Supa Princesses and a Much-Needed Multi Pass

Supanova was fun, as per usual. Sure it's crowded, and sure you get to queue a few times, but the atmosphere is always incredibly genial and everyone is there to have a good time. I also like that the attendees are of all age groups, with your tiniest tots (there were two cute sisters dressed up as unicorns, and a couple of small Captain Americas with diminutive shields) mingling with happy groups of young gamers and manga fans made up as their favourite characters, right through to veteran oldies. Comics, artwork, books, movies, games, modelling - all aspects of the scene are covered, and it's a place where those just starting out can sell their wares alongside established artists.

And always, there's a parade of costumes to admire, everything from your Wookies to your Doctors, Mulders, Scullies, Leias, Solos, Vikings, robots of different persuasions, samurai, zombies and zombie hunters, one dragon, many unidentifiable (to me) gamer characters, and much Game of Thrones finery, which enthralled many of the small girls present. One particular knee-high admirer just stood in the busy exhibition hall staring up at four female Throners with an air of disbelief, a huge, blissful smile on her face while her dad looked on, and everyone politely moved around the group and made room for her moment. Every year the cavalcade changes. There didn't seem to be any steampunk costumes  this year, no Daleks or Weeping Angels, there was nary a Star Trek officer to be seen, likewise Resident Evil soldiers and girls wearing fluffy cat ears.

But there were princesses. Disney royalty and the aforementioned Game of Thrones ladies were definite hit this year, though some carried it off better than others. At one point, a pink clad figure came schlepping by, her posture stooped, bags hanging criss-cross over her outfit, and she was rather indecorously downing junk food. I felt she was letting the side down. But the others all seemed to keep their princess personas going no matter what, regularly but discretely touched up their make-up and kept an eye on their hair, and were exceedingly gracious to all the little girls (usually in pink dresses themselves) who ran up to them for a close gander, arranging their big dresses and posing with the star struck kiddies for photos.

I bought a few things, of course, including the obligatory, geeky T-shirt (actually, I got three) and a Leeloo Dallas multi pass to  hang on the odds and sods board over my writing desk. It's a bit of a running family joke, and makes me smile when I see it.

We also attended a talk with Gary Lockwood and Keir Dullea from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and heard all about the brilliance of Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C Clarke anecdotes, amusing and serious information about the making of the film, the public reaction afterwards, and much trivia about Hollywood in the 60s. There were plenty of other guests, the stars of shows from the olden days as well as the latest productions, but after a second whizz around the grounds, we called it a day.

GoT v WD

Hot off the press - there's a game in progress out in the back yard of the house next door. It involves two littlies, and as an ear witness, I can testify that it began thus:

"Look, a dragon!"

"No, a zombie!"

"Dragon!"

"Zombie!"

From a such simple beginnings, it went no further. It continued, and still unfolds with that simple script, though running around in circles and squealing has been added to the routine:

"Dragon!"

"Zombie!"

I await the outcome of this titanic battle with bated breath.

 

Building A Better, Stronger And Maybe A Smidge Faster Story

It rained today, so I wrote and subbed two stories and read. It was pretty much a perfect writerly day.

And I solved a problem. I was almost going to give on the whole writing a cyborg story idea, and not just because the competition to nab one of the few slots left for unsolicited works for that particular anthology will be fierce. It's called a challenge! But the deadline was too close and nothing was working for me. So I gave up, only to discover the deadline had been extended by a month. Hope returned. Maybe it could still happen. I tinkered, but to no avail. Then today my brain kicked into high gear and noisily shifted pieces around like the changing sets in Inception. I realised that if I merged the background for my first unsuccessful cyborg story attempt with parts of the plot for my second unsuccessful cyborg story attempt, maybe I had the glimmer of a goer. A third ingredient then presented itself as I was settling carryover characters into their new environment, and now I have a story that excites me. If nothing else, I like to finish what I start, and if I eventually end up with a cyborg story under my belt, no doubt I will feel sooo accomplished. :)

I still haven't written a zombie story though. Maybe one day I'll come up with trail blazing tale about putrid corpses that appeals to me. The BBC series In the Flesh proves that the walking dead still have a lot of life left in them as vehicles for entertaining and meaningful storytelling, and that there's always another fresh, if somewhat whiffy in this case, angle to even the most weary and worn out tropes waiting to be discovered by intrepid writers.

Zombies, Zombies Everywhere

NO IMPORTANT SPOILERS, I THINK. I MEAN, IT'S A ZOMBIE MOVIE, FOR GOODNESS SAKE. WHAT'S TO GIVE AWAY?

As, supposedly, the first zombie movie in with a chance to win an Oscar, World War Z is a zombie movie for people who don't like zombie movies. In other words, it's classier than your average zombie movie - possibly even art house zombie?

 There are no scenes of gory evisceration, strewn body parts, intestines being slurped like spaghetti or close-ups of livers and brains being chewed with messy relish. Sure there are splashes of blood tastefully spurting across faces here and there, but that's about it. There are no cheap gross out shots of ripped off limbs being passed around to upset the audience here. No mumbled utterances of 'braaaaains!' either. Even the zombies themselves are quite nice looking. Not as nice looking as the walking dead in Warm Bodies, but they're not missing jaws and cheeks, rotting in horrible places or flaking all over the carpet.

But they're still very scary. They're scary because there are simply so so many of them (I was wondering whether there was an overpopulation subtext tucked away in the movie, but that's probably overthinking the script), they're fast, and they're a monolithic force of unthinking, unrelenting undeadness coming straight at you. You can't even take a rest from their scariness by making fun of their ridiculous shambling gait or making silly groaning noises, because these former guys and gals are silent and swift, agile hunters that bring folk down within seconds of targeting them. They're deadly efficient killing machines designed for the sole purpose of replicating themselves.

Which is why WWZ is really more of an international medical thriller than a zombie movie, sort of Contagion with speedy corpses in lieu of an invisible virus. That said, plagues that move swiftly and have a high rate of attrition are panic-inducing at a primal level - I kept thinking about the Black Death diary entries I read a long time ago which recorded how people woke up feeling fine, had boils by lunchtime, and were dead by the evening. The scenes of mass, blind terror in the face of unbeatable odds are effectively portrayed. I mean, what can your average person do when overwhelmed by a veritable tsunami of undead monsters? One tensely watches the screen and hopes that in  similar situation one would be as cool as Brad Pitt's character, but...hmmm. Zombies or viruses, people are mostly not good at being calm and rational when everyone around them is screaming and scrambling to save their own butts. While still entertaining us, WWZ does good job of showing how quickly society can break down and revert to the rule of gun-power and elite connections. Useful and rich people are saved. Non-skilled folk and the unwashed masses are left behind as zombie bait. A certain amount of the film's scariness comes from acknowledging deep down inside that, come the Zombie Apocalypse, most of us would probably end up tackling the rampaging hordes as best we can all on our own with a pointy stick.

 So yeah, WWZ was deliciously fright-inducing, as any good zombie movie should be, and, ditto, fun to watch, with splatterings of supernatural, Hollywood-style social commentary added to the mix to give it that much desired, mainstream respectability that many genre pieces subconsciously crave.

Zombie Brainwashing

Warm Bodies is an insidious movie. Do not see it. Do not let your loved ones see it either, but by all means recommend it to your worst enemies. Gentle, amusing, and all warm and fuzzy about the walking dead, this feel good movie full of misinformation, probably propagated by some secret organisation of card-carrying zombie lovers for their own dark reasons, might well bring about the extinction of our species.

Imagine it. The Zombie Apocalypse has arrived. Civilization has collapsed, but you, of course, being a sterling member of the human race, have survived. Cat-like, you're slinking through the debris-strewn streets, all lethal and commando-style in your camo gear. You're good to go with long, pointy knives adorning all parts of your person and the trusty, fully automatic, military assault weapon of your choice at the ready, when you spot a lumbering shape. You peer through the telescopic targeting thingie, your trigger finger a' twitching. You are so ready to blow the decaying head off the decrepit abomination before you.

But inexplicably, you pause. Stirrings of an old movie get in the way of your animal instincts. Scenes from Romeo and Juliet flit through your mind. You take a moment to think. You think things like Maybe there's a really nice person trapped inside that festering corpse fighting to get out and party or perhaps I wonder if this decomposing cadaver has a vinyl version of that Blue Öyster Cult album I've been trying to find for so long. What with the apocalypse having drastically reduced the pool of suitable dating partners, you might even perversely entertain musings such as Apart from all the rips, rot and pus, he/she actually looks quite hot in that murky light. Most dangerously of all, with memories of Warm Bodies flooding your synapses, you might indulge in the lost cause romanticism of Maybe my one, true, long lost love lies embedded beneath all that flaking flesh.

And that's it. The End. You're a goner. With your survival instincts slowed by this entertaining but highly dangerous movie that promulgates the notion that deep down, zombies are people just like us, you'll be pounced upon and felled as you dreamily plan the wedding, and disembowelled and devoured by rancid hordes before you get to your imaginary honeymoon.

So I cannot stress this enough - do not see this amusing piece of zombie propaganda. Your survival, our survival, depends upon it.