2nd November 2010, 9:24 AM
(This post was last modified: 2nd November 2010, 9:37 AM by Dark Jaguar.)
Well now NOT using the word zombie comes off as forced because you see it in everything. Zombie may be "generic", but it's accurate. I mean I don't call my cat a "stalker" or "prowler", I call it a cat, and movies about killer cats call them cats too. Everyone calls them zombies these days, and I can't think of anyone who can't take a zombie story seriously if they use the word zombie. I mean this isn't 28 days later. There was a rotting bifurcated zombie dragging its guts across the lawn. There's no confusion here.
It's like how in the 90s, they stopped saying the v-word to describe vampires, calling them "night walkers" and stuff for a while. Eventually, that got old and now we're back to calling them vampires again. Same with werewolves. For a while people tossed out "lupines" and "licans", but now it's back to wolf-man and werewolf as god intended. I mean I'm willing to allow for a growing and changing language, but when they just sort of come up with this stuff out of nowhere, and at the same time expect us to think it's all happening in a version of "our world", it kinda falls apart, because our world is fully aware of zombies, vampires, and werewolves and has words we use right now to describe them.
Perhaps this Penny Arcade comic will make the point clear.
<img src="http://art.penny-arcade.com/photos/215546869_oiifJ-L-2.jpg">
It's like how in the 90s, they stopped saying the v-word to describe vampires, calling them "night walkers" and stuff for a while. Eventually, that got old and now we're back to calling them vampires again. Same with werewolves. For a while people tossed out "lupines" and "licans", but now it's back to wolf-man and werewolf as god intended. I mean I'm willing to allow for a growing and changing language, but when they just sort of come up with this stuff out of nowhere, and at the same time expect us to think it's all happening in a version of "our world", it kinda falls apart, because our world is fully aware of zombies, vampires, and werewolves and has words we use right now to describe them.
Perhaps this Penny Arcade comic will make the point clear.
<img src="http://art.penny-arcade.com/photos/215546869_oiifJ-L-2.jpg">
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)