despite everything…
                                           it’s still you.
         by alcor (@kasualkaymer)
         sequel to like some pitch moon
The Keyblade War has ended. Xehanort is dead. The Next World has come, and it glitters with promise. But scars linger, and putting a heart back together is no easy task. Haunted by someone else’s memories and long-past unacquainted with his own heart, Isa embarks on an inter-planetary hunt for revenge and for an identity. When he is swept up in the machinations of gods, and joined by an unlikely companion, who will he be at the journey’s end?
okay, some thoughts on the elle-maccready dynamic while i’m doing research on him (both canon and . fic. look, it counts ok, finding fic focused on characters that jive with how they #feel to me makes it easier for me to get into their heads, especially someone who talks as Fucking fast as mac)
(also, the hard part about getting mac down, i think, is getting the balance of like. how Grounded he feels, and how he’s not actually all that chill. normally, the grounded practical-minded types are portrayed as the chill or at least even-tempered ones, but mac is emotional and opinionated while also being very willing to communicate, and all in all these traits together make it a juggling act for me that has me worried about writing him)
anyway:
it’s gonna sound so weird but — i’ve been going off the idea that he’s a very grounding influence for her for a while, and i’m still convinced of this
especially since he’ll think she’s the grounding influence for him until she starts opening up to him
maccready is her first human companion, and this is significant
she takes dogmeat everywhere, and adores him, but ... he’s a dog
she’s too scared to take codsworth out with her, bc if he goes down, she can’t fix him, and she Cannot Deal with losing more robot friends (still need to write that scene up at some point, maybe in the sturges focus i’ve been vaguely pondering)
but she’s used to running with at least one other person — usually, two. she’s perfectly capable of doing shit alone, but she does best with others
mac is the first available to her — hancock is next, but she’d feel bad pulling him from goodneighbor, so that’s not going to happen until later
hiring him is a business transaction. this also makes him the emotionally safe choice — and at this point, elle is Fucked Up
she feels isolated, so she isolates herself further (yeah i know), she’s kicking emotion bottles under the carpet constantly, her headspace is a very unpleasant place for her early game
maccready is the safe choice
he’s also a sniper, and apparently elle’s First human companions are destined to be snipers (/waves at boone)
maccready is also comfortable keeping it a business transaction. he don’t trust like that, and is focused on saving money, and so they’re on the same page from day one
safe spaces from day one, despite themselves
what starts breaking down elle’s walls? maccready’s sense of humor
he’s a huge ol honkin nerd and likes dumb jokes. and has a competitive streak, and all of these mean he can get between the joints of her armor
elle always responds well to people who play with her, in any form. mac would draw her out of her shell through ribbing and show-off competitions
why does this work? because he’d be drawing out her human side
sosu elle tries so hard to push down her own humanity for the sake of efficiency, of getting shit done. and once mac starts making her smile, gets her bantering back regularly, it starts breaking that shit down — making way for the rest of it to leak through
meanwhile, on maccready’s end...
elle is on the same page with him on more things than he’s likely been used to lately. she’s pro-making money (need caps for supplies, need supplies to do what they’re doing), she listens well and sees shit from his perspective instead of fighting him for having an opinion, she explains the decisions she’s making so he understands what he’s getting himself into and why she’s doing what she’s doing...
transparency is a big deal — elle is upfront about danger and generous with pay because she cares about treating him like an equal, not like an employee or someone otherwise beneath her
(because she does this shit with everyone, with a patient kind of purpose, because this is how you get results, she has this down to a science, but also with real empathy, because she genuinely cares — even as she’s smothering herself, she clings to caring to keep her identity intact)
so it’s really no wonder that they end up suprisingly close in a very short amount of time
(this is also a bit of a role reversal for elle, because this time, her companion is the one who reminds her of her humanity while she’s the one being patently reliable and pulling through for them, instead of the other way around)
end result: elle actually relaxes around maccready, and trusts him with personal shit more than others — finds him easy to talk to, and he’s a judgment free zone because while he’s opinionated, morality isn’t what he’s centered on, and that always makes her feel more comfortable with someone (contrast with nick, but that’s a post for another day)
maccready is the one elle asks to have at her back when she goes to fort hagen, instead of nick or codsworth
she isn’t going in there to kill kellogg, she’s going in for answers, but at the same time, she knows there’s still a chance it’d get ugly in there and she doesn’t want codsworth to see the darker side of her and with nick, he’s both still a stranger at that point, as well as being so Goddamn Good that she doesn’t want him near her when there’s a chance she’ll be like that
maccready? won’t do that. and she knows that if things go ideally, then he’ll think she was too soft on kellogg — and if instead, the worst comes out, then he’d be there to pull her back, but it wouldn’t change how he looks at her. not this.
and god Fucking damn is that such a big deal with her
as much as there is, i suppose, the Potential for a ship here, i seriously only get sibling-y vibes whenever i sit down to think about them like this. which is also funny because for once, elle isn’t the little sister — she’s the big sister
but for now, we’re adrift on the winds of discontent
trying to carve our place
all in hopes we’ll be something they want
but i ain’t holding my breath
concept: fic titled “a pair of sixes” centered on x6-88 learning to deal with elle (aka courier six. get it? get it? yeah i got smacked irl for that, anyway moving on)
including scenes such as
elle having x6 with her when she does vault 81 stuff, specifically, the “find the kitty” bit — expand it so the cat’s up a tree or something, i want this to start with elle asking x6 for a boost, and this can give x6 space to wax thoughts about how elle treats and interacts with animals, which i can then use for Metaphors later when x6 is trying to figure out how she sees him
x6 getting hurt bad in combat (by what??............... look. i dont know. Something, Ok) and getting treated to elle’s bedside manner, which is full of “sweetheart”s and attempts to soothe via physical contact
possibly include someone (nick? maybe x6 himself, but i think nick is more likely to look at it this way, but it may not work for nick to be around, so maybe i can figure out a way for x6 to do it, anyway) — include someone who looks at how elle is handling the commonwealth and come to the conclusion that she’s setting everything up so she can leave afterwards, and the ensuing conversation from there
tagged by: @dove-cot who DEMANDED I do this for Ferran who is my Sole Survivor for Fallout 4. Or SO of the Sole Survivor, depending.
tagging: anyone who’d like to meme
GENERAL
Name: Ferran Raines
Alias(es): Does it count as an alias if it’s his actual legal birth name? His birth name is Jack Baker. He thought it was boring and changed it in his early 20s. He’s gone by a number of other names as well, but none of them consequential. He’s casual in his use of fake names.
Gender: Male
Age: 41 at the start of Fallout 4
Place of birth: London
Spoken languages: English mostly. But he’s also had a crash course in some Mandarin for his job.
Sexual orientation: Pansexual. For anything more than sex, he likes women who are fierce and men who are gentle cinnamon rolls. This is because he’s very suspicious of men (including himself).
Occupation:Â Pre-war he was secret police. His job was to find Evil Communist Infiltrators. As Sole Survivor, he becomes the Director of the Institute.Â
APPEARANCE
Eye color: green
Hair color: brown
Height: 6′1″
Scars: A few faint scars from his younger years. Scars on his knees and one on his elbow. Track marks on his arms. After waking up in a post-apocalyptic hellscape he gets in a fight in the wasteland and acquires some facial scars from shrapnel and he freaks out about it because he’s extremely vain.Â
Burns: a few old and faint burn scars from cigarettes
Overweight: nope
Underweight: Very slightly for a little while as he adjusts to the wasteland, but he adapts fast.
FAVOURITE
Colour: blue, green
Hair colour: blond(e)
Eye colour: no favorite
Music genre: Jazz and swing. (He dances a mean Jitterbug.)
Movie genre: Spy movies. He likes to laugh at them. He wryly jokes that James Bond is his spirit animal.
TV show: Anything in the Old West genre. In secret he likes escapism of moral clarity of white hats and black hats and the white hats save the day and then ride off into the sunset.
Food: Anything gourmet that someone else cooks.Â
Drink: Vodka
Book: The Picture of Dorian Gray
HAVE THEY
Passed university: No, but he has a forged degree in Political Science.
Had sex: yup
Had sex in public: yup
Gotten pregnant: nope
Kissed a boy: yup
Kissed a girl: yup
Gotten tattoos: nope
Gotten piercings: Yes, but later let the piercings close
Had a broken heart: yup
Been in love: yup. He finds it very annoying and would rather avoid it. But he doesn’t always get what he wants he gets what he needs. And what he’s got is him as one point of a poly triad with a married couple named Zetta and Riley. (A patent lawyer/scientist and a soldier, aka the “Nora and Nate” of the game.)
Stayed up for more than 24 hours: yup. What is vacation time for if not to get high in self-destructive abandon and party like the world’s ending tomorrow, because it really might.
ARE THEY
A virgin: Not even close
A cuddler: With people he actually likes? Very cuddly.
A kisser: Sure.
Scared easily: No. Ferran is a risk taker adrenaline junky.Â
Jealous easily: Sort of. He has a massive chip on his shoulder and is extremely jealous of people who were born into wealth and privilege. He fakes being one of them, but there’s a lot of bitterness there.
Trustworthy: …not…really…
Dominant: Yes.
Submissive: Yes. (If someone wants him to be, he’ll play pretend. He’s not submissive by nature, however.)
In love: Yes
Single: Decidedly not. (That doesn’t stop him from sleeping around, however. Ferran is a difficult person to be in a relationship with.)
RANDOM QUESTIONS
Have they harmed themselves: Ferran is very self-destructive but never self-harmed directly. He doesn’t, say, cut himself, he just takes stupid risks, does drugs, has unsafe sex, and generally does things that aren’t good for him and gives no fucks about it.
Thought of suicide: He doesn’t think about actively killing himself. He just does things that might, as a side effect, kill him.
Attempted suicide: No.
Wanted to kill someone: Yes.
Ride a horse: Yes.
Have/had a job: He’s had a lot of jobs. Most of them various kinds of unsavory because he likes having money and has few morals. Pre-war his job was working for the evil authoritarian government. He got money and power and a sort of creepy respectability as part of the secret police. His primary job was to insert himself into targeted social circles and determine whether any of them were communist sympathizers.
Have any fears: Losing his mum. Losing Zetta and Riley. More abstractly, he’s afraid that he’s too much like his shitty dad or his mum’s various shitty boyfriends.
Sibling(s): None
Parents: Irene Baker. Single mum.
Children: No biological children. Zetta and Riley have an infant son named Shaun, who gets kidnapped by the Institute in the game intro.
Pets: Riley acquires animals, so Ferran ends up with step-pets. The general pattern is that at first Ferran wants nothing to do with the animal–it’s Riley’s pet–but then it grows on him.
tagged by:Â @johnandrasjaqobis
tagging: RAFE (@aidnos) DO FERRAN, @bigasstruckrental (ur choice), @onwingsofvalor (ur choice), des pretend i’m pinging you too
note: i couldn’t decide which kid to go with so uh you’re gonna get all three of them. but they’re all gonna get separate posts because i’m not a monster
GENERAL
Name: elena “elle” days
Alias(es): the courier, courier six; the people who knew her growing up called her ellie; there’s a storyline where she’s also the sole survivor of vault 111
Gender: female
Age: 22 at fnv start, 23 by fnv end; 29 at fo4 start
Place of birth: small brahmin town on the coast of california
Spoken languages: english, languages of the sorrows and dead horses (started to pick them up during honest hearts, then continued to be taught on later visits to zion)
Sexual orientation: gray asexual panromantic
Occupation:Â """courier""" (aka Local Do Gooder Wants To Do Good For You); minutemen general, railroad agentÂ
APPEARANCE
Eye color: blue
Hair color: black
Height: 5′0″
Scars: various scars from wasteland living (compounded by the extra heapings of Shit she gets herself into) - i.e., wounds from deathclaws, bullets, assorted stabby and slashy things, etc. but her most prominent are the following: two bullet scars on her forehead (her left, our right), and a matching set of three surgical scars (one heart surgery, one trailing the entire length of her spine, the other around her forehead)
Burns: the occasional scar from laser weapon burns and shishkabobs (thx white legs)
Overweight: nope
Underweight: YEP, specifically undernourished (extremely active lifestyle + diet of a scavver)
FAVOURITE
Colour: purple, yellow
Hair colour: this concept confuses elle, why would?? she have??? a fav???
Eye colour: see above
Music genre: everything mr. new vegas puts on
Movie genre: she doesn’t have much experience with movies but she’s inclined towards action flicks. ... also romance bc Happy Endings
TV show: "tv... show...???”
Food: noodles (which came from me hoarding it in fnv since it’s fairly rare, then i was like “...this can be her favorite food”)
Drink: nuka-cola (... she grew up on it... she doesnt like sarsaparilla...)
Book: none; she hasn’t read many books that are intact that she, like, #Enjoys or anything. she needs more exposure before she ends up with a fav
HAVE THEY
Passed university: "what’s a high school”
Had sex: nope
Had sex in public: see above
Gotten pregnant:Â see above
Kissed a boy: nope
Kissed a girl: nope
Gotten tattoos: nope
Gotten piercings: nope
Had a broken heart: oh very yes
Been in love: most definitely
Stayed up for more than 24 hours: all the goddamn time, ELLE GO TO BED
ARE THEY
A virgin: yup!
A cuddler: VERY
A kisser: what does this even mean
Scared easily: yes and no? it really really really depends. she’s been through some shit and seen some shit, but she’s also emotional and sensitive, so ???
Jealous easily: extremely not
Trustworthy: Very
Dominant: while most of the time the answer here is no, she can be in the right circumstances
Submissive: oh yes
In love: since this is covering a wide timeline where the answer could be both yes or no, i’m gonna skip this
Single: definitely
RANDOM QUESTIONS
Have they harmed themselves: dddefine. she has some self-destructive habits, but she doesn’t self-harm in traditional methods?
Thought of suicide: waves hand and makes “eeeehhhh” sounds
Attempted suicide: nope
Wanted to kill someone: i mean. yeahÂ
Ride a horse: “what’s a horse”
Have/had a job: her main alias is literally her job description
Have any fears: i assume this means phobias? uh yeah definitely. /POINTS AT BENNY’S GUN. DOESN’T STOP POINTING
Sibling(s): adopted only - leland (deceased older brother), kathleen (living middle sister), and mary (deceased same-age-bracket sister)
Parents: micah days (rancher), elena days (deceased caravanner), emma carlisle (adopted mother)
notes to use for elle’s fo4 courier six verse as to why she left the mojave:
change things for her so she does ncr ending
tunnelers. ulysses makes it very clear that the tunnelers are a real and present threat to the mojave, that eventually they'll spread out and attack from below and there'll be no stopping them. What If That Fucking Happens (instead of elle using big mt tech to contain the divide), and elle ends up having no choice but grabbing the people who are closest to her and have survived and fleeing
in both cases, i'm thinking abt having elle basically set it up where yes man rides around in her pip-boy and she keeps him secret in non-emory threads, which also gives her a reason to live in such a remote area (atomic galleria)
she’s currently in the commonwealth to investigate either 1. synth stuff, in hopes of getting yes man a synth body, and/or 2. mechanist activity, for similar reasons except replace synth body with custom robot body bc she ain’t got the skills to do that kind of thing herself
now, in case of an ncr ending ............Â
i’m thinking that possibly rearranging the dlc might have the effect? ulysses is obviously last, but that still leaves owb, hh, and dm. in her main timeline, she does owb first, then dm, then hh, with dm being the point where she breaks away from house. i think that rearranging dm to being next to last would...
i mean, i’d be canon divergent like heck by that point, because she would’ve already been locked out of ncr main quest by that point, but. if she kills house not long before ulysses calls her to the divide, and all of those “you have no ideals” lines you get from him when you’re wild card would hit way too close to home way too soon. bc she’d consider them true. she doesn’t stand for anything. she doesn’t believe in anything since she just killed someone she believes in, going against her loyalty and affection for him.Â
and even if she still talked ulysses down at the end instead of killing him, the loss of ed-e would still hit just as hard, if not harder, because someone else just died for her, because of her choices and her mistakes -- and that’s IF ... she doesn’t choose to blow up the legion base instead.
god. fuck. what if elle is at such a low point when all this happens, despite having talked ulysses down, that her abandonment issues are So Loud that she chooses to blow up the legion instead of lose ed-e? gggggod, like ... she would be so horrified with herself afterwards. legion or not -- that’s a breach of her morals that would scare her, and make her unable to trust herself
WHICH IS WHAT I NEED to keep her from going wild card. in her main timeline, hh is the crux because yeah, she had installed yes man into the mainframe by that point, but she still wasn’t confident in herself or her ideals until she meets joshua and learns about randall clark. lmao. god. so then after she hands NCR the victory, she ................ runs away
i love this bc it also gives her character arc options for RP -- and gives her some good companion quest and affinity talk material. y e e e e s s s s s.
things about that maccready fic that i just wanna mention:
elle, at her base, is a lot more animated in fidgeting and stutters a Lot more than sosu elle does, and maccready gets to know her before she really starts to come back to herself, whereas nick draws out a lot of her earlier behaviors and tells and insecurities, so maccready is seeing all these new lil things cropping up in her and is like ?????
elle apparently told him about her #amnesia but i’m still not 100% on what story she tells ppl in the commonwealth about herself, whether she came from the vault or if she tries to pretend like she just traveled here from the west or if she just Doesnt Remember Anything or what
elle being confused at his first comment comes from: 1. “uh... i know you’re smarter than this and i know you didn’t Just notice, why are you asking” 2. “how does What work???”
she’s always Clueless as to how obvious she can be when she has a thing for someone. at least it isnt as bad as when she fell in love with joshua graham and literally all the sorrows and dead horses knew. everyone knew. Everyone Knew, Elle, Even If You Told No One Jack Shit
fandom:Â fallout 4
genre:Â general
rating:Â harmless
characters:Â elle days (courier six turned sole survivor), maccready, nick valentine (mentioned)
word count:Â 552
summary: maccready realizes his traveling partner has developed a Thing for valentine. he doesn’t get it, and promptly sticks his foot in his mouth.
notes: this is really short and really Dumb and unedited, but this scene struck me and i thought it might be funny enough to write. first time writing maccready so uh /fingerguns
At first, Maccready doesn't think anything of it. He notices Elle's hands linger on Nick's arm -- or shoulder, on another occasion, or hand, on a different -- but, hey, that's just how she is. Touchy, cuddly -- Hell, she's spent a lot of nights curled up at his side to hide from the winter cold, and he can't count the number of times she's slipped her hand into his, or rubbed her hand down his arm. She's like that with anyone she cares about.
But then there are other signs. Her acting nervous when they're heading to Diamond City to meet up with him -- this is less obvious, but Maccready's run with her long enough, knows her well enough, to be able to see it. She fusses with her Pip-Boy more when she's anxious, straightens her gloves, holds her hands together fingers laced and rubs her pinkies together... Stuff like that. And Nick can get her to go shy in a way Maccready isn't used to seeing, like, she gets downright bashful and it's weird. He knows she gets uncomfortable when she gets more praise or attention for something than she was expecting, and whenever he says something especially sappy, she goes all soft and embarrassed. But Valentine? Valentine has her stumbling over her words, draws out this look from her like she's hoping he'll pat her on the head and tell her she's a good girl.
The Elle Maccready knows may change her mind mid-sentence about how she's going to phrase something, but she's usually so sure-footed about what she says, and she doesn't look to other people for support on her decisions. She may ask for input about tactics or insights, but she knows what she wants to do and she gets shi -- She gets business taken care of. She never asks for help deciding what the best thing to do is, but with Nick? Maccready's overheard her asking him what the right thing to do would be.
It's weird. And the last straw is when he catches her watching Valentine's retreating back with wistful doe eyes -- Her, the woman who walked into Fort Hagen and faced down her brother's murderer with no fear, no anger, who didn't flinch away from the rare couple of times he told her some of his Gunner stories.
Maccready stands beside her for a couple of seconds before clearing his throat. "Soooo... You know he's, like, a robot, right? How's that supposed to work?"
Elle finally tears her gaze away from Nick and stares at him instead. There's a funny little confused furrow between her eyebrows, but she doesn't answer him straightaway. "Uh... What...?"
"Come on. If we were back in D.C., I know people who'd be singing about you and Valentine sitting in a tree."
This time, she doesn't answer him at all. She keeps on staring at him, blankly this time.
"Seriously? You don't know that one? What kind of childhoo..." The word dies in Maccready's mouth and his eyes unbidden jump to the bullet scars on her forehead. Amnesia. She wouldn't remember stuff like that.
Now he just feels awkward, and a little bit like a jerk. He rubs the back of his neck. "Uh... You know what, forget it. Are we getting a move on or what?"
general commonwealth world-building to do and things to consider
determine timeline for switchboard hit
determine (or find) timeline for quincy attack
determine how the loss of switchboard affected the railroad and how they’d be working to recover lost ground (intel, connections, tourists, routes, whhhhaaateeeevvverrr, so we can build our own quests and plots out of it, also should make a list of codenames and safehouse names to draw off of)
make some decisions about expanding diamond city to fill in missing gaps (obviously meant to have a bigger population than what we see, determine what services/jobs/necessities for city survival are missing)
settlement politics (hinted at in the whole thing with the CPG, which was a long time ago, but there’s gotta be infighting/rivalries/whatever, will let us make minutemen quests more interesting)
whip up some guidelines on how we wanna handle passage of time for building projects (in the rp we actively decided to not worry about being Too Realistic, do we wanna keep that up, if we do, do we wanna work up how long it takes to build xyz, etc)
determine what holes we need filled wrt the prydwen/brotherhood (with the number of vertibirds they have, how did they have the space to... dock them... on the ride to the commonwealth, they obviously have more troops than would fit on what we see of the prydwen, we need to decide on patterns of movement/how long it takes them to spread west, etc)
What The Fuck Are We Gonna Do With Super Mutants (decided mutant hounds breed, but God What The Fuck Are We Gonna Do With Super Mutants Proper, How The Fuck Are There So Many, What The Fuck Bethesda)
decide on a concrete story for the CPG
make up some more cases for nick? definitely make up more things for piper to have written about
with the amount of time they spend in goodneighbor we need to build it up more (markets? where do people fucking Live, what do we want to do with crime group politics, etc) and maybe add hancock to the list of characters we need to build up
... god are we gonna do anything with the cabots, is there any extra stuff we wanna tie into them, they’re pretty closed off and i’m gonna be doing stuff with them in elle’s story if i ever write it so ???
what do we wanna do for coursers? both for combat purposes and for when x6 starts hanging around ferran
decide on some guidelines on chems and injury recovery
origamiaround
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ellievsbear
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