(cont.) So... what picture does this paint of Sleep?
Earlier I said that this idea of Sleep-the-tormentor isn't inaccurate, but rather incomplete. Here I will propose that incomplete here really does constitute grave inaccuracy; because yes, Sleep is a source of torment, but doesn't actively, of her own volition, seek to be.
From Vessel's side, Sleep is
A god; not just a god, but the eldest god. An "ancient majesty". Paradoxical and incomprehensible as per Alkaline and embodied by everyone from his shadow to his inspiration to his audience to his partner(s)
Selfish, superficial and ravenous
Emotionally closed off but demanding that he be open, as well as bringing his "walls of gold" down as per Aqua Regia, stripping him of his beautiful put-on facade to expose his soft, ugly underbelly
All at once "not like any other/something more than (he) could ask for" and someone who "gives him nothing whatsoever but a reason to leave"
Fickle; someone who wants him but believes he's unfit for her, who from the beginning knows they're not endgame, but continues to string him along with mixed messages
Someone he feels indebted to
Yet someone he is willing to weather the storm for again and again, the one that guides him "to safety and silence" as per Telomeres, the embodiment of his stability,
and someone who sticks by him even after Euclid concludes the cycle with Vessel outgrowing his old, obsessive self, by "Even in Arcadia walking beside him still"
But the way Sleep presents herself, when you look closely, is quite a stark difference:
She speaks almost exclusively in a very straightforward way, without much poetry besides the odd ominous metaphor. Not so much befitting the idea of a god
She is resigned from the beginning to the fact that she cannot keep Vessel, as per TNDNBTG,
yet refuses to let him go, both because he provides something she's after
but also because she is very fond of and worried about his well-being. In fact many of her songs revolve around this idea of uplifting Vessel somehow, changing and hardening him:
- Nazareth to break him off from a previous relationship he's hung up on;
- Jericho sort of dismissing his "My hands are not worthy" by looking at him as something desirable;
- Jaws and Give by encouraging him to be vulnerable and not hide himself;
- TNDNBTG by putting him among angels when he repeatedly expresses a feeling of alienation from anything holy and beautiful;
- AYRO? by straight up expressing concern over no longer being able to sustain him;
- Euclid by saying a bittersweet goodbye, believing he will be moving on now
- And finally Emergence by coaxing him out of his cocoon and welcoming his new self.
Furthermore, if we go back to Vessel's side, Gethsemane reveals she has plenty of issues of her own. Very human ones, at that. In fact it's in EIA that Sleep really begins to be presented in very human terms - which also happens to be the point where she begins to be treated as an equal. I don't believe that is a coincidence.
I believe Sleep is not and has never been a god.
Gods (and angels by extension) are something that have existed from the beginning in the story, and which Vessel has always presented to us as these distant figures lurking above him. And Sleep is above him too, but you know where she also is, more often than not? In his arms, in his bed, somewhere outside of a Heaven that her wings cannot bring her to. In TNDNBTG she even believes Vessel to be living among angels, so clearly she is not one. She is not part of the divine sphere.
Divinity as far as they go comes inextricably tied to their being lovers: they are divine because they deify one another.
see: I am hunting something and, in turn, that same thing is hunting me in the TMBTE poem; or
Though we act our of a holy duty to be constantly awake, you've got me in a chokehold -> the holy duty is this perceived debt, this deal they've entered where Vessel will keep himself alive -> Sleep, here, represents both the thing that draws him towards death (failing to be awake) and the thing which pushes him to live;
all of which ties into TNDNBTG's In turning divine, we tangle endlessly/Like lovers entwined
In fact, their very identities are wholly dependent on their rapport: Sleep is not her real name, because as an interview states, "no proper translation can cover it". Sleep is the name Vessel has given her, and similarly, he is only known as Vessel because that is what he is to her.
And given that Vessel describes himself as "a blade" in Chokehold, and later in EIA says that other gods "are sharpening their blades", it can be assumed that all gods may function this way: they are only gods so long as they are deified and served by someone who loves them. The only reason Vessel felt scorned by and outcast from their ranks is because his relationship with his own perceived god was a toxic, unbalanced one.
But that wasn't Sleep's fault. At least, not fully; she is rarely seen asking for things that are purely for her own selfish wants, rather she simply... takes as much as Vessel offers. And because he's prone to giving too much and her to not stopping him, they wind up spiraling further and further.
And what of Sleep's fate, then?
By looking at EIA, the point in which Vessel is at his most mature and stable, we can see that Vessel himself doesn't want you to blame Sleep or to view her as a monster.
At the end of the trilogy, the end of the cycle, Sleep is resigned to losing Vessel and asks only for the night - the night being a common motif in ST's writing, used to symbolize a period of darkness and turmoil (waters, the ocean especially, are used in a similar way). She is allowing him to move on and only asking that she get to keep what they had. It is a petition for a breakup on good terms. But instead of leaving her there as the ending to Euclid would suggest, EIA picks up at that point and shows us that Vessel chose not to leave her in the past.
And this is a very unusual way to write a story of maturing and moving on from a toxic relationship, but it is, as many things about ST, very realistic. Because in real life, humans are much more complex than we could fathom, and so the affairs they get mixed up in are as well. And despite this relationship being beyond toxic, instead of breaking up (even on good terms!) and leaving it at that, they work through it.
And as of EIA, though things are still not perfect, they are at least building up from a level playing field this time. Vessel is no longer putting himself down and deifying Sleep; and Sleep is letting him keep himself alive instead of sustaining him. But he won, they both won! Through a death (of the self), his arms stayed open; and finally, Sleep is willing to fall into his embrace. Instead of running in circles around each other, they're now building each other into better people. It is a hopeful ending; because it is no ending at all, but rather a promising beginning.
