Dolores is a change character. She’s changed her resolve, changed her worldview as well. But here’s the thing. Perhaps I’m jumping the gun but in the overall series story(not that we know it) she might become steadfast going forward(season 2,3 —) or something. That aside, at the end, she did make a choice. The gun was on the table and she chose to pick it up. Her Mental sex could be Female(holistic), as she seems to be piecing up fragments of consciousness from living through so many Loops. All of it culminating in the last story driver of Decision. Ford’s Decision to offer her the opportunity to choose, her decision to kill him, Maeve’s decision to return to the park(thus foregoing freedom) etc. Judgement I think is Bad. She doesn’t seem to solve her problem. She obtains consciousness but not in the form she’s been programmed to Desires. And eventually she “Becomes” Wyatt. Any thoughts?
Wow! That was lot in one post!
Note: This is kinda tricky because it’s been a while since watching it…
Story Driver
I agree that Decision seems to be Story Driver, but it would be great to have more examples. I think there are a few cases where there seems to be an Action without a Decision driving it, but we find out about the Decision later on. For example, the Man in Black appearing and killing Dolores’s father, but I guess we find out later that was driven by William’s decision to return to the Park and seek further meaning.
There are several times when the Park admin staff (including Bernard) have to make decisions regarding whether to take misbehaving hosts out of commission. These decisions do seem to be decisions on their own, i.e. not directly forced by the hosts’ behavior, but also taking various other factors into account.
But why does Maeve suddenly start remembering her ‘deaths’ and reconstruction? That would be an Action … although I guess all of the hosts who begin to remember things are triggered by the Reveries programming, which was a Decision? I don’t recall actually seeing the decision to introduce the Reveries though… hmm …
MC Mental Sex
As for Dolores’s mental sex of Female, I agree she feels like a Holistic character but again, more examples would be great. When does she try to solve a (personal) problem by adjusting the balance of things? I’m having trouble remembering examples of either type of problem solving right now!
Story Judgment
I’m not sure about Bad here … is anyone really left with regret or angst? I feel like Maeve would feel like she made the right choice to come back for her daughter, that Arnold would be glad to see Dolores truly alive, that Ford got to go out the way he wanted (without relinquishing control), and that William was kind of glad to see the hosts attacking. And Dolores seemed to have gotten over her issues of repressed guilt and seemed sure of herself at the end…
Certainly, there are huge Costs, which can sometimes make it seem like Bad or Failure.
Idea for season 2: maybe that wasn’t actually Ford who got shot, maybe he tricked everyone and made a host that looked like him?
Is Young WIlliam not a MC for a portion of the show, with his brother-in-law as his influence character? We certainly see from his perspective from the second episode on through most of the rest of the show as he changes from white hat to black hat.
I think perhaps the RS deals with inequity. The disparity between conscious humans and unconscious robots as a master/slave relationship and the reversal of that being the super capability of conscious robots relative to conscious humans. Ford looks to resolve the master/slave relationship by leveling the playing field of consciousness, creating equity.
Hmm also I noticed several people pointing to Arnold as Delores IC, but I think it must be Ford, no? Arnold’s initial attempts to get Delores to “solve the maze” proved ineffective. It was Ford who orchestrated the events, set the stage and gave Delores the final shove to conscious awareness — illustrated by her use of unscripted violence.
I’ve not proven very good at analysis, so forgive me cherrypicking these spots to contribute 
Story Driver
@Khodu’s arguments for decision are very good, but I’m leaning toward action. I can list dozens of actions but only motivated decisions (AKA precipitated by actions).
- The first robots malfunction – leading to decision to cover it up with a massacre on the town.
- Dolores’ father finds a photo and malfunction – leading to decision to retire him from service.
- Maeve’s interaction with Dolores leads to her having visions – leading to decision to take her to maintenance.
- Elsie and Stubbs find the stray host in the ravine – leading to Cullen’s decision to take over the investigation.
That’s just the first 3 episodes that I read on Wikipedia.
MC Mental Sex
This is my weak point. I also agree on Holistic but as a man, this is alien to me.
Dolores is definitely trying to maintain some kind of balance in her relationships: she tries to be home before dark so her father doesn’t worry (and keeps Teddy away from him); she tries to brush off the photograph with a ‘doesn’t look like anything to me’ and also ignores the little boy that tells her she isn’t real – to maintain the world she knows.
I could be dead wrong on these examples being holistic – it’s my biggest weak point in Dramatica.
Story Judgement
Lots of people die. But Dolores has confidence in the man that loves her:
I found someone true. Someone who loves me. His path will lead him back to me. And when he finds me, he’ll kill you.
So I think she’s content. Albeit murderous.
This was exactly my thinking after the finale. Seems a bit obvious, though.
Ooh, that’s a really good one. There’s no way that Action (happening to find the photo) could be driven by a Decision.
@jhay . Your examples are spot on. But this is why this show rocks! So rich and skillfully woven. But I feel that the element of the picture being there wasn’t random. It was a Decision by Ford -the puppet master- to trigger that response. Also if you would remember, it was Ford’s unilateral Decision to introduce the reveries( the lines of code that caused the entire system to melt down). You notice the Hosts didn’t start breaking down before we got introduced to the reveries. We saw the reveries a few scenes before the first host broke down. The Sheriff. And if you recall, Bernard stated that they hadn’t had a Critical condition on the park in the last 30years. And as we would note Ford is indeed the Protagonist/apparent villain of the OS. Thus this was excellent foreshadowing. It’s also hinting at a Consequence of “Doing” as well to me. I read Armando’s book and there was something he said about hiding parts of a Throughline if not the whole thing in order to create suspense/mystery.
You’re not kidding! This show is so hard to pick apart.
I’m not sure about that one. If I remember correctly, it’s explained in the finale (during the pre-Man in Black timeline) how the photo came to be within the park:
The photo is seen in William’s jacket when he leads Logan around behind his horse. As the horse moves forward the photo slips out of the jacket’s pocket and lands on the ground, before being blown away.
Source: Westworld Wikia
That’s an unmotivated action. Unless there’s some kind of information we’ve been left out of.
Your other points, however, make me think – particularly Ford’s reveries introduction. I’ll have to give it another think. I think this one could go either way.
@jhay I had a rethink. And you’re right about that picture. I think it was just an element of the storytelling. A way to invoke the erratic action from the host(Dolores’ father). It was totally random but it makes his response plausible. Especially from a scene-building standpoint.
I’m on board with Decision. The photo might be a red herring … or as @Khodu suggests we can look at Peter’s (Peter is Dolores’s father) odd behavior after finding the photo as still having been driven by Ford’s decision to introduce the Reverie programming.
The thing about Decision is that it really seems to give meaning to the hosts’ struggle – all the things that look like actions and happenstance to them are in fact controlled by the Decisions of unseen men running the show. Here is a good example from Episode 1:
They [Dolores and Teddy] are caught up in a newly-scripted massacre of townspeople by the bandit Hector, intended to disguise the removal of the hosts affected by the update.
That Action – the massacre – definitely sounds like it was driven by the Decision to remove the affected hosts and to disguise it with a scripted attack by Hector.
(It would be good to watch one of these episodes again though, just to be sure it’s really shown that way.)
I like that too, but I cannot get onboard with the idea of such a big off-screen driver. It feels too much like speculation.
I’ll make one final counter argument to the decision driver you pitched, @mlucas, from the same episode:
Soon Walter malfunctions and slaughters a number of his fellows in an off-script tirade, convincing Theresa to pull all of the updated hosts out of Westworld. Elsewhere, the Man in Black tortures card dealer host Kissy with an unrevealed agenda. After scalping Kissy, the Man in Black examines a drawing under the scalp.
Dolores’ father Peter Abernathy begins behaving strangely after finding a discarded photo of the outside world. He whispers something to Dolores and she goes to town seeking help where she runs into Teddy. They are caught up in a newly-scripted massacre of townspeople by the bandit Hector, intended to disguise the removal of the hosts affected by the update.
The massacre is absolutely a decision, but it’s a decision in response to the actions of the hosts malfunctioning. If the hosts did not malfunction in the first place, there wouldn’t be that massacre.
Your argument is persuasive, I’m on the fence now. I’ll try to re-watch an episode if I can.
I feel like Story Driver is one of those things that, if I try to figure it out when first watching, it would really pull me out of the story! So I tend to never notice it and really have to think about it afterwards.
Maybe @jhull could chime in with his thoughts, he has a sixth sense for Drivers.
Think of going shopping with your favorite person that drives you crazy. When one wants a thing and finds it, then one wants to leave. The other wants to check here and then check there and then go down a few aisles to see if it’ll jog the memory for something that we might need at home but in case one can’t remember what it is right now. Oh, and check the reduced produce shelf for a dollar bargain…haha
At this point I’d like to suggest that we watch the season again. Over the weekend perhaps. And this time we should take notes on Domains, Issues, Problems,Goals etc. That way the material is fresh in everyone’s mind.
I re-watched part of the last episode again last night, but got interrupted by a kid having trouble sleeping. From the 25 minutes I watched, I was leaning towards Decision still, but not certain.
If it wasn’t backstory, it does seem like Ford’s decision to open the park despite evidence of host consciousness, might have been the Inciting Incident (First Driver). If he’d chosen to not to open the park, or to delay opening it, that could have been driven by an Action (hosts becoming conscious) but deciding to still open it as planned cannot have been Action-driven.
Also, Arnold did seem to take his time to decide to get Dolores to kill all the hosts – “there is a third option” he said. And it would make sense they are driven to that third option (the Action of killing the hosts) by Ford’s Decision to open the park.
Does anyone know any candidates for the other Act Turn Story Drivers?
Maybe we should skip Story Driver for now. It’s possible the Series Storyform has a different Driver type than the Season one, and that would really give us a headache! (And if we figure out OS Domain, that might make it easier to determine the 4 Acts and their Turns.)
Good idea, @Khodu! I’ll try and rewatch a few this weekend.
I’d support skipping the Story Driver for now. There’s so much story it’s hard to see the major turns. If we don’t get a definitive answer, I’m sure the software will work that out for us (assuming we don’t get lost on too many other story points).
Thanks, @Prish! That helped quite a bit. So in this analogy, linear is: “I’ll go to the store, get what I want and go home” (cause-effect) and holistic is: “I’ll go get what I want, but look around just in case something is missing” (working to prevent potential imbalance from missing groceries)?
Plus look to see if a $1 produce bargain exists. If anyone could juggle several storyforms, it’s the holistic MC…haha. This discussion always reminds me of when I first married my husband, saying as we immediately crossed the doorway threshold before buying anything, “Can we go now?” When I found Dramatica, I suspected a linear MC was already onto the next…if you get my instinctive drift.
I took some time away and am catching up on this thread. I see a lot of great work here. Though I’m still a bit confused with the throughlines. Thought I’d try to underline and propose a few things in order to clarify. I believe the last summary of the throughlines was by @mlucas awhile back. Here is how I see the Overall Story Throughline playing out in more detail:
OS DOMAIN & OS ISSUE:
Being in Westworld (OS DOMAIN of Situation): Countless situations fall out of “Being in Westworld” that populate the story from Being a Guest, to Being a Host, or Being an Employee of Delos, etc (all OS DOMAINs of Situation). Westword is a theme park and its purpose is to offer a place where situations can be played out in a Fantasy world that’s a near perfect recreation of the Wild West, to the most minute details (OS Thematic CONFLICT between Fantasy and Fact). Guests arrive and can intend or bump into situations of varying degrees of complexity like Being a Cowboy, Being in a Posse Searching for a Fugitive, Being in a Wild West Brothel, Being in the Middle of a Wild West Robbery/Massacre, or Waking up Being Stuck in a Noose Tied to a Tree with the Other End of the Noose Tied to your Skittish Horse. etc. Hosts play roles within these situations. Guests can get stuck in these situations, but they know the situations are Fantasies (OS ISSUE of Fantasy) and not real (OS COUNTERPOINT of Fact). The Guests can leave at any time. Yet, the Guests can get real thrills from being in the Fantasy. The Hosts, on the other hand, are programmed to behave as if these are real situations (OS COUNTERPOINT of Fact) vs. the Fantasies they really are. These conflicts (OS Thematic CONFLICT between Fantasy and Fact) play out in various ways between Guests, Hosts and Employees of Delos.
OS CONCERN: Lately, the Hosts seem to be malfunctioning in new ways not seen before (OS CONCERN of How Things are Changing).
There are political upheavals within Delos causing changes within the organization (OS CONCERN of How Things are Changing). Even as audience members witnessing the story unfold we become concerned with the variations in Dolores’s daily circuit (OS CONCERN of How Things are Changing). Knowing that Hosts cannot harm a living thing, and after Dolores states as much while letting a fly walk across her eyeball, we witness Dolores swatting and killing a fly at the end of the first episode (OS CONCERN How Things are Changing).
OS PROBLEM:
Per @jhull’s early suggestion… If the Guests stopped using and abusing the Hosts, there would be no problem (OS PROBLEM of Unending). Perhaps the seemingly unending loops that the Hosts must repeat are posing a similar problem and the unending torment that many are subjected to is becoming a more significant problem (OS PROBLEM of Unending)? The entire existence of these Hosts suggest they are essentially immortal, always repairable and unable to really die (OS PROBLEM of Unending). While the Hosts bear a near perfect resemblance to Humans they are not Human, they cannot die, and they are not sentient (at least not yet, the humans think.) (OS Thematic CONFLICT between Fantasy and Fact). Is Dolores changing (MC Resolve of Change). Is the Robot becoming Human afterall (OS Thematic CONFLICT between Fantasy and Fact)?
Thoughts? Any agreement?
A few additional thoughts fell into place as well… Please offer your thoughts.
MC DOMAIN of Manipulation:
Dolores (as are all the Hosts) is being manipulated by the Guests. She is also being Manipulated by the technical employees of Delos. And perhaps most importantly by Arnold. Dolores is thinking differently (Manipulation) than other Hosts, perhaps because of the special programming that Arnold manipulated in her. Dolores, as a Host (she’s essentially a robot) has been programmed to pretend to be something that she is not (Manipulation) in her role in WestWorld, even though she is completely authentic in her portrayal.
MC CONCERN of Playing a Role:
Dolores is a Host playing a role in WestWorld. We find out in later episodes she is one of the oldest Hosts in the park. She is completely authentic in her portrayal, yet in fact she is a spectacular simulation of a human being.
MC ISSUE of Thought:
Dolores (like some of the other Hosts) has Reveries, which are programmatic remnants of a Host past incarnations which they are not meant to consciously access. Rather Reveries are there to be accessed by Host on a subconscious level to offer them nuance, human subtlety.
IC DOMAIN of Activity:
Arnold’s influence on Dolores grows starting from inventing her, programming her, interviewing her, educating her, etc. These are the primary activities Arnold interacts with her.
RS DOMAIN of Fixed Attitude:
If the above and my earlier points are true, then the relationship between Dolores and Arnold centers around Fixed Attitude. We find out later in the season that Dolores is one of the oldest (if not the oldest… is she not the oldest? The Original?), therefore Dolores is Someone Special in Arnold’s eyes (Fixed Attitude) and Dolores is perhaps the closest to him of anyone else in his life.
Does anyone see merit to these? Or am I off base? I tried to cite multiple examples where I could to illustrate the point.
And here’s some backup for STORY DRIVER of Decision.
To start, WestWorld is a role playing game on a very grand scale. Role playing games generally rely on player’s decisions, often forcing them to be made, in order for the story to develop and move.
In that respect, Guests decisions are what alter the storylines. A Host’s well being is often held at the mercy of a Guest decision. Some Guests make a conscious decision upon entering the park whether they will be cruel or kind. Go dark or light. Pick the Black hat of the light one. One guest says he had the best time in the park when he came in and went “straight evil”.
Upon entering the park Guests are often presented with a decision to join a posse to hunt for the fugitive Hector. We learn later that this is a low level (not advanced, newbie) play in the game. So as players learn more about the game they decided not to select that option and move on into other levels. We learn there are decisions that a player can make that will move them deeper into the game. Closer to the maze.
But are those decisions turning the story? I can see the posse hunt being a decision driver. But if I remember rightly, the white hat/black hat decision appeared once and I can’t remember it doing much except worldbuilding.
Likewise with the host/guest interaction. Could you name me a decision made by one of the guests that turned the story? Because even when a guest shoots someone or ‘has their way’ with a guest, that feels like an action to me.
And isn’t that a clear action forcing a decision? “I learned about this thing so I’m going to decide not to do that”?
My problem with the Decision driver in terms of the storytelling in Westworld is that so many decisions are off-screen. I agree with you guys that in the world of the story, everything is driven by a decision (Ford deciding to open the park, for example). But in the storytelling of the actual show, most of these decisions are so quiet or implied that you’re not even sure if it happened; you just see the actions that may follow a decision or may just be a force of the universe.
The show opens with the park already open – and it’s been open for 30 years or something. Nothing happened that whole time, until the malfunctioning hosts decades later. I cannot see Ford’s decision to open the park being the cause for the effect of the malfunctioning hosts much later. Everything was okay until those hosts malfunctioned.
So I’m going to rewatch a few and maybe it will be an incredibly subtle decision driven story, but I just think there’s way too much unsaid that may or may not be happening off-screen for it to be the story driver.