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https://nerdist.com/article/the-last-of-us-fedra-evil-explained-hbo/
HBO’s The Last of Us has amassed so much success for so many different reasons. One of these is how easy it is to match a scene from the show to its game analog. Of course, there have been distinct changes, and it’s these changes that also contribute to such an engaged audience. Aspects of the show that stray from what we anticipate contribute to the sheer horror that it cultivates. These make it generally more terrifying to watch than the game is to play. This is especially true with how the series depicts FEDRA.
The nuance to these FEDRA changes is that they may not be changes at all based on the concept of the game. Rather, as is the case with other translational aspects of the adaptation, they are expansions of the source material. FEDRA, like with Joel and Tess’s relationship, required more intentional fleshing out to raise the stakes of the series’ storytelling.
As a reminder, FEDRA is a reduced form of government that effectively operates through different branches in different quarantine zones throughout the USA. As the central government dissolved after Outbreak Day, FEDRA assumed control. Without answering to any higher power, their acts of depravity and violence go unchecked. The series adaptation has used this blueprint to construct an austere, authoritarian body in The Last of Us that doesn’t have anything material to do with the fungal infection. They have thus made it into one of the most unnerving facets of the show. The creators have been able to do this in part by allowing some of the most merciless parts of history to repeat itself.
As soon as the show transitions from Outbreak Day to 20 years later, we see the violence of FEDRA. Instead of seeing Joel waking up on a couch, a child with clunky, worn out sneakers walks up to the walls of the quarantine zone; the signs of infection are clear. Once FEDRA receives confirmation from the diagnostic scanner that the child is infected, a soldier sticks a syringe in his arm with the promise of his favorite food and toys. We next see Joel as he dumps the small body into a firepit in the QZ as his assigned work duty. The routine aspect of this travesty is what is most frightening. It recalls the mandatory labor of concentration camps, victims forced to dispose of bodies of other victims. The historical allusions don’t stop there.
Mere moments later, as Joel finishes his shift for the day, he joins a crowd of people. In front of the crowd, three QZ inhabitants stand on a platform, each with their wrists tied behind their backs, three nooses dangling before them. A FEDRA officer is blasting the transgressors’ violations through a bullhorn. They never show us the hanging itself, but the fear-mongering is on full display. The lack of shock on Joel’s face doesn’t undermine it at all, nor does him walking immediately to a different FEDRA officer for bargaining. This is normal to him, and he believes resistance is futile.
In episode three, Ellie goes against Joel’s wishes and leads the way down a road to a grassless stretch of Earth littered with segmented skeletons. The introduction to Bill’s town takes place in a flashback, a few days after Outbreak Day, when FEDRA soldiers began to transport uninfected residents to quarantine zones. Joel tells Ellie, “[…] Told you you were going to a QZ and you were… if there was room.” If you look closer at the patch of land, there is more than just bones. We see suitcases, tattered articles of clothing, even a guitar case. The images immediately recall the Holocaust Museum in DC, with rooms filled with shoes and other items left behind at death camps.
When Ellie asks why, Joel tells her “Dead people can’t be infected.” The look on her face is heartbreaking — she who has lived her entire life in a post-apocalyptic world, who had never seen the pristine white-picket fences and wooden front doors unmarked by FEDRA’s spray paint.. The visual manifestation of FEDRA’s horrifying acts — of the people who have raised her and educated her from birth — is more harrowing to her than stabbing an infected person in the eye, which she does with ease just five minutes before.
In episode four and five, however, FEDRA’s sinister lore blows wide open in Kansas City. The two episodes contain the most original content of the entire show, with a drastic reshaping of Sam and Henry’s segment of the canon. As Joel and Ellie arrive in Kansas City, we learn that the local resistance (separate from the Fireflies) has liberated the city from FEDRA. The resistance leader is Kathleen, an original character played by none other than Melanie Lynskey. KC FEDRA has a reputation that even reached Joel in Boston. “Monsters, savages, you heard right. Raping, torturing, and murdering people for 20 years. You know what happens when you do that to people? The moment they get a chance, they do it right back to you.”
Despite the resistance’s victory, Kathleen has a vendetta against FEDRA collaborators. Those people sold out resistance members like her brother for leverage. This is again a deeper depiction of how FEDRA abused its power to pin innocent civilians against each other. In this case, it was so that Henry could maintain Sam’s access to the chemotherapy treatment. This portion of the FEDRA story alludes further to authoritarian regimes in the ways that lamentable conditions force civilians to turn on each other, breaking the resistance, and falling victim to the ruling part as a means of survival.
Ultimately, HBO’s The Last of Us houses the chilling echoes of our world’s violent history, mitigating the horror of flesh-eating zombies. Those with a true grasp of the story understand that it has little to do with fungus or an apocalypse. Instead, the story uses those conditions as a vehicle to meditate on humanity — how it can rise up in some cases or break down in others. Could we really call a microorganism evil when its biological imperative is to survive and multiply, just the same as humans? Instead, these new, much scarier perspectives of FEDRA redistribute the antagonism of The Last of Us, giving viewers greater pause when asked to consider the evil at play.
HBO’s The Last of Us airs every Sunday.
The post How FEDRA Is Different, and Scarier, in THE LAST OF US TV Show appeared first on Nerdist.
HBO’s The Last of Us has amassed so much success for so many different reasons. One of these is how easy it is to match a scene from the show to its game analog. Of course, there have been distinct changes, and it’s these changes that also contribute to such an engaged audience. Aspects of the show that stray from what we anticipate contribute to the sheer horror that it cultivates. These make it generally more terrifying to watch than the game is to play. This is especially true with how the series depicts FEDRA.
The nuance to these FEDRA changes is that they may not be changes at all based on the concept of the game. Rather, as is the case with other translational aspects of the adaptation, they are expansions of the source material. FEDRA, like with Joel and Tess’s relationship, required more intentional fleshing out to raise the stakes of the series’ storytelling.
As a reminder, FEDRA is a reduced form of government that effectively operates through different branches in different quarantine zones throughout the USA. As the central government dissolved after Outbreak Day, FEDRA assumed control. Without answering to any higher power, their acts of depravity and violence go unchecked. The series adaptation has used this blueprint to construct an austere, authoritarian body in The Last of Us that doesn’t have anything material to do with the fungal infection. They have thus made it into one of the most unnerving facets of the show. The creators have been able to do this in part by allowing some of the most merciless parts of history to repeat itself.
As soon as the show transitions from Outbreak Day to 20 years later, we see the violence of FEDRA. Instead of seeing Joel waking up on a couch, a child with clunky, worn out sneakers walks up to the walls of the quarantine zone; the signs of infection are clear. Once FEDRA receives confirmation from the diagnostic scanner that the child is infected, a soldier sticks a syringe in his arm with the promise of his favorite food and toys. We next see Joel as he dumps the small body into a firepit in the QZ as his assigned work duty. The routine aspect of this travesty is what is most frightening. It recalls the mandatory labor of concentration camps, victims forced to dispose of bodies of other victims. The historical allusions don’t stop there.
Mere moments later, as Joel finishes his shift for the day, he joins a crowd of people. In front of the crowd, three QZ inhabitants stand on a platform, each with their wrists tied behind their backs, three nooses dangling before them. A FEDRA officer is blasting the transgressors’ violations through a bullhorn. They never show us the hanging itself, but the fear-mongering is on full display. The lack of shock on Joel’s face doesn’t undermine it at all, nor does him walking immediately to a different FEDRA officer for bargaining. This is normal to him, and he believes resistance is futile.
In episode three, Ellie goes against Joel’s wishes and leads the way down a road to a grassless stretch of Earth littered with segmented skeletons. The introduction to Bill’s town takes place in a flashback, a few days after Outbreak Day, when FEDRA soldiers began to transport uninfected residents to quarantine zones. Joel tells Ellie, “[…] Told you you were going to a QZ and you were… if there was room.” If you look closer at the patch of land, there is more than just bones. We see suitcases, tattered articles of clothing, even a guitar case. The images immediately recall the Holocaust Museum in DC, with rooms filled with shoes and other items left behind at death camps.
When Ellie asks why, Joel tells her “Dead people can’t be infected.” The look on her face is heartbreaking — she who has lived her entire life in a post-apocalyptic world, who had never seen the pristine white-picket fences and wooden front doors unmarked by FEDRA’s spray paint.. The visual manifestation of FEDRA’s horrifying acts — of the people who have raised her and educated her from birth — is more harrowing to her than stabbing an infected person in the eye, which she does with ease just five minutes before.
In episode four and five, however, FEDRA’s sinister lore blows wide open in Kansas City. The two episodes contain the most original content of the entire show, with a drastic reshaping of Sam and Henry’s segment of the canon. As Joel and Ellie arrive in Kansas City, we learn that the local resistance (separate from the Fireflies) has liberated the city from FEDRA. The resistance leader is Kathleen, an original character played by none other than Melanie Lynskey. KC FEDRA has a reputation that even reached Joel in Boston. “Monsters, savages, you heard right. Raping, torturing, and murdering people for 20 years. You know what happens when you do that to people? The moment they get a chance, they do it right back to you.”
Despite the resistance’s victory, Kathleen has a vendetta against FEDRA collaborators. Those people sold out resistance members like her brother for leverage. This is again a deeper depiction of how FEDRA abused its power to pin innocent civilians against each other. In this case, it was so that Henry could maintain Sam’s access to the chemotherapy treatment. This portion of the FEDRA story alludes further to authoritarian regimes in the ways that lamentable conditions force civilians to turn on each other, breaking the resistance, and falling victim to the ruling part as a means of survival.
Ultimately, HBO’s The Last of Us houses the chilling echoes of our world’s violent history, mitigating the horror of flesh-eating zombies. Those with a true grasp of the story understand that it has little to do with fungus or an apocalypse. Instead, the story uses those conditions as a vehicle to meditate on humanity — how it can rise up in some cases or break down in others. Could we really call a microorganism evil when its biological imperative is to survive and multiply, just the same as humans? Instead, these new, much scarier perspectives of FEDRA redistribute the antagonism of The Last of Us, giving viewers greater pause when asked to consider the evil at play.
HBO’s The Last of Us airs every Sunday.
The post How FEDRA Is Different, and Scarier, in THE LAST OF US TV Show appeared first on Nerdist.
A past secretary of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, said, “Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.” Genius Games continues to make education fun with their newest game, Ecosystem: Coral Reef.
This is a great game for just about any age, but is recommended for 8 and over. It can be played by up to six players, but has slightly different rules for playing with less than three. For those of you who game a bit, the mechanics are similar to Mesozooic. There is placement of cards into a matrix, but scoring is slightly more complex and without the time constraints that bring so much joy.
The setup is very simple. Each player is dealt 10 organism cards. There are eleven different cards, with nine of them grouped into three different food webs — producer, prey, and predators. The remaining two organism cards, turtle and the octopus, “group” alone. Each player picks a card from their hand, places it face down on the table and passes their hand to the left. At the same time the players flip their card and place it in front of them.
Each card is used to build your own coral reef, which is composed of a 4×5 matrix of cards. Each card has a different rule for placement, which supports scoring. So, for example, a shark will score two points for each card from the prey food group in the same row or column. The whale accumulates points by adding points for each krill in your ecosystem, but an adjacent card must be flipped over before scoring, resulting in the loss of points.
After the first round, players are again dealt 10 more cards. In this second round, the players pass to the right. The conclusion of the second round completes your reef and then the scoring begins.
The scoring can be a bit challenging, which is most likely the basis for the age recommendation. The understanding of the relationship between the different food webs to each other and life within a food web is essential. There are player aid cards that outline the relationship of each organism within its food web and to other organism cards.
My gaming crew has played this a few times. The general consensus has been a white knuckling of the player aid as each card placed has implications for your overall score and you really don’t know the scope of the cards for the round until you have passed enough times to see all the cards available. Of course with larger groups, there are very few cards left, once you finally see the hand of the player to both your left and right.
The small size of the organism cards was strange at first, until you see them arranged into the matrix that you use to build your coral reef. One of the biggest challenges was the octopus organism card. It is worth three points and allows the player to move one card or swap two cards. Invariably, I didn’t realize I need to swap or move until the next to the last pass and the card is not available. However, it can really help order your coral reef to maximize your scoring.
The educational value may not be evident, but there is an elegance to this game as it is obvious that the proposed value for correct placement of different organisms was done intentionally to emphasize the interconnectedness of the organisms on the structure and survival of a coral reef.
When we played, the player who typically won was the one who was best with the placement of the predators in balance with the other food webs. I, of course, spent all my time focused on the producer — the coral, krill, or plankton. This strategy kept me in striking range of a win, but I was always edged out by the multiplying effect of the predators. This reflects the fundamental fact that the key to the coral reef as with this game is balance of all the food webs and organisms.
The pure beauty of the organism cards and the easy game mechanics of pick-and-place make this ideal for playing with kids. If playing predominantly with smaller kids you may want to consider varying how to score to not let the complexity of scoring outweigh the fun of the game. On the other hand, it is a good exercise in addition and multiplication, so there is another benefit. Regardless, Ecosystem: Coral Reef is a great game, with next to no setup required, and relatively easy gameplay.
Ecosystem: Coral Reef is available from Genius Games directly and other various online platforms.
The Aberdeen Gardens 158: Built By Us, For Us, co-produced by The Historical Foundation of Aberdeen Gardens and The Unity Cornerstone Foundation, will soon be seen across America. Award-winning director and writer Tomeka M. Winborne, together with award-winning playwright/screenwriter David Barr III and Terrena Smith, have worked for more than two years preparing their highly anticipated feature documentary for national distribution. The moment has arrived!
On June 1, 2020, The Historical Foundation of Aberdeen Gardens received an unprecedented grant from the 400 Years of African American History Commission (Under the auspices of The National Park Service) to develop a documentary based on the Aberdeen Gardens neighborhood in Hampton Roads, Virginia. After two years, The Unity Cornerstone Foundation completed The Aberdeen Gardens 158: Built By Us, For Us.
Hampton’s Aberdeen Gardens is the result of a planned community proposal initiated by administrators from Hampton Institute, one of the earliest HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) in America. In 1934, school President Dr. Arthur C. Howe appealed directly to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal Home Sustinence Program to subsidize a ‘resettlement community’ for African American railroad, dockyard, and shipyard workers across southeastern Virginia. Upon approval of the grant, Aberdeen Gardens became the first federally funded housing project created exclusively for Blacks in the United States.
It not only is the last community of its kind to remain completely in tact, but Aberdeen Gardens has the distinction of being the only ‘resttlement development’ designed by a Black architect, overseen by a Black engineer and supervisor, and constructed completely by African American laborers; hence their motto “Built By Blacks, For Blacks.” Sixty years after its inception, the neighborhood officially became a United States Historic District. (In addition, Aberdeen Gardens is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Virginia State Landmarks Register, and was named “National Neighborhood of The Year” twice by the NUSA.)
Aberdeen Gardens is unlike any other community in this country. It is a 440-acre greenbelt subdivision that features 158 Colonial Revival and Queen Anne vernacular, double brick single-family homes with contributing buildings. But the validated roots of this modest community stretch much further back, to the first documented enslaved Africans who arrived in the English colonies over 400 years ago. Despite it’s landmark status, however, the community still faces debilitating modern challenges that continually threaten its historic sovereignty.
The Aberdeen Gardens 158: Built By Us, For Us received its public premiere screening on September 16, 2022 at the American Theatre in the Phoebus section of Hampton, Virginia. A few months later, the 400 Years of African American History Commission kickstarted their 2023 broadcast schedule by revealing a trailer of the movie on the bi-monthly news program “The 400 Hour: Episode 3 — Justice Sunday” that can be seen on their streaming channel, SmogoTV.com. The film, in its entirety, has been added to their website, www.400YAAHC.gov, where it can be viewed On Demand.
The Aberdeen Gardens 158: Built By Us, For Us is the first documentary ever produced by surviving original members of this proud community. To purchase a DVD copy of the film please call (757) 722-2345. To arrange an in-person tour of The Aberdeen Gardens History Museum or to obtain more information about Historic Aberdeen Gardens please visit www.aberdeengardensfoundation.org To screen the film publicly for your festival or organization, contact Unity Cornerstone Foundation.