#shadow madeline

Anonymous said:

personally my headcanon is that either a, the Bird is the Avatar of the Mountain, or b, there are two Birds and one is Part of Granny and one is the Avatar of the Mountain and the Granny one was just like, im gonna permanently cosplay the Avatar of the Mountain, and Granny was just like okay that works! (stopping time and giving other people superpowers seems a little overpowered for a Shadow but perfectly within the skillset of the avian avatar of an eldritch mountain god)

Huh, I never considered the angle of it being an avatar of the Mountain, but that makes a lot of sense. Madeline does only gain the ability to dash once the bird tells her how to. I always kind of assumed that the dash ability was just something that automatically happens to everyone once they get close enough to the Mountain and that point in the prologue was when she was close enough to activate the power, but it could have been the bird giving it to her, hm. (Though trying too hard to work the platforming mechanics into the story makes things pretty awkward. Is Madeline actually experiencing dying and respawning all those times? And if she is, then that means she’s going through a tough challenge, sure, but it also means that she’s in literally no danger because she cannot possibly die here.)

If the bird really is solely the avatar of the Mountain and not Granny’s Shadow at all, then that means that Granny just up and befriended the Mountain itself, which… yes, I can definitely see her doing that without a care in the world.

Anonymous said:

i like how ch9 revealed that maddy is trans, incidentally turning all the transitional cutscenes in the Summit into terrible visual puns (the sunrise colours used are specifically the trans flag colours)

It is really cool that they put in a couple of details suggesting Madeline is most likely trans!  (hello I’ve been kind of wanting an excuse to talk about this so I hope you don’t mind if I use this as one)

I say “most likely” because it still isn’t completely confirmed, unless the creators have made some kind of official statement on it that I’m unaware of. People have been saying Madeline is canonically trans, which is teeeeechnically not true, although I do understand the desire to jump on this and phrase it that way when there’s practically no canon trans characters anywhere in anything remotely mainstream. Outright confirmation in canon would be some kind of direct mention of it in the dialogue, but as it is, the details in her room still have some vague deniability to them. Although her being trans is definitely the more likely explanation for these details, it is possible Madeline just supports gay and trans people because everyone should and wants to show her support despite not necessarily being either, and it’s possible she just happened to have short hair when she was little even if she didn’t think she was a boy back then. (Honestly the photo clinches it for me more than the flag does because at that kind of age she probably wasn’t deciding her own hairstyle and her mom was probably just cutting her hair based on the gender she thought her child was.)

But it is still super, super cool that those details are there and very strongly indicating that she probably is trans even if the writers didn’t want to explicitly confirm it in the story (because after all that’s not really what the story is about anyway). With this, the creators have made it clear that they’re very happy with the idea of Madeline being trans and have given fans a solid reason to see her that way, which is a lot more than most characters ever get. Anyone can say she’s trans now and nobody is going to be able to turn around and argue “but there isn’t any reason to think that”, because yo there sure is. Not that headcanoning a character as anything is ever wrong even if there’s no evidence for it, that’s the point of headcanons, but it’s much nicer and more fun to be able to do that when there is evidence and it feels more likely to really be the “truth” about this character.

My own personal opinion on whether Madeline is trans is basically an “ehh, yeah, probably I guess?” but not quite coming fully down on one side, because in my personal view on the story, being most interested in Madeline in terms of her mental health issues and her Shadow and her emotional journey, this isn’t that relevant to it and so I’m not as invested in this part of her. (I totally understand why trans people would be very invested and excited about this and happy to be able to see that aspect of themselves in her, though!) Assuming Madeline is trans, it doesn’t seem to be too strongly connected to her issues, because if she wasn’t completely confident in her identity as a woman then her Shadow would probably have mentioned things that could be read as having to do with that, and people would have been able to theorise that she was trans way before chapter 9 all but said so. So I can only assume that Madeline must have figured it out when she was quite young and has been fully transitioned for a while. It certainly seems that her mom is completely supportive with it, calling her Madeline and very clearly loving her daughter for who she is, which probably helps Madeline a lot on that front. It could still be slightly connected to some things in her issues, though - I mentioned in my original big Celeste post that it seems Madeline has some level of trust issues, although the details are kept vague, so that could potentially have to do with people having found out that she’s trans and being really shitty about it.

(I do like to think, if Madeline is trans, that at some point over the apparently years she’s been friends with Theo by now, she’d have come to trust him enough to tell him about it. You know he’d be totally cool with it.)

Anonymous said:

if given the opportunity PoM would totally make wavedash dot powerpoint esque powerpoint presentations for maddy but on topics like “we might have a crush” or “cats: should we pet them more” or “maddy you forgot to take your meds today” or “should we buy milk” and madeline would find them absolutely hilarious

When most people praise the story of this game, they talk about how the narrative represents mental health issues and suggests a method of trying to deal with them. And don't get me wrong, I enjoy that aspect of it, too. I happen to suffer from depression and anxiety myself and can relate to Madeline and her struggles in at least some respects. But that's not the main reason I love this game's story - even if I wasn't mentally ill and couldn't personally relate, I think I'd still enjoy it almost exactly as much.

What I love the most about the story is specifically the writing of "Part of Madeline", who for ease of phrasing I'm going to call "Shadow Madeline" from here on. This isn't just a term stolen from Persona 4; it's actually a legitimate term from Jungian psychology which describes pretty much exactly what Shadow Madeline represents - the suppressed part of your psyche that you hate to acknowledge and hide from everyone, including yourself. I adore Persona 4 partly because of the characters' Shadows it features - I'm fascinated when a story takes a part of a character's psyche and makes it into a separate character, as it tells you so much about the original character in ways you'd never have seen otherwise. But Celeste goes above and beyond in terms of writing Shadow Madeline like absolutely 100% her own character and not just a part of her host's psyche, in ways that Persona 4, as much as I love it, only vaguely and occasionally hints at.

So what parts of Madeline does Shadow Madeline represent? A lot of people would probably say "Madeline's depression", but I don't think it's quite that simple. There's a large part of depression which is just feeling like crap for no good reason, the part that's caused by your brain chemistry not working right. This part of depression is mindless, unthinking, and is, in my interpretation, represented by the monsters in the Mirror Temple that also come from Madeline but have no sense of self and only want to hurt her for no reason. Meanwhile, the part of depression that the humanoid Shadow Madeline represents is the actual conscious negative thought patterns brought on by feeling like crap all the time. This part of Madeline would still exist in some form even if she wasn't depressed - her depression just makes her Shadow's thoughts worse.

On the surface, Madeline tries to hide this side of her, mostly blocking it out through sheer stubbornness. Even so, a number of the things she says subtly indicate that she has a very low opinion of herself: insisting she's not very photogenic (even though, when she's in the right mood for a selfie and not caught all deer-in-the-headlights, she totally is), wondering why she reminds Theo of his sister when his sister sounds so great (because obviously Madeline can't be that great, right?), wanting to help Mr. Oshiro because "maybe I can actually do something good for once", as if she never usually does anything good at all. Her Shadow is all of these subtly self-loathing thoughts brought right out into the open - "you aren't a mountain climber", "you can't handle this", "you deserve this". She takes Madeline trying to help Mr. Oshiro to feel like she's doing good for once and twists it around into "she only helps people to feed her twisted ego" - hardly; Madeline's self-esteem is so low that she doesn't have anything like an ego, but her Shadow latches onto the part where she's somewhat doing this for herself and blows it way out of proportion next to the part where she's genuinely just trying to help someone out. That said, Shadow Madeline's negativity isn't only directed at her other self, as she also tells Mr. Oshiro how much of a dump his hotel is, something you could tell Madeline was thinking throughout the chapter but chose not to voice out of kindness.

But it's not just negativity for negativity's sake - as Theo points out, Shadow Madeline is also something of a twisted defence mechanism. Madeline mentions how she "can't stop thinking about dumb crap that doesn't matter" - it's likely that a lot of these thoughts are about hurtful things that happened to her in the past. Most of them probably don't matter at all in the present, but her Shadow can't stop fixating on them anyway because it still hurt and she doesn't want anything like that to happen to herself again. There's implications that Madeline might have been hurt or betrayed by people in her past, even though she doesn't go into details: "I was probably always messed up. It just took something hurtful to bring it out"; that strange person on the phone in her dream who says they haven't spoken to Madeline in months and why would they start now. Shadow Madeline also implies this in chapter 7 when she says "you put too much energy into bad people who will just end up hurting you", implying Madeline has some level of trust issues, and that this is partly why Shadow Madeline wanted her to get out of Oshiro's hotel as soon as possible - so that she wouldn't get hurt. And of course, her "you aren't a mountain climber" isn't just her dragging her other self down; it's also the Shadow trying to protect her other self because she might get hurt on the climb.

Because when it comes down to it, climbing a huge mountain that's apparently trying to kill you at every turn (especially when you have very low self-esteem and a history of panic attacks) is scary. Interacting with new people you don't know when you've been hurt by people in the past is scary. Since this fear is part of Madeline, but a part that she once again hides from the surface through her sheer stubbornness, that means it's a part of her Shadow too. Shadow Madeline is actually just really goddamn scared of everything that Madeline is dragging both of them through. And what's so great about the writing in this game is that, even though Shadow Madeline is only a manifestation of a part of Madeline's psyche, she's still written like her own character enough to have her own defence mechanisms and ways of trying to hide and run away from this fear.

Think about it: with how much she appears to enjoy criticising Madeline on the surface, you'd think that Shadow Madeline would have started doing so from the moment she burst out of the mirror in chapter 2. But no - the first thing she does is run away. I love this detail and think it's so, so important. She must have been overwhelmed at suddenly having a physical body separate from her other self, able to think all these awful, negative terrifying thoughts for herself without them being drowned out and shot down by Madeline's surface stubbornness and rational reasoning. She runs away because she doesn't know how to deal with it and doesn't want her other self to see her in this state.

It's a little while before Madeline catches up to her. Shadow Madeline must have spent that time convincing herself that no, her being scared is just logical, and climbing this mountain is obviously a stupid idea that'll never succeed, and now she needs to do the sensible thing and convince her reckless, unreasonable other self to give up and go home so that she won't get the both of them hurt. Look at her, she's being helpful. Not small and scared and useless. Madeline asks her Shadow "Are you the weak Part of Me?", and she's right - Shadow Madeline is the weaker part of Madeline. But the Shadow can't admit that and lies to both her other self and to herself by claiming that she's the pragmatic part.

This is just one of many occasions where Shadow Madeline keeps insisting that obviously Madeline needs her around - "Where would you be without me?" "You owe me one. Add it to the list." "All I do is babysit you and you hate me for it." Because Madeline does indeed hate this part of her and want to be rid of her. She's specifically climbing Celeste Mountain in the hope that reaching the summit will change her in such a way that she'll be able to leave this hated part of her in the past. So it's no wonder Shadow Madeline is so desperate to act like Madeline needs her - because she's terrified of being left behind. Again, I just love how Shadow Madeline is written as absolutely her own character: the fear of being abandoned like this doesn't make any sense as something from Madeline's psyche that she's representing, but it makes perfect sense from the perspective of Shadow Madeline as her own individual who's made out of these parts of Madeline, and the fact that the game's creator actually thought about her to this extent while writing her is so impressive.

Another interesting thing to note is that, when Madeline asks her Shadow why she looks so creepy, Shadow Madeline seems uncomfortable with her appearance. Now, based on how the old lady talks about it, it doesn't seem in the Mountain's nature to make things come across as creepier than they really are. All it does is reflect the truth. So the only thing that makes sense to me as to why Shadow Madeline looks this way is because her appearance is reflecting how Madeline views that part of herself - as bad and monstrous and something she should be afraid of. It's no wonder Shadow Madeline dislikes her own appearance, then, since it implies that she really is that way and Madeline is right to want her gone. Not to mention that Madeline spends almost all of their conversations not even engaging with her arguments in favour of constantly telling her to shut up and leave her alone, which has to make Shadow Madeline feel even more unwanted - at one point she tells her other self, "Stop trying to make me feel like a monster."

(This is also why it really bothers me that a lot of people have settled on using the creators' placeholder name of "Badeline" to refer to Shadow Madeline. She's not inherently bad, and it would make her so upset to know that people called her that! The only thing that makes sense to me for why the creators use that name is that they coined it early on in development when she was merely a game mechanic, before they'd decided what she represented as a character. Don't call her Badeline. You don't want to make her sad, do you?)

But what's scariest to Shadow Madeline about the fact that Madeline wants to leave her behind is the thought that perhaps she's right to want this. After all, despite her insistence that she's helpful and pragmatic and Madeline needs her around, Shadow Madeline knows full well that she's actually just uselessly scared and pointlessly negative and doesn't really have anything good to offer her. Another reason she repeatedly tells Madeline "You aren't a mountain climber" is because, well - what if she is? What if Madeline actually does have the strength to climb this mountain? That'd mean she's so much stronger than her Shadow - strong enough not to need something so weak and useless at all. In getting as far up the mountain as she has and refusing to give up despite everything her Shadow tries, Madeline's been proving that maybe she really is that strong - and her Shadow desperately can't let that be true. This gives yet another layer to all of her criticism of Madeline throughout their encounters - one one level she's voicing Madeline's inner self-loathing thoughts because she is those thoughts, but on another she's trying to insist that Madeline is weak and pathetic because she can't deal with the possibility that maybe she actually isn't. Recall how I mentioned earlier that Madeline likely has trust issues and her Shadow got her away from Mr. Oshiro because she was afraid he might hurt her. As Shadow Madeline tells Oshiro "She never cared about you", her expression is desperate and angry rather than her usual smug grin. Because Madeline did care about Mr. Oshiro on some level, and the fact that she could do so despite her trust issues is a sign of strength - strength her Shadow hates that she has.

When Madeline confronts her Shadow at the beginning of chapter 6, saying that the Shadow is only the weak part of her and that she doesn't need her any more, it's everything Shadow Madeline was afraid of. The only thing she can do to stop her worst fears being realised is to furiously try and prove that no, Madeline isn't that strong at all - "You are not above me." Even though she hated being considered monstrous, here she embraces the creepy powers the Mountain has given her as the only way to prove that she's "stronger" than Madeline, because she'd still rather be a monster that Madeline's forced to keep around than be left behind. Her "You're going to think about a feather to stop me?" when Madeline uses the breathing trick sounds like she's mocking the idea, but really she hates the idea that all it takes is something so simple to give Madeline the strength to fight back, as if Madeline actually had all of that strength herself in the first place.

Fortunately for both parts of Madeline, it's literally impossible to actually get rid of your Shadow like that, because you can't remove something that's a part of you. If Madeline had "succeeded" in leaving her Shadow behind, all she'd actually have done would be to repress her really hard, locking her up in a tiny corner of her mind and refusing to listen to her. Which is not a healthy solution and pretty much the exact problem Madeline had in the first place. All she actually needed to do was realise that her Shadow is acting the way she does because she's lost and scared - and then try and help her through that. Because yes, Madeline is stronger than her Shadow, but that's a good thing; it means she can give her Shadow the emotional support she needs.

This applies to everyone, not just Madeline. Your Shadow is the part of you that you suppress from the surface, so it's essentially all of you except for whatever surface personality you have and defence mechanisms you use to cope with your problems and get through the day anyway. It's you, but weaker. So the next time you find some negative thought about yourself cross your mind, think of it as coming from that weaker part of you that doesn't have any other way of dealing with whatever crap you're going through. But you do. Your Shadow is probably just lost and scared and in need of a hug from someone stronger than them who understands what they're going through but has some idea of how to deal with it. And that's you. Go give your Shadow a metaphorical hug like the literal one Madeline gave hers. They'll appreciate it.