True Detective Rantings

By Edith Zimmerman February 27, 2014

There’s a “True Detective” folder on my desktop for all my screengrabs from the show, including a dozen of Cohle’s forearm tattoo alone — I can alllllmost see it, okay I can see it better now, okay that’s a little better? But then I realized it’s probably easier to just Google that tattoo, which I did, which led me to Instagram, which is where I learned that the dude who designed the tattoo (Joshua Lord, from Graceland tattoos in Brooklyn) apparently also designed Reggie Ledoux’s tattoos, and in response to questions (also on Instagram) about whether he’d intended to make the face on Reggie’s chest look like Cohle’s/Matthew McConaughey’s (as some people think, although I don’t really see it), he said “maybe” not once but TWICE, so basically the show is solved, SEE YA.

Also Reggie has what look to be Icelandic staves tattooed on his forearm, which is also a tattoo that Bjork has. And the actor who plays Dewall (“I can see your soul at the edges of your eyes”) is from Iceland. And the symbol, if it is that, apparently means protection (“Vegvísir was drawn on one’s forehead with blood to prevent a person from getting lost” — kind of like the lady Cohle interrogated who killed her babies??). WHAT DOES IT MEAN.

BUT ALSO, get this — in episode 3, Maggie’s reading a Cosmo, and if you Google Cosmos from 1995, it looks like it’s the one with Kirsty Hume on the cover, which is pretty impressive as far as accuracy goes, but the show’s supposed to be taking place in March 1995 whereas the issue is from December 1995, so basically Maggie is a time-traveling tattoo artist, and that is the answer.

Also later she’s reading Reviving Ophelia.

Also, beyond Cohle’s forearm tattoo, there are all the other freaky birds: the bird logo thing (pelican?) on the back of the motorcycle jacket:

… the owl in the rafters at the old church:

… the spiral-hallucination birds, the Louisiana state motto (pelican stabbing own chest), “duck hunt with a rake” (the thing Dora Lange said to Charlie), and — okay maybe a stretch but whatever — the bird poster on Audrey’s door (“[something something] Real Estate”). Update: That’s apparently Sunny Day Real Estate — thank you austin 3000 and benturner.