The Moth and the Wolf

Just as a forewarning, I do talk very extensively about trauma and a bit about dysphoria at the end, I realize not everyone wants to hear that so now's your time to click off.

Something that has always irked me about the fandom portrayal of the kid characters in TLOU is that they are always written as "The Innocent" character archetype, in Jungian psychology The Innocent archetype symbolizes "purity, trust, faith, optimism, and vulnerability. These types often approach life with joy and enthusiasm”

And my god… does this inaccuracy irk me.

I remember Ellie getting this treatment way back before Part 2 came out, Ellie was never portrayed by people as having experienced any trauma; she wasn’t allowed to have negative coping mechanisms, and she wasn’t allowed to have mental illness. At worst, she was allowed to say a few bad words but was largely still “The Innocent.”

But canonically, Ellie is a victim of child neglect; she drinks beer, she knows how to drive, she plays poker with the other kids, she steals, she has seen death, she has known abandonment, she knows loss, she has been held captive by a serial killer (David), and she has killed.

Ellie is very traumatized by the end of Part 1, and after all of it…

She’s cold.

She’s closed off.

She grows angry, she smokes pot, she shuts Joel out of her life, and she copes with her trauma badly, and winds up hurting both herself and Joel. And then Part 2 happens.

Ellie is a 3-dimensional character from start to finish, arguably the best-written character in gaming.

Now I understand that fanfiction is self-indulgent and that’s ok, but I start to have a problem with it when people start to think fanon is canon.

Now let’s look at Lev.

I've read fanworks that portray Lev as the Innocent archetype, just like Ellie, but that isn’t who Lev is or who he is going to be by the time he and Abby reach Catalina Island.

Before even meeting Abby, we get hints of his backstory through Yara, that he always question the “laws” and “traditions”, that Lev didn’t fit in their society; that he was forced to choke down who he truly was since the day he was born, he might not have had very many friends on the island, he never mentions playing with other kids or people he might miss, he has no father to speak of and his mother is well… not good.

Only 2 days before he met Abby, Lev was preyed upon by one of the leaders of their society, much like how David preyed upon Ellie, chosen to be this man's… “wife.” The betrayal, disgust, fear, and absolute horror he must have felt that day is very telling when Yara says that shaving his head was “suicide,” and I think Lev knew that when he did it.

He had reached a point in his life where he was ok with death as long as it was as himself.

(Side note when you look at Lev’s character model next to The Seraphite Male model his head is not clean shaven and has nicks and scars on his scalp, when he shaved his head, he did it clumsily and in haste.)

2 days later, his sister is recaptured and has her arm destroyed by the people he was once proud to be a part of, (he still prays, even after everything). What must that night have been like for Lev? Waiting in that trailer as his sister, the only one who was on his side, slowly begins to deteriorate, as her arm grows red and swollen, the growing anxiety, waiting and listening as the neighbors he once knew come to hunt him down, spitting his deadname at him like an arrow meant to pierce?

And afterwards, just 3 days after leaving, when his sister is healing, Lev wants to go get their mom; he doesn’t want her to get hurt, because he loves her, as all children do, I know that pain well, that Innocent Hope that maybe this time things will be different, that the parent you love with all your heart will for once be the person you need them to be. That Hope is completely shattered when he arrives at his home… and his mom starts screaming at him.

Then she tries to kill him.

And then he kills her by accident.

And then he watches his sister get gunned down.

Because of him.

Because of what he did.

Lev lost everything, his home, his sister and his mom, in just 3 days.

What must that have been like for Lev? To watch his mother fall against the table, to see her still and lifeless by his own hand. What was it like to watch his sister gunned down? Any semblance of innocence he had died on that island with the rest of his family.

Because Santa Barbara has the most amount of cut content in the game, we don’t get to see much of Lev after everything he’s been through, but we do get a hint of it in a (very missable) letter that Abby writes. It says:

“So the "good info" I traded those fish for turned out to be bogus. Despite our repeated dead ends, my gut tells me the Fireflies are in Santa Barbara. Somewhere. (I'm picturing the snark I'd be getting if you had heard me say that—shut up!) Gonna check another tip back in the suburbs. Wish us luck.

I was sitting by the fire at night with Lev, looking at the waves, thinking about you. I told him your stupid joke about the skateboarding grandma. He laughed so hard he spit out his food. It's the happiest I've seen him yet. I miss you.

You'd have liked it here—there are no towns, just small caravans that move up and down the coast. Everyone says Santa Barbara is haunted. Like some Bermuda Triangle. I think it's beautiful.

I saw a seal the other day. It had spots. Is this some karmic way of you mocking me?”

Right there, did you see it? “I told him your stupid joke about the skateboarding grandma. He laughed so hard he spit out his food. It's the happiest I've seen him yet.”

Lev is not coping with the loss of his family well; he isn’t smiley or goofy or jokey, or playful, he’s sad, sullen, and hurt, like Ellie was at the end of Part 1, And something that stood out to me during the game commentary is that Lev isn’t happy because they found the fireflies; he’s just happy for Abby, not himself, just for Abby.

I think Lev is deeply depressed by the time they get to Santa Barbara.

And then the Rattlers capture them.

We don’t know how long it was between Ellie leaving the Farm and her finding them on the cross; it could have been a few months or a whole year, and because of cut content we don’t know much about the rattlers, but what we can infer about them through the art book is…

Very, very bad.

(But its cut content so take it with a grain of salt.)

After everything he had already been through, Lev was also now kept as a slave, for months, with all the horrors that that would entail, and then left on a pole to die in the sun,

But he escapes with Abby to Catalina Island.

By then Lev has endured more trauma than most have in their lifetime.

(Trigger warning for dysphoria)

Now is as good a time as any to take a moment to bring up the fact that Lev is trans. It’s a topic I don’t see people discussing, but it is so fundamental to his character. In a world where information on such things is scarce, I am trans, and I understand this unique hell that Lev has been born into. He lives in a world where there are no proper binders, no HRT; he will grow up and have to live forever with a body that isn’t his, looking in a mirror and seeing a stranger, speaking and hearing someone else, and will have no path to correct that, and while people may accept him, so few will truly understand it, it anyone at all.

(K, nuff of that)

There is no way that Lev wouldn’t live through all of this and not develop some unhealthy coping mechanism, there are no therapists at the end of the world (except for Gail who is no help). And while I think he’s in good hands with Abby as his guardian, I know for a fact he is going to have a very difficult life.

I’m reminded of the animal symbolism in TLOU: Abby is represented by the Wold, Ellie is represented by The Moth and Lev is represented by The Shark, which represents Peace, Calmess, and Certainty of Movment, but every animal symbol has a Shadow Self, for the Wolf, its Wrath, for The Moth its Death, and for the Shark is, Unchanneled aggression: Strength without wisdom can become destructive, Isolation from the collective: While independent, the shark is still part of the sea. Disconnecting from others can make our path much harder, and Relentless motion without pause: Constant movement without reflection may cause us to miss the deeper wisdom the journey offers.

I think Lev is going to crash HARD when he reaches Catalina Island; when he and Abby are safe and they can relax, that’s when trauma rears its ugly head. I don’t think he is going to cope well with being among “normal people” ignoring all the things he’s already been through, the religious indoctrination that taught him “technology=bad” would put a degree of separation between him and everyone else. The ritualistic scars on his face already paint him as something “other,” and religious indoctrination doesn’t magically disappear overnight. How will he cope with living amongst… technology?

I could see Lev growing cold, growing angry… at himself, at the world, and growing isolated.

I think that if Lev is ever in a Part 3 (and I do hope he is), he is going to be a very, VERY different person from who he is in Part 2.

And that’s why…. I think Lev smokes.

Because Lev is The Shark Who Would Not Surrender to Silence, And Now Lives In Exile.