I’ve been challenging myself to audience more. No, that’s not a typo. Lately I’ve been thinking about audience as a verb, the simultaneous role of watching, the active sense of the passive tense being entertained. 

It’s like saying a lion doesn't mean to scare away a gazelle by approaching it. Even if the lion has no intention of hurting the gazelle, how is the gazelle supposed to know that? How is the gazelle supposed to recognize which lion will eat it and which lion just wants to get a drink from the oasis? Maybe it’s the fact that a body of water with a lion near it can never be an oasis for a gazelle.

If you’ve been on social media lately, or have just been following gaming and Pedro Pascal since 2013, then you’ve definitely heard of HBO’s The Last of Us by Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin — or, what is arguably the best video game adaptation up to date. The Last of Us, starring Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsay, follows the journey of Joel and Ellie — a stone-hearted smuggler and the girl he’s smuggling — as they travel across Apocalypse America facing mushroom monsters, raiders, and trauma along the way.