Web Original / Deviant Dead

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One part contest, one part webcomic, one part roleplay, Deviant Dead is an Original Character Tournament hosted on DeviantArt.

In a city infested with the undead, few manage to survive. Only fewer manage to tell their story. Such fate befell Major City, which went to sleep to get ready for another day of work and woke up to hordes of corpses making their way through its streets tearing apart anything they could get their hands on. Deviant Dead follows the story of those who managed to make it, each with their own unique skills, personalities, and backgrounds.

By meeting one another, banding together or fighting, they will live to see another day. But one has to wonder how long they can continue living like this, and what is happening outside the city...

Deviant Dead is peculiar when it comes to Original Character Tournaments because Matches do not necessarily involve fighting. The organizers select characters belonging to two creator and pair them up, asking each of them to merely draw a story of those characters meeting and interacting. What happens in that story is irrelevant — what matters is that the story and the overall art are judged positively, as the winner's entries become canon.

Deviant Dead provides examples of:

• Action Girl: The OCT features several characters who fit the trope's criteria:
  • Keziah is a very capable aeralist, jumping from building to building using her skills in parkour with ease. She is also capable of killing zombies by getting up close and whacking them with a wrench until they stop moving. jumps from building to building and kills zombies with a wrench.
  • When cornered by a horde on an edge, Q proceeds to fight them off by roundhouse kicking them in the head before falling to her death.
  • Izzy actively goes out of her way to track down zombies and put them down. She keeps a big tally of how many she killed since the outbreak begun.
  • Jestin finds herself underwater being assaulted by a zombie monkey. Against an agile opponent and with the water weighing down on her, she still manages to kill the zombie. By repeatedly swinging an axe at it.
  • The Black and Nerdy Hannah first appears by falling to what appears to be her death. It's later revealed that she not only survived, but managed to fight off hordes, plural, of zombies off by her lonesome, using nothing but a pointed stick she found.
  • Upon finding herself tagging along with a new group of survivors, Saby finds herself having to demonstrate to them how taking care of zombies should always be a last resort and how to do it efficiently — using her keys, of all things to stab them through the head.
  Saby: "Don't waste any time though... go straight for the eyes!"
• Anyone Can Die: Fitting for the genre, no one of the featured survivors are guaranteed to survive the day. Through-out Deviant Dead, there is atleast one major character death per Round.
• Apocalypse How: The events of Deviant Dead appear to take place during a "Class 0" — Regional Scale, Societal Collapse — as the overwhelming presence of zombies and the pathogens they carry is atleast shown to be limited to Major City. That the army is still active and orderly outside it, and that their solution to this crisis is to nuke it from above to erase any trace of the infection, leads further credence to this.
• Backstory: Ned, at the start of the story, suffes from Identity Amnesia and remembers very little of his past. Through-out the story, his memories are shown to the readers as he slowly remembers them, thus serving as the foundations of his character arc.
• Beard of Sorrow: By the third day, Brian had grown his beard out, a symptom of his depression. Right after letting it grow out, things take a turn for the worse and only turn more sorrowful for him as Josh ends up turned into a zombie.
• Believing Their Own Lies: Be it as a pre-existing state of mind or as a result of the stress of the situation, several survivors grow to be various shades of delusional:
  • Charlie Gilbert, already self-centered due to a rough childhood, kept insisting on how cooler, smarter, and better he was than everybody else as a way to instill some self-esteem, something he came to wholly believe and which leads him to look down on others.
  • Birdie presents himself as a legitimate, academically-taught scientist, to the point of actually performing some research on the zombies and managing to convince those dubious of him. He's not. He's a clinically insane person who convinced himself of being one.
  • Carl was frequently cast as The Hero in various movies, to the point that fiction begun blurring with reality and he begun thinking of himself as life's protagonist. With the zombie outbreak, he further slips down this slippery slope and begins thinking of himself as the action hero who will save the day.
  • Brian Gilbert is entirely oblivious to how much his son Charlie hates him, having constantly repeated to himself that he was just doing what a father was supposed to do and that Charlie had been messed up by somebody else. The constant repeating of this lead to it becoming a fact from his point of view.
• Body Horror:
  • Pierre hides an infected's bite on his person. The pathogen transmitted through it quickly begins to affect his body's chemistry in frightening, innatural and frankly disgusting ways.
  • Mickey has become one of the infected and has begun mutating. The beginning stages of this infection see a second, zombified face growing out of his head and he's still alive and completely conscious and aware of it.
  • Later, several "mutant" zombies begin appearing, zombies so different from the normal shambling corpses they stand out from a mile away. Many of them have horribly deformed bodies, and have sprouted body parts no human being should have.
• Boisterous Bruiser:
  • Nikolai tries to act like a larger-than-life figure who does not have an indoor speaking voice and isn't letting the outbreak bring him down, but all he does is make others scary of him.
  • As a natural evolution of his Insane Proprietor persona, Jay gradually became a loud, boisterous brawler who makes tall claims.
• Bonus Material:
  • In addition to the main story, the administrators also have run several side contests that is collected as bonus material.
  • In addition, the participating artists have make not one but TWO different omakes - a high school one and a Big-Brother style reality show.
  • And besides their rounds, competitors like Crispy-Gypsy and and-also-dinosaurs expand on their characters and stories with in-between rounds
• Camera Fiend: Q is always seen holding a camera with her and taking pictures of anything she sees. It's part of her Japanese Tourist persona.
• Catchphrase: Jay, from his original Insane Proprietor persona, often concludes some phrases with "And that's a promise!" and a wink, as if he was filming an advertisement. Even after he grows out of the persona, he retains the catchphrase.
• City with No Name: The city that Deviant Dead takes place in is never referred to by name, and exclusively as "the city". Sometimes, it's referred to as "Major City", but it's unclear if that is its actual name or it's meant to be read as "a major city".
• Crazy Homeless People: As a result of his many troubles and his being an Amnesiac Hero, Ned had been reduced to living off of the streets and acting like a paranoid wreck. Upon the zombie outbreak, he quickly manages to pull himself and his faculties together, which also leads him to slowly recover his memories. Ned was one of these before the whole zombie thing. Then he took a turn in badass.
• Darkest Hour: Once the military decides to bomb the city and wipe it off of the face of the Earth, things quickly spiral into complete and utter hopelessness and despair for the remaining survivors.
• Depending on the Artist - How the characters are drawn can vary between artists a lot. Just look at Bean and Vaughn.
• Dramatic Irony: Molly first becomes aware of the zombie outbreak once the undead attack her university's campus. What were the other students and some faculty staff doing at the time? Playing a campus-wide game of Humans vs. Zombies.
• Faux Death: Simon appears to have shot himself off-screen. It's later made clear that what was shown was merely the gun's recoil after he shot a zombie.
• Flashback:
  • Simon and Jay's life-long friendship and Simon and Saby's romantic relation are explored and developed upon through the use of flashback daring back years, if not decades before the zombie outbreak.
  • Charlie and Brian's relationship is sometimes explained through flashbacks
• Genre Savvy: Most of the survivors are very much aware that they are in a Zombie Apocalypse, and act with the matching savviness. Two of them even crack jokes about the situations.
• Hypocrite: Ned, through his amnesia, sees himself restarting his life from scratch, yet finds the time to lecture and berate others on carrying their weights and accepting their past mistakes. Nowhere is this better exemplified than when he lectures Brian and tells him to be a better father right before seeing his own daughter, claiming he was just hallucinating, and turning around as she dies.
• Japanese Tourist: Q hails from Japan and fits all the stereotypes of the tipical tourist from the country, constantly having a camera with her to take pictures with and resorts to Gratuituous English to communicate with others.
• Mayor of a Ghost Town: After the zombie outbreak brings disrupts society and brings down the city's government bodies, DJ Voice rises up to the task and becomes the de facto mayor, utilizing radio equipment to communicate with the survivors and direct them "north". Turns out, through his radios, he was the first to learn of the military's plans, and tried to get everyone out of dodge before it was too late..
• The Medic:
  • Bob, as a trained EMT, often serves as the one healing and putting other survivors back together. Due to the current state of the city and the overall context, he's indispensable to others.
  • Michael Creavley is a medical school graduate, but due to a lack of on-the-field experience and tools, he doesn't end up being much help to other survivors.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: After Charlie rants at Aaron that he cares too much about other people and will only hurt himself upon finding his sister's inevitably dead, Aaron proceeds to give the mother of all beatdowns inside the car. He promptly comes to regret it and feels horrible about it afterwards.
• Not Using the "Z" Word: Some survivors, such as Jestin, do not use the Z-Word and call them "ghoulies" or even "aliens", whilst others don't beat around the bush and explicitly call them as what they see them, zombies.
• Now-or-Never Kiss: After a big fall-out and thinking he had died, Saby stumbles upon Simon and figures out he's alive after all. Taking their situation into consideration, and how likely it may be that the next time one of them may bite it for good, the two proceed to have a big smooch right there and then.
• Nuke 'Em: After the city has been quarantined, the military decides that the only possible answer to the zombie threat is to bomb the city off the map, completely disregarding the survivors still within its limits.
• Our Zombies Are Different: Several types of zombies appear through-out Deviant Dead: some move as fast as human beings whilst others stumble and drag themselves around. Some are shockingly intelligent, whilst others are reduced to animals that rely solely on instinct without any form of higher intellect. Some look human, whilst others are so thoroughly mutated they don't even look like something of this planet. The one trait most of them have in common is that they hunger for flesh.
• Past Experience Nightmare:
  • Ned frequently suffers from nightmares about his past and the things he remembers of it.
  • Brian often suffers hallucinations about those he killed or watched die. In his hallucinations, those very same people encourage him to kill himself.
  • Simon dreams of traumatic moments he lived through since the zombie outbreak started, including being attacked by an large, aggressive dog and his fight with Saby.
  • Aaron often finds himself in nightmares that carry him back to his unhappy, abusive, and traumatic childhood.
• Scenery Gorn: As a result of the zombie outbreak, the city is slowly getting torn apart by the hordes at the same it decays and falls to pieces upon itself due to the lack of maintenance and human intervention. One survivor even mentions that the rivers that go through the city are running red with the blood of the horde and their victims.
• Ship Tease:
  • At the very beginning, the audience is lead to believe Pierre holds a crush on a female co-worker of his. She immediately turns into a zombie and bites him, infecting him as well.
  • Mona and Eoin are shown to be very good friends, and at one point even hugh. Eoin sinks the ship before it can leave port by revealing he's looking for his girlfriend.
  • Izzy quickly begins crushing on Keziah. She eventually comes clear to her, admitting to finding her attractive. Keziah shoots her advances down, and Izzy dies shortly afterwards.
  • Michael and Julien have very sweet interactions, with the two clearly having some romantic chemistry. This goes nowhere since Julien dies.
  • Aaron and Jestin slowly grow closer to one another, and later take a further step by acting flirty with each other. They take yet another step when they begin snuggling with one another and start blushing. However, the two end up separated when Kaylee runs off, and Jestin ends up killed before Aaron can reunite the group.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: After Charlie proceeds to put down every single other survivor and mocks Aaron for his empathy, even rubbing it in that it's going to only lead to pain when he finds out his sister is dead, Aaron shows him what he'll "really" do and punches him out before initiating a beatdown. He comes to regret it afterwards, however.
  Charlie: They're nobodies! Getting attached to them is pointless! You just love to cry about how sad shit is! Well, cry all the fuck you want, because you just don't wanna face the fact that I'm right and you're wrong!
  Aaron: You... you don't give a shit about anyone else, do you? You don't even give a shit about me! Well, you'll just have to get the hell out of my car.
  Charlie: No, I don't give two shits about anybody because I'm not a dumb FUCK like you! That's what made you a fucking RAG, because you gave a fuck about those stupid blondes and your DUMBASS SISTER! What the fuck will you do when you find they're all dead too?!
  Aaron: HERE'S WHAT I'LL DO, YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT! *TWAK*
• Sinister Subway: A group of survivors eventually stumbles upon an entrance to the city's subway sistem. The cramped tunnels and lack of lightning are already creepy, but the presence of zombies only makes them worse. The group is eventually ambushed down there by a zombified Nikolai.
• Slept Through the Apocalypse: Tom and Izzy spend a good chunk of the zombie outbreak locked in their house playing their Xbox, completely unaware of what is happening outside until it's almost too late. Izzy's bitter reflection upon it serves as the page's quote.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: It's impossible to tell apart survivors who have retained their sanity and morality from those who have gladly thrown them away if it means getting to come out on top and live another day. The average person who didn't immediately end up as food for zombie quickly fell into one of these two camps, but their appearance remains just as average. [[poiler:One such example is Brian, who was an harmless everyman and father and eventually guns down two young children to find food for his own family.]]
• Thoroughly Mistaken Identity: Upon meeting him in the flesh, Brian slowly becomes convinced that Michael is Charlie despite the two being completely different people and Charlie being in another area of the city.
• Tonight, Someone Dies: Some Rounds are advertised as "mandatory death rounds" where atleast one person died per each survivor's point of view.
• Took a Level in Badass: By its nature, those who manage to survive the zombie outbreak naturally grow stronger and take steps to make sure that nothing will be able to get the drop of them:
  • Ned goes from a paranoid homeless person that people on the streets mocked and insulted to a leader an entire group of survivors looks to with awe, capable of surviving and holding his own against the hordes. He also regains his sanity and his memories in the process.
  • Jay starts off as a sleazy salesman with an "Insane" gimmick who constantly acts as if he was in an ad to a big, boastful brawler who manages to keep morale up for himself and everyone whilst manhandling zombies.
  • Hannah starts off as a studious but physically unassuming girl who cares far more about theory than practice. She quickly grows into an Action Survivor of her own, using whatever she can find to fend off entire hordes by herself.