Tsv - Blog Posts
a little sketch of sister carpenter
sister carpenter with a gun what crimes will she commit?
a little tiny baby carpenter in giant waders
chapter 19 was one of the most episodes of all time
nana glass
some older silt verse fanart I did while listening to season 2
Carpenter walks up to a near complete mark of the wither tide, Faulkner muttering incoherently at its centre, and scuffs it with her boot.
Faulkner looks up with crazed eyes the moment she alters his masterpiece. Carpenter grips her shard of glass tighter and feels it cut into her hand. Blood drips to the ground and Carpenter suppresses a bitter laugh.
One last offering to the Trawlerman.
“You should run, Carpenter,” Faulkner warns, his voice quavers but not with anything so mundane as nerves. His body can barely contain his excitement, the fervency of his devotion. His gaze sharpens and Carpenter balks as she feels the water surrounding the pier pulse in rhythm with his heartbeat. “I’ve told you before that it would be unwise for you to test which of us our god loves more.”
Carpenter's pace as she walks through the wither mark, bad leg dragging against the floor and destroying all Faulkner’s hard work, does not change. She remains steady and is rewarded with a voice that does not quaver as Faulkner’s does. “You know as well as anyone that I have never proclaimed myself to be wise.”
Faulkner huffs out a laugh and Carpenter smiles a familiar smile. It drops as she remembers what she’s about to do. Faulkner must see it and mirrors her expression before his eyes go distant.
“I suppose we’re soon to part ways then?”
Carpenter pauses for a moment. “That would not be an unreasonable assumption,” she allows.
Faulkner nods as if this is the only answer he had been expecting. “Well then, I suppose if we are to end this as enemies, we’d best do it as the sort who love each other.” As he speaks Faulkner daubs himself in the marking of the Trawlerman once again. The mud from the last time he did so still stains his skin but the marks he paints now lose no clarity because of that. Once he appears to be finished he turns away from the prayer marks that have been gradually consuming his body to meet Carpenter's eyes. “May your peace find you on a lonely road."
Carpenter swallows dryly, suddenly very glad of the reminder Paige’s parting words had given her. “May your peace walk on with you for a while.”
She and Faulkner exchange sad smiles. Then Carpenter is raising her glass and running towards Faulkner as fast as her broken and bleeding legs will carry her. Then Faulkner is readying his stance and screaming his prayers to the river with more conviction than Carpenter knew a human voice could contain. Then Faulkner is raising his hands skywards and then-
~
The river rises
The river rises and it is not a flood as was written. As Nana Glass told stories of. As Carpenter dreamed would seep upwards to drench and drown her doubts in silt.
The river rises and it is a tsunami.
~
Carpenter, limping and shattered and shaking, is faster than her river.
She reaches the centre of the wither mark, reaches Faulkner. His eyes widen a bit as she does so, as if he can’t quite believe that his river would fail him in his moment of triumph.
Carpenter has known her god far to long to think it reliable.
She plunges the shard of glass into Faulkner’s left eye. He screams in pain and Carpenter mutters a quick prayer that his death will be quick, there is little else she can do for him at this point.
Then Faulkner manages to stop screaming, keeps his cries of pain trapped in his throat and lets something different flood out.
“You should have aimed for the prayer marks,” he hisses, teeth bared as blood drips down his cheeks in a crimson tide.
Shit.
There isn't much she can do after that.
~
-crashing waves full of weeds and bracken and crawling angels of the river. Water filling her lungs and mud wriggling into her eyes.
Something twists her leg. A thing with claws that are too huge to be any crab or lobster that Carpenter can't see through the filth of her god.
The pain is huge and impossible but even as tears fill her eyes Carpenter finds it in herself to be grateful. Of all the ways her river knows how to do harm this is perhaps one of its least awful.
She wonders if it’s a boon. A final thank you after her years of faithful service. Considering what she’s done for her river Carpenter finds this to be a rather weak acknowledgement of her efforts and stops feeling grateful.
Then she’s crashing tumbling through dodgem cars and her river is a whirlpool with her at its centre and if she could just breathe then-
~
When Carpenter wakes up, it’s to her shock that she’s still alive.
This is better thanks of my service, she thinks in the direction of her river. She sits up with a grunt of pain and begins to inspect the damage.
Her leg is fucked. It’s no longer bleeding but in a cruel twist of fate it’s been sanctified. The flesh is hard and rough. Calcified. Carpenter can feel layers upon layers and limpets, with other squamous things sandwiched in between, clinging directly to her bone.
Where her new flesh meets her old she itches.
There’s also the fact that she has no idea where she is.
Or, maybe she does. That patch of bulrushes looks sort of familiar and she’s sure she heard this same bird song she's hearing now at some point during her and Faulkner’s pilgrimage.
She drags herself upright and finds that she can put weight in her new leg even if it makes her somewhat unsteady. She hobbles about the bank, moving inland.
Then she sees the body.
It’s not much of a body. More like a skeleton, picked clean by birds and angels of the river alike. Despite the fact that it’s lacking most of its distinguishing features, Carpenter knows in her soul that this is the body she and Faulkner saw near the beginning of their pilgrimage. Right before everything started to go to shit.
Carpenter let’s out a harsh laugh as she realises this, the sound of her torment echoing across her still and silent river.
“You’re telling me that was all the god damn exposition?” she screams at her god, angry tears blurring her vision.
Her river doesn’t answer her.
Carpenter sighs, it’s not as if she expected anything different. She picks herself up and starts trying to figure out what to do now.
She laughs again, gentler this time. She bets that Faulkner is doing the exact same thing.
Paige leaves behind Carpenter and Faulkner in search of a new god.
She doesn’t really know how to go about such a thing. She’s more than well versed in strengthening a god, years of practice have made her far better at cultivating worship than any preacher, but the search for a god is something she lacks background in.
At a loss for what else to do, Paige drives.
She keeps the silence for a while. Hoping that being alone with her thoughts might lend her mind to some form of holy revelation. She manages to keep that up for almost twenty minutes before she sighs in anxious boredom and starts fiddling with the radio dial.
Static gives way to whispering voices gives way to a prophet of some new religion. Paige turns the sound up in sudden interest.
“-dream is to create. Dear listeners, we have reached a new stage. An apotheosis, if you will. I have metamorphasised from a decaying, droning worker, asleep to all the things that matter, to a new man with new purpose in my heart. I have gone from a sacrifice to something sacred. Something new. My god saw me about to devote myself to a deity of unholiness and was so gracious as to call me to something deserving of my worship. And, in answer to that calling, let us sing our next hosanna-“
Paige keeps listening to the radio, fighting against the tiredness nipping at the edges of her consciousness as she does so. There’s banging in the background, the soundproofing of the room the host is in quieting it enough that you don’t hear it at first, but it’s certainly there. Sometimes it drops away, presumably when whoever’s trying to get into the recording booth succumbs to the sleep that Paige is fighting so valiantly against. It keeps coming back and Paige thinks that a lot of people must be very desperate to get this man to stop worshiping his god.
Coming to a decision, Paige pulls over and gets a map out to try and find the radio station this prophet must be broadcasting from. She wants a new god after all, a gentler one than any she’s been provided with so far. And even if this man's god is not her god, and Paige suspects that it is not, then maybe he’ll still be able to tell her how to birth something she can worship. Just like he did.
redraw of one of my fav faulkner drawings from a while back!! this has been in my To Draw list for so long lmao
the old drawing ⬇️
4 episodes into The Silt Verses and I’m already being so normal about it
Can you see I am having too much fun with this ndjejjdjwn
I was thinking of doing a relisten so maybe we could like do it semi together. Fawkner from the silt verses is one of my favorite characters of all time and some times I just don't have it in me to listen to his bullshit
you would also probably like the Prenumbra Pod it's crazy gay
One of the things I love when it comes to the Redactedverse is that the listeners have separate personification outside of self-inserts. It’s vague for some listeners—but super clear in others. I enjoy disagreeing with the actions a listener takes! And when they have ideas that conflict my own morals. It makes them feel separated from me but also separate from other listeners. Some listeners would to the exact same thing in a similar situation—while others wouldn’t dare to. That’s SUPER neat to me 😞
Which is why it’s a bummer that I didn’t get to experience the Fred & BrightEyes stuff while it was going on. Having a Listener who does actions that get them into very severe trouble is such a fun concept. Even though it’s harder to agree with what they’re doing. It’s the same reason I resonated with the Geordi playlist. Cutie’s character is so clearly in the wrong and it makes their situation interesting to analyze.
All this to say: More Audio Creators in general need to make characters who aren’t 100% good people all the time :3 pleaaase
That's Like the only episode where he's good at his job of cult leader
okay at this point i can’t even be mad at Faulkner for his cult leader bit. like idk guys this far he is pretty competent cult-wise, he is kinda killing it. if i were at the Gulch id be like hell yeah brother i guess the river do be rising for you—
the whole conflict with Roemont and how it all worked out is pure gold like fucking hilarious
Faulkner is still the funniest guy ever, love all his dramatics, idk guys id vote for him
my favorite part of the silt verses ep. 38 is that there is a version of it that exists entirely in my head that is just Fawkner and Rain doing sit-com shenanigans to convince Fawkner"s family that he has a job other then cult leader
I just learned how to scan physical drawings to my computer so here is some fan art of Carpenter I made awhile ago. I really love drawing her
Truly a plight for the ages
Faulkner is like "god I'm so lonely" and then he keeps killing everyone around him and/or framing everyone around him for murder
I think it’s interesting that the many below is literally a god that let’s you choose the thing that eats you
I totally forgot that Sid Write is a saint
So Val is the same type of entity as Sid Wright, just... one tier higher, yeah? A humanoid saint still possessed of apparent free will, who can do terrible, reality-bending things to anyone who hears her voice?
...how *exactly* did the Peninsulan scientists figure out how to create her?
Horrifying. I love it.
The river rises 🙋🏼🦀
They evolving
Crawer Pot, Porcelain, 2023
Are there any poems that inspired TSV? I know I asked a similar question about plays, and I really loved the ones listen!
Well, there's a huge amount of Seamus Heaney in the landscape and vibes of TSV (particularly the bog-sacrifice poems for obvious reasons, the early Death of a Naturalist work trying to make sense of his childhood and parents, and his Buile Suibhne translations), and generally speaking we're sort of riffing off symbolist knight-errant narratives which includes poems like Faerie Queene.
They're almost too obvious and famous to be called influences, but I don't think you can write anything about religious and apocalyptic dread without feeling the looming shadow of The Waste Land, The Hollow Men and The Second Coming, and I think there's a lot of buried Rime of the Ancient Mariner homages in Carpenter's story (like one who on a lonesome road, etc) and Kubla Khan in Faulkner's.