>:)

* yes

* no

then almost immediately after that they're in the bathhouse. and barth's trying to clean himself as best as he can with his own two hands in the water, but he can only do so much. that is until tanrak - pious, dutiful tanrak - leaves his own dipper for barth and disappears without a word so that he can scoop the water, pour it over himself. bathe himself properly, make himself clean.

and then later in the episode we see barth rinsing himself off/cooling himself down with the hose and tanrak stopping to watch him. and this is probably the most interesting one of all to me, because it's such a different kind of water.... the water in rain is natural. the water in the bath is passive, almost still. but the water from a hose is purposeful. more aggressive, even. it goes where it's pointed, starts and stops whenever you decide. and that's the kind of water that barth choses to clean himself with. that's the water tanrak watches barth clean himself with - unlike in the bathhouse, where he disappeared before he saw what barth chose to do with his dipper. and the fact that it wasn't a short throw away scene and instead lingered while barth poured water over himself (just like tanrak) combined with the fact that we know from the trailer that there's at least one other scene where both barth and tanrak are playing with the hose and soaked by the water from it makes me feel like it's significant somehow, even if i don't quite know how yet.

and of course there's the pool. empty, of course - except not really, because barth is in it, ankle deep in the little bit of leftover water. and then tanrak is right there with him in the water. helping him pick through the waters and find what's his. helping him clean up a mess he didn't cause and didn't deserve. and it's in that pool where they lay together, close enough to touch, sharing barth's bag as a pillow, talking about god. where tanrak says 'of course i believe in god' and barth says 'i used to too once upon a time, but my god hasn't been as kind to me as yours has been to you'. and it's in that pool, close to the water but not quite in it, where they're caught. laying together, close enough to touch. somewhere they're not supposed to be, doing something they're not supposed to be doing.

and with all of this plus the scenes including some form of water we know are still coming, the imagery of a baptism is of course not lost on me - the power of the water to change you, to make you clean, to rebirth you as something and someone else. but what is a baptism, really? is it really something that can only happen once, or can it happen over and over again? what dictates if something is holy or not? and where does the power really come from to make it so? to make us change? to make us holy?

there's a story from the early church, about a saint called thecla who, after hearing paul preach the gospel, told her fiance that she wanted to call off her engagement and vow herself to christ. as punishment she's condemned to be burnt at the stake, but is saved by a violent rainstorm (!) sent by god which puts out the fire. she cuts off her hair, presents as a man. begs paul to baptise her. he tells her not yet. then, when the truth about who thecla is puts her in danger, paul denies even knowing her, much like jesus is denied by peter before he is crucified. yet she saves herself. she's again put to death - thrown in the arena to be torn apart by wild animals. god saves her again. the lionesses lie at her feet, protecting her from other animals. in the midst of the danger, thecla prays. she spots a lake, full of aggressive seals, and throws herself in it, baptising herself with the water. lightning strikes, killing all the seals before they could get to her. she's released. she returns to paul, dressed as a man, who has no choice but to bless her. she spends the rest of her life preaching the gospel.

i guess what i'm trying to say is that anything can be baptism. you don't need a priest or a church. you can take it with your own hands. you can throw yourself into the lake, drench yourself in hose water, wade ankle deep into the dregs of a stagnant pool. it doesn't have to be holy. god is already in the water. that's the beginning of the whole fucking story. (genesis 1:2 'the spirit of god was moving over the face of the waters') all you really need is to be brave. and i already know if this show is going to be about anything, it's going to be about being brave. it already is.

"When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. Love them as yourself." (Leviticus 19:33-34)

I first thought about how it emphasized the differences between them and the crowd that found them—those above with the heavens behind them and those underground, absent of the water that ought to have been here to bless or baptize them. They’re in the depths of something more like hell, trapped there by another’s cruelty, and judged for even the implication of homosexuality. The upside down framing draws a parallel to the bats they were trying to avoid, and when I checked, the stairway to heaven painting in the series in fact features demons with bat wings.

Thank you @telomeke for screenshotting!

Bats in Western Christian symbolism became associated with darkness, desolation, and uncleanliness. In Leviticus and Deuteronomy, they’re listed as unclean birds not to be eaten. Origen (one of the queerer Church fathers) associated heretics with bats, and Satan himself started to receive bat wings around the 1300s (see this great write-up about the history of bats and dragons in Christian rhetoric). As recently as 2020, the Pope used them to refer to sinners, “When we are in a state of sin, we are like ‘human bats’ who can move about only at night. We find it easier to live in darkness because the light reveals to us what we do not want to see. But then our eyes grow accustomed to darkness and we no longer recognise the light.” These are the malevolent creatures of the shadows.

In Thai traditions, however, bats can be symbols of good fortune, longevity, beauty, and, along the lines of some Indian beliefs, even sacredness. In Chinese traditions, which have influenced Thai culture and Aof Noppharnach who depicts his Thai-Chinese heritage often, the word for bat (“fu”) is a homonym for the word “luck,” leading to a ubiquity of their positive depiction in art, even more common than dragons. Bats are not without their curses and annoyances (shitting on your sleeping spots is mentioned in the first study just as it is in the series lol), but they are positive parts of the world that show a natural world in balance.