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#the ncr is fuckin corrupt
fujianvenator · 2 years
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finding out that people want to study in the ph because of the trese series is so fucking funny because its not even like anime with fuckin sakura petals flying everywhere n girls going kyaa !! its literally set in the dingiest parts of ncr with fucking aswangs tearing people apart n literally portrays both government and police corruption thats so widespread here did you even fuckign watch it ?????
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retphienix · 2 years
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What do you think about Lenk? Who was viciously attacked by the Legion, saw her comrades strung up and gored, and is clearly suffering extensively from the experience on top of now being blackmailed by a clear scam run by a nearby casino?
Oh... annoyed? You don't care?
You... don't want me to do anything about that? I mean, I'm gonna, you don't care? This is not important info?
Okay.
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How do you feel about a false report being filed in your name that no one really cares about and they really just want clarification as to whether it's real or not?
Oh... you like, CARE care about that, complete with taking an aggressive tone because that's something that relates to your marks and career which is entirely different from the well-being of your subordinates.
I getcha. Oh no, don't worry, I'll clear it up so you don't get a bad mark on your record or whatever.
Okay.
Tangent because I've been sighing at a lot of NCR dialogue the past couple days and just leaving it as is, mostly, sometimes I ranted then deleted it because I was being a special kind of irritable- this is less irritable and more enjoying my analysis of fictional nonsense.
It's ridiculous how many NCR officials act like this lmao. Just a lot of people dehumanized by the bureaucratic processes that promise upwards mobility and success to those that follow the rules- where by the rules are often lacking.
Said it before, say it again, the NCR (as in the Government Body) doesn't fight the Legion for moral reasons, it fights them because it wants to be the biggest dog in town and the Legion threatens that.
It fights the Legion because the Legion threatens to take the dam, and the dam offers the NCR power (figuratively and literally), and to a lesser degree they fight because the Legion disrupts the speed at which the power craving NCR can expand and expansion is the MOST important thing to the NCR.
None of this can be marked down as a Moral reason, it's all greed if anything, and that personifies the NCR nicely.
Of course this is all referring to the government body, as in the NCR as a series of government systems, lobbyists, corruption of all kinds both big and small, and yes, including the good of it being a democratic nation- not the people themselves.
But~ that same dehumanized expansion driven motivation is what a lot of the higher ups adopt as their own morality as opposed to like, you know, morals, or caring about people.
It's why a lot of the "Small" problems so thoroughly get ignored. On as big a scale as a Nation they don't hurt the NCR, and a lot of those in power only care about the NCR as a governing body because caring about the NCR like that gets you success- if you "Play Ball" then you get promotions, become a politician, live a comfy life.
It's not "Successful" to focus on the people who live within the NCR, not as a rule, and that's stupid.
It's pretty damn decent writing to demonstrate a nation's weaknesses and failings in my opinion- I just mean "That's stupid" as in "That's not my world view and I disagree with the dumb Empire that put growth before people's QOL".
So it's a pretty good stupid in terms of a fictional faction in a video game, it's interesting stupid, I Like The It.
I also both like and hate how this generally paints the NCR in terms of the people.
You see a lot of good people at the bottom, both as citizens and as soldiers, who strive to make life better for others; People who accept the general propaganda of the NCR at face value and think they are part of the good guy team!
Then you talk to anyone with power and they only care about numbers and even then they'd prefer the numbers bend a bit to the right so they better benefit themselves specifically.
I like the dichotomy, I also fuckin' hate how you end up with a faction of a bunch of good but powerless individuals and then a handful of corrupt as shit people pulling the strings while taking any credit for those good people's actions.
The NCR is known for good things, and didn't do a single one of them because what really happened is some hard working sod at the bottom had to sweat blood to make those changes take place all while the NCR scoffed and said it was pointless the whole time.
Just like real life :) lmao
At least in the vibby game you get to be a demi-god level individual who can "kinda" steer the nation in some better directions, but the end result is still the NCR taking credit for your work despite having no intention of putting in the effort itself. You're the blood sweating sod, but you're also so powerful that they sometimes have to admit you did the work instead of taking credit entirely lol.
If an entire faction needs a demi-god level individual to "convince" them to do something good like feed some hungry, make sure crops get watered, or save some downtrodden from slavers, then maybe that faction isn't as "good" as it's cracked up to be. That's a LOT of extra convincing power needed to make them do what should be their job lmao.
At least they got potential, if only because there's voting. Like it's purely hypothetical potential, but hey, it's there unlike most factions in NV who are doomed 100% forever. The NCR is just "Currently kinda Doomed, but maybe not, and also the Courier can do some things that help alleviate that % chance a bit, it's 'fine'"
Also worth saying we don't have the whole picture of the NCR from NV, though I don't really consider that relevant too much. The NCR is miles different than it was in FO2, and the NCR being willing to stretch itself to this point in NV is still reflective of decision making and priorities within the NCR as a whole- so I stand by my interpretation of the NCR as a greedy imperialistic group that doesn't care "too much" about it's people. It just cares as much as it has to to not accidentally spark a revolution of some sort.
Anyways that's my ramble on the NCR in small part from this tiny tertiary dialogue in a side quest.
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bonemoji · 3 years
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TALKING ABT HLVRAI FNV THOUGHTS bc i TRIED to put them in da art post tags but they got messed up cuz i did it on desktop so im doing it again here
#SO. UGH gordon still has a physics degree im sure itd be possible#and he was born in the brotherhood of steel :] he doesnt live there currently though he moved out bc he wasnt rlly devoted to the cause or w#hatever#i was thinkin maybe benrey is the last one the science team meets#like they were all going to the strip together bc ofc they were theres like 3 seperate casinos and they meet benrey! and r like oh this guy#is not like the other securitrons! and he uhh joins them :]#im not sure about tommy yet but im considering making him a follower of the apocalypse#like dedicated to keeping people safe from dangerous inhumane technology? extremely vague connection to the osha guidelines#i want darnold to sell guns i think maybe he works for the gun runners?#OOH MAYBE gordon gets like a cool gauntlet from darnold#idk what to do abt gman i dont want him to be like an antagonist but i do want him to be in a position of Power yknow#i dont thjnk hed be a follower i dont think gman cares about prewar technology like whatever happens to the other factions happens#forzens here too i guess hes just in the ncr being a lame bootlicker#rambling#i mean. ok i have a lot of thoughts about the ncr i think that maybe there Should be some sort of defence against groups like the legion but#the ncr is fuckin corrupt#like the shit with the powder gangers was so fucked up!#so like uh definitely the ncr in universe has a bit more value than real life army so its a Little less lame and stupid but. still pretty la#me and stupid#and if ur on good terms with the ncr everyones like ‘its nice to see a friend of our government’ like just bc the ncr is the best group to s#ide with doesnt mean that i dont steal ammo from them every opportunity i get#anyway forzen is rhe last member of the ncr#fnvvrai
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baelpenrose · 3 years
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Fallout Thoughts - Caesar, ahistorical bullshit, pulp fiction, faux-intellectualism, and the way the Legion apes a cultural misremembering of Roman culture that traces to an author most of you have probably never heard of.
This one's for you @adifferenttime
There's three things about me that are relevant to this post and we'll get to the third one part way through. But the first two are relevant up front. Thing about me everyone who follows me on this site knows because I never shut up about it and it's in my damnass bio: I'm a historian. Thing about me that people who have followed me for a bit know but aren't as immediately obvious: I am also a fallout fan. Caesar claims the Legion is "a nationalist, imperialist, totalitarian, homogenous culture that obliterates the identity of every group it conquers. Long-term stability at all costs. The individual has no value beyond his utility to the state, whether as an instrument of war, or production." This is not Rome. In no way is this Rome. "The Individual has no value beyond his utility to the state, whether as an instrument of war or production" is not Rome, it's Sparta. Rome also never obliterated the identity of every culture it came into contact with - it actually prided itself on assimilating the knowledge of everyone it absorbed and adapting the best parts of each. His rejection of technology is also fucking absurd - Romans believed their willingness to advance was one of the reasons they were conquering everything, it was a sign of roman greatness - Caesar sees it as only bringing weakness. That's not the only aspect of the Legion that's closer to Sparta than it is to Rome either - while Rome was brutally ableist, it was not eugenicist. The NCR mention that every legion soldier they see is "a near perfect physical specimen" and we see evidence that the legion start training in childhood.
Sgt. Boyd says that the Legion soldiers slit their own throats when they are at risk of being captured - again, not a Roman behavior.
Legionaries retreated all the time - standard legion doctrine was to retreat when you lost over a third of your troops, because it was better to live to fight another day than to piss away men, metal and money on a point of pride. Spartans were the ones so thoroughly indoctrinated that they pretty much suicided whenever it looked like they might be captured and refused to retreat. Now, Spartans were nationalist, imperialist, fairly totalitarian, eugenicist, statist assholes, and militaristic ones, but they were NOT terribly imperialistic ones, dedicated to stability though they were, and Spartan women enjoyed comparatively large freedom compared to most of the ancient world - had a lot of civic power. So maybe, you're thinking, "Okay, Bael, you've made your point, Caesar took notes from both Rome and Sparta. It's a mix of both, some Roman misogyny, some Spartan military training, all that." Fuckin' NOPE. See, both Spartans and Romans were militarily a heavy-infantry focused force-structure, tactically speaking. Their forces were all about large groups of heavy-armored, shield-carrying infantry with spears and swords forcing the enemy into close-contact, face-to-face, direct combat where discipline and brutal main force was the determining factor of the battle. Maneuver was strategic - once tactical, (ie "in-battle movement") commenced, movement became limited and force was applied until one army was ground into submission by the other. Rome wanted to seize territory and control it to gain its resources and make use of them. To eradicate the people living there - save in extreme cases such as Carthage, where the Republic believed a point needed to be made in an extreme manner - would have defeated the purpose. The Legion does not do this. The Legion, tactically speaking, is a light-infantry force structure. Its troops are lightly armed, lightly armored, do not actually engage in prolonged engagements for any reason if they can avoid it, and rarely take or hold territory. They're fighting a guerrilla war - and they're fighting one of depopulation, terror raids, slave raids, and torch-and-burn destruction of infrastructure and food supply. In no way does it militarily operate the way Rome did, either. In addition, Rome, while it was more misogynistic than Sparta, did have women in roles of importance - particularly religious ones - that gave them genuine societal power. A far cry from the way that the Legion represents them. In addition, the male sex worker in West Side mentions that the Legion punishes homosexuality, where Rome was permissive, bordering on binormative - it was considered normal to the point of being almost expected that young people would experiment with their closest same-sex friends, though it was considered humiliating to be on the receiving end of penetrative sex from someone lower in a social hierarchy than you were. So where the actual fuck are Caesar's gender politics coming from? Well, a friend I respect quite a bit has argued they come from Gram, but even as misogynistic as Mormonism is - hell, as Christianity is - there are upper limits. Even within those extremes they wouldn't be as flagrant as the legionaries are in openly making remarks on the beauty of newly-captured slave women. Thomas Aquinas and more than a few other Christian theologians - ones I admit I respect very very little for my own personal reasons, some of which are philosophical and many of which can be boiled down to "many traumatic memories are directly related to a Catholic upbringing and I have some scores to settle with the Catholic Church," - make compelling theological arguments regarding why women should be subservient but not wholly degraded according to the laws of those faiths, and Gram seems like a person who would have kept comparatively true to his principles in that respect. No. Caesar is very much meant to echo faux-intellectuals who misunderstand Hegel in the way Neitzche did. He makes a number of other errors as well - the Legion's Latin pronunciations are all over the place between Gothic,
Classical, and anglicanized, more
or less according to rule of cool, and their grammar is frequently mediocre. Thing about me almost no one knows: One of my big guilty pleasures is old-school pulp fiction and fantasy. Like. Original Robert E. Howard Conan the Barbarian, Original H.P. Lovecraft, that kind of thing. Insanely problematic horseshit in them and all, there is something about the really unique, neurotic/visceral writing styles that I just really like, and that I feel has sort of gone out of the world with the death of pulp fiction magazines. I bring this up because we know that to some degree, we know that pulp fiction exists in the world of Fallout, and that the Legion is okay with it - or at least willing to overlook it - Aurellius of Phoenix has copies of Grognak the Barbarian in his office. Though, I will say speaking as a Conan the Barbarian fan, while "amazing for the 1930s" is still "racist and sexist as fuck by 2021 standards" it is NOT "advocating for mass genocide or forcible sex slavery for half the population" so we're going to have to look elsewhere for Caesar's gender politics, but we've gotten our first inroad. Now, I'm sure you're thinking, "Bael, what the FUCK does pulp fiction and this admittedly funny aside have to do with Caesar's gender politics" Well, you know how in previous fallout posts I have offhandedly referred to Caesar as a "John Norman Fanboy," and I am about to explain that derisive reference. See, back in the 1960s, there was this college professor named John Norman who also wrote pulpy shitty misogynistic bondage porn as a hobby. (If you were curious, he lost me at "misogynistic" I would have been fine with "pulpy" and depending on quality I'll give "pulpy smut" a shot but I digress). It was about this random douchebag who got isakai'd into an alternate world where his shitty absent dad had vanished to, where his dad trained him as a warrior and abruptly taught him how to survive in this awful social darwinist fuckfest of a planet more-or-less stuck in the iron age where men are more or less allowed to go around slave raiding whenever and whereever and whoever the fuck they feel like outside their own communities as part of normal masculine activity. Pretty much the entire story is framed around thin excuses to have horrible scenes of humiliating women and long antifeminist spiels of pseudo-philosophical dreck about why men are naturally dominant and women are supposed to want that. It more or less languished in humiliating obscurity because his writing style sucked if you aren't a psuedo-intellectual political science or philosophy major who read Nietzche between frat initiations, but it suddenly got super popular during the backlash against second-wave feminism. Here's the thing. This unbelievably shitty series had greco-roman aesthetics with none of the actual values of Greece or Rome. It, too, has a social-darwinist "Death before dishonor makes you a real man" bullshit thing going. It, too, had a completely culturally anachronistic disdain for homosexuality, AND a view that technology and modernism were corrupting people and making them weaker and less manly or good. AND. AND. The warrior caste of this idiotic fictional world fights almost entirely through light infantry tactics of throwing spears and fast, light attacks with swords and hand-axes, from ambush, carrying away women as slaves and fleeing away. Now, critically. This shitty series, on its own, is not that big a deal. But it IS the single cultural event that resulted in Roman slavery starting to be played for nigh-constant fanservice in almost every thing set in greece/rome. Much of the "oh that's just realistic" creepy memory of how everyone in rome was just into teenage girls? This shit. I cannot begin to emphasize just how much the popularity of this FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT THAT THIS ONE FUCKING PRICK WROTE has damaged popular memory of Rome because of how popular it got with white faux-intellectual proto-MRA fuckboys. But back to Edward Sallow. Does it strike anyone else as suspicious that a man who is a very clear
faux-intellectual has created an army - granted, one he skillfully commands, one wielded well - that operates on a faux-intellectual's understanding of Rome, from an author who has the same misunderstanding of Hegel, and apparently the same gender politics as he does? Sallow is a hypocrite and so much of NV is dedicated to showing us that he is a fraud - it wouldn't shock me if some of this was meant to indicate he only understands popular memory of Rome instead of the way it actually worked.
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tcxastough · 5 years
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Fallout verse-- companion quests, New Vegas
So I generally have in Danielle’s Fallout verses that she’s a companion/follower for the player character, and like every good companion, they need a companion quest for the player to complete.
Unlike Fallout 4, New Vegas companions do not have a love/like/dislike/hate meter, and thus the only way to get their “trust” value up is to complete tasks in certain ways for certain quests (a prime example for this is Arcade Gannon, but all the companions have this to a certain extent.) The actions you must take are as follows:
-- Hard Luck Blues: In the quest Hard Luck Blues, you will gain +2 trust points if you decide to shut Vault 34′s reactor off without saving the trapped vault dwellers, and will comment that you made the right choice and “Sometimes the good of the many means sacrificing the few”. However, if you decide to save the trapped Vault 34 dwellers and thus dooming the NCR sharecroppers, Danielle will ask why you decided to save a couple of people over saving hundreds of acres of farmland (and the people that eat the food from said farmland); you have a list of speech options to choose from: * “The NCR needs to go back home, this seemed like an opportunity” -- Danielle will comment on how Mr. House or the New Vegas locals could have easily used the land instead once they are pushed back, and you will lose 1 trust point. * “I couldn’t sleep at night knowing I was responsible for their deaths.” -- Danielle will frown and comment on how you seem to have no trouble sleeping after killing other people you don’t even know, hostile or non hostile, and you will neither gain nor lose any trust points (if you activated ARCHIMEDES at Helios One, she will comment that you’re a hypocrite, and you will lose 2 trust points.) * “Not sure, just felt like it.” -- This will garner her to go quiet for a brief period, then comment on your spontaneous decisions and hope you don’t decide to do something stupid with your rash behavior. You will not lose or gain any trust points. * [Speech 45] “I know I can’t save everybody, but I still have to try.” -- Danielle will become contemplative, and ask if trying to save a few people is worth the risk of other lives, and what places value on some people over others. You will gain +2 trust points.
-- Young Hearts: If you finish the quest with Danielle in your party (or afterwards if you speak to Jack with Danielle in your party,) She will comment on your skills as a wingman. You then have the following dialogue options: * “They’re moving a bit fast, in my opinion.” -- Danielle will remark that it may be true, but the wasteland is hard and life is short, so relationships are usually acted out rather quickly. * “They make a cute couple.” -- Danielle will agree and speak of how Jack’s eagerness reminded her of her husband. * “I don’t really care, I just helped out so the Boomers will like me.” -- Dani will chuckle slightly and ask if that’s why you bring her along in hopes of making her more friendly towards you. No matter which option you pick, she will then talk about how she and her late husband met under similar circumstances by him becoming a new recruit, and how quickly they hit it off. After a bit of information pressing, she will both admit to being a former Brotherhood scribe from the Texas Branch and will also explain that the branch fell to a warring tribe that sided with the Legion in order to attack, and that both her husband, her son, and mother and father died attempting to protect the settlement. She then says that she’d like to drop the subject and keep moving. You will gain +2 trust points.
-- The Coyotes: Completing this quest with Danielle in your party will earn +1 trust point as long as you successfully complete it. She will make a quick comment that slavers are scum and deserve death.
-- Come Fly With Me: If your speech is low and you do not have the Black Widow perk, Danielle can speak to Haversham and convince him that he is not a ghoul and to not to sabatoge the rocket. Completing the quest with her in your party will earn +1 if you allow the Ghouls to successfully launch their rockets, +2 if you improve their coordinates (science skill) before launch, and -1 if you crash the rockets into eachother. No matter what you pick, Danielle will respond. “This was such a weird fuckin’ day.” Once the quest is completed.
-- There Stands The Grass: If you travel to Vault 22 with the quest active and Dani in party, she will speak with you and give you another option: Give the research notes to her instead of letting Keely delete them or giving them to Dr. Hildern. This option won’t be available if you have already completed the “I Could Make You Care” quest with using the data as an option to give to the Elder. You will gain +3 trust points for giving the data to Danielle; other options do not affect her affinity.
-- (Misc.): Walking through the Hidden Valley with Danielle in party will have her comment on how the Mojave Brotherhood don’t allow new members, and that she was rejected entry despite her history in the Texan branch. She further goes on to explain that this was how she met Victor and decided to join Mr.House in his conquering of the Strip. Gains +1 trust point.
-- (Misc.): Walking into the New Vegas Clinic with Danielle will cause her to comment on how she barely survived the attack of the legion and how she had crawled herself into the nearly-destroyed Brotherhood bunker’s Autodoc to have most of her organs and right arm replaced. Gains +1 trust point.
--(Misc.): Having Rex in your party will delight Danielle, and claim that she also used to have a cyberdog named Gunner at one point. She also says that, if you ever want Rex to have mounted turrets on his back, just say the word. Gains +1 trust point (only once)
(more trust point opportunities may be added later)
--
Hell Hath No Fury
    After gaining at least 5-7 trust points, Danielle will confide in you that the true reason she came out west was to track down the Paladin that betrayed the Texan Brotherhood by desserting and giving Caesar’s Legion security access codes to their troops, and thus was responsible for the conquering and slaughtering of her family. She knew it was foolhardy to try it alone, and thus attempted to reach the Mojave Brotherhood chapter for assistance. When they turned her down, she was prepared to head towards NCR territory, when she stopped on the road in Goodsprings and spotted a lone securitron, Victor, on the point of disrepair. 
    Being a former Senior Scribe and excellent in robotics and repair, she fixed the securtiron up and even managed to half-way unlock the upgrades in the model that the Platinum chip would have fully unlocked. Impressed with her skills, Victor hired the woman as a repairman and mercenary by proxy of Mr. House, running odd jobs and errands that securitrons couldn’t do. While she never spoke to the man face-to-face, she knew a man with so much power and influence would easily crush the legion forces when they came rolling in.
    While Danielle is fine with awaiting the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, she wishes to personally find the Paladin who betrayed her family and personally killed her husband: renamed Sanctus Militus by Caesar. She has word to believe that the man has gone AWOL, but has no idea where he could be, and asks that you help gather information. After a bit of running around, you will find that Sanctus is hiding in Brocflower Cave.
     Once found, you will discover that the once corrupt paladin is now old and crippled, even older than Caesar, and went awol due to no longer being of any use to the legion. You have a choice to convince Danielle to let the grudge go and leave the man be, with a 50 speech check for saying there is nothing left of him and he isn’t worth the hate, or you can allow her to recieve closure. 
     If you allow her to kill Sanctus, a cutscene will ensue and Danielle will kill the man in a scripted event by stabbing him in the gut multiple times. She will then turn to you and claim that he and the Legion turned her into a monster, (though whether she is refering to the multiple scars and vast cybertronics in her body or her mental state or both is unknown,) but that the memory of her late family is what still keeps her feeling human, and will thank you for giving her this opportunity for closure.         Taking this path will allow Danielle to gain the “Vindictive Justice” perk, which will give you a +2 boost to your Strength and Endurance as long as she is in the party (adds on even with 10 stat)
      If you convince Danielle to spare Sanctus, she will walk out of the cave and wait for you outside. After walking out, she will then comment on how the whole idea was stupid and she wasted decades trying to gain something she would never have again. She then thanks you for allowing her to realize this.        Taking this path will allow Danielle to gain the “Still Human” perk, which will give you a +2 boost to your Charisma and Intelligence as long as she is in the party  (adds on even with 10 stat)
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redphienix · 3 years
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I just need to say the words no matter how little they matter:
This dude's retrospective on Morrowind tackles a perceived weakspot (I agree) in the legion's story and says roughly:
"The quests' intent appears to be to have the player clean up a bunch of missteps on the path to the legion gloriously ending up on top (as a respected moral official force, IE: seen as the good guys)"
"this could have worked, but the questline lacked a real narrative and was much more a bunch of isolated incidents demonstrating how incompetent these colonizers were, or how morally bankrupt the members could be"
and I felt like I just heard someone say the exact thoughts I have towards NV NCR (where we're clearly meant to see our attempts push them to be the best they can be, but all I get is how corrupt and fragile their morality is from the bottom to the top [especially the top]).
NV NCR just never clicks with me because any quest involving them points to their flaws and then glosses over them after you fix them when all I get from it is that the NCR is full of flaws and apparently on a downward spiral from them as no one else fucking fixes it and my fixes are left isolated in their impact.
And that's chill! If that is the point! To have the NCR be overzealous and morally bankrupt with the appearance of the good guys! And the quests that DO present this narrative feel great and interesting! They make me feel like- for just a moment- the NCR is being accurately written as "morally gray shitbags that offer a marginally better future".
Except I never felt like that was the point overall- it always feels like the intended point is for me to think I fixed a little oopsie or protected the "Best Government For The Wastes (tm)" from becoming like their perceived lesser moral rivals when like... no. What I get is that the NCR fuckin' blows but the writer wants me to think they "don't really".
Anywho I'm wrong and not tagging to make others read my wrong statements on a good game. I really need to replay NV and just do like 100 hours of NCR questing to really confirm to myself what the writers' intent was.
Because if I just misinterpret some shit and the NCR are universally (from a 4th dimensional wall breaking position- the writer's intent) supposed to be seen as shitty as hell and doomed "but at least better than the legion" and that's IT then I like that. I just have all these memories of feeling like the writer's intent was to just show them as "oopsie daisy a little messed up but it's okay because you fixed it uwu" except with no impact being felt so all I get is that they suck.
Was it well written gray morality or was it shittily written gray morality, huh!? lol.
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professorwillynilly · 7 years
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2, 4, 5, 11, 39 for your courier?
2. Which faction(s) did they join and which did they destroy? Why?DESTROY ALL THE FACTIONS! ANARCHY IN THE MOJAVE! Seriously, though, Six is very anti-establishment. As afore mentioned, she sees the war and subsequent nuclear bombing of the world as an example of why governments don’t work and are inherently corrupt. That doesn’t mean that she wants no organization and chaos to rule, of course, but it does lend itself to a very…. laissez-faire way of running things, after the second battle of Hoover Dam. Rather than try to maintain strict order through centralized government, she accepts the notion that human beings are inherently chaotic, and swimming against the current will only result in more destruction. This isn’t to say that she doesn’t help people – she strongly supports the Followers of the Apocalypse, and encourages others to do as she has and help settlements in need if they’re able.  Six destroys the Brotherhood, the Legion, and the NCR, even going so far as to gain the latter’s trust enough to be part of the President’s welcoming party, and then letting the Legion assassin shoot him (did I do that quest for the express purpose of failing it for STORY REASONS? yes, yes i fuckin’ did). None of them belong in the Mojave, in her eyes – they’re all intruders on the way of life that the settlers there have fought for and carved out for themselves.
4. Give us a summary of their backstory.Six was raised in a tribe of nomadic hunters in Arizona (maybe one day I’ll actually name said tribe, but that day is not today). She was apprenticed to the tribe storyteller (the keeper of tribal traditions and oral history), and at some point as a young adult fell in love and got pregnant. The baby ended up being stillborn (for completely natural reasons, it happens sometimes, unfortunately), and in a fit of grief and inner turmoil ran off into the night, abandoning her people (and lover). Arguably, she’s always had the itch to roam on her own, and this way just a catalyst, but either way she did not return for several years.It was during this time that she took up work as a courier and traveled all over the NCR and beyond. She learned to read and write from the Followers in the Boneyard in exchange for making deliveries for them, as well as some other bits of formal education here and there. She discovered the Divide and began to use it as a main thoroughfare, and helped many runaway Legion slaves and displaced tribals (as well as other down-on-their-luck types, if she thought them trustworthy) relocate to the area. She meets Ulysses during this time, but that’s another story. Around the time the Divide is getting set up as a settlement, she finally gets the courage to return to her tribe, only to find that they have been wiped out by the Legion in her absence. She carries a lot of guilt over that, believing that she might have been able to avert their fate if she had stayed, but that’s neither here nor there.The destruction of the Divide hits her hard, and she becomes even more closed-off and essentially mute afterwards. Sometime later, while roaming the Mojave, she gets caught up in the Platinum Chip scheme, and, well, you know the rest.
5. What’s their full name and does it have a meaning? Do they have any nicknames and how did they get them?Okay so I’m a bad and haven’t decided what it is yet but she does have a tribal name which is her “true” name, I guess, but she takes the name Isabel after abandoning her tribe, for no other real reason than she read it in a book and it sounded pretty (maybe read about Queen Isabel I of Spain? she was a pretty cool lady idk). Her name is one of the things she forgets post-head shooting, but she does discover it again right before the second battle of hoover dam. After the battle, she sort of disappears from the limelight, but still manages Followers outposts and other things in the Mojave. She drops the moniker of “Courier Six” (again, another story) and goes by Izzy. Courier Six is also sometimes referred to as “the Ghost of the Mojave”, mainly because her battle tactics include sneaking up on her opponent before taking them out (sneak was one of my main skills). Also, because she’s weird and spooky, I guess.
11. Their biggest flaw? Do they recognize it as a flaw?Six probably has a lot of flaws, including her complete disregard for personal safety and her proclivity for violence. I think she recognizes them as flaws towards the end of her time as Courier Six, when she’s regained some of her memories and started to put the pieces of her life back together, but she’d probably never admit to it out loud.
39. What are their thoughts on having to kill on a daily basis in order to survive? Does it take a toll on them? Or do they shake it off rather easily?Kill or be killed, that’s the law of nature, man. Also because she thinks she’s divinely ordained (or something) to complete her mission as Courier Six, I don’t think it affects her much. That doesn’t mean that she lack empathy, just that she… puts it out of her mind, I guess. It starts to take a serious toll after the second battle of hoover dam, though. I doubt anyone but Ulysses and maybe Arcade really sees it, though.
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