This is something I've often wondered about, Beatrice is the lady in Vault 101 who gives you a poem for your birthday and seems to be the closest thing that the Lone Wanderer has to a mother figure, and sadly she dies when you return to Vault 101 because Andy the robot cuts her foot off trying to treat a "spranged toe".

Anyways I think there's evidence that Beatrice is some sort of seeress. The poem she gives the LW for his birthday seems to predict his fate like how he dies trying to activate the water purifier in the end of the main quest, and a memo posted in the diner says that she offers tarrot card readings to the residents.

I wish this was explored more in the game because the only time we really see Beatrice alive is during the LW's 10th birthday. I'd like to know just what her relationship with James was, obviously she saw the LW as a child figure that she helped raise but maybe she had some sort of romantic interest in James too? Also it's cool that she's actually somewhat of a psychic, it's one of the few supernatural things to exist in Fallout 3 like the Dunwich Building.

There's a note about her on the Overseer's terminal, I forget mostly what it says...other than the Overseer thinks she is sixually repressed and somehow, that leads to her behaviour. All that indicates to me is that the Overseer is a good old fashioned chauvinist who is convinced that women are nothing but a product of their hormones and her real personality is nothing to take at face value. :rolleyes:

Tarot don't necessarily mean the person who has them is psychic or a seer, because it's all about the position they're drawn in and their orientation. All the person has to do is apply what the general meaning of said position + orientation means in the context of the other person's life and voila, a reading. However, you do have to have an interest or belief in there being more to what happens in our lives than simply our actions. For me, I like astrology, insofar as I'm a Libra in basically every sense of it, so...

It doesn't mean she isn't more significant. She seems a bit...out of it in general. No matter how you reply to her, e.g. "Where's my real present?", she just brushes you off.

Bittercup was another one of those "weird" girls who spoke of supernatural ("Make sure you come and haunt me") but like everyone else from Lamplight/Big Town, she's a gigantic mystery.

The only other spooky/supernatural occurrence is the basemant shrine/temple thing in PL where the swamp people go...*shudder*

I remember what the Overseer's terminal says, he referred to her as "An absent-minded sixually repressed sycophant". I looked up what a sycophant is and it's somebody who pretends to be nice and pleases other people for personal gain, which I don't really think is true for Beatrice because she seems like a genuinly nice lady who cares about the Lone Wanderer like a surrogate son. Like you said I think the Overseer is just cynical and paranoid, so he's just doubtful that she really wants to help others with her tarrot cards and poems that predict the future.

And yeah I totally forgot about Bittercup, why is it that ever reasonably attractive girl like Moira, Seirra, Clover, and Bittercup is a complete nutjob?

Sarah Lyons is pretty hot...right?

No?

It seems the most memorable female NPCs are loopy. Perhaps they're memorable because they're loopy...

The Overseer was wrong about a lot of things, it would turn out, haha. If Beatrice really was getting messages from the ethereal, she might have a sort of "dreamy" disposition (much like Bittercup) which could be mistaken for being flaky, or absent-minded.

Well true, she was pretty and sane at the same time. I guess those other girls just stand out more and make it seem like every pretty girl is loopy.

The difference between Beatrice and Bittercup in my opinion is that Beatrice seems like she truely is in-touch with the supernatural, or at least believes she is. Bittercup on the other hand just reminds me of those goth girls in High School who claimed to be satanists and wiccans when they really had no idea about those cultures and would make up stuff trying to impress people (which never worked on me because I went through a phase where I truely did study wicca), and they simply put on a lot of dark make-up and clothing just to get attention. I think Bittercup is just meant to be like a stereotypical goth girl who wants attention (such as the fact that she's had a lot of boyfriends in Big Town) so she tries to come across as weird to scare the people she doesn't want to be around and impress the people she does want to be around.

Apparently we're having a private conversation, here, haha

The interaction with Beatrice is just too limited for me to gather much of an opinion. You're right -- sadly, she's laying on a gurney with her leg (and life) missing when you see her next, with no chance to even ask other people about her. You should write a fanfic about her

That may be true about Bittercup, though my feeling is that she's always been weird like that -- her name might be a throwback reference to http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Bittercup (note: I have not played Morrowind and simply did a Google search for her name) -- which is why her nickname is what it is. Kids and teens go through all kinds of phases, but it seems like she's serious about the emo girl thing. She only walks around Big Town at night, seems disconnected from reality...I mean, she might be looking for attention (don't we all, sometimes?) and since everyone grew up with her whole shtick, maybe they just ignore her so much now that she is overcompensating.

lol nah I'm willing to bet someone else will reply eventually.

I don't know about writing a fanfic, I don't really have the patience to sit there for hours and gather my thoughts to write a story, plus my grammar gets poor when I do a lot of typing so I'd probably just get laughed at for trying. It'd be cool if somebody else wrote a fanfic about her though.

As for Bittercup I think her name is a pun of the flower Buttercup. A Buttercup is a bright and cheery yellow flower, but Bittercup has "bitter" in the name like something intense and unpleasant, which kind of fits Bittercup's personality as she's a pretty girl like a flower but she tends to push people away with her claims to have powers and her love of things that are spooky, much like those goth girls in High School I mentioned. Bittercup may somewhat believe in the supernatural but I think for the most part she either puts it on as a facade to gain the attention of boys or to distract her mind from how s**** her whole situation is which is understandable given the fact that the Lamplighters kicked her and her friends out and left them in the Wasteland to be swallowed up by the dangers of slavers and super mutants.

_{Should I feel like an intruder? Looks like a private thread... :blush2:}

Just to drop in with my two cents: I never considered there could be anything more to Big Town residents other then them being a bunch of teenager (stereo)types. I always thought they were supposed to be subtly comical, with Bittercup as the 'goth/emo', Flash as the 'jock', Pappy as the 'loser' etc. I just couldn't take statements like 'I wish I could die romantically, in the moonlight, in a long black dress...' seriously, it's so cheesy.

As for Beatrice... eh, there probably wasn't any depth planned for her either, she was just a little touch to add a nice bit of foreshadowing/foreboding to the beginning of the game, so the player wouldn't feel too comfy-cosy. The slightly loopy person who actually has something meaningful to say is a kind of a trope, I think. No Bark Noonan would be a NV example. But it's all open to interpretation, of course.

*does computer voice* Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert! Activating Anti-Intruder Flamethrowers! :flamethrower: :ahhh:

lol just kidding! :hehe:

Anyways I agree, the kids in Big Town were all meant to be teenage stereotypes, and Bittercup is obviously the stereotypical goth/emo girl.

As for Beatrice, I think her role, while it was small and didn't have much debth, was meant to be like the only mother figure the Lone Wanderer had after his Mom died giving birth to him. She helped teach James how to change his diappers as a baby and she calls him "Dearie" which is the type of pet name a mother would often give to her young child, and she tells Amata that he is like a son to her. Also the fact that she dies when you return to Vault 101 is supposed to give the LW a sense of sadness because he's lost another person who truely cared about him. However there's also the fact that she's not the LW's real mother which can create a kind of uneasiness in their relationship, because he could feel angry that she's trying to take the place of his real mother and that's why he would respond to her with rude comments when she talks to him during his 10th birthday.