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Comment by kkkqkqkqkqlqlql | Hacker News Reader

Problem is, these kinds of media end up pushing nostalgia for a warped version of an old time. It's like anything based in the 50s or 60s in USA and is not full of racism. My go-to example these days is the Fallout tv show.

That said, you actually can create something positive set in that time while also portraying the bad. For instance, in Bill Burr's F Is For Family.

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Fallout doesn't present a "50s or 60s aesthetic of American life". It's an alternate universe with an alternate history. There's various reasons the racism you're used to seeing and referring to (black Americans) is less so in their universe; but to say there is no racism is naive and ignorant of the universe. There's certainly racism towards Chinese/Chinese-Americans, with Little Yangtze[1] being a prime example, for example; for their own in-universe reasons.

You might want to stick to universes grounded in real life/history, if you want to apply real life metrics to them.

1 - https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Little_Yangtze

I'm talking about the tv show, not the games.

The TV show is in the same continuity as the games, same world different medium.

Nothing in the TV show takes place in the 20th century, either. The aesthetic in Fallout is what people in the 50s might have thought the year 2073 would be like, but it is not the 50s.

The TV show and the games follow the same continuity and canon.

You are correct except on the “doesn’t present the 50s/60s American aesthetics” part. That’s the whole point of Fallout. It wouldn’t be half the franchise it is without those aesthetics, it’s what sets it apart and it’s what people associate with the franchise the most. Without that it would be just another plain boring post-apocalyptic “everything is brown” game in a sea of “everything is brown” games.

Fallout is absolutely about the American atomic age—not a historic recount of such period by any stretch, but it is the very foundation of the franchise.

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