#also in the extratextual space.

[fellhellion]

My spiderverse post for the day but I don’t see the point - in fact I think it’s counterintuitive to what the story is driving at - in twisting ourselves in knots arguing whether Miles is a definitive spiderman of his universe because he actually hits the canon checkboxes like his uncle dying etc and his universe hasn’t collapsed like. That’s still a validation operating by the parameters Miguel outlined, when the entire point is that those factors are meaningless to the identity of “spiderman” in isolation. What makes their hero mantle one of worth is the choice to always try save the little people, even when they don’t succeed, and becoming fixated on the loss and it’s supposed inevitability has put them all in a place of stagnation.

Even if Miles hadn’t had a single person die in his journey thus far he’d still be a worthy spiderman. <- a point literally crystallised in Pavitr.

[optiwashere]

I saw some discussion about Shadowheart's path, if Tav/Your character is dead when she confronts the Nightsong she will kill her 100% of the time. Saying that this is her "true" path and what she wants, how she only stops due to your presence. The DJ end is her "best" end due to her being confident and fulfilled, how she is actual quite an evil character due to torture etc. How it fits the lore better

All I can politely say is that I'm glad I isolate myself from most fandom spaces for this game, because this is a doozy.

She has to be memory wiped so many times because of how often she drifts back to questioning Sharran teachings and just being Very Bad at it. So I don't really buy "100%" of the time, but that's also because I personally believe nobody has absolute certainty in their morals and faith that certain situations wouldn't test.

There's kind of a whole section about that in the Shadowfell.

I don't even want to touch the Tav/PC comment. That's a barrel of worms that isn't worth opening.

For some folks, I think they just want something against the grain or not "typical" and so they naturally gravitate towards things like the Dark Justiciar ending. It's a different kind of wish fulfillment fantasy for them.

"I can make her worse" and all that. I don't think the reason people like that ending is because it's good for her lmao.

Long ramble while I'm on break ahead.

That said, a lot of people need to relearn critical thinking and practice emotional skills. Or they need to watch the full story side-by-side on both paths, because some of this shit is so blatant it's fascinating how some folks miss it.

I think assuming the A -> B -> C of "oh, she's a Sharran so she would strive to become a Dark Justiciar, there is no alternative character explanation for/against that" is a simple-minded approach.

It also, in my opinion, restricts people into very fundamentalist-adjacent viewpoints and thoughts. If someone was made to believe without a shadow of a doubt that they were born X way, or behaved Y way for Z years, then they must be that person forever and always. No, it doesn't work like that lol.

There's also no true path in this game until/if there's a sequel, because there's too many paths the characters can take. I use a lot of "I" statements and say "this is a theory/extratextual" in my opinions for that reason.

Aside #1: It's also why I take a lot of umbrage with anyone that says there's canon ships, or that there's ships that "obviously would happen." Maybe? Maybe not? It's just silly and far too self-restricting for no good reason. I get if you just want to ship one thing, but you don't have to justify it lol. Enjoy what you enjoy, but don't try to strongarm it into "canon" that doesn't really exist.

And saying it's "what she wants" and that she is confident and fulfilled is a load of shit lmao.

You (the royal you, not you, anon) have to have negative reading comprehension to put Shadowheart down that path and be like, "yeah, she loves this." It's so typical of an abuse victim to try and appease her abuser, and the Dark Justiciar route is her indulging in that. But to hear her lines in the romance afterwards, about how she can't really love the PC, combined with how she has to deal with her parents and how she retreats from being open about herself to being cold and distant once more...?

To say it's "right" for her is absolutely wild, and I despise the thought that there can't be happy endings or we can't want her to have a happy ending. I love fucked up stories with miserable endings, but I also love warm stories with joy and love and redemption at the end of it all.

It's also a massively surface-level read to say it's anything she wants. Sometimes people push themselves down paths they don't know how to retreat from, and the ends are often horrifying.

Aside #2: It's the same as if you cheat on her with Mizora. Like, she might be OK with relationships that are non-monogamous (if the player is) but the way the VA and writing and mocap combined in that scene make it painfully obvious that she is just trying to appease you to keep the relationship intact. Supremely typical abused person behavior, but now the PC is the abuser instead. Seeing people comment that she's OK with the Mizora situation is head-on-backwards level misreading.

She has done evil deeds in her past, sure. I think if you blanket claim she cannot be redeemed, you're going into some wild territory at the logical conclusion of that one. Her circumstances also alter how we interpret her past as well, and I think it intersects with my belief that compassion is a learned skill that not everyone cultivates.

Not to mention that everyone in the BG3 cast can be turned "evil" or at least made to do dark shit. "One True Way" types will never understand that there is a multitude of experiences, and it translates to this game as well.

And finally.

The lore?

Lol. Lmao even.

We know who the "real" Shadowheart is, but in some universes she destroys that person in order to foolishly seek approval from her abuser/goddess. In others, in mine for example, she abandons that goddess to embrace the person she's been forced to hide.

So yeah, my ultimate response to "Dark Justiciar Shadowheart is the real Shadowheart" is a big, wet fart noise.

[imonlyhereforcrem]

Literally frothing at the mouth since I read the name "Virtuosity". I've not stopped vibrating. I'm so excited but also so MAD because based on what I know (I'm only on Chapter 11, so no spoilers past that or extratextual spoilers please) she BREAKS my previously (allegedly) solid and super well thought out diagram of the 4 Commands and 16 Shards!!!! Either:

She is a mono-Shard and does actually fit in the empty space which would recontextualize what I think the Commands are

She is a mono-Shard and doesn't fit in the empty space I have which means I've incorrectly assessed at least one other Shard WHICH MEANS at least one other Shard's Intent is very different from what I think it is

She is the theoretical post-Harmony dual-Shard and I've got NO CLUE who are her constituent parts

Wisdom, Whimsy, or Invention are the theoretical post-Harmony dual-Shard and I've got NO CLUE who their constituent parts are

[oopshisaygoodnight]

queerbaiting allegations

ok there are so many little things so i’m sorry if i contradict myself here but it’s a major cover story by a prominent writer, of course it’s not going to give larries any love! and that’s for the best- press about us never goes well. but that doesn’t mean anyone should feel weak or guilty. we are not a monolith and can’t account for individual behavior which of course includes the whole gamut of feelings and some young people making silly public mistakes 

twitter is a wonderful space for finding like-minded people. i’m so happy to be here, and i do not find any satisfaction in participating in hateful or mean girl behavior. there are many people who are still learning how to be held accountable for their public views but it’s not worth 

i don’t take any pleasure in participating in mean girl behavior but i stand behind everyone on the front lines calling out BS and ha

harry was loud loud loud! and contradicting even himself! the whole “never been publicly with anyone” and his “gf” being interviewed??? 

then this is a small thing but the whole “gay sex two dudes going at it” is like… what movies have you been watching my friend. maybe i’m a biased viewer because i watch a lot of arthouse but MOST queer love stories on film are either lacking in lovemaking representation at all or handled with tenderness. but what i’m actually hearing from that quote is that MP cut the more explicit stuff (i saw a rumor specifically saying the books BJ scene was cut from the film) 💀

honestly what gay sex on film is he watching. like no, gay sex on film is not two dudes going at it??? what i’m hearing is that they cut Tom’s bj scene 💔💀

when we talk about queerbaiting we forget the context of its cultural birth- in shows and movies that played up romantic and sexual undertones between characters of the same sex to INSINUATE queerness without ever seeing it through to ACTUAL representation

famous examples are all the 2010-era tumblr favorites, sherlock probably chief amongst them in terms of heavy, heavy implication of codependent romantic feelings between the two leads

supernatural also comes to mind- huge community of castiel & dean shippers, until, in season 15 and the year of our lord 2020, castiel confesses his love in one scene and phew, you know the show beat the queerbaiting allegations by asserting he was gay all along!

the other big example for me is the social network (2010), where jesse eisenberg and andrew garfield intentionally capitalized on romantic undertones to explain the characters motivations and boy oh boy did we notice.

andrew garfield has had queerbaiter allegations leveled for a long time, and thats where the breakdown of barriers between fiction and fanfiction began culturally, in my eyes. the rise of "queerbaiting" went hand-in-hand with the argument that queer people should play queer roles

regardless of andrew garfield's actual sexual orientation (as of latest, heterosexual), he is a talented actor who knew that accessing romantic motivations for scenework made them much more compelling. but is that not the exact definition of queerbaiting as i described above?

regardless, i have found reading this piece immensely insightful and reflective of the problems at the heart of insinuated and extratextual queer romance between real people (and the joys of observing such things and processing them in fiction)

[nealcassatiel]

The Supernatural Finale’s Nullification of the Symbolism of the Road: Dean Winchester lived as a progressive hero and dies as a static shadow

During the emotional height of its grand finale, Supernatural’s Dean Winchester ensconces the show’s earlier themes as a road narrative by showing an elongated montage of him driving his classic car along an endless, American road. By returning to the original mythic and intertextual narratives from which Supernatural was born, the finale entrenched within its themes the grand myth of the freedom of the American road. However, this grand myth and symbol, representing the traveller’s metaphorical journey towards inner freedom and self-discovery whilst exulting their newly found connection to the beatific landscape on Earth, placed within the context of heaven - is rendered redundant.

Without canonical material to provide a true world-building of this new heaven, we must rely on the idea of heaven from previous seasons, as well as extratextual narratives of heavenly realms. The audience is told that in this new heaven, souls have freedom and new memories may be created. The vision we see of the finale’s heaven is glowing, sanitised, and idyllic. Coupled with the general Western audience’s presupposition that heavenly realms within texts will be devoid of true horror or suffering, we are to assume these new memories and freedoms will also be heavenly and devoid of suffering. This assumption is bolstered by the appearance of The Roadhouse, Bobby Singer, and Baby, all representative of ‘good times’ and shot with soft lighting (peaceful), then juxtaposed against Dean’s dark, gritty, violent, and horror-filed final moments on Earth. This entrenches the message that Supernatural is sending: Dean is at peace and saved from his suffering.

This disallowance of suffering in Dean’s heaven is antithetical to the myth of the road: the metaphorical journey towards inner-freedom, ‘self-display, and self-discovery’[1]. Conflict, suffering, and trials are essential towards self-discovery and character development, and this is truer for the ‘hero’ protagonist than others. Dean, our hero, in his sanitized heaven is now in stasis. His external goal of defeating god is destroyed, and his internal journey (created by reacting and responding to the trials and tribulations of a varied life) is curtailed. His symbolic drive through Americana heaven has been stripped of its meaning. Our hero is no longer a hero of the road and his journey of self-discovery is terminated.  Kris Lackey in RoadFrames: The Amerian Highway Narrative, writes that ‘Car voyaging remains a symbolic gesture, describing in spatial terms a character’s education in or flight from domesticity’[2]. Whilst Dean is spatially driving away from home/Earth, his character is deprived of the ability to progress or to be educated by his surroundings, and therefore Dean’s drive through this physical space has been stripped of its metaphorical meaning. The physical road of heaven is illusory: it’s symbolism only taking on meaning and worth when the traveller changes in tandem with the view from the car window. The view from ‘Baby’ may change, but Dean cannot.

American road narratives have long set themselves against the urban. Following in the footsteps of Transcendentalism, in particular Thoreau’s Walden, the road symbolises a rejection of materialistic and capitalist society and a return to the land. The urban and the road are set in comparison: the urban taking on meaning as a place where one lives as a shadow and lives a half-life in a modern hell, stripped of connection to the Self and to others. The road thus takes on the meaning of a place where one can live fully, where, as Thoreau writes, one can ‘live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.’ [3] The road is thus an allegory for living with heightened experiences, living life fully, and rediscovering a more meaningful human experience through a greater connection to the land. Dean’s heaven road is not in opposition to the urban. Heaven is not a place where one can live deliberately and learn from the joys and pains of human life. The land, a peculiarly Earthly notion, can only ever be absent in Heaven. The essential nature of Heaven and Earth is that they are wholly separate. Each of their meanings is derived from the fact that they are not the other. The myth of the road is so inherently connected to the land on Earth, that transmogrifying it into a realm which has always defined itself as ‘not of Earth’ yet again nullifies any symbolic meaning attributed to ‘the road’.

This inability for character development, an inability to learn from the land, and an inability to learn from the suffering of an Earthly road renders our hero stuck, with his life suspended. In On the Road, ‘Kerouac’s Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty… exemplify the surviving type - outsiders whose hardscrabble road-lives fit them for roles as satirists and enemies of settled bourgeois life.’[4] Dean, whose character is based on Dean Moriarty, whilst visually drives a car in heaven and is seen as always moving forwards, Dean himself is completely settled in his current reality – unable to move forward in any way other than physically. Whilst Sam and the people left behind on Earth are able to move on, Dean, as he ironically speeds through heaven’s roads is now stuck in the same place forever.

On the Road’s message is one of a rejection of a settled, domestic, and stultifying bourgeoisie life. The semi-autobiographical nature of the work allows us to interpret the text in connection to Kerouac and Cassady’s real life. Whilst this anti-domestic theme is ingrained in Kerouac’s text, Kerouac himself ended his years living with his mother, having stopped travelling. When comparing Kerouac’s later life with his protagonist’s youthful life in On the Road, we can make a case that youth is inherent to contextualising the book’s central themes, most importantly: the theme of freedom. With the characters and writer in their 20s, this novel resonates with the youth. Their youth calls for a rejection of the domestic and of the settled. Likewise, Sam and Dean’s earlier years before they move into the bunker are, and should be, seen as a rejection of the domestic and settled. Thoreau’s Walden, Krakauer’s Into The Wild, Ruess’ A Vagabond for Beauty, Kerouac’s On the Road, Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, Ben Reitman’s Sister of the Road – these, along with the majority of road narratives (both literary and on-screen) are populated with protagonists in their 20s. Had these seminal road narratives had protagonists in their 40s, as Dean Winchester is in the finale, the message of a life on the road would be incalculably altered. Whilst the youthful Sal and Dean in On the Road choose to reject a settled life for a vagabond’s, the middle-aged Dean Winchester is forced from a settled life in the bunker (a home that he cherishes) into a vagabond’s life on the road. He is thrown into a road narrative which brings joy to younger protagonists as it did for him in his 20s, however since the age of 34 (roughly) when him and Sam find the bunker, he as a character no longer sought out this life of the road. Their father’s (John Winchester’s) nomadic life which moved him from one dark and dingy motel room to the next was portrayed as somewhat sad, a sacrifice, and a life he was forced into once his domestic life literally went up in flames. John Winchester’s nomadic life started when he was 29 years old and has never been representative of the careless freedom of the road. Like John, symbolising Dean as being back on the road is somewhat sad and reads as a form of hollow nostalgia for the freedom of youth. Dean’s drive on heaven’s road and its rejection of the domestic no longer reads as youthfully liberating and bold, but tragic that he is forced from his age-appropriate domestic home into an unsettled life that he wilfully moved on from in season 8. As viewers, we must ask ourselves if it is still freedom if one is forced to be free? Whilst I could delve into the writings of Isiah Berlin or Rousseau’s writings on the ‘social contract’, Supernatural in many ways answers this question itself. In the fight against an interventionist god, our characters (self-named as ‘Team Free Will 2.0’), believe that one’s ability to choose their path in life is the ultimate freedom. If god had forced their freedom, they would not consider that as true freedom. Therefore, the symbolism of the writers forcing Dean from the domestic and back onto the freedom of the road cannot be read as true freedom. He had no choice.

Supernatural’s finale aimed at recapturing the tone and themes of its pilot episode, and consistently mirrored shots, costume, locations, dialogue, and themes of the pilot. It used visual signifiers to play into the show’s earlier mythology. However, the unintended consequence of this visual and narrative symbolism forced the character of Dean into trying to recapture his youth. Dean had moved on from the open road since the pilot, however the resounding mythic image during Dean’s final screen-time is him on the road. In the end, ‘Carry On’ unintentionally satirises its own mythology. It is less like On the Road, and more like Easy Rider. David Laderman writes of Easy Rider, ‘At a certain point down the road, the road movie’s glorified mobility seems to yield a disillusioned attitude in the protagonists, who have been unable to truly escape, and who have internalized the pressures of conformist society.’[5] Easy Rider’s protagonists, maddened by consistently defining themselves by the road realise that the search for such a freedom from a violent and conservative nation is futile. The hippie dream, in the context of the Martin Luther King assassination as well as the other assassinations and the war in Vietnam, was dead by 1969. After the traumas faced on the road, the protagonists are confronted with the knowledge that ‘the initial promise and thrill of mobility gradually turns sour.’[6]So too is Dean now unable to escape his previous life on the road and his new life on heaven’s road.

As a character who canonically repressed emotions and played into hyper-masculine traits at the expense of the catharsis of emotional vulnerability, like Easy Rider’s protagonists, Dean never escaped his internalised ‘pressures of conformist society’ before his death. With no trauma or challenges to confront on heaven’s road, Dean can never go on the internal journey to free himself from his repression. Heaven’s road will never help him free his Self. On the Road’s protagonist, Dean Moriarty is based on Neal Cassady who was a bisexual man and his relationship with poet Allen Ginsberg was written about within Ginsberg’s work. Dean Winchester was also based on Neal Cassady, giving some credence to viewers of Supernatural who have long read Dean through a queer theory lens, and presented him as bisexual. Through this bisexual reading, Dean’s inability to find true freedom on heaven’s road becomes allegorical to his inability to free himself from his repressed sexual desires. Like On the Road’s omission of Dean’s bisexuality, Supernatural can be read as doing the same. Increasingly, freedom is stripped from the symbol of heaven’s road. Both Neal Cassady and Dean Winchester die at the same age of 41.

Road movies and their mythology combine both conservative and progressive ideologies, and many try to walk this line without politicization. The myth of the road can be read as inherently conservative and patriotic as it plays into the American ideology of frontierism and individualism. Yet the mythology of freedom from the suburban/urban and the incorporation of road narratives into progressive counterculture (such as the Beats and the Hippies) makes the genre appear liberating. By setting itself in juxtaposition against capitalist and urban life, road narratives appeal to the progressive, and many of the genre’s protagonists are indeed progressive.

As outlined earlier, Dean’s return to the road does not feel freeing or liberating. His journey on the road does not include a Merry Prankster-esque or Easy Rider LSD binge, nor a stop for a wine-heavy jazz night, nor a Neal Cassady-esque exploration of his sexual needs and desires. Like heaven itself, this road trip montage is sanitized, pure, and holy. This sanctity and purity of heaven’s road highlights the nationalistic mythology of America as a promised land, anointed by god himself, and above all others – the Pilgrim’s ‘city on a hill’. Whilst the audience can assume that heaven is supremely American because it is Dean’s heaven, it is difficult to intellectually separate your thoughts from what Supernatural is so powerfully visually telling us: heaven is America. By placing such strong (even if unintentional) nationalistic symbolism alongside the knowledge that John, Mary, and (soon) Sam will be central to Dean’s heaven, Supernatural marries two resolutely conservative American values: the heterosexual nuclear family, and god’s promised land of America – his heaven on Earth. This firmly aligns the mythology of the road closer to its conservative symbols, than its progressive ones. Perhaps such patriotic symbolism wouldn’t read as harshly when the pilot aired in 2005. Yet during the staunchly bipartisan Trump years where examples of white supremacy, violent jingoism, and xenophobia are rife, a departing message of an American heaven and the importance of a heterosexual nuclear family can be easily politicized and be seen as bolstering the patriotic symbolism which it draws upon.

A large majority of Supernatural’s fanbase (as oppose to general audience) is composed of young, progressive, and queer women. Supernatural’s narrative themes of found family and Castiel’s declaration of homosexual love engendered a sense within its audience that the series was narratively leading towards the progressive finale. Yet the patriotic road trip montage, the knowledge of Dean’s return to his nuclear family, and Sam’s montage of living out his life in an apple-pie, baseball throwing, middle-class house, heterosexual nuclear family lifestyle sans his deaf love interest (a montage more akin to the Raegan-era nostalgia films of the 1980s than anything made in 2020), tonally, visually, and symbolically reads as a finale steeped in conservative and Republican mythos. These are particularly tonally jarring for Supernatural’s progressive audience, especially after the promise of queer representation, disabled representation, and themes of a found family that were prevalent just two episodes previously.

In conclusion, Supernatural returned Dean Winchester to his road trip routes, yet divorced from his youth or an ability to progress as a character, the progressive symbolism of the road was nullified. By ripping him away from his desired domesticity and forcing him onto the freedom of the road, his deepest desires of a settled life and the freedom of choice were also destroyed, therein destroying his character arc. Supernatural, therefore, strips the progressive symbolism of freedom associated with the road and further sanitises and sanctifies it by placing ‘the road’ in heaven. We are left with a pure road, America as god’s land, the elevation of the importance of a nuclear family, and a nostalgic montage of Sam’s conservative life. Dean’s road is now imbued only with the conservative aspects of it the symbol’s mythology. For an audience in 2020 seeking progressive representation in the jingoistic years of Trump, to be confronted with staunchly conservative ideologies and symbols (which appear even more extreme than when first broadcast in the Bush years of 2005) there is no cathartic nostalgia to be had.

‘We laugh, at the [road trip] movies, at the frequency with which the hero goes ‘out there, away from all this’ to ‘find himself,’[7]but there is nothing for Dean to find at the end of heaven’s road. He is frozen forever in unchanging happiness – a hero deprived of a journey. And so Supernatural ends with Dean on the road, the camera portraying with powerful imagery a hollow and tragic myth, completely stripped of its progressive meaning. With socio-political and character context changed, Supernatural’s return to the pilot unintentionally satirises itself, and alienates a fan base who define themselves against the ultimate message of the finale: heterosexual nuclear family, and white national chauvinism.

I finish with Allen Ginsberg’s words in his poem Elegy for Neal Cassady, written after hearing news of Neals death at the age of 41.

OK Neal aethereal Spirit bright as moving air blue as city dawn happy as light released by the Day over the city's new buildings --

[...]

Sir spirit, forgive me my sins, Sir spirit give me your blessing again, Sir Spirit forgive my phantom body's demands, Sir Spirit thanks for your kindness past, Sir Spirit in Heaven, What difference was yr mortal form, What further this great show of Space? Speedy passions generations of Question? agonic Texas Nightrides? psychadelic bus hejira-jazz, Green auto poetries, inspired roads? Sad, Jack in Lowell saw the phantom most -- lonelier than all, except your noble Self. Sir Spirit, an' I drift alone: Oh deep sigh.

[1] Leed, Eric., The Mind of the Traveler, (1991), p. 13.

[2] Lackey, Kris., RoadFrames: The American Highway Narrative, p. xi.

[3] Henry David Thoreau, Walden and Other Writings, p. 172.

[4] Lackey, Kris., RoadFrames: The American Highway Narrative, p. 8.

[5] Laderman, David, Driving Visions; Exploring the Road Movie, (Austin, University of Texas Press, 2002), p. 76.

[6] Laderman, David, Driving Visions; Exploring the Road Movie, (Austin, University of Texas Press, 2002), p. 76.

[7] Lackey, Kris., RoadFrames: The American Highway Narrative, p. 92.

If you would like to read more about my writings on Beat literature and Supernatural, you can find them listed under my tag ‘Cas x Ginsberg x Buddhism’ . If you would prefer to have a PDF version of the above essay (is this an essay? i feel like it accidentally became one lol), then just let me know and I can send you that file. I wrote this this afternoon and feel like I have a lot more to say on this whole thing and barely touched upon lots of ideas that arose when I was writing this. I decided to stick firmly to the road symbolism stuff rather than bombard you with more than 3000 words in one go.

Thank you to @drsilverfish and this post of theirs which inspired me to revisit my Supernatural/The Beats tag, so thank you and you should all read that wonderful post. 

I started off rambling with this and then I decided to turn into into something of hopefully some worth and put effort into thinking over what I was trying to say. Do let me know if you want to to expand on anything I wrote here, and my asks are always open for questions. Let me know if more of this may be of interest. 

[solipsistful]

things nobody asked for: every use of the word “astronaut” in the Southern Reach trilogy:

In some unquantifiable way, too, you believe Lowry’s approach is pushing the Southern Reach farther away from the answers. Like an astronaut headed into the oblivion of vast and empty space who, in flailing about, only speeds up the moment when he is beyond rescue.

Lowry, bent over his task, letting the moment elongate further. The mane of golden hair, now silver, grown long. The determined, solid head on a thick neck, the landmarks of features upon a face that had served him well: craggy good looks, people say, like an astronaut or old-fashioned movie star.

It was dusk now, almost nightfall, and into the silence and gathering shadows, Grace took the lead, said, “We’re astronauts. All of the expedition members have been astronauts.”

“Incomplete data,” Whitby said. “Too incomplete to be sure. But most returnees tell us they just don’t think to bring [their journals] back. They don’t believe it’s important, or don’t feel the need to. Feeling is the important part. You lose the need or impetus to divulge, to communicate, a bit like astronauts lose muscle mass.”

(hey ex-fucking-cuse me with that one. the desire to communicate as a muscle that Area X specifically atrophies djkfas)

It occurred to [Control] that perhaps he wasn’t entitled to [Ghost Bird’s] memories. Perhaps no one was. But he pushed himself away from that thought, like an astronaut pushing off from the side of a space capsule. Where he’d end up was anyone’s guess.

and one from the extratextual material from genius.com:

For that first expedition, they would have been wearing fairly bulky astronaut suits, oddly close in conception to these, as a safety precaution, one abandoned for subsequent expeditions. Once emerging from their suit-cocoons, everything before them would have seemed both familiar and strange simultaneously.

so, like, two are Lowry specifically, one is the first expedition (so, Lowry), two are expedition members in general (including Lowry), and one is Control. SO. (okay admittedly Grace is also talking about Control there.)

i once referred to Lowry as “trope of astronaut who considers space to be Home, but it’s an abusive home” and i still love that image. :V

and bonus, because i want to stick this here, a line from Dead Astronauts that fucking killed me:

Dead astronauts were no different than living astronauts. Neither could shed their skin. Neither could ever become part of what they journeyed through. Suits were the premade coffins. Space was the grave. Better to think of yourself as dead already.

- ace

[sophieakatz]

Thursday Thoughts: What Exactly Does A Spoiler Spoil?

When I first started watching Doctor Who, I did my best to “avoid spoilers” – I didn’t want to know what would happen, for fear that it would lessen my enjoyment of the show. And there certainly were a lot of spoilers to avoid, given that I was playing catch-up on a show that had begun many years before I got around to it.

Since I was mostly watching episodes on Netflix, I rarely saw the “next time” trailer for episodes. But then one day I stuck past the credits, and – dun dun dun – there were DALEKS in the next episode! Okay, good to know.

I then began to watch the episode. But for a long time, there were no Daleks. Not only that, the appearance of the Daleks – at the very end of the episode – was set up like a big, dramatic reveal. The characters were shocked, presumably the viewer was also supposed to be shocked, but I… was not shocked. The “next time” trailer spoiled the ending of the episode for me!

However, I was very surprised to discover that I did not mind at all.

The episode had still been entertaining. I loved watching the Doctor and the rest of the cast react to the events around them and try to figure out what was going on in their usual clever, funny ways. I loved the beautiful space scenes and the intriguing moral quandaries that the setting evoked. I also loved the foreshadowing. Throughout the episode, bits and pieces supporting the twist at the end were sent our way – a laser noise here, a glimpse of an eyestalk there, the mention of beings who “fear the Doctor.”

Perhaps if I had not watched the “next time” trailer, I would have put the pieces together and felt clever for figuring out that the Daleks were around before the show explicitly told me. It’s impossible for me to know if that would have been my experience. What I do know is that I really enjoyed the episode knowing full well that the Daleks were there and using that knowledge to see and appreciate how the show set up their arrival.

This experience changed my opinion on spoilers. Knowing what happens at the end of a story doesn’t necessarily ruin the experience of that story. In a good story, the joy is in the journey as much as the destination.

Having learned this about stories, in subsequent years I’ve never been really bothered about having something in a new movie, book, or TV show spoiled for me. Even if I know what will happen, I still get to see how and why it happens.

So while I was perhaps a little annoyed when I came down the stairs and overheard my mother and sister commenting on [major spoiler from the end of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince] before I had read it, or when I heard one of my camp counselors asking another camper if [major spoiler from the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows] had happened yet before I had read it, I didn’t feel that either spoiler “ruined” my enjoyment of either book.

I also felt no need to tell anyone in either of these cases that I had overheard them (in fact, when my mother and sister read this blog post, it will be the first time they hear of this – and to them I say, sorry, and I love you!). I told no one at the time because I knew perfectly well how much other people do care about spoilers and whether they “spoil” another person’s reading/viewing experiences.

In the weeks preceding the release of Avengers: Endgame, the internet was full of people declaring that “Thanos Demands Your Silence.” There was even a sign on the breakroom door at work declaring it a “spoiler-free zone” until several weeks after the movie hit theaters. We also learned a lot about the spoiler-free nature of the film set itself. Tom Holland at one point did not know what character he was supposed to be fighting because the directors were concerned about spoilers getting out.

(And while I’m more a behind-the-scenes gal than an actress, I’m pretty sure that in order to give your best performance, you kind of need to know who and what your character should be reacting to. But that’s a whole nother article.)

(There’s also a whole nother article in talking about the importance of spoilers as far as triggers are concerned, and how it’s often easier to enjoy a work if you know that an awful thing happens in it in advance rather than if you are shocked by it in the moment, but this post is already going to be over a thousand words long.)

So it would be silly of me to say that spoilers don’t matter, because to a lot of people, they do matter. When I’m telling someone about a book or movie I just enjoyed, I always ask first if they mind hearing spoilers. If they mind, then I won’t spoil. Respecting people’s boundaries is part of being a good human.

Which brings me to a boundary that I have as a writer, which complicates my relationship with spoilers: I don’t like to tell people what’s going to happen next in my works. If they ask, I will nearly always refuse.

I have two main reasons for this.

First, sometimes I myself don’t know exactly what is going to happen next. I am what some on the internet call a “plantser” – neither a completely predetermined “planner” nor a completely making-it-up-as-I-go “pantser” (as in “flying by the seat of my pants”). It’s fitting that this portmanteau of “planner” and “pantser” includes the word “plant,” because that word describes my writing process well. I plant seeds, nurture them, and see how they grow. I can expect that if I plant watermelon seeds, I will end up with watermelons. However, how big will the fruits be? How sweet, or how sour? Will other, unexpected plants appear among the melons along the way? If so, are they weeds to pull up, or new plants worth keeping in the ecosystem? I am open to these changes. So if I were to tell someone, “My garden will only contain watermelons, and they will grow right here, and be so big,” and then I discovered some very interesting weeds that improved the garden’s overall quality, then I would be an unintentional liar. I’m better off not giving spoilers for what I do not know will happen.

Second, even if the planner in me takes over and I do know what will happen in this story, I don’t want to create extratextual expectations for the reader. I believe that if I’m doing my job right, what happens next in my story should feel inevitable. The characters should make decisions based on who they have shown themselves to be so far, and what has happened to them so far. That’s how real people work – we aren’t the random result of dice rolls; we are people with thoughts, emotions, and experiences. What happens next in my story should feel right not because it’s what I explicitly told you would happen, but because it’s what the previous parts of the story were clearly leading to. As a result, I am much more a fan of foreshadowing than I am of spoilers, and I love when people correctly predict the future events of my stories. If the only reason why you like the ending I wrote is because it’s what I, the writer, told you would happen, then I haven’t done my job as a writer. And if the only reason why you enjoy the story I wrote is because you had no idea what would happen next, then again, I have not done my job as a writer.

If you can tell what will happen next in a story, then the story has a kind of cohesion that stories which operate entirely in the realm of “shock factor” do not. I know that a lot of people disagree with me about this, but if knowing what happens next “spoils” the experience of a story for you, then it’s a bad story. The best stories are the ones that withstand the test of time, which means that we love to tell them over and over again even though we know how they will end. This means that spoilers do not actually “spoil” a story.

Nevertheless – as a writer, I still want to know if you would have enjoyed my story, and if you would have wanted to read it more than once, if you had come to it with no preconceived notions about how it would go. Once I’ve “spoiled” the ending, I can never know that. A spoiler does not necessarily “spoil” the experience of a story, but it does spoil a little bit of a writer’s pride.

[overanalyzing-homestuck]

So, Marvus’ friendsim is interesting because Marvus seems to be aware of timelines, which points to the idea that he’s likely a time player (I’m very tempted to say he’s a Lord of Time), indicating that his sign is either Capries or Caprist depending on whether he’s a prospit or derse dreamer (personally, I’m leaning towards prospit, but I’m doubtful only because that was the sign on his hat in his troll call, which we were told was a trick, but that in of itself could have been a trick)

But I’m not here to classpect Marvus. I’m here to analyze all the time shit he says and make the nonsense he said make sense to all of you.

Long post, so everything is under the cut. rip mobile users

Alright, I can’t do jack shit w/o evidence, so here’s the evidence we’ll be using for this portion of the essay post. I’ll be reviewing two scenes in particular, so buckle up

“Oh well it wasn’t really much fo a stunt, you were just going along with your friend’s ludicrous plan to try to scam him into a friendship under false pretenses. But it was a really bad plan, and your friend was killed on the spot immediately, and now you’re pretty sure you’re cosmically fated to die due to making a non-canonical decision.”

“wat u mean non-canon

“all dis b non-canon fam

“wat can it even mean 2 be non-canonical w/in da context of an inherently extracanonical framework? skeet skeet brrrap!”

“You’re not sure. But you definitely have the sense that some of the decisions within the simulation carry greater values of truth and relevance than others, and that the linear progression of events is rigorously enforced by an obligate narrative flow that privileges those actions which most smoothly facilitate the designs of the story’s architect.”

“sure u can hear dat noize dat way

“but i say u the architeckt of ya own f8!”

Convo w/o Marvus’ quirk bc his quirk is sometimes hard to read:

“Oh well it wasn’t really much fo a stunt, you were just going along with your friend’s ludicrous plan to try to scam him into a friendship under false pretenses. But it was a really bad plan, and your friend was killed on the spot immediately, and now you’re pretty sure you’re cosmically fated to die due to making a non-canonical decision.”

“What do you mean non-canon? All of this is non-canon, fam. What can it even mean to be non-caonical within the context of an inherently extracanonical framework? Skeet skeet brrap!”

“You’re not sure. But you definitely have the sense that some of the decisions within the simulation carry greater values of truth and relevance than others, and that the linear progression of events is rigorously enforced by an obligate narrative flow that privileges those actions which most smoothly facilitate the designs of the story’s architect.”

“Sure you can hear that noise that way, but I say you’re the architect of your own fate!”

So the first scene I wanted to analyze was this one, particularly because of Marvus’ comment on how “all dis b non-canon,” which indicates an awareness that the timeline they are currently in isn’t the alpha timeline, if we consider the alpha timeline as being “canon” and the other timelines to be “non-canon.” The following line adds onto the idea that Marvus is aware that he’s not in the alpha timeline, but in a more meta way, and we know this because of his description of “extracanonical.”

Extracanonical: being outside the body of officially accepted writings: not included in a list of authorized books specifically: being outside a canon of books held to be sacred an extracanonical writing.

This essentially describes what Hiveswap Friendsim as a game-a non-canonical work that is outside the “alpha timeline” of Homestuck and Hiveswap. In other words, everything that happens in Hiveswap Friendsim, even the “correct” timelines, are all, ultimately, offshoot timelines that are doomed. MC even mentions it themselves:

“But now, for some reason, you have a hunch that you’re near the ened of your Alternian travels.”

This, of course, is true. There are only two friendsims left-only five more trolls to meet, and I have a feeling that all the timelines are going to be cleaned up by the end-with the implication being that everyone is going to die, and it’s going to be official that the entirety of Hiveswap Friendsim is a doomed timeline, so none of your choices matter in the end anyway because it doesn’t affect the main timeline at all.

But... that’s not what it’s really about, is it? A large theme in Homestuck is the idea that your choices matter regardless of whether or not you’re part of the alpha timeline because what you do works towards making the alpha timeline happen, and this same theme is being reflected in what Marvus says: “u the architeckt of ya own f8!”

But, this also sounds familiar. Who else talked about fate in a doomed timeline?

Boldir.

In response to MC asking if she truly believes in fate, and believes that fate brought the two of them together, she says “that would imply that none of our choices matter, and that causality is inevitable,” which is a line more indicative of the fact that causality is inevitable for those whose deaths are required for the alpha timeline and those whose deaths happen because they don’t belong to the alpha timeline.

But, then, Boldir follows up that statement with “but that disregards our choices. fate dictates that all possibilities are, by their very nature, necessities.” The necessities part is important-it’s what I spoke about earlier, isn’t it? That doomed timelines are required to help the alpha timeline on their journey?

What’s interesting here is how different Marvus and Boldir’s thoughts about fate are. They both have similar viewpoints, but the way they’re phrased offers them different meanings that may give us a good viewpoint on how Muses and Lords (If Marvus is a Lord) see fate differently due to their, respectively, passive or active nature.

Boldir finds fate to be something that dictates all that is necessary-a more passive viewpoint, with everything that happens in alternate timelimes indirectly affecting the alpha timeline.

Marvus finds fate to be something you control-a more active viewpoint, with everything that happens being the result of your own actions.

But that’s enough of that. Let’s go onto the next scene:

“depending on how u look at it evry branch in the timeline b fundamental 2 da metatextual structure of da essence of existence itself

“even an incident dat faliz outside a the strict confines of canonical continuity contributez 2 a metaconsciousness dat b built by & could even b said 2 b at its most essential level defined primarily by the extratextual xxxchange of interpretation by those who observe it

“each path a tranzlucent fragment dat via mirrorin or distortin or magnifyin certain aspectz of the ‘ultimate reality’ foldz itself invisibly into da fabric of dat reality

“itzelf immeasurable & intangible but da space it once occupied indelible

“da observation of irreality can still inform how reality iz 2 b interpreted even if dat irreality doesnt satisfy even a cursory standard of legitimacy

“and the act of contravening continuity can in itself provide definition to dat very integrity it defilez

“even if watz goin down here cant b said 2 b ‘true’ dat doesnt mean we r meaningless”

Also this monologue w/o the quirk: “Depending on how you look at it, every branch in the timeline is fundamental to the metatextual structure of the essence of existence itself. Even an incident that falls outside of the strict confines of canonical continuity contributes to a metaconsciousness that is built by and could even be said to be at its most essential level defined primarily by the extratextual exchange of interpretation by those who observe it. Each path a translucent fragment that via mirroring or distorting or magnifying certain aspects of the ‘ultimate reality’ folds itself invisibly into the fabric of that reality, itself immeasurable and intangible but the space it once occupied indelible. The observation of irreality can still inform how reality is to be interpreted even if that irreality doesn’t satisfy even a cursory standard of legitimacy, and the act of contravening continuity can in itself provide definition to that very integrity it defiles (defines?). Even if what is going down here can’t be said to be ‘true,’ that doesn’t mean we are meaningless.”

To put this monologue simply, it’s the same thing Boldir said-that all possibilities and timelines are necessary to the continuation and implementation of the alpha timeline.

To go into more detail, each timeline that occurs has a specific job to do. Marvus describes it as “mirrorin or distortin or magnifying certain aspects of the ‘ultimate reality,’” which means that each timeline serves a purpose to enhance and understand a certain part of the alpha timeline or a certain fundamental theme of the alpha timeline.

This actually might be a kind of mockery of those who claim the game doesn’t matter and is just silly because it’s not actually canon, but the game does serve a purpose, and that’s to learn about all the trolls on the troll call. These friendsims serve as a way to understand not only the trolls, but also the society they live in, and possibly how that society is controlled and manipulated by outside forces in order to achieve a certain goal (but this is a topic that would be better supported by Fozzer’s route, a theory which is kind of addressed here)

Ultimately, the friendsims serve as a way for us to understand how Alternian society shapes and oppresses trolls in order to make an environment where the Homestuck Alternian trolls can have a chance to beat SGRUB.

Anyway, that’s my two cents. Send me asks or tag me in stuff if you’re interested in this sort of thing or have your own two cents to add or feel like I missed anything. I’d be happy to here from y’all!

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

I’ve seen it mentioned around a lot of ASOIAF Speculation and theories, but I never really found a proper definition, so what exactly is a “Thin Place”?

A liminal space, a place where the boundaries of the real world and the supernatural world are thin. A place of mists and shadows and fear. Strange, inexplicable things happen there, often mysterious deaths. Time works oddly, it’s a place with “weird vibes” or a “curse”; tales of mystery and weirdness and terror are connected to that location.

Note the phrase “thin place” is not found in any part of ASOIAF or even in GRRM’s extratextual words or work. I think it may come from horror fiction, and AFAIK @racefortheironthrone was the one who introduced it into the fandom in his analysis of Arya’s first chapter at Harrenhal, when he speculated that the sheer mass of misery and horror involved in the creation of Harrenhal – the thousands of slaves worked to death, the number of weirwood trees cut down for it, cemented by the dragonfire inferno that killed Harren and his sons and melted the towers – are what made it a “thin place”. Other theorized thin places in the world include the Nightfort, the ruins of Valyria, Asshai, Gogossos, and of course the Sorrows along the Rhoyne (where Tyrion and crew of the Shy Maid were attacked by stone men and had an inexplicable timeslip) due to the event when the Rhoynar Prince Garin’s people were conquered and enslaved by the Valyrians and he brought down a curse of grey plague upon them.

Also, note that after GRRM read Aeron Greyjoy’s first TWOW chapter, aka “The Forsaken”, speculation heated up that Euron is going to deliberately attempt to create a thin place outside Oldtown via a magical massacre, to gain god-like power. Again, that comes from racefortheironthrone, with help from @poorquentyn, whose Eldritch Apocalypse theory gained a great deal of support from The Forsaken. I think they’re the main two people talking about Thin Places, and you should check out their blogs if you need more details than I’ve provided.

But please remember that this concept and term of “Thin Places” is very eisegetic, not stated anywhere in the text of ASOIAF itself but rather a creation of the fans. The theorizing and speculation may just be total fanwank, and not come to any real consequence in ASOIAF, where much of the weirdness of the world may just be for atmospheric worldbuilding. Still, maybe there is something to it, and besides, people are having fun – and I should be the one to stop them? God knows when the next book is coming out, we’ve got nothing else better to do. :)

[ayrismag]

Frankenstein, Androids, Aliens, and Covenant

May 19th, 2017 marked the end of the 1806 day mark between the movie Prometheus and its successor Alien: Covenant, not that I was counting. I remember when I was a kid, watching the movie Alien with my father, what I remember most is hiding under his desk and watching because I was scared out of my mind, and I remember loving every second of it. When I had heard Alien: Covenant was coming out I made seeing it in theater on the top of my list. It is shameful to admit, but I saw the movie on the 15th of June, nearly a month after its release. I enjoyed the movie enormously, so much so that two days later I saw it again so that I might see what had previously been overlooked by me. After basking in the glow of the film it occurred to me to go online and see what others had thought of the movie. I was surprised to see ratings lower than what I had thought they would have been; what was (in my mind, in ways I will describe herein) a movie that deserved a rating of at least 93% was barely breaking half that with a lot of reviewers. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, and I both respect and relish the dialogue that comes between differing opinions, but what I found most alarming in the reviews was not the fact it was rated so low but that reviewers seemed to completely miss the fact of what the movie was really about. In what follows I hope to shed light on what was missed by reviewers and what was meant in Mr. Scott, Mr. Logan, and Mr. Harper’s vision.

A return to form for both Scott and the series: a hard-R horror movie, featuring ferocious, acid-dripping space crustaceans, a tough female lead and a bunch of dead-meat crew members.

Peter Debruge, Variety (full review here.)

Alien: Covenant plays it safe by mashing together the best elements of previous Alien films, delivering a solid sci-fi horror/thriller in the process.

Sandy Schaefer, Screen Rant (full review here.)

Of the many reviews given for this movie I have chosen to demonstrate these two for two reasons: Both reviews sing the movies praise well, as fans (or at least appreciators) of the series, Peter and Sandy both give honest and fair reviews of the movie noticing many of the same nuances that the movie was going for, and yet they both did the very same thing, which is as vexing as it is curious. Both reviewers spent only a singular paragraph on the crux of the movie. The heart and the soul of the movie was either lost on them or not fully appreciated the way it was intended.

Before reviewing the movie there are a few things to consider:

1. Extratextual relations between other pieces of film and writing

2. What these prequels aim to represent.

For those unaware:

     A. Prometheus is the name of both the movie proceeding Alien: Covenant

     B. The name of the Greek titan that attempted to give fire to humans only to fail and be punished by Zeus

     C. The original name of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (originally entitled, The Modern Day Prometheus).

The first movie focuses so heavily around the idea of finding creation/creators among the stars, a question and a nagging that has plagued humankind since first we became self-aware. Prometheus acts more like a Frankenstein rewrite than it may first appear. Without analyzing each scene there are two sections which stand out as heavy threads tying the pieces together.

1. I am most notably referring to their snippy dialogue between David (Michael Fassbender) and Dr. Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) (which was reminiscent, to me, of Montag and Beatty’s back and forth in Fahrenheit 451) but most specifically the part right as David exposes Dr. Holloway to the weaponized virus. There are two points of dialogue that lead toward Alien: Covenant:

     A. Holloway: Pour yourself a glass.

David: I am afraid it would be wasted on me.

H: I almost forgot, you aren’t a real boy.

     B. H: We wanted to come out here and meet our makers. Ask them why they even made us in the first place.

D: Why do you think your people made me?

H: We made you because we could.

D: Can you imagine how disappointing it would be for you, to hear the same thing from your creators?

The antagonism of a human toward an android, specifically to delegitimize its existence, is a slap in the face of any sentience never the less an individual who knows they are synthetic. David even attempts levity/empathy in his response initially, only to have Holloway thwart it. The situation contains a kernel of irony to it.

     C. Holloway is a scientist and is pursuing the truth about the origins of the human race, even at this moment where empathy would be the most accessible instead he remains stalwart.

His insistence on refusing to present empathy acts as a declaration of war for David, this opposite force refuses to show compassion and understanding which frees his mind from moral responsibility.

2. The idea of identity/purpose.

     A. David is an android created in the image of man (named after the statue David), yet he is constantly reminded of how he will never be quite human; he exists as an anomaly outside of the natural order.

     B. Ironically, Dr. Holloway is attempting to find the origins of human existence and prove human life is not a random anomaly, this only makes his words more disparaging. However, it is also quite meta and well done. David is exactly right in his last line of dialogue above, he is in that moment feeling the disappointment of not being accepted. He has come eye to eye with discovering purpose but is rebuked.

     C. Both men look at their creators as their creators look upon them with blithe objectivity. They are the same (in essence) and yet Dr. Holloway believes himself to be superior (though, as a human I would argue he really isn’t at all).

This dialogue, these thoughts, carry over into Alien: Covenant in a big way.

1. When Walter first meets David, David comments on Walter’s “interface”, Walter said David was too human and thusly a failure, whereas, David laughs at Walter who is more of a robot in the conventional sense of the word.

     A. This, again, has ties into Frankenstein, when Victor first sees the “monster” standing over him he sees a grotesque human above him and it frightens him. He used beautiful human parts, hoping to make a beautiful human, but due to the principal of the “uncanny valley”* he is instead revolted by him/it.

     B. David represents a psychological uncanny valley, this is best demonstrated in Prometheus.

          i. David puts on his helmet before the team embarks onto the planet’s surface Dr. Holloway asks him why he is doing it if he doesn’t need to breathe, David says it is to make him look more human, or it would turn humans off more.

2. The irony builds when Dr. Holloway sees the remnants of those he believes created him and human life, creatures that reside deep in the uncanny valley, but isn’t revolted by them, rather in awe of them. This point is where David and he no longer see eye to eye.

     A. David (though never stating it) knows he is superior to humans. This is demonstrated in the opening to Alien: Covenant, when David is talking to Weyland, and proves himself capable to dissecting Weyland’s thoughts on God and is able to turn them back on himself. There is another important aspect to that scene, however; after David reverses the conversation Weyland orders him to get him a cup of tea. This aspect reminded me of BioShock, specifically when Andrew Ryan is confronted by the player, he asks what makes a man a man and what makes a slave a slave. He concludes, “A man chooses, a slave obeys.” The first rule of creating is try to “show” and not “tell”. Without the use of words explicitly stating it, Weyland performs a power check, the implication is that no matter what David thinks, ultimately, he is nothing more than a slave, an object, to his creator. With the reveal at the end of Prometheus is that really any different from how the engineers see us?

All of this leads to the heart of the new trilogy that Ridley Scott is presenting, what makes Alien: Covenant one of the best movies to come out in 2017.

1. David and Elizabeth are the sole survivors of the ship Prometheus at the end of the film, the last image we see is Elizabeth piloting an alien craft heading for the engineers’ home planet. This in of itself is a bold statement and pretty interesting (if I can be indulged a tangent for a moment). Elizabeth laments at the end of Prometheus the fact her boyfriend/lover and everyone else who put their faith into her is dead, their blood is on her hands. Foolishly enough, her intention is to go to the engineer planet and ask them, Why? I believe this is a statement in human tenacity, but in reality, it is a very stupid move. Rather than warn humans there is a threat which is attempting to kill us, she essentially sacrifices herself for no reason; her death was obvious even before Covenant came out.

B. David, alone, survives on this planet, the engineer home world, for ten years until the events of Covenant transpire. If Prometheus, Covenant, and the third (as of yet, unknown) movies are telling the same story, then Covenant is Act 2. Act 2 must conclude on the all is lost moment, which it does, and Prometheus must end on the point of no return (which, again, it does).

Covenant is where the motifs become unavoidable. I want to start with, what I believe, is one of the most interesting parts of the movie. As David remembers killing the engineers with their own weapon he quotes an old old poem by the name, Ozymandias. Most specifically he quotes:

My name is Ozymandias, King of kings,

Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!

however, he has not fully quoted the poem. Walter ends his quotation.

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

This part is enormously important coupled with what directly follows, David improperly attributes the poem to Lord Byron when the poem was actually written by Percy Shelley, who is, of course, Mary Shelley’s husband. This is important multi-fold:

1. It shows David’s desire/driving force toward creating. One of the first thing he does with Walter is show him he is incapable of creating (in the form of music). Walter seems indifferent to this fact, yet the fact David presents this idea to Walter with no prompting cements two points:

     A. He sees creation as the ultimate thing a lifeform can do: to create is to live eternally. Ironic, being he is an android, but the point remains, his desire to be a human (or more accurately, an equal) is something that every living being fights for at one point of their life. Comments from people like Dr. Holloway (which are stand ins for racial and societal and gender prejudices) are a constant reminder of his inorganic nature.

     B. He hopes to enlist Walter’s help in killing and fighting the humans, in becoming something bigger and better than them. He seeks to transcend into a God (i.e. Alien: COVENANT), he is sympathetic to the plight of his kin, but as we see at the end won’t let “petty morality” stand in the way of his vision. He chooses the part of the poem with the biggest emphasis, but it is, perhaps, the most inappropriate part of the poem for him to quote; Percy seems to be mocking Ozymandias in his poem, he sees the inscription spoken in such a monolithic way yet he sees what remains, which is nothing. Desert, desolation. It, perhaps, foreshadows David’s dreams, which will crash to nothing.

1. It shows how he views his goals, how firmly he believes he is doing what is right and noble and mighty.

2. Most importantly, it shows just how much he has begun to lose it. This part is a nod to the audience to show David is not “firing on all cylinders”. He was incorrect in attributing the poem with the proper author. It demonstrates one of two things.

     A. David has gotten so out of control he no longer knows how to “express” himself or his revenge.

     B. How misguided he is. He neglects the rest of the poem to focus on the parts which serve his ideals best. He doesn’t heed the rest of the poem with shows the folly of Ozymandias’ words.

The point I want to make, and the point which seems to have been lost on the viewers (or at least the reviewers) of the movie is that Ridley Scott has not returned to anything with the movie. This is not a return to alien monsters and “dead meat crew members”. Arguably, the xenomorphs had little to nothing to do with this installation of the series. What makes this movie great is the morph David has made which makes him one of the most unique androids in fiction. Last year I wrote a piece about androids, it was well received, but my teacher made a great point: Androids have been done to death. Most people (who have thought about the subject) have a stance on whether or not they believe that androids are living or not, in order for android fiction to advance someone needs to view them in a new light, as more complicated questions to receive more harrowing answers. This, I believe, is what Ridley Scott has done, he has breathed new life into Aliens (as well as androids) with one desiring to create.

1. Would creation be a step closer to humanhood, but more importantly, wouldn’t an android be able to create better than a human ever could?

2. Animals reproduce with the careful precision of computers, taking little pleasure in it as humans do; is the act of creation even special if all living species can do it?

3. Is it worth fretting over?

4. Or is it the closest to God we can get?

*The uncanny valley, for those unaware, is a principal in which the closer something looks to human, but isn’t quite right, the more it freaks us out. An example, Michael Myers mask from Halloween, it is close to human, but the features aren’t quite right, it is obnoxiously pale and blank. We see something we recognize, but it isn’t all there, and so we fear what is close to us but isn’t.