Eskew by Episode: Woe, Crossroads, Tenancy

Episode-by-episode commentary on I Am In Eskew. Follow along with the transcripts here!

Episode 15: Woe

In which David hears the story of how Allegra first came to Eskew.

Angling for compliments

So a little continuity screw-up here - previously it was Cemetery Hill, now it’s the Anglerman’s Cemetery upon a hill. That’s worse than usual and harder than usual to handwave as unreliable narration, so I don’t know what to tell you.

But this was at a time when some segments of the Magnus Archives fandom had just started to pick up on Eskew, and enjoy Eskew and it was really giving us a much-needed boost, so the name was meant to be a little soft wave towards TMA Episode 1. I don’t really like crossovers, so it was just a subtle nod of thanks that I think only I picked up on!

The nature of the cemetery itself is a little bit of Uzumaki, but also some fishermen’s gardens and memorials I’ve seen along the coast of the UK which do use seashells and coral for decoration. I think if you consider the drowned at sea ultimately becoming part of the landscape of the sea, there’s something particularly weirdly beautiful and horrifying about constructing a pretty shrine out of the things that grow out of your remains.

You, you, you

I think what begins to emerge in this episode is something that only gets more prevalent over time - the slight restlessness of entering the second act.

We know at this point that David is going to keep surviving episode-by-episode, so the show can’t just turn into ‘David goes to the supermarket, and almost gets eaten by the supermarket abomination, but then he doesn’t.’

We start looking for creative ways that we can tell horrible stories without putting him in direct peril every episode, enabling us to get around that formulaic approach - expanding into the viewpoints of other characters, creating threats that don’t target him personally, etc.

But I guess Allegra’s second-person narration here also follows on from Kenneth’s story previously, in that it opens David up to the possibility and hope of other people, empathy for other people rather than his self-absorbed approach to Eskew, and it’s his first explicit warning - other people may be threatening and they may be unreliable, but you won’t be able to get out of this place alone.

Allegra’s moment in the sun

I think we were always very aware that Allegra would come to a bad end. But before that happened, I wanted to have an episode where she actually gets to have a bit of a voice and backstory.

The rules we set for the show didn’t really allow for a lot of humanity in how the side characters are treated, and they naturally steered towards callousness, as perhaps we displayed with Kenneth in the previous episode - people being chewed up and spat out by Eskew in order to make a point to David, or in order to shock the audience.

I think it’s important to try and push back against that when you can, especially when your protagonist is a white guy who keeps inexplicably surviving at every turn. And, I suppose, it’s important to be sympathetic to David’s feelings of social isolation without the narrative completely reflecting his self-centredness.

Again, this comes through at the end, I think, with the very pointed comment that David’s pain doesn’t make him unique and it doesn’t make him an island.

Eurotrip

I went interrailing when I was 18, with some new friends from university, and - not their fault - it was a pretty horrible, isolating experience.

There’s nothing quite like being adrift in another country, with no safe space and nowhere to flee to, feeling like you’re on the outskirts of what other people’s collective enjoyment and they don’t seem to understand who you are.

There’s something particular in Allegra’s experience that I don’t think I fully captured in the writing - when you walk out of the interior place that’s supposed to be safe, to try and get away from people who are making you unhappy, and you wander aimlessly to try and pass the time for as long as possible so you don’t have to go back there, the exterior world takes on a very specific texture and feeling. Hostile, but also empty. Apathetic towards you, but also judging you.

Why couldn’t you be happy, back there?

It does, of course, turn out to be a very similar journey that takes David into Eskew.

With apologies to Pennywise, John and Laura

I didn’t mean to, but I think the cadence of “Soon it’ll be raining when you are, too” and the mention of water naturally conjures up IT. That combined with the gentleman’s grin makes me think that he’s probably one of our least successful monsters. (I like the rain that turns the other teenagers into a mass of flesh, but again, that’s a bit of a Uzumaki rip - the massed heaps of flesh that emerge from the row-houses.)

We generally make Eskovians horrific and obviously inhuman enough that it isn’t quite as stark, but I also think this episode comes the closest to more ‘realistic’ Englishman-abroad horror, where the fear and paranoia comes from the belief that those muttering locals in their own language are talking about you behind your back and that there are secrets in this place that you’ll never understand.

I do love some of the works that arise out of this horror - like Don’t Look Now, most obviously - but I’m glad we generally kept this at bay, because the terror of Eskew shouldn’t be that it’s foreign, but rather that it’s familiar.

Episode 15: Crossroads

In which Riyo enters Eskew.

I don’t love this episode, to be honest, and I don't have a whole lot to say about it - it’s mainly there to get Riyo from A to B, and to wrap up Professor Henley. I do remember it being incredibly difficult trying to keep a comfortable balance when you have a fairly grounded plot that you need to keep working through as one of your storylines, and then you have another storyline in a nightmare city where your imagination can run wild. You're always tempted to flee from one back to the other.

So again, I think I did Riyo a bit dirty because I was always itching to get back to Eskew.

What can I say about it? The throwing of objects is a nod to Roadside Picnic, of course.

Professor Henley’s story about the attic is quite nice, I guess - a continuation of the idea that we long to confront the horror that lurks on the outskirts of our vision, because finality and being devoured is better than never knowing for certain.

Episode 16: Tenancy

In which Room 11a appears in David's apartment without warning.

The knocking on the walls

Safety and comfort are really important to me. I’m a homebody, in the most anxious sense. I like to be somewhere I can feel undisturbed and unthreatened.

But it’s so hard to create a place of safety that’s genuinely unassailable. You’ve always got the neighbours talking through the walls, the banging on the door when someone comes to visit, the person walking down the street staring in. I think I’ve had a lot of nightmares about an unwanted visitor who breaks in and makes themselves at home and refuses to leave under any circumstances.

This episode is just...that, really. Articulating that sense of intense vulnerability, that fear that we may need to retreat further and further back in order to continue feeling safe, that we may be forced inwards, when an intruder comes knocking at our door.

To Thomas, with love

And this episode is perhaps the second very clear Ligotti homage / rip-off - it’s after the Town Planner, which likewise has an unseen malevolent force who communicates through scrawled notes, with an influence that grows and grows as the people under its spell dance absurdly to its tune.

That short story also has comically misspelled notes in all caps, by the way - I highly recommend it and it is a great riposte to anyone who insists that Ligotti is a writer without a sense of humour. 

C-c-changes

When I was a schoolkid, I remember the entire class did one of those career aptitude tests, where you complete a series of tasks and it tells you what jobs you should consider.

I don’t even remember what I was told I should do. But I was very insecure and desperate to understand myself better, so I voraciously read and re-read the top-scoring results pages for my various aptitudes after the fact: literacy, logical thinking, and so on. I thought it might give me a sense of myself. I couldn’t play sports, so you have to feed your ego wherever you can.

My highest aptitude, though, was ‘adaptability.’ I scored so high it literally went off the margin of the page template. (Or perhaps that’s just how I remember it.)

I dwelt on that a lot. Is it a good thing, to be adaptable?

Human beings have always been highly adaptable, of course, and that’s one of our greatest survival qualities...but then again, some of our very worst behaviours kick into play when we change in order to survive.

I’ve always been a people-pleaser, I’ve always inconvenienced myself to try and ensure that nobody thinks badly of me or causes a scene, and I think this episode is really taking that to absurd levels. It was quite cathartic to write as a kind of veiled self-criticism: this is where your behaviour will lead you if you don't learn to assert yourself occasionally.

Becoming a creature cramped up in the walls to avoid causing a fuss.

I quite like the final Hill House-esque implication that David may have become the Tenant in turn, and that a ‘normal’ family has moved into his apartment but he continues to harass a monster that may no longer exist. I just think that’s neat.

Next time: David encounters a mirror version of himself, and a man is watching a tower.