Randomosity

[oyceter]

• rachelmanija has finished her excellent series of posts on PTSD: Parts I, II, and III


• She's also started reading Angel Sanctuary! My joy cannot be contained! Also, spoil her and have your brain taken over by Rosiel.


• rilina and yhlee continue to watch Gundam Wing. My joy is still not contained! OMG people watching and getting into my beloved first anime series despite its mecha-ness!


• I'm sure everyone has already seen the post-apocalyptic cities posters for I Am Legend but I wanted to highlight the fact that they have TAIPEI and SEOUL! EEEEEEE! (I love Hong Kong, but I feel HK is featured much more often than Taipei and Seoul! OMG! Taipei! National monument that is only a few blocks away from my apartment!


• I have taken the plunge, put my Netflix account on hold, and started Blockbuster. I blame my sister. On the minus side, Blockbuster only has DVDs 7-10 of GWing. On the plus side.... THEY HAVE DAMO ON DVD!!!!!


• shewhohashope hosts the 5th POC in SF Carnival and focuses on non-Western fantasy, including... WUXIA! (yes, I am a little obsessed right now) I particularly rec meganbmoore's wuxia primer for those of you like me who only know you like swords and flying people and historical costumes and have no idea what to watch outside of two or three things. And it's good for people who have absolutely no idea what wuxia is too! Win-win!

I should actually catch up on book and TV posting but... oh well. Soon.

Comments

[shewhohashope.livejournal.com]

Is it wrong that I kind of hope it will be?

I can't really see the point of fighting to stay alive when you're the last person on Earth. Humanity is pretty much over already. In that situation, I'd be quite apathetic about everything, to be honest, let alone looking after a pet.

[oyceter]

Heeee. I think someone on deadbrowalking asked if that made him the ultimate Dead Bro Walking or not (I think in the book he is a vampire? Maybe?).

[magicnoire.livejournal.com]

Actually, in the book he's the last human left in a world of vampires/zombies. The book never comes out and specifies what they are. I say vampires but this is also the same book that helped inspire George Romero's Night of the Living Dead so.

[oyceter]

Oooh ok. This is what happens when your knowledge of things comes via half-remembered snippets of Amazon write-ups!

[magicnoire.livejournal.com]

No problem. I Am Legend is my favorite horror novel, and it makes me sad that more people haven't read it. It's old but it doesn't read that dated and it's short! It also makes me kind of mad because I hear people rave about how Romero was a genius because zombies were ZOMG! original but Romero's zombies? Inspired by the things in Matheson's book. *shakes fist indignantly*

[oyceter]

Oooooo. I am usually sucky at horror, and the book was recced by a co-worker who didn't necessarily have the same taste I did, so I never picked it up, but you are convincing me.

[magicnoire.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't know if I'm the best person to talk to because I love horror, even with all the deeply embedded sexism, racism and misogynism that makes me want to smack everything upside the head.

But then I'd miss out on things like A Tale of Two Sisters, which I loved and adored and was full of awesome female characters. Even if they were all batshit insane.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Matheson is one of those writers whose stuff has been so influential, and so widely adapted for TV and movies, that it's really worth checking out some of the originals purely from a historical standpoint, even if horror/sf isn't so much your usual thing. He's got a very minimalist style, and a real knack for twist endings -- if you ever watched the old "Twilight Zone" series, Matheson was responsible for many of the most memorable scripts.

(And speaking of film adaptations, the 1964 low-budget Vincent Price version of IAL, "The Last Man on Earth", is surprisingly faithful to the original story and readily available online or in dollar-store DVD bins as it's now in public domain.)

[oyceter]

Ohhh hrm. I am just... when I say "horror is not my thing," I actually mean "sometimes I hear summaries of Twilight Zone episodes and they freak me out so much I cannot sleep for a week." So um.. how scary is he?

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Oh, hrm, let me see...in general I would say he tends to be more about the psychological horror rather than the real splattery stuff? In IAL, for instance, it's not so much the vampire/zombie things constantly attacking or the lead character's having to fight them off that's so unsettling as it is just seeing it all through his eyes, the horrible isolation, never being able to relax his guard against the constant onslaughts, and the emotional toll that it's taking on him. There may be scary/horrifying stuff happening in the stories but it's the twists at the end that really make them stick with you, it's more effective on that unsettling, rug-out-from-under-your-feet sort of front rather than simple visceral fear of icky/threatening things, if that makes any sense. He tends to write quiet and understated and restrained and things sort of creeping up on you as you get the whole picture, rather than splattery relentless in-your-face direct assault.

My horror reading is pretty scattershot, and it's been years since I last read IAL so magicnoire can probably give you a much better summation. It's a very powerful story and worth reading, especially if you've somehow managed not to spoil yourself as to the ending already, but Matheson was one of the three core writers (along with Serling and Charles Beaumont) responsible for the bulk of the classic Twilight Zone scripts, so if the summaries alone freak you his stories might do the same?

[oyceter]

Got it, thank you! I may stay away just for my own sake... Sixth Sense was enough for a few creeped out nights, ha. And not from the gore, just the concept.

[magicnoire.livejournal.com]

I didn't think I Am Legend was all that scary. But he did write this short story about a woman with an overbearing mother and an African mask and that one disturbed me.

(Keep in mind who's saying this though. The only horror movie that has ever freaked me out so badly that I couldn't sleep was Ringu and that was because I have a TV at the foot of my bed and I was convinced something was going to crawl out and grab my feet.)

[oyceter]

Hee, gotcha! I am a total wimp when it comes to horror -- I never even watched the Ring; my friend only told me a summary, and that was enough to freak me out. Also, Sixth Sense scared me, and I had my eyes closed through half of it...

[magicnoire.livejournal.com]

It's been a while since I read I Am Legend so I can't give any definitive "This is not scary!". Especially since my standards are skewed. The Sixth Sense is one of my favorite movies ever.

Re: The Ring
It also didn't help that one of my friends thought it'd be funny to call me and whisper, "Seven days" when I answered the phone and then hang up. After freaking out for a few minutes, I finally realized what had happened. I was so mad and called him back and shouted at him for a good five minutes.

[oyceter]

OMG! Freaky and evil of him! That would have scared the living daylights out of me.