firstly.. unpopular opinion, but i liked the game. i liked the continued focus on grey morality, i liked that we were forced to do things that made us uncomfortable. the parallels between abby and ellie are numerous, as well as the parallels between abby and joel. the point since day one has been grey morality.
joel killed the only doctor capable of creating a vaccine to save someone who wanted to give their life for humanity. ellie was young, naive, and trusted that joel was telling her the truth for a while. i always thought she knew, even a little bit, but truly, she just trusted joel that much. that even though it didn’t make sense, she didn’t see any reason for him to lie to her about something that her knew mattered to her so much. she asked him about it once, and when he swore to her that everything he said was true, she said okay. and when she does start questioning as she gets older, and is met with frustration from joel’s side, along with more lies, she decides to dig deeper. and when she learns the truth, that he stole something so meaningful to her, she begins to resent him.
joel has not always been the type of person to save a stranger like he does with abby in part two. first game joel is not the same person as second game joel. he’s softened. immensely. he softened for ellie, and he softened because he could. or, for the first time in a long time, he felt like he could. he spent 20 years killing and surviving and being selfish for the sake of survival. but i stress, joel has not always been the good guy.
but anyway. back to ellie. she felt joel betrayed her, and she put distance between them. when you have someone you care deeply about but they hurt you, sometimes you begin to resent them. you’re not thinking about if you could lose them. you’re thinking about the pain of what they’ve done to you. losing them is the last thing from your mind because in that time of resentment you’re deciding whether you care to continue a relationship with them. of course, ellie cares. obviously. she was just really, really upset about the lies, and about him taking something so sacred from her. but seeing how much she still means to him, she tells him that whether she can forgive him or not, she’s willing to try. and then, just like that, he’s taken from her.
and none of it mattered anymore. her life, after that, was dedicated, for a time, to avenging him. a newfound purpose. she loved him. hardheaded and selfish or not, joel was the most important person to her. it’s why she even was giving him a second chance in the first place. she’s eaten away with hatred and can’t think about anything else, and if she does, she feels guilty. this is what joel would want, right ? she doesn’t realize until she’s killed and killed and killed, to the point of traumatizing herself, until more friends have been killed, and until she about loses dina and jj, that this isn’t what joel would want. it’s not until abby’s on her last few breaths that she sees his face, hears his guitar, that she knows. he knew what he did. he owned up to what he did. he didn’t regret what he did, but he did it for her. against her wishes, but for her. so for him, she doesn’t kill abby. for lev, the young boy relying on abby for survival, much like she did on joel at that age, she doesn’t kill abby.
she goes home. to dina and jj. to where, hopefully, in time, she can stop seeing the gored up face of the man she saw as a father, and to where she doesn’t have to hurt the living anymore. because she doesn’t have to. she ends the cycle. she’s not going to put lev through what she went through. she’s not going to disrespect joel’s memory with even more bloodshed.
i haven’t written very much of part two ellie, so i’ll address the big differences between part one verse ellie and part two verse(s) ellie.
general part two ellie is closed off. she’s not exactly shy, but she isn’t super big on social interaction. she’s anxious, and she’s become much more introverted. once you break down her walls she’s the same ol’ silly ellie as she’s always been, but otherwise, she’s hesitant to trust. she has her friends ( dina, jesse and cat ) but she likes her solitude. the introversion mainly kicked in after finding out about what really happened with the fireflies. ( so, about age 17. ) she’s depressed. she’s not exactly rude to people outside her small friend group, but you’ll rarely catch a genuine smile. but as always, she a dreamer. she likes art, writing songs and playing guitar. she loves horror and sci-fi. she’s a big nerd.
post part two ellie is even quieter. she sticks to dina like glue, and has moved into joel’s house with her. she spends a lot less time on the streets of jackson and in the diner, and more time either doing patrols or just staying inside. patrols don’t come until later, though. maria is very hesitant to let her back out there, knowing from dina how much trouble ellie’s had with ptsd. sometimes she’ll take jj to the park, but she needs more time to really ease into ‘normal life’ again.
in all verses, she remains a goofball to those close to her, and it isn’t that hard to make her smile. she suffers from depression, generalized anxiety, agoraphobia, and c-ptsd.
* btw, i’m more than willing to write with canon divergent joels who don’t follow part two canon, and we can work out the details together, but these details definitely can apply to that. regardless of if joel dies or not, she’s going to have a lot of trouble with ptsd and trust.
baratheonpilled
ellievsbear
areudirty
stormborns
janainaart
yousharknotpass
