Chris

Idle Thumbs 215: Flirtation & Procreation

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They are definitely the Travis and Justin McElroy of Idle Thumbs in that way. And maybe other ways.

 

At least it makes sense that Travis and Justin would sound very similar because they are the closest to genetically identical out of anyone they know except for Griffin McElroy.

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So about a year ago I managed to convince my housemate to start listening to Idle Thumbs, and he's enjoying it (and having a hard time telling Jake and Sean apart as well, which makes me very excited because it's clearly not just me).

I had trouble with Jake and Sean for the first few episodes too, for what it's worth.

 

When I first started listening, near the end of the second run of podcasts, I had enormous trouble telling Nick and Jake apart, even though that seems unthinkable now, but Sean's accent is so different from the one that Jake has, even though their pitch and timbre are extremely close, that I'd never be able to mix them up. I wonder why it's so different for different people.

 

Of course, I also thought that Chris' mocking "badass" voice was a fourth person sitting in the room and not saying anything except the occasional quip for two whole episodes, so what do I know?

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I finished listening, this was a really fun episode. I vote to promote Gabe to official Podcast Cop and keep arresting them when they skip segments or say something factually wrong.

 

Also, I have been scared of the Anno games, but Nick describing them as filling the same hole as Settlers II made me really want to try them out.

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Gabe's interruptions were a welcome addition and this was a super good episode! :tup: :tup: :tup:

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Of course, I also thought that Chris' mocking "badass" voice was a fourth person sitting in the room and not saying anything except the occasional quip for two whole episodes, so what do I know?

The fourth man: Remo Extremo.

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The "fallout shelter" thing occurred to me just as I started listening to the episode, so when it came up shortly after it was very surreal.

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I don't mix up Thumbs voices but I thought it was Intern Dave the whole time so what do I know!

 

 

A Fallout Shelter Vignette:

 

*my brain* "Hey, people with high Charisma do better in my forced breeding internment program!"

*drags two highest Charisma people to a dorm, they quickly baby it up*

"Ok go back to your jobs what were you doing?" *realize they were both manning the radio booth because they had high charisma, and are put back there together*

 

Is that awkward? Would they be pleased? I don't even know.

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They would be pleased but it turns out he has also fathered 6 children by other women so things may be a little bumpy in their relationship.

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They would be pleased but it turns out he has also fathered 6 children by other women so things may be a little bumpy in their relationship.

 

Or not!  I was actually thinking last night about that, and how it could be interesting to include in a game like this some interactions between people dealing with exactly that, both positive and negative.  It would be entirely plausible and reasonable in a shelter like this for a couple to form a romantic bond that didn't preclude mating with other pople.  Or even a situation where a man might be sterile, but his female partner still went and got pregnant by someone else so they could raise a child.  Or a gay couple (male or female) might each still have sex with the opposite sex because it was the necessary thing to do.  It might not have any affect on the actual gameplay, but it could make observing life within the shelter more interesting. 

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That horrifying moment when you drag two people to the dormitory, and as you zoom in they're just standing next to each other.

 

Then you see one of them remark, "Sure is nice to spend time with family!"

 

 

 

:nodance:  :devil:  :getmecoat  :wtz:  :campbell:

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Man, I've been mesmerized by the idea of some people working in a lab trying to figure out why their AI is sentient but not knowing. I also feel like it's so enticing an image it has to be a bit of a hoax! 

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I wonder if voice differentiation is similar to how some people are poorer at differentiating between colors as well - there's never a time that I couldn't NOT hear the difference between Jake, Sean and Nick. They all have very different patterns of speech and slightly different pitches. 

 

Then again, there's people who cannot tell me or my podcast partner apart despite both of us having wildly different pitched and regional accents to our voices but I suspect that's because a lot people generally think all Women Sound Alike. 

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The soundalike problem probably depends a bit on how much attention you pay podcasts as you listen.

I definitely had trouble with Jake and Sean when I started listening. Though it's worth saying I have the same trouble with characters in films when I'm not paying them my full attention. It usually takes me half the film to figure out how to distinguish people who are remotely similar.

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I pretty sure I always heard 3 different voices, but it took me a while to remember who's name belonged to which voice.

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The world has ended. A bunch of people are cooped up together underground without a whole lot to do. There are no wasteland condoms or birth control. Conception to birth takes 3 hours and birth to adulthood takes another 3 hours.

 

I can kind of see how it would make sense that everyone would always be pregnant.

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The world has ended. A bunch of people are cooped up together underground without a whole lot to do. There are no wasteland condoms or birth control. Conception to birth takes 3 hours and birth to adulthood takes another 3 hours.

I can kind of see how it would make sense that everyone would always be pregnant.

If women's bodies can physically handle conception to birth in three hours in Fallout, how is it not canon that they've taken over all aspects of society by using their ridiculous, superhuman physiques? Imagine the beating they could take in a fight if their body can handle that kind of shotgun baby creation and expulsion.

This is the Fallout game I want to play.

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If women's bodies can physically handle conception to birth in three hours in Fallout, how is it not canon that they've taken over all aspects of society by using their ridiculous, superhuman physiques? Imagine the beating they could take in a fight if their body can handle that kind of shotgun baby creation and expulsion.

This is the Fallout game I want to play.

 

Ladies sure as hell run my Vault. Have a baby, kick ass in the wasteland, spend 5 hours doing crunches, then spearhead my water purification program.

 

Basically what I'm saying is outside of the pregnancy part, Danielle is the prototype vault dweller badass.

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If women's bodies can physically handle conception to birth in three hours in Fallout, how is it not canon that they've taken over all aspects of society by using their ridiculous, superhuman physiques? Imagine the beating they could take in a fight if their body can handle that kind of shotgun baby creation and expulsion.

This is the Fallout game I want to play.

 

Also, there might be some grey area if we're assuming that this time scale is in any way proportional to reality. It doesn't really make sense that 3 hours = 9 months and 3 hours = 18 years. What is more plausible is that these "babies" aren't actually born babies, but are about 8 years and 7 1/2 months old when they are born. So in this Fallout game you want to play, it is totally reasonable that these superhuman women would have a special ability where their developing child could pop out for a bit to give you some kind of temporary double team ability like in the Simpsons arcade game.

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This game just got me to a weird place.  I used the same maxed charisma male character to impregnate three separate women.  Those pregnancies bore 2 boys and a girl.  By the time I checked in again they had grown up and I still didn't have any new dwellers at the door.  I instinctively threw the father into the living quarters and the grown up girl in with him since she wasn't assigned a job yet.  After a few minutes and "Its nice to hang out with family" conversation blurbs I realized what had happened and quickly changed up the pairing.

 

I don't even know if its possible in the game but it seems like in game incest isn't a possibility or at least I hope.  I don't plan on trying to couple her with her half-brothers to find out.  Just crazy that after duplicating Chris' strategy I now have 4 Jones' who are seemingly no longer compatible out of 19 dwellers.

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This game just got me to a weird place.  I used the same maxed charisma male character to impregnate three separate women.  Those pregnancies bore 2 boys and a girl.  By the time I checked in again they had grown up and I still didn't have any new dwellers at the door.  I instinctively threw the father into the living quarters and the grown up girl in with him since she wasn't assigned a job yet.  After a few minutes and "Its nice to hang out with family" conversation blurbs I realized what had happened and quickly changed up the pairing.

 

I don't even know if its possible in the game but it seems like in game incest isn't a possibility or at least I hope.  I don't plan on trying to couple her with her half-brothers to find out.  Just crazy that after duplicating Chris' strategy I now have 4 Jones' who are seemingly no longer compatible out of 19 dwellers.

The game even seems to prevent incest among characters with different surnames—which obviously makes total sense, but it means it is very difficult to know who is related to one another and therefore who can procreate.

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The game even seems to prevent incest among characters with different surnames—which obviously makes total sense, but it means it is very difficult to know who is related to one another and therefore who can procreate.

 

I can understand why they did it, because of ratings and the moral outcry, but I mostly agree with the approach used by Paradox in Crusader Kings 2. Incest is so hard to prevent in a way that is transparent and satisfying that it's maybe just a better design choice to let the player orchestrate it and just not tell them that they're orchestrating it.

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The game even seems to prevent incest among characters with different surnames—which obviously makes total sense, but it means it is very difficult to know who is related to one another and therefore who can procreate.

 

Does anyone know how the surname is chosen?  My first game it seemed to be at random but the second time it has always been the father.  I know you can change the name at birth and I think after but I wonder if it relies on charisma as well?  There's been a large disparity in charisma between the parents so I wonder if that's the case.  I could see that naming issue being a pain when the number of vault dweller jumps up, almost would make me want to sacrifice a few family members to the wasteland just for simplicity.

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Oh, one thing I really like about the game, when you have a child there's random name generator, and then it randomly picks between the father and mother to choose the surname. The first time I got the mom's surname, so I pretty much do that every time now. I probably never would've thought to do that on my own. I also always swap both parents when siring a new child and do it two at a time, after the initial bunch of high CHA Walkers and Armstrongs I got in my first couple batches.

 

Now that I think about it, a hyphenated name would probably be the ideal solution... maybe next time I start a Vault that'll be the experiment.

 

Edit: Now that I think about it, I'm not sure how it chooses the surnames, I assumed it's random but I don't know for sure.

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