undeadcourier - Tumblr blog

[undeadcourier]

rex and arcade

[undeadcourier]

Ghoul Dolly Parton

Because if anyone deserves to survive the nuclear apocalypse, it's this legend. Shout out to @newvegascowboy for the idea (in this post)

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Arcade Gannon in that one armor (forgot the name)

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[ID: a black and white sketch of the Sole Survivor and X6-88 from Fallout 4. Sole is an older Black woman with a face & neck tattoo, wearing a du-rag on her head. She is smiling and looking at X6, who stands behind her, covering his face and nearly doubling over with laughter. End ID]

draw your favorite Black characters happy and smiling TODAY ‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️

[undeadcourier]

anyways if you want to read a Black fallout fanfic writer's very short and unorganized reimagining of the story from the lens of a Black woman character read a mirror is harder to hold. Black love and joy and interiority and complexity above all

[undeadcourier]

The two most popular reads of the synth plight in Fallout 4 are that of the race allegory and the Red Scare/McCarthyist allegory. In the former example, synths get racialized in a similar way to Black Americans in the late 19th and early 20th century, but just barely. The Underground Railroad is quite literally remade, synths are subjected to slavery at the hands of their human creators and punished harshly for escape attempts. Others have likened synths to fears of immigrants or asylum-seekers from nonwhite majority populations. Synths in these imaginings of Fallout 4 are painted as needing to be saved at the same time as they are vilified and dehumanized – sometimes by the same character over the course of the story. This duality could be a great opportunity for a dive into how white saviorism tends to play out, but in reality it ends up being a messy, deeply uncritical exploration of the impact of race and racism in society. The factions doing the racialization and/or saviorism’s motives are never questioned, and there is a very clear depiction of “good vs. evil” being the end-all-be-all of anti-racism work (again, with no critical thought as to how the “good” side is made almost completely of non-racialized people making decisions on behalf of a marginalized group). Worse yet, it’s contrived. The android-racism analogy has been a thorn in the side of the science fiction genre ever since Isaac Asimov wrote the 3 Laws of Robotics. There’s very few iterations on the idea that have come from popular (white, Eurocentric) media that aren’t riddled with the same aftertaste of white guilt and fundamental misunderstandings of how racism plays out in day-to-day life.

The less common, slightly more agreeable interpretation is that of the Red Scare – which, given Fallout’s inspirations and the setting’s original critique of reliving America’s “good old days”, makes perfect sense. In this example, synths take the role of the Soviet spy: watching over everything Americans are doing and reporting back to a secret base that is plotting to overthrow the world as we know it. Psychological screenings as well as inhumane tortures are utilized to pick synth “spies” out from the good, red-blooded residents of the Commonwealth. A neighborhood is founded entirely around the protection of the “old ways of life”, complete with a white picket fence comically decorated with automatic machine gun turrets. While this is a more charitable analogy that’s grounded in a slightly-deeper-than-surface-level exploration of American history, the Red Scare interpretation is victim to the same pitfalls that plague the racism interpretation. Midway through the game, the player discovers that there actually is a secret base of evil villains hiding underneath our feet, plotting to annihilate our beautiful Commonwealth lives. People do get taken and replaced by synths, they are in our governments, there is an actual reason for synths to be feared. Sure, some synths are perfectly fine people with no wish to be made tools of the Institute’s tyranny, but that is greatly overshadowed by the fact that the Institute’s stated goal is to use synths to gain control over the Commonwealth. There is no real critique of McCarthyism, there is no ideology to be challenged, because the Communists are here and killing your loved ones in their sleep.

[undeadcourier]

as a Wretched East Coast Fan i will always always side with Stuck Up West Coast Fans wrt the themes and functionality of fallout as a series because frankly in comparison (and excluding some of my longtime mutuals) i have never felt more scrutinized and unwelcome than in hypersensitive 3/4/76 spaces that see any frustration or expressions of negativity at the state of the franchise as an attack on community wellbeing.

seeing a passion of mine for the past 10 years -- digging into the worlds of fallout and their political explorations, or lack-thereof -- be reduced to "fandom wank" and an inability to let people have fun is disheartening. and honestly demeans the exceptional amount of time, energy, and thought me & MANY others have put into piecing together lore and themes and creating interpretive meta.

i understand this seems like A Lot for people who may have just started following me but this is not the first nor will it be the last time well-established critiques of the later fallout games made by people of color or queer people have been reduced to fandom drama and im kind of fucking sick of it. and honestly im kinda tired of being nice about it

[undeadcourier]

based on my experience of getting kicked out of every casino on the strip while having arcade follow me around like a child forced to watch their parent go bankrupt

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FOUND family??? you think i just found them like this??? babes this is FORGED family. Me & the bros were scrap metal in a junkyard (very valuable, very sharp, very dangerous, uncared for) and we GOT IN THE FUCKING FIRE TOGETHER. WE did this. we said I AM NOT LEAVING YOU and melted into each other for better or for worse (it’s for better) and we are A FUNCTIONAL UNIT now. DO NOT SEPARATE. BATTERIES FUCKING INCLUDED. FOUND family my ass, we built this non-nuclear family unit from the ground up, don’t devalue this!!! it was is and will be a labour of love!!!

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fallout sticker designs!!

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I'd rather take my whiskey neat My coffee black and my bed at three You're too sweet for me

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he gets his own post

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little arcade. hello

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Rory (my oc) and fnv boys

+ a little bit of benny gecko

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ben jammin

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it just occurred to me that the reason rex hates hats could be that as a legion cyberdog, he was trained to react aggressively toward ncr troops who typically wear helmets and/or legion officers wearing helmets

[undeadcourier]

Worked very hard today and had a stressful week. I deserve a little sketch of Mac in a tight t-shirt. As a treat.

And you deserve a treat, too, so I’m sharing.