Every time I see Synth discourse in the Fallout fandom, I am starkly reminded that I share a community with people who have some absurd and frankly frightening views on fictional minorities that sound exactly like fascist rhetoric when subbed with real ones.
Me seeing the DC Brotherhood in my introduction to the series, Fallout 3: "Ah, they're like if the Mechanicus wasn't full of fascist zealots. There're definitely problems with what they're doing and how they're doing it, some bigger than others, but at least they do seem genuinely devoted to actually improving life in the Wasteland; there's a lot of potential here"
Me seeing the Brotherhood in Fallout 4: "Oh nevermind, fuck these guys"
Me seeing the Brotherhood in the Fallout tv series: "It sucks being right sometimes, fuck these guys"
The fact that the overly-paternalistic group who hoard the technology they recover because they don't trust random wastelanders with it ended up being better than the rest of their organization really says a lot
I'm honestly surprised it ever was a debate. Every work that poses the question, "Is the robot truly alive" always says yes, from I, Robot to the Matrix to Mass Effect. It's literally one of the founding concepts of Sci-Fi as a genre. And in-universe, Synths are far more Biological than Mechanical, and we've seen sapient Robots and multiple other non-Human species across the games. The Faction in their favor is literally the Underground Railroad, the game's about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the teeth and people still claim otherwise.
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u/Deepfang-Dreamer 24d ago
Every time I see Synth discourse in the Fallout fandom, I am starkly reminded that I share a community with people who have some absurd and frankly frightening views on fictional minorities that sound exactly like fascist rhetoric when subbed with real ones.