#the silt verses season 3 spoilers

[mintytea-exe]

every single time someone in the silt verses says "the river rises"

[cream-and-tea]

what she says: yea i’m fine

what she’s thinking: the story brought both carpenter and faulkner to their inevitable end points that have been foreshadowed from the v first episode of the show ambiguity of carpenters death aside she stood on the banks of the river singing like her nana glass and was gunned down by the military and faulkner was drowned dragged delivered by the god and story he had let devour him but. but. before those things happened right before the narrative reached its end both of them stood up and said no! i want to go forward! i want to find something past this whatever it might be i don’t want it to take me yet im going to keep on walking! and it was too late! the thing is it was too fucking late!!!!!!! the aquifer was already flooding the soldiers were closing in she was to hurt to run he can’t swim. the chance had come and gone at the beginning of the episode for any hope of them reaching each other ever again but even though it was too little too late never ever going to be enough they both looked the site of their doom in the eyes and said i do not accept this. not here. not now. i am staring at you– the thing that will eat me — and resolving to pry open the jaws and choose to use the last moments of my life (whether i know it or not) to run and stumble and crawl and cry and sing in the hopes of reaching the people who matter to me more than being made your meal. and of course they got fucking eaten anyways. of course they did bc they were walking towards it from the beginning. but there is a way out, there is a way forward, there is a land beyond the storm that is possible to reach if you choose to step out of the story that has been built for you to find it. we walk on, with a rough and tarnished hope, and a tangled, ruined love. it can end with love, and it can end with kindness. even as the jaws are closing. ours is a world of miracles.

[friendlyfirestarter]

I JUST realized none of the main four ever met VAL and she never met them. At the start of this season I thought she was going to be the final confrontation and instead she did one final kindness for people she'd never met.

This is fine.

[catwyk]

Victory in Glottage

mfw intimacy and violence are so intertwined they practically become one

reference and details below !!

i love wet drapery gah!!

[misstrashchan]

Hayward is the single funniest fucker in this podcast I swear. Carpenter's bafflement at Hayward coming to her defense at the end of S3EP1 as she was ready to die and enthusiastically calling her "an old friend" when like. The last time Carpenter saw Hayward he'd been handcuffed by Paige screaming at Carpenter that he'd hunt her down to the ends of the earth. Their interactions prior to that from her perspective where being detained and interrogated by him, and him talking her ear off about his failing marriage (which yes was an act and also actually him talking about his relationship to his job, but Carpenter thinks he's a cringe fail divorced policeman). This is the man who saves her at her lowest. This same fucking guy who was a cop hunting her in S1.

"Old friend" fucking hell Hayward. I love you.

[rainewintersnow]

TSV season 3 spoilers below, don't look under the cut if you haven't fully caught up

@eyesteeth sparked my inspiration, so here's some doodles

[nana-glass-chillhop-radio-hour]

Hayward: so are you mad at me lol

Carpenter: i have no room in my heart for hate for anyone but my traitorous shitbag little brother. Might make up w him tho lmao

[helen--richardson]

He wants Carpenter back soooooo bad

[veganslenderman]

*spends the last 4 episodes of The Silt Verses absolutely baffled by everything Faulkner does*

Dude what the fuck is going on with him? What happened to all his character development??

*final episode reveals that he's blonde*

Oh that's why.

[scaery-faery]

Just finished ep 37 of The Silt Verses and I am LOSING MY MIND. Val's whole thing. The stars. And I think the national grid workers have finally answered our question: what is the opposite of a sacrifice? What is the opposite of a sacrifice if not care. For yourself, for others. It is not the starvation of a god, but the care the makes it obsolete. Why would people need a god when they have each other and are able to be cared for (by themselves or others). Sacrifice is isolation, so it's combatant becomes community.

[cairnmaidens]

taking two seconds away from holding my head in my hands like some guy who lost it all on the ponies thinking about the silt verses to raise my eyebrows at daniel malloy's "armand told the truth" fancy script tattoo

[mintytea-exe]

The thing with Faulkner that makes him so interesting to me is that he is physically incapable of not destroying everything he ever has.

He is so power hungry, and so desperately in need of being in control all of the time, that his first thought is to ruin his interpersonal relationships rather than accept help or assistance in order to redeem himself. He deeply believes (in the moment) that he can help himself, save himself, better without the assistance of those around him.

Faulkner has a choice, after Chapter 38 and his discussion with his father. The choice is: continue as he has been or act on his regrets and change his behaviour. At first he seems to genuinely want to change, he is so deeply regretful over his actions towards Carpenter and so relieved every time he hears that she is alive.

His final breaking point is that he believes Carpenter, his sister, the one person he respected, trusted and admired, is dead. And as a result, he not only recreates his first mistake (killing Charlie) but also the mistake he regrets most (blaming Carpenter for Mason's death) in killing Rane. He is utterly unable to control his emotions, or accept fault.

He destroys his relationships with Carpenter and Rane due to his own ego. His hubris is his hamartia. He is about as tragic a character as it gets. All that he suffers in the Parish is self inflicted. Yet, I can't help but feel sorry for him.

[cream-and-tea]

Chapter 2: And Next Of Dark Deceit/ Chapter 43: One Last Song Of Revelations

i know i’m absolutely 1000% not the first person to make this connection but i still had to post it. because of. the agonies.

[friendlyfirestarter]

UH OH

[catwyk]

still trying to cope with last ep

[misstrashchan]

When it comes to predicting what happens with Carpenter and Faulkner in the last episode, I can't help but think back to S2 with Carpenter and the homesick corpse.

Carpenter's final talk with the homesick corpse is much more relevant to her character than I think people give credit for

The homesick corpse died because someone in the parish of tide and flesh, a sibling, turned on him, and he was hunted down, just like Faulkner turning on Carpenter and how she's been hunted by the people of the faith she once belonged to.

HOMESICK CORPSE:

I never learnt who turned me in. I knew it must have been a sibling of the faith, one of the families I had most frequently visited or one of the hidden pilgrims who offered food and shelter along the roadside. Someone who would have known who I was and where I was going next.

I spent many of my final days turning the names over in my head, trying to guess - who might I have offended, who might have wished me dead, amongst my friends along the road?

In the end, I stopped wondering. I wished to die with love in my heart: not doubt, not enmity.

Carpenter was reeling from Faulkner's betrayal and turning it over in her head, why did he do it, how could he, hating him, loving him. Also the dying in enmity bit. Emnity means to oppose or be hostile, to die in emnity is to die spitefully in opposition of something or someone in your final moments. Paige's god is defined by dying to spite and oppose their oppresors. Faulkner's schism of the Trawler-Man is defining themselves by their struggle against those same oppresors and those in higher power with more authority, including those in their own faith like the inner council of the high katabasian, hence why he snapped at the idea of their god being legalised and killed Mason.

Silence. CARPENTER digs.

CARPENTER:

(More roughly)

What do you regret?

THE HOMESICK CORPSE:

That I did not speak my love out loud often enough.

I had so much love in my life - it was offered to me as freely as rain. 

I felt it so deeply, but I did not speak of it. I knew it only through ritual, through shared meals and the chanting of crowds, through the oration of new words to old friends and the applause that followed.

I should have told them all how much I loved them.

CARPENTER chokes, a little, because she recognises the sentiment.

Then there's Carpenter and the Cairn Maiden, and the homesick corpse, speaking to her of dying with love in their heart instead of emnity. If Carpenter does die this season, I think that will be what's in her heart in her final moments. Though, I think it's much more likely Faulkner will die, who instead of sacrificing his siblings to the Trawler-Man or killing them for his own sake, he'll sacrifice himself to protect Carpenter from the remaining Parish of Tide and Flesh's wrath.

Speaking your love aloud more often and struggling because you only know how to do so through ritual clearly resonates with Carpenter, her faith in the trawlerman was how she stayed connected to her loved ones, even after they died, and that's why she decides to go back and tell Faulkner, her brother, that she loves him in the S2 finale. She never gets the chance to, but despite everything done against her, I think the love is still there. What Faulkner did to her wouldn't hurt so much if it wasn't. And still she hasn't spoken of that love aloud, at least not to him.

The Cairn Maiden also speaks to Paige of how they will bury the beasts (the gods that starve and die) with more comfort and kindness than they deserve, which I think will be what Carpenter does for Faulkner if he does die, whether that's him dying to protect Carpenter, or her putting him out of his misery, or him committing suicide. She'll bury him with more comfort and kindness than he deserves.

CARPENTER picks up the withered body and lays it down in the dirt.

Then she shovels the earth over it, in silence.

As she shovels, she begins to pray. It’s different, this time - the words come jolting out of her, they come strong and hard and she feels their weight.

She chokes, and she sobs, but she keeps on speaking them all the same.

CARPENTER:

This is the place. 

This has always been the place.

You were always walking towards this moment.

There’s nothing left to hold on to.

There’s nowhere left to go.

There’s no need to worry any more.

Her voice breaks on the final line

She breathes hard, struggling not to sob.

There is also that one hopeful part of me that wants to believe Faulkner would want so badly for Carpenter to kill him, to offer up his life to her for atonement, and her to be furious at the very idea that he thinks he can escape the weight of what he's done by dying, by putting that blood on her hands. For her to convince him to live with what he's done and move forward instead. Which personally I think would end up tying into the theme of finding the opposite of a sacrifice, of trying to break the cycle, but, *shrugs* who knows what could happen?

Ultimately whatever way it ends for them the one thing I am certain of is that I will be a crying mess on the floor.