u/Rich841

When we saw the origins of the Watcher getting sworn in in S3, we saw that the multiverse was already branched, but it didn’t look to me the tree-like structure of Loki. im not sure if nonlinear time/beyond-time shenanigans play a role, but I want to understand how the watchers had a multiverse to “watch” when the TVA still existed and we only had the sacred timeline. that seems to imply What if S1 occurs after Loki S1, then the Watcher being sworn in is technically after Loki and Sylvie taking down Kang. But we also see in What If S3 that the timeline is still branching but not like the tree that Loki held together, which seems to Imply Loki S2 was after? A little confused.

You just discovered that there is a vengeful god whose power depends on his worshippers. If he runs out of worshippers, he will die. His power scales from his worshippers. But, he promises famine, disaster, suffering, and even death to those who do not worship him. The reward for if you do worship him is not getting punished. Do you worship the vengeful god?

Assume he is the figurehead of a religion just like any other world religion, so people may or may not know about him.

I was mid watching it when the YouTube gods dusted his channel from existence and terminated it for community guidelines violations and now I don’t know what the video or comments said

https://preview.redd.it/3c9hoax49e7h1.png?width=913&format=png&auto=webp&s=c1b40bf0c37fb56e73f740425e0ec4582da54956

I know the vast majority of people loved the movie and strongly criticize those who called the movie too boring and slow. I partly agree with this because I'm of the opposite opinion, in fact: I don’t think Backrooms was too slow. I mean, not a lot happened in the plot so the pacing moved slowly, but I instead actually think the movie itself was too fast. What originally appealed to me about BlackAugust's original Backrooms 4chan post (side note but I wish Kane acknowledged BlackAugust by at least giving him an easter egg!), and the initial KanePixels found footage and discussion surrounding Backrooms was the atmosphere itself. The ambience, fluorescence, and liminality. The terrifyingly nostalgic and alienating vibe of a yellowing corporate hellscape. I think the movie dropped the ball on that.

Every time our protagonists went into the Backrooms something was always happening. Some sound effect, some abnormality, some encounter with the entity. There wasn't a single moment to breathe in the original terrifying heart of the Backrooms: the rooms themselves. I distinctly remember sitting in the theater WISHING that it could just slow down for a moment so we could absorb the sound of the fluorescent bulbs and the freakish mildewing rooms. Instead, there was literally ALWAYS some other distracting sound happening, whether it be the Voyager Golden Record on loop, or Cpt Clark’s menacing footsteps, or dialogue, or the sounds of the outside world, or a bird crashing through a column… never just pure Backrooms. I would say TOO much jingling keys. I came to see the Backrooms, and instead the Backrooms took backstage for a cat and mouse thriller flick. A roller coaster of jingling keys. I wanted to see the image in the 4chan post come to life, complete with the fluorescent audio and liminal spaciousness. There were moments that shined, I loved the chamber with the infinite hole, thousands of rooms, and a staircase. I found the visual design very impressive. But I just wish we got more of that, and less of the Backroom's entities. It reminds me of how before the movie came out, people were complaining about how the Backrooms community was becoming over SCP-ified and game-ified (especially the fandom and its thousands of community levels). While this movie didn't completely fall into that trap, I think it came close.

In fact, Captain Clark had so many scenes it was as if he always showed up exactly when we needed. Every single trip we took into the backrooms, he or the entity showed up to try to kill somebody. It's not scary if he is always there, as if on queue. And it also means the backrooms atmosphere isn't doing the scaring, its entities are. I think this misses the original soul of the backrooms.

There also were a lot of unnecessary, unearned jumpscares and other generic horror movie tropes that I didn't expect Kane to use. For a movie about a maze of endless, liminal corridors, why do we need a jumpscare for a fast cut to an old fashioned commercial? A jump scare from a woman opening a door? A jumpscare for every single kill? I'm not inherently against jumpscares, but I'm hoping to be disturbed, not jolted by a random commercial that isn't even scary. Some other mistakes that should have been cut was the unnecessary flashback to Clark's maze that he showed the therapist (we JUST saw that like 10 minutes ago) and the ridiculous trope of the protagonist constantly tripping on everything under the sun while running from a slow walking killer. I want to be scared by the Backrooms, not annoyed.

All this aside, I don't dislike the movie. Kane executed so many things well that I don't even need to point those out, since they have already been endlessly reiterated. I also understand that he has to appeal to a wider audience in theaters, instead of being more on the pretentious arthouse side. Most of us already know the Backrooms IP and are here to see what Kane makes, so he can trust us to be patient enough to give it a shot. However, given the reaction on Twitter, maybe he was smart to lean more generic horror after all.

All in all, it’s a 7/10 for me. It could have had less jingling keys and more atmosphere and it could have expanded more on the world-building/lore and the fear of the Backrooms itself rather than spending most of the runtime on generic cat & mouse sequences and long dialogue bits, but most of it was executed really well and I don't regret seeing it in theaters. Really impressive movie and great acting too. I hope (and expect) to see Kane get greenlit for a sequel.

At the start of the movie, real Nikki tells Bear on the car ride that she wants to write a book. She wants to write about love. "Love?" Bear asks.

"No. It's not a romance. It's a love story."

Bear doesn't seem to understand the difference, but Nikki does. In an on-stage QnA (youtu.be/72DiD0IJDyQ?t=165), Curry Barker explains that originally in the script, he had a whole monologue where Nikki passionately delineates the difference between a romance and a love story. It was cut from the final cut for brevity. This made me super curious about that distinction.

This is that monologue:

(the spelling for Nicky was likely changed to Nikki in production)

So I wanted to know how this distinction maps onto the people in the movie and the relationships we see. Nicky's rant at face value points out two things: romance is an illusion, hence we romanticize things when reality is not so rainbows-and-unicorns. Love is the messy, emotional, real, gritty stuff we feel toward people. It has good sides, and it also has ugly sides.

A superficial interpretation might suggest that because what Bear and Freaky Nikki have is surface-level and not a true caring relationship, what they have is not love, it is romance. I think it is a bit more nuanced then that.

We know from Curry Barker himself that the One Wish Willow is not intended to be a corrupting thing. It is Bear's obsession that produced such a corrupt wish, and the One Wish Willow simply did what it could to realize Bear's horrific wish. But the One Wish Willow doesn't lie, it took Bear's original wish exactly as it was phrased:

> I wish Nikki Freeman loved me more than anyone in the fucking world

^((note the irony of her last name being Freeman!))

The One Wish Willow has no choice but to make the wish come to reality. So what Freaky Nikki feels for Bear is genuinely love. It is the most potent, painful, and (arguably) true love one can feel for another. It is so extreme that she would kill everyone else in the world just so she can be with Bear. She truly cares about him, even if it is in a demented way, and even if she has to lie to him just to be with him. This is love, not romance. Even though it's totally fucked up, and nothing like the way we normally imagine love to be. (We can probably attribute its more fucked up qualities to the real, sunken Nikki trying to fight back internally, or the fact that freaky Nikki doesn't understand how to be a human, hence she can't be normal, she can only try to emulate it by acting it out around Bear)

But Bear lacks emotional maturity; this is something real Nikki possesses that he does not. So what he wants is the rainbows-and-unicorns romance that Nikki has. To him, the first half of their relationship is just romance, and similarly, he immaturely decides to reciprocate Sarah romantically. This is best represented in the happy relationship montage we see between Bear and Nikki when they are still in their honeymoon phase. This is the rose-tinted, unrealistically optimistic romance we expect to see from a romance movie. For a moment, we are almost rooting for them, almost believing in the fantasy that the two could be happy together. This is also what Bear thinks. As Curry Barker says at the 19:56 timestamp of the same QnA, almost the entire movie is told from Bear's perspective except for one scene (I couldn't figure out what scene he was referring to). So Bear only sees a romance, his girlfriend Freaky Nikki feels love in the worst possible way, manifesting itself in a corrupted, one-sided relationship. If Bear really loved Nikki, then he wouldn't have continued to use her as Freaky Nikki for as long as he could. He knew this wasn't really Nikki, and if he really loved Nikki then it should've bothered him that she was being kept under the spell. He would've done something about it. But for him, it wasn't love. Not really. To him, Nikki is just a means to an end. He doesn’t love Nikki for Nikki, he just is obsessed with the idea of being with Nikki. He never builds the emotional maturity that Nikki has to understand that romance isn’t love.

Ultimately, Nikki's monologue at the start is cut from the final film, because we don't need the monologue to subconsciously understand what Curry is trying to show us throughout the movie by following Bear and Nikki's relationship. We see how Bear sees Nikki as an object, a way for him to obtain romance, while we see through Inde Navarette's performance how Nikki feels unsustainable, boundless love for Bear that he could never reciprocate (until his freedom is also stripped by Freaky Nikki's wish).

Two kinds of obsession that could never be compatible: One borne from shallow, selfish romance, and the other forced into the world as undying, unrelenting love.

Dewier might be tuff

In Skied's new video

I'm taking 577 in fall, and have heard it's pretty heavy. I am interested in 532 and 539 now that I've finished linear algebra (341) and feel like I should take 540 as well. I think I'd be able to take 577 and 540 at the same time, but I don't know if I should think about taking 577 and 532 instead or some other combination (I heard you're meant to take 532 before 539, I don't know how 540 relates or if I should only take either 539 or 540 rather than both in the long run). I've also heard some bad things about 539. So I was wondering what combinations people here took would be recommended and in what order. Right now I'm thinking CS 577, CS 532, and Math 431 next sem, or delaying either 532 or 431 for the time being