kopia lustrzana https://github.com/thinkst/zippy
90 wiersze
4.4 KiB
Plaintext
90 wiersze
4.4 KiB
Plaintext
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How soon is now? "Blog Archive"
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Zombies and Vampires and Ninjas and Pirates
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25 Jul 2010
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by Rick
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It's tough to kill the vampire...genre
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I was noodling on Vampires the other day, but also lumped Zombies, Pirates and Ninjas
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in the mix. These archetypes seem different to me than other 'trends'. Surely the
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Vampire was dead after the spoof, "Love at First Bite " in 1979. But then the Anne Rice -led revival brought it
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back (technically the 1st book, Interview with the
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Vampire , was published in 1976, but didn't gain widespread popularity until
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later). Then it jumped the shark with the Tom Cruise-Brad Pitt movie (based on the Anne Rice novel) in 1994. But
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bubbling below the surface was Blade and other genre flicks, then Twilight hit and now vampires are hot.
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Surely Ninjas were done with horrible movies like American Ninja (1985) or with
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comedies starring Chris Farley ( Beverly Hills Ninja , 1997), and yet Ninja has become a replacement word for
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'expert' to the point where it's almost accepted parlance: A twellow search for
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'ninja' turned up more than 7,000 Twitter accounts using the term in their
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profiles. Ninja Warrior is one of the
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most popular shows on G4.
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We can put Pirates away now after the 3rd Pirates of the Caribbean flick, right? No, actually, if we've learned
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anything it's that genre memes just go back underground ( Pirates for adults [NSFW]You get
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the point0. These characters are like Zombies (pun intended), they just keep coming
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back to life.
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So it's not just a matter of knowing when to jump off the Vampire merry-go-round,
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it's knowing when (and where) to jump back on. If you jumped off Vampires would you
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have known to jump back on in time to publish Twilight? Fourteen literary agents
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rejected it before Stephenie Meyer got a deal. If you were off Zombies would you
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have gotten back on it time to publish NY Times bestseller Pride & Prejudice and Zombies ? I don't think you can "get off" any
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of these, you have to triangulate your decision across several nodes of popular
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culture, a triangulation that has to revolve around the audience (young adult --
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Twilght. mature -- True Blood) and sub-genre (comedy, horror, sci-fi...) and then the
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actual quality of the content. So what sort of matrix board do you have to create to
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know that a NC-17 comedy horror Zombie video game will work, but a PG-13 young adult
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time-travelling Vampire TV show won't? You can't. All you can do is hope you bat
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.300 and that when you fail, you fail
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fast .
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Ahh, the classics.
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If you broaden your scope a bit, I think it would be difficult to find a time over
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the last 40 years or so when any of these four archetypes didn't have a level of
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bubbling popularity via books, comic books, tv, movies, video games, music. If all
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you're looking at is 1 or 2 content categories maybe it looks like they're dead, but
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they may be flourishing elsewhere, and like a virus they're just waiting for a new
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host to carry them to the mainstream. Publishers, producers, editors, TV
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execs, they all have to calibrate their decisions based on so many factors, and yet
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even with access to sophisticated data it often comes down to human factors. A gut
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instinct that something is going to work. Somebody at AMC is greenlighting The Walking Dead based partly on historical evidence that says people like
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Zombies, but also partly on the notion that this particular iteration will have a new
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twist that will bring new people into the (zombie and
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AMC) tent . Personally, I'm waiting for someone to make Pirate Zombies v. Ninja
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Vampires. Hey, if they can make Aliens and Cowboys , anything is possible.
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This post was inspired by a recent post by Grant
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McCracken . Make sure you read that one too.
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3 Comments
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Matthew Duhan says: July 26, 2010 at 5:13 pm
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I don't know about Pirate Zombies v. Ninja Vampires, but there is a game where you
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can play to become Zombies, Ninjas, Pirates, and Mad Scientists. Zombie Ninja
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Pirates, by Gozer Games, is a quick 20-30 minute card game for 2-6 players. You
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can find more information on our website.
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We do have an expansion planned, which will add Vampires (among other Types) to
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the mix. There will be more info about that coming soon.
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Jewell Bardwell says: July 30, 2010 at 4:06 am
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Incredibly effectively performed without a doubt.
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Estefana Sjerven says: September 16, 2010 at 8:03 pm
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I like twilight! I could sit and watch all day long if I didn't have school..or
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life to stay me from doing it! lol Wonderful Simply Superb!
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