#ZRS8 spoilers

[artist-issues]

Sometimes I interact with the tiny little Zombies, Run! Fandom and I wonder how some people can view the story the way they do.

Specifically, I keep seeing that Sam and Five are "drifting apart," and I keep seeing lots of attention for Peter. Like, going into Season 6, 7, and 8 (which is the one I'm on now) I kept waiting for something big to happen to suggest that Peter was as impactful to Five as Sam seems to be.

But there just isn't anything. I mean, if you tilt your head and squint, and take everything Simon did or said to Five before dying and coming back as "Peter," and combine that with Peter...you still only have a handful of moments where they even seem close.

Like. Sure. Peter was willing to die for Five several times since coming back, but...he was lowkey willing to die for literally everybody? Because he wanted to heroically sacrifice himself? He had a whole character arc about it?

And it's not like he knows Five better than anyone, either. He has one or two moments where he notices that Five is being asked to do dangerous things even though Five is not indestructible, but that's really it. He doesn't even seem to get more concerned for Five than he does for others; just that one time, in the catacombs or whatever, when he's like "IS FIVE ALL RIGHT?"

And sure, that was sweet, but also, the writers clearly put that line in there so that Colonel Sage could point out that Peter shouldn't sacrifice himself if he really cares about his friends' safety, in general, because he can do more for them alive than dead. It wasn't a line to communicate to us that Peter cares a special way about Five. It was a line to communicate to us that Peter cares about friends, conveniently placed so that Sage could use that to convince him not to sacrifice himself.

Guys, one time should not a strong connection make.

I guess I remember he also said, when Janine was hinting that he was Simon under a different name, that Peter said "I don't want to talk about it in front of Five!" But...again, that's just. Or enough for me to believe that Peter is replacing Sam in estimation.

And speaking of Janine, there is WAY more evidence that Five is getting closer to Janine, if any character. Janine is given much more story focus than Peter, throughout the most recent Seasons. She runs more missions with Five. She's present for moments when Five is given rare character beats, like being visibly distressed at the Glassdoor Monster chasing her or ANNIE playing Five's friends' screams.

Which, is another thing, by the way. When the player is meant to notice that Five is being emotionally traumatized by a demonic A.I., the writers choose to play clips of Simon screaming and dying--sure--but the A.I. also plays those same screams for Janine. And the A.I. spends MORE time replaying Sam's screams and taunting Five with the idea of Sam Yao's mortality.

AND SPEAKING of Sam, the other side of this conversation-coin is the idea that while Five and Peter "get closer" (which I see very little evidence for,) Sam and Five are "drifting apart."

I keep looking for a big falling out, or a difference in the character of Sam Yao's reactions when Five is in danger or has to do something hard or is in an emotional situation, etc. But like...I'm halfway through Season 8 and zip. Zilch. Nada.

There's just as many instances of Sam insisting on helping Five, or appealing to Five, or hinting that he knows Five better than everybody else, or exhibiting special concern for Five, as there have been in any other season. The only thing I could maybe say is that the writers no longer put Sam on every single mission...but that's still not saying much. And all the post-mission email material? It's all still Sam writing to Five. I get maybe one or two letters from other characters, but literally only like, two letters from Peter, at most.

DISPROPORTIONATELY, Sam is still the closest character to Five. No matter how you spin it. And Peter is no closer to Five than Janine, or Jody, or even Veronica.

Now.

I'm not trying to start a shipping war or anything. If you want to say Sam and Five are drifting apart in your specific, in-between-canon-missions headcanon, go right ahead. If you LIKE Peter more than Sam for some reason, go right ahead.

But unless something happens further on in Season 8 or 9 or some extra-mission stuff I haven't unlocked yet, why are you saying they're drifting apart in-canon? Are you just...projecting that on it, because you find Peter more interesting, or because Sam's character has more going on than just "radio guy directing Five and missing his dead girlfriend" in later seasons?

This has been a niche rant that basically nobody but the teeny tiny ZR fandom will bother reading all of, but it felt good to get off my chest. Cuz sometimes, with the self-indulgence/self-insert trends of modern fandom, I think we're losing the ability to understand story. And we just blur the lines between what's actually in the story, and what we like to imagine ABOUT the story.

[notforconsumption]

good evening may I introduce...... my worst wife

[scorrigan]

Zombies Run, now I have POLLS

[abeltownshipslittlebitch]

Zr villain: Why… why can’t I beat you?

Five: I’ve literally beaten an immortal scientist, an insane dictator who had the most powerful AI ever created on her side, a mind controlling hippie, a red fungus that people worshipped as a god, and that’s not even scratching the surface of all I’ve done. The only reason why the fight has lasted this long is because I had nothing better to do.

[tazzy-zooming]

S8 M17 Spoilers Below

I’m sorry. Five picked up a WHAT?!

A fungus seed pod??

Five. Put that thing back where it came from or so help me—

[crownleys]

I'm almost done replaying season 7 and I can't wait to run into my best worst girl again

[teacup-crow]

Cliffhanger Ending

S8M30. Jody struggles even harder to do the right thing.

(This is HOT off the presses so apologies for tense mistakes. I hope you enjoy!)

“Look at that sunset. It's peeking through the clouds. Gorgeous. Are you going to shoot me?”

The bowstring was taut in Jody’s grip. Now, with the waves of adrenaline easing, she began to notice the ache in her arms, her legs, her chest. She wanted to scream. She felt Five’s hand brush her arm lightly. Permission? Absolution in advance? They turned away, and took a few paces across the grass, fiddling with their headset, trying to get Sam to come in.

“I should. You deserve it.” Her words were clipped. All she could see were his empty eyes, his skin made unnatural with death, like wax. How the corners of his mouth no longer turned up when she ran her fingers through his hair. She’d crouched there so long, his blood coagulated around her feet.

Shona turned, and pointed at her chest: a heart for a heart. “Go on, then. Go on! Go on! It was mine! Do you understand? I was going to be powerful... I was going to see my mum. It promised me!”

We have your mother, Jody. She wants to call you… she wants to call you down for tea.

Fucking Ian. She’d never have believed it, never have turned, but still… even now, those lies spun in her head on sleepless nights, rose again when the tendrils of the Red God appeared. Questions, doubts. Was it possible? She hadn’t had the time in the last three years to find out, or maybe she’d just been too afraid of knowing.

But had she been younger. Had she been isolated on an island, cut off from the wider world, surrounded by people who just could not understand, would she have answered the call?

“We don’t kill the powerless at Abel,” she said, dropping her bow, stepping forward. “Ellie wouldn’t have wanted that. Tom… You’re under arrest. You’ll get a trial on the mainland-“

“You won’t take me away from here!” Shona shrieked, and edged backwards, teetered. “I am one with the land, I am special, it chose me, it chose me.”

She fell. Almost. Jody dove, grabbed at her fleece which was sopping wet with silver and slippery, her fingers struggling to make purchase.

“Give me your hand, Shona,” Jody commanded, her voice strained with effort. “Five! Help pull her up, I’m slipping!”

“No,” the girl said, almost sulky. “Let me go.”

“I’m not letting you get away that easily,” Jody panted, grateful for Five’s sudden weight on her legs. “Hand. Now.”

Unexpectedly, Shona did as she was told, then turned her head and bit down on Jody’s hand, hard enough to break the skin.

“You little bitch!” She felt, rather than heard, the words escape in a sudden agonised breath, but forced her grip not to loosen, her eyes to stay wide open.

Shona opened her jaw to laugh, her teeth wet with blood. “You know they’ll only shoot me on the mainland, aye? That Prime Minister of yours will make a show of me for ruining her ship. Or you’ll lock me up and throw away the key, leave me in the dark and cold. You all did that to precious mad Tom, and I’m not precious to you.”

“Take his name out of your mouth,” Jody said evenly. She felt perfectly still. The ocean water beneath them drew back. The sun had almost set.

“Tom, Tom, Tom, Tom, Tom! God, stupid interfering Tom. Thought I was so weak, so helpless that he walked right into the lion’s den. You know, Jody, he might not be the first person I killed, but he was the first time I really enjoyed it.”

If you hurt enough people, something inside you breaks. And I worry, sweetheart, because you care so deeply about everything, and everyone, that one day it will happen to you. You’ll take revenge and it will help, for a little while. And the next time it’s easier to pull the trigger. To draw the knife. And suddenly there’s so much blood on your hands that you don’t remember where it came from, or whether they even deserved it. So please, will you promise me…

She pulled hard. Shona cried out as her arm popped out of its socket, but then they were both lying there, on top of the cliff, breathing heavily. Five had their arm around Shona’s neck before Jody could blink, their gaze quizzical. She shook her head.

“If you let me live, Jody Marsh, if you take me from my island, that’s a fate worse than death for me. And I’ll never forgive it. I’ll leave you alive, I’ll return the favour. But here’s the thing with hurting people; it only gets sweeter every time you do it. The Red God will rise again, and I will fill the valleys with the blood of your loved ones. I will-”

“Knock her out, Five,” Jody ordered. They complied with one expert blow to the back of the head, and began rummaging through their pack for some rope to tie her hands. She thought she heard them sniff, a tell-tale sign of them crying and trying to hide it. It had been a long time since they were roommates, since life had been so simple, so black-and-white.

“Jodes, I just heard from Sam. He’s okay. He’s going to be okay. I thought…”

She managed a smile. “Go find him. I’ll be fine, I just… I just need a minute, okay?”

The sun had fully gone, now, and the light was fading. The cliffs at Mor were beautiful, jagged, dark. Tom would have liked this. He would have leant his head on her shoulder, and started telling stories about the rising stars. Princess Andromeda, chained to her rock. Pegasus, riding through the sky. Sagittarius the archer. Children’s tales. They’d made up their own increasingly ridiculous backstories for the ones he had forgotten. Janine on a bad hair day. A zombie with a foot stuck in a bucket.

She didn’t really believe he was up there, too, but she waited until each star blinked into view, just in case one of them was new.

[nokkiart]

Amelia’s just having a blast... XD

[pldubrahs]

@abeltownshipslittlebitch replied to your text post:

S2S killed Tom bc they were too weak to kill any other member of the team out of fear of the fandom’s reaction and you can’t change my mind. Because you can’t tell me it made any of kind of sense that a trained MI6 agent who was already suspicious of the person he was with (who was a village girl that yes, may have had red fungus in her, but was still untrained in combat of any kind) was killed by her. He died bc he was the only character there w/o plot armor

yep!!! same goes for ellie, and, honestly veronica! they keep setting up "youre stuck on an island and its SO dangerous" storylines and then they have to be like "oh god oh fuck we need to kill someone for Shock Value but if we kill sam, fans will literally materialize in our homes"

to be fair, theyre right, i Would materialize in their homes, but that doesn't make it okay

[wubbelwubbwubb]

[enbeast]

explaining how each zr villain misgenders me after i jokingly went to rate zr villains based on how likely they were ro misgender me but then i realised that they pretty much all would. i will also include some ppl who are like minor villains or get redeemed and shit? idk its my list i make the rules

spoilers for like up to s8

van ark: would say "well biologically" and be really pretensious about his transphobia

simon: would not misgender me because hes my friend and also trans. is slightly obnoxious about validating my gender but in a fun way

amelia: misgendered me because she didnt know, blustered when she was corrected, was rude and i thought she was gonna be a real asshole about it but then the next time it she used pronouns she used the correct ones. if i tried to thank her for making the effort shed deny any knowledge of the entire subject

moonchild: technically doesnt misgender me and talks a big game about respecting my gender but lets it slip during while drunk/high that she considers me a quirky woman and subtly tries to pressure me into shaving my beard and growing my hair

sigrid: uses all the right words and pronouns but will absolutely call me a slur during a heated argument and misgender me when shes about to kill me but only if theres no one around who would call her out on it.

ian: perpetually looks like hes sucking on a lemon because sigrid told him hes not allowed to be publicly transphobic because its bad optics. doesn't misgender me to my face either because hes (correctly) scared ill beat him up. misgendered me as hard as he could for the brief period when he had me chained up in private. called me a biological female in his shitty documentary

brain moonchild: never misgenders me and is chiller about it, more focused on trying to gaslight me about mindcontrol. only mentions that id make a really hot woman one time in the context of it being a shame im not.

annie: does not misgender me because she has my pronouns on file and it never occurs to her to consider me anything else

the glass protocol: never misgenders me due to nonbinary solidarity

the last riders: actively tried to be as offensive as possible but theyre such fucking losers im not even mad

colonel sage (my most hated enemy): never misgenders me but asks a lot of annoying questions and is uncomfortably interested in my Trans Experience. not in a creepy way or anything. just annoying

shona: generally cool but did call me a scared little girl to try and taunt me while she was trying to hunt me in the tunnels. only misgenders me for the purpose of being the worst

[artist-issues]

Tom! What! No!

Also Shona you complete psychopath, WHEN will we get over the "likeable-friends-betray-Abel" trope?

[notforconsumption]

shakes both your hands

you guys get it

[scorrigan]

Spoilers for, eh, season 8 onwards and the VRs 14/15

Repeating my rofflenet musings- The problem with Frances is that she is kind of an earlier season character- the naive enthusiast, and we werent allowed to bond with her in lower stakes missions.   Shes like a character from Alien, clueless about the danger, when we needed more marines from Aliens.   I also suspect she was introduced to give more urgency to the past two virtual races, as they brought Alice back for those.

[abeltownshipslittlebitch]

Five: The real treasure was the memories that were made along the way.

Frances: I almost died.

Five: Ah, yes. That was my fondest memory.

@dorkylittleweirdo

[mrs-elijah-wood]

TWO WEEKS UNTIL ZR S9 DROPS!!!!!!!

Spoilers for S8+ below:

On god S9 better be kind to Janine. Let someone else carry the bad things happen ball for a little while. Also I hope we see more of the Abel gang this time around. I liked S8’s departure from the regular formula but I really missed Abel township (aka bring Steve and Kefi back please that’s all I’m asking also brain ghost Moonchild ma’am where tf have you been)

Who wants to put money down on Van Ark coming back? I’m not even kidding I’m about to make a bingo card (yes I know there was like ONE line that even hinted at him not being 100% dead but I’m running the race missions again AND THE FACT that he was back for a study in ichor and I’m Pepe Silvia levels convinced that’s what’s going on)

All I really want is five angst. Give me more ghosts in their noggin. Bring back some old ghosts. Lord knows there’s a whole cast of dead characters that could fill up a whole mission like that one in s3