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concertcs · 4 years

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hey guys 🥰💌✨🥺💘🌈 it’s me again !! ur old pal hannah ! n this is my angel child tito <3 welcome to loving tito hours <3

okay so before i jump into this, as a disclaimer i just finished finals week for a 17 credit semester so my brain is just like. tv static and evermore on loop. so if ur looking for an actually well-written, cohesive bio n stats n other fun stuff u can find that in my app which i did in fact write Prior to finals week ! okay on with the show !

okay so tito is the second child born to luis n angela rosario n the younger sibling of sebastián n tbh i know im biased but i love the rosarios sm 🥺 luis was an aspiring musician n angela worked 3 jobs to support them n they had a rly happy life together for a little while :/

tito first got into music when they were in first grade n their music teacher señora coco stayed after school to teach him how to play the piano n they loved it !! luis was Thrilled bc he swore from the day tito was born tht they were destined to be a musician with him n thus began the dream of the two of them would be a successful father-son duo one day <3

spoiler alert: it did not happen 💔

(death tw) luis was killed in a drive by shooting when tito was 15 😔 n it was rly hard on them 😔 they stopped playing music altogether n definitely went through this moment where they likely pushed away Everyone bc so much of their grief manifested as anger 😔 (end tw)

it didn’t last forever ! but ! the minute that he started to kind of regain his footing, angel was like hey we’re leaving the city !! let’s go !! n tito was like no 💖 bc they wanted to stay in la and salvage what they could of their dad’s dream... so they did

they also went to community college !! which was when he started to rly start to feel like himself again 🥺 but once they graduated they started working at this radio station to get their foot in the door n it backfired bc they’ve been stuck there for 3 years now... so sorry to them

the day that tito found the killer conclusions cd was actually their 3 yr anniversary exactly which was exactly as depressing as u think it is :/ so to cheer himself up they went to the thrift store for a blind date with a cd which was this tradition that his dad created for them when tito was little (ngl it makes me emotional i wrote a longer thing abt it in my app) n basically told tito that if you picked the most nondescript cd you can find then you’re not being biased n youre just letting the music find you

and ofc ! as we all know tito’s fate is to get haunted by our fave ghost band ! and here we are !

so that’s the sparknotes version of his bio sdfkdjs here are the hcs i wrote in my app bc i think they say a lot abt him <3

so tito grew up listening to a lot of his father’s favorite latine artists, n luis’s favorite is .. ofc… ricky martin bc he’s from puerto rico and livin la vida loca is a bop ! but tito’s own personal favorite artist is selena. the first Real Song that they ever learned (as in not hot cross buns or twinkle, twinkle little star) to play on the piano was dreaming of you, which is one of his two favorite selena songs to this day. it’s tied with amor prohibido <3

tito loves to dance n they are absolutely shameless about it. they grew up watching their parents samba in the kitchen n he was immediately like Okay Me Too. are they a particularly great dancer? no ❤️ but that does not deter them n what they lack in technical skill they make up for in enthusiasm

very, very, very much a Disaster Gay with the emphasis on disaster. like he Does Not know how to talk to boys at all n gets very flustered n nervous when he does . especially bc i think this is a pretty recent development for them. as in like .. within the last 5 years n it probably took him a long ass time to work their way through bc like. they were a little busy trying to figure out their relationship with gender

which! speaking of! they always knew that they didn’t 100% connect with being a Boy, like… the same way that he could say that he liked green beans sometimes, or they only wanted pepperoni on their pizza sometimes, he only felt like a boy sometimes. it wasn’t that they felt like a girl the rest of the time, though. they just didn’t have the words to describe what they felt like the rest of the time — not until they took their first gender studies class at community college. finding out that there was a community of people who were like him was a huge weight off of their shoulder n also kind of marked the point where they could start figuring out their sexuality

i think tito has a very Cozy home but like .. they just embody a lot of coziness to me in general. he definitely has a lot of plants, n 100% of their furniture n decor are thrifted but he’s a cancer so we know tht means their home n making sure they’re comfy there is very important

tito is very very Very fiercely protective of his people n you have to definitely prove yourself in order for them to let you anywhere near his people. like when the ghosts first showed up they absolutely had to earn their trust before they would let anyone go near like.. allegro mainly. perhaps nocturne also had to win his trust before tito was like Okay with them being around the ghosts bc ksdjfds he’s a cancer at heart n has an unbearable amount of love to give

king of emojis tbh djfksdj i genuinely don’t think he knows how to send a text without an emoji unless they’re like.. actually rly upset.. but Usually big on emojis. every time that he gets the chance to say “no ❤️'' their soul leaves their body a little bit in excitement

tito’s favorite season is winter and every single year when it rolls around they’re devastated that it’s too warm in california for it to snow 😔 he’s never seen snow in his life but he loves it n is very determined to see it one day

he’s a Can’t Drive gay 😔 but they grew up in the city so what do we rly expect from him? if we’re being honest with ourselves? nothing! instead they skateboard wherever they can n take the subway wherever they can’t <3 n is very jealous that ghosts don’t need subway cards

when they do happen to go on drives However they are the world’s greatest passenger seat dj .. n Yes it is a very elaborate radio show setup complete with regularly pausing for radio host talk show segments, calling in requests, and made-up giveaway games

they play the piano n the guitar n that’s all right now but i think he would Love to learn a new instrument they just never had the resources or the time

speaking of music… it is definitely kind of on hold right now as far as actually performing But i think they definitely try to do little open mic night things when they can… perhaps he tried to push for the bar he works at to have an open mic night? idk <3 but even when playing music in public isn’t an option they’re always writing songs (or trying to) at home, usually in the late hours of the night after an evening shift at the bar

i think tht he definitely still Does speak spanish but like. not as much with other people anymore after their dad passed away. partially bc luis was the primary person who spoke spanish w tito.. angela only spoke english.. so like once he was gone they didn’t really have a reason to speak it.. but Also even when he Does have a chance to i think it feels a little too much like it’s reopening the wound in a way tht tito just tries to Avoid

fictional characters tht inspired tito? julie molina kdsjfdsk <3 also miguel from coco n Honestly both julian And yadriel from cemetery boys

okay im so sorry for all the words <3 if ur still reading this thank u pls message me on discord let’s plot <3

#death tw #phqs.intro #whew #did i make this gif just to use it one (1) time on this intro? maybe #but look at him... a baby 🥺

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queencamden · 4 years

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The Dead Queens Club Ghost Headcannons!

I’m pretty sure only, like, two of you actually want this but here goes!

-Katie’s ghost is constantly soaking wet, as a result of her having died in the river. She’s also always cold, which works because Anna is on fire.

- Literally. Anna’s skirt has permanent flames on it (George is only mildly scorched- I’m going with he fell from the roof and she caught fire a bit before she did too. Because historically Anne Boleyn was almost burned at the stake before her sentence was commuted.) It works to warm Katie up, but sometimes Katie’s water temporarily puts it out.

-George first found out he was dead when he tried to comfort Parker after the explosion but she couldn’t see him.

-Anna found out when she tried to slap Henry and her hand went through him.

-Anna’s very bitter about the concept of death, and the fact that she peaked at sixteen.

-Katie was initially very scared of the whole thing, because no one could hear her. She’s gotten used to it now, but when she first died she spent the better part of an hour calling to Parker and Cleveland.

-Anna desperately wants to be a poltergeist. She’s just got all this anger and nowhere to go with it. She also really wants to be noticed again. Poltergeisting is very hard, but Anna is an ambitious go-getter so she just THROWS herself into it.

-Katie is the materializing Queen. She’s such an emotional person that she manifests quite easily.

-Anna’s really jealous. The only person she can materialize in front of is Amelie, who just straight up does not give a shit.

- Anna once launched a printer at Norfolk.

-Anna and George had a falling out early on as ghosts, because it was Anna who knocked that wall (I think it was a wall) onto Parker’s back and gave her the scar. Not intentionally of course. She was just trying to get her OUT OF THE BURNING BUILDING by blocking her path but things got messy.

-They made up when their parents were run out of town because they were both devastated. (That was when Anna threw the printer)

-Anna’s just been casually haunting Cleves for like, a year, partly because that’s her house, and also partly because “her dad’s in Germany and poltergeist’s a German word idk”

-That scene in the lakehouse when Henry and Cleves make out while they’re wearing Anna and George’s clothes? Anna was there.

-Sometimes they head down to the lakehouse together, because their rooms are still in order and it feels like they’re alive again.

-All three of them panicked when their rooms got cleared out. With Anna and George it was a long process. Their parents wanted to hold onto them, and the ghosts almost convinced themselves their rooms would just stay up.

-George tried to chase their parents car when they left.

-By contrast, Norfolk got rid of Katie’s room almost immediately, which left her in a weird lurch, as she hadn’t yet figured out ghosts don’t sleep.

-She usually climbs through Cleves’ window and invisibly snuggles her (Cleves doesn’t notice, but does wonder why she’s suddenly sweating so much there’s water stains on the sheets)

-She once tried that for Tom, (with less snuggling) but she accidentally materialized and it freaked him out so much he left the school.

-One time when Anna was practicing materializing in the country club a security guard saw her and straight up fainted (a reference to the Victorian story about Anne Boleyn’s ghost making guards at the Tower of London faint on duty)

-Historically, Anne Boleyn also haunts Hever, her childhood home, and Blickling, her birthplace, which is why she primarily haunts Cleves’ house and the lakehouse (which I guess makes that her birthplace now? Maybe the Boleyns went for a water birth)

-Apparently at Blickling she comes with a hoarde of demons who chase her father around for betraying her, but since Thomas Boleyn in DQC (and probably historical Thomas Boleyn too) is actually pretty okay, and also not dead she just. Doesn’t do that. Some tourists see the fire off her dress and think it’s demons.

-Which also led to people thinking the lakehouse was possessed by a Satanic cult for a while (by people, I mean Eustace and maybe Cleveland looking for newspaper stories)

-George has managed to gain possession of things long enough to ride his Vespa once again.

-It is.... a strange sight, especially since he is still completely invisible.

-Anna can conjure fireballs (another part of the whole demon thing) and for the entire summer after her death, she planned on torching Henry at end of the road (not to kill him- God knows there’s enough rumors about that- just freak him out a little)

-But then when she goes to do it she sees him lunge at Katie to push her off the drainpipe and loses her focus. It’s also raining, so her fire keeps going out. She can only watch helplessly as Katie disappears over the edge.

-It’s a thing in a lot of old mythologies that drowned souls stay trapped in the ocean forever, so Anna and George jump into the river and save her, very dramatically. Extra as possible, Mission Impossible style.

-George spent an entire day mildly inconveniencing Eustace and Henry for fun.

-Anna somehow got Guitar Guy’s adress and absolutely FUCKED. SHIT. UP. No one is clear exactly what she did, least of all Katie (or me) All that is truly known is it involved fireballs.

-Anna keeps trying to leave Cleves, the only other person who knows about Guitar Guy, a message telling her to do the same, but sending messages as a ghost is HARD.

-Anna locked Cleves’ car door when she was in the forest with Henry, in an attempt to keep it away from her. The sound of him unlocking it freaked Cleves out more, leading to her punching him. Anna was very much okay with that.

-Katie doesn’t really like being a ghost, but she’s also scared to move on. She knows if she does she won’t see her friends again, and more than anything she just wishes she could go back to school and live her life.

-Anna’s scared for another reason. After the Lina fiasco many people (football guy Cromwell, Eustace, Hans, Maggie, possibly Lina herself) told her to go to Hell. She knows it was a figure of speech, but it still makes her worry a little bit.

-At other times she is VERY confident in her innocence. After all, she got murdered. That wasn’t her fault.

-George wishes he could communicate with their parents and Parker, and finds the fact that he is bound to the city frustrating. He wants to see the world, and now he can’t.

-Mary went to the lakehouse once, to find closure. Anna decided materializing with all the fire was probably a bad idea, but she and George tried to move some things around to show her they were there.

-They think it worked. They hope she noticed. They hope she told their parents. They hope their families know.

-Katie feels bad for cheating on Henry and Anna and George are all “Okay, well normally I’d agree but considering murder is a thing that’s happening at this school cheating’s not really as big of a priority right now”.

-George claims he’s been to the afterlife waiting room and met Beetlejuice. The girls assume he’s joking but sometimes he just pops off and nobody knows where he went. Plus, he’s got strangely specific details of the whole thing.

-Basically George knows all kinds of advanced ghost shit, but can’t do really simple things. For instance:

-George is really bad at materializing. Like very bad. Which is unfortunate because he really wants to help out Parker.

-Katie tried to help him once and is now Parker’s sleep paralysis demon, so that’s nice.

-The girls keep materializing to Parker at night and talking to her, even if she thinks she’s dreaming. Katie tells her about how George is doing, and Anna tries to convince her to do something about Henry. (I.e, she snarks. A lot)

-Katie gets really bad flashbacks where she goes back to just before her death.

- During a few of these she materializes in Hampton Court (the cafeteria). Luckily no one is there, but Parker saw her once and th: rumors spread (that line where Cleveland talks about Katie haunting the cafeteria is literal- she just doesn’t know it.)

-Katie is very happy that Cleves is standing up for her, but also feels kind of betrayed and scared by the fact that she still listens to Henry.

-That time when Cleves and Henry almost have sex and she hears Katie’s voice? That was because Katie panicked seeing them together thinking Henry was going to kill her too.

-That night, fueled by the possibility of someone else dying, Anna gains control of her poltergeist powers and finally writes a message on Parker’s wall. Tell her the truth.

- Parker sees it and knows she has to tell Cleves about Henry.

-And thus Operation Desdemona is achieved.

-You know that bit at the end where Parker days she promised George she would kill Henry or something like that? She did. Literally.

-Well not really. George can’t materialize still, so really she was speaking to Anna, who was speaking for George.

-It was something like “I’ll kill him George. I’ll avenge you.” “George says that sounds great.” “Holy shit Anna, no I didn’t. My girlfriend’s not KILLING anyone!”

-After they are avenged and Anna’s name cleared, they’re ready to move on to the afterlife.

-They chill with the Queens a bit as they paint the wall. Katie gets into the radio waves to play her phone’s theme song.

-Before he goes George figures out how to materialize, and finally manages to say goodbye to Parker.

-The two of them talk in Cleves’ attic for ages, in their old blanket fort, long after Anna and Katie are gone.

-Except not really. Anna waits for George because she doesn’t want to go alone (and maybe Katie waits too, and they all go together)

-Their afterlife’s pretty great.

-In ten years they look down on the world and watch the Queens meeting up at Homecoming, like Katie had wanted them to.

-They’ve gotten a lot better at materializing.

-The three of them show up, and talk to the Queens for a while.

-The Queens are initially very freaked out by all this, except for Parker, who’s mainly just glad she’s not crazy.

-Cleveland does not understand how, she, a reporter, could not have noticed her house was haunted.And why didn’t Parker tell her? That would have made an amazing story

- She complains about this, often and loudly.

-When she gets home she makes some quip to Amelie about the house of their teenage years being haunted and Amelie’s just like “Yeah, you didn’t know?”

-The goth phase had to come from somewhere.

#the dead queens club #anna boleyn #anne boleyn dqc #katie howard #katherine howard dqc #george boleyn dqc #cleveland mark #anne of cleves dqc #parker rochford #the lady rochford dqc

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likefromtheoffice · 4 years

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What I Had To Do - TLoUII SPOILERS

I started feeling compelled to write a deep reflection on The Last of Us Part II when it became clear I was going to be playing as Abby for quite some time. Like everyone else, I imagine, I had made up my mind about Abby almost immediately. She would die, and I would be the one to do it. I didn’t want to play as Abby, I wanted to not move the controller and just have her die. But the game makes the choices here.

Of course, knowing Naughty Dog and expecting the level of quality I did from this game, there was certainly a reason we were slated to spend so much time with her. While I ultimately came to respect this choice, it was plain to see that the game was going to attempt to change our minds about Abby, to show us how she came to be the person she is and how she was driven to do the things she had done. For this reason, I was not engaged in Abby’s story. Because, like I said, I’d already made up my mind.

The brilliantly-handled revelation of her father being the surgeon the player is forced to kill in the first game was enough to fully humanize this woman who, in the space after she kills Joel up until she is hoisted in the Seraphite noose is surely the most viciously despised character on Playstation. Even though I kept the difficulty low in order to breeze through her portion of the story, I admittedly did eat my words: “If they can change my mind about Abby, I’ll be shocked.” My mind was changed just about as much as Abby’s heart changed throughout her ~10 hours of game time. She ends up doing almost exactly what Joel does for Ellie for a very similar reason, although Lev’s brain can’t save the world.

When I found Abby at the Pillars, I had already decided that if the game were to give me the option to press Square to kill Abby or circle to let her live, I’d smash the circle button. When Ellie says “I can’t let you leave,” I thought to myself, “yes, let’s actually do let her leave, but we probably should fuck her up a little bit, right?” Fuck her up we did, but of course the game isn’t base enough to trivialize the story it’s told over 20+ hours by letting you funnel out all your rage with a button press, completely destroying Ellie’s and Lev’s lives with a single click.

So ultimately, Abby’s segment shows us a lot about the world we’re living in inside this game, and the metaphor of warring clans with their own agendas and perspectives very directly reflects the distilled personal motivations behind Abby’s and Ellie’s actions. I said a hundred times that Abby’s section was too long, and I think I’d drastically shorten the first act. I don’t think we needed to stroll through the base and see kids taking classes in an attempt to humanize and raise the stakes for her. When we’re forced to play as her, we are not interested in what is happening. You could start with information about Owen and the coming attack on the Island. A lot of Abby’s section felt like Druckmann knowing that we need more hours for $60. But this may have been because until Lev’s mother dies in her cabin, I still wanted to watch her die.

This is where it all changed for me, except for the feeling that her segment was still too long. One thing this segment does perfectly and to hopefully great and continued effect, is to show us--more than the game already has--that LGBTQI+ stories are now a part of our human experience, and these people will be in the stories we tell. And it won’t be a fucking big deal. “Do you want me to ask about it?” “No.”

I was able to stay almost entirely blind to the promotional materials for Part II. When I started the game at 11pm CST, I knew only that there was a guitar, there was a fight in a shopping area, and there was a real bad person cutting a hanging guy’s stomach open. I was also able to avoid anyone’s conjecture about the game, but in seeking the opinions of others after I’d completed it, I’ve discovered the bizarre criticisms about the narrative. Namely, being forced to play as Abby for so long and having “social issues” shoved in their face when they’re “just trying to play the game.” I had a problem with the Abby segment even after I began to see its purpose, but eventually it cracked me open in the way it intended. In making me do the things she’d done, I was of course forced to fully realize her perspective from the moment we’re put over her shoulder instead. But the latter issue is what bothers me to no end, and it’s upsetting that we’re still here as gamers.

If someone has a problem with Ellie’s sexuality or coming of age, Dina’s sexuality, Lev’s gender identity, or the fact that all our main characters are women, then the only hope I have for that player is that they might see themselves in Seth. Seth is the physically oldest character we see in the game, and he is the only character who has any problem with what he’s seeing. He’s alone in his bigotry and he is weak. He will die very soon and he will do nothing meaningful before then, aside from being forced to make free steak sandwiches for those he has hurt by those who are in power and do not take his side. If this hypothetical--although very real--player fails to make this revelation and turn this corner, if that person still disapproves of the story being told, my question to them would be: “did you accidentally buy this when you meant to download Call of Duty: Warzone?” If you’re not playing the game for the story, you should just play a game where you’re always shooting things. If you are playing the game for the story and you have a problem with the story, also fuck off to Call of Duty. I use Call of Duty here because it’s mainstream and not objectionable and you are holding the trigger through most of the game where the story doesn’t matter if you don’t want it to, not because I have a problem with its playerbase or the games themselves.

The dissent I still cling to is that it’s difficult to ratchet intensity upward and keep motivation high when you know the character has to survive because you’ve seen a future piece of the story--especially when you don’t want them to survive. This was most sharply upsetting when I was still playing as Abby after she shoots Jesse and Tommy in their heads. I felt like tossing the controller and quitting. The only reason I can think of for this choice is that the trope of unwinnable fights in games exposes the guts therein. For me, though, this exposed them even more. I would rather have tried very hard to kill Abby and then have her overpower me with those cannon arms and watch the devastating Dina scene play out. It’s what I wanted just then, and was undoubtedly what Ellie wanted. This would have aligned me more with her, the character who I would still side with instantly and unquestionably. It was so strange to fight Ellie’s AI, particularly because the computer does not play her like I do, and for the only portion in the entire game, she was not human. I understand what this rigid perspective attempts to illustrate, but the choice still puzzles me greatly.

While I am still able to see why the game did it and why it was necessary, there was no way I was ever going to care about the Jackson Crew. This made playing with Manny and Mel very frustrating. Owen’s meta-perspective philosophizing about how none of the clans are actually any different from each other was interesting, but it was not touched on for very long, and now seems to only have been there to benefit Abby’s journey toward her own perspective-altering events. I see this as the only other true failing of the game, although I don’t have any idea how it could’ve been done differently. Aside from being shorter.

The reason everyone hates playing as Abby is because very few narratives have ever fully explored the other side of a conflict, and for us to be forced to see that, to play as The Bad Guy for so long, is something we’re absolutely going to hate for a long time. It does, or it should if you’re paying attention, eventually do exactly what it’s supposed to do. When Abby becomes human, we can then say that we’ve experienced the story up to that point. We are almost never shown this, much less forced to do it.

Another thing I’m stuck on but can’t suss out is the theme of pregnancy and innocence. Of course, an unborn baby is completely innocent even in an overgrown hellscape. Where this is most effectively employed is when the knife is at Dina’s throat. “Good.” Maybe the most terrifying line in the whole pair of games. It shows us the depth of hatred these women have fallen to, and how, like the player controlling Joel or Ellie or Abby in parts I and II, when we have to survive, it doesn’t matter what’s going on in anyone else’s life. If we feel someone has wronged us, we take everything from them and don’t consider the consequences. This game does show us our own actions very plainly, and the ultimate consequence could not have been more beautifully shown than in the final chronological scene in Part II. In following her own anger--combined with Tommy’s--she has damaged her connection to the very reason she followed it. She cannot play the song she shared with Joel without wounds appearing in the music itself.

Ultimately, the story told here is about violence. Why, how, and when it is employed, the unexpected casualties thereof, and how it changes the world for everyone connected to it. Love, hate, survival, revenge, and so many more. Joel protecting Ellie ended a lot of lives--starting as duty and perverting into misguided redemption and love. Abby avenging her father ended a lot of lives--starting as revenge and ending as duty and love. The cyclical implication is very clear as we come to blows between the two rowboats, although it is--like many other gigantic story moments--masterfully left un-hinted-at. If Ellie were to have held Abby under the water for a minute more and Lev were to survive somehow, we’d have ourselves a Part III for almost the same reason which started us down the troubling path of Part II. Can you imagine Ellie looking into the boat at a broken and unconscious Lev? Would she have felt something similar to looking over the bars of JJ’s crib?

What a lot of games don’t bother to explore is what violence takes away from those who employ it, no matter the reason for their doing so. When Ellie walks away from the farmhouse where her family used to live, leaving the last object connecting her to Joel there at the window, I was devastated, as I’m sure we all were and as I’m sure the storytellers intended. Through the deeply troubled feeling Naughty Dog left me with, I was searching for meaning, like Ellie was after seeing those giraffes: “After all we’ve been through. Everything that I’ve done. It can’t be for nothing.” What was it for? It seemed like it was going to be difficult to determine when the credits started to roll, but when it appeared to me, I was embarrassed it had taken me so long to figure out. Everyone was led to their devastating conclusion by the same driving force: love.

There’s also been a fair bit of talk about how bleak the outcome is, and how hopeless everything seems. This observation comes down to how deeply we’re hit by Abby’s boat disappearing into the fog as we sit entirely alone, physically and emotionally less than we’ve been so far, and how the ending and outlook of the whole game isn’t really what we want right now because our world doesn’t need a lot of help in the bleak category. Of course we want everything to work out, and we are so used to video games giving us what we want. Tragedy doesn’t cater to the wants of the audience, and the weight of this tragedy is gargantuan. What a knee jerk dismissal of the story would rob you of is the incredible contrast. I finished the game eight days ago and I’ve probably watched the dance scene at least once per day since. How gorgeous. “Oh, Ellie…” says Dina. To feel this moment fully, knowing its the beginning of a beautiful thing that can’t last, is a gift rarely given to any audience or player. It does so much so deeply in 3.5 minutes. That scene in itself shows us that this isn’t what we’re used to, and the bit of Joel and Ellie’s interaction we get in that scene also demonstrates that the things we care most about are not okay right now. We were Joel more than Ellie in the first game and we protected her. We saved her. We want to continue to protect her.

But the decisions Joel made in the hospital guaranteed things would never be okay. What is it that these folks want from the ending? “You killed Abby! Congratulations! Ellie went on to found Joel Miller Memorial Research Center, where a cure was eventually reverse-engineered from a culture of bacteria extracted from Ellie’s intestine. Dina eventually forgave Ellie, and invited her to live with her and JJ inside the walls of Jackson where they dance, free from hatred and despair, every Thursday night.”

It’s hyperbolic, sure, but what a fucking waste that would be. What we have instead is a seemingly insurmountable sorrow which wraps around a glowing core of warmth and beauty which we’ve seen firsthand throughout both games, begging us to discuss and reflect and analyze and feel. Is the ending really entirely hopeless if Ellie puts down and leaves behind the guitar which attached her to Joel? I don’t know if she’s wearing or still has the watch, I’d have to see the cutscenes again. But she’s walking away from it, finally. What could she be walking toward?

Finally, there is one piece of storytelling after the credits, not a cutscene or a piece of text. The iconic title screen rowboat which we assume Ellie rides away in is replaced with its twin, dragged up onto the shore near Abby & Lev’s beached fishing boat. I’m having trouble putting what I believe this means into words that don’t sound too disgustingly sunny, but if Abby and Ellie, these two veritable destroyers are now free from the searing chains of revenge, and we’ve seen their allegiances shift and their hearts fundamentally changed, imagining the good they’re capable of isn’t too terribly difficult a task. That’s disgustingly sunny to even type out, but I believe it’s supported. It’s very clear that at this point, both parties deserve and have earned peace, inside and out.

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