30,11,18

30,11,18

30: fic you’re especially proud of

I mean, it’s gotta be ‘Skin’. It was my first completed longfic, and honestly I’m just really proud of my writing for that one. I’m trying really hard to keep Scars at the same level of quality.

Also, I adore ‘AbelCode’. I’m not far into it, but I love writing it and I love how different it is to Skin. It definetly helps me not get bogged down in the angst of my other writing haha

11: WIP you’d like to finish one day

Ghosts. I love it and I’ve had parts of it written in Google Docs for so long but I genuinely think by the time it’s finished it could be like… one of my fave fics I’ve ever written.

18: share a deleted sentence or paragraph from one of your fics

Ooooh, okay. So for context, originally Joel was with Ellie for the entire last chapter of Skin. So they got caught by James together, but he wasn’t killed before David got there.

🦋

✨

Thanks for the ask Anon!! I’m very antsy to talk about my writing lol

(Kinda a long post)

🦋: Current WIPs

Oh my gosh this list is wayyyyy too long😅😅

So, I’m writing 2 ongoing stories, AbelCode and Anatomy of a Broken Girl, as well as AoaBG’s sequel. However, for things that haven’t come out…

Ghosts (Back in Jackson after Salt Lake City, Ellie starts to hallucinate the people she met on her journey)

A Dungeon Master’s Guide to Trauma (Ellie, Jesse, Dina, and Cat play DnD)

[redacted] (hehe…)

TLOU x Hunger Games (this one is pretty self-explanatory, but I’m not sure if I’m gonna post it…)

These are the ones I’m currently working on, but I have some other ones planned as well…

✨:Newest WIP

Someone sent me a request for a modern AU foster fic, so I started on that a couple days ago. It’s called ‘Frightening Fishes’, based on the ‘Shrinking’ theme song. It’s pretty angsty, believe it or not…

Also, I have a ton more for original WIPs, but I wasn’t sure if anyone wants to hear about that haha. Drop me an ask for original WIPs if you do!

1,2,3

wayyyy late with this but…

1: the last sentence you wrote

The door closed with a soft ‘click’.

-AbelCode c4

2: a character whose POV you’re currently exploring

I mean I’m not sure… I mostly write in Ellie and Joel’s POVs so that not super new, but I’m doing that I guess lol

3: how do you feel about your current WIP?

I have two ongoing stories at the moment, the first one I have is AoaBG which I’m on part 2 of atm. I’m really proud of this work, I think it’s definitely some of the best writing I’ve ever done. However I wasn’t adoring Scars so far so I changed a ton of the plan and am rewriting the first chapter, but now I’m liking it WAY more😅👍

And the second one I have is AbelCode, which I just adore. I love doing less angsty writing, even though it’s way out of my comfort zone. Also I’m getting a ton of help from the incredible @wordspinning, which makes it even more fun to write.

Not me completely redoing the first two chapters of Scars…surely not…

Ficlet where Ellie gets a fever/mild cold while still on the road to Lincoln or Pittsburgh? There's just so much time skipped in that whole period before jackson where endless bonding moments and potential for learning to trust can exist

Sorry this took a hot second! Thank you so much for the request!

Anyone can send me asks for specific TLOU story ideas and I’ll write a bit for them! So anyone reading this—feel free to send me requests!

(1.1k words. Mentioned character death.)

(Also I know you said before Pittsburg but I did right after because it worked a bit better for this story)

They were nearly a week out from Kansas City when Ellie’s cough started to worry Joel. It had started small, just a sound he’d attributed to the dusty tunnels they’d all gone through with Henry and Sam. But it had gotten worse. Small, sharp exhales to guttural roars that racked her tiny frame. 

She’d been quiet since KC, something Joel had been trying and failing to convince himself was because of how raw her throat most likely was.

Eventually they found a small town, a place called ‘Lecompton’, as far as he could tell from the worn, tattered signs scattered around the eerily empty neighborhoods.

It had been one of the places FEDRA tried to clear out before they gave up and started barricading civilians in the QZs, or at least he thought, judging from the tank tracks etched into the concrete, bullet holes in the shabby, cracked plaster of houses, and homes burnt until they were just charred frames.

They barricaded themselves in an old bar, Joel sealing all the windows in an attempt to muffle their sounds to the outside. Ellie’s coughs were loud enough that he felt like everyone in the world could hear, and even if the town seemed relatively safe there was probably a stray infected or two somewhere nearby.

”Hey, Ellie, I’m goin’ out for a second.” He took her shoulder after her latest round of hacking screeches. She looked up at him with a pathetic choke, her eyebrows drawn together. “Try to be quiet.”

She looked up at him, widening her eyes and making an explosion gesture above her head. ‘Woah, really?! I hadn’t thought of that’. 

Joel sighed, a hand coming up to pinch the bridge of his nose. Somehow she could still manage to snark him with her voice blown out.

“Yeah yeah, I get it.” He told her. “I’ll be right back.”

He took a seat outside the abandoned bar, letting his head fall back as he stared up at the cloudy sky above him. The cough was making him nervous. A frantic kind of nervousness that could only be cured by getting it to stop. Getting Ellie okay.

He couldn’t trade for medicine. Even if he found another party, people offering something as valuable as medicine almost always had an ulterior motive.

He made a mental note to tell that to Ellie later.

Really all he could do at this point was hope that the cough wasn’t an infection or strep throat. But he was never good at waiting or hoping, and as he stood and prepared to try and find anything useful he could in the small houses surrounding them, he spotted a small pine tree off in the underbrush where the town trailed off twenty feet away.

“Brought you some tea.” He said gruffly, sitting down next to where Ellie was curled in her sleeping bag on the floor. “Need some fuckin’ peace and quiet.” He handed her the tea he’d brewed, still hot in his thermos from the fire he’d snuffed out outside.

Ellie looked down at it, a crease between her eyebrows as she looked back up at him.

“It’s Eastern Red Cedar tea. You make it using the pine and boiling it. Helps with coughs.”

Ellie looked back down at the tea, slowly lifting the cup to her lips and tilting her head back to drink. She made a face, nearly dropping it. 

Joel’s first instinct was to snap at her, but she hadn’t really done anything wrong.

“Yeah, I know it doesn’t taste great,” he told her instead. “But it’ll help.”

Ellie scrunched her lips to the side, nodding once before she reached over towards her backpack, unzipping it and shuffling through the contents.

She pulled out a sketchpad they’d found a few days ago in an abandoned gas station and a blue pen which she shook a few times.

‘U botenist now?’ She wrote in the smallest possible font, trying to save as much room as possible for her surprisingly good drawings.

“First off it’s spelled with an ‘A’, not an ‘E’. Second off… just drink the fuckin’ tea.”

Ellie rolled her eyes, scratching down a quick ‘fine’ before pausing and staring at the letters.

He knew they were both thinking of exactly the same person.

Suddenly the silence didn’t seem so refreshing anymore.

“A couple years after the outbreak this young woman joined our little group of raiders—me and Tommy’s.” He started before he could think better of it. But by the way Ellie lit up he knew it was the right choice. “Drink your damn tea while I’m tellin’ you all this.” He told her, gesturing at his thermos. “So her name was Poppy, which was pretty funny ‘cause she loved plants. Loved ‘em.” He scratched his cheek, considering his words. “She was the caretaker of this garden at her college before the outbreak. Brought the whole thing back from just a couple dead weeds. She was real proud of it.” 

Ellie finally took another sip of her tea.

“Once we’re all headin’ through Kansas and she points out this pine tree. She says ‘that’s an Eastern Red Cedar, it’s good for coughs and bronchitis and joint pain and digestion’. And I really didn’t give a shit, but I go ‘damn, why ain’t we usin’ this all the time?’ And Poppy goes—” he smiled a bit, thinking back to it. “—‘’cause it tastes like if a pinecone could shit’.”

Ellie let out a small laugh, wincing and reaching her hand to her throat. 

“So there’s your story. Now drink.” Ellie grudgingly took another sip, reaching towards her notebook and scribbling something down.

‘What happened to her?’ 

Joel forced himself not to wince.

“We went our separate ways.” He lied. “The group disbanded eventually and we just said our goodbyes.” He could still hear her screams, trapped, rattling around inside his skull, clawing for his eardrums.

He blinked, her decimated corpse flashing behind his eyes.

Ellie looked down, taking another sip.

‘Really?’ She wrote. Joel nodded.

“Yeah. Saw an old ally of mine and they said she’d settled in the Phoenix QZ.” He knew he shouldn’t lie. Shouldn’t come up with tall tales trying to spare Ellie’s already gone innocence, but he didn’t want to see that look in her eyes anymore. The one she got when he knew she was thinking about just another person who died.

“Y’know, I had another ally. His name was Hank, but we all called him ‘Barrel’ because he could handle a rifle best I’ve ever seen.” 

Ellie perked up, looking surprised he kept talking. 

“So one day me and Barrel, we’re out scavenging for food—drink your tea—and we get ambushed. There’s ten raiders on us and we’re dashing like hell to—”

THE END

Remember, send me requests for more! This was super fun to do!

rules: list your five all time favorite films and have people vote on which one matches your vibe

Thanks for tagging me @renegadeknight!!

(I decided to go with TV shows because all my movies are basically the same lol)

(Excluding TLOU which is #1 because this is a TLOU blog so it wouldn’t exactly be a balanced scale)

(Yeah, my list is really weird lol)

No pressure tags: @bumblepony @becomethesun @wordspinning @logan178 @mildredellie @lauronk @captainredspade @freetobeyouandmichi-me @microsofttothemax @eedsknees @bearrycool @dumbassnamedkhoshekh @howtotrainyourdoofus