#muse : shaun ;; and i can still hear the sound of that dream

[gwinnetts]

@broadcastm​ sent an ask from the multi-muse meme: 18. which two muses would immediately fight each other if they met?

zetta and shaun are the really, really easy answer. because once the initial arrival-in-the-institute dust settles... well. actually, even before then. shaun’s utter conviction that the institute is doing the right thing, always, no matter the cost to wastelanders — wastelanders like the people zetta has finally started to accept as her own — makes her flare up, bad. and she comes in loaded with accusations to begin with... and then you add in the whole synth slavery issue... and their personalities... shaun basically doesn’t get a moment’s rest when zetta’s visiting

now for the more fun answers:

zetta and maccready also tend to knock heads whenever they first meet. their attitudes just automatically create sparks. whether they’re the good, fun kind or the bad kind depends entirely on the situation

god, is there a combination that doesn’t include zetta... i’m sure there are, but she’s going to be in a lot of these...

the three of mine most primed to throw down are zetta, maccready, dean domino, and kyoko. so, god, any combination of them would be a disaster. i personally hope to never see zetta and dean meet. the only way i can see that going down is that he’s getting punched in the face and she’s getting shot

[gwinnetts-archive]

⭐️⭐️

headcanons for our muses ;; accepting | @worldwarvet

>  shaun & bucky

the first time shaun takes a picture of a person, instead of scenery or objects, he takes a picture of bucky

but he doesn’t show it to bucky, like he shows his other photos. it’s because it was an experiment, shaun tells himself, it’s a trial run, it’s not technically good yet, and he’s a perfectionist. if he shows someone something he did, it has to meet his own standards first, and this one definitely doesn’t

years and years and years later, though, and shaun still has it. there’s a very small album that he keeps of personal pieces, and that’s one of them. the reminder that he had a friend, once. someone unique, someone brought into the institute for a higher purpose. someone like him

and just like the old flag, carefully folded and framed, the glass shattered, the flag itself dirty and stained — obtained on his request from the sleepy abandoned neighborhood in the hills by vault 111… it’s a reminder of his own goals, his purpose, and the legacy he wants to leave behind when he’s gone

>  zetta & bucky

i hope bucky’s prepared for zetta to make a very loud point of treating him like a person. he probably isn’t, because she can get pretty aggressive about it depending on the situation and how he reacts

part of it comes from the fact that she’s clearly expected to treat him like a weapon, both by him and by shaun, and she doesn’t like being told what to do. part of it is that she doesn’t know what shaun’s game is, assigning bucky to her, and she doesn’t like not knowing, so she’s trying to exert some control over the situation by trying to dictate how they’re going to interact

but part of it comes from the fact that her mom, quite frankly, tried to strip zetta of her own personhood. zetta’s mother wanted her to be a perfect little doll to dress up and pose at will, something she could show off. (and zetta’s relationship informs a LOT of how she deals with things in general.) but as a result, zetta not only bucks (no pun intended) hard anyone who tries to do anything remotely similar to her, but she adamantly refuses to do the same to anyone else

and that’s why she’s gonna get aggressive about it with bucky. like, it’s legitimately going to make her mad that he’s adopted the “but i’m not a person” mindset, on top of making her uncomfortable of the position it puts her in so she converts that feeling into anger. rip bucky im so sorry, this is the weirdest way for someone to do this

[gwinnetts-archive]

📂

useless headcanons ;; accepting | @worldwarvet

>  shaun

i don’t think i’ve actually talked much about his photography habit on the blog, if at all. it’s his one hobby that’s unrelated to literally anything to do with the institute. … except, i can’t really say that, either, because his favorite subject to take photos of IS the institute itself. he’s more of a scenery photographer than anything else, and since he’s lived in a high-tech hole in the ground his entire life, he’s only really had the one option

it started when he was still a kid, and had taken apart a camera out of boredom for the sake of seeing how it works and putting it back together. he was making sure it still worked once he was done, took some sample pictures, then… just… kept picking it back up again to take more

he didn’t start sneaking into the disused hallways until he was about in the middle of his teen years, and he got bored of taking pictures of the same old, same old. if we assume shaun reynolds, then his mother was a rebellious little shit, and his father had a bit of a mischievous streak himself, and these things being in his blood definitely contributed to his decision to sneak off. but once he got old enough to start working in robotics, he became too busy to regularly break rules for the sake of taking pictures. (and besides, those rules stopped applying to him anyway, as they were curfew and boundaries for the minors, so that sucked some of the fun out of that)

as director, shaun has settled down and is content to take pictures of the atrium, the labs, the gardens they HAVE to have somewhere that we just don’t see… he still visits the older parts of the institute, but it’s for the sake of his goals, for his ambitions, and don’t have much of anything to do with fun any more. but hey, at least he has his own personal dark room now. perks of the job, right?

[gwinnetts-archive]

// ... and then i ended up coming up with a verse with variations for shaun where he visits the surface when he’s thirty

pros: surface shaun surface shaun, experimenting with what his personality might have been like before we see him in fo4, optional seeing what paths shaun would take to get revenge if he chose to go that route before he was director, optional releasing the sosu wwaaaayy early, shaun meeting codsworth, the hilarity of the concept of shaun thinking he heard someone coming so in his rush he forgot to close one (1) bracket and he ends up on the wrong end of the commonwealth

cons: its 2257. who the fuck is alive yet, sound off. knowledge of history / timeline of the commonwealth required for all parties, as is making up more shit to fill in the gaps. 

[gwinnetts-archive]

// an extremely common interpretation of shaun — to the point i don’t think i’ve seen someone not do this yet — seems to be that his ego is easily threatened when someone questions or challenges him, his beliefs, or the institute, and that when that happens, he gets angry, huffy, and/or even petulant and hissy fit-y

canon suggests the opposite, tho

shaun’s arrogance is something that can’t be missed or denied, and it’s a key component of who he is. but it’s the kind where he is completely certain that he’s right. this, coupled with his controlled behavior, means it’s very difficult to shake his facade. he isn’t moved when someone offers or pushes an opinion contrary to his own

he does — eventually — lose patience with a non-institute aligned sole survivor. but it takes near the end of the game for that to happen. and if it takes that long for someone who is, despite whatever he might say (even to himself), further past his emotional defenses than anyone else, imagine how well he can hold it together against literally anyone else, y’know?

[gwinnetts-archive]

Acanthus for Shaun

plant symbolism ;; accepting | @verrado

>  shaun

Acanthus - Is your muse artistically inclined? What sort of mediums do they prefer to work in?

surprisingly, yes — shaun is into photography

(this stems from one playthrough when all the containers in his room spawned cameras in them, and while i know this is 100% just rng being rng, i decided to make it a lil headcanon and have kept it ever since)

for his subjects, he prefers scenery / architecture, so all of his photographs are of various locations in the institute, including the older areas that have since been abandoned. most of those ones, though, come from later in his life, since that’s when he’d have more ready access to such places — but if someone found some of his older albums, they might be able to glimpse at the photographs from when he was still just starting out. like any artist, he’s a bit embarrassed by them, but he isn’t the type to discard old work — he wants to keep a record of his progress... and his memories of years growing up

[gwinnetts-archive]

// one of my favorite things about writing shaun is how secretly sentimental he is. granted, it’s only with a select few things, and it is extremely rare for him to express it, but it’s definitely there and it’s important and it makes him feel properly human

one of the things i hate most about writing shaun is his gotdamn unwillingness to express that sentimentality until it’s too late, when if he’d just be fucking straightforward about certain emotional things, maybe he’d be able to have an actual genuine dialogue with his parent. it wouldn’t magically fix everything if he did — he’s still completely convinced that he’s right about pretty much everything, and goal-oriented to a fault at this point and as a result manipulative as shit, but goddammit it’d make it possible to take at least one step in the right direction

And Yet,

[gwinnetts-archive]

shaun // info

Shaun is open to threads from all Sole Survivors (once they've reached the Institute) and all Institute personnel (including synths still in the Institute). Any other characters will require plotting. When there isn't a SoSu in play, Shaun's parents will default to Zetta and Riley. Very open to discussing headcanons with SoSu players. I portray him as aroace.

My interpretation of Shaun's choices in canon is going to be centered on the fact that he knew he was dying. His plans were very near completion; this was the last stretch. His ultimate concern was securing the Institute's safety, which required it to be self-sufficient and to have more control over the surface.

His decision to awaken the SoSu, though, wasn't practical. It was personal. This was his last chance, and he wanted to see what his surviving parent was like, if they would care about him, if they were enough like him to love the Institute as he did. And he wanted to allow himself a modicum of revenge against Kellogg for what happened to his deceased parent.

My perception of Shaun is that he is bull-headed, he rarely admits he was wrong, and he values the Institute's well-being over anything else. He isn't prone to seeing from other people's perspective. But he is highly intelligent, he plans for the long run, he is incredibly dedicated, and very quietly sentimental. He has an interest in photography, and he is the leader of a generation of slaveholders. He has done great evil to the surface, and great good for his own people. 

I intend to depict him as human, while not excusing the things he is responsible for or his faults. Despite the evils he is responsible for, I’m not interested in playing him purely as a villain, and have no interest in threads or plots centered on victimizing the other character without prior discussion. I need to be comfortable with the mun before I’m willing to write these kinds of scenes.

As Shaun Reynolds, he is considered very much to be his parents' son. He has Riley's mild reactions, his charisma, his steadiness. From his mother, he has her intelligence, her penchant for long-term planning, her stubbornness. Physically, he looks extremely similar to Riley, with the only differences (aside from his age and beard) being in his nose and jawline, which are more similar to Zetta's. But he is also still a product of the environment and people that raised him: Institute-aloof, and with an ends justifies the means mentality.

For other SoSus, I'll treat his traits as being more nurture than nature, but his canon personality was just utterly perfect for the characters I chose for his parents, so I wanted to mention it since it factors into that particular interpretation of him.

[gwinnetts]

tag drop 05: muses pt1

// 

[gwinnetts-archive]

@ipsesclus​ booped the heart

It is time.

Shaun has been waiting for this moment. And now... It’s here. His father has found his way into the Institute. Shaun has watched every bit of the Watchers footage recording his journey through the Commonwealth, listened to all information gathered by undercover synths and coursers. He has done all he can to learn about this man, but indirect observation can only teach him so much.

No longer does he have to listen to word of mouth and rewind black and white footage. This should be the last time Shaun has to watch his father through a screen, and even then, this is live footage. He is walking through the back hallways now, and every step brings him closer. Shaun clasps his hands behind his back, rubbing his fingers over his opposite palm restlessly. Just a few more minutes of patience. Just a few...

[gwinnetts-archive]

‘ name a guilty pleasure. ’ (shaun)

interview the muses | @beenpole

"I suppose I can admit I find it pleasing to simply sit in the atrium and people watch.” Shaun inclines his head. “I know, that doesn’t sound like much, but please understand, being idle is something of a luxury for me.”

[gwinnetts-archive]

tag drop 07 : supports ✔️

zay // x6-88 // dean domino // shaun // edward deegan // jack cabot // link // braska // saïx // will turner // temp muses