[Fallout Equestria] Setting discussions

Harmony Ltd. wrote:I suppose they would use photographs rather than drawings. I don't think cameras (most probably using film) would be that rare in the post-S&R wasteland. At the least it would be available to people who would be likely to use them in a professional manner. I guess ?

What do you think ?

I admit I'm not too acquainted with the process of making traditional cameras, but I would think, manufacturing still being a very limited field, that things like cameras would be a bit too pricey for your average newspaper to want to spend.

I wonder if all those pre-war cameras lying around could maybe be scavenged, cannibalized for spare-parts and refitted ?

I guess here it's mostly a question of where we want to go, aesthetically, for the setting. Because with the fact there's literal magic widely available around, you could always say there's a a craftpony somewhere in Manehatten or Junction whose special talents is making lenses and working on optical instruments. If you wanted to, that is.

(Sorry for missing this before; I had a bus to catch and wasn't reading too closely.)

Yeah... I'm not sure. I think that that might not be the right question, though. Even if they have cameras, do they have the printing technology to print photographs? In other words, even if the reporter in the field uses a camera, does the newspaper still have to feature a drawing of the photograph?

On a somewhat related subject, I've been wondering if the Alliance has television. They've got the technology, both knowledge and physical, but I'm skeptical about them actually making broadcast television.

I see your point.

It could be the photos are taken on the field to capture the moment, and then back at the redaction they draw a gravure for the actual printing ?

I don't know enough about newspaper printing techniques to comment on that. But odds are that newspaper will be text-only, pictureless affairs.

As for television, I'm not sure. I could see Elusive setting up quite a number of broadcast networks under his control to further manipulate the people of the Alliance to his cause.

And maybe also the people of the NCR if he manage to sell TVs to them and to broadcast his signals there.

I'll go back and brush up on my knowledge of the Alliance, but from what I've inferred it seems like they're the type of power to whom such a useful propaganda/ panem et circenses tool would be appealing.

Other examples of the kind of gravure you could see in papers using XIXth century technologies :

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

re gravure:
Aye, that's what I was thinking. I'm not sure what you mean by "back at the redaction", though.

re television:
Yes… I'm just not sure if Elusive would deem the resource investment worthwhile. Particularly since, after all, he'd be guessing at the effectiveness, there not having been television preapocalypse.
Radio: voice, microphone, and maybe some sound effects (and, in the case of Elusive's personal broadcast, not even that, since he just directly generates the signal)
Television: actors (who have to look good as well as sound good), cameras, sets, lights, higher bandwidth transmission, more attention demanded from people to get the full effect (since they have to look at the screen instead of just listening), less portable...

You raise good points. It seems that the best propaganda tool for someone in Elusive's position would be the radio, as the listeners would be used to having him as a more-or-less constant companion. I believe it was Goebbels who said that all you need to do to make the masses believe a lie is to repeat it often and loud enough.

Mister Frost wrote:You raise good points. It seems that the best propaganda tool for someone in Elusive's position would be the radio, as the listeners would be used to having him as a more-or-less constant companion. I believe it was Goebbels who said that all you need to do to make the masses believe a lie is to repeat it often and loud enough.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFU6hxFfJac

?

Or more likely, he would probably set up a "Mr. New Vegas"-like sub-personality tasked to more or less subtly sing his praises on the 24/7 news & entertainment cycle. If my interpretation of him is correct, that is.

(by the way, I've always suspected that Mr. New Vegas is actually one of House's AI, but I don't remember ever seeing any evidence or even hint pointing one way or the other. Did I miss something ?)

Harmony Ltd. wrote:Or more likely, he would probably set up a "Mr. New Vegas"-like sub-personality tasked to more or less subtly sing his praises on the 24/7 news & entertainment cycle. If my interpretation of him is correct, that is.

Something of a hybrid of the two, I'd think. I was envisioning old-school propaganda films when I was typing (like the Nazi Germany-produced video.....can't remember what it was called, but it featured men from around Germany, dressed in Wehrmacht uniforms and speaking about Germany's unity under Hitler. This was before all that "war" business that rather sullied everyone's opinions

I'm not sure. I was envisioning Elusive as being a bit more subtle in his ways about that kind of things.

Then again, he's also an artificial intelligence with an alien frame of mind prioritizing efficiency when it comes to accomplish the goals he has set himself over purely moral considerations, so you never know...

Hinds ? Your thoughts ?

Mister Frost wrote:You raise good points. It seems that the best propaganda tool for someone in Elusive's position would be the radio, as the listeners would be used to having him as a more-or-less constant companion. I believe it was Goebbels who said that all you need to do to make the masses believe a lie is to repeat it often and loud enough.

I hadn't even thought about it from that angle, but yeah. Apart from Elusive's personal broadcasts, I expect that every major radio station in the Alliance (and there probably aren't that many) is owned by the Company. And "become ubiquitous" is certainly one of Elusive's goals.

Harmony wrote:Or more likely, he would probably set up a "Mr. New Vegas"-like sub-personality tasked to more or less subtly sing his praises on the 24/7 news & entertainment cycle. If my interpretation of him is correct, that is.

Aye, pretty much. And the radio stations that aren't directly him are still owned and ultimately controlled by him (Want to set up an independent radio station in the Alliance? Sure, you can do that! Just be prepared to use all your own hardware, and of course anything you buy from the Company will be marked up just a tiny bit…).

Harmony wrote:(by the way, I've always suspected that Mr. New Vegas is actually one of House's AI, but I don't remember ever seeing any evidence or even hint pointing one way or the other. Did I miss something ?)

As far as I know, that's completely confirmed. I too have never been able to find out where it's confirmed, though.

Mister Frost wrote:Something of a hybrid of the two, I'd think. I was envisioning old-school propaganda films when I was typing (like the Nazi Germany-produced video.....can't remember what it was called, but it featured men from around Germany, dressed in Wehrmacht uniforms and speaking about Germany's unity under Hitler. This was before all that "war" business that rather sullied everyone's opinions

Harmony wrote:I'm not sure. I was envisioning Elusive as being a bit more subtle in his ways about that kind of things.

Then again, he's also an artificial intelligence with an alien frame of mind prioritizing efficiency when it comes to accomplish the goals he has set himself over purely moral considerations, so you never know...

Hinds ? Your thoughts ?

His frame of mind is alien, yes, but he was originally designed to, among other things, keep a ship full of rich ponies, many of them in large part self-made and therefore with dominating personalities, safe and happy even if the world blew up or the ship was under attack. In game terms, he was coded with 10 CHA and both speech and barter tagged. He may not really get the minds of organic mortals, but he has a pretty good idea about which button does what and the ability to learn. While it's not impossible that he might use such blatant propaganda, it wouldn't be common, and he'd use it fully knowing how blatant it was.

So I was reminded of something while brushing 61: we saw in PH Chapter 60 that, while the preapocalypse world may not have had television, the GPE did have it.  And even if Las Pegasus was poorer than Thunderhead, which is likely, the Alliance still would have absorbed television as an idea when Las Pegasus joined.  And once the Alliance has the idea, well, Elusive couldn't stay out of it then.  So, yeah; by the present day (30SR in this thread, generally, for those just tuning in), the Alliance would have television networks.  I suspect that Alliance dedicated televisions may actually be CRT due to it being cheaper for the Alliance than a gem-based system.

This also raises the question of whether the NCR would have television, either native or imported from the Alliance.  Thoughts?

edit: GPE television is also shown in 61, of course, but I first posted this just when 61 released wanted to be sure that I didn't drop even that minor a spoiler.

This might be relevant to the television discussion. Just imagine the Alliance flag, with matching color scheme, instead of that of the DDR and the language being Pony or Roaman Zebra (I imagine that there are parallel channels for this) instead of German.

Posing another question to you overthinkers: How long was the Pink Cloud around Canterlot in comparison with when the regular bombs hit during the apocalypse? If I recall the conversation in the PH thread it was at least a day right?

EDIT: I meant how long the Princesses' force field was up, derp  

stringtheory wrote:Posing another question to you overthinkers: How long was the Pink Cloud around Canterlot in comparison with when the regular bombs hit during the apocalypse? If I recall the conversation in the PH thread it was at least a day right?

EDIT: I meant how long the Princesses' force field was up, derp  

A day or less sounds about right. There were still missiles in flight when the shield went down, after all.

Meleagridis wrote:Now what I'm interested in seeing is someone who's crafted an identity under which to perform acts of heroism.

(This was posted in the PH discussion thread, but I'm replying to it here.)
Well, I can think of two semi-examples from my headcanon.
Rose Eye (formerly Red Rose, formerly her raider birthname which I've forgotten again) would say that she's done that, but I doubt that many outside the Banner consider "trying to fill Red Eye's horseshoes" to be particularly heroic.  Rose Eye is also more of a faction leader than a standard frontline hero
Dea Rubrum is the other semi-example; I'm not even sure what her birth name was, and I think that, as the war progressed, what started as just a nickname became more and more her name as her public persona grew and dominated her (the Red Goddess of the Sky, Ace of Aces, heroic example to all soldiers of the Pax Roamana, is much less impressive if you know she's addicted to every combat chem you can use in the sky (including ones to try and replace all the sleep she's not getting), afflicted with Samaritan Syndrome, constantly under guard when on the ground to prevent assassination…).  (Oh, if you don't recall, Dea Rubrum was the PR pilot so good that it was suspected she had some sort of mutation (study of which was prevented by her being in the air most of the time).  Unfortunately for both the Pax Roamana and Dea Rubrum's health, one ridiculously good outlier does not universal air superiority make, even if she's constantly moving from battle to battle.)

Here's something that I've been wondering for a while: Does healing magic dissolve bullets? I know that it's a carryover from the game, and pretty standard from action literature, but if they aren't digging out the bullets, every protagonist in the FoE multiverse should be 50% bullet by now.

@ Hinds : is Dea Rubrum something from your headcanon, or is it from either FoE or PH ? FYI, I haven't read the latest chapter of PH yet.

@ Scienza : I would tend to think healing potions dissolve bullets, foreign objects and other contaminants, and expel them from the subject's body somehow. The most likely way would be by dissolving them in urine or in the feces (which by the way could lead to... interesting scenes in a story), like Rad-Away canonically does in (at least) Fallout 2 (a peasant in Vault City complaining that rad-away always give him a terrible diarrhea).

Although if the mass of foreign objects is too much, this could lead to nasty things like the dissolved foreign objects precipitating in the bladder or intestines. So if you want to be realistic this would mean the subject would have to stay under the effect of the healing potion long enough for all of the foreign matter to be expelled from the body.

In practice, this would mean regularly taking a certain dosage of healing potion while you have the mother of all bowel movement or you would risk suffering from the mother of all (kidney, bladder or intestinal) stone.

Harmony Ltd. wrote:@ Hinds : is Dea Rubrum something from your headcanon, or is it from either FoE or PH ? FYI, I haven't read the latest chapter of PH yet.

@ Scienza : I would tend to think healing potions dissolve bullets, foreign objects and other contaminants, and expel them from the subject's body somehow. The most likely way would be by dissolving them in urine or in the feces (which by the way could lead to... interesting scenes in a story), like Rad-Away canonically does in (at least) Fallout 2 (a peasant in Vault City complaining that rad-away always give him a terrible diarrhea).

Although if the mass of foreign objects is too much, this could lead to nasty things like the dissolved foreign objects precipitating in the bladder or intestines. So if you want to be realistic this would mean the subject would have to stay under the effect of the healing potion long enough for all of the foreign matter to be expelled from the body.

In practice, this would mean regularly taking a certain dosage of healing potion while you have the mother of all bowel movement or you would risk suffering from the mother of all (kidney, bladder or intestinal) stone.

That would explain why Blackjack has such monstrously destructive bowel movements.

Indeed yes, and the thought arose as I was writing this. That and all the rad-away she's been drinking.

This would also mean that taking too much healing potion at too close intervals that wouldn't let the intestinal tract time to fully absorb the nutrients from the digested food could lead someone to die from hunger, even if they take time to eat. And also dehydration.

I think this could in fact be a good counter to what would otherwise seem like an "I win" button (that is, the healing potion).

The ideal counter to that problem would be directly injecting the nutrients & water in the bloodstream through IV.

Harmony wrote:@ Hinds : is Dea Rubrum something from your headcanon, or is it from either FoE or PH ? FYI, I haven't read the latest chapter of PH yet.

Oh, my headcanon. Sorry for not making that clear. (Though if there's anyone else out there who has the same sort of conception of the Pax Roamana air force as I do, I'd lick to know about it. :D)

Also, nice to have you back in the thread, Harmony! Any thoughts on the other stuff I posted since you were last here? Sorry to pester, but I can't tell if your silence on them is because you just haven't gotten to them yet or you don't have any feedback.

Scienza wrote:That would explain why Blackjack has such monstrously destructive bowel movements.

Also, that expelled waste consists of what the body can't absorb. By this point, anything that Blackjack's body can't cope with is probably pretty nasty.

Well, the only thing posted here since I left that I haven't commented on is the television stuff.

I'll just say that it's pretty interesting to imagine Elusive City as having TV-screens everywhere, in the streets, in the buildings, constantly showing either news programs, sitcoms with a subtly propagandist message, or commercials for all the various items sold by the Elusive Company and all its subsidiaries.

Though given that the Alliance, for all its might, isn't THAT big, most of these programs would probably be reruns (as I doubt the mass entertainment industry would be that big, unless it's serials that are produced daily).


As for the NCR, I'm not sure how it would go. I don't doubt the wealthier people in the NCR would buy expensive TV-sets from the Alliance as status symbols, but actually watching something on them might be difficult if the NCR gets in its head to not allow the Alliance to broadcast inside its territories.

On the other hand, this could create a market for imported "VCRs" and "VHSs" of Alliance productions. At least until the NCR catch up and really start producing its own cultural stuff on that front.


Also, porn. Lots and lots of porn.

Harmony wrote:Well, the only thing posted here since I left that I haven't commented on is the television stuff.

I'll just say that it's pretty interesting to imagine Elusive City as having TV-screens everywhere, in the streets, in the buildings, constantly showing either news programs, sitcoms with a subtly propagandist message, or commercials for all the various items sold by the Elusive Company and all its subsidiaries.

Though given that the Alliance, for all its might, isn't THAT big, most of these programs would probably be reruns (as I doubt the mass entertainment industry would be that big, unless it's serials that are produced daily).


As for the NCR, I'm not sure how it would go. I don't doubt the wealthier people in the NCR would buy expensive TV-sets from the Alliance as status symbols, but actually watching something on them might be difficult if the NCR gets in its head to not allow the Alliance to broadcast inside its territories.

On the other hand, this could create a market for imported "VCRs" and "VHSs" of Alliance productions. At least until the NCR catch up and really start producing its own cultural stuff on that front.


Also, porn. Lots and lots of porn.

:D

And, yeah, you've a point about the size. The Alliance is huge by postapocalyptic standards, but postapocalyptic standards aren't that high. Hm... Though the Alliance might have a lot of non-rerun animated stuff if Elusive just dedicates one of his maneframes to making it. Still nothing like modern Earth's "only five hundred 24/7 channels?!", but that's not the standard Elusive is working to meet. The GPE, after all, was even smaller and poorer than the Alliance, and they didn't have Elusive to make programs all by himself. There are probably less than ten channels, and most of them likely have broadcast days instead of the equivalent of running 24/7.

I just wonder what the TV programs coming from Masozi would be like...

A mix between Fox News and The Military Channel, maybe ?  

Harmony Ltd. wrote:I just wonder what the TV programs coming from Masozi would be like...

A mix between Fox News and The Military Channel, maybe ?  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I8RdUCBwjE