one day i'll strap a pedometer on

[sideways]

Me: I'm a fairly chill person when it comes to fandom stuff, it's fun but it's fiction and I- [sees discourse about the TLoU ending in the year 2023] [BURSTS INTO FLAME]

I don't actually think the world needs yet another essay on a video game ending that's been a source of ferocious analysis and debate for ten years now, but as I ruefully prop my aching feet up I have to concede that maybe just writing things down would be a better strategy than furiously pacing my hallway, arguing with strangers inside my head, for 45 minutes. Good grief.

(It's fine to debate the ethics of the choices made but the CONTEXT you have to couch it within the given CONTEXT.)

Comments

[hokuton_punch]

A very unfortunate #mood. :'D (Although usually laziness wins out in my case.)

[sideways]

Perhaps we just need to invest in a sort of dictaphone... or a mute nun who'll follow our pacing around and furiously scribble down our rantings...

[anneapocalypse]

WRITE THE ESSAY I don't even go here and I will read the essay 😆

[sideways]

The context is DESPERATION Anne - the Fireflies are losing the fight against FEDRA and FEDRA is losing the fight against the cordyceps and the average human being is losing the fight to live a full life out here - everyone involved in what goes down at the ending is DESPERATE, they are all doing wrong things for right reasons and none of it is meant to feel good, you're not MEANT to side with any party in simple black and white whole, and if you get hung up on details like "14 is too young to legally consent to a medical procedure anyway" then you are MISSING the POINT.

[anneapocalypse]

Honestly I feel this without having played the game. 😂 Reminds me of no seriously every one of the Freelancers would have done far worse than kidnap an alien baby if it actually mean ending the war that came close to ANNIHILATING HUMANITY seriously the Covenant was WINNING do you understand how ABSOLUTELY FUCKED humans were right up until like the last year of the war

so yeah 🤣

[sideways]

ROFL aw man. Arguing ethics in RvB is even worse, though, at least TLoU has a consistent tone and consistent stakes.

...But yeah, in pretty much any situation where causing pain to one or two people may genuinely save All Of Everyone you can't cast the people trying to save All Of Everyone as no-nuance unethical bad guys just because the people they're hurting are your faves.

[queenlua]

bahaha, i think i had a reaction pretty similar to you :D;;;; like, back in the day, i wrote my one fic for TLoU & got the heck out of the fandom, b/c the way Fandom At Large talked about the ending was just so... dumb, to me... so seeing it come back a FULL DECADE LATER was some weird kinda blast from the past. (some of the writing choices / changes the show made didn't help....!)

can't say i mind the surge in traffic my tlou fanfic got in response to the show, though, so there's that :P

[sideways]

Hah, yes, the old fandom should be getting a bit of a boost at least! Been a bit of that around with all the TV adaptations, for better AND worse.

I just. I get the desire to debate the ethics, I think it's normal and even an intended reaction, but it's not really a morality play? It's a story? About characters? The meat of it is understanding that neither Joel nor the Fireflies would choose differently (no matter what Ellie's opinion), and understanding WHY they would make these tragic choices, having walked the world with them. If you like and sympathise with Joel, good! That doesn't mean he has to be The Most Morally Right, and it's incredibly limiting to feel that's the only way his actions could be defensible. /preaching to the choir in lieu of throwing down with randos