u/FistThroater

I'm seeing a lot of discourse about the Cromernockle book. Did someone from the town write it? A previous incarnation of Jade or Tabitha? Elgin's grandmother? Maybe Julie travelling back in time?

I have a different theory.

There's nothing special about the book, except the fact that Ethan believes in it.

No bible has ever entered the town, that's an established fact.

I think books of faith can harm the town somehow, and the MIY or whoever's in charge fucked up royally by letting Ethan enter with a book about magic he has complete and utter conviction in.

The Lake of Tears? Wasn't even a real thing until he arrived. It came straight out of the book.

I think that's why the crows freaked out when Tilly started using the tarot cards. They were just random pieces of paper until she started dealing them with the intention of forming a narrative.

I'm seeing a lot of discourse about the Cromernockle book. Did someone from the town write it? A previous incarnation of Jade or Tabitha? Elgin's grandmother? Maybe Julie travelling back in time?

I have a different theory.

There's nothing special about the book, except the fact that Ethan believes in it.

No bible has ever entered the town, that's an established fact.

I think books of faith can harm the town somehow, and the MIY or whoever's in charge fucked up royally by letting Ethan enter with a book about magic he has complete and utter conviction in.

The Lake of Tears? Wasn't even a real thing until he arrived. It came straight out of the book.

I think that's why the crows freaked out when Tilly started using the tarot cards. They were just random pieces of paper until she started dealing them with the intention of forming a narrative.

Everyone on earth is teleported into individual voting booths.

In front of them is a red button and a blue button.

In front of the buttons is a message deliberately crafted to polarize and confuse the people who read it, making red and blue both seem like the correct option depending on your point of view. Evidently, it worked, there's been days of arguments online as to which button is the better choice.

The buttons work exactly as they do in the original puzzle, because this is the original puzzle.

What do you pick?

I just started watching Murdoch Mysteries. (Utterly charming, strongly recommend.)

It's a Canadian detective show on it's 19th season, been on the air since 2008.

What stuck me as fascinating is that the first episode is just another episode. There's no grand introduction to detective Murdoch or the world he inhabits. We open on him attending a science fair, a murder happens and he springs into action.

I'm looking for a movie with that same sense of confidence. No audience POV character asking for exposition, no inciting incident that sets everything in motion, no small character moment that tells you everything you need to know about them. Just jumping right in to an established world where the characters are doing their thing.

I was just in another thread about breaking bad and how any high school chemistry teacher could make meth if they wanted to.

Got me thinking, how does that work?

How was the first ever meth cook able to go "Ok, I want to make something that's going to get people super stimulated and I've got a whole load of chemicals, let's get cracking!"

Bit of a weird one...

Looking for films about people who went through some insanely niche shit, but manage to work through it.

Can't think of that many movies off the top of my head, but the vibe I'm looking for is something like Peter Reich's memoir, Book of Dreams.

>!Peter grew up on a ranch with his father Wilhelm Reich. Wilhelm got rich selling bogus machines like weather control devices and energy rejuvenation chambers. Dude was properly insane and actually believed all his inventions worked. Had a full on cult and everything. So anyways, because he's selling all these snake oil products the FDA tell him to cut it out, and because he's a lunatic of course he doesn't. Cops arrest him one day and he has a heart attack in the back of the squad car.!<

>!Peter's only a boy at this point. His dad's been filling his head with all these stories about how he's building a machine to save the world and "the man" is out to get him. So obviously when the man does come and get him and he ends up dead, dude's fucked up for life.!<

Kate Bush did a song about it. Which I can't link to for some reason due to the sub's silly rules.

Other examples from other media. Fun Home, an inappropriately yet somehow extremely appropriately upbeat musical based off a graphic memoir by Alison Bechdel.

>!Alison grows up with a father she could never quite connect with. She comes out as gay just before leaving for college, lo and behold, her dad gets outed as a gay man the same week. Finally, something they can bond over then BAM. Dude gets hit by a truck and killed instantly before they can talk about it.!<

Only film I can think of that fits the bill is Mysterious Skin.

>!A fictional story about two men who were abused as children by the same man, but learned to cope with it in entirely different ways. One turning to drugs and prostitution, the other blacking it out entirely and developing false memories about being abducted by aliens. It holds no punches, with the description of the abuse being so specific in it's bizarreness that it's almost cathartic in how un-Hollywoodized and un-sanitised it is.!<

Just looking at the talisman symbol.

Shining sun on the left. Dark sun on the right.

Person on top, mirrored person on bottom.

Circle of symbols around it (might be a fallen tree).

What if that's some sort of pact or instruction?

2 groups. One underground. One overground. Swap at sundown and sunrise.

Look at the monsters behaviour. Sun comes down, leave cave, kill anyone outdoors.

What if the townsfolk are supposed to swap with the monsters every night?

That's why the talismans work. They're chipped off the cave walls, pin one to your own wall, shut all the doors and technically you're counted as being inside the caves.

Was just thinking.

It's odd how if you look back on things we've seen before with the knowledge that Jade and Tabitha are reincarnating over and over again, previously unclear things now make sense.

Their visions and flashbacks, it's their memories from past lives. The kids haunting them, it's because one of them was their daughter. Jade and Tabitha following the same patterns of Christopher and Miranda, it's because they're the same people.

The monsters though... We've now learned that they're townsfolk who sacrificed their kids to become immortal and it went wrong, which in hindsight explains... nothing?

Why do they follow a set routine every night like they're on autopilot? Why do they steal things and bring them to the caves? Why is Smiley so childishly fascinated with the bus? What's with the outfits? Why do they resemble characters from Victor's boardgame? Nothing we know about them becomes any clearer knowing what we know now.

That's weird right? What's up with that?

Was rewatching episode 1 earlier.

First scene we see of the Matthews family, Julie's in the back of the RV telling Ethan a story with two puppets.

One puppet, Norman has been fatally wounded by a monster attack, his best friend assures him that he'll be ok, that the fairies are coming from the lake of tears to save him, alas it's too late, the monsters claws cut too deep and Norman dies.

Ethan's distraught, Jim and Tabitha call her out on it, but she sticks to her guns, it's her story and that's that.

Tabitha steps in to comfort Ethan.

"Hey, what happened to Norman?"

"The monsters killed him."

"The monsters killed him? That's good news then."

"Why?"

"Because, there's no such thing as monsters honey, and if there's no such thing as monsters, well that means that Norman's still alive doesn't it?"

"Really?"

"Mmm hmm. Play with Norman."

I think this is the key to everything. Story walking is a trap. You can't change anything that happens in a story, you're just moving from one part of a cage to another.

Well so what?

Fuck the story, it's just a story. It has no real power. Make your own one.

That's why we keep being told the answers to the end are at the beginning. The story's already been written, there's no escaping the town, there's no defeating the monsters or saving the children, you need to go right back to the start and reject the entire premise. Start a whole new story from scratch.

Abby had the right idea, she just didn't execute it properly.

Random thought popped into my head and I thought I'd share it.

There's a cycle going on in the town. Jade and Tabitha keep coming back as different people. Sometimes Tabitha's a little girl. Sometimes Jade's a ventriloquist. Same story, different characters.

Well what if the setting's changing as well?

What if the reason there's a lighthouse in the forest is because it wasn't always a forest?

The monsters' true forms, they look like angler fish. Why?

A really bizarre thing about the town, it respects borders. People enter from all over the continental united states. Never Canada, never Mexico. What's up with that?

Does anything make more sense if we look at this through the lens of "This is a story originally told at sea being re-told in a new setting?"

The motel sign without a motel, the colony house, the American flag in the opening credits, the cowboy, the stereotypical milkman. It all smacks of someone's vague idea of what America's like.

What if this whole thing started with a group of people migrating by boat to the new world? The cave paintings certainly line up.

This guy seems to have a similar idea: The “Boat Theory” for FROM : r/FromSeries