#tlou marlene

[giveamadeuschohisownmovie]

Some more changes in “The Last of Us” TV show that I thought were improvements on the game:

1) Tommy calls Joel to bail him out of jail. It’s a small scene but it does help establish that Joel is the older, more responsible brother while Tommy is the younger, more reckless brother. It gives more dimension to Joel’s line of “I bring you the cure for mankind and you wanna play the pissy little brother”.

2) Joel possibly being a Desert Storm veteran. Because if he was, then his line “you have no idea what loss is” becomes even more tragic since it’s not clear which part of his life he’s talking about. Is he talking about Sarah, surviving the post-apocalypse, or the horrors of the Gulf War? Technically speaking, he could be talking about all three events, which is just incredibly sad.

3) As an add-on for point 2, either Joel or Tommy being a Desert Storm veteran works better for the story since it makes it more believable that the Miller brothers were able to survive for 20 years in the zombie apocalypse.

4) “Che Guevara of Boston”. It’s one line, but it tells you all you need to know about Marlene and the Fireflies. Honestly, I got a better understanding of Marlene through that one line than the explanation in the original game.

5) Tess telling Joel to calm down and that going after Robert will make him go into hiding. I know that might seem trivial but the show is subtly telling us that Joel is incredibly dangerous. In the game, this was established by going into combat as Joel. The show can’t just rely on action scenes since that would screw up the pacing and tone, so the next best way to establish Joel’s badassery is through dialogue. “Robert is scared of you because you’re a dangerous motherfucker, that’s why I need you to chill”, that’s basically what Tess said.

6) Joel beats the guard to death in order to protect Ellie. In this one scene, Joel has already bonded Ellie to his memory of Sarah and Ellie was introduced to Joel’s savagery, which is pretty impressive considering that it’s a scene with no dialogue (for at least that section).

[softavasilva]

ELLIE WILLIAMS and MARLENE in HBO: THE LAST OF US | 1.01 When You're Lost in the Darkness

[mdawgswizzleinthehizzle]

the way that joel went from being so untrusting in part 1…

… to being so unguarded in part 2 that he willingly walked into a closed room with a large group of strangers AND introduced himself. the energy shift in the room when joel says his name is eerie as hell…

he knew the dangers of his reputation and ultimately… his ability to allow a sort of trust and conscience to help strangers in part 2 is ultimately his demise.

[abbystanaccount]

TLOU Ladies Arms Comparison

Dina, Ellie and Abby

Dina, Ellie, Abby, Nora, Mel, Marlene

Abby's younger, Seattle, and Pillars arms. Her Santa Barbara arms are the same size as her Seattle ones.

Here's that again but giving Abby's last arms a texture edit I did of them healed with scars.

Ellie's Santa Barbara arms vs her Jackson ones

[mariatesstruther]

ellie coming out to marlene and marlene being like girl me too and ellie coming out to tommy and tommy being like girl me too and ellie coming out to maria and maria being like girl me too and ellie coming out to tess and tess being like girl me too—

[thundergrace]

Guess I'm officially the president of the Marlene Defense Squad. Y'all be having defense squads for beloved characters and don't ever even have to block people. Weak. Imma actually have to fight.

[lunalivvy]

when riley asked marlene if ellie could join the fireflies and she said no, i didn’t think anything of it, but i just remembered that she knows ellie and i realized that the reason she said no was bc she promised anna ellie would be safe

[dolche-tejada]

Since the show put this eternal debate about the validity of Joel's decision back on track, I wanted to talk about it and explain why Joel was right. Note that I'm not talking about Joel's reasons so don't tell me "yes, but Joel wasn't thinking about that so...", that's not the issue. The issue is his decision in itself.

Btw, I specify here that I talk about the show but considering its fidelity to the games, my arguments also work concerning them.

So... let's take a look at Ellie. Firstly, she was unconscious at the time. There's just no way to justify that. Marlene or the fans who defend the Fireflies can speculate all they want about what Ellie would have wanted, the truth is that we fucking don't know. We know for sure that she wanted to help produce a cure, but at the time, no one knew that this would require opening her head and killing her.

If Marlene was so sure of what she's claiming here, she would have woken up Ellie to give her the choice. But she didn't because she knows it's bullshit she's saying to convince both Joel and herself.

I'm sure I'll be objected that in TLOU 2, Ellie blamed Joel for preventing her from dying on the operating table and that given the fidelity of the series to the games, this will surely be the case in the next season. Yeah but that's irrelevant too, it's not the same Ellie. In a few years, especially during adolescence, we change a lot.

Then, since we're talking about Ellie's consent, I would like to remind you that regardless of whether she was conscious or not, she's a 14 year old girl. I have the impression that too many people tend to forget that, no one at that age can make the decision to sacrifice their life with full knowledge of what they're giving up and with the maturity to think about it properly. Especially when the 14 year old girl in question is victim of survivor's guilt after having seen several of her close ones die.

For those who have trouble visualizing what I'm saying, I'll make an analogy : If an adult slept with a 14 year old and the latter justified herself to you by saying that she was consenting and that it was her choice, would you find this relevant ? Of course not, because almost everyone knows that there are decisions that children/teenagers can't consent to !

Now that was just about Ellie, but what about the cure ? Because in spite of all the utilitarian debates about whether or not Ellie needs to be killed for the greater good, we're forgetting one essential point : What proves that the Fireflies could have made a cure ? Because whether it's in the games or in the show, there's no real evidence of that. Even the Fireflies don't know anything about it, Marlene and the others directly assume that they will be able to create a vaccine from Ellie's Cordyceps even though they barely had time to do some tests on her while she was unconscious.

Hey you know what ? Even Marlene implicitly admits that they don't know about it : "Our doctor… he thinks that the Cordyceps in Ellie has grown with her since birth (…) He thinks it could be a cure, Joel."

They literally had no plan or certainties, they didn't even take the time to conduct any in-depth study of Ellie, of her blood for example to find a way to produce a vaccine without killing her. They just chose the easiest solution out of impulsivity without worrying for a single minute about the opinion and safety of the concerned one.

Whether it was for the greater good or not, all of Marlene's justifications are based on biased assumptions and intellectual dishonesty. Joel hurt many people and was wrong about a lot of things but certainly not about stopping reckless morons from butchering his 14 year old daughter.

[hotxcheeto]

Sometimes I like to think about the fact that Ellie’s mom, Anna, trusted Marlene so much.

With her life, she even says it in the note to Ellie that Marlene is probably the only person she trusts.

That Marlene would take care of Ellie.

And then Marlene tries to kill her for a cure that might not have even worked with the way the fireflies went about it.

Without even a second thought.

Marlene cared more for about the cure than Ellie or Anna and she justified it by saying they could save the world. They didn’t even run their ‘tests’ they were just going to do what they wanted.

Ellie trusted her, and Marlene betrayed her.

But she also betrayed Anna, whose dying, written words to her infant daughter were that Marlene could be trusted and that she’d take care of her.

Anna believed her daughter was gonna be okay.

[lands-of-fantasy]

The Last of Us

Character Posters

[giveamadeuschohisownmovie]

So, remember how Neil Druckmann said the first TLOU was a game about love? Well, if we’re to apply that to the show:

1) Episode 1: Father-daughter love (from a blood-related angle)

2) Episode 2: Best friends/partners love (potentially romantic but also works from a platonic perspective)

3) Episode 3: Romantic love from beginning to end

4) Episode 4: Father-daughter love (from an adopted angle)

5) Episode 5: Brotherly/sibling love

6) Episode 6: How we show love to the people close to us, even if it causes conflict (Joel tries to leave Ellie to protect her, Ellie refuses to leave Joel because she feels safe with him)

7) Episode 7: Romantic love that is tragically cut short / friendship that grows into something more

8) Episode 8: How love can be twisted into something horrible (manipulation, sadism, abuse, etc)

9) Episode 9: The lengths we’ll go to protect our loved ones

[softavasilva]

what was the song? he kept sayin’, like, “Wake me up before you go-go”? shit.

HBO: The Last Of Us (2023-) 1.01 | When You're Lost in the Darkness

[0aurelion-sol0]

[abbystanaccount]

Who else here is believing in the Fireflies

[mariatesstruther]

man man man imagine like, still!outbreak AU tommy finds ellie outside jackson needing safety, his dad mode wakes 100% and he brings her inside jackson to live with him and maria cause he always imagined having a daughter with maria🥺

OKAY YES ANON YES YES. BUT ALSO YES AND

maybe an au where marlene KEPT ellie with her????? where she was raised among the fireflies???? maybe marlene told her she was the daughter of her best friend, a fellow rebel that got killed, but never that her mom was bit?????? so ellie doesn’t know she’s immune, and she’s sort of raised as marlene’s goddaughter with other children of firefly rebels

and maybe marlene tells herself that ellie’s immunity will eventually save them all, that she has to keep her safe, that she has to keep her alive and away from fucking everything long enough for them to figure out a cure. she doesn’t know or even suspect that it would take killing ellie to get their way—by the time they do figure it out, ellie’s like a daughter to her. she’s watched this kid grow up to hate tuna like anna and laugh like anna and love terrible puns, just like anna. before marlene’s eyes, ellie turns into anna’s mini-me without even knowing it; so what else is she to do but grow to love her too? that’s anna’s baby, anna and marlene’s baby. she loves her more than the world, more than the anything, more than the fireflies. more than a cure

so maybe when marlene finds out what abby’s dad has planned, she makes a different choice. she tells ellie the truth, that she’s sorry, and that she needs to go. ellie (who is blessedly not burdened by survivors guilt from riley and company) wants to live, of course she does. even if she hadn’t, marlene wouldn’t have let her die. she couldn’t

instead, she finds the most trustworthy yet capable and dangerous man she knows: tommy miller. what she hears of him is plenty, but what she knows for sure is this: he’s a great soldier, he’s a good man, and he used to have a neice named sarah. him and ellie already get along, luckily, because he teaches math to the firefly kids a few times a week. she tells him what is planned, and he’s horrified. she tells him how to stop it, so he does (kills a few people along the way, which she covers for. theyre good.)

then at this point, i actually think it’d be fun if joel and tess run into tommy and ellie somewhere random in the woods of wyoming 😭😭😭 maybe when joel and tess break into that old couple’s house from 1x06 and he asks if they’ve heard of a tommy, they actually go “you know what… some guy named tommy was here with a twelve year old not even two hours ago. little one cusses like a sailor. they went that way.”

im tagging in a-level marlene appreciator @clickergossip bc i want her to see this. anon thank u so much.

[2x4plank]

Ooh, oh no... The hospital act of TLOU. I'm gonna be upfront: least favorite part of the game.

I really wanted to like it (of course I did; I paid $70 dollars for this game), but it never hit me as hard as all the other acts. With the acts that came before this one, I looked at all the little nuances in interactions between the characters, reading notes, looking at whatever's in Joel & Ellie's backpacks--just loving what this game fed to me.

But the hospital act felt rushed to me.

Let me start with my first, ongoing grievance: the Fireflies.

I get where they were going with this, the moral dilemma they were trying to set up: should Joel save his daughter at the cost of the world? But the Fireflies don't seem very smart. I won't even talk about the viability of them creating a vaccine (or cure, rather) with the fungus on Ellie's brain. For the purposes of this piece, the vaccine will 100% work. So where does that leave us now?

The Fireflies seem to have a streak of malpractice. At the University of Colorado, players will pick up recordings from a dead Firefly. Long story short, that Firefly released infected monkeys just...into the world. This same Firefly also talks about the long stretch of time (5 years) that passed between the last scientific breakthrough. This does not inspire confidence.

Fast forward to the hospital act. Two Fireflies encounter a man doing CPR on a child and they...knock him out with the butt of their guns? I'll clarify I have a personal vendetta against people that are particularly a part of an organization hitting people with the butt of their guns, but outside of that, this is stupid. Joel is clearly trying to resuscitate Ellie, so even if they "didn't know who [he] was", knocking him unconscious doesn't make sense.

And then Joel wakes up and Marlene drops the bomb that they're currently taking Ellie's brain out. Okay. That was very quick. I'm sure they had time to run several complete tests and cross their t's and dot their i's. It makes complete sense that in the time between Joel being brought to the hospital and regaining consciousness, they figured out that removing her brain was the best way to create that vaccine. I'm sure keeping Ellie alive would have absolutely no benefits and going straight to killing her is the best option.

Additionally, that one Firefly that eggs Joel on? What is with these guys and abusing their power? They can't compete with FEDRA on that front, but it's still bad.

Finally, I always wondered how they were going to distribute that cure to the greater public. They're quite ostracized by FEDRA, if I remember correctly, and creating a cure is only a part of a problem. It's not like the current government hasn't displayed a tendency to hog resources, so working with them seems like a no-go.

None of what we've seen of the Fireflies makes me think they're competent.

My second grievance is Marlene. I liked her at the start, but what we see in the last part soured me on her. She isn't very compassionate to Joel's situation, but he's grown and a murderer (of both baddies and innocents in his hunter days), so I don't have a problem with that. He's not the most compassionate either. It's moreover her claiming to have monopoly over caring about Ellie. Girl, what?

Of course, we saw little of Ellie and Marlene's relationship as a function of the game. It was about Joel and Ellie sticking together when their loved ones either died or, in the case of Bill, simply refused to come with them. Marlene passed her along, and we just kind of hear how Ellie cares about Marlene. We also receive letters and recordings about Anna and Marlene's relationship in the late game. I get why it is this way, as it sets up the player to care about Ellie just as Joel did, but I do wish we got to see some more of Marlene's relationship with Ellie.

My third grievance is this idea of choice. Ellie did not choose to die. We might have some idea of if she would (she's really happy to think of herself as the cure to all mankind), but she didn't and all throughout the game, there is this emphasis on continuing to survive. Finding a reason to keep going. I would not say that Joel took this choice away from her, because never was this dilemma presented to her. Joel woke up, found out they were going to murder Ellie, and intervened so that did not happen. You can't choose to do anything if you're dead.

And then Joel takes her to get some McDonald's...

The problem I see people take with Joel that I can actually understand is him lying to her. Him lying has the potential to completely blow up in his face, and this concerns not only the cure, but Marlene as well. I wholeheartedly agree with him saving her, but this is a bit more dubious.

But here's the thing: beyond his selfish reasons for doing so (such as absolving himself of guilt), Joel has some legitimate reasons to lie to her. First and firstmost, Ellie has been through a lot at an extremely young age. Seen a lot of loved one's die, carries some survivor's guilt along with that. She does not need or deserve to have "I could have saved the world, if only I died" hanging over her head. Ellie deserves a happy childhood--or a happy remainder of her childhood, because she lost quite a bit and had to deal with David, among other things. The damage this truth has the potential to do to her is reason enough to lie.

Second of all, she does not need to know that the same woman she probably came to see as a second mother was willing to put her to death on a doctor's word. I believe in science and medicine, but maybe get a second opinion on that?

So yeah... When it comes to Joel vs. the Fireflies, it's no contest to me.

I should add: I would've loved if at least one named POC character survived. Kind of crazy all of them died, and as a non-white player, it didn't escape my notice. It also made me sad when Henry wasn't mentioned among the people they lost. I mean, Henry did protect/look after Ellie during that short part in the sewer. I think he should've been mentioned.