Queen of Lurkers 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

34. She/Her. Neurospicy. INFP. Sagittarius sun, Capricorn moon, Cancer rising. Late bloomer Swiftie. Scottish AF. Cat mum. Joel & Ellie are my blorbos. Hiding_Reader on AO3

[justwantedaccess]

🖋️📝✍️My Fics✍️📝🖋️

So, if you are new to my Tumblr homepage, hello and welcome! I write fanfiction based on The Last of Us and you can find me on AO3 under Hiding_Reader. I'm afraid I don't have a very extensive library of fics to choose from, only four at the time of writing, but I'm hoping to one day have a big long list of fics posted here. I have an abundance of plot bunnies for TLOU fanfics hopping around in my brain and I hope that I can bring at least a few of them to fruition.

If you're cruising through the "Last of Us" or "AO3" tags on Tumblr and are looking for something to read, I would be delighted and grateful if you gave them a shot 🥰:

Peripeteia (rated M)

This is my biggest ongoing project currently on AO3 and the main focus of my attention right now. The basic premise of the story is a role-reversal - Ellie is the one who gets injured while looking for the Fireflies at the university and Joel is the one who meets and ultimately has a battle-to-the-death-amongst-flames with David. I'm eight chapters in of a planned 10, currently working on Chapter 9. I struggled for so long to find a title, ultimately settled on "Peripeteia" - it's Greek for "reversal of fortune", a little on the nose, but hey, it works.

TW: Blood, injury, violence, anxiety disorder, panic attacks, PTSD, cannibalism, David and all his general nastiness (additional chapter-specific triggers included in Author's Notes)

my love is like to ice and i to fire (rated T)

This was my submission for Whumptober 2024, based on the prompt "shivering." It's a Tess x Joel fic, set during their Boston QZ days, featuring a winter storm and Joel being a hypothermic silly boy. Title is taken from the poem of the same name by Edmund Spenser.

TW: Allusions to alcohol abuse/alcoholism and drug abuse

twin flame bruise (rated T)

An ongoing two-for-one sick!fic where I pick on Joel and Ellie by giving them both medical emergencies requiring life-saving surgery within about a day of each other and angst ensues, feat. Ellie being the Fireflies' lab-rat and having trauma about hospitals.

TW: Surgery, medical setting, medical anxiety, PTSD, fear of doctors, vomiting, sickness

i sure know mating calls (rated E)

My entry for the TLOU Sex Gone Sideways 2025 challenge, based on the prompts Sprains, Strains and Other Assorted Injuries, Hell is Other People and IT'S TOO LOUD. A Tess x Joel fic, set in the Boston QZ, where our favourite smugglers are just trying to get laid after a day where everything has gone wrong, but Joel is noisy lover, the walls are thin and having the body of a forty-something is hard.

CW: Oral sex (f and m receiving), p in v sex, hand jobs, references to the loss of a child, references to violence

[endymionatlatmus]

Why is "Grace" by Florence and the Machine so Eva Stratt coded? Read it yourself if you don't believe me:

And you, you were the one I treated the worst

Only because you loved me the most

We haven't spoken in a long time

I think about it sometimes

I don't know who I was back then

And I hope on hope

I would never treat anyone like that again

This is the only thing I've ever had any faith in

Grace, I know you carry us

Grace, and it was such a mess

Grace, I don't say it enough

Grace, you are so loved

Grace, I know you carry us

Grace, and it was such a fucking mess

Oh Grace, I don't say it enough

Grace, you are so loved

[justwantedaccess]

Holy shit 😱

[justwantedaccess]

Okay, but imagine a Tess!Lives AU where she, Joel and Ellie are all living together in Jackson and whenever Ellie has nightmares about Silver Lake, she crawls into bed with her mom and dad and lies in between them, like this moment in Fantastic Four, how cute would that be? 🥺

(Or, alternatively, a baby fic - can you imagine Tess looking at Baby!Ellie the same way Vanessa Kirby does to baby Franklin in this GIF? My heart would explode 😭)

[justwantedaccess]

Sneak Peek Pretend-It's-Still-Sunday-Because-Monday-Doesn't Rhyme

Thank you for tagging me @stumbling-away! I've been working on "twin flame bruise", getting there in bits and pieces. I just wish I could focus on one chapter at a time, I keep pulling myself in several different directions because my concentration is shot 😫. In any case, here's a sneak peek from Chapter 5, and Joel's in some trouble. Also, the "monster" they're referring to is a big, purple hernia, I don't know what else you thought I might've been talking about, stop giggling in the back row there.

***

He can’t believe this is fucking happening. Four days ago all he had was a nagging, tugging sensation in his belly. It was nothing. And now the doctor’s telling him to get ready for surgery, making it clear that he does this, or he dies. To call it from zero-to-a-hundred doesn’t even begin to do it justice.

“What were you thinking, Joel?” Maria suddenly admonishes, breaking Joel out of his spiral. “I’ve heard all about your high pain threshold, but don’t tell me you were expecting to just walk something like this off.”

The feelings of panic and unreality fade and Joel almost welcomes the renewed rush of irritation.

“For Christ’s sake, I keep tellin’ you all, I haven’t been walkin’ around with this monster under my shirt for the last few days, it just felt like a muscle cramp. I had no idea my fuckin’ guts were about to slip out.”

“Maybe so, but that’s not my point,” Maria counters coolly, staring reprovingly at him in a way that lets Joel knows he’s not winning this argument. Hell, he already knew he was going to lose every argument from the moment he woke up and discovered this horror show under his shirt. “You’re not a young man anymore, and you’ve got Ellie to think of. You can’t afford to ignore what your body’s telling you. If something doesn’t feel right, you let people know. You wouldn’t have been inconveniencing anybody.”

“Maria, I swear, it was nothing,” Joel insists through gritted teeth. “Okay? It barely hurt, it was so fuckin’ insignificant, I thought I’d only embarrass myself if I brought it up. I thought it would be as if I was actin’ like my leg got cut off when I’d only stubbed a toe. And we had bigger fuckin’ problems at the time. You make it sound like it’s not that big of a deal. Well, how would that have looked a couple of nights ago, huh? Ellie goin’ into surgery, terrified out of her mind, and suddenly I’m there tryin’ to make it all about me instead? Over a fuckin’ twinge in my stomach?”

“Yes, I know. I understand that,” Maria says with a heavy sigh. “But there would’ve been time afterwards, once Ellie was in the clear. You had all day yesterday, you could’ve slipped out at any time and borrowed one of the doctors for five minutes. And yeah, I agree, it’s shit timing, you can’t help your body deciding to act up now when it’s the last thing you needed, but nobody was going to think you were trying to… to steal Ellie’s thunder, for God’s sake. Is that what you think of us?” 

“You’re both goin’ around in circles,” Tommy cuts in suddenly. “It’s done now, we can’t change it. Only thing we can do now is get ready for what's comin'. And how we're gonna break it to Ellie."

***

Thank you for reading! I'm making "twin flame" my summer project and hopefully I'm going to knock out a couple more chapters for you before September, when I go on my holidays. Until then, thanks for sticking with me 🥰

No-pressure tags: @consultingzoologist, @barlowstreet, @marceltheshellwithflipflopson, @lauronk, @paigegonerogue

[the-semicolonoscopy]

It’s Pride Month Eve, so leave out some milk for Freddie Mercury and his cats.

[the-semicolonoscopy]

Time for the annual Pride Month reblog of Freddie Mercury and his fabulous cats!

[nondelphic]

i don’t need discipline. i need a wizard to hit me with a staff and say “finish chapter 12”

[justwantedaccess]

*Gandalf voice* CONFOUND IT ALL, JUSTWANTEDACCESS! HAVE YOU BEEN SCROLLING THROUGH WIKIPEDIA AND TV TROPES INSTEAD OF WRITING AGAIN?!

[sun-blood-red]

The Last Of Us part 1 scenery

[powerbottombrucespringsteen]

There was a movie called Juno and the songs featured on that movie were compiled into an official soundtrack. This is generally regarded as major historical event from the 2000’s.

[sugar-for-ashes]

[bitt-better]

[galaxyedging]

And when we get there we can say to the Devil that we like their shoelaces.

They will smile and say "Thanks, I stole them from the president." and point over to a golf course where Donald Trump is perpetually falling on his face as his shoes keep falling off.

We all stand together and laugh before heading off to swap fan fics, gif and memes and read all the banned books.

[fullmoonlovestuff]

This or that with Pedro

loved that one too, Pedro

[beardedmrbean]

how to commit to the bit properly

[justwantedaccess]

IT'S FINALLY HEREEEE

[justwantedaccess]

Why can I so picture Ellie, Dina and Jesse doing this? Does Jackson have lots of hills for them to zoom down? And what's the council's policy on busting noisy house parties?

[justwantedaccess]

My friend edited a photo of my cat. She kept refusing to look at his camera for a photo and he came up with this 😂

[fullmoonlovestuff]

Oh oh 👀

[maceofpentacles]

what are y’all’s tarot birth cards?

mine are the tower and the chariot

[justwantedaccess]

Game Review: Mixtape

I spent the day watching a YouTube walkthrough of this new indie game called "Mixtape" because it was apparently attracting ire in some corners of the internet, so I checked out the trailer and was intrigued by the art style and the atmosphere and 90s setting and ending up watching the entire thing over the course of the evening.

I dunno, the people who don't like this game seem to really not like it, but I kind of found myself vibing with this thing. It is definitely more of a "vibes-based" game than an action-packed experience with taut gameplay and sophisticated AI. You're just wandering through this town and interacting with things, playing the occasional mini game as you go and soaking in the atmosphere. I can understand some people criticising it because it plays more like an occasionally interactive animated movie and, at the end of the day, I think I was happier watching it than I would be actually playing it. But I think I can still conclude that I enjoyed the experience and felt like it was three hours well-spent.

Structurally, it is a little bit of a mess, intensely flashback heavy and the central action taking a good long while to get going (which feels like a mistake when you have such a short runtime - we got to the 20-minute mark and I realised we were still in the main character's bedroom), though I think once you accept that it's meant to be more of a game about drinking in the moment and basking in nostalgia, rather than having relentless forward momentum, then it becomes easier to handle. I like the framing device that the main character is able to think of the perfect song to fit every moment, the entire day soundtracked to perfect precision. The characters' dialogue can be a little cheesy at times but, hey, it's supposed to be the 90s. Of our three principal characters, I think Slater was my favourite - just a really chill dude I would probably enjoy hanging out with.

Some of the set pieces were gorgeous, I especially liked the undercurrent of magic realism and urban fantasy to this thing, moments where the main character's imagination seemed to take over and turn the game into these fantastical dreamscapes - gliding through a meadow on the wind, leaving wildflowers in your wake; cars taking to the night sky while fireworks light up all around you; floating backwards through the town as the world turns monochrome and rain patters down around you. I found myself wanting to go to Blue Moon Lagoon and wander in the surrounding forests and skateboard down hillside roads at top speed and break into an abandoned dinosaur-themed amusement park. And some of the mini games are nicely evocative of the last days of summer before adulthood beckons, like stargazing on a roof and skipping stones at a secluded pond.

(Though, oh God, the kissing mini game 😫. Everyone else is right, it's memorable for all the wrong reasons 👅)

Technically, I am a 90s kid (though most of my core memories from adolescence are set against the backdrop of the mid-2000s to early 2010s) so I did enjoy getting to soak in this time period, the design and aesthetics before iPhones and flatscreen TVs and Funko Pops ruled the earth (I remember plasma globes!). And some of the needle-drops were fantastic (though, why hardly any music from the actual 90s?). "Yesterday's Hero" by John Paul Young playing during a Ferris Bueller-esque dash around town to save the day was a highlight, as was a drunken getaway from a party via shopping trolley scored to "Sensitive to Light" by Rainbow. And I will always appreciate representation from Scottish bands - in this case, "Just Like Honey" by The Jesus and Mary Chain.

So yeah, overall, I wouldn't say it's 10/10 worthy, but I'd give it a solid 6.5/10, maybe a 7. It's not the most complex, emotionally challenging, soul-searing game I've ever played (or in this case, watched), but it's pleasant enough. I may even eventually play it for real some day, if I'm in the mood for 90s core.