Dear creator!

[maharetr]

I fell so hard for this game, and I'm excited for basically any fic for it. Go nuts! <3 But if you're after specific pointers, see below:

Abby & Lev (The Last of Us)
I loved watching them become ride or die through the Seattle days, and then there's also the *months* of helping each other survive in that slave camp. Suggestions I LOVE about this friendship: shared trauma. Sure, it's the zombie apocalypse, everyone's got trauma. But these two now have very specific triggers (smells, tastes, times of day, who knows) that they know how to tread around and/or help each other through. Comforting each other through nightmares and flashbacks and helping each other into a new normal is my jam. Other pleasing things: Lev still finding comfort and meaning in Seraphite rituals, even (or esp) if he's presumably doing them on the quiet now. Fireflies helping Lev into the world outside the Seraphites. Side note: I think texts can depict homophobia/transphobia and not *be* said phobic, and the game did it really, really well. I'm totally okay with, say, flashback depictions of transphobia from the Santa Barbara assholes (I am 1000% sure that say, someone found out about Lev being trans, and Abby flat out murdered them before they could blab and make Lev a point of Interest). I'd much rather the Fireflies as a whole being entirely accepting of Lev's transness. He deserves safety and peace and a place to flourish.

Dina/Ellie (The Last of Us)
God, they're so good to together, and such messes. If you wanted to emotionally deep-delve: I feel like we got Ellie's pov on their relationship in the game, obv, but I'd love to know Dina's. Where/when/why Dina falling in love (and falling into ride-and-die So Hard) before the game started. Like, that's some fucking de-VOTION girl. Ino the Doylist take is that Ellie needed a sidekick (and THANK you, ND for the lesbians), but tell me that Watsonian take.

Did she take Ellie back after the end? There's so many conflicting signs -- the bracelet back on Ellie's hand, yes, but also all her stuff still at the house, welp. If Dina did, what did Ellie do to regain Dina's trust? If Dina didn't, how does she feel about Ellie now? (vastly prefer an ending of both of them making peace with wherever each of them end up)

If you wanted to go cosy and/or short: I loved the farm sequence, but watched it on tenterhooks the whole time, feeling like it was a fragile, pretending-things-were-okay existence, even before Tommy offered Ellie that fix (I like the analogy that I think Neil made about how Dina *knew* she was in a relationship with someone with hefty substance issues, and it was only going to be a matter of time...). So, WAY post-game, their relationship kintsugi-ed back together and whole again in a new shape. What does actual peace look like for them?

Ellie & Joel (The Last of Us)
i SOB. Joel was a fucking terrible person, and also such a good dad to Sarah and then Ellie. Troy mentioning that the moment where Abby turns the tables on them was an "ah. fuck. I let my guard down and now my past is catching up to me." type moment. But he DID get those years in Jackson of seeing another, less-violent way of being able to live, and Ellie seeing all the ways he did that as she wanders around his house, After. Fucks me up. all of it fucks me up. Ellie wondering if Joel even knew she was there when he died kills me. Ellie wondering if it made it better or worse for him if he did know D E S T R O Y S me.

The two of them together in their snarky profound love for each other is my kryptonite. The entire museum birthday sequence kills me (Ellie still managing to be so 'young' and having fun and happy and making faces in the mirror and Joel getting that whole entire day so perfect and *screams into pillow*). The idea that they spent years(years? TOO LONG) not speaking because of their rift KILLS ME.

Ugh. Actual prompts, hi, sorry. Okay. If you wanted to go light and fluffy and have them traveling together patrolling infected or just hanging out in Jackson together with zero rift, I'm 100% for the balm to my soul. If you wanted to give me Joel's dying thoughts, I'm also here for something that brutally real.

If you're after something specific: I kind of love the implication in Ellie's journal that the entirety of Jackson knew that Cat and Ellie were dating (side-side note: Ellie staying up all night, watching, terrified that she's infected Cat after they kiss for the first time? oh my HEART) and that Joel was the only one who didn't know. Idk what it says about me that I like the idea that Joel would have been homophobic before Ellie came out to him, and that's *why* she's worried about how he'll react. He strikes me as the masculine macho type for whom queers (derogatory) were Over There. Who'd just never questioned macho-maleness and had in fact benefited the fuck out of it. And then Ellie comes along and is like "so I'm kinda really fucking queer (positive)" not that she would necessarily have those words, but still. I'd love to see the 180 his brain and worldview would have to do to come all the way around to him awkwardly but fiercely defending her at the dance. Which he *does* because it's *Ellie* (heart DESTROYED, again). Permission granted to totally sidestep the 'did you lie to me about the Fireflies'? plot thread if you want. It can totally happen well before she confronts him about the Fireflies. Or layer it in for added, agonizing angst! :D).

Ellie/Owen (The Last of Us)
Honestly I looked at this pairing in the list, tilted my head and went HUH. I honestly had a tiny moment of 'Did you mean Abby/Owen, but got briefly confused? If you did, I really really liked Owen and Abby, and their relationship, and would be delighted to get an Abby/Owen fic of whatever gen-through-explict-kink spectrum you felt like writing. If you did mean Ellie/Owen, do you have Thoughts? A Plan? Honestly, I'm here for it, and I hand you the microphone and the floor. GO FOR IT. (my only DNW here is no Mel-bashing pls, I didn't like her exactly, but she's still a person character worthy of common decency and etc etc.)

Best of luck, and looking forward to whatever you write <3! :)