“how Is It That You’re Never Scared?”

okay seattle day 3 on ellie’s end was. alright. seattle day 2 absolutely takes the cake but day 3 was alright. kind of boggles my mind that im more attached to jesse as a character than dina because you get so much more time with dina but ellie and jesse’s interactions are actually interesting in comparison adlskgjasldgkjads i am. a dina hater. like a full blown dina hater. it’s okay it’s fine we’re allowed to have opinions. the way the music swells when you’re about to sink the boat is VERY GOOD and i lowkey wish there had been more visual storytelling like how you see all of the bloody rags in the aquarium and are like uh what the fuck. because that was 10/10 cool. also it very much pisses me off when people call playing as abby again an “empathy test” because imo it’s not empathy whatsoever it’s pure logic. like logically speaking ellie and abby are the same. i don’t think that’s rooted in empathy whatsoever. and like if you grow to respect abby or see her side i also don’t think that’s empathy like again to me that’s just logic. also i abhor how it’s implied that like. if you never end up caring about abby then you’re a bad person. like i think it’s very predictable for people to be more attached to joel than they are to abby and if you as the player always hold it against her a little bit that she killed the guy you played as for most all of the first game then like…i don’t know. lowkey it feels like an abuse tactic to say you MUST like abby on an emotional level. like people who hate her and call her awful like i think we can all agree that they’re idiots and that logically speaking her story shows why she took those actions etc etc but the implication of “you must like this person who killed someone you cared a lot about” feels very…not cute to me. like i like her a lot! i think she’s neat! but the idea that someone lacks empathy because they never fully like abby for whatever reason…sounds gross to me. idk if it’s the fan response or the game itself at this point but i think people really watered down the message of how there are many sides bc that means that there can be many opinions! and the implication of “you must see every side” like. it’s okay to favor one side over the other! just because there are many sides doesn’t mean you have to be truly neutral. so yeah. that always irks me. frankly i’d rather hang out with an “i see her side and i respect her but frankly i’ll never get over what she did to joel” person than an “actually joel was a bad guy too and there’s no true villain” type. u feel. does that even make sense. i am also lowkey still pissed that naughty dog made a buff as hell well-rounded female character with a STUNNING PERFORMANCE from laura bailey and then made her a “villain” of sorts. i think that reinforces a lot of stereotypes associated with video games and it does irritate me. especially because when i first saw the story it felt like a slap in the face to be given a female character who hasn’t really had a chance to exist in other forms of media and then slap me in the face with actually she’s going to kill your favorite guy. like frankly that sucked! again i like her as she is i do like her But it felt as if they were dangling something awesome in my face and saying you only get this if you suffer. did not like. also i dislike that they have abby’s dad save animals as a way to communicate that he’s a good guy. that felt ridiculously hamfisted to me and especially when you’re like still not liking abby at that point in the game it feels cheap and eyeroll inducing. i honestly would’ve preferred if he was Just A Guy and then you get more time to hear about how he grapples with what he’s about to do to ellie. also i’ve always thought it was a huge cop out that the game never has abby’s dad say if he would do the same if his daughter were in ellie’s place. the first time i saw it i wanted to scream SO YOU DO UNDERSTAND WHAT JOEL DID YOU ABSOLUTE MORON because i was <3 angry <3 and this time i was more hoping that after abby said if it was me i would want you to do it that her dad would add something along the lines of if it was you i don’t know that i could. because i think that kind of thing both agrees and disagrees with joel’s choice at the end and shows jerry’s humanity simultaneously. it just strikes me as a little ridiculous that he went out of his way to save a zebra but was then super fighting for a chance to kill a teenage girl. you know? and i understand what he said about how all the violence of the fireflies was made right by this one act, i get that, but in the writing/acting/whatever i never really felt that he grappled with what he was doing. i think i would’ve connected with him more as a character if he wasn’t put on such a pedestal. also never in my life will i understand the purpose of mel as a character but that’s a rant for another time

listen. the most jesse ever learned about why ellie even went to seattle to avenge joel in the first place is that “he had a falling out with former fireflies” and that “he was a smuggler and they disagreed about some goods.” jesse never learned about ellie’s immunity, even after he blew up an entire suburb to show up for her. he never even learned that joel specifically did what he did on ellie’s behalf and that’s why she feels obligated to seek revenge. he comes not because he’s in it for the cause, he comes because he’s that good of a friend. he wanted to protect the people close to him. he wanted to demonstrate that ellie’s pain was his pain, so he would help ellie do what she felt she needed to do to heal. he just wanted to be there for ellie. and he obviously would have taken a bullet for her, because well, he did. god, what a fuckin mensch. anyway, i love jesse and i miss jesse. i wish we got to know him more

After All We’ve Been Through. Everything That I’ve Done. It Can’t Be For Nothing

This will be my last response to these essays because I don’t think we’ll get to a point where there’s mutual ground and that’s okay lol. I did want to respond though because you offered some valid critiques on my post as well. This won’t be as long as the other for sure (at least I hope not).

You’re correct in that it’s up to interpretation of whether or not Abby feels guilt and if the small moments they provide us with are a indication of that. I can’t help but feel had she had a conversation with someone about guilt, it would have been met with resistance and notions of “so predictable” and not made a difference (not from you specifically. A lot of players of the game would have hated it no matter what because it didn’t live up to what they had in mind). Maybe I'm wrong with this and it would have been well received but no way to know.

As I stated in my previous response, the connection with Lev and Yara seemingly was brought on by them saving her and vice versa. Whether or not she feels obliged to help them because of this, there’s no reason to believe she would have gone back to the WLF after going AWOL. Owen couldn’t go back after Danny. Lev and Yara absolutely wouldn’t make it past the front gates. It goes back to the theory about purpose. If she’s found a new purpose in caring for the two of then, then why would she go back to the WLF? That’s not saying that after 4 years she wouldn’t have befriended anyone. We saw small interactions with a few characters but nothing that would lead us to believe she created deep connections with multiple people that weren’t a part of the Salt Lake Crew. Is it possible? Yes. Was there sufficient evidence given to support this? No. She had a choice though and after 48+ hours of hell and back with Lev and Yara, it doesn’t seem out of the box that she would choose them (Lev,Yara,Owen/Santa Barbara [again pre Mel conversation] over a group that wanted her dead). That ‘you’re my people” line feels like the most obvious indication that her allegiances have changed and that it had something to do with the bond she’d developed with them through their ‘adventures’ (putting that in parentheses because adventures should be fun and not messed up lol).

In no way shape or form did I say you are not allowed to criticize writers. People have every right to criticize. What I said was it’s not cool to resort to personal attacks. Criticizing a story that you find to be poorly written is different than calling the writers talentless and not creative. Bring up whatever issues you have with pacing/character choice/scene structure/lack of thoroughness/etc, but simply calling writers less talented and less creative isn’t conrtsuctive criticism. That’s lobbing personal insults at them, not offering any sort of feedback on their professional choices. That’s where I have issues. Not with offering criticism in general. There is a difference.

As for the theatre, I’m honestly not so sure why you continually dismiss the reality that Abby also had traumatic experiences, not just Lev. No ones trauma is greater than anothers. Trauma is trauma. Nearly everyone in this game with a substantial role in the story has experienced trauma. If we look at their 3 days and limit it to that time frame: Lev lost his sister, had to kill his mother in self defense, and was running from a group he grew up with. Abby was nearly hung, had Manny killed in front of her, and found Owen and Mel killed (Owen being of most importance). Those are just a few examples for each. I never said I didn’t care about her choices and whether or not they were questionable. That’s you assuming. What I did was offer up a possibility that Lev was aware of what would happen upon giving her the map.

Eye for an eye is a concept for retaliation/punishment at its very core so suggesting dhe should have let Joel go because he saved her doesn’t make sense as an eye for an eye scenario. That could be viewed as a reward or a compromise which by definition is not what eye for an eye is about.

The retort to the essay wasn’t intended to have any personal bias so if there were points of that, it wasn’t intentional. My response was based off what the game itself presented and the writing it gave us at face value. The whole point was playing devils advocate with offering counter arguments. I am very much a ‘devils advocate look at things from a neutral perspective’ person because I enjoy discussions.The whole point of me writing it was that aside from the bias, the writing came off as you knew better and that it was your way or the highway. That’s what was mentioned in the response to the Joel essay that I don’t think was posted, that the bias gave off a vibe that wasn’t approachable and that it seemed like an “I know better this is how it is” piece.

As for the add on reblog after the initial post, you are entitled to feel how you do. Once more, I never said that wasn’t allowed. Sort as I echoed above, I’ve pointed out multiple times that the main issue was the tone and how it came across and that it doesn’t necessarily feel like it offers up an environment that would foster a constructive discussion. This game is something lots of people get very emotional about. I’m simply saying if the intent is to write a persusasive essay vs an essay in general, bias and tone could be hurting you instead of helping. But if the intent was to get all the thoughts down on paper and out and not necessarily to try and ‘recruit’ (very loose use of the word), then having the bias/tone/emotion makes more sense. You have a very valid point that perhaps a verbal discussion can work better because some things get lost in translation through writing as it is quite often these days. Again, I enjoy reading different takes on different mediums and seeing that a couple of your essays had popped up in the tags, I went ahead and read them. Keep doing what you’re doing and I look forward to future essays. (this might have ended up just as long as the other, I honestly have no idea lol, my bad but I enjoyed this back and forth!)

I really did too!

And I think it's totally fine for us to not come to an agreement regarding this. I feel like discussions like these (especially about art that tend to be quite subjective) need more of "two people voicing their opinion, having an exchange and the conversation ending with both parties sticking to their point of view and accepting/respecting each other for that".

This discussion, at least for me, has been enriching, entertaining, and challenging even, which is exactly what I'd hoped I'd get out of posting my essay(s) in the first place. So thank you again for being so open-minded, critical, respectful, and for reaching out in the first place!

Regarding my future essays, I will from this point onward put even more effort into being less "high horse"-y and more neutral, as I do of course understand how that would be much more helpful in getting people to engage in an actual conversation/discussion.

I’m gonna find, and I’m gonna kill every last one of them.

THE LAST OF US PART II 2020 | dir. Neil Druckmann

I’ll be so miserable without you.

The Last of Us Part II Ellie + swearing

Repurposing this account

Accidentally deleted my side account, meaning all the essays I posted are gone too. So, I decided to repurpose this ancient account of mine and have to clean it up first, will repost all my content here in the upcoming days. So to any of you following me still (knowing that I haven’t posted anything in forever honestly), I will be posting mainly about The Last of Us Part 2 for now, so if that’s not something you’d be interested in, this is your sign to unfollow, I guess 😅 Other than that, I was able to save two of my essays that I will be reposting shortly, the third one I’ll try to rewrite in the upcoming days. That’s it from my side. xx

actually. Come 2 think of it. like. humor me for a moment, o followers of mine who are here solely because i post about gillian’s p*rtofino pictures. what seattle day 1 on ellie’s end needs is a tess. LET ME EXPLAIN. having dina there doesn’t work because dina’s character has to do a lot of storybuilding jobs. you have to understand as a player why ellie loves dina, you have to start loving dina yourself, and you have to understand why dina would join you on this revenge mission. and the first felt more out of convenience than anything else (it was a longtime crush but there’s nothing substantial beyond like. paper crowns), the second had me thinking dina was just very bland as a character and thus could be substituted out easily, and the third was just…convenience again. but with tess in the beginning of part 1 like you dont know who robert is but you know robert’s guys beat tess up and now it’s time to fuck robert up. like her anger just fits so well with the narrative that you dont question it at all. and the other thing is like. two young women going on a revenge quest like. Like i get that they both are worldly but they still feel wildly underprepared imo. so if it had been like…ellie and tommy instead for instance. like he has a history, you know there’s anger there, and there’s that unending depression and rage because this was not the world that had been promised to him. and also joel couldn’t occupy that spot because his emotions, though big and overwhelming, oftentimes get pushed down, so it would be a new experience and a bunch of great opportunities for characterization. i would much prefer swapping genuine war stories over dina talking about a farmhouse or making a dumb joke. tonally i think it would fit way better 

Happy Pride to these two adorable gays!