Discover Top Posts Tagged with #dire's sole

2020 Creative Self Love!

I was tagged by @deacons-wig, thanks!

Rules: It’s time to love yourselves! Choose your 5 favorite works (fics, art, edits, etc.) you’ve created this year and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you’ve brought into the world in 2020. If you don’t have five published works, that’s fine! Include ideas/drafts/whatever you like that you’ve worked on/thought about, and talk a little about them instead! Remember, this is all about self-love and positive enthusiasm, so fuck the rules if you need to. Have fun, and tag as many fellow creators as you like so they can share the love! <3

It’s too much pressure to pick my five favorites, and also a couple of these mayyyy have happened really late in 2019, but mid-2019 through now is basically all one year to me. I’m picking a pile that make me happy and am gonna try to show off all my OCs I love!

1. Carrot’s Ugly Christmas Sweater

The post for this shows off some of the artistic growth I made in my first weeks of teaching myself to draw, and I was able to get my chaos girl improved and colored for @badcowboy69‘s party! I love that her sweater applies to her in three different ways, all of which are represented here. And her face and expression are so cute! I’m just really proud of this.

2. Aftermath

Oh the places you’ll go, with your eyes so wide

With your heart in your hand, and your sword at your side

Oh the mountains you’ll move, oh the tears you’ll cry

Oh the places you’ll go, little love of mine.

My poor Sole. I put her through so much, and most of my depictions are of her at her darkest and lowest. But this time I got to portray her as finally happy, fulfilled, at peace with all the shit her life has thrown at her. Not to mention badass General. This was one of my latest artistic endeavors after I’d been practicing for a few months, and while there are of course places I’m not satisfied with, I’m really happy with the improvement I made over those months.

3. That Lucky Old Sun

The first story that really established Carrot’s personality. She went from telling Doc Mitchell that she’d try not to get herself killed again, straight into running from a bunch of robots that she’d chunked a grenade at. She lucks into getting the power plant terminal running, and then gets so excited about pushing big red buttons that she fails to realize she’s activated the giant space laser and smoked an entire garrison of troops. Whoops. I’m not used to writing comedy, angsty stuff like Sole’s is more my forte, so Carrot has given me a really lovely change of pace.

4. What Do You Get When You Add a Poet and a Mentats-Buzzed Founding Pirate?

I can’t not include this one. 2020 gave me @glitchvault74 and @falloutglow as friends, and along with them, Rig and Echo and the rest of their wealth of characters. And as my characters and world developed too...well, AUs were bound to happen. I had an absolute blast writing Rig Apollo into Soleverse, including more of that newfangled comedy stuff and stretching some poetry muscles that I haven’t used in years. Not to mention the mental stretch of writing another person’s OC (particularly one with such a...unique speaking style as Apollo), and also all the research I got to do on Greek mythology to sneak a bunch of references in.

5. Sanctuary

It was hard to choose a fifth, but I kept coming back to this one. One of my biggest gripes about the Fallout universe has been the lack of slice-of-life canon, the new songs and the new instruments that evolved over two hundred years, people being able to enjoy an evening together socializing and peaceful. I tried to imagine it here, three people only passably familiar with each other, under the weight of unimaginable pain, but trusting and joyous when given a reason to celebrate. I still get the lyrics I wrote for the song in here stuck in my own head on occasion. And Sole’s reactions to the fire and the sky are taken straight from my own memories of chilly nights around a bonfire.

#dire writes #dire doodles #dire memes #courier carrot #dire's sole #Apollo Ray #fallout #fallout 4 #fallout new vegas #2020 #new years

38. A person’s weight as they lie on top of you

I didn’t get this as an ask, but I saw it in the prompts list and realized it worked perfectly for this wip I already had half done! So enjoy.

[64 Sensory Prompts]

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The radstorm rages outside the ruined house they’ve sheltered in. Hancock leans against a boarded window, head fallen back, face relaxed, almost rapturous. Sole curls tight against the back of a couch.

The panic strangles her. Every muscle clenches, chest too tight to breathe. Even the desire for relief is fading as she succumbs to the temptation to just wallow in the pain, because why pretend everything is okay? Why pretend that the world is okay? Why pretend that there's any reason for joy?

"Hey, you okay there?"

#deep pressure therapy #it's good stuff #not included: hancock asking later 'will you pet my head and call me a good boy too?'#dire's sole #becoming sole #dire memes #fallout #fallout 4 #fallout hancock #fallout 4 john hancock

AO3 Wrapped 2020 Meme

Tagged by @electricshoebox , thank you!

AO3 Stats for 2020

Total word count: 17,695

Top 5 6 by word count:

Courier Carrot (Fallout: New Vegas) (6285 words)

Tales from the Wasteland (Fallout 4) (3866 words)

What Do You Get When You Add a Poet and a Mentats-Buzzed Founding Pirate? (Fallout 4) (2508 words)

Sanctuary (Fallout 4) (1797 words)

Ruin (Fallout 4) (1351 words)

Proximity (Original Work) (790 words)

Top 5 6 by kudos:

What Do You Get When You Add a Poet and a Mentats-Buzzed Founding Pirate?

Courier Carrot

Tales from the Wasteland

Hancock

Becoming Sole

Sanctuary

(I went with 6 because Tales is a compilation that I recently abandoned in favor of reposting the chapters and continuing the story as stand-alone works in a series instead, including Sanctuary, Ruin, and Hancock. Figured it wasn’t fair to directly compare either the reposts or the compilation with the others 🤷‍♀️)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

This is a bit of a non-traditional AO3 wrapup, but it’s been a non-traditional time, so oh well.

About a year and a half ago, I began a year of medical leave from my PhD program. I had just been diagnosed, finally, with ADHD, and given the new need to learn how to manage it and to try out new medication, along with the crippling depression and anxiety I’d been dealing with, I needed time off. By the end of 2020 I would choose to drop out of my dream PhD program and dream lab in order to pursue a simpler but, hopefully, more enjoyable and better fitting career.

I had just moved in with my new partner. She brought an Xbox. My main gaming experience up until then had been Game Boy Advance. She suggested I try a game called Fallout 4.

Playing turned to guilty pleasure pinteresting of my new obsession, turned to guilty pleasure tumblring of my new obsession, turned to giving up the guilt and getting my first tumblr account. By the end of 2019 Sole and Carrot were born, and I was teaching myself to draw so that I could draw them. In 2020 I joined a discord, and the pile of friends I’d made through Fallout multiplied. I started writing fiction again, for fun, something I hadn’t done since high school or earlier. I got an AO3 (and a Pillowfort too), and here we are.

2020 has been a lot of things, a lot of good and a hell of a lot of bad. But I can honestly say that Fallout, and the community and friends and support that I’ve found in the fandom, was one of the brightest lights helping me survive everything the year has thrown at me. It’s helped me grow, from gaining skill in the new hobby of drawing and the previously abandoned hobby of writing, to socializing with internet strangers and discovering real friendships there. I honestly can’t describe how much you all mean to me.

May 2021 be brighter--but if it’s not, we’ve still got each other to hold on to. Love y’all 💕

#dire writes #dire memes #dire digresses #courier carrot #dire's sole #fallout

2 | IN THE HANDS OF THE ENEMY / Sailor

Whump4tober Day 2: Sole makes an unwise pit stop in Libertalia. It takes longer than intended.

@whumptober2020

I swapped around a few of the days in the Fallout 4tober prompt list for artistic reasons, sorry /shrug

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In hindsight, it probably hadn’t been the best idea to try to clear a raider hive alone on a city made of boats linked by poorly constructed gangplanks. And definitely not with just her swatter instead of the .44. But Nordhagen had been increasingly concerned by their violent neighbors, and Sole had been in the area on the way down the coast to the Castle, and what was one more raider clearing?

Now, she was locked in a cell, cuffed for good measure, on a barely-floating deathtrap of a boat. All of her possessions gone, including most of her clothing, even down to her hidden bobby pins. And she’d been there for days now, parched and hungry, enduring the jeers of the raiders that swaggered by to gawk at their prize. They hadn’t touched her since she’d been thrown in the cell, though. They were smarter than that. They knew the bars were to protect them from her.

She wasn’t sure how much longer that would be true, though, especially if they kept giving her no more to eat than old bread and the occasional carton of gross, slightly salty water. She wasn’t a hand-to-hand fighter on a good day, and now? She barely had the strength to stand, much less fight her way out.

“Heya, girlie.”

One of them slouched outside the gate, leering at her. His dress was near obscene in tight leather pants, a ridiculous leather harness that left his whole torso exposed, and a sailor’s hat cocked at an improbable angle. The whole ensemble, raider included, looked like it spent most of its time in the irradiated sea without a wash. But the easy grace he used rocking with the ship’s movements, and the sinister knife currently picking at his nails, dissuaded any thought of an easy target.

“What, you not gonna gimme a smile?”

Sole bared her teeth at him and stayed silent.

“Aww, come on now. We don’t get many pretty little girls like you in the brig. Pretty little heroes.” His gaze turned predatory. “I got lotsa plans for what to do with pretty little heroes.”

Despite the panic building in her gut, Sole had noticed the amount of space the raider still kept between himself and the bars of her cage. She leaned forward where she sat, pretending it didn’t take all of her scant energy, letting the predator burn in her eyes as well. “Why don’t you come where I can reach you and try it?”

His eyes widened in fear.

Then, shouting rang out from outside the boat, and gunshots. Over the flurry of pipe pistols, Sole caught the bam of a shotgun…and the thunder of a laser musket.

Her grin turned feral. “Sounds like plans changed.”

The raider bolted from the room.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The sounds of fighting grew louder and louder, and then abruptly stopped. Soon after, the door to the room was violently kicked in and Hancock and Preston tumbled in. At the sight of Sole, who immediately slumped in exhausted relief, they began clamoring over each other.

“Sunshine! Ain’t you a sight for sore eyes. Let’s get you out of there.”

“Sole! You’re here! Thank goodness we found you. Are you hurt? What did they do to you?”

She managed a smile as Hancock set to work on the lock and Preston stood guard at the far door. “Had worse. They were too scared to lay a hand on me…How did you find me?”

“Smarter than most,” chuckled Hancock as the lock clicked open. “Not that it was enough to save them. You didn’t meet us at the Castle, Preston had a hunch, and here we are. Let’s get you up. Whoa, easy there, easy. Are you sure you can stand?”

She tried, desperately willing her legs to work. We’re still in the middle of the ocean, in the middle of a raider camp, who knows how many of them are left. I’ve gotta be able to fight out. Her legs weren’t convinced though, and they quaked and gave way, draping her heavily against Hancock as he struggled to catch her.

“Hey, uh, Garvey? Gonna need you on this. I’m good, but I’m not sure I’m ‘carry the princess across the ocean to shore’ good.”

“I’m on it.”

She struggled feebly, muttering protests and admonitions and swearing that her legs worked, just give her one more try, but Preston swept her up and across his shoulders with ease. And she found that her energy drained with each word, and it was just so tempting to give in to the sense of safety offered by the warmth and comfort of the muscles beneath her and the hands bracing her. She fought to stay awake, just long enough to see Hancock salvage her belongings and then the shore of Nordhagen on the horizon, and then she finally slipped into sleep.

#whumptober2020 #no. 2 #in the hands of the enemy #fallout 4 #fic #dire's sole #becoming sole #preston garvey #john hancock #fallout 4 john hancock #fallout hancock #libertalia #dire writes #fallout #fallout 4tober #sailor

as long as i can

I wanna hold on to you as long as I can, 'Cause who knows, this dance may be our only dance… There’s so much I don’t understand. But I love to watch a woman dance.

--Eagles

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Hat in hand, Preston slinks down the stairs into the Third Rail.

He’s been down these steps many times before, but usually to relax with a cold drink and squadmates. This time, the prospect of reaching the bottom frightens him. At the last few steps, just before the room comes fully into view, he hesitates, nearly changing his mind and retreating before sucking in a breath, steeling himself, and continuing.

#dire's sole #becoming sole #fallout preston #preston garvey #fallout hancock #hancock #fallout #fallout 4 #fo4 #fallout oc #songfic #hancock x sole survivor #hancock x dire's sole #pining preston #not that he's gonna admit it tho #yet

4 | RUNNING OUT OF TIME: Caged / Crows

Whump4tober Day 4: Smile for the pretty birdies.

This one is whumpier than my previous ones, no happy ending here. Be warned.

@whumptober2020

Fallout 4tober prompt list

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Sole ghosts into the Situation Room. She has no escort; she convinced Ayo that she had learned her way around well enough, thank you, she’s catching up on the information she needs to become director and would rather be able to talk with the directors and staff one-on-one without a Courser looming and yes she’s sure she doesn’t need the extra security or guidance, thank you very much. She just needs to be able to wander the Institute alone. To the Situation Room.

She floats around the room, dreamlike, barely conscious of the movement of her feet. Takes in the wall of command terminals, the war table with the map of the Commonwealth, the monitors. So many monitors. Lining the wall, row after row. Hanging above the table. Every monitor with a unique video of the Commonwealth.

There’s Diamond City, a view over the chapel and the catwalk up to the Mayor’s office. There Nick and Piper meet, talk silently, pixelated mouths invisible on the small screen. They head up the catwalk, vanish out of sight, out of reach.

Another screen, Goodneighbor. The view swings back and forth, tilts, the Watcher hosting this camera more bird than cameraman. Triggermen hold guard positions against buildings. Drifters drift across the courtyard like leaves.

Warwick. A view over the pumpkin patch by the sea. A man walks through it, Roger Warwick, vaguely recognizable at this distance, admiring the crop. Well, the synth Roger Warwick. The synth replacement that the Institute planted to run their pumpkin crop experiment. Information she’s gleaned from Institute terminals. But what is she supposed to do with it? Who is she supposed to tell?

Another man comes up to him, Bill Sutton, homestead foreman, who doesn’t know that the wife and children he abandoned died months ago trying to replace the brahmin he traded for chems. What good would it do for him to know?

The two seem to talk, pixelated figures in flickering, tilting blue. Digital figments in an aseptic nightmare. The screen grows bigger, filling her view. She’s almost forgotten she’s not there instead of…

Sutton pulls a gun. No. Warwick stumbles back, hands in the air. Sutton advances. Sutton knows. Warwick shakes his head. Warwick doesn’t want to die. The synth doesn’t want to die. Warwick’s wife suddenly appears, sweet, enduring June, dashing to her husband, putting herself between him and the gun. She doesn’t want her husband to die. She doesn’t know her husband is already dead.

They’re pitting you against each other! Stop this! I can help you! Listen to me! But they don’t hear her desperate thoughts. They can’t hear her. She can do nothing. They are there, unprotected, and she is…

Sutton charges, rips June away. Approaches Warwick, who tried to go to his wife, and now is backing away again, hands still raised. Who is now knocked backward to the ground, and she wants to find the rewind button, the stop, turn this tape off, pull the monitor from the wall and dash it to the floor, because this wasn’t supposed to happen, she was supposed to be there, to fix it, like she always fixes everything. And her hands touch the cold plastic of the monitor and the staticky warm screen and she’s abruptly pulled back into her body. She is here, trapped in the Institute in all but name. And every moment more she stays is another moment she’s not protecting the spooked and volatile Commonwealth from destroying itself.

She sees Sutton walk away across the blue pixeled screen as June crawls towards the body. She doesn’t want to see more. The view shifts abruptly and sweeps away; the Watcher seems to have heard her plea and taken flight. She lets herself slide to the floor, lets consciousness float away again from her body, from here.

It is a long time before she’s found by a Courser and returned to her room.

#whumptober2020 #no. 4 #running out of time #caged #fallout 4 #fic #death #gunshot death #no gore #depersonalization #derealization #dire's sole #becoming sole #warwick homestead #fallout 4tober #crows #dire writes #fallout #synth replacement

Six Sentence Sunday

This week’s offering is a special one, coming from a bit I’m SO EXCITED ABOUT that I’m writing for one @glitchvault74 starring his precious bean of an OC Apollo Ray, one synth detective dad, and one very flirtatious ghoul.

Nick’s silicone face continues to be grumpy. “I’m here on a case. Apollo is…new to the area, needed a place to stay and a guide, so he’s tagging along with me.”

“Ahah. Well, I’ll be happy to take good care of our visitor if he ever needs a break from the ol’ robo-dick over here.” Hancock offers Apollo his most charming smile, with a nice slather of suggestive on top.

Apollo just looks confused. “I like Nick. Why would I want a break from him?”

#soleverse #apollo ray #rig miller #rigpollo #dire's sole #fallout 4 john hancock #fallout hancock #nick valentine #fallout 4 nick valentine #six sentence sunday #wip #dire memes #fallout #fallout 4

3 | MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY: Held at gunpoint / Lantern Light

Whump4tober Day 3: The Railroad meets Sole.

@whumptober2020

Fallout 4tober prompt list

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Railroad.

The grinding of the old metal resounds in the catacombs as Sole depresses the center switch one final time. She steps back as noises continue to echo unprompted from inside the stone wall, the clack of gears turning and the rattling clatter of bolts pulling back. Finally, the wall emits a great thundering groan as a section of it slides inward and then shifts to the side.

Beyond is darkness. A dim, far-away lantern illuminates in soft flickering orange what is perhaps the edges of a doorway at the end of a hall, but nothing more.

Sole steps forward into the dark. The blue lightning static of the high-voltage shock mod jumps across her swatter, casting an erratically shifting, synthetic glow across the walls that mixes bizarrely with the natural glow of the lantern.

The doorway opens into vast darkness. Sole pauses at the edge of the lantern light. The darkness holds its breath.

A crack and blinding light split the darkness. The echoes are barely fading when a woman’s voice calls out, firm and imperial:

“Stop right there.”

Sole’s eyes slowly adjust, and she takes in the scene. A floodlight is trained on her from the stage-like landing on the far side of the large open room. Three people are poised on the stage, awaiting her arrival. The lanky man on one end has a nasty-looking pistol trained on her, but she’s a bit more focused on the minigun wielded by the woman on the other end with the calm confidence of someone who knows they’re the biggest threat in the room. Sole disagrees, but she still certainly wouldn’t make it out of a firefight without damage.

“You went through a lot of effort to arrange this meeting.” The woman in the center, even with no obvious weapon, is stately, haughty, utterly in control. “But before we go any further, answer my questions. Who the hell are you?”

“Wow. News flash, boss, this lady is kind of a big deal out there.” A woman materializes from the shadows behind the three, who are clearly startled, if not surprised, by her appearance. Casual and relaxed in a white tee, ratty jeans, and high tops, the other three appear even more uptight simply in comparison. Sole doesn’t recognize the dark pompadour, but those sunglasses…

The leader levels a long-suffering glare at the newcomer. “Deacon.” Of course. “Where’ve you been?”

“Hey, it’s not my fault you forgot my invitation to the party,” she says lightly. “I see you invited the Courser-killer though. Nice.”

Gasps and “What?”s sound from the three. “You’re saying this intruder actually killed a Courser?” asks the leader.

“No fucking way,” breathes the woman with the minigun.

“She’s the General of the Minutemen,” replies Deacon. “She’s the Silver Shroud and the savior of Nick Valentine, Amelia Stockton, and the synth the Courser was after. She’s left a trail of destruction in her wake, gone places no sane person would go alone. And as if that wasn’t enough, yes, she killed the Courser. And she has the chip intact.”

“She has what?”

“Yeah. So, if you’re done interrogating her, you might want to show this Courser-murdering machine a little courtesy. Just a thought.”

The leader stares at Deacon, stunned, before finally managing to close her mouth and turn back to Sole, who has been waiting patiently, leaning on her swatter, hand on her hip. “I owe you an apology. Anyone who kills a Courser is good in my book. I’m Desdemona, and I’m the leader of the Railroad.”