Spoilers For Ep. 8 And Cw Warning For Csa Mention

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.

can someone please get these hoes under control i'm BUSY

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

#same energy

This is not very “you’re cargo” of him