whoever this beloved anon was I am so touched by your kindness! You definitely didn’t have to do this but I am so happy you enjoy this idea and I will happily expand upon it for you!
this is just a collection of word vomit bullet points for the time being but I will happily answer any and all questions about this pair!!
warnings: violence, angst, child death (Sarah Miller), foul language, the same warnings that apply to tlou, reader is Sarah's mom and described as having similar features to her.
So the general Idea is that you and Joel are happily married before the outbreak.
You had been Sarah's mother, his high school sweetheart he got pregnant when neither of you were old enough to have any reaction to the pregnancy test other than a fucking panic attack in one another’s arms. but you made it work
you both worked but made time for one another and your sweet girl, going to museums every other weekend and joel insisting on swooping you off for a date every now and then
nothing special. He knows you’re more of a diner gal than anything too fancy that makes you both feel out of place.
On his birthday in 2003, you had planned to tell him that you were pregnant again. But the memories of your own fears of motherhood from all those years ago begin to swirl through your head again and you get cold feel. deciding to tell him the morning after
it is his birthday afterall, you want to focus on him.
but when you’re woken up in the middle of the night because tommy needs to get bailed out, Joel kisses you sweetly one last time before promising he’ll be back and you can’t shake the feeling that something bad is happening.
its you that shakes sarah awake that night. shouting at her to put on her shoes when she’s still rubbing the sleep from her eyes because you’ve been listening to the radio for the past two hours, calling joel again and again and again praying for him to fucking pick up but to no avail.
Sarah, bless your little girl’s bleeding heart is the one who insists you check on the adler’s against your better suspicions and when you find the eldest looming over her daughter, blood and sinew dripping from her mouth, you grab your daughter hand and burst into a full sprint until something slams into your back and sends you tumbling onto their front lawn
its how joel finds you, struggling to keep the once sweet old woman, whose now nothing more than dead eyes and gnashing teeth straining to snap at your pulse point as you push against her while sarah shrieks before your husband runs forward and cracks her skull with a wrench.
there’s hardly a moment of pause, just enough for him to pull you up and into his arms before he’s ushering you both into the car with an urgency.
when the truck crashes, you get separated from them. Perhaps at Tommy’s side when the flames rise and create a wall, separating you from your husband, or maybe pulled into the mob of chaos when trying to escape from those already infected-
all joel knows is that you promise you’ll find him: just get sarah to safety and you’ll meet him at the river
Poor thing is already so frightened, held in her father’s arms with tears streaming down her face insisting they can’t leave you they just can’t but her father kisses her forehead and reassures her its going to be okay
“we just need to be brave, okay babygirl? Your mama’s real tough, she’s gonna be alright.”
he isn’t sure if he’s saying it to his daughter or himself.
but when he comes to the river you aren’t there. Only a soldier who points a gun at the scared little girl in his arms and then he loses everything
its when the light is gone from his daughter’s eyes that he realizes. His voice cracked and raw from sobbing that he looks around to see his brother with drawn in shoulders and tears in his eyes but his wife is nowhere to be found.
Tommy says you got lost in the chaos. Everything was so loud, so sudden that he turned around and suddenly you weren’t there.
Joel wants to go back but its Tommy that stops him, that dulls the red in his vision to a sad faded pink because his brother points at the orange horizon not too far from them, so much of the city is already in flames.
“We’re gonna find her, but not there.”
So Joel searches. for the first year spent in the world post-outbreak its all he did.
He became a smuggler because of it.
Information came at a price and he needed to be able to fucking pay it, whether it be in blood or ration cards. He was willing to do anything to find you or any thin thread that lead your way.
But it’s Tommy that asks him to give up. Not in those words of course.
The youngest Miller knows better than to say something so cruel that would make his brother, the only person he has in this world turn on him.
But his voice is worried when he asks him one night in Boston when he hasn’t even had the chance to wash the blood from his knuckles
“You think she would have wanted this for you?”
the fight that followed his words was brutal. Vicious insults and scarred fists slamming against each brother until they're both too tired and bloody to continue. Each leaning against a wall for support and Tommy’s wavering voice breaking the silence.
“I don’t know where she is, Joel. But I do know you're gonna get yourself killed if you keep lookin’ for her.”
All he can do is nod.
It’s a few days later when he meets Tess. Who has heard plenty of stories about the elder miller’s brutality and wants him to put that muscle to good use for some extra profit.
It begins his new life. One that empty and cold but one he can live.
Until of course, Ellie comes along. The sweet and incredibly opinionated girl that makes him become something akin to the man he thought died twenty years ago.
its when he’s traveling with Ellie, that it happens. When a warm familiarity has settled between the two because so much blood and pain has been shared he can’t help but see her as something close, something bright even though all he can force himself to utter in her reference is “cargo”
when theyre traveling through the woods as Ellie chatters away, probing his memory about a movie that may or may not have existed thirty years ago because her descriptions of the plot are incredibly odd he hears a voice shout for them to stop and finds himself staring at a man- no, a boy- pointing a gun at them.
Ellie stills, but Joel can see enough to know that from the lanky figure and dimpled face that he’s young. Maybe twenty, twenty-two at the oldest, but his eyes dart from Joel to Ellie with a pinprick of fear that allows Joel the time to charge forward and slam him to the ground before wrestling the gun from his hands.
He has enough to time to tuck it under the stranger’s chin before he hears the sound of the safety being turned off and finds himself looking up and seeing a gun just inches from his face.
Joel’s head whips around when Ellie’s voice calls out his name in fear, he turns to see another stranger holding her a gun point, shoulders drawn back and a shadow cast over their face by the had obstructing their identity.
“You hurt one of mine, I hurt one of yours. That a fair deal?”
Its takes him a moment to recognize you. It’s been so long since he’s heard your voice, the sweet tease when you would poke at him each time he woke up late despite the fact that you reminded him to set his alarm the night before, the times you’d chide him with a harsh “Joel Miller!” whispered in public anytime he was able to grab you a bit too passionately to be appropriate in public but the laughter in your voice let him know you were never truly mad at him. You didn’t know how to be.
But that sweetness is buried under a cold rasp that cuts through the air as you point a rifle at the scared little girl in front of you.
“You think I won’t?” You’re older now, skin covered in scars from a life he didn’t know you got the chance to live and your eyes are cold as they regard your husband. “Put the gun down and get the fuck off of him, I won’t repeat myself.”
Joel mumbles your name in awe. The woman he loved, the woman he mourned the one he fought so hard to find stands before him like some sort of hallucination and suddenly the world feels like its spinning until you bark orders at him again.
“You’ve got five seconds Joel, make a fucking choice before I make it for you.”
He looks down and realizes the boy under him, the one with the bleeding nose and snarling face has your eyes and his dimples.
“One.”
The one above him has Sarah’s hair. Soft brown curls that shine under the sun.
“Two”
Wait. No, they both do.
“Three.”
Twins. Jesus fucking Christ you had twins.
“Four.”
Joel holds the rifle up above his head and the one boy standing snatches it from his grasp, tossing it to the ground and kicking it far from his reach. He slowly stands, allowing your son- dear god your son- to scramble to his feet.
Your voice softens just for a moment. “You okay, Duke?”
Blood stains the bottom half of his face from where Joel slammed his fist into the boy’s nose just moments before, but he nods nonetheless.
Now, they both stand on one side of you and he can see the resemblance clear as day the same way he would whenever Sarah was by your side.
When you order him to hand over his bag, he does so without question before telling Ellie to do the same.
She watches him with wide eyes, her hands still up in the air but gaping at her companion as if he had grown a second head.
“Joel!” “Just do it, alright?”
He doesn’t miss the way you watch their interaction with narrowed eyes until she tosses her bag to you and you slowly lower your gun.
“Now, you want to tell me what the fuck you think you’re doin’ at my home?”
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Give me widower Mav who has come to terms with his husband’s death and now gets to make jokes and comments about it which makes people uncomfortable while he finds it hilarious pls
As someone who lost their father a long time ago I have reached that point where I can make jokes and comments and like to my close friends it’s funny but to someone I don’t know it’s… strange cause they don’t know how to react and it’s truly a small moment of absolute joy cause they make it weirder than it needs to be
Here is what I mean:
Fanboy: Hi Mav! I like your hoodie!
Mav: thanks, it belonged to my dead husband
Fanboy:
Mav: he’s not gonna use it so
…
Hangman, pointing at the ring on Mav’s dog tags: you’re married?
Mav: I was, but sadly he died on a terrible accident
Hangman: oh I’m sorry—
Mav: I’m kidding, he didn’t die on an accident
Hangman: oh thank god I thought I—
Mav: he died of cancer
…
Mav: my husband used to hate this movie
Phoenix: what made him change his mind?
Mav: oh he didn’t, he just died
…
Mav: I miss my husband
Coyote: why, where is he?
Mav: I want to say heaven but he was a weird man so honestly I don’t know
…
Cyclone: Maverick where is the paperwork I asked for
Mav: oh I’m sorry? I was mourning the death of my husband, in case you hadn’t noticed, the audacity, I cannot believe you would come for a widower like this—
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hate to break it to you, but liu kang and kung lao are actually cousins. i enjoy your art a lot and scrolling through your blog, so seeing you and your friends support liulao makes me concerned. i hope you understand and are mindful about what you ship going forward <:(
I sense some condescension, anon, but since text messaging cannot accurately convey tone, I’ll take this as a genuine warning. Thank you for your concern, but do not worry, I’m old enough to be mindful about my ships and I do my research, since I have no interest in shipping relatives in any media, and it CAN be tricky with the universe as complex and lore heavy as mk.
With that being said, here’s where you are wrong, anon. Liu Kang and Kung Lao are canonically NOT related – at least the versions of them that people ship.
Just a week ago, lovely user rasta-bot covered the “cousins issue”, you can check this post or I’ll just repeat the main idea here. They were only made cousins in the original 1995 movie because this specific universe (and by extension MK Conquests universe since it's a prequel to the movies) has Liu Kang as the Great Kung Lao's descendant as well. However, this is what the mk co-creator and Lore God™ John Tobias said about this change:
In no other game Liu Kang was the descendant of GKL or Lao’s relative. In the original (and prev) timeline he was an orphan, raised by Shaolin monks.
And if you are referring to the 2021 movie, alas, you’d be wrong again. In the movie Liu Kang has no family, he tells Cole about his past, but people love to refer to the scene with a translation error. The mistake was pointed out by several native speakers online, but everyone can easily check it by themselves, even if they are not familiar with the language, just by doing a quick google search. This took me 2 minutes:
1. Turn on the Chinese subtitles.
2. Look at the first results of “師兄 meaning” goggle search.
source: wiktionary.org
source: chinese.yabla.com
source: hinative.com
It is totally fine if you don’t feel like shipping these two, you have all the right - everybody has different preferences. I also don’t like certain ship dynamics even if they are “legal” in any way. 😁 But I never encountered liulao shippers who would endorse inсеst, and it’s sad to see how this confusion nearly becomes a witch hunt, scaring and demotivating artists and writers.
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Erik!! I keep seeing your adorable centaur OCs and I always wanted to ask what's the story behind them??
Plushi!! Sorry for the mega-late reply… 🥺I was so happy to get this ask but I didn't know how to explain my silly ocs…I will try now-more under the cut.
Dael Braam (dwarf) is a cooped up farmhand looking to see the world, but being immune-compromised from birth it took a lot of persuasion to convince her parents to let them go. They relent under the condition that she finds a capable and strong person to travel with to keep her safe… Just so happens that a strong and capable centaur knight is visiting in town…
Rembrandt (horsey) was created from a dark fusion spell by an amateur mage, who had intentions to construct a powerful warrior to do his bidding.
However, the spell cast did not result in a powerful and fully-armored warrior…. but instead a frail baby knight centaur, with only its top half made of living armor. The mage, not wanting to raise any kind of child, promptly abandons his creation. He can always try to make another one after all.
Into adulthood, Rembrandt still carries a lot of pent-up abandonment and self-esteem issues. You wouldn't know that from the proud facade he puts on though, lying about being a royal knight yet helping all those he comes across with a smile, but never staying long. When the opportunity of having a long-term travel companion (and perhaps a friend…?) arises from Dael requiring a bodyguard, his craving for companionship and affirmation outweighs his worries about her seeing eldritch elements of himself.
Dirk (beefy dragon thing) is the second (and more "successful") attempt from the same mage to create a powerful monster. Think Rembrandt's "big evil" brother. Except he's quite a bit younger. Dirk emerged fully-developed except for his wings-which remain as little nubs. Despite his brawn and warrior-appearance, Dirk was mostly a glorified errand boy, using his impressive strength to terrorize the nearby towns and their land-collecting resources for the mage.
Dael and Rembrandt meet Dirk after hearing word of a giant dragon-knight ravaging villages (and their livestock yum yum).
(I also like the idea of the mage sending Dirk to capture Rembrandt + Dael when he recognizes is his first attempt is not only alive and strong, but also quite proficient in battle.)
One way or another Dirk ends up roaming with the two. At first, Dirk is over-confident, rude, and stubborn... Overall a huge pain for them to travel with. After being shown kindness for the first time and being subject to more than a few humbling situations, Dirk allows a protective, loyal and softer side of him to emerge.
Lots of found family shenanigans and adventures occur-and yeah! This was rambly but thank you for reading about my guys! 💖
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