Replaying Part I Right Now, And I Have Some Questions For Joel Concerning This Photo In His Living Room.

Replaying Part I right now, and I have some questions for Joel concerning this photo in his living room. 🤨

Feeling a little manic, the last couple of days. Not sure why that is. I had to stop taking my meds because of my cognitive issues (since we can't be sure it's not the medication, rather than long COVID, until we do some more investigating) so it could be related to that. The last time I was manic I wrote about 2/3rds of GYOW embarrassingly quickly. And I've written about 8k words since yesterday, so...at least I have that going for me?

Why yes, I did, in fact, scream when I saw this.

Brb screaming

This is actually a great preview of the next chapter of As Long as You Follow.

Also, good to know I'm not the only one who apparently looked up "sturdiest late '90s trucks that probably would still run 20+ years after the apocalypse" and was also greeted with Google being like "let me tell you about the Toyota Hilux" looool

TOYOTA HILUX TUESDAY

This came across my dashboard and so I am reblogging it again because it makes me cry.

Update: I continue to work on all things! Nothing is abandoned! New chapters will come!

The actual, fun and exciting update: I'm going to start recommending a few AMAZING TLOU fics that you might have missed on my blog every Saturday for the next while.

I hope you find some new great reads to keep you going while we wait for season 2 - our fandom is seriously so freaking talented, and there are SO many incredibly written fics out there that I want to yell about a bunch of them! Please reblog!

These fics will vary re: how closely they stick to canon and what themes they explore, but you can expect them all to be wonderfully written and, obviously, heavily feature Joel Miller.

Some of these, including this weeks, may include mature content - make sure to read and heed the trigger warnings listed on ao3!

I have never really been interested in fan fiction with OCs, so I missed out on this week's recommendation for a long time and I bet a lot of you did too. It's both a wonderfully told Joel love story and a fic that, in my opinion, really honours the world and characters of TLOU.

Go Your Own Way by @chronicallyonlinewriter 232,575 words || 31 chapters rating: mature [see ao3 tags for full content warnings] featuring: post season/game 1 life in Jackson, angst, fluff, action, romance, smut, plenty of protective Joel and parent Joel

You can check out a review from @march-flowerr below, describing some of what makes this story so special: (vague general spoilers re: themes and mature content)

“Go Your Own Way stands, in my mind, as one of the most well written piece of fiction on Archive of Our Own. Nandorluna has such an intimate and authentic take on the existing characters that we know and love (on Joel and Ellie and all the Jackson gang) but it’s her ability to create stunning, well fleshed out original characters that drew me to her story initially. Her main character, Benny, moves across the story in such a visceral and realistic way; her arc spans not just the present canon timeline, but transports us through an entire lifetime: from childhood to outbreak, to first love, to first loss, to heartbreak and grief and then finally, to her heart’s final resting place: Joel Miller.

Zee manages to write about and embrace such difficult topics as assault, pregnancy loss, and grief without ever once making a show of it. She handles each moment with quiet dignity and intense self reflection; she draws beauty from the hollow depth of heart ache and despair without ever once losing the thread of hope that The Last of Us is known for.

At the heart of Go Your Own Way is the love story of Joel and Benny. Zee manages to create a compelling story about brokenness and connection and the raw, rare glory that is finding someone with whom you can begin to fit yourself together with again. It’s a story of family - of people who when left to wander, find their hearts drawn to each other. It’s a story about love - each relationship, from Benny and Alexei’s long friendship, to Ellie and Joel’s turbulent first years, to Benny and Joel’s steadfast devotion for each other, caters to the soul. It’s a story that I’ve found myself returning to, again and again, in all moods and places in life. If I could change anything about it, it would only be that it did have to end after all."

If you read and love this, please please show the author some love and leave a kudos and comment!! Happy fandoming y'all.

WIP Wednesday

I was tagged by @sixhours. Have a snip from the next chapter of As Long as You Follow (which should be updated in the next day or two, and if you noticed I just added to the final chapter count again, no you didn't).

Tagging: @march-flowerr @two-birds-alone-together @bumblepony @becomethesun and @hypnotisedfireflies.

I think this segment was entirely my brain just being excited about all of my modern AU plans tbh.

Her exhaustion finally claimed her; her body, previously a taut knot of tension, now yielding to the comforting warmth emanating from Joel. And it felt…nice, in its own way, when she closed her eyes; his shoulder so firm against her cheek, the steady rumble of the engine a rhythmic lullaby. It reminded her of the more heady moments of her youth, of going out on dates with boys that had pickup trucks that made her mother shake her head and tut fretfully, of those days where her worries amounted to nothing more than the wind whipping through her hair and the pursuit of enough joy to drown out the persistent ache that always seemed to exist in her breastbone.

She wondered if this is what it would have been like, if things were different. If fate had dealt them a different hand, if she was older, or he was younger – everything she’d whispered to him on the bloodsoaked floor in that apartment building, this grand fantasy where the world hadn’t ended so catastrophically, yet they managed to find each other anyway. She’d tried to imagine him in his youth so many times before, had held that photo of her husband and her brother-in-law, clean-shaven and beaming, in her hands and tried to imagine what it would have been like to meet that Joel, to date that Joel, to fall in love with that Joel.

Would he have swept her off her feet with reckless charm just like the boys that came before him, who drove her around in trucks just like this, one arm around her shoulders, hand a little too eager to wander? Somehow, she didn’t think so. The image that materialized of him even as a foolhardy boy remained so steadfastly the man she already knew: the same protective instincts, the same aura of safety that had drawn her to him in the first place, the same warmth that he reserved for her and Ellie and shared so sparingly with others.

“Wake me up when you need me to navigate,” she said, her voice punctuated with a yawn. And he muttered something under his breath that, just from the one or two syllables she caught, was filled with irritation, but she felt the fleeting pressure of his lips press against her hair anyway.