Random Thought But I Really Do Fuck W/ The Way They Wrote Ellies Jackson's Scenes. Yes, Pedros Monologue

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

🚨 Spoilers for ep. 7 AND the entirety of og TLOU game. 🚨

Random thought II. HBO TLOU does a lotta shit right, but how it plays with perspective (with perspective being such an important thing in this game series already) it easily the best imo. AND important I think, considering it's something that a surprising amount of video game adaptions tend to fail with or don’t really bother at all) Thread below

Why do these characters do all the awful and amazing stuff they do? How do they justify their actions to others and themselves?

I go on and on on this account abt the inherent differences between video games (active medium) and television (passive medium) and how production teams need to stop looking at them like they're obstacles when adapting video games into tv and instead see them for the opportunities they are it to expand on side characters and the world in ways that video games can’t.

In the game, we really only get to see Joel’s perspective the whole way through (with Ellie during the Winter segment, which I'll get to in a sec). We know all about his trauma, his guilt and fears over losing Sarah, and how much he loves Ellie and wants more than anything to protect her. That very much culminates in much of the audience understanding, if not outright justifying, him murdering dozens of people and lying to Ellie about the whole thing. And within the game, it works really fucking well. Why else are people still vehimately defending Joel’s actions over a decade after the game was released?

But with television being the passive medium that it is, we get that chance to see an expanded version of the world. We get to have more scenes focusing on nonplayable characters, setting up their wants and goals and desires independent of Joel and Ellie. We get to have extended flashbacks without Joel and Ellie. We get to have whole episodes focusing on them in the case of Bill and Frank which, if you ask me, is so far the best ep. in the series.

The result? We get to better see everyone’s perspective and mindset and what drives them to do the things they do which fits the series' core thesis of love as a motive.

Bill and Frank? Romantic love, so strong and powerful that the idea of losing of it scares the fuck out of you.

Sam and Henry? Familar love. The intense desire to protect your family at the cost of others. Knowing what you doing it wrong, knowing that it will hurt so many people, but doing it anyway.

Kathleen? Grief and the absence of justice. What do you do when you fail the person you love?

Tommy and Maria? Wanting to protect what you have. Being satisfied. Finding hope and purpose in community.

Riley? Wanting a place to belong and have hope for the future.

All and all these bits make the world feel much more lived in, for lack of a better word. Joel and Ellie don’t feel like the center of the universe. Like the brutality that the characters demonstrate feels like it has more of a meaning —they exist and are driven by things independent of Joel and Ellie.

Idek if this makes any sense but ya. Hyperfixation go brrr brrr.

so i already went on a tangent abt how good the acting was in ep. 5 so lemme just gush abt the prosthetics for a hot sec because wowwww i'm absolutely obsessed

if you haven't heard already, they got barrie gower as prosthetic designer (he's the guy behind vecna on stranger things and the night king on game of thrones). his shit's been amazing. i cannot recommend following him on insta (@barriegower) enough (plus he recently posted some clicker concept for the show!). the props team also reportedly consulted some naughty dog concept designers who worked on og tlou for both creating the infected prosthetics and set design which (if true) fucks soooo hard.

everything abt how they tackled bringing the infected to live action is insane. it feels so meticulously done from concept to execution.

there's the obv. practical effects/ prosthetics/stuntmen over cgi which i love. i'm sure that with the budget hbo gave the team, cgi infected would've still looked fine, but going the practical route is *chefs kiss.*

kudos to the actors underneath all that make up as well! that terrifying clicker kid was played by 9 year old contortionist and self proclaimed "rhythmic gymnast" skye belle cowton and the bloater was played by stuntman adam basil (@adam.basil on insta. totally recommend checking him out there bc he posts a lot about his acting gigs). they ended up using a good amount cgi for the bloater's movements in the end but the suit they made still looks so cool.

even where the designs deviate from the game it's still done within respect to the og design aesthetics and what makes tlou tlou. the tendrils didn't just come out of nowhere; they were in the early concepts for the og game.

there's a lot more i can say about this but shdkshdj take my adhd rambling aight gn.

*shakes you* joel's choice had nothing to do with the logistics of the cure. homeboy was not sitting there weighing the statistical probably 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; his babygirl was in danger and acted accordingly.

likewise, ellie being so hurt by joel's decision was abt him lying to her and essentially telling her, little miss survivor's guilt, that her immunity meant nothing, that riley and tess and sam and henry's deaths meant nothing.

its so boring when ppl try to reduce joel's decision down to logic: "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

fair enough!