I love zombie movies. I run a blog about them, I just helped run an event at the Science Museum about them, and I once sent BadRep writer Hannah Chutzpah to get arrested just so I could write about a zombie flash mob.

One of the things about being a fan of all things zombie is that on a regular basis I come across articles declaring the end of the ‘zombie craze’, saying that all the stories about zombies have been told, that the genre is exhausted. These articles will usually involve puns.

It’s an argument that essentially misses the point of how both people and stories work – we don’t tell a story and then move onto the next one, we tell the same story over and over, from every possible angle, trying to tease out something new or rediscovered each time. One of the reasons I love zombie movies is they’re full of opportunities for that.

But that said, there is one zombie story that I have yet to see told anywhere (and if it has, and I missed it, please tell me. I wanna see). Particularly, it involves a group of people that zombie movies have led me to believe could make up as much as a third of the global population – women.

Zombie movies have, on the whole, managed to avoid most of the standard horror movie tropes when it comes to women. The amount of alcohol and sex a woman enjoys doesn’t usually directly correlate with their survival chances. Chase scenes rarely take place while female zombie fighters are in their underwear.

Yes, the first proper zombie movie, 1968’s Night of the Living Dead did star a woman (Judith O’Dea, right) who switched between being hysterical or catatonic, and another who gladly let herself get stabbed to death by her own daughter, because that’s what good mothers do. There was another woman in that film as well, but nobody ever remembers either her or her boyfriend, so we can safely ignore them. However, after that initial outing George Romero actually seemed to learn, and the way women in zombie movies are portrayed generally has improved as a result.

By 1978, and Dawn of the Dead, the main female character (Gaylen Ross’s Francine) may have found herself in the role of “house mom”, and not just because she was pregnant. But she fought against that role, insisting that the others teach her how to fire a gun and fly the escape helicopter, skills which led to her being the movie’s only survivor.

Day of the Dead (1985) had only one female character, but Sarah (Lori Cardille) was also very much the brains of the film, a badass, level headed under pressure, and again, one of the three characters to make it through the film.

When Night of the Living Dead was remade by Romero in 1990, Barbra, our alternately catatonic/screaming heroine from the first film, was now – played by Patricia Tallman – also a badass who knew her way around a firearm.

This is a pattern that’s replicated across the genre. You can see it in Selena in 28 Days Later (and yes, that is a proper zombie movie), in Ana, the lead protagonist in the Dawn of the Dead remake, in Wichita and Little Rock in Zombieland (Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin, right), and in Kelly, the lead protagonist in Charlie Brooker’s Dead Set. Even in Shaun of the Dead, Shaun’s girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield) is the level-headed straight woman to the comedy antics of the rest of the cast.

And now we’re getting to the nub of the matter. Liz is the straight woman.

You see, zombie movies come in many different flavours. They can be war movies, economic parables, satire, or an examination of the violence inherent in human nature. They can even, with their “bunch of people locked in a building together” format, be a sitcom. But in most cases, one thing you see a lot of in zombie movies is wish fulfilment.

It’s the reason why so many perfectly sensible, realistic people have more detailed plans for a zombie apocalypse than they do for a fire breaking out in their home. There’s an appeal in the idea that real life, with its bills, jobs, relationships and traffic jams, might one day give way to the sort of massive catastrophe that would finally reveal the inner badass you’ve been all along.

Zombie movies are filled with guys who lead boring or screwed up lives before the outbreak hits, only to rise to the occasion and become the hero. Shaun is stuck in a go-nowhere job and has just been dumped by his girlfriend when the zombies turn up. Zombieland’s Columbus is a phobic shut-in who plays endless World of Warcraft and has “perfectly justifiable to speculate on” virginity. 28 Days Later’s Jim is a bicycle courier who goes from being a liability at the start of the film to single-handedly taking down a house full of armed, trained soldiers by the climax. Even Ash Williams, famed zombie killer extraordinaire (despite the Evil Dead films, I’m sorry, not counting as proper zombie films. I don’t make the rules) started out as a shop clerk.

But it’s always the guy. The guy is allowed to start out hopeless and go through the learning curve required to reach the point where he’s massacring zombies with a lawnmower (Braindead, incidentally, is another example of this trope). Female characters in zombie movies nearly always start out with their badass qualifications already in place. Only guys get to use the zombie apocalypse to escape how little they can cope with day-to-day life.

And it’s not because this is an exclusively a male fantasy, not by a long shot. If you doubt me, do a quick search for “zombie survival” among the women of OKCupid. Talk to Mary Hamilton, one of the brains behind Zombie LARP, or Naomi Alderman of Zombies, Run!. Talk to my own sister, who has an imaginative, if fatally flawed zombie survival plan that involves stealing a train. Even with my fairly limited social media following, I was able to find five women with zombie survival plans in the space of an hour (and one of them had three plans, depending on her circumstances).

So, going back to the beginning, this is the new zombie film I want to see. Show us a zombie film with a hapless female protagonist caught in a shitty dead end job with mounting bills and a disaster of a love life. Then, over the course of the film, have her discover she has a knack for clean decapitations and barricade building.

It’s not particularly groundbreaking, but I can’t find that film out there, and I’ve looked hard. If you make this film, I’m telling you, there’s a huge readymade audience for it.

• Chris Farnell is a writer who lives dangerously close to a graveyard in Norwich. You can buy his book, read his blog, and locate his 140 character wisdom at @thebrainofchris. You can also take part in his most recent zombie project, The Trial.

Dear Deep Silver,

I have just seen the parody ad for the collector’s edition of Dead Island: Riptide. While violence against women and graphic dismemberment are fairly cheap, extremely tasteless and far too easy targets for “shock value”, I’m impressed by your provocative attempts to further the dialogue about the sinister and ingrained misogyny of videogame culture by taking it to a disgusting extreme.

Limited Edition! Specially designed and crafted! Completely and utterly terrible!

Oh… wait, hang on, I’ve just heard from Rock, Paper, Shotgun that you’re actually serious about this. This apparently isn’t just a misguided pastiche of publicity stunts. Oh. Oh dear.

You claim that this hunk of resin will:

… make a striking conversation piece on any discerning zombie gamer’s mantel.

Well, as someone who has notched up damn near 1,000 hours of zombie killing in recent years (thanks, Steam, for keeping track of that. I was starting to worry that I was wasting my life), let’s have a conversation about it. I’ll go and brew up a steaming cup of Sityourassdown while you perch on the naughty stool and think about what you’ve done.

I can hear it already, the rumbling of defensive PR managers approaching.

“But it’s a zombie game! The whole point of it is to commit heinous acts of violence against the undead in self defence! A zombie torso with its limbs severed is a trophy that represents your prowess!”

Before I address this, in the interests of full disclosure, I have to say that I am not a qualified physician. However, from my forays into the study of human and zombie biology, I can confirm that the healthy, warm-tanned skintone, obvious freshness of the blood, the lack of any sort of necrosis or decomposition of the flesh indicates that this torso was certainly not a zombie at the time of her dismemberment.

Exposure of the lower ribs suggest traumatic chest injury; however, it’s not clear whether this occurred before or after the time of death. My working hypothesis is that her death had something to do with either decapitation or the loss of all her blood. Even without formal medical training, I am fairly confident in positing that there is no coming back from complete removal of the head.

There isn’t even any artistic merit in what you’ve created, which is almost as offensive as the glorification of horrific violence against women. You have the gumption to describe it as:

…Dead Island’s grotesque take on an iconic Roman marble torso sculpture.

No. Stop. Please. The skies are filled with the anguished cries of Classics and Art History students, joined by the despairing sobs of everybody with a functioning pair of eyes. There are several salient differences between your abomination and classical works of art, but I’ll set out a few of these for your convenience:

• Artistic merit. Marble sculptures are exquisite works by highly-skilled craftspeople demonstrating the depth of their abilities. Weeks of work go into a marble sculpture, creating something dynamic and evocative from a chunk of something cold and unyielding drawn from the earth. These are not pieces that can be “designed” in an afternoon by a gaggle of fratboy marketers over their weekly office keg.
• Anatomy. Sculptors who work with marble show an intimate and thorough knowledge and understanding of human anatomy. Every muscle, every curve, every millimetre of skin is honed to a perfect representation of the human form. What you have done is plonked two tennis balls on a solid block of resin, doodled in a crude cleavage with a Sharpie, then splashed raspberry sauce all over it and called it a day. Which brings me neatly onto my next point…
• Overt sexualisation and glamourisation of violence against women. Classical torso sculptures are not without limbs due to some horrible run-in with a horde of undead and a crazed survivor with a katana. If any Classics types would like to weigh in on this, I’d be interested to learn. However, I’m pretty sure that the motivations of those classical sculptors was not “Hurr, violence is EPIC. You know what else is epic? TITS! Yeah! But you know what’s not epic? Any part of a woman that isn’t tits or crotch. Let’s put, yeah, some tits and a crotch in a string bikini, and like, cut everything else off. Gamers will eat that up. Oh man, I’m jizzing my pants already. Tits and extreme violence. We’re geniuses.” (Again, classics students, if there’s any evidence of the great Graeco-Roman sculptors having had this discussion, I will withdraw this point. Let me know.)

In summary: what the hell? After the first Dead Island game failed to quite live up to its own teaser trailer, do you just feel like you need to continue along this trajectory of disappointment? Were you hoping to hit rock bottom with today’s sick display in the hope that thereafter, the only way would be up? If that’s the case, I’d be tempted to applaud your shamelessness, had it not been such a swing and a miss.

Now, I’m a feminist, but I also don’t believe that every catastrophic misunderstanding of how to exploit the “desirability” of anything that vaguely resembles a woman’s body (usually one that conforms to narrow standards of Western beauty) is born of true misogyny.

I believe it’s quite possible that you “just didn’t think” of the implications and repercussions of showing a violently dismembered female torso and selling it as an ornament. For those of us – women and some men – who actually live in bodies like the one messily represented in your collector’s edition, it isn’t possible to “just not think” about the possibilities and the realities of violence.

Women are disproportionately more likely to be the victims of domestic violence or sexual abuse, both by people they know and by strangers. We are taught from childhood that our bodies are weaker, that if we don’t want to be attacked we have to dress demurely, to know our limits, to keep our mouths shut and to do as we’re told.

We live in a victim-blaming world that constantly promotes the idea that the only way to not be a victim is to not provoke those strong and burly menfolks, who cannot be held to account if they attack you because you were obviously “asking for it” if and when it happens. Although this line of reasoning was born of institutionalised misogyny, it doesn’t exactly paint men in the most flattering of lights either.

The discussion is thankfully broadening, so this is not an issue I’ll go deeper into here. But Deep Silver, consider yourselves called out. There’s a wealth of resources, information, blogs, zines, articles, and opinion pieces out there. You have no excuse for not educating yourselves about why what you have done is damaging and irresponsible.

Everybody fucks up sometimes when it comes to the way they think about or treat people less privileged than they are. What really proves whether or not they’re capable of meeting the criteria for being a decent human being, or a company with any integrity, is how they handle and learn from their fuckups. My advice? Apologise. Be humble. Be grateful to people who have called you out on this. Make the choice to educate yourselves. And for the love of all things zombie, don’t do it again.

I do, however, have one thing to be grateful to you for about this. Should I find myself romancing a fellow gamer in future, and we go back to their house, this statuette will be an immediate and unmistakable red flag that this person has questionable taste in games, décor and attitudes towards women. This information will be a clear indicator that this isn’t somebody I should be spending time with.

Perhaps your statue could replace the endless whining about “the friendzone” as the hallmark of somebody utterly clueless about human relationships and endlessly disrespectful to women. Then I would laud you for your achievement, because that shit is getting very, very tiresome.

Yours sincerely,

Mia Vee

Borderlands 2, or ‘the Accidental-on-Purpose, not-so-secret, feminist game’

There really is a lot that can be said about BL2, and although I’m not going to say it all, I’ve picked up on some points I think are more relevant for BadRep.  It isn’t, however, as hard as you might expect to find good, feminist-friendly things to say about BL2. In fact, it’s probably one of the best AAA titles in terms of its ability to give players something quite egalitarian as an overall experience.

Basic game-stuff first, though: keeping to form, Borderlands 2 is beautiful.  Hand-painted landscapes, smooth animation, great character design, brilliant monsters and, like, a gazillion-billion guns and other loot items.  It’s an FPS/RPG that combines the best of both game styles; you can recognise the colour-coded scale of awesomeness for your loot alongside the superb right-in-there combat mechanics.  You can grind, farm, explore – whatever.  It’s fun.  A lot of fun.

It’s available on the three big platforms (PS3, Xbox 360, PC) and is big on multiplayer, though frankly it’s just as great solo. However, the one thing that annoys me with these big multi-platform titles and multiplayer is that we can’t interact with each other.

While I can play through Steam with one friend, my Xbox friend can’t join in and is left to languish alone with inferior loot.  Not the fault of the game – more the big console companies trying to keep their corner of the market isolated – but it’s still a letdown.

Anyway, these things aside, why is this such a great egalitarian game?  Put simply, it takes the piss.  Out of everyone.  On the surface of things, anyone is fair game, but(!) if you listen and observe, what I’ve noticed is that there’s a bit of a slant on the piss-takings, and it’s a positive one.  I’ll give you some examples, but from here on out, beware the spoilers.

My two favourite NPCs are Ellie and Tina. They’re both great examples of powerful, self-confident, self-reliant women who aren’t your average pin-up character and who represent integral, practical and useful components of the story & mission.

They’re not decoration over in the corner of the room; they’re key to your success.  Ellie is a mechanic (and a bit of a whizz at that) and she’s a larger woman.  She loves it, and so does the game and its creators.

In the book that came with my special edition game-pack, Inside the Vault: The Art & Design of Borderlands 2, one character artist has said:

Ellie is one of my favorites… I like that we have embraced a variety of different character shapes.

Ellie’s dialogue is snappy, funny and generally awesome.  Some examples include: “…they like skinny chicks ’cause they’s pussies!” and “My mom Moxxi always told me if I slimmed down, men’d pay me more mind.  Shows what she knows – I got these boys bending over backwards…”.

And Tina.  Tina is an early-teens girl who has been orphaned and likes to spend time having tea parties and, uh, exploding stuff.  She’s the best explosives expert on the planet. Even the man leading the resistance defers to her.

Tina’s a confusing character to meet – her speech is a little discordant with her sweet appearance – but she nevertheless maintains BL2 hilarity while being totally badass.

Tina and Ellie are just two of the female NPCs (yup, there’s others!) but I gotta say, having played through, the women are very important in BL2. They’re powerful, proactive, and practical. They can fight, build, explode stuff and save the day – they are full and proper characters and they’re equal (if not more awesome) than their male counterparts.

Even a rather minor female NPC adds to the all-round feminine badassery by “accidentally” giving you coordinates to mortar a very misogynist fellow into tiny pieces.

What’s great is that while the game’s pleasing me by being fair with its female characters, it’s also very subtly passing on the message that misogyny and sexism isn’t cool and isn’t funny.  Plenty of anti-egalitarian types rear their heads in the story, but they all get punished in-game. I think that’ll go a long way to dissuading that sort of behaviour in the audience – and hopefully show other developers that women can be awesome too.

Deadlight, or ‘the obligatory, festivity-themed title that’s actually pretty awesome’

Finally, in the spirit of all things spooky, there’s Deadlight, which recently ported across to Steam from Xbox Live Arcade (released on Steam 25/10/2012). Developed by Tequila Works alongside Microsoft Studios, Deadlight is a tense indie zombie-survival offering set in post-apocalyptic 1980s Seattle.  You play Randall Wayne, who’s been separated from his wife and daughter, battling and evading the ‘shadows’ as he navigates a ruined, hazardous cityscape to reunite his family.

It’s a simple premise by all accounts, and we’ve certainly seen plenty of zombie themes in recent years across the entertainment spectrum – but don’t let that put you off.

Deadlight is a side-scroller with a dark, moody art style reminiscent of LIMBO . It doesn’t feel too distant from the survivalist title I Am Alive, which also requires you to focus on your stamina levels to avoid falling of buildings or running out of energy mid-fight.  Similarly, you have limited weaponry and ammo (only what you can salvage on your way) so a lot of the time you have to make do without, meaning you can’t go full force forward shooting everything that moves. Nor can you charge about with an axe and splatter everything, because that runs your stamina down pretty sharpish.

Running, climbing and hiding are some of the best options, but there’s also environmental elements you can use to your advantage.  Zombies aren’t smart: if you jump over a hole in the floor, they’ll just fall in it.

Without giving away too much, zombies aren’t your only problem in Deadlight, and not every moment is spent dashing about.  It’s good fun and manages to keep up the tension without being so nerve-racking you log off (I’m looking at you, Amnesia… you too, Slender!).

At under a tenner full price (£9.99) it’s not bad value either, but if you’re quick there’s 15% off on Steam until the end of today (£8.49), so it’s worth checking out for a little Hallowe’en amusement.  For those of you who prefer XBLA, it’s 1,200 Microsoft Points.

If you aren’t tickled by Deadlight, don’t forget, Thanksgiving is nigh approaching (22/11/12) so keep a look out in November for more sales all over the place from US-centric platforms and digital management systems!