hot take i don’t think violence is a villain either because the game doesn’t make judgements about how violent you or abby or ellie are...what drives these characters ultimately isn’t violence but rather their inability to see themselves or each other as human beings https://twitter.com/lepetitscldat/status/1297914392948822016

i don’t agree with a lot of what neil has said about the game but one thing i firmly think he was right about is that tlou1 and tlou2 are connected by the central theme of healing...joel, abby, and ellie are all people who act violently but that’s not what makes them flawed

ultimately what antagonizes all three of these people is their inability to forgive themselves for the trauma they’ve experienced in their lives and they have turned to viewing themselves as subhuman

it is fundamentally easier to deal with the violence in the game rather than much of the emotional turmoil these characters face because what is ultimately the “villain” is how they view themselves and each other not the actions that they commit