Highlander

Burn baby, burn.

General Geekiness

Why this time?

Well, as you may recall, I’ve never finished reading Pride and Prejudice. Until zombies came into the mix. Then I read it in two days.

Ah, the zed-word. I haven’t enjoyed a zombie romp this much since Shaun of the Dead.

If you aren’t familiar with the idea, a few months ago a guy named Seth Grahame-Smith decided to expand Jane Austen’s classic to include scenes of zombie mayhem. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, as the book is aptly titled, “transforms a masterpiece of real world literature into something you’d actually want to read” (so claims the back of the book).

The book is good, silly fun. Somewhere around the introduction of ninjas it goes from silly to purely ridiculous. Even I, a lover of the silly and taking a joke one step too far, thought this was over the top. Seriously, Grahame-Smith. Choose ninjas OR zombies. Not both. And if you’re going to have people running around chopping off heads with Katana swords, at least have someone mutter “There can be only one.” That would’ve made me laugh even harder.

I also felt that having the zombie plague be around for over fifty years removes some of the urgency that is the zombie apocalypse. I think that the springing up of the undead would have paralleled even more humorously with the budding, blooming relationships between the various characters.

P&P&Z was still quite funny; my favorite part is the reader discussion questions at the end of the book.

While I enjoyed it, I’m a bit dismayed at the other Supernatural Works of Jane Austen. There’s Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, as well as Mr Darcy, Vampyre. I’m sure more will follow. Note that I have not read these, only that I’ve heard of them (and in the case of Mr Darcy, Vampyre picked it up and couldn’t find a blurb about it, so I promptly set it down). While I enjoyed P&P&Z, it should stand alone. When others try to capture the original magic, most often it just falls flat.

Enjoy one last bit of zombie/classic mash-up awesomeness.

On immortality

General Geekiness

I recently saw that Warner acquired Methuselah to be an action-adventure film. Apparently the protagonist ages at a very slow rate and uses all the extra time to gain survival skills. And they probably aren’t just rubbing two sticks together to make fire. My initial thought was the writers should just look at Highlander‘s Methos, but hey.

Immortality is an intriguing subject matter. How long does a person live before he loses sight of who he is? Does he simply become a combination of loosely connected ideas and opinions? What happens to him after his friends and family die? How can he die? Extreme old age? In my own writing, I like to contemplate these ideas.

I have high hopes for this movie. Hopefully it’ll be good and strive to answer at least one of my questions. Preferably the first.

So, dear readers, what are some of your favorite immortality themed books, movies, television shows, video games, etc, etc?

On Netflix, Doctor Who and lowered productivity

General Geekiness

I just installed Silverlight on my computer so I can watch movies and TV on my computer. This is very dangerous. Now I can watch seasons 1-3 of Doctor Who, which is wonderful now that I don’t have Sci-Fi. Productivity may be down.

Oh well. I only managed to catch the majority of season one when it aired on Sci-Fi. I’ll finally be able to watch seasons two and three! And I can alternate Doctor Who with Highlander now.

That’s enough geeking out for now.

Blogger’s block

General Geekiness, The Twirl and Swirl of Letters

Ironically, I just posted an entry on writer’s block. Never thought I’d get blogger’s block so quickly afterwards.

So what am I doing? Looking for info on the Highlander remake penned by the Iron Man writers. Not coming up with anything new. Also reading bad fan fiction. Maybe I’ll go and write bad fan fiction.

On a happier note, I found my copy of How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way.  I forgot how much I loved that book. Now I’m drawing random characters who may or may not make an appearance in Nerds Have More Fun. Which I drew the first story of today. So sometime next week it will be posted (no scanner).

I forgot how out of practice I am with drawing action poses.

On Fan Fiction

General Geekiness

My feelings about fan fiction are wavery at best. I enjoy reading it; you could say that it’s a guilty pleasure of mine. My first long form story was a Lord of the Rings fan fiction. I was very proud of the fact that I had hand written well over 50 pages.

Yet fan fiction often is crap. For every good story, you get thirty seven that fail miserably. My first fic? Well, let’s just say that it was one of the thirty seven. These days, I find myself writing fan fiction (and reading it) when my own stories grind to a halt. I worked on a Highlander fic last month because my own characters were being uncooperative. Don’t expect to read it, though.

What can I say? It’s fun to try on other characters, to imagine how their writers crafted them. Trying out different situations with preestablished characters is a good way to work on maintaining characterization. I can see why people like reading and writing it (because I certainly do). But just the same…I really don’t want to read the dross.