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Horror 101, Monday

"Today, it's your turn to shine," Mitchell said, beaming at the class. He clapped his hands. "Show us what you did this past week. It can be a film fragment, something you read from a book, just describing it. Tell me what it says about the phobia of your choice."

He put the remote to the beamer on the table in front of him, and backed away so he could sit down at the back of the class.

"What are you waiting for? The floor is yours."

[[ open! ]]

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Like you're afraid of something.

Jack Priest

Alex Karev

Effy Stonem

Jennifer Walters

Chloe Saunders

Emma Frost

Harper Finkle

Tony Foster

Kate Gregson

Jonothon Starsmore

Alex Russo

Leda

Interact, eat food and drink, heckle your fellow students.

... Or rather, don't. It'll make Mitchell cross.

Alex wasn't above heckling but, for now, he was more in favor of partaking in the free food and drinks and just watching. Later, he'd probably heckle.

Name your fragment and your phobia, and tell us what they've got to do with one another, what it represents.

Students, feel free to react off each other's presentations!

"There is a terrifying book called That by Stephen King," Jack began. "Mostly, the monster is a clown, but there's one scene where the main characters are all out at dinner and they crack open fortune cookies to reveal objects related to their current fears. Two of them find bugs -- a giant mutated cricket, and a fly the size of a baby sparrow. When the fly breaks out of the cookie, it brings with it a puddle of pus."

"I think that's what entomophobia is about, really. It's about the decay that goes with insects as much as it's about the fear of things crawling on you. Cockroaches and flies come after sickness, filth and death, and that scares us more than the bug itself."

[OOC: I am about 90% certain this scene was also in the miniseries, but, in the interest of sleeping again sometime this week, I gave up looking for the clip. But gah. Scares the crap out of me.]

Edited 2010-03-22 09:14 (UTC)

"Nosophobia is the fear of contracting a disease which is a pretty freaking valid fear but people who have this phobia tend to fall to be irrational about it. It's sort of interchangeable with hypochondria but most people use the latter since it's a more well known term."

"There's a movie called The Aeronaut (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338751/) that deals with a really freaking rich guy who ends up getting something like this to the point he where he's started wearing Kleenex boxes on his feet, didn't want to be around people and became reclusive. He kind of gets so overwhelmed with his phobia that he really can't function in society anymore."

What a freaked up existence.

"Gerascophobia is the fear of growing old. Now, the movie (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088933/) I picked out is about a bunch of old people in a home who find eternal life thanks to the aliens next door with a swimming pool," explained Harper. "Of course, there is one weirdo who decides he'd rather live out his life naturally, but everyone else jumps at the chance to grow young."

"I tried to watch Bats," Emma began, waving the dvd. "But I kept falling asleep or laughing. It's not very good, but it's not quite bad enough to be a classic."

"Basically it says people are idiots. Bats are wonderful creatures that eat a variety of harmful insects - like mosquitos, spotted cucumber beetles, June bugs, stinkbugs and leafhoppers, and others - and you're not going to get bothered by them if you leave them alone. Besides, only 3 species of bats feed on blood, and only 0.5% of the 'vampire' bats carry diseases. If you ask most people, they're convinced all bats drink blood, and therein lies the major phobia."

"They get a bad reputation because humans associate them with the various dangers and fears of darkness, with the centuries of prejudices and accompanying myths of Dracula, Halloween, witches, and so on. If you've got a large roost, such as one in a cave or an abandoned home, ticks, mites, and fleas become a problem, and people identify bats with disease, like Histoplasmosis, which you wouldn't get if you weren't somewhere you weren't supposed to be."

"But chiroptophobia is usually left untreated, since most people don't have day-to-day contact with bats, and it provides us with vaguely amusing horror movies."

"So, my fear was haptephobia, which turned out to be the fear of touching," Kate began.

"And I actually found this flick, um, Sven and the True Gal? Where the protagonist guy kinda has this phobia. But, he's so messed up, so completely unable to deal with actual people, that he ends up falling in love with this life-sized doll." She raised an eyebrow at that. Despite all she'd seen, that was still weird.

"So the fear of touching is just one of his many social ineptitudes. But I think it all ties together with shying away from other people. 'Cause if you're afraid of being touched, or touching anyone, then you're having to cut yourself off from people. So there's no hugging or cuddling or even, like, handshakes. And, I can't imagine what it feels like to have this phobia, but I know that the idea of having it scares the crap out of me."

Said the girl whose first attempt at research for this assignment got interrupted for a whole lot of touching.

And who also tended to refuse touches when she needed them most. So, she'd know.

//I ended up picking th'easy one,// Jono confessed. //Aichmophobia is a morbid fear of sharp things. Pencils, knives, anything that can leave a messy hole in yer if it's wielded proper.//

Jono had a messy hole in him, but it had nothing to do with sharp things. So there.

//Really, all I had t'do for this one was shut my eyes and make a grab at any title on my DVD stack in my room. Th'winner was ~~meta for~~ Nightmare on Elm Street, about a nightmare figure with knives for fingers, a child murderer who invades th'dreams of youths and kills them in their sleep. Th'film has become so representative of this fear that th'bladed glove alone is pretty much instantly recognizable by anyone who lived through t'eighties.//

"Coulrophobia," Jennifer announced. "The fear of clowns. Not the fear of coal, as I'd imagined. Now, I'm actually going with That as well. The big bad of that book, and the TV miniseries, presents itself as... possibly the most terrifying clown ever. No seriously, he's scary (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7Oe62FKlac)."

"I think the fear is just... it's one of those things. I'm not even sure how to explain it. There's just something sinister about clowns."

Provided they're there!

Chloe was here.

Alex was here, too.

Just because he's making himself comfortable doesn't mean you can't bug him.

He's going to be very happy he doesn't breathe this week.

"I'm not a monkey of any kind, you know," Kate informed him, wandering over.

"Oh, I don't know," said Mitchell, thoughtfully.

"Yes you do." Beat. "If you ever want to get cake again."

"Threats," Mitchell replied, continuing that thoughtful streak. "I think monkeys do threats."

"Yeah well, so do humans," Kate pointed out.

"But it doesn't make it easier for me to tell you apart."

"I don't think a monkey would try to argue it's not a monkey."

"I don't know," said Mitchell, who seemed intent on making this conversation as surreal as he could. "I haven't met a lot of monkeys."

"Either way, I am not one," Kate said firmly. "Deal with it."

"You still haven't given me a lot of evidence," Mitchell pointed out, sinking back in his seat as he idly popped a crisp in his mouth.

"I really don't think I should have to give evidence," she replied, rolling her eyes at him, "beyond how I'm standing here talking to you, and just gave a presentation and everything."

"Well, you could be my TA next semester and I'll think about it," he said, considering the next crisp carefully.

"I'm not sure I can handle that much responsibility," Kate deadpanned. "But if it takes that to get you to stop calling me a monkey behind my back, then I guess I can try."

"I'll think about it," Mitchell repeated. Just in case she'd missed that part. "Although I could also just start calling you a monkey to your face."

Edited 2010-03-23 06:17 (UTC)

"Yes, and I could also stop talking to you."

Not that she would, but. Idle threats were nice.

I'm all about the awesome-but-spoilery Being Human music vids this week.

Seriously, though, if you don't mind spoilers, that vid is such an excellent glimpse at the series. Much like this Annie vid, which is less spoilery. I wish this fandom had more good fanvids (it's even tempted me to go vidding myself; somehow, I've gotten it into my head that this song might make an awesome Mitchell vid).

... Also, all this poking around and I'm finally finding people who've actually uploaded clips from the show. This is massively spoilery for Season 1, but damn, it's a piece of Annie badassedness that I had to share. Less spoilery: first scene from the first episode (which ironically I haven't covered in catchup yet).

*turns OOC note into an essay*

.. and that while completely forgetting to mention that they've finally put a reshot version of the scene in which Mitchell and George meet Annie up on YouTube. Now with 66% more series rather than pilot cast. I could have used that in my canon catch-up, mope.

Edited 2010-03-22 14:24 (UTC)

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