#long time running

[twosides--samecoin]

I'm immensely grateful to have connected with so many kind, generous, talented, skilled and empathetic people through a shared love of Fallout. It's wonderful to see so many new faces thanks to the show! From online friends to pen pals to fanfic to voice acting to modding to wiki editing to getting married to @nunc-pro-tunc, these games and this community have given me so much.

Blwyddyn newydd dda - happy new year!

[2024 holiday post]

[notliketheflower]

sidgeno not!fic inspired by @bluecornmoons post about a self-indulgent fic loosely based around Fireworks by the Tragically Hip, which I saw and said YES but it needs to be Long Time Running.

Geno's at the airport after the Pens wash out of the playoffs. Sid's already back in Halifax but Geno stayed in Pittsburgh a little longer for Nikita to finish out the school year. Nikita is with Anna now, and Geno's really glad the whole co-parenting thing is working out so well, but he's a little bummed out about only getting half the summer to spend with his kid.

So he's at the airport and he has a ticket to go back to Russia, alone, and he's about the check in but then he starts thinking about Sid and the weird way they left things at the end of the season—the weird way things have been since his split with Anna, if he's being honest—and suddenly he finds himself walking down to the Air Canada counter and asking for a ticket to Halifax. And there aren't any flights to Halifax until tomorrow, can he fly out then? But no, Geno needs to go right now, so the nice Air Canada lady says, well, how about Fredericton? It's only a four hour drive from Halifax.

So that's how Geno ends up in New Fucking Brunswick, wherever that is. And he rents a car and he starts driving, and the views are kind of nice, actually, and he maybe feels a little bad that he's never seen more of Sid's country than the cities with an NHL team. But then it gets dark and he can't see much of anything, and then it starts to rain and he can see even less. And then, as he's getting close to Halifax, the main highway gets closed for construction and he gets routed off onto some shitty two-lane country road with barely any shoulder, and no lights, and then the rain really starts coming down and somehow he ends up in the ditch.

And he's fine, really, and so is the car, but he's stuck in the mud and his phone is dead because he didn't bring a car charger. He knows the safest thing to do is stay with the car, but he can see the lights of a gas station just up the road, so he decides to walk up and see if he can get help. Only, just his fucking luck, because he gets there and it's closed. There's a payphone, though, and it's somehow still in service, so he digs out his wallet. He doesn't have any fucking coins—who uses cash anymore, anyway—but then he sees that someone's left a quarter on top of the phone box, a Candian one with the weird moose-or-whatever on the back. He drops it in and dials Sid.

No one remembers phone numbers anymore. It's been hell trying to get Nikita to memorize his in case of an emergency, and Geno can't remember the last time he actually looked at a number before just plugging it into his contacts, but Sid has had the same number for as long as Geno has known him. It's one of the few numbers still burned into his memory, like his childhood landline and his father's old office.

Sid answers the phone, groggy, and Geno's clearly waking him up.

"Geno?" Sid asks, shocked when Geno says his name. "What number are you calling from?"

"Payphone," Geno says. "My phone dead. I'm in—" and then he butchers the name he saw on the last sign.

"Kennetcook? What the hell are you doing in Kennetcook?"

"Come to see you. Maybe get little bit stuck in ditch."

It's still pouring rain when Sid pulls up to get him a half-hour later, the kind of hard, torrential downnpour that makes the whole world feel faraway. They get Geno's stuff from the rental but decide to wait 'til morning to call a tow, because it isn't fair to call anyone out in weather like this. Sid drives fifteen below the speed limit and blasts the heat the whole way back to his lake house, because Geno is soaked to the bone and shivering. They don't talk, and Geno is glad for it because he really doesn't know what to say, even though he was the one who came all this way.

Sid gets him set up in one of the spare rooms, and it's a little bit like the million hotel rooms they've been in together, the anonymity coaxing late-night honesty out of them, and also nothing at all like it, because he can see touches of Sid everywhere, from the Buffalo Plaid bedspread to the framed hockey memorabilia on the walls. Sid hands him a stack of towels and points him towards the ensuite, and he goes to leave, but Geno stops him with a hand on his wrist.

"Sid," he says. "You shower, too?"

And this is a line they haven't crossed in a long time, since before Anna, but Geno thinks that maybe they never got quite as far from that line as he thought. Sid nods, and it feels like it's been a long time coming.

(and then SOMEONE gets wet fingered)

(pokes it in, pulls it out)

(blah blah blah, and then they talk)

[ssnuppy]

for @twosides--samecoin

i tried to draw Jack and Olivia, i hope you like it!

[nunc-pro-tunc]

wip time

today's subject: @twosides--samecoin's sosu Jack Ward

this poor bastard will never get to drink an entire cup of coffee without interruption by at least one Potential Crisis™ and boy is that a mood

[perfectlypreservedpie]

MacCready Fanfiction Recs (Fallout 4)

hey everybody, nobody asked for this but in the midst of writing fallout fanfic I was feeling a special kind of love for my favorite fo4 fanfics and wanted to recommend them in case you hadn't read 'em. Because they are VERY GOOD and writing fanfic is hard, so you gotta give props to those who sweat for your comfort fics.

I'm gonna recommend my top three finished fanfics, and then two more bonus fics that are being updated rn. As a clarifier, these are all Maccready fallout 4 fics. so. keep that in mind.

im tagging the authors and also anybody who wants to join and share their favorites too!

3. THE FATHER(S) AND THE SON(S) on ao3 by @sirmanmister

I'm going to preface this rec by saying this: there is Fanon MacCready. There is canon MacCready. And then there is ascended!whatBethesdawishesitWAS MacCready, which exists solely in this fanfiction. The characterization of Mac is so well written. He is snarky, he is vulnerable. He desperately wants to grow up but doesn't know how. He has the most sick character arc in this story!!!

It's not a romance but instead a coming of age story where the sole survivor becomes a de-facto parent to Mac. The heart of the story is about how to raise a child while you're still trying to grow up yourself. The apocalypse setting lends itself well because the Wasteland is a place where NOTHING is beautiful, but the way that M!Sosu and MacCready care for their sons is beautiful. Which makes it special and worth fighting for.

As a fun fact, I read The Road by Cormac McCarthy for class a week after finishing this fic and I was thinking about this fic the whole time because the themes of fatherhood during an apocalypse hit a lot of the same beats. Maybe my professor would kick me in the teeth by comparing fic to McCarthy, but @sirmanmister YOU ARE MY CORMAC MCCARTHY <3

2. WORKING CLASS HERO on ao3 by @bluegrasskitty

This is the kind of fic you take with you to toilet, to work, in-between classes. It will suck you in. AND THERE'S A SEQUEL TOO YOU GUYS‼️

The sole survivor in this story is the model for the Nuka Cola girl. You know the hot lady in the spacesuit? SHE HAS A BACKSTORY. AND YALL IT MADE ME WEEP. During some point of the story, I sort of stopped rooting for MacCready to be the narrator and just wanted Nora Cabot to take the reins. When I tell you I think of this oc every two to three business weeks. She's an incredible leading lady. I can't look at Nuka Girl posters in the game without thinking of Nora Cabot, my beloved.

the sequel IS SO FIRE. It's the best reimagining of 'what happened after the institute blew up' that I've ever read. im gnawing at the bars of my enclosure actually.

A VERY GOOD PLOT TWIST I CANNOT MENTION TO NEW READERS BUT IF YOU'VE READ IT YOU'LL UNDERSTAND. AND IF YOU UNDERSTAND DM ME I HAVE TO TALK TO SOMEBODY ABOUT IT. HHh.

The amount of world building that @bluegrasskitty puts into this story is insane. They ARE Beth Esda.

As a fun fact, I didn't know that radchickens were canon in fallout. I thought it was a plot device made up by this author to excuse the ability to make cake in this book, but radchickens ARE real. When I was playing Far Harbor last year, I found radchickens and thought that @bluegrasskitty manifested them into existence because they had that kind of power.

that being said, I still think this author has that kind of power.

1. Atom Bomb Baby on ao3 by @starlightwrites

I think you dropped something....my jaw.

fellas. fellas. this is my comfort fic. You ever had a comfort fic? Something you come back to at least once a year to reread to feel something? the fiction equivalent of chicken noodle soup? this is what Atom Bomb Baby is to me. this is peak literature actually. if I ever figure out book binding, im doing this one first.

Plot wise, it's a retelling of Fallout 4's main story through the perspective of MacCready. But (and im wheezing as I say this) it's also so much more THAN THAT.

this fic author understands that MacCready is not a womanizer but is in fact a touch starved loser. and they are CORRECT.

MacCready spends the entire fic like 'uuuhhhh I dunno about this one, boss!'

ITS BEST FRIENDS TO LOVERS RAHHHHHH

it also has a nostalgia feel to me too, because reading it gives me the same feeling as what it was like to play the game for the first time, years ago. maybe it's because I've read it so many times over the years, but reading it feels so satisfying.

The author spends 10 chapters at the end solely dedicated to an epilogue. I wish more stories did this. They go through the wringer in this story, and it's so deeply satisfying to see how cleanly everything gets wrapped up. MacCready and the Lola work really well together as a couple, so it's awesome to see how they work together after the battle is done.

6 out of 5 stars.

BONUS FICS !! aka fics that are still updating! I squeal with joy when I get an ao3 email about these: 1. Best Laid Plans on ao3 by @druidgroves - Georgia Tate is an incredible character and sole survivor! She was a teacher prewar, so it's really fun to get her perspective on the world. She cares a lot about education and libraries and I find her really relatable and endearing. It's a cool thing for a character in an apocalypse to care about! It also makes for fun tension with Mac, who's written as a pragmatic survivor. A great take on familiar characters and their dynamics. - And It's a great slow burn! I'm really enjoying reading it. 2. Long Time Running on ao3 by @twosides--samecoin - If you've ever thought that Med-Tek was too convenient an option for Duncan's cure, this fic was written with you in mind. - RJ goes to Canada and im obsessed with it. - If you're interested in fallout lore, specifically the bit where the U.S annexed Canada and wished that there was more info about that, I would highly recommend this fic. Twosides--samecoin put in THE WORK. The world building they do to explain Canada's side of the Great War is so fun!!! its genuinely such a thrill to read!

I'm tagging the authors who I mentioned, if you all have favorite fics (fallout or otherwise, I'd love to hear em!) Thank you for making good art!

[hipquotesdaily]

Does your mother tell you things / Long, long when I’m gone?

[jcwdrawskinda]

Hey-oooo! This is my commission for the awesome, patient, and talented writer @twosides--samecoin ! Check out their fic Long Time Running if you enjoy Fallout, pain, love, RJ, and boxing! (I love those things) Also, thank you everyone for all the well wishes! (Seriously they meant a lot ;;;) I'm not 100% yet but I'm getting there! :'V