Shes Only Ever Violent When She Needs To Be - Tumblr Posts
Sorry if you've answered this before!
But I was curious on your thoughts about Ellie having or not having a violent heart?
short answer: no, especially not in the way i believe david meant it in that he has darker urges and wants power bc it makes him feel good, especially sexually-based power over vulnerable victims
longer answer: i think ellie and joel get along SO WELL because they have the same kind of heart.
they are ABSOLUTELY capable of violence, and sometimes it’s their first instinct (especially in the twenty years between the outbreak and the show for joel). but it’s not what either of them WANTS to do, not really. (like we the audience know he was NEVER violent with tess. we don’t even need to see anything about it play out on screen. we know from their interactions, the way he touches her, the way she speaks to him, that tess doesn’t remotely fear him and that joel would never give her a reason to. we know he’s violent in his day to day, but even in the depth of his lowest point before he’s met ellie, he’s not a threat to his loved ones. if he had a truly violent heart, that violence (i think) would come out with tess and tommy as well bc it would be his basic nature. but he doesn’t. he absolutely partakes in violence and even enjoys it to some extent like we see in silver lake, but he himself is not an inherently violent person unless he’s in some truly fucked up circumstances.) joel falls into it more easily than ellie in the show because he’s done it for longer, but once his world has been recentered into letting him be something he wants to be (a father figure), we see him shift back into someone who is soft and supportive and affectionate. at his heart, joel is a lover and a protector. it can MAKE him violent, but his violence isn’t about satisfying dark urges. it’s about satisfying his desire to protect.
that was a lot about joel, who wasn’t asked about, but i wanted to establish that before saying that ellie operates the same way. we see her hesitate in kansas city for SEVERAL moments before she shoots, and we see that she’s bothered by it afterwards. it’s not her natural tendency to try and cause a conflict, no matter her record or what she’s pushed into. we even see it when she’s interacting with bethany back in fedra. she straight up says she doesn’t want to fight. ellie wants to just listen to her music and run at her own pace. it’s bethany who starts the conflict and escalates it. ellie throws the first punch and makes it physical, but i think anyone would agree that bethany both started it and escalated it. if ellie inherently had a violent heart, she would have come out swinging at the first conflict. even with david (who ABSOLUTELY deserved to get his head chopped the fuck in), there’s no satisfaction to it. ellie did it because she was terrified and wanted to eliminate a threat. even justified, there was no satisfaction to what ellie had to do, and we see that in her horror afterwards. this is me filling in the blanks, but i think part of her mental state afterwards is her realizing she’s capable of that kind of thing. she doesn’t feel empowered by incredible violence. she doesn’t feel satisfaction that she can make other people hurt, and she has no desire to do it unless she is pushed into it.
even in The Canon That Must Not Be Named, ellie isn’t spoiling for a fight. she gets pissed at seth being an asshole (which i think anyone would), and we see her storming back over READY to fight, but even by the next day, he offers her sandwiches as a peace offering, and she takes them with a “whatever.” she clearly doesn’t really forgive him, but she also has no interest in picking that fight again. the situation is over. she’s let it go. she goes on her revenge quest, but even that isn’t her first instinct. when it doesn’t work out the first time, she goes back to jackson. she starts a life with dina. she’s still clearly struggling with what happened, but we see her doing things like carrying jj around and dancing with dina in the kitchen and learning to move on. she’s not an innocent little lamb who got bullied into going on her revenge quest by tommy, and she absolutely had agency in making that choice, but we also can’t say she was operating entirely under her own decisions. even throughout the entire quest, she just seems more tired than anything. there’s no real satisfaction to it for her. she might as well be checking things off on a list. especially in scenes like nora, we can see ellie just. she really would prefer to not be doing this. she’ll do it bc she feels like she has no other option, but none of this is her causing pain and fear bc she gets satisfaction out of it the way someone like david would bc it makes him feel powerful.
tl;dr: ellie, like joel, is absolutely capable of incredible violence. she’s even capable of enjoying it when it comes to hurting someone who hurt someone she cares about. however, unlike what david was trying to say, she doesn’t utilize violence because she enjoys it. she utilizes violence for what it can achieve (safety for her and others, revenge for hurting her and others, etc.). on her own with no pressing external factors, ellie even tends towards non-violent resolution when she has the option. so no, ellie doesn’t have a violent heart, and david, as ever, can fuck himself with a cactus.