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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steampunkette" data-source="post: 9221261" data-attributes="member: 6796468">I've said it, before, and I'll say it again: It's about possession.There's tons of cultures throughout history that give high reverence to the dead. And there's cultures that give minimal reverence to the dead. There's no reason for there to never be fantasy settings where the dead are given no reverence because it's a husk, a shell, a pile of meat since the spirit left. For every culture and religious practice in a setting to somehow align with heavily christian-influenced western society is kinda weird.But. Our bodies are "Ours" and our family's in the end. It's why Organ Donation requires you to opt-in rather than taking what is needed from a useless hunk of dead tissue that is going to be discarded, anyhow. Western culture has a strong idea of possession of the body even after one is dead.Which is why last wishes are almost always respected. ALMOST always.See, once you're dead, your body is no longer -entirely- yours. While the hospital has to follow culture-specific laws about organ harvesting, your family is under no legal obligation to respect your wishes. You wanna be buried in a New Orleans graveyard but your family balks at the price? Enjoy being cremated and scattered in the bayou to get you "Close Enough".Your body becomes your family's possession to do with as they like, essentially.So a necromancer animating your body is stealing it. Same for the resurrectionist in the 1800s stealing your body for scientific study. "Desecrating" a corpse is just a really high highfalutin way of saying "Vandalism", in the end, with a heavy religious overtone to try and add weight to it. Same as "Desecrating" a church or a graveyard. And since your corpse is someone's property, that's also unacceptable.I say go all in with it. Have a society where it's wrong to animate dead. Have a different society that doesn't give a darn what happens to the body after death. Have a different society play hard into possession of one's remains result in families selling dead loved ones to necromancers (or have them stolen in a body black market). Heck, take it a step further and have a society where undead aristocrats routinely buy fresh corpses as "Possession Puppets" for their ghostly butlers and servants to possess so they can turn down bedding instead of having their ectoplasmic hands pass through stuff.Get real -weird- with it. After all, on Earth we've got societies where corpses are dug up once or twice a decade for family gatherings. Or left on mountaintops in open-air burials so birds get a nice meal. Or they get hung from the sides of mountains in tiny coffins all curled up like they're sleeping. Heck, for a massive portion of human existence, endocannibalism was the appropriate way of dealing with a dead person. Also yes. Enchantment magic is skeevy AF. Always has been. Most people just didn't consider the implications of stealing another person's free will or the inherent invasion involved in taking direct control over their body until recently. Probably has something to do with a greater societal understanding of the importance of consent in everything from drug use to relationships.</blockquote>

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