The Poison Woman

The Poison Woman
The seed of the apothecary, an heir to aided ends
She loves the sound they make as they expel
A breath, the soul from their chest
She laughs a little, but never makes a sound

She swears she’s offerin’ you something savory (What lies she tells)
So take a drink, her product’s number one (Right down the hatch)
And now, it seems, a smooth intoxication, well
Just one drop is more than enough

She never dwells on penitence, advancing in a haze
A million men have reached an end
A side effect of incompetence
She laughs a little, but never smiles

She swears she’s offerin’ you something savory (What lies she tells)
So take a drink, her product’s number one (Right down the hatch)
And now, it seems, a smooth intoxication, well
Just one drop is more than enough

She has her superstitions, they’ve got their rationale on call
(They never saw it coming, they never stood a chance)
She’s got a new tradition, involving ethylene glycol
(They never saw it coming, they never stood a chance)
She has no apprehension, habit sustains her wickedness
(They never saw it coming, they never stood a chance)

With the weight of the world on her shoulders
She don’t want none of the sins
As they unfurl in her palms, in her palms
With the weight of the world on her shoulders
She don’t want none of the sins
As they unfurl in her palms, in her palms
Take this bottle, take this bottle, take this bottle…
Take this bottle, take this bottle, take this bottle…

🌲🌲🌲

What happens?
Having escaped the Tank, Hunter joins another group of soldiers who take respite in a roadside tavern. However, the proprietress is the Poison Woman, who laces the drinks she sells with fatal poisons. The other soldiers heedlessly drink her offerings and die, but Hunter refrains as he doesn’t trust her. When only she and him are left, she gives him a bottle of poison and Hunter continues on his way.

What’s in a name?
‘The Poison Woman’ — our second horror. She represents Death, which there’s certainly a lot of in war. She’s a much more subtle and complex figure than the Tank, certainly wicked for what she does, but almost like a beleaguered force of nature that has stopped seeing worth in her actions, yet continues anyway. There’s something extremely grim about her being the figure the soldiers come to when seeking joy or respite, as if they should know better of what they’re going to receive, yet somehow, she sneaks up on them and they still don’t.

Whose viewpoint?
Hunter.

🌲🌲🌲

>The seed of the apothecary, an heir to aided ends
Straight into the lyrics on this one, but let’s pause a second to talk about the music here. The vibe of the Poison Woman is not just a mysterious one — it’s a mystical one, as though she is a fortune teller or oracle (note, not an Oracle). With her knowledge of poisons and medicines, she seems to be in tune with ancient natural secrets (reinforced with these images of apothecary herbs, superstitions, traditions), which others will always find inscrutable. It’s like you’re entering this room all smoky with incense and crystals before revealing the actual setting of the bar, which still carries that seedy cabaret vibe.

Anyway, the lyrics. The Poison Woman is the daughter of an apothecary who specialised in euthanasia. She has taken her father’s teachings (we can figure she paid close attention) and applied them not to aid those wishing to die, but to murder those ignorant that they shall die. Then again, in the context of war, of all the deaths you’d possibly choose, one so pleasant and smooth you don’t even notice it is perhaps the most attractive… while also being the most cruel. You can question whether she still has some sense of her dad’s ethic in her, or if she’s just twisted after being exposed to death so young (and taught by a loved one how to properly inflict it as a positive thing — definitely some wires crossed there).

>She loves the sound they make as they expel / A breath, the soul from their chest
The poison woman’s motives are stated: she likes watching people die. We could call her a pure sadist, but she moreso seems to have a fascination with the spiritual side of death and the process of the soul dying. She likes that moment of transition when someone who was living and active becomes a corpse, and the gravity of a soul wisping into the air as everything else is still.

Don’t get me wrong, she’s still rotten and still sadistic, but given that she rewards Hunter for seeing through her, the tenor is like she’s teaching these people who don’t respect death to respect it.

>She laughs a little, but never makes a sound
Indicating several things here.

One: She’s subtle. She can’t be taken at face value, because she’s the type of person who can lie while saying nothing untrue. In this way she’s able to leave people unsuspecting of her even when she’s telegraphing what she’s about to do — not that she brags, or goes out of the way to bring great attention to it.
Two: She has fun tricking people, but is smart enough to stay quiet about it.
Three: For how she enjoys what she does, it doesn’t fulfil her. There is some element missing in the Poison Woman that she can’t seem to compensate for and leaves her empty.
Four: Hunter catches signals of her untrustworthiness that makes him doubt her off the bat. The emptiness in how she laughs while chatting with the patrons rubs him as awry.

>She swears she’s offerin’ you something savory (What lies she tells) / So take a drink, her product’s number one (Right down the hatch)
‘Something savory’ -> We can figure that what she’s offering is beer (or some other hearty alcohol) and from that, that she operates some business like a bar or tavern where alcohol is common. Hunter observes how she peddles drinks to the other soldiers, who, wheedled in by her sales pitch, don’t hesitate to drink up. Hunter, not trusting her at all, refrains, watching events as they unfold.

A note on Hunter being so wary — obviously he’s had his experience with Ms Leading to burn him a bit about trusting women (you can see in the WIMTBA music video that Hunter briefly sees the Poison Woman as Ms Terri, a font of comfort, similar to how he fell for Ms Leading, but quickly snaps out of it and shakes off her charm), but it’s moreso from his recent experiences in Cauda, WIMTBA, and the Tank. He’s coming off the tail of an encounter where he watched people throw themselves into certain death, so Hunter is finally in a position where he’s less naive than someone else. Soldiers who are still operating by their training, and are still willing to do ludicrous things like fight tanks, aren’t prescient enough to the danger they’re in every second they’re involved in this war. He is judging that the soldiers entertaining the Poison Woman are of this type, and combined with the signals he picked up from her, takes their willingness to listen to her as a warning that he probably shouldn’t.

>And now, it seems, a smooth intoxication, well / Just one drop is more than enough
‘Smooth intoxication’ -> pointing again to the presence of alcohol, but also to the manner in which people are wheedled in by the Poison Woman. She’s still a liar and a manipulator, but compared to say, TP&P, who is far more aggressive and controlling in his attitude, the Poison Woman eases you in by noting you that you wanted her drink in the first place. You come to her — not her to you. But what is she selling? Well, beer, but also death. I wouldn’t wager that these soldiers are suicidal, so much as they’re seeking comfort in the middle of war, and for those who won’t keep on their toes, death swoops upon them and obliges. The realisation that death isn’t a comfort, or that the comfort wasn’t worth it, only strikes once it’s too late. Really grim stuff.

Another thing on the TP&P comparison — TP&P keeps leverage on everyone around him to force them into serving him, while the Poison Woman just wants to see whether you’ll drink it or not. She is actually fine with people refusing her and if anything is impressed, or even a weird kind of happy, when Hunter does. He’s probably the first one to do that, too.

‘Just one drop is more than enough’ -> Self-explanatory, she’s extremely good at what she does and her poisons are so effective that one drop is enough to kill a man. The soldiers drink and get drunker, but they’re already doomed from the first mouthful. To take it as a metaphor, it’s like ‘you’re already dead the second you’ve dropped your guard to indulge’.

>She never dwells on penitence, advancing in a haze
The Poison Woman doesn’t care to think about how what she’s doing is wrong, (she rather seems reluctant to), she just keeps doing it anyway. This life of killing has become so fundamental to her that it seems she’s unable to do, or focus on anything else — as if she’s possessed, or going through the motions.

>A million men have reached an end
Showing the gravity of the Poison Woman’s warpath — also sounds like an accusation?

>A side effect of incompetence
But the Poison Woman brushes it off, dismissing those who fall for her tricks as incompetent. Though this is fundamentally her justifying her actions, it doesn’t quite sound like that, in the sense that she doesn’t see the big deal to need justifications for it in the first place. Either way, according to her, it’s her victims’ fault for being so unwary. Again, they’re not respecting how precarious their lives are.

>She laughs a little, but never smiles
Again, she enjoys her routine, but it doesn’t fulfil her. The pleasure she gets from her poisonings doesn’t last and doesn’t leave her satisfied. Outside of her act, she seems to be an extremely grim, or empty person. Which I guess, conversely, says that this little high is the only thing that gives her joy.

I would wager that she doesn’t even like her routine, honestly. She just does it because it’s what she does. Her fascination with death is still there, but surely going through the same song and dance of poisoning unsuspecting rubes gets passe after a while… and it probably sucks that you can only kill someone once, then it’s done.

>She has her superstitions, they’ve got their rationale on call
The soldiers have died by this point and Hunter is now accusing her for what she’s done. Having the opportunity to talk, she explains herself. It’s unclear what ‘superstitions’ she has exactly, whether that’s to be taken literally hearkening back to her family’s ethos (or some other significant element of death she adores), or if it’s just her appealing to vague philosophies on life and death for why her actions are permissible. She’s thought enough about these things to have the excuses on-hand to stave off this pressure, but principally she prefers not to focus on examining them.

To make a total guess though, I’d figure an easy rationalisation would be, “They’re soldiers and it’s better than getting blown up by a tank. You saw how unprepared they were, too, didn’t you?”

>She’s got a new tradition, involving ethylene glycol
Ethylene glycol is a colourless, scentless, sweet toxic chemical found in antifreeze — hard to distinguish when mixed as a poison. Her new tradition is of course that she’s taken her father’s lessons of euthanasia and turned them into murder, and has done this so consistently and for so long that she can say ‘well, it’s just my thing.’ Also notes that she’s not using herbs for this anymore so much as processed chemicals, breaking convention again. How innovative!

>She has no apprehension, habit sustains her wickedness
She does not fear being caught and does not feel any hesitation niggling at her to stop. This routine of poisoning her patrons is so ingrained in her that it’s on the same level as brushing or hair or getting dressed — she just does it because it’s what she does. She obviously doesn’t get as much joy out of it as she originally did, and by all metrics has reason to stop, but just doesn’t. She almost sounds to barely care, or to be overly confident, if she’s being so open with Hunter and admitting, ‘oh, no, the authorities aren’t a problem’.

Over these three lines, Hunter has put together his impression of her: she has excuses, but fundamentally doesn’t know why she does this.

>(They never saw it coming, they never stood a chance)
Hunter sympathises with the dead soldiers, transitioning into another accusation. However the Poison Woman justifies herself and dismisses their deaths as their own fault, she knew these people would drink.

>2:38 – 3:02 Instrumental
Unsure. Kind of a quiet moment with only the Poison Woman and Hunter present. Maybe the Poison Woman considering Hunter’s argument, and accepting it as right.

>With the weight of the world on her shoulders / She don’t want none of the sins / As they unfurl in her palms, in her palms
Innnteresting lines. Hard to read too

‘With the weight of the world on her shoulders’ -> The Poison Woman feels immense pressure.
‘She don’t want none of the sins / as they unfurl in her palms’ -> She does not want to be held accountable for wrongdoings.

There’s a really big, I mean really big, temptation to read these lines with her as a figure of death and be done with it. That kind of premise though starts making leaps, but at the same time you kinda need to make them…

I think one way to take it is: she’s incredibly talented at inflicting death. Simultaneously, from her father and perhaps other sources, she has dealt with extreme pressure or expectations to continue using this talent as her lifestyle. But, she does not like the moral ramifications of choosing who’s going to live or who dies, as if she has to justify why one life should live more than another. This is especially stressful in a warground where justifications and rationalisations are flying everywhere for why one side ought win and one side ought lose.

Rather than follow that train of thought to the conclusion of ‘I won’t kill anyone, then’, she went the other direction into ‘if we’re all equal, I’ll just kill anyone’. You transcend the whole issue of ‘well I killed him because he was hurting’ or ‘I killed him because he was an enemy’ or ‘I killed him because he wanted it’ and questioning if that’s acceptable when you go ‘listen, I’ll give anybody the cup, I just don’t force them to drink it.’ A death as the great equaliser kind of idea where she’s letting those who could die sort out the responsibility of whether they will or will not by themselves, while enjoying the trickery high alongside a mystical fetishisation of death.

If this is the vibe she’s going for though, Hunter has defeated her argument by underlining how she is deceiving people — if they knew upfront what she was offering, as Hunter was seasoned enough to know, they wouldn’t take it. She seems to break down at the correctness of this statement, or at the very least it works as impetus for her to reveal her inner thoughts to Hunter.

You can also take a more literal read of these lines: Hunter threatens the Poison Woman for her murders, and she takes the threat seriously enough to curry to him or voice repentance by surrendering her weapon (the ‘unfurling’ being the undoing of her whole scheme).

>Take this bottle, take this bottle, take this bottle…
In any case, the Poison Woman no longer wants to be responsible for the deaths she’s caused or will cause, instead passing that sin off to Hunter by giving him her bottle of poison. Now that he has it, he can decide what to do with it… and if he holds onto it, who he feels justified to kill without accountability. If a bolt of lightning could fall on one person, who do you think that should be, Hunter?

Inflection on this line is so hard to place, it’s like hopeful and desperate and crazed and dreadful at the same time. She obviously sees him as fit to be holding the bottle, though, given that he was competent enough to understand death. If he doesn’t use it, it exonerates her, if he does use it, that’s her worst critic proving himself no better than her… something like that, maybe.

In the literal reading, this is also her fobbing off her murder weapon to Hunter as a kind of peace offering for catching her.

>3:59 – 4:20 Instrumental
The Poison Woman’s motifs fade out as the squeaking from the end of the Tank appears again — Hunter has left the tavern.

>4:21 – 4:51 Instrumental
Alright what’s going on here… we have static, then bagpipes, then marching boots again, which fade out before the bagpipes end. The marching boots again suggest Hunter comes upon another group of soldiers (enemy?), but they depart before Hunter can catch up with them. The bagpipes are funeral pipes — the soldiers have gathered up bodies for later burial, which is the scene Hunter comes upon, when…

The Tank | Act III | The Thief

The Tank

The Tank
Eight wheels lusting for the lives of infantry (His bearings shift)
His turrets turning from accountability (He takes his aim)
We sing our final song and soon this verse is over

He makes advances ’till his wheels cease to roll (His God is smiling)
His God is smiling on his cold mechanic soul
His plot is perfect if it sees no contradiction

There’s no sign that he shows
A sign of slowing

You’ve stained your skin, and I won’t stick around, around
Long enough to count the hearts that hit the ground
So long ago, was I one of them?

Your urgency hastened by his ingenuity (It’s just a matter)
Matter of moments ’till your body is debris (So say a prayer)
His plot is perfect if it sees no contradiction

You’ve stained your skin, and I won’t stick around, around
Long enough to count the hearts that hit the ground
So long ago, was I one of them?

And still he moves on
Arm and iron conquer heart and soul

And what of those in silent disconnect?
Sundry souls akin in consequence
Begging for bliss beyond the pain?
Relief is just a turret’s turn away

You’ve stained your skin and I won’t stick around, around
Long enough to count the hearts that hit the ground
So long ago, was I one of them?

🌲🌲🌲

What happens?
A ferocious enemy Tank rolls onto the battlefield and slaughters Hunter’s squadmates. Before he can meet the same fate, Hunter flees the battle.

What’s in a name?
‘The Tank’ – pretty straightforward huh? It’s Hunter’s encounter with a tank, but there’s a little more to add here.

These next four songs — The Tank, The Poison Woman, The Thief, and Mustard Gas — each represent a horror of war that Hunter will come to face. These are the aspects of war that make it so uniquely terrible, so essentially, the worst parts of war. Hunter’s already dealt with the dehumanisation of conforming to political spin (Cauda), and experienced the pain and godlessness of active combat (WIMTBA), so how could it get worse? Oh, baby.

Of the horrors, the Tank represents Destruction. This is pure ruthlessness that has no regard for life, beauty, peace, love, history, humanity, or anything like that, but simply exists to destroy every asset the enemy has. Aside from the heartlessness of it, this is also the aspect of war that will desecrate historic monuments or landmarks, raze fields and forests, ruin inhabited cities, and generally crush whatever important or significant or sentimental things are around into dust. It can’t be compromised with because it doesn’t care — try to, and it just destroys you, too. Certainly, this is a step up from dealing with enemy soldiers, who are fundamentally human and can feel reluctance to harm other people or things.

Whose viewpoint?
Hunter.

🌲🌲🌲

>0:00 – 0:17 Instrumental
Man, what a horrible ‘hunting beast’ or ‘stalking beast’ atmosphere you get from just this sound. There’s an extremely good reason why this track is a common favourite.

So the enemy is revealed — a mighty tank, its turret scanning to and fro in search of prey. It spots the soldiers on the battlefield and beelines over, rumbling. I envision it like, the tank is so imposing and so massive that it feels like it’s moving slowly, but it’s actually so fast that the fact it’s gotten too close to outrun doesn’t register until you’re already doomed. I also see the ruthlessness of the ‘EIGHT’ in the next line being the tank firing off its first shot and instantly slaughtering a soldier before he’s even fully realised what this thing is that’s aiming at him.

>Eight wheels lusting for the lives of infantry (His bearings shift)
Wow okay okay okay. Every word here punches like a fist. Welcome to the horrors!

Where to begin here. The Tank is similar to Dear Ms. Leading in that lyrically it’s an extremely blunt, straightforward song (reflecting the nature of the tank it’s describing — blunt, violent, unsubtle, uncompromising, straightforward), so there isn’t too much storywise to divine here outside of what’s explicitly said: a tank shows up, massacres Hunter’s regiment in the most horrid, heartless display of violence (or perhaps even anything) he’s seen in his life, and rather than assuredly die fighting it, Hunter up and runs.

Still, there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on structurally. We have this very military call-and-response thing going on for one, similar to the sections in Cauda where Hunter was forcing himself to follow party line (’twisted beasts with a desire for disorder’) but more structured, which feels to confer the tank with the power of the entire enemy army behind it. Next, the character is the Tank, not the tank’s operator, who is acknowledged to exist but who is not the avatar of destruction in the utterly unsympathetic and mechanical way that the Tank is. Makes sense, since when you have a tank bearing down on you, you’re not going to be thinking much of the guy sitting inside it are you.

So that said, the line itself. The Tank moves with such mechanical precision and efficiency in how it targets a soldier, brutally destroys them, targets another, brutally destroys them, scanning for lives to extinguish, that Hunter characterises it as enjoying the process. There is absolutely no hesitation between it finding a target and destroying it.

>His turrets turning from accountability (He takes his aim)
The Tank does not see or care about all the pain it causes; again, even before the bodies it shoots can hit the ground, it’s already discarded that kill and is looking for another target.

To make a comment on this line’s relevance to Hunter: Hunter broke out of his indoctrination in Cauda because he recognised the pain he was inflicting (’with abrasive eyes, pain in plain sight’), so we can figure he felt accountable for it. Meanwhile the Tank doesn’t pause to give a toss; it just keeps going. It is truly evil.

>We sing our final song and soon this verse is over
Once the tank’s turret is pointing at you, you’re dead. Infantrymen armed with guns cannot take down a tank; everyone who attempts to fight it or even stays in its vicinity dies.

That said, the soldiers are not running. They are still collectively trying to fight the Tank, with Hunter (and the others too) realising that he will die in this engagement.

>(His God is smiling) / His God is smiling on his cold mechanic soul
‘Begging my God to make the wheels turn round’ — the God is the Tank’s operator, pleased with the Tank’s performance. The first call-response echo of this line reinforces the sentiment, though, to make the God simultaneously extend to the entirety of the enemy army, also pleased with the Tank’s performance.

>His plot is perfect if it sees no contradiction
Wait this line is kinda tricky. Essence of it though is ‘the Tank is never going to stop destroying, and is going to kill everyone here, because it doesn’t have a sense of morality that could stop it’. The ones who ordered the Tank be used are going to keep using the tank, despite the slaughter and heightened misery it brings, because it’s effective.

>You’ve stained your skin, and I won’t stick around, around
Second time in the album yet we’ve seen Hunter break out that ‘I’! Hello Hunter!

‘You’ve stained your skin’ -> Enough people have died for the tank to be covered in bloodspatter.
‘And I won’t stick around’ -> Hunter decides screw this, he’s not going to fight the Tank with the others, he’s deserting. This is why we hear the ‘I’ — he’s again breaking out of the soldier mindset, and this time from the unity he has with his regiment completely.

>Long enough to count the hearts that hit the ground
So many people are dying Hunter can’t even count them.

>So long ago, was I one of them?
Hunter has a moment of grim consideration; if he had faced this battle before he broke out of his indoctrination in Cauda, would he have been so trained and married to the war machine that he would have willingly flung himself at a tank the same way the other soldiers are, even though it’s obvious he would die?

>Chorus Repetition
Not too much change to note, but we’re hearing Hunter’s more ‘normal’/conscious tone show up here, like he can take a… not more objective view, but more of an outsider’s view of what’s going on here. In the sense of, dude, these people are throwing themselves at a tank. More of Hunter breaking away from his conception as a soldier — he has also put some distance between himself and the tank.

>2:40 – 2:44 Instrumental
Hunter is still on the battleground, but has secured a healthy distance between himself and the battle ongoing with the Tank. He either pauses and turns to see how the engagement’s going, or just glances over while still running, but either way he’s able to see how things proceed now that he’s not in immediate danger.

>And still he moves on / Arm and iron conquer heart and soul
The answer is, dumbfounding Hunter at the fact something so wicked even exists, the tank is still going. Why even bother? It’s obvious that the tank has won, the soldiers aren’t anything before it, but still it bothers to kill them!

‘Arm and iron conquer heart and soul’ -> The essence of what this song’s getting at, really. This technology is too powerful and too destructive for a human to even compare, enabling incredible slaughter that will be okayed, moral implications be damned, because it’s effective and useful for winning the war. It just kills and kills and kills and kills with no possible hope of stopping it. Sort of sounds like Hunter realising that principles, relationships, morals, ideals, feelings, so on and so on aren’t necessarily the strongest forces in the world. The Tank decimates these.

>And what of those in silent disconnect? / Sundry souls akin in consequence
Now we’re seriously getting Hunter’s usual inflection.

‘Those in silent disconnect’ -> The soldiers are coming to the same realisation that the principles and ideals they fight for mean nothing before the Tank, rattling their worldviews and sense of purpose. A lot of them are having a shellshocked Cauda moment, except it’s in the context of ‘what the hell am I doing! Why am I here!? Nobody here can stop this thing!’. Moreover, the realisation is properly setting in for anyone left that the opportunity to escape is gone, their fellows have unfailingly died before them without achieving anything, and they are also going to die in the same impotent fashion.
‘Sundry souls akin in consequence’ -> Fancy wording but basically ‘all the soldiers still near the tank, who will imminently die’.

>Begging for bliss beyond the pain?
The soldiers still left are already broken; the ruthless horror of the Tank and the war as a whole has defeated them. They simply wish for it all to end.

>Relief is just a turret’s turn away
The Tank obliges. They can’t even run or fight it — it’s pointless. They don’t just accept it, they look forward to it all being over. I get the image of the last soldier falling to his knees and letting it happen.

>Chorus Repetition
With the last of the soldiers being cleaned up, Hunter resumes running from the battleground. Strong (if harrowed) note of empathy on ‘was I one of them?’.

>4:23 – 4:39 Instrumental
Hunter has left the battlefield. What’s the scene here… we can hear some kind of door, or swing, creaking alongside several pairs of marching boots.

The creaking is likely to signal our next setting — a bar, or tavern, this being the opening of its rickety door.
The boots signal other soldiers — it sounds like Hunter has managed to find another allied group to attach himself to, and is going with them into the tavern.

What It Means To Be Alone | Act III | The Poison Woman

What It Means To Be Alone

What It Means To Be Alone
Oh, you were born with the sun
And oh, you will die with the moon
And everything you thought you had, you lost
But now, you’d never lose what you don’t have
Prayers from above, never answered quite enough
Now the only one you have is

You, with this cruel and bitter heart
You were cold and in love, left here naked in the sun
Run, scared, from this cruel and bitter world
This has only begun, as the bombs are bursting on

Smoke arose on azimuth glares, bodies brood in frigid winter air
Where families’ sons are robbed beneath their feet, and hearts concede
“Ab ovo,” the angel sings, “Ad astra”; our eyes to the sea
We thought that we had a cause for suffering
And reason enough to die alone

Oh, but you, with this cruel and bitter heart
You were cold and in love, left here naked in the sun
Run, scared, from this cruel and bitter world
This has only begun, as the bombs are bursting off

With our feet beneath us, with our hands to the sky
We extend our limbs begging “why oh why?”
Don’t turn away!

Prayers from above, never answered quite enough
Looking up never offered you too much
Now the only one you have is…

🌲🌲🌲

What happens?
Hunter, remembering his true wants and values, realises he has made a mistake in coming to war. He feels the absence of God as he fruitlessly prays to leave this pointless hardship, when a terrifying foe approaches…

What’s in a name?
‘What It Means To Be Alone’ — Something Hunter is coming to realise, as he finds himself utterly out-of-place and stranded in the middle of this war… but what does it really mean to be alone? Well, I’d say this: It means you have nobody to rely on.

Whose viewpoint?
Hunter. And/or an Omniscient voice, but principally Hunter.

Actually I suppose this warrants more attention. A lot of this song is in second person, speaking with perfect omniscient knowledge of Hunter’s journey and motives, but the speaker does not have the intonation of the Oracles (it’s closer to Hunter’s) nor are they speaking directly to Hunter. Hence, the omniscient voice here is not the Oracles. Rather, the voice seems to be affirming various realisations Hunter is having about his actions and journey, with an incredible tone of compassion and mercy. So, apart from simply being framing for Hunter to introspect (in large part the realisations he’s making don’t sound like consciously wrought trains of thought so much as the scales dropping from his eyes), I wonder if the speaker is the ‘angel’ Hunter identifies in this song (and that features prominently in this song’s music video).

With there being no supernatural elements to the story though, I wouldn’t take it as a like, a literal angel appears and tells Hunter these things. It’s more like… we’re hearing the voice of every higher positive force that loves Hunter but that can’t stop him or impinge on his will being venerated as Hunter realises that wow, he messed up. Parties you could throw in that group would broadly include God, ‘the universe’, Casey, You the listener, the part of Hunter that wants him to have a good life and stop messing up, and to go really crack something like the ghost of Ms Terri in heaven.

Fundamentally though I think the voice is just Hunter, framed from a higher vantage to get the point across of how to approach this song; the things the ‘angel’ says are the things Hunter is thinking, realising, or intuiting, these being deeply true and positive things to recognise, without necessarily demanding strenuous conscious thought put on them (he is still on the battlefield in the middle of a lot of attention-grabbing chaos right now. Maintaining a level of dissociation/distance probably helps when he has to flip into combat-ready survival mode on a dime.).

🌲🌲🌲

>Oh, you were born with the sun / And oh, you will die with the moon
Boy, what a pair of lines. Alright here’s my shot.

‘You were born with the sun’ -> Hunter’s true nature is that of a boy raised on love. As in tarot symbolism, Hunter is in a state of his greatest power, and greatest trueness to himself, when he is openly operating by the sentiments of pure love on which he was raised, given to him by Ms Terri. ‘Floating on wax wings / where is the sun?’ Ms Terri is the sun; so there is a literal element of Hunter being born to her, too — in short ‘Hunter! Stop letting yourself be a cog in the war machine and remember the sensitive, loving boy that you are!’.

‘You will die with the moon’ -> Hunter stifles himself, loses himself, and metaphorically kills himself when he abandons his true nature. The persona he took as a soldier in Cauda was not true to himself and was a form of killing himself; he has snapped out of it this time, but will come to discard his true self for more fake personae, leading ultimately to his non-metaphorical death. In the context of the war, if he continues to be a soldier, he realises he will likely die because he stopped thinking for himself. (Also to stretch a bit, and return to the idea of a Dime/Moon connection, you can also make a literal read of Hunter dying with TP&P, with TP&P being the moon to mirror Ms Terri/sun.)

Indeed, now that Hunter is thinking as Hunter again, we can see his actual opinions about this war, and they are certainly more vulnerable sentiments than the anger and belligerence expressed in Cauda.

Song as a whole has this amazing tone of mercy to it; I suppose that is what Hunter needs or is seeking right now.

>And everything you thought you had, you lost / But now, you’d never lose what you don’t have
Boy, WHAT a pair of lines. Hokay.

‘Everything you thought you had, you lost’ -> What did Hunter think that he had? We can trace his obvious losses of Ms Terri and Ms Leading, but can probably go further — he’s lost his feeling of belonging here, of purpose here, of home here, of desire to be here, perhaps even his pride as a morally justified person…

‘You’d never lose what you don’t have’ -> Since what he lost is everything, what he has is nothing, which means he has nothing to lose. He has no attachments to anything going on in the war anymore, and hence no scruples against trying to distance himself from it, aka to stop thinking like a soldier. Further, since he has nothing, there’s a sort of liberation in that… he can pursue whatever he wants without fearing the consequence of losing anything else. It’s also kind of like, ‘do you feel comforted, having run from everything in your life? This is where you wind up when you do that…’.

>Prayers from above, never answered quite enough / Now the only one you have is / You
Interesting phrasing.

‘Prayers from above, never answered quite enough’ -> Hunter has voiced several requests over the course of the Acts to reach a good ending, specifically in HHMHT and VVV with the ‘sing me to the lake’ reprises. While he has experienced some positives, the negatives have been far heavier. He does not feel his wishes are being heard, or rather, that the important part of them isn’t in any consummate fashion. He had a happy life with Ms Terri? She dies. He has a happy life with Ms Leading? It turns complicated. He sees prospects of comfort elsewhere? He’s allowed to try it, but it’s worse than where he came from.

Prayers ‘from’ above twigs at me though, wouldn’t a prayer usually be to above? I wonder if there’s not a double meaning in the sense of, Hunter feels alone because he’s realised that higher powers aren’t going to give him the perfect happiness he wants, while everyone watching along with the story knows that Hunter got himself into most of these messes and could’ve been fine if he’d just one thing different.

Either way, the nets are gone. Wherever he thinks to go next, he has to get there without relying on the universe to favour him.

Edit: Figured this one out. Prayers ‘from’ above is the demands of the Christian religion, which Hunter is saying don’t answer his major life questions sufficiently or suitably. Basically he doesn’t see how living as a good Christian, or accepting Christian doctrine, explains the realities of life he’s seeing in front of him, leading him to disillusion with the faith.

>You, with this cruel and bitter heart / You were cold and in love, left here naked in the sun
‘This cruel and bitter heart’ -> Hunter’s been cruel and bitter in his behaviour during Act II, but I think this is moreso pointing to his mindset as of Cauda; Hunter is recognising that his cruelty and bitterness is what got him into his current predicament. He was cruel and bitter leaving the Lake, cruel and bitter dumping Ms Leading, then cruel and bitter as a soldier… maybe he’s just the problem?

‘You were cold and in love’ -> Pointing to his treatment of Ms Leading; cold owing to the pain of Ms Terri’s suicide that he was trying to bandage (and his consequent edginess that made him flip so hard), in love because he was indeed in love. These two sentiments collided poorly, but Hunter sounds to be starting to recognise how it happened/maybe even forgive himself for it?

‘Left here naked in the sun’ -> Hunter was and is in an extremely vulnerable position coming to war. To be naked doesn’t just imply babelike innocence (he trusted the war machine to love him) or defencelessness (he has nothing to fall back on to get him out of this), but being naked ‘in the sun’ implies being completely exposed. Hunter cannot even pretend to like, agree with, or keep the rhetorics that training has battered into him, or that his pained ego convinced him were good ideas.

>Run, scared, from this cruel and bitter world
Hunter recognises that the world outside his designated safe zones is dangerous and hostile. He wishes to return to the comfort and safety he had when sheltered by Ms Terri, which he found again in his relationship with Ms Leading. Simultaneously, Hunter is thinking about escaping from the war as soon as he can, to get back to somewhere more familiar (so the City or the Lake).

>This has only begun, as the bombs are bursting on
This shot grounds us in the scene of where Hunter is: on an active battlefield, with bombs literally going off all around him and his unit. Though Hunter has been at war long enough to know he doesn’t like it, he also recognises that he broke quickly and doesn’t have the constitution to continue doing this for the full length of the war. Rather, knowing it’s Hunter, I bet what he wants is for the whole war to end the second this engagement’s over and he can return to camp — obviously, not going to happen.

Simultaneously foreshadowing the four horrors of war Hunter will face over the next four songs, which he is still naive to.

>Smoke arose on azimuth glares, bodies brood in frigid winter air / Where families’ sons are robbed beneath their feet, and hearts concede
Transition lines from the omniscient voice to Hunter’s grounded, conscious voice. These are sights Hunter has witnessed that left an extreme impression on him, but the intonation is still that of the omniscient narrator — that’s how we know the narrator in both cases is Hunter. Really impressive how smooth the transition is here by the way, like it’s to the point you almost don’t notice it despite being so explicit. Rooted in the way the pronouns bounce around, from ‘you’ to none to ‘we’ with the physical scene transition happening from the illustrations of action in ‘run, scared’ and ‘bombs bursting on’ into an outright scene description ‘smoke arose on azimuth glares’ after all that thinky-feely stuff.

Another case of the softness of Hunter’s voice feeling like him being very honest and in-tune with himself; won’t last, but over the transition it’s there.

ANYWAY

‘Smoke arose on azimuth glares’ -> ‘Azimuth’ means the angle between a reference point (say, north), an observer, and a point of interest along a straight vector from the observer (say, a town); here though, it’s in reference to azimuth bombs or AZONs, an early form of guided bomb. Fancy language to describe smoke rising in the distance as infrastructure is bombed, with the added dramatic element of distant explosions and the trail of the smoking flares that were also characteristic of AZONs.

One thing to note though is that AZONs were WWII things, not WWI things. This might be another one of those ‘alternate history’ moments or they’re not literally azons so much as it’s just borrowing the language to get the idea across of what these bombs are doing — hitting infrastructure.

‘Bodies brood in frigid winter air’ -> Self-explanatory, Hunter recounts a harrowing memory of seeing exposed corpses strewn across a battleground. I think these may be dead enemy soldiers in this particular case that are getting to him? BUT let’s zoom in on the coolest thing here… it is now WINTER! Since VVV was set in summer, we now know the timeskip between Act II and Act III covered at least two seasons for Hunter to travel and get trained up.

‘Where families’ sons are robbed beneath their feet’ -> Hunter has shed the military view of soldiers being pawns or resources; he recognises all the soldiers involved in this war, enemy or not, are people whose deaths their loved ones will mourn. Given the nature of conscription, beyond the men simply being robbed because they get killed, they are literally robbed in the sense that the compelling force of a mandate steals them from the safety of their homes (to get killed).

‘And hearts concede’ -> echoes of ‘love decays (while callgirls perform)’ in this. Basically describing Hunter’s situation in Cauda again; the soldiers know that being soldiers means forfeiting their personal sense of right and shutting off their selves to become tools of the machine, and even though nobody wants to do this, they do. Simultaneously, the families concede that these men are likely not to return again. SIMULTANEOUSLY, carries the literal element of hearts stopping — the soldiers dying.

>And hearts concede / “Ab ovo,” the angel sings, “Ad astra”
BEAUTIFUL line. Pretty layered one too, you know now that I have to properly think about them Act III has had a ton of these fat pithy lyrics and we’re only three songs in, it’s wack.

So, ‘ab ovo’ is latin for ‘from the egg’, used as part of a longer phrase ‘ab ovo usque ad mala’ or ‘from the egg to the apples’, with eggs being the first course of a typical meal and fruits being the last. The phrase then means ‘from the beginning to the end’, or in another sense, ‘in whole’, or ‘until it is completed’.

We’re not going to the apples though, we are going to the ‘astra’ — stars. With stars signifying the infinity beyond the earth, the fundamental meaning of the phrase stays the same: ‘from the beginning to the end’, but with the implication of going to somewhere higher and beyond this firmament, that is to say, to heaven.

The one singing this phrase is the angel: a divine messenger. Whatever the angel says carries the authority of God.

Finally, ‘and hearts concede’ blends into this line; it’s a part of it. So putting these elements all together, what is ultimately being described here is: the soldiers are conceding that god, or whatever fundamental force of the universe you want to say governs these things, will not intervene to stop the war and will not release them from it midway through. The war and the soldiers’ involvement in it will continue until it is complete, that being both the process of the war itself and its implications on the soldiers’ lives, which will definitely involve pain and likely involve death. This is how both the soldiers are conceiving it — they are not allowed to be freed from the horror of war until ‘the process’ is done — and how Casey is about to write Hunter’s encounter with the four horrors (and all of Hunter’s misfortunes in general actually; they never ‘stop’ halfway through).

At the same time, this is an extremely merciful line. It carries a promise that whatever is at the end is something greater, or something good, or some divinely-touched frontier we can only dream about scraping. The juxtaposition of ‘egg’ to ‘stars’ creates another image, of an infant at the beginning, then of man becoming dust and billowing out into the infinite cosmos at the end — somehow, there’s a method to all this.

Just really, really succinct and evocative way of looking at, well, life and death; the consummation of a life. Can see how these lyrics could capture the imagination of a screenwriter for over ten years.

>”Ad astra”; our eyes to the sea / We thought that we had a cause for suffering / And reason enough to die alone

‘”Ad astra”; our eyes to the sea’ -> Though the soldiers know the war will not end until it is ‘done’, and what ‘done’ may mean for them individually may mean dying, they are looking for an out. Screw whatever plan is going on, the soldiers want to run back to those steam ships and go home. Note the third person inclusive pronoun here; Hunter is talking explicitly now, and though he’s again framing himself as part of a collective mind of soldiers, we can figure this is him confessing that if he had the option right now he would say ‘screw this war!!!’ and go back to the City.

‘We thought we had a cause for suffering / and reason enough to die alone’ -> Another reference to the mindset instilled in Hunter in Cauda. Hunter’s military training told him that he would suffer this pain to defeat evil and protect the innocent, and that if he died that was a hero’s death. He has realised now it’s not like that at all. The machinations driving all this death belong to the politicians, not to the soldiers who are basically just ordinary people who in peacetime circumstances wouldn’t wish hurt on anyone. He doesn’t believe in his side’s unequivocal goodness anymore, hence doesn’t feel justified in what he’s doing or really see the point of it.

Moreover, Hunter knows what he really values is love. Implicitly, if he’s to suffer for a ‘cause’, that ‘cause’ would have to be love.

>Chorus Repetition
The background vocals on this repetition are ‘Who’s laughing now?’. So basically drawing attention back to the attitude with which he left Ms Leading, particularly his mockery of her in Red Hands and arrogance he could find better than her in VVV — Who’s laughing now? Not Hunter. He completely messed up.

>With our feet beneath us, with our hands to the sky / We extend our limbs begging “why oh why?”
Extremely evocative. The soldiers beg God to intervene and release them from this pain — the first explicit depiction of Hunter struggling with faith. We know that Ms Terri was ex-Catholic and struggled with the Church, so you can question how religiously she would’ve raised Hunter, but she also wanted him to integrate with the Lake and have a good sense of morals, with her own morals still being fundamentally Christian despite her experiences with the Church, so it’s possible he could still be basically Christian. I can’t tell if this is Hunter questioning capital-G-o-d God yet, because I’m not sure how much stock he put in God from the start, but it is certainly his view of the world being fundamentally a good place, that will provide for him, shattering.

Actually it’s probably both. So, starting, it’s a callback to 1878 and The Lake and The River, (’Branches twisting reaching for the sky / Hands extending reaching for the…’, ‘His branches reached so far before / His leaves were bold extremities with great control’) evoking the image of the Tree. The Tree is both a paternal figure for Hunter and a symbol of the boundary between the idyll of the lake and the danger of the world outside it; Hunter is now calling for a paternal figure (God) to demarcate the line of what is safe and what is dangerous and keep him securely inside the ‘safe’ zone of life, that is, for his life not to have pain or suffering, since God should be able to guard him from experiencing such things.

But of course, Hunter already left that safe zone when we went past the Tree to see more of the world outside. He is realising now that all of the world outside is not safe, and nobody is protecting him now. This isn’t yet the condemnation of God that we’ll see in Mustard Gas, but this is him realising what it means not to be sheltered.

With the Tree being a very masculine symbol too, really like it being invoked here in the context of soldiers. Don’t have much more on that thought but it’s neat.

>Don’t turn away!
Beautiful! Hunter calls out for God not to abandon him. Can’t add much more than that; the singing here stands for itself.

>Prayers from above, never answered quite enough / Looking up never offered you too much
This is a bit of a wild read here but I can’t help but hear the repetition of this first line echoing Ms Terri’s wish for Hunter to stay innocent and have a happy life, probably because of the reference to the Tree a verse earlier.

‘Looking up never offered you too much’ -> Getting a little sardonic. This is of course Hunter resigning that putting his faith in God to usher him into happiness so far hasn’t worked out, but also saying that his optimistic attitude towards finding things that would solve his problems (HHMHT, Smiling Swine, VVV) also never worked out. ‘I need to stop expecting things to go well for me’.

>Now the only one you have is…
Hunter feels alone. Ms Terri is gone, Ms Leading is gone, and now it even feels like God has turned away from him. He recognises the only one who can get him out of the place he’s put himself now is him, when something catches his attention…

>4:17 – 4:50 Instrumental
Rising from the smoke of the battlefield, the silhouette of this terrible machine instantly mutes all sentiments of mercy. As its mighty, wicked turret swishes side to side, the Tank, vanguard of the four horrors, draws nearer, and nearer…

In Cauda Venenum | Act III | The Tank

In Cauda Venenum

In Cauda Venenum
We’re biting our tongues, (biding our time)
An apparition; awoken
With an urge to own and occupy
Who ever said this was easy?

A majesty’s massacre floods the fields of red
Blood to your body naturally rushes the blood to your head
To your head!

And now, with our hands in line, these arms move tonight

And we cry (whoa) “we can not allow this, this is terrible!”
With ideals, we’re idle as they lust for more
Whoa, if we settle the score
We’ve never been so excited to see you before!

In the cradle we are helpless
But on our feet we are fatal
How we evolve and grow into
(Twisted beasts with a desire for disorder)

Oh! What a terrible, terrible game we play
Replacing a pawn for a body and the players
Politicians, who say what they need to say

Now, with hands aligned, arms move tonight
Here, with abrasive eyes, pain in plain sight

And we cry (whoa) “we can not allow this, this is terrible!”
With ideals, we’re idle as they lust for more
Whoa, when we settle the score
We’ve never been so excited to see you be…

Oh, when I think about your eyes
Oh, when I think about your smile
Oh, when I dream about your lies
Traveled all this way just to find love

🌲🌲🌲

What happens?
Hunter, now a trained soldier, is deployed to the battlefront on a counter-offensive after an attack on allied territory. Distasteful of the tool his superiors have shaped him into, and uncomfortable with the cruelty of battle, he realises his true desire is to return to Ms Leading.

What’s in a name?
‘In Cauda Venenum’ — latin for ‘the poison is in the tail’, or ‘the worst is yet to come’. Though the experiences described here are already rough, it’s incomparable to the horror that will come.

Whose viewpoint?
Hunter. Get ready for a lot of him — sans the Oracles intro, he’ll be our narrator for the whole album.

🌲🌲🌲

>0:00 – 0:26 City Escape Reversed
Earthshattering. Nevermind Writing on a Wall, welcome to the real Act III.

So this is the opening riff from City Escape, but reversed. In City Escape, it described a chaotic situation in a familiar environment. Here, it’s a chaotic situation in an unfamiliar environment. This is pandemonium, disorientation, destruction, adrenaline… yeah, this is a war.

Can’t help but envision those loud DUH-DUH-DUHs as bombs detonating. Shot in my mind is like watching planes high over the territory dump their payloads, and buildings below exploding, before the ‘camera’ redirects to Hunter’s camp, with his superiors in a fervour as news of the attack comes in and countermeasures are hastily planned (0:18 – 0:26).

>We’re biting our tongues, (biding our time) / An apparition; awoken / With an urge to own and occupy
So first of all, what’s Hunter’s situation? There’s been a timeskip since he reached Europe, but how much has happened offscreen? Has he been deployed anywhere yet?

Going backwards, I’ll answer with my impressions of, ‘no’, ‘training’, and ‘he’s at camp, about to ship out into battle for the first time’. We can certainly hear that Hunter’s a lot less cheery or optimistic as he was in VVV, and also has some opinions about war, a subject he should be clueless about, and that he’ll form new opinions about once we see him in the field; so some Sergeant’s drilled these rhetorics into him. I’m sure he’s had ambient exposure to what war ‘is like’ from the rigorousness of his training and second-hand tales from or about other soldiers, but for now his opinions are either party line or telephone.

‘We’re biting our tongues’ -> News of the attack has come in. The soldiers are nervous as the enemy is growing bolder, and consciousness of the urgency of their side to respond is growing. Very soon, it feels, the relative safety of camp will be gone. Though this anxiety is strong, the soldiers do not voice it.

‘(biding our time)’ -> Rather, their nervousness is instantly recontextualised into an expression of power rather than fear. They aren’t trembling kids! They’re trained soldiers, ready to fight on the word ‘go’, simply waiting for the perfect moment to launch into a devastating counter-offensive.

‘An apparition; awoken with an urge to own and occupy’ -> The apparition here is enemy faction — Germany and its allies. Though all the soldiers have been told about the enemy, and how they need to fight the enemy, and must be prepared to die in battle against the enemy, as yet this enemy has been something of a ghost that everyone knows is doing things but hasn’t intruded into this squadron’s life. This attack changed that. The threat now feels extremely close, real, and hungry to dominate the territory near (or on) where Hunter is posted.

>Who ever said this was easy?
Well, fuck, thinks Hunter, but instantly dispels that thought with reminders from his training. It’s war! He shouldn’t mourn the easy ride he could have gotten if his post stayed uneventful. He’s tough, he’s trained, he is posted here to go to the battlegrounds.

>A majesty’s massacre floods the fields of red / Blood to your body naturally rushes the blood to your head
Hard lines. The majesty’s massacre could be a direct allusion to the killing of some specific figure, but could also be a more general idea of national rulers being these avatars of bloodlust considering all the slaughter going on in their name and by their orders. I think this is Hunter considering the casualties of the recent attack and angrily envisioning the culprit behind it: the enemy leader.

‘Blood to your body naturally rushes the blood to your head’ -> Unsure. Vibe I get is that Hunter is extending his sense of self (body) to include the unit that got destroyed in this most recent attack; he is taking the attack on that unit as equivalent to an attack on himself, (his self is his entire faction; rather, his self is a cell of the greater organism that is his faction), and is personally infuriated, bloodthirsty, and vengeful at the deaths of these soldiers.

Could read as some physical action here that gets him in the mood to fight. Maybe he’s recovering corpses at the scene of the attack (literally getting their blood on his body. Feels kinda stretch), hence provoking his animosity?

I think if he can describe the fields of red, then he was sent out to the scene of whatever attack just happened, so if he hasn’t been issued to fight yet, then I suppose a recovery mission makes sense. Sure we’ll go with that.

>And now, with our hands in line, these arms move tonight
Hunter’s unit is formally ordered to deploy and engage on the offensive.

‘Hands in line’ — evocative of a salute, but also of all the soldiers taking the same coordinated action and adhering to their orders obediently.
‘These arms move’ — evocative of a march, but probably carries the dual meaning of ‘arms’ as ‘weapons’, ie the soldiers are both equating themselves as weapons (these arms = we soldiers) and saying they will stage an attack on the enemy.
‘Tonight’ — It’s not happening yet. They first need to either wait for night or travel to the battleground.

>And we cry (whoa) “we can not allow this, this is terrible!” / With ideals, we’re idle as they lust for more / Whoa, if we settle the score
‘We cannot allow this, this is terrible!’ -> The thing about war is, you can’t just go into war with no justification for it, and especially with no moral justification for it. While this is a principle that matters more for politicians and higher-ups, who need to be conscious of foreign relations and keep domestic support, than footsoldiers who simply need to be obedient, it’s unsurprising that the rhetoric would leak down to Hunter’s squadron. Hunter feels not just a moral justification, but a moral duty to defeat the wicked enemy.

‘With ideals, we’re idle as they lust for more’ -> Hunter’s side is the ‘good side’, preoccupied with things like propriety and doing the right thing, which includes not invading others. But by that logic, being good leaves you as a sitting duck for malevolent actors. Hunter is agitated that this attack happened, agitated that the enemy hasn’t been squashed yet, is antsy to do something about it, and blames it on his side being too restricted by morals to be an aggressor, which means the enemy is super-evil for being the invader and needs to be stopped — they will only continue to destroy if left unchecked; morals will have to go in the bin for the greater good.

‘Whoa, if we settle the score’ -> Now that Hunter’s side has been attacked, they have justification to exact vengeance and properly defeat the evil.

>We’ve never been so excited to see you before!
Is this a variation on the build up of ‘it’s just that easy / pick yourself up’ in Evicted? Very much get that impression; certainly is illustrating Hunter’s experience meeting his recruiting officer when he first enlisted. I get the image of this very well-groomed man in impeccable attire and shiny white teeth, holding his hand out in a handshake… a bit like TP&P.

Because there’s obvious irony here, right? The officer’s excitement is happiness that Hunter is pledging to die for the cause, while we know Hunter signed up because he was in a painful place and desperate to find something happier. He probably wanted to take this welcome at face value, and feel like he found someone invested in him. As he recognises, though, the investment was in the tool the officers could mold Hunter into. Hunter seems frustrated about this, but still compliant, finishing the officer’s words.

>1:41 – 1:54 Instrumental
The counter-offensive occurs. Hunter’s side is successful.

>In the cradle we are helpless / But on our feet we are fatal / How we evolve and grow into / (Twisted beasts with a desire for disorder)
Interesting perspectives to be hearing from Hunter. Ostensibly it’s a comment on human nature, and how people will grow to be destructive and power-hungry once they have the means to dominate or oppress others… but Hunter hasn’t naturally grown to have any such inclination. We’ve seen him have violent desires before, but they’re certainly not from a desire for chaos — they’re from a desire for stability. If he thinks of himself as adapted to these chaotic circumstances, that is the result of methodical training designed to scour him of his hesitance.

So for him to recognize himself as deadly, and changing, suggests he has some battle experience now.

‘Twisted beasts with a desire for disorder’ -> This is not Hunter’s voice speaking. This is the party line of what Hunter’s superiors would want him to be, and what peer pressure is telling him to be; a bloodthirsty monster that thrives in the pandemonium of war, eager for new engagements where he can destroy the evil enemy. Hunter can see that this mindset is twisted, and is uncomfortable with becoming such a thing, but knows that’s the role the military has nurtured him towards and what he’s conforming to.

>Oh! What a terrible, terrible game we play / Replacing a pawn for a body and the players / Politicians, who say what they need to say
Accurate. Hunter is aware of how expendable his existence his is to his masters, and how his actions are under their absolute control, but also doesn’t seem to resist it. Rather, even he seems to accept that all the people involved on the ground are just resources, making the moves they do as proxies for their commanders who have no honour and face no risk.

>2:25 – 2:48 Instrumental
Not sure of any scene specifically but sure sounds cool. Another battle?

>2:49 – 2:58 Faster/Save Me Reprise
I think that’s what this is at least. Hunter seems to be pretty dejected about the place he’s gotten himself in. Specifically, what’s bothering him here is a problem on the ‘systematic’ level more than any specific personal experience: he feels used and unloved by the institution he’s chosen to trust himself to, but also feels like he can’t leave it.

Probably why this song has so much focus on the rationales behind war, monarchs, leaders, morals, politicians, people’s lustful desires to power, so on so on all in the collective ‘we’ and not too much description of Hunter’s individual thoughts and feelings on fighting itself (we’ll get these in What It Means To Be Alone). This is the stuff Hunter’s been thinking about, what he’s become as a cog.

Putters out very pathetically. Hunter’s quite resigned.

>Repetition: Now, with hands aligned…
More pained/aggressive this time. Starting off an active battle.

>Here, with abrasive eyes, pain in plain sight
Hunter’s peering out from cover… strains to find targets, fires, and sees the enemies drop. His takeaway of this isn’t a feeling of success though, but of having inflicted obvious hurt in a way he’s not really proud about. Alternatively he could just be getting a better view of the battlefield now and can see the obvious devastation that’s happened here; bodies, broken buildings, injured survivors… and knows this isn’t the better future he was looking for in VVV.

‘Open eyes, young man’. Moment of revelation.

>Chorus Repetition
Again more aggressive, spiteful, angry… some of that anger may be falling on the leaders who ordered this moreso than on the enemy soldiers, now.

‘We can not allow this’ -> We can’t allow scenes like this to exist; if looking at Hunter specifically, might have a tenor of ‘I can’t let this be my future’.
‘With ideals we’re idle as they lust for more’ -> Though the soldiers may know what they’re seeing is wrong, and that what they’re committing conflicts with their morals, their superiors will order them to keep going anyway.
‘When we settle the score’ -> So never, you mean? The commanders ordering this will never fall or understand what the battlefield’s like.

>We’ve never been so excited to see you be…
Hunter was able to obediently toe to the words of his superiors last time we heard this line; though his attitude through the whole last chorus repetition has been far more furious and hateful, this time, instead, he…

>Oh, when I think about your eyes / Oh, when I think about your smile / Oh, when I dream about your lies
HUNTER I SEE YOU’RE USING AN ‘I’ NOW! HELLO! GOOD BOY!

Yeah, instead of taking some kind of vengeful riposte at the people who put him in this situation, his real desires of comfort come out. Fighting has made him realise that he doesn’t want to be here and that he’d rather be back with Ms Leading.

‘When I dream about your lies’ -> just wanted to note the callback to ‘we fall beneath the sea of dreams’, with lies being a double entendre again.

>Traveled all this way just to find love
What a line. Hunter, Hunter, Hunter…

Hunter came here looking for belonging, safety, stability, comfort, all those things which we could sum up in the word ‘love’. He recognises now, finally, finally, that he won’t find it here. Nobody cares about him here, he doesn’t like what he’s becoming, and the chaos is horrible. Everything he wants he’ll find more ably by simply turning right around and going straight back to the City and straight back to Ms Leading, which he realises now is where he truly wants to be — because whoops, now that he’s not freaking over his ego out so much, and has a better sense of scale between ‘being an immature jackass’ and ‘being a weapon of the state’, he loves her.

These fantasies of being with her again are holding him together though the stress and demoralisation of this life as a soldier. I figure he is imagining that, when this is all over, he’ll listen to the love in his heart and zoom right back to her — debatable whether he actually would do this without getting cold feet again, but it’s a pleasant goal for him to look towards.

Have our Black Sandy Beaches ‘ee-ee-EEE-ee-EEE’ again, the ‘smiling through the pain’ theme. He might actually be in battle again by the end of this song but is zoned out thinking of Ms Leading lol.

Writing On A Wall | Act III | What It Means To Be Alone

Writing On A Wall

Writing On A Wall
Come away, young man, where the ground is red
And you need a mask to breathe
Oh it’s been so hard, but your luck could change
If you’d just roll up your sleeves
We had tried our best to warn before
But it didn’t get you far
Now we’re here again with a wish to mend
Your agonizing scar

Open eyes, young man, vigilante hands
And a heart prepared for pain
You will lose much more in this vicious war
Past and present stay the same
But the time to come can be altered some
If you listen to our song
But we sing in vain and the fact remains
There is no thing can be done

🌲🌲🌲

What happens?
Coming off the boat, Hunter again encounters the Oracles. They warn him not to involve himself in the war, as it will give him nothing he desires while only hurting him further. But does Hunter heed this advice? Of course, he does not.

What’s in a name?
‘Writing on a Wall’ — aka, ‘Things Are About To Go As Bad As You’d Expect, DUHHH’. Hunter is imminently going to enter an active warzone and will be heavily scarred by the experience. Given we know how sheltered he is, and have the benefit of our extremely negative post-Vietnam cultural perspective on war (something Hunter doesn’t have — it’s the 1910s), only Hunter doesn’t understand how serious of a situation he’s gotten himself into.

The phrasing, ‘writing on the wall’ hearkens to the prophetic but ultimately ignored nature of this warning (mene mene tekel upharsin; a prophecy of destruction from God), with the substitution of ‘the’ for ‘a’ being an extremely minor thing that emphasises Hunter’s ignorance — this wall is not even a prominent enough wall to be the wall to him, central in his thoughts, when it should be.

Whose viewpoint?
Oracles, speaking to Hunter.

🌲🌲🌲

>0:00 – 0:25 ooOOooOOooOOOooOO
OooOOOOOOooooOOOOoooo

Welcome to Act III, soldier! As will become convention over the remaining acts, we’re greeted into the story by our friends the Oracles, who will both give us a primer of what this chapter of the story is all about, and try to talk some sense into Hunter! As we can guess, and as they know, they’ll fail — but it’s nice that they try.

Before getting into anything else, let’s establish the setting. Hunter is now in his early 20s, the year is the mid-to-late 1910s, and he is in Europe to imminently fight in WW1 (The Great War, before there were 2 of them) on the Western Front (’hints of a higher hand / lost on the Somme’). Taking the chronological read of events as still true, the last thing that happened was Hunter’s ship came into port. We don’t have any location landmarks to guide us in this song, but I like to figure this dialogue happens either as he leaves the ship, or shortly after.

So were the Oracles on the ship? I mean it seems they can appear anywhere Casey wants them to appear, but why not? Sure.

Anyway, the song. This a-capella singing will come to be a sort of calling card for the Oracles, with their multiple voices.

>Come away, young man, where the ground is red / And you need a mask to breathe
Man, we’re already not in Kansas anymore with this tonal shift. Happenings here will be much more precarious and much more grave than they were in Act II. Musically I mean. Before even touching the lyrics.

‘Where the ground is red’ -> Foreshadowing a battlefield where the ground is saturated with blood from all the slaughtered soldiers; probably specifically implying The Tank.

‘And you need a mask to breathe’ -> Foreshadowing the Mustard Gas that Hunter will encounter, and hinting which war this specifically is — WW1 is the war that truly showed the devastating potential of chemical weapons — especially mustard gas — leading to their banning through the Geneva Convention in 1925.

Anyway — we’ll be going into war and the Oracles are telling Hunter to turn away from these horrors while he still can.

>Oh it’s been so hard, but your luck could change / If you’d just roll up your sleeves
The Oracles sympathise with the hardships Hunter has faced thus far, that being his loss of Ms Terri and his breakup with Ms Leading. However, they also advise that these problems are not so horrific as to be unfixable. Hunter still could find quite a peaceful and happy life for himself if he’d just concentrate on something other than running from pain, by being more honest with Ms Leading predominantly, but perhaps even by just settling down and grounding himself properly in the communities he’s fled.

Either way, his problems are still within his power to address; he’s just been too scared to.

>We had tried our best to warn before / But it didn’t get you far / Now we’re here again with a wish to mend / Your agonizing scar
Explicit confirmation that the speakers are the Oracles, and that they have an invested interest in Hunter’s wellbeing.

Why do the Oracles care so much about Hunter? It’s them being mouthpieces for Casey again, and Casey (presumably) cares about Hunter.

>Open eyes, young man, vigilante hands / And a heart prepared for pain / You will lose much more in this vicious war / Past and present stay the same
WOWWW that uptick with the whole military march thing going on. Seriously cool.

Anyway, the Oracles. Wait hold on these lines are actually nuts?

So they’re simultaneously listing qualities that Hunter already has, but alluding to how these qualities will be lost, or damaged, by his experiences over the act.

‘Open eyes’ -> What he already has is naivety and innocence; what he will develop is the revelation of the secrets Ms Terri kept from him, damaging that innocence and making him hate himself. Could also be a general thing of him seeing true horror over the war, and a command for him to pay attention. ‘Open-eyed oversight led me to here’.

‘Vigilante hands’ -> What he already has is the intention to kill in the name of good; what he will develop is him becoming a murderer through the killing of a horrible man, the General.

‘A heart prepared for pain’ -> What he already has is the conception of himself being sensitive and desperate for love, hence liable to get hurt; what he will develop is… ‘develop’ is the wrong word for this, but he will experience so much pain that it snaps him. Love will be the last thing on his priority list so much as quite literally killing people so that he doesn’t have to get hurt or live his terrible life anymore. (And once again, as he was in leaving the Lake, he’s confident he’s already survived such a devastating pain with Ms Leading that he fancies himself hardened enough to take whatever pain war can throw at him.)

‘You will lose much more in this vicious war’ -> And those three qualities are just the start of the things he’ll lose. He’ll lose his worldview, his faith, his morals, his squadmates, his brother…

‘Past and present stay the same’ -> Hunter came to war looking for a better future. He will not get a better future. Instead he’ll get more of what he already has: pain.

>But the time to come can be altered some / If you listen to our song
Hunter has not been deployed to battle yet, or at least hasn’t faced the real horrors of war yet. He still has the chance to escape them.

>But we sing in vain and the fact remains / There is no thing can be done
Unfortunately, the Oracles, equipped with Casey’s knowledge, know that Hunter isn’t going to turn back. Once again, he was let off his chain to hear this advice but naturally gravitates into the oncoming disasters anyway.

Vital Vessels Vindicate | Act II
Act III | In Cauda Venenum

Vital Vessels Vindicate

Vital Vessels Vindicate
Salt in the sky in the sweet summer air while mammoths depart
Abandon despair with thirsty affairs of the heart
But the chances of escaping my heart are inadequate
And when all is said and done, I’m left with my history

Goodbye, my eyes shed heavy tears
One for every soul still sitting on the fence between pain and arrogance

Ebb to the left flow to the right the exit’s unflawed
The boys on the train, the almighty tongue with prose spilled in vain

Goodbye, my eyes shed heavy tears
One for every soul still sitting on the fence between pain and arrogance

We fall beneath the sea of dreams
And fail to breathe, until we resurface
We fall beneath the sea of dreams
And fail to breathe, until we awaken again

Sing softly, sing me to the lake, sing softly, bring me to the lake
(The flame is gone, the fire remains)
Sing softly, sing me to the lake, sing softly, bring me to the lake
(The flame is gone, the fire remains)
Sing softly, sing me to the lake, sing softly, bring me to the lake, sing
(The flame is gone, the fire remains)

Through all of this I’ve felt just the same
The flame is gone, the fire remains

🌲🌲🌲

What happens?
Hunter, on the military steam ship departing to war, reflects on his time in the city and relationship with Ms Leading. Feeling that he has grown wiser from the experience, he looks forward to the fresh and ideally better future that awaits him overseas.

What’s in a name?
Oh boy VVV, the tune of many titles. It’s questionable what this song’s name even is, having been labelled with no less than five different variations (some being obvious misspellings) of ‘Vital Vessels Vindicate’ over decades of releases and reissues. The two real candidates, though, are ‘Vital Vessel Vindicates’ and ‘Vital Vessels Vindicate’. Which is it?

Well we know there are multiple steam ships that come to the City port (’big steam ships / exits illustrate the flaw’, ‘while mammoths depart’), which makes me lean towards vessels being the plural. But you can also take it as the specific ship that Hunter boards being the one that vindicates him, which would make vindicates the plural. I feel like either way works, but default to using vessels since there’s more concrete lyrics about the scene backing that read up.

SO that aside what does it actually mean. Not much more than what’s on the tin, this one is pretty straightforward however you read it: ‘Hunter’s Ability To Start A New Life For Himself Overseas Supports His Decision To Ditch Ms Leading As Right’, vessels being the ships and vindicated being Hunter’s aggressive rejection of Ms Leading.

‘Vital Vessels’ gives the image of blood vessels, too, but I’m not quite sure how that ties into this. ‘The blood / how it paints such a scene?’. Maybe it’s just saying that running away is in Hunter’s nature.

Whose viewpoint?
Hunter.

🌲🌲🌲

>0:00 – 0:23 Instrumental
Alright slow down Casey. First line in and there’s already a lot going on here.

So we can take the scene, first of all, as the ship out in the harbour bobbing along after its departure in Black Sandy Beaches. We’re using the same melody in the main tune here as in the ‘she-ee-ee-eee’ from Black Sandy Beaches as well, so right off the bat that’s a reprise — ‘Let’s just say she is better off somehow / let’s just say she’s never been happier than she is now’ — we can take this tune as representing ‘smiling through the pain’, ‘finding happiness despite pain’, or ‘trying to get away from what’s hurting you by instead fixating on the positives of a bad situation’. That kind of area.

That said, the altogether mood of it this time is a lot more blithe than in BSB (and also a lot more nautical sounding). Hunter is more able than Ms Leading to shove aside his hurt, or rather hasn’t realised the stakes of the decision he just made in dumping her the same way that Ms Leading was conscious of the stakes of losing Hunter. Hunter thinks he can put the pain of the relationship behind him and try again — Ms Leading knows she has zero hope of finding anything as good as what she had with Hunter.

It’s crazy how solidly you get the image of Hunter standing on the deck of this big ship from just this little passage, too. That trombone (?) at 0:16 especially, then you have the steamboat willie silly cartoony type percussion coming in…

>Salt in the sky in the sweet summer air while mammoths depart
‘Salt in the sky’ -> Hunter is one of: at the port, about to board, or already on a ship and observing things from the deck.

‘In the sweet summer air’ -> It’s summer. One of those tiny little info nuggets that I like knowing even if it’s not super important (unless?).

‘While mammoths depart’ -> The ships are now leaving.

>Abandon despair with thirsty affairs of the heart / But the chances of escaping my heart are inadequate / And when all is said and done, I’m left with my history
Slow DOWN Casey. Hokay

‘Abandon despair with thirsty affairs of the heart’ -> Hunter is embarking on this voyage to escape the pain of a failed romance. We can hear from his cooler (if still rather I-know-everything tone) that he’s not in as much of a fiery state as he was in Red Hands or Dear Ms. Leading, and the sentiment he’s holding onto seems less to be resentment for anything Ms Leading did, than Hunter avoiding his inability to face the problems of the relationship because they were simply too overwhelming for him. He’s aware he screwed up and is terrified of trying to solve it, so he’s not going to. He’s just going to put some miles of distance between himself and his mistakes until he can pretend they never happened.

Zooming in on ‘Thirsty affairs’, Hunter needed that romance as desperately as he needs water. ‘The well has gone dry and I with it’. What Hunter is fundamentally looking for is love that might substitute for Ms Terri’s absence, which he did find with Ms Leading, but considering how that went, he’d also rather pretend that he isn’t that desperate.

‘But the chances of escaping my heart are inadequate’ -> Still, Hunter knows himself to be sensitive and knows the investment he put into Ms Leading was deep, so he expects to still be hurting emotionally even if he crosses the whole world. He’ll still be thinking of that romance, of his missteps, and of her. And, wherever he winds up, he knows he will still be desperate to find love. He is reasoning himself capable of finding love of similar calibre elsewhere. (’And my heart’s a liability’ / ‘came all this way just to find love’).

We have those ‘bah-bah-bah bah’s appearing here again. Still not sure what those are.

‘And when all is said and done, I’m left with my history’ -> Hunter recognises that fundamentally, he’s running away. He can’t erase his experiences with Ms Leading; they happened, they’re going to influence him, he can’t unmake the mistakes or the feelings… the long emphasis on history (’it’s hard with such a history’, Ms Terri vibes here? / ‘her history is left behind’) gives me the impression he’s talking about everything that’s caused him pain thus far, that being both his breakup with Ms Leading and the death of Ms Terri.

Hunter’s life is still pretty painful and still sucks and unfortunately all this pain is becoming foundational to who he is, which he isn’t happy about. He’d rather have a future.

>Goodbye, my eyes shed heavy tears / One for every soul still sitting on the fence between pain and arrogance
After all his fury in Red Hands and Dear Ms. Leading, and from the safety of a boat where he never has to face her again, Hunter finally lets himself just be properly sad about losing a relationship with someone he loved. Of course, he still is rather pretentious and makes it about himself, but at least he’s voicing these ideas consciously now.

‘Sitting on the fence between pain and arrogance’ -> Hunter identifies ‘pain’ and ‘arrogance’ as the two forces pulling at him in regards to this decision. He was deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply hurt by everything regarding Ms Leading, but was too proud to admit that and consequently admit his powerlessness. As a result, he couldn’t confidently choose whether to risk the pain of her not really reciprocating&/of embarrassing himself again, or to preserve his ego by writing her off. Rather, as we saw from Red Hands across to Dear Ms. Leading, he’s been careening between both extremes of ‘I am so hurt. I love you. How could you?’ to ‘Oh, you think you’re great? I wasn’t even serious about you. You dumb whore,’ in two seconds.

With this all being past tense, though, he feels the relief of having put this dilemma behind him. Not that he’s really solved anything, but it’s not something he needs to address anymore, hence, these aren’t overbearing emotions he has to deal with anymore. Obviously, though Hunter’s denying it, he is still hurt enough to be running away, and still arrogant enough to think he can find a better life by running away, but that’s not his problem now is it.

‘One for every soul’ -> Hunter’s predominantly talking about himself here, but similar to BSB, it’s comforting to imagine he’s not the only one who has faced such a predicament, and that others would empathise with his situation, too. I also think Hunter is hesitant to just, like, cry for himself being sad about Ms Leading, so he frames it as being for hypothetical others who happen to be just like himself.

Callback to Oracles on Delphi, also — first of several. Feels appropriate given they’re both songs where he’s on a vehicle to his next major destination…

>Ebb to the left flow to the right the exit’s unflawed / The boys on the train, the almighty tongue with prose spilled in vain
‘Ebb to the left, flow to the right’ -> Describes the bobbing of the ship under him, but also evokes the idea of dancing. As we know, the sentiment may be passionate and the intention may be pure, but what Hunter is doing conflicts inherently with his goals — he’s trying to find somewhere less painful… by deploying to war.

‘The exit’s unflawed’ -> Still, Hunter is convinced this is not just the optimal path, but actually a really good one. Since he’s still extremely naive, he cannot see the obvious problem of how war might be horrible, and just sees the bright hopeful sparkling opportunity of restarting somewhere else that hasn’t been ruined with personal baggage. This is an explicit rejection of the Oracles’ words, too — ‘exits illustrate the flaw’. Captivated by possibilities, and desperate for something less painful, Hunter genuinely doesn’t see how he’s erring here.

‘The almighty tongue with prose spilled in vain’ -> Explicitly highlighting the Oracles’ warning. Hunter has thought back on their words and nonetheless dismisses them as unimportant or at least as not personally relevant. This, again, solidifies that Hunter had the option to choose a different course than running, (such as forgiving himself, as the Oracles advised him to), but refused to take it. ‘Almighty tongue’ emphasises the word-of-god quality of the Oracles’ warnings, being Casey’s mouthpiece to Hunter.

>We fall beneath the sea of dreams / And fail to breathe, until we resurface
Reprise of Bitter Suite III.

‘We fall beneath the sea of dreams and fail to breathe’ -> Ms Leading and Hunter had married themselves to their collective fantasy of a perfect relationship. The happiness they had initially was the perfect dream they wanted forever, hence why Ms Leading hesitated to divulge her prostitution. They both wanted to believe it could last, and were both utterly immersed in it.

‘Until we resurface’ -> But reality hit, and Ms Leading’s a prostitute. The relationship was never what Hunter quite thought it was, and they were never going to hold onto that immaculate honeymoon forever.

>And fail to breathe, until we awaken again
Hunter asserts that he has ‘snapped out’ of that mindset, or rather that dream, and is now focusing clearly on better alternatives.

>Sing softly, sing me to the lake, sing softly, bring me to the lake
This reprise is the same as it’s always been — ‘Let me have a better future’. Hunter is entreating to find a better, happier, and less painful life for himself as a soldier. Also brings attention to the central focus of the story again, which is the plot threads set up in Act I with Ms Terri, looking to find a life of peace despite of a history of pain.

>Sing!
‘Let the story continue!’

>Through all of this I’ve felt just the same / The flame is gone, the fire remains
And here’s a good ol’ flame/fire whammy to close off the album. This is probably both referencing the overarching flame/fire of Ms Terri/Hunter, again as a reminder that there’s a wider narrative going on beyond this album’s relationship drama, and the new flame/fire dynamic of Ms Leading/Hunter, that is, Hunter’s relationship with Ms Leading is ‘gone’ for all purposes but the feelings that drove it remain.

First time we hear Hunter acknowledging this flame/fire dynamic too, isn’t it? Pretty cool.

>4:10 – 4:39 Instrumental
We hear the waves, seagulls, ship bells, and chatter of fellow passengers as Hunter excuses himself from his spot on the deck.

>4:40 – 5:05 Instrumental
Get the impression from the drums here that this is something to do with the army — perhaps a briefing to the soldiers, which Hunter naturally attends?

>5:05 – 5:36 Instrumental
Hunter’s involvement in the majestic, military side of this venture — perhaps his training sessions, or meeting his squadmates — proceeds…

>5:37 – 5:44 Instrumental
Woah, chaotic! Everything okay there Hunter? Guessing no, and that the stress of all this military stuff (alongside everything with Ms Leading and Ms Terri) is getting to him a little.

>5:45 – 6:36 The Lake South Reprise
Hunter fantasises of a better place that will give him a better future. I envision this as Hunter in his cabin in his bed kind of exhausted but hopeful, then of the ship as a blip on the ocean, then of the ship coming in to the port in Europe.

>6:44 – 7:09 Ambiance
The ship has come into port at its destination.

Black Sandy Beaches | Act II
Act III | Writing On A Wall

Black Sandy Beaches

Black Sandy Beaches
Messages from broken bottles fall on black sandy beaches
Ink in vein across the page now run from morning dew
Hands which chance upon it lead to eyes which strain to read
Hearts which pound from love long overdue
Lips which press together, stifle rhythmic, heavy breaths

Oh, how she smiles from vicarious love from the one he writes about
She must have been so glad for him to throw it out

Further steps lead to yet another broken bottle
Again, the words contained have bled the page
Whose tears were these which ran the ink?
From whom they poured to make this streak?
Were they his, by chance, from telling her?
Or hers, by chance, from reading it?
They could have been collective
They could have been from someone else
Why don’t we see what’s at the bottom?
Why don’t we see what comes next?

Oh, how she cries from vicarious pain, from the one he writes about
She must have been so sad for him to throw her out

Let’s just say she, she is better
Better off somehow
Let’s just say she, she has never been
Happier than she is now

We couldn’t fake it, so why even try?

Let’s just say she is better
Better off somehow
Let’s just say she has never been
Happier than she is now

Let’s just say she is better
Better off somehow
Let’s just say she has never been
Happier, happier, than she is now

🌲🌲🌲

What happens?
Ms Leading goes to address Hunter in person, but realises she is too late. Recognising that Hunter has rejected her, Ms Leading is left to mourn the happiness that could’ve been.

What’s in a name?
‘Black Sandy Beaches’… honestly, not many ideas for this one. I think it’s just to establish the imagery of a desolate beach, where messages might wash up — from there you get the image of two people on two distant islands throwing bottles back and forth, but the people have left and what remains is the bottles, since their correspondence is over. It is also literally set on a black sandy beach.

Whose viewpoint?
Ms Leading. “Isn’t this third person?” you ask. And I can’t deny that, but—

This song is maybe the most abstract in the Acts, even moreso than Where The Road Parts or Blood of the Rose. I don’t think you can take much of what’s here as literal, in the sense of the letters sent in Dear Ms. Leading having wound up in bottles on the beach for an onlooker to read. Rather, we have some hints that the ‘onlooker’ is aligning herself with Ms Leading — firstly, the onlooker is female, secondly, it’s Ms Leading’s perspective in the correspondence that she empathises with, third, the narration explicitly shifts to first person in the bridge to say the onlooker was part of the relationship, and fourth, the song concludes concerned with the happiness of Ms Leading. I think it’s feasible to read this as Ms Leading’s rather poetic and dissociated way of processing that the good times are gone and she’s been dumped, as well as a retrospective on the relationship as a whole.

So I’m going to be flagrantly breaking here my assumption of things the characters describe being literal, with the things that don’t really make sense being reflections of the emotional impact events have had on Ms Leading. You can still read it, and it still definitely works (more intuitively, even), when taken as a third person though, I’m just curious to see what happens when you filter it like this.

🌲🌲🌲

>Messages from broken bottles fall on black sandy beaches
Ms Leading, aware of the steam ships coming to take Hunter to war, runs to the beach to try and speak with him before he’s gone. But she is too late, and she sees the ships already departing the harbour. Defeated and stunned, the letters of their correspondence she has brought fall from her hands to the black sand of the beach.

‘From broken bottles’ — So the prevailing imagery we have in this song is one of two lovers, communicating over a very long distance by way of message in a bottle. This is of course reflective of the way Ms Leading and Hunter have been communicating over the end of their relationship, by letter instead of in person, but there is more happening than that. It suggests that each of the lovers is stranded, throwing out sentiments to the ocean, reflective of how empty the world is without the other.

Since the bottles are broken, though, we know the messages were received, just as we know Ms Leading and Hunter did, against odds, find each other. (The broad images of broken glass and funeral-black sand reinforce this as being a sad song, though. I mean, aside from how sad it sounds in general.)

ALSO there’s a beach (and harbour) near the city. Let’s get out that ol’ map I miss it.

>Ink in vein across the page now run from morning dew
‘Ink in vein across the page’ — The letter that she is about to read has been folded and unfolded many times, that is to say, read many times. Ms Leading often reminisces on the memories, feelings, and experiences of the relationship she is about to again relive, as it occupies a lot of her mind.

‘Run from morning dew’ — Morning dew literally places this as happening in the morning. Metaphorically, it means the dreams of the night are over (’we fall beneath the sea of dreams’), scoured out by the clarity of a stark, crisp morning. The incisive reality of their breakup has struck, smearing the memories of the past (and Ms Leading’s ability to clearly ‘read’ those memories — dissociating). Still, there’s a kind of purity in the image of dewdrops running over the letter (Ms Leading and Hunter’s relationship was scummy but still had good in it (?)), and a dissociated dreaminess in the idea of Ms Leading standing here long enough for the early morning to pass and for the dewdrops to form, and then noticing the letters she held as if she’d never seen them before.

Probably a subtle thing going on here with ‘morning’ dew as a homophone to ‘mourning’ to reinforce the feeling of bereavement that comes with the ending of a cherished relationship, alongside the black sand imagery. If you want to be really oblique you can read it as ‘mourning dew’ to mean tears but yeah that feels like stretching it.

The letter being in a condition where dew will run the ink also gives the image of it being quite old and tattered, but more in the sense of being ‘well-used’ than ‘worn out’. This was not a superficial relationship.

>Hands which chance upon it lead to eyes which strain to read / Hearts which pound from love long overdue
‘Hands which chance upon it’ — More dissociation; we aren’t given a clear view of the character that finds the letter, though she is our narrator. The way she describes finding the letter sounds only half-conscious, as if she were already sitting beside it, then after a while noticed it, and coincidentally reached out to it, ‘what’s this?’.

‘Lead to eyes which strain to read’ — The narrator has to squint to read the text. Literally, it’s because the ink is smeared from the dew. Metaphorically, taking the narrator as Ms Leading, because she’s still dissociated and has to focus for the words and scenes in her memory to even register, though she continues not to place herself as someone actually involved in these scenes, instead finding it more bearable to process these feelings from the distanced perspective of a sympathetic onlooker.

‘Hearts which pound from love long overdue’ — We’re getting the start of some dual meanings here. The ‘hearts’ ostensibly would be Ms Leading and Hunter, and while it’s true to the island imagery that they’d be isolated prior to finding each other, Hunter’s life has truthfully always been full of love. As the passion of the relationship is recounted in the letter, the ‘hearts’ that pound from these loving scenes are more precisely those of Ms Leading depicted in the letter (as she transitions away from her mercenary mindset into one of love — you can envision it as a still heart warming to beat ferociously) and… also Ms Leading, as she reads this!

After all, Ms Leading is the one whose life has had a persistent paucity of love. As she’s dissociated herself enough not to consider herself as the same person described in these letters, she experiences a vicarious fulfilment of her deepest desires, which excites and enraptures her with a deep investment to the story unfolding. The irony is that the person she’s vicariously rooting for, and wishing she could be, is herself, illustrating how her life with Hunter was fundamentally, everything she ever wanted.

>Lips which press together, stifle rhythmic, heavy breaths
Another dual meaning — we simultaneously get the image of Ms Leading and Hunter kissing and having sex, but also of the narrator Ms Leading struggling to keep herself from crying.

>Oh, how she smiles from vicarious love from the one he writes about / She must have been so glad for him to throw it out
‘Smiles from vicarious love from the one he writes about’ — Phrasing is finicky, but the narrator is smiling owing to Ms Leading’s feelings towards Hunter. It’s making the narrator happy to think about how much Ms Leading loves Hunter. Removing the filter of dissociation, it’s Ms Leading wanting to think and feel warm because of how much she loves Hunter, as she goes over those earlier parts of their relationship.

‘She must have been so glad for him to throw it out’ — Super tricky. Taken literally, it’s saying the letter the narrator is reading was written by Hunter (then how is she aware of Ms Leading’s feelings enough to be stanning her?), and was happy to find the letter on the beach — either because she’s thankful to vicariously experience this loving relationship through the letter discarded on the beach, or because the letter was cruel to Ms Leading and it comforts her to know he didn’t send it to her.

Given the narrator finds another letter that is cruel to Ms Leading, and is moved to cry for her at finding it, I’m wobbly about it being the latter, though it is kinda what feels to make the most sense. The ‘letter’, or memory or words or feelings she’s reminiscing on right now are broadly positive, but that read is pretty jarring against the aggressiveness of ‘throw it out’. Whichever way, it mostly sounds like Ms Leading trying to focus on the good times and comfort herself through the grief of losing this relationship. Like she’s convinced herself through dissociation that yeah this letter (being one of the Dear Ms. Leading correspondences, probably the first one?) is mean but Hunter did throw it out (and she knows how Ms Leading felt because she is Ms Leading and understands what Hunter’s alluding to as ‘promises of love’ or ‘make-believing everything was true’ was actually 100% genuine and thinking about how much she loves him is comforting her). Hard line in general.

>Further steps lead to yet another broken bottle / Again, the words contained have bled the page / Whose tears were these which ran the ink?
Uptick in energy here; the dissociation is fading a bit and the emotions involved are getting more intense. Ms Leading continues along the beach and spots another discarded letter, perhaps blown from its initial place, which she is again moved to inspect, albeit more proactively than the first one.

The words here are still smudged — Ms Leading is still hesitant to recollect these exchanges with clarity. This time though, it’s with tears; somebody cried on the final Dear Ms. Leading correspondence, where Hunter henceforth cut all contact with her.

>From whom they poured to make this streak? / Were they his, by chance, from telling her? / Or hers, by chance, from reading it? / They could have been collective / They could have been from someone else
More hints of dissociation; the narrator meticulously considers every single party that could have possibly been moved to tears at the tragic ending of this relationship. She already knows how this letter goes — she’s read it before, and is in denial about it. The exhaustive listing of everyone who could’ve been sad about it sounds like Ms Leading miserably stalling as the dissociation slowly eases.

Probably comforting to think that there are more people than just her who would be torn apart to know Ms Leading and Hunter’s relationship failed. The significance she’s putting on this relationship is so much you’d think they were soulmates.

>Why don’t we see what’s at the bottom? / Why don’t we see what comes next?
You can hear that edge of cynicism again here. Narrator definitely already knows what comes next, but is denying it.

>Oh, how she cries from vicarious pain, from the one he writes about / She must have been so sad for him to throw her out
Aaaand now the whammy hits. Ms Leading is forced to again consider the abject agony of knowing Hunter has left and the relationship that gave her everything she wanted from life is over, though with just enough insulation that she can consider the premise, ‘Hunter and Ms Leading will never be together again’ without totally collapsing. It feels better when she’s crying for someone else; it also feels nice to think there’s someone out there who’d be crying for her. Super lonely line.

>Let’s just say she, she is better / Better off somehow / Let’s just say she, she has never been / Happier than she is now
Still using the framing of being an onlooker, but not really dissociated anymore, Ms Leading authors for herself a slapdash attempt at consolation — something, anything that she could say to help her move on. The track she takes is somewhere between ‘don’t cry because it’s gone, smile because it happened’ and ‘but then she lived happily ever after!’.

It’s nonsense and she knows it; she’s not even really pretending to convince herself. Though it’s true that meeting Hunter has been a fundamentally positive experience for her life, and rekindled her faith in love as a concept, to have briefly acquired exactly what she wanted, and seen hope of escaping the city’s corruption, only to lose it so utterly, probably feels even more torturous than if she never met Hunter at all. But what she experienced with him is too great for her to wish or pretend it never happened, either.

Being practical through her agony, she declines to wallow in pity about it. She can’t get him back. The relationship is over. That’s how it is, so screw it. Mourn the whole thing, pretend it’s fine, and go forward.

Really strong verse.

>We couldn’t fake it, so why even try?
The dissociation completely drops; Ms Leading reveals herself as the narrator. With a sharp bout of cynicism, she concedes the relationship was always doomed and that there’s no point in holding onto it.

>Final Chorus Repetition
Might be a switch to Hunter, sounds like his intonation but could also be just a side effect of Casey getting intense lol. Definitely get the image of him telling himself that Ms Leading is somehow in better straits now than she’s ever been, to clear his conscience of the guilt of abandoning her and shove any worries about her out of his mind, on the conceit that she’ll be fine. Almost as if he’s able to ‘hear’ her telling the world not to worry about her and is picking up the wavelength.

Get a really strong image of Hunter with his bags all packed as he gets on the ship here, too, for some reason.

‘Never been happier than she is now’ — Reprising ‘until we resurface again’ melody from Bitter Suite III. Ms Leading and Hunter’s paths separate from each other, breaking them apart again into two individuals.

>3:42 – 3:57 Oracles on the Delphi Express into The Church & The Dime Transition Reprise
Solidifying the switch from Ms Leading to Hunter’s viewpoint, maybe? We last heard this little tune when Hunter was wandering around the City for the first time, discovering it after getting off the train.

Not sure what it’s representing here specifically though. Maybe just the exploration of a new environment, or a big camera shift, or mirroring Hunter and Ms Leading parting ways with the same melody on which they first encountered each other (Ms Leading leaving the beach?/zooming out of the beach scene to open ocean?).

>3:58 – 4:13 Instrumental
Scene illustration: we’re on the docks, with harbour bells ringing, seagulls squawking, and the waves whispering. Hunter’s ship has departed.

Dear Ms. Leading | Act II | Vital Vessels Vindicate

Dear Ms. Leading

Dear Ms. Leading
Dear Ms. Leading, I hate to tell you that I no longer need your services
The bitter fabricating manufacturer of lust you have been presented as
Doesn’t do a thing for me, I now know your identity
A black widow who tempts her prey with promises of love
If ignorance is bliss, wish I were blissfully ignorant, but I’m not
I’m enlightened now, light has been presented to me
In spite of you

Come now, Ms. Leading, I regret to inform you
I’ve fallen out of lust
It must be so hard to understand
(Oh no, I don’t think so, oh no, I don’t think so)
Did you really think me a fool enough to play along?
Make-believing everything you said was true
Push your pouting lips on other unsuspecting lovers
(Oh no, I don’t think so, oh no, I don’t think so)

Dear Ms. Leading, in response to your response, I’m simply unavailable
I hope you got the message in the message that I sent
(Shame on me for falling for someone so dense)
In different times, I might’ve fooled around for something warm
Something with security
As fleeting as the momentary rapture and the pleasure of
Collapsing in arms so welcoming to others just like me

(Go take another life
Go take another life
Go take another life)

Come now, Ms. Leading, I regret to inform you
I’ve fallen out of lust
It must be so hard to understand
(Oh no, I don’t think so, oh no, I don’t think so)
Did you really think me a fool enough to play along?
And make-believing everything you said was true
Push your pouting lips on other unsuspecting lovers
(Oh no, I don’t think so, oh no, I don’t think so)

🌲🌲🌲

What happens?
Rather than meet with Ms Leading, Hunter drunkenly writes her an angry letter to cement their break-up. Severing her from his life, he decides to pursue something totally different for his future, and instead looks to joining the military.

What’s in a name?
Dear Ms. Leading. That’s to indicate Hunter’s writing a letter to her, of course, but also parallels with the band’s name overall: ‘The Dear Hunter’.

Going on a tangent for a moment, the Dear Ms. Leading demos are also named for this song (or at least go out of the way to highlight it by sharing its name), it being the ‘lesson’ of the story in those demos. There, it presents a double meaning. The first half of the demo presents Ms Leading as a figure Hunter loves, something endearing — Dear Ms Leading — but the song where the relationship culminates and where that title appears is this one, where he ferociously disavows Ms Leading as a manipulative whore. So the demo title gains the second meaning, essentially, of ‘getting burned by a whore’.

That duality is lost in the Acts, but you can still see the contrast between the title of this song and the overall title of the band as The Dear Hunter. ‘My dear Hunter’ is what Ms Terri called Hunter as a term of affection; now those words have been twisted into one of distance and detachment by Hunter’s confrontation of Ms Leading via letter. This is also where Hunter begins truly straying from the principles Ms Terri taught him — he’s made mistakes in Red Hands, and made the mistake of leaving the Lake at all, but now he’s actively choosing to reject the peaceable option and his own feelings of love.

Another aside, I think you can read ‘The Dear Hunter’ in a literal way and have it fit, that is to say, ‘person who ‘hunts’ ‘dear’’, or in less abstract words ‘someone looking for affection’. (’Traveled all this way just to find love’). While also designating him as someone beloved (by Ms Terri) (and from that love is able to destroy evil). Not sure how much stock I put in that last read I just think it’s neat.

Whose viewpoint?
Hunter.

🌲🌲🌲

>0:00 – 0:22 Instrumental
Hunter is in a bar, faced still with the problem of how to respond to Ms Leading’s offer. Unable to come to any solution while sober, he drinks, and as he drinks, his energy becomes more determined and angry. Finally able to make a decision, Hunter takes a pen and begins furiously writing a letter…

The lyrics in this song overall are pretty straightforward, so there’s not too much to comment, aside from a general statement on Hunter’s mental state. He’s trying to deny that he had any investment or affection for Ms Leading, or rather that if he did have any affection, it was for a lie that didn’t exist and so Ms Leading should piss off with her attempts to manipulate him back in. He is very anxious about being manipulated, hurt, and losing control over his life again.

Given that he’s insecure, he is also looking to put himself in a superior position and comfort himself by brutally insulting her, drawing on the same basic destructive/vengeful/fiery energy we saw in Red Hands. It’s far more aggressive and targeted here, as he takes her as a far more actively malevolent figure. By totally dismissing any chance of a future with Ms Leading in this manner, and burning the bridge as thoroughly as he can, he’s able to avoid addressing his pain and commit himself to escaping to a new life entirely, though this aspect is maybe not conscious.

>Dear Ms. Leading, I hate to tell you that I no longer need your services / The bitter fabricating manufacturer of lust you have been presented as / Doesn’t do a thing for me, I now know your identity
Alright, so starting off, Hunter denies wholesale that he ever had a serious investment in Ms Leading. Moreover, he doesn’t care to stay with her anymore, as he has higher standards for himself than cynical, mercenary prostitutes looking to control him with pussy.

>A black widow who tempts her prey with promises of love
Hunter zeroes in on ‘love’ as the thing that enables Ms Leading to control him, indirectly confessing that he did have affection for her and was desperate to see it returned. It also cements, again, that the aspect of her prostitution that upsets Hunter so much is the fundamental idea that she doesn’t care about him, or that she would put his devoted feelings for her on an equivalent or inferior level to the cash and sex she gets from her clients.

His solution to Where The Road Parts, also, is cemented here as an attempt by Ms Leading to reel him back in so she can continue misusing him. I’ll also note his rhetoric for why he’s justified to insult her has changed slightly since Red Hands. Before, he was mad she loved other people — now, he’s accusing that she doesn’t even love the men she cheated on him with, but that she was just maliciously manipulating them for money, which is both somehow closer to the truth and even more totally wrong.

>If ignorance is bliss, wish I were blissfully ignorant, but I’m not / I’m enlightened now, light has been presented to me / In spite of you
Hunter now claims that this experience has painfully shed him of his naive innocence, hence she cannot take advantage of him anymore. The reality is that he’s still very naive, and will only begin to truly lose this naivety in Act III.

Once again, he is also blaming her explicitly for his pain and misfortunes, with the implication that she owes him some kind of atonement.

>Did you really think me a fool enough to play along? / Make-believing everything you said was true / Push your pouting lips on other unsuspecting lovers
Hunter rejects the idea that Ms Leading ever loved him, and insists any claims otherwise were just manipulations, using the fact she never told her of her prostitution as evidence of her untoward motives. Though the fact Ms Leading is a prostitute would be obvious to literally anyone except Hunter, embracing the perspective that she routinely tricks people away from learning so lets him save his ego, and retroactively lessens the sting of his failure in Red Hands.

Note the uptick of anger on ‘fool’ and ‘true’: Hunter feels like an idiot for not figuring things out earlier, and is terrified of confronting the idea that Ms Leading really wasn’t lying about her feelings for him. The drawn-out forlorn tone on ‘lovers’ also suggests than even though Hunter’s saying all this, he is seriously uncomfortable imagining her with someone else after he’s gone.

>1:50 – 1:57 The Procession Drums
Having finished and sent off his letter(s?), Hunter is left with a bit of a conundrum of what to do next. However, he chances upon an ‘out’ — an advertisement for young men like him to join the military, represented by these drums first heard at the end of The Procession (signifying the frustrated resolution to leave his current situation, and preparation to do so). He files an application to join the army.

>Dear Ms. Leading, in response to your response, I’m simply unavailable / I hope you got the message in the message that I sent
Ms Leading has received Hunter’s letter (letters?) and replied to him. However, Hunter doesn’t even read her latest reply, having made up his mind to instead stake himself on the army without problems from his current life affecting him. This doesn’t mean he’ll neglect to get the last word, though, and he writes to assert he will have no further contact with her from this point.

There’s an uptick of energy in this verse, being a little less impotently angry than the ones before it — Hunter has a direction to pursue, now.

>In different times, I might’ve fooled around for something warm / Something with security
Man, he’s really talking like one breakup makes him some wizened old man. I think the fact he does have a new direction without Ms Leading now allows him to confess these genuine vulnerabilities of his, though he dresses them up as if they’re not a big deal/he’s moved past them. But he is fundamentally admitting he glommed onto Ms Leading because she offered him the warmth and stability he desperately needed after the death of Ms Terri.

>As fleeting as the momentary rapture
Again he is indirectly confessing that he’s still looking for comfort and security, but that his experience with Ms Leading has burned him too severely for him to trust her as his pillar again. He wants something safe and permanent.

>and the pleasure of / Collapsing in arms so welcoming to others just like me
‘I fell into her arms’ / ‘she welcomed me in’ — line as a whole is pretty self explanatory, just wanted to bring attention to these callbacks. Hunter’s thinking back on his first encounter with her in Embrace and has grimly realised Ms Leading invited tens or hundreds of people to coitus in the exact same room in the exact same manner, undermining the very reason he fell in love with her, apart from making a general statement on the cheapness of the comforts she offered (and offers to nobodies).

>Go take another life
Interesting contrast with ‘sacrifice another life’ — that was him and Ms Leading resigning to forfeit their possible happy life together, now this is Hunter determining to choose something new. I envision this as Hunter going through the processes to get officially instated in the military, going through the tests, having his application accepted, getting sorted into his regiment, the date of his shipment being secured…

It’s a very turbulent sequence though, isn’t it? Of course, with his new life being one in war as a soldier, there’s inherently going to be a lack of peace, but I think there’s a little more than that. First of all, Hunter isn’t really enthused to be joining the military, and doesn’t even have any particular purpose he wants to achieve there as he did in leaving the Lake, so much as he just wants to get as far away from this life as possible and slam the reset button. He doesn’t sound to particularly have doubts about what he’s doing, but it’s inherently a negative kind of decision where he’s not really showing agency (which is what he’s looking for, control and comfort) so much as throwing himself at whatever new thing he can and being swept up in that course.

Next there’s a double meaning in ‘take another life’ — Hunter is metaphorically killing himself (’I’m a killer / But I was killing myself all along’) by choosing to run from Ms Leading, (remember the Oracles advised that Hunter and Ms Leading staying together was the key to their salvation), and the turbulence of this sequence illustrates the grim destruction of the naive Hunter who came to the city. Not that Hunter isn’t still naive, but his readiness to discard himself for comfier pastures (yes Hunter legitimately thinks running to a war front will be less agonising than staying on the same continent as his ex) is already pretty concerning. This guy’s discomfort tolerance is low. Like, low-low-low-low Low.

There is also the literal element, in that, as a soldier, Hunter will be killing people. Hunter does not realise how terrible of a decision this is yet.

>3:09 – 3:44 Instrumental
Chilled out a bit. Not sure that this signifies anything particularly, but I can read this as him coming up to the day of his deployment, not nervous about it or anything, but knowing he’s going forward now, and soon will not have to think about Ms Leading.

Might be in Oracles, also?

>Final verse repetition
Hunter cements his ultimate rejection of Ms Leading, resolved to try something new.

Where The Road Parts | Act II | Black Sandy Beaches

Where The Road Parts

Where The Road Parts
It’s ironic how I’d fall just to get back up again
A fix to cure this ailing bitter agony
Meet me where the road parts
You remember where we first met
So tongue-in-cheek with stale irony
If it pleases you, it pleases me

Just an innocent call, a telephone call
Just an innocent call

Now, if you were in bloom I’d pluck your petals clean
Although it won’t seem so, I can promise you, my ego’s running me
Then I’d be cold, you were the only one that didn’t fold
But I just broke right down for you in an attempt to gain control
Maybe I’m a waste of time waste of time, waste of time
Sacrifice another life, sacrifice another life

You were the only one that didn’t fold
You were the only one that didn’t fold
You were the only one that didn’t fold
You were the only one that didn’t fold
You were the only one that didn’t fold
You were the only one that didn’t fold

🌲🌲🌲

What happens?
Left with mixed messages on Hunter’s feelings towards her, Ms Leading invites Hunter discuss the future, or non-future, of their relationship. Though she recognises things are slanting towards a break-up, she is eager to continue with Hunter. Meanwhile, Hunter considers the invitation, but is troubled on how to respond.

What’s in a name?
‘Hunter and Ms Leading break up’, basically. Technically they haven’t yet but the writing is very on the wall.

Ms Leading identifies ‘where the road parts’ as the place where she and Hunter first met, and is waiting there for him, but by the fact he doesn’t show up, he signals to her that he’s not willing to talk through what’s happened.

Whose viewpoint?
Hunter? Ms Leading? Both? Really, really hard song to interpret on this front since most of the language carries Ms Leading themes, but the overall tone feels extremely Hunter.

In the end I went crawling back to the Dear Ms. Leading demos to see if that had any hints. Actually let’s pause a moment here to talk about those demos. The Dear Ms. Leading demos are the rough draft of ideas — mostly ones concerning Hunter’s relationship with Ms Leading — that would eventually become the starting point for the story of the Acts, with many of the later songs on Act II coming directly from the demos (Where The Road Parts, Red Hands, Evicted, Dear Ms. Leading, Black Sandy Beaches).

The world of the acts, with the Lake and the City and Ms Terri and TP&P, wasn’t fleshed out yet. From that, neither were the story’s central themes fully developed, and Ms Leading herself is presented as a much more antagonistic and foolish figure than she is in the Acts (and the tone overall is a lot more preachy). There is a complete story, and complete character arcs for both Ms Leading and Hunter however, which roughly goes like this:

Hunter is characterised as ‘innocent’, though he’s really kind of not, owing to him being just a nice guy/good person. He discovers that Ms Leading is a prostitute, but because he’s sensitive and vulnerable, stays with her while informing her that she’s doing herself an indignity by being a prostitute. Despite that advice, she continues doing sex work, and Hunter discovers this (Red Hands). The censure and love (?????!) she receives in Red Hands leads Ms Leading to realise Hunter was right and there’s better options than being a prostitute (Evicted). She decides to have more self-respect by making money through a more legitimate means, and becomes a photographer. This does not work to win Hunter back, however, as he is too wise to her manipulative nature (Dear Ms. Leading). Ms Leading is left to mourn the happiness that could’ve been (Black Sandy Beaches). FIN.

In all, in that story, Ms Leading is the author of her own misfortune because she prioritised money over herself and failed to realise how much Hunter loved her. It’s rough, is the word I’ll use. In the Acts, meanwhile, the one mishandling things is explicitly Hunter, and Ms Leading’s struggle away from a mercenary mindset is portrayed a lot more charitably (actually you’re really rooting for her to finally get out of that mindset/escape the city’s corruption, + she’d be a powerful ally in undoing TP&P. She’s also established to actually love Hunter before he flips at her for not caring about him enough in Red Hands, instead of Red Hands being the turning point of her realising Hunter loves her). So why bring up the demos when what the songs represent changes significantly once rearranged and contextualised in the Acts?

Because Where The Road Parts is the Battesimo Del Fuoco of those demos (first song, in media res, cyclical beginning, theme establishment) and that’s why it’s so hard to read. And over there, ‘you were the only one who didn’t fold’ isn’t ‘you didn’t fold to corruption’, it’s ‘you didn’t give up on me’. And it’s a Hunter line. So what is it here? For Hunter to say ‘you didn’t give up on me’ doesn’t make sense in the Acts, but to say ‘you didn’t fold to corruption’ doesn’t make any sense either. So did the song’s narrator shift in the Acts to be Ms Leading instead, and that’s why it smells Hunter-y? Is this Hunter recounting things Ms Leading has said to him? Is the narrator changing as we flip between Ms Leading waiting for Hunter and Hunter agonising over how to respond to her invitation? Is it both of them talking simultaneously?

I’m opting to say mercy, I have no idea who’s narrating this.

🌲🌲🌲

>It’s ironic how I’d fall just to get back up again / A fix to cure this ailing bitter agony
Alright I need to get the demos out of my head because they’re not relevant to what’s happening here. Not a cyclical beginning song just a good ol’ sequential event: Hunter has rejected Ms Leading on an incorrect basis almost to the point of raping her, but in realising the gravity of his error, is too mortified to face her. When we last left him, he was practically begging Ms Leading to believe him when he said he didn’t mean to hurt her, that yes he still loves her more than anything, and that he’d just been so overwhelmed with emotion he didn’t know what to do.

And it seems his begging worked, because he’s been given a second chance — Ms Leading has reached out to him via telephone, offering to meet him and talk.

These lines can work for either of them: Ms Leading ‘falls’ by being so aggressively rejected, but can get back up because Hunter rescinded the rejection and left room open for her to hope he still loves her enough to speak with her again, so there is maybe a chance they can work this out (the fix).

Hunter falls by losing his illusion of an idealised future with Ms Leading. But just as much as he fell and got back up after losing Ms Terri, tomorrow comes and he has to find something to help him move on and deal with yesterday. Hunter’s idea of a fix is more vague — I’ve seen someone read it as him drinking at a bar, which works enough (the next song is set in a bar, so this sets up the image of him already being there while contemplating Ms Leading’s offer, and the wording parallels with him using opium as a ‘fix’ later). I’m pretty happy to take it as that.

I think it’s also alluding to how his relationship with Ms Leading in itself was a ‘fix’ for the pain of Ms Terri being dead, and now he needs a fix for his fix: something that will take away the pain. (’I keep looking for a quicker fix / But I’m afraid of finding what it is’). In the short term, that would be an indulgence like alcohol, in the long term, that does mean addressing the problems of this relationship, which he proceeds to think about doing over the song.

>Meet me where the road parts / You remember where we first met
This is Ms Leading speaking, or at least, they’re Ms Leading’s words. Some time has passed since she spoke them, too. So this is one or both of them reminiscing on the offer, and hence the possibility of working out the bumps and giving this relationship another chance. Kind of interesting juxtaposition here; to meet where the road parts leans towards a future of a breakup, but the next line focuses Hunter’s attention towards the reasons they got together in the first place, implying a desire to return to that.

Note that ‘where we first met’ is ‘where the road parts’; Ms Leading and Hunter first encountered each other in a space with multiple paths coming off it, which is why I keep visualising the area of the city Ms Leading is in during The Church & The Dime as a square, though it could also probably be like, an intersection.

>So tongue-in-cheek with stale irony
The narrator comments on the manner that Ms Leading has given her offer, being self-deprecating if you take it as Ms Leading, and kind of exhausted if you take it as Hunter…

>If it pleases you, it pleases me
…which was this; these are Ms Leading’s words again. This is how she framed the offer to reconcile things with Hunter: ‘if you want to do it, I’m down.’

This is likely the exact same sentiment, and maybe even the exact same words, she presented to him when they first hooked up, which is where the tongue-in-cheek irony comes from. Back then, this was just the attitude she had to facilitate her work as a prostitute, that being the exact thing that’d led them to have this relationship breakdown in the first place, and the exact thing they’ll have to address if they do see each other again.

We know last time though, Hunter took these words at face value and wound up being burned for them. Reading the subtext, she does want to reconcile, but isn’t certain Hunter will. Either way, the ball’s in his court, and it’s on him to decide whether to take up the offer or just break up. Reconciliation will be difficult, however, and will require facing the mistakes and the extreme expectations he’s made across this relationship. Being that he’s still hurting from Red Hands, he’s hesitant about how to approach this.

>Just an innocent call, a telephone call
Two things going on here. Firstly establishing the manner in which Ms Leading has contacted Hunter to give this offer: by telephone. Some time has passed since Red Hands, and they likely haven’t seen each other in person since then. Hunter recognises that her offer is well-intentioned; Ms Leading hopes this sentiment of vulnerability communicates.

Secondly this characterises Hunter as an ‘innocent call’; Hunter and Ms Leading can look back at how they met, and see that Hunter was just that, naive. Though he’s made a huge mess as of Red Hands, there wasn’t any malice or ill will in his intentions up until then, and he didn’t want to become malicious, either. Hunter probably wants to go back to how things were originally, and seems to recognise that in pursuing Ms Leading he’s fallen into a difficult world he wasn’t ready for. Quite a tone of sadness and pain on this.

>Now, if you were in bloom I’d pluck your petals clean
‘In bloom’ is a phrase that’s so far been exclusively used to reference Ms Terri and Ms Leading — we can figure the speaker here is Hunter. Equally, the way he uses it tends to be describing these women in a state of absolute exaltation and beauty. Basically he is saying that if Ms Leading were a less troubled person, and had actually been more like the persona she presented to him, he would be agonising over ways to stay with her (going full she loves me, she loves me not). He wishes to indulge himself on her positives. I think this might also be a very poetic way of Hunter saying he still wants to bang her? We know, Hunter. But fair enough.

Basically, he wants to accept the call, but is nervous that anything that isn’t sunny might hurt him again.

>Although it won’t seem so, I can promise you, my ego’s running me
Again this line sounds extremely Hunter. ‘It won’t seem so’? Hunter, it’s been quite clear that you got into this mess because your ego got battered. Hell, the reason he’s not accepting the call is because it means he has to admit the city he came to conquer got him in over his head. And he wasn’t smart enough to see the inconsistencies on his own. And he wasn’t stable enough to handing difficulty without snapping. And he messed up and he failed and to be confronted with a reminder of that is excruciating. He’s proud, and immature, and hungry for only good things.

>Then I’d be cold, you were the only one that didn’t fold
Now we do a 180 into Ms Leading territory. I’m going to read this again as Hunter quoting things that Ms Leading has told him. With that view, this suggests that when Ms Leading called him to offer they speak again, Hunter cited to her that he was a selfish prick as reason not to even consider continuing the relationship and probably went on to say that from his side of the relationship, it’s never really been about her, but about what he could gain from her. Ms Leading countered this by saying that if Hunter was really that terrible, she wouldn’t be so happy to be in his company, and notes that he’s the only one who’s ever made her feel this way or treated her like a real person.

It feels kind of weird that Hunter would actually confess all this to Ms Leading though. Maybe he’s just imagining (accurately) the kind of counter-argument she would make, off of things she’s said before?

>But I just broke right down for you in an attempt to gain control
Hunter considers her words and rejects them, instead noting his own poor behaviour and characterising his motives again as selfish. Not sure what he’s referring to specifically as his breakdown — there’s Red Hands obviously, but I think it can be taken more generally as how malleable/invested he became within like two seconds of meeting her to try and get some semblance of order back in his life, which is why he exploded as hard as he did in Red Hands.

I can also read this whole verse as being an active conversation between them (maybe Hunter does meet her where the road parts and this conversation ensues? Or maybe this is the telephone call?) that ends with them parting/hanging up here, but the idea of this basically being Hunter and Ms Leading worrying alone to themselves about whether the relationship’s worth it in general, with the offer of reconciliation sitting on the table, then pivoting into Hunter’s hard rejection in Dear Ms. Leading, feels way more appealing structurally than them having this little waffle moment where they talk to go ‘I suck’ ‘No I suck’. Like it’s one thing to think about your doubts and failures in private, it’s another to comprehensively address them in front of the person you hurt.

>Maybe I’m a waste of time waste of time, waste of time
This is both Hunter and Ms Leading talking. As Hunter has reflected, he’s an absolute prick that only cares about people insofar as they make him feel better about his life. As Ms Leading reflected, she’s a mercenary vampire who tried to hold onto this idea of innocent happiness that she knew was founded on lies. In both cases, they don’t think they’re worth the investment of the other.

>Sacrifice another life, sacrifice another life
Both of them are braced to forfeit the happiness they could have had with each other. They accept the ideal life they both wanted will never happen…

>You were the only one that didn’t fold
But all the same, the sentiment remains: Hunter made Ms Leading happy, and she didn’t leave Hunter. She even still wants to stay with him. Given how ashamed Hunter is of his missteps in Red Hands, and how injured he still is from learning of Ms Leading’s prostitution, this makes knowing where to go next extremely hard. There are still enough positives to make the case that they try again. But is this relationship worth its problems if it’s not going to be perfect? Could they still try to make something that maybe isn’t perfect, but is okay? Is okay really enough?

Can they even do it? Are they even worth it?

Red Hands | Act II | Dear Ms. Leading

Red Hands

Red Hands
Even if you never strayed from me
I’d question your fidelity
There’d always be a shroud of suspicion
And my heart’s a liability
With your hands marooned so freshly red
You’d wrap your lips around my neck
Try and forced to love the thought of me
Simple motions make me ill

Was it bitter when you tossed and turned on his under cover mattress?
Did it feel so good? Hope it felt so good
Don’t know what I’d do if you lost sleep over little old me
He’s so much better, they’re all much better
Take off your sweater, your shoes, and your shirt, and get to work

Maybe this is just a work of art
Scripted players in a play of lust
Hope the end is well worth waiting for
Everything you wished it be

Was it bitter when you tossed and turned on his under cover mattress?
Did it feel so good? Hope it felt so good
Don’t know what I’d do if you lost sleep over little old me
He’s so much better, they’re all much better
Take off your sweater, your shoes, and your shirt and get to work

Oh my god, what have I done?
Now, my darling, put your clothes back on
Oh my god, what have I done?
Now, my darling, put your clothes back on

Because you can’t be caught red handed if you’re not red handed
My darling, I would never say those words to you
I was pulling out my heart so I could pin it to my sleeve
On display for you to see I’m on display
Because you can’t be caught red handed if you’re not red handed
My darling, I would never say those words to you
I was pulling out my heart so I could pin it to my sleeve
On display for you to see I’m on display

(Oh my god, what have I done?
Now, my darling, put your clothes back on
Oh my god, what have I done?
Now, my darling, put your clothes back on
Now, my darling, put your clothes back on)

Because you can’t be caught red handed if you’re not red handed (Oh my god, what have I done?)
My darling, I would never say those words to you (Now, my darling, put your clothes back on)
I was pulling out my heart so I could pin it to my sleeve (Oh my god, what have I done?)
On display for you to see I’m on display (Now, my darling, put your clothes back on)
(Now, my darling, put your clothes back on)

(Oh my god what have I done?
Now, my darling, put your clothes back on
Now, my darling, put your clothes back on)

🌲🌲🌲

What happens?
Hunter, hurt and furious, lashes out at Ms Leading for neglecting to tell him that she’s been a whore this whole time. Though he soon realises this was rash and takes it back, Hunter feels he’s crossed a line.

What’s in a name?
‘Red Hands’ – from being caught red handed, meaning you’ve done something wrong. Hunter accuses Ms Leading of doing wrong, but then realises he is the one acting poorly. Following the theme of hands from His Hands Matched His Tongue, Red Hands is where Hunter stops acting in line with his intentions or with integrity — the way he responds to Ms Leading here is the domino that bounces him to three more acts worth of wrong decisions.

Whose viewpoint?
Hunter.

🌲🌲🌲

>0:00 – 0:12 Instrumental
Right after walking in on Ms Leading with her client, and a very awkward drive to somewhere where he and Ms Leading can speak in private (probably Hunter’s place), Hunter, still numb from hearing Ms Leading’s confession, tries to find the words to start his part of this conversation.

Gives me the vibe of a hospital ward, almost (I think it reminds me of Kettering), they’re not in a hospital of any sort of course but it has that same kind of gentle-but-precarious tone.

>0:13 – 0:28 Instrumental
The words begin to cohere, as Hunter’s energy builds…

>Even if you never strayed from me / I’d question your fidelity / There’d always be a shroud of suspicion
Aaaaaaaaaaaand oh my god Hunter you idiot.

So, Ms Leading has confessed to Hunter that yes, she’s a prostitute, but her relationship with him is genuine. But Hunter, doubtful and generally insecure, is unable to accept her at her word. He cannot imagine her possibly sleeping with other men and not either liking them more, or ultimately not being serious about him.

Which is a fair thing to think when you catch your partner cheating… the problem Hunter’s missing is that Ms Leading isn’t cheating; she is destitute and this is her job. It’s been her job the whole time. They freaking met through her job. And despite what Hunter may think, she loathes everyone else she’s met through it!

Note his tone — he’s not lamenting ‘I’m sorry, I wish it weren’t true but this is hard for me, I won’t be able to trust you again’, he’s very much accusing her already. If there was room for them to find a solution to this dilemma, Hunter has already slammed it straight closed.

>And my heart’s a liability
Alright, now’s time for some self-pity. Hunter’s such a sensitive, loving person, he simply can’t handle the pain of knowing he’s been cheated. He ‘wishes’ ‘he’ ‘could’ trust Ms Leading, and forgive Ms Leading, but the pain… It is too much… how could you…

>With your hands marooned so freshly red / You’d wrap your lips around my neck
He has the image in his mind of her returning from a client, still dirty, only to seduce him with affection and kisses the same way. The thought he’s nothing more to her than another punter, or another man she can exploit with her carnal charm, makes him feel like he’s dying. Same idea goes for him thinking about how he’s investing his honest love into her, and the response she gives back being the exact same one she freely sells to faceless nobodies.

>Try and forced to love the thought of me
Now he’s flatly doubting that Ms Leading even really cares about him at all, and only entered a relationship with him because it was an alternative to getting railed on call. You don’t like me, you like having a boyfriend, Hunter accuses.

>Simple motions make me ill
‘She moved’; those same easy, beautiful motions that transfixed Hunter back in Bitter Suite I now disgust him, because, well… he fell for it. Realising now that he fell for it, a note of bitterness rises…

(Note the air of yearning as he trails off on this line here. He’s crushed.)

>Was it bitter when you tossed and turned on his under cover mattress? / Did it feel so good? Hope it felt so good
DDDDDDDDNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOO HUNTER WHAT ARE YOU DOING STOOOOOOOOP aaaaAAAAAAAAAAUGH

Alright so we’ve graduated from ‘you cheated and I’m hurt, I can’t trust you now’ (fair enough, he didn’t express himself in the nicest way but if it’s going to bother him, it’s going to bother him) to ‘you are a whore, whore’. Struggling to comment on the wordplay here (not that it’s subtle lol) beyond the wall of second-hand cringe (and appreciation for how right the first breakup teenage pettiness here is, Hunter’s like 18 and sheltered) but.

Alright, yes, so of his options forward Hunter has chosen pettiness. The way he’s mocking and taunting Ms Leading here is probably him externalising his own fears and disarming them by belittling a malevolent version of her in these fantasy scenarios when the reality is, she doesn’t like her job and she’s confessed as much to him. He does not feel secure right now and is trying to find some control by damaging her weak points until she’s torn down worse than him. So two birds with one stone, he can mock his genuine fear that she does care more about her clients than him, while legitimately hurting her by hitting the accurate point that yes, she did feel bitter about it and no, it didn’t feel good, and yes, she knows this occupation didn’t give her what she wanted, but…!

The fact Hunter can bring up bitter as a keyword to use against Ms Leading suggests she’s confided her own struggles about how she’s come to be bitter. Bitter is kind of like Ms Leading’s equivalent of Ms Terri and her misery. That’s her word you sneak. All of this is a very low blow.

‘Tossed and turned’ -> emotional turmoil from deceiving hunter, but also the throes of wild fun sex

‘Under cover mattress’ -> undercover = her sneakiness in keeping it hidden, but also literally under the covers since it’s sex. ‘If you cared so much, you wouldn’t have done it.’

‘Did it feel so good?’ -> she’s confessed she’s not proud of it, so it doesn’t feel good, but Hunter is anxious that it’s good enough for her to choose it over him. Hunter, the last thing Ms Leading is thinking about when she’s working is if she likes the sex, she’s too busy making sure the client does. You realise this enough to accurately jab her for it.

‘Are you proud of the choices you’ve made, whore?’, in a nutshell. On this first iteration of the verse the mood is still somewhat subdued, so I imagine he’s saying it without it registering how mean he’s being, and doesn’t think these insults are actually hurting Ms Leading. He’s too busy babying his own ego to be thinking about her.

>Don’t know what I’d do if you lost sleep over little old me
Haha, you funnyman, Hunter! (Genuinely a fun line though lol)

‘Lost sleep’ continues the string of double entendre jibes; mocking the idea of Ms Leading being worried about how Hunter would take the news (which she was, for justified reason, so this stings), and of her perhaps not taking so many jobs because Hunter’s existence was an obstacle impeding her (Hunter’s actual fear, which is stupid).

>He’s so much better, they’re all much better
Hunter explicitly voices his insecurity that he’s not good enough for Ms Leading, and that she must think he’s a boring easy lay sheltered gullible idiot.

>Take off your sweater, your shoes, and your shirt, and get to work
Not much to say, just wanted to highlight it for being a fun line. Carries a kind of bitter resignation that feels like Hunter properly realising that Ms Leading does this as a job, all the time, for money.

>Maybe this is just a work of art / Scripted players in a play of lust
Now Hunter’s getting meta. Or existential? Either way now he’s starting to try and downplay the pain of the cheating by framing the whole relationship as one big joke, not serious or consequential at all, while maintaining that aloof, condescending air where he gets to decide if the emotions involved were love or lust. He’s denying now that he even loved her.

>Hope the end is well worth waiting for / Everything you wished it be
Well Ms Leading, hope you like the punchline. (Hint: the punchline is you. Hunter will rub in how badly she messed up then dump her.)

Carries a feeling of genuine questioning too. Hunter probably hasn’t thought far beyond that and is unsure of what he’ll do once he doesn’t have Ms Leading. (Going by his track record though, the answer is, ‘run to somewhere less painful’.) Same as before, he seems to be figuring whatever he goes towards next can’t be worse than this, but if he does find himself facing misfortune he’s ready to blame that on Ms Leading (he could’ve had a happy ending if she didn’t cheat).

Since these lines are also meta, I read it simultaneously as an invitation to look forward to the climax of Hunter and Ms Leading’s story overall in Act V, while hinting that this is not the ultimate end of things between Ms Leading and Hunter.

>Chorus Repetition
Having conceived that Ms Leading is to blame for the end of Hunter’s happy life, Hunter’s anger ramps up. He’s not just venting to comfort himself now; this time, he’s aiming his energy outwards to attack Ms Leading, taking her as a Jezebel who he’s justified to hurt, humiliate, and punish.

Guess I’ll note here to say, Hunter was using this relationship as a bandaid for his Dead Mom problem. More than just the pain of being cheated on (though it’s still 90% that), Ms Leading’s probably getting hit by the splashover of his earlier resentment for Ms Terri’s suicide, even if that aspect’s not conscious. In general I think Hunter (at this stage) is touchier than most would be about losing relationships, especially when the other person loves him, especially because the other person lied, and that’s part of why he jumps to these extremes so quickly when dealing with Ms Leading here. He’s terrified of losing her too, the idea of her cheating is stressing him, and Hunter being immature when he’s overwhelmed has his emotions set to ‘KNIFE’. (’happiness is a knife / when the world rolls on fire’; ‘the world burns / but still we breathe’).

Fun to have a bit of a power high, isn’t it? Hunter’s really bad at reining himself in once something bumps him into an emotional ‘flow’. He’s just not thinking.

>Repetition: Take off your sweater, your shoes, and your shirt, and get to work
…And this time, this jibe isn’t a jibe, it’s an order. As the ultimate humiliation, Hunter decides to get his revenge and put himself back in control by treating her like what she is: a whore. He throws some money at her, instructs her to strip, and fucks her.

>2:59 – 3:12 Instrumental
…Or, well, the words leave his mouth at least. Given how undramatic this passage is, and that Hunter’s able to even try taking this back, I don’t think things escalate that far before Hunter snaps out of it. (If they do, then bro, Hunter).

Rather, I think it’s more like this: Ms Leading suppresses her anguish and strips, so now Hunter has to properly… do something to turn it into sex, or has to let Ms Leading touch him so she can turn it into sex, and that’s where Hunter realises hey woah he doesn’t want this. I could also imagine that Ms Leading starts crying or is otherwise obviously distressed/not her usual bedroom self during this.

>Oh my god, what have I done? / Now, my darling, put your clothes back on
Hunter snaps out of his vengeful arrogance as the realisation of how terribly he’s hurt Ms Leading hits him. Horrified at himself, and remembering that he loves her, he guides her to get dressed so as to humanise her again, as herself, Ms Leading.

These lines repeat a lot over the rest of the song — Hunter is mortified by his actions and cannot stop thinking about it. He’s always been rather emotionally volatile, and prone to animosity since Ms Terri’s death, but this is the first time that’s ever translated into him trying (doing?) something so unambiguously wicked. This is not what a good person acts like, not how Ms Terri raised him, and moreover, not how he should treat anybody, especially his girlfriend.

Equally, narratively, this is where Hunter crosses the line into no longer being totally innocent. Hence, red hands. It won’t be until Act III that misdeeds like this start becoming routine, so were he to stop and properly address this first error, that would probably course-correct him away from a boatload of trouble. Of course, since forgiving himself for this mistake is something the Oracles advised him to do, he won’t do it. He thinks he’s screwed this relationship irreparably.

>Because you can’t be caught red handed if you’re not red handed
Because Hunter finally realises — Ms Leading wasn’t cheating!!!

Which is she’s been saying, the whole time. She wasn’t lying about the job just being a job. As it follows, others may have had her body, but she was honest when she said her heart belongs only to Hunter. The entire basis for him getting so mad at her that he’d reduce her to meat, without ever pausing to think ‘wait’, was completely unfounded.

Because let’s be clear. Ms Leading’s actions haven’t been spotless, but the thing about her confession that bothered Hunter so much wasn’t that she waited so long to divulge her occupation (the actual wrong thing that she did), it was the prospect that her love wasn’t exclusive to him, that she didn’t care, and that she only kept him around because he was too naive to know better.

What really makes this line hit as hard as it does, though, and what it represents when it’s reprised, is that aspect of empathy for Ms Leading’s situation. It’s not necessarily that Ms Leading has not done anything wrong, but more that her circumstances are such that she couldn’t have reasonably done anything different.

>My darling, I would never say those words to you / I was pulling out my heart so I could pin it to my sleeve / On display for you to see I’m on display
Hunter tries to take back all the terrible things he’s said, scrambling to find some excuse to justify the fact that he did say them. What he settles on is ‘I was trying to be open about how I felt’… which I’m sure is basically true, but there’s a difference between emotional openness and emotional incontinence. Hunter did the latter, getting completely swept up in and carried away by his feelings, to the point of doing things he regrets. Still, his ego’s still far too tender to cope with such a blow as admitting that, so he spins it like it’s some kind of positive. (It’s also more important right now for him to comfort Ms Leading than pontificate on whether he’s a good person — you can still hear him straining to convince himself of what he’s saying, though).

I suppose the last thing to say about Red Hands is that it’s the place where we see one of Hunter’s bigger but less ‘loud’ personality traits on open display — he’s really selfish. I don’t mean that to say, he’s cruel, or uncaring, or exploitative, or cold, but rather to say that he has a strong, automatic drive to consider things in terms of their effect on himself, and from there do what’s most convenient for him. I don’t think that’s an inherently negative thing (it saves his life from the Tank later), but combined with him being reactive and quite sensitive, it does make him prone to impulsively doing or saying things purely to avoid feeling hurt, which in this case manifested as him dumping that pain on someone else, to his shame. Hunter does not seem sure how he can even show his face to Ms Leading, now.

>5:43 – 6:08 Instrumental
The conversation ends, and Ms Leading, dressed again, leaves to go home alone.

Blood of the Rose | Act II | Where The Road Parts