So, it's been a while. I've been pretty busy doing this and that and the other thing. Mostly, I've been not writing on this blog, but hell, I don't have any readership, so I don't owe anyone anything, I guess.
I know it's a little late, but when "The Last of Us" came out we were broke. Dead broke, and we couldn't afford to get it even though I wanted to play it. I read control alt delete, and I like to read Tim Buckley's reviews on games, and I was hooked by his review and his comics about it, but I had to wait quite a while to have the loose funds to get it.
We got it on the pretense of my husband's birthday, but we both know it was for me. I'm not a big fan of zombie apocalypses as I feel they are overdone, boring, and at the same time manage to scare the crap out of me. However, I like games where I sneak around and kill someone without them even knowing I was there. You need only check out my Elder Scroll saves to know that.
So, for any of you that have stumbled on this... here is my warning.
There are Spoilers ahead.
I'm not kidding.
Spoilers.
Don't get all annoyed when you see them, because I have given ample warning about the spoilers.
Here there be spoilers.
Moving on to the spoilers now.
So, the ending. As the title suggests, I'm going to be looking at this as a parent. I probably would have felt the same way about it before I became a mother, but... well, what can you do.
The beginning is important to me, because it establishes Joel, the co-protagonist, as a bereaved father. You get a brief glance at his daughter and how much he loves her. He'll damn the world to protect her, as shown when they pass up the three people walking along the side of the road. He'd do anything for her, break his back for her. As a daddy's girl until the day I die, I connect with Sarah because of her relationship with her father. Now, I wasn't raised by just my dad, and I have two brothers, but I understand the love there. It is simple, sweet, and makes perfect sense.
I bawled like I was at a funeral when she died, but not because she died. I cried because of the grief I knew her father would be feeling. I cried because I thought, "What if I lost my child?" It is honestly hard to say. Losing a child is a hard thing to comprehend until it's happened. I know that you move on, but there is a part of that child that will always be there.
So then it's 20 years later and Joel is alive, but he's estranged from his brother. He has a lady-friend named Tess who you know he cares about, but they both are careful to keep their distance, and honestly I can't blame them in this post apocalypse. In 20 years, I can only imagine how many people you trusted and relied on that died or betrayed you. At that point, you definitely start keeping things in perspective.
Then enter Ellie (yeah, I'm skipping a lot), and Joel is like "Wtf, really?"
You can tell he pretty much could care less about this girl. She's cargo and he doesn't even refer to her as a person most of the time. His only concern is about getting the cargo (Ellie) to the fireflies so that he can get his guns. Fair enough, I guess.
Things change, however, after Tess gets infected with the fungus. She sacrifices herself to buy them some time, which honestly didn't do much good. People refer to her as the girlfriend in the refrigerator, but I think that's the wrong trope. I'm not going to look it up, but I've seen enough movies to know that what Tess did was not the woman sacrificing herself for the greater good, but the infected future zombie wanting to die before he or she (in this case) turned into a zombie. It just so happened that instead of a man going out in a blaze of glory it was Tess. Who was a bad ass.
Anyway, moving on. Ellie and Joel, as they go try and find the fireflies really begin to trust and depend on one another. You can see Ellie becoming more jaded and disconnected from the world as she kills more. She forms a "This is us, and everyone is the other" bond with Joel. They become a team, and save each other more than once. Ellie fights tooth and nail to save Joel's life, and Joel does some really unethical things to save Ellie (things that I would do, mind you, but still unethical).
And here for the end. This is the real spoiler that I want to discuss.
You work your ass off with this girl that Joel has practically adopted. You listen to them talk about him teaching her how to swim and play guitar. They both see a future. It is together and beautiful. You feel at peace for a bit, hopeful... but there is that fear that everything will go wrong. You're not sure how... and then she almost drowns. I panicked. I went after her as if nothing else in the universe mattered only to find out minutes later that some retarded doctors are going to take her brain out.
I mean, what the world is going on here? Those are some crappy and unethical scientist right there. They get an immune person, and instead of handing her delicately in order to ensure that they have what they need they just decide they're going to cut her brain out. How does that make sense? I was furious, to say the least, and I planned on killing every last one of those bugs.
And I did.
Oh, I killed them all. Even when I didn't need to.
It took me a while because I suck, but I still made sure every last one of them was dead as dead could get.
When I got into the operating room, I honestly kind of thought I had gone into a cut scene. Without hesitation I killed the doctor with his own scalpel. Who knew you could shoot him or burn him to a crisp with a flame thrower? I don't think I would do it any differently though, because I loved seeing the rage on Joel's face. That primal anger of a father protecting his child.
It was terrifying and beautiful.
Then the nurse called me a monster, and I wanted to scream at her. "You're murdering a child without a second thought! You're the monster." I didn't kill her right away though. I tried to get Ellie, but the triangle didn't pop up, so I killed the nurse that accused me of being a monster and when the other one told me to just take her, I did and left.
And then Marlene. What a crappy ass surrogate mother. I wanted to kill her to. I wanted to scream at her when she said it was what Ellie would have wanted like she was already dead. Did they bother to ask Ellie? No. They didn't even bother to explore other options. They went straight for the brain pan. As Bill would say, "Fuck'm."
The cinematic that followed was beautiful and cathartic to me. I know others didn't feel that way, but I was relieved when I saw her in the back seat. I was vindicated when I saw Joel kill Marlene. I was a bit frustrated with the lie, but at the same time I understand why he did it.
A lot of people call Joel selfish and I say "So what?" The whole damn world was selfish. They wouldn't hesitate to kill me, but Joel is a monster for defending himself. Yeah, Joel wasn't a hero. He wasn't a great guy, but he was a survivor. Compassion and charity wouldn't last long in a world like that. He evolved and adapted to the way things were. I kind of think about it as a world with its own morality. It isn't the same as the world we live in now. It has devolved to "Us vs. Them". We're back to where we started. You protect your own. Maybe you're aggressive. Maybe you're reactive. In the end, a lot of death is going to happen as people struggle over resources. There is no law. No courts. The strongest, most organized get what they need to survive and keep it.
That's the world they live in. It's easy to say that "That is wrong," and that what Joel did was selfish.
But really, as a player of the game that doesn't live in that world I have the luxury of stepping back and looking at it. The world is in shambles. They want a cure and are willing to preemptively kill Ellie to get it. They'd probably do a lot of unethical testing to top it off. Ellie wouldn't be the only one to die. She'd just be a next one in the long line of dead humans.
So, assume that they get a cure. What are they going to do then? There is no more infrastructure. There are no facilities to mass produce it assuming they could even do so after they, you know, murdered patient zero without a thought. They'd have to contend with the military, bandits, all sorts of bad folks. Civilization doesn't take long to fall, but it certainly takes a while to build. Not sure where I'm going with this other than, a vaccine probably wouldn't make the vision the fireflies envision happen. It might help.. if they weren't child murderers anyway.
But all that is hindsight. You could say it's just me trying to make myself feel better about Joel's decision.
But who cares? I don't. Joel did the right thing for the right reason, as far as I'm concerned. The doctors were doing the wrong thing for supposedly right reasons. I'd say "Fuck the world" if it was my daughter or someone that I cared about, especially in a world that didn't seem worth saving.
On another note, Druckmann said that no parent disagreed with Joel while none parents were split pretty 50/50. I told my husband last night that it shows who should be parents and who shouldn't. If you don't have kids and think that Joel was wrong. Have kids and then play it again. I bet it'll change the way you look at things.
Anyway, off to work!
Somebody put me out of my misery.
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