I think there’s something so deeply and intimately and morbidly true about The Last of Us’s primary thesis which is that humanity’s fatal flaw, in that very Shakespearian way, is that we are destined to care too much about one another so much so that we discard the collective entirely. like we have such a capacity to love the human race and humanity as a whole, to grow our communities and govern cities how we know best and foster such connection with the masses which we are part of, but it’s overtaken by our capacity to love even just a single other person. like one human can come into your life that creates such an intrinsic and passionate love in you— or maybe two people or a family’s worth or any small number— and you suddenly would burn entire villages down just to keep them safe.
joel doesn’t blink twice murdering to find ellie. he doesn’t look back when he decides to do what he does at the hospital later on. he has no remorse about any of it it, because this one girl has grown to mean more to him than any possible greater good could ever mean. and it’s reciprocal. ellie would— and does— do anything she can to help him, save him, protect him, and, eventually, to avenge him. because that’s what you do when you love someone. not when you love people. when you love someone.
and it’s selfish, in a way??? because we love these people and would do so much for them because they mean more to us than other strangers do. it’s exactly like an iteration of the trolley problem, actually. one track has your daughter on it and one track has fifty people. don’t even try telling me you wouldn’t go onto track B if it meant saving your daughter and her puppy dog eyes from the whimpering and pain and fear. The Last of Us says yes, you would. I would. we all would. and like yeah that is our greatest weakness, that we have such a unique ability to love a handful of people so deeply that our compassion towards community and strangers and the bigger collective starts to slip from view. but goddamn what a fucking great fatal flaw it is to have. we are all going to die and the world will burn because we loved another person too much.
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“this person that i’ve gone on this journey with, that i care so much about, is choosing to lie about something so huge.” like, ellie… her bullshit detector is the best. she knows he’s lying. she— she feels it. she doesn’t know the extent of it. but something’s off. it’s not choosing to believe the lie…it’s just like, “okay, the rest of our relationship is gonna be a little different.”
—the last of us podcast, episode 9
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Even saying “I agree with Joel, I just wish he hadn’t lied” feels wrong to me, because I so wholeheartedly believe, in that moment, it WAS the right thing to do. He knows the kind of survivor’s guilt she is carrying! Personally and intimately! He was explicitly worried about her having suicidal thoughts, enough so that he willingly initiated a conversation about Sarah & probably one of the darkest points of his life. Cause he wanted her to know she’s worth more than that, that someone loves her! That even after the world crumbles and your child dies in your arms, there is still a chance for happiness later. So, of course he’s going to take this burden on for her. If he’d told her the truth, at least in that moment, it would have caused her so much unnecessary pain and guilt. And the whole point of the choices Joel makes in that hospital is to show she alone, without anything to give to the world, is enough and deserving of a life!!! OF LOVE!!! LOVE IS THE POINT AND LOVE IS THE ANSWER!!! No matter what, you keep finding something to fight for!!!
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sorry but I am officially a joel miller apologist. the fireflies knock him out & as soon as he regains consciousness marlene breaks the news to him that ‘yah sorry you’re never going to see your daughter again bc the surgery is lethal. but here’s her knife as a keep sake <3′ i’m sorry marlene but u thought that was going to go over well? you thought the insanely dangerous and firearm proficient man was who obviously bonded to ellie was going to go calmly? she should have sent ten men to escort him out. thirty. she should have just shot him in the head while he was unconscious. but of course she underestimated how much he cared. what he would do for ellie. bc she knew mean gruff self serving survivalist joel not father joel. she didn’t even let joel and ellie say goodbye to each other. was planning on killing ellie without even telling her for an experimental procedure they had no proof would work. didn’t even give joel the option to see her one last time. “would u kill 1 person to save 100?” they didn’t even allow a fourteen year old the agency to answer that question. team joel
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classic dads!
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6/∞ b i g gifs of joel miller
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