Know what I hate? Character shield. Whats that? Well you've probably seem it in a movie and thought about it without knowing the fancy name but Character Shield (also known as Plot Shield) is when a writer is too clingy to let somebody in their story die and lets them miraculously survive against impossible odds.
Plot Shield has gained a lot of attention (unfortunately) in hollywood and the gaming industry recently. A great example of this is Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. Zooming around in his spaceship to destroy the deathstar ships are getting blown apart left and right but his miraculously manages to not burst into flames and crash in a fiery, screaming wreckage. A more recent example of Character Shield is in Avatar when Jake Sully survives being repeatedly torn apart by beasts, shot, blown up, crushed under undeterminably large amounts of wood, or otherwise killed in a variety of ways that stretched the entire length of the film.
The more times a character is put into a dangerous scenario and they come out unscathed, the less the audience associates that character being in actual danger. After a main character survives the velociraptors the 18th time the audience stops seeing the dinosaurs as a threat and more of a boring interlude to the next scene.
It's not a good idea to kill off characters too quickly either. Doing that gives the audience the idea that those characters are meaningless, expendable, and don't matter in the overall plot of the story. Especially in horror movies there is a cast of blatantly expendable people such as:
-Nerdy Guy with glasses
-"I'll punch the serial killer" Jock
- Unintelligent and Physically Attractive Blond Girl
-Ethnic Minority Kid
-Generic "We must study the monster!" Scientist/Doctor
-Obese ADD kid who wanders off for no apparent reason
-Whiny Girl who screams at every little thing
Though I can't vouch for every director or all of these stereotypes, much of this grief of repeat cast comes from unimaginative script writers and character designers. Yes it's fun to be able to anticipate with surgical precision who the next bloke's face to become tangent with the aliens claws will be but seriously, unnamed/minor characters being swatted down like flies gets old. Fast.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Thursday, January 21, 2010
The Sky Calls to Us...
"If we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars." - Carl Sagan
Laying down in a soft, dew-filled meadow on a warm summers night one can find themselves lost in a myriad of awe looking up at the heavens. Towering above us in all imaginable dimensions is a veritable sea of stars that the naked eye can only glimpse a passing visage of. With the colossal distances between stars one sometimes develops the impression that space is a void; a black expanse of nothingness that simply filled in the nearly unending gap between a few points of light. But simply stars are not all that fill the universe. The cosmos if full beyond measure. Clouds of dust and gas larger than the collective distance every human has traveled combined, swirling oceans of metals, rock and crystals, stars of all sizes, classes, ages, and congregations, massive collections of matter in microscopic points we know as black holes, and of course other worlds permeate places that we call space.
With the knowledge of what lies beyond our diminutive homeworld it is only logical that one would want to ask the question: "How do we get there?". As a child wandering around and exploring so do we have the desire to travel from our home and wander around the backyard of our universe.
The primary difficulty of interstellar travel is the large distances between points of interest. A prime example of this is the
Alpha Centauri is an important star in human history and probably the future of our race. The Centauri star system is the Centaurus constellation and is the third brightest star in the night. Being one of the most visible stars during any given night, Alpha Centauri has been widely known for centuries around the world as a navigational reference. In actuality what we call Alpha Centauri is really three separate stars, Alpha Centauri A, Alpha Centauri B, and Proxima Centauri. Alpha Centauri A and B are main sequence stars and are both around the same age, size, and color of our own Sun. A and B are what is called a binary star system, which is two stars that are close enough that they actually orbit each other. Proxima Centauri is what is called a Red Dwarf, a light-weight star that emit mostly infrared light and sometimes release strong pulses of energy such as x-rays.
Because of the relatively short distance of the Alpha Centauri star cluster to our own world many see it as the most realistic step towards space travel beyond our own solar system. Just as it was a goal to put a man on the moon, so would it ultimately be a goal to put a man on a planet near Alpha Centauri. Unfortunately even though it is the closest, the distance between our system and the Centauri system is quite large. From our sun to there is 4.4 light years or 44,000,000,000,000 km away.
Because of the difficulty of traveling this massive distance, it is generally accepted that with our current technology it is impossible to attempt interstellar travel. With our modern propulsion systems to travel through space it would take 100 times the energy output of the entire earth to reach Alpha Centauri and the time required would be several decades if not centuries. Also other problems exist as a vessel would travel through space. The vacuum, radiation, weightlessness, and debris all pose imminent threats to the survivability of spacecraft. Anyone knows the dangers of crashing into things, especially someone who has driven a car before. Space travel however is greatly amplified from just hitting a deer at 40 mph. A shuttle for example, hitting a speck of dust only a few millimeters across at even a tenth the speed of light would be more than enough to completely obliterate the entire vessel and everyone and thing inside of it.
Still the question remains, will we bear witness to an age where people live on other worlds? Only time will tell.
Laying down in a soft, dew-filled meadow on a warm summers night one can find themselves lost in a myriad of awe looking up at the heavens. Towering above us in all imaginable dimensions is a veritable sea of stars that the naked eye can only glimpse a passing visage of. With the colossal distances between stars one sometimes develops the impression that space is a void; a black expanse of nothingness that simply filled in the nearly unending gap between a few points of light. But simply stars are not all that fill the universe. The cosmos if full beyond measure. Clouds of dust and gas larger than the collective distance every human has traveled combined, swirling oceans of metals, rock and crystals, stars of all sizes, classes, ages, and congregations, massive collections of matter in microscopic points we know as black holes, and of course other worlds permeate places that we call space.
With the knowledge of what lies beyond our diminutive homeworld it is only logical that one would want to ask the question: "How do we get there?". As a child wandering around and exploring so do we have the desire to travel from our home and wander around the backyard of our universe.
The primary difficulty of interstellar travel is the large distances between points of interest. A prime example of this is the
Alpha Centauri is an important star in human history and probably the future of our race. The Centauri star system is the Centaurus constellation and is the third brightest star in the night. Being one of the most visible stars during any given night, Alpha Centauri has been widely known for centuries around the world as a navigational reference. In actuality what we call Alpha Centauri is really three separate stars, Alpha Centauri A, Alpha Centauri B, and Proxima Centauri. Alpha Centauri A and B are main sequence stars and are both around the same age, size, and color of our own Sun. A and B are what is called a binary star system, which is two stars that are close enough that they actually orbit each other. Proxima Centauri is what is called a Red Dwarf, a light-weight star that emit mostly infrared light and sometimes release strong pulses of energy such as x-rays.
Because of the relatively short distance of the Alpha Centauri star cluster to our own world many see it as the most realistic step towards space travel beyond our own solar system. Just as it was a goal to put a man on the moon, so would it ultimately be a goal to put a man on a planet near Alpha Centauri. Unfortunately even though it is the closest, the distance between our system and the Centauri system is quite large. From our sun to there is 4.4 light years or 44,000,000,000,000 km away.
Because of the difficulty of traveling this massive distance, it is generally accepted that with our current technology it is impossible to attempt interstellar travel. With our modern propulsion systems to travel through space it would take 100 times the energy output of the entire earth to reach Alpha Centauri and the time required would be several decades if not centuries. Also other problems exist as a vessel would travel through space. The vacuum, radiation, weightlessness, and debris all pose imminent threats to the survivability of spacecraft. Anyone knows the dangers of crashing into things, especially someone who has driven a car before. Space travel however is greatly amplified from just hitting a deer at 40 mph. A shuttle for example, hitting a speck of dust only a few millimeters across at even a tenth the speed of light would be more than enough to completely obliterate the entire vessel and everyone and thing inside of it.
Still the question remains, will we bear witness to an age where people live on other worlds? Only time will tell.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Cordycepts: Mind Controlling Fungi
Mind control is a widely used concept in science fiction. Especially when conjoined with the omni-chiche body infesting parasites, it's difficult to have a good scifi story (let alone series) without some kind of brain-sucking or body dwelling monstrosity. From popular video games such as Halo, Half-Life, and Starcraft, to movies like Alien or Star Trek, there is a plethora of beasties that will crawl inside you and do some nasty, nasty things.
Interestingly enough the strangest fiction seems to be fact.
Throughout Asia (China, Korea, Thailand, and Japan especially) there are several strains of fungi called Cordycepts that infect roughly 400 different species of insects. Cordycept fungi are roughly club-shaped mushrooms that are parasitic and actually grow inside whatever species they're intended to parasite on. Before you get the heebie-jeebies, there are many fungus caused infections in people on a regular basis and don't cause any major harm such as Ringworm and Nail Fungus. Unless you have a disease that cripples your immune system, the only real danger a human has from fungi is eating a poisonous one or an allergic reaction.
Asian insects however aren't so lucky. Fungi reproduce by making a fruiting body (such as a mushroom like you find in the grocery store) and then shed spores. When a Cordycept spore lands on it's intended host, the it grows a tiny root-like mycelium into the hosts body. As the spore continues to grow inside of the host, it follows the insects nerve cord up into it's head and actually starts to control it's mind. Once in partial control of the unfortunate creatures body, the fungus directs it to climb as high as it can and attach itself (with mandibles, pincers, or legs) to the top of a building, blade of grass, vine, or tree and then die. The fungus continues to devour the deceased host's tissue and eventually a mushroom bursts out of the victims head and sprouts upwards, releasing a cloud of spores to infect others.
Cordyceps unilateralis (featured in the video below) infect ants and can eradicate entire colonies of billions of members. The fungi can reach pandemic levels inside nests very quickly and unless the infected are removed and carried away it can mean certain doom.
Interestingly enough the strangest fiction seems to be fact.
Throughout Asia (China, Korea, Thailand, and Japan especially) there are several strains of fungi called Cordycepts that infect roughly 400 different species of insects. Cordycept fungi are roughly club-shaped mushrooms that are parasitic and actually grow inside whatever species they're intended to parasite on. Before you get the heebie-jeebies, there are many fungus caused infections in people on a regular basis and don't cause any major harm such as Ringworm and Nail Fungus. Unless you have a disease that cripples your immune system, the only real danger a human has from fungi is eating a poisonous one or an allergic reaction.
Asian insects however aren't so lucky. Fungi reproduce by making a fruiting body (such as a mushroom like you find in the grocery store) and then shed spores. When a Cordycept spore lands on it's intended host, the it grows a tiny root-like mycelium into the hosts body. As the spore continues to grow inside of the host, it follows the insects nerve cord up into it's head and actually starts to control it's mind. Once in partial control of the unfortunate creatures body, the fungus directs it to climb as high as it can and attach itself (with mandibles, pincers, or legs) to the top of a building, blade of grass, vine, or tree and then die. The fungus continues to devour the deceased host's tissue and eventually a mushroom bursts out of the victims head and sprouts upwards, releasing a cloud of spores to infect others.
Cordyceps unilateralis (featured in the video below) infect ants and can eradicate entire colonies of billions of members. The fungi can reach pandemic levels inside nests very quickly and unless the infected are removed and carried away it can mean certain doom.
When one analyzes the main concepts of parasites it becomes increasingly clear as to why the idea of foreign things inside our bodies is so terrifying and captivating. Just as having an incurable disease is so debilitating, many science fiction parasites are incurable or work swiftly enough that there isn't time to cure them. It is a basic primordial weakness of ours to have foreign things inside us, that we cannot do much (if anything) to stop them. If you get a splinter in your hand you can put a bandage on it or get tweezers and pull it out. But if you have tiny, microscopic Andromeda in you can only hope your body is somehow strong enough to fight it off.
Yet another trump card of internal parasites is the recurring theme of mind control. We are mental organisms and our minds our are greatest strength. Just as other animals have evolved and specialized over generations and focused on a trait that will allow them to survive, so have we and our intellect and reasoning is that trait. We lack sharp claws, wings, or hard exoskeletons to protect ourselves and we need to use (and have used) our highly advanced brains to get where we are in the world. Something that affects our minds be it a chemical, biologic, or psychological harms us by taking away our greatest advantage and tool.
Yet another trump card of internal parasites is the recurring theme of mind control. We are mental organisms and our minds our are greatest strength. Just as other animals have evolved and specialized over generations and focused on a trait that will allow them to survive, so have we and our intellect and reasoning is that trait. We lack sharp claws, wings, or hard exoskeletons to protect ourselves and we need to use (and have used) our highly advanced brains to get where we are in the world. Something that affects our minds be it a chemical, biologic, or psychological harms us by taking away our greatest advantage and tool.
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