(Spoilers for backrooms and a not so secret 2nd movie from here on out >:). Dont worry, you’ll know by reading what the second movie is well before I start spoiling it, but its gloves off once I mention it’s name, Okay?)

(Okay.)

Hey.

Its finally over :’).

Things have been wild since day one, and now it feels like its over too soon. You know the feeling, when something feels like it lasts so long but is gone so fast it feels like it happened ages ago?

That’s what the exam study felt like. Several days straight of only studying, only to finally finish the exam and go watch two movies on the same day, and got a cool tin with me too:

You may be able to guess the movie from the tin but ill mention it after the first movie I watched with a friend that day, THE BACKROOMS.

For more context, we’d finished our programming final for the first year, properly wrapping up the year in its entirety (I had to pee fucking BAD for the last 40 minutes and was so fucking glad to be out). Me and said friend then went to have food at the cafeteria, as we usually do, relegating ourselves to a table upstairs as soon as the exam was done as fast as possible, if not because we were hungry then also because the meal deal that I bought before the exam leaked onto my backpack, and everything was lathered in beetroot juice.

It was a very pungent, limey smell to the cafeteria ill have you know (;n_n).

After the cleanup, I got another meal deal and a free sandwich from a sandwich place, and me and said friend talked about what to do. Initially we’d planned on doing billiards, since that was something I’d wanted to do, but the place that we had in mind was full at the time, so the next best option was the backrooms. He’d already seen it, but was eager to see it again.

Honestly, I was initially hesitant, mostly because I’m not that into horror as a genre in many ways, but this turned out to be an exception.

TO ELABORATE, I do quite like horror, but it’s a weird balancing act as it kinda is with other stuff I like, just much more explicitly visceral with horror. I think, it needs to have a lot of substance outside of the horror aspect, and also not be too scary as to have me just not want to watch.

I guess the best way I can put it right now is that I dont like horror made specifically to scare you, you know? I like survival horror quite a lot, in stark contrast to explicitly scary films, because I feel like the meat of it, the ‘lore’ so to speak, melds with the scary aspects of the media to create something extremely unique and fun to think about.

A lot of the old slashers I tend to find fun to watch stuff about, the newer sort of ‘gimmick horror media’ so to speak (and I dont mean that at all in a bad way) where the movie contorts a well known aspect of our lives and fucks with it, like birdbox and not being able to see, a quiet place and not making noise. Video games, like mainly fnaf but also Psychopomp and OYSASUMII, Analog horror and more broadly and closer to the discussion here, Worlds of horror like the SCP foundation and backrooms lore (and with backrooms I mainly mean the wiki dot, AKA the more story, level and entity heavy version of the backrooms).

I think their commonality is that they do touch on things that are scary, but not necessarily to such an extent that it throws me off my seat and has my heart doing laps in and out of my ass, you know? The fact that I’m unnerved is integral ins some way to everything that I’ve mentioned, but it’s not an experience built around it. Even one with genuine substance, if too unnerving, probably wouldnt suit me.

(It has worth noting that anything that falls into the category of psychological horror does NOT fit into this framework, that shit fills a whole different itch in a different hemisphere in my brain and basically bypasses everything that I’ve mentioned here, I love that shit)

Then again, I don’t know to what extent this definition works, if you can even call it that, its really vague. Even though that explanation works enough here, it doesnt really cover all the ground it could, does it? It’ll suffice for now.

Point is, kane parson’s backrooms fits quite neatly into the stuff that I like. Its liminal, drawing on a sense of nostalgia and wonder yet, a very visceral fear of the unknown, whatever the hell’s lurking in there, and that tension, especially at the start of the movie going into it, is exhilarating.

The movie then builds on that with a story of a man who’s kinda miserable and pretty shitty but trying to get better, lost in his own behavior, only to use that and the therapist that he goes to for help to slowly unravel that earlier mystery, then building on the long standing questions in the viewers mind. What is this place? Why the entities, why are they harmful, why are there after us?

Does this place end? How long does it go on for?

More pressingly, it also subtly brings into your mind a new question after it gives you these answers by the end of the movie.

Where does the real world lie in this? Is it also just another level, another part of the descending copies of realities that is the backrooms, or is it the original copy?

Both liminality, and lore, it felt like a perfect mix <3.

Don’t get me wrong, I was still scared shitless. The start of the movie gave me a jump, the middle of the movie where the main character uses his employees as basically bait for traversing a hard to reach area without him getting hurt, only for EVERYTHING to go wrong, and fuck me does it escalate and its TERRIFYING.

Then, the switch into the therapist’s perspective as the boss goes mad and we get to watch her, after having gotten there herself, beg for her life, and with a moment of reprieve from the boss sparing her then having to RUN FOR HER LIFE, holy shit its all so good.

Honestly, there’s just so much to dig into with backrooms media as a whole, and with kane’s clear skill I dont think this movie was gonna be anything but great. I think it’s an amazing rendition of the backrooms mythos.

I call it a mythos, because I genuinely feel like thats what its grown to become. More than just a connected thread of stories, its this sprawling universe of intrigue, levels and levels of the tension between wonder and dread, of the different interconnected parts of the world that make up said wonder and dread, curated by hundreds of thousands of people suiting different tastes.

Yall know about the backrooms wiki? Well, whichever you may have been thinking of, it’s worth noting there are two! Not only that, plenty of different subreddits exist too, either for just the liminality, or for the lore too. Again, so many different parts, but most of the disconnect and the different subgroups here exists to differentiate whether its a focus on just the place and its feeling, or the lore itself.

Personally, I like all of it, and though the wiki dot in particular and all the cool stuff it expands on in regards to the levels is really cool, I get why someone may prefer a focus on liminality.

Still, it exists WITH the other groups, not despite them. From my understanding these communities dont directly collaborate, but the very real intrigue of the space encompassing the 999 levels doesnt exist, despite how much lore there is, without the focus on liminality from other spaces.

These subgroups dont feed each other directly. but I feel as though the emotions that groups focused on JUST the liminal space gives me feeds directly into my imagination and how I feel about the wiki dot levels, all the cool stuff their, and just how cool kane parson’s take on it is too!

The world being copies of itself… Its so fucking cool! THE BACKROOMS MYTHOS IS REALLY COOL >:).

So yea, the movie was great, I loved every second of it, and more than that, I have a weirdly personal attatchment to the mythos around the backrooms and all its different permutations. My headcannoning has never been further off the charts I tell you, liminal space media as a whole is just infinitely satiating to every part of my brain.

Now, having finished the first movie (and ranting incessantly about it :)), the friend called it a day and went home, and I got a very important tin with some popcorn in it in preparation for the second movie, the amazing digital circus.

(I didnt have any snacks in the backrooms movie so I was feening for some now)

I dont think Ive talked about it much if at all, but I’ve been following the digital circus for about a year now. Initially I was kinda put off given I’d seen it in so much elsagate type stuff, really disgusting bottom of the barrel type kids content, and my brain made the association, but I decided to give it a try despite that. After all, I really love animation, so frankly if it WAS good, I was in for a good time, becuase I could tell from a glance shit would be sweet.

AND IT WAS, I actually ended up really liking it :D.

The first few episodes, specifically 1 & 2, lay nice groundwork, of a circus with people transported in it via vr that CANT leave, doing wacky things, but dont really hook me or anything. Up until then, it really just felt like any other show, with a nice and lovable cast but nothing that would establish itself in my mind as more than that, even with the pomni gumigoo plot thread, where the mc gets close to an AI gator.

Then episode 3 came though and MAN, it was all uphill from there. I fucking LOVED episode 3, it was so fun. I feel like it was at this point that I started to really get a feel for all of the characters and their personalities, as much as many of them where more prominent than others to begin with though. Like RAGATHA, MY GOAT >:).

And jax, the fucking loser.

The kinger and pomni talk was also really sweet too, and I loved the lore being sprinkled, as well as the message beginning to form. Working within your constraints to make a life worth living rather than chasing a, for them, soon to be found to be a LITERALLY UNATTAINABLE goal is pretty neat.

The next few episodes till the plot begins hurdling facefirst into the end of the series also similarly feature a lot of fun character moments, with us learning more about all of each of the members and their oddities. SOME get more than others, that much is obvious, but things are still really nice. The rapid fire mini adventures, the gunfighting and TOMMY GUN, and the fast food work of all things really just give you more moments to enjoy with a bunch of character drama inbetween.

Eventually though, things begin to point towards an end. It started with the gun fight and caine getting worked up over people not caring for his adcventures as much as hed like, since the mini adventures was just made up of circus member suggestions, and him creating a whole escape adventure that’d supposedly help them out of the circus (it most certainly does not) backfiring and causing MAJOR strife, getting him all pissy and angry at the rest of the cast too.

Things escalate, badabing badaboom and by end of episode 8, he’s dead (he’s not really dead), and in comes episode 9. Techincally speaking the movie premieres episodes 8 and 9, but I dont much care to tell you about the episode everyones’s already watched and that you can go see yourself right now on youtube, I want to talk about episode 9.

MY GOODNESS, EPISODE 9. THE END.

It was nice :).

I call it the jax finally dies and everybody fixes everything episode >:).

Kinger finally spills the beans on them being clones, unable to escape the circus due to not having bodies. Things take a nosedive from here, and we really get to see how everybody interact. As usual, zooble and gangle are relagated to the side compared to the other 4, mainly 3 or if were being honest two usually, jax and pomni, but with a lot of emphasis on ragatha. Shes usually a very kind and considerate person, to a fault, but even still the moment breaks everybody. She has to fins herself in pomni before she can really get back to it, and them helping each other back up is really sweet.

Of anybody though, I unironically think jax probably took it the worst. He prescribed himself to a sort of nihilism, considering them nothing more than npc’s in a circus, cartoon loons, but the now technical reality of being clones, alongside everything else that had been going on in his past and present to push him to that point, is too much for him.

He abstracts (aka, suicide).

This was my only really MAJOR gripe with the movie that threw me off while watching, suicide in itself can be argued to be something that isnt glamorous, and so shouldnt be glamorized, but even so he sort of just dies? Like one scene he’s decided not to talk to pomni, and thats the final straw suddenly, next frame, gone, he’s now one of the abstracted creatures like any other person who’s abstracted.

It’d be fine if it werent for the fact that theyd been leading up to some big moment of impact, like the many panic attack in the earlier episodes, or the times he tried and failed to reach out here, or just his slow descent away from them in general and how it was conveyed, made it so the wind got taken out of me the moment we switch scenes and BOOM, he’s a big 50 eyed creature now, bam.

That aside, pomni figures out how to still get to him, talk to him, and she does, and in doing so sees both his thoughts on her and the cast as well as his backstory and what led us here.

And let me just say, goodness me, this guy is putrid. He’s the whole reason ribbit and kaufmo ultimately abstracted themselves, one due to actively ostracizing her from EVERYONE ELSE after HE opened up to HER, and kaufmo more after that fact due to the love of the game (game being not giving a shit for anybody anymore).

Same with ragatha, he also ends up hurting her in getting her to never mention them again, which she’s now in present day conflicted with having agreed to. Should she have done that for him given thats when they stopped being friends, and he continued to spiral, or should she have insisted they work things out?

Regardless, not my goat’s fault.

Still, despite all the shit he piled onto everyone else, all the suffering he’d caused, it’s distinctly human. Jax getting to know ribbit and kaufmo is, honestly, the most wholesome part of the entire series, and so is him sharing his story with her in her room right before kaufmo knocks and he switches up.

Simply put, it’s toxic masculinity, and more than that, its fear of his own identity. He’s fucking terrified.

In ribbit’s room after being prompted, he gives in, sharing what had happened in his real life before he ‘got here’ so to speak. He’d hurt his mom, lived with a horribly shitty and overly masculine dad, and things went to shit after that dad left. So with her and him, and under the scrutiny that he’d get every day from his mom, seemingly for being like him, he hits his limit.

Things escalate, and he hurts her, unintentionally. Before you know it, he’s fleeing home, scared and unwilling to see what harm he may have caused, then he’s here.

Life with his mom reinforced harmful habits, and life with his dad gave him those habits. Hes an overly showy wannabe masculine pathetic piece of shit and it shows, but we’re given the reason, and more importantly, the outcome.

Ribbit comforts him, even gives him her bow to have on while they share a moment, and things should be all well and good. But you dont open up that easy, you dont just decide to be okay with this, right?

He should be, he’s happy, but it comes back to what his fear of being himself, of his identity, from everything he’s come to know. For as much as he was safe there, he wasnt safe in his own mind.

So when kaufmo knocks, he panics. His mind panics.

He throws the bow to the floor, yells, changes attitude, and utterly fucking embarrasses himself. Its hard to watch. This is the point of no return, the reason we come to see him how he is today. Will he regret things later? A million times. But there’s no taking it back really, at least for him. He decides he’ll keep everyone away from him, as far away as possible.

From this point onward, we get the character we know today as jax, dick to all, and his eventual downfall. Pomni shares a moment with him after seeing his story, and they share a moment, but what’s done is done. It cannot be taken back. He’s gone, and all thats left in the ‘real’ world is a abstracted husk.

But they take care of it, they endeavor to take care of him and the memories they shared regardless, despite the complete asswipe that he usually was in those memories. Because he was one of them.

The rest of the movie proceeds to shoot caine back into the story, cause apparently the ‘install’ just sent him to this void space that we’re familiar with already, and thigns continue for him from there. Despite that silly way of continuing things, I enjoyed his miniature arc into a more fully fledged person, understanding of the circus members history, in the time the movie gave him.

Did it deserve more time? DEFINITELY. Still loved it tho <3.

He reunites with the rest of the gang rebuilding the circus since its been pretty badly beat up since they tried to delete him, and he shares the stories that their real life counterparts were sharing online, showing them who theyd become. Satisfied, they endeavor to make their lives in the circus, their home, as great as it can be, they live out the fantasies they’d wished to express in real life in the best way that they can, choosing to try and forgive caine, and things end, unironically, happily ever after.

So, again, I enjoyed it quite a lot. I think the whole series oozed a lot of artistic charm, and it was always pretty fun to tune in past episode 3 for me. The characters, when they shine, shine a lot for me, I enjoy seeing the witty banter or simple things like pomni and ragatha sharing a moment.

Also, the designs are SO FUCKING COOL. Gangle’s comedy mask and ribbon bod, ragatha as just fucking RAGATHA (doll like characters done well are always adorable and I love them to death, looking at you sackboy), and even jax, is just a really simple but effective character.

A fun bunny :).

There were many flaws, Like how gangle and zooble frankly got done dirty in terms of moments to share with them throughout the story, same for rags, I wanted more ragatha but we never seemed to be able to get that after episode 6 for as great as things were after that, it was just full steam ahead towards the finale. More than just the moments in 9, I wanted MORE, MORE ragatha lore, MORE gangle and zooble interactions, with and without the cast, would’ve been nice to see.

Also important to note that although I may have given you a certain impression of the show, even with my ramblings, the show isnt all too subtle about what its trying to be, and can be VERY corny at times (yes jax’s episode 6 speech still makes me cringe) but thats not all too bad a thing, more just that you ought to know what your dealing with. The show is a lot and for a lot of people, and although it comes out to be a strength in many ways, it also limits itself from time to time leaning into being less subtle than it could be.

Also, IT NEEDED MORE TIME.

But still, I felt I really enjoyed my time with it, especially the movie. Of course, im referring a lot to jax’s part, since for as much as I hate him I cant deny that he’s real as fuck in some aspects, mostly that fear of himself and especially anything effeminate (despite embodying it with the maid outfit when we’re in his mind), so he just breaks down at the thought of others seeing him as effeminate is something that I felt extremely viscerally, regardless of the subject matter.

That feeling that you need to be different for the person in front of you, that shame in certain parts of your identity, that’d be bizarre or off-putting to the people that you know and the anxiety that it gives you, I really felt that come through to me in that scene in the movie. It genuinely bothered me (in a good way :)).

Nothing crazy, but I loved it nonetheless.

Also, the actual cinema-going experience and the people there made it just that much better, it genuinely felt like the people there were the people I was meant to be with at that moment.

People my age looking to enjoy the movie, dapper as fuck, sick ass cosplayers coming in to sell the mood, all of us with our digital circus tins, having a good time. The audience laughs at the start of the movie, the gasp at jax hitting on gangle WHICH WAS SO FUCKING REAL X), the clear joy and sorrow and whatever other emotion that fit the scene encompassing the room was just really fun all around, and never distracted from the movie itself.

All in all, it had me craving more. It’s one of the few times I’m around people who are interested in the same internet stuff as me and I want MORE. I wanna go meet cool people like that, talk to them and make friends who are interested in stuff like digital circus. That’d be fun :).

So yea, that was my complete day basically as soon as the exam finished. Right after having thought all of this I got on a bus, went home and sinked into bed, and several days later here we are now. It’s been a neat couple of days since then, mainly relaxing, though I plan on heading to the library soon to get some computer science books to read over the vacation, might as well return my history books and go all in on that since im not reading that anyways, will see how that goes.

Actually hold up IVE ALSO GOTTA MOVE SOON, so maybe I’ll just return the current books for now :v.

Idk, Ill figure that out later. For now though, I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s post. I didnt think I’d even be able to write it given I still felt pretty tired leading up to it given I still went out yesterday and the day before that, but honestly once I started writing about the backrooms I sort of just clicked into my chair for the next hour and fucking LOCKED IN.

It’s still pretty long though, and I dont have the energy to give it the extra polish that I’d usually try to, but I still hope you enjoyed it all is it is now ^_^.

That being said though, I’m about to pass out from exhausting, about time I head to bed.

That’s all for now, have a lovely week and see you all next Sunday <3.