxon strolls up like “I told you to kill him! WHy is he not dead?!”

And out loud I’m like “BECAUSE FUCK YOU THAT’S WHY. YOU DON’T DESERVE THAT NICE COAT. I WILL RIP IT OFF YOUR CORPSE.”

But in game I have to be like “But killing people is wrong, Maxon!”

So I pass the speech check and he’s like “Ugh, fine, just get that thing out of my face.” And now Danse lives with me and Synth!Shaun at the Red Rocket Station (because I didn’t want to do the Sanctuary thing again because that was too much work).

You know what you get for this questline? You know what you get for murdering the railroad, slaughtering innocent synths, and being a general asshole to all non-humans?

You get promoted to Sentinel and you get a jetpack mod for your power armor.

That’s it. Fini. The End.

You murdered hundreds of innocents for a fucking jetpack and a fancy title.

Oh, and I didn’t mention the best part! The SIDE QUESTS!

You know what the Brotherhood has you do for a side quest?

Take LITERAL CHILDREN out into the battlefield and have them help you fight shit.

And those kids are like “Golly gee whiz I can’t wait to go and blow up filthy mutants and ghouls and kill synths!” And I was like “NOPE.”

Fuck the Brotherhood. Screw Danse, screw the power armor, screw Liberty Prime, and screw Maxon in particular because he doesn’t deserve that awesome coat.

Elder Lyons knew what the fuck was up. He was an awesome dude and he’s spinning in his fucking grave at this shit.

[/spoilers]

I think Old World Blues may be my favorite DLC, but I haven’t bought anything for FO4 beyond the Wasteland Workshop.

If you like Nick as a companion, you might wanna get Far Harbor. It’s damn good, and it has a lot of Nicky goodness. It’s expensive, but it’s got plenty of content for the price, methinks.

I really wanna get Nuka World though because some of the new raiders look amazeballs.

I wanna join The Pack. I wanna be a pop art furry.

Though, and I know this doesn’t happen, I really wanted one of those mascots to chase me around and attack me while doing a pseudo Mickey Mouse voice.

That would have been terrifying and awesome.

Where do these guys live that men are regularly beaten up for “bad” behavior?

“Where the f**k do women learn this bitchy, ugly behaviour?”

From MEN, asshole. Men like YOU. Everything you complain about women doing, you only hate it because it reminds you that women are not some separate species, and that they have things in common with you, even if they are annoying things. This little girl playing with a phone bugs you because she looks just like some angry dude, thumb-typing misogynous shit on his smartphone and uploading it to Reddit, or whining to his buddy about that HB10 that won’t fuck unimpressive plain ol’ him. No wonder you’re mad. You can’t stand the sight of yourself, even minified, in a mirror. You hate the idea that you look like an overgrown toddler every time you throw a tantrum about women. And when you see a little girl mimicking you, you lose your shit. And then you go and blame women, and stick your lower lip out as you’re thumb-typing shit on Reddit.

(You’re welcome!)

@Alan

For a fictional take on a woman involved in the origins of rock, check out “Nineteen Fifty-Five” in Alice Walker’s book of short stories You Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down.

**********

Ooh thanks for that tip. I’ve found a legal pdf of it so that’s tomorrow’s waiting for the judge reading sorted out (it’s either that or actually read the case papers). I’ve had a little peak and it looks very interesting and a subject close to my heart.

Kickass! The main character is supposedly based on Big Mama Thornton — you might be very familiar with her. She sang “Hound Dog” before Elvis did. I was always mystified by that song until I heard that Thornton sang it first. It really does seem to be a song written for a woman.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mama_Thornton

Yeah, she was amazing. Started out as a church gospel singer as you might have guessed from her music; but you can practically hear rock & roll being born in some of her songs. The way she suddenly gets all twangy guitar riffs and hard beats.

Yeah, I hear the rock ‘n’ roll.

Unsurprisingly a lot of the major rock and roll stars credit her as an influence. Perhaps more surprising is how many metal guitar gurus also do (it was someone in a supposed punk band that turned me on to her).

This is new news to me. But when I read her Wikipedia bio, I saw this:

In 2001, the French film Amélie included a scene showing the protagonist’s house-bound neighbor mesmerized by a montage of video clips that featured a performance of “Up Above My Head” by Tharpe.

Which means that I saw her in that movie in 2001, but I’ll bet that she wasn’t identified until the credits — which probably flashed right by me.

@ Kat

She sang “Hound Dog” before Elvis did. I was always mystified by that song until I heard that Thornton sang it first. It really does seem to be a song written for a woman.

Yeah, the tone is also somewhat different from the original; which is essentially a lament about a relationship with an asshole man.

Mind you, if you listen to to the lyric of Jailhouse Rock you can get the impression that Elvis was pretty flexible in his tastes 🙂

(“Cutest little jailbird that I ever did see” etc.)

There’s probably an article to be written about gender flipped songs. You might find it interesting for instance to see if you can track down a song called ‘Kitty’ by 70s band Racey.

I want to play Brotherhood of Steel now. Of course, that would require me actually getting the game…

@PI — no worries on spoilers, I’ve been watching Many A True Nerd play Fallout 4 for over a year now, and I got spoiled on the Brotherhood Twist pretty early on.

Were the seeds always there? From the Black Isle games? I thought the Brotherhood was cool up until now. Maybe it’s the DC chapter.

It’s the Vertibirds, somehow. The Vertibirds are cursed and any organization that uses them ends up being rant-spewing Nazis. I just know it. Even if they can’t stay in the sky longer than two minutes in FO4.

@Scildfreja: Looking great!

Probably will shoot you if you get close. Probably will run away and snipe you if you don’t die immediately.

.. I’m doing this wrong, aren’t I?

Nah, “you have to prove you aren’t going to eat my face” is a perfectly sensible position in the wasteland, as far as I’m concerned.