Posted by: Micha at June 4, 2007 09:41 PM Obviously there is, ayt least new takes on old themes, but it is initimidating.
I don’t know that it’s intimidating, at least in my little POV, so much as challenging. Sometimes the nothing new comes off well because of what it’s being used to say. Take the movie Ginger Snaps (please.) I had a friend who was nuts for that film. She loved how the idea of the werewolf myth was being used as a metaphor for all the changes in women during puberty and the ensuing sexual awareness that comes on (by both genders) at that time.
Vampires could easily be metaphors for AIDS, politics, poverty, greed, etc. It’s just whether or noy the writer can pull off what they want well enough to not hit you over the head with it and to give you a really good story to boot. Just not a lot of people doing that right now.
Dracula 2000 played around with the concepts of the unrepentant soul and redemption, obsession and addiction. May not have been the most well done example of those, but it was still an ok popcorn movie.
… and wanted to hear from the experts.
Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you were talking to me. Ðámņ. All that time spent typing that could have been spent watching something like Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are in My Neck.
which was another reason why I wanted to hear of any cliches I should be wary of.
All of them and none of them really. a cliche isn’t really all that bad a thing in and of itself, it’s just how their used that can suck. Use a cliche (or tons of them) well and you have PAD writing Rick Jones. Use them badly and you have Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin.
Same thing with vampire films. Ive seen some great ones and I’ve seen some dogs and in some cases the great and the garbage had the same thing to say from start to finish. It was just the skills of the presenter and the presentation that made the dif.
I’m sure you can come up with a thousand non-vampire works that you can say the same thing about. You’re just seeing the forest for the poison ivy here because you’re overthinking what you want to do. Chill out and go for it.
Granted, that’s advice coming from someone who hasn’t had published work since college…..
A bully and a liar to boot. He said I’m not gay-baiting, I’m obsessive-baiting, and there is simply no portrayal of a same-sex obsession as anything other than gay. but he wants us to believe now that what he said was the absence of any non-gay portrayal applicable to Jerry’s obsession with me But ok, ok, enough. There’s truth to what you say. We’ve shown him to be stupid, we’ve called him on it, we’ve let him hang himself with ever increasing craziness and there does come a point where it gets to the point where people might feel sorry for him, the exact opposite of what we want.
It’s very very hard though to avoid hitting back at someone who employs certain tactics, especially when that person has their own issues…it’s like being called ugly by a frog.
That’s true. There’s something intimidating in the volumes and volumes of fantasy, sci-fi, superheroes and horror you find these days. Is there anything to add that has not been done already? Obviously there is, ayt least new takes on old themes, but it is initimidating.
Here’s my take, given with the admission that I do not have my finger on the pulse of the buying public (or GRINDHOUSE would still be in theaters): I’d like to see more historical horror. The best parts of THE ZOMBIE SURVIVAL GUIDE were the speculations about historical outbreaks.
If I had the budget I would LOVE to do a movie that would take place in the ill fated Roanoke Settlement, the fabled Lost Colony. Ill-prepared settlers, Indians and zombies. Ever try to do a head shot with a matchlock? And reloading time is a bìŧçh. They never had a chance.
That’s what I’d like. Gimme Roman legions vs Druid vampires in Britain, that kind of thing.
I should also tell yu that, as I look at different aspects of my life, smacking you around now and again falls under the category of guilty pleasures….
Oh, and Mike is a bully, even if one that is incapable of doing much harm. But his behavior is that of a bully nevertheless.
I haven’t asked anyone to take my word for anything. That’s why my posts are mostly quotations. If you have an example of a same-sex, non-gay obsession that can serve as an analogy for Jerry’s seemingly arbitrary obsession with me, you can make it a first and share it here.
Mike, how exactly is it that you can twist logic in this particular instance to assert that it is Jerry who is obsessed with you? Given that he has hardly made a post about you in quite some time, while almost every post you make is about him, it would seem that the obsession is on the other foot. I realize such an observation is one only those of us burdened with logic would make, and therefore invalid in the Realm of Mike ™, but I confess to being curious as to how you distill the situation to a purity that leads you to the conclusion that you have, indeed, reached.
I am addressing accusations. This is true for all my posts your accusation may apply to.
If you were educated in an American school system, you know that the US Constitution makes no obsession a right, but it does make all accusations reviewed in a court accessible to cross-examination. My addresing accusations against me is no more an obsession than that.
Mike, you really ought to recognize that Bill, rather than wanting to sodomize you, may simply take an interest in your abnormal psychology. Instead of challenging him to prove he doesn’t love you, how about substantiating your own claim that he just MUST?
Are you saying Bill is obsessed with me? I’m not sorry for the time I held Bill to his pattern of hypocrisy, but at least it makes sense that that would piss him off.
As for Jerry — what offense has he ever claimed from anything I’ve said? The “must” lies in the absence of any alternative explanation.
Unless you are insane, you must be aware that no one here respects any of your qualities quite so much as you do.
Would you say respect is all things to you?
Who does your observation not apply to? I don’t doubt you have an answer, I’m just wondering who you have in mind.
…there are so many ways that one could [portray a same-sex obsession as something other than gay] that your reliance on cheap gay-baiting is convincing evidence of a deeper animus toward homosexuals.
…which you demonstrate by failing to cite even an example of “so many ways” to portray same-sex obsession as something other than gay.
…here’s a good one. You could have compared the situation to Les Misérables. Jerry would, in your fantasy, be the obsessive Inspector Javert, hounding the kindly Jean Valjean (played here by Mike). I have yet to hear anyone ever suggest that either A- Jean Valjean and Javert are not of the same sex or B- Javert is not obsessed with Valjean or C- there is any sexual component to that obsession.
The only disadvantage to the analogy is that putting yourself in the role of the heroic Valjean is only slightly more laughable than making out Jerry to be Javert.
Thanks, Bill, for reminding us of — and disqualifying — that Valjean/Javert dynamic no one can ever seem to get away from.
No, thank you, Mike for [confirming] that your statement there is simply no portrayal of a same-sex obsession as anything other than gay. was both incorrect and indicative of a lack of imagination….
Your latest attempt to deny the obvious is the funniest one yet. Keep it up. You’ll be able to save a bundle on therapist costs by just printing this all out and handing it to them….
So how and when did my supposed pretense of invulnerability manifest itself? Was it when I accused you of refusing to take a correction I previously gave you credit for taking? No, that can’t be it, because that wasn’t my hypocrisy against you, that was your hypocrisy against me. That’s Totally Normal Psychology.™
It’s no big deal to admit you have a problem with, say big numbers– 300 million becomes 300 thousand, for example–but to admit you actually said something that does not stand up to logical scrutiny–say, for example, that there is simply no portrayal of a same-sex obsession as anything other than gay–you bluster and flail, making the failure all the more apparent with every stubborn repetition.
You accused me of refusing to take a correction you previously gave me credit for taking — and rather than opt to abandon your contradiction as a casual mistake, you chose to formalized it by persisting in challenging me with it. All that’s left for my to say is thank you for sacrificing your own credibility to boost mine.
No, I was being sarcastic when I thanked you–it’s what you do on a regular basis and it amused me to use it on you.
I don’t need your gratitude to be authentic to legitimize your contradiction. Your portrayal of me “[confirming] that [my] statement… was… incorrect” is literally what happened.
At this point I can’t tell whether you still think that there is simply no portrayal of a same-sex obsession as anything other than gay or that you have admitted this is incorrect and you’re sore that this admission hasn’t been recognized.
Perhaps you’re confused because your insincerity has eroded your very sense of reality, like in Dante’s Infreno where the fraudulent suffer from polymorphism because their insincerity has disintegrated their ver identity….
I have no reservation against rephrasing and fixing misspellings:
While the absence of absolutely any portrayal of a same-sex, non-gay obsession would have demonstrated the absence of any non-gay portrayal applicable to Jerry’s obsession with me, all portrayals of same-sex, non-gay obsession — as stipulated by Bill Mulligan — do not necessarily apply to any given same-sex obsession.
After 5½ days, Bill’s “so many ways” to portray Jerry’s same-sex obsession with me as something other than gay is still zero.
A bully and a liar to boot. He said [“]I’m not gay-baiting, I’m obsessive-baiting, and there is simply no portrayal of a same-sex obsession as anything other than gay.[“] but he wants us to believe now that what he said was [“]the absence of any non-gay portrayal applicable to Jerry’s obsession with me[“] But ok, ok, enough. There’s truth to what you say. We’ve shown him to be stupid, we’ve called him on it, we’ve let him hang himself with ever increasing craziness and there does come a point where it gets to the point where people might feel sorry for him, the exact opposite of what we want.
It’s very very hard though to avoid hitting back at someone who employs certain tactics, especially when that person has their own issues…it’s like being called ugly by a frog.
Why would I need anyone to believe I said “the absence of any non-gay portrayal applicable to Jerry’s obsession with me” when I said “there is simply no portrayal of a same-sex obsession as anything other than gay?” Is a statement only true if it’s said first? Does the model of a heliocentric system have to predate the model of a geocentric in order to be accepted as true?
Jeez, Bill, I’ve never seen anyone’s entire connection with reality challenged before by their inability to comprehend such a widely used word as “rephrasing.” Awesome. Just… awesome.
Ooooooookay….
Anyway, if anyone else is interested in the kind of historical vampire/zombie scenarios I mentioned, go to http://www.fvza.org/histhome.html for some nice tales.
The next time any of us feels like responding to Mike and demonstrating his derangement, just go to just about any of his posts. They do a wonderful job of that, probably better than we could do.
One of my favorite turn everything on it’s head pieces is Vincent Price’s Last Man on Earth. I’d say more, but in case anybody hasn’t seen it, (What, you people have LIVES? For SHAME!) I won’t say any more.
Jerry, Micha, as far as truly original stuff, I have to wonder two things. First, I have to wonder if something was Truly Original if it’d get past a lot of marketing people as “Nobody’s ever seen it, give me more of the same thing!” And second, for a lot of up and comings, I wonder if they(we?) are trained that THIS is what a story should be, and you can’t play with it until you’re firmly established as A Talent That Is Recognized.
Mike – for the record, I can and do find many things wrong with what you say. Non-arbitrarily, I am telling you that I find your redefinition of vocabulary to mean whatever you want it to [mean] in each sentence detestable, whether done arbitrarily or with a purpose peculiar to your fevered brain.
…such as?
Mike, just to be clear, I condemn you – very specifically you and not someone else – for what you say and do. At present it does not bother me that other people make use of the same alphabet and a few of the same words as you. Many of them speak English fluently. Of them, a respectable number are sane. Of that number, relatively many (more than half, possibly) are not jáçkáššëš. If that weren’t the case, I’d criticize them, rather than just you.
Thank you for continuing to demonstrate you can’t find anything wrong with what I say — by not finding anything wrong with what I say.
I do not like it when you use a word, are called on its absolute stupidity; redefine it to mean something else; are told that – yes, that is different, but it is also still stupid; redefine it again; still make no sense….
…like when?
…The truth of anything else I’ve said doesn’t depend on pretending mistakes pointed out to me aren’t mistakes.
Mike, you have pretended that virtually every mistake pointed out to you isn’t a mistake. That’s about 50% of what angers many of us. (Faulty reasoning is the other 50%.)
For example?
The next time any of us feels like responding to Mike and demonstrating his derangement, just go to just about any of his posts. They do a wonderful job of that, probably better than we could do.
Feel free to establish that precedent anytime you’re ready.
I just recently saw ‘Last Man on Earth’ on TCM and really enjoyed it. A much more faithful adaptation of ‘I am Legend’ than Chuck Heston’s ‘Omega Man’ (or, one presumes, Will Smith’s upcoming adaptation.)
Not that Omega Man isn’t fun, and has it’s own charms, but it goes nowhere near the themes Matheson was working with in his novel.
Sean,
I’m not sure that the originality problem is as heavy on the editors end as it is on many writers’ ends. Even a lot of the fan fiction that’s out there is as stuck in the clone-the-latest-fad mode as the big publishers’ writers are. The problem is definitely how so many people have allowed themselves to be programmed.
I’ve played around with the concept on this thread when joking around (kinda) about zombies. I kinda like my zombies to be DEAD, but I’m pretty much limited to my one nit pick there. I don’t care if they’re fast, slow, mystic, radioactive, remote controlled, human, animal, dumb as a brick or a little smart. I even liked the massive bending of the rules that Return of the Living Dead did with them. Go to the IMDB boards or any number of fan sites and you’ll see loads of people trashing any zombie concept that’s not what they see as George Romero’s. They hate fast zombies, smart(ish) zombies, zombies that use tools in their killing, zombies that communicate with one another, etc. Thing I always find funny about that is that Romero’s first three zombie films had all of that themselves.
Conversely, vampires don’t seem to have quite as many rabid purists, but they tend to get stuck in a rut more then some other things. Vampire fans seem to latch onto whatever the latest concept is and hold onto it for dear life. The last dozen or so years, the idea of the tragic and romantic vampire has been really growing in strength and almost nobody is out there bucking the trend. I’m really hoping that the film version of 30 Days of Night and the, hopefully not horrible, remake of Near Dark jump starts a move into a different direction for them.
Micha,
Check out this link. I was digging around for some stuff and came across this. The first answer gives a few good variations on the myth as examples as well as mentioning a couple of pretty ok source books.
Now I have to. First, just to see Den thought a complete fit.
Second…well, do I really need a second?
I wasn’t going to say she was doing anything original. Far from it, I think she’s doing something conventional. Taking the romance model, and adding in conventional vampire characters. Although it’s a stretch to say that a supernatural creature that keeps getting killed by a telpathic waitress (who generally can’t even use her power on the vampire) is really powerful, she does manage to at least create an illusion that they are a dangerous, unpredictable creature. But it eventually falls into the same problem the Anita Blake series hits…after the first few books where there’s a sense of danger and true risk around them, seeing them continually get offed lessons the danger. Buffy suffered from this, too, although moreso, because Buffy vamps are getting dusted left and right by normal humans.
LA Banks series I’ve only read the first book of, and enough of the rest of the series to know I don’t care for the rest. But the vamps there seem to be a more deadly variety than elsewhere.
I think I’m beginning to understand the problem with the mainstream vampire. As a rare entity, it’s mysterious and dangerous. But when you have to kill one every story whether that’s a weekly TV show, or a book series every couple of years, you start to lose the credibility of how dangerous they are.
Back on Harris’ series: While it’s pretty clearly a romance first and anything else second, there are times while reading it that I wonder if there isn’t more going on in subtext. We only see the brief exposure of the vampire world through Sookie’s eyes, and filtered through her thoughts. Harris could intentionally be having Sookie misinterpret things, or just plain miss things, that later Harris can reveal or use in a related series (since she’s indicated that the series is nearing an end) for a more serious take on the vampire mythos.
“You’re just seeing the forest for the poison ivy here because you’re overthinking what you want to do.”
The story of my life.
“Chill out and go for it.”
Thanks Jerry for the encouragement, ideas and links. I’ll try do well by the vampires if and when I write.
“Granted, that’s advice coming from someone who hasn’t had published work since college…..”
I have a lot of respect for people who write. It’s not easy. Getting published is even harder. I have done a little of the first and none of the second.
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Posted by: Sean Scullion at June 5, 2007 08:35 AM:
“Jerry, Micha, as far as truly original stuff, I have to wonder….”
It seems to me that when coming up with ideas for genre pieces like fantasy, horror, space-opera, super-heroes, pirates, etc. there is a tendancy to draw from a basic stock of ideas, concepts, images and directions about how to handle the material. If I try to think of ideas about elves, or feuding noble houses, or vampires, or what not, the first ideas that wil come to my mind and the first direction my mind woyuld take, would be along the established lines. At worst, this can result in pure imitation. I once read the first book of a trilogy (don’t remember the name) that started with introduction telling how much this guy loves Tolkein and always wanted to write like him. I thought, wonderful, I like Tolkein, I want to write. But this guy ended up pretty much wring the Lord of the Ring badly. At other times, as we’ve already said, it is possible to write great stories using directions from this basic stock. Another option is to see if you can twist or turn the conventions in a certain way. Part of what makes Pirats of the Carribean great was that Johnny Depp played around with the stand image of the pirate and it worked. Although bad stories can be done this way too. And sometimes the upside down idea can become as unoriginal as the first convention: see noble vampires. At a certain point making the vampire a good guy was an original idea. There was a certain idea I had concerning a maelstrom, an image that popped into my mind which I wanted to use. But maelstroms are not very original, certainly not after Pirates of the Carribean 3. I’ll have to decide (if I actually get to it) whether the image is cool enough to be worth keeping despite that, or if I should think of something else.
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Bill Mulligan:
“If I had the budget I would LOVE to do a movie that would take place in the ill fated Roanoke Settlement, the fabled Lost Colony. Ill-prepared settlers, Indians and zombies. Ever try to do a head shot with a matchlock? And reloading time is a bìŧçh. They never had a chance.
That’s what I’d like. Gimme Roman legions vs Druid vampires in Britain, that kind of thing.”
Both are good ideas. Images already popp into my head just from the few sentences you wrote. Combining the fear of landing in a foreign land with the fear from vampires/zombies could be great. But meanwhile, another part of me is asking itself, isn’t casting the vampires/zombies as the druids/indians vs. the civilized Romans/colonists too conventional? No, it isn’t. Imagine a distant Breton-Roman village next to the Hadrian wall, late Roman empire, a small company of soldiers. Fog? That’s a cliche, but a good one. But then again, maybe we can also turn the idea upside down. Maybe the Indians should be the humans and the colonists should be the vampires or zombies. Maybe they were turned while the ship was on its way. A Puritan vampire came abroad in England the night before the departure, or an infected ghost ship crashes on plymoth rock. The vampires/zombies as metaphors for the ills of the old world. But wasn’t that idea used somewhere? Probably. Anyway, this is how my mind works. Ideas vs. second-guessing, who will win?
Bill, as a person who actually wrote and made movies, couldn’t you do a movie in American historical setting using these groups of people who recreate historical battles and villages? There is certainly potential here.
Mike: “I haven’t asked anyone to take my word for anything. That’s why my posts are mostly quotations.”
Until you can show that you are capable of understanding the meaning of the words you quote as intended, and/or that you are actually interested in the meaning of these words as intended rather than forcing on them the meaning you want, all these quotes are a waste of time and space. Better that you use your own words instead of forcing the words of others to do the work for you, unsucessfully.
Micha, I’m saving the idea for when I have a bit more time, money and experience–if I do it at all I want it to be good. It has too much potential to just hack it out. But your idea of using re-enactors is spot on–I may try a civil war piece first since you can find them all over North Carolina.
I would probably have one of the settlers become the first zombified and from that it spreads to both the Europeans and the Indians, who must fight together and ultimately sacrifice themselves to save the new world.
If I could do a Roman story I’d have a small surviving group of Roman soldiers training barbarian tribesmen in the Roman way of battle to defeat the living dead (and the Romans, frankly, would probably be better able to do it than the marines–no dig at our armed forces but Roman tactics and weapons are far better for the task.
I like having enemies team up to defeat a greater foe. Ultimately, whatever our differences, we’re all alive and that has to count for something.
Historical fiction is dámņëd hard to pull off in movies but it’s great for books. I promise I’ll buy a copy! So you are already on your way to a bestseller.
“Historical fiction is dámņëd hard to pull off in movies but it’s great for books.”
I’m actually trying to write fantasy not historical fiction. Too much research. But you can be sure hat I’m writing is very much informed by all the history I’ve learned, and it’s supposed to have a historical feel. I hope it works.
—————-
“If I could do a Roman story I’d have a small surviving group of Roman soldiers training barbarian tribesmen in the Roman way of battle to defeat the living dead (and the Romans, frankly, would probably be better able to do it than the marines–no dig at our armed forces but Roman tactics and weapons are far better for the task.”
What yo can do is create a situation in which a few Roman soldiers have no choice but to leave the Roman area (i.e. civilization) and go to the barbarians, thus evetually saving both civilization and the barbarians by going beyond the borders of civilization, but also using the benefits of that civilization. Everybody’s happy.
Have you considered a zombie version of the Seven Samurai’s
Have you considered a zombie version of the Seven Samurai
Oh have I.
Though this is one case where vampires might be a better foe. The premise of Seven Samurai is that the bandits keep raiding the peasants and the Samurai help them to fight back. There wouldn’t be any chance to prepare for an upcoming zombie attack; they just show up and you either kill them or die. Vampires i could see coming yearly to demand their booty in virgins or whatever. (actually, wandering bands of vampires hitting villages like bees going from flower to flower makes sense. I don’t like the whole vampire nation stuff but there IS safety in numbers).
Of course, Seven Samurai has been ripped off about 1000 times but if I’m going to rip off someone it might as well be Kurusawa.
You should check out Dragon Against Vampire if you can find a bootlegged edition over here. If not, there’s the not quite as good but very available on American DVD Tsui Hark’s Vampire Hunters. Not quite the same concepts, but they would both give you some good ideas and a few ideas of to avoid.
Bill’s Roanoke idea has been bouncing around my head since I first read it. It could actually work as a really cool blurb in my script, but I think it’d be destined for the cutting room floor, no matter HOW much fun it’d be to shoot. Still, it’d be a pretty neat bit of exposition.
I actually had an idea on my honeymoon for a zombie/undead story on a cruise ship. I mean, what ELSE am I going to think about in the middle of the ocean at midnight when the moon is waxing in a most romantic manner? It was sort of a zombie hunt/locked room mystery, since everyone was trying to figure out who the z’s were after, if anyone, and who was responsible. What if Romero met Agatha Christie and they got drunk? VERY drunk?
I should also tell yu that, as I look at different aspects of my life, smacking you around now and again falls under the category of guilty pleasures….
Oh, and Mike is a bully, even if one that is incapable of doing much harm. But his behavior is that of a bully nevertheless.
I haven’t asked anyone to take my word for anything. That’s why my posts are mostly quotations. If you have an example of a same-sex, non-gay obsession that can serve as an analogy for Jerry’s seemingly arbitrary obsession with me, you can make it a first and share it here.
Until you can show that you are capable of understanding the meaning of the words you quote as intended, and/or that you are actually interested in the meaning of these words as intended rather than forcing on them the meaning you want, all these quotes are a waste of time and space. Better that you use your own words instead of forcing the words of others to do the work for you, unsucessfully.
If what you say isn’t what you intend to say, why do you say it?
I would probably have one of the settlers become the first zombified and from that it spreads to both the Europeans and the Indians, who must fight together and ultimately sacrifice themselves to save the new world.
Wait, you’re thinking of portraying Indians as sacrificing themselves to, for one thing, facilitate their exposure to the smallpox, measles and other diseases that would wipe out 95% of all their people? Why stop there? You can portray Russian zombies invading a concentration camp and the Jews sacrificing themselves to preserve the Nazi conquest of Europe.
Bill: “actually, wandering bands of vampires hitting villages like bees going from flower to flower makes sense. I don’t like the whole vampire nation stuff but there IS safety in numbers.”
In a society in which there is a brakedown of government or that resides in a lawless frontier, bands of bandits, pirates, barbarians etc. emerge. This could also work well for vampires. I believe the society in the Seven Samurai is like that.
In a lawful civilized society vampires could represent the hidden corruption, the worm in the society. So people represent vampires as a hidden nefarious element. In that case it would make more sense to have them in smaller groups, although the vampire nation idea feeds into the fear of secret organizations, conspiracies, powerful corporations.
Agatha Christie’s books work in this kind of society: small, civilized but disturned by a hidden internal menace.
“Of course, Seven Samurai has been ripped off about 1000 times but if I’m going to rip off someone it might as well be Kurusawa.”
Ripping Kurusawa off is one of the things that cause critics to roll their eyes in disgust. But now the western adaptation of his movies are classics in and of themselves.
Mike: “If what you say isn’t what you intend to say, why do you say it?”
People usually do say what they intend. The question is if you have the capacity to understand it, and if you are interested in understanding it at all. Experience has shown that in your case the answer to both questions is no.
There are times, where people intend to say something and don’t get it right, or get misunderstood by someone else. It is usually an act of good faith to try to understand what people actually intend to say even if it is unclear, to allow them to clarify themselves, and to accept (and try to understand) the correction as the actual intention.
In all cases the important thing is to make an effort to understand what people actually intend to say. That’s the point of communication.
People usually do say what they intend. The question is if you have the capacity to understand it, and if you are interested in understanding it at all. Experience has shown that in your case the answer to both questions is no.
There are times, where people intend to say something and don’t get it right, or get misunderstood by someone else. It is usually an act of good faith to try to understand what people actually intend to say even if it is unclear, to allow them to clarify themselves, and to accept (and try to understand) the correction as the actual intention.
In all cases the important thing is to make an effort to understand what people actually intend to say. That’s the point of communication.
How does demonstrating to the poster how his words are being parsed prevent the poster from rephrasing his words so they more closely match his intent? Is that not the benefit of editing?
There is a famous drawing among those education in American school systems that includes a vague shape that could be viewed as a chin, of a young woman — or a large nose, of an old woman. If you want people to see some vague notion in what you present as exclusively one thing, how is it the fault of the person who sees something incompatible with what you intend — when that incompatible notion is compatible with the vague notion you employ?
Mike:
“How does demonstrating to the poster how his words are being parsed prevent the poster from rephrasing his words so they more closely match his intent? Is that not the benefit of editing?”
1) You are not as good as it as you think.
2) You don’t do it with the intent to understand, communicate or help others make their point clearer or to elucidate some hidden point, but rather to force and distort the words of others.
3) You are not open to the idea that the words you quote can have another meaning other than the one you ascribe to them, even when it is clearly not true.
4) The words you quote are not that difficult to understand. You are the only one who finds in them meanings that are so contrary to their intent.
5) Word games with the meaning of phrases can be a lot of fun when done in good spirits, just like visual illusions. But you do not treat your words or the words of others as linguistic illusions shared with us for fun, but as ways to hinder proper communication.
In a lawful civilized society vampires could represent the hidden corruption, the worm in the society. So people represent vampires as a hidden nefarious element. In that case it would make more sense to have them in smaller groups, although the vampire nation idea feeds into the fear of secret organizations, conspiracies, powerful corporations.
It would seem that life for vampires would be much better in a time of anarchy than of order. Two thoughts then–if I were looking for vampires now I’d check out some place like Darfur, Somalia, etc. And it would be interesting to see vampires involved in terrorism to bring about the fall of civilization, usher in a society in which they would be very much the top of the food chain.
Wait, you’re thinking of portraying Indians as sacrificing themselves to, for one thing, facilitate their exposure to the smallpox, measles and other diseases that would wipe out 95% of all their people? Why stop there? You can portray Russian zombies invading a concentration camp and the Jews sacrificing themselves to preserve the Nazi conquest of Europe.
Bad analogy, Stanley. Destroying the Russian zombies would not prserve the Nazi conquest of Europe. A brief glance at a history book would tell you that the Nazi regime fell in the reality that does not have zombies. Allowing zombies to live might change that future.
And what choice would our Indian warriors have? Allow the zombies to win, happy in the ntion that although it would mean the total extinction of their people at least Whitey would get some pain as well? Sorry, but I would imagine that fictional Indians, just like the real ones, would be much smarter than you.
But I am not at all surprised that a story where enemies work together for a greater good has no appeal to you.
How does demonstrating to the poster how his words are being parsed prevent the poster from rephrasing his words so they more closely match his intent? Is that not the benefit of editing?
There is a famous drawing among those education in American school systems that includes a vague shape that could be viewed as a chin, of a young woman — or a large nose, of an old woman. If you want people to see some vague notion in what you present as exclusively one thing, how is it the fault of the person who sees something incompatible with what you intend — when that incompatible notion is compatible with the vague notion you employ?
1) You are not as good as it as you think.
2) You don’t do it with the intent to understand, communicate or help others make their point clearer or to elucidate some hidden point, but rather to force and distort the words of others.
“Force and distort” what? What interpretation of “smacking you around now and again falls under the category of guilty pleasures” excludes an indulgence in the suffering of another?
3) You are not open to the idea that the words you quote can have another meaning other than the one you ascribe to them, even when it is clearly not true.
Like when?
4) The words you quote are not that difficult to understand. You are the only one who finds in them meanings that are so contrary to their intent.
I don’t hear anyone else denying “smacking you around now and again falls under the category of guilty pleasures” means anything other than an indulgence in the suffering of another.
Wait, you’re thinking of portraying Indians as sacrificing themselves to, for one thing, facilitate their exposure to the smallpox, measles and other diseases that would wipe out 95% of all their people? Why stop there? You can portray Russian zombies invading a concentration camp and the Jews sacrificing themselves to preserve the Nazi conquest of Europe.
Bad analogy, Stanley. Destroying the Russian zombies would not prserve the Nazi conquest of Europe. A brief glance at a history book would tell you that the Nazi regime fell in the reality that does not have zombies. Allowing zombies to live might change that future.
So — that would make Indians fighting off zombies to preserve the manifest destiny that would take North America away from them even more counter-intuitive, now, wouldn’t it?
And what choice would our Indian warriors have? Allow the zombies to win, happy in the ntion that although it would mean the total extinction of their people at least Whitey would get some pain as well? Sorry, but I would imagine that fictional Indians, just like the real ones, would be much smarter than you.
But I am not at all surprised that a story where enemies work together for a greater good has no appeal to you.
I never said the more extreme example of nazis and Jews facing off against zombies had no appeal for me, and did not serve it as an example of such. I just asked a question.
Like Lone Wolf & Cub, the story protagonist could completely embody, in the post-WWI setting, viking virtues, and even serve as the inspiration for the ideal Aryan. Then, like Retsudo Yagyu, Joseph Goebbels could frame the protagonist as a Jew, completely driving away his influence from the establishment of the nazi party, with Hitler playing the absolutely powerful shogun. Again like Lone Wolf & Cub, our hero becomes a refugee from the powers of order meant to shelter the virtues he embodies. (Our hero’s outlaw status from the nazi regime would obviously have to be established immediately in the story.)
Where the zombies come in is that Goebbels’s framing of our hero is revealed to be part a plot to forestall the impending Ragnorak, the nazi regime acting under Asgard’s influence in modern times. As part of his revenge, our hero campaigns to start Ragnorak and bring about the end of all things itself. First Goebbels summons the honored dead of Valhalla to fight our hero, but our hero’s encounter with them earns the honored deads’ respect, and they refuse to fight him any further. Then Goebbels must resort to the dishonored dead — contagious, flesh-eating zombies, of whom there is no limit.
This leads to a showdown in a concentration camp, where our hero is able to rally nazi and Jew, as Ogami was faced with the challenge of uniting samurai and peasant in the face of the complete breakdown of order — only in this case to fight off zombie hoards. One of the Jews could serve as a crucial element in the development of the atomic bomb, providing a partial Ragnorak fulfillment.
So — that would make Indians fighting off zombies to preserve the manifest destiny that would take North America away from them even more counter-intuitive, now, wouldn’t it?
They’d really have to be psychic Indians to know that. That seems to me to be asking for two rather incredible assumptions–A–the Indians would be willing to have their entire civilization destroyed by zombies–100%, which is worse even than 95% and B–they would do this because they would somehow know that the starving dwindling group of Europeans at Roanoke were just the beginning of what would ultimately be a successful invasion by Europeans.
It’s already asking a lot for people to accept the existence of zombies. Adding self destructive psychic Indians is just asking for trouble.
Now if Micha wanted to try something that would definitely cause some controversy–how about the story of Masada with vampires added? We don’t know what happened inside the walls of that fortress and it offers some real opportunities for fantasy. Of course, Masada is a source of great national pride and messing with it might not be worth the grief. It would be like putting werewolves in the Alamo (and I might add, I would have no problems with that premise. At all. But that’s me.)
“There is a famous drawing among those education in American school systems that includes a vague shape that could be viewed as a chin, of a young woman — or a large nose, of an old woman.”
I have parsed this (as you acknowledge one may do) and found it to be flawed – so obviously it’s a bunch of worthless pap. “Those education in American school systems”? “Education” is the wrong word; “Those who were educated in the American school system” or “Those educated in America” is what is needed. The image to which you refer is “My Wife and My Mother in Law,” drawn by W.E. Hill in 1915. It is not, in fact, a vague shape, but a realistic image which is usually first recognized as a young woman, and only later is an old woman seen. I believe Hill was an American, but have never found him part of any standard curriculum, so the American education identification may be irrelevant.
“If you were educated in an American school system, you know the US Constitution makes no obsession a right…”
Actually, as I was educated in an American school system, I know that the U.S. Constitution makes nothing a right. Rather, it recognizes certain unalienable (as it was expressed at the time) rights of the individual and declares that the purpose of government is not to grant rights but to secure them and protect them. As for “all accusations reviewed in a court” being “accessible to cross-examination,” that may well be so, but there are no accusations being reviewed in a court here, so your point, if you have one, is irrelevant.
Wait, you’re thinking of portraying Indians as sacrificing themselves to, for one thing, facilitate their exposure to the smallpox, measles and other diseases that would wipe out 95% of all their people? Why stop there? You can portray Russian zombies invading a concentration camp and the Jews sacrificing themselves to preserve the Nazi conquest of Europe.
Bad analogy, Stanley. Destroying the Russian zombies would not prserve the Nazi conquest of Europe. A brief glance at a history book would tell you that the Nazi regime fell in the reality that does not have zombies. Allowing zombies to live might change that future [of a nazi downfall]….
They’d really have to be psychic Indians to know [aiding settlers would nurture the manifest destiny that would take North America away from them]…. It’s already asking a lot for people to accept the existence of zombies. Adding self destructive psychic Indians is just asking for trouble.
The Indians wouldn’t have to be psychic if they could get their hands on the history book you felt free to offer the zombie-challenged concentration camp detainees.
That seems to me to be asking for two rather incredible assumptions–A–the Indians would be willing to have their entire civilization destroyed by zombies–100%, which is worse even than 95%
Oh, according to Jared Diamond (you may have seen a display of his pulitzer-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel in your local supermarket) the 95% depopulation of the Indians was from disease, without any bullets being fired, so we are talking about much worse than a 95% loss oflife. With Ward Churchill acting as their spokesman, how would today be much different than a complete destruction of their culture to an Indian from 400 years ago?
My Wife and My Mother in Law
Actually, while Hill often gets credit for it and it is his version that gets the most printings, the image is older then Hill’s work. There are older versions that predate his by decades.
Just an long ago ex-art student being picky.
I have parsed this (as you acknowledge one may do) and found it to be flawed – so obviously it’s a bunch of worthless pap. “Those education in American school systems”? “Education” is the wrong word; “Those who were educated in the American school system” or “Those educated in America” is what is needed.
Thanks, Jeffrey, for taking inventory of my typos. I don’t write here with the hope of establishing a publishing history — but you seem to have that kind of belief in me, which I take as a compliment. Otherwise, you would leave “what is needed” to each reader to handle as you have, as opposed to, I can only suppose, your concerns for meeting professional requirements for publication.
The image to which you refer is “My Wife and My Mother in Law,” drawn by W.E. Hill in 1915. It is not, in fact, a vague shape, but a realistic image which is usually first recognized as a young woman, and only later is an old woman seen.
I meant “capable of being understood in more than one way” so, yes, I said “vague” when I should have said “ambiguous.” Again, thank you.
I believe Hill was an American, but have never found him part of any standard curriculum, so the American education identification may be irrelevant.
I encountered the drawing in a textbook, perhaps to serve as some example for how diversity can take place among reasonable people in culture, in belief, and in innovation and invention. When I refer to it, everyone seems to know which picture I’m talking about, so I’m guessing there are enough people with sense enough to use it in educating children.
Actually, as I was educated in an American school system, I know that the U.S. Constitution makes nothing a right. Rather, it recognizes certain unalienable (as it was expressed at the time) rights of the individual and declares that the purpose of government is not to grant rights but to secure them and protect them. As for “all accusations reviewed in a court” being “accessible to cross-examination,” that may well be so, but there are no accusations being reviewed in a court here, so your point, if you have one, is irrelevant.
I responded to a question directed at me, and you haven’t disagreed with nor challenged my reply. Thank you.
Mike, where is the court that would make your call for cross examination relevant? If you are seeing courtrooms where the rest of us don’t that’s something that should worry you.
To be clear, I disagree with and challenge your reply (to whatever it was a reply.
It should come as no surprise that my purpose in pointing out your “typos” (they look more like unfamiliarity with English than inadvertent errors, but still…) is not to help you polish your prose, but rather to ridicule you. That is much more satisfying. When one cannot express oneself intelligibly in a minimum of one language, it looks exactly like stupidity.
Mike – for the record, I can and do find many things wrong with what you say. Non-arbitrarily, I am telling you that I find your redefinition of vocabulary to mean whatever you want it to [mean] in each sentence detestable, whether done arbitrarily or with a purpose peculiar to your fevered brain.
…such as?
Mike, just to be clear, I condemn you – very specifically you and not someone else – for what you say and do. At present it does not bother me that other people make use of the same alphabet and a few of the same words as you. Many of them speak English fluently. Of them, a respectable number are sane. Of that number, relatively many (more than half, possibly) are not jáçkáššëš. If that weren’t the case, I’d criticize them, rather than just you.
Thank you for continuing to demonstrate you can’t find anything wrong with what I say — by not finding anything wrong with what I say.
I do not like it when you use a word, are called on its absolute stupidity; redefine it to mean something else; are told that – yes, that is different, but it is also still stupid; redefine it again; still make no sense….
…like when?
…The truth of anything else I’ve said doesn’t depend on pretending mistakes pointed out to me aren’t mistakes.
Mike, you have pretended that virtually every mistake pointed out to you isn’t a mistake. That’s about 50% of what angers many of us. (Faulty reasoning is the other 50%.)
For example?
The next time any of us feels like responding to Mike and demonstrating his derangement, just go to just about any of his posts. They do a wonderful job of that, probably better than we could do.
Feel free to establish that precedent anytime you’re ready.
To be clear, I disagree with and challenge your reply (to whatever it was a reply [to.)]
It should come as no surprise that my purpose in pointing out your “typos” (they look more like unfamiliarity with English than inadvertent errors, but still…) is not to help you polish your prose, but rather to ridicule you. That is much more satisfying. When one cannot express oneself intelligibly in a minimum of one language, it looks exactly like stupidity.
Jeffrey, the reason you indulge in pointing out typos seems to be because if you didn’t, you would never be right about anything (which is no casual qualification for stupidity). It’s ok with me.
Bill, another option is just throwing in a quick blip at the beginning that establishes that Roanoke outbreak isn’t the Indian’s first contact with zombies. Because they were close to the ocean, any ancient seagoing vessel that got hit with an outbreak could have drifted to the ancient America’s shores. The Indians could have repelled one or several outbreaks before the Roanoke story and the reason for their fighting them then could be worked in as a belief of fighting some great and ancient evil.
The Roanoke outbreak could then be caused by a ship full of infected hitting the shores or a zombie from a past outbreak that got trapped under the water dislodging or chomping a chunk out of a swimmer. The fun/tragic twist at the end is that the knowledge of the American outbreaks and the knowledge of where the last of the zombies where trapped would be lost in the later destruction of so much of the East Coast’s Indian cultures. Think about the ending of the WWZ story you like so much. Here you would have no doubt that what awaits some unsuspecting group of people in the future is freeing the remaining hoard and starting a new outbreak.
I actually did a story like this way back in Jr. High with vampires. The extra historical mystery I threw in was tying the Anasazi in with the vampires and there ancient overnight disappearance as the vampires destruction. I was given an F by the teacher. She felt that I wasn’t treating historical tragedies with enough respect. Then again, this is the same teacher who wouldn’t let her children see a Jason or Freddy film because people who enjoyed that kind of thing were disturbed and were on the path to Hëll. Needless to say, that’s not one of the teachers I miss from my school days.
“Now if Micha wanted to try something that would definitely cause some controversy–how about the story of Masada with vampires added? We don’t know what happened inside the walls of that fortress and it offers some real opportunities for fantasy. Of course, Masada is a source of great national pride and messing with it might not be worth the grief. It would be like putting werewolves in the Alamo (and I might add, I would have no problems with that premise. At all. But that’s me.)”
Actually, Massada itself is controversial. The negative or positive attitides toward it parallel political attitudes today. Also, people here are not afraid of controversy. However, I don’t think this event lends itself well to vampires. To have them die by vampires instead of by mass suicide takes the point away from this whole (controversial) story. Vampires would do much better during the Roman siege on Jerusalem: famine, fear, infighting between factions, Romans on the outside, Jewish soverignity soon to go down for two millenia, a generally bad time for the Jewish people.
But here is another idea for a vampire story with a Jewish component that would fit your parameters. A medieval city state in Italy or the Rhine. 14th century, the city plagued by the Black Death, debauchary, dispair, death. In this setting a vampire is stalking the citizens, whose suspicions naturally turn toward the Jews (Blood Libel). Now all you need is a Rabbi/Physician in the role of Van Helsing, cooperating with a young Christian noble (whose name could be Van Helsing or von Helsing), in order to stop the vampire. Maybe a scene involving the Rabbi explaining to the noble that it is not the cross that deters the vampires but the belief in the cross, and that it works for other religious symbols as well.
“I never said the more extreme example of nazis and Jews facing off against zombies had no appeal for me”
A story like that would be in extremely bad taste.
Jerry, don’t you wish there was an appeal process in school? I had a creative writing teacher in college who told us that we wouldn’t be submitting any sf/fantasy because that wasn’t real literature. I thought I’d have to be sure to tell Asimov, Tolkien, Lewis and Clarke. While there are specific rules for story structure they have to teach, the subject shouldn’t be criticized, only the execution.
You know, now that I’m thinking about it, you could actually do a Roanoke-starting story, then translate it to modern times having another small town disappear with no trace, have a folklorist or someone more familiar with the story than most people notice the similarity. You could even have the townspeople from the colony as the undead taking the new town.
Bill, another option is just throwing in a quick blip at the beginning that establishes that Roanoke outbreak isn’t the Indian’s first contact with zombies. Because they were close to the ocean, any ancient seagoing vessel that got hit with an outbreak could have drifted to the ancient America’s shores. The Indians could have repelled one or several outbreaks before the Roanoke story and the reason for their fighting them then could be worked in as a belief of fighting some great and ancient evil.
You know, now that I’m thinking about it, you could actually do a Roanoke-starting story, then translate it to modern times having another small town disappear with no trace, have a folklorist or someone more familiar with the story than most people notice the similarity. You could even have the townspeople from the colony as the undead taking the new town.
That’s good too, and might have more appeal to those who are not into historical stuff as much as I am.
Actually, Massada itself is controversial. The negative or positive attitides toward it parallel political attitudes today. Also, people here are not afraid of controversy. However, I don’t think this event lends itself well to vampires. To have them die by vampires instead of by mass suicide takes the point away from this whole (controversial) story. Vampires would do much better during the Roman siege on Jerusalem: famine, fear, infighting between factions, Romans on the outside, Jewish soverignity soon to go down for two millenia, a generally bad time for the Jewish people.
That’s a great idea and it’s a historical event that, for all its importance, has not been widely explored.
I was thinking more that the Masada story would end with the zealots, having killed off the vampires, choosing to kill themselves to prevent the possibility of vampirism falling into the hands of the Romans. So the story would be exactly as we know it with the difference that the reasons for events are different. But I like your idea better.
Oooooo! Ooooo! How about the first contact was with–get ready for it–Viking Zombies! That’s why the Viking expeditions didn’t stick. Hey! And you could tie it into the whole Viking Berserker legend.
Cripes I have GOT to do something with this…
“Oooooo! Ooooo! How about the first contact was with–get ready for it–Viking Zombies! That’s why the Viking expeditions didn’t stick. Hey! And you could tie it into the whole Viking Berserker legend.
Cripes I have GOT to do something with this…”
I think by now you have enough for a whole series about zombies in the new world. Zombies in the viking settlement has the ingredients of good horror — a distant isolated community, a scary foreign land. Also cheap production costs.
Thought I’d plunk this one down in the thread for which it was intended…
Is it possible to use zombies as foot soldiers in a fantasy setting?
Absolutely! Just off the top of my head, the Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting Eberron does just that with the nation of Karrnath. They take as many fallen soldiers as they can home (theirs and enemy) to be raised by state necromancers and put back into service in zombie or skeleton units.
Of course, it works best if the undead you’re working with are at least intelligent enough to follow orders, use weapons, and, of course, not eat their own still-breathing brothers-in-arms. Though, that’s also part of what the necromancers are for.
-Rex Hondo-
I never said the more extreme example of nazis and Jews facing off against zombies had no appeal for me…
A story like that would be in extremely bad taste.
Ok. Why? Are we talking John-Cusack-in-Max bad taste, portraying-nazis-as-rational-in-Downfall bad taste, or some other bad taste?
“Though, that’s also part of what the necromancers are for.”
So, that’s what they’re for. So far they have just been sitting around my house watching TV and eating my food while the bodies pile up.
Thanks for the reply Rex.
———————–
“A story like that would be in extremely bad taste.”
“Ok. Why?”
Wouldn’t it be nice if I could discuss it with you seriously, like I would with a normal person? But I don’t think that’s possible. I don’t want to discuss a subject like the holocaust with you and end up with your usual antics.
“Though, that’s also part of what the necromancers are for.”
So, that’s what they’re for. So far they have just been sitting around my house watching TV and eating my food while the bodies pile up.
Thanks for the reply Rex.
———————–
“A story like that would be in extremely bad taste.”
“Ok. Why?”
Wouldn’t it be nice if I could discuss it with you seriously, like I would with a normal person? But I don’t think that’s possible. I don’t want to discuss a subject like the holocaust with you and end up with your usual antics.
Is it possible to use zombies as foot soldiers in a fantasy setting?
Like Rex said, as long as they are under some kind of control…although I suppose one could use them as a sort of bio-warfare to soften up an enemy prior to invasion. But that would be wise only if you had a sure fire easy method of disposing of them once the invasion started.
Now there’s a creepy idea for a short–an army besieging a castle keeps catapulting diseased animals and humans over the walls and when they finally break through they discover that their efforts have resulted in the population becoming zombified.
Get the cow?
Huh?
Get the cow!
(Sorry, purists, I neither speak or read French. Thus my complete inability to do the actual line. However, the thought of Arthur running away from a zombie cow is just too good. Also explains the Black Knight, doesn’t it?)
“Now there’s a creepy idea for a short–an army besieging a castle keeps catapulting diseased animals and humans over the walls and when they finally break through they discover that their efforts have resulted in the population becoming zombified.”
You can add it to the Jerusalem siege idea
I never said the more extreme example of nazis and Jews facing off against zombies had no appeal for me…
A story like that would be in extremely bad taste.
Ok. Why? Are we talking John-Cusack-in-Max bad taste, portraying-nazis-as-rational-in-Downfall bad taste, or some other bad taste?
Wouldn’t it be nice if I could discuss it with you seriously, like I would with a normal person? But I don’t think that’s possible. I don’t want to discuss a subject like the holocaust with you and end up with your usual antics.
If you don’t think such a discussion is possible, why did you start this one? Retreat from me if you must, but you only have yourself to blame.
Mike: Here’s something for your consideration – Sometimes (maybe a lot more than half the time) when Micha posts something it is not in reference to or directed toward you. Now my case (I’m Jeffrey Frawley, since you sometimes have trouble distinguishing the authors of posts) might be a different case. I am talking to you, Mike, foolish as that may be.
In any case, remember this: IT IS POSSIBLE TO DISCUSS ZOMBIE NAZIS WITHOUT REFERENCE TO MIKE (unless you have some health issues I’d rather not know about).
“If you don’t think such a discussion is possible, why did you start this one? Retreat from me if you must, but you only have yourself to blame.”
I didn’t start a discussion, I made a comment. And anyway, my comments are not meant just for you. There are other people on this board, with whom I would willingly discuss this issue if they wished it.
“Retreat,” interesting choice of a word. If there is a retreat, there is also an attack. This proves that your agenda on this board is to attack, not to converse, and you will be treated accordingly by me. But of course, I wil lnever retreat from you. I just don’t feel obligated to play by your preverse rules or to jump through your hoops of insanity.
And no, I don’t blame myself, I blame you. It is you who have rendered such discussion impossible, as the attitude of everybody else on this board toward you can attest. I would discuss the same subject with almost anybody else but you with little hesitation. But the holocaust is a sacred subject for me, and I don’t to see it go through your games of absurdity.
Samurai 7 is an anime update to Kurowasa that you can catch on IFC if you hurry. I said “if you hurry!” Why are you still reading?
It’s set in a mecha/steampunkish setting, which can put some off right off the bat, but there’s something to be said about a human samurai going toe-toe with a Gundam+ sized mecha bandit that’s just all kinds of cool.
No zombies, though. Cyborgs, yeah, it’s got cyborgs. No ninjas, though.
“(unless you have some health issues I’d rather not know about).”
Jeffrey, any nightmares I have from that image will be blamed on you. Unless, like the one I had last night, they can be used as screenplays, in which the AKNOWLEDGEMENT will be gratefully sent your way.
Hard to type when you’re shuddering from that visual.
• 
Posted by: Micha at June 4, 2007 09:41 PM
Obviously there is, ayt least new takes on old themes, but it is initimidating.
I don’t know that it’s intimidating, at least in my little POV, so much as challenging. Sometimes the nothing new comes off well because of what it’s being used to say. Take the movie Ginger Snaps (please.) I had a friend who was nuts for that film. She loved how the idea of the werewolf myth was being used as a metaphor for all the changes in women during puberty and the ensuing sexual awareness that comes on (by both genders) at that time.
Vampires could easily be metaphors for AIDS, politics, poverty, greed, etc. It’s just whether or noy the writer can pull off what they want well enough to not hit you over the head with it and to give you a really good story to boot. Just not a lot of people doing that right now.
Dracula 2000 played around with the concepts of the unrepentant soul and redemption, obsession and addiction. May not have been the most well done example of those, but it was still an ok popcorn movie.
… and wanted to hear from the experts.
Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you were talking to me. Ðámņ. All that time spent typing that could have been spent watching something like Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are in My Neck.
which was another reason why I wanted to hear of any cliches I should be wary of.
All of them and none of them really. a cliche isn’t really all that bad a thing in and of itself, it’s just how their used that can suck. Use a cliche (or tons of them) well and you have PAD writing Rick Jones. Use them badly and you have Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin.
Same thing with vampire films. Ive seen some great ones and I’ve seen some dogs and in some cases the great and the garbage had the same thing to say from start to finish. It was just the skills of the presenter and the presentation that made the dif.
I’m sure you can come up with a thousand non-vampire works that you can say the same thing about. You’re just seeing the forest for the poison ivy here because you’re overthinking what you want to do. Chill out and go for it.
Granted, that’s advice coming from someone who hasn’t had published work since college…..
A bully and a liar to boot. He said I’m not gay-baiting, I’m obsessive-baiting, and there is simply no portrayal of a same-sex obsession as anything other than gay. but he wants us to believe now that what he said was the absence of any non-gay portrayal applicable to Jerry’s obsession with me But ok, ok, enough. There’s truth to what you say. We’ve shown him to be stupid, we’ve called him on it, we’ve let him hang himself with ever increasing craziness and there does come a point where it gets to the point where people might feel sorry for him, the exact opposite of what we want.
It’s very very hard though to avoid hitting back at someone who employs certain tactics, especially when that person has their own issues…it’s like being called ugly by a frog.
That’s true. There’s something intimidating in the volumes and volumes of fantasy, sci-fi, superheroes and horror you find these days. Is there anything to add that has not been done already? Obviously there is, ayt least new takes on old themes, but it is initimidating.
Here’s my take, given with the admission that I do not have my finger on the pulse of the buying public (or GRINDHOUSE would still be in theaters): I’d like to see more historical horror. The best parts of THE ZOMBIE SURVIVAL GUIDE were the speculations about historical outbreaks.
If I had the budget I would LOVE to do a movie that would take place in the ill fated Roanoke Settlement, the fabled Lost Colony. Ill-prepared settlers, Indians and zombies. Ever try to do a head shot with a matchlock? And reloading time is a bìŧçh. They never had a chance.
That’s what I’d like. Gimme Roman legions vs Druid vampires in Britain, that kind of thing.
I haven’t asked anyone to take my word for anything. That’s why my posts are mostly quotations. If you have an example of a same-sex, non-gay obsession that can serve as an analogy for Jerry’s seemingly arbitrary obsession with me, you can make it a first and share it here.
I am addressing accusations. This is true for all my posts your accusation may apply to.
If you were educated in an American school system, you know that the US Constitution makes no obsession a right, but it does make all accusations reviewed in a court accessible to cross-examination. My addresing accusations against me is no more an obsession than that.
Are you saying Bill is obsessed with me? I’m not sorry for the time I held Bill to his pattern of hypocrisy, but at least it makes sense that that would piss him off.
As for Jerry — what offense has he ever claimed from anything I’ve said? The “must” lies in the absence of any alternative explanation.
Would you say respect is all things to you?
Who does your observation not apply to? I don’t doubt you have an answer, I’m just wondering who you have in mind.
Why would I need anyone to believe I said “the absence of any non-gay portrayal applicable to Jerry’s obsession with me” when I said “there is simply no portrayal of a same-sex obsession as anything other than gay?” Is a statement only true if it’s said first? Does the model of a heliocentric system have to predate the model of a geocentric in order to be accepted as true?
Jeez, Bill, I’ve never seen anyone’s entire connection with reality challenged before by their inability to comprehend such a widely used word as “rephrasing.” Awesome. Just… awesome.
Ooooooookay….
Anyway, if anyone else is interested in the kind of historical vampire/zombie scenarios I mentioned, go to http://www.fvza.org/histhome.html for some nice tales.
The next time any of us feels like responding to Mike and demonstrating his derangement, just go to just about any of his posts. They do a wonderful job of that, probably better than we could do.
One of my favorite turn everything on it’s head pieces is Vincent Price’s Last Man on Earth. I’d say more, but in case anybody hasn’t seen it, (What, you people have LIVES? For SHAME!) I won’t say any more.
Jerry, Micha, as far as truly original stuff, I have to wonder two things. First, I have to wonder if something was Truly Original if it’d get past a lot of marketing people as “Nobody’s ever seen it, give me more of the same thing!” And second, for a lot of up and comings, I wonder if they(we?) are trained that THIS is what a story should be, and you can’t play with it until you’re firmly established as A Talent That Is Recognized.
Feel free to establish that precedent anytime you’re ready.
I just recently saw ‘Last Man on Earth’ on TCM and really enjoyed it. A much more faithful adaptation of ‘I am Legend’ than Chuck Heston’s ‘Omega Man’ (or, one presumes, Will Smith’s upcoming adaptation.)
Not that Omega Man isn’t fun, and has it’s own charms, but it goes nowhere near the themes Matheson was working with in his novel.
Sean,
I’m not sure that the originality problem is as heavy on the editors end as it is on many writers’ ends. Even a lot of the fan fiction that’s out there is as stuck in the clone-the-latest-fad mode as the big publishers’ writers are. The problem is definitely how so many people have allowed themselves to be programmed.
I’ve played around with the concept on this thread when joking around (kinda) about zombies. I kinda like my zombies to be DEAD, but I’m pretty much limited to my one nit pick there. I don’t care if they’re fast, slow, mystic, radioactive, remote controlled, human, animal, dumb as a brick or a little smart. I even liked the massive bending of the rules that Return of the Living Dead did with them. Go to the IMDB boards or any number of fan sites and you’ll see loads of people trashing any zombie concept that’s not what they see as George Romero’s. They hate fast zombies, smart(ish) zombies, zombies that use tools in their killing, zombies that communicate with one another, etc. Thing I always find funny about that is that Romero’s first three zombie films had all of that themselves.
Conversely, vampires don’t seem to have quite as many rabid purists, but they tend to get stuck in a rut more then some other things. Vampire fans seem to latch onto whatever the latest concept is and hold onto it for dear life. The last dozen or so years, the idea of the tragic and romantic vampire has been really growing in strength and almost nobody is out there bucking the trend. I’m really hoping that the film version of 30 Days of Night and the, hopefully not horrible, remake of Near Dark jump starts a move into a different direction for them.
Micha,
Check out this link. I was digging around for some stuff and came across this. The first answer gives a few good variations on the myth as examples as well as mentioning a couple of pretty ok source books.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061014150522AAZrEqp
I was going to mention Charlaine Harris.
Now I have to. First, just to see Den thought a complete fit.
Second…well, do I really need a second?
I wasn’t going to say she was doing anything original. Far from it, I think she’s doing something conventional. Taking the romance model, and adding in conventional vampire characters. Although it’s a stretch to say that a supernatural creature that keeps getting killed by a telpathic waitress (who generally can’t even use her power on the vampire) is really powerful, she does manage to at least create an illusion that they are a dangerous, unpredictable creature. But it eventually falls into the same problem the Anita Blake series hits…after the first few books where there’s a sense of danger and true risk around them, seeing them continually get offed lessons the danger. Buffy suffered from this, too, although moreso, because Buffy vamps are getting dusted left and right by normal humans.
LA Banks series I’ve only read the first book of, and enough of the rest of the series to know I don’t care for the rest. But the vamps there seem to be a more deadly variety than elsewhere.
I think I’m beginning to understand the problem with the mainstream vampire. As a rare entity, it’s mysterious and dangerous. But when you have to kill one every story whether that’s a weekly TV show, or a book series every couple of years, you start to lose the credibility of how dangerous they are.
Back on Harris’ series: While it’s pretty clearly a romance first and anything else second, there are times while reading it that I wonder if there isn’t more going on in subtext. We only see the brief exposure of the vampire world through Sookie’s eyes, and filtered through her thoughts. Harris could intentionally be having Sookie misinterpret things, or just plain miss things, that later Harris can reveal or use in a related series (since she’s indicated that the series is nearing an end) for a more serious take on the vampire mythos.
ARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Okay, fit over.
“You’re just seeing the forest for the poison ivy here because you’re overthinking what you want to do.”
The story of my life.
“Chill out and go for it.”
Thanks Jerry for the encouragement, ideas and links. I’ll try do well by the vampires if and when I write.
“Granted, that’s advice coming from someone who hasn’t had published work since college…..”
I have a lot of respect for people who write. It’s not easy. Getting published is even harder. I have done a little of the first and none of the second.
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Posted by: Sean Scullion at June 5, 2007 08:35 AM:
“Jerry, Micha, as far as truly original stuff, I have to wonder….”
It seems to me that when coming up with ideas for genre pieces like fantasy, horror, space-opera, super-heroes, pirates, etc. there is a tendancy to draw from a basic stock of ideas, concepts, images and directions about how to handle the material. If I try to think of ideas about elves, or feuding noble houses, or vampires, or what not, the first ideas that wil come to my mind and the first direction my mind woyuld take, would be along the established lines. At worst, this can result in pure imitation. I once read the first book of a trilogy (don’t remember the name) that started with introduction telling how much this guy loves Tolkein and always wanted to write like him. I thought, wonderful, I like Tolkein, I want to write. But this guy ended up pretty much wring the Lord of the Ring badly. At other times, as we’ve already said, it is possible to write great stories using directions from this basic stock. Another option is to see if you can twist or turn the conventions in a certain way. Part of what makes Pirats of the Carribean great was that Johnny Depp played around with the stand image of the pirate and it worked. Although bad stories can be done this way too. And sometimes the upside down idea can become as unoriginal as the first convention: see noble vampires. At a certain point making the vampire a good guy was an original idea. There was a certain idea I had concerning a maelstrom, an image that popped into my mind which I wanted to use. But maelstroms are not very original, certainly not after Pirates of the Carribean 3. I’ll have to decide (if I actually get to it) whether the image is cool enough to be worth keeping despite that, or if I should think of something else.
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Bill Mulligan:
“If I had the budget I would LOVE to do a movie that would take place in the ill fated Roanoke Settlement, the fabled Lost Colony. Ill-prepared settlers, Indians and zombies. Ever try to do a head shot with a matchlock? And reloading time is a bìŧçh. They never had a chance.
That’s what I’d like. Gimme Roman legions vs Druid vampires in Britain, that kind of thing.”
Both are good ideas. Images already popp into my head just from the few sentences you wrote. Combining the fear of landing in a foreign land with the fear from vampires/zombies could be great. But meanwhile, another part of me is asking itself, isn’t casting the vampires/zombies as the druids/indians vs. the civilized Romans/colonists too conventional? No, it isn’t. Imagine a distant Breton-Roman village next to the Hadrian wall, late Roman empire, a small company of soldiers. Fog? That’s a cliche, but a good one. But then again, maybe we can also turn the idea upside down. Maybe the Indians should be the humans and the colonists should be the vampires or zombies. Maybe they were turned while the ship was on its way. A Puritan vampire came abroad in England the night before the departure, or an infected ghost ship crashes on plymoth rock. The vampires/zombies as metaphors for the ills of the old world. But wasn’t that idea used somewhere? Probably. Anyway, this is how my mind works. Ideas vs. second-guessing, who will win?
Bill, as a person who actually wrote and made movies, couldn’t you do a movie in American historical setting using these groups of people who recreate historical battles and villages? There is certainly potential here.
Mike: “I haven’t asked anyone to take my word for anything. That’s why my posts are mostly quotations.”
Until you can show that you are capable of understanding the meaning of the words you quote as intended, and/or that you are actually interested in the meaning of these words as intended rather than forcing on them the meaning you want, all these quotes are a waste of time and space. Better that you use your own words instead of forcing the words of others to do the work for you, unsucessfully.
Micha, I’m saving the idea for when I have a bit more time, money and experience–if I do it at all I want it to be good. It has too much potential to just hack it out. But your idea of using re-enactors is spot on–I may try a civil war piece first since you can find them all over North Carolina.
I would probably have one of the settlers become the first zombified and from that it spreads to both the Europeans and the Indians, who must fight together and ultimately sacrifice themselves to save the new world.
If I could do a Roman story I’d have a small surviving group of Roman soldiers training barbarian tribesmen in the Roman way of battle to defeat the living dead (and the Romans, frankly, would probably be better able to do it than the marines–no dig at our armed forces but Roman tactics and weapons are far better for the task.
I like having enemies team up to defeat a greater foe. Ultimately, whatever our differences, we’re all alive and that has to count for something.
Historical fiction is dámņëd hard to pull off in movies but it’s great for books. I promise I’ll buy a copy! So you are already on your way to a bestseller.
“Historical fiction is dámņëd hard to pull off in movies but it’s great for books.”
I’m actually trying to write fantasy not historical fiction. Too much research. But you can be sure hat I’m writing is very much informed by all the history I’ve learned, and it’s supposed to have a historical feel. I hope it works.
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“If I could do a Roman story I’d have a small surviving group of Roman soldiers training barbarian tribesmen in the Roman way of battle to defeat the living dead (and the Romans, frankly, would probably be better able to do it than the marines–no dig at our armed forces but Roman tactics and weapons are far better for the task.”
What yo can do is create a situation in which a few Roman soldiers have no choice but to leave the Roman area (i.e. civilization) and go to the barbarians, thus evetually saving both civilization and the barbarians by going beyond the borders of civilization, but also using the benefits of that civilization. Everybody’s happy.
Have you considered a zombie version of the Seven Samurai’s
Have you considered a zombie version of the Seven Samurai
Oh have I.
Though this is one case where vampires might be a better foe. The premise of Seven Samurai is that the bandits keep raiding the peasants and the Samurai help them to fight back. There wouldn’t be any chance to prepare for an upcoming zombie attack; they just show up and you either kill them or die. Vampires i could see coming yearly to demand their booty in virgins or whatever. (actually, wandering bands of vampires hitting villages like bees going from flower to flower makes sense. I don’t like the whole vampire nation stuff but there IS safety in numbers).
Of course, Seven Samurai has been ripped off about 1000 times but if I’m going to rip off someone it might as well be Kurusawa.
You should check out Dragon Against Vampire if you can find a bootlegged edition over here. If not, there’s the not quite as good but very available on American DVD Tsui Hark’s Vampire Hunters. Not quite the same concepts, but they would both give you some good ideas and a few ideas of to avoid.
Bill’s Roanoke idea has been bouncing around my head since I first read it. It could actually work as a really cool blurb in my script, but I think it’d be destined for the cutting room floor, no matter HOW much fun it’d be to shoot. Still, it’d be a pretty neat bit of exposition.
I actually had an idea on my honeymoon for a zombie/undead story on a cruise ship. I mean, what ELSE am I going to think about in the middle of the ocean at midnight when the moon is waxing in a most romantic manner? It was sort of a zombie hunt/locked room mystery, since everyone was trying to figure out who the z’s were after, if anyone, and who was responsible. What if Romero met Agatha Christie and they got drunk? VERY drunk?
If what you say isn’t what you intend to say, why do you say it?
Wait, you’re thinking of portraying Indians as sacrificing themselves to, for one thing, facilitate their exposure to the smallpox, measles and other diseases that would wipe out 95% of all their people? Why stop there? You can portray Russian zombies invading a concentration camp and the Jews sacrificing themselves to preserve the Nazi conquest of Europe.
Bill: “actually, wandering bands of vampires hitting villages like bees going from flower to flower makes sense. I don’t like the whole vampire nation stuff but there IS safety in numbers.”
In a society in which there is a brakedown of government or that resides in a lawless frontier, bands of bandits, pirates, barbarians etc. emerge. This could also work well for vampires. I believe the society in the Seven Samurai is like that.
In a lawful civilized society vampires could represent the hidden corruption, the worm in the society. So people represent vampires as a hidden nefarious element. In that case it would make more sense to have them in smaller groups, although the vampire nation idea feeds into the fear of secret organizations, conspiracies, powerful corporations.
Agatha Christie’s books work in this kind of society: small, civilized but disturned by a hidden internal menace.
“Of course, Seven Samurai has been ripped off about 1000 times but if I’m going to rip off someone it might as well be Kurusawa.”
Ripping Kurusawa off is one of the things that cause critics to roll their eyes in disgust. But now the western adaptation of his movies are classics in and of themselves.
Mike: “If what you say isn’t what you intend to say, why do you say it?”
People usually do say what they intend. The question is if you have the capacity to understand it, and if you are interested in understanding it at all. Experience has shown that in your case the answer to both questions is no.
There are times, where people intend to say something and don’t get it right, or get misunderstood by someone else. It is usually an act of good faith to try to understand what people actually intend to say even if it is unclear, to allow them to clarify themselves, and to accept (and try to understand) the correction as the actual intention.
In all cases the important thing is to make an effort to understand what people actually intend to say. That’s the point of communication.
How does demonstrating to the poster how his words are being parsed prevent the poster from rephrasing his words so they more closely match his intent? Is that not the benefit of editing?
There is a famous drawing among those education in American school systems that includes a vague shape that could be viewed as a chin, of a young woman — or a large nose, of an old woman. If you want people to see some vague notion in what you present as exclusively one thing, how is it the fault of the person who sees something incompatible with what you intend — when that incompatible notion is compatible with the vague notion you employ?
Mike:
“How does demonstrating to the poster how his words are being parsed prevent the poster from rephrasing his words so they more closely match his intent? Is that not the benefit of editing?”
1) You are not as good as it as you think.
2) You don’t do it with the intent to understand, communicate or help others make their point clearer or to elucidate some hidden point, but rather to force and distort the words of others.
3) You are not open to the idea that the words you quote can have another meaning other than the one you ascribe to them, even when it is clearly not true.
4) The words you quote are not that difficult to understand. You are the only one who finds in them meanings that are so contrary to their intent.
5) Word games with the meaning of phrases can be a lot of fun when done in good spirits, just like visual illusions. But you do not treat your words or the words of others as linguistic illusions shared with us for fun, but as ways to hinder proper communication.
In a lawful civilized society vampires could represent the hidden corruption, the worm in the society. So people represent vampires as a hidden nefarious element. In that case it would make more sense to have them in smaller groups, although the vampire nation idea feeds into the fear of secret organizations, conspiracies, powerful corporations.
It would seem that life for vampires would be much better in a time of anarchy than of order. Two thoughts then–if I were looking for vampires now I’d check out some place like Darfur, Somalia, etc. And it would be interesting to see vampires involved in terrorism to bring about the fall of civilization, usher in a society in which they would be very much the top of the food chain.
Wait, you’re thinking of portraying Indians as sacrificing themselves to, for one thing, facilitate their exposure to the smallpox, measles and other diseases that would wipe out 95% of all their people? Why stop there? You can portray Russian zombies invading a concentration camp and the Jews sacrificing themselves to preserve the Nazi conquest of Europe.
Bad analogy, Stanley. Destroying the Russian zombies would not prserve the Nazi conquest of Europe. A brief glance at a history book would tell you that the Nazi regime fell in the reality that does not have zombies. Allowing zombies to live might change that future.
And what choice would our Indian warriors have? Allow the zombies to win, happy in the ntion that although it would mean the total extinction of their people at least Whitey would get some pain as well? Sorry, but I would imagine that fictional Indians, just like the real ones, would be much smarter than you.
But I am not at all surprised that a story where enemies work together for a greater good has no appeal to you.
“Force and distort” what? What interpretation of “smacking you around now and again falls under the category of guilty pleasures” excludes an indulgence in the suffering of another?
Like when?
I don’t hear anyone else denying “smacking you around now and again falls under the category of guilty pleasures” means anything other than an indulgence in the suffering of another.
So — that would make Indians fighting off zombies to preserve the manifest destiny that would take North America away from them even more counter-intuitive, now, wouldn’t it?
I never said the more extreme example of nazis and Jews facing off against zombies had no appeal for me, and did not serve it as an example of such. I just asked a question.
Like Lone Wolf & Cub, the story protagonist could completely embody, in the post-WWI setting, viking virtues, and even serve as the inspiration for the ideal Aryan. Then, like Retsudo Yagyu, Joseph Goebbels could frame the protagonist as a Jew, completely driving away his influence from the establishment of the nazi party, with Hitler playing the absolutely powerful shogun. Again like Lone Wolf & Cub, our hero becomes a refugee from the powers of order meant to shelter the virtues he embodies. (Our hero’s outlaw status from the nazi regime would obviously have to be established immediately in the story.)
Where the zombies come in is that Goebbels’s framing of our hero is revealed to be part a plot to forestall the impending Ragnorak, the nazi regime acting under Asgard’s influence in modern times. As part of his revenge, our hero campaigns to start Ragnorak and bring about the end of all things itself. First Goebbels summons the honored dead of Valhalla to fight our hero, but our hero’s encounter with them earns the honored deads’ respect, and they refuse to fight him any further. Then Goebbels must resort to the dishonored dead — contagious, flesh-eating zombies, of whom there is no limit.
This leads to a showdown in a concentration camp, where our hero is able to rally nazi and Jew, as Ogami was faced with the challenge of uniting samurai and peasant in the face of the complete breakdown of order — only in this case to fight off zombie hoards. One of the Jews could serve as a crucial element in the development of the atomic bomb, providing a partial Ragnorak fulfillment.
So — that would make Indians fighting off zombies to preserve the manifest destiny that would take North America away from them even more counter-intuitive, now, wouldn’t it?
They’d really have to be psychic Indians to know that. That seems to me to be asking for two rather incredible assumptions–A–the Indians would be willing to have their entire civilization destroyed by zombies–100%, which is worse even than 95% and B–they would do this because they would somehow know that the starving dwindling group of Europeans at Roanoke were just the beginning of what would ultimately be a successful invasion by Europeans.
It’s already asking a lot for people to accept the existence of zombies. Adding self destructive psychic Indians is just asking for trouble.
Now if Micha wanted to try something that would definitely cause some controversy–how about the story of Masada with vampires added? We don’t know what happened inside the walls of that fortress and it offers some real opportunities for fantasy. Of course, Masada is a source of great national pride and messing with it might not be worth the grief. It would be like putting werewolves in the Alamo (and I might add, I would have no problems with that premise. At all. But that’s me.)
“There is a famous drawing among those education in American school systems that includes a vague shape that could be viewed as a chin, of a young woman — or a large nose, of an old woman.”
I have parsed this (as you acknowledge one may do) and found it to be flawed – so obviously it’s a bunch of worthless pap. “Those education in American school systems”? “Education” is the wrong word; “Those who were educated in the American school system” or “Those educated in America” is what is needed. The image to which you refer is “My Wife and My Mother in Law,” drawn by W.E. Hill in 1915. It is not, in fact, a vague shape, but a realistic image which is usually first recognized as a young woman, and only later is an old woman seen. I believe Hill was an American, but have never found him part of any standard curriculum, so the American education identification may be irrelevant.
“If you were educated in an American school system, you know the US Constitution makes no obsession a right…”
Actually, as I was educated in an American school system, I know that the U.S. Constitution makes nothing a right. Rather, it recognizes certain unalienable (as it was expressed at the time) rights of the individual and declares that the purpose of government is not to grant rights but to secure them and protect them. As for “all accusations reviewed in a court” being “accessible to cross-examination,” that may well be so, but there are no accusations being reviewed in a court here, so your point, if you have one, is irrelevant.
The Indians wouldn’t have to be psychic if they could get their hands on the history book you felt free to offer the zombie-challenged concentration camp detainees.
Oh, according to Jared Diamond (you may have seen a display of his pulitzer-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel in your local supermarket) the 95% depopulation of the Indians was from disease, without any bullets being fired, so we are talking about much worse than a 95% loss oflife. With Ward Churchill acting as their spokesman, how would today be much different than a complete destruction of their culture to an Indian from 400 years ago?
My Wife and My Mother in Law
Actually, while Hill often gets credit for it and it is his version that gets the most printings, the image is older then Hill’s work. There are older versions that predate his by decades.
Just an long ago ex-art student being picky.
Thanks, Jeffrey, for taking inventory of my typos. I don’t write here with the hope of establishing a publishing history — but you seem to have that kind of belief in me, which I take as a compliment. Otherwise, you would leave “what is needed” to each reader to handle as you have, as opposed to, I can only suppose, your concerns for meeting professional requirements for publication.
I meant “capable of being understood in more than one way” so, yes, I said “vague” when I should have said “ambiguous.” Again, thank you.
I encountered the drawing in a textbook, perhaps to serve as some example for how diversity can take place among reasonable people in culture, in belief, and in innovation and invention. When I refer to it, everyone seems to know which picture I’m talking about, so I’m guessing there are enough people with sense enough to use it in educating children.
I responded to a question directed at me, and you haven’t disagreed with nor challenged my reply. Thank you.
Mike, where is the court that would make your call for cross examination relevant? If you are seeing courtrooms where the rest of us don’t that’s something that should worry you.
To be clear, I disagree with and challenge your reply (to whatever it was a reply.
It should come as no surprise that my purpose in pointing out your “typos” (they look more like unfamiliarity with English than inadvertent errors, but still…) is not to help you polish your prose, but rather to ridicule you. That is much more satisfying. When one cannot express oneself intelligibly in a minimum of one language, it looks exactly like stupidity.
Jeffrey, the reason you indulge in pointing out typos seems to be because if you didn’t, you would never be right about anything (which is no casual qualification for stupidity). It’s ok with me.
Bill, another option is just throwing in a quick blip at the beginning that establishes that Roanoke outbreak isn’t the Indian’s first contact with zombies. Because they were close to the ocean, any ancient seagoing vessel that got hit with an outbreak could have drifted to the ancient America’s shores. The Indians could have repelled one or several outbreaks before the Roanoke story and the reason for their fighting them then could be worked in as a belief of fighting some great and ancient evil.
The Roanoke outbreak could then be caused by a ship full of infected hitting the shores or a zombie from a past outbreak that got trapped under the water dislodging or chomping a chunk out of a swimmer. The fun/tragic twist at the end is that the knowledge of the American outbreaks and the knowledge of where the last of the zombies where trapped would be lost in the later destruction of so much of the East Coast’s Indian cultures. Think about the ending of the WWZ story you like so much. Here you would have no doubt that what awaits some unsuspecting group of people in the future is freeing the remaining hoard and starting a new outbreak.
I actually did a story like this way back in Jr. High with vampires. The extra historical mystery I threw in was tying the Anasazi in with the vampires and there ancient overnight disappearance as the vampires destruction. I was given an F by the teacher. She felt that I wasn’t treating historical tragedies with enough respect. Then again, this is the same teacher who wouldn’t let her children see a Jason or Freddy film because people who enjoyed that kind of thing were disturbed and were on the path to Hëll. Needless to say, that’s not one of the teachers I miss from my school days.
“Now if Micha wanted to try something that would definitely cause some controversy–how about the story of Masada with vampires added? We don’t know what happened inside the walls of that fortress and it offers some real opportunities for fantasy. Of course, Masada is a source of great national pride and messing with it might not be worth the grief. It would be like putting werewolves in the Alamo (and I might add, I would have no problems with that premise. At all. But that’s me.)”
Actually, Massada itself is controversial. The negative or positive attitides toward it parallel political attitudes today. Also, people here are not afraid of controversy. However, I don’t think this event lends itself well to vampires. To have them die by vampires instead of by mass suicide takes the point away from this whole (controversial) story. Vampires would do much better during the Roman siege on Jerusalem: famine, fear, infighting between factions, Romans on the outside, Jewish soverignity soon to go down for two millenia, a generally bad time for the Jewish people.
But here is another idea for a vampire story with a Jewish component that would fit your parameters. A medieval city state in Italy or the Rhine. 14th century, the city plagued by the Black Death, debauchary, dispair, death. In this setting a vampire is stalking the citizens, whose suspicions naturally turn toward the Jews (Blood Libel). Now all you need is a Rabbi/Physician in the role of Van Helsing, cooperating with a young Christian noble (whose name could be Van Helsing or von Helsing), in order to stop the vampire. Maybe a scene involving the Rabbi explaining to the noble that it is not the cross that deters the vampires but the belief in the cross, and that it works for other religious symbols as well.
“I never said the more extreme example of nazis and Jews facing off against zombies had no appeal for me”
A story like that would be in extremely bad taste.
Jerry, don’t you wish there was an appeal process in school? I had a creative writing teacher in college who told us that we wouldn’t be submitting any sf/fantasy because that wasn’t real literature. I thought I’d have to be sure to tell Asimov, Tolkien, Lewis and Clarke. While there are specific rules for story structure they have to teach, the subject shouldn’t be criticized, only the execution.
You know, now that I’m thinking about it, you could actually do a Roanoke-starting story, then translate it to modern times having another small town disappear with no trace, have a folklorist or someone more familiar with the story than most people notice the similarity. You could even have the townspeople from the colony as the undead taking the new town.
Bill, another option is just throwing in a quick blip at the beginning that establishes that Roanoke outbreak isn’t the Indian’s first contact with zombies. Because they were close to the ocean, any ancient seagoing vessel that got hit with an outbreak could have drifted to the ancient America’s shores. The Indians could have repelled one or several outbreaks before the Roanoke story and the reason for their fighting them then could be worked in as a belief of fighting some great and ancient evil.
You know, now that I’m thinking about it, you could actually do a Roanoke-starting story, then translate it to modern times having another small town disappear with no trace, have a folklorist or someone more familiar with the story than most people notice the similarity. You could even have the townspeople from the colony as the undead taking the new town.
That’s good too, and might have more appeal to those who are not into historical stuff as much as I am.
Actually, Massada itself is controversial. The negative or positive attitides toward it parallel political attitudes today. Also, people here are not afraid of controversy. However, I don’t think this event lends itself well to vampires. To have them die by vampires instead of by mass suicide takes the point away from this whole (controversial) story. Vampires would do much better during the Roman siege on Jerusalem: famine, fear, infighting between factions, Romans on the outside, Jewish soverignity soon to go down for two millenia, a generally bad time for the Jewish people.
That’s a great idea and it’s a historical event that, for all its importance, has not been widely explored.
I was thinking more that the Masada story would end with the zealots, having killed off the vampires, choosing to kill themselves to prevent the possibility of vampirism falling into the hands of the Romans. So the story would be exactly as we know it with the difference that the reasons for events are different. But I like your idea better.
Oooooo! Ooooo! How about the first contact was with–get ready for it–Viking Zombies! That’s why the Viking expeditions didn’t stick. Hey! And you could tie it into the whole Viking Berserker legend.
Cripes I have GOT to do something with this…
“Oooooo! Ooooo! How about the first contact was with–get ready for it–Viking Zombies! That’s why the Viking expeditions didn’t stick. Hey! And you could tie it into the whole Viking Berserker legend.
Cripes I have GOT to do something with this…”
I think by now you have enough for a whole series about zombies in the new world. Zombies in the viking settlement has the ingredients of good horror — a distant isolated community, a scary foreign land. Also cheap production costs.
Thought I’d plunk this one down in the thread for which it was intended…
Is it possible to use zombies as foot soldiers in a fantasy setting?
Absolutely! Just off the top of my head, the Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting Eberron does just that with the nation of Karrnath. They take as many fallen soldiers as they can home (theirs and enemy) to be raised by state necromancers and put back into service in zombie or skeleton units.
Of course, it works best if the undead you’re working with are at least intelligent enough to follow orders, use weapons, and, of course, not eat their own still-breathing brothers-in-arms. Though, that’s also part of what the necromancers are for.
-Rex Hondo-
Ok. Why? Are we talking John-Cusack-in-Max bad taste, portraying-nazis-as-rational-in-Downfall bad taste, or some other bad taste?
“Though, that’s also part of what the necromancers are for.”
So, that’s what they’re for. So far they have just been sitting around my house watching TV and eating my food while the bodies pile up.
Thanks for the reply Rex.
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“A story like that would be in extremely bad taste.”
“Ok. Why?”
Wouldn’t it be nice if I could discuss it with you seriously, like I would with a normal person? But I don’t think that’s possible. I don’t want to discuss a subject like the holocaust with you and end up with your usual antics.
“Though, that’s also part of what the necromancers are for.”
So, that’s what they’re for. So far they have just been sitting around my house watching TV and eating my food while the bodies pile up.
Thanks for the reply Rex.
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“A story like that would be in extremely bad taste.”
“Ok. Why?”
Wouldn’t it be nice if I could discuss it with you seriously, like I would with a normal person? But I don’t think that’s possible. I don’t want to discuss a subject like the holocaust with you and end up with your usual antics.
Is it possible to use zombies as foot soldiers in a fantasy setting?
Like Rex said, as long as they are under some kind of control…although I suppose one could use them as a sort of bio-warfare to soften up an enemy prior to invasion. But that would be wise only if you had a sure fire easy method of disposing of them once the invasion started.
Now there’s a creepy idea for a short–an army besieging a castle keeps catapulting diseased animals and humans over the walls and when they finally break through they discover that their efforts have resulted in the population becoming zombified.
Get the cow?
Huh?
Get the cow!
(Sorry, purists, I neither speak or read French. Thus my complete inability to do the actual line. However, the thought of Arthur running away from a zombie cow is just too good. Also explains the Black Knight, doesn’t it?)
“Now there’s a creepy idea for a short–an army besieging a castle keeps catapulting diseased animals and humans over the walls and when they finally break through they discover that their efforts have resulted in the population becoming zombified.”
You can add it to the Jerusalem siege idea
Mike: Here’s something for your consideration – Sometimes (maybe a lot more than half the time) when Micha posts something it is not in reference to or directed toward you. Now my case (I’m Jeffrey Frawley, since you sometimes have trouble distinguishing the authors of posts) might be a different case. I am talking to you, Mike, foolish as that may be.
In any case, remember this: IT IS POSSIBLE TO DISCUSS ZOMBIE NAZIS WITHOUT REFERENCE TO MIKE (unless you have some health issues I’d rather not know about).
“If you don’t think such a discussion is possible, why did you start this one? Retreat from me if you must, but you only have yourself to blame.”
I didn’t start a discussion, I made a comment. And anyway, my comments are not meant just for you. There are other people on this board, with whom I would willingly discuss this issue if they wished it.
“Retreat,” interesting choice of a word. If there is a retreat, there is also an attack. This proves that your agenda on this board is to attack, not to converse, and you will be treated accordingly by me. But of course, I wil lnever retreat from you. I just don’t feel obligated to play by your preverse rules or to jump through your hoops of insanity.
And no, I don’t blame myself, I blame you. It is you who have rendered such discussion impossible, as the attitude of everybody else on this board toward you can attest. I would discuss the same subject with almost anybody else but you with little hesitation. But the holocaust is a sacred subject for me, and I don’t to see it go through your games of absurdity.
Samurai 7 is an anime update to Kurowasa that you can catch on IFC if you hurry. I said “if you hurry!” Why are you still reading?
It’s set in a mecha/steampunkish setting, which can put some off right off the bat, but there’s something to be said about a human samurai going toe-toe with a Gundam+ sized mecha bandit that’s just all kinds of cool.
No zombies, though. Cyborgs, yeah, it’s got cyborgs. No ninjas, though.
“(unless you have some health issues I’d rather not know about).”
Jeffrey, any nightmares I have from that image will be blamed on you. Unless, like the one I had last night, they can be used as screenplays, in which the AKNOWLEDGEMENT will be gratefully sent your way.
Hard to type when you’re shuddering from that visual.