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.

A few days ago, I bought a Game

It was called CHALLENGE THE ZODIAC, and it was only 1.29 at the "Generally a Dollar" store. Well, I felt that it HAD to be challenged, so I purchased it.

I will have a more complete review (with pictures!) at a later date, but I just had to share the fact that I had purchased it now.

But I will answer the burning question now:

Was the Zodiac worth being challenged?

The answer is a resounding no.

Almost a half an hour before work so...

...I figured I'd write a little bit.

Fire Emblem: Awakening has been taking up my non-working, non-eating time because I am enjoying it that much.

Mostly for the relationship system.

Seriously, I am planning my second playthrough's relationships more than stats and classes. I only have two more of the child characters to get, and I'm still figuring out their perfect matches. I have Cherche and Maribelle left, and I'm thinking of Cherche with Gregor and Maribelle with Henry. Mostly for the koot. And I'm planning Sully and Kellam for the next play as well. Gonna delete my bro's old file (he didn't like the game) for it so I can keep my current team.

OFFICIAL FIRE EMBLEM GOAL: FILL SUPPORT LOG!

I picked the right shirt

I am wearing my "I spell F-U-N   D-&-D" shirt at the football game.

Very fitting.

After about an hour or so of traffic followed by a bunch of time looking for our seats, we find ourselves sitting in the stadium. Stuff is happening, and I have absolutely no clue what. I have had it explained to me at least twice and it is all gobbledygook. I just see people running and stopping and everyone is cheering and I am blinking.

So I occupy myself by mobile blogging and eating horrendously expensive and spicy crab fries as everyone starts yelling again. Even the beau understands this stuff more than me. I came for the free for me food. Thank god this is a pre season game. I am having a hard time with a supposedly small crowd.I have been just told that this is actually a mid sized crowd.

I will sit with this mantra:

It was free.
It was free.
It was free.

How to write an adventure?

I am very good with world settings. I love creating long dynasties of rulers, religious systems, contintental layouts... all the background stuff. I adore building a diverse and interesting world for players to explore and discover all the little nooks and crannies of.

But when it comes to filling that world with actual adventure... I'm stumped. And that's bad, because I would love to write large, multi-session adventures in the world I craft, and then sell them to gamers on little flash drives. But that's much further down the road. First I have to write the adventure. I guess I will try at it the way that one goes at writing- a chapter at a time. And by reading other pre-written adventures.

I will let you know how it works out, if it does.

Character Creation Part II, the Final Fantasy X Version

Well, my roommate is going to be running his Final Fantasy campaign when our current one is over, and now that I am going through the game with the beau, I think I have a good idea as to what I am going to do with the character for that one.

She's going to be Guado. I kinda knew I wanted a Guado character from the moment I saw the race and went "TREE ELF PEOPLE? YES." I even have a name for her- Quersa, after the scientific name of the Oak Tree. Her class: beastmaster/tamer. If she can summon fiends like other members of her race, she'll have a specialization over plants and insects to start (maybe large reptile types later on because yay large reptile types). If she can only choose one, though, it'll be either a bird or a hornet of some form. Because that sounds badass. Along with an instant poison touch if she decides to attack on her own.

Well, I am going to wait until I get through the rest of the game before deciding on a backstory, so that is all I have for now.

Character Creation!

I have two tabletop campaigns to start crafting characters for, now that Shadowrun has reached what seems like a slightly-past-mid-point. One for a Final Fantasy X campaign (which the beau is playing through so I understand the world and general plot), and one for a high-fantasy epic level campaign.

The FFX one... is daunting. My original character concept was one I crafted because I knew absolutely nothing about the universe and I could get away with asking dumb questions about obvious subjects. Now I do know things, so crafting a character should be simpler. But what direction do I want to go with her? And what race? I will wait until the game is over to figure out that.

My Epic Level character is the exact opposite. I know her extremely well. She is a much older version of my very first D&D character, a flighty bard who collected stories with the dreams of running her own library one day. Well, this character is about forty years after that first trip out and taking one last adventure before she becomes unable to perform such a feat. I will actually be writing her backstory here most likely over the next few days so the DM can have it all in one place.

I ended early...

...due to heat exhaustion. I was so tired on Saturday I only saw a tiny sliver of the evening concert. Then again, that was because I was a big dumb and forgot sunscreen on Friday. I thought "Oh, yeah, I usually don't need sunscreen. Why would I need it today?" And then I got horribly burnt and had a hard time enjoying myself the next day.

Friday, on the other hand, was EXCELLENT. Amazing bands with awesome party energy, clearance t-shirts that allowed me to re-stock on my festwear for less than twenty dollars, and an all-around fun time. It was nice hearing Shimeka Copeland again, and she wailed just as well as I remember. The Old Crow set BLEW ME AWAY, and everyone else was just as excellent.

The afternoon show was amazing too. Spuyten Duyvel, A Fistful of Sugar, and The Wallace Brothers were really amazing local groups, and we bought A Fistful of Sugar's album the next day. I looked for The Wallace Brothers online but they had no music available. I still need to check for the third group.

All in all, I had an amazing time and it was great to be back. I walk through the entrance, and it felt as if I had never taken that eight year break. Everything was as I remembered it, from the grounds themselves to the people that occupied them. A place where I could leave my stuff without having to worry about it getting stolen and have those non-worries actually founded in truth. A place where I felt like I was part of one huge family. And I can't wait to do it next year, as the beau has agreed to go again.

Hopefully with friends this time.

Give this a watch if you have the time.

One day I will write about how much I DESPISE the Tim Burton adaptation of Sweeney Todd, but before I do that, I have to show everyone the way Sweeney is supposed to sound. Patti is totally my favorite Lovett. Lansbury was too squawky and Carter is too breathy. But Patti... she has it down. The only tolerable Lovett.

Plus, NPH is in it and he is fantastic. 

An Early Weekend

This week, Thursday is Friday.

I am taking a three-day weekend in order to attend the Philadelphia Folk Festival on Friday and Saturday. An old family tradition revived.

I used to go to Fest every year, and it was the most fun I could have all summer. More fun than the beach or any amusement park out there, the young me looked forward to Folk Fest, near summer's end. For me, it was the last big party before school started.

I went for sixteen years straight to fest. According to my father, I was even there before I was born. I was pretty much destined to be a folkie. And then I went every year. Attended all the workshops and side concerts I could, ate so many caramel apples from the fire company stand that I could no longer look at them for a few years, and begged my parents to buy me as many expensive handmades as they could, only getting maybe two of them.

Then mom got sick and dad lost his job, and we didn't have the money to go. I was super upset the first year I was told we wouldn't be attending, and then worked to try and find a way to go on my own. My paycheck was never large enough to take care of fest costs unless I saved like a madwoman (which I still have a hard time doing), so it became a distant dream for me.

And then I got a job that allowed me to go WITHOUT saving much money. So I will be attending fest once again, after an eight year break. I am extremely excited and will hopefully come back with tons of pictures and fun stuff to show to everyone!

At-Work Creative Writing Part II

Utilizing WriteWorld is a great thing that I should really do more often. They usually have some interesting prompts and all kinds of things like that. This one actually reminded me of a dream I had a few nights ago that I had.

That morning, Catherine woke up in the woods.Wearing an outfit she didn't go to sleep in. After picking the leaves and twigs out of her long blonde hair, she sat up. "Not again..." she groaned.

Mind you, this had only happened two times before. At least this time she didn't wake up near something dead and weird-smelling. She was almost late for school last month because she spent so long in the shower getting rid of the stench.

There was no way she was going to tell anyone about her blackouts. She had a social status to maintain, and this kind of news would ruin everything. Like Rome, a close circle of friends and andmirers was not built in a day. Fortunately, she had her bag on her this time, along with her phone, compact, and a small piece of paper. "I don't remember any pieces of paper in here..." Catherine muttered as she pulled it out and unfolded it.

All that was on it was one word, scrawled in a thick black marker.

"SORRY"

Catherine frowned and folded up the paper. "Who's sorry? And for what?" She shrugged and looked at the forest around her. Fortunately, it was a familiar part of the forest in her backyard, so she knew how to get back home this time. And if she made it home in fifteen minutes, nobody would know that she had even been gone.

Just the way she preferred it.

Decided to experiment with mobile blogging

Well, I find myself sitting at the train station waiting for my ride and I figure what better way to test out the mobile post writing?

I just wanted to write about how I used to think I was really adaptable and more than able to react easily to change. As i got older, I realized that was not the case.

I had to resist the urge to glare at someone for an entire bus ride because he sat in the seat I usually occupy. It was such an odd experience that I realize other people also go through, but I still feel bad. This guy had no clue that he was wronging anyone by sitting down, but he was. I spent the entire ride hoping he would not become a regular that I would have to fight for my seat.

Because that is silly.

Creative Writing During Work

It's a slow work day today, so I think I may pass the time with a little bit of writing. Utilizing WriteWorld once again for inspiration, I start again with snippets to try and get my creative juices flowing once again. Last time I used WriteWorld, I used a picture. This time, I take one of their first lines to develop a fantasy world I return to every once and a while. This one's a little long compared to other snippets, so you can read after the break.

I have decided to bring this back up again, because I have nowhere better to record random musings and writings. Tumblr is not the place for that kind of thing, and there is no WAY I'd do it on Facebook, once again, not the right place. So time to bring back an already existing blog.

If anyone ever reads it, good. It's just a place for my not-so-private, sometimes deep, sometimes amusing, but always rambling thoughts. If nobody reads it, whatever. This is writing for me, not really anyone else.

So I'd like to give a hello and a welcome back to whoever wants to take this rambling journey with me.