Ellie Thibodeaux holds arguably the worst job in Bridgehead City. She’s not a cook. She’s not even a cleaner. She’s the resident RDA psychiatrist, and her next assignment is helping the formerly deceased Project Phoenix come to terms with being brought back to life as an entirely different species.
Enter Colonel Miles Quaritch, the most reluctant, and most challenging patient she’s ever had the displeasure of treating.
James Cameron’s Avatar - The Way of Water (2022)
Recombinant Quaritch x ofc (currently professional/platonic, enemies/annoyances to friends, could be more) & Quaritch x Paz Socorro
Warnings: currently none
Tagging: If you want tagged for this series let me know! It is gonna be a longread, we all know how I LOVE a longread
Read on Ao3
| Chapter 1
Prologue
Dead man walking!
That was what the RDA soldiers had yelled in her direction as she stepped off the Valkyrie onto Pandoran soil late last year.
She tried to walk proudly into the buildings of Bridgehead City, with her head held high and her back straight. It was easier in the lower gravity. Intimidation might work on greenhorns, but it wasn’t going to work on her.
She’d already been through more in her life than any of them would ever know.
“This better than Earth.” Ellie struggled to convince herself as she got used to breathing with an exopack for the first time. “It has to be.”
A second chance. A second life. Wasn’t that a saying amongst the natives? That you were born twice?
Ellie dug that. She’d take all the chances she could get.
Six years of cryosleep for this. She was guaranteed Paradise, back on Earth when she signed on with the RDA. Instead, all she ever saw of Pandora was infrastructure, concrete and steel.
None of the greenery, impossible colours and bioluminescence her orientation literature had promised. It was too dangerous, apparently. The local tribes were still referred to as hostiles. The RDA had tried, and failed, to tame Pandora.
Her world was brown, grey and that disgusting khaki green she had grown to hate. Same colour as the food she was served in the canteen every damn day.
Bridgehead was plenty hostile as it was.
She didn’t fit with the two main factions in Bridgehead. Not a soldier, neither a scientist.
A goddamn shrink. That was what everyone called her. Intellectuals and hired thugs alike. They didn’t think she was useful, or necessary. She didn’t study the native wildlife or know how to handle a gun. She didn’t speak Na’vi. Practically useless in survival situations.
“Tibbs!”
General Ardmore caught her attention after breakfast. Ellie didn’t like the older woman much, she was a textbook narcissist, but fortunately she wasn’t paid her generous annual salary to like people. That would cost you extra.
“Guess who woke up yesterday?”
Ellie silently stared at the name on the file in Ardmore’s hand. She’d heard the stories, which by now seemed more like legends passed down through the generations of human settlers. This particular soldier, and future patient of hers, was the one member of Project Phoenix she was least looking forward to meeting.
He had quite the reputation. Even from beyond the figurative grave.
“That’s right, sweetheart-“ Ardmore grinned widely at the pained expression on her face. “Colonel Miles Quaritch, back from the dead.”
(btw the reason I made puppet versions of some of the characters was bcuz I wanted 2 see what they’d look like in my (work in progress) show’s art style)
I stumbled across this tier ranker for various creechers from the Fallout universe, modified the format, and used it to list out the most and least favourites of some of my OCs:
Kayli:
A fairly common sense approach here- yay to peaceful creatures, nay to the more aggressive types.
Sigrid:
Goris her deeply beloved. Also, those infamous scorpions will never leave her...
Tibbs:
Two of the earliest snippets of information he ever volunteered about himself were that he grew up on a farm and gets grossed out by most reptiles. Fairly self-explanatory.
Trin:
Juliet her deeply beloved. Also should be noted that she's not a big fan of insects on the whole, the only reason she feels any affection for cazadores and desert stalkers (gotta sneak in my VB references wherever I can) is an odd brand of homesickness.
Vari:
This 'scared of' lineup is very reflective of all the ~fun~ he's been subjected to in various iterations and settings. The rabbit should more accurately be a jackalope.
Vector:
Bonus co-created with Sibling A!
In his words: 'She likes to eat dog food so she relates to the dogs, she likes to hit gulpers with smackers, she likes to see scorchbeasts flying, but she hates those frogs, they just lick and you die.' I took the liberty of throwing a mirelurk in because he definitely enjoys the challenge of killing swarms of them in-game... but always gets poor Vector killed in the process.
And finally, the one we've all been waiting for...
(will be updated consistently and linked in my pinned!)
gay adam stanheight, cis man scott tibbs, transfem lawrence gordon, cis gay logan nelson, gay mark hoffman, homoromantic peter strahm, transfem amanda young, transfem lynn denlon (saw)
agender death (discworld)
transfem subspace, system darkheart (phighting)
spidritchcute kafka, cariadore blade (honkai star rail)
trans miles morales, trans gwen stacey, agender hobie brown, demiboy pavitr prabhakar, nonbinary margo kess, bisexual gayatri singh, genderfluid ganke lee (spiderverse movies)
futch kaylee, butch simon (firefly) + objectumsexual
bi will graham, graysexual hannibal lecter, bisexual alana bloom, grayromantic margot verger, non-sam aromantic frederick chilton, aroace randal tier, demisexual francis dollarhyde (hannibal)
transfem caliborn, transmasc calliope (homestuck)
transmasc fang, queer reed, buggender trish, trans guy sage, queer stella, questioning nasir, queer naomi, trans girl rosa (goodby volcano high) + flag links
ceruleanic blackthorncove (oc)
bellusromantic march 7th (honkai star rail)
bi vivian, pansexual lucy, grayromantic monte (the linguini incident)
How do you think your OCs would fare on Mothership Zeta?
I'm going to rank a whole bunch based on how well they'd get on, and whether I think they'd make it home or not:
Charlie: 1/10. She'd be in a constant state of 'What the fuck? What the fuck?!' to the point she'd probably hesitate and die in combat.
JJ: 0/10. Would totally freeze up and be too afraid to try escaping from alien captivity.
Sid: 10/10. Would survive, laying absolute waste to the Zetans in the process.
Tibbs: 8/10. Would survive, but probably then find himself unable to return to earth and have to spend the rest of his life just playing Nuka Tapper and eating alien squid food, knowing his luck...
Trin: 5/10. Might survive. Would be very interested in the alien tech, possibly leading to distraction at a fatal moment.