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🚨 Spoilers for ep. 7 AND the entirety of og TLOU game. 🚨

Random thought II. HBO TLOU does a lotta shit right, but how it plays with perspective (with perspective being such an important thing in this game series already) it easily the best imo. AND important I think, considering it's something that a surprising amount of video game adaptions tend to fail with or don’t really bother at all) Thread below

Why do these characters do all the awful and amazing stuff they do? How do they justify their actions to others and themselves?

I go on and on on this account abt the inherent differences between video games (active medium) and television (passive medium) and how production teams need to stop looking at them like they're obstacles when adapting video games into tv and instead see them for the opportunities they are it to expand on side characters and the world in ways that video games can’t.

In the game, we really only get to see Joel’s perspective the whole way through (with Ellie during the Winter segment, which I'll get to in a sec). We know all about his trauma, his guilt and fears over losing Sarah, and how much he loves Ellie and wants more than anything to protect her. That very much culminates in much of the audience understanding, if not outright justifying, him murdering dozens of people and lying to Ellie about the whole thing. And within the game, it works really fucking well. Why else are people still vehimately defending Joel’s actions over a decade after the game was released?

But with television being the passive medium that it is, we get that chance to see an expanded version of the world. We get to have more scenes focusing on nonplayable characters, setting up their wants and goals and desires independent of Joel and Ellie. We get to have extended flashbacks without Joel and Ellie. We get to have whole episodes focusing on them in the case of Bill and Frank which, if you ask me, is so far the best ep. in the series.

The result? We get to better see everyone’s perspective and mindset and what drives them to do the things they do which fits the series' core thesis of love as a motive.

Bill and Frank? Romantic love, so strong and powerful that the idea of losing of it scares the fuck out of you.

Sam and Henry? Familar love. The intense desire to protect your family at the cost of others. Knowing what you doing it wrong, knowing that it will hurt so many people, but doing it anyway.

Kathleen? Grief and the absence of justice. What do you do when you fail the person you love?

Tommy and Maria? Wanting to protect what you have. Being satisfied. Finding hope and purpose in community.

Riley? Wanting a place to belong and have hope for the future.

All and all these bits make the world feel much more lived in, for lack of a better word. Joel and Ellie don’t feel like the center of the universe. Like the brutality that the characters demonstrate feels like it has more of a meaning —they exist and are driven by things independent of Joel and Ellie.

Idek if this makes any sense but ya. Hyperfixation go brrr brrr.