can't be for nothing

the real tragedy of tlou is that in saving ellie’s life, joel dooms their relationship. it’s not tragic that he killed a hospital of ppl and prevented a cure bcus we have no emotional attachment to any of those people or the notion a cure might actually work and fix the world. we’ve travelled across that world with ellie and joel and seen how it’s in pieces and how unlikely it could ever be fixed the way the fireflies imagine. but emotionally we ARE with joel and ellie and as we see them in that car and hear joel tell his lie and see ellie’s face, we know that things can’t be the same for them again. i am now and have always been of the opinion that joel lies in that moment to protect her from her feelings of guilt and the burden of thinking she has 2 save the world (and ive always said too he should have told her the truth eventually instead of her having to force his hand to get it), but regardless of that the choice joel made and the lie is always going to be between them. things will always be a little different now. an unspoken thing that eats away at the space between them, making it bigger and bigger. and that’s why it’s really tragic because joel picked ellie’s life over and above anything else cus he loved her and thus knew her life had value independent of being a cure to save the world and she should get to live it, but whilst she is living it (something she is only able to do cus he saved her), he has to watch from afar. he saves her and loses her at the same time.

also this is honestly why ppl who say joel just acted selfishly for himself cus he didn’t want to lose ellie baffle me cus he does lose her ultimately and yet tells her after 2 years of not speaking he’d do it all over again exactly the same. bcus for him it was about giving her the life she finally deserved to live at last, not one stuck in a military school with no one who cared her about, not one in which she’s seen as a commodity, but one in which she’s just a fucking kid who gets to make friends and fall in love and learn how 2 swim and watch movies and have snowball fights, even if he does have to watch her living that life from a distance eventually. and that’s the goddamn tragedy of it all. he couldn’t save ellie’s life and keep her in the same way he had her during their journey together (relationship wise ofc i mean not in a possession way), he knows that but he’d still pick her, he’d still save her, because her life is more important to him than himself.