#nate (fo4)

[missionimpossibleii]

ONE YEAR AGO TODAY. Head fallout 4 “writer” Emil Pagilarulo made a tweet so iconic, so ridiculed, so important to our group chat that we knew we had to celebrate. so my boyfriend and i got a cake printed. happy birthday the event he has dubbed. NATEGATE

[sizeziro]

Part 6🩶

Nate and Princess Cadance!

[lee-cu]

i know it's been said a million times, but there should be a mod where you can bury your spouse. It'd be even better if there were unique interactions where your follower helps you either by offering or you asking them once your affinity is high enough.

or it's a mission that can trigger after saving the quincy group and you can ask Preston/Sturges to help you dig the grave because you helped them settle in sanctuary (takes way longer as one person then you'd think, there's a reason it's a full time job). Or even if you return to Sanctuary while Codsworth is there, after finishing the main questline, and he asks if maybe you think it's time to bury sir/the missus for closure, and then he offers to help you.

it could even be more heavily scripted/fade to black like some of the missions from far harbor and then there's a grave with a little scrapped together cross or headstone or some hubflowers or something.

bonus points if you can leave things around the grave marker like a teddy bear or letter blocks or the holotape or anything you want within an appropriate size range and there are slots that it clicks too so they can't be kicked or picked up by settlers.

maybe if it's an institute ending, even an option to put up a plaque honoring the spouse or something, like a little side table alter of things that remind you of your spouse. It could even be like pre generated stuff that spawns into the quarters.

anything more then leaving them frozen underground, alone in the place that took everything from the both of you, forever.

[shinybanette]

Deacon moment

[comfethan]

tried to sneak my oc in

[themojavesworst]

playing as the female sole survivor seems way more devastating to me in a way. imagine seeing your son that you are barely a few months postpartum to, already in his 60s looking just like your husband if you could've grown grey together. you saw him taken from your husband, your lover shot dead and you mocked in your frozen coffin.

you and nate could've seen your boy grow up, if only the bombs didnt drop, if only both their lives weren't taken from you, if only everything had gone perfect. but here you are 210 years later, distraught and alone with nobody but yourself at the end of the day

you gotta think too nora was probably still only a few months postpartum and that's gotta take a lot out of her and here she has to travel across boston in a harsher world in what only feels like second since she was last awake. like is that badass or what

[large-picard]

you just know if maccready wasn't written by bethesda he would be the most tortured repressed bisexual. i genuinely think you wouldn't be able to romance him as a man, even though he would still be in love with you (he is kinda boone-esque tbh, i know a lot of people hc boone the same way). maybe considered other boys back in little lamplight, but then there was lucy, and they got together when he was like 17. got married, had a kid, the whole shebang. and then lucy dies and he's shattered, he doesn't want to even think about the possibility of being with another person. he isn't even looking for friends. he just wants to lock himself away, prevent himself from ever feeling that kind of pain again. it's still such a fresh wound; he's only 22 and he's a single father with a dying kid he barely has any contact with. the idea of being with another man is so deeply buried that he's kind of talked himself into believing it was just a phase. i mean, everybody thinks about it once, right?

and then if a male sole survivor/nate reaches max affinity with him he just kind of breaks all over again. nate, who grew up in a society even more bigoted against queer people than mac did; nate, who served his country and immediately settled down in a cookie-cutter white picket fence neighborhood with his wife and their newborn son. mac isn't totally sure if nate loved nora or if that was all compulsory (maybe performative on a level so deep that he didn't know himself whether it was normal to feel so uncomfortable being intimate with her, why she only felt like a best friend. or maybe they were in love. maccready wouldn't know -- because that's his first question, "what about your wife? i know she's gone, but you still love her, don't you?"), because despite everything mac has told nate, he never wants to talk about his past. the idea that that fucking guy could pick up the courage (his boss always can, can't he? why is it even surprising anymore) to genuinely, without any joke or easy way out, ask mac to be in a relationship with him? it's humiliating, and terrifying, and [maccready idolizes you.] he doesn't want to admit that, but he does. he has for a while. he is letting himself realize in that moment, for the first time, that "idolizes" is maybe not the right word for how he feels about nate.

i know he says "i... i don't know. i mean, i never thought of us that way." regardless of gender, but oh my god the implications that has for a male player. it isn't just that he's been ignoring his feelings and feels guilty at the prospect of moving on from lucy, or the pressure of bringing a new adult into duncan's life. he can't let himself think about it at all because if he starts thinking about it then it's real and it wasn't a phase and something is really, really fucking wrong with him -- because, why isn't he satisfied to have married the love of his life? why wasn't that enough for him? why does he want more? why is it both? there are bisexuals in the commonwealth (well. mostly companions, and they don't address it, so. pretty low representation there too); but mac? mac is new there, almost as new as nate. he grew up in the capital wasteland where there are two kinds of bisexuals: gay men who used to sleep with women, and women who will sleep with anyone for caps. maccready is closer to the second option, being a severely desperate merc for hire, and that definitely isn't making him feel any better. living in goodneighbor is only reinforcing that because the people around him are not the kind of person he wants to think about being with. there's nobody like lucy in goodneighbor, nobody he'd want near his son, nobody he wants to emulate or relate to.

but all nate does is think, so of course he's been thinking about it (how long? that's another terrifying thought; why doesn't it bother mac at all to imagine nate wanting him, when they were are just friends?) and suddenly there's no avoiding it. nate is right there in front of him and mac's not going to just run away this time. he can't keep running. he can't keep leaving. he can't keep lying (nate already knows every horrible thing he's done, anyway. nate was that perfect toy soldier, once. but he knows mac wasn't, and he still wants him). "maybe it would've been better if we died there with her." he ran then, and he ran from duncan, and he just. can't. do it anymore. it has to stop somewhere. it has to start somewhere. and there isn't anyone he'd feel safer starting that with than nate. because nate's always there; always helping, always listening, always comforting. they're two sides of the same coin, and there's nobody he trusts more, nobody he admires more, nobody he could imagine being a better co-parent. nate would adore duncan, and duncan would be just as starstruck by the frozen war hero as mac still is (sometimes, when nobody is looking). maybe there wasn't anybody like lucy left in the wasteland at all, but nate is something completely new. and new is terrifying, it always will be -- but mac knows, too: new means homesteads, new means caps, new means cures, new means friends. new means nate, so... it's gotta be worth it to try.

also i want to add, codsworth will always refer to the player as male ["mr. maccready, do take care of my master. if any harm shall befall him, i would be most disappointed." / "quit worrying, codsworth. you're going to blow a fuse or something."] when swapping in maccready, regardless of the player's chosen gender. which i'm sure is just a mistake, but it definitely makes it feel extra real to me that maccready/nate is so ingrained into the game.

[aroace-in-a-scary-place]

I wish there was something about the player character figuring out that caps were currency in fallout 4

like even just one line of dialogue about "oh, why is everyone collecting bottle caps?" or something instead of them just going straight to buying things with caps