"Joel & Ellie's Excellent Adventure": a TLoU Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Story
Title: "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!