when I have a nightmare I know that I can always wake up and be safe at home again but here dreams are the only way to escape the master workor we're going to be talking about today is an unsettling descent into madness where the familiar becomes grotesque and childhood Nostalgia morphs into a night marish experience tonight we're going to be exploring and analyzing Jack stober's most powerful work opal Jack stobber might be one of my favorite modern artists and for good reason his strange otherworldly disturbing and sometimes hilarious animations and songs have captured the imaginations and troubled minds of millions over the last decade one among them being mine shortly after beginning to see viral internet success Jack started working with Adult Swim where he made some short videos like wishing Apple an animation about how wishing for something and then getting it might not mean the wish actually did anything Valentine's Day is not for the lonely a sad little song about how us lonely people get every other day and Shop a pop Opera which is a beautiful surreal piece about taking charge of your own existence told through the lens of a Trippy grocery shopping spree it was all fairly light-hearted and to some extent it was even uplifting The Wider audiences who see adult swim shorts got a wholesome Taste of Jack's material for about 2 years and then everything changed and shifted into the unfamiliar the surrealist psychological musical horror film entitled Jack starers opal a sort of culmination of all Jack's artistic stylings and idiosyncrasies utilizing stop motion three-dimensional animation live action weirdcore music and a ton of clay despite being only 12 minutes long opal manages to be as dense as some fulllength movies and has a horrific story to tell a basic overview is a young girl named Claire is being abused and neglected by her family and has a frankly horrific home life the exact extent of the abuse is never made clear but during a flashback we see Claire's mother hit her and afterwards she has blood all over her face implying that the blow was especially damaging the people in her life are self-obsessed and don't seem to care about her very much leading us to the main deception of the short Claire has no real way of Escaping The Awful reality that is her home life but when she looks out the window of their big creaky house at a billboard outside she sees an advertisement for a burger joint depicting a happy girl surrounded by a normal family and as time goes on on she develops A coping mechanism a sort of dissociative maladaptive Daydream where she is the little girl in the billboard and her family actually cares about her part of why opal works so well is the hierarchy of knowledge that we as viewers become exposed to important plot points aren't explained until the very end of the video which recontextualizes the entire piece and makes you want to watch it again you don't know for sure that Claire and Opel are supposed to be the same child until the very end Jack creates and maintains a sort of sick Fascination throughout opal and our curiosity drags us forward against our will into the light of understanding that will burn our eyes and haunt our minds an opening theme song plays as we watch cigarettes TVs mirrors and pills dance the music going from a sweet droning sound lulling our senses to sleep to this orchestral Crescendo everywhere in opal the music is telling a story and this sets a perfect tone there's a piece of fiction on display called serial killer Lover by Amy vibrator who knew Claire's mom was a book talker the camera pushes through a window into the yard outside of a calm and cozy White House in this moment we are looking at the world through the perspective of opal and we enter the Dreamhouse to escape some horrible reality we're leaving behind her imaginary family are posed like clay dolls but immediately spring to life and their eyes fixed onto opal as soon as she appears opal's sitting in a room and initially her face looks scared and scrunched up almost like she's anticipating being hit but then her eyes open and her face abruptly returns to normal there's a table sparsely set with nothing but a small hamburger in front of her the ceiling lights morph into what seems to be either TV lights for her sitcom family or interrogation brights the room around them gets dark as the family gather around opal and sing we see you opal your troubles are Miles Away we see you opal and in our eyes you'll stay if this is a World in opel's imagination and this is her construction of a perfect life in a perfect world it is very jarring to me to see that her interpretation of a perfect family isn't even one that loves her but simply one that sees her that attempts to understand her the design of the ceiling lights stand out as important to me they look like interrogation lights to me and an interrogation generally is a clinical or even violent way way to get information out of someone essentially cutting them open with little regard for their health or their well-being opel's real family is so self-absorbed that they don't even seem to notice her existence except as a tool that they can use after the song we cut to each individual simply greeting her another thing we later see her real life family never does opal observes the Burger on her plate seemingly not understanding what it's for her family all wait with baited breath encouraging her to do her very best specifically the mom tells her you can do it which is important as a profession of faith and belief in her ople Smiles very wide at this comment and begins to dance not not eat it still still not actually eating the food after poking and proding at it for some time in the billboard for the burger place we see later in the short you'll notice opal's face is round where Claire's is emaciated and Haggard she isn't even being taken care of properly at home when it comes to food and in her dreams she has food and doesn't even know what to do with it as she stands up on the plate and does her happy little dance everyone exclaims yay Whoopi and the music is Happy and full of joy I sure do love happy endings in my art oh boy I I wonder what's going to happen [Music] next the lights go dim in a Sinister moment where opal is strangely drawn to a window to stare at the dilapidated house across the street in particular the upstairs window something immediately uncanny about the entire scene is how the family never take their eyes off of opal even as she moves around the room their eyes follow her but as she tries to look out the window her mom quickly closes the blinds as her dad asks her what do we always say indicating that this isn't the first time they've had this discussion while heavy sweat drips down his brow he implores opal not to mind the house across the street it's not where her attention ought to be they seem terrified of her going to the house and after giving her eyeballs a good massage they tuck her into bed for the night cuz she must be getting sleepy this part's kind of sad cuz if this world is an imaginary one this scene is as though her brain is trying to protect her after being left alone opal gets up and sneaks over to the window again as ominous drums start playing loudly in the soundtrack as she peers across the lawn into the upstairs window of the house across the street the window opens and she suddenly hears drums that get faster and heavier like all of this pain anger and sadness just building up and boiling only to release in a terrified wailing which is coming from that room her face turns concerned and sad and this becomes the thing that breaks her unfortunately for her future sanity and fortunately for us curious viewers Opel disregards her parents' warning and leaves her perfect house escaping into the night to seek out the other house her intense empathy for whoever or whatever is crying leads her to go try and help but this very empathy leads her down a path that she never should have walked we watch as she becomes filled with determination to save whoever might be hurt and she escapes through the window and tiptoes out to the evil house when she gets there we notice that up close the building is far more disorienting than it originally seemed consisting of four massive just absolutely oversized Windows a rundown wooden porch and a uniform broken down look created by faded and chipped painted wooden planks opal looks at all that and seemingly has second thoughts about actually going inside and if only she had turned back here some blindingly bright lights flash on either her dream family turning on a light when they noticed she was gone so they could start looking for her or someone inside the evil house turning on a porch light and scaring her but my personal theory is that this light was the billboard turning on think about it it had just passed from DUS into the real darkness of the night right around when many outdoor lights automatically turn on and when whatever it is does turn on it scares opal so badly that her eyes nearly pop out of their sockets and she immediately runs inside the horrible house slamming the door behind her why would just a light scare her so badly I believe whatever she saw it broke her understanding of the world around her and shattered the illusion of the dream just for a moment just long enough to scare her terribly but not enough for her to consciously figure anything out opal's initial relief after escaping the light is shortlived as she enters to see a dismal room with her real grandfather sitting on this moldy looking couch the room stinks of cigarette smoke and discarded popcorn bags the atmosphere is oppressive an opal's reactions to her environment let us know that it's dangerous she looks around in fear and tries to avoid her grandfather only to accidentally step on a rapper and alert him to her presence this moment is the first real creepy moment of the film to me and it doesn't rely at all on cheap jump scares but rather powerful link lingering imagery that it's confident enough to force us to sit with the way we stare at opel's reaction to what she's seeing first before we get to see it is genius and fills me with immediate unease it creates tension and as she closes her eyes tight only daring to Peak after a few agonizing seconds where she realizes knowing if he saw her or not is more important than avoiding what's currently happening happening and where just a moment ago he had his back turned he is now facing directly into her soul she stares back at him seemingly hoping against hope that he doesn't bother her but he immediately calls out to her asking her to bring him his cigarettes he accuses her of hiding the cigarettes from him as well and then goes on a rant about how it's evil to try and help people who don't need help followed by him immediately coughing up blood he definitely doesn't need help he assumes that she hid them to stop him from smoking and while the video Never Fully confirms this is correct I think it's safe to say that he's probably right I used to be around a lot of people who smoked all the time when I was younger and at that age there definitely was a desire to try and help or to do something to change the situation I think it's hard for a kid to see their family or their parents engage in self-destructive Behavior especially when you're told by those people that engaging in this activity will like eventually kill you and then they turn around and do the exact thing they're warning you against he even acknowledges what he's doing as a problem in the next song and the whole dynamic prays upon that empathy that we discussed earlier and the amount of character held within such minimal dialogue is really something special I think as opal inches forward we realize he can't actually see her as the grandfather is blind he mentions that just like the people on TV opal is far more interested in him than anything she herself has going on and this ties into the next song where he sings that the people on TV sing to him and try to fight over his soul like rabid dogs over a bone they are idea salesmen and he is their only customer this sort of narcissistic projection is a common theme for the adults in the show he truly believes everything he sees on the TV was tailor made specifically for him I bet he'd be the type of person when he goes to see a movie to sit down and watch the opening trailers and loudly exclaim whether or not he personally watch any given movie that has a trailer their business model must be broken if everything everything is not customized precisely to his exact demographic of one another important thing to pay attention to is how he calls opal Claire some not so subtle foreshadowing for the big reveal later he questions how the people on TV can talk for so long without needing to stop and get help or take breaks and then he goes into my second favorite song from opal easy to breathe fastpaced and Darkly hilarious easy to breathe is a very fun song but also a very sad song for one thing it's mainly about being disabled in some way and kn other people can do things very easily that you yourself can't do the grandfather has been smoking long enough to be coughing up black dust and Old Blood he can barely talk without wheezing his main joy in life is now listening to the television and it's implied that's really all he does but when he hears them talking with no breathing issues he starts crying out in confusion asking why does it sound so easy to breathe on TV but somehow Jack manages to find humor in this from the line the girls are singing they dance too I assume to the lungs crashing out of TVs and acting as legs in a Broadway style musical production all the visuals in the section are 3D mirroring the digital aspect of the lyrics after the song ends Opel has almost reached him with the Box in her hands however as he sits up in his chair and creepily sniffs the air before telling her she smells weird he begins to freak out screaming that she's not Claire and what is she doing in his house get out he screams as he reaches out to grab her only to unceremoniously fall out of his chair and crash to the floor in a heap this entire scene is sickening to me so let's break down why it works so well firstly the character telling Opel she smells weird is a awfully strange mment it's probably because he can't see so his other senses are heightened but I I still question why he's dwelling on how she smells often enough to recognize the shift from multiple feet away and opal has this deer in headlights look when he says this leading me to question the grandfather quite a bit I'm not sure that the short never really returns or calls back to this moment but the second thing is the sound design because my God all of the sound design in Jack's work is just brilliant along with the creeping synths and strange low ranged noises there is this high-pitched ringing that gets more intense and goes faster and faster but then the real juice the real sauce is how it starts by playing regular tones and then shifts to being dissonant as the scene escalates setting your teeth on edge and building this tension in your gut I love it it's beautiful let's move on OB runs away from the grandfather but that's definitely not the last will see of him she goes up some rickety stairs then slides to a halt at the top her feet dragging on the carpeted floor there's a door at the end of this hallway which is slightly open and we hear the terrified wailing crying again coming from behind that door opal gathers her courage steals herself again and starts slowly heading towards the door only to get stopped and called into a brightly lit room by a new character we can only assume as her dad also called the mirror man you may be able to tell why the room is filled with mirrors hanging down from being strapped to this man's head and we never get to see his face that's really important we never truly get to see the miror man's face except as a reflection there is nothing in the room besides the mirrors a toilet and a sink it kind of looks like it's a bathroom which is hilarious because it seems like the dad lives in here but despite the room being much brighter and more colorful The Vibes are still Sinister and unwelcoming he speaks in an affectatious high pitched and soft voice that strains to seem warm and understanding but slips up from time to time into a deep evil groan or shout in the first two seconds of opal's arrival he makes multiple passive aggressive comments and then you can hear him growl under his breath look at me one cool thing about the mirror man is that he can't shut up to save his life and he mumbles about how he needs to correct or fix every little aspect about his appearance while simultaneously making derogatory comments about the appearances of other people and then his hypocrisy is revealed as he goes on to say this is all just part of my journey he's but a small tiny little growing thing his skin is forgetful sometimes and you can fit him in the palm of your hand I'm not sure exactly what he means by his skin being forgetful but he turns one of the mirrors to see opal trying to sneak away and he shouts at her hold on a second which causes her to react with fear he tells her that she could spare him a little time then says that he feels like everyone's mad at him especially her but why should they be like we said he's a little tiny growing thing that you can hold in the palm of your hand opal continues just standing there saying nothing as Miram man continues to say if she wants to know why he gets worked up so badly he might as well just tell her this is hilarious as opal has said literally nothing this entire time and so begins my favorite song from opal mirman weird catchy and a dissertation on the desperate vanity of someone who is slowly losing themselves to insecurity the mirror man implies that he once had Ambitions likely creative ones but was turned down by whoever or whatever he was hoping would lead to his big break and now he sits in a chamber of unending reflection hoping to be seen by someone out there it's ironic to me that his one desire is connection yet he is so full of himself that he can't listen to another person and just lives to hear himself talk and at the same time as all of that is so insecure about his appearance that he cannot escape from the room he exists inside forever preing applying foundation and sewing his own clothes the obvious tragedy and delusion here everybody ages and it's impossible to reverse that process obsessing over it is going to cause him to miss out on what he has now and just make him miserable later still he wants to shift himself and find a new God within his skin an illusion to Divinity that repeats itself in the very last lyrics crafting the world its next new savior just as with the grandfather there is total self-absorption on display here which constantly manifests itself as abuse disregard for and neglect towards opal whether it's conscious or not an interesting thing to note is that the mirrors strapped to his head actually prevent him from ever seeing opal to such a complete degree that as I was writing the script I came up with a theory that might be a little bit far-fetched but I still think it's interesting do you think it's possible that he doesn't even notice who it is that he's talking to he assumes The Listener has malice towards him multiple times in the one-sided dialogue he never sees any more than opal's feet trying to sneak away in the corner of one of his mirrors and most importantly what he's talking about doesn't really make any sense to say to a young child and maybe that's just because he's too stunted and oblivious to notice what is and isn't appropriate to talk to child about but I personally think it's possible that he thought opal was his wife and just didn't notice because he never cared to actually look I have no idea let me know your thoughts as opal stands in the doorway silently waiting for the nightmare to be over sorry opal that's not happening mirror man's final words are I don't see why we have to talk about this it puts things into perspective for you I'm sure in one last arrogant comment which implies that he's had this conversation countless times over my God I hate him so much suddenly from around the corner up comes grandfather who managed to make it all the way up the stairs and is now crawling towards opal shrieking you know how this makes me feel and before I move on I love how the song is called Mirror man every other song has a symbolic name and then there's this one which the father really clearly just named after himself further reference to his vanity Jack really made a masterpiece on all fronts here it's really interesting to me how this character is put together especially in a modern context where men have been getting more vocal about their insecurities and more media is praying on those insecurities like hairline or skull shape cheekbone structure or having some impossible to imagine amount of money or having a 30in dick he's convinced himself that his failures in life are because of the way that he was born but in reality where he is today is a culmination of his choices that have led him there he tries to shove his insecurity onto others and then uses self-loathing as a manipulation tactic to try and make people sorry for him everything's going to be okay though cuz he's working on himself and if you can't see that you're being too hard on him one day he'll have all those superficial characteristics that fade with time and then he'll be loved even if if he's an [ __ ] yeah right oh my child is fine ma'am your child found a better family and a fast food advertisement opal only barely manages to escape her Grandpa through a door at the end of the hallway this was the door she heard the crying from before the dad's bathroom was just a detour and distraction from the true Mission inside the room we still see no source of the crying the wallpaper is in such tatters one might imagine Charlotte Perkins Gilman has been here that's one for my literary noobs out there Noob because that reference is more basic Than The Inferno reference in the over the Gard Wall video there are empty wine bottles scattered throughout the room white sheets over Furniture almost as though the family is getting ready to move there is another passage at the far end of the room which Opel starts making her way towards but a Haggard sickly hand darts out from beneath one of the sheets trips her and sends her tumbling to the ground faster than her grandfather father earlier and this hand belongs to her mother now opal's mother might be the most evil character in the film and the poison that are her thoughts and words are some of the most interesting in the whole piece to put under a microscope to try and decipher exactly what kind of monster she is we get to see opal through her eyes for a moment opal swimming across her vision with multiple duplicates of herself indicating her mother is heavily drunk opal's mom's alcoholism and struggles with pill addiction are a huge element of her character and it exacerbates the awful abuse she inflicts on Opel she makes spiteful comments tries to drag opal down to her level but most importantly we see her physically strike opal the only visible and physical manifestation of abuse that is shown in the entire show and it's only for a split second but in the aftermath you see Opel wiping blood off of her face honestly Opel just looks terrified the entire time her mother is on screen she begins spewing her poison with the words goodness exists if I just wait and sit still it will arrive this is wrong pretty much always so much of what I do and who I am is influenced by the people I surround myself with and the activities that I choose to engage in as like a really simple example if you wanted to find a partner like get into a romantic relationship you would have to look and engage and face rejection and your own insecurities about yourself but the actual slow killer and isolator is never trying and never moving remaining stationary the mother goes on with her hand still firmly grasped around opal's leg keeping her down on the floor saying she blames Opel and all the rest of the family for her own misery the exact nature of her misery aside from the addiction is not revealed although I imagine that everything that's going on here is a manifestation of generational trauma and what I mean by that is that the mom had abuse leveled towards her when she was a kid and now she's taking all of that pent up anger and Malice and hatred and putting it on to her kid in an attempt to lash out and take control where she didn't have control before she says she feels terrible for all the things and then stops unable to finish the sentence with that I've done instead opting to just repeat I feel terrible she's aware what she's doing is evil and yet she cannot admit it the biggest hypocrisy of her nature is revealed here she feels terrible for what she's done but instead of taking responsibility she ignores it leaving only the terrible feeling with no clear cause behind it and so she takes it out on her kid putting her down and striking her which leads to more feelings of guilt in her leading me to the most horrific and depressing song in the short one which can't even really be classified as a song in the way that the others can virtuous cycle pulls us down into the Perpetual victim mentality of these kinds of thought processes if you've ever known an abusive person like this before you will immediately know exactly what I'm talking about she sees herself as a saint and actually sees opal as the monster resenting her existence and hating her for having more perceived freedom than she does and the end result of all this is opal caring for her mother instead of her mother caring for her the song only has one verse mama needs a little girl to land on mama needs a little girl to fall in her arms mama needs a Mama's girl to take good care mama needs a baby girl to hold her hair when I was researching for this video I came across a few readings of this that compared it to trauma bonding an extreme form of codependency formed through traumatic experiences with another person which can happen between the abuser and the victim opal's mom is the instigator but is trying to condition opal into believing they are going through it together it's so malicious and horrifying that it literally sent chills down my spine when I first realized the extent of what the mother is doing we see her falling or drowning in the depths of her depravity then in Rapid succession we see a bunch of terrifying images a phone calling 911 drug abuse someone hits someone else and we see the mom tearing off the face of the dad explaining why he's so obsessed with his appearance as she has disfigured him grotesque imagery of abuse in many different forms being relived over and over again because opal's Mom can't forgive herself or anyone else and she can never heal or move on she tells her daughter that they are one and the same that they don't live they just survive opal is just as if not more helpless than she is their enemies notice it's not her enemy it's their enemies are in denial which would be laughable projection if it wasn't so [ __ ] up this lady talking about other people's denial is crazy as she says opal is just as powerless as she is she suddenly lunges forward and I have no idea what she was going to do here and I'd rather not think about it thankfully opal manages to Escape right as the music reaches a fever pitch rushing down the hallway she'd been approaching before then up a flight of stairs and entering into a room that we haven't seen before she slams the door shut and pushes a chair underneath the handle implying that there is no lock but how did she know that there would be no lock and what does there being no lock signify and this was a question that I'd asked myself many times over the last year ever since I did my own video on the topic it's always bothered me that I was never able to shed light on the significance of the door and just the attic in general because well it's complicated it's not until Claire reaches the room herself that she realizes the person in need of help the most this entire time was her the short up to this point has made the room appear like this safe place of the house and when Claire runs inside and locks the door and has this moment to herself you realize why and this is something that I believe most her hermit crabs like myself can relate to hermit crabs meaning you're like me and have at one point in your life could even be now viewed your room as this Safe Haven there were many times coming home where I'd sit in my car for minutes sometimes cutting it close to a half hour to an hour just because I couldn't fathom having to walk inside and take the steps to get to my room and whenever I eventually got the courage to get out of my car and head on in I'd Rush inside slam the door shut and well the biggest difference here was that I had a lock on my door which Claire doesn't the chair being up against the wall signifies that she does not have this luxury they've even taken away her privacy from her the moment that Claire is out of everyone's hair and gets some alone time to herself her family are like vultures and Claire is the meal it just goes to show how much this family relies on what can only be an 8-year-old little girl and it really breaks my heart to know that this is the brutal reality for some of you out there I've had many friends who've been forced to grow up faster than the average kid simply because their family was made up of these types of adults the kind that forces you to look away from your living situation and dream of having a better one opal looks around the room and we notice there's no crying anymore she sees a sparse bed in the corner and her eyes Dart around as a look of scared disbelief appears on her face and as she reaches the lone window at the end of the attic she looks out and we watch as her face changes and our stomachs drop eerie music that sounds like some sadistic Carnival begins playing as she looks out to see the giant billboard with opal's burgers in big letters across the front there's also an indication of how many miles away the location is giving a new angle to that your troubles are Miles Away line from earlier the framing is so so Twisted here we get a wide open shot with the bright lights highlighting the letters outside then a noise comes from the door with the chair propped under it and we're pulled back into the stuffy suffocating attic held in place by nothing but our desire to escape paralyzed in our helplessness with nowhere to go and we come to the awful conclusion for the first time Claire and opal are the same person what the hell the door rattles fiercely as opal's family try to break in yelling and crying at her when suddenly all the noise bleeds away and we see a Trippy summation of everything we've seen so far the old man's glasses are gone revealing his blindness and then opel's face appears where his eyes should be the dad's mirror turns revealing his true face for a split second in a terrifying moment and we see opel's face on the other side of the mirror and the mom takes her pills which turn into opal as well and then opal screw dreams in agony and sudden realization Claire gets down on the ground as her family try desperately to break in the walls start to morph into hideous faces and formless beings eyes rolling and teeth nashing as she closes her eyes and covers her ears before suddenly realizing she's back at the Burger Joint and her family is normal again and this realization turns her face back to normal for now at least as her mom turns and shuts the blinds again her false family all gather around the table with hamburgers floating around them and again they sing we see you opal your troubles are Miles Away we see you opal and in our eyes you'll stay and we pull back as opal Smiles then up through the back of her skull revealing that it was all in her head I ain't happy I'm feeling glad I Got Sunshine in a Bag then back out of the door as we see them banging and hollering outside and out through the back of the house where we get this meta moment of seeing an obviously cardboard house with the billboard out front only one thing is highlighted or animated in this scene and you probably missed it unless you were looking extremely closely but the lights over the billboard are the same ones that I mentioned earlier and I called them interrogation lights never trust a video essay I was wrong those are the bright lights from the billboard anyways thus concludes opal with one of Jack's Infamous end screens with the little distorted made by Jack stobber text opal in this context means clouded opaque fuzzy where Claire represents Clarity opal is a story about a lovely fantasy figh with the horrific reality that the family that she wants to love her so badly will never exist you could like I did back at the beginning of this video see her desire to be seen as part of a child like misunderstanding of what love is but with layers upon layers I believe there's something more here something that's rooted in an intense fear of being loved while also having such a strong desire for it for what is love if not a desire to be understood and to try and understand but then that fear that comes along with the idea of someone understanding CLA is forced to understand to empathize to be a sounding board and a therapist by people far older than her and all she wants is understanding in return that immense resp responsibility that weight should never be on a child to begin with something I find interesting is the imagery of rot and Decay found throughout the entire piece the house and family and environment is all rotting away and that in turn is rotting Claire herself that which was once familiar becomes sources of anxiety and deep seated dread the film is a depiction of the decay of childhood innocence and the emergence of these darker more disturbing realities there is analog degradation in the very music we're hearing also I don't know if anyone else noticed this but the very last note of each of the family memb main songs end with the same notes that we see you opal ends with which I think is really cool throughout the short the unsettling music and sound design contribute to the overall atmosphere of ones the use of jarring sound effects and distorted vocals the unsettling Melodies and dissonant harmonies and just the overall sound design and how it manipulates the viewer's emotions and creates a sense of unease and Dread another thing I want to draw attention to is the beautifully horrid animation and character design a man with a million mirrors strapped to his head are you kidding me the whole short has so much personality and character and I hold it very near and dear to my heart the elongated limbs the massive expressive eyes the multimedia elements of watching animations digital animation clamation and live action sometimes all unfolding at the same time the imagery somehow being cute and grotesque I love it unfortunately Claire ends up engaging in the same sort of Escapist Behavior her family does the thread is not broken and the trauma continues for another generation it's fairly common for children who experience this kind of intense neglect to use maladaptive daydreaming to hide or bury their trauma and unfortunately because she is experiencing all of this she has developed this understanding and intense empathy for pain that those around her the people who are supposed to be taking care of her are constantly exploiting her grandfather uses her to be his eyes her dad uses her to be his ego and her mom uses her to numb her own pain and give her self-control R back through fear even when Claire goes looking for the crying child to save her she is led by this deceptive empathy but she starts to realize that the person she's being led to help is herself and I think that coming to that conclusion coming to that realization is the understanding that could eventually break the cycle and save CLA if one day CLA realizes that she can apply that empathy to herself then she could break out of the mental Loop currently destroying her ability to lead a normal life but honestly that Loop is the hardest part to overcome a path walked over and over again will eventually become a road and a thought repeated over and over again will eventually become a habitual feedback loop even talking about this is kind of making me feel sick in my stomach but it is integral to understanding what it is that we're dealing with here and how Insidious the evil is and also what sort of lessons we can take and apply to our own lives sometimes when I have a nightmare I have trouble retaining the memory of it the next morning it fades and dies and I am left with nothing but the impression that I was once scared but opal lingers and it stays with you long after the credits roll as the unsettling imagery and music continue to dissonantly resonate into your soul and worm their way into your mind I highly highly recommend you you watch the film if you haven't already every time I've spoken about Jack stabber in the past I've tried to cover both sides of his work the weird yet uplifting and the depressing and disturbing however tonight in the single most requested video from you guys ever we have now covered what is for those with eyes to see the single most messed up thing Mr stabber ever made wake up now from the dream that is this video huge thank you to the people over on patreon Audrey Justin Lou Ray ZK Tom Dave elki stardrop nude George Joseph and Mr Fox see you guys in the next transmission as I'm getting older chip upon my shoulder rolling through life to roll over and die