the questions of our times: formality and vampires

[rm]

This, thanks to a discussion started by weirdquark. Please do visit the comments where you will learn many things including the many ways formality is structured in different languages (something my questions did not fully take into account, and I apologize for that), werewolf pack dynamics considerations, and whether there are vampires in France.

[Poll #1601631]

Comments

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

Totally depends.

If I'm a fangbanger and the vamp is my steady sweetie, informal all the way.
If it's a vampire I don't know, completely formal, with Sir and Ma'am thrown in for good measure.

Werewolves...depends. If he's my lit prof, then he's still Dr. Camomescro, whether or not he gets furry once a month. If he's one of my kids' friends, then "Hey, puppy" or "Yo, dawg" is fine.

Ghosts, no need. They're psychic energy projections of past events stored in a location and replayed when someone of proper mind type is around. They aren't actual beings.

Zombies, real: formal. These are priests who have undergone a transformative death & resurrection experience. They deserve the formal. Zombies, traditional folkloric: informal. I own them and they work for me. Walking dead brain-eaters, I let my shotgun speak for me.

The Good People? As formally as I can manage with any Gaelic I know.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Best (and most appreciated) zombie answer to date.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

Your first reference to zombies confuses me.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

Within the Voodoo religion, a priest will sometimes choose to visit the Land of the Dead or the Spirit World. To do this, the priest drinks an herbal concoction that gives the appearance of death. The priest is then buried. As the concoction wears off, the priest returns to tha Land of the Living.

However, some of the toxins involved in the concoction can leave the priest physically or mentally impaired, which is what gave rise to the legends of zombies.

Unscrupulous people used the concoction to "kill" people, only to "revive" them when their families paid up. The people weren't always careful with their toxins and a lot of people got impaired relatives back.

The zombie legend is a horror of having your body enslaved after death. Death was the only escape for slaves in the Islands, and being made to work after death was horrific. In this mythology, salt, sugar and spice can remind a zombie it is dead and it will return to its grave.