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So something can be not totally grounded if and only if it's successful? It's not that their plan is factually correct, it's that they believe it will work or has enough of a chance to work to be worth it.
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Mar 13, 2023 08:54
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Kwolok posted:What if the child herself is willing to be vivisected for the possibility of saving the world? Maybe they should have asked her then, which they absolutely did not, because they knew it was a monstrous thing to ask and a loaded question that would be putting a child in a position where they were facing either death or a lifetime of guilt wondering what-if? Marlene throwing in Joel's face that Ellie would choose to sacrifice herself is utter bullshit because she already was at pains to let him know that she did NOT tell Ellie what they were going to do, because she assumed that pragmatic Joel would end up siding with her. Her crocodile tears for her dead friend's daughter only come out when she's trying to convince Joel it's okay to let some doctor chop up Ellie's head based purely on a theory. Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 09:06 on Mar 13, 2023 |
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Mar 13, 2023 08:56
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Kwolok posted:It's not that their plan is factually correct, it's that they believe it will work or has enough of a chance to work to be worth it.
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Mar 13, 2023 08:57
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Martman posted:Nah. The fireflies are taking an insane risk without some plot contrivance justifying them rushing so irresponsibly, and we're not really shown any of their perspective at all (aside from the fact that Marlene clearly does care about Ellie). The fireflies had custody of Ellie for an unknown amount of time before the show, during which they confirmed her immunity and devised their plan for a cure. I don't think it's a huge leap to imagine that they already tried simpler methods to get a cure from her, like just taking some blood or lymph or spinal fluid or bone marrow and doing a transplant. This is what they came up with, after the obvious methods failed. It still doesn't really matter, though, whether the Firefly plan is an insane risk, a moderate risk, or 100% sure to work. That's not the point, to Joel. He has learned to love again... in a half-hearted, broken sort of way. Really, he hasn't changed how he views other people; Ellie is just an exception. He is still happy to condemn every single other human in the world, with only a twinge of regret.
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Mar 13, 2023 08:57
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I’m gonna hand every single person posting in this thread who has never played the game a pass so they can have the arguments we’ve been having for nearly ten years all over again. Everyone coming to the “Joel did the right/wrong thing” “Ellie would/wouldn’t let herself be killed to make a cure” “The Fireflies were/weren’t capable of making a cure” arguments, remember these empirical facts: 1) Ellie is a fourteen year old girl. 2) Joel’s decision was selfish and emotional and not anything approaching pragmatic as to whether or not the Fireflies had the actual capability to make a vaccine. 3) That doctor guy that Joel killed is, however, the real deal and if anyone COULD have made a vaccine as a result of Ellie’s death, it’s that guy. The game never says if he would have been successful or not but there you are, he’s not the typical loving clown 99% of all other Fireflies are. 4) The Fireflies is general as an organization and especially in their attempts to accomplish Literally Anything on a grand scale (like say, a worldwide rollout of a vaccine they created) would be almost certainly doomed to fail. Anyways, have fun with the arguments we’ve been having for a decade! This is genuinely hilarious to watch.
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Mar 13, 2023 08:59
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I can believe that Joel might have done that either way; I think they accidentally made his actions seem morally correct which obfuscates the point they were trying to make. I still find the result interesting.
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Mar 13, 2023 09:00
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Martman posted:That's nice that they believe it. But killing the only immune person in existence for a "maybe" makes them look stupid. And if they're stupid, then they should not be trusted with the decision. I mean, yes. And it does make the ambiguity of Joel's moral choice rather less ambiguous if the Fireflies were just idiots with sharp knives ready to gently caress everything up. It's a bit unclear to me whether the shady pseudoscience Marlene presented was supposed to sound dumb, or if it's just dumb because this show isn't hard sci-fi, and it's all a bit silly.
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Mar 13, 2023 09:03
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XboxPants posted:I mean, yes. And it does make the ambiguity of Joel's moral choice rather less ambiguous if the Fireflies were just idiots with sharp knives ready to gently caress everything up. It's a world where cordyceps infect people's brains, cause them to never decay, can cause them to grow ten times their size, develop echolocation, and have a vast network of fungal based communication. Why is that normal and cool but somewhat vague, hand waivey pseudo science to fight this magic fungus a bridge too far? To me it was basically just medical mumbo jumbo to give the audience a vague idea why it was necessary. The specifics don't matter.
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Mar 13, 2023 09:09
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Kwolok posted:It's a world where cordyceps infect people's brains, cause them to never decay, can cause them to grow ten times their size, develop echolocation, and have a vast network of fungal based communication. What it establishes about a cure is that Some Guy said he could maybe make one. Like imagine if the show never actually showed us any infected, anywhere. Viewers would be like "uh so is the zombie apocalypse supposed to be real? Or a made up conspiracy thing" and that would be a pretty reasonable question because, why not make it clear they exist? Martman fucked around with this message at 09:17 on Mar 13, 2023 |
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Mar 13, 2023 09:13
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exmarx posted:i've been assuming that they're jizzing about some incredibly lame video game twist like "we can make a mushroom zombie vaccine... but it's going to KILL ellie", gotta keep expectations low lmfao
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Mar 13, 2023 09:18
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Martman posted:Because the show successfully establishes that all of those things actually happened. So how could any cure ever pass your test? There has never been anything like this, no one has ever done something like create a cure like this, it's completely uncharted territory. And it's not some guy, he's probably one of the few medical professionals left with at least some knowledge on how to combat this. In your mind, is any character in any media that says "I have a plan" a fool of we aren't shown that explicit plan working in the past? Kwolok fucked around with this message at 09:26 on Mar 13, 2023 |
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Mar 13, 2023 09:23
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NieR Occomata posted:I’m gonna hand every single person posting in this thread who has never played the game a pass so they can have the arguments we’ve been having for nearly ten years all over again. I don't understand why the game was so popular to begin with if it had the same stupid plot. Just a frustratingly dumb episode and turn of events.
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Mar 13, 2023 09:25
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NieR Occomata posted:the arguments we’ve been having for a decade Please note; posting about this is asinine.
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Mar 13, 2023 09:26
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bro... you're not going to believe the ending of "the last of us" tv show, which is based the deepest and most well-written video game of all time: imagine if an extremely dumb guy tried to explore a 100-level moral dilemma
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Mar 13, 2023 09:35
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Kwolok posted:So how could any cure ever pass your test? There has never been anything like this, no one has ever done something like create a cure like this, it's completely uncharted territory. And it's not some guy, he's probably one of the few medical professionals left with at least some knowledge on how to combat this. If the plan requires doing something that is obviously insanely dangerous (killing the only immune person, making future study or attempts impossible if their first plan fails), and the show doesn't establish anything about its chances of success, then yeah there's gonna be a huge problem if they expect us to take it at face value. The thing is, you're acting like I'm anti mumbo jumbo, but that's exactly how you could lay this groundwork. Show that they were able to take some tiny amount of her brain tissue safely, and it was able to immunize a human for like a day, but it quickly faded or something. That would be a tiny step towards showing they're at least capable of making something resembling a cure. For now though, all we can assume is that in the last 20 years, the greatest surviving scientific minds on earth haven't been able to do jack poo poo about cordyceps. In other words, they don't seem to understand it. Now a miracle has shown up, someone who could probably be studied for another 20 years by thousands of people, and they say let's kill her I totally got this dudes!! What about the extremely obvious hypothesis that pregnancy is how immunity is conferred? Oops, can't test that, we killed her.
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Mar 13, 2023 09:39
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Yeah poo poo I guess you're right, I guess all the fireflies just really put their trust into some random guy, how strange.
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Mar 13, 2023 09:43
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Kwolok posted:It's a world where cordyceps infect people's brains, cause them to never decay, can cause them to grow ten times their size, develop echolocation, and have a vast network of fungal based communication. Don't get me wrong, I agree. When I was watching the episode I just nodded along to Marlene's explanation and moved past it. It wasn't until I came into the thread and saw people questioning the tactical realism of the medicine, that it occurred to me to question the doctor's plan. Kwolok posted:So how could any cure ever pass your test? "We tried this on monkeys and it works, we just need to manufacture a vaccine that will work on humans" would go a long way. And fit in with the other medical research center we were shown. But that's just spitballing for fun, this show isn't a medical mystery, it's a drama about human relationships. Like sure, they COULD have had an entire extra episode where they show a flashback to an Army medical research center in the years after the outbreak where they were researching a cure, and they almost had it figured out, and then they got raided and everyone died but ONE DEVOTED SCIENCEMAN loaded the secret cure onto a USB drive. And that very drive is what the Firefly Doctor based his cure on. So you have some reason to think it might really work. But it would still be totally irrelevant to Joel and it was the right decision to ignore that aspect. If we're sure the Firefly plan will work, Joel's dilemma becomes boring. If we're sure it won't work, it's also a boring dilemma. It's not really a dilemma if there's an obvious answer.
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Mar 13, 2023 09:47
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XboxPants posted:Don't get me wrong, I agree. When I was watching the episode I just nodded along to Marlene's explanation and moved past it. It wasn't until I came into the thread and saw people questioning the tactical realism of the medicine, that it occurred to me to question the doctor's plan. Lol sure, basically a walking dead season. Thank gently caress we didn't get that. But I hear you.
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Mar 13, 2023 09:49
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It would take like ten minutes to show that the cure is real. I don't see how Joel's dilemma becomes boring if it's real, and I think lots of people are arguing in fact the opposite, that the cure should be presumed to be real and that that's what defines Joel's choice. e: I mean, you could still totally leave it unclear from Joel's perspective too! It would be fine to give the viewer more information and then watch him make the decision based on his gut Martman fucked around with this message at 09:59 on Mar 13, 2023 |
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Mar 13, 2023 09:51
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Consider also that the main point of the dilemma is as much about a desperate attempt by the Fireflies to bring back an older world and Make it All Worth It. Neither they or Joel are thinking clearly, nobody is actually approaching the dilemma pragmatically and could never do so. I think reducing Joel's decisions to Just Selfish is as shortsighted as any other view. Yes he is learning to love this specific person again, but also, per Druckmann, he is meant to represent specifically parental love rather than just selfish and toxic love. I have my own opinions (gently caress the Fireflies!) but I don't think we should view this only as a question of pragmatic possibility. We should also evaluate it as a thematic question about what is valuable or moral, and how to move forward with one's life after tragedy.
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Mar 13, 2023 10:17
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I think that is a good point. I will also back off the discussion because it inevitably feels like I'm arguing that the episode was bad when really I just don't buy into one certain interpretation of it (albeit perhaps one intended by the creators) Honestly I liked the finale a lot.
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Mar 13, 2023 10:21
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I mean personally I think Marlene is a coward and that's shown even in the flashback scene where she first chokes about doing the horrible but necessary thing, then walks away, just long enough to make her friend's death more horrific, before walking back in to kill her swiftly and in shock and anger rather than gently euthanize her. She knows Ellie might not consent, which is why she doesn't tell her. Because Marlene needs it to all be worth it. She needs a win to bring back the past. I don't think her tears for her dead friend are crocodile tears, I just think she and Joel are both on the cusp of doing something unspeakable (she was pretty clearly sending him out to his death) and they both decide in that moment how they need to move forward. And Joel chooses Ellie. Partly because she's a daughter figure, but also because he really does want better for her then just to die here. I think that's what the giraffe scene is meant to convey, that she is traumatized but she is capable of healing after all this loss, and he wants and needs to give her the chance. It's pretty clear she knows he's lying and he knows she knows, but he needs to tell her that lie as much so she can live with herself as with him. Jetrauben fucked around with this message at 10:27 on Mar 13, 2023 |
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Mar 13, 2023 10:24
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I like how they had Joel just completely disassociate and take on a flat emotional affect for his entire hospital rampage and gave me a sort of unhinged feeling similar to agent Cooper in the last episode of Twin Peaks season 3. It plays to me like he knew he was doing a 'bad' thing deep inside, but he wasn't going to let himself leave that place alive without trying the final impossible task of mowing down an entire hospital full of armed guards to save Ellie. But the story's universe won't let Joel die without making this choice, he missed with his suicide shot 20 years ago, and he failed to kill himself again here as he just wanders down the hallways mowing everyone down like a robot, and I think it worked better for me than if he had had a tense running battle fighting his way to the surgery ward.
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Mar 13, 2023 10:25
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a_gelatinous_cube posted:I like how they had Joel just completely disassociate and take on a flat emotional affect for his entire hospital rampage and gave me a sort of unhinged feeling similar to agent Cooper in the last episode of Twin Peaks season 3. It plays to me like he knew he was doing a 'bad' thing deep inside, but he wasn't going to let himself leave that place alive without trying the final impossible task of mowing down an entire hospital full of armed guards to save Ellie. But the story's universe won't let Joel die without making this choice, he missed with his suicide shot 20 years ago, and he failed to kill himself again here as he just wanders down the hallways mowing everyone down like a robot, and I think it worked better for me than if he had had a tense running battle fighting his way to the surgery ward. Yeah that was great. Total icy calm. Total pragmatism. And absolutely no mercy to any armed foe as long as Ellie is in danger - any mercy here would have just meant someone shot him in the back. But once he knows she's safe he becomes a bit human again and lets the nurses go. Because it's not wrath, it's robotic necessity. Joel isn't a sadist. He's even most savage to people when he's protecting someone else - he was a raider basically for Tommy's sake and he was a torturer for Ellie's. He doesn't actually seem to care very much about surviving for his own sake.
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Mar 13, 2023 10:29
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They should have taken some creative liberties with the ending. A period longer than 'knocked out cold' could still end with "well I don't like this either but it turns out we have no choice", complete parental denial of that outcome, and a child kept oblivious to the discussions happening around them. Give the sacrifice some gravitas, give the lie some weight. It's not a video game so you don't have to worry about the player sadly afk'ing through a 25 minute montage or even a full episode of "trying other options and coming to the same conclusion". That was abrupt as gently caress and if that's what they want then okay I'll guess but loving earn it first.
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Mar 13, 2023 12:53
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LLSix posted:Not a stupid question at all. It's entirely valid. The surgeon's theory that Marlene gave us is both stupid and psychotic. Let's be honest the explanation in the show is better than the one they gave in the game. The game explicitly states that Ellie's infection, drawn from her blood, is already growing in culture. Fungus isn't differentiated so any part will work. The show's version of Ellie's infection was that she was infected through the placenta, very briefly, and that was enough to generate a tiny miniscule infection. None of it really makes sense if you interrogate it, because nothing about biohazard zombies makes sense, but whatever it'll do. Elden Lord Godfrey fucked around with this message at 13:19 on Mar 13, 2023 |
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Mar 13, 2023 13:00
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Martman posted:It would take like ten minutes to show that the cure is real. Yeah no kidding. We saw in ep 3 that giving the writers some latitude can really elevate the story. Seeing as this is all made up, they could've written whatever they want. And yeah, I watched the finale with a group of people (including two healthcare workers and a chemist) and they were all yelling at the screen about the Fireflies lovely plan. Most people aren't going to look past the idiot plot in the service of appreciating what the writers were trying to accomplish. If you have to do that, the writers failed.
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Mar 13, 2023 13:22
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Every other thing we've been shown about this firefly org has them at Keystone Cops level so, it's actually canon that some dude just wanted food/water and was like "uhh, yeah, i can totally make a vaccine, I was top of my class in mushroom doctoring at the mushroom institute" and they were like "wow, that's awesome, we know this girl..." None of that really matters but it's funny that the reason this show is dumb is because the game was dumb 10 years ago and nobody thought to try to improve it.
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Mar 13, 2023 14:40
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Finale was creepy horny
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Mar 13, 2023 14:45
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uggy posted:Finale was creepy horny like a giraffe's tongue going to town
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Mar 13, 2023 15:03
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Kwolok posted:It's not supposed to leave you wanting more. The ending is meant to tell a complete story, it wasn't written to be a teaser for the next season. Kinda awkward then that it literally ends on a blatant teaser for the next season.
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Mar 13, 2023 15:19
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bucketybuck posted:Kinda awkward then that it literally ends on a blatant teaser for the next season. It absolutely doesn't. They go back to a safe town with Christmas trees and bacon and she agrees to believe her lie. For now, that's all there is to the story. There is no teaser for anything. When the game came out, for a few years the game studio said they weren't sure if they would do a sequel but that they thought Joel and Ellies stories were probably done, and it was the consensus among fans that yeah this doesn't need a sequel. And it's the exact same ending.
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Mar 13, 2023 15:23
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XboxPants posted:The fireflies had custody of Ellie for an unknown amount of time before the show, during which they confirmed her immunity and devised their plan for a cure. I don't think it's a huge leap to imagine that they already tried simpler methods to get a cure from her, like just taking some blood or lymph or spinal fluid or bone marrow and doing a transplant. This is what they came up with, after the obvious methods failed. Are you saying that when they had her in Boston making her count to ten, that they had also somehow done bone marrow tests and drew out spinal fluid? In that apartment block with no doctors? Come on. And in general, the idea that it doesn't matter how asinine the Firefly plan was, that is just ridiculous itself. Of course it matters. lovely foundations lead to lovely houses.
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Mar 13, 2023 15:23
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Nail Rat posted:It absolutely doesn't. They go back to a safe town with Christmas trees and bacon and she agrees to believe her lie. For now, that's all there is to the story. There is no teaser for anything. That's just rubbish. The "OK" and the repeated deep and meaningful looks make very clear that she doesn't believe him. May as well have a "To be continued" on the screen. I never played the game, I can only go with what is put in front of me and that ending was as teasery as gently caress.
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Mar 13, 2023 15:25
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Martman posted:That's nice that they believe it. But killing the only immune person in existence for a "maybe" makes them look stupid. And if they're stupid, then they should not be trusted with the decision. The other subtext is that Marlene is/was a "President Snow" autocrat in the making. Ellie might've been her best friend's daughter, but she's also her meal ticket into becoming Queen of poo poo Mountain by being the Savior of Humanity. She brags about how she had a personal protective detail, then discounts their deaths when Joel merks the whole damned hospital. She thinks she's more important than Ellie. If she truly cared about saving humanity without pretense, she'd have juiced FEDRA into the plan once Ellie was with her, even if it was for extra resources. But she didn't, because she wanted the cure as a means to take control of everyone left. That all aside, I know there's a plot armor aspect, but no way Joel takes on that many heavily armed men in an environment they know instinctively and gets out without getting hit. BIG HEADLINE fucked around with this message at 15:30 on Mar 13, 2023 |
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Mar 13, 2023 15:26
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Nail Rat posted:It absolutely doesn't. They go back to a safe town with Christmas trees and bacon and she agrees to believe her lie. For now, that's all there is to the story. There is no teaser for anything. Well we are talking about the current tv show that just aired yesterday not when the game came out and there is a planned season 2 so are you expecting people to assume it’ll be like whole new characters and not a continuation of the story that people just spent 9 episodes following, that ended on Ellie clearly not believing Joel. What
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Mar 13, 2023 15:29
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bucketybuck posted:That's just rubbish. The "OK" and the repeated deep and meaningful looks make very clear that she doesn't believe him. May as well have a "To be continued" on the screen. And what's she gonna do about it? The doctor who could do anything is dead andJoel basically wiped the last bunch of fireflies out. quote:Well we are talking about the current tv show that just aired yesterday not when the game came out and there is a planned season 2 so are you expecting people to assume it’ll be like whole new characters and not a continuation of the story that people just spent 9 episodes following, that ended on Ellie clearly not believing Joel. What Obviously there is going to be a continuation of the story but it's not a teaser at all. "She doesn't believe him" okay, but she can't do poo poo about it. This works fine as an ending if they hadn't gotten a second season. I wish they'd waited six months to say there was a season 2, because people are trying to read into it being a teaser but saying "also, it's a bad teaser" when it never was meant to be a teaser. That's why it's a bad teaser. And then, like the first time around, people would be saying instead "where possibly could they go from there," because how it continues is out of left field and pretty cool because of that. Nail Rat fucked around with this message at 15:36 on Mar 13, 2023 |
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Mar 13, 2023 15:29
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Nail Rat posted:And what's she gonna do about it? The doctor who could do anything is dead andJoel basically wiped the last bunch of fireflies out. Thats a complete non-sequitur, not believing him can have consequences other than resurrecting dead doctors. An obvious angle would be that it causes tension between them, then the truth comes out and there is a breakup between this father - daughter relationship that a whole season was devoted to setting up. A break up, then something happens that allows him redemption. Its not even difficult to imagine ideas of where it could go, because it is such a blatant starting point, soaps have been dining out on it for decades. "Ellie doesn't believe Joel, tune in next week to see what happens next!". Its just ridiculous to deny that the teaser exists, its right loving there!
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Mar 13, 2023 15:45
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The reading that Fireflys are completely incompetent and unable to make a vaccine has always been a shallow framework to discuss the moral implications of the story. It undermines what the story is going for and makes it a very boring "Joel was right" end of story line of reasoning. This is so clearly not what the writers are going for. I do think it is legit criticism to say that if the story made you feel that way, then it didn't do a good enough job at communicating the objective facts required for it's thematic underpinnings to work. But if you want to engage with the story's moral dilemma you need to accept the Firefly's were likely going to be able to do something with the results of the surgery. If you can't do that, then just take a pass, say the show/game is bad, and move on, because it's not an interesting conversation if you assume otherwise. If you are willing to engage with the intended line of reasoning, I think there are a lot of very interesting ethical issues that makes this an ambiguous situation. There's strong arguments against Joel from both a utilitarian perspective (save the world) and a personal perspective (Respect your surrogate daughter's autonomy). There's also a lot that can be said in favor of what transpired. The generalized humanitarian trope of is a society worth saving if the cost is a child's life without their consent. The emotional argument of a parent protecting their child which touches on the idea of whether a 14 year old is cognitively developed enough to be allowed to make the choice to sacrifice themselves. And finally, there's simply the selfish argument of what can be expected from a 60 year old man with severe trauma, depression, & PTSD who is given a second lease on life. After a lifetime of the world continually making GBS threads on this man, is it at all realistic or fair to expect to give up the little piece of salvation he has found? The story puts a lot of different ethical principles and values directly in opposition to each other. Depending on people's moral frameworks this is going to generate a lot of discussion and there's never going to be a right answer, because it will depend on which ethics paradigms you adhere to. The show vs the game does make it clear how powerful an interactive medium can be in selling a theme if the developers know how to utilize it for storytelling. The show was a good portrayal, but in the game the player is Joel, so when Ellie is taken from you and you are treated like poo poo by the fireflies after a 14-15 hour journey of stressful gameplay, you see red and the rampage feels righteous and justified. The event itself also serves as a gameplay catharsis, as you use all of your carefully stocked up ammunition/grenades/traps to go against this impossible challenge of fighting the military. Only in the final cut scenes do you come to the realization of what you've actually done both on a global and personal level. The last thing I want to comment on is that when the game came out, there was no talk of a sequel whatsoever. It felt one and done. Which I think makes the final scene and ending beats much more powerful. Even when there was initial talk of a sequel, most people were convinced it would be a completely separate story in the same world. Megasabin fucked around with this message at 15:49 on Mar 13, 2023 |
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Mar 13, 2023 15:45
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I think the message to take from the season finale regarding the Fireflies is the message that was clear from the onset. They don't want to save everyone from FEDRA, they want to be the *new* FEDRA because they think everyone else is incompetent or a barrier to the world *they* want to create. They're "freedom fighters" in the same fashion as those in Central Africa. "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."
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Mar 13, 2023 15:50
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