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craqueluring · 1 year

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i want to talk about randall tier

hannibal draws a lot of inspiration from manhunter (1986), which was the first film adaptation of the hannibal books, and i want to talk specifically about the scene where randall crashes through will's window, because it derives from a scene in manhunter. i am going to compare these two scenes, and use this to further my discussion of hannibal, which will be the focus of this. (there is a TLDR at the end of this!)

in manhunter, at the end of the movie, will runs and crashes through dolarhyde's window, shattering it and directly jumping into a fight with him. now, there is a copious amount of imagery in manhunter depicting will talking to his reflection in glass, windows, etc as if his reflection is dolarhyde. we get the sense that dolarhyde is inside of will’s head, and they start to blur as will has to relate and empathize more and more with dolarhyde to catch him.

will crashing through the window is him meeting the darkest parts of himself face-to-face – now, he and dolarhyde are on the same side of the glass. will kills dolarhyde, which represents will overcoming (or, at least, suppressing) his violent urges and the turmoil that comes with understanding killers so deeply.

so, will crashing through the glass to meet dolarhyde is him meeting the ‘bad’ part of himself, the part that understands killers and lets them inside of his head, and by killing dolarhyde, he defeats this darker part of himself. will graham, in typical 80s fashion, ends the movie stable in his morality and can return to his heterosexual family life and watch the sunset with his wife and child.

the scene in hannibal is a bit different. instead of the identity parallel being between will and dolarhyde, it is between will and randall tier. randall is (if i am not mistaken) the first patient of hannibal’s we meet that has undergone his “therapy” and is considered a success. this is when we fully start to grasp what it is that hannibal does with his “therapy.” and what will could Become if he accepted hannibal's guidance.

instead of solely will’s violent urges, like dolarhyde represented in manhunter, randall tier represents, in a way, what will could be: a 'balanced' person who embraces his violence and becomes one with it. randall tier has the same violent urges and the dissonance in his identity that will has, but he accepts it, embraces it, and revels in what he is.

so, when randall crashing through will’s window, will not only comes face to face with himself, but the Higher Self that hannibal is guiding him to Become. this is why randall is depicted as the raven stag, and then the stag man: will is forced to come face to face with who hannibal is guiding him to be, hannibal's influence, and has to confront how to handle his violent urges once again by being forced to kill in self defense. however, his fight with randall does not represent him overcoming these violent urges, as was in manhunter. the fight does actually facilitate will’s Becoming. will throws his shotgun away and chooses to use his hands to kill randall, as hannibal suggested. through Will’s fight with and murder of randall tier, he actually becomes closer to his Higher Self and his Becoming.

this is furthered by will's choice to make randall tier into a tableau. will’s first tableau. in will’s pendulum conversation with randall, it is made even clearer: will says “you forced me to kill you” and randall replies “i didn’t force you to enjoy it.” !!!!!

TLDR: in manhunter, will crashes through the window to meet a man who represents the darkest parts of himself. by killing dolarhyde, will defeats this dark part of himself and fortifies his sense of morality. hannibal flips this completely around. in hannibal, randall crashes through will’s window. will comes face to face with him, who, in a sense, represents his Higher Self and who will could be if he accepted hannibal's guidance. his fight with randall marks the start of him beginning to embrace this intimate violence hannibal has been talking about. by killing and displaying randall in a tableau, will revels in his violent urges by killing him with his hands and enjoying it and becomes closer to his Higher Self and his Becoming. instead of will overcoming his violent urges through this fight between a him and a representation of his violence like in manhunter, will killing randall fuels these urges.

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twdmusicboxmystery · 3 years

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99% Sure Leah is a Hallucination

Okay, I REALLY wasn’t going to post anything else. I know the two template posts I gave you yesterday were a lot to chew through. But something happened last night that made this come together for me and my buddies, and I just couldn’t sit on it. I promise I’ll keep this brief, though.

After watching the episode yet again last night, @frangipanilove found an article in which Norman says something interesting about this episode. Well, maybe interesting isn’t the right word. More like BOMBSHELL.

Remember how we at first thought she might be a hallucination? Well, we moved away from it because we learned that Carol knew about her. That, and I thought it was safer for us all to make our peace with the idea of Daryl having a relationship with this woman. Just accept it and move forward, you know?

But after watching the episode, yes, Carol knew about her, but only what Daryl seemingly told her. She never met Leah. Not a single soul in the world other than Daryl ever saw her. Hmm.

So, here’s the article @frangipanilove found:

I honestly wouldn’t have gone back to the hallucination theory, if not for reading this. But now Norman is saying that nothing in this episode is what it seems. And he’s specifically referencing Daryl’s relationship with Leah.

(P.S. I have to laugh that fans are asking him what’s wrong with him. Um...he’s not Daryl? He’s Norman. And he doesn’t write the show. The writers do. Lol. But also notice that he talks about staying true to Daryl, and we all know that this Leah thing is the opposite of that. Unless....)

So, let’s look at some weirdnesses in the episode. And @wdway deserves most of the credit for this. Once we started discussing the article and brainstorming, she came up with most of this.

1. When he meets Leah. My fellow theorists and I were actually talking about this before the episode aired yesterday. Why does he just run into her cabin? He follows Dog, but the funny thing is, Dog doesn’t run into the cabin. Only Daryl does. How does he know there’s not 47 walkers in there? How does he know there aren’t a dozen armed people? You’d think he would stop and observe and evaluate. But he doesn’t. He just charges in. And that’s very unlike Daryl.

And of course we could come up with some sort of explanation. Like maybe he heard Leah yelling while fighting the walker in the back bedroom and thought she needed help. Maybe, but the show doesn’t actually suggest this. There aren’t any subtitles or anything that give us any clue as to what his thought process was for just charging in.

2. When he brings Dog back to her, when his eye scar has appeared, if you listen to the dialogue between him and Leah, it’s a little bit odd. Maybe not quite as odd as him charging into her house at first, but still it leaves some questions. About the eye scar, she says, “looks like you got the raw end of the deal.” He just says, “yeah.” Well, that scar isn’t jagged or shaky at all. It’s very straight. Clearly made by a knife, not a walker. So, it’s a little strange that she doesn’t ask what happened. If she wants to be left alone, wouldn’t she be concerned that there might be someone else out there. Why doesn’t she just ask about it? Why doesn’t he just tell her about it? In a way, it almost sounds as if Leah knows more than she’s saying in this scene.

3. When she opens up to him about her family and her past, all the stories she tells are almost like amalgamations of Daryl and the characters on TWD. Obviously everyone noticed the similarities to Carol. That’s a big one. But the story of the blood and the running could be them running from the prison, or the deaths of a lot of different people Daryl has had to say goodbye to. When she talks about meeting and fighting with her squad and how they gave her hope? TF in a nutshell. And even that she hints at having an abusive family. Daryl. Carol, too. But mostly Daryl.

4. It’s still odd that no one else ever met Leah. Yeah, she said she wanted to live out there alone. And we talked about how this makes it an unhealthy relationship, because if she really loved him, she would want to go meet his friends and family and know about every part of his life. Into this, I’m going to lump the fact that she never seems to have gone with him to search for Rick. Once again, if you love someone, you participate in their lives. And she’s just alone at the cabin anyway. Why not go with him?

5. Outside the show Weirdness: Look at that top pic I used for when he met Leah. Remember when we discussed that there is someone kneeling behind her? I assumed it was her son, because spoilers didn’t reveal when or how he would die. But that’s not the case. This person looks to be a teenager or an adult (much older than Matthew was) and we never learn who it is.

People have said it might be a set person or a mic guy who accidentally made it into the shot, but I don’t buy that. They scrutinize these pictures and could easily have fixed that with the computer if they’d wanted to. I don’t know if we’ll ever find who it is. It might just be a hint that there’s more going on here than meets the eye.

But then I found this pic:

There’s someone lying dead on the ground behind them, and we didn’t see this in the episode. @wdway thinks it’s just Leah. That she was dead when he arrived, but he made up this story about how she was this strong, survivor woman and could have become his companion. I think that’s a super-viable theory, but of course we won’t know the details until they actually show us.

There are more weirdnesses than this, but I’m sure you get the idea. The more we think about it, the more sure we are that she’s a hallucination. And obviously that would make more sense anyway from the “why would the writers handle Daryl’s love life this way and piss off the entire fandom” perspective.

One thing we also noticed was that on TTD, the writer emphasized that this story is told from Daryl’s perspective. We’re seeing his PERCEPTION of it, and that’s important. I heard her say that, and wasn’t quite sure of what to make of it. Before realizing the hallucination thing, I thought she might be hinting that there was more we hadn’t see, or Leah might not be who he thought she was. Something like that. But if she’s not real, that makes way more sense, doesn’t it.

So, some things to consider. The strong parallels to Carol. The exact ones, actually, like spear fishing and all the identical dialogue. That’s because he’s taking those things from his time with Carol and incorporating them directly into Leah’s story.

Everything I said yesterday still applies. Mostly because that’s the symbolic template and here, we’re talking about the reality of what’s happening, so the two don’t affect each other directly. But while Leah’s personality is based on Carol’s (probably because that’s who he spends the most time with these days) the romance element is definitely molded out of his time with Beth.

Real:

Hallucination:

The cross that represents the grave? The one Chris Hardwick said would make some people think Leah is dead? Yeah, we think that really is her grave. We do think she probably really existed, and he met her, but she died relatively quickly, and the rest of the relationship didn’t happen. It’s all in his head. I’ll give you some more possibilities on that in a minute.

We think she’s the one who gave him the eye scar. If we’re right about that, I’m sure they’ll show it to us eventually. I mean, if she’s a hallucination, they’ll have to tell us that eventually, but probably not until S11. Think about the dialogue. “Looks like you got the raw end of the deal.” Daryl: “Yeah.”

This is also why the ending makes little sense. His argument with her about where he belongs is really him arguing with himself. That’s why he cries when she asks where he belongs, and he says he doesn’t know. But then later, we see him charging off to look for Rick, and not seeming at all sad or conflicted about anything. It’s because there is Leah. There never was. He’s just looking for Rick.

@frangipanilove also said something insightful about Carol. I think I took most of my mentions of the Carol flashback scenes out of my meta yesterday. Only because it was already so long and I wanted to focus on laying out the symbolic template for you. But while watching the episode, I actually felt kinda bad for Carol. Every time she came to see him, she seemed so upset. Like she felt as abandoned by him as he does by her. And I’m not saying she doesn’t deserve a taste of her own medicine, but I guess that sadness from her kind of surprised me.

But what @frangipanilove said is that maybe her worry for him really was warranted. Because he’d been out there on his own so long, it started to mess with his head and he really was losing his sanity. Carol might have been starting to see that, and she really was terrified for his mental health, which is why she kept trying to get him to come back.

And you know, it creates an interesting sort of irony for Daryl and Carol’s fight at the end in present day. He says that when things get tough, she runs, and he’s sick of dragging her back. And that’s true. We’ve seen that he’s right and Carol does do this, so I was 100% behind what he said to her. Was it harsh? Sure. But it still needed to be said.

But the irony is that during these 6 years after Rick, Daryl was doing exactly the same thing. Him staying out there to look for Rick, when after years, it would have become clear that he wouldn’t find the body, was him running away from the pain of what happened. Carol kept trying to drag him back, but he wouldn’t go with her.

Also, the two of them on opposite sides of the river here could represent the divide between reality and Daryl’s hallucinations.

The note. It’s a little hard to know exactly how to interpret the note from a PTSD perspective. Symbolically, I’d say the note he left was for Beth. Maybe he doesn’t even realize that in the episode, but with all the Beth parallels, it’s just about him wanting to belong somewhere. He wants to belong with someone who loves and needs him.

But I talked yesterday about how the cabin was trashed, and the picture was gone, right? By the time he wrote that note, Leah was long gone. Dead, I mean. The fact that the picture wasn’t there is especially significant. Why would the picture have disappeared, unless it wasn’t real to begin with.

Another thing I noted was Carol’s somewhat bizarre reaction when Daryl suggested they go down toward the river to hunt. She looked worried about that, but agreed. At the time, I was thinking she was worried because he’d spent so much time down there before looking for Rick, and she didn’t want the obsession to resurface. And that’s probably still true, but it’s even more interesting now, isn’t it? And maybe that’s why she’s always wanting to go out with him when he goes hunting or looking for supplies or whatever. She just doesn’t want him falling back into that mindset and disappearing again.

And it will make what I said yesterday about what will happen in the spinoff—her wanting him to stop looking for Rick and come with her—make more sense, too, won’t it?

Okay, I’ll stop now. I really haven’t covered everything we could possibly talk about with this. I’m sure you’ll all think of tons more. But you get the idea. And remember, this isn’t just my theory or our theory. I wouldn’t have come back to this at all if I hadn’t read that article where Norman hinted at it. And he would know, right?

And hey, if this turns out to be incorrect, I’ll be okay with that. I’ll eat my words (not literally 😉). But Norman is referring to SOMETHING here, and given how few characters were in this episode, and that he was directly talking about Leah in that quote, there really aren’t many things he could actually mean.

Special thanks to both @frangipanilove and @wdway. Honestly, they did way more work on this one than I did.

Thoughts?

#beth greene #beth greene lives #beth is alive #beth is coming #td theory #td theories #team delusional #team defiance #beth is almost here #bethyl

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whatspastisprologue-blr · 5 years

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Writing Advice, the Completed Version

This is a follow up to this post: https://whatspastisprologue-blr.tumblr.com/post/184968470815/writing-advice. I’d written that on my phone, I think, and goofed somehow, so I didn’t post the entire thing.

Now, to start, I love reading what you guys have to say, and I consider you guys basically geniuses. You spend hours, or what seems like hours, analyzing SPN (and also other works as well, but mainly SPN), and you’re willing to put up with horrible backlash from people too dumb to realize they’re wrong.

And I keep thinking how I would love to write something, be it a novel or a TV show, that people love so much that that they’re willing to write meta for it. Contrary to what I’ve seen around about some creators being upset when their audience figures out what’s going on, I’d be delighted to know that people care so much that they pay close enough attention to figure it out. As for things like subtext, I see myself jumping up and down like, “You’ve got it! I thought you would! I put that in there to see if you’d notice and you did! Yay!” To me, meta has become a high form of praise just by its existence, but from the standpoint of literary criticism and how art both reflects and transforms society, also absolutely necessary. Please, critique art!

Which leads me to part two: how do I actually put stuff into the work for people to write meta about? Like, I’ve seen mini-essays ranging from fictional parallels/references/shout-outs to alchemical practices to entire discussions about, for instance, specific shirts (”x character is wearing x shirt again!”) to various pieces of decor to the meaning of various types of food (bacon, cake versus pie, burgers) and how food is used (Sam and food, or Cas and food). I’ve seen posts written analyzing songs used in episodes and how they inform the episodes or a character’s arc, etc. I’ve watched fascinating yet trippy videos about narrative spiral that make me wish I was approximately 400% smarter so I could properly appreciate and understand what I was watching. I’ve seen meta about colors and symbols, and the symbolism of different types of beer, which means that someone must have thought of it.

Someone, at some point, decided, “let’s have a beer that symbolizes family, a family beer”. And others agreed. And someone else, or perhaps that same person, decided, “let’s have a beer that shows up whenever things aren’t as they seem”, and again, others agreed, so now we have a running list of El Sol appearances.

I’ve seen some truly mind-blowing, fantastic meta that’s been written, but obviously, that analysis works because there’s something to analyze. It wasn’t pulled from nothing, as some mistakenly believe. We can talk about the Red Shirt of Bad Decisions because there’s evidence for it in the text. Someone put it there. Someone made sure to include El Sol enough times in episodes with a similar theme (things being not what they seem/alternate realities/djinn hallucinations) that we can talk about its significance and know, in upcoming episodes, that when we see that beer, it’s a sign that there’s incorrect assumptions being made by characters, that what we see isn’t necessarily real, etc.

So, how do I put content into a work so that people can pick up on it and then write about its meaning and significance?

I guess, relevant to this, is a third question, that could possibly help me figure all this out as well: what makes “Supernatural” worth writing all this meta about? That might not be phrased right to get my meaning across. While, granted, I have fandom lanes that I stay in, so I could just be unaware of meta being written for that work, but I don’t hear of people analyzing, say, “Psych”, or “Bones”, or “NCIS”. I don’t hear of long, in depth-articles about how food is used on “Glee” to give insight into a character’s mental/emotional state or closeted bisexuality. Is that just because there’s nothing to write meta about for those shows, or is it because, even if there is something to write meta about for those shows, “Supernatural” lends itself to that analysis and criticism in a way those other television shows don’t?

On a related note, people have been publishing books and YouTube videos and even teaching college classes at least partially about “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and its spin-off, “Angel”, for 20-odd years. Is all of the meta surrounding “Supernatural” the progression of that phenomenon, with SPN at least partially reaping the benefits of what BtVS helped establish? Does it have something to do with being a paranormal genre show?

Don’t get me wrong, I truly and wholeheartedly believe that SPN is a show worth writing meta about, and I’m always excited to see more of it. So it’s not whether or not the show is worth it that I’m questioning, but what specific qualities contribute to the show’s worthiness that so many other television shows don’t seem, to my knowledge, to have?

As a budding literary critic, meta is fascinating; as a creator, it’s kind of overwhelming, because that’s a lot of analysis of a work, a lot of studying with a magnifying glass. But, as someone who’s starting to see the willingness of people to write meta as a benchmark or grade of how good that work is (because people, I would assume, wouldn’t spend several hours writing an analysis of a show that sucked), it means that I want to do a good job of putting things in there for people to pick at, and I want to do what I can to make sure that what’s being analyzed is something good (as in, the messages are positive and/or useful, no harmful lessons or unfortunate implications).

I’ve been working on the backstory for my series for at least a year now, and I still feel like I’m less than halfway done. I don’t want to start writing without a clear plan of where I’m going, at least for a little while (my idea is to have a few “little endings”, thinking for if this is going to be a TV show one day, and if the show gets cancelled before the “Big Ending”, I still want there to be an ending that’s satisfying, even if it’s not the Big Ending that I hoped to get to, so I suppose I could plan to the first little ending). Sometimes, I feel like I’m behind, drastically behind, that I should have at least one book (or season) planned by now, but then I think about how I’m still in my early twenties, and how I want to write something worth writing meta about (and thus, the work needs to contain something to write meta about) and part of me wants to freeze and is grateful that the going has been slow so far.

But, with “Supernatural” ending, and given my love for the sandbox that it’s helped define and re-define, with episodes that push the bounds of storytelling in so many fascinating and delightful ways, given my appreciation for shows such as SPN, BtVS/Angel, and Wynonna Earp (and also Stranger Things and Lucifer), I’m inspired to write. Part of it is to honor SPN’s legacy by re-defining the sandbox even further, by taking what it’s done so wonderfully and, sort of like a relay race, doing my part to carry the baton a little farther--because that show has been so amazing that, since I truly love and appreciate it, how do I not pay it forward? Pay tribute? How could I just drop the baton? And part of it is because the general sandbox that those shows play in is just one that I love, one that I want to play in and expand on, and help continue to demonstrate that genre shows are (or can be) awesome, transformative pieces of art, not just some semi-obscure show about fighting monsters.

To do all that, however, I’d really appreciate your advice, and if you think of others who should weigh in, I’d be thrilled to hear from them as well.

Thanks!

@mittensmorgul @occamshipper @tinkdw @dimples-of-discontent @drsilverfish

P.S: I saw this GIF, or a picture of it, before I knew it was from SPN. When I saw it in an episode, I was just like, “?!”. (Oh, the things I’d seen from SPN before realizing it, or all the scenes I could recognize/quote that I’d maybe seen clips of at most, because I’d seen GIFs and screencaps so many times--that show took over my life before I ever started watching it). Anyway, as much as I truly love storytelling and I want to do it for my life because I love it and because I want to inspire hope in people through art, I’ll leave with this:

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beneaththetangles · 4 years

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The Promised (Never)land: a Thrilling Plan of Salvation

I’m happy to introduce Gaharet, our newest writer! You may have seen him haunting our comment section, but now you’ll see much more of him and insight on Beneath the Tangles. The eldest of ten siblings who are all avid readers, Gaheret is a is a Catholic lawyer from Spain, too tall for Robin already but not serious enough for Batman yet. Interested in heroism, wonder, hope and Christ, he looks for them from the realms of Philosophy and Theology to the Arthurian cycle, Dostoyevski, and comics. He discovered anime after University much to his joy, mostly through Beneath the Tangles. Besides here, you can also find him writing on his website (in Spanish).

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A happy childhood in a household by the countryside. A somewhat separated world. Loving parents, being the eldest of many siblings, new ones joyfully looked forward to and then received into the family where we watched them grow, good grades in class, a lot of books, small adventures exploring the forest not far from the house, and interesting conversations about people, deductions and discoveries, the past and the future with other kids as the sun sets. And then, as adulthood is approaching, the horror: the monsters. The parallels and coincidences are many, so it´s no wonder that I saw a lot of myself as a kid in the special children of The Promised Neverland (2019), a clever thriller with no less clever child protagonists dealing with themes of horror, family, love, and survival. My ordinary life back then had a lot in common with that of Emma, Norman, and Ray. That may be what has helped me to see, step by step, that my current life is not too removed from it either.

I´m pretty sure I’ve never enjoyed an anime as much as this one: it has so much in it of the shows I enjoy most, from the strong feeling of place in Haibane Renmei to the childhood/adulthood themes of Erased to the moral clarity in convoluted circumstances and hope against all hope of Now and then, here and there. But more than that, as I was watching it and meditating about the themes, I found so many parallels to my Catholic faith and my own life with God from childhood on that I can say it helped me to look at it with fresh eyes in a way few works of fiction, anime or not, have. It works perfectly without adding the considerations I´m gonna make, as a thriller epic. I´m not a manga reader, so please refrain from spoilers in the comments: also, I´m going to freely discuss the twists and turns of the first season (not to mention my own life): spoilers ahead.

I hope my first paragraph has managed to capture a glimpse of the powerful and Edenic attraction of that place, the House, an orphanage of sorts where sons and daughters live and grow as siblings, as there is usually something Edenic in a childhood with loving parents. The story conveys it in various ways, and maybe the most striking is the color symbology: From the opening, The Promised Neverland uses white and red to symbolize innocence and blood, so even the white clothes are reminiscent of the original nakedness of Genesis, which evokes the same idea. A world arising from unconditional love and deep union, image of the union of the Holy Trinity, worth exploring, powerful and stable, for us to grow with others and develop our unique talents while hoping for a future of wonders unseen.

And yet, something feels off. There are books, symbols, and pieces of the past here and there, and they point to something that has been lost. Some things are missing; some have changed. I believe this is a universal experience: Even as children, we tend to know there is a gap between the law we discover in our hearts and some aspects of reality, even if we don´t mind at first. Growing in a mostly post-Christian Spain was the specific form this uncanny feeling took in my case. The Cathedral of Leon is full of light and color much like the Temple of the Bible, but why was it almost empty, while the Temple was full of pilgrims? How come that so few people knew about Christian wisdom outside of my family and the books, while almost everyone in, say, a Dickens novel knew about Grace and Providence? And then the day comes when you meet face to face with something powerful and dark, and discover with shock and utter horror that there is something in this world, close to you, that could devour and destroy you and those you love.

Monsters who devour children are the primal symbol of evil in children tales, and one cannot but feel a primal fear seeing them. While the models of the monsters are predators in Nature, I believe that much like Christ warns us to be afraid not of those that kill the body, but of those who kill the soul, every fear, even physical, is an echo of the true fear that monsters symbolize: being destroyed by turning myself into a monster voluntarily, and for it to happen to the people I know and love. Sin, after all, is the worst of evils and the source of all the rest. To discover in your own darkness and that of others that this is a very real possibility, and to see the immense power of that darkness both in yourself and in the world with its “prince,” is a shocking experience. For me, a first shock was the sudden loss of faith of my entire class at school when we turned twelve (funnily enough). Suddenly they left God behind without a second thought, as if he were Santa, and all at once started behaving in ways I knew to be seriously wrong. The second was the dark and disturbing reality of my own sins. Even the good things, while remaining good, are tainted and compromised as you become more aware. The sins of the people we had previously trusted and the suffering and the death of the innocent in this world are perhaps the strongest signs of this reality. Norman and Emma suffer both at once.

Much as when Adam and Eve hide after the Fall and make excuses, or Cain suddenly fears a world of murderers even if he is the first, the worldly logic created by sin sucks us into it through our wounds and the wounds of the world. The passions, the animal wants and fears, have become disordered as a result. Even psychologically, when confronted with these signs of evil, we tend to lose hope in the goodness of the world. There is nothing more natural than than trying to survive at all costs, even disregarding others, and thus Norman first did as much. It feels like this is just what the world is. Other possible reactions are forgetting about that, go along with the crowd, and trying to live a superficial life, focusing on developing your abilities so as to remake your world, or a part of it at your own image (I´m looking at you, Ray, and to Lelouch Lamperouge), or build an armor and retreat into something not so far from the infamous eight-grade syndrome, as I myself did with the likes of Hikigaya Hachiman, or focus on recreating, Utena-like, the external circumstances of the time when we were happy, or running for just one bit of power, satisfaction, or pleasure that seems to be within our reach, becoming increasingly cynical about everything else. So, when Emma rejected all that and said, “I don´t want anybody else of my precious family to die!” instead, I felt a true bolt of hope. It strongly resonated with me, and here´s why.

A thrilling plan of salvation in the everyday world, born from a love strong and pure enough not to exclude anyone, humble, down-to-Earth, clever, difficult and wise but also full of simplicity and open to all (for everyone has a role in it), motivated by the desire to save, for everyone to live—does that sound familiar? “I don´t want anybody else of my precious family to die!” For me, it´s kind of an echo both of the “so that you may live” of the Deuteronomy, and the “I have come that they may have life” of Our Lord. To give us life, not a few or even many years more, but a new kind of life which destroys death for us and others. To save us. Of course, as a Christian, I knew and I prayed that people would be saved, and tried to help, to spread the Gospel, to live in charity. But perhaps my heart hadn´t felt with such intensity and hope that He really wants us, each of us, to live, to escape sin and eternal death, to be with Him, to bring us to a better house, a better land which we know a little because it resembles the first. Or more accurately, because the first resembles it: the first Jerusalem and the new Jerusalem. He cares about the rest of our sorrows, our needs and our hurts, and helps, as He did in Palestine, but he wants the endgame: We are under the shadow of death, and he wants us to live.

And how does he attract us to this plan? He promises us a new land; he promised it to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to Moses and the Israelites, to the prophets and the exiled and to David, to Our Lady and to Joseph, to the Apostles. It had everything they could dream of and more: It had Him. He promised the patriarchs a people which will be theirs and without number, to Moses a free land in which to live in justice, to the prophets a Messiah and a new kind of kingdom, to David the eternity of his house, and to the Apostles that they would become fishers of men. He also gave them signs of hope, among them the deliverance from various sufferings and the earthly land of Israel. Much like this, Emma and Norman guide the rest to the Promised Neverland, and Emma´s love and their own past becomes a sign of hope for how they will live there. As all those who were called by the Lord, something has to be left behind, and the road forward is full of danger and uncertainty. The “follow me, and I´ll show you something cool” also felt hopeful, and very similar to the “come and you will see” of the Gospel: Reject the story of revenge and death you have thought for yourself, become a sibling for a lot of brothers and sisters, help and be helped in the way to the Promised Land. Or leave the things you deem riches and come for something new: I call you; follow me. It has always been the same for me: God has convinced me again and again that there is something incredible at the other side, something that includes me, Him, and His precious family, and all which is good, yet goes deeper than I can perceive now. Even as I stray, sin, and fall again and again, I continue to turn back to Him, because, like Peter, I know somehow that only Christ has words of eternal life.

The fact that some people we love are revealed to be servants of the enemy, yet they are included in the plan, and how both Mama and Sister are saved, was easily what made the show jump from really good to great, as the thorough defeat of utilitarian logic by a logic which doesn´t lose any of its cleverness or its strength, but gives them its true meaning instead. Ray and Norman were similar, but Norman was converted to love by his love of Emma. The way this loving, hard hope is gradually given to everyone as a call to serve the rest, come to be part of the sometimes mysterious plan under the authority of the elders and give the best of your peculiar abilities was very like the Church, and the mutual love of Emma and Norman, innocent and childlike as it was, recalled the words of St. Paul about marriage being similar to how Christ sacrifices Himself for the Church. A child is a great symbol of how we are to be before God, and these children are as innocent as doves and as shrewd as serpents. Trumping the logic of the world of adults, demons, utilitarianism, and Ray, and freeing the villains from it, was a great thing to see. How they become a sign for each other, loving everyone, yet being prudent and humble about what they can do (Emma´s decision towards the smaller ones) made me want to be stronger, wiser, and more loving myself, which I think it´s the very purpose of epic stories.

The Christlike sacrifice of Norman for the sake of Emma, the rest and especially Ray, to bring him out of the pit of darkness he got himself into, and the Shawshank Redemption way it is presented—darkness, violence, death of the beloved and the innocent, everything seems lost, then we discover it was all part of the plan—makes it even more compelling and more parallel with the Gospel: Is the same thing the Disciples experienced in the Passion, what Joseph and Mary didn’t understand at the Temple, and what we don´t understand every time we meet the Cross. Suffering is a mystery, and the plenitude of suffering, the biggest mystery. And yet, beyond our understanding, Christ has met us there and is fighting for us. The loving yet decisive goodbye of Emma to the House and to Mama was also memorable and unique: She truly has rejected hate and embraced all the good there was in the house, even when following the hopeful path and leaving. Jesus loved the Temple, even if it needed to be set of fire, and Israel. Is easy to hate those who harm us, the enemy, a natural impulse: We forget the menacing Mama is a wounded child too, one of the family, another lost sheep. But as Christians, we know Christ sees them also as the lost sheep, and fights for them too. Even during the Passion, He is praying for the last one of His executioners, working for their salvation. At His last moments, he fights for the soul of those crucified with Him. And Mama, at least, is converted.

The post-death Norman (whatever it may happen in the future) who walked for a moment at the side of Ray and Emma, made them feel his presence, caused them to remember his words, and disappeared again behaved very much like Christ does now (only He is alive and acts). Ray, redeemed from his path of revenge, letting go the sword, strengthening others as he was, and occupying his place with his limitations, is much like Simon Peter. He is the father of the orphaned flock, and Emma is the mother, as Mary, and like her she is the closer friend of Norman, and they walk with his spirit to the Promised Neverland. The family is divided in two, as Israel from the Church, yet will be united, as St. Paul tells us with passionate love. And the last scene, “This is our first day,” with the sun coming up in a world without our old certainties, dangerous but hopeful, was very like us experimenting with the fruits of Resurrection: The danger and the new life begins here.

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The Promised Neverland can be streamed on Crunchyroll.

#Anime #Christianity #The Promised Neverland #Yakusoku no Neverland #Articles #Author: Gaharet

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kylieinwashington · 6 years

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Monuments & Memorials

OK - I was toooooo tired to finish this last night - so here it is a day late.

Sunday, Nov. 25, 2018

It is almost 11:00 PM and we have been home less than 30 minutes. We topped 20,000 steps in our quest to see and understand most of the Monuments and Memorials that ring the Mall and/or live close by.

During breakfast this morning the girls - who knows who started it - began singing songs from Hamilton. It was so cute and went on and on. Finally we had to began our day so we headed out about 8:45. We had talked about the amazing gift James Smithson gave to the United States so of course our first outing this AM was to the Smithsonian Castle and James Smithson’s tomb - which looks a lot like a bathtub...

There are currently 17 Smithsonian Museums dedicated to science, history, art and culture and each one more fabulous than the next and free to everyone. The weather today was glorious. Sunshine and temps in the high 50 -maybe even the in 60! - had us shedding our coats and enjoying the two meals we shared outdoors today. (More on our rather crazy outside dinner later!)

From the Smithsonian Castle we walked to the Washington Monument when Charlotte was our teacher. Prior to our trip, I assigned all the kids the job of learning about a specific monument and being our teacher. They were all very excited to take the teacher role - and today was the day. Charlotte was well prepared and excited to present and she carefully positioned us to view the beautiful monument and hear her lecture.

The 555 foot Washington Monument is closed currently - and indefinitely, according to the sign - while they try to repair or replace the elevator that has not worked with enough regularity to open it to the public since the 2011 earthquake. It was open 3 years ago when I was here with Colin but closed again shortly after our visit. Charlotte was a font of information and had our deepest attention. She was very proud of her “speech” and so were we.

From there we walked to the World War II Memorial. We prepped the kids with lots of talk of World War II and sent them to speak to one of the many volunteers about several subjects.

They had much work to do in their notebooks and moved around the monuments identifying one feature after another and understanding the symbolism it possessed.

From there we went to Signer’s island, a sweet little island that has the signature of all the 58 signers of the Declaration of Independence. We talked about the risks these men were taking by signing the document as the action truly was high treason punishable by death. I asked the kids to make rubbings of several of the signatures and as we did that we talked about who among us would have had the bravery to sign that document.

The answer was simple - NONE of us. Yes, if it had been left to the 6 of us, we would still be subjects of England. Hmmmmm...

A picnic lunch was next and we sat in the magnificent sunshine and ate our lunch we had packed earlier in the day. Perhaps the most interesting part of lunch were the very friendly Washington DC squirrels.

Those little suckers KNEW we had food and they saw no reason why we couldn’t just share. (But we didn’t.)

After lunch and squirrel shooing we headed to the Viet Nam War Memorial. I CANNOT get through this without tears - no matter how many times I have been there. We started at the Nurses Memorial statue (which was strewn with long stem roses) and the kids did not disappoint to look, think, reflect and try to understand. I assured them that however they interpret any sculpture is correct but we pushed them to look deeper and think harder. They saw the dedication, fear and exhaustion in the eyes of the nurses. They identified the sandbags but didn’t know why they were there and when we told them they were horrified. I KNOW these kids got more out of the statue than 99% of all adults who view it.

Next we looked up the names of soldiers on The Wall, one from Ann Arbor, Saline and Boulder, CO and then went to find them. Moving.

We talked about the design of the monument and the designer. But nothing is more impactful that walking that wall and getting deeper and deeper into the list of dead and then actually seeing the name you are searching for - right before your eyes.

We finished this Memorial by visiting the Soldier’s Statues. Again the kids were very insightful and willing to be pushed pass what you see on the first pass. I love it.

Next up was The Korean War Memorial. Here we talked about the United Nations Coalition and the very clever way in which the designer of the monument used the 19 soldiers and the reflective black marble to tell us about the 38th parallel that still divides the Korean Peninsula. I was born during this hot mess and I am always struck with how long this has continued. Sadly hate has a long shelf life. :(

We walked right through the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial because we have big plans for that tonight but I could not miss taking this amazing pic!

Next we walked to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial. I love the way the designer uses water to represent the mood/health of the nation. I will forever be grateful for all the benefits of the CCC and the WPA. Brilliant. We talked about the soup kitchens and the “fireside chats” but mostly we focused on the quotes. Every single quote holds true today and I wish the leaders of our country would embrace his caring empathic thoughts.

I truly enjoyed discussing these quotes with these brilliant young minds and I have hope that maybe their generation can clean up the mess we are are making. Sigh....

Eleanor Roosevelt was next and we talked about “walking the walk.” She was the perfect example of this.

Next up was the beautiful Thomas Jefferson Memorial with teacher Kylie.

She was so excited and did a wonderful job - although she did have us move from the top to the bottom and right back up (our legs were sooooo tired) . The climbing, however was completely relevant and necessary because how else could we see the beautiful and significant frieze on the portico? Well done!

This ended our major walking tour and all we had to do was jump on the Circulator bus and head to Union Station for dinner and our tour to see the remaining significant monuments. But we missed the bus by about 3 minutes and had to wait for 27 minutes for the next one. Then it was the slow roll to Union Station. Gwynn read that restaurants in Union Station close at 6:00 on Sunday and our tour was a 6:30 and as the bus creeped down the roads the time ticked away. To make things more stressful the inside lights of the bus stayed on which meant NO ONE could see outside and IF the driver was announcing the stop he was doing it in a tiny whisper - so we had no idea where we were and when we needed to get off. I kept looking out of the window only to see myself which was NOT helpful. I had a map but I needed just ONE POINT OF REFERENCE - (just like the astronauts in Apollo 13!) - and finally Dylan said - Hey there is the Washington Monument!” Bingo!!!!

We FINALLY arrived at Union Station at 6:01. The kids are hungry - but not quite HANGRY - but it couldn’t be too far behind. BUT the food places were open although people were already lining up for our tour we grabbed some food and went outside to wait. We got food ASAP and headed outside where we ate on something that worked as a table but was NOT a table.

We boarded the bus to this view:

We spent 30 minutes at the MLK Jr Memorial and the kids used every second filling in their books and talking about the amazing quote on the walls surrounding the Memorial. This makes my heart sing!

We spent an additional 30 minutes at the Lincoln Memorial and believe me that it was NOT enough time. But what a wonderful time.

Finally, teacher Dylan was up for the Marine Corps Memorial - Iwo Jima. He was prepared and fabulous. I was very proud of all of our teachers today - and so were they.

Finally we boarded the Metro and headed “home.” To say we were tired would be an understatement.

But I can say we had a day filled with education, thoughtful discussion and discovery - and THAT my friends is a day well done.

Stay tuned.

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twdmusicboxmystery · 7 years

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Season 8 EW Photo Shoot - TD Clues

Good morning Everyone and happy Saturday! How is everyone's weekend going?

Okay, so over the past 3 days I've gotten about 7 of these Asks about the EW pictures. I already had the first one when I was answering Asks on Thursday, but I decided I wanted to wait to answer it and do a full post. Then I got a bunch more. (These are obviously not all of them, but all the rest had the same gist.)

Actually I'm glad I waited because just yesterday the FB group had some really great insights that I wouldn’t have had before.

I will warn you, though, that this has been discussed all over the fandom. If you've read a lot of other discussions about it, I doubt I have much to say that hasn't already been said. This is what I see in the pictures, what insights the wonderful ladies in my FB group have had, and what we've been discussing.

So, quick summary for those who've been hiding under a rock and don't know what this is about. EW, as per usual, has done a photo shoot spread for TWD S8. These are some of the photos.

So here’s the complete run-down from my end:

The instant they hit the airwaves, a certain dark ship started screaming that because MMB has her arms around Norman, the show is foreshadowing C@ryl becoming canon this season. For the Nonny who needs reassurance, let me promise you that nothing could be further from the truth.

Here’s a random joke I made about it in my FB group:

Here are some simple facts:

1. Carol and Daryl have an iconic friendship, and people love seeing them together, even if it's just as friends. So the show has used them heavily promotionally for the past few years. And yet, they've never gone canon. This year is no different.

2. More than once AMC has hinted or outright said that Carzekiel will be pushed this season. I don't know if they'll actually go canon (most of the other long term couples have taken more than a season to actually hook up--Richonne = 3 seasons, Carnid = 2 seasons, Bethyl=oh geez! The one exception, I think, is Glaggie) but it should become very obvious that it will be the two of them in the long run. And who knows? They might go canon. I, for one, hope they do. And, based on the symbolism we're seeing here, I think there's a good chance they will.

Let me explain. One of the above Nonnies asked about symbolism. And the symbolism should go a long way to setting your mind to rest about the possibility of C@ryl.

At first I just kind of rolled my eyes at this picture, thinking, "well, the C@rylers are gonna have fun with that one, aren't they?" But then an IG follower pointed out that Carol is holding Sophia's doll.

Now, the third Nonny above asked if it was the magazine putting these symbols in, or tptb? While of course we can't know for certain, the instant I saw the doll, I knew it wasn't an EW thing. Not entirely. There are too many symbols we've seen in the show in this shoot for them to have been arbitrarily chosen by the magazine or the photographers. And remember this magazine had it's hands in all the secrets of Jon Snow's return to GoT, so I have a hard time believing these symbols aren't purposeful.

So for Carol, remember I said HERE that her whole arc has been and is about Sophia. This surely proves it. She's holding Sophia's doll, so this Sophia arc is obviously going to come into play in a big way in S8. My logic is that, even though this has been Carol's arc all along, we've never seen her hold the doll before, so it's got to be more front and center this season. Meanwhile, we have this kid, Ben's little brother, who just so happens to be played by Madison Lintz's brother, so he LOOKS just like Sophia, and is going to be part of Carol's story this season. He may be what finally helps her to heal and brings her arc full circle. And that's why I think Carzekiel could go canon this season. I think part of her healing will be a relationship with Ezekiel. No way to tell for sure when it will happen. Knowing Gimple, it could be spread over two or three seasons, but it also might not be.

So after noticing the doll, I started studying this picture and symbols started jumping out at me right and left.

(The funny thing was that by the time I actually went into my FB group, there were already like sixteen comments about the symbolism and I'd been tagged a bunch of times, lol. I was actually late to the table for this discussion. And I'd only logged off for like four hours! Well, that's what happens when new TWD stuff comes out, I guess. ;D)

The most obvious symbol to me was Daryl holding the champagne. Definitely milder than moonshine, but who cares? It's alcohol. Can't help but see it as a callback.

What most people in my FB group pounced on is the fact that Carol is feeding Daryl with a spoon. Not only does it remind us of Beth's D.C. spoon, but you don't get a more mother/child image than spoon feeding. Symbolically, many of us have thought for a while that Carol will have a relatively big role in bring Beth and Daryl together. This almost suggests her bringing Beth to him.

The other thing that caught my eye are the flowers he's holding. The reason is that I recently re-watched 7x05, Go Getters. Remember that when Maggie wakes up in the medical trailer in that episodes, there are tons of parallels to Beth waking up.

Also, when Maggie awakens, the first things she sees are purple flowers. These ones in the EW shoot look exactly like the ones in 7x05. I there's more white in the ones in the EW shoot, but other than that, practically identical.

So if you ask me, we have Daryl holding alcohol (Still), and flowers a Greene sister saw when she awoke in a medical place with a doctor.

Everything around Norman is screaming Beth to me. We also have peaches on the table and in one of Lauren's pics (peach schnapps)

and strawberries (totally a Bethyl thing).

And I’m pretty sure there's pomegranates in there too (Carzekiel).

So we were all doing pretty well with this. Pretty confident in our symbolism, etc. And then something else happened today. One of the EW photographers posted about the symbols used in the photo shoot. As you might imagine, none of the explanations were particularly TD-ish.

But guys, that's okay. Let's face it, they're never going to come out and say, "oh, the champagne is a callback to Still because Beth will be back this season." Just never gonna happen. So they're giving very convenient explanations for what the symbols are. And while they might be mostly true, they also kind of don't make sense.

For example, the stuff Melissa is feeding Norman is chocolate pudding. An obvious callback to Carl, and that's fine. But if they were going to callback to Carl, why not just put him in the photo shoot? He's one of the Atlanta originals and has been on the show longer than Maggie or Michonne. Why use pudding specifically?

This photographer also said the flowers were Carol's "look at the flowers" flowers. Um…if they're actually using that as a "look at the flowers" symbol, that suggests Carol will kill Daryl in this season. I chuckle even typing that because it's so ridiculous. I think we all know that's not happening. So my point is that these explanations aren't hitting the deeper symbolism.

Also notice they say that Shiva represents the Sanctuary. Well, Shiva...chewed on people who live at the Sanctuary, but she represents the Kingdom. Really not hating on this person. Just pointing out it’s not the most reliable synopsis.

Keep in mind, we've seen them do this before: give convenient explanations that are mostly plot-based, without really going into what the deeper symbolism is. As I told my FB group yesterday, the most recent example that comes to mind is an article that was released a few months ago explaining what the A on Daryl's shirt at the Sanctuary meant.

They said it meant "asshole" because the Saviors always try to degrade their prisoners. Now, I'm sure that's true. They aren't lying. (Other shirts we see have letters like F and S on them. Not hard to imagine what those stand for.) But the fact is that we saw A’s at the prison, at Terminus, at FG's church, and at Alexandria. Not all of them can possibly stand for a name call/body part. So this was a convenient explanation that doesn't REALLY talk about the deeper symbolism.

If the photographer knows anything at all about the symbols (isn't just guessing) then I’m thinking tptb gave her these simple explanations in case she was asked questions. And there probably is truth to them, but it's deeper and more complex than a simple, one-sentence answer.

The doll isn't just a callback to that one time Carol lost her daughter. It signifies Carol's entire 4 season arc and that fact that it will be front and center this season. She'll have to face Sophia's loss and find a way to finally move past it.

I think the flowers are about resurrection, at least partly. If they're also tied to Carol, well, the whole "look at the flowers" thing didn't start until Lizzie and Mica showed up. So I also think it could symbolize that she'll finally talk to Daryl about the girls.

Rick is holding the sheriff's badge. That's not TERRIBLY suspicious, but it's been some time since the badge was specifically used to signify him. They've focused more on the red-handled machete and such the past few seasons. So I can't help but think, new sheriff in town?

Aside: I also watched the Fan Favorite video for Carl today. While there's nothing inherently Beth-ish in it, I will say that the damn sheriff's hat is focused on A LOT. Just saying.

Maggie holds Glenn's watch. At first I didn't read much into that. As I told my group, I think it could just signify who she's become since Glenn's death and who she'll continue to be. Her whole purpose now is about her child and about the person she'll become specifically BECAUSE Of Glenn's death.

But the more I thought about it, the weirder that symbol seemed to me. Not only did they go out of their way to close Glenn's arc in a beautiful way, but she even gave the watch away (to Enid) in S7. So to see her holding it here again almost feels like their *ahem* resurrecting it in some way? And I don't even mean that it's necessarily Beth-ish. Just that it's kinda weird. At the very least, it's a time symbol. Maybe showing that the time screw is over and we'll finally go back to Grady and see what's up?

Now let's talk about the pudding one more time. While discussing this, @thegloriouscollectorlady said something that really got my wheels turning. She suggested that the pudding definitely was a callback to Carl (it totally is) but that that only goes to show that they're pushing Daryl and Carol as a son/mother relationship. The person who at the pudding before, after all, was the only "kid" on the show. And of course Carol is spoon feeding it to him.

That made me think more about Carl's whole pudding episode. That episode has a LOT of Beth parallels in it. Check out my analysis HERE.

In a nutshell, Carl sees a dead song bird beside a cage (foreshadowing Beth's “death” at Grady). Right after that, we see lots of resurrection themes. A walker comes at him and he shoots it in the left side of the forehead (right where Beth was shot) and thinks he got it, but it jumps right back up again. This is also where he goes into the bedroom with the nautical theme (Oceanside foreshadow) and has to escape the walker there.

He beats it with an actual lamp (Lamp Theory) plus there's a yellow bat in the scene. (Yellow = escape, bat = Negan. And what do you know? Oceanside showed up at roughly the same time as Negan; symbolism fulfilled.) Plus, he loses a shoe, and we see yellow-handled scissors near his foot.

That enough TD symbols for you? Right after that, he sits on the roof and eats the pudding. So this was very much about Carl becoming a man and learning to survive by himself. He did all this himself, without Rick's help. It instilled a confidence in him about his own ability to survive.

So now they're applying the pudding symbol to Daryl. Remember what Carol said in Consumed (you know, while they're looking for Beth?). "You used to be a boy. Now you're a man." So I feel like the pudding here is showing that Daryl has matured emotionally.

Remember that tptb and even Norman himself have said many times that Daryl was still emotionally immature in S4. They say that if he had romantic feelings for Beth (which AMC confirmed that he did) he didn't fully understand them. Think about that. Follow the symbolism through to conclusion.

If they're using the pudding symbol for him now (he's eating it, as Carl did) then it suggests he's reached full emotional maturity now. Guess what that means? Time for Beth to appear. He will now be capable of sustaining a romantic relationship with her, where in S4, he really wasn't.

This one shows Norman pretending to smoke a birthday candle. The candles from the cake he and Andy have all over them. Ostensibly it’s birthday cake to celebrate TWD’s “birthday” with 100 episodes, right? But who was the one character that talked about birthdays before starting a certain fire? Just saying.

Other interesting symbols:

1) Grapes. This really isn’t a symbol we’ve seen extensively around Beth or anyone else, but it could be termed Beth-ish because there were grapes in her arc in s4. In Inmates, which had the wacky non-chronological story-telling (X), Ty, Lizzie and Mica ate grapes. Later Beth and Daryl find the same ones and Beth picks some for anyone else they may find. Which they don’t.

2) Carrots are also on the table. (X) I’m gonna add that although we don’t actually see “carrot flowers” as far as I can tell, we do see both carrots and flowers in this shot. And Gimple had planned to play the song “The King of Carrot Flowers” during the dinner scene in Alone. (X). He only didn’t because of copyright issues. Just saying.

3) Apples, of course. (Apple Theory). They’re really around Richonne here, and we’ve seen them specifically around Richonne in the show, especially in 6b. But we’ve seen a lot of apples entwined Beth-related symbolism (as well as other characters like Maggie) so having them here at all is kind of suspicious.

Finally, there’s a bandage around Andy’s hand. No idea if that’s an Andy thing or a Rick thing, but if it’s a Rick thing, it’s a callback to S4, when Rick wore a bandage on his hand for most of 4a. Beth’s bandage at Grady mirrored that. And maybe it’s not for the show, but it doesn’t seem to be a significant injury (not like a broken bone or anything) which means they could have easily covered it up or photo-shopped it out. I think it’s more likely it was purposely put in.

So all of this rambling boils down to this: No, I'm not worried that C@ryl will go canon this season. Everything points to C@rzekiel. Yes, I think all the symbols we're seeing in the shoot are point to Beth's return. And yes, I think they were purposely put in by tptb, no matter what anyone else says.

We've seen them too often in the show for them to be arbitrary, and everything else we've said in the past still holds true.

But hey, it's just a theory. Just my opinion. I mean, I've only been analyzing the crap out of this show's symbolism for two and a half years. What the hell would I know, right? ;D

Everyone have a fantastic weekend. Four weeks and counting, my Bethyl peeps! Xoxo!

#beth greene #beth greene lives #beth is alive #beth is coming #td theory #td theories #team delusional #team defiance #bethyl #bethyl forever #bethyl for life #bethyl reunion #bethyl reunite #beth x daryl

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