Are zombies the new vampires?

[Superfluous_Parentheses]

@Chronos

Reginald Shoe would like a word with you.

EDIT: Dang, too slow.

Good catch though

[Knorf]

@Diogenes_the_Cynic

There’s nothing romantic about being a zombie, nor is there anything sexy or attractive about them.

Obligatory Oglaf link (NSFW)!

[noparse]http://oglaf.com/rigormortis.html[/noparse]
NSFW!

[Little_Nemo]

I was just discussing this with my mom the other day. She’s thinking demons will be hitting it big soon (I think that’s a good guess, but it’s also been a while since we had an aliens craze…). Goodness knows the market’s been more than saturated with vampires lately.

We tried Alien, Predator, Independance Day, Mars Attacks - the idea just didn’t take off. Same with werewolves, mummies, and giant creatures. So I guess it’s time we gave demons another shot. But tell killer robots to start warming up.

[JoelUpchurch]

@Max_Torque

Nazis and zombies are about the only things the heroes can kill anymore without getting angry letters from some “Group X Anti-Defamation League”.

How about Nazi Zombies?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1278340/

[elfkin477]

@dangermom

I was just discussing this with my mom the other day. She’s thinking demons will be hitting it big soon (I think that’s a good guess, but it’s also been a while since we had an aliens craze…). Goodness knows the market’s been more than saturated with vampires lately.

There are already a ton of urban fantasy novels from this decade about demons. None of them has been a breakout hit, though.

[Enterprise]

@Little_Nemo

I read “What Maisie Knew” - great story. But the few exceptions doesn’t dispel the general fact that zombies are not protagonists - they are just plot devices that threaten the protagonists. And vampires can still occasionally function as just a threat but the general rule for them now is that they have character and motivations.

Hhhm, I must have missed where the argument changed. First up, zombies frequently are the protagonists – witness the Matheson & Matheson short story “Where There’s a Will” in the collection The Dead that Walk. Among others, anyway, including Breathers already mentioned above, and indeed, numerous others. I don’t know how many exceptions are required to make a general fact less of a general fact…
That aside, I’m not sure what the argument is here. Sometimes zombies are what you call “plot devices,” which I take to mean that they are just there to further some other aspect of the plot, such as human interactions or something, and their being zombies isn’t really the point. But that’s rare, I think. It’s more often the case that zombies are a crucial part of the plot, the antagonist, frequently even the signifier of a greater metaphorical menace than themselves. In this, they certainly follow in the vampiric footsteps.

[Max_Torque]

Popping back in to note: the full text of “What Maisie Knew” is available online from Google Books, as an excerpt from The New Dead, by agreement with the publisher. Just read it, and it is indeed a damn fine story. Hope this link works: “What Maisie Knew”.

[Little_Nemo]

That aside, I’m not sure what the argument is here.

There isn’t really an argument here. More like a discussion on what role zombies serve in modern fiction and whether they inherited that role from vampires when they were moved into a new role.