Technically zombies do not pass the Harkness test which is used to determine if it is okay to sleep with said fantasy creature or alien. 1. Does it have human intelligence? Not even close. 2. Can it talk or communicate with language? Not typically. 3. Is it sexually mature for its species? Yes.
The same could be said of sleeping people, people at various (severe) states of inebriation, and some small percentage of authors themselves.
Sleeping and inebriated people do posses human intelligence. One is unconscious and the reader could logically assume they would regain it if disturbed and woken up. Drunks are impaired and thus unable to give consent but will regain their faculties once their bodies have metabolized the substance inebriating them. A better example you could have used would be someone comatose as their is no guarantee they will regain any degree of intelligence.
The examples I used, while I did use them facetiously, are still arguably legitimate. Being capable of *regaining* human intelligence etc. Isn't the same as *possessing* it at the time of sex. Being capable of becoming a mature adult at a later time isn't the same as possessing that attribute at the time of sex. A comatose person might still wake up. Regardless its close to the same state of mind in the temporary. Doesn't matter. I really don't care, I was just messing around, but the point is that either state isn't clearly in favor of passing the harkness test... Which is the point of the joke in the first place.
Anyway we already have a topic to argue the gray area minutia of the clearly flawed harkness test... Hopefully this topic can be a little less serious minded on that bullshit.
I worked retail and I can tell you that if being asleep makes you fail the harkness test then I've met some people who were fully awake that would fail steps 1 and 2. So maybe we're being to hard on Zombies.
I am going to argue that sleeping and comatose humans count as having human intelligence, it's just that they at that moment are unable to use it. The real issue is that the Harkness test never asks for consent. Is it implied? Sure, the point is to find out if the creature CAN consent. An alien that passes the Harkness test can get drunk/asleep/comatose and then be unable to give consent even though they normally could do it.
I am being 100% honest as I say this: The current method of categorizing stories with science-fiction or fantasy merely as scifi/fantasy is a bit silly. And it's not just this site or porn in general, libraries and bookstores do the same. If, for example, there's a scifi-romance book which category will it be sent to? I've read some good detective books that were found in the scifi/fantasy section rather than crime/mystery just because the setting was fantasy. And more on topic for CHYOA, if I write a non-consent or bisexual or a cheating spouse story set in a fantasy setting why lump it up with the fantasy stories instead of the other categories? There's a separate category for MILF stories. What if I write a Scifi story abou MILFs? Why force all the stories with scifi or fantastic elements into one huge category? I've said it before and I'll say it again, ever since the realism movement in literary got started in 19th century they have been hogggin the focus and somehow the upstarts forced themselves to be considered the "default" of everything. In non-porn fiction this also causes the problem that books are forced into the "scifi-ghetto" where unless the writer is called Stephen King the book is considered less serious than "proper" stories.
