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#childhood fears
pratchettquotes · 11 months
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Victor remembered being frightened of tigers when he was young. In vain did people point out that the nearest tiger was three thousand miles away. He'd say, "Is there any sea between where they live and here?" and people would say, "Well, no, but--" and he'd say, "Then it's just a matter of distance."
Darkness was the same thing. All dreadful dark places were connected by the nature of darkness itself. Darkness was everywhere, all the time, just waiting for the lights to go out.
Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures
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velociraptoraddict · 9 months
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beehindblueeyes · 1 year
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The Grabber is the embodiment of childhood fear in the 70’s
Finally got to reading the fangoria article and it is everything actually. It’s a mixed interview conversation that they got the text of and this will be the first of a few of my posts on it sharing the highlights and going in depth about them.
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The grabber is fear itself. He’s sort of like Michael Myers, in that he’s a very real figure within the story who plays into that fear. How they’re the boogeyman or that fear that someone, something is out there and going to get you. I adore how their goal wasn’t to be in that role but it’s assigned to them via the characters in the movie- they’re killers independently but also fit the role of you get what I mean?
The grabber is that fear every kid has. Especially in the 70s at the beginning of the serial killer spike in America where the fear is constant someone is going to get you. But he’s a real person. A real child predator/killer who just so happens to come when finney is the most scared/the one to amplify and make that fear very real and justified since it’s happening in his own community. To himself maybe he’s just a small time passion killer but he’s inadvertently playing into that bigger role? Everything everything everything! The writing! In this movie, the thoughts of the people behind it- I could kiss them!
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It’s also playing into the fact that serial killers are sensationalized beginning with their first news stories while still active. Nameless. Faceless. Boogeymen. Ghost stories. Something to scare your friends with “he’s gonna get you!” (Stealing from Halloween 1978 there) we see this with Gwen and Finney’s convention.
Hhhhhh. However credit where credit is due at least Michael doesn’t touch and kill kids 🤷‍♀️ a wins a win I guess. I honestly didn’t think I could compare the two much before reading this and honestly it works so fucking well.
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tv-head-enthusiast · 1 month
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i watched the the music video for weird al’s jurassic park when i was like, 4 or something made me scared of barney
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talefoundryshow · 6 months
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It’s easy to recognize the liminality of spaces like hotel hallways and empty shopping malls. But childhood is also liminal—the transitional stage between infancy and adulthood. You can’t go back and relive it, but you can certainly experience nostalgia… even when it’s nostalgia elicited by the fears you thought you left behind.
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spookcataloger · 7 months
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There's Something on the Stairs
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king-k-ripple · 8 months
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chaos-self · 1 year
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You aren't scared of the Night and her Darkness, my child. You are scared that she is being taken advantage of by other entities. Shadows, slowly moving over your room, sounds sending shivers down your spine. These creatures take advantage of the Night, use her to camouflage themselves.
The Night and her lover, the Darkness, are neither evil nor good. You aren't scared of the Night herself, just of the shadows and scary sounds using her. And her being used like that, just because she's neutral ground, that my child, is a sad thing.
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pumpkinfreak · 3 months
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Media That Haunted Me as a Child
We're going to start strong.
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The Face stealing spirit from Airbender. This thing can eat my shorts, why did they make it a millipede, that's too many legs. The face-stealing bit really just elevates the horror of the legs.
I rate it a: "I will pee myself if you touch me!"/10
2. The bitchy owl, also from Airbender
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This bird was bad. Why did it unfurl its neck like Satan's slinky? I hated that as a kid, and I still hate it now.
I rate it: Long Furby makes me cry/10
3. Nosferatu from the Hash Slinging Slasher
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Nickelodeon and I, have beef, okay. I would hide from the TV every time this episode aired. Really the whole episode would make me anxious, but this clip art bastard at the end... I'm still mad about it.
I rate it: Just cook me into a patty instead/10
4. Jumpscare butterfly
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Why are they all Nickelodeon! I did not plan it this way, I swear. This is the production company from Hell. I just wanted to watch cartoons, why was I punished!
I rate it: Nickelodeon's Day of Play spared us only momentarily from the constant torment it inflicted/10
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marvelmaniac715 · 3 months
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You wouldn’t even believe the reason why I was scared of the dark as a kid and still have a starlight projector to this day (after having a nightlight shaped like a purple globe):
I went to a Christmas party as a kid and there was a really bad magician. One of his tricks was making SpongeBob appear from a black fabric, and for some reason that scared me. I genuinely believed that SpongeBob was going to enter my room at night. Don’t even get me started on the life sized cardboard cutout of Liam Payne that my sister had (we shared a room) which I was terrified would come alive and start singing in the night 😭
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artsinmamouf · 5 months
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When I was a kid, I was absolutely TERRIFIED of the concept of space. Not for any sort of rational or existential reason. I was afraid of space because that's where the aliens were. I have a memory of standing on a golf course when I was like eight and looking up at the sky, I realized it was a dome and started quietly panicking.
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Artist's rendition ^^^
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Real talk, it was such an odd thing, reading about Hades and Persephone for the first time as like, an eight-year-old. A man kidnaps a girl, and also forces her to be his wife? How awful! And her mother is so sad and angry that winter happens? But in the end she doesn't really rescue her daughter, she only gets her back for part of the year.
In my mind, the bad guy had kinda won, which wasn't supposed to happen. And in my mind it corroborated the stranger-danger warnings my mother had already been giving me since I was old enough to understand them.
And then you get older, and you'll see peers adapting it to a romantic fantasy, and you get used to seeing it retold in more consensual ways. Persephone elopes with a man because she's a powerful woman who knows what she wants
But in the back of my mind, I always remembered that odd, twisty feeling in my stomach, that kind of hide-behind-your-mother, hold-her-hand-tight fear
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ahedderick · 8 months
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Junebug
I was intensely fearful as a little kid. I remember being so terribly scared of bedtime. Things under the bed, things in the closet - but the worst was the Things clawing at the window screens trying to get in. Because the WERE things clawing at the window screens trying to get in! In vain did my parents try to reassure me that it was just junebugs. It was junebugs. I knew it was junebugs. The fact that honking-big beetles were outside the window trying to get in did not reassure me! The combination of aluminum screening and large bugs made an dramatically creepy twanging noises.
Fast-forward thirty or thirty-five years. My kids were . . well, so very normal. Normal childhood fears, but always easy to soothe, never over-the-top like I was. (Gosh, I wonder why?) And at some point I realized - there were no junebugs at the windows? Obviously junebugs are still around; I would see them if I was out in the garden at dusk, they circle around the porch light if it's on. We certainly have our windows open at night with screens to let cool air in and keep bugs out. The junebugs, though, were no longer pinging off the screens or crawling across them, attempting to get inside.
It was kind of baffling to me. I know my childhood memory is accurate because my mother mentioned it when I was older, so she remembered it, too. What was UP with that house I grew up in? Why do junebugs stay properly outside, now, and never try to come in? It's a mystery. But I'm (shudder!) very glad I no longer have to hear them in the night, scrabbling menacingly outside the window.
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Author’s Honesty: Unhealed Stays
I always tried to keep space between us as if the space between could render me incapable of love, heartless even, stop me from loving you, protecting my shielded heart. I wanted the space between to maintain my fear of love; because I was sure from the moment I met you I knew I could love you. With just a taste of you, I thought you could change my fear so I maintained our space.
Then, you entered my mind like you had cast a spell and under it’s affects my walls had already fell. I was afraid to look your way because I knew I would be compelled, utterly compelled to hold my gaze. My priority was to understand you more, oblivious to what was stirring inside of me. I memorised each trace of you, each motion you took, each symphony blues. I saw a glimpse of you which was me too. Then I knew I wanted to change the space I made between us.
I often think what we fear is more than what we need to face, it’s what we don’t yet feel ready to face, questions we don’t want to ask ourselves, what we don’t want to doubt, what we want to avoid, what we don’t want to be honest and vulnerable about, what we don’t feel good enough to want.
And in my futile attempts to not love you I lost the love I found and it’s become lost time.
~ In Awe ~
Date Originally Created: March 4th 2023
unspoken feelings are unforgettable ~ Andrei Tarkovsky
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delcat177 · 10 months
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I want to ask a ton of kids what the scariest thing they can think of (specifically in real life) is, but I don't want to actually do that kind of legwork. I would have said leeches. I had been informed that if you tried to pull them off, they stretched forever, and I thought that was literally...FOREVER. I was also informed that if you were able to pull them off, the head stuck in your skin and never came out. Couldn't go swimming in unfamiliar water for years unless Mom brought a salt packet.
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businesscasualart · 2 months
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There’s nothing like slowly realizing an f/o or blorbo or whatever you have now actually very closely resembles a very specific piece of media you forgot about that traumatized you when you were a small child
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