I did get the material via Spoonflower. For my particular vest, I bought 1 yard of cotton voile, which worked perfectly. I also hunted down a vest pattern on Etsy – it was something like “Colonial vest pattern.” It was the only one that store had, unfortunately, but you could probably find something pretty easily.

I didn’t mean to keep the vest under wraps! I had bought the vest material from Spoonflower back in August, so I must have completely forgotten to link it here. I hope your costume goes well!

1) I only caught the end of the Fisto thing, so I have no idea what it’s a reference to. Which is fine – I actually thought that was a funny moment, and said as much to my friend that had gotten worried. I still haven’t gotten there in my own play through.

2) I have yet to run into either Veronica or Arcade, so I cannot comment on either one of their character/story arcs. I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that they do represent healthy views on homosexuality, but since I haven’t seen either one on my play through I can’t really know yet. But they are beside the point – I was writing about what I have experienced in the game, which is specifically the Corporal Betsy arc and the way it was handled.

3) I do not know who the writer is, I do not know what the situation was that originally made him include this story line, and I do not know the review process these stories go through before going into the game. It’s fair to assume they go through some review process, hence my taking issue with Obsidian as a whole. This is not a personal attack on a person, this is a discussion of a much larger problem.

4) My argument is based on the following concept: anything that appears in-game is cannon for the game (not counting glitches or bugs, obviously). Everything there is to know about a character should be available in-game, as that is where people will experience it. I linked to the Fallout wiki, which I used as a tool to try to explain it all to me, as I was sure I had misread something important. That does happen on occasion. To summarize: the game itself is cannon for that game, and the wiki is there to detail things that, though available in-game, might get missed.

That said, there is no point either in-game or on the wiki where it is mentioned that Corporal Betsy is a lesbian prior to her rape experience. The explanation you receive from her commanding officer is that she was raped and is now hitting on women and causing a problem. No mention of a prior girlfriend or lesbian relationship. He wants you to kill her rapist and convince her to seek therapy, because her actions (ie, hitting on female soldiers) are bothering her squad. When you talk to her, she does not tell you she broke up with a prior girlfriend, she does not tell you that she is having trouble trusting or even touching anyone, let alone getting intimate with them, or that she’s suffering from sleeplessness, paranoia, agoraphobia, or any of the other many potential results of rape. She doesn’t even seem shut down. She is well aware of her problem, she just doesn’t think it’s a problem.

That is the behavior of a Rambo after getting shot in the arm, that’s not the behavior of a rape victim. Even if we assume that her psyche would launch her into some sort of need to exert power, that STILL doesn’t explain the sexual orientation issue. Given the absolute lack of homosexual characters up to that point in the game, it is easy to assume she should be straight, and therefore make that logical assumption.

As for looking closer – how closely am I, a player, supposed to look? It’s a side mission where you’re contracted to kill three bad guys that shoot at you without provocation. There is absolutely no deeper meaning to that – here is money, kill these people. She is not a main story character, she is not an available travelling companion, and she is not even an entire side mission. She’s a side note in a side mission, and the last step before you can officially count as having “completed” it. It’s all shown to you on the surface, through exposition. There is no reason to look deeper, and when I did try, there was nothing there. Everything I could discover was presented to me already.

Finally: I fully support any game that’s willing to take on such a massive topic, but only if they present it properly to the player. We need to be able to see real-world consequences on the person you’re supposedly helping, it needs to not just feel like a side thought, and it needs to be handled with deepest care, as many potential players are also victims of something like that. Corporal Betsy’s story was none of those, and it was absolutely shocking to discover. I will leave you with an actual quote of hers, which is clearly a statement made by a TV or movie version of a “butch power lesbian,” not the statement of a rape victim:

“I see some cute little number, and I’d rather get in her pants. So, maybe I’m a stone-cold bitch after all.”

1. I’m familiar with the writer. And he’s actually someone that writes a wiiiiiiiide variety of women and doesn’t think twice of putting them into powerful positions.

2. And here again: Please don’t get this the wrong way. It’s logical.

Your mind went from reading the lesbian element to the stereotypical “Girl was raped so now she is magically a lesbian” theory. Which is completly understandable.

However if you actually look closer its more like: Elite Soldier gets (sexual) control taken away from her. Not wanting to deal with the situation she went overboard and tries to assure herself everything’s still same old, same old.

First off I agree its not the best story arc in the game, but you are assuming here a little too much.

The point beeing that she was already a lesbian before the rape happened. Her not willing to deal with the situation is her searching for sexual partners thereby ignoring what happened to her. Not that shes now suddenly a lesbian and thats bad.

Secondly, Fisto was a joke and a refrence

I haven’t seen the rape thing, but I can’t say that my reaction would have been much better than yours if I came across it first. It’s unnecessary and insulting. What’s sad is that regardless of all that, I am just happy to see that the female soldiers aren’t in some sort of metal bikini instead of full body armor.

Also, I just tried Googling this, to see if anyone else wrote about it. The 1st thing I saw was someone asking if there were any “rape mods” for this game. Jesus christ.

Feel free to e-mail whenever you’d like. I might not be able to physically high five you for something, but I can figuratively do it online. In fact, I’d be glad to!

Keep your chin up! You can totally handle everything that gets thrown your way!

I have to say I completely agree with you, especially re: plans. I have filled up my schedule with concrete goals in the last month and that has helped massively. I am still finding it a bit hard to stay confident, probably because I’m so far away from people who would provide real support, but I’m getting there (I think)!