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Shortly after Aliens launched, Dark Horse secured the license to the Alien comics line. They made an amazing comic about Xenomorphs taking over the Earrh. When Alien 3 finally launch and killed Hicks and Newt, Darkhorse reprinted the original story with changed names. Hicks was now Wilks, for example, and the Ripley that shows up is a synth clone now instead of being the real one in the original version. I want a collection that is unedited. No alterations to make it about new characters. Is there any place where I can purchase said collection for a reasonable price? I am completely okay with tradebacks and omnibus.
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Mar 11, 2023 04:19
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Covok posted:Shortly after Aliens launched, Dark Horse secured the license to the Alien comics line. They made an amazing comic about Xenomorphs taking over the Earrh. When Alien 3 finally launch and killed Hicks and Newt, Darkhorse reprinted the original story with changed names. Hicks was now Wilks, for example, and the Ripley that shows up is a synth clone now instead of being the real one in the original version. I can’t guarantee it’s not the “reprint changed names” version but this is the most current omnibus that has it (and a hell of a lot more). Aliens Omnibus Vol. 1 (Aliens: the Original Years Omnibus, 1) https://a.co/d/gTeTX3U I’ll ask around and see what version it reprints. Funnily enough, Wilks got name-checked in the Alien RPG recently, as did Spears (the villain from Nightmare Asylum). I got an Aliens lootcrate like 7 years ago and one of the things in it was a really nice hardcover reprint of the first Aliens comic series in black and white as it was originally published. The thing about the original black and white is it’s meant to be a plot twist partway through the story when the Marines get murdered by Aliens and it’s revealed that they were all synths (and Newt slept with one earlier without knowing this). When they get murdered there’s blood everywhere, but since it was printed in black and white you don’t know that it’s *white* blood until the dismembered synth Marines start moving around again. The color reprints ruin this.
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Mar 11, 2023 05:03
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sigher posted:I'm sure the budget for that film was juice injections in the rear end for everyone I'm not surprised. Since it was the 80s, there was probably a fair bit of cocaine too. Schwarzenegger had an entire gym's worth of equipment shipped to Mexico for the production.
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Mar 11, 2023 07:25
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Xenomrph posted:since it was printed in black and white you don’t know that it’s *white* blood until the dismembered synth Marines start moving around again.  Done poorly it's annoying, like when a film treats everything out of frame as invisible to viewers and characters alike.
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Mar 11, 2023 12:43
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Xenomrph posted:I can’t guarantee it’s not the “reprint changed names” version but this is the most current omnibus that has it (and a hell of a lot more).
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Mar 11, 2023 14:02
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Xenomrph posted:Funnily enough, Wilks got name-checked in the Alien RPG recently, as did Spears (the villain from Nightmare Asylum). I assume this is the place to get the Alien RPG? https://www.alien-rpg.com/ Does anyone know if this is an irl-only game or if it can be played online with people kinda like D&D?
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Mar 11, 2023 18:19
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You can absolutely play online on discord/roll20. Here is an invite to a discord server devoted to exactly that: https://discord.gg/alienrpg
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Mar 11, 2023 19:31
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Awesome! Thanks  I'll order the various stuff first and have a read through it once it arrives. The 'Starter Set' & 'Core Book' seem like the best places to begin, but the starter set seems to include a condensed version of the core book, so maybe I just need the core book? Then again the extra stuff in the starter set seems really useful.Colonial Marines, Heart of Darkness & Destroyer of Worlds seem to just be expansions and not necessary for getting started?
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Mar 11, 2023 19:51
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SUNKOS posted:I assume this is the place to get the Alien RPG? https://www.alien-rpg.com/ It is a tabletop roleplaying, which is the same category as D&D. Sorry if that sounded fart sniffing, but it's a pet peeve of mine. I didn't mean to sound patronizing, if I did. It's also a really exception TRPG at that. My favorite mechanic is Stress, which works well to build tension and make the situation actively worse for the PCs. The biggest gripe I hear is it two modes of play. It is primarily made as a One-Shot game. In other words, a game that consists of a single Adventure, usually finished in a single session. This is called Cinematic Play and was clearly intended as the primary mode of play. Cinematic Mode mirrors the effect of a film as it is designed to be one and done, with sequels only a question. No one complains about Cinematic Mode, it's actually really fun. The complaint tends to be more with Campaign Mode. It clearly exists because people would request it out of tradition. Borrowed from war games, a campaign is a series of interconnected adventures that usually has no predefined end point. A short campaign tends to one that ends within 2 months. A long campaign is considered 2 months to a year. And anything above that is simply called a Campaign. Campaign play suffers from the setting hindering the idea of a campaign. The reality is that the game only works for longer campaigns if you basically play it as a cyberpunk setting for most of it and have the Xenomorph only show up on occasions. Not Free League's fault, honestly. The setting is more of the bugbear there. They tried their best to make it work, mind you. All the books are filled with tons of lore to try to better suit such a style of play. Hell, they even added details to try to suit it and that lead to some really fun lore: like how William Gibson's Bodybursters exist in a research lab or how some nebulus force (the book is intentionally vague if its David or the Engineers) is biobombing the frontier colonies with mutagen. Personally, I actually would want to try campaign play. I even have a pitch: quote:
Anyway, I'm kind of got a hyperfixation on it at the moment and am totally down to chat about it. SUNKOS posted:Awesome! Thanks Here is my advice: the Starter Set is always kind of a rip-off. It kind of exists to help get newbies in play, but, unless you plan to run the game and not be a player, it won't really help you. I only get it when I want a complete collection. It's easier to just ask people on reddit and something awful for rules questions. Colonial Marines, Heart of Darkness & Destroyer of Worlds are what we call "supplements." They exist to enhance the experience but aren't required. The later two are actually "pre-made adventures," which means they are developer released modules ready to play for your game. "Colonial Marines" is a "sourcebook." That means it details additional rules and setting lore on a specific subject. In this case, the colonial marines. Covok fucked around with this message at 19:57 on Mar 11, 2023 |
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Mar 11, 2023 19:55
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Thanks for all the information, and apologies for the error regarding tabletop roleplaying. Everything you shared is super helpful I was just comparing something like Space Hulk which is Aliens-ish and 2/3 players (and assembling mission levels and having miniatures and such) and an online friend telling me about a D&D group they play with online a year ago and it sounded wild but also really fun, so I wondered if Alien RPG could be played the same way which it sounds like it can which is exciting  Apologies again for the categorization error, though.Also regarding the mention of Earth War, my memory is really fuzzy here but I think the books played out quite similar to how you described, with Earth falling and people escaping to a colony which also eventually gets overrun, which I think was the Moon in the books? I don't remember anything beyond then but the prospect of some kind of Betty-like crew (Alien Resurrection) running mercenary jobs sounds really fun, I love that kind of thing and it's the kind of story setup I've been hoping they'd use for a new Alien movie (along with the standard desire for an adaptation of Labyrinth). It sounds like Alien RPG is really in-depth with a lot of world building given the mentions of it covering everything from the Music of the Spears guy to William Gibson's unused script as well, which is very appealing. Makes me wonder if it has stuff like this too. I love that book
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Mar 11, 2023 20:34
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SUNKOS posted:Makes me wonder if it has stuff like this too. I love that book The RPG makes some seriously deep cuts into the franchise history, it's great.
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Mar 11, 2023 20:37
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Anyone ever play the Aliens board game from 1989? I hadn’t heard of it til seeing a Reddit post last week
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Mar 11, 2023 20:56
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FastestGunAlive posted:Anyone ever play the Aliens board game from 1989? I hadn’t heard of it til seeing a Reddit post last week The one by Leading Edge? There was a Flash version on Newgrounds for a long time. Leading Edge also made an Aliens tabletop RPG around the same time, and unlike the new RPG the old one was decidedly campaign-focused, with a lot of down-time and character building for your characters, non-xenomorph stuff, etc. Aliens were present of course, but the RPG went out of its way to flesh out the world and introduce non-Alien stuff. Naturally, the new RPG references it liberally.
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Mar 11, 2023 21:06
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SUNKOS posted:Thanks for all the information, and apologies for the error regarding tabletop roleplaying. Everything you shared is super helpful Oh yeah the Alien RPG is INCREDIBLY in depth and extremely well thought out with how it manages to fit like every Alien media thing ever into one place that all works.* It's interesting because they take advantage of the black goo from Prometheus and the spores David reverse engineers in Covenant for this. So it manages to have a bit of bestiary based on what type/when a being was exposed to stuff in what combination. My favorite is that they made a creature for the one in a million situation where a person gets implanted with a xenomorph egg but then also gets exposed to the black goo so that they could have something result in the very early concept where the alien had totally transparent skin with a bunch of "technobabble" about an exoskeleton forming around the person while their inner skeleton stays intact causing this xenomorph-ish creature to form that still has the visible human skull and like formerly human but now vestigial eyes/some human organs visibly floating around in there. The two smartest things about it are how it really keyed in on it being a setting where thanks to corporate greed all of humanity is in decline. So you have all these colonies in the middle of nowhere that may as well be the wild west, massive space stations that are incredible feats of human ingenuity that were decommissioned decades ago and have maybe like 40 people living on them, all kinds of natural phenomena there's a lot to have the players investigate and be interested in besides just the xenomorph itself. It ties into why they have radios/cassettes/etc. "regular" technology still in use too their explanation is just that you actively want bulky old poo poo that can reliably work and is durable since hey you're a billion miles from anywhere? Good luck affording or even finding this year's model. Stuff like wi-fi and blu-tooth as we know it now isn't effective in space with the crazy variety of stuff radiating off the stars and various worlds you visit. They really did techno babble their way into making every aspect of the setting make sense and work, which isn't something I give a poo poo about in a movie, but of a tabletop game trying to go in depth they absolutely nailed it. As far as the campaign mode goes, I've done two things with this my friends have had fun with when we wanted to go beyond a one shot: 1 was having them play different characters each time but in the same overall story. The adventures officially released for it do this already, but I have the times of them intersect much more closely so the players can run into a character (or the body or resulting monster of it or some record of their knowledge) they were playing for a few sessions ago and stuff like that. The other is to just rip off The Expanse and have the players stumble into actually possessing their own ship a session or two in instead of just leasing or being assigned to one. I set something up so at least one of the players' characters has a vested interest in learning more about/stopping//profiting from/whatever from whatever This works because you can open up with a bang with some encounter but even after you can have the fallout of aliens being a thing - and the ensuing wanting to know more about them or not - and have all of the archaeology, research, whatever corporate shenanigans, investigating hosed up places where bad poo poo went down, investigating breathtakingly beautiful natural phenomena, etc. keep the xenomorph or engineers as a major presence that hangs over every session even if the players aren't running into them in person every week. All the rules for playing as an android are great too. The cool thing is if you want to do a more action oriented campaign, the setting has a whole bunch of way outer planets that are being black goo bio-bombed with all kinds of nasty poo poo on them, the setting is a powder keg with a few different factions that could go off at any time. And they released an entire book that's JUST Colonial Marines lore/weapons/gear so you can definitely have your party just rock the gently caress out blasting everything in their path and getting paid if you want a situation like that to happen for a few sessions. Like with that stuff you could definitely do something along the lines of a Space Hulk "THE BRASS HAS FOUND A BAJILLION DERELICTS FLOATING THROUGH SPACE THEY PROBABLY HAVE XENOMORPHS BUT ALSO IMPORTANT STUFF WE WANT TO RESEARCH THAT WILL ABSOLUTELY NOT RESULT IN ANYTHING BAD, SUIT UP MARINES" kind of thing if you wanted.
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Mar 11, 2023 21:57
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Covok posted:If the Xenomorphs XX1121 existed, there would be people who think they're cute arguing how they're misunderstood. They would probably post pictures of Xenomorphs on their tumblr saying things like "beautiful bug kitty" or "aww, look, he's so spooky~" They'd say they feel a kinship to the creature and wish they could have one as a pet. They'd refuse to listen to anyone about how existentially dangerous they are. Some of the rich ones would keep them as pets. You'd read a story eventually how someone thought they tamed there’s and it ate him and some of his servants before the colonial marines were able to put it down. It's me with the personality to try it. I've met sharks, lions, etc. and the only thing that gave me pause was when I tried to pet an alligator and it literally roared at me. That's why when people complained about the scientist trying to pet the hammerpede in Prometheus, I was like "huh? Of course he would."
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Mar 12, 2023 14:10
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Covok posted:If the Xenomorphs XX1121 existed, there would be people who think they're cute arguing how they're misunderstood. They would probably post pictures of Xenomorphs on their tumblr saying things like "beautiful bug kitty" or "aww, look, he's so spooky~" They'd say they feel a kinship to the creature and wish they could have one as a pet. They'd refuse to listen to anyone about how existentially dangerous they are. Some of the rich ones would keep them as pets. You'd read a story eventually how someone thought they tamed there’s and it ate him and some of his servants before the colonial marines were able to put it down. Now I want a remake of Grizzly Man in the Alien universe. Also directed and narrated by Werner Herzog.
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Mar 13, 2023 21:37
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I'd love to play the rpg run by a cool person with a deep and obsessive knowledge of alien. I'm always a GM, never a player.
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Mar 13, 2023 22:00
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Re-watched Prometheus and Covenant this weekend. Prometheus still gets better every time I watch it, although it asks a lot with the breakneck pace of its final act (not a lot of breathing room is given to all of the pilots just deciding on the spot to do a suicide run), and honestly Sean Harris' dialogue does not give him a lot to work with: "What do you mean, there's a [thing]?" fifty times. Charlize Theron's ultrahammy acting and Guy Pearce's bizarre makeup also remain very distracting. I was less annoyed by Covenant the second time around, but aside from some solid visual ideas and being more of a slasher, it's just not that good and mostly marred by its second half. We do the ending twice, and it gets tedious. Billy Crudup feels like he has more screen-time than Katherine Waterston, but he's portrayed as an unlikeable moron, so it's an irritation following him around and very low-stakes when she has to lead the finale. Time scales feel fluid with the editing near the end, adding to the disjointedness.
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Mar 14, 2023 00:58
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Baronjutter posted:I'd love to play the rpg run by a cool person with a deep and obsessive knowledge of alien. I'm always a GM, never a player. Well, I’m one of those things. I don’t think I’m cut out to be a GM though.
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Mar 14, 2023 01:28
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Xenomrph posted:Well, I’m one of those things. You never know until you try! And it's not like an Alien comic, where trying this leads to the horrible, horrible deaths of everyone involved (well, it still might, but hopefully only in game) and it could be a lot of fun.
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Mar 14, 2023 03:21
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I think my opinion is pretty standard, but I don't like Prometheus or Covenant. They make everything small. The whole point of Alien, in my view, is that there are things waiting, in the outer dark. It's a big universe out there.
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Mar 14, 2023 04:05
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Beachcomber posted:I think my opinion is pretty standard, but I don't like Prometheus or Covenant. They make everything small. This comes up in this thread often, but Prometheus makes things *bigger* because the goo is larger and more random and indeterminate than the Xenomorphs or Space Jockeys/Engineers.
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Mar 14, 2023 04:09
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Darko posted:This comes up in this thread often, but Prometheus makes things *bigger* because the goo is larger and more random and indeterminate than the Xenomorphs or Space Jockeys/Engineers. I don't see it that way, because it's still a knowable thing associated with the engineers. It might as well just be The Blob.
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Mar 14, 2023 04:19
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Beachcomber posted:I don't see it that way, because it's still a knowable thing associated with the engineers. It might as well just be The Blob. How does it work? What all has it created? Where does it come from? How do you counter it? Etc.? Just like Xenos, Engineers were killed by it, too. Any knowledge you have about the goo can be applied moreso to Xenomorphs, with more unknowable things attached to the goo.
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Mar 14, 2023 04:32
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No the original Alien derelict etc was creepy and mysterious in a way that covenant especially just isn’t. But it’s an open question as to whether or not a modern Alien film could ever be as evocative as the first. Not saying the new ones are bad, but they present a different world with quite different rules.
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Mar 14, 2023 06:21
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Xenomrph should GM a game that includes his NPC. I’ll play as long as I get to be one of the ninjas from Music of the Spears.
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Mar 14, 2023 06:55
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Beachcomber posted:I think my opinion is pretty standard, but I don't like Prometheus or Covenant. They make everything small. As big as the universe is, pre-Prometheus every single xenomorph or xenomorph-related thing to ever appear onscreen actually came directly from, or was at most one generation removed from, that single pile of eggs on that single spaceship on that single planet from the original movie. It's basically the Skywalker family of the Alien series.
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Mar 14, 2023 06:57
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The fact that AVP wasn't some hyper stylized live action anime version of the drat arcade game and instead some Store Brand Darko posted:How does it work? What all has it created? Where does it come from? How do you counter it? Etc.? Meanwhile everything about the xeno is violent and wildly unlike what we know to be "natural".
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Mar 14, 2023 07:02
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Open Marriage Night posted:Xenomrph should GM a game that includes his NPC. There actually is a campaign centered around the attempted assassination of my character. 
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Mar 14, 2023 07:49
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Not only in the RPG, but also one on the SA forums.
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Mar 14, 2023 09:04
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FilthyImp posted:
I thought the primordial chaos goo revered by our ancient ancestors as a source of life, death and change was a good deal more compelling than 'alien wasps'. Really if you want to get mad at a film for ruining the mystery is should be Aliens
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Mar 14, 2023 09:06
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MrMojok posted:Not only in the RPG, but also one on the SA forums. Well poo poo
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Mar 14, 2023 09:27
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Darko posted:How does it work? What all has it created? Where does it come from? How do you counter it? Etc.? The goo isn't even the Blob, as someone suggested. It's a spin-the-bottle game with lots of different monsters sitting around it. Maybe this time you'll get lucky and it'll be a Xenomorph, who knows? Small Strange Bird fucked around with this message at 12:26 on Mar 14, 2023 |
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Mar 14, 2023 10:05
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FilthyImp posted:The fact that AVP wasn't some hyper stylized live action anime version of the drat arcade game and instead some Store Brand The extended version of it available on home video isn't as bad as the theateical release, I'd even say it's almost pretty good. But I do hate how aggressively just fine the overall movie is. The cast is excellent though and really holds it together along with some of the sets. But for real, like imagine an AvP movie but in the style of like Predator 2 or Hakaider or something, it really needed to go extra and big, like it's literally ALIEN vs PREDATOR And the Requiem came out and I remember not hating it when it first dropped but seeing it more recently-ish, WOOF
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Mar 14, 2023 16:10
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The mystery of the black goo isn't so much about what it will do, the mystery is where it came from, how was it created, and for what purpose? Prometheus and Covenant throw some really tantalizing ideas at you about what the black goo's deal might be, but never enough to prove any one particular theory. The xeno in Alien is similar. We know what it does, it kills. It's the other questions that are interesting. For example, did the Engineers create the goo? They seem to worship it, or at least have an almost religious reverence for it.
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Mar 14, 2023 16:20
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Payndz posted:To quote Parker, the mysteries of the goo are a big "so what?" It can do whatever the plot requires to act as a catalyst for the next part of the script. Sure, you can argue that it represents eitr, primordial chaos or whatever, but in itself it's nothing but a Macguffin to make things happen. "Someone's been infected by the goo!" "Okay, what crazy mutation is gonna attack us this time?" That's not Alien, that's The Thing. The trouble is that you're approaching "The Xenomorph" and "The Goo" as, like pure concepts that 'should' just automatically instill sheer fascination and terror. If that were how it worked, AVP 1 would be the scariest movie ever made. In actuality, the goo 'isn't scary' because our viewpoint character in Prometheus is David, who thinks the goo is neat and relishes the opportunity to unleash it. In Covenant, the viewpoint character is Walter, who is programmed not to experience fear. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Mar 14, 2023 |
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Mar 14, 2023 17:00
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Gonna call bullshit on the spooky space ants being more mysterious than the "GodCum."
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Mar 14, 2023 17:15
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Schwarzwald posted:Gonna call bullshit on the spooky space ants being more mysterious than the "GodCum." Alien Megathread: Gonna call bullshit on the spooky space ants being more mysterious than the "GodCum."
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Mar 14, 2023 17:21
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You can tell what's actually discomfiting, because it's what gets comforting conspiracy theories written about it. On the one side, you've got a Jimspiracy that assures us that somebody was in control the whole time. This belief is supplemented by the hyperbolic fantasies about how the aliens are perpetual-motion machines that feed on aether, a single one is gonna consume the whole Earth in minutes, etc. From this we can conclude that what actually unnerves people is that nobody's in control of the system, and that even the 'perfect' aliens are small and weak.
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Mar 14, 2023 17:25
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Ferrinus posted:As big as the universe is, pre-Prometheus every single xenomorph or xenomorph-related thing to ever appear onscreen actually came directly from, or was at most one generation removed from, that single pile of eggs on that single spaceship on that single planet from the original movie. It's basically the Skywalker family of the Alien series. Right, which is fine and cool, because it leave the mystery of where it came from in the first place intact. The unknowable is still out there. The engineers totally made the black goo, but before that who knows why the eggs were there? We know what they use the goo for.
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Mar 14, 2023 18:57
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