#dire writes

I was tagged by @valkyriejack (thanks!), and whaddaya know, I actually had a bit written! I’m forcing upon all of you once this thing is actually finished my unshakable headcanon that Deacon and Piper would absolutely get on like a house on fire once they got over themselves.

Deacon is only one beer into the night, which isn’t nearly enough to deal with what the radstorm blows into the Third Rail. The noise of the bar drops to a lull just in time for her to catch the sound of the doors upstairs slamming open on a crackling crash of thunder, followed by an overly energetic voice greeting Ham. She knows that voice, and her seat behind the stairs isn’t likely to be a sufficient hiding place. Of all the places to get ratted out. She’s gonna have to pretend to be a man for a month to get back under cover here. She fuzzily debates trying to slip up the stairs to escape, or maybe talking her way into the VIP room; that option’s likely to get uncomfortable fast, though, given what tends to occur back there.

Breakfast With a Werewolf

Main Characters: Werewolf!Jacksepticeye, Hunter!Markiplier, Chica

Summary: Sean went to LA to visit friends and ended up staying at Mark’s house for the duration of the trip. He discovers something about Mark that he wished he had known before; and now he’s in a heap of trouble.

Pairing: None

Warnings: Strong Language, blood, character in pain

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Mark fell asleep in his desk chair and was awoken by Seàn’s screams and howls as he transformed back at 5 am.

Mark grabbed a blanket, when down to the basement and tossed the blanket into the room without looking.

Then he went to the kitchen and started frying some bacon.

Seàn passed through the kitchen, wrapped in the blanket and went upstairs, he came back down with clothes on. He. Was. Starving.

He didn’t so much as look at the bacon that was in the frying pan, he went straight for the rest of the package that sat next to Mark on the counter, uncooked and raw. Seàn grabbed a big handful and began eating.

He stopped mid-bite when he noticed Mark was staring at him.

“What’d you expect?” he asked.

Mark shook his head. “I don’t really know.”

“I didn’t have anything to eat last night and let me tell you, that beast’s a hungry fucker.”

“Damn…”

“I need a lot of calories to keep up with the energy needed for transformations and shit. You know, I ate a steak the night I got here, a whole deer that night in the reserve, and I was still starved for breakfast the next morning.” Seàn explained. “And I haven’t even been eating near as much as I should during the day…”

“Damn… Well, most of the meat in the freezer’s gonna start to get old soon so… I suppose you can have at it.” Mark offered.

“Oh, thank goodness.” Seàn sighed. He went over to the freezer and took out basically half a steer’s worth of meat and set it out on the counter to thaw.

“How much meat do you have at home?” Mark asked.

“A. Fuckin’. Lot.” Seàn answered. “I have a room, and not a small one, that is a dedicated freezer.”

“Holy shit… you look like a person who would be full after half a pork-chop.” Mark marvelled.

“I know, and I was that kind of person before… before.” 

Mark finished his own breakfast while Seàn wolfed down a few steaks. 

It felt so strange to find out that someone he had known for so long was a werewolf. He never would’ve guessed.

After they finished their breakfasts, they remained seated at the table and talked. Seàn finally being able to relax.

“So,” Seàn began. “I was pretty suspicious at times, but what finally convinced you that I was a werewolf?”

“Well, I got really suspicious the day after I uh… shot you, and you seemed stiff, and then Chica started acting really worried about you. So, while you were gone I did some sleuthing and I found the bloody T-shirt in the trash, and then I… kinda, sorta… snooped through your stuff a bit… and I found the bullet.” Mark said. “So, I put the air-freshener thing in the living room and waited.”

“Were Tyler and Ethan actually here yesterday?”

“Tyler was. He helped me… look for clues.”

“Is… is he…”

“A Hunter? Yes.”

“Ah… nice to know…”

“Um, how did you… remove the bullet?”

“Ah, I just… y’know… pulled it out…”

“With like… tweezers or something?”

“No…”

“With your bare hands???”

“Yeah.”

“Ouch… sorry about that…”

“No worries, I needed it… I would’ve devoured you if you hadn’t…”

“Uh huh... Okay, so, I don’t know a ton about werewolves, I’ve never actually met any, but… how does it work? Do you just… completely lose control?”

“Depends on how hungry I am… I don’t really… lose control. My instincts are just… strengthened. I don’t usually go after humans, I don’t usually give myself the chance, they really don’t taste good. I just… hadn’t eaten enough during the past few days.” Seàn explained.

“Wait… don’t taste all that good? You know what people taste like???”

Seàn sat in an awkward silence, trying not to let the memory return to his mind.

“I… I…” Seàn stuttered. He shook his head sadly. “Not my proudest moment, okay?”

“Holy shit…”

“I’m just a monster that deserves to be put down. I’ll never be able to move past that.”

Mark gave Seàn a pat on the shoulder. “It’s… it’s okay, Seàn.” Mark said.

“No, it’s not okay. Nothing will ever make it okay.” Seàn said. “I’m a monster and no one can change that.”

“Seàn! Don’t be ridiculous, you’re no monster! You’re just a man who’s been through some shit.”

“Why haven’t you shot me, Mark? You’re a Hunter. Isn’t that your job? You’re supposed to kill people like me, good or bad.”

“Actually, that’s where you’re wrong.” Mark said. “Hunters only kill those with bad intentions, because the real monsters are those that wish harm upon others. We’re not destroyers of potential threats, we’re destroyers of threats.” he explained.

“Now, disappointingly often, people who find themselves blessed with… strange abilities use them for evil. Sadly, you’re the first one I’ve met that didn’t mean harm to people.”

Seàn shook his head. “If you only knew…” he got up, walked to the window and looked outside. “When you’re a werewolf, you… crave blood and flesh and… even during the daylight hours. I can smell Chica, I can smell you, Mark. And it makes me fucking hungry.”

“But you don’t act on that hunger, Seàn, and that’s what makes the difference.” Mark said.

“I don’t know…” Seàn sighed.

Then his stomach rumbled loudly.

“Sorry… I really am hungry…” he chuckled awkwardly as he went back to the counter to grab more food.

“Damn. You just ate two steaks and a quarter pound of bacon..”

“Well, welcome to my normal, everyday diet.”

“Fuck, dude,” Mark marvelled. “You’re so skinny, where the hell does it all go?”

Seàn shrugged as he sat down and took a huge bite out of a freshly thawed out pork chop.

Chica walked up to him and tried to sniff out the meat. Seàn involuntarily froze and an inhuman growl rumbled deep in his throat.

Chica quickly backed off.

“Oh, no, no, no, Chica! I’m sorry girl, I didn’t mean to!” he said, tearing off a small piece of meat and holding it out for her.

She hesitantly approached and ate the meat out of his hand. She relaxed and her tail began softly thumping on the floor once again.

Seàn looked up at Mark who was sitting on the table. “There’s a reason I don’t have any pets…”

Mark chuckled and shook his head. “It’s going to be interesting to finally find out what werewolves are like in their day to day lives. Sitcom style.”

Seàn laughed. “Yeah.”

~~~

The End.

Or is it?

I really wasn’t feeling up to writing today, finishing up my Masters this week has worn me tf out. (But it is finished! Aside from paperwork! I (basically) have a Masters!!!)

But then @electricshoebox tagged me, and thanks to her I got the motivation I needed to do some writing and also figure out a few of the missing points for this lil fic! So have a little over six sentences of denial cute:

Piper has to admit, her little sister does have a talent for hair. Or maybe it’s just that a second person is an improvement on her attempts to style her own. Either way, soon it’s in what she has to admit is a rather pretty style. She even puts on some makeup with a little extra care. Just because she’s feeling like it. Doesn’t want to go around the market looking all careless and unkempt, after all.

Hi yes hello I am alive! And I even have some sentences to prove it! never mind that they were thrown together about five minutes ago, they exist now. Thanks @emiratexaaron for the tag!

Right on Ellie’s doorstep, Piper remembers. She forgot to grab the dessert. And she had been planning on buying the prettiest pie, maybe that delicate pink design that was always featured in the corner of the display. A disappointment, again. Bags and packages precariously balanced on one arm, Piper pushes windswept hair out of her already sweaty face, steels herself, and knocks.

Tagged by both @adventuresofmeghatron and @electricshoebox this week, thanks y’all!

I don’t have a lot more written on this piece yet, because frankly the idea of trying to write dialogue between Deacon and Piper is intimidating as hell haha. The problem with trying to write two smart-ass, witty, clever characters is...I have to come up with all the smart-ass, witty, clever things they say. How am I supposed to do that?!

Well, have this bit while I haggle with the dialogue gods:

Piper drops her elbows on the bar and leans heavily, all the barstools taken thanks to the storm, and Deacon realizes she’s made the wrong choice. Shoulda stealthed it anyway. She makes a valiant effort to appear dour, foreboding, and interested only in socializing with her bottle. But Piper’s done chatting up the barbot and is eyeing the room—and she’s been spotted. Not enough dourness in the world to ward off that reporter’s gaze.

I was tagged by @deacons-wig, thanks!

Rules: It’s time to love yourselves! Choose your 5 favorite  works (fics, art, edits, etc.) you’ve created this year and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you’ve brought into the world in 2020. If you don’t have five published works, that’s fine! Include ideas/drafts/whatever you like  that you’ve worked on/thought about, and talk a little about them instead! Remember, this is all about self-love and positive enthusiasm,  so fuck the rules if you need to. Have fun, and tag as many fellow creators as you like so they can share the love! <3

It’s too much pressure to pick my five favorites, and also a couple of these mayyyy have happened really late in 2019, but mid-2019 through now is basically all one year to me. I’m picking a pile that make me happy and am gonna try to show off all my OCs I love!

1. Carrot’s Ugly Christmas Sweater

The post for this shows off some of the artistic growth I made in my first weeks of teaching myself to draw, and I was able to get my chaos girl improved and colored for @badcowboy69​‘s party! I love that her sweater applies to her in three different ways, all of which are represented here. And her face and expression are so cute! I’m just really proud of this.

2. Aftermath

Oh the places you’ll go, with your eyes so wide

With your heart in your hand, and your sword at your side

Oh the mountains you’ll move, oh the tears you’ll cry

Oh the places you’ll go, little love of mine.

My poor Sole. I put her through so much, and most of my depictions are of her at her darkest and lowest. But this time I got to portray her as finally happy, fulfilled, at peace with all the shit her life has thrown at her. Not to mention badass General. This was one of my latest artistic endeavors after I’d been practicing for a few months, and while there are of course places I’m not satisfied with, I’m really happy with the improvement I made over those months.

3. That Lucky Old Sun

The first story that really established Carrot’s personality. She went from telling Doc Mitchell that she’d try not to get herself killed again, straight into running from a bunch of robots that she’d chunked a grenade at. She lucks into getting the power plant terminal running, and then gets so excited about pushing big red buttons that she fails to realize she’s activated the giant space laser and smoked an entire garrison of troops. Whoops. I’m not used to writing comedy, angsty stuff like Sole’s is more my forte, so Carrot has given me a really lovely change of pace.

4. What Do You Get When You Add a Poet and a Mentats-Buzzed Founding Pirate?

I can’t not include this one. 2020 gave me @glitchvault74​ and @falloutglow​ as friends, and along with them, Rig and Echo and the rest of their wealth of characters. And as my characters and world developed too...well, AUs were bound to happen. I had an absolute blast writing Rig Apollo into Soleverse, including more of that newfangled comedy stuff and stretching some poetry muscles that I haven’t used in years. Not to mention the mental stretch of writing another person’s OC (particularly one with such a...unique speaking style as Apollo), and also all the research I got to do on Greek mythology to sneak a bunch of references in.

5. Sanctuary

Tagged by @electricshoebox , thank you!

AO3 Stats for 2020

Total word count: 17,695

Top 5 6 by word count:

Courier Carrot (Fallout: New Vegas) (6285 words)

Tales from the Wasteland (Fallout 4) (3866 words)

What Do You Get When You Add a Poet and a Mentats-Buzzed Founding Pirate? (Fallout 4) (2508 words)

Sanctuary (Fallout 4) (1797 words)

Ruin (Fallout 4) (1351 words)

Proximity (Original Work) (790 words)

Top 5 6 by kudos:

What Do You Get When You Add a Poet and a Mentats-Buzzed Founding Pirate?

Courier Carrot

Tales from the Wasteland

Hancock

Becoming Sole

Sanctuary

(I went with 6 because Tales is a compilation that I recently abandoned in favor of reposting the chapters and continuing the story as stand-alone works in a series instead, including Sanctuary, Ruin, and Hancock. Figured it wasn’t fair to directly compare either the reposts or the compilation with the others 🤷‍♀️)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

This is a bit of a non-traditional AO3 wrapup, but it’s been a non-traditional time, so oh well.

About a year and a half ago, I began a year of medical leave from my PhD program. I had just been diagnosed, finally, with ADHD, and given the new need to learn how to manage it and to try out new medication, along with the crippling depression and anxiety I’d been dealing with, I needed time off. By the end of 2020 I would choose to drop out of my dream PhD program and dream lab in order to pursue a simpler but, hopefully, more enjoyable and better fitting career.

I had just moved in with my new partner. She brought an Xbox. My main gaming experience up until then had been Game Boy Advance. She suggested I try a game called Fallout 4.

Playing turned to guilty pleasure pinteresting of my new obsession, turned to guilty pleasure tumblring of my new obsession, turned to giving up the guilt and getting my first tumblr account. By the end of 2019 Sole and Carrot were born, and I was teaching myself to draw so that I could draw them. In 2020 I joined a discord, and the pile of friends I’d made through Fallout multiplied. I started writing fiction again, for fun, something I hadn’t done since high school or earlier. I got an AO3 (and a Pillowfort too), and here we are.

2020 has been a lot of things, a lot of good and a hell of a lot of bad. But I can honestly say that Fallout, and the community and friends and support that I’ve found in the fandom, was one of the brightest lights helping me survive everything the year has thrown at me. It’s helped me grow, from gaining skill in the new hobby of drawing and the previously abandoned hobby of writing, to socializing with internet strangers and discovering real friendships there. I honestly can’t describe how much you all mean to me.

Whump4tober Day 2: Sole makes an unwise pit stop in Libertalia. It takes longer than intended.

@whumptober2020

I swapped around a few of the days in the Fallout 4tober prompt list for artistic reasons, sorry /shrug

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In hindsight, it probably hadn’t been the best idea to try to clear a raider hive alone on a city made of boats linked by poorly constructed gangplanks. And definitely not with just her swatter instead of the .44. But Nordhagen had been increasingly concerned by their violent neighbors, and Sole had been in the area on the way down the coast to the Castle, and what was one more raider clearing?

Now, she was locked in a cell, cuffed for good measure, on a barely-floating deathtrap of a boat. All of her possessions gone, including most of her clothing, even down to her hidden bobby pins. And she’d been there for days now, parched and hungry, enduring the jeers of the raiders that swaggered by to gawk at their prize. They hadn’t touched her since she’d been thrown in the cell, though. They were smarter than that. They knew the bars were to protect them from her.

She wasn’t sure how much longer that would be true, though, especially if they kept giving her no more to eat than old bread and the occasional carton of gross, slightly salty water. She wasn’t a hand-to-hand fighter on a good day, and now? She barely had the strength to stand, much less fight her way out.

“Heya, girlie.”

One of them slouched outside the gate, leering at her. His dress was near obscene in tight leather pants, a ridiculous leather harness that left his whole torso exposed, and a sailor’s hat cocked at an improbable angle. The whole ensemble, raider included, looked like it spent most of its time in the irradiated sea without a wash. But the easy grace he used rocking with the ship’s movements, and the sinister knife currently picking at his nails, dissuaded any thought of an easy target.

“What, you not gonna gimme a smile?”

Sole bared her teeth at him and stayed silent.

“Aww, come on now. We don’t get many pretty little girls like you in the brig. Pretty little heroes.” His gaze turned predatory. “I got lotsa plans for what to do with pretty little heroes.”

Despite the panic building in her gut, Sole had noticed the amount of space the raider still kept between himself and the bars of her cage. She leaned forward where she sat, pretending it didn’t take all of her scant energy, letting the predator burn in her eyes as well. “Why don’t you come where I can reach you and try it?”

His eyes widened in fear.

Then, shouting rang out from outside the boat, and gunshots. Over the flurry of pipe pistols, Sole caught the bam of a shotgun…and the thunder of a laser musket.

Her grin turned feral. “Sounds like plans changed.”

The raider bolted from the room.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The sounds of fighting grew louder and louder, and then abruptly stopped. Soon after, the door to the room was violently kicked in and Hancock and Preston tumbled in. At the sight of Sole, who immediately slumped in exhausted relief, they began clamoring over each other.

“Sunshine! Ain’t you a sight for sore eyes. Let’s get you out of there.”

“Sole! You’re here! Thank goodness we found you. Are you hurt? What did they do to you?”

She managed a smile as Hancock set to work on the lock and Preston stood guard at the far door. “Had worse. They were too scared to lay a hand on me…How did you find me?”

“Smarter than most,” chuckled Hancock as the lock clicked open. “Not that it was enough to save them. You didn’t meet us at the Castle, Preston had a hunch, and here we are. Let’s get you up. Whoa, easy there, easy. Are you sure you can stand?”

She tried, desperately willing her legs to work. We’re still in the middle of the ocean, in the middle of a raider camp, who knows how many of them are left. I’ve gotta be able to fight out. Her legs weren’t convinced though, and they quaked and gave way, draping her heavily against Hancock as he struggled to catch her.

“Hey, uh, Garvey? Gonna need you on this. I’m good, but I’m not sure I’m ‘carry the princess across the ocean to shore’ good.”

“I’m on it.”