The Last of Them : What Is Up With The Neons? An Essay From Annie
The Last of Them : What Is Up With The Neons? An Essay From Annie
This is the first of a two part Last of Us essay, with Annie and Andy each sharing their thoughts. First up, Annie!
This Blog Post will contain spoilers for the Last of Us Part 1
From the day I met Andy, he expressed his love of video games, and often spoke about his favorites. I knew essentially from day one, that his all time favorite video game was The Last of Us. I have since sat next to him, walked by the living room, and overheard from a distance, his many, many replays of the franchise. The first year we were together, he convinced me to watch a video game awards show called “The Game Awards”, and expressed his excitement to share his love of video games with me through this medium. I should probably mention here that I personally love video games and play them too, but in a much much different format. The Game Awards was the first time we really had a cross over between our two gaming spheres, which otherwise overlapped only in that we both gamed.
After our first year of The Game Awards, it became a tradition that we watched annually. We started watching E3 together, Summer Games Fest, and now more. I can still remember the day we were watching and they announced The Last of Us TV show. Andy jumped up off the couch and couldn’t contain his excitement. I will admit, the trailer had me hyped as well. But of course, we were years away from release at this stage, and beyond hearing his enthusiasm, my only connection with the franchise was now waiting and hearing him bemoan the delays.
Enter Season One of The Last of Us. It finally arrives. We are SAT. Popcorn at the ready, black screen staring back at us until the clock has ticked down to zero. The intro alone gave me chills, and I thought to myself, “uh oh. I’m gonna like this too much”. And I was correct.
From the moment the opening beats of that show played, I was hooked. The splashes of green, red and brown colors were threaded through with the sheer horror of loss, and forced growth the characters experienced. We watched Joel suffer, Bill & Frank love and lose, and many more characters harkened to a calling beyond death. Did you know that the real cordyceps mushroom really does work like they describe in that first scene in season one? It actually does turn ants into zombie-like creatures, doing the bidding of the fungi. You can read more about that here: Zombie-ant fungus | Description, Infection, Life Cycle, Humans, The Last of Us, & Facts | Britannica
If you go into the show not knowing this true-life horror, the idea of the cordyceps still has an impact. However, I already knew well of the cordyceps, so the second I learned that the zombi-fication of the characters was led by this mushroom, I knew I was in for a ride. And ride we did.
We watch as the monsters of season one are revealed, and that they are called “clickers” because they click like bats in the darkness. If you can tip toe past, you are home free. We learn that they are infected by the cordyceps, and horrifyingly, they are not in fact zombies, they are “infected”. They are zombified by the fungus, controlled via their cerebelum, but not actually undead – a horrifying reality not worth considering. Worst of all, as the show unfolds, we discover that the clickers they showed us from the very beginning are not the real monsters – the people are. To quote A Quiet Place, "The People That Are Left, They're Not The Kind Of People Worth Saving.” The weight of that horror settles over the show across both seasons, amplifying as we go.
One of my favorite themes in horror is when humanities failings are amplified. Horror and science fiction do an amazing job of capturing the dark side of our species. My favorite version of this type is the genre of apocalyptic content (obviously), because survival is at the core of our being, and the storytelling capacities are bottomless. Watching the characters we love, and many we hate, turn into monstrous characatures took this show to dark places, and stirred up emotions that are hard to capture. This is also true in that we learn to love characters like Joel, who is the monster of the story for so many other characters. The show takes the idea of what makes us human (love, compassion, survival, loss), and twists them in front of a mirror, reflecting our own horrors back at us.
While watching The Last of Us with Andy, my love for him was reflected back at me many times over. We see the young love in “Left Behind” with Ellie and Riley, the unconditional love in “Lost In The Darkness” with Joel and Sara, and the long-abiding love in “Long, Long Time” with Bill & Frank. We even seen the wrong kinds of love in “Endure and Survive” (vengeful) and “When We Are In Need” (violent). Dark love, long-standing love, bright agonizing love forever lost. Beyond desperately striving to survive, humans seek love. The complex and violently bright feelings these episodes inspired in me led to the creative inspiration and ultimately, the color story of this collection.
The primary color of this collection is green. The show and game have intense green color tones, and I wanted to capture the color green in every way to do that color palette justice. Just as importantly to me, I fucking love green, and I wanted to show you what I love to mirror the loves we see in the show. In fact, every single shade in this lineup has green in it in some way. From the sneaky green shimmer in the shade “Clicker” to the bright turquoise shimmer in “Lose Our Minds Together”, every single shade has green in it. The colors that surprised everyone the most by far though, were the neons. When you think of The Last of Us, you may not think of neon pink or orange, or maybe not even the neon green. For me though, these bright colors represent the feelings evoked from the show, with the intensity of that emotional impact.
The neon pink of “Hot Cordyceps Summer” represents the bright feeling of joy and playfulness I felt for Ellie when she read from her pun book, and made Joel laugh again.
The neon orange of “For The Pun of It” captured the vibrancy of the impact that the orange cordyceps has on the entire society.
Bare your fangs, while not as neon, is a nod to the WLF in the games, and fighting back against an oppressive regime. The teal mirrors the rainfall on overgrowth covering buildings, and the orange flakes look like little teeth, ready to bite.
Clicker being such a dainty, light shade is meant to show how harmless these creatures are in comparison to the sheer monstrosity of the humans in the show.
The Last of Them is the combination of all the colors in the collection, captured in glitter, because we love glitter around here. And it is both dark and light, feelings the show inspired in waves of bright love, and dark horror.
Love abides and I Think I’m Gonna Love You For a Long, Long Time both went through more iterations than you would care to hear about. Those shades represent the love and loss featured in Bill & Frank’s episode. Love Abides is what I imagine the feeling of picking a ripe strawberry on a misty morning would look like if you could bottle it.
And finally, “Lost Our Minds Together” is a combination of my love of green, Andy’s love of purple, and our love of each other. Watching Ellie and Riley shelter against a nightmare and finding laughter together in spite of it resonated with me and my love for Andy deeply.
Whether you agree with the colors, the themes, the finish or even our vision as a brand, please know that this was a labor of love. This is art to me. Many nights, I lay awake pondering the show, my feelings and how to bottle all of that in a way that was ugly, beautiful and shareable. The neons almost didn’t make the lineup for the very reason they were questioned – "how on earth are neons a part of Last of Us"? Ultimately, for me, the neons captured so much of the bright violence of the feelings evoked by the show. The grungy colors were both expected and unexpected in their varying uniqueness.
The final collection lineup for me captured my feelings for the show, my feelings about love in all its' stages, and my feelings for Andy swirled throughout. I hope you enjoyed this collection, but if you didn't, that's okay too! This is art for me, and since art is subjective, it won't always land for everyone. If you did love this collection, I'm so glad that I was able to share this content, and this art piece with you, and connect through a mutual love of all things weird.
As always, thank you for choosing to spend the end of the world with us.
xoxo
Apocalypse Annie
