Introductions: The adaptation we deserveI think it was around early spring of 2016 that I decided to read a bit of Worm. I’d first heard of worm not from friends, but from the subreddits “/r/respect threads” and “/r/whowouldwin.” Now, I know what you’re thinking, and yeah, not exactly the best place to get a recommendation on reading material, but see, here’s the thing. I figured that it was something on the internet, and with that in mind and not knowing about Subspace Emissary, figured that it would be a short read. After reading for a little while, I discovered two things: that it wasn’t a short (roughly 13 million words, which is a few million above the entirety of the Harry Potter septet) and that I couldn’t stop reading it. In fact, whenever I’d go online to read a bit, I’d find that I’d keep going, up until the point that I’d read a good several thousand words and hadn’t stopped, like a particularly engaging open world game. Eventually, it got to the point where I said “fuck it,” and decided to just burn through it like there was no tomorrow, which let me tell you, was something I should've done at the beginning, because by that point, it was just a little tricky to keep track of everything. By the end of October, I'd finished the bad boy up, and felt that combination of relief and despair that comes with finishing something that you simultaneously love yet find overwhelming Now, if you’re an avid reader, I know what you’re thinking. And yeah, just because something is infinitely readable, is naturally no guarantee that it will be any good. I mean, heck, some of the most vapid, uninteresting books make it so you're unable to put them down. In the case of Worm, however, it isn’t. In fact, if you ask me, Worm is probably one of the greatest deconstructions of the so-called superhero genre this side of watchmen. What starts off as the tale of a young woman trying her best to get in deep with a gang of so-called super-villains and trying to balance her secret with trying to learn some good dirt, becomes a sprawling epic discussing the ideas of good and evil, and how far someone will go to fight for the greater good. It is an epic tale that is masterfully told, with a female protagonist who makes Katniss Everdeen look like Bella Swan (yes, I did go there). DisclaimerI suppose I should back up here a bit and mention two things. The first is that it has, admittedly, been a bit of a while since I read Worm, and while I'll try to keep the info as accurate and spoiler-free as possible, this is something to be kept in mind. The second is that a sequel has recently come about, (called Ward) which I'll admit to not having started, seeing as how I have whole mess of physical books in my backlog that I really want to get through before I start on another epic piece of fiction like that (the last one was longer than all seven Harry Potter books put together for context). While I'm sure there are plenty of things that tie into Worm proper in Ward, I can't say for certain what they are yet. So for the sake of my own sanity, I've decided to keep my focus on Worm proper, seeing as how I have the most knowledge about it. There's also the very real chance that even if I did feel like including Ward on here, that there would be significant changes here and there so as to leave it completely moot at some point. So wait, What is this?"What the hell had I been thinking, wanting to become a superhero?" I suppose I should back up a bit and describe just what, exactly, Worm is. Written in a serial format from June 2011 to November 2013, by one John McCrae, or Wildbow as he is more well known on the interwebs, Worm is the tale of one Taylor Hebert, a young woman who, after a rather brutal bullying incident, acquires the ability to control insects. After her first night out as a “superheroine” when she literally takes down a what could be described as the hulk if he became a dragon, she’s found by a group of supervillains and decides that she’d take it upon herself to become a part of the group, so that she could spy on them for the “good guys” (I’ll get into why that’s a joke later), she quickly finds in them friends. Part of it is that her best recently became her worst enemy right out of the blue and has made it her personal life mission to make taylor’s day to day life at school a living hell. Needless to say, she finds it increasingly difficult to do this so-called mission of her’s. Now, while the set-up does admittedly sound a little cliché, things become increasingly less so when a gient monster who runs crazy fast ruins her hometown of Brockton Bay, and she learns that the heros aren’t quite as the heroic as they make themselves out to be, whether intentionally or not. From there were learn more and more about Taylor’s world and just how messed up it is. Not in that the heroes act with reckless abandon, but in the fact that Taylor's world is on the brink of destruction, and that some of the most "evil" of people are simply doing what they're doing to keep the world from going straight to hell. Another great thing about this series are the powers that are given to the various superpowered individuals, here called “parahumans”. While it does have some of the expected tropes—a guy who can fly and shoots lazers, the ability produce shadows—many of them are either unique takes on old classics or entirely original. One character can, for example, teleport himself, but leaves a clone for about 15 seconds, just enough time to use said clone as a kamikaze soldier. One person can turn into an intangible thing so long as no one's looking. Another can use math to practically predict the outcome of any fight, and then there’s the guy who can freeze an object temporarily, making it into either a extremely powerful projectile or temporarily protecting a friend or civilian. And then there are what are, in universe, called tinkers. They’re the supergeniouses of this world. They’re the Lex Luthors, the Ironmen, the Dexter, Boy Geniuses etc. of this world. They start with an idea and then it becomes form in a sort of reverse of the scientific process. Each tinker specializes in something, bombs, lazer beams, medicine, cramming more stuff into a small space. One of my favorite villains is a tinker who specializes in biomes who lost his family to one of the three eldritch abominations roaming around this particular universe, and who makes his body self-reliant and who lives only to kill. Wormbuilding: World-building at it's finest“I always knew there was something wrong, underneath it all, but there were bigger things to focus on. You finish dealing with one Endbringer attack or a potential war with parahuman attacks on both sides, it demands all of your focus. You’re left drained, dealing with the event or the aftermath, and then you need to recuperate, you have an organization to manage. There’s never a moment where you can stop, take a deep breath, and then say, ‘now is the moment where I address that nagging doubt I had the other day’. Now is the moment I call so-and-so out on that less-than-complete truth they used while we were elbow-deep in Indonesian cyborg super-soldiers.” If the Warcraft film has taught us anything, it’s that having an expansive, unique universe is only part of the equation. A world is nothing without a good story to tell within it. And let me tell you, Worm deliver’s in the character and story department. After all, there’s a very real reason I’d argue that this is the greatest deconstruction of the superhero genre this side of Watchmen, and it’s not just because of Taylors ambiguous hero or villain nature. While the story itself is definitely a little wrought early on—burgeoning teen romance, teaming up with others to deal with some major threat, that sort of thing—things become increasingly interesting after the eldritch abomination fight that levels Taylor's home town, and the introduction of the Slaughter House 9. In fact, I would argue that, as of recent memory, Worm has to be the best world introduction this side of Harry Potter. You see, the challenge with a really good world you want to introduce ideas and concepts at a rate that they won’t overwhelm and confuse the readers, something which the Wachowskis seemed to have forgotten about entirely when they started making Jupiter Ascending. This is why in many a fantasy story, the protagonist is someone young who’s just living an ordinary life and then finds themself in some sort of magical land, whether due to a magical wardrobe or a trio of homeless old ladies decided that it was now or never. It makes world building into a metaphor for growing up and coming to understand the world at large, something that the Harry Potter series embraced wholeheartedly. Just as Harry was learning more and more about how the Wizarding World, and by extension us, the readers, works, he’s also learning more and more about the prejudices and inequalities present within it. It doesn't hurt, either, that Harry goes to a school, meaning that, as the years go by, the more the rules of the magic in this universe start to unfurl. You see this even with fantastical protagonists like Bilbo and Frodo (though, to be fair, the Hobbits do strike me as the middle earth equivalent of suburbanites). While they start out in the Shire, they’re eventually dragged (both metaphorically and literally) into a world of magic, wizards, and eldritch rings that contain the essences of evil beings. Worm is no different. The more Taylor learns about the world she inhabits, the more we come to realize just how deep the theme of doing the wrong things for the right reasons run. And the deeper we get into this world, the more and more we learn just how close Taylor’s world is to oblivion (as if the revelation that highly populated cities are regularly attacked by a trio of eldritch abominations wasn’t clue enough). This is a world filled the brim with roaming bands of murder hobos, multiple universes, and secret organizations that perform unethical experiments on human subjects, and while you may need a few flashcards to keep track of the onslaught of characters that are sent your way, it all feels revealed in a completely natural fashion. Another thing to keep in mind whenever one is creating a universe is to try and make sure that the themes of the story proper. This is another thing that the Harry Potter novels are great at. The themes of classism and racism permeate both the talk of the Durselys and many members of the wizarding world proper. Wizards even have slurs, something which adds a powerful element to the anti-prejudice undertones. In a way, the wizarding world didn’t really need all that much pushing to become the oppressive anti-muggle society it became when Voldemorte took over. And as ridiculous as the Inheritance cycle novels can be at times, they at least make it so that the Urgal, the not-orcs of that particular universe, become allies with Eragon against Galbatorix (wow, does that name sound cheesy in retrospect), thus enforcing the idea that everyone had to band together to take down Mr. Scaryname. This is something that even Tolkien had an issue with when it came to writing the LotR serie, what with an entire species of "evil" beings (fun fact: Tolkien apparently a rather large Neo-Nazi following, as much as that most likely makes him role over in his grave) This is why making an expanded universe for the Star Wars movies is tricky. The entire series is inherently based upon the idea that there is a good and evil side, and about the conflict within all of us to decide whether to join the good or the bad, which is made significantly easier when the choices are space Nazis or the plucky resistance. Worm, though, ties the themes and motifs of it’s universe perfectly into the themes of the story that’s being told. Just as the story reflects themes of getting caught up in the flow of events, basic themes of conflict and how communication is integral to life, and just what it means to do the wrong thing for the right reasons, so too does the multiverse of Worm itself. The more we learn about the institutions, and more importantly people, of this universe, the more we come to discover that powers in this world means that you’re just destined to for more trouble in life. However, whereas the aforementined Watchmen commented on how being a veritable god can slowly but surely isolate you from the people around you, Worm sort of goes in the opposite direction. Whereas Doctor Manhattan may have been becoming more and more far gone from mankind, the capes of worm take the opposite approach. They’re just people who use the abilities they have to make themselves appear more so. It doesn't help that “capes” in this universe get their powers during especially traumatizing events in their lives. Of course, having a constant reminder of your time being used as a human land-mine detector, or of how adoptive mother was this close to murdering the only thing you ever gave a shit about in life isn’t the most conducive way to get over one’s past, especially when said constant reminder comes in the form any kind of weapon you want or turn dogs into eldritch abominations. Things aren’t much better for many of the so-called “thinkers,” individuals who view the world in completely different ways from normal people. Maybe they have super-powered intuition, which permanently turns them off sex, or maybe they have an exceptionally organized view of the world to the point of being able to how to make trap doors and various other killing machines in wreckage, but also have an extreme case of OCD. As anyone who has ever watched any of the DCAU will tell you, super-powers plus psychological scarring very rarely go well, and a universe full of that combination is only expected to become a crucible of conflict (which is another major theme throughout the story). And then there's Taylor herself. Taylor Hebert: She who would make Bella Swan's Head Explode"If you're lucky, Imp slits your throat with you none the wiser, or Regent has one of your underlings stab you in the back, and you go quick. If you're unlucky, Bitch's dogs tear you to shreds, and it's a long, drawn-out, painful process. If you're very unlucky, you get the worst of both worlds, and you deal with me." In my book, Taylor Hebert has to be one of the most badass leading ladies in any piece of fiction to date, this side of Wonder Woman with a mastery of the Fist of the North Star. While she may only have insects at her disposal in a world full of unstoppable monsters, flying bricks and eldritch abominations, she knows how to use them in ways that are significantly more flexible than most of the “superman” types she comes across. As I mentioned before she is genuinely creative with her powers, and is exceptionally badass. She uses her bugs as a sixth sense to "see" in environments where there's no light, turns them into copies of herself to confuse enemies, or make ropes of spider silk. She even created her own costume out of black widow silk, which was thicker and more lightweight than kevlar. She's resourceful, too. The second time she faced the aforementioned dragon guy, she dips an insect into an injured cape's blood which just so happened to have the same effect as the world's dankest weed and then touched the insect to the guy's eye, effectively knocking him out. That being said, what keeps her from going into full blown mary sue territory is the fact that we get the very real feeling that she barely has any control over her own destiny for upwards of two thirds of the story. For the most part, she just goes along with the direction of her fellow undersiders or what have you. It doesn’t hurt either that there’s a very real feeling for many of the fights that Taylor’s facing an almost inhuman force, whether they be the aforementioned fucking dragon guy, or the cybernetic mute who’s perfectly suited to fighting her, or the eldritch abomination that flattened her hometown. She’s also been known to not think too hard about her own safety or own well being when going into a fight, leading to at least one concussion and several hours without sleep (though I will admit that she has the sort of resolve I haven't seen out of a fictional character since I read Berzerk). What’s more, she hardly looks like the type to be a badass supervillain. While she does have a rather intimidating looking costume that she wears, her physique is about the farthest from superhuman. She’s skinny as a scarecrow and apparently has the mouth for it, and while some of this can be attributed to her adolescence (she’s only fifteen when the story begins proper), she’s takes it rather personal and keeps her hair out nice and long. And while she may not have risen from extreme poverty like Katniss Everdeen, she makes up for it by going from lowly, bullied teenage girl, to one of the most (metaphorically) powerful crime lords in the country over the course of half of the series. She’s tough, crafty, determined, and willing to make the hard sacrifices when the time comes, a perfect remedy for a world that’s still trying to get the taste of Bella Swan and Anastasia Steele (Christ all mighty, even their names sound ineffectual). Adaptation RecommendationsWLet’s not mince words here: Worm is gonna need the budget of something like Game of Thrones or the Walking Dead if it’s going to be given it’s due, and not just due to Taylors bug powers. The series regularly giant dogs that the Undersiders ride into the various battles they get themselves into. There’s are also several characters who are… less than human. A metallic man with a shapeshifting body, a woman who’s just a head with a whole host of tentacles, and even a young woman who rides a teddy bear around town. It doesn’t help that things pretty much start out crazy, what with the giant dragon man, and people riding giant dogs and ironman wannabes coming straight out of the blue in the first part of the story. The trickiest thing, though, at least in my book, would definitely be how to properly pace a show based on Worm. The trick with Worm is that it’s split into thirty “arcs,” each of which have roughly ten chapters or so, each of which are about 3,000-5,000 words in length. It doesn’t help that Wildbow crams in random fight scenes here and there so as to do his best to keep the readers' attention, with the occasional interlude to focus on a different character. While this format does work in it’s original format of a bi-weekly internet serial, it makes adaptation into different formats slightly tricky, up to and including the creation of printed versions. Another major issue is that first major chunk of the first arc is devoted to showing how hard taylor has it at school, not to mention how much shit get’s dumped on her on a regular basis. And while we do get a good feel for how influential capes are at this time, we don’t really get much action outside of that. My recommendation would be to start with the introduction of Scion, the very first "cape" or at least when he says his first word, sparking the beginning of the “heroic age”. And from there, skip ahead to where the web series begins proper. Another major place where pacing would be tricky would be the introduction of the Slaughterhouse nine, which each take up a chapter in and of themselves. My feeling is that this would work best as a TV show, as I may or may not have made clear, so I would recommend that a single episode be relegated to their introduction. This actually should work out pretty well, because we’re introduced to each of them through the way in which they contact the person who they see fit to be the newest member of the nine (read: who they choose to be tormented and abused by the others while in what’s left of Brockton Bay), and the manner in which each member is introduced is very much unique. Lastly, there’s a particularly large time skip about two quarters of the way through, which may be a bit tricky, especially seeing as how a lot happens over that period of time. I suppose an entire episode devoted to montage could help with that, but lest it’s handled delicately, it could end poorly. As for casting, this is gonna sound like a bit of a cheap shot, but I think that the party from Stranger things should lend their talents to this particular adaptation. Right out the gate, I'd recommend that Taylor be played by none other than the Millie Bobbie Brown. While she doesn’t fit Tayler’s description to a t, she has a masterful grasp of the craft, especially given her young age, and at the risk of sounding cynical, by the time the darkside of Hollywood rears it’s ugly head in her direction, she’ll have lost just enough “innocence” to capture taylor’s combination of hope, cynicism, and brutality. Caleb Mclaghlan could definitely work as the intimidating level headed Grue, though whether or not he'll have the physique for it is yet. Noah Schapp could definitely work as the chill yet secretly sociopathic Regent, given his innocent appearance. Sadie Sink could probably work as Tattletale (though some fans would undoubtedly be butthurt over the decision to change the character from blonde to a ginger). Dakota fanning could also possibly work, although the Dawson casting might be a little jarring. Bitch will be a bit trickier, due in no small part to her build. See, she’s a very muscular young-woman, almost butch to a degree. My thinking is someone not unlike Gwendoline Christie, though obviously younger, seeing as how Dawson Casting will only get you so far. As for supporting cast, I’d making Gaten Materazzo into the character Theo, aka Golem later on, along with Jon Hamm as the sleazy head of neo-Nazi gang, Empire 88, Keiser, or possibly Corey Stoll, and Sophie Headly as either Theo’s adoptive mother, Purity, and possibly Taylor’s underling and confidant Sierra. Lucy Lui, I’m thinking would make either a great Bakuda, a master bomb maker with an ego problem. I was thinking that Aiden Gillen could play either interim baddie, Coil, or possibly even main baddie Jack Slash himself. While Gillen may be more typecast as sleazy businessman or adviser types—which fits perfectly with Coil’s character—I think that his skinny appearance and general experience with baddies would work perfectly with the almost cartoonishly evil Jack Slash. Well, either him or Jude Law, though he might a stretch. Oh, and Hamm may also work as the aforemnentioned Coil. Lastly, I’d love, love, to see Doug Jones as Slaughterhouse nine member, Mannequin. Jones is a very physical actor, something with is integral to a character who has gone out of his way to never, ever communicate with anyone outside of a hand gesture here or there or the occasional broken keyboard keys. Oh, and one last thing, and this will probably be a little controversial to some of the fans, but I'm of the opinion that it would probably be wise to at least either change the name, or at the very least give it a subtitle like "parahumans" or such. Why do you think bungie subtitled the first Halo Combat evolved? Because, well, Halo sounds like a silly name, and Worm doesn't sound quite like "The Walking Dead" or "Game of Thrones," or "Black Mirror." What I'm getting at is that I think it could use something a bit... catchier. Possibly a title like "Parahumans: Worm" or such Linkages and suchIf you're interested to see how off my opinions on how an adaptation should be handled, feel free to click the button at the bottom, or just click these words. There's also a fan-made Worm: Audiobook for those who are feeling beyond lazy and just want to listen to shit instead of read it. I'll include a link to the youtube version below, as well as a link to download the audiobook version, both in button and link form. Bonus: Fan Fiction Recommendation: The TECHNOQUEEN (krakathoom)She actually said harrumph. Who did that? Who actually said harrumph? THE TECHNO QUEEN. THE TECHNO QUEEN said harrumph. Dennis honestly wondered if he was in love. As a bonus completely unrelated to Worm proper, I’d be remiss to talk about Worm without bringing up the TECHNOQUEEN (krakathoom), though whether anyone should adapt it if and when Worm becomes a thing proper is entirely up to a fan community.
So here’s the thing about Worm. It’s got a very real cult following online, and what has to be one of the more active fanbases with regards to a property, with fan-fiction, theories, and such rivaling even the likes of Harry Potter and Star Wars. So, naturally, like any a good fan base, it’s only fitting that there be a particularly large fan-fiction community at large. Now, I don’t pretend to be the biggest connosoire of fan-fiction—the major’s that I’ve read are My Immortal, at least one of the ShakespeareHemmingway Garfield stories, First Encounters, and a piece of 30H—and while I’m certainly no connosoire of Worm fan fiction—of which, there is a whole subreddit devoted—though, I think many in the community will agree with me when I say that one of the best Worm Fan-fictions is undoubtedly THE TECHNOQUEEN (krakathoom). I think the best way to describe THE TECHNOQUEEN (krakathoom) would be like saying THE TECHNOQUEEN (krakathoom) is to Worm what The Adam West Batman Series is to the Dark Knight. The kitschy, cheesy, hilarious version that, while not anywhere near as deep or profound as the other, is nonetheless hilarious. For those of you not a part of the worm fandom, allow me to roughly sum up the premise of the THE TECHNOQUEEN (krakathoom). So, when Taylor ends up getting her powers, instead of acquiring the ability to control insects, she becomes what’s known as a “Tinker.” And with her newfound ability to create various technologies, she styles herself into the hamtacular, slightly ineffectual (though don’t say that to her face) TECHNOQUEEN (krakathoom), who’s evil schemes include things like turning all of the ice-cream in a several mile radius into broccoli, and making game shows for various capes to participate in. And in case you’re wondering, the reason there’s a thunderclap before her name because she invented a device to produce one whenever she The thing that worm, there is a very real sense that, in spite of being labeled a “villain,” Taylor very much tries to be a decent person, helping out others , ets., etc. The TECHNOQUEEN (krakathoom) takes the exact opposite approach. While she plays up the “would make a james bond villain laugh at how ridiculous your scheme is” she’s actually kinda, sorta ineffectual, and practically a hero, if only because she manages to accidentally kill off nine of the most powerful villains in that particular universe. It doesn’t hurt just how self aware the series as a whole is. What’s hilarious is that her cheesiness seems to infect the entirety of the universe, with such things as wearing a fedora and trenchcoat as a proper disguise and a character being hung upside down for no apparent reason. For example, where as the story arcs in Worm have names like "scarab" and “extinction,” the TECHNOQUEEN (krakathoom) has arc names like “Ham and Cheese” or “BRIAN BLESSED”. Lastly, it contains the phrase “I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you over the sound of being a mother fucking centaur.” I think what I’m essentially saying here is that I would thoroughly recommend it once you’ve at least gotten to arc 20, seeing as how that’s when THE TECHNOQUEEN (krakathoom) tapers off. As I'm sure you can see, there's also a button to go to the forum that contained the original THE TECHNOQUEEN (krakathoom), though I should warn you it's a bit of a pain in the butt, due to the spread out nature of the original's release.
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So if anyone ever studies the mythologies of various world cultures, they’ll no doubt come across this idea that there are beings who have two primary characteristics. For one, they’ll be “dead” and/or they consume the life force of those around you. Perhaps they’ve died and have been afflicted by some sort of darkness or demon and hunt the living. Or perhaps they’re demons and they’re out to consume your flesh or take your life force. If any of these descriptions sound familiar, it may have something to do with the fact that vampiures and zombies have more than a few similarities with each of these particular types of characteristics. Now, while what constitutes a “vampire” is definitely something that could be said to be up for debate, I’d argue that these entities, whose presence, I’d argue are almost as universal as the Hero’s Journey. Something that can be found in almost all cultures, albeit in much more varied forms than the Hero’s Journey, but is nonetheless is present. So without further ado, let’s get this gravy train going. It's christmas time and I still haven't finished this bad boy off. My procrastination has reached an overload and I've got family coming next week and I should probably get as much of this done as possible. Disease, or how people coped before it was a concept.The most popular explanation for many a natural phenomenon back in the day was early religion. The reason there was lightening was because of a god, the reason our crops failed was that the gods weren't appeased. And while these days that’s what we have conspiracy theories for, I’d argue that the life taker, the early vampires and zombies, were the result of people trying their damnedest to try and figure out why children would die young. It also served as, to a degree, try to gain some sort of control over it. If there’s one thing that’s genuinely scary, it’s, as any parent, will tell you, it’s not being able to do something, anything, about your problems, whether they be minor or major. Take Succubi/incubi for example. The major reason for their creation, at least, initially was as an explanation for sleep paralysis. Ask anyone who’s ever experienced sleep paralysis, and they’ll tell you that it is freaky. You’re awake, but you can’t for the life of you tell your limbs that. Chances are, you’ll be alone when it happens, and you can’t for the life of you say anything. All you can do is whisper just a little bit and hope that someone will hear you. You’re wishing for some sort of stimulation, any really, just to get your body moving. Even these days, when we have scanners and sleep observation machines, we still don't entirely get the cause of sleep, much less sleep paralysis. As someone who's suffered from the occasional hallucination associated with sleep paralysis, it can the special kind of creepy that can only Back in the day, before we realize just how much of an impact the brain can have on the body, the best explanation one could possibly think of for this sort of thing was to say that it was some sort of demon sucking the life out of you like a leech. Even horrifying things need to have an explanaiton. It's part of the old human curiosity, and when an explanation isn't forthcoming, we resort to what I like to call alchemy though processes. It's when we rely less on evidence and more on the symbolic meanings of certain things. Like, this mercury is acting like magic, clearly it's something that has some sort of magical properties. Even more obscure diseases, such as porphyria, a disease that can cause horrible repercussions unless you drink blood, could very well have been explanations for what we now call vampirism. This symbolism has, naturally, made its way into the modern symbolism of the vampire tale thanks to Dracula, or at least Dracula's predecessors. For while Dracula may be the definitive vampire tale, it is, like 1984 with the dystopia, the one that popularized many of the tropes, as well as canonizing much of the symbolism and motifs associated with such a tale. While I haven't read "Vampyre" or "Varney the Vampire," Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla, and I can definitely tell you that there was a lot of. After all, the original language of both Carmilla and Dracula is that it's "an affliction," and as things went on we learned that the source of the affliction was, naturally, our dear count himself. Eventually this symbolism is what led to the Richard Matheson classic, I am Legend, and the movie version, The Last Man on Earth. In the book and subsequent film, the vampires were created by a human created virus gone rogue and turning most of mankind into a pack of savage "vampires." This idea, of an undead creating virus really hit it off with everyone's favorite two zombie flicks "Night of the Living Dead," and "Dawn of the Dead." After all, the lifetaker as personification of virus hasn't gone away. Far from it, in fact, this symbolism has taken on a whole new dimension in the world the zika virus, and the swine and bird flus. It doesn't help that we've crammed ourselves into cities, making such places claustrophobic, nor does the idea that cities are inherently dirty help the presence of disease. This isn't even going into the likes of yellow fever and the spanish flu, both of which the world was undoubtedly still reeling from during Matheson's time. Even small diseases, like strep throat or the common cold are simple reminders of the very real existence of disease in this world. Disease is a part of human existence, whether we like it or not. Death and Deathly Evils But to die as lovers may--to die together, so that they may live together. "Of course, just like disease, death is one of those things that you we as a species have a hard time coping with, or even completely understanding. Take for example the idea that the fingernails and hair continue to grow after we die. Even to this day, that concept continues to live on. How about the idea of corpses bloating with gas or even apparently moving here or there without any understanding of why. Rigor Mortis certainly must have been one of those major questions that made you wonder just what the hell way going to happen when someone woke up. Hell, it isn’t uncommon to find graves in certain parts of eastern Europe whose bodies contained a single iron rod to keep them from becoming a monster. Death is one of those things that continues to vex us, especially if it came suddenly and unexpectedly, such as many early cases of suddenly infant death syndrome. Lord knows what it must have been like to witness the first heart attack. It must have seemed like someone was literally just dying for no apparent reason. As mentioned before, in a world where people had no proper explanation for anything, it’s hard to know what exactly to do to prevent it, and when people seem to flop about for no apparent reason, that had to be a special kind of scary. In the original Carmilla, Carmilla was said to reside in a coffin during the night. In Dracula, when Lucy becomes bitten, the main characters do everything in their power to try and keep her from becoming a monster. It's telling, too, that most Romero's flicks, as well as one of the most popular television sereis have the word "dead" in them. "In both Night of the Living" and "Dawn of the Dead," there are pivotal scenes where characters who have been bitten turn into the very creatures who have been assaulting our protagonists throughout the entire film. In the Walking Dead universe, at least in the television-verse, it's also telling that even those who haven't been bitten by a walker can become one. Whether intentional or just an excuse for the world to have become so overwhelmed so quickly, this reflects the ways that the original life takers could take form. It's telling, too, that the first person to come back as a walker after being killed by a person is Shane, the member of the group who is arguably the most guilty of sin, having both slept with his comatose yet still living friend's wife and leaving a man to be killed by the walkers. This reflects how it was those who were sinful in life that become the undead after their body has stopped working. The (metaphorical) Monsters Within usThey're us. We're them and they're us. In my opinion, the lifetaker has what you could call two different sides of the same coin. The first being that of disease, and the second is that they sort of represent, out of a lack of a better term, societal taboos, or even things that are necessary and yet at the same time taboo. As I mentioned in both my vampire and zombie overview, each represents many of the taboos of the world that were present at the time of their creation. Vampires were the sheer excess of alcoholism and sexuality given form in the cases of Dracula, Lestat, Carmilla, and even Edward Cullen. Zombies represent what happens when we let go of all pretenses and look out solely for number one, whether it be the selfishness that comes with consumerism or the fact that once the fabric of society falls to pieces, we’re forced to come to grips with the fact that we may have to do somethings that we aren’t proud of. The reasons for this, I would argue, are two fold. The first is that we need some sort of scapegoat, some sort of dark figure to be the form of sin. We need for there to be a consequence, whether it be becoming a monster or the monster getting us of succumbing to our. It’s not dissimilar from how the original boogy-man was meant to be a figure to scare kids into not being bad. The other reason is, I’d argue, is as a sort of syphoning of the things that are taboo, and yet are perhaps necessary or even desirious into a singular form. Sometimes it’s to fetishize, sometimes it’s to decry. Take the vampire for example. During the vampire’s early years as gothic monster, the vampire were seen beings of sheer sexuality, or at least Dracula and Carmilla were. Keep in mind that the Victorian era was one of repressed sexual desire, one where the scientific discovers of the enlightenment somehow managed to mix their way into the cruel limitations of Christian understanding into the ideas of what’s “proper.” We see this as well with other forms of this myth throughout the world. Take the wendigo in all of its’ forms, for example. The wendigo of Native American lore was a creature that was said to have been spawned by the consumption of another human being. Now while we still look down upon cannibalism to this day, there's a very real chance that communal societies would've been especially repulsed by the concept of the communal Algonquin peoples. That being said, people may have had to resort to it out in the cold wastes. There's even what is referred to as "Wendigo Psychosis" in which people will use the Wendigo as an excuse for their desperate acts, or perhaps even their brutality. And then there's the bramarakshasa of Hindu mythology. These cannibalistic beings were once Brahmen, the highest of the Indian castes, who either refused to share their knowledge with others or who used their knowledge for selfish ends. The Brahmen are, after all, instructed to share their knowledge with others as long as they can. This doubles as a sort of perversion the idea of reincarnation. While it's possible for you to come back in another life as something animalistic, hell you can even come back as a fly, it could almost be argued that it'd be better to come back as a fly rather than this grotesque perversion of humanity. And while this does sound like it wouldn't be the best place to go for a romantic love interest, a Bollywood horror show has actually managed just that. More recently with zombies, the original Night of the Living Dead was about how beneath our veneers of civility, we’re just as cruel as can be, eating eachother with reckless abandon and stabbing our own parents. It was the undoing of everything that we thought we knew about the world. This concept is taken one step further when Dawn of the Dead came about, saying how consumerism, the purist expression of the free market, the thing that, at least for a little while, separated us from those damned, dirty commies, is making us mindless, worried only about what we can get. In the current era of 28 Days Later and the Walking Dead, zombies naturally represent what happens when we strip away any pretenses of the idea of humanity being "civalized." In essence, Zombies are a representation of selfishness and greed and corrupt a person. In Dawn, the Zombies haunt the mall even in death, and in Walking Dead and 28 Days Later, very real parallels are made several times between the living and the dead. As for other living dead, I think special mention has to be given to the original zombies. Before Romero’s treatment, in which they became more what could be “ghouls,” zombies were the creation of hatian voodoo culture. They were a mixture of what little mythology from their homelands African slaves could retain beneath the chains and whips of slavery, and their very experiences as slaves. I suppose I should specify that while the original zombies were reanimated corpses, they were actually created to be the soulless puppets of their raisers, their bodies forced to do menial tasks even in death. Think about how scary that must be to someone who undoubtedly had living relatives who were slaves, or may have even been a slave themselves. It’s bad enough that your life is spent in bondage, but your body is not even allowed rest when your soul departs it. You’re a slave in life and in death. The monsters society create are the projection of the very real monsters that society either frowns upon or secretly needs in spite of itself. Or even those that it knows are wrong but does anyway. There's also the significantly more well known Jiangshi, otherwise known as the chinese vampire in the west. These resurrected corpses were said to hop towards their intended victims, their fingernails longer from due to the (untrue) notion that the fingernails continue growing after death, and to suck the chi (the lifeforce) right out of them. It's telling that the jiangshi legend grew out of a legend about someone who, due to being buried away from their village, is reanimated and made hop all the way back home with a daoist magician. Keep in mind that, at least according to the Master, traveling away from home was considered unnecessary at best. It could even be argued that taveling away from home was how the jiangshi came to be. Something else to keep in mind is that while jiangshi were traditionally just western vampires for a while in hong kong cinema, it was during the fifth generation of chinese film making, the era when chinese cinema was becoming increasingly nostalgic for the pre-communist era china, that the jiangshi became their old selves again.
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AuthorHello all and Welcome to Jacob's Latter. Here I will be giving my opinions on everything from movies, video games and books to my general outlook on the world. Archives
January 2018
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