The Creative Side of SH

[Sturgeon]

Also, I'm gonna start NaNoWriMo early except I'm gonna just try and do short stories. Uh, I'll try and post something over the next 48 hours to this space.

 

So, I totally fucking didn't do this at all.

[Sturgeon]

Great article on writing scarier zombies, however I think that the primary reason for the resurgence of the zombie genre isn't because they're terrifying, but as very crude power fantasies that the audience can indulge in both because of the impotence of the zombies and the incompetence of the characters.

[Oedipus Wreckx-n-Effect]

Great article on writing scarier zombies, however I think that the primary reason for the resurgence of the zombie genre isn't because they're terrifying, but as very crude power fantasies that the audience can indulge in both because of the impotence of the zombies and the incompetence of the characters.

It's the fantasy of getting to kill all of those around you without the repercussions. 

 

And those with this fantasy are usually weak. 

 

So they empathize with the inept protagonists of zombie stories. 

[Meplat]

It's the fantasy of getting to kill all of those around you without the repercussions. 

 

And those with this fantasy are usually weak. 

 

So they empathize with the inept protagonists of zombie stories. 

Zombie wank always gets me, in that fucktards dont factor in things like": oh hay you just ganked your neighbor who was the only person who remembered your birthday, or who remembered to take out your trash when you were passed out drunk in the lawn"..

 

A sane person would be spending too much time performing proper burials. Or at least cataloging. "This was Fred Jones, He was a good man, prior to becoming a zombie".

 

 

Because God knows, I'd be doing that.  And assuming I survived said incident I'd likely die remembering the friends and neighbors I'd killed. Again.

 

 

So fuck that genre. All I see it as is "smoke that bitch who cut me off in traffic" wankery.

[Jeeps_Guns_Tanks]

Hah, I so can't wait for the zombie craze to pass, I just hope the whole vampire thing doesn't come back, we need to get back to WWII being the hot thing. 

[Meplat]

Long diatribe regarding personal faith and social interaction basically abbreviated to nonsense.

 

Do not become a "zombie" in my locale lest you want a proper Christian burial, to the best of my abilities.

[Donward]

See. I don't mind the Romero zombie stuff. I mean, holy shit, the original Night of the Living Dead had a black guy, Duane Jones, as its main protagonist in the year 1968. The Dawn of the Dead movies are good horror movie fare. The issue that has been alluded to of course is the commercialization of zombies and its incorporation into a lifestyle whether it's Preppers stocking up on ammo and toilet paper or the millennials who think it's cool to dress up as zombies and go to zombie walks/marriages/daycare. 

[Priory_of_Sion]

Zombie apocalypses are just the poor man's robot apocalypse

[Meplat]

See. I don't mind the Romero zombie stuff. I mean, holy shit, the original Night of the Living Dead had a black guy, Duane Jones, as its main protagonist in the year 1968. The Dawn of the Dead movies are good horror movie fare. The issue that has been alluded to of course is the commercialization of zombies and its incorporation into a lifestyle whether it's Preppers stocking up on ammo and toilet paper or the millennials who think it's cool to dress up as zombies and go to zombie walks/marriages/daycare. 

TL-DR. it's shit.

 

Have six months of food and asswipe because the government is shit. Deal with it.

[Donward]

Got the six months of food in one form or other (salmon) and just shipped three months worth of grub and toilet paper for the barge to Alaska. Current supply of toilet paper at home is a bit low atm...

[Collimatrix]

Why aren't there ever werewolf apocalypse movies?  Werewolves are a lot more effective vector for their infection than zombies are.

 

I would be interested in a story about the long-standing grudge between vampires and werewolves that explains how the vampires insist that werewolves are not a distinct identity but doggy vampires.  The story would explore the werewolves' fury at the injustice of the great werewolf genocide of the 1900s, an event which vampires still deny ever happened.

[Jeeps_Guns_Tanks]

Why aren't there ever werewolf apocalypse movies?  Werewolves are a lot more effective vector for their infection than zombies are.

 

I would be interested in a story about the long-standing grudge between vampires and werewolves that explains how the vampires insist that werewolves are not a distinct identity but doggy vampires.  The story would explore the werewolves' fury at the injustice of the great werewolf genocide of the 1900s, an event which vampires still deny ever happened.

 

Wasn't this a Kate Beckinsale movie?

[Collimatrix]

Wasn't this a Kate Beckinsale movie?

 

You're right.  I think it was called Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam.

[Meplat]

BRB loading the defensive GAU2A/A's in the yard, and checking on the inerlaced claymores. 

 

None of which are for fictional boogeymen' rather, they are for tax collectors and politicians.

[Collimatrix]

You don't need that sort of heavy iron for the likes of them.  Politicians will die if you pour salt on them.

[Donward]

The Beckingsale vampire/werewolf were fucking gay. I mean gayer than the horrible Ann Rice vampire movies which were all about gay vampires getting gay with each other. 

 

The only GOOD vampire movies have Bela Legosi or Christopher Lee.

 

Or they have a black vampire like Wesley Snipes or William Marshall.

 

[Donward]

I think this is the worst thing ever, being a mashup of Zombies and Vampires AND James "Imma-kill-you-in-a-duel" Yeager acting out fantasies of shooting his fellow citizens.

 

 

See (or don't) 1:51 mark.

[Walter_Sobchak]

 

Or they have a black vampire like Wesley Snipes or William Marshall.

 

 

But please, no Eddie Murphy.

 

[Collimatrix]

IT LIVES!

Once thought lost in depths of the WOT forum deleted thread archives, I have recovered my horrible stories.

 

 

I

"Hello handsome," she said, a smile trying to wrestle its way across the last remnants of baby fat on her face, "glad you could come."

It was another gray November afternoon.  A temporary break in the clouds made the sunlight cold and clear and bright and good.  I was ten minutes later than I said I would be at precisely the instant my foot cleared the threshold.

 

I had to admit; she was right.  In this lighting, the greenish patina of my skin looked particularly fetching.  I took off the skull and my scarf and hung them on the coatrack before closing the door behind me.

 

"Are your parents home, young lady?"  She only giggled impishly in reply.

 

"No, they're out at the opera.  We have the whole house to ourselves."  She had that particular energy of youth that kept her body in constant, subtle motion.  I endeavored to observe this curious effect.

 

"Yes, Carmen, I think it is?  It's a shame you didn't mention it, we could have gone with!"  I ducked to avoid the low ceiling.

 

"You are insufferable!"  There was a brief, hot peck of lips on the cold, unyielding porcelain of my face.

 

"And you are a brat; from your last cervical vertebra to your sacrum," I said as I grabbed these, pulled her close and hefted her on to the couch.

"But the rest is fine?  Also, this is quite fast enough!"

 

"Have you never laid on a couch before?  You should try it; it's lovely."  My long, beak-like facial protuberance patrolled the part of her hair, around her ears; the hard ceramic material gently caressing her dimples.

 

"You knew what I meant!  Don't be such a brat!"

"We're both brats," I said, looking now directly at her, her brown eyes locked in the gaze of my horrifying, empty sockets, "we're perfect together."

 

"L’amour est un oiseau rebelle" I whispered near her ear, as my fingerless, flipper-like hands began attacking zippers and buttons "we could be watching Carmen instead of this."

 

II

 

I could tell she was thinking.  There was that subtle scrunch of the forehead that I could feel, even from my location behind her.  Women say the strangest things when you're cuddled up with them afterwards.  I don't know how they manage it; I was of course experiencing the well-attested drain of vital force and precious bodily fluids that afflicts males after the act.

 

"Do... do you believe in astrology?"  She said.

It took considerable mental discipline to respond in anything more complex than monosyllabic grunts.  But I forced myself; la petite mort is the little death that brings total obliteration.

 

"My sweet, I am a six foot tall ceramic statue that is a cross between the grim reaper and a penguin, animated by eldrich majicks, currently in a state of post-orgasmic bliss.  Do you think I believe in astrology?"  I said.

Or grunts to that effect.  It didn't really matter; she had already planned the route of this conversation and my participation was not strictly required.

"Because... I think I do.  But I know it's silly.  But... I want to believe."  She deliberately said.

 

"Grunt.  Grunt grunt grunt grunt grunt, long cross between a grunt and a moan for particular emphasis, mumble grunt grunt."  My words were the basso vibrations of a body that had not lungs nor throat.  They simply appeared; causing the hard, unyielding glaze of my surface to vibrate underneath the thin layer of sweat it had recently accumulated.

 

"I thought about why I want to believe."  I could tell that she was close to tears.  "I thought really hard."  Her breathing and heart quickened; I could feel them perfectly, since I have none of my own to distract me.

 

"I want to believe that everything... has a purpose.  I want to believe that I have a place in all this.  I want to belong.  I want someone or something to be looking out for me!"  Her shoulders began tiny shudders.

I said nothing for a little, and just stroked her forearm with my flipper-arm-thing.  Human skin is so malleable.  It is so warm.  For a brief instant I envied her; envied her skin, envied her body.  Her flesh was made warm by the metabolic oxidation of organic molecules; my body would forever be cold, as it was powered by the necrodynamic decay of the souls of virgin sacrifices, which produces negligible waste heat.  Her skin would lose its youthful taughtness in a few decades; my lifeless stony visage, my sneer of cold command would last centuries.

 

"My sweetest sweet, my daisy truffle," I began, "you do belong.  You belong to me.  The stars do not write our pacts and destinies; they are mute witnesses to them, and long beyond the time when they have burned to cinders and nova'd, and an infinity beyond that, for as long as our bodies continue to move beneath days lit by the harsh sun, and under nights surveyed by the cold, uncaring stars, and for longer, and for longer than forever, and beyond the time when the deathless outer madness demons devour time itself, you will belong to me.  That is your belonging."

Her breathing slowed.  After a minute or two, she turned around and pressed her face against the smooth, rigid contour of my neck.

 

 

III

 

I shivered in the cold and wet outside of the Enchanted Hunters motel.  It was merely to shed the water, the cold did not matter; my ceramic skin is non-conductive and in any case my core temperature is irrelevant to my metabolism.  Untold millennia ago, ancient wizards had trapped the souls of virgin sacrifices in a shell of clay.  When human souls are forcibly imprisoned in vessels other than a human body, they begin to decay.  This unraveling of the life-force can be efficiently harvested and used to power all manner of unholy simulacra of life.  Because it is simply moving life force around, this process operates with a high degree of efficiency and produces only a few lakh-ergs of waste heat per kilo-crowley.

 

Trying to create life force with heat engines has not generally been successful.  The extreme temperatures required to convert aether into usable life force have required the use of expensive refractory materials, and the extremely high heat rejection temperature necessitates coolants like mercury.  A few successful stationary co-generation plants existed, but almost all mobile unholy constructs used the traditional Virgin Soul Necrodynamic Generator, which is simple and robust and lacks moving parts.  Indeed, VSNGs were even common in stationary applications in the USSR, where they were used to power remote necromancy beacons in Siberia.  Occasionally a party of hunters would stumble upon an abandoned VSNG and attempt to dismantle it for scrap... with results too terrible to think about.

 

Anyway, upon my creation all those years ago, the wizards sought to control me by my great hunger for virgin souls.  Their plan had a flaw; wizards are the sort of people who, at a young age, opt to study the minutiae of magic at great length and in considerable detail in wizard schools and wizard universities.  That is to say; most wizards are virgins.  So I devoured all of their souls and went on my way.

 

Having an uncontrollable hunger for the souls of virgins does make me something of a liability around virgins, so I do my level best to ensure the safety of those around me.  That brought me to my present business at the Enchanted Hunters.  The key slid in very nicely to the lock; and I pushed through into the room.

 

"I'm back.  Have you managed to entertain yourself, my sweet?"

"I was reading about how the Kharkiv Morozov design bureau modified the design of object 487 by raising the engine deck and adding a two-stroke diesel, and it would have been accepted into service but Uralvagonzavod used their political connections to ensure that object 199 would be mass-produced instead, but with a modified version of the 125mm cannon using one-piece ammunition according to page 356 of Domestic Armored Vehicles..."  Her voice faded off in patter with the occasional break as she struggled with the syllables of a long Russian word.   I wasn't really focused on her words anymore.  My mind was definitely elsewhere.

 

"I see.  And how goes your orbital mechanics homework?  Have you learned about gravity turns yet?"  I asked in the sternest tones of pedagogical inquiry.

 

"Um," she paused, "I don't really get gravity turns."

 

"Your lack of attention," I pried her head up from a well-worn, dog-eared copy of Domestic Armored Vehicles, "to anything but tank design class and imperialism class is terrible.  If you don't start getting better grades, nobody will ever take you seriously!  Drastic measures will be required."

"Awww," she frowned in mock dismay, "it's not another spanking is it?"

 

"It will most certainly be," I said, "at least, as a start."

 

IV

 

The dregs of sunlight stretched into the classroom.  An eager pupil listened as studiously as I could hope.  The strains of Pierre Sprey and Kanye West's latest collaboration scratched in the background.  Summer was slowly dying.

 

"The primacy of emotion, political liberalism, and the transitory nature of all things are prominent Romantic themes in Shelley's poem Ozymandias.  Identify them."

She was admirably game.  So supple, and so eager.  So... compliant.

 

"Well, the broken statue represents the end of tyranny, I guess?"  Her voice had that upwards shift in pitch that indicates a certain timidity.  "And it's broken and in a desert, showing his reign did not last forever."

"That's a good start.  The wonderful thing about Shelley is that he's not terribly subtle.  We'll take a look at Prometh-" I was rudely interrupted as the door was kicked down.

 

A man wearing a trenchcoat and nothing else was brandishing a gun.  I stepped quickly in front of my young charge.

 

"And who might you be?"  I said.

 

"I am your executioner," he dramatically threw a piece of folded paper to the ground, "and this is your death warrant.  Read it!"  He made a great show of brandishing the gun.

 

I have a Mohs hardness of approximately 9.49, and an improbably high fracture toughness thanks to pre-stress and micro crack propagation arrest mechanisms based on necromancy.  I have a thickness efficiency of 5 or so against KE threats and about 6 vs CE.  I am also hardened against neutron threats and NBC contamination.

 

So when I began reading, it was purely to indulge this clearly unbalanced individual.

 

"Because you took advantage of a sinner

because you took advantage

why do women prefer taller men

I just want to die for German food

of Eastern front videos

in a mountain state

aye a litter of artillery"

"This is dreadful.  What is the point of this?"

 

He became agitated, gesticulating wildly.

"You took her from me!  I was 5'8", and you took her from me!"

 

I scratched my head.  "Could you be more specific?"

"You abducted her!  You ruined my life!  She was my only love, and you forced your attentions upon her."  He was now visibly shaking.

 

"Well, yes, that was for her own safety.  You see, I eat the souls of vir- wait, did you say she was your only love?"

"Yes!"

"But when I met her she was..."
 

...

 

I sat lazily in the evening, digesting the delicious, delicious soul.  My sweet came along beside me.

 

"Naught may endure but mutability."  She stared meaningfully into the horizon.

 

"You know," I said, "I'm not really a big fan of Shelley.  I like Yeats.  Have you ever heard Leda and the Swan?"

 

She smiled.  "No, teach me."

"Most thoroughly."

 

 

[Sturgeon]

So I watched Night of the Comet tonight with the girlfriend. This movie is '80s schlock, but it actually has really strong characters, an unusually (by today's standards) tight plot, and a really fun twist on the zombie genre. It's the sort of thing that, had it come out today, would be a major turning point in the genre, I think.

[Belesarius]

Glorious memories Colli.

[Sturgeon]

I've got an idea for a story that's gripped me, but it requires me to write a scene where the female teenage POV character gets broken up with. Except I A.) Have never been a girl (despite having lived in Trinidad for two years - shocking, I know), and B.) Have never had someone else break up with me.

So now I am sitting here listening to horrible pop breakup songs as research. Oh dear lord. 

[Sturgeon]

TIL that Beyonce either has had shitloads of people break up with her, or she had one super duper bad breakup that she won't shut up about now.

[Sturgeon]

Holy lord my YT suggested videos are completely ruined. It's like a sad, pink bomb went off and blew stock MS Word fonts everywhere.

[Belesarius]

I've got an idea for a story that's gripped me, but it requires me to write a scene where the female teenage POV character gets broken up with. Except I A.) Have never been a girl (despite having lived in Trinidad for two years - shocking, I know), and B.) Have never had someone else break up with me.

So now I am sitting here listening to horrible pop breakup songs as research. Oh dear lord. 

You are in remarkably good company. John Ringo recently had a research project into 13somthings actual music taste these days... Results were startlingly encouraging.

 

Edit: I note that as a parent, my Kidlets musical choice alternately amuses, enthuses, and horrifies me.   So I'm amused that she has semi-independently chosen stuff I like, picked a bunch of stuff I really like, and then picks something that absolutely horrifies me. She likes a weird mix of country, various metal sub-genres, eastern european/scandinavian folk and pop.