Welcome to #TransTuesday! It’s time for part four of THE UNINTENTIONAL (?) TRANS ALLEGORY OF SILO! Tillyvison reservoir full, it’s time to Silo up! This week it’s an episode 4 and episode 5 twofer!
Of course you’ll want to read PART 1 first.
And of course you’ll want to follow that with PART 2.
And OF COURSE you’ll want to follow THAT with PART 3.
EPISODE 4
Bernard is mayor now that Jahns is dead, according to the pact. Though Jahns was still a (possibly unwitting) tool of the system, she’s the one that considered Juliet for sheriff and signed the order making it official. Even THAT was enough to make Jahns a threat to the system.
In a flashback we see Juliet has childhood trauma from her mother and brother dying, and her dad being the one to make her go through their things to take to recycling. Here we see her want to fix her mom’s chair, but her dad doesn’t think it’s fixable.
A lot of trans people who transition as adults have childhood trauma. Even if it’s not from active transphobia, when you realize how much of your own life you missed out on, it wounds you. I didn’t get to be a little girl, and never will. See THE PAST AND WHY IT HAUNTS US.
And her wanting to fix the chair is wanting to gain control and understanding over the broken world around her, and to understand herself, so again see the trans tuesday on SEARCHING FOR MEANING (when you’re trans and don’t know it).
When Juliet goes to her new apartment, which used to be Holston’s, there are flowers in front of the mirror. He prepped them for her, put them there back in episode 1, to make things better for those who came after him.
In another flashback to Juliet’s childhood, after just having taken her mom’s and brother’s things to recycling, she’s at home making food for herself. She’s CRACKING AN EGG. In trans parlance, your egg cracking is when you realize you’re trans. Or start to.
As this is a flashback, I think this is present Juliet remembering that moment and realizing it for what it was. Because it’s shortly thereafter she left home and went down to Walk in mechanical, fed up with how broken her life was. Running from the pain.
But her brother dying, her mom dying (and the other trauma at the hands of Judicial that we learn about later), her dad telling her to abandon and ignore what was broken rather than try to fix the problem, is what did it. Made her realize the WORLD was broken, not her. Egg crack.
Again, this is probably all unintentional, but an egg cracking on screen during the time Juliet decided to leave her old life behind on the very long path to become someone new, someone she wanted to be, is… well. A very big coincidence, let’s say!
After being sworn in, Juliet can finally get into the sheriff’s safe, but there’s nothing there about George. Judicial lies and says they don’t have a file for him. Holston left her a file though. And in there is his note about doubling the flowers in front of the mirror.
In the scene where Marnes asks Juliet what she did or said to Holston that made him want to go out, he’s basically accusing her of trans-ing Holston by association. “You turned my kid trans!” “No they were always trans, they just didn’t tell you because you weren’t safe.”
Just after Marnes and Juliet talk to Patrick Kennedy, there’s a spot where Marnes says, “truth and trying mattered to Allison too, and it mattered to Holston. And you might wanna think about that.”
Which is showing you right there that the truth is dangerous. Look what caring about reality and the fight to not live a lie will get you. I think this is more of a warning than a threat, because he’s agreed to help Juliet against his better judgment, and we know where that takes him.
Juliet sees Lukas in the cafeteria again. Juliet was named after a play but they don’t perform it any more and some say it was written by a rebel. Anything from before, that could lead them to information about the real world, is banned.
She was named for something rebellious that is actually beautiful and enriches the world. Why would her parents do that? Her mom’s an egg, but we’ll get to that later on.
Also if this doesn’t remind you again of the “don’t say gay” bill, and of wiping trans people from history, and from those very same transphobes making Shakespeare actually illegal to be taught in Florida schools in the Year of our Pizza 2023, I don’t know what to tell you.
Marnes tamely breaks the rules by dangling his beer over the wall by the sign that says not to. A small thing, but again, look what those in power can do with no consequences, while he himself would force others to stop doing what he’s doing right now.
Once again I direct you to CIS PEOPLE GET GENDER AFFIRMING HEALTHCARE TOO.
Marnes is attacked in his apartment, and killed (by someone from judicial). Because Marnes ALSO wouldn’t conform and do what they wanted, and he was aiding Juliet. And looking into Jahns’ death would only implicate judicial too, so… he’s removed.
Juliet’s now in her apartment, seeing the flowers in the vase and pondering why she should increase them. She finds the washer rattling in the vent, pulls the wire it’s attached to, and inside is a bag with George’s file. More morsels that Holston left for her.
EPISODE 5
Juliet goes to Marnes’ murder scene, where Sims introduces Billings as her new deputy. Billings reveres the Pact and knows it by heart, and this is why he’s judicial’s pick to be sheriff. He’s gone overboard into being an ultra-conformist. Why do you think that is?
Bernard talks about how Jahns and Marnes can serve his goals, even in death. No matter who you are, you will be taken and used for the good of those at the top of the system. They don’t care about you! You’re just a tool to them. We all are.
Juliet ditches Billings and goes back to see Patrick Kennedy who bloodied Marnes’ nose. She picks the lock with Holston’s badge (the truth literally gets her in) and she finds Marnes’ drawing of Jahns planted in the closet with poison.
Juliet finds Patrick Kennedy working, and takes him to put him “somewhere safe”. Billings comes in and tells her he went to judicial. He wants to build trust so he tells her the truth – that he wanted to see how judicial’s investigation was going.
They get reports from “listeners,” (judicial calls them “friends of the silo”). Their info is not admissible in court and they aren’t part of the pact so he doesn’t like it. Judicial is EXTRAjudicial, and will break any of their own laws if it is to their benefit.
Then there’s some hullabaloo with Judicial not knowing Patrick Kennedy’s wife died and so he was moved to a smaller apartment, and thus they planted the evidence to frame him for Jahns’ murder in the wrong place.
There’s a chase and a bit of a fight but the important thing is that Billings, though so entirely over-committed to the pact, realizes Juliet is right about things not being what they seem. He wants to help her, because he’s LIKE her (trans). But he wants to stay hidden.
Sims tells Trumbull that the first time he saw janitorial his father came out of the door, and people looked down on him for being a janitor, but EVERYONE contributes to the good of the silo. But a janitor’s still a janitor and Sims was a janitor’s boy.
This seems like it’s a contradiction, because if everyone contributes to the good of the silo, why would a janitor be looked down on? But this is Sims giving away the game. I mean yes, he’s a raging hypocrite as we see in detail later on…
But what he really means is that everyone contributes to the good of (THE PEOPLE AT THE TOP OF) the silo, and those people, including Sims, look down at those they feel are beneath them. You see this time and again in the show, even when Juliet first arrives at her office.
To Sims, being a janitor IS bad, because people would perceive him as less than (because HE perceives them as less than). And the only way that’s acceptable is if it was a front for something else, with what he sees as real power.
It was his father who got Sims into his position with judicial, showing you AGAIN how power, control and influence passes from generation to generation to only the “right” kinds of people, keeping “the other” outside where they cannot effect change.
And so the people in the control room, behind the janitorial door are… imagine a group of cis people who KNOW the gender binary is a lie, but choose to perpetuate it anyway to maintain control and keep themselves in power. THAT is who those people are.
But really that’s just Bernard. The people in the control room, and even Sims, have also bought right into the lie of it all (evidence for this comes later). Because it lets them feel right, and like they deserve what they have, and that the “other” (trans people) don’t.
Sims says that behind the door to janitorial is, “the most important work of the silo, work that keeps 10,000 people alive.” But I mean, no, right? That’s what Juliet and everyone in mechanical does. All the people in the control room do is keep themselves as the ruling class.
Sims asks Trumbull if he’s willing to do ANYTHING to serve and protect the people of the silo, willing to give everything he has to serve and protect the people of the silo. Trumbull says yes to both. And Sims tosses him over the rail, killing him.
This is what waits for the people who gleefully do the work of our false cis binary society. The TERFs and the transphobes… society and those at the top DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOU. They will LITERALLY USE YOU TO FURTHER THEIR OWN ENDS and then dispose of you.
Was Trumbull part of the silo? Yes. So wouldn’t something that’s good for the silo also be good for him? Yes. But Sims doesn’t even consider Trumbull as part of the silo. He is literally just a tool that’s outlived its usefulness.
Juliet presents the facts about Trumbull to Judge Meadows. Juliet wants to investigate further because she’s sure he’s just a patsy, but Meadows tells her not to. They can say they have the killer and the killer is dead, that’s enough to quell rumors.
You can see hints here that Meadows is controlled by Sims (who’s controlled by Bernard), but also how absolutely none of them care one iota about the truth. Or actual justice. They care about “stopping the unrest.” Because, again, that’s what keeps them in power.
Juliet finds Lukas again in the cafeteria, drawing the “lights in the sky.” They don’t know what stars are, but he’s trying to figure it out. To learn. To understand. That’s what draws them together.
Walk and Juliet talk about the camera. Juliet can’t read the writing on it, so she asks for a more powerful magnifying glass. Walk says, “like the one your mother made with two lenses that Judicial destroyed? Do you know why they destroyed it?“
Walk says there are two big mysteries about the pact. One: they cannot mechanize the way they go up and down the silo. And two: no magnification beyond a certain amount. Let’s examine those.
No mechanizing movement up and down the silo means everyone has to walk, and there’s over a hundred stories. They can’t have elevators or escalators. To say nothing of the way this otherizes and traps the disabled on the surface-level story…
It keeps people APART and separates and foments resentment and anger and fear of the other, which you can see directly plays into the hands of those at the top. If we’re all angry at each other, our anger isn’t directed where it should be – at THEM.
You can see this in the real world with the way more rural areas have much higher instances of transphobia (and bigotry of all kinds). Living in urban areas means you’re in close proximity to other people, and that means you learn about them.
And you discover your differences are nothing to be feared, and maybe even are something to be celebrated. And I’m not saying big cities have no bigotry, that’s demonstrably false. But they’re much more accepting, in general, than remote rural areas.
It’s why cities vote Democrat and rural places vote Republican. There’s a cultural divide that is INTENTIONALLY FOMENTED BY THOSE AT THE TOP. Republican candidates stoke fear and hatred in their voters all the time. PARTICULARLY ON TRANS ISSUES.
And the rule about magnification is just entirely straightforward. It’s about keeping the masses uneducated, so they can’t learn about what’s hidden from them, about their history, about what came before.
It’s a direct analogue to Republicans defunding public schools and controlling what can and can’t be taught… even if it’s entirely illegal.
And just as directly it’s an analogue to Republicans banning books they don’t like, books that tell the truth about history that paints THEM AND THOSE LIKE THEM in an (accurately) poor light. It’s allllllll about controlling the masses to keep the power.
Walk is worried Juliet will be next in the line of murders, that seeking the truth will get her killed. And that’s what’s kept Walk in her apartment for two decades. Fear of what will happen if she comes out. We’ll get into more about this with Walk later on.
But Juliet has a plan to try to get to the bottom of things. And that’s maybe gonna take her places she didn’t expect. But that’s what happens when you do the work to examine yourself and society… and discover it’s all been lies.
Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com
Ps – Part 5 is here!