The Sounds Of Nightmares Episode 3 Analysis: A Triple Bill Of Memories

The Sounds of Nightmares episode 3 analysis: A Triple Bill of Memories

I can safely say I was not expecting 95% of what happened in this episode. That said, there's a fuckton of things to cover, so let's get started!

The Voices of the Lonely Mall:

So @queen0fm0nsterz made a great post showing that the chain woman from episode 1 is an inverse of the Lady, and it's pretty clear that the same thing is going on with the Mall and the Tower.

The Mall is also our first non-malicious antagonist in the series, which is doubly surprising given how inhuman it is.

I don't actually see the various PA voices that chastise the "brain" for scaring Noone as other personalities, since the Mall says "Don't leave ME" as the dream ends. I think a better description of the PA voices is false personas, possibly based on previous visitors (the way it uses their memories to lure visitors in), that the Mall has deluded itself into treating as real and separate from it by way of the PA system due to it's unbearable loneliness. I'd be astonished if we get a more tragic one-off monster in the remaining episodes.

One last thing about the Mall, it scares Noone away with it's desperation, like how Otto scares her with his desperation to know more about the Ferryman. Neither have inherently villainous motives, but hinder themselves due to their obsession with said motives.

How is the ferrying buisiness, anyway?:

I've said it before, the Ferryman is WAY scarier in the podcast than in the comics. With the expanded knowledge about the Nowhere we get in this episode it's clear that the Ferryman is intentionally taking Noone to certain places in the Nowhere, and it would seem she's far from the first to be taken to the Mall, as it seems to dread him taking it's new patrons away, above all else, not to mention that the bathhouse water reminded Noone of the water that got her sick and the "familiar" dress from episode one possibly being like one worn by her mother.

Also noteworthy is that, unlike all other characters whose dialogue Noone quotes, which we hear from the character themselves and slightly ahead of Noone, we only hear what the Ferryman said through Noone's mouth. (I'll be discussing the implications of what he said in another post)

The old paper:

The paper Otto reads from to finish the episode seemingly implies that the human world's function is to feed into (in more ways than one) the Nowhere, again, I'll expand on this in a future post.

I think it's neither, instead, the Nowhere (LN world) is an alternate plane that kids "visit" in their sleep but can be trapped in by some entities /like the ferryman.

Ok people who listen to "the sound of nightmares" podcast I have a question for you. Concerning your interpretation :

Are you team "the LN world is just the collective surnatural nightmares and none of it happened in the real world"

Or team "the normal world is actually the LN world before it got corrupted by God know what and the collective nightmare made by Noone and other kids is an announcement/warning of what is yet to happen" ?

What I love about LN3 is that Low and Alone just showed up and were like: Bandai said it's our turn to get fanart and be chased by incomprehensible horrors.

And the whole fandom was like: K, but you have to play nice with everyone else *adopts them both*

I'd argue his encounter with Six actually does have the choice, just a crude version: Go with him or get torn apart.

It wouldn't surprise me if the Ferryman used his shapeshifting to convince one of Humpback's friends into going to the mirror house and then coming by to "clean up".

The brief thing with Low and Alone is interesting since my current theory is that only one will manage to escape the Nowhere, since all the promotional stuff is building up how close-knit the two are and tearing them apart would be classic LN fuckery.

I get the feeling the Ferryman's not strictly tied to the Maw, rather he just makes sure to get the kids that matter to the right places at the right ties to upkeep all the various operations needed to keep the various regions of Nowhere running. It could be argued he's a conduit for the will of the Nowhere itself.

So a post by @softichill made me realize that, by having Noone take off the pendant and escape the Mall, the Ferryman is essentially returning to his MO from the comics: He saves a kid from a (usually) non-humanoid resident before whisking them away for his own ends. Just something worth thinking about.

MASTERPOST (haven't linked it in a while :0)

Indeed! He is returning to his roots. Although I think Noone is different from all cases of him going into action before because of the nature of the other encounters. All of them are pretty different one way or another.

In the case of Six, he was chasing after someone who had already resided in the Nowhere for some time, with the specific purpose of taking her to the Maw. He did not come to her rescue, nor did he offer his hand to her: he instead pointed his finger at her chest in an accusatory way － or at least Six perceivs it that way.

It is worth noting that, unlike what happened with Noone and the pendant, the Ferryman did not wait for Six to take anything off her person.

This time it felt much more like an "I found you" moment. Like he was looking for her. It was so imperative that he took her there that he (presumably) chased after her and immobilised her to get her on the submarine.

This is the only time when a child found by the Ferryman is not given a choice on whether to follow him or not.

Or. Well. The illusion of a choice.

Which brings us to the second child taken by the Ferryman, the Refugee Boy. Considering that he might be originary of the Nowhere, since his village gave out charms to protect them against the North Wind, implying that he has always been a threat to the village, this is yet another peculiar case because it indicates that the Ferryman also looks for live, Nowhere-born children to bring to the Maw. He doesn't seem to make distinctions.

In this particular occasion, he had actually made a bet with the monster who was interested in the Refugee Boy. I wonder if the deal was struck when North Wind killed the girl and the Ferryman was "not in time" to offer his help to her as well, but considering how he deviously smiles when transforming back... I have my doubts it comes from a good place.

And also, I think that the next story I'm about to touch on points to the Ferryman only pursuing single targets rather than groups.

The next time we see the Ferryman is when he arrives at the end of the Humpback Girl's tale, after she's already faced the Mirror Man and has been abandoned.

The only thing that perplexes me about this is that it doesn't seem to be happening in a dream, but the Ferryman is also stepping into the "real world". I doubt the Humpback Girl is like the Refugee Boy because the other children who were with her make fun of her for being afraid of monsters, with the underlying message that monsters do not exist.

The presence of the Mirror Man, however, would imply that the Ferryman is not the only monster who can cross the bridges between various realities. And with this in mind, I am also thinking of whether or not he can only manifest through a specific kind of mirror in the real world, which are the ones we see in the comics and would explain why they were sealed away.

Maybe the choice of not destroying them could stem from the belief that maybe someone could return through them... (thinking hard about Low and Alone.)

Anyway. Back to the man of the hour, who, rather cowardly, shows up when the action has already finished. And this time, he just... vanished with her holding his hand. Like a boogeyman, taking yet another victim away.

There was no build up to this, like for Noone, who instead sees him in her dreams becoming more and more vivivd and to whom he even speaks -- something he has never done before.

And remember: all these kid, he is not taking ALL of them to the Nowhere. His objective is to get them on the Maw. Which is where I am afraid Noone might end up in at the end of this podcast -- whichever version of it, at whichever point in time.

It has me wonder when in the timeline the podcast takes place. I have a feeling this podcast will be revealed to come first in the timeline, dating back to a time even before VLN, but we'll see.

So apparently the next episode of Sounds of Nightmares is called "Theatre of The Mind" and I am so excited to see what passes for preforming arts in the Nowhere. Gets me even more hyped for the LN3 circus.

I always saw the cultists looking at the hole as them wondering "Why did our eldritch horror suddenly act out?" It makes the most sense given what we know so far.

I forgot about the piper, then it might be somethin other than early exposure. But then again, that short is non-canon and not just what we see in it, after all, despite John saying the piper's back we have no indication he even exists in canon, let alone that he's taken people away before.

I think the chess cover for the physical OST is a hint that we're making Eyes out to be more villainous than they are. For example, when someone's eyes glow seafoam green they're not possessed by Eyes, but rather using their energy/power/blessing.

This would explain why both Pump's eyes and Bob's eyes glow towards the end of TT, one is tapping into magically granted knowledge and the other is reanimating himself.

If this is correct, then Kevin and the Hatzgang might also have some dormant supernatural powers, which would be fucking epic!

I think I made a post a little while ago about that, Eyes being a chess piece while the cult are the ones looking over everything makes me think that, with rich families like Roy's and powerful people like Mayor Evermore being part of it, the Cult is more in control of the town than we ever would've thought

I've never seen Eyes as dangerous or an intentuonally malicious villain, I think of it more as like a huge octopus dog that accidentally brought the attention of a powerful cult to it after it saved the son of its previous owner and his friend from a creepy pedo

I've always thought of Eyes having been possessing people, but after what happened in TT (because I doubt Eyes would let someone go after Skid and Pump), that he more grants them heightened mental and physical strength

Oh and also, in pretty sure Bob survived for long because of the pendant he had in his chesr that was shown in the true ending, the ones that the cultists wear, and he only died because Jack cracked the pendant after he had ran Bob over enough times with the car

Also yeah, I have been waiting for the Hatzgang and Kevin to be shown having green eyes, because they saw Eyes aswell, I want Kevin to get green Eyes and go full on Beast Mode to protect the kids

Aka, cult is in control of a lotta inner workings of the town, Eyes can grant immortality to people and the cult is seeking immortality (implied by that one book in the ARG), Skid's dad is implied to have adopted it in some doodles, which may be the reason Skid's got some literal plot armour against it, Bob was able to survive being hit like 5 times with a car because he had a cult necklace, and I want Kevin and the Hatzgang to murder someone