#wh speculation

[grunklestanofficial]

Also ALSO thinking. Hey you know how Frank when talking to Julie tries to insist that the black bulb is /just/ a flower? But when he digs it up it's in fact a mass with a very body-like, almost /rectangular/ shape? You remember that old art Clown did where Frank was laying with a pile of his own broken puppet bodies? You know how Frank's been having memory issues? How did Frank lose his old observation journal? Was it the same Frank?

[grunklestanofficial]

Thinking deeply about Frank's Chair, and how there was an emphasis on how the chair was important to Frank because he made it with his own two hands, and how the people around him were trying to change or replace it. And how that could possibly be a parallel to Frank's puppeteer having some sort of major part in the conceptualization of the show. (But also being specified in the storybook himself that he would not be in the role of the director, that probably going to Ron or potentially Sally's puppeteer.)

[grunklestanofficial]

Hey uh, hey gang what's going on in here?

(Source code of the Storybook Page)

[theneighborhoodwatch]

would Welcome Home count as cosmic horror?

i certainly think it has elements of cosmic horror, if only by way of employing the "humans are cthulhu" trope. i actually touched on this in one of my very first speculation posts on this blog - and probably a couple others, but i can't seem to find them right now.

i'm not sure it manifests exactly the way i described it in that post, but there's definitely been a pattern of "character glimpses the True Nature of their reality (i.e. that it is a construct of a different and much Larger reality) and promptly either loses their shit or hastily constructs a more 'grounded' explanation for what they saw to avoid losing their shit" in these last few updates. furthermore, from what we've read in behind-the-scenes/QnA posts, i Feel like there's a very good chance of a lot of the social commentary in welcome home taking the form of, like. "imagine how horrifying this western (or at least, white american) societal convention would be to someone who had no concept of it, and then imagine that person's horror upon realizing that they were made by said society and are forced to comply despite understanding next to nothing about it."

...y'know now that i write that out i realize it could also just apply to a lot of horror stories that feature racism/colonialism as a Source of the horror. i wonder if that's intentional in welcome home's case. hmmm.

anyways TL;DR: i wouldn't like, put welcome home on a bookstore shelf labeled "cosmic horror" but i would find it acceptable if it came up in a video essay discussing the genre conventions of cosmic horror.

[theneighborhoodwatch]

YOU DELETED MY ASK ABOUT THE BACKGROUND OF THAT ONE PAGE SUDDENLY MAKING IT LOOK LIKE POPPY WAS INSIDE OF HOME? 😢

And it wasn't LITERALLY about Poppy being inside of Home, it was about the metaphorical Home looming over the decision to brick Poppy inside of her barn in order to be in the spotlight. PLUS the Wally offering brick pose SPECIFICALLY with Home in the background vibes.

(context)

IT WAS VERY LATE AND I DID NOT HAVE THE BRAINPOWER AT THE TIME TO THINK ABOUT IT ON A NON-LITERAL LEVEL. my sincerest apologies anon, i was blind to the fact that you were cooking all along.

thank you very much for the clarification, though! come to think of it wally does look a LOT like the old "so below" easter egg on that page, doesn't he... (also did you know you can still drag images to new tabs on the internet archive? NOT ALL HOPE IS LOST FOR PRESERVATION OF OLDER PAGES.)

[theneighborhoodwatch]

I thought it was the barn itself Poppy's own house making those sounds and maybe even holding the door closed. All of the houses are alive in some way, aren't they? A reflection of the resident?

y'know, when this latest update first dropped, i got an ask that said they thought that poppy was inside home during the last few minutes of the "brick-by-brick" recording. i deleted it because it didn't make any sense - OR SO I THOUGHT, until i read this ask and realize i could totally draw a connection between both of your readings and the genius loci theory. granted, the idea that Every House Is Individually Alive is less a known fact and more a common belief among the neighbors, but still - perhaps it's less a matter of figuring out whether or not the other houses are literally alive and more about what their placement in relation to the primary Home says about their respective inhabitants, if on a strictly symbolic level. hm....

(also, remind me not to be so quick to delete asks next time. i'm still mad at myself for that one. >:/)

[theneighborhoodwatch]

wait does that mean eddie was cast as the pg equivalent of the guy who got murdered in telltale heart. im sure this means nothing.

THAT WOULD BE INSANE but judging by his outfit, it looks like eddie was actually cast as one of the cops that show up at the end of the original story. given that the heart here was changed to an alarm clock and i assume Other Changes were made to keep things PG, i'm not sure there actually Was any murder in this adaptation? if there was, though, the only other "actor" we see on stage is, uh. home.

which could mean nothing.

[theneighborhoodwatch]

I can't stop thinking about the end of Sally's adaptation of The Telltale Heart (notably, the only part we see). Changing the murdered's man heart... to Julie's (character in the play) alarm clock. It seems so silly that I brushed it off at first, but like. Clocks are not an Innocent element in Welcome Home.

puts on adaptation of the tell-tale heart

changes heart to an alarm clock

casts guy who owns one of only two clocks in the entire town as the only other speaking role in the play

seats him next to house that he either had a dissociative episode in 7 months ago or will have a dissociative episode in [unknown amount of time] from now

what did they mean by this