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chocolatepotFinished The Haunting of Hill House last night! The basic plot: Eleanor Vance travels to Hill House on the invitation of Dr. Montague, a would-be paranormal researcher, and meets fellow guests Theodora (an artistic lesbian) and Luke (bit of a playboy, related to the people who own the house). The house is incredibly unsettling just from its construction and decoration, and seems like it's "sick"; everyone who's ever lived there has either been a hot mess or has left almost immediately. There are a number of times someone sees or feels something moving but isn't sure there's anything there, but then definite supernatural stuff starts happening - an incredibly cold spot in front of the nursery, spiritual door-pounding up and down the hall, writing in chalk and then blood on the wall. Finally Mrs. Montague comes, and while she clearly views herself as a real ghost whisperer, she's unable to perceive any of what they're experiencing. The story comes to a climax with Eleanor - who has been told multiple times in different ways by the house to "come home" - sleepwalking/possessed-walking up to the top of the rickety tower stairs, and being firmly told to go home the next day by the rest of the group. Instead, she drives her car directly into a tree in the yard and dies.
Definitely a story where your imagination does much of the work at creeping you out - I was repeatedly Messed Up by comparatively minor things just because of the suggestion that there was more to them than what we were seeing. The nighttime door-pounding incidents were probably even scarier than when it happens in a film, because you can hear Eleanor's thoughts - she knows it's looking for them, and when it hears them it concentrates harder on the door because she knows it wants to get in, not just because she draws the conclusion but because she can feel its presence and what it wants.
I identified pretty hard with Eleanor: she's a very lonely, very introspective young woman about my age, and the whole time she's with the group she's analyzing whether she's Part of the Group or not, which is definitely something I'm prone to. So but it's really hard for me to tell when she's just being Eleanor and isn't sure that she's being fully accepted, and when the house is infecting her into being suspicious of everyone, because I'm suspicious all the time that people are making fun of me or not accepting me. But that definitely makes the reading experience more spooky.
The concept of the haunted house rather than apparitions caused by specific disturbed dead people in a house, or a mass of disturbed dead people in aggregate, is pretty interesting, and I'm surprised that we don't see more of it. I guess filmmakers and writers feel like that's not as interesting to show or easy to make a plot about as "there's a ghost of this bad person doing bad things, they have to be put to rest or exorcised," or "this place was used for terrible things and now it is bad," which is certainly true, but IMO nothing really beats "the house is malevolent on its own and won't stop" for terror.
Rewatching the Netflix series to try to pick up on color stuff. I know that a blue/orange color scheme is a Thing in filming, but the blue is so overwhelming and feels so meaningful that I'm trying to notice every time another color is showing up, even if it could just be aesthetic. I'm not sure anything is just aesthetic. Well, I think some of the orange is aesthetic, but some of it's so strong that it has to be meaningful.
Ep 1: Mostly noticing that practically everything is blue or sometimes grey, except for Nell in the flashbacks (pink pjs, salmon robe, salmon headband), and Shirley, in the flashbacks, has a pink coverlet when she's talking in her sleep about the red room, and a pink plaid shirt - in the "now" scenes, even Nell is in blue. Olivia's first appearance is in an off-white nightgown. The library tower up to the red room also has a bunch of pinks of various flavors. I think the woman Theo brings home from the bar is in a kind of purple? And the beer labels have a very bright orange, while Shirley's patio furniture has a lot of yellow-green in the upholstery. Very orange light in Hugh's room when he talks to Nell on the phone when she's gone back to HH and the light's on for her, and the bag he grabs to go after her is khaki. Steven's coverlet, when Hugh gets him, is salmon/orange, and Luke's wearing an orangish shirt in the car. Is seeing the very orange lights on the back of the car relevant? Waltzing Nell's dressing gown is off-white. Even Theo's clock numbers are blue, while Luke alone is in an orange light when Nell dies. (Steven's and Hugh's clocks are red.)
Pregnant Shirley in the flashback is in pink, and there's an orange/blue checked fleece behind Steven and orangey-brown curtains, some orangey artwork and lamps. The "Hill House" on the cover of his book is also in orange.
Hugh is in a dark red coat in the lawyer's office, which has orange-brown wallpaper; lots of orange and yellow on the tabloid covers. Yellow stripe on Steven's shirt.
Mrs. Dudley's shirt in the kitchen is dark green? Olivia's is brown. This is right before Steven goes up to the "treehouse" to find Luke, where the trapdoor is orange and the wicker walls come off that way in the light. There's an orange car in it, too, and some orange on pillows.
Steven's apartment is extremely grey, where everything else is more of a blue or at least bluish grey. Ghost!Nell has a light blue denim jacket and maybe a mauve shirt?
Tumblr user larkandkatydid said of the show that Theodora getting her gloves is "Ring of Keys for a certain type of austere goth femme" and I get that so hard.
Ep 2: Shirley's clock numbers are blue. When she's talking to the kid in her (very light grey) room, her shirt's dark green - maybe a parallel to Mrs. Dudley proselytizing Steven? Lots of bright oranges in the grandmother's dress. All her makeup table is blue, but Olivia's box of compasses is orange in the flashback. (Young Shirley's in a pink/orange shirt. Nell's in a very lavendery floral, and Olivia's in very light blue. Luke has a dark green shirt.) Someone brings a mauve box of pictures for Shirley to use to fix up a body.
When they put Luke in rehab, Theo's in a dark red coat and Steven's in a khaki overshirt. (Nell's is grey.)
Shirley's daughter is in pink at dinner, and Shirley has a brown sweater. This is just after she was wearing the green shirt and found her husband's secret checking account. I think their mortuary's sign lettering is green? At least it was on a computer screen earlier.
Kid Shirley's pjs are pink as well as her coverlet, we see in the wall-pounding scene. (And her walls are warm-colored.) At the kitten burial, Hugh's wearing a kind of light orangey shirt. When they come back to the kittens and all of them have died, Nell's in her orange robe and Shirley is in light green pjs; Olivia is in a white shirt and blue jeans, holding a purple pillow, when she talks to her, and then puts on a very dark blue velvet dressing gown and pink nightgown. There's an orange candle on her bedstand.
Shirley's daughter is in pink again when she comes down with her brother to see Nell's body; Shirley has a purple shirt. Shirley dresses Nell in a dark red, and is herself wearing red (and brown) when making up Nell at her wedding. When she sees Olivia on the slab, she's holding the same box that guy gave her, but it's blue.
The fanfic meme!
What’re your first and second most common work ratings?
I have ten Gen, and one each of NR, Teen, and Mature.
What’s your most common archive warning? Least common?
"No Archive Warnings Apply", lol. Only one is "Chose not to Warn" and I suspect that that was a mistake, because I don't think there's anything warnable in it.
Do you consider yourself an adventurous writer?
Yeah, I think so. I get more adventurous in each exchange - you wouldn't believe some of the things I offered in the H/C exchange. I don't have much of a desire to write fanfic novels, really, or series: I want to write about everything and every fandom.
How many stories have you made in each pairing category?
Gen (6)
M/M (3)
F/M (2)
F/F (2)
Is this more accidental, or do you have preferences?
Mmm ... I used to have a strong M/F preference, but lately I don't even have a very strong romance preference anymore - I want to concentrate on people's sad childhoods, or their clothing. That being said, I never bother to nominate anything in exchanges and since nobody ever nominates Remus/Tonks, I can't offer that and write treats for it, which I would if it were there. Apparently nobody likes the ship anymore??? (Only joking, hardly anybody really liked the ship in the first place.)
What are your top 4 fandoms by numbers? Are you still active in any of them, and do you tend to migrate a lot?
Original Work (3) - lol, but for real it's the most fun
Harry Potter (2)
The Goblin Emperor (2)
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, book and tv version (2)
Harry Potter is my ride-or-die forever fandom, even if I'm not talking about it so much anymore. I'm definitely nowhere near as active in TGE as I used to be, and I don't offer it anymore because I can't remember enough about the characters ... but then, I also never really cared about the ships in the fandom, which is what everyone else seems to be into. I don't migrate a lot so much as I offer what I can write and typically get matched on the thing I put in last because I needed one more offer.
What are your top 4 relationship tags? Does this match how you feel about the characters, or are you puzzled?
All my relationship tags have one each! Multifandom exchanges 4 lyfe.
What are your top 2 most used additional tags, and your bottom 2? What would happen if you combined all 4 of these into a fic?
Top two are Alternate Universe and Clothing Porn, both with 3 uses; bottom two would be Meta and First Time, both with 1. Technically, I've used Meta in conjunction with Clothing Porn for a Goblin Emperor fashion magazine. All together, I think I would write a fake academic or pop history article about the clothing we have left from Emma Poole's wardrobe, in an alternate universe where she is a fabulous magician.
How many WIPs do you have currently running on AO3? Any you don’t plan on finishing?
Nooooooone. I know that I never finish anything so I don't post WIPs. Also, most of my WIPs are about OCs and I'm still very very wary of posting OC fic in public.
Definitely a story where your imagination does much of the work at creeping you out - I was repeatedly Messed Up by comparatively minor things just because of the suggestion that there was more to them than what we were seeing. The nighttime door-pounding incidents were probably even scarier than when it happens in a film, because you can hear Eleanor's thoughts - she knows it's looking for them, and when it hears them it concentrates harder on the door because she knows it wants to get in, not just because she draws the conclusion but because she can feel its presence and what it wants.
I identified pretty hard with Eleanor: she's a very lonely, very introspective young woman about my age, and the whole time she's with the group she's analyzing whether she's Part of the Group or not, which is definitely something I'm prone to. So but it's really hard for me to tell when she's just being Eleanor and isn't sure that she's being fully accepted, and when the house is infecting her into being suspicious of everyone, because I'm suspicious all the time that people are making fun of me or not accepting me. But that definitely makes the reading experience more spooky.
The concept of the haunted house rather than apparitions caused by specific disturbed dead people in a house, or a mass of disturbed dead people in aggregate, is pretty interesting, and I'm surprised that we don't see more of it. I guess filmmakers and writers feel like that's not as interesting to show or easy to make a plot about as "there's a ghost of this bad person doing bad things, they have to be put to rest or exorcised," or "this place was used for terrible things and now it is bad," which is certainly true, but IMO nothing really beats "the house is malevolent on its own and won't stop" for terror.
Rewatching the Netflix series to try to pick up on color stuff. I know that a blue/orange color scheme is a Thing in filming, but the blue is so overwhelming and feels so meaningful that I'm trying to notice every time another color is showing up, even if it could just be aesthetic. I'm not sure anything is just aesthetic. Well, I think some of the orange is aesthetic, but some of it's so strong that it has to be meaningful.
Ep 1: Mostly noticing that practically everything is blue or sometimes grey, except for Nell in the flashbacks (pink pjs, salmon robe, salmon headband), and Shirley, in the flashbacks, has a pink coverlet when she's talking in her sleep about the red room, and a pink plaid shirt - in the "now" scenes, even Nell is in blue. Olivia's first appearance is in an off-white nightgown. The library tower up to the red room also has a bunch of pinks of various flavors. I think the woman Theo brings home from the bar is in a kind of purple? And the beer labels have a very bright orange, while Shirley's patio furniture has a lot of yellow-green in the upholstery. Very orange light in Hugh's room when he talks to Nell on the phone when she's gone back to HH and the light's on for her, and the bag he grabs to go after her is khaki. Steven's coverlet, when Hugh gets him, is salmon/orange, and Luke's wearing an orangish shirt in the car. Is seeing the very orange lights on the back of the car relevant? Waltzing Nell's dressing gown is off-white. Even Theo's clock numbers are blue, while Luke alone is in an orange light when Nell dies. (Steven's and Hugh's clocks are red.)
Pregnant Shirley in the flashback is in pink, and there's an orange/blue checked fleece behind Steven and orangey-brown curtains, some orangey artwork and lamps. The "Hill House" on the cover of his book is also in orange.
Hugh is in a dark red coat in the lawyer's office, which has orange-brown wallpaper; lots of orange and yellow on the tabloid covers. Yellow stripe on Steven's shirt.
Mrs. Dudley's shirt in the kitchen is dark green? Olivia's is brown. This is right before Steven goes up to the "treehouse" to find Luke, where the trapdoor is orange and the wicker walls come off that way in the light. There's an orange car in it, too, and some orange on pillows.
Steven's apartment is extremely grey, where everything else is more of a blue or at least bluish grey. Ghost!Nell has a light blue denim jacket and maybe a mauve shirt?
Tumblr user larkandkatydid said of the show that Theodora getting her gloves is "Ring of Keys for a certain type of austere goth femme" and I get that so hard.
Ep 2: Shirley's clock numbers are blue. When she's talking to the kid in her (very light grey) room, her shirt's dark green - maybe a parallel to Mrs. Dudley proselytizing Steven? Lots of bright oranges in the grandmother's dress. All her makeup table is blue, but Olivia's box of compasses is orange in the flashback. (Young Shirley's in a pink/orange shirt. Nell's in a very lavendery floral, and Olivia's in very light blue. Luke has a dark green shirt.) Someone brings a mauve box of pictures for Shirley to use to fix up a body.
When they put Luke in rehab, Theo's in a dark red coat and Steven's in a khaki overshirt. (Nell's is grey.)
Shirley's daughter is in pink at dinner, and Shirley has a brown sweater. This is just after she was wearing the green shirt and found her husband's secret checking account. I think their mortuary's sign lettering is green? At least it was on a computer screen earlier.
Kid Shirley's pjs are pink as well as her coverlet, we see in the wall-pounding scene. (And her walls are warm-colored.) At the kitten burial, Hugh's wearing a kind of light orangey shirt. When they come back to the kittens and all of them have died, Nell's in her orange robe and Shirley is in light green pjs; Olivia is in a white shirt and blue jeans, holding a purple pillow, when she talks to her, and then puts on a very dark blue velvet dressing gown and pink nightgown. There's an orange candle on her bedstand.
Shirley's daughter is in pink again when she comes down with her brother to see Nell's body; Shirley has a purple shirt. Shirley dresses Nell in a dark red, and is herself wearing red (and brown) when making up Nell at her wedding. When she sees Olivia on the slab, she's holding the same box that guy gave her, but it's blue.
The fanfic meme!
What’re your first and second most common work ratings?
I have ten Gen, and one each of NR, Teen, and Mature.
What’s your most common archive warning? Least common?
"No Archive Warnings Apply", lol. Only one is "Chose not to Warn" and I suspect that that was a mistake, because I don't think there's anything warnable in it.
Do you consider yourself an adventurous writer?
Yeah, I think so. I get more adventurous in each exchange - you wouldn't believe some of the things I offered in the H/C exchange. I don't have much of a desire to write fanfic novels, really, or series: I want to write about everything and every fandom.
How many stories have you made in each pairing category?
Gen (6)
M/M (3)
F/M (2)
F/F (2)
Is this more accidental, or do you have preferences?
Mmm ... I used to have a strong M/F preference, but lately I don't even have a very strong romance preference anymore - I want to concentrate on people's sad childhoods, or their clothing. That being said, I never bother to nominate anything in exchanges and since nobody ever nominates Remus/Tonks, I can't offer that and write treats for it, which I would if it were there. Apparently nobody likes the ship anymore??? (Only joking, hardly anybody really liked the ship in the first place.)
What are your top 4 fandoms by numbers? Are you still active in any of them, and do you tend to migrate a lot?
Original Work (3) - lol, but for real it's the most fun
Harry Potter (2)
The Goblin Emperor (2)
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, book and tv version (2)
Harry Potter is my ride-or-die forever fandom, even if I'm not talking about it so much anymore. I'm definitely nowhere near as active in TGE as I used to be, and I don't offer it anymore because I can't remember enough about the characters ... but then, I also never really cared about the ships in the fandom, which is what everyone else seems to be into. I don't migrate a lot so much as I offer what I can write and typically get matched on the thing I put in last because I needed one more offer.
What are your top 4 relationship tags? Does this match how you feel about the characters, or are you puzzled?
All my relationship tags have one each! Multifandom exchanges 4 lyfe.
What are your top 2 most used additional tags, and your bottom 2? What would happen if you combined all 4 of these into a fic?
Top two are Alternate Universe and Clothing Porn, both with 3 uses; bottom two would be Meta and First Time, both with 1. Technically, I've used Meta in conjunction with Clothing Porn for a Goblin Emperor fashion magazine. All together, I think I would write a fake academic or pop history article about the clothing we have left from Emma Poole's wardrobe, in an alternate universe where she is a fabulous magician.
How many WIPs do you have currently running on AO3? Any you don’t plan on finishing?
Nooooooone. I know that I never finish anything so I don't post WIPs. Also, most of my WIPs are about OCs and I'm still very very wary of posting OC fic in public.
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Date: 2019-03-10 06:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-18 01:42 am (UTC)