#otgw the woodsman | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

eregyrn-falls · 1 year ago

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You know, I honestly never connected these dots until you wrote this, Rose!

It's giving me Thoughts, but I'm not sure they're useful; or accurate. Also, this is Yet Another occasion on which I'd like to listen again to the DVD commentaries, and I wish those were easily accessible online somewhere. (I have the DVD, but playing it is tricky.) (I would love for someone to extract that audio and put it up on YT, as GF's audio commentaries were.)

The thing I most note is that -- with a few important exceptions -- it doesn't feel like there's that much communication between the vignettes (for want of a better term) visited by Wirt and Greg (and Beatrice - who is one of those important exceptions).

Each vignette takes place in its own time period, as evidenced by clothing and architecture. It's pretty hard to imagine Miss Langtree socializing with Auntie Whispers, right? (Although I've definitely seen some fun fan-art that puts various characters in the same place.) And if we accept the Unknown as a sort of limbo, the question arises: is limbo one giant "world", in which everyone has their own little area, and you can travel between them?

(Noting here that the Unknown does not match up to the Christian theological Limbo, or Purgatory. But both words have been used to describe this in-between place where Wirt and Greg travel. I'm going to keep using limbo, as it's the term with the least amount of specifically religious freight. Limbo has passed into English with a variety of meanings: a place/state of neglect or oblivion; a place/state of restraint/confinement; a place/state that is intermediate or transitional. That's how I'm using it.)

Anyway, it does seem to work that way for Wirt and Greg, and Beatrice -- they are able to pass from vignette to vignette. And the Woodsman (and the Beast, of course). And the idea that the Unknown is a place between life and death, where Wirt and Greg find themselves during those few seconds of drowning in their real world, then suggests that everyone else they meet is also existing between life and death, for some reason.

Or, does it? Quincy Endicott *IS* already dead. (Since we see his headstone in the cemetery from Wirt and Greg's original time/place.) And everyone else's behavior is... well, actually, everyone else's behavior is kind of distinctly weird for each of them.

The idea that Mr. Langtree thought it was a good idea to found a school in which to try to teach animals to read and write is... there's kind of a dreamlike quality to that, isn't there? (Just as there's a dreamlike quality to Jimmy Brown getting stuck in the gorilla suit and not being able to communicate except through gorilla-like roars.) As covered, the Dark Tavern is occupied as much by Archetypes as by actual people (hard to tell which!). I probably don't need to elaborate on the dreamlike quality of Endicott's and Lady Grey's mansions "growing together" in the middle. Pottsfield exists in a never-ending celebration of what is basically the living dead.

But again, there are exceptions. The Woodsman and his daughter, from the very brief glimpses we get, seem to "live" an ordinary life. How does that address the idea of them existing in limbo? And Beatrice's family ALSO kind of looks like they have a "normal"-ish life.

And none of this explains the frogs. Or the salmon fisherman.

It also doesn't really explain how the Unknown functions as an independently-operating "world" in which people can be cursed. Beatrice is cursed by a magical bluebird, along with her whole family. Lorna is cursed by an evil spirit that possesses her. What role does that kind of magic play in a limbo? And what's up with the "witch sisters" of Adelaide and Aunty Whispers?

In other words, there seems to be a lot of evidence that for some of those we meet, the Unknown is NOT functioning as a transitional space. It seems more like it functions for some of them as a place of "neglect" or "oblivion", whatever you take that to mean. It seems like for each of them (mostly), it's a place where they exist within a moment in time (their time). They aren't going anywhere or working through anything the way Wirt and Greg are. They seem like they're in a state of suspension, of waiting. Or of repetition of a moment in time that they don't perceive as repetition?

Beatrice, once she has been cursed, leaves her own vignette (Regency-era, but in America), and travels throughout the others. She *is* on a journey, but it's a journey with a solution that also exists within the Unknown. Similarly, her family, once cursed, all leave their home and take up residence in a hollow tree, as bluebirds would. (Why do none of the rest of them travel to seek a solution? Yes, it's Beatrice's responsibility; but the family don't know that; or do they? They're still sentient too, so if I'm Beatrice's father or sister or brother, why would I *not* go forth and try to find a way to save all of us? Okay. That's just a digression.)

The Woodsman also travels from vignette to vignette *after* he becomes the Lantern Bearer -- which is implied to have happened because his daughter wandered away from their house into the woods, and got lost; and when he went to find her, the Beast convinced him that her spirit was within the lantern. (And then, she finds her way home on her own, to discover her father has disappeared.)

Crucially, though, we never see the Woodsman outside of the woods. We don't see him entering the clearings or the towns -- with the exception of the Mill, which once belonged to Beatrice's family. The implication there is that he comes upon the abandoned Mill at some point after Beatrice and her family were turned into bluebirds. But we don't know how long that was. We don't really know how long the Woodsman bore the lantern, either.

(I will also point out that the only other "traveler" we meet who interacts with multiple vignettes is Fred the Horse; who is also the only animal we see who can talk. (The frogs don't talk, although in Jason Funderburker's case, they do sing.) I have no idea what to make of Fred. Does he travel between vignettes because he becomes a part of Wirt and Greg's journey? The man driving the hay card, whom we see at the start of that episode, also isn't REALLY shown within any of the vignettes -- we don't know where he came from, nor where he's going.)

Okay. So then -- is traveling within the Unknown and interacting with multiple vignettes completely situational? I'm going to say that it does seem like it. I can't see any evidence that most of the people within each vignette even know that there are other such pocket worlds out there. (And Patrick McHale acknowledged someone pointing out that none of the Archetypes in the Tavern are seen stepping outside it.)

Sometimes they act like they know there's *a* world out there; an existence beyond their own, the *ability* to travel. The folk in the Tavern have no trouble with the idea that Wirt is a Pilgrim on a journey. But they don't act like they know who Adelaide of the Pasture is. They're not talking to each other saying, "Hey, did you hear about that wild gorilla on the loose over at the Langtree school? Crazy, huh?" There aren't any hints that the evil spirit inhabiting Lorna, and causing there to be a creepy house in which people are devoured, has become a more widely-known tale of the dangers that lurk in the Unknown. (And WHAT IS UP with the salmon fisherman?)

Adelaide knows about (and says she works for) the Beast. Aunty Whispers presumably knows about the Beast, but what she warns the boys about is Adelaide. Impossible to know whether Adelaide is "from" the vignette that contained Lorna and Aunty Whispers (1600s America) and left it, or whether both witch sisters are from yet another vignette and both struck out on their own.

But, Miss Langtree and the rest (the circus, the townsfolk from ??? who come to give money to the charity concert) seem blissfully unconcerned by the idea of the Beast. The only thing they're worried about is that wild gorilla on the loose. We can't, of course, talk to the frogs, but they don't see all that worried about anything, either. Of all the anxieties plaguing Quincy Endicott, the Beast isn't one of them, and we don't really feel like the shadow of the Beast causes any worries in the mansions (fortress?) occupied by him and Lady Grey.

OKAY. So, you noted already that what's interesting about the Tavern is that everyone within it seem to be Archetypes. None have proper names, and all of them are VERY preoccupied with finding a label to fit Wirt. (I guess Greg is a little kid and isn't expect to have a label yet?) There's a Chaucerian quality to the Tavern, and that kind of extends to the folktale-as-warning that the Tavern Keeper sings about. We kind of don't have a lot of evidence that that song is known anywhere ELSE.

Maybe there is such a song about the Beast and his nature in the Tavern because in his own way, the Beast is another Archetype? And as you pointed out -- the Woodsman is also an archetype, but... who gave him that title? He never introduces himself by ANY name or title. He and the Beast are sort of a part of this archetypal system, but neither of them seem to be *within* that vignette; and I don't think the Woodsman is from there. I'm... I'm not sure those are actually "real" people (insasmuch as you can say that anybody in the Unknown is a real person?).

Given the way it *feels* like some of the other vignettes have no knowledge of the Beast (let alone the rules that govern him), perhaps the Woodsman and his daughter's vignette was another of the ones that didn't. We don't really have any idea what their reality was like before they fell into this additional limbo of loss, waiting, and the lantern. And we don't know if the knowledge of the Beast that the Woodsman imparts to Wirt and Greg is something he knew before his role as lantern bearer, or that he has put together after.

Yeah, it's tragic that the Woodsman never went into the Tavern and heard the song. It's tragic that nobody from the Tavern ever went anywhere else and spread the knowledge of what the Beast is and what he does. It's tragic that he never came across Adelaide, who could have explained the Beast to him; or Aunty Whispers, who might know all about the Beast as well, though we don't know for sure.

The Unknown is a place that runs by magical rules -- and it might be a place that runs by rules that are particular to each vignette. Maybe, short of a traveler on a journey -- like Beatrice, or Wirt and Greg -- it's not... possible? for the people from each vignette to enter the others? Or, like... if not not-possible, maybe it's a thing that simply wouldn't occur to them? We're given evidence of only a few people who seem to be able to move at will across the wider expand of the Unknown.

Whether the Woodsman ever "could" have heard the song from the Tavern -- and I do think you're onto something with suggesting that when he became the lantern bearer, anyone who knew what that meant would have shunned him -- there's still that element of tragedy to him. Maybe it's as simple as the idea that the Woodsman, the lantern bearer, must stay within The Woods. (He does tell the boys to *leave* the woods, to be safe from the Beast.) Can the Woodsman leave the woods himself? Maybe not until he learns the truth himself, and casts off the role of lantern bearer. It feels possible that he couldn't have even gone back to his home before that.

I still don't really have any firm idea for HOW each of the vignettes -- the communities and their people -- wound up occupying a part of the Unknown. How, or WHY. Why are they there? What are they there FOR? There are tantalizing hints of people existing beyond what we saw (the "others" who came to the house and who were devoured by Lorna's evil spirit; the community that the Langtrees belong to). Will their time there ever end, or not? Why not? What happens to the Unknown NOW that there's no Beast any longer???

Heck, what does it even MEAN within the Unknown that the moon's phase never changes, but the season turned from fall to winter? (You might think that the change to winter was symbolic of the coldness of the deep water and the cold of death coming over Wirt and Greg, but... the frogs were going to hibernate in the mud well before that. And we see in the little round-up of "what happened to them afterwards" that winter stays.)

Anyway, uh, thank you for coming to my TED talk. Here I am, loving this show for like 7 years, and never really engaging in much lengthy meta about it. But MAN, is there a lot to say.

(As a final note: I have no idea whether the comics address any of these questions, or fill out any of the backstory of what we saw in the show. I haven't read them, although I'd like to. But they come so far after the show -- and I have little idea of their writing provenance -- that I feel okay talking about the show on its own.)

so the Tavern Keeper's song "The Beast is Out There" actually spells out the Beast's modus operandi in thorough detail, right? it explicitly spells out that his promises are lies, that the Edelwood trees are grown from his victims, and even that the lantern is "his."

this is all delivered, folktale-as-a-warning-style, to Wirt and Greg when they appear in the tavern as lost travelers — it may even play a part on Wirt seeing through the Beast's trick in the finale. this is a warning conveyed to residents of the Unknown through song — these people aren't oblivious to the Beast; in fact, they're "all" well aware that he's out there and he can't be trusted.

so, with this in mind, why is it so strongly implied that the Woodsman hasn't heard this song?

the Woodsman claims, probably honestly, that he had no idea where the Edelwood trees come from. and he never had an inkling that the Beast's soul was in the lantern all along — maybe a very faint one, but not enough to counteract his denial and desperation. nothing like Wirt's immediate intuition.

so, was the Woodsman's denial just too deep, or had he really never heard the song? had he really never been warned? he's been seen very near to the Dark Lantern tavern, but it seems he never entered, and this has... heartbreaking implications to me.

because clearly, he was feared and ostracized due to carrying the lantern! the Tavern Keeper was superstitious enough about bluebirds, for crying out loud, so of course she'd object to the Woodsman stepping foot in her tavern when "he who carries the lantern must be the Beast!"

but even before the Woodsman became the lantern-bearer — was he never given a proper warning then, either? were he and his family outcasts then, too? if so, was it by choice, or were they just ostracized by superstitious townsfolk before the Beast ever had them in his clutches?

I mean, think about the naming conventions in the Dark Lantern episode — the Tavernkeeper. the Butcher. the Tailor. the Highwayman. and then the Woodsman. the names seem almost designed to call attention to how these characters should be connected — but they aren't. why aren't they?

and, hell — why did the Woodsman's daughter have no one to turn to who'd help her look, when her father went missing? why was there no support for either of them? did they just... never have anyone in their lives besides each other?

anyways, if you can't tell, the Woodsman is one of my favorite tragic heroes.

#over the garden wall #meta #otgw the woodsman #otgw the tavern keeper #otgw the beast #long post

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