#ellen deloria

[starions]

Who is Butch's dad???

The biggest mystery of Vault 101 to me if the fact no one knows who Butch’s dad is, not even him, and Ellen was never married. According to the official Fallout 3 guide, the reason Butch acts out and is an overall terrible person is because his mother being an alcoholic and his lack of a father pushes him to be rebellious. Seeing the Lone Wanderer with perhaps the only caring dad in the vault may be why he targets them the most.

My theories are:

1) The Overseer. This one is far fetched, I know; but it is interesting to consider. If he is Butch’s father, it would make sense for him to enable Ellen’s alcoholism to keep her from sharing Butch’s father. Who would believe the vault drunk? Him employing the Tunnel Snakes may be to keep a close eye on Butch. However, considering the vault canonically has abortion pills according to voice lines, he would probably have Ellen flush out a pregnancy to avoid scandal.

2) Allen Mack. To be honest, everyone is related to the Mack family for some reason so let me throw him into the ring. This has some gross implications though; considering Susie refers to Butch as “dreamy” and Christine (who is a cousin to the Macks) “puts out,” I would like to wipe this one off the table all together. Also, Allen seems to love his wife Gloria very much, seeing how his personality completely switches after she dies.

3) A wastelander. This one is my favorite. If we take Butch’s birthday from this wiki at face value, he was born at the tail end of 2257, meaning he was conceived in February of 2257 give or take. If Alphonse closed the vault doors in 2257 or 2258, Ellen could have been one of the vault dwellers who made a trip to the wasteland beforehand. It could be plausible she met a wastelander, fell in love, Butch was conceived, and the vault doors were closed before or shortly after he was born. The loss of her love could have sparked her alcoholism, and again, if she says anything about the vault once being open, who would trust the vault drunk?

This is so interesting to me, especially since it was never touched on in the game. Maybe there's some tension in the vault from women who don't trust there husbands, wondering if their partner could be the father of Ellen's child, especially because she's regarded as a "fading beauty."

I almost posted this on /r/falloutlore before I read that speculation was against the rules :P oh well

[distractedrighter]

WIP Wednesday

it's not Wednesday, but I won't let the work week end without me acknowledging that chapter 2 of a short-sighted man has been fully written!

[agentcoltslaw]

OH NO I MADE ANOTHER *cries*

[ghost-qwq]

Advertising my fic because my boyfriend said I should : "What Am I So Afraid Of?"

 In Vault 101 no one ever enters, and no one ever leaves. Butch DeLoria spent nineteen years stuck with the same people, same food, same damn life in that vault. People in the vault aren’t the best when you’re stuck around them for so long. Especially not the doctor's kid. James Maxwell’s special little “angel”, Cyrus. That dork wasn’t even worth being on Butch’s mind… if that’s the case, how come he thought about him so much?

[artemismatchalatte]

Bonus Books for the Pinterest reading challenge- more 2023 TBRs!

[datura-tea]

oooh i love lone wanderer's that hate james lol. does gwen blame him for jonas' death? mine could never forgive him for it. messed up you can't even bring it up to him >:(

oh man. gwen blames james for everything. jonas' death, the fact that she doesn't know anything about catherine (she got more answers from dr li), that she thought ellen deloria was her biological mother and only found out that she wasn't when they divorced, that butch is her former step-brother and now they have a warrior's bond forged from their parents' shitty marriage they both can't shake, that the overseer hates her, that she had to live underground for the first 19 years of her life...

she fully blames james for leaving her, for not teaching her anything useful for survival which is why she's fully unequipped for life outside the vault and had to learn to do things the hard way. she's killed people on her way to find him. she puts that blood on james' hands

[sweeter-innocence-fics]

Mom (Butch Deloria First Kiss Drabble)

Word Count: 369

The radroaches crunched under the weight of her baseball bat, gore flying in every direction. She frowned as some splattered onto her vault suit.

She’d been killing radroaches since she was ten years old. No big deal, right? And more than anything, it was worth it to see the smugness wiped off of big bad Butch Deloria’s face. If this was the last time she ever saw him – and it might be – then this is how she would remember him.

As soon as Ellen was safe, she straightened up and offered her a drink. The girl waved her off.

She didn’t have time to dwell on this. She needed to get out of this vault before the Overseer’s goons found her. She needed to find her father.

She almost walked into Butch when he suddenly appeared in the doorway. He was actually smiling at her. That was a novel experience. Normally, his smiles were cruel, taking pleasure in her pain (or Amata’s). Right now, he looked actually happy.

Must be nice.

“We did it! My mom’s gonna be okay! You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, man.”

He didn’t give her a chance to respond. He closed the distance between them and kissed her. It lacked finesse – a clumsy, bumping of the lips – but she felt a prickle of heat run down her neck all the same.

He smelled good, like cigarettes and cologne and pomade. After a moment, as if coming back into himself, Butch pulled away. His cheeks were flushed.

She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. He cleared his throat.

“I know it isn’t much, but I want you to have my Tunnel Snakes jacket.” He shrugged it off and handed it to her. She took it, feeling the warmth of it against her skin.

It was big on her, hanging loosely off her shoulders, but it was warm, and it was comfortable, and it smelled like him.

“It suits you,” he said. He moved closer to her, and for a moment, she thought he might be about to kiss her again, but instead, he brushed a stray hair off her face. “Stay safe out there, okay, Nosebleed?”

She could only nod.

Masterlists.

Taglist info.

[atomicbird101]

Sad Butch DeLoria Headcanon

Before leaving Vault 101, after packing his things, he goes to say goodbye to his mother one last time and at least try to make amends in case they never see each other again. Ellen tells him the story of how his father left and it's like "So Big / So Small" from Dear Evan Hansen, and it's bittersweet because she could never kick the drinking habit to be the best mom she could be for Butch.

~

"And I knew there would be moments that I'd miss.

And I knew there would be space I couldn't fill.

And I knew I'd come up short a million different ways,

And I did. And I do. And I will."

~

I like to think that she tried, but she just couldn't. I think maybe she resented Butch more and more as he grew up because he looked more and more like his dad, which caused her to take it out on him more when she was drunk. Although she was a terrible mother, (there's no denying nor excusing that) she does want him to know he can always come back home because she's not leaving anytime soon. Even if she's not sober, she's still there.

~

"Your mom isn't going anywhere. Your mom is staying right here.

Your mom isn't going anywhere. Your mom is staying right here,

No matter what. I'll be here."

~

And maybe he does go back for a day or two after Project Purity, even if it's just to tell Amata about the fate/coma of her best friend. Maybe he needs a brief sense of familiarity now that the Lone Wanderer is dead/could be dying. However, regardless of Ellen's condition, he can't stay, and she wonders for the rest of her life if things would've been different if she loved her son as much as he loved her. Either way, he's not at her side when she dies.

[m-u-n-c-h-y]

Since I’m back on my Butch DeLoria bullshit again, here’s some headcanons I came up with, and have continued to live rent free in my brain.

Despite it being so contrasting to the rowdy greaser image he projects,  Butch is surprisingly a neat and tidy person. It comes from years of cleaning up after his mom, who was generally a messy person. As well as his experience being a barber, and having it drilled into him that he needed to keep his space and tools clean to prevent any sanitary issues.

Speaking of his experience as a barber, out in the wasteland he could be considered a chemist. Knowing all the chemicals for dying and treating hair is just part of his job, but if he applied it outside of hairstyling, he’d actually be pretty good at it.

Butch has A LOT of issues with abandonment; he just hates the idea of being alone. A lot of this stems from his childhood, having to deal with Ellen’s parenting, and what ended up going down in the vault after the LW left.

Butch is, usually, really good with kids. He just has a way with speaking to them that they like and will listen to him. He says it’s because he talks to them, not at them, it ain’t that hard to understand.

Butch definitely had a crush on Paul Hannon Jr, he just never realized it until after Paulie died. It has severely fucked him up :)

[thecoolkidsbasement]

WIP Wednesday/Teaser Thursday Tag

I was tagged by @hellektr0 for this fun little exercise (which I appreciate ‘cause I’ve been dead on tumblr LOL) and so thought I’d post a little teaser of the next chapter of Inventor’s Absolution! I always seem to post teasers or bits and bobs from Winona chapters but never from Butch chapters, so here y’all go!

“How’s it looking out there?”

Looking back to the voice behind him, he found his mom lingering in the clinic, seeming well-rested despite her exhausted smile. She came to stand beside him, also watching the people eating and rustling themselves under blankets to sleep.

“S’alright, I guess. Got more people in today.” He shrugged vaguely in reply.

“That’s good. We should stick together in a time like this and look out for one another.” She said with her eyes panning across the floor, momentarily taking on a look of sorrow when she spotted the Kellan family. “I thought I heard Mike and his family was here… poor Jessica… we should make sure Wendy gets an extra blanket. Goodness, I can’t remember the last time I saw a child since all this started… poor little Wendy, she must be so lonely.”

“M’Sure she ain’t the only one.” So many people had died already, and he didn’t want to think about the same happening to a kid... but his mom was right, wasn’t she? When was the last time he saw a kid since all this started?

Frankly, Butch didn’t want to think about that, either.

“You eat dinner yet, Butchie? I see you working hard around here for Amata, I worry you’re not eating enough.”

“Not like there’s much t’go around,” He said with a feeble snort that made her shoot a scrutinizing look.

“How about I grab us some dinner?” She inquired hopefully as the look faded into a small smile. “We can sit together and eat... like we use to.”

Thanks again for tagging me love! I also wish to tag @corvegaassemblyplant, @imperialistbullshit, and any of my other writer mutuals who’d like to take a stab at it as well! :)

Happy reading, happy writing everyone!

~Faerie

[clickbaitcowboy]

Here’s my finished Six Fanarts! Thanks to everyone for your suggestions!

[starions]

what if butch’s dad is alive in the wasteland and butch meets him and finds out his dad truly loved him and tried desperately to get inside the vault after it was closed

[distractedrighter]

A Short-Sighted Man, Chapter 2: The Morning After

Rating: E (like, very E)

Universe: Fallout 3

Pairing: f!Lone Wanderer x Butch DeLoria

Prompt: It's prom night, and Felicity (unintentionally) makes a bet with Butch that she's not prepared to cash in. *eyebrow waggles* Eventual plot, but let's be honest, it's an excuse for me to write smut while I rewrite my currently unfinished fic with this same pairing *shrug*

Chapter Summary: Felicity returns the spare vault suit to Butch.

Excerpt: Felicity gripped the folded vault suit in her fist as she mentally prepared herself to knock on the DeLoria’s apartment door. She really didn’t want to be there. Butch’s taunting from yesterday night was still lingering in her thoughts every time she saw the puddled suit on the floor. His mom’s puddled suit, no less. It was a horrible, awful reminder of the brainless decision she made with an equally brainless individual, and she needed to get it out of her possession immediately.

Warnings: Explicit language, explicit sexual content

Tags: Slightly canon divergent, enemies to lovers, Lone becomes a sugar momma, Butch has a plan but he falls in love, there will be plot i promise, but not this chapter!

[reanimatedcourier]

How to Write Indigenous Characters Without Looking like a Jackass:

Update as of December 26th, 2020: I have added a couple new sections about naming and legal terms, as well as a bit of reading on the Cherokee Princess phenomenon.

Boozhoo (hello) Fallout fandom! I'm a card-carrying Anishinaabe delivering this rough guide about writing Indigenous characters because wow, do I see a lot of shit.

Let's get something out of the way first: Fallout's portrayal of Indigenous people is racist. From a vague definition of "tribal" to the claims of them being "savage" and "uncivilized" mirror real-world stereotypes used to dehumanize us. Fallout New Vegas' narrated intro has Ron Perlman saying Mr. House "rehabilitated" tribals to create New Vegas' Three Families. You know. Rehabilitate. As if we are animals. Top it off with an erasure of Indigenous people in the American Southwest and no real tribe names, and you've got some pretty shitty representation. The absence of Native American as a race option in the GECK isn't too great, given that two Native characters are marked "Caucasian" despite being brown. Butch Deloria is a pretty well-known example of this effect. (Addendum: Indigenous people can have any mix of dominant and recessive traits, as well as present different phenotypes. What bothers me is it doesn't accommodate us or mixed people, which is another post entirely.)

As a precautionary warning: this post and the sources linked will discuss racism and genocide. There will also be discussion of multiple kinds of abuse.

Now, your best approach will be to pick a nation or tribe and research them. However, what follows will be general references.

Terms that may come up in your research include Aboriginal/Native Canadian, American Indian/Native American, Inuit, Métis, and Mestizo. The latter two refer to cultural groups created after the discovery of the so-called New World. (Addendum made September 5th, 2020: Mestizo has negative connotations and originally meant "half breed" so stick with referring to your mixed Latine and Indigenous characters as mixed Indigenous or simply by the name of their people [Maya, Nahua].)

As a note, not every mixed person is Métis or Mestizo. If you are, say, Serbian and Anishinaabe, you would be mixed, but not Métis (the big M is important here, as it refers to a specific culture). Even the most liberal definition caps off at French and British ancestry alongside Indigenous (some say Scottish and English). Mestizo works the same, since it refers to descendants of Spanish conquistadors/settlers and Indigenous people.

Trouble figuring out whose land is where? No problem, check out this map.

Drawing

Don't draw us with red skin. It's offensive and stereotypical.

Tutorial for Native Skintones

Tutorial for Mixed Native Skintones

Why Many Natives Have Long Hair (this would technically fit better under another category, but give your Native men long hair!)

If You're Including Traditional Wear, Research! It's Out There

Languages

Remember, there are a variety of languages spoken by Indigenous people today. No two tribes will speak the same language, though there are some that are close and may have loan words from each other (Cree and Anishinaabemowin come to mind). Make sure your Diné (you may know them as Navajo) character doesn't start dropping Cree words.

Here's a Site With a Map and Voice Clips

Here's an Extensive List of Amerindian Languages

Keep in mind there are some sounds that have no direct English equivalents. But while we're at it, remember a lot of us speak English, French, Spanish, or Portuguese. The languages of the countries that colonized us.

Words in Amerindian languages tend to be longer than English ones and are in the format of prefix + verb + suffix to get concepts across. Gaawiin miskwaasinoon is a complete sentence in Anishinaabemowin, for example (it is not red).

Names

Surprisingly, we don't have names like Passing Dawn or Two-Bears-High-Fiving in real life. A lot of us have, for lack of better phrasing, white people names. We may have family traditions of passing a name down from generation to generation (I am the fourth person in my maternal line to have my middle name), but not everyone is going to do that. If you do opt for a name from a specific tribe, make sure you haven't chosen a last name from another tribe.

Baby name sites aren't reliable, because most of the names on there will be made up by people who aren't Indigenous. That site does list some notable exceptions and debunks misconceptions.

Here's a list of last names from the American census.

Indian Names

You may also hear "spirit names" because that's what they are for. You know the sort of mystical nature-related name getting slapped on an Indigenous character? Let's dive into that for a moment.

The concept of a spirit name seems to have gotten mistranslated at some point in time. It is the name Creator calls you throughout all your time both here and in the spirit world. These names are given (note the word usage) to you in a ceremony performed by an elder. This is not done lightly.

A lot of imitations of this end up sounding strange because they don't follow traditional guidelines. (I realize this has spread out of the original circle, but Fallout fans may recall other characters in Honest Hearts and mods that do this. They have really weird and racist results.)

If you're not Indigenous: don't try this. You will be wrong.

Legal Terms

Now, sometimes the legal term (or terms) for a tribe may not be what they refer to themselves as. A really great example of this would be the Oceti Sakowin and "Sioux". How did that happen, you might be wondering. Smoky Mountain News has an article about this word and others, including the history of these terms.

For the most accurate information, you are best off having your character refer to themselves by the name their nation uses outside of legislation. A band name would be pretty good for this (Oglala Lakota, for example). I personally refer to myself by my band.

Cowboys

And something the Fallout New Vegas fans might be interested in, cowboys! Here's a link to a post with several books about Black and Indigenous cowboys in the Wild West.

Representation: Stereotypes and Critical Thought

Now, you'll need to think critically about why you want to write your Indigenous character a certain way. Here is a comprehensive post about stereotypes versus nuance.

Familiarize yourself with tropes. The Magical Indian is a pretty prominent one, with lots of shaman-type characters in movies and television shows. This post touches on its sister tropes (The Magical Asian and The Magical Negro), but is primarily about the latter.

Say you want to write an Indigenous woman. Awesome! Characters I love to see. Just make sure you're aware of the stereotypes surrounding her and other Women of Color.

Word to the wise: do not make your Indigenous character an alcoholic. "What, so they can't even drink?" You might be asking. That is not what I'm saying. There is a pervasive stereotype about Drunk Indians, painting a reaction to trauma as an inherent genetic failing, as stated in this piece about Indigenous social worker Jessica Elm's research. The same goes for drugs. Ellen Deloria is an example of this stereotype.

Familiarize yourself with and avoid the Noble Savage trope. This was used to dehumanize us and paint us as "childlike" for the sake of a plot device. It unfortunately persists today.

Casinos are one of the few ways for tribes to make money so they can build homes and maintain roads. However, some are planning on diversifying into other business ventures.

There's a stereotype where we all live off government handouts. Buddy, some of these long-term boil water advisories have been in place for over twenty years. The funding allocated to us as a percentage is 0.39%: less than half a percent to fight the coronavirus. They don't give us money.

"But what about people claiming to be descended from a Cherokee princess?" Cherokee don't and never had anything resembling princesses. White southerners made that up prior to the Civil War. As the article mentions, they fancied themselves "defending their lands as the Indians did".

Also, don't make your Indigenous character a cannibal. Cannibalism is a serious taboo in a lot of our cultures, particularly northern ones.

Our lands are not cursed. We don't have a litany of curses to cast on white people in found footage films. Seriously. We have better things to be doing. Why on earth would our ancestors be haunting you when they could be with their families? Very egotistical assumption.

Indigenous Ties and Blood Quantum

Blood quantum is a colonial system that was initially designed to "breed out the Indian" in people. To dilute our bloodlines until we assimilated properly into white society. NPR has an article on it here.

However, this isn't how a vast majority of us define our identities. What makes us Indigenous is our connections (or reconnection) to our families, tribes, bands, clans, and communities.

Blood quantum has also historically been used to exclude Black Natives from tribal enrollment, given that it was first based on appearance. So, if you looked Black and not the image of "Indian" the white census taker had in his brain, you were excluded and so were your descendants.

Here are two tumblrs that talk about Black Indigenous issues and their perspectives. They also talk about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of Australia.

However, if you aren't Indigenous, don't bring up blood quantum. Don't. This is an issue you should not be speaking about.

Cherokee Princess Myth

"Princess" was not a real position in any tribe. The European idea of monarchy did not suddenly manifest somewhere else. The closest probable approximation may have been the daughter of a chief or other politically prominent person. But princess? No.

Here is an article talking about possible origins of this myth. Several things are of note here: women from other tribes may have bee shoved under this label and the idea of a "Cherokee Princess" had been brought up to explain the sudden appearance of a brown-skinned (read: half Black) family member.

For a somewhat more in depth discussion of why, specifically, this myth gets touted around so often, Timeline has this piece.

Religion

Our religions are closed. We are not going to tell you how we worship. Mostly because every little bit we choose to share gets appropriated. Smudging is the most recent example. If you aren't Indigenous, that's smoke cleansing. Smudging is done in a specific way with ceremonies and prayers.

Now, a lot of us were forcibly converted. Every residential school was run by Christians. So plenty of us are Catholic, Baptist, Anglican, Lutheran, etc. Catholicism in Latin America also has influence from the Indigenous religions in that region.

Having your Indigenous character pray or carry rosaries wouldn't be a bad thing, if that religion was important to them. Even if they are atheist, if they lived outside of a reserve or other Indigenous communities, they might have Christian influences due to its domination of the Western world.

Settler Colonialism and the White Savior Trope

Now we've come to our most painful section yet. Fallout unintentionally has an excellent agent of settler-colonialism, in particular the Western Christian European variety, in Caesar's Legion and Joshua Graham.

(Addendum: Honest Hearts is extremely offensive in its portrayal of Indigenous people, and egregiously shows a white man needing to "civilize" tribals and having to teach them basic skills. These skills include cooking, finding safe water, and defending themselves from other tribes.)

Before we dive in, here is a post explaining the concept of cultural Christianity, if you are unfamiliar with it.

We also need to familiarize ourselves with The White Man's Burden. While the poem was written regarding the American-Philippine war, it still captures the attitudes toward Indigenous folks all over the world at the time.

As this article in Teen Vogue points out, white people like to believe they need to save People of Color. You don't need to. People of Color can save themselves.

Now, cultural Christianity isn't alone on this side of the pond. Writer Teju Cole authored a piece on the White Savior Industrial Complex to describe mission trips undertaken by white missionaries to Africa to feed their egos.

Colonialism has always been about the acquisition of wealth. To share a quote from this paper about the ongoing genocide of Indigenous peoples: "Negatively, [settler colonialism] strives for the dissolution of native societies. Positively, it erects a new colonial society on the expropriated land base—as I put it, settler colonizers come to stay: invasion is a structure not an event. In its positive aspect, elimination is an organizing principal of settler-colonial society rather than a one-off (and superseded) occurrence. The positive outcomes of the logic of elimination can include officially encouraged miscegenation, the breaking-down of native title into alienable individual freeholds, native citizenship, child abduction, religious conversion, resocialization in total institutions such as missions or boarding schools, and a whole range of cognate biocultural assimilations. All these strategies, including frontier homicide, are characteristic of settler colonialism. Some of them are more controversial in genocide studies than others." (Positive, here, is referring to "benefits" for the colonizers. Indigenous people don't consider colonization beneficial.)

An example of a non-benefit, the Church Rock disaster had Diné children playing in radioactive water so the company involved could avoid bad publicity.

Moving on, don't sterilize your Indigenous people. Sterilization, particularly when it is done without consent, has long been used as a tool by the white system to prevent "undesirables" (read, People of Color and disabled people) from having children. Somehow, as of 2018, it wasn't officially considered a crime.

The goal of colonization was to eliminate us entirely. Millions died because of exposure to European diseases. Settlers used to and still do separate our children from us for reasons so small as having a dirty dish in the sink. You read that right, a single dirty dish in your kitchen sink was enough to get your children taken and adopted out to white families. This information was told to me by an Indigenous social work student whose name I will keep anonymous.

It wasn't until recently they made amendments to the Indian Act that wouldn't automatically render Indigenous women non-status if they married someone not Indigenous. It also took much too long for Indigenous families to take priority in child placement over white ones. Canada used to adopt Indigenous out to white American families. The source for that statement is further down, but adoption has been used as a tool to destroy cultures.

I am also begging you to cast aside whatever colonialist systems have told you about us. We are alive. People with a past, not people of the past, which was wonderfully said here by Frank Waln.

Topics to Avoid if You Aren't Indigenous

Child Separation. Just don't. We deserve to remain with our families and our communities. Let us stay together and be happy that way.

Assimilation schools. Do not bring up a tool for cultural genocide that has left lasting trauma in our communities.

W/ndigos. I don't care that they're in Fallout 76. They shouldn't be. Besides, you never get them right anyway.

Sk/nwalkers. Absolutely do not. Diné stories are not your playthings either.

I've already talked about drugs and alcohol. Do your research with compassion and empathy in mind. Indigenous people have a lot of pain and generational trauma. You will need to be extremely careful having your Indigenous characters use drugs and alcohol. If your character can be reduced to their (possible) substance abuse issues, you need to step back and rework it. As mentioned in Jessica Elm's research, remember that it isn't inherent to us.

For our final note: remember that we're complex, autonomous human beings. Don't use our deaths to further the stories of your white characters. Don't reduce us to some childlike thing that needs to be raised and civilized by white characters. We interact with society a little differently than you do, but we interact nonetheless.

Meegwetch (thank you) for reading! Remember to do your research and portray us well, but also back off when you are told by an Indigenous person.

This may be updated in the future, it depends on what information I come across or, if other Indigenous people are so inclined, what is added to this post.

[dankar-camoran]

A little something for the holiday

cw: descriptions of violence towards insects,

Unpolished, unedited, terrible ficlet about a terrible man

Butch DeLoria was going to listen his mother die, and there was nothing he could do about it.

He didn’t know how many radroaches were in the room with his mother, but even one was too many. They looked bigger in the dark, and they were big enough as it was.

But that was his mom in there, screaming for help, yelping in pain whenever one of the roaches struck at her. She may not have always done right by him, she may not have been perfect, but she didn’t deserve this. Nobody deserves to be left to die because their son was too much of a coward to squash some bugs.

Tears welled in his eyes. He started shouting for security, for any of the other Tunnel Snakes, for anybody to come save his mom.

“Move.”

Butch jumped at the sound. He looked over and there was somebody standing just a step away from him and the door. It looked like a person, but with gray skin, red eyes and ears that ended at points. He had to have been some kind of mutant.

“I won’t ask you again, boy. I’m quite hungry, and I think I deserve a little morsel or two.”

The mutant was sneering at him. Butch could almost feel himself turn pale as he almost fell over taking a few steps out of the way between the door and the sudden guest to the DeLoria home.

Whoever he was, he wasted no time, striding to the door, casually hitting the button to open it, and just as casually entering. A semblance of rational thought came to Butch. Whoever this was, he must have gotten into the Vault with the roaches. He said he was hungry, and Butch had just let him into the same room as his mother.

Above all other emotions whirling through Butch in that moment, was one of righteous fury. This mutant wasn’t about to eat his mother. He grabbed his switchblade out of his pocket and raised it up, ready to kill anybody and anything that wanted to mess with his family.

And then he froze, when it became clear that this mutant wasn’t hungry for human flesh.

The roaches had turned to hiss at the sound of the door, and one lunged at the gray stranger, only to be caught in mid air. It writhed and squirmed for a few moments, before its assailant brought it up to his face, and ripped its head off with his teeth. Its body continued to twitch with life as he dropped it, but it was no longer a threat.

The other two roaches, unmoved by the death of the first, moved to make their own attacks on the interloper, still chewing on his first fallen foe. A roach scuttled forward about to jump in the same manner that had been the folly of its fellow, when the stranger took the initiative and slammed one hand down to pin the bug to the ground while using his other to rip a leg off, which was eaten.

Butch and his mother both were slack jawed at the sight before them, but the third and final roach was unperturbed as the stranger continued to dismember and devour the second, and it moved to strike at his hand. But the stranger was ready for this, and with a manic grin, he withdrew his hand from the now nearly legless second roach, to swat at the third, cancelling its momentum and bringing it to the ground. Without missing a beat, he jumped into the ear, and dove elbowfirst onto its thorax with a sickening squishing noise.

Moments later, he was following the pattern he had established only moments before, and began feasting on the roach, this time going for the meat in its center mass, scarlet eyes filled with bizarre satisfaction.

The three of them were silent (except for the sounds of chewing) for what felt like days, when the stranger finally stood back up, apparently satiated, and headed towards the still open door.

Ellen DeLoria called out after him, in a voice that was too baffled, frightened, and pissed to be grateful, “Who in the fuck are you!?”

The stranger turned back towards her and cocked his head with a sly grin, face covered in roach gristle, “Valen Dreth,” he said, proudly, and then, as though irritated with the lack of reaction he repeated it with emphasis “Valen DRETH!”

When Ellen and her son still didn’t respond, his face twisted into the same sneer he had arrived with, and he walked out the door and disappeared down the hallway.

[datura-tea]

i just realized something. my player characters with bethesda-mandated family (lone wanderer gwen and sole survivor sofia) are estranged from that family. meanwhile my couriers (moz, kiwi, and avery) have pretty good relationships with their families :) that's what happens when a backstory isn't forced to your character i guess!!

details under the cut

gwen and james, though stuck in close proximity in the vault for 19 years, are as distant as can be. james has his work, his projects. gwen has all the turbulent drama of childhood and teenage life. they have their moments, but otherwise? nothing much. except for lectures and reprimands, they don't really talk, especially post-james and ellen's divorce. gwen has more of a relationship with ellen and butch than james.

their relationship gets worse topside, when after all gwen has done to get to james is pushed to the side because all james can think of is project purity. so after he dies, what does gwen do? let his pet project die as well. she doesn't even know what the passcode number is, when sarah lyons asks her. how the fuck would she know? her father barely told her anything. she didn't know ellen deloria wasn't her biological mom until after james divorced ellen and told gwen the truth. she's not even sure if he loved her for herself, or if he just loved her the way a parent loves their child - as an extension of themself and their values. now that he's dead, she'll never know for sure.

sofia has a good relationship with her family back home in the philippines, all six siblings and both parents and both sets of grandparents, and countless uncles and aunts and cousins of them. the problem is nate. and shaun, eventually. the thing is, sofia never imagined herself marrying a foreigner, much less a blue-eyed american soldier. she never would have married nate if he hadn't gotten her pregnant. but with abortion being illegal in the philippines, and with nate being "a true gentleman" in his words, there was little else she could do.

in boston, a shotgun wedding. which turned into a loveless marriage pretty quick, once the honeymoon phase wore off. homesickness. morning sickness. anti-asian racist microagressions from neighbors who've never met a filipino before, even though america annexed the philippines decades ago. a miserable life, freshly post-partum and friendless and jobless, all alone in a big house with only a baby and a robot butler for company. who wouldn't fall into a deep depression?

and don't get me started on shaun. sofia placed all her hopes and dreams and joys on meeting her baby boy and watching him grow up, teaching him tagalog and sharing with him all her favorite meals and memories. can you imagine how sofia felt, when he got kidnapped? when she spent her first year in the post-apocalypse relentlessly trying to find him? when she killed kellogg in her rage and grief over him? when, finally, they meet and he isn't a baby but an old man, the leader of the group she's looking to dismantle, and she realizes that he came from her but he's not of her, he doesn't know her and she doesn't know him, and she hates everything he stands for, but still she's his mother and she loves him but she'll never like him? can you imagine???

meanwhile: moz and her big family with her mothers dalisay and philomena, her big brother lakan with his wife guadalupe and their eight kids (all adopted), and her husband ulysses and their child ree, plus everyone in the painted hairs, everyone in their town whom she calls tito and tita and ate and kuya and bunso and totoy and nene :) nothing but love and understanding there!!

kiwi and their family of butchers and tailors - grandmother, father, mother, and brothers, all adept with shiny sharp things. strict but loving, in the "i want what i think is best for you" kind of way. kiwi would have stayed if their father didn't keep forcing the butchershop and their straight marriage to a family friend's daughter on them. honestly if kiwi went home, they'd find their father a changed man - he only wants kiwi to be happy, really; if wearing sequins and being the right-hand man of mr house is the key to that happiness, then so be it!

avery is an only son, raised by a single mother after his ncr ranger father died. he and his mother will defend each other to death - which is why avery set fire to his mother's asshole (now ex-)boyfriend's house when he hurt avery's mom. on the run, avery still writes letters home. he never leaves a return address until after he gains amnesty for his arson charge. by then, his return address is the lucky 38. his mom sends him one hell of a letter. the first thing he does after winning the battle of hoover dam is go home to his mom :)