Fallout new Vegas if it was made in 2024

devastatingly true

A nuclear event would be a tragedy but also, an opportunity. Perhaps the greatest opportunity in history. Because when we are the only ones left, there will be no one to fight. A true monopoly. This is our chance to make war obsolete. Because in our current societal configuration, which took shape without intentional guidance, we have friction. We have conflict, and we have war. And war, well... War never changes. FALLOUT (2024)

read your criticism and have a genuine question about your thoughts on the branding scene. i completely understand how max's branding is inherently tied to a racist history, and it always will be, but i dont feel like the scene itself was written with that bias/intent. thaddeus also gets branded in later episodes and it's implied to happen to every aspirant upon their promotion. at what point in writing are black characters morally barred from specific story points because of their similarities to a history that's not directly related? sort of similar with barb, at what point can black characters not do bad things at all, especially in a story where there are near a dozen non-black characters who do worse things? also considering it's implied (at least, i understood it as) she's sticking to vault-tec to protect her family?

I am not in the best position to comment on this, because I am not black. I will do my best to add what I can, but this is a space for others to chime in.

Barb is interesting because she's essentially become the person who did the most heinous crime in the entire setting- by far and away worse than anything anyone has ever done. There really aren't white characters who did worse things- because all the crimes of Caesar or the Enclave or whoever else pale in comparison to being the one who literally set into motion the total annihilation of all nations on Earth. (This is setting aside her willing participation in the inception of the vault experiments- which is an entirely separate also horrific crime.)

The issue is they've created a setting that is, as presented, colorblind. Race is invisible to the writers, who did not consider it meaningfully while producing the show- as is often the case with white creatives putting characters of color into their stories. Colorblindness does not always produce entirely racist results- and when done with tact and intentionality it can even be revolutionary. Look at the relative inclusivity of star trek as an example, and the radical depiction of Uhura in the original series.

The thing that makes Fallout different from Star Trek however is that it is not depicting its colorblind future with tact and intentionality. This is a show that is intensely concerned with depicting the specific brand of nationalistic American politics of the 1950s and the Cold War- and they've reproduced that system for the show but with a black woman at the head. That's where the issue comes up.

This was a system that had racism baked into it by design. It still does. American Nationalism and corporate violence are built on racism against black people and other minorities. And this show desperately wants to depict these things, but they've decided to put a black woman at the head of them. They're depicting systems that are, by their nature, violently racist- but they've decided to portray them as being run by a black housewife.

Fallout 3 does a similar thing with how it depicts every major slaver as a black person. Eulogy Jones, the slave buyer at Paradise Falls, the head slaver in the Abe Lincoln memorial, Ashur in The Pitt. Hell Mothership Zeta adds in a black woman from the wasteland and even SHE'S revealed to have been a slaver. This is something Bethesda consistently does- depicting ideologies and practices with a deep history of racialized violence- and then showing black people at the head of them, seemingly to try to avoid actually addressing any aspect of racism in their stories outside of hamfisted metaphors like synths and ghouls. (I use Fallout 3 as an example but Fallout 4 does many of these same things.)

Thaddeus does also get branded, and he does also get treated to the same demeaning servanthood as Maximus. The difference, quite frankly, is that Thaddeus is white. There are just some things that are straight up inappropriate to depict happening to black characters without appropriate thoughtfulness and context. Never before this series has the Brotherhood ever done brandings- and yet this show opens with it in the first episode and introduces this brand new jarring concept with the visceral image of a black man being branded by faceless fascist cultists.

It's also important to note that even if they didn't intend the scene as racist, it still is. Like I don't think the scriptwriter sat down and said "oh I'm gonna do a racism" cuz intent just doesn't matter here. The scene was intended as a way of showing the severity of the brotherhood- but it also thoughtlessly reproduces images of historic black violence.

@orange-coloredsky I know you've been talking about this stuff all day, and your initial posts about the antiblack racism in the series were what prompted me to write my thoughts today- which is what this ask is in response to. I was curious if you have any other input with all this.

I'd also be more than happy to have any additional input from people better suited to answer these questions.

Thinking about how each protagonist in the Fallout TV show believes themselves to be the last true American because each of them is a different kind of American myth. Is being an American all about getting to be the lone gunslinger who exists in a world without rules or limitations? Is it about being controlled by a corporation in a hyper-consumptive society that only gives you the illusion of free choice? Is it about being in control of such overwhelmingly dominant military technology that you believe your power grants you the responsibility of being the world's moral authority? Let's do some drugs about it.

/r/falloutlore is probably the worst subreddit because every discussion there is like, the opposite of worldbuilding. It’s worldunbuilding. There was a post that was like “how do wastelanders know how old they are?” and all the responses were something along the lines of “well The Lore never explicitly states that people use calendars, so most rural [read: uneducated] wastelanders probably have no idea what year it is or how old they are. The ones who have computers know everything perfectly because computers have internal clocks :)”. 

Like, ignoring how insanely and disgustingly classist that is, it doesn’t even make sense? A lot of wastelanders are farmers, who have to know what season it is in order to know when to sow, when to plant, and when to harvest. Most early civilizations would develop some sort of calendar shortly after agriculture as the necessary next step. 

And then, from there, you could speculate about post-war harvest celebrations. How do wastelanders celebrate the end of the harvest season? What sort of rudimentary holidays do they celebrate? We know that Diamond City celebrates Christmas and Halloween, what other old-world holidays are celebrated? There’s so much speculative worldbuilding you could do but they insist on stopping at “akshually The Lore doesn’t say that they have calendars so I don’t think they do :)”

⚙️ | "i started out as nothing, and i’ve ended up as nothing...and i don't know what the hell to do about it." - ‘nother 2021 redraw

tbh i liked this version better but oh well.

"You need to leave."

what r u looking at 🤨🤨🤨🤨

Just a couple of fellow working girls

COURIER SIX

Ramshackle Dwellings by Simon Laveuve Reach Skyward in an Imagined Post-Apocalyptic Future

really love him, dont know why....