#tlou2 meta

[hatosaur]

it's pretty implied that ellie never came out to joel in the proper sense. she lets him assume that she's into men, gives him the false satisfaction of "seeing" her "crush" on jesse, does not correct him. she's fairly confident in being gay in public for others to see and having others close to her know; so why not correct him? why dodge the topic?

was it out of fear? could it be that she never broached the topic despite being close to him in the early years because of the possibility of his reaction being negative? that she was afraid that out of all things that could force them apart (further apart after they split), him reacting badly to her being gay would be the worst?

what about at the dance? would she have been as wound up as she was if the moment hadn't been an encounter with a vicious homophobe? maybe she would've still snapped without this context, but why is she immediately on the defensive against joel after he sticks up for her?

what about the porch scene? why did she refute his question of dina being her girlfriend so insecurely, looking away, nervously and quietly stumbling over words? why isn't she mean about it? why doesn't she get defensive at the question? why did she lash out again when he expressed acceptance?

i think these scenes revolving around her queerness indicate it as such; that ellie never told joel for fear of a response, that she lets him think what he wants because that's the easiest way for it to be. then, when she's ready to face off against a homophobe, because that's the way things are, that's what she can expect, and joel defends her, she lashes out.

it's such a clear juxtaposition of support and hatred between joel and seth, and being faced with joel's acceptance is too much, makes her turn to the anger she'd been holding onto and reinforce what she thinks is true -- that she doesn't need him. and in the fallout, as her regret dawns on her, so too does the realization; he was protecting her, like always, without hesitation, over this thing she was always afraid he wouldn't accept her for.

in the porch scene, joel chooses his words wisely, and asks if dina is her girlfriend -- not "so you're gay?" or "why did you never tell me?" or "how long has this been a thing?" -- with such a casuality that it seems to throw her off. it's like ellie can hardly get the words out. she refutes the idea, fumbles for each following part of her response, is tense. she wasn't prepared for the question.

and when he finally asserts his support for her, in as explicit terms as he can, you can see ellie become emotional, touched for a moment but overcome, before she launches into the defensive again, exactly like at the dance scene -- meeting his kindness with hostility as a way to cope with her emotions.

and then, in response to her basically saying her life doesn't matter, he affirms that it does.

so he's now affirmed two things that ellie has doubted: that he accepts her being a lesbian, and that her life matters. a conflation of the two, in ellie's mind, may have come after; and after that, her olive branch.

and yeah, him affirming these things for her is fully in the context of his overwhelming parental love for her and her complex feelings about being the cure, but within a queer subtext, it means more. it's such a familiar thing to slink around loved ones and hide being gay/queer for fear of any type of response, and lying by omission in conversation just to keep that state of peace, of normalcy. ellie, with all her brutishness and bravery, falls into it like anyone else, because even while mad at him, she valued that response from him.

a lot of people seem to think that the approach to ellie's queerness is nonchalant, that it's just some unrelated thing about her, but i think that it holds more weight in the narrative that what is explicitly spelled out. it's subtle but it was a deliberate choice to place her queerness at the center of the confrontation. i think that's why ellie's relationship with dina took center stage in the story, and why so much time is devoted to just them -- because her being queer matters to her character, but in a way that perhaps only a queer person can see, analyze, and appreciate (without being blatant enough to anger certain other fans).

[hallwyeoo]

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.

[quietlysomethingalso]

The most surface level take on Last of Us 2 is that it’s about violence and inhumanity; you’re getting closer if you realize that the ugliness of violence is meant to be understood as the game’s vehicle for illustrating its message about vengeance.

I think what Last of Us 2 does that is really profound is that it supercedes its protagonist in order to illustrate the experience of having their worldview. Playing as Abby gives us empathy for that character as an audience, but the thing that makes that thematically relevant to Ellie is that it creates a framework for empathizing with her choices at the end. By forcing you to take a step back and experience Abby’s story, it also forces you to understand how utterly irrelevant it is to Ellie’s obsession with her. Ellie’s hatred is based on an event, it’s based on trauma and emotion, and as such it is detached from empathy. The realization that the hatred of Abby has nothing to do with Abby—the audience has already been set up for that understanding by the structure of the game. That’s why Abby’s perspective matters so much. That kind of writing, that grabs you by the collar and forces you to engage with theme through different perspectives rather than being tied to simply presenting it in linear fashion and hoping the audience is willing to follow along… That is so much deeper of an engagement with a story’s ideas than you will see in almost any game. It’s also very challenging and asks a lot of you, as the player, immersed in characters and story, but you really cannot take away from the depth of it. It is about experiencing empathy, where it comes from and how it’s lost and where it goes, not just considering it abstractly. When I see people write the game off for wanting to say something but just being a simple story about “violence bad” or whatever, it is just betraying people’s own unwillingness to actually engage meaningfully with it as an experience.

[sicksicksixx]

i saw a tik tok trying to say that jackson is more tribalism than communism and i’ve got to strongly disagree. the WLF and the Serephites in tlou2 represent true tribalism, which includes an us vs them mentality. isaac is the leader of the WLF, he makes laws, he outcasts people, he tells them where to live and what to do. the scars similarly follow a strict regime. there are rules, and not about the town safety or group comfort, but for individuals and how they live. in fact the rules in jackson are mostly a result of the infected, and subsequently raiders. if those outside forces were shifted, things would look very different. the WLF and the scars deal with the infected but their reality is civil war.

jackson is open to people, even if it isn’t advertised. new people join, and as long as they are willing to contribute in some way, they are welcome. they don’t need to swear loyalty to the group. they don’t need to pledge allegiance. they just need to wanna be a part of it.

people are really jumping through hoops to try and say “it’s not TRUE communism” when yes actually it is!! it’s just such a true form of communism we almost never see it irl. the 2nd game goes out of its way to show the contrast between these ideologies and how IMPERIALISM, which here is violence, the desire to control the land or to have people conform to your religion, (all classic motifs of modern imperialism) which ruins what could otherwise be peaceful and productive.

[australet789]

Really need to stop reading the comment section of the playthrough of TLOU2 im rewatching, because the mentai parkour people do to hate on Abby is insane.

Like, just said she killed Joel and that‘s why you don’t like her.

I don’t like Joel because he killed Marlene and the nurses.

Simple as that

[sillyguyhotline]

ough something something about the dichotomy btwn joel and ellie’s characters and how they deal with the prospects of time and moving forward. tlou1 doesn’t have any flashbacks. we follow joel linearly through his journey because he’s resigned himself to a life of constantly pushing forward and denying himself any risks of looking back to think about everything he’s lost. he won’t even accept the picture of himself with sarah the first time tommy offers it to him, an undeniably sweet and fond memory for him, because he refuses to dwell on the pain it will inevitably dredge up.

ellie, on the other hand, is completely mired in her past. the first standalone title we get with her is half-flashback, and it’s from her memories of her time with riley that she draws the strength and willpower to save joel and keep fighting for the both of them. tlou2 is even more peppered with flashbacks, ellie’s memories of joel haunting her and ebbing in and out of her current existence. she’s severely burdened by the guilt of everyone she’s had to leave behind and this guilt that she can’t let go of is a key motivator for her to reach the fireflies and make a self-sacrifice that she believes will be a resolution to the pain of her past. these differences end up tying into each other in an interesting way because they both end up feeding into the unhealthiest methods joel and ellie have of coping with their problems. joel allows himself to be cruel and brutal because he does not permit himself to regret or to grieve or to reminisce. ellie, on the other hand, drives herself into self-destruction because she cannot seem to let go of her past and is desperate to find some way to remedy the things that she’s done and that have been done to her (which is ultimately a fruitless task).

they both end up hurting people in the present because of their inability to compensate for the past: joel repeatedly pushes ellie away because he fears having to connect with and love anyone again. ellie ends up damaging her relationship with joel because she can’t let go of the hospital and all of the other losses it represents in her mind, and later her relationships with everyone (dina, herself) because she can’t let go of joel’s death even when she acknowledges that he likely wouldn’t have wanted her to pursue the route she went down.

both characters are so different in how they approach their pasts, but when they end up intersecting they’re able to help each other come to more of a balance and it’s incredibly sweet. ellie, for joel, represents not just the ability to move on from sarah’s death and actually resolve the grief he’s been burying for 20 years, but also an opportunity to Return to his past and come to terms with his fatherhood again. when she presents him with the photograph a second time, he accepts it and resolves that he can’t run away from his past forever. joel, in turn, gives ellie a purpose that isn’t merely defined by her obligations and debts to other people. we begin tlou2 with him singing “future days” to her and promising that the two of them do have a life to live ahead of them, even if it’s not the life ellie had initially wanted or anticipated. they help give each other meaning and purpose in the ways that they individually find it the most difficult to derive purpose from life and it’s . nice :)

[xamiipholia]

Since it’s been a year since Burning Shores came out, some thoughts on Seyka:

TL;DR: Great character, really happy with her as a love interest for Aloy. They do some really interesting things with her that I never really see addressed so I wanted to talk about them.

She is tangibly shown to be much more of a match for Aloy through gameplay. Compared to other npcs, she solves things faster, does more damage, is a much more formidable melee combatant, faster climber - she even has a fucking Valor Surge using her Focus that does pretty significant tear damage to large machines like Slaughterspines. Environmental storytelling- Seyka’s skiff has at least 2-3 Tiderippers’ worth of parts, meaning she’s been out on her own killing the things to build boat motors, and she has some ambient dialogue that strongly suggests she’s fought and killed Slaugterspines before. Is some of this npc tech advancements in Burning Shores? Maybe, but it feels intentional. 

Seyka has a natural probing curiosity about the old world that for the most part Aloy’s other companions didn’t have without some significant hand-holding from Aloy to get them started, and some of her close friend (but not base team) characters just don’t have at all. I don’t mean this as a moral judgement, everyone is different and has different strengths and priorities , but it’s absolutely critical that a partner for Aloy have that kind of curiosity - it’s such a big part of her character. While she lives in this new world, she’s never going to be entirely a part of it. Like she says, she finds belonging in individuals, and not really the tribes. I don’t really see Aloy settling down in Meridian or Mother’s Heart. She needs to have a life of exploration and discovery and Seyka seems cut from that cloth too, whether she was always that way or being marooned gave her a fresh perspective.

Seyka did risk death using the focus and decided to do it anyway- in Rheng’s notes he calls for capital punishment for her. The threat is never *too* present but honestly I think that’s a broader critique of the series and pretty consistent with the writing of conflicts in Horizon. I agree they could have played up the dramatic tension a bit, but this is a person who weighed the risk of a military execution by a totalitarian state and immediately decided it was worth it to save her sister and others. I think Aloy can intimately relate, given what she went through for Beta.

Even though it’s a DLC, she has a TON of screen time, probably comparable to Kotallo in HFW, and Horizon does SO much storytelling through gameplay and ambient dialogue. I think she’s given a LOT of narrative space to breathe. She’s also has her own musical cues and leitmotifs that do a ton of foreshadowing work through the DLC - in terms of musical cues and framing she’s very associated with the acoustic guitar, and the flute melody in ‘Her Sky, Her Sea’ has for Aloy and Seyka the same function that ‘It Can’t Last’ does for Ellie and Dina in TLOU2 - next time you play Burning Shores, listen for it. That and the guitar cues from ‘The Idea of Home’ and ‘For His Entertainment’ do a lot of emotional work. It’s great stuff.

Okay and lastly- YMMV on this one - I’ve def talked about it with friends before but I don’t think I’ve said it on Tumblr. I’m a firm believer that meta narratives and the way that stories are situated and created in our own world matter and that art deserves to be taken seriously and dissected. I love Horizon, but it, and Aloy as a protagonist, are absolutely drenched in white savior and colonial storytelling tropes. Every time I play Frozen Wilds, all I can think of is Jack Sparrow going “and then they made me their chief”. There’s a lot of iffy stuff in the games, as much as I absolutely love them. We’ll have to see how H3 goes, but Burning Shores is MUCH better about this and honestly Seyka is a huge part of it. The story centers itself on a queer woman of color who is pretty tangibly presented as Aloy’s equal with her own strengths and weaknesses throughout the story and takes the lead just as often if not more than Aloy does, which I find really refreshing. It doesn’t entirely fix Aloy’s white savior issues but I think it’s a really good move for the narrative that continues the themes found in HFW about community and connection.

Horizon Zero Dawn: The Frozen Wilds (2017)

[seek--rest]

3, 6, 7, 19

3. What is that one scene that you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be arsed to write all of the set-up and context it would need? (consider this permission to write it and/or share it anyway)

Unfortunately I suffer from can’t shut up disease so any “scene” I have in my mind is or has been a fic. I DO however want to see tlou2 adapted into an AU and started writing tlou1 but,,,, the whims are fickle

6. What character do you have the most fun writing?

My beloved bastard whore and war criminal Tony Stark!

7. What do you think are the characteristics of your personal writing style? Would others agree?

Probably that I spend a lot of time in character studies. I didn’t realize this was a separate genre for the longest time because Every fic I write is a character study

19. Is there something you always find yourself repeating in your writing? (favourite verb, something you describe ‘too often’, trope you can’t get enough of?)

Em dashes my beloved

Meta asks

[aeirithgainsborough]

people who talk in their meta defending tlou2 about how joel was selfish and took away ellie’s choice and say he was morally reprehensible and massacred an entire hospital (no he did not lmao) so ofc he should have died he had it coming and it was deserved and made narrative sense are the ones who don’t understand nuance, actually. that whole prologue is a manipulation you know that right?

[silentsockfeet]

i like to think that the prisoners in santa barbara thought ellie and abby were friends and that ellie had come to rescue her and that’s why she asked where abby was

[dissonantdreamer]

how long do you think Ellie and Cat dated?

I’m sure you asked me this because I’m not going to give a simple answer, so here’s why it took so long. Rant underneath the cut because if anything I try to be thorough as possible when pulling the possibilities out of my ass but also considerate of everyone who doesn’t want to see a wall of nonsense on their feeds as I get there.

Here I go, back on my bullshit:

Okay, here are my findings and best approximation given the fact that while, I think Ellie and Cat broke up amicably, as proof by the photo in Ellie’s room, there is a time unaccounted for with emotions and happenings that I can’t predict. As well as the fact we know jack shit about Cat, what her personality is like, how she would handle Ellie if she was so full of hurt and anger directed at Joel. That kind of emotion, especially when you don’t know how to handle it will definitely begin to bleed into other aspects of your life over time. Dina’s line about “I think she wasn’t right for you.” while hinting that she thinks she’s better for Ellie, also might hint at the fact that she might not have been the type of person Ellie needed during that time. Young queer love in a small town has the potential to force people who are better as friends into a relationship that doesn’t really fit because fuck it’s less lonely. But this is all conjecture. What I do know?

This this is what I know:

In 2036 Ellie and Joel go off to find strings on 9/22, a few days before Joel’s Birthday.

Ellie doesn’t date her journal so it’s hard to say if the entry was made the day before they went off to find strings or maybe a week or two.

Looking at Ellie’s tattoo though, it’s been enough time that it’s begun to heal albeit poorly, you can see a few spots where Cat pushed too hard or not hard enough. It was hard to tell with the way the tattoo renders on the skin if it’s scabbing or not, most tattoos take two to three weeks to appear healed. So, it is possible since mid-August she and Cat have been together.

That ends what I know for certain.

Ellie goes to Salt Lake, shortly after and then it’s a big unknown as to when they broke up. BUT again, with Dina:

“I always knew that Dina had been in love with Ellie for a long time,” Woodward tells me. “There was a scene that I tested with when I read with Ashley [Johnson, Ellie’s voice and motion capture actor] that became a version of a different scene. But there was a monologue that they had me do. It was about the history of their friendship. And it was talking about how she’d been in love with her for a really long time; that they had been friends when Ellie had another girlfriend, Cat. And then her relationship with Jesse naturally had kind of ended … I think, once she was single, she was like, ‘We’re both single right now. We should probably take the window.’”

This scene that could have happened would have given us a better guess, I’d like to think they broke up a little before Jesse and Dina, who starts to realize what she has with Jesse isn’t what she wants and that their relationship is off and on because they are better as friends.

To conclude:

I can say with some certainty, as long as there wasn’t some big BS thing that happened that no one hinted at, they were probably dating from Mid-August/ Early September 2036 to sometime in the Winter 2037-38. (Personally leaning on December 2037/January 2038)

I could be wrong as fuck and they broke after the tattoo was done and Ellie was like, “thanks for the ink, I’m out.” Unless we get more info, everything I say is a big maybe.

Any who, thanks for the ask anon! hope this answers your question and you don’t hate me for making you read an essay for the short answer at the end :)

[blogquantumreality]

Because I have feels about TLoU 2

[heavy spoilers herein, you have been warned]

So when Ellie gets back to what was Dina’s and her house, she finds out Dina took the baby and left. And because it was once a farm, this put me in mind of a verse I read, part of which runs:

“ ... jah þaurp ni gastaistald ... “ (Nehemiah 5:16)

This can be translated somewhat loosely to “and farm[land] we possessed not”, or “and we possessed no farm[land]”.

Now, in human history, having a farm is about the most rooted form of security there is. If you’re good at it, you will always have food to live off of. And here, Ellie doesn’t have that anymore.

Feels, indeed. :(

[heartoferebor]

The Last of Us 2, “purity culture” and why we really need to stop woobifying characters

Or: why a number of responses to TLOU2 encompass everything that troubles me about the current state of fandom

Before you start yelling at me, hear me out. I didn’t write this to cast blame on anyone, but as an invitation for people to reflect on their own views and perhaps go and re-examine some of their own opinions and knee-jerk reactions they’ve had.

*Spoilers for the first part of TLOU2 ahead* 

Broadly, the people who hate or severely dislike TLOU2 seem to be falling into two camps: one, your average dudebro who complains about ‘SJW bullshit’. I won’t be talking about them, others have done that far better. No, I’ll be talking about the second group, the people (mostly here and on Twitter) who I’ve seen go ‘but the story is crap!’ without ever having played the game themselves (but perhaps having read some spoilers) or having stopped after Joel’s death.

And, let’s be clear – Joel’s death is extremely upsetting (it is meant to be). I stopped playing for half a day and was completely awash with tears and an emotional wreck, yelling ‘BUT WHY. WHY SO SOON. WHY LIKE THIS.’ (I expected him to die in the course of the game, but this didn’t soften the blow any). But then I picked up the controller and kept on playing and was rewarded with an incredibly thoughtful game that didn’t pull any of its punches and yet left me satisfied and hopeful at the end, and filled with utmost admiration for its incredible storytelling. It’s a game about violence and love and how love can make us do terrible things. It’s about healing and the search for forgiveness. It’s fundamentally, achingly human, with all of humanity’s most beautiful and terrible shades.

But why did so many others not continue? Or not even start the game when they read that Joel was going to die? Or kept yelling about how the story was crap because you are ‘forced’ to sympathise with Abby, Joel’s murderer? Was it just because they were upset that their favourite character had died an incredibly violent and painful death (which I’m not saying is invalid, btw)? Or because they were some deeper issues that are pertinent in fandom at play?

A part of this is definitely that a lot of people basically just wanted to play TLOU1 again with the same dynamics and a slightly different story. But if you have watched any of the trailers or read anything (even without spoilers) about the game, it was very clear that TLOU2 wasn’t going to be that. No, there’s something else going on here, too.

Purity culture has been an issue in fandom for a long time, but it seems to have become really pertinent during the last few years. It’s that extremely toxic notion that you cannot like something or someone if they are even the tiniest bit ‘problematic’. A fictional character once said or did something wrong? You are a bad person for liking them! A piece of media not getting all its representation 100% right? You are a bad person for liking it and blogging about it! I could go on, but you get the gist.

Which, in turn, leads to people relentlessly woobifying or downplaying the bad sides of characters they love because otherwise either they or the fandom does not allow them to actually like them. Joel is a prime example for this – what he did at the end of TLOU1 was, objectively, wrong and utterly horrifying. We all know why he did it and we can understand and sympathise with it because we went on that journey with him and Ellie and grew to love her like he did (him being an attractive white dude also helps…). But still, it was wrong. Ellie deserved a chance to determine her own fate. Humanity deserved the chance to be saved. Now, did he deserve to die for what he did? No, probably not. But neither did the people he killed in that hospital deserve to die like that, especially the doctors. Nor did the people Ellie kills in the course of seeking her revenge. That’s the whole point of it.

And along comes TLOU2 and tells you that Joel did a bad thing there at the end of TLOU1. And that he cannot escape the consequences of his actions; they come down hard and fast. And that’s the thing most people cannot stomach because suddenly they are forced to face the fact that their fave might not be 100% perfect and good, and oh gosh, through years of yelling Tumblr has taught them that this means they are a bad person for liking this character! How much easier to just stop playing/not even start playing and shout about how Naughty Dog made a bad game and how Joel’s name is dragged through the mud and how it’s all violence and so terrible etc. Because it’s always easier to blame somebody else than it is to examine your own biases.

Once again – people are very much allowed to not like the game or not wanting to play it in the first place. There are a myriad of good reasons – not liking horror, not being in the right frame of mind to deal with what can be a very depressing game at times, finding the violence too extreme, etc – but stop hating on a game you haven’t bloody played because it made you confront your own hypocrisy and reckon with the fact that all actions have consequences and people aren’t just purely good or evil after all. You are doing both yourself, the game, and the fandom a tremendous disservice. Or, to say it with the words of an awesome friend: “I don't think people like to be confronted with the reality of our failings as humans, because then they would have to stop and examine their own.”

Just play it and see for yourself.  

[jaggedwolf]

Thinking about how TLOU2′s handling of the Joel-Ellie relationship really works for me, in that it expands on opposing beliefs that both fundamentally make sense to me.

For Ellie, especially once she’s learned the truth of St. Mary’s, a meaningful death there is the only thing that could have imputed retroactive meaning onto her life, her survival, when so many others around her have died - her mom, Riley, the list goes on. Ellie’s attitude is “the only way I can ever be okay with them dying and me living is if my immunity ends up having grand significance.” A sort of fucked-up self-applied Chosen One narrative built out of her survivor’s guilt. 

For Joel, there’s no such thing as a meaningful death. Only living itself. Be it laced with grief, dulled by apathy, or pained by the break with Ellie, all of it is preferable to him or his loved ones dead. His people cannot die, and that is the uncrossed line, sometimes the only line.

Of course that clashes terribly and leaves a relationship that has to be rebuilt in the second game. Of course that makes Ellie’s revenge mission about Joel and his decision. Joel is another person dead because Ellie didn’t die in that hospital. When Abby finds her in the theatre, Ellie doesn’t say, “it’s me, I’m the one who killed your friends”, she says “it’s me, I’m the one Joel took”. It’s why I think it’s actually great that Ellie never finds out Abby was the surgeon’s daughter, because Abby herself has very little to do with Ellie’s motivations.

Another motivation for Ellie is agency. She didn’t get to choose not to die for a cure, she didn’t get to choose not knowing the truth, but she did get to choose to break away from Joel. Then when she finally chose to mend things with him, that choice was negated by Abby’s golf club the next day with Ellie helplessly watching.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Ellie in Seattle can talk about Joel and doesn’t have flashes of his death while Ellie on the farm can’t and does, because the latter still feels an obligation to make Joel’s death have some kind of meaning, but with no obvious course of action that would.

So when Ellie’s drowning Abby and has a real choice again, over Abby’s life, she can bear to think about the night of that stolen choice on the porch. The night where Joel says he’d do it exactly the same if given a second chance, even with the resulting split it’s caused with Ellie. 

Ellie doesn’t stop herself from killing Abby because she suddenly realizes that revenge is morally wrong or violence is bad or some other moral. I think she stops because she realizes Joel’s words would extend to his death as well. 

It can be okay he died while she couldn’t do anything. She doesn’t have to make up for it by trying to become him. 

(Or her conception of him, anyway. I remain unconvinced Joel would ever go on a foolhardy revenge mission.)

[yelenadelova]

A Brief Meta on Ellie, The Last of Us, and Space

I’ve always had a lot of thoughts about the character of Ellie Williams and particularly her love of space. In both the first and second game we see that Ellie dreams of being an astronaut. She’s fascinated with space, astronomy, spaceships, astronauts, etc. We especially get a lot of insight into this dream in the second game. In her living space in Jackson we see astronaut figures and posters and books about space. In one scene in Seattle Ellie and Dina are exploring a bank. They see tons of money from the old world and have a discussion about what they would buy if they lived in a world where the currency meant anything. Ellie, of course, states she would buy a spaceship. Then, in what is probably the most significant space related scene, Joel takes Ellie to a museum. In the museum there is a model of a spaceship. With a helmet and an audio provided by Joel Ellie is able to actually simulate space travel. And we see this is one of the happiest moments in the whole series for Ellie.

So why do I care so much about this detail? It could easily be a throwaway detail added to her character but I think it’s really significant in seeing who Ellie is as a character and a big part of what makes her so lovable (at least to me). 

The sad fact is Ellie will never go to space. She’ll never be able to be an astronaut. Even in a pre-apocalyptic world the chances of becoming an astronaut are slim. It requires rigorous training and schooling and is a highly selective process. And obviously in the world of The Last of Us no one is focused on space travel. They’re all simply trying to survive. Few people even dream of rebuilding society let alone going to space. But the really beautiful thing is this doesn’t stop Ellie from dreaming. In a lot of ways Ellie is dragged down by the harsh realities of life. She lives in fear of loosing the ones she loves and she’s seen so much death and trauma it’s hard for her to see the good in this world. It would have been easy for the Last of Us writers to make her a hardened character who shoots down dreams as impractical and a waste of time. But the writers didn’t do this. Instead they played into her dreams.

One thing I was happy to see is that these dreams don’t go away when she’s older. We see a lot of changes in Ellie over the course of the game. She looses a lot of the playfulness she had in childhood. But still she dreams of outer space. I think this detail does a lot to show that Ellie has this kernel of joy and hope in her that is hard to fully crush. The reality that she will never go to space doesn’t stop Ellie’s dreams. She still researches and imagines and thinks about the topic all the time. In the museum we see Dina reply to Ellie with something along the lines of “Oh right, your space thing,” which means this is something Ellie talks to others about fairly regular. It’s something she’s passionate about and something that makes her happy.

Space also serves as an example of the connection Joel and Ellie have. Joel puts so much work and thought into finding the museum and finding the best way for Ellie to be able to experience space travel. We can see in Joel’s house he has a book by his bedside that says “Space for Dummies”. Joel is learning about space, even if it doesn’t interest him, because he wants to be able to talk to Ellie and understand the thing she loves. Because he wants her to live her dreams even if the world says they’re impossible. Because Joel wants Ellie’s world to better than the one she’s been forced to live in.

There are so many tiny details that add to Ellie’s character and make me love her. She’s a girl who loves superheroes, who collects comic books and trading cards, she loves music, she plays the guitar and writes her own songs, she loves art and cheesy action movies. Space is just one of the many examples of these little details but it’s one I particularly love. Because it makes Ellie feel so human. Despite living in the apocalypse and facing immense hardships Ellie is a girl with hopes and dreams and thinks that make her happy. Her whole world isn’t limited by realism. And I think that is one of the many things that makes her feel like such a special character.

[hatosaur]

Do you think Ellie ever called Joel “Dad” when things were still okay between them? Maybe as a joke or a slip up or just trying it out and it was weird so she never did it again maybe.

no, i don't think so. i think after salt lake, things were at least the tiniest bit weird between them, and even tho they might've moved past it for a while and come closer, it seems like a boundary they never crossed. they definitely felt it but never said it.

it's more poignant (and makes more sense thematically, i think) that ellie never got the chance to work up to that point. and even more so that she really wanted to (though maybe not explicitly on those terms).