Question for you guys.
Jul. 14th, 2014 09:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynI'm currently trying to pull together a plot outline for a Falloutverse fanfic, an idea I've had off and on for a few years now and keep ditching. I figure I have more of a chance of finishing the thing if I do an outline and know where I'm going, which is more than I actually had for either Who Ya Gonna Owl or Hellblazer Hogwarts (I had vague conceptions of how I wanted to finish those two at best). Right now I have most of the basic high points planned out under 'stuff I want to see' but there's a point that I'm a little stuck on.
According to Fallout canon, the founder of the Brotherhood of Steel was a married man with a wife and teenaged son when the Great War happened. Shortly after the Great War he led a bunch of survivors to a safer location, but the journey took them through some dangerous territory and got them attacked at least once. The worst of the attacks resulted in a lot of people dying, including his wife, but not his son.
I'm trying to figure out how to handle this without it coming off like a fridging. Canon has Roger as a member of the US Army. It doesn't say what his wife did for a living, although the prewar Fallout universe was socially late 1950s with a few notable exceptions, so up until now I've been acting on the assumption that she was a housewife. I'm half tempted to have her display some previously unseen elements of badass before the major attack and then have her body found surrounded by dead enemies that she brought down herself, but I don't know how tacky that would be....
I'm also reasonably sure I'm going to have to split this thing into two parts, the first being the run-up to the Great War and the second being the Exodus itself (this is the term they use in canon for the move to a safer location, not my choice). But I can handle that. I'm just trying to make sure that the canon death doesn't seem like a gratuitous thing done to provide Painful Horrible Motivation. Probably the fact that a hell of a lot of other people died in the same event will help with that, right?
According to Fallout canon, the founder of the Brotherhood of Steel was a married man with a wife and teenaged son when the Great War happened. Shortly after the Great War he led a bunch of survivors to a safer location, but the journey took them through some dangerous territory and got them attacked at least once. The worst of the attacks resulted in a lot of people dying, including his wife, but not his son.
I'm trying to figure out how to handle this without it coming off like a fridging. Canon has Roger as a member of the US Army. It doesn't say what his wife did for a living, although the prewar Fallout universe was socially late 1950s with a few notable exceptions, so up until now I've been acting on the assumption that she was a housewife. I'm half tempted to have her display some previously unseen elements of badass before the major attack and then have her body found surrounded by dead enemies that she brought down herself, but I don't know how tacky that would be....
I'm also reasonably sure I'm going to have to split this thing into two parts, the first being the run-up to the Great War and the second being the Exodus itself (this is the term they use in canon for the move to a safer location, not my choice). But I can handle that. I'm just trying to make sure that the canon death doesn't seem like a gratuitous thing done to provide Painful Horrible Motivation. Probably the fact that a hell of a lot of other people died in the same event will help with that, right?
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Date: 2014-07-14 08:32 pm (UTC)Or! Have it not be violence, but sickness or hunger that does her in. Harder to be driven by REVENGE when there's no enemy for him to fight. Maybe she insists that they leave her behind to keep their son alive. That gives her some agency as well.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-14 08:38 pm (UTC)'After burying the scientists, Maxson's soldiers and their families began the Exodus to Lost Hills. Raider attacks inflicted a heavy toll of casualties, including Maxson's wife. His teenage son survived.'
So that's what I have to work with.