Blog 13

The gap I choose to fill for my reader’s choice is dragons. I feel like dragons a really big part of fantasy. Dragons were in fairytales since I was younger and I still see them till this day. Dragon’s appearances have evolved and are very different now. There’s fire, water, and many different kinds of dragons that exist now. Have you ever wondered how were dragons created? My presentation has the answer. The novel I read was Eragon, which was way different than the movie, but isn’t every movie that’s a novel? This book had adventure, mystery, mythical creatures, and war in battle all in one.  I also liked how the book had its own world called Alagaesia. Eragon fights with the elves and learns many things through the process. He starts off, as a poor farm boy who seems like nothing exciting will ever happen in his life. Until he finds a blue stone, which did, turned out to be a dragon egg. Now be in mind that the evil king kills all of the dragon riders just so he could be the only one. He wants all the power for himself so everyone could obey him. I am currently half way through the second book and so far my experience is amazing. My presentation will start off with the history of dragons and move on to themes that I saw.  Many people might have different opinions on the themes because like always in science fiction, there are always different views. It’s all about perspective and how the story affected you. I will also talk about if dragons are good or evil? Nowadays dragons could actually be either or. Isn’t that crazy? A dragon that was known to be a killing creature could now be good.  I promise you won’t regret reading this book.

Blog Set 12

           The Premature Burial

The narrator begins by mentioning several horrific events in history including, the Passage of Beresina, the Earthquake of Lisbon, the Black Hole at Calcutta, the Plague of London, and the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. He starts talking about the disease that makes you seem dead but you really aren’t. Since everyone thinks they’re dead they get buried alive. As one thing leads to the other, the person wakes up and is already in a coffin where it is extremely dark. He talks about real life situations where people were actually buried alive. We then find out that he himself has catalepsy. His sickness ends up getting worse and worse and he ends up being in a trance situations for weeks. We tend to see that the narrator’s biggest fear is to be buried alive himself.  He avoids sleep because his fear to him is that serious. He is even afraid to leave his house because what if he ends up being paralyzed and people think he is dead. He would rather stay home and wake up on his own. He renovates his family’s tomb by putting food, water, a bell, and a vent to someone could breathe. This fear is literally killing him inside but at least he is prepared for the worse. Then he witnesses his worst nightmare but it turns out to fake. This changes his view on life. I feel like life is too short to live in fear this deep like the narrators. The human mind could be very dark and could actually make you insane. People should live their lives to the fullest until there is no more life in them.

                                                                                                   The Monkey's Paw

Off the back this story starts off with a storm, that’s exactly how we know were about to read a scary story for sure. Mr. and Mrs. White are enjoying a fire with their son Herbert. Sergeant Morris arrives with this monkey paw that is supposed to grant 3 wishes. It reminds me of a genie but this actually comes with a curse. Morris try’s to warn Mr. White about the curse but he still buys it. Most people would take that as a sign and run the other direction. There’s also that saying that says everything comes with a price. Nothing is ever that easily handed to you because it would be too good to be true. Of course is first wish is about money. Herbert goes to work like he would on a normal day. Some stranger comes to their house and he is actually from the place Herbert works at. He tells them that Herbert dies and he will be giving him money for his loss. Guess how much? That’s right the same amount he wished for in the first place. Now they want to use their last two wishes to bring Herbert back. Mr. White thinks it’s a bad idea but does it for his wife. After a couple of days they heart knocking on the door and Mrs. White runs down stairs to open it for her son. This seems supernatural to me because someone or something is banging on the door like crazy. Mr. White makes a wish, and all the knocking stops. There is no one at the door when they open it. I wonder what he wished for. Why wasn’t he as excited as his wife? 

Update:Now thinking about it, in premature burial he feared was not only feeling trapped but to also not being able to do anything about it.  To be honest just to be safe I would probably get all prepared also. Around this time period, a lot of people were buried alive due lack of medical knowledge and technology. People also grave robbed around this time period. Some stole bodies so that people could experiment on them. Now I think that is hundred percent wrong but then again, how else would our knowledge grow? We have to experiment to find out what’s going on in the human body. But then again it is still wrong to steal bodies and use them for a class. Some coffins even had bells on top of them just in case to show that they were still alive. It was literally a big concern around that time and I didn’t know that. Many people found scratch marks on the coffin. Others found the bones faced down as if someone was trying to push up with their back to escape. Basically they saw many signs of someone struggling. So did these robberies make up the whole zombie thing? It seems like it did because people probably thought they escaped and walked away. I honestly couldn’t even imagine living in this time period or even being buried alive.

Blog Set #11

                                       Berenice

Egaeus grow up in a gloomy mansion and was always in the library which is also where he was born and his mother died. His cousin Berenice grew up with him and also lived at the mansion. Berenice was a cheerful and lively girl until a disease affected her. Berenice turned into a sad and gloomy looking girl inside and out. Egaeus ends up marrying her which is weird because they’re cousins. Egaeus develops his own disease himself called monomania which is an obsession over one thing. His cousin or should I say wife, had false impressions of death that came with her disease but she always woke up from them. Egaeus monomania didn’t seem bad until he saw Berenice smile and got obsessed with her teeth. The next night Egaeus was told that Berenice was dead. Coincidence? I think not. When he went to the funeral he said that her teeth were shown. He says he doesn’t remember anything that happened after the funeral but he knew something had happened. Then one of his servants made him put the puzzle pieces together by saying that someone violated Berenice’s grave. He noticed his dirty close, dental surgery instruments, nail marks on his hands, and 32 actually teeth that feel out of the box. So was Berenice ever truly dead? I don’t think she was because where would he had gotten the nail marks on his hands. He literally blacked out and did something horrible without even noticing. Just like every other women in Poe’s poems Berenice was beautiful and ends up dying.

The Furnished Room

A young unnamed man searches for the love of his life in a large city. He commits suicide after not being able to find her. He dies without ever knowing that his loved one had also committed suicide in the same room only a week earlier. The young man asks the housekeeper about his loved one, but gets a horrible reply. He kills himself with the gas from the lamp. The story ends with the two housekeepers talking about the girl, who the unnamed man was searching for, who died in the room. Why didn’t the housekeepers tell him what happened? Did they not know it was the same girl?

The Boarded Window

This story took place in 1830 where a man named Murlock lived. His house had a boarded window and one single door which led many to question why he had it. Maybe he had some type of secret, who knows. I believe he had it up because he was trying to keep something away. He was left alone after his wife passed away. Murlock was found dead in his cabin due to natural cause but we all know that wasn’t the case. Legend has it that Murlock found his wife with a fever and tried to do as much as he could. Murlock prepared his wife for her funeral and he didn’t shed one tear. In his sleep he hears a cry which he says it was a cry from a “beast”. He hears footsteps in his cabin and senses that someone was there. The table suddenly hits him and he grabs his gone. He finds out that it was a panther dragging his dead wife away. He sees that the animal’s ear was ripped off, could that possibly been that wife? Was she ever dead or did she come back to life? 

Update:The activity in class really did break down all the elements of each of these stories. The supernatural elements were probably the best of them all because most of them have you thinking if it really happened or not. In Berenice there really isn’t any supernatural things but the language makes it seem like it. In the Furnish Room he smells her perfume and feels her presence. Now in the boarded window, was the wife alive the whole time? Did she come back to life? No one really knows, but isn’t that the best thing about science fiction? To think about many scenarios that might of happened. It’s like making up your own story but in your point of view. There can be many ways to look at a story; it all ends up in your hands on what you believe. To me that is the best part of this genre. Science Fiction is all about perspective. In every single one of these horror stories there is always a lost love. In Berenice, he lost his mother and his fist love. The madness he had was kind of creepy, the way he unconsciously took her teeth. When he would just talk about random stuff like fairyland.

Viewing Blog Set 3

Supernatural is probably one of my favorite shows of all time just after watching season one. Actually just watching the first episode I already knew it was going to be an amazing series. Now there are two brothers, Sam and Dean Winchesters. Dean is the oldest and he follows his father’s footsteps. Dean is your regular tough guy who drives an impala with a leather jacket on. Sam on the other hand did not want to follow his father’s footsteps. He actually wanted to go to college and study. He didn’t want the life his father wanted him too. He went to Stanford University where he had a full scholarship and lived with his girlfriend. For two years he hasn’t seen his brother or father. Now this is where the good stuff actually comes in, when Sam was a baby and Dean was a toddler, they went through a horrible tragedy. Some type of supernatural creature murdered their mother. She was murdered in Sam’s room. The demon forced her on the roof and killed her. John (Dean and Sam’s father) went to Sam’s room and saw blood on Sam. When he looked up, he saw his wife dead and dripping blood. That’s not all, the mother ends up catching on fire and burning the whole house down. Ever since then, John has had an obsession to kill what murdered his wife. He became a hunter and traveled to many places with Sam and Dean. Now do you see why Sam didn’t want to live this life? But anyways, two years later Dean shows up at Sam’s house and tells them that their father was missing. He asked for help and Sam said yes. They didn’t have any luck finding their father so Dean asked for another favor, to come with him for a longer period of time to find their dad. Sam rages and says no to Dean, when Sam gets back home his girlfriend is killed by the same Demon and the same exact why his mother died. Sam ends up going with Dean and they find their father. Now they have more knowledge of the demon and found a weapon called the colt to kill it. John and Dean end up getting hurt by the demon and same shoots it in the leg. Sam is driving to the hospital when a demon possesses a trunk and crashes into Dean’s impala. Leaving Sam, Dean, and John injured and in the middle of the street. I wonder how the Winchesters will get out of this one.

Shockingly I have never actually watched ET; I just know what it was about. After seeing this film I realized I really did miss out on a classic. Elliot finds ET in his backyard and unlike any other person who would freak out, he actually takes him in. He hides him from his parents and took care of him. I think it was very kind of him for taking in an alien and being very kind. If it weren’t for him, ET would have been found and probably experimented on. Elliot’s siblings meet ET a couple days later. Everyone starts to create a bond with ET and end up loving him. This shows me that it doesn’t matter where the living being is from or how it looks, you could still create a relationship with them. ET ends up learning to speak English. Elliot takes ET to make a call to his family and it was a success. Of course the government ends up coming and trying to get ET but its too late he was already going home. ET finally goes home and Elliot will forever remember him.

During the World War II bombings of London, four siblings are sent to a house where their parents would think they will be safe. The siblings were wondering around the house almost everyday. One day Lucy finds a wardrobe that transports her to a magical world called Narnia. When she gets there she meets someone named Tumnus who told her about the evil White Witch that is making the land winter forever. She tells her silbings but they do not believe her. Then again who would believe a crazy story like that especially from the youngest. She ends up proving them wrong. She returns to Narnia with her brothers, Peter, Edmund and her sister, Susan. They join the magical lion, Aslan, in the fight against the evil White Witch.

Viewing Blog Set # 2

Ever After was just like Cinderella but it was a bit different. I really like how in the beginning it starts off by telling us the actual true fairy tale. She did not want the tale written from rumors so she told it herself. Instead of her name being Cinderella, it was Danielle. Just like ever other Cinderella story, her mother dies and her father brings another woman who has two other daughters. Her father ends up dying also and she was left with her evil stepmother. In this movie the stepmother didn’t really seem as evil as the original does. I mean she was evil but when she talked to Danielle she made it seemed like she was nice when she wasn’t. Danielle was part of their servants. Also, Instead of both the stepsisters being evil, one of them was actually nice. Now Danielle didn’t need anyone to save her, not even a man. She saved herself every time she was in trouble. Fairy tales tend to make it seem like females don’t know how to save themselves and that they also need a man to be saved. She even ends up saving him from a group of gypsy.  She also pretends to not be a servant but he ends up finding out the truth from someone else but that doesn’t stop him from going back to her. They live happily ever after just like any other fairy tale we all know.

The season begins with two siblings who have lost both of their parents in a car crash and they are left with their aunt Jenna. This series is all about vampires, werewolves, and doppelgangers. Elena ends up dating a vampire named Stefan Salvatore. Her best friend Bonnie ends up finding out that she comes from a line of witches. Elena is a doppelganger from another named Katherine Pierce. Stefan and Elena have come from a line of doppelgangers and they always manage to find each other every time.  They literally have people who look exactly like one another from 10,000 years ago and end up being together. It seems to me that they have always been meant to be. There is a plot twist; Stefan has a brother named Damon who has always came between Elena and Stefan in the past. Basically history is repeating itself over and over again. Like every other vampire story, there is a group of people in town plotting against them called The Council. They have a certain device that kind of controls vampires but then they find out that it controls all supernatural creatures. Elena finds out that her parents were actually her aunt and uncle. Her other best friend Caroline ends up getting into a car accident. Katherine ends up killing Elena’s real dad and her brother takes many pills to overdose. I wonder what will happen next, to me it sounds like everyone Elena loves is dying and leaving her alone.

The film starts by talking about the history of the twenty rings. That existed to three for elves, seven for dwarves, nine for men, and one made by the Dark Lord Sauron, in Mordor, which would rule all the others. Sauron wanted to use the ring in a evil way so the elves ended up fighting against the Dark lord.. They won the battle and the ring fell to Isildur, but just as he was about to destroy the ring in, he changed his mind and held on to it for himself. Later on he was killed, and the ring fell to the bottom of the sea. The creature Gollum discovered it and brought it to his cave. Then he lost it to the hobbit Bilbo Baggins. Now it fast forwards to the hobbit’s home where it is Bilbo’s 111^th birthday. Bilbo does a speech and ends up putting on the ring that makes him disappear and fakes his death. He leaves the ring to his nephew Frodo. Gandalf ends up telling Frodo all about this ring and how it belongs to Sauron. Everyone ends up fighting for this ring to have the power of it. Sauron is also looking to get his ring back. This was such a perfect example of a fairy tale.