Banana-est Fish @mitty-mitskis-version-8 - Tumblr Blog

hai jelly!! i hope you're well :) i was wondering if you could do a elio character analysis? i absolutely love your percy one. keep up the amazing work <3

HELLOOOOOO, cutie anon!! I am well (despite the slight burnout), thank you! I hope you are, too. <3

Okay, an Elio character analysis... I'm not gonna lie, I was a bit reluctant and nervous to get to this at first, because there's actually SO MUCH I'm still learning about him that I feel like everything I know about Elio is all still... surface level. But with the help of friends (shoutout to my goat flapmemelord. Really opened my eyes over here... SIGH), I managed to wrap my head around it and understand Elio more!

The first thing that really comes to my mind is that this man is not simple. He's... legible, which is different. And I think legibility is what fools people. He expresses emotion openly enough that others think they've reached the bottom of him. In reality, they've just reached the bottom of what he shows without friction. And the game actually supports that reading if you pay attention to how his information appears. A lot of what we know about Elio is contextual and conditional. You only see certain edges in specific social situations. The narration itself sometimes behaves as if it assumes a default version of Elio unless something pushes against it. That's a subtle but important storytelling trick. It mirrors how people in real life operate—if something is broadly warm and agreeable, the world tends to accept that version of them as the whole picture until conflict forces a deeper reveal.

Elio benefits from that assumption.

He's the guy people feel safe around. He's the connector. The bridge between social circles. The one who introduces people, pulls them into plans, and diffuses tension with sincerity or excitement. That role is not accidental. It suits him genuinely—he really does like people. Still, it also creates a social gravity around him, making him the emotional center of the room without ever needing to dominate it. But that kind of role has a hidden cost. When someone is the emotional facilitator of a group, people subconsciously expect them to remain that way. The moment that the facilitator becomes the one with a problem, the atmosphere destabilizes, and people like Elio learn that pattern very early in life; if they keep things bright, people relax. If they show their own storms too directly, the room shifts in uncomfortable ways.

So the brightness always stays. Not forcefully, it's just prioritized. And that leads directly into his relationship with honesty.

I don't think he's a liar. He doesn't seem like the type to manipulate facts, invent stories, or deceive people. But he does practice a very specific form of dishonesty that's actually extremely common among emotionally generous people: withholding his own problems so they don't become someone else's burden. That's the kind of dishonesty that is... socially rewarded. People call it being considerate, selfless, easygoing, and low-drama.

In reality, it's a coping strategy. And I don't think that's something he can just... change? The way I see it, he deeply believes in handling his own mess. He's not the kind of person who easily puts his heavier feelings in someone else's hands. If anything, he'd resist that pretty hard. There's a certain stubbornness—recklessness and impulsiveness aside—to him that I don't think gets talked about enough.

Elio seems like someone who would rather quietly carry something difficult than risk becoming a burden to others. He's so naturally connective and so good at making things feel light and open that it makes sense he'd struggle to be the one to change the mood in the other direction. There's a difference between being expressive and being vulnerable after all, and I don't think Elio gives those two things away equally. That's part of why I started to read his optimism as something other than simplicity. There's a kind of faith in it, but also a kind of self-containment, like he'd rather tell himself, I'll get there eventually, than let someone watch him while he's still in the middle of not being okay. And that's where I think his emotional self-reliance starts to blur into a little isolation. Because he may not always know how to lean on them without feeling like he's giving them something they didn't ask to carry.

I also think this connects to how he can be conflict-avoidant. I don't think that means he's passive or that he doesn't have strong feelings. I think it means he understands how quickly tension can spread through a group, and he usually chooses not to feed it unless he has to. He's someone who values connection a lot, so of course, he'd be sensitive to the way conflict can sour the whole atmosphere. But avoiding conflict isn't the same as lacking perspective. Elio definitely has opinions and has his own limits. He just doesn't seem like the type to lead with those unless something pushes the issue into the open.

That's what gives Elio depth. He's not some endlessly cheerful guy, not an easy character with no edges. He has them. He just doesn't always present them first. A lot of his sharper or more complicated parts feel quieter, more situational, more tucked beneath the version of himself that people naturally gravitated toward. And I think that's exactly why he can be easy to underestimate at first.

When I took a step back to look at all these pieces together, a pattern began to form. Not a definitive answer—there's still a lot to uncover, but there is a pattern I came up with that feels consistent with the fragments we've been given so far.

The way I see it, Elio might be someone who believes connection is something you protect, not something you risk. That belief quietly explains a lot about the way he moves through the world. It explains why warmth comes easily to him, because it's one of the fastest ways to build a connection between people. It explains why he instinctively tries to keep the atmosphere light, because tension can fracture the emotional space that allows people to feel comfortable with one another. And it explains why he seems reluctant to put his own heavier feelings on display. If you believe the connection is fragile, then of course, you'd hesitate before introducing something that might change the balance. In that sense, his optimism starts to look a little different.

And interestingly enough, even his curiosity about the universe starts to echo that mindset in its own way. It tends to develop a strange relationship with perspective. Problems shrink, not because they stop mattering, but because they exist inside something much larger. When you look at the world that way, it becomes easier to approach life with generosity, easier to believe that things can work out eventually, even if you don't have the answer yet. But this is also where the tension in Elio's character begins to show.

Protecting people from discomfort is generous, and keeping relationships safe is admirable. But there's a quiet risk in that approach, too. The possibility that some parts of you never fully enter the space you've worked so hard to create. If the goal is always maintaining warmth, ease, and that sense of shared atmosphere, then the parts of you that might disrupt it become harder to share. And suddenly, the same traits that make Elio so easy to gravitate toward start revealing a more complicated edge.

Elio feels like the kind of person who makes everyone feel included, while quietly carrying the parts of himself he isn't sure how to share.

Maybe that's the best way to understand him for now—someone who lets people see enough to feel close to him... while still leaving just enough unsaid that you can't help wondering what else might be there.

And if that reading is even partially true, then it adds a really interesting layer to the character. Because the person who is best at creating connections might also be the one who struggles the most with letting others hold him in return.

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