Ted Bundy Isn't Ugly, You're Just A Lesbian

The Last of Us Part II Ellie + swearing

Arthur x Karen

Sevika + Smoking

Left Behind - Part 1 of 4

I can imagine people thinking I hate the game based on how incredibly critical I am of it in my essays and that couldn't be further from the truth. I love this game to pieces. It has been on my mind nearly every day since it came out, it fascinates me, inspires me and has like nothing else that has been released in the past year made me think about my own craft and skills, I have never been this productive and this thrilled about storytelling before. And if I'm being honest, I could write just as many, just as long essays gushing about certain aspects of the game, I just don't think that'd be an interesting read and/or give reason to have interesting conversations. No piece of art is perfect, so me being critical of it is not necessarily a reflection of my overall stance. Again, this game and its story mean the world to me.

"Returning home."

I don’t have casual obsessions, I have all consuming fixations that send me into a downward spiral to hell

i read your last post about tlou2 and i 100% agree with you. one other thing i don’t understand is how there are fans of the game who genuinely like abby. she’s selfish and she’s done some really awful stuff.. i just don’t understand how people like her. other than torturing and killing joel, they way she bashed dina’s head in and was about to kill her and the way she said “good” when ellie told abby about dina being pregnant, that was so fucked up on her part

Oh, I am currently writing another essay about Abby 👀 And I will talk in length about why her caring for a random child and playing fetch with dogs doesn't actually redeem her... but I wanna word that right before I release it into the world 😅

okay seattle day 3 on ellie’s end was. alright. seattle day 2 absolutely takes the cake but day 3 was alright. kind of boggles my mind that im more attached to jesse as a character than dina because you get so much more time with dina but ellie and jesse’s interactions are actually interesting in comparison adlskgjasldgkjads i am. a dina hater. like a full blown dina hater. it’s okay it’s fine we’re allowed to have opinions. the way the music swells when you’re about to sink the boat is VERY GOOD and i lowkey wish there had been more visual storytelling like how you see all of the bloody rags in the aquarium and are like uh what the fuck. because that was 10/10 cool. also it very much pisses me off when people call playing as abby again an “empathy test” because imo it’s not empathy whatsoever it’s pure logic. like logically speaking ellie and abby are the same. i don’t think that’s rooted in empathy whatsoever. and like if you grow to respect abby or see her side i also don’t think that’s empathy like again to me that’s just logic. also i abhor how it’s implied that like. if you never end up caring about abby then you’re a bad person. like i think it’s very predictable for people to be more attached to joel than they are to abby and if you as the player always hold it against her a little bit that she killed the guy you played as for most all of the first game then like…i don’t know. lowkey it feels like an abuse tactic to say you MUST like abby on an emotional level. like people who hate her and call her awful like i think we can all agree that they’re idiots and that logically speaking her story shows why she took those actions etc etc but the implication of “you must like this person who killed someone you cared a lot about” feels very…not cute to me. like i like her a lot! i think she’s neat! but the idea that someone lacks empathy because they never fully like abby for whatever reason…sounds gross to me. idk if it’s the fan response or the game itself at this point but i think people really watered down the message of how there are many sides bc that means that there can be many opinions! and the implication of “you must see every side” like. it’s okay to favor one side over the other! just because there are many sides doesn’t mean you have to be truly neutral. so yeah. that always irks me. frankly i’d rather hang out with an “i see her side and i respect her but frankly i’ll never get over what she did to joel” person than an “actually joel was a bad guy too and there’s no true villain” type. u feel. does that even make sense. i am also lowkey still pissed that naughty dog made a buff as hell well-rounded female character with a STUNNING PERFORMANCE from laura bailey and then made her a “villain” of sorts. i think that reinforces a lot of stereotypes associated with video games and it does irritate me. especially because when i first saw the story it felt like a slap in the face to be given a female character who hasn’t really had a chance to exist in other forms of media and then slap me in the face with actually she’s going to kill your favorite guy. like frankly that sucked! again i like her as she is i do like her But it felt as if they were dangling something awesome in my face and saying you only get this if you suffer. did not like. also i dislike that they have abby’s dad save animals as a way to communicate that he’s a good guy. that felt ridiculously hamfisted to me and especially when you’re like still not liking abby at that point in the game it feels cheap and eyeroll inducing. i honestly would’ve preferred if he was Just A Guy and then you get more time to hear about how he grapples with what he’s about to do to ellie. also i’ve always thought it was a huge cop out that the game never has abby’s dad say if he would do the same if his daughter were in ellie’s place. the first time i saw it i wanted to scream SO YOU DO UNDERSTAND WHAT JOEL DID YOU ABSOLUTE MORON because i was <3 angry <3 and this time i was more hoping that after abby said if it was me i would want you to do it that her dad would add something along the lines of if it was you i don’t know that i could. because i think that kind of thing both agrees and disagrees with joel’s choice at the end and shows jerry’s humanity simultaneously. it just strikes me as a little ridiculous that he went out of his way to save a zebra but was then super fighting for a chance to kill a teenage girl. you know? and i understand what he said about how all the violence of the fireflies was made right by this one act, i get that, but in the writing/acting/whatever i never really felt that he grappled with what he was doing. i think i would’ve connected with him more as a character if he wasn’t put on such a pedestal. also never in my life will i understand the purpose of mel as a character but that’s a rant for another time