idc if david ward was basically annihilated in a way that left naught but ashes piece her the fuck back together and get her on hrt we can still clutch this

its still so crazy david was straight up going to let his mirror self strangle him to death but then started fighting back solely bc it was smiling a little TOO much while doing it and he couldnt stand seeing a single iteration of himself be happy. number one hater

last time i was talking about eiffel's favorite holidays, i didn't consider april fool's day, and that was a grave oversight because not only does he consider it a holiday, it is one of the holidays to him. between "unbelievable. the first time in three months we've had, like, downtime and i can't think of a single way to prank everyone else. me! the master of the prank!" and the time he hid a randomized buzzer in minkowski's quarters (and made a bet with hera to see how long it'd take her to find it), and his lame attempts to scare lovelace in the hiccups method... that guy is a menace. eiffel would be so, so annoying on april fool's day. it's one of the few things he actually plans for in advance, and he still forgets like 80% of the stuff he sets up until his own pranks backfire on him, sometimes days later. and he's so bad at lying that even when he does remember, he looks too eager and hangs around expectantly and everyone else can recognize he's waiting for them to fall for his trap. and on top of that, minkowski knows a thing or two about traps, and every year she'll disarm one of eiffel's and then set it back up so it'll get him when he checks to see why it didn't work. this happens every year. eiffel still thinks he's a genius.

So what is Eskew? What does it want?

I’ve been reading some fantastic analysis on this topic which is far more thoughtful and sensible than anything I intended, and it got me trying to write out my thoughts about what, if anything, I actually *did* intend.

To me, Eskew (the city) was always a few different things at once, and it was those in a piecemeal kind of way that became a struggle to make cohesive by the time the finale came around. 

I thought I’d share what I wrote in case it’s interesting to anyone - but obviously if it doesn’t mesh with your own ideas on that subject, feel free to ignore:

1) Primarily, I wrote Eskew as an amplified, literalised expression of a particular kind of fear that I’ve experienced in isolation and during past periods of difficult mental health challenges - when you find yourself second-guessing not just the random cruelties and kindnesses and reactions of the people around you, but the chaos of the living environment itself. 

Did that car splash me because I’m a bad person? Are those people on the street corner laughing as I pass because they recognise something terrible and mockable innately in me? Why did I spill my dinner on the floor? Is all of this really arbitrary and random or is there a punitive sense to it? And if there’s sense to it, can I out-manoeuvre it?

Sometimes the world’s response to us - as individual entities passing through it - seems to make sense. Sometimes it doesn’t. 

Sometimes you seem to be getting adverse results from a certain course of action…so you change your behaviours, but then the adverse results happen anyway.

2) I wrote Eskew as a literalised expression of the isolated person’s inability to just give up - the way that life and human connection keep on happening to us in spite of our best efforts, and we keep on dragging ourselves back to them.

That, to me, is a source of weary, absurd hope. But it’s also a source of terror and despair, because it’s systemic as well as psychological. ‘The real monster is capitalism’ is funny as hell in commentary across contemporary horror fiction, but, well…

I will wake up each morning, and go into the city, back to a job that corrupts me morally, walking past suffering people who are reaching out for my help and will not receive it, and I will pay money to get what I want from vast companies whose horrors will outlive me, and I will return. And the next day, I’ll do it again, and the best hope I have of living well is to stop thinking too hard about it and stop questioning the process.

In other words, I have to find a way of dwelling within the belly of this *thing*, because it won’t let me stop. I have to find a way of not minding that I’m being eaten away even as I carry on - but if I succeed, I’ll be shutting down my ability to understand what’s happening to me.

I think the traditional preoccupations of cosmic horror are ultimately charming and quaint in comparison to that endless atrophy - wouldn’t it be a relief to gaze into the maw of an eldritch god once, confirm the truth of existence, and lose your mind entirely? 

At least that’d have a sense of resolution to it. At least then you could stop pretending that everything was fine.

3) Beyond that, insofar as Eskew had motives as I wrote them, they were purely cancerous. This is a harmful, inchoate thing that ‘s dreaming of being a city. 

It wants to grow, like a city, and be dwelt in, like a city, and because cities are named, demarcated human territories, it wants to be recognised as a city. 

But on some level it doesn’t understand how to be those things; on some level it can only ever wreak havoc upon the things it shapes, and it becomes spiteful when the objects that it’s trying to push around the gameboard don’t react in the right way.

That’s where the connection between the character and his nemesis comes in, for me - while the city of Eskew is not meant to be a literal manifestation of David’s state of mind, it is absolutely an expression of him, or at least a kindred spirit.

Both David and Eskew are struggling with a reality that will not respond logically, or favourably, to their efforts to control it - and they’re struggling with a reality that will never remain still or consistent for enough to become something certain.

My youngest niece plays with that building block game where you have square blocks, circular blocks, and triangular blocks - and correspondingly, you have this base with all the holes where the different shapes slot in.

When you slot the square block successfully into the hole, that’s one of the earliest empowering, orderly experiences that you have.

When the opposite happens, when you take your block and try and fit it into the hole, but it just smacks crudely into the sides and refuses to fit and you start crying your head off because there’s no sense or resolution to your own actions and you don’t know how to interpret this or fix the issue? That’s how I feel a lot of the time, and to me it’s as funny as it is horrible as it is worth writing about.

In all of these senses combined, I think the ending of the show is possibly overly optimistic, and even violates the essential nature of Eskew itself as a ‘character’ - but then perhaps I needed it to, to avoid some kind of Beckettian cliffhanger.

It was meant as expressing the hope that perhaps the dark cloud will lift, that perhaps whatever malign thing has its eye on us will move its attention on to somebody else - and we’ll finally be able to change. We’ll become something capable of moving free and unseen and easy through the darkness. The world won’t get better, but somehow we’ll have what it takes to exist at last.

Anyway, just some random thoughts - hope you’re all doing OK, and best wishes to you and yours x

i wonder what using tumblr wld be like in eskew 🤔

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⛅loyaltothesky42 Follow

can you people read carrds for the love of god. how many times do i have to say worms dni. i dont know how to make it any more obvious that im pro sister agnes's tower. going to start hardblocking if this keeps up

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🌘eskew-travelogues-official Follow

been thinking of meeting up with this couple thats looking for a third in the park

🌒laiciffo-seugolevart-wekse Follow

ꟻlɘꙅᴙUoY llik

🌘eskew-travelogues-official Follow

who said that

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💣concernedcitizen Follow

im so fucking tired of seeing that stupid tower id rather be eaten by a hoard of rats than deal with this shit

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🌉your-friendly-neighborhood-bridge Follow

DJ Bodyhorror has the whole club pulsating and throbbing

so delerious from stress i had a dream last night that i went to a drive through and ordered a david ward burger

i order a david ward burger and the drive through employee whos face i can never properly focus on hands me the most sopping wet paper bag ive ever seen and i take out a soggy burger made with a strange rubbery white meat-adjacent material that squelches when i adjust my grip on it. the employee wont let me leave until i eat the whole thing. shes laughing at me

my fancast for i am in eskew

david ward:

why doesn't he just move out of eskew? is he stupid?

Well, the good news is that you've broken the time loop.

The bad news is that the reason you've broken the time loop is because whatever force was responsible for maintaining it looked at the shit you did on that particular iteration and thought to itself: "you know what would be really fucked up?"