I Have Been Reduced To Near Tears Over Ep. 3 For A Multitude Of Reasons, But Let Me Ramble Specifically

I have been reduced to near tears over ep. 3 for a multitude of reasons, but let me ramble specifically about Bill and Frank's story and how, despite how radical the changes are, it still fulfills the same general purpose as the game and teaches Joel and Ellie what they needed to be taught. Just from a different angle

More than anything, The Last of Us is about companionship and love. Each new character introduction and story is about showing the possible outcomes and consequences (both positive and negative) of allowing yourself to get attached to others.

Game Bill's story presents the negative consequences: resentment, grief, and loss.

But HBO Bill and Frank presents the positive consequences: love, trust, and (most important to Joel) purpose.

Both ultimately serve the same general purpose in teaching Joel and Ellie a lesson about companionship and do so well! Two sides of the same coin! It's great and I'm crying so much don't mind me.

It's also just a textbook case of what a good adaptation should do. It builds on an untouched storyline. It utilizes arguably the biggest benefit of television as a passive storytelling medium (the ability of the film camera to better focus on nonplayer characters for extended periods of time without having to justify itself with gameplay) and runs wild with it! It's so fucking good.

we were all forced to read “classics” in school so reblog and put the one you actually ended up liking a lot and the one you can’t fucking stand in the tags

my fave is Lord of the Flies and I ironically enough want to burn every copy of Fahrenheit 451. trash

tlou ep. 6 first impressions

abt to walk into the sea with a pocket full of rocks over last night’s tlou ep.  (spoilers below for the show up to ep6 but not the end of the game below. tdlr: godamn was this ep. fucking gr8)

i was so worried about the argument scene bc it’s one of if not the most important bit in the game for joel and ellie but godamn they did it justice and then some. “do you give a shit about me or not?” “of course i do.” no hesitation on either of their parts — yes he loves her and that’s the fucking issue. putting ashley johnson’s improvised push in the script was *chefs kiss*. it also totally works w/ how much more pent-up anger and frustration they gave ellie in the show. the og “you are treading on some might thin ice” line will def. be sorely missed but pedro’s simple and abrupt “no” the moment ellie tries to bring up sarah sent chills up my spine godbless.

and where tf do i begin w/ joel’s monoglue to tommy? pedro pascal u beautiful bastard u. go get that fucking emmy man. the argument scene is abt how joel is ellie’s safety, but his monolouge is about how ellie is joel’s weakness. how her relying on him scares the shit out of him. as far as joel’s concerned failing people is the only thing he’s good for. he failed sarah and he failed tess; why the hell wouldn’t he end up failing ellie? and he know’s that anything happening to her will kill him. he’s desprate and pleading and fucking crying dawgggggg.

i love love love how they did the ending scene for jackson. zero hesitation on ellie’s part to go with him. “you’ve got a right to choose-” “let’s go.” “okay.” its so fucking good and such gr* foreshadowing.

literally the only issue i’ve got off the top of my head is how quick the college segment went by. the ending with joel getting impaled and him and ellie exploring the college felt a little rushed, but def. not to the extent that it ruins to ep or even really bring it down all that much just bc everything before was so gr8.

sorry i’m rambling but this one is def. one of my favorites in the whole show so far.

Spoilers for ep. 8 and cw warning for csa mention🚨

Random thought III. I’m definitely not the first one to be saying this or anything, but w/ David’s episode dropping last night i am once again obsessing over how tlou presents love through side character vignettes.

So far we’ve had:

Love in the form of a father doing everything he can to protect his daughter on zombie outbreak day.

Love in the form of an old gay couple finding peace in the mists of the apocalypse.

Love in the form of an older brother willing to kill a whole revolution to get medicine for his younger brother.

Love in the form of a sister willing to destroy herself and everything she’s built in pursuit of avenging her brother.

Love in the form of community.

Love in the form of two estranged brothers.

Love in the form of young crushes and puppylove

Then ep. 8 comes along and here's a guy whose whole stick is abt twisting love into something awful and vial to fuel the flames of his sadism. And Ellie — not Joel — is the one to face this head-on. Mind you, right off the heels of her flashback episode where the audience sees her at her most innocent and carefree.

So Ellie confronts it. She has to. Because she loves Joel, it’s love in the form of a not-daughter doing all she can to protect her not-dad.

This is the first time she’s been directly exposed to this kind of senseless violence and brutality. David wants her because he can have her, because he knows that he’s physically stronger than her and a hell of a lot crueler. Ellie was just at the wrong place at the wrong time.

It’s “love” that he’s twisted into something so hideous and so unrecognizable and so terrifying and cruel — everything that love shouldn’t be.

And Ellie's loss of innocence at the hands of this "love" is enforced by Bella Ramsey's incredible acting (give them an Emmy for ffs). Even with David dead, she doesn't stop bashing his head in, she can't.

Cause I mean, yeah. It's the desperate, terrified actions of a little girl who's already been conflated violence with justice and safety being pushed to her absolute limits.

obv. she's totally in the right here. fuck david all my homies hate david. but, at the same time, it's showing what she's capable of when being pushed to that extreme. all that fear and anger and sadness and rage that's been festering in her since riley (and probably for much longer) absolutely has the potential to become destructive. it's a rlly good set up for season 2 me thinks.

Random thought but I really do fuck w/ the way they wrote Ellie’s Jackson's scenes. Yes, Pedro’s monologue was gr& and I’m glad he’s getting his flowers for that, but there’s just so much about Ellie’s interactions with Jackson that got me by the throat lol. Like easily one of my favorite additions to the whole series. 

I love that bit of Ellie sitting in the makeshift theater with the other kids looking anxious and on edge without Joel. I love how the camera focused on her longly jealous expression when she saw Joel and Tommy hug. I love how she didn’t hesitate to defend Joel when Maria interrogated her about him. I love “you deserve to have a choice-” “let’s go.”

I mentioned this before but God I’m obsessed with how Joel’s monologue illustrates hows Ellie is his weakness while Ellie’s Jackson scenes + their argument illustrate how he’s her safety.

And not to repeat my Bill and Frank tangent but it’s another textbook case of what a good television adoption should do. With television being a passive medium, it gives them a chance to show slower scenes focusing on nonplayer characters for extended periods of time. It’s all very good and is gonna make the finale hit so hard lol

*shakes you* joel's choice had nothing to do with the logistics of the cure or the competency of the fireflies. homeboy was not sitting there weighing the statistical probability of the fireflies creating a cure or crunching the numbers of how they'd distribute it. he did not care abt any of that shit!! it was a purely emotional decision based on his love for ellie and that's the point!! god himself could've come down and told him that the cure would've worked and everything would've gone back to pre-cordyceps society and HE STILL WOULD'VE KILLED EVERY SINGLE FIREFLY IN THAT HOSPITAL. just for two more years with ellie! cause he loves her!!

likewise, ellie's anger at him is so much more than "he killed a bunch of ppl :(" he's the only person she's never trusted (minus riley) and he lied to her abt the most important thing in her life. he essentially told her, little miss survivor's guilt, that her immunity meant nothing, that riley and tess and sam and henry's deaths meant nothing. everything she went through, and she didn't deserve the truth.

its so boring when ppl try to reduce joel's decision down to logic when the whole point is that it's an illogical from an outside utilitarian point of view, but bc we know joel's perspective we're inclined to justify him. "well the cure was impossible, ergo he was right". like no, that's not why he did anything. you might've been thinking abt that in retrospect but joel's character sure as hell wasn't