#tlou episode 5

[jadeinretrogrde]

bruh wtf

[dyingroses]

The Last of Us + text posts 

(RIP Tess, you would have loved raising Ellie as your found daughter with Joel)

[amihyperfixatingagain]

As someone who went to school for theatre production and focused in scenic design, I just want to point out this moment in episode 5 of The Last of Us that just made my heart sing. I am a sucker for anytime scenic elements help tell the story. This is fairly early in the episode, when Henry is looking out the window and spots Joel shooting back at the KC Resistance members. 

It is just a reflection on the window but its placement portrays Henry as wearing the same superhero mask that he painted on Sam...

It’s fast and probably easy to miss if you’re not thinking about it, but it’s a moment of absolutely elegant visual storytelling. While Henry is unaware of the mask he’s wearing, Sam sees him as his hero all the time. And Henry is his hero, in so many ways despite “doing bad guy things”.

Again I’m a complete sucker for visual storytelling, especially moments like this, so fast, so subtle, and yet such an important look into the characters, without having to say anything.

[actual-changeling]

There is something so fragile and painful about Joel hiding his nightmares from Ellie and not asking for help. He sees himself as the caretaker and for the most part he is, but he takes it to an extreme it doesn't have to reach and denies himself any kind of comfort she might offer that isn't focused on her. In the fic I wrote about it, Ellie has already figured out how to help him, but I wanna write about the very first time Joel wakes her up while having a nightmare, both before Jackson and then once they settle.

I wanna say the first time is after episode five, he has them every night but they get worse sometimes and that are the ones that make him wake up in the middle of the night. Henry and Sam dying the way they did is a gigantic mirror of Joel and Sarah, and combine that with almost seeing Ellie get ripped apart by infected and you get a nightmare that makes you snap out of it with a full-blown panic attack.

Joel doesn't scream, doesn't shout, he simply shoots upright and his pupils are blown out with frantic terror. The ragged breaths he sucks in while hyperventilating are the only sound in the clearing they have chosen for the night, the fire having long died down and leaving them in almost complete darkness. Maybe if she hadn't already been awake she wouldn't have noticed it at all, but Ellie has barely slept for the last three days because she sees blood and bullet wounds whenever she closes her eye.

Her sleeping bag is right next to his, a silent choice they both initiated the first night after Kansas City, and she is on her knees before Joel even spots her in his confusion.

There are things neither of them can say in the daylight, but there's only the moon and the distant stars as their witnesses now, and the desperate Ellie he chokes on lays all of them out in front of her.

She doesn't quite know what to do, doesn't know what she is allowed to do, but Joel's hands are shaking and her heart is pounding and he held her surrounded by Henry and Sam's blood on the motel room floor, so she shuffles closer. As soon as his gaze lands on her the tension holding his shoulders up drops and her head hurts with the hours and hours of sleep she has been missing out on, so she feels not an ounce of embarrassment when they meet in the middle and Joel pulls her closer.

Ellie doesn't know why there are tears dripping from her jaw or why the soft touch of Joel's cheek on top of her head breaks something deep inside of her open, but she curls up in his lap amidst the heat he is radiating and listens to his heartbeat until it slows. The forest is a cold void stretching around them, and she squeezes her eyes shut when his breaths calm enough to allow his words to reach her ears, the same phrase mumbled into her hair over and over again.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

[pedritoisapunk]

i kinda wish we’d gotten to see more of the underground settlement/school. that was one of my favorite parts of the game, such rich storytelling in that world building, so I’m sad it was downplayed here.

[teatime-withtori]

Every week I think surely this episode cannot be as sad

And yet I’m literally sobbing once again!!! Hbo you are so sick for this

[protectingstucky]

is any episode from the last of us NOT going to make me want to throw myself into an active volcano? just asking!

[colloquialcolors]

god fucking dammit, what a wildly devastating TLOU episode. It was always going to be! And yet. And YET.

- Having experienced the game, theres a moment I saw the paintings and the art around the door and immediately- oh- its Ish's place! oh, its beautiful! -and then right on its heels- oh, oh, Sam and Henry aren't making it much further, are they. if this is here.

-- this makes sense with the Kathleen narrative being fleshed out, wanting the stories to wrap together, they can't make it out proper. cant make it away, not really. but also. but also.

- ellie talking to sam is- well. goddammit. fuck. he reveals his bite and her first move is to. draw her blood, try to use it as medicine. ellie wants so badly to not be alone. ellie wants so badly for the people she loves to stay. ellie would draw the immunity out of her blood and give it to others if she could. she tries to. its such a naive move. its all she can do. it does nothing.

- The scene is almost verbatim from the game and it cuts to the core both ways! impeccably! ow.

-- the choice to stay on ellies face is. yeah.

- Bloater does the head rip thing and my only thought was "oh thats such a nice homage to the game, where i got joels head ripped off/in half a solid 8-10 times :)"

- is your person worth more than others? more than mine? more than the world? haha. shit.

[againstacecilia]

Ellie

Relationship: Joel and Ellie (Henry and Sam)

Word Count: 1.3k

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Blood mention, emotional breakdown, spoilers for Episode 5 of The Last of Us.

A/N: Please mind the warnings! Inspired by a post by @not-so-mundane-after-all and originally posted here, but I wanted it on its own post. 🥰

Ellie.

Joel’s mind is racing, the gunshot ringing in his good ear. Ellie is staring at Sam, or, rather, Sam’s little body, blood rapidly pooling and spreading over the yellowed carpet, her shoulders heaving from the breaths she’s desperately pulling into her lungs. Henry’s eyes haven’t left his younger brother, hand going limp and dropping the gun to the floor with a thud.

“Are you okay?” Joel asks as Ellie’s eyes meet his. Her hair is wild, standing at odd angles and sticking haphazardly from her ponytail. The sight reminds him just how young she is, looking more like a scared child waking from a nightmare than the world-weary person she was forced to grow into too quickly.

Joel wishes he could wake her from this nightmare.

Two long strides carry him across the small hotel room and he drops to his knees next to Ellie, ignoring the protesting of the joints, and pulls her into his arms. She’s still for a heartbeat before her small hands grab Joel’s arms surrounding her in a vice grip, pulling him closer. Sobs immediately wrack her body and Joel’s stone heart cracks for the first time in years.

“Shhh, it’s okay, you’re safe,” Joel whispers, adjusting his embrace to envelop her completely. He holds Ellie as she shakes and murmurs whatever he can to try and comfort the panic coursing through her system.

“I- I tried to save him,” she manages to say between gasps, “I thought maybe my blood… But it didn’t…”

“You did everything you could, baby girl, it’s okay, it’s okay…” Joel’s gaze wanders to Henry, the younger man laying on the floor across the room, his eyes still focused on the body of his brother. He’d convince Henry that he did the right thing. That, in a world like this, sometimes the right choice has to be made from a list of wrong ones. But he’d do it later.

“Ellie, look at me,” Joel keeps his voice calm but firm, coaxing Ellie’s face from it’s spot buried in his chest. “Now I’m guessin’ you knew Sam had gotten bit and didn’t tell us. I’m not mad, I know you wanted to help him, and I’m proud of you for thinkin’ of him. I just need you to be honest with me, okay?”

Ellie’s puffy eyes never leave Joel’s as she nods, sniffing and wiping her nose across the sleeve of her jacket. “Okay,” she whispers.

“Are you hurt?”

She shakes her head and sniffles again, turning to look back at her friend. In a matter of a day, Sam really had become her friend. Someone closer to her age that understood things like Savage Starlight and could roll their eyes at the adults with her. And they had been so close to getting out…

A fresh wave of tears hits Ellie and she turns back to Joel. Without hesitation he pulls her back into his arms, allowing the walls he’d built so thoroughly over the last twenty years to fall.

[the-irreverend]

Well, I guess that's what happens when you "fuck with fate," Kathleen.

[sporesnsonnets]

TLOU EPISODE 5 SPOILERS:

I can’t stop thinking about how much worse they made poor Henry’s story.

He sold out someone he admired and because of it the resistance was left with a violent, extreme, callous leader. How responsible for the carnage that followed did he feel? It clearly weighed heavily on him.

And he did all of it for Sam; to keep Sam healthy - to keep Sam alive. He did so much, endured so much… all for Sam. To know that it was ultimately for nothing? That he couldn’t keep him safe despite it all? To have to kill him himself after all that?

Absolutely heartbreaking.

Do you think he heard Kathleen’s voice in the end? Telling him that Sam was destined to die?

It wasn’t enough for him to shoulder the burden of failing his brother. He also had to shoulder the burden of feeling responsible for everything that went down, only for it to be for nothing in the end.

[weirdprophetess]

oh my goddd im watching the new tlou episode and crying this time too i love henry and sam😭😭😭

ellie showing sam her joke book and him teaching her the signs for what sounds like the slogan for the comic book they both own is so cute im fucking keeling over clutching my hand to my chest

[dyingroses]

The Last of Us + AO3 tags

[pedritomosquito]

The Sinkhole Mob Scene (Ep 5)

Joel covering Ellie from the window:

Ellie knowing that Joel will cover her from the window:

[actual-changeling]

do you ever think about the fact that joel trying to talk henry into giving him the gun probably mirrored the way that tommy talked him down? the outstretched hand, the way he made himself seem non-threatening, the soft, almost gentle, tone of voice? do you ever think about how hard it must have been for tommy to keep himself together long enough to make sure he wouldn't lose the other half of his family, too?

"give me the gun, joel"

"you know i cant"

"please"

"i'm not leaving her. bury us together, okay? i don't want her to be alone. it's cold."

"if you go, i follow, joel, do you want me to die? do you want all of us to die today?"

"tommy"

"for family, joel. give me the fucking gun and keep going for family"

(or what's left of it, anyway, and without sarah, it's barely anything)

joel "i didnt see the point anymore" miller probably severely softened the story he told ellie because that man did not put a single thought into what he was going to do, the second tommy made him let go of sarah, he grabbed the nearest gun and just tried to shoot himself.

which, lets be honest here, was probably the side arm of the soldier that shot sarah. ironic, isn't it, that he tried to kill himself with the gun of the same person that took his light away, in for a penny-...

[sb25p]

I’ve cried every episode wtf 😭 I’m talking full on sobbing 😖😫