I like Jay's staff! Did he find it, make it, buy it? Or was it more of a "I need to draw a staff and this looks good" decision? :D
Thank you! The design was actually a completely conscious choice based on Jay’s big thing and identity - being a shepherd. ^u^ With some visual embellishments.
It was commissioned for Jay by his dad as a kind of a ‘you’re a grown man now and a full mage so please stop growing I’m not getting you any more new staves after this just because you outgrew it’ gift. ^u^ It’s made out of metal but made to look like it’s old greyed wood (albeit with subtle runes etched into the wood grain pattern), and it’s modeled after a real shepherd’s tool. It’s meant to be fully functional as both a shepherd’s tool and as a staff, and it is, though I should actually remove the bit from the bottom of the arch to make it more practical as an actual tool. xD
Ok now I have to because I was thinking about it yesterday: What D'n'D characters would Jay and Deacon (and Jay and Anders) play? Or would one of them be the DM? (Or maybe Preston as excited DM? He could make awesome campaigns with his love for comics and history.)
AAAAAH ilu omg, you always have the most amazing questions. Thank you so much! I gotta send you some back someday soo! ^U^ This. This??? So good. *shoves actual DnD plans aside*
I really love the idea of Preston running a campaign for his friends in his spare time! Any time Jay and Deacon (and the kids) are coming to the Castle, he’ll have a game session or two planned, or he brings the game with him to Sanctuary when HE comes to visit. It’s fun, and it makes him laugh like nobody’s business.
I think Jay may have played before the war already so he’s not COMPLETELY out of it, I think maybe Nora introduced him to it with her friends, buuut he still mixes the rules up or forgets them - it’s been a while. xD I think he plays maybe a Paladin or a Cleric because he likes to keep his friends safe even in the game (Oath of Ancients paladin, nature domain cleric because he wants to be friends with every animal he meets; he doesn’t care). He’d be maybe be either a halfling, or some kind of a half-giant depending on whether or not he wants to be himself, or if he wants to try to be very small. xD
Deacon? I think he might play something really flashy instead of being a sneak thief tbh, he’s sneaky enough irl. Maybe a sorcerer with a side of bard? Tiefling, I think, takes the Warcaster feat as soon as he can. He has the most outrageous plans and he likes trying to unravel Preston’s plans or makes him improvise stuff that there aren’t clear rules for (Preston is not thwarted, and Jay pulls Deacon back on track on the regular) in good humor, and makes really obscure references nobody else gets. Deacon has a really cool and detailed backstory written for his character, and he’s by far the best at staying in character in the game. Shaun’s good too, but Deacon has seniority and therefore more experience. Once that character dies, I think he might move on to a rogue and play to his advantages. xD
BONUS: I think sometimes Shaun and Rosie are allowed to join, and Shaun gets really excited about it as well, and eventually becomes a regular at the table. He plays a big half-orc barbarian who is very gentle with little children and wants to help everyone; the most chivalrous character in the game, gets mad at evil people, smashes. Very politely knocks on doors before smashing them in. Rosie on the other hand is very little and probably doesn’t entirely get it so she plays with one of the adults’ help. I think Preston specifically makes her a small hard-to-kill dragon character as her first character when she’s little - one that can breate fire and bite people. She roars with glee and actually knocks over figurines. Even when she’s not playing and she happens to be in the room, Preston will tell her ‘Rosie, scream like a dragon for me please?’ and she’ll happily oblige and get sweeties as a reward. xD
In Dragon Age? Anders ABSOLUTELY is the long-suffering healer character. xD The party is too reckless for him to be able to do anything else, and tbh he’s okay with that. It makes him the one they can’t survive without. I have no idea tbh. xD
yknhec replied to your post “chrysalisshell replied to your post “i still stand to my theory that...”
I have this nagging feeling this DLC was a was to keep the level designers busy while the rest of the staff had already moved on. Nuka World is freaking gorgeous, even with the butt load of re-skins. But there are no stories to fill the empty void surrounding it. You had someone coding the "if x gets more y than z gets angry" ending and the rest feels like they incorporated a lot of game jam stuff that did not fit into the rest of the game.
yeah i really love the park even if it reuses designs, and the pre-war feeling is also pretty nice (most people would disagree but i love the mentions of pre-war america) just the endings were bad and the whole dlc fell really flat :/ also the zones got progressively more boring to clear you - like Kiddie Kingdom being story driven and if you went to it first like me you were hyped up because “SHIT A GLOWING GHOUL I WONDER WHATS NEXT!” and next is....um...collect 25 tablets....kill bloodworms for cowboy robots.......Cito.....kill like 300 mirelurks in a tunnel.....Cito was ok but it was ultimately flat and boring. So I really feel like they started working on this DLC and then halfway through they decided it’s not worth it and its enough to ship for 15$ content
I love Nor(m)a's dress so much! (And all the PreWar fluff lately. <3) I missed the prompt and was going to ask either way: What did Jay (& Nor(m)a) do around Halloween PreWar and what do Jay & Deacon do Post War? Does Jay celebrate Halloween or does he have some traditions of his own? :) (We don't celebrate Halloween here but have lantern festivals around fall. ^^)
Thank you! ^U^<3 The pre-war fluff kick has been a very welcome thing, it’s so far largely undiscovered territory and that’s a super good thing when the inspiration is petering off. And thank you so much for the questions, too, ahhh! I won’t doodle anything for these today but I feel like blabbering non-eloquently, so:
Jay grew up mostly in the US, so Halloween definitely was a thing, but kind of also not to the same extent as it could have been in his family? xD His dad was a Finn, and in Finland, Halloween isn’t really a big thing, and it’s a NEW thing, it only landed here in the 50′s. I don’t think anyone really does trick-or-treating, or if they do, it’s a new development. WE never did as kids; we just had a Halloween disco in ONE of my schools. Sometimes people have costume parties, IF they do, and maybe there are scary movies on TV. Anyway his dad always thought it was complete humbug, and grumbled his way through it every year, but his mum thought he should be allowed to have fun the same way other kids did. ^U^ I don’t know if he ever went trick-or-treating? He lived in the countryside, and their neighbors weren’t really close, but he did go to some Halloween parties (where he had to watch what he put into his mouth because lactose), and they had candy and decorations at home. I think Jay never really grew up to think it’s a particularly big deal, and it isn’t his favorite holiday by any stretch of definition, and only Nora’s influence eventually made it something he looked forward to every year? Tbh he was and IS always more excited about the harvest and celebrating that (aka kekri, in his dad’s words). His family always had a big feast at the end of harvest season, with friends and family. I think the family liked to keep the two separate even though technically they fall into the same timeslot? Jay’s parents wanted him to have a taste of both parents’ traditions. :)
Nora loved Halloween as an adult - she liked decorating the house and handing out candy to the kids better than she did trick-or-treating when she was a kid, and she liked watching scary shows or movies on TV or telling horror stories with Jay. When they were together they’d decorate the house (nothing too fancy or tacky, but all the more atmospheric) and the porch and have fun carving pumpkins and drinking apple cider and eating well - they combined the best of both their favorite things about the season. Nora loved dressing up a lot and Jay had fun doing it WITH her, even if he probably would not have done it if he’d been alone? Sometimes they’d have friends come over, or they’d go to one of their parents’ place instead, but mostly it was just the two of them, and some quiet fun at home! They’d usually end up watching too many horror things and scare themselves silly when it was time to go to bed, and wouldn’t want to go to the bathroom alone in the middle of the night. xD
Jay and Deacon? I don’t know how much of a big thing Halloween is in the post-war world, but I’d wager it isn’t the same animal as it used to be. :’D But Jay’d want his kids to have fun, and would try to do this sort of kekri/halloween celebration each year, like a hybrid thing, much like it was with Nora. Maybe it’d be more like kekri than Halloween because… well, the Commonwealth is a plenty scary place; he doesn’t really want to scare the kids with stories about things that don’t exist on top of everything else, especially when they’re small? They could still have spoopy decorations like carved friendly pumpkin(-eque thing)s and colorful lanterns, orange and black and yellow paper chains, and so on, but fun things. They could still have candy and pumpkin-y things and all that, and a big meal to celebrate harvest. ^u^ They have friends come over, and hand out treats to kids whose families trust them, and they just have fun and play old records and eat well and it’s good & fun. The kids eventually hear scary stories and scare themselves, probably from each other. Somehow I think that’s inevitable, but an Effort was made to avoid having a kid crawl into the dads’ bed in the middle of the night saying they’re scared of ghosts or stuff. xD
“@hajskaeg: #I really cant imagine jay using swear words skfkdkk #He...”
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Jay saying "oh fiddlesticks!". Deacon witnessing him saying "oh fiddlesticks!". Shaun hearing Jay say "oh fiddlesticks!" and starting to say it too. .... I can't. Help this is so adorable
Lmao I can only imagine Deacon’s face when he witnesses something like this though, like realizes it for the first time. xD He’s traveled with Jay for a while but hasn’t thought much about the lack of swearing so far, but then Jay DOES something like hits his fingers instead of the nail he was aiming for and the ‘fiddlesticks!’ or something similar comes out (maybe in Finnish, in which he doesn’t really say anything more potent than that either) and Deacon can’t BELIEVE it, and he’s so delighted. He’s found a real gosh darn pre-war treasure, and it just keeps on giving. ‘What ARE you?’ Deacon asks gleefully and Jay doesn’t get what he’s on about. “Never change,” Deacon tells Jay, and Jay kinda shrugs and goes “Don’t really intend to?”
Then when Jay on the very rare occasion actually DOES swear, Deacon knows he means business.
“I’ll be critical of FO4 here for a minute and then go on to enjoying...”
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I think the best way to sum it up is that your companions and ppl u pass all comment regularly on yr sidequests but no one gives a shit abt yr son being 60 and running the goddamn fuckin institute
EXACTLY! Or about you adopting a synth version of your child! I swear there’s some side quests that have more nuance in general (and not just in companion reactions) than most things surrounding Shaun do! I don’t actually have an example but that’s what it feels like. xD The big twist (gasp! your son is 60 years old and you’ve been following a synthetic child clone!) is like criminally underused and just ???? for being such an important beat in the search for your son, like ???? why have a twist like that if it’s not gonna be a big deal? It’s like at that point the story has decided that it’s now about factions at war and it’s not that important to deal with this issue anymore, there’s people to fight and explosions to set off! Nobody has the patience or time for moral quandaries and philosophical discussion, or feelings about your family! No time for that! Yuck! But also let’s never talk about it again afterwards either!
It’s really really frustrating. ;u; For me it’s one of the most interesting issues in the game, and the game doesn’t let me talk about it!!!! Rude.
yknhec replied to your post: “I’ll be critical of FO4 here for a minute and then go on to enjoying...”:
Small addendum because that's what I miss right now: You can never hold baby Shaun. You are not the one carrying him to the Vault. Why? You could just give him to your spouse in first person cam animation when it's time to go into the pods. But no, baby Shaun is some kind of cursed doom device: Whoever holds him dies.
Very true also. ;u; He and his fate is out of your hands from the get-go ahhah. Can you imagine carrying him to safety yourself and then giving him to your spouse in the Vault when it’s time for ‘decontamination’ -- and after that it’s all out of your hands after that, not in your control. I have no idea if it’d make a difference in terms of how deeply you end up caring about him in the first place but it might? It could be a moment of kind of getting to have a connection with him beyond spinning a mobile on top of him at the house?
yknhec replied to your post “chrysalisshell replied to your post “I honestly never understood why...”
He didn't just attack fan favorites (tho that is probably the reason for most to dislike him). He rivals even M.axson in his hate for ghouls. Like with every Companion you just don't get all of it if you don't take him along all the time. (He dislikes Kent surviving and has the most awful dialogue towards the Vault Tec ghoul should you recruit him with D.anse as a Companion.)
Ah I guess there go my gaps in lore, I guess I should have at least read his dialogue on the wiki. So he will get a bit of an ass kicking after all, once he gets his ass out of that power armor. (I will kill for Kent Connolly I in fact have I reloaded the game six times to save him during that quest...I will...kill)
edit: i mean ill kill in general not Danse, I picked the Minutemen ending specifically so as many people will live and also I like having him around, Tracie is like that :>
