kingtristantzara replied to your post “Public Safety Alert: please remember that Autumn and October are times...”
Is this... inspired by the sorcerer’s apprentice?
If you mean specifically the issue of automated cleaning systems going out of control? That’s inspired by my roomba, who needs supervision whilst cleaning because he gets trapped in the bathroom or caught on the internet cord and has to be rescued.
Which might be seen as defeating the purposes of a robotic vacuum. He’s more like...a weird pet who does one chore with mild competence.
On a more general note, I watched our VHS copy of Fantasia way too many times as a kid. My favorite bit was the Pastoral Symphony. Color-coded soul mates, weird forest fashion, mythical beasts--it had everything I could have wanted as a wee creature. (Uh, the racist bits were censored out on the tape, so I was blissfully unaware of that nonsense.)
The death of the stegosaurus and Night on Bald Mountain were both unsettling for a small child, but I could cope. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, though? No, uh-uh, that shit was not on.
It had to be fast-forwarded through, with my eyes averted, every time. I was irrationally, intensely terrified of the whole bit. Not the brooms, mind you--Mickey and the sorcerer. It was a story about messing up and getting in trouble with authority, which was way more frightening a prospect than rogue magic.
So in summation: not particularly? From Beauty and the Beast to Alice in Wonderland to Harry Potter, there are plenty of other sources that have informed my love for what I call “animate objects” in a way that Sorcerer’s Apprentice never particularly did.
Also, I grew up reading a lot of pagan/Wiccan books, which always talk about how the “veil between worlds” thins around Halloween, allowing spirits through to our world.
