#character:beck

[keyboardandquill]

A conversation about trust (feat. Beck & Hawthorne)

Based on this week's Weekend Writing Warriors prompt by @the-wip-project

“You didn’t believe me before, what changed?”

“Thanks for siding with me back there,” Hawthorne says. His tone is light but not teasing, not accusatory. “That could have been some real trouble.”

I hum in response. Though I can feel his gaze on me, I keep my eyes on the hills for any signs of pursuit. There are none—at least not by vehicles. No dust clouds or tell-tale electric whine in the distance. If they’re following us on foot, we still have the advantage.

“I’m mostly impressed you bothered throwing your weight around for me. Could have just as easily let me fend for myself.”

“It wouldn’t have been right. You were innocent. And they’re not bad people.”

“I thought you didn’t like them.”

I glance at Hawthorne then, unprepared for the sincerity of his expression. “I don’t, but I’m not the kind of person who thinks every person I disagree with is amoral.”

“You’re a dying breed, Beck.”

“Yeah, well.” I shrug and turn back to the hills. “I’m still careful where I place my trust.”

“Then I appreciate that you trusted me. I know you didn’t believe me before. What changed your mind?”

It’s going to sound so petty if I tell him I didn’t want to believe him because I was angry, so I say nothing.

In the distance, a dust devil whips up and flicks across the landscape, backlit by the evening sun. We watch it in silence for a minute before it dissipates.

“Theo would have believed you from the start,” I finally say. It’s not a proper answer. But it doesn’t need to be.

The slamming car door draws our attention back to camp where Yarrow is settling down on her blanket to work on her latest drawing. She’s practicing hands and keeps looking at her own before going back to her careful marks on the page.

“She’s come a long way, huh?” Hawthorne remarks, a merciful change of subject.

“Thanks to you.”

“Don’t underestimate the impact you have. You’ve helped more people than you realize.”

“Perhaps,” I say. I’m sure I’ll believe him eventually.

[keyboardandquill]

WIP Intro: Rocket Boosters and Other Things You Can Find in a Post-Apocalyptic Junkyard

an offbeat sci-fi comedy

(Updated with new character and setting info as of May 11, 2022!)

It's been 10 years since the boringest apocalypse imaginable, and Beck just wants to collect salvage and tinker in peace. But the residents of Basin's Edge really need someone to go find a doctor, and it's not like Beck's gonna say no, right? Anyway, things go about as well as expected.

Rocket Boosters is about learning how to accept affection and tolerate people. Beck, a grouchy wasteland survivalist, gets gets saddled with a 12-year-old and two grown-ass men on a trip to the coast in search of a doctor and must come to terms with the fact that some post-apocalypses are not best survived alone.

Character info below the cut!

Main Characters

Beck is a cynic with a rigid moral code. She keeps to herself, and her intentionally boorish demeanour mostly does its job. Mostly. She finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time and gets roped into helping the people of Basin's Edge after a raid leaves them without a doctor.

Although her personality tends to repel people, Beck's keen eye for social cues often puts her at the advantage in tense situations. If only she cared enough to intervene without being asked.

Yarrow is the most persistent twelve-year-old Beck has ever met. Despite Beck's repeated chastising and attempts to push her away, Yarrow sticks closer to Beck than Beck's own shadow.

She finds Beck's tactlessness charming and is determined to follow in her footsteps as a salvager. Oh, they also just met.

Hawthorne is nice, sweet, funny, caring, kind, and good with kids. Beck hates him. Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to know a thing about surviving in the wastes, so obviously she has to escort him to safety so she can get him out of her hair.

He has an irrepressible smile and enjoys pushing Beck to the edge of her patience.

Calamus is almost as jaded as Beck, but is far more likely to stick around and watch from a distance with a proverbial bucket of popcorn when things get hairy. His background as the oldest son of a prepper family has given him unrivaled survival skills, making him an essential part of the team. Even if everyone else wishes he weren't.

He has a younger brother named Jamie who was injured in the attack on Basin's Edge, and who is the only reason Cal volunteered for this trip.

The Setting

Set in our nearish future somewhere around Nevada and California.

Ten years after city-dwellers left their homes en masse to set up shanty towns in the wilderness, only a few of these original settlements are still intact. Others set up and fall apart on a regular basis, threatened by lack of food, water, and protection against the roving, gun-toting Mad Max wannabes who plague the nation.

At least the roads still work.

Connecting most "major" wasteland dwellings is a network of relay towers used to boost radio signals—a rare commodity in a post-EMP world. Portable, working radios are worth more than their weight in gold, and some people will do anything in order to stay connected...

Daily Life

Year-round extreme weather makes existence in the so-called 'wasteland' difficult, but most find it preferable to living under the brutal thumb of martial law in the more populated areas.

Unfortunately, those populated areas are where one is most likely to find a doctor. Funny how that goes.

The longest-surviving settlements have the perfect combination of citizens: a good leader, people who know how to grow food, and people who can get a motor running.

Rocket Boosters Tag List

Ask to be added or removed! :)

@wip-nook @bloodlessheirbyjacques @ariskamalt @daltoneering @edgebug @ren-kenobi-wan @sp8sexual @ericaceam

[keyboardandquill]

2 for your oc of choice :)

I'll answer this for Beck from Rocket Boosters! Her clothes are what I'd call "wasteland chic." Definitely well-worn, a little ratty and torn but patched up over and over and over. I imagine her in greys. She probably also has goggles for the sandstorms LOL

Thanks for the ask 🥰

[keyboardandquill]

inspired by @bloodlessheirbyjacques but

Beck is a car guy in the literal sense in that she knows and loves cars.

Hawthorne is a horse girl if you count motorcycles as horses, which I 100% do

[keyboardandquill]

Tiny Scene Sunday ᕙ(⇀‸↼‶)ᕗ

caution, scars, desperate (bonus: valour) | Hawthorne and Beck :D ❤️

@bloodlessheirbyjacques ❤️✨👀

Jacques thank youuu!!! These have been PERCOLATING in my BRAIN for a long while so I'm glad to finally present to you a not-so-Tiny Scene on this beautiful not-Sunday :]

(CW: gunshot wound, guns, wound tending)

---

There's gauze wrapped around my middle when I wake up. I know this ache—the searing agony of a wound I could have avoided. I'm not sure what hurts more, this, or the fact that I could have prevented it had I shown just a little more caution.

Hawthorne knows it. He offers me a lopsided smile from where he sits beside me, apologetic, almost.

Running my fingers along the neatly-wrapped bandage, it takes my pain-fogged mind a few moments to comprehend what must have happened. Cal has no first aid training, nor does he show any inclination toward it. Yarrow, in her inexperience, wouldn't have been so tidy.

Which leaves Hawthorne.

"Let me know if they're too tight," he murmurs. He reaches out, his hand stopping short of touching me, and clenches it into a fist. "It's been a while since I've had to do that."

I take a slow breath and wince. This one's gonna scar. There's no way it won't. Yet another mark on the patchwork canvas of my body, another painful reminder of everything this world has come to. I glance over at Hawthorne again.

His hunched shoulders, his downcast face, the worried furrow of his brow—all of it is so opposite to the way he usually is, it leaves me craving... normalcy. (The fact that I so quickly took his loud presence as normal, I'll have to examine at a later date.)

"Hey," I croak. He's unscrewing the cap on his canteen before I can even get the next words out, bringing it to my lips to sate my thirst before I continue. "This isn't my first time getting shot, you know. I've built an immunity."

Expressionless, he stares at me for a long moment. "You're telling jokes. Now I know something's really wrong," he says, his somber tone belied by the twinkle in his eye. That's better. "Is that what the other scar was?"

The image of a terrified little boy flashes through my mind. His trembling hands hold a gun, point it at me. He's desperate. We all are. Somebody screams and he startles and his finger pulls the trigger and I double over and wake up wrapped up not unlike I am now.

"Yeah," I say.

"Did you get that one while committing unwise acts of valour too?"

The gun in my memory clatters to the floor. All I could think then was about how empty my stomach had been, how filling it with lead wasn't exactly what I had in mind when I came across that house in the middle of nowhere.

I breathe out a laugh. It hurts. "Not quite." Valour, after all, is a choice. And I didn't choose any of this.

---

thank you @bloodlessheirbyjacques I loved writing this!! It's been stewing in my mind for ages so I hope you enjoy <3

Tag list (ask to be +/-)

@wip-nook @ariskamalt @daltoneering @edgebug @ren-kenobi-wan @sp8sexual @ericaceam

[keyboardandquill]

HAPPY STS ᕙ(⇀‸↼‶)ᕗ

What little things do the cast of rocket boosters notice about people or the world around them that make them happy? What tiny little treasures do they find in the normal every day that makes the world seem a little brighter for them?

@bloodlessheirbyjacques ✨

Hi @bloodlessheirbyjacques thank u for the Q! Happy STS!

What a lovely question. And an excellent opportunity to brainstorm some details about these nerds!

Beck

colourful sunrises and sunsets

when someone shares their snacks with her just cuz

when her cat (yet to be introduced on-page...) finds some random thing to play with and goes absolutely ham with it

Hawthorne

campfire conversations. sometimes he'll even stop talking and just listen to other people talk about their lives

having in-jokes with people

seeing the smile on someone's face when he does something nice and unexpected for them (perhaps like sharing his snacks... ;P)

Yarrow

her dad's stew is one of her favourite foods and it always makes (made) her day when it was on the menu

when the desert blooms after a rain

when two people who obviously like each other get together (she gets very invested!! she's a tiny romantic in the making)

Cal

when the radio stations play the music he and his mom used to listen to

when other people are good with animals, both domesticated and wild

whatever gets his little brother excited enough to talk about it

[keyboardandquill]

Happy Storyteller Saturday! :DD

What helps inspire you to help you get into the heads of your characters? How do you find their voice when you write? For example: listening to a playlist you made for them, or even watching characters from other shows that inspire them? Anything you do to help you find their voice?

From @bloodlessheirbyjacques ✨

Thank you Jacques!

Since I draw a lot of inspo from my favourite fictional characters, sometimes I'll assign each of my OCs a 'type' based one on of those characters. It's a good base to start on and it helps me develop them into their own person while making it easy to imagine what they'd be like or how they'd react to certain situations.

Creating original character voices is actually something I'm currently working on. I've been told I write in-character when I tackle fanfic, so I want to take that knowledge and create a whole new character out of it if that makes sense!

Often, I'll think about what they've gone through to get where they are. Are they an optimist? A pessimist? Do they get along with other people, or are they aloof? Do they get excited to share things they know, or do they prefer to keep knowledge to themselves? How have their past interactions with a variety of situations built on each other to create the person they are today?

Then I'll think of a few adjectives to describe how they interact with other people.

For instance, Beck from Rocket Boosters is immediately distrustful of everyone she meets because she's had a hard 10 years and has been burned too many times. She prefers to keep her head down and watch things play out from afar, and will only step in to take action if nobody else will.

Ergo, her voice comes out no-nonsense, clipped, and impatient.

On the other hand, her foil Hawthorne is what I like to call "confidently annoying" in that he's not afraid to make a nuisance of himself to further his goals. He's not from the same type of society as the rest of the characters, so he'll do anything including drawing attention to himself, pushing the limits of social norms, and unapologetically doing what he wants even at the inconvenience of other people because he's never faced major consequences for doing that.

His voice is carefree, flippant, and friendly.

(Thank you for asking that because it forced me to do more character work and to figure out their voices in more definitive terms! That's going to help a lot in the next little while, I suspect :3)

[keyboardandquill]

Happy Storyteller Saturday!!

Do you have piccrews of your characters for Rocket Boosters? Can I see them for STS? Perhaps with a good quite attached to them that the character says? (If that's not too much to ask) 🙈👀

I wanted to send you links to picrews, but then I realized you'd probably have visions and tastes I can't even imagine so I wouldn't wanna limit you! Definitely google links to different ones to get a good taste of what out there 🥺❤️🌹

@bloodlessheirbyjacques

WOO okay I am finally sittin down to do this one because I've been Thinking About It for ages.

“Nah. I think you want me to talk, but you’re not gonna say so.”

Hawthorne, from this picrew maker! he's meant to be dark-haired but it didn't have an option that matched, so this was closest :P

“Why’s it matter to you? Nobody around here cares what anyone else does.”

Cal, with the same picrew maker because I liked it :D I have just discovered that he's blond! Neat.

“I saw the way you held that machete. The wasteland chews up and spits out fresh meat like you. Where’d you even come from, anyway?”

Beck!!! Using this picrew maker <3

“Okay, but will you at least write me a letter?”

Yarrow, with this picrew maker :D

These were so much fun to do. Thank you Jacques <333