Forum: Story Discussion and Feedback

I used to watch it religiously, but think more in terms of 'fast-walking zombies' and less of 'reproducing' zombies, so naturally, I've thought the same exact things, yet never applies the math to it (which seems an exercise in frustration, as in most fiction, you simply accept the premise, ignoring how utterly unrealistic it is.

I can easily recite ALL the reasons why Star Wars isn't the least bit possible, yet it didn't prevent me from accepting the story anyway, at least until I saw my … 38th movie (more realistically it was probably the 5th or 6th one), at which point I just threw up my hands and never bothered with another one again.

Yet knowing a story's inherent weaknesses, makes them easier to 'work around' them.

However, the key to any horror movie is the 'ever present threat', so in the end, it still doesn't matter how unlikely it is, horror fans still want more of it!

I stupidly wrote my own zombie novel, Zombie Leza, where Leza was someone who could communicate with the Zomies and thus offered the remaining humans a 'safe zone', yet the only thing they saw, was her leading huge zombie armies who she could easily command to do her bidding.

Yet, when I closed the story with the protagonist's helping find a 'cure' for the zombie virus (both living and undead versions), every horror fan who read it absolutely HATED it.

So, having learned my lesson, I never again wasted my time writing an 'alternate' horror story. It's still one of my personal favorites, yet it's not one the fans demand, so … who bother?

It appealed to the non-horror fans, yet it spoiled the ride of the main horror fans.

As usual, I typically enjoy upsetting the standard approaches, so those familiar with my stories tend to appreciate my unusual approach, while the die-hard horror fans instead took my non-standard approach as a slap in the face.

Like you, I liked what I did with it, yet after watching the fallout from it, I decided it just wasn't worth the aggravation, though maybe I just need to label those stories as something other than "horror", so maybe "satire"? ;)

I haven't watched TWD, but that's almost always a good direction to take the plot. Zombies themselves are nearly a 'natural disaster.' You can't reason with them, can't negotiate, can't make truces. They don't make moral choices. They attack, people die.

Other humans are far more interesting. They have the ability to make moral decisions, and some of them will turn out to be horrible people. Whatever you have, there's almost always someone willing to share and work for the common good, and there's almost always someone else who wants it all for themselves and will do what it takes to get it.

You can blur the lines - see 'Warm Bodies', a favorite of mine, where the zombies are capable of moral choices, growth, and even recovery (though they don't start out knowing that) - but it's much more common for them to be mindless lost causes.

Also see 'The Girl With All The Gifts', essentially a zombie story where some zombies have human to human-plus intelligence.

Also see 'The Girl With All The Gifts'

Which also has a cracking tune in it...

In the story, the 'Walking Dead', weren't the zombies, instead the title describes those still living, as they were merely 'surviving', making them the true 'walking dead', killing zombies rather than killing the living, yet just as soulless and thoughtless.

If you never got that, then you never even grasped the story itself, as they made it plain at the end of the very first season.