The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/fantasy/)
Sexual fantasies. When a girl mentions this term, I assume most people imagine some steamy, hot bondage sex scene with lots of rope, blindfolds, and other sexy kinks. But to me, the term “sexual fantasy” means something else. It refers to my private, creepy, does-this-reflect-a-hidden-part-of-my-character thoughts when I’m touching myself, or sometimes even just daydreaming in a coffee shop after seeing a hot guy. Yeah, neurotic.
Most of the people close to me either don’t know or only have a marginal understanding of what I do in my spare time. My friends and family know that I am obsessed with baseball, but that’s about all they know. When I was in sixth grade, I created a fantasy baseball league with friends, teachers and family members and continued this into seventh grade. After that year, I realized I was putting much more energy and time into the fantasy league than my opponents, who mostly consisted of casual baseball fans. Soon after, I joined an online simulation league played through the Strat-O-Matic simulation program.
Until it goes off the rails in its third act, The Witch maintains an unnerving, tense aura of creepiness and dread. The dread comes not from gore or bloodshed, but from the overwhelming threat of violence that seems inevitable in a 1630s Puritan setting. That is Puritan, not puritanical. These folks in bonnets and heavy cloth seem like the real witches; they would be willing to sacrifice their children if commanded to do so. The Witch occurs in an environment where religious devotion and the desire to avoid the hot place approach insanity.