Maddie asked Isaac Marion:

R embodies an interesting duality of existence as both human and a perversion of that state. Do you find it more liberating to write a character who is human, but not constrained by standard societal expectations/social mores than to write a character bound to reality in some way?

Isaac Marion I'm going to assume when you say "bound to reality" you mean bound to the above mentioned social mores and not *reality* itself, because R's world is "the real world" in every way except the existence of the plague.

So to answer your question as I understand it--yes, it's liberating, but really the fun part is the transition out of those norms. Warm Bodies begins with R as an upstanding member of society--it's just not the society we're used to. It's not until he meets Julie that he actually starts breaking rules. Julie is further down the "rebel" path than R is at this point, and he sort of meets her in the middle where the fringes of their societies overlap. I'm always interested in those fringes, whether it's social groups, belief systems, genres, etc. I suspect there's a lot more value to be found on the edges where things clash and mix than in the solid center.

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