Journal of Other Forum Analysis (Volume II, Issue 1)

[Jansen]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/eurogamer-the-last-of-us-part-2-online-backlash-prompted-naughty-dogs-next-star-to-get-bootcamp-ing-from-neil-druckmann.1186923/page-4#post-139868121

Ethnocracies should not exist, period.

And do you also want to erase/whitewash Druckmann's problematic treatment of black characters?

https://www.resetera.com/threads/naughty-dogs-anti-blackness-tlou2-spoilers.301376/

and while I can't ever know what is in Druckmann's heart, he is someone who has gone out of his way to follow and inform his views with some incredibly questionable people:

https://www.resetera.com/threads/whats-peoples-problem-with-neil-druckmann.1132980/page-2#post-136962090

There is also just what he has actually posted:

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

[IMG width="577px"]https://i.redd.it/k0g5switbstb1.jpg[/IMG]

And I say this as someone that is probably in the top 3 of posters on this site that have written on this IP and will continue to defend the artistic merit of TLOU and TLOU2 stories, often going much further in my praise than almost anyone. I truly think TLOU2 is a better story then TLOU and amongst the best videogame stories ever made. I have found Season 2 up to this point(havent seen this weeks episode yet) to be stronger than the first season.

But I will still stand right up and say aspects of the storytelling and how things are presented knowing their larger context are downright atrocious. Notably, the treatment of black characters and the clear racist subtext with how he presents the Seraphites vs the WLF in the game.

The latter complete with a white savior narrative in the context of Abby and Lev. Where the WLF are treated as largely a collection of many good people, some that got consumed with vengeance and violence, but most are pretty easy to empathize and even sympathize with. The seraphites in contrast are treated almost as if that post I linked in the spoiler was the north star in how the Seraphites were written. Whereas the WLF are given deep levels of empathy and moral complexity the Seraphites are cultists, superstitious, brainwashed, and culturally regressive. The main sympathetic character we get from the WLF is Abby, someone who lost her way and is a good person, we are even meant to feel really bad about killing most of the WLF grunts because most of them are your typical morally complex people.  The only person we get of that caliber with the Seraphites is Yara and Lev. Lev who is presented as someone that is still innocent, is forced to recognize the regressive culture due to their sexual identity, and it is implied unless Lev is saved by our white heroine Lev's future is likely one of deep oppression and an early death.

The WLF are deeply humanized and centralized: Good people, bad leadership, many are simply victims to the cycles of violence we must all break or unwitting victims to the cycles others have imposed and forced upon them.

The Seraphites largely remain caricatures. There is no interest in humanizing them. They are brutes, fanatics, cultists that can't be redeemed unless they are 'saved' early like Lev. They terrorize for the love of the game and the few insights we get of people in the community, most of the empathy derived is of a tragic posture. Like the two kids that lost their mom and felt their dad wasn't fighting back enough so they ran away and joined the Seraphites cause they are fighters. Reading almost like a "the kids succumbed to radicalization due to an absentee father."

Unlike in real life the Seraphites are presented as a group that organically became this way, that through leaders radicalizing a religion presented as illegitimate and stupid, there is now little to dwell on over humanizing with it's barbarity other than killing innocents is bad(but at many times its implied few are innocent here). Even if a lot of the actions of the WLF are cruel. There is not much dwelling on the wholesale burning of their island which is kinda on brand in it's own right...

Which again, in contrast to the real story of Israel/Palestine which is one of 100 years of apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and violent oppression that has snuffed out any real societal advancement and undermined any opportunity for peace or proper development(a story across a lot of the ME due to western colonialism). Unlike what is often presented in Israeli media and in this game, the Palestinians are not an actual threat necessitating the level of violence continually perpetuated and used. For someone that has openly said he has used the conflict as inspiration, how Druckmann has chosen to present the obvious allegories is also just as telling and suggests a deeply problematic view of the conflict, Israel's role in it, and the Palestinian people writ large.

I'd like to think that given his capacity for introspection he's shown in his stories that he will find his way to evolving his views in a positive direction, but I think the fact that all this goes along with mostly silence up into the present leaves a lot of people(myself included) rightfully suspicious.