#file 56

More sydposting… i love the faceless dear !!

The anatomy is a bit weird on this one but it’s fine because I literally had to use myself as a ref

Lineart and no lighting under the cut if you’re interested

This is especially true in Rowan’s case since as a side character, we know a lot less about him than we know about Sydney which makes the set up and twist of expectations a lot more clear as opposed to Sydney who the audience knows more about from the beginning and it’s more so the other characters who don’t understand why he’s like that. So, Soren in terms of execution here is likely going to be a lot more similar to Rowan in the execution of this plot line. Especially since him and Rowan have been getting a lot of time together to work as foils already as they fight about whether to protect themselves from or embrace the coming storm. But of course, a good foil works best when they’re also a parallel.

(Also, speaking of Rowan, it was revealed that he’s been missing for two days in this scene! Which by the way isn’t so long after he stormed off after his mental breakdown in Swallow The Bite. And no one has gone looking for him! I figured this would happen after that episode! I’m deeply concerned! Why did it take everyone two days to bring this up?! I get that Juniper understands that Rowan is a grown man who can take care of himself and Rowan wants that independence. But disappearing for two days after what just happened?! Look for him now! That’s so scary!!!).

Sorry, Rowan tangent over, back to Soren, Fennel, and Sydney. Because, also, genuinely, why is Soren like that? There must be a reason he’s so afraid of death and wanting to seek eternal life. Did something happen to him? That or it could just be the mental illness making him obsess over it (I feel that). But I wonder if we’ll ever find out anything regarding his backstory as to why. Maybe he had a near death experience, or maybe he was raised extremely religious. His faith could come from a family background, or he could have been raised deep in a different religion and left to find answers to the questions it wouldn’t answer elsewhere.

Fennel expresses that they’re really concerned about Soren because he’s been talking nonsense and getting worse (presumably about the mother of stones and such), and despite everyone else laughing it off as Soren shenanigans (Rowan parallels are back!), they’re really worried that he’s going to hurt himself. Presumably they think that in an effort to achieve eternal life he’ll actually end up in some kind of comatose state like he was trying to put everyone into with the mold, or he’ll attempt a highly dangerous ritual or some such. This likely has something to do with the coming storm since he’s been excited about its possible religious meanings. Fennels comes to Sydney asking for help with this, but Sydney tells them that there is nothing he can do. Which, yes, it is very rude to say that to Fennel right after Fennel was vulnerably asking for help for their cocouncilor who they describe as a loved one. Whether that’s platonically or romantically in the canon remains to be seen. But regardless, this is someone that they deeply care about who is in danger who they came to the only person that they could think of to help with and they’re very rudely being shut down. Sydney does even go out of his way to add unnecessary insults about Soren calling him a freak, saying there’s “no ointment for being terminally weird,” and saying that he’s just “a weirdo with an ego.” Obviously, not the best way to handle things, not very nice at all.

But then, let’s look at this from Sydney’s perspective. Fennel has no idea that Sydney has just been through an exceedingly rough day where he was sick and yet he still had to take care of the sick campers because Jedidiah wasn’t there to help, and he was terrified of the strange illness that the kids were showing, and he was thinking about Tommy and how he couldn’t save him. And in the end, he couldn’t save these kids either, The Deer With No Face did. And she did it in an extremely cryptic and creepy way and indirectly threatened Sydney. So obviously, Sydney isn’t exactly in the best headspace to talk to Fennel about their issues with Soren. Sydney has no reason to believe that he has any power to save Soren, nor does he particularly care. Since, while I’m sure he doesn’t want to see Soren hurt, he’s still not exactly on the best terms with Soren. All that Soren has done is resurrect a rabbit that Jedidiah had to kill in order to hide how illegal it was from the government, and try to put everyone in an eternal life where you just sleep between life and death using mold, and get in the way of Rowan’s attempts to build safety for the kids during the coming storm. Not to mention, that he did all of this knowing about how Sydney is undead. He has told Sydney this which freaked him out and made him cry and Soren did not seem to care especially while he was resurrecting a rabbit and continuing to engage in necromancy despite the possibility of it drawing more attention to Sydney. Soren also seems to be the only person who isn’t some sort of magical entity who knows things who wasn’t involved in the incident who knows about Sydney being undead. So of course, Sydney is extremely unsettled by him and wants nothing to do with him. He has every right to not have any interest in Soren’s state after everything that he’s done with no apology. Especially since, Sydney’s being quite clear, that’s not his job. Sydney is the camp nurse, he’s not a therapist. He has more than enough issues already to work through in his own. The only thing he can really do for mental issues that we’ve seen so far is give Rowan over the counter meds which are for blocking dark visions which Soren does not have. The only people that Sydney has really tried to sit down with and help are the kids who he deeply cares about, and Rowan, because Rowan is his friend. But not as a therapist, as a friend and camp nurse. He can’t be expected to sit down and talk out feelings with Soren when that is not his job nor is he in any way qualified. Still, it wasn’t nice of him to make rude remarks about Fennel’s suffering loved one to their face, and it wasn’t nice of Fennel to return those remarks by telling him that “it’s no wonder no one likes you.” Which, yikes, rude.

Hi! This is just me saying that this rant won’t be as organized or formalized (if you can call it that) as my other rants about these topics! As I am a bit busy and these are just random thoughts I am trying to mold into the form of words. So without further ado, let us begin!:

I want to start this off with the rant about Fennel’s talking to Sydney thing. Because I have been saying I would write that down for what a month or so now?: 

Fennel shouldn’t be hated for what they said to Sydney regarding Soren and other things, because Fennel is clearly very worried, but not just for Soren. Here’s what I mean by that; notice how they say that “[they] hope [Sydney] never has a loved one hurt the way [Soren] is” which is an important line to think about, this is because they are (yes) worried about Soren, but also because they are worried that Sydney won’t be able to help/won’t be willing to help if someone he (Sydney) cares about is in trouble. And yes this doesn’t excuse the way they said before that “no wonder everyone hates you” and “you are so mean” but theres context here: first of all when Fennel first came in to talk to Sydney, they weren’t aggressive. They simply were asking for help with Soren, (though we’ll get to more on the matters of Soren later), and when Sydney outright refused to talk about it or try to help they were devastated, because they don’t like seeing Soren hurt; think about it, you would probably do anything to help if a close loved one was hurt or was about to do something dangerous. What would you do if you were denied help for them?

Fennel is lashing out at Sydney due to the stress of seeing Soren hurt, but also to try and teach Sydney to take care of people/care for their feelings as well as his own.

Now to rant about Sydney’s self destructive behaviors + up and Adam yayyyy:

First of all Up and Adam specifically suggested the therapy to Sydney because he knew Sydney couldn’t resist it after some time and several factors causing stress in relationships; as we all know Sydney wants to be “eaten by something that loves [him]”. But this isn’t love, not in the way that two people loving each other is love, but in the way a hunter loves its prey. What I mean to say is, Up and Adam is preying upon Sydney’s vulnerabilities (which include him being insecure, and any stress in his relationship with Jedidiah), but he is doing this in such a way that its disguised as love. He acts as if he’s doing Sydney a favor, which is not true. Because, while it was VERY unethical for Jedidiah to do what he’s done, what Up and Adam is doing is just as bad if not worse. 

Up and Adam may not be lying about being able to cause Sydney’s death, but and this is a big but, if this goes too far then Sydney won’t be able to turn back if he decides this isn’t the way. Adam’s way comes with a price to pay, and the cost is pretty large: to succeed in what he’s doing, Adam has to successfully push Sydney to withdraw himself from everyone (which he’s done a pretty good job in doing), make everyone tire of helping him, and get him to willingly give his blood and more.

So far Adam has gotten Sydney to be bitter towards everyone, by making him believe (through using his insecurities) more than he did before that people hate him. This has caused him to both ignore other people’s feelings but also to make private arguments public (like we saw with Joshua). And when he’s confronted for that, he either pushes people away more, or lets them get a bit closer temporarily only to push them away again when they offer solutions to his problems. Sydney has also willingly given Adam blood, an eye, satisfaction, and love, and fear. Adam is feasting on Sydney and in return only giving him pain; I didn’t mention death, because he isn’t giving Sydney it in the way that he’d wanted/normally would happen. Sydney is already self destructive in many ways, but Adam is specifically using this weakness and trauma and fear to get him to be more and more self destructive.

If you’ve ever felt gross after Up and Adam either talked to or about Sydney in some way in any of the episodes (idk if you have), I wouldn’t be surprised, because the man is essentially abusing Sydney, so subconsciously you know somethings not right about the way he’s talking about Sydney. And there is a plot reason for it, Adam takes joy in eating Sydney both in body and in emotion, he drinks in Sydney’s fear, anger, sadness and fuels it, he eats Sydneys eye, and drinks his blood; he seems to have a reason he believes this to be a good thing. He is scared of Sydney, but is using this to grapple for power above him, he wants to feel strong, and to satiate his never-ending hunger. 

Another point I would like to make is the fact that Adam is always eating snack foods and packaged foods, but those never fill him. We know hunger and love are connected in symbology for this at least, so I would like to purpose a theory: Adam is low on love, he craves it, and cannot get it, we see him desperately trying to fill himself with it through eating, eating snack foods, those weren’t made with love, they were mass produced and packaged. He enjoys the taste, but they do nothing to fill him. When he realizes he can’t fill himself with them, he uses them just to temporarily satiate himself until he can get more love/food. In this case, Sydney, he is eating Sydney, eating his love, eating his care, in the form of getting him to lay all of his trust upon Adam. By doing this Adam is bestowed with trust, love and food. The food is Sydney himself, given with care. This fills him because it is filled with a type of love, a twisted type of love yes, but still love. But, in a lot of symbology love is in the heart… is he saving that for last?

Adam is interesting to think about in comparison to Elijah, because both are trying to kill Sydney, for both different reasons and the same if you think about it. Because, Elijah was trying to make him live forever to worship and importantly feel the love of. While Adam is trying to kill Sydney while importantly drinking/eating his love. Both of them are doing it for love, both in twisted ways, but also very different ways.

Sydney is killing himself in mind, meaning he is making sure everyone around him would already consider him too far gone to save, so when he’s actually gone, they won’t think twice of it.

Now the matter of Jedidiah:

Jedidiah is an interesting one to think about, as he obviously cares for Sydney, in so many ways; but he isn’t good at expressing it, and the ways in which their relationship is without change are kind of toxic. Jedidiah doesn’t want to lose Sydney, but also in many respects already has, he is’t willing to let go but also isn’t willing to make things right. He is scared, he feels guilty, and he wants to love and to be loved as anyone would be. 

Whatever he did to Sydney is something he won’t admit, because he regrets it, he is scared of what he’s done, so he does what he needs to to keep Sydney alive but he never processes it fully, otherwise he’d feel even more guilty for what he’s done, and he wouldn’t be able to look at Sydney without remembering in detail all that he’s done. Though not processing it has also caused him trauma, trauma he’s trying to suppress rather than work through, which is what causes him to avoid Sydney and to snap at him all the time. He does want to protect Sydney and keep him safe but he cannot in his current condition effectively do so.