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GribbleGrunger said:
SpokenTruth said:

It seems like their own agenda and complaining about an agenda they wish to fight against has blinded many regarding this very obvious implication.

Had it been a heterosexual relationship and the man was immediately seen killing guys while being nearly in tears, we would not be having this conversation because they would have immediately grasped that he is killing them because they killed his girlfriend/wife.


Gribble, you bemoaned a perceived agenda while exposing your own. 

So what agenda would that be? I'll repeat it again because people seem to be struggling to understand: It's about the mirroring, not the kiss. Mirroring is a technique that is used in narrative which flicks between two opposite themes. From a cold environment to a hot environment. From the death of a loved one to the birth of an infant. Right, you got that? Let's move on (and forget about the kiss). We move into the scene and have the line 'they should fear you'. This refers to jealously or love. During the kiss (ignore the kiss it's just a mechanism for the mirroring. Camera zooms in/ camera zooms out. Transition completed. Mirroring accomplished). The next scene is of Ellie stabbing a man in the neck. We've moved from love to hate (the theme of TLOU2). This is clearly deliberate. 

The problem I see with people trying to discuss this and getting it wrong is they themselves can't get around Ellie being gay or the kiss. The kiss doesn't matter and neither does the fact Ellie is gay. Are you still following? I hope you took that in. If Ellie was a man, I would still have the same problem. Are you still with me? The line 'they should fear you' would still mean the same and stabbing the man in the neck would still be mirroring. 

I've been following this thread fairly superficially, but it amazes me as well that most people didn't understand the first time what you explained here again. It indeed might seem like agenda at first with line such as "I think they (men) should be terrified of you" to killing men right after it, though fairly quickly we see there's women she kills as well.

I'm quite curious what would be reactions in media if it was other way around, and we see some guy listening to "they (women) should be terrified of you" and then cut to him killing women (at first at least).



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HoloDust said:

I've been following this thread fairly superficially, but it amazes me as well that most people didn't understand the first time what you explained here again. It indeed might seem like agenda at first with line such as "I think they (men) should be terrified of you" to killing men right after it, though fairly quickly we see there's women she kills as well.

I'm quite curious what would be reactions in media if it was other way around, and we see some guy listening to "they (women) should be terrified of you" and then cut to him killing women (at first at least).

I think we know exactly what they'd say, without question. The irony is it's them that have to problem. They can't see what I'm saying because they're so hung up on Ellie being gay and the kiss. I just see two people kissing, they see two lesbians kissing. To me it's just normal and something I've seen all my adult life. 



 

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RolStoppable said:
 

But we would have controversy if the hypothetical male hetero character slaughtered hordes of women.

First of all, I doubt it. Call me a cynic.

Secondly, the logical reverse is NOT what happens in the trailer we're discussing and you know it. A good half of the characters that Ellie takes on therein are female.

You see what I mean? It's just really obvious that you...people...want to engineer a problem here where none exists because you really just have a problem with Ellie being a lesbian character. I just wish you'd be honest about that fact and admit it rather than pretending that this is about art or moral consistency or something else that it obviously isn't.

Last edited by Jaicee - on 20 June 2018

Jaicee said:
RolStoppable said:

But we would have controversy if the hypothetical male hetero character slaughtered hordes of women.

First of all, I doubt it. Call me a cynic.

Secondly, the logical reverse is NOT what happens in the trailer we're discussing and you know it. A good half of the characters that Ellie takes on therein are female.

You see what I mean? It's just really obvious that you...people...want to engineer a problem here where none exists because you really just have a problem with Ellie being a lesbian character. I just wish you'd be honest about that fact and admit it rather than pretending that this is about art or moral consistency or something else that it obviously isn't.

You people really do have a problem with her being lesbian don't you. See, I'm 60 years old and to me two woman kissing is nothing at all. It's just normal in my social circles and nobody would even notice. I know you younger people think you invented all this but you really didn't. You just jumped on the SJW bandwagon to give yourself a sense of purpose. You think that's harsh? Well, not as harsh as suggesting someone is homophobic when they're not. 



 

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GribbleGrunger said:
 

You people really do have a problem with her being lesbian don't you. See, I'm 60 years old and to me two woman kissing is nothing at all. It's just normal in my social circles and nobody would even notice. I know you younger people think you invented all this but you really didn't. You just jumped on the SJW bandwagon to give yourself a sense of purpose. You think that's harsh? Well, not as harsh as suggesting someone is homophobic when they're not. 

In the consideration of your stated age, I will give you some grace, but in the consideration of the fact that I'm 36 years old, I would appreciate not being talked down to like I'm a child or something.

When I hit puberty, I didn't feel like I had a specific orientation. I knew that I was supposed to be into guys, however, because that's the message that had been beaten into my brain, implicitly more than explicitly, all my life by my parents, neighbors, teachers, the media, and more explicitly by my church, et al., so the first romantic interests I pursued were with boys. Those experiences I found to be quite negative and disappointing, so I resultantly began to gravitate more toward other girls because I felt like girls understood each other better. I can remember my first attempt at asking another girl on a date quite vividly. She kind of freaked out and hurried away. Word got around. My peers started making fun of me. I was ultimately required to formally apologize to her. That touched off a very confusing period for me that ended with me officially, but not actually, converting to heterosexuality.

The point I'm trying to get across here is that my orientation is not a gimmick, but a real sentiment. I won't pretend that I was "born gay" to win an argument or anything (I really don't think that people are born with a definite orientation, but rather acquire one as a result of their conditioning and/or experiences), but am definitely 100% lesbian right now and have been for most of my life.



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Jaicee said:
GribbleGrunger said:

You people really do have a problem with her being lesbian don't you. See, I'm 60 years old and to me two woman kissing is nothing at all. It's just normal in my social circles and nobody would even notice. I know you younger people think you invented all this but you really didn't. You just jumped on the SJW bandwagon to give yourself a sense of purpose. You think that's harsh? Well, not as harsh as suggesting someone is homophobic when they're not. 

In the consideration of your stated age, I will give you some grace, but in the consideration of the fact that I'm 36 years old, I would appreciate not being talked down to like I'm a child or something.

When I hit puberty, I didn't feel like I had a specific orientation. I knew that I was supposed to be into guys, however, because that's the message that had been beaten into my brain, implicitly more than explicitly, all my life by my parents, neighbors, teachers, the media, and more explicitly by my church, et al., so the first romantic interests I pursued were with boys. Those experiences I found to be quite negative and disappointing, so I resultantly began to gravitate more toward other girls because I felt like girls understood each other better. I can remember my first attempt at asking another girl on a date quite vividly. She kind of freaked out and hurried away. Word got around. My peers started making fun of me. I was ultimately required to formally apologize to her. That touched off a very confusing period for me that ended with me officially, but not actually, converting to heterosexuality.

The point I'm trying to get across here is that my orientation is not a gimmick, but a real sentiment. I won't pretend that I was "born gay" to win an argument or anything (I really don't think that people are born with a definite orientation, but rather acquire one as a result of their conditioning and/or experiences), but am definitely 100% lesbian right now and have been for most of my life.

I appreciate the candidness but you're still missing my point. I'll explain it one last time to try and clarify. It has nothing to do with the kiss or the fact Ellie is a lesbian. If Ellie was male my problem (or the potential perceived problem) would still be there. Again ... my problem is with the 'mirroring', a narrative technique that flicks between two opposite states. It can be cold to hot or someone dying of old age and a baby being born. The opposites here are love and hate. The switching point is the kiss but it could be anything. The kiss just allows the camera to pan into the back of Ellie's head and then transition to the next scene. There is no ambiguity about the structure here. The love interest states 'they should fear you' and we know she's referring to men because Ellie points out that all the men are watching the love interest (love/jealousy). This then switches to the mirror which is of Ellie stabbing a man in the neck with a knife (hate). To re-enforce this mirroring, the last scene is of a man being decapitated which once again transitions back to the love interest reiterating 'they should fear you.' 

How obvious does this have to be? Nearly everyone I've seen react to this video has either understood the mirroring or laughed at the idea this is what Ellie thinks of when she kissed. 

We have only two ways of looking at this because it is definitely done deliberately. Either it was a bad choice for a short demo and context will give it validity in the full game, or it's agenda driven. I'm inclined to believe it's just a bad choice, but in the present climate of so called 'toxic masculinity', 'patriarchy', 'white privilege' etc, it FEELS as if it could be agenda driven.  That's my problem. 

Last edited by GribbleGrunger - on 20 June 2018

 

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GribbleGrunger said:
 

I appreciate the candidness but you're still missing my point. I'll explain it one last time to try and clarify. It has nothing to do with the kiss or the fact Ellie is a lesbian. If Ellie was male my problem (or the potential perceived problem) would still be there. Again ... my problem is with the 'mirroring', a narrative technique that flicks between two opposite states. It can be cold to hot or someone dying of old age and a baby being born. The opposites here are love and hate. The switching point is the kiss but it could be anything. The kiss just allows the camera to pan into the back of Ellie's head and then transition to the next scene. There is no ambiguity about the structure here. The love interest states 'they should fear you' and we know she's referring to men because Ellie points out that all the men are watching the love interest (love/jealousy). This then switches to the mirror which is of Ellie stabbing a man in the neck with a knife (hate). To re-enforce this mirroring, the last scene is of a man being decapitated which once again transitions back to the love interest reiterating 'they should fear you.' 

How obvious does this have to be? Nearly everyone I've seen react to this video has either understood the mirroring or laughed at the idea this is what Ellie thinks of when she kissed. 

We have only two ways of looking at this because it is definitely done deliberately. Either it was a bad choice for a short demo and context will give it validity in the full game, or it's agenda driven. I'm inclined to believe it's just a bad choice, but in the present climate of so called 'toxic masculinity', 'patriarchy', 'white privilege' etc, it FEELS as if it could be agenda driven.  That's my problem. 

To respond to the key bolded part, what you're suggesting is "obvious" is not apparent at all to me. Watching more than the first moments of the trailer reveals that a good half of the characters Ellie fights during the game play sequence are female. What do you say to THAT rather obvious contradiction of your entire case??

Frankly, to me, the fact that so many of armed villain characters are female is something that seems like it's a little disingenuous. Just about all armies, gangs, and other armed groups in the world are almost if not entirely male in their membership composition. In that recognition, to me, it actually kind of seems like TLOU2 is forcing an equal number of women into the ranks of armed foes that Ellie must engage with just in order to be politically correct and not offend you. The developers should have realized, however, that that was an impossible task; that people like you were determined to be offended no matter what as soon as they saw the kiss.



SpokenTruth said:
Hang on....this whole thing is about some kind of implied man hate?

It's a bunch of men claiming that they can authenticate the experience of being lesbian better than I can as a lesbian.

EVERYTHING is man-hating to woman-haters.

Last edited by Jaicee - on 20 June 2018

I found the trailer to be cringe worthy. Not because it was lesbians, gays, straight or anything, but because I didn't want to watch 30 seconds of some awkward CGI fake people kissing.

I don't care how realistic you people think video game characters look, they don't look real. So just as people find say cartoon/anime sex/kissing/ect as uncomfortable, the same I find any video games portraying that as awkward. It just comes off as weird.

And that is just the actual act of the kiss. As for the context. I haven't played last of us, and have no plans to. I also have no plans to play this sequel. This trailer did nothing for me. It was a bad trailer, imo. There have been plenty of games, like Call of Duty, that I have zero plans to ever get, and no matter how awesome of a trailer, I still won't get. But they still have some trailers that make me tempted to break that. Or Anthem. This year's trailer/showcase did nothing for me. Last years though, I was ready to jump on the Destiny clone bandwagon.

So for context. A non LoU player had no connection to the characters and thus found the entire church scene insanely boring, and topped off with a super long unnecessary kiss. Then the gameplay was your boring ass horrible AI stealth gameplay. Wouldn't it be great if in real life sneaking around was that easy. Such moron AI can never find you, hear you, react, ect. Be nice if someone improved stealth gameplay beyond the moronic stuff Assassins Creed invented. It's the same in every stealth game I feel. Horizon, AC, LotR, Tomb Raider, Batman. The AI feels more stupid than I feel awesome.
BTW what happened to the Zombies, is LoU not a zombie game?



Jaicee said:
SpokenTruth said:
Hang on....this whole thing is about some kind of implied man hate?

It's a bunch of men claiming that they can authenticate the experience of being lesbian better than I can as a lesbian.

EVERYTHING is man-hating to woman-haters.

Do you see the irony here? Seriously, do you even consider what you're writing? You've just proved my point about the current climate. My God you people are arrogant. YOU are the reason I find this mirroring problematic. And please stop lying. I've explain so many times it's got nothing to with the kiss or Ellie being a lesbian that it HAS to be lying. 

Having read more on what Neil has said, I have a feeling I'm going to be ripping TLOU2 a new one. 

Last edited by GribbleGrunger - on 20 June 2018

 

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