#Great khans

[papakhan]

They tortured my ass in the sierra madre and all I got was a new bestie

[fallout-biggest-irons]

[feeshies]

keeping these as sketches

[neuroticreno]

it's jerry and his emo hair against the world

[herecomesthementalmeltdown]

fanon yes man: wow, such a chill lil guy!

canon yes man, 90% of the time: wow, such a chill lil guy!

canon yes man, whenever the brotherhood or khans are mentioned: HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT. FOR YOU. HATE. HATE.

[ltsorbetes]

im sorry but Fallout fans on Reddit casually have like the worst opinions ever

what the fuck do you mean “bitter springs was justified” or the great khans somehow deserved to have many of their children killed. also @ people who think vera deserved her fate. you know, some girl in a very uneven power dynamic who was being blackmailed through her terminal illness. also also them ignoring the nuances of joshua's character because edgy badass "we can't expect god to do all the work". Bonus points it's all three

[songsaa]

And then they kissed and had babies and and Benny was the pregnant one and and and and

[enigmatic-luminary]

Yo why do the meerkats on my meerkat calender look like benny and the khans from fallout new vegas

[bellonathedragonborn]

Here’s a link to the Fallout: New Vegas prequel comic.

To be honest I think it’s neat that Benny isn’t portrayed as a coward like he is in the game.

I also like how it explores a bit on the Bootriders. If only a bit.

[papakhan]

I'll make my own post actually. I think it's an under appreciated detail and piece of characterisation how the courier is buried not only fully clothed but also carrying stimpaks, caps, and their weapon of choice (and we know its THEIR weapon because the game gives you whatever type of weapon you scored highest in with skills). And sure its just a game mechanic thing but they could have just as easily had Doc Mitchell say "here's some stuff of mine to help you out" but he explicitly says "here, this is all you had on you". Also I need you guys to ignore the DLC dumping all that shit on you at the start of the game okay forget about it. I know it's funny but it's not what I'm talking about

It's interesting no matter who you pin this behavior on. If it was Benny preventing the Khans from robbing the courier as they would any raider victim, then that's just another layer of him thinking he's being respectful about the ordeal. Or at the very least enjoys having power over the Khans and ordering them around.

However my headcanon is that it was the Khans who buried the courier in this way. And I say this because they bury the courier in the same way they bury Chance, another Khan whose grave you can find in game, in his armor and with his weapon. And I just think it's fun and interesting to think that these guys who, from the comic we know wanted no real part in any of this and are only here for money, laid the courier to rest in the most respectful way they knew-- like one of theirs.

And actually according to one of the trailers the couriers hands are unbound while in their grave so. And they're still fully clothed. So actually Doc Mitchell giving the courier the vault suit is more likely because he had to dispose of their og clothing because yknow. It'd be filthy from being in the ground and on the couriers comatose body (do you know what the body does when it's comatose. Trust me you don't want those clothes back) and also knowing emergency medicine the courier was probably cut out of their clothes because if you're concerned about a head/neck injury cutting clothes off is less disruptive then trying to wiggle an unconscious person out of them and possibly causing more damage.

Anyway. Either way the Khans and Benny still show more respect to the couriers "dead" body then the courier/you the player show to any of your victims I mean. How many powder gangers did you strip naked and leave to rot under the desert sun? Or legionaries? Or raiders? Or the Khans themselves? Much to think about

[deepest-dope]

you know what? i think the NCR and the legion would both be like ultra pretentious about horses, the higher the rank of the soldier the less mutated their horse is with caesar and oliver both having if not a completely "normal" horse then a horse with the least obvious mutation.

meanwhile in the great khans camp "this is tarantella, we call im that because hes got 8 legs and does a sweet little dance when hes happy! he isnt the fastest but hes fucking STRONG, he can drag around one of those old semi trucks if he wants to. we love him, hes super sweet with the kids"

[fallout-biggest-irons]

"The Great Khans deserved Bitter.."

WRONG

[feeshies]

happy pride to the fallout faction of leather-wearing anarchists with shaved heads who answer to a man named "papa"

[roseyturtles]

In a perfect version of Fallout: New Vegas, Boone would submit himself to Khan justice (get the shit beat out of him until he's in a full body cast and is missing his dominant hand, and unlearn his imperialism during the hot, sweaty, itchy, uncomfortable recovery time)

[melistening]

i hate benny i hate benng IBAYE BENNY IHATE EBENNY BENNY I HATE EBNNY BENENBYHJATAHEYIHATE BENNG IVHATE GOU BENNNY!!! AHSOO MUCH MUCH BDNNY!!!!

[newwillinium]

The Great Khans and the Tribes of Zion/Honest Hearts

So I noticed this a few nights ago when I was trying to decide what route to go for my newest Fallout New Vegas character, and I noted something that I don't think many people have really ever clicked on.

-][-

The Great Khans, in Fallout New Vegas, are written as stand-ins for Native Americans.

Hear me out.

They are a people who have been pushed east out of their ancestral homelands time and time again, later finding a home for themselves in the Mojave. They warred with other native tribes, Mr House and what would become the Families, and then later were subject to a brutal attack on their civilians which led them to be stuck on land that was their own but was sparse in resources and are unable to meaningfully fight back against the rising Imperialistic powers of Mr House and the NCR (President Aaron Kimball later referencing and using the same "Sea to Shining Sea" rhetoric as the United States did during the Great Western Expansion, at Hoover Dam).

But what really clicked this for me was that, in the NCR ending where the Great Khans ally with the New California Republic, they are once more kicked off of their land and are sent off to a far off distant Reservation.

After the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, the Great Khans returned for a time to Red Rock Canyon. The NCR's pressing need to expand proved greater than its promise of amnesty, and before long the government decided the Khans had to go. The surviving Great Khans were relocated to an isolated, barren reservation, well north of NCR trade routes

Sounds really familiar right?

And looking at the Great Khans within this context, really reframes the context of their raiding and deep bitter anger that the Elder Khans like Papa Khan and Oscar have against the NCR.

Colonization is an ugly brutal thing, and it is also a complex one.

Like the Great Khans in New Vegas, many Native American tribes ending up raiding American citizens as a way to fight back, to strike against a rising imperialistic threat that was eager and willing to grind them against their heel, to kill their culture and bring all under the American Empire.

They fought, raided, begged, pleaded, sent letters to congress, lobbied Congress and the President and the Director of Indian Affairs, even as the infinitely more wealthy and powerful United States (even just off of the weary years of Civil War) did little to nothing to step the Westward push and actively allowed it's military to perform as it may on and off orders to get the natives off of land that had once been promised to them but was now deemed too valuable for a mere treaty to hold any sway.

And to bring this back to the actual conversation I want to have, is that I wanted to state this realization of mind in order to contrast it with another example from the exact same game.

The Dead Horses, Sorrows, and White-Legs of Honest Hearts.

Where as the Great Khans are treated with a kind of weary respect, of a people crushed beneath the wheels of a infinitely more powerful empire, struggling to find hope in a FUTURE for their people and culture, the Dead Horses and Sorrows and White-Legs are. . .honestly written with far less respect in my eyes.

The Sorrows are being actively converted by a White Savior in Daniel, who sees it as his burden to show these "innocent savages" the true faith and demands that they give up their home so that they are not "tainted" by the harshness of reality. Where they have no other visible leaders then this Foreign Priest calling their faith and interpretation of his teachings through their own cultural lens as wrong-headed.

Where Joshua Graham, the butcher who helped Caesar commit cultural genocide on dozens of tribes alone, is elected War Leader by the Dead Horses and in some endings becomes worshiped by them. Even he warns Follows-Chalk to stay in Zion lest he be corrupted by the dangers of the wider wasteland.

Now you sound like Joshua. He always tells me the tribal life is better, that I should stay here and forget the outside world.

And the White-Legs are treated as nothing but a people wholly existing of hate that deserve to be destroyed because they have been fooled by Ulysses and Caesar. Never humanized, never given a chance to learn the truth for themselves, they are written and treated almost like generic Orcs in many fantasy settings. No matter what this tribe and people are consigned to doom and slaughter.

-][-

And I say all this because I find it deeply weird how disparate these ideas and depictions are between the main game of New Vegas and it's Honest Hearts DLC.

Why are the Great Khans given so much dignity and pathos, when the Honest Hearts tribes feel almost like caricatures?

Why is Honest Hearts the way it is? And why is the writing so disparate between the two sections of the game?