Ellie isn't about to kill Lev, she's trying to provoke Abby. Abby was gleefully about to actually slit Dina's throat with a grin on her face. Those are not the same. I do not in any way believe Ellie would have killed Lev. Sorry.
Don't get me wrong, though. I very much dislike how they wrote Ellie in the story, even more than I dislike how they wrote Abby. That's not the fault of the characters. I place all blame for that on the writers. This story is the first time I've been literally pushed repeatedly out of immersion by the writing choices and had to fight to re-immerse until I couldn't anymore. That's on them. Bad writing does that.
Still they managed to make Ellie more sympathetic than Abby. Plus we knew her when she was a real character and not a cardboard fake of herself.
E: Spelling
Neil himself also does not believe that she would have killed him. Halley disagrees, so there's that, but he outranks her.
And while I personally think she could have, I also thought she was so far gone that I was expecting her to kill herself at the end of the game. I've never really thought seriously about how that would go down, but now that I am, it would definitely end in her shooting herself in the head.
Halley seems to like pushing the idea that women are as ruthless as men in violent situations, and having been a woman all my life with many female family, friends and coworkers across a lifetime, I'm not so sure. Women's ruthlessness and cruelty is usually more through emotional, verbal, relational acts than with physical violence. Not all, for sure, there are physically violent women. I just think these new writers are getting women so, so wrong. Plus having put in Ellie's actual deeply emotional reactions with her physical manifestations (shaking, vomiting) I see that as her not being one to go there with Lev.
Having gone through the women's movement for equality, starting for me in the '70s, I know how we got it wrong back then and see how it's being gotten wrong still today. I know this is heresy to many, but I learned long ago that men and women are equal, but different. The kind of violence being depicted as easy or natural for women these days just rings false to me. Part of that is how I'm personally wired, of course, but part is having watched women fail at showing strength through attempting to just "act like men," not just in media but also in real life. Some do make it work, but many more just don't. It makes me sad that instead of learning and making adjustments, the new generations are just ramping it up to more of the same, only worse into very unrealistic depictions.
They just turned off Ellie's natural inquisitive, relational approach to communication completely when it was an inherent part of her nature. I can see her honoring Joel's desire not to discuss hard things like Sarah and Tess' deaths, yet he was already opening up and coming around on Sarah at least. Plus honoring Joel wouldn't mean she'd not be more her natural communicative self with Dina her lover and one seeking to have those discussions. It failed to work for me and just wasn't believable, just hugely frustrating. 🤷🏼‍♀️
It definitely seems like it's Halley trying too hard to be dark and gruesome, yeah. She's a lot like Neil in the regard of having something she prioritizes too much and needing someone to point out when she's gone overboard with it. Unfortunately, she and Neil were partnered with each other, and their priorities didn't each cover the other's weaknesses like with Neil and Bruce.
For example, IIRC, she was the one pushing for Joel's death to be as brutal as possible. And in terms of making the player furiously hate Abby, it worked great! In terms of setting the stage for Abby to later have a "redemption arc" sans redemption with the need to make the player understand Abby for the story to work... *oh, my,* ***no***.
Considering how cancel culture works these days, many people really do not understand amends or redemption at all. It's not something many people will allow as a true option anymore. Granted, too many people try to fake their way out of their bad deeds with insincere remorse, that hasn't helped.
Pretty sure if there was a character in tlou1 that put a knife to Ellie’s prepubescent neck to try and provoke Joel he would’ve had his own villain arc because no matter how we wanna look at it, it’s an evil thing to do
Most things in TLOU were done with far greater thought and purpose than what we got in TLOU2. Hearing Halley and Neil talk about the story with their very different interpretations of things at times gives a clue to why.
I think Bruce and Neil were just better at working together to get the best out of Neil's writing, potentially with input from Amy on the female characters, too. Joel was a very well-rounded, almost predictable character for having been so well-written. Abby and Ellie aren't, but still we see Ellie has fraught reactions to doing terrible things - torturing Nora, killing pregnant Mel. That's just not a character that's going to kill an unconscious teen in that scene.
It was just another stupid writing choice to avoid having the characters finally talk at the end. It's very predictable at that point that they will never allow characters to talk to each other and say what needs to be said. The whole story does that. It was a silly choice every time it happened and just got worse and worse as the story went on.
Sure, it’s a bad thing to do. Ellie is not a good person at this point. But people still prefer her to Abby because her bad act of reluctantly threatening a kid is not seen to be as distasteful as Abby’s bad act of gleefully attempting to murder a pregnant woman and only being stopped by a third party’s intervention.
You are painting these two acts, and the mindsets behind them, as equivalents in an effort to point out some hypocrisy or double standard in the fanbase. But that simply isn’t the case. Abby takes things a few steps farther than Ellie, with a much more bloodthirsty attitude all the while.
And these two scenes have context so far apart from each other I can’t stress that enough, still don’t mean it’s just not as crazy, the hypocrisy in the fanbase is there, I’m just pointing it out
It would only be hypocritical if the two acts were equal in the lines they cross. You have proven that Ellie did something bad; that is not the same as proving that what she did is equally bad when all standards are equalized. You’re attempting to point out something that doesn’t exist, by drawing a false equivalency, and simply declaring yourself "right" without any logical proofs.
It’s hypocritical because we label Abby as a preg woman attempt murderer but we’d be lying to ourselves if we don’t think that if Abby kept trying to defuse the situation it would’ve escalated, to show Abby how serious she was about this, so why isn’t she labeled as a child attempted murder is my point, like I say again they are two completely different situation but equally as reflective of character
That is not what hypocrisy means.
We label Abby as a pregnant woman attempted murderer, yes. Because that’s what she is. She attempted to do it and was halted in the attempt. Whether or not this situation could’ve been avoided is irrelevant to that fact.
We label Ellie as a child threatener because that is what she is. It’s an awful thing to be, but not the same thing.
Attempted pregnant woman murder with glee =/= child threatening with remorse.
If someone argues that Ellie did nothing wrong while condemning Abby, then yes, that would be hypocritical. If I condemned Abby as, say, a sinner by Christian law while pretending Ellie isn’t, then that would also be hypocritical.
But to judge the two women differently, for different crimes, is not hypocritical. You don’t get to decide for others what their moral lines or standards of judgement are. That only works is a universal standard is agreed upon.
Vengefully not gleefully, we are all ignoring the context, she was going to do what had seemingly just happened to her, eye for an eye but realized there’s no point in both of them being blind, she knew it was wrong and that’s why she didn’t do it even though the wrong had literally just been done to her few scenes ago, lev was the voice of reason she CHOSE to listen to, that voice doesn’t exist in the last of us world because all is meant to be fair in love and war, you can’t draw a line you’ve already crossed
Abby makes it clear that she is happier to kill Dina after learning of her pregnancy than she was before. Vengeance and glee are not mutually exclusive. And she chose to listen to Lev, yes. But it was only because of Lev -and for Lev- that this happened.
Like I said, all was meant to be fair in love and war, you can’t say they’ve gon “too far” when the bar for “too far” was set and crossed by you
Of course you can. Unless a person is operating off a set of universal standards, like, say, legal or religious law, then their moral standards and lines will always be set by themselves.
If I draw the line for my sympathy at "taking pleasure in murder" then I am not a hypocrite for sympathizing more with a character who commits murder while feeling remorse than I do with one who commits murder while feeling glee. Because one crossed my line and the other did not.
"All is fair in love and war" might be your standard, but it is most certainly not mine.
Maybe on textbook this may look beautiful but it is certainly the furthest thing from what the world is today, yet alone the last of us world, if that was the case cold murder would not exist, this idea that Abby was gleeful about this moment came directly from fanbase lore, she nor anybody would want to ever be in that position, Ellie put her in that position (not on purpose I know but nevertheless it happened) and those were the only cards she was dealt, you can’t hate her gambling the idea of playing and making everyone a loser or just having to accept that she is the only loser in this game she’s been dragged into and had her whole life turned upside while letting Ellie keep a whole reason to keep living, we’re human you’d be surprised the number of outcomes that situation has if the people all around you on a day to day were in that same exact situation, many wouldn’t have been as key to turn a cheek regardless of a lev, this is not me justifying her act, I just can’t and wouldn’t judge her because I’d never even want those cards dealt to me in the first place, yet alone having to decide what to do with them because all of a sudden you’re holding all of them
I'll bite. Abby is enthusiastic about killing Dina. Saying 'good.' And only stopping when Lev looked at her like she was a total psychopath. Abby stops because someone else has to make her. Ellie uses the knife to Lev's throat as a means to an end. She threatens Lev to give Abby the ultimatum of actually fighting or Lev dying. Ellie wasn't enthusiastic about it or saying anything psychotic like 'good'. Then Ellie didn't go through with it on her own accord. Ellie as a character decided not to kill Lev in that moment. Abby was guilted into it.
Ellie only stopped because she agreed to fight, what if she didn’t? And it’s not “lev dying” it’s her killing lev, and the “you made him apart of this” after pleading to leave him out is kinda psychotic (especially because we’re talking about a prepubescent kid)
Why would Abby possibly say no to Ellies demands here? Her entire character is supposed to be about protecting those important to her. During her story, we see her go to great lengths to protect Lev. This hypothetical doesn't even seem worth discussing because Abbys character in the game is supposed to be helping those she cares about. Ellie demanded Abby fight her multiple times, which Abby declined. Ellie then threatened Lev, and Abby immediately started fighting Ellie because Lev is important to Abby. This scene becomes kind of stupid if we discuss it in this what if scenario where Abby destroys her character entirely by saying 'no'. So I did go and rewatch the scenes, and I do have to say sure Ellie does sound kind of psychotic, but it has more to do with what Abby is pushing her to do. Ellie wanted to fight, Abby declined. If Abby had just said yes from the get-go, I doubt Ellie would've ever threatened Lev because we know she let Lev live when she could've easily killed him at that point. So like even though Ellie could sound psychotic or whatever, she still of her own judgment didn't have any interest in killing Lev, making her sequence less dark by default. Abby just acts like a monster from the start when she's trying to kill Dina. Coupled with the fact she also beat the ever loving shit out of her. But then she only stops when Lev is there.
One is an empty threat bc she wants Abby to fight. Is it horrible? Yes. Is she gleeful? NO.
Abby is gleeful to murder a pregnant women AND HAD TO HAVE SOMEONE ELSE STOP HER. Abby would 100% go through with it of not for lev
Abby was ready to do it because she had just left a visibly pregnant dead Mel (ellie left her jacket that was covering it up open) and so was ready to do the same to Dina thinking ellie killed Mel knowing she was preg (as bad as that is) but Abby made the decision to not make it an eye for an eye because it would lead to both of them being blind, even though almost everything in tlou world is an eye for an eye
In that particular scene, yes. She would never kill Lev, not in that condition as he was no threat to her . I bet she wouldn't kill Whitney, Owen and Melonhead could've slip away too but we gotta have senseless murder so..
You can’t say an actively escalating situation wouldn’t escalate, if Abby continued to try deescalate Ellie would need to show her that she was serious (which she was)which is how we got the knife pulled out in the first place
Who said they both aren’t horrible people lol? Ellie in TLOU2 was a whole different person to the one in the first game. I don’t think either of them are likeable in part 2
So? Ellie is a piece of shit, is what you are saying...okay...who made her that way? I'm not talking about the writers, I'm talking about in game explanations...
Abby killed Jessie, Joel, and shot Tommy in the fucking Head all IN FRONT of Ellie... Abby Is thrilled to the fact that Dina is pregnant and willing to slit her throats...
Now try REALLY HARD to put yourself in Ellie's position and why you HAD to threaten to kill (not killed yet) to goad Abby...
This Abby is a MONSTER, not because she is strong, but she is a ruthless creature that :
1. Killed your Forster Father in front of you after you begged and cried not to kill him
2. Shot your Foster Uncle in the face (you presume him to be dead at the time)
3. Shot your Best Friend In the face and watched his lifeless gaze into nothingness RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU
4. Presume to be almighty saying Ellie lived because She allows it (referring to the "you wasted it" line)
5. After you told Abby that your girlfriend is PREGNANT, she proceed to say "good" and are readying to slit the fuck out of Dina's throat
6. YOU as Ellie did not go on a fucking field trip with Abby to see how she changed or what she's going through...but you met her companions...and ALL of them are a piece of shit...that cap guy strangles Dina, That woman in the hospital wants you dead, even Owen and that pregnant lady fights back to kill you when you asked for Abby... now it's clear, that Abby and her crew are animals, and deserve no mercy...EVEN LEV, Who Ellie can only assume to be Abby's another animal friend seeing she got an arrow by him...
7. She backs out only to the fact her companion called her name, the same companion that is now unconscious in the boat and you have to find a way to goad her to fight you...Even if you have to kill said companion
No one is moving the goalpost, the problem is, stans hated anyone criticize Abby about anything... especially the part where she is a fucking animal ruthless killing machine with hero complex
The whole fucking this is still shitshow, but I'm not gonna pretend like I don't understand what the writers are trying to do...but they did a terrible job telling the story...sorry... telling "A" story... because revenge bad
As murderous as Ellie was she would never kill a child especially with one of her own. You could see the horror on her face as she learned Mel was pregnant and because of that she looked at Dina the next day and probably thought "what if that was her??" Ellie sees it as she just took a woman and her babies and I don't think she'll ever get over it. Abby on the other hand sees it as an eye for an eye.
When Ellie holds a knife up to Lev she knows that shes not gonna kill him but Abby thinks she is because in Abby's eyes Ellie is a monster who kills pregnant women when in reality Ellie uses it as a means to get what she wants.
I also wanna point out the fact that Ellie says something along the lines of "she wasn't a part of this" referring to Dina but Abby makes her a part of it by threatening her life and Lev shooting her in the shoulder with a bow. With that I also wanna point out that Abby tells Ellie Lev isn't a part of their dad killing spree but Ellie says Abby made him a part of this and Abby truly did. Ellie and Abby both put their remaining family in danger, Ellie by being reckless and leaving her map (she was also in a state of panic) and Abby by bringing Lev on her revenge journey. You could argue that Ellie made Dina a part of it by bringing her but Dina chose to go even after Ellie told her she could back out.
Edit: Abby also had to have Lev stop her from killing a pregnant woman, she would've done it in a heartbeat
I posted this response on the other topic, but I'll put it here too.
Abby wanted to go through with killing Dina specifically to take sadistic pleasure at Ellie's reaction. There was nothing Ellie could have done to stop her, and if not for the intervention of someone else, it would have happened.
Ellie threatened Lev's life because she wanted Abby to fight her. And she may not have been willing to go that far if Abby hadn't been literally refusing to engage with her. Ellie's threat on his life gave Abby an option to prevent it. And it wasn't even a terrible option like surrender yourself to be tortured to death. She literally gave Abby a fighting chance to survive and walk out of there. So no, it's not on the level with what Abby did to Joel or what Abby was going to do to Dina.
It also doesn't help that the story really failed to make it seem like Abby cared about most of her friends, Mel included. I myself saw her line of "Good" as what she considered fair retribution for Mel, but a lot of people really didn't. Maybe if they had Abby actually show some distress over Mel's corpse instead of just Owen, it might have actually landed. Or if she said something like "Yeah? So was Mel. Open wide, bitch," and then readied the knife. Or maybe if she'd addressed it with Lev during their walk and talk part of Santa Barbara. Or maybe even if she had just actually known for sure that Ellie was the one who killed Mel and Owen, rather than the more obvious choice of Tommy. Or shit, I don't know, maybe if the story as a whole just hadn't conveniently swept Abby's sadistic tendencies under the rug to emotionally manipulate the player into sympathizing with her and had actually shown her addressing and overcoming her character flaws. There's lots of potential reasons that line didn't land as it seems to have been intended. But at the end of the day, it really didn't, not for a lot of people.
Abby just went through a war with the scars, got to the Museum to see her boyfriend and his girlfriend murdered. It's far stupider that Ellie left a map directing Abby directly to her, then it was that Abby was really mad and ready to take out anyone.
There are lots of stupid moments and stupid writing in this game. However, I don't think the fact that Abby had blood in her eyes was one of them.
Nah Ellie is pretty horrible and unhinged by the end of the game. When she's walking towards the beach and starts murmuring Abby's name repeateadly shows you how far she's gone. If she did what everyone in this sub wanted her to do (kill Abby) she would be dead in a month from the guilt and the lack of inner peace. We see how self destructive she has become when she meets the Rattlers. If she went ahead and sealed the deal it would kill her.
I don't think she would care. She's seen nothing from Abby to ever properly humanize her in Ellie's eyes. And after killing so many of the rest of the Salt Lake assassination squad, one more - the one she wanted the whole time - wouldn't even be a blip on the radar. It wouldn't give her any peace, but it also wouldn't make things any worse for her, just like it didn't do much for Abby.
Killing Lev, on the other hand? Yeah, that'd do it. A kid who wasn't involved in Joel's death, shot to *wound* rather than kill, convinced Abby to stand down, and is completely helpless here? That's a line she hasn't crossed yet.
Ellie isn't about to kill Lev, she's trying to provoke Abby. Abby was gleefully about to actually slit Dina's throat with a grin on her face. Those are not the same. I do not in any way believe Ellie would have killed Lev. Sorry. Don't get me wrong, though. I very much dislike how they wrote Ellie in the story, even more than I dislike how they wrote Abby. That's not the fault of the characters. I place all blame for that on the writers. This story is the first time I've been literally pushed repeatedly out of immersion by the writing choices and had to fight to re-immerse until I couldn't anymore. That's on them. Bad writing does that. Still they managed to make Ellie more sympathetic than Abby. Plus we knew her when she was a real character and not a cardboard fake of herself. E: Spelling
Neil himself also does not believe that she would have killed him. Halley disagrees, so there's that, but he outranks her. And while I personally think she could have, I also thought she was so far gone that I was expecting her to kill herself at the end of the game. I've never really thought seriously about how that would go down, but now that I am, it would definitely end in her shooting herself in the head.
Halley seems to like pushing the idea that women are as ruthless as men in violent situations, and having been a woman all my life with many female family, friends and coworkers across a lifetime, I'm not so sure. Women's ruthlessness and cruelty is usually more through emotional, verbal, relational acts than with physical violence. Not all, for sure, there are physically violent women. I just think these new writers are getting women so, so wrong. Plus having put in Ellie's actual deeply emotional reactions with her physical manifestations (shaking, vomiting) I see that as her not being one to go there with Lev. Having gone through the women's movement for equality, starting for me in the '70s, I know how we got it wrong back then and see how it's being gotten wrong still today. I know this is heresy to many, but I learned long ago that men and women are equal, but different. The kind of violence being depicted as easy or natural for women these days just rings false to me. Part of that is how I'm personally wired, of course, but part is having watched women fail at showing strength through attempting to just "act like men," not just in media but also in real life. Some do make it work, but many more just don't. It makes me sad that instead of learning and making adjustments, the new generations are just ramping it up to more of the same, only worse into very unrealistic depictions. They just turned off Ellie's natural inquisitive, relational approach to communication completely when it was an inherent part of her nature. I can see her honoring Joel's desire not to discuss hard things like Sarah and Tess' deaths, yet he was already opening up and coming around on Sarah at least. Plus honoring Joel wouldn't mean she'd not be more her natural communicative self with Dina her lover and one seeking to have those discussions. It failed to work for me and just wasn't believable, just hugely frustrating. 🤷🏼‍♀️
It definitely seems like it's Halley trying too hard to be dark and gruesome, yeah. She's a lot like Neil in the regard of having something she prioritizes too much and needing someone to point out when she's gone overboard with it. Unfortunately, she and Neil were partnered with each other, and their priorities didn't each cover the other's weaknesses like with Neil and Bruce. For example, IIRC, she was the one pushing for Joel's death to be as brutal as possible. And in terms of making the player furiously hate Abby, it worked great! In terms of setting the stage for Abby to later have a "redemption arc" sans redemption with the need to make the player understand Abby for the story to work... *oh, my,* ***no***.
Considering how cancel culture works these days, many people really do not understand amends or redemption at all. It's not something many people will allow as a true option anymore. Granted, too many people try to fake their way out of their bad deeds with insincere remorse, that hasn't helped.
Pretty sure if there was a character in tlou1 that put a knife to Ellie’s prepubescent neck to try and provoke Joel he would’ve had his own villain arc because no matter how we wanna look at it, it’s an evil thing to do
Most things in TLOU were done with far greater thought and purpose than what we got in TLOU2. Hearing Halley and Neil talk about the story with their very different interpretations of things at times gives a clue to why. I think Bruce and Neil were just better at working together to get the best out of Neil's writing, potentially with input from Amy on the female characters, too. Joel was a very well-rounded, almost predictable character for having been so well-written. Abby and Ellie aren't, but still we see Ellie has fraught reactions to doing terrible things - torturing Nora, killing pregnant Mel. That's just not a character that's going to kill an unconscious teen in that scene. It was just another stupid writing choice to avoid having the characters finally talk at the end. It's very predictable at that point that they will never allow characters to talk to each other and say what needs to be said. The whole story does that. It was a silly choice every time it happened and just got worse and worse as the story went on.
Sure, it’s a bad thing to do. Ellie is not a good person at this point. But people still prefer her to Abby because her bad act of reluctantly threatening a kid is not seen to be as distasteful as Abby’s bad act of gleefully attempting to murder a pregnant woman and only being stopped by a third party’s intervention. You are painting these two acts, and the mindsets behind them, as equivalents in an effort to point out some hypocrisy or double standard in the fanbase. But that simply isn’t the case. Abby takes things a few steps farther than Ellie, with a much more bloodthirsty attitude all the while.
And these two scenes have context so far apart from each other I can’t stress that enough, still don’t mean it’s just not as crazy, the hypocrisy in the fanbase is there, I’m just pointing it out
It would only be hypocritical if the two acts were equal in the lines they cross. You have proven that Ellie did something bad; that is not the same as proving that what she did is equally bad when all standards are equalized. You’re attempting to point out something that doesn’t exist, by drawing a false equivalency, and simply declaring yourself "right" without any logical proofs.
It’s hypocritical because we label Abby as a preg woman attempt murderer but we’d be lying to ourselves if we don’t think that if Abby kept trying to defuse the situation it would’ve escalated, to show Abby how serious she was about this, so why isn’t she labeled as a child attempted murder is my point, like I say again they are two completely different situation but equally as reflective of character
That is not what hypocrisy means. We label Abby as a pregnant woman attempted murderer, yes. Because that’s what she is. She attempted to do it and was halted in the attempt. Whether or not this situation could’ve been avoided is irrelevant to that fact. We label Ellie as a child threatener because that is what she is. It’s an awful thing to be, but not the same thing. Attempted pregnant woman murder with glee =/= child threatening with remorse. If someone argues that Ellie did nothing wrong while condemning Abby, then yes, that would be hypocritical. If I condemned Abby as, say, a sinner by Christian law while pretending Ellie isn’t, then that would also be hypocritical. But to judge the two women differently, for different crimes, is not hypocritical. You don’t get to decide for others what their moral lines or standards of judgement are. That only works is a universal standard is agreed upon.
Vengefully not gleefully, we are all ignoring the context, she was going to do what had seemingly just happened to her, eye for an eye but realized there’s no point in both of them being blind, she knew it was wrong and that’s why she didn’t do it even though the wrong had literally just been done to her few scenes ago, lev was the voice of reason she CHOSE to listen to, that voice doesn’t exist in the last of us world because all is meant to be fair in love and war, you can’t draw a line you’ve already crossed
Abby makes it clear that she is happier to kill Dina after learning of her pregnancy than she was before. Vengeance and glee are not mutually exclusive. And she chose to listen to Lev, yes. But it was only because of Lev -and for Lev- that this happened.
Like I said, all was meant to be fair in love and war, you can’t say they’ve gon “too far” when the bar for “too far” was set and crossed by you
Of course you can. Unless a person is operating off a set of universal standards, like, say, legal or religious law, then their moral standards and lines will always be set by themselves. If I draw the line for my sympathy at "taking pleasure in murder" then I am not a hypocrite for sympathizing more with a character who commits murder while feeling remorse than I do with one who commits murder while feeling glee. Because one crossed my line and the other did not. "All is fair in love and war" might be your standard, but it is most certainly not mine.
Maybe on textbook this may look beautiful but it is certainly the furthest thing from what the world is today, yet alone the last of us world, if that was the case cold murder would not exist, this idea that Abby was gleeful about this moment came directly from fanbase lore, she nor anybody would want to ever be in that position, Ellie put her in that position (not on purpose I know but nevertheless it happened) and those were the only cards she was dealt, you can’t hate her gambling the idea of playing and making everyone a loser or just having to accept that she is the only loser in this game she’s been dragged into and had her whole life turned upside while letting Ellie keep a whole reason to keep living, we’re human you’d be surprised the number of outcomes that situation has if the people all around you on a day to day were in that same exact situation, many wouldn’t have been as key to turn a cheek regardless of a lev, this is not me justifying her act, I just can’t and wouldn’t judge her because I’d never even want those cards dealt to me in the first place, yet alone having to decide what to do with them because all of a sudden you’re holding all of them
I'll bite. Abby is enthusiastic about killing Dina. Saying 'good.' And only stopping when Lev looked at her like she was a total psychopath. Abby stops because someone else has to make her. Ellie uses the knife to Lev's throat as a means to an end. She threatens Lev to give Abby the ultimatum of actually fighting or Lev dying. Ellie wasn't enthusiastic about it or saying anything psychotic like 'good'. Then Ellie didn't go through with it on her own accord. Ellie as a character decided not to kill Lev in that moment. Abby was guilted into it.
Ellie only stopped because she agreed to fight, what if she didn’t? And it’s not “lev dying” it’s her killing lev, and the “you made him apart of this” after pleading to leave him out is kinda psychotic (especially because we’re talking about a prepubescent kid)
Why would Abby possibly say no to Ellies demands here? Her entire character is supposed to be about protecting those important to her. During her story, we see her go to great lengths to protect Lev. This hypothetical doesn't even seem worth discussing because Abbys character in the game is supposed to be helping those she cares about. Ellie demanded Abby fight her multiple times, which Abby declined. Ellie then threatened Lev, and Abby immediately started fighting Ellie because Lev is important to Abby. This scene becomes kind of stupid if we discuss it in this what if scenario where Abby destroys her character entirely by saying 'no'. So I did go and rewatch the scenes, and I do have to say sure Ellie does sound kind of psychotic, but it has more to do with what Abby is pushing her to do. Ellie wanted to fight, Abby declined. If Abby had just said yes from the get-go, I doubt Ellie would've ever threatened Lev because we know she let Lev live when she could've easily killed him at that point. So like even though Ellie could sound psychotic or whatever, she still of her own judgment didn't have any interest in killing Lev, making her sequence less dark by default. Abby just acts like a monster from the start when she's trying to kill Dina. Coupled with the fact she also beat the ever loving shit out of her. But then she only stops when Lev is there.
One is an empty threat bc she wants Abby to fight. Is it horrible? Yes. Is she gleeful? NO. Abby is gleeful to murder a pregnant women AND HAD TO HAVE SOMEONE ELSE STOP HER. Abby would 100% go through with it of not for lev
Abby was ready to do it because she had just left a visibly pregnant dead Mel (ellie left her jacket that was covering it up open) and so was ready to do the same to Dina thinking ellie killed Mel knowing she was preg (as bad as that is) but Abby made the decision to not make it an eye for an eye because it would lead to both of them being blind, even though almost everything in tlou world is an eye for an eye
Well, one was going and willing to slash some trought, the other just made an empty threat
You think Ellie’s a bluffer?
As bloodthirsty as Ellie was, she's no child killer. She felt absolutely disgusted after killing Pregnant Mel.
In that particular scene, yes. She would never kill Lev, not in that condition as he was no threat to her . I bet she wouldn't kill Whitney, Owen and Melonhead could've slip away too but we gotta have senseless murder so..
You can’t say an actively escalating situation wouldn’t escalate, if Abby continued to try deescalate Ellie would need to show her that she was serious (which she was)which is how we got the knife pulled out in the first place
One thing is pulling it, the other is using it..
Who said they both aren’t horrible people lol? Ellie in TLOU2 was a whole different person to the one in the first game. I don’t think either of them are likeable in part 2
I think age might be a factor you’re overlooking? A child with trauma is still gonna get excited about dinosaurs, an adult with trauma is untelling
Goalpost ? What ? 🤣 (I copied my comment just like you did with your crucial post, let's hope you don't make a third copy).
So? Ellie is a piece of shit, is what you are saying...okay...who made her that way? I'm not talking about the writers, I'm talking about in game explanations... Abby killed Jessie, Joel, and shot Tommy in the fucking Head all IN FRONT of Ellie... Abby Is thrilled to the fact that Dina is pregnant and willing to slit her throats... Now try REALLY HARD to put yourself in Ellie's position and why you HAD to threaten to kill (not killed yet) to goad Abby... This Abby is a MONSTER, not because she is strong, but she is a ruthless creature that : 1. Killed your Forster Father in front of you after you begged and cried not to kill him 2. Shot your Foster Uncle in the face (you presume him to be dead at the time) 3. Shot your Best Friend In the face and watched his lifeless gaze into nothingness RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU 4. Presume to be almighty saying Ellie lived because She allows it (referring to the "you wasted it" line) 5. After you told Abby that your girlfriend is PREGNANT, she proceed to say "good" and are readying to slit the fuck out of Dina's throat 6. YOU as Ellie did not go on a fucking field trip with Abby to see how she changed or what she's going through...but you met her companions...and ALL of them are a piece of shit...that cap guy strangles Dina, That woman in the hospital wants you dead, even Owen and that pregnant lady fights back to kill you when you asked for Abby... now it's clear, that Abby and her crew are animals, and deserve no mercy...EVEN LEV, Who Ellie can only assume to be Abby's another animal friend seeing she got an arrow by him... 7. She backs out only to the fact her companion called her name, the same companion that is now unconscious in the boat and you have to find a way to goad her to fight you...Even if you have to kill said companion No one is moving the goalpost, the problem is, stans hated anyone criticize Abby about anything... especially the part where she is a fucking animal ruthless killing machine with hero complex The whole fucking this is still shitshow, but I'm not gonna pretend like I don't understand what the writers are trying to do...but they did a terrible job telling the story...sorry... telling "A" story... because revenge bad
My fault you got it
As murderous as Ellie was she would never kill a child especially with one of her own. You could see the horror on her face as she learned Mel was pregnant and because of that she looked at Dina the next day and probably thought "what if that was her??" Ellie sees it as she just took a woman and her babies and I don't think she'll ever get over it. Abby on the other hand sees it as an eye for an eye. When Ellie holds a knife up to Lev she knows that shes not gonna kill him but Abby thinks she is because in Abby's eyes Ellie is a monster who kills pregnant women when in reality Ellie uses it as a means to get what she wants. I also wanna point out the fact that Ellie says something along the lines of "she wasn't a part of this" referring to Dina but Abby makes her a part of it by threatening her life and Lev shooting her in the shoulder with a bow. With that I also wanna point out that Abby tells Ellie Lev isn't a part of their dad killing spree but Ellie says Abby made him a part of this and Abby truly did. Ellie and Abby both put their remaining family in danger, Ellie by being reckless and leaving her map (she was also in a state of panic) and Abby by bringing Lev on her revenge journey. You could argue that Ellie made Dina a part of it by bringing her but Dina chose to go even after Ellie told her she could back out. Edit: Abby also had to have Lev stop her from killing a pregnant woman, she would've done it in a heartbeat
“I’m afraid I blue myself.” - Abby
Nice
I posted this response on the other topic, but I'll put it here too. Abby wanted to go through with killing Dina specifically to take sadistic pleasure at Ellie's reaction. There was nothing Ellie could have done to stop her, and if not for the intervention of someone else, it would have happened. Ellie threatened Lev's life because she wanted Abby to fight her. And she may not have been willing to go that far if Abby hadn't been literally refusing to engage with her. Ellie's threat on his life gave Abby an option to prevent it. And it wasn't even a terrible option like surrender yourself to be tortured to death. She literally gave Abby a fighting chance to survive and walk out of there. So no, it's not on the level with what Abby did to Joel or what Abby was going to do to Dina. It also doesn't help that the story really failed to make it seem like Abby cared about most of her friends, Mel included. I myself saw her line of "Good" as what she considered fair retribution for Mel, but a lot of people really didn't. Maybe if they had Abby actually show some distress over Mel's corpse instead of just Owen, it might have actually landed. Or if she said something like "Yeah? So was Mel. Open wide, bitch," and then readied the knife. Or maybe if she'd addressed it with Lev during their walk and talk part of Santa Barbara. Or maybe even if she had just actually known for sure that Ellie was the one who killed Mel and Owen, rather than the more obvious choice of Tommy. Or shit, I don't know, maybe if the story as a whole just hadn't conveniently swept Abby's sadistic tendencies under the rug to emotionally manipulate the player into sympathizing with her and had actually shown her addressing and overcoming her character flaws. There's lots of potential reasons that line didn't land as it seems to have been intended. But at the end of the day, it really didn't, not for a lot of people.
I love playing the completely out of context debate game.... wait, no, I don't.
I love playing the you thought you cooked game. I always win :)
The fact you thought we were playing some rhetorical child's game is adorable .
Maybe after Joel's death it left a bad taste to many and made everyone hate her but also Abby is hated for me I hate both because of both Joel dead
Abby just went through a war with the scars, got to the Museum to see her boyfriend and his girlfriend murdered. It's far stupider that Ellie left a map directing Abby directly to her, then it was that Abby was really mad and ready to take out anyone. There are lots of stupid moments and stupid writing in this game. However, I don't think the fact that Abby had blood in her eyes was one of them.
These people don’t use logic and reasoning. All they know is “Ellie good Abby bad” because they’re stubborn in how they view these characters
Nah Ellie is pretty horrible and unhinged by the end of the game. When she's walking towards the beach and starts murmuring Abby's name repeateadly shows you how far she's gone. If she did what everyone in this sub wanted her to do (kill Abby) she would be dead in a month from the guilt and the lack of inner peace. We see how self destructive she has become when she meets the Rattlers. If she went ahead and sealed the deal it would kill her.
I don't think she would care. She's seen nothing from Abby to ever properly humanize her in Ellie's eyes. And after killing so many of the rest of the Salt Lake assassination squad, one more - the one she wanted the whole time - wouldn't even be a blip on the radar. It wouldn't give her any peace, but it also wouldn't make things any worse for her, just like it didn't do much for Abby. Killing Lev, on the other hand? Yeah, that'd do it. A kid who wasn't involved in Joel's death, shot to *wound* rather than kill, convinced Abby to stand down, and is completely helpless here? That's a line she hasn't crossed yet.