this movie doesn’t just critique the manic pixie dream girl trope; it dismantles it entirely. and contrary to what people assume, it isn’t a romantic movie in any conventional sense. i would argue its focus is more on calvin breaking his cycle, his obsession with control, his loneliness, his inability to truly open up or connect, and what it really means to step into unpredictability. and maybe most of us are actually the calvins, not the rubys. let me explain…

the story presents calvin, a lonely and genius author, but not in a cute, tragic way. more of a misanthropic, deeply rooted, self-isolating, almost clinical way. he never really talks, never shows himself fully, never wants to be seen in the dark corners of himself. that avoidance is the root of everything that follows.

then he meets ruby, or rather, he creates her. he sits in front of his typewriter and curates his perfect woman. his dream girl. and to his surprise, everything he writes. his descriptions, the moments they share, ruby herself, becomes real. she’s perfect. she’s exactly what he wants. quirky enough but safe, funny enough but not too funny, interesting enough but not challenging. perfect on paper, malleable, a person who exists for him, without the inconvenience of existing for herself. and at first, it feels magical, and maybe it is. it seems like a perfect love story. calvin and ruby fall for each other, their lives intertwining, their love seeming absolute.

he decides she’s enough as she is, that there’s nothing to change about her. and i mean, he didn’t choose to create her in the first place. he loves her as she is.

but as the film progresses, it becomes clear that calvin does not truly love ruby. he loves the idea of her. a reflection of his ego, companionship without risk, the fantasy of being adored. and because he never opens himself up, because he can’t bear to be vulnerable, he doesn’t need her to be a person, he needs her to be his creation, a presence that fills the emptiness in his life without ever demanding that he actually meet it. his loneliness festers into a version of her that exists solely for his gratification and comfort.

ruby’s independence, the very qualities that make her human, becomes a source of discomfort for calvin. when she expresses her desire to work, make friends, or assert herself, his perception of her shifts. he manipulates her, rewrites her, punishes her for existing outside his expectations. he writes that she is “miserable” without him. when she’s too clingy, he’s annoyed by this version of herself. then he writes her as joyful, and when she becomes almost unbearably radiant, he recoils once more. she was a canvas for his ego. everything she does is measured against what he wants her to be. and because of that, nothing she does is ever enough.

the scene where his ex calls him out is so important, because until that point, we’re made to believe she’s a “heartless slut” who left him for no reason. she tells him he only loved her as he imagined her, as a vessel for his ego. she exposes the pattern calvin has been trapped in all along, loving only the reflection of himself in another. he never wanted to talk, never wanted to be truly seen, didn’t want her to do better than him. just praised and adored.

the moment ruby confronts him about his controlling nature, it’s hard to watch. “i’m not your child. you don’t get to decide what i do.” and he says, so casually, “wanna bet?” and shows her everything he’s written. pages and pages, endless, of every detail about her character, her past, her words, her life. then, when she protests that he can’t write about her, he says, “i’m not writing about you. i wrote you. i made you up.” and the terror of that truth is in how calmly he says it, as if it were nothing, as if she were just a character on a page. he makes her do everything that’s a threat to her autonomy to prove his point. making her bark like a dog, speak in french, say “you’re a genius. i love you.” over and over again as she tries fighting against it but can’t. and then, finally, he sets her free. he releases her of the past and writes: “ruby is just ruby. no longer calvin’s. she was free.” we don’t see her again until the end.

meanwhile, he finishes his book, goes out into the world, and puts his typewriter away for good. that gesture feels huge. the typewriter has been his instrument of control, the tool by which he bent ruby to fit his desires. by setting it aside, he’s letting go. that act alone shows that he’s capable of loving without ownership now. the story has been building up to that moment.

everyone’s focus so far has been on ruby. the messy, complicated girl who is never accepted as enough in anything she does. constantly changed. but we as humans are tempted to idealize and control, especially those we love. like calvin.

at the end, he runs into ‘ruby’ or, as i would argue, ruby was never a person, she was an idea. so he runs into an unnamed woman who resembles ruby but isn’t ruby. i notice that she’s not making art like the first ruby was. the first ruby’s creativity was performative. it was for him. the new ‘ruby’ reads quietly, independently. she has her own habits, preferences, and autonomy. the first ruby never read because calvin’s ruby should not. the new ‘ruby’ is unpredictable, uncurated, and alive in ways calvin cannot control.

so it’s not a happy ending in the “all’s well, i get my dream girl back” way. the narrative offers no assurance of romance, no promise that they will fall in love in a neat, scripted way. the audience is left with ambiguity, mirroring calvin’s own leap into uncertainty. life is no longer a story he writes, it’s something he participates in. calvin’s arc closes on growth. his response is quiet, open, almost hesitant, but most importantly, it’s respectful. the ending is not about happiness, it’s about readiness to face unpredictability. he is not rewarded with a perfect love, he is offered the chance to finally and fully encounter someone real. he’s left the cycle behind. the creation, the dissatisfaction, the rewriting. he’s open to connection on someone else’s terms. someone human. someone not written by his typewriter.

the rarest form of goodbye is that one that doesn’t scream or sob. the kind of letting go that doesn’t ask to be noticed or beg to be heard. it’s not born out of defeat or surrender. but it lives in something holier. it breathes: godspeed.

i wanna explore a kind of farewell that isn’t about anger or closure, but about reverence.

the kind of farewell that’s about holding love in your hands, without needing to keep it forever.

i wanna look at this love through three different works: frank ocean’s song ‘godspeed’, celine song’s film ‘past lives’, and hiromi kawakami’s book ‘manazuru’.

diving into the sacred, the silent, and the spiritual undertones of letting go without letting bitterness consume.

“i will always love you, how i do / let go of a prayer for you.”

Frank Ocean, Godspeed

there are goodbyes that feel like death.

there are goodbyes that feel like freedom.

and then there are goodbyes that don’t fit neatly into either category. the kind of goodbyes that are quiet partings where you don’t slam the door, or talk shit, or pretend any sort of indifference at all. you just bless what once was, and you let it drift away.

that’s the kind of farewell i want to write about. not the “closure conversation” kind. but the kind that didn’t demand an ending wrapped in a neat explanation. the reverent goodbye that only ended with a soft acknowledgment of we loved, and that is enough.

“still, i'll always be there for you. how i do. i let go of my claim on you. it's a free world.”

Frank Ocean, Godspeed

that lyric is a recognition that love isn’t less true for being impermanent. that devotion doesn’t need permanence to have mattered. there’s something almost ritualistic about the way his voice goes over those lines. like love held in open palms, whispered into the air like incense, drifting toward the person who will never again be yours but will always, in some small immortal way, be loved.

i think about how unusual it feels, in our culture, to let go without bitterness. to resist the urge to narrativize every ending as failure. and to resist the temptation of scornity.

there’s almost something radical in saying: i loved you, and that love will always be holy to me, even if it cannot continue.

celine song’s past lives lives inside that exact feeling. it follows two people across decades and oceans, threading together the almosts and what-ifs of their connection. the film is full of silences where words just don’t reach.

at one point in movie, nora says:

“there is a word in korean: in-yun. it means 'providence' or 'fate.' but it's specifically about relationships between people. it's an in-yun if two strangers even walk by each other in the street and their clothes accidentally brush. because it means there must have been something between them in their past lives. if two people get married, they say it's because there have been 8,000 layers of in-yun over 8,000 lifetimes.”

Past Lives

this idea is never trapped under the label of romance. it’s honored as something sacred, even when it’s unrequited. all significant in their own ways. the love between nora and hae sung is undeniable, but it belongs to a larger tapestry, not to a single lifetime of domesticity or marriage or happily ever after.

and when the two leads finally stand in the night, knowing they can’t change their timing. there’s grief, but not anger. the film doesn’t give any sort of cathartic reunion. instead, it offers some kind of benediction where their love is not denied or diminished. it is simply released into the mystery of in-yun.

“if you leave something behind, you gain something too.”

Past Lives

the real gain is spiritual. the kind of growth that comes not from having someone, but from letting them go kindly. this film isn’t about the reunion of two past lovers, but a question that asks:

what if the right people arrive at the wrong time?

or

what if there was never a right time? just right feelings that we have to outgrow?

that’s why people believe in in-yun. it’s not fate. it’s recognition.

this kind of farewell isn’t common because it costs us pride. it asks us to sit with our ache and not weaponize it. it asks us to love without needing the other person to witness it.

to love someone may mean letting them go so they can become more fully themselves. even if that path doesn’t include you. real love says: i don’t need you to validate the love we had. i know it was real and i’ll carry it quietly.

hiromi kawakami’s manazuru is a quieter text, but it reflects the same message in a not so obvious way. it tells the story of kei, a woman haunted by the disappearance of her husband 12 years earlier. the book is less about finding him than about learning to coexist with his absence, memory, and longing that has nowhere to land.

“only the things we are still holding on to can vanish into the past. if we no longer have it, it can’t be lost that way. can’t vanish anywhere. nonexistent, it is nonetheless unable, forever, to go.”

Manazuru

things we hold onto can be lost. things already lost are oddly permanent in their absence. the ache comes from holding. the haunting comes from absence. this quote is basically saying, true “vanishing” only happens to what we clutch at. but once something’s gone, its nonexistence has nowhere else to go. it lingers like a shadow you can’t chase away.

reading this book, i realized that goodbye is not always a singular event. what i love about manazuru is its refusal of finality. kei kept returning to the seaside town where she felt the closest to him, revisiting memories, until she learns how to carry the loss. it is about coexisting with loss. about revering what was, even if it never fully leaves or resolves. sometimes a goodbye is ongoing. you say goodbye over and over again until you finally learn how to live with absence. the book doesn’t resolve grief in any way. it just sanctifies it. sometimes reverence looks like sitting quietly with what remains, without needing to close the wound entirely.

i like that idea. the idea that goodbye can last a lifetime and that it doesn’t need to be clean to be sacred.

the spiritual art of goodbye

what links these works is a shared understanding that letting go is not about negation. it’s about integration. it’s about recognizing that love lives on, even when the form changes.

in a way, it’s profoundly spiritual. isn’t this what prayer is? it feels like prayer because it is. it requires surrender. it requires trust in something beyond possession, whether you call it god, fate, in-yun, or simply human longing. not control, not certainty, but surrender? the song godspeed isn’t far from nora’s in-yun, or kei’s ritual returns to manazuru. all of them enact a goodbye that doesn’t kill love but sanctifies it.

because bitterness is easy. anger is easy too. reverence takes work, humility, and asks you to admit that you cannot possess another soul, only witness them, love them, and finally release them.

in the end, maybe all sacred goodbyes sound the same. a whispered thank you, a silent bow, and a song sung half to the other, half to yourself.

so i hold these works close because they remind me that goodbye doesn’t need to be defiled. it can be a form of prayer itself.

godspeed to all that we’ve loved and released. godspeed to the hands we no longer hold, but still bless in silence. godspeed to the art of goodbye.

letting go kindly. letting go softly. letting go, but still loving.

godspeed.

“Time wasn't right. It was moving too fast. And then I was 19. And then I was 20. I felt like one of those dolls asleep in the supermarket. Stuffed. And then I was 21. Like chapters skipped over on a DVD. I told myself, "This isn't normal. This isn't normal. This isn't how life is supposed to feel."

I Saw the TV Glow (2024) directed by Jane Schoenbrun

there’s a certain kind of TV glow that doesn’t just light up a room but hollows it out.

i remember sitting in the dark, the static blue of my laptop screen washing over my face like some kind of memory trying to make itself real. i watched shows the way you’d stare at the prayer mat like it had all the answers. i knew the stories were fake. but the feelings they gave me? those were real. and in I Saw the TV Glow, Jane Schoenbrun doesn’t just capture that feeling but she dissects that truth wrapped in fiction.

a tv show becomes a lifeline, a language, and a lifeboat until the boat drifts too far and you realize you can’t swim back.

The Pink Opaque (the fictional show within the film) isn’t just entertainment for the characters, it’s oxygen. it’s the most honest relationship the characters have. it’s home. watching it gives them connection and identity. it became a flashlight in the dark when real life felt like a dark basement. and that hit hard, because my childhood was too spent living through shows, not in reality.

when i was lonely or empty, when i was confused about who i was or what i felt, i turned to tv shows like it was a mirror that reflected back the version of me i wished existed.

confident, joyful, a part of something.

it never felt like an escape. it felt like growing up. but over time the glow got colder and the stories got longer. the problem with living vicariously is that you stop living at all. reality slipped further out of reach and i realized i was building a home in fiction while the walls of my real life were falling apart.

the horror in I Saw the TV Glow isn’t the kind that screams. it’s quieter. something more intimate. it watches you from the corner of the room. it’s the horror of letting your life rot in silence. of realizing you’ve assigned your coming of age story according to someone else’s script. Owen doesn’t evolve, he decays. he fossilizes under the weight of nostalgia and avoidance. the fear isn’t monsters. it’s stasis. and that is terrifying because i know that too well. the feeling of waking up and realizing the years of your life where you were supposed to be living got eaten by screens and the person you thought you’d become never arrived.

“Time moves fast these days. Years pass like seconds. I just try not to think too hard about it.”

I Saw the TV Glow (2024) directed by Jane Schoenbrun

there’s a scene where Owen re-watches The Pink Opaque as an adult. and it’s wrong. the colors are dim. the dialogue is off. the magic is gone. the show feels fake in a way it never had before. he said it’s not the same. but it’s not just the show that changed. he changed with it. and so did we.

we return to these glowing corners of our childhood hoping to bring back a feeling and instead we find the ghost of who we used to be. it feels like going back to your childhood bedroom and realizing it was smaller, dimmer, and less magical than our memory remembered.

that scene hit because i too have returned to shows i once loved only to have been betrayed by my own memory. only to realize i was chasing a ghost of myself. not the story. the problem wasn’t the show. it was the illusion. the betrayal of time.

nostalgia lies. it tells you it can take you back. but it can’t. and the glow of the TV knows this.

it doesn’t just mourn youth. it exposes the myth of it. childhood isn’t always safe. nostalgia isn’t always innocent. what you thought was comfort ends up being a cage.

the entire film is drenched in the feeling of unease. there is no safety in its nostalgia, no comfort in its glow. every frame feels like a memory that got turned inside out. the settings are all liminal. places that feel like dreams trying to fade away. it’s a film that exists in the space between two realities. between being and observing, between knowing and never having the words to say it. it’s the texture of disassociation. you’re not just watching you’re sort of floating.

one of the eeriest scenes is Owen staring blankly at the TV as strange, grotesque images flicker across the scenes. twisted faces, shapes that shouldn’t exist. something distorted crawling across the pixels. it’s not just horror. it’s memory corrupted. he’s not afraid. he’s not even surprised. he just watches. it’s the moment that feels like the climax of him giving up. where he lets the screen fully consume him.

where he becomes the static.

Maddy is the revelation Owen needed. she’s someone who knows. she sees the trap and the falsehood of the world around her. she knows something is wrong before Owen can ever admit it and she fights it. not just the place but the version of herself that was half asleep. when she says she can’t go back there, it’s not just about a place but a state of being. she breaks free and rips herself out of the story. and The Pink Opaque ends with her exit. it’s not just a coincidence. her leaving kills the narrative.

her freedom feels raw. it doesn’t come with closure. it comes with loss. with the understanding that freedom sometimes means loneliness. but it also means truth. it means claiming your life from the stories that are being written for you.

the movie ends. it doesn’t offer any resolution. no cathartic relief. just silence. Owen never reclaims his narrative. he never breaks free. he just fades. he literally cuts himself apart and deep inside his hollowness he finds a glowing light. only to cover himself back up and apologize for it. it sees the lonely, the lost, the dissociated. and maybe that’s the point.

for some of us. the fight isn’t about winning. its about waking up at all. the tragedy of Owen isn’t just that he faded away. it’s that he had a choice. he could have followed her. could have listened. could have tried. and that’s what makes the ending echo. that’s what makes our own passivity feel dangerous.

there is still time. not just for Owen. for us. but it won’t last forever.

sometimes living in fiction isn’t a failure it’s just survival. sometimes the only place your truth can exist is inside a story because the real world hasn’t made room for it yet. but stories can’t hold you forever.

what if the person you were supposed to be was trapped in the stories you loved and you never learned how to get them back?

and then i was left. sitting there. haunted. thinking about all the years i spent hiding in someone else’s story. all the ways i let people on the screen feel things for me instead of feeling them inside me. all the nights i spent hoping a better version of me would walk out of the screen. and years i spent asleep.

and somewhere beneath the hum of the static. there’s a question that flickers.

are you watching, or are you living?

and i’m painfully trying to look away from the screen.