HEY, I have a blog post for Wednesday! Someday I'll get back into the swing of actual blogging, but for now, this conversation happened in RinkChat and it made me laugh so hard I figured I should share it. Read on, those who appreciate snark.
Me: Ugh, this story is making its way around my Facebook with people being all, "This is the most romantic story of all time!" http://www.snopes.com/glurge/carry.asp
Me: Snopes' final paragraph on it is great: "Is any of this a true story? With the authorship of the piece unknown we cannot authoritatively label the tale false, but we suspect that wives in the final throes of cancer who are confronted with adulterous husbands intent upon divorce likely don't get their spouses to agree to cart them around the house for a month, with the intent of dying on them before that time is up."
Goosey: Oh ugh
Leen: Hmm, never seen that one before.
Leen: That story, I mean.
Goosey: I was reading it thinking it was a nice story UNTIL she died, and I was like "Oh WHAT? This is not true. Ruined now."
Me: Haha, right? I was like, "OK, this is a little cheesy, but kind of sweet... Oh, wait, WHAT? Gah."
Goosey: Oh yeah, see? I like the original ending.
Me: Leen: I'm pretty sure I used to see it on MySpace.
Leen: Wow, that is old!
Leen: I don't know how I've missed it.
Me: Yeah. Heh.
Me: It still all rings very false to me, even the happy ending, but I understand people believing it's a true story. But that sudden death ending is just bizarre and reeks of 16-year-olds going, "NOW IT IS DEEP AND MEANINGFUL."
Goosey: Well no, not even that with the happy ending it was necessarily true, but with the sad ending it's just horribly manipulative.
Sam: Oh my gosh. That is the worst-written story ever.
Goosey: lol Sam
Sam: It's terrible even before the end, but that ending is so lame. You're right, it reads like a 16-year-old's idea of something shocking and profound, but really it's just manipulative artifice.
Goosey: yup
Me: Sam: Exactly.
Sam: With just a tiny bit of rewording here and there, I could put that on Pea Soup for the Cynic's Soul.
Me: LOL LOL
Goosey: haha dooo it
Me: It really does read like that.
Sam: Just need to strip out the moral at the end.
Leen: lol
Sam: "That evening, I arrived at home, flowers in my hands, a smile on my face, I run up stairs, she was dead of cancer. THE END."
Goosey: LOL
Me: LOL
Sam: There's a fine line between comedy and tragedy.
Goosey: A fine dotted line sometimes
iwpg: LOL
Sam: Haha, apparently in that snopes article they say that that's how the story WAS for a time.
Sam: The sad ending was added to the original, which was more upbeat, and it wasn't until some time after THAT that the cause of death and closing moral message were added.
Sam: That's awesome.
Sam: Exactly the sort of thing the Internet would do.
Goosey: hehehe
Leen: It kinda reminds me of a Hallmark movie, but Hallmark would put a happy twist on the ending.
Goosey: With another slight rewording you can turn it into a ghost story where she had already foudn out about his infidelity and killed herself, and came back as a ghost to haunt him into being faithful again.
Sam: hahaha
Sam: "You see, John, I died three months ago."
Me: LOL LOL
TalkingDog: ooooOOooooOoooOOooooooo
Goosey: " and he looked down as saw he was carrying a SKELETON AAAAAAHHHHHH!"
Goosey: Or he went mad with grief and hallucinated carrying her every day so he could make it up to her posthumously
Sam: Yeah, at the end Jane comes around to their house, intent on facing them both down once and for all, and she just sees him walking down the stairs with his empty arms stretched out in front of him.
Goosey: YES
Goosey: And then Jane either gets him committed and swears off married men, or she nurses him back to mental health and they get married.
Sam: No wait. He KILLS his wife, then fantasizes she's still alive, as some sort of way to fantasize a redemption for himself. So Jane comes around and sees him carrying his wife's DEAD BODY down the stairs.
Goosey: And then in the SEQUEL Jane is haunted to death by the ghost of the wife.
Goosey: Jane and her new boyfriend, who is a married man, but she doesn't know it.
Sam: Then it turns out that the couple's kid is actually a werewolf nazi.
Goosey: LOL LOL
Goosey: That's for Title: The Revenge
TalkingDog: With a heart of gold?
Goosey: TD: YES
Me: This is turning into the best film franchise of all time.
Sam: ACTUAL gold.
Goosey: Jilted: The Trilogy
Sam: The other characters find out and try to kill him for the priceless fortune inside him!
Sam: The movie poster tagline: "How do you drive a stake through a heart of gold?"
TalkingDog: That rules.
Goosey: And THEN in the 4th movie, which will come out nearly two decades after the others, HIS ghost comes back and rips the hearts out of them and everybody they love, and is finally taken down by a group of college freshman spending fall break in a cabin in the woods.
Goosey: Who are all having affairs with married people.
Goosey: With cancer.
Sam: I feel we've diverged somewhat from the text of the original story, while keeping true to the spirit of its message.
Ok, so, one time I was at this anime convention. There was one room that was showing live-action Asian horror films. I watched one. Don't ask me why, because I hate horror, but I watched it through to the end. This is its plot, which that discussion vaguely reminded me of.
ReplyDeleteThere was a woman who had a fling with a spoiled rich dude. At one point, he leaves a little plant at her door as a cute gesture. Later he spurned her, and she had a miscarriage in her apartment and died. Her apartment building began to be rumored to be haunted, and no one would move into her apartment. Then, the spoiled rich dude, who had begun seeing this other nice young lady, started investigating the apartment for whatever reason. There's a lot I don't remember, but the ghost of the dead woman possessed his new girlfriend, and tied him to the bed and SAWED HIS LEGS OFF. She began to saw off her host body's legs too, but was stopped for some reason. The girl managed to escape, but the dude died, and when she phoned his dad to tell him his son was dead, she discovered that no, he'd been dead the whole time too! And the movie ends with the woman ghost opening her apartment door, seeing another little plant there, and looking down the hallway to see the guy -- still with no legs -- sitting on the floor and being charmingly cute. And he gimps his way into her apartment and back into her life. Or her death. The end.