IT SCARES ME, TOMMY
No, I'm actually not going to talk about the terrifying Zappos puppets or the creepy!Cabbage Patch!Sixth Doctor doll thing or even Terrifying Pertwee. Nah, I just thought it would make a funny title. (Context to the title: I have a pet theory that Terrifying Pertwee was painted by the same doode who painted the Quaker Oats mascot, who haunts the nightmares of Chuckie from "Rugrats" a show that I will admit, was pretty good for what it was when it started out. FREAKING REPTAR, MAN.)
Anyway. Reading timali's post and the thread on Don Bluth's forum on the censorship of The Land Before Time and other animated movies, sometimes I just can't help but think...hell, if any of my stories were animated in any way into a movie, it would SO NOT BE RATED G. If only for the beginning scenes with Dakota and Lindsay. Dakota's fiance, for those of you who are out of the loop, was murdered in an ignorant hate crime that was more born out of fear than true hate-- but ignorant all the same. (Gryphons with their big claws, beaks, and magical powers must seem like too powerful creatures to be walking around in proper society, rite?) This, I feel a bit guilty to say, has been a part of the story since Dakota was written in, as long he's been around, Dakota has pretty much been a widow. (Maybe not technically, but might as well be.) But anyway, the point is, I've always written and even once illustrated this scene to be rather graphic. The narration always included descriptions of blood-soaked feathers on both of them among far nastier things and Lindsay dies under Dakota's wings and if it were a movie, there'd be no way for it not to be onscreen.
And you think for J5's beating in the second movie the movie deserved at LEAST a PG-13 and not just a PG even though it's "just a robot..." uh....yeah. *coughs* I know neither Lillian nor J5 are "just robots" so what happens to both of them deserves more than a PG rating, especially if a lot of people's reaction to some of what I myself consider to be Narm-y violent angst art I've posted to this journal are anything to go by. (On that note, I think only a few people have seen my unfinished illustration of Lindsay's murder...I remember doing a scan of it and remember showing it to tsunami_ryuu...but I can definitely understand why I can't find it on my computer. I just tend NOT to want to share my more violent art, mostly because...I think it's Narm. Hmm...)
Y'know, noting that most of this is stuff that has been restricted to text besides a few illustrations by myself, it also reminds me of how I've been thinking recently about how children's books (young adult novels, stuff like that) can usually depict way more than visual medias can. I guess I can understand why, with books, no matter how bad the description, it still has nowhere near the scarring factor of actually seeing realistic violence, if only for the reason what you imagine is typically nowhere near as bad as a well-done realistic depiction. (Generally. Especially if you're younger, too, and haven't watched tons of medical shows on Discovery Health or TLC or even unrealistic violence potrayed as realistic stuff like CSI. [CSI and stuff...good drama...horrible, horrible science and often just horrible leaps of logic. And it takes itself too seriously for me to often accept it. And I seriously want their image enhancement program that can make any sized image blown up with PERFECT CLARITY. But I digress.] In other words, before you've JADED yourself.) That, and let's face it, even for adults, graphic violence out of nowhere will at least get a "WOAH WAT?" reaction.
That said, often I look back at the books I've read as a kid and marvel at what they got away with. The fact that my favourite underrated Roald Dahl book, The Witches, is one of the mostly widely banned books over here amuses me insanely. It's a book about witches that are bald and have blue spit and they turn the main character in a mouse. C'mon. I figure I may have to go back and maybe see if there's some non-PC stuff in there, but mostly people are trying to sell the fact that since witches were all female it was offensive to women. (Uh...there are no male witches? C'mon, most every kid knows that.) I think I started reading the Harry Potter books when in elementary school (fifth grade or so, which is late, but certainly not a teen yet, I was in Missouri still) and while the first books are nowhere near as blunt with its violence as the last ones, I look back and see even the first and second ones have some stuff that is actually pretty creepy. And I don't remember the Animorphs books holding back on the creepypasta, I think the author got sheer joy out of writing the transformations as gross and disturbing, and...well, that's just before they go and try to tear sluggie aliens apart who are in bodies that may be their own loved ones. Fun stuff. (No really, it was!)
I guess I will always be one of those people who just believes that kids love gross stuff, kids like to be challenged with "scary things" and boast to their schoolmates about what "scary movie" they got to see to their classmates the next school day (I know they did when I was a kid...getting to see PG-13 or even if you're "lucky" R movies in elementary school was a friggen badge of honour...or toughness...or whatever.) I know some other people have been raised in environments greatly different from this. It's pretty brilliantly displayed when you tell most American adults that "doode, Doctor Who is a kid's show." (One of the comments on Don Bluth's forum said she knew a 5 year old kid who adored Doctor Who while she herself was often terrified by it and wondered if the kid was gonna grow up to be scarred or just react to things differently...uhhh, if he grows up scarred, he'll be no more scarred than the majority of kids raised in the UK from 1963-1989 and 2005-now. [And yes, I'm counting the old ones. If you grew up at the time, that green bubble wrap and foam and junk WAS scary, man. And they probably didn't think cybermats were as adorable as I do.])
But seriously, sometimes I look across the ocean and go "MAN the kids over here aren't having ANYWHERE NEAR AS MUCH FUN AS WE DID BEFORE and as they do now :<" watching stuff they know is supposed to scare them, get scared, and maybe phobic of angel statues or gas masks, but still talking about how awesomely scary it was at the playground. I dunno if that happens, but that's pretty much how it went down when movies like, say Jurassic Park came out when I was in second grade and we got to see it. (I loved that movie all through my childhood and watched it over and over with my dad, and now, finally, I step back, and realise...if I was raised by most modern parents, I wouldn't have gotten to see that at least till I was a teen.) But nah, we were playing with dinosaurs eating each other and our other toys, some of the toys have bits of flesh that could come off to expose a nice wound with bones visible to simulate a bite from another dinosaur...and it was awesome! We loved it! I admit I was a coward when it came to more violent, shoot-em-up type movies that the boys were all over, but that just may have been more because just watching humans killing each other was just bad while MONSTERS chasing and hurting humans was cool to watch. And most of the time we didn't want the monsters killed. :<
Again, this is my experience as a kid...which probably means I'd happily show Weeping Angels and such to kids if I got to babysit. (And...knowing most parents, when they'd find out, I could never babysit at that house again. But heck, if the kid liked it, chances are we'd make up stupid games and see who could go the longest not blinking at the other. And let's face it, in the end, those are the type of kids I tend to get along with best. XD; LET'S USE OUR IMAGINATIONS AND PLAY, BUT IT'S GONNA BE SCARY AND FUN NOT LIKE WHEN MOST KIDS ON TV USE THEIR IMAGINATIONS.)
...You can totally tell I'm writing this at 3AM, can't you?
Maybe "Legacy" is a sign I'm "scarred," because I'm writing about violence and death. ...Then again I started writing this as a teen and I was damn well old enough to know about that stuff and was pretty much already jaded as HELL not from TV, movies, or whatever, but my own life. I don't know, I'm just confused. I just know when I was a kid it was pretty much normal to like gross stuff and dark scary creepy stuff. Then again, it has already been established that at least in the case of my own parents; they're pretty cool as far as parents go. On the other hand, I remember thinking before my parents were "stricter" than the others since they didn't let me watch a lot of the shows and movies I could...I couldn't go to R rated movies and I was like the only kid in middle school who didn't watch South Park. (Which, I know realise, is more a parenting FAIL on their parents end, and I didn't even watch it because in my mind, it was those kind of shows that doomed MST3k when it was on Comedy Central. Actually, that WAS the main reason I couldn't watch it, we banned Comedy Central in our house after they canned MST3k...we were spiteful folk...now I generally just would prefer not to watch it because while I'm not classy I'm still too classy to watch South Park. >.>;;;)
I dunno. I know I probably have people who span all across the spectrum in how they were raised as a kid and how they reacted to stuff...I know conversations with several people WERE shockers in how much they were scared of stuff that everyone I grew up with loved. But is that the end result of heavy PC-ism and censorship in childhood, or something that just had to do with the kid's personality, and they just didn't like that kind of stuff in the first place? I've heard cases for both, which really makes the whole question of censoring kids stuff even more complicated, and in the end, mostly up to the parents, which is really too bad, because it doesn't seem like most parents care about telling kids about the difference between reality and fantasy and being able to gage what their kid can or cannot handle. Heck, I learned basically to tell my parents what I couldn't handle or if they decided to watch a movie I thought would be too violent or adult for me I would excuse myself-- BUT that was because I didn't want to be SCARED or CRY in FRONT of my PARENTS. Better just to leave than to allow myself to be scared by a movie in front of my parents! (One of the stories I tell all the time-- I was sick as a dog and my brother was watching me, and he put in The Land Before Time and I'm laying in bed, watching, WILLING MY SICK, ELEMENTARY SCHOOL SELF NOT TO CRY IN FRONT OF MY BROTHER because to this day I was CONVINCED he put that in JUST TO MAKE ME CRY. Well, that was me. I never cried openly even at say, MUFASA'S death when I was watching TLK with my 'rents till I was older. LIKE, TEEN-AGED. I was messed up in THAT WAY, at least I know that for sure.)
...Okay I just ran circles around my logic SO I BETTER STOP WHILE I'M AHEAD.
2AM icon, ACTIVATE!
Anyway. Reading timali's post and the thread on Don Bluth's forum on the censorship of The Land Before Time and other animated movies, sometimes I just can't help but think...hell, if any of my stories were animated in any way into a movie, it would SO NOT BE RATED G. If only for the beginning scenes with Dakota and Lindsay. Dakota's fiance, for those of you who are out of the loop, was murdered in an ignorant hate crime that was more born out of fear than true hate-- but ignorant all the same. (Gryphons with their big claws, beaks, and magical powers must seem like too powerful creatures to be walking around in proper society, rite?) This, I feel a bit guilty to say, has been a part of the story since Dakota was written in, as long he's been around, Dakota has pretty much been a widow. (Maybe not technically, but might as well be.) But anyway, the point is, I've always written and even once illustrated this scene to be rather graphic. The narration always included descriptions of blood-soaked feathers on both of them among far nastier things and Lindsay dies under Dakota's wings and if it were a movie, there'd be no way for it not to be onscreen.
And you think for J5's beating in the second movie the movie deserved at LEAST a PG-13 and not just a PG even though it's "just a robot..." uh....yeah. *coughs* I know neither Lillian nor J5 are "just robots" so what happens to both of them deserves more than a PG rating, especially if a lot of people's reaction to some of what I myself consider to be Narm-y violent angst art I've posted to this journal are anything to go by. (On that note, I think only a few people have seen my unfinished illustration of Lindsay's murder...I remember doing a scan of it and remember showing it to tsunami_ryuu...but I can definitely understand why I can't find it on my computer. I just tend NOT to want to share my more violent art, mostly because...I think it's Narm. Hmm...)
Y'know, noting that most of this is stuff that has been restricted to text besides a few illustrations by myself, it also reminds me of how I've been thinking recently about how children's books (young adult novels, stuff like that) can usually depict way more than visual medias can. I guess I can understand why, with books, no matter how bad the description, it still has nowhere near the scarring factor of actually seeing realistic violence, if only for the reason what you imagine is typically nowhere near as bad as a well-done realistic depiction. (Generally. Especially if you're younger, too, and haven't watched tons of medical shows on Discovery Health or TLC or even unrealistic violence potrayed as realistic stuff like CSI. [CSI and stuff...good drama...horrible, horrible science and often just horrible leaps of logic. And it takes itself too seriously for me to often accept it. And I seriously want their image enhancement program that can make any sized image blown up with PERFECT CLARITY. But I digress.] In other words, before you've JADED yourself.) That, and let's face it, even for adults, graphic violence out of nowhere will at least get a "WOAH WAT?" reaction.
That said, often I look back at the books I've read as a kid and marvel at what they got away with. The fact that my favourite underrated Roald Dahl book, The Witches, is one of the mostly widely banned books over here amuses me insanely. It's a book about witches that are bald and have blue spit and they turn the main character in a mouse. C'mon. I figure I may have to go back and maybe see if there's some non-PC stuff in there, but mostly people are trying to sell the fact that since witches were all female it was offensive to women. (Uh...there are no male witches? C'mon, most every kid knows that.) I think I started reading the Harry Potter books when in elementary school (fifth grade or so, which is late, but certainly not a teen yet, I was in Missouri still) and while the first books are nowhere near as blunt with its violence as the last ones, I look back and see even the first and second ones have some stuff that is actually pretty creepy. And I don't remember the Animorphs books holding back on the creepypasta, I think the author got sheer joy out of writing the transformations as gross and disturbing, and...well, that's just before they go and try to tear sluggie aliens apart who are in bodies that may be their own loved ones. Fun stuff. (No really, it was!)
I guess I will always be one of those people who just believes that kids love gross stuff, kids like to be challenged with "scary things" and boast to their schoolmates about what "scary movie" they got to see to their classmates the next school day (I know they did when I was a kid...getting to see PG-13 or even if you're "lucky" R movies in elementary school was a friggen badge of honour...or toughness...or whatever.) I know some other people have been raised in environments greatly different from this. It's pretty brilliantly displayed when you tell most American adults that "doode, Doctor Who is a kid's show." (One of the comments on Don Bluth's forum said she knew a 5 year old kid who adored Doctor Who while she herself was often terrified by it and wondered if the kid was gonna grow up to be scarred or just react to things differently...uhhh, if he grows up scarred, he'll be no more scarred than the majority of kids raised in the UK from 1963-1989 and 2005-now. [And yes, I'm counting the old ones. If you grew up at the time, that green bubble wrap and foam and junk WAS scary, man. And they probably didn't think cybermats were as adorable as I do.])
But seriously, sometimes I look across the ocean and go "MAN the kids over here aren't having ANYWHERE NEAR AS MUCH FUN AS WE DID BEFORE and as they do now :<" watching stuff they know is supposed to scare them, get scared, and maybe phobic of angel statues or gas masks, but still talking about how awesomely scary it was at the playground. I dunno if that happens, but that's pretty much how it went down when movies like, say Jurassic Park came out when I was in second grade and we got to see it. (I loved that movie all through my childhood and watched it over and over with my dad, and now, finally, I step back, and realise...if I was raised by most modern parents, I wouldn't have gotten to see that at least till I was a teen.) But nah, we were playing with dinosaurs eating each other and our other toys, some of the toys have bits of flesh that could come off to expose a nice wound with bones visible to simulate a bite from another dinosaur...and it was awesome! We loved it! I admit I was a coward when it came to more violent, shoot-em-up type movies that the boys were all over, but that just may have been more because just watching humans killing each other was just bad while MONSTERS chasing and hurting humans was cool to watch. And most of the time we didn't want the monsters killed. :<
Again, this is my experience as a kid...which probably means I'd happily show Weeping Angels and such to kids if I got to babysit. (And...knowing most parents, when they'd find out, I could never babysit at that house again. But heck, if the kid liked it, chances are we'd make up stupid games and see who could go the longest not blinking at the other. And let's face it, in the end, those are the type of kids I tend to get along with best. XD; LET'S USE OUR IMAGINATIONS AND PLAY, BUT IT'S GONNA BE SCARY AND FUN NOT LIKE WHEN MOST KIDS ON TV USE THEIR IMAGINATIONS.)
...You can totally tell I'm writing this at 3AM, can't you?
Maybe "Legacy" is a sign I'm "scarred," because I'm writing about violence and death. ...Then again I started writing this as a teen and I was damn well old enough to know about that stuff and was pretty much already jaded as HELL not from TV, movies, or whatever, but my own life. I don't know, I'm just confused. I just know when I was a kid it was pretty much normal to like gross stuff and dark scary creepy stuff. Then again, it has already been established that at least in the case of my own parents; they're pretty cool as far as parents go. On the other hand, I remember thinking before my parents were "stricter" than the others since they didn't let me watch a lot of the shows and movies I could...I couldn't go to R rated movies and I was like the only kid in middle school who didn't watch South Park. (Which, I know realise, is more a parenting FAIL on their parents end, and I didn't even watch it because in my mind, it was those kind of shows that doomed MST3k when it was on Comedy Central. Actually, that WAS the main reason I couldn't watch it, we banned Comedy Central in our house after they canned MST3k...we were spiteful folk...now I generally just would prefer not to watch it because while I'm not classy I'm still too classy to watch South Park. >.>;;;)
I dunno. I know I probably have people who span all across the spectrum in how they were raised as a kid and how they reacted to stuff...I know conversations with several people WERE shockers in how much they were scared of stuff that everyone I grew up with loved. But is that the end result of heavy PC-ism and censorship in childhood, or something that just had to do with the kid's personality, and they just didn't like that kind of stuff in the first place? I've heard cases for both, which really makes the whole question of censoring kids stuff even more complicated, and in the end, mostly up to the parents, which is really too bad, because it doesn't seem like most parents care about telling kids about the difference between reality and fantasy and being able to gage what their kid can or cannot handle. Heck, I learned basically to tell my parents what I couldn't handle or if they decided to watch a movie I thought would be too violent or adult for me I would excuse myself-- BUT that was because I didn't want to be SCARED or CRY in FRONT of my PARENTS. Better just to leave than to allow myself to be scared by a movie in front of my parents! (One of the stories I tell all the time-- I was sick as a dog and my brother was watching me, and he put in The Land Before Time and I'm laying in bed, watching, WILLING MY SICK, ELEMENTARY SCHOOL SELF NOT TO CRY IN FRONT OF MY BROTHER because to this day I was CONVINCED he put that in JUST TO MAKE ME CRY. Well, that was me. I never cried openly even at say, MUFASA'S death when I was watching TLK with my 'rents till I was older. LIKE, TEEN-AGED. I was messed up in THAT WAY, at least I know that for sure.)
...Okay I just ran circles around my logic SO I BETTER STOP WHILE I'M AHEAD.
2AM icon, ACTIVATE!