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deepest-dope · 2 years

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Here’s a bit of Cave Mann fiction, his first ever actual meeting with Great Khans, that I’m going to blame evacuate-the-mojave for because I went through all his posts about Jessup and it ended up making me love the man and his brothers. for context of why I don’t ever use Cave’s name it’s because this is after he forgets the name his parents gave him but before his friends start calling him Caveman (which becomes Cave Mann when he gets arrested and sent to NCRCF)

He’s crouched behind some rocks, breathing as quietly as he can, poking his head over to check on the NCR patrol regularly, nerves burning with anxiety and perhaps a little sunburn. The troops haven’t noticed shit because the NCR doesn’t teach them how to tell when they’re being stalked for some reason but there's no way the Khans across the road haven’t seen him. He grits his teeth and squats back down, trying to subtly scoot himself into what little shade the stone will give him. Maybe they’re just scouts and will leave him and the squad of soldiers alone for now? But that might be a bit too much to hope for, even not knowing much about Great Khans favored raiding tactics he’s pretty sure scouts don’t stalk anyone like this.

Fuck. He desperately needs the supplies these troops are carrying. He’s not going to last long out here on his own without food and water. He has to get supplies here and now. There’s no way in hell he’s gonna be able to fight the Khans and the NCR troopers one after the other but that’s fine probably, he just needs to adjust his original plan of “creeping up onto the patrol while most of them are asleep” to “wait for the Khans to strike then run through and snatch something in the confusion”. It’s a fine plan, one that's worked for many a Jackal before him. Plus the Khans are doing pretty well for themselves out in the mojave. They probably won’t miss what he takes.

He pokes his head over the rock to check on the troops again, ends up making accidental eye contact with one of the Khans, one with screaming bright orange hair and tries to grin, to set them at ease? Let them know he’s a Jackal so not interested in a fight? He’s not quite sure in or after that moment but judging by the look on the Khan’s face it’s more like he bared his teeth in a threat display. He ducks back down for now. Screw it all he’s just going to snatch and dash with the nearest duffel bag to him.

He can feel the sunset coming on already, just a matter of time, he can’t see or hear shit the khans are doing from where he’s crouched but he knows that like the Jackals, Great Khans sensibly prefer to do most work at night, instead of toiling away in the scorching hot desert wearing layers of clothing under armor like the NCR seems set on doing. For some reason. He’s never claimed to know what goes on in any NCR citizens head, let alone what made General Oliver think full length sleeves under breast plate with gloves and arm wraps cutting off any potential airflow was the way to go in the desert but he’s never going to complain about being able to pick free supplies off soldiers collapsed from heatstroke, especially not now that he’s on his own.

The sun starts to set, he watches the sky from his blanket of shadow and waits for the telltale sound of Great Khans jumping NCR recruits. He shifts to a sort of sprinters crouch, peeking beyond the rock to pick out the trooper closest to his side of the road, catches the familiar roar of Great Khans and bolts towards his mark, grabbing their duffel bag and crashing into their side at once before continuing to run forward to pull it off them and knock them into the dirt to take off with it. He proceeds to sprint off into the desert as the Khans start working through every other trooper before they can stop him from making off with part of their loot. Or he thinks he did?

He’s still running towards his planned hideout before he notices it, the unnerving sound of a second pair of footsteps catching up to him. He barely slows enough to pull the bag onto his back before speeding up again to sprint faster, hoping to lose what he guesses is the trooper he robbed so he can check the bag to see whats apparently valuable enough to abandon your unit to Great Khans to chase after. He can see the old brick building on the horizon already.

As soon as he’s in spitting distance of the crumbling house he leans forward to gain a little more speed to kick off the flat wide stone just below the hole in the wall he uses to get into the otherwise inaccessible 2nd floor, dragging himself inside and skittering across the floor to turn back towards the hole to make sure he’s not been followed. Panting, he watches the hole from across the room waiting to make sure his pursuer isn't going to make it up after him. He doesn’t see any hands or helmets crest the bottom of the open wall for a good minute and after a few more minutes pass, he decides to creep forward to peak out and see if they given up.

Its then that he hears it, the shaking of the dead tree next to the house, branches creaking as some fool tries to climb it, someone grunting as they pull themselves up into a dead tree. He can’t really help himself after that, standing up fully tossing caution aside to walk forward and get a good look at the idiot that's about to be dropped on their empty head when dry branch snaps. Its the Bright Orange Great Khan himself, who he made eye contact with earlier that day. He’s way up the tree, dangling off the branch with three limbs like a sloth reaching towards a higher branch slightly closer to the building and crucially closer to the entrance of his hideout, wedging his foot between two branches for leverage.

He’s helpless to stop himself, the dumbfounded surprise bubbling up and out his throat into, “What. the Fuck?’

The Khan flinches and misses grabbing his next branch as the one he’s currently clung to starts to give out above him and lets loose a startled shout as he falls, before being swung against the trunk and smacking his face into the bark with a yelp, dangling from where his ankles now caught between the trees limbs.

His jaw falls open and he can’t do anything but stare as the Mighty Great Khan sways in the air, cussing about banging his head against the trunk, not even slightly afraid anymore just deeply deeply confused over the whole ordeal. He’s only broken out of his reverie by a voice cutting through the quiet night air.

“Jessup?!?”

He and the Khan both turn to look at the newcomer to their bizarre situation, the biggest blondest hunk of Great Khan this Jackal has ever seen in his life. He ends up turning his open mouthed boggle eyed stare to the newcomer completely unthinking.

“Chance! Help I’m stuck!”

The newly named Chance proceeds to stand there and look up at Jessup with a mixture of surprise, confusion, perhaps a slight amount of disappointment for a few moments before asking with his head in his hands, “Why are you up a tree? How did you even get up there?” and fully settling onto confusion. He stops to look around for a moment before spotting him. They share a brief moment of quietly confused eye contact before they are once again interrupted.

“Chance! Did you find- Jessup?! What happened? Why are you up there?”

The Khan hanging by his ankle from the tree opens and closes his mouth a few times floundering and confusedly waving his hands around his head before shrugging his shoulders awkwardly. The new arrival makes a sharp hiss that may have been What do you mean you don’t know before Chance elbows him to point out the Jackal, who is unable to do anything but shrug equally confused.

Chance ignores this and turns to Jessup, asking in a tone he barely remembers from being a child in the vault when his older siblings caught him doing something real dumb while their parents were gone, “Why did you chase the Jackal? I thought I told you to leave ‘im alone and he wouldn’t bother us?” to which Jessup once again shrugs “I don’t really know? I just saw him run by and before I really realized it I was just chasing him?” clearing nothing up for anyone.

It is at this moment the Jackal realizes, dear god, this is baby’s first ever raiding party. His brain finally giving out on him, he falls into a crouch with his hands steepled in front of his face and waits for his mind to reactivate for a few moments. When he regains his senses its to Chance with As-of-yet-Unnamed Khan stood on his shoulders trying to pull Jessup down or himself up? He doesn’t know but before he can stop himself he barks “What the fuck are you doing you’re gonna break his ankle like that” instantly catching the attention of about 3 more Khans then he’d like.

“Well how do YOU think we should get him down?!”

To which the Jackal thinks for a moment before shrugging off the duffel bag and his coat, ties the sleeves together, takes a moment to awkwardly lasso it to a branch above Jessup and tells him to grab it, before sidling out onto the ledge on the side of the building to try and reach the branches holding him up.

He stops to say, “You two get under him and be ready to catch him, I’m gonna try and pry the branches on his foot apart” before leaning forward to grab at them without waiting for an answer. He just manages to grab one with one hand without falling and gets to prying them apart, Jessup falls relatively unharmed into the arms of Chance and Mystery Khan, which is better off then the Jackal, because the branches that dutifully held the Khan aloft for the past 20 minutes decided to immediately break upon releasing him just to fuck the poor bastard over, because of course they’d do that to him. After the old man died and left him to get kicked out of the family, and he’s been on the run again, starving again with hardly any food or water to forage!

He’s broken out of his angsty internal monologue by Jessup, “Dude are you crying?” he sounds somewhat incredulous for some reason, the freshly 15 year old Jackal lifts his head to impulsively bark back “Yeah so?” with as much hostility as he can muster but it doesn’t really do much to ward the Khans off when he’s more visibly a little twig on the ground, now with tears in his eyes. Chance is actually bending down to get a closer look at him, and Still Nameless starts doing that weird shuffle younger kids do when they think they should go get an adult but don’t know who. Jessup himself sits down next to him to rub his ankle. The Jackal drops his face back on the ground

#fallout fanfic #courier six oc #Jessup #Chance #Mcmurphy #as the unnamed 3rd khan #fallout new vegas #I have once again spent all day writing about my oc #look at him #lmao #Jess saw something running out of the corner of his and his hindbrain kicked on and made him chase it #meanwhile chance knows jackals only get #this close to great khans or armed ncr soldiers if they're very desperate #I didnt open the bag in story #but inside of the duffel bag is grenade rifle that becomes the love of cave's life #the concern shown towards the end is because they think he's a kid #he had an extremely late puberty #yknow cause of his malnutrition #he's 4'7 with squeaky voice in this

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calder · 7 months

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Released in 2010, Obsidian Entertainment's Fallout: New Vegas actively concerns itself with the realities of gay existence, and is widely recognized as a noteworthy work of queer science fiction. New Vegas extensively examines social attitudes towards homosexuality among the game's major factions, and primarily conveys this lore through gay and bisexual characters describing their own experiences. It also allowed the player to mechanically set the Courier's sexual orientation. By taking both available perks, the player character can be bisexual. By choosing neither, the player can opt out of seeing flirtatious dialogue options.

Uniquely, Fallout: New Vegas explores homosexuality in the context of wasteland societies, and touches upon related issues. The core theme of New Vegas is that the desire to recreate the past is driven by irrational nostalgia, and any endeavor to manifest past glory is dangerous and doomed. The social issue of homophobia is used as a demonstrative example. The resurrection of corporate and military power structures presents new avenues for Old World problems such as institutional homophobia to reemerge. One of the many issues that divide the New California Republic and Caesar's Legion is the latter's open persecution of gay people. The NCR is described as tolerant and even accepting of same-sex relationships, though acceptance tends to fall off the further one moves away from the developed, urbanized core of New California. In recent years, the Republic's rapid economic transformation has led to an unforeseen erosion of the humanitarian ideals which it was founded to serve. In practice, to recreate America was to take on its shortcomings and its sins. As subsistence scavenging has dried up, the people of the NCR increasingly turn to wage labor, entrepreneurial venture, or military enlistment to keep their families fed. Meanwhile, their government enacts morally corrosive imperialism (narrative verbiage), their dominion expanding indefinitely as their infrastructure crumbles from within. This has led to a profit-based imperial monoculture which must conquer, consume, and coerce to perpetuate. As personal politics and service labor grow in importance, people find themselves more inclined to present as "normal" in the interest of financial stability and political expedience. A loading screen visualizes this culture of artificial social normalcy: the portrait of President Aradesh on the NCR 5$ bill neglects to depict his unibrow, earring, and facial scarification, overall portraying the once-chieftain so cleanly-cut as to be unrecognizable at first glance. He also appears to be wearing a collared shirt or suit as opposed to the robe he wore in Fallout.

In the Legion, Caesar has mandated that every legionnaire take a wife and produce children, citing high infant mortality rates and the constant need for soldiers, and going as far as instituting child quotas. He treats human beings as a resource to be exploited for war. Ostensibly in this aim homosexuality has been declared a capital offense punishable by death. Historically, routine demonstrations of violence towards women and gay people are a deliberate feature of fascist societies, the only logical cultural conclusion of a government devoted entirely to war and control. In Forlorn Hope letter 9, an NCR soldier wrote wrote the following to his boyfriend:

Dearest Andrew, Writing this seems pretty morbid, but tomorrow we march into the no man's land between our camp and Nelson, which is crawling with Legion. The Major insisted I write this damn "if you get this, I'm dead" letter so here it is. What a crock. I have the luck of the devil and your love on my side, so I'll be home soon. Keep the porch light on for me. We'll party in New Vegas when I get back. I love you. —Devin

Devin believed he would prevail over the Legion because his love would keep him safe. He was found dying or dead on the battlefield, the letter was found on his body. In a post-release patch, the injured soldiers were removed from the battlefield for performance reasons, and never re-implemented. Driven largely in reaction to the Legion's hyper-masculine posturing and misogyny, rumors persist across the Mojave that gay male relationships are not only common within the Legion, but condoned. These rumors are repeated commonly in NCR society. A closeted NCR Major mentions that the Legion is "a little more... forgiving" about close male "friendships," speaking in a hushed tone to avoid suspicion. At the same outpost, the player can encounter Cass, a bisexual civilian woman. She may flirt with a male Courier, who may imply they are gay, prompting her to imply gay men are more common in the Legion. Even as gay men fight and die in the name of love under his command, NCR General Oliver may remark to Courier Six at the Second Battle of Hoover Dam: "If you think after all that's happened, I'm going to grab my ankles and take it like the Legion..."

This writing pertains to institutionalized homophobia which manifests in practice though power structures and social interactions without being written into law. Simply put, in his derogatory remark, the general expresses to his army that military surrender is gay, much like their gay enemy. From the brevity and bluntness of this remark, it's clear that this sentiment is already well understood among his ranks. Logically, to project strength in the eyes of such a leader, one might also project homophobia by scrutinizing and harassing one's peers and subordinates. In this atmosphere, the expression of homophobia is not only normalized, but materially incentivized. For the ambitious, it becomes a tool, and a way of casting shame upon rivals. For the closeted, homophobia becomes a survival tactic, hoping to throw scrutiny off oneself. This is why Major Knight is immediately frightened when a male Courier flirts with him. He is so profoundly alienated that he romanticizes life as a gay man under the Legion. The Legion punish homosexuality with death, and yet Knight characterizes them as more "forgiving" than the NCR. Through these apparently disparate events, the audience can trace how a distorted perception of gay people emerges among insecure men in a military environment, and subsequently becomes ingrained in the corresponding civilian culture. At the 188 Trading Post, a lesbian from the Brotherhood of Steel named Veronica also wryly remarks that she believes legionaries have gay sex about as often as straight sex. She also notes that this only applies to men, as women have no rights whatsoever in Legion society. In this aside, she conveys a pre-existing frustration with lesbophobic social norms. Veronica also mentions that the people of her bunker would rather she remain on the surface. The Mojave Brotherhood of Steel has no official policy prohibiting homosexuality, but an implicit attitude among its dominant members that their limited numbers require everyone to have children to avoid extinction. Numerically, this may seem logical on the surface, given their reluctance to recruit outsiders. However, given their tiny population, this is an ineffective countermeasure, as they do not have nearly enough members to maintain genetic diversity for more than a few generations. This approach is not universally supported by all family units within the Brotherhood, but every individual is ultimately at the mercy of the elder. Veronica was in a lesbian relationship, but they were quietly separated by Elder Elijah, due to the dominant culture of enforcing heterosexual pairing among their population.

Caesar's law has not ended homosexuality within his domain. Despite the obvious risks, some legionaries have continued to pursue relationships behind closed doors, especially given their access to slaves. So long as members complete their societal obligations and fulfill the child quotas, they are able to pursue romance with other men in secret. Homosexual relationships in the faction are noted as being relatively equal compared to the average Legion husband and wife, in a "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" sort of open secret policy. Gay legionaries must always make sure to keep their activities hidden. A centurion was once almost caught fraternizing with the teenage boy he had chosen to tend his tent. Despite previous "romantic" intentions, he quickly resolved to dispose of the slave to dispel suspicion. Had they been caught together, the centurion would have been charged with homosexuality and sentenced to death. This story is only known because the enslaved young man, Jimmy, managed to escape execution. Further illustrating the cruelty intrinsic to Legion governance, it's stated that homosexuality was the crime, and not the rape of a young slave; in fact, it seems Jimmy was forced to contribute to the child quota despite being a gay teenager, and the experience left him traumatized. He has resolved to never have sex with another woman, as the very notion triggers memories which fill him with disgust, and (in his own words) makes him feel like a slave all over again. The Strip is indifferent to gay people, viewing them as another opportunity to make caps. Both the Gomorrah and the Atomic Wrangler are interested in maximizing profits, and their prostitution services cater to clients regardless of their orientation. The openly gay Jimmy works at nearby Casa Madrid, but there is some tension among his peers due to his co-worker Maude's blatant homophobia. She supposes he's "okay, for one of those," and if propositioned by a female Courier, Maude will direct them to Sweetie for such "perverted" services. Pretty Sarah must regularly intervene to keep the peace among her staff.

The Followers of the Apocalypse, well-read punks who seek to embody healing through anarchistic values, are not concerned with gender. Most are openly and casually sexually active. Upon meeting Courier Six, Arcade Gannon offhandedly makes his gayness known, unprompted. The audience must face the fact that Arcade's apprehension of the Legion is far from abstract; under Legion law, he would be put to death. One possible ending gives further insight into Caesar's hypocrisy: should the player sell Arcade into slavery and leave Caesar alive, he will keep Arcade as a personal physician and philosophical advisor. They intellectually spar at length, and Caesar grows singularly fond of him. Accordingly, Arcade imitates the historic suicide of Cato the Younger by disemboweling himself. The Legion's remaining medics attempted to save his life, but none were Arcade's equal. Caesar understood his doctor's final gesture of contempt, and mourned him for months.

New Vegas ventures further into themes of healing from the trauma of sexual violence, from the perspective of a lesbian character. Corporal Betsy, an NCR sharpshooter, is a rape survivor, and suffers with PTSD from the incident. Her unprocessed trauma has manifested as a maladaptive tendency to aggressively and explicitly proposition the women she encounters, in an effort to reassert a sense of control. This defensive hypersexual impulse has negatively impacted her ability to connect with other women. A male superior officer notes that her behavior is inappropriate for anyone of her stature, but abstains from disciplining her out of sincere concern for her mental health. The Courier can help her begin to recognize these problems, and convince her to seek treatment from Doctor Usanagi at the New Vegas medical clinic, which proves helpful to her as she processes and heals from her trauma.

In Old World Blues, the Think Tank are five floating brains in jars who express themselves by waving robotic arms bearing screens depicting facial features. Before the War, they were federal scientists who committed crimes against humanity in the name of weapons development. Each is stuck in some sort of neuro-bionic feedback loop which prevents them from moving forward with their projects, mentally binding them to their central laboratory. Walking through their homes at Higgs Village, it's clear each was deeply neurotic before they were transformed into floating brains. Now without bodies, they attempt to maintain the illusion that they are exempt from sexuality as purely mental beings, but each displays obvious interest in the human form. They have codified this shaming with the term "formography." Most of the men are obsessively defensive over their complete disinterest in penises, which they talk about constantly. However, the shameless Dr. Dala shows overwhelming interest in observing and recording any and all human functions. Already androgynous in her pre-War life, Dala has taken to self-identifying as a "gender neutral entity" (though she is not known to use they/them pronouns). Regardless of the Courier's gender, they may coquettishly scratch themselves, clear their throat, and stretch in front of Dala until her biomed gel decoagulates. Dr. 8 also responds positively to graphic masturbation advice from Couriers of either gender. The X-8 research facility is ostensibly a massive immersive shrine to Doctor Borous's hatred of Richie "Ball-Lover" Marcus, a long-dead child who bullied Borous centuries ago. He also clings to his resentment of one Betsy Bright, who refused to attend a dance with him, supposedly so she could "go smoke with RICHIE MARCUS." Clearly arrested in development, Borous has literally built a temple to the fantasy of torturing his adolescent romantic rival and feeding him to dogs. His frozen, static characterization of the jock Richie Marcus as a "pinko-commie" who "likes balls" reflects the shallowness, pettiness, and overall misanthropy underlying his patriotic identity. It remains apparent throughout Old World Blues that the Think Tank are all chronically sexually repressed, which is inseparable from the values of the violent and judgmental pre-War culture which created them. With time and isolation, this ingrained repression has manifested as various intense and deranged psychosexual behaviors, including rage-fueled homophobia, voyeurism, and the obsessive performance of puritanical pretense.

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“Although I’ve been out for a very long time, I made a conscious effort to be out with relation to this project, as I wanted to be visible as a lesbian in the game industry. New Vegas itself is, I think, one of (if not the) best games out there in how we treat homosexuality – and all of that is very intentional.”

“If my work on FNV, if my being out has helped even one gay person, then I have succeeded.” — Tess “Obsidian’s Gay Cowgirl” Treadwell

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written (with help from other editors) for fallout.fandom.com/wiki/LGBT_representation_in_the_Fallout_series criticism welcome

#fnv

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