#reply.tag

Okay so, time for you guys to help me out cus, what the fuck is this shot?? Raw and edited gif for your study.

I'm positive we're seeing the torn arm still stuck to the pipe, following it down ona close up to show the veins and mutations reach the pendant and the seedling within. But what are those dancing glowy things? At first I thought they might be budding leaves, but then they looked a bit similar to the flesh bits glowing effects, but they are round and almost have a volume and direction of movement.... so i'm truly puzzled.

Read more for more pictures and a theory.

I have a thought forming about that moment but I don't have any reference images for it!

Love your work 🫡

ahoy there!! nice to see ya and thank you sm :D And absolutely I can get you those!

So for context for everyone, that scenes goes as such: Simon gets the SM-8 info and notices all the fucked up sores and boils on the sub. He gets on the console and drives to the meeting point. We see the mutations grow teeth and the blood invade more of the sub. The blood drips on his head, Simon flinches, and we hear the growl. He looks to his hand, glances at the pendant, and then back to the bandages. That's when he removes them and sees the mutations on himself. Then we get to the meeting with Ava.

here it is in gifs:

and for some raw stills:

@retrograde-raven alright so, here's the best I could get from the movie. here's to hoping we get some BTS footage with better details at some point?

Image-heavy under readmore

laika the space dog

also dogs in general, especially ones trained to attack

schrodinger's cat (personal fav)

sacrificial lambs / scapegoats / black sheep

the leviathan, specifically in a "jonah and the whale" sort of context (haven't really seen this anywhere, but my friend and i were discussing it the other day and i can't get the idea out of my head bc it lines up so well, thought i'd toss it up here too)

if u or anyone else has more to add i would love to hear 'em !!!

i'm not gonna lie, my favorite one of the lot is Schrodinger's cat by a LONG shot! <3 Laika is a close second, but the cat is just him to a T plotwise. symbolism wise, def scapegoat.

though i have NOT seen the leviathan one yet?? wouldn't that be the sub instead? unless i'm misreading what you mean and he's Noah in that scenario. kind of makes me think of Pinocchio.... smth smth wanting to be a real boy when everyone refuses to treat him as a human being, constantly being told to "obey his father". also can work with some of the recent retellings of it!

He's the Judas goat if anything. The animal trained to lead sheep into the kill line while being spared itself right up until they need goat meat.

i did NOT know this was a thing??? holy shit you're SO RIGHT

damn now i wanna write about Judas and Simon. Orthodoxy v. Gnostic Judas takes too cus...

So, this will be a bit bonkers because I'm on a time crunch now, BUT you bringing this phrase just made me consider one thing: "We will see the answer together. And you will live. And we will be free." aka Simon will live and we (the Eel? The blood?) will be free. It was asked if Simon would give Everything just to survive. The way I interpret the scene with the Red Eyed God, Simon was unable to give everything: the seed is a physical representation of something Simon holds dear, even if not in the belief of the Last Tree as a God. If i remember right, one of the things we hear from his mom is "there's a tree" when mentioning Eden, which makes me think that Simon just... Likes trees, since he was a kid, and the seed is a physical reminder of his childhood and before the Quiet Rapture. Not a God, but a reminder of better times, and this is what Simon can't let go: yes he wants to survive, but not for the sake of survival, he clings to the idea that the stations are the ones that disappeared and everyone else is ok. Simon has this bloodied uncommon hope not on survival but that everyone else is still there and still exist, that his home (which I think he means Mars before he left with his mom and not Eden) still exist. And he can't give this up. The thought process I just had was that the Eel/Ellie hoped that, with Simon giving everything to survive (which I think IS what Ellie did, represented through drinking the blood as food and water), HE would become the new Chew-Toy under some influence of the Red Eyed God, freeing the Eel. However, things didn't work exactly like this. The REG got an interest in Simon, but Simon didn't give everything, the seed, the physical representation had to literally be tore off of him later on, and the Eel was still not free. Not only ALL THIS, but if I remember right, right after Simon meets the Light, he vomits blood and in the reflection sees the Red Eyed God. (1/2)

​Ellie, one of the SM-8 scientists, drank the blood and it helped change her. Simon came with blood inside him from the Light, and his body literally expulsed it (as far as i remember, only instance where simon vomits blood?). The Red Eyed God may have said "Agreed", but Simon… Didn't kept his part. He didn't give everything. Didn't give himself, his hope, what the seed represents. This doesn't mean the Red Eyed God doesn't want him: It is still very much interested and wants to change Simon. And the Eel thinks that it is still not Free and Simon is Free because the REG saw something in Simon but probably no, Simon just didn't kept his side of the bargain, is still very much himself, and until the bitter end he fights to survive.

There's a few points you raised and I wanna get through them in order but yeah, I agree that the tree was never a god to him. At least not in the way we understand god nor in the way Eden viewed it. It's an important figure to him, and maybe one he anthropomorphises but in his own way. We see him treat the SM-13 like a living thing, I could see him giving the same treatment to the tree! Not a god but an equal, maybe even a secret friend, the only one he had.

Next: I personally have a more charitable view of the Eel. My take on her is that she's a wounded, suffering and confused being. Half the time she doesn't remember who she was, how she ended up like this, why she even cares about the Light so much. She constantly misspeaks and changes opinions, her mind is scattered and fragmented both from the horror she suffered through and the blood ocean hivemind melting her sense of individuality.

I don't think she planned for Simon to be a scapegoat, but rather I think she looked for companionship and comfort in another human. It also worked towards some Ocean-induced drive to find and consume more humans into the Blood. It's likely not the first time she swam and nudged around subs before, she does speak of others which she probably watched die, slowly but surely.

She wants answers because she forgot what the Light showed her, she wants the Light because it's her source now (the Pinhole God turned her into what she is indirectly when she consumed blood) and because she got this delusion the Light and what it holds was meant for only her, but she wants nothing to do with it because her mind was fractured when she beheld it. She was no equal to the Light, so it broke her.

And in her brokenness, she couldn't understand why or how Simon was different. Why his sub came alive when hers didn't, why Ava came for him but not for her, why he got a second chance from the Eye and she didn't. I mean, it's a lot to process for anyone, much less someone who hs suffered what she has!

I doubt it's only her jostling around in her brain, I bet more than a few sub drivers are with her now and I double doubt they are taking Simon getting everything they wish they had gotten well.

For your other point, I think Simon did give quite a bit! He just didn't give it to the Blood. It's interesting that he says he had nothing to begin with, but then when dressed down by the Eel, he pushes back.

"Half measured, half committed, never enough. There's nothing else for us now." "'Nothing else'? What do you know?"

Simon claims he never had anything to begin with, but he's very wrong and we see it throughout the movie. Simon still has his flesh which could be given to soil. And he has his free will, which he uses to turn "not my problem" into "it's more than me" in regards to the SM-8 black box information. And he has his tie to his mother, the holster and the cowl, which he foresakes so she will watch over the black box instead of him.

What he does have, he gives for humanity and this feeble hope that it's worth it like Ava said. Even what flesh he gives up (his arm) goes to the seed, not to the blood. He didn't just fight to survive, the fought to the bitter end to not submit to the Blood's will. The Eel claims "it wants you to do this" and Simon says "fuck that and fuck you".

OP I have a suggestion for you (I would do if movie available on my country already lmao): what are the coordinates everytime Simon sees the Shadowman, including when he finds the pendant (and if possible, when he turns back on the energy after leaving the crawlspace, because before he heard steps and the tape was pulled). My theory is that Simon sees the Shadowman aka himself when he passes over places he has already been before or will be. I can be FULLY WRONG, but as of now that's the only thing I can think regarding the importance of the coordinates, that time-space is being warped

​heya!! happy to help out <3

mm not sure about this theory, but first let's see if we can spot these, the console isn't always in easy view but we can do some guesstimates, so here we go:

1. Shadowman sighting #1: This happens just as he's being submerged from the towship drop. They pull him up at 389, 220, but on the way down the console gives no numbers.

He then finds the Pendant and the message. the next time we see any coordinates, just as he goes forward after saying he wants to live in response to TGWTYCW, they are mostly obscured. we then cut to looking for the skeleton, so not much help.

2. Sighting post-crawl space: first glimpse of the console after Simon reboots the engine is a bust, i can make out a 5 and a 2 but that's it. That said we can assume it's the same number as when we get a proper view when he gets back in action, so the coordinates are 702, 652.

I do wanna point out this is beyond the range of the COI map, so they didn't even account for him going there during this expedition. This is not entirely new territory since we do spot the SM-8 later on in this out-of-bounds area, and maybe the SM-13 itself has gone down this range before, but not Simon.

3. Shadowman sighting #2: Happens almost immediately after the Pinhole God's vision thing. The shadowman is at the console, when we get back to it, he's gone and the coordinates are 463, 241.

Simon's expedition: Now for the places that he has been, before the Eye God spat him back out.

He starts his trip at 094, 179. The COI map is a square that goes from coordinates 0 to 550. When he reaches the first POI and loses the first O2 light, he's at 140, 160 and he finds the weird tendril anemone at 380, 226.

Edited this one for a bit of clarity, and because this is a perfect snapshot of his trip prior to the stranding.

We can somewhat see here that Simon has explored most of the map's left side. Since we know the map goes up to 550, then we can ballpark that line cutoff at around 250, probably less. It fits with the previous coordinates, since they never go past the 220s in the X axis. He landed not too far from his cutoff point, slightly east and further north, but not at the exact same location.

@emilyisemrys hiii hope you don't mind me tagging ya but I wanted to reply on a proper post <3

first of, thank you sm!! yes I have full intention of dissecting the whole movie, even if it takes me a while <3 I don't have that much freetime of late but this has been a fun project, so I will continue. i also have some more meta and theory posts on the slow cooker cus they will require a bit more reading and foundations to stand up on.

I do wanna reply to both the tags and your message cus, I have a theory that connects the both of them! cus the audience is not just a parallel to the Pinhole God, but the audience is a separate God, and I think that God is the Seed Tree

It involves some egregore and tulpa creation theory and well as some gnostic principles, but to make it very short: The Pinhole God sees Simon as the Butcher, and names him as such. "A God makes sense of what it sees, despite what it should be". The Eye sees Simon only as an equal in violence and murder, and thus won't let him go.

The audience however knows Simon far deeper than this, we have seen his vulnerabilities, his gentleness, his regret and guilt. He's not just violence, and that side of him is often shown towards the Pendant, the seed of the Tree. It literally plants a seed as the audience mind that Simon deserves more, deserves better. We make sense of what we see by creating a broader but still incomplete vision of Simon. Those eflashbacks are not because of the hivemind, but rather the audience as an entity seeking to understand him.

What Simon should be, is free, not just one more soul to be swallowed up by Eden or the COI or the blood. The audience is witness to that injustice, and we have tied him with the Seed, just as he has tied himself to it. That Seed becomes a vessel of this connection, from who Simon is truly and our idea of him. That is the same seed that breaks through and "saves" him through rebirth as a tree.