The Last of Us 2 is the latest in a line of various franchises' sequels made to ~subvert~ and ~challenge expectations~ that ends up just taking a massive steaming shit all over the original, then shaming the fans. Every character that fans loved in the original is either dead or utterly broken. And again, we are not only asked, but expected to like the characters responsible. Ffs Abby literally gets crucified like she's supposed to be fucking Jesus.
These people seem to either forget, or stopped giving a shit, that they're making a
sequel (or in cases like
Fantastic Beasts, a
prequel) to a product. In the process of "challenging expectations", they destroy characters like Joel and uplift characters that are very much forgettable or hated. This is the same shit that happened with
The Last Jedi. The once hopeful and courageous Luke Skywalker turns into a fucking hermit for such piss-poor (if any) reasons and people are supposed to deal with that and focus more on Rey.
These people feel the need to "divide audiences" and have it reflect the current state of society for no reason.
If you want subversiveness done well, check out
Memento or
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. Within the context of the way they were created, being subversive worked. But people now seem to want to put this methodology in pretty much everything, even linear storytelling.
There's a famous essay called "Destruction and Creation" by Colonel John Boyd. It's an extension on how battlefield commanders get into one another's heads. As Boyd stated, the human psyche comprehends the world by taking in inputs, finding a lots of realities and controls, and framing that information into a psychological model that permit rational decision-making. At the point when we distinguish that our psychological model isn't right ("My spouse has been cheating on me this whole time!"), it causes an unpleasant phase of annihilation, when the old mental model must be destroyed to think of a model that fits the recently procured realities (the creation stage). You see this pressured response in individuals who've quite recently left a cult, when even as they talk about what occurred, they're continually shaken by unexpected realization that nearly all that they'd acknowledged had been a determined falsehood, and their cerebrum needs to reconsider pretty much every occasion exclusively. On the front line, a leader who comprehends his adversary will work to make his rival misjudge the accessible data sources (utilizing bluffs, double dealings, bogus government agent accounts, and so forth). In any case, he attempts to postpone his rival's realizations, so that the opponent's time and energy intensive destruction and creation cycle (the epiphany) comes too late to affect the outcome of the battle.
In that light, when we watch an anecdotal universe, we're learning the standards of that universe, its history, and its characters. We do this normally with the goal that we can comprehend, anticipate, and respond to occasions, similarly as we would in reality. A standard infringement triggers a mind's "I've misread everything!" reaction in a way not proposed by the writer, rather than a writer releasing an energizing huge uncover or "aha!" second - "No Luke, I am your father!" When a group infringement occurs, rather than moving with the story, the watcher is confounded and attempting to accommodate the new information with the old model. They're in a high-stress state since they've unexpectedly understood that their psychological model of the anecdotal world might be lethally defective, and that is never an agreeable state for a wise being who thinks the exactness of his psychological model is significant.
But people who attach no importance to the fictional universe, the "non-fans", don't go through this because they have no investment into their mental model of a fictional universe that they don't value. Non-fans won't have a reaction to a canon violation, anymore than a bass fisherman would react to a Paris fashion faux pas. They neither know nor care and just enjoy the pretty show. But a fan's enjoyment will likely be destroyed as their Destruction and Creation cycle gets triggered. They are sitting in their seat, madly trying to make sense of a shocking revelation, yet it is a revelation the author never intended, and one certainly never intended to be upsetting and stressful. The blissfully ignorant author thought it would just be cool if a character could suddenly do X, Y, or Z, while the fan is reacting as if he'd just beheld a scene that said Jesus was gay or water flows uphill. He's taken completely out of the movie and spends the rest of it wrestling with the logical contradictions and implications. He comes out upset and unsettled.
So, tl;dr, subversiveness is gay and belongs only in the hands of Yuri Bezmenov.
