#i feel like people would think im insane if i dropped something like 'danse cuts btw' into my headcanon list

[amazinglyegg]

I read your tags on you Boone theory and I completly agree. I used to SH as a teen and young adult in college and I hate that everytime I see rep somewhere, it's a 'woe is me' sad teenage girl who cries while doing so and makes it dramatized as hell when if someone has actually gone through that, it's a casual thing like putting water on to boil. I'd love for once if it was mentioned by a character like Boone, talked about a bit as a tender topic in the past but something learned from, and then never used as something to pick him apart. Nothing like 'What if he does it again? He's fragile and I need to keep him with me to protect him'. As soon as things similar are brought up in a narrative, that's all the writers and Fandom seem to associate the character with and I'd love for Boone to be the outlier and the rep we deserve. Sorry for the rant/ agressive agreement, I'm really passionate about this from my past and Boone being my favorite character in any media.

I'm so glad someone agrees with me on this!

You make a great point with the fact that the fandom (and game developers, truthfully) tends to cling onto characters problems and not focus on anything else. Cait does DRUGS, and Preston is SUICIDAL, and like 10 different characters have DEAD WIVES and the rest of their personality gets forgotten about or overshadowed.

This tends to come naturally due to characters not having much time for plot development, hence why "Cait does drugs" is focused on a lot more often than "Nick has a dead wife", even though those are both the main points of their personal quest. Nick just has way more screen time and thus more personality traits and life experiences for the fandom to cling on to. Cait has 1900 dialogue lines and Nick has 2600 including Far Harbor, just to put it into perspective.

It almost makes me glad the idea of Boone's self harm never gets verbally brought up in game because I know it wouldn't be treated the way it should. Boone is stoic and strong and I know it'd butcher his entire character beyond repair if Bethesda tried to put in a "please stop cutting... for me? 🥺" bit between Six and Boone. Boone isn't a sensitive flower that cries and sheepishly pulls down his hoodie sleeves, he's a grown man who can talk and be talked to like an adult.

If Boone self harming ever did become canon the only way I could see the game dealing with it is the same way you mentioned - "a casual thing like putting water on to boil", because that's how Boone would view it. In a perfect world Boone would have scars visible on his arm that Six could bring up and the conversation would be as curt as literally everything else he says. Something like "Yeah, I used to cut myself. I stopped, though." It doesn't need to be any more than that, really.

It would mean the WORLD to me as someone who's been self harming for seven years now to see truly normal, CASUAL representation. My entire life I've had to cling onto dramatic or romanticized stories of self harm, the whole "she drew a picture on her wrist with a razor as her pen..." garbage just to see myself in any sort of fiction. Googling questions just to get hit with "Is your teen daughter self harming?" as the top results. I cannot think of a SINGLE character in media with visible self harm scars at all, not to mention ones whos self harm is treated respectfully.

At the very least I wish Boone self harming was a more common headcanon. It's hinted at in game and it would be the perfect representation if handled correctly