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I wanna say something about The Last of Us Part II, sans spoilers. This will be focused on the themes of the game’s story, not mechanics, and not specific plot details.
I’ve talked about it here before, and I don’t wanna go into details again, but a few years back a group of guys full of rabid hatred tried to kill me, my boyfriend, and two friends.
That event broke us. It broke my boyfriend to the point of changing him entirely into someone I didn’t know. He turned on himself. He turned on me. I had no choice but to leave him, and I felt in a way like I’d abandoned him to, metaphorically, die.
That, in turn, broke me.
I became consumed by hatred. I had murder in my heart. Joy left my soul, and all I could think and feel was anger, frustration, fear, and a yearning for retribution.
I became consumed by hatred. I had murder in my heart. Joy left my soul, and all I could think and feel was anger, frustration, fear, and a yearning for retribution.
I don’t mean, like, arrests and charges. I mean biblical levels of suffering, returned ten fold.
Their actions, delivered with gleeful malice and complete disregard for our lives, destroyed my faith in everything I knew.
Their actions, delivered with gleeful malice and complete disregard for our lives, destroyed my faith in everything I knew.
For a long I was lost in a vast ocean of rage. I would struggle to surface for air and be crashed under the waves. It changed me, almost irrevocably.
What brought me back was realising, with devastating clarity, that this event had turned me into an abuser of those that loved me. I could not love them when I was drowning in so much hatred.
They saved me, with their patience, understanding, kindness and love.
This story resonates with me profoundly in a way that I know is hard to truly understand if you have not been a victim of violence, of utter contempt for your very existence.
What @Naughty_Dog has done here is attempt to communicate the complexity of being a broken creature of love, a hurting thing full of sharp edges, desperate to make right and feel the world is safe again.
That’s an incredibly difficult thing to communicate. And I think they did it with grace and authenticity.
I love this company, and I love this game. And I’m glad I could share it with you all.
I love you. Be kind to yourselves. The people who love you deserve it.
I love this company, and I love this game. And I’m glad I could share it with you all.
I love you. Be kind to yourselves. The people who love you deserve it.
Make no mistake: Hatred is as toxic as it feels cathartic. It is a poisonous shield against pain, changing you without ever healing the scars, corrupting you, and the longer it goes on the harder it is to find your way back.
