#and with shrue's speech this episode

[cherrywhite]

There are so many callbacks in tsv that destroy me but this one absolutely gutted me

[catwyk]

travel doodles part 2!!!! notes and info below if youre interested :]

link to part 1

🦀🦞🦀🦞🦀🦞🦀🦞🦀🦞🦀🦞🦀🦞🦀🦞🦀🦞🦀🦞

picture 1: the cairn maiden!!! i drew her veil on whiteboard ONCE and im obsessed w shading thin drapery now. tbh im just obsessed w drapery

picture 2: headshots of faulkner, roemont, carpenter, and shrue that very much leave something to be desired, but im including them anyway

picture 3: faulkner comforting his father during ep 38 (best s3 episode)

picture 4: PYJAMA FAULKNER !!!! also during ep 38

picture 5: wallace, faulkner and thurrocks attempting to contact the endless drear in ep 22 (best s2 episode). again this leaves somethig to be desired but whooo cares maybe ill adapt it digitally

picture 6: very rough 2-panel comic of faulkner stealing carpenter's pancakes. there was gonna be a third panel where she stabs him with a fork but i fucked it up so badly i had to rip out the whole page. the text reads "couldnt care less" // "still waiting for his food"

picture 7: drawn most of the way through listening to season 3, and you can tell bc im just desparate for carpenter and faulkner to have a happy moment :( this is them going out for coffee together (the text shows that carp has a cappuccino and faulk has a hot chocolate)

picture 8: young em and carpenter playing in the white gull, trying not to fall in :] better times all round. this is another one i wanna digitize

picture 9: an older em and carpenter, where em is cleaning her scraped knee. his speech bubble reads "stop kicking your damn leg."

[thesiltverses]

The reveal that noone could even hear shrues broadcast was so devastating 😭

Something we spent a fair bit of time on was the question of how far to take the problem which Shrue themselves acknowledges at the start of their speech - that even an honest voice is doomed to get lost, twisted, shut-down, or co-opted, in a world of endless propaganda and vying noise, and so our words may be purposeless or even contributary.

For a good while the plan was actually to have the reveal that the entire broadcast had been shut down remotely from early on (an understandable post-Sid Wright measure from GGR) and that the radio was instead playing the finale of the stupid superhero serial we've been hearing throughout the season.

Which works thematically and ties up a couple of extra loose ends, but I thought would have been a pessimistic twist too far for this episode (and make our heroes look too much like ineffectual putzes when you stop to think about it - is there not an ON AIR sign visible? Would they not find a way to check?). Having a quick snapshot to show us that while Shrue's words are being heard, they're not necessarily being listened to, felt like a fair and humane compromise.

[valtsv]

The implications "every god is a god of lies" has for VAL though? As thee liar's saint?

Every god is a god of lies and at the end VAL tried, for once, to be a god of truth and suffers for it

to be honest the real answer is both - because every god in the silt verses is a result of that human need to build something to keep our awareness of the inevitability of our own mortality at bay. every god is a god of lies, because every god is a construct that we've created, often to allow ourselves to look the other way and live in blissful ignorance in spite of the horrifying practices and systematic failures happening around us (and relying on our continued participation in them), yes, but also simply to give ourselves a sense of purpose and possibility against the inexorable, ever-encroaching tide of death. every god is a god of lies, in service to the one true god that governs us all - the oldest; the only thing that has been or ever will be certain. the end of all things.

setting that aside for a second, i think it's important to remember that VAL's god isn't just a "god of lies" - that's a human label that we've affixed to it in order to make it easier to explain to ourselves; to reduce it to a manageable size that we can believe we're capable of understanding and controlling. but the Last Word is actually a rhetorical god - a god of the power of words, and how we articulate and express them. VAL is the mouthpiece of a god that embodies what Shrue decries in their speech - words. and those words do nothing but uphold those terrible lies we've built our society on; reinforce them and bring them to the surface. it's intentional, i think, that the only times we see VAL enact any kind of meaningful change that doesn't simply uphold the status quo and perpetuate the cycle of violence are when she decides not to speak, but to act - such as when she tells carson she doesn't want to speak to her mother, or decides against killing the man who showed her a small but genuine kindness. her agreement with Shrue's broadcast is, i think, an acknowledgement of this - she's demonstrated a capacity for self-awareness before, after all (though she does tend to retain her conviction in her own delusions in spite of this - which, speaking as someone who experiences psychotic episodes, is a brilliant portrayal of the self-contradictory reality of living with delusional thinking, but i digress - so what she'll decide to do with this awareness, if anything, only time will tell).

[resident-quilt]

Shrue’s descent into radicalism and what the Silt Verses says about our world today

(also, regarding the giant poem that the episode titles make) ITS A TUMBLR ESSAY BABYYYYYYYYY

Kill your gods. Starve them out, topple their statues, forsake their comfort— Kill the stories that gave birth to them. Tear away your flesh that bears their marks.  Adjudicator Shrue, Ep. 43

The Silt Verses is a story born of its time, to a 21st century world which is slowly decaying—and everyone in it is doing their part to help it decay just a little bit faster. It speaks of capitalism, of corruption, of power and belief and environmental destruction and the rift between generations. When Charles tells Val he can’t really stand behind the idea of a family (“You wonder about what kind of world we’re bringing children into, y’know?”) I had to pause and gather myself; it’s something we hear from so many Gen Z’ers today.

But then Shrue’s speech came, and it made no sense.

Shrue calls for an end in any form it can be given. They call for the loss of all faith and love and community in the world; they call for us to kill the stories of our history, to kill the figures we believe in and the ones that give us hope. Anything, everything, all we can give to stop the decay and degradation of the world. They demand us to defeat the corrupt system we have built by trading our lives to do so.

If our words and stories sustain them, let us fall silent. If our communities rely on them, let us drift apart and die, lonely, in the polluted wilds amongst the howling winds of long forgotten deities.

It made no sense because TSV, most simplistically, embodies “no ethical consumption under capitalism”—and this solidly did not fit. So I cast about for an answer to what it all meant, because TSV had grown to be more than the “folks, look where capitalism got us” which I thought it to be. And Shrue's “we can’t do anything to escape the system but die” was just too flat a conclusion. 

Then I fell upon the poem compiled from each episode’s title.

It begins with the start of humanity: a story of things that have happened, things people have believed, things which have roamed the land from then til now. 

Let me speak first of revelations, and next of dark deceit. Then I’ll speak of champions, of lovers, gods and beasts.

And so the poem continues in a description of this story, until it eventually twists to become entirely self-destructive around Chapters 18-24. It's a reference to how everything in the TSV universe seems to eat itself: their system of gods, sacrifices, even the characters themselves.

If I could trace with bloodless fingers, if my hands could shape the flow, I’d bear this song to the precipice and rend us both to dust below.  We’d both go plunging downwards, one final fall from grace— I’d howl, I’d scream, in victory, and we’d be gone without a trace. 

At Chapter 25, we get a respite from the story. We get a short poetic break which concludes that yes, we’re doomed to die—but we continue as we are despite it, and write our story even if it’ll be lost in the end. It’s a classic conclusion that a lot of literature and poetry fall to, because it’s so very human. It’s a cliche, and it’s a cliche for a reason. 

But we’ll never be rid of each other, my song, my sorrow, and I,  So I’ll bear it trembling onwards: to drift on, to dream, to die.

With that, the poem progresses forward until it starts addressing our end and what happens when we face that. It screams of last-ditch efforts keep on believing, even as we plunge down and down and the world just gets worse and worse. Shrue’s speech takes place in “One Last Song of Revelations” (the title is so fitting!), where they vocalize their realization that their pacifist attitude isn’t doing shit to change anything. 

But when they switch towards radicalism because it’s, evidently, the only way anything will ever get done—the only way anything will get the exposure to maybe make an impact—they speak of the destruction of society as a whole. Not the eradication of capitalism, nor the installation of kinder gods, nor the lowering of sacrifice ceilings. They speak of true destruction. Utter destruction.

Shrue’s speech isn’t some call to action, nor does it embody any concrete ideology which the writers are trying to convey. It’s just an expression of desperation. Nothing is working; no one is listening. 

What this poem sounds like is a story of how our world goes. It's its birth, its self-destruction, its philosophical revelations, its finale.

When we began following Carpenter and Faulkner in the reeds of the White Gull River, we were consuming a commentary on capitalism. Now, it’s more. It’s a commentary, yes, but it’s not only that—it’s an exploration. The Silt Verses is a tragic exploration of our world as it connects to theirs, of how we’ve been driven so far and been corrupted so deeply that only radicalism makes a difference because only radicalism is what gets the notice and attention to spark moderate change. And that same radicalism is going to destroy the society we have left.

But it’s all the same in the end, because society's collapse was going to happen anyways. So at least someone had it in them to fight for something.

GAHHHH I LOVE THIS SHOW

[eyesteeth]

predictions and theories for what’s to come. tsv spoilers up to tsv42 / s3e13, cw for content in line with what has been previously established in canon, long post (~2.5k)//

disclaimer: i’m not on the patreon or wherever the early access content is. if i guess something correctly do NOT tell me for the love of sweet salmon i will manifest crabs in your house

convergence

it’s kind of a given for this kind of show that convergence will happen in the final season: all (or most of) the main characters get in one spot before the final fight goes off. i’ve been betting for a very long time on everyone arriving at the tree camp before the big battle. i didn’t think it was gonna happen for a little bit in the middle, but i see the vision now:

paige is already in the camp

carpenter, hayward, and shrue are gonna head over once they’re done with their business

the aquifer is close to the tree cap so faulkner (and possibly rane) make the walk there

val is the exception - she might physically be there but i don’t think she has to be nor do i think she will be for reasons i’ll get into later

now, i don’t think convergence is gonna happen in the next episode, but i think it’ll happen in the penultimate one (or the episode after next episode, depending on if they split it in two again). what i think is gonna happen next episode is:

shrue does their speech and instantly after the carpenter-hayward-shrue trio hightails it outta there as the episode ends.

paige begins to enact her plan with the help of the tree camp friends we've met over the course of the season

faulkner decides to kill himself by walking into the god-winds and ends up at the camp (or this might happen in the episode after that i’m undecided) and rane might follow

val begins her big plan and Consequences start brewing

maybe a bit with the powers that be, most likely with shrue’s segment or in relation to val cutting communication 

i don’t have much to say to the first point. shrue does their speech and it goes about as well as a politically incendiary speech can go. either the last scene of that group that episode is them getting in the car and Zooming back to camp or them getting approached by security. though to me personally i think there’s gonna be a run from security types, someone pulls the car around for the other two to hop in, and they drive off tires squealing.

second point i have less to say to. we know paige has a plan, but the nature of that plan is currently vague. whatever it is, it begins to be carried out. not much else to say at this stage.

third point i have Too Much to say about. faulkner’s fully defeated by this point, and given faulkner’s “i’m tired” comment last episode and the comment paige received about prophets “walking out into the storm”, i think faulkner’s going to do exactly that. and i have a variety of ideas on what could happen on the journey!! you can mix and match from the following list:

rane tries to stop him and fails

rane ends up following him from a distance, alerting them to the camp and making More Future Problems in the process

rane dies or is killed while trying to get faulkner to go back to the aquifer

faulkner gets god-wind hallucinations of any/multiple from this list: carpenter, his dad, charlie, eddie, mason

he ends up playing marco polo with the winds

faulkner meets the cairn maiden in the same spot paige did and he talks to her and gets some insight on if/when he’s going to die soon (or he doesn’t and just passes by) (or he stops for shelter in that cave but doesn’t see the maiden) (or he just, fucking dies)

fully walks to camp on his own, mirroring the journey he took between season one and season two

gets absolutely fucked up by the trip and rescued by paige while she’s in the area enacting her plan, contrasting with the season one kidnapping

he actually doesn’t go into the god-winds this episode, rane convinces him back into the aquifer but he manages to slip away by the episode’s end and spends the beginning of the penultimate (or not, as stated before) episode in the winds and convergence happens then

(which allows the potential of timing so when carpenter arrives back at camp faulkner is hallucinating out of his mind and she runs into him like that and he thinks she’s a hallucination but shes not and [i am bonked on the head and dragged away before i can continue])

fourth point, again, not much to say there. i had mentioned the idea of val intentionally monkey’s paw-ing people early in the season, but now i think the good she’s going to try to do is going to have an unintentional consequence. possibly bootstrap theory or bootstrap theory adjacent. i’ll explain what that means in a second.

fifth point, self-explanatory. if shrue’s not saying what the powers that be want, they might intervene. or, val saying she doesn’t want her mother and cutting contact sends them into a panic, and we get some cuts to the boardroom and their balancing act of “woo we won the war” and “we have lost control of our reality-warping nuke on two legs''.

bootstrap theory interlude: it gets more and more viable with each new episode and it has me on edge

so way back when val was first introduced this season i posted about how she blows the power scaling of this series through the roof because of how much she can do. one of the things i used as a hypothetical was her saying that the gods never existed. this then grew from an off-the-cuff statement to a full hypothetical that i’d rotate from time to time. it made sense to me from a thematic standpoint - carpenter talks in season one about how much of a waste gods are, considers in season two what life would be like without a god, and the tagline of season three is “kill your gods” - but i could never see it happening practically until now. val, on a benevolent god kick, goes on a wish-granting spree and ends up destroying all gods and herself in the process. 

the core of this idea was formed when our first big moment with val was in the form of “never”, making it so something never existed. her doing this with the gods would absolutely be a bootstrap - she wouldn’t exist without gods, and if she didn’t exist, the wish couldn’t be granted, so there would be gods, then she would exist, then she’d make the wish, congrats you’ve made a bootstrap paradox.

i don’t think that theory in that form is going to happen. val’s avoided paradoxes so far, and she’s shifted away from “nevers” to making things happen in the current moment. she could, if she reaches a certain point, say she doesn’t want gods to exist anymore, in which case she’d either be counted as a god and die too, or the force of such a declaration would just kill her on the spot. if done right, it could be very thematically fulfilling, but if done wrong, it would feel like an utter cop-out.

this is my bootstrap-adjacent theory, and i’m very loose on this happening. pretty much everything else i’ve listed so far feels firmly within the realm of possibility to me, while this one is more “wouldn’t it be cool/fucked up if this happened”

miscellaneous (but important)

i’m gonna forget points cause i have a sieve for a brain but but some story threads that i think are gonna be relevant are:

carpenter’s tree dream from s3e1. that was specifically a willow tree, and the willow tree is what’s been mentioned in tsv41, so that’s absolutely connected. if i am to lean on old theories again, the cairn maiden’s reliance “this has always been the place” and val’s ability to change the past could have some relevance if a multiple-god fight goes down, but i’m not entirely sold on the idea of that happening, more just in the space of them being potential thematic parallels.

the big ol’ wave in s3e1. that was implied to have been caused by the trawler-man in some way, and i can think of three possible explanations: a) faulkner was simply praying So Damn Hard for his sister’s safety that the trawler-man was like “yeah sure i’ll do that” and it was long-range protection, b) the bit about carpenter and faulkner fighting for champion status in the fake beach episode script was in fact insane foreshadowing that faulkner’s not special but carpenter is and she’s the world’s most (un)luckiest gal with two (debatably three) gods watching out for her and that wave was the trawler-man protecting his special favoritest follower (which could also be why the wave came in the s1 finale, the trawler-man was responding specifically to carpenter and faulkner just wasn’t doing shit), or c) carpenter and faulkner combined get enough trawler-man attention, they were both needed to summon the s1 finale wave, and so faulkner specifically praying for carpenter’s safety made it trigger because it was both of them. she’s the sediment and he’s the water, you need both to make silt, they’re two mouths on the same face that wants outta this shit, thematic overload, kablooey. i am fully prepared for none of these three to be canon but the wave has to come back.

paige's riddle: this is either an outstandingly long death flag (either of them are not going to be able to give the answer because either the giver or receiver will be dead), has some deeply thematic answer, or is Simply A Bit. sometimes a spade is just a spade. shrugs.

val’s mom: this is a given. will she show up? will val move past the notion of wanting her mother? is there some weird twist with the mom? (val’s reaction at the end of that segment reminded me of shrue thinking about their family and the uncertainty of their existence, could perhaps val be unsure of her mother’s existence?) it’s gotta lead somewhere, unless it intentionally Doesn't.

rane: i stated before that i don’t think rane is gonna survive the season and i still mostly stand by that. my main thoughts concerning rane have to deal with their change in perception and interaction towards faulkner. they’ve always been perceptive (iirc it was noted back in s3e4 that they knew faulkner was unstable when they gave him the news) but they were there to support him and were happy to do so. now they’ve gotten more bitter and upset, and i doubt them or faulkner will be willing to reasonably talk it out. i can think of a handful of scenarios in which rane dies (fights with faulkner in a way that reminds faulkner of thurrocks and he does a black-out murder again, rane gets misled by the winds when going after faulkner and dies out there, some Different threat picks them off, they see carpenter and faulkner at the tree camp together after convergence and attempt to kill carpenter and are killed instead by someone present) but only one where they live (let faulkner go to his presumed death and lead the river people themself). if they go out, which i think they will, it's gotta have thematic weight baby

rough outline of thoughts

so, provided we’re getting three episodes and one of them doesn’t split again:

tsv43 / s3e14: carpenter, hayward, and shrue do shrue’s speech thing. because this is incredibly incendiary, they gotta zoom outta there back to tree camp, likely evading security. at the tree camp, paige makes big progress on her plan. val also makes big progress on her plan. carson and the powers that be might show up for some fucking around, possibly having to juggle both the val problem and the shrue problem. rane either drags faulkner back to the aquifer where he has one last bout of misery before finally fucking off into the winds with the intent to die, or he just is in the winds asap and spends his whole chunk of the episode in the wastes without protective gear and experiences Various Horrors. events would likely not happen in the order described here. if all of this were to go down, this episode might also be split in two, or some of this would happen in 44. i am pretty confident in these events occuring, however.

tsv44 / s3e15: convergence time. carpenter, hayward, and shrue pull up at the camp. either faulkner’s already there because he got there in 43 or he’s on the way and shows up during his segment. an absolute clusterfuck of character conversation occurs, paige and hayward riddle time, faulkner apologizing to carpenter, shrue being confused out of their mind, paige explains the plan to the gang (likely sans faulkner cause he’s not technically part of the tree gang but he's in the area when it happens) and the plan is all set up by the end of the episode. meanwhile, val’s a wreck doing her thing. i find the idea of her not being alive for the final episode (and that the conflict the gang faces is the Consequences of her powers as opposed to her specifically) quite enticing, so i’m going to say that she succumbs to her body breaking down as she does the Consequences Thing. the point of the mother is resolved - either she finds her mother or she moves past that desire, and she dies just in time for shit to get Fucked for our heroes.

tsv45 / s3e16: something has gone Horribly Wrong! is it val’s plan? is it paige’s plan? is it both? would both plans have worked independently but have coincided in a horrible awful mess? who knows!! get ready for the wildest hour of podcasting you ever did hear. i think at least one of the main four is gonna die, if not more, and we will all probably cry. (if this ending is unsatisfying i am going to drop everything and write a massive fix-it fic, mark my words.) we’ll probably get a better idea of this potential conflict as val and paige’s plans come to light in 43 and 44.

lightning round

purely things i think would be cool and have some, but less likelihood of happening:

sid wright cameo (if shrue’s gonna be on the radio, maybe a brief moment of him?)

gage pops up (given that they were a god hunter last season and the tagline of this season is “kill your gods”, they could show up as an asset)

the withermark gets used (provided i’m remembering correctly, it was initially in bellwethers, which is close to the camp, and therefore the aquifer, so rane could potentially get their hands on it. at this point in the series i severely doubt either carpenter or faulkner would use it unless they were in Fucking Dire circumstances)

carpenter and faulkner play marco polo yet again, going three for three on marco polo happening each season

some meta reacharound (the series was called the silt verses because these events were being recorded in the silt verses the whole time!! woahg!!)

faulkner goes by richard/richie again and/or carpenter goes by mallory again

anyway thanks for listening to me ramble for 2.5k this podcast has me unwell

[mapleandgingeroatmeal]

Ok before I listen at all to the finale, my only prediction for how the end of this will play out:

In the episode where Shrue was giving their speech, one of the reactions that we cut to was Val, listening with approval and agreement.

Then in the penultimate episode we had a moment of (I think) forshadowing where Carpenter says that Shrue’s sacrifice will have been worth it if even one person was listening.

That episode also set up that Carson is going to try and use Val to make The Woundtree responsible for the attack on Glottage.

Taking all these pieces of set-up together, I think at some point we’ll have a moment of Val standing up to Carson and refusing to harm Paige or her congregation. I don’t know what else she might do, or anything else about the end. But I do think that will happen.

[thesiltverses]

hi! I just wanted to say that Shrue's speech in this episode is such a hard hitter and I am in awe. thank you

Thank you, really glad you liked it! Sarah Griffin delivers an absolute powerhouse of a performance in that speech, imo (and I know it was a real emotional challenge for them as an actor to build to it) - it held me rapt in the recording session and I think it's an absolute tribute to their talent that it holds us rapt even though it's standing firm and still in the heart of an action-packed episode.

[eyesteeth]

idk if this counts as tsv spoilers cause they literally posted this on the official tumblr but this does involve info about tomorrow’s episode so if u don’t wanna click don’t click i just have more predictions now //

the fact that faulkner’s gonna get found out next episode means there’s potential for him to get run out into the winds instead of my previously assumed “ok im gonna kill myself now bye” walk of shame Which Means That we could potentially get faulkner/carpenter parallels on being forced to run from a place of faith. neat!

while he could potentially walk it back and try and make up another lie quite frankly it’s gotten so big and he’s so tired i don’t think he’s gonna try. maybe rane is gonna do their best to help the lie, but i feel like they’re so irritated by this point that they’re going to be part of the group digging into him.

on the other side of the coin, given that greave is gonna show up during shrue’s speech and carpenter is presumably going to be in the area i’m hoping for confusion central. carpenter expecting to see faulkner there and psyching herself up for that conversation but seeing greave instead and possibly overhearing about the schism and having a “?????” moment trying to figure out what happened while also lying low.

convergence is still gonna happen though. imo. carpenter/hayward/shrue are gonna go back to tree camp and faulkner’s gonna get there somehow, either by wandering out or being forced out. i’m keeping the rest of my predictions the same

(once again i am not on the patreon. do Not spoil me i Will put crabs in your pipes)