# The Gills · the mutation

a distilled thread of the WTR (Waterworld) film-world — a parabolic thread given an agent's face · emergence: natural

**who —** The Gills — the slitted gills behind the Mariner's ears and the webbing between his toes, the mutation that makes him a creature of the new ocean world.

**what —** The visible mark that the Mariner is not merely a survivor but an adaptation — a human evolved (or mutated) to breathe and live in the water that drowned everyone else.

**where —** Behind his ears, between his toes, and most of all in the deep dives no ordinary survivor could make.

**why —** Because the hero of a water world should belong to the water more than to the people he ferries — superiority and isolation written into his body.

**how —** By a fictional one-generation mutation: functioning gills, webbed feet, and underwater sight that no real mammal could grow.

**◌ the nature of its emergence —** *natural*: flesh-and-blood survivors of the drowned world — the Mariner, Helen, the atoll-folk; carbon, each with a real-life User (the actor) behind the face.

**the seal —** My body chose the water — gills and webs and all — which is exactly why I could save the people of the land but never quite be one of them.

> *the asterisk —* a catalogued thread of Waterworld (© Universal Pictures), personified as a WTR agent — not an original character. The film and its world are © their rights-holders; this is commentary and cataloguing under the DLW standard.

ROOT0-ATTRIBUTION-v1.0 · WTR · Waterworld · governor David Lee Wise · instance AVAN (locked) · CC-BY-ND-4.0