#hector ref

[rockshortage]

Day 3: Lantern Light

Activities that can be done at night without disturbing a sleeping companion are limited. For Hector, it’s a good time to record the day’s events. He might forget, but his journal keeps them safe.

[rockshortage]

Ah, yet another thing I can’t decide on, but maybe if I actually write down the options I have instead of just daydreaming about them, the answer will become clear

Option A: Hector leaves MAAK at his home base. + more flexibility on the journey + less risk for anything to happen to his beloved robot + IF replacement part Hector needs is something for MAAK’s leg -> can’t physically take MAAK with him unless he wants to risk breaking that leg entirely. - emotional support robot not present - home base is outside of Nuka World -> Hector can’t just go get MAAK because he’s not allowed to leave - will probably take a long time until people trust him enough to let him leave temporarily just to get MAAK

Option B: Hector makes MAAK wait in a little secret place outside of Nuka Town + easier access to MAAK after the gauntlet + emotional support robot is present - why would he take him along all this way only to leave him right before the moment he’d probably get most nervous - more difficult journey to Nuka World because MAAK is not exactly agile. - risk of damaging MAAK (further) by taking him along

Option C: The raiders take MAAK along with Hector’s other shit as they catch him + emotional support robot is present + easiest access to MAAK after the gauntlet (presumably) + extremely high chance for one of the raiders to get bitten - leading to a high chance of the raiders taking their anger out on MAAK - they have no reason to assume this will end in anything other than Hector’s death so they do what they want with all his shit - MAAK might get damaged / end up in the scrapyard / ??? +/- Hector rage mode activate - less flexibility on the journey to Nuka World

Option D: Hector has MAAK with him in the gauntlet + emotional support robot is present - VERY scared of anything happening to him with all those traps and explosives around - Hector has to path him through shit because MAAK is not agile. like how the hell is he going to navigate this big fat robot over the trap boards in the first tripwire room? the generator maze? down and through the mirelurk pit??? seems impossible - why would the raiders go through the trouble of letting Hector take the robot along. they take his weapons but have the patience to get this boy into the elevator to the gauntlet? nah +/- could be helpful in the fight against Colter. A distraction, maybe manage to crunch down on a leg real good. but might get his circuits fried if the electrical shield isn’t disabled by then. Colter could stomp him real good. rip maak

Like you said, MAAK is pretty much just a pet that can bite your hand off. A very dangerous roomba. How many traits/abilities he has besides trying to eat anything that vaguely resembles trash, I’m a little conflicted about. I’ve made quite a few doodles in which I anthropomorphize him, hinting at him having at least the vaguest aspects of a personality, but. Whether that’s actually the case or if that’s just Hector projecting traits onto a brick, I’m still not sure about. It all hinges on how Hector programmed him in the first place and how far he got until he decided ‘this is good for my current abilities’ and left him as is. And then later forgot how the fuck he did anything and was too scared to try and figure it out.  Regardless, MAAK is not much use in combat. He’s pretty clunky and cumbersome, and while he can do some faster snapping movements that could potentially help in a fight, it’s nothing you can rely on very well.

but hey, there’s potential for that to change later on, thanks to dear kind Butch being helpful and understanding once MAAK is in desperate need of a tune up.

However, side note to that… so far I/we have treated that scenario as being the first time Hector was brave enough to maintain MAAK’s inner workings just from a mechanical perspective. One of the servos in a leg giving out is the best option I can think of why Hector would make the trip to Nuka World in the first place. If we adhere to that scenario, it needs to be something important but can’t be vital enough for Hector to require opening MAAK up completely.

UNLESS: I’m thinking perhaps we change that a bit, because it would open up some options above (of MAAK getting ‘hurt’) that would otherwise automatically rule that scenario out. So I’m thinking what Hector is really scared about is taking MAAK apart completely (basically rebuilding him from scratch), and/or (what I like better) is he’s extremely worried about messing with his software at all. Because that’s what makes MAAK what he is, and I may not be a programmer but I do know that you can mess up your whole entire code by just. forgetting a bracket somewhere or putting a comma where it doesn’t belong or anything insignificant like that. And Hector being kinda new to programming a whole entire robot when he built MAAK probably led to him making some unconventional code that’s hard to retrace and recreate with the more advanced knowledge he has now.

[rockshortage]

Hey, so I know you’ve said hector is short but do you have an exact height for him? I read through his tag and he’s just so good I love him and his obsession with animals :)

Aw, thank you for taking the time to read through it! I’m glad you’re getting entertainment out of it too :D And yeah, he has a hard time with people but all animals are friend material as far as he’s concerned.

He’s 5′5′’-6′’ ish (166 cm)

[rockshortage]

maybe???

can’t be bothered to clean this up nicely but I might be betting somewhere

really didn’t care for this when it was just black and white, but it started looking a lot better when I added some color

how the fuck is he still able to see anything when there are bright lights RIGHT by his eyes? fuck if i know. I just like how the mojave manhunter mask has a glowy thing going on and it would be neat to add that here. I’ll explain it away via night vision being turned on or something and the light isn’t actually bothersome because of it, I dont know dude

don’t like how the rim on the filters looks here but one of the gas masks I own (the swiss one) has a thin red rim around the filter just like that and it looks really nice so i’ll jot this down to not drawing it good

make the edges of the coat a little more tattered perhaps or add some more pointy places, don’t quite like what it looks like here. but i also don’t wanna make it too complicated :V

here’s a blank png if anyone wants to fuck around and clothe the man

yes the anatomy is wonky and no I don’t know how to fix it nor do I have the patience to try and figure it out

[rockshortage]

Does Hector change up the grille at all? Like, does he just hang out on the inside area, or does he try to "fix" the patio so he can chill out there without needing full coverage? Maybe he could figure out how to add some blinds he can pull down over the windows, or just brick them up entirely? Or just build some more walls around the bed on the patio and make like a little room so at least that area is safe from sunlight? Also curious what happens to fizztop mountain after Nisha turns on him

He definitely does, but I’m not so sure when or how exactly. Also, I’ll answer the part about fizztop mountain separately because somehow this got really long again ✌

This is about as far as I got with my thought process: Gage leads Hector to the grille, probably trying to ‘sell’ the place to this terrified little man. Check it out you own all of this. This over there was Colter’s old bed and it’s yours now, look at how nice and big it is and look how nice this patio is. Decor’s a little lacking maybe but check out that view, such nice big windows that, and I cannot stress this enough, will let in so much daylight it’s great. Obviously he wouldn’t phrase it that way but that about gets the message across. And Hector’s just like “thanks :)” but crying on the inside. He proceeds to not sleep the whole night, not sleep a lot the rest of the week, only take of the mask when he’s damn near starving and generally just have a shitty time.

He doesn’t really have the courage to make any big changes even if Gage said it’s fine. Because Gage also said time is ticking and they have to get to work and get the gangs to respect him and they have to show results. I think rather than spend valuable time and effort to make the patio livable for himself, Hector is more likely to approach Gage after a while about maybe moving a bed inside. Or maybe uh. switching places? If Gage would be interested in that. totally not trying to encroach on his territory, not at all, just thought that maybe Gage would like to be on the patio since he talked about how nice it is and--

Gage would be understandably confused, and possibly a little defensive about his little corner. No thanks boss, I quite like it in here, and also it’s a strategic position because if anyone tries to sneak in at night through the elevator on the inside, Gage is the last line of defense and that’s the way it’s supposed to be, etc. Hector could think of quite a few excuses, but he’s afraid of making himself sound like a sensitive little wimp in front of this tough raider man who keeps telling him that raiders will eat him alive if he shows any weakness at all. So he can’t argue that it’s a little drafty out there and he gets cold, or that he doesn’t sleep as well in brighter light conditions, or that he feels watched with all these windows. And he sure as hell can’t admit to his biggest weakness being the fucking sun. So Gage wants to keep his inside bed, Hector doesn’t want the outside bed but he also wants privacy.

Solution: move into the little storage room next to the indoor kitchen Because He Is The Boss Do Not Question Him. Gage doesn’t have a good argument against it aside from ‘that’s not very Overboss of you to sleep in a small shitty room’.

It might take until Gage learns about the sun allergy that Hector can relax a little. Gage suddenly realizes why Hector danced around some unknown thing all the time when it came to arranging his living situation, and he might be more open about figuring something out with him. I’m unsure if Gage would actually end up moving out onto the patio, but then again... why not? Hell, might even be happy to. I can just see him being most concerned about making the impression to others that he gets to live better than Hector, which undermines his authority, stuff like that. I’m unsure. Because as much as Hector wants to just cover everything to banish the sun forever, he has to admit that the patio and the view are quite nice. Just bricking everything up would be a shame, but he also doesn’t trust any blinds they could construct to do the job with 100% reliability. The best solution would be UV filtering window films/coatings, but there’s practically no way they can get their hands on something like that (but perhaps at a later point the institute could help?). Hector may be able to do it on the lenses of his mask, but large scale with those huge windows? no way, at least not in any acceptable time frame.

On the other hand... I do also like the image of Hector just boarding everything up. Nothing temporary like blinds, but something that would take time and effort to remove again. It’s especially beneficial to him leaning into the vampire thing, because having all those big windows suddenly boarded up basically tells the entirety of Nuka Town that This Man Hates The Sun. Maybe the storage room gets too cramped after a while, Hector gets more confident, Gage would still rather just stay in his spot, and thus Hector decides he’ll take some time to make the patio livable after all. However this would also require me to figure out when exactly he does the whole vampire thing and that’s another story again

And of course, like you said, building a little wall around the bed area would also be a good solution. They get to keep the nice view and Hector gets his dark little privacy place. It would probably be the best way to handle it tbh

[rockshortage]

ALSO thinking about how Hector can repay people for all the kindness they’ve been showing him

He’d want to return the favor the same way, like they can talk to him if they need to but. that’s not how it works. And he’s not good at offering advice and such anyway. He can’t just give out a coupon for 1 free venting at him and he will sit there and listen, but like you gotta come at him for that because he doesn’t know how to approach this. If he notices that something’s wrong at all.

There’s not really An Object Hector can get or make that’s very meaningful (aside from being a nice gesture or something). But what he can do is give Gage some days off. Pick up some of his responsibilities once in a while, and cut Butch some more slack, so that the two of them have more time to spend together, because that makes them both happy. Maybe volunteer to look after Lily once in a while if they’ll let him. Give her some cool shit too. Give Butch and Gage tasks he knows they’ll enjoy and do the less fun stuff himself. Stuff like that.

Aside from that - I did mention it a few times that Hector goes pretty hard with friendship. Getting protective in dangerous situations is part of that, but mostly it’s little acts of service. Repayment for grueling emotional support would be more of the same stuff he already does, just... increased. 

Like in general, if Hector hears through the grapevine that Gage or Butch are wanting or needing something specific, that immediately becomes his next (secret) priority project.

An example that’s been floating around in my head for a while: take the hypothetical scenario that Butch lost or broke their glasses. They’re gone, beyond repair, or just about to fall apart. Ignoring the institute for a moment (or assuming Darryl hasn’t made enough progress yet to get personal favors like that), it’s really damn hard to get a replacement. One that’s functional, not half busted already, and most importantly, has the correct prescription. Enter Hector, who now scours every inch of every ruin he enters to find glasses and specifically seeks out places that might have some, collecting every single one, every empty frame, every disassembled piece. Buying all the damn glasses in the market, if there are any. Tasking caravans with acquiring more. Trying to learn how to make glasses himself with the tools he has at his disposal. In the end he just has a giant pile of glasses, all kinds of prescriptions because he doesn’t exactly know what Butch needs, and all kinds of frames so they’ll hopefully find something they find aesthetically pleasing. Then he steps back from it for a moment, looks over this mountain of glasses, considers how many hours he’s spent on this. And gets cold feet. Like, oh shit, no one even asked him to do anything, he just saw Butch was understandably upset about their glasses, but maybe they found a replacement already?? And Hector just went waaaay overboard completely unprompted. They’re gonna think he’s weird and creepy oh no- And that’s how a metric fuckton of glasses just happen to find their way inside Butch’s workshop through a very strange turn of events. And after a few hours of going through everything, Butch finds a pair they’re pleased with and all is well.  and despite how Hector tries to pretend he knows of nothing, there’s not many people around with a) the knowledge that Butch needed new glasses, b) the resources to get so much crap, and also - Hector’s acting a little too interested but totally not interested but do you like the new glasses Butch, asking for no particular reason--- 

This went on a little long but that’s basically how Hector do. Hear of something, think to himself ‘hm I could help’, go overboard as hell, second-guess himself, go through with it anyway and pretend it wasn’t him. Or acknowledge it was him but lie that it was totally no big deal, he whipped it up in 5 minutes haha, nothing worth mentioning, he was gonna throw it away anyway

[rockshortage]

@corvidexoskeleton He wouldn’t be a huge fan of the concept as it exists in modern times, but at the same time he wouldn’t hate it either. Mostly thanks to the fact that there’s been a development of it straying away from religion. The setting and rituals of it though... still very much rooted in it, so he can’t fully escape that aspect.

He’d be very torn about it. On the one hand it would be nice to make it official in a proper way once it’s okay for them to do so. To show everyone that he’s happy with this and he’s committed. He knows it’s not necessary, the social stigma about it has decreased drastically, but still... 

On the other hand, like you said, Hector does not like organized religion, and your typical wedding ceremony involves a whole lot of that. And at least in canon, the only place in the area you can get properly married at is at the chapel in diamond city. Like if Darryl was the type to really want a ceremony like that, or if Hector knew she’d love it even if she says she doesn’t care, he would want to try and go through with it anyway. Or at least organize and change it up in a way that he thinks he can deal with. 

[rockshortage]

The fact that Hector looks like white jesus in his younger picture is so fucking funny. Like, imagine you give birth to what you think is either a literal demon, at least a heavily cursed and/or possesed child, or the literal spawn of satan, and then he grows up and turns out to be the spitting image of Your Lord And Savior Jesus H. Christ (as far as you understand, at least)

It IS

Like when I fucked around in artbreeder to make those, I really wasn’t sure whether I’m actually gonna roll with what came out of it, particularly because I can’t fucking decide on a hair color - but the juxtaposition of this from a story perspective is just so good that I almost have to. 

A) because it annoys Hector and that’s funny. having people tell him he looks like Jesus and meaning it as a compliment, only to have that supposedly Kind Jesus Face morph into a scowl

B) because it makes Hector taking revenge on his parents so much better. They’ll see that face and think it’s a miracle! Everything turned out fine, he is cured and him looking like that is the ultimate proof and symbolism for it :) Except this “Jesus” is actually about to unload The Lord’s Wrath on them and strike them down with righteous fury, perhaps making them question in their last moments if what they did really was the right thing