#and i’ve also been wanting to draw dina and ellie inspired by ‘i don’t care if you’re contagious’ by pierce the veil

[sleepytownzzz]

i don’t care if you’re sick / i don’t care if you’re contagious

[abbystanaccount]

GoT/TLOU Abby-sentric fic outline

A synopsis for a fic idea I had that’s too long for me to write all out, so instead here’s the long outline.

I had this idea come to me while drawing my knight Abby drawing, it was inspired by Brienne of Tarth and also I’ve been in the ASOIAF fandom for years. If I were a better writer with more time here’s how my Abby-sentric somewhat GoT AU would go. This fic won’t be super dark, like I could have gone way more sad and have it align with the GoT/TLOU universe more but this is a self indulgent fic lol. Here’s some Ellie / Dina medieval art that could fit in with this too

In this AU the world is basically a GoT/generic fantasy/generic medieval/but less strict 

- There are various lords across the country, some great lords some lesser ones

- Jerry is a great lord, as is Isaac, Maria is a great lady, Neil Druckmann is king (lol)

- There is a plague going around like the Cordyceps but it’s not as bad as the zombie stuff, more like an illness

- Joel is Tommy’s disgraced older brother who was cut off from the family line after going too far for revenge when Sarah was killed

- Ellie is a peasant girl who is immune to the plague, Dina is the younger daughter of a Lord. Jesse is a knight.

- Joel ends up fostering Ellie and takes her with him on his travels, they find out about her immunity to the plague

- Marlene is like a spymaster for Jerry and finds out about Ellie’s immunity, Jerry believes he and his healers can make a cure from her so he has Marlene get Ellie for him, Joel is tricked into bringing her there.

- Joel finds out they plan to run experiments and tests on Ellie to find a cure, and he isn’t about to let them hurt her

- Going back to more about Jerry and Abby, Abby is his only daughter and as a teen becomes betrothed to Owen, who was a knight that got promoted to a lord. Jerry was worried she didn’t want to be a lady and that she wouldn’t end up liking any of her suitors, but when she started to show affection to Owen, Jerry promoted Owen and betrothed them.

- Abby likes to fight though too, and Jerry was fine with her learning to be a warrior as well though it was hard to balance both duties

- Anyway, Joel finds out where they’re keeping Ellie and kills many of Jerry’s men with fire and sword, and also kills Jerry and Marlene when they try to stop him. He burns down part of the castle, rescues Ellie and they go on the run. They eventually settle in the town where Dina and Jesse are.

- Abby is heartbroken over the loss of her father, and also filled with anger. Her father’s most trusted ally Isaac comes in and offers to take charge of the area, Abby agrees to it because most of the council and was killed in the fire and she doesn’t want to lead the town anyway.

- Isaac offers to have Abby trained full time by his best swordsmans so she can be a strong fighter, but he wants her to just be a knight and not a lady anymore. He wants her to break her betrothal to Owen and then have Owen marry one of Isaac’s ally’s daughters, Mel, instead.

- The couple is kinda distraught and conflicted about this, they love each other and have been together for two years. But, Abby knows she wants to go after Joel and can’t just sit back and be a lady. Owen is devastated but has to accept her decision. (They still do the dirty though lol.)

- Owen agrees to the break up and the betrothal to Mel, tough he doesn’t see Mel for a year, and then it’s another year until they’re finally married. 

- In this 2 year period Abby is training, Joel and Ellie are laying low, and she’s also learning to fight and getting to know Lady Dina secretly

- More months pass and then the new spymaster gets word of where Joel and Ellie are hanging out. Abby is informed and she gathers her closest group of friends- Manny, Jordan, Nick, Nora, to come with her. 

-  Abby has still come into contact with Owen throughout the years, they live in nearby towns. They’re friendly and don’t cross the line, it’s obvious Owen still loves Abby, and she loves him, but they chose theirs paths. Abby gets Owen to come with her on the mission and Mel is aware of it and agrees, Mel spent time with Jerry when she was a teen and looked up to him.

- They travel to the town where Joel and Ellie are in disguise. In a lucky ambush they capture Joel. It plays out a lot like the game, and Abby beats Joel with a mace. Owen is a bit disturbed by her brutality. Ellie comes in too late and is subdued, Abby finishes the job with Joel. They let Ellie go like in the game.

- They all basically go back to normal life, but before they part and say goodbye Owen lets Abby know that Mel is pregnant with their child, and Abby is upset with this. Owen is also emotionally unrested from the pregnancy and from how violent he saw Abby be and is so conflicted that when he comes back, he socially retreats from everyone. Abby tries to just continue being a knight a doing jobs for Isaac but she isn’t sure of her purpose anymore and feels lost

- Ellie is devastated from losing Joel, and vows revenge. Tommy is also upset by the news that his brother was killed, but people don’t want him to send out soldiers to find the person responsible, so he meets and supports Ellie in her tracking them down. It doesn’t take long for his spies to figure the perpetrators were likely connected to Jerry and his house, so Ellie gets Jesse to come with her on a mission to find out what happened. Dina wants to come too but can’t as her parents won’t allow it, though, she sends her blessing.

- Abby goes on a job for Isaac where she’s supposed to kill Seraphites but runs into Lev and Yara and befriends them. She starts to find her purpose again through helping the displaced kids. Yara injures her arm due to the Seraphites hunting them, so Abby decides to head to Owen’s nearby town where there are healers, but they need a discreet one as Seraphites are seen as hostiles.

- Ellie and Jesse infiltrate Owen’s town in search of answers, meanwhile Abby sneaks in Lev and Yara to Owen’s castle and he’s surprised to see her. She tells him she needs a discreet healer and he tells her of one on the outskirts of town. He’s worried about Abby but she brushes him off. She thanks him and goes there with Lev and Yara.

- Ellie and Jesse ask around about Abby and some townspeople mention how Owen knows her and they connect the dots that Owen was there when Joel was killed too. They decide to get to him to try and track down Abby. Ellie and Jesse kill some guards along the way trying to get into the castle.

- Owen and Mel have moved to a tower in the castle that is more secluded, and that’s where Ellie and Jesse find Owen and Mel in a heated discussion, Owen is immediately alerted because he recognizes Ellie. Mel panics and throws a vase at them, and the four get into a scrap, Ellie and Jesse use daggers while Owen and Mel are unarmed, Ellie stabs Mel in the neck as she tries to escape, and Jesse stabs Owen in the shoulder and side and then pins him down. They tie him up to question him and he’s distraught by Mel, who has bled out.

- Ellie learns that Mel was pregnant and starts freaking out. Jesse is also having a hard time keeping cool with this and Owen’s curses.

- Abby, Lev, and Yara get to the healer and get her arm fixed, but they are discovered by an angry gang of villagers who saw her and the Seraphites sneak in there. Abby and Lev have fight them to get away. Abby considers just running away with the two, but she looks up at Owen’s castle and gets to sinking feeling that something is horribly wrong.

- Yara and the healer hide out in a safe area while Abby and Lev head to castle.

- Ellie has collected herself a bit with the help of Jesse, and tries to get Owen to talk about where Abby is, but he is furious and completely unwilling to tell them anything. Jesse thinks that Abby will come to Owen and due to various info that Abby was there recently, and he persuades Ellie to not kill Owen, though she kicks him around a bit as revenge for Joel and still trying to get info.

- Abby comes upon the path Ellie took a few hours earlier and seeing the blood and dead guards and is alarmed, she rushes to the secluded tower she is familiar with from a higher window, and sneaks down in with Lev. She first sees Mel’s blood pool and then Jesse, then Ellie facing the other way, then Owen, tied up and bleeding.

- Abby gets the jump on Jesse and disarms him, she has her sword to his neck and Lev puts his bow on Ellie. But Ellie has scrambled over to Owen and put her dagger to his throat. They’re at a standoff and Ellie tries to barter for by saying that she was the one that caused Joel to kill Abby’s father and that the fight should just be between them. Abby says if that’s the case then they should duel each other with honor and have no one else get hurt.

- After some tense moments, Ellie says yes to the duel and they all tentatively put down their weapons. Abby says that they’ll duel alone in the field behind the walls of the town. Jesse is released and rejoins Ellie. Ellie warns if people come after her then she’ll kill Owen and the rest of Abby’s friends and they leave the tower.

- Abby rushes to Owen as soon as those two leave and her emotions flood out seeing him hurt and realizing the shock of what just happened. She cuts him out of his bonds and he begs her to not do the duel because he doesn’t trust Ellie and is afraid she’ll try something in the duel and kill Abby. She says that she has to go, and takes Lev and subtly alerts the guards to get Owen medical help before slipping out.

- Abby goes to the field where Ellie and Jesse are waiting, they tell Jesse and Lev to hang back and walk a distance away so they can’t hear or interfere with the two women. They tell them to stay out of it. Abby is in a heavier plate mail while Ellie is in lighter chain and mail. They both have longswords.

- Before they fight, Abby says something to the effect that Joel killed her father, and Ellie says she doesn’t care, Joel was her father. They then start to fight, any hit Abby gets on Ellie hits hard, but Ellie is faster and gets hits on Abby as well. At one point, Abby disarms Ellie but Ellie doesn’t stop, she starts brawling Abby instead. Abby tosses away her sword and begins hitting her unarmed too.

- Abby eventually asserts the upper hand and has Ellie pinned down in a slow choke. However, her disdain for Ellie being the cause of her father’s death and causing the death and injury of some of her friends begins to fade as she looks up and she sees Lev looking at her sad and scared. She lets go.

- Abby looks at Ellie who is gasping for breath on the ground and asks her “What good is it going to do? I hurt you for hurting me? Then someone else will come after me for the pain that will caused them. You only wanted to hurt me because I hurt someone who you loved. It will never end. Unless we end it right now. We decide enough is enough.” Abby cries and it hurts her to say that as she thinks of her father.

- Ellie silently cries as she thinks of Joel dead, but then of him alive, and then looking at Jesse, she remembers Dina and how she’d like to see her again. Ellie stares at Abby, which is hard at first, but eventually she sees less of a person she hates, and more of someone who is in pain; someone who is a lot like her.

- “Okay.” Ellie agrees, and she means it. The two slowly get up and walk back to Jesse and Lev. Ellie tells Jesse they’re going and he’s confused but follows her. When Abby reaches Lev she thanks him silently and then pulls him into a hug. The two head back to town.

- Time skip of around 6 months, Ellie has found more peace through meditation and being around her friends. Ellie, Dina, and Jesse are all really close and they decide that since Dina’s parents want her to get married that she’ll marry Jesse, but Ellie will be her secret lover and they’ll share Dina in a poly relationship. Ellie is also Dina’s sworn shield and the two often go on adventures together through the country. Later, Dina has JJ by Jesse and they settle down for a more homey lifestyle in a new village they create that is closer to Tommy’s.

- Tommy was angry for a few months at Ellie that she didn’t kill Abby or more of the people responsible, but his wife Maria becomes pregnant after years of them being unsuccessful at having kids, and once the baby is born he starts to let go of his anger and find happiness again.

- Abby and Owen reconcile, he mourns Mel and his baby and slowly heals. Abby, Lev, and Yara build a domicile near the sea they stay at most of the time. Isaac and his many troops attack the Seraphites and largely wipe them out, but he dies in battle. Some others scramble to take over his position but Owen stays out of it and has his men mind their own business. Owen also makes it known that Lev and Yara are his allies and not to be attacked. 

- A few months from that, things calm down more and Abby visits Owen and her friends living in his town often. They begin a relationship again, and eventually Owen proposes marriage to her. But, he clarifies that she’d be able to adventure with Lev and Yara and travel to their seaside house when she pleased. He also doesn’t want to be in charge so much as a lord and decides to delegate more power to his council so he could come and go more often as well.

- Abby tells him she has to think about it, but after telling Lev and Yara they encourage her so she comes back and tells Owen yes. The two are finally married and they all lead a happy, more free life with their adopted kids Lev and Yara, and eventually a baby together. 

Happily ever after, lol.

[like-twilight]

The Last of Us 2 thoughts eyyy longgg and spoilers

This is my opinion before hearing anybody else’s opinion about it.

I only want to discuss the story as it is the only thing I can really speak of since I didn’t play it for myself. All I can say is I wish I could’ve and I’ll always regret not being able to because I really wish that could’ve been my experience as it was with the first game that I could play myself. It’s also probably noteworthy that the first game was the first video game I’ve played in my life so I’m probably biased.

So I’ll go all over the place because why not.

The false advertisement is extremely scummy and I don’t really know what to do with it, I blame it all on the No Spoilers Culture we currently have going. I don’t think anybody would’ve watched any of the promotional stuff a better marketing team could’ve put together and said “ah you can’t see old Joel in action, I bet he dies early in the game, I won’t fucking play this”. There was plenty of buzz around the game and there was no reason whatsoever to falsely market it. That part’s bullshit and I condemn the company for this.

From the story side though, Joel dying was honestly not that huge of a surprise or shock to me. TLOU is a game that has you watch a kid die in the first section of it then does more than enough to establish itself as a game without taboos. Now whether that’s something you like or not is not important, what cannot be said about the game is that it didn’t establish itself as a game that would do this.

I also think arguments like “Joel wouldn’t go out like a bitch” are silly. The beginning told me Joel, the badass and smart survivor he is, was very quick to adjust back to a small town life with a now pretty much surrogate daughter. I’m not saying that excuses the unceremonious death but to me Joel is not a gun-blazing badass hero, not even an anti-hero. He’s just a dude. He got overpowered and then he died.

See this is where the game could never win. If you leave Joel alive and he’s in the story then it’s just a repetition of the first game. If you leave him alive but he’s not in the game much then you underutilise him and people miss him. Also if you leave him alive then people will just say you’re a little bitch because it’s fanservice that Joel is technically invincible because he’s the face of the game. But if he dies, people riot. The creators couldn’t win either way and so I’m glad they made up their mind and stuck to it. It’s also very useful to get people talking.

Before I tie that into the rest of the story, I also have to mention that one of the few things I heard about the game was the expression “torture porn” and maybe I’m just desansitised but I didn’t feel like it was that overwhelming or unjustified. I didn’t watch too much of the promotional material but I saw what I think was the gameplay reveal where the devs said in this game enemies would call each other by name when you kill someone or they find someone dead. And I think that’s a neat detail but I think it also has a lot to do with what the game is... about.

That the hundreds of faceless people you slaughter during the game all have a video game or more worth of story behind them. They are people with their own twenty plus years of survival in a world gone to hell whose story ends the way Joel’s did. By meeting a person who just... wins the fight over them.

So that the deaths are really personal and intimate in that way feels justified. You also have this crazy technology that allows them to animate people very realistically. This is the last big game for the PS4 and they really just brought the technology to its limits, I feel. For them to then say “oh a sledgehammer to the face doesn’t look that bad” or “we just won’t add more types of weapons and have one type of death animation just cause we don’t want to overdo it” is just. It’s not gonna happen.

I never felt like those were glorified, I think they all added to that feeling that bubbled to the surface towards the end of Ellie’s first stretch of the story where I just couldn’t stop shaking my head, going Ellie... Ellie, what are you doing, look at yourself... look at what you’re doing. So to me that wasn’t really an issue.

I can imagine some people, maybe even most people would play the first stretch of the game in revenge mode. You know, let’s get this bitch. But in the same time, I also couldn’t really deny that Abby was like... kinda right to want revenge. I’m not saying I’m glad she killed Joel I’m just saying she had a reason to. (On that sidenote, Abby being that surgeon’s daughter did nothing to enhance this feeling. I could’ve imagined Abby in a settlement much like Jacksonville where they’re all hopeful because they found a surgeon who’s leading research about the cordyceps, maybe he’s a super good leader, inspires the Fireflies to keep up their spirits, all that. Maybe Abby’s group could’ve been his super close-knit group of soldiers taking care of him and running errands for him, even then the rage would’ve been justified.

I get they wanted to draw the parallel between Joel-Ellie, surgeon-Abby, dad-daughter relationships but that added nothing to the story for me. It didn’t take anything away either, I just kinda rolled my eyes like okay, whatever.)

So when Ellie was on her revenge quest, I liked that she and Dina were in Tommy’s footsteps, I thought that was a nice touch and kinda foreshadowed another section of the story where we would meet up with Tommy eventually. 

Now, Dina and Jesse, I found nothing wrong with Dina or her being pregnant (except that it reminded me of Aniara and I hate that movie with my whole being). I thought it was a good enough source of conflict and I really liked Jesse being around. When he shows up and they’re just saying they’ll get Tommy and then get the fuck outta there you can already tell Ellie is obsessed but you’re still holding out hope that Dina will be enough to get her mind off of it but she’s just too far gone.

So the shift to Abby and the scars.

Jacksepticeye said it while he was playing that Abby’s part should’ve been like a DLC or something but I honestly don’t agree. I mean I don’t disagree but I think it worked the way it was. I definitely think most problems people have with this switch that doesn’t stem from the fact that people disliked Abby or that they can’t admit to themselves that they were caught off guard by the changed narrative style, could’ve been solved with different pacing. Now I don’t know if they would’ve had to constantly switch between Ellie and Abby for it to work or figure some other way out because I’m no expert but still. 

I liked the beginning when it switched to Abby, the whole atmosphere was so eerie like you could tell they were on a collision course and it was going to get ugly. Maybe something like that could’ve worked but it could’ve just been either too suspenseful and tense the whole way through that it draws the attention from the gameplay or it would’ve been even more on the nose than it already was with the parallels between Abby’s group and Ellie’s group.

Now I honestly really liked that Abby’s story was so different because when she returns to the stadium, the part of her story that involved Joel is over. She got her revenge then she goes on with her life. She had a life before Joel entered it, she has one after she killed him. And it just so happens to be a good opportunity for the game to showcase some of the shit that goes on outside of what we’ve known so far and what Ellie knows.

I didn’t mind the religious aspect, I think it makes sense, like enough time passed since the apocalypse that the then grown up generation is distant enough from their old lives, and the generations after them are growing up in the ruins of the old society, that a messiah figure like that lady could emerge. That it just had to be transphobic and shit sucks of course and I do understand the frustration with it. I can imagine better writers coming up with a way to make the Scars despicable without them having our current society’s problems. They could still have the trans and the Asian characters still of course, but without them having to face the struggles trans characters do in our current world.

So that Abby only realises Ellie’s just one step behind her when she still has the climax of her individual story to get through was just. To me it worked so well. Like here we play as Ellie for half the game, this girl is consumed with rage and then Abby’s just fucking off and doing something entirely different because that’s... how little... it affected her. Or at least she personally got her closure and is ready to move on.

I personally liked the conflicts she had in her group, it was believable, it felt reasonable for the kind of life they lived. Of course we already spent one full game with Ellie so Abby was never going to catch up, but if you’re thinking like me then by less than half of Abby’s story you already don’t want Ellie to kill her.

The confrontation in the theatre was messy but since it’s not the end of the story I sort of don’t mind. I know some people don’t like how Jesse died or how little time we have to process certain deaths and story beats and of course it can just be bad pacing but that was again something that to me just brought the player’s world on the same level as an NPC’s world. That for one enhanced the experience for me.

Okay. Let’s talk about the last part that starts with Dina almost dying at Abby’s hands, especially after she says “good” when Ellie tells her she’s pregnant. Of course there’s the callback to dead Mel. But I liked that Lev was there and his presence sort of switched Abby’s role. Up to that point Abby had been Ellie. But then when she has Lev, and she acknowledges him as “her people”, she becomes Joel. And then she becomes a better version of him. Or at least a version of Joel that has mercy.

And you’d think being this close to losing Dina is where Ellie would snap back to it. And she does, for a while.

Here’s when I admit the pacing definitely needed some work regardless of anything. Up until that point we go through three days, albeit twice, but three days. Then suddenly we’re nine plus months later and the setting is different and we don’t get enough time here before Tommy shows up with the end of the story...rope... we got cut in half in the theatre.

I’ll take some time here to genuinely express my what the fuck at Tommy here.

My memory is a little fuzzy here but wasn’t Tommy on board with returning to Jacksonville when they return to the theatre? I actually just checked, Tommy says “they got what they deserved” to which Ellie says “but she (Abby) gets to live” and Tommy says “yeah”. And then when he visits Ellie and Dina suddenly he’s a dick about it saying Ellie made a promise? Is that something that was supposed to happen off-screen or a plot hole? Did that conversation in the theatre have more versions they went through and the wrong reaction got included? Maybe I just didn’t pay enough attention but it felt out of the blue for me and I can safely say that’s the character moment I’m disappointed in the most, especially because we never see Tommy again.

One could argue that the choppiness of time is supposed to symbolise the dissociation and out-of-body experience you can have when you’re living with trauma but I truly just have it down to bad pacing here. I get that they wanted to show the baby but I truly believe with enough polishing they could’ve come up with a scenario that works better and flows better.

I truly could’ve had Ellie maybe leave with Dina and Tommy and then have her turn back before they leave Seattle and then they have the conversation with Dina and then Ellie starts tracking Abby. Here we could’ve had more of what was in the beginning of the story, sort of switching between the two, maybe slightly altered gameplay, etc. Even though the last level as Ellie was really cool and once again I liked how we just barely got a glimpse of how other people live, you know. Those prisoners in those cells have a hell of a 25 years behind them and being freed by this stranger might be the best thing that will have ever happened to them, but to Ellie they’re just a background noise to her mission.

I truly liked those parts.

I could imagine Ellie being kidnapped similarly to Abby but they are treated differently and somehow still end up escaping together, maybe even helping each other the way Ellie almost did with cutting Abby down and letting her get Lev to the boat. And then you’d have Ellie still be consumed by her rage.

The whole time I wanted her so much to just scream everything at Abby. Because look, life for these people is a whole ass trauma. Some people like Dina might handle it differently, or it’s easier with a community around you, but Ellie’s life has been very strange, with her immunity, with the realisation that Joel killed and lied for her, all that. She would need a fucking good therapist. I wanted that catharsis, for her to scream at Abby, to sob until she can’t even breathe, for Abby to do the same, except she realises she got her closure while Ellie never did, and then maybe for Abby to give some sort of... forgiveness to Ellie. For her life not having meant anything in the end.

I don’t know, I wanted that for her.

If there never is a last fight, if Ellie never so much as punches Abby, that would’ve been fine for me.

Two more things that I liked were that Ellie actually started down a path of forgiveness before Joel died. You know, when we see the scene where Ellie tells Joel off you’re like “oh that’s the last thing she said to him, no wonder she feels so guilty” and then you realise, oh no wait, they were actually eventually going to be alright. They just never got the time. To me that hit so much, that was a good scene.

The other thing I liked is Dina leaving. Once again this could’ve been something like, Ellie goes back to Jacksonville and there they tell her Dina left or sum shit idk how that could’ve worked, I’m just saying that losing that farm life didn’t really make me feel anything because we didn’t get the time to grow attached to it.

So Dina leaves, and suddenly you’re back in the room with Sam in the first game when this bitten boy asks Ellie what she’s most afraid of, and she says she’s scared of ending up alone. And this immune girl Joel killed and lied and died for, eventually ends up alone.

So I understand that a lot of TLOU’s fanbase that belongs to a marginalised group, especially those part of the LGBT+ community would be hurt by this ending. By this interpretation. The LGBT+ community, as far as I know, at least a huge part of it, seeks to heal. We use fiction as escapism in a way people who don’t know, who can’t know our struggles will never be able to sympathise with. And as such, we as a community in a large part, have moved on from stories of pain. Not necessarily in that we turn a blind eye on it or anything, but I think it’s a mostly universally agreed thing that after so much suffering we’re ready to see ourselves, and people like us end up happy. And as such the demand from this community towards creators have shifted to not necessarily fully happy endings, but some sort of relief. And as such, this ending is cruel.

It is heartbreaking. My heart breaks for Ellie because I can practically feel the weight in my chest that she carries around when she walks away. She lost everything and she never got the closure. She never got that relief and neither did we.

Once again, if you personally have a problem with this ending and it ruined the game for you, I understand it completely. That’s your own experience with the story, and even though I feel much of the same things, I’m once again left here thinking this is the way the creators wanted to do this and that they did it like this makes sense. It makes sense for the story, the characters, it just does. If it had happened differently in a way that also makes sense, I would not think “oh this should’ve had a heartbreaking ending, this is bullshit” but I do think the ending makes sense.

Overall, I’m pretty much pleased with most everything, except fuck false advertising, fuck Tommy, and fuck uhhh, I’m pretty sure I mentioned something else too. Oh yeah, pacing. Jack actually offered a really great alternative to the beginning, where the museum scene of Ellie’s birthday should’ve been the first scene, and then you could’ve had Ellie wake up four years later at the end of the countdown. That Joel told Tommy about the hospital could’ve been implied through dialogue and interactions.

I also don’t think Joseph Anderson’s theory is hurt by this, he said personal decisions and morality aside, the Fireflies were fucking idiots and they couldn’t have come up with a cure even if they had given Ellie the chance to say yes, because of how unprofessional they’d been and how much they rushed into the surgery. Just because Abby’s dad was a good dude and a good surgeon doesn’t mean shit when you’re dealing with something you’ve not seen before, such as Ellie’s immunity. And I think knowing that wouldn’t have mattered to Ellie either to change her mind about forgiving Joel. And this is what I’ve always said. Like the Fireflies or not, believe in them or not, taking a choice like this away from Ellie because you can’t stand losing your daughter again (and that is why Joel kills the Fireflies, not because he shares Joseph’s opinion) is objectively wrong and borders on the same obsession we see consume Ellie. Joel is just as unhinged by that point as Ellie is, he’s just more... mature about it, I guess.

That could’ve been even more painful, sort of, to not have Abby be the surgeon’s daughter but just for her and her group believe in this doctor that might just be talking out of his ass so much that them avenging his death sets off this terrible cycle of vengeance. I think that could’Ve been very “gritty” and shit, that would’ve hurt because it’s even more pointless. People killing over lost hope.

So, pacing, Tommy, false advertising, bad points, everything else, yeah alright. 7/10 sounds good to me. I will play this one day >)