THE DUALITY✨️

I feel like people aren't appreciating fyodor enough after the recent chapter. This guy has not only gaslit the characters, but us the audience for what? 15 volumes? He pulled the very same party trick he pulled on Ace, and we fell for it.

"People can be so simple, they truly think they are thinking for themselves. If they discover something themselves, they see value in that, and don't want to think they're being led by the nose"

This applies to us as well. We too made theories and connected the dots as to what fyodor's truth may be, and felt comforted when dazai came up with the same conclusion only for fyodor to be the one feeding us this false information with his magnificent performance. As much as it is frustrating, it's just as fascinating. To have the reader go back all those volumes ago and find out that the clues were there, yet still blatantly lie till the end is amazing. It makes me so sick and insane and I love it. Truly fyodoresque!

Is he stupid

ok so maybe, as a gifted kid w gifted kid trauma, i may throw my hat in the ring on ratios relationship w the genius society.

I don't think he wants to be a part of the society because hes such an open critic of them and some of their practices. However, I do think that there is a little bit of bitterness there. But not for the reasons that you'd think.

i want you all to consider for his perspective on this: You've spent your entire life striving for perfection in your field. Day and night, year after year, you work and work and work towards a goal that you believe is a good, selfless cause. And people have likely told you that you're simply too altruistic, that its not worth it and that your talents and skills are best put to work in areas that would instead tear the world apart. It hurts your heart to think that, being raised to be a kind and diligent person, the world feels your kindness is beneath you.

You've spent your life dedicated to knowledge in the pursuit of a greater tomorrow, not just for knowledge's sake. And a part of you hopes that maybe THEY will turn THEIR eye towards you, and recognize that someone so good and hardworking is worthy of recognition - that humanity and simply caring enough to go above and beyond, something so intrinsic to your identity - is worthy of all the praise lavished upon them over the years. That maybe when THEY see your hard work, everyone will recognize the truth and that things will finally be better. Maybe the universe will say "you have done enough, you have helped all you can, rest easy."

But that never happens. And if no one else will do the work, then you will.

How would you feel?

just catney and pretty pc

This makes absolutely no sense

why does the doa wear so many layers

what point in the year is it, how do they not overheat

I am so in fucking love with the stairway to heaven animation and the only ways I can express that is to either say I am bricked the FUCK up, or I give in to the uber instincts of my uber autism and write an essay on what I THINK are some of the references/inspirations used in the animation. I chose the essay because I need people to know why I am "bricked up."

I am fully willing to accept if I am wrong/reaching for some of these but even then, I think it's cool that I can still connect certain moments with things I enjoy. With that out of the way, behold my analysis/breakdown of Stairway to Heaven!

Spoilers below the cut not just for the animation, but also minor spoilers for Kane Pixel's backrooms series, Liminal Land, Skinamarink, and Mandela Catalogue. Also just a warning for the incoherent ramblings of a guy who's abnormal about analog/indie horror. Please please please please PLEASE go watch the animation if you haven't.

First, "subject 087" is in reference to SCP-087, the never ending staircase SCP. I actually didn't even catch that the first time until I scrolled down to the comments lmao. In my defense, when SCP was blowing up in the mid 2010s I wasn't really old enough to appreciate it or find the format interesting (and honestly it is still hard for me to really get into it, but that's more of a me thing. Conceptually a clinical approach to horror like with SCPs or in All Tomorrows is fascinating, but it can be a bit of a slog for me), so I only knew the main three's numbers. (173, 096, and 682).

"Motion detected" has been used in just about every analog horror series now, but Mandela Catalogue is probably the main series that popularized the trope when analog horror first started getting popular.

The backrooms is, obviously, the backrooms. You can probably assume it's Kane Pixels' backrooms because his version really blew up but it feels more like early days backrooms before we got all those monsters and almond water stuff. (Which btw it's so funny we got "almond water" from whoever the first person to say the air smells like almonds was. For reference, almonds smell like cyanide. OP was trying to say the air smells toxic, not that almonds are the safest thing to consume in the backrooms.)

This shot just reminded me of The Oldest View, ALSO from Kane Pixels. Tbh that's probably just me but I thought it was neat.

Next up, the door. Aside from the obvious 333 angel numbers which also appear very prominently in Mandela Catalogue (this series is going to pop up a lot, I'm sorry), but for some reason it reminded me of the Silent Hill 4 door. Again, that's just the tism probably.

Skinamarink ahh shot, was honestly expecting the door to just poof, disappear.

Next, the shot with all the houses. While KP's Backrooms do have that creepy neighbourhood, this exact shot and set up feels closer to H.O.M.E. from Liminal Land.

And then our most darling biblically accurate horror icon Columbina would make False Gabriel proud, and just... she is so fucking cool and creepy in this and I love her so much.

This whole sequence was for one absolutely horrifying and beautiful, but what caught MY attention were the settings and locations shown. These are standard creepy liminal spaces and analog horror gore censorship, yes, but they also reminded me of the locations Trevor Henderson uses in his art pieces, so suffice to say I think Columbina looks RIGHT AT HOME regardless of how you wanna look at these shots. And the animation on her face opening up into wings and eyes is just an absolute chef's kiss moment. Props to the animators, man.

This trope, the whole main character monologue overlaying the screen moment, very common in analog horror but for me, again popularized by its use in the Mandela Catalogue.

The smudged picture is a reference to one of the ending shots in Skinamarink, where it pans over the childhood photos only for their heads and faces to now be missing, which most agree is the movie's way of saying these kids were trapped her for so long they eventually just stopped existing/faded into nothingness.

And finally, the classic ending scene of KP's first Backrooms video.

I know for a fact there are probably other references to liminal spaces/analog horror that I either missed or they're like general concepts/tropes used in analog horror. I did almost mention the mill in petscop because of Columbina's "two in the mill, one taken, one left" because that phrasing felt really specific, but it doesn't quite fit the vibes of all the other references. Also her only being seen in the camera is a trope used in all manner of horror media. My first thought was the forest scene in VHS (2012) where the murderer could only be seen in the film static.

I just wanted to get the especially cool/unique moments out there. I didn't even touch on the storyline but that's because it seems pretty straightforward. I'm also aware not many people are gonna read my red string corkboard ramblings, which I'm fine with. I just needed to get this out of my system, but I do appreciate those who did take the time to indulge my ramblings!

That's all for now, back to whatever the hell I had planned for today.

do not inspect my favourite characters too closely, i swear it will tell you nothing about me. i pinky promise

hngghh domestic......

i actually have nothing to post except a random au that crossed my mind