#tlof2

[cluelessfanperson]

Well, if those leaks are true, then I may have to add The Last of Us 2 to the list of “Once Beloved Pieces of Media Being Destroyed by Poor Studio Behavior, Shitty Fan-Fiction Writing, and ‘Subverting Expectations.’”

[interstellar-wanderer]

WARNING SPOILERS FROM THE LAST OF US 2

The misogynistic mentality of those weak Incels talking about TLOU2 leaks is quite ridiculous. Is not longer about whatever plot the game has, but about how women are protrayed in every damn video game and how they behave when it doesn't please their mentality of how they think a woman should look like or behave like. That is not about attacking the lgbtq community, but attacking women directly when they are being represented as strong and capables or even diverse. All the time is about them getting ANGRY every time their fetishistic fantasies regarding women are not pleased, and making a tantrum because of it. Honesly I think those inmature dudes have never seen or interacted with a woman before in real life, and they think all of them looks like barbie dolls or were born to serve them.

Women of all shapes and personalities deserve to have this kind of representation, just look at Gina Carano/Cara Dune for a moment, I have never seen a female character like her since Ripley in Alien.

When I see the leaks I see REAL WOMEN instead of those highly stereotyped archetypes of female characters that the game industry has like to portray since forever. This is a game about THE COLLAPSE OF CIVILIZATION for god's sake, and female characters deserve to be realistic as male characters are.

F*ck the misogynistic incels and their mentality. Not every damn woman in the world is femenine or looks like a model, and women who is masculine shouldn't be seen as trans all the damn time, I feel HIGHLY attracted to what society thinks is only for men, but have no necessity or desire to change my sex.

Strong women with rough body shapes EXIST in this world without the necessity to have LABELS to describe what they are, for f*cks sake, but the representation of them is so small every damn person think women looks like disney princesses.

I did read their complains and I got the impression they are telling woman "to stay in their place" every time they show a strong traid in their personality or bodies. Humans are not femenine or masculine, people are highly diverse and those morons complaining about her not looking like a woman when in their whole lifes they have been sitting in their asses playing endless videogames, while their ONLY interaction with women is p*rn, should stop pushing women to follow stereotypes when is not even their place to tell us how to look, what to feel or what to do.

End rant.

[masked-omen]

The Last of Us 2 should have ended with Joel saying for Ellie to wake up.. Fuck this game. Who the hell was suppose to enjoy it ???

[incorrectly-quoted-queers]

Not a Last of Us 2 Review

Preface: I am getting back into personal blogging so I figured I could share it with y’all! It will often be nerdy and queer and pro-mental health so it’s still in my space bard brand. 

Anyway, enjoy my mini-essay on The Last of Us 2:

If I wasn't a cheap bitch, this would be a Last of Us 2 review. Alas, I have some other things to pay off and am in post-quarantine application hell, so no, not quite on the table. Before we go any further, warning for spoilers for The Last of Us 2. Turn back if you'd like to remain unspoiled (though goodness knows the internet has probably spoiled you already). But that is hardly going to stop me from talking about the insane Metascore climate and how this reminds me of a very similar situation that happened to a very different community: the book-lover community reaction to Go Set a Watchman (the sequel to the beloved To Kill a Mockingbird). At the end of the day, both stories started with a beloved adventure that changed people, that made them fall in love with the characters, world, and push the boundaries of their perspective. Unsurprisingly, people latched onto these open-and-shut experiences, revering them. At least, they seemed open and shut, the story and characters encased in their "perfect" endings like petrified mummies, preserved in our memories forever. Until they weren't. So let's start with telling the story of Go Set a Watchman. For decades, To Kill a Mockingbird (TKAM) has been one of the most evangelized and renowned novels in American history. Scout's coming-of-age story changed so many people while reading it, making them question justice, inequality, and the nature of humanity. Just like young Scout, readers admired her father, Atticus Finch, and saw him as this pinnacle of righteousness, goodness, and progress. After all, that's how his daughter saw him. Harper Lee perfected this infectious peek into the eyes of a young girl having to come face to face with the harsh truths of the world, and her father seemed to be a rare good person leading it. Go Set a Watchman (GSAW) changed that narrative. While TKAM maintained this reverant view of Atticus, GSAW sees it crumbling down. It makes it clear that, though Atticus defended a black man, he defended him because he was a "good one" and it was his job. He didn't do it because he was some race revolutionary. In actuality, he held some racist views that were just as insidious as some of his neighbors who had booed Tom Robinson in the stands. Scout (and in turn, the fans) had to come to grips with the fact that their hero wasn't who they thought he was; that maybe he never was. Well, considering many book readers grew up seeing Atticus as their "one good white man", they didn't love hearing Atticus Finch was racist. They felt it a character assassination, even though no where in TKAM does it say, "Atticus is not racist" or Atticus say "I think black people deserve rights". He just made it clear he preferred to defend a man who did nothing wrong over a man who was "low". Skin color didn't matter, but not in a positive way. It was just Scout's young eyes that helped people jump to those easy conclusions. As a biased, not-quite-a-fan of TKAM, I found the ideas of GSAW compelling. There could always be a dichotomy of a man having progressive ideals, for wanting to make better people out of his children, but still holding onto the racist ideals of his forefathers. But it's not very easy to cast heroes aside, is it? In real life, and especially in stories, people would prefer they remain these pinnacles of goodness or love or justice. Having someone they see as an ideal turn human doesn't leave a good taste in their mouth, even if it's realistic. And that's what leads us to The Last of Us 2 and what happened to Joel. While Joel didn't turn out to be a racist, the game did make the inciting incident of the game his brutal and tragic death. Fans were totally rocked by the choice, having their hero and resident in-game badass wrecked by some local raiders. They could never see their Joel going down like that, a hostage murdered in cold blood. If anything, they'd have their boy go down swinging. However, they seem to discount the fact Joel is older. More worn. Maybe settled into his life. The terrible things he did in the first game would take a toll on anyone. And even if it was seconds after the first game ended, when Joel was at his "height", any fighter in a world has their day. Being good at it doesn't make him immune to the horror or danger or bloodshed. It's fair to say that someone can feel like Joel is invincible, after spending so much time with him breaking faces and shooting monsters and mowing down a hospital. That doesn't remove his fragile humanity, though. I'm not saying people weren't allowed to be upset to watch him die, but to have such a visceral reaction to it happening in a story? It's letting idealization win over reality. It should and will break your heart. But it does not make the ripples of his life, the world he left, any less interesting. And biting at the game with venom in your mouth just because he came to a helplessly human end isn't fair. Just like it isn't fair to assume GSAW is some false cruelty because it exposed the fact that your favorite "not all white people" southern gentleman was, in fact, just like everyone else. Stories aren't made to just tell you what you want to hear. Sometimes, they tell you things like your worst nightmares and then guide you through that. But if you spit in its face and call it trash for daring to hand you a harsh reality, no one learns anything. While I can't say the game is some masterpiece or GSAW is a revelation, there are pieces of wisdom in both that everyone deserves to taste and swallow that have nothing to do with dead heroes. But killing a beloved character doesn't make a story trash and the people saying it does are setting themselves up for a lot of disappointment and stunting if they can't grow past the heroes in their lives that fall. ​ Maybe its pessimistic for me to like that kind of view, but more than anything I just find it a little too reactionary to reject something completely and give it incredibly bad reviews just because it debunked the heroes you revered perhaps a little too much. If the game really is trash, go off.  But too many people just write them off for daring to remind that humans are fragile and imperfect and, sometimes, disappointing. Oh, and also gay and trans people existing won't kill you, so kindly see the door about that shit. Maybe there's a reason you need to reevaluate yourself. Okay, unedited blog me out.

[dinaslilbitch]

listen,, i just wanna hold dinas hand and then cry and then treat her right okay okay

i don’t make the rules im just stating the facts and this is the truth i love her so much i personally could and would treat her like the goddess she is i’ll say it

listen again i just wanna kiss kiss her okay i’m sorry you want to intercept but you can’t okay i am aware dinas not actually a real human but also cascina is but also i respect cas ya know but dina isn’t real so i can’t respect her as much but i love her personality

[ryderart]

tried my hand at Ellie <3

[endureandplay]

The Last of Us 2 - What’s up with the user score? (Spoiler-free)

Approximately 3 days after the launch of the game, the game scored only 3.3 on Metacritic, whereas The Last of us 1 and Left Behind scored 9.1 and 8.0. People argue that the score isn’t that low because of the LGBTQ+ representation in the game. Many compare it to other games like Life is Strange, Detroit: Become Human and even the Left Behind DLC itself which all represent LGBTQ+ and still have a pretty good user score.  First of all, we think that these other games are a LOT more subtle and often “the worst you get” is a kiss scene. The Last of Us 2 takes this to a different level: Romance is very explicit and present all the time.  

Second, and most importantly: The user score is actually going UP. And that makes sense.  Within the first 3 days there were about 15,000 user ratings submitted on Metacritic. The Last of Us 1 - after seven years - currently only has ~10,000 reviews.  The Left Behind DLC only has ~1,100 as of now.  The huge gap between these numbers makes a lot of sense considering people’s reaction to the leaks a few months ago. Without ever having played it, many rejected the direction of the story and cancelled their pre-order. Neil Druckman received so many hateful messages that you really gotta question what’s wrong with some people to threaten another person like this, and even more so, because of a game.  Let’s also not forget about the hundreds or thousands of people who complained right from the start that the sequel confirmed Ellie being gay (which they probably had dismissed as “experimenting” up to then). Or those who were enraged that the game wouldn’t have multi-player like the first one, and cancelled their pre-order because of that, way before the leaks. The game had lost many supporters at that point already.

Of course there are those who simply don’t like the story. The “golf” scene and many things about the new main character in particular, at least that’s the critique we heard most often. But just because people don’t like the story doesn’t mean the game deserves a 1/10, does it? Most people would agree that the graphics are amazing, that the gameplay is fun and engaging and that Naughty Dog improved a lot of things in general. Taking this into account, the game CAN’T objectively be a 1/10. How many stories in video games suck or are pretty shallow, yet people still love the game? It’s only that the expectations are pretty high for The Last of Us, considering the success of the first game and the scale it set. So if the story disappoints for some, they dismiss the entire game as bullshit.

Honestly, maybe a small part in the disappointment also plays that the trailers are very misleading and having followed them, you’d expect something pretty different from what’s in the actual game.   

Our guess is that many, many people - without having so much as touched the game - immediately went to hate on it by giving it the lowest possible score. Just to show everyone how pissed they are. And many people also wanted to convince others of not buying the game because “it’s trash”. 

Now after those people had the chance to submit their negative review right away, the user score slowly becomes more objective. There are those who love, like or dislike it for good reasons. More and more people actually finish the game themselves (and while some are fast and have the time, the majority of people can’t fit a 30+ hour game into a single weekend, especially if they’re busy). So people have a chance to build their own opinion after having explored and experienced the game - and obviously, the game isn’t that bad. There are just as many people having a blast playing it. 

While I’m writing this, there are almost 100,000 reviews on Metacritic. The score is at 4.8 today (6/29/20) and I’m basically checking every day - it keeps getting better. 

Truth is that the game isn’t complete trash. In fact, we, personally, enjoy every bit of the game, we love what Naughty Dog did including the story. It’s probably best not to assume the direction the story will take and instead going into the game with a fresh mind, because what Naughty Dog did is definitely brave and could be seen as controversial. But we find that everything about the story and how it is told makes perfect sense. It’s a great sequel to the first one, and more importantly, we don’t think it’s random, like they had to come up with some story that feels forced in and out - it’s perfectly logical. 

A little heads up for those who haven’t played it: Just be prepared for explicit violence in this game. It’s really detailed, brutal and gory.  Here are links to articles that found out the same, and you can easily find more if you check: 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2020/06/25/the-last-of-us-part-2s-metacritic-user-score-rises-32-now-that-people-have-actually-finished-it/#6b7cacce924d https://screenrant.com/last-us-2-metacritic-score-users-rising/

[ambrosiadreamer]

If you’re trying to avoid The Last of Us 2 spoilers, don’t search it up on youtube!!!! Even the autofill contains spoilers :(