Fallout: The Amazon Series

Yeah, he's honestly not dumb per se, he just has really bad instincts.

I'd say the issue is that the SPECIAL system doesn't really differentiate intelligence and wisdom per se, so someone who's technically intelligent but has poor judgement is a bit hard to mechanically represent.

In fact, I'd actually argue that's perhaps more of a "player skill" thing.

Saw a particularly brutal critique of the show on tumblr that I honestly don't completely disagree with, pointing out how from their perspective at least the show actually has some deeply regressive and borderline hateful politics buried under the surface if you squint hard enough.

To whit:

There's more the critique in question goes into, and they do a far better job of it than me in fewer words, covering far more than I did here. And neither I, nor the person who wrote the critique really consider any of this to be intentional, necessarily, at least not in the sense that it's trying to promote an agenda or anything. But I do agree that there is... definitely a rotten smell of some kind under the surface of it all, all things considered.

Edited by Dirtyblue929 on Apr 15th 2024 at 9:37:41 AM

Speaking of, I do like how the 3 leads represent different takes on the player character. Max is definitely a take on the type that jumps at the "obvious" good choice, only to find out after the fact that things are a bit more grey than that.

x3: Granted, it does seem like the Brotherhood has been keeping its younger members woefully under-educated, if Max's total lack of sexual education is any indication, so a low Intelligence could also be justified for him even accounting for the difference between intelligence and wisdom.

It also speaks to what Elder Cleric Quintus sees as the Brotherhood's standards having plummeted so badly a guy like Titus became a knight and when Maximus reported his death to Quintus in person he didn't act the least bit surprised that Titus was an abusive coward to the end.

The Fallout 4 Brotherhood also had a weird hangup about sex, at least enough to make it part of their questionaire for new members.

I didn't interpret Maximus as totally ignorant so much as high off his gord on the medicine.

Also extremely shy around a girl.

@Dirtyblue

I think their logic is...flawed. Especially as the franchise is so starkly Pro-Left that it's weird to act like its politics are somehow the opposite.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Apr 15th 2024 at 10:15:59 AM

I think an important distinction you're missing that the person in question picked up on (this isn't Suspiciously Specific Denial or …But He Sounds Handsome, despite what you implied before editing your post; this is legit something I saw elsewhere and don't have a link to on hand at the moment) — with regards to the first point, the difference you seem to be missing that I think underpins why it doesn't work for me, and why they were able to read this into it, and why I think it's a valid reading... is that Vault-Tec explicitly isn't doing this for money. This isn't like the real conspiracies you cited where the goal was for the military-industrial complex to get rich off a war they believed they could win, or at least wouldn't harm them.

IIRC Barb Howard explicitly rails against the existing capitalist, nationalist systems the world runs on that have driven mankind to the brink of destruction... before going off about how they should speed that destruction up so that the enlightened folk like herself, House, Sinclair, and others can guide humanity's rebuilding. It's an explicitly ideologically motivated plan rather than a profit motivated one. And again, the fact that it's a black woman spouting this ideology while her white, southern husband reacts with horror is... probably not intentional framing but certainly not good framing.

I don't disagree that the franchise has always been very left-wing, but it's always been at its most left-wing when it's in the hands of the original creators. Starfield was perhaps the most flagrantly libertarian game I've played in my life, and Amazon... well, Amazon is Amazon. You know they're not particularly interested in critiquing the actual systems and ideologies behind capitalism.

Edited by Dirtyblue929 on Apr 15th 2024 at 10:23:22 AM

Thank you for your response, I rewrote my answer several times and regret some of the earlier versions as being unclear.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Apr 15th 2024 at 10:27:25 AM

All valid points. I think as always some nuance is lost in the game of telephone here, as I recall one of the followup posts I saw from the same person (still trying to find the exact blogpost, honestly might not bother to post it anyway since it's clearly a little contentious and I don't want to potentially trigger any drama exportation) was that as mentioned at the end of my original comment, they don't necessarily think this is all intentional framing but more likely the result of a mostly white, decently wealthy, "middle-ish of the political compass" writing and producing staff who didn't give much in the way of consideration to the implications.

Like... the branding scene, I've noted elsewhere in convos to other people, reminds quite a bit of the weird initiation ceremonies that medieval knightly orders would have (the Templars in particular), and the internal culture really does do a good job of mixing those sorts of things with the more toxic traits of modern militaries. It's almost definitely the vibe they were going for, and it does great at it!

But the fact that they're doing it to their black lead, who is also constantly shit on and humiliated and is a total snake for much of the story... isn't a great look. Much in the same way people complained about Finn in the Star Wars sequels getting completely shafted by the narrative at times. It's not so much that anyone thinks the writers and producers at disney were consciously racist, they just... didn't respect their black lead.

Edited by Dirtyblue929 on Apr 16th 2024 at 9:48:11 AM

Possibly true.

I feel the show leaving out the Enclave and government for pure corporate conspiracy is a bit of a dodge.

It acts like the USA wasn't involved in starting the war but the "evil" Corps alone.

Regarding Vault-Tec, I will say it's worth noting that for such a group to come into power requires institutional failings. This is actually pointed out in the story itself with talk about fiduciary responsibility and whatnot. Plus, they only launched the nukes, there's no confirmation that they started the war.

Now, Vault-Tec and Enclave are rooted in conspiracy theory concepts. I really don't think highly of conspiracy theories, and I'm admittedly a bit of a nationalistic drone that Fallout likes to poke fun at. Having said that, it's a bit silly to say all conspiracy tropes are innately antisemitic, especially since Enclave is so explicitly nationalistic

It's a weird time because there's absolutely a bunch of real life conspiracies and criminal activity by high level politicians and coverups by corporations going on in the news right now out in the open.

But, well, the conspiracy theorists ignore all of that to point at the people not involved and even are allied with these Far Right groups.

Which I suppose they always were.

Or TLDR, "Hitler was part of a conspiracy to overthrow the government and allied with corporations. But he justified it with conspiracy theories."

W/ regards to Vault-Tec, it's pretty much what you'd expect corporations to do once they feel that the governments they leech off of has outlived its usefulness. On the other hand, there is a rather vocal group of conservatives & rightwingers, most prevalent in geek spaces like video games, who honestly believe that non-military corporations such as Amazon, Sony, Paramount and Disney are even more evil than military-associated corporations such as Lockheed, Northrop Grumann and even Blackwater bec they see the former as making nonwhite people and LGBT people more visible and less stereotypical, blame these corporations for them no longer able to openly use slurs such as the N word as well as insisting that these non-military corporations and leftists invented racism as a means to distract people while the corporations and leftists usher in the cyberpunk dystopia. Of course, these jackasses use their anti-corporation stance as a means to justify their own racism and LGBTphobia. And I've had the displeasure of knowing these people in real life.

Edited by KRider on Apr 16th 2024 at 5:55:28 AM

Regarding Vegas... anyone else thinks the reason why it looks abandoned is due to getting hit by its own share of Vault-Tek fuckery post-FNV?

Could be. Maybe Vault 21 got the last laugh over House after all?

Actually, now that I think about it... again, I don't necessarily think this is intentional, but it's definitely not a good look how, to my recollection, every major black character in the show is a duplicitous snake to some degree.

• Maximus: As discussed, he lies, manipulates, takes sadistic glee in bullying the person who bullied him even as it becomes clear the guy is a victim too, only letting up after the guy risks his life for him, then tries to kill him for not being willing to help him cover up his mistakes... He gets better but he's by far the most deceptive and weaselly of the main trio.
• Barb Howard: Presents as a loving and considerate girlboss trying to preserve humanity in the event of disaster but turns out to be a megalomaniacal supervillain advocating for global genocide to bring forth a new utopia under the enlightened leadership of her and her fellow elites.
• Betty Pearson: Immediately uses Hank's kidnapping as an opportunity to seize power within the Vault, leaving him for dead, becomes increasingly sus as the relationship between the three Vaults is explored to a deeper degree and turns out to be a pre-war member of Barb's conspiracy, thus being directly complicit in global nuclear holocaust and the destruction of the NCR.

And another point about the shows politics I forgot until writing about Betty — they really kind of portray Norm as being 100% in the right to want the death penalty for the raiders who attacked the vault, don't they? The whole scene of the 33 dwellers discussing the concept of rehabilitation is treated like a joke, and Norm's suggestion to execute them being shouted down treated like a portent of doom.

And yeah, I understand that it's far from a 1:1 to IRL debates about the application of the death penalty, and that in the specific context the show constructed for this situation it is, almost inarguably, justified, but... that's kind of my point? They could have written this in a lot of different ways, but they chose to make it a situation where innocent fools think they can rehabilitate bloodthirsty psychopaths who will never ever change, and the one person brave enough to suggest doing what needs to be done is shouted down.

Like, Moldaver is leading remnant NCR forces, right? They could have had these guys turn out to be surprisingly reasonable, in a twist on your expectations. Ex-military who lost their way and were given hope by an ideologue. The Vault's people, driven by fear, call for their exile or death, and Norm is the only one brave enough to talk to them and listen. Heck it would make a lot more sense given Betty & the other V31 folks' apparent desire to ensure that the inhabitants of 33 never learn anything about life on the surface, and IMO would fit better with Norm's arc of questioning and rebelling against authority and groupthink. But no, the raiders are portrayed as a bunch of screeching, howling animals every time we see them in captivity and Norm's assessment of them by all accounts appears to be 100% accurate :P

Edited by Dirtyblue929 on Apr 16th 2024 at 10:19:05 AM

I'll say that the Captured Raiders are...consistent with how Raiders have been depicted in the series going all the way back.

Raiders in general are rather cartoonish. I buy that in the post-apocalypse there'd be a lot of tribes/gangs that'd engage in violent raids and brutal atrocities, but Fallout tends to portray them as a caricature entirely revolving around murder-theft, drugs, and rape.

It's not specifically that they're being depicted as evil, just that they're depicted as a cardboard cut-out of evil. To use an example, The Legion is basically a non-cartoonish Raider clan.

And that's fair, but it's still a strange and unfortunate choice, especially in the context of the story they were telling with Moldaver and her NCR remnants vs the Vault Illuminati and all the... other unfortunate choices the show makes.

Again, need to reiterate that I don't think any of this is intentionally promoting any kind of ideology or political agenda, but it definitely feels like they weren't giving much thought to how decisions like having 2/3 of your major named black characters be outright villains and all of them be manipulators, or naming a character who spends most of the show as a severed head being tossed around like a football as a joke after a famous holocaust survivor.

"like having 2/3 of your major named black characters be outright villains and all of them be manipulators"

I do understand your point, but I personally think that, if there's clearly no racist motives, and if the characters aren't caricatures, then there isn't an issue if all of the black characters just happen to be flawed or villainous. It's not like there's many characters who aren't very, very flawed and in the case of the black characters there's still a variety between them (at least from what I've watched so far). So it's just flawed/manipulative characters who are black, instead of suggesting that black people as a whole are flawed/manipulative.

Edited by king15 on Apr 16th 2024 at 6:22:30 PM

There were also several villainous or flawed characters that weren't black.

, That's entirely fair, and again, I'm not saying that there was an intent to send that message there or even that it really sends that vibe if you aren't squinting really hard or primed, for better or worse, to suspect that sort of vibe from a piece of media.

But it is a pitfall of trying to be completely 100% colorblind with your casting, that you can wind up with all the black actors in the show playing either extras or really shitty people while the white actors get a wider range of roles. It is something that can happen by accident, but it's something that you should be really careful about IMO, and in this case I don't think they really put much thought into it — again, for better or worse.

Edited by Dirtyblue929 on Apr 16th 2024 at 11:36:26 AM

I will also say that I don't find Max to be especially unsympathetic. Sure, he does lie, but he's in a situation where telling the truth might get him killed. And I don't think his lies actually cause any harm.