what if tess was the main character of the last of us?

my Tik Tok for you page is an at times embarrassing amalgamation of my current media hyper fixations anytime I open the app there's a 50/50% chance of the first video being an absolute god tier edit made by a 16-year-old so naturally at the beginning of last year my for you page was filled with edits of The Last of Us featuring lots of I know the End by Phoebe Bridges I bet on losing dogs by mitsky all the all the classic sad edit songs right and including of course the edits of all edits the most most famous edit of all time the Pedro Pascal one you you know what I'm talking about granted however many jeel edits I was shown I was shown more test edits for some rather obvious reasons my Tik Tok knows me very well I've been in love with anator since I first watched Fringe I don't even know how many years ago and it remains to be one of my favorite shows of all time and it is so underrated it is Criminal and that's not this video but that is a video because that show should be huge but I digress some once my Tik Tok wisened up to my preferences I was shown mostly test edits like a lot of them like like a lot until eventually in March of last year I saw a video with audio from a podcast of behind the seates content from the show that I had never heard before I have tried my hardest for years to get into podcast and I just absolutely I just I can't I cannot and and the podcast it's just like a behindth scenes thing and it's posted on HBO Max's website if you want to watch it and you haven't seen it yet before and it's hosted by some really cool people it's hosted by Troy Baker who was the original voice actor for Joel and the games um as well as Craig Mazin Mason I'm so awful with the names I'm so sorry Neil Duckman who is the executive producer and he's the actual creator of the game which is really cool and a really neat Trio to have talking about the show and just the story itself the three of them were discussing something that we'd never gotten the chance to explore in the games but was almost added to the show Tess's backstory and they revealed the intended cold open of an episode where we would see Tess before that she was once married and had a young son but when the outbreak hit both her son and her husband were infected with the corps virus in left with no choice Tess shot and killed her husband and not being able to kill her own son she instead locked him in the basement of the house where he would remain Undead and turn into an infected and theoretically could still reside there in Tessa's present day a clicker in the place of her once beloved Son ultimately it was decided there wasn't a place to fit this into the show and it was scrapped but this small clip from the podcast gave us some really valuable insight into a fan favorite character that before we'd only had guesses and assumption as to what her past may have looked like and while I don't think any fans would be surprised to hear that this is her backstory it's still really interesting to hear just how similar it is to Joel's and and while I'm certainly appreciative of this little edit for bringing this podcast and information to light for me it was really a comment on this edit that I still over a year over a year later how ridiculous is that I can't get it out of my head and it was it was simple and seemingly nothing Obsession worthy but well here we are and it read okay but imagine an au where it's Tess and Ellie instead of Joel and Ellie once I saw that I in fact could not stop imagining an alternative Universe where Joel died at the beginning of the story in the capital building and the rest of the journey was for Tess and Ellie and for for over a year now for over a year I have not been able to stop thinking about this I think about it all the time I think about it very very frequently it truly is an obsession at this point why why did such a niche hyperfixation of a hyperfixation consume my thoughts like this what made it take up so much space for me at first it was just the overwhelming feeling of well nothing would really change that much would it a lot of the main plot points could still happen in I think a largely similar fashion but the more I thought about it the more I realized just how much would change and from there I came to the ultimate conclusion that it's the audience's reaction to the story that would change most drastically which spoiler alert for the rest of the runtime of this Society hates mothers and like yeah yeah yeah women in general too but really in particular hates mothers but adores doting fathers and we'll get into that with a bit along with some Talk of the recent Obsession that people have had with the surrogate tough guy fathers and their adop spunky teenage daughter Trend cuz there's there's been a lot recently I don't I'm sure you've noticed I don't know how it's possible to not notice at this point we'll talk about the bar for fathers versus mothers under the patriarchy um and how I think the test would have ended up being seen as an anti-hero and protagonist to the story in a way that Joel never was or will be and just one last brief little thing before we really get into it here um I will obviously be spoiling the entire plot of The Last of Us Part One first season of the show um but I will not be discussing or making any references whatsoever to the second game and what will presumably be the following seasons of Television so you are spoiler safe from me in this video if you have not played Andor seen the second game but you know look at comments and whatnot with caution perhaps it's in your hand [Music] part one red ribbons and invisible string The Last of Us is a post-apocalyptic video game originally released in 2013 with a second game in 2020 a remastered version of the first game in 2022 and now of course the worldwide phenomenon HBO adaptation show under the same name that was released at the beginning of 2023 and while it's not the point of this video and it is rather obvious at this point it is necessary to State how absolutely fantastic the show is and what a spectacular job they did of adapting the game a game that was heralded as being so cinematic that it didn't need any sort of adaptation that it felt like you were watching a series already and yet we ended up with something that a lot of people consider to be one of like the best adaptations ever really I mean it's it's it's pretty good it really is a big reason for that is how closely it follows the game and Source material that is so great itself and for that reason I'm going to be referring to them as mostly the same entity unless it calls for the distinction in the few places the plots do differ but they're overall pretty closely following each other The Last of Us follows the story of Joel Miller a hardened and cynical middle-aged man who is reluctantly tasked with transporting a 14-year-old girl across what remains of the United States after a zombie apocalypse a zombie apocalypse that only happened 20 years prior meaning that Joel lived a whole life before the outbreak a life that included his own teenage daughter Sarah who was tragically murdered the night of the initial virus outbreak a soldier shooting her in attempts to contain the outbreak Joel then miserably and bitterly survives her for the following 20 years as society and Life As We once knew it fully collapses and that of course is the Crux of the story it is a zombie story and it's post-apocalyptic and all of these great things but the story is about the relationship between Joel and Ellie the teenage girl he 20 years after the loss of his own daughter finds himself responsible for and again that's what the last of us is about it's about the father daughter relationship the two of them end up forming at first reluctantly neither one of them wants to be stuck with the other Joel even less so than Ellie which is truly an impressive feat to accomplish but having to trust each other and rely on each other to stay alive they eventually learn to care for one another as well but this isn't about me talking about how wonderful The Last of Us is this isn't just me gushing on it and as a longtime fan of the games I have so much love for this story but that's not what we're here for what we are here to talk about is Tess who while leaving a large impact on the story the characters and audiences Tess doesn't actually play that momentous of a role in the story itself we meet Tess immediately following the time Jump after the death of Joel's daughter Tess is Joel's partner in crime and persus Clen in his life period clearly the only person he's allowed himself to care for is s Sarah's death you know if you're if you're here right now I'm going to make the safe assumption that you're already familiar with the story so we're not going to sit here and go over beat by beat every single plot Point um more so I'm picking and choosing what I think is important for where I'm going to and we see in the beginning the inner workings of Joel and Tessa's both personal and work relationship we watch as they hunt down men who stole inventory from them and as the show really pushes to us even more than the game does Tess's one scary [ __ ] um in a way even more so than Joel is the show like goes out of their way to show us this the show like really wants us to know this okay they really want us to know this and it also goes out of its way to show us just what a tight leash and control Tess has over Joel as well and a very like typical male writer hitting you over the head with how badass as female character sort of way uh which isn't a critique against the show and these writers in particular simply an observation of a larger Trend in media and these stereotyped strong female characters as a whole but in dealing with these business crime smuggling Shenanigans we're introduced to the rebel group The fireflies their dwindling numbers along with their leader marleene and now Marlene's in a bit of a tough spot when she runs into Tess and Joel who she's done business with before and in a bind Marlene agrees to give Joel and test the merchandise they're looking for if they smuggle something across the border for her a 14-year-old girl named Ellie who at the time we don't know why Ellie is important and now I mean most people with context clues and literally any knowledge whatsoever of like the zombie apocalypse genre it's like it's probably pretty obvious and you'd already guessed why Ellie was important but Joel and Tess don't know and it's obvious that neither of them want to do this Joel more so than Tess and since we see the story through his lens it's immediately obvious to us that this teenage girl is an absolutely horrible pouring of salt in the unhealed wound of the loss of his own daughter like duh obviously no [ __ ] it's not intended to be a subtle metaphor but it's Tess who ultimately makes the decision for them regardless of what Joel wants to do furthermore it's Tess who later leaves Joel and Ellie alone together and later still it's Tess who convinces Joel not to shoot Ellie after the fedra soldier reveals Ellie to be bitten and seemingly infected and I've seen a lot of people say mostly men that it's obvious that Tess and Ellie instantly bonded and I don't really agree with that especially game Tess was written very differently in her interactions with Ellie but I think those interactions with her in the show are very on par for how Joel was treating her at the time it's simply because Tess is a woman and Ellie is a young girl that people are viewing it automatically through this lens of maternal figure rather than just chest being some Burly man talking to a teenage girl and assigning softer emotions to it than it necessarily calls for speaking of societal perceptions it's not the part that we're at yet we're going to get there and we're going to spend some time there but that's not where we are yet so Joel and Tess now joined by a disgruntled Ellie all set out to cross the border of the quarantine Zone and get Ellie to the capital building where a group of firefly soldiers are waiting to transport her and you know through the normal this is an apocalyptic Survival Story so nothing ever goes right l everything that can go wrong does our crew is forced to cut through an old museum for safety and they run into a group of clickers which I can so confidently say or like at the very top of my list of worst zombie types to have to deal with the walkers from The Walking Dead are like puppies compared to these things they'd be so easy to deal with if the zombie apocalypse happened and clickers are running around I'm not even trying I'm not even trying in the first place I've said it before I will say it again I do not understand why people in these like apocalyptic type stories try so hard to survive I'm done I'm through I'm I'm out I'm good it's been real and it's been fun but it will not be real fun without the internet and electricity and running water and having to like physically fight for my life what happens if my glasses fall off like I'm [ __ ] I'm over I live in a big city I live in New York what this is the first place that's going down I'm I'm not me to survive it and quite frankly I don't want to but especially those [ __ ] clickers the three of them narrowly managed to avoid being eaten alive good for them and they finally make it to the long awaited capital building where there are supposed to be Firefly soldiers waiting to meet them and they're going to take Ellie the rest of the way on their Journey Joel and Tess are done at that point their obligation to marleene is fulfilled but immediately upon their arrival it's obvious that the fireflies who were once there are dead they've come all this way for nothing and to top it all off more infected and clickers are on the way it's then the test reveals she was infected by fighting off the clickers in the museum and she sacrifices herself to give Joel and Ellie enough time to get away and obviously in the story it's pretty much the inciting incident for the rest of the story um not just because it's now Joel and Ellie alone forced to work together or die but it gives Joel something to both resent and bond with Ellie over because Tessa's death truly is the Catalyst for the entire story because Joel at this point was done his obligation to Marlene was to get this stinking kid to the Capitol Building get his car battery and him and Tess be on their merry way now Tess is dying the fireflies aren't there and he has no way of getting the price he was promised regardless but once again it's Tess who pushes Joel into action Tess who convinces Joel to see it through to get Ellie to the fireflies she full-heartedly believes that Ellie is immune and might be the real deal she might be the one and only actual shot of getting the cure to everyone and as Tess raises it herself it's a chance for them to write their wrongs to tip the scale all all of the immoral and horrible things they've done since the outbreak could be wiped clean if Joel just gets her to the fireflies it's Tess's dying wish and Joel can't refuse it and as Tess tells him save who you can save Joel no longer can save Tess but he can still save his own life and Ellie's by leaving Tess and buy them some time save who you can save Joel can still get Ellie to the fireflies where there's at least a chance that she could actually be the key to the real cure the thing that they been waiting for for 20 years they could literally save everyone he can't save Tess the only person he's cared about for years but he can still save this kid whose inadvertent fault it is that Tess is even dying in the first place save who you can save it's interesting especially to view this scene in in particular Tessa's plate to Joel to take Ellie to the fireflies with this new information that we now know from Tess's backstory this isn't just a woman seeking to atone her and Joel's past sins this isn't just someone wanting to save humanity and do the righteous thing this is someone who has personal stakes in the fight which obviously 20 years into the virus everybody had personal Stakes here all of them would have lost a friend companion partner family member whatever it is to the virus but since we view this story through the lens of a father and a child Tess lost her son her husband and her son but it's her son that really is the main focus here and they were both turned they were both infected they didn't die from a byproduct of the virus or from Human scavengers or from just in general human shittin they were infected and turned by the virus itself which to me is the ultimate reason that Tess is so adamant that this is the right thing because yes Tess lost her child all those years ago just like Joel did but unlike Joel her son's death was a direct result of the virus itself yes Sarah dying was because of the virus and the outbreak but Sarah wasn't infected she was shot Sarah's death was a tragic but avoidable death it was a panic induced craze by living breathing people which is of course one of the main themes typically of these zombie apocalyptic stories which is who are the real monsters o who are we most afraid of is it the fles eating zombies or the other humans that are still left and usually including the case here for The Last of Us it's the latter and that's something that we're shown time and time again as the story progresses and is really I mean the main overarching theme of the story but Sarah's death was never caused by the virus Joel's anger was directed at The World At Large at the people the system had failed and it's mirrored in every one of the major plot points in the story people people killed Sarah people capture Ellie marleene lied in the end not to mention Joel's actions at the very end prove this and flip it on its head showing us just how monstrous he can also be to protect those that he loves it is people doing all these things and not strictly the infected the perceived monsters Tessa's loss was directly because of the virus not inadvertently because of it and if there's a cure that wouldn't have saved Sarah's life but a cure would have saved Tessa's son and now there's a chance there's a real tangible shot and at the very least it's the closest they are ever going to get to it getting Ellie to the fireflies to test is a way to save her son long after he turned and died and that's exactly what Tess leaves Joel with a mission and from there we all know how it goes Joel and Ellie struggle to get along with each other until they eventually do and then they both fight like hell to stay with each other it's the father daughter Dynamic relationship we all know and loves so much but here's where our Divergence happens here's this idea I can't let go of what if Joel Was Bitten during the clicker attack in the museum and he died in the capital building instead leaving Tess to be the one to see it through and bring Ellie to the fireflies what would change what would stay the same what if Tess was the main character of The Last of [Music] Us Part Two everything changes and everything stays the same I want to First discuss what I think would remain the same if it was Joel who died instead of Tess because I think a lot of the main plot points would be pretty shockingly similar both the show and the game did an excellent job of establishing the fact that Tess is just as capable of Joel and they even make it a point to have Tess literally say that it was just a second of bad luck that made her get bit the same could happen to Joel at any point it's a split second of bad luck it happens to everyone we know that Joel and Tess have worked together for years and the two of them have very similar values and decision-making skills it's why they've worked together so well for so long really the only difference we've established is that Joel can at times be a bit more unfor giving and quicker to the draw than Tess but in a lot of instances that would arguably make Tess even more valuable and strategic than Joel and it's obviously why the two of them make such a good team together all of that to say I think Tess would make a lot of similar decisions that Joel would we'll talk in a minute about Joel's death and the conversation about Ellie they would have had would have changed but I fully think if Joel was infected he would have done the same thing that Tess did he would have sacrificed himself so that Tess and Ellie could get away I think actually it's unbelievable to think that the two of them had not multiple times discussed the probability of something like this happening and both of them agreeing that they would do exactly this in that situation and after that happens um you know from there Tess and Elli would manage to escape the capital building I think it's really safe to assume that Tess would think to do the same thing Joel did go to Bill and Frank for help we know that Tess also had a relationship with Bill and Frank so it seems perfectly logical that Tess would think to do the same thing and we're obviously now viewing this in a sense that the story is Tess's from the very beginning meaning that instead of watching Sarah die in the prologue we instead watch Tess before the outbreak and we see Tess's son die so we immediately feel that connection of older parental figure to this teenage girl but now through the lens of Tess that also means that the problem of Tommy pretty much takes care of itself because I'm sure someone out there is saying oh but Tess and Tommy never meet why would Tess think to get a car from bills and then go to Tommy for help why H that doesn't make any sense um and you know that could easily like be solved in a number of ways none of them being at all consequential to the storyline of Tommy and what happens at Tommy and what unfolds there you know there could be a quick little bit of dialogue added in the first episode where Joel mentions the days the three of them used to run things together oh the good old days of the Apocalypse you know establishing that again Tess would have those connections outside of Joel and before his death Joel could have suggested that she seek Tommy out to even Point her in the right direction or again the story is now tests from the beginning Tommy just could have been her brother make things simple so really we could go down the entire plot and do this find workarounds to every single thing but again not what we're here for we're we're getting past this to get to the other stuff and regardless of all these little details and slight differences I really do believe Tess would do a lot of things very similarly to Joel so it's kind of a mood Point anyway starting at bill and franks which maybe now would be a great time to talk about some of the differences between the game and the show briefly I already said I'm not going to get super into the changes between the two of them because they really are similar enough that we can just refer to them as one joint entity but there are of course some changes and to me the changes that they made are adaptational changes that are different little branching paths but they all lead to the same destination none of like the big overarching story lines changed you know but how we get to some of those storylines change but again very slightly it's it's very very similar they just expanded on a few things and passed over a few others and it's decision- making which I think overall was well done I think it's a pretty fruitless Endeavor to adapt something literally word forward line by line camera angle by camera angle especially something that as we've already said was so cinematic to begin with there had to be things that they expanded upon and made different for the sake of having it be made done you know and something just translate differently in different forms of media it's necessary to make changes in a television show versus a video game where you are literally immersed in the world and you feel like you're the one making the decisions versus when you're just an observer to the going on in a movie or TV show or you know any other form of visual Media One such thing being that Joel himself all around a little bit more likable and a little softer than in the game especially in the last episode when he opens up in kind of a bigger way to Ellie than he NE necessarily does in the game you know the show doesn't have as much runtime to show the progression of their relationship and so they have to verbalize it rather than show it over the course of longer periods of time the game has what at minimum like 15 hours involved in it while the show doesn't even have the full eight so they have to show the progression of the relationship in a clear and concise way and speaking of the changes I actually quite like the majority of changes that were made one of the best parts of the show that is different from the game is the background and the entire stories that it gives to characters that we never got these moments with in the game like obviously Bill and Frank who Nick Offerman just won an me4 congratulations welld deserved their episode was jaw-droppingly good as we all know it was beautifully acted and written and so beyond heartbreaking and it had the added bonus of pissing off so many conservatives to had men everywhere who thought that this was a woke free like hardcore action zombie show um and I know some very conservative men who watch this show and were just absolutely foaming at the mouth at the at the homo of it all you know it's very rare even now to see queer relationships portrayed with such softness and such tenderness and care and kindness and to see how it was done in this [ __ ] zombie show is just actually hysterical my only gripe with this is that we were robbed of the absolute impeccable interactions between Ellie and Bill that happen in the game which if you haven't played or seen it before I highly recommend at least like looking up their moments because they are just so great and it's guaranteed to bring you Joy and I'll gladly trade that for what we got in the show but I can't help but miss some of their snarky vter you know we we have to point out here that these cold opens and the more flushing out of backgrounds of some of these more Side characters um is the whole reason that we're here it's that Tess was optioned to have one of these but it was later next for other plot points you know we also have Sam and Henry having one of these really wonderful fleshed out stories in the addition of Sam being younger so that him and Ellie can have more of this sibling Bond um and Sam being deaf just add so much the emotional aspects of the story which is something that it was uh really lacking you know the emotional Stakes are something that there just there weren't enough them to begin with but these were all intelligent intentional choices that make you Bond even more so with these characters something that you do sometimes more strongly in a game where you feel like you are one of them you're a part of them and you're an active moving part in the story itself one of the things I did find maybe a little bit unnecessary was flushing out Kathleen quite so much not bad by any means but just a little bit like okay okay okay slay girl okay um granted I do truly truly truly love anything related to Melanie Linsky and anything that Melanie Linsky is in I feel like Melanie Linsky is going to be our generation's version of a bit more seriously taken character actress Margot marale she's just she's been in so many things in either very large or very small roles and she just she [ __ ] eats it up every time one thing about Melanie Linsky is that she's eat it up teenage cannibal she ate that uh unreliable Bluebird Navigator double check she's there she's there she's there she's in the last of us I respect it I love it um back to the point and just one last thing that I don't have a specific other spot to put but talking about changes I do also want to mention one of my favorite ones it's what happens when Ellie fights David or rather after Ellie defeats David it's one of the most if not just the most intense and heart pounding moments in this story it's so visceral and real and executed perfectly by Bella Ramsey their rage and fear is just so comes across so well in that moment what I love so much is how the show gave Ellie this moment she takes her time killing him and sitting with it before she stumbles out of the burning building and bumps into Joel while it's a subtle change from the game what I love so much about this is that Ellie undoubtedly saves herself here Joel was not close enough enough to save her if Ellie hadn't been able to do so herself Ellie had to get herself out of that situation and she did but if she hadn't then Joel wasn't close by enough to do anything to help her either and in the game Joel rushes in almost the instant that Ellie stabs David which while we get arguably a more emotional interaction between the two of them to me it feels like it robs some of the agency from Ellie in that moment Joel was Joel was right [ __ ] there he was probably already in the building by the time that Ellie kills him you know Joel would have killed David himself if Ellie was 2 seconds slower it's still a great moment in the game and I at all do not mean to take anything away from it um Ellie still saves herself and from a game mechanism I understand why it works better not having to change locations and scenes but I just love the subtle change that the show made with that I think it adds a lot more stakes and wait to this for Ellie and truly it was her kill it was her skill and it was her responsibility to get herself out of that situation and she did and to end our talk about itational changes just to reiterate again we can go down the list we can go line by line but not that much changes not that much changes you know from Bill and Frank they'd head through to Kansas City and end up running into Sam and Henry they'd battle through with them and end up at Tommy's would Tess have the emotional turmoil Joel does there maybe probably it's a big emotional climactic moment in the game in the story so I'm sure there's something that could have happened would it have been exactly the same no but it would have been different she could have opened up in a different way could have tried to still pass her off to Tommy again change it a little bit Remains the Same this is an adult who does not want to be with a child because of an unhealed dead child wound that does not change but they'd eventually head back out together on their Journey now more closely emotionally bonded than ever when they get attacked by Raider Tess gets injured Ellie's taken in by David's crew they proceed from there until they reach the hospital and both get knocked out when Tess awakens it's to Marlene telling her that Ellie has been taken into surgery and at her prompting marleene would tell her that Ellie won't be surviving the surgery their end goal in sight accomplished and now Tess is faced with the same terrible choice that Joel was and now after sitting here and telling you that I think nothing would change if Tess were the main character let me now tell you why I think that Tess would choose differently than Joel why I think the test would sacrifice Ellie to the fireflies in hopes of finding a [Music] cure part three save who you can save unless the thing is is that there's one big main difference between Joel and Tess one big difference that even though they have similar backgrounds and dispositions and decisionmaking skills it changes their motivations in very specific circumstances circumstances like like exactly what the choice is that's presented at the end of the story save Ellie's life and take away her choice and possibly [ __ ] all of humanity forever because you love her and can't bear to lose her or let Ellie die for a chance at finding the Cure because you love her but you want Humanity to have a chance at least on the surface those are the simple motivations so what is the big difference no not the mommy daddy issues of it all we're getting to that in a minute Joel and Tess both lost a child around Ellie's age which makes both both of them uniquely suited to take on the task of caring for one now and I already briefly touched on this earlier when I talked about Tessa's motivations for sacrificing herself in the Capitol building but Joel's daughter Sarah did not die from the virus and she was not turned she was shot by a human being showing the lengths and depravity our species falls into under chaos and stress and Terror and that's the theme of the entire story all of it was explained to us instantly from this one brief instant how easy would it have been in the story to have Sarah get bitten or scratched or literally like torn apart by the [ __ ] flesh eating zombies right the fact that it was a human soldier who shot her after her and Joel just got away from the horde of infected again literal flesh eating zombies tells you everything you need to know about what the last of us is trying to tell us and it's echoed all throughout the story but especially in the ending where Marlene proves how far she and Humanity will go in order to survive and further their own agendas and it's echoed further still by Joel who goes on an absolute Slaughter to save Ellie's life and then lies to her about it Marlene is wrong but Joel is also wrong it's Humanity it's people who are the main enemy no one knows the lengths they'll go to in order to survive until you're put in those situations and that's the entire Point as writers and creators Neil drunkman of the game and Craig Mason the show said in an interview with cider in 2023 the infected creatures were a vessel through which characters are pressured to make interesting decisions and reveal their true selves this all works narratively because the setup of the prologue and the way that Sarah died not simply that she did die but the methods of which her death came about if Sarah had been killed by infected then the rest of this Arc wouldn't line up Suddenly the messaging of humanity and people being the villain doesn't fit with the literal monsters murdering Sarah which is why this story would have to change if our main point of view character's child was killed by the infected or as we know in Tessa's case and really only further proves my point I think is her son wasn't just murdered or eaten alive by the infected which is awful in its own right he was turned into one of them and suddenly everything I just said doesn't apply anymore now the altering and completely emotional and LIF low of our main character is directly centered around the infected no one shot Tessa's son he was infected and turned it's not in Tessa's head that Humanity caused this this wasn't people being cruel and desperate to survive in the lengths they'll go to in fear and Desperation this was an infected attacking doing the thing that they're exactly supposed to do it's now the virus's fault and the infected that are the root of Tessa's disdain and of course you know the rest comes later with being a Human Being Alive before the fall of humanity and then the ensuing 20 years after would be enough to make anyone think people were bad and selfish and awful and terrible and all the things that Joel especially believes to his core but the difference were shown in the story from the get-go is that Tess pretty much immediately wants to believe Ellie is immune I've seen again a lot of people mostly men in my opinion misinterpret this a lot of people I've seen are really quick to attune these to again Tessa's motherly Instinct and compassionate tones when there's nothing to back that up other than people projecting their own thoughts of a woman's actions in response to this young girl Tess isn't believing Ellie before Joel does because they have this womanly Bond or Tess is more sympathetic and wants to believe her it's because she still believes in the possibility of a cure deep down she still believes it's possible to salvage what remains which is something that Joel doesn't there's still that last little bit of light left that thinks it's possible and in Joel position even if the fireflies wouldn't have had to kill Ellie would he have let them go through with it if there was even a chance that Ellie would have come out on harmed would he have let them do it he probably still believed the idea of the Cure was pointless and even if the Cure was able to be made and possibly so how would they distribute it who would get it first what would the side effects be what would you have to give up in order to get it think of the battles and the wars that would happen over it the length that people would go to to get their hands on that they would do anything but Tess still thinks that it's worth it and her telling Joel in the capital that taking Ellie to the fireflies to get that cure is a chance for them to write their wrongs is only further damage she's not just talking about her and Joel's wrongdoings their own horrible things they've done to survive she's talking about her son and herself the son that she couldn't bear to kill and let him instead turn into an infected getting Ellie to the fireflies and finding a cure is n just about saving who remains it's about saving her son even if she knows logically that there's no way of doing that anymore that her child is gone the creation of a cure proved that he could have been saved that other children might still be saved that the wrong that was done to her child both by the infected and by herself could be wred and nothing will ever bring her son back the same way that Joel bonding to Ellie and saving her from another person's desperate Act of humanity won't bring back his daughter but it helps and the same would happen for Tess there's just a few changes I want to discuss in terms of Joel versus test the first being the capital scene itself remember we're imagining that instead of Tess getting infected by the clickers during the museum Escape it's Joel who's infected and hit it up until this point so it's Joel who stays behind to take out as many infected as possible to let Tess and Ellie get away and this is one of the most emotionally waited moments we get up until this point other than obviously Sarah's death it's Tessa's dying with that propels Joel forward through the rest of the story something that she knows he won't refuse because of the bond that they have so if things are the opposite now and Joel is dying what the hell does he say to Tess because something that wouldn't change is that Tess already believes Ellie is immune and wants to get her to the fireflies she doesn't need convincing to do that but the same way that Tess knows Joel well enough to know what he's thinking and convince him to do what she wants Joel knows Tess the same and knows her well enough to know her motivations the same way that she does his I think the Joel would end up telling her to take care of Ellie to make sure that she's safe and to look after her the same way that Tessa's death mirrors her son's death jeles would mirror Sarah's in his final moments he'd revert back to the father role and be thinking about this child the same way Tess was thinking of hers and what killed him the infected or the living Tess tells Joel to get Ellie to the fireflies and to find a cure a task which Joel follows spectacularly until eventually he forsakes her wishes and saves Ellie instead of of allowing marleene and the fireflies the chance of completing Tess's task and in a similar fashion and narrative device Joel would tell Tess to look after Ellie and ensure her safety not mentioning a single word about the Cure and test would go right along with that until the moment that she doesn't and forsakes Joel's wishes of safety and instead sacrifices her to the fireflies and a lot of the tension in the beginning between Joel and Ellie is over the fact that he doesn't want to transport her not only is it Ellie's inadvertent fault that is now dead but Joel doesn't want to be doing this in the first place and that's different with Tess now who would want to take her to the fireflies but I think there's a lot more emotional resentment that would rest between the two of them that has nothing to do with Joel's death at all but rather the fact that Ellie was bit and survived again Sarah wasn't infected so the fact that Ellie was bit and didn't turn isn't a point of contention in their relationship there's no resentment that Ellie survived an affected attack which allows Joel and to bond quicker however Tessa's son was infected and did turn where Ellie didn't Ellie was attacked and bitten and survive and again we can't do this for everything and we're pretty much and we're we're stopping doing this for everything now but I think this really is why this idea has stuck with me and resonated with me for so long I can't really think of another story where I think so little would change of the actual plot Point itself is the main if the main character was a completely different person how much they things would change and stay the same but really what would change most is the reaction to all of this and how the relationships and the story would be perceived because of it because as I discussed in terms of adaptational changes I'm going to say the same thing now about test being the main character Ellie still gets from point A to B but it's the intent and the meaning the narrative and thematic elements that change fundamentally when it's test a woman and we're presented with a motherdaughter dynamic rather than a father daughter dyn Dynamic and the story no longer works when it's a motherdaughter dynamic The Last of Us is a story strictly works because of the fatherdaughter [Music] pairing part four my father is the worst man alive and I am his favorite daughter before we can talk about motherdaughter Dynamics we first have to examine fatherdaughter relationship and it's hard not to notice the recent trend of Harden tough guy middle-aged men taking on the role of surrogate father to feisty spunky teenage girl that is being depicted in modern media there are tons of examples that we could list and talk about here I'm sure some others instantly spring to mind for you as well but just to name a few that I think fit very like specifically in the roles that The Last of Us designates you have Logan and Laura from Logan Wolverine um Hopper and 11 from stranger things Ari and the Hound from Game of Thrones and to settle us back into the gaming world you have geralt and Siri from The Witcher and sebas and Lily from The Evil Within and you know The Evil Within is like different because it is her biological father but it's The Evil Within is kind of like a hot jumpster fire but it's my hot jumpster fire and I will defend it until my last dying breath and really what I mean by that is I will defend the first game which I know is the unpopular opinion I do not like the second game second game I think they just totally miss the mark of Joel and Ellie Dynamic that they were so clearly trying to invoke the least important reason being that Sebastian is actually Lily's biological father but then he turns into a Joel like character but then he gets her back but she's still like 7 years old it's so weird not to mention like the clearly like fan pick underlines a bit the second game is just a hot mess but not the point not the point and there are other examples to list for this totally um but we don't have time to sit here and talk about them all and we've been SPO fend a lot of them recently so I don't think I need to go into too much detail cuz you get the point on these and with these kind of Dynamics being portrayed it's very particularly father daughter there aren't a ton of examples I can think of that depict this same kind of fear protectiveness between father and son mother and son or God forbid mothers and daughters you know just as a general General gender warning um we're about to enter and then not really exit the realm of extremely gender terms both that I'll be saying and sources that I'll be quoting so um take all of it with a grain of gendered patriarchal salt there's a lot of reasons why people are so drawn to this tough guy father teen daughter Dynamic and like most things in life it can all be traced back to typical social constructs of gender and what everyone's perspective roles are under the patriarchy a daughter is something that has to be protected especially as a male adult figure a young woman is either something to be coveted or protected both for her virginity and innocence to either keep for yourself as a perspective Suitor or as a father figure one of the issues I sometimes take with these sort of father daughter but deliberately arrogate father Dynamics is how frequently they are twisted into sexual Relationships by mostly male audiences an older man taking interest in a younger woman must purely only be for the sexual advantages taking on a younger less experienced partner would be certainly nothing paternal certainly nothing other than that and if you're surprised to hear that this is common with almost all of the Dynamics I just listed I'm very sorry to be the one to have to break that news to you and for the love of God do not not look at the A3 tags on these characters in particular Ari and the Hound or Sansa and the Hound not to mention Galt and Siri I just it stands that whether from a platonic familiar romantic sexual standpoint a young woman is something to be protected by an adult male figure under the patriarchy women are seen as more helpless than men and seeing a son in these situations wouldn't bring out the same protectiveness in the same way it does for audiences and stereotypically these male character is that a daughter does the the Damsel in Distress to put it simply because in these situations where a daughter has to be saved you would expect a son to Buck Up and prove himself and you know in theory I think this could be alleviated somewhat by having a much younger son but for the same effect to prove useful it would have to be like almost an infant aged child which of course ruins the aspect of the child father relationship being really the main point of the story um being that the kid would be so damn young they couldn't really emotionally intelligently connect in the same way at this point of you've been paying attention which I hope you have been there's a certain series I specifically have avoided mentioning The Walking Dead one of the things I think the last of us did so well as a show was make itself so starkly different from the Walking Dead which is a great franchise and was beyond a success itself but it really brought a new face to the zombie genre that is to this day what a lot of modern audiences think of when they think of zombies obviously the stories and shows themselves are very different but I think one of the best things that The Last of Us did was not have too many infected even early on in the Walking Dead's runtime audiences were rolling their eyes at the literal thousands of Walkers that pretty much every time the crew was able to escape unscathed even the very iconic moment from the pilot episode of The Walking Dead we're already having some pretty thick like character arm on with Rick being able to get away from what like hundreds of thousands of them lots of us uses hordes and large numbers of the infected but every time we're shown one we lose a character we know and The Last of Us is not an ensemble like The Walking Dead is so those deaths hit harder every time even very early on in the story there also isn't nearly as much gratuitous score which I don't mean as a criticism of The Walking Dead I enjoy Gore and horror and The Walking Dead did it so well but when you have a you know show or movie with this much Buzz you're going to attract viewers who this isn't their main genre they don't frequent this kind of content and don't always enjoy intestines being pulled apart scenes as much as other people do it's it's fair I can't argue with that there are a lot of people I know who watched The Walking Dead up until the point that literally everyone stopped watching The Walking Dead and they would look away every time from those scenes and honestly I think there's a whole other video just talking about the smart choices that The Last of Us made in order to differentiates itself from the piece of zombie media but I wanted to just give a subtle nod before now circling back to the father daughter because aside from obviously the zombie apocalypse comparisons to make a big part of The Walking Dead is Rick's family and himself being a loving father to his son Carl Carl now to immediately take that point away I don't believe their relationship falls into the same category of the other father daughter um dynamics that we're talking about and Rick's relationship is a pretty textbook fatherson relationship within its perceived gender role beyond that while Rick certainly goes above and beyond to save and fight for Carl not only is his relationship with Carl not the main focus of the storyline but Lori is still around Carl has his mother and even after Lori dies he still has the emotional bond and weight of adult women in his life that fill and take up that maternal role meaning that Rick himself doesn't have to fill that spot Rick never has to be the sole caregiver of emotional mental physical everything to his child of course talking about The Walking Dead as a franchise we also have to mention Clementine and Lee from The Walking Dead games which is um another adop young daughter and father pairing but um their story goes down a much different route but starts in a more familiar territory to the last of us with this adult man having to fill the entire weight of emotional and physical caretaker of this specifically female child because despite talking about the superbly gendered and strict patriarchal rules that these kinds of relationships enforce they're at the same time serving as a Breaking of gender and patriarchal Norm submissive women whose main purpose is to be the homekeeper to take care of the children while men fight in battles build things and bring in wealth and goods in order to survive and under these strict patriarchal terms there's not as much that men and fathers have to do with their children men may entertain the children sometimes they can take on the role of a fun parent in our more modern society where the emotional labor still mostly falls on the mother but the act of actually raising children being the primary physical and mental caregiver is a role that is very typically reserved for women for the mother obviously in our more civilized modern society and as younger Generations continue to become parents these lines become more blurred however if you ever want to feel ready to absolutely strangle any man that you come across there are plenty of videos on Tik Tok that go viral every week for the exact things that prove that we might not be as advanced as some may think but these blurring of the lines where women are expected to work a full-time job while also being the primary Keeper of the house and children means that the mother has less time than she did in the 50s to do over her children all day long meaning the father is now more involved than he has been typically in the past but even so fathers in comparison to mothers are usually seen as the fun parent fathers are the ones who take you out to lunch after your sports match who teach you how to ride your bike go out in the yard to throw the ball around take you to your first concert they're not the one making you wash the dishes after breakfast make sure your homework is done and brush your teeth before you go to bed at night regardless of how much more involved fathers are in their children lives now parenting is still highly gendered a 2019 study in science daily found that father's child care activities were more likely to be recreational and take place on the weekends while mother's activities were more likely to involve an infant and fit into the category of solo parenting meaning parenting without a partner present so really showing these dynamics of characters like Joel and Ellie where they only have each other Joel is the only person Ellie has to rely on for safety shelter food and her emotional needs and in doing so this and in in fact is a pretty big breaking of a lot of these pillar values which is obviously mimicking the view of a single father for us something that Joel actually was before the outbreak he was a single father to Sarah his daughter before Society collaps this is a can of worms of a much broader conversation of um single fathers and the way Society treats them and Heralds them as heroes in a way that partnered mothers let alone the millions of more single mothers there are out there um are not there's a lot of of sympathy held for men who are single parents people tend to view them as going above and beyond rather than just completing and fulfilling the tasks that creating a child demands of you but with men it's celebrated they're stepping up to the plate for being a single parent rather than it's just what you do the expectation and again again part of a larger conversation Society patriarchy blah blah blah blah blah it is still just so unexpected to people that that a man would take on the responsibility of soulle caregiver to a child that stories like The Last of Us explode because of how endearing it is to see a man doing these things that typically in our regular human civilized society he might not do even when that should be the normal everyday thing there's a really interesting article I found um from epil loers docomo and Laura and Joel and Ellie and it takes um a much Kinder and more emotional View than the larger cynical societal view I'm heading towards again it really points out the harsh gender of this dynamic in order for it to work and it reads quote both girls are initially described as someone that needs to be taken care of that is true for the most part of the story but ultimately the role is slowly reversed the daughters slowly start maturing and eventually become their father's emotional saviors throughout the story our protagonists keep on making an effort to complete their Journey while saving their surrogate daughter from Harm's Way as the girls also start learning the ways of the world and slowly becoming more and more able to defend themselves on their own and what I find most interesting about that and true is that it immediately puts the emotional well-being of these grown ass man into the hands of the young girls as soon as they begin to mature and start to reach Womanhood especially in the final episode of The Last of Us when Joel tells Ellie that he only ever started to heal and get better after 20 years was because of her regardless of the obviously very nice and well-intentioned sentiment that's a hell of a lot of emotional weight to put on a 14-year-old kid's back and very really reflects Dynamics and relationships that exist into the real world single fathers passing off household duties emotional duties and everything not onto their sons but onto their daughters even if they may be younger than the son if you ever want to ruin your day there's a lot of really terrible um heart-wrenching quotes about fathers and daughters and how they very frequently drift apart when teenage girls begin maturing into their own person and distance themselves more from their parents' views especially a lot of the time their father's views because there is a bond that happens uniquely between fathers and their young daughters specifically when they're younger and for a lot of people those special bonds don't really make it out of childhood it's this daddy daughter style relationship right the daddy daughter bond the daddy's girl little I'm a daddy's girl t-shirt dad's with shotguns over their shoulder to meet the prom date at the front door daddy daughter dances at school where the dad takes his daughter on date and shows her how a man should treat her what why am I the only person that finds this weird no one else finds this weird I don't I don't know because the father is projecting all of his life experience with women onto his daughter he thinks she's different than all the other women in his life and you'll often hear men talk about having do makes them sick to their stomach because they know what young boys think and they can't imagine anyone thinking about their precious special daughter that way as if having ownership of the daughter is the only thing that gives her autonomy and gives her value the value of being owned and protecting that perceived innocence virginity they only see the wrongs they've done to women in their lives Through The Eyes of their daughter but again all of this relates back to that innate need to protect a female male child that perceived idea of innocence and helplessness damsel is that a word that a daughter has and that daddy is going to nurture and protect in a way that only he can and young daughters are very perceptive and welcoming of daughters partake in this and cater to it when they're still young and haven't realized the extent of the society they already live in it's a little team that form the child of course is receptive to it it's your parent showing you positive interaction and enforcing these interactions you're having that the Father the adult is setting a tone for quote often father and daughter look down on mother woman together they exchange meaningful glances when she misses a point they agree she is not as bright as they are cannot reason as they do this collusion does not save the daughter from the mother's fate this idea of a girl dad is something that has become more popular the past few years and it kind of ties back into what I was saying with the fun parent but it's shockingly even more gendered than that it refers to a father who is with the times and doesn't mind doing more typically girly stuff because his masculinity isn't so fragile that he can't handle wearing a tiara during the duration of a tea party or having his nails painted or God forbid watch the Taylor Swift movie a girl dad isn't someone who emotionally supports their daughters or buys them period products or anything inherently female coded in that way only in the light-hearted ways that only strengthen to show simply how masculine he is by allowing his young emphasis on the young aspect because this does seem to have like an age expiration date of allowedness young daughter to console him into he's a good sport he's just playing along quote at once imbued with positive associations of innocence and fun and insulated from any suggestions of naivity or weakness that might be stereotypically deemed girlish traits the girl dad siphons the positive associ ation of girlhood only often for commercial or professional gain there's not really an opposite to this there's a boy mom but that's more so someone who takes her kids to soccer practice and cheers for her son Sports someone who will patch up scrape knees and clean grass stains out of sports uniforms and makes as much food as her growing boy needs because they need so much to grow no almond moms are ingredient only households for these boy moms damn you which we're not touching that topic with a 10-ft pole in this video and there's also you know there's also the boy mom who's like weirdly in love with her son and is projecting onto him um but that's different and you know it's its own subcategory of this weird situation here a boy mom is similar and its gendered stereotypes but still assumes an amount of emotional and physical labor that goes into the task that a girl dad does not take responsibility for and I don't say all of this to say that there are no good Fathers and that all men are terrible and that no one has fathers that don't fall into these categories I'm obviously not implying that but when we're talking about society as a whole and under a patriarchal society that we do in fact still very actively live in there's a hell of a lot more of what we just discussed than there's not even if some people don't want to realize that because they don't want to recognize that their own partner is falling into these categories the fact of the matter is a lot of us didn't and don't have the relationship with with our parents that we wish we did and in completely unbelievably disproportionate numbers a lot more people feel this way about their fathers than they do their mothers some of us are fortunate enough to feel this way about both so it's no wonder that seeing a depiction of a man forgoing everything to care for this young girl as a father is a story that emotionally resonates and connects with so many people it's healing of your own inner child to get to see a child getting the care and attention you wish you'd received when you were in your time of need like Ellie was it's the found family Trope plain and simple and the fact that Joel is a man and not a woman means that it's actually allowed to play out and every single move he makes it doesn't have to be overanalyzed and constantly [ __ ] scrutinized by don't you swear at me you little [ __ ] don't you ever raise your voice at me I am your mother it's time to talk about Mommy part five Reflections on shattered mirrors mothers and daughters existing as wretched mirrors of each other I am all that you could have been and you are all that I might be you can't have this trend of media portrayal of more loving and caring fathers without the opposite and as we've already discussed while this serves as a Breaking of typical patriarchal values of showing men being the primary and sole caretaker and being more soft and open there's now this flip side we have to explore in a patriarchy we already know that women are expected to be the main caretaker of the children but what does that really mean because it means something different than a single father being the sole caretaker beyond the obvious it implies that a mother must always be present and available she is responsible for the actions of the child while also taking care of their personal needs and her own according to Canadian women studies in short mothers are open and hospitable they're caring and selfless always putting their children's needs above their own they cook every meal homemade and with love for their child seasoned to Perfection so that they're not mocked for it on the internet three times a day at precisely the correct times they do all their children's laundry including the large child they undoubtedly married they sort it they fold it they put it away they make sure teeth are brushed and shoes are put away that homework is done birthdays and aren't missed and that everyone is perfectly happy which is totally fine and not a lot of pressure at all all all of course just as equally as importantly being submissive to their husbands upkeeping and cleaning the home maintaining their own physical appearance keeping a social network and extracurricular activities for their children and the list goes on and on and on and for many years that was the only mother that we were shown can you look at me when I'm talking to you Jesus the doting loving mother whose warm embrace after a bad day of school would turn even the deepest frown upside down there's literally so many examples of like perfect unattainable mothers like that in media that I don't even feel the need to list a single one as you've probably already conjured about 10 in your head um just for me talking about that and maybe maybe you're even thinking of your own mother which is you know um good for you but just as there have always been plenty of fathers more involved in caring in their children's life than these typical gender roles push for there have always been mothers that are none of these things mothers that are not kind or caring or selfless and aside from my own personal ties and connections to this conversation I think it's endlessly fascinating this idea of mothers who don't fit under the patriarchal rules established for them because it's very different than fathers who don't fit into these very gendered roles it's a simple fact that regardless of gender you're supposed to grow up settle down and procreate having children is seen as the end goal of Life by a lot of people it's the happily ever after Fade to Black right off into the sunset and I don't even mean that in a biology major theatric animalistic we're meant to repopulate the Earth man kind of way but that's what's expected of human beings it's to create more human being but the narrative is different a man can choose to not have children and it's usually seen as a smart call when he does he was focusing on his career he was making big moves advancing himself and he didn't have the time to settle down he was too busy playing the field sleeping with surely hundreds of desirable women who were all helplessly attracted to him and they tried to force him into matrimoni and fatherhood the old ball and chain but he resisted their plights and rather stayed being an independent alpha male but for the women who choose to not have children who I'm I'm telling you girl well women can literally make the choice to not have children women in fact cannot choose to not have children it's no longer an active decision that the human being is making with agency it's by default a woman could never choose to not have a child she's been deprived of them no one wanted to marry her no one wanted to settle down with her to raise kids with her you don't want to be like her kids to be old and alone who's going to take care of you when you get to be that age who will you pass on your legacy to what will you do with all of your time since women trible up into old hags after the age of 30 you don't want to be a spinster clet you're 10 years old you don't know what you're talking about you'll change your mind things change when you get older when you meet the right person when your frontal loes finish developing when you succumb to to societal pressure and all of your friends and siblings have children and suddenly they you're the only one with an empty and Barren womb and hey that biological clock sure is tiing and won't you regret it for the rest of your this idea this entire purpose of being equaling motherhood is pushed onto women from the very beginning in literal infancy we give our young girls baby dolls to play with while handing our boys cars and fighter jets and army men and building blocks and action figures and we push baby dolls into our daughter's hands that you have to feed and change their diapers and swaddle and burp and look I've fully agree that internet analysis and critique can get too into the weeds and it's just doll it's just a toy but the only toys that I can remember having from my childhood are dolls that I took care of in a maternal fashion which was probably the last time I had any sort of those kinds of feelings and a [ __ ] cleaning cart no because I am being so dead ass serious I cannot even describe right now I have absolutely no recollection of gave me a [ __ ] cleaning cart toy because I do not remember acquiring it and I cannot fathom why I personally would have asked for this but I was obsessed with this stupid [ __ ] little janitorial style children siiz cart that had like a broom and a fake vacuum in it because honestly who gave that to me that's criminal and it Des jail time that's insane on God that is deprived and [ __ ] up ungodly and so but then you have these fake kitchens and fake cleaning carts and these fake beds and laundry to fold and suddenly we're teaching valueable skills like housekeeping and the care of children hm familiar sounding isn't it almost like we're training young boys for the workforce while training our girls to stay at home and care for the children in house it's been long argued by feminists Scholars and activists alike that whether intentional or not quote dolls have been interpreted as agents of patriarchal culture in which girls were passive consumers and another quote dolls encapsulated the values of scientific motherhood espoused by Urban and middle class professionals a belief that motherhood required the development of expertise and technique dolls have been prevalent for hundreds of years as a popular choice for young girls toys and although it may not have always been a societal and patriarchal moated surge by companies very frequently it has been during the 50s quote these toys were produced in order to train young girls how to take care of babies there was no question of whether these little girls were going to grow up and have children of their own so they were provided with as many child rearing simulation toys as popular women in the ' 50s were charged with the care of children while the men worked to provide for the family economically socially expected white nuclear families raising their children in Suburbia there was a massive shift that occurred following the end of World War II as America emerged into the Cold War communism drove women to work instead of staying in the home so naturally the US wanted to keep women in the home and was emphasized through the popular culture of the time including children's toys my personal obsession with dolls aside which actually if we want to psychoanalyze and get real about it it's because of my lack of typical girlhood attributes that I think I like them so much and the fact that um here's the thing I only like old ones she's old she's Vinted she's porel and she's hand painted I should be probably being more gentle with her than I am being I also just love disturbing other people it's a Pastime and problem of mine and um my dolls and my little doll bits that are behind me usually um they face my bed and people find that very disturbing when they come over and that's always really fun anyway my point being motherhood is pushed on to young girls from the very moment they're born it is conditioned into women that it is the ultimate goal the happily ever after the purpose of absolutely everything is to nurture and raise children of your own of course this goes along with having a husband for the only thing worse than not having a child at all is having a child out of wedlock whole other side tangent attached to that how many 9-month long vacations could wealthy Victorian women take to the seaside and returned suddenly a little bit more Solen and sadl looking before their friends got suspicious or on a more serious note how many women have died over hundreds of years from botched and failed abortions for the sake of Keeping Up Appearances of their male Partners forcing them as to not ruin their reputation but again topic for another time my point is that it's never posed as an option for women to have children it is assumed and expected from the moment of birth that little girls will grow up and be good little girls to have babies of their own so what happens when like with everything in life there are women who don't fit into the mold little girls who don't want to grow up and have babies for much of History they've still grown up to have little babies of their own because there just wasn't a choice especially in the old days not even that old old of days even when women didn't have bodily automony wow thank God we've come so far from that point but when women were legally viewed as property and things like marriage were decided by them by the adult parental they were literally not given a choice marriage was a business transaction and as a daughter it was your obligation to fulfill your end of the contract meaning to have children didn't matter if you thought your third cousin was ugly as all hell and you didn't want to not nose little brat attached to your hip that looked just like him for the next 14 years you were to marry him and breed with him you literally like you just you didn't have a choice women who did Rebel and fight against this Norm were branded as insane and had mental issues and were thrown into insane asylums not feminists or ahead of their time thinkers but literally crazy even in much more recent times where marriage wasn't quite so archaic let's not forget that it was only in the' 70s that women gained the ability to open a bank account independently can you can you imagine that a lot of our mothers were born before that so even all in the 70s it wasn't a contract for marriage and well okay marriage is literally a contract but you know what I mean when I'm saying that women could get jobs independently even before they could keep the money fully to themselves marriage was still expected in fully the norm you could go and get a job and go to college but you still end up a stay-at-home Mother by the age of 30 while your husband continued on being the bread winner it's really only been this most recent generation of 30ish year olds that were seeing having a shift and decline in the amount of babies actually being born and while obviously a lot of that has to do with important things like the economy the state of the world global warming war and all around just um absolute terribleness of everything like literally everything this is also really the first time women have been able to choose to not have children and not to the surprise of anyone paying attention lots are choosing to do so or to not do so all of this long tangent to say with literally thousands of years worth of women having children for the sake of having children how many women became mothers simply because it's what you were supposed to do rather than what you actually wanted to do and before you jump in and say oh well you can say the same thing for men who got tricked with P pesky birth control and holes and condoms and women trapping them into the financial obligations to come with having children it is so intrinsically different what being a father father and being a mother means that your point just isn't valid I'm sorry to tell you when you're a father you're still an important member of your team at work you still go golfing with your FS on the weekend and go out to drinks after your job you pick up McDonald's on the way home and are met with cheers of delight when you get home you still get to be a man when you're a father the two are not mutually exclusive you still got to be a whole human being that just so happens to have sired an offspring but when you're a mother that's suddenly all you are sure you can still work but any mistake you make is suddenly under the guise of oh she's distracted now now that she has the baby at home and really you're trusting the child with a daycare worker why don't you just stop working and take care of the kid full-time that's what your parents did if you do happen to have time for something like friendly outings without your children you're ridiculed for not bringing your children where are the kids did you leave them alone on the weekends when they're free from school don't you know that's really important emotional bonding time with them you go out for drinks after work and you've left the kids alone all day and now you're drinking when it's their bedtime shouldn't you be there for that you pick up fast food on the way home and that's the nutritious dinner you brought home Wow way to provide them with a balanced diet in the double standards of parenting quote what makes a good father can be as simple as love and provision what makes a good mother is a Mong List full of contradictions exceptions and inconsistencies I still get calls from if one of my kids is sick or misbehaving I'm still the one responsible for figuring out the carpool and the snack Duty for soccer practice and where my kids's Martial Arts uniform is assuming I remembered to wash it my responsibilities as Mom wife employee household manager and scheduler are so intermingled we could continue to go on but I think you get it not only are the standards for mothers and fathers vastly different but the act of being a mother and father and what it means to your identity and as a human being are catastrophically different being a mother is all consuming it becomes your entire identity in s everything else is secondhand to Motherhood while men and again there are plenty of great fathers who love their children and would do anything for them they still could be people outside of the parental roles in a way that mothers don't and when you've societally pressured women to have children there are a lot of women that had children who didn't want to and in a patriarchal society where women who don't Excel and find purpose in only and everything associated with motherhood women who had children and later discovered they shouldn't have had those children well you're [ __ ] admitting such a thing is heinous and even other women tend to be tight lipped about those feelings we don't have time to talk on PPD and the complete in total lack of support to women and mothers in general for their mental health and I've already gone off on such a deep Rabbit Hole anyway but I find it very ironic and humorous my continued Fierce protective and defensiveness of this idea of women who probably wouldn't have chosen to have children on their own and who were forced to have children and then just had to deal with it it's something that's been considered very taboo for a long time is this idea of bad and abusive mothers and I think that really for the first time in the past maybe decade or so we're seeing people start to step out and talk about it and I think that's important and we should all strive to continue these kinds of conversation because mother-daughter relationships can just be complicated and messy as is right and people can just refuse to acknowledge any sort of abuse being there simply because a mother would never do something like that she's a mother it goes against everything a mother has or is to raise a hand or Voice or any of the [ __ ] up [ __ ] that millions of people have had to deal with it is just so programmed into people's brains to believe that every single mother is the perfect apple pie mother that they cannot imagine that regardless of whether or not their mother actually was that they can't imagine others not being that way in that brings me back to the actual point that I'm getting at which is abusive mothers shitty mothers women doing batshit crazy things and not in a fun I support women's rights and women's wrong kind of way but in an actually bad way because just as there have always been men who have broken from their roles under the patriarchy there have always been women who while fulfilling the bodily requirements of motherhood do not meet the nurturing and caring expectations placed on them and just as there's been a trend lately of showcasing these more caring and soft father figures kind of hard not to notice how many complicated mother child Dynamics we've been fed in the past few years just to name a few ladybird obviously hereditary obviously um sharp objects BoJack Horseman the Netflix adaptation of Haunting of Hill housee not to mention books that made a really big splash like um I'm glad my mom died by Janette MCC that does a really fantastic job of talking about some of these things and just to hearken back to what I was just saying look at the backlash that Janette MCC faced over that book do we think she would have faced that if the context of it was about her father probably not these are you know all different obviously and while media portraying not Picture Perfect mothers is nothing new the way they're being depicted is different and the frequency and the frequency in which we're seeing them as well but something I think is equally interesting in all of these is the amount of Discord that revolves around them in particular centering on the child the child could have done something differently in order to be treated differently there's always this underlying oh well they must have done something to deserve it that warrants a mother being abusive how many Tik toks have I seen of young girls who watched ladybird with their mother and their mom turns them at the end of the movie and says they thought ladybird was a selfish little [ __ ] like oh okay a lot of those pieces of media are examples of what I think would fall into the category of what I was just talking about is women who had children for obligation and not because they were eager and seeking and loving and War people who truly wanted to nurture and mother a child and it's always more difficult to portray these kinds of relationships especially as abuse in mother child Dynamics is so often written off and not to insinuate that Abus of fathers are never written off and again it Roots back to understanding these roles that women and mothers are placed in this perception that they're more soft and gentle and nurturing and that they would never do something unless it was warranted it's almost more palatable I think for an audience who has certain preconceived views and Notions of mothers to believe a mother being like something in ladybird than a mother who is physically abusive to her children even in stories like sharped objects by author Jillian Flynn where the mother literally poisons and tries to kill her children I've still heard people make the argument that oh but Camille makes it so difficult for her there's this Fierce protectiveness that people have over mothers even fictional mothers in media that I I think especially if they had great mothers who would never ever do something like that it's almost unfathomable to them that any mother would behave that way period And when audiences in real life people are faced with the reality of mothers who treat their children with abuse and coldness the blame is very frequently put on the child or in part the child's Behavior rather than the adult they use a child's acting out as a way to justify what the adult is doing rather than putting the blame where it firmly belongs on the adult and on the flip side of that talking about mothers who are normal human beings and are not abusive you know they're the best parent that they have the ability to be do we still put the blame on the child when something goes wrong what was that class um no usually no ironically when mothers aren't doing anything outright awful people tend to blame them a great example I think is Gilmore Girls which is a show okay first of all every time I say the word girls now I just hear grw and especially saying Gilmore it just triggers my brain to go Gilmore GS I don't I don't know why but um it's a show that I'll be honest and say I've never watched very much of because it does um it does trigger that little part of the brain that doesn't like shows about mother daughter mostly happy Dynamics and I find it uncomfortable rather than comforting to watch but I've seen enough and I've had enough friends around and I've been on the side of Tik Tok for some reason a bit for a few months I don't really know how that happened I feel qualified to discuss for a moment and despite the fact that I know a lot of people don't particularly love Rory in that show I hear a lot of people criticize Laura life for her choices throughout the majority of the series even beyond the obvious of having a child so young nonsense um the way that she allows Rory to act and the things she lets her do laurelai is trying her hardest to have a relationship with her daughter that she always wanted with her mother but nothing she does is ever good enough Shameless is another one that I think of um and I I think it's really interesting to talk about because there's an abusive father in that show and it's his eldest daughter who steps up to take care of her younger siblings and act as their mother and what do her other siblings the other adults in the series and audiences do criticize her critique her put all the responsibility and burden on her a lot of my favorite books and books that I seek out fall into the subcategory that I like to call mother horror um which isn't literally about the body horror of child birth but um the horror of being a woman and mother and also being a daughter which I had quite a few sitting in the background this whole time night [ __ ] is a book that explores this topic beautifully and I cannot recommend it enough to you if conversations like this interest you at all um I can't quote this entire book for you but pretty much this entire book could be sourced for this also SHP sharp objects is right is right here too and in book just like home by Sarah gayy our main character L with her childhood and her relationship with both of her parents her father who was a convicted serial killer having killed many men in the basement of her childhood home and her mother who kicked her out once she was a teenager and the main character the daughter finds it much easier to forgive her father the literal convicted serial killer simply because he was warmer towards her during her childhood and he showed more open affection she never really forgives her mother and to be clear she shouldn't have to and in fact shouldn't but it's a really interesting book that explores this Dynamic of even women being less forgiving and men not facing as much critique for their action and these are two extremes of fiction I am I'm aware that these are not autobiographical books they're not but they're rooted in reality and the entire point of literary fiction let alone horror fiction is to explore certain aspects of the human psyche and Dynamics just through a certain lens which is exactly what the Last of Us does as well just by the way which is something that is not at all unique to mothers on screen and in literature in fact I'd say the opposite it's much more prevalent and common for mothers in real everyday life to face much more harsher scrutiny and criticism than fathers do which is obviously like obviously nothing revelatory to say um and goes back to things I've already discussed and there are a [ __ ] ton of fantastic video essays that are just about this that just you know we as a society hold mothers to such impossible unattainable standards especially to what we hold fathers to it would be pretty comical if it weren't so in fact depressing because again motherhood is what's expected from women fatherhood is never expected and assumed in men making it endearing and sweet when a man acts parental towards a child that's why you never hear people talk about mothers stepping up to the plate to take care of their children like you hear men being praised for it's part of what makes a dynamic work in The Last of Us here's this cold- heartened killer of a man who by by all means should not show affection to this young girl but it's so unexpected that he would that it's instantly charming and it makes him unbelievably likable to us as an audience we're willing to forgive all of his previous transgressions the admitted fully by himself terrible things he's done because of it and the fact that we're able to see their relationship develop Joel is instantly more likable by his simple association with Ellie let alone the eventual affection and care for her and I know I already said but I do think it's important again to note that a father and son Dynamic wouldn't have worked in the same way if Ellie had been a boy it wouldn't have allowed Joel the same intimacy and softness under these patriarchal roles fathers are supposed to teach their sons to be tough and strong not being overly n nurturing towards them the child in this relationship being a girl allows Joel the opportunity to express this emotional intimacy with her that with the son would have been perceived as weakness rather than just bonding and now finally here's the point that I've spent the past 30 minutes or so getting to Motherhood is simply expected of women it is the default Tess eventually developing a motherdaughter dynamic with Ellie wouldn't be surprising or charming or celebrated it would just be the standard the oh it's so amazing to see the relationship unfold and the story aspect it's gone people even just watching the probably what 10 minutes of screen time the two of them had together in the show we're already saying the test was being motherly but was she she was treating Al literally like so literally I cannot even properly articulate so I'm just going to continue improperly using the word literally literally the exact same way that Joel was the only difference was that Ellie most likely instantly felt a little safer with her because Tess is a woman and you know in real life that tends to happen as well let alone in apocalyptic universe but that Dynamic of Ellie just instantly feeling intrinsically safer with Tess goes away really quickly once she realizes Joel doesn't mean her any harm it's not because test is an older M trly mother figure to Ellie it's simply because she doesn't have a dick beginning and end to it but as I'm getting to it's not the actual Dynamic that's important it's the perceived reaction to as both the show and game do a great job of portraying to us and as we've already discussed Joel and Tess are very similar in their decision- making and they have very similar backstories with their children this hesitancy that Joel feels this unwitting to this unwilling to connect and bond with his child and fear of getting hurt in the same way again would be very similar for Tess Tess wouldn't instantly start braiding Ellie's hair and asking her what boys or girls in the qz she had a crush on she'd treat her the same damn way she was the same way Joel was treating her do I think that eventually over time they develop a care and respect of each other one that mirrored child parent relationship yeah of course obviously it's what being in close quarter and relying on each other like that would do to anyone but it wouldn't fundamentally change either of them as people if you verbatim take every single line of dialogue that Joel said to Ellie over the course of the story and had Tess say it to her instead the perception changes this is no longer a cold man showing weakness and vulnerability towards this young girl this is a cold woman who's being cruel and callous and is not showing this young girl more warmth and care she should be more affectionate she should be more caring and understanding she should be more protective and careful why would she lead them to Kansas City without knowing if it was safe first she's really going to trust these two random people with Ellie's safety every move test makes would suddenly become much more criticized by her assuming the care of this young girl and when Tess wouldn't change who she was as a human being despite the fact that the two would Bond because Ellie also isn't a warm and fuzzy person I think there would be a lot of people more critical of their interactions simply because of this perceived notion of what a woman and mother should act like towards a daughter while it's Charming that Joel is reluctant at first to open up holds himself back it would be cruel of test to do that the story is no longer about a caring fatherdaughter Dynamic but rather a complex and cold Mother character with their rebellious daughter charge our threshold and expectations for mothers is so much harsher that if absolutely nothing changed the story would be wildly different simply because of our perceived expectations about gender there's also the important added bonus that Ellie might not even end up opening up to Tess or any woman the same way that she did to Joel the mother daughter Dynamic is so uniquely complicated in a way that no other parent child one really is as one source puts it quote the reality is that both mothers and daughters have placed unattainable expectations on each other which only mirrors the pressures the patriarchy places on women its imprisoned motherhood alienated women from their bodies and each other and ensures these limiting and controlling beliefs about women are passed down from mother to daughter there's a resentment and jealousy that exists between mother and daughter always even when there's so much love that mirrorlike quality never fully goes away another great book of mommy horror that explores this mirror quality is Rouge by Mona Awad I know we're not here to talk about books but I love to talk about books and if you're interested in these topics and these genres I have lots of good recommendations for you and just as a side note it's like a branch of this top I find this endlessly fascinating and I'd love to do a whole Deep dive on this is the fact that we mostly talk about generational trauma between mothers and daughters look at hereditary that's literally the entire point of the movie is this thing that passes from Annie's mother to her and then to Charlie and in the word the one and only Sylvia Plath mother you are the one mouth I would be a tongue to Mother of otherness eat me actually can't talk about sopia plow for too long before getting emotional so we're going to just move right past that it can also be a really delicate balance in Media especially visual media showing a badass tough strong female character suddenly start being vulnerable and softening up due to love usually we see this with romantic love um but we also see it with paternal audiences can start to not like the character as much and often claim that she's acting out of character because she's happy that's why a lot of these characters end up not in long lasting relationships in these stories that try so hard to push these stunted archetypes one example I think of with this a lot and it probably just brings to mind because once upon a time like permanently altered my brain chemistry at the age of 13 um is Emma Swan who I adored and still do but people loved her character both online and in person but once she was in a happy relationship and was all around acting happier and being a little less Rough Around the Edges because she started you know heal become a little bit more emotionally Advanced and developed people started calling her whiny and annoying and unlikable and complaining that she sometimes cried like godamn the girls got like the most traumatic life of anyone ever it would make most people fall to the floor in agony let the woman be happy godamn it let her be happy I mention this because I think that it would have to be a very delicate line to have Tess Remain the badass tough literal like serial killer the plot needs her to be that Joel can so easily remain while being open and soft us with Ellie to appease the same audience it's not a with Joel because again men aren't expected to be these paternal soft and as vulnerable so in the moments that he is it's a much bigger deal it shows how much he's come to care about Ellie how far he's come and that despite his best efforts his affection for her still Reigns true but if it was these same only more fleeting moments with Tess it would come across as her being uncaring and calculated rather than genuine and in the words of the wise doctor Swift a man does something it's strategic a woman does the same it's calculated a man is allowed to react a woman can only overreact the point I'm getting at is that it's really not so much about Tessa's actual actions and her meaning behind them it's how an audience of the show the general public and the game which is still predominantly male would have perceived and received those actions like I mentioned earlier I'm not going to spoil anything from the second game in this video Even though there is a lot I say about it that ties into what we're talking about here um but this is a mild thematic spoiler so skip to this time if you want to avoid even a tiny hint of that all that just to say men's reaction to pretty much every single aspect of the second game and if you have played or seen it you know exactly to what I am referring um to what and to who I am referring really just pretty much proves my point in every aspect Tess could have had the purest of tensions the purest of intentions and did absolutely everything that Joel did word for word action for Action punch for punch and it wouldn't have been perceived as enough it never would be no audience would have ever been satisfied with that as a loving motherdaughter relationship the way that they were with it is a fatherdaughter relationship so with that comes my final point the story has to change [Music] part six inherit the earth the narrative story of The Last of Us Works beautifully because it's a complete story it's a complete Arc both for the characters and for the Thematic tones that we've discussed throughout the video that it sets up from the beginning of the story until the very final scene I've already made my argument for why I think chess would choose differently and why I think it lines up narratively in the same way that decisions do if we just change it for tesses so we don't need to rehash all of that I just want to end you with thinking about truly truly truly do you think an audience would react the same because in my opinion there's absolutely no way that they would let's say hypothetically that test would do the exact same thing that Joel did in the end story still wouldn't come across the same and I think that's the point that I've been trying to make even if we take away the writing and story decisions talking about how these changes would be made really at the end of the day if Tess did absolutely everything that Joel did word for word line by line Beat by beat the story wouldn't be taken the same way it is no longer a heartfelt emotional story of a parental figure who lost a child bonding with a child X many years later same actions if done by a mother rather than a father are not good enough they're only good enough because Joel is a man and it's purposeful and that's why it's written from the beginning to be that way and why and please like genuinely if you can think of some mother daughter dynamics that are like this or even just mother child Dynamics I would love for you to leave them in the comment section because I I honestly struggle to think of some that I think are the same sort of relationship and dynamic that stories like the last of us give us with fatherdaughter Dynamics so I leave you with wondering the perception of that and why it is as a society that we hate mothers the way that we do and why we hold them to such an impossible standard and yet we celebrate fathers and their bare minimum efforts so so much and that's what at the end of the day that's what this is really about that's why we're sitting here that's what this is for it's just a great excuse to talk about the things that we've normalized with one of our most uniting causes the media we consume [Music] [Music]

Channel: conversations with colette

Views: 63

Keywords: the last of us, the last of us video essay, what if Tess lived, what if Tess was the main character, tlou, video essay, media analysis

Id: vxyEP89IX6U

Length: 97min 25sec (5845 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 08 2024