#duncan maccready

[perfectlypreservedpie]

Found a bunch of sketchbooks from around 2018-2019 I think? Plus some other art that I never posted back in the day from the same time.

[stoat-party]

Sometimes a family is you, your 200-year-old mom, her sad robot boyfriend, your dead father, your other dead father who your mom says was really your brother

Your uncle/fourth dad, your cousin/brother, his dead mom

A noir detective, his secretary, his weird brother from Maine, and your evil cyborg fifth dad who haunts his brain

The Irish pit fighter who doesn’t like you but follows your mom around like a puppy

A French medical researcher who’s also a robot

A militiaman with clinical depression

Your weird uncle you think might be a shapeshifter

A reporter and her 12-year-old sister

A cool drug-abusing mayor with no skin and a bodyguard who might be his daughter

The sad robot boyfriend’s one (1) friend, also sad

Your mom’s estranged grandson the Terminator

A handful of neighbors including a mechanic, a couple with lots of emotions, a former fortune teller, and the guy whose personality is “salesman for a company that no longer exists”

Your seventh parent the butler (actually a robot this time)

The dog who’s a part-time detective, the cat your mom stole off a giant airship, and the giant cannibalistic ogre who functions more like a pet than the other two.

And that’s okay.

[sirmanmister]

The MacCready family deserves the literal whole entire world and nobody can convince me otherwise.

[probablylilly]

you leave your son for a few weeks and he immediately joins the worst gang in the capital wasteland

[marf244]

More Mac!

[puirell]

hi ok so duncan and maccready reunion when !

[atombonniebaby]

Just some DadCready to give all the fuzzy feels!

[maccreadysbaby]

why do y’all love maccready so much, he’s so boring 😫

Are you actually asking? Do you actually want an answer? Ok fine here we go

Why MacCready is a Fan Favorite: A Rant

Familiarity; first time players are swamped by all of these companions who are, hate, or constantly talk about synths and the institute. Piper never freaking shuts up about it, Preston doesn’t stop bugging you about the militia he’s trying to rebuild, Cait is literally a raider, Danse is part of the bigot brigade, Hancock is a literal ghoul, Nick is a literal synth, Codsworth and Curie are robots, Deacon’s a spy, Strong is a Super Mutant, etc etc. MacCready is just a young guy who wants to do right by his son. He isn’t up the players butt about choosing one faction or another. He may be one of the only companions that doesn’t make idle comments about factions or hating the institute. (I know there are some, but not nearly as much as any other companion.) Long story short, he’s just a guy, just trying to help his son, and he doesn’t care what freaking faction you choose because he’s just trying to save his son. Yes, for affinity purposes, he dislikes the railroad and bos, but we all know he actually doesn’t care because that isn’t what he’s focused on. After the initial “Maccready disliked that” it’s hardly brought up ever again. We like him because he’s just a guy who doesn’t care about the Commonwealth’s problems and just wants to save his kid.

He’s reoccurring; another reason players like him is because they probably remember him from Fallout 3, where he was an orphan in the place called Little Lamplight. He is the only reoccurring companion and makes comments on things players might remember from Fallout 3, like “tunnel snakes rule!” And his past in Little Lamplight. What’s more fun than playing with a character you knew when they were twelve? It’s fun to see how his life has progressed instead of him just being another npc that you never see outside of Little Lamplight.

Relatability; MacCready is unashamedly scared, easily annoyed, constantly complains and has all the traits of a normal human being living in the wasteland. Our sole might be a semi-superhero, frolicking through the wasteland with a sledge hammer in the grognak costume smashing every enemy they see, but we all know we’d actually be terrified if we were there. His companion quest is full of emotion that we clearly see, as opposed to Hancock, who just tells us about the emotions he experienced before. He’s twenty-freaking-two and it’s painfully obvious. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, he’s worried about everything. He doesn’t give the player a gun like righteous authority or the deliverer, he gives them a little freaking toy soldier that his dead wife made for him because he’s sentimental and wants the player to know how much he appreciates them by giving them something with a heavy emotional attachment. Letting them know he trusts them. What’s not to like about that? About a guy being so utterly human in front of other humans?

Empathy; MacCready is really the only companion the sole survivor can empathize with, and vise versa, in terms of their children. They’re both trying to save them. It’s their life’s goal. They both know how it feels to fear for their safety and wonder if they’re even alive. Not a single one of the other companions can relate to sole like he can, thus, forming a bond through something other companions can’t: shared pain.

Emotions; MacCready gets exceedingly angry, more so than the other companions, if the player lowers his affinity too far. Because he’s already lost his wife, been betrayed, and now he’s watching another person he’s grown to care about change on him. It’s just another example of his achingly well written personality and in-depth emotional story.

Tid Bits; these can be quite objective, but I’m gonna include them anyhow. This is probably the bottom line for many players, if I’m being honest. MacCready may look like a rat, but he’s cute. His voice acting is on pointe. Even though he got some bad writing at the end where we never hear anything about Duncan again, his storyline is still gives the player a very rewarding feeling. He’s just adorable.

what’s not to love, anon?

[acorncoffeeformysweetheart]

Falloutober day 8 - Faith, hope and love

Gage definitely didn’t deserve such a family, but sometimes even the worst people get lucky.

[sas-afras]

a collection of duncan maccready doodles, featuring a real conversation i had a meltdown over as a 5 year old

[perfectlypreservedpie]

Absolutely love the way you include Duncan and Shaun in your Fallout art!! Love maccreedy and your sole survivor as cool parents!!

this ask was so nice that I drew some more

[stoat-party]

MacCready winds up at Little Lamplight, probably a baby, but at most young enough not to remember his parents. Maybe he grows up with a secret belief that they loved him, because they left him with three names whereas a lot of his peers didn’t get any. But they were grown-ups, so who needs them anyway.

He grows up eating fungus that thrives on human flesh. He starts drinking at six. He learns to shoot at ten — starting with monsters who used to be human, but undoubtedly graduating to humans long before he should have. Also at ten, he wins a fight against another child and takes power as mayor. Part of the job is to exile kids when they turn sixteen. Maybe some of them helped raise him. He knows Bigtown isn’t as safe as it’s made it out to be, how could he not? A lot of those teenagers are headed out there just to die. MacCready knows he won’t be one of them, because he’s tougher.

When we meet him at twelve, he’s ruthless. He admits that the out-at-sixteen rule is based on lies, and that it’s really to keep the population low enough to survive. He’s a social Darwinist who protects the kids as a population, but can’t afford the luxury of caring about them as individuals. He’s learned death is cheap, you can’t afford to help strangers, and if you don’t take what you want, someone else will.

“Around” sixteen he graduated (which makes me think he left before they could kick him out), and we know the rest of the story. The person we meet in Boston has internalized these lessons. He’s friendly and has a conscience, but the only people he cares about enough to prioritize are Duncan, a maxed-affinity Sole Survivor, and probably a few others like Daisy. And boy, does he care about that tiny group of individuals. But everyone else? Make it worth his while or go kick rocks.

Having a crazy childhood doesn’t fully explain his choices - encouraging the Survivor to kill Danse, cruelly flirting with Desdemona as the Survivor betrays and murders her, outright stating he’s willing to kill innocents if there’s a way to profit from it, and disliking giving the cure to Austin even though his son is in the exact same situation. But I think his history goes a long way toward explaining his motivations and making him likable, if not exactly justifiable.

[sirmanmister]

Teaching Dunky how to read w/ Grognak

I don’t care what anyone says DadCready is PEAK MEDIA TO MEEEEE

[edaworks]

I love seeing everyone’s headcanons for where MacCready’s homestead would be located, and since I’m piecing together more parts of One if By Land, here’s my own unhinged way-overthought headcanon on the topic.

The first time I played through Mac’s affinity quests, a location for the homestead IMMEDIATELY clicked for me (complete with vocal “oh. well shiiiit.”) because, well, you’ll see!

 Let’s take a look at the affinity dialogue about Duncan’s illness for a sec:

With that in mind, let me introduce y’all to still-partially-agricultural Frederick, Maryland, just north of Washington, D.C. - and its largest local employer, Fort Detrick. (For reference, the Bethesda, MD location for Bethesda’s/Zenimax’s studios is literally 30min away from this location...unless it’s rush hour! Then it’s 90min away. That commute sucks.)

1) Um, what do you mean, “there’s a military installation for WWII/Cold-War-era bioweapons research, turned military installation for modern infectious disease research, just outside DC?”

Yup! Welcome to Frederick City.

______________________________________________________________

Blah, blah. But I didn’t come here to show off population stats, I’ve got Actual Reasons™ I promise, so lemme skip to those: ______________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________

Back up, though: “Bioscience/communications research” doesn’t quite grasp the scope of what my homies at Detrick have going on. This is more like it: ______________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________

If you hear “unknown disease” or “bioweapon research” or “Ebola zaire” or “the plague” or other scary phrases regarding disease around the DC-MD-VA area, this is kind of the one and only place that comes to mind. It was the center of US bioweapons research for an extraordinarily long time, starting prior to the Fallout universe’s continuity split.

After Detrick’s bioweapons research was, ahem, shut down (as far as we civvies know), biological defense research and biomedical research continued to persist and still persists through present date: ______________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________

Remember the US’s Ebola zaire outbreak a few years back? In 2014 (right before Fallout 4 was released)? They brought several Ebola patients to Detrick for observation when they weren’t under observation with the CDC.

Biomedical research has better optics than bioweapons development, though, right? Uhhh…Detrick’s recent history here has not been without its complications. Observe: ______________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________ Yeah. Just imagine how much worse the ‘safety violations’ would have been in the Fallout universe, right? And there’s more – decades of controversy regarding materials disposal methods predating the latest issues: ______________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________

There’s been argument for years about whether there is a “cancer cell” area for civilians located around Area B (colloquially ‘B-site.’) Funsies.

So - sometime in the 2280s after 200+ years of facility abandonment, a kid getting sick playing in the back 40 of a farm in this area? It’s not only believable, I’d freaking expect it.

2) Okay, but does the area have agricultural potential?

100% yes! Uhh…at least, it does pre-nuclear-apocalypse.

This area was (and in some places still is) HEAVILY agricultural, particularly up until about a decade and a half ago. There is still active farmland RIGHT next to Detrick. It’s good soil.

Basically: farms, the I-70/I-270 interchange, the Barbara Fritchie house, many DC suburbs, the downtown area, various important Civil War historical locations, and Fort Detrick. That’s the whole area in a nutshell.

3) But is it on the Fallout 3 map? I don’t remember seeing a location named “Frederick” anywhere.

Frederick isn’t a named location on the FO3 map, likely because the area where it would have been pre-war is half-on, half-off the northern map edge. However, consider: there’s a military installation nearby the area where Frederick would sit on the map, and it’s a sattcomm base. Fort Detrick, as you might’ve seen above, is also known for communications research.

Here’s a shitty overlay image for reference - I’ve traced some of the major roadways on the FO3 map and have labeled them with their likely IRL equivalents (everything’s very skewed to IRL locations), to give a general idea of where this area falls on the map.

Compare to IRL:

TL;DR: I’ll die on my headcanon hill that Mac’s homestead is in what used to be Frederick County near Detrick’s Area B, just at or just above the northern edge of the FO3 map.

(Fun bonus fact: I took some summer courses with Detrick employees when I was college age! One of those classes was a public speaking course. For his demonstrative speech, one of them walked us through how he gets into his HAZMAT suit in a span of less than 15 seconds! Oof.)

[nightingaelic]

“So do you cut anyone’s hair?” Duncan asked, staring up at the mercenary in awe.

Butch, who had just finished reassuring Murphy and MacCready that he’d clean up after himself if he had customers, gave the boy a smile. “Sure. So long as they pay.”

“What’s the best haircut you’ve ever done?” Shaun pressed.

“Hmmm.” Butch stroked his clean-shaven chin in thought. “That’s tough. I do a mean mohawk, but I don’t do them often because of how much product you need. You’ve got to refine snaptail sugar and mix it into a paste, it’s a whole thing.”

“No, I don’t suppose extra-strength hair spray is as common as it used to be,” Codsworth said.

- Chapter 10: Usual Range from The Rest is Merely Tenacity, Part 5 in The Alpha & The Omega, by me

[callmewisteria]

me: i'm not going to write a sad fic about MacCready and Lucy before Duncan is born and after, including leading up to her death. also me: is starting to do so anyways and have it completely outlined.