Testing Chat IV: A New Hope

[evilsoup]

Neil Gaiman: over-rated nerd writer or the most over-rated nerd writer?

[evilsoup]

oh lol I'm right now watching a film where they turned King Arthur into some kind of Roman general

[Darksi4190]

The one with Clive Owen and Kiera Knightly?

[evilsoup]

yes
it' on bbc 1 right now
it's even worse than that TV series where they did King Arthur except everyone was 12

[Losonti Tokash]

i don't understand why people keep putting keira knightly in movies

[evilsoup]

I liked her in Pirates of the Caribbean
(that was her, right?)

[RyanThunder]

It's her titanic chin. They think it might physically damage the box office or something.

[RyanThunder]

Yet you said you did you lying sack of shit.

I said I'd read his post. I did not state that I'd read the book.

[RogueIce]

Looks like we've found the zombies' weak point:

My weak point too.

[Flagg]

Looks like we've found the zombies' weak point:

My weak point too.

Hepatitis?

[Djinnkitty83]

Look at that bodice. One direct hit to those strings and everyone in a thirty foot radius is getting hit by shrapnel.

[AniThyng]

Well I wish I had the words and concepts to explain why broadcasting atheist propoganda into the Muslim world probably won't have the intended effect.

[timmy]

I read a quote once where someone that defined the essential difference in public perception between Bridget Bardot and Marilyn Monroe that Bardot was someone that made sex happen for others, where Monroe was someone that sex happened to. Discuss this with regards to recently posted image of 90s sexual icon Pamela Anderson.



Also Flagg, hep joke was comic timing. High Distinction.

[thejester]

assuming a spherical Dresden full of zombies it will take 800 Lancasters to kill 30,000 people

[Civil War Man]

oh lol I'm right now watching a film where they turned King Arthur into some kind of Roman general

I saw that one. OK premise, shit execution.

[The Spartan]

That movie was such a fucking letdown.

[Big Orangutan]

And being the 5th century, with the relatively rapid collapse of Western Roman Empire and the onset of the Early Medieval era (or so-called "Dark Ages") the general look of King Arthur and his cadre was several centuries out. Roman weaponry and equipment had evolved a lot after the 1st century AD and Arthur would've likely looked something like this:

[The Spartan]

The anachronisms didn't bother me that much. What did bug me is that these guys were supposedly from the exact same culture that had been absorbed by the Roman Empire they each had personal fighting styles from different cultures.

There really wasn't that much big that bothered me, it was lots of little things. Most of which I can't really put my finger on, there was just, well, something...

[Questor]

"Guys, I'd really like like the topic of conversation to change. ...What? Come up with my own topic? No, no I don't feel like doing that, I just want it to change, so, uh, could you guys do that for me?"

I was actually referring to sc-if fandom in general. We've talked about wwz for about what? 3 pages here? I think we've spent more time discussing speed traps than wwz.

EDIT: To expound, I referred to WWZ as a strong book in a mediocre genre. I feel that "zombies take over the world" in a novel medium is doing a disservice to both the medium and the genre. Zombie stories work best with an enclosed, claustraphobic feel. If you spend too much time on the larger picture, the things that make zombies an interesting threat get diluted.

Zombies seem to work best as this slow, unstoppable continuous tide. A single zombie* is not much of a threat to a small group unless it starts infecting people, 20 zombies are a massive threat, and lets not even think about 200. If the infection is covering entire continents or the entire world, your possible solutions are deus ex machina or technobabble, and neither generally produce a satisfying outcome. Another option is to present as grand tragedy and depict the fall of civilization, possibly with a few marooned witnesses.

On the other hand, "Zombies take over the world" plays very well to the strengths of movies or even comic books. I am at the moment, withholding judgement on television, because despite my guess, that drawing out the plot would dramatically reduce tension, Walking Dead is one of the better shows out there right now, and I'm willing to believe that I called that one wrong due to the strengths of the episodic medium. The strengths are the ability to tell complicated, detailed scenes quickly through visual cues, the ability to dramatically and successfully move between a "global" perspective and an individual one without losing the audience, again by using visual cues. In a novel, that kind of context shift is often jarring, especially when it happens mid scene. Simple editing tricks can make the exact same scene work in a movie. Zombies translate well (playing to the weaknesses of the medium as well) by being a relatively straightforward concept (the dead walk) and not requiring significant exposition.

* Referring primarily to traditional "shambling, unthinking" zombies. Fast zombies that think are really more in the "Alien" or hunting horror genre, as I like to think of it, which has an entirely different sets of strengths and weaknesses.

[The Spartan]

Has anyone ever pulled of a sort of "On the Beach" story, but with zombies instead of nuclear holocaust?

[Questor]

Has anyone ever pulled of a sort of "On the Beach" story, but with zombies instead of nuclear holocaust?

Looking it up, that's exactly the kind of story that I think would be a good novel-length zombies take over the world story.

Also, it just went on my list.

[Questor]

RE:Asiana 214:

Do you want to see some fun politics? Boeing is going to want this to be 100% pilot error, because of the profile of the 777 on their road maps. South Korea is going to demand 100% mechanical failure. *A and United will just want the whole thing to go away. I hope the NTSB was joking about including SK authorities, at least in anything more than a "bring the documents we ask for and we might allow you to read the report" role, same as Boeing's people.

[uraniun235]

zombie apocalypse is just survivalist bullshit for nerds who can't handle post-atomic horror

[evilsoup]

oh lol I'm right now watching a film where they turned King Arthur into some kind of Roman general

I saw that one. OK premise

No. It's part of that trend (which seems to have died down) of 'demythologising' various myths and legends. Like Troy, except at least Troy had a pretty good spearfighting scene. I fucking hate that trend.

The anachronistic costumes were kind of annoying, but if the film had been otherwise good I wouldn't care about that. What was really annoying was the anachronistic characterisations -- Arthur was like a 20th-century guy dropped into the setting, with all his talk about abstract 'freedom' etc.

[Flagg]

anime is just bullshit for nerds who can't handle life