perhaps we are the instruments of ultimate good

2026 MIDTERMS

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‘You know, sometimes when bad things happen to people it’s for a good reason.’

He doesn’t even consider it something he DID. It’s just a bad thing that happened to her because she called him out for stalking her. Her hand broke because she spoke out of turn. In his head, Caitlyn maimed herself by upsetting him. Actions have consequences.

‘why didn’t we see Brandon’s entire childhood to establish who he is as a person???’ babygirl the movie is 90 minutes. We see how other characters react to his strange behavior. It’s obvious that he does not usually act the way he does in the film. I am holding your hand. Please fire more than one neuron at a time, the movie is short and we have to keep up

You have to pay attention to the colors, my darling.

Red, the color of ‘ychhagaro larum ghhol, take the world,’ the color of an unknown advanced species that seeds planets with ravenous parasitic young. Toxic masculinity and imperialism and genocide. Stalkers and terrorists and school shooters and abusers and parasites.

Blue, the color of motherhood, of the ties between mama bear and the cub she would fight tooth and claw for. Of the woman who will excuse her child’s every heinous action, of the son that trusts and adores his mother implicitly. Of the woman who sees her injured daughter and shrieks for justice, who is sadistically executed for the crime of keeping a predator away from his prey.

Yellow, humanity, fatherhood, security, home, sol 3. Despite our flaws humans are ultimately innocent and loving and brilliant and protective. We try our best, even when we stumble. We just want safety, security. The color of an aunt earnestly trying to help her troubled nephew. The color of a father who sees his son change for the worse, and realizes that he is in the middle of a galactic trolley problem he never could have imagined or prepared for. It’s the bar where Kyle spills his troubles out to his dearest friends. It’s the uncle’s truck, a secondary father figure that Brandon ultimately found wanting and heartlessly discarded. It’s the loving home the Breyers tried to build; ultimately, devastatingly wiped off the face of the earth with maximum human casualties.

And there are smaller colors, too. Tori’s purple, who she truly is, motherly but deliberately blind to her son’s dangerous flaws. Caitlyn is pink, Brandon’s softer counterpart, the feminine ideal he becomes obsessed with.

Brandon always loved a challenge. He drifts eastward. Every tv screen draws him in deeper. ‘Government officials have declared a full lockdown!’ Brandon draws closer. ‘A serial killer targeting men!’ Brandon is nearly drooling. ‘Please, please, for your own sake, stay inside!’

Maybe mom was right, maybe he was a hero, maybe this was his destiny.

(she screamed his name all the way down. He could still hear it. brandon, brandon, im sorry, brandon, i love you, brandon, please catch me brandon i love you brandon please!)

The people of earth were frail. Made of paper and glass. They needed a savior, and maybe if Brandon stepped up, maybe, maybe, maybe Caitlyn would—

The Atlantic Ocean. He stares across the depths, wondering.

He is too distracted. The blow to the back of his neck, blinding pain that would have paralyzed a human, is the greatest surprise of his life.

He staggers as he turns, and wheezes when fists slam into his sternum and groin. He cannot breathe, he cannot think, and for a moment Brandon Bryer clings to life by a thread.

‘Pathetic,’ he hears through the shrieking pain. ‘You are all the same. Weak. Demanding respect you have not earned.’

His scalp screams before he even realizes she had grabbed a fistful of his hair. He could feel pavement turning to rubble beneath him. She was dragging him along a road, carving a furrow with Brandon as the plow.

He convulses, twists, barely weasels out of Styganor’s grasp. He is airborne, sucking oxygen into his lungs, recalibrating. She is strong, so strong, he needs to—

Her arms come up, and his eye lasers crash against her bracers. Lightning, fireworks. A weapon of death becomes a child’s diversion in her hands.

Brandon wonders if this is how his father felt.

Brandon does not respond. He sits sullenly in the corner, manacled by a metal that had never been seen on earth.

‘Do you have any memory of your home planet? Any memory of — well. Of any others?’

No response. The creature sighs.

‘It would be much easier for you, if you spoke.’

‘Unbind me.’

‘My dear, that is FAR more trouble than it’s worth.’ The alien returns to its hologram. ‘I have already put in a dissection request. I will get answers from you, one way or the other.’

‘If you say so,’ Brandon spits, his mother’s stubbornness bleeding into his voice.

Silence. For one moment, another, another.

‘Brandon,’ his mother says, and Brightburn’s head snaps up, horror on his face.

Tori looks down on him, smiling softly. Her gentle hand reaches out to cup his cheek.

‘Stop,’ he whispers.

‘My baby boy.’

‘Stop!’

‘Why don’t you ever talk to me anymore, Brandon?’

‘Stop it! Stop it!’

‘Im so lucky to have you. I always tell your father how lucky we are.’

Heat bursts from Brandon’s eyes. ‘Stop!!!’

The lasers hit Tori’s face. They have as much effect as water on a duck. ‘Who gave you to me, Brandon?’

‘I hate you!’

Caitlyn is in the storm cellar with her father. He is fussing around the doors, puttering and muttering, battening the hatches as well as he can.

Someone outside begins to scream.

Caitlyn and her father both go rigid, staring at the doors, waiting. The shrieking continues. It draws nearer. And with a wet crunch, it ends.

Caitlyn’s father turns, rushes to where she is sitting on her cot. His strong arms wrap around her. She can smell the comforting leather of his jacket, the hopeless tang of his sweat. He presses her face to his chest.

she can feel his lips move silently over the crown of her head. ‘love ya, princess.’

she had heard that a thousand times before, a million, every time he dropped her off at school or gymnastics or soccer or the library or a friend’s house. Why was her heart breaking?

And who was knocking at the cellar doors?

Caitlyn’s tears soak into her father’s yellow henley.

shave. and a hair. cut. two bits.

Caitlyn’s nails bite into the sleeves of her father’s old leather jacket.

shave, and a haircut, two bits.

Caitlyn’s father kisses her scalp.

shave and a haircut two—

The cellar doors explode. Caitlyn screams. Something is gauging at her chest, digging against her sternum, and reflexively she pushes away from the pain.

Instant relief. She clutches at her heart, sobbing and bleeding and gasping for air. Her vision swims for half a dozen heartbeats. She looks down.

Her father is lying on his side, a shattered board punched through his back. Barely two inches protrude from his chest. Caitlyn’s fist is white-knuckled on the shallow wound over her heart. His eyes roll wildly, searching, until he sees her. He grits his teeth into a desperately comforting grin. He coughs up blood. ‘Love ya, princess.’

And with a gasp, a gag, and a wheeze, her father was Gone.

Caitlyn screams. And screams. And—

‘I didn’t have to do that, you know.’

He drifts through the hole he made. Floats down, deigning to grace the cement floor with his feet. He looks down at what was once her father, then turns to her. She can barely even see his eyes behind the mask.

His voice is different, now. ‘I guess i just dont get it.’ He’s empty, she thinks wildly. ‘Why you’re being so difficult all of a sudden. I mean, you said yourself smart guys rule the world.’

Her tears are boiling oil drenching her cheeks. Her chest hurts. Caitlyn is so, so tired, and this has to be a nightmare because it can’t be real. Shuddering, wheezing, she stiffly lifts her legs onto the cot. It takes so much agonizing effort to turn onto her side, to face the wall, away from Him. Caitlyn manages.

‘Are you serious? Wow.’ He barks out a hysterical laugh. The silence stretches, but only for a moment. ‘I don’t understand why you won’t just talk to me.’

Breathe in. Breathe out.

‘This isn’t my fault!’

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.

‘I didn’t ask for this, you know!’

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe—

‘I’m sorry,’ he mutters. ‘I’m — I’ll clean this up. I’ll fix it. Im sorry.’

she can feel the heat of his palm, hovering over her scalp, a ghost of a loving touch. her stomach turns.

‘I’ll fix this.’

His hand settles on her hair. She nearly gags.

‘Caitlyn—‘

‘Where’s my mom, Brandon?’ she asks, choking on tears.

A heartbeat. Two. The silence stretches.

She twists around, her voice cracking. ‘Brandon?’

the empty room has no answers.

—

Several foster homes later, Caitlyn goes back to Brightburn. to the wreckage of the Breyer house. The state never fully cleaned up the debris. Caitlyn doesnt blame them. shortly after the accident, they had far more pressing issues to attend to.

‘Authorities are urging citizens to maintain lockdown,’ her tinny camping radio informs her. ‘For your own safety, we encourage you to stay inside.’

Caitlyn breathes in the Midwestern air, feels the sun on her skin. her head tilts, and her eyes land on the old Breyer barn.

her radio squeals. ‘-garo larum gh-’

Caitlyn grimaces and twists the dials.

‘-rum ghhol-’

‘ychhagar-’

‘-aru laru-’

‘-arum ghhol ych-’

Scoffing, Caitlyn turns the piece of shit off.

She walks aimlessly. She ends up at the barn.

Caitlyn blinks, feeling a bit queasy. The barn seems to have collapsed in on itself. A hunk of metal rests in the center of the crater. Curious, she descends into the wreckage, mindful of exposed nails and broken boards.

She can smell rotting flesh. She covers her nose. Did they miss one of the crash victims? Caitlyn imagines a tragic passenger, trapped in some wreckage, never to be found.

She reaches the center of the crater. It isn’t a twisted hunk of metal she finds. This thing is deliberate, unfamiliar but intelligently designed. And it reeks of blood.

Caitlyn’s hands roam over the alien vessel, puzzle pieces snapping together neatly in her mind. A wispy something tangles in her fingers, and she yanks it loose to examine it.

A lock of bloody, blonde hair.

Caitlyn turns and vomits. Missus Breyer, oh, missus Breyer. Caitlyn heard they had to scrape her remains into a garbage bag. Had Brandon battered her to paste against his ship? Or maybe she tried to get away, and her hair caught on some hunk of alien metal, and then Brandon grabbed her and—

Only bile was coming up. Caitlyn wheezes, gags, catches her breath. She stares at the terrible metal womb.

‘You know, sometimes when bad things happen to people it’s for a good reason.’

He doesn’t even consider it something he DID. It’s just a bad thing that happened to her because she called him out for stalking her. Her hand broke because she spoke out of turn. In his head, Caitlyn maimed herself by upsetting him. Actions have consequences.

‘why didn’t we see Brandon’s entire childhood to establish who he is as a person???’ babygirl the movie is 90 minutes. We see how other characters react to his strange behavior. It’s obvious that he does not usually act the way he does in the film. I am holding your hand. Please fire more than one neuron at a time, the movie is short and we have to keep up

You have to pay attention to the colors, my darling.

Red, the color of ‘ychhagaro larum ghhol, take the world,’ the color of an unknown advanced species that seeds planets with ravenous parasitic young. Toxic masculinity and imperialism and genocide. Stalkers and terrorists and school shooters and abusers and parasites.

Blue, the color of motherhood, of the ties between mama bear and the cub she would fight tooth and claw for. Of the woman who will excuse her child’s every heinous action, of the son that trusts and adores his mother implicitly. Of the woman who sees her injured daughter and shrieks for justice, who is sadistically executed for the crime of keeping a predator away from his prey.

Yellow, humanity, fatherhood, security, home, sol 3. Despite our flaws humans are ultimately innocent and loving and brilliant and protective. We try our best, even when we stumble. We just want safety, security. The color of an aunt earnestly trying to help her troubled nephew. The color of a father who sees his son change for the worse, and realizes that he is in the middle of a galactic trolley problem he never could have imagined or prepared for. It’s the bar where Kyle spills his troubles out to his dearest friends. It’s the uncle’s truck, a secondary father figure that Brandon ultimately found wanting and heartlessly discarded. It’s the loving home the Breyers tried to build; ultimately, devastatingly wiped off the face of the earth with maximum human casualties.

And there are smaller colors, too. Tori’s purple, who she truly is, motherly but deliberately blind to her son’s dangerous flaws. Caitlyn is pink, Brandon’s softer counterpart, the feminine ideal he becomes obsessed with.

Brandon always loved a challenge. He drifts eastward. Every tv screen draws him in deeper. ‘Government officials have declared a full lockdown!’ Brandon draws closer. ‘A serial killer targeting men!’ Brandon is nearly drooling. ‘Please, please, for your own sake, stay inside!’

Maybe mom was right, maybe he was a hero, maybe this was his destiny.

(she screamed his name all the way down. He could still hear it. brandon, brandon, im sorry, brandon, i love you, brandon, please catch me brandon i love you brandon please!)

The people of earth were frail. Made of paper and glass. They needed a savior, and maybe if Brandon stepped up, maybe, maybe, maybe Caitlyn would—

The Atlantic Ocean. He stares across the depths, wondering.

He is too distracted. The blow to the back of his neck, blinding pain that would have paralyzed a human, is the greatest surprise of his life.

He staggers as he turns, and wheezes when fists slam into his sternum and groin. He cannot breathe, he cannot think, and for a moment Brandon Bryer clings to life by a thread.

‘Pathetic,’ he hears through the shrieking pain. ‘You are all the same. Weak. Demanding respect you have not earned.’

His scalp screams before he even realizes she had grabbed a fistful of his hair. He could feel pavement turning to rubble beneath him. She was dragging him along a road, carving a furrow with Brandon as the plow.

He convulses, twists, barely weasels out of Styganor’s grasp. He is airborne, sucking oxygen into his lungs, recalibrating. She is strong, so strong, he needs to—

Her arms come up, and his eye lasers crash against her bracers. Lightning, fireworks. A weapon of death becomes a child’s diversion in her hands.

Brandon wonders if this is how his father felt.

Brandon does not respond. He sits sullenly in the corner, manacled by a metal that had never been seen on earth.

‘Do you have any memory of your home planet? Any memory of — well. Of any others?’

No response. The creature sighs.

‘It would be much easier for you, if you spoke.’

‘Unbind me.’

‘My dear, that is FAR more trouble than it’s worth.’ The alien returns to its hologram. ‘I have already put in a dissection request. I will get answers from you, one way or the other.’

‘If you say so,’ Brandon spits, his mother’s stubbornness bleeding into his voice.

Silence. For one moment, another, another.

‘Brandon,’ his mother says, and Brightburn’s head snaps up, horror on his face.

Tori looks down on him, smiling softly. Her gentle hand reaches out to cup his cheek.

‘Stop,’ he whispers.

‘My baby boy.’

‘Stop!’

‘Why don’t you ever talk to me anymore, Brandon?’

‘Stop it! Stop it!’

‘Im so lucky to have you. I always tell your father how lucky we are.’

Heat bursts from Brandon’s eyes. ‘Stop!!!’

The lasers hit Tori’s face. They have as much effect as water on a duck. ‘Who gave you to me, Brandon?’

‘I hate you!’

Caitlyn is in the storm cellar with her father. He is fussing around the doors, puttering and muttering, battening the hatches as well as he can.

Someone outside begins to scream.

Caitlyn and her father both go rigid, staring at the doors, waiting. The shrieking continues. It draws nearer. And with a wet crunch, it ends.

Caitlyn’s father turns, rushes to where she is sitting on her cot. His strong arms wrap around her. She can smell the comforting leather of his jacket, the hopeless tang of his sweat. He presses her face to his chest.

she can feel his lips move silently over the crown of her head. ‘love ya, princess.’

she had heard that a thousand times before, a million, every time he dropped her off at school or gymnastics or soccer or the library or a friend’s house. Why was her heart breaking?

And who was knocking at the cellar doors?

Caitlyn’s tears soak into her father’s yellow henley.

shave. and a hair. cut. two bits.

Caitlyn’s nails bite into the sleeves of her father’s old leather jacket.

shave, and a haircut, two bits.

Caitlyn’s father kisses her scalp.

shave and a haircut two—

The cellar doors explode. Caitlyn screams. Something is gauging at her chest, digging against her sternum, and reflexively she pushes away from the pain.

Instant relief. She clutches at her heart, sobbing and bleeding and gasping for air. Her vision swims for half a dozen heartbeats. She looks down.

Her father is lying on his side, a shattered board punched through his back. Barely two inches protrude from his chest. Caitlyn’s fist is white-knuckled on the shallow wound over her heart. His eyes roll wildly, searching, until he sees her. He grits his teeth into a desperately comforting grin. He coughs up blood. ‘Love ya, princess.’

And with a gasp, a gag, and a wheeze, her father was Gone.

Caitlyn screams. And screams. And—

‘I didn’t have to do that, you know.’

He drifts through the hole he made. Floats down, deigning to grace the cement floor with his feet. He looks down at what was once her father, then turns to her. She can barely even see his eyes behind the mask.

His voice is different, now. ‘I guess i just dont get it.’ He’s empty, she thinks wildly. ‘Why you’re being so difficult all of a sudden. I mean, you said yourself smart guys rule the world.’

Her tears are boiling oil drenching her cheeks. Her chest hurts. Caitlyn is so, so tired, and this has to be a nightmare because it can’t be real. Shuddering, wheezing, she stiffly lifts her legs onto the cot. It takes so much agonizing effort to turn onto her side, to face the wall, away from Him. Caitlyn manages.

‘Are you serious? Wow.’ He barks out a hysterical laugh. The silence stretches, but only for a moment. ‘I don’t understand why you won’t just talk to me.’

Breathe in. Breathe out.

‘This isn’t my fault!’

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.

‘I didn’t ask for this, you know!’

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe—

‘I’m sorry,’ he mutters. ‘I’m — I’ll clean this up. I’ll fix it. Im sorry.’

she can feel the heat of his palm, hovering over her scalp, a ghost of a loving touch. her stomach turns.

‘I’ll fix this.’

His hand settles on her hair. She nearly gags.

‘Caitlyn—‘

‘Where’s my mom, Brandon?’ she asks, choking on tears.

A heartbeat. Two. The silence stretches.

She twists around, her voice cracking. ‘Brandon?’

the empty room has no answers.

—

Several foster homes later, Caitlyn goes back to Brightburn. to the wreckage of the Breyer house. The state never fully cleaned up the debris. Caitlyn doesnt blame them. shortly after the accident, they had far more pressing issues to attend to.

‘Authorities are urging citizens to maintain lockdown,’ her tinny camping radio informs her. ‘For your own safety, we encourage you to stay inside.’

Caitlyn breathes in the Midwestern air, feels the sun on her skin. her head tilts, and her eyes land on the old Breyer barn.

her radio squeals. ‘-garo larum gh-’

Caitlyn grimaces and twists the dials.

‘-rum ghhol-’

‘ychhagar-’

‘-aru laru-’

‘-arum ghhol ych-’

Scoffing, Caitlyn turns the piece of shit off.

She walks aimlessly. She ends up at the barn.

Caitlyn blinks, feeling a bit queasy. The barn seems to have collapsed in on itself. A hunk of metal rests in the center of the crater. Curious, she descends into the wreckage, mindful of exposed nails and broken boards.

She can smell rotting flesh. She covers her nose. Did they miss one of the crash victims? Caitlyn imagines a tragic passenger, trapped in some wreckage, never to be found.

She reaches the center of the crater. It isn’t a twisted hunk of metal she finds. This thing is deliberate, unfamiliar but intelligently designed. And it reeks of blood.

Caitlyn’s hands roam over the alien vessel, puzzle pieces snapping together neatly in her mind. A wispy something tangles in her fingers, and she yanks it loose to examine it.

A lock of bloody, blonde hair.

Caitlyn turns and vomits. Missus Breyer, oh, missus Breyer. Caitlyn heard they had to scrape her remains into a garbage bag. Had Brandon battered her to paste against his ship? Or maybe she tried to get away, and her hair caught on some hunk of alien metal, and then Brandon grabbed her and—

Only bile was coming up. Caitlyn wheezes, gags, catches her breath. She stares at the terrible metal womb.

‘You know, sometimes when bad things happen to people it’s for a good reason.’

He doesn’t even consider it something he DID. It’s just a bad thing that happened to her because she called him out for stalking her. Her hand broke because she spoke out of turn. In his head, Caitlyn maimed herself by upsetting him. Actions have consequences.

‘why didn’t we see Brandon’s entire childhood to establish who he is as a person???’ babygirl the movie is 90 minutes. We see how other characters react to his strange behavior. It’s obvious that he does not usually act the way he does in the film. I am holding your hand. Please fire more than one neuron at a time, the movie is short and we have to keep up

You have to pay attention to the colors, my darling.

Red, the color of ‘ychhagaro larum ghhol, take the world,’ the color of an unknown advanced species that seeds planets with ravenous parasitic young. Toxic masculinity and imperialism and genocide. Stalkers and terrorists and school shooters and abusers and parasites.

Blue, the color of motherhood, of the ties between mama bear and the cub she would fight tooth and claw for. Of the woman who will excuse her child’s every heinous action, of the son that trusts and adores his mother implicitly. Of the woman who sees her injured daughter and shrieks for justice, who is sadistically executed for the crime of keeping a predator away from his prey.

Yellow, humanity, fatherhood, security, home, sol 3. Despite our flaws humans are ultimately innocent and loving and brilliant and protective. We try our best, even when we stumble. We just want safety, security. The color of an aunt earnestly trying to help her troubled nephew. The color of a father who sees his son change for the worse, and realizes that he is in the middle of a galactic trolley problem he never could have imagined or prepared for. It’s the bar where Kyle spills his troubles out to his dearest friends. It’s the uncle’s truck, a secondary father figure that Brandon ultimately found wanting and heartlessly discarded. It’s the loving home the Breyers tried to build; ultimately, devastatingly wiped off the face of the earth with maximum human casualties.

And there are smaller colors, too. Tori’s purple, who she truly is, motherly but deliberately blind to her son’s dangerous flaws. Caitlyn is pink, Brandon’s softer counterpart, the feminine ideal he becomes obsessed with.

Brandon always loved a challenge. He drifts eastward. Every tv screen draws him in deeper. ‘Government officials have declared a full lockdown!’ Brandon draws closer. ‘A serial killer targeting men!’ Brandon is nearly drooling. ‘Please, please, for your own sake, stay inside!’

Maybe mom was right, maybe he was a hero, maybe this was his destiny.

(she screamed his name all the way down. He could still hear it. brandon, brandon, im sorry, brandon, i love you, brandon, please catch me brandon i love you brandon please!)

The people of earth were frail. Made of paper and glass. They needed a savior, and maybe if Brandon stepped up, maybe, maybe, maybe Caitlyn would—

The Atlantic Ocean. He stares across the depths, wondering.

He is too distracted. The blow to the back of his neck, blinding pain that would have paralyzed a human, is the greatest surprise of his life.

He staggers as he turns, and wheezes when fists slam into his sternum and groin. He cannot breathe, he cannot think, and for a moment Brandon Bryer clings to life by a thread.

‘Pathetic,’ he hears through the shrieking pain. ‘You are all the same. Weak. Demanding respect you have not earned.’

His scalp screams before he even realizes she had grabbed a fistful of his hair. He could feel pavement turning to rubble beneath him. She was dragging him along a road, carving a furrow with Brandon as the plow.

He convulses, twists, barely weasels out of Styganor’s grasp. He is airborne, sucking oxygen into his lungs, recalibrating. She is strong, so strong, he needs to—

Her arms come up, and his eye lasers crash against her bracers. Lightning, fireworks. A weapon of death becomes a child’s diversion in her hands.

Brandon wonders if this is how his father felt.

Brandon does not respond. He sits sullenly in the corner, manacled by a metal that had never been seen on earth.

‘Do you have any memory of your home planet? Any memory of — well. Of any others?’

No response. The creature sighs.

‘It would be much easier for you, if you spoke.’

‘Unbind me.’

‘My dear, that is FAR more trouble than it’s worth.’ The alien returns to its hologram. ‘I have already put in a dissection request. I will get answers from you, one way or the other.’

‘If you say so,’ Brandon spits, his mother’s stubbornness bleeding into his voice.

Silence. For one moment, another, another.

‘Brandon,’ his mother says, and Brightburn’s head snaps up, horror on his face.

Tori looks down on him, smiling softly. Her gentle hand reaches out to cup his cheek.

‘Stop,’ he whispers.

‘My baby boy.’

‘Stop!’

‘Why don’t you ever talk to me anymore, Brandon?’

‘Stop it! Stop it!’

‘Im so lucky to have you. I always tell your father how lucky we are.’

Heat bursts from Brandon’s eyes. ‘Stop!!!’

The lasers hit Tori’s face. They have as much effect as water on a duck. ‘Who gave you to me, Brandon?’

‘I hate you!’

‘You know, sometimes when bad things happen to people it’s for a good reason.’

He doesn’t even consider it something he DID. It’s just a bad thing that happened to her because she called him out for stalking her. Her hand broke because she spoke out of turn. In his head, Caitlyn maimed herself by upsetting him. Actions have consequences.

‘why didn’t we see Brandon’s entire childhood to establish who he is as a person???’ babygirl the movie is 90 minutes. We see how other characters react to his strange behavior. It’s obvious that he does not usually act the way he does in the film. I am holding your hand. Please fire more than one neuron at a time, the movie is short and we have to keep up

You have to pay attention to the colors, my darling.

Red, the color of ‘ychhagaro larum ghhol, take the world,’ the color of an unknown advanced species that seeds planets with ravenous parasitic young. Toxic masculinity and imperialism and genocide. Stalkers and terrorists and school shooters and abusers and parasites.

Blue, the color of motherhood, of the ties between mama bear and the cub she would fight tooth and claw for. Of the woman who will excuse her child’s every heinous action, of the son that trusts and adores his mother implicitly. Of the woman who sees her injured daughter and shrieks for justice, who is sadistically executed for the crime of keeping a predator away from his prey.

Yellow, humanity, fatherhood, security, home, sol 3. Despite our flaws humans are ultimately innocent and loving and brilliant and protective. We try our best, even when we stumble. We just want safety, security. The color of an aunt earnestly trying to help her troubled nephew. The color of a father who sees his son change for the worse, and realizes that he is in the middle of a galactic trolley problem he never could have imagined or prepared for. It’s the bar where Kyle spills his troubles out to his dearest friends. It’s the uncle’s truck, a secondary father figure that Brandon ultimately found wanting and heartlessly discarded. It’s the loving home the Breyers tried to build; ultimately, devastatingly wiped off the face of the earth with maximum human casualties.

And there are smaller colors, too. Tori’s purple, who she truly is, motherly but deliberately blind to her son’s dangerous flaws. Caitlyn is pink, Brandon’s softer counterpart, the feminine ideal he becomes obsessed with.

Brandon always loved a challenge. He drifts eastward. Every tv screen draws him in deeper. ‘Government officials have declared a full lockdown!’ Brandon draws closer. ‘A serial killer targeting men!’ Brandon is nearly drooling. ‘Please, please, for your own sake, stay inside!’

Maybe mom was right, maybe he was a hero, maybe this was his destiny.

(she screamed his name all the way down. He could still hear it. brandon, brandon, im sorry, brandon, i love you, brandon, please catch me brandon i love you brandon please!)

The people of earth were frail. Made of paper and glass. They needed a savior, and maybe if Brandon stepped up, maybe, maybe, maybe Caitlyn would—

The Atlantic Ocean. He stares across the depths, wondering.

He is too distracted. The blow to the back of his neck, blinding pain that would have paralyzed a human, is the greatest surprise of his life.

He staggers as he turns, and wheezes when fists slam into his sternum and groin. He cannot breathe, he cannot think, and for a moment Brandon Bryer clings to life by a thread.

‘Pathetic,’ he hears through the shrieking pain. ‘You are all the same. Weak. Demanding respect you have not earned.’

His scalp screams before he even realizes she had grabbed a fistful of his hair. He could feel pavement turning to rubble beneath him. She was dragging him along a road, carving a furrow with Brandon as the plow.

He convulses, twists, barely weasels out of Styganor’s grasp. He is airborne, sucking oxygen into his lungs, recalibrating. She is strong, so strong, he needs to—

Her arms come up, and his eye lasers crash against her bracers. Lightning, fireworks. A weapon of death becomes a child’s diversion in her hands.

Brandon wonders if this is how his father felt.

The FBI cut the phone lines during the 1977 disability rights sit-in. Then they turned off the hot water.

They locked the doors from the outside. One hundred and fifty people were trapped on the fourth floor. Half of them used wheelchairs. The government assumed they would leave.

Kitty Cone was thirty-three. She had muscular dystrophy. Her muscles were failing, but her logistics were flawless. She knew how to organize people.

The federal government had promised to sign regulations protecting disabled Americans from discrimination. The policy was known as Section 504. They printed the promise on paper. Then they stalled. Without a signature, it was just typography.

The protesters entered the regional Health, Education, and Welfare building in San Francisco on a Tuesday morning. They took the elevators to the director's office. They brought sleeping bags and catheters. They informed the staff they were not leaving until the law was signed.

By sunset, the police surrounded the exits. Kitty sat near the windows. She organized the floor plan. She assigned committees for security and sanitation. She kept her medication in a small cooler.

According to federal memorandums released decades later, the strategy to end the occupation relied on medical attrition. The building was not equipped for long-term habitation. The FBI calculated that a population requiring ventilators, specialized diets, and daily medical aides would voluntarily evacuate if the environment became sufficiently hostile. They instituted a blockade.

The blockade went into effect immediately. No food deliveries allowed. No medical supplies permitted through the lobby. Guards stood at the main doors checking identification.

Kitty's muscles deteriorated faster under the physical strain. She couldn't walk. When the phone lines went dead, the fourth floor lost contact with the press. The government waited for the quiet.

Kitty dropped to the floor. She realized the barricades were designed for standing adults. The police had blocked the hallways at waist height. They hadn't blocked the linoleum.

The floors were covered in cigarette ash and spilled coffee. She dragged her body through it. She crawled under the barricades to reach the restricted elevator shafts and unguarded offices.

She carried notes in her pockets. She found a single working payphone the FBI missed. She called the local news desks. She called the mayor's office.

She crawled back. When her arms failed, someone pulled her by her ankles. The Black Panthers heard the news reports. They crossed the police lines with hot meals. The FBI could not stop them without a riot.

They shut off the elevators, so she crawled.

The occupation lasted twenty-five days. It remains the longest non-violent occupation of a federal building in American history. On April 28, the Secretary of HEW signed the regulations without a single alteration.

The protesters left the building the next morning. They went back to their apartments. The Rehabilitation Act regulations laid the groundwork for every accessibility law that followed. The HEW building still stands on United Nations Plaza. The elevators run on a schedule. The doors are heavy glass.

Kitty Cone: the woman who crawled under the barricades.

Source: Kitty Cone's oral history, Bancroft Library.

Verified via: National Museum of American History.

Brad Lomax who was disabled and a Black Panther was key to the Black Panthers involvement. They did more than provide meals and didn’t just hear it from the news. They were actively involved.

‘You know, sometimes when bad things happen to people it’s for a good reason.’

He doesn’t even consider it something he DID. It’s just a bad thing that happened to her because she called him out for stalking her. Her hand broke because she spoke out of turn. In his head, Caitlyn maimed herself by upsetting him. Actions have consequences.

‘why didn’t we see Brandon’s entire childhood to establish who he is as a person???’ babygirl the movie is 90 minutes. We see how other characters react to his strange behavior. It’s obvious that he does not usually act the way he does in the film. I am holding your hand. Please fire more than one neuron at a time, the movie is short and we have to keep up

You have to pay attention to the colors, my darling.

Red, the color of ‘ychhagaro larum ghhol, take the world,’ the color of an unknown advanced species that seeds planets with ravenous parasitic young. Toxic masculinity and imperialism and genocide. Stalkers and terrorists and school shooters and abusers and parasites.

Blue, the color of motherhood, of the ties between mama bear and the cub she would fight tooth and claw for. Of the woman who will excuse her child’s every heinous action, of the son that trusts and adores his mother implicitly. Of the woman who sees her injured daughter and shrieks for justice, who is sadistically executed for the crime of keeping a predator away from his prey.

Yellow, humanity, fatherhood, security, home, sol 3. Despite our flaws humans are ultimately innocent and loving and brilliant and protective. We try our best, even when we stumble. We just want safety, security. The color of an aunt earnestly trying to help her troubled nephew. The color of a father who sees his son change for the worse, and realizes that he is in the middle of a galactic trolley problem he never could have imagined or prepared for. It’s the bar where Kyle spills his troubles out to his dearest friends. It’s the uncle’s truck, a secondary father figure that Brandon ultimately found wanting and heartlessly discarded. It’s the loving home the Breyers tried to build; ultimately, devastatingly wiped off the face of the earth with maximum human casualties.

And there are smaller colors, too. Tori’s purple, who she truly is, motherly but deliberately blind to her son’s dangerous flaws. Caitlyn is pink, Brandon’s softer counterpart, the feminine ideal he becomes obsessed with.

Brandon always loved a challenge. He drifts eastward. Every tv screen draws him in deeper. ‘Government officials have declared a full lockdown!’ Brandon draws closer. ‘A serial killer targeting men!’ Brandon is nearly drooling. ‘Please, please, for your own sake, stay inside!’

Maybe mom was right, maybe he was a hero, maybe this was his destiny.

(she screamed his name all the way down. He could still hear it. brandon, brandon, im sorry, brandon, i love you, brandon, please catch me brandon i love you brandon please!)

The people of earth were frail. Made of paper and glass. They needed a savior, and maybe if Brandon stepped up, maybe, maybe, maybe Caitlyn would—

The Atlantic Ocean. He stares across the depths, wondering.

He is too distracted. The blow to the back of his neck, blinding pain that would have paralyzed a human, is the greatest surprise of his life.

He staggers as he turns, and wheezes when fists slam into his sternum and groin. He cannot breathe, he cannot think, and for a moment Brandon Bryer clings to life by a thread.

‘Pathetic,’ he hears through the shrieking pain. ‘You are all the same. Weak. Demanding respect you have not earned.’

His scalp screams before he even realizes she had grabbed a fistful of his hair. He could feel pavement turning to rubble beneath him. She was dragging him along a road, carving a furrow with Brandon as the plow.

He convulses, twists, barely weasels out of Styganor’s grasp. He is airborne, sucking oxygen into his lungs, recalibrating. She is strong, so strong, he needs to—

Her arms come up, and his eye lasers crash against her bracers. Lightning, fireworks. A weapon of death becomes a child’s diversion in her hands.

Brandon wonders if this is how his father felt.