there's a post going around about the trope of like. characters who haunt and shape the narrative without actually being present in the story. and i DO love that trope but it also always makes me think of when i watched the third man for the first time, somehow blessedly unspoiled, and i thought that was going to be the movie's whole deal. but no! your ex boyfriend is alive, and he's orson welles, and he's giving you an unhinged supervillain monologue at the top of a ferris wheel