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beccaelizabethToday I was thinking on my old Zombie James Bond plot bunny, but without looking it up so I don't remember what I wrote last time. Two people get blown up, one a very old zombie, one a modern day guy. The zombie's handlers try and raise him and get a kind of amalgam of the two. So we get a new guy learning all about the organisation but with leet skillz if he doesn't mind letting the bits of the other dead dude run the show.
Was thinking today, new guy should be a modern technical dude, and also a black guy. Really old guy should be a white guy with blue eyes and lots of combat skills. The joined person is mostly black, but with blue eyes and white scars or mismatched hands. It also helps if the new guy is left handed and the old guy right handed, or tother way around, because then they can have different skills in different hands and be sort of ambidextrous as a team. It's a little like learn-to-love-your-symbiote stories but without voices in your head per se, just sometimes being a passenger while violence happens. So it's a little like werewolf stories in that violence sometimes happens without consulting your higher brain functions. Stories about difficulty of controlling one's temper, always useful. But also it's techie black guy being remade into scary black guy against his will. Like a stereotype is trying to eat him. That could be interesting.
Zombie stories weren't scary because zombies could eat you, they're scary because you could get turned into a zombie, and even death doesn't end the work. So, here's this guy who could reasonably expect that being blown up is the end of his day job, but nooooo. Her Majesty expects a few more centuries work out of him.
Forced labour, being locked up to do work, or unless you do work, I was thinking US prison systems and lots of black dudes, but UK benefits systems are doing their best to go there. Connection needs poking.
Zombies in Sean of the Dead, the beginning bit where you can't tell commuters from zombies, or Dead Set with the zombies in the mall at the very end (was that the one, watching themselves on TV?), those are modern zombies. Stuck shambling along working empty work forever.
But zombies in the classic sense are mindless, and I want people more like dead Owen, stuck in a corpse and still at work. Does that change things? Are they actually zombies then? What's the problem with being a revenant if you're still you in there?
Well, Owen had plenty of problems. Can't eat, sleep, or shag. Feeling disconnected from everything. That feeling after a major life changing accident that one life is over, done, ended, and now you don't know how to be you any more. Add to that inability to quit a job you never applied for, and there's really a lot of problem. And I'm back to the disability benefits thing with work related activity going on forever.
I also keep looping back to the creepiness of transplants, but I hate when stories do that, stuff that saves lives isn't creepy. Except, you know, for giving me the creeps. Must poke that idea a lot. Because we can do hand transplants, so evil hand stories are Not Cool, but, well, still such a creepy idea.
So I was going to mash Bond movie plots and add zombies to get fun out of it. Lots of blowing stuff up and being all super spy. Which is a bit Chuck if you've got a tech geek with instant skills. Still fun though.
I was pondering today making revenants allergic to holy items and unable to go on holy ground without lots of pain and eventually rotting. Give them a supernatural barrier as a flip side to the being immune to most kinds of pain and damage. Then there'd be the heroic scene of pushing into a church to stop the bad thing - probably another bomb, given that I blew them up at the start - and that would give the tech geek a thing to do the older dude couldn't, fix the bomb, and bring them around full circle defeating the same dudes with the same tech tricks they had at the start. And then they'd collapse as the zombie spell couldn't fight the holy ground any more, and maybe the two dudes could have a chat in the afterlife. Tell each other to move on and leave the duty to them. Finally agree to the new team up.
I don't know though, how much do I want to do with the two personalities bit? Do I really just want a new zombie recruit?
Do I want this plot bunny at all?
I was thinking on integrating it with my superhero universe or the one with the King of Dust and Ashes. But while both have magic, they're dealing in different ways. The Shade dude is using calligraphy ink to make shadow magic, direct spells, inspired as much by Woochi as by comics art. And the King of Dust and Ashes has gone right Neverwhere, where all the words are worlds, metaphor is concrete, and you can go live in the past or learn things at the All's Fair. They're not really about zombies with bombs. Different uses of magic.
They could fit but they're slightly different genres I think.
Zombie Bond is a perfectly good bunny on its own.
I should just write some of these properly. I'm not a writer, I'm a bunny generator. Is no use.
Was thinking today, new guy should be a modern technical dude, and also a black guy. Really old guy should be a white guy with blue eyes and lots of combat skills. The joined person is mostly black, but with blue eyes and white scars or mismatched hands. It also helps if the new guy is left handed and the old guy right handed, or tother way around, because then they can have different skills in different hands and be sort of ambidextrous as a team. It's a little like learn-to-love-your-symbiote stories but without voices in your head per se, just sometimes being a passenger while violence happens. So it's a little like werewolf stories in that violence sometimes happens without consulting your higher brain functions. Stories about difficulty of controlling one's temper, always useful. But also it's techie black guy being remade into scary black guy against his will. Like a stereotype is trying to eat him. That could be interesting.
Zombie stories weren't scary because zombies could eat you, they're scary because you could get turned into a zombie, and even death doesn't end the work. So, here's this guy who could reasonably expect that being blown up is the end of his day job, but nooooo. Her Majesty expects a few more centuries work out of him.
Forced labour, being locked up to do work, or unless you do work, I was thinking US prison systems and lots of black dudes, but UK benefits systems are doing their best to go there. Connection needs poking.
Zombies in Sean of the Dead, the beginning bit where you can't tell commuters from zombies, or Dead Set with the zombies in the mall at the very end (was that the one, watching themselves on TV?), those are modern zombies. Stuck shambling along working empty work forever.
But zombies in the classic sense are mindless, and I want people more like dead Owen, stuck in a corpse and still at work. Does that change things? Are they actually zombies then? What's the problem with being a revenant if you're still you in there?
Well, Owen had plenty of problems. Can't eat, sleep, or shag. Feeling disconnected from everything. That feeling after a major life changing accident that one life is over, done, ended, and now you don't know how to be you any more. Add to that inability to quit a job you never applied for, and there's really a lot of problem. And I'm back to the disability benefits thing with work related activity going on forever.
I also keep looping back to the creepiness of transplants, but I hate when stories do that, stuff that saves lives isn't creepy. Except, you know, for giving me the creeps. Must poke that idea a lot. Because we can do hand transplants, so evil hand stories are Not Cool, but, well, still such a creepy idea.
So I was going to mash Bond movie plots and add zombies to get fun out of it. Lots of blowing stuff up and being all super spy. Which is a bit Chuck if you've got a tech geek with instant skills. Still fun though.
I was pondering today making revenants allergic to holy items and unable to go on holy ground without lots of pain and eventually rotting. Give them a supernatural barrier as a flip side to the being immune to most kinds of pain and damage. Then there'd be the heroic scene of pushing into a church to stop the bad thing - probably another bomb, given that I blew them up at the start - and that would give the tech geek a thing to do the older dude couldn't, fix the bomb, and bring them around full circle defeating the same dudes with the same tech tricks they had at the start. And then they'd collapse as the zombie spell couldn't fight the holy ground any more, and maybe the two dudes could have a chat in the afterlife. Tell each other to move on and leave the duty to them. Finally agree to the new team up.
I don't know though, how much do I want to do with the two personalities bit? Do I really just want a new zombie recruit?
Do I want this plot bunny at all?
I was thinking on integrating it with my superhero universe or the one with the King of Dust and Ashes. But while both have magic, they're dealing in different ways. The Shade dude is using calligraphy ink to make shadow magic, direct spells, inspired as much by Woochi as by comics art. And the King of Dust and Ashes has gone right Neverwhere, where all the words are worlds, metaphor is concrete, and you can go live in the past or learn things at the All's Fair. They're not really about zombies with bombs. Different uses of magic.
They could fit but they're slightly different genres I think.
Zombie Bond is a perfectly good bunny on its own.
I should just write some of these properly. I'm not a writer, I'm a bunny generator. Is no use.