#I feel more disgusted by the Curie romance than the Cait one tho tbh

[nukacoola]

Yeah Piper is the only one whose romance doesn’t feel predatory. There’s also only 3 (4 of you count Ada) female companions to 13 male ones…

I can’t bring myself to do any of the romance options in Fallout 4. Something feels creepy and predatory in the ones I have encountered so far and I absolutely hate feeling that way because so far I’ve had only female companions. But all of them feel like they are inexperienced, insecure, or vulnerable and that they are written assuming these traits provide openings to flirt with them. Is it because they were written assuming the male Sole Survivor would be the default person with interest in the female companions? Is that vulnerability a ‘signal’ to the men who wrote the game?

Some of them also come forth with their tragic backstories in a sudden way that makes me feel uncomfortable, too. Cait in particular with her high-risk behavior and drug addiction, casually tells you on her second friendship talk about being enslaved and implies she’s a rape survivor because she feels she ‘owes’ you for being nice to her. Is she doing this as another high-risk behavior, almost hoping she gets knocked down? Is the game smart enough to portray someone with impulsive decisions realistically? I can’t feel like I can trust the writing. Meanwhile you can build rapport with Cait quickly just by being naked. While there certainly are hypersexual people in real life, people with addiction and people who engage in high-risk behavior in real life, I feel scummy when I think about how all this leads up to a romance option. Even if you help her ‘recover’ I feel that I had an inordinate amount of power over her during a period in her life where she had little personal agency or could have easily been coerced.

I have a girlfriend of my own and I can say that insecurity, trauma, or inexperience are not very sexy. When we struggle with mental illness or general lack of confidence we put sexy things on the back burner to address maybe more pressing psychological needs.