#marlene if you ever believed for a second you were in his debt you should have shot him where he fucking stood. absolutely unbelievable.

[frittern]

EXTENDING OFF OF THIS.

1. There was no guarantee the surgery would work. This is the first time that they have ever had the chance to even try it, Joel has already mentioned that people have tried knock off nonsense cures in the past to no avail. He has already seen over and over again just how desperate people are for something that many times meant nothing, and the fireflies are Exactly the type of people to decide "yeah, actually, we'll kill one kid to just SEE if MAYBE we can do this, we'll use her body just to kind of experiment around. Not like we haven't already risked and killed Many Many People for our causes before this point, what's one more kid to the body pile". It's a pipe dream built off of desperate desperate hope.

2. Not to mention that Ellie's body is a LIMITED RESOURCE, to be able to produce a "vaccine" or "cure" they would need to reproduce it. A lot of it. Ellie's body at best could be used to understand a structure or compound that could fight off spores and then MAYBE, MAYBE give them an idea of what to search for or how to build a vaccine. They would have no way to get More of the DNA and blood in her body, especially with her dead, so if this vaccine relied on her body directly then it would at best be able to be put into maybe 20, 50 people. That's it. It wouldn't cure those already infected, and it would likely only partially help until the spores found a new way to mutate. Distributing and getting people to take the vaccine would also be a Fucking nightmare.

3. Because these people are so desperate for this attempt to do Anything, they are not going to wait another second to think this through or attempt another way or try to see if they can figure out something. They are not listening to Joel. They will kill him if he steps out of line. He cannot talk his way into them giving her back.

So like.

Arguably the only things Joel did wrong here was killing the scientist who was the "only one capable of making a vaccine" which , by the way is Totally Weird and very suspicious. They should have had notes and should have been training people if they thought they could figure out a cure. This should have been a big thing. And exactly HOW or WHY would Joel have been able to stop when that guy was one of the Main People in the way of getting to Ellie. As much as it would be nice to try and spare that guy, we do not have time to be questioning who might be what when they are hovering over her with scalpels and attempting to convince us to let her KILL her.

And of course, he should have told her. But in the end I think that they figure things out through the flash backs of the second game. It was a classic mistake of trying to protect someone from yourself, and the things you've done. It was distressing and upsetting and Yeah, This Is A Lot Of Dead People and Fucking Lord did it have consequences for him, but he cares about people. He cares about *Ellie* too much to have ever been able to make another choice.

This game has a lot about choices, about the fatal flaw of humanity. Even if you love the world, even if you love people, you will always love those you bond with more. No matter how much you care for humanity and want to save them, if it's a billion people vs. the one person you love the most, you will save that person every. Time. But even in the context of this lesson, even in this bittersweet ultimatum the game sets us up for, I think Joel was completely right in what he did and putting someone you care about this deeply, who saved your life and is basically apart of your family, at risk of dying in a horrific and intrusive way with only the BARE MINIMUM IDEALISTIC HOPE that MAYBE, MAYBE, a few people might have the same immunity she had when there are so many Other things to worry about killing you in this apocalypse. It's not fucking worth it. It never would have been worth it. So damn it, I'm right there with him, we're carrying this little girl in our arms out of that hospital of massacred people who refused to think for a damn second about potential consequences, and it's Into The Sunset with us.

sorry but I am officially a joel miller apologist. the fireflies knock him out & as soon as he regains consciousness marlene breaks the news to him that ‘yah sorry you’re never going to see your daughter again bc the surgery is lethal. but here’s her knife as a keep sake <3′ i’m sorry marlene but u thought that was going to go over well? you thought the insanely dangerous and firearm proficient man was who obviously bonded to ellie was going to go calmly? she should have sent ten men to escort him out. thirty. she should have just shot him in the head while he was unconscious. but of course she underestimated how much he cared. what he would do for ellie. bc she knew mean gruff self serving survivalist joel not father joel. she didn’t even let joel and ellie say goodbye to each other. was planning on killing ellie without even telling her for an experimental procedure they had no proof would work. didn’t even give joel the option to see her one last time. “would u kill 1 person to save 100?” they didn’t even allow a fourteen year old the agency to answer that question. team joel