Cerberus123

Hey Cerberus,

I had a... tentative suggestion for you, regarding monsterizing another group.

Long story short, there's this comic book series called "Crossed" by Garth Ennis. It's technically a zombie apocalypse series, but with a few twists:

1. The infected individuals don't become undead, but rather gain a red rash/marking on their faces that looks like a cross (hence their name, the Crossed).

2. Instead of becoming mindless cannibals, the Crossed instead become violent and sadomasochistic psychopaths, who do every terrible thing you can think of (and then some) to any humans in the area.

For pretty obvious reasons, I don't recommend checking out the comic, outside of maybe some Google Imaging to get an idea of what the Crossed look like (and even then... that can get graphic, so... go at your risk, if you choose to).

Now, that being said, I do think there is something you could do with them! Since you are in the habit of monsterizing various characters and creatures, one thing that could work for you in the Cerberusverse is that some Crossed also get monsterized, making them essentially a new breed/subspecies of zombie. In this case, they are technically alive (you know... assuming that MGE zombies aren't also actually alive and just appear corpse-like), and are a bit faster and smarter than their "vanilla" sisters. With a possible downside to their "strain" being that they can be more reckless than baseline zombies, and aren't as magically or socially adept as wights.

To be honest, I could totally see them as being your MGE take on "fast" or "feral" zombies, who exist somewhere between regular MGE zombies and wights.

Hi again, Cerberus.

Just wanted to pop in and mention some YT channels that might interest you—especially since they deal with fantasy/sci-fi stories that you probably haven’t heard of (in detail), but can let you get the stories without reading. In some ways, they are kind of like the VaatiVidya of Sci-Fi and Fantasy books.

First, there’s Cursed Armada—they basically focus on doing deep dives into lesser-known fantasy and sci-fi stories, with their current and biggest series thus far being a deep dive into R. Scott Bakker’s Second Apocalypse series (a dark fantasy about a superintelligent but amoral human who poses as a messianic figure to stop a cult of aliens from destroying his world), and he does a good job at explaining the overall plot (and stakes) without going into some of the more… divisive elements (such as that the aliens are basically a cross between Xenomorphs and *very* un-sexy versions of mamono). You can find his channel here, and I’d highly recommend checking his “Prince of Nothing“ videos as they detail the first book in the Second Apocalypse series:

https://youtube.com/@cursedarmada88?si=1OCjDTvSQeWWNDcN

The second channel is Warriors and Wizards, who do animated videos in the style of documentaries that go into the lore and background of different SFF works. Some of these are well-known, such as Lord of the Rings, the Elder Scrolls, Warhammer 40k, etc., but they also cover more niche works like Conan the Barbarian, Dragon Age, the Cosmere, and even the First Law series by Joe Abercrombie. While I’d say one of their Star Wars or LotR might be a good place to see if you like them, I recommend checking out their First Law, Wheel of Time, and Cosmere playlists. You can find their channel here:

https://youtube.com/@WizardsandWarriors?si=oFN76Zq2VWW5CQ5P

Say Cerberus, I was curious about something:

Have you ever heard of a web original series called “Epithet Erased”? It’s a fantasy-comedy that has a lot of humor that is similar to yours (as well as a girl who is Heidi and Tomo’s level of hypercute), a potential couple of waifus, and has quite an interesting magic system.

Plus, you can see the first season on YouTube for free, so that’s a plus.