#tlou s2e2

[crescentmel]

TLOU S2E2

[melodiesofmidnight]

"just watched tlou s2e2" moodboard

[hearts-hunger]

omg why did that suck so bad??

let me say the pros first:

young mazino jesse is growing on me. he gets that responsible/sarcastic thing that game jesse has. and the fact that he is shown taking care of all of them in the end is very in character and nice for us to see.

gabriel luna once again slays as tommy. that kiss with maria, the longing???? god. i love him.

the fighting in jackson was a cool idea, would have enjoyed playing a sequence like that in the game, but overall the change hurts more than it helps.

okay that's about it for what i liked lmao! the cons:

where is my pot smoking lesbian love scene. what the fuck.

kaitlyn dever looks like a little kid, genuinely. and so does bella ramsey. kaitlyn has more emotional range than bella but neither of them can carry that rage and heartbreak. neither of them are raw and brutal like they are in the game. they're both trying too hard and it shows.

everything that was changed from the game was worse, and i believe that with my whole heart. why wasn't tommy with joel? the reason tommy goes as psycho as he does it because of the grief he has from introducing joel to abby. why didn't we get dina/ellie patrol route to further solidify their relationship? dina being at the lodge made no sense and added exactly nothing to the plot. why was ellie going to jump right back into patrols with joel? in the game she barely even spoke with him before he died, but in the show apparently they're good enough to just hang out now???

The Scene™ was simply not executed as masterfully as in the game. like, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. the colors were off (where is my cold, dark, shadowed death scene?), the stab was fucking pathetic compared to game abby's yell and final blow, owen didn't get a chance to do his "if we kill them we're no better than he is" which actually gives him a character trait. abby spent wayyyy too much time explaining everything to joel. and joel is like. crying? instead of spitting mad and sneering his way towards a death he always knew was coming. where's the RAGE???? it's all sanitized and therapy-speak and big feelings and sad girls and weak old men. it just doesn't hit as hard.

the show is trying so hard to make us sympathize with abby, even more than the game, and it's so forced as to feel stupid. also, side note, why is she housewifing for owen? she's a bitch to him in the game and i like that about her. why is she rubbing his arms and making him soup or whatever? not my muscle mommy.

no "bigot sandwich" line???? best line in the whole game???

anyways those are my thoughts, i'm sure i'll have more, but come talk with me about them if you want!

[yourneighborhoodwlw]

NO WEED SEX SCENE? YOU'RE GONNA KILL OUR DAD OFF AND NOT EVEN GIVE US OUR WEED SEX SCENE? FR????

[twilightsumu]

i have such torn views on the meaning of joel dying in the middle of a blizzard

1) the blizzard, cold and indifferent, is nature’s judgment in this episode, a force that strips away comfort and mercy. as snow buries the world in silence, joel meets his end not in warmth or redemption, but in isolation, surrounded by ice and fury

the storm, then, becomes both a burial shroud for joel and a rite of passage for ellie. it erases the warmth they shared, but also offers her a blank slate—one that she doesn't yet know how to fill. his death in that cold purity leaves her with a paradox: immense grief inside a landscape that seems to offer spiritual cleansing, as if the world itself is daring her to decide what to carry forward—and what to leave buried in the snow. (DONT GET ME STARTED ON WHAT IT MEANS TO ME THAT ELLIE VISITED HIS GRAVE AND SAID HER ‘GOODBYES’ IN THE SPRING)

2) the storm, with its blinding whiteness, becomes a canvas of renewal. snow, often seen as a purifier in mythology and scripture, washes over the blood-soaked earth, cloaking his violent end in a kind of grace. joel’s life was marked by moral compromise and brutal survival, but the blizzard does not judge—it erases. in its whiteness, there is a strange mercy: a return to stillness, a cleansing of his sins not through forgiveness, but through elemental force

[bitchin-beskar]

please get up, I can't do this alone

Rating: Mature due to source material

Characters: Joel and Ellie

Warnings: The Last of Us Season 2 episode 2 spoilers, mentions of violence, gore, death, grief, spiraling, brief contemplations of revenge. All told, there's not much to warn about, but this deals with Ellie's thoughts in the aftermath of the most recent episode, though this IS a fix it au.

Word Count: 1.2k

A/N: Have I seen The Last of Us Season 2? No. Will I watch it? Also very likely no. But my heart is broken regardless, and so here is a fix it, because Joel does not deserve it and Ellie does not deserve it. I will take no questions at this time. If characters are ooc, deal with it, I honestly do not care. This is for comfort purposes only, not to stay true to canon.

The hospital in Jackson was less a hospital and more a repurposed building with scavenged medical supplies, makeshift hospital beds, and barely running vital sign monitors. It was as sterile as they could make it, but it was nothing compared to what hospitals had been like before the outbreak, at least according to what she’d read.

Her hands were numb. Her fingers were nearly purple and damn near frostbitten, but she couldn’t feel them. They were clasped together in her lap, knuckles almost white from the strength of her grasp. There was a buzzing in her ears, a low hum of static, so it took her a while to realize someone was calling her name.

“Ellie? Ellie! Ellie!”

Her head jerked up, bloodshot eyes landing on Tommy standing in the doorway, expression caught between fury and barely concealed panic.

Her eyes track his mouth moving, but she can’t make out the words, the buzzing in her ears getting louder with every passing second. He seems to realize that she’s not comprehending his words as he moves forward and comes to kneel before where she’s sitting in the stiff plastic chair.

He cups her hands, before jerking back, taking off the scarf around his neck and trying to wrap it around her frozen fingers.

“I can’t feel them,” she says, though she can’t even hear her own voice. For all she knows, she’s either whispering so quiet she can’t be heard, or, she’s screaming so loud it’ll bring infected down around their heads.

Tommy doesn’t speak again, all his focus on wrapping his scarf around her hands. She faintly appreciates the gesture, but can’t muster up any emotion other than crushing emptiness and naked terror.

Suddenly, Tommy’s head snaps to the side, and she slowly turns her own head to see Mel, the doctor in Jackson, stepping out into the hallway, her eyes tired. Nora steps out after her, also looking utterly exhausted.

Her shoulders slump, and the buzzing in her ears becomes a roar. Already, she can feel the fury rising, warring with the utter heartbreak. Despite her best efforts, despite Jesse and Dina helping her drag Joel here, they were too late.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Tommy bury his face in his hands, shoulders shaking. She should reach out, try to comfort him.

She can’t make herself move.

Mel is talking, but she’s already lost in her own thoughts, plotting out the best path for revenge. She can’t lose herself to grief now. She has to avenge Joel. She has to. She wasted so much time, mad at him for so many things, but now, with him gone… what was she supposed to do? He’s the closest— was the closest thing she’d ever had to a father. She’d never told him. Why had she never told him?

She’d begged him. Pleaded with him. He couldn’t leave her. He promised he’d never leave her. How could he break that promise?

“Do you want to see him?”

The sentence breaks through the dull roar that had encompassed her head. She looks at Nora, disbelief quickly giving way to cold anger.

“Why? I carried his body here. Didn’t do him any good. He’s still dead.”

Tommy flinched violently, but the expected guilt didn’t come. She distantly wondered what that said about her.

But instead of looking pissed, or shocked, Nora’s eyes widened instead.

“Ellie, did you not hear Mel?” She opened her mouth to respond, but Nora bulldozed on. “Joel’s alive, Ellie. He’s gonna pull through.”

Her body was up, and off the chair before she even consciously registered the words. Tommy’s scarf fell to the floor at his knees as she ran, past Mel, past Nora, through the doorway and down the hall to where they’d been working on Joel.

She pushes through the door, the wood cracking against plaster as she throws it open and it slams against the wall. Her eyes are frantic, searching for proof— if Nora wasn’t telling the truth, if Nora lied—

But there he is. Chest bare, neck wrapped in bandages, face swollen and almost unrecognizable, though cleaned of blood. He’s small, on the bed. Joel had always seemed larger than life. But now, he just looks broken.

He just looks broken.

“Joel?”

The faint sound of her own voice almost makes her wince. It’s hoarse, probably from the screaming. Or the begging. Or both.

The monitor next to his bed is the one thing that keeps her from turning around and confronting Nora for lying to her. Because if it weren’t for the slow, but steady beat of his heart clear on the screen, she’d swear he was dead.

Her legs are shaky. She’s barely able to stand, let alone walk, but she stumbles to his bedside. There’s another chair, and she sinks into it, grateful that she doesn’t have to trust her legs to keep her upright anymore.

One of his hands is resting on his stomach, and she slowly reaches out. Her fingers are still numb, but she manages to wrap them around his wrist, and after a moment she feels the slow pulse of blood pumping through his veins, physical proof that he’s still here. Her other hand slowly wraps around his fingers, squeezing gently to let him know that he’s not alone.

She feels tears start rolling down her cheeks, but she doesn’t wipe them away. She can’t let him go.

~~~

At some point she’d fallen asleep. She wakes slowly, to the feeling of fingers stroking through her hair, and soft voices speaking, though she can’t focus on the words. Her back is sore from sleeping hunched over, and she wonders why she fell asleep in such an uncomfortable position.

Suddenly, the past 24 hours hits, and she bolts upright, eyes frantically roving over the room. Her thoughts are racing, and she’s simultaneously hoping it’d all been a nightmare, and Joel hadn’t been hurt at all, or it’d been a miraculous dream and she’d actually gotten him to Jackson in time, and Mel and Nora had saved his life.

Tommy is sitting in a chair on the other side of the bed, his eyes wide as he watches her like she’s a skittish animal he doesn’t want to spook.

But her focus is on Joel.

He’s laying in the same position he had been before she’d fallen asleep, but his eyes are open. Somehow, his eyes are open, and he’s looking at her, and his hand is partially outstretched, and she realizes he’d been the one running his fingers through her hair.

Embarrassingly, she bursts into tears.

Joel winces slightly, but opens up his arm, and she barely hesitates. She’s cautious of course, climbing onto the bed next to him gently to avoid jostling his various wounds. But as she curls up next to him, his arm settling over her shoulders and his fingers winding back through her hair, she sobs her relief against his chest.

“I’ve got you, baby girl,” he whispers, voice wrecked and tight from pain, but he tightens his grip on her when she tries to pull away. “I’ve got you.”

[lloquent]

the thing about s2e2 (yapping tbh)

ok, finally having articulated my thoughts and feelings of the most recent tlou episode, i want to point out the most frustrating bit in my opinion (all is based off my opinion so say what you will lol but i have to get the brainworm out)

for me, as a fan of the game since the initial release in 2013 (flexing lol) joel’s death feels like the most important piece of the story — it is what makes ellie’s story the entire story, y’know? as hard of a pill it was to swallow, his death is arguably the most important point in the entire last of us storyline (at least to me.)

in the game, joel’s death is not only entirely unexpected but also feels incredibly heavy and confined; he’s secluded by abby’s group in the lower level of the lodge, shot, pinned down, etc. as the player we literally lead him to his death before jumping to ellie where we then have to helplessly watch the inevitable. it’s easily one of the most emotionally-heavy moments in the games if not the most for how much care and time we’ve invested into these two characters. it is the emotion that drives these scenes — the emotion we feel for this character now being brutalized.

in the show, however, it doesn’t feel that the emotional aspect was really leaned into much if at all. we’re told from episode 1 that abby is going to kill joel — already taking away half of the heavy-hitting blow that was the unexpectedness. having it come out of nowhere felt like a blow to the gut; having it laid out before us felt like just waiting on the clock. having it told to us first and foremost almost immediately numbs the audience to the thought of it whether or not they believed it would really happen, it takes the power from the loss entirely.

then we get to the actual moment, already having the knowledge that abby plans on killing joel even as we approach her friends who also are planning to aid in killing him. we finally get inside the lodge — and then the emotional aspect just falls flat. we focus entirely on abby’s monologue, abby’s anger, abby’s resentment rather than joel — the character people care and worry about. they shift our focus from feeling the dread and anxiety of what’s happening to joel to instead listen to abby’s dragged-out exposition (that also feels incredibly out-of-character for her.)

it just feels like season 2 so far is more focused on expanding the story rather than keeping focus on the important, key aspects of the games — the emotion. the love and care and subsequent grief we feel as the audience when something happens to the characters we love. we spend so much time worrying about the fight at jackson and abby’s over-explaining that we lose sight of the turmoil we feel for joel. we lose focus on how impactful losing joel is for the story, the characters, the audience — especially if they already told the audience he was to die. i did not feel the tension in the lead-up, we simply walked with him into the lodge and stood around while he died.

tldr; disgruntled game-fan feels that the show is struggling to grasp and/or convey the emotional aspects of the story and is disgruntled.

[softsnzstuff]

Umm yeah so WHAT THE FUCK

[elysynn]

The Last Of Us - S2x02 - Deep Dive

There be spoilers here. If by some miracle you've managed to remain unspoiled for S2x02 (for the love of - insert meaningful epithet here - stay away from any entertainment sites) do not read under the cut.

A few years ago, I tore my way through the two TLOU video games on the recommendation of my brother-in-law. He gave me the warning, "When you get to the second game, beware. The first act is going to rip your heart out and stomp all over it." He didn't give me any more than that. But, it was enough that when the game opened and I was not playing Ellie or Joel I knew something was up.

The TLOU Part 2 starts on the cold mountain - basically where S2x01 ended. There's little to no dialogue. Long story short - there is zero context about who you are playing and why. I had a feeling of dread, suspicion that something terrible was in store for the characters I'd come to love from the first game based on my BIL's warning - but nothing more.

So when Joel is killed in the game, you as the player have no idea why. Abby's motives don't become clear until much later in the game.

Which left me (and a lot of other players judging by the huge amount of backlash the game developers got) really unhappy with Abby's character and resentful of having to play her. Especially after Joel saved her life.

This is where I think the show runners made a smart choice with Abby. The season still starts with Abby, paralleling the game, but farther back in time. The viewers get the context the players did not. We know her motives from the outset. The character is given the chance to have some empathy thrown her way before she goes through with her act of vengeance.

I discuss briefly in my spoiler-free reaction what I believe the antagonist of these stories are. These games (and the series) examine human nature and raise questions about righteousness, love, justice, survival. It's intense. It's deep. It's visceral and violent. And it's dark. Folks, it doesn't get lighter from this moment.

These characters are richly complex and provide a remarkable lens to examine these characteristics. Through the game, I was eventually able to develop some empathy for Abby, even against the backdrop of her violence against Joel. Ellie's choices to come reflect the hints we've seen in Part 1/Season 1 of the darkness within her.

There are moments of beauty to contrast the darker explorations. They're organic, natural extensions of the characters we've come to know. Yep - even Abby has a few. As much as I wanted to throw her off a cliff (and I tried) when I first started playing her suspecting I wasn't going to like the road she was travelling - she makes some choices later on that show the depths of her humanity before vengeance took hold.

After I'd heard that the series had been renewed for a third season, I'd wondered where they were going to place Joel's death. Was it going to be early on like the game? Or were they going to save it for a season-ending cliffhanger? Truth be told, I'm glad they placed it where they did. There's enough story told through flashbacks in the game they could have gone the cliffhanger route. But, I think had they done that it would have turned the moment into a gimmick. There would have been something vital lost had they waited longer.

Joel's death is meant to be heartbreaking. It's meant to stoke that fire of vengeance in the player/viewer. It was absolutely necessary for the story the creators wanted to tell. I think it's going to be interesting to see how the rest of the season and series plays out with that kernel of empathy for Abby already planted. With that reminder that Joel was not a saint. And honestly, I really credit the creators of the game and series for daring to ask the question of what happens to the people that are collateral damage and not taking the well-travelled narrative of the cartoonish villain.

[ghostlyboiii]

im crying

[uuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhh]

With how distant Ellie has been do y’all think Joel Thought he was hallucinating Her being there in the end? like as a dying comfort. Do you think he just wanted to see his daughter again? Do you think he died thinking he was alone? Not knowing it was really her? Do you think he even thought Ellie was unwilling to try and save him? And it was just his subconscious playing tricks? Do you think-

[melodiesofmidnight]

Too soon?

[milla-frenchy]

So they were supposed to go on patrol together, but he left with Dina to let Ellie sleep.

I think I'm still dissociating, but I wish my brain would keep forgetting this

[milla-frenchy]

I read something like "he couldn't save his daughter, so he protected every teenage girl until it killed him"

And... yeah

Fuck I feel sick again

i’m still not over how Joel immediately went to Dina, had his coat off and on her as soon as they were inside. i’m fucking sick.

[whocaresstillthelouvre]

Mallory She/Her • 30's • ♊️💍🤖🦆 • AO3

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[elysynn]

The Last of Us - Season 2x02 - Spoiler Free!

This is going to be a tough one to keep spoiler free.

Oof.

This episode again did a spectacular job recreating the environment from the game. The lodge was uncanny in its likeness.

This episode features a pivotal moment in the game and sets the stage for everything that follows. If you've managed to remain unspoiled to this point, I won't spill the beans. I think the showrunners made some smart choices though relating to this moment that I may expand on a spoiler-filled analysis later on.

As with so many episodes - as well as the games - these characters make you feel. Through a conversation with a friend last week about S2x01, we were talking about what was to come in the season - including the pivotal moment from tonight. And that conversation crystalized something for me that I've mulled since playing through TLOU II a few years ago. The infected are a catalyst. Sure, they're the gross, terrifying mechanisms to execute jump-scares and make you sweat trying to escape. But, I don't think they're the true antagonist of the story. I think the antagonist is human nature itself.

Throughout the first season, we're introduced to a variety of factions: FEDRA, the Fireflies, raiders, and other individuals just trying to survive. They all make choices with their own justifications of doing the right thing. Some are easier to empathize with than others. In season 2, we see the infected get smarter, faster and more terrifying. And human nature... well. I'm going to stop there. Spoilers, after all.