Doodles for my #DenialAU in which Joel survives with major brain damage and partial amnesia and Ellie takes care of him. Angst fluff and mental breakdowns aplenty. I just love broken and helpless characters so much ok
Oh darlin, darlin what have I done? Well I’ve been away from you too long and all my days have turned to darkness and I believe my heart has turned to stone
Ooh, oh tell me what the hell I’ve done… Can I stop at one? Or have I just begun?
Hurt myself with some thoughts, this one’s a reeeeach and I pulled a muscle or two getting there.
I’ve spent a stupid amount of time staring at Ellie’s journal entries this week so I noticed when something stood out from the rest.
Little detail that fucked with me real hard this week is how neat and precise Ellie is with her journal entries throughout the entire game. Until we get back from Seattle.
Some pages she stops writing in the lines her words spilling over, almost as if she’s writing post panic attack. Or in some emotional duress. This really gives you an insight into her true mental state during the end of the game. No entries before were had her writing over the lines like this:
Here she is able to write and draw neatly in the space. The poems are neat even with the lines being crossed out. Someone pointed out a while back that the quality of her moths deteriorate as the game progresses so I tried to use an entry from Santa Barbara and Seattle that shows them for comparison as well.
Even here where she’s going through processing her immunity reveal and Dina’s pregnancy, everything is neat considering the emotional toll of the day. She’s upset, yet she still writes normally.
The one entry that messed me up the most, one that should be, based off of all her other entries, neat and happy. Is her good day with JJ. She has plenty of pages with drawings and words, she is capable of fitting them in the space and does consistently. She can’t here, and that subtly shows how even on her good days she struggles. Deep down how guilty she feels that she is having a good day.
There are pages and pages of her writing being consistent, and to see the times when it wasn’t and think of the mental state she could have been in trying to write down what she was going through hurts like hell.
I’m probably looking way to much into this detail. I just don’t trust ND to throw random details that break a set pattern like that and not have it mean something. Still if you must take this, take it with a dusting of salt. I got a lot of free time to think about everyday objects in video game details and try to make meaning in a meaningless world.
[Images description: Images of Dina and Ellie with words underneath them. First image of them kissing in the dance day with the words: ‘Where are those happy days? they seem so hard to find’ Second image of Dina holding Ellie, words underneath read: ‘I try to reach for you but you have closed your mind…’ Third image: Ellie standing on their farm looking out the window. Words underneath read: ‘You seemed so far away, though you were standing near’ Fourth image: Dina hugging Ellie after she comes back to the theater, when she confessed she made Nora talk. Words underneath read: ‘You made me feel alive but something died, I fear…’ Fifth image: Dina looking to the other side as Ellie is in the back, they are in the farm and Ellie is about to leave. Words underneath read: ‘Whatever happened to our love? I wish I understood’ Sixth image: Ellie, JJ and Dina dancing in the kitchen. Words underneath read: ‘It used to be so nice, it used to be so good’]
Not what I originally pictured doing, not really finished, and not my typical style, but I just had to get something out after that trailer. I’m so worried about this child.
