#tsv meta

With the final episode looming it's a question we've been turning in our heads, so I wanted to give my best guess/analysis as to what it might be before Jon and Muna come to tear our hearts out in the final episode.

This is the question Hayward asks Paige, and later Carpenter, and it seems to be the underlying thematic statement of the series, in response to Carpenter's exposition in the first episode of the Silt Verses that introduces us to the fundamentals of the world and system they live in:

CARPENTER:

A god must feed.

A god must be fed.

This is a fact agreed upon across every territory in the Peninsula. And so, really, the only difference between the people born to the water and the people born to the land...

...is the precise nature of the sacrifice we need to make.

There is a God for anything in their world as long as there is someone believing in it. But all Gods need human sacrifices. A god must feed. A god must be fed.

These simple rules have been used as fascinating and horrifying metaphors of our modern society, and to explore themes of faith and sacrifice throughout the story.

And so the final question the last season proposes is if we can find a way to make something better, that can exist outside of this ultimately unsustainable exploitative system and the harm it inflicts upon ourselves and the world, when it has come to define so much of the way we live and how we think. And that means figuring out the opposite of a sacrifice, if they want to kill the idea, the lie, that is at the heart of their world.

At first I thought the opposite of a sacrifice, of offering up to the gods, was about killing your gods. Starving them out. Refusing to offer up anything. And that is part of it, I think. I mean it's literally been a repeating mantra of multiple characters this season once they've reached they're breaking points. Violence in revolution as a tool to overthrow oppresive systems is sometimes needed and necessary. But what about after? What kind of future or vision for a better world can there be? There needs to be something at the heart of that movement that isn't just about violence against their opressors, because you then define yourself in relation to them.

This is even illustrated in the Many Below god Paige created having predator and prey emeshed together, a movement defined by their resistance against the predators of the world, the beasts, cannot seperate themselves to meaningfully create a better future that exists outside of that dichotomy. I think Hayward realises that even earlier in S2:

HAYWARD:

There’s a hare in the grass, half-buried and bloodied.

A barn owl has latched onto its back, its talons driving deep into the flesh of the hare.

Both animals are dead.

Familiar black stone veins protrude from the carcass of the victim, twisting like branches, driving upwards into the predator’s skin.

Hare and owl are locked together, inseparably.

The god must have struck just as the prey died.

White crocus is flowering up from the two entwined bodies.

(Unhappily)

And suddenly I begin to feel deeply afraid.

It all makes me think of a dormouse, dead in the dirt, its ribs showing. Of rabbits, teeth chattering, hungering from their cages

I kick dust up over the corpses. Nudge them aside into the long grass so they can’t be seen from the path.

Paige doesn’t need to know about this, I tell myself.

There’s no sense in worrying her. Not yet.

Which then makes sense why he's the one proposing the question of what the opposite of a sacrifice is to Paige (and Carpenter), for this very reason.

I think the answer is pretty simple and yet, like most simple truths in this world, it's forgotten and overlooked or twisted as naïve.

Preservation. The opposite of a sacrifice is preservation. To better explain this let me use an example:

If someone who cared about you tells you you're working too hard at your thankless job, sacrificing your sleep, your time, your personal relationships, your physical and mental wellbeing, far past the point considered sane, they'd tell you to stop. To make sure you take care of yourself. Instead of endlessly feeding yourself into a machine to justify your existence.

Applied to the world of the Silt Verses, it's not just self preservation and caring for yourself. It's about caring for, protecting, and preserving the lives of those around you, that is the ultimate act of rebellion and political warfare, the first steps forward towards a better world. Caring for humanity.

Whenever our characters reach a breaking point of turning against their gods, there's a common thread of wanting to save their fellow man, and realising the inadequacy of a god's ability to do that. Whether that's somebody close to them (like Faulkner and Paige):

Or humanity as a whole (VAL and Shrue):

SHRUE:

Use them, pass them on, do not forget the suffering that keeps the engines of this world turning, forget the name of your god and cherish the name of your neighbour that was swallowed up by it-

Cherish your neighbour. Be kinder to one another.

This can even go back to Carpenter's rejection of the Trawler-Man back in S1, her fury at the fact those she loved had been eaten (her family) and would continue to be eaten (Faulkner).

CARPENTER:

(Yelling to the river)

It's over between us, you twin mouthed prick!

Do you hear me?

Does that stir you from your torpor? Pry the barnacles loose from your sodden ears?

My father and mother were Gregory and Sandra Glass. My grandmother was Adalina Glass. My brother was Em.

They died for you.

Every single one of them died for you and they thought it meant something.

My name is Carpenter. And I am still alive!

I have loved you for so long. I have tried to know you for so, so much longer.

And I'm done with you. Here and now. I'm not laying down my life for you.

I'm not dying, do you hear?

The same breaking point for Faulkner at turning against his parish and finally snapping is the idea of Carpenter being offered as a sacrifice, an offering returned, begging for her to live.

I must clarify this is my own interpretation of the question and themes the story proposes. I'm

I'm not sure we'll actually get a hard answer so much as different characters offering their own answers and us as the audience encouraged to think for ourselves what it might be. I think this is what Hayward's answer might be at least, anyway, because like me he's a corny motherfucker:

I think Jon and Muna do a great job of making even minor characters feel distinctive and resonant with the main cast, and the disciples of the various faiths are one of the places this shows most strongly. The disciples of the Trawlerman are the people Faulkner has made himself responsible for and as early as Chapter 22 a thread develops that many of them are naïve, and young, and almost comedically earnest.

And yet, at the same time, these 'children' are part of-- at the forefront of, even-- Faulkner's acquistion of power within the Parish. In the same episode, Thurrocks accurately articulates both the depth of the faith they have in him and the result to which it is already leading.

So. Young members of the faith as (at least superficially) earnestly artless and yet having a dangerously fervent power of belief. Rane, when we meet them in Chapter 30, seems like another genuine and ardent neophyte.

They're eager and conscientious and I half expected them (like Jasp) to last less than two episodes. But they become a quiet background voice to Faulkner's downward spiral. They take on administrative tasks, attending to Roemont when he visits the Gulch, and-- increasingly-- becoming an emotional and social anchor for Faulkner as he slides into depression.

Rane doesn't seem to be a born diplomat. Earnest. Naïve. Clumsy. But I think that ambiguity the stage directions draw out is interesting. Is Rane really so ingenuous? Are they 'pretend[ing]'? They've taken on so much responsibility for the faith, smoothing over awkwardnesses, arranging things in the background, organising transport and supplies while Faulkner broods. Is it earnest? Pragmatic? Both?

I think it's very easy to read Rane as having unreciprocated romantic feelings towards Faulkner. I certainly do. Their devotion shades into excess, and in the moments where the pair seem to engage almost as equals, like the car ride in Chapter 38, there's this real sense of simultaneous shared joy and an underlying desire on Rane's part to 'get Faulkner's attention' and prove themself worthy of it. To impress him.

This Chapter sees Faulkner experience a dark night of the soul. He's already depressed to the point of suicidal ideation, detached from his surroundings and utterly anhedonic. He's clearly not equipped to acknowledge or accept love from others, romantic or platonic. This episode is about caring for someone who is fundamentally disconnected from you, who will never see things the way you do but must be loved and kept safe nonetheless. It's also where Rane saves Faulkner's life.

Rane, acting as caretaker, quietly reverses the established power dynamic of their relationship. Faulkner's attempted drowning directly parallels his childhood experience of conversion as recounted in Series 1. He becomes the lost, frightened child in their dynamic.

This speech obviously underlines Faulkner's insecurities, his youth, and the validity of his prophetic status as "chosen". We know he's engineered and manipulated his own glorification.

But it also draws attention to how Rane acts as a parallel to Faulkner. Faulkner, when we first meet him, seems precisely this enthusiastic if inept younger disciple. 'Was I like that?' he asks himself about Thurrocks. Maybe he was once. Because we see the same kind of darkness surface in Rane. As Faulkner clearly no longer cares if he lives or dies, they take on more and more of the unspoken burden of leadership.

They 'stage-manage'. They become the structural surety at the heart of the myth of Faulkner, putting in his hard work, handing him his kelp wreath, shoring up his crumbling facade. They recognise the gap between what he is and what his people want him to be, what they need him to be.

'It will be different when it's written'. Did Faulkner trip, or was he shoved? Does it even matter? We don't truly know whether Rane has taken the wheel as the endgoal of some Machiavellian scheme, or as a decision of pure pragmatism motivated by their faithful zeal, or out of desperate, genuine, self-deluding care for Faulkner, but is it important?

and the stink! the god that has a real, visible effect on cops, the one that they treat like a deity instead of just a mascot to pay lip service to! it’s a god of pointless, arbitrary violence, that seizes on the flimsiest excuses to pick a victim, that makes the people they thought were good and trustworthy turn on them. forcibly others them, kills them, and the killers can pat themselves on the back, knowing institutional power is still on their side.

- obviously, there’s the element of theatre in e20 with Hembry and his fucked up god, the Man with Many Faces. in this episode, everything is a performance, with Hembry narrating out loud, and his god as the audience. the story has to be good enough. or else.

- then in e22, we hear Hayward talk about how becoming a cop was just a performance for his mother. “So you put on a show for her,” he says. “You just make yourself into the person they need you to be. And maybe some day you won’t even be pretending any more.” here, the audience is a mother and not a god, but Hayward is still writing his own script. and Paige is able to convince him to help by offering him a different role to play.

- finally, in the devastating time-loop of e24, we have another god with a million faces—the Sorrow-and-Shame, according to the transcript. Carpenter sees through its masks, and accuses it: “You’re not real. This is a performance, nothing more. So let’s get this over with, and maybe you’ll be satisfied.” again and again, we get these themes of performance and satisfaction. the story has to be good enough, or else. and it’s only by rewriting her own script—telling Nana Glass the truth, she’s not okay—that the god is satisfied and Carpenter can escape.

i don’t really know what to do with this observation yet. does it have something to do with the two faces of the Trawlerman? the showmanship of Paige’s dad? the way Faulkner makes people underestimate him on purpose? Adjudicator Shrue’s televised political race? yes, yes, i’m red-string-boarding here.

It's a core tenent of The Silt Verses, which is interesting because it... isn't true? Not always, anyway. For some people it is: Faulkner has likely already chosen the thing that will eventually eat him. Vaughn did, and eventually paid for it. But for many people, it isn't.

Think about the prisons. These people don't choose what they get sacrificed to. They don't choose what they become. I mean, I suppose you could argue that they choose to go to prison, but that's a stupid argument, and clearly not reflective of the themes The Silt Verses is trying to get across. Plus even for people who aren't prisoners, this is a world where anyone is at risk of being snatched up and fed to one of the gods at a moment's notice, whether it be legal or illegal sacrifice. They're not choosing anything, they're just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Unlucky.

And then of course there's the question of how much is actually a choice, and how much are you forced into. Carpenter went back to the Trawler-Man because she had nowhere else to go. Did she really have a choice in that? What about Hayward, joining the police force because he had no other way out of poverty? In these cases, I would argue that yes, they both made deliberate choices in those moments, but they were certainly pushed forward into them by a lack of appealing other options.

There is the wording of it, too: "get to choose". Like it's a privilege. And maybe it is; maybe our main characters all have the unique privilege of choosing what will eat them, while people around them get consumed by whatever's most hungry. It certainly does give the protagonists some agency in the world, even if it's only in their demise. That's what Paige is trying to give to people with her new diety, the privilege of choosing a different fate than the one the authorities choose for them. Maybe that's something powerful.

Ultimately, I think the point of the quote is that there is no real choice in this universe. You will be eaten. Like the gospel of The Many Below: "You are not safe here. You will never truly be safe here." And that's the main conflict of the podcast. What do you do in a world that's determined to eat you alive? It isn't just the institutions, either, it's a fundamental truth in the way the universe works, or at least it seems like it. How do you do good when it's consume or be consumed, when nothing can change or get better without some amount of sacrifice? How do you live with it?

I'm disappointed in Paige in The Silt Verses episode 27 (Season 2, Chapter 12).

Not in how she's written - it's very in-character. She's a liberal who's kickstarted a violent revolution. She's gonna have regrets.

I just. Look at what she said in episode 23 (Season 2 Chapter 8):

Transcript: "My point is, there's nothing we can make that can't be turned against us. So. If we're going to make a god that's genuinely new, something that actually helps ordinary people, and which can last in opposition to the contemporary pantheon, we need to make sure it's airtight. It can't be taken from us."

And Hayward's contribution to the same conversation:

Transcript: "The gods that always gave us the most trouble in law enforcement were the localised ones. God of a hill, god of a river. They're the hardest to control, they're the hardest to understand if you're on the outside of it. If you want something that can't be taken from you - that can't be repurposed or stolen - you want to be thinking local."

And now in episode 27 she's fretting about how "Nine people are dead. And it's because we raised something we couldn't control."

Like. Good?!