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Mwa-ha.
Mwa-ha-ha-ha.
It's mine, all mine.
My precious.
Mwa-ha-ha!
(Yes, that is only 64 pages of 8-1/2" x 11" paper halved and trimmed. No, I don't want to talk about how much shipping from France was. Mine!)
Mwa-ha-ha-ha.
It's mine, all mine.
My precious.
Mwa-ha-ha!
(Yes, that is only 64 pages of 8-1/2" x 11" paper halved and trimmed. No, I don't want to talk about how much shipping from France was. Mine!)
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Deadlands, of late, is simply making me happy. I grabbed the Hell on Earth book as well--what happened 200 years later--and there is a certain innocent appeal to shooting monsters and scrounging for bullets in Hell--
--hrm. Must recommend this to
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I think it better not to mention which system we're using, it may taint your opinion of me. ;) We'll say that its table top and leave it at that.
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I am thinking I may whip up a character sheet, see what'd happen to Velvet van Sloane's descendant in the Wasted West... Am *definitely* contemplating junker. There's just something about beating the hell out of manitou to make them get things done for you that appeals.
John explained a particular point of the setting to me as follows:
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If it makes any difference we do manage a decent Cthulu larp now and then. ;)
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How much of the system has D20 kept? Do you still get poker chips for doing cool things? Does character creation and combat initiative go by drawing playing cards? Do hucksters draw poker hands when casting spells? How do you determine head shots (it's a game wth zombies, I have to assume it matters)? (Would this be a good time to mention that John has a free and legal copy of the PDF for the Player's Guide, which is 2/3 of what you need?)
Not giving you a hard time, just honestly curious.
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I ask you this; what about Pinhead?
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*blush*
--I haven't seen Hellraiser. So I am relying on summaries and osmosis, and the next two paragraphs have a big "According to my incomplete understanding" tag on them.
Pinhead mostly killed people who were having Teh Illicit Sex, which puts them firmly in the "deserves to die" category of most horror movies.[1] However, he also killed his brother and I think he threatened (and possibly inflicted survivable physical violence on) his niece. Threatening someone who doesn't deserve it is fine; horror movie villains do that all the time, standard Final Girl stuff.
On the other hand, his brother was an innocent; if not a bit of a fool, then certainly fooled (my understanding of his characterization is coloured by The Hellbound Heart, which I really did like). Larry's association with Frank is pure chance, blood ties that neither of them had any control over, and in that way he's very much like the Elm Street Kids being hunted for their parents' sins. And I would classify the accidental spilling of blood as rather less intentional and worthy of punishment than reading aloud from a book of demon summoning as a joke[2], so Larry can't get nailed for guilt that way. And as far as I know, he did not indulge in moral reprehensibility.
I think you're right. I think Pinhead attacks and kills an innocent.
(Thank you, by the way. I really needed to geek on something like this right now.)
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[1] Pardon me a moment as I indulge in my standard "How the hell can I respect these movies, again?" moment of cognitive dissonance.
[2] Unless the presentation of it really tried to make it seem like something that was Larry's *fault*, which I am guessing is not the case. Dammit. Must watch movie.
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The trouble is, at this point, I really *have* to see the movies; my understanding of what solving the puzzle box means is coloured too sharply by the novella. I see it as invoking Damballah, chanting "klaatu barada nictu", or creating life out of dead body parts and a lightening storm. It's hubris and Dionysian tendancies wreaking havoc on the Appolonian natural order, and it *will* get you punished. The punishment may be survivable if you're the Final Girl, though you still pay a price--
--sudden thought; do protagonists tend to lose their innocent status through the climactic confrontation? Turn into the outsider, the spooky one uttering pronouncements of understanding, and generally die?[1] Nancy Thompson and Kirsten Parker did, but both of them play opposite Freddy, who does violate the rules on killing innocents. I think Kirsty's supposed to be in an asylum by the second Hellraiser movie. Laurie Strode survives for an incredibly long time, though I haven't seen Hallowe'en 2 and can't say if she comes across as other or innocent; I'd call other in Hallowe'en 20 and Resurrection. And I can't think of many other characters who were revisited in sequels--
--but really, I can see Pinhead's wrath at Kirsty to be essentially misdirected. If solving the puzzle box is a violation of morality[2], then it's one she's committing in an effort to right a greater wrong and one which she is not punished for because she's able to perform an act which is essentially good, as it corrects the intrusion of the abnormal into the normal.
Kind of (God help me) like Kirk not getting fired for violating the Prime Directive to save the planet.
...you know, for no reason I can determine, I *really* want to see The Prophecy right now. The one with angels, not the one with paper plants despoiling the wilderness.
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[1] See, this is what makes me occasionally uncomfortable about horror. Not the schlock, not the slashing, not the exploitation, not the cheese. The idea that knowledge is bad, knowledge dooms you or someone else.
[2] Yes yes, *horror movie* morality. See under-age drinking and illicit sex. Also being horribly uncool and crochety around teenagers.
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"Yes."
"It's happened before," came the reply, "but there's no help for it. No way to seal the Schism, until we take what is ours..."
The spirit of this holds true in the movie. Kirsty was just playing with the box, managed to open it, and the Cenobites came to take her to Hell. No crime involved.
And doesn't sci fi have the same message?
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> solving of the puzzle box is entirely innocent; she was just fiddling with
> the box she'd found in the house. I quote from the novella: "You did it in
> ignorance," the visitor said, "Am I right?"
> "Yes."
> "It's happened before," came the reply, "but there's no help for it. No way
> to seal the Schism, until we take what is ours..."
> The spirit of this holds true in the movie. Kirsty was just playing with the
> box, managed to open it, and the Cenobites came to take her to Hell. No
> crime involved.
I would certainly agree with you that she is innocent in intent.
My point is that I'm not sure that you can open a puzzle that leads to hell and remain innocent in the eyes of the horror movie; the horror movie morality frequently judges not on innocence of intent (just fooling around, just reading aloud, just having friendly no-strings sex, bitching out protagonists) but on innocence of effect (gate to hell, summoning demons, morally unacceptable sex, being uncool). I mean, I'm not going to argue that the Deadites go after innocents because they killed the guy who spoke the incantation (and thoughtfully recorded it on tape) and pushed the Necronomicon's "on" button.
If you cannot, then Pinhead does not go after innocents.
(As to sci-fi; god no. Look at the books; between the lives saved and the reconstruction done and the diseases cured and the distances travelled and the lifespans lengthened and problems conquered and the labour saved, I'm astounded that they actually manage to fit any problems in there.
Movies and books that present themselves as science fiction (or action/horror with a technological excuse--see Dean Koontz) are a lot more prone to demonizing knowledge than the written genre, but even they don't do it all the time.)
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By the by, I disagree. I think sci fi is far more inclined to punish "knowledge-seekers". See "The Matrix" or "The Terminator" or "2001: A Space Odyssey" or hell, even "Jurassic Park". Horror, on the other hand, while using the same trick, is just as eager to punish the ignorant, particularly in gothic horror. Whether that ignorance be innocent ("Rosemary's Baby") or willfull "Pet Sematery"). And horror can be optimistic too; I've seen a number of horror movies where love is the answer and the best of the characters survive ("Poltergeist" and "Pumpkinhead" come to mind).
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(As to Kirsty as support for the curiousity argument; remember, I said *I'm not sure* whether or not she's innocent in the eyes of the horror movie; and that's *after* the deal with the devil is complete. Yes, she opened a gate to a functional version of Hell. However, she ended up restoring the Appolonian order of things, and Pinhead himself is a force of order.)
So yeah, the victims in "The Ring" are innocent. Ditto everyone in "The Grudge". Ditto the mother in "Dark Water".
As to SF/H;
Am not seeing it in "The Matrix"; seeking knowledge (assuming you are one of the rare humans that can) lifts you from the sordid world and gives you superpowers and lets you battle demons that others can't see. It's *dangerous*, yes, but it's not something for which you need to be punished within the moral framework of the universe. It may kick you in the teeth, but you'll be a noble crusader rather than a bastard who got what they deserved. And rejecting this knowledge, trying to return to your ignorance, is the provenance of a coward and a traitor.
"The Terminator" is a horror movie.
In "2001: A Space Odyssey", it's not seeking knowledge which causes the problem, but the fact that poor HAL is *told to lie and can't handle it*. Duplicity and secrecy cause the tragedy; gaining knowledge elevates a human to an exalted state (and, incidentally, was what started off the human race). I see that as knowledge-seeking granting good things after a hard trip, not knowledge-seeking being a bad thing.
You are entirely correct about "Jurassic Park". Furthermore, you would be correct in saying that about any of Crichton's books, or any of the movies based off them. The man is a shrieking technophobe.
"Rosemary's Baby" doesn't punish the innocent; it exploits her. Punishment isn't bad things happening; punishment is bad things happening in a way that is presented as morally correct within the confines of the genre.
"Pet Sematery" is *so* much about the punishment of knowledge. You find out about the secret that breaks the laws of nature, you use the secret that breaks the laws of nature, and everything goes to hell.
Compare how often in horror movies someone uncovers That Which Should Not Be Known and has it start chewing off people's faces to how often they uncover That Which is Glorious and Good but Was Forgotten and has it ushering in peace and glory and light and victory. It's not usually something you find that defeats the monster; it's something you are, implicitly or explicitly. The virtuous girl kills the monster. The righteous man cannot be harmed by the demons. The monster can only be killed by a child who was born on a specific day/way/circumstance.
It's modern sword-and-sorcery, only instead of the villainous results of forbidden knowledge being defeated by a protagonist with naturally mighty thews, they're being defeated by a protagonist with naturally mighty moral integrity.
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If you watch (or read) "Rosemary's Baby", you'll notice that while yes, she is exploited by those around her, the reaosn they are ABLE to exploit her is because she is COMPLETELY ignorant as to the way her own body/pregnancy works. She is literally in agonizing pain almost throughout her pregnancy and has no clue that this is abnormal. The doctor the Satanists have hired is able to convince her that there is no problem because she is utterly and totally ignorant to the way a normal prengnacy should proceed (I've ranted on this subject here: http://jasmine-koran.livejournal.com/91082.html)
As for "Pet Sematary", while knowledge of the burial ground was indeed a factor, recall that the reason the children were shown the burial ground was because they were ignorant as to the workings of death and its purpose. A child was only taken to the burial ground if he or she was ignorant to the idea of death as a force of nature, and retained the thought that death should be feared or avoided. The burial ground took their dead pets and taught them the lesson that "sometimes, dead is better". Adults who felt the same (Louis and Rachel) were taught the same lesson, but in a much harsher way (recall that there were only three occasions in which a resurrected creature "turned mean", and each of those times was when an adult, not a child, had buried it).
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> disagree that "The Terminator" is a horror movie), the downfall of
> humankind was brought about by their own inventions; artificially
> intelligent machines. Mankind became so technologically advanced that the
> created machines with consciousness, enough consciousness to desire power
> ("The Matrix" & "The Terminator") or go insane ("2001"). To my mind, all
> three movies are about "we've gone too far, and these are the consequences".
I really don't see 2001 as being about the downfall of humankind; agree to disagree about that and "The Terminator"'s horror status? I agree with your assessment of bad technology for "Terminator"; Skynet is presented more unsympathetically than the machines in "The Matrix" or HAL (and more story-important than HAL, who's really a distraction).[1]
To my mind, "The Matrix" treats the rise of the machines as background. It's certainly present, but the focus is less on how they got to that state of the world (war -> holodeck) and more on what being in that world means (the One. The One? The One!). On the flip side, knowledge comes with escaping the trap of the Matrix, teaches you the meanings hidden behind the false world, and lets you successfully assault the bad guys. It's the only reason you can even cope with the bad guys.
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[1] Sidenote, on the "Frankenstein is the story of the world's biggest dumpster baby" note: You create something intelligent, and then you try to keep it as a slave or you threaten its survival or you torture it. *Of course* it's going to rebel or go insane. It's not the hubris of creating a machine which is the problem; it's the hubris of trying to enforce superiority on another intelligent being. If they'd put a human in the same situation in "The Matrix" or "2001" or "A.I.", it would have done exactly the same thing. Outside the moral context given by the movie, the difference between "The Terminator" and "The Stepford Wives" is they gave Skynet guns and a brain instead of breasts and a limited vocabulary.
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If you create an intelligent being by having sex and then abuse or threaten him until he rebels/snaps, it's not usually seen as a cautionary tale against having sex.
If you create an intelligent being by using technology and then abuse or threaten him until he rebels/snaps, I can't see it as a cautionary tale against using technology. Against being an entitlement asshole, perhaps.
(Agh. Sorry. I'm about to go into the You know, I watched the second (fifth) Star Wars movie, and I saw *not one* person objecting to the fact that the Empire was enslaving thousands of people on the basis of "well, we paid for the cloning, so that makes it okay", nor anything that established that the clones were not people.)
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> species purely through technology is not, whether it be through
> graverobbing and lightning or computer chips.
The very fact that such a distinction is frequently made and accepted is an example of the xenophobia and fear of knowledge I am complaining about. The whole "made with physical bits we don't need to learn about to make work is normal" versus "made with metal we need to learn about to make work is bad and wrong" is facile and trite.
And on top of that, it's usually undermined by the very stories it's presented in! If Mama Nature is going to bite you in the ass and your creation will hand you your head *simply because it's your creation and not hers*, then giving the creation a reason to lash out against humans undermines that. And yet the enslavement and abuse and torture of the Perfect Servitor Race keeps getting overlooked, and you end up with schlock that says "Welp, they built a machine, shoulda known that was going to happen" and completely not saying "Hey, maybe threatening to kill the intelligent thing for your personal convenience had something to do with that, you know?"
I'm not saying the message of "It's not nice to fuck with Mother Nature" isn't there. I'm saying it's a dumb message. (I'm also saying it's not a message that you find in most science fiction.)
Anyway. That "eeevil knowledge!" schtick is not something you find in most science fiction. Look at Asimov and Wyndham and Vonnegut. Look at Lois McMaster Bujold and Orson Scott Card and Timothy Zahn and Connie Willis and David Weber.
Frankenstein, certainly. Horror story, stupid man pokes at knowledge and dies. That's not only background, that's what the entire story was about.
For the Matrix, yes, it's background. It's background for Terminator and Night of the Living Dead, too. And I really don't see the message of those films as being "don't screw with Mother Nature"; in order, I'd see them as "the truth will set you free", "run away from the scary man (with a side order of "make your own fate")", and "people will turn upon each other and doom themselves when in danger".
What's your definition of a science fiction as opposed to horror?
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And think of "The Terminator" trilogy as a whole...it goes from "run from the scary man" to "we have to stop people from making a hideous mistake" and trying to stop those who seek to bring Skynet to life.
Asimov wrote I Robot, which is a collection of cautionary tales about creating a new species.
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The Terminator trilogy as a whole does rely on science as a significant part of the background, and the warnings about what mankind can casually do definitely start cropping up in the second and third. However, we've been discussing "The Terminator", which uses technology as an excuse to send back a terrifying killer and an explanation to why he didn't bring back an incredibly effective weapon with him. "The Terminator" is about "Oh, hell, it's found us" and a bit of "You can take control of your future", not "Goddamn, I hate this time period, you complacent spoiled technology-saturated idiots--can't you see what you're creating?".
What are you seeing as the caution in I, Robot, or any of his robot stories? Ignorance and the failure to think through the implications and implementations of robots--that is, intellectual laziness and the lack of knowledge on the part of humans--are consistently presented as the source of the problems. Asimov does not present the creation of robots as something which causes Mother Nature to lay down a cosmic whammy upon you.
As cautionary tales, the moral is "Read the instruction manual. *Read* it! Good. Now. *Think* about this! *Apply* it!"
This is not a warning against creating intelligence. It's a warning against not using it.
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> that while yes, she is exploited by those around her, the reaosn they are
> ABLE to exploit her is because she is COMPLETELY ignorant as to the way
> her own body/pregnancy works. She is literally in agonizing pain almost
> throughout her pregnancy and has no clue that this is abnormal. The doctor
> the Satanists have hired is able to convince her that there is no problem
> because she is utterly and totally ignorant to the way a normal prengnacy
> should proceed (I've ranted on this subject here: http://jasmine-koran.livejournal.com/91082.html )
Yes. But she's done nothing wrong. She's exploited, not punished. I'm not saying naivete doesn't result in bad consequences; I'm saying that the movie doesn't present those bad consequences as deserved. She comes across as doomed by others, not as someone who's actively screwed herself over. (Passively, maybe. Not actively.)
("He has his Father's eyes." Heh. I swear, Levin wrote the whole book for that punchline...)
I'm complaining that horror presents knowledge--gaining awareness of the unknown, eroding of moral innocence, eating that damn fruit--as the source of the problem and as morally flawed, and that the fundamental answer is all too often specifically *not* something learned or developed or discovered but a shining diamond of natural instinct. Heck, you pointed out that Rosemary wasn't listening to her body and her instincts, and that if she had she could have been saved.
I do not mind the whole "courage of the heart is very rare / the stone has a power when it's there", mother love triumphant, strength as the strength of ten because my heart is pure schtick. But I mind when good instinct is continually the answer to bad knowledge. Instinct and knowledge end up getting tarred with the good and bad brushes respectively, and I don't think that's fair. It's trite. It's the sort of thing that makes me think of this (http://www.theonion.com/content/node/49604), the "those goddamn eggheads done let the weird shit out again, Marsha! Pass me my shotgun! If it don't look natural, it needs a burnin'!"
> As for "Pet Sematary", while knowledge of the burial ground was indeed a
> factor, recall that the reason the children were shown the burial ground
> was because they were ignorant as to the workings of death and its
> purpose. A child was only taken to the burial ground if he or she was
> ignorant to the idea of death as a force of nature, and retained the
> thought that death should be feared or avoided.
Agreed.
> The burial ground took their dead pets and taught them
> the lesson that "sometimes, dead is better". Adults who felt the same
> (Louis and Rachel) were taught the same lesson, but in a much harsher way
> (recall that there were only three occasions in which a resurrected
> creature "turned mean", and each of those times was when an adult, not a
> child, had buried it).
Well, yes. If you're innocent and you bury something in the sematary, nothing too bad happens and you learn about the world. If you're an adult who knows what it does and bury something in the sematary, it comes back bad and crazy and kills things.
Similarly, if you're innocent and go off alone into the haunted house, nothing too bad happens and you learn about the world. If you've been having inappropriate sex and you go off alone into the haunted house, you get killed with something shiny and/or mechanical you dirty dirty tramp you.
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And as for the second, that's not strictly true....while Lewis does go into the sematary for the first time supposedly for Ellie's sake,we all know she'd likely have done just fine without it (and note that in no other cases did the child's parent do the burying). That first visit was the sematary's introduction to him. It's only when Lewis refuses to accept the sematary's lesson that it really gets pissed.
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That movie isn't just set in 1968; it was *made* in 1968. Roe vs. Wade hadn't happened yet. The idea of a woman existing outside of the role of happy housewife was still new and frightening, especially among people old enough to have established a household. The seminar in Boston that led to the first by woman/for women health course hadn't happened yet. Our Bodies Ourselves, the reference book eventually published as a result of that, would not come out for another five years. To expect a housewife of 1968 to be informed about women's health and argue with her doctor is like expecting Elizabeth to tell Victor Frankenstein that she's not marrying him because she's planning to study to become a doctor.
As to "Pet Sematary": no, it's strictly true. Spot was buried by a kid, and never hurt anyone, though he frightened the adults who knew he was dead. Church was buried by adults, and Church gets vicious. He's not really effective, because he's a housecat, but he's gone nasty and cruel.
Similarly, the boy who came back from the war was buried by an adult, and he was terrible. Gage was buried by an adult, and turns into the second coming of Michael Myers. (I'm pretty sure they cut Hanratty the bull from the movie, but IIRC *he* was also buried by an adult, and he got mean.)
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And while I don't think the movie conveys that she is a bad person or morally wrong, I think she is wrong in the context of the film in the same way Kirsty was wrong in playing with the box. Both were doing something seemingly innocent and were nailed by the film for it. I say that if you claim that Kirsty is "wrong" for playing with the box, you have to agree that Rosemary is "wrong" for sealing herself in her little plastic fantastic bubble.
While Church did turn "mean" he never attacked the family. You'll note that his few aggressive actions were directed completely towards Louis ("giving" him dead animals). Louis in fact, thinks several times that "he has bought this", and Jud even says "it's your cat now". Church was a mild lesson; Louis is outraged by his death because Church is "within the magic circle of the family", and therefore wasn't SUPPOSED to die. The new Church was the Pet Sematary's way of saying "Okay, here's the alternative", but Louis refused to accept it, going into denial and deciding that he'd buried Church alive. THAT's when the Sematary got pissed and killed Gage.
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> housewife role.
Yes. Starting to. See "new and frightening". And apparently Rosemary didn't catch that particular wave.
> I say that if you claim that Kirsty is "wrong" for playing with the box,
(Which I haven't done yet, remember? "if solving the puzzle box is a violation of morality", "I'm not sure that you can open a puzzle that leads to hell and remain innocent in the eyes of the horror movie")
> you have to agree that Rosemary is "wrong" for sealing herself in her
> little plastic fantastic bubble.
Hang on, you're telling me that if I see knowledge being presented as morally wrong in one movie, I must see ignorance being presented as morally wrong in another? Please explain. :)
Church did attack Louis; he claws his face right before Louis goes to see Jud and gets the Sematary history. (And that's even if you're willing to count his almost tripping Louis all the way down the stairs after Gage's funeral as accidental.)
If Louis was actually in denial and had convinced himself that Church was alive, I think he would more likely have opened the conversation with "Damn, dumb mistake, good thing we didn't make the grave deeper" instead of "What did we do?" and go on about he tried (and failed) to lie to himself that Church was buried alive.
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And yes, Church did act a little aggressively towards Louis, but again, ONLY Louis, symbolizing that it was Louis who needed to learn the lesson. However, as Louis says as he's contemplating resurrecting Gage, he as a rational man was unable to accept the plain fact of Church's death and resurrection until the same possibility opened for his son.
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Being ignorant is often a characteristic of characters who do this, but that is because it stretches disbelief most cruelly to have characters who regularly say "Wow! Puzzleboxes to hell, illicit sex that makes me a bad person, and demon-summoning incantations! Yeah, I want some of that!"
Louis doesn't say that; in fact, it's the morning that Church has come back to life, when his family's still out of town, that he says he wanted to disbelieve the fact and couldn't. He accepts Church's resurrection before Gage is even back in range of the highway, much less dead. He doesn't want to think about it before Gage dies, but he has accepted it.
Yes, Church only got around to attacking Louis. My point is that the fact that Church turns into a bad and cruel thing emphasizes that a wrong thing was done and a bad thing has been let out. Again, the one instance we are shown of a child burying an animal and having them come back results in a harmless animal. Every instance of an adult--who should know better, who should have learned that death must be accepted[1], especially a doctor--burying something in the sematary has bad things happen. Innocence may go unscathed through the darkness; exploiting knowledge results in monsters.
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[1] One wonders what would have happened if Rachel buried something...
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Does Pinhead constitute a villain in the first Hellraiser?
Have you read Kim Newman's excellent short stories about Rob Hackwill and Adam Keyes?
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And oooh, good point. Strictly speaking I suppose Frank is the villain, and Pinhead more of an antagonist...but still, Pinhead has become one of those archetypal "monsters" along the lines of Freddy/Jason/Michael, so I say he still counts.
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I grant you I'd put Pinhead firmly in the realm of movie monster, but I still can't quite bring myself to file him under monster movie villain. For the firt movie at least, his role seems to be more that of overworked cop required to drag back trespassers than monster/villain.
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