Week 14: Science Fiction Parody and Satire

             Satire is always an interesting look to look. Sci-fi has a genre is always taking it’s guesses at the future, and this is a always a great place to get a few laughs. Idiocracy is a great example of this, using the promise of the future to deliver a message on consumer culture is a very clever and funny satire of the future.

            When I think of this genre I mainly think of movies, more then books. I much like how Star Wars is often the first move people think of when they think Sci-Fi, Spaceballs is my go to sci-fi satire film. If nothing else Spaceballs manages to take a stab at some of the Star Wars and sci-fis more ridiculous parts. Some of my favorite jokes include combing the desert and the numerous mentions of “Spaceball’s the ____”.

            I don’t have much to say on this subject, its not something up for a lot of critical thought, it’s all for fun a lot the time.

 I wanted to write a quick post reflecting on the class some more. For the most part I really enjoyed it. I wish we had spent a few more weeks on honor and fantasy, I felt like we only had about two weeks of fantasy to go through. This is of course all just my personal tastes. I thought we could have had a “Swords and Sorcery” and a “Kaiju” week for sci-fi and fantasy respectively. I don’t know how much literature is about Kaiju but I’m sure there are a few books about them. Anyway, I loved the class shame.

Week 10: Narratives From the Multi-verse

This week I read the “Drowned Giant” this week because it’s name sounds like name of a metal album. The story follows the fate of a drowned Nephilim’s body as it washed up on shore. The body is enjoyed by the community, but it is slowly taken apart piece by piece as the story unfolds until at the end only the torso remains and is left to decay on shore until it’s nothing but a grand perch

for the seagulls. Those pieces of the giant taken are found all over the town in pretty cool creative uses. (The tattooed skin wall is pretty neat) This of course is symbolism for something, so like I normally do I read a few articles I find on Google to see what others think about the piece.

 The common theme seems be that, the body is broken down because, it’s a massive reminder of our mortality and that have this dead giant such a massive reminder. I guess I can by that, I don’t know what they do with dead whales that wash up on shore but I assume it’s the same thing. I don’t know when this written but I think their maybe a holocaust metaphor in here too. As pieces of something start to fade people forget and stop believing they ever happened.

Week 11: Cyberpunk

I read Bruce Sterling’s Cyberpunk in the Nineties articles which is strange to read a twenty year old article now. Sterling goes on to describe, the history of cyberpunk, which seems to be a punk rock version of sci-fi. “Cyberpunk is doing what we do to rats, and doing it to humans”. Very in your face an unapologetic about what it’s doing. I guess that’s punk in general. 

Though I love the idea of punk and cyberpunk, I don’t know how much power or shock it has left to offer in today’s age. Sure I don’t think it’ll die but unless something huge comes out of cyberpunk it’ll go the way of most punk sub genres and be underground. It’s 2013 now, I think most people have fun some excuse me “fuck up shit” if you over the age of 15 and on the Internet. I don’t think many people live with the idea anymore the world is a great place, it’s actually pretty much horrible. Maybe all these years in art school have turned me into a bit of douche now that reading that over, about how awful I think the world is, but my life is great and so are a ton of other people’s. I assume this is the target market for cyberpunk. I mean the fact we have the time and the chance to read cyber punk isn’t very cyberpunk is it?
            I feel the same way about horror and other genres that turn over the underbelly of the world to the dark side. It’s hard to shock people now a days. I mean it seemed like almost monthly we were having school shoots and awful godless things are happening, and that’s just in America.
            I may have gone a bit off topic here. To but it simply I don’t know what is going to happen to cyberpunk.

Week 13: Literary Speculation

            This week we read the Aquatic Uncle; it reminded me a lot of the scenes from Fantasia. The story takes place in the primordial days as fish make their way onto land from the sea. This seems to be the first or second generation of fish with feet, but the old generation still leaves in the nearby ocean.

            Our main character Qfwfq, is part of the new generation and has an old uncle by name of N'ba N'ga, who is still an aquatic fish. Qfwfq and his uncle do not agree about the future of their species, which calming that land or sea is better. Qfwfq’s wife falls in love with N’ba N’ga over a visit with them. Finally she ends up leaving Qfwfq for him, falling in love with living in the sea.

                        The ending of story has an interesting paragraph. Qfwfq comes on to name a number of animals who have something “superior” and that never change over the course of ages in a massive way. Animals like crocodiles and roaches and things. He states that

“They all had something, I know, that made them somehow superior to me, sublime, something that made me, compared to them, mediocre. And yet I wouldn't have traded places with any of them.”

I think the theme of the story is pretty much in these sentences. It’s roughly that few though, my wife left me to go leave with my old sea uncle and his old way of life. He believes that he isn’t a crocodile and that he needs to move on because it’s important for his kind, and that they can’t go back. It’s a very pro evolution and change theme, which I do happen to agree with. I liked this one, a bit of a sad one but that’s just fine sometimes.

Week 12: Diverse Position Science Fiction

 First of all Brother from Another Planet, is a great film to show in class. Very in enjoyable, nostalgic film, that just off the energy in the room seemed like everyone was really eating it up. I love it, glad I finally saw it, and it’s one of those movies I always seen on Netflix but never clicked on.

This week in class, we read “The Blood Child” which was an interesting sci-fi reading. The story is told through the eyes of young human who is next in line to be the vessel for an alien spices. This spices is known as the Tlic. Written as large humanoid Millipedes they use the human as nest and incubators for their eggs. The story goes to describe the history between the two spices. How this relationship came to be and give and take that most spices do to support each other, however the power clearly lies in the Tlic’s hands.

            The story is one giant metaphor for the current societies gender roles. Put simply the young male is women and the Tlic are males. When you break it down to the bare bones the reproduction path is the same for us. Think about males and females can’t reproduce with out each other. Additional have a baby is just like have a weird parasite grow inside of you until it burst out. I mean normally it’s the same spices most the time but you get the idea. It has some horror elements in it, thanks to the Alien like stomach exploding action, so it was a fun one.

Week 9: Space Opera

            This week was week nine aka, Space Opera week! The semester is really starting to heat up so for this week I needed to read a short story. This week we are covering Space Opera’s such for me and I assume many other people as a much more familiar genre in the form of Space Westerns, the most popular movie in this genre being Star Wars of course. I have to yah that I very much enjoyed the movie Forbidden Planet we watch in class this week. It’s one of the few old iconic Sci-Fi movies from yesteryear, and it was just a great as I had hoped it would be. On to this weeks reading though.

            The short story for this week was the “Nine Billion Names of God”. In short a group of

mountain monks want to print off the billions of names they believe that gods name will bring about the end of mankind. The hire two people from the west to program and build a machine to help them to this. This is a interesting idea and an idea that is parody in other forms of media. (There is an episode of Futurama in which monks look for god in the cosmos through a massive telescope. Fry and Lela even ride donkeys to the stop of the snowy mountain.) As the months roll by the two begin to fear that the monk will lash out at them when god doesn’t show after all nine billion names are printed. The slow down the machine so it finish at their exit flight comes to the mountain. As they fly into the night sky, they see that all the stars have gone out, signally the end of the world.

            After searching the Internet for the meaning of the short story, it seems to be a struggle or a partnership of spiritually and technology. How religion predicts the future put technology can make it come true much quicker.
 

Week 8: Mythic Fiction and Contemporary Urban Fantasy

American Gods was a really interesting read for me I always love this kinda of stuff. Modernizing something old like gods and bringing them to America is cool idea, then adding our own “American Gods” and how we as a new culture must too worship gods. I’m sure this is all some big metaphor, but I don’t really want to get too much into it.

            This was one of my favorites of the course, I found every little thing about it be interesting. Slowly feeding you bits of information as you join Shadow along for the stories length. You learn as he does what is happening and the chaos that slowly goes on over the course of the book. I also enjoyed the back and fourth the sub characters like the succubus women sucking men she sleeps with into her, the other one of these that stood out was the African gods section. It’s nice too because there is some religious lore in there too much makes it nice for people also interesting in learning mythologies of ancient cultures.
            I’ve never read another Neil Gaiman work, but I am interested in reading more. I’ve only ever heard outstanding things about Sandman. That would seems like the next logical place to go.

Week 7: The Novel of Spiritual Education

The words “Harry Potter” bring a lot of thoughts into the minds of the millennial generation. Castles, owls, qudditch, chocolate frogs I could go on and on about it. Many of us drew up reading the series as kids and we got to grow into them as the darkness grew in the series. I got lucky and had a really nice sweet spot in the year I was born. When I was 11 the first movie came out, the age you start at Hogwarts. Then my senior year of high school the final book came out.

            Despite growing up and into it, I think the Harry Potter series offers a strong cast of likeable characters that are all well defined and explored over the course of the seven books. Sprinkling death over almost all the books, JK Rowling managed to never make readers feel like their favorite could still be the victims of the evil magic of these world. At the same time there is a sense of hope through out everything. Death isn’t something you can escape and that is one of the main themes of the series. At the same time you have to learn how to accept death as well, because it’s part of life and you will come face to face with.

            Though not my favorite  Secondly, this were much of the fun happens. The crazy every favor beans, the fore mentioned frogs, owls, dragons, and so many other things are touched are on the original. It’s not as child to lose yourself with all the whimsy of the first novel.

in the series the Sorcerers Stone probably has the strongest aspects of this week’s theme. It’s the most school focused of any of the others the final victory being winning the house cup.

           

Week 6: A Rich Fantasy Life

Warcraft 3- Peon

             Sadly I slept through this class, which is a damn shame because I really wanted to learn about some stuff about high fantasy that’s life I guess. So I’ve never read a Tolkien book, but of course like so many people I’ve experienced the Lord of Rings and the recent Hobbit film. I’m very fond of those movies, like so many other people. I was excited to read the Hobbit since I’m counting down the days the 2^nd movie and it’s always been on my list of things I’ve wanted to read.

            The Hobbit is interesting; Tolkien’s style is something I wasn’t expecting. All the 4^th wall breaking of the reading so Tolkien can relate things to the present day to make descriptions. It makes sense, as this is a children’s book. It just wasn’t what I expected from the great father of high fantasy. I found it quite charming though, the songs especially stood out.  I fell as though I missed a golden book in my childhood after getting through it.

Album- Nightfall in Middle Earth

            All in all I thought that the Hobbit was a really cool novel and it’s no surprise to me that it really grabbed a lot of people as kid or even adults reading it. You have all your great fantasy tropes going on. Dragons, treasure hunting, wizards, orcs, trolls, goblins, warrior princes, and so much more and from what I know it all started with Tolkien. Did we even have fantasy, as we know it before Tolkien, honestly? I know he didn’t make up elves and dwarfs but my god did he spawn the all the stereotypes and tropes for these races and monster of middle earth.
I’ve been an avid World of Warcraft player on and off since 2007. I spent most of my high school on a world filled with all these things found in Tolkien’s works and even not having read them, I feel like I have a huge emotional connection to them jut because of what they helped create. So thanks Tolkien for helping create Dungeons and Dragons, Warcraft, Power Metal, and Live Action Roleplaying with your writings.

Week 5: Women Archetypes

For this week we were asked to discuss a trope or archetype in horror/fantasy of women. Having a small talk after class, I wanted to explore the idea of the "Unsatisfiable Women" in horror and primarily in the older films mainly in the 1950s.

 The first movie I thought of when thinking of women like this my mind came to the film, "The Brain

That Would Not Die". After a fatal car crash a scientist is able to keep his wife's (Jan) head alive. She is enrage by this, and even more so has the scientist begins to try and find a new body for her. She goes around town, find and drugging the most beautiful women he can find back to his house. Right from the get go all Jan wants is to me left alone and die, however he will not let her. This causes her to hatch a murderous scheme. Luckily for her there is a monster in the labs closest locked away, and the juices keeping her alive give her the ability to talk to it mentally. Through of series of events her plan is success and all three of them burn in flames.

The second is "Attack of the 50ft Women"

Week 4: The Future of Horror

The future of horror is an interesting topic to look into. I think it goes without saying that horror has gone it a number of different directions. One of these new trends in horror, now thanks to the power of the Internet spreading the word is “The Syfy Original” type of movie. Things like Sharknado and Sharktopus are strangely very widely know and and celebrated films, by a selected group. One that is profitable enough to continue making them. The so good it’s bad movie trend has really exploded in this generation.  The success of the Syfy & The Asylum films is really something interesting and is really building on “the bad movie” as these movies are of course meant to be bad. These films are made bad it's done for comedic value. Packed with bad CGI, cardboard characters, ridiculous monsters/titles, and awful acting.  So this is mix of comedy if is done by poor quality, is technicality, an explainable of genre mashing.

The idea of genre mashing isn't a totally new idea for the genre. It was probably one of the earliest to do so with the Horror & Sci-fi. The 50s were filled with that stuff and it's really a marriage of both genres made in heaven. I don't see this mashing come to a close. The newest trends in horror is the horror comdey, which ties in with the "Syfy Original" movies I mentioned. Horror seems to be a popular genre to parody as it has some of the most famous cliches in town. It's not just horror sci-fi and comedy though. Looking at a list of genres horror has mashed with almost all of them. Fantasy of course, History? Lincoln hunting vampires, Reality Show? Fear Factor I guess. I think that is something that not only horror but everything genre is going to be doing. However it will likely be horror that is the first to cross pollinate first.

Week 3: J-Horror

This week we covered J-Horror witch is a pretty deep genre with a lot of content, since it’s a whole countries. Anyway I’ve seen bits and pieces of J-Horror movies, Battle Royal, and the Auditions. I remember having to leave the room during the dismemberment scenes of that movie. I can’t stomach any thing like that. It was so prolonged, and everything it was just…ew I couldn’t do it.

            For reading though I listened to the audio book for “A Wild Sheep Chase” is my second Haruki Murakami novel. I really like something about his work, it’s a lot of dialogue but it’s good dialogue something just really engaging about it. Interestingly the audio books for his novel “Sputnik Sweetheart” both have the same reader and he was quite good. As far as the novel goes it was good. They’re a little slow, and I don’t think there were many American Horror elements to it. It follows more closely to the Japan threads switch I’m not use to. That said, its still a very interesting novel. The events that happen are much more like a thriller then a horror novel.

Week 2: Vampires

Nosferatu

One of the thing that this book has, is a lot of different ideas about being afflicted with vampirism.  These ideas, archetypes that a lot of media has not used in Vampires strange state at the moment (maybe the fact this is my first time reading this series. Plus there was some interesting new character stories I hadn't heard before). I really like character struggles of Claudia because a lack of physical sexual similar to many vampire stories, but is handled differently. Vampires are often sexual, but there is lack of sexual contact or sex in them. Though Claudia does not do anything like, though she does drink blood. However it is not written the way like it is during the show in the theater or when Lestat does, to me it's more like she is just eating. No, Cladia's repressed sexuality comes from being a physically trapped in a girl's body for all eternity. This is where Cladia's burning rage seems to come from, her hatred for being cursed not only has a vampire but also to never to experience the sexual sensations that vampires do, since they most likely experienced sex as humans. As I said I thought this was an interesting approach for a vampire. Since she isn't a show as a sexy modern vampire, if anything I think she is in a way the biggest "monster" of all. I should consider her the closest to the original idea of vampires like Dracula and Nosferatu. She is the scariest in my opinion.

 
 Then of course, you have the odd relationship with Louis and Lestat, what the whole novel is built on. Personally the novel really loses steam in the parts of Lestat's absentees for me. I feel like their relationship is similar to an unhealthy marriage. It starts off well, there is an attraction between them, then one of them wants to break up and then they have to stay together because "oh crap we made a baby".
Then again you could say Lestat is some what charming even though he is serial killer. He takes such pleasure in killing that when I was reading I found it hard to not enjoy it myself. For Louis though it really goes back to being forced into the "marriage" again. The idea that Lestat knows more then him about vampirism when really Louis really makes more out of the powers given to him then almost any vampire. There is a pupil overcoming the teacher theme somewhat, and I think that is kind of what is important for Louis. He learns he doesn't need Lestat, but he almost learns he can't trust any other vampire at the same time. Which is tragic, but I guess there is a message in that idea too.      

Week 1: Gothic Style

Gothic Style: Darkstalkers

            Well luckily for many others and I two things we both enjoy, horror movies and videogames have cross-polluted many times before and produced a lot of titles. My heart however belongs to specific genres of videogames and horror. Those being fight games and monster movies respectfully. There is but one game that fits into both those, the Darkstalkers series.

Darkstalkers Resurrection

 I guess I should define my own understanding of the term "Gothic" before going into detail. I define it with words such as "Dark, Violent, Romantic/Sexy, and dealing with lost"

  At its core the Darkstalkers game takes iconic monsters (mostly universal's) and gives them a twist in some way. Characters range from a zombie british rocker, kung-fu werewolf, and a gun packing little red riding hood. Though the idea of a Kung-fu werewolf is somewhat comical, the back stories of the character gives a bit more to them in there appearances and play styles let on.

Lord Raptor Win Pose

John Talbain turned to marital arts in order to not let the beast take over him, he hoped that if he pushed his limits he could retain inner strength and maybe one day his humanity as well. The games follow him over his story where, sadly he finds no way to cure himself. The aforementioned British rocker is also a mass murder. Lord Raptor killed 100

people and himself at his final show, but was brought back to serve the devil. Most characters have this type of back-story fitting into different horror archetype origins. Another tie in is that stories being told through different characters and points of view is also something happens frequently in the Gothic literature style. Stories like Frankenstein, Dracula, and other novels do this.

The Train Stage

What really stands out in many 2-D fighting games is the backgrounds. There is just something really interesting about them many have a personality all their own. Darkstalkers is a key example of this statement. It has a pretty well rounded catalogue of backgrounds, jungles for the sasquatch, and castle for the vampire. Things start to get a lot darker and interesting with the last two stages in the games arcade mode. The first is a train which appears to be living; it has a mouth and eyes. It reminds me a lot of how I imagined Blaine the Mono from “The Dark Tower” books. The final stage is one of the most iconic 2-D backgrounds in gaming. The “Fetus of God” stage takes place inside of God’s womb I assume. The background is probably the creepiest thing in any fighting game hands down, and it looks great. If that isn't Gothic Horror I guess I don't know what is.

The Fetus of God

Darkstalkers remains as one of the few games and probably piece of media that honors the monsters of Gothic literature and movies in such a unique and well executed way. Though it has some comedic pieces in there too, I think that the dark stuff is done so well that it can be easily over looked. It's not the most Gothic game, but it damn sure does honor and build upon it.