On False Inspiration

Happy New Year's!

It's been a while since I have written here, hasn't it? Well, after Junji Ito month became kinda boring because I realized my opinions were all basically the same on the stories I ended up reviewing, I left this blog for a bit.

Before I get to the topic at hand, let me recap you on what has happened in the life of Momma Shakespeare.

NaNoWriMo went extremely well, and I won for the year with a story that is still not complete. But I made the 50k word count limit by the next to last day of the month. And Christmas also went well. After that, though, I've been creatively... stale. I'm trying to rekindle some of it with the MGRP NEXT sequel, and maybe a few other interesting ideas for stories, and this brings me into what I mention in my title.

I just wanted to know that if anyone else out there ever got struck with a thing that I like to call "False Inspiration". I get it every time I walk into a bookstore and I see all of the books in there and just go, "wow, I could do that. I just need to write something!" And then I get an urge to go purchase ANOTHER new notebook! Let's say this is a perfect world where I have all the money I want for everything, so I go and get that nice leather-bound one I wanted. Then I go get the PERFECT PEN, the stainless steel one with the gel ink that I love so very, very much (black, of course), and then I head home.

Then I open up that leather-bound book and take off the little rubber cap that's on any gel pen of quality, and I sit down to write. And I realize... I don't want to write anything. I have the overwhelming urge to write, but nothing to focus on it. I have multiple ideas and concepts, but they all sound really dumb when I consider putting pen to paper. And then I am left sitting there, an idiot with a notebook and a pen that I should have never purchased because I may never use it due to its fancyness. But I still want to write.

And that's why I am here. Writing about the feeling of wanting to write but not being able to write. I mean, it's a very weird sensation, and I know for a fact that other writers go through this. And I want to keep myself sharp doing the whole "Write something every day!" thing and keeping a blog about everything and nothing in particular. I don't think anyone even reads this, or if it's even worth me posting here. But honestly, whether people read it or not, I just need to put this shit out somewhere. I'm just doing it to have an archive. A public diary of sorts. And maybe someone, someday, will find this somewhere and be... mildly intrigued by... whatever I do?

Every time I say I want to go back to using this, I end up going back on it a week or so later. But who knows? Maybe this time, of all times, is the time to go back to this blog. Well, new year, new start. Maybe I should make a daily to-do list and go to someone I know very well to get it printed.

We'll see how this works, guys.

A Scaredy-Cat Reads Junji Ito: House of Puppets

SPOILER ALERT

I WILL BE SUMMARIZING THE ENTIRE STORY, SO IF YOU WANT TO READ IT YOURSELF BEFORE GOING FURTHER IN, CLICK HERE.

SUMMARY
The story starts with a narrator talking about his life moving from place to place with his two siblings and his father, who ran a puppet show. He ended up in an elementary school for a month while they were moving from place to place, and he is welcomed by his class. During cleaning duty, one of his classmates askes him about what he did. He revealed to her that he wasn't fond of being a puppeteer, and that his brother was much better. She goes home with him to the truck they both stay and move around in and he shows her the puppets. She focuses on an odd puppet, a magician named Jean-Pierre that belongs to his brother.
A month later, they move on, but she swears that she will see him again in the future. A few hours later, he and his brother are talking about how they would both like to leave the traveling puppet business and actually settle down somewhere, but both know that it's not going to happen any time soon.
Strangely enough, their father gets sick not too long afterwards. They are all sitting in his room as he gives a speech about the souls of puppets and the duty of puppeteers. Later that night, his older brother reveals that he never felt like he was controlling the puppets, but the other way around. After that, his brother ran away, and a half a year after that, his father died. He and his little sister then went on and got a small apartment together. He runs into the girl he befriended during that month in school while looking for work, and the two of them started getting close. Then he gets a letter from his brother asking them to come over and visit.
When they get there, Jean-Pierre is at the door to greet them and his brother comes out as well, along with a wife and child. Unusually, they are all floating a few inches off of the ground, and there are strings attached to them going up to the ceiling.
During dinner, he reveals that he's the boss of his own puppetmaking company through the luck brought to him by Jean-Pierre, and that he and his family are controlled by puppeteers in the ceiling. He and his sister become regular visitors to his brother's house and soon his sister is outfitted with strings of her own so that she can dance like her older brother's ballerina puppets. After dancing, her brother says that it's time for them to leave, but she declares that she wants to stay there instead. He tries to avoid mentioning his brother's place to his female friend.
When he goes over to visit again, the ballerina puppets ask him to join them, and as he is rejecting them. His female friend sees him with this very realistic-looking puppet girl and takes offense, running into the house. She is greeted by Jean-Pierre and suddenly all of the puppets start freaking out, including the strings that the family were on. After he goes around the house trying to figure out what was wrong, he finds Jean-Pierre moving completely on his own. After a very bizarre but also very tense man-versus-puppet battle, Jean-Pierre is destroyed and the family is revealed to actually have been puppets themselves for the last two years...

REVIEW
That was long. Much longer than the others I have read so far, which is fortunate because I didn't have the time to read yesterday. I don't really have much to say about it, really. It makes me think, but it doesn't have the... oomph I'm used to from an Ito story. Well-written, but not well-spookied, this story gets a...
CONFUSING

A Scaredy-Cat Reads Junji Ito: The Bridge and Ice Cream Bus

Due to me forgetting to read yesterday, I have decided to do a two-for-one day. And as always:

SPOILER ALERT

I WILL BE SUMMARIZING THE ENTIRE STORY, SO IF YOU WANT TO READ IT YOURSELF BEFORE GOING FURTHER IN, CLICK HERE FOR STORY ONE AND HERE FOR STORY TWO.

SUMMARY

A woman goes to visit her grandmother in the countryside after calling for company. As she crosses the bridge that leads to her grandmother's house, she sees someone on it. When she talks to the other person, they are silent. She invites the person to join her, but when she gets a good look at the person, though, she sees a half-rotted face and body. She runs towards the door of the house and her grandmother opens it. She reveals that the half-rotted man was her uncle, and he appears on the bridge every night. It started happening after her husband passed away, and now every night the ghosts call to her. And not just his, but the ghosts of the entire village, calling her to the river.

She then sits down with her grandmother and her grandmother tells her an odd funeral custom that the village used to have, where they would send the deceased down the river. She watched as her uncle went on his raft, and as his body reached the bridge, it hit the base and the raft tipped the body over into the river. As the custom stated, this meant the body could not rest in heaven. When her first fiancee died in an accident, he was placed on the raft as was custom and sent down the river. When he hit the bridge, he was too tall to sink under and just floated, blocking the way. The villagers did their best to make sure he went under the bridge, but the body sunk before they could move it. The ghosts resume their calling out, and the grandmother begs to be buried and not sent down the river to join them. Right after saying that, her grandmother passes, and she wakes from a dream, still in her car heading to her grandmother's house.

As she reaches the bridge near the house, she sees the same figure from her dream walking across the bridge. This time, though, it is an old man who tells her that her grandmother just passed. When she goes to see, the body is gone, and so are straw mats that were in the house. When she goes outside, she sees the half-rotted ghosts  of the entire village standing at the bridge, waiting for grandmother to come down the river. The mat hits the bridge, and the body falls into the river. When she looks back at the bridge, the ghosts are gone.

REVIEW

This one was very good. A very traditional ghost story, with a solid beginning, middle, and end. The ghost villagers are eerie, but not frightening enough to stick in my memory. So I give this one another verdict of

CREEPY

SUMMARY

In a small neighborhood, an ice cream bus comes around every saturday, even in the middle of the winter. All the kids in the neighborhood swarm to the bus to get scoops of ice cream, and then take a drive around the town as a free service. When a father who was new to the neighborhood refuses to let his son ride on the ice cream bus, he starts to sulk and cry, saying that mom's house is better.

Next week, the ice cream bus comes again, and this time he allows his son to buy ice cream and go onto the bus. When he came back, he was too full to eat any dinner because he had even more ice cream on the bus ride. A few days later he comes home early from work, and his son has a bunch of friends from the bus over. When he asks his son about going to his mother's place again, his son refuses, due to his mother's neighborhood not having the ice cream bus. That Saturday, the father asks to ride on the bus with the children, but the ice cream man wouldn't let him due to the bus having a no adults allowed policy.

His son comes back and is exctremely sticky, but refuses to take a bath, and everything that he and his friends touched was sticky too.

That spring, the father was walking through the neighborhood, he sees some of the kids from the ice cream bus licking each others' skin. He continues home and sees a pile of something in the corner. The shoes of his son's friends are at the doorway, but the house is unusually quiet. He comes in to see his son around piles of ice cream with clothing scattered around. His son says that his friends came over, but then they melted into ice cream, which he is eating. When he tries to get his son to stop eating them, his head falls off as the sounds of the ice cream bus play in the distance...

REVIEW

Well, that was... unusual. And eerie. I love ice cream, but after that I'll wait a bit before eating more. Or who knows? Maybe I'll go get some now...

COOL

A Scaredy-Cat Reads Junji Ito: Second Hand Record

SPOILER ALERT

I WILL BE SUMMARIZING THE ENTIRE STORY, SO IF YOU WANT TO READ IT YOURSELF BEFORE GOING FURTHER IN, CLICK HERE.

SUMMARY:
The comic begins with two friends listening to a mysterious record containing the most beautiful song they had ever heard. When one asks for a copy, the other refuses to give her one, and won't even tell her where he bought it so she can get her own copy. After a heated argument, she leaves, vowing to never return again. When her friend finds out that she stole the record from her, a chase ensues, ending in the friend's head being bashed with a rock. Her friend is dead, and she hides the body under a tarp in an alleyway. After saying a quick prayer of forgiveness over the body, it starts singing something. Figuring that she wasn't dead, the girl goes home with the record.
Unfortunately, she could not find a record player anywhere, no matter how hard she looked. Her need to listen to the strange song became obsessive, until she finally found a second-hand record shop. When she goes in and asks them to play the record, the owner recognises the cover immediately as one that wasn't for sale in the store. The only one in the entire world that he prized more than anything, even his own life. After he tries to take it back, she runs out of the store.
Being pursued by the owner, she ducks into a jazz cafe to hide. Finding out that they had a record player in the building, they allow her to play it there. One of the cafe's patrons recoginses the song almost immediately as the mysterious "Scat Singing of Paula Bell", a record that was recorded after the singer died. Once she was a no-name club singer with great talent, and she got a record deal. The first day in the studio, she was hit by a car and was horribly wounded. She demanded to be taken into the studio. She died under her microphone, but a few minutes later she began singing. In a hurry, they turned on the recording equipment to catch what they could. They all cut their own copies of it and never released it to the public.
The girl thanks them for the information and leaves. One of the patrons, the one who told her the story of the record, follows her home. While getting home as quickly as she could, she runs into the owner of the record store as well. Ducking into a nearby alleyway, she tries to escape. On the way up the wall, she falls and cracks her head on the pavement. The man from the cafe picks up the record, and a few minutes later the girl's dead body starts singing.
Singing the song from another world.

REVIEW
By far, this is one of my favorite Junji Ito stories. Just unsettling enough to give me the willies, but not enough to keep me up at night. Plus, the subject matter is one of great interest to me, as the idea of a mysterious record that makes anyone who listens to it obsess over it is really neat. So all in all, this story gets the verdict of:

COOL

A Scaredy-Cat Reads Junji Ito- In The Soil

SPOILER ALERT

I WILL BE SUMMARIZING THE ENTIRE STORY, SO IF YOU WANT TO READ IT YOURSELF BEFORE GOING FURTHER IN, CLICK HERE.

SUMMARY

At a twenty year junior high school anniversary, everyone is having a good time socializing  and seeing what old friends and classmates had been up to since they last saw each other. When the time comes to dig up the time capsule they all buried in the front garden during their senior year, they all head outside. As it is being dug up, two of the women discuss how close their class had been and how everyone had generally been friendly with each other. Everyone except a girl named Kumi. She looked normal enough, but she spent a lot of her time complaining and being a general downer, which annoyed her classmates. 

After this unsettling conversation, the capsule was finally dug up. The two women then realize that Kumi didn't show up for the reunion, and one mentioned how she was still getting calls from Kumi, who complained as if the past twenty years had never gone by and they were still in Junior High. The time capsule is lifted out and opened. Everyone looked in horror as the shriveled body of Kumi is revealed, still in her uniform.

REVIEW

That was one that was short, sweet, and to the point. Pretty much as I remembered it being, I really enjoyed this one. I knew girls like this, and wonder now if any of them would have been crazy enough to do something similar. Too bad it was only sixteen pages, is all I can say. Despite the length, I give it the final verdict of:

COOL

A Scaredy-Cat Reads Junji Ito- Slug Girl

SPOILER ALERT

I WILL BE SUMMARIZING THE ENTIRE STORY, SO IF YOU WANT TO READ IT YOURSELF BEFORE GOING FURTHER IN, YOU MAY DO SO HERE.

Yuuko has been having trouble speaking as of late, and nobody knows why. When her friend Rie goes to visit her after she didn't show up in school the next day, she finds Yuuko's parents salting and squashing a slug infestation in the backyard. They let Rie inside to see Yuuko, and, she finds her in her room, with a mask over her mouth. When Yumiko's mother tries to see what is wrong, Yuuko bats her away.

The next day, Rie goes back to Yuuko's to find her mother running out of the house in horror. Yuuko comes out behind her, and reveals that her tongue had transformed into a giant slug. Rie runs out of the house and never comes back, but Yuuko's parents keep her updated. Yuuko tried to cut her tongue off several times, but each time a new slug grows in its place. Even attempts to salt the giant slug did not work. Slowly, Yuuko wasted away due to being unable to eat or drink. In a last-ditch effort to kill the slug, they put Yuuko in a bathtub full of salt. After she completely submerged herself, she didn't surface. When her parents fished her out, they found a normally sized head on a small, shriveled body. To try and revive their daughter under running water, but instead the slug came out of her mouth, and now it carries her head around the backyard, like a snail's shell.

REVIEW AND THOUGHTS

Well, that one was... unusual. It wasn't one of the more interesting Ito stories I read, and I guess this one would be more frightening to someone who had a slug phobia. I, on the other hand, never did have that fear and actually found slugs to be pretty fascinating. Unfortunately, it was not what I look for in an Ito story, so I have to give it the final verdict of:

CONFUSING

A Scaredy-Cat Reads Junji Ito: An Introduction

First off, Happy first of Halloween!

I have decided, that in honor of October and in apology for not typing at all for a while, that I would do a daily exercise.

I simultaneously love and hate Halloween. I love the costumes and candy and general spoopy, but I cannot stand haunted houses and horror movies and anything scary.

Hilariously, I do love horror comics. Especially those by Junji Ito. They're so bizarre and well-written, and while I am extremely creeped out by some of them, others are absolutely fascinating.

So I figured: why not celebrate halloween month reading some Junji Ito and giving whoever may be reading this my opinions on the stories from his anthologies? One for each other day in October.

While reading, I have a rating system that I have decided to put in place, one I have called the "Four Cs":

Confusing: I had a hard time with this one. Maybe some of the plot elements didn't get through, or maybe I had a hard time finding it entertaining in any way.

Cool: This one was just... cool. Everything fit in all the right places, and where it may have given a shudder, it wasn't enough to last.

Creepy: This one was... weird. Actually able to have some kind of lasting effect and stuck with me, but not in the way the cool story did. Definately a spine tingle.

Chilling: These are the genuinely scary ones. The ones that I'm going to regret reading a second time because they kept me up at night. (fortunately the most infamous one is not being reviewed)

Of course, your mileage may vary on how scary they are. The ones I thought were cool someone else may be horrified with.

I will be reviewing Horror Anthologies 7-12 this month, just so I can avoid reading the Shouichi stories because they're creepy and I hate them. You may read them on your own.

So I'll see everyone tomorrow with my first reading and review.