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daryl-dixon-daydreams · 1 year

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Words: 4,690 Pairing: Daryl Dixon x Female!Reader Reader pronouns: she/her Era: S10, The Reapers Warnings: language, violence, gore, angst A/N: This is Part 3 of a commissioned miniseries! Thank you to @ankhmutes for their generous support! Summary: Daryl and Y/N have more time to talk and the group heads back home.

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Part 2

The sun wasn’t yet breaking over the horizon when Daryl awoke, though a pink glow was beginning in the distance. He was a little stiff from laying on his thin bedroll, but surprised to find he had managed to get a good amount of sleep. He felt far more at peace than he could remember in a very long time even though his mind was still whirring with unanswered questions. He glanced back and could barely make out the prone shapes of you and DJ in the darkness of the shipping container. He got up as silently as he could and stepped out into the twilight. Kelly was on watch and Daryl climbed up to stand beside her on another steel container.

“Hey,” he greeted her, speaking it and signing with his right hand. “Did you get some sleep?”

“A little,” she said, nodding, turning her eyes back out to the night. “I took over watch so Elijah could get some.”

Daryl nodded and gazed out over the stillness, chewing on his bottom lip for a moment. Kelly tapped his arm lightly with hers.

“Soooo… Y/N?” she asked, spelling your name.

Daryl ducked his head, but his lips curved in a small smile.

“How long has it been?” she asked.

Daryl looked back up at her and rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “Ten years,” he said.

A struck look of understanding hit Kelly’s face. “You were… together?” she signed.

Daryl avoided her eyes a little bashfully but nodded. “Yeah. We were.”

She tapped his arm so he’d look at her again. “The little boy?” she signed. “Yours?”

Daryl nodded again.

“Holy shit,” Kelly said out loud, smiling at him. She happily grabbed his shoulder and gave him a reassuring look. “I’ve seen you with Judith and RJ. He’s lucky to have you as family. And Y/N? Now?”

Daryl looked anxious and shrugged. “I dunno,” he drawled, his heart speeding up even as he thought of you. “Ten years is a long time.”

She gave him another reassuring smile and then some movement below caught both their eyes. “I think she’s looking for you,” Kelly signed. You’d stepped out of the shipping container, your arms wrapped around yourself, and were glancing around.

Daryl gave Kelly a tight smile and climbed down, heading your way. “Hey,” he greeted you, shoving his hands into his back pockets. You smiled at him and he felt another jolt of electricity. How was it possible that you were even more beautiful now than he remembered?

“I was wondering where you went,” you said, tucking a strand of your hair back behind your ear. “Everything okay?”

“Just checking in with Kelly on watch,” he said. “All good. Still quiet out there.”

There was a silence that felt a little tense before both of you said “Did you get some sleep?” at the exact same time. Daryl ducked his head and let out a small laugh and your smile widened.

“Um—you first,” you said.

“Yeah. Ya know, I actually did. Wasn’t sure it was gonna happen but I managed a few hours,” he drawled.

You nodded. “Good. Same. First good night of sleep I’ve had in—I don’t even know how long,” you said. A shiver from the chill morning air suddenly zipped up your back. You should have pulled your jacket back on before stepping out.

Daryl’s brow furrowed immediately and he quickly moved around you to grab a blanket off his bedroll just inside the door of the shipping container. He held it out for you and you gratefully accepted it, wrapping it over your shoulders.

“Thanks,” you said softly. You gave him a long look, studying the scars you could see on his face that he didn’t have before and the years he carried now. Your heart still rushed at the sight of him.

“DJ’s still sleepin’?” Daryl asked.

You nodded. “Yeah. He somehow always seems to sleep just fine. At least much better than I do,” you said.

Daryl nodded. “Nah, it makes sense. He was born into this. S’all he knows. As long as he’s got ya by his side, everything is probably alright in his world. Means yer doin’ yer job right.”

Daryl watched a shadow pass over your face. “He’s had to deal with plenty of me being away, especially lately.”

Daryl gave you a questioning look but you shrugged it off. “Ah... never mind,” you said, giving him a tight smile. “Plenty of time for that later.” You adjusted the blanket around your shoulders and glanced back up at him and caught his blue eyes. They were fixed on you steadily. There was a stack of railroad ties nearby and you tilted your head toward it. “Want to sit down?”

Daryl nodded and followed you over, taking a seat beside you but being sure to leave a buffer of space. His eyes were searching your face when next you looked at him. “Go ahead and ask me,” you said suddenly, your eyes soft and perceptive.

Daryl gulped and looked down at his boots. They were scuffed with dark earth still from all the mad running in the forest the day before. He felt like his heart was in his throat. “Ask ya what?”

You shrugged and turned slightly more toward him. “Whatever it is on your mind. We might as well get started catching up, right?”

Daryl nervously licked his lips. He wasn’t going to ask you whatever was on his mind… because a lot of it he was still navigating himself and some of it was—well, it was too soon. But you were right, he had a lot of questions and he was sure you did too. “I guess—might as well start at the beginnin’. Atlanta. What happened after—after the walkers?” Just the thought of it dropped his heart from his throat down into the pit of his stomach.

You pulled in a deep breath. You could still see it all so clearly in your mind’s eye, as if it had just happened moments before. It was like it had been crystallized into glass. It was almost tangible. You could smell the moist rotting flesh. You could see the vaguely yellow or pink tinge to the whites of their eyes. You could hear the gnashing and mawing and growling. “I—I ran.” Daryl watched your brow furrow and cast a shadow over your eyes again. “I just ran, until I couldn’t anymore. And then I got into this building but the dead—they were all around it like a flood…” You ducked your eyes. “I was trapped in there for a day and a half before something must have led them away or they just lost interest. I got out. I tried to get back to where I had lost you…” Your fingers fiddled with a worn spot on the edge of Daryl’s blanket. “But I’d just run wildly to escape and I didn’t know where I was. I’d run so far and I just—I didn’t know.” You paused and pulled in another deep breath and let it out slowly. “I was in pretty bad shape by then. I hadn’t been able to find any water so I went back into this high rise and just started looking for supplies, thinking I’d find something to eat and get some water and then get back to where we’d left the car somehow… I knew you’d go back there to look—”

“I did.”

You nodded. “Yeah… well, I never made it back. I’m sure you knew that. I don’t know if it was just having spent so much energy and being dehydrated or if it was the pregnancy but—I must have passed out.” The shadow that veiled your face seemed to deepen. “That could have been it right there… Some walker could have wandered into me and that would have been it. But instead, when I woke up, I was in this little dingy apartment. This young woman had found me and somehow brought me back to her place. She wasn’t that much younger than I was at the time and it was just her and her mom in this little one-bedroom place, holed up since the fall. They were surviving by scavenging supplies from the rest of the building and hadn’t even really gone down to the street. Of course, I wanted to leave as soon as I had any strength back but then I was getting sick all the time from the pregnancy. Baby DJ didn’t like most canned food at the time and unfortunately that was mainly what we had,” you said with a dry laugh, shaking your head. “And the longer I was sick, the more I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to find you. When I finally was able to keep some food down, I started heading out into the city but it was useless—I was just wandering aimlessly, running the risk of meeting some serious trouble.” Your hand went to your stomach as if you were remembering what it was like to be alone and pregnant with DJ...

Daryl’s expression was soft and sad as you met his eyes again. “‘M so sorry,” he said.

You gave him a sad smile. “It’s not your fault,” you replied gently. “But I knew eventually that I couldn’t stay in the city any longer. Maria and her mother were kind to me… but I worried about what was going to happen to them in the long run. Supplies were getting more and more scarce and—I was amazed they’d managed to last two years the way they had but—” you paused and shook your head, a look of distress tightening your features briefly. “I tried to convince them to leave with me, but they wouldn’t. So, finally I just left. I found a working car and packed it with as many supplies as I could find and I headed out.” Your gaze fell down toward your hands again on the edge of the blanket over your shoulders. A canyon appeared between your brows as you remembered having to make that horrible decision. “That was where I felt like a line had been drawn… until then I could tell myself that maybe you were still in the city, still looking for me, or maybe you’d come back with everyone and you’d gotten Beth and you were just waiting for me to show up at the car or—I don’t know. Then I kept having this dream.” The look in your eyes grew far away. You seemed to shrink back into some other deep pool. “I could see you and hear you. You kept calling my name, but there was this glass between us and you couldn’t see me. I’d yell and pound on it but you couldn’t hear me… It was horrible. I’d wake up crying. When I left Atlanta, I knew that I could go out and try and look for you, but there was little chance of us ever finding each other again.” You blinked away the moisture in your eyes and finally lifted your gaze back to Daryl. There was pain so explicitly written across your face that Daryl’s chest ached and all he wanted was to wrap his arms around you.

“Mighta been only a little chance,” Daryl drawled. “But it was big enough.”

You gave him another sad smile. “Wish it hadn’t taken so long.” You sighed heavily again. “God, I really missed you… I can’t even tell you how much. And DJ has missed having his dad around for almost a decade. I’m so sorry you’ve missed out on so many milestones with him.”

Daryl nodded and felt a lump of emotion tighten in his throat. “S’like ya said though. Ain’t yer fault. And we found each other now.”

“Yeah… still is real shitty though that we had to go through that,” you said with a wry laugh. Daryl nodded his agreement.

“What happened after ya got outta the city?” he pressed you. He felt the need to know everything that had happened since you’d been parted. Nothing, no little hurt, no little joy, was too small, but it was a lot of ground to cover and for now he’d settle for a summary. The details would have to come over time, building up a complete timeline of your two lives, split apart.

“I was alone for a while. Getting more and more pregnant and absolutely terrified about that,” you said with another dry smile. “I was moving around a lot, always looking for some sign of you. Every arrow or bolt I found I studied, hoping that it was one of yours. But it never was and I was still alone. And then all of a sudden, I just started finding people, you know? Or they were finding me. Some bad and some good… but eventually I had this—this found family, just like you have. The membership changed over time as we lost some and gained others, but there was a core group of us who stayed together for a long time, even if we did have to keep moving. We’d find somewhere and try to put down roots and something would happen—it would fall, sometimes to people and sometimes to the dead. Sometimes to completely stupid shit that used to be more benign but now is a catastrophe—severe weather or fires or whatever. We’d move again… Eventually, we stumbled onto this gated community near the coast and I just knew it was where we were meant to be. It was somewhere we could make safe and actually turn into a home. It had strong walls. It’d be safe for DJ to grow up and learn. I was so tired from all the running by that point… From what Maggie has told me, it wasn’t that different from what you found, from Alexandria. Of course, the pressing problem was that it was filled with the dead when we got there.”

It wasn’t lost on Daryl that you were speaking of this home in the past tense and he understood from the little Maggie had said that it fell to the living, not the dead, this time.

“But we managed it,” you said with a smile. “We drew them out and led them away and killed the rest. We set up homes and grew our own food. We had a governing council and school for the kids. It was still hard but it was good. It worked, for a long time. And then—” Here, your voice failed and face fell again and Daryl thought he caught a glimpse of tears in your eyes.

“Hey—” He was brave enough to touch you lightly on the shoulder. “We ain’t gotta talk about that yet,” Daryl said. “If ya ain’t ready—it can wait. Really, if it’s too much, all this can wait.”

You nodded. “Yeah. Maybe once I’ve had more time to process everything that’s just happened in the last couple days and have a little more distance from it.” Daryl shifted and nervously scratched at a non-existent itch on his head.

“What are—I mean…” Fuck, he didn’t know how to ask this. “Uhh—what ‘bout now?”

You gave him a questioning look and he seemed to be struggling to find the right words. You waited patiently.

Daryl rubbed a hand over the back of his neck anxiously. “I just mean—what are yer plans… I guess, is what ‘m tryin’ to ask…” he trailed off and you could see that he was nervous.

You realized he was trying to ask you where you were going next. “Daryl—” Your angled your body more to face his and the blanket he’d given you slipped from your left shoulder. Your knee almost bumped his. “My plan is to take DJ and go wherever you’re going. If you’ll have us?”

A wash of relief spread from the top of Daryl’s head all the way down through his toes. The sensation was like a subtly electric tingling, a cooling wave, and he felt his muscles relinquish their tight grip on his bones.

You were looking at him now with one brow quirked up. “Did you really think, having just found you, that I’d take DJ and go somewhere you aren’t?”

Daryl let out a gruff laugh and shook his head. “I dunno what to think… I still ain’t sure yer sittin’ right in front of me, or that any of this is fuckin’ real…”

He started briefly as your hand found his and rested over the top of it. You gave it a gentle squeeze. He gulped and met your eyes again. “It’s real. I promise,” you said softly.

Daryl nudged his nose up at you in a nod and tried to suppress the tears that were starting to blur his vision. He blinked them away. “To answer yer question… course that’s what I want. Come to Alexandria. Please,” he said. “It’s still home, though it’s a bit worse for wear righ’ now, but—we always bring it back.” Daryl noticed then that the blanket had slipped down and he reached over and pulled it back up around you. His hands rested lightly on your shoulders after he replaced it and there was some thickness in the atmosphere that materialized between you. You were looking right back at him with bright eyes and he felt as if he was on the brink of something… something much bigger than himself.

“Mom?”

Both of you startled a little and you shot to your feet. DJ was standing in the doorway of the shipping container, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

“Yeah, honey. Right here,” you said, smiling at him. You could still feel where Daryl’s hands had been on your shoulders almost as if they were still there. The blanket he’d just pulled back around you was now pooled on the railroad tie where you’d been sitting. You grabbed it and handed it back to Daryl. “Thanks,” you said, quite sure your cheeks were flushing a little pink. The dimness of the morning light may have saved you from him seeing that blush. You rested your hand lightly on his shoulder as you moved around him and went to DJ in the doorway. Daryl watched you disappear back inside with a sigh.

He nestled the edge of his thumbnail between his teeth and bit down hard, chewing it anxiously as his mind again whirred. He realized that it had quieted while you were here.

“Hey.” Maggie’s voice. She had a knowing smile on her face.

Daryl straightened up. “Hey.”

“Everythin’ alright?” she asked, pacing closer.

A dry laugh escaped Daryl and he paused for a moment thoughtfully. “Yeah… Fuck yeah.” Maggie laughed despite all the loss she’d suffered in the last few days. He stood and Maggie thought it looked like some flame had been kindled in him that she hadn’t seen since he’d lost you so long ago. _ _ _ _ _ _

The journey back to Alexandria on foot was long but blessedly uneventful. Daryl stuck closely beside you and DJ and before long the two of them were talking. DJ had started it. Daryl felt him looking up in his direction earnestly and glanced over. Daryl gave him a tight smile as his heart started to race with nerves.

“How heavy is your crossbow?” DJ asked him.

Daryl slung it off his shoulder. “Ain’t heavy at all. S’built to be light. S’only five and a half pounds. Wanna see?”

DJ considered him for a moment and then nodded. Daryl held it out to him and DJ held out his own little recurve bow, which Daryl took in return. Although it was light, the crossbow was a little unwieldy in DJ’s small arms, but he looked up at Daryl and grinned. Daryl felt a wash of some unexplainable feeling. You were watching the whole interaction with a blossoming bloom of warmth in your chest.

Daryl inspected DJ’s bow closely, testing the draw length and smoothing his hands over the wood. “This is a good bow,” he said, admiring the glossy red wood that made up the limbs and the riser.

“Mom made it for me,” DJ said.

Daryl smiled and glanced over at you briefly before looking back at him and holding it out. “I thought she might’a.” He held DJ’s bow out to him again and took his crossbow, slinging it over his shoulder in a well-practiced motion that was mainly muscle memory. “Ya know, yer mom is pretty good at just about everythin’ she does.”

“I know that,” DJ said in response.

“Well, did ya know there’s only one thing I’ve ever seen her completely fail at?”

“Excuse me?” you interrupted, laughing.

DJ looked between you and Daryl. “What’s that?”

“Snipe huntin’,” he drawled, shooting you an amused glance. You laughed heartily and then shot him a look.

“Daryl, you better just be quiet over there,” you said through your laughter. DJ was looking between you and him.

“Snipe?” he asked.

“Yep,” Daryl said with a nod. “They’re real rare. Only way to hunt ‘em is to go out in the woods when there’s a full moon. And then ya gotta call ‘em out.”

“How do you do that?” DJ asked eagerly. You couldn’t stop smiling to yourself and Daryl stole another glance at you, just to see your lips curved happily.

“Ya gotta be real quiet. Find someplace to hide. And then ya use the one essential thing for snipe huntin’… a spoon,” he said seriously.

“A spoon?!” DJ repeated shooting a confused look at you that drew a full laugh from your chest.

“Yep, a spoon!” Daryl said again. “I thought ya taught him how to hunt?” Daryl asked you, smirking, his blue eyes filled with so much light it almost brought tears to yours.

You laughed again. “I guess I forgot a few things.”

“What’s the spoon for?” DJ asked.

“Ya use it to catch the light of the moon. They’re attracted to shiny stuff, snipe. It’ll bring ‘em right in, every time.”

DJ looked back at you again, perplexed. “I’ve never even heard of snipe,” he said.

You brushed your fingers through his hair. “They’re very rare. You’re better off spending your time in the woods hunting something else.” You shot another look at Daryl and shook your head, a subtle smile still on your face. DJ ran ahead to catch up to Hershel and Maggie and you laughed again before catching Daryl’s blue eyes. “If he goes missing from his bed during the next full moon, I know who to blame,” you said.

“He might be too smart to fall for it,” he said.

“Hey!” You playfully hit him on the arm. “Are you calling me gullible? First off, that was a really long time ago. Second, there is an actual bird that people hunt called a snipe! I thought you were really teaching me something!” Daryl let out a gruff laugh.

“Yeah, but ya shoulda known when I gave ya the spoon…”

“Whatever… you ass,” you said. “We both know that whole thing was just a ploy to get me alone.” You shot him sideways glance and Daryl felt a bolt of electricity jump up his back.

He shook his hair from out of his eyes and ducked his head. “It might’a been…” he admitted. “S’good to see ya smile,” he said suddenly. “I mean, it’s just good to see ya at all… but even better to see ya smile.” His heart was racing again.

You nodded. “It feels good to. Haven’t had much occasion to lately. Though DJ manages to pull them out of me most days.” Daryl hummed a noise of acknowledgment and glanced up ahead to where DJ and Hershel were talking animatedly.

“We’re almost there. We’ll be behind some safer walls soon,” he said.

It wasn’t long before the group came within sight of Alexandria. DJ returned to your side as you stopped and took it in for a moment. Daryl immediately noticed the busy activity of people around one side where a section of the wall was down. You shot an anxious look over at Daryl.

“C’mon,” he murmured. “S’alrigh’.”

Maggie paused and waited for you to catch up. She gave you a tight smile which you returned.

“You ready for this?” she asked you. “There’ll be a few familiar faces and a lot of questions. And a lot of new faces too.”

You pulled in a deep breath and nodded, glancing over at Daryl again. “Yeah. Ready.” You grabbed DJ’s hand.

As you all walked up, the first person you recognized was Carol. She was helping near the wall and her eyes went to Daryl first and then to you beside him. The support she’d been holding slipped from her hands and clattered on the ground. “Oh my God…” She was grinning as she ran over to meet you and Maggie. There were tears brimming in her pale blue eyes. “Oh my God!”

You laughed as she grabbed you into a tight hug and then pulled back to look at your face, clasping it between her hands. “I—I can’t believe this!” she said.

“Me either,” you replied. “It’s so good to see you.” Now Carol’s eyes went to DJ beside you and she gave you a stunned and questioning look, her eyes going wide. All you managed was a nod. Carol dropped down to one knee so she was at his eye level.

“And who might you be?” Carol asked him.

“DJ,” he said, sticking out a hand to her. She smiled warmly at it and grabbed it in her, giving it a hearty shake.

“Nice to meet you, DJ. I’m Carol,” she said. “You can call me Aunt Carol if you want.” He grinned at her.

“He’s heard some stories about you,” you said.

“Well, I should hope so!” she said, standing up. Next, she pulled Maggie into a hug and looked tearily at Hershel, then finally she met Daryl’s eyes, shooting him a look of disbelief.

“The hell happened to the wall?” Daryl drawled.

Carol’s face fell. “Parting gift from the Whisperers,” Carol explained. He nodded and chewed on his bottom lip, glancing back again at the gaping hole.

“Alrigh’… I’mma get everybody settled,” Daryl drawled. “S’been a long couple of days.”

“Okay,” Carol nodded. She gave your arm a friendly squeeze as you moved past her with DJ. “Daryl, hold on one second—” You and DJ waited a short distance away. “Please tell me you aren’t going to stick them in some random empty apartment or house,” she said, her brow furrowed.

He stared back at her and then shifted anxiously. “Uhh—I hadn’t even gotten that far… I was just tryin’ to get us here.” Just then, there was a familiar bark and Daryl looked up to see Dog tearing toward him. Judith and RJ were running behind. “I’ll—I’ll figure it out,” he said hurriedly. He turned his attention back to the newcomers. “Hey! Dog!” Daryl bent down and the Malinois stopped just short of bowling him over, licking his face and wagging his tail furiously.

“Friend of yours?” you asked, smiling down at him.

Daryl scratched behind Dog’s ears and just then had an upsetting realization—shit. Leah.

#daryl dixon fanfiction #daryl dixon x reader #daryl dixon twd #the walking dead #twd fanfics #daryl dixon drabbles #daryl imagines #daryl x y/n #fanfics #writers of tumblr #twd drabbles

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hometothecanyonmoon · 1 year

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rating and reviewing BLs i have watched so far (unupdated as of april ‘23)

hi this is just a post that i wanted to include in my page but it was getting too long lmao. this is just like a list of all that i’ve watched so far, in order. i won’t be including their plots here, but there might be spoilers. these are just my opinions in case someone new wants to bond over shows and wants to know what i thought 🤌🏽

we best love (both seasons) - 10/10. first BL that i watched, lowkey changed my life. absolutely obsessed with it, comfort series that i keep rewatching. absolutely amazing acting by everyone involved.

history3: trapped - 8.5/10. tang yi. no words. beautiful acting and cinematography, the plot was handled pretty well and i was pretty much broken by the last episode. jack and zhao lian are my children. i’m still obsessed with the OST, i listen to it multiple times a week. just goes to show how much a good soundtrack can still keep a show in your mind even if you watched it months ago.

bad buddy - 1073392729/10. HOE MY GOD. where do i start. all i’ll say is i’ll never be the same, this series is IT for me. THE show for me. nothing will ever come close. one day i’m gonna meet p’aof and cry on my knees. i will never be able to put into words just how much this series means to me, or just how important it is to me, or just how influential this has been for my life. i’ll never be able to get over it.

2gether the series - 6/10. didn’t watch the second season because s1 was so disappointing even if i finished most of it in one night. brightwin are cute and all but they were giving brothers i’m sorry 💀 their chemistry just sizzled out halfway. and they both need acting lessons i’m sorry

love in the air - 9/10. fort thitipong simp forever. first show that i watched while it was ongoing. came for payurain, stayed for prapaisky. although it’s lowkey rapey (which is to be expected from mame) i loved how well they handled the characters

tharntype - 6/10. started because i had heard so much about it, but abandoned it halfway. aside from the dubious consent (again, mame, people can’t consent when they’re asleep), the internalised homophobia got too toxic

star in my mind - 7.5/10. joongdunk are adorable, but they could’ve done a little more with the plot. the Feels™️ were lacking a little bit. cute show overall though. and i’m one of the five people who will die on the hill that seanmaitee are canon and deserved an official kiss

semantic error - 8.5/10. first KBL that i watched, finished it in one day. very beautifully done, all the colour symbolism etc was interesting as hell. pretty cute, although i do wish we could’ve gotten more fluff

love mechanics - 8/10. saw a short on yt and was convinced about the angst. boyyyy was i wrong, it was so much more angsty than i thought. highkey toxic and unhealthy too, but i’ll let it go. forever simping over p’bar. the parents angle was annoying but eh. i will say though, i had to take a lot more breaks while watching than usual, it became too much at points. we did get a little fluff at least though so

my tooth your love - 9/10. yes i hate the title. very very nicely done, the perfect representation of how trauma affects you even when you’re older and just how much it holds you back. convos about mental health, therapy, not letting your lover treat you like shit, AAAAA 🤌🏽🤌🏽 finished this in one day too. they didn’t magically have a moment where they forgave each other and kissed after confessing. they both worked to prove they were in this for the long run, and xun’an didn’t hesitate to hold bai lang accountable for being a jerk. really breaking all the BL barriers sjdhsjh 😭😭 the only part that annoyed me was his dad beating him up like hello?? he’s 30?? 💀💀 fucking vile. but bai qing is an icon and i love her and i would die for her. simp for alex speaking in english randomly. him and rj deserved more scenes and they need to be canon now!!!!!

roommates of poongduck 304 - 7.5/10. i had heard SO much about this so i had high expectations but i was kind of let down, i mean we really only got them together in ep 7. the chemistry, acting and side characters were great but tbh i feel like i’d have loved this a lottttt more if it had been a little spaced out, more episodes, had better conflict resolution and just better overall detailing. still a cute watch though

currently watching:

never let me go - this series is going to break me, i already know. phenomenal acting, symbolism and cinematography. every wednesday you can find me crying because it is just so excellent, the brainrot is real. can’t wait for more episodes

my school president - OBSESSED with them for real. they’re the toned down version of bad buddy, which i have proven in a post. can’t wait for them to be their high school’s power couple. very very wholesome

those are all for now! i’ll keep updating this post as i watch more. my to-watch list is already overflowing but i’d love your recommendations too!! and i’m always willing to scream about any given show so feel free to join me. :) x

#we best love #history3: trapped #bad buddy #2gether the series #love in the air #tharntype #star in my mind #semantic error #love mechanics #my tooth your love #never let me go #my school president #phewwwwww #roommates of poongduck 304

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maypearlss · 10 months

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𝐰𝐢𝐩 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 : 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐧𝐨𝐧𝐚 𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭!

this is an intro post for my current main (and favorite) wip, "the nona incident!" i've had this wip for about 2 months now and it's currently still in the development and plotting stage, but i'm kinda... obsessed with it... so i'm super excited to actually start writing it, whenever that will be! for now, here's a little bit of information about it!

𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰 ⋆｡°✩

genres: historical fiction, drama, romance, thriller

target length: novel

setting: the united states, mid-1980s (begins in 1985, ends in a currently undetermined year)

rating + content warnings: "the nona incident!" will be intended for a mature/adult audience. content warnings include strong language, drug/alcohol use and addiction, sex and sexual content, an abusive relationship, biphobia and homophobia, compulsory heterosexuality, misogyny, graphic violence, and death. there will be other content warnings i have yet to nail down; just know that this story will be on the (for lack of better word) grittier side, so if you aren't comfortable with some generally disturbing content, this probably won't be for you.

𝐬𝐲𝐧𝐨𝐩𝐬𝐢𝐬 ⋆｡°✩

it’s 1985, and there are two things on may costa’s mind, the same two things that have always been on her mind for as far back as she can remember: making it in the professional music industry, and being with her best friend since childhood, nona darnell. but as a guitarist with no band and few friends to speak of, stuck working as a local music store clerk, and with nona busy living an exciting life on the sunset strip with her too-cool boyfriend, duke strickland, may is about as far from those two things as is possible to be. that is, until nona invites her to accompany duke’s growing band, overconsumption, on their first tour—accompany the band, and her. with this opportunity, may is determined to carve out a place for herself in both the rock legendarium and in nona’s life, but success has unexpected consequences, especially in the untamed world of rock ‘n’ roll.

𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐬, 𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐬, + 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐩𝐭𝐬 ⋆｡°✩

the thing about tni! is that it's a very self-indulgent project—like, even more self-indulgent than usual, which is saying something—so the themes and ideas explored in it are pretty much all things somewhat personal to or specifically geared towards myself. for the most part, they all boil down to one of two things: bisexuality and rock 'n' roll. basically, tni! is meant, in part, to be an exploration of both the good and the bad of the 80s rock scene from the point of view of a closeted bisexual woman who feels out of place in the world she loves. this does make may somewhat of a self-insert, i suppose, but i don't really consider her a self-insert, because she's not meant to be me? she's more meant to be an avenue for me to express my feelings towards the concepts presented in the story. if that makes sense. to get back to the point, tni! is more or less just me projecting onto and living vicariously through a fake 80s rock band for an indeterminate number of pages. boom, there's the theme.

𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 + 𝐜𝐨. ⋆｡°✩

may costa: a talented but lonely guitarist from vermillion spring, california in search of a band and respite from her own dislike of herself

nona darnell: the treasured girlfriend of duke strickland with aspirations of becoming a photographer and filmmaker

duke strickland: overconsumption's charismatic frontman with a famously kind and humble reputation

tommy salem: overconsumption's reserved bassist with a penchant for nighttime motorcycle rides

logan vaughn: overconsumption's multitalented drummer who started it all in the first place

rj patterson: overconsumption's rhythm guitarist who loves stirring up conflict for the sheer fun of it

𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 ⋆｡°✩

the short answer to what inspired tni! is music (shocker)! if you haven't put it together yet, i live for the rock music of the 80s (and 70s, and 90s and onward, but especially the 80s). a huge amount of the inspiration for this story came from me listening to my favorite music, and i specifically decided to make this an actual wip while listening to the use your illusion albums by guns n' roses on a drive home. from there, the ideas just sort of collected and collected, which has kinda... never happened for me before? So that was really cool (and probably only because i daydream about being a rockstar way too often).

beyond just the music itself, i've also gathered a lot of ideas and inspiration from researching my favorite bands! i went through a span of time a month or two ago where i was just obsessed with reading up on the history of the bands i love (and i still am, honestly), and a lot of the stories i discovered—there were some crazy-ass stories—had a big influence on some of the plot points and the overall "vibe" of tni!.

𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 ⋆｡°✩

⋆ bad obsession - guns n' roses

⋆ nona - mötley crüe

⋆ magic touch - aerosmith

⋆ hide your heart - kiss

⋆ rocket queen - guns n' roses

⋆ detroit rock city - kiss

⋆ patience - guns n' roses

⋆ you could be mine - guns n' roses

⋆ thrills in the night - kiss

⋆ don't cry (original) - guns n' roses

⋆ mr. brownstone - guns n' roses

⋆ get in the ring - guns n' roses

⋆ sweet child o' mine - guns n' roses

⋆ too young to fall in love - mötley crüe

𝐟𝐮𝐧 𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐬 ⋆｡°✩

⋆ the plot of tni! was originally going to be a lot more... extreme? it still gets pretty extreme as it is now, but may used to be a way different character in a way that made the plot much more horrific before i realized that that wasn't the kind of story i wanted to tell with these characters

⋆ may is probably one of my favorite main characters i've ever written, so you guys have that to look forward to <3 facets of her character are also inspired by slash (the person, not the fanfic, since i know this is tumblr lmao), because... i love slash... shock and awe, i guess

⋆ this is my first attempt at realistic and historical fiction

⋆ nona is the first of two ocs i have that unintentionally have the same names as characters from the locked tomb series (maybe you'll meet the second someday? who knows... not me)

so, that's "the nona incident!" if you read this far, thank you so much, i really appreciate it! i'm not new to tumblr, but i am new to writeblr, so i'm not 100% sure of how to go about connecting with people and making friends here, so if any of this seemed interesting to you, or we have some common interests, or you just wanna chat, feel free to reach out in any way you want, and i'd be super happy to talk!

#wip : the nona incident!#wip #my wips #wip intro #wip introduction #historical fiction #drama #romance #thriller #writeblr #creative writing #80s rock #rock and roll #queer fiction #wipsbymor

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livindeadgirlgrav · 8 months

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The Monster's Den

Pairing: Otis Driftwood x fem reader

Warning: Violence, bad language, gore, nsfw, kidnapping, stockholm syndrome its Otis Driftwood lol

A/n: This is my first story on this account! I use to write a lot but my account got deleted so iIm staring over! Just note I type really fast and I'm also dyslexic, I'll try my best to proofread every post but please tell me if I miss something or made a mistake:) - This story is a work in process, I'm still getting my creative juices back!

This story is written in the readers pov and alternating povs!

Getting a flat tire is a stressful experience already, but getting a flat tire in the middle of no where in the Texas heat is even worse. You knew this would happen sooner or later but you hoped your piece of shit car would make it a little longer. Tying a old shirt to the door you decided to walk, having no idea where you were walking to just hoping a house or gas station would pop up so you could use the phone. After what felt like hours of walking you finally stumbled upon a house, carrying your wedged sandals you decided to knock on the door. The house in your mind was creepy, it look as the vines were eating the house with hanging baby dolls trying to escape from the walls. the yard itself was littered with items. You tried not to be too judgmental for working in this heat had to be killer. "Oh hello darling?" You smiled at the warm presence of a older woman. "Hi, i'm sorry to bother but my car broke down a few miles back-" before you were able to finish the lady pulled you in "Oh honey you look terribly hot! why don't you have a sit and I'll get you some iced water" Taking a sit on the couch you watched as the lady came into frame with a sweaty glass of water. "Thank you so much! Do you have a phone I could use by chance?" You said accepting the cool beverage. "Noo,I once had one back in 57, I don't quite remember you see there isn't anyone here I feel like jaw flappin' at no more."She said taking a sit beside you. "But RJ has a tow-truck, I bet he can get it for you. Might be able to fine the problem." You took a sip of the heavenly water and brightened up. "Really? that would be wonderful! Thank you" You said sweetly admiring the generous woman. She smiled and nodded "Well it might take him a few hours but you are free the stay here." You smiled "I would love that thank you!" The woman giggled a little before deciding to go find RJ to talk to him about your car, leaving you alone in the living room.

After a few minutes of looking around and sipping your water you heard a noise behind you, turning to see if it was the woman- you were met with a tall, pale man with stringy blonde hair. Feeling your heart flutter as the man stared down at you sitting on the couch remaining eye contact as he walked around to get a better view of you. "H-hello, I'm y/n the older lady welcomed me in, I-I broke down a few miles bac-" Before finishing your sentence the man spoke up. "Can you speak girl?" He glared down. You nodded fast. " Then speak up!" He shouted making you jump with the outburst. "Yes" Otis stared at you watching your face heat up and your eyes flutter. Gasping, your eyes quickly widen when the strange man grabbed your neck pulling you up from the couch harshly. Grasping his wrist to try to free yourself but it was no use. "I bet you are soaked already huh?" He admired your struggling form for a moment before he slammed you down on the couch by your throat. You winced in pain. The man decided to sit on your legs to keep you from kicking tighting his grip. You tried to scream but nothing came out. "p-please!" struggling to form words you squinched up your face in pain. "i-I cant breathe!" trying your best you begged breathlessly. Before everything went black you saw the man smirk.

Your eyes fluttered awake, starring up seeing a ceiling as your eyes came into focus. Moaning at the pain, you knew there had to be a bruise on your neck. Realizing your arms are tied behind your back and a gag was in your mouth you tried your best to look around the room. You started to breath heavy realizing what just happened. You jumped when you heard the door open and the same man who was just choking you walked in. "Hey there mama, you sure are pretty hogtied like that!" You cried out and pushed against the rope. Earning a chuckle from Otis. "Now look I'm going to remove your gag but if you make anything such as a fucking peep. I'll gut you like a pig and make you eat your own intestines!" You nodded as tears rolled down your cheek. Otis pulled the rag down and stared at your face looking at your puffy lips. "W-what do you want?" you stuttered making Otis chuckle, "You."

Thank you for reading! I might make a part 2 Im not entirely sure but I hope you guys like it! I haven't written in forever so this was great!

#slasher fucker #slasher x reader #slasher rp #slasher fanfiction #slasher requests #horror #house of 1000 corpses #otis driftwood x reader #otis driftwood #otis drifteood x y/n #my writing #my story #send me asks #request #request open

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incorrectonceandfuturenerd · 7 months

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Happy Ten Year Anniversary @onceandfuturenerd! A few of us over on the discord server put together an audio compilation of us talking about how much we love the podcast and what it means to us. There's a transcript below the cut that also has the names of who's speaking in each clip.

Thank you so much for making this wonderful podcast, and congratulations on ten years!

Kat: I love most things about The Once and Future Nerd. The characters, the setting, the genre awareness, the humor. It’s my favourite podcast for a reason, and that’s saying something as I’ve listened to over a hundred. I remember listening to the show for the first time in late 2016, it was... Christmas concert season and I was walking back and forth pretty much exclusively between my dorm, rehearsal, class, and the dining hall. Um. But somehow, despite that very limited time, I managed to listen to all of The Once and Future Nerd over the course of approximately two days, and fell in love with it pretty much immediately. Um, at the time, all of book one was out, which was, uh, less than there is now, but still a significant amount of podcast to listen to over the course of 48 hours. Um. Aside from how wonderful I continue to find the podcast, The Once and Future Nerd has also allowed me to have access to a community I never would have had otherwise. After creating the discord to talk more about the show with a few other folks, I met some of my closest friends. As of sending this message, I have sent-- and I checked right before- before I did this-- in the server alone, 28,638 messages. That is not including direct messages to my friends, that is just directly in the server. Um, the server has also had a long-running Dungeons and Dragons game that’s been going since spring of 2019, and has had multiple bl- book clubs, including one that meets weekly has consistently since spring of 2020. It’s been one of the most fulfilling community experiences of my life, and it all ties back to The Once and Future Nerd. Creating stupid inside jokes like Gy’y Fy’ryy and Elves Have Fur and Antonin being the sexiest the character no matter what any polls say, he better win this last one, I swear... um, it’s been one of the great joys of my life over the last five years. Thank you so much for all the love and joy, humor, tears, and so much more that The Once and Future Nerd has brought to my life and to the lives of many others. The story’s been wonderful, y’all are wonderful, and I hope you continue for many years to come. Happy ten year anniversary.

Nicole: What do I love about The Once and Future Nerd? This is going to sound weird, but I love how specific it is. The Once and Future Nerd is such a peculiar blend of genre and humor and social commentary, that it’s a near perfect filter for finding like-minded people. I’ve met some of my best friends through this podcast and I’m so grateful I found it back in 2016. At the time, it was so hard to find fantasy audio dramas, so I was immediately drawn to The Once and Future Nerd for that alone, uh, when I was trying to search for some. I really liked the concept, enough to make me listen until Monsters, because that’s the chapter that hooked me. I devoured the rest of book one after that, only pausing to sleep and attend lectures... and sometimes listening to it during lectures. Sorry, not sorry to my stats prof. If I had to pick a favourite moment, I would have to say Yllowyyn’s confrontation with Ry’y lo-Th’yyt in Bridges. I think that one is burned into my brain because I was a crowded train trying not to freak out at the time. This podcast means a lot to me as a source of connection with others and it’s just a plain fun story. Thank you, Zach and Christian and everyone who works so hard on it. It’s been going for ten years, and I don’t care if it takes ten more.

RJ: I found The Once and Future Nerd in February of 2017 as a depressed 18-year-old in my first year of university, and I think I listened to everything that had been released at that point in about a week? I love it because of the genre subversion and genre awareness, I love the characters, I love the way it challenges expectations and engages with complex topics with care... I really, really like listening to this podcast, but more than that, I like talking about this podcast. The main thing that makes me keep coming back to The Once and Future Nerd, keep listening, and that makes it important to me, is the community I’ve found in listening to it. I joined the discord server two days after it was created, and that remains the only fandom space where I’ve successfully made actually close online friends. To the point where the friendship has expanded beyond just our shared enjoyment of the podcast into just... being friends. It’s really great to get to know these people, to plan things like this anniversary event with them, to have things like a weekly book club, or collaborations on projects, or just conversations about silly and serious things related to the podcast, and unrelated to the podcast. And none of that would have happened without The Once and Future Nerd so, thank you. Thank you for being the reason that I know these people, thank you for being the reason that I have been inspired to make creative things, from fanart to videos to what have you, uh... I love your show so much, congratulations on ten years, and I can’t wait to hear what comes next.

Dirk: Hey, this is Dirk. Uh, I don’t remember when I started listening to this podcast, it was years ago-- but I do remember being immediately drawn in by the brief and tragic tale of Mr. Fluffy Toes. The mix of humor and sass and sincerity, it immediately struck me. As the story went on, I delighted in Nelson being shockingly genre-savvy about this fantasy world and, honestly? I really enjoyed the fact that the world at large ignored the kids at first. That’s not something you often get in portal fantasies. Uh, I’ve also always deeply enjoyed the queer representation and tongue-in-cheek political commentary... As if that wasn’t enough, you all gave me a chance to write for your podcast. I had so much fun with the Bailey sisters short, and with making up a whole-ass holiday! It was so much fun. And even though I had to recuse myself from the later plotline, I’m still here to listen to how it goes. My inability to write for it has absolutely no bearing on your grace and kindness to me, and even though I dread how it will make me feel because of my own personal issues, I know that I can trust whatever it turns out to be. Like so many pod- things in this podcast, it’s gonna be sensitive, sometimes funny, sometimes deeply tragic, or terrifying, and it will never punch down. Because that’s the kind of podcast you have made. Happy ten year anniversary, thank you so much for all that you’ve given us. And I hope you can continue making whatcha love for as long as you want to be making it. And like... Let’s be real. As long as you’re making this, we’re gonna be here for it, so... Thank you.

Oriana: I had the podcast recommended to me by a friend who was very active on the reddit at the time. I love that The Once and Future Nerd is not afraid to look long and hard at The Implications of a lot of fantasy tropes. I kept listening because I wanted to know what new ideas would be explored next. One of my favorite moments is the speech that Traft gives about how the Princes of Iorden do alchemy. The Once and Future Nerd is the first thing that I got to write for that has an established audience and... that was very cool. Thank you for everything.

Aja: Hey guys my name is Aja, and I just wanted to say congrats on ten years of a fantastic podcast. I started listening to The Once and Future Nerd back in 2017, 2016, not long after I’d gotten my bachelor’s degree from college and right as I was starting to realize that I wanted to go back to school to get my teaching degree. So it- it came at a really special time in my life. What kept me coming back over all these years is the fantastic character development, especially for the kids, uh, in the story, but also for everybody else, and I’ve also just really appreciated the, uh, subversion, I guess, of fantasy tropes. I think it’s kept the story really interesting and really relevant, and it’s- it’s so real, despite being a fantasy story, so. Thank you so much for all of your hard work, and I look forward to listening for... as long as you keep making this podcast. Thanks guys.

Aster: The Once and Future Nerd is one on an ever-growing list of podcasts that I deeply love despite being upwards of a year behind on, and every time I am able to get back to listening to it, I am in awe of the incredible world that it shows. And a special thanks to the podcast for finally, really, dragging me down into the incredible world of audio drama fandoms.

Teddy: Well, first of all congrats on ten years, that is a tremendously long time to work on a project, and it’s an excellent project to have been worked on. I’ve loved the podcast for... a while. I’m not quite as into it as I used to be, but I still listen to the episodes whenever they come out. Uh... I first listened to the podcast all the way back in, I believe 2016? Uh, when I was in college. One of my friends was listening to it at a DnD session and I heard just one clip of it-- I think it was the scene where Regan had a threesome with the barkeep and his partner? I don’t remember exactly what happened in that scene but, uh... [laughs] it was interesting enough to draw my attention, and I talked to my friend about what the podcast was about, and I decided to go ahead listen to it, and so I listened to it. It hit all the right notes for me. I really loved the emphasis on diversity, and the science that went into it. I thought the science... um, the way science and magic integrated in the show was really fantastic and clever. You know, I really loved the characters. I think I listened to the entire podcast, up until the beginning of covid, about... three or four times through, and then since the pandemic when everything’s slowed down I’ve only listened to it another couple times since then. But, even though it’s no longer quite my main fandom or anything... But I think that I’m going to continue listening to it for as long as it comes out. Even if it’s never my big passion, it’s gonna be one of those quiet, comfortable, familiar things that will be a thread woven throughout the path of the rest of my life. Or not the rest of my life, but, you know, a good portion of it. However long- however much longer it goes, um. But, yeah, uh, congrats again on ten years of The Once and Future Nerd, and thank you for creating it. It’s really fantastic, I love it so much.

Rachel: So I found The Once and Future Nerd shortly after the pandemic started. A friend reached out to me who, um, I had met in college, and she asked to connect and we started calling every week, and we eventually started listening to this podcast together because she was already a fan, and she thought I would love it-- she was totally right. Um [small laugh], and we listened to this for almost a year, almost like a book club. Um, and we talked about it, and we got deep into the themes which was really enriching for me, that’s one of my passions, I got a degree in it. Uh, in, um, literature, so just picking apart stories and I-I was- I’ve always been impressed by how crunchy it is. How the characters feel fleshed out and stood apart from each other, and how so many tropes you think you understand and then you guys subverted them. Um. And then, while I don’t listen to The Once and Future Nerd right now, I have other podcasts that I do listen to, and before listening to The Once and Future Nerd with Kat I was not a podcast person. So, because of this podcast I actually have maintained a friendship, and I’ve gained a whole new ways to access stories, and it’s been pretty marvellous. And I’ve loved that a lot. So I’d like to thank the creators for those two sparks of joy in my life.

Kellie: Congrats on ten years! Um. I have not been listening to The Once and Future Nerd for ten years, I’ve been listening more like the past, like, one and half or so years, um, and I am so glad that I started listening. This podcast means a lot to me, it is one of my favourites, and not only is it just individually enjoyable for me, it’s also brought me closer to a lot of people, um, the existence of the podcast itself has brought me into a community that I value so deeply, and brought me close to so many people who I just love and adore. So, I mean, you know, obviously you’re doing something really right if, uh, you’re bringing people close together for lifetime friendships, uh, by making, you know, content. And that’s amazing in and of itself. But also, just, the podcast itself is so good. I mean, first of all, it’s great quality, it’s, you know, these... these wonderful little stories that are so, so gay. [laughs] And that analyze interesting topics in a really nuanced way. I can’t express the appreciation that I have for the way that y’all talk about these topics cause they’re always- they’re handled so well. Um. So, instead... [laughs] so instead of trying to express that, um, I will instead express that I just love how... I love when Arlene and Gwen are gay. Like, that’s just great. You know? It’s fantastic. And they’re so, so gay, and it’s so, so wonderful every single time. [sighs] And also Regan is just so hot. You know? Like. Uh, I... [sighs] Good for her, you know? Good for her. And good for y’all for- for having this podcast be- be going on for so long and still going strong. It’s- it’s so much fun and I’m so excited to keep listening to it. I’m not all the way caught up! But I’m working on it and I’m r- just enjoying every moment along the way. Thank you for what you do, cause what you do is so great. It’s incredible. Thank you.

Drak: The Once and Future Nerd. Um. What it means to me. So I had really bad migraines a couple years ago. Uh, to the point of, I had to blindfold myself for days and weeks at a time, uh, in order to avoid a debilitating migraine. And, um, so I found myself suddenly having to navigate the world without being able to see. The worst part of it was the boredom because I couldn’t read fanfiction, I couldn’t, uh, do most of my crafting hobbies, I couldn’t play video games. Um, obviously there are, you know, ways that people can do those things while blind, but I did not have any of those accommodations at the time. And so I started listening to podcasts, and I found The Once and Future Nerd and while listening to it, sitting in my room, by myself, uh, blind and in pain, The Once and Future Nerd took me away from my loneliness and my boredom and my pain and, you know, kind of, uh, saved my life. Uh, because I had something to help me get through a difficult period of my life, and, um. On top of that, you know, I-I love how much care and thought the crew and the cast and everyone involved puts into the story, um, in terms of being, like, sensitive about topics and as well as, like, trying to, um, provide good representation for, uh, marginalized voices, and um. I just. God, I love this podcast so much. Thank you, thank you so much for everything y’all do. The Once and Future Nerd is... I-I recommend it to everyone I know, even if they don’t like podcasts because I-I really think it’s that good. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Sen: I love this podcast for its tapestry of fantasy tropes, the funny takes, and the moments of awesome. For multifaceted, diverse characters that I hadn’t encountered in other mediums before, and [sighs] well, for a gorgeous sound design that brings it all together. I found this podcast back in the middle of 2018. I was in a really, really bad place then, I was failing my classes, um, due to depression and anxiety for which I had begun taking medications too, which was not easy to adjust to. I just- I couldn’t concentrate on anything at all. So, I ended up searching for, uh, podcasts, and specifically what I would do back then is I would read the scripts and then I’d decide to listen to the whole thing later, you know. I read the first two episodes, then I just decided fuck it. I’m gonna listen. This podcast, and a few others, they were what got me through a really difficult time, but, you know, what made me keep listening then after that was just that it keeps on getting better. Personally, my favourite moment in TOaFN is, uh, episode three of I’ve Been Working on the Whale Road. Because, okay, yes, there are the pilot- uh, pirates, and there is Maddy Groves, but then there is also Bryce’s death. An ignoble death, nobly done. I get emotional thinking about it, but I think the way that Bryce died, it touches you, I think. And I think that... that balance between the humor and the silliness and the sincerity, and the love, I think, uh, it’s always- it touches you. I love this show for its emphasis on storytelling, the words “people are the stories they tell, power is who gets to tell those stories” th-they’re ingrained in my mind at this point. I resonate with the philosophy so much, and I’m so grateful to this show for getting me through tough times and for teaching me things about storytelling, about myself. And for the people that I have met through this show. In the discord server, the long-running DnD game, um, those people that, like, I got close to, and the book club folks, er, that I get to chat with on occasion. They make me laugh and they make me smile and I can confide in them, they’re always there and... I just- I- Thank you so much, for giving me all of that.

CJ: Congrats on ten years!

#toafn #the once and future nerd #the once and future nerd is a period piece #toafnperiodpiece

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druidgroves · 2 months

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Chapter 13: It's All In the Game

Fandom: Fallout 4 Words: 7,475 Characters: Georgia Tate (Canon Divergent Sole Survivor), Nate, RJ MacCready, Nick Valentine, Conrad Kellogg Notes: content warnings for graphic-ish descriptions of gore? canon standard tbh but just thought i'd give a heads up :) enjoy ! read on ao3 / read on tumblr

August 28th, 2075. 7 PM.

The place Nate ends up taking her to is a dive bar near some place called Fort Hagen, a military base, one he tells her he spends lots of time at with his friends. Its patrons were mostly servicemen, which was how Nate found out about it and it isn’t exactly prime date material in Georgia’s mind, but he reassures her that it’s a fun place.

“Something is always going down there,” he says, and he’s cute enough that she lets it slide. It’s only one date; she might as well see where this goes, right?

On the drive there, she learns that he’s been out of the military for a few months now, and picked up a job as a line manager in his uncle’s Corvega factory. He brags about being one of the only managers who likes to actually be out on the floor with the guys, and she’s able to spin it as him being dedicated to his job. He blows past a stop sign on a thankfully empty street when he grins over at her in the passenger seat.

“Aren’t you the little optimist,” he says, one hand on the wheel and the other on the arm rest between them. “I’ll have to tell that one to the boys at work next time they give me shit.”

“I’m a brightside kinda gal, what can I say?”

“That you are,” Nate agrees. “You’ll fit right in at the bar. They’ve got a jukebox, karaoke, a pool table. You’ll love it.”

“Pool?” Now he has her attention; she’s been pocketing 8-balls since she was thirteen, but he doesn’t need to know that. She plays coy, raising a perfectly manicured eyebrow. “I’ve always thought pool was fun.”

“Oh, really? You’re a woman after my own heart, Miss Walker.”

Georgia beams back and sits pretty beside him, hair done up in curls and her best dress already riding up her legs. He drives a cherry red Corvega Blitz with a creamy leather interior that sticks to her thighs in the late summer heat. That detail is not lost on Nate, whose eyes dart to the exposed skin before she artfully smoothes out the fabric. His scarred lip twitches into a self-satisfied smile as he pulls into the parking lot. Up the hill, Fort Hagen itself looms ominously despite its spotlights. Georgia can’t help but wonder what goes on inside a building as imposing as that; probably nothing good, she decides, and definitely not as entertaining as her date is about to be.

Things inside the bar are much more inviting, loud and raucous with music spilling out of the promised jukebox and people dancing across the floor. Georgia hopes that Nate is a dancing kind of man, her hand already tapping the beat against her leg. She doesn’t want to speak too soon, but if it goes well, maybe a club and a good band would be a nice second date. She’s about to ask him if he dances when a group of men at a table in the corner catch sight of him amongst the crowd and begin to shout him over.

“Hey, let me introduce you to my friends really fast,” Nate says, already steering her in their direction.

Georgia attempts to hide her frown. Maybe she jinxed it. “I’m sure they’re nice, but…I thought this was a date.”

Nate looks down at her, eyebrow raised. “It still is. They were gonna be here anyways, might as well say hi, right? C’mon, they’ll love ya.”

Hm. Georgia could appreciate a man who maintained his friendships—surely that was a green flag. Nate ducks down and whispers next to her ear, “Besides, it’ll give me a chance to show you off, huh?”

This gets her blushing, pink from her hairline down to her collarbones. Well, she certainly wouldn’t mind that. She puts her best face on as they approach.

They see Nate first and greet him warmly, clapping him on the shoulder and offering him a seat. Georgia steps out from behind him and before Nate can introduce her, one of his friends nods at her over his beer and asks, “Are you gonna tell us who this fine young thing beside you is, Tate?”

Georgia doesn’t hide her frown this time and goes to open her mouth before Nate opens his first.

“Hey, knock it off,” he tells his friend seriously. “I’m a gentleman tonight. You should play along.”

Another friend laughs and derides him, “Just tonight, Natey? Is your broad aware of that?”

The men descend into a round of obnoxious laughter, but Nate just waves them off while Georgia crosses her arms in contempt. He puts an arm over her shoulders and turns them away from his friends, leaning down to talk to her again.

“Don’t mind them,” he tells her. “They’re already drunk and trying to give me shit. I think they’re just jealous. Who can blame them? Out of that teacher get-up, you look gorgeous.”

Her brow furrows deeper. “Those are my regular clothes.”

Nate must sense he’s said something wrong, because he readjusts on the fly. “I mean to say, you look sexier without a dress code holding you back. Better?”

She will admit, his petty appeals to her vanity are working in his favor. She decides to let him off easy.

“Better. Now, let’s turn this back into a proper date, shall we?”

Nate acquiesces to her and finishes up with his friends, then guides her towards an empty pool table.

“Now,” he says, pulling out his wallet and flashing a few hundred dollar bills that catch Georgia’s attention as he pulls out his driver’s license, “how’s about I grab us a few drinks and I teach you a thing or two about pool?”

Her eyes flit from his wallet to his face and she perks up, unable to stop the mischievous little voice in the back of her head telling her to take him up on it. When she smiles, it’s saccharine-sweet.

“Sounds great. You get the drinks and I’ll grab us some sticks?”

Georgia spends some time inspecting the pool cues, finding two without much warping or worn tips. She chalks her own but doesn’t touch Nate’s until he comes back with the drinks—she doesn’t presume to tell a man how to handle his stick, both on the billiard’s green and off…but she can give a couple pointers.

“You shoot with an open bridge?” she asks conversationally after he makes the break shot. Nate looks at her, raising an eyebrow over his bottle of Gwinnett. She mimics the shape with her hand and he nods. She gives him a playful look. “I thought you were gonna teach me a thing or two about pool?”

Nate laughs, but she can sense a touch of stung pride, just enough that it gives him more of a competitive drive. Georgia can’t say she doesn’t delight in riling up her competition.

“So you were just pulling my leg earlier,” he says, then sets her with a daring look. “Alright then, let’s play some damn pool.”

They play the game and he commends her for her trickshots and doesn’t even seem upset when she sinks all of her balls and calls the winning pocket for the eight ball at the end. In fact, he looks downright eager to get her to hustle his friends for money. So he sends her back over to their table and she plays the part of Nate’s innocent little tagalong, asking them if they want to join in on their game. A few take her up on the offer, sharing looks between themselves like they’re just humoring her. She catches Nate’s eye as they walk back, sharing her own sneaking look with him as he casually asks his friends if they want to put money down on the game. For fun, he says. They agree and soon enough, the game begins.

By the end of the night, Georgia has five grown men nearly snap their pool cues when they are forced to empty out their wallets. As a team, she and Nate had done pretty well, even if she had done most of the work.

Her latest victim sneers, throwing a few crumpled bills on the table. “Bullshit beginner’s luck.”

“Maybe so,” Georgia shrugs, chalking up her cue again, “but then that still means you lost to a beginner, so what does that say about you?”

The man, Jacobs, sneers at her. “Tate, if you don’t control your lady—”

Nate steps between the two of them, putting a hand firmly in the center of his friend’s chest.

“Get a fucking grip, Jacobs, it’s pool,” he snaps.

“And she cheated me out of my last dime!” Jacobs all but shouts and Georgia suddenly feels that maybe hustling people at pool in a military bar wasn’t their brightest idea.

Nate, however, looks entirely unbothered. All he does is give the other man a flippant shrug. “And? You’re the one who put it down. No one forced you to lose at pool.”

“And no one asked you to bring her to our bar,” Jacobs counters and glares at her over Nate’s shoulder. “The little bitch is a cheat, and I can pr—”

Georgia isn’t even able to get an astonished “excuse me?” out before Nate’s fist connects with Jacobs’ nose. Jacobs stumbles back, wiping the blood from his face and doesn’t pause before he charges Nate, nearly pushing him into her had she not stepped out of the way in time. She puts herself safely on the other side of the table as the two men descend into a brawl. She wants to stop them, yells at Nate to do so, but she can’t put herself between them so all she can do is watch as the punches fly.

Nate fights like a caged animal, going for any weak spot he can see and hitting them more often than not. She has a front row seat to the rage now coursing through him, teeth bared and fists bloody as they wail on each other. Jacobs catches him in the cheek but then Nate has him pinned to the pool table in front of Georgia, slamming him down on top of it. The man’s face is a patchwork of black, blue, and red as Nate holds him down by his shirt. He leans down, close enough where only he, Jacobs, and only incidentally Georgia, are able to hear.

“You don’t get to disrespect me and mine just because you’re a sore fuckin’ loser, alright?” he mutters and something in his words makes a warm, fluttery feeling start in the pit of Georgia’s stomach.

Nate spits on Jacobs’ chest before letting him go. When he looks up and sees Georgia standing in front of him, however, all the fight leaves him at once. His face goes pale and that’s when the both of them realize just how many eyes are on them and the silence that now pervades the bar. The fluttery feeling is quickly replaced by embarrassment and Georgia makes the executive decision to hurry the two of them out of the bar before they’re kicked out. She goes around the table, takes Nate’s arm into hers, and leads the two of them out with her head down. As they leave, his muscles are still taught in her grasp.

Once they’re standing next to his car in the parking lot, Georgia turns on him, hands on her hips.

“You didn’t have to do that.”

Nate leans back against the driver’s side door and doesn’t meet her eye, just pulls his cigarettes and a lighter out from his pocket. He lights up and takes a drag before speaking to her.

“He called you a bitch,” he says, blowing his smoke into the wind and it tickles her nose. “I didn’t like it. What, did you want me to stand there and let him?”

Georgia puts a hand on her forehead and sighs. On one hand, she’s pissed. This is categorically not how first dates were supposed to go, and she had been on enough to know. She’d had high hopes for the charming man that had walked in and picked up his nephew from her classroom that afternoon. Now, she was standing beside a man who would fistfight one of his friends at the drop of a hat. She can’t help but replay the fight in her mind and as she does, that same fluttery feeling comes back as she recalls what Nate had said to Jacobs. Me and mine.

On the other hand…

Watching him go from zero to a hundred in half a second, all on her behalf…well, no one had ever fought for her like that. First date or not. All that anger and power emanating from him…that had been because of her. For her. Something about it, as terrible as she should find it, makes her reconsider if this date–this man–was a total loss.

Her silence must make Nate antsy, because he speaks up again and this time looks her in the face.

“I didn’t want you to see me that way,” he says, and reaches out to touch her. When she doesn’t move away, his hand runs down her arm until it's holding hers, and he squeezes it with an infant’s strength. “I just…it’s like the anger gets loud, you know? And it’s all I can hear. It was stupid to let it get the better of me. I’m sorry.”

Out in the parking lot, half-lit by street lamps and out of the bar, Nate doesn’t look so imposing anymore. Slouched beside his car, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and a bruise rapidly forming across his cheek, he appears regretful. And, Georgia can’t help but notice, increasingly attractive.

“You’re right. It was stupid,” she agrees, going to lean against the car beside him and he looks down at her with a furrowed brow, “but no one’s ever fought someone for me. It was…kind of nice, almost.”

Nate laughs and puts an arm around her, pulling her close. She leans her head onto his shoulder and looks up at him.

“You’re one surprise after the other, Miss Walker,” he says and she grins. “Might have to keep you around.”

“Just don’t make it a habit, alright? I can handle bein’ called a bitch a time or two, it wouldn’t be the first time,” she tells him, and plucks the cigarette from between his lips to steal a drag. “Besides, I don’t think we’ll be able to come back here for our second date. I was hopin’ you were a dancin’ kind of man.”

He raises an eyebrow at her. “You’ve cleared me for a second date already? Color me surprised.”

“What can I say? I guess I have questionable taste and a thing for men with a solid right hook,” she jokes, only half meaning it, and he throws her that smile that got her to agree to all this in the first place before he takes his cigarette back.

They stand there for a little while longer, smoking cigarettes until Georgia says it’s getting late and they should both go home. They sit in his car a while longer, though, dragging out the date minute by minute until, by unspoken agreement, they decide to get a little hot and heavy in the backseat of the car. When they kiss, she’s careful of the bruise on his face and even softly presses her lips against it. Things escalate from there, a fire in Nate’s eyes, but Georgia doesn’t let him past the first five buttons on her blouse at first, per her own dating rules. He does get a hand up her skirt about halfway through and she allows it, so whether or not it counts as putting out on the first date is up in the air.

After, Nate drives her back to her little apartment a few blocks from the school, and very politely asks if he can kiss her goodnight outside her door despite the fact that he had her moaning his name not even an hour earlier. Flushed from hairline to collarbones, Georgia invites him in under the guise of getting him some frozen peas for his face, and if they end up between the sheets, well.

Georgia thinks she can bend her own rules, just this once.

-----

January 31st, 2288

When Fort Hagen comes into view after hours of chasing Dogmeat’s nose, past wild mutated bears (yao guai, Mac had called them) and a decimated assaultron, Georgia almost has to laugh at the irony. Just down the street are the ruins of her first date with her dead husband and before her is the foreboding tomb she may or may not find her son in. She hasn’t been the praying type in a long while, more so after waking up two hundred years in the future, but she throws a little mental prayer to anyone listening anyways.

The sky above them had been gray since they left Diamond City that morning, making vague threats of rain from the north that hadn’t yet come to pass. Dogmeat ends his tracking at the boarded up doors to the fort and barks once.

“I knew Dogmeat could sniff our man out,” Mr. Valentine says from her left. “Let’s you two and I take it from here, give our four-legged friend a break.��

Georgia bends down, knees popping, to give the hound a rewarding scratch behind the ears. “You did your part, boy. Stay out here while we find a way in, okay? Good boy.”

Dogmeat barks again like he understands—at this point, she’s pretty sure they have some kind of mental link from how in tune they are—and lays down, tongue lolling out the side of his mouth.

“Front door isn’t an option, and even if it was it wouldn’t be the smart one,” Mac says, attempting to look around for another entrance.

“There’s scaffolding around the side, maybe this place has rooftop access,” Mr. Valentine says, so the three of them seek it out, only to find several automated turrets on said roof that put a bead on them almost as fast as he can shuffle them back down the platforms.

Mac offers to take them out, reminding her of the training yard job, but when she reminds him they should probably keep a low profile, he surrenders to her point. It’s only when she spots the parking garage connected to the building that she remembers they usually have interior entrances. It’s surprisingly deserted when they get down there, and almost like a light at the end of a tunnel: a door, lit by a single emergency light amongst the darkness. When she puts her hands on the crash bar and it begins to open, she pauses.

“You ready?” Mac asks from beside her. She swallows.

“You don’t know until you know,” she says, and presses forward.

The synths scattered among the inside of Fort Hagen are Gen 2’s, according to Mr. Valentine. Metal and plastic like him, but without his sparkling personality, as he put it. Georgia’s been lucky enough that she hasn’t crossed paths with many of them since she thawed out, and those she did, she and Preston had steadfastly avoided. Now, with their hollow, robotic voices echoing off the crumbling walls around her, it sends chills down her spine. They’re damn good shots, too, because by the time she, Mac, and Mr. Valentine clear the floor, they’re all sporting new holes in their coats and multiple plasma burns of near misses from their energy weapons. Mr. Valentine seems the most well-off, all things considered, while she and Mac quickly patch up the burns on her thigh and the one on his arm.

The further they go, they manage to find an elevator that provides the only way forward. It takes them below the surface and it reminds Georgia far too much of the vault. She tries to push it out of her mind as they press forward past another handful of synths, a turret, and a few easily disabled trip wires. For a moment it all seems too easy, like the three of them are just blowing through minor threats before rolling up to the big one, wherever he is. But then something crackles along the hallways, like a classroom intercom, and Georgia is sent back to cold metal and glass, thin air, and Shaun’s wailing cries. She nearly trips going down the stairs.

“If it isn’t my old friend, the frozen TV dinner,” a rough cadence says, echoing down the never ending hallways. “Last time we met, you were cozying up to the peas and apple cobbler.”

“Whoa, careful now,” Mr. Valentine says as he catches her by the elbow, looking around for the speakers.

“That’s him, that’s his voice,” Georgia says, her own voice trembling and her legs feeling like they’re about to give out from under her. She’s not ready. “Mac, Mr. Valentine, I can’t—”

“Yes, you can, Georgia,” Mac says firmly from the other side of her, putting a hand on her shoulder. “We didn’t come all the way here for you to turn back now. If he’s here, let’s go find the bastard.”

“Take it slow, one step atta time. We’re right behind you,” Mr. Valentine nods, readjusting the grip on his gun.

Georgia bites down on her lip to keep it from quivering. The speakers hadn’t come back on and she consoles herself with the fact that she has one of the best guns in the Commonwealth beside her as well as its best detective. One she trusts implicitly and one she trusts enough to help her see this through. She resolves to press forward. Mac was right; she didn’t come this far to only come this far.

Once she’s able to keep going, they take out a few more of Kellogg’s defenses and when his voice crackles overhead again, she isn’t as caught out by it. She can’t stop the shaking in her hands, though, shotgun wavering in her grip.

“Sorry your house has been a wreck for two hundred years,” Kellogg says, snarling when he adds, “but I don’t need a roommate. Leave.”

The words continue to bounce around her skull as they push open a set of metal double doors, opening up to some sort of command center. It’s like a game—they snuff out a few more Gen 2’s, Kellogg comes over the speakers to taunt her. She feels like a rat in a maze, the man who tore her family apart the mad scientist watching her every move.

“Hmph. Never expected you to come knocking on my door. Hell, I thought the Commonwealth would have chewed you up like jerky if you even made it out of that old neighborhood alive,” he muses, voice no less like sandpaper across her face even through the speakers. “What a surprise you turned into.”

Eventually Georgia’s fear morphs into anger and frustration. The closer they seem to get, the further away Kellogg seems. A game of cat and mouse, except the cat sends minions to do his work for him. She takes her rage out on a couple of Gen 2’s and hopes Mr. Valentine doesn’t take it too personally.

“Look,” the mercenary says after Georgia’s shotgun blows apart the plastic skull of yet another synth in front of her, “you’re pissed off. I get it. I do. But whatever you hope to accomplish in here? It is not going to go your way.”

She can’t help it; the pressure builds and she screams back at him, something deep and raw from within, “Fuck OFF.”

Mac and Mr. Valentine jump at her intensity, so on edge for everything else around them that they don’t expect it. There is fire and fury within her now that she can only do so much to keep contained. She thinks, briefly, of how much she can relate to Nate right about now. That only makes her angrier and she does away with the thought as she does away with the next synth that crosses their path.

They descend further into Fort Hagen’s depths and Georgia doesn’t want to dwell about how far underground they must be. Surely not as far under as the vault, but with the walls closing in around her as they enter a red-lit tunnel, she can’t really tell the difference. It knocks the wind out of her sails, her breathing starts to thin and she can barely get the words out to ask her two companions for a moment. She tries to grab at the walls around her for purchase when her knees buckle again, Kellogg’s voice ferrying her through what must be the start of a panic attack.

“You’ve got guts and determination, and that’s admirable. But you are in over your head in ways you can’t possibly comprehend.”

Faintly, over the sound of ringing in her ears, she can hear the mechanical voices of more synths around the corner, and Mac tries to yank her back into a standing position.

“We can’t stop here,” he tells her, an ironlike grip on her arm, “we have to keep moving.”

And they do, though every one of Georgia’s footsteps feels heavier than the last and her vision is tunneling and her chest feels too tight. Mac and Mr. Valentine take care of most of the synths, because all she can focus on right now is trying to push ahead. Her hands still won’t stop shaking long enough for her to aim her gun.

“It’s not too late,” Kellogg says, enticing her to give up already. “Stop. Turn around and leave. You have that option. Not a lot of people can say that.”

She’s caught between wanting to bolt and being so desperately close to her son’s kidnapper as the three of them come upon a red door.

“We’re close,” Mr. Valentine says, sniffing the air for something neither she nor Mac can detect yet. “I can smell that old merc’s cigars…”

Past the red door is what Georgia can only assume was an office for whoever commanded Fort Hagen back in its heyday. Now, it’s full of all sorts of tech and pristine, anachronistic furniture and smelling of cigars. There’s a bed that looks like it belongs more in a hospital than an old military fort, just as out of place as the rest of the furniture around it. It’s almost enough to jolt her out of her spiraling until the speakers come on again.

“Okay, you made it. I’m just up ahead. My synths are standing down. Let’s talk.”

A set of maglocks on a door across the room slide open. The man who took everything from her is just on the other side.

Georgia fights the urge to flee and the pent up energy just redirects back to the anxious jittering of her hands. Fingers try to disappear under her sleeve, but have a hard time getting under Mac’s bandages. She doesn’t even register him coming to stand beside her until her quivering hand bumps into his and she latches onto it like a lifeline. He’s a warm, steadying presence beside her and doesn’t even flinch at her white-knuckle grip. The shaking starts to fade.

She turns to him, and he meets her with a steely look as he nods. To her left, Mr. Valentine motions to the door ahead of them.

“Into the belly of the beast,” he says. Georgia lets go of Mac’s wrist to brace herself.

The room is dark when they open the door, weapons drawn, but spotlights begin to flicker on one by one. The last spotlight turns on and her breath catches in her throat when he steps into the light. The rest of the room fades out around her. It’s just the two of them.

“And there she is,” Kellogg says, walking out from behind a desk terminal with three synths at his back. He gestures to her with the pistol in his hand. “The most resilient housewife in the Commonwealth.”

He’s just as she remembers him: gritty, scarred, and worn-looking, but no less threatening, no less predatory. His visage had been the harbinger of her family’s demise, instilling a bone-deep panic into her now that she has a clearer look at him.

Unfortunately for him, all of Georgia’s panic evolves into rage at the sight of him. It’s like she can feel Nate’s hand on her shoulder, giving her the permission she never needed to snap.

“Where the hell is Shaun?!” she barks, more animal than woman.

“Right to it then, huh?” He has the gall to laugh, casual as you please, only fueling her fire. She should shoot him right now before he even gets a chance to gloat, but she knows that he knows the only thing keeping him alive right now is the information on Shaun’s location. If he decides to tell her the truth at all.

“Okay, fine. Your son, Shaun. Great kid,” he continues, casual as you please despite the severity radiating off her to the point where the shaking returns in a different way. “A little older than you might expect, but I’m guessing you figured that out by now. But if it’s a happy reunion you’re after, it’s not gonna happen. Your boy’s not here.”

Georgia’s teeth grit together so hard she swears she’s cracked a molar.

“You can either tell me where the fuck he is, or I blow your goddamn head off,” she seethes. Her gun has been aimed at his chest since he stepped out. “This is the end, Kellogg. Only one of us is walkin’ out of here. You die. I get my son back.”

“If only it were that simple. I’m just a puppet like you—my stage is just a little bigger, that’s all. Doesn’t change the fact that your boy isn’t here,” he shrugs, his revolver glinting in the light. “He’s with the people pulling the strings.”

“Where is he?!” Georgia screams, finger twitching on the trigger and held only by some modicum of restraint still left in her.

“Shaun’s in a good place,” he tells her and she almost believes him. “One where he’s safe and comfortable and loved. A place he calls home.”

Her resolve is starting to slip. Her vision tunnels.

“The Institute.”

A flash of gunfire cuts through the gloom, pulling Georgia out of the moment as the room descends into chaos.

Kellogg stumbles back from the blast of her shotgun, some sort of armor underneath his clothing the only thing blocking what would’ve ripped apart the chest of a regular man. Then Georgia feels herself pulled to the ground, behind one of the desk terminals scattering the room. Streaks of energy from the synth’s weapons fly overhead and she can hear Mac cursing beside her as his rifle sounds off, but then he’s stumbling around the corner of the desk. It takes her a few dangerously long seconds to realize what’s going on, diving behind another terminal as one of the synths falls beside her.

“He’s got a stealthboy!” Mr. Valentine shouts, and she doesn’t even have time to think “what’s a stealthboy?” before a bullet whistles past her ear. “He’s gone!”

She has no idea where anyone is, world turned upside down in the firefight, but her mind catches up to her with a shot of adrenaline. A few terminals down, Mac darts past, low to the ground and Georgia hears him shoot before something falls. She pokes her gun around the edge of a desk before sneaking over to one closer to where she’d last seen Kellogg. Another gunshot, this time from Mr. Valentine, cuts one of the Gen 2’s off mid sentence and then everything goes quiet. Her heart is thundering in her ears as her eyes dart around for any signs of a threat. Another shot rings out to her right so she goes left and makes a break for another piece of cover.

It’s an agonizing few seconds that feel like hours before she sees something flutter out of the corner of her eye. A centuries old piece of paper, falling from one of the desks as if someone had brushed past it, invisible. Her blood runs cold.

One of Mac’s rounds hit a terminal nearby and that’s when Georgia can see a dirty, booted footprint manifest itself on the fallen piece of paper. She lines up the shot.

She pulls the trigger twice and Kellogg materializes before her eyes, falling over sideways as his ankle practically disintegrates under him. He manages to roll over as he falls, landing face up. He doesn’t call out in pain as she rushes him, putting another round in the hand that goes to reach for his revolver on the floor next to him. It turns into a bloody stump, conjuring up images in her mind of ground beef at the supermarket. He barely even makes a sound when she unloads again into his knee cap and is pinned under her boot, the threat of all she’ll do to him a heavy weight in her hands. There isn’t any fear in his eyes when she levels the gun at his head. Instead, with the barrel at his temple and her heel on his chest, he has the gall to smirk at her. Like this was what he had planned all along. Like it was some game to him. She pulls the trigger, but nothing happens. A smirk like he might take the upper hand is the last thing to appear on Kellogg’s face before she changes plans.

The grip on her shotgun has never been tighter than when Georgia uses it to bash his head in. She brings the stock down on his face again and again and again and she doesn’t know when she starts screaming, but her throat is torn raw by it as she lets go of every piece of frustration that’s been building up inside her since she thawed out. Every downward swing is another fuck you to the world, to karma, to the Institute, to him. The air turns coppery as blood—his, her own, she can’t tell the difference—covers her torso. The drops that manage to fly into her still screaming mouth burn on her tongue as she drops to her knees above him, dead set on reducing him to nothing just as he did her. Then she’s grabbed by both arms and dragged away.

She tries to fight it at first, not realizing who has a hold of her. The adrenaline makes her twist and try to launch herself back at the mangled remains of Kellogg’s corpse. “I’m not done!” she shrieks, but Mac and Mr. Valentine’s separate grips on her shoulders don’t give. Together, they pry her hands away from her gun, finger by bloody finger.

Mac is beside her ear, repeating, “It’s over, Georgia, he’s dead, you did it, you’re okay—”

The hands only come off her once they have her away from the carnage. The two men sit her down on something hard and solid and are careful to block the view of her destruction. She doesn’t know why they bother; she already knows the former mercenary is nothing more than mincemeat from the neck up. Distantly, she hears Mr. Valentine say something like “at least the bastard won’t be hurting anyone else” before telling Mac to watch over her.

“I’ll look around, try to get all the intel this place can hide,” she hears him say and he disappears behind one of the overly large desk terminals.

Mac takes a seat beside her as she buries her face in her hands. She chokes on a sob, fury fading into distress as crimson consumes her, covering her arms, her chest, her legs. It’s everywhere and suddenly she feels like she can’t breathe, that red is all she’ll ever see until Mac wordlessly takes her glasses off her face. Blurrily, she sees him wipe the smears of blood off as best he can with his shirt. Instead of handing them back when he’s done, he hooks them on his collar and swings his pack around to rifle through it. He comes out with one of the tins of water from the Gunner base and reaches for the knife he keeps strapped to his boot.

He stabs a hole into the aluminum top, then points to her hands. “Here,” he says quietly, “let’s get that off you.”

She doesn’t move, too trapped inside her own head, but then she feels him move her trembling hands, softly, to pour the water over them. Blood and water pool together in her palms before spilling to the floor and he doesn’t say a word as he silently washes it away, gentler than any words of comfort he could have given her. He even changes out the bandages on her left arm now that the old ones are soaked through with new blood.

In the quiet of his care, all Georgia can think is that she failed. Sure, the man is dead, but she is no closer to finding her son.

The Institute.

She’d heard all the stories, or at least the ones people weren’t too scared to share. Becky, in Diamond City, whose lost husband may or may not have been snatched up. The settlers who wouldn’t look her in the eyes in the early days because new faces were suspicious and not intriguing. Piper, who seemed to have her own personal vendetta against the Commonwealth’s biggest boogeyman, the blade in the dark that struck when you least expected it. The Institute, whatever it was, had Shaun. If Kellogg was telling the truth. That at least meant he was still alive, possibly. She just didn’t know for how long.

While Mr. Valentine pokes around, Georgia slowly comes back to herself. Her vision stops tunneling and the ringing in her ears begins to fade. She doesn’t speak until Mac finishes cleaning her off and bandaging her up. What comes out is hoarse, like someone has taken a nail file to her vocal chords.

“Thank you,” she manages to get out, barely above a whisper. There are so many other things she wants to say (thank you for being careful with me. Sorry I dragged you into this. I’m glad you were here) but they die in her throat.

He shakes his head, unhooking her glasses from his collar and handing them back to her. His voice is only a little rough when he says, “Don’t mention it.”

By the time Mr. Valentine comes back over, she is as put together as she can be in the moment, but even then the grasp she has on herself is tenuous at best.

“So, turns out Kellogg wasn’t giving us any bull. I bullied my way into his terminal—your son really is on the inside,” he says, regretful to be the bearer of bad news. “I’m sorry to say it, but even I don’t know where the Institute is, and they built me.”

Mac pipes up from beside her, indignant, “There has to be a way, right? Otherwise, how the hell did he get in and out?”

“We’re in the weeds here, kids,” Mr. Valentine sighs with a mechanical shrug. Mac’s lip twitches like he wants to rebuke something in his words, but stays silent. “I looked over the body and found these, though.”

From his pockets he pulls out what had once been the pristine pillow case on the bed in the other room, now dark with viscera. Georgia can’t help but wrinkle her nose. A funny, involuntary reaction, considering.

“You did quite the number on him, but I noticed this between all the gray matter. Cybernetics,” Mr. Valentine continues, then puts it back into his coat. “I may not know where the Institute is, but with this, we may have just won the lottery.”

Her brow furrows as she looks up at the detective, confused.

“What do you mean?” she asks, purposefully quiet to not agitate her still-raw throat.

“There’s a place in Goodneighbor called the Memory Den. Heard of it?”

Georgia nods. She’s seen the hazy neon sign over the former theatre in her scant few visits to the town. She’d never been inside, however, before or after the end of the world.

“The place to be to relive moments of your past in your mind as clear as the day they happened. If anyone can get a dead brain to sing, it’ll be Doctor Amari,” he says. “She’s the mind behind the memories.”

“Who is Doctor Amari?”

“She runs the place,” Mac supplies. “Well, kind of. Irma’s the real owner, I think.”

“I’ll let Amari give you her life’s story in person,” Mr. Valentine cuts in, pushing ahead, “but if we head out now, we can get there before it gets too late.”

“And you’re sure she can help?” Georgia presses, not wanting to take more out on hope.

Mr. Valentine’s yellow-filament stare holds her own, “She might be our best bet.”

“Then let’s go,” she nods as she stands, but Mac catches her by the sleeve.

“Hey, hey, slow down a minute,” he says, looking between the two. “Shouldn’t we, I dunno, think about this a little more?”

“What’s there to think about, Mac?” she pleads. She pauses to cough, the more she talks the more it stings. “If the Memory Den is our best bet, then I have no other choice.”

Mac stands up beside her, crossing his arms. “What I’m saying is maybe we should take a break, rest for a little bit, plan before you go shooting off—”

“Mac, I’m fine,” she stresses, clenching a fist at her side. “I don’t want to put it off anymore. I…I want to know.”

She gives him a speaking look that she hopes will say everything she can’t, that after this, she’s done not knowing. All she wants to do now is make up for all the time she’s wasted, and then maybe she can find her boy.

Mac sets his jaw, then tears his eyes away to look at Mr. Valentine. “Fine. Plan is, we go to the Memory Den and talk to the doc, but after that, you’re taking a break.”

“Christ, okay,” she can’t help but snap (now was when he decided to start disagreeing with her leadership?) but when his expression shifts, she sighs, apologetic. “I’m sorry. Let’s just go. I don’t want to be here anymore.”

She makes to leave, but Mr. Valentine reaches out, putting his plastic hand on her shoulder. It’s surprisingly weighty.

“Hey, chin up,” he says, trying to bolster her. “I know the night just got darker, but it won’t last forever.”

She knows he’s just trying to be supportive, but this time, it doesn’t land. “Doesn’t change the fact that it’s still dark,” she mutters, and walks past him, stepping over Kellogg’s mutilated corpse without so much as an acknowledgement of her violence.

It’s a long way up in the elevator they find tucked into a hallway. It takes long enough that being stuck inside starts to make her antsy again, fingers grasping for purchase on something, anything, until they end up catching on the cuff of Mac’s sleeve. He doesn’t make a show of taking it into his own and squeezing, once, and for that Georgia is grateful. When the doors slide open, he lets go, but she can still feel the lingering roughness of the calluses from where he holds his rifle. Mr. Valentine goes to work on hacking through a terminal attached to the only way out, and he mentions something about the turrets outside being put to rest.

The sun has almost dipped completely under the horizon when they exit. It’s finally raining, too, matching just how Georgia feels on the inside, but it does nothing to obscure the massive, brightly-lit airship coming in from the west. It catches all of them by surprise and takes up the sky like one of those big radstorm clouds, demanding she look at it. What look like vertibirds—are vertibirds, she realizes—undock from the sides and take to the air. She squints up at the thing, putting a hand over her eyes to shield from the rain. A booming, bellowing voice cuts through the skies.

“PEOPLE OF THE COMMONWEALTH. DO NOT INTERFERE. OUR INTENTIONS ARE PEACEFUL. WE ARE THE BROTHERHOOD OF STEEL.”

“Son of a…it’s the goddamn Brotherhood,” Mac breathes, eyes transfixed on the airship. “What the hell are they doing there?”

“That man…at the police station…” Georgia trails off, remembering how she and Preston had helped a man in power armor defend his dwindling squad’s base from feral ghouls in Cambridge. They hadn’t been much help in looking for…whatever it was the man had been looking for. She doesn’t even remember his name now, instead only how much he favored Nate…

“What?” Mac asks, tearing his gaze away from the sky.

“Nothin’,” she says, shaking her head as she heads for the scaffolding on the side of the building. “Let’s move.”

#fallout #fallout fic #fallout 4 #fo4 #rj maccready #fic: best laid plans

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onwriting-hrarby · 1 year

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On endings—The last sentence

Hello, it’s been a while! After finishing Rotten Judgement I have been taking a little break with writing my novel and also reading quite a lot, but RJ has still been on my mind because I wanted to talk about endings. Or, more specifically, about the last sentence. I would also like to do a literary analysis on the last chapter (how I built the pace for it), but I feel like that would be giving too much into the readers’ readings and feelings. Yet, if you would like me to talk about building a pace (with examples), please tell me so.

In this little post, we will talk about:

The importance of an ending

How does an ending need to be?

When does an ending appear?

Motifs and themes

On changing endings—because of the people

Again, bare in mind that this is not "writing advice" per se, only my impressions as a professional in the sector :) also, tagging @writeblrsupport in case they find it interesting and want to share!

First things first—The importance of an ending

People say that while writing it’s important that you get a nice first sentence, gripping, that keeps the reader into the page. It’s not that I disagree, but I do believe that we have bubbled up this notion of “the first sentence” a little too much: it is not the first thing the reader reads. Nowadays, the first thing we might read about a book can be the review on bookstagram, and if we are in the bookshop, we might choose the book for its cover or typo—to end up reading the claim or the synopsis. This notion of the first sentence might have worked when the novels were inside newspaper, written by chapters, and the chapters needed to be gripping and auto conclusive. Of course, if the first sentence is all that—all the better.

But I consider the ending to be more, if not equally important as the first sentence. Colum McCann says something along the lines that our last sentence will be the first sentence of the imagination of the reader—of what’s further than the ending. It will be the first thing the reader is left when they finish the book.

Yet—don’t make it senseless. The ending has to be coherent with the story. Ending the last sentence with a plot twist or a shock just for the sake of it—for the “remembering” effect—is not the way to go. Mainly, because the reader will frown, take themselves out of the narration completely, and get angry. (I am speaking with knowledge: I said no to a translation because it had this problem.)

How does the ending need to be?

I guess, for me (as always, I speak from personal experience), the endings should be gripping, coherent, and satisfying. I’ve talked about coherence, but let me explain a little about gripping: When I say gripping, I don’t mean that it’s full of tension, or shocking, or leaves you breathless. That, if your story demands it, too. What I mean is that the whole path to the ending (the so-called “resolution of conflict”) should have your reader seated the whole time, wanting to know how it ends. There are different narrations and paces to this: crime, mysteries, fantasy or sci-fi generally have a faster path to this resolution of conflict, and their ending tends to be, yes, gripping (in its original sense). Other narratives, like realism, or character-based books, or non-fiction, might have a slower one. That is good, too, because as I’ve said, most of all the ending should be coherent. But still, the book should not fall out of the reader’s hands. If it does, then there’s a problem with the pace. Generally, you won’t help that with the ending, but sometimes you can do it. The reader wants to finish the book. We don’t have to sacrifice, to my view, any coherence, any intention of us as writers, or any literary quality, but we have to be aware of the grippiness of our text to balance it out to have a satisfying ending.

What do I mean by satisfying? Again, that it’s not confusing, that it makes sense, that doesn’t make the reader feel like they didn’t follow. The reader is not dumb—will never be—so you should treat him with respect. (The readers are more intelligent than the authors, and they pick up on things you wouldn’t have even thought about in your prose.) The satisfaction is that final breath when we close the book, this exhilarating feeling, that “good, very good” that we mutter after the last page. I believe we should strive to leave our readers with this kind of satisfaction.

In summary: if you have a bad beginning, you have a whole novel to make up for it; if you have a good novel but a bad ending, the thing falls into pieces at the last sentence.

When does the ending appear?

This is as easy as to answer Where do people get inspiration from—there isn’t one answer, everyone has their way. To me, though, it works best if I know where the story is going to go from the beginning.

When I start writing the story, it’s almost 6 months after I started thinking about it—not purposefully, but during walks, or talking with friends, some dialogues and scenes occur to me, and I also get to know the characters better. Because I do a character-based narrative, their motifs are the main things I need to have clear when I plot a story. I usually think about the beginning: what is the starting point for the story (which can or cannot be the same for the characters if I’m doing in media res, etc), with which scene do I want to begin? Then, normally, I will get glimpses of possible scenes that go in the middle: an important point for them, maybe the climax. But I always, ALWAYS get the ending before finishing the story. And normally I think about the ending—more like, it comes to me—before I begin writing the story altogether.

Why? Again, Colum McCann says something that pinpoints exactly the answer I would give to you (but better): if a story is a plane and the ending is a destination, we don’t need to know the exact destination, but we need to know that the plane will land.

I leave myself a chance to change the ending if I’m writing the story and I see that the ending is going to change according to what the story needs, but it rarely happens, because I tail my stories around the ending, and not the beginning or the characters. Let’s say that I’m writing a romance: if I tail the story around the beginning (the characters meet), then I have a confusing plot because there are just a million ways in which the characters can evolve from that. If I tail the story around the characters (one is cute, the other one is grumpy, they fall in love) then I have all feelings and a plot, but I don’t think I have a motif or different layers. If I tail it around the ending (the characters get together despite their differences) suddenly I have a message.

I am being a little reductionist here, but you get the gist. Again, this works for me, but it cannot work for you at all! It all depends on what you want from your story, in the end.

Motifs and themes

I feel like endings should be conclusive in the novel, too. That is: in a way, they should summarize the motif of what you want the reader to stay with in your proposal. I don’t know if I succeed with every single ending of mine, but I think I have grown the capacity of doing this kind of summarizing without being too obvious.

The book shouldn’t be a thesis, but it should put something on the table. It can be a secret pact between you and the reader, but it has to lay motifs and themes that the reader can observe and think for themselves. But if your book is too obvious about the theme or your intention as an author, the reader will get bored easily because, again, the reader is not dumb and doesn’t want to have a lecture on it. Laying out your motifs and themes has to be subtle enough for the reader to choose whatever they want to fixate on, and ending with this motif reverberating has to be subtle enough to avoid boredom but clear enough so that the reader knows they have understood and they are with you.

Following the previous point about changing endings, and to go back to the intention of this little post, I had to change my last sentence completely.

Mind you, I had the last sentence written 6 months before writing the ending! Oh my! I had it scribbled in one of my notebooks, the page marked with a dog ear so that I wouldn’t forget I had to end like this. But—stuff happened, that stuff being that my main motif of the story changed.

It wasn’t planned, and it wasn’t suddenly: the story had always revolved around love as a constant effort and life as a constant struggle. Because my main intention was to talk about the first one (and it was what I had people lured into my writing in the first place), six months before the ending I had my first sentence, which was:

“And hands in hands, because they know that love is never the end of any story, they stare at each other and promise wordlessly to keep walking down this path—the one that is bumpy, full of trial and error. And swear to keep on trying, incessantly, every day, together.”

But I wrote that when I was in Chapter 10 (of 21) of the story, so of course, I should have given myself the space to change it. I was stubborn, and I didn’t, so when I started crafting the last three chapters and doing revisions of the other 18, I realized—late, and almost because I had to—that the story didn’t revolve around the love, but about the life. The way I had plotted the last chapter of Rotten Judgement, even, was all about a political revolution! There wasn’t love in it! Or not romantic love per se. There was a birth at home! Now it’s all clear to me, but please imagine me having to write a whole seating 30-page chapter and coming to the end and… it doesn’t work.

What happened, then? What had I done wrong?

Historia, the character who’s giving birth in the bathtub, was the character who was setting the pace of the chapter, which transitioned between the birth and the demonstration. The pace of the birth was very clear to me, and every stage signalled a change in pacing overall (I won’t say much here, this belongs to the post about the last chapter and pace per se). When Historia’s son finally comes out of the womb, it serves as a little epilogue to the fast pace of the chapter. It all stops, and then the son is born.

Mikasa and Eren, the couple, help Historia with the birth of the son. Tired but exhilarated, he kinda proposes to her, and thus the first last sentence should have been born. But ending with the love of the pair would be to neglect that even if the city was burning there was a new birth, a possibility of doing things right. So, it was clear to me that I had to end the ending with Historia grabbing her son for the first time, and the son opening the eyes to this chaotic, political life—so, my second theme.

What I did was to move the couple’s scene and first last sentence to this slow pace.

The ending to that 200k story and 30 last pages of revolution ended up like this, thus:

Amidst tearful cries in the bathroom, they [Eren and Mikasa] giggle against each other desperately. And hands in hands, because they know that love is never the end of any story, they stare at each other and promise wordlessly to keep walking down this path—the one that is bumpy, full of trial and error. And swear to keep on trying, incessantly, every day, together. From out the window, the sirens hustle closer and closer to the building now. Smoke columns rise from the avenue and the Parliament. Some screams penetrate the walls of the apartment, but the air is filled with hope and the anticipation of their friends—surely—coming back. The new mother [Historia] crouches forward to the midwife, takes the head of the newborn with care, then his whole little body, red and moving, watches his little mouth open and his closed eyes and the mother puts their baby against her chest. Little Marco falls silent for a moment as if he was taking in the arduous work of being alive.

On changing endings—because of the people

On a last note, I wanted to address writers who change the ending because they see that the fans want something specific, or that the public is not taking the leading up to the ending well. Some mentions: High School Musical The Musical The Series (they changed the ending of the main pair because they saw that another ship was very famous and the main character wasn’t in the show anymore; it resulted in a shit-show of character development); Sherlock (resulted in the worst 3rd season ever); Game of Thrones (don’t let me get started); Sally Rooney’s Beautiful world, where are you (an epilogue set in the pandemic which reads like an adding that she can’t even have written); How I met your mother (oh please), and much more.

Don’t do it—don’t! You know what the story needs. You know what you want to tell. Don’t let anyone influence you. Be Succession. End when you need to end, and with what makes sense for the story to end with.

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