Zombies vs. vampires

[womzilla]

Working on editing a vampire article for NYRSF and was reminded of a generalization that came into my head during a post-session discussion at this year's ICFA:

The moral threat of a vampire is the loss of conscience; the moral threat of the zombie is the loss of mind.

Like all generalizations about literature, there are certainly exceptions, but I think that gets at the difference between the two major types of undead.

(I'm tempted to start going through the entire D&D taxonomy of undead--skeletons are the complete loss of identity, mummies the return of the repressed--but I'll spare myself before I try to draw distinctions between wights and wraiths.)

Comments

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

Wights & Wraiths are easy. (Corporeality is relevant.) Wraiths and Spectres and Ghosts are where the really stupid arbitrary lines crop up, and that's because they were split up for mechanical variety & relative challenge.