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lauronk · 3 months ago

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REVIEW🧟 REVIEW🧟‍♀️ REVIEW🧟‍♂️

(pretty please)

hi friendo, glad to see you! buckle up for this one, it's...a lot lmao like literally a wall of text, i tried to break it up so that it's a more manageable read but i was so wordy i do not think i succeeded.

lemme just get the elephant out of the way, the bit that's had so many tumblr girlies (gn) up in arms all day: joel's experimenting comment and his talk to me when you're more yourself bit. 🚨🚨if you don't care to read that part, skip down to the next star banner for thoughts on the rest of the episode🚨🚨

and let me say right off, i do not think that joel's reaction was right but i think it was understandable. i think some people have been living with soft fic dad joel too long and have idealized the fuck out of him (which, tbf, i do too) and some of the less favorable aspects of his character have been forgotten because, believe it or not, he is not the perfect man/dad we all like to pretend he is. that being said:

for one, i need people to stop saying "he's from austin! he would be liberal!" my sweet precious little summer children. i have lived in and around central texas, including austin, travis county, and various parts of the hill country, for 25 of my 33 years on this planet. austin is liberal, yes, especially compared to surrounding cities and counties, but travis county voted for bush in 2000. and homophobia (and conservatism and hate crimes and all of it) still exists in and around the whole area, there is not some magical anti-homophobe bubble over the city that automatically makes everyone who lives there an ally. joel and tommy are also canonically from arlington (game versions at least), and tarrant county is significantly more conservative than travis county. stop treating austin like a liberal monolith because it is not that any more than texas as a whole is a conservative monolith.

show!tlou outbreak was in 2003. pre-obergefell, in the midst of DADT, when straight was seen as the default and anything remotely outside that was other, weird, unacceptable. i am not gonna say that just because joel lives in texas he is a bigot. but i am also not gonna say that living in austin automatically makes him liberal either, which is the conclusion so many people seem to be jumping to. especially because liberal in 2003 was farrrrr different than liberal today. lgbtq+ rights were nowhere in al gore's presidential campaign. john kerry (the democratic nom in 2004) was flatout opposed to same-sex marriage and thought it should be decided by the states. you cannot look at joel miller with a 2025 understanding of queerness because we never get past 2003 and society was too busy trying to fight fungus monsters to work on their societal and cultural mindsets.

yes, joel is friends with bill and frank and yes, he seems to not care one way or the other that they're gay. but (unfortunately) for some people it is a vastly different thing when it is your friends (and when it comes to bill and joel i use the word very loosely) vs when it is your kid. my best friend came out to his conservative parents and while they reiterated that they loved him no matter what, they still had to "work through" accepting that it meant not getting the exact future they had envisioned for him, and they still went through a period of denial even though he was in his mid-20s and had known this about himself for some time before working up the nerve to tell them.

joel walks in on his teenage kid not just fooling around with a partner of the same sex, he walks in on her fooling around with, in his eyes, an adult. cat & ellie may not see 17 and 19 as all that different, because they are in a time where the rather arbitrary 18yo = adult line has been erased, but that line is likely very much still there in joel's head. he sees an adult woman in his teenaged daughter's room, tattooing her, giving her drugs, and fooling around with her. any parent would have flipped their lid, MY parents who were lesbians would have flipped their lid. to quote judy gellar on friends: "that's a lot of information to get in thirty seconds."

should he have said experimenting? no. should he have implied that the 17yo didn't know herself well enough to know what she's saying about herself? no. but to joel - she is high, she is a kid, she is mad at him now for interrupting and embarrassing her in front of cat. and let's be so for real, joel miller does NOT have a good record of thinking before he speaks, nor has he really been shown to acknowledge and share his emotions more than a handful of times.

this has all been a very long-winded way of saying i think slapping a blanket homophobe label on joel is utterly lacking in nuance, context, and literally any critical thought. i think saying his behavior is OOC is lacking those things as well because at the end of the day he is an emotionally damaged/emotionally constipated old man from Texas who probably internalized some of those ideals whether he meant to or not.

and i think it is very clear that despite that misstep, he loves and accepts ellie for who she is. he shoves a man who calls her a slur, he asks about dina with the same awkwardness that my dad has ever asked me about a significant other with, he says dina would be lucky to have her, and he still sees her as his daughter at the end of it all.

for the rest of the episode:

honestly, top to bottom, fucking loved it. joel making her guitar rather than finding it? carving the moth in himself? infodumping about the tools? sheer perfection.

ellie being a little gremlin and digging her hand straight into a cake, joel/pedro singing (even if pedro wasn't actually playing lol), the SPACE CAPSULE AND THE TAPE, we got a baby girl and a forehead kiss, we got a joel and ellie who are as domestic as it gets, it was all incredible.

i loved the changes made as well (for the most part): eugene being the trigger for ellie's realization; the delayed timeline on her moving to the garage and their estrangement; seeing some things unwind from joel's pov as opposed to ellie's; the little joel and maria convo (GIVE ME MORE) and uncle grumpyyyyyyyyy; also i would happily watch joel shove seth a thousand times over. i loved ellie trying to work through her logical list of questions and then immediately panicking and shoving them in a drawer when joel knocks.

PORCH SCENE PORCH SCENE PORCH SCENEEEEEEEE i'll be so honest at first i was like why the fuck are they giving this to us now? but i loved the scene so much i don't care lol and i do think, in the end, it was good placement for it. i think it gave us everything we needed to see to make ellie's behavior thus far make sense (her reaction to the pregnancy, her wanting to do daddy-daughter patrol). AND JOEL SAID I LOVE YOUUUUUUUU i cannot believe we got that.

honestly one of my favorite things about this season has been how just upfront about what exactly joel & ellie's relationship is in a way the game (to my admittedly limited knowledge) never was.

also at the end of it all, just absolutely top notch performances by pedro and bella, as always. all of it was just fucking incredible, i cannot believe we are so blessed to live in a timeline where they are our joel and ellie, and they love each other so deeply offscreen too.

issues? needs more tommy and maria. needs more minutes per episode. needs more episodes in the season. and also the museum needed to be longer really. that's such a big chunk of the game and i know they gave us fresh new stuff but also...dinosaurs with hats 😭

#the last of us #the last of us spoilers #tlou spoilers #zombie anon friend #joel and ellie #the last of us hbo #tl;dr #please think for more than five seconds before screaming joel is a homophobe #please stop acting as though you have to pass an ally & liberalism quiz before living in austin tx #please accept that characters are messy and imperfect and the joel of our fics is not necessarily the joel that IS #please accept that fanfic writers are not the arbiters of what is and is not 'out of character'#also #and i'm going out on a limb here #if you haven't consumed the media directly yourself #idk maybe don't act holier than thou about your opinion when talking to people who HAVE consumed the media #just my two cents #i am enjoying the season overall #it is one of the few good things in my life right now #so at the end of the day that's what matters to me #let people enjoy things #and also if you take issue with something i said i am more than happy to have a convo with you about it #in good faith and genuineness #discourse makes the world go round #and if you take issue and don't wanna talk about it with me #that's also your prerogative & i acknowledge that posting on a public forum like tumblr means inviting interaction w/people who may disagre #happy monday y'all

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mirrortouchedsea · 9 months ago

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dark. that was all he had ever known. cold, dark, damp. the boy shivers in the small room, painfully alone, only a book and his magic to keep him company. he tries not to use his magic very often, though. it seemed that the people above knew when he used it and they always always always refused to give him food until he “woke up” next, if they bothered to keep track of that. maybe this time he’ll learn their lesson. the boy whispers his spell, cur memini, and creates a small light in his fingers. this is the only spell he can cast safely, too small to be noticeable by the people above. he holds his hand over the fading book on the floor. the boy can’t read the letters on the page, but this book has pictures. he flips through it again, careful of the pages that were falling apart, admiring the figure in armor who always comes to rescue the figure in the tower, cut off from the world, just like him. the boy frequently dreams of a figure in armor coming to save him, despite the years he has spent alone. dark and cold and damp.

the room the boy lives in, the only room he has memories of, is empty besides himself and the book. sometimes the people above would give him water and stale bread to eat, and then there was a cup and a dirty plate, but otherwise it was just the boy and the book. the boy knows why the people above have locked him away, they told him that he was a freak of nature, unnatural, dangerous. but the boy could only make lights in his palm, and that wasn’t very dangerous at all. he thinks to himself that the people above are the dangerous ones, locking away a child for something like this, but he can’t say that out loud. he doesn’t want to die again.

the boy’s stomach grumbles and he curls in on himself, the light in his palm fades out. he longs to see the sun again, to play with the other children he can hear through the ceiling, to be normal. the people above must have decided to punish him again, though, as he doesn’t remember the last time he had anything to drink, to eat. his stomach would eat through his skin and he would still wake up the next day. why can’t he just die once and for all and be rid of the pain? why is the world keeping him here? why was he even born?

the boy closes his eyes, and falls asleep. maybe this time it won’t hurt so much.

---

how long has he been here? the boy doesn’t keep track of time. he knows he’s died at least a dozen times, but how long does it take for a dozen lifetimes to pass?

---

a clattering on the floor wakes the boy up. the people above decided he can eat today. stale bread and water again, but better than nothing to the boy. he crawls closer to it, listening to the door. it closes and the voices disappear. where was the sound of the lock? did they forget?

the boy scarfs down his food and water before tiptoeing up the stairs. he doesn’t hear any voices, but he needs to be careful. he doesn’t remember what the above looks like, but he needs to leave. he needs to be free.

slowly, quietly, he opens the door. it’s dark on the other side of it, but still much, much brighter than his room ever was. he closes his eyes but keeps the door open. breathe in, and out. opens his eyes again, blinking the brightness away. pushes the door further open. steps on the hard ground outside the door. he’s so close. closes the door quietly. turns around and holds his breath. where was outside? pick a direction and go. his legs hurt. turn the corner, listen for voices. voices are dangerous, get away from the voices. whisper his spell, create a small light. keep moving keep moving keep moving. window ahead. break it? open it? is he strong enough? lift the window up. too weak. voices coming. hurry hurry hurry must get out now. whisper spell again, hand on window. break the glass and jump through it. cuts on feet cuts on legs deal with that later. voices getting louder voices shouting. run run RUN.

the boy runs away from the building, away from his room. freedom is so close. first get to the trees, then… he hasn’t thought that far, but he will find a way. gunshots from the house. he runs faster, must get to the trees, must hide, must be free. cur memini, he whispers again, crossing into the forest. his spell can make lights and now break windows, but he needs it to protect him at this moment. run run run until the voices are quiet again. his legs are giving out, but he needs to run. he can’t die now or they’ll find him. keep running. bare feet on sticks and stones and sharp things, everything hurts but he can’t stop. he keeps running until the sun comes up. his heart beats out of his chest.

---

when he wakes up he doesn’t know how much time has passed. his heart beats fast and he sits up. did they find him? he looks around. trees, rocks, a gurgling stream. he’s free. he’s free. he sighs and lays back down. how far did he run? he needs to go further. away from other people, away from anyone who might lock him up again. he sits up again and forces himself to stand and walk towards the sound of the stream. he can start there. water is important, and he might be able to get food from the little stream too.

his first drink of the stream water is icy cold, quenching his lifelong thirst in just a few swallows. he washes his face with it, removing years of sweat and grime. he wants to sit by the stream forever if only he could, but the people will find him eventually if he doesn’t keep moving. but he allows himself a few minutes to bathe in the water, savoring the feeling of water on his skin. his stomach still growls, wanting something more filling than the freezing water of the stream, but that would have to wait. he needs to get his bearings.

the light of the outside world is almost blinding, he realizes. the sun and the snow made it almost impossible to see anything. he should get up above the trees. can he even do that? cur memini, he says, trying to get his voice to be louder than a whisper. his feet float a few inches above the ground. he closes his eyes and says his spell again with more conviction. Cur Memini. he feels himself shooting into the air before he opens his eyes. he can see the forest stretch out for miles around him. trees covered in snow in every direction. if the old house is behind him, he should fly straight ahead, towards the forests on the mountains. tentatively, he leans forward and focuses his magic on keeping himself afloat.

it doesn’t take much to exhaust what little magic he has, but he’s put more distance between himself and the old house and the people above now. he should be safe to rest, truly rest. but first he should find something to eat. is there anything to eat out here? something in his head tells him to look a little closer to the ground. to his left. there’s a bush full of berries. he’s never had anything but stale bread, and doesn’t know what to expect as he crushes one with his teeth.

the sensation overtakes him for a brief moment. the berry is sweet, yet tart, and delicious. it’s the best thing he’s ever eaten and he thanks the little voice in his head for the information as he picks several more berries from the bush. the juice runs down his chin and makes him sticky, but it feels good. he feels truly alive for the first time.

once he’s finished picking the bush clean of its fruits, he needs to find a place to rest, to stay warm. he’s shivering in the intense cold of the north, but it’s nothing he isn’t used to. the room was never very warm after all. he listens to the little voices calling out to him, guiding him towards a small cave, instructing him on how to make a small fire to warm himself up. a small rabbit brushes against his leg and he swears one of the voices is coming from it. and with the fire going, he thanks the rabbit before it hops away back into the snow. he would be roasting that same rabbit over the fire a few months later.

the boy can’t stay in the cave forever though. as days turn to weeks turn to months, he worries that the people above are getting closer to him. they’ll put him back in that cold, dark, damp room again. he needs to keep moving. he has been practicing his magic, casting stronger spells, and he needs to be ready to fly. it's been long enough. cur memini he says holding his hand out. a rough stick with twigs tied to the end flies into his hand. it’s a poor excuse for what he understands is a broom, but it will work. he climbs onto it and focuses. cur memini cur memini cur memini. he lifts off the ground and watches as the branches of the trees get shorter and eventually he passes above the treetops.

he takes a moment to gather his bearings. he no longer remembers the direction the house was in, but going up is his best bet of staying away from the people above. he laughs, realizing that he is the one above them now. after a moment, he flies into the mountains. the small voices change into bigger, unfamiliar ones as he gets further into the mountain range. they tell him to hide, to stay away. he doesn’t listen. they cannot be more dangerous than the humans he is running from.

the boy lands, still exhausted from using so much magic, but he was able to travel further this time. that has to count for something, surely. he gathers some sticks and looks for another cave to make his home in. the caves remind him too much of the room he left, so he chooses to stay close to the entrance, close to the light that reminds him he is free. the fire keeps the animals away, but the voices are curious about the new presence in their woods. they make him curious too. he should stay in the cave tonight though and regain his energy. maybe he can get some small game to fill his stomach before settling in for the night. he listens for a rabbit’s voice, or maybe a squirrel, anything that would be small enough to kill with his hands.

at last, a small fox’s voice is heard nearby. he wonders if fox will taste different from the other game he’s eaten thus far. he lifts a hand-sized rock and slinks out of the cave towards the voice. it takes a few minutes to find the source, but the fox is curled under a tree, shivering, hungry, just like him. the boy hesitates before bludgeoning it and slinging the corpse over his shoulders. there are more foxes. he is much more important.

the fox is only the first animal he hunts in those mountainous woods. he spends several years in that forest and eventually humans settle up there as well. the boy, or rather, the man now, has made a name for himself amongst the human populations of the north. he is no longer afraid of humans capturing him and locking him up. they are still terrified of him, but now he is in control of that terror. the hunters that left his territory alive whispered tales of the great wizard owen who inhabited the mountains and terrorized anyone who had the bad luck of running into him.

all of this is perfectly fine with owen. eventually his reputation will grow beyond himself, encapsulating atrocities that were impossible for even someone as strong as oz to commit, but that would be a problem for future owen. for now, he is still young and living in his cave on the outskirts of a small village and scaring hunters who stray too far from their boundaries. the wolves don’t like these visitors either and gladly listen to owen’s lamentations. it keeps his hands clean of the bloodshed if he isn’t casting the spell himself. the wolves don’t care for owen either, but they respect him. and that is enough for owen.

the first of the unwanted visitors was a young man, someone who wanted to provide for his family. he pleaded with owen and the wolves to let him go and he wouldn’t cause any problems. those pleas fell on deaf ears though as owen looked the man in the eyes. won’t your family be disappointed, he asked almost innocently, you don’t have anything to show for your efforts. the man stammered a response, they’d rather i come back alive with nothing than die trying to find food. is that so, owen reached out for the man’s chin, the distance between their faces was almost nothing. y-yes, sir, please just let me go and i won’t bother you anymore. owen grinned. oh i’m sure you won’t be causing us any trouble again. the wolves stalked out of the woods, drooling at the prospect of tearing a piece of that man for themselves. owen snapped his fingers, and they came running forward, only to stop mere inches from the now trembling man. there was a suspicious yellow stain in the snow beneath him. p-p-please sir, anything you ask, it’s yours! then make sure you tell the rest of your little village that this forest belongs to the great wizard owen. the man ran off, leaving behind a hunting rifle and a ratty sack. the rifle would be of use, but the sack became tinder for his fires.

despite the warning from that first man, hunters continued to enter into owen’s territory. and one after the other, they ran off screaming with their tails between their legs. this should have annoyed owen, that people would ignore all of the warnings and stories that had started popping up about him, but it doesn’t. their fear feeds into his magic power, only making him stronger, and that is all fine with owen. he is no longer a weak child locked in the damp, dark basement, and he never will be again.

#shay writes #mahoyaku #promise of wizard #mhyk fanfiction #owen #owen mhyk #owen mahoyaku #character study #my wips #okay putting. disclaimers in the tags bc formatting. i am still new to reading everything #i'm almost done with the ballads. i have one left and its the proud hunter one #and then i'm hoping to start the first anni story #so uhhhhh if anything past the ballads is wrong no its not #jk jk i just havent gotten to it but i also like to take creative liberties with some things #and i definitely have already #trust me this is going to be way longer than it already is #like this is 2.5k words and i'm only posting all of it now bc its owen's birthday #i have several more scenes i want to write out as well that will add probably at least #another 2k words to this #if not more. its gonna be a time #but i did force myself to get to a decent place to end where it wasnt like. the middle of the scene #or a sentence. which some of my wips do accidentally end midsentence. i need to get better at that #but yeah. okay i should go to sleep i am actually sick and need to sleep and pray #i can go to work tomorrw. though if i'm feeling worse thats fine w me #i can sleep in for once #anyway happy birthday owen my mippy <3

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