We hope you'll find this blog an educational, entertaining, and inspiring source of information, whether you're recently undead, a long-time member of the differently animated, or a still-living friend of your fallen, yet risen again, brethren. Everyone with an interest in zombie rights is welcome!
We told you about this game before on the ZRC blog, but ‘All Zombies Must Die’ is currently being exhibited at PAX and there are new details available:
All Zombies Must Die is a twin-stick shooter where you and three friends sit around your living room (no online co-op yet, but it may be added later), grab a drink, and blast a few zombies together. Shooting zombies isn’t the only draw, however. There is a hilarious narrative tying all of the action together that got more than a few laughs out of me during my demo. The melee weapons have a charge attack that can lead to some funny moments (I got the “leatherface” combo for chainsawing through a group of brain-eaters), and as you go through the game, you’ll get the opportunity to upgrade your abilities so you can become a more fine-tuned undead destroyer. There’s also a crafting system that (as the name suggests) allows you to combine different materials into more powerful weapons — the flaming chainsaw is my favorite so far.
Yes, it’s another Anti-Zombie twin-stick shooter that will be available on the Xbox and PS3 for download… which has to be one of the most over-saturated markets imaginable by now. I’ve reviewed a few here on the blog already, and if you go looking through the Marketplace you can easily spot many, many more, all clamoring for a bit of your lucre.
What sets this game apart? Apparently it’s the sense of ‘humor’ it takes toward murdering the innocent virtual Differently Animated.
Why anyone finds that funny I do not claim to understand.
Anyway, ‘All Zombies Must Die’ will apparently be available this fall, so look for an angry, possibly expletive filled review then.
I can understand how the general public might assume that the ZRC would be in favor of censorship of the violent and depraved Anti-Zombie media, but I can assure you that is not the case. We believe, here at the ZRC, in the marketplace of ideas, and that the best way to counter Anti-Zombie, even Living Supremacist prejudice is with cogent arguments and persuasion, not censorship.
After all, if unpopular opinions are silenced, where would that leave the pioneers of the Zombie Rights Movement? Sadly, our own ideas are often pretty unpopular.
We’ve talked about this previously, and about Australia’s extremely troubled and inconsistent history with censorship relating to Anti-Zombie AND Zombie-related media in the past. This tendency to squelch the free flow of ideas has, sadly, continued to rear its ugly head of late:
SEGA Australia has confirmed that House of the Dead: Overkill – Extended Cut has been refused a classification in Australia.
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The PS3 game was supposed to launch on October 27th with Playstation Move support, but the Australian Classification Board gave the game a ‘Refused Classification’ rating.
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It is also interesting to note that the original Wii game was classified as MA15+ in December 2008, so the board seems to believe the two new levels make the game too dangerous for the Australian public. In other news, the board recently rated films such as I Scored a Soccer Mom! Vol 7 and 8th Street Latinas Vol 7, along with films that have far more NSFW titles.
The Zombie Rights Campaign objects strenuously. One tragic side-effect of this censorship is of course to drive the discussion underground, or online, where Anti-Zombie voices often go unanswered, except by advocacy groups such as ourselves.
So here we have yet another instance where the marketplace of ideas is impeded, and free discussion thwarted, in the name of protecting citizens from themselves. For shame, Australian government. You’re really not helping.
(BTW, if you want a great argument against ratings agencies like the ESRB and the MPAA in general, look no further than their foreign counterparts, which have actual legal authority, and consistently abuse it in cases like this. Thankfully here in America the First Amendment prevents the worst abuses of the pro-censorship crowd, although both the MPAA and the ESRB in the past have managed to punish those who espouse unpopular ideas or defy their authority.)
From a ZRC Twitter pal comes a tale to illustrate how silly the Zombie Apocalypse genre really is, by substituting another unlikely foe of Living humans for the Undead.
Still, Terry has been hunted his whole life, and nobody has caught him yet. Using stealth techniques learned from a lifetime of scavenging the wreckage of the old cities, he circles his enemy, keeps beyond the reach of its senses. Eventually, he’ll find a safe vantage point, and then the hunter will become the huntee.
He finds his spot, a still-standing concrete pillar that offers a clear line of sight to the enemy. It’ll mean leaving cover, but if he’s quick enough, it might just work. Terry risks a glance around the edge of the pillar. The enemy is there, watching with tiny black eyes. And it’s smiling. That’s the thing Terry hates most of all. The enemy is always smiling.
I suggest you read the entire thing, and remember, if you’re going to worry about Zombies taking over the world, you might as well also fret about the Dolphin menace.. and keep watching the seas.
Every year at 8:29 p.m. on August 29, zombies invade Bardstown Road between Eastern Parkway and Bearno’s in the Highlands. People spice it up with themes for their zombie costumes including brides, hello kitty, Adam and Eve, and I even saw Darth Vader once (Not a zombie. Just Darth Vader??). The zombie walk trend is not unique to Louisville: it occurs all over the world. Louisville has one of the largest events in the United States according to recorded statistics.
Louisville Zombie Attack began as a birthday celebration for three friends who share birthdays with the king of pop, Michael Jackson. Word of mouth spread, and it grew to the large event that it is today. An estimated 5,000 zombies, survivalists and victims converged on the Highlands last year, resembling an undead mardi gras. Although there was a permit in place to close the street, the amount of people left some business
owners, the police department and others worried about safety issues and upset about vandalism.
Yes, tragically Zombie Walks are often plagued with such doubts and concerns because of the negative stereotyping of the Differently Animated by much of the media. Madison’s Zombie Walk went off without a hitch, but the annual Halloween celebration here has been slowly strangled by corporate management, and it’s a pity because the city is gradually losing a Zombie Friendly public gathering.
Not so in Louisville, where concerned Zombie Allies came together with a plan:
This year: it’s taken a lot of work and effort from some key people to make it happen – or rather, to make it happen safely with a street closure permit. These people really deserve a
round of applause from the legions of undead fans. Richard Teachout of Zombie City (an attraction at Asylum Haunted Scream Park), George Timmering, Owner of Bearno’s, his manager Charlie Cronin, and Jon King (one of the friends who started the tradition) have been working for months to take necessary precautions to keep the zombie walk alive legally and safely.
And The Zombie Rights Campaign salutes them for their efforts! Truly an outstanding job, and it sounds like a fantastic event for Zombies and Living people to come together has been preserved for another year and, one would hope, for future generations as well.
Not only did the key supporters of this wonderful Zombie outing come up with funding for a sizeable off-duty police presence, they have assembled volunteers to powerwash the streets and buildings along the ‘Attack’ route in case any Undead citizen, through no fault of their own, happens to ooze a little.
Yes, I know, it’s terribly unfair that Zombies are held accountable in ways that the Living never are (when’s the last time anyone powerwashed after smokers left cigarette butts or someone smeared gum on the sidewalk?) but meeting the city’s demands head-on in this manner was both forward thinking and great community relations.
PR is important when fighting for Undead Rights.
The ZRC is very happy to learn that the ‘Zombie Attack’ will go forward again and create a fun atmosphere for building mutual understanding between the Living and the Differently Animated. Very happy indeed.
“With added planning and organization time, we think it will get better each year,” concluded Teachout. “It’s a great fun thing to get people together and keep Louisville weird – we’re all about having fun.”
The Zombie Rights Movement thanks these proud friends of Zombiekind for their hard and diligent work.
Some of the fundraising dips lightly into Anti-Zombie imagery but on the whole this sounds like a lovely event that the Zombie Ally community might consider chipping in for:
Come join us for some rockin’ undead fun at Visalia’s third-annual VISALIA ZOMBIE BALL & CRAWL, brought to you by none other than Central Valley Horror Club – the first and only horror-themed organization in Central California. Join us for a night of live and dead entertainment, a zombie crawl, group THRILLER dance, a costume contest, prizes and giveaways, and the crowning of our second Creepshow Queen!
Our first two events were such a great success (our second event in 2010 resurrected around 400 zombies), and we are so excited to bring them back from the grave…again! We have added many special treats and surprises to this year’s Zombie Ball & Crawl.
We will kick off the night with a ZOMBIE CRAWL down Mooney Blvd. After the Zombie Crawl has returned back to Howie & Son’s, we will begin the group THRILLER dance! We will then kick off the Zombie Ball!
Doesn’t that just sound awesome? Awesome and celebratory of Undead Culture?
It’s an all-ages event, kids are welcome, they have all sorts of events and contests and the focus on Creepshow and Thriller strongly suggests a Zombie Friendly angle. All in all, it looks great!
So if you have a few bucks to spare, consider chipping in. If you’re in the area, definitely go check it out. Send us back pictures and a review if you like, we love promoting Zombie Positive public events.
With seating for more than 100 on its sidewalk patio, the restaurant’s interior will have an apocalyptic décor featuring classic movie posters and custom murals of zombies attacking Des Moines. Food will be served until 2 a.m. Sunday through Thursday and 3 a.m. Friday and Saturday.
Anti-Zombie murals? Really? Awww.. come on! I was looking forward to going there some weekend!
I’m seriously and legitimately bummed out here. The restaurant sounded neat, the food sounded amazing:
The beef will be ground in-house. Burgers will be cooked on a custom-made grill with a press designed to bash the burgers and create an exterior with a crusty char. In all, there will be about 20 burger combinations on the menu and 80 sandwich mixes, including hot dogs, chicken breasts and an array of vegetarian selections such as veggie burgers and portobello mushroom caps.
Alas, even the probably-delicious food will be themed in such a way as to make Zombies uncomfortable:
The “They’re coming to get you, Barbara” burger has cheese, bacon, caramelized onions and two grilled-cheese sandwiches instead of a bun.
Ironically this burger could instantly give any Living patron a massive coronary, so driving off the Zombie patrons is a questionable move:
So ends the dream of a Zombie-themed, Zombie Friendly place to grab a great burger, at least for now.
For shame. For shame, and what a shame!
The Zombie Burger + Drink Lab apparently opens at 11 am on Tuesday, and breaks my heart about the same time.
Normally here on the ZRC blog, the most we discuss dietary matters is in our ongoing effort to dispel certain harmful myths about Zombies and their nutritional requirements (ie, that all Zombies eat human brains, that they cannot control their craving for your flesh, etc).
However today we have an example of advocates of a different sort of specialized diet using Anti-Zombie tropes and prejudice to advance their cause:
Ever worry that flesh-eating zombies might start multiplying and come after you? Well, not to fear because The Vegan Zombie is ready to fend them off.
The Vegan Zombie was started by a vegan chef looking to combine his love for horror movies and veganism. The site provides how-to videos for making various vegan meals, as well as what to do should you find yourself the victim of a zombie attack.
Yes, it’s part cooking-show, part Anti-Zombie spectacle.
But what’s the angle? Well, it seems that in this fictional universe, vegans are the Survivors, as not consuming animal products either renders you resistant to the ‘infection’ or perhaps said ‘infection’ uses any animal product as a vector… which is a rather extremely unrealistic scenario, and quite frankly reeks of fantasy wish-fulfillment:
Q: Why zombies?
A: Why not? Horror films are fun and interesting and so are zombies…even the slow ones. We thought it would be interesting to put a vegan twist on the cliche bloodthirsty zombies. We have a script for a short film ‘The Vegan Zombie’.
Q: What’s the film going to be about and when can we expect to see it?
A: The film is about a zombie outbreak in which vegans are highly resilient to infection (that’s all we can say for now).
We’ve seen this sort of thing many, many times before. Far too numerous to list here are the examples of someone taking a behavior, cultural practice, institution or, basically, any other personal bete noir and labelling it ‘Zombie’, or attempting to associate it with Zombies in the hope that the prevailing negative cultural stigma attached to Different Animation will taint their personal nemesis. (For many examples, check out our tag ‘Don’t Use the Zed Word’)
Nevermind how the Zombies feel about all this, because, to the insensitive and unenlightened out there, Zombie feelings don’t count.
Instead you get tired Zombie Apocalypse fearmongering in an attempt to demonize both the Undead (many of whom have no choice in the matter of going vegan thank you very much) along with everyone who consumes anything from an animal:
“This is the beginning of a unique group of vegans ready to fend off the flesh eating mainstream…The zombie apocalypse is coming and we will be ready. Infection will originate from within the meat flesh the people zombies consume. Vegans will be one step ahead…”
Brother. “Flesh eating mainstream”? Seriously? If these individuals think Vegans are some sort of oppressed minority, they should try Unliving as a Zombie for a few days.
Instead they’re busy making the most violent cooking shows in history, putting the Undead man down before showing you how to make french toast.
Case in point:
The ZRC of course has no particular position on veganism, beyond noting that the fringe groups who try and peddle the notion that it’s the state of the human animal in nature are barking mad. But so what if being a Vegan isn’t ‘natural’ per se? We do lots of ‘unnatural’ things (blogging?) and heck, many Zombies, strictly speaking, do not originate from ‘Nature’. So what? Unnatural stuff is often fun, get out there, Unlive a little.
[Although, if you are considering a vegan diet, do something else unnatural and take vitamin supplements. Unlike natural herbivores like cattle and rabbits, humans have no system to reliably produce some required dietary inputs, like Vitamin B12, and can't get them from plants alone.
Fun fact: rabbits eat some of their own waste partly in order to obtain B12, because, like all animals, they lack the ability to make it, and it's not found in plants. In mammals, B12 is either absorbed from something you eat (ie, another animal), or made in the intestines by bacteria. Problem: you can't just absorb it there too. Solution: redigest (or ingest) your already-eaten food, which also allows digestion of cellulose. Rabbits eat (some) of their own solid waste. Cattle chew their cud. You get the idea.
Humans, needless to say, shouldn't generally do that. Eww. So: vitamin supplements!
Another startlingly unsympathetic-to-Zombies interview with a major player in ‘The Walking Dead’ tv series is out now. A small and distasteful sample:
Q: Have you created any signature zombies for Season 2 akin to Bicycle Girl?
A: If I tell you about it, it gives the gag away! But I will say one of the signature zombies we did for this season took us five weeks to build and is the most elaborate thing we did on the show. And we were working on it up to an hour before we were shooting it on-set. But there’s a lot more to do this season in regards to the way the story propels itself forward. There’s one thing that’s really interesting that they’ve established, which is this herd mentality — the idea that they travel in these big packs and that there could be hundreds and hundreds of walkers in these herds. The first episode we come upon one of these herds and it’s just terrifying.
Talking about Zombies as if they’re not people, calling them ‘it’, referring to their social gatherings as ‘herds’, yeah, you get a pretty good feel for the twisted mindset of Mr. Nicotero here.
It appears that the second season of ‘The Walking Dead’ will plumb new depths in the on-screen defamation and demonization of the Undead. How tragic.
We were linked to a new webseries at what has to be one of the worst possible times via the ZRC Twitter: during last weekend’s marathon computer meltdown.
Thanks again by the way to Microsoft for that one. I’m STILL reinstalling software.
At any rate, what to think of ‘Zombie Hunter’? Well, the way it was billed to us:
@Zombie_Rights An irreverent documentary on incompetent zombie hunters youtu.be/DLOK-4sGMEc Though you might like it.
After watching the six current episodes of ‘Zombie Hunter’, apparently based on a novel entitled ‘Fields of Rot’, I have to say it presents the ZRC with a dilemma. Overtly, it’s Anti-Zombie, but at the same time it’s also a satire of both your standard survivalist tv series programming (think Discovery Channel) and the explosion we’ve all seen in Youtube-based Zombie Apocalypse fare.
In the ‘Zombie Hunter’ series, the dreaded Zombie Apocalypse is finally upon mankind, and the result seems to be a bunch of yahoos wandering around hunting the Undead and seeking attention. Zombie ‘Hunter’ Nathan Greene thinks he knows it all, and isn’t afraid to tell you as much in profanity-laden rants. Only, as rapidly becomes clear, Greene’s ego is matched only by his incompetence and lack of actual knowledge about his chosen prey.
The question from a Zombie Rights perspective is, how do we assess the series’ attitudes about the Differently Animated and separate them from the unreliable narrator that is Nathan Greene? Clearly the series showcases a lot of hurtful stereotypes about the Undead, and some are apparently supposed to be objective reality, as seen by the camera, and not just Greene’s fantasizing.
I think we get at least a peek into a more tolerant worldview in Episode 4, ‘The Gore Suit’, where Nathan gets the opportunity to actually speak with a Zombie for a few minutes, and the results are surprising. I’ve embedded the video below.
A bit ambiguous, isn’t it? A tinge of ‘Marvel Zombies’ or ‘Return of the Living Dead’ here with the suffering and sentient Undead.
In the end, Zombies in the world of ‘Zombie Hunter’ may be ravenous, rapidly decaying monstrosities, or they may be misunderstood addicts suffering from terrible cravings, but one thing is clear: they’re not the self-important goofballs roaming the countryside with a camera. They’re not the butt of the joke… but they’re not exactly sympathetic either.
It’s a tough call, but for now, we’re rating the ‘Zombie Hunter’ series as Anti-Zombie. More material like Episode 4 and we might be able to bump it up to Zombie Tolerant.
