Details of Anti-Zombie LARPing in an Abandoned Mall (Of Living Supremacism)
Out of all the things you will read on this blog about those who hold unfortunate Anti-Zombie prejudices.. is definitely the following. But at least it’s occasionally very funny, and even though the ‘Zombies’ are unfortunate stereotypes, they usually prevail over the treacherous and untrustworthy Survivors.
Who are playing themselves, kind of. Which says a lot about their self-image:
their last minute Christmas shopping there, nervous graduates would shop around for their first Interview Suit, teenagers would shoplift from the Claire’s Accessories. Not anymore though. Now there is no Claire’s Accessories.
Because in Friar’s Walk, everybody died. Usually more than once. Now it is a dark place, a quiet place, a graveyard of empty shop fronts, disused kitchenettes, and a tragically unused jungle gym.
But as you stand there, in the dark, if you listen carefully you can hear whispers. Because is Friar’s Walk the walls tell stories.
Stories about the massive Zombie LARP game that went on there last weekend.
These are those stories.
And what stories they are! Mostly stories of rank scheming, ruthless sabotage of one’s teammates and the frequent abandonment of colleagues to be devoured alive by the alleged Zombies that, on the whole, come out looking quite a bit better and clearly know the meaning of Solidarity:
We safely navigated our way to the saferoom, and called the helicopter. We now had to make it to the roof, fight off the hordes, and await salvation. By now we had a decent sized group, but we were woefully under equipped. In our rush up the narrow stairs, I was injured by a passing zombie. Limping, I bravely hid behind my fellow survivors, fighting off the neverending surges of the undead with nothing but melee weapons. Realising my importance in this scenario, I valiantly yelled “Look out there’s a fucking zombie” when it seemed appropriate. I even attempted to hide under the air conditioning units, alas the zombies had the same idea. I was left, cowering next to a dead pigeon, although still not regretting my generally traitorous ways. After what seemed like an eternity, the doors to the roof were open. Our rescue had arrived, we had survived! The high priest, regrettably, was taken at the last second, sacrificing himself for the greater good. The doors were closed, and relief flooded through me like some insensitive simile to do with a tsunami. We had survived, we had not been taken. My team had been…..but screw them, I was alive!
Disturbing video footage of the event is also available:
Zombie LARP – Station Zero from Antony White on Vimeo.
Particularly disturbing is the notion that Zombies are repelled by the ‘power of God’.
Hmm. What kind of God, I wonder? A devious one that isn’t much for teamwork by all appearances.
At any rate, the ZRC cannot approve of this Zombie Larp activity, as it sows unfortunate and counterproductive division between the Living and Undead communities, who clearly share a common love of abandoned merchant establishments and a fear of hobbies that don’t make one look a bit insane and/or heavily subsidize the Chinese plastics industry.
We rate it accordingly as Anti-Zombie. For shame.
Bonus: Observe the Twitter conversation between myself and one of our UK correspondents who helped document this unfortunate outing, where he gamely plays Devil’s Advocate and attempts to explain the (obviously faulty) reasoning behind the activity.
About The Author
As the main organisers of Zombie LARP, we were sorry to hear of your objections to the game. We had considered it a relatively harmless sport that actually provides significant benefits to the zombie community. It provides gainful employment for young, energetic zombies who would otherwise have nothing to do but terrorise our inner cities; it converts the living to the zombie viewpoint by simple expedient of having them become zombies; and we are always careful only to invite the hardiest, most indestructible of the undead to take part. We are very sad to hear of your verdict, and would like to invite you to discuss your concerns further – our new website is scheduled for launch next week, so perhaps that might be a suitable venue for recording a robust exchange of views on the matter?
See, you don’t even realize it but you’re stereotyping and maligning an entire community right there. Why would Zombies have ‘nothing to do but terrorise our inner cities’?
If this is some form of anti-contractionary policy, a sort of Anti-Austerity Jobs program for the Differently Animated, it’s still not helpful to perpetuate these negative stereotypes even while giving some select Zombies a chance to play ‘Uncle Zom’ for your Living friends and game attendees.
Think of how demeaning that might be for one of the Differently Animated!
We would be happy to discuss this serious issue further in any number of venues. Advancing the rights of the Zombie Community is our calling and our mission here at the ZRC.
The issue isn’t that the whole Zombie community is terrorising inner cities – but we here at Zombie LARP try to target those young zombies most at risk of committing anti-social behaviour, being drawn into gangs, and so on. We give them a new chance at undeath – a chance to make a positive contribution to a society that so often rejects them entirely. And by getting the living and the undead to engage in activities together, we often find that their differences become irrelevant. Indeed, many living people leave our events with a much deeper, more complex understanding of zombie motivations and culture.