In regards to the Winnower and the Gardener
Reading the lore book Unveiling, the personifications of the Light and the Dark were very vivid to me. They weren’t complex, majestic, sinister, or beautiful, like a lot of fanart depicts as such. They were caretakers. Caretakers of the garden don’t dress up in their fancy robes and ethereal garbs, no no. They get their tunics, their work pants, their sandals, and their gloves. They dress to work.
It was the description of the Gardener having chapped lips that really did it for me. That’s not something I would ever imagine this force or this personification of it having, but this description gave me a vivid, gritty mental image in my mind. The Gardener wearing a white tunic, and perhaps burlap pants. Sandals and kneepads. A full face. The Darkness perhaps with a fraying wicker basket. Same burlap pants, perhaps canvas. Barefoot. I saw the Darkness wearing a wide-brim hat of some kind. A narrower, but no less full face.
The thing is, with this story, is something that’s seen all the time in scripture. The authors knew that. Jesus would always tell allegorical stories to explain doctrine. He wouldn’t delve deep into the philosophies and principles that govern existence right of the bat. Followers and students and scholars can’t learn like that easily. Like feeding meat to a baby that can’t even chew. You start with something they know, whether that be a son running from home, only to return to his father’s house with open arms, or a Gardener and Winnower, fighting over the rules of a game. The Darkness is making contact with humanity, so they choose a medium in which they can process and chew, rather than shoving mathematical and ontological truths into their brains. A planter and a reaper.
My first read, I read both “characters” as male. In lore, the Traveler in particular, the Light is perceived or at least referred to as female. My second read, I couldn’t see the see the Gardener other than male, but I imagined the gardener as female. It was entertaining for my brain to imagine the two sex roles play opposite of what you expect. It’s left ambiguous, though, so it doesn’t really matter.
Getting back to their descriptions, I don’t imagine the fight between the Gardener and the Winnower with the First Knife as a great cosmic battle of gods. They were wrestling. Sweating and struggling. Shoving and straining. It’s not an attractive or visually grandiose fight. I imagined it more of a school yard scuffle, or a backstreet mugging. It’s not choreographed, its messy and frightening. Each interaction results in a different rule being broken, and a universe becoming permanent.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. I basically wrote this because I kept seeing depictions and fanart of the Gardener and the Winnower and for the longest time I couldn’t figure out what bothered me about it.
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