Profile Post: Movie Neoteotihuacan
Considering the nature of the internet, there were no shortages of blogs related to analyzing pop culture and generating fan theories. However, what was more difficult was sifting through all the humor blogs, fan theories, fan fiction (sadly) in order to find a blog that actually took this analysis seriously. Lucky for me, I was able to find an author going by (what I think is the pen) name of Neoteotihuacan. While relatively new, I definitely enjoyed what this author had to offer in the ways of analyzing Star Trek.
Being an avid Trekkie myself, I feel that I am more than qualified to judge his work both as a writer and in terms of his content, and I am at least mildly impressed in both cases. The easiest stylistic choice to talk about would be his target audience. He appears to be writing for a highly educated audience, as he does very little in the way of explaining his points, instead assuming that his readers are following him completely. In the particular blog post I am referring to, he attempts to find a cohesive method for analyzing the various timelines and time travel conundrums created by various entries into the Star Trek franchise. He outlines various “rules” that seem to govern time travel and the multiverse, but does so without going into detail with any of the rules. Instead, he assumes that his reader is already on the same page as him.
He continues his audience assumptions in regards to Star Trek as a whole. Several times, he not only references specific concepts in Star Trek, such as the Q Continuum or fluidic space, but he does so without ever stopping to explain what any of them are. While I myself was able to perfectly follow him, as I have seen and do in fact own every episode of every series of Star Trek ever made, anyone who was not a complete expert would have a hard time figuring out the importance of his references. For example, when listing the various multiverses that exist, he references a specific episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in which the character of Wharf is constantly and uncontrollably switching between universes and realities, ranging from ones in which he is married to various other crew members to ones where the evil Borg have taken over the universe. Needless to say, a lot happened. And yet the author does nothing to inform his reader of the events of the episode, instead just assuming everyone had seen it, remembered its name, and remembered all of the events of the episode.
In terms of voicing, the author maintains an academic tone throughout the post. This is done both through the vocabulary used as well as the various infographics used. The formatting of his paper was more akin to a research article in the science field despite its arts and humanities subject matter and topic. He uses lofty vocabulary and does not describe anything more than he would need to for an expert in the field. He is particularly fond of using the word “famously” to describe a specific event or some other aspect of Star Trek that an expert would be familiar with.
Overall, while his blog was for sure fun to read for myself, I would not recommend it to anyone other than the most hardcore of Trekkies, as an expansive knowledge of the franchise is required to fully appreciate the subtleties of his analysis as well of the merits of his arguements. And, despite my criticisms, his arguments and analysis of the Star Trek timelines holds up splendidly.
