[HN Gopher] Sci-Fi Short Film "There Is No Antimemetics Division...
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Sci-Fi Short Film "There Is No Antimemetics Division" [video]
Author : Anon84
Score : 287 points
Date : 2026-03-13 11:44 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| glenstein wrote:
| I jumped into the book after hearing all the buzz as it seemed
| like the big scifi hit of 2025. Killer premise and for the most
| part the fast pacing works... for the first third or so. But it
| you can feel the short story anthology vibe as it goes on and
| becomes practically a disconnected series of vignettes, and even
| the central idea itself loses cohesion. The Big Bad Thing has so
| many manifestations that it feels like monster of the week rather
| than a true full book that holds onto a core sharply executed
| identity. Less a grand thesis than a series of isolated short
| form thrills.
|
| So the long and short of it is, definitely worth it for the first
| third and dimishing returns after that.
|
| As for the short film, I think it's great for what it is, gets
| better and better as it goes and is worth the short watch.
| Fascinating seeing the visual depictions of the stuff the book
| talks about both foreground and background.
| silenced_trope wrote:
| True, the first third had some mystery to it. The rest was kind
| of mediocre as far as sci-fi goes.
| jhbadger wrote:
| I also didn't think it was quite as good as it was hyped to be,
| but as someone who has long been into the web-based SCP stuff,
| I did appreciate how the book is introducing SCP to a wider
| audience.
| brson wrote:
| I felt similar about the book. The premise was thrilling, but
| as it went on it seemed to succumb to typical genre tropes,
| ending didn't deliver.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| I actually liked all of it. It's slightly more cohesive than
| the original writing on the SCP website, which is structured as
| a series of short thematically linked reports. I get that style
| won't appeal to everyone though.
|
| Still one of the more original bits of sci fi / horror to be
| published in a while, so a strong recommendation from me!
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| I read it based on a reddit search for 'good sci fi books' and
| that's it. Going in with no hype or expectations and I thought
| it was great.
|
| PS. HNers, any good sci-fi book recommendations?
| mugwumprk wrote:
| "Service Model" is a recent one and I had an absolute blast
| with it. If you don't have much of a humanities background,
| you'd benefit from skimming the Wikipedia article. There's a
| lot of references to old novels you might miss if you don't
| have the context.
| sohkamyung wrote:
| You might be interested in this prequel to "Service Model":
| "Human Resources" [1]
|
| [1] https://reactormag.com/human-resources-adrian-
| tchaikovsky/
| LogicFailsMe wrote:
| He needs to do more in this universe and maybe connect it
| to one of his others. He really specializes in all the
| variants of collapse and I love every page of it.
| alexpotato wrote:
| A write up review of books I've read and there are a couple
| scifi books (and a bunch of other recommendations) here:
| https://alexpotato.com/books/
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| Nicely done, thanks!
| tartuffe78 wrote:
| I just came across Hardwired from 1986, it's a cyberpunk
| dystopian future with lots of action. I loved it, some of it
| is very prescient, but with lots of 80s influence to an
| imagined future.
| dsr_ wrote:
| Interesting chain of descent: Walter Jon Williams wrote
| Hardwired, and R Talsorian Games based their tabletop RPG,
| Cyberpunk 2020, on it. That's the source material used for
| the computer RPG, Cyberpunk 2073.
|
| Meanwhile, WJW followed up with Voice of the Whirlwind,
| which seems to be set about a century later, and drops
| enough references in Aristoi to place it as the third book
| in the same universe, quite possibly a thousand years
| later.
|
| I recommend all three (and almost everything that WJW has
| written).
| rototrav wrote:
| Just read Lexicon by Max Barry (2013) - great sci-fi thriller
| that actually has a strong anti-memetic component. I wonder
| if it was an influence on qntm's book.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| I loved Jennifer Government (Max Barry) wayyyy back.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Lexicon was very good. I'd also recommend Bad Monkeys, by
| Matt Ruff, for a vaguely similar feel (although the subject
| matter is completely different.)
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| The Diamond Age is feeling more and more prescient to me as
| time goes on
| roadside_picnic wrote:
| I'm a pretty big fan of _Roadside Picnic_!
| floren wrote:
| _A Deepness in the Sky_ by Vernor Vinge
|
| _Player Piano_ by Vonnegut
|
| _Dune_
| TheGoddessInari wrote:
| I feel like I have to mention "The Sky So Big and Black" by
| John Barnes. IMO, rather underrated. Hadn't really read any
| good Mars-based science fiction before.
| milchek wrote:
| If you liked it and want something in a similar style
| (conceptually) but with a bit more personal/human element I
| would recommend The Raw Shark Texts.
|
| As for best sci fi books I've read in a while: The Gone World
| by Tom Sweterlitsch (think sci fi meets True Detective) -
| some awesome concepts here and really strong pacing. The
| other one was Version Control by Dexter Palmer which is a bit
| slower and more subtle sci fi (big concepts presented in a
| personal drama style of book)
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| I remember after reading the first few chapters thinking this
| may be one of the coolest books I've ever read. It sort of
| meanders and fizzles out. It starts so strong it seems
| impossible to finish as strong. I would still recommend the
| book. It's got some very cool and unique ideas and it's a fun
| story.
| jerf wrote:
| "The Big Bad Thing has so many manifestations that it feels
| like monster of the week rather than a true full book that
| holds onto a core sharply executed identity."
|
| This is one of the structural weaknesses in the entire SCP...
| motif, for lack of a better word. When a core part of the
| premise is "you can't understand it, not even in principle, if
| you think you understand it you're wrong", the premise does
| some fairly fundamental damage to what most people would
| consider the basic structure of a story. Generally we think
| that at least in hindsight, a story should "make sense", but
| SCPs by their nature _have_ to be somewhat random and lack
| predictability or they aren 't SCPs. You can try to wrap a more
| conventional story around that particular motif, but you've
| always got this fundamental structural weakness sitting right
| smack in the middle of it, and you can't remove it without
| leaving the sub-genre. The SCP structure fundamentally starts
| with a negation of this aspect of stories.
|
| It is fun seeing what some people do with this limitation, and
| there are after all compensating benefits or nobody would write
| in the universe. But it is something that is going to be there
| in any story set in an SCP or SCP-like universe.
|
| I think it was Larry Niven that observed that most stories are
| judged by something like character, plot, theme, etc., and that
| one of the distinguishing characteristics of science fiction is
| that you have to add the _background_ to the list of things to
| look at. But only a vanishingly small set of works ever managed
| to have character, plot, theme, and the other characteristics
| firing on all cylinders as it was; asking for a work to have
| all that and _also_ be 5 out of 5 on the new setting it
| establishes as well is way too much to ask of a work. With this
| sort of story, as a reader you are putting all your chips on
| the setting. Going in to this sort of work you should expect
| the conventional measures of a story to at least take a hit,
| and in many cases a fairly large one. And of course, if that 's
| not what you want, then you're not going to enjoy it and I have
| no problem with that. This is less a "defense" than an
| explanation, that if you didn't particularly enjoy this, I'd
| suggest staying away from the entire subgenre because the
| entire SCP subgenre is structurally prone to these issues from
| the very foundation on up.
|
| (To give another example, Greg Egan has a number of works in
| which he fiddles with the laws of physics, to do things like
| have two time dimensions and two spatial dimensions, then works
| out how that actually affects physics using math rather than
| intuition and write stories in the resulting universes. This is
| such an investment into the setting that I don't find it all
| that surprising that I don't find the characters all that
| compelling per se. There just isn't the room. But you can't get
| that setting anywhere else.)
| pjm331 wrote:
| What is SCP
| marcosdumay wrote:
| https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/
|
| It's an open collaborative fictional universe.
| cousin_it wrote:
| I agree sci-fi is an outlier on this, but I also think all
| stories compete on setting to some extent. Fantasy most
| obviously (Tolkien, JK Rowling). But also for example the
| Jazz Age setting of The Great Gatsby contributed a lot to the
| novel's popularity and was a bit fictionalized, hard boiled
| detective writers like Hammett or Chandler wrote about a
| crime-filled world that was fictionalized for appeal,
| historical romances about lords and ladies are super
| fictionalized and so on. Writers try to put appeal into
| everything, that's why they're writers.
| jerf wrote:
| Larry Niven isn't referring to merely an "unusual" setting
| in his quote (which I've never managed to find referenced
| online, unfortunately), but to the way in science fiction
| you are creating the setting from _scratch_. Gatsby is set
| in the Jazz Age, and you can pick up some aspects of it
| from that, but it is still in the stock set of settings the
| author expected you to have some ideas about, so it doesn
| 't explain how cars work or how doors open. And by _that_ ,
| I don't mean the sort of "explain" at an engineering level,
| but things like "how combadges work" in Star Trek, i.e.,
| when they work, when they don't, what can be sent on them,
| what failures they are prone to, etc. Even something as
| fantastic as Tolkien is still generally set in a particular
| milieu and he is adding very skillful and numerous brush
| strokes to a genre that existed already.
|
| You've read many stories set in all the settings you
| mentioned. You have never read a story in which the
| fundamental shape of space-time is two time dimensions and
| two space dimensions before, unless you have also read
| Dichronauts. This is the supplementary material to the
| novel, which is mostly not _in_ the novel and is not the
| story itself, just the background:
| https://gregegan.net/DICHRONAUTS/01/World.html You don't
| need that provided for something set in the Jazz Age, or a
| fantasy story explicitly based on myths that had been
| floating around for centuries, or a historical fantasy.
| Someone _could_ write some equivalent, but you don 't need
| it; it's already loaded into your head. That's the point.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _This is such an investment into the setting that I don 't
| find it all that surprising that I don't find the characters
| all that compelling per se._
|
| His characters do tend to be a little flat, _but_ I think I
| almost always found them compelling. His books tend to be a
| physics or mathematics primer, wrapped in a pretty thin plot,
| but as soon as you poke at that plot-wrapper, most of the
| time some pretty good social commentary comes steaming out.
| glenstein wrote:
| I think the SCP is great as a basically perfect
| infrastructure for playing in this space that makes room for
| community participation. But absorbing them as a whole into a
| story is tough. I think you put the basic bargain reasonably
| well int he following:
|
| >With this sort of story, as a reader you are putting all
| your chips on the setting. Going in to this sort of work you
| should expect the conventional measures of a story to at
| least take a hit, and in many cases a fairly large one. And
| of course, if that's not what you want, then you're not going
| to enjoy it and I have no problem with that.
|
| Where I would challenge that as it relates to TINAMD is I am
| not sure it fully succeeds even against this basic bargain.
| By contrast I would note Annihilation which is exactly as you
| describe, light on characters and plot and entirely about
| setting, and I think it sticks the landing on those terms in
| ways this book could have. But still, love its premise, love
| the traction its getting and I think the healthier way to
| engage with it is to cheer it on for its successes, which are
| significant.
| redfloatplane wrote:
| I wonder did you read the re-release or the original release. I
| believe it was recently re-released with a bit of an editing
| pass, but I haven't read that version myself. I just recently
| reread Fine Structure and it definitely had a strong sense of
| being written sequentially, one chapter after another, and
| (very) lightly edited after the fact. I'd recommend Valuable
| Humans in Transit for a short story collection by the same
| author which works a bit better for me. Moved on to Exhalation
| by Ted Chiang which is also a very good short story collection.
| And just in general, I want to recommend Clarkesworld:
| https://clarkesworldmagazine.com
| presbyterian wrote:
| I've read both, and the "editing pass" was minimal. Names
| changed and some scenes reworked a tiny bit, but it's the
| same thing. If you've read the original, I'd say don't bother
| with the new one.
| redfloatplane wrote:
| Thanks, that's the answer I was looking for!
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| The core pitch becomes quite formulaic. It's a fun kind of
| formulaic, but all the SCPs are made from the same relatively
| small set of moving parts, painted with different colours and
| textures for each specific monster.
|
| But as a concept it's still one of the freshest things to
| appear in SF this century, and it's a wonderful contrast to
| more standard action hero SF.
| glenstein wrote:
| Right. I respect it for what it is, and there are elements
| that are amazing and deeply thought out. But there's an
| alternate universe where the whole of it is a big cohesive
| vision statement in the metaphysical/visionary subgenre of
| Scifi a la Blindsight by Peter Watts or Annihilation by Jeff
| VanderMeer. But has that potential but where it lands is
| closer to monster-of-the-week in book form.
| kranner wrote:
| My experience of the book was similar: the first third was
| great. Great idea, brilliantly executed. Definitely worth it
| for the first third alone.
|
| In a way, maybe it going off-piste is _coherent_ with the idea
| of the first third. I 'm sure this was not the author's intent,
| but fun from an ironic perspective.
| glenstein wrote:
| It certainly invites that level of meta-commentary on its own
| structure, though I agree it's inadvertent. And I _know_ at
| some point someone is going invoke that point in full
| sincerity as if its an answer, and whatever that is, the
| satisfied meta-commentary that makes too much of irony as if
| its a sincere insight, I feel like is just looming as a
| possible and frustratingly shallow justification of the book.
| There 's an interesting question there of the scales of
| abstraction at which anti-memes could function, and that's
| fascinating but as you noted in this instance not necessarily
| intentional.
|
| It makes me think of the movie Doubt, where I remember being
| sincerely confused as to the central accusation at the center
| of the movie (though retrospectively its obvious and I knew
| it was at least one possibility but I wasn't sure if there
| was perhaps a different interpretation), and was told that
| not being sure was the point and by expecting an answer I was
| missing the point since the whole movie is about "doubt". I
| felt this explanation was, frankly, just stupid. Just because
| you're going meta doesn't mean any point coherently
| registered in the form of meta-analysis is insightful. But
| anyway, I'm off the rails a bit now going after imaginary
| adversaries, but agree with everything you've said.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| > the big scifi hit of 2025
|
| I read the book in 2024 (before it was cool!), and have the
| email order as evidence, but quite fittingly I have almost no
| memory of what was in it, or how I found out about it.
|
| Bit like the bad guys The Silence from Dr Who:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po8Jc7sLbP8
| argomo wrote:
| What a coincidence. I also read the book and can't recall
| what it was about. Umm, what were we talking about again?
| jrussino wrote:
| > 2024 (before it was cool!)
|
| The original draft of the first part "We Need To Talk About
| Fifty-Five" was posted to scp-wiki in 2015, and the SCP-055
| entry dates back to 2008!
|
| https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/qntm-s-author-page
|
| https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub
| helterskelter wrote:
| It definitely needed an editor to help them polish it up. It's
| funny though, I read it a year or two ago while I was in the
| middle of _I Am A Strange Loop_ by Hofstadter and I 'm positive
| the author of _TiNAD_ had just read _IAASL_ when they wrote
| it...People essentially being memes explained through loss of a
| partner, Prokofiev making a conspicuous appearance, and strange
| loopiness in general. It was weird, like the author and I had
| just read the same book.
| glenstein wrote:
| As a fellow reader of IAASL I see what you mean. I think
| IAASL lost me at the end because it was repurposing terms
| like "soul" and "self" in ways that were no longer really
| philosophically robust, but I understood and appreciated it
| as effectively memorializing a lost partner, and gave clear
| expression to what it means to treat the things a person
| leaves behind, and the desire to preserve them, as a way of
| keeping your connection to them.
|
| And it doesn't diminish how fantastic the rest of the book us
| up to that point. In the age of almost-AGI and renewed
| debates on consciousness we need the likes of Hofstadter more
| than ever.
| wishfish wrote:
| My experience with the book became a bit meta. I greatly
| enjoyed the first half or so of it. Though it did start to feel
| a little repetitive after a while. But I couldn't get past the
| first half because all the black line "redactions" started
| making my Kindle unstable. First time I've seen an ebook's
| formatting crash the device.
|
| Eventually gave up because of the constant slowdowns and
| crashes. Which in many ways fit the book. I liked thinking the
| data within was so dangerous and alien that my Kindle could not
| handle it. I know this wasn't intentional by the author but
| still, it was a nice metafictional touch.
|
| I suppose a future horror novelist could replicate this
| intentionally. A creepy combination of symbols guaranteed to
| overwhelm a limited memory ereader. Coming at the right point
| in the story, it could be effective. Though it would also lead
| to a ton of 1-star reviews.
| simulator5g wrote:
| The redactions are definitely overused. There's some pages
| almost entirely redacted. It would be more effective to write
| a shorter sentence with some mystery than to just block out a
| large portion of a verbose page.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| Oh wow, They filmed it! Twice even!
|
| hn discussion about the written versions
|
| * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41224225
|
| A different version by different director/actors:
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-IiVeGAydE
| jojobas wrote:
| I bet they filmed it way more than twice.
| ricksunny wrote:
| I never thought much of Adrian Gage as a director anyway
| actionfromafar wrote:
| twice... _in the last 15 minutes_.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| I bet everyone's seen it way more than twice.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| What do you mean? There is no antimemetics film.
| tantalor wrote:
| Did they forget it was already filmed once?
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| Jasika will always be Astrid from Fringe. In my head, Helen Hunt
| plays wheeler.
| loganberriess wrote:
| You mean Astro?
| dspillett wrote:
| No, Asterix.
| timschmidt wrote:
| Astral.
| jmcgough wrote:
| Read this as "antiemetics" (anti-nausea meds like Zofran) and was
| very confused for a moment.
| coldtea wrote:
| Did anybody else find the original story mediocre stuff?
| Interesting premise, but neither novel nor that deep. PKD has
| done 100x with much less.
| Nition wrote:
| I really liked it and all the little interesting ideas within
| it, like the antimimetic worms that live everywhere. I actually
| found it very creative and clever. However, I didn't think the
| recent rewrite was as much of an improvement as others seem to.
| The later parts were improved but I thought some of the padding
| out of earlier parts arguably came out worse.
|
| ---
|
| Edit:
|
| To give an actual example, Marion's description in the
| original, from the scene in the video:
|
| _She is turning fifty this year and slowly greying, well on
| her way out of "petite" towards "little old lady"._
|
| In the updated edition:
|
| _She turns fifty this year. She is diminutive and flint-eyed,
| very dark-haired but rapidly greying. Today, her hair is
| strictly pulled back and up into a silver clasp. She wore her
| good suit for this, one button, very dark grey, with a solid
| blue blouse underneath. Ankle boots with stout heels, two
| silver stud earrings in each lobe. Contact lenses, not the
| usual glasses. On a lanyard around her neck she wears a
| security pass with a bright orange and red diagonal stripe._
|
| Two uses of 'very dark' right after each other? And I actually
| liked how snappy the original was but that might be just me.
|
| Another line in this first chapter that I love from the
| original:
|
| _" What..." O5-8 asks carefully, "would happen if we_ did
| _know? "_
|
| becomes in the new edition:
|
| _" What..." Mahlo asks carefully, "would happen if we did know
| what happened to him?"_
|
| Why pad that out? It sounds less natural now.
| johnke wrote:
| There were also some examples of sloppy editing in the
| updated edition, like multiple uses of the word "perimetre"
| which the author acknowledges was an 'incautious find-and-
| replace from the US English "meter" to UK English "metre"'
| https://qntm.org/antimemetics#komment6913d2eb6c240
| ethmarks wrote:
| Which is especially odd because the author (Sam Hughes)
| lives in the UK and wrote the original in UK English, but
| apparently wrote the rewrite in US English. For example, a
| chapter in the original was titled "Case Colourless Green",
| but in the US edition of the rewrite that chapter is "Case
| Colorless Green" (without the 'u'). So Hughes, a native UK
| English speaker, wrote the rewrite in a non-native (to him)
| dialect, then had it (lazily) translated into his native
| dialect.
| rtkwe wrote:
| It was probably to deal with the transposition [0] out of
| the SCP universe into a new one. SCP is vaguely 'set' in
| the US because that's how a majority of the contributors
| naturally write and spell things, which sets the voice of
| the world indirectly.
|
| [0] AKA "filing the serial numbers off" when it's
| explicitly fanfiction instead of a shared universe model
| like SCP
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| I liked it _for_ the interesting ideas within it. My favorite
| part of a story is the worldbuilding, the author 's unique
| take on an idea, the special ways that different characters
| think and act. There's not a great deal of artistry I require
| in the introduction of a 49-year-old greying woman deep in
| some giant bureaucracy to imagine how other people relate to
| her, I'm interested more in the idea of a bureaucracy that
| deals with antimemes.
|
| Perhaps that comes from reading too many online stories -
| including the whole of qntm's site [1], including the rough
| drafts. The quality of the editing, prose, or dialog isn't
| that important to me if the quality of the worldbuilding and
| the concepts are high enough.
|
| https://qntm.org/fiction
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| I loved the ideas! The premise was novel to me, and I also
| don't think I've encountered the same idea since (except for in
| reference to the original story). I'm not a fan of the writing
| style though. It's very stiff and heavy-handed, as if the
| writer's only goal is to setup the next twist. But I can't
| complain that much, it reminds me a lot of my own writing.
| pwdisswordfishy wrote:
| Indeed, it works fine as an introduction to a longer series,
| but on its own feels pretty unfulfilling.
|
| I think the story where she detains her own husband would work
| much better in a stand-alone adaptation.
| axus wrote:
| My standard for website fiction is lower. When you're unknown,
| there's less pressure to go through a long editing cycle. Pale
| and SEEK have been good though.
|
| Would not consider myself well-read, if I read enough PKD
| stories I could probably find some mediocre ones; really liked
| the popular ones I did read.
| tgv wrote:
| I thought the short movie was also mediocre. It should have
| been much shorter.
| throw310822 wrote:
| I did find the introductory short story (this one) brilliant,
| as it's short, shows a clever and surprising inversion of roles
| midway, but especially because the premise- antimemetics- is
| actually extremely interesting. I even wonder if it has been
| developed seriously- I mean the study of antimemes as a
| communication/ propaganda technique.
|
| It's true that the whole novel, despite a few good moments,
| seems mostly interested in plot and entertainment. Having read
| quite a bit of qntm's stuff online, I'd say he excels in the
| short story format where he can quickly present a clever or
| surprising idea and there isn't the need to sustain a plot or
| work on character development etc.
|
| Anyway, comparing a random author to one of the best and most
| influential sci-fi authors ever is a bit pointless, don't you
| think?
| InitialLastName wrote:
| > I even wonder if it has been developed seriously- I mean
| the study of antimemes as a communication/ propaganda
| technique.
|
| Tell me you can't see the fnords without telling me...
| renewiltord wrote:
| The idea was entertaining and I enjoyed the read. The author is
| clearly accustomed to shorter works. The final book has the
| feel of an anthology. Regardless, one my top 1000.
| jpfromlondon wrote:
| thought the idea quite fun, the execution incredibly
| amateurish.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| Was this authorised by QNTM?
| GCUMstlyHarmls wrote:
| I think all SCP content is creative commons share alike
| (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/), so I don't
| think he actually needs to -- assuming this is based on SCP and
| not the book. I know the book had some revisions done to make
| it legally distinct from the SCP stories for copyright
| purposes.
| v9v wrote:
| In one of the youtube comments the director says that they
| contacted the author and got permission.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Doesn't need to be, the default license for SCP Wiki is
| Creative Commons BY-SA so you only have to attribute the source
| and distribute under the same license. I don't see that
| mentioned so it might technically violate the license unless
| they negotiated directly with qntm under a different agreement.
| That's the tricky thing with licenses, you never know if they
| have so unless the original creator is raising a stink you
| can't know and legally you have no grounds to object even if
| they are violating the license.
| decimalenough wrote:
| The originals:
|
| https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_Is_No_Antimemetics_Divis...
| world2vec wrote:
| I just finished the book and it did not live up to all its hype.
| Quite boring, actually.
| giorgioz wrote:
| Or did you actually finished the book? Think very hard. You
| must want it.
| world2vec wrote:
| What book?
| manfromchina1 wrote:
| Reminds me of "Total Rickall"(Rick and Morty: Season 2, Episode
| 4) which itself is probably a retelling of a retelling of a
| retelling of a retelling.
| bschne wrote:
| I came back here for the comments after clicking through and my
| wifi was glitching, leading me to get a "can't find this site"
| message for a minute. Interesting experience.
| the_af wrote:
| Interesting that there are two versions that I know of!
|
| I watched this one first, and I prefer it:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-IiVeGAydE. I like the actress
| who plays Wheeler better (no disrespect to Jasika Nicole, she
| does a good job too and I loved her in Fringe), and the script
| seems to stick closer to the original short story form from the
| website. Is this new short based on the book? If so, it seems the
| dialogues in the book are... weaker maybe?
|
| Things I liked in this short: the use of B&W, and I thought the
| actor who plays O5-8 is stronger in this version.
|
| I wonder if this story could become a "standard" for indie
| directors to riff off?
| com2kid wrote:
| IMHO The writing and acting are much better in this new one.
| The way the fake agent was revealed is far superior, and so was
| how the pills were introduced and handed over. The original is
| fine, but it has a lot of "and now for this!" moments that just
| don't flow into each other.
|
| This new one spends time building trust between the two
| characters, the resolution feels earned and not just handed out
| for the sake of the plot moving forward.
| the_af wrote:
| Oh, don't get me wrong, I liked this one. I would definitely
| watch the rest of the stories with this cast and director!
|
| Maybe it's just a case of having watched the other version
| first.
| languagehacker wrote:
| This book was so good. Can't wait to watch this after work :)
| afandian wrote:
| Lots of people familiar with the material here, but as somone
| with zero context, I watched the film and I don't get it.
|
| Is it something where you need to know the backstory to get the
| importance? The premise just seems quite thin: (Spoiler alert)
| the guy behind the desk had his mind erased and the guy with the
| gun is an impostor.
|
| Is there more to it than that?
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I think the story is written in a much better way than this
| video presents it: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/we-need-to-
| talk-about-fifty-fiv...
|
| I know it's not polite to armchair-critique a thing I could
| never have created myself, but I don't think this is a
| particularly good adaptation of this story. One change, I
| think, completely robs it of some of its impact, and I would
| have handled something else differently as well - but oh well.
| the_af wrote:
| > _One change, I think, completely robs it of some of its
| impact_
|
| Which one?
|
| One thing I didn't like from this adaptation is that the
| thought-devouring idea doesn't live inside Wheeler's mind,
| like in the story. They made it into a CGI blob. But I
| suppose the story is confusing enough, so making it invisible
| would have been too much.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I didn't want to post any extra spoilers, so I'll ROT13 my
| reply:
|
| Gur PTV oybo jnf gur ovttrfg bssraqre, V guvax. Znevba'f
| crg fubhyq arire unir orra ivfvoyr ba pnzren, vg ybfrf
| arneyl nyy bs vgf zlfgvdhr, NAQ vg fubhyqa'g or "phgr". Fur
| unf vg ba n yrnfu, ohg vg'f fgvyy n irel qnatrebhf FPC! Vg
| fubhyqa'g or ebyyvat nebhaq yvxr n phgr yvggyr OO8
| rdhvinyrag.
|
| V guvax gur glcr bs ivrjre jub vf jngpuvat na nqncgngvba bs
| guvf fgbel jbhyq unir qrnyg jvgu vg svar.
|
| Frpbaqnevyl, V xabj gung Pynl "zvffrq" uvf qbfr, ohg ur jnf
| fgvyy tncvat ng ure crg yvxr ur'q arire frra na FPC orsber
| va uvf yvsr, yvxr ur jnf gur arjovr orvat vagebqhprq gb
| guvatf. Juvpu _qbrf_ znxr fbzr frafr va guvf pbagrkg, ohg
| ur 'f fgvyy njner gung ur'f n irel fravbe bssvpvny ng gur
| FPC sbhaqngvba. Vg whfg qbrfa'g zngpu uvf punenpgrevmngvba
| ng nyy.
|
| Guveqyl - naq guvf vf zl zbfg crggl pbzcynvag - vs V jrer
| gur jevgre/qverpgbe bs guvf, V jbhyqa'g unir unq uvf
| "nffvfgnag" chg njnl uvf tha orsber fur fgbyr vg. V jbhyq
| unir phg sebz n fprar bs uvz nvzvat gur tha ng ure, onpx gb
| gur erfg bs gur fprar sbe n ovg, naq gura onpx gb uvz
| jvgubhg gur tha. Vg'f zber vzcerffvir gb fgrny n tha bhg bs
| fbzrbar'f unaqf guna vg vf bhg bs n ubyfgre.
| cyberax wrote:
| It's set in the "SCP" universe. It's a collection of short
| stories ( https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/ ), collaboratively
| written.
|
| Most of them are (as expected) crap. Some of them are really
| scary, and some are hilarious: https://scp-
| wiki.wikidot.com/scp-4703
| the_af wrote:
| > _Is there more to it than that?_
|
| Yes, there is. I can see how someone not already familiar with
| the material would feel lost.
|
| First, it's based on SCP, as other people have mentioned.
| Second, it's very dialogue/monologue driven, there's lots of
| exposition about a shared universe, vaguely hinted at, secret
| government agencies, conspiracies, etc.
|
| The author chose a very topic which by definition is hard to
| understand: ideas (or memes) that do NOT want to be remembered.
| So a lot of what happens is discussing "dangerous" ideas that
| do not want to be remembered or discussed. There's a larger
| overarching plot, split across several related stories.
|
| The guy with the gun was one such idea embodied in the physical
| shape of a man. It was confusing the boss on purpose. Wheeler
| was on to him from the beginning (because her boss doesn't have
| an assistant), but needed to get her boss on board with the
| idea first, before shooting the "assistant". Everything she
| does in the dialogue has this goal.
| hx8 wrote:
| You're missing a bit, like there is an entire top secert
| division of people that fight against mind erasing aliens, and
| there are a large variety of mind erasing aliens.
| ldb wrote:
| Very nice. This is up there with my favorite DUST short film,
| "Final Offer". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv8kOzRZK8g
| viscousviolin wrote:
| That's a great find. My personal favourite so far from Dust is
| "Laboratory Conditions":
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1N25e4Ss34Q
| Animats wrote:
| Fnord!
| morgango wrote:
| Astrid! Or more accurately, Jasika Nicole.
| giladd wrote:
| It's been a long time since a book has gripped my attention like
| the one this short film is based on. It has many interesting
| ideas and a plot with some truly unexpected twists.
|
| The latest version of the book distances itself from the source
| material (a good decision imo): The SCP Foundation. It's an
| extremely interesting project, with some parallels to FOSS. I
| wonder if there are other joint literary projects of similar
| scale.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Maybe I am just dumb but I think I missed why this is cool. I
| found it incoherent and thus failed to enjoy it. I've heard the
| name "There Is No Antimemetics Division" before and it was always
| said with reverence. What did i fail to notice/understand?
|
| EDIT: saw other comments here mentioning that I am not expected
| to get this without lots of prior reading.
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