L'infinita vanità del tutto

Like this guy who you never liked (the Kingslayer, the man who has twisted Knighthood and made it a joke) he saves you from being raped, loses his hand, and confesses to you the truth about why he killed the mad king.

And then he leaves.

He leaves you to go home and you’re stuck with the same horrible men who maimed this guy that has began to weasel his way into your psyche. But it’s fine because he’s gone now and you don’t have to deal with it.

And then he just freaking falls out of the sky and saves you from the bear. A knight saving the damsel. (And for once him the knight and you the damsel.) And when you ask him why he came all the way back just to save you he says, “I dreamed of you.”

I know we've already talked about this, but I want to know the WHY? behind it.

Like, we might not have figured out shit about the show, but I know that this one IS figured out, cause I'm 100% sure this is true.

This photo of Maura, which Daniel took with him from the Prometheus, belonged in that empty frame sitting on Eyk's desk in Prometheus' captain's cabin.

This photo is made for a frame, and it doesn't just perfectly fit the said frame, it also looks like it. It looks like Prometheus. Old, washed out, like it had seen better days. Just like this frame and everything around it.

Now, every other photo we see in Daniel's memory is different. It doesn't come close to this one. They are all modern photos. They don't even look a decade old, let alone a century.

Another thing that supports this is the shot from the character promo that I can't find anywhere now, but I have screenshots from it. The same photo in a drawer. On the desk, there is a tobacco box, just like there is one, same or quite similar on Eyk's desk, which Maura uses to trap Alfred, as well as books written in German.

The cherry on top all this is Maura's reaction to Eyk's "family photo". Except, it's probably not a reaction to just the photo, but also the frame. Because she's had a more emotional reaction to that photo frame than she's had about 80% of other things happening around her. Every time she looked at it, it was as if it called to her, as if she was trying to remember what it meant. Because it was her photo that should be there, not some random woman and children (the original script, where she takes the frame and puts it back face down, had only the wife and daughters in the photo, Eyk wasn't there). Anyone who's seen Dark remembers the weird and off-putting staring Stranger Jonas gave us with that spot on the floor, and we later found out what it really meant (and it was huge).

So what does this mean? It means that in the previous sim, the roles were different (I've already talked about this in another of my posts. Different sims, different roles, and every sim taking the character deeper and deeper and more out of touch with reality). Maura's photo on Eyk's desk meant that in the previous sim, or maybe more than one, she was HIS wife.

Finally, what I want to know is why did Daniel take it?

Maybe it's because he knew they were gonna search the ship, and if they found it, it would cause some disturbance. But if he wanted Maura to wake up so badly, wouldn't that help? Wouldn't it help if she remembered there were previous simulations and that that meant none of it was real?

I don't believe a word of what he said to Maura about their backstory is true because everything we know about his and Elliot's memory is just a part of a simulation. But I do believe it was probably one of the previous sims. Perhaps one of the initial sims that would make her remember easier and bring her back to the beginning from the depth of endless cycles.

I don't believe Daniel is some sort of evil mastermind, and I don't believe he does any of it for the sake of some evil plan, but this thing about the photo is bugging me so much, because it also connects to him repeatedly telling Maura that it doesn't matter why she forgot, while he kept telling her she needs to remember and wake up.

Maybe they are in the Coppola movie adaptation, BUT NOT IN THE NOVEL. Sure, Dracula sucks Mina's blood and does his mind melding thing with her, but he doesn't have a relationship with Mina. She matters to him only inasmuch as she is the most important person to the ones who are hunting him. Mina is important to Dracula because she is important to Jonathan. Jonathan is Dracula's personal victim. He is the one Dracula is truly obsessed with. I'm not saying that Dracula x Jonathan are a Saurondriel equivalent, maybe the novel Dracula simply doesn’t have one. I mean, I personally see the "if you're condemned, I'll follow you to hell" Jonmina of it all as a sort of cosmic connection, but someone could see little Mr "This man belongs to me" the same as a Galadriel-obsessed Sauron. In any way, in the novel, there isn't such a clear cut version of them.

Also, someone brought up that Morfydd plays Mina in the Dracula miniseries when discussing Dracmina as Saurondriel. So… in that show, Dracula and Mina have even less of a relationship than in the novel.

HOWEVER, I'm delighted to announce that show Dracula does indeed have a Saurondriel-like couple of its own. A woman who spends her whole life hunting Dracula. Who has a weird mind melding shit with him. Who tries to murder him for real and gets weirdly horny while doing it.

Kids, the couple you're looking for is Dragatha:

They have it all: centuries long enmity, blood binding, banter, height difference, for a sec everyone thinks they’re a couple when spending time in a boat together, she's the white queen to his dark knight, she's his sunlight. You could even say he kneels before the light of his queen. And they have the most fucked up incredible final scene I've ever seen. I won't spoil it though. Watch this show.

Ani's breakdown in the final scene is a combination of a bunch of things: over the past two days, she's lost the dream of the life she had envisioned for herself, her husband (who she probably believed she loved, at least on some level) has rejected her, she's been insulted and denigrated, she's been bruised and manhandled and dragged all over New York and then across the country and back, and she's got nothing to show for it (aside from the money and the ring, but I don't think she's really thinking about that yet). It's a lot, and I think if Igor hadn't given her the ring she would have gone into her house and crawled in bed and cried where no one could see or judge her.

But now he's given her this thing, which in her mind puts her in his debt, and she doesn't want to be in debt to this guy, this psycho who confuses her by doing nice things but who, in the end, is an embodiment and final reminder of this terrible episode of her life that she only wants to forget.

So she decides to have sex with him. It'll even the score — no more debt, and she'll be done.

The tricky thing with sex is that it can make things complicated, especially when the people involved have very different assumptions about what it means. Igor's looking at her and he's cupping her face and trying to kiss her and she realizes that he wants her — not just her body, but a connection deeper and more real than she's prepared for. Ani rejects that — the last two days have sent her reeling, made her question her worth and her whole life, and who is this fucking asshole to try to tell her she's suddenly worth wanting? — and she lashes out. It's the physical and emotional outburst, followed by the fact that he still doesn't reject her (like everyone else has), even as he sees her, sees everything she is, that makes it all come crashing down.

Rings of Power 1.2 (2022-)

if i could just hold on to that feeling,

keep it with me always,

bind it to my very being,

then i...

HALADRIEL PARALLELS!