RemoteUser
Posts: 2854
Joined: 5/10/2011 Status: offline
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I blame Bob's Burgers. Zombies don't turn me on, but they don't squick me, because, like unicorns, they're not real. Same with any mythical creatures, really, and for the same reason. Would you still love a sparkly vampire? Or a werewolf who was cursed with their affliction for being a cannibal? I think Hollywood gloss can make just about anything seem appealing to at least some segment of the market, and the idea of power always sells. If I had to romanticize a zombie, though, I'd take a twist on it to make Tim Burton seem normal. I dug into the history of zombies and read about them as a teenager heavily into RPGs, and the zombie-based story I enjoyed writing most for my group revolved around West African tales of zombies and salt. There are legends that say a zombie fed salt is immediately given all of their memories of life back. The process alone could drive them insane, but then so could remembering being alive, and becoming aware in a dead body. In my story, the adventurers came across a dead village and had to piece together the details of what happened. It was a tragedy, of course: a witch is spurned by a man, she curses him, he dies and comes back to life. She leads him to his former lover, whom he kills mindlessly, and as he is feasting on his once-lover's corpse, the witch sprinkles salt on the dead woman's flesh. All his memories return with the next bite. The horror of his own existence causes him to turn on the witch and tear her apart, and then he systematically takes out the rest of the town. Because he was reanimated by a curse, the people he killed didn't rise as zombies. The adventurers never did find the zombie. Some of them didn't even have stomach for the story. Choice curse words were fired my way. That's how I knew it was good. It's not sexy, but damned if I didn't load that story with pathos.
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There is nothing worse than being right. Instead of being right, then, try to be open. It is more difficult, and more rewarding.
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