#tsv theory

[misstrashchan]

So... Please tell me I'm not the only who has Thoughts. About Hayward's plan to recruit Shrue and specifically Carpenter's involvement in it because. Adjudicator Shrue has been working to legalise the Trawler-Man's people and was working with Mason and the current Katabasions. Before that they were trying to eradicate them, being the one to hire and send out Mercer and Gage with their own platoon of soldiers.

Which brings us to Faulkner and his murder of Mason and Thurrocks, his opposition to the Katabasions plans to legalise them and let the Withermark and their people be used as a weapon of war, and the story he spins pinning the murders on Carpenter, painting her as a traitor who was working with the legal authorities (aka Shrue) and undermining them:

FAULKNER:

I could never have imagined that the Legislatures could have won her over to their cause.

It was Sister Carpenter who alerted the government’s forces to the location of the Paraclete’s Gulch. 

(With a weary finality)

But they had, and of course her return was no coincidence at all.

It was Sister Carpenter who attempted to undermine our defences from within.

And after their attack failed, thanks to the combined strength of our disciples…it was Sister Carpenter who waited for a moment when the entire Gulch was gathered below in joyful celebration, and she assassinated Katabasian Mason and poor Sister Thurrocks.

(3x01 Something Dreadful Shall Arise)

And we know how strongly Carpenter feels about the idea that she would ever work with the government legislatures against the people who were once her family, how angry she is that Faulkner has written a story that has made that lie true:

CARPENTER:

You think I’d ever make peace with the people who did it? You think I’d work with them against my own family? 

Against my brother, my parents, my grandmother?

You think I wouldn’t have put a bullet in my own skull already if I had that weight pulling me down?

And I think it's important to point out that Carpenter has no idea why Faulkner killed Mason and Thurrocks. She doesn't know anything about Mason and the other Katabasisons plans to legalise their god by proving themselves useful as a tool in the war. But we do know that in the past, when the idea of legalising the Trawler-Man was brought up before in S1 by Paige as a more peaceful way forward, she loathed the idea as much as Faulkner:

PAIGE:

But this is what's absurd, isn't it? We're talking about ancient history. Laws from 50 years back, long dead legislatures.

They're accepting new faiths back into the canon all the time now. You just need to get your god's name on a petition and-

CARPENTER:

Listen to her, Faulkner. "Our god's name, on a petition". Well. Why shouldn't we be reasonable about all this? Now that the Peninsula is ready to hear our case?

Why shouldn't we go through the proper channels? Why shouldn't they be allowed to get away with it?

FAULKNER:

Carpenter, let's keep this quiet...

CARPENTER:

My parents were dragged in shackles to the Saints hydroelectric dam, a year after I was born. They were dragged there, they were sentenced, and they were tossed off the side into the churning waters.

And the last words that they ever heard were that they were to be devoured by something that they did not understand. Because the dam was new, and on unconsecrated, and because a god must feed, and because these false faith renegades from deep in the fens made for the easiest sacrifices.

I will not hear that the world is a better place than it was because there is process. I won't and I can't.

(1x12 And To Fight Is Just to Choke)

And now Carpenter is with Hayward, and are headed towards Adjudicator Shrue to try and work with them so they can help the Woundtree seem more sympathetic and have someone who can better tell their story, as it were.

Carpenter is still being hunted by Faulkner's schism, only being given a break by being in a no man's land, only now she won't be, as she's heading into Glottage.

CARPENTER:

(Staring out of the window)

If we stayed on this road heading south, we’d make it down to Marcel’s Crossing by nightfall.

Another day’s driving, and we’d be at the Paraclete’s Gulch.

(3x06 The Wise Man Knows the Taste of Rot)

So the next time Faulkner hears about Carpenter, it's going to be about how gosh, you were right all along Katabasion Faulkner, that devious Carpenter is working with the same government official who tried to eradicate us and who is now trying to legalize us to use as a tool in their war! (that's not even mentioning she'll be seen with Hayward as well, who as far as Faulkner is aware is the cop who was hunting them down back in S1) And Faulkner is just gonna be like

Wondering if he told his lie about Carpenter working with the legal authorities undermine the Parish of Tide and Flesh so convicingly that he made it into the truth and what's that? IT'S THE FOILING TO VAL AND THE LAST WORD WITH A STEEL CHAIR READY TO BEAT ME SENSELESS-

[thatonecrimsonecho]

Poor Tucker and everything, but the choice of keeping the kid gets me thinking.

Harvested are those who have looked into the red light, right? Well, based off the way they seem to act, their minds have been altered, possibly being a part of a hivemind. Also I’d like to mention that animals canonically can also be brainwashed, I’m pretty sure someone who contacted Nat in the early days of TSV said something like that. Anyways.

If Darkwater can alter the mind and bring people back from the dead like WTP did with Danyon (presumably), who’s to say that the mind-altering properties of Darkwater can’t also work it’s mind magic on those who have been turned into the Harvested?

Sure, maybe it’ll infect their bloodstream and slowly kill them, but there is a chance that it could snap them out of whatever trance the red light puts them in.

Food for thought.

[frankensteinmutual]

Signalis (2022) [H.P. Lovecraft, The Festival] /Sagittarius A* / Kathy Acker, Pussy, King of the Pirates / Outer Wilds (2020) / Is There a God-Shaped Hole at the Heart of Mathematics? / Drain for overflowing water at Sambuco Dam, Lavizzara Valley / ? / Thomasin Frances, Hole Theory (15/10/2022) / Bryan’s Ground, a public garden in Herefordshire on the Welsh border. / odd, weird, strange and unusual / Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves / Evil (2019-2014) / Judas H., Overflowing With Empty / Illustration of the Annular Eclipse of 1836 from “A fourteen weeks course in descriptive astronomy”, Joel Dorman Steele (1836-1886) / @imdad_barbhuyan on Instagram / The moon’s Copernicus crater. Through magic glasses. 1890. / Kaveh Akbar / Dune (2021) / x / Dmitry Kochanovich, Epiphany (Russian,b. 1972) / The Silt Verses, Chapter 41: But As My Last Breath Splits My Throat / Yousif M. Qasmiyeh, The Camp is a Bait for Time / Darina Muravjeva, Hole / Hilde Heynen in Heterotopia and the City / x / Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers / x /  Louise Glück, from Descending Figure / Anne Carson, Eros the Bittersweet: An Essay. / Caitlyn Siehl, What We Buried; from “A Letter To Love” / Lara de Moor, Orb (2014) / Sam Sax, Pig / The National - Wake Up Your Saints / Aleksander Rostov / Sanna Wani, from “Princess Mononoke (1997)”, My Grief, the Sun / Gregory Orr, [i want to go back] / Thomas Ott / ? / Judas H., Overflowing With Empty / James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room / Massive sinkhole swallows house in Florida / Edna St Vincent Millay, in Letters (1952) /Silent Hill 4 (2004) / @/vren-diagram / Anne Boyer, What Resembles the Grave But Isn’t / Law of Holes / Scarlet Hollow (2021) / China Miéville, from Railsea

(part one)

[thatonecrimsonecho]

I think you’re onto something.

Personally, I don’t think it’s a simulation? If the aliens are testing to see if they can invade Earth, I feel like they would’ve stopped already after everything that’s been going to shit for them thanks to the humans.

I dunno- This is why I make AUs, so that I can make my own lore that’s less confusing :’)

My current theory based on the new lore is that the sun vanished is basically the plot of the doctor who episode "extremis." All the characters are in or are simulacra in a practice simulation by aliens to practice invading earth and the only way out of if is dying. This also kinda explains why the remember album and the video of tsv noclipping into a world with a sun exists bc it could be tsv's real self or tsv after escaping the simulation sending himself photos of the real world to keep him going

[eyesteeth]

faulkner is actually really funny when you think about it

he is directly responsible for one drowning and indirectly responsible for many more at the age of 13. he then sits on this for 6 years.

within the first two episodes, it’s established that he’s been a member of the faith for 16 days. this is his first mission. the mission has also been going on for 16 days.

three days into this mission, he saints a man and turns him into a shrimp creature.

less than a week after that, he finds the crab equivalent of a nuke.

he nearly dies after summoning his god, gets a dorky staff in the process, and walks all the way back to the church, at which point he collapses in the middle of a sermon.

he gets a promotion, spends months in luxury, realizes he doesn't quite like this position like he thought he would, and then gets sent back out on a mission - as the leader of the group this time.

somehow, between the crab nuke and his second mission, about eight months pass. i assume most of that was him relaxing and not him walking. faulkner's day off - more like faulkner's half-year off.

this mission takes over a week but probably not as long as two, over the course of which all of his charges die except for one.

he spends a couple days getting kidnapped, rescued, and hightailing it back to base in order to prevent the religious battle that is about to go off

he survives said battle as a beacon to his people, increasing his credit

he then proceeds to kill one of his higher-ups and one of his followers

his god goes legal and there’s now an empty katabasian spot. i wonder who’ll take it. i wonder.

within the span of less than a year, he goes from a new member to someone of high ranking. he has effectively speedran religion, doubly so if he either dies as a martyr or becomes a disgraced heretic in s3. the momentum he held from drowning many people at 13 was enough to shoot him over the finish line. he has jumped into the river with both feet, completely forgetting that he can’t swim. silly guy. i hope he cries in s3. he needs it.

[thekhaninglass]

Need to analyse Paige from The Silt Verses from a transfeminist lens but idk enough.

Local trans woman quits her job, takes on the job of birthing a god of anarchism in her own body and it’s killing her but then instead of the org eating her time and labour they choose her!

She went from being the widow of wounds to a sister! *screams*

[crimeronan]

you know how i said val silt verses is blorbo material. she's becoming like BLORBO blorbo material to me. oh my GOD.

[clonerightsagenda]

While the finale had more overt examples of choosing to die for yourself rather than for a god, the moment that made the biggest impression on me was actually during the electrical workers' strike where instead of chanting the mantra of the wound tree or even invoking a god to curse their name, the workers' battle cry was furiously referencing the number of kilowatt hours the company thought their lives were worth. Saying no I'm not dying for a god, I'm not even dying for spite, I'm dying insisting that my life and the lives of the people around me are worth more than what you say they are.

And then, of course, the lights come back on anyway. But they still said it.

[kissurcomput3rr]

random tsv theory i thought up:

this might be farfetched, but what if tsv got harvested?? basing off the sun in the video of him fucking dying, i think the harvested do actually see the sun. (or atleast hallucinate it.) Back in tsv's neighbors notebook guide, the last page before they pretty much went insane from presumably looking at the red strobe light

They very clearly stated in their final message that the sun is back. further kinda showing that the harvested hallucinate the sun coming back. They also seem to have some sort of consciousness and awareness (?) even AFTER they look at the light because of the previous things they wrote, like how tsv said that entire poem before he went silent. Maybe he saw something in that ship that caused him to get harvested? idk, this is just a theory

a game theory..(im sorry)

uhh idk have my rambling bye guys

[pensivespacepirate]

my bet on the answer to Hayward's 'What's the opposite of a sacrifice' is 'not sacrificing' because they had been pushing for the 'kill your gods' rhetoric but that seems too obvious but it might not be obvious to the people who had fed their gods for 6000 years but there's no way Paige and Carpenter wouldn't answer that but maybe they didn't have time to process the thought on the spot and so by structuring it as a riddle Hayward had successfully made them come to that conclusion on their own but also is Hayward a reverse psychology genius and playing 5d chess? but also he had been a cop so that might have been a persuasion tactic anyway i cannot wait for when they bring it up again

[misstrashchan]

So. What's the opposite of a sacrifice?

With the final episode looming it's a question we've been turning in our heads, so I wanted to give my best guess/analysis as to what it might be before Jon and Muna come to tear our hearts out in the final episode.

This is the question Hayward asks Paige, and later Carpenter, and it seems to be the underlying thematic statement of the series, in response to Carpenter's exposition in the first episode of the Silt Verses that introduces us to the fundamentals of the world and system they live in:

CARPENTER:

A god must feed.

A god must be fed.

This is a fact agreed upon across every territory in the Peninsula. And so, really, the only difference between the people born to the water and the people born to the land...

...is the precise nature of the sacrifice we need to make.

There is a God for anything in their world as long as there is someone believing in it. But all Gods need human sacrifices. A god must feed. A god must be fed.

These simple rules have been used as fascinating and horrifying metaphors of our modern society, and to explore themes of faith and sacrifice throughout the story.

And so the final question the last season proposes is if we can find a way to make something better, that can exist outside of this ultimately unsustainable exploitative system and the harm it inflicts upon ourselves and the world, when it has come to define so much of the way we live and how we think. And that means figuring out the opposite of a sacrifice, if they want to kill the idea, the lie, that is at the heart of their world.

At first I thought the opposite of a sacrifice, of offering up to the gods, was about killing your gods. Starving them out. Refusing to offer up anything. And that is part of it, I think. I mean it's literally been a repeating mantra of multiple characters this season once they've reached they're breaking points. Violence in revolution as a tool to overthrow oppresive systems is sometimes needed and necessary. But what about after? What kind of future or vision for a better world can there be? There needs to be something at the heart of that movement that isn't just about violence against their opressors, because you then define yourself in relation to them.

This is even illustrated in the Many Below god Paige created having predator and prey emeshed together, a movement defined by their resistance against the predators of the world, the beasts, cannot seperate themselves to meaningfully create a better future that exists outside of that dichotomy. I think Hayward realises that even earlier in S2:

HAYWARD:

There’s a hare in the grass, half-buried and bloodied.

A barn owl has latched onto its back, its talons driving deep into the flesh of the hare.

Both animals are dead.

Familiar black stone veins protrude from the carcass of the victim, twisting like branches, driving upwards into the predator’s skin.

Hare and owl are locked together, inseparably.

The god must have struck just as the prey died.

White crocus is flowering up from the two entwined bodies.

(Unhappily)

And suddenly I begin to feel deeply afraid.

It all makes me think of a dormouse, dead in the dirt, its ribs showing. Of rabbits, teeth chattering, hungering from their cages

I kick dust up over the corpses. Nudge them aside into the long grass so they can’t be seen from the path.

Paige doesn’t need to know about this, I tell myself.

There’s no sense in worrying her. Not yet.

Which then makes sense why he's the one proposing the question of what the opposite of a sacrifice is to Paige (and Carpenter), for this very reason.

I think the answer is pretty simple and yet, like most simple truths in this world, it's forgotten and overlooked or twisted as naïve.

Preservation. The opposite of a sacrifice is preservation. To better explain this let me use an example:

If someone who cared about you tells you you're working too hard at your thankless job, sacrificing your sleep, your time, your personal relationships, your physical and mental wellbeing, far past the point considered sane, they'd tell you to stop. To make sure you take care of yourself. Instead of endlessly feeding yourself into a machine to justify your existence.

Applied to the world of the Silt Verses, it's not just self preservation and caring for yourself. It's about caring for, protecting, and preserving the lives of those around you, that is the ultimate act of rebellion and political warfare, the first steps forward towards a better world. Caring for humanity.

Whenever our characters reach a breaking point of turning against their gods, there's a common thread of wanting to save their fellow man, and realising the inadequacy of a god's ability to do that. Whether that's somebody close to them (like Faulkner and Paige):

Or humanity as a whole (VAL and Shrue):

SHRUE:

Use them, pass them on, do not forget the suffering that keeps the engines of this world turning, forget the name of your god and cherish the name of your neighbour that was swallowed up by it-

Cherish your neighbour. Be kinder to one another.

This can even go back to Carpenter's rejection of the Trawler-Man back in S1, her fury at the fact those she loved had been eaten (her family) and would continue to be eaten (Faulkner).

CARPENTER:

(Yelling to the river)

It's over between us, you twin mouthed prick!

Do you hear me?

Does that stir you from your torpor? Pry the barnacles loose from your sodden ears?

My father and mother were Gregory and Sandra Glass. My grandmother was Adalina Glass. My brother was Em.

They died for you.

Every single one of them died for you and they thought it meant something.

My name is Carpenter. And I am still alive!

I have loved you for so long. I have tried to know you for so, so much longer.

And I'm done with you. Here and now. I'm not laying down my life for you.

I'm not dying, do you hear?

The same breaking point for Faulkner at turning against his parish and finally snapping is the idea of Carpenter being offered as a sacrifice, an offering returned, begging for her to live.

I must clarify this is my own interpretation of the question and themes the story proposes. I'm

I'm not sure we'll actually get a hard answer so much as different characters offering their own answers and us as the audience encouraged to think for ourselves what it might be. I think this is what Hayward's answer might be at least, anyway, because like me he's a corny motherfucker:

If a sacrifice is the idea that the most meaningful and transformative thing you can do is to give up your life, your sense of self, to die, then the opposite of that would be to try to keep on living, and finding meaning and transformation in that, surely?

[thatonecrimsonecho]

Small tiny theory, but have we ever considered the possibility that the "th" in Tucker's Twitter @ stands for his initials? Seems like an interesting thing that Aidan added to his @ without any explanation.

[stellarstarryyy]

How ive been feeling posting on my sideblog for the past year

[crimson-iden]

I have a theory about strobes. Granted, some of it might be a stretch, but I have a few ideas at least.

I think strobes may have a form of blindness or some form of lack of vision built into their biology. They’re definitely alien, we know that, but I’d like to take into consideration the idea that where they came from may be a place with very low to no light levels, considering that strobes are sensitive to light, that being one issue I’m thinking about. A lot of creatures, say bats and some spiders, may come from areas with very low light levels, like caves, and it’s found that animals that live in environments like that tend to have difficulties seeing or have sensitive vision. This would make sense as applying to strobes too, given that they seem better off in the dark.

Some animals that live in naturally dark environments and tend to have forms of blindness also use echolocation, the use of sound to locate their surroundings. I think this could apply to the clicking sound that strobes produce when their strobe lights flicker. Think about that quote, “They see motion”, this would make sense with a creature using echolocation, as its surroundings would seem static, but the moment something moves, they’d be able to tell in some shape or form. By remaining still, you could likely avoid a strobe becoming alert.

So what about their camera lens-like eye and their lights? I’d like to go back and look at a tweet that Tucker made when he was attacked by a pair of strobes, he claimed that as he looked back at them, there was some kind of cylinder protruding from its head. I’ll come back to this. Also consider that strobes are described as kinda organic but kinda metal, cyborgs likely. I believe their singular eyes are actually cameras built into their heads, producing a constant feed that I think would stream back to the ships, which tend to be present in the same areas as strobes, this may be due to the limited range of their transmission, not to mention the fact that they likely do better in warm environments.

So how do they transmit the stream? By the cylinder, I believe it could be an antenna, some kind of dish built into the head that send the signal to the ships, and receives commands, I don’t think the ships harbour a pilot, more that they are ‘alive’ in their own sense, like a ships computer in sci-fi having the majority of control over the whole thing.

I think the lights that strobes produce are to illuminate the stream, that way the ship’s computer can understand. I personally picture the computer of the ship like the eyes of a fly, every separate section of it is the different streams of strobes in the area, I think it would also make sense, given that the ship can somehow tell where the body of a strobe is after it dies, considering that they apparently retrieve the corpse. That would especially make sense for a constant feed, so when a strobe dies it kinda immediately starts to send an alert signal that the ships can act upon.

Obviously there are issues with my theory, namely, why are strobes so sensitive to light if they can’t see it? How can they see light? Honestly, I have no idea, maybe it’s that the strobes themselves aren’t affected, but the light messes with the camera and causes a reaction by the ship, maybe some kind of stress that messes with a strobes brain and causes the reaction, which I guess would make sense since I imagine having a camera stuffed in your face would mean you have wires near your brain.

At the end of the day, it’s only a theory, and I’m sure it can be debunked and questioned, this is just how I’ve personally been processing the “biology” of strobes

[kitty-lattee]

i don’t like how nat is becoming tsv . i don’t like how she’s making his exact “wallowing in my own self pity” tweets or how she’s making polls for important decisions . i’m scared this role is gonna make her lose herself and lose sight of who she really is . because *obviously* she has a role to play , everyone in tsv does , but i’m scared tsv’s legacy will be too much for her to handle and she’ll lose herself in the process . i’m scared she’ll go haywire just like tsv did .

[darkwater-reservoir]

Why the remember album may have dissappeared

The remember album is a mystery, but we do have a vague understanding of how it works. The album is influenced by tsv's choices. When he makes a bad choice, a photo (or the whole album) dissappears, but if he makes the right one, another photo is added. Recently, it completely disappeared, and no one knows why, but I think I might have an idea.

Tsv is stuck.

He's stuck. He's caught up in the past and worrying about the future; he's not living. How do we know this? Well, that's because of tsv's latest tweets.

The tweets tsv has made over the past few days have all had the same theme. He keeps talking about the past and worrying about the future. In the tweet he made where he was ranting about what the remember album's disappearance meant he mentions danyon.

That's fine and all until you realize that danyon has nothing to do with the remember album. In fact, he's a completely separate problem, yet he mentions him in this post where he's worried about the album.

He's been thinking about him alot, and in one of tsv's most recent posts, he mentions how he has been thinking about what it was like before the sun vanished. It can be assumed he's been thinking about what danyon used to be like. This completely nullifies the "goodbye post" tsv made directed to danyon back in September since, in reality, he really hasn't moved on from him.

Tsv also keeps worrying about what the darkwater in his blood might do to him (which is totally understandable tbh) and what the remember album might mean. That being said, he's also constantly worrying about the future. He's stuck in the nostalgia of the past and constantly worrying about the future, causing him to be stuck.

If the remember album is based on tsv's choices, then him being unable to let go of the past and embrace the unknown future could make it disappear.