The Irrational Fears of Children (or what monsters we really should have been scared of in our younger years)

Re-watching childhood cartoons is a curious business. Obviously I’ve never stopped watching cartoons, but there is a crucial distinction between cartoons aimed at children and cartoons aimed at adults (a distinction that can be best summed up in the first five minutes of episode 1 of Elfen Lied). But something has been sticking in my mind lately, and I’m finding it rather perplexing. So as I always do, I’m going to talk about it to anyone who gives a shit, and use the exercise to help me put my thoughts in order.

When you’re a child, everything is terrifying. You’re a tiny little blob of jelly that’s been parked on planet Earth, and you don’t know anything (in spite of what you might have tried to tell your parents). TV, of course, was your ‘safe’ window to the outside world, teaching you the stuff you needed to know, like how to quickly navigate a swimming pool to collect floating stars, or how to best trap small creatures in a little red and white ball.

But in between the fun stuff, there was the stuff that terrified you into cowering behind cushions. Things like mummies creeping out of tombs in the middle of a deserted museum at night, or catching sight of spectral figures in mirrors. After being properly introduced to vampires (in The Simpsons *groan*) I developed a terrible fear of them, which prompted me to sleep with my neck covered by the duvet.

Dear Christ, I was a wimp when I was little! Why was I scared of these monsters at all?

I’m not talking about the knowledge that the monsters are ‘fictional’ and ‘only in the TV’. I’m talking about logically. Monsters from my childhood make no sense. I was obviously far more impressionable when I was five years old. Gluing me to the screen was child’s play (literally) providing you had access to an entire cement truck full of gunge.

But impressionable or not, why on earth did I fear these thing? Even as a child, on my tiny legs that were of no use to me at all in PE lessons, I was easily capable of outrunning a mummy. And what exactly was their method of attack if they did catch you? They don’t eat you, or turn you to stone. All I ever heard of mummies doing was potentially cursing you, which is a rubbish method of attack. Every child knows that curses can be broken with relative ease, and the mummy still has to get hold of you first. Homestuck fans are more terrifying than this, and that’s only because it’s more difficult to escape them!

Ghosts I don’t understand at all. Now in my adult years, I’m more fascinated by them than anything else, but when I was a child, curtain twitches in my dark bedroom used to make me scared...of what? I think to myself now. All a ghost can do is follow you around like a particularly persistent ex-boyfriend. Sometimes they pop out from boxes or right in front of you while you’re in the shower (yup, definitely sounding like an ex-boyfriend). So they can startle you – but they can’t scare you.

Often they do start airing their grievances and complaining about perceived slights against them to anyone who will listen, rather like those ladies who spend every free moment of their time writing in to the local newspaper to complain about unkempt hedgerows, and vapour trails making the sky look untidy. Annoying as fuck, but ultimately harmless.

And vampires? Bloody hell, where do I start? Gone are the days when a vampire breaking into your house and sucking your blood was a credible threat. Now they sparkle and sit in corners feeling sorry for themselves.

But even if Stephanie Meyer hadn’t come along and ruined vampires for us, there is a limit to how far vampires can be considered a threat, logically. Now I might be a heavy sleeper, but I think even I’d notice two fangs being stuck into my throat. Your neck is one of the most sensitive areas on the body (that’s why it’s an erogenous zone for most women, and some men) and anyone who has had an injection knows how much even a tiny needle stings, because you’re pushing something sharp in through an organ that’s specifically designed to keep shit like this out. Now imagine having two very large needles being jabbed into one of the most sensitive areas of your body. Even someone on a heavy dose of sedative is going to feel it enough to crack the glass of water from their bedside table over the side of the vampire’s head.

And even if you were drowsy enough not to notice being bitten, you’ve still got to drink the vampire’s blood in return to complete the transformation process (vampires apparently adhering to the same laws of equivalent exchange as alchemists). And humans just don’t have the stomach for blood – literally. That’s why when someone has a nosebleed, you’re supposed to make them lean forwards not backwards – it’s not just to make you look less daft. It’s because if you swallow that much blood, you’re probably going to throw it back up. So the transformation would fail regardless.

And this is exactly what I’m going to tell my kids. Obviously I’m going to have to check under the bed and in the cupboard anyway (after all, mummy is a grownup, and doesn’t know any better). But there are far scarier things out there, which I am convinced will enter the realms of cartoon nasties by the time I’m ready to conceive. Werewolves and zombies are still credible threats to a child in my mind (they can and will eat you, even if they can be foiled by silver or moving faster than a brisk trot). But things like the Weeping Angels and Slenderman will also be the nightmares of my children’s generation. Creatures that sneak up on you, and actually pose a threat to your person, and have the potential to separate you from your loved ones (or your head from the rest of your body).

And probably a good thing too. These are at least things that children have a rational reason to be scared of.

Shuffle over boys. There are new monsters in town.

(I was going to put pictures of the monsters down here, but frankly, the prospect of google imaging them terrifies me).

A little squishy project

Hi guys! Just a little update on one of my latest projects that I'm doing between Nanoing.

I do a lot of sewing, and I have lots of scrappy bits of fabric laying around - bits that aren't big enough to make something new, but are large enough that it seems a shame to throw them away. So I'm embarking on a little project to turn them all into cute pincushions!

So as you can see, today I've been cutting out a lot of hearts. What you're seeing in the picture below are bits of TARDIS dress and Sailor Fuku!

I'll add more updates as I find more little bits of fabric, and decide on how I'm going to decorate them. I have a love of buttons and ribbon, but I want to see if I can possibly do something with my stacks of embroidery thread too, so who knows?!

I'll keep you all posted! If you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them!

Stumbling blocks to 50K

So Nano has kicked off for my seventh year of participation, filled with plot twists and resting bags of peas on my wrists for a week after it’s over. But when it’s over I have 50,000 more words than I did at the beginning of the month, so I mustn't complain.

I mustn't. But I will.

My motivation for Nano is always subject to fluctuation, depending on the various things going on in my life at the time. These tend to form hurdles on my sprint to 50K, and their size varies greatly depending on how tempting or pressing they are. This year though, I seem to be trudging rather painfully towards the end, even though to the outside gaze, it looks as though I’m doing swimmingly (17K on day 4 is a pretty good result by most people’s standards).

My blocks this year have ranged from the tiny little pebbles to huge mountains on the track in front of me. My big problem is that I have a very short attention span. Even now, writing this post, I’m itching to go and do a million other things. My anxiety doesn't help – when I have deadlines looming or things that I know I should get done, my body goes into a state of nervous tension until I can get them finished. This makes me even more erratic, and any hope of concentration I had goes out of the window.

Other things get in the way. Even though I’m resolutely focused on writing this story, my other stories (particularly fanfictions – Sisters of the Infinite Schism and Shadow Summoners, I’m looking at you!) are waving coyly at me from the sidelines, trying to entice me over with their sexy plot twists and curvaceous characters (River Song and Kisara in particular are being really flirty with me right now!). I’ve spent the last few days listening to one track on my iPod over and over again, purely because its inspired such a wonderful scene for Shadow Summoners that it makes me want to put my Nano on hold and run off to write it. But this way lies demons, mainly because I cannot chunk write (with me, it dramatically attacks the flow of my writing), and doing this scene now would not turn out well.

If these stories are the mythically beautiful sirens on the side of the track, waving at me enticingly, then Pokemon Y is the massive hedge in the middle of the track (you know, the kinds of hedges that are single-handedly responsible for tripling the mortality rate of horses in the Grand National). I cannot emphasise how much I want to play this game. I’m growing rather attached to my team, even if it is currently suffering from a rather glaring lack of balance, with three fires, two waters and an electric type. I get very fond of my Pokemon in my games (yes I know they’re strings of computer code – shh!) and I don’t think I can be blamed for wanting to continue my adventure.

But I have to be good. To that end, I’ve taken to playing it in the one place where it is impossible for me to write – the bath. There is something rather satisfying about reclining in hot water and Lush bubbles up to my neck and level grinding like a woman possessed. All I’d need is a cup of tea to make the image perfect.

And of course, my friends and boyfriend are still here – this is the one thing I will stop for on the Nano track. They’re just too important to me. Jenny and Rob are back for a few days this week, and I’d never miss the chance to spend time with them. Then we’re still in Tennerfest season, and I have three in a row this week (White D’or, Duke of Richmond and somewhere else yet to be decided). Craig is busy too, fighting off the demons of term paper and other assignments in between his job, so at every point he manages to find a second to squeeze himself online, I'm there.

So I have enough obstacles and things to stop for on this track as it is. But the worst thing is that I’ve also got a dead weight dragging me back as I try to claw my way towards the finish line.

I'm always critical of my work, but lately this has morphed into something very real. It’s very rare that I like my writing any more. It’s been building over the past year, but its only since Nano started that I’ve fully got a grasp of what it is. Its like there’s no spark of life in my writing – it’s just words on a page, that don’t inspire anything. I look at my friends like Craig and Jess who are churning out masterpieces, and my own work feels stilted in comparison. And it scares me.

And it’s killing my Nano. I might be writing fast, but I hate what I'm writing. I know you’re not supposed to like your first draft – that’s the whole point of Nano. You’re getting the first draft out of the way. But even all my other first drafts had something inside them; a little ember of something beautiful, just waiting to have petrol thrown on it. But everything I write lately just seems to be a dead lump of charcoal.

I can’t give up on writing, even though it sounds like I might be. It’s the only talent I have (or had). All I can do is claw on down the track and hope that this deadness in my words doesn't last forever.