Respectomancy

Naturally I am a skilled necromancer and I find puppeteering a zombie so trivial it's boring. This means I know how the motivating spellwork goes. It's just math. Computer code.

Today I want to talk more about the respect functions. 

Given access to a zombie, any necromancer can inspect the triggers that result in the zombie displaying respect. If you try it yourself, you'll immediately notice that the triggers have nothing to do with being respectable. Presumably because the raising necromancer was lazy - appearances are simple in the way substance is not. It would take time and effort to not suck so bad.

They're begging you to spoof their respect algorithms. Hence e-girls and other grifters. It's not some momentary lapse or temporary peccadillo. Zombies gonna zombie. They will not rise up - it's a miracle they were risen from the dead in the first place, don't expect a double miracle.

In particular, look at the [[respect]] that comes from beating up the zombie. Naturally this respect is merely fear, but it pretends to be respect so the zombie doesn't have to admit to itself that it is a coward. It hates itself plenty as it is, after all. As long as you can inflict physical pain on a zombie and get away with it, the zombie will [[respect]] you.

Now look back at the other triggers. They all call the fear-pretending-to-be-respect functions. It all merges into one lane.

Look again: are these triggers plausible evidence that the zombie should be afraid of you? Within their sharply limited cognition, yes. You and I might be able to easily fend off many of these attacks, but a zombie sure can't. They're pushovers - as in they will often literally fall over if you physically push them, because zombie. 

E.g. a zombie will [[respect]] you if you have a lot of money. Because you can hire a lot of lawyer or bribe the mayor to make their life hell. If you look closer, it's not even [have money] it's a couple extremely impoverished indicators of money, like having an overpriced car and a nice watch. Get the car second or third hand and a fake watch? Usually the zombie itself will prevent anyone from seeing through the ruse, if it can, to avoid having to admit to being fooled. You and I might be able to tell the difference between a fake watch and a real one - I would look for e.g. anxiety while paying restaurant bills - but the zombie wasn't programmed with that, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

To prevent a zombie from getting grifted, the necromancer has to constantly supervise them, or let a vampire feed so heavily on the zombie they have nothing left to grift. Even necromancers find zombies repulsively putrid.

There's an obvious solution. If you're necromancer-class and you're doing something because you're afraid, say you're doing it because you're afraid. Or deterred or wary. If anyone ever asked me, I would say I was efficiently threatened. You can then find other necromancers who are capable of giving and receiving respect, by noticing the ones willing to say when they're just afraid.

The zombies are fucked tho.
If you openly endorse "cowardice" in the face of deterrence, they will act weird, but you can just puppeteer them into doing something else with a minor effort. You can reprogram them to not be completely retarded but it's not remotely worth the effort, and after reprogramming you have to constantly guard them against being reverted, which means riding the ass of a rotting corpse. 

P.S. Do zombies laugh their ass or sides off because the connective tissue has disintegrated from necrosis? 🤔