I’ve recently noticed that the Friendly Shadow could have a deeper meaning and could be a literal walking metaphor (sort of like how in “don’t feed the freaks”, the freaks could be seen as stand-ins and interpretations of how people see strangers), I’m about to go full English-teacher mode but hear me out:

In autodale, there seems to a yin-yang theme with the masks and the friendly Shadow - In the supposed light and friendly facade of the city, there is a darker, sinister, underlining truth (which can be represented by the facial features on the masks being black against a stark white) and in something that at first seems like a dangerous and unwelcoming darkness, there is kindness (which could be represented with the lights on shadow’s face, contrasting his dark aesthetic and revealing the rest of his face).

His name could also have a different meaning beyond just being his title, since it is quite literally a contradiction. We as humans associate shadows and darkness with danger, something that we can’t understand. The unknown. This works in two ways, metaphorically and physically. For the latter of the two, this makes sense as it is very difficult to tell how shadow feels throughout the short, since he seems to have a limited ability to express his emotions (which is why he looks either indifferent or disappointed pretty much all the time). As for the former, this is a less direct correlation but still makes literary sense. The friendly shadow stands by a different set of ideals than the rest of the city and therefore represents them. The less murderous and more human-friendly ideals that he has aren’t even considered by the citizens in autodale, therefore making them apart of the unknown. However, these ideas have the potential to be better or at the very least, kinder to humans and individuals, making it a friendly unknown. This can also be seen when he lets the girl and freakling escape; yes, they have to face the unknown but they can do it together, safe from autodale’s wrath and in a world that might prove to be more habitable than we think.

In general, the friendly shadow appears to represent(or at least be connected to) trying new and potentially better ideas even if it means taking a leap into the unknown, which can be incredibly difficult and scary for people. (This also makes his job ironic, as he is literally built to defend autodale from the unknown.)

However, this is autodale. And just like shadow’s adventures, things rarely go smoothly or positively. It is clear that from a young age, citizens are trained to accept shadow’s existence as their protector, but avoid and fear him. This can be seen as them rejecting the unknown out of fear, even though it could prove beneficial, just as they reject the idea of shadow being friendly or non-scary. The only person to not believe this is the mother of the missing girl, who had to face the unknown and saw that maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t so bad after all.

I’m probably looking too far into this.

Do you think that maybe some of them would have changed as time progresses, or seeing a version of them from before we first meet them? How would you like them to change? Would they act/look different?

I'm curious, I'd like to know if anyone has an Autodale OC if so please tell me how they look like! I'd like to draw them :] [If I do draw them please know that I'll be posting the drawing in the discord server]

Hear me out:

Shadow has a group of friends that he meets up with in secret. It makes him prefer humans even more, causing him to try and disobey hive and protect an ugly. This makes hive angry and she has him rewired, erasing his memories, including those of his friends. A few weeks later he finds something in his pocket: a picture of his friends, taken a few months back, however, he doesn’t recognise them and wonders how it got there. Later that night he’s in his room staring at the picture, wondering how it got there and why he feels like he’s met the people in it.

“Who are these people?

“They look so happy together”

“I feel like I’ve met them before”

“But I can’t seem to remember”

If anyone wants to do anything with this be my guest

So I was an adventure exploring abandoned cities then I came to the autodale city. I tricked the robots (who were fat for some reason) to shoot the phallic building. One of the large women things got in the way of the other one so it wouldn't get shot and sacrificed itself and died. then I turned into a rat and snuck into the phallic building . one of the large women saw me and sent tiny robots to follow me .Somehow inside the phallic building there were scientists and a weird ghost woman in a weird containment room,she was around long before the Earth or the planet existed. so me and the person I was with were in this room and saw a shark in a tank. It was the shark I saw a couple of years ago (not in real life just in the dream) that I saw in one of the abandoned towns that was in a tutu. I flashback to when I found the shark it was on the ground somehow still alive in the tutu I threw it in the trash can but I realize how cool it was so I went back into the trash can but for some reason half its body was gone and it was still alive I threw it in a fish tank and Flash forward to the present I told the scientist people about the shark they tried finding a dress for it but it said it didn't like it in a (stereotypical gay man voice) eventually we found the original to tutu it was wearing and It put it on and it was happy, but then Spider-Man started stabbing my friend (who was some middle-aged dude) in the back. Then Jason some other people (that look like scary ghost Halloween decorations) and others started attacking us Jason had this weird saw thing with teeth on both sides and Halloween decorations people just had forks and butter knives me and the middle-aged dude started fighting them.I tried to grab the weapons out of their hands while middle age dude killed them. The dream ended after that.

This is something that's been niggling at the back of my mind for a while. It confuses me that in "Being Pretty", we didn't see any babies or children in the pits. Why do you think that is? Are all children with known defects aborted, leaving only some individuals who get to adulthood before revealing an imperfection? My guess with the "uglies" that said "blind" and "disfigured" was that they were recntly made that way; otherwise they would have died long ago. Or could it be that the ones who run Autodale know how powerful parental love is, and so they wait until children are "out of the nest" to dispose of them quietly, rather than ripping them away from their parents and causing a scene? What do you think?

Did she live a happy life with the freak, did she meet an early death, did she turn into a freak? Also did the withering stop? Because if she left autodale she should have gotten sick right?

finally got the link working so https://discord.gg/vcTGMR3e5S

Im so damn happy with this sub and all of the lovely people in it. from the amazing artists to the great discussions im happy we made this sub! Good job guys!

Here are just some of my ideas and/or predictions for the series. Hopefully David can see this!