Bumping Geese 8: The Girl Who Cried Monster

 Thanks for being patient during this brief hiatus we just had. This one took longer because the week I was meant to do this review, I came down ill and then Christmas happened and I was caught up in all the yearly traditions and activities.

But here we are, past that, new year creeping up on us, just around the corner, and I hope you've all had as happy a holidays as 2020 would allow. And I hope your travelling and socialising was kept to a safe and sensible minimum.

Now, you've waited ever so patiently for this one, so let's not waste any more time. 'Goosebumps' book 8: 'The Girl Who Cried Monster'

I don't know if there are Christmas themed Goosebumps books
This one is not.

There are a couple of things that make this book distinct. It is one of only a few, so far, that have been written in first person. It doesn't even try that hard to be scary, instead opting to be more of a children's adventure with slight horror elements. Unlike Monster Blood, which does the same, this book isn't complete crap. Or even mostly crap. The villain is an actual character, instead of a vague looming threat. That's unusual for the series, so far. Because it's not much of a horror, there's also not much mystery or suspense. The monster - and I hope it's not a spoiler to say there is a monster - is present and described in detail from very early in the story. RL Stine doesn't try to be funny, much, which is a rare relief. Uh, what else...

Oh yeah.

The twist ending is totally fucking nuts.

I imagine most of you along for this ride with me have either read the Goosebumps books, or are adults who are as mildly curious about them as I was when I started, and very few, if any of you, are going to read the books after reading my blog. But if you are - if that is what you are doing - then please stop reading this blog and go read the book first. I am going to spoil the ending, and regardless of whether or not the ending is good, whether or not it is a satisfying twist (and see the Monster Blood review for what isn't a satisfying twist), this twist is worth experiencing first hand, unspoiled.

You'll get one more warning before I spoil the twist ending.

So as the name suggests, 'The Girl Who Cried Monster' is just Aesop's Fable 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf' but Goosebumps-ified. Modern (well, by 90s standards) suburban setting, a monster in place of a wolf, shitty parents, and an utterly bananas twist ending.

Our protagonist is Lucy, a young girl who likes making up stories about monsters to frighten her brother and trick her friends. But one day, she stays late at the local library and sees that the librarian, Mr Mortman, is a monster. Lucy tries to tell everybody that she has seen a totally real definitely actual alive and real monster, but of course they've heard her tell these stories for a long time, so they don't believe her.

At this point in 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf', the real wolf eats the village's live stock and, depending on the version, the boy. But 'The Girl Who Cried Monster' goes off in its own direction here and we follow Lucy's adventure as she tries to first confirm what she saw - Mr Mortman turning into a monster - is real, and then prove it to her friends and family.

And here is also where we also run into the biggest problem with this story.

Mr Mortman isn't a good wolf. Some of the scenes in which he transforms are unsettling. He is usually observed while feasting on moths, flies, and even a small turtle, and that does kind of churn the stomach, but there's no indication he is a threat, and it isn't until near the end that he even knows Lucy is onto him. So there's very little at stake in this story. Lucy isn't in danger and her goal isn't to stop Mr Mortman or save anybody, it is just to make people believe her and stop calling her a liar. Even though she is a liar, and it just happens she is telling the truth this time.

And that also undermines the point of the fable this story is based on. Which makes this novel kind of hard to say anything interesting  about. It's an Aesop Fable without a moral. You know the first half of the story, and the second half, while a decent page turner, is also kind of sterile. There's no sense of danger, no suspense, no comedy (failed or otherwise), and unfortunately quite a bit of repetition of scenes of Lucy spying on Mr Mortman, seeing the same thing, getting scared, and escaping unscathed. That takes up most of the second half of the book.

And then the ending happens.

Lucy is finally validated when her friend Aaron also sees Mr Mortman transform into a monster. And backed by her friends' testimony, Lucy's family invites Mr Mortman to dinner.

And I'm about to spoil the twist ending of the story so if you want to know what the fuss is about, if you want to try and experience this wild wacky nonsense for yourself, go get a copy (the ebooks are cheap) and read it. The whole book will probably take you 20 minutes to read. These aren't dense or lengthy fiction. Okay. Warning over.

Mr Mortman arrives for dinner and makes small talk with Lucy's parents and then THEY FUCKING GROW FANGS AND EAT MR MORTMAN. It turns out that Lucy's family are all monsters, and they don't like other monsters living in their town, so when one does show up, they eat them. No monsters have shown up for some 20 years, so Lucy's parents didn't believe her until a non-monster corroborated the story. Lucy and her brother don't eat Mr Mortman because they're not old enough monsters to have fangs and eat other monsters, yet. That's also why Lucy's brother, a monster, is afraid of other monsters. He's not big enough to be the predator just yet. 

And Lucy and her monster family live happily ever after.

And...

What the fuck.

This is not a satisfying twist. Or rather, it shouldn't be. It has none of those good qualities I have described good twists having. It doesn't come with any suspense, just surprise - to use Hitchcock's language.

But it's so completely out of nowhere, so random, so over-the-top... I kind of love it.

Seriously, I can forgive the rest of the book's flaws for going all in for wild absurdity at the end.

But its such nonsense, and like most of the book, so undermines the point of the fable it is based on that it leaves me with very little to say about the rest of the book.

And you know, that's okay.

I called the ending absurd, a few paragraphs ago. And I meant that in the common sense of "wildly ridiculous". But in philosophy, the term 'Absurd' also has a more specific meaning. The Absurd is the desire for meaning where there is none, or where you couldn't understand it even if you found it. And philosopher Albert Camus suggests that we learn to be okay with the absurd, to recognise how it limits us, accept it, and go on with enjoyment in your absurd life.*

Absurdist art has been around a long time, and they tend to leave you with a sense that maybe this art could mean something, that there could be a message, but you could twist yourself in knots trying to find it and still come up empty handed. The play 'Waiting For Godot' by Samuel Beckett is a famous example of Absurdist Art.

And the way 'The Girl Who Cried Monster' presents itself as a re-telling of an Aesop Fable, but actively guts it of meaning, and swings radically into its out-of-nowhere twist ending does play out like a work of absurdist art. We think it should mean something, because of its fable origins, but ultimately, it seems it doesn't.

So I'm not going to dig deep on this one or reach for any greater meaning or message. I'm not going to squeeze a Marxist take out of it. I'm just going to laugh, shrug my shoulders, and say "that's fuckin' wild and I love it."

It's what Camus would want us to do.**

*This is an extremely simplified summary of Absurdism and Camus' work.
**Camus would also teach you about Absurdism, and I guess I'm doing that, too, despite saying I'm not going to read much into this one. Can't help myself, I guess.

Bumping Geese 7.1: Who Is Lindy Powell?

You'll remember that last time, I told you that Lindy Powell is the greatest monster in all of Goosebumps. Obviously I haven't read the entire series yet. In fact, since Goosebumps books are apparently still being written and published (something I did not know when I started) I may never finish reading the series.

BDG is goals

None the less, I am confident in saying that no monster, no villain, in the series will ever show more cunning and cruelty and such a frightening lack of humanity as Lindy Powell. But now that we have exposed her crimes to the world, we can punish her. Right?

But my question to you is, can Lindy Powell be punished for her sins?

I want you to do something for me. Imagine a ship. An ancient Greek trireme, we'll say.

Have a picture to help you imagine it

We'll say this ship you're imagining belonged to the legendary Greek hero Theseus. After Theseus is done being a hero, finished his life of adventure, and settled down to live out his days quietly as the king of Athens, his ship is placed in a museum for all to see.

Imagine this: The Ship of Theseus.

Over the next, I don't know, century. Let's say over the next one-hundred years, pieces of the ship begin to rot, and ship-wrights working for the museum replace those rotting parts. Plank by plank, sail by sail, over those hundred years, the whole of the ship has been replaced with new material.

Is this still The Ship of Theseus?

Why?

Why not?

If this ship is no longer The Ship of Theseus, when did it stop being so? Was it when on plank was replaced? Was it when the final plank was replaced?

Let us also say that after another century, some amazing technology is discovered that can restore all those rotten pieces of the ship to pristine condition again. This technology is used and all those pieces that were taken out of The Ship of Theseus are used to build a new trireme.

Which is The Ship of Theseus? Which is the original?

This is not an ancient Greek boat

This is a depiction of a human body. You probably have one just like it. A body with all the requisite number of organs, fingers, toes, nostrils, and at least one face (or you may have some perfectly human variation on these features). Are you your body?

Like The Ship of Theseus, your body is rotting and being repaired. Researches estimate that roughly every seven years, you have shed and regrown every cell in your body. The matter that makes up your body is changing constantly. So if The Ship of Theseus stops being The Ship of Theseus at some point during its repair, when did you stop being you?

If we punish Lindy Powell. If we sentence her to life in creepy child jail, and Lindy Powell is the sum of the matter which makes her, must she be released in seven years? At that time, has the Lindy Powell who committed those heinous crimes against her sister ceased to exist? Are you not punishing a new person for somebody else's crimes at that point?

Or if it doesn't take complete replacement - if The Ship of Theseus was no long The Ship of Theseus at the moment the first rotted plank was taken out and replaced, didn't the Lindy Powell who tortured her sister cease to exist the moment one of that Lindy Powell's cells died and flaked away from her body?

You might answer this by saying such base materialism is no way to define a human. A ship may or may not be the sum of its matter, but a human is more than that. A person might be kept in their body, you might say, but their essence is the sum of their life. When we talk about Lindy Powell, we don't mean "that collection of atoms arranged in that particular shape" we mean "that individual collection of memories, beliefs, life experiences, relationships, and emotions - well, maybe not emotions, given its Lindy - but definitely an entity that transcends their skin and liver cells."

And I would, on the face of it, agree. Certainly when I think of myself, I think of myself as a consciousness before a body.

But that doesn't actually resolve the question of The Ship of Theseus.

If Lindy Powell exists as the sum of her life, then isn't she, in every moment, experiencing new life and once again changing what it is that constitutes her? The Lindy Powell who plans to trick Kris into thinking her doll is alive is different to the Lindy Powell who is currently tricking Kris into thinking her doll is alive, who is different to the Lindy Powell who just tricked Kris into thinking her doll was alive, who is different to the Lindy Powell who tricked Kris into believing her doll was alive yesterday.

In every moment that passes, that equation that equals Lindy Powell has changed. The materials are different.

"No, not different!" you say. "Added to." And you make a good point. It is not so much replacing the sails as it is adding new sails. And maybe, so long as you are only adding new sails, the ship might remain fundamentally the same creation. It is a ship being infinitely built, but never rebuilt.

But haven't you ever forgotten something? Have you ever had a memory change over time? Have you ever changed your opinion on a food or a movie over time?

If we can assume that, other than being an inhumanely cruel monster of a child, Lindy Powell is still fundamentally human, and that humans do change our opinions, and that our memories are not like photographs but more like stories we tell ourselves a little different every time, then we do come back to that same problem.

How much of Lindy Powell needs to change before she stops being Lindy Powell? And if that transition is ever made, how can you be sure you punish Lindy Powell who is guilty of tormenting her sister and bringing woe to mankind, without ever punishing a Lindy Powell who did not?

Perhaps math is no way to resolve this. Minus a memory here, add a sail there. That's no practical way to define a person. Lindy Powell, perhaps is an idea. An idea of a dynamic but still ultimately temporally consistent person. Lindy Powell is who we agree, practically, who Lindy Powell is, who we understand her to be when we say "Lindy Powell is a danger to humanity and she must be stopped."

There are no public domain images of an idea, so here is one of a dog instead.

Okay.

But whose idea is that? All of us? Does the same idea of Lindy Powell exist in all of us?

You and I, we know in our hears that Lindy Powell is a vicious and conniving and merciless abomination who wears humanity like a mask and discards all sympathy and emotion at a callous whim. We share this in our understanding of the idea of Lindy Powell.

But put yourself in the shoes of her parents. Do what Lindy Powell cannot and try to empathise with them. Imagine you are seeing Lindy Powell as they do. They don't know the truth you know. They haven't read the book, or my review of the book. They think their daughter is a competitive but ultimately well meaning young girl with a talent for ventriloquism. That is the idea of Lindy Powell that exists in their mind.

And that Lindy Powell, as an idea, does not exist in our mind.

And what about the Lindy Powell who exists in her own mind? Does anybody believe they are the villain of their story? She is villain to us, but she might be the hero in her own mind. The idea of Lindy Powell that Lindy Powell has constructed is a third Lindy Powell.

And we can go on. While our idea of Lindy Powell might be most distinguished by disgust, and her parents' idea distinguished most by love, should Kris ever learn the truth, wouldn't it be safe to assume the the idea of Lindy Powell she possesses would then be most distinguished by betrayal? And wouldn't that revelation change the Lindy Powell that exists for Kris?

The person as an idea is no more static than the person as matter, or the person as metaphysical equation.

So who is Lindy Powell?

And if we can't answer that with any certainty, how can we punish Lindy Powell with an absolute certainty we aren't punishing somebody who is innocent?

The Ship of Theseus is a thought experiment in philosophy that's basically as old as philosophy. The version I've presented most resembles that used by Thomas Hobbes. Many philosophers have taken a stab at resolving it one way or another, usually with a lot more rigour than I have. But I didn't want to resolve the question with this blog, or even give you a rundown of how better philosophers than I have tackled it.

I just wanted to make you aware of it, and walk you through some of my initial thoughts about it. And I wanted to raise it in the context of crime and punishment because it's not an angle I see very often for this thought experiment.

And also I had to link it to Goosebumps somehow.

But even if you ignore that angle, The Ship of Theseus does prompt us to consider our sense of self in relation to time and consider what, fundamentally, makes us who we are.

All literature, even spoopy children's books, ask questions of us. That question might be as simple as "should Lindy Powell be punished for being a terrible person who torments everybody around her and has never known what it is to care for another creature?" but I link to think of small questions as the loose threads of the universe. You start pulling on them, and inevitably you start pulling on something much larger, and your questions evolve into very big questions like "What does it even mean to be me?"

And the big questions are often the most fun to try and answer.

Bumping Geese 7: Night of The Living Dummy

I need to stop writing these with a hangover.

Well...

Anyway...

Let's get into it.

Were ventriloquist dummies ever not creepy?

'Night of The Living Dummy' stars Kris and Lindy Powell. Two twin preteen girls who are always in fierce competition and rivalry with each other. One day, while walking through the in-construction house of their neighbours, Lindy spots an old ventriloquist dummy in a dumpster. She immediately falls in love with it and decides to become a ventriloquist.

At first Kris thinks this is super weird. Probably because it is super weird. But Lindy, it turns out, has a natural talent for ventriloquism and she begins putting on performances that wow their friends, neighbours, and family. Lindy starts doing shows at children's birthday parties, making herself some money, and even gets invited on TV. Kris is jealous of the attention Lindy is getting with her weird new hobby, and that jealousy peaks when Lindy's ventriloquist act even gets the attention of a boy at school Kris has a crush on.

Kris decides to try and get her own dummy and start putting on her own ventriloquism show. She asks if she can practice with her sister's dummy - which Lindy has named Slappy - but Slappy rebukes her, calls her ugly, even strikes her. Lindy insists she didn't do it, that Slappy acted on his own, but of course nobody believes her and her parents force her to apologise.

Kris and Lindy's father, known only as Mr Powell, finds a second ventriloquist dummy for cheap in a pawn shop, and brings it home for Kris. Now both girls have their own dummy and can do their own shows. Even though Lindy is more talented, has more practice, and seems to have a better grasp of comedy, Kris does okay for herself and even gets invited to perform, with her dummy Mr Wood, as MC of the school's spring concert. But none of this quite serves to quell the jealous rivalry between the sisters. Lindy is furious her sister is stealing her schtick, and Kris hates that Lindy is better than her and still getting more praise and attention.

But something far more sinister is afoot.

One morning the girls wake up and find Mr Wood posed in such a way that it is though he has been attacking Slappy, trying to choke the dummy to death. Another morning, Kris finds that Mr Wood has put on all her finest clothing, wrinkling them and ruining her outfit for the day. After a fit of frustration at being outdone by her sister, Kris throws Mr Wood hard against the floor, and that night, she discovers Mr Wood in the kitchen, all the contents of the fridge strewn across the floor, and among it all is Kris' favourite jewellery. Kris and Lindy both insist they had nothing to do with it, that it must have been Mr Wood all along. But of course their parents, who have been driven to wits end by their daughters' rivalry, do not believe the dummy is alive and threaten to punish them both and take both dummies away unless they begin behaving themselves and getting along. During the night, Kris is sure she can hear Mr Wood in the closet, demanding to be let out.

Kris sits frightened on her bed, sure her dummy is alive, but sudden unexpected twist! Lindy admits she was responsible for it all. The kitchen mess, the dummies fighting, the clothes, even the voice - Linday was doing it all just to frighten Kris. Kris is, of course, furious, and swears she will never speak to her sister again. And for a while, the girls continue to be cold to each other.

Then one day, just before the Spring Concert, Kris notices something she has never noticed before. A slip of paper in Mr Wood's shirt pocket. She unfolds it and reads what appears to be a short phrase of nonsense words. Nothing happens, and she puts the paper back in Mr Wood's pocket.

The Powell's elderly neighbours arrive and Mr Powell suggests the twins each do a short performance for the neighbours. Lindy puts on a great performance, as usual, but when Kris sets up to do her performance, sudden twist! Mr Wood seems to come alive again, all by himself, and insults the elderly neighbours. Kris swears it is not her, but of course nobody believes her and she is made to apologise. Lindy even scorns her for trying to pull the same mad-insulting-dummy that she had pulled with Mr Slappy, earlier in the story.

A similar horror occurs at the Spring Concert, but far worse. A nervous Kris sets herself up on stage, ready to begin, but once again Mr Wood seems to come to life and begin insulting one of Kris' teachers. When the teacher tries to stop the performance, Mr Wood suddenly projectile vomits a putrid green slime across the auditorium. A sticky, awful, and unexpected end to the concert before it has even begun, and, it would seem, an end to Kris' career as a ventriloquist. Her parents are too angry to even contemplate a suitable punishment, but they assure her this will be the last time she sees Mr Wood. Mr Powell plans to return it to the pawn shop the following Monday.

But Mr Wood has other plans. He well and truly comes to life that night and tries to escape. Kris and Lindy have a brief scuffle and fight with Mr Wood and subdue him and lock him in a suitcase. They drop the suitcase into a hole in the next door yard and bury him deep. It seems they have won, at last, but sudden twist! Mr Wood is back again the next morning, and he plans to make sure the girls suffer for their slight against them. He warns them he has great power and cannot be killed. And if the girls don't become his slaves, he will murder their friends and family, starting with the family pet dog, whom Mr Wood begins to strangle to death.

Another fight ensues and this time the girls carry Mr Wood out into the construciton yard, where two steamrollers are flattening the land, and they throw Mr Wood in the path of the steamrollers. Mr Wood is finally defeated for good, crushed to death by a steam roller.

The girls return to their home, to their room, the nightmare over at last. But sudden twist! Slappy comes to life and asks if the other terrible dummy is finally gone!

This book has twists like 'Welcome To Dead House' has moist things.

Just a whole lot.

But it is also a work which forms part of a broad and very old tradition in fiction, both horror and otherwise. The villain of this book is one in a long line of cunning, deceptive, manipulative, and frankly sociopathic evil master minds. Fu Manchu, John Sunlight, Lex Luthor, Hannibal Lecter, and now - well now as of 1993 - Lindy Powell.

Oh, and I guess evil living dolls are a thing to but, eh, whatever.

The real horror is Lindy, clearly the evil twin of the two, and an absolute psychopath. For much of the book, you think that Kris is kind of the bitch sister, always jealous, always bitter, always trying to outdo her sister. And Lindy, sweet innocent Lindy, is helpful and supportive of her sister, giving Kris tips on being a better ventriloquist, and just being rightfully proud of her own accomplishments, regardless of her sister. Sweet innocent Lindy.

But it's an act! Lindy isn't proud. Pride isn't an emotion Lindy can feel. All Lindy knows is the pure ecstasy of inflicting pain on others. Beneath that saccharine smile, Lindy knows she is driving her own sister into a agonising jealous rage. She knows that their parents, who she has wrapped around her fingers, will punish Kris when Kris inevitably lashes out.

And why would Lindy be proud anyway? She's not a good ventriloquist, she has a living dummy of her own! Not that she mentions this at all through the story. It is clear she has made a dark Faustian pact with Slappy. Together they will wreak havoc on the world, while Lindy builds fortune and fame from their partnership. But don't mistake me - in this arrangement, Slappy is Faust and Lindy is the demon Mephistopheles.

That's just one part of her scheme. The other, of course, is to make poor Kris question her own sense of reality, by fooling her into believing Mr Wood has come to life. No doubt an idea she had from her dealings with her own living dummy. And when Lindy seems like she has had her fun and revealed her scheme to Kris, only then does she plant the ancient spell in Mr Wood's pocket, knowing her sister will read it aloud and bring Mr Wood to life.

So long is this con, so convoluted is this plan, that even though Lindy risks losing her own dummy, even though Lindy has to help clean up the kitchen she trashed, these are all minor sacrificial pains that bring her closer to her own goal. She plays the helpful ally, in the climax, of course, but only because at last her goal is within her grasp. Together, she and Kris destroy Mr Wood, leaving Lindy and Slappy as the only ventriloquist act in town.

But not only that, all evidence of Mr Wood's short and violent life, all evidence that he was responsible for the slime and insults, is gone. The Powell parents think their daughter Kris might have genuinely lost her mind, and there is punishment yet in store for her, and she will never prove that she was innocent.

She will never prove that Lindy was the puppet master pulling all the strings right from the beginning.

Lindy Powell. The master villain. The greatest monster of Goosebumps series.

Forget the existential horrors of the cursed camera or the invisibility mirror.

Forget the iconic terrors of Slappy, Monster Blood, and the Haunted Mask.*

Forget the creeps seemingly designed to frighten me specifically in 'Stay Out of The Basement'.

Lindy Powell is the most frightening creation of RL Stine.

But, like, I guess haunted dolls are kinda creepy too. If you're into that. Whatever.

I'm doing an episode 7.1 for this one. I have a much bigger question to pose about Lindy Powell that demands its own blog space. So check back next week for that.

See you then. If you dare.

*I haven't read the haunted mask book, yet, but I understand it is one of the most popular/memorable ones.