*spoilers for Olivia and Yunnan if you haven't seen it*
Excited to hear your thoughts on how our latest episode fits into Marcy's dreamscape.
I think the part with Olivia, Yunnan, and Marcy fighting their fears could be a desire to share her fears, vulnerabilities, with others without feeling like a burden as it is out of her control and everyone experiences it together. I think the whole idea of Olivia and Yunnan being the ones to rescue her comes from a desire to be wanted and cared for by people who have no obligation to do so, as opposed to Anne and Sasha who she might fear stay with her out of pity, or because it's what they've always done.
I heard someone describe the possession as a "mind-rape", and, like, yeah. But I wonder how the Core being a collection of the greatest minds plays into this. Maybe it's her fear of being completely overwhelmed by people more powerful than her playing out in a masochistic fantasy, that will hopefully end with the catharsis of overpowering and eliminating them. Maybe the whole thing with the core's eyes being everywhere is a manifestation of feeling watched all the time- like your analysis about the male gaze.
Anyways
Hi, anon! Thanks for the thoughts!
I like your take on Marcy wanting to be vulnerable and also not wanting to be vulnerable and oh wow. Okay. I'm putting the rest of this paragraph under the cut.
As for wanting to be rescued by people outside the trio, maybe? The fact that Marcy mistakes Yunan and Olivia for Sashy and Anne is making me reconsider whether I was right about this after all:
I’ve wondered whether [Sprig is Marcy according to Anne,] Polly is Sasha according to Anne, Olivia is Anne according to Marcy, Yunnan is Sasha according to Marcy, and Percy and Braddock are Anne and Marcy according to Sasha (but I can’t figure out which one’s which). This is probably wrong.
It helps that Olivia seems primarily aligned with Heart; plants tend toward Wit, but she puts a Heart spin on them with themes of stewardship, moral responsibility, tradition, and obligation to family. Yunan, of course, is aligned with Strength.
I could easily be wrong. The newt ladies do have mom energy (not as much as the fandom was hoping for, but it's still there), so maybe they signify Marcy's desire to have good parents? Or maybe her mom is actually a better parent than her dad.
Other stuff! Yunan's childhood trauma might haunt her still because it signifies the creeping threat of old age and senility? Maybe? Arm injuries are associated with Strength is all. (Hm, I should do a follow-up post about the primary/secondary/tertiary attribute thing. There's a lot that the initial post missed.)
Given Marcy's enthusiasm for necromancy and her desire to stay friends "forever" and "never grow apart," I strongly suspect she wants to cheat death and become immortal. This wish just came true in the worst possible way.
The line "But my lord craves a host" stands out to me, if only for the possible connection to Marcy's weird cannibalism motif. (NB: Anne also has a cannibalism motif. I have no idea what the heck is up with cannibalism in this show.)
Someone on Discord suggested that the Core's possession of Marcy is akin to a trans kid experiencing unwanted puberty—especially if Tarantulad is foreshadowing a permanent physical change in Marcy's appearance. I'm pretty interested in this interpretation, given that I already read Marcy as AFAB and vaguely trans; in particular, their quest in Marcy at the Gates to prevent the female (barbari-ants) from overwhelming the male (Newtopia) has vibes of staving off puberty.
(Having invoked the trans reading, I will now refer to Marcy as "they" for the rest of this post.)
The Core's eye motif just got dialed way the fuck up, which means that between it and the shadowfish I am now very interested in this line from Scavenger Hunt:
Yeah, sure, I'm good at solving puzzles and calculating the check, but you're amazing at making connections. Me, I have trouble looking people in the eye sometimes.
(cw: rape)
And then, yeah, the whole "mind rape" thing.
So I'm pretty confident that Newtopia is Marcy's fantasy of college, but there are still some major unresolved questions about their dreamscape. More than anything, I want to know what's up with all this metaphorical sexual trauma. The king is arguably coded as a sexual predator, his impalement of Marcy as rape, and the Core's possession of Marcy as rape resulting in pregnancy.
I can think of four possible reasons for this, which aren't mutually exclusive.
One, Marcy was sexually assaulted on Earth, and the shit they're going through right now is a symbolic reenactment of that trauma. This is what I argue in the post about Andrias, although I'm no longer as confident as I used to be. Might be true! Might not.
Two, Marcy is afraid of being sexually assaulted; Andrias, the Core, and the leering eyes of the shadowfish are all manifestations of this fear.
Three, Marcy experienced and continues to experience puberty as a violation of their bodily autonomy, an assault on par with rape.
And four.











