#tlouposting

one of my favourite details in tlou is definitely joel having no first aid knowledge whatsofuckingever like. broken bone? thats fine itll probably heal fast. tess sprained her ankle? just duct tape it up real tight, thats close enough a brace. stab wound in abdomen? step one is open the wound more, step two is ignore it until you pass out from blood loss. how the fuck is he alive

there’s something soooooo. i can’t quite put it into words. but there’s something so fascinating about tlou2 where you can sort of compartmentalize everything that happens to ellie as “seattle”. seattle day 1, day 2, day 3. these are things that happened, things ellie did in seattle. so when she comes back home to jackson, to her farm with dina and jj, and she’s still the same person that she became in jackson, it’s so jarring. it’s jarring for us and it’s jarring for HER especially, because she should be home, she should be safe. but it’s not seattle that made ellie that way, and she can’t escape any of it by leaving.

it hits me sooooo bad that joel saving ellie DIRECTLY led to his death. he killed those people to save her life and abby killed him for it. and that’s why ellie thinking of him when she spares abby is so fucking insane to me because like!!! in the end joel saved ellie AND abby. he saved ellie again and again. yes, the cycle of violence, but also the cycle of THESE PEOPLE. the ways they’re connected, the way they affect each other. it always always comes back to joel saving ellie.

good character writing in tlou2 is ellie giving joel the ultimatum, and joel continuing to do whatever it takes to keep ellie with him even if it makes her hate him. bad character writing in tlou2 is joel and tommy trusting this random lady and going to her house with her friends and putting themselves in danger for no fucking reason

i keep thinking about. the ultimatum that ellie gives joel in the flashback in the second game. “tell me what happened here and if you lie i’m leaving, if you tell me the truth i’ll go back to jackson, whatever it is” i keep thinking about how at every possible moment, joel chose the option that would keep him and ellie together. he took ellie from the fireflies and then lied so that they would be together. he chooses to finally tell her the truth because it meant, even if she hated him, she would stay in jackson. he puts himself in danger, puts himself in front of her because he can protect her. he could have lied to ellie, he could have stuck to his guns and told her that there was never going to be a cure, but he knew she would leave. it fucking hits me in the chest knowing that he told her the truth because it meant that she would stay. joel would rather ellie hate him than have her leave.

real fun to see joel repressing things in real time

the tlou news international women’s day tweet is so funny because it’s like. here are the women in the show <3 love them <3 and then all but like three of them die