A minor rant on an inconsequential matter

There’s one thing that just kills me in Fallout 4. (Besides deathclaws, I mean.) It’s so bad that I cringe when I see it pop up on my screen. Each time, I nervously glance at it, hopeful that maybe it magically has changed…and each time, I am disappointed and irritated.

IT’S THE DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY, NOT “DEPARTMENT THE ARMY”!!!! For all of Fallout‘s obsession with the American military industrial complex, one would think that the series would get something like this right. The Department of the Army was officially named such in 1947, so divergence can’t be blamed — and really, there’s no excuse, since the name “Department the Army” makes no grammatical sense in any timeline.

So, while I can forgive the developers for misunderstanding how military manuals are titled and numbered (why on earth would a Covert Operations Manual be abbreviated as “FH”??) — and for combining the discrete security classification terms “authorized use only” and “eyes only” to make the awkward label of “authorized eyes only” — I have a hard time overlooking this one basic, glaring error. I want to make peace with it, but I just can’t. It drives me batshit every time I see one of these manuals. Because, well…

Also, both John W. Campbell, Jr.’s short story “Who Goes There?” and John Carpenter’s movie The Thing (based on the story) are absolutely fucking fantastic. The fact that references and homages like these abound in the Falloutverse almost makes me feel bad for bitching about a missing preposition. But just “almost.”