Morph
Best Villain 2016*
It's 3 AM. Time to complain about something for no reason before I go to bed.
I feel like the undead aren't really touched upon as much as they should be, both in roleplay and fiction in general. You've got shambling zombies and ghosts. Sometimes the zombies run. So where are all the ideas? Where are the reboots, the innovative looks at undeath and zombies that change the way we think about them?
There are so many ways to do it. I have a few myself. I just don't share them, because I'll eventually get around to publishing something and don't want to find out some rando lurker stole my concept.
Let's talk about zombies. Bring zombies back to basics, and by basics I mean Night of the Living Dead basics. They used tools. They planned. They overwhelmed. They were scary not because they were mindless, but because their mind was alien. They were not themselves. They were other, on a completely new and disturbing level.
And then we went and screwed it up. We made them dumb and motivated solely by hunger. The only reason zombies are scary now is because of good makeup effects and hordes.
Here's a suggestion, huh? Make their motivation survival. There's still a person in there, and they don't want to kill. But they're just so damned hungry, they can't resist, they need food, they crave it, it's driving them mad every second they don't get it, and they just want to eat and eat and eat and eat and when they come to their senses it's too late.
But no, test audiences and beta readers don't like thinking. Thinking is dumb and boring. Let's make the zombies become human again through the power of love. Romance. It's what people crave. Why else would they read bad fanfiction?
On a side note, we're at the point where film studios should do the opposite of what their test audiences say. I don't know who those people are, but if I had a dollar for every movie with a thought provoking and emotional ending that was cut because test audiences didn't like it... I could probably buy myself a couple sandwiches, at least.
I'd really like to see more corpse monstrosities formed from eldritch magic. More blood rituals bringing the dead to life, but changed somehow. Revenants on quests for vengeance, but actual revenants who were killed all the way (sorry Leo).
Why can't I have what I want? Why is my only recourse to rant about this in the middle of the night while playing the world's smallest violin? There is no god, and if there is no god, does that mean god is dead? Where do gods go when they die? Is it some cold and empty hell on the edge of the universe? What would that place be like? Where did it come from? Is it, itself, a creation of some impossibly vast dark force poised to devour us at the inevitable end of all things?
Okay, that's actually a pretty cool idea.
I feel like the undead aren't really touched upon as much as they should be, both in roleplay and fiction in general. You've got shambling zombies and ghosts. Sometimes the zombies run. So where are all the ideas? Where are the reboots, the innovative looks at undeath and zombies that change the way we think about them?
There are so many ways to do it. I have a few myself. I just don't share them, because I'll eventually get around to publishing something and don't want to find out some rando lurker stole my concept.
Let's talk about zombies. Bring zombies back to basics, and by basics I mean Night of the Living Dead basics. They used tools. They planned. They overwhelmed. They were scary not because they were mindless, but because their mind was alien. They were not themselves. They were other, on a completely new and disturbing level.
And then we went and screwed it up. We made them dumb and motivated solely by hunger. The only reason zombies are scary now is because of good makeup effects and hordes.
Here's a suggestion, huh? Make their motivation survival. There's still a person in there, and they don't want to kill. But they're just so damned hungry, they can't resist, they need food, they crave it, it's driving them mad every second they don't get it, and they just want to eat and eat and eat and eat and when they come to their senses it's too late.
But no, test audiences and beta readers don't like thinking. Thinking is dumb and boring. Let's make the zombies become human again through the power of love. Romance. It's what people crave. Why else would they read bad fanfiction?
On a side note, we're at the point where film studios should do the opposite of what their test audiences say. I don't know who those people are, but if I had a dollar for every movie with a thought provoking and emotional ending that was cut because test audiences didn't like it... I could probably buy myself a couple sandwiches, at least.
I'd really like to see more corpse monstrosities formed from eldritch magic. More blood rituals bringing the dead to life, but changed somehow. Revenants on quests for vengeance, but actual revenants who were killed all the way (sorry Leo).
Why can't I have what I want? Why is my only recourse to rant about this in the middle of the night while playing the world's smallest violin? There is no god, and if there is no god, does that mean god is dead? Where do gods go when they die? Is it some cold and empty hell on the edge of the universe? What would that place be like? Where did it come from? Is it, itself, a creation of some impossibly vast dark force poised to devour us at the inevitable end of all things?
Okay, that's actually a pretty cool idea.
