#imagine you write a novel that like trailblazes the way for others in the genre and fundamentally informs all further haunted house stories

[steveharrington]

god i know this is an unpopular opinion but i wish mike flanagan had just made his stupid show and called it something else. i hate that people associate the haunting of hill house with that show, and i’m not even saying that i think the show is bad. i don’t think it’s poorly made but it’s just not….the haunting of hill house. it rearranges the characters it strips so many of them of their personalities it just fundamentally changes so many crucial aspects of the story! and shirley jackson was a genius she was a major voice that informed the horror genre we know today and it’s so bizarre to me that someone took her story, rearranged it into something barely recognizable, and still used her title. and now it’s what people think of when they think of hill house and mike flanagan goes on documentaries and says stuff like “when i created the haunting of hill house” and he has a character named shirley but she isn’t even the one who wrote the titular novel within his show, they gave that to a man, and i hate it. i hate it so much. just make your thing and say it’s inspired by the haunting of hill house fuck me

[ayogsothothismybabydaddy-blog]

A Quiet Place is Not a Good Movie

1) It's unoriginal.

One of the principal things that people have decided to praise this movie for is its originality. I cannot fathom why a horror movie in which people try to be quiet to avoid a monster is in anyway considered novel. The sentence I have just written describes a good twenty percent of the runtime of every horror film. As far as I can work out, AQP's trailblazing efforts consist of attempting to stretch this premise out for an entire 90 minutes, sans storytelling, character development, thematic conerns, or anything else that might divert from the absolutely thrilling spectacle of a strangely hipsterish family running/hiding/and being quiet in order to evade CGI creatures whose shitty design is the only thing frightening about them.

If you want a specific film in which the idea of silence is key then here: The Descent. Exactly same thing: creatures that are blind because they have evolved underground (btw - right there is more of a rational than AQP ever provides you with for why in fuck's name these creatures can't see - or indeed where they came from...) are evaded through silence. The Descent 2 even ends in the exact same way - a character screams to attract the attention of the monsters, sacrificing themselves and allowing other characters to escape. Want a more recent example? Don't breathe (2016): home invaders have the tables turned on them when a blind war veteran locks them inside and uses the home-turf advantage to hunt them down.  It's not as good as the Descent and it's definitely more gimmicky, but you know what? It's still not as shitty as A Quiet Place...

So, how exactly is a horror film that relies entirely on one of the most fundamental conventions of the genre for its entire runtime and has close parallels with 3 other well-known horrors (one of which came out only 2 years ago) remotely original? It's not. Next.

2) The writing.

God the writing is shit. Let's start with characters. Elementary characterisation suggests that a character ought to have something they want; a motivation that propels them during the course of the plot. The characters don't really want anything other than to survive. They're a family who wants to not get eaten. Perfectly reasonable, but not really good enough for the purposes of entertainment. A film needs more: something like the brilliant Koren zombie movie Train to Busan. It's a zombie movie so the motivation is, understandably, don't get eaten by a zombie. But there are also REAL characters with differing motives, attitudes, prejudices etc. that allow the film to have scenes revolving around conflict. In train to Busan you cach yourself asking interesting questions like (I wonder if this character will betray another? I wonder how far this one would be willing to go to protect his daughter? etc. The only thing it's possible to wonder at any point in AQP is 'I wonder if Thing A will eat Character A?'. Just substitute the letter each time and you're seriously describing the source of supposed dramatic tension for what felt like 15 scenes of the film.

Oh wait. I forgot about the fucking daughter.

Right so, one of the things people are praising is the supposedly involving and emotionally affecting narrative centring around the deaf daughter and her father. Essentially, she blames herself for the death of her younger brother and is convinced that dad also blames her. Seems pretty reasonable. That's until you get to the entirely unreasonable, nonsensical ways in which this causes her to act.

One of the great areas of potential when you're telling a post-apocalyptic story is the sheer interest of contemplating how an alterered society might result in people being altered: developing with different, values, attitudes and knowledge. In The Road when the son drinks a coke for the first time in his life it's a fascinating moment. Hell, in Planet of the Apes, when Gary Oldman uses the recently restored power to look at photos of his family on a tablet it's an emotional moment. You are struck by the sheer, terrifying but fascinating difference of this world from our own. And yet, the director of AQP seems determined NOT to explore a different world (a dinner scene in which the family sit around a nicely garnished fish dish consitutes such a twee post-apocalypse it's pretty easy to forget the end of the world)  or to even consider that children who have grown up in a radically different, highly dangerous world would be anything other than the most stupidly cliched characters.

So the girl is guilty - she believes she has caused the death of her brother. Does she retreat into quiet solitude? Does she do what I think most teenagers would probably do and desperately seek her father's affection? Does she fuck. She does the pissy teenage rebel act you've seen 1000s of times before (always in film, hardly ever in real life). One noteable highlight is when her father presents her with a hearing aid which he has made for her (at the cost of great time and effort) and she essentially throws it back in his face. I found the moment pretty baffling and to my mind the context makes no sense of it. I felt even worse when I realised that it was the set up for a scene which made even less sense; having witnessed the death of her father, the deaf daughter goes downstairs to the basement of the house and finds the table at which her father, with a book on the anatomy of the human ear to guide him, has been painstakingly assembling the many hearing aids (all of which have not succeeded). So, because it's the right point in the film, she cries. But why the fuck is this scene treated like a reveal? Did she think he was finding hearing aids on trees? Why suddenly has a gesture that inexplicably angered her in the 1st Act caused her so much emotion in the 3rd?

Notable other occasions of characters doing things that make no sense include:

1) The bit where the daughter and her brother are stranded. The brother says that the father is coming to save them, the daughter remarks that he will come for him but not her. They're in the same fucking place! Is the daughter so insanely unreasonable/out of touch with reality that he expects the father to find them both, arrive, punch her in the face and run off with the son?

2) The bit in the 1st 5 minutes where a 4 year old living in a world where perfect silence needs to be maintained at all times (unless you want to suffer a horrible death) somehow thinks that putting batteries in an electric toy isn't a fucking dumb idea. BTW: the 'kids are dumb though' line doesn't excuse this: nobody is that stupid.

3) The bit where an older kid running away from a monster who can only hear decides not to run down an open path with no obstacles but to run straight into a corn field instead. Why? Well because it's much noisier and also easier to get lost in. Obviously.

4) The bit where a mother in a flooding basement decides to have a nap and wakes up to find a baby she gave birth to 10 minutes ago floating in a box. I'm not making this up. At this moment, a film where THIS happens is currently rated at 97% on rottentomatoes.

3) The sound design. Given how much of the film hinges on sound you'd expect this not to be one of the best elements of the film. It's not. The film shows non-diegetic sound at its absolute worst. Almost every appearance of a monster is accompanied by a an inception style foghorn which gets to be like a punchline after a while. In this film the score seems to subscribe to the school of thought where the purpose of a soundtrack is to tell you how to feel. Whether it's telling you to be afraid of a monster or sad because of a hearing-aid/father/daughter subplot that makes no sense, the soundtrack is there to tell you how to feel. Trust me film, if you've done your job properly I won't need a soundtrack to cue me in, I'll just feel things of my own accord.

Diegetic sound wise, you spend the entire movie waiting for them to do something interesting with the deaf girl. I mean, a deaf character; surely it's got to result in a moment where we can see it but she can't hear it? Ideally one where we experience her deafness so that we see the monster appear silently and creepily onto the screen? Well it does, but by then I'd stopped giving a shit. It's also worth noting that while every review you'll read for this movie with stress the importance of silence to the movie, what they won't mention is actually there's a hell of a lot of fucking annoying noise in it as well. This supposedly original film relies so heavily on the lazy tactic of using loud noises in an effort to shock and scare, that every attack from each of the monsters is accompanied by the most irritating keening, slavering, yelping bullshit imaginable. The idea of grating high-pitched feedback even becomes essential to the plot at one point, meaning that if, like me, you long ago stopped giving a shit, then the finale will break new ground by actually giving you a headache too. That's right, having bored you with shitty storytelling, cliched and hollow characters and a derivative and formulaic plot, AQP ends by trying to actually hurt your ears.

4) the premise. The premise makes no fucking sense. Actually that's not fair, it makes some. If I were M. Night Shyamalan I'd be wanting my act back. You know, the act of coming up with a gimicky premise that makes just about enough sense that you'll hopefully stick with it until you get to the twist, but if you think about it for like, a couple of seconds, you'll realise it's ridiculous.

So, the film demonstrates at the start that society seems to have almost entirely collapsed. It didn't do so straight away though, as evinced by a number of newspaper headlines reporting on the monsters themselves. That means there was at least a period of time during which the monsters were alive and kicking but society had not broken down. What the hell was the world's military doing during this time?

Let's look at the monsters themselves: fast, lethal to a human, and totally and utterly blind. Are you telling me that not one person, scientist, solider or in fact military organisation, has been able to trap one of these things? You know, rig a cage to fall and chuck an eggtimer underneath it? Not one person, has tried this, caught one and studied it? At the end of the film it's revealed that the monsters are basically disabled by certain high pitched nosies (in this case caused by the girl's hearing aid - what? No I don't think that's really convenient either). And yet nobody else in the world, having clocked pretty quickly that the monsters are entirely reliant on sound, thought about experimenting with sound waves?

That's if you buy into the idea that studying it is even necessary. Yeah the creatures are pretty big but they're hardly going to stand up to a tank are they? They're also, as the film shows, definitely possible to kill just by shooting them in the head. In zombie movies the breakdown of society doesn't involve too much suspension of disbelief because they almost always rely on a virus that affects humans and which spreads very quickly, meaning that no matter how well-armed or regimented an organisation, it's likely to be destroyed from within. And yet, an entirely intact army was unable to stem the tide of these creatures (from god knows where) taking over the entire world? Bullshit.

[greggory--lee]

An Astrological Look at Stephen King’s Natal Chart

Every day, I like to look at celebrity birthdays and post a few on Facebook and Twitter. We all love to look for aspects of ourselves in the personality of a celebrity who shares our birthday, don’t we? Today, September 21st, I happened to note a trend of excellence in thinking and communication skills. Next, I pulled one of my favorite books off the shelf, Love Cards by Robert Camp, and looked up the card for September 21st. Camp assigns a title to each card, which I’ve found to be uncannily accurate in summarizing the personality for each card. I had to chuckle when I saw that September 21st is the three of clubs – the card Camp calls “The Writer’s Card.”

A wildly popular and successful writer who happens to be born today is an excellent example of the three of clubs. In Camp’s Destiny Card system, the threes are highly creative and imaginative and clubs rule communication. Stephen King is truly a king in his chosen field. I must admit that although I am a voracious reader, I have only read a small slice of his prolific literary offerings because his writing makes me bite my nails and sit on the edge of my seat. It can take me a few days to shake off the unease that reading his novels creates in me. When I looked at his birth chart today, many things jumped out at me immediately that made me think, “Oh, of course,” and I’ll share a few with you. So much jumps out to indicate his unique talent and notable career that it is hard to know where to begin!

Writing ability and a fertile imagination that can spin a good story can often be found in a busy third house within the natal chart. The Sun, Venus, and Neptune are all in King’s third house, indicating he takes to writing and enjoys it as naturally as a duck takes to water. Neptune in the third is conjunct Mercury, the planet of communication, in his fourth house of home. The fourth house is also the seat of the soul and the psychological foundation of a person. His Mercury is in Libra, the air sign that contemplates the polarities of self versus other and examines the myriad aspects of human interaction. Venus, Neptune, Mercury are all in Libra, but his Sun is in a late degree of Virgo. The earth influence and detail-oriented nature of a Virgo Sun helps him gather the many thoughts and impressions the Libra influences generate and distill them into a cohesive story. The Libra energy can also help him lead the reader in one direction and then another. Appearances can definitely be deceiving and things aren’t what you think they are is another way of translating King’s Mercury/Neptune conjunction.

Another house to examine for signs of creative ability is the fifth. Here, King’s Moon in adventurous Sagittarius is sextile Mercury. He literally loves to write. Writing is an emotional release for him and possibly more an escape than a work task. His Moon in the fifth also opposes Uranus in the eleventh house of friends and groups. The eleventh house is his audience and Uranus is a planet with electrical and erratic influence. King shocks his audience with his genius ability to generate disturbing emotions as his stories unfold. Some, like myself, may find the emotions his work stirs up to be too uncomfortable. There are other aspects, though, that allow him to be well received and to get away with pushing limits. One of these is the Moon in the fifth trine Saturn/Pluto in dramatic Leo in the first house of self. Saturn rules mortality, longevity, pain, suffering, and sorrow. Some Saturn archetypes are Father Time and The Grim Reaper. Pluto can be power, fear, death and transformation, resurrection, Hades, Hell, all that is dark, disturbing, taboo, hidden and suppressed. Leo rules the fifth house of creativity where King’s Moon sits, so the supportive flow of lunar energy to Saturn/Pluto in the first makes him a dramatic presenter of exciting and disturbing emotions having to do with fear, pain, and death. King also has Jupiter in the fruitful water sign of Scorpio in the fifth, semi-sextile his Sun in the third, indicating his creativity and writing can be prolific and profitable. With Jupiter in square aspect to Saturn/Pluto in the first, success may not have come easily, though. Persistence, persistence, and plain old hard work got him to where he is now. Scorpio rules the metaphysical, paranormal, and supernatural. Another aspect that makes his work appeal to many is King’s Jupiter in Scorpio in the fifth trine Mars in sensitive Cancer in the twelfth house of the subconscious and the collective of society. I suspect King can feel the fear in his body as he creates it in his writing. I wonder – does his hair stand up, does he get goosebumps, must he walk away from his writing and pace a bit before he can return to crafting the perfect words that will make his reader’s skin crawl? He may get some of his ideas from actual nightmares and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn some of his best writing takes place in the wee hours when thoughts naturally turn toward what’s lurking in the closet or under the bed. Mostly, he understands the part of us that likes to be scared and reaches out to that part like a sympathetic good buddy. We must like how Stephen King scares us because we buy a LOT of his books!

To top off his chart, King has the initiative fire sign of Aries on his midheaven. He is a trailblazer in his genre and stands out and above others in his field. I have read novels based solely on the fact that I saw a Stephen King endorsement on the cover. His reputation and fame as a writer are such that he has a following of devoted readers, and deservedly so. Stephen King’s life path as indicated by his Lunar North Node in Taurus in the eleventh house of his natal chart is to bring something material and tangible to the masses. King lacks a strong enough influence in the ninth house of publishing to guarantee his books would make it into print, but his plodding, stubborn Lunar North Node in Taurus combined with his powerfully determined Saturn/Pluto in royal Leo refuses to be ignored. His attitude toward getting his first stories published may well have been, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” His Lunar North Node in Taurus in his eleventh house and his Jupiter in Scorpio in the fifth house are both feminine and fruitful, assisting King in producing a large body of work for his appreciative readers.

Source by Dunnea Rae

Source: http://bitcoinswiz.com/an-astrological-look-at-stephen-kings-natal-chart/