It's a little eerie how much of popular culture manages to seep into your head without you realizing it. Now a large part of this is clearly just effective advertising by the creators/pushers of products, getting even the most banal things noticed by all. I just have to admit to finding it a little concerning when I know what I'm looking at without actually knowing anything about it. As soon as I saw tonight's sticker I knew it belonged to the game Plants vs Zombies. Now everyone who reads this on a regular basis knows that I am not a video game person, so I have zero experience with/exposure to the game itself. Honestly before I started looking into this tonight I had no idea what the game even was, other than obviously dealing with plants and zombies in some manner. Reading through the Wikipedia page, it doesn't seem to be a terribly complicated game since you're really just keeping the zombies away from your area. It also feels like a unique take on these sorts of strategy games, with the planting and collecting of seeds to create your defenses. And while I may still be mildly baffled by the appeal of these kinds of things, this game is certainly still a popular one after almost 9 years. Capcom has even gone on to create 4 different games based on the original premise. There's a Twitter feed to keep players updated with new quirks to the game and what I'm guessing are fun/cute pictures for it. And they have an entire Youtube channel dedicated to gameplay breakdowns and walkthroughs. I'm also a little surprised by all of the different devices you can play this game on, I kind of thought it was just one of those phone apps people gushed over and didn't realize it started on the computer. Quickly skimming through my previous posts, I see that while I've briefly touched on zombies a couple of times I really haven't gone into too much depth about them. Although that's not terribly surprising since the two big times I've looked at zombies it was in association with a local band. So I figured I would look at this popular creature for a little bit, since they are still such a prevalent element in TV and movies. I can't say I've ever been a big zombie fan, certainly an interesting piece of storytelling but it never really captured my imagination like some things have. Well I guess that's not entirely true, I find the original idea of the zombie to be fascinating and scary in a way that the current zombie isn't. While every culture has had a fear of the undead, the word zombie that we use today is derived from Haitian folklore. What makes the Haitian zombie a little different from the zombies you'll see on things like The Walking Dead is that these creatures weren't mindless flesh craving monsters. The Haitian zombie was just an animated corpse created by a powerful sorcerer or bokor. These animated corpses were then used as personal slaves by the bokor who created them. There is also a branch of this zombie belief that claimed bits of people's souls could be captured and used as a source of power by people. In either situation though, what the zombie boils down to is that even after death you can have no rest and are trapped without a will of your own. So for a group of individuals that were already enslaved, the idea of remaining a slave even after death is a horrifying one. There are even stories out there of living people who are enslaved in a similar manner through the use of powders that cause them to appear to be dead and deprived of their will. One of my favorite stories on a Podcast I listen to actually uses this premise during their zombie section. So while being a mindless creature that craves human flesh is certainly a scary one, I think the idea of being trapped within yourself with no hope of rest even after death is far worse. While I'm on the subject of zombies tonight, I really can't end tonight's post without sharing The Cranberries song Zombie. I vaguely remember growing up with this song, my dad is a fan of The Cranberries, but this one of those things that remind me heavily of college. It is one of those sad and odd coincidences that I decided to go with tonight's theme, especially with the recent news of the lead singer's passing away today, but I can't think of a better way of ending things.
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Maggie Ondrey
An amateur photographer and writer capturing a small portion of the city. Archives
August 2017
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