oldsins replied to your post “Bill has a huge amount of respect for Tess and, despite a rocky start...”
i've always found it super interesting that bill and tess both make it sound like they do their business trades together without joel, but then bill comments on how he thought the two of them were inseparable. bill only references tess in his notes, and tess writes out note for joel on what he got them each time. plus she has to remind him when the next meeting it.
I definitely feel that like, maybe something got screwed up somewhere between concept, design, putting shit in the game, and completing it? Sort of like how I think ND accidentally almost spoiled their own game after deciding not to tease it in a game but leaving a poster/easter egg in it? but my personal theory is that like, Okay so one- when they’re first tracking Robert down and the checkpoint is closed, Tess is like ‘welp guess we gotta go outside the QZ and back around’, Joel is like ‘uhhh u sure?’, and Tess is like ‘lol you baby’- which kind of suggests that A: Tess is more comfortable going outside(or at least, more confident/outwardly so) and B: Possibly goes OUTSIDE more often, because they seem to work independently/not paired up 100% of the time. Pretty much all the evidence suggests that Tess works independently of Joel(she’s much more comfortable/confident outside of the QZ, knows the layout of the surrounding real estate, etc), and most of the shipments are probably just Tess and Bill(Tess’ remarks about ‘its next month’, her manifest, his note), except for that ‘I thought the two of you were inseparable’ line. So my theory is that Tess does a lot of the shipments(at least light ones like Bill’s; offhand, pretty much all of his shipments could probably be carried by one person except I think he had a crate of whiskey one time or something? which still is one person but you’d probably want two getting it back into the QZ/fighting) by herself, and that Joel mostly comes along for more dangerous stuff/things that require more muscles, doing his own business beats in the mean time. See- the thing also is that Bill is a little shit, and he and Joel have a unique relationship in that they’re both very comfortable with one another, and they kind of rib one another back and forth in a pretty brotherly way. One of Bill’s Things is definitely Button Pushing- either to get a reaction, to see how far he can take something, to express himself, to lash out in an attempt to protect himself, etc(PARts in this town, you shoulda given her a gun, tell tess that she can-, if we get thru this imma kill u). So you basically have this guy really scarred by trauma, feeling under attack(’you break into my home’), having likely just spent a whole day clearing infected out(his big trash heap bonfire) so his adrenaline is already up, Joel and Ellie bust up like half his traps, he almost dies dragging them to the bar, etc etc. He doesn’t seem that surprised to see Joel on his own- he doesn’t look around for Tess, doesn’t ask ‘is she out there still’/did she get separated, etc, doesn’t address it during the bar fight- he doesn’t bring her up until they’re out of danger(away from the infected) and he’s had a chance to calm down(given them a cold shoulder, mumbled complaints to himself, recharged and reset by going to a different room), but he’s still def a little upset abt the breaking and entering, the ‘i need this v important and rare thing bill’, the danger, etc, so ok well i just dissociated hard core but basically my point is: I feel like Tess and Joel mostly only work together on more dangerous stuff(i.e. leaving the QZ/likely the state with a child) and Tess is the one more comfortable outside of the QZ/farther outside the QZ(i.e. a few miles north and thru a just absolute mess of city ruins and infected), so Bill’s more used to seeing Tess alone/outside town than Joel (nvm that Joel’s never been to town but hes like ‘... personally’, which leads me to suspect Tess has been at least a couple times), and also Bill is a Lil Shit so, in a move that both expresses his concern for Tess(this is her job Joel wtf are u doing out here), and gives Joel a ribbing(lol lover problems am i right) while also making him seem detached/like he doesn’t give a shit(he totally does; he brings her up four times completely on his own), he asks where the hell she is, you two are inseparable(haha my boyfriend abandoned me)
