#im thinking of ending things

[fairycosmos]

i'm thinking of ending things by iain reid

[desirableendings]

musings on hope

Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar // The Vision of the Empyrean by Gustave Doré // 254 by Emily Dickinson // Hope I by Gustav Klimt // Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit // I'm Thinking of Ending Things by Charlie Kaufman // @sunsbleeding // Anthem by Leonard Cohen // @niccillustrates // @mumblesplash // The Garment by Louise Glück // @mugofsoup

[harlequindaydream]

Double post today! Last 2 parts of the little series I have here as tribute to my underrated queens 🖤

top to bottom, left to right: Nina Sayers from Black Swan (2010), Jenn Remming from Sweetheart (2019), Daphne Peters from Braid (2018), Elaine from The Love Witch (2016), Adelaide Wilson from Us (2019), Dani Ardor from Midsommar (2019), and Edith Cushing from Crimson Peak (2015).

From top to bottom, left to right: Lisa from Lisa Frankenstein (2024), Vanessa Shelley from the Five Nights at Freddy's movie (2023), M3gan and Cady James from M3GAN (2022), Lucy/"young woman" from I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020), Pearl from Pearl (2022), and Emerald Haywood from Nope (2022)

[mediademon]

Toni Collette in I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020)

"A whisper...As if I'm constantly being whispered to. Maybe it's sharing the secrets of the universe with me...but I can't tell...Maybe it's giving me stock market tips."

[dogcyder]

Coming home is terribly lonely...

Jealous girl! + shitpost 2 feel better

Everything's on Instagram too, per usual!

[lynchiandoll]

Mulholland Drive(2001)/ Ellie Parker(2005)/ Inland Empire (2006)/ I'm Thinking of Ending Things(2020)/ Romy and Michelle: In the Beginning (2005)

[jeepersjpeg]

can you explain your interpretation of "i'm thinking of ending things"? id love to hear your thoughts

YEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSS

*ahem*

first off : the book and the movie are vastly different, but i actually do not have a preference for one or the other. i think everyone who's seen the movie should read the book, i think everyone who's read the book should see the movie. they both bring incredible things to the table when it comes to telling this story. for simplicity, i'll only be talking about the book (SPOILER WARNING TOO)-- but keep in mind i Absolutely Love and Still Recommend the film wholeheartedly.

i interpret I'm Thinking Of Ending Things as a heartbreakingly bleak trans horror story. this was my first conclusion, almost as a joke, but when i looked over the book again i found that it made so much sense.

these are a few details that i think contribute to my interpretation :

jake is not just imagining himself with a girlfriend, with a better more fulfilling life, he's imagining himself as a girl. Jake's source of depression comes from not living up to his full potential, but there's really no specific way he envisions his "better life" except "im a girl this time, and im happy".

the girl is never named, nor described (other than a one-off line confirming that she's blonde, and also implying that Jake is blonde) but the book alludes that Girl looks a lot like Jake. her appearance is supposedly drawn from a girl he saw at trivia night, and then he started.. imagining himself as this girl? i don't think his avoidance of her was a "missed connection" type of thing. i think he felt longing in an envious way. he can never bring himself to be with a woman because it would make him upset, like being someone's boyfriend would just be a confirmation of his current gender. his expected role as a man. taking any steps to make a life for himself involves being perceived as a man. a boyfriend, a husband, a father. he doesn't want to lock himself into these roles.

during the sex scene, he says "let's use our hands, only our hands". even in his fantasies he can't bear to imagine normal PIV sex because He Doesn't Know What It Feels Like From A Girls Perspective. even when he is the girl, he Can't imagine it, and he can't disrupt his perfect dream. so they use their hands, only their hands.

the paintings. the grotesque imagery of both his selves trying to merge, hidden away in a basement. the picture on the wall of "Jake as a child" that looks exactly like Girl.

at the end, Jake is being hunted down by his younger self. there's this sense of anger from him, as Girl dissipates into an old man, "Why didn't you do it? We could've had this life. It's too late now. Why didn't you do it?" he now believes there's no chance of becoming who he wants to be. that this is how life will always feel. that the only way out is relieving himself of feeling this way entirely : killing himself. merging as one with the Girl, he can stay inside this dream forever. nothing has to hurt anymore.

AND HE DIES IN A CLOSET.

i found that there are a lot of parallels between I'm Thinking Of Ending Things and I Saw The TV Glow. it looks like only one of them leaves room for hope, but i don't think that's entirely true.

I Saw The TV Glow tells us "there is still time". it has an equally bleak ending, but it's not over. Owen isn't dead. no matter how old he is, his life is not over. as long as he's still alive there is still time.

and I'm Thinking Of Ending Things tacks onto this, "what are you waiting for?"

they both have symbolism that can read as suicide or transition. in a way, it's both. it's presented as "killing" a part of yourself. The Real You is suffocating. the idea of having to upheave your entire life, however "good" it may be now, for a chance at happiness (potentially alienating yourself from everything and everyone you know)- is terrifying. the alternative (that you give up, that life is going to feel like this forever) is equally terrifying.

but There Is Still Time.

we didn't see Owen make it out. we don't see Jake survive. but you're here. like a cautionary tale-- you walk out of that theater, you close this book, after looking into a shattered mirror that echoes the terrifying thought of your hopes and dreams being euthanized. after looking into a crystal ball that tells you Yes, It Will Hurt. Yes, It Will Be Hard. this is how it can be, this is how it often goes. but it doesn't have to be you. it doesn't have to end like this for you.

i can never get it out of my head : There Is Still Time. What Are You Waiting For?

[k4tb0nes]

First page of the book "I'm thinking of ending things" by Iain Reid.

[thebookdragonshoard]

okay so

i plan to write up a review of the book i’m reading now (I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid) HOWEVER! it is my favorite book and therefore has around 150 annotation tabs in the book so it’ll be a very long review. so which would yall rather? (or hypothetically rather if you don’t follow my blog yet)

the poll is only gonna be open for a day bc i plan to finish this book today and write a review today or tmr for it

[comotsolebo]

'I'm Thinking of Ending Things' painting study

[mes-popcorns]

- I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020)

[fairycosmos]

im thinking of ending things by iain reid

[stinkyfen]

made a long while ago, prob my favorite radiohead song. "that was a little song by... radi-oooo ga gaaa... radiohead"

[lunalovesangst]

I was re-watching I'm Thinking of Ending Things (which, if you haven't seen, you really should) and I'm at the part where Lucy is reciting the poem Bonedog and it may be that I'm currently obsessed with TUA but.....

Is it just me or is the poem giving Five?!?

For example:

Coming home is terrible [...] whether you have a wife or just a wife-shaped loneliness waiting for you.

Like try telling me that isn't about Dolores. Try it and see what happens.

One note in this post and I'll write another one with more details of the poem and its correlation with Five's time in the apocalypse and his return to 2019.

[thewizardofloneliness]

Everything has to die. That's the truth. One likes to think that there is always hope. That you can live above death. And its a uniquely human fantasy that things will get better, born perhaps of the uniquely human understanding that things will not. There's no way to know for certain. But I suspect humans are the only animal that know the inevitability of their own deaths. Other animals live in the present. Humans cannot, so they invented hope.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things (dir. Charlie Kaufman)

[goodolreliablejake]

Last night I watched Hereditary and it took me a long time to decide if I liked it or not, and I ultimately decided that I didn't.

I'm willing to admit that maybe I missed something, and there is more to this movie than I'm giving it credit for. But it felt to me like another example of my biggest movie pet peeves.

There's a feeling of intrigue when you genuinely don't know where a film is going. Most films are formulaic enough that not knowing what kind of film you're watching as you're watching it is gripping and novel. I like speculating, and I like weird, experimental stuff that doesn't have a clear answer. My pet peeve is when the film does have a single, specific answer, they just withheld it from you for most of the runtime. Here are some examples of what I mean:

2010's Remember Me is perhaps the most egregious example, and I was genuinely outraged when I saw the final scene, as if a prank had been played on me personally. The whole time, I was trying to figure out where this winding, psychological romance/family drama was going. Turns out it was 9/11 the whole time. That was the twist. That was the whole thing.

2020's I'm Thinking of Ending Things was a bigger disappointment, because I had much higher expectations for the majority of the film. Of course I noticed the ways in which our female protagonist was inconsistent in name, personality, profession, etc. but it didn't distance me from her. Rather, it made me feel empathy for the experience of being projected onto by a man, of being at the whims of his passing insecurities when you're just trying to live.

There's a scene with the parents where they discuss art and how to interpret it, how to see various feelings within landscapes, and I took this at first as a guide to how to interpret the film; even if things don't make sense literally, the feelings it arouses in you are significant in themselves.

But no, it isn't that open to interpretation after all. The movie really is entirely about the man. It's the dying dream of a man committing suicide, and that's really all it needs to be. Again I felt tricked.

The connecting point, to me, of all these twists is that they'd be better as starting points than ending points. You lost a loved one on 9/11? Okay, let's explore that and how you cope and how it changes you. You exist within the dying dream of a man committing suicide? Okay, let's start there and then tell the story.

It's something trite given significance only by being hidden.

Which brings us back to Hereditary. The most obvious theme as I watched was generational trauma and family dynamics, so as I waited for the other shoe to drop, I was wondering about the thematic conclusion. What statement does this film make about family and trauma? Well, I don't think it says much of anything. Because the big secret is that there's a cult and a dark god who possesses people. And I'm not sure it really is much deeper than that.

Also I think it's ableist but that's unrelated.