tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8072184693466214766.post5724619948018260202..comments2023-07-05T06:27:19.137-04:00Comments on Jollyreaper's Idea Pit: The Feasters Belowjollyreaperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05673007647719726846noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8072184693466214766.post-5934827087014962502012-04-29T22:17:08.803-04:002012-04-29T22:17:08.803-04:00Might be worth a chuckle or two. :)Might be worth a chuckle or two. :)jollyreaperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05673007647719726846noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8072184693466214766.post-78347792309409809122012-04-29T20:50:43.333-04:002012-04-29T20:50:43.333-04:00Jolly, I'm still working one the Feasters sket...Jolly, I'm still working one the Feasters sketch. Haven't given up, just haven't gotten it to where it works. You and your damned muzzle. You're welcome to use the sketches I already sent you.<br /><br />Also, during the climax, it'd be funny (To me anyways), if the kid, whicle rigging the tunnel to blow, makes a bunny out of the C4, as an homage to Caddyshack. He's a kid, after all. Smartass seems to come natural with the age.Cthulhuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08097786256433955754noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8072184693466214766.post-84148791720882379242012-04-27T19:54:56.140-04:002012-04-27T19:54:56.140-04:00That's another valid point. Even with the abil...That's another valid point. Even with the ability to survive in barely breathable environments, fire would be taxing.jollyreaperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05673007647719726846noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8072184693466214766.post-31343129118250076542012-04-27T19:09:42.231-04:002012-04-27T19:09:42.231-04:00Just wondering, but fire burns oxygen, so it could...Just wondering, but fire burns oxygen, so it could explain why they don't use it much, if the oxygen of their caves is not renewed fast enough.Ethhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13196257853962186227noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8072184693466214766.post-60327420162750881072012-04-27T10:41:28.234-04:002012-04-27T10:41:28.234-04:001) Unsure. There was a promising but ultimately fa...1) Unsure. There was a promising but ultimately failed novel called the Descent (unrelated to the movie) about subterranean monsters in a vast deep world ecology that lies deep in the crust, a world-straddling cave system we weren't able to detect seismologically for some reason. It ended up failing because the writer invoked supernatural stuff halfway through what was supposed to be a reality-based book and you had the Vatican going underground to find the literal source of Satan. Pretty dire stuff. <br /><br />2) Muzzle. Like baboons. <br />Can't embed IMG in reply. Closed muzzle. <br />http://photographicdictionary.com/sites/photographicdictionary.com/files/photos/b/baboon.jpg<br /><br />Open muzzle, displaying fangs. <br />http://www.strangezoo.com/images/content/138731.jpg<br /><br />3) Yes, and fire led to the human jaw decreasing in size while allowing more calories could still be consumed. Big jaws with big muscles allow for primates to spend most of the day eating. Humans with cooked food can wolf down the necessary calories quickly and then take the time to try hunting. A chimp spending the day on an unsuccessful hunt is at a huge calorie deficit. <br /><br />If I allow the feasters to make too much use of fire, then I have to explain why they aren't more human. <br /><br />4) There are no known eusocial mammals outside of two species of mole rats. (though the definition is argued and there's claims other mammals could qualify but I don't find a link.) The kicker for me is that it's independently evolved multiple times among arthropods, I believe the two mole rats developed it independently from each other as well. So I think it's not unreasonable to imagine hominids under similar selection pressures as the mole rats to develop a similar strategy. <br /><br />Irreducible complexity has been constantly disproved but I couldn't begin to imagine how to describe the steps of going from standard hominid to eusocial. Can't imagine how the bugs did it, either. But I also have a hard time coming up with an explanation for the eye and biologists smarter than me have done a good job of it. <br /><br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eyejollyreaperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05673007647719726846noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8072184693466214766.post-62123377299496657572012-04-27T01:59:13.434-04:002012-04-27T01:59:13.434-04:00It's an interesting idea fundamentally, though...It's an interesting idea fundamentally, though there are a few questions I would like addressed.<br /><br />1) How the heck did the hominid ancestor of H. chthonisis get over to (what I presume to be) North America. If I remember correctly, Beringia was still underwater and kind of required an ice age for such migration.<br /><br />2) How pronounced is this "muzzle" on these mole people? I don't really recall (modern) primates having muzzles extend to other mammalian animals. <br /><br />3) Wasn't it also said that fire make food easier to be digestible for humans, so wouldn't it have a more expanded use other than religious (at least for the court)?<br /><br />4) I can only assume that there'll be a kind of "post credit scene" or stinger for sequel encounters.<br /><br />Still, the idea of basing the social structure on the naked mole rat is interesting, though I can't help but wonder if there is a potential primate analogue.Sabersonichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11304850400062201271noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8072184693466214766.post-80743010787434771012012-04-26T11:05:04.958-04:002012-04-26T11:05:04.958-04:00whoops -- can't edit post after posting.
1 t...whoops -- can't edit post after posting. <br /><br />1 through 3 ruin a good monster movie and #4 would be an extra challenge -- making a threat scary without needless slaughter. It's like trying to do a clean stand-up comedy act. Possible? Sure. Harder than doing a dirty set? Much so. <br /><br />With most of the horror movies I've seen, the characters are either annoying, stupid, jerkfaces, or a combination of the three and you end up rooting for the monster or axe-killer. <br /><br />As a stylistic component, if filmed, I'd like to avoid the cheap jump-scare. Violins rise and set your teeth on edge, hero closes the medicine cabinet door to reveal NOTHING behind him in the mirror! Music rising again, hero creeps closer to closet with gun raised. As the music reaches the peak he reaches out to open it and pauses. He says to girlfriend "You don't have a cat, right?" She shakes her head. He empties his gun into the closet door. It is pushed open as the monster inside slumps to the floor. <br /><br />Passages underground, yes. One of the advantages for the hero being a scrawny kid is that he can go in there like a tunnel rat from Vietnam. I'm thinking a pistol with a maglite attachment, a knife and a satchel charge. (Yeah, uncle's a survivalist. He has this along with canned food and plenty of beer.) He goes down there and blows the damn tunnel. No big deal, they're like gophers. Big, scary, killer gophers. It's his Caddyshack moment. <br /><br />The whole idea is to play with expectations and do the unexpected but not in a predictably unexpected way. I don't want it to be like the idiotic broad genre parodies where the jokes are telegraphed, mailed by certified letter, and then hammered into your skull just in case you didn't catch the reference. "This is funny because it is contrary to expectation! You must laugh at this joke which was old when the stars were young! Derp-derp herpy derp-derp!"jollyreaperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05673007647719726846noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8072184693466214766.post-61718702777154060352012-04-26T11:04:02.152-04:002012-04-26T11:04:02.152-04:00This comment has been removed by the author.jollyreaperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05673007647719726846noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8072184693466214766.post-18086282379389082422012-04-26T05:03:11.065-04:002012-04-26T05:03:11.065-04:00Sounds good to me.
So you intend to avoid :
cliché...Sounds good to me.<br />So you intend to avoid :<br />cliché 1) Darwin-awards contender stupidity.<br />cliché 2) Government cover-up ; the media just don't care instead, which is quite logical<br />cliché 3) No-one in the outside world will ever know it afterwards, and things return to status quo<br />And probably cliché 4) Early deaths just for the sake of it (though it may make showing the threat they are slightly more difficult)<br /><br />Do you intend to have passages underground? It may be difficult, due to the extreme disadvantages the heroes would have there; on the other hand, they may have guns.Ethhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13196257853962186227noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8072184693466214766.post-21573626821875394012012-04-25T14:51:11.613-04:002012-04-25T14:51:11.613-04:00Not quite Tremors. I need to clean up the outline ...Not quite Tremors. I need to clean up the outline to reflect some of the newer ideas I've had. <br /><br />The main character is a kid who's been damaged goods since his father did a murder-suicide to take out the whole family. The bullet meant for him didn't penetrate the skull and left him unconscious and bleeding; he was the only survivor. He's living with his uncle who is a war vet who has his own issues with being a productive part of society. The kid is quiet but always alert, always observing. Understandably jumpy given that his own father tried to kill him. If something like that can go wrong, who knows where the next terrible surprise is coming from? So he tries to compensate for this existential insecurity by being as relentlessly competent at as many practical things as possible, a young survivalist in the making. <br /><br />His uncle is one of those loner types who never really reintegrated with society. He lives outside town and makes his money running a small-scale pot farm. He pays the cops to look the other way, keeps his nose clean, and everybody's happy. He's a big fan of all things Fortean but from a skeptical point of view. He wants to believe, is sure there's crazy, weird stuff out there but won't accept a hoax. <br /><br />The feasters are foraging more openly on the surface thanks to the fracking. One of the first places they hit is our main character's property. A worker comes into his room and attacks only to get a bullet through the head. The kid sleeps with a gun under his pillow? Yes. Who the hell does that? Someone who has vowed to never let anything life throws at him to take him by surprise. He had the gun in case of armed intruders -- it doesn't matter to him whether or not the intruder is human. He actually feels a sense of relief since he now knows what the threat is and can kill it. <br /><br />He's not meant to be role model protagonist, not the kind of person you point to and say "this is healthy." But he is uniquely suited to the situation at hand. <br /><br />So the rest of the story is about rallying the residents to secure the town. Video footage of what's going on is treated as a hoax by the news networks because "you can do anything with computers these days." Fox was going to run the story as a slow news day Friday piece but that got blown out of the water by a celebrity sex scandal. <br /><br />The uncle's contacts in the weird things internet community help to figure out what they're dealing with based on the dead specimens and thus give us some exposition. <br /><br />The resolution I have in mind for the story is that enough workers and soldiers have been killed that the queen decides to leave the town alone. The National Guard arrive too late to provide any help. Upon the advice of his colleagues from the internet, the uncle has invoked some legal black magic to keep the town from getting taken over, turning it into a collectively held corporation with sole access and rights to the subterranean hominids. The town becomes the center of corporate and academic research into the entire deep world. <br /><br />The ending will require some massaging for plausibility's sake. <br /><br />Given that we've seen too many horror stories that absolutely depend on the complicit stupidity of the cast to make them work, I'd like to see a horror story where the level-headed competence of the main characters are able to prevent things from getting too out of hand. I'm not sure if I can plausibly get away with a body-count of zero dead humans but I'd like to try.jollyreaperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05673007647719726846noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8072184693466214766.post-66530437188539152332012-04-25T11:28:44.146-04:002012-04-25T11:28:44.146-04:00"Any part of their behavior whose purpose can..."Any part of their behavior whose purpose cannot be immediately divined is usually attributed to religious or ritual purpose; this may simply be a deficiency of imagination the the part of the observer."<br /><br />This is, of course, completely unrelated to any practice from archaeologists when confronted to unidentifiable prehistoric object, and all resemblance would be purely fortuitous?<br /><br />Tremor with morlocks? That's something I'd like to see indeed. Otherwise, it sounds good enough for my suspension of disbelief at least.<br /> And the open conclusion, 'what else may be there?' is a nice point as well, allowing for more options later.Ethhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13196257853962186227noreply@blogger.com