[perl-in-my-head]

"In the classical era, it was customary in our part of the world to build our cities in the form of a kneeling woman."

" [...] As an act of encouragement."

Black and white version under the cut, looking more like a vintage postcard, because I also really liked it ↓

[gossaamer-threads]

one of my favorite things about the silt verses is the phrase "a god must feed." on it's surface it is a factually true statement, as uncontestable as the sky is blue, but what it hides is that they must have gods and they need to keep making sacrifices. It implies that the proceeding and expanding of the systemic killing of people is as fundamental as the turning of the earth. It's dogma for an enlightened age.

all of that to say i wonder what is in store for our wars have ended's "all things want to return to what they were." like yeah that sounds like the basis of some type of magic but also that' fascism baby!! i'm so curious what a "kill your gods" for this story would sound like

[winter-wise]

Thinking about the possible reveal that the Big Man is dead and that everyone is in fact living on a giant corpse. Everything comes down to bodies, in the end.

[valtsv]

you are all just jealous of my severed head

[arianwells]

You’ll wish you’d stayed.

[freezerfridays]

I have come in search of all I was and all I will become.

[creetchure]

my daughter has a smile to fix the world

[rosenkranz-does-things]

A young citizen of the nation by the unfortunate name of Caul Serrikane is preparing to die. Again.

[needlebeetles]

interesting that (presumably dead) lords are responsible for naming children in Cyshane. it’s a fun little demonstration of the paternalism of the takeover + the idea that the dead are specifically superseding the living as authority over children.

[winter-wise]

Our Wars Have Ended still coming through on the commentary of how bioessentialism impacts assumptions about reality. Street preacher who is adamant that the Big Man is biologically male even though there is no proof. Another street preacher who is adamant that the Big Man is biologically female (and pregnant). Presumably also without any proof.

Each telling people to have faith that their perception of reality is the correct one. Even though the thing they are adamant about could certainly be verified. Has anyone ever checked the Big Man's biological sex? Sent an expedition? Does the Big Man even have genitals? Any secondary sexual characteristics?

The Big Man is assumed to be able to think, but we again have no proof of this. If the Big Man does think, does the Big Man have a perception of gender identity that would even fit with Cyshanic society?

Something I love about the worldbuilding is how the setting (the planet is a human figure walking through space) is used to tell us about what society believes. What would it matter if the Big Man had one or the other set of genitals? (Nobody in the podcast has yet posited the theory that the Big Man has no genitals or is intersex - after all, that wouldn't serve an agenda focused on two sexes.) What would it change about the daily experiences of the people in Cyshane? Absolutely nothing. But those street preachers are yelling about it anyway.

[deermouth]

Obsessssed with this sort of precariously transgressive third(+)-gendering—widespread enough to be respected as a rather newfangled standard, new enough to not be included in bawdy marching songs, and, legally speaking, the dead lords might be "rolling it back any day now." Different in its social valances from our own current gender politics, but still painfully recognizable. And that's not even getting into the anatomical fixations and neuroses inherent to the residents of a humanoid planet.

[captainamsel]

Love love love how ugly dying is in Our Wars Have Ended. Episode 1 had Finick screaming and wailing the whole time, episode 2 has Dogged wheezing in the background for what must be hours, even Caul in episode 3, who we know will come back and dies relatively quickly, is clearly in great pain

[freezerfridays]

sniffles. I tgink I've been infected with The Character

[missinformation5031]

genuinely obsessed with our wars have ended's approach to the great man theory of history. the way caul'd father invokes lord dourmarrow as cyshane's lone defender against the "foreign hordes" reminds me so much of how, say, american conservatives are always going around invoking fuckin george washington or whichever other dead founding father against any and all progressive ideas and movements, or the UK's persistent and rather pathetic nostalgia for the bad old days of the british empire at its height, and all the ways in which dead "heroes" can be weaponized in service of bigotry.

i think the big man is also super interesting as an absurd, grotesque literalization of that theory, a literal great man (and of course it was assumed to be a man, specifically), larger than life, larger than the whole mass of humanity, striding through the stars as a singular and unstoppable engine of history.

it's all really cool and really fucked up and horrible and i can't wait to see where the series runs with all these ideas. i mean god, we're three episodes in and already it has to be one of if not the most thematically-rich fiction podcasts i've ever listened to.

[fairymousse]

Sister Bull is honestly a delight to have in the story, not just because it's amazing to hear Méabh again, but it's also interesting to see what it's like for the resurrected with more agency. Sore reacted with fury when Timmer even suggested bringing Dogged back, and as we've been largely seeing them as a form of mindless labour, his anger made some sense - the old dead walk and rule, the new dead are soldiers and workforces. But Sister Bull, while still being there as a tool to rescue Caul, can think, sing, respond to conversations, she still has so much care for Caul. It's not perfect at all - there's an implicit ableism that others have mentioned, but compared to her father, who is so singlemindedly hateful Caul remarks he might as well already be dead for all he's making of his life, she's infinitely preferable. Sister Bull is the strongest argument so far for why people would want to bring the dead back.

[valtsv]

really totally not significant at all that caul's most comforting memory - the sole tether that anchors her against euthanising herself permanently - is of a woman who sang her songs of "the better body that is yet to come". for a child with a disabling congenital birth defect, that would have been a formative lifeline. and the worst thing is, it's actually a pretty radical sentiment in a world where the ideologies governing it are based on the idea that "everything yearns to be what it once was". it just so happens to undermine its own intent to encourage progress by inflaming ableist sentiment through implication. so now that child carries that woman's severed head around like a security blanket against the horrors of living, and regularly kills herself to escape the indignities and limitations of her body. the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

[valtsv]

the nametaker: hey, check this shit out. alexa, play despacito [rotting corpse starts shrieking] pretty cool, eh? why don't you ask me how much it cost. go on. i know you want to.

caul serrikane, who couldn't give a shit if you tried to waterboard one out of her: