Jonathan Crane (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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etcelsior2015-05-22 01:29 am
restingstitchface) wrote in etcelsior2015-05-22 01:29 am
Entry tags:
Some things are best kept secret.
The Headcanon Meme
I. Post with your character. If you've got a bunch, consider doing a catch-all under one header.
II. Poke other characters with questions. Ask about their childhood, crushes, their thoughts on game events. Anything you can imagine.
III. Answer questions people have left for you with your headcanon, or canon if it's been covered there.
IV. Feel free to go into as much or as little detail as you want.
joel | the last of us
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How would this effect Joel? And we're talking end-game after all the shit they've been through.
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WELL, A FEW THINGS COULD END UP HAPPENING HERE. if someone else didn't shoot her, then joel would probably be forced to shoot her. so, you know. HOW DO YOU THINK THAT WOULD AFFECT JOEL??! DDDDD:
he'd probably wind up killing himself and i'm not even exaggerating. ellie is literally all he has to live for and losing a "daughter" all over again would just bring way too many awful, horrible memories and grief back to the surface and yeah. he wouldn't be able to cope and wouldn't see any reason to keep going. and especially so if he had to kill her. he wouldn't be able to live with himself.
GOD WHY WOULD YOU ASK THAT DKGJfdfg
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Joel would without a doubt and without hesitation say 'good'. Or, actually, wouldn't outright say 'good' so much as 'what kind of stupid question is that?' because chances are, that question would make him in some way think of Sarah, even subconsciously.
On some levels, Ellie is good for his psyche in that she brings a bit of the old Joel out in him. In MoM in particular, because they're in this world where there's no devastation or constantly living every day in fear or the never-ending threat of death, the 'old Joel' has a bit more of a chance to sort of come to the surface through him dadding at her. He smiles a bit easier, will joke around a little bit with her, does dad things with her, teaches her things, helps her with things. (Although, it's harder to do any of that at the moment because Ellie doesn't remember anything about being here last time.) He does genuinely love Ellie and refers to Ellie as "my kid". Having Ellie in his life gives him purpose and gives him a reason to keep living.
Buuut, yeah. The whole reason he even developed affection and care towards Ellie in the first place comes from a very broken and grief-filled place. He has a terrible, deeply entrenched fear of losing Ellie, to the point where he will go on a panicked, murderous rampage in order to keep her close. He's essentially filled his Sarah-shaped void as much as possible with Ellie and he doesn't realise how much his grief and aching loss over Sarah affects how he approaches Ellie. He's essentially made Ellie his entire world, to the point where if he ever lost her or if she ever left him, he would fall apart. He's extremely needy when it comes to Ellie, extremely codependent, more so than Ellie is with him. (Which is where Ellie being Joel's sole reason to keep living is really fucking sad and also really fucking messed up. That's a big burden he's unknowingly placed on her shoulders right there.)
So, I guess you could say Ellie is bad for his psyche far more than she is actually good. In saying that, though, it wouldn't HAVE to be like that so much if he would deal with his issues a little bit. But then again, how would he even recover and really know how to deal with any of his issues? He's an extremely broken person with years upon years upon years of extreme, relentless trauma, which has made him understandably yet also unreasonably selfish, and he's still locked in this dark place of grieving where his pain over losing Sarah is the only pain that matters. Towards the end of TLOU, you see Joel start to tentatively let go of some of his grief concerning Sarah, but that's really something he's ultimately never going to be able to work past. The fact that he uses Ellie as a "replacement" for Sarah is in and of itself really messed up, even if the reasons for why he and Ellie are so close and so protective of each other is entirely understandable given the circumstances of their life back in their world. Like, if Sarah ever showed up in MoM? His entire world would become focused on smothering Sarah and being overbearingly overprotective towards her, and Ellie would probably get shafted to the side.
Man, you asked a super complex question. WHICH IS AWESOME because I love discussing how many shades of grey are in Joel's character and how complex he actually is. He comes across on the surface as just gruff and like there's not a whole lot going on because of the way he shuts other people out, but there's really a huge tangled mess of stuff going on beneath the surface.
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