A devastating and confusing thing about the Fallout setting, when you explore the pre-war aspects, is what the creators think about pre-war America. In the first games we only get hints of the pre-war world, but they seem to be some sort of wild fascist nation invading Canada. In Fallout 1, the first thing we're introduced to of the pre-war society is seeing a soldier shoot civilians and laughing.
Now, for the first 2 games and New Vegas we don't really know much. What we know is that there's a fascist military group known as the enclave who were a sort of US deep state even before the war, and that the government teamed up with corporate interests to preform vaguely MKULTRA-ish experiments with the Vaults. Basically, the government was an extreme version of the 50s American jingoism and McCarthyism.
This is well and dandy, I guess issues come up more when we get to the later games, especially 4, where it seems like none of this extreme plotting and societal civil unrest which would exist is seen. The society as presented in 4 also seems quite progressive, gay people are featured in the opening, and none of the baggage of say, civil rights not existing are included. Now on a baseline, I don't want settings to be more conservative, homophobic and sexist etc., but it becomes a very confusing setting when it's displayed both as this jingoist extreme thing with fascist tendencies aswell as a progressive place where everyone is seemingly equal. If you're focusing on the 50s as your setting, and American nationalism in the 50s, then you can't have McCarthyism spoofs and anti-communism as a societal paranoia norm while also general equality is the norm without misunderstanding why McCarthyism and nationalist jingoism is bad. A massive harm done in anti-communist paranoia is how it degrades and vilifies any progressive movements (women's rights, civil rights, homosexuality) as being morally un-American and therefore connected to communism. To ignore this just makes any critique of MacCarthyism and jingoism weird!
Basically, pre-war America in Fallout 4 becomes this both sides thing where America is both pure and equal and white fences in every instance that we see as the player (the intro), while also supposedly being this dystopic MacCarthyist hellscape that's broadcasting gladly about their war crimes in Canada, and wants to root out communism. I guess the only fix for this issue without getting into the fine print like they had to do is just not to focus too much on the pre-war world.
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Say hello to the new and independent Fallout Wiki!
Greetings to all of you lovely wastelanders, mutants and robots alike! We come bearing an important announcement, one which might even pique the curiosity of all you nosy prospectors out there.
We’d like to introduce you to the shiny and brand spanking new, Independent Fallout Wiki.
Now, I know, you may be asking to yourself, “Wait, there’s already a Fallout Wiki out there! Why’s this one so dang special?”
Well, if you’d bear with me for a moment, I’ll tell you why!
What is the Independent Fallout Wiki?
Well, the Independent Fallout Wiki is just about as straightforward as it sounds! We all used to be members of another wiki dedicated to Fallout, which is hosted by a company that shall remain nameless. Now, if there’s one thing you should know about this company, it’s that they have very little regard for the community, introducing changes that no one likes, hosting tons of ads and even buying out wiki editors to work for them. We find this (among other things) to be antithetical to our beliefs. We feel that wikis should be in the hands of the community, not a company that refuses to listen to us!
This reached a breaking point earlier this year, along with some events out of our control, which led to the bright idea of forking into independence and starting a new wiki! A wiki that’s truly in the hands of the community. A wiki that is self-hosted and safe from harmful, corporate interests. We don’t have shareholders to please and we don’t answer to anyone. We don’t have ads and we don’t need them, hopefully ever. Content is created by fans, for fans
We are simply wanting to provide the most reliable and accurate source of all things Fallout. We’ve even broke bread with some of the other fantastic independent wikis out there, such as Doom Wiki and Combine Overwiki whom we recommend you check out too!
What kinds of new features are we offering?
We’re glad you asked! As well as offering a trove of accurate, well sourced content about the Fallout franchise (with strict guidelines to ensure the best possible content quality, as all wikis should), we’re offering a new Community space. This will be a place for the community to host all kinds of fan works, such as fanfiction, fan art, creations, roleplaying and tabletop games, pen and paper games, Fallout 76 player CAMPs and, much, much more.
As mentioned before, we have affiliated with many other independent wiki projects, including the Doom Wiki, Combine OverWiki, JoJo’s Bizarre Encyclopedia, StrategyWiki, Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages, and even Halopedia! We’re also proud members of the Gaming Wiki Network, and soon, we’ll even be affiliated with NIWA, the Nintendo Independent Wiki Alliance. These affiliations will offer mutual aid and support that will help every wiki in the short-term and long-term. We are looking forward to working with them, for we all share the same goals!
How can we help and how can we be apart of the community?
We welcome anyone who wishes to join our community. It doesn’t matter if you’re an editor or reader. We are all fans of Fallout and we encourage you to join our community! If you are a non-editor and are only looking for information about something from the Fallout franchise, click this here link! https://fallout.wiki/wiki/Fallout_Wiki/
If you are interested in becoming an editor and want to fight the good fight to help rewrite content and smashing misinformation and head-canon, click this other here link! https://fallout.wiki/wiki/Special:UserLogin
While you’re there, check out our LGBTQ representation page. It was written by the lovely robot, C0NN1E here on Tumblr!:
https://fallout.wiki/wiki/LGBTQ_representation_in_Fallout
We welcome all members of the LGBTQ+, MOGAI, GSRM, Plural and Otherkin communities with open arms!
Last, but not least, if you’d like to be apart of our wider social community, you can follow us here on Tumblr, on Twitter, check out our Instagram or join our Discord, right here below, right now! We even got a fresh, custom invite link!
https://discord.gg/falloutwiki
https://twitter.com/thefalloutwiki
https://www.instagram.com/thefalloutwiki/
Well, that about wraps up this little segment of ours. We hope you enjoy this project as much as we do. We put a lot of time, effort and care into it and we want to give back to the people that we love the most, the community. Have safe travels out there, and we hope to see you around!
END OF BROADCAST
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