Zombies shouldn't growl or snarl, they should babble a mixture of incomplete word sounds and whole words or sentence fragments. Every zombie should sound almost but not quite like it's trying to tell you something.
this may not be what you're saying, but what I'm hearing is that zombies should make everyone feel like they've developed sudden onset audio processing disorder.
Like if you could just hear it more clearly, you'd understand what they're saying, but in reality it's nonsense and there's nothing to understand.
And damn if it doesn't convince so many folks that their loved ones are still in there, they just need to keep them locked up safely in the barn until someone finds the cure, then everything can go back to the way they were.
THIS is exactly what this particular zombie trope is missing. Like we all understand, conceptually, that this still looks like someone they love, but it would be 1000 times more effective if it still somewhat behaved like someone they love.
oooh muscle memory. i’m not into zombie media enough to tell if this has been done or not but. zombies that will automatically reach into their pocket for their phone when they hear a ring, even if it’s dead, broken or lost. zombies that reach up to play with their hair or necklace, the same way your loved one did. zombies that bite their nails. a zombie rolling up its sleeves with perfect practice while looking at you with the utterly blank eyes of a dead animal
While listening to Magnus Archives, a few of my favorite books kept popping up in my head. I nearly mistook a book for an episode at one point, so I thought i'd make a small list to share if anyone wanted a few good books.
House of Leaves
Mark Z. Danielewski
For lack of a better term, we’ll call House of Leaves a novel. It is more of an “experience.” This is a book about a book about a film about a house that is a labyrinth. Collapse all this and what do you get?–a book that is a labyrinth. This is a labyrinth written on a typographical landscape–footnotes, appendices, poems, bars of music, letters, journal entries, in different fonts, backwards, sideways, or all alone on stunningly white pages. The book is a labyrinth, a puzzle, and yet before anything else, it is a story.
The story is about a house, a house that is bigger on the inside than on the outside. The story of this house has been documented in a film, The Navidson Record, shot by Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist, Will Navidson, as he and his family moved into their new home. A mysterious hallway–dark and cold–has suddenly appeared. This hallway proves to be much more (or less) than it seems–it becomes a seething, shifting void within the house, an ominous architecture of pure darkness and indefinable dimensions. It will threaten Navidson’s wife, Karen; his two children; his estranged brother, Tom; his friends; and finally, Navidson himself, as he becomes obsessed with exploring the impossible cavern that has opened up within his home.
In turn, The Navidson Record has become the obsession of a blind old man, Zampanò, who has assembled a massive scrapbook, the House of Leaves, full of articles, scholarship, commentary, transcripts, and personal writings all centering on the documentary. After his death, this scrapbook falls into the hands of Johnny Truant, a club-kid going nowhere fast, who becomes consumed by Zampanò’s scrapbook, by The Navidson Record, by the black-hole inside the house on Ash Tree Lane. Like Navidson, Truant is propelled by an irrepressible need to know, to see, and will stumble way beyond safety.
The Fisherman
John Langan
In upstate New York, in the woods around Woodstock, Dutchman's Creek flows out of the Ashokan Reservoir. Steep-banked, fast-moving, it offers the promise of fine fishing, and of something more, a possibility too fantastic to be true. When Abe and Dan, two widowers who have found solace in each other's company and a shared passion for fishing, hear rumors of the Creek, and what might be found there, the remedy to both their losses, they dismiss it as just another fish story. Soon, though, the men find themselves drawn into a tale as deep and old as the Reservoir. It's a tale of dark pacts, of long-buried secrets, and of a mysterious figure known as Der Fisher: the Fisherman. It will bring Abe and Dan face to face with all that they have lost, and with the price they must pay to regain it.
The Reddening
Adam L.G. Nevill
One million years of evolution didn't change our nature. Nor did it bury the horrors predating civilisation. Ancient rites, old deities and savage ways can reappear in the places you least expect.
Lifestyle journalist Katrine escaped past traumas by moving to a coast renowned for seaside holidays and natural beauty. But when a vast hoard of human remains and prehistoric artefacts is discovered in nearby Brickburgh, a hideous shadow engulfs her life.
Helene, a disillusioned lone parent, lost her brother, Lincoln, six years ago. Disturbing subterranean noises he recorded prior to vanishing, draw her to Brickburgh's caves. A site where early humans butchered each other across sixty thousand years. Upon the walls, images of their nameless gods remain.
Amidst rumours of drug plantations and new sightings of the mythical red folk, it also appears that the inquisitive have been disappearing from this remote part of the world for years. A rural idyll where outsiders are unwelcome and where an infernal power is believed to linger beneath the earth. A timeless supernormal influence that only the desperate would dream of confronting. But to save themselves and those they love, and to thwart a crimson tide of pitiless barbarity, Kat and Helene are given no choice. They were involved and condemned before they knew it.
The Hollow Places
T. Kingfisher
A young woman discovers a strange portal in her uncle’s house, leading to madness and terror in this gripping new novel.
Pray they are hungry.
Kara finds these words in the mysterious bunker that she’s discovered behind a hole in the wall of her uncle’s house. Freshly divorced and living back at home, Kara now becomes obsessed with these cryptic words and starts exploring the peculiar bunker—only to discover that it holds portals to countless alternate realities. But these places are haunted by creatures that seem to hear thoughts…and the more you fear them, the stronger they become.
The Revival
Stephen King
In a small New England town, in the early 60s, a shadow falls over a small boy playing with his toy soldiers. Jamie Morton looks up to see a striking man, the new minister. Charles Jacobs, along with his beautiful wife, will transform the local church. The men and boys are all a bit in love with Mrs Jacobs; the women and girls – including Jamie’s mother and beloved sister – feel the same about Reverend Jacobs. With Jamie, the Reverend shares a deeper bond, based on their fascination with simple experiments in electricity.
Then tragedy strikes the Jacobs family; the preacher curses God, mocking all religious belief, and is banished from the shocked town.
Jamie has demons of his own. In his mid-thirties, he is living a nomadic lifestyle of bar-band rock and roll. Addicted to heroin, stranded, desperate, he sees Jacobs again – a showman on stage, creating dazzling ‘portraits in lightning’ – and their meeting has profound consequences for both men. Their bond becomes a pact beyond even the Devil’s devising, and Jamie discovers that revival has many meanings. Because for every cure there is a price…
Yellow Wallpaper
Charlotte Perkins Stetson
A woman and her husband rent a summer house, but what should be a restful getaway turns into a suffocating psychological battle. This chilling account of postpartum depression and a husband's controlling behavior in the guise of treatment will leave you breathless.
Horrorstor
Grady Hendrix
Something strange is happening at the Orsk furniture superstore in Cleveland, Ohio. Every morning, employees arrive to find broken Kjerring bookshelves, shattered Glans water goblets, and smashed Liripip wardrobes. Sales are down, security cameras reveal nothing, and store managers are panicking.
To unravel the mystery, three employees volunteer to work a nine-hour dusk-till-dawn shift. In the dead of the night, they’ll patrol the empty showroom floor, investigate strange sights and sounds, and encounter horrors that defy the imagination.
So all of these books give me some kind of Magnus vibes but especially the Fisherman and House of Leaves
"I did not like to be touched, but it was a strange dislike. I did not like to be touched because I craved it too much. I wanted to be held very tight so I would not break."
izzy806
origamiaround
blakekathryn
kaledo-art
stormborns
tangentwithtanner
kianamaiart
