Originally Posted by Pilgrim
Just imagine the epic lord of the rings film and replace orcs with human zombies. If you imagine aragorn charging into the battlefiend and cutting off groaning zombies heads then it just doesn't fit. There is no scientific explanation for why something doesn't fit, but the two genres just don't mix convincingly in my opinion.
Although orcs and magic don't exist, its fun to stretch your imagination. Animated corpses just seem a bit too unrealistic to me and stop me being caught up in it all.
A race of giant pink rabbits wouldn't fit either, but it is impossible to explain why they look fine in pokemon but not here. Mixing genres just often looks wrong and ruins the effect.
What "mixing of genres"? There's no mixing of genres here. Undead have been a part of fantasy settings since forever. Warcraft, Warhammer, D&D and yes, even LoTR (army of the dead, barrow wights, nazgul), all have undead in them.
Also you seem to imply that the undead consist exclusively of zombies which of course is not the case. For example the undead faction in WC3 has no zombies among its buildable units.
Do you really think zombies originated in B production horror movies? The undead myth (including "zombies") has existed since long before those movies were ever made. The undead have as much root in our mythology as elves, dwarves or pretty much any fantasy element.
And of course it "unrealistic" to have Aragorn fight a bunch of zombies. It's because the book is about men, elves, dwarves and orcs etc. and not zombies, it's a completely superfluous statement.
The reason why I was mildly rude to you is because you didn't seem to think things through at all but instead said "No undead plx!
" without any sense to back it up.
You personally may not like the undead but you have no objective argument as to why they don't belong in a fantasy setting.