"I always pictured Life as this great crackling formless thing," said Miss Flitworth nervously. "Like an electrical storm in trousers."
--Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man (paraphrased from memory because I don't have the book at hand)
I've been wondering about this for a while. There are certain terms that supernatural horror readers/writers tend to
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SO I'll be a coward and just respond to your last line: You're in dangerous waters (sorry to keep overusing that metaphor). If "life" requires the full use of body and mind, the world is full of zombies already--with more every day. Facing our own inevitable decay through aging and the thousand shocks the flesh is heir: now there's horror for you! At the Boskone zombie panel, someone mentioned a story where zombification is a metaphor for Alzheimer's, and I agree with that. Yet Alzheimer's sufferers cling to life, as do any number of terminally ill or institutionalized people.
I do agree that when people say "Full of life" they don't mean any of the above categories, and you're right to point out that "Life" doesn't necessarily mean "pleasurable life."
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