...

she/her, 30.

[freakshowontheroad]

Cynical-posting for a sec.

I made a comment on a post yesterday about how suddenly all the relationships in Fallout seem like they're getting simplified, and wondering why they're doing that.

Ghoulcy teasing is over. Barb/Coop is now just a loving couple united against the true evil, no more complication with Barb being an antagonist or anti-hero. Vaultknight seeming to pick up right where they left off in their storybook romance, despite the fraught personal journeys they've been on separately.

And, yes, we have a long way to go. So these dynamics aren't locked in by this single finale episode. We could absolutely get even more intrigue for Barb, or a season-long tumultuous reunion journey for Lucy and Max.

But I wonder and worry if the relationships aren't actually being flattened on purpose to avoid... I guess I'll call it TikTokified criticism? I don't want to disparage anyone specifically, lol, but extremely surface-level critique, usually short-form, from probably young viewers who don't want to see anything too complicated.

Is the show deliberately trying to avoid any dynamic that might be too messy as to be called problematic by the social media masses, and in doing so veering towards making everything a little extra sanitized, tidy, and wholesome?

[freakshowontheroad]

Got my dad into Fallout and I wonder if he's getting anything out of this or if he's just blissfully enjoying it wondering why his only daughter wanted him to watch this.

[trojanhorseface]

You're all wrong, Lucy and the ghouls dynamic is not child/parent or romantic. They're obviously Dante and Virgil

[brainwashedsmogbreathingprincess]

"I remember good people" and that is the magic in Maximus as a character. Shady sands most likely wasn't a perfect utopia those people there had interactions across the waste land, thier society was imperfect unlike the sanitized zen in the vaults but they still chose to do good when confronted with the hardship of the world. That's why his choices are difficult and messy but ultimately they make sense in the moment and that's all you have on the surface. But they're choices for the good

[freakshowontheroad]

My dad was in this episode and I didn't like that.

[falloutprime]

falloutonprime: Maximus al-Gaib

[freakshowontheroad]

Thinking about Steph and Lucy's friendship.

It's just really sad that every significant relationship in Lucy's life is tainted by Hank. And it feels extra insidious that Lucy's best friend, who helped her dress for her wedding, is also a Vault-Tec plant who knew Hank 200 years ago.

Granted we don't know what Steph's pre-war involvement really was yet, but seeing how pragmatic and self-focused Steph is, it seems likely she had ulterior motives to befriending Hank's daughter. If not her own scheme to keep herself in the inner circle, I wonder if Hank encouraged her to befriend Lucy as a "safe," Vault-Tec approved influence?

And at the very least, if there was no scheme on either of their parts, she stayed instrumental in upholding Lucy's Vault-Tec approved worldview, lying to her about the world, and deliberately exercised her influence by befriending Lucy specifically.

On the flipside, it would be juicy if she is a double-agent and had designs on turning the tables on Hank after she got Lucy on side. Maybe befriending Lucy was just a mind game on Hank. She is a duplicitous Canadian, after all.

Giving her the greatest benefit of the doubt, maybe she did intend to reveal the truth to Lucy for Lucy's own good because she cared about her. Or Lucy befriended her first and was so damn delightful that Steph just couldn't not be her friend.

I don't see that as the most likely situation, though, given how singularly focused she's been on herself and her most efficient path to authority. Even if she isn't Vault-Tec loyal I don't see a scenario in which she was a genuine friend to Lucy.

[freakshowontheroad]

Ghoulcy antis say ghoulcies don't like or have any interest in Max or Barb but like... I don't tag posts with characters they aren't about?

If I'm talking about Max I wouldn't tag the post ghoulcy just to randomly identify everything else I ship. And if it was ghoulcy-adjacent I would probably actually only tag it as ghoulcy because I don't want to make anyone mad lmao.

So idk where their sample size is coming from, plenty of ghoulcies like Max and Barb and they make separate, appropriately-tagged posts about them, and you wouldn't know the user is a ghoulcy unless you went to their blog to try to determine that. In which case you have identified a ghoulcy who actually is interested in Max and Barb lol.

Do they go in the Ghoulcy tag, not see posts about other characters, and determine those users hate any other characters? Try checking Max's and Barb's tags??

[freakshowontheroad]

one thing I appreciate, reading Ghoulcy fics and writing my own atm, is that we all collectively have agreed Cooper is always sitting around like this

[xiegray]

Is this anything

[freakshowontheroad]

It's a shame that filler episodes are sort of dead nowadays, because I'm really missing some filler eps of early days in Lucy and the Ghoul's road trip.

There was eventually a preliminary "tenuous alliance" conversation. How did that go down? How has he gotten away with not telling her his name? What the hell does she call him??

Dino Dee-Lite was like, their dozenth rodeo at least. How did they iron out their routine?

Is Lucy, who probably once thought her perfect personality and excellent temperament would make her great with animals, maybe a little bit upset that Dogmeat prefers the companion who stabbed her?

And, yes, these questions have all been addressed in hundreds of fanfics and I do eat them up every time. I'm just saying, I feel a little robbed of more Ghoulcy buddy comedy content.

[fascinationstreetmp3]

I've kept myself alive for one reason. To find my family.

FALLOUT — 1.04, 1.06, 2.06

[freakshowontheroad]

Excited to get into some Barb-centric stuff because I did have "Barb or Steph secret good guy" on my Fallout bingo card.

And I wouldn't exactly say Barb is a good guy lol but I expected that there would be more to her involvement since we know there's always a bigger bad out there manipulating things. It always seemed likely to me that she was playing along to some degree; once the evil corporation you work for floats the idea of nuking the world, staying an insider is the self-preservation play.

When Chet found Steph's ID, I thought it was an interesting parallel to Coop listening in on Barb's phone call. Now we have two clueless husbands (or, one clueless husband and one Chet) finding out that their wives are secret Vault-Tec Baddies.

And I figured that it wouldn't be that straightforward, because on its face it could accidentally veer into the territory of, "look at these duplicitous career women deceiving their innocent men, won't someone think of the children!" I don't personally think it would be that, even if they both stayed unabashed villains, but I think the show is smart enough to avoid that possibility.

But I feel like I'll be waiting a long time for my Steph Harper 2077 flashback.

[mayorofgoodneighbor]

I want to talk about shipping, tropes and Ghoulcy for a moment.

For context, I’ve shipped Ghoulcy from the moment the Ghoul said “Well I ain’t torturing you sweetheart, I’m using you as bait.”

I know, I know—basically the moment they met. When Lucy bites his finger off and he cuts hers off to match…well that just sealed the deal for me.

And I know what some people see. A violent, toxic relationship between two diametrically opposed people. How could you ever ship something like that? Well for one, it’s fantasy. For two, it’s Fallout and not a single character or faction has ever been the perfect example of moral goodness.

But let’s not pretend that Enemies-to-Lovers isn’t still one of the MOST popular tropes in literature and media to this day. The fanfiction and book community is built upon it. People are constantly asking authors to write this trope in its truest form. Because people actually want the characters to nearly kill each other before they get together. Anger and desire burn at the same temperature and it is always so fun to watch it consume everything in its path.

Intentional or not, Ghoulcy is written with that formula. The opposing views and hatred, forced proximity, begrudging respect, the banter and the budding trust mixed with vulnerability. The inevitable betrayal. Even down to the fact that Lucy and Max are dangled in there as a safer, sweeter, alternative relationship. Those are all check boxes on the list of how to write that trope well.

I’m not saying you have to ship it. Hell, the writers might even pivot at the last second and say “Oh no, just kidding. We were just teasing you with that.” I’ve seen it before.

But I’ve also read, analyzed and reviewed enough books to know when the writers are using that trope as opposed to the cut and dry ‘found family’ father/daughter trope people like to reference when talking about this ship. It’s just not written that way.

[certainly-sydney]

there are people think that how coop still refers to barb as his wife and not his ex is definitive proof that he’s still with her and not interested in lucy, but i dont agree

i think it’s just easier to say ‘wife’, or ‘family’ even, instead of ‘ex wife’, and it invites fewer questions into his personal life. if he went around saying he’s looking for his ex and kid, i could see people asking why they broke up, how did they break up, etc. and he’s obviously a very closed off person

and hell lucy may not even understand the concept of exes (or divorce, or alimony) bc i dont really think her vault allowed divorce lol 😬 like she always says ‘cousin stuff’ instead of referring to chet as an ex or anything, and her sexual history is a ‘resume’ - speaking of which, dont even get me started on their weird business-speak and manager-ification of sex/relationships lmao

[freakshowontheroad]

At some point he had to explain that he had a wife and child to the nosiest girl in the wasteland, I don't blame him for being vague lol.

Furthermore, on a serious note, he was obviously deeply in love when he discovered what was going on with Barb. It's not like that singular moment he stopped loving her, or that the moment you divorce somebody you suddenly purge every feeling you've ever had for them.

There's still so much we don't know about the divorce period and what was happening with Barb when the bombs dropped (how do we go from Coop fleeing with Janey in the Hollywood hills, to Barb and Janey going into a management vault the location of which Coop doesn't know?) so I don't think we can really make any assumptions about the final state their relationship tbh.

[freakshowontheroad]

I see a lot of frustrated non-Ghoulcy viewers talk about how Ghoulcy shippers sideline or erase Max. Obviously the race discussion is top of the debates but that is being discussed everywhere and I want to throw out some other topics, as a filthy Ghoulcy-Vaultknight centrist.

Firstly, we're getting no Vaultknight content right now. Besides a few lines early on, they haven't talked about one another, and they haven't been onscreen together yet. Meanwhile Lucy and the Ghoul have been full steam ahead developing their relationship, so that ship is just being fed a lot more right now. I ship both, so if one restaurant is closed you know I'm eating at the other one. And when that first one opens again I will go over there.

Secondly, I think it's unfair to characterize Ghoulcy as something delusional people are shoehorning in with absolutely no textual evidence. This dynamic is something we see all the time in adventure romance. The fish-out-of-water and experienced-but-reluctant companion, navigating their differences on a perilous adventure. It's Romancing the Stone in the Wasteland (or The African Queen, or even It Happened One Night depending on how far back you want to trace tropes).

That doesn't mean it always will (or always should) end in romance. You don't have to like those tropes or that dynamic, but it's recognizable and associated with romance for a reason.

Thirdly, Ghoulcy is just more interesting to people who gravitate towards the characters and ships that are more off-beat, dark, complicated, weird, ad infinitum...

There are so many people who wanted the Phantom of the Opera to get the girl that they made a sequel to the musical retconning Christine's loving relationship with her kind, heroic, actual love interest; featuring a 7-minute-long song about how she and the Phantom actually got it on when we weren't looking. Everyone knows Raoul was the correct choice here, but the people want what they want.

So, yeah... Max can be the most perfect love interest in the world and Ghoul thirst will always persist.

On this subject I also see a counterargument from Ghoulcies that Vaultknight is boring and that the actors have no chemistry. And I disagree with that.

I think their romance felt appropriately like a speedrun rom-com because that's where the characters were at. Lucy was still of the mindset that they could finish their adventure and go home and live happily ever after. Max didn't know what sex was. It hit the "boring" romantic beats because that's where they were meeting each other. But if you want the tense, adversarial slow burn, of course Vaultknight didn't deliver that.

I'm actually very excited to see them reunite with more hardened and complex outlooks and see how they navigate their romance now that they're changing so much independently. I think future Vaultknight will get a lot more attention and enthusiasm from viewers who found it boring the first time around.

tl;dr Vaultknight is working with a totally different set of tropes than Ghoulcy and it's going to appeal to a different audience, but I think there's a big overlap who do ship both and are just focusing on the dynamic that is in front of us right now with no intention of forgetting Max.

(And I am only tagging this as Ghoulcy, lol, I don't want anyone to feel like I am trying to invade their space with more Ghoulcy if they're sick and tired of the discourse. Just wanted to toss some thoughts out.)

[freakshowontheroad]

There's already been the discussion of how Robert House is very Walt Disney styled.

So maybe I was already primed. But any other former Magic Kingdom Cast Members getting big utilidor vibes from Hank's little drive through the old facility? Thought he was driving to Adventureland on his little cart lol.