#tlou commentary

[thatblackdress]

All the handwringing about morality of Joel choosing Ellie over the world and I’m like… okay but I just don’t care.

What I care about is being emotionally satisfied. We start the story with Joel completely shut off from Ellie, convinced she’s doomed to die, stubborn to her appeals for connection. We start the story with Ellie being passed over from various adults based on her utility, Ellie being defined by her experiences of abandonment. And then we end that story with these two characters completely emotionally entwined and Joel valuing Ellie—as an individual—and him becoming a father figure that would choose her first no matter what.

That relationship and character arc is DELICIOUS. The rest of humanity is just a backdrop to Joel and Ellie for me, like I can’t emphasise how much idgaf about it in this narrative lmfao.

[amozon28]

[thatblackdress]

Thinking about how Joel explicitly tells Ellie to leave him behind and let him die alone when he’s injured… but Ellie refuses his request because she sees through his self-sacrificial beliefs and she loves him and she refuses to give up on him. She’s willing to kill all those people from David’s camp to protect Joel because he can’t protect himself. And that’s presented as a good thing—her seeing his worth and her insisting that it’s worth them staying together more than him dying for her sake. It’s not presented as her destroying his agency.

Thinking about Ellie getting knocked out and drugged by the Fireflies so they can kill her… but Joel refuses, and even if Ellie had consented, he would still see through her self-sacrificial beliefs. He loves her and he refuses to give up on her and he’s going to fight for her life being worth something in its own right. But then that’s presented as a bad thing in tlou2 because “well what if she wanted to die actually” 💀

Nah I like them fighting for each other to stay alive 🤷‍♀️

[thatblackdress]

thinking again about the arguments that it doesn’t matter that ellie’s a kid, she’s ~mature for her age because she’s grown up in a post-apocalyptic world, she should’ve been allowed to sacrifice herself to medical experimentation if she wanted to—

meanwhile in 1x06

ellie: yeah so i rubbed my blood into sam’s bite wound and didn’t tell anyone what had happened because i was hoping for the best. didn’t work :/

it’s almost as if her decision-making is impaired by her age, lack of medical knowledge and overwhelming sense of guilt—to the point that it makes her act in a recklessly self-sacrificial way 🤔

[thatblackdress]

I’ve seen a lot of rejection to the criticisms of show!TLOU’s significantly reduced action, but tbh I think it’s a valid criticism.

No, the show absolutely does not need to have the game’s level of action, we don’t need an Infected fight sequence every episode, we don’t need to see the characters take down 30 enemies every time there’s a confrontation. And yes, the show is primarily a character drama.

But I feel like some of the response to the criticism simplifies it to “you just want an OTT shoot-em-up gameplay on TV”, or that more action implies making it into silly popcorn material.

Action CAN be a great addition to the narrative and to the characters. Building the world, helping the pace, increasing the tension, showing how characters work together. I mean, one of the best and most memorable scenes from the show so far is when Ellie and Joel communicate via eye contact in 1x05 while he protects her with his sniper. It was tense AND a key turning point in showing the growth in their bond.

The show doesn’t need a bunch of hyper unrealistic action or whatever; but some of show’s action has been oddly paced or rushed in places. I don’t think it’s an unfair criticism to say the show could be improved with a little more action or by extending the tension in some of its action scenes (e.g., 1x06 in particular—getting impaled on a rebar like the game wasn’t necessary, but we could’ve had Joel stabbed by the goon inside the building, and then spent a tense minute or two of them desperately trying to sneak out of the building). Action scenes aren’t inherently low-brow or a disservice to this “prestige drama” format.

[thatblackdress]

I’m ngl I’m disappointed that they removed some of the ways Ellie initiates connection with Joel in the final chapter. Eg, her wanting to talk to Joel about having weird dreams; making Joel pause so she can give him the photo of Sarah; asking him to teach her how to swim in the future. She’s quieter and loses track of herself in the game, yes, but she’s still making these efforts to connect because she likes how comfortable their relationship has become. It feels like they erased some of this and didn’t let her character move outside of a trauma focus.

[abbyandersn]

2 years later and people who deliberately refuse to engage in TLOU2 and claim its bad SOLELY because joel dies have some of the smallest dick energy ever