#Tlou discourse

[darlingjmiller]

every video game dudebro on reddit reacting to the season two trailer all say the same thing, it’s a circlejerk chamber of ‘boohoo ellie doesn’t look exactly like she did in the game, kaitlyn dever isn’t jacked enough to play abby, i’m gonna be rude to the actors because it’s 100% their fault’ i’m so glad tumblr is more positive about it, like yes the girls wearing makeup and having a blowout doesn’t make sense but no one got upset when tommy looked like he came straight from the salon with his glossy curls in s1, if that’s the extent of our criticism then i think we’re ok

[hearts-hunger]

the thing about tlou hbo's portrayal of joel and ellie is that it feels very much like a way to retcon their characters to make tlou2/the second season of the show seem even remotely believable.

you have to have ellie be snarky and aggressive and bitchy from the get go for it to make sense that she becomes cold and distant and hateful in the second game/season. because an innocent eager child who loves and trusts very easily is not realistically going to become a closed off loner spree killer. so you change her character and try to show that she was always angry and violent and closed off from affection and hope and kindness. she was never vulnerable and childlike. she was never obedient to adults or eager to please. she was never scared and wanting a hand to hold. she was always aloof, never cared about making people like her. she was always domineering, rude, vengeful, and mean-spirited.

you have to nerf joel's character too, because ellie can't be subject to a disciplined, stoic, consistent, trustworthy authority figure. because it makes no sense for her to be a feral little freak if she has a guardian who takes care of her, praises her efforts to please and obey him, is one hundred percent of the time a dependable and stable and competent adult. so you make him someone ellie would be weak and stupid to love, someone who is emotionally volatile, subject to intense mood swings of aggression, panic, grief, someone who is impulsive and shown from the first moment to be led by the people around him. you make joel into a needy, guts-spilling-out kind of person who parentifies this oddly girlboss child who knows better than him, fights better than him, and seems to not really need him. you make joel a crumbling mess who can’t really protect ellie because he's too busy crying or beating someone to death in a haze of the emotion that rules him. you make him into someone who isn't strong enough to be her safe place, who can't rescue her, who can't be a father to her.

the dynamic of tlou1 only works with a kind, gruff, adult who actually does know better than the eager, genuine kid who wiggles her way into the adult's heart. when it's a little girl softening the heart of a father who's forgotten how to love and hope but just needs a reminder. when it's a man who does right by this child because he knows what's in her best interest and has the strength of will to do it.

it doesn't work if it's a miserable, unwieldy adult who needs to learn some life skills from the prickly, aggressive kid who somehow gets the adult to use his emotional volatility to kill for her. when it's a match and a fuse just waiting to be lit. when it's some all-wise teenage punk and a weepy grownup with no ability to make the right decision because he's too in his own head. when the kid knows best and the adult screws it up so bad that the foolproof plan to save the world goes completely to hell.

now, tlou2 works with that dynamic — the whole narrative of the second game blames joel for his selfishness and weakness and nails ellie to the wall for her violence and coldness. joel fucked everything up because he was a blubbering, uncontrollable, panic-ridden idiot who wasn't strong enough to make the necessary sacrifice. ellie should have died on that operating table like she knew she needed to, because the world would be a better place, because the only thing she's capable of in life is revenge, hatred, betrayal, sarcasm, iciness, anger, sharpness of tongue and sharpness of blade. she is not hopeful or good or loving or trusting or open hearted. she deserved to die for everyone else, and now that she didn't, we all get to suffer and so does she. she's a shitty person who doesn't want to be better, even as a kid, and there's no changing her. too bad she missed her one chance to make a positive impact on the world because of some selfish moron who can barely function because of his emotional distress.

the problem is that the dynamic needed for the second game’s message to work is just not present in the first game. joel is a man's man, a good father, a strong person mentally and physically. ellie is a kindhearted child, one who strives to please joel and make him like her, a spunky and likeable little girl. but the creators of the first game hate that now, apparently, or look down on it as naive and unrealistic. even though they made it. and i think their solution is to retcon the first game's story with the show, and just straight up attempt to gaslight audiences into thinking that's all the first game ever was. all the things you liked about the first game? they suck and so do you. fuck you for liking them and wanting them reflected in the show. truly.

[22thumbs]

Too many people think teenagers look like 20/30 year olds and it's frustrating. Teenagers actually still look like teenagers. A lot of times, some teenagers actually look like preteens.

Honestly, the funniest thing about all the TLOU discourse is the sheer number of people who don't know what a fucking teenager looks like.

[toxicanonymity]

"I guarantee dark fic readers wouldn't want some guy off the street to do these things to them IRL" 😤

"Some fics aren't canon compliant, and some don't even pretend to have plot" 😤

"Some people read their favorites the most" 😤

"Some people dont reblog til after a blog they follow does" 😤

[abbysdyke]

whenever people say that lesbians headcanon abby as a lesbian just because she’s muscular they are projecting their own stereotypical thinking. i actually watched abby and think she’s a lesbian because of her mannerisms, the way she interacts, looks at and protects women versus the way she interacts and looks at men. as someone who experienced comphet for YEARS i see it so clearly in abby’s story. she had a crush on a boy at a young age (which most lesbians do) and her dad, who she lost, approves of this crush and encourages her to pursue it so she continues to hold onto him and that relationship because it’s what she believes is right and what she thinks her dad would want. she obviously did care for owen at some point and have love towards him but it could easily be platonic love. after they hook up you can tell she immediately regrets it and has so much hatred towards him. she can barely even look at him or talk to him. i do believe him cheating on his pregnant girlfriend contributed to her anger towards him but it also feels so much deeper than that at the same time. at the end of the day this is a fictional character and her sexuality was never confirmed so any sexuality people say (yes even calling her straight) is a headcanon so if lesbians want to call her a lesbian i think we should be able to in peace especially considering there is VERY little representation for buff lesbians in media!

[sapphosclown]

ellie’s grief in the show is different than in the game because the show is on a new timeline.

ranty/rambly character analysis kinda idk

i keep seeing discourse ab this show and. i’m trying so hard not to care bc it’s all annoying to me lol but the one that keeps coming up is ellie wasn’t angry enough. but, the reason it feels that way and that maybe she’s “happier” in the show is because the timeline is different

in the game, joel dies, ellie is on her revenge path after a few days. in the show, ellie is physically hurt. she cannot go find anybody right now, she’s being held in the hospital while she recovers. also, she just lost the most important person in her life, she’s being kept under as much surveillance in that hospital as they can get. this whole process takes three months. that’s three months that ellie has already been actively grieving. all that rage is building inside her, probably venting in very strange ways as she’s being held up, but ultimately she’s trying to suppress it. why? she wants to leave, because she wants to fucking kill abby.

that’s why they make her talk to gail before she goes. that’s why she’s happy as a clam during the whole conversation. if you genuinely watched that and thought “wtf why is she so okay right now” i fear you were not the intended audience for this show. it’s been said over and over which is why it’s fascinating that people are still missing the whole point.

Ellie. Is. Lying.

She is lying to Everyone. she is fucking livid. she’s heartbroken, so much so that she’s numb. she’s coasting. the whole time she’s just coasting, waiting for the moment she explodes—the moment she finds abby.

that’s why you think she’s “out of character”—but she’s not. think about how she acted in season 1. she was silly and aloof and chatty and witty; and she was grieving. she had just lost her best friend and first crush and first kiss, the most important person in her life at that point had just died. but she put on that face. that goofy smile and stupid puns, that is the face she puts on while she grieves because she doesn’t want her devastation to be anyone else’s business. this is also interesting when you look at her behavior after the david situation, she is not herself. she’s fully dazed over and quiet. that was the tipping point for all this trauma that she just shut down. she couldn’t hide all of it anymore

you can also see it in the flashback episodes. she becomes more and more reserved (not necessarily angry, but certainly pulling away a lot) as she begins to really sort through truth and lies. that anger does come back until it has a reason to (eugene).

the timeline of ellie’s grief is so important because is shows that she has had ample time to put together a version of herself that works publicly. that falls apart when things start to get real, because what’s real is she is murderous and she is going to do terrible things (which she will end up regretting but that’s a whole other thought i have). dina’s “pep talk” wasn’t explaining to ellie why ellie needs to be angry, it’s her explaining why she, dina, wants to be a part of this. ellie knows why she is there, but she doesn’t want dina to be apart of the horrible acts she’s going to commit, she wants dina to remain her safe place and her sense of self—the self that still had joel. but selfishly, she can’t make dina not go, because she wants her there.

i also think that’s why ellie wasn’t mad about the pregnancy like she was in the game. it’s been months, the grief has settled into being familiar at this point, she’s not constantly on the edge; unlike the game where the wound was still fresh and that news was shocking, so since she’s hurting, she reacted hurt. but since in the show she has a bandaid on, she was able to avoid the hurt reaction.

lastly, to act like game ellie was constantly the worst version herself every minute she’s in seattle is just so dramatic and wrong. ellie and dina have nice moments, ellie has moments where she is sad and happy and angry and bittersweet. her grief is not simply rage—it’s human. that’s how the show is doing it too. it’s weird when someone you love dies because somehow, the world keeps spinning. it feels unfair, how dare life continue without someone i cared about with me. but it does, which means even as you miss someone you’re going to have happy moments, and excited ones, and silly ones. that doesn’t mean everything is ok, it just means something is right then in that moment.

anyway. i think the show is fine, it’s entertaining, it has solid enough plot, and more than anything it’s goal is to provoke thought and feelings, the same thing the game wanted. if you don’t like how they did it that’s fine, you can play the game. but if you’re giving the show a chance, give it a real one. contextualize s2 within the show, not the game, because they are different and if you keep mixing up content then yeah, it’s going to feel like a bad show. so everyone chill out and just have fun watching a little show damn

[drugsorgasmsandcheese]

still seeing people say bella ramsey was a bad casting choice for ellie TWO YEARS after the show premiered has me growling like a guard dog i will defend them until the day i die

[nqueso-lies]

[genetics4life]

If your actions contributed to the mass exodus of Pedro boy writers in the past 48 hours: I hope your botox migrates, you wake up with a sore neck every morning for the next 10 years, and you get audited on your taxes.

[tv-opinion]

the show was my first introduction to this story and i think the ethical dilemma of what joel did in salt lake city is really compelling as obviously it’s a good thing ellie is alive however he selfishly stripped her of her agency and burdened her with endless guilt and the feeling that her life needs to be profound so color me surprised to see how many people just think joel did the right thing and saying the show made ellie “bratty” because she outright says joel is selfish like MAMA HE IS SELFISH HELLO😭

[lauronk]

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 😭

[savage-rhi]

I'm personally not a fan of HBOs TLOU (or part 2 of the game for that matter, to each their own, I love the first game), but the community of Jackson got me to thinking, "what if...?" like, "what if I lived in a society that was focused on community? what would I contribute with my limitations?" and I sat back and made a list:

1. Mental health: I can provide it and feel confident I could teach others.

2. Crafting: art, design, crochet, nets, spears, traps, weapons, woodworking, etc.

3. Writing: writing books about the community's history, stories, cataloging lost media, running a library, etc.

4. Husbandry: working with farm animals and livestock, pets, unusual critters, etc.

5. Patrol: seldom would participate but if need be I can snipe, throw axes, and I'm getting good at shooting a bow.

6. Daycare: I can watch the littles and help them figure out what they like to do, protect them, give parents a break, etc.

7. Trading/bartering: if I have the balls or a death wish, go to other settlements and establish a trade route, foster connections, bring people in and out etc.

8. Entertainment: have movie nights, get folks into plays, have community games, etc.

9. Dentistry/medical: I've watched enough YT videos (and at one point considered getting into the profession) that I feel pretty good I could do cleanings and basic extractions. Wound debridement, injury repair etc.

Y'know what's fucked up about this, laying it out like that?

There's so much I could be doing for a community, being of service to people (even with my disabilities! seriously look at all the shit I listed so far!), and being taken care of in the process, but I live in a society that could give two shits less about what I can contribute and I'm too burnt out and stressed over money to make a lot of these things happen in the sparse time I get to myself.

Look, I don't want a cordyceps apocalypse (the fungal blood infection I had the summer before was enough for me), but I get the appeal, or at least understand why folks are so keen for everything to go to hell in a hand basket so we can eventually get a factory reset back to community-driven societies.

[millermenapologist]

I keep seeing people say this is such a terrible adaptation and I’m like…so confused. the show literally hits majority of the major story beats of the game? time in jackson ➡️ joel dies ➡️ ellie goes to seattle and spends 3 days there looking for abby and the 3 days match up with the events of the game lol. I genuinely don’t understand what all the fuss is about. because they decided to make ellie a more realistic teenager? I don’t think tlou fans realize how lucky they are to have the source material so faithfully adapted tbh. they deserved a shittier show and then they would really have something to whine about. a bunch of entitled crybabies because surprise! a tv show is not a video game and doesn’t operate like one.

I think that the biggest problem is that many, many people didn't pay attention the first time around, didn't understand the characters nor their motivations, and now they're lashing out because the show is highlighting how little attention they pay to things.

Just look at how many people constantly rant and rave about how cool and "much better" TLOU2 would've been if Ellie had been the one who got murdered and Joel the one who sought revenge. Like, the game is very clear: Joel spent years of his life being suicidal, either attempted or thought to, and Ellie's death would be what brings him to go through with it once and for all. If Ellie were to be murdered, the game would last 20 minutes: beginning scene, she gets killed, Joel shoots himself in the mouth, credits roll.

Same thing with Tommy, who the fandom insists on depicting as a vengeful monster when, in reality, he goes to Seattle solely to keep Ellie safe.

Same thing with Ellie, whose goal was never to exterminate the entirety of Seattle but kill a very specific group of people and whose canon, non-gameplay kills account for less than 10.

The worst thing is that now they're coming out of the woodworks to over-analyze things in the most intellectually deficient tone possible, slapping random labels on everything because the show made them feel dumb as fuck. The latest is that the show is "pro-life" because Mel begs Ellie to save her baby. The baby that the plot is clear about her wanting. Pro-life.

They are intellectually dishonest on a good day, amazingly dumb on the worse, and their vocabulary consists of therapy speech terms they're not ashamed of scattering around like breadcrumbs in front of pigeons.

The show could've been 1:1 with the game and they would've still found reasons to complain about it because they didn't pay attention to it in the first place.

[mirananananan]

another day has come and gone…

and i am still seeing homophobe joel discourse on my feed here and on that godless app twitter.

everyone else has already said what needs to be said imho, so i won’t stir the pot, but i do think it’s indicative of the larger issue in our society:

more of us should really take time to step outside, breathe fresh air, understand that not all media will cater to your individual worldview. in fact, it is very healthy that is doesn’t! this is what makes media interesting and encourages us to empathize with other experiences and see ourselves in them and understand our favorite characters as multi-dimensional and complex human beings.

all of this said, i do not believe joel miller is a homophobe! he loves ellie very much and lashed out in frustration with a thoughtless comment!

[penvisions]

dev is tired.

y'all, i really am. i get that my writing isn't the best or the most exciting. i have a lot of grammar errors and angst is abundant in every one of my fics. but i put appropriate warnings, i'm kind to those who reach out in appropriate ways and ask questions, i always thank people for their interactions. but i just. i popped off this morning after a terrible night of tossing and turning because of this comment a guest left on my fic for the tlou fandom after not writing for years:

i was contemplating what to say for hours because it affected me that much. but ended up with the following:

i just, i really don't know how to feel right now. i know i was a little harsh and defensive and if people want to unfollow me because of my response, that's totally valid. but i am always kind, i am always so happy to respond to comments and replies, i am always so willing to interact with anyone about anything. this is was just a lot to handle and i needed to say my piece.

[shorthaltsjester]

being a huge fan of tlou but also like. thinking that certain stories are built for certain mediums. like the entire theme of tlou2 is grounded and fresh because it’s a railroad/story video game that still affords you mechanical choices in how you navigate the world. i just don’t have a lot of confidence that presenting that story in a tv show with the minimal adjustments that they did in s1 will be fulfilling or compelling in any comparable way. because with tlou1 some of the like. beauty of that story was simply that it was such an emotive story contained in the medium of video games. and some of that was retained just by hitting similar or expanded emotional beats in the show, like the episodes that expanded on the life of the characters and the realities of that world. but truly so much of tlou2 emotional depth and ‘why does this story matter’ rests in the fact that’s it’s your hands on the controller, continually choosing to go forward in the story and have hope that it will work out in your-as-ellie-or-abby-or-somehow-booth’s favour. and you simply cannot get that in a non-interactive medium like television. like i do think tlou2 is a good story but it’s a good story because of the investment required by the player to keep pressing buttons and keep returning and to feel the adrenaline like responses of high intensity moments and be jarringly shifted into backstories that only increase the frustration. in general i’ve been thinking a lot about cross-medium adaptation and on the one hand i am glad that season 1 makes the story of the last of us more accessible to people who wouldn’t pick up a video game but it’s also like. maybe instead we can destigmatize video games as this inaccessible and dangerous medium a bit more instead of just . implicitly agreeing . like no maybe your mom won’t pick up a video game controller and play the last of us . but maybe you can play the game in the living room. sometimes the mediums that stories are told in aren’t just important but are actually foundational parts of how the information of a story is conveyed and that’s not only okay but is fucking fantastic. we should be happy actually that there are so many ways to collect a bunch of themes and ideas and put them together and hold them out to someone else and say “won’t you consider this with me. won’t you feel these emotions and care about these characters with me.”