#Neither of them are above a bit of recreational torture or murder

[meggsssart]

Just me wondering how my D&D characters would work in a party together. Spoiler: they wouldn't.

[meta-for]

Meta Meta Everywhere, Let’s Drop Dean in the Drink

I want to talk a little bit about Exodus in 14x12, particularly in relation to Tony Alvarez’s three victims. 

First, let’s summarize what we know about Tony. When we first see him drowning Jane Doe in the bathtub, we know nothing about him. For all we, and our favorite brothers, know, he’s the monster of the week, carrying out senseless acts of violence for ritual sacrifice/personal gain/marinating a home-cooked human for his freak pallet, etc. We later discover that Tony is a malformed prophet, firing at half-potential due to Donatello’s comatose state. He believes he is carrying out the Word of God by kidnapping, torturing, and killing his vics (or at least, most of them, but hey, two-out-of-three-ain’t-bad).

Our first introduction to Tony is the second scene in the episode, in which he tosses vic number one into a bathtub filled with salt water. After dunking her head back under (baptism, anyone?), he slits her wrist, turning the bath water red with her blood. When Sam and Dean break into Tony’s apartment, we find that Tony is recreating the destruction of the Egyptians in the Red Sea (Exodus 14).

Vic number two meets his death for being the eldest of two twins—the first by four minutes, we learn—and is taken as the First Born Son. Whether this ties in to the King’s command to kill off all first-born sons of the Israelites, or the subsequent plague God sends down to slaughter the first-born Egyptian sons is left to interpretation. (Exodus 11)

What is striking about both victims is the wrongness of their deaths, and not just in terms of, say, basic human morality. Taking into consideration the story told in Exodus—in which Moses (notably, the first born son of an Israelite who is later saved by the Queen after his mother sends him in a basket up the Nile to save his life) receives the true Word of God—it should be clear that Alvarez’s version of the Word is incongruous with this part of the scripture. This is not to say that there is no bloodshed in the Old Testament. In my personal, unsolicited opinion, it’s the most metal religious text out there. However, this particular book of the Old Testament leaves the bloodshed in God’s hands—the Israelites themselves, even Moses, never directly intervene or seek revenge (except for that one Egyptian dude Moses buries in sand, but that’s before he receives the Word so, I mean, can’t really blame a guy).

What it boils down to is this: God gives Moses ten rules when he speaks to him on the mountaintop, the Commandments, the first of these being “I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other God before me.” Pretty important stuff—we’ll examine later how this ties into the 3rd vic’s story.

The second Commandment is “Thou shalt not kill.” 

Whatcha doin’ there, Tony?

I recognize that this may be kind of a long shot, given the actual bloody history of the Old Testament. However, this may be our fist indication that something’s off with prophet boy.

Aside from this, though, the vics Alvarez chooses just don’t quite fit the bill.

We don’t know too much about vic number 1. We don’t get an interview with a grieving family member, or a peek into her apartment. We can pretty readily assume, though, that she hasn’t enslaved anyone.

In Exodus, God drowns the Egyptians in the Red Sea for pursuing the Israelites on their diaspora from Egypt. They had previously enslaved the Israelites—apparently for being too numerous, and overpopulating to the point of there being more Israelites than Egyptians in Egypt, leading the King to order the death of all the first born sons of Israel—and were now coming to stop them from fleeing their oppression by either re-capturing or murdering them on the way out. So God tells Moses to go ahead and shake that stick, and He collapses the Red Sea down on them after granting safe passage for the Israelites to cross first.

What has vic number 1 done to merit that same fate for herself? Is she a slave owner? Probably not. Is she trying to prevent someone from leaving her? Leaving an oppressive relationship with her, in some way? No indication of the same anywhere, but even if that was the case, does it warrant a death sentence? There’s not even anything to allude to her being Egyptian in some way, which would be the absolute shoddiest reason for Alvarez to pick her.

The fact is, we don’t know why Alvarez chooses vic number 1 as his first sacrifice. We don’t even get a feel for who she is by seeing his initial kidnapping of her.

What we are asked to understand pretty immediately is that vic number 1 is absolutely a wronged victim here—we do get to see, at length, Alvarez murdering her. This second scene of the show opens with tight shots of her wounds, her sweat-stringy hair, her bound hands. We hear her pleading and whimpering through her gag, and eventually trying to beg. We see the abject fear and desperation in her eyes. The majority of the scene is arguably shot from the victim’s perspective, right up to the point of her drowning where she’s shot from beneath, seemingly floating high above us in the water, and illuminated by a bright yellow, almost Heavenly light.

This coupled with the shots of Tony’s cold eyes, his uncaring, vacant expression, his apparent glorious satisfaction upon the completion of his task—it’s clear that we’re meant to sympathize with, possibly even identify with, the victim here. We don’t yet know who is whispering to Tony at the end of the scene, and we don’t particularly care outside of our boys finding out who it is and ganking their evil asses. The whole thing is black-and-white up to this point; victim. Monster. Presumably evil motive. The works.

Then we learn about vic number 2, and things get a little more complicated. Deciding to take on the case, Sam and Dean don their fed suits and pay a visit to 2’s heartbroken twin brother. We learn, through their conversation with him, that the vic was friends with Alvarez prior to this whole mess, and that Alvarez had an Enochian tattoo meaning “the Word” on his forearm. Sam and Dean struggle to parse out what kind of monster would be fluent in Enochian, what the motive of this apparently otherwise zealously devout man would be. Something’s off. The boys know it, and as they know it, we know it. A standard salt-and-burn, monster-of-the-week, last hoorah for Dean this ain’t.

After a quick, heart-shattering call to Cas, the boys find out that this Tony Alvarez is next in line to be prophet, after Donatello eventually dies. They discover that Donatello is still kicking, and there’s no way that Alvarez should be rockin’ and rollin’ on the prophet express at this point. So what gives?

Turns out, Donatello is sending some mixed messages to Alvarez subconsciously. He’s muttering bits and pieces of bible verses, and Alvarez hears him, taking his incoherent ramblings as the Word of God, and interpreting them to mean he should act out these scenes from Exodus.

But he’s failing. Again, vic number one is no slave-owning murderer, and vic number 2? Can we really count him as a First Born son?

We find out from 2’s twin that he was born earlier, and refers to himself as the big brother, because he was born first—by four minutes. That’s some fast and loose interpretation on Alvarez’s part. Is it because he knows vic 2? Maybe. If he knows his buddy calls himself the big brother, the eldest, and he already knows where to find him, well, maybe that’s just gotta be good enough.

The point I’m trying to make here is that Alvarez is pulling off half-cocked reenactments of Exodus, in direct defiance with the actual Commandments Moses receives as the actual Word of God, and it turns out he’s not even getting the Word from the man himself. What he’s getting is a faulty half-message from a half-functioning prophet who’s stuck in dream land. So, in sum, unclear messages from a presumed higher-power that he’s ultimately misinterpreting and carrying out incorrectly.

Hm. Sounds like someone we know.

Before I finally address that point, I’d like to touch briefly on the third vic, our escapee.

I couldn’t quite catch all of what Alvarez was saying as he was getting set to deep fry our pal extra crispy, but what I did get was something about Abraham, and being purified in flame, or meeting one’s salvation through fire. That struck me as odd, because Exodus? It’s not Abraham’s story. He’s the outlier here, and so, consequently, is the one that got away.

I couldn’t think of a biblical book that particular tie-in was from, as a matter of fact. It’s not that Exodus is flame free—far from it. We’ve got the burning bush where Moses first hears the voice of God (first referred to as an angel speaking for God, and then referred to as God himself…more mixed messages), and the pillar of fire God appears as in the night to light the way of the Israelites. But neither of those instances include someone being lit on fire for their salvation. So I did some digging (read: I Googled it).

What I found was pretty interesting, and I am wide open to counters or suggestions on this. But the best link-up I could find was the story of Abraham in the Genesis Rabba (original cut of Genesis), as a midrash positing possible tales about Abraham’s childhood and early life, which we do not get in the Bible itself. “What’s a midrash?” you may ask. Fear not, fair reader—I didn’t know either. I am but a simple gentile, but based on what I read, a midrash is essentially a rabbinical teaching or interpretation based on biblical text.

This particular midrash tells the story of Abraham working in his father’s idol shop. His father leaves him to man the shop one day while he goes off to do something else (God knows what…HA), and Abraham subsequently mocks all of the customers who come in to worship the assorted idols, challenging their beliefs, and questioning why they would choose to worship false Gods, essentially. Abraham’s dad hears about this, and he’s not too happy. He takes Abraham for a little visit to a guy named Nimrod to educate him on proper worship.

Bare bones of it is, Abraham argues with Nimrod the whole way through, and eventually Nimrod decides to chuck Abraham into the furnace, saying that if Abraham’s God is so great, he’ll come save him. Long story short, He does, and Abraham walks off Scott free because of his absolute faith in God, who, at that point, he’d never seen or heard from. The same can’t be said for his brother, who decided he’d only side with Abraham if he came out of the flames unscathed, but I digress.

So, essentially what we’ve got going with the third vic, from what I understand, is Alvarez’s interpretation of Donatello’s coma-babble about an interpretive tale meant to illustrate a story from the original cut of Genesis that isn’t a part of the modern-day old testament. AND Alvarez is, once again, doing it wrong. It’s safe to assume he means to really burn the third vic alive, not to yank him out of the flames and expect him to be unharmed. So unless vic number three is meant to represent Abraham’s brother, who doesn’t get saved, Alvarez is once again misinterpreting the jumbled Word from a middleman.

It’s important to note that this is the only story that actually gets carried out correctly, despite Alvarez’s attempts to the contrary. The false prophet dumps some gasoline, lights a match, and gets ready to watch our vic go up in flames—only to have Sam and Dean bust in and save vic 3 at the last minute.

What does this mean for the episode at large?

The episode opens with Dean’s anxiety dream about pulling off his stellar “let’s throw me in the ocean” plan. Much like with vic number 1, we see Dean in a state of absolute distress, his eyes squinted against tears, his nails clawed bloody from trying to scratch his way out of the Mal’ak box. He is at the bottom of the ocean, bleeding, alone, and desperate, crying out to someone that isn’t going to save him, not this time. When Dean wakes, he finds himself in bed in another motel room, but his reality is essentially no different. The wallpaper mimics ocean waves in style, blue-green in color. The lamps on the walls cast a bloody red light here and there.There are claw marks in the wall next to his bed where he chipped his nails bloody against his imagined coffin lid.

Cut to drowning vic number one in the Red Sea. The imagery surrounding her establishes that she shouldn’t be there. Should Dean?

Vic number two is, again, an eldest brother by four minutes. Dean’s older by four years. Hm. And, of course, there’s the brother left behind, who says he’s “lost a part of” himself. Who is clean cut, and quiet, and heartbroken. There’s no righteous mourning for Sam’s mirror (shameless plug—I hope to address all the fun mirrors everywhere in this episode in a separate post).

Dean tells Sam and Mary that the only way for him to keep Michael contained and stop him from destroying their world is by locking himself and Michael up in that box forever at the bottom of the ocean. He says Billie’s books say it’s the only way. 

And what do we have here? Instructions from a higher power that we never actually got to see. We never read the book Billie handed Dean, the one with the only apparent way out of this situation. We’re relying on Dean’s interpretation of what Billie’s book says or does not say. What her Word means. Just like Alvarez is relying on the faulty Word he’s getting from Donatello. Cas reveals that Donatello is essentially muttering nonsense in his unconscious state. Alvarez carrying out a word he doesn’t really understand, but is convinced is the righteous, correct thing to do. But he didn’t really get clear directions. Maybe Dean didn’t either.

Maybe Dean, like Alvarez, is damn wrong.

Again, I’m not going to go into mirrors in this post, but I will drop this little tidbit. Alvarez, dressed in a way that’s pretty reminiscent of Dean, at least in the army green jacket, carries out his supposed orders without so much as a flinch. Until he learns the truth, discovers that he has been doing the wrong thing this whole time.

Then he shoots himself with Dean’s gun. Dean’s white hilt, cowboy-flower-engraved, can’t-watch-the-show-and-not-associate-this-gun-with-Dean, gun. Hm.

A final word (ha) on the third victim. What saves Abraham is, ultimately, his faith. Abraham believes that God will save him from the fire, and therefore, he is saved.

What will save Dean, it seems, is Sam’s belief in him, and ultimately his belief in Team Free Will. In Sam, in Cas, and in himself. He affirms for Sam, “I do believe in us,” and decides to go on home and hash things out before proceeding with what Cas refers to has his “suicidal plan” to drop himself in the drink. Suicidal like Alvarez, who, based on Sam and Dean’s reaction when they realize what he is about to do, doesn’t really deserve the death he gets either, despite it all.

Earlier in the episode, we have the bro-ment in the car, in which Sam, for the first time I can personally recall in the series, directly states that Dean “practically raised” him in lieu of their absent father. He recognizes Dean as his father-figure, at least in part. Sam then goes on to talk about his belief in “us” as a unit. Dean agrees that he believes in “us…in all of us,” factoring Cas in as the third in their Trinity. Dean of course now recognized as the father, Sam the son...and Cas?

Cas the celestial wave of intent, a brilliant, angelic, burn-the-bad-guys-from-the-inside-out entity inhabiting a humanly body? Who is Cas if not the Holy Spirit in our little Trinity?

So Abraham’s belief in God saves him from the fire. And Dean’s belief in his own Trinity, maybe, is what will save him from misinterpreting how his story ends.

[ralafferty]

80.6 Archipelago

What is there to say then about Kasmir “Casey” Szymansky? Where does one start? With Finnegan, you’d note that he’s a schizo, or a teras, or a gargoyle. With Duffey, that he’s a magus. Or with Teresa, that she’s a witch. Casey doesn’t have any one epithet that makes sense of who he is, or who he’s supposed to be in the context of the Argo. It might be that no sense can be made of him. And yet, he is central and vital, and apart from Finnegan receives more of Lafferty’s attention across the Argo cycle than any others of the Dirty Five.

Let’s try this: Casey is, above all else, an anomaly. Alone among the Five, he is given but a single prior life: “Kasmir Gorshok, a ninth-century scholar and necromancer.” Once again we must curse the dispersal of Lafferty’s library, which might have provided a clue into exactly what he in mind here. “Gorshok” or “Горшок” is Russian, and simply means “pot” or “potty”; so it’s a literal translation of “Casey the Crock.” But Russian as such didn’t exist in the 9th-century; it was all Old East Slavic in speech and High Church Slavonic in writing—when they got around to actually writing things down half a century later, as Kievan Rus became the prominent power in the region. Not that this Kasmir couldn’t have been a scholar of Latin or Greek or Old Norse or all of the above—as a necromancer, he’d pretty much have to be all of the above—but it does make for a damnably difficult reference search, if it’s even a reference to begin with and not just another of Lafferty’s fabrications.

For Casey’s Argo role, we’re seemingly on firmer ground: he is Peleus, a figure at the heart of Greek mythology. Peleus palled around with Heracles, which is not commonly a way to experience your best life; and he did, in fact, accidentally kill first a half-brother and then his father-in-law, before a complicated series of events led to his first wife hanging herself in a rage. His second wedding, meanwhile, kicked off the Trojan War, thanks to Eris and the apples of discord. Only one of Peleus’ seven children would survive, but that one was a doozy: Achilles. Peleus is a minor figure with respect to the Argonauts, however, so the mythological parallels remain unclear, if a bit overwhelming.

Another possibility remains, though: that Casey is not Peleus, but instead Pelias—Jason’s uncle, and the proximate cause of the quest for the Golden Fleece. Lafferty would be far from the first to conjoin the two: in fact, the first of the anonymous “Vatican Mythographers,” whose mythological reference work dates back to sometime between the 9th and 11th centuries, lists both spellings as possible for the king who, rather than publicly murder his nephew, dispatched him on an impossible quest. As Pelias, Casey would be much nearer the center of the story: he would be the cause not only of the Fleece quest in general but also of the building of the Argo in particular: a ship (as legend has it) on a scale previously unknown to a society of small trading communities who kitted boats out for voyages between nearby islands. Or, put another way: Casey poses an impossible challenge, a challenge designed to kill those undertaking it, and the Argo—as ever, for Lafferty, the Church in and out of history—is the only vessel through which that challenge may be met. Thus the building and maintenance of that ship becomes synonymous with the challenge, even becomes the challenge itself; all other labors related to the Fleece and its acquisition are footnotes to this supreme endeavor.

Was Lafferty aware of the Pelias/Peleus mixup? Without his books or notes, the question is impossible to answer definitively, but I would wager he was, for two reasons. First, it’s consistent with everything we know of Lafferty’s tendencies to torture words along etymological lines. And second, it allows him to treat Casey as both dispatcher of the Argonauts, and a minor member of their company. Both in terms of character and narrative function, this amalgamated Peleus/Pelias thus approaches Judas—and Lafferty, in multiple places (most directly the as-yet-unpublished “Poor Man’s Guide to Hell”) entertains the notion that hell may in fact be empty, and hence even Judas be redeemed once his role in the redemptive drama is complete. Can the same be said of Casey, or is he (as the chapter heading has it) lost?

As if that weren’t enough, though—and when is it ever for Raphael Aloysius?—Lafferty pulls another figure into the Casey complex, noting that “Casey sowed a field with dragons’ teeth. It was ordained from the beginning that one of the company must do this. It was one of the Heroic Labors, the least understood of them.” It’s not really well understood within mythology either, not least because Jason is being asked to recreate a previous heroic labor, the original sowing of dragons’ teeth by Cadmus, the founder of Thebes credited with inventing both alphabet and agriculture. Any number of theorists, from Freud to Lévi-Strauss to McLuhan, have taken up these connections in the Cadmus myth; few, however, give much thought to why Jason must repeat that ancestral task. I’d be very interested to hear anybody’s take on that, generally or in Lafferty’s context; all I can figure is it’s possible his statement refers to himself as much as anyone else: he doesn’t quite understand why this happens. The immediate context is Casey’s rundown of the other Dirty Five, showing each in their worst light; if these doubts are the results of the teeth he’s sown, they are far more effective an opposition than any armed men could be. But at the very least, Lafferty is careful to give this ineffable task not to Iason-Finnegan (who after all has a reason, one with a name even, for the things he does), but rather to Peleus-Casey, the anomalous Argonaut.

Indeed, all that we are shown of Casey shows an individual continually searching to understand something of himself, as well as the world around him and his fit within it. This gives Lafferty the chance to experiment with two elaborate lists, one of the various “hidden” or “dream” worlds that Casey mentally inhabits; another of the many things Casey learns at his boarding school—or, at least, the first 39 of those things. Lafferty forgoes listing the 251 books Casey read, which is a shame, as it might help us in mapping out the author’s own reading habits at a similar age. Still, through these lists Lafferty presents introspection in a way unusual for him; more commonly the reader follows his characters into their own minds and out again, where here we are kept at a distance. (All this will come back into focus when, some time from now, we reach “The Casey Machine.”) And yet even this barrage of information does not suffice: “[T]here was more to Casey than this. There are things that cannot be communicated and yet call out their presence. If there had been no more to Casey than this, Finnegan wouldn’t have bothered with him, and neither would the rest of them.” So who would we be to throw him overboard?

Before moving on from an entry that has taken far too long to pull together between research and real-life interludes, a couple strange encounters: this chapter mentions both a meeting in dream with “a most odd traveler,” whom Casey speaks to in Phoenician—perhaps the figure in Phoenic’?—and a meeting in real life with Audifax O’Hanlon, who draws a masthead for a predecessor of Casey’s Crock. Lafferty will in time adopt the AO’H moniker as his own pen name, in flash fiction for the Oklahoma Science Fiction Writers’ Group newsletter—but that, along with the future twists in Casey’s tale, is a matter for another day.