olreid: the thing that continues to really get me about eskew is how horrifying it’s not? both
olreid:the thing that continues to really get me about eskew is how horrifying it’s not? both for me to listen to and for david to live in. david chooses eskew over and over again. he walks out of london into the tunnel; he leaves the safety of the burn unit; he kills the child that saw the city’s nightmares so he wouldn’t have to; he rejects kenneth’s pleas for help, he dismantles the plane that is taking him away from eskew. eskew is the one place where he is always right to be afraid; where he can’t help but be lonely because, increasingly, he is the only one left who is real; where anyone would be sad because it never, ever stops raining. eskew is the externalization of all his symptoms; it provides justification for every single way in which he feels bad or broken. in eskew, david wants to jump off a bridge not because he’s suicidal but because the things under the bridge are calling out to him, pulling him under; he wants to isolate himself in his relationship not because he’s afraid of commitment but because his wife has been consumed by the city and is now bent on his destruction. all of his responses are eminently reasonable, rational when viewed from the outside; who wouldn’t be scared and traumatized when every day is a battle for your life with an enemy so formidable and changeable that you have no hope of ever making out its shape nor escaping its grasp ? no, all of that makes perfect sense. the real horror is feeling that way in a place that is not eskew, where your anxieties don’t manifest themselves in reality, where jumping at sounds and shadows only leaves you looking paranoid, and where picking away at your relationships doesn’t reveal secret tricks being played on you, but instead clearly shows your own woeful inadequacy when it comes to sustaining interpersonal relationships. eskew is the comforting respite; outside its walls is where the real horror begins -- source link