Short Story - Frenzy

[TcheQuevara]

Yeah, I got it was a reference to Jaws when the marshall and the scientist met. A marshall and a brainy type, in a tourist resort...

But I loved it. It was the best one so far, I dare to say.

I really thought Rin was going to die. The happy action movie ending didn't bother me.

Queer couples in space! I had the impression she was lesbian or a tomboy since the first three pages, but I didn't expect them to almost confirm it like this.

Robear, does this story helps your project in any way? She says the spire is as big as a Sequoia... I don't think too many Robear Mutalisks would fit inside a Sequoia, you know. Maybe mutas are tinier than they seemed before?

Eeew... ew ew ew ew ew. They shoot at us with their genitals! Oh man. Now I feel disgusted at clicking at my SCVs after a muta raid. Zerg: spitting, pooping and now jacking things on you since 1998. Eew.

[Hawki]

Admittedly I've never seen Jaws (seen its sequel though), but I did recognise it as being Jaws-inspired. Not really an issue for me though, in that while its source of inspiration was clear, it still felt natural to the setting rather than forced in (e.g. terrans hunting an aquatic zerg with 20th century technology/techniques).

Of the HotS stories released so far, while it's not my favourite (that would be A War On), it's not my least favourite either (The Teacher). I think the writing was better overall than the previous fic in that when the information was being given, it felt less info-dumpish. The reader gets information on mutalisks, but it's relevant to the characters and the situation they're in, whereas sections of The Teacher felt less relevant to the overall story. Also more character-centric and less 'sterile,' which is another plus for me.

[Robear]

Robear, does this story helps your project in any way? She says the spire is as big as a Sequoia... I don't think too many Robear Mutalisks would fit inside a Sequoia, you know. Maybe mutas are tinier than they seemed before?

A lot of this story is still really ambiguous, intentionally so, I think, to avoid coming out and saying things like "goliaths are 15 feet wide." Thing about redwood trees, they could be a skinny as this, and as giant as



So, that with a large, spread out pod on the top... yeah, it still couldn't hold more than a couple of the mutalisks from Ghost.

The description itself is strange:

a claw-footed thrust of cartilaginous bone the diameter of a redwood tree... The stem supported a pulsating, membranous sack with a gently respiring circular vent in the top.

Which is strange because no Spire design has a single stem; they're all held up by ~10 separate stalks.







So, basically, I don't think the writer knows what they're talking about. If the entire diameter is supposed to be redwood tree-sized, I don't buy it at all. The official Zerg buildings we've seen in the background of WoL's Char campaign menu and loading screens, are [so] much bigger.


If each of those individual stalks is like a redwood tree? Now we're talking again, that's more plausible. But the author pretty clearly isn't thinking of that.

Anyway, Blizzard released a (imo poorly-made) 'viral' video of Mutalisks in France today, that was apparently taken down, but should resurface soon, where the Mutalisks are pretty big again. So, yeah, just disregard this short story or imagine they were a special breed of tinymutas.

[TcheQuevara]

Who's the Zerg Spire art? I never seem it before.

You know Robear, I went back to your unit pictures thread. I got my eyes on the Ghost / Unarmored Terran. I imagined a huge redwood behind it, a little bigger than the biggest one I seen in google images. It get as thick as the Colossus. The story doesn't say much about the height - if it's bulky (as in gameplay), it would be also as high as a Colossus, but this one - or any one - could be higher.

Your mutalisks are 5 meters high, if we don't count the wings nor straight them up. Just as big as your goliaths.

So when the story depicts a lot of mutas on the Goliath's armor, what do you imagine? I imagined something about that, things as big as the Goliath reaping it off, just like in the Evangelion movie (oops, forgot the trigger warning. the horror ).

But seems to me, by the way mutas drink people's blood instead of swallowing them, and the way seeing them fight a rhino sized beast is impressive, because of the ferocity involved, but not ridiculous as no big size difference is talked about... I guess our mutas are small this time.

Still, I think 60 SC Ghost mutas would fit inside a Colossus/Redwood sized spire.

[Hawki]

The concept art's from Ghost. And if the mutalisks are 5m high and the same size as Goliaths, something's wrong, as Goliaths are 3.7m high.

[TcheQuevara]

Well, Robear's Goliath is 6 m tall, actually. Which makes sense if you see the proportions. Maybe Goliaths are about 4 m tall when they're hunched? Where did you get this stat from, anyway?

Here's the graph with all units, to save you the time to go to the other thread. See, a muta without its wings (which size do vary from artwork from artwork) is as big as a Goliath.

EDIT: Forget what I said. The Goliath really is 6m high, but the Muta is bigger. Even curled it is about 9m high. So if a Spire is Colossus-sized, 60 of them couldn't fit there.

[Robear]

Goliaths are 3.7m high.

I know that's what the wiki says, and maybe that's how big they were in original Starcraft... Here are some goliaths with some marines in Brood War, and 3.7m could be right:


But, in Ghost, they're just bigger than that. Here's a gif I made from background of the Ghost intro cinematic. Note the marine (just a blur, really, but it's a marine) walking in front of the rock, and the goliath walking behind the rock.



That goliath is around 3 times the height of that marine. Maybe a tiny bit less, but, marines are at least 2m tall, so the goliath is definitely nowhere near 3.7.

(god I wish Blizzard had just released pictures of all these models T_T)

Maybe it's some sort of standing vs. crouching thing, and they're supposed to be the same size. But, of course, this story's custom goliath with arms could be any size it wants to be, and again it's described too vaguely to tell. We never hear "he climbed up the rungs of the ladder leading 10 feet off the ground to the goliath's cockpit" or anything, so, another big shrug on that one.


Also, here's a link to that Versailles Mutalisk video I was talking about, but, there's no reason to believe it's canon, so I'll wait for HotS for more Muta measurements. My old mutalisk estimate was probably too big.

[TcheQuevara]

So, did you guys notice Ponera did a cast complaining about the Muta's acidic blood? He posted a thread on Bnet forums and said he was wanting to help Blizzard to get their science facts together.

The thread got 13 pages and AFAIK the mods deleted it.

On the episode I got but 2 comments:

1) "Hemo globyn" implies some mutalisk liquid tissue is red, formed of free cells, and this "hemoglobyn" that converts into acid is a prothein, right, because of the sufix. So either the word "hemoglobyn" doesn't mean anything in specific anymore in the 25th century, or mutas have red blood as part of a circulatory system that uses protheins to transport gases. Why do aliens anatomy is so much like a vertebrate's? Sigh.

2) By the few of his videos I watched, Ponera seems to think that the Xel'Naga and the Overmind should be limited to 21th century human science. I imagine how a Ponera's "Anatomy of 2001: A Space Odyssey" would be.

[Hawki]

Also, here's a link to that Versailles Mutalisk video I was talking about, but, there's no reason to believe it's canon, so I'll wait for HotS for more Muta measurements. My old mutalisk estimate was probably too big.

Alright alright, who created a time paradox? Obviously the Reapers have come, and unless the Doctor fixes it, I...

Oh, wait. Wrong media.

I imagine how a Ponera's "Anatomy of 2001: A Space Odissey" would be.

Me either. "Anatomy of 2001: A Space Odyssey would be interesting though.

[Telenil]

So we have acid spitting, wing-flapping flyers that can dodge missiles and destroy jet fighters in direct combat, and what is criticized is that the name given to whatever fluids they have in their bodies is scientifically incorrect.
I know, I have myself pointed out that a platform is geostationary orbit doesn't need any power to stay there. But doing a specific thread to complain about the blood of a creature that doesn't make sense anyway feels a little much.