chocochipbiscuit | why Fallout doesn't need (more) racism (Reply)

Every so often, I see posts or discussions criticizing the way that Fallout (and more specifically, Fallout 4) handles the discrepancy between the 1950s-inspired nostalgia of the prewar era and the violently regressive culture of the fictional year 2077. Visions of 2077 as being a progressive utopia is, at best, a shallow look at the introductory sequence and flavored by the deliberate 1950s aesthetic. In part, this is due to inconsistent writing (from the devs) and a certain amount of deliberate escapism (from the fans) when engaging with the canon. Occasionally, I see people wishing that we had seen more blatant bigotry in the game, such as racism or sexism from prewar ghouls and robots.

I disagree. I do not want to be forced to encounter more of this while just trying to play the game. I personally do not want, desire, or otherwise wish that the canon had been even more overt in its hostility towards players and fans of color. I would like the privilege of being able to enjoy my post-apocalyptic game without having me (or my OC) being forced to bear the burden of others’ prejudices, especially as I question the ability of Bethesda’s open-world sandbox to convey nuance in its storytelling.

I have thoughts, and would like to preface this by saying that as a Chinese-American fan, I am mostly focusing on the anti-Chinese sentiments. I cannot pretend to speak for all other POC, or even other Asian fans, as our experiences are different and we are not interchangeable. However, I believe that many of us will agree that we do not need to see more blatant racism when the canon already contains multiple examples of in-game racism, both in the prewar and post-apocalyptic eras.

We start Fallout 4 in Sanctuary, portrayed as an idyllic community with the beginnings of a default nuclear family (M/F only, no same-sex or NB options without mods) and the less utopian aspects come through once we start reading more of the found materials and pay attention to the background news broadcasts: the annexation of Canada (completed in 2076, raising questions of just where the canon ‘war veteran’ Nate got his combat experience), the food riots (explicitly discussed in Boston Bugle terminal entries), and the deployment of the military within US cities to quell civil unrest (misc terminal entries, including the Fallout Bible and the relative abundance of power armor and military checkpoints within the game). We also get evidence of clear prewar discrimination against Asian-Americans in the game (the South Boston military checkpoint terminal entries concerning ‘suspicious behavior’ of the Wu family, resulting in their detention despite no evidence of contraband) and with Danse’s frankly bizarre accusation of Takahashi being a Chinese spy.

Danse’s behavior, even if intended as a joke, still begs the question of where he acquired this particular xenophobia, considering that this is 200 years after the bombs dropped. It makes me question how much hostility my own Chinese-American OCs might encounter while just trying to explore the Commonwealth.

Commander Zao is the first prewar Chinese character that we can encounter in the Fallout games, and as the player, we have the option to call him a ‘commie’ and immediately attack him. We also do not have the option of assuming that the player already has fluency in Mandarin and speaking to Zao in a shared language.

These are just the in-game examples of anti-Asian racism from Fallout 4. Again, I question why we need the player to encounter more direct racism.

Fallout New Vegas includes Little Yangtze, a Chinese-American internment camp that also doubled as a source of involuntary test subjects for the scientists at the Big MT. The explosive collars that we see in other games (Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, and I would suspect the shock collars we see used by the raiders in Fallout 4’s Nuka World) were prototyped and used on the prisoners here.

Fallout 3 includes the Turtledove Detention Camp, a camp for suspected Chinese spies and saboteurs. We also have Operation: Anchorage, an entire DLC centering around a simulation of the liberation of Anchorage from Chinese troops. The simulation itself is of questionable realism (including an in-game report that the sim is divorced from reality), especially in its portrayal of General Jingwei. Jingwei’s in-game Mandarin is unintelligible, and the translations of his bloodthirsty lines only serve to further dehumanize him as ‘cruel’ and ‘savage,’ with a twisted sense of ‘honor’ that means he would prefer death over capture. As this is an in-game simulation created by Americans during the Sino-American war, this functions as an extended portrayal of the American attitudes of the time towards the perceived Communist threat.

I am not including Fallout 1 or 2 because I have not actually played those games myself.

If you are someone who thinks that the best representation for POC involves media that shows us being actively discriminated against, please reconsider why that might make us less comfortable consuming that media. I am not sure why the idea that there should be even more overt racism in the games, such as hostility from prewar robots or ghouls, is good or desirable.

Given the racism in the source material, I understand that people may want to engage that racism through fandom. However, I am tired of the following tropes:

East Asian characters with bleached, dyed, or albino features, especially written by white fans. It often feels like lazy writing, a way of showing the character is ‘not like other East Asians.’ I would also like to point out that this is prevalent enough that writingwithcolor even has a tag for this.
Fics where Asian characters have to wear sunglasses or hide their eyes so they won’t be shot on sight by robots or prewar ghouls. This is a level of discrimination not even present in the games, and yet I've been linked or recc'd multiple fics where this occurs. It also shows a fixation on East Asian eyes that feels very uncomfortable. (This WWC guide to describing eyes respectfully includes both writing tips and elaboration on why this fixation is problematic.)
Fics that assume that Asian-American characters have a natural affinity with synths and robots, especially as they come close to already prevalent stereotypes of East Asians as being ‘robotic,’ ‘inscrutable,’ or innately good at math and science. I would also like to point out that the Institute’s treatment of synths and the role of the Underground Railroad more closely borrows from US chattel slavery, and I question what seems like fandom’s greater comfort with focusing on East Asian OCs (mostly as written by white authors) over more sympathetic and nuanced portrayals of Black characters like Preston Garvey and X6-88. (I also recommend further reading on techno-orientalism and the media representation of subservient robots with Asian features.)
Disrespect towards canonical characters of color. It is extremely disheartening to see untagged vitriol against Madison Li and Marcy Long—both Asian women, both less than ‘nice’ to the player-protagonist in part because of their own in-game grief and trauma—crossing my feed. Marcy alone has had multiple mods making her killable or enabling the player to put duct tape over her mouth, and Bethesda even released a patch making her killable in the game. In games where I can customize my own playable protagonist, I am so used to being the only Asian person in a given setting that this level of animosity towards these explicitly Asian, non-whitepassing characters strikes a particularly unpleasant chord.

As a minor but apparently necessary aside: if you, as an individual, have created or consumed content that uses those tropes, please do not message me. I am not interested in your apologies, in absolving you of having problematic faves, your recs for how you think a particular creator has handled that trope in a sensitive manner, or your explanations for why you dislike these characters. I am tired. I would like you to please consider why those tropes you love make me, as a Chinese-American fan, uncomfortable in fandom. If you believe in ‘don’t like, don’t read’, then please respect my choice to not read these tropes that I do not like because they are offensive.

I would like to end this on a positive note. I’ve given lists of problematic tropes and explained why I don’t enjoy ‘representation’ that focuses on discrimination, so here are some examples of things I do enjoy in fandom and wish were present in the game.

Food: We have so many prewar packaged foods and post-apocalyptic recipes! If we can have sweetrolls, Fancy Lads, steaks, stews, and omelets, why not pineapple buns and dim sum? Why not char siu and whole roasted fowl? Yes, availability of ingredients will have changed, but recipes get adapted over time. And exploring those adaptations is a fun way of expanding worldbuilding!
Holidays: Diamond City clearly celebrates Christmas; what about other holidays like the Lunar New Year? If nothing else, don’t tell me that Goodneighbor wouldn’t take any excuse to shoot fireworks!
Locations: the Boston Chinatown is one of the largest Chinatowns outside of New York City. Even with the impact of two centuries of the apocalypse, what kind of stories could we have gleaned if this was included in the game? Further, what sort of communities would have survived the war? For example, the Emperor’s Garden is a gorgeous restaurant housed in what was once an old-fashioned movie theater. For a game that has so clearly researched existing locations and maps in order to create the setting, the absence of Boston’s Chinatown feels like a glaring omission.

Fallout’s canon and fandom both have plenty of racism already. I don’t want to gloss over the problematic aspects of the canon, but I believe we can engage with it without further alienating fans of color. We and our characters can exist without focusing the narrative on discrimination, especially levels of discrimination that go beyond the canon.

(Originally cross-posted to Tumblr)