How I play Ellie/Thoughts on Ending
Jul. 1st, 2020 02:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
44pistolundermyheadspoilers, obviously.
So I have a set of songs for the younger Ellie. You can see them here, though they aren't the only ones.
To me, many of the "Ellie" or "Ellie and Joel" songs sounded like fight songs, things to keep your spirits up to. With the context of the new game, they sound less like defiant cries into the night, and more like a twisted, horrific determination to inflict retribution. They aren't about survival in the face of horrid odds anymore, they're something almost obscene.
Anyway. The creative director has described Ellie's drive to kill Abby as an obsession - a drug addiction. I take that very seriously in the way I play her, especially post-game. In my opinion, she didn't forgive Abby. Joel's death still haunts Ellie, and it will for a long time. She can't smile and proclaim that everything's okay. After more than a year of holding onto that rage - she still hates Abby. She still wants her dead.
But in letting her go, Ellie made the conscious choice to try and resist those feelings. The same way a drug addict, when deciding to quit, doesn't just get over the addiction, they've just started down the first step in that path. But the fact that THEY have made that choice is everything.
By the end of the game, to me it's clear to see that Ellie is self-centered, only caring for the perceived relief from the guilt she feels. It's an aspect of the trauma she's gone through, but it doesn't absolve her of the horrific choices she's made. If there's redemption to be had, she needs to actually start giving a shit about the people she's connected to, and find real meaning in her life.
Letting Joel go (via leaving behind the guitar) is another step to that. But you don't overcome trauma and horrific thinking patterns with just one decision. It'll be a lifetime of correcting herself and dealing with the trauma, and having to understand that nothing will ever go back to the way it was ever again. She will never be the person she was before Joel dying, before Seattle.
But at this point, she's realized the only way out is forward. Depending on what I'm writing, the trauma and PTSD could end up consuming her and lead her to suicide to escape the pain. Or she could, slowly but surely, become a better partner to Dina. She could be some kind of okay.
At the last moment of the game, she's not stable to me. But she's making a conscious choice to change. That's the important part, and what informs me most when I'm writing her.
It's actually beautiful, in a strange way. Before part 2, I've always had Ellie's personality as reactionary, in that she doesn't make moves on her own, she just reacts to what the world throws at her. Part 2 sees her actions driven by those reactions, up to the very end. (I'm talking in the broad scope of plot points, and none of this absolves the fact that she very specifically hunted down Nora, Abby, and others. But those were reactions to the initial stimulus - they killed Joel.) It's only there, as she's drowning Abby, that she finally does something that's not a basic tit-for-tat reaction. At least as I play her. That's part of her growth, too.
So I have a set of songs for the younger Ellie. You can see them here, though they aren't the only ones.
To me, many of the "Ellie" or "Ellie and Joel" songs sounded like fight songs, things to keep your spirits up to. With the context of the new game, they sound less like defiant cries into the night, and more like a twisted, horrific determination to inflict retribution. They aren't about survival in the face of horrid odds anymore, they're something almost obscene.
Anyway. The creative director has described Ellie's drive to kill Abby as an obsession - a drug addiction. I take that very seriously in the way I play her, especially post-game. In my opinion, she didn't forgive Abby. Joel's death still haunts Ellie, and it will for a long time. She can't smile and proclaim that everything's okay. After more than a year of holding onto that rage - she still hates Abby. She still wants her dead.
But in letting her go, Ellie made the conscious choice to try and resist those feelings. The same way a drug addict, when deciding to quit, doesn't just get over the addiction, they've just started down the first step in that path. But the fact that THEY have made that choice is everything.
By the end of the game, to me it's clear to see that Ellie is self-centered, only caring for the perceived relief from the guilt she feels. It's an aspect of the trauma she's gone through, but it doesn't absolve her of the horrific choices she's made. If there's redemption to be had, she needs to actually start giving a shit about the people she's connected to, and find real meaning in her life.
Letting Joel go (via leaving behind the guitar) is another step to that. But you don't overcome trauma and horrific thinking patterns with just one decision. It'll be a lifetime of correcting herself and dealing with the trauma, and having to understand that nothing will ever go back to the way it was ever again. She will never be the person she was before Joel dying, before Seattle.
But at this point, she's realized the only way out is forward. Depending on what I'm writing, the trauma and PTSD could end up consuming her and lead her to suicide to escape the pain. Or she could, slowly but surely, become a better partner to Dina. She could be some kind of okay.
At the last moment of the game, she's not stable to me. But she's making a conscious choice to change. That's the important part, and what informs me most when I'm writing her.
It's actually beautiful, in a strange way. Before part 2, I've always had Ellie's personality as reactionary, in that she doesn't make moves on her own, she just reacts to what the world throws at her. Part 2 sees her actions driven by those reactions, up to the very end. (I'm talking in the broad scope of plot points, and none of this absolves the fact that she very specifically hunted down Nora, Abby, and others. But those were reactions to the initial stimulus - they killed Joel.) It's only there, as she's drowning Abby, that she finally does something that's not a basic tit-for-tat reaction. At least as I play her. That's part of her growth, too.
