Sapphire Sapphics

ADHD Sapphic who loves talking about film theories and reblogging wlw queer content. Talks most about Arcane, Korra, She-Ra, and Blue Eye Samurai.

[sapphiresaphics]

🧁 My Arcane Analysis Master Post 🧁

🤖 Why Season 2 ends with a big robot battle.

🤔 How to analyze media.

🆚 Why Arcane is NOT “centrist.”

✝️ Arcane vs Puritanism

💨 Why Caitlyn isn’t “gassing a city.”

9️⃣ 9 lies you probably believe about Arcane Season 2

💭 When does Caitlyn figure out she’s being used by Ambessa?

🎞️ How Arcane uses the language of film to tell its story in a meta way.

🧁 Understanding Caitlyn better.

🔢 The need for fans to quantify Caitlyn’s punishment.

🙏 About the moral policing of the Arcane Fandom.

🧠 Vi being bad at mental health.

🌹 What was the Black Rose arc all about?

👂 Why does Jinx stop hearing voices?

🎥 Jinx’s psychosis as commentary on Arcane

⏰ Why Ekko’s AU is the way it is.

👬 Why teaming up to stop a big bad is historically accurate.

📺 About educating yourself on media literacy.

☀️ Viktor is Azir from League of Legends Lore

🔴 Other Arcane Observations 🔵

🧱 “The threats beyond our walls.”

💉 The curious case of the shimmer addicted hexcore.

[blogfamousturtlecollector]

Well, I really don't have any questions for this show anymore.

[sapphiresaphics]

This is the dumbest take to have over what are obvious sarcasm and trolling posts. Gooseworx herself is a trans woman. That would be akin to her saying she wants violence against herself, you fuckin’ dumbasses.

Anyone who takes these posts as concrete evidence of goose being a terrible person is just showing the world how 1) dumb you are and 2) potentially transphobic you are.

You’re the type of people who would accuse Rebecca Sugar for being a Nazi apologist because she had the bad guys of her KIDS SHOW be convinced they were wrong.

Jesus fucking Christ… the ignorance on display here is astonishing.

[disoda]

a window

[goth-queen]

I made a battle axe out of monster cans

[lii-mobageshiki]

[lii-mobageshiki]

[sapphiresaphics]

The next time you’re watching this masterful scene I want you to remember that 3D objects in the computer have no physical properties and can clip through each other without care. Which means that every stretch of skin, every forceful kiss, every tender hand placement, every single physical touch and movement has to be meticulously crafted and executed flawlessly by the animators to ensure that it looks realistic. It boggles my mind at how much work was put into every single frame of this scene and I thank the animators for their service.

[akahetepx]

This scene made me laugh and loose my shit. I get you missed her but fucking in a prison cell???!!!! 🤣🤣🤣 There has to be better places

[sapphiresaphics]

People who get too hung up on the location bug me. The world is about to end. They’re likely going to die tomorrow. Let them fuck wherever they want.

Fucking purity culture assholes the lot of you. If you can’t enjoy beaten and bloody lesbians making out in a dirty cell, you’ve got no business being here.

[fluffehwuffeh]

zoey's positive reinforcement training 🐶

(pssst! there's a SPICY second page on my twt/X - @fluffehhhhh )

[b0tster]

lesbians making out video but with reduced music so u can hear them making out sloppy style. happy pride! 🏳️‍🌈🔊

[washed-up-wurmcoil]

Seeing people say TADC is for people with media literacy is insane. In the three episodes I watched there wasnt a single piece of subtext or theme that wasnt immediately pointed out by the characters via bad dialogue.

[sapphiresaphics]

I saw this post and then this response and I think I can explain why the show DOES need media literacy to understand.

The scene in question is from Episode 6 “they all get guns.” Jax and Pomni are talking about archetypes, and Jax goes on to explain how each character in the circus fits into those archetypes. He describes Ragatha as the happy one, Gangle the sad one, Zooble the grumpy one, Kinger the crazy one, and himself as the funny one.

The MEDIA LITERACY part comes in when you actually compare his description to the actual characters themselves. We are 6 episode deep now and ALL of the characters have grown and changed. In this very same episode we see that Ragatha is not happy, Gangle doesn’t need her happy mask to be happy, Kinger is the most mature and intellectual one of them all, Zooble can display care and warmth, and Jax isn’t doing things just to be funny.

The media literacy part is realizing that his description is WRONG and understanding WHY he sees them this way.

So this criticism that the show has him “literally explain their archetypes” shows how little this person was actually paying attention. Because Jax is wrong. If you think the show is spelling out the archetypes because it doesn’t trust people to understand the characters, you missed the point of that scene and that’s just showing to the world that YOUR media literacy is what’s actually BAD.

Fandom critical hashtags aren’t for people who have legitimate criticisms of a show. It’s just where dumb people congregate who just want to be hateful and dumb and not take the time to understand anything.

[villainpencils]

The height difference we deserve

[crazyguyraaagh]

Ah yes, famously the most valid argument of all; "You're just too stupid to understand it"

[sapphiresaphics]

Okay but like… that’s true?

I don’t care what your thoughts are about the quality of the show, that’s always up for debate and subjective as heck. But I DO know a lot about fandom culture and discourse and TADC is a very special case in that regard.

The show isn’t meant for kids. It’s distinctively an adult show about existentialism. The central premise as described by the creator (loosely) is “a bunch of people who hate their lives stuck in a place they can’t get out of.” The juxtaposition of early 90’s kid friendly computer graphics is meant to be intentionally jarring to the subject matter. And the creator herself is trans. So saying this show is meant for “analytic queers” is accurate.

But because of the bright colors, and intentional in-universe censorship (again a joke by the show forcing these adult character to abide by child like rules), the show gained a HUGE following by actual children. And once YouTube Kids Slop got their hands on it, it just spiraled out of control.

So now we are in a situation where this show, not meant for kids, has become one of the BIGGEST shows on YouTube making millions of dollars for Glitch, while their fans are rude, emotionally disregulated, disrespectful, causing controversy after controversy, and being downright AWFUL towards anyone who has a different opinion than themselves.

And while you will always find toxic people in large fandoms, this is exasperated by the fact that these KIDS don’t seem to have a basic understanding of simple storytelling and character growth. They’ve grown up on Disney+ and TikTok and YouTube Shorts. They are essentially children watching an adult show and not being able to respond in a mature way. Couple that with the media literacy in the world becoming worse and worse and suddenly you see that TADC is caught in that void.

Again, I’m not trying to praise or criticize the show itself. You can feel however you want about the show. But the circumstances around it that culminated in this perfect storm of toxicity is not an accident and we should be able to acknowledge that.

[sapphiresaphics]

I think the reason everyone tends to gravitate towards Kane Pixel’s version of the backrooms is because he actually has a STORY he’s trying to tell.

The backrooms as an Internet horror concept has been degraded over time with the wiki and the TikTok slop content and 100+ levels and random weird ass entities.

Kane still does entities and weird rooms, but he uses those things to further his story. They become THEMES and NARRATIVE DEVICES. They exist to serve a greater purpose and not just give you a cheap jump scare. He actually puts thought into WHY the backrooms are scary and he doesn’t shove it in your face every 5 seconds.

And that’s why Kane’s version of the backrooms will always be better than the nonsense that we get as derivative slop on YouTube/tiktok. While they’re out here making “level Burger King” or whatever, Kane is actually trying to dig deep into the psychology of what these rooms and monsters MEAN to us humans and finding ways to distort and twist that meaning into something truly unsettling and yet profoundly interesting.

[iuvenis-vespilla]

I very much always loved the layers, but looking at them, they're dumb. They don't have reason. Why are there layers? Are they infinite? Why is there heaven layer/pool/etc etc. the movie says, "because it remembers reality", while the tiktok slop just says "eh, because!". I want there to be layers, but it has to have reason. And- they always had random entities. Hell, I even thought up a version while walking on Thursday.

It's based on the YAAI level from 2021. Very short explanation of my idea; the YAAI forces you to see all your worst memories and biggest traumas and regrets with every beat, and also blares to hurt your ears and alert anything else. Like a scavenger calling over the predators. It's dumb but it has REASON, y'know? It makes you relive everything, very very fast. Makes you catatonic or unaware.

[foureyesisafish]

Saying the layers need to have a reason to exist is sort of missing the whole point. Like the Backrooms as a whole don't need a reason to exist, the original post sure doesn't. So why do you need to define why the layers are there?

And things don't need to be narratively important to exist. Just making stuff for cheap jumpscares is obviously the worst way to approach it, but not every entity in there needs to be a tight bundle of themes. Sometimes it can just be something in a barely understood world, which looks like - but isn't - our own. Leaving them without meaning might honestly be more powerful than giving them one.

[iuvenis-vespilla]

I mean yeah but like. Why are there layers? What purpose do they serve? If it's just no reason then it feels hollow and empty.

[foureyesisafish]

...so hey, what makes the Backrooms unsettling again? I think the lack of purpose adds to that side of it. There's no functionality, no reason behind it, but these places, these reflections of ourselves, are just... here, with no obligation to explain themselves to us.

[sapphiresaphics]

That’s… not what makes liminal spaces or the backrooms unsettling. It’s not that there’s seemingly no reason for them to exist, it’s that they’re empty and uncanny. A space isn’t scary just because it’s unusual. A space is scary because it’s meant to be populated or used for a specific purpose, and it’s not.

And my point is that you can still do all of that while ALSO tying it together with a cohesive theme and narrative. Themes and narratives don’t detract from the liminal horror aspect. If anything they ADD to it.

Again, you don’t have to agree. That’s fine if you prefer layers or levels or whatever else. But if you’re making a major motion picture, with Hollywood actors, and are trying to appeal to the general public and get your average Joe interested in the concept of liminal horror… you need SOMETHING to hook them and tell a good story. Otherwise you’re essentially spending $20 to watch 2 hours of silent gameplay footage.

I would also argue that Kane has done a phenomenal job at giving a purpose to HIS interpretation of the backrooms while not losing any of what makes the backrooms scary or unsettling.

[ultrawhalnar]

Anyway i love how the movie uses this very abstract out-there horror premise to represent the human tendency to get stuck on something and obsess over it and become trapped in a never-ending cycle and to resist change so hard that you still change anyway but in a way that degrades and warps and destroys you and the fallibility of human memory and how every time you recall something it gets a little less accurate which means the more you obsess over something the further entrenched in it you become the more you choose to live here the worse it gets the less you understand it until your perspective on the objective reality of it is completely destroyed. The backrooms are a brain the whole thing is a brain. The horror is the human brain. CAN ANYBODY HEAR MEEEEE

[sapphiresaphics]

Yes! Because the best horror films are more than just jump scares and scary monsters. The best horror films are metaphors that represents something genuinely terrifying about the human condition.

[sunnylovesgirlythings]

I really love that the backrooms film answers probably something that everyone has at least wondered once.

“What happens if I just… choose to stay.”

It kills you. It will eventually kill you. Because you’re choosing to live in a memory. An echo of the past.

To live in the past is to no longer experience the future.

To no longer experience the future is to run out of the present.

To run out of the present allows the past to catch up to you. Quickly.

Clark was dead the second he made that choice. Not just because of the captain. But because in that very moment he let go of his future.

And became someone who only exists in the past.

[sapphiresaphics]

I feel like the Backrooms movie is going to become another litmus test about people’s willingness to engage with a piece of media.

Because you cannot tell me that the kid who spent a summer meticulously crafting a 1:1 recreation of a demolished Texas mall for a psychological horror series on YouTube and who put so much time and effort into thinking about the psychology of The Oldest View….

…just so happened to skimp on dialogue and purpose for his cinematic debut film.

If you came away from the backrooms movie going “well there were plot and character moments in there that weren’t really explored and went nowhere” I am telling you that you are not paying attention.

This is one of those films where every line of dialogue, every odd thing you see in a frame, every unusual moment and shot composition, has a purpose and reason for being there.

And it’s not the film’s fault if you don’t wanna put in the effort to try and piece together what’s going on.

Now I’m not saying that makes it an inherently better film or something. You can still dislike it if you want. Taste is subjective. But it IS the type of movie that you get more out of the more you spend thinking about it than if you just brush off any weird moment or thing you didn’t understand as “weak writing.”

Like, I cannot stop thinking about the film and the more I do the more connections and moments I find that flesh out the world and the characters to me. Even the most innocuous little details are suddenly starting to make sense and offer up insight into the larger picture of this world…and it’s leading me to go down this conspiracy theory rabbit hole that makes its connection to the YouTube series even wilder and existentially creepier imo.

I feel like people who do that are going to get SO MUCH MORE out of this film than someone who just watches it once and shrugs their shoulders and goes “well that didn’t make sense to me.” Unpacking it all is part of the experience. That’s part of the fun. And if you don’t wanna engage with that, that’s fine. But that doesn’t make the film “bad.”

[sapphiresaphics]

I’m so pissed off that I was right.

Not only has the internet essentially turned on the backrooms (and essentially Kane Pixels himself), but now it’s just devolving into forced hatred, shit talking, and stalking.

I hate how the algorithms force a black and white binary on everything. There’s no room for nuance in opinions now and you either loved the film or you’re a spawn of satan who must be bullied and harassed and made fun of until you succumb to the fucking hive mind mentality of the shittiest people on the planet.

Fuck this hateful fandom bullshit.

[fizzlewizard404]

Raggedy Roan

[lluxentz]

Happy pride