Abby/Ellie, The Last of Us

“I’m the girl, I’m the one you want!” “What the hell’s she talking about?” someone asks. “Look at me!” Ellie shouts, and the girl finally meets her eyes. “Yeah, you fucking remember me, don’t pretend you don’t, Abby.”

After stumbling upon Abby torturing Joel in the lodge, Ellie offers herself up for the cure as long as they agree to leave Joel behind. Ellie still wreaks havoc in Seattle, and their relationship grows increasingly tense when they have to work together to get to the hospital.

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

short form writers look at people writing 100k+ fics as though this is some sort of talent given as part of a fae bargain, that the commitment required shows some sort of ungodly mental fortitude.