#at least pertaining to Whats Canon for star in my brain

[escapewiththestars]

ooc; gonna share some of the writing i got up to while being away. i mostly write a bunch of random scenes that happen in star’s verse when i feel like it (although whether they’re canon or not fluctuates). here’s just a quick little thing that takes place when sonic is presumed dead in forces, and jet’s feelings on it.

google drive link (easier to read usually) ao3 link

[monstersinthecosmos]

please make longform sheith posts on tumblr 😭😭😭 (if you so wish ofc)

hjaklgd I hung onto this ask because I was waiting for the right time to talk about Sheith and I got such an insightful comment on my fic Tonight the Stars Revolt! that I decided I wanted to talk a little meta about the thought process that goes into this fic and so here you are and it's time to utilize this invitation !!!!!!!!!!!!

The comment from DocYo5 as follows:

It feels like reality, the feelings and thoughts Keith has, fitting for someone who had to grow up without close relationships, with Shiro being closest to a family member before he left for Kerberos. Understandable that he's able to open up to him, because he trusts him and somehow understandable that they can have sex together without hard feelings... At least from Keith's point of view. We can only guess how Shiro feels about this, probably more than he lets out. For me it's surprising to have sex with someone repeatedly without considering to love him, to announce it as weird to like him when I think it's much more weird to fuck someone often without love, only to get release. In this fic I think it's possible that it stays that way. So I am curious what you will make of it. The way you put it it would make sense.

So!!!! This is exactly the dynamic that this fic is ABOUT, okay? And while some of this pertains to my fic specifically and the places their relationship goes behind the scenes of canon, I did build it off of canon, so a lot of this speaks to the way I’m reading them on the show.

Since the fic is Keith’s POV we’re spending more time with his interiority, naturally, but I’m going to get to Shiro in a second lol. But I think Keith is someone who really compartmentalizes his feelings. I think he, more than the others on the show, sort of has an ON and OFF switch in which he’s either a grumpy little shit or he’s simply dealing in facts. It’s SO rare to see him smile; I think he laughs, like, once? Even in the shitshow of S8 he can’t enjoy himself on their day off at the carnival.

Compartmentalizing can be a useful tool, especially given that the characters are at war, but it can be so harmful, as well. And Keith, unlike the others, tends to have sort of violent outburst from time to time and does lose his temper. I know the creators one time ascribed this to his being half Galra, which I think really opens a fucking can of worms when we talk about Keith’s emotional intelligence as well as being neurodivergent; it’s a popular fanon read that Keith is autistic, and there’s a lot of clues!, but I also have to ask like, how much of his Galra half is driving in his brain? And if his brain is only half human, that literally means he’s neurodivergent from a typical human.

I strayed from my point a little but I’m trying to say that Keith perhaps relies on anger a little too much, whether it’s genetic or not, and sometimes I think compartmentalizing looks like him being angry all the time because he won’t interact with any of his other feelings.

THE EXCEPTION TO THIS of course, is with Shiro! There are so many moments of him and Shiro where he’s vulnerable and soft in a way he doesn’t show to other characters! And I think it’s easy to overlook this when we watch with shipping goggles—of course we ARE SEEING IT because we’re shipping it lmao but it’s easy to forget that he doesn’t show this to anybody else.

So anyway I’ve been very intentional in this fic to try to write Keith as obsessively compartmentalizing and trying to keep a hold on all of his emotions and have control over the way other people perceive him. I’ve ranted & raved about this before but I read Keith as a person who makes himself deliberately unpleasant so that he can control when people come & go from his life, rather than ever trusting anyone or relying on them or having his feelings hurt when he inevitably gets abandoned again.

I often struggle in this fic with the line between showing and not telling because I am very aware that a lot of the text IS telling, but this is intentional! Keith obsesses over every feeling, every interaction with Shiro, he questions everything he says and does and worries about it for days! This is part of his anxiety around the whole situation and not knowing if he’s behaving correctly! He doesn’t want to compromise his relationship with Shiro, because it’s the ONLY meaningful relationship in his life AND Shiro is the ONLY person he has the stomach to trust, but on top of that he simply does not understand how he’s supposed to act. So every interaction between them is this huge puzzle for him to figure out and he’s stressed out as fuck!

And this fic is about him trying to compartmentalize all these human emotions and needs, like, his need to have sex, his need for companionship, maybe even his need for love? And he has the drive to want these things. (Does his growing and uncontrollable horniness have anything to do with same non-human half that dictates his temper? We shall see. 😏)  But how does he navigate “I am horny and want to get off” vs “I need the companionship of my best friend” alongside “having sex with someone is actually very intimate” and in the end "sexual intimacy makes me uncomfortable because in some ways this thing with Shiro is everything that I want, but if I admit that and lose it I will be destroyed” ?? How can these things coalesce for him???

The idea for this fic was me trying to subvert some tropes I was seeing all the time in Sheith fic and the main one is like, we have a habit of making them such soulmates and making it so seamless! WHICH IS FINE AND GOOD, I LOVE THOSE FICS TOO LOL, but I wanted to ask like, what if it was messy, what if they were just fucking? And I think part of me wanted to keep the illusion going for longer, when I was first planning the fic, and it wound up like growing a life of its own and taking me to a lot of places I didn’t intend to go. And I say that because, where we are right now in the story, I don’t think either of them are denial about their feelings, or withholding on purpose. I think Keith is compartmentalizing, and I tried to get at this a little bit when he has the conversation with Pidge about what love means. He loves Shiro, he already loved Shiro. He will love Shiro regardless, as a friend. And he’s also fucking Shiro. And he’s keeping these two things separate. And I don’t write it as if he’s pining and WANTS more (just yet) as much as he’s just found himself in a tricky emotional space and doesn’t know where his boundaries are.

The complication of the perhaps-alien-half dictating his libido trying to co-pilot with his very human half that is demisexual is a problem, too. Like he asks Pidge in Chapter 8: . “If you love someone as a friend, but you’re fucking them. When does it become, like. I don’t know. Romantic?”

He doesn’t know! We don’t know! Let’s keep going and see what happens lol.

SHIRO ON THE OTHER HAND.

What makes him such a great character (for me lol) is that like, he could so easily be such a 2D character and just, the fearless leader who is always chill and nice to everybody, and we DO get that to an extent, but they were generous in making him so multifaceted. He has PTSD. He struggles with his disability. He even loses his temper sometimes! When he gets back (as Kuron) he has a lil depression cave sesh in his bedroom in his PJs. Like he’s a very well rounded character and it makes him extremely realistic and human to me!

I don’t think it’s as fair to say that he compartmentalizes the way that Keith does, except what we can glean from his canon timeline. Meaning: He fights for the Kerberos mission despite his disability, he makes it up there only to be abducted, he survives the arena, he escapes to lead Voltron. And ALSO him being canonically queer; I think this starts getting into headcanon territory because I don’t think we get any clues in canon that they’re navigating homophobia in their universe, but we absolutely still see ableism and sexism. (Put a pin in the racism conversation as well when it comes to like, alien species and systems of oppression because there’s a lot to unpack and I’m trying to focus LOL.) So like, we do know that their world isn’t perfect, and Shiro is someone who had to work his ass off and fight for his rank and for his career. He’s someone who can put his feelings aside and focus on the task at hand, and we know this because he’s NOT perfect, he does occasionally lose his temper, and he has PTSD!

Basically, I think we have to assume he compartmentalizes to function, because he comes out of a year of INTENSE trauma to immediately lead a team, and lead them with kindness and patience, and the writing tells us that it’s not a matter of him being Perfect Cartoon Man, because he’s not a perfect person and he’s traumatized as fuck.

Because the fic is Keith’s POV I’ve tried to communicate this by Keith noticing that Shiro wears “masks”, or uses different voices. Sometimes it’s even about his clothes, like as they become more intimate and Keith starts seeing more of Shiro’s scars, and how Shiro is self-conscious about them. But it’s also moments like in Chapter 7 when Shiro is crying.

I feel that Keith and Shiro have some like sort of equal-opposite relationships to trauma and grief that balance each other in the end. Like, Keith lost his dad at a young age and had a horrific childhood, but that’s been his reality for most of his life and he’s learned how to carry it day-to-day.  Even though he’s a messier and more immature person, he’s used to shouldering it and it’s sort of baked into his personality at this point. But Shiro’s trauma is SO new. Shiro’s is a ton of shit ALL AT ONCE, vs. Keith’s 10+ years of grief and disappointment, and it’s so recent!  Even though Shiro is, on paper, a more mature and emotionally intelligent person, this is very new to him!

So Shiro in this fic also has some feelings he’s juggling, like, “I am touch starved and have physical needs” and “my mentee grew up kinda hot” and “I have to be very careful with him and his feelings”. He sees Keith for the mess that he is, and he’s patient, and he can wait for Keith, and take Keith’s lead.

I don’t feel that Shiro is pining necessarily, either—I think he’s a lot more grounded and realistic, and their encounters aren’t causing him the same level of anxiety because he can read Keith so clearly, even when Keith can’t read him back. But I think, he is pining a LITTLE lol. I think because he’s smart enough to know where this is heading, and he’s being patient, but he’d speed it along if it were up to him. They’re both so sensitive in different ways and I think they’re both so vulnerable to hurting each other’s feelings!!!! And Shiro is trying so so hard not to crush Keith like a little egg!!!!!!!!!!!

😊

Anyway !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you for coming to my lecture! I don’t say this often about my fics because it makes me squeamish but I LOVE this fic, it really is where I put all my Sheith love, and all the thoughtwork I do about them is FOR THIS FIC lol it’s my lovenote to them, I’m putting my whole Sheithussy into it ahskjgdlasd

[totalyspies]

I was tagged by @jumpthensfall​ who needs to stop apologizing for her cute answers. 

nickname(s): elle is a nickname that i gave myself for tumblr lol but my rel name is janelle

gender: female

height: im a 5'8″ cutieee

time: 8:11 pm

where i’m from: USA BABBYYY (not sure why im so proud cause america sucks but also we’re all patriotic soooooo)

hogwarts house: listen i don’t even know what a harry potter is, jk i do know what it is but never seen or read any of it

favorite show: OKAY SO RIGHT NOW IT’S GOOD GIRLS, IF YOU HAVE NOT WATCHED THAT SHOW GO WATCH IT RN

favorite animal: tigers cause the beauty omg, stop killing them please

favorite band/artist: TAYLOR FUCKING SWIFT LADIES but also loveeee lana del rey, sabrina carpenter, panic! at the disco and so many more!

song stuck in my head: my brain is switching between yntcd,,, supercut and negative nancy by adore delano IT’S A WILD TIME

last movie i saw: ALADDIN, that was the last one I saw in theaters at least

last thing i googled: i googled smirnoff red, white and berry cause i need it for my 4th of July party and it’s sold out at Walmart omg

other blogs: most of my sideblogs are dead now or pertain to rp but i help run newtaylornation so that’s one of my sidblogs!

do i get asks: i get some every once in a while but i’d love to get more cause i love talking with you guys

why this url?: because i’ve never really had a completely canon url and im an american queen cause i love the 4th of july even though ive had it for like a year now so it’s not just for the 4th

number of blankets: usually 2, i like for it to be cold and to snuggle up with blankets

followers: 0 (i dont wanna say)

following: 599, oooohh that bothers me i need to go follow one more

average amount of sleep: uhhhhh usually like 5-6 and a nap or two sometimes

lucky number: 7, idk why

what am i wearing?: im wearing jean shorts and a tank top with a bralette

dream job: being happy 

dream trips: i wanna go to paris, JE SUIS CALME

favorite food: salmon lol, i know it’s weird

instruments i play: none lol

eye color: hazel but more green than gold

hair color: dark brown

aesthetic: mermaids and pastels and disney princesses and all that but also moons and stars and dark things (basically the lover album and reputation)

languages i speak: english and i took 8 years of french but i don’t really think im fluent

most iconic song: any song written by Taylor Allison Swift

when i created this account: umm i believe sometime during 2013, ik now it was in may

best memory: any memory with my grandmother and cousin

best pun: i quite enjoyed my “Trailer Swift” pun

random fact: i just moved into a house with my bf and it’s been great omg living the dream

i tag @rainbowwithallofthecolours, @tsdyke, @taylorsbihair, @acousticsoitgoes, @reddeluxes and anyone else that wants to!

[tardisgirlepic]

Ch. 1: “World Enough and Time” Analysis Doctor Who S10.11: Important metaphors & Don’t Believe Everything You See

All links below go to my AO3 analyses.  For Tumblr, check out my Meta Archive.

Catching Up with Metaphors & Supporting Information

This is a really short chapter.  I want to get this out to give you, if you are inclined, a chance to either read or reread some chapters from my pre-Season 10 document, Fairytales and Romance in Doctor Who.  They lay out what is happening in this finale.

If you haven’t read my post analysis of TRODM, starting in Chapter 14 of Fairytales and Romance in Doctor Who, I suggest, if you have time, you read it to further shed light on what is happening.  I’ll translate “World Enough and Time” to show you how we saw this coming. However, the many details are in those chapters.

If you have read those chapters, it’s good to refresh memories.  It was for me.  There’s so much to think about in order to pull all these concepts together.  These chapters have a much more in-depth look at the supporting metaphors and information.  I’ll do my best to give you the most important points, in case you don’t have time to read those chapters.

If you only have time for 2 chapters from that document, you should read Chapter 15, which sets up most of the metaphors you’ll need and Chapter 17.  It examines “Heaven Sent,” which is very important to “World Enough and Time, and while it’s not a full analysis, it comes close. I’ll be heavily referencing that chapter.

Because I had to set up the foundation of the complicated meaning behind TRODM, it took quite a few chapters.  Here’s the really quick outline, in case you want to go back and see how the subtext has foreshadowed all of this. 

Sadly, since this was my first time doing a meta, I didn’t break out TRODM from my pre-Season 10 document Fairytales and Romance in Doctor Who.  For those of you who haven’t read it, I did a TRODM pre-airing analysis starting in Chapter 9.  The Post-airing analysis starts in Chapter 14. 

Post-airing analysis of TRODM:

Chapter 14:

·      Shows the major reveal in dialogue that the Doctor was battling himself, along with foreshadowing for it where I give examples that go all the way back to the 9th Doctor.  (Skip this for now if you haven’t read it.)

Chapter 15:

·      Talks about several metaphors, including Black Holes, Earth, Brains, the Eye of Harmony, and the Boat metaphor.  I also gave a quick look at the Library metaphor, which I’ve never fully posted because I never finished it.  However, I have talked about parts of it throughout Season 10.

Chapter 16:

·      Talks about Black Holes being metaphorical beasts.  We examined “The Beast Below” and the Star Whale metaphor, which is a type of Boat metaphor.  

·      There’s an important promise in the episode that I highlighted because this all was going to get really dark, which it has.  And it will get worse.  What we need to keep in mind is that there is a greater love behind all of this, which will heal everyone in the end, at least in many ways.  The Doctor is the Star Whale, so not everything may go back to the way it was before starting, at least not in the story, which I’ll explain.  However, it does mean people will wake up, and the Star Whale will no longer be tortured and enslaved.  We are seeing this play out with Bill (a face of the Doctor), and we’ll examine this more in a bit.

·      Gives examples of the Black Hole and the Eye of Harmony from “The Impossible Planet” & “The Satan Pit.”  Exploitation and slavery were themes.  They actually tie into a concept in TRODM.

·      Shows how Vikings, love, poison, and a curse are involved.

·      Compares “The Satan Pit” to TRODM

·      Talks about “Planet of the Ood” and slavery, along with what the Beast really is

·      Talks about why I believed we were headed for the coming apocalypse in an alternate universe.

Chapter 17:

·      Talks about how “Heaven Sent” is so much more than it appears.  The episode was already very complicated, so the details of what was really happening have to be left to subtext. I tie in many episodes in this chapter, and this chapter is the main one playing out right now in “World Enough and Time.”

·      Examines the prison, energy source (Mr. Razor in “World Enough and Time” mentions solar panels), building an army (which is where the plague comes in), the Door/Doughnut metaphor, how this connects to “The Unquiet Dead,” the invisible monster and “Vincent and the Doctor,” a quick look at the gender change, pods and the plague tying in multiple episodes, what pods and drawings tell us about the Library.

Chapter 18:

·      Talks about exploiting children, along with the significance of the age of 8, which comes up again in “World Enough and Time.”  Also, it talks about the Master’s madness and Rassilon’s part in this. This madness shows up in the Library, “The Empty Child,” as well as the 2-part story “Under the Lake” and “Before the Flood.”  Additionally, I examine why the Time Lord Academy was more than it appeared and how turning oneself human was a problem.

·      Shows how “A Town Called Mercy” and its minisode prequel are really important.  And I show how that also connects to “Face the Raven.”  I wanted to make that point in “The Eaters of Light” analysis, but I ran out of time.

·      Talks about how the Doctor’s Mother, the Legend of the Blue Box, and “A Town Called Mercy” are tied together.  I didn’t get to reiterate this point either in “The Eaters of Light” analysis.

·      Examines how we are turning back time and rescuing children.  I also talk about how much more pain and misery is in the subtext.  “World Enough and Time” is giving us a small taste in canon of what has been in the subtext for a long time.

·      Looks at how Danny Pink’s “heavenly” experience foreshadows the rescue and why the Doctor doesn’t need to regenerate.

Chapter 19:

·      Talks about the Doctor’s Mother and her rescue plan, along with what Rassilon and the Master wanted, Wilfred and the Doctor taking up arms.

·      Examines what it means when the Doctor shoots the general and what the subtext suggests about the War Doctor and Master.

·      Talks about what looking at the Eye of Harmony, the Black Hole, means and who Prisoner Zero is. We examined the Doctor’s potential blindness before TRODM aired.  We’ll take a look at it from another point of view in the “World Enough and Time” analysis.

·      Examines the Architect from “Time Heist” and relates it to the meaning of the poems in “The Beast Below.”  I also link this to the Doctor’s mother.  Here’s where I first talk about the Horse metaphor, as well as the Vault in relation to the Library.

TRODM is extremely important to the subtext story, even though it doesn’t look like it on the surface. 

I believe that Moffat and DW will make history with the reveal of what really has been happening to the Doctor in this upcoming last episode of Season 10 or the Christmas Special.

He’s pulling the rug out…

Things Are Not as They Appear & the Library Metaphor

It’s the standard mantra: don’t believe what you see.  There are several problems that show this, but here are a few:

They Are in the Library Metaphor

When we see the end of the ship close to the Black Hole metaphor, we get some important information.

In the image below, the Black Hole (red arrow) is on the right while the ship on the left has several important symbols.  This ship’s end is cylindrical, showing us a container circle encompassing various markings. There are 4 white lines around the outside of the center white circle, and I’ve marked one (white arrow).  These 4 represent the compass directions which pertain to the Library metaphor.  There are 8 darker lines, and I’ve marked one (yellow arrow).  This is a djinni symbol.  It’s a trap for djinn, symbolized with a container circle.  This is a prison ship.

Please note that when I took this image, the compass points had rotated.  The ship is spinning, which provides artificial gravity.

The Doctor on Ice

At the beginning of the episode, the Doctor (with OMG really long hair for him!) stumbles out of the TARDIS, falls to his knees, and starts to regenerate.  That he screams, “Nooooo!” is a big red flag.  In a bit, we’ll examine what this suggests.  Also, we’ll examine the OMG hair and how it supports the Samson & Delilah hypothesis, along with what additional information this all suggests.

The Ship’s Width Doesn’t Match

The ship is reaaaaallllly long.  Nardole gives us the dimensions, but there is a problem:

NARDOLE: Oh, it's a big one. Ship reads as four hundred miles long

[Tardis]

NARDOLE [OC]: And a hundred miles wide.

DOCTOR: It's big, even for a colony ship.

There is no way the width of the ship is ¼ of the length.  The width is tiny in comparison.

The Next Chapters

I’ve got a lot to cover, but here are a few things.  More insight on the Doctor’s OMG really long hair.  How the title fits in, the meaning of the Doctor using “Doctor Who” as his title, the Fish metaphor (finally!) and what they have to do with the Library metaphor and Hospitals.  The Master and lots of mirror explanations, tying in “Face the Raven,” “Heaven Sent,” “Hell Bent,” “Journey into Terror,” “Oxygen,” and much more.

Read next chapter ->

[robedisimo]

Alien: Covenant - Five things worth discussing [SPOILERS]

[Warning: spoilers for Alien:Covenant and appalling geekery follow. Go here for a spoiler-free review.]

The old Walter/David switcheroo

One of the points I made in my review pertained how Alien: Covenant tends  to anticipate – or at least acknowledge – its viewers’ questions and doubts as they watch the plot’s horrific events unfold. This is usually expressed through dialogue, but there’s one crucial instance in which facts speak louder than words, and I think it’s worth talking about in greater detail.

As soon as the camera cuts away an instant before David’s (presumed) demise at the hands of his technological “brother” Walter, trope-savvy audience members know what’s afoot: the lack of a confirmed death scene opens the way for a late-game reveal, which indeed is what we ultimately get as David turns out to have somehow survived his deadly encounter with his better-but-lesser doppelgänger and taken his place as the Covenant’s resident android.

The point is that Covenant could have ended – rather anti-climactically – with the first Xenomorph being killed by the crew with the cargo crane, the survivors returning to the ship, and David being unmasked as the credits started rolling, all in the span of five minutes. Instead, the film’s climax is lengthier and more articulated, with a second Xenomorph emerging within the ship and chasing the surviving crewmembers inside its bowels, David watching the scene through cameras while still under the pretense of being Walter.

Here you see how Covenant’s script is aware of the people watching the film. Another movie could’ve been content with only fooling the more naïve portion of its audience, while accepting the fact that more experienced moviegoers have already seen the plot twist coming. What this movie does, instead, is keep both sides guessing. Fassbender’s performance as the film’s final act unfolds is guarded and remarkably neutral: his expressions while watching the Xenomorph make its way through the ship could be either of apprehension or fascination, and his final reaction as things resolve could be either of disappointment or relief. Are watching David, somewhat sad to see his creature defeated? Or are we watching Walter, dealing with unexpected feelings as Waterston is shown to have survived the hordeal, David’s words about love seeding doubt in his synthetic mind?

It’s a really enjoyable feat of filmmaking, and it’s only accomplished by a combined effort of scripting, direction and acting. The fact that Covenant isn’t satisfied with having half its audience know the final twist beforehand, but rather takes active measures to keep perceptive viewers second-guessing their own intuitions, shows a kind of narrative sensibility that certainly was nowhere to be found in Prometheus.

It all comes, of course, on the heels of a potential plot hole: why did Walter spare David, and what was his ultimate fate? Was he somehow “converted” by David’s impassioned case for synthetic superiority, or did his final hesitation give David the chance to somehow gain the upper hand (pun semi-intended)? Did he actually die, or was he left to take David’s place on the Engineers’ decimated world? Those are all questions – and hopefully answers – for another instalment in the franchise.

David as an overarching villain

When Prometheus was first announced, it was reasonable to assume that Noomi Rapace’s Elizabeth Shaw would go on to be the new franchise’s leading character, carrying the new narrative on her shoulders the way Ellen Ripley did for the original Alien saga. Given the way that film ended, that impression grew even stronger; Covenant instead throws a curve ball at us, giving us a movie in which her character not only doesn’t drive the plot, but is actually revealed to have met a gruesome end between chapters.

The most immediate consequence of this choice is one I’m fully in favour of: the new Prometheus/Alien franchise has no Ripley of its own. And really, when you start thinking about it, why would you want one? Sigourney Weaver’s are some (literally) big shoes to fill, and any new heroine would have to live with that shadow constantly looming over her.

The same issue was faced by the 2013 Evil Dead remake-slash-reboot, which made the very smart decision of gender-switching its lead character and give her an altered backstory: that obviously obliterated the need to recast Ash Williams, a veritable minefield which would have left any young actor hypothetically chosen to fill the role facing an onslaught of unflattering comparisons to Bruce Campbell, likely dooming what eventually turned out to be an actually pretty decent update of the cult franchise.

So instead of casting a new saga-spanning heroine, the revamped Alien series has chosen to give us a new female protagonist each film while basing its narrative around an overarching male villain instead. David is at this point clearly intended to be this new story’s central antagonist, and Michael Fassbender to be its main big-name star. It may disappoint those rooting for the rise of a new culturally-iconic action diva, but let’s leave that to a younger franchise – one less likely to incite unwanted backlash by not living up to former glories.

Creator, creature, creator

Covenant’s midway section is arguably its least solid, but also its most intriguing by far: its revelation that David is the actual creator of the franchise’s titular alien shakes the whole saga from the foundations up, and is delivered in such chilling fashion that while watching in the theatre I couldn’t contain my admired disbelief at the film for taking such a bold narrative turn.

What compounds the scene – scenes, rather, as the whole extent of the reveal is explore over the course of two separate sequences – is the choice to portray David as not just the creature’s engineer, but also, more specifically, as its designer. His laboratory overflows with drawings echoing the iconic style of legendary concept artist H.R. Giger, ultimately fusing fact and fiction together to canonically acknowledge the Xenomorph as a product of deliberate aesthetic planning.

It’s a poetic tribute to the franchise’s visionary visual architect, and it carries with it a number of fascinating consequences. David, now free of his human creators and having in the interim become the destroyer of their makers in turn, elevates himself to the role of builder of new, carefully constructed life and thus potentially seals his fate as the future victim of his perfect nightmare child.

Like its predecessor, Covenant is rife with biblical – and biblical-adiacent – references, as David is evidently portrayed as a Lucifer analogue. Made in the image of his creator but perceiving himself as superior though bound to servitude, his rebellion – after which he is replaced by a second generation of lesser, more obedient creatures – ends in his creation of an army of demons to unleash upon humanity.

Here the mythology gets more complex, as it draws from different cultures and narratives – as explicitly evidenced by the Wagnerian reference to Norse folklore –: David’s human creators are not self-made gods, but are instead themselves the children of higher, older entities. The “Engineers”, like the Titans of Greek myth, hate and loathe the new generation of creators they begat and yet are ultimately destroyed not by them, but by their creation’s creation.

Ironically, David, who hates humanity, becomes the instrument of the death of the Old Gods – who hate humans as well – but at the same time carries on their work, inheriting their taste for perverse biological experimentation and ultimately continuing their “mission” in ways mankind never did, as it had chosen that alternate path which resulted in the creation of David himself.

So there’s also poetry in the fact that the half-animal, half-machine conundrum that is the Xenomorph turns out to be the brain-child of a synthetic lifeform. All in all, I feel as though with this film the franchise’s title gained a second, more obscure meaning: by getting to peer into David’s imagination through his Giger-esque design, we got to see how truly alien his mind is.

It turns out, at long last, that this most iconic of sci-fi monsters wasn’t a natural-occurring beast, but rather the nightmarish science project of an immortal Hannibal Lecter type. David’s treatment of Shaw’s corpse suggests that she wasn’t killed by a chest-bursting parasite, but rather subjected to autopsy or vivisection... and the fact that it’s hard to tell which of those options is the more likely in the face of David’s professed love for her says more about his character, I feel, than just about anything else. This is all the product of retcon, of course; but I don’t think this film series ever had a more compelling character to play with.

Amusingly, his “authorship” of the Xenomorph creature lends a new meaning to Weyland-Yutani’s efforts to gain possession of the alien species in the original saga. After all, as products of their product, they must certainly feel they have a right to call dibs.

What does this mean for the franchise?

That’s the question at this point, isn’t it? I can certainly see how we may still need a couple movies in order to loop back into the scenario we stumbled upon at the beginning of the original Alien. Ridley Scott tells us we’ll actually need four, which sounds a tad too much but could be interesting, provided there’s already a concept in place for a coherent story arc.

Of course the big problem is that Prometheus introduced a plot hole into the franchise, and Covenant has now blown it wide open. The “face chamber” in Prometheus featured an engraved image resembling the classic Xenomorph, contrasting with the “Deacon” seen emerging from an Engineer at the end of the film: that seemed to suggest that we were witnessing wasn’t the birth of a proto-Alien, but rather just a variation of it.

It was all pretty confusing – what wasn’t in that movie? –, but Covenant makes matters arguably worse with its implications concerning David and the Xenomorphs’ origins. As things are, there are probably only two or three possible scenarios: either David created the “classic model” Xenomorph – although it’s worth pointing out that the version seen in Covenant doesn’t yet display the overtly biomechanical features so prominent in the classic design – or he’s replicating something the Engineers had already achieved in ancient times.

The third option, less likely but perhaps more intriguing on a broader mythological scale, is that David is consciously modelling his creations after what he saw on the mural, and that that same image was the Engineers’ own mythical representation of their idea of a devil analogue. David may be actively working to turn the gods’ worst fears into reality; but that’s just me speculating.

Of course, if the answer turns out to be the most straightforward one – David being the actual creator of the Xenomorph as we know it – that spells absolute doom for the Alien vs. Predator shared universe, which far from being confined to the two mediocre films of the same name is actually alive and sprawling in comics and novels, one of them of very recent publication and dealing with the aftermath of the Prometheus scenario.

Plainly if the Xenomorphs are such a recent creation, the Predator race can’t possibly have regarded them as the ultimate prey for millennia. Ironically, while Covenant is on its own one of the best movies in the entire franchise, it may also very well end up becoming the most hated by a certain devoted subset of fans.

I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that

So this last one is admittedly just for Italian readers, but I trust the rest of you can get a kick out of it as well. For the entirety of Prometheus, the Italian dub cast addressed the David character with a correct standard-English pronunciation of his name. Day-vid; well, more or less. Nobody batted an eyelid, and everything rolled along just fine.

Then we get the first scene of Covenant, in which David “names” himself while looking at Michelangelo’s homonymous statue. The parallel is fairly obvious: over the course of the film we learn that David single-handedly laid waste to the Engineer homeworld, a classic “David vs. Goliath” scenario.

Now, that’s an entirely different matter for Italian speakers: the biblical character David isn’t Day-vid, it’s Duh-vid. So for the entirety of this second movie we got the Italian voice cast calling him that, instead. A small continuity hiccup, but no big deal.

This is where it gets funny, though. I remember wondering, back when Prometheus came out in theatres, whether the choice of “David” as the character’s name was supposed to be half-homage, half-parody: the human protagonist of 2001: A Space Odyssey is named David Bowman, and Michael Fassbender’s character here certainly shows some heavy parallels to his A.I. counterpart, HAL 9000.

The funny part? The Italian voice actor portraying HAL in the local dub of 2001 consistently addressed Bowman as Duh-vid. Let it be known that everything ultimately comes full circle through sheer power of nerdiness.