#fr i think too much post-apocalyptic media is getting to me

[steinbecks]

i really liked TLOU but joel's choice to save ellie over humanity left me a little cold bc TLOU regularly makes the argument that with very few exceptions, humanity is comprised of violent people who will shoot you and eat you as soon the second they get the chance. granted it provides a context for this - in a zombie apocalypse, people will do anything to survive - but it starts to feel so exaggerated it's absurd. like joel getting stabbed at the university, with zero time between first contact and murder; in essence, the first contact IS murder. in TLOU, our single relational mode with other people is "enemy until proven otherwise."

and this is ellie's hope - that by providing the cure, she can end this world of endless violence - but given that the series ends up highlighting the threats we face from each other rather than the threats we face from the infected, the selfishness of joel's choice at the hospital fills me with indifference because i'm not invested in saving the people of the world of TLOU lol. which is a wildly anti-humanistic feeling to be left with, and one that contradicts a lot of things i believe about humanity as it exists in real life - i think we're worth saving on the basis of our humanity, not our goodness; i am against capital punishment point-blank, etc.

but again, perhaps faith in and hope for the future are what joel squanders when he makes his decision - if only he'd sacrificed ellie, he could've given humanity the chance to end and transcend this insistence on violence - and perhaps i'm jaded after binging yellowjackets and so much post-apocalyptic media that assumes civilization is the only thing keeping our most violent instincts in check. and perhaps i must accept that TLOU isn't trying to tell a story about saving humanity, but instead a story about how in a violent world, even love becomes a violent choice. still!! i will be chewing on this for a while.