#a cry in the wilderness

[hellyeahgeorgekennedy]

George Kennedy in A Cry In The Wilderness (1974)

[rastronomicals]

12:54 PM EDT March 18, 2024:

Eluveitie - "A Cry In The Wilderness" From the album Ategnatos (April 5, 2019)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

File under: Folk Metal

[yeahthatsinteresting]

Ryan Gosling as Sebastian Wilder in 'La La Land' (2016)

[lovelikeafuneral]

let this guy be carmy’s therapist

[jadepomp]

NATS FUNERAL OMG AM I A JOKE TO YOU???

[jaztice]

god WHY did no one tell me the gender cascade adventuring party has like, the coolest deep dive into the negotiation aspect of game theory oh okay thats why

[just-somedude]

.

[wistfulwatcher]

I asked him that, Nat.

[orenji-iro-no-sora]

I have also been dreading the end, Lorsan.

You're my favourite! ❤️

[hellyeahgeorgekennedy]

George Kennedy, Joanna Pettet, and Lee Montgomery in A Cry In The Wilderness (1974)

[rastronomicals]

5:02 PM EST December 1, 2024:

Eluveitie - "A Cry In The Wilderness" From the album Ategnatos (April 5, 2019)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

Some parts I like, some I don't. Either way, you can't deny Eluveitie know their Fairport Convention--and their Destiny's Child

File under: Folk Metal

--

[befuddled-calico-whump]

open for a surprise

oh hey, how'd he get here?

(from the end of No One's Coming to Save You)

•°•°•

Wildefire Masterlist

@whumpacabra   @enteredin2eternity  @kixngiggles  @whumpsday   @kiichu

  @whump-for-all-and-all-for-whump   @shywhumpauthor   @distinctlywhumpthing , @bloodinkandashes , @fleur-alise ,

@whumpy-daydreams , @whumpwillow , @honeycollectswhump ,  @snakebites-and-ink , @the-scrapegoat

[orchidscurse]

Gene Wilder climbing a tree, circa 1993

[thatwillreallydoit]

[sunfl0wer71]

holger, live on tennis channel, saying that he pulls on his shorts to distract his opponents, is wild

[deeply-embarrassing]

dissecting shauna's trip in "purgatory" with her son in 2x06

okay so shauna's "hallucinations" with her son are devastating. the fact she'll never be sure whether she truly held him is already a lot, but 2x06 is even worse to rewatch if you believe in three theories**:

there's a purgatory, and what the person who's between life and death experiences depends on whether "it" wants them to survive

eating/drinking in purgatory condemns you

blood has value in the wilderness

just like with jackie, purgatory for shauna and her son is sweet and believable at first. everyone is there, everything is fine. purgatory is giving shauna everything she hoped for.

except it's not. because whenever shauna tries to feed her baby, it doesn't work. why? there were food/drinks available in jackie's and lottie's purgatories. whether shauna's body could realistically produce milk doesn't matter, as she does eventually manage to breastfeed him. and her son is hungry, he's so hungry he can't stop crying.

why isn't he eating? why isn't it working? maybe her son instinctively knows he shouldn't. maybe milk is not what he's hungry for, and she's offering the wrong thing. maybe she can't produce what he needs just yet.

meanwhile the wilderness is starving, "it" needs to be fed. "it" picks the people shauna trusts the most, and portrays them as annoyed by the kid's cries (tai) or as already condemning him to death (natalie). a clever way to goad shauna into trying to feed him more insistently.

frustrated none of it works, "it" starts to break the sweet illusion, creating more shocking situations appealing to shauna's fears. lottie taking her child away, becoming the child's mother. she'll feed him (physically and psychologically), unless shauna does it first.

from that moment on, "it" makes tea available to shauna. "we need to feed": it's going to be her or the baby. the tea or the milk. however, ideally, "it" would rather have the baby: the tea is easy to miss in this scene, just sitting there, undiscussed. probably because shauna would be more useful to the wilderness.

eventually, shauna sits with her son. for the first time, she tells him that she loves him, that she's sorry she used not to. as soon as she starts speaking to him, his "hunger-induced" crying stops.

(it might be another "physical hunger as the expression of psychological hunger, of longing for love and connection" yellowjackets moment. the baby hadn't been crying for milk, in this reality, but for love. and when hunger is psychological, you can only be fed by the people whom you're connected to. jackie was given tea by the group, after shauna brought her inside. lottie was given food by laura lee. love is "psychological food", and it's portrayed as literal food in these scenes.)

so, the only one who can feed the baby is someone who loves him. shauna explicitely does, now, and she asks him to drink for her. she says it's how they'll stay together. so he does. she kills him while trying to do the opposite.

""natalie"" comes in just a few seconds later, bringing shauna tea. the kid kept refusing to drink, so it was time to make the mother truly notice the tea. but then "nat" realizes the baby is drinking: it's finally happening. it's a miracle.

"she" directly wants to "tell the others", which probably is code for informing the trapper/hunter. it echoes with "so glad you're joining us, we've been waiting for you" in jackie's purgatory, or "i think we need to get you out of here" in lottie's.

shauna is so fcused on her son that she doesn't even acknowledge the tea. in every way, her son's death saves her life. loving him, feeding him, being awed by him, saves her life.

she asks for a bit more time alone with the baby, she has no way of knowing what she's truly asking for. the attention of "nat" has completely switched, though. "she" avoids looking at shauna and is focusing on the baby, a bit shocked, a bit hungry. and though "she" protests a little, eventually "she" accepts the request. it's not evil, just hungry?

then, she wakes up next to an empty crib, the tea and the group's offerings. and the group is eating her baby: all of them, including ben, who didn't eat jackie. the baby's dead, and "it" is eating him in front of her.

blood had been spilled in this world, all over the symbol, by eating the baby. and in real life, it's been spilled through the group's blood offerings and shauna's body. "it" isn't hungry anymore. shauna wakes up in real life.

-> we're not sure whether these death sequences are "real", if there truly are "wilderness entities" manipulating them towards life or death or if their minds are making it up depending on their own wishes/fears. but if it's real, then 2x06 shows us shauna being manipulated into killing her own child right in front of us. and just like her, we'll probably never know for sure if she truly held him. if it was all just hallucinations or something else, something both better and worse.

ps: severe placenta praevia kills both the baby and the mother during childbirth if you don't do a cesarian. from a medical point of view, shauna totally should have died. either the writers didn't look it up, either the wilderness heard them ♥

(**of course, said "purgatory" or "wilderness" don't have to be real things that exist within the show's universe. these death sequences can just be a way to explore further the themes of psychological hunger and consumption, though i personally find that hard to believe. why is food what kills them in these death sequences, offered by the people they love? perhaps the idea is that hunger means you're alive. you're not meant to have everything you want, complete comfort. only death will offer you that. didn't explore that much in this post, it's a super large theme, and there are parts of shauna's "hallucinations" which i struggle to explain without supernatural elements, such as the tea or ben also eating the baby.)