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Do you ever wonder if there's an alternate timeline where Goncherov is real and Advance Bravely is just cobbled together from mass hallucinations? 🤔
I haven't but now I am!
Most of my thoughts along that line are about the alternate universe where Advance Bravely could be Kinnporsche, like it really wanted to be. Hot muscular gay shirtless bodyguards and a deeply fucked up side couple that start their romance with torture. It's all there.
@bourbonpowered replied to your post:
What’s the alternate start mod? Like, more time to bum around the pre-war neighbourhood or Fuck It We Bawl: start with seeing your spouse murdered and son kidnapped?
lmao omg 😂
start me up redux, the one i'm using, is a full overhaul of fo4's main quest, not just an alternate start. instead of playing as one of shaun's parents, you can be a random vault dweller, or one of dozens of wastelander classes, like a raider or NCR ranger. if you pick the "random vault dweller" start - as i have - it positions you as a bystander who witnesses the kidnapping and feels compelled to investigate it. in the wastelander start, you hear a rumor of the kidnapping, then visit the vault and unravel the game's mystery from there.
having to RP as a parent was why i avoided playing fo4, and a few hours in, it's amazing how cleanly this mod excises that. it shuffles preexisting dialogue to remove references to a spouse or son, so your character is still voiced, but you can envision whatever backstory you want. seriously, the mod page says it tweaks over 800 lines! that's dedication. it even adds some pathos to codsworth - he mistakes you for his former owner, and the references to that missing family feel sympathetic, not glitchy.
@nocturnalroostermarch replied to your post:
When FO4 came out, I was so insulted by the voiced protagonist that I refused to play it.
7 years later, I picked it up for the first time a couple of months ago, stuck in a classic camera/voiceless protagonist mod and I'm having a good time. So yeah, right now is the best time to play FO4 imo, lol
yeah, it was interesting to see which features of fo4 were deal-killers for veteran fallout fans when it came out. i promise i don't mean to pick at old fandom discourse - the question of "how much do we define the protagonist?" is a huge dilemma in RPGs. truly open protagonists give the player endless creative freedom, but when you're trying to account for everything, they can become too blank a slate. a voice or a backstory make it easier to write a cohesive character, but the more you add, the more players like me will feel penned in. that friction happened with dragon age too: a lot of players [me included] felt that inquisition's choices railroaded you into playing a certain type of character.
i think it comes down to expectations. it bothered people less with mass effect, because shepard had a really clearly-defined role from the off. [me notwithstanding. it's why the voiced fo4 protag doesn't bug me: i'm already used to irina having the wrong accent.] i also think that "east coast fallout," as we used to call it, puts its player characters in a more explicitly heroic role. you can go off the rails in fo3 and fo4, but it feels like a big departure from the way the intro set you up. by contrast, in new vegas, you're literally Just Some Guy, and benny shooting you diverts your life without changing who you are. that's closer to my philosophy: i can define a character's present, but i'd rather not dictate everything about their past or future.
NHS should get to bite as many classmates as he wants. Some of them clearly never learned don’t start none (kill my brother) won’t be none (your life destroyed)
i sat here just blinking for like a full minute because i have erased cql canon from my mind lmao
huaisang should get to do whatever he wants regardless though. if my little angel wants to throw tantrums and be a menace that's his right. if his actions hurt anyone that's a them problem and they shouldn't have made my precious cupcake want to in the first place!
Guardian is like what if monster of the week but also boys kissing (nearly literally at one point) and developing a love that lasts for ten thousand years? Also contains bonus side gay pairing that they try to play off as oh the big one just misses his didi and the twink is his stand in. Uh hunh. Because when I want to scare my "little brother" I naturally grab him from behind and growl into his ear about how I got exiled for eating him. It's a mess but it's damn tasty
wHAT jlaskdhajldsad
i mean
that's one way to scare your "little brother"??
(in advance bravely universe we call this "normal")
(i'm so sorry)
47 is used to sleeping in his undies, ramrod straight on his back, even though it’s been decades since he’s had to worry about spot checks and orderlies coming by with “enhancements for tomorrow, my son”. Diana sees the tension in his body as she crawls across the bed to join him, waits patiently for him to adjust to her presence and smiles deeply when he lifts an arm up inviting her to lay down on his chest. That night they both sleep better than they have in years.
Hot tub sex. At the Fuck Cabin or in the field, dealers choice
In the decades since they last spent time together at the log cabin in the snow, the ICA had made changes to the way they trained their pairs. At some point in the decades the place had stopped being a bare bones place haunted by the byproducts of forced intimacy, and grown into something a little more sedate, a little more middle aged.
Much like them, he supposes.
He tracked Diana there when the signal arrived from where he was lying low, drinking too much and thinking too little, and they began something new, a new ICA for a new age. A new way to deliver justice, a new framework a new paradigm. It was just like the last time. They needed this, needed to be in close quarters. He felt himself slipping back through time into that place of pure potential, before the ICA fell the first time, before they were anything other than an anecdote.
The place had gone to ruin in the few years since the ICA had left it. They’d worked together to bring it back to life, clearing the garden and exposing the old memories, the makeshift shooting range, the low wall she sat on every morning that looked out over the beautiful vista while she drank her coffee, the grooves in the floor from where the beds had been pushed together hastily by people other than them.
They aren’t having sex, but they are sleeping together. There is only one bed these days in the cabin, an emperor sized plush memory foam and cotton satin monstrosity that almost eats you soon as you sit on it. They are too exhausted to have it be awkward, to have it be anything but unconscious and horizontal.
Not yet, anyway.
Because even 47 can feel it brewing like an oncoming storm, crackling with electricity across every corner and edge. He knows he loves her, he knows that he wants her the way he’s never wanted anyone else. He knows, in his bones, that she wants him. And yet, much like a storm, there has to be something to spark it.
He’s clearing leaf mulch when he finds it, what seemed from afar to be just uneven terrain turned out to be a hatch of some kind. Diana is away in the nearest town buying supplies, but its nothing to lever off the lid and find that its a converted wine vat. There’s a wood burning stove beneath it, and its waterproofed, and he knows there’s only one thing to do. The hosepipe stretches from the hot water tap in the kitchen easily, and its easy to have it up to temperature by the time she gets back with a little bit of ingenuity.
It is still cold up this north, and the surface of the water steams pleasantly, and it is too much to resist getting in. He strips, and considers keeping his underwear on, but then decides to be bold. Its a pity Diana isn’t there to witness the way he sighs with pleasure at the feeling of hot water on cool skin.
He hears her come in, call his name and get no reply. He could have called for her, but that isn’t the plan. She pokes her head out of the kitchen door and then he hears her come out to see where he’s got to.
“This is...nice”, Diana says, standing behind him. “Mind if I join you?”
“Please”, he says, swallowing his heart back down his throat.
There’s a rustle of fabric, and then she’s climbing in, her hair piled on top of her head but nothing else on her body. He pretends to avert his eyes until she’s beneath the water, but even then it is a fiction of propriety at this point. They’re both naked. Diana’s breasts sit delicious and plump just above the water line, and she’s got her eyes closed in pleasure from the heat of the water, meaning he can look his fill.
“This is nice”, Diana says, her eyes still closed. “I wish they’d had this when we were here last. The hot water would have helped the aching muscles from all you put me through, back then.”
“It was important.” he said, “If I had known you were in so much pain, I’d have done something about it.”
She cracks an eye open, and looks at him. “You’d have spared me climbing endless mountains?” she says, skeptically.
He shakes his head. “No. But I might have helped your muscles recover.”
“A little manual therapy?” she says. “I have been hiking up and down that mountain with shopping, 47″ she chides. “There’s no time like the present.”
“Come here then,” he says. “and I’ll show you.”
The tub isn’t big, but she still sculls across to him like she’s swimming. Up close, her eyes are alight with anticipation, of finally getting his hands on her. He likes to think his are the same. She sits in front of him, presents her beautiful back to his front. “Do your worst, 47″, she says, twisting back to look over her shoulder at him.
The first touch of his hands on her slick, wet skin shouldn’t be as good as it is, he’s built it up in his head for so many years. And yet, its exactly as good. Her shoulders are tight, tense, and yet the muscles yield between his fingers. She moans, and shifts so she’s kneeling, presenting her back to him. He runs his hands all the way down, counting each vertebrae until he brushes against her sacrum, just about still plausible as something that could be medical, if they weren’t naked, if they weren’t free and if there was nothing between them but water.
He runs his thumb slowly up each knob of her spine, and then follows it with the drag of his fingers. His hands are huge against her, and its easy to accidentally touch her breast as he reaches up, and its that touch that is what collapses the house of cards. Her breast is soft, and she yelps as he seizes her body and pulls her back against him, calls uncle, as he buries his face in her hair, and touches her, as she slides her thighs alongside his, perching herself on his lap and grinding down. “Yes, 47″, she moans, as he ruts up against her, and its all over now, no deniability left. He’s called her bluff, and she’s gone easily. She easily twists in his grip and presses her breasts against his chest and finally kisses him, the steam curling around their faces feeling more like a natural byproduct of their desire than the simple physics of a winter hot tub.
It’s hard to actually fuck in a hot tub, water being an anti-lubricant when push comes to rut, even though he knows that it would be a moot point with how turned on they both are, but he will never forget the way it felt to scoop her into his arms, slick and warm, and carry her, laughing and clinging to him, across the garden and back into the house, and the mad, laughing love that they made right then and there, in a beautiful cabin that was always theirs, even when it was just a memory, that they needed to destroy and remake the world for it to come to this, even that is right, that the cabin, the final asset of the ICA, should be their inheritance, their birthright, their reward for a job well done.
So. The Duck.
Who wants to put money on them dusting off that unused outfit from Absolution for Lust?
Thought exercise for you: how do you think Grey would have factored into gameplay if Edwards only got to Diana after Dartmoor?
That’s an interesting question!
I don’t think that it would have made a huge difference on the story itself if Grey survived (one reason I still can’t understand the decision IOI let him die).
I believe that Grey really longed for a “normal” life and that he wanted that for 47, too. In Berlin, Hirschmüller talks about Grey and that he wanted to make Fake-IDs for him and “two other people” so that they can disappear and I’m quite sure that he meant Grey, Olivia and 47. I think Grey didn’t care much about the constant; he underestimated him. He just wanted the partners dead, getting the future he wanted and “lay the past to rest”.
That’s why I believe that the story would have continued and ended exactly as it did, with the difference that 47's journey towards greater independence would have been influenced by larger conflicts. That means he either has to decide to follow Grey or to follow Diana. I’m pretty sure that he would always follow Diana, and I’m sure, especially after the post Dubai cutscene, that Grey is aware of 47s feelings for her. So i think in the end he would accept 47s decision (because it’s his to make and that’s important for Grey) and he would support him to take down ICA and providence once and for all so he could start anew with Diana by his side, even if that would make Grey sad in some ways. I’m sure that Grey’s and 47s ways would have parted in the end, but Grey at least would get the “normal” life he always wanted- and hopefully he would start a therapy against his childhood trauma.
