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#32196 06/14/01 05:21 PM
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Yeah, I agree with mav.


#32197 06/14/01 05:39 PM
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I'm glad that Mav is on the same page as me.

Here's one other way to differentiate terror and horror:

Terror is the feeling that you have just before a public speaking engagement for which you are not well-prepared, and you know that Jackie is in the audience. Horror is what you feel when you walk off the stage, having just bombed the whole speech, and you realize that your fly is unzipped.

In reply to:

We don't have Terror flicks, nor do we have horrorists. But I'm not arguing logically.


Well, I think Kenny G might be described as a horrorist, since his music makes me want to run screaming from the room. Same goes for Jerry Bruckheimer films, the Backstreet Boys, and MTV.


#32198 06/14/01 05:40 PM
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"Mistuh Kurtz, he dead."

I agree that terror is a reaction to something tangible...while horror is, as Brandon said, the fear of the unreal or irrational. I can be terrified by a spider, but I am horrified at the thought of a spider.

...where horror implies revulsion or disgust

I also like this nuance of meaning for horror...like what I felt while watching John Malkovich incomprehensively butcher the character of Kurtz in the telemovie...it was as if he was just camping it up and walking through it, throwing it away because he had a tiff with the director and was out to spite him or something. And I wanted to scream at the screen, "You are a MUCH better actor than that! How DARE you do this to this great novel, you bastard, you!" I was truly horrified! Darkness descending......


#32199 06/14/01 06:31 PM
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"Ter ror is the feeling that you have just before a public speaking engagement for which you are not
well-prepared, and you know that Jackie is in the audience. Horror is what you feel when you walk off
the stage, having just bombed the whole speech, and you realize that your fly is unzipped."

I wish I had said that.


#32200 06/15/01 01:26 AM
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How many *important writers were born into one language, but wrote their best-known works in an acquired language?


#32201 06/15/01 01:32 AM
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How many *important writers were born into one language, but wrote their best-known works in an acquired language?

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh.................Joseph Conrad?



#32202 06/15/01 07:41 AM
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Nabokov


#32203 06/15/01 09:43 AM
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Conrad was Polish, right? What was Nabakov's original tongue?

You know what horrifies me? When I discover a tick on me and see that it's all engorged with my blood, and I realize how long it must've been there unbeknowest to me. *shudder* It is a sort of retrospective disgust. And of course I'm in terror that I might get rocky mountain spotted fever or something. *ugh* I've often imagined heaven as beautiful gardens and lawns and woods without any nasty bugs.


#32204 06/15/01 11:35 AM
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Nabokov was born a Russian. He'd get my vote as the best non-native speaker/writer of English.

Brandon


#32205 06/17/01 01:22 AM
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No, no, no, guys: the key to the difference between terror and horror is believability. Terror is what you feel when something real, and real-ly scary, is about to happen. Horror is what you feel when what has either happened, or is about to happen, is so awful that you want to deny that it could be/could have been real.

Interesting--I never really thought about these words being
tense-sensitive (well, I figure if a browser can be case-sensitive, then surely tense-sensitive must be a word).
You can't feel terror* once the event is finished--it is pretty well restricted to something that is in the present or the future. Horror can be felt at a past, present, or a future event.
*I don't mean that the residuals of terror of something that
almost happened to you abate immediately. I mean that if you come upon a scene where something terrifying has happened, but all danger is now gone, you cannot feel terror at that specific event.
==========================================================
Terror can soil underwear. Horror can't.
that depends...

Good one, tsuwm!
===========================================================
Alex--I am typing to Backstreet, from a video website!
Love 'em, love 'em, love 'em! Even went to your town to
hear 'em, November 17th, 1999. "I Want It That Way"...
===========================================================
you walk off
the stage, having just bombed the whole speech, and you realize that your fly is unzipped."
I wish I had said that.

Well, c'mere, Bill, let me help you with that zipper..









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