I could probably talk endlessly about Harlan Ellison himself.I can't watch the video right now because of lag, but if I remember correctly, AM mentions the yellow, then the box and the fact it's yellow, pain (not going into that) and then he says something along the lines of "Now now, don't start to cry. If enough people ask, I might do more posts like these, maybe comparing the game adaptation with the short story. The cliché of “His eyes rolled down her dress” takes on a whole new meaning if “he” is a zombie. Ted could actually have flesh made out of Jell-O and rubber, and AM might have actually roared like a lion. I have struggled with this in some of my own, currently unfinished stories.įor those who haven’t played the game adaptation, it is very much up to interpretation which words were metaphorical and which weren’t. Because of this, it’s very hard to know what’s metaphorical and what’s real. This is a very weird story, with a lot of strange and unusual things happening. Because Ted tells us how he feels, it just makes him that much less human, that much more frightening.Īs for the metaphorical language, that part was fairly hard for me to pin down. He literally is everywhere: a computer covering the entire planet, created to wage a war too complex for humans to comprehend. Now, the fact that AM can’t show his emotions directly gives him a very Lovecraftian presence. So that the ending doesn’t feel too abrupt. The scene before this was very tense, with a lot of action, so the telling here gives the reader a moment to breath so they don’t feel exhausted. (Though I sadly did not experience the story until years later.) Content aside, this is very much a story that Equestria Daily would have no problems featuring, though our narrator, Ted, tells us what the characters are feeling six times in this scene alone.īut it works here for a few reasons: none of the characters can exactly use body language to show emotion at the moment, the fourth one is accompanied by prose that paints a very vivid mental picture, and they’re spread out well, pacing-wise. While I was shopping my first story around for reviews, someone recommended this story to me as an example of how to make my writing read less like a comic book script. And yet … AM has won, simply … he has taken his revenge … At least the four of them are safe at last.ĪM will be all the madder for that. Living under the land, under the sea, in the belly of AM, whom we created because our time was badly spent and we must have known unconsciously that he could do it better. Outwardly: dumbly, I shamble about, a thing that could never have been known as human, a thing whose shape is so alien a travesty that humanity becomes more obscene for the vague resemblance. Blotches of diseased, evil gray come and go on my surface, as though light is being beamed from within. Rubbery appendages that were once my arms bulks rounding down into legless humps of soft slippery matter. Smoothly rounded, with no mouth, with pulsing white holes filled by fog where my eyes used to be. Or cut my throat on a rusted sheet of metal. He doesn't want me to run at full speed into a computer bank and smash my skull. Sometimes I want to, it doesn't matter.ĪM has altered me for his own peace of mind, I suppose. I know I saved them, I know I saved them from what has happened to me, but still, I cannot forget killing them. He made certain I would suffer eternally and could not do myself in. It was not even a shadow of the hate he now slavered from every printed circuit. There was no way to dig up the deckplates. I think it has been some hundreds of years. AM has been having fun for some time, accelerating and retarding my time sense.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |