THE LAST OF US PART II and the Problem of Being Included in the Apocalypse (Patreon)

CW: discussions of LGBT violence, dead naming, abuse, animal cruelty, and gore.

1. Gaming The Horror

The following is a simple and incontrovertible fact: I have spent the last week watching a young gay woman I care about get her throat ripped out, be burned by acid, fall to her death, get shot in the face, get shot through the face with an arrow, stabbed, bludgeoned by fists, have her jaw ripped out, have her head smashed to the ground, and all together die in various combos thereof at least 300 times. This happened.

And it got to me. 

To be fair, there’s a lot of reasons it got to me. The most important of which we’ll come back to later. But some of it also has to do with the portrayal of the violence itself. 

Now, like a lot of movie-loving guys, I spent many of my formative years watching cinematic violence with a sense of cathartic amusement. I grew up on action films where getting the bad guy and killing him was some culminating act of justice. Similarly, I had my horror phase where the inventiveness of “the kills” in the film felt like some kind of gamified score keeping. I acknowledge that most of this goes back to the boyhood titillation of it all, especially as I remember freaking out about this cool new game called Mortal Kombat and its bloody fatalities! And if I’m being honest, my overall tolerance for media violence has mostly stayed intact. 

I still like plenty of low-brow fare that knows how to keep it light and fun (and fairly unproblematic). Just as there’s lots of high-brow genre fare that found ways to mix its unshakable viscera with hypnotic imagery. Films like The Silence of the Lambs, to Annihilation, to Midsommar. It all comes with the understanding that violence has the tremendous power to punctuate, to shock, to unsettle, and to transform. To that, I want to convey how much I have room for it’s use on the whole. 

But some of it is really starting to change. 

Maybe you can call it a symptom of getting older, but I’m having a harder and harder time with certain kinds of violence. Part of that is when you’re older, it’s more likely that pain has become much less of an aspirational or abstract feeling. I don’t need movies to help me connect to deeply negative ideas. They’re already there. And when I see certain violence now, it connects to real life experiences, wounds, pain, loss, accidents, and hospital beds. It’s all part of how the arc of mortality becomes more clear with time. Because bodies aren’t a fantastical playground, they’re a limited, precious resource. 

The truth is sometimes we see that same fragility in mortality when we are kids, but we just don’t have the ability to process it. Which makes us realize just how much of this conversation is really about how human beings put up walls of defense and have difficulty connecting to our emotions, because we don’t want to let the reality of this mortality and violence in. But now that I have spent the last five years breaking down my own walls, I feel more like an open raw wound, with frayed nerves of an abundance of feelings like guilt, trauma, and so much more. And there’s no real ability to turn it off. 

And it’s why the violence sometimes hits differently. 

We can all have different triggers, too. Sometimes it’s when movies really prolong the pain of a certain experience. I know a lot of people felt this way when torture porn was en vogue, it could just feel so monotonous. Also in this game, there is so much potential for violence against dogs, which I know can absolutely wreck some people in a deep way. But for me, I’m finding the bigger problem comes with repetition of violence. I mean, I genuinely like these movies, but the endless parade of headshots in the John Wick series is honestly starting to get to me. I think it might have something to do with the disposability of this kind of violence. The lack of any time spent on its meaning. 

Which is to say there was something about The Last of Us Part II that really, really hit me hard when it comes to the aforementioned death animations. It was that repetitive monotony of those grizzly deaths, over and over and over again, especially in certain sequences where I was making dumb mistakes in ways that felt counter-intuitive to how I was playing the game just before. And yes, sometimes my reaction peaked to the point of being outright triggering. It doesn’t matter that I have enough tools to try and quell this sort of stuff now. I know how to step away, using breathing and awareness exercises to find my grounding again. That’s not the issue. There was something deeper going on here.

The truth is it’s sometimes hard to talk about this kind of stuff in video games because of how quickly it can fall on unwilling contrarian ears. Don’t get me wrong, every medium has their loud, defensive audiences, but we have to acknowledge there’s an infamous portion of the gaming audience that comes at these discussions with knee-jerk commentary and / or false solutions. And it’s not so much that they exist, it’s that I find they really affect the overall language with which people talk about games. To wit, when I tweeted wondering if there was any way to turn these death animations off (particularly for repeat occurrences), it’s clear I was looking to problem solve. But instead a lot of the advice was flippant and dismissive (which honestly doesn’t happen with my readers when I’m writing about film). It was full of commentary like:

-“Don’t play it.” To which I can only respond, “Well, this is a sequel to a game that’s really important, it’s pretty much the interactive narrative event of the year. So I kind of want to play it and write about it. I’m just asking a practical question.”

-I also got a lot of “just lower the difficulty,” which is a complicated thing because I actually like playing games on normal difficulty. And with this game, I liked the particular challenge of the gameplay. I just didn’t like watching those death animations. So I didn’t want to sacrifice that part of the experience because of another part (that said, I really did appreciate the difficulty sliders the game had for certain aspects of the game! It was helpful!). If anything, the solution that helped most was that any time I got close to death, I quickly went back to reset at the last (very generous) check-point. But a lot of times it all just happened so fast or I was so close to getting past the enemy in question.

-Of course, I was also offered a plethora of oh-so-helpful sentiments like “stop dying” or the ever popular refrain of “git gud,” which is a video game mantra I’ve come to resent. For the problem with the “git gud” refrain is basically the entire tenor of everything about it. Because of course the person who is asking for help is trying to get good at the game. They are not looking for cheats, they are looking for tactics to help them get good and overcome a particular situation. But instead of engaging that idea, the “git gud” response is all about giving a non-helpful answer that is inherently designed to put the question asker down and put the commenter above them. Whether that is they intend it or not, it reeks of “you need to get on my level.” 

Where the issue becomes complicated in The Last Of Us Part II is that the whole key to “getting good” means being willing to make a lot of mistakes and learning how to play the game itself. But when the mistakes are so visually punishing? When it’s so agonizing that it prevents one from wanting to engage in the “get good” loop of making mistakes and learning? Then it’s a useless solution, really. Because it’s not the DYING I mind (I love difficult games! I died endlessly in Sekiro boss battles! That’s how I learned to beat the game!) it’s the punishing nature of the visualization. And trying to verbalize this frustration brings you squarely into a conversation with an audience that is not at all bothered by the same problem. 

To wit, another commenter literally said I was just complaining about “the tiniest” things and to “try to be happy for once” (a comment so spectacularly invalidating on so many levels that I don’t have room to get into it here). To be fair, I also got a lot of commiseration and practical advice! But the way we talk about games often has so many problems. And getting on the same page can feel like a herculean task. But here, it brings us square into the problem of hurtful narrative repetition and its intersection with certain gaming systems.

The most telling comment I got around this issue was how I “wouldn’t be complaining if it was a movie.” But that’s the whole crux of all of this. When I watch a film, everything is engineered and singular. The manipulation of who dies, when, where, and how are all part of a series of calculated and purposeful choices. And a character’s death, particularly a main character’s? There are specific reasons for it, meaning how and when it shows up are part of the crux of the entire narrative. But games tap into a far more random and complicated system. It is about interaction, after all! And so many forms of possibility! It is about choice and fault! There is such power to this interactivity. We are complicit in how and why things happen. And sometimes it can be used to the most poetic and artistic effect. But it can also be completely unwieldy. And with this aspect of the game? I keep coming back to that simple fact I mentioned at the start:

I watched the main character die a gruesome death over 300 times. 

And narratively speaking? At least in terms of the true narrative? None of these deaths actually “happened. They are not canon. Instead, they are part of the endless alternative universe where the story of Ellie ends as she is killed by some random stalker that I didn’t see out of the corner of my eye (or worse, a seemingly invisible game mechanic I didn’t understand at first). But those 300 deaths are also incredibly real. I saw them. I experienced them. At times they were flinch-inducing, nauseating, desensitizing, numbing, or even triggering depending on the moment and build-up. And this reality brings up a series of pointed questions. Namely why is the game doing this? What does it add to the narrative? Is it really just to provoke and get a visceral reaction? Is it to make me want to die less? For me, it adds to the more difficult question…

If it was really that hard to watch, why did I keep going?

The answer is because the first Last of Us is one of my favorite games of all time and I really wanted to continue the story. I realize my love for it may strike you odd, considering the violence I have just described is not that far apart from what appeared in that original game, only some small differences. But that’s the whole rub.

Those small differences end up being everything.

2. The Re-litigation of Us

I really can’t explain how much The Last of Us felt like radical gift from the heavens. Right at a time where people were so many people were like gAmEs sHoUlDnT tRy tO bE cInEmAtIc, here was a game that just went for it and delivered beyond compare. The lesson of which was simple: it’s not that telling good narrative stories in games is impossible, it’s that good storytelling is really hard in general. 

It takes knowledge of how to do actually do it, forethought, commitment to the process, and the support of a studio that wants you to actually go for it. And while games always had their bright spots with writing, it’s safe to say the AAA level has historically been plagued with more indulgent aims of storytelling. And yet, here it was: a new narrative game that honored emotional spaces, lent interiority to its characters, and understood that nuance is about far more than putting sad piano music over violence. And most of all, my god it had some sense of understatement! Moreover, it told a story about a bleak world, but still had this impeccable balance of light and dark, hope and complication, loss and gain. Even then, you play most of the game and you think you are experiencing what is just a really well done drama, but then you come to that ending…

It’s almost a disservice to try and describe it, but it’s an essay, so I have to. 

Joel and Ellie have traveled across the country, through harrowing circumstances, all to use her immunity to help save humanity… but making a vaccine will mean killing Ellie. And after that incredible journey, after Joel has learned to heal his loss, open himself and love again, Joel feels he has to make a dreadful choice. Because what use is it saving the world if she’s not in it? So he takes on the fireflies, murders the doctors, takes an unconscious Ellie, and runs. But that’s not even the complex moment that people remember. No, it comes right when they are about to enter the safety of Jackson and Ellie confronts him. She knows something isn’t right about how they left in a hurry. She asks Joel to tell the truth about what happened… But Joel doesn’t do it. He can’t. Their future is about her thinking her own future is wide open, not one haunted by his choice. So he reiterates his made-up story… and she takes him at his word: “okay.” Cut to black. And with that, history is a lie agreed upon.

I remember the goosebumps so vividly. It was one of the most morally complex and yet humane moments I had seen in a narrative that year, let alone in games. But even then, The Last Of Us also was directly confronting the language we frequently see in genre games, where so often “saving the world” is the assumptive, rote goal that they never question the real meaning of, especially when it comes to relationships. Even those players who felt so conflicted and upset in the final choice had some part of them that absolutely wanted to save her. Arguments aside, everyone understood the nature of the choice. And for that, I think they ended up creating a seminal piece of art. A game that helped define the power of the medium and rightfully turned writer Neil Druckmann into one of the leaders of the industry (he would also help bring incredible depth to Uncharted 4). But any time you make that big of an impact with a single game? There is always the inherent danger of trying to go back again to the same well…

Whatever I can say about this sequel (and I will say a lot), the effort is certainly ambitious. I mean, I don’t think it’s an accident that The Last of Us Part II takes on the nomenclature of The Godfather series. The game is aiming for the same kind of moral expansiveness as that feature, the same broadening of depth and history, and even trying to get at the same notions of parallel storytelling. But right from the introduction, The Last of Us Part II also does the thing I feared most: re-litigating the ending of the first game (that is the taking the thing so perfectly expressed in dramatic fashion and coming back to rehash it in verbal fashion). Perhaps there was no way around it, but I admit, I held my breath in utter fear as the game opens with Joel literally explained the ending of the last game out loud. No matter how artfully or well acted, it took the thing that is perfect and… well, made it reductively concrete.

But for this particular story, it had to, because as much as I hoped this entry would be about something else, it’s actually going to unpack the consequences and fallout of Joel’s decision. And over the course of this story, sometimes it expands that narrative in fascinating ways that breath new depth into it. And sometimes it falls dramatically short. Either way, this re-litigation so much of what we encounter. To the point that a character even outright asks, “is there anything else you’d like to rehash?” Which reflects seeming awareness of how precarious it can be when you’re trying to expand on a story that already “nailed it in one,” so to speak. 

Because it’s in that pursuit that you experience the danger of…

3. Nowhere To Go But More

So. The tricky thing about “reviewing” a game is that you still have to talk about the gameplay and technical execution. But I’m glad we’re getting to a place where this is less and less important! Games are just getting really good across the board, and that means the difference of art and artistry are coming closer and closer together. 

To that, the artistry of The Last of Us Part II is predictably impeccable. The environment is either jaw-droppingly gorgeous or gut-churningly terrifying. The voice acting work from all parties is sublime. For all my comments about death screens, the game’s action is streamlined and improved. It really strikes that great balance of feeling prepared for encounters and yet knowing how to put you on your heels. The level design is more elegant and thoughtful than the last time. And in terms of mood, there’s the palpable sense of paranoia and fear, as most of the confrontations are so well done. For it’s not the endless “gotcha parade” you see in lots of horror games. In fact, I’d argue it understands the balance of surprises and rhythms better than any other horror game I’ve ever played.

The biggest technical criticism I can muster is when it comes to the balance between character work and the overall action encounters. Sometimes it was a problem in the original, too. But here found myself saying a lot of “oh man, this action sequence is just gonna keep going, huh?” But I admit a lot of this largely falls on the consumer demand to match the “content length” that games require. I’d honestly be happy if all of the story existed as is and the gameplay was much, much shorter. But I happily concede this hits against the push pull demands of AAA video game creation and making things that have to cost 60 dollars. But now having said all this glowing admiration (and it really is that), I can concede that none of this really matters to the questions I am about to get into. For while the game needs all this artistry to succeed, it’s not about this artistry at all. It’s about the intention of the art.

Which means it’s time to discuss the narrative.

Now, it is virtually impossible to talk about this game without spoiling pretty much all of it, so consider this fair warning, I’m going to discuss absolutely everything. Starting from a structural standpoint, The Last of Us Part II has a whole bunch of chapters that really just make up four overall sequences. The first sequence deals with events in Jackson and a lot of Ellie’s personal life. She’s on the cusp of a new relationship with a young woman named Dina, who has a bit of a complicated story with her ex, Jesse. At the same time, we are bouncing our player’s perspective to a new character named Abby, and we soon realize that she’s there to find someone (who we can guess is Joel). She’s with The Fireflies maybe? The game doesn’t quite tell us. We just know it’s some kind of revenge. And when circumstances fall into place and the moment finally comes, Abby and her group capture Joel and torture him. Then after her rescue attempt is botched, Ellie has to watch as Abby kills Joel right in front of her (while letting her and Tommy go afterward). It’s harrowing, but we also understand very little of the why, particularly why they let Ellie go (this actually is never wholly answered). But it all feels very much obscured on purpose. 

For what becomes clear as you’re playing The Last of Us Part II is there’s going to be a lot of “withholding” in this story. Even conversations are mostly teases and vague allusions to things we’ll finally get to see later. It’s a tactic that I’ve written a great deal about when it comes to the problems of “mystery boxing” and pushing the audience away from clarity. Because yes, it draws in your curiosity, but it’s often hard to sustain. And it makes your narrative way too dependent on the quality of the reveals. But most of all, it makes it hard for the audience to have a baseline understanding of a character’s headspace to go along on those difficult and troubling journeys. And in this particular effort, one core motivation will be held until the final moments of the game.

I mean, let’s put this in context. The first game does not wait until the very end to reveal that Joel used to have a daughter who died and THAT’S why he must save Ellie in this game’s final moments. Instead, you know this information from minute one. Which is great because it’s precisely what puts you in Joel’s head space to go on the journey and have a character arc. And yet, the exact opposite choice is made here. I can’t say for certain why this happens, but I feel like storytellers (usually when nervous) sometimes can’t resist the urge to play the magician with narrative. They want to reveal everything at the last second as some kind of, “Ta da! I knew what I was doing all along!” 

But honestly, I really think it comes from a place of being unsure how else to come at, or being afraid to dramatize the clear motivations. To also be clear, I think Druckmann’s way too smart to go full JJ Abrams with it and give you empty promises. He actually has something interesting going on under all of this! But the way the interesting information is constantly nestled within flashbacks in this game makes for interesting push / pull. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes it feels like a devil’s bargain.

All of these results are on display within sequence two, which is basically Ellie going on a revenge streak to hunt down Abby in Seattle. There’s clearly something that’s bothering her about her relationship with Joel, but we don’t expressly know what it is. We just know that it didn’t seem to end on great terms. Nonetheless, Ellie and Dina go off and we play through three hellish days in Seattle. They have many close calls as they hunt down Abby’s friends, kill them, and get closer and closer. Along the way, Dina reveals she’s pregnant with Jesse’s baby (her ex) and theres a lot of complicated emotions. But also we feel that Ellie is losing more and more of her humanity in this process. She’s particularly haunted when she takes the life of a woman she didn’t realize was pregnant. And after those three hellish days, Abby shows up at their hideout and confronts them about killing her friends (and then some). She’s desperate and enraged. And we are now in the tensest stand-off of all stand-offs.

Enter: the bait and switch. 

For we then begin what we think is a brief flashback, where we see Abby’s relationship with her own “Joel” AKA her actual dad. But as the flashback goes on, we learn that he was actually the surgeon that Joel killed at the end of the first game, so really it’s all been personally motivated. I admit this moment works well, especially because it takes that iconic moment and actually makes me reflect even harder on it. But the reevaluations don’t stop there. In fact, the narrative presses on so that the entire third sequence is about Abby’s own three days in Seattle. 

There’s a real Rashomon vibe to the whole thing as we get to see the flip-side to everything that’s happened and more importantly, the underlying humanity of every character that Ellie killed in her brief confrontations. Sometimes this all feels like punishing agony, the act of a “gotcha” narrative feint, but I admit it’s still an effective one. For these people were incredibly personal to Abby (often in complex ways), so it really helps you understand Abby’s perspective on Ellie’s seeming monstrosity.

But the sequence is also about Abby’s own journey, for there’s something changing in her. Having finally got her revenge against Joel, she’s coming to understand the way her revenge has affected both herself and others. She spent her formative years turning herself into a tank of a human being, but now that it’s “done,” she starts to unravel her motivations and even questions her loyalty to the WLF (the military-like faction she is a part of). She thinks about escaping with her ex (and his new wife? it’s complicated). More importantly, Abby becomes hopelessly involved in the story and well-being of a pair of enemy siblings who save her life. It’s sort of a lot to try and summarize, so forgive me for skimming, but their story brings them square into the conflict between the WLF and the “scars” AKA the religious group that takes the apocalypse as a sign to go back to being at peace with nature. 

The whole architecture of this conflict is really about peeling back the endless layers of reflexivity. It’s about coming to understand the people you are war with, while hitting the hammer again and again about humanity underneath their opposition (just as the entire sequence itself is a reflexive counterpoint to Ellie’s motivations). There’s even a subplot about a young trans boy named Lev who is running from the Scars because of persecution. And Abby, driven by guilt and trying to atone for a lifetime of anger and retribution, nearly sacrifices everything to help him. They really both lose so much in the process. Then Abby comes back to discover she’s lost even more, the people closest to her at the hands of Ellie. And so, she sets off to end it…

With that, we finally come back to the fireworks of the climax…

The game has built up to this moment so damn carefully, two whole sides of a story coming to a head. We know everything now, which means so much of their conflict and motivations can now finally explode outward into impasse or catharsis. But what spills out is… pretty messy and complicated, but mostly intentionally so. In the immediate stand-off, you play as Abby and try to kill Ellie (not before getting your face horrifically blasted by a shotgun if you fail some attempts). They fight, Abby gets the advantage, but Dina comes in to save her. But Abby gets the advantage again and tries to kill Dina, but Ellie screams for her to stop because Dina’s pregnant. Given that Ellie just killed HER pregnant friend, Abby replies “good.” But then Lev objects… That’s all it takes, the one person outside of the cycle sees the futility of what she’s about to do. Abby doesn’t do it and she doesn’t dwell, either. She says she never wants to never see Ellie again… It’s over. 

And I cannot overstate how much this feels like the natural climax to the story. 

The scenes that start to come after make us think we are in the resolution zone, but actually, bit by bit, you realize are the start of an entire new fourth sequence. Ellie and Dina have survived. They are on their farm with the new baby. But Ellie is still haunted by PTSD, specifically of Joel’s death. She can’t let it rest, even though she’s trying. Turns out Tommy has survived too. He comes and guilt trips her for not wanting more revenge and I’m not going to lie, it feels forced and out of character? I know they say that he’s separated from his wife as he’s likely still fixating on revenge, too, but it really does feel not right. Either way, Ellie’s still stuck. And not knowing what else to do, she goes to sneak off in the middle of the night to get more revenge. Dina catchers her and it comes to a head… If Ellie leaves, there will be no home to come back to. Ellie tells her that’s on her. She has to do this… She has to.

Okay. At this point, it not only feels weird for Ellie to still be making this choice (we’ll get to that), but after all these emotional cutscenes I have to say that going back to standard shoot em zombie fare feels… utterly anti-climactic. You meander around Santa Barbara and eventually you get a neat gun and find out Abby and Lev are kidnapped by the “The Rattlers” who are this entirely new group of baddies that the story has just introduced (PS - narrative advice often warns you about introducing characters in the last act, it just feels weird). It’s such a strange emotional feeling. 

But after you kill enough of them (who probably all had families too, or whatever), you go to the beach and find Abby, now hung from a pole (there’s lots of crucification imagery), a weakened shell of her former self. Ellie, nearly dead in her own right, lets her and Lev down. There is this eerie silence that happens as you seem like you are about to go your separate ways, and you think “finally, she’s letting go.” But again, just as before, Ellie can’t let it go… Images of Joel’s death flash in her mind. As if it’s some catch all justification for this.

With that, Ellie goes to fight. Abby refuses. So Ellie threatens Lev, a truly heinous gesture. I get that we are supposed to find it so, but it’s really A LOT. And so Abby gives in. You have to fight her and she barely has energy. It’s agonizing to play as “boss fights” go, and where it could have felt only sad, there’s something disgustingly visceral about it too. Hell, her fingers get chewed off. But Ellie gets the advantage and starts drowning Abby… but then a different image of a different memory of Joel pops in her mind… One that’s been hidden from us, and will continue to be…

But now she can’t do it. Ellie finally lets Abby go, who escapes with Lev. Ellie cries in the water, alone. Cut to home, now with two fingers missing from the fight. The farm house is empty. Dina meant it. Ellie’s lost everything. All that’s left are her drawings in the room… and her guitar. The thing that has been the familiar rallying point throughout the story. She goes to play it, but now with missing two fingers, she can’t play it quite the same. It’s yet another cost to her pursuit of revenge. And with that, we finally get the flashback to the thing that’s been haunting her… 

All this while, the game seemed to be hinting at some cruel final last moment between them, where Ellie likely said something she regrets. But instead, it’s something more complex. For she’s not haunted by the specter of cruelty, but instead the fact that they were trying to get back on the edge of forgiveness. After the bitter fallout from Joel’s decision, there was now a promise of reconciliation. And yet, the next moment Ellie saw him, he was killed in front of her… She leaves the guitar behind, leaves the house, and walks into the woods…

Guilt is a complex animal. The things that haunts us, the things that haunt me, are often deeply conflicted. Because it’s not just the things we’ve done wrong, but often the way those things color the totality or the experiences and relationships in question. It’s not that we deny the wrong, it’s that we want to remember the wholeness of people and the relationships we had with them. But when they get cut short, when bad endings cast a shadow, or when we feel responsible, there is this endless permutation of moments that cycle through our head. It can be so hard to try and unravel it, and often we try to problematically bargain with that past by messing up our present (one of the best films I’ve ever seen on the topic is Kenneth Lonnergan’s Margaret, please watch if you’ve never seen). All in all, It can feel like hell.

The clunkiest reading I can give to the final moments of The Last of Us Part II is that Ellie’s memory going from Joel’s murder to finally remembering how she was trying to forgive him is one that helps her remember to try and forgive Abby in turn (a lesson she should have internalized long before, narratively-speaking) But a more interesting reading is, of course, that both were driving her in complex fashion. Because there’s this idea that being on the edge of forgiveness was something far more torturing. For losing that possibility of having him back? That’s a part that hurts so much within all of it. Relationships are supposed to endure… and sometimes they don’t. That’s what drives her so deeply.

I know that is a really, really long summary But it feels critical to explain them because any reduction of those endless back-and-forth complications would be just that, reductive. And while I have reservations about the clarity of a lot of these themes, ultimately, I have to take the entire game and analyze what it is at least trying to say. To that, I can offer the following notion…

This game is not just trying to unravel the flaws of revenge narratives, nor just show that “blood will have blood,” nor point out that basic action tropes are problematic. Instead, The Last of Us Part II seems to really about the havoc created by what is unsaid. 

From the onset, it’s about the distance created between what is unsaid between Ellie and Joel during their new life in Jackson. Just as there is trouble created by the way that Ellie spends so much time shoe-gazing that her potential relationship with Dina almost goes by the wayside (Dina practically forces her hand on the matter). Likewise, we later get the flashback where Ellie forces Joel’s hand, by going to hospital and getting the records to prove he lied. So he has to admit the truth. But the moment also feels weird because of how much she makes it about her death and the vaccine, even though it feels like so much of the real transgression is the way Joel gaslit her instincts, because deep down she knew. Either way, it’s about the pain of that which was unsaid. 

Then in the final confrontation, after we as the player all know the truth about Abby, we want her to scream “he killed my dad!” And we want Ellie to communicate the same. But they don’t say the things they would need to. Never in all their battling do they bother to get at those root causes. And so, it becomes the catharsis that almost was. Across the entire game there is just so much pain in every direction, so much from the words that go unsaid. Because the saying of things helps bring catharsis. And without them, the tragedy perpetuates… 

But the unfortunate truth is that, dramatically speaking, this thematic exploration doesn’t exactly hit you with the same hammer-to-the-gut that the first game did. It’s more a slow sense of erasure of any real feeling. Or more problematically, it’s something that’s a little fuzzy to see. I’d argue lot of it has to do with Druckmann’s writing style, which skews toward shoe-gazing in general. I know that follows the old advice in writing, “say it without saying it,” but it also feels like something he almost takes too much to heart. For his characters rarely ever come close to articulating what they really need to for both catharsis and connection to the player (so much of that instead rests in the journals). 

This means thematic points can both be an analysis OF those shoe-gazing problems and yet emblematic of them, too. And where the first game still felt laser-focused in its emotional intention, this one feels more unfocused. And while I can assemble a logical argument about those notions, while I can theoretically *get* the choices behind all this particular narrative… there is something else that bothers. Because the experience of actually playing it all? Particularly when it comes to how it feels to have that critical thematic information coming at you at different points throughout the game?

That’s where we get into the big problem.

4. Can We Get N’Sync?

So much of what I try to do in these dang columns is look at narrative and ask questions about “function.” That is the way certain story choices affect the audience, and where those choices create effects that go against the story’s intention, or maybe have unforeseen consequences. On a pure story level, there’s a few things about The Last of Us Part II that I can point to. 

The first is rare for me, but I can’t help but notice how much the “cure” question of Ellie’s existence is left outside this game’s narrative. Like, once she knew she could actually make a vaccine, has she explored this possibility more? Is it just gone without The Fireflies? Or much more importantly, how does she actually feel about all of it? And why has every other character completely abandoned hope for the cure, too? I’m not really pointing this out as a logic or plot hole, I’m saying I notice how much the narrative needs to eschew these lingering questions, perhaps because they would complicate the aims of this revenge-driven story.

But more important are issues of characterization. Like the fact that Dina, while spectacularly acted and overall well-rounded, often exhibits behavior that is largely reactive to Ellie. Meaning so much of who she is changes in a way that either best challenges, helps, or affects Ellie, while her own psychology is hard to track. Meaning it’s not really coming from her character as independent personhood, but what the writer wants to happen in the story. It’s not an endlessly problematic thing, but it’s just something that makes it harder to truly dig in with their love story. And it sort of gets at the deeper motivational issues throughout the entire piece.

For instance, I talked earlier about the general problems with mystery boxing, but there really is a cumulative emotional effect to how LONG we go in this game being kept from certain information. Because it’s how long we, as a player, are just following along on Ellie’s coattails without really getting what we need to empathize in her journey (to be honest, the timing of information with Abby’s story is so much more functional, which is part of why the player likely gravitates toward her). This game holds on so so long that I felt pushed away. Especially during the whole variety of choices made during the final sequences. We are talking a sharp motivational dissonance where I am utterly divorced from Ellie’s actions. But is that automatically a problem?

After all, how much does the player actually need to be in sync with the character?

The answer is a big old “it depends.” In movies, we have no control over the story / character so we have grown much more comfortable with the push / pull that comes with whether we are effectively “rooting” for a character or if we are watching their troubling behavior from afar (to be clear, directors can still mess up this up quite often). But video games are such an interesting medium in that control and choice are baked right into the DNA of what you are doing. While many games follow through on that powerful capacity and allow you to alter the story, there’s always this inescapable reality of what story choices are put on rails and which are not. For game-makers, the goal is often to make it so the thing the game is requiring you to do is also the thing you want to do. And it’s about more than just goals and objectives, it’s properly motivating you to have certain rooting interest, however small, however nuanced. But, of course, sometimes divorcing your motivation from the character’s behavior is the exact artistic point.

I won’t rehash landmark games that dug into this question like Bioshock or Spec Ops: The Line, but it’s safe to say there are varying levels of success in these attempts. And I’ll be honest, you kind of reach a logical endpoint when the whole theme is is just “you don’t actually have control at all!” or “you are the one who did this horrible thing! ISNT THAT FUUUUUUCKED UP!?!” I mean, there’s a reason this sort of thematic exploration was short lived. Because what is far, far more interesting than these issues of control is making story choices that draw you into moral complexity. Which is exactly where The Last of Us comes in, especially that incredible ending. Again, Joel’s decision is a conflicted choice, but one I wholly get. Largely because the story has given me all the reasons to feel conflicted. And even though it hurts, saving Ellie is absolutely a part of what I want at that point. 

The same cannot be said for The Last of Us Part II.

Yes, the story is filled with moments where this sort of moral complication works. The three day flip sequence in particular is filled with great commentary, but due to its sheer length, it also feels emotionally punishing in a way that doesn’t really let me feel all that complex about it. I just feel the drudgery. At times, it’s almost like it’s three day guilt trip. Again I very much understand *the point* of this choice, but going through 10-ish hours of story that goes along with them feels emotionally grinding. Especially considering that during that sequence, once we understand the flip of morality in that sequence, we just so badly want to get back to the MOMENT at hand with her stand-off with Ellie to resolve it. Then when you finally get there, and with everything that comes after in the fourth sequence, the feeling of divorce is astronomically increased.

Because honestly? I’m so much on Abby’s “side” at that point.

It’s not that Abby hasn’t done things that are messed up too. It’s just that coming right after the narratives “gotcha!” moral framing, it’s practically impossible not feel a deeper empathy. Ellie is the character who has been losing her humanity, while Abby was the character who has been regaining hers. And the murder of Owen and Mel put it into that place where the scales of justice have been tipped. This argument doesn’t even include the effect of recency bias, where we realize how much we’ve come to side with the person we’ve been playing with recently versus Ellie, who suddenly feels like someone we played forever ago. And while this emotional divorce gets us through that first fight in the theater in functional enough fashion (kind of), it is so much harder for what comes after.

Because Ellie’s entire fourth sequence is so utterly alien from what I felt. Coming into that moment, the player has ABSOLUTELY learned the lesson about revenge and the circumstances that have brought both characters here through and through. And yet, Ellie has not learned anything. Again, I completely understand that this is *the point* they are trying to make with this. But the way it scrolls on and on drowns my emotional connection to said point. It all becomes about the inescapable FEELING of playing this game. Specifically, the grinding action of virtually everything about the Santa Barbara sequence. Heck, it evokes the feeling of what is said about sad Irish plays: they can end at any point (and I like a lot of those plays). 

The emotional effect of the “playing space” is just so much more intense when you are going against your instinct, especially with hours of gameplay.. So if I am going to be THIS divorced from a character’s behavior, I cannot overstate how much I wish those final sequences were all cutscenes. Something that gives us the safe distance to watch. But it doesn’t. And it makes for an unfavorable comparison to the first game. Because unlike The Last Of Us, what Ellie is doing is not a complicated choice at this point… It’s a clear choice. Especially to the player. It is clear in its most basic moral wrongness. And yet I am forced to continue. Worse, I am forced to continue in a sequence that provides me no real added commentary to what has come before.

And I think people utterly absorbed this problem.

To wit, I tweeted a bit about my frustrations with the way the game meanders on and the popular refrain most players have used goes along the lines of, “you don’t get to stop until you understand REVENGE BAD.” Which I actually find a really interesting response. For one, it is a reduction of the complicated work that’s going on here. Again, Druckmann’s story sense is too nuanced for something to be thematically stated as that simple. But what it is not a reduction of, is the very feeling of playing that I’m talking about now. It FEELS like REVENGE BAD, because we spend not a single moment, but hours completely grinding against our instinct to forgive. Which brings us into the subject of why some emotional things like this are so much harder to shake. 

You may remember, but for a long time, games criticism was fixated on the conversation of ludonarrative dissonance, that is “is the conflict between a video game's narrative told through the story and the narrative told through the gameplay.” It was the hot topic precisely because it brought us squarely into the biggest complication of the medium: how can a game supposedly be about “love will conquer all” or “violence is bad” or something when 99% of the action is solved by in-game murder? But the reason a lot of the conversation on this subject petered out is because of the same reason those action conventions were there in the first place: they make the gameplay so much better, duh. In terms of artistic evaluation, there were just certain “gamey things” like restarting when dying or save points that have to be accepted as necessary, much like we accept that movies are filmed with actors and cameras. It’s all a part of suspension of disbelief. But it also comes with the tacit acknowledgement that some games’s themes make it much harder to suspend. 

For one of the big problems with The Last of Us series is that calls so much attention to the preciousness of life and survival, and here in Part II, to the reflexivity / futility or murder and revenge, yet you spend so damn much of the game casually murdering. I’m talking totally choking out random real life patrol people as they seemingly plead and try to hang onto life. It’s like the NPCs feel all so much MORE NPC-ish and yet LESS so, precisely because of how human and nuanced everyone else feels. These aren’t fungus monsters who don’t have a mind anymore. I am dispatching the same humans you are effectively telling me to “look deeper” into. Knowing the problems of this, the game is constantly telling you over and over again that these are bad people with sentiments like “ugh, these fuckers!” And yet I never felt more and more divorced from a game’s actions then I have with this one.

And it’s part of a whole series of conundrums, really. For a game that takes care to depict the fallout of PTSD, it also sure seems hell bent on triggering it. Just as it gets mileage out of character moments, like when Ellie enters a dusty room and says “spooky!” even though this same character just fought off fungus monsters in a red-lit sewer and it was one of the most harrowing things I’ve ever had to do in a game. But they shake it off like it’s old hat. It’s honestly amazing how they’ll experience the most harrowing things and then just make jokes like “fuck this place!” as to somehow undercut the emotional load of these scary experiences. And while these troubling conventions sometimes felt true in the original game, The Last Of Us Part II makes them feel so much more problematic.

There’s actually a comparison that feels right to me, and that is how these two games remind me of The Raid and The Raid 2. Where the first film used clear motivations, set geography, and forthright objectives to tell a singular, compelling story (one that was also the perfect vehicle for rooting-based fisticuffs), the second entry was totally a case of “nowhere to go but more,” personified. It sprawled out with endless complication and reflexivity, miring so much of its violent action beneath complicated character motivations. Most of the time I was watching I was like, “I have no idea who I want to win this fight and that makes the violence feel awful instead of cathartic.” Especially when it’s like “Uh, I like hammer girl, I really don’t want to see the hero kill her.” But we did. And it sucked. Meanwhile, there’s a reason the ensuing kitchen fight is completely fantastic. I see that main bad guy and go “oh I hate this fucker.” This kind of stuff matters with violence a whole lot. Especially, when the whipping of wounds feels like its scarring all sides.

To be fair, The Last of Us Part II is after something far more complex than simple rooting interest, but it’s still playing with the same kind of fire. It’s too smart to fumble it in some kind of grand way, but it instead falls victim to the way some troubling choices stack up. Whether it was the desire to be THE MAGICIAN in the narrative construction, or the way it pushes too far with the divorce from the characters actions, or even just the overall tonal balance, it just ends up feeling utterly different from its predecessor. For while The Last of Us was certainly just as brutal at moments, it had so much to juxtapose in the way we fight for humanity. But with this sequel, it tips the scales into misery all the way down. That is the FEELING of playing. And instead of that dourness being some brave narrative choice, it honestly feels like a kind of lack of trust the story. A lack of realization that one complex moment can stick with me longer than lots of sadness piles stacked on top of each other. 

Especially when they culminate in moments of frustrating dissonance. There’s one moment I think of in particular. It’s when Nora tells Ellie “I’m not giving up my friend” and you get the prompt to strike her and commence the torture… I didn’t want to do it. I even waited a few minutes, hoping something might change. Because I really didn’t want to torture this Black woman. I didn’t want to be complicit. But to play the game, I had to. And honestly, I don’t really find much interesting commentary in that (it’s even something Rockstar has started to phase out). As a player, it evokes something more along the lines of, “Fine, I’ll do your stupid torture to find out what happens next.” Even at its best, you can only argue it’s just a way of using her pain to make some kind of point about Ellie losing her humanity. 

And that’s when we get to the square of what my biggest problem is with this game.

Perhaps this tweet on the trans depiction in this game get right to the heart of the issue “I'm not going to pay $60 for a game that mistreats, deadnames, and abuses trans characters. It doesn't matter how "dark"/"grim" a setting is, that's unnecessary. Developers need to understand what kind of player will feel good about that kind of violence directed at trans people.” 

And then this tweet furthers the commentary: “I'm so tired of performing trauma for the cis gaze. I would rather trans people not even be mentioned in the story than for the real life pain and hurt I felt when coming out to my family be turned into content for a AAA video game that Sony could sell to a bunch of cis gamers.” 

Make no mistake, these issues are very, very real.

And they open up an important existential question.

5. WHAT YOU SEE WHEN YOU SEE IT

“Tragedy is when I cut my finger, comedy is when you fall into an open manhole and die.”

This Mel Brooks quote is not just a funny joke, it’s something I use all the time to explain the notion of empathy. Because when events are personal, that is when we are closer to experiencing them as the “I,” then you feel the weight of them in such an intense way. It’s the way a cut on your finger, no matter how small, is felt deeply. But when you look at the “other” from a distance, it is easier to disconnect yourself from those hurt feelings. It is easier to see them as just that, a “them.” Which means it’s easier to laugh at their pain or shortcomings. After all, comedy has a victim, right? And what this makes clear is that your reaction is always rooted about how you actually feel about the victim. Which cues the whole conversation of punching up / punching down and what makes for fair targets. Feel closer to them? It will likely feel less funny. And if you’re going to laugh at someone, you want to be sure it’s worth it.

This goes far beyond notions of comedy, and really how we relate to things across many genres. Because the same is absolutely true when it comes to depictions of violence. It’s all about how you feel about the victim (just like I talked about with The Raid films). Like them? Then you don’t want them to get hurt! Hate them? Die, you jerk! These are the base mechanics of rooting interest in media. And while I won’t unpack whether or not cinema’s full scale acceptance of casual violence is problematic (it obviously is to some degree), it becomes a whole other discussion when violence is purposefully used to make us feel “bad” feelings like fear, guilt, or complicity.

To best illustrate it, let’s start with horror, where the entire engine is built around fear. Hell, it preys on it, often throwing imagery that is designed to shock, sicken, or otherwise unnerve. At it’s most cathartic, really good horror is meant to provide a safe space (read: a theater) to engage and overcome those things that we most fear with an empathetic goal in mind. But we know that isn’t always how it works. Just as we know there are are ways people watch horror and root for the killers to take out hypocritical teens one by one (often by the film’s design), because really it’s about fodder to safely indulge in a more sadistic side of human media consumption (in a way, no different than watching the absurd dramatics of some reality TV). But the whole thing gets into a really important series of questions: who is the pain on screen for? Who is it actually scaring? And who is actually enjoying it in a very different way?

Where this reflexivity becomes more complicated is actually with traditional dramas, because they get into the notion of violence being used for guilt and complicity. Where so much classical tragedy was about the “fatal flaw” and seeing the way a seemingly good person can come undone, so much of modern tragedy is about “hey, this is sad thing happened, don’t you feel bad about it?!?!” Think of the countless Oscar films about impossibly sad events, or historical epics that are designed to tug at the heartstrings. The goal of this fare is, quite simply, to manipulate your emotions and make you cry. That is a job well done. They crave your sympathy. And where it hits an incredibly complicated nexus point is how much “important Hollywood cinema” is also supposed to be about changing minds. 

Because there are two immediate problems that come from this instinct…

1) I cannot tell you how much this style of filmmaking is built for people who have trouble connecting to their emotions, not the people who have raw, open nerves and are often very close to the pain being explored on screen. Which means… 

2) I cannot tell you how many depictions of suffering are not made for the actual people who are suffering, but made to evoke sympathy form those who are not.

And when you interject topical issues of societal oppression into this equation, it becomes intensified. After all, how many stories about racism have featured black people suffering so they can dutifully change a bigots mind? How many of them are set in the past and offer happy endings and catharsis, as to secretly make white people feel like they have “overcome” racism simply by watching the film? How many use the pain of the oppressed people and imagery to evoke sympathy from the “them,” all while using the stark, incontrovertible pain of the “I” on screen to make that sympathy more effective? We know the answers to these questions because these are the films that always get made. And while these problems cross thresholds in every oppressive direction, there has always been a troubling history of these depictions for LGBTQ+ characters.

Before I get into how, I want to make it clear that each of these letters represent identities that have completely different struggles, needs, and goals. I do not want to lump the identities to pretend those struggles are equatable in any way shape or form. They are utterly different. They are each singular. And they require their own nuances of depiction. But when it comes to many depictions of them in traditional media, there are also problematic commonalities that show up because they are quite often made by people who are on the outside of those identities. 

Why else would there be an entire trope called “bury your gays,” which is all part and parcel of how gay characters almost always killed off in media (if you need proof for some god forsaken reason, here’s a mega list). Why does this happen? Simple. Because it is the “best” way to make straight people feel bad. Just as it’s the “best” way to turn gay existence into some sort of noble Jesus-like sacrifice. And sometimes, it’s not even that conscious of a decision. The trope is so common that often people use it instinctively, for is the only way straight people know how to document your humanity.

The way this messaging hits queer people is radically different. Because it is outright saying your story will end in tragedy. It is saying your situation is hopeless. That you will never have a safe way to be, let alone love. It is saying you don’t deserve a happy ending, not even because of the sheer awfulness of bigotry, but because your pain only exists to teach them a lesson. It is saying your existence is really just a motivator for someone else’s change. That their slight alleviation of guilt is your entire point of being there. So just die why don’t ya. And then, they will feel the depths of this tragedy and go “oh how sad, this is HIGH ART!” Meanwhile, you will internalize it all and feel absolutely fucking horrible. Because you are the “I” in the situation. And they are very much making it for them.

The thing about The Last of Us Part II is it seems to have some kind of awareness of these tropes. It does not commit the cardinal sin of “bury your gays” within the main narrative, meaning it does it kill any of its LGBTQ+ characters. Nor do any of the main characters misgender or deadname (other bad characters in the game do, however). But… and this is a big but… these characters suffer ad nauseam. Ellie suffers so much violence, blood, and carnage that I’m hard pressed to think of another depiction of gay woman that comes close to matching it? 

And as you play, there are so many terrifying threats where she and Dina come so close to dying that it constantly feels like the “bury your gays” moment is just about to happen. The tension puts you so on edge. And in the moments of disturbing violence, like watching young Lev’s neck nearly break against that garage door? It feels overwhelming. Fuck, it’s so omnipresent it practically feels like the narrative trying to “edge” toward those horrible conclusions and I use that term in the most disturbing way on purpose. And this discussion doesn’t even include the death screens, where I watched Ellie die 300 times, and obliterates the entire notion that the game doesn’t fall victim to that trope. No, within those alternative universes, the “bury your gays” trope is executed to such absurd lengths, bordering on something that feels sadistic. And all of this is incontrovertible.

Someone on Twitter asked me, “would it just be better if Ellie was straight?” I sort of don’t know how to answer because “better” can mean a lot of things. Really, all I can do is shrug and say, “it would be different.” Because when you compare the ways you see Joel die horribly in the first game and the way you see Ellie die horribly now, it is different. Because when you engage in a depiction of anyone’s identity, you inherent the history of all depictions that came before. There’s no way around it. 

I know some people look at all this and go “No, it’s beyond that! This game depicts equal opportunity carnage for every kind of person!” But it’s the same thing as when people claim they “don’t see race.” You’re not actually honoring equality, instead you’re not recognizing that certain inequalities exist and hardships are different. There’s a history of violence that strikes people differently. Which means there are no blank slates. We’re just so used to treating depictions of white men like they are that we hit problems when we try to casually shift those conventions and assume the same rules apply.

I know it’s hard to convey the nuance of all this. Especially when this game is ALSO coming out in a climate where a bunch of toxic bigots are furious that they even included gay characters / made characters that men aren’t attracted to. Shouldn’t the fact it makes them mad be enough? It’s not, of course. And I feel when I try to talk to straight people about this stuff, there’s this simmering frustration of “fine, why even try!?!” As if they think there’s some magic answer key to unproblematic depictions. There isn’t. And I know there is nothing but good intentions behind the making of this game, but it’s not really about that, either. It’s about the different ways that depictions hit different people. It’s all about “who it’s for.” And so often the real answer to that question comes down to who is telling the story.

I’ve had situations where I was advising on scripts and have had to be like, “absolutely do not make this joke” and then bunch of people discuss why they WANT to be risky and decide to do it anyway. Which is to say I don’t know how to help you when we actually have different goals. There is a separation between the “I” and the “them” in these situations that is really hard to bridge. And unless those differences are met at the structural level of creation, the “who it’s for” generally won’t change. And it’s funny, literally as writing this section I saw this tweet which speaks to this exact dynamic: “Intersectionality is not additive. It’s fundamentally reconstitutive. Pass it on.” And it gets why the quality of depiction is often rooted in the structures of who is making things. Which is why it will always come back to that question…

Who is this really for?

When it comes to The Last of Us Part II, I actually won’t even pretend to have a definitive answer to that question. The game is complex enough that I don’t think it’s dripping with ulterior motive, or anything so insidious. I could even be utterly misguided in my criticism (something I always want to make clear that I acknowledge, especially when talking about intersectional issues). Moreover, I’ve seen enough positive responses to the inclusion of the game that I admit it can have a wide-ranging effect. I’m sure queer people can play this story and feel that Ellie’s rage, anger, taps into something their own. And I can see posts like this about someone who was at first mad at the lesbian inclusion, but then ended up really emoting with Dina and Ellie’s story. In the end, they not only wanted to the two characters to be together, but it made them have more empathy for their real-life cousin. The positive impact of this is undeniable. But it also can’t help right back to the problem of “who it’s for,” because this post is about helping change the mind of a straight person to become more tolerant. But how do these depictions effect players who are actually queer?

And after glancing across the collective response the last week, I don’t think it’s necessarily an accident that straight movie centric bros seem to be the ones who are embracing this game with the most feverish zeal (in a strange twist, even game critics seem to be more aware of the problematic depictions). Meanwhile, there are so many trans and queer people I’m coming across (like the ones linked above) who heard details of the game and go, “It does what now? Okay, nope!” This difference tells an important story. But since I can’t speak for them or anyone else, I have simply talk about my own arc within that story. Because I’ve spent so, so, so long looking at depictions of queer people and going… 

“Oh, that’s not me”

I did this even though I knew I was attracted to men since I was kid. Heck, I’ve known I was bisexual my entire conscious life. But knowing doesn’t mean taking on that identity. And even as I came to fully embrace the idea that identity internally, I still felt so much more comfortable not talking about it or not using those labels. I told myself that this was good! Bisexuality comes with the most privilege! What right did I have? I certainly never felt the right to talk about any of this from a place of experience. Never! That right was earned by people who have had it far worse, people who have suffered, people who so closely identified with being gay! Not me, who spent my life hiding mostly hiding it! 

Ugh. I really thought like this. And all the while, I thought maybe once I had dated enough men, maybe I could feel more comfortable talking about it as part of my identity. But even when that happened, I kept delaying and delaying. It really wasn’t until finally dating a man who made me feel comfortable in my skin, who listened, and most importantly, who made me feel safe that I finally I realized I there was no “logical endpoint” where I’d finally just feel comfortable talking about my sexuality from a place of emotional experience. And I realized I was “not seeing myself” in those depictions for a single reason.

I was fucking afraid to.

Because I had been made to be afraid of that part of me my entire life. I did not grow up in the most tolerant place and time (80’s / 90’s north shore Boston with Irish Catholocism). And I was in high school when Matthew Shepard was murdered. I remember the immediate fallout, with people making jokes at the lunch table with this callous matter of factness of “if he was gay, who cares [that he died]” His life was worthless fodder. At best, there were some adults who were like “aw shucks, that’s awful.” But nobody discussed further. Nobody cared. Nobody felt like they had to. Nobody ever realized I was sitting there listening, not understanding myself, being confused about what was going on with me. I didn’t know if I was gay. Mostly because I had been taught to not understand my attraction. I had just been taught to be “afraid” that I was gay, especially because that meant instant tragedy and doom. 

These are part of the things you internalize so deeply. The things you bury and not think about until someone comes along to help you let it out, and suddenly the pain of those constant micro traumas crystalize. It is then that you unlock in a heap. Years later, it is absurd how much I connect to the twenty straight years of insane homophobia in toxic masculinity; just as I did with a space where the constant depictions within media made those feelings equatable with death…. So no, it didn’t matter that I knew I liked men when I was a little kid. There was a reason it was something I couldn’t say out loud until I was well into my 30’s. There was a reason I spent so, so long being afraid. Because virtually everything around me told me that I was supposed to be. 

And now that I’m not afraid. Now that I understand what was going on with all those feelings? Now that I understand how much I absorbed violent depictions and directly associated them with doom? Let me tell you…

Your identity directly effects “what you see when you see it.”

The “it” being the violence against gay people in question. The “it” being the uncanny feeling that this is not for me. The “it” being repeated images that really, really, really fucking got to me. After all, if tragedy is what happens when “I” cut my finger, what do you call it when “I” am burned by acid? It’s certainly something that will hit you different if you are a “them.” 

Yes, I understand that mileage may vary, even within all of us. Yes, I understand that someone else may indeed look at this same exact narrative and find empowerment in that harrowing experience. Yes, I understand that sometimes this can literally just be a matter of ones emotional state going into the depiction in question, for sometimes a movie about suicide can trigger me or sometimes the same movie could make me feel less alone in that struggle. Yes, I understand these issues of inclusion exists as a double edged sword. But if I can acknowledge that the depiction can be positive? It is okay to ask you acknowledge this troubling feeling with these depictions and understand why so many people engage in the following exchange:

“Congrats, you’ve been included in the apocalypse!”

“No thanks!”

This “no thanks” feeling crossed my mind constantly throughout the entire process of playing The Last of Us Part II. It was not a singular reaction, mind you. I have many feelings about playing this game (clearly). And many things I will say to its credit. But unlike the first entry in the series, I didn’t get goose bumps from it being a powerful, transformative piece of art. Instead, I got a series of conflicting emotions. Some of which were really troubling. But more than agreement about what exactly they were and whether you felt them, too, I simply want to be understood.

Because for most people, apocalypse narratives are a theoretical play space where people work out fears of death or engage in murder fantasies. Because the true nature of most apocalypse narratives is that they are not about your world ending, but the fact that you somehow survived, you lucky dog! And the reasons for that world ending often allow you to say one big “told ya so” with a smug disposition. Once done, you get a good old encouragement of, “here’s your gun, go shoot some meaningless bodies!” That’s “the apocalypse” to most people. 

But for others, “the apocalypse” is a very real part in the constant past. Or even the haunting present. Make no mistake, queer people have been there. They are there. And even with how much it is getting better, there’s is very little imagination necessary when it comes to catastrophe. Especially when they look at their cinematic existence, where their bodies are always precious, limited resource used for the fodder of someone else’s sympathy. So when it comes to a popular genre that likes to peer into the future and portray our most violent nature? That likes to use their pain for catharsis of the other’s gain? Well, I can’t blame someone for NOT wanting to see a version of the future that features them getting horrifically murdered 300 times. 

Because the future has to be about something brighter.

It has to be.

<3HULK