birdplushie:

episode 7 / episode 9

actual-changeling:

finally watched the pluribus finale, and while i’m gonna need 1-5 business days to emotionally recover from this, i keep going back to the sky.

humans are always looking up, it’s just something we do, and not just to try and guess what the weather will be.

carol and helen spend that long, quiet moment staring at the aurora borealis together, and it’s shared love, a way of connecting. we take in the sun, moon, stars, clouds, rain, snow, it doesn’t matter—it’s so easy to find joy in it.

many, many times, carol looks up just because, but the hive? never. not unless they’re copying her behaviour, same with kusimayu. she stares up and even as two others join her, they never once tip their heads back, which is what you’d expect.

if someone looks up, you look up with them. there’s a longer, way more complex essay in subconscious mirroring humans engage in, but that’s for another post.

my point is, all the hivemind ever does is look down. they have literal eyes in the sky, we often see them in planes or, right at the end, in a helicopter. piloting and sitting in them is mechanical, empty and focused in all the wrong ways.

carol seeks out the window in the plane, yet zosia doesn’t, and why would she? that urge is suppressed and buried, she sits in the middle aisle and stares straight ahead unless it’s to look at carol. considering her book tours, carol has been on many planes, yet flying never loses its touch, not fully.

they don’t stop to take in the sunlight falling through the leaves or linger to watch a sunset, and it’s interesting that (as far as i remember) we often get bird view shots or close-ups from above when it comes to the hive, both with individuals and groups.

the original signal came from space, and yet all that genuine joy and excitement the scientists had has disappeared and been replaced by “we need to share it with everyone else”. figuring out where it came from doesn’t really matter as much to them as figuring out how to send it elsewhere.

for humans, the sky is endless in its possibilities and the feelings it evokes. for the hivemind, it’s a functionality, a way of observing without really understanding, the ultimate surveillance tool. i doubt that they can actually lip-read from space, but manousos paranoia in carol’s presence serves an important purpose; the point is that he believes it to the point of fearing the sky itself. also something for another post

with the way the show is shot, it directs our attention again and again to the sky, and outside the cinematography being insanely good, it draws on our universal fascination with simply looking up.

is a life truly worth living if you never get the urge to stop, breathe, and feel the sun warming your skin?