Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/05/10/first-person-360-vr-you-are-a.html
…
2 Likes
That’s just… holy shit. Brilliant idea.
1 Like
Uh, isn’t it xenomorph, not “neomorph”?
Different gribbly-flavour. Similar principles, I think.
I hope the new movie doesn’t suffer from alien-of-the-week syndrome like the last one did… 
I think the original term coined for the infant stage is chestburster, following facehugger and before that the egg laid by the queen. Within a few hours the chestburster matures into one of several types of drone, the specific morphology of which may be dependent on egg type, environmental triggers, host species or, most likely, plot necessity (the single most powerful force in fictional evolution). Technically all are xenomorphs, as that is the species, not the life-cycle stage.
However, since they’re apparently genetically engineered more or less from scratch by - depending on where you stop in the movies and whether you’ve avoided or wisely repressed memories of Alien v. Predators - one of several possible designers with improbably stupid motives, the term species may be inappropriate as it implies natural evolutionary decent.
1 Like
The organism doesn’t have a name*. In Aliens, Lt. Gorman refers to them as ‘xenomorphs’ during the mission brief but it’s directly implied that the Marines have had non-human, ‘bug hunt’ missions before so it’s not a proper name-- just the subject. Ripley then calls them ‘aliens’ a couple times but it might as well be ‘burritos’ or ‘moths’. ’Neomorph’ is the cutesy crew term for our new pal, and the difference between the new neo-ness and alien xeno-ness is due to a familiarity between something in the new film but I’m not some kind of spoling asshole.
*If you wanna get nerdy: In the (very) mixed bag of all the semi-canon Dark Horse comic series/crossovers of the past 25 years, they were given two scientific names: The solid one, ‘Linguafoeda Acheronsis’, meaning ‘Foul Tongue of Acheron’; or the crappy one, ‘Internecivus Raptus’, meaning ‘Murderous Thief’. In more strict canon, they’re strictly the alien/xenomorph/creature/‘perfect organism’.
2 Likes
Wait, I know it’s tacky to reply to myself, but I just realized that Ian Holm played both Ash in Alien and the priest in Fifth Element. Both had a solid shot of him, stunned and immobilized, explaining a supreme being/perfect organism central to the plot. Alright, I’m done. 
2 Likes
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
