Late 20s tgirl. Elf ear pervert. Some say hemipenis girl. Writing mostly original F/F. Stories will frequently be horny so if you're under 18 you're getting blocked.



spookydichotomy
@spookydichotomy

so from cursory observation the bizarre discourse that seems to have crystallized about the Fallout TV Show is those nasty hateful new vegas fans have no media literacy and just can't let people enjoy things and like

  1. what an insane guy to make up to be mad at
    and
  2. christ, "fandom" is fucked up.

I don't think it's meaningful to apply a "modern" adjective to the fandom in this case, cuz I think it's always kinda been like this back to the star trek tos days, but there might be something to how audiences for Stuff in general have exploded in the last couple decades. videogames are a colossal industry not because a videogame made in 2023 is necessarily better and therefore more successful than one made in 1993, it's just the market has expanded. but anyways

I see a lot of the "let people enjoy things" stuff- as a veteran hater in the era of forums especially- and it's revealing of such a... insecurity, I think I might be so bold as to call it, in Fandom. there's a lot of fandom-as-brand that's especially revealed by long-running videogame franchises, like Fallout and Halo, that even beyond the complex production process with their "original creators" have been sold off as a franchise to other studios and other people. often, these franchises become very different to what they were originally as they are expanded to new audiences by new creators. still, to a lot of people, the Brand is what they are a fan of. attacks on the brand, especially by people who are supposedly part of the fandom in-group, are unacceptable. how can a fellow loyalist betray the brand in this manner?

I like to complain about stuff if it sucks. complaining identifies what is useless or detrimental and seeks to cut it away. it is therapeutic, satisfying in itself, but it is also a whetstone, making both the complainer and what is complained about sharper in the act. this is the hater's wisdom.

this sort of Fandom Tension really just asks: why do you like something? on a surface level I like Fallout because I was exposed to it early, yes, but I also had a VHS of Gallavants (1984). I actually played a lot of fallout 3 when it came out, but it didn't last, because it lacked that lasting element that was what I actually liked about fallout beyond the things I remembered like the mascot and power armor helmet design. that element arose again in new vegas- the existence of ideas within the game's world and systems, the concept that the creators even bothered to ask "why would things in the game world be this way?" there's actually a popular mod that combines new vegas and fallout 3, and I never understood how players that chose it could withstand the fundamental narrative and thematic whiplash between "this empire's reach for resources exceeds its grasp" and "go get some 200 year old consumer goods from the shelves of this grocery store filled with arbitrary murderers". like, I don't need that. I can eat dog food, but I choose not to. fallouts 1, 2, and new vegas have at times a separate fandom because they represent a distinctly separate vision from what fallout has become under Bethesda's pen.

to their credit, Bethesda did, to a degree, recognize their vision for Fallout was irreconcilable with what had come before them, which is why the whole West Coast / East Coast thing came about. bethesda played over there in the east, and let the original stuff and the stuff following its legacy exist over there in the west. bethesda took up all the signs of Fallout- names and aesthetics like the Brotherhood of Steel, the Enclave, Deathclaws, vaults, the mascot guy- and discarded their meanings, using them to create the wacky sheet metal and environmental storytelling skeletons theme park world Fallout has become synonymous with.

the Fallout TV Show has become such a lightning rod for Poster Controversy because it is breaking the ancient pact of the two coasts. it takes Bethesda stuff, the focus on recognizable "remember this?" signs over a deeper meaning, and places it firmly in the realm of guys who'll talk to you about supply lines. beyond the issue of retcons- which do exist beyond a single ambiguous date- a clash has been forced between two kinds of Fan. do you like something because of recognizable symbols, or because of what those symbols were used to represent?

the really saucy thing is this likely wasn't at all intentional by Bethesda as an entity, because I don't think even their head writers really care that much. from what I can see, bethesda as a company was fairly hands-off, and most of this might be coming from the westworld guy who's the actual writer I think. and that's interesting. the broadly popular "vault suits and bobbleheads and stuff from the games, you recognize that, right?" perspective has conquered the way of the logistics freaks who'll seek out the NCR sharecropper guy to listen to him talk about how post-nuclear nevada civilization manages food and water. unlike caesar's whole bit about hegelian dialectics, I don't think we're getting a synthesis on this one


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in reply to @spookydichotomy's post:

supplemental thought: it is fascinating to me how, even detached from the fallout brand, New Vegas presented a vision of a videogame world where a faction's conditions and motivations were considered and resources and ideals were at the core of conflicts, and then three out of four of the supplemental DLCs* grappled in some way with how to let go and move on. within the context of Fallout, New Vegas is the Last Fallout Game. it gives one last triumphant ride and then says "okay, move on for your own sake, it's never gonna be this good again and you have to go make something new"

*honest hearts remains dogshit