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lumy12Title: "Joel & Ellie's Excellent Adventure": a The Last of Us Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Story
Fandom: The Last of Us (if anyone is not familiar with the game but wants to read because YAY IT'S A CYOA STORY, I wrote this post a few years ago that summarizes the game, albeit not very succinctly)
Characters: Joel, Ellie, OCs
Word Count: 448,130 total, with 275 "pages" (yeah, this thing turned into a monster... BUT it's easily consumable in much smaller nuggets!) Also, I have a MS Word or pdf version available if anyone is interested... but it's 1,175 actual pages, and the page numbering is not revised to fit that format, so I do NOT recommend that if you're reading on a screen
Rating: R
Summary: Joel and Ellie once traveled more than 2000 miles, over the course of many months... two years later, can they make it through a mere handful of days away from home? It's up to you!
Author's Notes: This is a long A/N, but it is (technically) the only one in the whole story, so pleaseendure my parentheses abuse and read!
Welcome to my The Last of Us choose-your-own-adventure story! If you're not familiar with this type of story, all you need to know about the format is that you are not meant to read the "pages"/posts in order. The story won't make sense that way. It's written in second person, but "you" the reader are not an OC -- you are Ellie. At the bottom of some of the "pages," you will have a decision to make. Simply click on the link that corresponds to your choice.
Each choice determines the direction of the story, but the plot variables may change with each choice -- meaning there are contradictory "branches" where something that was true in one may not be true in another. [To give a very basic example, say you have to choose "yes" or "no" when Joel asks you if you're hungry, and you choose yes. You click on the yes page and find that you've been ambushed by hunters before you even do so much as reach for some food. Then you go back and read the "no" page to see if that choice makes any difference, and those hunters don't even exist in that storyline.] Basically, there is no right and wrong, and the only choice that is guaranteed to shape the story in any meaningful way is the first one: you decide if Joel and Ellie's relationship is father and daughter or romantic.
This was originally meant to be pure crack, but I have apparently lost my touch for crack, because I found that I couldn't do it! The stories alternate between humor, drama, action/suspense, fluff, and angst -- not unlike the rest of my work, really! That said, don't expect each of these to be of the same quality as a "real fic." Some parts might feel repetitive between stories. A lot of the stories will read more like fic snippets, and MOST do not involve completing the mission laid out on Page 1 (I have to laugh at myself for thinking at the outset I could reach a proper conclusion for each story thread. It would probably have to be 2,000 "pages" long to accomplish that!). Some are light on detail, or too dialogue-heavy, or contain conversations or musings that don't "serve the greater story" (because there IS no greater story)... basically, even though it's (mostly) not crack, it's not meant to be taken too seriously. Forgive me if some of the scenarios seem implausible; I did try to keep things fairly realistic (like, no alien abductions, time travel (in spite of the movie it's named after), or turning yourself into an infant -- such craziness does happen in the CYOA kids' books!I reserve the right to resort to crazy shit in a possible sequel), but I had to come up with dozens of plotlines (with plot not being my strong suit) and it's hard to keep things interesting without some crazy. Page length and number of decisions per story will vary -- with 119 different endings! I meant to keep things brisk with short pages, kind of in the style of the children's books, but as you'll see, I failed at that most of the time :/ And I had to do all the formatting manually because I've never been able to get the "easy posting" thing on here to do everything I want... I was going to say I'm pretty sure I caught and corrected all the egregious errors, but saying so would ensure that there's at least one I missed!
Warnings: Contains game-like violence and language, and disturbing imagery or situations. Some choices will lead to the death of Joel and/or Ellie :( Remember, just like with the game -- if you die, you can simply start over! But if you'd really rather not... PLEASE SEE MY NOTES WITH PAGE-SPECIFIC WARNINGS for deaths, references to or threats of sexual assault/non-con, and notes about some other things you may encounter in a story that I did not tie to specific page numbers. If you'd prefer not to read these scenarios or would like advance notice before reading, please make note of which pages to avoid so you can enjoy the rest of the stories; there will not be any type of warnings on the pages themselves. It's like a 'real' book in that regard.
The warning page also contains a master page list (links to ALL pages), in case anyone finds that useful. When you reach the end of a story, there will be a link on that page for you to return to page 1.
Let me know if you have any questions. Anonymous commenting is enabled on all pages. I'd love to know what ending you get on your first go (as kids, my brother and I always said the first one was your "real" ending in the books!). You may proceed to page 1 from the warnings page or turn to page 1 here. Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy!
Fandom: The Last of Us (if anyone is not familiar with the game but wants to read because YAY IT'S A CYOA STORY, I wrote this post a few years ago that summarizes the game, albeit not very succinctly)
Characters: Joel, Ellie, OCs
Word Count: 448,130 total, with 275 "pages" (yeah, this thing turned into a monster... BUT it's easily consumable in much smaller nuggets!) Also, I have a MS Word or pdf version available if anyone is interested... but it's 1,175 actual pages, and the page numbering is not revised to fit that format, so I do NOT recommend that if you're reading on a screen
Rating: R
Summary: Joel and Ellie once traveled more than 2000 miles, over the course of many months... two years later, can they make it through a mere handful of days away from home? It's up to you!
Author's Notes: This is a long A/N, but it is (technically) the only one in the whole story, so please
Welcome to my The Last of Us choose-your-own-adventure story! If you're not familiar with this type of story, all you need to know about the format is that you are not meant to read the "pages"/posts in order. The story won't make sense that way. It's written in second person, but "you" the reader are not an OC -- you are Ellie. At the bottom of some of the "pages," you will have a decision to make. Simply click on the link that corresponds to your choice.
Each choice determines the direction of the story, but the plot variables may change with each choice -- meaning there are contradictory "branches" where something that was true in one may not be true in another. [To give a very basic example, say you have to choose "yes" or "no" when Joel asks you if you're hungry, and you choose yes. You click on the yes page and find that you've been ambushed by hunters before you even do so much as reach for some food. Then you go back and read the "no" page to see if that choice makes any difference, and those hunters don't even exist in that storyline.] Basically, there is no right and wrong, and the only choice that is guaranteed to shape the story in any meaningful way is the first one: you decide if Joel and Ellie's relationship is father and daughter or romantic.
This was originally meant to be pure crack, but I have apparently lost my touch for crack, because I found that I couldn't do it! The stories alternate between humor, drama, action/suspense, fluff, and angst -- not unlike the rest of my work, really! That said, don't expect each of these to be of the same quality as a "real fic." Some parts might feel repetitive between stories. A lot of the stories will read more like fic snippets, and MOST do not involve completing the mission laid out on Page 1 (I have to laugh at myself for thinking at the outset I could reach a proper conclusion for each story thread. It would probably have to be 2,000 "pages" long to accomplish that!). Some are light on detail, or too dialogue-heavy, or contain conversations or musings that don't "serve the greater story" (because there IS no greater story)... basically, even though it's (mostly) not crack, it's not meant to be taken too seriously. Forgive me if some of the scenarios seem implausible; I did try to keep things fairly realistic (like, no alien abductions, time travel (in spite of the movie it's named after), or turning yourself into an infant -- such craziness does happen in the CYOA kids' books!
Warnings: Contains game-like violence and language, and disturbing imagery or situations. Some choices will lead to the death of Joel and/or Ellie :( Remember, just like with the game -- if you die, you can simply start over! But if you'd really rather not... PLEASE SEE MY NOTES WITH PAGE-SPECIFIC WARNINGS for deaths, references to or threats of sexual assault/non-con, and notes about some other things you may encounter in a story that I did not tie to specific page numbers. If you'd prefer not to read these scenarios or would like advance notice before reading, please make note of which pages to avoid so you can enjoy the rest of the stories; there will not be any type of warnings on the pages themselves. It's like a 'real' book in that regard.
The warning page also contains a master page list (links to ALL pages), in case anyone finds that useful. When you reach the end of a story, there will be a link on that page for you to return to page 1.
Let me know if you have any questions. Anonymous commenting is enabled on all pages. I'd love to know what ending you get on your first go (as kids, my brother and I always said the first one was your "real" ending in the books!). You may proceed to page 1 from the warnings page or turn to page 1 here. Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy!
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no subject
Date: 2020-05-24 09:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-05-24 10:08 pm (UTC)HAVE FUN!
no subject
Date: 2020-05-24 10:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-05-24 10:19 pm (UTC)And I know you're not a Joellie person but even with just the father & daughter part there's still around 200,000 words to read O.o so maybe don't get TOO addicted, ha. But I'm so happy you're liking it!
Omg yay!!
Date: 2020-05-25 02:34 am (UTC)Re: Omg yay!!
Date: 2020-05-25 02:55 am (UTC)This is Annie from AO3
Date: 2020-05-25 07:36 pm (UTC)But I'll definitely give this a try! Thank you so much for remembering me and for sending me a link! <3
(Also, it's been so long since I've read fanfic on LJ. It's making me feel nostalgic, ha ha.)
Re: This is Annie from AO3
Date: 2020-05-25 07:57 pm (UTC)Oh I know -- like who even posts fic on here anymore??? This is where I got my fandom start, back in the "LJ heyday," and I kinda miss it, too. Of course, fic gets buried on here much easier than on AO3... but for THIS particular format, it's perfect!
RE: Re: This is Annie from AO3
Date: 2020-05-25 08:50 pm (UTC)Thanks for the warning! I think I want to do a blind read first and see where I end up :) Hopefully somewhere happy and good ;)
I think I missed all of my fandom heydays so I was mostly reading old fics anyway ^^; But, well, as I say, I don't think any fandom ever truly dies :) I mostly say that to cheer myself up, though, ha ha.
Re: Re: This is Annie from AO3
Date: 2020-05-25 09:33 pm (UTC)Good luck finding a happy ending, there's plenty out there that at least aren't horrible :)
I missed the TLOU heyday, but it seems to be a small enough fandom that people are somehow still finding my stuff even though I haven't posted anything in over a year (LJ doesn't count! lol).
RE: Re: Re: This is Annie from AO3
Date: 2020-05-26 12:06 am (UTC)Or pay attention to weird details like me, ha ha.Good luck finding a happy ending, there's plenty out there that at least aren't horrible :)
This sounds kind of ominous actually, lol xD But thanks, I'll definitely try!
RE: Re: Re: This is Annie from AO3
Date: 2020-05-26 09:47 am (UTC)Or pay attention to weird details like me, ha ha.Good luck finding a happy ending, there's plenty out there that at least aren't horrible :)
This actually sounds kind of foreboding ha ha xD But thank you!
RE: Re: Re: This is Annie from AO3
Date: 2020-05-26 09:50 am (UTC)Yeah, I post all my stuff on AO3! Here (https://archiveofourown.org/series/1754545) if you're interested :) But there're only two so far and they're both super short. I do want to write more as I get further into the book but we'll see. My writing is so arbitrary. *sighs* And the codas probably won't make sense if you don't remember anything of the first book.
Or pay attention to weird details like me, ha ha.Good luck finding a happy ending, there's plenty out there that at least aren't horrible :)
This actually sounds kind of foreboding ha ha xD But thank you!
RE: Re: Re: This is Annie from AO3
Date: 2020-05-26 09:53 am (UTC)RE: Re: Re: This is Annie from AO3
Date: 2020-05-26 02:18 pm (UTC)Sorry it's so overprotective :( [insert Joel-being-overprotective-of-Ellie joke here] Can you maybe reply on AO3? It doesn't seem to mind links so much!
RE: Re: Re: This is Annie from AO3
Date: 2020-05-26 10:49 pm (UTC)I'm actually doing a chapter per chapter review of the books myself! But I actually hate the books so I'm just doing those short codas to distract and amuse myself, pretty much. There's this fic for HP I've always wanted to write so I'm trying to do that. We'll see if I get that far, though.
And yeah, I'm pretty sure no one would read super short gen chapter codas in the HP fandom.
Ha ha, actually that fic I mentioned would be eventual Harry/Draco (without buttsex, though). I once read fics for them because I was curious why people shipped it. Some of them were pretty good but it always low-key annoyed me how no one seemed to give a proper build-up for the relationship so I wanted to do it "right". But personally I've never shipped anything in HP.
Hey, at least you won! Congrats! xD And aww. I'm kind of casually following the FF7 fandom right now because of the Remake and let me tell you, fandoms are surprisingly a lot of drama! So maybe it's a good thing you were just chilling in your little corner of the internet :)
Re: Re: Re: This is Annie from AO3
Date: 2020-05-27 12:07 am (UTC)Dare I ask why you hate the books? If it's a super long answer or you're not in the mood, no worries, I was just curious. "Fix it" fic is really satisfying to write, isn't it?
Aww no buttsex? :P And HA -- that's exactly how I came to be a Joellie shipper! I was appalled that people actually PAIR them, like omg why can't they just appreciate the awesomeness of the relationship they have WHY DO THEY EVEN HAVE TO BRING SEX INTO IT, blah blah... so I read one out of curiosity. And I was like... "ya know, I can kinda see it... except WAY slower than that" -- and thus, "Accretion" was born! (truthfully I'd like it to be even slower than THAT, but that's how it came out. If it's TOO slow, and Ellie's 18 by the time anything happens, you lose this whole delicious layer of angst... Joel's just so fun to torment! I'm sure he'd still be tormented being with her at age 18, but it's just not the same as when she's "illegal")
Anyway. I've never read any Harry/Draco but would love to read yours if you do it!!! I can understand why people would pair them (at least for the hatesex aspect?)... I just never saw it myself in the movies or books so it would have to be an acquired taste. My HP OTP is Harry/Hermione and that's about the only fic I've read in the fandom. There's just sooooo much HP out there that it's overwhelming to sort through -- usually if I get the itch, I find a one-shot that scratches it nicely, or I read something that someone else recommends.
Hehe, I remember when I thought there was fandom drama on LJ... that's apparently nothing compared to what goes on on tumblr? Don't have a tumblr, don't care to :) I guess I tend to gravitate towards pairings that squick people -- but on LJ, people seemed to naturally follow the don't like/don't read rule. Some people ELSEWHERE don't seem to get that even when you tell them!
RE: Re: Re: Re: This is Annie from AO3
Date: 2020-05-27 10:49 am (UTC)To try to put it shortly?
And lol, I think all of my fics are some combination of leaning on the fourth wall, fixing canon and fanon, and obscure blink-and-you-miss it references. That, or just crack.
WHY DO THEY EVEN HAVE TO BRING SEX INTO IT
Haha, I know a lot of ships like that and I just don't read them xD
I've never read any Harry/Draco but would love to read yours if you do it!!!
Aww, that's so sweet! Thank you! I think I have to warn you, though. It'll basically be a total rewrite of HP: to give you some idea, Harry goes into Slytherin and his family and grandparents are still alive. I just... really really like writing families, especially complex families.
that's apparently nothing compared to what goes on on tumblr? Don't have a tumblr, don't care to
Or twitter! And I'm the same on Tumblr. But then, I don't really have any social media. And yeah, I know ships I really don't get: for example, Destiel (that is, Dean and Castiel from Supernatural). In the fandom, the Destiel shippers like to flaunt it as "morally superior" because it's not incest. But, like, he's at least 4 billion years old supernatural creature possessing somebody else's body which is either married or dead? I think a little consensual incest between two adults is less dubious in comparison, but I'm strange like that.
I still wouldn't go harassing them on their blogs or fanfics because I have better things to do with my time.
Like pretending to write.Re: Re: Re: Re: This is Annie from AO3
Date: 2020-05-28 02:33 am (UTC)I have a twitter, but I rarely use it -- and I swear, every single time I DO use it (usually just when I need to vent and don't have a sympathetic friend handy to bitch to), I get spoiled for something. And I HATE spoilers. Argh!
I've never watched an episode of Supernatural but have seen clips here and there and have a basic working knowledge of who the characters are, thanks to the millions of people in its fandom. I think I'd lean more towards Wincest myself. I mean... I'll read Luke/Leia fic in Star Wars, so :)
RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: This is Annie from AO3
Date: 2020-05-28 04:44 pm (UTC)Aw, sometimes it's so hard to find a good friend to vent with! Personally, I don't mind spoilers but my mom and brother do, and it's always so much fun to tease them, ha ha.
From a Wincest perspective, Supernatural is honestly a really funny show. There was unintentional subtext long before the staff became aware of Wincest, and afterwards there was a mixture of intentional subtext and fanservice. Besides, the ship name is a win itself! ;) None of the ships are canon, obviously, but I had many giggles over Sam and Dean's irrational, over-the-top codependency.
I've never read Star Wars fics but I was never that much of a fan. The last Star Wars films I saw were the prequel trilogy :) And I think that was like a million years ago (okay, not quite).
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: This is Annie from AO3
Date: 2020-05-29 03:21 am (UTC)I hope you don't spoil things for them with your taunting!
Yeah at one point wasn't there some debate over whether Wincest would become canon??? Like... wtf. I think I would rather have my ships NOT be canon, because then there's no limitations on what you can do, whereas if canon defines everything for you... heh, well, I guess you can always rewrite it, right? Yeah. Wish I could be more like you that way, where the sky is the limit!
I've been a Star Wars fan my whole life, but the prequels are what introduced me to online fandom, and I am forever grateful!
RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: This is Annie from AO3
Date: 2020-05-29 07:43 pm (UTC)And no, nothing like that! I usually teased them with stuff like this: "And THAT part was totally awesome, but when THAT character did THIS", or something like that xD I haven't done that in a long time, though, since I stopped watching TV... six years ago? And we don't read the same stuff. My sister picked up my legacy, though, ha ha.
Yeah at one point wasn't there some debate over whether Wincest would become canon???
You know, when I was looking for a particular Wincest fic, one of the recommended search queries was: "Are Dean and Castiel in love?" which made me laugh. None of the ships in SPN are canon! Like, c'mon, people. Shape up!
And I'm the same with ships! I don't think I've ever shipped a canon couple because I don't see the point? If it's well-written, I'll just enjoy the canon story and if it's not well-written, why would I ship it in the first place, right?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: This is Annie from AO3
Date: 2020-05-29 11:53 pm (UTC)So you passed the torch to your sister! Awesome!
Oh maybe that's what it was, not Wincest. Like I think ppl were asking the actors at cons and they perhaps furthered the speculation somehow? That would be good enough for me if there's stuff implied, like that COULD be reasonably interpreted as OMG THEY'RE IN LOVE that fic writers can run with :D
True...except if it's not "done right" you can still ship it and write it the way you want :)
This is Annie from AO3
Date: 2020-05-26 09:49 am (UTC)Or pay attention to weird details like me, ha ha.Good luck finding a happy ending, there's plenty out there that at least aren't horrible :)
This actually sounds kind of foreboding ha ha xD But thank you!
RE: This is Annie from AO3
Date: 2020-05-27 12:11 am (UTC)