Torchbug Dragon

I love you Simon Iron Lung

Let me explain

TWs: Dehumanizing, cults, spoilers for iron lung

So much medias make their gods either too human or too easy to understand, less like gods and more immortal players with powerful abilities. It's so easy to talk back to them, to understand them, to behold them. Their jobs are also so one note for easier world building. Usually, there isn't much to chew on.

The pinhole god isn't like that at all. You feel its weight in every scene he's in. We only see its eye throughout the movie and that enough helped us understand the kind of eldritch nightmare Simon is dealing with. All it has to do is look and reality bends to its will, whether it wants it to or not.

(Sidenote but I'm also obsessed with how the pinhole god treats humans. It reminds me of the story on tumblr about self written metaphors where someone's mom kept taking the sunflower from the sun cause she wants it to brighten the room and the sunflower died out as a result. Or all those times where someone adopts a pet but the enclosure was too small so the animal went ballistic.

Ava, a scarred milky eye. Someone who said goodbye to her humanity the first time she put a man in a box knowing he was being sent to die. Who knew Simon was not the first. Who expected he would not be the last.

Simon, The Convict, denied his own humanity from the start. Losing himself throughout the journey only to claw himself back from the brink in a firm rejection of the darkness, the ocean, the hopelessness. The same eye as Ava, a fiery red. Blood.

The ship. Its porthole window an eye closed to its surroundings lest reality crush them in an instant.

The pendant, an extension of Eden's power over Simon. Cracked in an identical pattern to the ship porthole window.

Ryland Grace has made it all the way to his bike with Eva Stratt at his heels, so her trusted security team has correctly assessed it's time to move in the cars, and Carl is approaching off-screen.

Grace comes out of the little "I don't know why that makes me such a nut!" rant, and there Carl is, stepping up into frame exactly next to Stratt. Tall, broad, unimpressed, unmistakably a force to be reckoned with, unmistakably a trusted professional.

But also a nameless goon at this point. An extension of the threat Stratt seems to represent to Grace. A depersonalized tool.

Grace clocks the cars, his presence, the unfolding situation, instantly and incredulously. And he does something clever, something he always does, which is to call attention to the absurdity of the unspoken threat by trying to force the situation into a normal mold.

"I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name."

Turning Eva's nameless goon into a person with agency. Trying to force a relationship that hinders coercion.

Ideally, this would force them all to acknowledge how abnormal they are acting and retreat a little to keep up the appearance of normality. Or admit to what they are doing by refusing. Either way, the ball shifts out of Ryland's court into theirs.

Neither happens, though.

Carl sees exactly what he's trying to do with that and interrupts him mid-question. "Carl." And then keeps staring at him the same way as before. One word, and we already know so much about him.

He is not a nameless goon. He is an individual named Carl.

And he fully supports what is happening there. Because nothing is normal and it's stupid to pretend that what is happening isn't happening.

So yes, while he bonds with Grace over silliness and is the astrophage-coparent and instigator of Carl's Hypothesis... he is also entirely introduced to us as the man who will wish Grace the best of success on the mission while he's being sedated on the ground. Because Carl has a personal opinion about what is at stake.

"Sun's really dying, isn't it?"

happy month