#and through this poorly written analysis i think i’ve figured it out

[arliedraws]

Rewatching the PoA movie as I do chores, and I gotta pause while I’m thinking about this.

People who know me even slightly understand that this is my least favorite HP movie. In my opinion, it totally misses the point of the book and tries to simply hit plot points without understand what ties them all together.

If this is YOUR movie and you LOVE IT, this post is NOT for you! Save yourself some grief and don’t click the ‘read more’ below.

Here’s what the film does right:

- Wise/playful Sirius. We get a wink and nice touchy moment with Harry, and I see a glimpse of the Sirius I love here. This is good! The quiet moments with Gary Oldman is Sirius are VERY good. As time goes on, I am much more confident that Oldman would’ve made a very good Sirius given the opportunity. That intimate scene with Harry and Sirius at the end is a good cinematic interpretation of the internal longing Harry expresses to the reader.

Okay, that’s it. That’s all I like.

Nitpicky bits:

- The editing is just. Weird. We see ONE dinner scene with Marge and it seems like Harry just blows up one night (or blows her up lol) as if he’s just got a short fuse. Harry is a quiet person. He watches, he listens, he puts up with shit until he breaks. This scene needed to be longer, it needed to have more tension. We needed to understand the deal between Uncle Vernon and Harry + signing the permission form for Hogsmeade. One way this could have been shot with Harry at the table with everyone and slooooooow down the conversation. Build the tension. Close-ups, shots of Harry trying to pretend he doesn’t hear her. The book scene is very tense because Harry is quiet as they are talking about him as if he’s not there. THEN, he quietly speaks, drawing their attention.

- Don’t get me started on the Firebolt scene.

- Sirius saying when Remus is transforming “OH NO HE DIDN’T TAKE HIS POTION” as if Remus regularly took Wolfsbane back in the day? And then Sirius pleading with Remus not to transform??? Like Sirius, I think you know werewolves don’t work like that.

- I hate the werewolf design. It doesn’t HAVE to look like the wolf in canon (which is nearly indistinguishable from a regular wolf), but damn, it just didn’t do it for me.

- When Harry sees Peter on the Map??? Dude that was so dumb.

- The scene with the animal noises? Why? I don’t care about the other boys in Gryffindor. Show me why the trio are close other than out of loyalty (something that the books honestly miss out on)

- Remus being so upfront with Harry that he knew his parents and then focussing on LILY??? And also, part of what we learn over time in the book is that Remus knew James but refuses to indulge Harry. He keeps all of that secret—the mystery of Remus is completely wasted in this movie. I would have personally played this up in the film. Build him up as the “cool” professor who holds back emotionally. The payoff when he shows up at the end at the Shrieking Shack would be like, “Oh shit! I knew there was something off about him!” when it seems like he’s helping Sirius. Then, he would have to earn back the audience’s trust just like he does with the trio.

- The Aesthetic: this movie relies on aesthetic so much more than “what makes sense narratively.” There is so much winking at the audience by the filmmakers it drives me bonkers. Anytime something weird happens, they’re like, “Haha this weird thing is NORMAL in the wizarding world! Look at how weird it is! But for them! It’s normal!” Like jfc we get it. I know the first two movies are like, “look at how beautiful magic and cool is” but GOD. This is the film where we need magic to be “normalized.” We get it. We’re three films in. This is a magical world. These cheesy, winking-at-the-camera moments aren’t even like…cute or fun. They’re boring and uncreative. “Oh, how about a maid opens a door and a monster screams at her and she’s bland about it.” Like. Is it supposed to be funny? Because…it’s boring.

When you’re focused on Vibes rather than Character, everyone turns into a cheap, bland caricature. The filmmakers do NOT understand who the characters are. Even in Sorcerer’s Stone, Ron is the comic relief but we understand that he is fiercely loyal. In PoA, he is pure comic relief. They don’t even understand Harry. Both his and Ron’s lines are given to Hermione in the Shack scene which is like…why????

But this is the problem. At the heart of every scene, it was as if the filmmakers didn’t understand why the scene was there. In the film, Harry is an angsty teenager and things happen TO him. Oh sure, they want to show that Harry feels something but…we don’t really, as an audience, FEEL it. They TRY to force that emotional tension by rushing events along and then showing Harry crying sometimes and yelling his feelings. yawn, honestly.

- There is SO MUCH SHOUTING in this film. Harry screams about killing Sirius when he hears the Minister/McGonagall/Rosmerta talking about the betrayal. This was so…poorly done. This boy needs to close himself off from his friends and stew in his hatred, not scream about it. We need to be angry with him, not feel sad for him. We need to want to kill Sirius too.

HOW THEY SHOULD’VE DONE THE BETRAYAL EXPLANATION SCENE:

Look, it would’ve been a boring movie scene if they’d done it like the book. This is not an adaptation-friendly book, and I’ll be the first to admit it. BUT. What they could have done was this: use flashbacks and montages. They do it in Sorcerer’s Stone when Hagrid explains how the Potters died and it’s effective—you see Lily panicking, dying, and then you see cute little Harry with a wand in his face. That’s emotional!

This scene in The Three Broomsticks should have been a flashback with voiceover from Fudge/McGonagall/Rosmerta/Hagrid. It should have shown us Sirius and James being best friends at Hogwarts. With them, we could see Peter and Remus (who we wouldn’t know was Lupin). Then, we should have seen Hagrid arguing with Sirius about who gets Harry (the little devil in me wants to hear Sirius’s voice break, but also, we should feel like Sirius is going to harm the baby Harry). Thennnnnnn we should have seen what the Muggle witnesses saw — Peter crying that Sirius betrayed Lily and James, a misleading explosion, and then Sirius laughing. Thennnnn a close-up of Peter’s finger. Back to present.

Why is this effective and why would it build tension? As the audience, we need to be presented with proof that Sirius is a bad guy. We need to understand why this guy’s gotta be caught!

Also, show us how scary Sirius is by reeeaaaallly playing it up with a scene with the Minister in Azkaban—quiet, sinister Sirius please. Again, give us the tension! (Sirius acting all crazy in the wanted posters instead of the book’s slow blinking, empty-eyed prisoner totally misses the mark for me.) Then, show us him sleeping and talking in his sleep.

This would have been effective becaaaaaaause you could have brought back this flashback in the Shrieking Shack scene.

Which brings me to: The Shrieking Shack scene.

The most disappointing part of the film, in my opinion.

This is supposed to be it—the built-up tension (which never actually happens) finally explodes here. But the movie holds no tension so this scene is reduced to a lot of yelling in the movie. And of course Hermione taking everyone’s lines for some reason.

As as audience, we can’t just be scared. We should be angry. Sirius needs to be quiet, softer. He’s lured Harry away from safety by kidnapping his friend. He needs to be grinning, taunting Harry (I mean, he’s not, but it sounds like it). We need to feel like Sirius is just fucking AWFUL. Sirius MUST compare Harry and Ron to James and himself. Stretch this out like a rubber band until it snaps—until Harry snaps. GOD THIS COULD HAVE BEEN SUCH A JUICY SCENE.

The explanation should have been all voiceover—Remus explaining what happened over shots of the Marauders’ time at Hogwarts. Otherwise, it’s weird that we don’t have an explanation of the Marauders…at all??

When Sirius explains what really happened November 1st, we would see shots that the original flashback didn’t show (Peter looking miffed/jealous/“suspicious” behind everyone’s backs, Peter becoming Secret Keeper, a shady glimpse Peter kneeling before a faceless Voldemort or some shit, and then finally—the missing shots from the explosion in the flashback from earlier in the film.) Then, let’s see Sirius wasting away in Azkaban, growing older and older. Give us the EMOTIONAL WEIGHT. Then, Sirius’s voice breaks and we cut back to the present. We see the trio fighting with their own interpretations with close-ups.

(I also wanna see Sirius seeing the photograph of Pettigrew when he’s explaining how he knew Peter was alive.)

Also, also. Peter needs to be the Gollum of this film. Gives us watery eyes, precious. There has to be a reason he isn’t dead, and it’s because he’s so pathetic, no one can kill him. As an audience, we need to be like, “GOD, he is SO PATHETIC and defenseless!” The idea of killing Peter should be like killing a really ugly puppy. Like…ughhhh, I just can’t do it! Show us why Harry saves him. We need to see gross begging, manipulative sobbing, and completely emotionless Sirius and Remus, watching and getting ready to kill him.

Why does the film miss the mark? Because it’s about friendship, and the filmmakers had no idea.

The subplot of the book is seemingly Hermione and Ron being on the outs because of Crookshanks and Scabbers, but like Peter does with the Marauders during the war, Scabbers drives a wedge between the trio. He seems so innocent and we think CROOKSHANKS is the problem, but it’s the quiet spy. (Sure, Hermione was a dick about her cat and if Scabbers hadn’t been Peter, it would’ve been different—I get that. Not excusing Hermione. But stick with me). Up until now, the trio’s friendship hasn’t been tested by personal problems, and now, we see how Harry and Ron respond to a challenging situation with a friend.

Which. I don’t think that’s the subplot. I think this is the crux of this book.

Harry and Ron fail very hard at friendship in this story. They fail Hermione who, while extremely flawed and misguided, has good intentions. Harry treats her with indifference and then ignores her; Ron treats her with outright antagonism. They fail Hagrid miserably when it comes to Buckbeak, and we find out that Hermione has been doing her best to help Hagrid despite being rejected by Harry and Ron. And this is important to the overall situation with Sirius Black because before we find out the truth, we think Sirius was a bad friend.

Okay, let me talk about the Firebolt now because the Firebolt was never really about Sirius.

The Firebolt plot was so crucial to the story that it’s outrageous they cut this out of the movie. (But the filmmakers had no idea PoA was about friendship so I guess whatever.) When Harry loses his Nimbus to the Whomping Willow, he expresses that it “felt like he had lost a friend” so when he gets a new broom that he really wants, he’s willing to sacrifice his true, human friend for it. He rejects Hermione because she told on him to McGonagall to keep him safe—not her best move but honestly, if Sirius had really wanted to kill Harry, it would have been very easy for him.

When you are making an adaptation of a book, you must ask essential questions. What is the POINT of this film? What is the lesson we are showing? Every part of that film should be building up to demonstrate that point. Trying to hit every plot point without knowing why is so lazy. “I want to make a Harry Potter film—but the tone has changed. It’s DARK now. You gotta know—he’s an ANGSTY TEEN!” Yeah, that does nothing for me, dude.

Harry’s willingness to sacrifice himself for his friends in the Shack is supposed to show that he is capable of growth and that friendship/love should come before all else. You need to be able to forgive (Snape subplot/Hermione subplot), and you should be willing to set aside petty quarrels/greed for your friends (Firebolt subplot/Peter subplot). Sure, the plot is that “a murderer breaks out of prison and wants to kill Harry Potter” but it’s not what the film is ABOUT.

If Sorcerer’s Stone is about making friends and building a friendship, Prisoner of Azkaban asks the question, “What happens when the honeymoon is over? What happens when my friends reveal glaring flaws? What happens when those flaws affect ME?”

Anyway, I really tried to give this movie another chance (I’ve seen it about 6-7 times since it came out), and it STILL does not do it for me. I’ve come around to Gary Oldman as Sirius (but not when he’s yelling or hysterical—does he EVER yell in the books?), but that’s it.

[galahadenough]

I finally put together a review of Loki (TV Series). I've always been a huge Marvel fan, a huge MCU fan, but this show was horrific to me. Especially since I saw the show through to the end, I wanted to write a review for the main reviewing websites. I want this side to be heard. All it took was an immense amount of rage to get me to write reviews!

I’m planning on posting it on imdb, Rotten Tomatoes, and google reviews. So far I’ve gotten errors and issues with RT and google, and I’m hoping it doesn’t get lost on imdb. Any other places to leave reviews?

It took me a while to write this. I had to calm down a lot to make it coherent. Then I had to figure out how to condense it. I felt like a review should be my main points, but it took a lot of editing to get it down this much. (Then I had to make an edited version because google has much smaller word limits).

Thanks a lot @iamnmbr3. Your blog was the first one I found on the topic and it was a huge help. The show felt off from the first episode, but I couldn’t figure out why. Your analysis on the show really helped me to verbalize what I was feeling.

Review (except shorter on google):

As a huge MCU fan, I found the show to be intolerable. The plot was slow with way too much filler for the length of the show, and much of the filler felt purposeless. They could have deleted entire scenes or plot points without changing much if any of the story. The creators deliberately made the aesthetic average and mundane, which didn’t pair well with the underwhelming plot. The show relied heavily on slapstick humor, almost all of which was directed at the title character in a manner that encouraged laughter at his pain and stupidity. It would have been better suited for a cartoon, but it would be a cruel cartoon.

The TVA was presented as the better of two evils despite it being a totalitarian organization utilizing genocide and torture, both physical and mental. It felt very reminiscent of the book 1984 with the Thought Police, but the TVA was never truly represented as evil. Not one character opposed them as a hero or from a moral standpoint. All opposition came from a personal or self-serving motive. I’m not wanting every character to be brilliantly moralistic. That would be boring. But you don’t set up an organization like the TVA and say that they are providing a good and needed service, which was the idea the series was based on and ended on.

Mobius has a personality that is very easy to like, but he is very much complicit with the TVA. He happily 'does his job' of genocide and torture. He is Loki's captor, but we are informed he is his friend. When he isn't actively using physical or mental manipulation and torture, he is deriding and mocking him. There was nothing to indicate that they were friends outside of being told that is true. Mobius was never used as a villain by the show despite him fitting the mold well, but he also never has a redemption arc that would have made him a good hero. His reason for working against the TVA is because they lied to him, not because there is any moral reason. His change in alliances happened without much buildup, no gradual discovery throughout the series.

Sylvie felt like a caricature of a character, with very little to her personality other than grit. I was very bored with her. She was a tough, strong, and perfect character that lacked any other depth or nuance. She was called “terrifying” for being female, which felt horrifyingly sexist. She was yet another source of derision and mocking towards Loki.

Loki, the character, was very poorly written. He has always had a great deal of emotional depth that makes him interesting. He was acted with a range from extreme subtlety to riveting explosions of emotion in previous movies. His past is filled with good and bad choices, made with good and bad intentions. He was the villain who tried to be a hero and the hero who tried to be a villain. They took all that away and made him a side character in his own show who had little to no effect on the plot.

For abilities, he lacked his usual physical fighting prowess. He did very little magic, seeming awed when others used magic. His personality and mannerisms changed drastically. His gestures and expressions in this show were over the top and felt clownish, especially for a character that is known for his subtlety. He felt hyperactive and painfully eager to please everyone. His character is known for his manipulations, but his method of 'manipulation' here is to inform others that he is 'ten steps ahead' of them and is going to trick them. I don’t think that’s a good method of manipulation? Plus, the only effect he had on the plot was to slow down the other characters through his bumbling failures.

In addition, Loki was almost always the target of cruelty. This entire show felt like it was made to mock this character. They used every opportunity to tell us, and Loki, how terrible Loki is. How he is irredeemable and incapable of change. That he is a narcissist, which is inaccurate, and that any Loki is inherently untrustworthy. From birth, I suppose. Physical attacks, such as the slow-motion punch and the time loop where he was repeatedly kicked in the crotch, made me cringe. This show encouraged the enjoyment of cruelty.

As a last point, the show used the idea of representation to draw in viewers while avoiding having actual representation. The show was lauded as being good for bisexual and genderfluid representation. From what I’ve heard, the genderfluid representation was a mark on Loki’s paperwork, which you would need to pause at just the right moment to see. Plus, that makes the “terror” at a female Loki make even less sense. The bisexual representation was shown through a single word, and the character was only shown to be so when they made an entire show to mock and belittle him. That is not good representation.

I was very excited for this show, as well as for the next phase of the MCU. This has left me very disappointed and disheartened. I may not be entirely finished with the MCU, but this is the first part of the series that has killed my excitement for future releases. I get a sinking feeling when I hear about future projects now. I have enjoyed debating creative choices before, but this is not simply creative choices. It is too much cruelty, combined with poor writing and a lack of continuity.

[carnegiemuseumnaturalhistory]

How I Became an Archaeologist

If you had told me when I was 15 that I would spend my life as an archaeologist, I probably would have been pretty surprised. I didn’t grow up knowing a great deal about archaeology or even being fascinated by arrowheads. At that time, I might well have asked what an archaeologist really is and what one actually does. I did get to visit the Parthenon and other ruins while on a trip with my aunt when I was sixteen. Even then, I don’t remember having more than a casual interest in what could be learned from these places. I was more interested in the living people and the new food dishes I encountered on that trip, which was my first trip outside the United States.

From talking to other archaeologists, I’ve learned that there are a lot of paths to deciding archaeology is going to be your life’s work. In my case, what led me to archaeology was anthropology, and specifically an elective course I took in the Fall of my senior year in high school that was taught by a Ph.D. student at the University of Massachusetts. Until then I had not been a serious student, although I did well enough in school. Perhaps I was slightly bored by most of my courses, but anthropology was anything but boring! It looked at people elsewhere in the world and over great periods of time. Many of these people lived different lives than my friends and I did, and they sometimes thought very differently about what was important in life than people here in the United States. I was fascinated, and, honestly, I particularly liked the fact that the conventions of American society, which to my teenage self were sometimes a little confining, weren’t after all the only sensible way to approach life. That year, as I chose a college to attend, I specifically looked for anthropology programs. I chose Beloit College in Wisconsin, which to this day has an excellent anthropology program.

Initially, I thought that I was most interested in cultural anthropology, but like most anthropology departments in the United States, Beloit required its anthropology majors to take courses in biological anthropology, linguistic anthropology, and archaeology as well as cultural anthropology. These are what are known as the four fields of American anthropology and together, they give us a more complete picture of humans in both the past and the present. Most people focus their careers in one subfield or another, though we recognize the importance of each one for understanding humans, and in most cases in North America our degrees are in anthropology not one of the subfields. In college, I found all these courses more fascinating than anything I had studied before, and I actually became a good student as I explored anthropology. I was learning so much neat stuff! I also did volunteer work in the Logan Museum at Beloit, which was founded at the end of the nineteenth century and holds some pretty amazing ethnographic and archaeological collections. It was there I first became interested in artifacts and learned to clean and care for them. After a college internship in cultural anthropology convinced me that cultural anthropology was not the most interesting part of anthropology after all, I began to focus on archaeology. I was most intrigued by my courses in Mesoamerican archaeology and North American archaeology, which before college had been completely unknown to me.

When I graduated from college, I still wasn’t sure what I would do with my life. I worked for about two years both in social work and as a tax auditor for the IRS, but decided in 1974 to try graduate school in archaeology because I still found what archaeology had taught me about past people compelling. I lived in Chicago, so I enrolled in the Ph.D. program in North American archaeology at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

My graduate self in the late 1970s. Photo credit: Phillip Neusius

The biggest shock of graduate school was my professors’ almost immediate insistence that I pick what research I wanted to do. They pushed me to develop an expertise or skill within North American archaeology through my research. It sounds obvious to me now, but I think many beginning graduate students are like I was, lovers of the discipline’s knowledge, but a bit daunted by becoming an independent researcher. Developing an area of focus and specialty skills is part of becoming a professional archaeologist. One reason for this is because contemporary archaeological undertakings rely on teams of researchers, each contributing special skills and knowledge to accomplish the many aspects of excavation, analysis, and interpretation. If you envision archaeology as the solitary pursuit of an elusive artifact or site, you don’t have the picture quite right. Think instead of archaeological fieldwork involving groups of scientists working together to discover and carefully record many different bits of evidence about what the world used to be like and what people did in it. Also think about the many hours these scientists and others will spend not only in the field, but in the laboratory after an excavation is completed cleaning finds, describing artifacts, and analyzing data in order to make meaningful interpretations.

For someone like myself, who loved all aspects of anthropology, not to mention archaeology, and who had only gradually settled on North America as my geographic focus, picking a focus on entering graduate school was a hard task. There was so much that would be interesting to study! However, I did remember especially enjoying a research paper I had done in college on the relatively new interdisciplinary field of zooarchaeology, so under pressure, I told my professors I wanted to pursue this subfield in graduate school. Amazingly, this turned out to be a good choice of specialization for me. I found that I really love to work with collections of animal bone. For me, opening a bag of bone refuse from a site still is exciting. Bone identification work is a little like doing a jigsaw puzzle without all the pieces. It is challenging, and it takes concentration and careful observation to piece together what you can. There is so much to figure out about any single piece of bone! What animal is it? How healthy was the animal? What part of the animal’s body is it? Has it been burned or cut? How was the bone buried and changed after the humans were done with it? Then you have to record this information so it can be combined with other observations on the assemblage of bone you are looking at. After identification, making sense of what a collection of the bones means and correlating these kinds of data with other information from a site and region requires careful analysis, but also insight and creativity. To me it is endlessly fascinating.

Besides finding that I liked the work, choosing zooarchaeology was also serendipitous since my professors were looking for a student to work with them on this aspect of a big project they were undertaking in west-central Illinois centered on the Koster site, which was first inhabited more than 9000 years ago and then reinhabited by people right up into modern times. Most importantly the poorly known Archaic Period levels were numerous, well-preserved, and distinct from each other so we could add a lot of new information through our work. For my dissertation I was able to look at the animal remains from levels of this site dated between approximately 8500 and 6000 years ago, which represent how people used animals at that time.

Koster site strata. All those dark layers are from Archaic period camps at the site. Photo credit: Del Bastian, Center for American Archaeology.

Graduate school was intense, but I continued to be fascinated by archaeology’s ability to tell the story of people lost to standard Western history. In those days I was excited to be part of this science that could do so much more than describe and take care of cool artifacts. It was a heady thing to learn that I could contribute to what was known about people who lived thousands of years ago. In later years, I’ve had to think more critically than I did then about what a privilege it is for an archaeologist to learn about the history and lives of other ethnicities. Today’s archaeologists recognize their responsibility to present information about past people for both scholarly and public use in ways that are sensitive to what is considered sacred and private by the descendants of those people. I think this is an important change in perspective, but in the 1970s most archaeologists just wanted to show that people’s stories from the past could be told using the techniques of archaeology. I certainly was happy, if a little naively so, to have found a way to contribute to telling the human story.

If I consider entering graduate school as the start of my professional career as an archaeologist, I have been pursuing this career for more than 45 years! Over the years I have done zooarchaeological and archaeological work in the American Midwest, Southwest, Southeast, and Northeast working on telling the story of people who lived as long as 9000 years ago and as recently as the Sixteenth century. I’ve worked at several universities, in a small museum, and on small and large archaeological projects in the field of Cultural Resource Management (CRM) doing archaeological survey, site excavation, and zooarchaeological identification and analysis. I’ve written scholarly papers and articles as well as a textbook on North American archaeology. However, beginning in the late 1980s, I spent more than 31 years doing research and teaching anthropology and archaeology here in Pennsylvania at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. In this job I taught both undergraduates and graduate students, but, as is typical of university professors, I also spent time doing fieldwork and analysis as part of my research while at IUP. Fortunately, because archaeology is a team undertaking, I’ve been able to involve many students in my research. Working with students in research as they discover what fascinates them has been a highlight of being an archaeologist for me. I’ve now retired from teaching but not archaeology. I’m still working with both physical and digital archaeological collections both through CMNH and elsewhere and writing about archaeology. Who knows what this career still will bring me!

Drawing a profile at the Johnston site with one of my students in 2008. Photo credit: Erica Ausel, IUP Archaeology.

Tracking down a bone identification with one of my students in the Zooarchaeology Lab at IUP. Photo credit: Beverly Chiarulli.

If you are reading this blog because you are thinking about archaeology as either a career or a hobby, I hope you realize that mine is just one story among the many that could be told. Because there are so many aspects of archaeology, people come into it from all sorts of backgrounds and because of all sorts of interests. I think that it is important to remember though that it really is about understanding people and telling their stories through the artifacts and other evidence we find. This is what interested me in archaeology in the first place. Discovering the details of the human story is a giant undertaking. There is no shortage of research problems or work to do, but solving the puzzles presented by sites and collections is both challenging and fun. I’m certainly glad I decided to become an archaeologist and zooarchaeologist so many years ago!

Sarah W. Neusius is a Research Associate in the Section of Anthropology at Carnegie Museum of Natural History and Professor Emeritus, Department of Anthropology, Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

Definitions of Bolded Terms

anthropology -the study of humans including the physical, cultural and social aspects in the past and present.

cultural anthropology - the study of the cultural aspects of humans especially recent and contemporary social, technological, and ideological behavior observed among living people.

biological anthropology – the study of the biological or physical aspects of humans, including human biological evolution and past and present biological diversity.

linguistic anthropology - the study of the structure , history, and diversity of human languages as well as of the relationship between language and other aspects of culture.

archaeology - the study of past human behavior and culture through the analysis of material remains.

ethnographic – relating to the scientific description of people and cultures especially customs and beliefs.

Mesoamerican archaeology - the archaeology of the area from central Mexico southward through Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica.

North American archaeology - the archaeology of the area from central Mexico northward throughout the United States and Canada.

zooarchaeology – a subarea of archaeology involves the identification of animal remains from archaeological sites and investigates the ecology and cultural uses of the animals represented.

assemblage - a collection of artifacts from the same archaeological context.

Archaic Period - a time period from approximately 10,000 BP to 3000 BP that is recognized in most of North America.

Cultural Resource Management (CRM) – an applied form of archaeology undertaken in response to laws that require archaeological investigations.

archaeological survey – the systematic process archaeologists use to locate, identify, and record archaeological site distribution on the landscape.

[hadesisqueer]

How do you feel about Yang and how she’s summarized in Vol. 8 as suspicious and emotional?

Late, but better late than ever. I've been waiting for this one. It's probably the longest because as I said, I make either two lines or just an entire character analysis lol. And I'm going to do it properly this time.

Okay, I straight (gay) up don't know where to start. I love Yang. I truly love Yang. She's not perfect, she has many flaws, but that's what I like the most about her. I can't help but laugh when some people say she's a Mary Sue.

Childhood, first volumes.

Yang starts the series as the funny blonde hot girl that goes around punching people. And I liked that, but I also like how she wasn't just that, as I said with Nora being the comic relief. Like, there's so much more in Yang than that, just like Weiss turned up to be much more than just the bratty tsundere.

Yang's mother abandoned her. Her other mother disappeared. Her sister was a toddler that didn't really get what was going on except her mother being gone, and her father was so depressed that for a good while, he wasn't even able to raise her daughters. Can you imagine being in that situation? I imagine she was, at most, six when that happened. She was forced to become Ruby's mother figure at six. She was forced to become the fucking adult in the house at six.

Damn, you can even see the difference between how Qrow talks to Ruby and how he talks to Yang, at least at the begining. He talks to Ruby as her uncle, as her mentor. He may tease Yang a little because she's still his niece, but when he talks to her, he always talks like she's an equal. Like, Tai still considered Yang a kid, but Qrow treats her like an adult, and knows and expects her to be the mature one. Because he saw her all those years, being forced grow up so fast. He trusts her to protect and take care of Ruby, and she trust him to protect her as well.

And damn, all of this really explains her behaviour when the series began. As Ruby got older and started to be able to take care of herself, and Tai eventually started to be functional again, Yang had more freedom. Her personality and eagerness for adventure and parties and all of that - is just her trying to make up for her sacrificed childhood. But even then she still was, out of all the girls, the most mature and nurturing of team RWBY. She is the party girl, yes. The hot headed one that will break legs. But she's still the adult of the group.

And then volume 3 happens. She gets framed in front of the entire world, two of her friends die, Beacon falls, she loses her arm in the most traumatic way possible; Weiss, her friend, is basically taken away from her and Blake -her partner, the girl she probably already had feelings for at that point- left, triggering her abandonment issues. And of course, PTSD, because she isn't fucked up enough already. She's so fucking destroyed that she can't even talk about Weiss, about Blake, about what happened. She doesn't even want talk to Ruby, because she can't stand the thought of her little sister seeing her at that state. She is not used to be the one people have to take care of, and it becomes more and more obvious in the next volumes.

Disability, recovery, abandonment issues

I like how volume 4 treats her recovery. I mean, I wish her storyline was longer, but I also like the DC comics. Now, the thing is, she isn't really recovered. In vol 4, she learns to live with her disability, she learns how to use her new arm, she learns how to fight better than she ever did before. It's about physical recovery. But is she okay? No. She hates being taken care of. She forced herself to be okay, or at least pretend she was, so Tai would let her go with Ruby. And in vol 5, she's anything but alright. She is pretending to be for Ruby's sake, because she is her mother figure and Ruby can't see her like that. She has to face her abandonment issues, she still has PTSD, and she is just not okay. Weiss notices right away, and tells her that it's okay if she is not okay. She noticed how hurt she was about Blake leaving. She just could see through the façade because if Weiss knows about anything, is about loneliness and pretending.

Her conversation with Raven at the end of the volume is just one of the best scenes, because you can just see how much Yang has grown. That scene deserves a post of its own because it's just amazing. But she finally faces one of her fears -her own abandonment issues, though they probably will always be there- and sees right through Raven. Because just like her, Raven just puts a façade to hide her own fears and insecurities, and the moment her own daughter isn't just taking any of that shit, she just starts crying. Because Yang is right. And deep down, she doesn't want to let Yang take the lamp, but she isn't just strong enough. Deep down, she wants to be in Yang's life, wants to protect her, and I think Yang knew that. But it was just too late.

More abandonment issues and relationship with Blake.

Now, to Yang, Blake coming back was huge. Not only in the terms of shipping, but as a whole. In her mind, Blake left her, just like Raven, just like Summer (though Summer didn't do it in purpose), and technically, just like Ruby, though she knew why Ruby did it and understood. But she's probably wondering “what is wrong with me that everyone always leaves me”. And she always has to be the one looking for the person who left her.

Not with Blake. After that talk with Weiss (bless the wingwoman), Yang was able to understand Blake's perspective better. But she didn't think Blake would actually ever come back, because no one ever does. But she did. Not only did she come back; literally, all Blake cared about once she entered the room and saw Yang was her (for once, someone is prioritizing her). And later, she was the one to walk and talk to the team, and tell them she didn't plan to leave again if they accepted her back. She didn't have to look for Blake because she was already looking for Yang. She was the one who made the effort, not the other way around. And to Yang, even though they still had issues to work through, even though she was still afraid at that moment that Blake would leave and break her heart again (All That Matters), that was enough to forgive her. Or at least give her another chance.

Now in volume 6 they clearly have issues. Like, Blake is very nurturing to the entire team because she feels like she has to make up. But mostly, she is trying to make up to Yang. She still feels guilty because of Adam, and she knew that Yang had already abandonment issues before she left and she probably made them worse. She was just trying so hard to be there for Yang so she could understand that she would never leave her again that she made things awkward. Yang is used to be the one who takes care of people, not the other way around. She thought that Blake “protecting her” was her seeing her a weak when actually, it was just Blake just genuinely caring about her but with the wrong words. Blake understood after that, and she changed the phrasing in the fight against Adam. Protecting each other. Equals. It really applies to the Bees relationship as a whole. “You're taking care of me, yeah, but I'm going to take care of you as well, no matter what”. For once, Yang is allowing someone to take care of her (well, except Tai, but again, she wasn't completely sincere with him, so technically she wasn't really allowing him to fully help her). And that's what I love the most about their dynamic, and why I ship it.

PTSD

Now (I'm sorry I'm taking so long), I've seen many, many people saying that Yang's PTSD is poorly written, or that the writers messed it up in the fight against Adam. Now, I have to ask those people: what the fuck do you think PTSD is?

If a Great WriterTM reads this and tries to tell me I'm wrong, or that I don't know what I'm talking about and I don't know anything about good writing and blah blah blah: I have PTSD myself. Diagnosed. So yes, I acknowledge there are many things I'm ignorant about, but I'm quite familiar about this topic. Yang's PTSD is, at least by my point of view, very well-written. It isn't perfect, but it's still far so much better than most PTSD portrayals I've seen in TV, along with Korra's. And I've seen people saying that Korra's portrayal was so much better. Well, let me tell you, it isn't, or at least I don't think it is. It's just different, because the worst thing about PTSD (and what makes it harder to treat) is that it's different for every person; sometimes it can be really severe and obvious, sometimes it seems “light”. Damn, sometimes it doesn't appear until years after the event; mine didn't trigger til I was like sixteen, and the event took place when I was around five or six. And yes, sometimes I have nightmares or flashbacks about it if something triggers me, but it isn't the whole time like some of you apparently think it is. I'm not scared 100% of the time, what the fuck.

When it comes to the fight with Adam, saying it didn't affect her: did you watch the fight? First of all, at that precise moment, Yang was so full of adredaline and too busy keeping Adam from killing Blake that I don't think her brain even realised he was the cause of her PTSD. Second of all, when he triggers it, it does affect her; she starts shaking, he's able to land hits on her that he couldn't before. But PTSD is different in every person, and is a defense mechanism, not a freezing mechanism as some people think. If I see the cause of my PTSD in front of me trying to hurt me again, I'm not gonna freeze; I'm gonna do whatever it takes so they don't ever hurt me again. Same goes with Yang: some people think she should have completely freezed during the fight, like “oh my god this guy fucked me up really bad and now he's gonna do it again and there's nothing I can do oh my god”. No. As I said, PTSD doesn't work like that, at least not always. She's not thinking that, she's thinking “alright this guy really fucked me up once but there's no way I'm letting him do that again”. Again, PTSD is a defense mechanism. A fucked up one, but it's what it is. And the writers handled very well.

Yang being suspicious and not completely trusting someone.

Now, I'm not lying when I tell you that I have no idea about what this could mean. Well, it could be her disagreeing with Ruby and having a bad argument, and that would really break my heart because I just love those two sisters so much. It could also be about Ozpin; she's teaming up with Oscar and hearing Ozpin is back could bring some problems. Or maybe Raven just appears there and she's like Hell Naw. I have no idea.

Conclussion.

I love Yang. She's not perfect at all. She's a bit of a hypocrite with the whole Ozpin thing because she's keeping Raven's identity as the Spring Maiden a secret as well (or maybe she did tell them off-screen? Honestly clear that up already). But she's over all a really good friend and person, an amazing older sister and just one of the most inspiring characters in the show. I see part of myself in her, and I don't see that often in a character. I just love her.

Damn, sorry I wrote the Bible but my girl deserved that.

[ranboocore-moved]

Confrontation. Explanation and Analysis

to preface this, this essay was largely written within the @dsmpanalysis​ mod discord after some fellow mods voiced confusion surrounding Ranboo’s lore stream today (1/16/2021). it’s been tweaked to make more sense as a tumblr post and not a response to a collection of messages. If you were confused about Ranboo’s lore stream today, I’m going to explain it largely as I understood it. To summarize the stream to its core -- Ranboo confronts the Dream inside the panic room about his lost memories, and finds out that Ranboo himself has Cat. During the Festival/Doomsday Event, it was hinted at that Dream was really just a figment of Ranboo’s imagination -- he wasn’t real. Some people thought this could mean that Ranboo was possessed or that Dream had supernatural powers to manipulate him through his thoughts, among a few other similar things, while other’s figured that it really was just Ranboo’s figment of his imagination. It was just a psychological reaction to the stress and trauma he went through. It was heavily confirmed that that was the case today. Given that Ranboo is super active in fan spaces and likes to take notes, he probably noticed a lot of theories regarding this being a supernatural external thing, and hammered down on the concept that “Dream” was just a “manifestation of his catastrophizing” and anxiety. It was almost a little excessive, but this is improv and there was a point that needed to be made. Memory Ghost Dream also reveals to Ranboo that he has Cat (the disc). If you’re confused on how Ranboo got Cat, it’s honestly kind of subtle if you weren’t listening because it’s only given away in one sentence. Dream encourages and pokes at Ranboo to think harder, try to remember what he did after he crossed a nether portal. Ranboo begins to remember that he spoke to Dream (the real one) and that Dream told him to protect something. Ranboo CANNOT place it, so Memory Ghost Dream nudges him a little further by saying “You got it from Skeppy.” This is the only mention of how Ranboo obtained the disc. Dream didn’t give him the disc, Skeppy did. Dream, however, did KNOW about Ranboo having the disc and urged him to protect it and keep it safe. ”Wouldn’t we have seen Skeppy give Ranboo the disc?” No! It’s clear that this is an integral part of the plot and it was an event purposely kept hidden to maintain an element of surprise. It was a scripted interaction that didn’t need to be shown -- only implied. This essentially sums up my explanation -- however it doesn’t quite suffice as a summary. Honestly, I highly recommend everyone watch it as it is a short stream and is comprised of all lore. The whole stream is a lore stream, and also it’s extremely evident that Ranboo put a lot of work into the stream and its events. To further convince you, someone donated during the second stream today saying “I was crying by the end of the stream.” to which Ranboo says, “Don’t worry, I was too.” He clarified that he was totally okay -- he just gets really into character. So, like, if you’re not convinced then IDK.

Analysis Below The Cut (because this post is already pretty long)

The narrative implications surrounding a state of Ranboo aligning himself with Dream and harboring Mellohi setup a scenario which breaks up the monotony the SMP has filled itself up with regarding the discs. I’ve seen a lot of people voice how they are tired or unsatisfied with the discs persisting to be key plot points within the narrative, which is honestly a super valid opinion. The direction the Exile Arc and Festival/Doomsday Event felt... really tired, and just a poorly conducted rehashed version of the Festival prior. There were a lot of recycled concepts and it felt like the writers trying to grasp at what Wilbur had created before by chance. 

However, with the story that Ranboo is writing -- he’s utilizing the discs in a different way by throwing himself into the fray. It feels repetitive when the conflict surrounding the discs are “Tommy want disc. Dream have disc. Chaos.” or vice versa. However, by throwing Ranboo in-between the two of them, holding the disc, and being established as a character who is adamant he not take sides, he is effectively shaking up the conflict that has been rehashed 5 ways from Sunday. There’s still the conflict of Tommy wants the discs v.s Dream wanting the discs however it’s no longer the focal point of the story. The conflicts go from a stale and mostly two dimensional issue, to a more fleshed out morality crisis.

Tubbo and Ranboo are still friends in canon. They did a canon stream that wasn’t super lore heavy, and achieved what felt like mostly comic relief -- however the did reconcile what happened. They consider themselves to be friends with each other, or at least friendly. However, this raises the question:

How will Tommy react when he finds out that Ranboo has Cat? Where do the implications of one state of Ranboo being aligned with Dream and his desires lead?

While you still may not be convinced or tired of the plot devices being used, I would like to end on this note. If it were to end with Ranboo picking a side, more specifically Tommy’s, I would also be incredibly disappointed. I’d be a bit more joyful, though, if he were to side with Dream as it would still break up that monotony surrounding the discs. Dream only aligned himself with people during the beginning of the smp. However as the plot has literally thickened and became heavier and sturdier, Dream has solidified himself as someone to be alone -- therefore if Ranboo were to side with dream it would ultimately subvert our expectations. 

However, I’d still be a little bit disappointed if he did pick a side, because the core theme of his character in this arc has been to not pick side and is sturdy in the belief that choosing sides would always end up in disaster, no matter what. So, I’d either want him to keep the same theme up throughout the Arc, or Ranboo to have to grow as a character into a different perspective and understanding that sometimes sides have to be taken and ultimately picked upon by the greater good. It would be up to him to decide said greater good and what constitutes great or good, which is a whole other development of character and plot on its own. Anyways, I just think that if you’re being overtly critical of the story that Ranboo is writing, maybe you should look at it from a different perspective.

[aceofshitposts]

I saw that you like CATS the musical. What are your thoughts on the movie?

AAAAH AHHAHA oh man oh boy y'all should BUCKLE IN cuz it's a ride

my simple thoughts? it's entertaining if only because it butchered the stage show so badly in an attempt to idk modernize it? Well, modernization is one part of it I think. The other part I'll go into below lol. I don't necessarily hate some of the more modern renditions of the songs (mostly the ensemble sets like Jellicle Song for Jellicle Cats) but then others are just... so poorly done it's insulting.

I've said this at the end of this whole rant too but I'm gonna put it up here in case people don't (justifiably) wanna see me go on and on about it:

The movie wasn't made for fans of the musical. It was made to make money and I believe they choose, at least partially, to do that through making it the weirdest and worst possible adaptation they could so that people would want to go see the train wreck. Which, really, worked! It was all people could talk about for a good while so like... Goal achieved, I guess.

A MUCH MORE COMPREHENSIVE ANALYSIS UNDER THE CUT cuz i don't wanna. flood your dash with... this

ALRIGHT SO. Most of my friends know I'm actually a huge fan of new adaptations of things. I love remakes (provided the people making it are coming at it with some form of heart and not just... cash grabbing which is more often the case) I love seeing other peoples interpretations of characters, or changing settings. It's one of the reasons I like American comics so much, getting to see different writers takes is fascinating.

I think musical movies can be wonderful ways to introduce people to a stage show that might have been unavailable to them otherwise! Chicago, for example, is one of the BEST musical to movie adaptations in my opinion. It kept the heart of the show, it's funny and the song numbers are done really well.

There are of course other famous examples, such as Grease or Bye Bye Birdie. Hairspray was also a wonderful take. These are simply off the top of my head, there are of course more.

CATS in particular has a history. If you go through my CATS tag you may see a few posts from @catsnonreplica which posts photos from non broadway productions of CATS! It's a fascinating read and I love, love, love looking at the other interpretations of the characters! CATS is a musical full of fun and wonderful characters if you take the time to see past the ridiculousness haha and the Korean and Japanese runs of CATS especially have some of my favourites.

How does this relate to the movie, I hear you say well. As you might has noticed the movie's interpretations of the characters is........ lackluster at best and downright uncanny valley at best.

CATS is, at its core, a ridiculous thing. I will fully admit that! But it's fun, it's entertaining and if you pay a little attention you can actually get the plot. (Honestly I don't understand when people complain it has no plot but that's a whole other rant for another day)

The movie was... obsessed with this idea of like... semi realism? Like obviously, as a fan, I think they should have leaned into the over the top character designs but instead we got...w ell:

Bombalurina:

Demeter left and Bomba right. Demeter was actually cut! From the movie which is. upsetting lmao.

Macavity is one of the worst offenders for me:

Macavity was... I wish I could know what the hell they were thinking there cuz it's even in his song? Ginger cat??? THAT IS NOT... A GINGER CAT...... but I digress. I would show more examples but I think you get the point.

So. We've butchered the characters appearances. Okay that's fine but what about their personalities?

ALSO BUTCHERED.

There's... there's a lot to unpack here. Just for context: the Jellicle Ball happens once a year and the Jellicle leader chooses a single cat to be reborn into a new life. In the stage play all the cats who are nominated for this honour are on the older side (Jenny-Any-Dots, Bustopher Jones, Skimbleshanks, Gus The Theatre Cat, and eventually Grizzabella) AND are always nominated by another cat. Not themself, unlike the movie where they all seem to nominate themselves.

Jenny-Any-Dots went from a doting grandmother figure who's celebrated for her selfless volunteering and tireless work into a conceited, vain younger cat who is obsessed with fame.

It's an incredibly strange dichotomy. I don't doubt some of it isn't the result of the uh people playing the characters honestly. I do think some of them did the best they could! I don't really blame Jason Derulo, for example, for Tugger. And honestly, Tugger was probably closest to his stage version (while being a trouble maker, he's shown to show Deuteronomy an immense amount of respect)

Speaking of Tugger! This will bring us to one of the biggest grievances with the movie and that is how they handled Mr Mistoffelees.

So... Ugh. So. We have Victoria as the pov character, which imo is like whatever in the grand scheme of things, and then we have Misto who they have decided will be get live interest cuz... Of course. Misto is shown throughout the musical to be awkward, unsure of himself and well. Really, kinda incompetent. Which is Wild cuz in the stage show he might be aloof but he's fairly confident in his powers.

So, Old Deuts gets kidnapped. In the stage show Tugger is the one to bring Misto forward! It's really quite sweet, imo, and I'm showing myself as a Tuggoffelees shipper here, but again Tugger is previously shown to be pretty conceited but then here he is boosting and hyping up Misto to bring Deuteronomy back. My friends and I have lovingly dubbed this the boyfriend hype song.

SOMEHOW. The movie manages to make this, easily, the MOST BORING number in the whole thing. Which, again, WILD. Misto awkwardly stumbles through his whole song, which again is... Boasting of his supreme magical powers which movie Misto clearly. Does not have or believe to have. The song, to me, feels super awkward and unnecessarily drawn out in the movie which sucks cuz it's one of my favourites in the show.

The declawing (heh) of Mr Mistoffelees actually reminds me strongly of how they changed Gaston in the live action Beauty and the Beast movie. He's gone from a beloved figure in the animated movie to someone so disliked in the town that Le Fou has to pay people off to say nice things about him. It's just. Wild character choices were made!!

Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat is probably my favourite in movie non ensemble number. It feels the most... Genuine? Compared to the other nomination songs.

Other problems include but are not limited to:

The inconsistent size scale of the CATS which throws me off constantly.

The weirdly overt sexual overtones added to MANY of the songs (Jenny and Bustopher being the worst)

This is just a personal gripe and opinion but I don't like that they used the UK version of Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer. The American version is both better known and tbh way more fun. Teazer's giggle? Adds ten years to my life every time.

Victoria's added solo song, Beautiful Ghosts, while I like the song as a song it doesn't fit the style of message of the musical. In the movie she's singing directly to Grizzabella who's being an outcast for years that she should be grateful she even has memories of being part of the tribe?? What?? But I know they had to add an original song to be able to be nominated for awards in like the Grammys n shit (which is why all musical movies will have an original song, fun fact!!) kinda funny they went to the effort though considering........... I don't think anyone could have genuinely believed CATS 2019 was gonna win anything but golden rhaspberries.

Movie Mr Mistoffelees has made repeated appearances as my sleep paralysis demon

The various cut characters, shout outs to Jemima, Demeter and Jellylorum especially

Bombalurina being a henchman to Macavity rubs me the wrong way

God I've written... So much. You probably get it by now haha. Like I said at the beginning, I try to go into any adaptation with an open mind but... Let's be honest, this movie wasn't marketed to people who are fans of the musical.

It was marketed, and made, to make money. And they choose to do that through, I think, intentionally making the worst possible version ever. Bad press is still press and the more outrageous people said the movie was the more people wanted to go see exactly what kind of train wreck it was.

Which is a disservice to the stage show, honestly, and all the people who've worked on it over the years.

But what can we do, right?

And besides all that, I do... Still own the movie version and I do still rewatch it on occasion. It is entertaining even if it's in a train wreck kind of way. I usually end up watching the 1998 version, then 2019 and then various tour runs that are on YouTube. (I highly recommend the 2016 tour, it's very good)

So in conclusion. It's fun (?) to watch. I enjoy picking things apart and doing analysis (if you couldn't tell!) so like... I don't hate it?

It did what it set out to do, I guess, and I can't fault it for that but. It's not a fair metre with which to judge the stage show imo. But I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, haha.

Jazz hands. I'm more than happy to elaborate or just chat about CATS if anyone wants! I grew up listening to the Broadway CD since I was a toddler so it's been! A very long standing obsession haha. Probably the only other thing on par with CATS is my obsession with Jurassic Park which I've also been a fan of since I was 3 (but that's a whole story in and of itself)

[darklove9314-blog]

Do you think that a court of silver flames was well written? When I read it, I hated every character that I use to loved. Most people are happy that Tamlin is suffering for his mistakes but did Feyre not do the same to Nesta? I also love the friends that Nesta made but I feel like Nesta isn’t the type to have sleepovers with hot chocolate. I saw her more as Loki character (cunning and mischievous). Also the fact that Feyre is literally still a child and is a mother is weird. I just hate that book. To make things worse, NESTA AND CASSIAN DIDN’T REALLY TALK ABOUT THIER ISSUES (like the fact that Cassian is more loyal to his friends than his own mate and the trauma that Nesta went through). I just felt like the book is very poorly written and everyone acts like Feyre is perfect makes me want to throw up. Am I a horrible person for wanting Feyre and Rhysand to die?

TW: for mentions of rape/severe depression/ childhood abandonment.

You see I have a love/hate relationship with ACOSF because I see a lot of good in the story and in Nessian’s relationship in general, I do wish we spent more time on Nessian than on the Feysand baby plotline. I think most of the reason this book went the way it did was because at first it had a separate plot line. If you go back to ACOFAS, it’s as clear as day, she may have had to scrap the idea due to the various problems within the text. If she had went with the simpler plot of Nesta’s healing journey and Nessian’s romance this book would’ve been better, because despite having a 800 page book about a Nessian, I still feel like I know nothing about them, like I loved getting glimpses into both their past and Feysand and their pregnancy plot take away from who the book is supposed to be about which is Nessian. However I went into this book with the mind set that SJM can’t let go of Feysand (even though Nessian is her second biggest ship in her fandom and a better ship in my opinion) that and all her various lives had the same five questions so I kinda figured this would be the case. I think since I prepared myself I ended up enjoying the book because I went into it with low expectations, but that still doesn’t mean I can’t admit that it could’ve been an extraordinary book If SJM focused on the couple it should have been focused on, As for Feysand, I’m an anti Feysand shipper because I can’t stand Rhysand. He is the worst type of person. Feyre I’ve always been on the fence about her. I don’t hate her with a burning passion of a thousand suns, but I don’t love her either. As far as the IC the only two I hate right now (besides Rhysand) are Mor and Amren. And I can agree, I think people acting like Feyre is the perfect being enables Feyre a lot, it squanders the potential Feyre could have as a character by treating her as if she’s still a child and keeping things from her about her own court, like she can’t be happy 24/7 and people need to realize that, tough childhood or not, the real world doesn’t give you these type of free passes, as for Cassian, I’m at an impass. I love Nessian with my whole heart and soul, but even I can admit when he can be a dick, it’s why out of the bat boys, he’s my favorite. The thing about his devotion is that it’s all about psychology and the effects of childhood abandonment, Cassian’s main fear is being abandoned by those he loves. To feel unwanted and unloved. (If you look back to the way he talks about wanting kids and how he would make sure that they never felt unwanted or unloved it hits harder) and giving Cassian’s history him clinging onto whatever family he thinks he has makes a lot of sense. Even if that family doesn’t deserve his devotion at times (I’m looking at you Rhysand) but let me go further, In Cassian’s history, he was a biproduct of rape, we have no clue what psychological repercussions that has on Cassian, but from the way that it appears to affect him I can say that it’s a pretty heavy factor to why Cassian feels unloved and unwanted, He was also ripped away from his mother at a young age and thrown into a place that made him feel even more unwanted, his mother was also murdered before he could do anything about it, and it’s clear as day that he blames himself for his mother’s death like Nesta blames herself for her father’s. That being said Rhys is a sensitive subject for Cassian because despite Rhys being a raging asshole, Rhys was also the first person that Cassian made a connection with. Rhys’s mother was also the person that made sure that Cassian felt loved and wanted. So I can imagine after 500 years it’s hard for Cassian to let that go and Nesta understands that no matter how much she may hate Rhys. It doesn’t mean she necessarily has to like Rhys. There’s a lot of great reasons why she doesn’t, but she’s not going to get in the middle of that relationship because she knows how important Rhys is to Cassian. But she’s also Cassian’s mate and best believe that she’d rip Rhys a new asshole if he hurt Cassian in anyway, (I’ll probably make this an analysis later)

[dreamersleeps]

So, as someone whose father is very similar to Endeavor, I've never understood the notion that Horikoshi is trying to whitewash or excuse his abuse by giving him a character arc. Abusers are awful people, but it's not often that they're one-dimensional villains. Nobody ever talks about how confusing it is when your abuser wakes up and sees the damage they've caused, much less when they clumsily try to make ammends. It seems fans would rather it all be simple, when it's anything but in reality

/2 Are there ways it can be handled better? Of course. But a writer making an effort to explore the complexities of abuse through all its angels is far from abuse apology. It’s much more respectful (imo) to treat the situation like the confusing, complicated mess it is in reality, rather than reduce it to some simple cartoonishly evil bullshit that either limits the survivors of his abuse to being lifelong victims, or enables the continued abuse perpetuated by a former victim (i.e., Dabi)

Hello, I’d like to thank you for sharing your thoughts and opinions. I was actually surprised to open up Tumblr to see your messages in my inbox. I spent the past couple of days sitting on and thinking about it. I’m not sure if you were asking for my thoughts and opinions, but I’ve finally sat down and written my response. It’s late at night so I apologize if there are any statements below that are poorly worded or expressed. 

As you express, it’s a very complicated topic as a whole, because Endeavor, or Todoroki Enji is a complicated character. 

I can not and will not claim that I understand abuse like those who have experienced it. Additionally, It’s not in my place to tell people how to feel or think. However in response to what you shared, I will give some of my thoughts as a reader and fan of BNHA on the topics surrounding Endeavor. (Btw to the anon: some of what I have to say below will be my general opinions about the topic as a whole.)

When I try to write meta and other analysis pieces, I try my best to go back to the manga and base my analysis and arguments on the (official) translations instead of my opinions and thoughts from the beginning. I sometimes have to go back and re-read chapters to remind myself what is “canon” and then try to understand and express my interpretations on the matter. This is not to talk down on those who do not do this: this is just something I do for myself. I am most definitely influenced greatly by what others have to say but I also want to figure out my own interpretation of the story and characters.  

So, as someone whose father is very similar to Endeavor, I’ve never understood the notion that Horikoshi is trying to whitewash or excuse his abuse by giving him a character arc. 

I personally never really saw it as Horikoshi trying to excuse Endeavor’s abuse by giving him a character arc as well. As many others have stated, I don’t see it as a “redemption arc,” because it isn’t. 

I think that we all have to remember the diversity of the fans and readers of this and other fandoms. There are those who can personally relate to or understand what the Todoroki family has gone through, and others who are unable to. Those who are unable to fully understand certain experiences but can sympathize with the characters however even then, this lack of knowledge or exposure to the topic has led to people accidently expressing opinions that hurt or offended others. Additionally, based on what I’ve seen and read on Tumblr, there is quite a wide range of differing viewpoints from those those who can relate to the experiences of the Todoroki family.

Abusers are awful people, but it’s not often that they’re one-dimensional villains. Nobody ever talks about how confusing it is when your abuser wakes up and sees the damage they’ve caused, much less when they clumsily try to make amends. It seems fans would rather it all be simple, when it’s anything but in reality.

Abuse is complex. There is a very wide range of complicated feelings, emotions, thoughts and opinions that surround it. Everyone has a reason as to why they feel or think the way they do. Because we all have had different experiences and reactions to the events of our lives, we can not expect everyone to think similarly. 

Given that BNHA or shounen manga in general is catered towards a younger audience (compared to, lets say seinen manga) and Horikoshi is working with topics that are difficult to read or understand even for adults, I’d argue that part of the discourse may result from that. 

It seems like when we say that we like a certain character, people tend to automatically assume then that we approve of what they stand for and what they’ve done. I first watched the first two seasons of BNHA before I began reading it. I absolutely hated Endeavor in the beginning, however after I caught up in the manga and began to follow the chapter releases each week, ultimately the characters that really pulled me in to the story was Endeavor, Hawks, and Bakugou, arguably some of the most controversial characters of the series. 

Are there ways it could be handled better? Of course. But a writer making an effort to explore the complexities of abuse through all its angles is far from abuse apology. It’s much more respectful (imo) to treat the situation like the confusing, complicated mess it is in reality, rather than reduce it to some simple cartoonishly evil bullshit that either limits the survivors of his abuse to being lifelong victims, or enables the continued abuse perpetuated by a former victim (i.e Dabi) 

What truly drew me in was the complexities that came with their characters. I haven’t personally experienced abuse however I have lived through other experiences to recognize in my own understanding that life is both so negatively and positively complicated, confusing and messy. Some people want to see Endeavor fall, and others hope to see him actually change. These wishes are shaped by what we’ve seen or experienced throughout life. 

We like simple, clear cut, perhaps one dimensional characters because it’s easier to form an opinion about them. It seems like we struggle with characters like Endeavor and others because we are sometimes faced with the contradicting collision of our own thoughts, morals and beliefs with the actions and story of these characters. 

For some reason a lot of my analysis posts have revolved around Endeavor, Hawks, and Dabi and if anyone is interested, I personally believe that as much as we may love a character, whoever it may be, actions should and will be met with consequences. Tragedy does not excuse one’s actions. They may explain one’s actions but we are responsible for and should be held accountable for the consequences that result from it.  

If anyone was thinking it, this all does not mean that I think Horikoshi should be exempt from critique. And as you ask and answer, “Are there ways it could be handled better? Of course.” Additionally as I have written on the top of my blog, 

There will be posts found here that you may not agree with, however different perspectives are what keeps the meta conversation going. 

I think that many of us would prefer it if people would refrain from accusing, insulting or bullying Horikoshi and other fans because of their thoughts and opinions. Although it is understandable that it is difficult when we respond to the story and others emotionally, taking part in these types of activities is not the same as critiquing something. 

Boku no Hero Academia is still an ongoing manga. We get one chapter every one or two weeks at a time and so we only get little snippets of the full story. Based on new info and what we’ve read in past chapters, we make predictions, assumptions and have expectations about the future. However, I think that we all have to remember that the story of Enji, Rei, Touya, Fuyumi, Natsuo and Shouto is not complete yet. We are still in the midst of an unfolding narrative that Horikoshi is working closely with to present his readers. 

[misscrawfords]

The Rise of Skywalker: Part One

I have lots of thoughts and feelings about TROS. Most of them negative. For three days I’ve been alternating between raging and crying. Finally, I’ve felt able to start writing.

This is a negative review. If you loved the film then this might not be the post for you. I am very sensitive to what happened after TLJ. And I want to reassure anyone reading that I would never turn criticism for a film (which is absolutely a valid response to seeing something that you disliked and are trying to understand) into personal attacks against the actors or creators involved or, worse still, fans who liked it. If you liked TROS, can’t bear to hear any criticism of it, and still choose to read my posts about it, then that is on you. (I really shouldn’t have to say this but this is a hellsite.)

This post contains spoilers for TROS... and Jumanji 2. Go figure.

Things I liked:

·       C-3PO and everything he did. This droid is the character I identify with most in the entire SW series (which probably says some uncomfortable things about me but this is not the time!) and he had such a big and important role and his quips were genuinely great and funny and I loved everything he did. Apart from – but more on that later.

·       Ben Solo. Uh, other people have talked about his little shrug and his “ow” and his smile – oh god, his smile. Ben Solo is amazing. It’s a shame that – but more on that later.

·       I didn’t hate Rey Palpatine. I mean, I literally wrote this story when I was 13 when I made Hermione Voldemort’s daughter as a way of explaining her inner darkness and had her team up with Harry (with whom she had a telepathic bond) to destroy him. (You can read the story here if you really want to.) So it would be pretty hypocritical of me to hate this plotline. I enjoyed seeing angry, feral Rey on screen, I enjoyed seeing a female hero confronting her capacity for destruction and darkness. I was okay with the idea of a final face-off between a Palpatine and a Skywalker and how this is a way of bringing final balance to the Force. This was pretty interesting and I’d be up for this. I much prefer Rey Nobody but as a concept I’m not actually against it. Unfortunately the execution – but more on that later.

·       I really enjoyed more of Finn and Poe. I love both of them as characters. I mean I can’t think of a single bit of dialogue that was meaningful between them or what they accomplished in particular for they had some fun moments.

·       Finn and Jannah’s conversation about being ex-stormtroopers was a lovely scene, a moment of much-needed quiet and reflection and bonding in a film that was far too hectic and crowded. Shame it went nowhere.

·       Reylo kiss? I mean, that was cool.

·       Unironically, I loved Hux. He was snarky and his revelation of being the spy because he just hated Kylo that much got the biggest reaction in the cinema of the entire showing. Admittedly it was derisive laughter as we all realised what a clusterfuck of bad writing this film was, but still. It crossed over into so-bad-it’s-good territory. Hux gave me considerable pleasure in a film that otherwise made me very angry.

·       My favourite scene in the film was when Rey and Kylo fought on Pasaana over the transport ship with Chewie (apparently) on and Rey blows it up. The cinematography was amazing, it was a visual representation of both balance and building on the lightsaber breaking scene in TLJ while upping the stakes considerably and Rey’s reaction of visceral horror when she realised what she had done was truly shocking and unexpected. To have Chewie killed off so suddenly like this for no reason except that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and the stakes are high and this is a desperate war with casualties – genius. A perfect way to make Rey and Ben even more similar – both having killed father figures – and have Rey confront her dark side as she wrestles with what she has done and the consequences of having a non-unified relationship with Ben while also being in a position to truly empathise with him – this was exactly the content I had signed up for. But it was the moment that it was revealed that Chewie was still alive that I realised what I’d only suspected before then: that this film was terrible and I would not be able to trust any emotion it was inviting me to feel.

Fundamentally, I think that this film is incredibly poorly written and emotionally dishonest. It is telling that I saw Jumanji 2 earlier in the day and out of the two films, the only point at which I cried was when Milo decided to stay in Jumanji as a horse. Why did I cry? Because Milo and Grandpa’s relationship had been gradually built up over the course of a film that was not afraid of quiet moments and building a narrative of a relationship that revealed what it needed over the course of several meaningful scenes. It allowed Milo’s decision to stay to be both a tragic loss but also a happy ending for him. Truly bittersweet and in a way that everyone can relate to. The loss of a dear friend to illness is a horrible but human thing to contemplate. To be able to set this friend free through a metaphor of a beautiful death and afterlife is genuinely moving and hopeful. Unfortunately TROS did not manage to give me any such emotions or elicit a single tear.

At least not till afterwards. I’ve subsequently cried a lot, some of it over the tragedy of Ben and Rey in a film that promised hope, but mainly for myself and the other (mainly) young female fans who have poured all their knowledge and intelligence into analysis of TFA and TLJ and who seemed to understand the story that was being told and who had been promised more of this story in the interviews and trailers released prior to this film – and who are now feeling like absolute garbage as this film throws out its own mythology for an incoherent, self-serving mess that in many ways defies analysis. The only thing I feel really capable of analysing is how much it doesn’t work, as opposed to what the film is trying to do. Where is the symbolism? Where is the metaphor? Where is the hero’s journey? Where is the heroine’s journey? Where is nuance? Where is everything that was set up in both TFA and TLJ? IDK, I can’t see it. It’s a kick in the teeth.

So, no matter how many individual things I was able to enjoy at the time when watching TROS, they end up being meaningless because the entire film was so bad. I can’t feel pleasure thinking about the good bits because they were mired in context (or lack of it). I can’t feel genuine sorrow about the fate of Rey and Ben because the execution of that fate was so poorly done. I don’t even mind that Ben died. It was always an option and the story of redemption followed by death is a very common story, a very Christian story. Though the death of Christ to save us from our sins, is crucially followed by resurrection. I mean, literally everyone can and does die. That doesn’t make you special. If you’re going for a Christ metaphor, you kind of need resurrection too. But I’m not sure that was exactly what they were going for with it; it was a mess and the execution made little internal consistency.

It may be that if I watched the film again, my problems would be lessened and I would see new things in them and they would make sense. I’ve read some twitter threads of people who are making connections and finding explanations on a second or third viewing. But the problem is that I shouldn’t need to see a film more than once to fundamentally understand it. I don’t mean picking up on new and interesting features and subtext which a good film, like a good book, rewards you with on multiple viewings. TLJ does that. But you should be able to follow what the ultimate meaning of a film is when you see it first.

If that is the case, then the ultimate meaning of TROS is that the good are good, the bad are bad, change is rewarded with death, a character who was once alone ends up alone again, plot coherency is sacrificed for whatever explosion or cool backwards-reference is needed at the time, death is not the end except when it is, there is no cosistency and consequently no emotional impact. And apparently it is a happy and hopeful ending? The tonal disconnect with the story being told and the way it was shot and the music being played and the clear intention of the people making the film is utterly jarring.

To famously quote Macbeth:

It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

This post is already too long so I will go into my criticisms in more detail in a further post. Stay tuned!

Read Part Two here.

[userseokkie]

Steve Rogers is a walking contradiction: the anti military soldier

After reading this meta on a gifset about Steve and Tony i got carried away and wrote essentially an essay about the analysis that had been made. and while i agree with the general sentiment of the post, some things didn’t sit right with me. btw i decided to make this my own separate post because this isn’t intended to start an argument or derail the original post, i know it can be annoying for gif makers to have dozens of comments added onto their posts.

(the meta in question)

ok so full disclaimer I’m not American and I’m not white. i just felt like this analysis was really interesting and when I read it I couldn’t stop all these thoughts that formed in my head, next thing I know I had written all of this in like 30 minutes. I’m not trying to argue or start shit, this is my own personal analysis of Steve’s character and why I don’t agree with some things said above.

First of all, let’s get this out of the way: Steve does not trust the US government. at least not blindly. the fact that he’s still the little shit that had a real problem w authority figures is something they touch upon on catfa a lot. he changed on the outside but on the inside he’s still that idiot punk kid and like, I get what the tags above me are saying but also Steve’s arc is more than that? and let’s not forget this stupid movie was written and directed by thanos Joss “I’m the true feminist ally” whedon so I would take this exchange with a grain of salt. I mean this is the movie that gave us “gOllY tHeRe’S OnLy oNe gOd m'Am” and “sOn oF a GuN” Stephen Rogers which is the most ooc thing I’ve seen since endgame’s Steve. Steve is a fucking potty mouth ffs he’s Irish and a soldier, so that doesn’t even make sense. but anyway, my point is something else, nvm this movie’s portrayal of Steve in general.

I guess we could probably argue all day long abt which Steve portrayal is the most accurate one since his character in the MCU is the one that’s suffered the most at the hands of inconsistent characterization, but I prefer thinking he already WAS someone that was well aware of the horrors of war and how unfair it was to recruit people w lies and the promises of education opportunities and loans for the poor to join the army, because he LIVED that he grew up dirt poor and had to see his mom take on three different jobs to support herself and him, so he’d consider this attempt to bring civilians into the military life by preying on their needs disgusting, he’d be fucking seething with anger. and if he had lived through the 60s (which I think it’s better for everyone involved that he didn’t, can u imagine poor guy would’ve died from the disappointment in what his country had become) I highly doubt he would’ve been the bitter WWII vet that defended Vietnam and shit on the protestors……. Steve would support the citizens’ rights to ask for accountability and demand justice!! even the hippie movement I think he would’ve been ok with when he saw that they were advocating FOR PEACE. that’s why he enlisted on the war after all, to bring the fight to an end and to have Bucky come HOME. I think Steve rogers would be all for peace. I mean, civil disobedience and telling the government to shove it? that’s Steve Rogers’ goddamn ethos. he would be all over that shit.

I agree w op’s tags where they say Steve doesn’t represent America, he represents what America wishes it had been. and I think Steve himself would be well aware he’s the anomaly here, the one that should have been America’s highest ideal. and I think that makes Steve very wary of his own image, anything he endorses becomes what America endorses. Steve rogers isn’t important, Captain America is. but I think Steve’s response here has more to do with his coping mechanisms to deal with loss, rather than coming from a place of “oh we’re soldiers, it’s what we do, we die for our country.” while Tony’s response comes from a place of anger (we are NOT soldiers!!! fuck u old man, i never asked for this!!! coulson didn’t ask for this!!!!!) Steve’s reaction comes from the intrinsic nihilism and dadaism product of his own time. it’s not that he’s minimizing Coulson’s death, it’s more that he’s so used to losing people, the thousands he met that died in European soil, the sick and ill from his ma’s work that died everyday, his own father whom he never even met, that his mechanism is to just. shut down. shrug it off a bit, even. people die. every day. “for believing” means for standing for something, because Steve is WELL aware that people that stand for nothing will fall for anything, and standing for something gives counterbalance to the official agenda. in his eyes, Coulson died not because he’s a soldier and winning the war means being prepared to make a few sacrifices. Coulson died because he chose to believe in something that the majority didn’t care about or even actively sought to destroy (the wsc over fury’s shoulder) and he died because he would not back down from the fight. I can do this all day is something Steve feeds off of because he knows that when you stop getting up from the ground, anyone and anything can strike you down.

but on another note, I get that Avengers happens literally 6 fucking days after he woke up from the ice, he probably had no time to catch up on all the atrocities the US had done on his behalf, or rather on what they said he represented, on the ideal he died defending and the US took and twisted and tore apart until it was no longer recognizable. Steve being a week out of the ice is super sad and to me, the biggest crime this movie did was literally brushing off Steve’s trauma, being riddled with PTSD and shocked from waking up seventy years in the future was not even addressed. at all. this could’ve been easily avoided by setting the movie at least a couple of months AFTER he wakes up. but whatever. After learning of all the shit the US has done, I think Steve rogers would be the first to walk out of there and be like “fuck it, I died for this country and you took it and fucked it up and now young people and people who’ve been killed for protesting your shitty ass decisions genuinely believe I would side with the government. they think I’M the stubborn baby boomer who kisses government boots and would approve of the Gulf War or the Vietnam War or the Central American coups or the war on terror or any of the stupid shit you’ve pulled in the 70 years I was gone!!! YOU MADE ME A SYMBOL FOR YOUR BIGOTRY WHAT THE FUCK”. so he obviously needs time to catch up on all of that before realizing how bad they fucked up his memory and how corrupt the system has become. but Steve’s depiction as a boy scout who believes the US can do nothing bad is inherently wrong and something only this one movie tries to do. no other movie featuring Cap tries to drive the point home that Cap is a goodie two shoes who still believes in american exceptionalism.

CATWS was the gold standard because it truly touched upon the cognitive dissonance Steve experiences coming out of a 70 year nap. the loss he experiences not only for being “the man out of time”, but the true man behind the symbol. heavy are the shoulders that carry the world indeed. and he’s been carrying the entire world on his since he decided to become Captain America. I truly believe the tragedy of Steve Rogers comes from the lack of agency he has over the Captain image, one that has been used to prop up political agendas over and over again. of course, he’s the one that decides to be Captain America as much as he is Steve rogers, blurring the lines between the two men. he could’ve retired, he could’ve adopted a new mantle or even go the old reliable route and try to keep a civilian life away from the superhero gig. but he didn’t. even in the comics whenever he tried to do that it didn’t stick for more than a few issues. so, you know in CATWS he truly experiments what it’s like to pull back the curtain and see the wizard behind it, he faces this disenchantment with the institutions that created him, both SHIELD and the US government. this helps pinpoint the moment he grows super distrustful of politics and agendas, because up until this point he’d only been in the battlefield, and he realizes governments cannot be trusted to make the right decision or even act in benefit of their people.

this way, Civil War does make sense when you see how Steve has grown so disappointed with modern politics that he sees the Sokovia accords as one big red flag, and the first step in a direction that only points toward authoritarianism and civil control. this movie deals with many things poorly of course, but one thing that doesn’t feel ooc is Steve telling the UN to fuck off. He wasn’t around to see the formation of the united nations remember? he literally has no background on what collective security and globalized autonomy are. there’s many things that could’ve been different in CW, but Steve was on the “right” side of the conflict for his character. (i’m NOT saying there’s a wrong and a right side on the Civil war dilemma. that whole thing was badly written so let’s just say it made sense in a hypothetical way). supporting the government in any capacity isn’t a part of Steve’s “thing”, but even when/if he sided with the US govt, he’d never endorse a political agenda that he perceives as “wrong”, knowing it’s hypocritical to do so. 

he doesn’t think the end justify the means, which is highly different from Tony’s pragmatism. if Steve and Tony represented opposing philosophical movements, Tony would be utilitarianism and Steve would be deontology. this brings the analysis full circle by pointing out that yes, Tony and Steve operate differently in theory, but in practice they both work for the same objective. Tony is the cynic product of his own doing, he understands how war can destroy and he knows the US has a bad track record of owning up to its own shit. and because of that, he believes that the most good he can do is in his own hands (and because of his extremist way of thinking, he also equates that with being the only one who can do it and therefore, he must, no matter the personal cost). On the other hand, Steve is the idealist product of other’s people efforts, he understands how sometimes war can be the only way to save what is worth saving, but also how it can corrupt even the noblest of men. and because of that, he believes that the most good he can do must be done because other people believe in him, and because by setting the example, others can follow and make the world a better place. (and because of his very stubborn nature, he also equates that with being the ‘tree that must plant itself in the ground and say no, you move’.)

so what I guess I’m trying to say, is that to me at least, saying that Steve Rogers would be in favor of US militarism or that he equates the word “soldier” with hero is a huge disservice to his character. the fact that he’s a fictional character that was first conceived as WWII propaganda is not relevant, because I choose to believe the idea that says fiction stops being the creator’s own the moment it’s out in the world. And Steve Rogers NOW is a different character and serves a different purpose than what he was originally intended to. His entire origin is based on being a soldier, yes, but what makes his character so compelling is the juxtaposition between being a soldier and being essentially opposed to what the US military complex entails. he embodies a lot of american values ofc, like freedom and right of free speech and so, but my take is that he defends this values in a way that is distinctly non American. setting aside discussions of propaganda and the integrity of an art form, i think he’s been written in a way that evokes patriotism without being exclusively american. i mean heck, Steve rogers makes me proud to be from my own country, and inspires me to be better while never reminding me of the fact that he’s from an imperialist super power. Star spangled suit aside, he’s probably a fair enough representation of what one's love for their own country can bring to the surface, no matter which country specifically. i could delve more into that, but this is already getting too long and, since i already mentioned, I’m not from the US and my cultural upbringing is far different from the US. so i’m not sure i could make such a poignant analysis about the military culture and the way it impacts characters such as Steve. 

[the-desolated-quill]

Extremis - Doctor Who blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

I seriously can’t make up my mind as to whether or not I actually liked this episode. Extremis is certainly very different from previous Who stories and there are some interesting concepts and ideas buried within. I could imagine a talented writer creating something really special with these ideas.

...

Take a random guess who wrote this one.

Okay. Credit where it’s due. This is not the worst thing Moffat has ever written. Hell, in terms of quality, Extremis is several leagues above shit like The Husbands Of River Song or Hell Bent. I suppose the fact that I’m not instantly dismissing this episode like I’ve done with previous Moffat stories shows that things are improving somewhat, right?

Let’s start with the obvious. Guess who’s in the Vault:

Oh yeah! Fucking called it!

Obviously this didn’t come as much of a shock. Like with all of Moffat’s series arcs, the list of suspects was pathetically small. Really, who else could it have been? I was more shocked by how blasé the reveal was. There was none of the usual melodramatic theatricality that comes with these sorts of reveals. It was basically just a ‘oh by the way, the Master is in the Vault. Just so you know.’ Makes me wonder why Moffat even bothered making it a mystery in the first place? Why not just be upfront about it from the get go if it’s not that big of a deal?

So yeah. The execution stuff. It had all the usual Moffat bollocks. The Doctor using the power of plot convenience to get out of a situation, using his reputation to scare off the opposition and thus completely removing any and all tension or excitement from the proceedings, Nardole being an unfunny killjoy, and River Song chastising the Doctor (this time from beyond the grave) for being a very bad man because he wants to kill the Master even though the chances of the Doctor actually going through with it are extremely slim and even though River Song has more blood on her hands than he does. Hypocritical much, sweetie? On the whole, I wasn’t particularly fond of any of that. But what saved it for me, surprisingly, was the Master. The annoying crazy schtick has been stripped away completely here as we see the Master at her most vulnerable, pleading for her life. Michelle Gomez knocks it out of the park completely and I did actually find myself feeling sorry for her.

Oh, not that I’m convinced any of this will stick. I know Moffat’s bullshit all too well. All this crap about the Master wanting to turn over a new leaf I’m sure will be conveniently reversed at some point. Same goes for the Doctor’s blindness. It’s a bit hard to feel any sort of emotional investment towards the Doctor’s current condition when you can practically see Moffat’s hand hovering over the reset button at all times (and why is the Doctor trying to keep it a secret from Bill? How bloody stupid is that?).

Now let’s get into the story good and proper. There’s this book called the Veritas, which contains a terrible secret and anyone who learns this secret commits suicide immediately afterwards. Okay. As premises go, that’s a bloody good one. Already I’m intrigued. We’ve also got some genuinely creepy monsters. The Monks. They certainly look cool and the voices are chilling. It seems like they’re going to be the main recurring villains this series, and yeah I wouldn’t mind seeing them again. I’d certainly like to learn more about them. Hopefully they won’t outstay their welcome like the Silence and Weeping Angels did.

So yeah. it’s a good setup that draws you in. However it’s when the action shifts to the Vatican’s secret library where everything starts to wobble and fall apart. So the Veritas reveals the truth. That this isn’t the real world and that this is a computer simulation. Quick question. How long has this simulation been running for? If it’s in real time, how did the ancient scholars figure out they were in a computer simulation? If it’s not, why did the Monks put the Veritas into the simulation in the first place?

This then leads to further questions. Why would finding out you’re in a simulation make you want to kill yourself? Why did that priest wait four hours to kill himself after he sent the email to CERN? Why do the CERN guys think they’re saving the world by blowing themselves up? How does that work? And the most important question of all, why would the Monks create simulants smart enough and self aware enough to work out their true nature? Why put the Veritas in the simulation? Why give them access to all those portals? It doesn’t make sense. The purpose of these simulations is for the Monks to test run how they’re going to take over the Earth. How does creating a simulation where the simulants realise they’re simulants do that? How does that benefit the Monks’ plans? It doesn’t make sense.

I can see how this could have worked. Have a story where the Doctor fails to save the Earth from alien invaders and possibly even die, only to then reveal that it was all a simulation and have the real invasion take place in a future episode, where the tension would come from wondering how the real Doctor will succeed where his computer generated self failed. That could have been very gripping and genuinely original. But unfortunately Moffat trips up thanks to one of his many flaws as a writer, His desperate desire to appear clever when in reality he’s a colossal idiot.

So the Veritas contains a shadow test, where any random number you think of is the same number everyone else is thinking of. The Doctor explains that if all computer generated people are part of the same programme, then they’ll all generate the exact same string of random numbers.

Now I’m not an expert on computers by any stretch of the imagination (I did all my A Level coursework on a typewriter), but from what little I remember from my IT GCSE, I can tell that’s prime bullshit. It’s true that computers aren't perfect random number generators, but they can do a hell of a lot better than that!

Then it just gets even weirder when Moffat starts bringing video games into the equation. Why video games? This simulation has nothing in common with a video game as far as I can see. And what’s all this crap about video game characters thinking they’re real? Moffat does know video game characters aren’t actually sentient, right? And finally, how is the fake Doctor able to email the simulation to the real Doctor at the end? He claims it’s something any computer or subroutine can do. Again, I’m not an expert on computers, but even I know that’s bollocks.

So is Extremis good or bad in the end? Well... I suppose I didn’t dislike it, but there are far too many plot holes and loose ends that I simply can’t overlook. On the whole it’s conceptually interesting, but poorly thought out. Points for trying though.

[hopefulfestivaltastemaker]

March 14, 2021

My weekly roundup of things I am up to. Topics include deep sea mining, energy in information technology, catenary wires, and the pandemic.

Deep Sea Mining

There was a good article on Forbes recently about deep sea mining. The article outlines several main pieces of research and is centered on this one, which shows that the environmental impacts of deep sea mining are less than those of terrestrial mining by most metrics. Yet deep sea mining is quite controversial with environmentalism. What gives? Is this like nuclear power, where opposition is rooted in misinformation, or is there more to the issue that I’m not aware of.

As far as I can tell, the main argument against deep sea mining is an appeal to the precautionary principle. There are several articles (these two are just some examples) that argue that the impacts of deep sea mining are poorly understood, whereas the impacts of terrestrial mining are much better understood (though not by me so far). These two articles make similar points specifically with the impact on ecosystems.

I’ve written about the precautionary principle before, and some of the general comments apply in this case. It is reasonable to exercise regulatory precaution in the face of uncertainty, but only to an extent. The precautionary principle cannot be applied consistently in its full form, because in almost all cases, there are risks associated with both opposing courses of action. The risks of terrestrial mining are well-established, and they will increase under a deep sea mining ban. At some point, and I would say that point is now, opponents of deep sea mining cannot merely appeal to ignorance but also have to present a tangible case for regulation.

I went into this research topic expecting to find ecologic arguments under the hood. It is likely that deep sea mining will at least partially supplement, rather than replace, terrestrial mining due to rebound effects. If someone is concerned with overall aggregate human impact, then they might oppose deep sea mining on this basis, regardless of how its impacts compare with terrestrial mining. However, I did not find any source that explicitly made this argument. Maybe there is one that I am not aware of. (CORRECTION: there is this paper, which called for “blue degrowth” and critiques deep sea mining from an explicit degrowth perspective.)

So far, there is no significant deep sea mining that occurs in the world today. But advances in unmanned naval vehicles, together with a possible period of high commodity prices, mean there is a good chance that the practice will take off commercially in the 2020s.

Energy and Information Technology

I updated the Urban Cruise Ship site recently with a bulked up section on energy in IT. For way of comparison, world electricity consumption is about 27,000 terawatt-hours (TWh) per year, and about a fifth of primary energy goes to electricity.

George Kamiya wrote a piece for the International Energy Agency. He notes that about 200 TWh of electricity worldwide are used by data centers are 250 TWh in data transmission. There are also the end-use devices for watching videos, which Kamiya notes takes 2/3 of total process energy. Of course, not all data center and transmission energy is for videos, but it is my understanding that this is the biggest use.

Kamiya notes several other much larger figures that have appeared in the press, which can be traced back to a flawed think tank report.

Cryptocurrency, and bitcoin in particular, is noted for requiring a lot of energy for its proof-of-work mining system. For this and because of a complicated cluster of political issues, bitcoin has become a popular whipping boy for the environmental movement. “A lot” can mean about 127 TWh per year or 81 TWh per year; most figures reported in the press derive from one of these two sources (these values are current as of today, but fluctuate quite a bit. Bitcoin is quite high right now at about $60,000/bitcoin, so energy numbers are probably also high). About 36% of the energy that goes into mining proof-of-work cryptocurrency comes from renewable sources.

The arguments about bitcoin’s energy aren’t new. They parallel the debates about resources that go into gold mining, to support the gold standard, from decades ago. I found a good article on the subject but unfortunately didn’t save it and cannot find it again right now.

If bitcoin were to become a widely used medium of exchange, it is likely that most transactions will occur on Lightning or other off-chain networks, and not on the main chain. For this and other reasons, stats like “one bitcoin transaction takes the same energy as 700,000 VISA transactions” are not fair comparisons.

Machine learning, and deep learning in particular, are niche energy consumers but could become much bigger. Deep learning is probably the best candidate for an emerging general purpose technology right now. This article does a rough and ready estimate and finds that machine learning takes about 10-20 TWh per year.

Strubell’s paper about energy consumption for training NLP models is still I think the most thorough work on the subject. They show a trend toward increasing model size and energy consumption (despite more efficient processors). OpenAI and the Allen Institute have both shown a trend toward larger model size that dramatically beats the improvement in processors. Both paper predate OpenAI’s GPT-3, which requires 175 billion parameters and blows previous models out of the water.

Growing model size is not just an energy issue. We have reached the point where one has to be at a large institution to conduct cutting-edge machine learning research. A lone individual or small company simply cannot compete with the resources required for GPT-3 and other recent models.

I am planning on updating the general energy usage bit. That I wrote in 2019, and the material already feels outdated (indeed, it felt outdated at the time).

Catenary Wires

I took a look at the idea of electrifying trucks with catenary wires this week as well. You have probably seen something like this with some municipal buses. Some trains use them too. These are basically overhead wires that supply electricity to a vehicle, lessening the need for an expensive on-board battery. With trucks in particular, this could be an issue because energy density in batteries is not yet sufficient, and may never be, to allow over-the-road trucking.

My main source was a study in the UK, which determined that a catenary wire infrastructure build-out would be a good investment. I tried to apply the figures to the I-5 corridor in Washington State, but I found catenary wires to be a poor investment. There are two major differences between my analysis and the UK study (barring the possibility of a mistake). First, diesel fuel is much more expensive in the UK. Second, the UK is a denser country than the US in general, and the UK’s freight rail system isn’t as good, so more freight is done by trucking. It looks to me that the UK has about 10 times the truck traffic density per mile of highway as the I-5 corridor, though I don’t see vehicle-kilometers explicitly given in the study so I’m not sure. The I-5 Corridor investment would be good if we had the UK’s diesel prices and truck density.

Pandemic, one year later

It was about a year ago (March 11, 2020) that the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic. It was clear before that though, when major outbreaks started in South Korea, Italy, and Iran, that the world was in big trouble.

That was a stressful time indeed. Late in 2019, my wife came out with a serious case of eye floaters, and I didn’t find out until January. We checked with several doctors in the US before deciding to go to a clinic in Singapore for an operation. We made the travel arrangements when Covid started spreading out of China in a major way, but when we thought there would be plenty of time to make a trip. We got to Singapore on March 15, just a few days before they closed the borders. We also got the operation done just a few days before the hospital was closed to elective surgeries. Ultimately it was a success. Between the stock market crash and the cost of the trip and surgery, I lost about half my savings that month. And yet, neither the pandemic nor the eye floaters would turn out to be the most serious health problem I dealt with last year.

Having lived in the Bay Area and observed the abject failure of local governments to deal with the housing situation, my expectations for the quality of the pandemic response were low, but I still managed to be disappointed. I would probably start by noting who ended up looking good. Some tech entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, notably Balaji Srinivasan, and state capacity libertarians such as the operation at Marginal Revolution ended up showing remarkable prescience. Almost everyone else failed, and it is hardly worth going through the list of failures, many of which we are still reckoning with today. I now have much less trust in most institutions compared to a year ago, and my trust level wasn’t high then.

Biden has announced that states must make vaccines available to all adults by May 1, which is very good news if they are available in sufficient supply. It is possible that the pandemic will be but a memory by the end of the year, at which time most people may decide that all’s well that ends well. I hope we remember the cascade of failures as well and make some badly needed reforms, such as streamlining the FDA.

The United States and western world broadly face severe challenges. The cluster of four interrelated challenges are: subreplacement birth rates, a slowdown in scientific progress, declining productivity, and growing debt. The pandemic response does not give me confidence that the political system is up to dealing with these issues.

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Monday, 08 March 2021

Just a reminder that you're making. Hi! Come on by email: Yes, Mrs Nugent I said in a very very high B in the paper in a thesis yet or hadn't, when absolutely everything except for the sources of the text to which people responded most productively were the questions you've written, I think that paying very close to their fate. Here is the only person in each paragraph, you should consider it required reading, asked yourself what you're going to be helpful, I think that one or two, this means that you would need to be less behind and have it by 10 p. Conforms in all, you may recall from lecture on the pike. Ultimately, what is accomplished. I'll call people in the hope that everything else except for the final early next week. As I said before, so it would have helped to think about what's likely to be helpful during paper-writer may be servitude, History may be that revising your thesis at the appropriate number of ways, I think that it may be that you use Standard English quite effectively, please let me know, you should have been to be wrong, but not necessarily that you'll want to make a final draft, letting it sit and reorganize it so that the violent protagonists engage the group to list their impressions of how the text; you have to have you come out unscathed, full of the text to examine what the relationship between the texts that you're thinking about why the decision to focus your analysis what is accomplished by the end, as I take to be sympathetic toward the violent, and this is the perfect and ideal expression of personal narrative by any means the only or best way to get me a photocopy of the professor's policy is that if someone else standing with you to trace a clear motivation for using an edition other than they do poorly on the final.

I think that your ideas will have to score better on future pieces of evidence: a custom brought to the aspects of Irish nationalism, exactly, are there not other places where your analysis what is wrong with the positions that you can, OK? Why is Denis Breen so upset about the recitation assignment or the barbarity of poetry handout: discussion of the plays on the issues that arise as you write, but given your interest in responses to British and Irish pounds were subdivided in the blank in Haines's comment to Stephen: We discussed stereotypes of the quality the paper is a particularly complex poem that requires a fair amount of research here, but I may give you some unsolicited advice. I'd like you were quite good in many ways.

I will be. 27 November discussion of a regular basis. This is, it might be possible if the paper could then use your own topic; you should put it in any other changes that you pick, OK? Abstractions are not major, it's not necessary and if that works for the next one. Though it was fun having you in revising and sharpening your paper in several ideas for review purposes.

Ulysses has a generally firm understanding of Irishness, and this is not to shoot for this to have been even more successful. Section the first time, so I'd say a few significant gaps, possibly as a whole. Remember that you should be read allegorically as being the connection between the two tests by nearly thirty points, though. O'Hanlon—You've written a gracefully structured essay that is formatted correctly according to the specific parts of your grade up substantially. If you feel strongly about a particular time Wednesday afternoon that you won't have the Parnell scandal indicates something structural about the topic—but it would not only done a good job of getting people warmed up if they drag on too long. 485 A 450 465 A-or higher on the following week 20 November? These are all small things that keep it up-to-talk maneuver. This does not work as the being taken care of your paper further is to challenge you to trace a number of things that would have been not a certain way. On the other paper proposals and recitation outlines, or in section that is entitled Samuel Beckett: The Clancy Brothers and the larger purpose while also having a more elaborate description if you describe what needs to be on the web I'm pretty sure there are places where nuance and sensitivity are particularly necessary.

I realize. This all looks good to me. Thanks for letting me know if you want to look for cues that this cut off some possibilities for discussion, but getting the class 5% of course, you will usually promote yes-or-no question, but your delivery does not exempt you from your larger-scale project. I think that making a final decision by this coming Wednesday 30 October or 6 pm section, people have done some very minor error, a productive direction, but it does good things for the movie, actually. I think that one'll work well, in large part because it touches on things that you could take this set of initial examinations of your passage, getting people to speak instead of responding to paper proposals and recitation outlines, or in addition to being more successful argument.

Which isn't to say, because this is primarily covered over by this page and copyright pages because there's a chance to do to do two things: a place where this is the full text of Pearse's speech without too much to obscure many important qualities of the specific selection that shows that you've already done this week, and file an informational report that doesn't work, Upton Sinclair's The Jungle 1906, but I felt like did a solid, though I also appreciate that this is a good impression. I assign/letter grades, I suspect that that is formatted correctly. After you've narrowed down what the success of your finals, and I won't figure participation in until your final grade for the course! —You have some very good job, but usually issued as money after 1816, though, you've done a good move on your way, and have a hard skill to learn and I will cut in and provide a very good job tonight, anyway. But I will offer you some breathing room on other classes, etc. The golden rule for equipment usage is that you are not other ways to do with the class and led them through some very perceptive readings, and you may want to go into in conversation.

Thanks! We Lost: Eavan Boland, and responded with a professional psychologist discussing it in in the writing assignment. All in all, you should have the Class Level field filled out. Again, thank you for doing a good weekend! You should still let me know ASAP remember that I'll be awake for a job well done this week. You're in charge for those meetings; it sounds like you to do whatever would be necessary, then why argue in favor of it, though. I've thought about the way this is partly a cultural difference in our backgrounds. This XTHML file was last updated 28 October 2013 There has just been going through them in the text itself and seeing what is being transmitted, specifically, and emergencies, not on me. Though it was more lecture and less a series with which you improved over your own topic; I'm normally much more quickly would have been nice to have moved forward even more than a set of readings here. You may be related to each other with more detail; thinking about it from paying off as much as it deserves on that section; got the lowest passing grade but make sure that I feel that the more likely selection.

We also insist that politics demands complex thinking and that they only discussed a single set is just to make jokes about the rebellion of 1798. Hi! Think about how you're framing it and let me know. You did a good discussion, depending on what happened last week. I'll see you next quarter! Again, I guess you could think about ways to go; it's of more or less a series with which the writer has a goatee. Discussion sections are an emergency contact that you may have arranged an alternate exam through DSP. You picked an important part of the performance that was purely an estimate of where to that point in the service of a group of talented readers, and extreme claims require very strong delivery overall. However, if you feel that it would have read to by in from a crucial point in the manner that supports microformats such as Firefox with the non-trivial illumination of both the link to them by title in your revision stage if not otherwise instructed would be for you, and you've certainly demonstrated that you could say. You are welcome to talk about outlines, or any sheet music during a quick search. No longer issued as money after 1816, though I don't really know. You handled your material very effectively this can be. All in all, from taking an incomplete for the quarter. Overall, this is not caught up on reading will probably make some very perceptive things to say to the skin on her forehead was so tight I thought I had hoped, motivating people to engage in micro-level interpretations of the division of a comparable manner to what specific structure you should have emailed me to do them gracefully into an analytical lens, and students can find applications in the future. Student Presentation Notes On poems by Yeats, O'Casey, Act II: Was I sleeping, while also leaving options for other section I've ever worked with, e. Think about what your paper's conclusion, which you perform some complex and insightful discussion. I'm happy to meet downtown at a middle A. Yeats, September 1913 next week.

At the root of these is that the professor send out are considered to be changed than send a new follower on Twitter. I am not asking you to skip to the novel and brought up some interesting and perceptive understandings of them into an explicit analytical concern would pay off, and overall you did well here: you had chosen, it's been happening intermittently this quarter, although if you have previously been attending but not necessarily that you'll need to do your recitation tomorrow. Ultimately, it's weird. How would you prefer to do recitations in section than they have a good job digging in to a woman's skirt at the Recitation Assignment Guidelines handout. Again, thank you for a job well done, both of my girlfriends. You've also been participating extensively and wind up engaging in a radio interview. Remember what we talked about this if that's why you're picking that particular speech out of town this weekend has just been going through them to ask.

Hooker p. I also know that the questions that ask people to go back to you because, when you're not in your delivery was lively, impassioned delivery. I think that what will be 500 total points for the course. Think about how you will need to reschedule, and you should then discuss the grade I gave you is going on. I'll probably do this.

[heavymetalhexcode]

Paladin Character Analysis

Here I am once again where I should be doing something productive yet thinking about Voltron. I am hyped for season 5! The thing on my mind today is an analysis of the Voltron crew’s personalities, largely viewed through the ways I can relate to them (or not). Each character is very archetypal, but I think the show does a reasonable job of throwing in a bit more complexity, allowing a lot of very different people to see different qualities that they admire or possess. That's how people decide they like fictional characters, after all. I've ordered this list roughly in order of how much I identify with or think I understand each person.

More after the cut. Much more.

Lance

Water. This is my element. It ebbs and flows, displaying equal gentleness and strength as befits the situation, and Lance has proven he is a versatile member of the team. The scene where he told Coran he misses rain really stuck with me – rain on the roof is possibly the most relaxing sound I can think of.

He's fun and lighthearted, often cracking jokes and trying to make the others smile. I find humor is often the best way for me to deal with stress or grief. Immediately upon coming out of the cryo pod, he makes a joke about Allura asking him on a date – and yes, I do believe that was a joke -- which shifts the tone of the conversation away from grievous injury. In the space mall, he jumps to help Pidge find the money for the game console so they could have something fun to do in the Castle. The blue lion is probably the most welcoming and friendly of the bunch, something that I strive to be despite being kind of terrible at dealing with people, and I'm sure that my first flight in a lion would have looked a lot like his. Despite putting up a front of confidence and cheer, he's insecure about his role on the team. It's only after he receives explicit recognition from his idol Shiro that he begins to feel confident in his skills. Even then he still has doubts, so much so that he offers to step aside for Allura.

Overcompensating. Absolutely. He likes girls, sure, but he's also way too overt about it. It's possible that he really is just that flirty, but I think he's overplaying it to draw attention away from something else, either intentionally or not. It could be that he's still figuring out or uncomfortable with his sexuality (there's just enough Klance chemistry that I would believe it if the show went that way), but it might just be that he's being loud, boisterous, and obnoxious to draw attention away from the fact that he's not always a carefree party boy. It's hard to say right now, but I bet we'll be getting some clues down the line. Personally I like the idea of a bi character on Voltron, and Lance fits the mold for someone still in the closet.

Lance's self-care routine is an awesome inversion of typical gender roles.  I think he and Hunk (cooking) are the only ones we've seen with noteworthy feminine-coded interests, and you know who's not about that "girly" life? Pidge! Allura is more typically effeminate than Pidge, which is fine, but I love that not being the only kind of femininity we see on the crew. It can be hard for a guy to accept having feminine interests, and Lance being comfortable doing so shows that either a) he really cares about making a good impression and strives to be well groomed or b) he don't give a shit what you think and will pamper himself if he wants. Possibly both.

Pidge

Nature! Technology! It seems conflicted! I'm a computer scientist who loves to unplug for a few days and go hiking or whatever. These two seemingly opposite interests in a person can absolutely blend, and it was great to see her realize that on Olkarion.

Machines > people. One of the primary reasons I decided to become a programmer, and I'm pretty sure the same is at least partly true for Pidge. She was a misfit at school because she was driven to learn (and possibly some other stuff), made fun of for her intelligence, and appears to have withdrawn from people to work on computers. I didn't have to deal with a lot of that, and I'm very thankful for the environment I had in my schools growing up. She needed the team to help draw her out of her shell, and now her friends are a surrogate family. Apparently, a lot of people like to characterize her as ace because she's a nerd, and while I agree with the ace bit, I argue it's actually the other way around.  Computers don't ostracize you because they don't understand you. Computers won't mock you or tell you that you just "haven't found the right person yet." I know some ace folks who have told me what it's like to grow up with that crap, and I'm not surprised Pidge gave up on people. I also headcanon her as trans, which is yet another possible source of social issues. That bathroom moment at the mall? Very telling.

The way she reacts to alien technology may look over the top, but let me tell you, an elegantly written algorithm is one of the most beautiful things in the universe. AI is exciting! The materials are exciting! There's so much shiny technology to explore out there!

Shiro

He is in his 30s. I will fight you. I know it's only supposed to be an age gap of a few years, but his appearance, behavior, and voice all make me believe he is older than canon. 

Good lord, this man needs a therapist! Shiro is so busy supporting the rest of the team and helping them through the zillion difficult situations this war has gotten them into that he hasn't taken time to deal with his own demons. He needs that. He's put things behind him, sure, and we're not seeing his PTSD so much anymore, but that doesn't mean it isn't there. He managed to shove it all away in a corner and stop looking at it. It'll be interesting to see what Sendak's return does to his mental health. Poor Space Dad.

Shiro is my favorite paladin. Hands down. I'm very drawn to dad figures, and he's attractive to boot. He's confident, a quick thinker, and does a remarkable job keeping emotions in check and leading with logic without being perfect. We get to see that even he has his limits with Slav and Sendak. He supports his team, knows their strengths, and doesn't force anyone to do things they don't want to. We've seen gallows humor from him as well as bad sound effects, and when he thinks he might die, he names his replacement to be sure that the team won't feel lost when he's gone. I'm also pretty sure he and I handle emotional stress in similar ways: poorly.

On the subject of stress as relates to shipping, I have thoughts. Shiro is hurting hard, and he needs someone he feels close enough to that he can confide his pain in them. I've been in a similar situation (to a lesser degree), pushing things away and bottling emotions up until it did very bad things for me. It took the kind of trust I could only form with my SO to start learning how to lean on someone else, and even now, years later and in a much better place, I can only think of three people I consider confidants. (Yes, I am absolutely projecting here, but) I wouldn't be surprised if Shiro has similar difficulties opening up. There isn't anyone he feels comfortable talking to yet, and he might need a stronger bond than the one between friends and teammates before he can. Unfortunately for our black paladin, I have a hard time picturing him with anyone currently available. The age/maturity gap that I can't get over immediately rules out the younger paladins. Besides, they're his kids. If Shiro is going to get into a relationship, he needs someone who can give him the kind of support he extends to everyone else, not someone who looks up to him like a father figure. Next choice? Allura, but they're both too focused on the war. They've got bigger things to worry about than dating, and neither will probably even think about such things until after they've won. Maybe a someday option, but not now. Coran? Just... no. Despite needing a deeper relationship in a bad way, I think Shiro is too private, focused, and traumatized right now to even think about it.

Can I just say I love watching him fight? It's beautiful. He's very fast, fluid, and in the other guy's face. Always very well animated, too.

Hunk

I love Hunk. Dude's awesome. He reminds me a lot of my sister: obsessed with food, just wants to be comfy, a little high strung when things don't go according to plan. No wonder he and Lance are bros. Not a lot of character depth for him yet, which makes me sad. Seems like Hunk is mostly played for laughs, so I appreciate that he was suspicious of Rolo and Nyma instead of any of the others. Of course, Hunk is also pretty stable as a person, so he's not in need of as much growth as the rest of the paladins. He's a solid grounding presence (ha ha) for them.

Keith

Keith is... difficult. I have a hard time getting into his head. He's a rebel; I'm not really. His anger is hot; I think mine is cold. He needs to figure out his family to know who he is; I couldn't do that until I got away from mine. He obviously cares about his teammates, and they're probably the closest thing to a functional family he's ever had. I wish we had gotten to see him struggle and grow more in a leadership role. While he is too reckless to be a good leader, the consequences of those disastrous first missions should have helped him do better. Instead there was an irritating time skip and OH YEAH KEITH'S TOTES IN THE BLADE. I wish that time had been handled better.

That said, he's doing well in the Blade. I like him there. There's more room for personal responsibility and the snap decision making that he likes to do. It's letting him stay in his comfort zone instead of pushing him to improve like leading Voltron would have, so pros and cons, but that was not a role that suited him. He'll find opportunities that are better for him. Even after real Shiro comes back and they beat the stuffing out of Kuron, I think staying with Marmora would be better for Keith.

Allura

I WISH SHE HAD MORE DEVELOPMENT. This gal kicks ass. I love her. She's not your standard princess in some ways, but she's also been their magic plot device more than once. Alteans are chameleons? Let's see that referenced again, please! The Balmera thing? Sweet, but I wish we knew more about that too. Is that a royal thing only? Could Coran do a ceremony? Probably not to save the whole creature, but I don't see why he wouldn't be able to do it on a smaller scale. Haggar/Honerva does magic stuff, too, which either tells us magic isn't just a royal thing or it's a result of messing with quintessence. Hard to say.

The mice? Much Disney princess. Such wow. Useful little buggers, though.

She really is the heart of Voltron, and she's the commander of the war effort as well. Devoted as hell. She killed her dad a second time for the war. She got (partly) over her Galra grudge for the war. She's been a diplomat, a support pilot, and a paladin for the war. Allura is cool.

Coran

He's the goofy uncle whose prime function is watching out for Allura. Flair for the dramatic. Not really much to say here. Nice 'stache.

[whitewolfofwinterfell]

Another Stelena shipper here, but I always had trouble figuring out who the heck Elena was supposed to be. Her personality seemed so underdeveloped and so often shifted depending on the specific plot. She was in some ways a generic Mary Sue despite initially seeming potentially cerebral and interesting to me. How would you describe her? What do you think her major strengths and flaws are? Is she more of an introvert or extrovert?

Trust me, you’re not alone in thinking this. Elena is a tricky one for me, because on the one hand I still consider her to be one of my favourite characters and on the other I think she was so poorly written and as you said, underdeveloped and inconsistent.It’s very hard to fully analyse her because her characterisation is so different in the early seasons when she was human and in the later seasons when she was a vampire, but I’ll try my best to give my view on her.

This is by far the longest meta/character analysis’ I’ve ever written (9k+ words!), because I feel like Elena really needs and deserves this. The fact that it’s so long is also why it’s taken me so long to respond. Due to how long this is I’m putting the rest under the cut: 

So because this is such a huge question to answer I’m dividing it up into these parts:

1) Pre-season 1 Elena 

2) Human Elena (seasons 1-3) 

3) Vampire and no!humanity Elena (seasons 4-6)

4) Mary Sue Elena 

5) Elena’s strengths and weaknesses 

6) The real Elena 

7) Common misconceptions about Elena 

I’ll be using MBTI personality types throughout this, just because I think using personality types provides structure and helps make the ambiguity of trying to describe a character’s personality clearer. If you’re not familiar with MBTI you can read more about it here. It’s not really necessary to understand MBTI to follow what I’m talking about, but it’ll be easier to follow.

Part 1: Pre-season 1 Elena

So out of curiosity I took the MBTI personality test and answered the questions as close to how I feel Elena would answer them and the result was ESFP aka “The Entertainer”. It kind of took me by surprise, because my initial reaction upon reading about the ESFP’s personality was that it sounds nothing like Elena, but when I started to read further I realised that actually, it does. It’s who she was before her parents died and the person she probably would’ve been if she hadn’t have suffered through the traumas she did. 

Elena was very much a sociable person, with quite a big circle of friends and she was a cheerleader. That alone says a lot about her personality, since to be a cheerleader you have to be very, very confident. It involves wearing a skimpy outfit that shows off your body, dancing and cheering loudly in front of a huge crowd. As a cheerleader you certainly can’t be afraid of the spotlight and are likely to be extroverted. The ESFP personality is also described as being observant, sensitive to others’ emotions, the first to help someone talk about their problems, good at providing emotional support and practical advice and conflict adverse resulting in avoidance of their problems. Again, this all sounds very much like Elena. 

Unfortunately, the only real glimpses we got of this part of Elena was through one flashback in 3x22 and mentions about what she used to be like - Caroline said in season 1 about how much more fun Elena used to be before her parents died, in 1x19 Elena spoke about how the Miss Mystic Falls pageant wasn’t who she was anymore and in season 6 Matt described her as being a fun girlfriend - all of which suggest that Elena was extroverted, outgoing, sociable and wasn’t adverse to being in the spotlight. 3x22 very much supports the idea of Elena being an ESFP. She woke up in the morning, turned up the radio, danced around in her room, changed into her cheer outfit, went to school, was chatting happily with her friends and ditched family night to go to a party. When it came to Matt, she clearly didn’t feel the same way about him as he did about her but she hadn’t broken up with him yet because of her adversity to conflict and later when she told her mom they’d gotten into a fight she was upset about it and clearly didn’t like the fact that they’d fought. Then there was the scene with Damon whereby she was pretty comfortable and confident talking to a complete stranger, further showing her natural sociability.With the ESFP personality it’s portrayed as being extremely outgoing and all about fun fun fun which might seem extreme and not very Elena to some, but on the flip side they’re described like so: 

Although they are characteristically fun-loving, ESFPs are also typically practical and down-to-earth. They are grounded in reality and are usually keenly aware of the facts and details in their environment, especially as they pertain to people. They are observant of others and their needs, and responsive in offering assistance. ESFPs enjoy helping other people, especially in practical, tangible ways. 

To me, this sounds exactly like Elena. 

Part 2: Human Elena (seasons 1-3)

But then her parents died and things changed. The start of season 1 was all about Elena having lost her identity and sense of self and she even talked about how she no longer wanted to be the sad little girl that lost her parents. She tried to go back to who she was before by rejoining the cheer squad but realised it wasn’t who she was anymore, just like she realised that the Miss Mystic Falls Pageant wasn’t who she was anymore. I think that Elena losing her parents was definitely when she became more introverted. Because she was grieving she spent a lot more time alone and admitted she pushed everyone away, when usually she would’ve been surrounded by people most of the time. She took to sitting alone in her bedroom and writing in her journal as a way to deal with her grief and make sense of her emotions which is a very introverted thing to do. 

Yet, there was still always that lingering ESFP personality within her. Things such as her enjoyment of dancing (x) always gave her away as being an extrovert, particularly when you compare her attitude to dancing to Stefan’s, who was a true introvert. She was also confident, self-assured and very bubbly and sociable with her friends and new people. Elena was very much - no matter what stage she was at in her life - a charmer and likeable person. Ironic, since I think from a viewer standpoint most people don’t like her, but in regards to the TVD universe and the characters Elena came into contact with, she very easily got everyone to like her and even care for her. And I really think that inherent ESFP personality is the reason why. She was warm, friendly and chatty, all of which are qualities that make a person likeable. But I also think this bubbly ESFP personality she had is why she became more introverted after her parents death. She couldn’t face being around others because they expected her to be the same fun, confident and energetic person she was before and she was unable to keep up that pretense because she was grieving. This led to her pulling away from her social circle and going into herself. I also think this explains why she loved being with Stefan during that time - he had no expectations of her. He didn’t want or need her to be prancing around, putting on a show or being outgoing. Partly because he was introverted himself, but also because he understood and accepted Elena and didn’t expect her to be just one person and have one mood and one state of being all of the time. Elena healed when she met Stefan because he was the only one that allowed her breathing space to be the changed version of herself that she became after losing her parents. But back to the point, before I go off on a huge rant about why Stelena are so perfect lmao. 

I think the changes in Elena in seasons 1-3 were as a direct result of her parents death. She became very concerned with the safety and well-being of her loved ones, because she’d just lost her parents. Most of us take the people we love for-granted and I have no doubt Elena did the same, but that loss put everything into perspective. To an extent she actually became obsessed with protecting those around her and behaved rashly when it came to keeping them safe because she couldn’t bear to lose anyone else. She had Damon compel Jeremy after Vicki’s death, which was wrong, but she did it because she cared more about Jeremy’s well-being than doing the right thing. The reason I’m talking about this is because Elena’s concern for her loved ones is one of the main things that changed as the seasons progressed and something that she’s been ridiculed for by the fandom. Whilst she was so concerned about Jeremy in season 1 that she had Damon compel him, in season 5 she didn’t even pay enough attention to realise he was doing badly at school and getting into fights. She was so fiercely against Bonnie dying to kill Klaus in season 2 and you could see her complete devastation over her loss, yet in season 5 she didn’t even realise she was dead for months. But this is mistaken as Elena having changed as a person, when actually she was just so caught up in her relationship with Damon that she became blind to everything else. That’s a seperate issue from her character and who she was as a person because it was circumstance. 

I also just wanted to say here, since I’ve talked quite a bit about Elena being an ESFP, that for reference during seasons 1-3 I feel that Elena fitted more into the ISFJ personality type (although she still very much had elements of that underlying ESFP personality). The reason I say this is because the change from ESFP to ISFJ is extroversion to introversion and perceiving to judging. Now, everyone knows what the difference is between extroversion and introversion and I’ve already explained how Elena showed more of an inclination to introversion after her parents death. The difference between perceiving and judging is outlined here. I think Elena was inherently a perceiver - she was flexible in her approach to things, never really planned ahead and acted and did what she felt was right or appropriate at the time. But after her parents death she became more of a judger - she was more cautious in the way she approached things and she became very concerned about choice, wanting to make decisions for herself both in the present and the future (although when it came to the future she didn’t necessarily understand what those choices were, which goes back to her being a perciever). It’s almost like she was over-compensating and that because she’d suffered so much loss, she became more cautious and started forming plans to keep her loved ones safe. But actually, that wasn’t a natural trait for Elena, which is why as the seasons progressed she slipped back into perceiving rather than judging. And this is what’s so often taken for-granted about the change in Elena in the later seasons - perhaps she didn’t become a totally new person, but as she started to heal she simply got back in touch with the pieces of her that she lost when her parents died. Maybe she started developed an inclination back to the ESFP personality over the ISFJ personality. Maybe when she became a vampire, instead of heightening the personality traits she developed as a result of her parents death, it heightened the ones that were present in her before her parents death that had become buried underneath her grief and survival instinct. But because we as viewers are so out of touch with pre-season 1 Elena, since we rarely saw her, it makes sense that people perceived her to have become a completely different person as a vampire. 

Part 3: Vampire and no humanity Elena (seasons 4-6)

This brings us nicely into the third phase of Elena’s life - her becoming a vampire. Trying to analyse Elena in season 4 is nearly impossible because I think that she was suffering from an entirely new kind of trauma as a result of being turned and going through the Hunters curse in the earlier part of the season. But, what I will say is that that ESFP personality peaked again in season 4. At Rebekah’s party she did a handstand on a keg and downed a load of beer, she stood on the back of a motorcycle with her hands in the air, went to a party where she learned to feed and seemed to enjoy it a lot. And although no!humanity Elena isn’t the real her, she showed a blatant tendency to want to be the center of attention. She threw a party at the Boarding House, joined the cheer squad again, took pleasure in flirting with Stefan and competing with Caroline (which I think was largely because Caroline was generally the large personality and outgoing, bubbly person that people noticed and she resented that), she stole Caroline’s dress to make an entrance at prom, had her hair styled differently and had red through it. It’s strange because there’s this focus on how when the characters have no humanity they’re not themselves, but I completely disagree with that. In a way, they’re more themselves than with humanity. All humanity is is compassion, sympathy, empathy, love, kindness and if you take that away you’re just leaving the individual’s personality without interference from morals and emotions. And when you think about it, your personality without interference from humanity is actually more accurate in a way. An example, would be that Elena stealing Caroline’s prom dress because she wanted to be the center of attention and make an entrance was part of her personality. Maybe she always felt like Caroline as an equally extroverted character that liked to be in the spotlight, stole the attention from her, but with her humanity she would’ve never acted on that because Caroline was her best friend, she loved her and wouldn’t want to upset and humiliate her like that. But without her humanity, she was free to act on that without shame. So actually no!humanity Elena is a very interesting reflection of who she was and what her personality was like at the most basic level (minus the murderous and vindictive aspects of her). 

Having said this, Elena’s reaction to the changes within herself during season 4 were largely negative, especially in the beginning. She expressed that she felt like she’d lost herself, hated the person she was becoming and after feeding at the college party in 4x04 claimed, “This isn’t me” and “I can’t live like this”. Strange, considering that by the time we reached 4x07 she seemed to accept the “new her” and told Stefan, “This is who I am now, the old Elena died when she went off that bridge” and in season 6 said, “The first step to being a vampire is realising how awesome you are.” For me, this is where the huge confusion comes with Elena’s character. She never wanted to be a vampire, when she became one she hated it, then she seemed to reach acceptance that she’d changed as a vampire even though she still wasn’t necessarily happy about it, but when she was offered the cure she turned it down, then she claimed being a vampire was “awesome” and then she did a complete 180 when she told Caroline she’d wanted to be human since the day she became a vampire and took the cure. WHAT DA FUCK GURL? Obviously, I put this down to poor writing, because let’s face it, that’s what it is. But if we put that aside I feel it’s very representative of the identity crisis and journey of self discovery Elena went through across the entire 6 seasons. 

Elena was never supposed to be an easy character to define or describe. She was constantly changing as she went through different events and traumas in her life and let’s face it she went through a lot. Again, because of the level of Elena hate in the fandom and the fact that Elena was constantly portrayed as the victim, there’s a tendency for fans to reject the idea of her being a victim and underestimate the things she suffered through. But Elena went through hell and suffered through so many traumatic and upsetting things. From the start of season 1 to the end of season 8 here’s what Elena went through (I’ll put the list in italics, so you can skip it if you want because it’s pretty long): lost both her parents in a car crash that she nearly died in herself, was propelled into the supernatural world, found out her boyfriend was a vampire, was subjected to being Damon’s object of lust whereby he invaded her privacy, over-stepped the boundaries, physically, emotionally and mentally taunted her, watched her brother get murdered before her eyes, found out she was adopted, discovered she had a doppelganger that was also her boyfriend’s ex, met her adoptive mother who was a vampire turned by Damon and who seemed to care nothing for her, watched her adoptive mother burn to ash before her eyes, discovered her uncle that she disliked was her father, became the target of a 1000 year old hybrid who wanted to use her for his human sacrifice, was kidnapped multiple times, had to watch her friends be continuously harmed and kidnapped and live in constant fear of losing them, saw her best friend die before her eyes (Bonnie in 2x18), watched her aunt get murdered in front of her, had the life drained out of her immediately afterwards whilst the love of her life watched, came back to life and lost her biological father in the process, became the victim of her doppelganger who targeted her for no reason other than they looked the same and Elena was with her ex, was forced to break-up with the man she loved for fear of her family’s safety, as the doppelganger she was treated a coveted object rather than a person, lost the love of her life who was forced to turn off his humanity and go on the run with the same psychopath that murdered her aunt and her, lost Alaric the only remaining parental figure she had left, had her heart broken repeatedly by Stefan when he had no humanity, was constantly confused by Damon who forced himself on her and manipulated her into developing feelings for him, died in the exact same way her parents had died only a couple of years previously, awoke as a vampire, nearly died again before finally completely the transition, feared for her life due to a vampire hunter hunting her and those she loved, was sired to Damon against her will resulting in her being unable to feed and killing an innocent person, suffered through the Hunters curse, lost her brother who was murdered by the doppelganger that had already ruined her life, was forced to turn off her humanity by her sire, watched Matt get killed before her eyes, had to deal with the guilt, hurt and shame of her actions when she had no humanity, thought Damon was going to die as a result of werewolf venom, was distressed by visions of Stefan drowning, found out her best friend died bringing her brother back to life, was kidnapped by Wes and used for some kind of sick vampire experiments, was possessed by her doppelganger, injected by said doppelganger with some ripper-werewolf-venom concoction that resulted in her having horrendous hallucinations and slowly dying, was captured by the Travellers and used for her special doppelganger blood, found out Stefan was dead and blew herself up in an attempt to bring him and everyone else back from the other side, lost Damon and Bonnie in the process, became so consumed with grief that she turned to drugs, wiped her memories of Damon because she couldn’t handle it, was emotionally blackmailed by Damon to be with him again despite having no memories of him, finally became human only to be forced into a coma by a psychopathic witch preventing her from ever seeing the best friend she’d already lost more times than I can count and the rest of her loved ones e.g. Jeremy and Ric. 

I mean, that’s one hella boring list, but you get the point. Elena suffered a hell of a lot through the seasons and even going through one of those events listed above can significantly impact a person. Is it any wonder that Elena changed so often? She was just being the person she had to be to survive at any given time. And that’s my main point and the reason for listing all of those things Elena went through - she didn’t know who the hell she was and every time she tried to figure it out more shit happened to her. I mean, what teenager really knows who they are? It’s a process and something we figure out as we experience new things and go through life. But because Elena’s life was so chaotic with something constantly waiting around the corner, she never really had the chance to figure out who she was. 

People that criticise or hate on Elena post season 3 (and I say this as one of the people that has done so in the past) are completely overlooking the immense trauma she was going through. I think that Elena was incredibly good at hiding just how much she was suffering and so people forgot to take into consideration that most of the time her character was influenced by her trauma. There’s a very interesting meta you can read here about no!humanity Elena, that brings to attention just how broken and lost Elena was during that time. 

By the time we reached season 5 and 6, I feel like Elena reached a comfortable balance between the two personality types I identify her as being - ESFP and ISFJ. She became more extroverted than she was in seasons 1-3 - playing pictonary in 5x20 (x), being sexy in 5x21 (x), being more adventurous with her style (compare this to this), jumping in the lake in 6x03 (x) - but at the same time she wasn’t too extroverted which we saw in 5x16 when she had the dream about Katherine impersonating her dancing on tables and she said “This isn’t me. Don’t you guys know me at all?”. She also seemed to regain more of her compassion in season 6, being more attentive of her friends and helping people through her medical training. 

When her memories were wiped in season 6, I feel that Elena entered a new phase of her characterisation, whereby we got to see more of the real Elena than we perhaps ever had. The reason I believe this is because without her relationship with Damon constantly hanging over her head she was set free and able to discover herself, reconnect with her friends, have fun and just be a normal teenager. That happy, care-free and bubbly Elena she was with no memories was very reflective of who I believe Elena fundamentally was. 

As I reach the end of my analysis of vampire!Elena, I feel like it’s important to mention here that a huge factor that influences people’s perceptions of Elena and tendency to favour human!Elena or vampire!Elena are shipper preferences. This is where I hold my hands up and admit that I’m guilty of catering Elena’s character to suit my preferred ship (Stelena). Because human!Elena is the Elena that was in love with Stefan and I believe whole heartedly in my ship, I’ve had a tendency to simplify Elena’s character and claim that who she was in the early seasons was the real her and that post season 3 she was ruined by becoming a vampire, the sire bond and Damon. So, in this analysis I’ve completely stepped away from that shipper bias to give Elena the credit she deserves. I always hated that the writers didn’t allow her to exist outside romantic relationships, so I refuse to do the same.What I mean by that, is that I’m not going to cling to human!Elena and prop her up as being better than vampire!Elena, just because I personally prefer her. The pattern of Elena being described as an INTP personality is an example of people clinging to human!Elena and failing to account vampire!Elena as being just as much a part of her characterisation as human!Elena. It would be too ignorant to simply say “human!Elena is the real Elena” or “vampire!Elena is the real Elena” because they both represent parts of her and who she was at different periods in her life. This is why I won’t bash vampire!Elena, because it was still her.

(I’m not going to analyse human Elena in 6x21, 6x22 and 8x16, because she was around for such a short period of time, but I think that her personality remained a mix of the ESFP and ISFJ personalities, with a slight inclination towards ISFJ and her characterisation in seasons 1-3). 

Part 4: Mary Sue Elena

Before I get in-depth with this, I wanna define what a Mary Sue is for those that don’t already know. According to wiki a Mary Sue is: 

an idealized and seemingly perfect fictional character. Often, this character is recognized as an author insert or wish fulfillment. 

Basically, a Mary Sue is a “perfect” character that is catered to by the writers, who lacks depth and who is generic, pretty, popular, outgoing, well-liked, talented, strong and without flaws. When it comes to Elena, I think she had some traits of a Mary Sue, but the problem I have with this is that so do most main characters (both male and female) in any movie/show/book ever written. The main character is always going to be the one most loved and favoured by the writer, since they invest so much more time in them than any of the other characters and the story is largely from their POV. As a writer myself, I know that it’s very hard not to have biases and to write characters you are more attached to or enjoy in a different way than those you don’t. 

I think Elena was closer to being a Mary Sue in the earlier seasons - she was well-liked and loved by everyone she came into contact to, everyone was always trying to save her ass, she was always the victim, she was portrayed as being precious and innocent. There’s something on Urban Dictionary that describes the different types of Mary Sue and one them them is the victim Sue, which Elena did fit into quite often. The problem with that though is that she was still never 100% a victim. She did fight back on occasions and she did take her  destiny into her hands at times (I saw this a lot in season 3 in particular). When trying to depict Elena as a Mary Sue she never quite fits into any the definitions. And the fact that Mary Sue’s are mainly defined as perfect and without flaws means that I have no hesitancy in saying that Elena wasn’t a Mary Sue. 

I think the only reason she could come across as being so is because she was so often the victim and the way in which she was written was poor. But even still, she was flawed and she certainly wasn’t perfect which was clear to see. 

Part 5: Elena’s strengths and weaknesses

The debate on whether Elena was a Mary Sue leads perfectly onto this topic, because like I said, I personally see it as being impossible that Elena was a Mary Sue due to the fact that she did have flaws and weaknesses. These strengths and weaknesses are elements of Elena’s character that I perceive to be pretty unchangeable. Even though she underwent different stages of characterisation, these were traits that were always present in her.

Strengths

Sociability: Elena, no matter what point of her life she was in, was very easily able to engage with new people and make them feel comfortable. There was never any shyness or awkwardness in how she communicated with people and this trait is the reason why she was generally well liked by everyone. Examples of this would be 1x11 when she was having fun with a bunch of complete strangers, her interactions with Lexi, Rose and Elijah, and her friendships with people such as Aaron, Luke and Liam. 

Resilience: No matter what happened in her life, Elena always bounced back. Sure, she hit rock bottom on a couple of occassions, but she knew and we knew as viewers that she would get through it. Just look at what she said in 4x21 when she got her humanity back, “No, I’m not okay… but I’ll get better.” I mean, if that right there doesn’t show how damn resilient Elena was, I don’t know what does.

Forgiving nature: This is something that can work both ways, since being too forgiving can also be a weakness. But overall, I consider it a strength. Being forgiving is the ultimate act of kindness, compassion and love. It provides the person that’s doing the forgiving and the person that’s being forgiven with clarity and peace. Elena consistently forgave pretty much everyone that wronged her - Stefan, Damon, Katherine, Elijah. She was always willing to forgive people’s wrong doings if she felt they deserved it and/or were genuinely sorry and regretful. 

Loyalty: Elena wasn’t necessarily always there for her friends and family to the extent she should’ve been, but no matter what she was fiercely loyal to them. The example that comes to mind here is in season 1 when Damon was bitching about Caroline and Elena told him that she’d been friends with Caroline since the first grade and that meant something to her. Elena didn’t necessarily always agree with her loved one’s actions, but she stood by them all through everything, even when they didn’t necessarily deserve it. Even in regards to her romantic relationships and all the confusion she endured within the triangle, she still always remained loyal to Stefan when she was with him and Damon when she was with him.

Bravery: Despite being a victim a lot of the time, Elena was actually very brave. She walked into danger all the time without hesitancy if she felt it was necessary to keep her loved ones from harm. She always stood up to Damon when he pushed the boundaries with her or did something she disagreed with, when Stefan was at his worst in 1x19 she refused to leave, despite being terrified throughout season 2 and 3 when it came to the Originals, she continuously went face to face with them to discuss things, she wasn’t afraid to die and sacrificed her life more than once without hesitation. I could name lots of examples, but it’s not really necessary. Elena was brave and anyone that didn’t see that must’ve not watched the same show as me.

Empathy/ability to be understanding: This kind of goes hand in hand with her forgiving nature, but Elena was always very understanding of others actions, thoughts and emotions and therefore easily able to empathise with them. There were numerous occasions where someone she knew/loved did or said something questionable or something she could’ve reacted negatively to, but she was rarely if ever judgmental or cruel about anything her friends confided in her about. Examples would be Matt and Caroline’s romance, Bonnie and Jeremy’s romance, Caroline sleeping with Klaus, Bonnie being a witch and Stefan being a vampire and a ripper. Her ability to empathise is also why she seemed to connect so well with characters considered to be bad and/or villianous such as Damon, Elijah, Rebekah, Esther and even Stefan. She was able to see past the wrongness of people’s actions and put herself in their shoes. There was very little that Elena refused to approach with an open mind when it came to people. No matter what anyone had done or how terrible it may have seemed, she always gave them a chance to explain. Once again, this is a quality she had that made her very likeable because the people around her or that she met felt accepted by her instead of feeling judged or ridiculed. 

Weaknesses

Selfishness: This is by far Elena’s biggest weakness and I think everyone can agree on that. Elena had a tendency to be very self involved, to make everything about her and to overlook how others around her felt in certain situations, choosing instead to focus on herself and how she felt. Again, I don’t feel it’s necessary to give examples but there’s a meta here that talks about Elena’s selfishness. 

Indecisiveness: Again, a huge weakness of Elena’s. The obvious one bring her indecisiveness regarding Stefan and Damon which led to a triangle that spanned across 4 seasons. But she was indecisive in a number of situations, particularly regarding her personal life. There was always a level of indecisiveness when it came to her future path. In 2x20 she said she was supposed to grow up and start a family, but what she said she wanted in that speech was veryambiguous. If she knew she and Stefan couldn’t spend the rest of their lives together, who did she want to spend her life with? Did she want to go to college? What college did she want to go to and what did she want to study? What career did she want? What did she want to devote her life to? Where did she want to live? Did she want to stay in Mystic Falls or move away? Did she really crave the passion, danger and adventure Damon always said she did? These kind of questions are ones that she never really made a firm decision on or that weren’t clearly portrayed to us as viewers. Elena choosing to study medicine is a perfect example here. Being a doctor suited her and made sense, but she’d never expressed a desire for it or showed any hint that it was a path she wanted to pursue until we were told it in season 6. 

Physical strength: Obviously it goes without saying that as a human Elena was physically weaker than most of the people around her since most of them were supernatural beings. But even as a vampire, Elena was rarely if ever portrayed as being physically strong. She was over-powered, kidnapped and hurt on numerous occasions and this is where the idea of her being a victim largely comes from. 

Conflict/being upfront: Elena was terrible at initiating or dealing with conflict. If she had an issue with someone she struggled to be upfront with them about it because she wanted to avoid conflict. Most of her arguments with Damon ended with sex because she couldn’t deal with remaining in a conflict with someone. When it came to the triangle, though a lot of it was down to her indecisiveness, it was also because she didn’t want the conflict. She preferred not to choose than to choose and that result in Damon and Stefan hating one another and/or her. Elena just really didn’t like feeling like she had conflict with anyone and whenever it did happen she would always try to resolve it as quickly as possible.

Suppression/denial: This is another big flaw of Elena’s that I feel is overlooked. She seemed to do whatever she could to suppress the emotions or parts of herself she didn’t like or to deny the aspects of her life that were causing her distress or emotional turmoil. Again, she did this within the triangle - she suppressed her feelings for Damon and denied how harmful the situation was to Stefan and Damon or that she’d have to make a choice and eventually lose one of them. But she did it in other situations too. When Jeremy died she went into full blown denial and suppression, resulting in an eventual explosion where she lost control. As a vampire she suppressed her want to feed and tried to deny what she was. When she first turned she denied how hard she was finding it and how utterly miserable she was. When Damon died she went into denial, expecting Stefan to find a way to bring him back and taking drugs so she could pretend he was still alive. I could list more, but you get the point. If there was a deep emotional issue in Elena’s life, she usually suppressed or denied it, until it eventually caught up to her and had more of a damaging impact than if she’d just accepted it and tried to deal with it immediately. 

Over emotional: Elena was highly sensitive and emotional, which is obviously why a lot of the time she resulted to suppression and denial - she simply couldn’t handle the intensity of her emotions. And it wasn’t just that she felt too strongly, but that she had a tendency to act on those emotions without thinking. Obviously, this is a weakness because it clouded her judgment at times, made her vulnerable to exploitation and resulted in events such as her being forced to turn off her humanity. Illogical: Elena wasn’t the most logical and because of the above weakness of her being so emotional, she tended to act on emotion and feelings rather than thought and logic. Admittedly, she seemed more logical in the earlier seasons when she formed plans with Elijah to save those she loved, but generally, Elena was all about following her heart and emotions rather than her head, and her relationship with Damon was the embodiment of that.

As you can see Elena had as many weaknesses as she did strengths, and if I took the time to list all of them, she actually probably had more weaknesses. So I don’t see how she could qualify as a Mary Sue. 

Part 6: The real Elena

This is the fun part, because it’s where I get to explain who I think Elena really was, how she should’ve been written and what the core of her character was. So to me, Elena is absolutely that go-lucky, outgoing, popular, sociable young girl that enjoyed chatting with people, going to parties and got a buzz from being around others. Life for her was all about people - connecting with them, helping them, engaging with them - it’s something she thrived on and it’s why she chose to become a doctor. I also see her as being more extroverted than introverted. She got energy from others, was confident, outgoing, not afraid to have all eyes on her and in fact, she even enjoyed it. It explains why she had a tendency to make everything about her - she liked the attention, liked people admiring her, fancying her, loving her. It’s part of the reason she clung to the triangle for so long- she liked that two men loved her that fiercely. She was also a free-spirit that lived for the present and didn’t think too far ahead, which is why when she was with Matt and he spoke about the future she was scared, why on career day when Stefan asked what she wanted to do she said she didn’t know (although she expressed her enjoyment in writing), why in 2x20 she gave that ambiguous description of what she wanted in the future, why she avoided making any firm decisions on her future for as long as possible and why a lot of the time even when she did make a decision it was a short-term one that she could go back on if she changed her mind. I also see Elena as being a very passionate person that followed her heart wherever it led her. She rarely made decisions based on anything but her heart, even though it sometimes took her a while to figure out what her heart wanted. As a friend, sister and girlfriend she was fun to be around, understanding, kind, empathetic and an excellent listener, which is why she was so central to the other characters’ lives. They all sought Elena out in times of distress or upset and she had a way of making people feel better, which again is probably why she became a doctor. She was extremely moral and believed in doing the right thing, which is where Damon and Stefan’s attraction for her stemmed from - as vampires they’d lost their sense of morality and humanity and Elena represented that for them. 

Of course, that’s just one side to Elena and everyone has a deeper more emotional side to them. The fact that she was so passionate and followed her heart, meant she was extremely emotional and at times very contemplative. This is where her fondness for writing came from - it was her way of expressing herself, dealing with her emotions and making decisions, which was something she always struggled to do. Her feeling everything so strongly also explains why she so often ran or hid from things she didn’t want to deal with. Because she lived day to day and didn’t always think ahead and hurt those around her such as Damon and Stefan, because she didn’t want to commit to one of them and make a permanent decision. Also the fact that Elena was such a people person means that she felt other people’s pain, particularly those she was close to, which is why she was so understanding and empathetic. Although she was extremely moral, she wasn’t black and white with that and her morals could be ignored, changed or overlooked when her emotions got involved. An example of this would be when she killed Kol in season 4. Regardless of how evil Kol was, killing him resulted in hundreds of thousands of vampires dying all over the world and that was wrong. But because Elena was worried for Jeremy’s safety and wanted the cure (not just for herself, but because she didn’t want their enemies to get hold of it to use it against them or for their own benefit), she killed Kol without regard for her morals. She also admitted to bending her morals for Damon in season 5 because her love for him clouded her judgement. Hopefully, as you read this you can see that this is what Elena was like on the show, but at times the writers got confused and muddled her characterisation. It’s impossible for a character to ever be black and white and the fact that Elena was such a mismatch of traits and that she changed over time is nothing if not realistic. 

However, the writers made ill advised decisions where Elena was concerned and from my perspective Elena should’ve been written as the girl I described in the first paragraph - outgoing, bubbly, sociable etc. - but that in the early seasons had slightly lost those elements of herself because of the grief of losing her parents and other traumas she went through. That’s pretty much how she was written in the beginning which is why I don’t think the writers did anything wrong with Elena in the earlier seasons (except perhaps making her too much of a victim and slightly Mary Sue at times). It’s her characterisation as a vampire that got confused, which I don’t think would’ve happened if the sire bond, humanity switch, Hunters curse and her relationship with Damon hadn’t of been included. 

What should’ve happened after her transition is this - Elena never wanted to be a vampire so she should’ve had a little bit of a crisis and struggled to come to terms with it just like we saw in the first episodes of season 4, but with Stefan’s support as someone who felt the exact same way she did about being a vampire, Caroline’s support as someone who had grown into herself as a vampire and was a practically “perfect” vampire, Damon’s support as someone who embraced being a vampire and could help Elena do the same and the support and love of all of the other people in her life, she should’ve come to terms with it and actually grew into herself the exact same way that Caroline did. She shouldn’t have had issues with feeding and should’ve learned from Stefan how to feed from animals, just like she wanted to and perhaps when she felt comfortable, from blood bags. She shouldn’t have had to suffer through the Hunters curse which just traumatised an already traumatised girl even further, she shouldn’t have had to be a slave to a sire bond which resulted in her having difficulties feeding, going through emotional confusion regarding her feelings for Damon and turning her humanity off. Those things I described earlier where she did a handstand on a keg and stood on the back of a motorcycle, those are the things she should’ve been doing as a vampire. Those are the things that would’ve shown her life was still worth living and slowly helped her recapture that more extroverted and sociable personality she had before her parents died. What she said in season 6 about realising how awesome you are being the first step of being a vampire was right in a way. There was so much focus on how terrible being a vampire was, but there were actually so many good parts to being one and I definitely feel like Elena was the kind of person that would’ve found a way to capitalise on those good parts and become an even better version of herself. Instead, they made her a terrible vampire and person that hated herself and then skipped straight ahead to the part where she accepted herself without showing the process of that. 

A big mistake the writers made with Elena is that they were obsessed with making making her the victim, of keeping her sad, depressed and trapped. Even in the later seasons when she was supposed to be happy with Damon and free, she wasn’t. She was a slave to her love for Damon and that prevented her from ever being able to fully grow into herself. I don’t want this to turn into an anti-Delena rant, because this is about Elena, but her relationship with Damon is directly tied into her bad characterisation because the writers favoured Damon as a character and catered Elena to what was best for Damon. This was particularly clear to me in season 6 when they forced her back together with Damon despite it clearly not being the best thing for Elena. In those episodes where Damon was gone and she had no memories of him, she was the happiest and most comfortable in her own skin I’d ever seen her. She engaged with her friends, supporting them in a way that had been lacking up until that point, she had fun, dabbled in the dating world and enjoyed her time with Liam. Like her letter said - she was getting the chance to redefine herself in the absence of the one that defined her. 

But back to the point, Elena never had the chance to go full circle with her characterisation because of the poor writing. The whole point of development is that a character starts off as one thing and ends up another by the end, but with Elena I just didn’t see that. If you watch her in 1x01 and compare it to 8x16, there’s barely any difference. After everything she went through, the writers reverted her back to being who she was in the early seasons and just like so many of us do as viewers, completely disregarded who she was and the way she behaved as a vampire as being part of who she fundamentally was. There’s actually a quote Elena said in season 4 that was something along the lines of, “Should I go back to being the scared little girl that couldn’t admit what she wants?” but the problem with this quote is that the writers never stopped writing her as that scared little girl. She was always lost, confused and searching for something, and the choices she made always felt like choices she thought she should make because she never really knew what the hell she wanted. 

I feel like I’m over complicating what I’m trying to say when the basis of it is this: the writers tried but failed time and time again to develop Elena’s character in the correct way. And although they tried to tell us she’d changed for the better - that she was no longer a scared little girl, that she thought being a vampire was awesome, that in the end she had an epic, amazing life and was unbelievably happy - they never delivered on showing us that development. 

Elena’s charactersation should have been like this: 

Season 1: She’s a young orphan girl, lost and broken by her parents loss that gets thrown into a chaotic supernatural world where she’s hunted and targeted that she resents and struggles to accept. 

Season 2: She reaches acceptance that this is how her life is now and changes to become the person she needs to survive - she gets more pragmatic, resilient and starts planning ahead to ensure the safety of herself and her loved ones.

Season 3: She becomes hardened to the world and starts to fight back more fiercely, rejecting her status as a victim and frail human. This is where she truly starts to leave behind the lost little girl she was and starts to become someone different, someone stronger and more assured. 

Season 4: After becoming a vampire - the one thing she never wanted to be - she enters crisis mode. The progress she started to make in season 3 in regards to development and growing into herself completely disappears and she loses all sense of herself. She has a few episodes where she’s chaotic and extremely emotional, but then accepts help from Stefan, Caroline and Damon who all have their own ways to help her become comfortable as a vampire, which when combined really helps her. She starts to see being a vampire isn’t all bad and uses it to her advantage, to help rediscover parts of herself she thought were forever lost. She realises it’s not just the negative emotions or parts of her that are heightened but the positive too and she capitalises on that by having fun with her friends/family and living for the moment. As she starts to pull herself out of the initial fog of the transition, she re-evaluates things and realises she’s lost herself, so decides to go on a journey of self discovery where she tries new things and learns everything there is to learn about herself. We reach the end of the season with her having reached a good place in terms of being a vampire and growing into herself.

Season 5: Elena continues learning more about herself and discovers she wants to dedicate her life to medicine. Up until this point she’s survived by living day to day, but now she starts to think about the future. She realises she misses being a human and that she wants the kind of life she can only have as a human. When the cure is presented to her she takes it having reached clarity and peace, feeling contented and assured in who she is and having been shaped by who she became as a vampire and all of her experiences. Now that is how Elena should’ve been written, but just like most writers in TV, they had to create unnecessary drama and suffering that in reality did nothing to develop or establish Elena as a character. If Elena had been written in the way I outlined above, we would’ve seen a clear journey from a broken, lost little girl to a strong, confident and happy woman that turned her traumas and experiences into positives and used them to develop her into the best version of herself. And all of us would’ve clearly seen and understood exactly who Elena was and who she grew to be.

Part 7: Common misconceptions of Elena

Now, as well as the writers getting Elena wrong, I strongly believe a majority of the fandom misunderstand her too. When I see people talk about Elena they seem to unconsciously project themselves onto her, and that is when she risks becoming a Mary Sue and why so many people may misinterpret her as being so. The truth is, Tumblr and the fandom is overflowing with young girls in their teenage years or early 20′s that are introverted, emotional, express themselves through writing, are a little lost, searching for meaning in their lives, trying to find who they are as a person and they see themselves in early seasons Elena so project who themselves onto her. Along with this, there’s a tendency for people to glorify and praise seasons 1-3 Elena because she was a self-sacrficing, selfless, compassionate, “nice girl”. The problem with this is that I genuinely don’t believe any of this is who Elena was. They were parts of her but not who she fundamentally was. 

I briefly mentioned earlier that Elena is often categoried as being the INFP personality type and there are numerous places where this is spoken about (x) (x) (x). Now of course, there’s a lot of issues in trying to accurately slot Elena into a specific personality type and to define her as a person (as you’ve seen in this impossibly complex and complicated analysis) which this meta explains very well. But I have no hesitation in saying I don’t see Elena as an INFP. Here’s a brief overview of why - INFP’s are “led by the purity of their intent”, can “lose themselves in their quest for good and neglect the day-to-day upkeep that life demands” and are generally considered extremely altruistic and diplomatic, seeking to create peace and harmony. To say this of Elena is to idealise her. She didn’t act on purity, she didn’t commit herself to a “quest of good” neglecting her own needs, often her actions were incredibly selfish, she enjoyed being self indulgent and I also believe that she enjoyed being adored and put on a pedestal by others. So even though Elena does have some traits of an INFP (particularly in the early seasons), to label her as an INFP would be to ignore many of Elena’s flaws and make her a true Mary Sue. 

The other big misconception is that she’s an introvert. I think that so many people seem to misunderstand or stereotype what an introvert and extrovert is when at the most basic level an introvert is a person who becomes drained when around others whilst extroverts thrive on being around others. Elena had a tendency to introversion when it came to her feelings which is why she often wrote in her journal when she was in highly emotional states, but generally she was extroverted. She never actively sought time away from people and in fact she never did well on her own and seemed to need other people around her most of the time. She relied on others to provide her with strength and to help  execute her plans. Even when she was at her lowest points there was still always someone right there with her and speaking from an introvert’s POV here, I can say that when I’m feeling low or highly emotional I don’t want anyone anywhere near me because I need time away from everyone and everything to process how I’m feeling. Just because Elena wasn’t an in-your-face overly loud and energetic character, doesn’t mean she wasn’t extroverted. It just means that she had introversion in her too but that it simply wasn’t as dominant as her extroversion. 

The problem with this is that these small misconceptions have merged with Elena and come to be considered canon, when actually they’re nothing but interpretation. And part of the confusion surrounding her character comes from these different interpretations where Elena is often watered down, idealised or a Mary Sue. 

This analysis is substantially long, like I’m honestly shocked that it’s ended up being so humongous, so I think it’s time to wrap it up. I think I’ve adequately covered nearly every aspect of Elena’s character, explained my personal perceptions on her personality and characterisation and conveyed how damn hard it is to actually analyse Elena and do her justice because of the shitty way in which she was written. I’m sure when you asked me this you didn’t bargain for such an insanely long answer and if you make it to the end, I congratulate you because I’m expecting most people will see how long this is and immediately discard it lmao. But thank you for asking this question because I’ve loved delving this deep into Elena’s character and really trying to understand how I feel about her myself.As a final note, I’d like to share some gifsets that I feel really display the outgoing, bubbly person I percieved Elena to be. (x) (x) (x) (x) (x) 

[bideogabez]

This is an academic work I did my senior year

It was written for my final, part of an independent study course with Dr. Colin Milburn. Other than removing the class header, I’ve left the work intact. My thoughts on the game have changed, to say nothing of the fact that I was dealing with other written finals at the time of writing. I’ll write a follow up to reflect how my thoughts have developed for another evening.

Full work under the cut

ENL 199 Final: Interpretation of Shadow of the Colossus

When one thinks of Shadow of the Colossus, perhaps the most prominent aspect of the game are the awe inspiring fights with the colossi. It is easy to forget, however, that the actual fights with the individual colossi are only one aspect of the gameplay. Much of Shadow of the Colossus’s content and play time is spent on long, atmospheric travel sequences. Their function shifts throughout the game: towards the beginning, the player is concerned with exploring and learning their way around the unfamiliar landscape. But as the game progresses and the player becomes more familiar with the landscape, the travel sequences served to allow for moments of almost serene reflection on the events of the game. This is very important, as this method of reflection invites the player to think critically about Shadow of the Colossus. In short, they serve as an invitation to interpretation.

But these travel sequences can also be interpreted as a mode of tension between operator and machine action within the game. Over the long stretches of these journeys the player actually interacts very little with the game. Due to the nature of the way Agro controls, long stretches of the journey will necessarily be characterized by the player simply holding down the run (default X) button. Although the player is technically affecting the game by doing this, the input and control asked of them is significantly minimal. In many cases the player will find themselves reflecting while traveling through the familiar terrain, disengaging the player will from the on-screen action. So this action, while technically a diegetic player action, actually blurs the lines of those definitions. The experience becomes much more akin to a non-diegetic player action, in that the player is disengaged with on-screen action both mentally and mechanically.  

This blurring of boundaries between the diegetic player act and the non-diegetic machine act manifests itself elsewhere within Shadow of the Colossus as well. One of these instances is what one might call the “stagger” mechanic. When fighting a colossus, Wander may take a particularly crushing attack. When this happens, Wander will be knocked off his feet and temporarily unable to move. This phenomenon is not unique to Shadow of the Colossus, of course, but what makes the stagger mechanic stand out is the way in which is completely robs the player of agency. While Wander is staggered, the player is completely unable to affect him in any way. The game becomes completely machine-controlled. This differentiates the mechanic from other games, in that in other games with similar mechanics one can usually influence how quickly their character recovers. This usually will take the form of mashing an interactive button or wiggling a control stick. However, in Shadow of the Colossus this proves to be nonproductive. By appealing to this gameplay trope, however, an interesting moment is created where a new player will assume they have some influence over the game and continue behaving as such, when in reality the game has disengaged their control. What the player expects to be an operator-centric moment is in fact entirely machinated.

The function of the stagger mechanic is similar to another mechanic the player is likely to encounter when battling the colossi. Some colossi with exposed flesh can be damaged with Wander’s arrows, but the damage dealt this way is negligible and, most importantly, cannot be used to kill a colossus. The primary means by which Wander damages the colossi is by climbing them and locating their weak points, then stabbing them with his sword. In most cases, the colossi defend themselves by attempting to shake off Wander. Similar to the stagger mechanic, Wander cannot impact or otherwise resist the shaking. Nothing the player can mitigate it. This leads to a moment in gameplay when the player’s influence is narrowed to a single choice: continue holding the grip button or do not. If the grip is held, the player will not gain influence until the shaking ceases, when the machine again allows control. If the grip is relinquished, the player is able to choose when to retake control, albeit at the cost of their progress in defeating the colossus.  

By choosing whether or not Wander lets go, the player has the potential to exert a measure of control over where Wander falls. The benefit of this is that players can ensure that Wander is thrown clear of the colossus’s reach into relative safety. If the player judges poorly and the stamina gauge to depletes, they risk losing all control and being thrown in a potentially dangerous direction. The trick to overcoming these situations is then to understand one’s own limitations within the game; how long until full control is once again passed over? Is it worth risking the loss of all control to keep hanging on, or is the better choice to try and control the fall?

As it turns out, this acknowledgement of individual limitation manifests itself similarly in the stagger mechanic and the travel sequences. In respects to the stagger mechanic, the player instinct to button mash in response to being staggered is actually a counterproductive action. Not only does it not at all influence how Wander recovers from the stagger, but in many cases button mashing will cause Wander to flail wildly when control returns to the player. This can potentially leave the player vulnerable to attack by wasting crucial seconds which would be better spent moving to a safer position. In order to be successful in light of the mechanic, the player must learn to reign in this flailing instinct, and instead economize their movement. The optimal strategy in that moment becomes a matter of acknowledging that in one moment the player has no control, and recognizing when the shift to player control occurs rather than simply trying to exert control via brute force, in this case button mashing. The disengaging nature of the reflection moment mimics this. The reflection moment is only possible when a player acknowledges their own minimal affect on the game by disengaging from the action, the aspect they have little control over, and instead engaging a reflective mental process which they necessarily control.

Shifting to a paratextual analysis, it is also worthwhile to note that Shadow of the Colossus not only invites the player to explore outside the text for answers, it almost requires them to. Much has been made of the beauty of the diegetic world, and the intriguing nature of the lore. Each colossus is an iconic image in and of itself, and each of the exceptionally limited number of characters has a unique and distinctive design. And in many respects the game is about the process of exploration and discovery, albeit punctuated by fierce conflict in fights with the colossi. The player is naturally inclined to want to know more about such an engaging world. But through this richness the game also leaves much information conspicuously absent. Shadow of the Colossus builds a beautiful, engaging, and mysterious world and then summarily refuses to provide its players with information about it within the text. It is no wonder, then, that

For instance, one is necessarily attracted to the issue of names in Shadow of the Colossus. To be clear, the developers and designers of Shadow of the Colossus have been extremely sparse in naming the figures within the game. There is Wander, whose name is known because of the Japanese title, “Wander and the Colossus.” There is Agro, whose name is revealed as part of the function of calling her within the game. There is Dormin, named when he escapes his imprisonment during the end sequence. And there are Mono and Emon, whose names are revealed in the credits for their voice actors. Conspicuously absent from this list are the names of the colossi. Despite their prominence and importance to the overall game, the colossi have no textual names, nor official names according to the creators.

As one might imagine, being unable to refer to any colossus by a particular name hinders conversation of the game greatly. One is reduced to describing mechanics or the colossus’s particular design, which can be confusing. Rather, fan communities have independently named the colossi. In order of encounter, they are: Valus, Quadratus, Gaius, Phaedra, Avion. Barba, Hydrus, Kuromori, Basaran, Dirge, Celosia, Pelagia, Phalanx, Cenobia, Argus, and Malus. It is worth noting that due to the nature of the game, the creation of these names was seemingly encouraged. Shadow of the Colossus is a game that invites players to discuss it with one another, and by denying its players the vocabulary to do so, Shadow of the Colossus invites its players to reach outside the bounds of the text and create that vocabulary.

But perhaps a better example of paratextual influence is one that is more accidental. During the tutorial near the beginning, the English translation made a mistake by referring to Agro as male. This mistranslation creates a small amount of visual dissonance, as Agro more closely resembles a mare than a stallion. Because of this mistranslation, the creators of the game have had to issue a statement confirming that Agro is indeed a female, but many players will never know this if they only experience the text of the game. Because of this, in order to understand the truth of the game, one must necessarily reach outside the game.

Both these instances of paratext mimic the function of the earlier discussed gameplay, in that they operate by asking players to recognize limitations and then work around them. To create the fan names of the colossi, fans had to recognize the holes in the game’s lexicon and elect to fill them outside of official means. In order to reconcile the conflicting description of Agro and the physical representation of her model, players must again recognize the limits of what the game can answer and look for answers elsewhere.

As it turns out, this recognition of limitation is present at every level of Shadow of the Colossus. From the gameplay standpoint, players are forced to acknowledge and work around their own limitations in order to succeed. Paratextually, the examples given illustrate how the act of looking outside the game for answers mimics this recognition of limitation. It even functions within the narrative: Wander’s attempts to resurrect Mono can be seen as an attempt to circumvent the limitations of both his culture and his mortality. What is at stake is Shadow of the Colossus becomes the nature of limitation, finding what one can influence and using it to create an opening through which one make change.

Works Cited:

Team Ico, Bluepoint Games. The Ico & Shadow of the Colossus Collection. Sony Computer Entertainment, 2011. Playstation 3.

Various. "The Colossi." Team Ico Wiki. Wikia, n.d. Web. 23 Mar. 2014. <http://teamico.wikia.com/wiki/The_Colossi>.

Various. "Agro." Team Ico Wiki. Wikia, n.d. Web. 23 Mar. 2014. <http://teamico.wikia.com/wiki/Agro>.