That Kid in SOSC

[skoulsons]

The flashbacks were my favorite part of the second game.

Personally I didn’t love the second game as much because it just felt like we were missing so much. I would love to see more about Joel and Ellie’s estranged relationship. There’s two whole years of their lives we know nothing about and it kills me.

I need to know the details, did Joel ever try to reach out? Did they ever run into each other and have to make small talk? Did Joel keep tabs on her around town to make sure she was ok? Did Tommy ever try to help them reconcile? She lived in his backyard, I know they had to see each other at some point 😩

Oh yeah, I agree with you. The whole first game is about them. To be fair, I do believe that the second game is still very much about them, just not in the front and center way the first is.

But it’s…their story and how they grow. And then to have a game that shows the hard crash their relationship and then give me an ounce of hope only to take it away? Way to shoot me in my nonexistent balls, naughty dog

There HAD TO HAVE BEEN moments. I hold a small head canon that, at the height of those two years and the feelings there, Joel was playing guitar on his porch. Maybe a little bit for her to hear, maybe not. But she does. And she sits in her garage and just listens to him play. Maybe he plays future days. Maybe he plays another song he helped her learn. Maybe he plays an old song she doesn’t recognize. But she sits and she just listens; a part of her regretting how she’s been treating him and how she knows she’s the reason he doesn’t smile as much anymore

[skoulsons]

It’s funny because if it had gotten the worst reviews for being a rehash of the first game I would sat through another cross country adventure with Joel and Ellie in the 2nd game (which is what I think Neil said the very very early plans were in an interview somewhere before they scrapped it). Like all the gamers would’ve hated it but I would’ve eaten that shit up. 😂 Maybe that’s why I like fanfic so much too, because the game is way less to me about the gameplay or fighting the infected but how Joel and Ellie’s relationship changes and grows and evolves.

You get it!!!!

Fanfics are so so good. Like yes, fill in the gaps for me of their adventure, PLEASE!

tlou3 says tlou2 doesn’t exist and it’s Joel and Ellie living their little domestic life together as a family where they go on patrol and have camp nights and make dinner together and watch movies and decorate the house and play guitar together and Joel teaches her how to carve little wood animals and ellie tries to teach him how to draw and they celebrate holidays together and get pictures together and bond over space and just…live a happy life

[vamprozy]

I think there’s something so deeply and intimately and morbidly true about The Last of Us’s primary thesis which is that humanity’s fatal flaw, in that very Shakespearian way, is that we are destined to care too much about one another so much so that we discard the collective entirely. like we have such a capacity to love the human race and humanity as a whole, to grow our communities and govern cities how we know best and foster such connection with the masses which we are part of, but it’s overtaken by our capacity to love even just a single other person. like one human can come into your life that creates such an intrinsic and passionate love in you— or maybe two people or a family’s worth or any small number— and you suddenly would burn entire villages down just to keep them safe.

joel doesn’t blink twice murdering to find ellie. he doesn’t look back when he decides to do what he does at the hospital later on. he has no remorse about any of it it, because this one girl has grown to mean more to him than any possible greater good could ever mean. and it’s reciprocal. ellie would— and does— do anything she can to help him, save him, protect him, and, eventually, to avenge him. because that’s what you do when you love someone. not when you love people. when you love someone.

and it’s selfish, in a way??? because we love these people and would do so much for them because they mean more to us than other strangers do. it’s exactly like an iteration of the trolley problem, actually. one track has your daughter on it and one track has fifty people. don’t even try telling me you wouldn’t go onto track B if it meant saving your daughter and her puppy dog eyes from the whimpering and pain and fear. The Last of Us says yes, you would. I would. we all would. and like yeah that is our greatest weakness, that we have such a unique ability to love a handful of people so deeply that our compassion towards community and strangers and the bigger collective starts to slip from view. but goddamn what a fucking great fatal flaw it is to have. we are all going to die and the world will burn because we loved another person too much.

[vamprozy]

I think there’s something so deeply and intimately and morbidly true about The Last of Us’s primary thesis which is that humanity’s fatal flaw, in that very Shakespearian way, is that we are destined to care too much about one another so much so that we discard the collective entirely. like we have such a capacity to love the human race and humanity as a whole, to grow our communities and govern cities how we know best and foster such connection with the masses which we are part of, but it’s overtaken by our capacity to love even just a single other person. like one human can come into your life that creates such an intrinsic and passionate love in you— or maybe two people or a family’s worth or any small number— and you suddenly would burn entire villages down just to keep them safe.

joel doesn’t blink twice murdering to find ellie. he doesn’t look back when he decides to do what he does at the hospital later on. he has no remorse about any of it it, because this one girl has grown to mean more to him than any possible greater good could ever mean. and it’s reciprocal. ellie would— and does— do anything she can to help him, save him, protect him, and, eventually, to avenge him. because that’s what you do when you love someone. not when you love people. when you love someone.

and it’s selfish, in a way??? because we love these people and would do so much for them because they mean more to us than other strangers do. it’s exactly like an iteration of the trolley problem, actually. one track has your daughter on it and one track has fifty people. don’t even try telling me you wouldn’t go onto track B if it meant saving your daughter and her puppy dog eyes from the whimpering and pain and fear. The Last of Us says yes, you would. I would. we all would. and like yeah that is our greatest weakness, that we have such a unique ability to love a handful of people so deeply that our compassion towards community and strangers and the bigger collective starts to slip from view. but goddamn what a fucking great fatal flaw it is to have. we are all going to die and the world will burn because we loved another person too much.

[tojustbe]

Home of many a That Kid

[tojustbe]

“Yeah, I read Plato for fun in my free time. And Socrates. And a little Durkheim, to change it up a bit.”

[tojustbe]

“Don’t accuse me of seizing the modes of production in this relationship!”

[tojustbe]

That Kid always takes notes during office hours

[tojustbe]

If they’ve got this poster on their wall, they might be a That Kid

[tojustbe]

The moment you realize your crush is a That Kid, just like your best friend has been telling you all quarter.

[tojustbe]

“My weekend is free, I wrote the paper last week. Not to brag but it’s probably the most important commentary on Nietzsche since Leopold and Loeb happened.”

[tojustbe]

The bookshelf of a That Kid

[tojustbe]

Some breeds of That Kid can be easily identified by their unique headgear.

[tojustbe]

“It wasn’t in our reading, but I’ve already read all of Marx’s work and in Capital Volume Three, he says that...”