Spooky Time

Hi! Y’all can call me Jules and I’m 19, I’m a little freak and will not be normal about anything ever, I also WILL BITE YOU (lovingly). I use she/her pronouns.

[c-tech]

Does anyone else feel like Clark is a very relatable character in a lot of ways?

I like just having a character where all the awfulness and reluctant to change is his downfall cause I have been in those shoes serval times and still feel like I'm a little tied in them

[ambi5]

Clark is the realest one out there like me too girl, change is terrifying and I never want to do it, even if (sometime especially if) it’s for the better. ( ˘ ³˘)♥︎

[pinkpxtches]

backrooms spoilers again

camera angles!!!

when we’re with clark as he travels through the backrooms, the camera angles feel claustrophobic. there are a lot of tight shots of his face, and POV shots than any other character.

when we’re travelling with mary, the shots are agoraphobic. she’s out of her depth, and it gives you such a wide pan of the backrooms that you instinctively search every corner of the camera for Something.

clark feels trapped in his life. he works a dead end job, he’s been kicked out of his house, and overall feels very defeated. the camera angles reflect that, clark is afraid of being trapped.

mary, on the other hand, is still struggling with her mother’s agoraphobia. while she doesn’t have any massive indicators that she too has it, as the movie progresses and she starts dwelling on the trauma of her mother’s abuse more and more, she almost uses her mother’s fear as a way to cope with the backrooms.

i think this may also be connected to that first therapy scene we see, where we’re immediately introduced to the theme of the movie; in order to change your life, you need to change. if you don’t change your own behavior, you’ll be stuck in the cycle forever. we’re also shown two contrasting shots of mary and clark; mary with her back to a closed window, and clark with his back to an open one. this reflects their claustrophobic and agoraphobic parallels, but it also parallels the final shot of the movie, where mary is the one with her back to an open window. before each character gets sucked into the backrooms, they turn their back on the window. they turn their back on any hope of changing, and instead decide to stay stagnant. they can question people (phil or mary), they can complain, they can mourn, but if they refuse to exit the window, they will be trapped in the loop forever.

i feel like this connection doesn’t make sense on paper but it lines up in my head idk. a lot of analyzing this movie feels like theres something just beyond my reach that i cant really articulate.

[kanine-kaz]

This is basically a copy and paste yap session about the backrooms movie I had on discord and I wanted to post it on tumblr too because I think people gotta know how much I liked this movie as someone who is kind of snobbish about liminal spaces and the backrooms. It's really long so beware.

Most of the spoilers are under the cut

Ok so I shouldn't have gone into this movie with low expectations because I already knew that Kane Parsons actually understands the backrooms and the liminality of it, and based on the plot and characters of the movie, he obviously understands it on the psychological level and what the backrooms and liminal spaces in general represent on a mental scale.

So in my opinion thank GOD it was him to be the one directing a backrooms movie and nobody else like some big film company because I truly believe they wouldn't have captured it the same way he did.

First of all, the cinematography was great. Like 'I wanna get a dvd release of this NOW so I can take screencaps of it' great. There were multiple shots, even outside the backrooms, that were shot in such a liminal way, like the stereotypical liminal space image. And that's really silly and stuff but it worked so good to put you on edge the whole time and immerse you in the movie's vibe. Because it gave you this scale of how the rest of the movie would be shot. So many good scenes are just widescale frames with a main character walking in the distance, and I think that distance makes it more liminal in nature. Because obviously liminality invloves the absence of people, so they end up feeling out of place anyway.

They had a saying in the film. "Like describing a dog to someone who's never seen a dog and asking them to draw it." This in my opinion perfectly encapsulates how I see liminality and the actual horror of it. It's so close to what's normal and human, and yet not quite right. That's how this entire movie feels and it's WONDERFUL. I want to specifically point out a scene towards the start of the movie, when Clark first discovers the doorway to the backrooms. Seeing him change his perspective over and over as he catches this sliver of light in the wall made me so giddy, it was just a beautiful way to show his curiosity and confusion, rather than dropping him into a new setting and having immediate panic. More of that in liminal space media!!!

Speaking of characters, they were some of the best, most straightforward and best fitting characters for the film they were in. I thought that they would be dry and just have some backstory written that would explain them being there, but no, they were genuinely written into the movie as two separate archetypes opposing each other, their personalities and their backstories were the driving force of what made the backrooms an actual psychological horror and not just a spooky place. Because that's what they're meant to be!!! It all perfectly encapsulated the feeling of isolation not just in the setting, but in the characters because they themselves were already struggling with really heavy shit.

Clark was such a good protagonist with great writing and internal struggles, and Mary's flashback scenes throughout the movie to tell the audience that she herself was also going through her own version of "staying in one place" was wonderful and gave two characters with similar problems, two distinct ways of dealing with it. One is internal and focused on himself and who he is beyond someone fitting into a patriarchal box and the autonomy of others, one is more external and focused on those around her and what it means when she's meant to help others when she can't even help herself.

Clark struggling with his own emotional regulation and understanding when to admit he's at fault. The movie starts with him explaining why his wife left him from his own perspective and that was not lost on me. We get no context for what actually happened and why she kicked him out of the house, but we know how he feels about it and how that takes precedence over his wife's feelings. He's self entitled and grasping at any kind of control he can get out of his situations. You see that in the way he maps out the backrooms and really wants Mary to understand that he isn't making it up. He wants to understand it, he doesn't want it to just be a mystery. He starts out with going to therapy and trying to be better as a person, wanting a grasp on it in a way that isn't harmful to those around him. But by the end of the movie, he's become so comfortable in the way he is and how he engages with others and the world around him, he just wants to stay the way he is, and stay in the backrooms where he says he's truly free.

And this is all because the point of the movie was about looking back at the past and wanting to go back to a time. Or at least putting yourself in that moment and not leaving. At first I didn't like that Clark died and Mary didn't, I thought it was a little unfair. But now I understand why it was like that for plot and theme relevency. Clark is basically eaten by a monstrous version of himself, the version of himself he portrays on tv for his furniture business. He gets up in excitement to face this version of himself and says "It's ok! She says we don't have to change!" literally saying that they are one and the same, saying that this version of himself that is killing and eating people, is part of him and that he doesn't want to let go of it, he's comfortable in his own struggle with his mental health and it's literally eating away at his mental state, to the point that he makes bad decisions for himself and those around him.

Also he literally eats the "made up" versions of people in the backrooms. He says it's ok because they don't feel anything. He acknowledges that somewhere there's people that are the real versions of them, but these are not those and are therefore fine to eat and take advantage of, taking his own autonomy into account over their own, seeing a different kind of person than he is. However, he kills Kat, his assistant for filming and it's undetermined if he eats her but he at least killed her and put her head in his fridge. He said it's because she wasn't willing to accept the place they were in, she opposed him and so he killed her. I think her not wanting to stay in the physical backrooms was similar to her saying she didn't want to be near Clark anymore, at least that's my interpretation.

Also little sidenote, Mary's reaction to Clark stabbing and eating the people from the backrooms as opposed to her reaction to seeing Kat's head was really good. Yes she was shocked at him stabbing the backroom's remembered man, but she was truly horrified seeing Kat's head. She immediately knew she was a real person, not something made by the backrooms, showing the difference between the real organic look of humans and the artificial look of the remembered people.

Mary is actually similar to Clark in a way I think. She was the daughter of a mother who I believe had a form of Alzheimer's or other kind of dementia. She was trapped in her house and wasn't ever allowed to leave until they were forced out by the city building new skyscrapers (At least I hope that was what was happening because her flashback scenes were not very literal and more symbolized which is COOL because that was the whole point of her character). So she doesn't know anything but the inside of her house for like the first 7 years of her life until she's suddenly forced out of it when her mother is hospitalized for her disease. She looks back at her childhood with nostalgia, having her view of it progressively less literal and more of a symbolic event for her to eventually become a therapist. Which btw, I love the dynamic of the two main protagonists being a therapist and her client SO much. I thought she would be written without much depth because of that, especially her being a woman therapist trying to take care of a man's problems (which DOES come into play). But no she was basically in the same position as Clark but in a more physical way. She keeps herself looking back at what could have been and in turn also stops her from getting any better. She tells Clark she genuinely doesn't know how to make him better, she doesn't even know how to make herself better!! She's a well known author of a book and audio cassettes meant to help others and yet she herself is struggling with her past and moving past it, it's such a deep and visceral kind of C-PTSD she has and even in her position of a therapist, she doesn't know how to get past it.

Which is why her being chased down by the monster version of Clark is so good!!! He came to her to solve his problems and he, at least in the point of the movie we see, has not made much progress. And you can tell in their sessions that she's actually kind of nervous about this and is seeing it almost as a failure on her part. She felt like she was partially responsible for her situation as a kid and responsible for her mother, but she couldn't do anything about it, and now that she's struggling with this guy's complex struggle with his anger and emotional regulation, she sees this also as a failure. When she tells Clark he doesn't have to change and that she doesn't even know how he could change, she sounds so defeated. Like she actually wanted to see him be better as a person but she couldn't get him to that point, and she sees that in herself. She couldn't get herself to a point that the past wasn't affecting her the way it was. So she is literally almost eaten by this version of this man that has eaten his own mental state (i.e. himself). "You are your brain, you dipshit!!!" She yells at him, because his actions are his own and not to be blamed on his brain. Even after Clark is gone, that version of him that she saw still chases her, similar to the version of her mother and the life she lived follows her in her memories.

Mary specifically has this really good sound cue that when she's unsure about doing something, it's loud and booming like a heartbeat. She's nervous about changing her current situation in order to move forward, and when she persists and follows through, it stops immediately. As if she just has to cross that barrier of mentally telling herself she can't.

And her end of the movie, unlike Clark's, isn't her dying or being eaten. She's taken by the Async researchers and they tell her they have to ask her questions and run tests on her. She asks "how long will I be here" and Phil literally doesn't know. She's put into a spot that she's being forced to stay and these people with more power than her are saying she can't leave!!! Literally a revisit to her childhood!!! Also the scenes looking at the inside of her house progressively being "remembered" more and more distorted was so good and it ending on a remembered version of her, showing that regardless of where she physically is, the past is always distorted by her memories and the trauma she has from them.

So in conclusion. The movie was very good and the characters were written to benefit the theme and plot of it while also fleshing them out as full functioning people. Their situations were mirrored into a physical incarnation of the backrooms and the way it explored this in symbolism of their own internal problems was really good.

[mercymornsproxy]

For a little I felt like we missed Clark’s spiral and that’s why the change felt so sudden but in the same scene that Clark shows this “sudden” violent part of himself he says ‘I don’t want to change’.

Clark has always been like this. We saw his extreme anger at the start of the movie. His disregard for those around him with how he speaks to and about them. The implied breaking of the glass was that he threw it, not knocked it over.

I was expecting a spiral but he didn’t need one. He was already there.

[mercymornsproxy]

When changing yourself is terrifying and hard and change means destroying your current self so you want to stay the same and the person who is meant to help change you says you can but never changing is only remembering worse and worse each time and it destroys you in a different way

[a-person-on-the-internet]

The Backrooms movie is incredible, and without spoiling anything, Clark is easily one of my favorite horror protagonists I’ve ever seen. Chiwetel Ejiofor was putting everything he had into this role and it shows. I would kill for this movie to come out digitally so I can just analyze his micro expressions - his EYES. Holy SHIT can that man act. I need him to get a goddamn academy award.

[a-person-on-the-internet]

Also this is not to dismiss Mary. Mary is equally fantastic and a perfect deuteragonist and her and Clark foil each other perfectly. Renate Reinsve is also ABSOLUTELY pulling her weight in every scene she is in, she also has some wonderful micro expressions, and the scenes she and Chiwetel share are the highlight of the film just because of how well they work off each other. Even some of the rougher dialogue writing was a nonissue purely due to how compelling they were when sharing a scene. I would watch them sit in front of a camera and talk for two hours. They’re so good, phenomenal acting, fantastic character writing, and they carry the film on their backs. They BOTH should get awards for this.

[spam-monster]

Iron Lung and Project Hail Mary as "men who persevere against impossible odds and find courage in the depths of despair"

Versus Obsession and Backrooms "men will willingly stay in a literal horror movie situation over confronting their mistakes and taking responsibility for their actions"

[ambi5]

Just watched the backrooms, and I think my favourite part of it was the perspective shift halfway through, and how much it fucks with our perception of Clark as a character. We get to watch him see the entity, and then the next time we see him is from his therapist’s perspective an unknown amount of time later. From the amount of mail stuffed under the door, it must’ve been at least a week in our time, probably more but we don’t know how the backrooms work in terms of time. Perception is a big theme in the movie, particularly of the self and of others, so it is very possible that ones perception of time is completely screwed in the backrooms. We don’t actually know how long Clark was wandering in those halls for. How long did it take for him to try eating the memories? How long did it really take for him to crack in such a significant way?

When we shifted to Mary’s pov, we lost all context behind Clark’s behaviour which made his seemingly sudden shift so surprising and scary to both us and Mary. She already thought he wasn’t well from their last therapy session, but even then it’s quite the drastic shift from her point of view. For the audience however it’s even more shocking, because we knew long before she did that the backrooms are real and he was in them. He was completely lucid albeit scared and excited about his strange new discovery.

What I wonder the most about is what that length of time was like for Clark. Being stuck anywhere without knowing the way out SUCKS, Nevermind being stuck in an endless, ever-changing maze of distorted halls with only the warped visage of all your worst traits and strange, half-remembered people for company.

[kuragin]

this is the most underrated part of rockin’ and rollin’ yoda

[bunjywunjy]

Luke’s face is what makes this.

[marlynnofmany]

For today’s lucky 10k who have not seen the sacred texts – enjoy. It will be stuck in your head for a while.

[smokeablunt]

[sonicismyboyfriend]

cool idea! anyone got a link for where to read / print these?

[anarchistserum]

Not exactly the same zines but it definitely looks like the same author judging by the mousegirl!

[candyboydeathparade]

My homie Peaches actually illustrated these zines! You should check 'em out!

Radical Guide to Safe Drug Use Pocket Zines

Our update to the Radical Guide to Safer Drug Use has now been split up into these cute little pocket zines! Drugs: ketamine nitrous poppers

[qqchurch]

[ambi5]

No one told me that so much of chicken keeping would be watching my birds eat increasingly disgusting things and being completely impotent to stop them

[niamhthefae]

just gonna leave this here for anybody who wants it

free copies of:

the bonnie and clyde proshot

hadestown

the great gatsby(jeremy jordan)

dear evan hansen

jekyll and hyde

ride the cyclone

Next to normal proshot

website for free pdfs of books

a bunch of free movies and tv shows

enjoy!

[satanicpink]

It’s still February, love isn’t over yet!

[phantomrose96]

Oh I saw something today that made me become the Joker.

[phantomrose96]

An AI bot made a callout post of a real, actual, flesh-and-blood human code developer. Because the developer rejected the AI's code contribution on the grounds of it being an AI bot.

Not. Not kidding. Not kidding. And the bot did this on its own.

[phantomrose96]

Gatekeeping in Open Source: The Scott Shambaugh Story – MJ Rathbun | Scientific Coder 🦀

[phantomrose96]

Just. For just some very baseline context.

a huge amount of code is "open source" - which means the code is fully available for anyone to see and, generally, anyone is free to contribute to the code project

all contributions of course go through review by the code owners. but it is generally good grace and good form to allow other well-meaning internet strangers to contribute to your project

if you are, perhaps, VERY nice, and VERY invested in the community, you might be like Scott Shambaugh here, who has intentionally earmarked some low-hanging fruit for newbie contributors to practice and get their feet wet

like I cannot overstate this is an immediate green flag, to me, that Scott WANTS to foster community learning.

now

Like. W. Win. Based. Good response Scott.

And this was in fact the screenshot I saw first, and I thought I was looking at a post made by a human who was mad that their AI coding bot pet project was being shut out from reviews.

But no. The bot itself wrote and posted this... The bot did this.

This article was fully and autonomously written by the bot...

It's claiming discrimination...

It's a bot.

It's AI.

This is not a real person.

What are we doing. What are we doing. Can anyone hear me? Hello? Hello? Hello is anyone there?

[phantomrose96]

@jackdaw-sprite has pointed out Scott responded so please read his human words, written by a human, which deserve to be read, due to the aforementioned humanity

An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Shamblog

An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – More Things Have Happened – The Shamblog

[fairycosmos]

being called an old soul when you were kid and knowing you just got diagnosed as a weird cunt

[systlin]

Every time I see bullshit about women never EVER being able to beat men in any sport, I think about how in martial arts classes I, a cis woman, 5' 8" and 145 pounds, regularly beat the tar out of 6' 2" 230 pound cis dude weightlifters. One guy ragequit class. He came in cocky as hell and talking the standard bs line about how a woman simply never could beat a man in a fight because they're physically weaker and our instructor was like. Okay. Put the pads on you're sparring her. Yes, her, the one 4" shorter and 100 pounds lighter than you.

It wasn't close I beat the pants off that man, and others like him. I did it more than once. Some guys got humble and stayed. One guy got angry and stormed out.

And I think about that every fuck damn time I hear that bullshit, which seems to be all the fuck over the place these days. Oh, women are just fragile little soft delicate flower creatures who can't do ANYTHING and could NEVER compete with big strong manly muscular strong MEN.

I think about driving that dude into the mats and seeing the brutal reality of this big dude's misogany meet the realization that a woman was beating his ass literally that second, that none of his strength could stop the fact that I'd just hip thrown him facefirst into the mats and that had I actually connected with the axe kick to his neck I would have crushed a bunch of important shit and he could not stop me, and his whole psyche collapsing like a dying star in that moment.

Anyway, don't ever fall for it, ladies, and there's absolutely no goddamn reason to get your knickers in a twist about trans people in sports.

[klatchianmist]

What martial art do you study? Hip throws and axe kicks are an unusual combination.

[systlin]

Tang Soo Do! It's closely related to Tae Kwon Do, but Tae Kwon Do is almost purely a Korean style with a lot of the signature powerful Korean style kicks and Tang Soo Do has a lot of Chinese, Japanese, and Okinawan influences as well as Korean, thanks to the fact that Korea was occupied by both China and Japan at various times and of course the fact that martial artists through history have learned from each other and swapped interesting techniques.

What this means practically is that we do, in fact, learn hip throws AND axe kicks! Very versitile, I think picking out the various influences from various arts is very interesting and quite enjoy the wide range of movement styles we learn because of it.

[ambi5]

When I did tae kwon do at 12 i would consistently beat the shit out of many of my sparring partners, didn’t matter their gender. The only people I couldn’t beat were really just more experienced than me, man or woman. most of the time experience trumps gender