Charlie: “So this is what a full hotel looks like…”
Vaggie: “Think it’ll survive until Extermination day?”
Charlie: “I don’t know if I’LL survive to Extermination day.”
Vaggie: “Aww, babe.”
Charlie: “Seriously, who keeps ordering pizza??? We all already KNOW the cannibals will just skip it and try chewing on the poor delivery person!”
Vaggie: “My bet’s on Angel Dust. He’s not exactly thrilled the place got filled up with ‘shit smiling judgmental prudes.’”
Charlie: “Whyyy didn’t I remember the cannibals have a whole dress-code thingy?”
Vaggie: “They are being polite about it though.”
Charlie: “They keep eyeing Angel Dust’s exposed thighs like they’re chicken wings.”
Vaggie: “And if they wanted to eat him up in any other way, he’d be thrilled.”
Charlie: (growling) “Some of them keep looking at YOUR thighs as if they were-”
Vaggie: “Anything other than property of Charlie Morningstar?”
Charlie: “-Vaggie they want to TEAR YOU APART!”
Vaggie: “And they’re not actually trying it, which is polite, even if they’re still talking about how angels might taste whenever I’m in the room.”
Charlie: (pout) “You taste good.”
Vaggie: “Not like that, babe.”
Charlie: “How could the rest of you not taste good too??”
Vaggie: “Ask the cannibals. Meat flavors based on where the meat thing lived and what it ate, something something- What if angel steaks taste like artificial food coloring?”
Charlie: “I like those-!”
Vaggie: "I know." (laughing) “Maybe that’s another reason why you’re the woman of my dreams.”
Charlie: “Am I?”
Vaggie: “The one and only.”
Charlie: “You’d never… think about leaving me for someone else?”
Vaggie: “NO?”
Charlie: “Someone a little more badass maybe?”
Vaggie: “Not possible. You called heaven out for being total bullshit. In a song.”
Charlie: “Maybe someone you had an instant and deep connection with?”
Vaggie: “Like the woman that bandaged my eye socket and took me home with her and nursed me through physical and emotional hell all because she also thought sinners might be people worth caring about?”
Charlie: “Well what about someone who… is just better? At the whole. Everything.”
Vaggie: “Literally who. Who the fuck-”
Charlie: “Carmilla?”
Vaggie: “Car-hhhhHHH." (chokes)
Vaggie: "AHAHAHAHAH! Charlie! WHAT!?”
Charlie: “She’s cool. She’s one of those, those muffin things right? Angel Dust said-”
Vaggie: “A milf, sweetie. It’s milf and PLEASE also listen to Husk’s reality checks whenever Angel Dust opens his well meaning but dumb as shit whore mouth.”
Angel Dust: (distantly) “My HOT and SEXY whore mouth heard that, toots!”
Vaggie: (yelling back) “Then go stick a dick in it!”
Angel Dust: “I’m tryin’~”
Charlie: (used to this) (ignoring them) “So the whole private training battle song thing was, not a turn on for you? At all?”
Vaggie: “If I ever call Carmilla Carmine ‘mommy’ it’ll be because she just signed my adoption papers.”
Charlie: “Oh! Okay! Juuuust wanted to check.”
Charlie: “…..”
Charlie: “Are you gonna ask about me and the head-to-heart I had with-”
Vaggie: “No.”
Charlie: “-because I was literally thinking about you the whole time-“
Vaggie: (smile) “That just took a perfectly non-worrying thing and made it sound bad.”
Charlie: “Is there a thing like a- an elf??”
Vaggie: “Aunt you’d like to fuck?”
Charlie: “Well not ME personally. But Rosie is very impressive.”
Vaggie: “You looked more impressed up in heaven.”
Charlie: “Huh? Heaven??”
Vaggie: “Nothing- never mind. I do actually have a lady-related question for you though.”
Charlie: “What does heaven have to do with- what?”
Vaggie: “I think I’m in love.”
Charlie: “WHAT!?”
Vaggie: “She’s ripped out my heart and I want to thank her for it.”
Charlie: “Th-thh that’s wait how when-?”
Vaggie: “Charlie.”
Charlie: “-y, yes?”
Vaggie: “Can we keep inviting Susan over, even after Extermination day?”
Charlie: “…”
Charlie: “Susan.”
Vaggie: “Charlie please? Please? She's the granny I don't deserve and desperately need in my life. Please please please please-”
Charlie: “But, Vaggie- She HATES everyone!”
Vaggie: “I know!”
Charlie: “And she SAYS it!?”
Vaggie: “And it’s so fucking cool.”
Charlie: “She said you dress like a hooker!”
Vaggie: “Angel Dust was furious. I think he would’ve thrown a punch at her, in defense of hookers everywhere, if Husk hasn’t grabbed him.”
Charlie: “A LAZY hooker!”
Vaggie: “That one hit home and I’ll cherish it’s sting forever.”
Charlie: “She’s not NICE. She doesn’t even PRETEND to be nice like the other cannibals do!”
Vaggie: “Isn’t that great?” (grinning) “She’s like, the anti-Alastor….”
Charlie: (sigh)
Charlie: “I guess… being brutally, painfully, rudely honestly about your feelings is… not the worst thing someone can be.”
Vaggie: “YES! Can we adopt the creepy old mean lady?”
Charlie: “She can visit. We are NOT inviting her to LIVE here.”
Vaggie: (smiling)
Charlie: “….”
Charlie: (drooping) “…not unless she wants to.”
Vaggie: “Thanks, sweetie.” (kiss) “She never would. She hates us all and especially the hotel. Ask her and she’ll tell you, in detail, how all our decorating ideas are terrible and she’s only here to grab the free snacks, shove some angel leftovers in her basket, and then fuck off to her own perfect home back in Cannibal Town.”
Charlie: “So why scare me like that by asking? SUSAN in the attic! Ughghgh…”
Vaggie: “’cause it’s nice hearing you’d be open to it anyway.”
Charlie: “Mmrmph.”
Vaggie: “I like remembering that you’re like this.”
Charlie: “Whipped marshmallow.”
Vaggie: "That Angel Dust again?"
Charlie: "Maybe."
Vaggie: "I've got a better word for you."
Charlie: "Like 'girlfriend?"
Vaggie: “Like amazing.”
Charlie: (snorts) (smiles) "Heh. Alright, flattery accepted."
Vaggie: "My wonderfully, adorably dramatic, heart stopping and breathtakingly passionate girlfriend, the most incredible person I've ever met, who-"
Charlie: (laughing) “Now who’s being a sweetie?”
Vaggie: “Charlie, I’m seri- whoah!”
Niffty: (lifting up floor board vaggie was standing on and peeking up at them) “Hey guys!”
Charlie: “Niffty!” (hug lifting vaggie to safety) “W- hi! Um! What is it?”
Niffty: “A bad day not to wear underwear!”
Vaggie: “And a good day to Die.”
Niffty: "I WISH!" (GIGGLES) “News from the hotel gossip line! S.O.S from Husk- he says Angel Dust and some cannibals are fighting over who gets to put the new pizza delivery in their mouths while Cherri’s taking bets and also shots.”
Charlie: "Shots of alcohol?"
Niffty: "Laser gun!"
Charlie: "Nooooo I thought we'd cleaned up everything after Pen's last inventing spree!"
Niffty: "Missed one. She keeps missing too. She fried the pizza."
Vaggie: "Instead of?"
Niffty: (GRINS) "The pizza delivery person!"
Vaggie: “Ugh. We look away for Ten. Minutes.”
Charlie: “Well that’s not- that’s not TOO bad! At least Sir Pentious isn’t-”
Niffty: “His corpse is in the lobby.”
Charlie: “-right. Okay.”
Vaggie: “Why is he a corpse in the hotel lobby this time?”
Niffty: “The cannibals accidentally ate his tongue while he was trying to show Cherri how long it was and then he choked while proving he has no gag reflect and can unhinge his jaws.”
Charlie: “Oh.”
Niffty: “The cannibals want to snack on him again but Susan keeps yelling at them about ‘crumbling standards’ and ‘back in HER day-‘”
Vaggie: “I love her.”
Charlie: “I’m right here.”
Vaggie: “You kinda love her too right now.”
Charlie: (pulls face) “She can come to dinner every other week. If we live. For now though, let’s just, um.”
Vaggie: “Go save the snake man?”
Niffty: “That man is DEAD!”
Charlie: “Resuscitate. We should go resuscitate the snake m- Sir Pentious.”
Niffty: (giggles) “And I’m gonna go order another pizza boy~” (scurries back under floor board)
Vaggie: “Wait, Niffty-”
Charlie: “Niffty! Are YOU the one who’s been-? Vaggie NO-”
Vaggie: (spear out) (in pursuit) “GET OUT OF THE CRAWL SPACES RIGHT NOW AND COME BACK HERE, YOU LITTLE-”
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V, JoeNicky & Nile
V. An abandoned or empty place.
When Joe pulls the sheet off the couch it kicks up enough dust that it makes Nile sneeze. The couch underneath is old, wooden frame rotting, fabric stained and full of holes where moths have eaten away at it.
“Sorry,” Joe says to Nile when she finally manages to get the sneezing under control. “Didn’t realise it was that bad.” He puts his hands on his hips and looks down at the couch. Nile looks it over.
“There’s no saving that,” she says, wiping at her eyes. She can heal from falling over ten stories, but she can’t get away from allergies.
Joe frowns. “I liked that couch.”
The house is older than anywhere else they’ve brought her, and has been abandoned for long enough that it’s falling apart. But through some trick of posing as their own sons, or something, Joe and Nicky still own it, even if there’s a giant hole in the roof and all the windows are broken. Why they’d decided to come back here, Nile doesn’t know, but it’s a nice enough area, and a good distraction from, well. Everything. Growing back a leg, she’s discovered, is not fun.
From one of the other rooms – she thinks it’s the kitchen, she’s not actually sure where Nicky had wandered to – there’s the sound of something breaking and crashing to the ground, and a muffled curse.
Joe makes a questioning noise in the vague direction of the kitchen. A few moments later, Nicky appears in the doorway, covered in dust. “I am okay,” he says. “But I think we will need to go out to eat tonight.”
“Nothing?”
Nicky shakes his head. “Unless you want to start a fire and go hunt some rabbits.”
Joe grins. “Just like old times, right?”
Nile shakes her head firmly, which makes Nicky smile. She loves them, but there’s no way they’re doing that.
“We can probably clear out enough space in here,” Joe says, gesturing to the floor. “Get the sleeping bags out of the car. Probably have to start a fire anyway, but…”
Nile looks around again while Joe says something to Nicky in Arabic that makes him laugh. The house is falling apart, sure, but it’s structurally stable, and the bones are all there. It could be something. They’ve got time to make it something.
Nicky is the one who goes for pizza in the end – he doesn’t trust Nile and Joe to order it if left to their own devices – while they try to clear out a space in the living room. Eventually, though, after Nile has another sneezing fit, Joe suggests they just take the sleeping bags outside instead, which works out a lot better. He sets about starting a fire with practiced ease while Nile sets out the sleeping bags around it. They’re far enough away from civilisation that she can’t hear cars passing by, which is kind of surreal, and the stars are brighter than she’s ever seen them.
When Nicky gets back, two boxes balanced on one arm and a bottle of wine in the other, he looks over their makeshift camp and laughs. “Just like old times, then?” he asks.
Joe grins. “Except we have pizza.”
“And actual sleeping bags,” Nile says.
“Ah, these modern inventions could never quite match the comfort of a pile of furs,” Joe says wistfully. Nile gives him a look. She’s ninety percent sure that one’s bullshit, but she can never quite tell with him.
Nicky sets down the pizza boxes, and jogs back to the car to grab the pack of plastic wine glasses they’d bought before they got here.
“We should’ve bought marshmallows,” Nile says. “Could have made s’mores.”
“Well, we’ll have to go to the hardware store tomorrow anyway,” Joe points out. “And I think it’ll be a little while before we can actually sleep in there.”
“Tomorrow, then?”
“Tomorrow,” Nicky agrees.
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Ellie’s memory of the golfing scene and what it tells us about her.
🚨spoilers for tlou2🚨
I think Ellie’s flashback to Joel’s death is very telling of how she internalized the event and the meaning she applied to his death. It’s also a good demonstration of her relationship to autonomy. Let’s break down the elements that were inconsistent with the actual event:
The stairs/hallway are much longer than they were. This suggests a sense of helplessness, an inability to get there fast enough. Joel is constantly out of reach.
There is blood on the floor outside of the door. Not entirely certain on this one but my hunch is that she blames herself for not seeing more obvious signs of violence/not knowing something was wrong sooner.
The door is locked, another roadblock in her path to Joel. She can’t access him, she can’t help, he needs her and she isn’t there.
Most importantly. Joel yells “Ellie, help me” (which he didn’t in the actual scene, he just screams. He doesn’t say a word in the actual scene)
Ellie hearing Joel scream for her help, calling for her while being horribly beaten, and her being repeatedly impeded on her way to him suggests that what she took away from his death is that she wasn’t enough. They always helped each other, always had each others backs, always got up. Ellie views his death as a failure. She was too slow, too weak, not smart enough to save him. She failed him when he needed her most. She is absolutely helpless to save him, just like she was helpless to save Riley, Tess, Sam, and Jessie (and Marlene, and humanity, and and and-).
Once again, Ellie makes a decision (staying with Riley, going to the fireflies, staying with Joel, being the cure, trying to forgive Joel) and once again her autonomy and ability to find closure is ripped from her.
This is the inciting incident of tlou pt2, this is the moment where Ellie’s whole world shatters the same way Joel’s did at the start of pt1. Ellie enters into the same cycle (which I like to call the “Joel cycle” because… yeah.) that he did, and throughout pt2 she stays in the “20 years later” phase of the cycle. She is changed, she has lost her light, lost what she fought for. She lost her chance to genuinely forgive Joel and rebuild their relationship. She is stuck in a gruelling and violent world that she has no anchor in, at least not anymore. His death is so sudden and so incredibly violent that it practically gave her (and me as well, tbh) whiplash. She’s in a state of total shock.
On another devastating note, this is one of the three times in tlou that we see Ellie beg (that I remember). The first is begging Joel to get up at the university of Eastern Colorado, the second is begging him to get up and for Abby to stop, and the third is begging Abby to not kill Dina because she’s pregnant. (Two times she begs Joel to get up, one time he doesn’t. Two times she begs Abby to spare her family and one time she does. What a beautifully haunting contrast)
To wrap up, every person creates an internal narrative, a story of their life that is crafted from their context and lived experiences. The meaning we derive from those experiences doesn’t always reflect the truth, and that can sometimes bite us in the ass majorly when we experience a traumatic event. We tend to want to find someone or something to assign blame to, some reason or rationale to why it happened. We tell stories. We write them in our minds about ourselves and what happens to us and what that says about us.
But Ellie is wrong. Joel’s death happened in response to a conscious and willing choice he made. It is in no way her fault, and there was absolutely no way for her to know or to stop what was happening. I think Ellie knows that much on an intellectual level, It just doesn’t change how devastated she is over the whole event. It can’t change the fact that she FEELS as though this was all her fault, that Joel did what he did to save her, that she could have saved him. That she should have.
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