Talk:Trick or...Trapped!

Fake Santa Ending: Scarier Than it Seems?
You're all going to think I've completely lost it, but just hear me out, and let me specify that I myself am not scared by this ending, but I am think of it from your character's perspective. Remember, however old you are, your character supposed to be a child.

If I recall correctly (I have not got the book to hand, but I do own it) the gyst of the ending is; you, a young child, gets saved by Santa, after presumably almost dying a few times (the order of events differ each time you read the book), and finally begin to feel safe, and also probably really excited because Santa is now proven to be real, which would be an event of a life time to most children. However, you start to thank Santa, and then he turns to face you, and he sudenly has a skull like face, and there are other horrific features of him (I think there was something like a losse eye, or a worm crawling out of his eye socket, or something - I'll have to read it again).

Looking at it from a young child's perspective, this is kind of scary - an icon of happiness, and childish innocence such as Santa suddenly changing to that, I may mock R.L. for some of the choices he made in these books, especially where "making innocent things scary" are involved sometimes, but I actually see the potential of this ending. Especially when you consider the fact (if I remember it correctly) the choice isn't "Get on Santa's Sleigh/Turn Him Down." It's two unrelated choices that lead to this, and if you pick the wrong one - you are automatically saved by fake Santa, so if the was really happening, to you, it's not an easy to avoid ending.

Remember; Child "saved" by someone who looks like Santa, "Santa" faces away from child, then faces child looking like something out of a horror movie in the space of a second. It's the sudden transformation from childish innocence to horror that makes me thing that this could be pretty shocking if it was animated. Kind of like the scene with the angel in one Adventure Time episode where she goes from having an angel's face, to a monster's/skull's face all of a sudden. It doesn't scare me, but I think I would have been at least shocked as a kid. MJNSEIFER (talk) 15:11, September 30, 2013 (UTC)

Any paths? ThomasProofreader 17:35, December 3, 2019 (UTC)