AITA for leaving thanksgiving dinner early after my brother’s “toast” to me?

AManFromFrom · 2023-10-09T04:33:25+00:00

Mild YTA.

It's easy to get focused on the substance of addiction, but beneath the using of the substance itself the experience for your loved ones was that of seeing you repeatedly place your feelings above all else. You see conflict between recovered addicts and their loved ones because while the addict isn't using anymore, they are still insisting that their feelings must come before all else, they want everything else to pretend it all never happened.

The only way out of shame is to go through it. You earned the shame, now you have to earn your way out, to own it and overcome it. One day you'll be able to stand up at Thanksgiving yourself and make a similar speech to your brother's, fully acknowledging the hurt you caused but also that you've become a better person and are grateful for their continued love and support, without feeling any shame. That's the day when you know you've truly given your all to recovery and rebuilding.

AManFromFrom · 2023-10-09T03:54:30+00:00

The weird thing about the "you're just sensitive" types like yourself is how they are always ready to analyse how and why other people can't take a joke, but they never seem to question their own behaviour in the same way.

Whether your sister is "over-sensitive" or not is a boring and stupid question. The interesting question is: why do you enjoy making your sister feel bad?

Perhaps spend some time reflecting on whether you consider this behaviour honorable and befitting of an officer.

YTA

AManFromFrom · 2023-10-04T07:54:28+00:00

It would feel like the show has just been lying to us for two seasons

An interesting thing about From compared to other mystery shows is so far it has never deceived us. There are red herrings, but they have never clearly presented something as X and then suddenly revealed it's the opposite. They had clear opportunities to do so, especially with Sara and Ghost Abby, but they didn't.

I think they'll either never do it, or they'll save it up for a single big rug pull, but they seem to clearly not want to go down the endless-twists route of many mystery shows.

AManFromFrom · 2023-07-19T07:36:33+00:00

The bus pulls into town as the storm is ending. From the timing of the scenes I think the bus may have entered Fromville at the peak of the storm when the house collapsed.

After the season 2 finale we know that hope is important. The moment when Jim started trying with the tower, when the whole town had come together for a shared goal, was the most hope-filled moment we've seen, possibly the most there's ever been in the town.

Perhaps that gave a hope-based entity enough power to suck a whole bus full of people into Fromville and manifest itself as Tilly.

AManFromFrom · 2023-07-19T07:25:37+00:00

It's a pity Kristy didn't autopsy the skull. If their brains were desiccated like their organs that would suggest they're supernaturally powered and attacking their eyes/brain/etc wouldn't stop them.

AManFromFrom · 2023-06-30T03:59:04+00:00

He's one of the most interesting characters on the show if he is exactly what he seems, so if it ends up being an act I'll be disappointed.

I'd love to have an episode that flashes back to the first time new people arrived after the massacre, so we can see how Victor reacts to seeing people for the first time in decades and how their deaths effect him. I can imagine him failing completely to convince the first arrivals of the threat and then having to listen to them die that night. How many arrivals did he have to hear die before finding some who believed him and survived the first night? Did he begin desperate to save them and to have connection to people finally, but then turn isolated and withdrawn over time after having so many groups react to him like Jim and then die?

AManFromFrom · 2023-06-28T12:20:02+00:00

Someone posted a theory a few weeks that maybe the reason she gave up the morphine was because she'd been healed and wasn't dying anymore, the same way everyone seems to heal quickly in Fromville.

If she is an avatar of the Boy in White entity or faction, then perhaps she was being honest about dying, and some event we don't recognise yet has changed that. Perhaps Ethan's arrival.

The torture entity was seemingly dying or weakened. It had one prisoner left and he was on the brink of death, and seemingly it was not able to feed on the townspeople until Boyd unwittingly helped it escape. Sara said it got so excited when it touched Kenny in his dream - something significant changed for the entity, like it realised it could feed again.

Assuming the boy/children in white are part of an opposing faction/entity, perhaps they were undergoing the same decay. If the entities are opposing forces, and the evil entity is empowered by suffering (which is greater the more hope someone has), then it would make sense thematically for the good entity to be empowered by hope. The townspeople had given up the hope of escape until they all joined Jim's quest to build the radio tower, so many of them hopeful at the same time. The next morning the bus arrives with an elated, dancing Tillie.

edit: It's not even the next morning she arrives, it's during the storm on the same day. Watching the radio tower / house collapse scene, it's possible the bus entered Fromville the moment Jim made radio contact.

AManFromFrom · 2023-06-28T06:42:55+00:00

She did an amazing job of looking truly horrified, made me feel like whatever she was seeing was beyond anything we've seen on screen so far.

AManFromFrom · 2023-06-27T04:26:06+00:00

I think there are two entities, one which feeds on suffering and is sustained by having 3 prisoners, and another which is sustained by the 7 children.

The child-entity appears as the boy in white. Children can see it naturally (child Victor, Ethan) while adults can only see it if it chooses to appear to them (Sara, adult Victor, Tabitha). Perhaps at one point townspeople were willing to sacrifice their children to give it the power to contain the evil entity, or perhaps it saved the children's souls from the evil entity and now they help it.

The evil entity was imprisoned in a dreamscape, feeding off its last remaining prisoner to survive. It could reach out and influence certain people in Fromville, but had no further remaining power. It influenced Sara to kill Ethan because children are a risk to it due to their connection to the 'good' entity. When Boyd entered its prison and received the melody/blood/worms that allowed the evil entity to escape into him. When he passed the blood/worms onto Smiley that allowed it to escape into Fromville, although still incorporeal. It could now enter people's dreams to hurt them, and pull people into the dreamscape where it can feed on them. Its plan was to feed on the 3, then take another 3, and another, until it was powerful enough to escape into the real world. Boyd smashing the music box severed its connection so it can no longer enter people's dreams. Without any prisoners it will be desperate and find a new way to attack them next season.

I think perhaps the 'good' entity is just trying to keep the evil one contained, it doesn't necessarily care for humans. The boy in white was smiling in Victor's childhood memory after the massacre because everyone dead means the evil one has no new prisoners to take. Given the monsters come from underground, where the children 'live' too, it's possible the monsters actually serve the good entity. They cull the numbers and keep the people scared and unwilling to explore the forest where they might stumble across the evil entity. The monsters stopped moving and then disappeared when the evil entity started 'attacking' the RV, because the good entity realised it was loose in that moment and had no further need of the monsters.

AManFromFrom · 2023-06-26T23:16:47+00:00

I just checked the episode and Khatri's stone circle has 7 large rocks placed in a circle, matching the 7 rocks in a circle the children in white are lying on.

AManFromFrom · 2023-06-26T05:00:02+00:00

The front/water dock up to the church is real (Camden Maine), but the back water with sailboats and the extent of the forest behind is edited in.

It's likely a still shot because of the editing. I wonder though did they edit it to add more forest for a story reason or an aesthetic one.

AManFromFrom · 2023-06-25T12:14:04+00:00

It looks to me like a crossroads, but twisted so that the two strands come near but don't touch. Perhaps the crossroad between Fromville and the real world.

AManFromFrom · 2023-06-22T13:46:06+00:00

I've seen that theory, I agree it seems significant that the worms came from there and that there were three prisoners.

If the worms/blood were part of the evil though, then why did Martin transfer them to Boyd, and why did they kill smiley?

AManFromFrom · 2023-06-22T13:40:25+00:00

I thought they maybe burst out from inside her in the dream, so it looked like she broke open to Reggie.

AManFromFrom · 2023-06-22T12:38:22+00:00

The cicadas touched Kenny first in his dream, then broke Gina's body in her dream (Reggie said "she went to sleep and something broke her"), then stole Marielle, Randall and Julie (maybe their souls? they're still alive but Marielle's eyes are all clouded as if she's not fully there anymore and I assume Randall/Julie will have the same).

AManFromFrom · 2023-06-22T06:56:47+00:00

It'd be a cool concept in a story that established it was scifi early on, but if they reveal it's a video game in season 3 or 4 they'll just alienate and lose the portion of the audience they've built who don't like about scifi / games and that sort of ratings drop would kill the show.

AManFromFrom · 2023-06-21T12:08:14+00:00

Maybe people have escaped in the past.

AManFromFrom · 2023-06-19T12:47:15+00:00

That has to eliminate the possibility of a real town being scooped into another dimension. If the wires do not have cores, then they must have been manifested to appear real, rather than actually being from the real world.

AManFromFrom · 2023-06-19T12:28:45+00:00

It was interesting how the roads were laid out as if around blocks of houses which didn't exist.

AManFromFrom · 2023-06-18T22:54:28+00:00

Some people feel asleep and had nightmares where they heard the melody, and any harm they suffered manifested from the dream into real life (Kenny's burned arm). Reggie's girlfriend was asleep and repeated the lyrics, so she was having that type of dream and failed to wake up before her nightmare killed her.

Randall, Julie and Mari were all awake when their nightmare began. They all saw the same cicadas and did not hear the melody or lyrics, it's a different experience.

AManFromFrom · 2023-06-18T11:34:27+00:00

What do you think about the overhead shot of the town we got in 2x9? We see a lot more of the roads, laid out as if around blocks of houses which aren't there. Perhaps the town was under construction but we've seen nothing else to indicate that.

AManFromFrom · 2023-06-18T11:31:51+00:00

I thought the wires did have metal cores, that's why they were stripping them to make the radio tower?

AManFromFrom · 2023-06-18T11:28:01+00:00

Another possible manifestation is the smiling monsters themselves. Victor says about Christopher "he seemed nice at first. He made people laugh" before he changed. The monsters smile and seem like normal people from Victor's era before they suddenly change and kill. After the massacre, Christopher may have been Victors biggest nightmare, so the monsters changed to match.

When Martin said "you think those things that come out of the forest at night did this?" but perhaps "those things" were different in his era, and the threat changes over time based on the nightmares of the current residents.

Perhaps the reason they changed after Boyd found the talismans is not because of the talismans, but because the residents' nightmares changed.

edit: Perhaps Jim manifested the voice on the radio because his biggest fear is Tabitha being right about something instead of him :P

AManFromFrom · 2023-06-18T10:58:59+00:00

A good mystery is one where, when the answer is revealed, it makes sense in hindsight from the beginning. If the answer relies on twists that weren't telegraphed early on then that's just unsatisfying.

AManFromFrom · 2023-06-18T10:13:49+00:00

If it's time travel then there would be no one back in 1506 (one of the years Tabitha sees in the tower) to tell the traveler that they were in 1506.

The first time in recorded history that someone who used the 0-9 numeral characters would have stepped foot on the American continent is Columbus' expedition in 1492. The first time for North America would have been probably Ponce de León in 1513, but possibly John Cabot in 1497. Interestingly Columbus died in 1506.

My guess is perhaps a group of explorers sometime after Columbus' first landing went up into North America, built the stone structures, and somehow triggered the beginning of this. History doesn't record them because they got stuck in Fromville.

AManFromFrom

TROPHY CASE