Anne Rice & Queen of the Damned Rant
I was watching the extras and deleted scenes from "Queen of the Damned" yesterday and it left me with this lingering question: why the hell does Anne Rice get so bent out of shape over fanfiction when she let filmmakers butcher the living crap out of her characters and storyline?
Seriously.
There was this one deleted scene where Marius calls out ( Read more... )
Seriously.
There was this one deleted scene where Marius calls out ( Read more... )
My one moment?
I would go to right before the massacre when they were standing on Rebel Hill waiting for their bombs to go off - before they'd actually shot anyone. Did they have second thoughts?
I would be particularly interested in seeing whether Dylan did. If so, did he speak up and have to be reassured by Eric? Or did he just keep it to himself, getting his "courage" to follow through from watching his partner in crime?
Would it have been possible for either one of them to back out at and say "I'm sorry, but I just can't go through with this?" at that point?
I would be very surprised if both boys didn't have at least a few second-thoughts about their NBK plan sometimes, but what I want to know is: when did they reach the point of no return?
The thing I find the most interesting about the Columbine massacre is that Eric and Dylan had planned to kill the vast majority of their victims via bombs going off and collapsing the ceiling in on the cafeteria. This is a very indirect method of killing people, which wouldn't require them to actually *see* most of their carnage. And picking off fleeing survivors from the hill - again, killing at a distance, probably without the victims knowing they were there until it was too late. When the bombs didn't detonate properly and the ceiling didn't collapse, they were forced to go with their half-baked Plan B, which was to just run around shooting people until they decided the time had come to end their own lives. Of the people they *did* kill, they didn't hang around the bodies long, and in several instances they had the ammo and the opportunity to kill WAY more people than they actually did. They intentionally let some people live.
Why? Were they just lost in the moment, quickly rushing from room to room on pure adrenalin without caring if they'd finished everyone off in one area before moving on to the next?
Or, maybe, just maybe, they weren't enjoying their killing spree as much as they wanted everyone to believe?
Impossible to know for sure, but my gut tells me that Eric and Dylan weren't having fun near the end.
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(Did you get my other e-mail by the way? The one i called an 'interim' e-mail? I sent it to your MSN address).
"It's far easier to go through with a plan of that magnitude with a partner than it is to fly solo, for both logical and emotional reasons."
Absolutely. It makes a world of difference. What also fascinates me is that it's so much the more unlikely that you have *2* people working together on a thing of such magnitude & to the same ends... given that people's personalities are so very different.
"Or did he just keep it to himself, getting his "courage" to follow through from watching his partner in crime?"
I wonder. Shy, less confident characters will sometimes pretend a confidence they don't feel and no-one on the outside can tell that it's feigned. (It's a psychological trick that does actually work). Dylan could have done the same thing - certainly he could have 'held it together' for the last hour or so of his life immediately prior to the shootings. And, as you point out, he had Eric to egg him on.
Also, he probably figured at that point that Eric was going to go through with it *no matter what*. That being the case, Dylan could have decided there was nothing to go back to should he, himself, back out at that particular point. He wouldn't have had Eric, for one thing, because Eric (i'm fairly certain) would've gone through with it on his own if he had to, and Dylan knew that. For another, he'd have been completely in the frame - there'd be a whole load of questions requiring answers, and there'd be no Eric to back him up. I'm guessing that, in the end, the choice was fairly clear-cut. We also know in how little regard he held his own life although it's impossible to know whether he had regrets about killing the others.
The point of no return? I don't know. Was it when they got hold of the guns? Or just before they taped their videos? For Dylan, could it have been when he made the decision not to send his love note? Although, if he was sure he was going to die, why wouldn't he have sent the note anyway? Her rejection would've given him the more reason to end his life. I can't help feeling he'd never have gone through with it if he'd had his love reciprocated. That was the only thing he could conceive of that would make his life better. It could have redeemed him, i think. It could have pulled him back from the brink.
I feel i can get into Dylan's head a lot easier than i can Eric's. But, for that reason, i find Eric the more fascinating. Because his mindset is so 'out there', and i really can't grasp it. I can empathise with Dylan to an extent, but with Eric i have a more voyeuristic thing going on, because i really *don't* understand him, and i feel i never will. Oh hell, they *both* fascinate me to bits. What are your feelings on this?
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"The thing I find the most interesting about the Columbine massacre is that Eric and Dylan had planned to kill the vast majority of their victims via bombs going off and collapsing the ceiling in on the cafeteria."
Yes and i find it really irritating that even now people persist in saying that they 'targeted' their victims when they obviously didn't, they were going for 'numbers'. You raise a very interesting point here and one i hadn't thought about. Initially i went with the idea that they were playing god and letting people live because they could. I now wonder how they really felt about killing at such close range? It wasn't what they'd intended, after all, and i wonder how prepared they were. I know they carried knives, but even so... I wonder if they'd really considered how it would feel to be in such close range of their victims, ie, face-to face. It was a *completely* different scenario to the one they'd envisaged. Maybe after the adrenalin rush wore off they just couldn't do it any more. Seeing the faces of their victims - that isn't what they thought they'd be doing when they planned the thing out. (And now i need to go away and think about this some more).
"Or, maybe, just maybe, they weren't enjoying their killing spree as much as they wanted everyone to believe?"
Quite likely. I recall one of the killers yelled out, "this is awesome! This is what we always wanted to do!" That has always sounded rather forced, to me. As though someone is trying to convince himself that he's really having a great time, (honest!) shooting up all those people. Adrenaline will only take one so far before it burns itself out. And then, my god, enjoyment was possibly very far from their minds. It's almost unbearable to contemplate their thought processes at that time.
Thank you so much for giving me your opinions. More questions on the way!
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