Lesbian Hivemind

Then there is the YouTuber talking about Transformers, casually dropping the "Iraq war aesthetic" like it's a color palette. Desert punk. Military core. A vibe. This is what happens when your country hasn't had a war on its own soil in living memory; the violence becomes media, a backdrop for childhood toys. The explosions are no longer the sound of mothers screaming; they are cool action sequences. They are digesting the visual debris of massacre as a nostalgic fashion choice, scraping the trauma off and compressing it into a genre for their retro-futurist fantasies. The apocalypse becomes a mood board.

And finally, the girl recounting celebrity love triangles from her childhood, flippantly mentioning how the U.S. was "busy with the Iraq war or whatever." Or whatever. That single phrase is the thesis statement of American innocence. Over a million dead, a region destabilized for a century, an endless river of grief; and for her, it was the commercial break between pop culture segments. It didn't raise her rent. It didn't stop her Wi-Fi. The violence is geo-locked to brown skin and distant deserts, just background noise like a refrigerator humming. She has the luxury of forgetting because the machine doesn't eat her children, it eats yours.

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Julia Serano, "Whipping Girl"

marketing guy: hmmm yeah we need to make vodka soda branded as “gay water.” make sure the packaging looks like diaper packaging.

other marketing guy: maybe we should add funny little stickers, like–

^Literally talking to anyone but trans women about this ban

Which is super sus considering they've got noted transfem activists and journalists in their roster as recently as March 30th:

But look at some other notable reporting on this topic from supposedly queer-friendly NPR. Note how frequently the discussion pivots from transfems to TME people. Note how the bans always focus on transfems but the "experts" are rarely transfem. Note how frequently we are minimized and dismissed as a tiny minority. Note how often economic impacts are discussed in lieu of the fact that this is just dehumanization plain and simple. And go through the other examples with these ideas in mind.

And on the rare occasion they actually talk to a trans girl in sports, they go on and on about how much she sucks at sports as some sort of "gotcha"

some are far more willing to take complicated cases, for one of 2 reasons:

1. they don't care about outcomes and do minimal aftercare

2. they care A LOT about outcomes and do ABOVE AVERAGE amounts of aftercare (which facilitates safely handling more complicated cases)

He is, after 210 years, still the Vault Tec Rep. He has no name, and still wears the same exact clothes. He mentions struggling to loose that identity despite holding a lot of (very valid) ahtred for Vault Tec.

I think there should have been a more in depth quest then that non-quest conversation you can have. Like you happen across him in the Rexford, then you can send him to Sanctuary, and then if you see him in Sanctuary again you can offer him a job and get the option to... send him to another settlement?

They could have had a quest where you bring him to some Vault Tec office, or you go by yourself, and have to find his desk. Maybe fighting some ferals and some emotional flavor text about knowing them but not being able to tell who they are or him saying he thinks he recognizes someone based on their clothes.

Find his desk with a spare ID card in it that has his name and face. Maybe an old photo of him with his spouse/kids/family/friends to jog his memory. Either he can take these or if he's not there you bring them back to him.

Only then can you send him back to Sanctuary (or maybe the Slog so he can learn to love himself as a ghoul). When you see him again he's changed his name and his clothes. He tells you about how he feels like a person again, and it's so good to hear the other settlers call him by his real name. Talk about how he has friends now and finds his job there fulfilling and rewarding, either farming to provide food or guarding to protect his new friends.

Or if you are the General of the Minutemen, and he really wants a job similar to his old one he could instead rep for the minutemen. Be a traveler with a little caravan like the provisioners and you can spot him in the environment. He will tell you small stories about the people he's run into or tell you he's sent [insert number] of settlers your way since he last saw you. (The number doesn't even have to be consistent with the actual settlers you've gotten cause they don't always make it to settlements.)

And if we wanted to get crazy he could have been a companion, and all of this could have been instead his affinity quest, where he slowly decides he wants to be more than just Vault Tec Rep. And it ends with him having learned to embrace his new life in the wasteland, more confident in fighting, traveling outside of 'safe' cities, and navigating the post war world as a whole thanks to the experience he gained traveling with you. This could not only be linked to your affinity to him but also the number of new locations you travel with him to add a little extra pizzazz.

Maybe even the quest to the Vault Tec building 'fails' and he has to pick a new name and form a whole new identity instead of going back to his prewar one.