stunt_muppet (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stunt_muppet) wrote2010-01-18 02:17 am
stunt_muppet) wrote2010-01-18 02:17 am
Entry tags:
I natter on on a variety of topics.
Even though I should really go to bed.
1. So I finally watched the opening cinematic to the I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream PC game, and...I've got to say I'm not crazy about Harlan Ellison's voice as AM. It's not bad, it's just so different than the way I imagined AM sounding. Maybe it's because I've become accustomed to text-to-speech programs, and HAL 9000 and all his cinematic successors and knock-offs, but I always imagined AM as having...not quite a monotone. It's hard to describe, but when I read the "hate" speech I always heard it in a very even tone, with very little inflection - but still intense, fervid, shaking with rage. Like he had only basic vocal processors, not accustomed to conveying emotion, but the sheer intensity of his hatred was straining their capacity, quavering that basic voice.
If I thought I could do it any kind of justice I'd make a voice post about it. Maybe I'll do it anyway, under flock and key so I'm not a complete embarrassment. to the people around me.
A note: Really, if you liked the short story (for a given value of "liked", of course), I do highly recommend at least looking up a Let's Play of the game (as a copy of the game itself is somewhat difficult to procure). Ellison, who is about as curmudgeonly and video-games-cannot-be-art as it gets, wrote the game himself in order to answer the repeated questions he got about why AM chose to torture those five specific humans. Grim, atmospheric, and really good.
2. I've asked this question before, but it's been a while so I might as well go another round: in books, fic, or other printed media, what scares you?
I think I've figured out why it's so difficult for me to write something scary (which, if you haven't guessed, I really really really want to do) - fear, for me, is intimately tied to auditory cues. Sounds with unknown sources, the usual "something behind you/beside you that you can't see", noises in the dark, distorted speech, things like that are what strike me as scary. Not that visual and text cues can't scare me, but when I try to think of scary things I always go back to sounds. Or sensations (like the "bugs in the skin" associated with withdrawal), but those are hard to convey in textual form without looking over-the-top and silly.
So...what about you? What do you find scary? What sticks with you after you read it?
3. So there was this fic idea I had, and it technically goes against canon but I want to talk it out anyway.
I know that there were several Triple Changers in G1 and the comics-verse, but in Animated Blitzwing appears to be the only one, so I figured I had a bit of liberty to make up origin stories for him more unique than "because he's a Triple Changer, that's why". That was, of course, before I figured out that he's actually given an origin story - that Blackarachnia experimented on him after the war to make him a Triple Changer, and that his multiple personalities were a result of that.
But what if, I thought, it was the other way around - that he hadn't always been a Triple Changer, but he had always had three personalities? Possibly being given three faces and thus the ability to actually change personalities in some discrete and meaningful way (rather than having his personality swap inside while being the same outside) might have actually made him saner, especially given that, near as I can tell in this continuity family, Transformers don't assume a shape until after their spark - their soul/personality - is introduced to a blank form, and thus their bodies are supposed to reflect their personalities - what they look like is intrinsically part of what and who they are. Having three personalities with the same body shape would probably seem intrinsically wrong to them.
And from there I got another idea. What if these multiple personalities were a sort of condition, seen and documented before but very infrequent, wherein the bot in question would try to modify their bodies to match every time their personalities changed, until eventually they completely disassembled themselves. Or even if it wasn't a documented condition, that could be what Blitzwing did before he was given three faces - he would change his own face and body every time, then undo those changes the next time a different personality took over. Heck, if I was really feeling daring, I could even have him be neutrally-aligned (like the AllSpark Shard robots) before his modification, with Megatron converting him to the Decepticon cause by offering a way to "fix" him that the Autobots don't have or won't use. Or, possibly, have Blackarachnia fix him without Megatron himself getting involved, because that means writing more Blackarachnia.
I can't help but feel like there's an anvillicious metaphor about identity in here somewhere that I'm not quite seeing, but eh. Either way, I'm sure this has probably been done but I want to write it anyway, and writing it down here is a way of resisting that urge until I get something productive done.
I really must go to bed now, mustn't I. Good night, good night.
1. So I finally watched the opening cinematic to the I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream PC game, and...I've got to say I'm not crazy about Harlan Ellison's voice as AM. It's not bad, it's just so different than the way I imagined AM sounding. Maybe it's because I've become accustomed to text-to-speech programs, and HAL 9000 and all his cinematic successors and knock-offs, but I always imagined AM as having...not quite a monotone. It's hard to describe, but when I read the "hate" speech I always heard it in a very even tone, with very little inflection - but still intense, fervid, shaking with rage. Like he had only basic vocal processors, not accustomed to conveying emotion, but the sheer intensity of his hatred was straining their capacity, quavering that basic voice.
If I thought I could do it any kind of justice I'd make a voice post about it. Maybe I'll do it anyway, under flock and key so I'm not a complete embarrassment. to the people around me.
A note: Really, if you liked the short story (for a given value of "liked", of course), I do highly recommend at least looking up a Let's Play of the game (as a copy of the game itself is somewhat difficult to procure). Ellison, who is about as curmudgeonly and video-games-cannot-be-art as it gets, wrote the game himself in order to answer the repeated questions he got about why AM chose to torture those five specific humans. Grim, atmospheric, and really good.
2. I've asked this question before, but it's been a while so I might as well go another round: in books, fic, or other printed media, what scares you?
I think I've figured out why it's so difficult for me to write something scary (which, if you haven't guessed, I really really really want to do) - fear, for me, is intimately tied to auditory cues. Sounds with unknown sources, the usual "something behind you/beside you that you can't see", noises in the dark, distorted speech, things like that are what strike me as scary. Not that visual and text cues can't scare me, but when I try to think of scary things I always go back to sounds. Or sensations (like the "bugs in the skin" associated with withdrawal), but those are hard to convey in textual form without looking over-the-top and silly.
So...what about you? What do you find scary? What sticks with you after you read it?
3. So there was this fic idea I had, and it technically goes against canon but I want to talk it out anyway.
I know that there were several Triple Changers in G1 and the comics-verse, but in Animated Blitzwing appears to be the only one, so I figured I had a bit of liberty to make up origin stories for him more unique than "because he's a Triple Changer, that's why". That was, of course, before I figured out that he's actually given an origin story - that Blackarachnia experimented on him after the war to make him a Triple Changer, and that his multiple personalities were a result of that.
But what if, I thought, it was the other way around - that he hadn't always been a Triple Changer, but he had always had three personalities? Possibly being given three faces and thus the ability to actually change personalities in some discrete and meaningful way (rather than having his personality swap inside while being the same outside) might have actually made him saner, especially given that, near as I can tell in this continuity family, Transformers don't assume a shape until after their spark - their soul/personality - is introduced to a blank form, and thus their bodies are supposed to reflect their personalities - what they look like is intrinsically part of what and who they are. Having three personalities with the same body shape would probably seem intrinsically wrong to them.
And from there I got another idea. What if these multiple personalities were a sort of condition, seen and documented before but very infrequent, wherein the bot in question would try to modify their bodies to match every time their personalities changed, until eventually they completely disassembled themselves. Or even if it wasn't a documented condition, that could be what Blitzwing did before he was given three faces - he would change his own face and body every time, then undo those changes the next time a different personality took over. Heck, if I was really feeling daring, I could even have him be neutrally-aligned (like the AllSpark Shard robots) before his modification, with Megatron converting him to the Decepticon cause by offering a way to "fix" him that the Autobots don't have or won't use. Or, possibly, have Blackarachnia fix him without Megatron himself getting involved, because that means writing more Blackarachnia.
I can't help but feel like there's an anvillicious metaphor about identity in here somewhere that I'm not quite seeing, but eh. Either way, I'm sure this has probably been done but I want to write it anyway, and writing it down here is a way of resisting that urge until I get something productive done.
I really must go to bed now, mustn't I. Good night, good night.