Fantasy is a genre where you can make your protagonist a lich wizard and don’t have to rationalize with any sort of scientific explanation. And yet, I see so few authors taking this oppurtunity. Outside of general fears of undead being “unrelatable” I am not sure what, exactly, stops so many people. Maybe they never considered an undead protagonist in the first place.
Vampires are an edge case, since they are written closer to fae than intelligent bloodsucking corpses. I don’t like this portrayal because it robs them of their own unique identity. Zombie protagonists are even rarer, still. Some horror stories feature a protagonist that are not aware of their undead nature, but they usually end with that revelation.
I THINK the Dark Tower series may have a vampire protagonist but I am uncertain because my main exposure to the series is Orden Ogan’s album, Gunmen.
Hmmm…I don’t read horror or paranormal so I just assumed there were millions of books like that. Are there really no undead protags? That is odd…maybe it’s something that could really go viral if a new book suddenly became popular and famous? ☜(ˆ▿ˆc)
I always thought that Overlord would become uber popular in the West if it was written more like a Joe Abercromie book rather than a Light Novel. Basically an american remake for a more general high fantasy audience.
Right now I’m technically writng a half-undead MC with an undrad FL. They’re malevolent spiritual entities that pop into existence and are acuskky a snarled bunch of snakey vines that mimic humanity. Well, the MC just thought he was human, finds out he naturally evil with a twist of unknown. They are currently called Urianapoiokako, but I need a modern name.
Because in fantasy, and in reality, undead/dead people coming back to life is considered unnatural, tabboo, and evil. Hard to have a protagonist who’s very existence is frightening and considered evil to so many. Magic that brings the dead back to life is usally black/dark/evil magic too. There have been very few times when an undead character is a protagonist, the movie Warm Bodies, for instance. But it’s not a common trope for a reason.
Woke fantasy is my pet hate… do you really think the cheeky elves care about body representation when they themselves laugh at the ugly orcs and play jokes on them?
I haven’t been reading as much, but I’ve been writing quite a lot, and I just sort of assumed there were more undead protags?? Idk I have two undead characters in one of my stories (though they’re not protagonists—one’s a selfish frostbitten zombie and the other is a cannibalistic “vampire” whose misguided bid for immortality came with rather gory consequences) and the narrator of this story is a disembodied consciousness who can see everything but can’t do anything about it and it feels like I’m writing a standard fantasy to me, so I’m not quite sure. The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor do a pretty neat job of blurring the lines between alive and dead, but that’s not fantasy, that’s paranormal.
You also have people on the end of the spectrum, who actually, ironically get more fantasy plots out of the real world, and bizzaro plots more so than I ever would from fantasy.
It really does seem like there should be more!! I can’t remember the last book I read that wasn’t. A part of my lang&lit class but like. Between zombie apocalypse stories, vampire stories, and those necromancer/death-related “dark” fantasy stories there should definitely be more undead protags but I guess it’s just humans reacting to to the undead beings around them more than anything else.
It makes for a more original idea, for sure. I don’t see anything wrong with exploring the idea. But most people see it at face value and decide undead means bad because of the preconceived expectations they have and never bother getting more creative with it.
Lmao, I just rolled with them being the evil that judges evil, and since his mix is a bit off, he’s seen as weak. The first one if his own that he gets to jusge is is own father.
