The Creature in The Mirror

Supervisor: Worker 72094. You failed to meet your quota for 3 weeks in a row now.

Worker 72094: I can explain!

Supervisor: You're clearly burned out. I heard you moved recently. Take a mandatory two weeks paid vacation to readjust and report to me then.

Worker 11335: Is it because I badmouthed the company during lunch?

Shadowy Board Member: That is correct. We are very displeased, Worker 11335...

Worker 100100: What's with the mask?

Of course. All Hopeless Inc. employees are due-paying members of Mindless Drones United.

They'll elevate whoever the workers decide to positions of power to supplement the board's workload.

To save the hassle of a costly internal power struggle, they'll even let the workers choose the leader's successor in some sort of election.

The term “zombie” is both a technical term, referring to a family, and a common name, referring to a genus.

The family Zombie is a broad, overarching group that includes the genus that many people call zombie (Ghoulus, not to be confused with Ghouli, the unrelated genus of the Ghala family which also includes bogeymen and some ghosts*) as well as the Mummy genus (Pyrima), the spore-zombie genus (Fungan) and a few others.

The colloquial term “Zombie” is the common term for the genus Ghoulus, which is in the family Zombie and includes Ghoulus romero (the walking zombie), Ghoulus snydera (the running zombie), and Ghoulus smithi (the vampiric zombie, also called the legendary zombie).

Interestingly, there are several things called “zombies” that are neither Ghoulus nor Zombie, including the dancing zombie (Jacksoni thrillera), which is more closely related to (although not currently actually in the same family as) clowns.

*Note: the ghosts in the Ghala family are not true ghosts. True ghosts are in the order Spectere, which is entirely unrelated to Ghouli, Ghoulus, Pyrima, and Fungan. Ghala “ghosts” are given the common name ghost because of their superficial similarity to true ghosts.

the closest to a domesticated ghost we have is the house ghost, Phantome domus (sometimes classified as a distinct subspecies Phantome domus domesticus).

P. domus is interesting because it’s like housecats – they are technically domesticated (scans have shown that the fight-or-flight response, like in domesticated animals, is weaker in P. domus than in related species like P. majestica, the manor ghost, or P. more, the cemetary ghost), but evidence suggests that it’s a naturalistic co-evolution rather than an intentional domestication process like with sheep or dogs.

Lighthouses of the Great Lakes.

"Okay, I got you."

*Removes the B from the BREAD sign*

now I know that there's no way for me to respond to this without a bunch of fans of the modern adaptations ruining my inbox for the next week, but there's no evidence of Waluigi - or indeed Luigi - in any of the contemporary versions of the Mario-Wario sagas. The name "Wario" itself is a later invention, held to be a pun on warui that likely emerged after the adoption of Japanese scripts in the Koopa States.

The conflict between Mario and his "boyhood rival" was one over political influence on his home island and Mario's long absences - in particular his trip to Sarasaland. While later Sarasan sources would heavily reference Mario's brother, he is absent from both the preceding narrative and the unrest in Mario's homeland. The historical consensus is that the Sarasaland journey was one of Mario's earliest wanderings, with his brother attempting to manage affairs in his absence and proving unfit. The invention of a separate "Wario" character and its development into an explicit coup d'etat were later poetic creations, as is distancing of the "Wario" figure from the later depictions of Mario's brother as the more cowardly and reserved "Luigi".

(As an aside: "Mario Land" is a mistranslation. The original Mushroomer and Sarasan chronicles are better translated as "the land of Mario", without connotations of ownership. The modern scholastic consensus is that it refers to Yoshi's Island, where Mario and his brother spent their youth and later established a small manor, not, as commonly depicted, a "Mario Castle". The emphasis on Mario as king of "Mario Land" was a mostly successful political maneuver by the Yoshis to retain coequal status with the Mushroom Kingdom heartlands in the face of 18th-century expansionist pan-Mushroomism.)

Fandom "migrations" are definitely a thing, where artists and writers move from fandom to fandom based on what's new and exciting like a herd searching for new growth to feed on. There are some fandoms I've been in where you can definitely see something like a population cycle, with a baseline of more permanent fans and more "seasonal" fans that wax and wane.

I'm not really into the MCU movies at all but it's interesting to hear it described as a post-apocylptic wreckage when I think it's doing okay for itself despite the mass extinction. But that's just me whining because smaller fandoms can be desolate and I'd LOVE for some of them to have as much fandom activity as MCU. I think of Harry Potter and Game of Thrones as being similar-ish ecosystems, in that they're big budget mainstream productions that gained enough critical mass to somewhat sustain themselves but nonetheless suffered mass die-off when their main series ended, and in response the IP holders attempt to prop up interest with new spin-offs.

Also, I think the type of content or "canon" has an effect on the type of fandom that grows and what kind of population cycles occur (if any). Some creators have a pretty contentious relationship with fans of their stuff while others I think, deliberately construct their stories in a way to encourage the flourishing of a fandom ecosystem. And a single one-and-done story is going to have a different ecosystem than an ongoing franchise.

I can't remember if you posted it on your blog at some point but there was a chart going around tumblr hypothesizing the sweet spot for a massive fandom to bloom. It has to be just good enough to be compelling, but not so good that all the emotional loose ends are tied up. There needs to be SPACE for that new growth. Related, I remember people observing that fluffy lighthearted source material tends to inspire angst, and dark stories end up with a disproportionate amount of fluff and fix-it fics.

I love all these thoughts. Fandom ecology!

There's a decent amount of activity in MCU fandom comparatively, but I would estimate it's collapsed by over 90% since the days of Avengers Endgame... well within the threshold to qualify for a mass extinction!

But there was so much content and so many fans, the primary productivity of the fandom ecosystem was incredibly high. think like a tropical ecosystem with high precipitation sustaining lots of plant growth and lots of energy to go around on all trophic levels...

Other fandom ecosystems might be like deep underground caves, or high alpine slopes, or deserts that receive moisture only through fog... processes are happening slower, nutrients and essentials of life are more limited

It's an interesting thought... what represents the primary energy source (in our world, sunlight) in this analogy? is it the media itself the fandom is based off of?