I think the author just doesn’t get the story The Last of Us is telling.
It’s a story about loss, and how that changes people. Both characters start the story having lost someone, and neither wants to form a relationship again, but then they find each other. And they’re so afraid to go through loss again that they’ll do monstrous and selfish things to avoid it.
We’re not supposed to see Joel and Ellie as heroes. They’re complex characters that we’re supposed to empathize with even though we know they are broken people.
You are looking through such a small lense at this story. It’s also about what causes their losses (brainless people who seemingly only exist to hate the “real people”) and how that hatred stands central to the losses. It’s about creating walled off spaces and the dangers of leaving your “safe zones.” It’s feel-good fascism replacing the oppressed and expropriated group with zombies to make it more palatable. It’s settler colonialism apologia.
We think it’s about “complex people” because we’re so used to the settler colonist as a hero that even one who makes worse decisions (killing a doctor for no reason) is “complex” instead of a terrible, nihilistic person doing something even worse than their ordinary.
Of course, in the world where zombies exist for real, it’s not real “settler colonialism” to save that land. But fiction isnt ever just fiction
That’s an apt description of it. It wants you to just accept what it has to say about humanity, which is incredibly nihilistic and misanthropic, by creating strawmen that don’t actually exist. Seeing what the author has to say about Palestinians tells you everything you need to know.
Pretty sure Joel has a few lines where he shits on his brother looking for causes to join.
Sure we can sympathize with two broken people. But we also can’t ignore that they never get fixed, they seem to always reject anybody’s attempts to offer them help, and the problems all that causes as a warning to “not be like Ellie and Joel.”
I think the author just doesn’t get the story The Last of Us is telling.
It’s a story about loss, and how that changes people. Both characters start the story having lost someone, and neither wants to form a relationship again, but then they find each other. And they’re so afraid to go through loss again that they’ll do monstrous and selfish things to avoid it.
We’re not supposed to see Joel and Ellie as heroes. They’re complex characters that we’re supposed to empathize with even though we know they are broken people.
You are looking through such a small lense at this story. It’s also about what causes their losses (brainless people who seemingly only exist to hate the “real people”) and how that hatred stands central to the losses. It’s about creating walled off spaces and the dangers of leaving your “safe zones.” It’s feel-good fascism replacing the oppressed and expropriated group with zombies to make it more palatable. It’s settler colonialism apologia.
We think it’s about “complex people” because we’re so used to the settler colonist as a hero that even one who makes worse decisions (killing a doctor for no reason) is “complex” instead of a terrible, nihilistic person doing something even worse than their ordinary.
Of course, in the world where zombies exist for real, it’s not real “settler colonialism” to save that land. But fiction isnt ever just fiction
That’s an apt description of it. It wants you to just accept what it has to say about humanity, which is incredibly nihilistic and misanthropic, by creating strawmen that don’t actually exist. Seeing what the author has to say about Palestinians tells you everything you need to know.
Pretty sure Joel has a few lines where he shits on his brother looking for causes to join.
Sure we can sympathize with two broken people. But we also can’t ignore that they never get fixed, they seem to always reject anybody’s attempts to offer them help, and the problems all that causes as a warning to “not be like Ellie and Joel.”