tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156334464585894857.post7502669861507541494..comments2023-10-25T05:30:54.507-04:00Comments on Oh Get A Grip!: "The Rats in the Walls" and the nature of racismAshe Barkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03390519279886657608noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156334464585894857.post-91287038073048265712014-02-23T18:10:31.928-05:002014-02-23T18:10:31.928-05:00Ooo! Ooo! Gave me an idea!!
Thanks ladies.
Ga...Ooo! Ooo! Gave me an idea!!<br /><br />Thanks ladies.<br /><br />GarceGarceushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11160407485298015371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156334464585894857.post-22773968814142225402014-02-23T18:08:32.812-05:002014-02-23T18:08:32.812-05:00hi Lisabet!
"I think this is an excellent st...hi Lisabet!<br /><br />"I think this is an excellent starting point for a story."<br /><br />Hmn. Funny you should mention that.<br /><br />"However, I don't see this as horror. Or at least, it would be difficult to make it so. . . '<br /><br />Hmn. Let's find out. Got an idea just now.<br /><br />I think these days its very difficult to write horror that horrifies without stepping into taboos just killing children or something. Our age has been so filled with human horrors. I ask what would frighten me. I think its the ongoing low simmering fear under the surface than even the thin skin of comfort that exists over my life might suddenly be ripped away by contingency, such as a stroke, or a tornado, recently in my area a small earthquake that occurred while I slept. What if it was a big earthquake? I'd have awoken just in time to feel the ceiling come down on me. Lovecraft seemed to play with the theme of inherent madness, that you would lose your grip on reality and your own identity which is what happens at the very end of Rats in the Walls. That would be a horror also, to discover that the world you think you're living in is not the world you're living in.<br /><br />Imagine the horror these days of being a Syrian, who only a couple of years ago had a nice business, a family and a comfortable middle class life and now you're living in a tent somewhere? We can;t even imagine such a thing, but it happens.<br /><br />GarceGarceushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11160407485298015371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156334464585894857.post-27513062451435529762014-02-23T18:00:12.816-05:002014-02-23T18:00:12.816-05:00Hi Fiona!
I'm getting back to everybody so la...Hi Fiona!<br /><br />I'm getting back to everybody so late.<br /><br />It is frightening how people will find a way to dehumanize each other in order to treat them anyway they want. And if you talk to the person they'll have good explanations for every horrible thing they do. The theological speculations on that thought alone are vast.<br /><br />So much of it is about power. I suppose a lot of that dynamic goes back to sex, trying to impress women or dominate women. I read that when you see stone age hand axes, chipped from stone by cave men, they're more technically precise and beautiful than they need to be. Why? They were a status symbol, a display of prowess. In order words - trying to impress girls.<br /><br />I've written quite a bit about sexual relationships between human beings and non human objects, and I think its because I understand it and it goes back to what you were saying. Some men feel judged and found wanting by women. So they want to stop that somehow, either by violence or by interacting with a sex object that will not judge them. Say an android - or a prostitute, which is also in reality a device.<br /><br />GarceGarceushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11160407485298015371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156334464585894857.post-82652923408606191532014-02-23T17:51:36.223-05:002014-02-23T17:51:36.223-05:00Hi Daddy X!
I'm sure they bragged about it. ...Hi Daddy X!<br /><br />I'm sure they bragged about it. Almost all African Americans are of mixed blood. As a matter of fact, pregnancy was encouraged among human live stock being shipped from Africa because a woman with an infant on the way was considered two for the price of one, so women on ship board were routinely raped by the crew as one of their perks.<br /><br />I love the fact that we all carry Neanderthal genes. I'd rather think we absorbed them rather than just slaughtered them. Its interesting to wonder what their relationship was with Homo Sapiens, if it was mutually desired or an early form of slavery.<br /><br />GarceGarceushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11160407485298015371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156334464585894857.post-60102940841049624662014-02-22T01:07:37.259-05:002014-02-22T01:07:37.259-05:00Garce, you always raise such intriguing issues! Ho...Garce, you always raise such intriguing issues! Horror indeed.Jean Robertahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08805088081675965859noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156334464585894857.post-12280360044451178762014-02-21T10:08:59.659-05:002014-02-21T10:08:59.659-05:00I've long been fascinated by the changing theo...I've long been fascinated by the changing theories on the Neanderthal people, probably beginning when I read Golding's "The Inheritors" back when I was an impressionable teenager. I llke to think of them as in no way a lesser form of human, just adapted to a world changing under them. The modern day sex slave idea is intriguing; would the offspring of Neanderthal sex slaves be inevitably more and more "homo-sapienized" by the intermixing of genes, until they conformed more to the standards of attractiveness of the oppressing culture? Or would there be a deliberate breeding plan to keep them "othered" to satisfy a desire for sex outside the cultural norms? Sacchi Greenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10801164916418570059noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156334464585894857.post-4375696333739917232014-02-19T22:20:00.593-05:002014-02-19T22:20:00.593-05:00Whooee, Garce, you manage to go a long way staring...Whooee, Garce, you manage to go a long way staring at walls!<br /><br />I think this is an excellent starting point for a story. However, I don't see this as horror. Or at least, it would be difficult to make it so. These days - unlike Lovecraft's time - you'd always have the shadow of social commentary hanging over this fictional world. No matter how awful and disgusting you made the behavior of your characters, I don't think it would inspire fear - just guilt and/or moral outrage.<br /><br />Lovecraft was an innocent. He lived before the death camps and civil rights and (the label of) ethnic cleansing. We understand now about atrocities, even as we still commit them.<br /><br />Speaking of Lovecraft, the notion about genetic regression and beastly humans runs through many of his tales. I recently reread The Shadow Over Innsmouth, in which the narrator, much to his horror (really!) discovers that he has descended from this race of half-human, half-fish monsters who haunt the seas off the haunted town of Innsmouth - and that he's gradually becoming one of them.Lisabet Saraihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05162514190572269660noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156334464585894857.post-85380171881113054052014-02-19T18:43:45.740-05:002014-02-19T18:43:45.740-05:00What scares me more than anything is the extent on...What scares me more than anything is the extent one human will go to in satisfying himself (almost always men), at the expense of another. I'm reading Margaret Atwood's "Madd Addam" now, the third and final book in her dystopic future that began with "Oryx and Crake". I liked that book because it looked at what we do now in terms of bio-engineering, and took it to the nth degree. But still there are human "monsters" much more frightening than any genetically-altered beasts. Because some human men will torture and deliver pain along with gratifying themselves, and the hapless, unlucky female whom they use for their own purposes is, for all extents and purposes, not considered "human" to them that act worse than the beasts they consider themselves superior to. Awkward sentence construction alert, but when I get really riled, I forget my inner grammar teacher and just rant! And this topic always sets me off!<br /><br />Just like in Star Trek The Next Generation, when almost the first thing we learn about Data, the android, is that he's "fully functional". And in Japan they've almost perfected the android females for sale...hmm, related perhaps to the fact that Japanese females feel no need to marry anymore, now that they can support themselves? So men will turn to robots? Why not, oh, I don't know, try to discover how to relate realistically to a woman, to win her heart? Oh, right...that's too hard! Sheesh!Fiona McGierhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13495707848048468428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156334464585894857.post-1398798238764704412014-02-19T11:14:14.383-05:002014-02-19T11:14:14.383-05:00I think in the US, it was a slaveowner's right...I think in the US, it was a slaveowner's right to use his property however he wanted, but I wonder if they bragged about it. Geneticists say that many African-American families whose ancestors have been here since slave times have at least some white blood running through their veins.<br /><br />And there's a good bit of evidence that Neanderthals were absorbed into Homo Sapiens rather than gone extinct. A minority of geneticists feel the correct designation should be Home Sapiens Neanderthalensis. A friend just had one of those genealogy tests and they found Neanderthal genes, which wasn't considered at all unusual by the testing agency.Daddy Xhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12927663248424944119noreply@blogger.com