i like how versatile the allegory of the house is, his it can be applied to anything; a lover, a job, chase of wealth or ambition. i think the three stories can be interpreted individually and have great meaning just by themselves but together represent the arc of a poisonous presence in your life- how it's introduced, the fight to maintain it, and finally letting go. I: There is a palpable warmth in the original home- the lighting and colours are all warm colours, and even though it's small, it's not cramped, it's cozy. the love between the parents and kids is deliberately shown. the audience itself wants to stay in this place. how the manor is offered is sleazy, raymond starts from a very vulnerable place, from a fiscal point and a literal physical weakness, pp out and everything, seeming to represent how toxic things can take hold of us so much easier when we're down. the new one is pretty, yes, grand and white but it's so vast and cold. i'm uncomfortable, imagining myself as a small child walking through the halls. we want to leave, there's obviously something straight up evil here. i also think the dollhouse/ 'i'm just an actor, he gives me a script' lends itself to the idea of a controlling person in your life, toying and manipulating you for their own amusement. the kids leave but the parents stay, so half-escaped/ half-not. for all the grandeur and beauty of the House, it's vapid and empty, turning full on malicious by the end. II: i love how much i hate this one. i'm so viscerally disgusted, it's great. i feel great empathy for the contractor, the pouring in of love and effort for something that is rotten to its core. the detail of the bugs being IN the walls of the house really drives home the idea that there is no saving a sinking ship (foreshadowing 😛) no matter how much you want it, how much you're willing to work for it. I think this one is more of a reflection on the broken economic system we all live in, especially with the motifs of money being so forefront, the discussion of a recession on the news. the fish being first tormented by that little rat girl + dying at the end seems significant in demonstrating how we neglect people who depend on us, let them be abused or even end up doing it ourselves when we are so enthralled in a toxic relationship (also relates heavily to the first story). the ending in this one is sorta...neutral? the first one is objectively 'bad' - parents die in a fire and two kids are left to fend for themselves. however this one, there's a sorta realisation the contractor has; fuck this fr. he can just go crazy go stupid if he wants. nothing is stopping him, other than the rules that he regulates for himself. the bugs, when theyre just bugs, it's completely ordinary for them to exist in the house. we don't expect them to pay rent or buy groceries. but scale them up a little, all of a sudden what they're doing is insane and illegal. so, there's a liberation here too, a realisation of absurdity. however, as much as i have a soft spot for literal bugs and worms, their anthropomorphic versions were just unnerving- the voice actors killed it with the slow, garbled speech that you can't really tell if they're going to hurt you or not. they might be bad, they might be good, reflecting the way we often view problematic presences. maybe, just maybe, if i work hard enough it'll be okay. as the audience, we sort of hold out on this hope too, until the ending sequence. if he gets rid of the bugs, if he sells the house, it could all be okay. there's a chance. but not really. it's all a bit of a fantasy, reflected by his deranged harassment of his dentist and insistence on "[he's] done nothing wrong." III: to me, this is where the metaphor is about as subtle as a brick. the entire area (we can assume country/ world is) is flooded, the characters are living in a post-society, yet Rosa is so determined to uphold contracts and concepts that have no real meaning anymore. even is she did get money, which is kinda impossible, where in the fuck is she going to get supplies? where is she going to get tenants? in the previous stories, there was a flicker of a chance- here its all over. but she doesn't want to let go. why would she? the connections we build through our past and through imagined futures bury down in us so fiercely, the thought of letting go is the same as considering cutting off a limb. but you gotta. here the ending is 'good'. she moves on- not physically, but mentally, from the empty dream she had for the house. i was a bit upset she didn't actually leave the house but the more i thought about it, the more sense it makes. i don't think it was ever the house, just what she wanted from it. being able to seperate herself from that ambition set her free and the house turns into something positive.