Enneagram and Encaustic – Page 14 – Screenwriting, Lyrics, Art, and Investigation

JONNY LEE MILLER’S HOLMES, FIVE

From the first moments of Episode One of Elementary, this Sherlock behaves like a Five. He’s much more serious and less fun than the archetypal Seven Holmes. His super-smartness also comes with a weariness because he must explain everything to the peons around him. (A Five hates to explain; a Seven loves it.) Also, his drug addiction is a result of emotional turmoil. His substance-usage is to forget his despair. The Seven Holmes partakes because it’s stimulating and fun.

We still have a Head Type Sherlock, but this is a darker version. There’s no twinkle in the eye with this Holmes. It’s a valid choice with interesting possibilities, but the showrunners need to stay on point. A Five isn’t going to lean close and sniff the rug, for instance. A Seven loves that kind of sensory input, but a Five would find another way to follow the clue. A Five wouldn’t invite hookers in. He would recoil from the need to touch and interact with a stranger. A Five can just shut that tap down, so to speak, and become celibate. A Seven is the Holmes who would explore all avenues, including sexual. I believe the show is playing with different parameters of Sherlock, but it slides back sometimes to the old portrayals.

By Season Two, this Sherlock is firmly established. His clothes, with the high-buttoned collar and bland styling, are very Five. He’s eccentric, but he likes an ordered world. Watson must live in his house so they can work at all hours. He’s more than disdainful of those who don’t understand, he’s actually pained. Everything borders on over-stimulating for him. It’s a complete and beautifully acted portrayal of a Holmes with a different Enneagram.

Among the Seaweed

The title came last.

This is a repurposed piece that had, once again, faded. Just spitballing, I added dried flowers and leaves to it, but nothing was working. It made me think of undersea life, though, and I went from there. It’s not my greatest fish piece (out of 2 so far, lol), but it was an important step and inspiration.

Season One Overview of The Last of Us

Wow. Season One is a grim line-up! It’s a dark world out there.

I’ve bolded the episode titles as I work through the Storytelling Enneagram.

When You’re Lost in the Darkness

ONE

This encompasses the first half of the episode, including all of pre-outbreak life. Within here Sarah dies and twenty years pass. We’re also introduced to post-outbreak life under a military government.

Establish Joel and Tess; establish Marlene and Ellie.

TWO

Joel meets Ellie. This Trouble moment looks all the way forward to the final episode. He’s tasked with delivering her to the Fireflies at the Two, and he succeeds at the Eight (although not in the way we expect).

When Ellie discovers the radio code in Joel’s apartment, we also begin to see their dynamics together. We get the hint that their dominating and crusty personalities might be double Eights, and we see which person is going to lead the other. Ellie outsmarts Joel right from the start.

Undersea

I’ve begun a new thematic interest, the undersea life. For me, this is a large piece, 10″ x 15″. I’ve made a new category and I hope to add more pieces as time goes by.

ELLIE WILLIAMS, EIGHT

Remember, Ellie is a leader. It’s something we’re told more than shown, until we look at her in comparison to Joel. The child leads the man.

Here’s an interesting thought: is Ellie an Eight? Usually I wouldn’t like two main characters sharing the same Enneagram number, but this might work. Ellie displays the positive traits of an Eight. Leadership, bravery, loyalty, and an awareness of how her actions impact greater society. Joel is the negative. He’s brave and loyal, but not in the same way. He’s the guy the mob boss can depend on to do the dirty work. Ellie and Joel are both the kind of people you need in a dystopia, but Ellie’s the one you want to keep around after society begins to rebuild. Joel’s the one you want following Ellie’s orders.

JOEL MILLER, EIGHT

Think back to the beginning, before the outbreak. Joel would probably be his truest self at that point. Even then he was socially disconnected. Sarah wants him to grab a birthday cake and he forgets. Later, certainly, he’s not socially comfortable. He ridicules Tommy for being a “joiner”. This is not a Heart Type.

He’s not a leader, either. That’s Tess. That’s Marlene and, we’re told by FEDRA, that’s Ellie. Joel is a follower. We can say, judging by the final episode, that he’s not a planner. When no one is in charge of him, he kills everyone in the building. He’s not strategic. (He would’ve kept the doctor alive if he had any sense of the post-apocalypse big picture.) We could even say that Sarah was the boss of him before she died. For Joel, he’s not just losing a daughter with Sarah (or with the threat to Ellie), he’s losing his purpose and identity.

This is a particular kind of Eight, the type society tries to keep busy in physical jobs. He’s a mastiff on a leash, if we’re lucky. In civilization, we want Joel to obey orders. In war, we let the dog slip.

Look for the Light

This is the finale for Season One of The Last of Us.

ONE

Someone is panting and running through the woods. A woman. She’s last-trimester pregnant, and she’s having contractions. Sounds of pursuit keep her moving. Ahead, a ramshackle farmhouse. When entering, she calls out, “It’s me,” so she knows this place.

Her water breaks. In what was once a child’s bedroom, she pushes a chair under the doorknob and squats against the wall. She’s in advanced labor now. From her pocket she takes a switchblade, ready just in case. Something attacks the outside of the door. An infected breaks in and scrambles at her, rushing right up to her face.

She stabs him and goes back to giving birth. A small human, delivered onto the floor, starts crying. As mother looks down at the baby, she notices the bite mark on her leg. She quickly cuts the cord and ties it off.

A very precious and unhappy newborn infant (a squirmble!) gets a close-up. Mama cradles it and says, “Ellie”. Roll credits.

When We Are In Need

This is my least favorite episode of The Last of Us. Let’s get through it together.

ONE

Silver Lake, CO. The depths of winter.

Inside a restaurant, people meet and listen to a man reading from the Bible. A teen girl weeps. A sign written on cloth hangs at the window: “When we are in need He shall provide.”

TWO

The preacher/leader (David) kneels next to the girl. (He speaks gently but he has a creepy vibe.) She asks, “When can we bury him?” David pauses, looking at another man (James) at the gathering, then says the ground is too cold for digging. In the spring.

Outside, people in parkas head home. Blowing snow and roof ice dams indicate a very cold place. (None of Jackson’s social cheer is here.) James and David discuss that their meat stores are down to a week. Deer were spotted in the forest. David challenges James, sensing doubt in him. No, he answers, it’s just been a hard six months.

THREE

Ellie examines Joel’s wound while he sleeps. He looks feverish. Wolfing down the last packet of jerky, Ellie leaves a piece on Joel’s blanket. She heads out with the rifle.

Summer Hiatus, not

Now is normally when I take a break from encaustic. However, this year my art cart is in a climate controlled environment. No need to compensate for wax that stays perpetually soft.

My postings of encaustic will still be light, though, because I’m working toward an illustrated book. No worries. I promise a few more random dead flower pieces this summer. You know I can’t resist them.

Left Behind

LEFTOVER NINE

While credits roll, the camera travels through a neighborhood of abandoned houses. Inside a garage is the horse, still wearing its tack. Cut to a frantic Ellie, ripping cloth for bandages and pressing on Joel’s wound. He lies on the basement floor gasping in pain. He tells her to leave, and she yells at him to shut up. “Go to Tom,” he says. After covering him with his coat, she gives him a long look and walks out. Fade to black.

ONE

Pearl Jam starts, over, and we fade in on a Walkman at Ellie’s waist while she runs laps in the school gym. Round and round the basketball floor the girls jog until some bully comes from behind and rips off Ellie’s headset. The bully taunts that Ellie’s friend, the one who fights for her, is no longer here. After a pause, Ellie throws a punch.

Cut to Ellie in the principal’s office. She has a black eye. Cpt. Kwong wears a FEDRA uniform. He’s gentle, mentioning that Ellie’s been in much more trouble over the past few weeks. The bully, Bethany, is in the infirmary with stitches. Kwong, who appears to like Ellie, lays out the two paths ahead for her. One, she becomes a drudge doing the worst jobs. Two, she becomes an officer and has an easier life. “There’s a leader in you,” he says.

Details of a room: a baseball on a window sill, dinosaur drawings, a paperback copy of “No Pun Intended”. Rain is heard while Ellie on her bed reads the comic book Sam loved in Episode 5, “Savage Starlight”. She tosses it aside and looks over at a bare corner of the room with an unoccupied bed. Lights out, and Ellie climbs under her covers.