"The fact that Alina is undead is a at least flinch-worthy."
You know, there's a lot you can do with the concept of reanimation when you start considering 'zombie horror' for the perspective of a zombie, especially if they're actually still aware. They're struggling with new instincts that make them innately monstrous; there's a question about the existential horror of their existence and what it means for the hypothetical soul; there's an innate tragedy to be mined, of course, regarding the fact that they were previously
dead and how their loved ones dealt with that, and how they deal with them walking again and dealing with the
why that caused it; if you really want to lean in on the horror you could even have them actively rotting, there are so many interesting complications both physical and emotional, especially if you do have a significant other involved.
In World of Warcraft? As far as I can tell the Forsaken are basically treated as just another race. Granted I'm just skimming the wiki but it doesn't really look like there's anything there that makes them particularly squicky or uncomfortable, they died and they were revived and they're basically just what they were before with a different skin tone and hair color. Within context there's nothing actually 'flinch-worthy' about it. It
could be uncomfortable. It
could be tragic. But Lily doesn't build any of this, she just plunks her OC into an established world and hopes that the surface-level implications will do all of the heavy lifting without (1) earning it herself or (2) actually thinking about the universe she's using.
WoW doesn't seem to have most of these implications, which makes sense, because the Forsaken are a playable race and you can only add so much negative flavor and still appeal to the widest possible audience. Naturally, Lily is once again trying to have her cake and eat it-- she wants the tragic implications of a living-undead relationship but thinks that the concept alone will do all the heavy lifting without her actually doing anything to sell it.
I fucking
love it when morons smugly reveal that they're morons. She actually
does not understand what 'showing' versus 'telling' is and it's marvelous.
Her point that sometimes telling is preferable isn't wrong, either, but her preferred genre is
romance. General rule of thumb is that when you have to impart information you prioritize telling, but when you want to impart emotion you
show. For instance, Aliana announcing that she's gay? Perfectly acceptable use of telling. Having two lesbians talk at each other about how much they love each other instead of, like, spending a paragraph on how they had a wonderful date or even just threading pet names and inside jokes into their dialogue? Totally missing the point.
Unless the point isn't to identify with the character and just watch from afar, which... actually it might be. Lily said not that long ago that she doesn't
do crap like identifying with characters so actually maybe her writing really is just meant to be voyeuristic rather than empathic.
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