Sunday, June 15, 2008

Of Violence in Media, TV Tropes, Fanfiction and Firefox

With the development of technology in the entertainment sector, quite a few different types of violence occur, not all have to involve blood though...

There was a point in time where pasting a face over another actor's face with a ton of gore and then ripping it off to simulate a face being shredded in between was revolutionary, now we can have it done with simple CGI, and make it look a lot worse.

I'm gonna categorize a few different types of violence...

Bullet hole - Blam ! Guy falls down, perfect, round hole in torso, gasping for air, bleeds. Dies.

Typical action movie thing. Not much here, just maybe a bit of spatter on the walls or something of those lines. Lets categorize even further !

Bullet Hole - Zombie Gunshot - Blam ! Shotgun to torso, 20% is blasted to kingdom come.

Why is it that zombies always seem to have more blood gore and assorted detritus on them and seem to often burst in creative ways ?

Bullet Hole - Shotgun to Average Guy - Close range, guys flies back into wall, guy looks up, a few spots are bleeding and maybe a small chunk of flesh is missing. Often survives.

These are a couple of your more basic types of gunshot violence.

But, lets look at violence in general !

Psychological: Darkness, creepy sound effects and shadows. Only a master can wreak psychological terror in broad daylight.

Gung Ho - I sweep minigun across stage. Minigun slices people in half. Ouch.

Let's compare these two in my life.

I merrily chuckle as enemy Orks with their big Power Klaws (That's spelled correctly) are cut down in a storm of Bolter Rounds from my Space Marines. Every shot sends a spray of blood out of the enemy. I keep the chuckles up.

Conlcusion: I eat my sandwich with a smile whilst reminiscing on the carnage.

Serenity, Feature Film, Scene where Crew Lands and Discover Miranda. Rotting corpses in a place that is unnaturally bright and all have wide open mouths and blank eyes. Summer Glau's excellent acting enhances this aura of fear by saying they all just sit there in their homes, they say nothing and... cue the tears !

I'm afraid of the dark for the past 3 days, leave all lights on and realize I'm only replicating this scene. I've looked behind me for more than 17 times, not because I want to see the TV behind me, but to look for these dead corpses. Stupid ? Yes. But talk to this kid who watched this scene he himself explicitly skipped in an attempt to 'confront his fears'.

Conclusion: I constantly fear their existence.

I was going to post a picture of all these things but realized how bad this would be for my own sanity.

These are just a few of the more basic types. Let's move on to a lighter subject !





Excerpt from TV Tropes.

"Everywhere you go, there's the genetically-engineered survivor warrior species that's infesting every corner of the galaxy and cheerfully trying to kill everything else in the galaxy because it's literally hard-wired into their genetic code. The closest thing to the good guys you can find in this setting is a tiny alien empire sandwiched between all the other factions, and they have a thing for forcing new subjects into their empire through orbital bombardment, sterilization, and concentration camps."

That's part of their summary of Warhammer 40000. All of it is true.

Any writer would love this site, as it is the nexus of good ideas and strong foundations to writing a good piece of fiction. Casual surfers get a laugh and are stuck to this as they realize the things they see on TV that are very similar all have the same base.

This is a wiki. Be warned. The first time I went there, I spent FIVE hours surfing it, no breaks. Every article has a link you're interested, it's a vicious cycle.

I'll start you off on this journey. The next 2 sections provide a number of links to the rest of the site, I believe you'll click at least one of them...or laugh yourself really, really hard. These are all part of the description of Warhammer 40000 AND articles related to Warhammer 40000

"Abnormal Ammo (Guns which fire razor-edged molecule-thick ninja stars, guns which fire nets of Razor Floss, guns which fire wooden stakes, flamethrowers which squirt holy napalm; biological guns which use, um, muscle spasms to fire flesh-eating beetles/maggots or exploding tumours, guns which open holes into hell, guns which fire tiny goblins into, through, and back out of hell.)"

"BFG (Way, way too many to list here. The short version is: Anything carried by a Space Marine.)
    • Or anything carried by the Tau, who are defined as the "shooty" faction.
    • You know, the Eldar have guns that send you straight to hell - and their standard issue assault rifles shoot tens of thousands of molecule-thick ninja stars at hypersonic speeds. Then there's the support weapon which vibrates the target to death. And the "Harlequin's Kiss," a device that shoots a mono-filament wire into the target, then spins, turning them into bloody soup. Oh, and a stupidly large handheld gun that shoots a cloud of these wires. And an artillery variant of the above, mounted on a house-sized flying tank.
      • The majority of Dark Eldar firearms are enormous spiky bladed things which fire pure pain.
    • Or anything carried by an Ork, whose guns mainly run on Clap Your Hands If You Believe and "moar dakka". The Ork Shokk Attak Gun, one of the most beautiful examples of the setting's "screw you, physics" attitude, sucks up tiny gremlins and fires them through the warp into armour. Having an insane daemon-tortured Snotling appearing inside your skull? Hurts.
    • Even the standard issue Imperial Guardsman's lasgun, one of the weakest weapons in the setting, is capable of blowing off heads and limbs with a single shot. Considered weak because the average footsoldier in the setting is either wearing an absurdly huge suit of armour made of future ceramics/living metal/enormous rusted steel plates held together by bolts and belief, or won't even notice a mere lost head or limb."
Any Warhammer 40000 player will tell you it's all true. I'm a Warhammer 40000 player.

It's all true.

The actual site is here.


"It's a gun, Frank. A gun that shoots swords."





On to Fanfiction!

A large site where fans of stuff write fiction about stuff.

Firefly and Serenity ALONE has 3918 different pieces of fiction and stories. From short 'ficlets' to massive epics. Any avid reader who wants to see what other fans will write about what he likes will visit this little piece of Heaven.

21 Genres.

Countless millions of words.

8 Major categories.

A lot of individual categories.

Just like when an artist dies, his paintings have 3 zeros added to their price, canceled TV shows here are no less similar.

Teen Titans and Firefly have seen a large boom of writings with their cancellation, Firefly now has 3918 and Teen Titans is running on high with 22,055. And remember, these numbers are different stories and not just chapters of these stories.

Anyone with Firefox probably knows that there is a Download Day coming up. Firefox is attempting to set the record of 'Most Software Downloads in 24 Hours' All we have to do is download Firefox 3 on Download day and pray it works.

Longest. Blog. Post. Ever.

Regards, Boombaye1

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