Sapphire Sapphics

In particular I love that shot of Mary standing by the doorway looking back. Because of the way she’s holding her hands the shadow on the wall appears to look like a creeping monster towering over her. Subtle foreshadowing to both the monster that chases her and her ultimate fate in the backrooms.

okay so obviously fictional characters can be interpreted any which way

but why are you people so desperate to avoid acknowledging even a FICTIONAL TRANS WOMAN.

Protagonists don't need to be good people.

A protagonist doing something does not mean that the story or author inherently supports that action. In fact, the entire classic Tragedy story structure is built on the protagonist being narratively punished for their bad actions. A story can condemn its protagonist's actions while still showing their point of view.

I was talking to my sister about the movie and I kept mentioning Dr. Klein's room and wondering why it sounded familiar, then it hit me.

The knowledge argument. "Mary's room"

[If you don't know already, it's a thought experiment that asks whether Mary, a scientist who knows everything there is about colour and colour vision but exists in a black and white world, would learn anything new upon physically seeing colour for the first time. Whether if there's some things that you can't know unless you experience it (qualia). ]

Looking at Klein's occupation as a therapist, I wonder if it was a call back to this idea. As a therapist, she needs understand how the human psyche works, learn what her clients needs and goals are, and try to find a treatment that works for them. But that also means her treatment plans are based on whatever she, or other therapists, believe would help with that specific issue, inferring what could work but not knowing if it will work. Inferring from academic knowledge to creat something with an outcome that they can't guarantee.

In other words she may know the clinical and academic aspects to her patients minds, but that doesn't mean it will be a perfect translation into knowing the right plan for them. After all, there are so many variables to the human experience, it would be impossible to have one cookie cutter remedy for everyone.

And I think her trying to find Clark, going into the backrooms and truely seeing who he is for the first time, may have been a new learning experience for her. Sure she knew that Clark wasn't really the type to change, but it took him kidnapping her, tying her into a chair and forcing her into roleplay while he treats somewhat sentient beings as props, for her to accept that she can't change him. For her to finally admit that there's nothing she could do as his therapist. And i think that is so smart.

Also her last name Klein reminds me of Felix Klien, the one to first describe "the klien bottle".

A surface where there is no distinct inside or outside. A "shape", if you could even call it that, that can't exist in our 3 dimensional world without intersecting itself. Something where the beginning and end loop, almost like her monologue about "walking in circles, reaching for the same solution over and over again".

And with her ending alluding to her not being allowed to leave the ASYNC facility, her mind forever haunted with the knowledge of what she just experienced, trading her acceptance of her childhood for the trauma of watching the one person she can't save being eaten alive by his insecurities manifested? It's almost poetic how in trying to forge her own path she was already being lead right back to the start.

So knowing change is possible is not enough. You have to actually commit to doing it, and when you think about this in a real-world context, it's absolutely terrifying because how many people are out there knowing that they need to change and even maybe knowing why, yet they choose not to because it's easier to stay stuck in the same patterns (even if it hurts people) than to do the opposite. What's the most terrifying to me personally is that SO many of these people are parents stuck in their own little mental houses who should be fighting to get out for their children's sake but choose not to do it. So then their kids, like Mary - like me - grow up to become her. Stuck in their own Backrooms-esque hellscape where we're fixated on changing a past that was never our responsibility to change in the first place.

And we are shown afterwards once Caine comes back that they make a separate space for ALL of the abstractions, including Kinger’s wife. You can see him reading a book about bugs to her in the epilogue.

And, crucially, it's not too late for Jax! Our Jax may have succumbed to fear, but her macroverse counterpart is still out there! She's living on her own, making friends, enjoying her work. She still has a chance to be brave, to trust others with the parts of herself she keeps protected.