#tlhbou

[stonelions]

i am. begging. people who have not played the original TLOU (either the og, or the first remaster, not the latest one) to play the game.

or, if you cannot play the game, i am begging, i am begging you to watch a cinematic playthrough, so you can see this story in its original, less cuddly, more frightening, ambiguous form.

everything you love about the show is there, but is executed with about 1000x more punch & heart.

[stonelions]

[disclaimer: again, not blaming the cast for anything. blame being set squarely on writing/directing choices]

as i understand it, tlhbou very intentionally cast Pedro bc they wanted to present a more lovable, softer version of Joel. (Show Joel, if you will.) which, considering the source material, an unusual & potentially disastrous change to make, since fundamentally altering Joel's character and casting media's current darling loveable dad..... ends up gutting the story in a pretty fundamental way.

in-game Joel is a traumatized, emotionally shut-down survivor who has succeeded as long as he has in a dangerous world because he's selfish. it's simple self-preservation. he avoids FEDRA mandated QZ duties, he and Tess are clear heavy hitters in Boston's underbelly, and he is disturbingly competent at killing people. to that effect, his violence is measured; decisive. practical. (this disconnection from his actions is arguably a result of trauma, yes, but unlike Show Joel, he isn't "triggered" to violence. he chooses it, because it's the most expedient way to stay alive or get what he needs. and in the tlou-verse, if you aren't the guy doing the violence, somebody else is gonna do the violence to you.)

this Joel has given up on his brother. they have not spoken in years, he has no idea if Tommy is still alive, and if he is, he assumes Tommy wants nothing to do with him. his primary goal is to keep his and Tess' existence as "free" and comfortable as possible, regardless of the nature of their relationship. (never made explicitly romantic, in-game.) he does not need to be "managed" by this Tess, like some kind of unpredictable guard dog, and the two of them together kill people handily, as needed, to maintain their place in the QZ pecking order. they seem committed to staying off FEDRA's radar, for obvious reasons. (FEDRA doesn't much care about protecting law-abiding citizens, let alone smugglers.)

so when Joel meets Ellie and is tasked with her transport, he is annoyed. it is a huge, hazardous inconvenience. & losing Tess is the exact kind of slap in the face he expected from getting involved in a battle he had no interest in fighting. he was not "already going out west" to look for his brother, and now he has to, in the hopes Tommy is still alive, and won't immediately turn him away because of their bad blood.

this inward facing selfishness is what we start to see chip away as Ellie--NOT "violence in her heart" Show Ellie, but traumatized, survivor's guilt riddled in-game Ellie, who is shy at first, and more jokey than mouthy--endears herself to him by being in parts clever, naive, hopeful, oddly sweet, and competent.

by the time they arrive at Tommy's, Joel wants to offload her not out of fear or self-doubt--convincing himself she'd be better off with Tommy and his guys is a lie to soothe his conscience--but because he's afraid of the bond they've formed, and is trying to run from it. he is being selfish to protect himself. (from more loss, pain, etc.)

this changes after the fight in the ranch house. he realizes he can run, but it's already too late, and actually they might as well finish what they started because yeah, he is capable, and maybe he's not her dad, but now? he's something.

and it's this selfishness, (love can be profoundly selfish) that motivates his heinous actions in the hospital. Joel, because of who he is, what he's been through, and how he gets attached, could not have made any other choice, world-be-doomed.

whether you believe killing Ellie would provide a cure or not (i do not, tbh, like, killing your one immune subject immediately is high stakes storytelling but terrible fucking science, w/e), the choice Joel makes is heinous and awful. and SELFISH. Joel. is selfish. (this is not me saying he is a bad person. the showrunners seem desperate to map our moral sensibilities to the setting, but that is ridiculous. Joel has to be selfish, or die.)

Show Joel... is self-doubting, and self-hating, full of regrets, (even suicidal????? WHAT??) and as far as we see, way less competent than his game counterpart. he's an emotional being. (that monologue to Tommy? i am not even going to touch it. he would not say that.) his attachment to Ellie seems almost instantaneous, and the showrunners treat it as an inevitable outcome, like these two characters are destined to meet and do violence together, which is, frankly, far less interesting than two very different people forming a close bond through incredible hardship that fundamentally alters the course of both their lives.

anyway. that's. just a brief (lol) summary of one way I've been looking at it. if they wanted to make Show Joel softer, they needed to change other story beats to match, and they... didn't. so.

[stonelions]

having finished the show, my ultimate (and most generous) take on TLOU HBO, the take that encompasses all my other takes, is that TLOU (the version co-created by the now uncredited Bruce Straley) is a surprisingly complicated interactive narrative, one that unfortunately doesn't lend itself well to the time constraints of a 9 episode television season.

this is exacerbated by the show being a highly unfaithful adaptation which not only adds unnecessary new plotlines, but fails to compensate for massive, retconning alterations to the characters and major story beats, an offense that's compounded by two showrunners hellbent on hammering out any ambiguity with shoddy exposition in place of worldbuilding, and conflating melodrama with moral complexity.

it would be a monumental task for any writer to maintain even part of the emotional impact achieved by the immersive, participatory experience of playing the video game, and instead of trying to do that, Druckmann decided to seal off every space that might allow interpretation outside his own authorial intent. and that's... just kind of a lousy thing to do to your audience.

[stonelions]

Hey I want to ask your answer from here

https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/stonelions/711278768124313600

What's Neil interpretation about Ellie you were referring about?

Thank you

i don't see anything specific about Ellie in the linked post, but sure, yeah. i think show Ellie is a wholly different character, basically, one i personally find way less interesting. the creators have repeatedly stated, offscreen and on via other characters as mouthpieces, that hbo Ellie has a violent core. this is nothing like her in-game counterpart, who suffers from terrible survivor’s guilt and is horrified by Joel’s violence (which the show also shies away from to make him more palatable), and i feel like after a point, Druckm was intentionally pushing things further from the original to take full, nuance-free ownership of it, with the intention of aligning the narrative better [??? somehow] with his beloved solo outing TLOU2, [which i wrote criticism of here. spoiler: i think it’s a miserable, self-important slog] the events of which will comprise s2+.

anyway, given what we saw in HBO TLOU, it seems likely to me the now uncredited Bruce Straley had a far larger role shaping the narrative of TLOU than Druckm cares to admit, and i simply do not vibe with Druckm+Cmaz's storytelling: constant efforts to overtly manipulate the audience, rather than focusing on their characters. (i had the same issue with TLOU2. nothing inherently wrong with it, but for me personally i find it annoying when a story keeps grabbing at me, the viewer/reader, like hey check this out. look, look at it LOOK. it's like, i'm already looking. tell me a damn story.)

[stonelions]

alright, NO SHADE to show enjoyers, at all, i really wanted to give tlhbou the benefit of the doubt, and i respect and admire the efforts of those who worked to make it look fantastic, but... this quote from mazin sort of succinctly encapsulates my issues with how the showrunners are approaching the whole thing:

CRAIG MAZIN: We were already talking about tendrils coming out and we were asking these philosophical questions, “Why are infected people violent? If the point is to spread the fungus, why do they need to be violent?” We landed on that they don’t. They’re violent because we resist, but what if you don’t? What does it look like if you just stand perfectly still and let them do this to you? Then we landed on this nightmare fuel. It’s disturbing and it’s violative. I think it’s very primal in the way it invades your own body. To use an overused word, it’s triggering.

okay. okay, so... virulent pathogenic parasitic fungus is violent... because its (potential) hosts resist?

.....really. that's the parallel you're gonna focus on, huh, as if the infection itself isn't violation enough. that is the philosophical question in need of an answer, here? anyway, again, all apologies to those who are liking the show, but i think cmaz+druckm's attitudes speak to the tone of the adaptation on the whole and personally, i can't reconcile it with the original </3