Benny Cooper - Tumblr Posts

I have a question that you should not take as criticism! But I was just wondering in As Long As You Follow why the Texas scientists wouldn't just send a car up to Jackson to grab Ellie instead of letting them take weeks / months? to get to them on foot? Because they have cars and patrol and everything?

I definitely don't take this as criticism, lol. But the answer to this question is a two-parter:

1.) As far as Amos and Alexei knew, Ellie & Co did have access to vehicles. It's mentioned in GYOW that the settlement has a couple of trucks, and they also retained the Yukon after Alexei and Amos left the settlement three years prior in one of Otto's vehicles. They had no way of knowing the Yukon was out of commission, or that the trucks weren't available (also touched upon in GYOW - they use them for plowing in the winter, and occasionally supply / hunting runs, but they aren't reliable for long-distance trips).

If Ellie had held her horses (pun intended) for one damn minute, everyone could have traveled down with Otto when he arrived with a vehicle a few weeks later (not that it would have gotten them any further than Amarillo, where the engine blew). Or they could have communicated with Galveston when it became apparent that they would have to go via horse, and then Galveston may have sent someone. Even so, it's a dangerous trip no matter what and, not wanting to put anyone else in danger, Ellie made the kneejerk decision to immediately run off with Shimmer - though there was no way Joel & Benny weren't going to immediately follow.

2.) It was necessary to the plot, this cross-country trip. 🤷

Also, if anyone is interested in the math: Ellie left Jackson in the late hours of March 20th, 2030, and Joel and Benny followed the morning of March 21st. Ellie reached Galveston with Tommy on May 7th, after one month and sixteen days of travel. Joel and Benny arrived in Galveston May 13th, one month and twenty-two days after leaving Jackson.

Tommy didn't leave Jackson until Otto arrived, around April 8th or 9th or so, catching up with everyone else in Amarillo around the 10th. He arrived with Ellie to Galveston on May 7th, so was only on the road for about a month.

I just want you to know that I read Go Your Own Way in just a couple of days and am now most of the way through the sequel and I am in love. There are a lot of fics that pair Joel with ocs and then present a pregnancy but I just really appreciate that you went the other way about it and have shown another side and that you have approached that subject with such compassion. Your OC is so well developed, I just love her. I really hope those two manage to have a happy ending but also I am hoping she doesn't have a surprise pregnancy or something, though I don't think you would do that. I can't wait to catch up!

Hi, anon. And thank you - glad you've enjoyed my blorbos. ☺️

I struggle with the concept of motherhood, myself, and these fics are part of how I work through that. I'm not really trying to say anything about anyone else's fics by writing my version of it, you know? That's the great thing about fanfiction; there are so many different ways to write things, and there's truly something for everyone, haha.

I thought it was important for them to try to find happiness in other ways, considering this - which is the reality of many people (myself included). The characters all mean a lot to me, and I'm happy to have been able to share their (mis)adventures with other people, and that others have enjoyed them.

Oh my god. 😭 This is so lovely, and extremely unexpected, I barely know what to say?! She looks so happy, and I adore that this was the moment you decided to capture.

Thank you! ♥️♥️♥️

“– something exciting about the afternoon where Ellie left a little earlier than usual, sunlight still spearing through the tall living room windows while Lindsey Buckingham crooned through the stereo speakers and Benny twirled through the motes of dust lazily, a glass of wine in one hand, her hair glittering in the light. She and Ellie had gone to the beach earlier in the day when he’d been occupied with fixing the balcony door, and she’d donned another donated dress for the occasion; a cascade of white with splashes of emerald leaves and blossoms, the skirt loose and flowing, and when she danced, a bittersweet thought struck Joel: that this was probably the closest he would ever get to seeing her in anything that even remotely resembled a wedding gown.”

-As Long As You Love Me by chronicallyonlinewriter

Some OCs simply just reign superior, and I couldn’t get this moment with Benny’s new dress out of my head. I wanted to add her new Stevie shawl but I got overwhelmed by fabric lol

Anyways go read this masterpiece ❤️

✨Out of context line challenge✨

Thanks for the tags, @march-flowerr and @lauronk! the rules: if you're tagged, make a new post and share one or two sentences (or lines for artists) from your unposted WIP with zero context.

There was stunning familiarity in the young face printed on the paper; in the soft smile, the long waves of dark gold cascading gracefully, even in the gentle curve of her cheeks and the light smattering of freckles across her pale skin. Only the eyes were different, a subtle divergence that nevertheless captured his attention — dark, less crinkled in the corners, yet still full of warmth. If you already got tagged sorry I guess, idk I just work here: @wordspinning @two-birds-alone-together @bumblepony @hypnotisedfireflies @mote-of-star-dust @ameerawrites @becomethesun @probssomethingorother

I can not wait for the next chapter of As Long As You Follow!!! I keep wanting to ask if you plan out your fanfics ahead of time because they have so much happening in them? Do you plot things out chapter by chapter?

Hi, anon. Thanks! I'm pretty loosey goosey about storyboarding, and I should probably be...better, about that, because then maybe my fics wouldn't be so bloated. I always know general points I want to hit, and how I want to pace things, but I don't often plot it out chapter-by-chapter. (I mean, clearly; ALaYF was supposed to be ten chapters, and it'll end up being seventeen when all is said and done.) I do track things as I go, however. I keep notes of dates and my fics' general timelines so I can reference them later, and not contradict myself, which has been very helpful.

Walked.

Here she was, pressed against him while the sting of antiseptic burned in her nostrils, yet a chasm had opened between them, yawning wider and deeper with every passing second - and how long would it be, this time, after she walked out that door?

Word: sighed

This one is unfair because you know my characters be sighin' all over the place.

Joel sighed as he holstered his pistol, fixing his wife with a look full of exasperation when she added, "It...might have been a tarantula."

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.

Chapter 16 (out of 18) is up! With this chapter, As Long as You Follow (247,126 words) has officially surpassed its predecessor, Go Your Own Way (233,279 words) in length, and I have also officially posted more than half a million words to AO3 (in just 14 months, which I feel like I should be more concerned about, oop). It's been a wild ride, ya'll. Still (hopefully) more to come, though.

Last Line Tag Game

Rules: in a new post, show the last line you wrote (or drew) and tag as many people as there are words (or as many as you feel like).

Thanks for the tag, @sixhours!

You get two lines, because I don't follow rules. From the next chapter of As Long as You Follow:

He always took such care to say the right things to her, to be aware of her feelings, but he was often a little clumsy with it - his love better manifested itself in more tangible ways, with skilled hands he used to construct and hold and soothe and defend. He wasn't always honest with her, otherwise - and she knew it, knew that when he deemed his words to be sufficient over action, they were carefully crafted to cause her the least amount of pain.

@march-flowerr @toointojoelmiller @becomethesun @hypnotisedfireflies @bumblepony and literally anyone else because I can't tag that many people. ♥️

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.

I love your fics so much. I wish we got more of Texas in it is all, the settlement there and their government. It kind of felt like you were setting that up to be bigger but then they just left but I WANT MORE because I love fics about what other places became after the outbreak. Are you going to write more about that? Because I would read it!

Hi! I'm happy you're enjoying my lil' fic.

Moreno was supposed to have a slightly bigger role, as the settlement leader, but he works just as well as a character working in the background, always busy. (Fun fact, I had something of a Diego Luna-ish vibe in mind when picturing him.)

There were things about Galveston that I wanted to fit in the story, and then didn't, but I also think that's just the nature of writing - you can't always get all of your ideas onto the page, unfortunately. I would have loved to flesh out The People's Galveston a little more, but I'm also content with what I managed to fit in around the main story.

Also in the Texas chapters, we were supposed to meet a character named Cameron - who was mentioned briefly in GYOW, the brother of Wesley (Benny's deceased former partner). But I just ended up not having the time or space to bring him into things in a way that would have done him justice, either.

At the moment, I don't have any plans for any Galveston spinoff fics or etc. I have to be honest that ALaYF already takes a lot out of me to write, and as we come to its conclusion it also gets less and less engagement, so I just don't think the effort would be equal to the interest anyone might have in it (which I promise is not me whining about it, I'm just trying to be pragmatic).

Benny & Joel

I am absolutely dying over this piece of art that the wonderful @bumblepony surprised me with, commissioned from the amazingly talented @miranhas-art (who has made some of my favorite Pedro character art on Tumblr). Based on a scene from chapter 15 of As Long as You Follow:

Sometimes these evenings were a little different. Sometimes wine flowed a little more generously (for her) while familiar music played from Alexei’s CD player. He danced with her now whenever she asked him to, without protest, because he didn’t have it left in him to ever again deny her anything that he had the power to give. She was at her happiest when he twirled her slowly around the living room, and there was something nostalgic about these steps – something familiar that pulsed under his skin when she laughed as he lifted her arm and carefully spun her, something so free about how she always danced barefoot, her hair swaying back and forth against her back, something special about the way she always kissed him first, because even when he led their steps, she led everything else –

– something exciting about the afternoon where Ellie left a little earlier than usual, sunlight still spearing through the tall living room windows while Lindsey Buckingham crooned through the stereo speakers and Benny twirled through the motes of dust lazily, a glass of wine in one hand, her hair glittering in the light. She and Ellie had gone to the beach earlier in the day when he’d been occupied with fixing the balcony door, and she’d donned another donated dress for the occasion; a cascade of white with splashes of emerald leaves and blossoms, the skirt loose and flowing, and when she danced, a bittersweet thought struck Joel: that this was probably the closest he would ever get to seeing her in anything that even remotely resembled a wedding gown.

Sunburn kissed her shoulders with a rosy glow, a blush mirroring the flush on her cheeks, and when she beckoned for him to join her, curling two fingers in and out as she swayed, he did so with no hesitation, drawn to her like a moth to a flame – though he took her hand, first, spun her around slowly, and then wrapped her up against him from behind, all the better to trail his lips down her neck and over her shoulder, leaving fleeting white marks against her heated and red skin. And there was just something about this that felt different even when it was achingly familiar; there was a rawness to it, an uninhibited surrender in the way she tilted her head back with a longing sigh, finding rest against his shoulder, the way she tipped the wine to her lips and drank long sips, then held it up so he could do the same.

I put these two through so much - and I love that when the opportunity arises, people choose to show them in their better, happier moments. ♥️

Pushing myself to try to finish the next chapter of As Long as You Follow today. I know I take forever to update, but I hope that another 30k chapter helps to make up for that. 💀

WIP Wednesday

Thanks for the tag, @sixhours! Here's a very small snip from the next chapter of As Long as You Follow:

He’d braced himself for the worst; for the sight of her raw grief, for tear-streaked cheeks and a rigid gate, for hands that trembled just as they had at the dam. Her eyes were still rimmed with red, her face blotchy, but when their gazes met she offered a smile – a genuine smile – filled with a warmth that reached her eyes and tugged at his heart. Without a word she hoisted herself back into her saddle, and when he reached out to hand the reins back she wrapped her hand around his wrist and forced him closer to her, leaning across the space between their horses and pressing her forehead against his. For a fleeting moment, the world shrank to the space between them. Everything else disappeared; the horses' startled snorts, the symphony of crickets, all faded into insignificance. There was only the dizzying pressure of her skin against his, the mingled scent of sweat and something more sour, overlaid with the subtle, sweet perfume of her hair and a hint of lilac, all of it filling his senses – until she drew back from him, her eyes locking onto his. “Okay," she breathed, her voice the first thread to pull him back to the present, each syllable bringing with it the reemergence of the cricketsong. “Now we can go home.”

Tagging: @bumblepony @mote-of-star-dust @two-birds-alone-together @lauronk and @march-flowerr (and whoever else wants to share).

Added to the chapter count again, because this story keeps demanding more of me, oop.

Anyway, chapter 17 of As Long as You Follow is up. ♥️ This fic is coming to a close, I promise.

(Art by @mote-of-star-dust.)

Have a snip. As a treat.

Benny bullies Joel into letting her get chickens.

Their names are Stevie Chicks, Atilla the Hen, Chickadee, and Henrietta.

She tells him this very matter-of-factly one morning, and he just looks at her like

That's it, that's the post.

Just reblogging again because it makes me happy. 🥹

Benny & Joel

I am absolutely dying over this piece of art that the wonderful @bumblepony surprised me with, commissioned from the amazingly talented @miranhas-art (who has made some of my favorite Pedro character art on Tumblr). Based on a scene from chapter 15 of As Long as You Follow:

Sometimes these evenings were a little different. Sometimes wine flowed a little more generously (for her) while familiar music played from Alexei’s CD player. He danced with her now whenever she asked him to, without protest, because he didn’t have it left in him to ever again deny her anything that he had the power to give. She was at her happiest when he twirled her slowly around the living room, and there was something nostalgic about these steps – something familiar that pulsed under his skin when she laughed as he lifted her arm and carefully spun her, something so free about how she always danced barefoot, her hair swaying back and forth against her back, something special about the way she always kissed him first, because even when he led their steps, she led everything else –

– something exciting about the afternoon where Ellie left a little earlier than usual, sunlight still spearing through the tall living room windows while Lindsey Buckingham crooned through the stereo speakers and Benny twirled through the motes of dust lazily, a glass of wine in one hand, her hair glittering in the light. She and Ellie had gone to the beach earlier in the day when he’d been occupied with fixing the balcony door, and she’d donned another donated dress for the occasion; a cascade of white with splashes of emerald leaves and blossoms, the skirt loose and flowing, and when she danced, a bittersweet thought struck Joel: that this was probably the closest he would ever get to seeing her in anything that even remotely resembled a wedding gown.

Sunburn kissed her shoulders with a rosy glow, a blush mirroring the flush on her cheeks, and when she beckoned for him to join her, curling two fingers in and out as she swayed, he did so with no hesitation, drawn to her like a moth to a flame – though he took her hand, first, spun her around slowly, and then wrapped her up against him from behind, all the better to trail his lips down her neck and over her shoulder, leaving fleeting white marks against her heated and red skin. And there was just something about this that felt different even when it was achingly familiar; there was a rawness to it, an uninhibited surrender in the way she tilted her head back with a longing sigh, finding rest against his shoulder, the way she tipped the wine to her lips and drank long sips, then held it up so he could do the same.

I put these two through so much - and I love that when the opportunity arises, people choose to show them in their better, happier moments. ♥️

I have torn my way through Go Your Own Way and will start the sequel soon and I am so obsessed with Joel and Benny!

I am curious if you ever thought about what would happen if Benny had kept the baby or if that was ever considered. Joel thought it would have ended them but I don't know, it's hard to think that it would have!

Hello! Thank you!

Spoilers ahead for GYOW, for anyone who hasn't read it:

I think this is an interesting question, and the answer to that is complicated. I personally did not consider having Benny choose to continue her pregnancy - it wasn't what I wanted for the plot, or the characters.

If she did, in some parallel universe, choose differently, I think she would have thrown herself into motherhood 100%. I think she would have allowed her love for her child to override any hatred for their biological father (eventually) and she would have been content with that decision (eventually).

I think Joel would have tried, and that's the best I could say for him.

In the end, I can't say for sure that it would have ended their marriage, but it certainly would have damaged it.