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ursineknight · 11 months

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I've tried to write a big, special post about this book for a week, but I think I'm just spinning my wheels now. Please enjoy some loosely collected thoughts about The Luminous Dead. Spoilers below.

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The Luminous Dead was a super effective horror novel for me. I had to go sit next to my partner and be patted on the arm while I was getting through the last 10%, lmao.

The limited third-person POV works so, so well in a story where one character’s understanding of her environment starts deteriorating.

Our protagonist Gyre is exploring a deep cave system at the behest of a mysterious corporate concern all by herself. She’s wired into her cave suit, recycling and recirculating waste material in a closed loop, and subsisting off of food delivered straight to her gut because a monster in the caves may be attracted to any trace of humans.

From the second Gyre enters the caves, she’s robbed of connecting to her environment with three of her senses: smell, taste, and touch. She especially laments the last as exploration of the cave wears on her.

All that’s left to her is sight and sound, and it’s not enough.

SEEING

The author, Starling, makes it clear from the beginning that what Gyre sees is what we get to see. When Em, Gyre’s handler, hides the fallen body of Adrian Purcell, a solo caver from a previous expedition of the exact mission Gyre is on, from her suit’s sight, it disappears for us, too.

Which makes Gyre’s later visions of Isolde, Hanmei, Jennie, and Eli, other previous cavers who are connected in darker and deeper ways to Gyre’s current foray, walking around at the edge of her vision suck so bad, lmao. Especially after she cuts Em off from communication because she’s convinced Em’s messing with the suit displays to fuck with her. Now, Gyre thinks, she can trust her own perception. Like, surely everything she perceives now she can trust is happening. Despite doing this on the tail of seeing the supposedly dead mother of Em down in the caves. Oof.

Gyre’s go-your-own-way attitude comes from a life where she’s only been able to depend on herself, as her mother and father are both absent in different ways before she came down in the caves. Cleaving to her independence becomes deadly as she loses her grip on reality, though.

Especially as Gyre cuts off human contact and perhaps invites something else in, to keep her company. When she cuts off Em’s communication to her suit and herself, she only gets rid of what she’s thinking as Em’s poisonous influence by opening herself up to the cave, actually. She literally cuts Em’s line and then opens her suit’s helmet up to the air of the cave for the very first time. She says she can feel the cave on her skin.

The unraveling thread of Gyre’s sanity from here on could just be her stress. It could be fungal spores, as Gyre’s noted mushrooms in the caves and even populating the bodies of the dead down there. Even worse, there’s an idea that the cave itself gets into her. She starts weaving together the apparitions of the dead with the sense that the cave wants her to crawl back down to its lowest levels. Maybe it’s got its claws in her and doesn’t want what it has to leave.

To Gyre’s credit, she thoughtfully doubts her perceptions—near the beginning. As we run up to the end, Gyre no longer has time to doubt herself; that and the insomnia, the hunger, the weeks of isolation, the burgeoning infections make her so weak to taking what’s in front of her directly.

Even when she’s being directly contradicted at the end, Gyre won’t let go of what she’s seeing. Gyre’s insistence on the dead’s presence near the end, when Em literally is throwing up all the overlays and readings to show Gyre nothing is there!! MAN!!

HEARING

The dead never speak to Gyre. Em eventually becomes a source of truth for Gyre in the cave by being a dependable voice in her ear vs. these visions of the lost cavers appearing only to Gyre and never being perceivable by Em. These dead even touch Gyre, near the end. Jennie, a dead caver that especially haunts Gyre’s thoughts because Gyre keeps coming back to her corpse again and again, drags Gyre to the edge of the Long Drop (a miles-long straight drop in the cave system). If we can believe Gyre.

Gyre can’t entirely trust her hearing either, though. At different times, she thinks she hears music, or humming, or steps, only to realize she didn’t. Gyre always has a second thought that it might have been real, though, and her doubt sticks in your craw.

BELIEVING

Tangent, but the phantom humming and the “dead” comms channel are especially eerie. Gyre and Em finally realize Gyre’s been hearing something when Gyre snaps at her to stop humming, but it gets lost in the argument they have afterwards and Em files it away as stress hallucinations. But when Gyre is separated from Em? The humming is back, and casts doubt on Gyre’s desperate, fraying belief that she is alone down there.

And the “dead” comms channel especially throws a wrench in Gyre’s control of the situation. When Gyre cuts Em off of the suit's comms, she does it by switching to an empty communication channel...that she realizes she cannot switch back. She wanders through half the cave by herself, increasingly convinced somebody is down in a death trap of a cave with her. And then she thinks there's somebody on the line with her, too— watching her run down the last of her supplies without a word.

Not only is Gyre stuck pleading with dead air, there’s an implication that some shadowy other influence is not only listening to her, but trying to control her body. And it succeeds—at one particularly tense moment where Gyre appears to have finally gotten the upper hand, she seemingly loses control of the suit to whoever is sitting in silence on the ghost channel and they literally break her only chance at survival.

What it comes down to for me is this. While I can think of a logical reading of the novel—Gyre is hallucinating badly because of paranoia and stress from early on, and it only getting worse as things go to shit—the timbre of Gyre’s panic and her constantly rounding back on herself on whether or not she can believe her perceptions color that whole experience. I cannot in good faith just say to somebody, “Oh, she imagined all those things.” Somewhere deep down, I question myself, too. And that’s why “The Luminous Dead” will be on my mind for a long time.

Also, lmao. “Gyre.” “Lethe.” We love references. I see you, Starling.

#The Luminous Dead

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fayn3ko · 5 years

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My interpretations on the new Rammstein album

Alrighty, I think such ‘here’s my opinion how much I liked this and not’ are boring so I’m just gonna write what I think of and read out of the songs. I let out Deutschland and Radio cuz y’all know about them, I guess. Idk even if anybody is interested in this but here we go

Weit weg (far away) - one of my faves

On the first sight it seems to be kind of a love song because till sings about two people - a man watching a women undress and seeing her naked. Actually, it’s about Voyeurism. He is standing at her window, presses his face against the glass, there’s no interactions between them and she is the 'queen of his fantasies’. 'Ganz nah - weit, weit weg von mir’ (really close - far, far away from me) - he is incredible close to her and sees intimate moments, but he isn’t supposed to, they probably don’t even know each other. So, actually, emotionally they are far away from each other.

Diamant (diamond) - only sad song, big fave

Kind of a love song, Till is mostly singing about how beautiful the other person is, how bright her eyes shine, “how clear and pure” she is. It already sounds like as if he were in mad love with her, but he also wants her to finally 'let him go’, he wants to leave tho she is so marvelous 'like a diamond, but also just a stone’. He tried to reach her heart but wants to 'love someone who is able to hate’ - is she too perfect? Are they even together, or is it just him who struggles to let his love for her go? Maybe she doesn’t feel anything, doesn’t have anything except her beauty and is cold-hearted, diamonds “are just stones”.

Zeig dich (show yourself) - a fave, its really nice

Obviously a song about the church, unlike Hallelujah (which is about the child abuse of priests) this one is about the church in general. Most of the text are enumerations,“[they] do crime … forgiveness of all crimes, burn, … tracking, … accidentally abuse children” (Irony, damn that’s fore sure provocating) always ending with 'in the name of god’ which describes the long history, mostly the negative aspects and how the church allowed themself to do anything if they say they do it in gods will - a lot of people believed that. The dramatic choir underlines how much power the church had and how often it abused its power. 'Show yourself … we lose the light’ - religion gives humans hope and something to believe in, exploited by the church, but all these things are hidden behind a mask.

Puppe (doll (sometimes also puppet, toy)) - probs most interesting one

The protagonist is a child, who got a doll as a gif from his sister (he calls her 'Schwesterlein’ so he is probably way younger?). Her workplace is in the room next to his, he sees men coming there, 'sometimes it’s even two [men]’ - she is a prostitute. While she works, he is looking at the sky, taking his medicaments [like a good boy] - so he must be sick in some way. Since he 'rips off the head of the doll, bites off the neck of the doll’ and sings 'I really don’t feel good’ it’s probably something mental. Later, he watches through the keyhole how his sister gets beaten to death, he continues ripping of the head and biting off the neck but now 'he feels finally good’. No parents are mentioned, so the sister seems to be the only relative, probably being responsible for him and buying him the medicaments (one of the only details we get so they have to me important in some way). Maybe he didn’t like her and he imagined the doll is her? Being unhappy because she is still alive and after she got killed, finally being happy? Maybe, he is happy that he won’t need to take medicaments anymore, he looked the whole day outta the window and seemed to do nothing, bc the meds blocked him)

Was ich liebe (literally 'what I love’, in this context, “the things I love”) great song

Fans who heard through some demos should know this one because it’s the demo of Pussy. They used the very different lyrics and refreshed them (changed the 'will die’ to 'will verderben’) , making them into a song about a person which doesn’t want to be happy, doesn’t want to enjoy and doesn’t want to love. A lover of him will 'verderben’ - it’s a prediction, he doesn’t even think it just 'could’ happen, it will happen. He will be unlucky at some point and suffer, 'in luck is also ubglück’, he fears to be hurt so much that his lover 'must’ verderben. Though, he still talks about a lover, so next to this fear, he still does and wants to be happy, enjoy and to love.

Tattoo (tattoo) - I like the music and singing but the topic is boring to me

Pretty simply, it’s about tattoos. He compares paper with his skin and describes noticeably often the pain “when the pain hugs the flesh…” you feel while getting one and how much he likes them on his skin. ‘Show me yours [and[ I’ll show you mine’ it sounds more like a demand as if it were something intimate. Also, after gettin the name of the lover tattooed - in case that the partner would end the relationship - he would prefer to find another partner with the same name instead of erasing the tattoo. He’s just crazy for tattoos.

Hallomann (is norwegian and a word for moderator or similiar) - pretty good?

It sounds kinda as if he would like to spend his time with a little girl. He’s telling a her to “just get in” and to “dance for him” but he doesn’t want her to speak. They go together to the sea, he buys stuff for her. ‘You are alone’ - the girl is alone, maybe she was walking around alone? - and he is ‘all alone’, this sounds more like on an emotional base, being lonely. Not sure of in a romantic or a platonic way. After the dancing would come the Hallomann to her - I really don’t see the connection. Later they sunbath, do something with skin and sand. She has to ‘give her word’, take his hand and afterwards it won’t be the same. ‘Perl on the ring’ - a wedding ring? I’m not even sure if the person himself is an adult or maybe just a boy. In the end he says ‘don’t ask for the meaning’, maybe he just wanted to spent a nice day with her. It got some pedophile vibes at the first sight but nothing really indicates it. Maybe I just don’t see the methaphors lol okay everybody says it's about a pedophile and I guess;; he used phrases pedophiles often use

Ausländer (foreigner) - sounds like Schlager Urgh [german trigger] but good

Simply just a Gigolo jumping from one bed to another and fucking his way through the whole world. He doesn’t even “stay over night, just for 1 or 2 hours.” Anyways, it’s practical to speak many languages so he can talk with the foreign women. In that way he tells us that he’s good in these and speaks a lot, but the last sentence means something like ‘you coming with [me], I’m you doing goodd’ which is pretty bad in grammar but it’s enough to let her know what he wants.

Sex (sex) - love the melody and riffs, really good one

Uhm also pretty much just about sex? Sex without feelings tho. He ‘gets sick when he looks at you’ - it’s really just about the act - ‘mine is yours and that in you’. This is underlined by ‘better slovenly than again not’, he probably put the ‘again’ before the ‘not’ to let it stand out, again, so they already did it at least a couple of times, or better said, didn’t do it. Maybe they are in a relationship? But he can’t look at her anymore, he just wants her body for sex - and only the important parts. The contrast to that is the refrain, ‘We live only once, we love the life, we love the love, we love sex.’ The last sentence is ‘We live because … sex.’ So, he sings often they love the life and in the end it’s they only live for sex = they love just the sex.

#i could go deeper into the material but oof who even wants that lmao #some songs confuse me anyway #rammstein #personal #song interpretation #r+#if you see grammar mistakes just eat em i didnt watch it too much to b correct everywhere #if theres anything strange or in german just at me bc i dont see it then

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