Month: November 2015

[Trigger warning: homelessness, sexual assault, suicide, police brutality, and misogyny.]

I’ve never been homeless before.

I’ve always been poor.

When it comes to the many thin and transparent layers of poverty, every new day feels like a potential step in the right or wrong direction. I was raised by a single mother with a disability, gradually cast out over the years from a white middle-class family too deep in their nasty bias to financially and emotionally support a deaf woman and her biracial daughter. I’ve been on the cusp of prestige—occasionally visiting my grandparents’ gated beach-side community in my younger days and marveling at the borderline fantasy land at my disposal.

More familiar became the sting of poverty—living in trailers throughout junior high and moving to a new apartment every few years afterwards with the omnipresent hope that my mother’s Section 8 benefits wouldn’t dry up anytime soon…

Remember when Fallout 4 was finally officially announced and the internet collectively shouted with glee? In June 2015, Bethesda finally told fans that yes, Fallout 4 was indeed A Thing, and during their E3 showcase, it was the main attraction. I was actually playing Fallout: New Vegas at the time and was having a ball, so needless to say, I was pretty pumped myself. 

While I did not have the chance to attend the Bethesda showcase in person, I got to watch it live on Twitch with other fans who couldn’t make their way to California either. Showcases are meant to promote upcoming games and their technology, and Bethesda did a damned good job of making the viewer want to buy the game and its accompanying merchandise. Fallout 4 was presented as a trailblazer in the frontier of next-gen gaming that retained the spirit and…