Ouroboros

Ouroboros
I bet you thought that you’d succeed
Pulling the wool right over me
Hard to believe this snake stayed in the grass
Just long enough to catch the rabbit’s feet
With telescoping glances, hands romanced, enticing you to keep
Laboring against the clock in spite of secrecy
You couldn’t know, revealed itself to me
The second you decided to compete

I fell down and I fell apart
“I never wanted to hurt no one, I never wanted to be your city’s son”
Then I cried out to his crooked heart
“I never wanted to hurt no one… no one but you”

I bet you thought that you could breathe
A satisfied sigh of relief
A terrible thing, forgetting where you came from
Or have you trouble when you fall asleep?
I’ve seen you fabricate, manipulate and here, you masquerade
But if we’re poaching ghosts, you know I’ve got a few that I would raise
Settle yourself; as long as I’m protected
You can bet your secret’s safe with me

I fell down and I fell apart
“I never wanted to hurt no one, I never wanted to be your city’s son”
Then I cried out to his crooked heart
“I never wanted to hurt no one… no one but you!”

Lost my soul in the place of the great deceiver
Foolish hearts led foolish plans awry; they told me:
“Don’t veer far from your home, try never to leave her”
Near, I landed; here I’ll live and die
Traveled too far from the River’s side

But it wasn’t long before I felt nothing below me
And all of the ground I thought I’d gained, taken away
I thought I was strong, not strong enough, my mettle was bending
Foolish plans kissed foolish hearts goodbye
Traveled too far from the River’s side

🌲🌲🌲

What happens?
Now that Hunter is situated comfortably as the Mayor, TP&P confronts him in private at Church about his identity theft and reveals himself as the Pimp. He threatens to reveal Hunter’s true identity if Hunter fails to do what TP&P wants. Hunter is devastated and realises his efforts as the Son have been for nothing, and that he is now under the control of the villain he wanted to destroy most.

What’s in a name?
‘Ouroboros’ — a powerful symbol, the snake eating itself. Here it signs the ending and beginning of a cycle; a process of death and rebirth; an ending that gives way to beginning; things staying ever constant through cycles. Somewhere between ‘Here’s To The End And Start Of Another Life, Hunter,’ and ‘Yes Hunter, The Pattern Is Still The Same’.

Whose viewpoint?
Hunter and TP&P alternating.

🌲🌲🌲

>0:00 – 0:07 Instrumental
Church service for the day has wrapped up. Hunter is in attendance.

>0:08 – 0:27 Instrumental
As the Congregation leaves, the Priest pulls Hunter aside to talk privately in the confessional. It is not altogether atypical for Hunter and the Priest to be talking like this, given how closely they have collaborated — but something is different this time, and there’s an air of unease as Hunter settles into the confessional…

>I bet you thought that you’d succeed / Pulling the wool right over me
This is TP&P talking to Hunter. TP&P starts the conversation, maintaining the pretence that he is merely the City’s humble Priest, and accuses Hunter of deception.

>Hard to believe this snake stayed in the grass / Just long enough to catch the rabbit’s feet
‘Just long enough to catch the rabbit’s feet’ -> Long enough to get a reward/good fortune from it = long enough to situate himself as Mayor without anyone realising he committed identity theft, and is not the person he claims himself to be.

>With telescoping glances, hands romanced, enticing you to keep / Laboring against the clock in spite of secrecy
‘He telescoped his hand’. Telescoping glances here conjures the image of Hunter glancing about suspiciously (so he’s fearful of people figuring out the truth) but also in a way that sucks people in, ‘hands romanced’ is him making a big show of doing good things (’Every feigning flame I chance upon / I put the fire on’) and networking (’romancing’ people with his deeds). ‘Laboring against the clock’ points to his ceaseless effort in doing things as Mayor; we already saw this in King of Swords, but he’s been extremely active around the community and devoted to his general Mayoral work.

>in spite of secrecy / You couldn’t know, revealed itself to me / The second you decided to compete
TP&P reveals that he has known Hunter’s true identity all along. Why? Because he’s Hunter’s old employer, the Pimp, and Hunter didn’t realise it (’you couldn’t know’).

>1:13 – 1:18 aaaAAAAaaaAAA
Revelation. Hunter realises the Priest is the Pimp.

>I fell down and I fell apart
Hunter is speaking now. He is distraught at the revelation of who the Priest really is, and who he has been collaborating with this whole time. Rather, no, this hasn’t been collaborating… Hunter has been used! Everything he thought he built, was really a design of the Priest! He never had anything! He’s lost!

>“I never wanted to hurt no one, I never wanted to be your city’s son”
Hunter has a breakdown. He expresses that he never desired to become so aggressive or to work for wicked ends — we can suppose that some of the people Hunter ripped down in his fight to get this seat… actually, maybe weren’t that bad, or at least didn’t need to be destroyed as thoroughly as Hunter attacked them. I mean, whoever the Mayor before him was, at the very least was above-board enough to get the Dime shut down in the first place. Fair, he might be turning a blind eye to the Priest’s scummery as the Priest, or just might not be aware of it, but TP&P was actually in an unideal position for once in several decades.

Further than that, Hunter really hasn’t desired to ever hurt anyone, ever. Though he has hurt people, and has done hurtful things on impulse, his desire has always been for peace and stability. He wants to help people, if he can. Hell, even his desire to destroy TP&P fundamentally came from his childhood desire to help Ms Terri.

And more, he expresses that he never really wanted to be Mayor. He likes the purpose the position gives him and how it, ostensibly, lets him protect the innocent. But the position of Mayor itself was one he never would have thought of pursuing — he had to be in the middle of an identity crisis to take it, and the Priest had to nudge him into it. He holds onto it so tightly because it’s all that he has. He never wanted to be subservient to the Priest, much less the Pimp. And he doesn’t want this being TP&P’s city.

Either way, he’s realising his Son persona will now be used to malicious ends, destroying its purpose for Hunter entirely… after he’s already committed himself to it too far to possibly back out.

>Then I cried out to his crooked heart / “I never wanted to hurt no one… no one but you”
Hunter finally expresses his hatred for, and desire to kill, TP&P. Ever since 1878, Hunter has wanted to destroy TP&P, even if he didn’t realise then who the target of his enmity was. TP&P is ultimately the cause of every bad thing in Hunter’s life: Ms Terri’s depression, Ms Terri’s suicide, Ms Leading’s prostitution… he is just an unambiguously evil entity that extorts people, exploits them, wears them down, and enslaves them at every turn, that the world is completely better without. He is the force that people must be protected from.

>I bet you thought that you could breathe / A satisfied sigh of relief / A terrible thing, forgetting where you came from
TP&P takes over the dialogue again, rubbing salt in Hunter’s wounds.

‘Thought that you could breathe’ -> There’s that breathe again. ‘I bet you thought you had found a better, comfortable, liberating, functional life for yourself as the Son.’

‘Breathe a satisfied sigh of relief’ -> ‘And in doing, left all the troubles of your past behind.’

‘A terrible thing, forgetting where you came from’ -> I mean it’s a taunt but it’s also true too; TP&P is aware of how important people’s pasts are to their identity, and how losing connection to that past is a way to make people malleable and degraded. Note the change of tone; TP&P has fully switched off his Priest guise.

>Or have you trouble when you fall asleep?
TP&P taunts Hunter again, probing him on the suspicion that he hasn’t actually erased all of his connection to his past, and that the pain of it still has been bothering him on top of the stress of trying to assume this new identity. Ie, that he hasn’t been able to live a ‘dream’ like he desired.

>I’ve seen you fabricate, manipulate and here, you masquerade
Since Hunter was collaborating with the Priest in his mayoral campaign, TP&P knows all the scummy tactics Hunter used to rip down his opponents, on top of the basic perfidy of his false identity. Apart from just telling lies about himself, and making purposeful moves to manipulate people, it kinda sounds like Hunter also straight-up framed/blackmailed people at some point?

>But if we’re poaching ghosts, you know I’ve got a few that I would raise / Settle yourself; as long as I’m protected / You can bet your secret’s safe with me
TP&P blackmails Hunter with the threat of revealing his true identity, on top of whatever other crimes he’s committed as the Son, unless Hunter protects TP&P. That is to say, from law enforcement, as well as protecting TP&P’s reputation, as well as from anyone else who’d contest him. TP&P is going to double down on whatever illegal ventures he wants to get up to, knowing he has the Mayor in his pocket.

>Chorus Repetition
Hunter falls into further despair as it sinks in that he’s become indentured to TP&P, and will be complicit in his corruption. Hell, not only complicit, he’ll be the biggest driver of corruption in the City, now.

>3:11 – 3:20 Instrumental
Hunter leaves the confessional, shaken.

>Lost my soul in the place of the great deceiver
Hunter has lost his self. A lot of it was a consequence of his own effort to become the Son, doing away with his ties to his own identity and replacing them with illegitimate things he does not really love — The Mother, his Wife, the Friends. Now he has lost the one thing that made it worth it: his power to do something good as the Mayor. Far from do anything good, he has become a servant of evil. Maybe even the ultimate evil.

There are a lot of equations made between TP&P and the literal devil — I don’t think he is the literal Devil, but he does represent that exact kind of force and that exact kind of energy, subverting the pious into sin, enslaving the vulnerable in false contracts, degrading people so they lose their selves, lies, deception, trickery. He has a very specific corrupting atmosphere that earns him all these diabolical epithets. It’s notable that our next big villain, Mr Usher, won’t have this atmosphere — even though he’s more sadistic, cruel, violent, canny, and ruthless than TP&P. The difference is that TP&P is framed like a propagator of outrageous lies and sin who delights in his nature, while Mr Usher is just a guy. Just a really, really sick and vicious guy.

>Foolish hearts led foolish plans awry; they told me: / “Don’t veer far from your home, try never to leave her”
Hunter thinks back on his encounter with the Oracles on the train. He regrets and curses himself as an idiot for not listening to them, for not returning to the Lake immediately, and for running away from Ms Leading when they advised him to reconcile with her.

>Near, I landed; here I’ll live and die
Hunter recognises he will never be able to leave the City again. His position is too prominent and TP&P’s blackmail over him is too absolute. He also does not have the option to ‘kill’ his present self and assume a new life, as he has consistently been doing when faced with problems, for the same reason.

And the life he’s going to be living here will be utterly miserable. Every day he’ll be going through the motions of this false life, under this false identity, with this false family, false religion, putting on false smiles, giving false love, manufacturing his false piety, telling false promises to his constituents who look up at him with admiration and hope… all while he drives them deeper into deception, manipulation, corruption, and sin as the prize pawn of a greedy conman.

>Traveled too far from the River’s side
Hunter regrets leaving the Lake — he concedes now, utterly defeated, that he never had a chance of overcoming the evil of the City. He could never become strong enough to face the world outside. A sheltered environment of purity and innocence was where he belonged, and the only place he could have even theoretically survived in.

Hunter’s folly in desiring otherwise has led him to be enslaved and corrupted.

>But it wasn’t long before I felt nothing below me / And all of the ground I thought I’d gained, taken away
The foundation he has built for himself as the Son is gone. More than that, all the lessons he feels he has learnt along his journey, and all the developments he thought he made toward becoming a more complete or stronger person with a sense of agency, are also gone. Everything is gone. He has nothing.

‘And what’s the worst I’d see / By giving myself to the earth below me?’. This, Hunter.

>I thought I was strong, not strong enough, my mettle was bending
Hunter thought he had, through all the ups and downs, become a stronger person since leaving the Lake.

He did not become a stronger person. He was just an idiot who didn’t know how to deal with his problems, and made the wrong decisions, every time. He did not know how to deal with heartbreak, he did not know how war would devastate him, he did not see how empty this false identity would be, and he did not know how to recognise or combat evil vigilantly enough to rebuff it before it crushed him under its thumb. Where was the sun?

>Foolish plans kissed foolish hearts goodbye
Now that he has taken this path into corruption, the innocence of Hunter’s youth is irrefutably gone and not returning.

>Traveled too far from the River’s side
And that’s where Hunter has found himself, going into Act V — poor guy.

>5:10 – 5:25 Instrumental
Womp womp. Don’t worry Hunter, I’m sure you’ll find a way out of this… somehow…

Wait | Act IV
Act V | Regress