the railroad is one of the most underwritten factions and comes off as a turbo-liberal bleeding heart “secret” organization who are also all dumb enough to make their passwords password123, which i genuinely believe was done to make the audience discount them a bit and make everyone there look kinda stupid, and that SUCKS because they have a point and they could’ve been so much better!!!
(it’s very telling though that bethanyesda would develop a faction based on the literal Underground Railroad, an organization rescuing and transporting escaped slaves synths under the noses of the institute, and then characterize them as i worded above…. it’s giving everyone calling hermione ridiculous for founding SPEW and wanting house elves to be freed. i do also think the slavery allegory is a little out of touch at the same time, because at the end of the day, synths aren’t fully human, and comparing their treatment to that of REAL enslaved Black Americans is not the move.)
that being said. while i agree that synths have a legitimate consciousness, i.e. they’re living, and deserve to exist freely as such, i do also have thoughts on the catch and release program as a whole. mostly concerning the mind wipes, which is what most of the discourse around the railroad revolves around anyway. my genuine thought, besides the question of morality— it’s just not practical.
gen-3 synths (the ones the railroad seems to prioritize saving) are flesh and blood and bone, yes. they breathe and they hunger and thirst, not that they actually need to do any of those things, but they do it subconsciously, as humans do. however, the reality of the fact is that they’re sterile. they cannot reproduce. moreover, they’re immortal and cannot age and will not die unless they’re killed.
so, if you wipe their minds completely, to the point where they don’t remember they’re synths, what good does that even do? they and their loved ones are going to figure it out one way or another.
furthermore, their agency is completely removed by denying them knowledge of their own reality! if they at least knew they were synths, and that they needed to keep that a secret, they would be able to keep themselves safe and avoid the people they know would not accept them. yes, they make the mind wipe optional, but they’re pretty pushy with it and i doubt the terrified, fresh-to-the-world, just escaped synths agreeing to it are actually giving any sort of informed consent, nor are they given any information on how the real world is going to treat them. and they definitely aren’t given the skills to reckon with it when they discover their own secret and try to navigate between their implanted memories and what’s actually real. (and don’t even get me started on how the implanted memories generally SUCK and they can’t even have a nice fake life out in the real world.)
what’s even more is that the railroad does absolutely nothing to persuade the public that synths aren’t a threat to society, and the catch and release program does NOT help. because when a suspected synth gets shot in the middle of diamond city, and the citizens find out that they were correct in their suspicion, it continues to perpetuate the idea of the institute infiltrator/bodysnatching (which IS a real thing that the institute does). the commonwealth isn’t ready for them, and the people would definitely never adjust to the concept of free synths being inducted into wasteland society until, at least, the institute is destroyed. so in that case, the mind wiped, released synths are no better off than the institute plants, and the railroad is not doing them any service by keeping them wiped!! they have to be able to advocate for themselves and know when to hit da bricks!! furthermore, if they get found out or feel unsafe, they need to have the network and support of the railroad and be provided options of escape— relocation, a new identity, even a new face. tl:dr releasing escaped synths into the commonwealth none the wiser is wildly inhumane and i wish the railroad wasn’t written so badly.
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