#answer: anon

People suddenly started becoming extremely picky the moment season 2 was announced. In one of the TLOU subreddits, the first thing they said was that they better find an actress that's exactly two inches shorter than Bella, to play Dina, because Dina is exactly two inches shorter than Ellie. Then, when some of the first pictures of Isabela were released, they whined that she has piercings and who would ever have piercings in the apocalypse? It's not like she can just... put them into her ears while in Jackson and then leave them there, just like how Joel did with his watch.

They are obsessed with how clean and new their clothes look (which, yes, does make my nose wrinkle too), but never questioned how Joel was able to keep his beard and hair short in season 1, nor how they both were able to find winter coats, gloves, and boots that fit them, nor how they managed to get Ellie an entire new outfit between the place where the Fireflies' car broke down and Jackson.

The "mistakes" were already there but, interestingly, they only matter now and are serious enough to warrant constant waves of criticism.

They don't like that a man isn't leading the story anymore*, and they don't like that the person who was picked to isn't someone they find attractive (because it didn't go lost on me, how so many of the people who criticize the show on TikTok used to also be the ones crying because Cailee Spaeny "deserved" it more and cried because that one cosplayer who sculpts her features with heavy make-up looks more like game Ellie than Bella).

They care about the looks and the fact that a man isn't there anymore, so they refuse to pay attention and are dumbfounded by everything. Like, at this point they're even coming up with random ass plot points that in the game don't happen. Tommy has a very marginal, small role in the plot, and Ellie doesn't find him until she murders Owen and Mel, but if you were to listen to the "reviewers," you'd believe that you're actually following his story (because god forbid you put a woman at the center of the narrative).

It's irritating as fuck, especially because the people who come up with bullshit criticisms then try to shield themselves by coming up with bullshit excuses, usually focused around their autism and how the games are their special interests, rather than admitting that they'd rather die than meaningfully engage with new material that's carried by an actor they don't find fuckable.

What makes me laugh is that they're all screeching that HBO is causing Naughty Dog to die and that the show won't be renewed for a 3rd season when, in reality, Sony has earned at the very least 12 millions in a month because people purchased the game and HBO already announced there's going to be a 3rd season. Like... talk about disconnect from reality.

OHHHHHH that's such a sweet thought!! 🥺🥺 I hope you don't mind if I just—

———

It was inevitable, the way you were drawn to one another. It was true when you first met many months ago on a sunny day in Ijincho, and it's true now, watching movies together on opposite ends of the couch. It always starts off that way, just something innocent in intent; a means to spend more time together laughing and talking, but there's always something, some unspoken, unseen force that draws the two of you together until you meet halfway.

And that's about where you both are on the couch right now, the movie playing in the background, forgotten, while you hum, content, in between kisses. You're not quite the tangle of limbs or clothes just yet—though the night is long, and he has nowhere that he needs to be tomorrow—the two of you simply exist within each other's spaces, sharing heat and tender caresses. Of a cheek, idly stroking with his thumb. With a hand splayed down and around your neck, right in that little junction where it meets your shoulder, where his nails graze. Of your lower back as he drags you closer until you're almost, almost, on top of him.

You both have every opportunity to slip a hand beneath clothes, knowing full well that that's all it takes for them to come off, but that's just too messy for this quiet moment. All either of you really want from the other is nothing more than this; an organised mess and kisses that are both gentle and forceful; where you lean into him, and he accepts all that you are.

His eyes are gleaming and his smile is somehow sleepy when you pull back. But not for breath. Not when you both breathe the other full of love and life. No, you part from him with a final peck at his lips to reach up and pull his glasses of his face, folding them slowly, gently, and then reaching past him to put them somewhere safe. He lets you do this, watching you all the while with an easy smile. Zhao turns his head as you lean past him, his lips finding your pulse just to feel its rhythm; the unshakeable proof that he has you. He kisses his way up it until he finds your lips again, anchoring you into place with a hand on the back of your head. He tilts his head just so, pulling you closer, as if that alone will let him taste you all the more.

He swears it does.

I had very few hopes before the first episode aired (people spent two months "campaigning" for Bella to be removed in favor of a more conventionally attractive actress, some even saying that Bella should realize her shortcomings (???????) and leave the show on her own) and lost whatever remained of them after episode 2 (when people started saying "NOOO, keep watching the show because Tommy and Jesse and literally anyone else but the female character who gives the story reason to exist"). I went on a mass unfollowing streak after episode 6, when people started cutting Bellie out of all gifsets and screenshots.

The show isn't perfect in any way, I found some of the structural decision to be fairly weak and the cinematography didn't impress me particularly, but... yeah, most of the critiques were made by people who weren't paying attention because their eye candy was taken away from them* or because they completely misunderstood every single plot point and character of the game.

One of the points they keep hammering on is that Bellie is unpleasant and like... so is Game Ellie. Game Ellie is extremely unpleasant. She's an awkward, stubborn loser who doesn't think before she acts, yells are her pregnant girlfriend, causes her best friend to die and her uncle to become disabled, and later on deals with her grief and guilt by drinking her weight in alcohol. What is pleasant, about this?

It's clear that people didn't pay attention to the actual plot of the game and invented their own version of it in which Ellie is a mentally stable and super likeable femme fatale, Dina has a personality (I love Dina, but she's really a non-character until the very last scene at the farm), and Tommy a bloodthirsty monster. Instead of getting a narrative about the futility of revenge and the cycle of abuse, they got Rambo (but without the anti Vietnam War commentary.)

Really fucking glad the show is over, not because I wasn't liking it but because seeing people interact and react to it was dragging me crazy.

I think that the biggest problem is that many, many people didn't pay attention the first time around, didn't understand the characters nor their motivations, and now they're lashing out because the show is highlighting how little attention they pay to things.

Just look at how many people constantly rant and rave about how cool and "much better" TLOU2 would've been if Ellie had been the one who got murdered and Joel the one who sought revenge. Like, the game is very clear: Joel spent years of his life being suicidal, either attempted or thought to, and Ellie's death would be what brings him to go through with it once and for all. If Ellie were to be murdered, the game would last 20 minutes: beginning scene, she gets killed, Joel shoots himself in the mouth, credits roll.

Same thing with Tommy, who the fandom insists on depicting as a vengeful monster when, in reality, he goes to Seattle solely to keep Ellie safe.

Same thing with Ellie, whose goal was never to exterminate the entirety of Seattle but kill a very specific group of people and whose canon, non-gameplay kills account for less than 10.

The worst thing is that now they're coming out of the woodworks to over-analyze things in the most intellectually deficient tone possible, slapping random labels on everything because the show made them feel dumb as fuck. The latest is that the show is "pro-life" because Mel begs Ellie to save her baby. The baby that the plot is clear about her wanting. Pro-life.

They are intellectually dishonest on a good day, amazingly dumb on the worse, and their vocabulary consists of therapy speech terms they're not ashamed of scattering around like breadcrumbs in front of pigeons.

Yepppp thank you anon!

I feel like most of the outrage about Tommy is happening because a lot of people also misunderstood Game Tommy's intentions too, reducing both him and his brother to vengeful animals, when this is couldn't be any further removed from what canon establishes.

Game Tommy says it very clearly and people still missed it, so now they changed the writing around a bit to make it even more blatant, and... people are still missing it and are upset that, in the "revenge bad" story, Tommy isn't eager to get revenge.

Issue is: we don't know much about Joel and Tess' relationship, do we?

In the show, yes, they're a lot more direct with it and do so by showing them sleeping in the same bed and by having Joel refer to her as "mine" when he's at Frank and Bill's (this happens in 2013, though. We have no prior confirmation of them being together before this date, so I wouldn't say that Joel "moved on" from Sarah's death only five years after it happened), but in the game they flirt so much more (and Joel is hinted as being suicidal here too).

While I was playing, I did get the impression that they were, if not in a romantic relationship, then at the very least friends with benefits, and that Joel was more than happy to be commanded around by her (and that this was such a common recurrence that NPCs literally refer to him as being Tess' guard dog).

I see why you make the argument for Tess being the fridged woman, but I don't think that her death is the sole thing that moves the plot forward, nor what gives Joel reason. Like, yeah, he likes to play the hard ass tough guy, but he wouldn't have left Ellie, an infected kid, to fend for herself in the wild, and he is portrayed as being a bit of a pushover. Realistically, I don't think it would've taken any character a lot, to convince him to do their bidding lol.

All deaths in the TLOU narrative are important, from first to last, but I feel like it's important to see why. All the deaths of people that are dear to Joel are caused by humans, while for Ellie they're caused by infected. This helps build the narrative for the end of the game and its sequel too: on one side we have Joel, a man who has grown to despise humanity and thinks it's not worthy of redemption, and on the other we have Ellie, a girl who thinks that all of humanity's faults can be traced back to the infection and that a cure could wipe away.

In Joel's eyes, Tess' death happened at the hands of FEDRA, while in Ellie's it happened because she got bitten first. Just like the second game, it's really a question of perspectives.

Also, the fact that some people still romanticize the story to this day. Nabokov must have spasms in his coffin every time this happens🤦🏼‍♀️I would

Oh, he's definitely rolling around.

Honestly, though, for the past year or so I've seen considerably less people (who haven't read it) discuss it as a romance novel and more as a book whose author thinks pedophilia is excusable and the victim's fault.

This idea comes from the same place of misunderstanding: when Nabokov wrote the novel, he did so with utter sincerity. What Humbert jots down in his memories is the actual, absolute truth and what the author thinks about the topic of CSA.

It's still not great, don't get me wrong, but it's (slightly) better than what we had before.

(Zhao, my beloved, I will drop everything to see if you're okay🤧)

Wehhh me too nonnie!! WE LOVE SOME HURT/COMFORT IN THIS HOUSE 🙏🙏 At least I think this classifies as hurt/comfort 🤔

I really could see him doing this tbh, but not before a little (or a lot) of hesitation on his part, because he just got out of cleaning up a mess some of his boys inadvertently left behind, and it's like 3am, which is kind of the norm for him honestly, but it isn't for you, but he really wants to see you? So he's humming and hawing and keeps his thumb over the call button, wondering what he could even say, because he knows he's gonna be waking you up if he does hit that button.

And then he gets a text?

From you?

hey are you up?

And he immediately responds:

yeah. just got done wrapping some shit up. you ok? its pretty late

had a weird dream. been rolling around ever since

well can i come by? i was kinda wanting to call you tbh. kinda in a mood too.

yeah of course!

Things just kind of have a way of working out for the two of you tbh; coincidences that make everything feel right. Right by you, right by him. Makes you feel right for each other too, even though neither of you say it. But you feel it in the way he smiles at you when you open the door for him twenty minutes later. And in the warmth he radiates when he pulls you in for a hug you both need.