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Yes, somehow humans minus the one attribute that makes us superior to other animals probably wouldn't quite be the apex predator it is portrayed as.It's on of those things that drives me nuts with certain types of nerds who insists that a Zombie Apocalypse could totally happen, guys! That and the whole undead thing.
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Sep 5, 2014 12:37
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Zombie Apocalypses are stupid
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Sep 5, 2014 13:34
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Captain Foo posted:Zombies are stupid
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Sep 5, 2014 14:18
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Tollymain posted:Between that and the horrendously creepy artificial town nearby filled with actors paid to live day-and-night in an uncanny-valley attempt at portraying the Ideal American Small Town, there's got to be an Unknown Armies adventure in there somewhere. I mean quote:Walt Disney always had a dream to build a model town. It was part of his master plan to create a new magic kingdom in Florida. It's pretty much already there. If you want to go a little deeper, it's really easy to picture Disney controlling and grooming the American dream by constructing this bit of quintessential Americana that is explicitly their own creation. I was going to say that it would also be interesting for a Fiasco or Call of Cthulhu game - how do you deal with problems in a town that's supposed to be perfect? But going from the article, they've already had some issues with the facade crumbling. Maybe America is pushing back against the homunculus town. Sionak fucked around with this message at 15:20 on Sep 5, 2014 |
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Sep 5, 2014 15:16
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Sionak posted:I mean The modern occult stuff goes deep if you look at it with the conspiratorial eye. Religious structures within Disney World are carefully desanctified. Buddha's Eyes lose the nose, prayer flags are to creatures not associated with the divine, a stave church is internally redecorated as an Odinic temple, religious iconography on reproduced buildings is replaced with generic symbols... except for one ride, which has a temple to the Yeti, simultaneously a cryptid and a creature of myth. Three of the four parks in Disney World are circles centered around a tall structure. The only one that isn't has had constant financial troubles, and has gone through a string of official logos and even been renamed. Space is deliberately and elaborately warped within the parks. In more prosaic, everyday creepiness, Disney will admit to experimenting with infrasonics to see if they could control audience reactions. They concluded that only about a third of people are susceptible to the sounds they use to induce tears and watery eyes.
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Sep 5, 2014 15:31
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Effectronica posted:Disney Stuff My wife and I went to Disney World for our honeymoon and we went on their Backstage Magic tour. One point of the tour took us through the tunnel system underneath the Magic Kingdom. The tunnel system was developed because Walt didn't want the fantasy world illusion destroyed by seeing a Frontier Land worker walking through Tomorrow Land to get to their job site. While walking through the tunnels I saw some kind of instrument/valve mounted on a wall with some process piping leading up and a label that said "COOKIE AIR". They literally pump artificial cookie smell into the air around the entrance to elicit a Pavlovian response. I couldn't help but question all of my senses the rest of the stay. Also of note, my wife asked one of the guides about security personnel because she heard a rumor that they had security pose as normal park goers. The guide laughed and said she couldn't divulge that information. All she said was "let's just say that there's people I like to refer to as Moving Rocks."
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Sep 5, 2014 15:56
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There is certainly an issue with people who do not want to play themselves for a variety of reasons--but, well, I still think it is worth narratively glossing over the real-life hindrances if they are fun-ruining. Drawbacks are always fun to play up until a point--I mean, even "will die without access to modern medicine" to me sounds like an awesome plot point rather than a reason to not play. But I also think of course everyone has to be on the same page--if you have Type 1 Diabetes and would really rather not have to spend your in-game time trying to find insulin, the GM could just handwave that and move on. Bucnasti posted:When I run Barter Town you won't be allowed to man the double crossbow turret on my six-wheeled nitro-burning-dune-buggy. Also thank you for this last page, as I now think being trapped in worst-case-scenario Disney World could be a compelling apocalypse scenario.
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Sep 5, 2014 17:04
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Effectronica posted:Disney stuff Christ, the place sounds like a UA campaign.
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Sep 5, 2014 17:06
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Disney World is certainly a phenomenon. But then, so is all of Disney and the place it seem to hold in many people's hearts. For me, it's a company that makes children's movies and a media conglomerate, not much more, but for many, it's basically a religious experience, right down to the pilgrimage to Disney World.
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Sep 5, 2014 17:34
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Evil Mastermind posted:Christ, the place sounds like a UA campaign. Dear Tim Powers,
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Sep 5, 2014 17:35
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Is LARP discussion allowed anywhere in TG, or is that the final line no Goon will cross? My housemates started after our various DnD groups collapsed, and it looks sort of interesting.
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Sep 5, 2014 18:32
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I went to a LARP with my friends once. We wrote up character sheets for the LARPers and spent the whole time yelling at them that they didn't hit because we rolled a 3 until we got thrown out. Totally worth it.
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Sep 5, 2014 18:41
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YggiDee posted:Is LARP discussion allowed anywhere in TG, or is that the final line no Goon will cross? My housemates started after our various DnD groups collapsed, and it looks sort of interesting. There is actually a LARP thread. Its a slow burner of discussion though.
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Sep 5, 2014 18:43
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Thanks! I didn't see that thread the first time I looked, so I thought maybe the subject was verboten.
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Sep 5, 2014 18:54
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Evil Mastermind posted:Christ, the place sounds like a UA campaign. Escape from Tomorrow I haven't seen it, but it sounds like it might be in the vein you're looking for.
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Sep 5, 2014 19:20
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Squidster posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nfU_5NWBoE It's alright. Decent surreal horror but any shortcomings are imo made up for by the fact that it exists at all, given the circumstances under which they shot it. it is definitely not unknown armies
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Sep 5, 2014 19:47
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Evil Mastermind posted:Christ, the place sounds like a UA campaign. I hope this is a gag, but it fits right into UA.
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Sep 5, 2014 20:27
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Bucnasti posted:I hope this is a gag, but it fits right into UA. I've read about that, I believe it was actually a performance art satire on the Orthodox Church.
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Sep 5, 2014 20:30
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Solomonic posted:It's alright. Decent surreal horror but any shortcomings are imo made up for by the fact that it exists at all, given the circumstances under which they shot it. Yeah, I've heard of the movie, but what I've heard wasn't to encouraging. Like they're coasting on the "filmed in secret" factor. Hell, I didn't even know it was supposed to be a horror movie.
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Sep 5, 2014 20:50
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"X-Files", late in its run has an episode devoted to tying up the loose end of the cancelled series "Millennium". Now it apparently has to do with unleashing the four horsemen of the Apocalypse and bringing about the end times, but it is essentially presented as the ground floor of the classic zombie apocalypse scenario. It also happens to be dealt with pretty casually by the episodes hero's just shooting the four zombie progenitors to death before anything really goes wrong. The problem with the whole zombie apocalypse preparation scenario is as such; The assumption is made that the people most well prepared for such a situation (The Doctors, the scientists, The Military, Etc.) are already out of the picture, if those people couldn't deal with such a situation, what could your classic katana wielding, burger sucking nerd do? Even in such a situation, you know who is better prepared for the zombies than us? All those Redneck militia members who are convinced of the upcoming RAHOWA. Those imminent fighters for the pride of whitey are way better set up to deal with this poo poo than Mr. puter McPostsalot. And not to be a Military fetishist, but Zombies are one of those problems that could very easily be handled by our armed forces, who happen to be equipped with infrastructure, lots of guns, and vehicles that prevent biting. Not to mention the sheer quantity of weaponry we hold that can hit enemy's from way beyond the natural sight range of a person. Zombie apocalypse is pretty much a non starter. Of course, realistic apocalypse scenarios are far more likely to be ecologically based, and who out there is really preparing for the inevitable issues of starvation and climate change? Ah who am I kidding, thats just a conspiracy made up by lieberals trying to distract us from their zombie creation program. Finally, apparently fetishistically isn't a word. remusclaw fucked around with this message at 21:30 on Sep 5, 2014 |
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Sep 5, 2014 20:51
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There was a TV show on a little while ago here in the UK called In The Flesh, where the dead had risen from their graves and spread terror and chaos...For a year or two (I think), until a treatment was developed, and all the undead were rounded up and given it. Former zombies (Partially Deceased Syndrome sufferers) trying to reintegrate, facing hostility and suspicion, is a fresher take than the standard "oh no the flesh-eating hordes will inevitably overrun us".
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Sep 5, 2014 21:21
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remusclaw posted:"X-Files", late in its run has an episode devoted to tying up the loose end of the cancelled series "Millennium". Now it apparently has to do with unleashing the four horsemen of the Apocalypse and bringing about the end times, but it is essentially presented as the ground floor of the classic zombie apocalypse scenario. It also happens to be dealt with pretty casually by the episodes hero's just shooting the four zombie progenitors to death before anything really goes wrong.
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Sep 5, 2014 21:46
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Evil Mastermind posted:Christ, the place sounds like a UA campaign. This is really just throwing out the most occultish stuff. Going into Disneyspeak, the fact that Disney is a law unto itself in Disney World and controls two cities outright, the original plans for EPCOT, the obsession with providing a detailed backstory for even 30-second rides, the fact that they try to have understudies for every tree in the parks proper, and you start looking at a full-blown dystopia. EDIT: Also, the official name for the tall centerpieces is a "weenie", but I thought linking the parks to yoni/lingam and the concept of a hermaphroditic being in alchemy was a little too close to bringing the Knights Templar and Illuminati in.
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Sep 5, 2014 21:48
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Why stop there though 
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Sep 5, 2014 21:59
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Effectronica posted:This is really just throwing out the most occultish stuff. Going into Disneyspeak, the fact that Disney is a law unto itself in Disney World and controls two cities outright, the original plans for EPCOT, the obsession with providing a detailed backstory for even 30-second rides, the fact that they try to have understudies for every tree in the parks proper, and you start looking at a full-blown dystopia. I mean, if we're going Unknown Armies with it, might as well go full-bore.
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Sep 5, 2014 22:00
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Effectronica posted:EDIT: Also, the official name for the tall centerpieces is a "weenie", but I thought linking the parks to yoni/lingam and the concept of a hermaphroditic being in alchemy was a little too close to bringing the Knights Templar and Illuminati in.
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Sep 5, 2014 22:02
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Gazetteer posted:Do tell me more about how the problem with giant robot movies is that giant robots could not realistically exist. Hey now, its not that Giant Robots couldn't exist, we just don't have good reasons to build them that way. My issues with zombies have little to do with the stories told about them, but more to do with the strange obsession people seem to have with them. People approach the idea of zombies with a strange tendency toward taking them seriously, even if as a thought exercise, with the stated solution having to do with how they personally would survive such a situation. Personally, I like the ones that are clearly magical and divorced from pseudo science, like from "Return of the Living Dead" or "Evil Dead", the ones where you literally have to destroy the body to stop them. Those zombies would pose more of a reasonable threat for modern settings. Regular Zombies pre WWI would be interesting as well, as the lack of modern military tech would present a clear disadvantage to survivors. The airborne virus version works as well but kind of kills the whole point of zombies when there is no real way to avoid infection. But yeah, in modern settings, regular zombies work better as a piggyback to another more devastating apocalypse scenario, like a nuclear war or something. Lastly, part of the fun of digesting media is poking holes in it. I don't hate the things I poke holes in, I just enjoy bullshitting about them. Some of the most fun I have had in games, books, and movies is the bullshit session afterward. It makes good stuff better, and bad stuff worth powering through. I may need to work on my tone when writing this stuff though, people seem to take it as serious ranting, where it is not intended to be so. remusclaw fucked around with this message at 22:42 on Sep 5, 2014 |
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Sep 5, 2014 22:09
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You talk about all this Disney stuff like it's supposed to be creepy, but to me it just sounds really impressive.
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Sep 5, 2014 22:11
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Bongo Bill posted:You talk about all this Disney stuff like it's supposed to be creepy, but to me it just sounds really impressive. I can see it both ways. I can understand logistically why you'd want tunnels underneath the park to move people and heavy equipment (because trying to drive them through a theme park crowd would be a pain), and giving plants specific "understudies" would be a big help when you need to identify which ones are damaged and need to be replaced, like labelling parts on a motor. But, yeah, I can see how practically controlling two cities through "the power of happiness~" could be a little offputting.
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Sep 5, 2014 22:16
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Well, y'know, it's theater. Tremendous resources are being mobilized in service of illusion and manipulation - but that just makes it fiction, on a grand scale. Of course, the juxtaposition of the standards of fiction with the standards of fact is fertile ground for inspiration, so this is good poo poo regardless.
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Sep 5, 2014 22:31
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Bosushi! posted:My wife and I went to Disney World for our honeymoon and we went on their Backstage Magic tour. One point of the tour took us through the tunnel system underneath the Magic Kingdom. The tunnel system was developed because Walt didn't want the fantasy world illusion destroyed by seeing a Frontier Land worker walking through Tomorrow Land to get to their job site. While walking through the tunnels I saw some kind of instrument/valve mounted on a wall with some process piping leading up and a label that said "COOKIE AIR". They literally pump artificial cookie smell into the air around the entrance to elicit a Pavlovian response. I couldn't help but question all of my senses the rest of the stay.
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Sep 5, 2014 22:43
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frankenfreak posted:No! Please DO go on! I mean, it's already there. You've got the dick in the center, and the circle (vagina) around in, with EPCOT Center having a dick, a big hole in the ground, and an infinity symbol linking them together. The exception is the Hollywood Studios park, where the original dick was just two stories tall in forced perspective, the replacement was way off to one side, the second replacement was a loving wizard hat, and there really isn't a yonic shape to the park at all. No wonder they don't have the numbers Disney wants. Most rides have an elaborate backstory. The Haunted Mansion didn't have an official one until its makeover a few years ago, but one coalesced shortly after it opened. Although it's acceptable to coyly admit that the characters are really performers by referring to, say, Cinderella characters as "friends of Cinderella", Disney requires everyone who goes behind the scenes to agree that there is only one Mickey Mouse, and if you see him in two places at once somehow, the other one is Cousin Morty. This is obviously a joke, mind. Every character performer is required to stay in-character while performing, sure, but their handlers talk to them in-character during breaks. Executives at the parks and at the main Disney HQ have had a habit of treating the characters as if they were real. This was one of the major exceptions to the Disney Princess brand when it started, and if you look closely, none of the characters in the early branding are looking at one another or acknowledging the presence of anyone else. EPCOT Center was originally going to be an actual city ruled by the Disney company, and then that faded away, but it was still at almost the center of the property until they launched their actual Disney City, which had to be independent so they could keep total control of Disney World. Even then, the official maps put the entrance at the bottom, which renders the park upside-down. Hollywood Studios is flipped on its side for the maps, as well. Oh, the Liberty Square and Frontierland areas of the Magic Kingdom were set up so that as you went from the 1690s upstate New York Haunted Mansion to the Wild West Southwestern Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, you steadily moved southwestwards across the USA and forwards in time. Splash Mountain's Georgia-red clay breaks the geography but keeps the chronology intact. Oh, and they probably closed one of their waterparks because they detected brain-eating amoebas in the water. Bongo Bill posted:Well, y'know, it's theater. Tremendous resources are being mobilized in service of illusion and manipulation - but that just makes it fiction, on a grand scale. Movie magic starts to get creepy when you let it intrude into "real life".
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Sep 5, 2014 22:45
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Effectronica posted:I mean, it's already there. You've got the dick in the center, and the circle (vagina) around in, with EPCOT Center having a dick, a big hole in the ground, and an infinity symbol linking them together. The exception is the Hollywood Studios park, where the original dick was just two stories tall in forced perspective, the replacement was way off to one side, the second replacement was a loving wizard hat, and there really isn't a yonic shape to the park at all. EDIT: I'm not saying you are wrong or anything but in the grand context of things I don't remember much about that park. Universal Studios was actually a far more interesting park among those themes unless I'm jumbling those two together which I could very well be. MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 23:08 on Sep 5, 2014 |
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Sep 5, 2014 23:02
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It's performance art. When you go see a play, you don't freak out about how your senses are being deceived and how everything you see is a lie. Maybe we should, but our culture has kind of accepted fiction. Disney World exists outside of reality, just as much as a Disney movie or musical does. Like, their rides are explicitly presented as fictional. They all have narratives (even their log flume has a plot), and they're all in indoor "sets". The Winnie the Pooh ride is inside the Hundred Acre Wood and the Peter Pan ride takes place in Neverland, neither of which exist. As you enter the Animal Kingdom, you walk by a sign explaining that you are entering a place known as the Animal Kingdom, where a bunch of different animals live. Epcot kind of strains this, but nearly everything is contained within fictionalized, romanticized versions of various nations. Disney Hollywood Studios fails because its theme is the reality behind Disney's fiction, which Disney can't actually deliver.
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Sep 5, 2014 23:15
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pospysyl posted:It's performance art. When you go see a play, you don't freak out about how your senses are being deceived and how everything you see is a lie. There's an entire school of theatrical thought that's rooted in the idea that you should be freaked out about your senses being deceived, and that you should engage with theater with the knowledge that what you're seeing is in fact artificial. The Brechtian school is really quite revolutionary, and its a shame that most lay people aren't familiar with it. I think that it, especially, could have some useful impacts in RPG design, especially the idea of the actor-character distinction.
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Sep 5, 2014 23:32
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The part where Disney is literally the government of the area it's on the land of is kinda weird, though! Like, all law enforcement except for highway patrol and deputies on road traffic stuff are handled by private Disney security. Which is not required by law to share documentation with anyone; there's been court cases upholding this when people wanted to get more information about their son who was murdered on Disney land. Legally, Disney doesn't run the place - the Board of Supervisors does, which is elected by the landowners of the area. There are exactly five landowners, who each own a small undeveloped patch of land. The rest of the land is Disney or public highways. These five landowners are all senior Disney employees, and they are all on the Board of Supervisors. Florida is weird.
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Sep 5, 2014 23:41
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Plague of Hats posted:I'm kind of surprised it's not (as far as I know) Dillons/Kroger store policy that you always wear mesh gloves handling the slicers. The number of stories about missing finger tips that I have heard from my Dillons-employed friend… I would be absolutely mindfucked if they didn't. People ignore safety regulations all the drat time. pospysyl posted:It's performance art. When you go see a play, you don't freak out about how your senses are being deceived and how everything you see is a lie. Maybe we should, but our culture has kind of accepted fiction. Disney World exists outside of reality, just as much as a Disney movie or musical does. Like, their rides are explicitly presented as fictional. No, it's not art, it's advertising. Disneyland is entirely designed to extract the maximum amount of money from you while you're there. They're not piping cookie scent up to you to enhance your experience, they're doing it to get you to buy a cookie.
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Sep 5, 2014 23:41
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Striking Yak posted:There was a TV show on a little while ago here in the UK called In The Flesh, where the dead had risen from their graves and spread terror and chaos...For a year or two (I think), until a treatment was developed, and all the undead were rounded up and given it. Former zombies (Partially Deceased Syndrome sufferers) trying to reintegrate, facing hostility and suspicion, is a fresher take than the standard "oh no the flesh-eating hordes will inevitably overrun us". In The Flesh was itself inspired by a French TV series called Les Revenants which also aired over here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Returned
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Sep 5, 2014 23:53
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Tulul posted:I would be absolutely mindfucked if they didn't. People ignore safety regulations all the drat time. It's both. Without getting into leftist amateur academia dickwaving, the manipulation of smell is done throughout the park in both commercial and noncommercial areas. Mors Rattus posted:The part where Disney is literally the government of the area it's on the land of is kinda weird, though! Like, all law enforcement except for highway patrol and deputies on road traffic stuff are handled by private Disney security. Which is not required by law to share documentation with anyone; there's been court cases upholding this when people wanted to get more information about their son who was murdered on Disney land. Legally, Disney doesn't run the place - the Board of Supervisors does, which is elected by the landowners of the area. There are exactly five landowners, who each own a small undeveloped patch of land. The rest of the land is Disney or public highways. These five landowners are all senior Disney employees, and they are all on the Board of Supervisors. Not to mention that Disney World is two cities, Lake Buena Vista, with a population of ten, and Bay Lake, with a population of 47. Almost all of Disney World proper is in Bay Lake, but most mailing addresses are in Lake Buena Vista.
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Sep 6, 2014 00:07
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Tulul posted:No, it's not art, it's advertising. Disneyland is entirely designed to extract the maximum amount of money from you while you're there. They're not piping cookie scent up to you to enhance your experience, they're doing it to get you to buy a cookie. I don't think anyone is maintaining that Disney Parks are art for art's sake. However, Disney operates on a different level of promotion: they design an environment that makes you want to be part of their dream. You want to take pieces of that dream home with you. You leave Disneyworld and all you can think about is how much fun you had. You want to go back- not because they've indoctrinated you with slogans or coupons. Disney has just created an experience that's so enjoyable and memorable you can't resist. Let's be honest, that is some kind of art. Another great piece of fodder for surreal Disneyland adventures is that the employees are often completely indoctrinated. I know quite a few who have worked there and they respond to criticisms of Disney with either doe-eyed ignorance or fervent repudiation. It's an almost religious sort of fervor. They become obsessed with the characters they play or the rides they work, often to a life-defining aspect. Whether Disney selects for these personality traits or imbues them with training and culture is up to you, but either could be pretty loving scary in the right situation. Disney Parks hit all of the right buttons for conspiracy. There really are people working behind the scenes and in underground tunnels to fool you into thinking this illusion is reality. These people will deny the obvious falsehood of the performance on the directions of their faceless corporate overlords who control everything inside their borders. Subliminal and subconscious methods are used to keep you inside the park and enjoying your experience. Murders, rapes, and corruption occur but are covered up by the machine, even when the actual government attempts to intervene. When you walk through a Disney park, you are surrounded by people who have bought into this lie. They want to believe it's true. You can watch them pretend that animatronic forest friends are real, interact with people in stuffed suits as if they are their favorite characters, wait in line to get their picture taken with Darth Vader and Fa Mulan. No one questions any of it. Maybe you don't question it. Will you wake up and see the lie as real? Or will you take the path of the child, as the park seems to encourage you at every turn?
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Sep 6, 2014 00:25
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