I've written before about how art closes the gap between people since the audience's experience of art is necessarily a combination of their own subjective world and that of the artist's. This merging of subjectivities, I believe, is best experienced when the work is taken as is without any direct influences on one's interpretation, especially the external influence of the creator (although I've recently read some things that confound this). Therefore, I'd personally suggest reading FDOTG and forming your own opinion first. However, it's not something I can enforce and I'd be hypocritical to suggest you can only enjoy art in one particular, objective way.
This self-indulgent piece primarily exists to explain my intentions for the work and where I think it has succeeded and failed. I love hearing about artists' processes and opinions on their own work. It informs my own practice (not usually directly, but it at least makes me think about it), it's a kind of connection, and it can also enhance my appreciation for the work itself.
I think at least some of these are obvious to those who've experienced them but who knows. I'll explain them all anyway.
At the impressionable age of 10, I saw Land of the Dead. What struck me most about the movie was that the zombies were portrayed sympathetically (at least more so than anything else I'd seen) and one character even wanted to try out being one. I think I was already very into zombies at this point (I remember doing quizzes about them back when quizzes were a big thing on the internet) so I was aware of their usual status as somewhat menacing fodder. So, even though the classism metaphors flew over my head, seeing them be something more than that felt special.
I'm not sure exactly which Resident Evil movie I saw first, but I definitely saw the movies before trying any of the games. I really enjoyed the monster designs (by far the most out of anything in this list) and loved the idea of the T-virus being able to create such a diversity of forms. I'm not sure if there were ideas in the franchise related to hive minds in earlier Resident Evil media, but it certainly comes up in the latest video games (such as Resident Evil: Biohazard).
For both Prototype and Dark Sector the protagonist is infected with a zombie-producing virus and has to fight both normal humans/military guys and creatures produced by the virus. The requirement to fight zombies always perturbed me, and I have since longed for some media that has pure zombie vs humanity conflict from the perspective of the zombies. I've still yet to find anything like that (other than FDOTG itself, of course). Both games, but particularly Prototype, try to have their cake and eat it too regarding zombification where the protagonists are bestowed powers but without any responsibility to or kinship with the other infected. I could probably write an essay on this point alone, but I shan't digress too much. Suffice it to see why this approach fits nicely with the goal of delivering an individualistic power fantasy.
I really liked the aesthetics of Prototype. Flesh growing on buildings, a red and black colour scheme, a perfectly early 2000s level of edge. It was just right for my tastes at the time. Like the Blacklight virus, the Blossom also facilitates the sharing of memories. I think this idea was not explored deeply in the game, but that tracks since its focus was more on the action sequences. As for the characters, I found the protagonist Alex Mercer a bit boring but oh my did I love Elizabeth Greene. I was fascinated by how she identified with the virus and was eager to spread it. I couldn't help but think: would it be so bad to join her? She retained enough of her mind that she could still reason and speak, and I got the sense that she genuinely cared about the infected. Combined with the aforementioned memory sharing, I imagined the infected ‘community' would feel very close, safe, and, of course, I consider agelessness a pretty massive benefit. Again, these ideas are woefully unexplored within Prototype, but the potential is unmistakable. I wish there was a game from Greene's perspective, or at least where her character was developed more deeply.
Dark Sector did not fit my aesthetic preferences so closely, and its main character is yet more boring, but I did like/found attractive the designs of Stalker, Nemesis, Stringers, Chroma, and Howlers. What I particularly appreciated was the transition from messy zombified infected to sleek and powerful monsters.
The Enemy series by Charlie Higson starts off as a pretty normal zombie apocalypse (I think. It has been over a decade since I read them and there are seven books). I distinctively remember that at some point we saw the perspective of one character who was turning into a zombie, as well as that of a particularly intelligent zombie. This zombie, called Wormwood, felt a sense of community with his mindless brethren and also appeared to be able to influence them telepathically.
Everything mentioned so far features zombies that are, to varying degrees, integrated into a hive mind, and/or protagonists who are themselves infected with the zombie pathogen. Resident Evil: Biohazard, Prototype, and Land of The Dead all hint that there's a sort of community to be found in zombification. While I'm very glad that there's at least this sort of consistency, I don't feel like any of these works really delve deeply into this idea, at least from the POV of someone being integrated into that community. This has frustrated me for years.
Moving on to the non-zombie-related media.
Evangelion has influenced my entire personality and so also everything I do and create. But the influence on FDOTG is also quite direct: I wanted to make something that really embodied what it would be like to be under the Blossom's influence in the same way as Evangelion's final episodes embody what it is like to be affected by the Human Instrumentality Project. In Evangelion, the medium undergoes dramatic shifts (partially due to budget cuts) to reflect personality melding, Shinji's loss of individuality, and the conflict over whether he wants it back or not. There is very little more impactful than when the medium of a piece reflects the story itself. The question posed by Evangelion regarding the Human Instrumentality Project ("Is it better to be one or live as an individual?") is also the main question which drives Flesh Dreams of The Garden.
OMORI also poses the question "Do you want to live in the world and have relationships with others?" but the alternative is solipsism rather than oneness. At one point, I considered also trying to make a horror RPG game version of FDOTG and maybe one day I still will. I'm planning to write my magnum opus starting when I turn 30 and once I've finished that I might move to a new primary medium for my art.
As for Annhilation, it solidified my choice to confirm very little about the Blossom, just as Vandermeer confirms very little about the Shimmer. What the Blossom is was decided independently of Annihilation, but one could certainly make some strong comparisons between it and the Shimmer.
Disclaimer: the initial idea for Flesh Dreams of The Garden was significantly hornier and more debaucherous than the current version. If you've read FDOTG you probably won't be perturbed by anything I say next but I will discuss death, pregnancy, and bodily transformations.
I initially envisioned Flesh Dreams of The Garden as a novel called The Horde which was a superhero-erotica-horror mash up. The Horde was set into the future (rather than the past) where humanity was struggling against an ongoing zombie invasion. There were meant to be several different strains of Blossom, each of which had very different themes and motifs. The most developed of these was one with a somewhat militaristic ethos and chess-like hierarchy. The main character, also called Aster Good, was scientist who, in her eagerness for samples, accidentally ended up (consensually) mating with a massive zombie from this strain (a "King"). She died, but the virus resurrected her and gave her powers.
This version was actually outlined fairly completely, except for an ending. The idea was that Aster would realise her values aligned more with zombies than humanity, defect to their side, and begin efforts to help them win the war against humanity. Her womb had the ability to combine different strains into new forms. She would develop her powers, and grow her army, through a mixture of training with and mating with the different strains.
Can you tell video games were a big influence? I would pay stupid amounts of money for a game that achieved this vision because I can scarcely imagine anything hotter.
At some point I decided that this idea was so hot that if I was to really do it justice, I'd need to make it feel real in a way that I couldn't achieve by just dropping the reader into this somewhat outlandish setting. That's what led writing a very grounded backstory for Aster which mostly looked the same as it does in Old Flesh. It was meant to make her feel relatable, realistic, and give a development to her monster-fucker kink. What happened instead was that I drew a lot more on my own life to make hers feel real.
As I continued along this path, I found that certain barriers I faced writing the original version were no longer present. The superhero-horror-erotica idea wasn't really suited to the prose format in the same way the very close exploration of Aster's psyche was. For a while, I still fully intended to write the initial version but I've now given up on that.
Fun fact: William's story was already an idea at this stage, and it wasn't all that different to its current form (although it's much better written now).
Having interrogated the desire for a zombie sympathetic narrative, I realised it's because I always project onto zombies a desire for oneness. If we could share each other's dreams, thoughts, and memories then wouldn't we understand each other better? This is the problem posed by Human Instrumentality Project in Evangelion. When I began writing the first version of FDOTG, I would have said the answer is an enthusiastic yes: the less boundaries between us as individuals, the better. Somewhere along the first re-write I found that I no longer agreed with my past self. Rather than desiring oneness and enjoying connection as a temporary, flawed version of that, what I realised that what I really desire is connection itself and that can only be experienced between individuals.
This presented something of a problem in writing FDOTG since the idea formed under one system of priorities but was completed in another. The NILS zombies, at first, represented oneness, and certainly they appear that way at first to Aster who has been alienated from the rest of humanity. What I have attempted to do is to allow Aster to perceive them this way at first but then confound this interpretation for her and the reader. Although she has what she wants from the very beginning (oneness as produced by the influence of The Blossom) she clearly doesn't know this and, I hope it is clear, she does not directly benefit from it.
Rather, her happiest moments occur when she makes connections with the thoughtforms in her psychological world (represented in NewFlesh and, maybe, OldFlesh depending on your interpretation). These connections are facilitated by the Blossom, but ultimately it is her actions that create them. I didn't want to imply her lack of connections in the Real timeline (of Corpse.html) is entirely her fault, though. Connection is hard, especially if you have no practice, and she genuinely did not have much opportunity to make them. The Blossom makes all this easier by allowing her to repeat the cycle and by providing her with temporary moments of oneness that reduce her feelings of alienation. In particular, by experiencing Julia's emotions, she avoids a jealousy that she would be unable to contend with. She is therefore able to maintain a stable relationship with both James and Julia. Still, Aster doesn't do this perfectly and often rejects possible intimacy.
Another way she obtains oneness is by experiencing her friends' dreams and memories. However, she fails to really incorporate these into her worldview or use them to understand those around her. Structurally, these dreams - which are often unpleasant - are well separated from the rest of her psychological world. This is meant to evoke the idea that Aster does not want to experience, or dwell on, any real hardship. The one time Bad Things threaten to actually enter her psychological world (the death of Charlie's mother), Aster is unable to understand how Charlie might feel and thus makes no bond with him.
The idea isn't really to take a moral stance on oneness vs connection as such, but rather to show how the desire for the latter might be confused for the former, especially for someone who is socially isolated and inexperienced. Indeed, even though Aster does get to wake up (and is saved from life as a mindless NILS zombie, something she explicitly does not desire), the world she wakes up into is strange, dangerous, and it's left ambiguous if she will be able to find connection with others.
I didn't realise until writing this, but Aster's psychological world could also be read as OMORI type escapism, e.g., escape into solipsism. This is because Aster's inner world, although it is made up of both her psyche and that of others, is cut off from the external world. Just like in OMORI, Aster's thoughtforms are static, stuck with the traits their real-world counterparts had before the inciting incident. This makes Aster's world solipsistic; although she is now one with other people, she is also entirely isolated from them, and her world can only recycle what already exists.
This trend was a lot more unconscious so it's much harder to say what my intentions where here. But I will say that I do have 90% of a novel that is explicitly about the question of solipsism versus connection. So, I'll save any further thoughts for if I ever publish that and do a retrospective on it (or hey, maybe someone else will).