#sacrifice/savior imagery

[wellthisissomething]

ATEEZ(에이티즈) - 'HALAZIA'

Whumpy Moments in Music Videos - 16/?

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[thebiggestfuckgiven]

Ectoberweek 26: Cults

Rating: T

Warnings: description of suicide (in the form of self-sacrifice), cult mentality

A/N: a little (a lot) shorter than the previous one, but it’s cuz i wrote it during my thirty min break at work~ It’s a beloved trope that Danny falls victim to a cult, so i thought, what if it was a little different? hope u enjoy!

-💜-

It was a strange thing, to hate the person who saved you. Who continues to save you. A person, a thing, that shields you from the incessant violence of the grotesque dead things that look so much like them, and you hate them.

Or, you used to, at least.

Cool metal bites into your palm. The dagger in your hand is curved, its metal a haunting blue. Like ice.

You can’t begin to fathom why you ever hated that fated savior. That thing that watched over you and everyone else so selflessly. It gave everything to you.

Slowly, you drop to your knees. The pain of impact is barely there. There is a low green light in the room. With a shuddering breath, you incline your head upwards. All the breath leaves your lungs. The being before you towers impossibly. A massive body of writhing, pulsating shadows, a green shine trapped within.

You want to look higher. You yearn to. You need to see. Tears prick at the corner of your eyes. They’re burning. Your skin grows clammy, burning hot and covered in a cold sweat. You’re burning. Burning, burning, burning.

You see a cool blue face, trapped in an icy pallor. Purple tinged lips. A twinkling cosmos above them. Impossible swirling vortexes of nebulas and supernovas. You see piercing toxic green light before you can’t see anything. Something warm, thicker than tears, runs down your face.

You gasp a breath, finally. Your body is trembling, and you know that you should apologize. But you saw your savior. The thing that gave you everything.

A deep rumbling vibrates the floor beneath you.

It was time to give back.

The dagger in your hand is cool, still. Light. Head still inclined upwards, you bring the blade up to your throat. Blood and tears alike stain your neck. There is something at the tip of your tongue. A prayer. A praise. A holy blessing.

Thank you.

A quick movement to the side. You barely feel it. Thick, hot blood runs down your chest in what should have been a terrifying torrent.

You feel at peace. A warm blanket encompasses you.

Thank you, you whisper again. All you hear is the sound of your own life pooling in your throat, and you smile.

He shall live, and you with him.

[sokkastyles]

Addressing the La Pieta pose in Crossroads of Destiny:

(I was raised Catholic so let's do this)

The scene is %100 a reference to Mary holding Jesus. I've seen a lot of zutara shippers use this to support the motherly nature of Katara and Aang's relationship as an obstacle to shipping them, and I agree.

What I disagree on is whether the scene is meant to be romantic. Although La Pieta absolutely has mother/son imagery, it doesn't preclude it from being used in romantic scenes. Atla is hardly unique in doing this.

And the reason why is because the imagery is not just mother/son, it conveys themes of sacrifice and healing. It's not a coincidence that Aang is positioned in the same position as the christ, and the show also uses a lot of madonna imagery with Katara. All of this is used in conjunction with Katara and Aang's relationship. It's a powerful image that is frequently used to describe relationships between men and women, because it follows a lot of well-established archetypes.

I've said this before, but it's not that the mother/son dynamics are in opposition to Katara and Aang being romantic. It's that they're used to enhance the relationship. We're supposed to see Katara being motherly and carrying the burden of Aang being The Savior as romantic.

The problem is that it's a one-sided and male-centric way to write a romance, and carries implications of men as doers and actors in a story and women as supportive, virginal figures who carry the brunt of the emotional labor.

In short, it's not that people who don't ship Katara and Aang don't get the symbolism. We just don't like it.

[justforbooks]

She’s Always Hungry by Eliza Clark

A bona-fide queen of body horror delves into fears and illicit desires in this engrossing short-story debut

Disgust and delight, it has been said, live in close proximity; in Eliza Clark’s debut collection, they share a home and a bed. These 11 stories revolve around food, sex, gender, power and the body; they veer from realism to sci-fi, fairytale, horror and post-apocalyptic dystopia. This is a book that seems crafted from the stuff of our deepest fears and our most illicit desires. You read on, by turns engrossed and grossed out, as though in the thrall of some demonic power.

In one story, a tapeworm finds a happy home in the narrator’s belly, eating her dinners and keeping her weight in check (“Find me deliciously thin at a Michelin star restaurant, devouring a tasting menu with a wasp waist, never loosening my belt”). Another narrator’s pubescent face, blighted with acne, melts and scabs over after an aggressive treatment found on the dark web. “I feel like I’m touching raw meat and I pull my hands away.” In the sci-fi story Hollow Bones, a rip in the spacesuit of a scientist studying alien cultures allows a luminescent parasite to burrow into her thigh; bizarrely, she eats her own finger as it breaks off after prodding the wound (“The skin of that finger was so thin, it fell apart like stewed meat and slid down her throat just as easily, gristle collapsing with a press of her tongue, and the bone crumbling between her teeth”). The tale ends in her leg and forearm being amputated by a surgical team of fanged and furry creatures. Clark is a bona-fide queen of body horror, sadistic in her choice of imagery, and cussedly attentive to that most mundane and yet consequential of facts: that we have and are a body and, as a result, are always at risk of injury and mutation.

Boy Parts, Clark’s debut novel, was a BookTok sensation. A darkly hilarious study of gender archetypes and the treacherous schism between art and porn, consent and coercion, it featured a Geordie dominatrix and fetish photographer who, in the name of her vocation, groomed, snapped and possibly also bludgeoned and killed men she picked up from the streets. Her follow-up, Penance, turned a sly gaze on true crime, reconstructing the immolation of a teenager by three of her schoolmates. The preoccupations and self-awareness of these novels percolate into the story collection, but it is also very much its own thing: the tales ranging from quiet and murky to freaky, surreal and outright absurd, the work of a writer both dealing in and surpassing abjection and taboos.

Goth GF, a workplace comedy with sub-dom elements, reads like a winking recapitulation of Boy Parts, while The Problem Solver, about a rape survivor who confides in a male friend, engages themes of women’s testimony, male saviorism and sexual gaslighting. As ever, Clark manages to draw blood with a prop knife. After the woman half-jokes about the point of the Sex Offenders Register, the friend earnestly proposes the following course of action: “You wouldn’t have to call him out on your account,” he says. “In fact, we could do it like … more like a whisper network. Or I could message my friend from that feminist book club, the one with all the Instagram followers. Get them to name and shame him.”

The title story, set within a matriarchal community with strict rules for its men – fishers vulnerable to the dark call of the sea – is a delectable, code-scrambled mermaid tale that plays with ideas about male and female power (“The machinations of men had done so little for this place, and for the world outside of here”) and adds a mischievous twist to notions of communal safety and female self-sacrifice. It comes swaddled in influences, from Andersen’s fairytale to Orkney folklore and Lovecraftian mythos (there��s a Lovecraftian nod, too, in the following tale The Shadow Over Little Chitaly, composed entirely of reviews of a mysterious Chinese-Italian fusion takeaway).

The King satirises the “femgore” subgenre with which Clark has been identified, dramatising its excesses while relishing its cliches. Told from the uproarious viewpoint of a cannibal goddess who rises to power after the apocalypse, ruling over a settlement she christens Dad City in honour of the father she has killed and devoured, the story is a litany of horrors leavened by sick humour. She says of a man who offers himself up to be eaten: “He wants me to cut off his dick and balls before he goes. The dick-and-balls thing – they never enjoy that as much as they think they will. It’s always such a let-down for them. It’s a little sad.”

Two stories, Extinction Event and Nightstalkers, may feel like interlopers. The first is a miniature eco-thriller about an alien species of air- and sea-purifying starfish, and the second a hallucinogenic portrait of queer longing in 1970s California. Clark, you realise, isn’t a writer who will keep very long to any one path. This collection, full of shock and surprises, filth and wonder, is occasionally hard to reckon with, but harder still to forget.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[a-room-of-my-own]

There's been a bit of news coverage about the 80th anniversary of D-Day here in the US, and I was wondering how it's covered in France.

Since it's unlikely there will be any surviving veterans to tell their stories for the 85th or 90th anniversaries, it's important to record their stories and commemorate the sacrifices of those who fought and died that day while there are still survivors.

I couldn't find an English transcript of Macron's speech, but when I compare Biden's speech with King Charles', Biden's comes off as very political by involving Russia's attacks on Ukraine. I don't disagree with the sentiment, but time and place! Especially since there are still surviving veterans of D-Day in the audience.

I think the difference is because the United States is only 248 years old, and WWII, in general, has become foundationally important to our national myth. In the US national story, WWII started because the US refused to intervene in Europe's affairs but it eventually got so bad that we had to swoop in and save the day world. WWII has became so important to US identity that both the left and the right use it in their rhetoric: The right generally focus on the atrocities committed by belligerent dictators in allusions to the Holocaust, and the left focus on the authoritarianism of domestic politicians. The Invasion of Normandy is seen as the day that we stepped up to our 'responsibility' of being the world's police superhero.

I think that US politicians use D-Day and the associated imagery as a platform to reaffirm their commitment to this national story and the ideals they feel that story represents, which is why Biden felt it was appropriate to call out Russia during a memorial at a cemetery and Charles and Macron did not (at least I'm assuming Macron did not).

In comparison, France has over 1,100 years of shared history and identity. WWII was obviously horrific and the Nazis needed to be defeated, but was D-Day itself a drop in the bucket of French history?

Compared to all the other battles of WWII by Free French forces and members of the Resistance, how is D-Day seen in modern France?

I’ve been living at the office these last few days so I didn’t watch the news but usually it’s rather positive. And it’s definitely not seen as something akin to an anecdote, on the contrary I think everyone is still extremely grateful. It’s really presented as our allies swooping in to save us.

Even if historically, if you look at the cold facts, the US and UK pretty much intended to occupy France, change its money and put a candidate they had chosen as the new president - all that didn’t happen basically thanks to De Gaulle - the average soldier didn’t know that and that’s not why he fought. And first thing first, the UK and US still had to kick the Germans out and then move as quickly as possible towards Germany or all of Europe would have been in the USSR.

At the end of the day, what the American and English soldiers did was extremely brave and for most of them selfless. And as much as it hurt our collective pride, we do still very much need the US. Europe is still a conglomerate of small, old sovereign nations in a world that is increasingly globalized.

Russia is comprised of many different people, so is China, so is India. In Europe, the EU’s jurisdiction is already seen as too heavy. We’re literally unable to speak with one voice. Nobody recognizes Ursula Von der Leyen as our president for example. And we don’t have an army or a way to associate our armies under one command.

When you look at what’s happening in Ukraine, it’s basically Europe, as an entity, being unable to defend its borders and needing heavy military aid from the US to stall the Russian invasion. The fact that Putin wants to bring back the USSR should worry us but we’re too busy with our own internal affairs.

The problem isn’t that the US acts as the world’s police per se but that the world savior mythology was used to invade and destroy sovereign countries, or to interfere in local politics to the point of supporting dictatorships that made thousands of victims.

[daandyli0n]

fuck it.

y'all are getting the Symbolism And Whatnot of the "Blurred Lenses" kids (MCI + Charlie)

this will be in the order of their deaths.

Charlie:

General Color Palette: green, white, black, with various splashes of color depending on accessories.

Symbols/Associated Items: stars, music/music boxes, dolls/teddy bears, stripes, daffodils, soft glowing lights, softness in general, stickers, sparkles, bugs, chaos.

Themes Surrounding Them: having a savior complex, "you can't help people swim/float while you yourself are drowning," "never mistake kindness for weakness."

Susie:

General Color Palette: lavender/pale purple, bright orange, pale blue.

Symbols/Associated Items: stars, hearts, flowers (particularly daisies), sweet things (candies, desserts, etc.), dogs, oranges (as in the fruit).

Themes Surrounding Them: emptiness, loss of identity (after a while, Susie is unable to tell where she ends and where Chica begins), loss of childhood innocence (Susie was rather sheltered, even if not to an extreme degree).

Fritz (Jr.):

General Color Palette: reds, oranges, light/pale blues, browns.

Symbols/Associated Items: pirates, foxes, coyotes, vultures, patches, bandages, running.

Themes Surrounding Them: loneliness/isolation, "no one's coming to save me, so i'll save myself," hopelessness, desiring vengeance/karma.

Gabi ("Gabriel"):

General Color Palette: bright oranges, bright and pale yellows, various shades of teal.

Symbols/Associated Items: the sun, clouds, sunflowers, dandelions, softness, joy/happiness, teddy bears/baby bears, smiley faces, balloons.

Themes Surrounding Them: confusion, fear, and lashing out due to both emotions.

Mimi ("Jeremy"):

General Color Palette: dark/navy blues, indigo, blueish purples, dark reds.

Symbols/Associated Items: nighttime, the moon, stars, planets, just space in general really, books, neon lights, rain, quietness, nature.

Themes Surrounding Them: anger, distrust, protectiveness to the point of self-sacrifice.

David:

General Color Palette: pretty much the entire rainbow, but with dark reds and golden yellows being some more consistent colors.

Symbols/Associated Items: just general weirdcore imagery (eyes, spirals/swirls, etc.), Christian Religious Imagery/Trauma, liminal spaces, Reality Fuckery/Bending, obscured/blurred pictures, masks, teeth, colorful band-aids, forests, lakes.

Themes Surrounding Them: having a god complex, vengeance, being forgotten.

( @that-darn-clown i've already showed this to you but. here's an updated version with Charlie. @hello-there-world)

(here's a drawing of The Babies for anyone who wants to know what they look like)

[feathered-serpents]

Also the one pantheon I’m very iffy on the God of War series using is the Aztec pantheon. Don’t get me wrong, the Aztec gods are incredibly underrated and very cool. My blog is NAMED after one of them, I LOVE the Aztec gods

But

I am white, so let me know if I have no business speaking in this. However, I just can’t stop thinking about how if you have a foreign, white god, going into the Aztec lands and killing their gods… do I have to explain why that would be in hideously bad taste? If any human enemy is exclusively brown people fighting the white protagonist? It’s not good

And if you want to flip it around to be that god saving the Aztec gods, then you still have a random foreign white savior saving this pantheon rather than them saving themselves. It’s still not good

It’s not impossible to do correctly, if Santa Monica has a goddamn army of Nahua advisors, writers, sensitivity directors, they could make it work. Otherwise, if they aren’t willing to do that then… maybe we leave this one alone? Yes the mythology is cool but it’s already so misunderstood in the west with the racist reputation of being solely about human sacrifice and imagery of still beating hearts when it’s so, so, much more than that

It’s a cool idea, it’s a VERY cool idea. But maybe we don’t do it, maybe we don’t use this one in the “killing gods video game”. Maybe it’s also a bad idea

[holden-norgorov]

Buffy, Aslan and The Apocalypse - The Christian Undertones of Restless

Speaking as an atheist, I've always been fascinated by the Christian parallels which seem to permeate the entire work of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. But while I think such religious links are usually highlighted or explored whenever they come up in the text, I don't think I've ever read an analysis of Restless that even scratched the surface when it comes to its deep-seated interest in drawing comparisons between Buffy and The Christ. So, I decided to give it a try and attempt at verbalizing my thoughts on the episode regarding the specific religious thematic nucleus and imagery.

There have already been numerous instances, before Restless aired, wherein the show has deliberately drawn several parallels between Buffy (The Slayer) and Christ (The Savior). Buffy actively fights against the forces of Evil - vampires and demons which, under strict religious lens, could be interpreted as the embodiments of Sin, conceived as a kind of plague capable of multiplying and corrupting the Earth. She does that by wielding tools and objects whose conceptual implications frequently refer to Christian iconography or tradition (wooden or silver crosses, holy water, etc.). Under this framework of analysis, Buffy is exceptional as The Chosen One whose explicit role lies in eradicating Sin, or preventing it from spreading all over the world and conquering it. This state of affairs puts her above all the other human beings because of a string of specific characteristics which steam from that role (in her case, superpowers) in a not-so-different way than how all of this works for Christ Himself who, according to the Bible, descended on Earth with the specific intent to purify the planet and, as The Chosen One (The Son Of God), can likewise claim a wide range of characteristics other people don't possess - specifically, immunity from the Original Sin.

The religious allegory comes under intense narrative focus particularly during Prophecy Girl (S1E12). The Master, who is confined underground, symbolizes the Original Sin. The Anointed One, who is destined to lead the Slayer (Savior) towards the Original Sin, embodies the Serpent whose corruptive action condemns humanity as a whole to be excluded from Eden. In this circumstance, Buffy is wearing a white dress whose purpose is to suggest both her state of purity (defined as the absence of Sin) and her preparatory phase of pre-baptismal existence. White is also the color of God's Lamb, which is a direct reference to Christ. The moment when the Master bites Buffy and a solitary tear runs down her left cheek explicitly conjures the image of both the specific salvific action aimed at absorbing the Original Sin (the tear as the emblematic representation of the experience of the world's evils) and the potential consequence of Eden being corrupted through the alteration of a condition of untouched purity (picking the apple from the Forbidden Tree). The Master is therefore able to leave his underground prison and invade the outside world ("My world, my beautiful world!"), symbolizing the creation and spread of the Original Sin and the trasformation of Eden, which goes from being a terrestrial Paradise to a corrupted world where men and women are no longer "side by side with God", but have now to deal with Death and Sin.

What truly makes a difference, though, is that Buffy's decision to "pick the apple" doesn't originate from her insubordination against God's will (unlike that of Adam and Eve), but from her acceptance of God's own plan, once we take into account the Prophecy claiming that the Slayer will die while facing the Master as being metaphorically representative of God's Word. Buffy ultimately agrees on being guided to the Master's lair (and therefore, to the Original Sin) because that's what God intended for her, and it's precisely because of her acceptance of her own mortality and of the need to self-sacrifice that she's able to remain uncorrupted by Sin. Unlike Adam and Eve, she doesn't disobey God - she doesn't turn her back from her destiny, but she faces it head-on, knowing full well that her death, aimed at safeguarding the rest of humanity from Sin, is a salvific act on her part. Like Christ, she accepts to sacrifice herself for humanity as decreed by God's Word. She doesn't head towards the Original Sin because she's being seduced by her own curiosity, or because she possesses the kind of hubris or arrogance that can lead her to think that she might overpower the Master. She heads towards the Original Sin because of a deep-seated sense of duty, sacrifice and acceptance of what was prophesized about her. It's therefore not accidental that the Original Sin leads her to fall into a puddle of water. The idea of the puddle of water as a baptismal font is visually suggested by the scene, wherein a still pure and uncorrupted (white-dressed) Buffy undergoes a kind of baptism comparable to the one Christ received from John the Baptist.

While watching Restless we most definitely learn that Xander symbolically represents Buffy's Heart. This newly gained bit of knowledge allows us to retroactively interpret this scene as featuring a "resurrection" process that Buffy is able to go through specifically because of the purity of her Heart - which is not that different from what constitutes the reason behind Christ's own resurrection. At the same time, the scene also suggests the occurrence of a kind of Baptism: Buffy experiences a rebirth from the water and resurfaces stronger than before ("I feel strong. I feel different."). It's the purity of her Heart, which cannot be fazed or touched by the Original Sin, that allows her to re-emerge. The secondary presence of Angel in this scene (in its literal meaning of "angel" as in, God's emissary) implicitly recalls the fall of the Holy Spirit in front of The Christ right after his own baptism.

So, the show openly nurtures an allegorical interpretation that puts Buffy and Christ as comparable, parallel figures, and this same parallelism comes back in Restless, albeit in alternative ways.

In Willow's dream, wherein we definitely discover that she represents Buffy's Spirit (as in Pneuma, or the "vital breath" that animates the Body), this same parallelism is introduced once again by drawing an explicit link to S1. I know it's been talked at length about how Willow's role, specifically during S1, vastly lies in triggering Buffy's emotional catalysis. It's the circumstance of Willow suddenly finding herself in danger that ultimately leads Buffy to discard the idea of turning her back from her Call during Welcome To The Hellmouth (S1E1), and it's Willow's own trauma in Prophecy Girl (S1E12) that ultimately defines Buffy's choice to radically accept her destiny. Willow is the Spirit whose task is to vitalize Buffy-The-Entity and to set a specific course of action in motion for the Body to act and operate from. It's therefore not at all surprising that the first instance of comparison between Buffy and Christ steams from Willow herself in this episode. At first, we are led once again - following S3's footsteps - to view a feline (specifically, a cat) as a personification of The Slayer - Miss Kitty Fantastico, Willow and Tara's own pet, takes the symbolic role of The First Slayer in the first stage of the dream, stalking towards the camera with an explicit predatory vibe that makes the attitude of the cat look more like that of a panther, or a lion cub even. But it's only by the end of Willow's dream sequence that the religious allegory takes explicit form. Willow, wearing a carbon-copy of the dress we were introduced to her with during Welcome To The Hellmouth (S1E1), announces that she spent her summer reading C.S. Lewis's "The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe" (1950), and mentions that the novel deals with a lot of important themes. Of course, the most important theme lies in the Christian interpretation: Aslan - other than being a huge predatory feline (lion), also another representation of The Savior, tying the three characters (Buffy, Christ and Aslan) together in a thematically clear thread - sacrifices himself on a stone table in order to grant Edmund Pevensie atonement for his Sins, and comes back to life one day later, in a not-so-different dynamic than the one Buffy herself went through after confronting the Master. But the Willow we see now, coming right off the pilot of the show, is way too premature in presenting Buffy with this particular role: as proof of that, we see Xander (Buffy's Heart) channeling the same reticence and opposition that Buffy herself had towards her own Call during that same episode ("Who cares?!"), and Buffy herself is shown steadily holding a vacuous, detached expression while her own Spirit gets ferociously assaulted. Buffy is Aslan, but she's not ready to recognize it yet.

In Xander's dream - wherein, as I've already said, we learn that he represents Buffy's Heart - the parallelism between Buffy and Aslan is evoked once again during the scene when Principal Snyder appears. That scene is susceptible to different interpretations depending on how exactly we evaluate Xander in that moment - if we consider Xander as an independent character who's undergoing self-exploration in his own narrative, or if we take him as a symbolic embodiment of a specific role he plays in constituting Buffy-The-Entity. In the latter case, where Xander is the Heart, Principal Snyder represents the First Slayer. The parallelism becomes apparent as soon as Snyder refers to Xander as a "whipping boy, raised by mongrels and set on a sacrificial stone". Historically, a "whipping boy" is a (usually male) slave or individual without choice whose role involves undergoing corporal punishments on behalf of a prince or a nobleman he belongs to. Presently, the term is broadly used to refer to anyone who finds themselves having to pay or suffer consequences for the choices or actions of someone else, or anyone who is stuck in the position of having to sacrifice themselves on behalf of others. The explicit reference is to Buffy's own pre-acceptance phase, wherein her Heart has not yet come to terms with the fact that having to surrender her own life to save all humanity is the kind of sacrifice her role is bound to force on her (one that has already forced on her, and will force on her again). Her resentment at the injustice of her role filters through the use of the term "mongrels" to likely describe the Watchers (who raise the Slayers into accepting this role, in a way), while the explicit mention of the Sacrificial Stone recalls Aslan's own sacrifice in C.S. Lewis's aforementioned novel - which the Lion undergoes after being whipped, mocked and abused.

If in the first dream sequence we see that Buffy's Spirit (Willow) finds itself in complete disconnection with her Heart (Xander) and Body (Buffy), and in the second dream sequence we see that Buffy's Heart feels victimized ("whipping boy"), neglected ("raised by mongrels") and unfairly sacrificed ("set on a sacrificial stone"), then it's within the third dream sequence, Giles's (who represents Buffy's Mind), that we can successfully locate the ultimate acceptance of this self-sacrificial circumstance, and witness how that gets integrated into Buffy-The-Entity. If we go through Giles' entire dream under the presupposition that he's operating as Buffy's Mind, it follows, according to what we are precisely shown, that Buffy is still seeing herself as little more than a child who shouldn't be expected to undergo the same kind of sacrifice that Aslan (The Christ) faces, while simoultaneously being aware, on a purely rational standpoint, of it being a necessary component of the duty that it's her job to fulfill. The entire sequence is about the reconciliation, within Buffy's own Mind, of these two seemingly contradictory aspects. Almost absent-mindedly and with evident disregard, Giles recites the concept that Buffy needs to fully embrace ("The blood of the lamb and all that") suggesting reluctance at first, but he's put in front of the reality of things soon enough: after taking a final glance at a crying Olivia with a stroll turned upside down beside her (which substantially symbolizes Buffy's grief towards the loss of a condition of pre-acceptance and the loss of her own indulgence into the childish desire of having a normal life), Buffy's Mind ultimately focuses on Spike. The ultimate acceptance of the notion of sacrifice and of her role as Savior (Slayer) materializes in the exclamations of relief and bliss that the mass of photographers produce as soon as Spike, in a visibly liberating gesture, ends the shooting by posing in such a way as to recall the Biblical Crucifixion of Christ. This is, of course, all foreshadowing to The Gift (S5E22).

In Buffy's own dream, we witness a last initial attempt at resistance at this newly gained realization ("Buffy, you have to get up right away!" "I'm not really in charge of these things."), which quite rapidly turns into a spasmodic research of her friends. The Body alone isn't enough - it has to be reunited with the Spirit, Heart and Mind. Significant relevance, within this interpretation, lies in Buffy's dress during the dream - while still being fundamentally white (meaning absence of Sin, recalling her Prophecy Girl dress), this time it showcases a motif of cherries - fruit whose symbolic role is to represent the sacrifice of The Warrior, and which is also known as "The Fruit of Paradise". During the confrontation scene between the two Slayers, Sineya (The First) reminds Buffy that "The Slayer does not walk into this world" - what is being demanded of Buffy is that she recognizes her celestial (as in non-terrestrial, otherworldly) destiny and cuts herself off from the humanity she's expected to sacrifice for not only emotionally, but also physically. Buffy replies by underlining the importance of the Body ("I walk. I talk. I shop. I sneeze.") and thereby of the individual, while at the same time showcasing a definite acceptance at her own predestination provided by the cumulative integration of the previous dream sequences the other three elements constituting Buffy-The-Entity already experienced. The phrase "I'm gonna be a fireman when the floods roll back" is an explicit reference to The Bible and to two different apocalyptic scenarios. According to the Scriptures, the first "end of the world" kind of situation manifests itself through Water - Genesis' Flood, which God arranges in order to clean the Earth from corruption. By mentioning a return of the cataclysm, Buffy implicitly identifies herself with Noah's figure and role in building the Ark which granted him the ability to perform the salvific act of safeguarding humanity from total destruction. At the same time, though, she explicitly calls herself a "fireman", thereby also mentioning the second big "purification" - that of The Last Judgment, manifesting itself through Fire.

2 Peter 3:10 But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the Earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.​

With a single statement Buffy frames herself as The Savior of humanity in not one, but two apocalyptic circumstances. She is both the Ark that carries the remaining part of humanity to safety through the biblical floods, and the Fireman who is going to quench the fire during the final judgment.

The actual, definitive parallelism with Aslan's character (in itself an alternative, fictional personification of Christ), though, ultimately comes up when we take into consideration the events C.S. Lewis recounts in the final volume of The Chronicles Of Narnia, "The Last Battle" (1956). In that novel, Aslan himself brings about the Apocalypse. Dragons and giant lizards invade the Earth and destroy all vegetation with fire, the stars plummet down from the Sky and Aslan ultimately saves humanity allowing those "pure of heart" to enter the Real Narnia - which is an Eden-like Paradise whose appearance is indistinguishable from that of the Old Narnia (Earth), but that's also devoid of corruptibility and Original Sin. Those "impure of heart" perish in the imperfect copy of the actual world under the weight of the fire, leading Aslan to be accurately described through the very same expression Buffy uses here to identify herself: that of a Fireman - as in, someone who doesn't quench just the literal fire, thereby granting humanity safety and protection, but also the metaphorical representation of Sin itself.

Restless ends by letting us understand that within Buffy herself lies a dormant Aslan capable of doing that very same thing - of bringing forth a change so drastic and fundamental to not only save but also revolutionize humanity; of taking the entirety of Earth to a "higher level" wherein the Original Sin (that is, the very intrinstic nature of a broken, corruptible system) is finally eradicated; and of establishing a new kind of equilibrium in the co-existence of those pure and impure of heart. It's of particular importance, under this lens, to consider the fact that, as long as the Body (Buffy) is alone, she's vulnerable to the attack of that very system - the First Slayer has no problems striking effective blows against her in the middle of the desert, not so differently than how the Master was able to inflict an effective bite on her while she was alone in his lair. But as soon as the Body is reunited with the other parts and they get integrated within a singular, functional Entity, those same attacks cease to have any and all efficacy or effect - the Original Sin becomes insignificant, easily washed away by a baptism. In the desert, like in the sewers, Buffy is fragmented and exposed; within the walls of her home, or in the company of her friends, she's complete and invulnerable.

Because, as Aslan's character exists in this episode to precociously demonstrate, and as Buffy herself will come to finally understand and embrace in Chosen (S7E22), the key to truly save the world lies, ultimately, in changing it.

[9800sblog]

Hi! Can you do a reading on Kai’s ideal type from EXO? -🪼

kai tarot reading

ideal type characteristics

do I have his energy permission to do and share this reading? the empress

general

6 of pentacles - someone he can spoil, but is still rich. someone that needs him, can make him feel like a helper or a savior of sorts. someone open and giving, charismatic, charming. he likes it if his person shows desperation for him. someone that compliments him, is good at what he's bad at and vice versa. he likes to see his person very casually and then see a total transformation outside of the house, he thinks it's powerful, someone that can be two opposites (like jennie). and probably a celebrity, the imagery of this cards reminds me of a stage and of fanservice.

4 of cups - an introspective and maybe religious type. again, someone who needs his help. someone that feels like a dream come true, like a gift from the gods. someone he can put a ring on, for sure, probably korean too. he may prefer the sexier type (at least in public). this is a person he daydreams about a lot. artistic in casual life, maybe someone who draws, paints or photographs as a hobby.

page of swords - an incredibly sweet person, who gets along with anyone, defender of outcasts, maybe an activist type or at least someone who is slightly interested in political and social discourses. someone who is always learning big things and planning for the future. someone who has/wants kids. I can't dismiss the correlation with the military here as he's currently serving, I just don't know what it means, it could be someone he met there or someone who's memory is helping him get through this difficult moment.

10 of pentacles - rich rich rich and family person, someone he can create a legacy with and who gets along with everyone in his family, from oldest to youngest. he wants a big big family too. probably korean or someone he's very familiar with (he did date krystal after knowing her for 9 years). he may want someone he currently works with or could work with in the future. and someone with some sort of nepotism (example: idols from big companies, who have an easier rise).

the magician - very similar message. probably a celebrity, probably korean but may travel overseas a lot. someone very rich and emotionally mature, that can take care of him and be by his side forever but also let themselves be taken care of. someone strong, that stands tall. powerful and talented, artistic is coming through again. a big professional who dreams big but is also grounded (like someone who has a practical and achievable plan but aims high). lots of knowledge about many different subjects, interdependent, great conversations, someone that makes him feel smarter everytime they talk. maybe some sort of mentor, teacher or independent worker.

9 of pentacles reversed - extreme work ethic and investment, willing to sacrifice for their dreams (can mean different things depending on each person). this may be someone that doesn't know how to take good care of themselves in a physical or material way, aka needs his help (again). may be someone he gets easily jealous with. their finances, physical well-being, material world in general might not be in the best light right now, this may be someone he often gives practical advices to (or wishes to do so). sexy is coming through again. also, someone who serves as a distraction or "solution" to his material problems.

__

for appearance i literally got strength reversed and 10 of wands, damn..... I asked if he wanted to talk about it, before asking about the appearance and he gave me the 6 of cups, so this is not one of those moments.

this person is not in their best moment, they may look sick. I'm not sure if he likes the heroin chic type of look, or this is someone who is genuinely physically unhealthy. this may be someone who works out too much, skips meals, is very insecure of their appearance in general.

I definitely think he wants someone he can carry around tho. he may prefer shorter hair, someone that looks a bit different from the crowd, but still fits the beauty standard, he may like those that look more aggressive than they are, maybe someone who has a conservative style, covers up a lot.

[hailmaryfullofmaggots]

"Scraped knees, Back of heads"

...Arriving to the confessional, he only need slam the door behind him, crouch in the dark of the booth, find strange solitude. It knocking around him, throaty, as ships trapped in ice do. Him knowing the phrases writ by angels upon his hands and from His tongue spilt blood:

We pray to tired gods

that we'll be saved

because the son of

the one nailed above

left a long time ago.

Son above, son below

bruises on knees

it's why we're here,

begging.

To serve not he who preaches,

but humble sexton and the dirt

beneath his nail beds,

scraping at insides like fruit, like

scooping seeds,

God is fingers

pushed between baby teeth.

Made for it, He says,

pressed into necks,

fingers wrapped collars.

Not breathing back.

God is when bled,

red, wine-dark, stains on pavement

gray-white bathroom tile.

Sacrifice, Abraham's,

Sacrifice, His,

Little Savior, born of the Lamb,

smiling face stretched above

haloed, hallowed

Light.

Angels feared by men,

children loved by angels.

Quiet like soil, Quiet

like fucking church pews,

fucking

in

crushed velvet

and stained glass.

Tiny bodies hollowed out,

empty,

little coffins at the gold altar

on maple, on hickory

it was never going to be real.

Please

God.

Tell me it

wasn't real. Tell me

Bodies rot,

You're rotting

you can't stop that

you can't stop leaving.

The stranger hijacking your body

that's not your fault,

you're dying.

✟✟✟

"To serve not he who preaches,

but humble sexton and the dirt

beneath his nail beds,

scraping at insides like fruit, like

scooping seeds,

God is fingers

pushed between baby teeth."

Thank you for sharing, dear <3

i love the imagery i get of the Sexton digging at dirt with his hands —assuming we’re talking about the groundskeeper of a church and graveyard — and the twisted reverence that comes with it. a humility in tending to the earth and the dead, both in a sense the opposite of what a holy man preaches. in the world, not on the world; eternal life, safety from death, resurrection…

then the fruits. i can picture bodies, laying in these shallow graves, rib cages butterflied open. the groundskeeper with his dirt-covered hands wrist deep in the gore. there’s a sort of violation that comes with it. My mind goes to maggots and eggs as the seeds, breeding and planting and growing.

“bruises on knees

it’s why we’re here,

begging.

to serve not he who preaches…”

bringing in this, the idea of possibly begging the Sexton like you would a priest or God. serving him, even as a corpse, for whatever purpose. or the Sexton as the one serving or worshipping into the ground, in opposition to praising with arms raised toward Heaven.

and bruises on knees, ahh i love the variety of ways to use this. bruises implying the frequency or force by which one is kneeling. there is the sexual connotation to it, pleasuring someone, a sort of worship and submission — like God asks of his followers. wash his feet with tears and Know him.

my personal interpretation of course, but thank you so much for submitting your work in Confession <3

My flesh and my heart fail; But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. - Psalm 73:26

[skyderman]

Skye I return and I come bearing questions for Story of Magus!

What exactly is a "firebrand" are they kinda like a fire bender (fire witch?) or is it something completely different?

What does Archmages allow the students to learn and not learn?

How does the role of konyenon keep the city safe?

I see in the warning "drowning" so tell me (if you're willing) what's in the lake beneath the city or better yet what do the city goers believe to be below the surface of that water?

-HD

ahh these are all fantastic questions! welcome back!

“firebrand” is just a nice word that i thought described felix’s personality. although, maybe i can work with that…

i’m still working through the details of what students at the academy are taught. i’m mulling over the idea that the academy itself is basically just a front to allow Valerius to screen kids with strong magical ability without actually teaching them anything substantial. but for a more concrete answer, i know for a fact that they’re taught mostly harmless Bright magic, like Light spells, simple Holding spells, basic Bright magic theory, and lots of severely skewed history lol. they would withhold anything that might make the students a threat or a liability like Fly spells or any sort of offensive magic. when i know more about exactly what Bright magic can do, i’ll have a better answer hehe

the konyenon is Valerius’ most important figure (on the surface anyway). they are supposed to be a very powerful Bright mage whose job is to keep Valerius afloat (the public isn’t informed of the details). over time the Archmages have conflated that role with a sort of psuedo-religious savior figure, which is very useful for manipulating their citizens. there’s a lot of talk of sacrifice and angelic imagery. but what the konyenon actually does is one of Valerius’ greatest secrets >:) i’m not gonna reveal it just yet! still trying to decide how open i want to be about the plot of my WIPs lol

ah yes the lake. (as an aside, i love your questions because they reveal just how much worldbuilding i still have to do haha)

i will admit, i am entertaining the idea of there being some kind of monster in the lake. but i think it would be more thematically appropriate to include something benevolent, or at least harmless. as for Valerius, i’m not sure if they would know it even exists. there is a tall wall around the edge of the island, which actually does prevent people from falling off the damn thing (and shields them from stray enchantments floating through the air) (AND protects against creatures lol) but it also means that citizens of Valerius don’t really have a view of the surface. they have to rely on what the Archmages tell them about it.

but i do like the idea of the Shadow Mages of Camaerahh having a relationship with the lake. i haven’t talked much about them because i’ve focused a lot on Valerius, but the Shadow Mages see the lake as a bastion of life. it’s a great source of food and the land surrounding it is healthy. it was formed in the crater of Valerius, and so in some ways it’s free of the magical fallout that covers the rest of the world, being newer than all of it.

thank you again for the great questions!!

[p1nqu3]

A savior, but at what cost?

i’m not religious but I think the imagery of the halo was fitting for the idea i was thinking about. Imagine feeling responsible for maintaining someone else’s life and feeling like you have to save them no matter the cost. She sacrifices so much, but willingly?? Her character is so interesting and resonates with me.

The color choice and darkness also makes me feel like you have to be in a really dark place to come to the decisions she makes about composing music and maintaining her health.

[exilley]

Fuck offff bro the overlap between vnc and orv is an unbroken circle and im gonna be the one to make that graphic organizer one day. I prommy i'll be more insane and unbearable when i have the energy. The savior motif and the allusions to real-world figures and consistent employment of divine/godly imagery, line between victims and survivors... self-sacrifice and survivor's guilt, gendered character arcs, and oh god the meta. VnC is about Vanitas the art philosophy but i think there's also a reading in there about how reality and fiction are oftentimes the creation of myths and fables alike, thus rendering the two indistinguishable to some capacity. Im yelling into the void here

[luxgalador]

20: a song that has many meanings to you

20: A song that has many meanings to you

My Chemical Romance - AMBULANCE

I fucking love Conventional Weapons so much. This one speaks to 2 sides of myself: the one that desperately wants to be rescued and saved and the one that is compelled to self sacrifice to save others. I have a wounded child within me that makes it so easy to have "woe is me" thoughts that lead me to isolation, sadness, and regret. On the flipside, there's also a self within me riddled with guilt that does not belong to me but still harbors it like it does. That self never saw her future. That self never believed she was worthy of the air she breathed. That self decided that the only way she could possibly have a life of meaning despite that debt of perceived guilt was to help and save as many people as possible before going out in a blaze of glory.

Both of these voices do not serve me. No one is gonna save me, and I don't have to kill myself to make up for some perceived debt I owe the universe.

So having the imagery in this song speak to both sides of this dichotomy, of being both the saved and the savior, helps me consolidate them towards the truth: that I save myself, that I belong here, and that healing is possible and required.

[twdmusicboxmystery]

Re-Watches of The Same Boat

So, last week we re-watched Ghosts, and this week a couple of us re-watched The Same Boat. I know we've been talking about Carol a lot, but the only reason is because we think she'll have a big part in Beth's return. Remember that TSB came not long after Grady, and has a lot of Beth imagery in it, along with a lot of resurrection symbolism. You can check out my past posts about it HERE.

@galadrieljones:

So I just watched The Same Boat. I honestly forgot how brutal it is. In this episode, Carol crosses a line. It’s an interesting culmination of all her tricks. Pretending to be weak (a wolf in sheep’s clothing), manipulation (using Maggie’s pregnancy as a bargaining chip), gaslighting herself into thinking others are “making” her kill them (“I told you to run”). Fire.

One thing I didn’t remember is that Maggie pushes Carol. Carol just wants to leave when they get free but Maggie insists that they kill everyone. When Maggie tells her, “We have to finish it,” Carol just follows like she doesn’t have a choice, like she doesn’t have a say, like she’s just a “tool.”

But it’s not as simple as that. Once the choice is made, and it’s just Paula, Carol insists on dealing with her instead of Maggie, and she kills all the men too with her cigarette. She is shielding Maggie, like a motherly gesture, protecting her. I don’t know if this has anything to do with Beth or just because Maggie is pregnant.

Carol believes that Beth saved her life, so she may feel she owes this to Beth. In the end, she keeps the rosary beads and this feels like a callback to Beth and Coda as Beth = the Christ figure, and maybe it is also a reference to Mary, Christ’s mother. Beth saves Carol and then Carol ends up in this hostage situation, and she gets to go free but Beth doesn’t. Then it’s The Same Boat, and Carol is again in a hostage situation with Rick on the radio and a trade, and this time she’s with Maggie instead of Beth.

I feel like she sacrifices whatever she has left of her humanity to save Maggie and to prevent Maggie from having to lose herself so that Maggie can stay strong for her baby. Over the course of the episode, the whole thing is Maggie’s plan but she only kills Molls. Carol kills everybody else, including Donnie. That one just took a long time.

There’s plenty of talk about making choices and choosing sides in the episode, too, per the theme of “indifference.”

The whole deal with Gregory for the Satellite Station was Maggie’s deal, and she’s really on some sort of tear. Maggie’s arc is fairly secondary in seasons 5-6, like it’s easy to forget. But after Beth she slowly changes. She becomes ruthless, and I think it’s actually really well done because it creates this karmic pressure that builds toward Glenn’s death over time. Glenn pays the price for Maggie’s mistakes. To be honest I’m still not sure whether Maggie has owned up to this.

It also occurred to me that this episode feels like the Grady arc mainly in that it takes place in a completely other world, separate from Team family. There’s a whole new cast of characters at the forefront, and we are looking at Rick et al from the outside. Carol infiltrates yet again to another timeline, but this one is for the Saviors. Ofc she wants to just leave but she ends up burning it to bits so there’s nothing left, and only then does Rick arrive. The Red “X” gas cans are an interesting touch in this respect.

I don’t have much else for now. Going to think on it some more. A very unique episode, to be sure.

Actually, looking forward, I like the idea of Carol feeling like she owes Beth. I think she feels too like she owes Daryl. Carol is selfish so she wants to impress Daryl and win his affection and respect, but she also wants to repay those who help her. She is loyal to the people who save her life or show her compassion.

I think this is why she defends Shane to Rick ever so briefly in Indifference. If Carol could find Beth and return her to Daryl that would be, in Carol’s eyes, the crown jewel. It would absolve her of all her sins and she could then just live out her days knowing she reunited the two people in this world who have saved and defended her even when she knows she didn’t deserve it. I think looking at Carol as a maternal figure to Beth is interesting, not something I’ve thought about much before.

@twdmusicboxmystery:

I re-watched The Same Boat as well and will now give you my notes about it.

So, I’m positive some of this has been discussed before, so some of it will seem familiar. But it’s what I wrote down as I watched. My over-arching theory here is basically not any different from any of our others recently. I think this whole sequence both parallels Grady and foreshadows the CRM. The Saviors and AOW were always a foreshadow of the coming CRM war, but we knew little of the CRM when this episode first aired. I also had some of the same impressions you had, Tarah. But I’ll get to those.

The first is Primo. He’s the guy Rick and Daryl capture, and who Rick shoots at the end because he tells Rick he’s Negan. It’s been discussed before that “primo” is the upper part of a musical duet. So there’s a musical reference going on here. But what I didn’t remember or maybe just never registered is that Primo is also a medical guy of some kind.

Donnie, the guy Carol shoots in the arm at the beginning, who ends up bleeding out and dying, keeps saying they need to get Primo back because he can patch Donnie up. He can fix Donnie’s injury. We aren’t told if Primo is a doctor or surgeon or medic like Bob. But Donnie is telling us very obviously that he’s a medical guy who heals people. It’s yet another parallel to Beth and Grady, and the fact that he’s shot in the head at the end also parallels him to Denise.

After being captured, it shows Carol’s POV. She has a good over her head but is looking down at her feet. It’s very similar to how it showed Beth’s feet walking in Inmates, Rick’s in 9x05 just before Jadis takes him, and more recently, Madison’s when she was revealed to be alive. Hence, connections to the CRM and them taking people captive, as Carol was a captive here.

I could talk about other things like their “omega” talk and the coffee analogy, but I think we’ve talked through those pretty thoroughly.

This place they go is missing guns and food. They talk about how only a month ago it was stalked, but now the guns and food are gone and it’s full of walkers. This is actually very similar to TF believing Alpha sent the walkers in Ghosts.

Here, Paula’s people come to the conclusion that Rick and TF are the ones that took everything. But Rick and TF have never been to this place before. It wasn’t them. So, someone else took the Saviors’ supplies from this place, and we’re never told who. Even back then, with these little background conversations about the supplies, the writers were hinting at the CRM.

I think I mentioned the Saw movie reference before, so I won’t go through it again, unless someone needs a refresher. Let me know.

So, one thing that really struck me watching it this time, was how much talk there is of pregnant women and making babies. Of course it’s all about Maggie being pregnant, and Carol reveals that in the hopes that they’ll show Maggie mercy because of her delicate condition. But if this foreshadows the CRM, while Paula and her gang aren’t actively taking pregnant women, we still have Maggie, who happens to be pregnant, become their prisoner.

We also find out ‘Chelle lost a baby, through miscarriage, at some point. Even though the CRM is doing something totally different than Paula, I still feel like there’s a parallel there in the flippant attitude toward something that ought to be protected.

Paula is disrespectful and makes fun of the idea of creating families in the apocalypse, calling them “bite sized snacks for the dead.” While the CRM, or Padre at least, is ripping families apart by kidnapping the children, and sometimes the pregnant women. It’s different logistically, but the same in terms of the dystopian attitude and concept.

I had the same thought as you, Tarah, in that I got the sense Carol was being so protective of Maggie and determined to free her because of what happened to Beth. Since she couldn’t save Beth and bring her out, she would save Maggie.

I wrote down that the guy who got shot, Donnie, reminded me of Dawn, but I can’t remember why or what I was thinking there. Unless it was just the similarity of name: Dawn, Don.

Maggie wears the red shoelaces all through this episode. I’m pretty sure she wears them all through S6, and maybe even beyond.

Oh, the other thing about Donnie is that he bleeds out from a wound in his arm, right. The wound comes from a gun shot (a la Carol) which is like Beth, but of course it’s in his arm instead of his head. But remember that in 9x05, in Rick’s vision, we don’t see the gunshot wound in Beth’s head. We see blood on her arm. I wonder if this and that are part of the same symbolism. We just aren’t sure what it points to, yet.

Even back when this episode aired, people talked about how ‘Chelle and Maggie are foils to one another. Both were pregnant at some point. Both had very closed relationships with their fathers, and lost them. They differ in that, obviously, Maggie lives and ‘Chelle dies. Maggie gets to have her baby, while ‘Chelle lost hers.

But it struck me that the parallels run much deeper than that. The guy ‘Chelle was with was a jerk. Total douchebag by her own admission. She only looked for him on principal because he was her boyfriend. Maggie, on the other hand, married Glenn. Even more, though, are ties to Daryl, even if ‘Chelle never knew who he was or really met him. Daryl killed her boyfriend by blowing him up on the road. Daryl also, though unwittingly, had hand in Glenn’s death.

I think a lot of this also feeds into what you’ve said above, Tarah. TF losing their humanity during this period. Maggie and Carol abandoned their humanity in order to survival. (Survive first, live later.) But by the end, it wiped them both out. Neither of them were “okay.” And then Rick shooting Primo obviously traumatized them more.

Let’s talk about some interesting things about Carol. Where ‘Chelle was a foil to Maggie, Paula was an obvious foil to Carol. I thought it was interesting when Paula said, “I see exactly who you are, Carol.” Except she didn’t. Carol had put on a mask. Paula thought she saw everything, but she was willfully blind. Paula talked about how she was in DC when the turn happened. She said she killed her boss, and she stopped counting how many she’d killed when she got to double digits. That’s also when she stopped feeling badly about it.

Herein, I think, lies Carol’s redemption. We’ve talked a lot about how she very often does morally questionable things, and sometimes we’d just like to smack her upside the head for it. But the thing is, she always feels badly about it.

(Lol. It just reminded me of a line from a song in the Sound of Music, when the nuns sing about Maria. One says, “she’s always late for chapel” and the second one says, “but her penitence is real.” That line always made me laugh. It’s like, she does all these bad things, but she feels REALLY bad afterward, lol. That’s kind of Carol in nutshell, though her story is much darker than The Sound of Music ever was.)

The point is, Carol never becomes hardened to the humanity of it the way Paula has. Carol thinks she has to be hard in order to survive, and maybe sometimes she does, but she always feels it afterward. With the people she’s killed, with the kids, with Connie. Also remember that later in S7, just before leaving Tobin, she is writing down and counting the people she’s killed. I really loved the observation that that’s when we saw her smoking cigarettes a lot. It’s a visual way the writers show psychological illness. It’s like, even though she does kill and will, she’s truly worried about her soul.

I always loved J.K. Rowling’s analogy that murder rips the soul into pieces. It’s like Carol’s soul is ripped apart, and she doesn’t know how to fix it. This is why, when she killed the Saviors on the road after leaving Alexandria, she was crying to hard. It’s funny, because that REALLY confused most of Carol’s fans, who follow her so closely and like to see her as a badass. Most of them had this really confused reaction like, “why is she CRYING.” Lol. Most of them chocked it up to it being a trick to put them at ease so she could kill them. And that was part of it.

But it’s deeper than that. She genuinely doesn’t want to kill anyone else. She totally will, and in that case they truly would have killed her if she hadn’t. But those tears, as well as the ones she showed Paula in this episode, were based in something real. She ran away to the cabin in S7 because she was trying to avoid tearing it any further. But when the war broke out, she was right back in it again, defending the people she loves.

I love the line when Carol tells Paula that she’s the one who’s really afraid to die. This isn’t really anything to do with TWD, but I just think there’s truth in it. Anyone who is mean or nasty or violent to others, it’s always based in fear. Those who are calm and kind are more concerned with their own souls and being decent to people. And if they die, they die, but at least they do it with a clear conscience. So Carol is right that it’s really Paula’s people who are terrified to die. Carol is terrified of not being able to save Maggie, but I don’t think she’s afraid to die herself.

When Carol goes ham on Paula’s group at the end, Paula says, “you’re good, nervous little bird. You were her, but not now.” Just more of Carol being a chameleon, as you discussed earlier in detail. Then Paula says, “what were you so afraid of?”

And it’s interesting, because you would think Paul would just assume it was an act, but it’s like she intuitively knows Carol was not faking that. Just backs up what I said above. Carol’s tears and the trauma she show are real, but she mostly hides them, and when they don’t serve her anymore, she buries them again. The answer is that she’s afraid of losing her Maggie, and of losing her soul. She’s also afraid of exactly what happened in this episode: being responsible for the deaths of more people.

I’ve always thought it was downright creepy when Carol did Paula’s voice on the radio. She just does it so perfectly. Morphs into Paula for a second. But I think it shows a) her chameleonness (totally a word ;D) and b) that Paula is her foil or dark side. They’re the light and shadow elements of the same character. (Remember in S11, Zeke calls Carol a light.)

The only other things I wrote down is that at parts of this episode, there’s a high-pitched squealing noise in the background. It almost sounds like a tea kettle whistling. But it’s not part of the show. It’s just a sound effect, much like background music, that is put in. And it’s always around Carol. I think it’s meant to make us think of coffee brewing, or of Carol being a boiling kettle that’s about to explode.

Finally, they put down Paula on their way out. So, they don’t leave her as a walker. Probably representative of Carol trying to kill her shadow self, though it doesn’t entirely work here. So yeah.

I know not much of this is about Beth, but it just backs up everything else we’ve said about Carol’s role in finding Beth and bringing her back to Daryl. She saved Maggie here, but later lost Sam. She saved Henry as a boy, which called back to not saving Sophia, but then she lost him to Alpha. She lost Tobin, both emotionally and physically, but gained Zeke. Carol is such a fascinating character because she is always wrestling with her own demons, and often loses. I don’t think many of Carol’s biggest fans understand her at all.

Anyway, that’s what I have from The Same Boat. It was fun to re-watch.

[quietwingsinthesky]

Fic premise ask game: I feel like you’d be the one to write (or already have written) a deep reflective piece on Sam’s place in the cosmos (I’m thinking specifically the Messianic/Jesus imagery the most) interspersed with the kinkiest sex possible, most likely with Lucifer. Like, erotic navel gazing.

i see "kinkiest sex possible, most likely with lucifer" and i black out and hit reblog. (or. well. answer. but you get my point.)

you're absolutely right i would write something like that lmao. i am that flavor of annoyingly introspective.

although maybe a little off the mark with the jesus imagery. or. off the mark with it being about sam, christ figure, savior and messiah and all that. maybe more jesus imagery of like. that was just a guy. when it came down to it they were both just guys who didn't ask to be in this position, who specifically asked 'hey, can i opt out of this, because it fucking sucks' and were told 'eh. no. suck it up and sacrifice yourself.' sam winchester's place in the cosmos as the most important specialest man of all time, and how he's also just a guy. sam winchester as the center of lucifer's universe, and also. just a guy. a guy who he has kinky sex with.

huh sorry that got rambly. okay, providing comic relief now.

they do this while sam has lucifer on a leash.

[fic premise ask]