can we talk about the huge difference in how fo1, fo2 and new vegas talk about old-world america versus how fallout 3, 4, and now 76 seem intent on portraying it
competent writers: the american commonwealth devolved into a fascist imperialist police hellstate that invaded mexico and canada and pillaged the world for its resources and burned the world in nuclear fire and partnered with vault tec to engage in unethical social experiments inside the vaults to better understand how to maintain a monopoly of power over the masses and-
todd howard, drowning out the series’ legacy with a boombox:
A̭̙̟̲L̲̥M̺͕͚͉̰O̴S̰̠̥̘͚̲̠T̗̮̤̟̯̫👌
̛H͏͕͍EA̻̣͖̥̣̤̺͞V̘̫͕̫̱̗̼͜E̸͚̖̤͚̱N ̷̦̦̭̤̳
👼
.̢̯̹̱͍̥̳.W̶͖̲̘͕͕͍ͅE̡̖̙̲̙̱Ş̻̦T ̱͎ͅ☀️V̳͔̺̱̼̖Ị̪̖͉̮RG͘I̛NI̵̞
A̻̣͖̥̣̤̺͞
A͖͙̤A͓̳̪̲͙͉🌻💀🇺🇸💣😋
mood: during the trial against my friend, the persecuter claimed that my friend had a weapon at the time he was arrested and later the defense attorney pulled out the “weapon” and was like “everybody. this is a sex toy”
in addition to the dildo defense: saw an observer pull out her chapstick and start smearing it on her face. also another observer was wearing cat ears
when i was 12 i got banned from yahoo answers and when i emailed support to be like “what did i do??” i got a really vague answer that just said “you know what you did” and it still haunts me to this day
When I was 10 I was in a AOL chatroom for kids and we were all making this Homer Simpson face (8^(|) but this one girl Crystal forgot to put the nose in the face so I said “You forgot the nose crystal” and I immediately got booted offline and no one in my family could log on. My Mom talked to someone from AOL and they said I was trying to sell drugs to minors because I said “nose crystal”
When I was like 10 I roleplayed with people on Neopets, completely innocent stuff like ‘high school AU’ or ‘wolf AU’ and the like. I made a thread called ‘See the Sea Hotel’ and it went on for a few replies until I randomly got my account frozen and after explaining to my mom for a good 30 minutes that ‘frozen’ didn’t mean the computer wouldn’t respond, she got on to try and send an email to Neopets’ staff and they said that ‘hotel’ was a restricted word because it included ‘ho’ in it
I had a similar experience around that age with an online music game called Audition.
I said something like “Can I get the speed to 2x speed?” and it automatically changed my message to “Can I get the **** to **** ****?”, and a moderator saw that modified message and suspended my account for offensive language.
It turned out that I couldn’t say ‘speed’ because it had ‘pee’ in it, and I when I contacted support to say it was a mistake on their part and asked if I could be unsuspended, they said that I was also writing numbers, and writing numbers was strictly forbidden just in case they were a phone number.
I remember playing Phantasy Star Online back in like 2001 - it was one of the first console MMOs, if I remember correctly - and you didn’t get banned for saying “bad words”, but they did get censored. their list of inappropriate words was….extensive, and one in particular created a real problem for people trying to make plans to play together. because of course the most common day of the week to do that would be Saturday, right? but. that has the word “turd” in it. so. every time. you tried to say “do you want to play Saturday”. it would say. “do you want to play $%&@%#+%”. and the other person is just. sitting there. wondering. what the fuck did you just ask them to play
how the FUCK did they make that penguin from wallace and gromit look so evil like it’s literally just a plasticine penguin but it somehow radiates Pure Malice look at it
truly character design at its finest
Part of the reason that Wallace and Gromit is so successful is that every single character is just so expressive. The people’s lips move like half a foot every frame. Gromit has basically only his eyebrows, and he has more personality than two average real people. The Moon Machine was up there with the rest of them, and it didn’t even have a face.
The penguin, on the other hand, never expressed anything at all. It’s designed almost explicitly with purpose of not expressing anything. It’s practically featureless, with only the bare minimum of detail necessary to tell you it’s a penguin.
It has a face, but it never uses it. It has no sclera, meaning it stares straight ahead at all times.
It actively repels most attempts to ascribe any emotion to it – at best, you can feel that it is coldly satisfied, perhaps detachedly frustrated. I’d say it’s like a robot wearing the skin of an animal, but that’s literally the villain of A Close Shave, and he was pretty expressive.
It’s like Aardman found a tiny crack in the likability curve, far away from the uncanny valley but a hell of a lot deeper, and decided to build a penguin there.
