i need to start this video by saying that i am not particularly interested in zombies
they're a great archetype used in a lot of interesting places but i mean the zombie
boom was 10 years ago we got our fill of brains and severed body parts back then
and moved on to greener less apocalyptic pastures i haven't missed it terribly until now
a few weeks ago i read the book the girl with all the gifts by m.r kerry and i have to say at least
for me it gave the undead new life it presents one of the most interesting takes on zombies i have
ever seen one that argues with our concept of them as a mindless mass obstacle to surmount maybe they
could be something a little deeper a little closer to home maybe they could even be the hero of the
story
a big thanks to campfire writing and world building software for making this video possible
and to all of our supporters on patreon we love you the girl with all the gifts doesn't feel like
a zombie story when you first start it yes it is an apocalyptic setting and yes the world is
teeming with the shambling husks of the undead but right from the start you know that this is a story
about children strange children who have to be kept imprisoned because they'll fly into a bloody
frenzy at the first smell of human flesh and try to eat any living person they can get their little
hands on but children all the same kids who want to play and draw pictures and explore and learn
things they can't help that they have these urges in fact they're scared and confused at that side
of themselves a very small spoiler here but given the thumbnail of the video i'd be surprised if
you hadn't guessed it by now they are part zombie human all the way through except when the urge to
feed strikes then there's something else entirely it's one of the freshest and most heart-wrenching
takes on zombies i've seen in a long time it made me respect all the potential the archetype could
have if we let it but wait you might already be typing in the comments that's not a zombie zombies
look like this they shamble around aimlessly they've got rotting flesh and disfigured bodies
they're certainly not just normal kids with a cannibalism quirk and okay i hear you i understand
the zombie you're talking about is the one we all know and love it is iconic deviate
too much from it and it feels like you're not really dealing with the zombie anymore
but i think it only feels that way because of how saturated we were with it for years and years
this zombie the classic mindless decomposing shambler freshly risen from the grave it didn't
actually have much of a presence until 1968 with the release of george romero's
night of the living dead before that they were usually either the creations of voodoo magic or
dark scientific dabbling in either case before that movie they were very different creatures
usually more like servitors or philosophical anomalies a la frankenstein's monster
even during the zombie boom of the 2010s we saw a shift away from undeath to viral infection a lot
of the creatures that made zombies most famous like those from 28 days later in resident evil
weren't actually zombies in that sense at all just horrifically altered humans and yet
it would be silly not to call any one of those things a zombie they all have something in common
that we recognize innately the thing at their core the thing that solidified them not just as
a recognizable monster but as an important one is one singular key trait the loss of
control more than grotesque cannibals or festering hordes zombies are human beings turned automaton
they've experienced death or some other form of profound corruption which has wrenched control
of their actions away from them and handed it off to something inhuman and unempathetic
they're a walking reminder that without agency to think and act for itself mankind is nothing
just a flesh robot at the mercy of the soul it creates a sense of dissonance more visceral than
a simple confrontation with death could ever be which i think is what makes zombies such a
potent and memorable monster whatever form they take they are humans minus the humanity in the
book i was talking about earlier this is exactly what's happening maybe the children are human
and maybe they are in control most of the time but when they smell human flesh for that moment
their humanity is on hold and something else has taken over without any rotting tissue or severed
limbs without dying and coming back they become little zombies the fact that they're human before
and after really only makes it more tragic they're sympathetic in a way that simple shambling corpses
just can't be which is why i think they make such a great case for zombies as protagonists
in the vast majority of zombie stories they're really not much more than menacing punching bags
our heroes lay into them with crowbars and chainsaws slaughtering them by the dozen
and then when it's convenient for the plot oh hey somebody got bit drama these stories
treat their monster more as an environmental stressor than anything else and you know i think
that's fine we don't really want our haggard survivors to stop and stare into the vacant
eye sockets of every ghoul mourning humanity lost that's not what these stories are about
usually but sprinkled throughout the generations of fiction in this genre
you can actually find a not insignificant number of stories that experiment with the idea
of sympathetic zombies yes some of them like the movie warm bodies and the show i zombie are a
little more in the territory of gimmicks how zany would it be if we made the main character a zombie
but there were a number that really tried to make a genuine exploration of it by the end of richard
matheson's 1954 book i am legend which fun fact was one of romero's inspirations for night of
the living dead we find that none of the zombies are quite what we expect them to be and we've sort
of been rooting for the wrong cause the whole time in the 2017 film the cured a cure for a
zombie plague is discovered and those who are once zombies have to try and reintegrate into society
living with the burden of all the things they've done even frankenstein's monster
is a creature in a body not its own whose mind is fragmented and haunted by compulsions
desires predispositions someone else chose for it in one way or another all of these stories
are about people whose humanity has been in some measure stolen away by compulsions alien to them
they've done terrible things against their own will and the human part of them has to
live with that what an incredibly stressful inner conflict for a character to deal with
it provides a depth to the archetype we almost never see and that is what i love
about these weird zombie children in this book they show that if you give just a bit of the
humanity back to a zombie allow them the capacity to be aware of what's happening to them maybe even
the ability to respond in some way you end up with something far more complex and interesting
than even the most novel monster you give a dead archetype new life so much life in fact
that i really think they could have the potential to steal the show there's something intrinsically
powerful about this idea of a character trapped within a self that they can no longer control
the main character of the girl with all the gifts is a little half zombie child named melanie she is
everything we've discussed so far but she's also a genius and she loves the humans around her dearly
or at least one of them this makes her hunger the most terrifying thing in the world to her because
she knows that if it strikes she will harm someone she cares about so she spends the book trying to
process these emotions trying to come to terms with who she is and trying so very very hard
not to be a danger to anyone to me this is so striking because it's not just an interesting
point of conflict for her it's the conflict every single human being faces every single day bear
with me this goes back to traditional psychology each person has an id ego and super ego which
respectively describe one's natural impulses their self-conduct and their self-awareness
the everyday battle is when the ego wages trying to satisfy as much of the id's desire as possible
whilst avoiding the judgments and the emotional punishments of the superego
there are plenty of things people want to do that they know they shouldn't
and it typically requires conscious effort to reconcile those two things
very often however the id will win out even while the superego is screaming that it should not
someone will cheat on a lover or steal something from a store or procrastinate writing a video
script and so they end up feeling guilt or shame or at the very least a fear of repercussions
this is the essential struggle melanie and every other zombie with the leftover human conscience
faces except unlike a normal human being they don't really get a choice and the stakes are much
higher than an act of infidelity or avarice this strange part of their id has complete control and
the poor ego sits hostage in the brain while the superego bee rates it for its failure to intervene
we can imagine what this must be like we can relate it's ultimately a sympathetic experience
for us because as intelligent creatures in an unforgiving universe one of the things we're
most afraid of is losing what little control we do have and with it our identity this is all a
recipe for an amazing story protagonist because the conflict is both fascinating and relatable but
it also gives us something a little more than that as well you see melanie doesn't
just struggle with this on the inside she knows what's going to come when she catches a whiff of
that delicious human scent and she knows that she can't stop it so she takes pre-emptive measures
she allows herself to be manicled and muzzled she rides on the roof of the car instead of inside it
she runs off into the wilderness to hunt game and fill her belly so that the hunger won't be quite
so profound and to me these actions make melanie more than a good sympathetic protagonist
they make her a hero she's showing a willingness to face adversity for what she believes to be
a moral reason this is why it's always such a powerful moment when a character gets bit by a
zombie and they decide to cut off their own arm or end their own life it's tragic it's horrific
but it's a small triumph over this terrible impending loss they're about to suffer the harm
they'll soon cause even someone who doesn't have the time to respond beforehand if they're still
in their conscious has time to be a hero they could save their own psyche try however feudally
to fight the urges from within which sometimes results in a zombie who's reluctant to say
eat that poor scared piece of meat who they vaguely remember was once their daughter a zombie
of this type might even make reparations once they're cured recognizing what damage they've done
against their will and working hard to write it all of these are acts of heroism feats of courage
and bravery in the face of a fate literally worse than death this book the girl with all the gifts
showed me that our historical fascination with zombies isn't just because they're a symbol of
death although they are that it's in part because they're a symbol of life the inner
life the ongoing struggle against the powerful natural impulses that try to govern the body
and the higher ideals and feats of willpower that keep equilibrium and in the end shape identity
it feels good to see this sort of triumph even if it's a small one in the end it promises that
no one not even a zombie has to be slaved to the dark aspects of their own nature there is room
for heroism here and valiant tragedy so if you're playing around with zombification in your fiction
maybe consider letting the psyche live on for a while see what it does under all that pressure how
the person inside the monster reacts i guarantee you'll find depths beneath the rotting flesh
you never knew we're there of course every good zombie apocalypse needs a good gimmick if you
are going to experiment with this idea you're also going to have to figure out whether your
zombies are the result of occult magic or a fungal parasite a virus or an underworld over capacity
whatever the case is you're going to end up with a world very different from our own and it's going
to get hard to manage in a hurry lucky for you i know a tool that can make the whole process so
much easier if you're not familiar campfire blaze is a browser-based suite of tools to help you keep
your writing organized you can collaborate with friends in real time or work by yourself to flesh
out every facet of your story create characters design your plot and world build every single
piece of your setting all in one place when it comes time to turn your world into a story
you can also develop your entire manuscript right there in blaze's word processor when you're done
sharing your work with your friends and fans is incredibly easy no more sending out 30 different
copies of your manuscript you also have a lot of freedom to customize how you pay for it start with
the free version then expand by buying just the tools you need permanently or build a subscription
by adding features for as little as 50 cents a piece which means to use everything you'd only
be paying a few dollars a month and if you're on the fence no risk there's a 30-day return policy
follow the link in the description to learn more write better stories faster with campfire blaze
before we wrap up i'd like to give a quick thanks to all the helpful humans who support the show on
patreon all those words you see scrolling in the background of these videos those are actually the
names of our patreon maintenance crew without whom this show would be impossible and a special word
to all of our top patrons lord gotti rpg grenade and the autumn rider thank you so much and that's
it for this video there's usually a few weeks between uploads so if you want more tail foundry
in the meantime come join our community we have a discord server that's basically like a big family
of creatives a lot of love there we also run a writing group on twitch every single week if you
want to get some practice in you can find links to all of it in the description hope to see you there
until then thanks for watching and keep making stuff up i'll see you next time bye
you