Tlou - Tumblr Posts
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.
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.
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.
🚨tlou game spoilers 🚨
jail. jail for a thousand years
truly the craziest shit abt tlou is that is drops sunday night. like them bitches hit me with the most disturbing shit that irreversibly alters my brain chemistry and i'm just supposed to go to bed after that and be totally normal abt it at school the next morning
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.
*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
*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
i’m gonna cry for sam and henry so much oh my god
just to confirm. YES. I DID. A LOT.
i’m gonna cry for sam and henry so much oh my god
"he's not my dad-"
"she's not my daughter-"
JUST U FUCKING WAIT.
joel did the right thing, i stand by that. the world was already so far gone, and ellie is joel’s world. so technically he did “save the world”. plus he doesn’t owe anyone anything. so much was taken away from him and he could not stand to lose another person he cares about. i LOVE JOEL MILLER!!!!
god bless the fanfic writers of the world🙏
The last of us II ocs!! Meet sal (driver) and pepper (kid)
I’ll totally be posting more of them
the last of us Oc blitz! Meet Sal
Sal is 20 going on 46 and has been through hell and back. (But who in the Last Of Us hasn’t?) she’s from Texas as well. first thing after the outbreak she teamed up with her old highschool friends and stayed with them for a year. They got caught in a horde of infected and she ended up hurting her ankle, causing her to be dead weight. Her “friends” pushed her into the Horde to save their own skin. This is when she found out she was immune (though, lesser than Ellie.) she was able to pull herself out by the fucking seat of her pants (but not after being bit like ten hundred times.) she basically accepted her fate and sat against a tree to wait for her time. It did eventually come but she was able to snap back to reality after clawing at her own skin for a bit. She’s kinda half dead from that point on and stays pretty much 20(ish) looking. The only new growth happening is either her eye bags or cordyceps. She now is on a quest to find Joel, (she knew him pre-outbreak) as he’s the only one she trusts to tell about her condition. She finds Ellie in Santa Barbara instead after she’s fought with Abby. Yes I make them kiss what of it??
Tlou II oc blitz! Aspen hensbane!!!!
She met Abby in a chance of fate as she was escaping her life in the scars. She was high ranking and was one of the few believed to receive visions and messages from god. (She got SUUUUUPER high on shrooms like all day every day) she speaks very eloquently but in basically riddles cus the shrooms fried her brain somewhat. She followed not far behind Abby and lev and was able to get to Catalina island just to go “we’ve saved each others asses, and now you and I are eternally grateful to each other” and wouldn’t leave her be.
YOOOOOOO SAL WITH NO PANTS LESGO
