#they also sound kinda like mirror man from jack staubers opal

[ask-zacharies-snackarie]

He's doomed by the narrative, ahhh he's mad 🤣🤣

[funny-house]

What do you think happens during the aggressive sequence when opal’s mom was singing her song?

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa I have technically answered this before!! but since it was always always always attached to another post or rushed and summarized blah!! I will make this post

The Official

Opal Wine Mom Flashback Analysis  tw: spousal abuse, drug use, etc 

ok

insert that Always Sunny meme of the disheveled guy at the cork board cause we are going in---

First things first!! Flat answer, then explanation so the answer is: The mom was having memory flashbacks to events within the house, one if not all of them, depicting her being physically abused by her husband, mirror man! A lot of people find that shocking to hear at first, but let me explain I got a lotta proof !!!

Let’s start from literally the tippy top The sequence starts by zooming into the mom’s eye. This represents that whatever is taking place in this flashy sequence is all about her, what she’s been through, and what she’s seen. It’s her perspective. That, combined with how it seems to paralyze her while she’s going through it and her eyes roll to the back of her head until it ends, implies it’s something she’s trying to force away or doesn’t want to think about!

So frame by frame analysis, this is film theory now!!  first mental image: A windowpane at night that resembles jail bars. ( maybe the one seen on the bottom floor of the house in outside shots? ) A parallel to Claire’s window and a symbol for her feeling of being trapped-- something she brings up multiple times in her dialogue. She’s stuck here. She doesn’t want to be here but something is holding her by force and she feels helpless to escape it.  

Next scene! Hard cut to rapidly trying to call on the phone. They type 9-1-1. The music starts to fade into screaming.  Next scene! The mother’s head is in the far corner and the window is seen behind her, a reminder that she feels trapped, as she is literally seen being slapped in the back of the head by a hand. Next scene! A shot of their bedroom(whatever room she’s in!) door as her face melts across the screen Next scene! The mother screaming in a way that flaps her mouth in crazy waves and reveals her teeth and gums exactly like how Claire yells near the end Next scene! She’s shown laying down with pills dancing over her head. Next scene! her face melting below a distortion of multiple shots of her room’s door  Next scene! A whole bunch of stuff in rapid fire!! An array of eyeballs and slapping palms and her face distorting and pills and something being thrown and shattering overlayed on her face and then a zoom out from the prison bar-like windows and more screaming bleh Starting to form a picture here, right? Somebody has been very badly abusing this chic. Bad enough that she’s called the police... probably for a domestic dispute, I bet. You can even see a very nasty wound/bruise on her head, just like she’s depicted being most often hit in her flashback!! On the face!!

And in higher quality than this little picture i resize so it doesn’t take up the screen lol, you can pretty clearly see reddening and discoloring-- that’s not just another dent in her weird shaped head, she’s been hit! No other character has visible wounds on their design like that, not even Claire. So why do I assume it’s Mirror Man?  Well first, this world exists on a little set yknow they make a point of zooming out and showing as much, all their world is that house and that billboard. If someone not in that house was damaging her, they’d have to establish their existence or this would be.... a weird artistic choice tbh? The visual equivalent of randomly changing the subject lmao So it’s gotta be the dad or the grandpa heck-- it might be both, but I think it’s more likely the grandpa is a passively unpleasant company to her. He’s probably very mean and unstable- like he is to Claire, and-- honestly, for reasons i mentioned in a different post-- probably not even her grandpa but someone she was saddled with--  BUT he’s not the person in power. It’s just not likely she’d be afraid for her life enough to call the police on a badly disabled grandpa who can barely move without falling. Above all? He couldn’t be the one holding her hostage in a loveless marriage. 

LET’S jump to the very very start of the short! Every character has a montage of items that represent their problems as people. Mirror Man is obsessed with self image and is shown frustratedly throwing a tissue at a fashion magazine of a ridiculously exaggerated man’s face, the grandpa is shown putting out a cigarette but he’s missing his cigarette holder and just dabbing it on a TV program list, which is reckless and dangerous and shows a little disdain for TV itself. The mom? She knocks her wine..... onto a romance novel. A novel Jack Stauber deliberately drew the cover of himself about loving a serial killer that depicts another exaggeratedly idealized hot dude... strangling a woman whose smiling and dying in his arms. A toxic relationship, I imagine! Looks like someone!!! is having!!    relationship problems, maybe So let’s listen to how the mom describes the problem to her daughter “ It’s a virtuous cycle ” “ And they never repent how I want them to ” “ Our adversaries are in denial ” So it sounds like to me...... not only is she prone to being too forgiving of a certain someone, and that’s why she stays in a horrible situation in a horrible relationship... but that certain someone both gives insincere apologies... and denies that their actions are severe enough to be criticized.

Sound familiar? Maybe it sounds like the insincere apology of a certain mirror loving duderino who insulted his daughter’s ankles and promptly excused himself for having a brain that likes fixing mistakes without ever taking back what he said? And then promptly said this habit of his was uhhhh

“ That’s just a part of my journey, yknow? I’m like a tiny growing thing.” “ Everybody’s so mad at me, like, i’m growing though-- why be so negative? Why do people look at me-- like you probably are right now?” Feign innocence, empty promises to improve, reflect all attempts to convey that you’ve hurt someone? All without even being asked about it, btw lmao? It sounds like someone has something they should be apologizing for...   ( You’ll also notice all the 3 adults have a way of talking as if speaking in general terms-- like they’re talking about everybody in the whole world or to an audience rather than to... a little girl they have a personal relationship with-- but i think that’s just expressing how disconnected and self interested they are. You kinda have to read between the lines to get what they’re saying. )

ANYWAYS this is all my take on it, at least ! Hope it made sense!! If... any of you actually read all this junk lmao

[funny-house]

what do you think of the theory that the mother is the reason mm face is so disfigured? at first i was unsure but after slowing down her flashback and seeing someone's face fall off it makes me think it's plausible. i also find it interesting how she starts to say "i feel terrible for all the things i've done" but just says "i feel terrible". truly a family that lives in their own heads

 I think that’s an.......... interesting perspective? sahjadadkj I’M TRYING NOT TO LIKE repeat previous posts but like?? i’m also super aware I have um a small novel at this point of Opal related posts

so i totally understand if you haven’t seen this one, but basically, first? I don’t think there’s anything wrong with mirror man’s face ! i mean,,, more than any of these other creepy clay puppets In that part where the mirror turns to reveal his face, take a close look at what’s actually wrong with him. He’s not damaged, he just has a big, creepy... unnatural... monster mouth. Like, an elongated, double jaw with 2 rows of human teeth. No amount of violence is going to cause THAT on a person

That isn’t deformity, that’s like,,, Claire imagining him as something monstrous,, and he’s not missing an eye, at least i’m pretty sure he’s not, because I happened to put his face through a contrast scale on accident when I was editing his picture and you can actually see his big pupil looking left too, in the right eye, it’s just in shadow. and I have written vaguely a post about how Jack Stauber is conveying the idea of an abusive cycle with the wife,,, i could,,, go on for dayssss But it’s under a “Read more” on a random post about mirror man’s past and i’m ajkasdjuad  i’m losing track of them all um

i’m SO disorganized forgive me dude

but.... then there’s the flashback. And honestly? I  H A T E  going frame by frame in that thing, cause it gives me mad anxiety, i think it’s the scare chords and flashing imagery, so i kinda just avoided really looking super close at it

WHICH. AS A FAN OF ARGS AND WEIRD INTERNET CONTENT, I CAN’T BELIEVE I LET MYSELF DO THAT BECAUSE everyone knows the answer to questions are ALWAYS in the flashy bits.....

but boy oh boy. I........ am actually even more sure she’s the one being attacked here. I mean. You.... you literally....  You literally see her getting hit? TWICE. once in the back of her head by a hand and again with possibly?? a plate or some sort of glass being thrown at her face?? ( lol, maybe a mirror? )  

Like, looking at all the other details... If she’s the violent one, why is she screaming? That isn’t anger screams, those were like horror movie screams, like high pitched AAAAAAAA Not to mention, she does the big wavy mouth scream, kinda like Claire does but not as exaggerated. That doesn’t convey anger to me? Why does she look so scared? She never even makes an angry expression, like if Jack wants to convey someone is angry he will DO IT.  and why couldn’t the floaty, melting face be her own face? You see her face distorting and decaying all throughout it, it doesn’t seem out of place to me.

idk, listening to her dialogue, to me this is not a person in power or willing to fight back! Why would she say she’s trapped and that her and her daughter can’t escape their situation if SHE was the one doing the physical abuse? Why would she say   “ we are surviving, not living, our adversaries are in denial, etc”   if she was able to stand up for herself to the extent of physically attacking an adult man? She clearly doesn’t want to be here!! what else could explain, within the narrative of the story, why she’s suppressing her memories with self medicating and living in a “virtuous cycle”? a literal phrase used to describe people who forgive their abuser, a reference to the “cycle of violence”, which describes the three repeating stages of abuse btw.

tbh i consider that part the most clear reference to her being an abuse victim out of like,,,,,,,,, ALL of this

And I never thought about it before, but you can see her frantically calling the police or some sort of hotline right at the start of it, after it zooms into her eye-- and I guess, why would she be picturing, from her eye’s perspective, her husband calling on the phone? That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me?

And what she says there  “ I feel terrible for all the things tha-” she says that right after  “how did things get so bad?”  As if this is something that was done to her, something she didn’t see coming. And she was talking to Claire, which means she was likely telling Claire she feels terrible for dragging her into The Bad Things  with her. I’m sure she feels guilty for having a child with a person who mistreats both of them!! She’s one of the only characters that show she understands the situation is bad and she wishes it could be different. *FLAILS ARMS*  BUT OK I’M SO SORRY  I hope i don’t sound upset, it’s not bad at all if you disagree with my take, honestly it’s just that there’s so much on my mind that I want to explain, so you’ll understand where I’m coming from yknow?? but i’m all over the place !!

I guess I just really can’t picture this theory myself, but it was,,, definitely interesting to look into! ;u;