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!
I've avoided posting these here because of extremely negative messages i got about it when I first made this new blog but this is kind of an emergency. i wont be able to make rent or bills next month and I was hit with other payments that I cant pay myself, please anything helps. Im really really sorry for the huge amount I dont know what else to do. I cant open commissions, I wont be able to complete them. i hate asking for so much and i dont have anything to offer for it i just want to live. im sorry this is really vague
Support Yagamimi
rent and bills together is around $2200, the rest is the other payments i was suddenly hit with
Honestly one of the most important things I can say I’ve learned as an artist is that if you feel like you’re really stagnating, that probably means you’re seeing problems in your work that you have never been able to see before, but you haven’t figured out how to fix them yet.
You’re not really stagnating
You’re understanding of drawing has moved beyond your current execution.
Once you have finished processing the problems you’re suddenly seeing, you’re likely to correct them and suddenly make a huge breakthrough in your drawing.
Don’t push yourself, either. Sometimes you have to remove yourself from a problem temporarily to solve it, just don’t give up drawing altogether.
TL;DR feeling like your drawing is stagnating/getting worse means your eye is improving, and your hands are likely to catch up soon.
as a musician who went through this recently, I can confirm this is very true.
you’re not bad
you’re not realizing you’re a fraud
people aren’t lying to you when they say you’re good
you’re just improving, and this is an agonizing but really important step. congratulations, because I can promise you you’re about to get ten thousand times better at whatever it is you do.
Putting this on the site because this is very true for writers as well.
The most important thing to realise is that this is a temporary condition, but one that will return again an again, but it will get easier every time since you will be able to recognise it for what it is.
Don’t ever let self-criticism stop you from creating.
This special is from a scene much further in the LU comic. It felt like a fitting way to reflect on the journey that started it all. What an impression it left, as we still feel that sense of adventure all these years later.
if there’s ever a time to re-share links to my print shop, my patreon and my ko-fi, i guess it’s now.
i want to be clear that this is not a formal call for donations and not a financial emergency, but i am looking at considerable vet costs, and while they aren’t as high as in the US, for now they will keep accumulating (if the diagnosis doesn’t end up terminal, they will for a while. but i am expecting the worst right now.) if you enjoy my art or my writing or my online presence (lol), then any small help is appreciated if you feel like giving it. if not, that’s okay. no worries.
i’ll open commissions soon, but right now i’m too emotionally taxed so we’ll see when i’ll get to that.
thank you so much to everyone who’s bought or sent something. it’s already helped get the endless taxi costs covered that we need to get the cat to and from various vet appointments (no car + it’s freezing outside + he’s very anxious.)
Huge screenshot dump incoming! There will be 3 more parts to this in a reblog chain! Seriously there's 30 shots just of walls 😅
A collection of screenshots that I took for the purpose of creating backgrounds in art, and to study the textures, architecture, infrastructure and furnishings in mass effect Legendary Edition.
These are practical rather than pretty aesthetic shots, if one seems completely random i'm probably trying to capture some wires, a floor tile or a sofa etc.
I thought someone might find them handy! You are welcome to use and transform these in whatever way you wish and I don't need to be credited.
Mass Effect is one of my favorite franchises of all time, but it can be so difficult at times to reckon with the fact that as a female gamer, they were simply not made with me in mind. And, ultimately, it suffers for it.
Ironically, the gender gap in the ME trilogy especially apparent when I recommend the games to a male friend. I finally talk them into playing it, and they will, more often than not, have absolutely nothing at all to say about the female characters (or lack thereof). Wandering through the games, you're bombarded with a diverse universe full of unique-looking aliens- but male aliens. Asari are the only female aliens you meet beyond Tali and a couple other female Quarians, until ME3, where we get Eve and Nyreen in the Omega DLC. Which means for two (and a half, let's be honest) games in the franchise, every Turian, Salarian, Krogan, Batrarian, Drell, Hanar, Vorcha, Elcor, and Volus is a male. But what is even more striking than this atrocious worldbuilding oversight is that, handing the games to your average male fan, they barely notice. It escapes them entirely as something worth mentioning. They don't perceive the empty echoes of the female voices we aren't hearing, of the other halves of alien populations completely unrepresented. It's as if the default setting of the world, fictional and not, is male.
Asari- the primary female voices in the game- are poorly written. We know this. An entire race of biotic-wielding, technologically-advanced aliens with lifespans in the centuries and incredibly rich culture and technology, and the most we see of them in the entire trilogy is as strippers and occasional mercenaries. Liara, Samara, Aria and Benezia break this mold, but not without their own flavors of sexualization. After all, Benezia still dies in what is akin to Turian fetishwear under the control of Saren. Her favorite color was yellow, remember?
But beyond Asari strippers, skin-tight Cerberus uniforms, and comically sexualized robots- all valid topics, but talked to death at this point- I truly believe the most astounding, hollow, and disheartening result of this casual misogyny is the Krogan.
The storyline of the Krogan cannot be emancipated from the concept of birth. An entire species near-sterilized, a war crime excused away for the greater good. The Krogan story IS the Genophage, and the horrifying explanations used by those in power to excuse atrocity. And for two entire games, not once are we ever shown what the Genophage has done to Krogan women. Not societally, physiologically, or psychologically. They are conveniently segregated away in briefly-mentioned "female camps," while the men discuss the horrors of a war crime that affects birthing rates. It takes until the final installment of the series to show you one female Krogan (who didn't even get her own model, they just covered her so you wouldn't notice) and to mention the absolutely devastating toll that a cultural pandemic of stillbirths, abuse, and chronic infertility-caused sickness can have on a population. Eve is a fantastic character. Truly. But after two whole games of the Genophage being such a critical cultural touchstone for so much of the galaxy, and so many player choices depending on it, it's incredibly difficult for this omission of perspective to be remedied by a few nuanced lines in the med bay.
On the other hand, I think about the Rachni a lot. The so-called ancient enemy of the Krogan people, the foe that led to them being uplifted by the Salarians (and then, ultimately, discarded by them) in the first place. A massive amount of pre-game lore is devoted to a culture that, interestingly enough, speaks to the player through a queen. In fact, the Rachni queen is one of the first female alien NPCs you encounter in the entire trilogy. And as you encounter her, she speaks of songs of mourning. Not for her, but for her children.
You are offered the chance to spare her twice, once in ME1 and again in ME3. Both times, she has been used for her control of her hive, her children, and the potential army that can be bred out of her. Given the choice to free or kill her, many argue she's too dangerous to be kept alive, her species too volatile to be left to reproduce unchecked. An eerily familiar narrative, echoed by the Krogan, creating very poignant foil to me. A species struggling to give birth, and another, their supposed enemy, constantly being taken advantage of for it. It is a struggle of mothers, being commodified by men, and everyone is losing.
I wonder what narrative depths this series could have discovered in the tragedies of the Krogan and the rich cultures of other alien civilizations if they had considered, even for a second, that female voices could support a story where male voices simply cannot. What would we have learned about Salarian women, and their opinions on fertilization regulations favoring male offspring? About Turian women in the line of duty and their place in the hierarchy? Does the Batarian caste system have a bias on the basis of sex?
Obviously, there is nothing that can be done about the erasure and treatment of women in a game series over a decade old. But, I do believe it can be used as an example going forward to show how cultural and environmental storytelling is genuinely made worse by the oversight of female voices. All that to say, I love this universe and these games. Sometimes, it's just difficult to remember that we were only given half a galaxy to truly appreciate.
I see the Queen's actions in the first game as a twisted sort of self-defense. Wonderland was going to be destroyed, and Alice seemed helpless to stop it. In her mind, taking control of Wonderland was the only way she, and even it, would survive. No matter the cost.
2087
gummygunk
ellievsbear
andulkaphoto
snowghoul
jbbartram-illu
