Omega Snipe
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Level 726 - "Just A Regular Living Room" / Discussion
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This is the discussion related to the wiki page Level 726 - "Just A Regular Living Room".
This article is a ten without a doubt, I plan to include it in one of my articles. Very good writing and mystery. Every article these days needs a pinch of mystery, although sometimes they are not like that.
On my first read I noted two elements
- The MEG uses this level as a way to track frontroom time (pretty fun worldbuilding element, gotta love them seeing how rare they are)
- there used to be a person here whose pet disappeared, yet the food was being eaten by something impossible to see
I was about to downvote because of the lack of development. Here is what I was going to say at first:
- An underpresented mystery: the reader doesn't have the time to grow interested in the topic because it lacks uniqueness, making it feel just like a random backrooms weird trivia, like with the L1 crates disappearing or the L5 majong being impossible to approach. Therefore, it simply feels like a gimmicky level rather than an actual mystery
- This gimmick is coupled to random facts that aren't linked to the concept, making it feel even more random and underdevelopped.
Yet, then, I started to wonder about the Frontrooms mention, and the story of the guy from the notes. I remembered the mentions of fire starting in the chimney or all the weird pet elements. And I made a theory.
What if the level was actually an Echo from the Frontrooms? But an weird echo, one where the actions in the Frontrooms are reflected in the Backrooms Echo, and the Backrooms actions in the original Frontrooms location, thanks to the weird multiple dimensions of this world (like with the Blue Channel and Model 38). What if the echo was linked to the original so much it would be… A way out? The pet could have been gone, but it would still be able to interact with the food in the Backrooms echo, which appears in the Frontrooms. The pet would have been adopted by the new owners of the Frontrooms house, and their actions would reflect in the Backrooms echo. That would be why the time outside would match the Frontrooms one, and why the owner could see the food disappear, but not their pet.
I was quite happy with my theory. It was a fun one, first unassuming but which would have even bigger hypothesises. And to my surprise, I realized the page, and all the facts I first deemed to be random, all worked together to allow me to create something to explain the presented mystery.
And that's when I realized that the page actually worked. The elements I first deemed as random and devoid of substance actually allowed for the reader to set links between them to allow for creative interpretations of the mystery. Under their simple presentation, all the informations work with each other with loose yet clever elements chaining each of them. The interest of the page can be seen by anyone who can decrypt them and have fun trying to reconstitute what was going on. Each element build with each other because each have their own subtle link with others, that can be seen in order to create a full picture.
The most fun element is that I may be overthinking the entire theory. But the result is the same. The page gives us tools. Not bits entirely disconnected, but parts that us readers can build into ways to solve the mystery that becomes more and more interesting the more you think about it. The reader can imagine the page as much as the author, and it is enabled even with few content. But all of this content revolves around pieces created to, in a subtle way, be used by the reader without them even realizing at first.
Of course, the page could still use more elements in order to diversify the theory potential. Some parts, albeit few, still look like filler, like the first note before the clinical part starts. It could still convey its potential more efficiently, since its point and potential can be missed seeing how short the page is. But nonetheless, this first unassuming page proved to be a hidden gem that was a very pleasant experience.
interesting concept, rushed execution. the basic twist is good, but the page is also filled with a lot of fluff that detracts from building the mystery.
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