I love this photo so much. His expression, the clothes, his hands, his arms (love a rolled up sleeve), the hair, the sunglasses. Everything. Perfection.
The backrooms are a failing brain trying to hold onto even the most basic of memories, even as they warp and decay.
The backrooms are generative AI trying to capture something real but only achieving a malformed, mindless imitation.
The backrooms are stagnation, an unwillingness to step into the new and uncomfortable effort of changing, instead running through the same old routine even as it starts to fall in on itself.
The backrooms are nostalgia cannibalizing itself, trying to remake and remake what it already knows without making anything new, until the familiar is so bastardized it's barely recognizable.
Hello everyone! Thank you for liking and commenting with your thoughts on the first chapter! Here is the second chapter, and I'm working on the tag list for people who want to be updated when new chapters drop! Enjoy reading!—!!EDITS HAVE BEEN MADE!!
Tag list:
@misswings1864
@sailorsaturn96
@amandarobertsboyce
Chapter 2: Paths Cross
——— (Y/N’s POV) ———
After your seminar, you and Harper split ways to attend your classes and obligations. After two more classes and grading papers, you went to a nearby coffee shop to work on your dissertation. You looked at the time and sighed, “8 PM already? Guess I'd better head home before it gets darker.” As you were packing up to head back, you noticed a raven looking at you through the window. You’ve seen your fair share of birds randomly looking in your direction, but something felt off. You looked at the raven for a couple of minutes, sensing it looking back at you, examining every feature of your face. While hopping on your moped, you looked across the street and noticed something. Someone was staring at you, dressed in all black with a coat on. He stood like a shadow, silently observing you, his face composed to the point of being unreadable. You looked at him for a couple of seconds, entranced at how he did not fit his surroundings. A passing car temporarily blocked your view, revealing that he had disappeared. Looking at the time again, you shrugged it off and left the coffee shop.
…
Back at your flat, you see a note posted on the fridge while making a cup of tea.
Don’t wait up for me. I’ll be back late - Harper
“You'd better come back safe and sound,” you mumble under your breath as you wait for your tea to brew. You head to your bedroom and pull out new articles for your classes tomorrow. As you look in your bag, you realize the book is still there. You slowly pull it out, handling it with such care–like it’s improper to touch it. You examine every feature of the cover, tracing the raised lettering on the front, and flip through the pages. The pages are slightly yellowed from age, with smeared ink that settled onto the paper over time. You start reading the book while sipping your tea, writing notes that seem appropriate to your topic. As you read the pages, you feel a wave of drowsiness come over you. Your eyes blink rapidly, trying to fight the sleeping spell creeping on, but to no avail. You rest your head on the pillow behind you and close your eyes. Your mind recalls the events that happened today, reflecting on the important tasks you’ve completed. Before drifting into sleep, the last image you remember is the strange man from the coffee shop. How he looked out of place on the street, an aura of etherealness exuding from him. As the image of him drifts further from reach, you find yourself lingering on his eyes–endless darkness lit faintly by something that looked too much like stars.
…
You open your eyes and find yourself in the library once again. You look at your hands and realize you are holding onto the book from your bedroom. Looking around, the shelves were filled with the same books from the night before–the crisp smell of ink and old paper faintly hanging in the air. You walk around for a little bit until you come across a hidden chair and a small table, resembling a reading nook. You sit down and continue reading the book, skimming through the pages you’ve already read and re-reading sections to understand the old language in which the book was written. Suddenly, you hear a door open and close; the same door from the previous night. You hear light footsteps shuffle slowly, back and forth through the shelves until the door opens and closes again. You cautiously look around, worried you might bump into the person from the night before. After a couple of minutes of silence, you settle into the chair and go back to reading the book.
“Are you enjoying the book?”
A deep voice echoes through the shelves and startles you. You quickly look around and see a tall figure at the end of a shelf, eyes darting up and down, analyzing if you are a threat or not. You bolt up from the chair, holding the book to your chest with both hands. Unsure of what to do, you softly speak to the man.
“I’m sorry…Am I not supposed to be here?” You examine the man at the end of the shelf, but are unable to make out any features. It’s as if he is shrouded in shadows, indistinguishable. The only feature you can make out is two white dots where his eyes are meant to be. After looking at you, he slowly walks closer, each step making your heart beat faster, until he is a few feet away from you.
“No. You are not.” the man spoke, his voice steady and unmoving.
You get a better look at him and examine his features. His face sharp and pale; his hair somewhat messy and dark as the midnight sky, with an unreadable expression that nobody could pierce through. He was wearing a black shirt with a long, black coat on, black jeans, and boots. A flashback of the man from the coffee shop earlier came to your mind, noting the similarities between the two.
“I must be dreaming. I was reading this book for my studies–from this library, surprisingly–and put my head down to rest for a little bit. All of a sudden, I’m back here from the night before,” you spoke, looking around for any anomalies to solidify your theory of lucid dreaming. If you were dreaming, which you suspect you are, there should be signs in your surroundings like an extra finger or numbers changing or looking blurry.
As you looked for signs, you noticed the man staring at you–sharpness in his eyes, a deliberate focus that made it clear he was watching you and only you.
“You are in my realm. You are trespassing on my castle. You have taken property that does not belong to you,” he stated. His voice hosted no hostility, but delivered a seriousness that was not meant to be ignored.
You looked at the book in your hands and realized he was talking about your “visit” from yesterday. This book does not belong to you. You are not a thief and did not want to upset the man further, so you extended the book towards him.
“I’m sorry, I did not know this book belonged to you.” You couldn’t meet his eyes, so you stared at his hands. A moment passed before he slowly reached out for the book, an air of caution around him. As he grabbed the book, you felt his fingers lightly graze your own. You felt a zap of lightning from where his fingers touched yours, the sensation traveling all across your body. You glanced at his face, trying to find any emotion in what you felt. Before you could look at him, he swiftly brought his hand, with the book, to his side–away from your touch. He took a few steps away from you, as if you were something that was not meant to be touched.
Interested in this man and why your dream took this appearance, you decided to take a risk.
“What did you mean exactly by ‘my realm’ and ‘castle’? Where am I?” you asked, curiosity and confusion slipping into your words.
“You are in the Dreaming…my realm. You are in my castle, and you are not supposed to be here,” he calmly stated, the corners of his lips twitching downward. His face displayed no emotion, but his eyes were another story. There was a hint of annoyance and caution in them. With the strange man in front of you, the zap of lightning you felt when he brushed your fingers, and the atmosphere he gave off, your curiosity was getting the better of you.
“What exactly is ‘the Dreaming’? Who are you?”
“You study the gods of dreams, do you not?”
You glance at him. “Yes,” you admit. “My research focuses on Oneiros.”
“Then you already know one of my names.” He takes a step forward, and you feel a shift in the atmosphere. A chill runs down your spine, making your heart race.
“I have been given many names…Oneiros…Prince of Stories, Shaper of Forms…I am Morpheus. Dream of the Endless.” His gaze sweeps across the endless shelves and lands directly on you.
“This is the Dreaming. My realm through which all dreamers pass when they sleep.”
For a moment, time stopped. You listened to his voice drop those words, but they didn’t fully land until a few seconds passed. You were standing in front of the person you dedicated the past 2 years of your life to. All of the depictions of Oneiros you’ve read, the many visits to museums for any new information on him and dreams, informational videos watched to build your research with…it all did not compare to the man standing in front of you.
Thousands of thoughts plagued your mind. A million questions you wanted to ask that could solve all the roadblocks to your work, and the answer was standing a few feet in front of you. Before you could utter a word, your train of thought was stopped after he spoke.
“Many dreamers wander the Dreaming.” His gaze remained fixed on you.
“Few find their way to my castle. Fewer enter my library.”
The silence stretched between you two. He stepped closer to you, your heart pumping as if to be released from your chest.
“You are not here by chance.” The certainty in his voice made your stomach tighten. His next words carried an authority of not asking, but demanding you answer him.
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.
Me the first half of The Backrooms: "oh I get it. He's a down on his luck failed architect and even more failed furniture store owner who's trying to better himself. He'll probably be fascinated with the furniture/architecture of the backrooms and start selling the items there for money + notoriety. And eventually he'll go deeper and deeper to get more and more items until he gets trapped and encounters The Horrors. A classic tale of hubris :) "
The 4 tempers, the Severance procedure and the 9 Principles
At the end of Severance it was revealed that the files that MDR was refining were actually Gemma's consciousness.
In particular, they were removing her 4 Tempers: Woe, Malice, Frolic, and Dread. Every refined file corresponds to a new blank-slate innie for a new room.
Many speculate that Lumon is trying to perfect their severance procedure. They can already remove someone's memories from them, and they aim to also remove their personalities, make them sheepish and malleable and ready to obey whatever command they're given without question and without resisting.
I think this theory has merit. The four tempers correspond to sadness, fear, playfulness and cunning spitefulness, all things that make innies more resistant to their oppression.
Waking up in a strange room full with strangers with no memories is definetly scary. Makes people want to escape or fight.
Being locked in an office with no option to leave without ever seeing the sun or the sky definetely makes people sad, making them yearn to leave.
Playfulness makes people want to, well, play and have fun instead of working.
A certain amount of malice aids in formulating an effective escape plan/fight your opressors back.
If you remove all of the above, you get the perfect worker. The perfect plialable, trusting person you can exploit how you want with minimal hassle.
It's a very useful feature in the product Lumon is trying to sell:"Make this other person do all the boring, scary, painful, anxiety-inducing things in your life. Also don't worry, they feel no fear and no sadness so you don't need to feel guilty. Also they are very easy to train and will not cause problems".
It's basically the perfect product.
And I'm sure they'll sell it as an enlightenment thing. Kier tamed the 4 Tempers, after all. This is nothing but a technological shortcut to do the same, right? And if Kier did it, then it must be a good thing.
Kier is seen, as many cult leaders are in real life, as an extremely wise man, who was able to rise above and gain perfect self-control over his emotions. By taming the 4 tempers. Of course there is no actual proof he was a righteus man. And many fans suspect Imogene was a child bride (and I also think that). He was probably the furthest thing from a righteous man, and yet, as it happens in real life, he was able to fabricate this image of "Enlightened man", and gain a massive following because of it.
The Severance procedure helps you tame your 4 tempers. But this is not used for enlightenment. It is used for exploitation. It doesn't help people be free from their emotional problems. It makes them more easy to abuse.
Also, it's note worthy to me how the 4 Tempers are something to tame (something you want to free yourself from) while the 9 Principles are something to embrace (something you want to always be).
But these things are oftentimes in conflict with each other.
As an example, let's take Malice (temper) vs. Wiles and Wit (Priciples). I'm italian, and in Italian the words "Malice" and "Wiles" are translated in the same way, "Malizia". They mean the same concept. In english, one has a negative connotation while the other has a positive connotation (depends on context but it's overall less negative). This mirrors something I've seen in real life religion. The same exact act can be described in two different ways. The same way of being can be both something wrong to punish and something good to celebrate. This way it's extremely easy to punish someone for the same actions someone else is celebrated for. The discriminant is, of course, the level of power that peron holds in the organization. If a severed worker is cunning, that means they are wicked and malicious. If a high-level Lumon executive does the same, they are witty and masterful.
A similar thing happens with Frolic (Temper) vs. Verve and Cheer (Principles). That makes it very easy to pick and choose who has a right to be light-hearted and have fun and who doesn't.
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