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@eden-anderson *headdesk* Yes, I did. I get you guys confused.

@ericawordsmith Hey, everything I said to Eden back there was for you… So, yeah…

@wordsmith – Yeah, I knew what he was talking about. I’ve read part of the Illiad and we learned about that in school, I was just laughing at the way he phrased it. 😊

@ariel-ashira … Uh, because we’re twins separated at birth? Or because… great minds think alike? 😊

@ericawordsmith – Viking Quest series!?!?!?!?! I am not the only person on the planet who has read those?!?!?!?!?! YAY! *high five and squishing hug that’s a little awkward cause you’re half a foot taller than me* I loooooove those so much!!!

Okay, so maybe we play a different version of Catan? I play Settlers of Catan, where you’re trading resource cards to buy houses and roads and stuff. There’s no people besides the grey robber… thing. But I know there’s a lot of different version.

We played six square once at a church picnic because there was so many people in line. Best ever. 😊

Coyotes. That’s how it’s spelled.

Ice skating is the amazingest, and it’s actually the times in my life when I am the most graceful! I fall down a couple times, sure, but in three and a half hours of skating I only fell down twice last time!! Once I get used to it, I can go fast and do slow spins, so I love it.

Haha, no I don’t actually play the organ. My dad and I were cleaning out our Pastor’s prop room at church and I put on one of his cloaks and posed at the organ. XD Oh, our Pastor’s prop room… a writer’s paradise. He has daggers, swords of all kinds, little cool golden thingies, cloaks, weapons, little weird flute things… it’s awesome. Our Family Sunday School in the morning usually involves people acting out the story while he teaches, so it’s so much fun!!! One time his younger brother Joel put on this glimmering gold shirt and floppy gold hat and danced around a pretend fire shouting “Oh Baal, hear us!” during the story of Elijah. He was so loud Pastor couldn’t even continue. It’s awesome.

@ericawordsmith @wordsmith So, the movie…

The movie was called The Village, by someone names Shyamalan, I think. He’s known for psychological thrillers. Now, I want to make this clear, this movie isn’t bad at all, it doesn’t have a lot of gore or negative content, and my brothers like it and my mom loves it, so I thought I would too.

The premise is that there’s this utopian society in a valley, around late nineteenth century, I think, and they live in peace as long as they stay out of the woods surrounding them, because there are these creatures. Those Whom We Do Not Speak Of, who live in the woods. The creatures wear red cloaks, so red is the bad color, and none of it is allowed in the village. Yellow is the safe color, so the night guards in the watch towers and the people who will offer meat sacrifices occasionally wear yellow. The main character is a blind girl, Ivy who wants to get married to Lucius, who is the only one in the village who does not fear the creatures for his own strange reasons. Then… there start to be animal carcasses left around the village, and the creatures start coming in a night, and everybody is panicking.

THIS WILL INCLUDE SPOILERS SO SKIP TO THE NEXT ALL CAPS IF YOU CARE IF YOU WILL EVER WATCH THE MOVIE…

So the twist comes when Lucius gets stabbed, which is one of the saddest things. He was stabbed by another young man in the village who is mentally unstable and was also sort of in love with Ivy. So Ivy volunteers to walk through the woods to get medicine from the nearest village. Then her father, one of the elders, takes her to a shed and shows her that the whole ‘creatures’ are a farce. They are costumes worn by one or two of the elders to scare the people into staying in the village.

So she goes through the woods, and then encounters one of the creatures… which is actually the mentally unstable young man who’d found one and she thinks it’s still real, and he doesn’t tell her, so… and this is one of the worst parts… She gets away by getting ‘the creature’ to fall into a pit, and he’s killed.

She makes it out of the woods and over the wall… and she’s in modern day. It’s modern day actually, and the whole thing was set up by the elders who were sick of the world and its evil. In the ‘real’ world, their community is in a nature preserve. So she gets medicine and goes back.

The elders of the village decide to tell everyone about it, especially when they find out Gideon, the young man with mental problems, has died. So it’s… kind of a happy ending.

END OF SPOILERS!!!

Again, this has way less gore than LotR or some of the war movies I’ve seen, no swearing or bad stuff, it was just… not for me.

It wasn’t truly the creatures that scared me; not their appearances. They walk on two legs, and wear red cloaks with spiny things coming out the back. Their faces are warthog like, and they have long foot long claws. They actually look a bit cobbled together.

But the idea of them… the way they are presented in the movie. This guys theory was less is more. The less you show them, the scarier they are, and it’s true.

They inhabit the dark woods and are only out in dark settings, so when I’m in the dark or in the dark by woods, it’s all too easy for my mind to conjure up a form in a red cloak, an evil presence that makes me feel terrified.

Another thing that made me feel sick and scared was just the dark utopianism of it all. These people believed they could make their own perfect world, and yet death and horrible stabbings and evil still comes in. The grief they brought on their families because of their deceptions is horrible. They only decide to tell the truth after the attempted murder and needless deaths happen. It’s just… hard to swallow, and that sort of just put a… dark, black fear into me.

It’s very, very hard to describe, but there just the same.

After I saw the movie, I didn’t think I was scared. The visuals of it hadn’t bothered me. But when I was up in my room, the mental things came and that was what gave me basically a panic attack. I could see things outside my window, I was shaking and crying but couldn’t move. It was awful.

So I’ve sworn never to watch another psychological thriller and am now struggling with fear of the woods, which used to be such a happy place for me. I don’t blame my family for this, even though they convinced me to watch it, because I thought I would like it, and they all do. It’s just… bad for me.

*sighs* So… that’s that.