Latest Posts by shapeware - Page 11
individual moral flailing
individual moral failing rn
faith underrated
"the terms" of a video game is that it was made at some point in time and is about that point in time. all video games, television, movies, books, all fiction all media is about NOW. you cannot create a fictional world. it is just discourse on and in the real world. to do a meeting of the game on it's terms in the way framed here is to create a misconception of what fascism is—which is what this post does.
I don't think "Fascist" is a very useful or accurate thing to call Caesar and his Legion (from Fallout: New Vegas) in the context of the game world itself. Like there are a lot of aesthetic similarities and basically all of their unironic real world fans are some sort of Nazi Nerd, but when talking about their place within the context of fictional post-nuclear Nevada it just doesn't work. Like Caesar's whole deal is that he's a Social Scientist who, living in a world that's been "blasted back to the Stone Age", figures that society must evolve through the same stages if it wants to properly return to modernity. The Legion is basically comprised of "Primitive Communists"* who've been forced into a Slave Society. His criticisms of the NCR boil down to them being a moribund remnant of/reversion to Old World Capitalism rather than something organically adapted to the post-Nuclear world. He repeatedly talks about how the Legion isn't meant to represent an ideal society but simply a stepping stone onto something better (the thesis that will clash with it's antithesis and evolve into a superior synthesis). His interactions with the Courier heavily imply that the Legion's Misogyny, Homophobia, Tech aversion etc. are much more tools of social organisation and control than values that Caesar personally holds. The Legion isn't just some band of mindlessly violent reactionaries but the product of very deliberate Social Engineering; a peculiarly post-nuclear sort of scientifically planned society
Now I'm not defending the Legion as a "good" choice or anything; Caesar's plan has a lot of problems, it's not hard to poke holes into and in terms of unadulterated cruelty The Legion is easily the most morally repugnant of the main factions. But the thing I really love about The Legion is how, within the specific context of Fallout's setting, it makes sense. Like once you really think about it you can understand why someone in Edward Sallow's position would arrive at these conclusions, and there are good reasons why (if you take your roleplaying seriously and don't treat the Player Character as an extension of yourself) someone living in this world might chose to side with him. The Legion may be terrible but it's not evil for the sake of evil; there's genuinely a compelling ideology behind it.
It's why I get sad when I see so many people dismiss them as the "dum dum fascist slavers" because there's so much more to them than that. Like I think the best part about The Legion is how ridiculous they first appear ("These raiders dress like Ben-Hur extras?????) but once you find out more about them then it all starts to click ("Oh I see their leader is trying to assimilate them into a distinct and alien culture in order to maintain their loyalty; severing their previous connections and giving them a whole new identity"). So it sucks to see so many people get caught up in the first part and never make enough connections to reach the second. Like in general, Fallout: New Vegas is very messy and flawed and yet it's full of all these interesting little nuances and I think that's worth appreciating it. It's why, time and time again, I keep walking down that dusty road
*in the very broad sense that Fallouts "Tribals" are meant to represent people who have reverted back to some sort of pre-state society; of course there are countless problems with how Fallout treats this matter (including but not limited to incredible amounts of racism) but in order to understand Caesar we're forced to meet the game on it's terms
we must hate the weirdos and freaks. i would personally add puppygirl anarchists with bangs..
cage match to the death between an asexual person commenting "lol can't relate, allos have such weird problems" on a post about sex and a poly person commenting "lol can't relate, monogamous people have such weird problems" on a post about cheating
all these cigarette ed tumblr girls are autistic and men and i am in solidarity with them
dark souls 1
elden ring would be objectively improved if it didn't have Torrent or password summoning
young autistic catholic wedding photos
Ummm okay well….. I think I have room in my cart for another sample
AI discourse has merged with trans women in sports discourse
Lmao.
im so happy i made all the correct choices that led to us meeting
i recognize him
The Yakovlev VVP-6 was a concept design for a heavy, six rotor helicopter from the Soviet Union in the 1960's.
Its primary role would have been a mobile SAM site, able to rapidly deploy six surface to air missiles into the russian wilderness. This wasn't the only planned design, however. These would deploy in a formation of no less than 4, each filling a role similar to a carrier group. This models the mobile SAM site, with six missiles.
Another VVP-6 would be a flying radar site, with an AWACS dish and a further 2 SAMs.
A third would be a mobile command center, and the fourth would be an airborn carrier.
However, the technology of the 60's would not allow such a mechanically complex vehicle to function, and most of the documents for this flying fortress were lost to time.
must write
software is such a heavenly, perfect word... you've got all these solid wares, these intricate metallic cities of circuitry... what could live in these hard cities but soft beings squeezing into buses... they are wares of their own, goods, commodities... just like us... we feed softerware to our squishy blood machines, towers of meat... what do programs eat? python: ᘛ⁐̤ᕐᐷ. easy.
a secret blend of 11 traumas and neuroses
this pride, i learnt about the Palestinian trans woman Oscar Al-Halabiye, dancer and resistance fighter against the israeli occupation in Southern Lebanon. she named herself Oscar after Lady Oscar from the "The Rose of Versailles", a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Riyoko Ikeda.
her story is documented in Cinema Fouad(1993). zionists use pink washing to reinforce their genocidal terrorist narrative when queer Palestinians have been fighting against the occupation since the very beginning. you can watch it here with english subtitles. long live the intifada!
“What? Like, a disabled protagonist? How would that even work? How could someone with a disability be the hero in an action show?” local anime trash boy wonders while sitting next to his box sets of Full Metal Alchemist, showing no hint of irony or self awareness.
St. George and the Dragon, from Red Magic by Kay Nielsen (1930)
i had a dream that time travel was invented and too many people choose to travel back in time to save the titanic from sinking (the question of whether unsinking of the titanic deserved so much attention in the face of human history was the subject of both heavy academic and online discourse), which caused a rift in the space-time-continuum that led to the titanic showing up indiscriminately all over the world’s oceans and sea in various states of sinking.
this caused a lot of issues both in terms of fixing said space-time-continuum and in terms of nautical navigation, and after a long and heavy battle in the international maritime organization it was decided that the bureaucratic burden of dealing with this was to be upon Ireland, much to their dismay. the Irish Government then released an app for all sailors and seafarers so they could report titanic sightings during their journeys, even though they heavily dissuaded you from reporting them given the paperwork it caused.
anyway i woke up with a clear image of the app in my head and needed to recreate it for all of you:
Chloe White: Cuckoo Settles Down (2006)
