#i loooooove opportunities to ramble abt theseus

[gayford]

What's something you'd like to share about Theseus?

i'll use this as an opportunity to talk a bit about theseus's name! (for clarity, i will be using they/it interchangeably to refer to theseus.)

i imagined that aside of choosing a physical appearance of their own, another aspect of identity that would be an important choice to shifty would be a name.

they never really had their own identity, their name just being a shortened nickname of what ford classified their species as (and with an unintended negative connotation, as someone who is "shifty" is seen as sneaky and untrustworthy.)

within a canon sense, i imagined shifty would have first heard the name "theseus" from having ford read various stories to it when it was still quite young, the name having mulled in its mind during the years trapped in the bunker. (idea inspired by @weirdalfemme!)

in a meta sense, the name theseus was chosen for two main reasons. the first reason is a reference to the ship of theseus paradox, which is as follows to those unfamiliar:

The ship of Theseus, also known as Theseus' paradox, is a thought experiment that raises the question of whether an object that has had all of its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object.

as shifty is a creature with constantly changing dna, it poses a paradox within itself over how much of it is the same creature it was years, hours, or minutes ago.

the second aspect of theseus's name regards the actual greek mythos of theseus slaying the minotaur.

within the series, shifty has a very similar role to the minotaur: a beast that is part man, part human, locked away in an underground labyrinthine trap it cannot escape.

as theseus was the slayer of the minotaur within the greeek mythos, shifty taking the name would psychologically symbolize them "killing" their past identity. when it was younger, shifty had been treated more like a caged animal than a sentient being with human capabilities.

with taking the name "theseus," shifty no longer remains the creature who was trapped and helpless, and thus reclaims their identity as a fully realized, fully sentient being: having both the body of a monster and the mind of a man.