Briar Bond 3/25 Blog Post 2, Shadow Selves

 I have been thinking about shadow selves ever since we talked about it in class a few weeks ago. I'm not sure why, but I've always had this misconception that shadow selves had to either wholeheartedly on the same side or diametrically opposed. I'm giving away my obsession with BBC here, but the best examples I could come up with were Arthur and Merlin from the show Merlin (who are often compared to two sides of the same coin) or The Doctor and The Master from Doctor Who (one of whom is the personification of protection and the other destruction). Either way, I had this idea that two characters had to exist on extreme opposite sides of a conflict to be considered shadow selves.

The way Van Nortwick defined it altered my perception a bit. He said that shadow selves are two character s that are opposed in some regard, but intrinsically have something in common. While the more extreme examples, like the two I mentioned before, are included here it broadened the scope of what I was looking for. I ended up exploring this more as I was picking a topic for the second essay. Suddenly I was looking for shadow selves in everything, picking apart old favorites to see if I could find anything new. This isn't exactly a huge revelation, but I think it is interesting how engaging with a new perspective can open up paths to explore many new ideas.

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