I need to give you all a bit of background.
I've been a DEVO fan for 35 years. I wish that I could say I've seen them live or have met them in person, but I can't. Life sucks like that sometimes. My other big obsession is CRPGs, or Computer Roleplaying Games. Those I've been playing for almost as long as I've loved DEVO. Long story short, the two have finally converged into what I hope will become one big and hopefully entertaining work of fanfiction.
I've been writing since I was 12, have done two novels (both of them for the yearly National November Novel Writing Mo contest (NaNoWriMo) in which you bang out 50,000 words in thirty days. Believe me when I say that the results are not high literature. They're not bad, though. This was going to be for this year's event, but it can't wait any longer. My muses are bossy bastards (especially one, and he knows who he is) but I love them anyway. I've done a couple of poems (published), some song lyrics (too crappy to think about, and lost to history), and more than a few fanfics (mostly Elder Scrolls and Fallout 3). They're on my Livejournal, and are all rough draft quality, so readers beware.
The two great loves of my life came together recently. I'd had some ideas for DEVO themed mods for Fallout 3 (come on, who wouldn't want to travel the DC Wasteland wearing an energy dome and wielding a whip?) but my 3D modelling and texturing skills are zero at best. No one seemed interested in collaborating, so I put the idea on the backburner.
But it wouldn't go away. Somehow, (at least in my head) the retro--future look of the Fallout series and DEVO go together. Perhaps if Mankind had heeded the warnings about De-evolution, World War 3 would not have come to pass. But in the end, we're all DEVO, and war...
...war never changes.
So what's it about? I hear you asking. That's easy enough: despite the cultural setting of the Fallout Universe, the 1980s would still have existed, and in my mind, DEVO would have as well. To keep from straying too far from the Fallout timeline, they just came along in the early 2040s, instead of the late 1970's They would have been no different than we all know and love: after all, they're self-described mutants.
Now imagine that when the shit hit the fan, they acquired some actual mutations (Science! lol, not really, but I can't say "A wizard did it" in Fallout) and have turned the remnants of Akron, Ohio into a safe and thriving community for mutants of all kinds. (I am no Loredinator. Just because in game canon only Super Mutants and Ghouls exist doesn't mean there can't be other sorts. Just look at Harold and his friend Bob aka Herbert.) Imagine there's a thriving trade between this community and one that sprung up nearby, a town of 'normals'. Imagine all goes well, until one day, suddenly, it doesn't.
One day, under orders from their leaders (and if you can't figure out who those leaders are, I invite you to read this all again. Along with the rest our favorite mutants have managed to survive the past two hundred years. Ghouls have slowed aging, so why not? Besides, reasons will be revealed, once they feel like telling our protagonist their story), the gates of steel close... and do not reopen.
The Normals are going to be in trouble. There's Super Mutants, Outcast Brotherhood of Steel, and other threats to deal with. They don't need to be cut off from the rest of Ohio (their tradelines pass through Akron).
Obviously, they need to find out what's going on. So they send one of their own, a social (if not outright physical and mental) misfit--mutant if you will--named Shae Richardson to go and find out what's going on. The story will detail Shae's path as she talks with the mutant leaders (I for one welcome our DEVO overlords), earns their trust, discovers what's going on, runs some fetch quests, has some misadventures, and it all keeps coming back to the themes in their music, their words, and the guys themselves.
If all goes well, my panned time schedule is a new chapter every 1-2 weeks.
Legalese and Disclaimers: I do not own the Fallout Series. That belongs to Bethesda. DEVO belong to themselves, not me (but they're welcome to hang out here all they want, any time). If asked by either part to cease and desist, then that's that.
Furthermore, no real life person in the story is being portrayed or intended to be portrayed as "This is the real deal". Anything written is extrapolated from interviews, videos, my own imagination, and intuition. Don't sue me, bro!
Duty now! Prepare for the Future.
I've been a DEVO fan for 35 years. I wish that I could say I've seen them live or have met them in person, but I can't. Life sucks like that sometimes. My other big obsession is CRPGs, or Computer Roleplaying Games. Those I've been playing for almost as long as I've loved DEVO. Long story short, the two have finally converged into what I hope will become one big and hopefully entertaining work of fanfiction.
I've been writing since I was 12, have done two novels (both of them for the yearly National November Novel Writing Mo contest (NaNoWriMo) in which you bang out 50,000 words in thirty days. Believe me when I say that the results are not high literature. They're not bad, though. This was going to be for this year's event, but it can't wait any longer. My muses are bossy bastards (especially one, and he knows who he is) but I love them anyway. I've done a couple of poems (published), some song lyrics (too crappy to think about, and lost to history), and more than a few fanfics (mostly Elder Scrolls and Fallout 3). They're on my Livejournal, and are all rough draft quality, so readers beware.
The two great loves of my life came together recently. I'd had some ideas for DEVO themed mods for Fallout 3 (come on, who wouldn't want to travel the DC Wasteland wearing an energy dome and wielding a whip?) but my 3D modelling and texturing skills are zero at best. No one seemed interested in collaborating, so I put the idea on the backburner.
But it wouldn't go away. Somehow, (at least in my head) the retro--future look of the Fallout series and DEVO go together. Perhaps if Mankind had heeded the warnings about De-evolution, World War 3 would not have come to pass. But in the end, we're all DEVO, and war...
...war never changes.
So what's it about? I hear you asking. That's easy enough: despite the cultural setting of the Fallout Universe, the 1980s would still have existed, and in my mind, DEVO would have as well. To keep from straying too far from the Fallout timeline, they just came along in the early 2040s, instead of the late 1970's They would have been no different than we all know and love: after all, they're self-described mutants.
Now imagine that when the shit hit the fan, they acquired some actual mutations (Science! lol, not really, but I can't say "A wizard did it" in Fallout) and have turned the remnants of Akron, Ohio into a safe and thriving community for mutants of all kinds. (I am no Loredinator. Just because in game canon only Super Mutants and Ghouls exist doesn't mean there can't be other sorts. Just look at Harold and his friend Bob aka Herbert.) Imagine there's a thriving trade between this community and one that sprung up nearby, a town of 'normals'. Imagine all goes well, until one day, suddenly, it doesn't.
One day, under orders from their leaders (and if you can't figure out who those leaders are, I invite you to read this all again. Along with the rest our favorite mutants have managed to survive the past two hundred years. Ghouls have slowed aging, so why not? Besides, reasons will be revealed, once they feel like telling our protagonist their story), the gates of steel close... and do not reopen.
The Normals are going to be in trouble. There's Super Mutants, Outcast Brotherhood of Steel, and other threats to deal with. They don't need to be cut off from the rest of Ohio (their tradelines pass through Akron).
Obviously, they need to find out what's going on. So they send one of their own, a social (if not outright physical and mental) misfit--mutant if you will--named Shae Richardson to go and find out what's going on. The story will detail Shae's path as she talks with the mutant leaders (I for one welcome our DEVO overlords), earns their trust, discovers what's going on, runs some fetch quests, has some misadventures, and it all keeps coming back to the themes in their music, their words, and the guys themselves.
If all goes well, my panned time schedule is a new chapter every 1-2 weeks.
Legalese and Disclaimers: I do not own the Fallout Series. That belongs to Bethesda. DEVO belong to themselves, not me (but they're welcome to hang out here all they want, any time). If asked by either part to cease and desist, then that's that.
Furthermore, no real life person in the story is being portrayed or intended to be portrayed as "This is the real deal". Anything written is extrapolated from interviews, videos, my own imagination, and intuition. Don't sue me, bro!
Duty now! Prepare for the Future.
The Amazing Colossal FAQ
Q: Why?
A: Why the hell not?
Q: Seriously, Whyyyyyy? Are you some kind of obsessed weirdo?
A: Yes. But no more obsessed than any other fan of Devo. Weirdo? I resemble that remark :D
Besides, there's a My Little Pony: Friendship is magic (tm) crossover with Fallout. So why not Devo with Fallout?
Q: Are you worried that the band will find out about this?
A: Why should I be worried? It's not like I'm writing slash. Besides, the characters are, as stated above:
Furthermore, no real life person in the story is being portrayed or intended to be portrayed as "This is the real deal". Anything written is extrapolated from interviews, videos, my own imagination, and intuition. Don't sue me, bro!
And truthfully, I'm kind of hoping they do. They love fan art, and writing is another art form. Mind, if I ever had a confirmation from anyone in the band that they were reading this, you'd hear me screaming all the way over in Akron (I'm in Denver, so that's pretty damn loud).
Q: How big is the role of the band in the story? In other words, do they appear frequently?
A: As frequently as the story allows, meaning I won't shoehorn them in, but they and their ideas appear often enough to justify the theme and title.
In the aforementioned Fallout: Equestria, the Mane Six have a strong presence in the story, but the story is really that of Little Pip and her friends. The band appears more frequently in my story, but again, I want their part in things to be natural, not forced.
Q: Who are the main characters, if not the band themselves?
A: The main protagonist is Shae Richardson. She's 28 years old, and something of a social and mental mutant. She's an electronics expert, and a foul-mouthed smartass with a heart of gold. she's basically a good person thrust into a difficult situation.
Next, we have Edgar Price, a ghoul with a mysterious past. He was surviving in the ruins of Akron when Devo emerge from a centuries-long stasis (remember how they used to talk about having their own genetics labs and stuff? I took that and ran with it) into the wasteland, Edgar is the first to find them, lost and disoriented, and with some interesting mutations. Edgar helps them get their bearings in the new world, and together they found a thriving mutant community in Akron.
And of course, Devo themselves. Bear in mind: this is obviously a heavily fictionalized version. I tried to create appropriate personalities for them, based on their own brand of lore (can a band have lore? I think so), interviews, videos, extrapolation, and my imagination.
I gave each band member specific mutations which I felt were fitting. Not all of it comes forward in the first meetings with Shae, but you see enough to know that whatever they were diddling with before the war in those labs, it took.
Q: But those aren't Fallout lore based...
A: Nope. But lore isn't static. It evolves over time. Harold didn't have a tree growing out of his head in Fallout 1. The Commonwealth wasn't a thing before Fallout 3. and so on. My inspiration for the mutants of Akron is a bit of Fallout and its spiritual grandfather, Wasteland, sci-fantasy games such as Gamma World, movies like A Boy and His Dog, and the old Hiero's Journey novels by Sterling Lanier.
Q: So out of curiosity, at what point in their career was the band when they shut themselves away from humanity?
A: I felt that the early 90s, right after "Smooth Noodle Maps", was ideal. They were all quite young still, they would have been sufficiently disgusted with humanity while at the same time still having some small hope that perhaps one day their message might be heard, and for obvious reasons, I'm not digging too closely into their real lives and connecting such to the story. Consider this an Alternate Universe fic, which it certainly is.
Q: Admit it! Shae Richardson is an author avatar/self-insert/Mary Sue. So out with it: Which of the band is she getting set up with?
She's none of those things. Shae is prettier, but I'm sexier :D
As for whom she hooks up with, well, read it and find out. I am neither confirming nor denying such a thing. it will depend on the story and the direction it takes. In other words, it's up to the characters, not me.
q: Since this is an AU fic, are Alan and Bob 2 in the story?
A: Absolutely. I was heartbroken to hear of their passing. I obviously didn't know either man, but I hope that their characters in-story will pay some tribute to them all the same.
Q: I did some fan art/a video/something else for you...
A: Awesome! Send me a link, and I'll share it. You get full credit, of course.
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