The Khans - My Introspective
I don't like the Military and I don't support a lot of the actions the NCR does to the Mojave in New Vegas but in terms of the Khans I feel like the fandom infantilizes or diminishes the fact that they are or at least one of the most violent raider groups in the Mojave.
What happened at Bitter Springs was a tragedy, innocent lives were lost and the fact that the NCR swept it under the rug and continued to hunt down Khans that are truly trying to back down and resettle is horrendous, but there is a history to the NCR's aggression towards them.
The Khans first appear in Fallout 1, the main faction of raiders in the game besides the mentioned Vipers (who don't actually appear if I remember correctly). They came from Vault 15 along with the members that would form rival groups; The Vipers, The Jackals, and Shady Sands. They are a very large and foreboding raiding party, known for burning towns and encampments they attack and taking survivors as their slaves or slaves to sell. They are a big reason why the Jackals and Vipers are actually so small in New Vegas, they wiped them out.
Their main targets where Shady Sands and Junker town, the former of the two would be what became The New California Republic. This explains a big part of their animosity towards the Khans, only furthered by the fact the Khans kidnapped Tandi as a young girl, the girl that would go to offically found the NCR out of Shady Sands. When the dweller saved her and killed much of the Khans, this allowed the NCR to develop into what it currently is as they no longer needed to focus on fighting off constant raids.
When the Khans became the New Khans in Fallout 2, they barely resembled the Khans as they were led by Darion, Garl Death-Hand's son (former leader of the Khans). They were smaller and refortified vault 15, still planning to take down the NCR (at this time nowhere near as imperialist as they are in FNV) as mostly a revenge/power ploy. They manipulate The Squat, a group of y'know squatters, that lived in the upper levels, promising and lying about repairing the vault and offering them ransacked caravan resources if they kept the NCR away. Being their only life line The Squat had no choice. Still the chosen one got rid of them and they left New California for the untapped Mojave.
The Great Khans, the most current iteration, continued in the path as the original Khans, regrouping and gaining information from the Followers who hoped they'd use their new medical knowledge to heal themselves. They gained more members and a substantial part of Vegas territory before they were run out by the three families. They were pushed to Bitter Springs where they first and foremost continued to pick off and attack NCR settlements, most of which consisted of caravans, towns, and camps as they saw them as easy like in their old days. It was the killing of four influential Republic members (non-military) that brought on Bitter Springs.
Bitter Springs was the result of years of hatred and animosity and likely the goal to send a final message to the Khans. It does not excuse the fact that innocent men, women, and children were slaughtered with few survivors. It does not excuse the fact that the NCR has yet to make amends for this and continues to try and persecute the Khans even in moments of surrender.
This post is not to defend what happened but to give a quick rundown of the Khan's history and their history with the NCR. It's to remind people that the NCR is not just their military power but an actual group/settlement of people that were also attacked indiscriminately by the Khans. It's to point out that the Khans were not a band of indigenous people (no matter the comparisons) driven from their homes but raiders who fed into the brutal cultures of the west coast wasteland and were in turn treated to the same things.
My frustration comes from the fact that FNV has so many comparisons to indigenous struggles but the groups it chooses are not comparable at all. Their oppression hinges on not being familiar with their past, which explains why they have the reputation they do in canon. The "tribes" are often not even groups of minorities or have goals/desires out of acquisitions of power and I feel like it is important to both acknowledge that this is bad indigenous rep because it is not supposed to be. It is supposed to be a comparison of the in-game groups and how they all do the same things and justify it in their own fucked up ways, some better at it than others.
FNV of all the Fallout games (in light of it being heavily Western based) distastefully uses indigenous imagery and theming for groups that are sad mimicries of American indigenous cultures at best and outright offensive at worst.
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I don't know... horrible things happen all around the world and it's not a competition
Atrocities are committed against multiple groups in multiple parts of the world at the exact same moment, and none of them erase each other. They all matter, all the people in this world who are being brutalized matter. There shouldn't be any line you draw where one group doesn't actually matter as much as another
You're welcome to prioritize your energy towards helping one group or another, but what's not ok is invalidating or dismissing people who are actively being harmed
Same goes for trying to figure out which social group has things worst (and lets be honest, always using a US lens)
Like... maybe the important thing is to prop each other up and help everyone get on their own feet rather than trying to... pick fights about if physical disabilities or mental illness are less respected (I'm trying to pick a more absurd example but sadly I've seen exactly that argument happen before). Maybe it doesn't really matter and what matters is helping who we can when we can
I'm tired of it, I'm just fucking tired of it. Support people, champion them when the world is just brutalizing them, but you don't need to throw a single other person under the bus to do that
Which seems to be an absolutely impossible lesson for people to learn
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What do think of a Milgram next generation au? Like an AU where the prisoners (excluding amane) have kids?
Ooh, what an interesting concept! I've never thought of that before (besides crying over Mahiru’s dream family she mentioned lol) so this was real fun to think about >:) I’m assuming the Milgram events all occur, but somehow everyone makes it out and tries to move on with their lives as best as they can. It'd be really cool story of all these kids meeting up and slowly uncovering their parents trauma/secrets...
For a lighter tone, it could be a very cute “kid detectives meeting up and making a little club to talk about mysteries of the past with their weird pet rabbit :)” But of course you could keep the darker canon tone, and have these ordinary children from wildly different walks of life discovering the bloody secrets that have haunted their family.
Either way, it'd be cool to set it up the same way we’re discovering the crimes: the children get pieces of information here and there as their parents let things slip, they check a story from an old news site, they catch details here and there from the locals. The group tries to put all the pieces together with limited snapshots and comments. There are no judgements -- it definitely leans into the mystery/story elements.
I'm sure their time in Milgram would drastically change the original prisoners, so some of their children would be shocked to find out what their parents were doing back in the day... I think a few of them would move far away, or want nothing to do with the others, so it takes their children a bit of digging to track down the other kids like them. Even if their parents are enemies, the children can all get close over their unique situation. I'm also a sucker for siblings who aren't close to find a better relationship through discovering the family secrets.
For an even darker tone, though, the original prisoners could have been wrongfully released or escaped back into the real world -- so years later, Milgram collects the children into the prison to judge them instead (sins of the father and all that). Instead of extracting mvs from them, the child and warden are forced to watch their parents’ videos and are interrogated about that. In this case, there'd be a weird dynamic in which they're learning to hate their parents (for the cruel things they did or for being the reason they're currently imprisoned) while also working really hard to defend them to the warden so that their family is forgiven. Similarly, there's an interesting relationship between them and the warden: these new prisoners criticize their decisions while also working together to solve the details of the parents' crimes.
I don't have a ton of specific headcanons on the cast, but a few roles in the group I can picture:
Kazui becomes much more honest after everything -- his children end up with leader roles because they have the most information on milgram/his crime.
Alongside them, Kotoko's kid would take after her mannerisms and become a leader as well. Out of Fuuta, Mahiru, and Mikoto's kids, half of them don't mind their parents' conflicts, while the other half act like they should carry on that legacy. I don't think Kotoko's kid themself feels the need to carry on her work, but will definitely defend her actions no matter what.
Shidou’s child would be put in a really weird spot, hearing how much he mourned those that came before. Feeling like a replacement, or not living up to the idea of his previous family, they act just as melancholy as him. Yuno's child also has a strange survivors guilt sort of thing going on.
In a normal-world setting, Fuuta's kid is the one to track the others down and get in touch with them. (But they're just as hotheaded as he was at that age, so another member has to do the actual recruiting lol)
Mahiru tries to move on from the events of Milgram, so her child is the most shocked that their mother was involved in a death and trial like this.
I think there'd be a solid mix of kids who are exactly like their parents, and the complete opposite. I like the idea of Haruka’s kid becoming the friendly, talkative one who really brings the group together <3
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MAGS UR SUPPOSED TO TELL US IN ADVANCE SO WE CAN PREPARE FOR IMPORTANT EVENTS LIKE THE QUEEN’S BIRTHDAY!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY WIFEYYY! Words cannot thoroughly express how much I love ur work. I’ve actually had a rough past few years and I was really going through it when I first found your blog. Your work took me to a world where there was comfort, ease, and love. I was inspired by many of your works to confront difficult aspects of my life and prepare myself to accept love in a vulnerable and meaningful way. I truly thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving me this safe space and place of comfort. You are far more appreciated than you know. ❤️🔥
don't make me tear up... I appreciate that so much, I'm so glad you could enjoy my writing and my blog like that, when I hear that it just pushes me to want to write even more... thank you so very much 💗
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