#fallout meta

[findher-ogg]

Not to get emotional but I'm getting a bit teary about Maximus representing the ideal of the NCR. Not the mangled corrupted mess the NCR were by the time of New Vegas, though. As they were before. Back when Shady Sands was a small settlement, with nothing but some shacks and a well. Aradesh's dream, Tandi's dream - that's what Max represents. Their legacy lives on through him.

[bbutterguns]

the contrast in east/west coast fallout games is genuinely funny. in boston people are huddled in scrap metal shacks in fenway park (despite many of the city’s buildings still standing?), calling it a thriving city, the jewel of the wasteland. and like guys. new vegas has a monorail

[lucks-eterna]

I do wonder if part of the reason why the Ghoul is dead set on corrupting Lucy in season 2 is not just to toughen her up and get her used to killing for her own good, but also because he wants to make himself feel better for the choices he’s made over the years.

I think Lucy saving his life with those vials when he gave her every reason to leave him for dead or shoot him really bothered him. I think her goodness and selflessness not only reminded him of the man he used to be before the war, but also challenged his worldview.

I think Cooper was under the impression that he HAD to kill all those bounties and he HAD to adapt to be just as cruel as the unforgiving wasteland but Lucy being that good and surviving all the way to the observatory challenged that belief.

Lucy MacLean is proof that you CAN be kind and still survive, and while yes she did shed her naïveté, she held on to the core of who she is and her inner goodness and that’s gonna bother Cooper the more time they spend together in season 2.

Conversely, I think Lucy is gonna be on a mission to prove that maybe the Ghoul isn’t some irredeemable evil monster and that there’s still a bit of that kindhearted cowboy she grew up watching on the Radiation King.

While Cooper is trying to corrupt Lucy into a cynical wastelander like him, Lucy is going to be fighting back and reminding him of the pre-war values he once held so dearly and reminding him of his humanity.

It is truly going to be a joy to watch this push and pull of morality as their morality tug-of-war plays out over the season. Season 2 is going to be an absolute sight to behold y’all 🥹🥹🥹

[moputopia]

people complain about long-term settlements in fallout being too ramshackle, and basically looking like they were just built despite the fact that the nuclear apocalypse happened 200 years ago. "people should be building proper, long-term structures and not just building shacks out of rubble at this point" is the argument i hear, applied to places like the new vegas strip or diamond city in fallout 4.

and i don't 100% disagree, but i do feel like this logic assumes that the bombs dropping 200 years ago is the only disruptive thing that's happened in these places? "the wasteland is a living place, people should be rebuilding and not just living in rubble" <- yes, but the wasteland is also a living place filled with constant power struggles and warring factions and regime changes. maybe that city isn't what they managed to build in the last 200 years since the bombs dropped, maybe it's what they managed to build in the last 30 years since the last time they got attacked by another place and almost wiped out.

it just doesn't seem that unrealistic to me, is all, especially if you've been to areas that have been afflicted by poverty and scarcity for hundreds and years and seen that these sorts of conditions do actually exist. humans persist under all sorts of harsh circumstances.

ETA: this post got a lot more attention than i expected, and people are taking it as some bethesda fallout vs non-bethesda fallout thing, which i don't get because i think all of the games are guilty of the "people living in 200 year rubble" thing that gets criticized so much. as i mentioned in the tags, this post was inspired by a cleanup mod for new vegas. and to be clear, i'm not saying that all the games necessarily execute this concept well, but it does make sense as a concept and isn't the gaping plothole a lot of people take it to be. like, look up what slums in the poorest countries in the world look like. imagine what what would happen to social norms in a world where everything blew up and you had to start over with practically no resources and no central government.

[twosides--samecoin]

Fallout is an absurd environment from the jump. If we can have Man Embedded In A Tree and canon aliens I think we can handle the civilian spouse being able to wear power armour in Fallout 4. Like yeah sure there's something to be said for narrative consistency, call em out when you see them! But I think certain things just aren't that deep. Sometimes it's okay that the video game doesn't take preventative measures so that you know how the civilian spouse can use power armour. It's okay that the game doesn't explain how the joints of a rust-free suit of power armour exposed to the elements on the roof of a building for 200 years was actually built with forever lube that never needs maintenance. Some stuff is better left to the imagination

Like I've never heard anyone critique how the BoS sources rare gases to keep the Prydwen flying through the air or staying aloft while parked at Boston Logan but the civilian spouse wearing power armour with no training!?! Gee whiz stop the presses

[thorst]

In Defence Of Barb Howard

I've been thinking about Barb Howard (Fallout) this afternoon and how little we actually know about her. She's not a POV character, so to us, she's as opaque as she is to Cooper. (Who by contrast, we see so much of his interiority and conflict that we can reasonably divine most of his inner workings at any given moment.)

This is actually fairly rare of the named characters of the show! Only really minor characters and more villainous characters like Steph (though she's had one brief moment now) and Quintus have had screentime without POV, or characters like Moldaver, who is pretty complicated and interesting as alignment goes.

But that doesn't look very good for Barb, for a post saying it's in her defence, does it?

I think rather than indicating she's a villain, however, it's a deliberate narrative choice to only give us Cooper's perspective of her, and not her own. She's not active in the story in the present day like Hank MacLean is; she doesn't (as far as we know) have an agenda right now to corroborate or dispell our suspicions, because she's literally in stasis. So we don't get her perspective because she's not in the picture.

So what do I have to go on, to be here saying hang on, I think Barbara Howard might not be just what she seems?

The Ghoul.

Cooper Howard is in a state of crisis in the show in those pre-war flashbacks; he's distraught, acting erratically, doesn't know what to do, how to reconcile the love he holds for his beautiful beloved wife who always tries to do the right thing and the reality of her being the one from Vault-tec to say in order to ensure the viability of nuclear fallout vaults, they drop the bombs themselves.

We see him freak out and try to run to the countryside with Janey, see him drink himself into a barely conscious stupor, see him not know what to do when we know that generally he's a pretty can-do fella. We know, from the very first scene we see Cooper and Janey in, that he and Barb get divorced. We know that this divorce is very public and catastrophic for Cooper's career; that's why you have an A-list celebrity doing cowboy-themed birthday parties. What would have to happen for Chris Hemsworth to be doing Thor birthday parties, even for the rich and famous?

But the Ghoul? When he talks about what's kept him alive for 200 years, what's kept him on the move and working what must be almost constantly to have an unbroken supply of the chems that keep him from turning feral, he always says "Finding my family" or finding his "wife and daughter." It's never just "finding my daughter." He's never resentful or glib about his wife. He plays the details of his search close to his chest, but if it was only about Janey, why would he mention Barb at all? And he doesn't use her name, he doesn't say "My daughter and her mother", or anything else that would put distance between the two of them. He says "my wife and daughter." "My family."

And it made me wonder, because the Ghoul isn't sentimental. All of Cooper Howard's soft edges have been weathered away by the wasteland, what remains of his humanity and heart buried deep under calloused scar tissue. What reason would he have to speak of Barb as his wife if their divorce was that terrible? After all this time, all that's happened to him; after all, if we are to interpret what happens on screen literally, the blame for his being a ghoul at all could be placed on her shoulders. So if their relationship was truly done before the bombs fell, where is the resentment? Where, at least, is the apathy?

So. Back to Barb. It's true that in the few scenes we have with her, she can seem distant and less than enamoured with Cooper, who by contrast seems utterly besotted. Her colleagues at Vault-tec praise her for using her connection with Cooper to get him to advertise the vaults. At times she seems annoyed. She organises a wrap party for the advertisement at their house without warning Coop before the day of, knowing he didn't like such events. It does paint her, or at least her regard for her husband, in an unflattering light.

But then there's the fact that Cooper says of her she "always tries to do the right thing," -- and at the moment, we know him to be a reliable narrator-- and the scene where Barb, in tears, can't figure out how to fit Janey's teddy into the keepsake box. The box she knows beyond doubt they will in fact need to use. Because not only will the bombs fall, not only has she secured her family positions in one of the good vaults, she knows that one of the good vaults involves stasis until all the nuclear fallout is gone from the atmosphere. Until the world is set to rights again.

Yes, she could be crying over guilt, in this moment. But in combination with the idea that she always tries to do the right thing, couldn't it be that she'd climbed the ladder in Valut-tec with the honest intention of trying to do the right thing, trying to change it from inside?

Couldn't it be that she failed in that task?

See, once she realised she couldn't change Vault-tec for the better, it would be too late to pull out. She knows the bombs will fall. She knows most of the vaults are truly horrible. She knows she absolutely must secure positions in one of the good vaults for her family, because the alternatives are awful.

"We drop the bombs ourselves." Thinking of corporations, this isn't necessarily her words, but even if they are, she could so easily be saying them because at this point, she knows there's no stopping it. Because at this point, she's either a high-ranking Vault-tec executive taking on the murder of the planet, or she's condemning her family to a violent death. She could not refuse to take part in this and continue to have save lodging in one of the good vaults, could she?

Then there's the divorce. Because of course Barb never told Cooper any of this; she's ashamed, she's certainly not allowed to, she fears he would see her differently, she could fear so much. It isn't right for her to lock him out of all this, but it does make sense. And because she never brought Coop into the fold, he's had to learn of all this in the worst possible way. He can't see how or if her hands are tied, isn't thinking about the absolute necessity she sees of that good vault. He doesn't have the whole picture, and then he goes and gets mixed up with the Reds. The pinkos. The enemy of America and Vault-tec.

Maybe the price of Janey's getting a spot in one of the good vaults after the company discovers Cooper's little indescretion is that she divorces him. Publicly. That he is shamed and ruined and cast out, as other actors who have spoken out against all this have been. It certainly seems plausible. That she gets to stay with their daughter, on a leash but safe from the bombs, and he doesn't. It doesn't feel implausible to me, that the divorce was orchestrated by Vault-tec more than Barb and Cooper. It would explain why the Ghoul is still hunting for her as his wife, and not just Janey and Janey's mother.

Either way, it feels like we might get some kind of answer to this question in episode 6, and I look forward to seeing what it turns out to be.

[mimir-anoshe]

Fuck ok I was driving and suddenly I had a thought - guys I had a lot of thoughts - and I was like do I need to pull over and write this down? I almost did then decided that's insane. ADHD moment.

Anyway so guys hear me out, what if Hank wasn't contacting House (the obvious red herring) or some unknown third party on the global communications in Season 2 Episode 1 "The Innovator?"

What if he was contacting Barb?

Potential spoilers below. Apologies if I'm parroting a theory that's already been discussed I haven't heard this one yet and I got excited just thinking about it.

What if she's at the Enclave? With Janey? And when Hank was saying:

"Your old stomping grounds actually..."

It's because it was Vault 38 where her and Janey were put into Cryo, and a vault where she helped to "manage" all the other vaults up to a point?

She's the one being named as the executive for putting certain vault experiments forward. She's the one House names as an "unknown" and is tied to FEV in the vaults and the creation of the deathclaws.

"You always spent so much time calculating how to survive all possible contingencies."

See the word used there would immediately point to House - as the human calculator - being the culprit. But who else was also planning for all contingencies so she could try and find a way for her family to survive? Specifically Janey? And not just that, but thrive? Barb.

Also I won't spoil it but I know something about House from the games that makes that comment seem redundant/incorrect. It never rang right in my head, some puzzle piece just wasn't fitting.

Guys I think it's Barb. I think it's all Barb. She's the other player.

She's already linked to Moldaver and the cold fusion, but what if she was Wilzigs boss? Wilzigs who knew everything about all the vaults, who was involved in FEV and the mind control devices in season 1. What if she's the head of the entire operation that both ended the world and is now mutating it forward?

I think those cryo pods are empty.

(The cryo pods seemed active when we saw them in episode 5, but it just feels so quick? Really? We find them already? I don't know guys somethings not adding up).

Hank was her assistant, if anyone's giving him a 219 years late promotion through puppeteering Vault-Tec it's her. She's his BOSS.

What if the mind control devices that House was trying to implement were taken by Barb in exchange for the cold fusion (which he never got) and furthered through the Vault 38 experiment which she oversaw. And Hank taking over it is carrying on her work.

But it's not just the mind control devices.

It's the 31, 32, 33 experiment too. It's the implementation of FEV. Hank isn't just carrying on with the 38 experiment, he's also put into motion what Barb created; phase 2 for Vaults 32 and 33. Her work, that's Hank's picked up, and wants to "bring it all home."

Mind control, and mutants, and the world without borders controlled by one entity... Vault-Tec? Or perhaps something else, something worse thats managing it all. Something Barb's affiliated with that even made House shit pant. Because War never changes, and Barb was pulling all the strings from the start. I think she still is.

If this is the case what a fucking insane character they've made. What a badass evil complex fucking goated spectacularly sadistic yet righteously sympathetic antagonist they've written. Who is connected to all our heroes in ways I can't even begin to write down. But especially Cooper like holy shit.

HOLY SHIT.

I think Ella said in an international interview something about her being "geographically lost" at the end of season 2. Take it with a big pinch of salt I need to find it. But what if that's because somehow by the end of the season she gets abducted and taken to the Enclave? What if that's where she meets Barb and Janey?

Barb kidnaps Lucy because Lucy is part of her experiment. What if the Enclave take Lucy because of something to do with 33 and the FEV and so Lucy is technically a specimen? Something they need to lock down and study.

And Cooper and Max end up having to go on a roadtrip of their own, one that leads them to the Enclave. To Lucy, Janey and Barb.

Oh the ANGST of it all, what will Cooper do huh? His ex-wife and his wasteland wife? And what will Lucy and Barbs conversation be like as two badass woman on the opposing ends of morality that blur through the middle. Oh god Lucy and Janey interacting my heart 🥺 I wonder if she's still a kid or all grown up if they are out of the pods.

I think I'm wrong, I'm probably wrong and it's gonna be so funny when I am.

Watch them just be in those pods and the reveal is something like "the other player was the friends me made along the way" lmao. But I would love it if I'm not. There was a shining glorious moment where all the dots connected in my head, and it's gone again.

I suppose we shall see.

Oh god what if Barbs tied to Cooper becoming a Ghoul? Usually it's just via radiation, but the US government were actively experimenting on humans and turning them into ghouls. This is crack at this point but it's fun thinking of all the potentialities. Guys I love Barb what the actual fuck of a character have they made she's so cool and I also agree with Goggins. If this is true, in many ways she is the devil.

Me creating my own Barbgate.

[newvegascowboy]

I've been contemplating how the wasteland would do holiday foods, since they don't have access to a lot of the classic holiday spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and vanilla. I'm going to try and stick as close as I can to food we actually see in game, across all the games, with one notable exception. This is sort of a spiritual successor to my last wasteland food headcanon post, and while originally I just started typing this on the couch while having coffee, it grew extremely out of control.

I'm going to leave out the really obvious things like mashed potatoes because... Well I don't have all day, and I don't want to condescend to you. But I am fascinated by the potential wasteland diet, and the fallout games give us VERY LITTLE. I'm sorry, but I don't want to believe wastelanders are eating unseasoned roach out of the shell.

There are still plenty of ingredients to make reasonable approximations of your favorite holiday foods, so here are my Wasteland Holiday Food Headcanons

The Basics - What do wastelanders have access to?

While raw ingredients like flour and sugar don't appear in game, the fact that things like sweet rolls exist confirms that they have access to those raw ingredients (and I am not that much of a fucking pedant). They'd also have to have some sort of leavening agent (likely baking powder, as cream of tartar, an acid used in baking, is a byproduct of winemaking, which we know they do in the wasteland). I'm also going to allow myself a few things we don't see in game, but would be logical for wastelanders to do, like making jams, preserves, cheese, etc.

Wild yeasts can also be collected off plants, so we'll be generous and assume they have access to yeast cultures. We also know they have to have yeast, because again - brewing alcohol like beer requires yeast. Furthermore, moonshine requires sugar, which brings me to my next point.

While wastelanders don't have access to raw refined sugar, they DO have access to sweeteners (that's the sweet in sweet roll). Corn crops means corn syrup. They'd also likely be using maple syrup or honey as a sweetener. So we know they have access to milk, which means having cream and butter, we know they have flour and salt, we know they have water. We also know they have eggs, thanks to the chickens in the Far Harbor DLC.

Let's start with the easiest, most classic staple of humanity:

Bread

While bread isn't exactly the first thing I think of when it comes to Holidays, Humans Like Carb, especially when it's cold outside. What does a wastelander's bread look like?

The standard loaf of bread in the wasteland is probably a sourdough, since sourdough starters will outlast the heat death of the universe. Yeast for the bread can be taken from the air around you, and they're so low maintenance you can forget about them for months and still revive them. However, sourdough isn't necessarily festive.

Sweet yeasted breads like challah, or enriched brioche are very possible in the wastelander's diet. Razorgrain seems typically closer to a rye than a wheat, so this is going to affect flavor and texture, but it's not going to stop anyone from mixing in different fruits, or glazing their loafs with a simple sweet glaze. One could also just make a literal sweet bread slathered in preserves.

Whatever you want, bread's got your back.

Drinks

This one is going up near the top because I'm going to present a couple ideas that are going to be important to the integrity of the rest of the post.

The first:

Chicory root. I'm gonna break my own rules here by using a plant that's not mentioned in game, but I don't care. I have long contemplated where wastelanders are getting their coffee, since there's no way those tins have survived 200+ years, and then it recently came to me. It's Chicory root. Chicory is a coffee substitute that's been used in America as a coffee substitute since the Civil War, and can be roasted and brewed as an earthy, caffeine free beverage. Sweeter variations exist, and in 200 years, I can believe that caffeinated mutations exist.

Granted, chicory is probably a year round drink and not strictly holiday related, but with some wasteland marshmallows, we can think of it as a tasty hot chocolate substitute.

Tea is another thing given to us by fo76, but that doesn't matter, I was always a tea truther. Again, not holiday specific, but everyone likes a hot drink when it's cold and snowy outside.

Eggnog is possible, but it's going to lack the typical holiday flavor of cinnamon and nutmeg. It's also going to be boozy as fuck. The booze helps to preserve the raw egg, and depending on the alcohol content, it could keep for up to a month in the fridge. (Yeah, it can be cooked but where's the fun in that?) Wasteland eggnog is definitely sweet, perhaps flavored with fruit syrups or even roasted chicory root.

Spiced wine/rum. This is where I loosen the reins a little. The spices in spiced wine or rum typically refer to cinnamon, oranges, cloves, allspice, and nutmeg. All of which we have previously decided the wasteland doesn't have access to. But humans like spices! Historically, we have done a lot to obtain spices to flavor our food! People don't want to eat bland food, so I do not believe that for the last 2 centuries, wastelanders have been contenting themselves with unseasoned meat and drinks. So this is my second important rulebreaking caveat:

As you can brew tea with various plants found in and around the wasteland, I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that you can harvest some sort of spice analog. (Also you use hubflowers to make meth, so... There's gotta be something in there. Maybe caffeine). However you wish to interpret the flavors of these spices, and where exactly they come from, is up to you. I am choosing to interpret them based on the buffs they give your character as consumable items - for example, fever blossom tea gives you an AP boost, which could be read into as being caffeinated/spicy - maybe even close to cinnamon. The world is your oyster.

The spice in spiced alcohol could easily refer to being brewed with various tea leaves, or spices harvested from these plants, and sweetened with fruit and fruit syrup.

Candy

Remember corn syrup? I remember corn syrup. Let me tell you that wastelanders are making a shit ton of candy.

Corn syrup + water + heat. It's easy, it's versatile. Hard candies and candied fruits or nuts are just taken to the hard crack stage, while soft candies like caramels or marshmallows are taken to soft ball. I imagine that they flavor their candies with different fruit syrups and concentrates. Again, for flavoring we can look to concentrates made out of tea leaves. Tarberry, mutfruit, cranberry, and apple are all flavor possibilities. While we never SEE nuts as a consumable item, we can assume if they exist they're being thrown in to make brittles.

While the old marshmallow was made with the sap of the marshmallow root, the modern marshmallow is just made with sugar, gelatin, and water that's been whipped to hell. With a livestock industry, wastelanders would certainly have access to gelatin, and they have corn syrup. Again, you could say they add some juice concentrate to flavor it, as they have no access to vanilla (and the gelatin would impact the flavor somewhat).

Cookies, Cakes, and Pies

So we've already covered their access to raw ingredients to make bread. You can use these same ingredients to make basically any other baked good. The lack of refined sugar is going to change the texture, resulting in chewier, softer cookies, but they would be by no means inedible.

If there's too much corn syrup, maple syrup and honey are good substitutes. I suspect maple would become a central flavor and ingredient (also who doesn't love a maple cookie?)

You could make an unsweetened shortbread out of butter, flour, and salt, which would be closer to the typical modern texture, and then throw whatever kind of sweetened confection you want on top, be it maple glaze, honey, or fruit jam. Whatever!

Apples are real, according to fo3 and fnv, so apple pie is back, albeit diminished without spices like cinnamon. Gourds return to us pumpkin pie, and you could reasonably make some sort of sweet tato pie (potatoes distinct from tatoes are mentioned in the dialogue and I think you can find raw potatoes in fnv, so it's not unreasonable to say sweet potatoes/yams exist out there, but who knows).

Fruitcake exists. I know it does. Heavily, heavily alcoholic, once again to preserve shelf life. Packed with all sorts of dried fruit like tarberry and mutfruit. Rum cake - wait hold on. Rum is real. The canonization of rum changes the game.

Rum is alcohol brewed with sugarcane. Sugarcane means sugar. SUGAR IS BACK ON THE MENU, BOYS! POST CANCELLED!

Miscellaneous Holiday Food

These are some honorable mentions I'm throwing in for fun variety to the wasteland diet.

I thank fo76 for returning to us the mighty cranberry, which means sweet cranberry dishes are back on the menu - perhaps our single surviving modern analog. The controversial cranberry sauce, sweet cranberry bread (There is a notable absence of citrus in Fallout, which I find hard to believe considering the slutty nature of the citrus family, but it's out there somewhere, I know it...)

Latkes - who doesn't love a latke with some applesauce or sweet cream?

Cheese - they're making so much cheese. SO MUCH CHEESE. Cheese keeps forever, is calorie dense, and you can throw all sorts of shit into it for flavor variety.

Gingerbread - look, I backed myself into a corner by assuming they didn't have access to refined sugar and wrote a whole post about it, but they've got rum, and that means they've got sugar, and that means they've got molasses. You could argue the scarcity of raw sugar, and perhaps I will, but that's a different post. Who cares. The ginger in gingerbread probably isn't ginger - pick whatever in game spice analog you want, be it ash flower or fever blossom.

Wait. There's lemonade on the consumables list for fo76. Citrus IS real. Jesus Christ. Post cancelled for real now, guys, I'm outta here