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teawizard · 6 months

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Okaaaay! 'Week 2' of @encanto-extended-edition event!

Relationships...... (warning: a lot of words, I feel like I am coming up with the stuff on the go, but some pictures too! So please at least have a look at them!)

I am slowly reimagining Daniela's whole narrative and I want to focus on her having the time of her life :)

So, I thought that making her a part of a small chaotic friend group would be fun!

Daniela (left) and Dioselina (middle) are close neighbours, really old childhood friends and are really passionate about art, acting out their favourite books, etc. Bruno joins the group later.

Dioselina

Dioselina is a really huge support for Daniela. She lives on a farm and is used to manual labour from when she was little. Due to an accident, she loses her right arm but is still insistent on helping her parents and siblings. She is kind of stoic and brave, sociable and very confident. Dioselina is like a 'straight one' of the group, the voice of reason. She is more inclined to music than other art, but because she lost her right arm, she is not capable of playing musical instruments and is left (😉) with singing which she does really well.

Her deal with Daniela is that Daniela is 'the creative and crazy one'. As they are close friends, Daniela is comfortable to be her curious and impulsive self around Selina. They really enjoy talking with each other, they have the same sense of humour. And Selina keeps Daniela out of trouble :)

Bruno

Bruno is introduced to Daniela by Dioselina. One day Selina went to him for a vision, than he almost had a breakdown because it was the third vision that had to do with the agriculture that day. Selina felt sorry for him and asked about the familiar book she'd seen on the shelf when she'd entered the room. They talked a bit and she left. She starts to visit him, they talk about the book and they get close really fast.

Bruno isn't really shy at this age. He is adventurous and gets really irritated that he has to do visions for everyone everyday (because they are good visions mostly). He has some friends at school, but most of them think he is weird, because he can infodump about books or future for hours and has no filter, so he sometimes says a lot of disturbing shit. His sisters love him and defend him against bullies, but they have too much responsibility. They skip school a lot and don't really share his interests.

So, when he meets the girls, he is over the moon. They share his interests, they listen to his rambles and come up with scenarios even crazier than he saw in the future 'movies' (whatever that means) and they don't 'censor' him. Of course, it takes time for Daniela to warm up to him, but she does eventually.

The group

As a group they are a menace really. Bruno is usually the one that initiates 'the troubles', Daniela supports him and makes it more unhinged and Dioselina is here to look at those idiots fail and then help them.

At first, they try to prevent Bruno's visions from coming true. As an experiment they try to not let old Señora Sevanna's favourite apple tree fall but they unknowingly trigger said vision and end up in trouble.

As Bruno is overly righteous, after some not good people asking for his vision, he asks the girls multiple times to help him take revenge. Daniela usually gets really agitated and they come up with a thousand plans to kill the guy, but Dioselina reasons with them and they instead steal his chicken or trick him into thinking his barn is haunted.

Also, I thought, one time, they try to make Bruno more popular. They fake some of his visions, Dioselina gossips around town that she had heard only good things from him, because his limit of good news is one vision a day, but it ends in the whole town standing in line and fighting to get Bruno's vision first.

With time they become less interested in the shenanigans. They gossip about their respective sisters and brothers, their friends from school, discuss their future. Daniela is the one that brings up 'adult stuff' on the group meetings. She hangs out with her brother and sister's friends sometimes and also found a dirty book in her siblings' room, though she doesn't know who it belongs to.

SO being high on the hormones and her mother disapproving her friendship with Bruno, they start a relationship, which ends fast. They aren't exactly ready for marriage (they are 16 and 18 come on), and Daniela doesn't want even to kiss Bruno. They decide to be friends, but after a year or two he falls in love with her and is low key miserable.

(a first version of their group 'photo' in their 20-ies)

(a second one, which is accidentally a Modern AU and look! they wear each other's colors!)

Okay, when they are 20-ish they still hang out. They love playing little pranks, but generally they have their own struggles and really miss hanging out every day.

Bruno gives more bad visions with time and becomes more of a recluse. He still goes to town, sometimes they meet with Dioselina, he visits Daniela's workplaces (sometimes accidentally, sometimes on purpose). The girls are worried about him and try to cheer him up. In public spaces he is shunned and Bruno is very uncomfortable, even more when Daniela is almost screaming at people for being jerks and Dioselina tries to shut her up. In private Dioselina and Daniela end up having conversations that Bruno can't contribute to and he gets frustrated and leaves. The girls try to make things better by making the town not that feared of Bruno again, but fail. Bruno is hurt that he is a-

Oh no, it is sad again. Soooo, let's end here, before it becomes worse :)

#teawizard art #encanto oc #encanto oc event #oc: daniela #oc: dioselina #I don't really want to dive into Daniela's relationship with her mother #and her siblings #I am still struggling to make Daniela a compelling character #I always bump into her being everything and nothing at the same time and I am really afraid to make her too contradictory??#I don't know how to say this #and as much as I like writing these posts and letting my imagination run wild #my perfectionism is making me go 'oh no I need to write about every minor thing happening to them so that I know the characters soooo well-#-that I can write a perfectly believable story and their motivations would make sense #but I'm like #not sure of my own motivations most of the time #so I guess I should just do things instead of tormenting myself about needing to plan everything through #thanks for coming to my ted talk #and I wish you the best day ever

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miscellaneous-obsession · 3 years

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Hi, I'm not sure if you do requests but I came across your ongoing fic about Alcina Dimitrescu and the maiden. I was wondering if you could write an angst piece about the family involving Ethan Winters and him carrying out his mission in the castle (as hinted during gameplay)? You can make it as sad and gory as you want!

Ah thank you for the ask, I really tried to go all out with the piece! Also please note this was written before canon details of the girl's weakness was revealed.

The Inevitable

Warnings: Graphic violence, death of main characters, implied suicide, details of injury and blood, use of blades and guns and not suitable for minors.

Anguish consumed her entire being as sobs were ripped from her throat, each more violent than the last. Her chest heaved, becoming more breathless as tears relentlessly trailed down her cheeks, falling only to land on the creamy expanse of Alcina's dress.

Being the last to have turned, Ethan presumed her mortal connections of humanity lingered longer than most. The emotional intensity of the scene that unfolded before him forced him to avert his gaze as guilt threatened to tear through his heart. He was the cause of such destruction; he had laid waste, bringing about the death of a family in reparation and retaliation for the loss of his own.

He called them monsters, but there was always a chance he was wrong. Was it he who was becoming the villain of the story?

Forcing himself to face the consequences of his actions, his stomach turned. Recalling the events that led him to believe that the brunette was the first he had slaughtered. She had walked into the hall unsuspecting of the company hovering above on the bannister, perched in wait, ready to leap onto her frame. Unable to swarm and seek help from her sisters, Ethan had plunged a blade through the skin and muscle of her neck with such force even the crunch of bone and cartilage echoed alongside a gurgled scream. Her eyes had widened, arms flailing helplessly as her mind continued to fight, hoping that this was not her untimely end.

"Cassandra," the cry of her name rang throughout the expansive room and with force, Ethan was flung from his position over the fading woman. The redhead looked torn; anger and sorrow clashed together like waves against a cliff. Her bottom lip trembled as tears threatened to spill over with the force she blinked, a truly futile effort to contain them.

"You can't go, Cassie; who will I bicker with?"

Ethan had recovered by then, his heart aching with a drop of adrenaline as these sisters were forced to part, separated by planes of existence by his actions. The brunette now lay lifeless in a pool of her own blood, cradled by whom he knew to be Daniela. The very same redhead remained unguarded, vulnerable, and against his better judgement, he retrieved his gun. Solely focused on Cassandra's corpse, Daniela had less than a second to react as she unsheathed her sickle, refracting the bullet, so it embedded within wooden panelling rather than her head.

"You bastard," with sloppy movements, she swung the blade that remained coated in her previous victim's blood. Advancing with ferocity, Ethan was compelled to retreat; his steps backward created a minute distance only to be quickly eliminated by Daniela's persistence. With both knife and gun in hand, Ethan continued to parry, deflecting potentially lethal blows, waiting patiently for an opening.

Two sounds followed in succession, first a second shot of the gun, then the thud of a fallen body. Not far from her elder sister lay Daniela, her body shaking as she slid across the marbled floor leaving behind an abhorrent bloody trail in her wake. Her effort was not in vain as she curled into Cassandra's now cooling body, hoping for a semblance of comfort in the absence of her mothers and only remaining sister.

Seconds later, the matriarch's wife stormed in, her fury no less palpable than her youngest’s. "No," her voice was soft as disbelief seeped in; ignoring the direct threat before her, she came to her daughter's side. The redhead forced a smile, hoping to alleviate the distress that crossed her mama's face.

"Mama," that sole word was enough for the maiden to hush the girl who she pecked on her forehead.

"Relax, Dani, you did so well, my darling. I am proud, so proud."

The slight smile, still as toothy as ever, cracked the maiden's heart, knowing it would be the last she caught from her daughter.

"Cassandra will be waiting, so do not fear, for you won't be alone."

The comfort Daniela sought was given in tenfold as always, and as she closed her two-toned eyes for the final time, she was only aware of her mama's delicate fingers carding through her hair.

Much like her daughter, who had just passed, the blonde could not contain her pain at the sight of her deceased children. Although before Ethan could act, the two remaining ladies of the house emerged, summoned by the ruckus he was responsible for.

Bela surged forward after a single glance to her younger sisters; her protective nature had not dulled even in their deaths. On the other hand, Alcina flew to her wife's side, sharing in the grief that constricted their unbeating hearts. Never had she thought that a single man could enact such damage.

Bela was relentless, her anger conforming to her will and an advantage as she slashed with precision. Her blade getting too close for comfort for Ethan's liking, but he was prepared. Blocking and countering with his own attacks saw the blonde thrown off-kilter, her movements becoming sluggish as she expended her energy far too much over the course of the evening.

Observing her daughters struggles, Alcina moved to step in, only to be too late as Ethan used Bela's momentum against her. With her sickle wedged within the hearth of the fireplace, unable to rip it out in time, both blade and bullets penetrated her unprotected abdomen. The inhuman cry from Alcina sent Ethan staggering as she pulled Bela into her embrace, coaxing and pleading for her to stay awake. Quickly cream became crimson within seconds but was ignored in favour of re-joining her wife. Held safely in her mother's arms brought Bela a semblance of peace; she desperately wanted to stay but knew there was nothing to fear anymore, for she had her sisters to join.

"I'm sorry, mother, mama," she looked to them in turn as she spoke their favoured terms of endearment, eyes fluttering with each movement.

"Nonsense dragă mea, you were perfect."

A small nod from the maiden confirmed Alcina's statement, confident that her daughter had succeeded. "Rest Bela," was the last thing the blonde heard as she slipped into an endless sleep, still held and cradled in the soothing caress that her mothers provided.

Only when they were sure did they let go, allowing Bela to lay by her sisters, placed with such delicacy it surprised Ethan. Only two to go; it was a thought that crossed his mind as both women stood, bodies stiff and ready to pounce as though they were predators and he was their prey.

Both matriarch and her wife were riddled with injuries by the end of the fight, Alcina more so as she had taken blows in an effort to save her beloved. Foolishly it was this notion, her own sentimentality, that brought about her end. Having collapsed her wife catching her with practised ease, Alcina was held against the blonde's chest. With an urgent need to convey her love, Alcina forced herself upright, seeking the lips of her maiden. Granting one of her last requests, her beloved closed the distance, savouring what would be the final kiss in which the matriarch would or could reciprocate. A hand rose to Alcina's cheek as she came to rest her head in the column of her wife's neck, fingers tracing skin with unparalleled tenderness. Ethan's own heart ached, he had lost his wife, his Mia, and he was the reason his ancestor was losing her own.

"I'll be with you soon, my love; I promise even death won't separate us."

Alcina hummed, although not in disagreement; she too did not want to be parted in the afterlife. "You are mine dragă mea."

"I am yours just as you are mine; that will never change."

Smoothing out tangled curls, the maiden pressed a gentle kiss to the crown of her wife's head. Seconds later, Alcina's chest stilled and only then did the final Dimitrescu shed her tears, leading to the scene Ethan saw before him.

"Where is my daughter?"

No success, her sobs continued to wrack her body, oblivious to the man's question as she pressed her face into the top of her wife's head.

"Where is Rose?"

He demanded louder each time, growing more frustrated with a lack of results he had hoped to achieve from this massacre. Eventually, without any patience left, he drew closer, his footfalls treading carefully across stained floors. Extending an arm, allowing a hand to come into contact with the blonde’s shoulder, snapped the maiden’s attention to the man who murdered her family, her innate fear of being removed from her beloved squashed upon meeting his bitter gaze.

"Why would I tell you anything, Ethan Winters?"

For once, he had no response, but she filled the silence with her resentful tone, despite her wavering voice and quivering lip. "You hold no more bargaining chips. You played your cards much too early. How foolish a man to have made such avoidable mistakes."

He scoffed as if to refute her statement; despite all of the stacking evidence that she was right, some small part of his mind refused to acknowledge or toy with the concept that she was wrong.

"You want a daughter you will not find; I will not divulge a secret of which I was entrusted with. For you killed my daughters, my wife, my everything. Nothing you can say or do could repair or undo the damage you have caused. You will leave here knowing you have failed."

With that said, the maiden prepared for the inevitable, for Ethan's weapons to end her life much like he had the other four Dimitrescu's at her refusal to share what information he desired. Holding her wife tighter and an arm resting across her daughters, she waited. But the blow nor bullet she anticipated came, leaving a hollow, empty sensation festering in her chest.

"I won't kill you until I leave with what I came for."

"Unfortunately for you, that is the opposite of what will happen."

Before Ethan could stop her, she grabbed her youngest’s discarded sickle, and for all to hear, she said aloud, "In life and in death, glory to Mother Miranda." The weapon was swung with force, finalising the end of the Dimitrescu household, allowing the last member to come to rest, still clutching her wife's body with a loosened grip.

Ethan had failed.

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Only hours later, without hearing from his sister, did Heisenberg approach the castle. Lacking his lycans or other substantial back up he entered silently, aware of the games that may be ongoing. He did not want to spoil his niece's fun.

Entering the hall brought about a shock; in the light of the fires dying embers lay those who he had called his family. Untouched from the fight, Daniela was held between her sisters, flanked on either side, just as she had adored as a child. Alcina was to their right, body held by her wife, who distinctly lacked the sickle once embedded in her skin. The very weapon was strewn to the side, still marred by her blood. Those emerald eyes Alcina adored to talk of were now closed in respect, an unforeseen gesture carried out by none other than the man who wreaked such havoc before having absconded. The matriarch's wife had her arm extended, albeit stiff with rigour mortis, across the girls, forever comforting them in a maternal gesture.

Never did Karl anticipate an ending like this, although he was only thankful for their departure together, for they remained a family even in their time of death.

But for now, it was time to inform Mother Miranda of their demise.

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monochrome-in-madness · 3 years

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My Top 10 Favourite Horrors

Within this top 10 list, some will include the prequels, sequels and any other follow ups as 1 ranking number. Some may be considered thriller, sci-fi, suspence etc, however, I do regard these as horrors myself.

I have take many aspects into account, such as videography, actor quality, SFX makeup quality, soundtrack, directors, CGI etc.

Note : this is my personal opinion. You do not have to agree with it, though if you haven't seen these, I highly reccomend them.

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1. The Conjuring

(1 & 2)

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The Conjuring 1 :

The Perron family moves into a farmhouse where they experience paranormal phenomena. They consult demonologists, Ed and Lorraine Warren, to help them get rid of the evil entity haunting them.

The Conjuring Trailer :

youtube

The Conjuring 2 :

Peggy, a single mother of four children, seeks the help of occult investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren when she and her children witness strange, paranormal events in their house

The Conjuring 2 Trailer :

youtube

My Opinion :

The Conjuring was the start of an incredible series of horrors that beat any other horror to the ground. It is absolutely fantastic and I basically worship these films. James Wan is my favourite director and he never ceases to amaze me.

Paranormal horror is my favourite and as someone who actually believes in the paranormal and who has had paranormal experiences, I can confirm that The Conjuring is much more realistic than any other paranormal films, which just makes it extra spooky.

The actors, camera angles, music, sfx makeup and storyline is just - chefs kiss -. I've been waiting for the 3rd one for so long, but they keep extending the release date. (R. I. P)

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2. Annabelle

(all of them)

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Annabelle :

John and Mia Form are attacked by a Satan worshipping couple, who uses their doll as a conduit to make their life miserable. This unleashes a string of paranormal events in the Forms' residence.

Annabelle Trailer :

youtube

Annabelle Creation :

Samuel and Elle embed their daughter's spirit into a doll, only to realise it is a demon. Years later, they open their home to a nun and six orphan girls, one of whom finds the doll.

Annabelle Creation Trailer :

youtube

Annabelle Comes Home :

Judy and her babysitter are left alone in her house after her parents leave to investigate a case. However, an unexpected guest sets Annabelle free, unleashing demonic activity in the house.

Annabelle Comes Home Trailer :

youtube

My Opinion :

Another great film series that was birthed form The Conjuring. Definitely less realistic, with many more jumpscares and spooky characters, which is appreciated in the horror world. Many people find dolls far more creepy than ghosts, myself included, so that's another perfect aspect that adds to the suspense.

I prefer Annabelle 3 over the others, mainly because I found that one to be more scary overall, even though Daniela is an idiot and she makes me so frustrated 😂

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3. Saw

(all of them)

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For the totally unindoctrinated, the Saw movie franchise revolves around the Jigsaw Killer (a.k.a. John Kramer), who tortures victims he believes are complacent or guilty, in order to make them appreciate their time on Earth.

All Saw Trailers :

youtube

Obviously I'm not going to list every Saw movie, because there are 7 (Jigsaw aka number 8, does NOT count. It is a disgrace).

My Opinion :

A classic for horror and gore lovers of all kinds. Of course I need to list this as number 3. I simply adore these movies. I even have the DVD set, so I am definitely a long term fan haha.

The obstacles and creativity regarding Saw as a whole needed a lot of thought put into it, plus it has a happy little side note of "make sure you don't cause harm to others in life and don't take anything for granted" which some may have not even noticed while being overwhelmed by the amount of fake blood.

Yes, a lot of characters are annoying, but that just makes us enjoy seeing them tortured even more (shh it's not real). Some of the blood doesn't look very realistic, the sfx can lack attention, BUT... It's still great and I can overlook these few flaws to appreciate the movies to the max.

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4. Blair Witch

(2016)

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A young man and his friends venture into the Black Hills Forest in Maryland to uncover the mystery surrounding his missing sister. Many believe her disappearance 17 years earlier is connected to the legend of the Blair Witch.

At first the group is hopeful, especially when two locals act as guides through the dark and winding woods. As the night wears on, a visit from a menacing presence soon makes them realize that the legend is all too real, and more sinister than they could have ever imagined.

Blair Witch Trailer :

youtube

My Opinion :

I love the camerawork. Not because it's perfect, because it's the opposite. It's a documentary style and this makes it feel more realistic, as if you are within the film yourself. I enjoy how they skip to the action at just the right time after a mild buildup.

The visuals are great as well and there were definitely some parts where I was disgusted and claustrophobic, which is good to experience while enjoying these types of films.

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5. Under The Skin

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Disguising itself as a human female, an extraterrestrial drives around Scotland attempting to lure unsuspecting men into her van. Once there, she seduces and sends them into another dimension where they are nothing more than meat.

Under The Skin Trailer :

youtube

My Opinion :

I would classify this as horror, but many won't. Either way, this is an amazingly artistic film with beautiful imagery and silent awe. It definitely makes you feel the suspense in a calming manner and it has some really dark moments. Without reading the description, one might be confused as to what is going on, but how art is supposed to be interpretated is by the imagination of individuals.

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6. Veronica

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During a solar eclipse, young Verónica and her friends want to summon the spirit of Verónica's father using an Ouija board. However, during the session she loses consciousness and soon it becomes clear that evil demons have arrived.

Veronica Trailer :

youtube

My Opinion :

A Spanish masterpiece, to put it simply. It's hard to find proper horrors like this in English. I really enjoyed this one and I watched it subbed not dubbed, because I feel like voiceovers tend to ruin the art of the original film. The buildup is perfect and unlike many horrors, it barely shows you the face of the "monster". That leaves it to the imagination, which in general makes it far more scary.

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7. Underwater

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Disaster strikes more than six miles below the ocean surface when water crashes through the walls of a drilling station. Led by their captain, the survivors realize that their only hope is to walk across the sea floor to reach the main part of the facility. But they soon find themselves in a fight for their lives when they come under attack from mysterious and deadly creatures that no one has ever seen.

Underwater Trailer :

youtube

My Opinion :

This movie was released quite recently and I didn't know what to expect. I was definitely blown away by how good it was. Being trapped underwater gives most people a sense of anxiety. Add being trapped underwater and being hunted by creepy sea monsters and you've got yourself a good horror. Kristen Stewarts general anxious personality definitely suits this film well.

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8. Split

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Kevin, who is suffering from dissociative identity disorder and has 23 alter egos, kidnaps three teenagers. They must figure out his friendly personas before he unleashes his 24th personality.

Split Trailer :

https://youtu.be/84TouqfIsiI

My Opinion :

An incredible film with phenomenal acting on the part of James McAvoy. You can get lost within his character and almost feel as if you are the character itself. Suspense is built up slowly and the climax of the film is released rapidly. People I know who do not enjoy horror, love this film themselves, which is saying something. It's definitely one of the best modern films that draws you in from the start.

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9. A Quiet Place

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A family struggles for survival in a world where most humans have been killed by blind but noise-sensitive creatures. They are forced to communicate in sign language to keep the creatures at bay.

A Quiet Place Trailer :

https://youtu.be/WR7cc5t7tv8

My Opinion :

As you can tell by now, I love anything alien related. This film has some of the most amazing looking aliens I've seen, I was honestly in awe by how great they looked. Another silent film, but in a different sense to the previous one. Instead of being the hunter, this family is being hunted and this adds more to the fear factor.

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10. Unfriended - Dark Web

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When a teen finds a laptop with a cache of hidden files, he and his friend discover that the previous owner has access to the dark web and is watching over them.

Unfriended - Dark Web Trailer :

https://youtu.be/XenTM_C9fxM

My Opinion :

A modern take on horror. Involving the actual dangers of the dark web and the use of technology and turning it into a horror was a magnificent idea. It definitely had me at the edge of my seat.

Due to another film type that is not often explored (thus being that most of the movie is equal to what it would be like to look at your computer and video chat), it makes it different and therefore more compelling than the usual videography styles.

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Thank you for reading, if you've made it this far! Feel free to share your top 10 in the comment section, I am definitely interested in your opinions and finding new movies to watch myself. Any questions are also welcome.

Until next time, take care and stay spooky!

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10 notes · View notes

vinayv224 · 6 years

Link

And the rest of the week’s best writing on books and related subjects.

Welcome to Vox’s weekly book link roundup, a curated selection of the internet’s best writing on books and related subjects. Here’s the best the web has to offer for the week of September 2, 2018.

In the ’70s, 53-year-old J.D. Salinger invited the teenage Joyce Maynard to come live with him. Maynard’s eventual memoir of their relationship, At Home in the World, was roundly trashed, and Maynard herself was held up as an example of a shameless woman trying to shame a brilliant man. At Jezebel, Frida Garza reevaluates Maynard’s legacy:

At Home is a disarming and up-close recollection of how Salinger, then 53, poised himself as an intellectual ally and confidante to an 18-year-old girl who felt excluded from her peers. (According to Maynard, her essay only furthered her alienation from her classmates, who began to see her as a hack.) She recounts how she cut almost everyone out of her life to be with him; how he won her trust and wooed her parents. When Salinger invited Maynard to spend the weekend with him in Cornish, New Hampshire, a former English teacher from Exeter Academy agreed to drive her. On the way, “he says nothing to indicate that there might be something worrisome about this visit I’m making,” Maynard wrote 40 years later in At Home.

I will always stan for Elizabeth Gaskell, the Victorian novelist who was friends with Dickens and Charlotte Brontë but has long been treated as a staid and matronly also-ran in the Victorian canon. (Look, is the prose in North and South brilliant? No. Is that book nevertheless immensely satisfying, and does its critique of classical liberalism still have merit? Hard yes.) So I am very here for Hannah Rosefield’s examination of her novels at the New Yorker:

I suspect that the comparative lack of generosity with which time, fashion, and progress have treated Gaskell has at least as much to do with her stuffy image as with her work, which has its own admirable qualities. She was more versatile than many of her casual readers realize: alongside her better-known realist novels, she wrote ghost stories, historical fiction, and the first biography of Charlotte Brontë. “Cranford,” a collection of stories set in the titular village, and the novella “My Lady Ludlow” both imagine a world almost entirely inhabited by women. Unlike Eliot and the Brontë sisters, who often set their novels in the past, Gaskell was, in her early works, at least, fiercely and explicitly concerned with the present and its problems.

Also at the New Yorker, Brian Phillips remembers the magic of half-forgotten children’s author Joan Aiken:

Aiken wrote more than a hundred novels over the course of her long career, and many of them manage something like this transformation. An absurd premise (we live on a bus; the Glorious Revolution never happened; a queen claims that her lake has been stolen) is treated with deadpan seriousness, allowing its latent magical possibilities to emerge in an atmosphere that’s half ironic, half enchanted — or, rather, in an atmosphere that’s entirely ironic and entirely enchanted, at the same time.

For the New York Times Magazine’s Letter of Recommendation, Elisa Gabbert recommends the shelf of recent returns at your local library:

When I pick the books up, a part of me expects them to be warm, like a just-vacated seat. They often still contain the life detritus of the last person to open them: makeshift bookmarks, boarding passes or receipts; oil stains or flecks of melted chocolate or even blood; an eyelash. Sometimes the books make me itchy, and I know the last borrower owns a dog. Sometimes there are clusters of related books that must have been checked out by the same patron. It’s like getting to look at someone’s night stand, but whose? The shelf is everyone’s night stand, an average of night stands.

At LitHub, Shaun Bythell delves into the details of opening his Scottish bookshop:

When I first saw The Book Shop in Wigtown I was 18 years old, back in my home town and about to leave for university. I clearly remember walking past it with a friend and commenting that I was quite certain that it would be closed within the year. Twelve years later, while visiting my parents at Christmastime, I called in to see if they had a copy of Three Fevers in stock, by Leo Walmsley, and while I was talking to the owner, admitted to him that I was struggling to find a job I enjoyed. He suggested that I buy his shop since he was keen to retire. When I told him that I didn’t have any money, he replied, “You don’t need money — what do you think banks are for?”

Also at LitHub, Evan Fallenberg sings the praises of the epistolary novel:

Even more important and more attractive is the manipulation involved in letter-writing, the filtering of events for another reader or readers that naturally takes place. Our interest as readers is piqued when there is some discrepancy between what we know to be true and the letter-writer’s presentation of these facts. Expressed otherwise, it is the dichotomy between how a person perceives herself, what she aims to project to the world, and what the rest of us see: the style of her writing, what she chooses to tell or leave out, the tone. A good writer manages to let that character’s personality present its true self to the reader even when the letter-writer herself wishes to hide parts of her being from the world.

In a compelling counterargument to the standard “fiction is about empathy” line, Kanta Dihal makes the case at Aeon that our stories actually prove that we are very bad at putting ourselves in other people’s shoes:

I am a literature scholar. Over thousands of years of literary history, authors have tried and failed to convey an understanding of Others (with a capital ‘O’). Writing fiction is an exercise that stretches an author’s imagination to its limits. And fiction shows us, again and again, that our capacity to imagine other minds is extremely limited.

It took feminism and postcolonialism to point out that writers were systematically misrepresenting characters who weren’t like them. Male authors, it seems, still struggle to present convincing female characters a lot of the time. The same problem surfaces again when writers try to introduce a figure with a different ethnicity to their own, and fail spectacularly.

At Vice’s Garage Magazine, Her Body and Other Parties author Carmen Maria Machado riffs on the four favorite models of Yves Saint Laurent:

This is Daniela’s theory: She is immortal and has cycled through many existences. She does not tell anyone, for fear that they will disbelieve her, test her, or hang her for witchcraft. When she was a teenager, a palmist took up her hand at a fair and after a moment of scrutinizing slapped it away as though it was on fire. Daniela tried to get her to explain, but the woman refused, and after that Daniela began to have dreams: She was the handmaid of a queen of an ancient nation; she carried lilies for her mistress’ late husband after his heart stopped in Bangkok; she modeled for a minor Flemish painter.

Meanwhile, here’s a rundown of the week in books at Vox:

I didn’t read Harry Potter when I was growing up. And I wasn’t alone.

Gary Shteyngart on his new book, which explores the self-delusion of Wall Street bankers

How The Little Stranger uses its ghost story to mask a study in toxic masculinity

A history of happiness explains why capitalism makes us feel empty inside

As always, you can keep up with Vox’s book coverage by visiting vox.com/books. Happy reading!

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