A thought on Affliction

[a_sporking_rat]

First, some rat news:

- Sam's mass is growing again :C

- I let Sid and Ratsputin play on my bed, and it's cold now so they just cuddled together under my blanket and made pissy faces at me every time I lifted my comfort and checked on them because MOM YOU'RE MESSING UP OUR SECRET FORT! Then one of them peed in there ON MY BED and I think it was Ratsputin because he was evicted from it shortly afterward. Sid came out at one point and got in my lap, and I thought he was being friendly but he pooped on me and then went back into the blankets. HE JUST DIDN'T WANT TO POOP IN HIS FORT!

- There are ferrets and baby hamsters at the shelter. Dad won't let me get the ferrets so I'm hoping I can have a hamster as a consolation prize.

And now, I am about to make something that I expect might be an unpopular statement, and I would like you to know that I am fully prepared for the resultant criticism of it and in fact welcome it, because I'm not sure I actually have all the facts in making it:

I thought that LKH actually did a good job making the zombie plague in Affliction fit in with how her universe already worked. I fully thought she was going to break the fuck out of her own canon just to get on the Romero-zombie bandwagon, and she didn't. At least, not as far as I can tell. Granted, I only read a spork (a lovely, wonderful spork by Duamuteffe, by the way!) and I was quite tired and skimming at some points, so I may have gotten some stuff wrong, so please do correct me if that is the case. But here is what I got from it:

There are what appears to be zombies running around attacking people, and with no animator in sight responsible for them. This would appear to break canon rules of all zombies needing to be raised by an animator, and of almost all zombie being harmless unless ordered to attack (the exception being animators, who, if raised as zombies, will be uncontrollable flesh-eaters, and that whole 'murder victim zombies go after their killers' retcon). These "zombies" are also stronger and faster than zombies in the series have thus far been shown to be, and, if one bites you, you become one, another huge break from canon in the direction of the more currently popular film zombies.

Except it turns out they're not zombies. They're rotting vampires and are being mistaken for zombies because they're appearing in daylight, not just night. It turns out that Morte D'Amour is possessing the younger members of his bloodline, forcing them into daylight (which rotters can survive), and making them bite people. I realize in a universe where everyone knows vampires exist and rotters are one of the types, people should generally know by now that, hey, rotters can move in daylight so these dudes are just as likely to be them as they are some kind of "new" zombie breed, but this is actually accounted for---it's stated in canon that though not a rare type of vampire in general, rotting vampires are rare in the USA, so it makes sense that most Americans wouldn't immediately recognize them. Americans are, on the other hand, familiar with zombies, given that there are several animating firms in the USA, and I'm sure that there have been cases in the past (or at least fear of it happening) of animators using zombies to commit crimes, so the idea that "some animator is controlling all these zombies and making them act weird" is not an unreasonable initial assumption over rotting vamps when the "zombies" first appeared.

Of course, then comes in the "if one bites you, you become one" bit. That gets explained too. It's been established canon before this book that a bite from a rotter can cause the tissue around the bite site to rot, and can even spread and result in the death of the victim (a process called "corruption" in canon). It turns out that this bite also lets Morte D'amour posses the victim once they've rotted sufficiently, even if they got the bite not from his own real body but the body of another rotter that he was possessing when it bit them. So these aren't zombies. These are rotters and their rotting victims possessed by the rot king. And since rotters are so rare in the States, most people are not going to be aware that this can happen, hence why the initial panic of a "zombie plague" could very realistically start up until someone pointed out that this is actually a rot thing, which should have happened...except LKH again manages to cover why no one would: Because it's not a rotter thing, it's a Morte D'Amour thing. It's something only he can do. Any rotter can make you rot with its bite, but only he can take control of them with it, from what I can tell, and Morte D'Amour doesn't seem to have ever been on American soil at all until this book, hence no precedent for this ever happening.

However, American history is of course not the be-all end-all of everything that has ever happened. There still surely must have been some case of Morte D'Amour doing this before, right? Well, remember, Morte D'Amour is most likely old-as-fuck like all the Council members are as a rule, so it's entirely possible that the last time he did this was hundreds of years ago, and that he's been sitting on this ability ever since, keeping it secret so it can be used as a weapon of surprise as it was here. So it's believable to me that nobody had any idea what the fuck they were actually dealing with until the truth was uncovered. Now, I think it could have been done better---like going through history books looking for a similar "plague" and finding a case and one of their older vampires saying they remembered something about it and that points of MdA and such--but I can still buy it as is.

And, most importantly, LKH didn't bust her own canon to pull this off. And that was all I asked for. It is also enjoyable to me for RP reasons, because it means my buds and I can set our characters during this "zombie plague" and have a good fun "zombie apocalypse" RP set in the ABverse without breaking any actual rules about AB zombies because these aren't really zombies, yay!

Naturally, of course, none of this changes the fact that Affliction still sucked major rotting donkey balls, and also that "don't break your own canon hideously" is a bare fucking minimum requirement for most authors, not something I should be pleasantly surprised at. And I'm also not entirely sure I actually got all this right; LKH may in fact have had other less-sensical things going on and my brain just re-arranged them all this way so I could understand what the hell I was reading about, because even filtered through a spork this was a baffling trainwreck.

Comments

[okami-no-yume.livejournal.com]

I'm dead tired, so apologies in advance if this comes off as the mad ramblings of a sleep-deprived mind. NANO's kicking my butt.

Anyways, I've made my AB fanfic idea into this year's NANO, and while I may not be the greatest writer ever, at least I can take comfort in the fact that my writing couldn't be as bad as LKH's is. I actually put some degree effort into what I write. LKH's novels are just slapdash and sloppy in nearly every way imaginable. For the most part, I find it easier to disregard a lot of her so called "canon" because a lot of it is such a contradictory clusterfuck. (Hey, alliteration!)

That being said, I am impressed that she actually stuck to her own canon in regards to Affliction. She does occasionally have a solid idea. As the saying goes, sometimes even a blind hog roots up an acorn. The thing about writing for this fandom is digging through the muck for the few good gems there are when it comes to characters, plotlines, and the Universe itself.

I think I will forever lament what could have been if the Anitaverse were placed in the hands of a capable author. The wasted potential almost hurts.

[a-sporking-rat.livejournal.com]

I think I will forever lament what could have been if the Anitaverse were placed in the hands of a capable author. The wasted potential almost hurts.

I knooooow! It actually made me lie awake one night wishing so, so hard that I had come up with it first instead of her. I'm certainly not the BEST author to take its reins, but, like you, I know I still couldn't be as bad as she is.

And good luck with NANO!

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

The phrase "contradictory clusterfuck" pleases me greatly for some reason.

[duamuteffe.livejournal.com]

Glad you liked the spork ^_ ^ And you made it all sound very coherent - I applaud the effort! I'm still not 100% sure how the whole transmission thing works in the book; I know the rotting vampires bite the zombies and the zombies become infected with...something... and want to eat people. And somebody's bites infect people with rot and they die, but I am still not certain it was explained in-book that it was the zombies or the rotting vampires.Also I'm still really confused about how the infected dead rise as flesh-eating zombies, which I think is what happens in the morgue? Or did the LoD raise them from a distance? I don't think it's ever specifically explained.

[a-sporking-rat.livejournal.com]

And somebody's bites infect people with rot and they die, but I am still not certain it was explained in-book that it was the zombies or the rotting vampires
I'm assuming that's the rotting vamps, since that's the an ability they already had in pre-existing canon ("corruption")

I know the rotting vampires bite the zombies and the zombies become infected with...something... and want to eat people....Also I'm still really confused about how the infected dead rise as flesh-eating zombies, which I think is what happens in the morgue?

...yeah, I've got nothing here, sorry DX

[duamuteffe.livejournal.com]

No worries, you already made it about 47 more times coherent than the book did. Really, if you could stand being around her for that long I'd suggest you seek out a job creating and manning a series bible for LKH.

[a-sporking-rat.livejournal.com]

I actually keep wanting to work on the Wikis, I notice they're incomplete and behind on a lot of things, but besides not wanting to spend the time I also don't think anyone else on there is anything less than a "troo" fan...so dealing with her biggest fan (herself!) would probably be beyond me, lol XD

Funnily enough, in The Diva Ate Her, the "anonymous" narrator consistently suggests a series bible to "Miranda" but is always turned down. OMG HER CHARACTERS ARE HER FRIENDS YOU DON'T NEED A DATABASE TO REMEMBER THINGS ABOUT YOUR FRIENDS!

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

I have two examples: Nathaniel's height increased at least two inches between Danse Macabre and Dancing. It's possible that he was intended to grow, because he's young enough for that technically, but I don't think that's what LKH intended to happen. A more important gaffe: in DM she says all necromancers will accidentally raise dead people if they don't have an outlet to do so on purpose. In later books, only Anita is this powerful.

And if I, who have read very little LKH, caught that stuff, there must be so much more to find. Doesn't need a database my heiny.

[a-sporking-rat.livejournal.com]

She totally would have mentioned it at length if it were because he had grown, she went on this big creepy spielin KtD about how Cynric was taller now because of his growth spurt.

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

Oh god ew.

All this LKH creepiness is inspiring me to try to write good romance and sex, though, so there's that. But... EW.

[finite-wombat.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I don't think that LKH cares about consistency all that much and doesn't sweat the details. Having a series bible that she has to adhere to would probably cramp her style considerably, as would having any sort of decent continuity editor or a someone with a working brain who could point out the problems with her plots, which is probably why she doesn't have any of these things. She wants to pretend to bleed for her craft, but she doesn't want to sweat or work for it.

But what really bugs me is that she pretends she does. She claims all the time that she does tons of research when it is instantly obvious that she has done almost no research whatsoever, and it so self-serving and... Argh! It makes me angry mad, it does.

I don't want to sound narcissistic, but I write free sci-fi RPG adventure scenarios and each one of them probably contains more research than LKH has conducted in her lifetime, so when she says she does research and I read things like a Colt Python being a .45 and people being denied bail in Tennessee for non-capital offenses (for example), it's like she is deliberately going out of her way to insult me. It is like a guy who bought a degree at a diploma mill going up to a Nobel laureate chemist and going, oh you're a scientist? I am a scientist too.

Sorry for the rant, but this really pushes my buttons. If anyone needs me, I'll be in the angry dome.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

She has previously said that she won't have a series bible because "what information do I put in there?" People's heights change. People's hair changes. And she can't decide which version to put on the index cards because every version is true. But she treats it like it's set in stone and can never be changed or updated. Case in point: she dyes her own hair because Anita can't change hers and she's tired of everyone confusing her with her character. Um yeah, Anita can't change her hair.

This is why I just took the notion that whatever showed up first chronologically in the books is the actual "canon" (insofar as canon works in this series) and everything that comes after is a bizarre retcon (MURDER ZOMBIE RAMPAGE, I AM LOOKING AT YOU - and even though I managed to ask her in a Barnes & Noble chat about this, she handwaved it as "oh it was always like this." She's also said that she cannot 'un-know' something about plot/character once she's discovered it, so this is why in the prequel comic, Anita is asking about "where's your [vampire] kiss!?" when she didn't even know that was a term for a collective group of vampires until...The Killing Dance)

That she also hits up fans on Twitter for previous canon makes my head hurt. SHE SHOULD KNOW THIS. And, like, she's meant to be a D&D nerd, it's not that hard to keep character sheets in a folder somewhere for easy reference.

[duamuteffe.livejournal.com]

And, like, she's meant to be a D&D nerd

D:
Can you imagine playing a campaign with her?

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

I've met a lot of people like her in MMORPGs. You are there to prop up their egos. If their character completely breaks the world and makes it impossible for you to play your character (which it always does): tough. Your character does not count except as ego fodder for their character.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

lol I want to do this too. There's so much missing from wikis and the two previous websites for good ABVH references have both been abandoned back around NiC. So I'm torn between "it's not worth the effort," and "GODDAMN I REALLY WANT TO CREATE THE DEFINITIVE REFERENCE DATABASE/WIKI!" because I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be useful for anyone that isn't like us.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

Also I'm still really confused about how the infected dead rise as flesh-eating zombies, which I think is what happens in the morgue?

Could it be the soul issue? I haven't read Affliction yet, so I'm just going on my freakish ABVH memory here -- it's been previously stated that it takes three days for a soul to clear a corpse before Anita can raise it as a zombie, it's coincidentally the same time it takes for a body to rise as a vampire. It's not a hard and fast rule, sometimes it can be more or less for souls to vacate according to Anita's necromancy senses. But it's a good general waiting period.

So could it be entirely possible that people that were infected/murdered by the flesh-eating zompires seem like just regular dead people long enough to get to the morgue, whatever magical hoodoo involved in souls leaving a body super fast because there's zompiring going on while a body is on the slab awaiting autopsy?

[duamuteffe.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure. In the (incredibly short and disappointing) boss battle Anita does say that the LoD has somehow surpassed the need for the three-day limit, so apparently he can res them right away. Also the bodies in the morgue rise as zombies and eat the rotting vampires and any of the other corpses that didn't rise. But she also says that more corpses in the morgue rose as flesh-eating zombies than had gone into the morgue as bite victims in the first place, so apparently they can spread somehow without a vampire involved? It's confusing.
Honestly, I'd say don't bother to read Affliction if you can at all help it. It's not even laughably awful, it's just plain awful. The only reason I sporked it at all was because I tried to reasd it for laughs and it made me so damned angry at its awfulness instead.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's just easier to handwave any kind of logic and say "a wizard did it."

I'm only laughing at your advice because I know full well that I still need to slog through Kiss the Dead, which may well just kill me with how boring it is. I'll take rage-inducing awful over painfully boring any day.

[duamuteffe.livejournal.com]

Fair enough- you have been warned. :)
I think what pissed me off the most about Affliction was that the author expected us to pay good money for badly written badly edited and only barely coherent I'm-The-Awesomest wanking that she never actually went back and read after writing to make sure any of it matched up. Eighteen e-book pages out of 1140 were actually about fighting zombies. And they still sucked. And we were expected to pay for this bullshit. Argh.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

Yeaaaah. That feeling gets ratcheted up to eleven when she releases an eSpecial and expects us to shell out $3 for something from her slush files. I feel justified in flexing my search powers to avoid giving LKH money.

[duamuteffe.livejournal.com]

Indeed.

[a-sporking-rat.livejournal.com]

The only reason I sporked it at all was because I tried to reasd it for laughs and it made me so damned angry at its awfulness instead.
That was exactly what happened when I started Skin Trade and then had to start this spork blog, lol

[duamuteffe.livejournal.com]

Her writing really does bring out strong feelings in people- just frequently not the ones she's looking for, lol.

[duamuteffe.livejournal.com]

Also, hee hee, silly rattie boys and their fort shenanigans! And I hope Sam's mass stops growing again asap.

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

I hope Sam's okay!

Is that what happened in Affliction? I was so busy being appalled by... everything, I hardly noticed the plot.

[a-sporking-rat.livejournal.com]

That seems to have been what was going on, from what I got from the spork.

You know, in the background amidst all the terribly-written family drama with Micah

[a-sporking-rat.livejournal.com]

I honestly can't help thinking that LKH intended to write a plague of actual zombies and then pulled out the rotters when she got stuck for time or ideas.

Hahhahaha, this seems totally likely!

I think all domestic pets come preprogrammed with a "let's see you clean THIS up" function
DOUBTLESSLY

[duamuteffe.livejournal.com]

Though this might just be me still too pissed about USING WHITE PHOSPHORUS IN A HOSPITAL YOU BLOODY IDIOTS

And as though that weren't maddening enough, she DOESN'T use it OUTSIDE in the scuffle in the woods where it might have been of some flippin use! She clearly didn't even do the thirty seconds' worth of work on google to see how and where phosphorus grenades were actually used. Gah!

[jessica collett (from livejournal.com)]

Head's up - today's chapter of Blue Moon deals with Nathaniel being infected with a rotting disease spread by vampire bites.

Anita has no excuse for not recognising it.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

OH ANITA

[jessica collett (from livejournal.com)]

I think LKH must have read back through the outlines for her past books, and decided that no one would remember what happened in Blue Moon anyway - she didn't!