#but i often find i interpret the fears a bit differently than common concencus for some reason /shrug

[gammija]

only tangentially related to this ep, but - i have an Avatar concept around the cold/freezing water/hypothermia and drowning, and Ive discussed before which Fear that would most closely align with. A lot of people said the Buried or the Lonely, maybe the Vast, mixed with Dark.

Water and cold can be hard to categorise, even aside from how the categories are arbitrary lines drawn between fears etc etc. Cause these motifs have shown up with the Vast, Buried and Lonely, and probably others on occasion too.

But I think the cold an sich, and cold water especially, are most closely related to the Dark. Just like how Manuela describes the darkness as not the opposite of light, but the absence of it, the universe's natural state; so too does she talk in today's ep about how cold is not the opposite of warmth, but the lack of it. Cold is stillness, quiet, numbing. Dark.

...and also;

109, Nightfall: "As soon as my foot hit the water, I fell into it completely. It was colder than anything I had ever experienced, and the torch slipped from my hand as my vision immediately went dark."

140, The Movement of the Heavens: "I gripped the head of my foul adversary, and forced it down, into the dark pool before us. There I held it, the water so cold upon my skin the marks have yet to fade."

143 Heart of Darkness: "... I began submerging the first of the sacrifices in the brackish water it had blessed with its stillness."

143 ,, : "There is another world, a world of still and quiet darkness, where no heat touches..."

Other Fears statements occasionally also feature water, sometimes even cold water (though it's always accompanied of a mention of how dark it is, too), but it's not as much of A Thing as with the Dark. And I think it's a cool motif which they should get more credit for!

@a-mag-a-day

#idk if this is even something people disagree about #but i often find i interpret the fears a bit differently than common concencus for some reason /shrug #tma #a mag a day #mag143 #tma s4 #tma theory #the dark #also if you'll permit me a leetle bit of saltiness... its cool how basira is the one saying #'lets just leave this alone and not risk your life' while Jon goes ahead with it of his own accord #come to think of it she also didn't want him to go into the coffin recklessly #almost like... she doesn't actually want him dead or anything like that #at least not before she finds out about the extent of the live statements. i havent relistened to that chunk of eps in a bit #so that'll be a good refresher on what exactly she says and does #but her not being nice to jon is sometimes conflated with her not giving one iota if he lives or dies #and thats just evidently not the case #for the first half of s4