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definitely-not-outlet · 9 hours ago

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how would sex work in vault 33?

as a biologist by training, with way too many classes on reproduction, i found myself wondering the answer to this question.

we have only a few lines to work off of to establish these theories. firstly, lucy saying she can't wait for "the real deal" on her wedding day. then, later, she asks maximus directly if he'd like to have sex. not really much, i know. but, i have a few ideas despite this.

also my sources on this include autism that made me rewatch the show five billion times, and a degree in biology + animal science. a lot of research at my school is on reproduction. i almost worked with sperm. a good friend of mine did a study on sex.

i enjoy making video essay-type posts on things since i do research lmao. so, let's dive into some procreation!

in short:

vaults 32 and 33 have a very comprehensive sexual education curriculum, and sexual intimacy is very casual and common.

however, penetrative + procreative sex is reserved for married couples, and-

non-procreative sex is allowed for all. this includes hands, mouths,... other parts. anything that doesn't make a baby.

socially, these rules are kept in line, since no one wants to be the one to have a kid that overloads the food supply or water chip, especially not in a meritocracy.

there may or may not be contraception. i say only married couples get it, since there's likely a limit on number of children they can have.

on the first point, it was clear that lucy knew a good amount about sex. (sex, here, is used generally to mean all acts of intimacy, including nonpenetrative). lucy knew what to do when with monty. lucy offered sex after maximus said she smelt good, and was casual/knowledgeable in what he meant about ejaculation. this could be because of her 'experience' with chet (i don't like discussing this much), but also it's reasonable to extrapolate that she was just taught about all of this in school. they likely sat people down and were like, hey, this is how to make a baby. this is how to pleasure a partner. etc etc etc.

it'd make sense for them to be taught all of this, since 32/33 are explicitly a breeding program. so, it's good to teach them how to procreate effectively. however, they are a breeding program.

the goal, overall, is to make super managers. and i'd like to think bud knows a lil bit about science and selective breeding. so, controlling who people reproduce with is step 1 of making this work. the best way to selectively breed for a trait is to select individuals who exhibit these traits, then put them together. bam, you are one step closer to a super manager. so, you'd make sure marriages are between favorable people, bada bing bada boom.

it's like dog breeding, if you want a less human-centric example. it's also literally eugenics, but bud would definitely dislike that descriptor. it's his own words, he wants a super manager, and 32/33 are breeding pools. so, he's gotta ensure that his breeding program continues without a hitch.

it makes sense, then, for only married couples to perform procreative sex. only married couples can actually reproduce, as they have been approved by the council (and whomever else may be peeking in, like bud). and i think that the stigma associated with a child out of wedlock, as well as education on what makes a baby, how a baby affects the parents and the community, etc., are all ways to keep people from reproducing willy-nilly. the vault clearly prides itself on good deeds, so spinning it as a bad deed that must never happen probably is pretty effective in preventing it. it's not guaranteed, but it just might work.

(plus, you can let them do other things,,, which i touch on later.)

i know i'd hate to be the one to have a kid that throws the entire delicately-balanced vault ecosystem out of balance. one more body may prove too much for the water chip, or the crops! and coming out of the famine (which. may or may not have happened), the idea of keeping the population in-check would be more prevalent within the dwellers.

although, they probably had a mini baby-boom afterwards to get the population back up, because there's a notable lack of 20-30 year olds. imo there's a lot of kids, and a lot of older people. then, mostly young adults died in the famine.

either way, having too many kids would cause problems, especially to have a kid (gasp) without being married. educate them on how to avoid this, and give them alternatives.

i doubt, though, that they'd shun people for having a kid out of wedlock. they'd help and support them, but definitely make them marry to preserve the order.

plus, the way lucy says she needs a suitable marriage partner, to me, moreso seems like marriage is the sole track to procreation, and likely the main psychological method to keep babies from popping up all over. let only the married ones create babies, both to prevent overpopulation AND to control the experiment as a whole.

also, though, it's clear that they don't demonize sex before marriage. and, there's no surefire way to actually prevent people from doing things outside of marriage. religions have tried for millennia to control the whims of human sexual desires. so, callback to my teaser, i think that unmarried individuals can do anything but penis in vagina sex. no making babies, so do anything else. literally anything else.

to frame it with what's been said, they have good sex education. they want to keep reproduction in check, and banning all sex outside of marriage does absolutely nothing to help with that. so, then, why not allow unmarried individuals to be intimate in other ways? handjobs, oral, grinding, heavy petting, there are so many options to allow for people to still scratch the itch whilst not actively posing the risk of making a baby. educate them on how to do these other acts, show them how to be healthy and relieve their urges, but insist, simultaneously, that babies are to be avoided.

it'd also present the idea of freedom, and let dwellers 'socialize', even if their reproduction is heavily controlled. plus, it's good for you! yay! go fuck your neighbor! relieve yourself!

i do want to comment on contraceptives, since i do think there's a chance they exist. i feel like they'd be highly prevalent in in-game vaults if they were something that was available, especially since other vaults have a much lower capacity of people. not every vault has a high-tech atrium growing a bunch of crops. 32 and 33 are also comparatively huge, but that may just be a limit of the game systems (since we can't enter a lot of rooms and dwellings in vaults). even still, you'd want to make sure people didn't get knocked up and overpopulate the vault, causing the mouse utopia that bud mentions.

vault 32/33 may then be an exception, and might have condoms to allow for penetrative intercourse. but imo there's no implication that what chet and lucy did even included that. 'messing around' and marriage being 'the real deal', to me, sounds like lucy hadn't gone that far, so to speak, prior to monty. we also don't know what specifically she was offering with maximus, since 'sex' can refer to any combination of intimate acts. there's many, MANY ways for this all to be interpreted, and ways to achieve the same goal of 'no babies unless said babies would get us closer to or will themselves be super managers'.

i also think the vaults have a limit on how many kids people can have, to help curb overpopulation. married couples may have access to these contraceptives, and i doubt they'd have their tubes tied, since remarriage/making new pairings is a thing. so, only 2 babies per household. no more. stop it.

the vaults likely just have a low rate of fertilization overall, helping with the whole overpopulation thing. be it from the toxic chemicals in their environments, the literal nuclear-fueled devices they wear on their wrists, or the generally poor diet they seem to have (it is better than the wasteland at least), there's likely a lower chance of fertilization and successfully carrying a child to term. the latter is less plausible since i KNOW they'd have good obstetrics to both keep the mother alive, and gain a new life for the vault.

steph's what i mainly base this on because it seems like she was married to bert since the last triennial trade, but only now had her first child. if fertilization was top-notch, they'd definitely be on baby number 2 by now. she also seems incredibly enthusiastic about this whole baby thing, but that could fully be a ruse. regardless, she signed up knowing that she'd be sent into the other vaults to have babies, since i assume she knows exactly what's going on in the experiment. and she doesn't seem to hate the idea of having kids, since she's happy to raise her kids with lucy. so, it took her an awfully long time to have that first baby. i say this is likely from low fertilization rates, but it's also possible that she likes the having kids thing far less than she puts on.

the final tldr (my abstract, perhaps?): vaults 32 and 33 are a breeding experiment to make super managers. to keep this goal in-sight, reproduction within these vaults has to be finely-tuned and controlled. only married couples, which have been approved, are allowed to procreate. to therefore try and curb babies born out of wedlock, 32/33 allow for sexual acts that don't make a baby (i.e. handjobs, oral sex, etc.). social stigma also helps prevent procreation, especially when looking at the limited resources and space within the vaults themselves. it's uncertain if contraceptives exist within the vaults, and fertilization rates may or may not be low as well. regardless, preventing the experiment from going off-the-rails is necessary, so a social + rules-based system was likely put in place to ensure its success.

to end, i also want to note that this shit is fucked up lmao. i'm not like "yay vault tec control people", it's just like. mmm how strange and convoluted can vault-tec be. what other ways can they implement to make humans into guinea pigs for their fucked up experiments.

anyways. thanks 4 reading this far. as always, please feel free to comment your thoughts. i probably won't budge on a lot since this is the backbone for my own lore/stories, but i still like to hear what other people think!

#outlet yaps #fallout headcanons #fallout tv #fallout on prime #norm maclean #lucy maclean #knight maximus #stephanie harper #steph harper #i love when scientists are just a little bit fucked up #outlet headcanons

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primussavethesemechs · 1 year ago

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I’m back with more slightly disturbing thoughts about transformers.

Ok listen.

I think cybertronians should be more freaked out by the fact humans eat other living things.

Like come on, bots only ingest energon which is inanimate crystal juice, they’re regularly grossed out by normal organic functions, and you’re telling me they don’t bat at eye at the idea of their friendly little Sentient companions straight up killing other animals and eating them??? I feel like that should def cause more cognitive dissonance for them, esp autobots since they actually get close to humans.

Like I can see them being grossed out but accepting of the fact that wild animals eat each other- they are WILD animals and all, not exactly sentient or even necessarily intelligent after all. But HUMANS? The organic creatures that are the closest to them (going by tfp standards where they don’t mention many other organic species) in terms of structure and emotion and intelligence?? That has to be concerning on some level to them.

Referencing tfp and MTMTE where they have scraplets and sparkeaters, i feel like that’s what they’d kind of associate it with which would freak them out more. God forbid they hear about how common cannibalism is in survival situations, I don’t even know if they’d be able to sympathize the slightest bit with that considering as far as I know cannibalism Isn’t Really A Thing for them. That’s a thought in of itself tbh, would they be able to reckon with the concept of being so hungry you’d eat people you know, when it’s physically impossible for them to do that? How do you rationalize the choices others make in desperate situations when you know you’d never have to make that choice anyway and you’ll never have their perspective on it?

Anyways, I’m entertained by the idea of them being able to ignore stuff like nuggets or patties considering it doesn’t look recognizable as what it is but being downright repulsed by steaks, especially if its bloody or has bone visible. They don’t like the visual reminders of their sweet little organic friends consuming flesh and blood. Too freaky for them.

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