The Last Of Us Hbo - Tumblr Posts - Page 2
Exhaustion
A/n: So this turned out way more angsty than I originally planned it to be but whatever. I also kinda hate it but I just wanted to write a little bit to get back into the swing of things.
All my work is 18+ MDI
Word count: 1.7K
Warnings: Lowkey angsty but fluff at the end, kinda established relationship, reader doesn't know how to cope, miscommunication, implied traumatic past, mention of nightmares, post outbreak! Joel, no use of Y/n, swearing, self harm in the form of sleep deprivation if that's a thing. Please don't read if any of this is triggering to you.
When you were out on the road it was easy to avoid your nightmares. You would barely sleep in between watches with Joel, and when you did it was a light enough sleep that you wouldn't ever dream.
But in Jackson it was different. It took a few months to get adjusted to the new way of life, the somewhat normal life in the commune. Once you, Ellie and Joel had gotten used to the new town you had quickly fallen into a routine. Ellie would go to school while you and Joel took patrols with each other before coming back home to share a bed. For a while you would still sleep light enough that your dreams, or rather nightmares couldn't reach you in Joel's strong embrace, but eventually you got comfortable and your past crawled it's way into your subconscious.
On more than one occasion you had jolted awake in a panic not knowing where you were while Joel was forced to calm you down. It was these moments that filled you with guilt and shame. Joel had been through just as much, if not more than you had and he didn't need you ruining what little sleep he got just because you couldn't handle something that you had escaped from over a year ago. It was then that you decided to push through and suck it up. If Joel could handle a little trauma, then so could you.
So as the days went on you forced yourself to sleep as little as possible. Sure it made you a little jumpier on patrol but so far Joel hadn't noticed and you hoped he would just chalk the bags under your eyes up to long patrols nights and 'waking up' earlier than usual. You had made it almost a month sleeping just enough to keep you functioning, which meant about an hour or two a night, before Joel decided to corner you during patrol.
"So you gonna tell me what's going on with you?" He spoke one day while you were hiking up to a abandoned hunting cabin that had been shaped into a patrol outpost you two occasionally spent a weekend on patrol at.
His words caused you to momentarily freeze up during which he sent a glance over his shoulder at you, eyeing your reaction. "What do you mean?" The words left your mouth carefully with no emotion as you tried to focus on anything other than your pounding headache and the way Joel kept glancing back at you. Just another mile and then you would avoid Joel at the cabin. You've held off this conversation for a month, you could do it for another 30 minutes.
Joel, however, seem to think otherwise. He scoffed at your response and stopped walking, causing you to pause for a moment before walking past him towards the cabin. Just a little more...
"Don't bullshit me, darlin'. You're shaking and sweating right now just walking when you can usually do this hike without breaking a sweat. You're pale and you've had bags under your eyes for the past month. So tell me what the fuck is going on and why you won't talk to me."
Shit.
He noticed. Those weeks you had gone laying in bed awake while we slept at your back and you tried to play it off hadn't gone unseen like you had hoped. Now he was mad at you and you were just causing him more stress, the opposite of what you hoped your efforts would do. "It's nothing Joel. Just drop it, alright?" you kept walking and ignored the ever growing headache pulsing behind your eyes as the exhaustion caught up to you after not getting a wink of sleep the past three days and then hiking with this conversation thrown at you. Joel called out your name angrily and stormed up to you forcing you to stop walking and face him. The cabin was only a quarter mile up now.
"I'm trying to have a serious conversation here!"
"Yeah, and I'm trying to avoid it!" You regretted the words as soon as they left your mouth because they only confirmed that something was wrong.
"And why's that, huh? What aren't you telling me?" His expression changed then and he dropped his gaze down to his hands for a moment. "Did I do something wrong? Is that why you won't talk to me?" His fears broke through you just a bit and you could feel your throat tighten up against the tears building up. When you spoke your voice came out thick and brittle.
"Jesus, Joel, no it isn't you. Shit. You didn't do anything wrong, it's just me, okay? It's just something I have to handle." Joel met your eyes again then and stared into your glazed over gaze. He only nodded then and started walking again. Thank fucking God, he was dropping it.
It wasn't until you thought Joel was fast asleep that your exhaustion truly hit you. You knew that if you slept now you would be out hard and it would be impossible to avoid the memories of unwanted grasps against your skin and cries of pain as you were struck would reach you. So instead of laying in bed with Joel where you knew you would be out in seconds if you stayed any longer you slowly climbed off the dusty bed and downstairs to sit by the fire place where a few glowing coals remained from your earlier tense dinner.
You sat there for what could've been hours or minutes just rubbing your temples with shaking hands, trying to physically force away your pounding migraine. You hadn't even noticed Joel appearing in the doorway until his voice caused you to all but jump out of your skin.
"This is you handling it then?" His voice was raspy with still and you couldn't help but be jealous at the precious hours he had to sleep in peace. "Jesus christ darlin, when's the last time you slept?"
His words immediately brought tears to your eyes and the walls you had spent weeks building high came crashing down. You crumbled as the first sob tore through your body, your entire being shook and you brought your hands up to cover your face as shame and pain ripped into you.
Joel was upon you in seconds and wrapped you up in his strong embrace as he slowly rocked you back and forth, trying to calm you down. "Breath, darlin', just breath. Listen to me okay? In...and out," when you only continued to shake and sob in his arms he lifted one hand to your face and used the other the grab your own hand and place it against his chest, forcing you to feel his deep breaths. "Come on you gotta work with me here. You feel my breaths? Yeah, you do, just match my breathing, I know you can do it. In, and out. Yeah, just like that, good job." When your breathing had finally evened out and all that remained was a few sniffles you began to speak.
"I'm really sorry. I didn't mean to, uh, I didn't mean to wake you up. You can go back to bed." Joel just grabbed the back of your head and pressed you into his chest while shaking his head.
"Don't do that. Don't apologize, you did nothing wrong. I just need to know what happened so I can help you, alright?"
You shook your head and mumbed against him, "I don't wanna tell you." When you looked at his face he had a deep frown and concern etched across his features.
"Why not, darlin'. You know I'm here to help you, that's how this thing works." He gently pulled you away from his chest and made you look at his face while he spoke.
"I don't want you to think I'm weak..." You avoided eye contact when you saw his face crumble and realization flood his gaze. He had finally figured it out.
"It's your nightmares isn't it?" You just barely nodded and continued staring at the ground you sat on. "You've been forcing yourself to stay awake? Sweetheart, you can't do that, it'll get you killed out here if you aren't able to function properly. Why didn't you just come to me?" His words were spoken quietly but still firm in your ear.
"I didn't want to be a burden. You've been through so much as well and you don't wake up screaming every night. You're so strong. I didn't want to make you see how weak I am, so I figured if I just didn't sleep then they wouldn't be able to hurt me again." You shook your head in disbelief at yourself and scratched at your arms anxiously. "God I spent so long getting out of there and trying to heal and I'm still just the dumb little slave. Nothing's changed." Joel grabbed your arms and forced your scratching to stop and looked you in the eye with anger behind his eyes.
"Hey. Don't say that shit. What you went through is unspeakable and it doesn't make you weak to be affected by it." You opened your mouth to speak but he cut you off before you could get any words out. "No, I'm talking right now. You are so incredibly strong, darlin'. You've been through so much and you still manage to push forward and live. So don't you dare call yourself weak because that is absolute bullshit and we've promised not to lie to each other. How about we go upstairs and get you some sleep, and if you have a nightmare you wake me up, I don't care how often or what time it is and you tell me what you need me to do, okay?"
You nodded your head and leaned forward to press a soft, barely there kiss to his lips that he immediately reciprocated. "Thank you. For everything."
"You don't have to thank me for anything, darlin. This is what I'm here for. Please don't ever feel like you can't tell me stuff like this, alright." You just nodded again and allowed him to help you back upstairs into bed where you fell asleep in his strong embrace within seconds of your head hitting the pillow.
i cannot stress this enough: hbo joel and ellie are so fucking funny to me the way they’re like two feral cats 0.5 milliseconds away from duking it out at any given time.
like game joel really only ever gets mildly annoyed with her until their argument in jackson (or for that quick second after she tries to bring up tess). hbo joel on the other hand is absolutely ready to throw hands with a fourteen year old – verbally and physically at a moment's notice. he's 56. he's grown. do you think that's stopping him from duking it out with a middle schooler? absolutely not. this show is rated tv-ma but his hands are tv-g for general audiences, ellie damn well included.
Late night rambling — It's finals week and I drank too much coffee.
Both Joel&Ellie TLOU and Silco&Jinx Arcane scratch that Lone Wolf and Club trope that I live for, but there's just.. Idk. Added layers of selfishness on Joel and Silco's part that have me by the throat. How they both refused to sacrifice their daughters. In Silco's case for something he genuinely believed in and dedicated his life to, but Jinx didn't care too strongly towards. For Joel something he couldn't give less of a shit about, but Ellie wanted more than anything.
I'm not sure how to word it right now (it's almost midnight over here lol) butyea
I have been reduced to near tears over ep. 3 for a multitude of reasons, but let me ramble specifically about Bill and Frank's story and how, despite how radical the changes are, it still fulfills the same general purpose as the game and teaches Joel and Ellie what they needed to be taught. Just from a different angle
More than anything, The Last of Us is about companionship and love. Each new character introduction and story is about showing the possible outcomes and consequences (both positive and negative) of allowing yourself to get attached to others.
Game Bill's story presents the negative consequences: resentment, grief, and loss.
But HBO Bill and Frank presents the positive consequences: love, trust, and (most important to Joel) purpose.
Both ultimately serve the same general purpose in teaching Joel and Ellie a lesson about companionship and do so well! Two sides of the same coin! It's great and I'm crying so much don't mind me.
It's also just a textbook case of what a good adaptation should do. It builds on an untouched storyline. It utilizes arguably the biggest benefit of television as a passive storytelling medium (the ability of the film camera to better focus on nonplayer characters for extended periods of time without having to justify itself with gameplay) and runs wild with it! It's so fucking good.
do not hmu i'm absolutely inconsolable about sam and ellie.
when i first heard about them lowering sam's age i was admittedly kinda confused abt that bc i felt that a reason why he and ellie worked so well was because they were abt the same age.
but it works in the same way that bill and frank work (see last week's tangent lol). long story short i'm obsessed with all the changes. i'm obsessed with the way ellie was like a big sister to him — reading and acting out the comic books to him, making him laugh, playing soccer with him, putting her arm around him, promising him she'll stay up with him. character wise for ellie it's fucking gr8 because it sort of puts her in joel's position of wanting to protect someone else whose younger than you but their age gap isn't so big that goofing around with him doesn't feel unnatural or like she's just humoring him for his sake. she's still a kid too.
which really just goes to show how fucking great bella ramsey and keivonn woodard are. i was completely sold on bella by ep. 3 (specifically when joel was teaching ellie gun safety and he pulled on her gun and she did get little giggle that felt so natural and contrasted so well with the seriousness of the situation and the weapon she had in her hands) but jfc their scenes with keivonn were so fucking good. it all felt so natural. they were two kids stuck in a shitty situation doing what kids always do: trying to have fun. and their scenes together never felt forced.
long story short uh amazing ep im in tears
so i already went on a tangent abt how good the acting was in ep. 5 so lemme just gush abt the prosthetics for a hot sec because wowwww i'm absolutely obsessed
if you haven't heard already, they got barrie gower as prosthetic designer (he's the guy behind vecna on stranger things and the night king on game of thrones). his shit's been amazing. i cannot recommend following him on insta (@barriegower) enough (plus he recently posted some clicker concept for the show!). the props team also reportedly consulted some naughty dog concept designers who worked on og tlou for both creating the infected prosthetics and set design which (if true) fucks soooo hard.
everything abt how they tackled bringing the infected to live action is insane. it feels so meticulously done from concept to execution.
there's the obv. practical effects/ prosthetics/stuntmen over cgi which i love. i'm sure that with the budget hbo gave the team, cgi infected would've still looked fine, but going the practical route is *chefs kiss.*
kudos to the actors underneath all that make up as well! that terrifying clicker kid was played by 9 year old contortionist and self proclaimed "rhythmic gymnast" skye belle cowton and the bloater was played by stuntman adam basil (@adam.basil on insta. totally recommend checking him out there bc he posts a lot about his acting gigs). they ended up using a good amount cgi for the bloater's movements in the end but the suit they made still looks so cool.
even where the designs deviate from the game it's still done within respect to the og design aesthetics and what makes tlou tlou. the tendrils didn't just come out of nowhere; they were in the early concepts for the og game.
there's a lot more i can say about this but shdkshdj take my adhd rambling aight gn.
tlou ep. 6 first impressions
abt to walk into the sea with a pocket full of rocks over last night’s tlou ep. (spoilers below for the show up to ep6 but not the end of the game below. tdlr: godamn was this ep. fucking gr8)
i was so worried about the argument scene bc it’s one of if not the most important bit in the game for joel and ellie but godamn they did it justice and then some. “do you give a shit about me or not?” “of course i do.” no hesitation on either of their parts — yes he loves her and that’s the fucking issue. putting ashley johnson’s improvised push in the script was *chefs kiss*. it also totally works w/ how much more pent-up anger and frustration they gave ellie in the show. the og “you are treading on some might thin ice” line will def. be sorely missed but pedro’s simple and abrupt “no” the moment ellie tries to bring up sarah sent chills up my spine godbless.
and where tf do i begin w/ joel’s monoglue to tommy? pedro pascal u beautiful bastard u. go get that fucking emmy man. the argument scene is abt how joel is ellie’s safety, but his monolouge is about how ellie is joel’s weakness. how her relying on him scares the shit out of him. as far as joel’s concerned failing people is the only thing he’s good for. he failed sarah and he failed tess; why the hell wouldn’t he end up failing ellie? and he know’s that anything happening to her will kill him. he’s desprate and pleading and fucking crying dawgggggg.
i love love love how they did the ending scene for jackson. zero hesitation on ellie’s part to go with him. “you’ve got a right to choose-” “let’s go.” “okay.” its so fucking good and such gr* foreshadowing.
literally the only issue i’ve got off the top of my head is how quick the college segment went by. the ending with joel getting impaled and him and ellie exploring the college felt a little rushed, but def. not to the extent that it ruins to ep or even really bring it down all that much just bc everything before was so gr8.
sorry i’m rambling but this one is def. one of my favorites in the whole show so far.
Random thought but I really do fuck w/ the way they wrote Ellie’s Jackson's scenes. Yes, Pedro’s monologue was gr& and I’m glad he’s getting his flowers for that, but there’s just so much about Ellie’s interactions with Jackson that got me by the throat lol. Like easily one of my favorite additions to the whole series.
I love that bit of Ellie sitting in the makeshift theater with the other kids looking anxious and on edge without Joel. I love how the camera focused on her longly jealous expression when she saw Joel and Tommy hug. I love how she didn’t hesitate to defend Joel when Maria interrogated her about him. I love “you deserve to have a choice-” “let’s go.”
I mentioned this before but God I’m obsessed with how Joel’s monologue illustrates hows Ellie is his weakness while Ellie’s Jackson scenes + their argument illustrate how he’s her safety.
And not to repeat my Bill and Frank tangent but it’s another textbook case of what a good television adoption should do. With television being a passive medium, it gives them a chance to show slower scenes focusing on nonplayer characters for extended periods of time. It’s all very good and is gonna make the finale hit so hard lol
🚨 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.
🚨tlou game spoilers 🚨
jail. jail for a thousand years
truly the craziest shit abt tlou is that is drops sunday night. like them bitches hit me with the most disturbing shit that irreversibly alters my brain chemistry and i'm just supposed to go to bed after that and be totally normal abt it at school the next morning
Spoilers for ep. 8 and cw warning for csa mention🚨
Random thought III. I’m definitely not the first one to be saying this or anything, but w/ David’s episode dropping last night i am once again obsessing over how tlou presents love through side character vignettes.
So far we’ve had:
Love in the form of a father doing everything he can to protect his daughter on zombie outbreak day.
Love in the form of an old gay couple finding peace in the mists of the apocalypse.
Love in the form of an older brother willing to kill a whole revolution to get medicine for his younger brother.
Love in the form of a sister willing to destroy herself and everything she’s built in pursuit of avenging her brother.
Love in the form of community.
Love in the form of two estranged brothers.
Love in the form of young crushes and puppylove
Then ep. 8 comes along and here's a guy whose whole stick is abt twisting love into something awful and vial to fuel the flames of his sadism. And Ellie — not Joel — is the one to face this head-on. Mind you, right off the heels of her flashback episode where the audience sees her at her most innocent and carefree.
So Ellie confronts it. She has to. Because she loves Joel, it’s love in the form of a not-daughter doing all she can to protect her not-dad.
This is the first time she’s been directly exposed to this kind of senseless violence and brutality. David wants her because he can have her, because he knows that he’s physically stronger than her and a hell of a lot crueler. Ellie was just at the wrong place at the wrong time.
It’s “love” that he’s twisted into something so hideous and so unrecognizable and so terrifying and cruel — everything that love shouldn’t be.
And Ellie's loss of innocence at the hands of this "love" is enforced by Bella Ramsey's incredible acting (give them an Emmy for ffs). Even with David dead, she doesn't stop bashing his head in, she can't.
Cause I mean, yeah. It's the desperate, terrified actions of a little girl who's already been conflated violence with justice and safety being pushed to her absolute limits.
obv. she's totally in the right here. fuck david all my homies hate david. but, at the same time, it's showing what she's capable of when being pushed to that extreme. all that fear and anger and sadness and rage that's been festering in her since riley (and probably for much longer) absolutely has the potential to become destructive. it's a rlly good set up for season 2 me thinks.
*shakes you* joel's choice had nothing to do with the logistics of the cure. homeboy was not sitting there weighing the statistical probably of the fireflies creating a cure or crunching the numbers of how they'd distribute it. he did not care abt any of that shit; his babygirl was in danger and acted accordingly.
likewise, ellie being so hurt by joel's decision was abt him lying to her and essentially telling her, little miss survivor's guilt, that her immunity meant nothing, that riley and tess and sam and henry's deaths meant nothing.
its so boring when ppl try to reduce joel's decision down to logic: "well the cure was impossible, ergo he was right". like no, that's not why he did anything. you might've been thinking abt that in retrospect but joel's character sure as hell wasn't
*shakes you* joel's choice had nothing to do with the logistics of the cure or the competency of the fireflies. homeboy was not sitting there weighing the statistical probability of the fireflies creating a cure or crunching the numbers of how they'd distribute it. he did not care abt any of that shit!! it was a purely emotional decision based on his love for ellie and that's the point!! god himself could've come down and told him that the cure would've worked and everything would've gone back to pre-cordyceps society and HE STILL WOULD'VE KILLED EVERY SINGLE FIREFLY IN THAT HOSPITAL. just for two more years with ellie! cause he loves her!!
likewise, ellie's anger at him is so much more than "he killed a bunch of ppl :(" he's the only person she's never trusted (minus riley) and he lied to her abt the most important thing in her life. he essentially told her, little miss survivor's guilt, that her immunity meant nothing, that riley and tess and sam and henry's deaths meant nothing. everything she went through, and she didn't deserve the truth.
its so boring when ppl try to reduce joel's decision down to logic when the whole point is that it's an illogical from an outside utilitarian point of view, but bc we know joel's perspective we're inclined to justify him. "well the cure was impossible, ergo he was right". like no, that's not why he did anything. you might've been thinking abt that in retrospect but joel's character sure as hell wasn't
my magnum opus and ofc its Sal
