how i delight in serene melancholy.

001. THE LAST OF US

. i got interested in tlou/the last of us through a game theory video. yes, matpat got me into the last of us. ive heard about the game before, but ive never been inclined to play it. then, around feb-march of 2024, i finally watched a gameplay (i got both games soon after) of the two games on youtube. thats when i became obsessed with the last of us and more so, ellie williams (which we will get to later). the game really struck me with its compelling storyline. the way that love, loss, and grief was depicted seemed so real, it almost didnt seem like fiction anymore. one of my favorite parts of both games is the characters. the characters in the last of us are not strictly "good" or "bad", theyre morally gray, except david. davids just evil man. the characters may do "bad" things at times, but it only seems bad because youre not seeing the story through their eyes. a good example of this is abby anderson from the last of us part 2. (spoilers if you havent played part 2 yet) at the start of the game, she...does some things to joels head with a gold club, and thats pretty much when like 99% of the tlou fandom started hating her. i did too, actually. how could you not after you play as this man for almost the entirety of part 1? after you see all the things hes gone through, and all the things that ellie goes through after his death? but then we get to abbys side of the story. (spoilers again for part 2) we then see what really happened at the fireflies hospital back in part 1. because of joel, her fathers gone. as you play abbys part for a while, you realize that shes not the "cold hearted monster" that you depicted her to be. and as you play even more of her part, you start to see the paralells, my personal favorite being when she was carrying lev out the beach, it looked exactly like when joel was carrying ellie out of the hospital. okay now back to ellie cus we need some context on why theyre on a beach, theyre not on a vacay guys, actually theyre far from it. so after the fight in the theatre, abby decides to let ellie go despite being able to easily end her right then and there, showing that she still has some humanity in her. some time passes and now we see ellie and dina living on a farm away from jackson. everything seems fine, they seem fine, right? wrong. behind the scenes, ellies still suffering. we see how intense her ptsd really is in the barn. suddenly, shes back there. back in the place where joel died. but in her vision, some things are different. what shes seeing is not what really happened, like the staircase being longer, the door being locked, or joel screaming her name when he really wasnt when it actually happened. flash forward: after some hunting, ellie comes back home and surprise! tommys there. he tries to persuade ellie to go after abby again, but dina shoos him out of the house, but not before he calls ellie a "joke". that was the final push for ellie to go after abby again, she planned to leave in the middle of the night, but dina woke up before she could. she says that she has to "finish it", and with that, she leaves her family. she travels to santa barbara (where abby is), and gets severely injured on her side. but she continues on, she has to end it. she finds abby and lev tied to poles and she gets them both down as they all head to the beach. we see that ellie cant move properly due to her injury, yet, she still challenges abby to fight her one final time. abby declines, focused on getting lev to safety, when ellie holds up her switch blade to levs neck (not cool ellie..) showing abby what will happen if she declines. abby then accepts and they start fighting. its brutal, bloody. ellie loses 2 fingers in the process. towards the end of the fight, it looks like ellies gonna win and finally her "revenge". but at the last second, she sees joel, and ultimately lets abby go. she sits in the water, as abby and lev escape on a boat to safety. flash forward: ellies back at the farm house now. yet, its different. no dina, no jj, just the ghost of everything that used to be there. dina left, and she took the life of the house with her. you cant blame her, not after what ellie did. she goes inside the house, and picks up her guitar, the guitar that we see joel give her at the start of the game. she tries to play the song that he played for her, but it sounds incomplete without her 2 fingers. i also dont know if this is true but someone said that the 2 fingers she lost (her ring and pinky) represent dina, the ring finger, and jj, the pinky finger, and that just adds salt to the wound because whatt?? back to the story, she leaves the house, leaving the guitar behind as well. she has no wife, no child, and she cant even play guitar anymore, which is the only thing that connected her to joel. her biggest fear came true, shes alone now. and then the game ends. i genuinely love this game so much and i will forever thank matpat for getting me into it. it shows how ellies desire for vengeance led her down a path of destruction and pain, leaving her with nothing but the weight of her own regrets. ellies obsessed with the idea of getting "justice" for joel, but the cost of this obsession is losing everyone and everything around her. we see as she gets more and more violent each day she spends in seattle, to the point where we question if her humanity is still intact. when dina begs her to stay at the farmhouse, she left anyways, she chose revenge over her own family. and while i do understand, losing your father figure is an unbearable kind of pain, and she needed that confirmation that abby is really gone. im not defending her actions, im just saying that i kinda do understand why she did it. tlou has truly altered my brain chemistry. in a good way or a bad way, i dont really know. what i do know however is that i will forever cherish this game for the rest of my life. also, id just like to clarify that i do NOT support neil druckmann in any way or form, because fuck zionists!!! i love the games and only the games. thank you for listening (maybe) to my very very long yap session about tlou.