thisbluespirit | Friday Five

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Friday Five

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thefridayfive:

1. What book frightened you as a young person?
I don't know. I can think of TV things that did, and books I didn't like, or that left an unpleasant taste behind, one way or another, but I don't remember being terrified of anything in a book. I was always on the wimpish side in my reading, just in case something would scare me.

ETA: If it counts, when I was 11, our class tutor read us a Sweeney Todd story, and that definitely scared me!

2. If you had to become a ‘living book (i.e. able to recite the contents of a book cover to cover upon request – reference Fahrenheit 451), what book would it be?
I would prefer not to become a living book, as that sounds very uncomfortable for me and everyone else around me, so I'll go for Love That Dog because it's about the shortest book I know. (It's also good, though, and contains bonus poetry.)

3. What movie or TV show scared you as a kid?
The BBC Miss Marple (Nemesis in particular), and I do mean Joan Hickson. She sprayed somebody in the face with insecticide. Also some random thing where a cake was poisoned that I saw when I was four, that I think was some old b&w film comedy and was the worst/scariest thing ever. Also when I was about four, I was scared of the theme music to Doctor Who and when it came on would stick my head under a cushion and yell for someone to turn it off. So, ironically, I put an end to DW-watching in my house for about six or seven years, until I got into it myself. (It only ever scared me in the good way after that.) Also probably, as it turns out, Assignment Six of S&S, and that episode of Bergerac where Alfred Burke was so good he had to murder people. And Fraggles! Fraggle Rock was pure nightmare fuel. I still shudder if I see or hear of a Fraggle. The weasels in the (stop-motion) Wind in the Willows! TV was full of terrifying things when I was small.

4. What movie (scary or otherwise) will you never ever watch?
I am very wimpish about horror! It would be quicker to give a list of things I would watch, although that would still be far too long for a meme. But nothing that's primarily a gore-fest, anyway, unless I had to for some reason. I've been learning lately to be a little less wimpish in my watching, although only a little so far, and it's paid off.

5. Do you have any phobias?
Nothing at the level of a phobia, but I am scared of the future, fish, and over-eating (and poisoned cake, see above). And shop-window dummies.

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Is there such a thing as Autonophobia?

Possibily, although my fear predated having seen Spearhead From Space! I think it's mainly uncanny valley, isn't it? I also get it from life-size cardboard cutouts etc.

Interesting...

They are like people but not people!

(There are reasons I latched onto David Collings as Poul. Robophobia is perfectly understandable! ;-D)

As the internet likes to say 'So relateable'!

LOL, yes.

1. I made the mistake of reading The Apple Tree by Daphne du Maurier when I was in junior high school. It's a small collection of horror stories including The Birds, which inspired the Hitchcock movie. I'm still not sure why I read it (horror has never been my thing), but aspects of the stories still haunt me today.

2. I can't imagine being that, or people asking someone to recite an entire book, unless we were stranded on an island and devoid of any other entertainment. In that case, Lord of the Rings, as that would keep us all going for some time.

3. Certain Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents episodes did their job of being scary very well. And although I never watched the movie, the ads for the original "Halloween" movie came out when I was a young teen - just starting to babysit - and I had nightmares for weeks after seeing the first ad. I did my best never to see that again.

4. I don't watch any current horror movies at all, and still avoid the commercials if I can. I can watch the old classics of Dracula and Frankenstein but that's about it. My mind has trouble forgetting that kind of stull

5. Heights, although I've tried to get over it. I can be up in a tall building or fly in a plane as long as I can look out, not down. I can climb a short ladder. But it's the going down that gets me - tried skiing once, never again. Don't like downward escalators, but I can manage stairs at my own pace. No rollercoasters at all; I get sick to my stomach just seeing the ride on TV or movie.

PS Boy is Dreamwidth annoying for trying to post! I tried "open" and it wouldn't take it so I had to go find my hardly-ever-used account info and do it twice before this would post.

Edited 2017-10-20 17:32 (UTC)

I can't imagine being that, or people asking someone to recite an entire book

It does seem a bit weird, but LotR seems like a good choice! Although if you were marooned with a fantasy hater, murder would probably be done...

I don't watch any current horror movies at all, and still avoid the commercials if I can. I can watch the old classics of Dracula and Frankenstein but that's about it. My mind has trouble forgetting that kind of stull

I've been tentatively watching some of them (Hammer horror) and the like, and that seems to be about my level, as far as horror goes. Give me a bit of Gothic and I'm okay, but anything else is too much!

I read The Apple Tree, probably when I was in my teens, though I might have been a bit older. The only story from it that I can remember now is "The Birds", which I thought was brilliant. Strangely, I've never seen Hitchcock's film of it.

Edited 2017-10-21 09:29 (UTC)

There is something terrifying and wrong about a poisoned cake. Cake is supposed to be a source of joy! Not death!

Exactly! And it was done as if it was supposed to be funny, instead of clearly HORROR. (I don't know how old I was; I can remember some random things from being very young indeed, but it made an impact.)

Fish sounds awkward!

I was pretty fearless as a child, I think, not that I was allowed near horror films (or even Dr Who!) All my fears seem to be adult-onset - cliff edges, newborn babies and never sleeping again.

I'd memorise the whole of the Oxford Book of English Verse and I'd always have something for every mood :-)

Well, fish won't walk up and bite me, so I'm okay with that. And as a child, I remember mainly being afraid of death, fire and burglars, which seems not unreasonable, but some weird things on TV freaked me out!

I'd memorise the whole of the Oxford Book of English Verse and I'd always have something for every mood

That's a nifty answer.

Oh man, Fraggles! It sucks they scared you. I'm just glad I'm not the only one who didn't like them growing up.

I was much too old to be scared of them, and they were still terrifying! Fraggles! You can definitely join me on my Fraggle-hating step here. ;-D

I've heard about people being afraid of DW's music, but have never quite understood. Is it the unique oddness of the theme tune itself, or does it have bad associations for people (maybe they heard the music, then proceeded to be scared by something in an episode)? Hmm...

I think it's probably the oddness of it is one of the big things, but I really can't say. I can remember doing that - sticking my head under the cushion - but not how I felt or why. Unlike a lot of other things on my list, I don't even get the smallest echo of it now, nor did I back when I started watching it again.

I can never remember being scared by a book!

I remember Dr Who being scary but never to the extent I wouldn't watch it.

Oh I would be so spoilt for choice as there are so many books I love. Sherlock Holmes perhaps or the Deryni Rising series or Dragonflight.

The movies I would never watch are the ones that think that splashing lots of gore around is scary. Frankly I find Grand Guignol (or its more modern name, splatterfests) boring.

I have a phobia of wasps and being hemmed in by crowds, both of which had a triggering episode - not the same occasion though.

I have a phobia of wasps and being hemmed in by crowds, both of which had a triggering episode - not the same occasion though.

Both together would definitely be even worse!

1. What book frightened you as a young person?

I don't know the name or author; I was three or four, it was a slim little YA paperback. The first-person protagonist was dared by his friends to sneak into a spooky house inhabited by an old man who was reputed to eat live rabbits. He accordingly snuck in, and was confronted by the old man, holding (not eating) a white rabbit. For some reason this scared me so much I hid the book behind a dresser -- I recall a vague feeling that the book would come alive and eat me too! :-)

The other books that scared me were all nature books with photographs of, like, snakes or spiders, which I also feared would jump out of the book at me. (I still have this problem with certain images. You know how xkcd sometimes runs diagrams of the ocean depths, shaded in from light at the top to dark? Can't look at 'em, in case the deeps reach out and try to eat me. This probably ties in to Voyage of the Dawn Treader, of course; if the depths don't reach out, they will at least become real and pull me in through the computer screen, and then I will drown. :P CS Lewis wrote some serious nightmare fuel for tiny!me...)

2. If you had to become a ‘living book (i.e. able to recite the contents of a book cover to cover upon request – reference Fahrenheit 451), what book would it be?

*picks through old memories* I think my childhood must have been shaped indirectly by people who had read Fahrenheit 451 and brought away the wrong impression, which isn't really that surprising now I think of it. The idea that the government was going to destroy all Bibles and you had better have yours memorized feels like a familiar riff on the government destroying all guns. As it happened, I wasn't interested in memorizing the Bible, especially not in translation, which seemed rather useless, but I did get at least a page or two into memorizing The Hobbit (figuring that I'd better have that along with LotR). ^_^ These days, my memory is too shot to do any such thing, I think.

3. What movie or TV show scared you as a kid?

I can only remember seeing a few things on video before we got our TV when I was ten. The scariest would have been the BBC's The Silver Chair -- Tom Baker under green latex, waggling his webby fingers at Jill, gurning with his big blue pop-eyes, and intoning things about whether a bridge would fade away into thin air just as we got to the middle of it. I was really majorly scared of bridges for the rest of my childhood. (Interestingly, I never feared anything would come out of the TV at me. For some reason books were closer to the waking world.)

4. What movie (scary or otherwise) will you never ever watch?

Oh, lots of them. I also am very wimpish in my watching. These days, for good reason -- I check everything for my long list of triggers. There are excellent movies I will either not ever watch or will only watch someday with good friends, a relatively large stock of sanity, and a clear schedule. ;S

5. Do you have any phobias?

I'm never entirely sure what defines a phobia. I have trouble with bugs, traumatic amputation, going into the ocean, anything happening to eyes, strangling/suffocating... animals in danger, children in danger, angry men, power imbalances in relationships... The one that makes me just really bunch up and go "nonono" is the thought of losing a finger or fingertip. I interact so much with the world through my hands. So that might be a phobia.

The other books that scared me were all nature books with photographs of, like, snakes or spiders, which I also feared would jump out of the book at me.

That reminds me of the excellent box of flash cards I had as a little kid about insects and spiders. I found the cards very creepy, as they had large, detailed pics of the critters, and I tried to avoid touching the images -- I knew they weren't alive, but it was as if touching them would make them alive, and far too large. *shiver*

Also, when I was quite young, I had a strange fear reaction to a TV channel's logo (when I saw it, I didn't want to be in front of a window at night, as if it would show up in the dark and eat me). Can't remember what it was. I really hope it wasn't the CBS network's eye logo, because that would be so predictable.

The one that makes me just really bunch up and go "nonono" is the thought of losing a finger or fingertip. I interact so much with the world through my hands. So that might be a phobia.

Agreed, especially when I was trying to be a musician, though I still feel protective of my hands.

Yeah, let's not be living books! Who let that question in here? It doesn't seem to have anything to do with the others, anyway.

*hugs you*

<3

1. I don't remember any book particularly scaring me as a child.

2. The most appropriate book to memorise would surely be Fahrenheit 451 itself.

3. Quatermass and the Pit really frightened me when I saw it aged about nine or ten, back in the late 1950s. This was the original BBC version, not the Hammer film that was later made of it. (Your mentioning that the Joan Hickson Miss Marple frightened you as a child makes me feel very old, BTW.)

4. I rather like horror films, but I prefer them to be subtle rather than to have masses of gore. I definitely don't want to watch The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, based on the assumption that the title is a true description of its content.

5. I don't like heights, but only when there's nothing to prevent me from falling over the edge. Put a railing between me and the edge, and I'm fine. And I don't fear flying. I'm scared of wasps, but I consider that perfectly rational rather than a phobia.

As to 4, I think we seem to be in good company - no gore fests seems to be the rule up and down my flist so far! (There'll be one, though, no doubt...)

Your mentioning that the Joan Hickson Miss Marple frightened you as a child makes me feel very old, BTW.

Ha, sorry. Although it would have been worse if I'd been frightened of Geraldine McEwan's Miss Marple as a child, and that's perfectly plausible these days. (Thereby making me feel old, too.)

I definitely agree about Nemesis, and Sleeping Murder.

I remember a book that scared me when I was little: on the last page, the supposed author heard about a sofa that ate people, went to investigate, and was never seen again. Complete with an illustration of their fate. Little-me didn't like the idea of homicidal furniture lying in wait.

I would have hated that too!

Little-me didn't like the idea of homicidal furniture lying in wait.

I take it, though, that you can cope with Terror of the Autons these days? ;-)

I've managed to watch it without obvious trauma :-)

Joan Hickson was pretty badass, wasn't she? I could never watch the ITV Marple after growing up with her version. Watch a few minutes of Hickson and you realise there's a tough unsentimental woman underneath the fluff. She describes people as "silly" and there's a whole world of judgement in five letters...

She was! I have recovered from my fear and can watch and appreciate her now, but she still has moments where she's the scariest thing in the series. She was amazing!

I could never watch anyone else playing the role now. I feel that had Jane Austen lived into her seventies and taken up solving crime, she'd have been a lot like Joan Hickson's Miss Marple.

Joan Hickson's Marple would murder you without a thought if you annoyed her enough.

And she'd get away with it, too.

It would have to be for reasons of justice, though! Not just annoyance! She's Nemesis, after all. :-D

That matches my experience: I imprinted on the Joan Hickson version and can't suspend disbelief for any of the others.

When I was in my teens I read the 'Magic House' by James Herbert which had a description of a mouldy cup of coffee. It was so disgusting I've not forgotten it, blurgh. I wasn't bothered by the other horror stuff he wrote, but that got me!

I'm more scared by things in books and films now. There are films that if I watched them for the first time now I would be hiding behind the sofa!

It often seems to be the random things which are to blame for childhood terrors!

The DW theme is scary. I agree with you there!

Well, obviously I don't think so now, but apparently when I was very small I didn't like it so much!

I can't think of any scary books either. I used to like ghost stories as a kid, but my favourites were in a big compendium from the local library, in the children's section, so I can't imagine it was anything dreadful! Probably just pleasantly spooky.

Sadly, I am a living book. When my younger sister was very small, her favourite book was a rhyming nonsense book called "Each Peach Pear Plum" (by Janet and Allan Ahlberg). I had to read it to her so often. She's thirty-five now, and I probably haven't had to read it in close to thirty years, but I still know it all the way through. It's the rhyming text, I suppose.

Fraggles. :D I've still never seen an episode of that. Everybody used to talk about it at school, but it must have been on at the same time as something else.

Have you ever seen "Arsenic & Old Lace"? Possibly not, since b&w films are a new thing for you. Crackly forties comedy starring Cary Grant and Peter Lorre, about sweet little old ladies who murder the residents of their guest home, thinking that they're doing them a favour. They poison their drinks. It's supposed to be a comic spin on several horror tropes, but it strikes me that you might find it a genuine horror. ;)

Yes, I still have a few stories and poems memorised from being a children's librarian - I am a living book already, if probably a slightly patchy one by this point. Rhyming helps a lot!

Fraggles. :D I've still never seen an episode of that.

You missed nothing, I tell you, nothing! ;-p

I have not seen Arsenic & Old Lace but when I mentioned this poisoned cake incident before it was my flist's best guest at what I might have seen. I fear you might be right about me not enjoying it!

Rhyming does help to ~~stick something indelibly in your brain, whether you want it to or not~~ remember something, yes. Sadly I fear that, in some post-apocalyptic society, or desert island situation, our living bookness would be less welcome than some. We'd probably be first on the menu when the grub ran out!

I love "Arsenic & Old Lace". It's so beautifully mannered. I quite understand though! We all have our limits. You should absolutely try "Bringing Up Baby" though, or one of the other Katherine Hepburn/Cary Grant pairings. She's such a fascinating actress, and she was always doing such interesting things.

I watched Bringing Up Baby recently! I did enjoy it. I've watched a few things with Katherine Hepbourn in now - that, The Philadelphia Story, Stage Door and Sylvia Scarlet. Bringing Up Baby was a lot of fun; I enjoyed it.

our living bookness would be less welcome than some.

Hey, no, we will be in demand as babysitters! I mean, you can't set the people who chose Lord of the Rings or whatever to amuse the three year olds. ;-)

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Friday Five

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