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Courier: Whiski Six

Just a little art for me in this busy time.

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My day three piece for Preston Appreciation Week. Decided to give Preston a day off and show some Mama Murphy love <3 

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Rage, Grief & Other Quiet Explosions

(Emotional meltdowns that don’t look like meltdowns, but absolutely are)

 The “Smiling Too Much” Grief Your character’s entire world is on fire, and they’re asking if anyone wants more wine. That’s not denial, it’s an effort to hold the damn pieces together. Smile like a glue gun. Watch them crack.

The “Not Crying At the Funeral” Breakdown They don't shed a tear. They organize everything. Perfect speech. Perfect outfit. But a week later, they scream into the laundry basket over a missing sock. That’s the moment. That’s the eulogy.

 The “Silent Dinner Table” Fight No yelling. No slamming doors. Just chewing. Clinking silverware. The kind of silence that tastes like metal. Let the reader feel the air shrink.

 The “Polite but Dead Inside” Apology They say “Sorry” because it’s expected, not because they’re ready. Their voice doesn’t crack. Their eyes don’t meet yours. This isn’t healing. This is a peace treaty with no peace.

The “I Don’t Want to Talk About It” Detour The one where they ask about your day mid-sob. Redirect. Deflect. “Let’s not talk about me.” That’s rage choked by shame. Write it like it’s shoving itself into a smaller box.

 The “Obsessively Productive” Meltdown New projects. New hobbies. Suddenly they’re running marathons, baking sourdough, fixing the garage door. Because if they sit still for one second, they’ll break. Keep the camera on them when they finally sit.

The “Unsent Letters” Grief They write it all down. Every damn emotion. Then burn it. Or delete it. Or hide it in a shoebox under their bed. It’s not for closure. It’s to let the ghosts know they were seen.

The “I’m Fine” That Echoes Delivered too fast. Too sharp. You could bounce a quarter off it. “I’m fine” isn’t fine. It’s the dam cracking. Listen to the echo. Let another character hear the hollowness.

The “Hyper-Logical Rant” Rage They argue with spreadsheets. With perfect bullet points. Cold rage—like ice, not fire. “I’m not mad, I’m just saying…” But that’s a lie. They’re volcanic under that clipboard.

 The “Laughing in the Middle of the Breakdown” Moment That bitter, hysterical laugh. The kind that sounds more like sobbing with teeth. Let it come at the worst time. Let it shock even them. That’s emotion refusing to stay boxed in.

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sole survivor: hi preston say something about a settlement so i can make the same tired joke a million people have made before and get notes for it

preston, staring directly at the player: lazy humor is the last refuge of the creatively bankrupt

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james and jonas used to do all kinds of. experimentse . with each other

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Laura the spy

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the giving tree

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pygmalion

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hi everyone i just hit a follower milestone and i wanted to do a little art giveaway!!

two winners will get a colored bust of up to two characters of their choosing, like so:

rules:

must be following me

like and/or reblog this post to enter; each like and/or reblog is a separate entry

i will use a random picker to pick the winners, who will be contacted via tumblr dm

i will redraw if i don't get any response after 48 hours

giveaway ends on 31 may 2025, 23:59 gmt+8

that's all! feel free to drop me an ask if you have any questions :) thank you for following and for being such lovely people!!!! much love <3

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im going to talk about blue heaven.

specifically from nick’s perspective. bc i think a healthy amount of his motivation in that fic is to make tua feel good - which he genuinely wants to do - but unfortunately that does play into his feelings of being a novelty or an object, which is why i wanted it to start w the wireplay scene. i wanted to Lead with, ok, he wants to kiss them and wants to be intimate w them bc he loves her and wants to do that for her, but there’s also a certain amount of physical attraction he doesnt completely understand and might be a little disturbed by, and he wants her to do this for him for reasons he’s still comprehending

but also ☝️ even though its from tua’s perspective, i hope its clear - bc it is to tua lol - that even though nick doesnt understand that attraction, even if the unknown is distressing and confusing, he also really Really wants to indulge in it bc he is Really into them. and its all sort of coalescing bc hes finally accepting of his body and feeling more grounded than he ever has before, and part of what helps is being physical w tua. it does make him feel Real

anyway its just sweet to me. nick loves tua and the novelty of having this love that is just his, unique to him and him alone and not his predecessor, is so intoxicating. he wants to make them feel good, but also theyre beautiful and he likes looking at them. etc. area machine learns how to feel horny.

this is also a topic i havent really broached w gen4 au. bc gen2 nick has a hundred years of Synthetic Catholic Guilt around sex, but also no physical way to be swayed from that. no rushing blood, no racing heartbeat, no hormonal urges, etc. he is able to Ignore Certain Thoughts if he wants. thats why the dream™️ is so off putting - he’s not supposed to still be able to do that!! then he gets an upgrade, and granted, he has many many months of adjusting to feelings of dysphoria and dissociation before he can enjoy intimacy w his partner again (which is a whole thing in and of itself) but he has None of the learned abilities to just ignore that. he’s basically going through puberty. which is fine at the end of the day but means by the time they actually get around to it he is just overwhelmed with emotion. like he probably cries. and not just the first time

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life is dull; it's nothing but one big lull, then presto - you do a skull and find that you're reeling she's sighs and you're feeling like a toy on a string and your heart goes ring-a-ding-ding!

for @alicewav's dtiys!! the composition of the original was so good, i couldn't resist :)

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Been busy and going thru some health stuff lately but here's a Six

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PLEASEEE do talk extensively about tua's relationship with mira i'm so curious... i ❤️ complicated relationships with parenthood

augh thank you for asking!!

firstly i think it's important to remember the context for fallout's setting... it's fifty years in the future, yet culturally locked in the 1960s, which means tua is grappling with a lot of expectations for someone who is middle-aged and perceived as female, like the idea that she needs to get married and leave their job to have kids.

tua meanwhile has no goals to get married or have a family. but it IS important to note that this is somewhat a response to a lifetime of feeling ostracized for how she presents. they don't have any family, and being of mixed background means she has been made to feel untethered/unwanted. growing up aware of these things, there never seemed to be room for someone like them in that picture of the american dream, so tua never really learned to want it.

(sidebar but... they supplement whatever loneliness comes of that with her job, which obviously leads to a really unhealthy relationship with her concept of worth. but i digress)

there's also another layer in the fact that tua's mother left her and her father at a very young age, taking infant miriam with her to the west coast. as a child tua came away with the belief that they had done something wrong, that they were too difficult/complicated and their mother couldn't handle her, when in reality their mom was a young mom and didn't know what to do while being so far away from her extended family in mexico. so tua's relationship with motherhood is that, well, they don't want to be a mom because they'd mess it up and be imperfect and couldn't handle it. etc.

(in fact the whole point of the penultimate chapter of act i is that tua learning to love herself is fully realized by coming back to mira and loving her. spoilers lol)

something i especially hope people keep in mind with tua being of mixed background is that she inherently has a different relationship w the concept of gender identity, with concepts of femininity and masculinity, and before the war there is definitely this concept of motherhood that tua absolutely cannot relate to and despises and as consequence despises the expectation that she have children. THEN because tua was so out of touch w their own body from decades of dysphoria they also just did not realize the signs until miriam made them go to the doctor. the fact tua's detachment from her own body means she didn't know she was pregnant until like 3-4 months in is kind of Part Of The Whole Thing!!!!!!

after the war, when tua is allowed to dress the way they want to, present the way she wants to, and there are no expectations for them to live a certain life, she ends up more willing to take on the responsibility of raising mira. a couple years in they do not feel that level of vitriol, BUT they're definitely not interested in having more kids to be clear.

(which ok other sidebar: i will also say doing the research into writing act i helped my dysphoria out a lot too, so it became important to me to present pregnancy/childbirth from a gender neutral perspective and to avoid using any of the weird motherhood = womanhood themes you see a lot. i think by the end of writing act i i had fixed a few of my own personal biases and i find that was invaluable!!)

all in all i really tried to make tua's relationship w/ being pregnant and raising a child as nuanced as possible without falling into the usual tropes around the topic... ultimately tua sees mira as her sister's baby, and sees themself as mira's guardian and not necessarily her parent. because of this, while tua does make an effort to provide for/support mira as she grows up, tua is also just very emotionally distant and standoffish by nature. i wanted tua to feel more like an awkward uncle who is making an attempt to be parental but does not have any natural instincts for it. in the end, mira grows up far closer to nick than to tua - while at the same time ending up exactly like her... always distant, always moving, and always self-isolating.

there might be more to it than that.... but basically it IS complicated and i put a lot of work into avoiding making it seem like everything "clicks" for tua once they have mira when in reality she was so manic they walked across the glowing sea and fought a horde of feral ghouls barehanded. normal new mom things lol

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Caesar, muttering to himself: They call me caesar cause I be dressin’

Courier, hiding in the shadows and about to assassinate him:

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I want everyone who was excited about my plans to make a "Boone marrying Carla with the King officiating and there being a scene where Boone comes in with the courier and the King recognizes him" comic to be pissed with me that I fucking lost the blueprints and I've been packing my shit because I'm moving and literally have not found them >:(

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volga but mom wins the custody battle