little-tulips

[little-tulips]

Demigods in The Silt Verses

~~ spoilers for the entire show~~

Relistening to TSV and I won't lie, alot is blotted from my memory due to the trauma this show has given me (in the good way), however finishing season 1 I feel like we only see 2 proper demigods?

The most obvious is Val, her and TheLast Word have intertwined so much that she is it and it is she. From what I remember The Last Word is a new propaganda God, so it would make sense she's it's only disciple and therefore able to completely co-exist within her. Not like a larger faith where the constant pulling from other worshipers means it'll hurridly create saints before moving to the next call.

Val is called a battle saint but the level of autonomy, internal thought, and "humanity" she's retained makes her seem like a true demi(in the purist sense)-God.

The second is almost the opposite, but also not.

Paige.

In some regards they're similar, both Paige and Val want to change the world they live in, and both The Last Word and The Wound Tree want to help facilitate that. What's different is that Paige won't allow it. In some ways Paige is a black box, Val has proven the coexistence she has, by preforming miracles without losing (much) control. Paige on the other hand never really utilises The Wound Tree's power directly, acting as a messiah and letting others call upon its power. This would put her in the same camp as Faulkner, where they're more "divine emissaries" rather than demigods.

However the difference I think is their internal worlds. For Paige, The Wound Tree is HER. It's her baby, a part of herself, her deepest wants, it hunts for HER and wants to give her everything she wants if only she would let it. The Trawlerman is an external force for Faulker, an important one, but he's his conduit, not a host. This might seem like semantics but in Paige we see a coexistence, not a healthy or balanced one, but The Wound Tree is in her unlike any other God we've seen.

Also like The Last Word, I think the small size of Paige's cult was why she was able be the incarnate of The Wound Tree. I think among other reasons she decided to abandon the cult was that, as it grew, she could feel her demigod status changing, and she'd either become a saint or a messiah.

In this way I'd say that Demigods in the TSV universe are humans fused with all or a large portion of a divinity. Not saints as they retain their higher cognitive thinking and relative autonomy, and not messiahs, as the divine is an internal part of them, not an external source to which they are a special person too. A coexistence is needed but as with both examples above, it'll always be on a knifes edge and will eventually crumble. Lastly an alignment of goals, down to the minutiae, is needed and works best if the deity was made for the demigod or vice versa.

Other possible demigods are -

Side Wright - who I was originally gonna have as one of my 2 but thinking on it, paige is much closer to the balance than he is. However he does seem different from other saints we've seen, like Babble, as he seems bitter (haha) wnough to recognise he was sacrificed for no great reason.

Mercer and Gage - I think they where gunning for demigod status but would've likely been sainted. However Mercer at least was perfectly aligned with The Beast That Stalks Through The Long Grass, it's just that for them to remain perfectly aligned she would've had become more animalistic and eventually would just be a saint.

Carpenter - personal crackpot theory, I think by the beginning of the show Carpenter isn't tied to The Trawlerman at all. Her use of language, her philosophy, and the results she gets when she invokes it. I think Carpenter made a new river god "My River". And I think that is who she's the demigod of ... possibly. "My River" as a separate deity to The Trawlerman is a whole other post that's too long for here.

Anyways I know the TSV is antithetical to categorising the divine and their effects, and the whole show is about trying to read human concepts into what are essentially reality parasites, but this was kicking around my brain for too long and the voices must be expunged. I hope you enjoyed.

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One piece of Carpenter lore that I can't stop thinking about is the fact that the name she chose to use as a disguise when she was travelling while she was serving the parish of tide and flesh, Sandra, was her mother's name. Sandra was taken away from her at such a young age, so I'm not sure she even remembers her, and yet she chose to bring her back in the world (in her life in a way) by taking shelter under the safety of her name. Maybe her mother didn't have the chance to protect her daugher from the horrors of the (silt verses) world, but her name can keep her safe for a while.

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After crabs the second most talked about animal in the silt verses is birds: Carpenter and Faulkner traveling under the disguise of birdwachers, the name of their river, Mason's childhood story, Faulkner thinking of his followers as birds, even just Faulkner's name, etc. In a naturalist way, it makes sense, rivers provide homes to many bird species, birds are very important to the biosphere of a river. And in a textual way, seens they are associated with the Wacher in the Wings birds could represent symbolically the narrative, the story that the characters are performing, that they have crafted and locked themselfs in or that other have crafted and caged them in, and that will seize them and slow them whole, just like birds will with their prey. I wonder if, giving that a faulkner is the job title of someone who keeps and trains falcons, Faulkner's name is meant to represent that fact that he is the character who is most preoccupied with trying to tame his narrative, to make the story take the shape he wants.

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The horror genre is a fantastic litmus test for seeing the overall fears and anxieties of specific eras, like how the invasion of the body snatchers highlighted the red scare of secret communist spies in the 1970s.

With that in mind, I think that the late 2010s and early 2020s have seen a massive rise in something I call "bureaucratic horror", in which the horror stems from working a dead-end office job that treats people like disposable cogs in a corporate machine, with the business itself so large and domineering, that it seems like a Lovecraftian, cosmic horror monster to those forced to work within its domain.

With the middle-class shrinking, office jobs have become emblematic of an almost bygone era. Office jobs are boring and tedious and very few people would dream of becoming an office worker. However, for decades, these jobs offered a type of stable, comfortable, job security that is becoming unfathomable for most young people. Office jobs are viewed as dredge work, which characters harbor open disdain for but there is an inability to quit, due to the allure of a consistent income.

Bureaucratic horror plays on the tension that stems from the resentment and hatred for office jobs, while also dangling a monetary reward just out of reach, and thus these stories portray workplaces as bastions of horrifying scenarios in which the characters must play their part in this capitalist system, no matter what, and that's terrifying.

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Who would win in a fight, Chuck Harm or Philomena Cunk.

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hayward writing down his little reports on paige to maintain his illusion of legitimacy + faulkner coping with his suffering by describing it as a "new chapter in the silt verses" and meeting a transcriptionist to give his narrative power by writing it down + carpenter and faulkner having a chalkboard and a paper copy of the verses in season 1 + hembry reciting stage instructions like he's doing a table reading of a script rather than giving an actual performance + paige getting instructions on god-birthing from a book + gods requiring systems of prayer-marks as a kind of written language (the wither mark being a thing that needs to be written to destroy)...paige being called a homophone for PAGE....there's an incredibly strong link between divinity and power and writing/books in tsv and i can't wait to see where this gets taken in the upcoming episodes especially in the context of an audio medium

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It’s finally done:,)

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“Medieval peasants couldn’t handle my Spotify playlist” but could YOU handle a medieval bard relaying the epic of Beowulf over the course of an hour? Humble yourself.

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Sites of Supernatural Occurrence and Assessment

Making myself a map of various supernatural locations and organizations in the horror podcast I've been listening to. Loose criteria is:

a) Audio drama

b) Supernatural, particularly Eldritch

c) Could conceivably exist in a version of our modern day(ish)

Limited by how many icons I could squish in. Open to suggestions, especially outside of the US and UK!

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hey guys. aha. who wants to think with me about how the woundtree is a parallel to the trees of self-murderers from dante's inferno. suicide is a sin, because you're rejecting the life god gave you. the woundtree is a rejection of the fate you've been given, that small rebellion against gods as a whole. you grow into something painful and beautiful in your death, you will die today. you will not die helpless. your death is yours alone to claim. this is self-murder. you will not be food for gods. you will be a tree of pain, a reflection of the violence others commit upon your body, you will reflect that violence, you will wear it as your skin.

people driven to suicide. people driven to acts of extreme violence upon both themself and their killer. a body that is both pain and branches, blood and roots. a testament to violence. a monument to spite.

can anyone hear me. are you there

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please welcome: Brood X!

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this came to me in a vision

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EVERY. DAMN. PASSCODE. FOR THISISNOTAWEBSITEDOTCOM.COM:

Will update when i find more!! (updates VERY frequently)

everything in bold+italics needs to be spammed for the full effect

Dipper  Mabel Wendy Soos Bill Cipher Bill cipher Pacifica Gravity Falls Robbie GideonStanley Stan Stanford Ford Sixer Mcgucket Hectoring Pinata Rat Divorce Breakup Weird  Alex Hirsch Matpat Giffany  Pines Sorry Skeleton Math Mystery shack Mystery Lies Tad strange Book of bill God One eyed king Blanchin Boyfriend Curse Wittebane Euclid Euclydia Peak  Platinum Paz Fuck  Shit Glass Shard Beach Theory Cray cray Ad Astra Per Aspera Im still on your mind Vallis Cineris  Help me Theraprism Triangle Weirdmageddon Blind eye Dorito Deer teeth Baby bill Baby LALALALALA Journal 1 Journal 2 Journal 3 Blendin History Filbrick Love FBI Waddles Reality Universe Portal T J Eckleburg Season 1 Season 2 Season 3 Cursed Scary Abuelita Gun Disney Mickey Mouse Caryn Cryptogram codex Ducktective Toby Determined Irregular Booberry Horror Creepypasta Seven eyes Yes Trigonometry Torture mentally Xyler Craz Tantrum Justblendin Black sheep Baaaa Monster Titans blood Life Death Skibidi Fortnite Gyatt Who are you Fixinit1 R34lity Love ya bro Conspiracy Dippy Fresh Disco girl Liar Lyre Harold's Ramblings Union Made 29121239168518 Grebley hemberdreck 3466554 Tinsel snake XGQRTHX 333 sundapple lane cozy creek IL 60714-94611 naitsuaf mountain don't axolotl morality well well well being Burnside Creepypasta Family matters Forget the past Nothing Something Hey nerd Even his lies are lies Riddle No LLIB When will I die Elon Clone Multilevel mark Goodnight Sally Paper jam Tyrone Fordtramarine Tourist trap Mason The duchess approves shape Scalene Scientology Meow Shave Your Grandma Nacho Rizz Crypto Sevral times Easter Egg Oh yes they both Oroborous Suck it Merlin Just fit in Daddy Mommy Burned Inside Kings of new jersey Destruction is a form of creation They'll see They'll all see I see Unreality Rubberhose You can't kill an idea Card Scrimbles Am i blanchin Fuck Alex Fuck you Alex Fuck you (im not cursing out alex i prommy, these are deadass codes) Hotxolotl Bye gold Ciphertology NSA Globnar Disneyland Rehpic Kook Kubrick Not a phase Paper is book skin Virus Spookemups That's just a You're insane Owl trowel L is real 2401 NFT Question Answer  Occurremus iterum Frilliam Butternubbins Dispense My Treat Dionarap Stod eht tcennoc History Hologram The gun Marry me

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wait but i thought that no one in tsv wore shoes?

"I've put in so much contradictory information about whether or not shoes exist that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality."

James Joyce

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So between Shrue's "Kill Your Gods" speech and Paige's speech about leaving the comforts of The Grace in the final two-parter...The Silt Verses ends on an anarcho-nihilist call to personally reject the comforts of capitalist modernity as a maybe-still-not-enough last-ditch only-hope way of ending capitalism and its atrocities, right? The last scene is literally a pilgrimage away from civilization to a world that doesn't require sacrifice? They're walking away from omelas? Like I may be doing a motivated reading based on my own politics here but it's basically "reject civilization and employment, become oogle" as a thesis for the B-plot of the whole work, right???

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"To become a Katabasian is to shed skin and soul, to drown, and in drowning, be born anew!

Do you accept this offering from the depths?"

alts under the cut

I truly couldn't decide between the versions, so you get them all. I would like to thank Jon Ware, Muna Hussen and B. Narr for giving me insomnia

[ID: A digital drawing of Brother Faulkner from the Silt Verses podcast. He kneels in a shallow part of a pool of glowing, green water under the Grand Aquifer, straddling Sibling Rane, who lies limply at the bottom with their face right under the surface, visible where Faulkner's reflection would be. Faulkner's face is upturned, with the water surface reflecting off his skin. He is wearing an expression of exaltation morphing into dread and staring into the distance. On the first picture, his head is surrounded by a halo. On the second, by the Withermark. He is alone. End ID]

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Pray for the High Prophet, children of the water! Pray for his health and his safety!