rigorousintuition.ca

Here's my opinion on the whole supernatural interpretation of TD:

First postulate - TD takes place in the (a?) chamberian/lovecraftian universe. Second postulate - Rust has some form of ESP or psychic sensitivity.

The cultists were attempting to break out of "the flat circle". They were aware of the fact that they were trapped in this existence and wished to ascend from it. The child sacrifice and torture was how they were attempting to open the gateway out of our plane.

Reggie Ledoux: "I know what happens next... he literally does, because it's happened before ...You're in Carcosa now, with me...he sees Rust in Carcosa during episode 8, notice Errol says the same thing while Rust is chasing him... He Errol sees you. You'll do this again. Time is a flat circle.

Ledoux wasn't just spouting gibberish. He had achieved some measure of success with escaping the "flat circle" of his existence. Although he and Rust were never at Carcosa together from our temporal reference, from his fourth dimensional perspective time is flat and they are indeed there simultaneously

Errol: "My ascension removes me from the disc in the loop. I'm near final stage, some mornings I can see the infernal plane".

Errol is also having success in breaching our plane. He seeks to be removed from his infinitely repeating existence (the disc in the loop).

When asked where Bill Childress is, Errol's,umm...girlfriend?...responds: “All around us, before we were born and after you die". In other words, you guessed it, time is a flat circle. He existed before us and will exist again after we're gone, when the disc comes back to that particular part of the loop.

When Rust and Marty pull up at the Childress residence, Rust can sense that "this is the place". His ESP is perceiving something (the souls of all the dead there?). This feeling is conveyed to the audience via a series of strange haunting sounds. That wasn't just a creepy soundtrack, it was the disturbing psyhcosphere of the area put into auditory form so that we could hear what rust was feeling.

When he finally makes his way to the inner chamber of Carcosa, he is able to perceive the breach created by the cultists. The giant swirling vortex is not a hallucination. It is a gateway to another plane beyond our existence and the genesis of the swirl symbol used by the cultists. They could see it too, or at least one of them had seen it.

Errol Tuttle says 'my family's been here a long time'. Given that Carcosa appears to be a pre-civil war French era fort, possibly a pirate garrison at one time, in a Bayou/ Littoral zone we can assume the early vestiges of what became the cult are as old as the coast's European settlement. Originally, I think the inhabitants of the fortress were pirates from whom some of the cult members trace their ancestry who were around since the early 1700s. These pirates have been there a long time, since at least the mid 1700s French colonial period. The French era rule would also explain the Cajun Mardi Gras motifs we glimpsed in the video. Moreover, like in the Pitcairn Islands, longstanding cults of child sex abuse are a thing that isolated pirates and their ancestors do. Perhaps, over the course of the 1800s and as a result of interaction with West African slaves and Spanish influences, Voudon and Santaria entered an ingrained culture of pedophilia which also merged with Mardi Gras and Acadian/ Cajun Catholic pageantry. As this family/ cult/ set of families, possibly including creole and black branches, evolved its culture of pedophilia, some distinct elements of West African sun worship, and the sacrifices therein, began to occur. Hence why the sacrifices follow solstices and harvest festivals.

I'm really glad they didn't reveal anything like the cult's history as it makes it a truly Lovecraftian and unseen horror (and allows us on the internet to speculate indefinitely). But I think that when Cohle says he sees, 'sprawl' what he's looking into is an abyss, an ingrained evil that's older than the very State of Louisiana which he once served. The cult, is as mysterious as the Bayous, the coast, and Southern Louisiana's/ Acadiana's early history. It's a sinister centuries old throwback that was engulfed by swampy overgrowth and stayed hidden there becoming an unseen part of the coast's culture and way of life. Very much an homage to Ambrose Bierce's Carcosa, it no longer exists, but there are still people from there. It's a wretched place, and its tentacles and legacy persist to pollute our world.

TLDNR; The cult probably have their origins in piracy and are a part of the Louisiana Coast's storied history of cultural cosmopolitanism. It's cool that the creators never explained any of the 'Sprawl' because it fits with the writing and inspirations for the series.

best spoof I've seen

I'm really glad they didn't reveal anything like the cult's history as it makes it a truly Lovecraftian and unseen horror (and allows us on the internet to speculate indefinitely).

brekin » Wed Mar 12, 2014 1:00 pm wrote:8bitagent wrote:

best spoof I've seen

Had a thought this morning to. I really dug the Louisiana mis en scene, and they didn't shy away from the industrial blight, in fact they more than fetishized it a bit, and there were moments in flashbacks when they alluded to environmental problems, Marty says something like, all this land is going to be underwater someday, etc. But where is the BP Deep Horizon Spill? Flashback time is 1995, and the "present day" True Detective time is 2012.
Deep Water happened 2010 to now. Most of the storyline deals with the coast. Did I miss any references to it in the early episodes? Seems like they missed a big chance to tie in the super theme of pollution, exploitation, degradation of innocence & corruption, environmental wise to the physical and psychic pollution, abuse and corruption related to the Yellow King, Carcosa and the elite secret society that victimized the populace. Even, Deep Horizon aside, there is no shortage of environmental malfeasance and abuse in Louisiana. In fact it is rampant. Pity, it was mostly just a background prop as they drove around instead more of a stronger thread.

Unless of course thats what the time whorls were alluding to all along.

Reading this thread has been hugely entertaining and educational.
I watched this show under the naive misconception that it was about two men investigating a murder they couldn't walk away from for the same reasons that made them broken, and hugely enjoyed it front to back.
Grateful to find out I was completely wrong!

barracuda » Wed Mar 12, 2014 8:30 pm wrote:I have to admit being a bit disappointed that an HBO buddy-cop mini-series didn't actually turn out to be the vehicle by which the millennias-old conspiracy of the ruling occult pedoligarchy would finally be exposed. What a let-down. Oh well.
Now I'm looking forward to season three - I heard it's going to be a thinly veiled dramatization of the Babalon Working with a Jennifer Lawrence cameo as Sara Northrup. If they film it just right, I expect the Scarlett Woman to actually manifest herself within the lives of all legitimately subscribing viewers. And Emmys… Emmys for everyone.

8bitagent » Wed Mar 12, 2014 12:24 pm wrote:Love this theorizing on TD from Reddit

Here's my opinion on the whole supernatural interpretation of TD:

First postulate - TD takes place in the (a?) chamberian/lovecraftian universe. Second postulate - Rust has some form of ESP or psychic sensitivity.

The cultists were attempting to break out of "the flat circle". They were aware of the fact that they were trapped in this existence and wished to ascend from it. The child sacrifice and torture was how they were attempting to open the gateway out of our plane.

Reggie Ledoux: "I know what happens next... he literally does, because it's happened before ...You're in Carcosa now, with me...he sees Rust in Carcosa during episode 8, notice Errol says the same thing while Rust is chasing him... He Errol sees you. You'll do this again. Time is a flat circle.

Ledoux wasn't just spouting gibberish. He had achieved some measure of success with escaping the "flat circle" of his existence. Although he and Rust were never at Carcosa together from our temporal reference, from his fourth dimensional perspective time is flat and they are indeed there simultaneously

Errol: "My ascension removes me from the disc in the loop. I'm near final stage, some mornings I can see the infernal plane".

Errol is also having success in breaching our plane. He seeks to be removed from his infinitely repeating existence (the disc in the loop).

When asked where Bill Childress is, Errol's,umm...girlfriend?...responds: “All around us, before we were born and after you die". In other words, you guessed it, time is a flat circle. He existed before us and will exist again after we're gone, when the disc comes back to that particular part of the loop.

When Rust and Marty pull up at the Childress residence, Rust can sense that "this is the place". His ESP is perceiving something (the souls of all the dead there?). This feeling is conveyed to the audience via a series of strange haunting sounds. That wasn't just a creepy soundtrack, it was the disturbing psyhcosphere of the area put into auditory form so that we could hear what rust was feeling.

When he finally makes his way to the inner chamber of Carcosa, he is able to perceive the breach created by the cultists. The giant swirling vortex is not a hallucination. It is a gateway to another plane beyond our existence and the genesis of the swirl symbol used by the cultists. They could see it too, or at least one of them had seen it.

Errol Tuttle says 'my family's been here a long time'. Given that Carcosa appears to be a pre-civil war French era fort, possibly a pirate garrison at one time, in a Bayou/ Littoral zone we can assume the early vestiges of what became the cult are as old as the coast's European settlement. Originally, I think the inhabitants of the fortress were pirates from whom some of the cult members trace their ancestry who were around since the early 1700s. These pirates have been there a long time, since at least the mid 1700s French colonial period. The French era rule would also explain the Cajun Mardi Gras motifs we glimpsed in the video. Moreover, like in the Pitcairn Islands, longstanding cults of child sex abuse are a thing that isolated pirates and their ancestors do. Perhaps, over the course of the 1800s and as a result of interaction with West African slaves and Spanish influences, Voudon and Santaria entered an ingrained culture of pedophilia which also merged with Mardi Gras and Acadian/ Cajun Catholic pageantry. As this family/ cult/ set of families, possibly including creole and black branches, evolved its culture of pedophilia, some distinct elements of West African sun worship, and the sacrifices therein, began to occur. Hence why the sacrifices follow solstices and harvest festivals.

I'm really glad they didn't reveal anything like the cult's history as it makes it a truly Lovecraftian and unseen horror (and allows us on the internet to speculate indefinitely). But I think that when Cohle says he sees, 'sprawl' what he's looking into is an abyss, an ingrained evil that's older than the very State of Louisiana which he once served. The cult, is as mysterious as the Bayous, the coast, and Southern Louisiana's/ Acadiana's early history. It's a sinister centuries old throwback that was engulfed by swampy overgrowth and stayed hidden there becoming an unseen part of the coast's culture and way of life. Very much an homage to Ambrose Bierce's Carcosa, it no longer exists, but there are still people from there. It's a wretched place, and its tentacles and legacy persist to pollute our world.

TLDNR; The cult probably have their origins in piracy and are a part of the Louisiana Coast's storied history of cultural cosmopolitanism. It's cool that the creators never explained any of the 'Sprawl' because it fits with the writing and inspirations for the series.

brekin » Thu Mar 13, 2014 1:35 am wrote:Wombaticus Rex wrote:

Reading this thread has been hugely entertaining and educational.
I watched this show under the naive misconception that it was about two men investigating a murder they couldn't walk away from for the same reasons that made them broken, and hugely enjoyed it front to back.
Grateful to find out I was completely wrong!

barracuda wrote:

barracuda » Wed Mar 12, 2014 8:30 pm wrote:I have to admit being a bit disappointed that an HBO buddy-cop mini-series didn't actually turn out to be the vehicle by which the millennias-old conspiracy of the ruling occult pedoligarchy would finally be exposed. What a let-down. Oh well.
Now I'm looking forward to season three - I heard it's going to be a thinly veiled dramatization of the Babalon Working with a Jennifer Lawrence cameo as Sara Northrup. If they film it just right, I expect the Scarlett Woman to actually manifest herself within the lives of all legitimately subscribing viewers. And Emmys… Emmys for everyone.

Well there was that little old cop show on HBO called The Wire. That will stand with the greatest muckraking works of the last century. After The Wire even Hill Street Blues seemed like a broadway musical regarding realism. Even the Living Newspaper theatre of the 30's and 40's pulled no punches with controversial themes and were popular as well. I think if a piece of fiction is going to approach the themes True Detective did one should have (let me step onto this soapbox someone left here) high expectations and a responsibility to honor the content. If you don't, then you are really just capitalizing on the misery of such incidents for others puerile entertainment. If True Detective is less The Wire and more Harley Davidson and The Marlboro Man Go To Bohemian Grove then it is worse than all the crappy cop shows that don't go near such big conspiracy themes. The crappy shows at least don't legitimize treating such themes as convenient plot devices to just have Starsky & Hutch sharing a beer at the end.

I'd rather be naive and have high expectations than get giddy and complacent when some R.I. type themes are smeared over the cop version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And really, if there wasn't the promise of deeper conspiracy and occult threads in the show being revealed it wouldn't have been as compelling I imagine for many. I mean we got decades of the standard cops looking for the serial killer vehicle. If you go and start linking up to the larger power lines of grand conspiracy and occult narratives then you better illuminate some shit up. Dabbling with it and then retreating into faux-profundity and oh so mysteriousness bric a brac is a moral and intellectual coitus interruptus on a cosmic scale. Our we fans and shit connoisseurs of what is discussed on R.I. or do we want some of this shit to be acknowledged? I don't want MKultra, Franklin Scandal, etc inspired video games and shows, I want dramatic expose's. True Detective, just give me some truth!

Which is to say, nice to see you guys, barracuda and Wombaticus. Things got weird here for awhile. Whats new with you?

True Detective, just give me some truth!