Wow, yea I've been doing a terrible job keeping this up. And for fairly valid reasons. Work has been keeping me busy instead of giving me ample time to lounge around which is why I even started this thing. I've also been exploring Chicago and trying new things and working on being social. I had escargot two days ago (it's like an earthy oyster). Also signed up for online dating in order to meet people because wow, am I socially awkward. But hey, it's getting me out of the house and actually wearing dresses and skirts (but really, I'm throwing the skirt on as soon as I get home, steel toed boots don't make me feel pretty and after 8 hours of wearing them every day, I wanna feel pretty). So that's keeping me busy from writing on here as well as the fact that I am continuing to work on those side projects. I still need to shift more attention to my own stories but those are still cooking in my head, getting better with each time I share them with someone. But these side projects: I only have two individual works that I am writing in spurts (the latest garnered a lot of good tears, makes me happy), one long fic that I am working on with my awesome writing partner (seriously having a writing partner is something I've wanted forever and wow she's good at the inspiration/idea throwing/motivation/editing/fun), and then the weekly publication that just hit forty stories (average is about 3k words) over 34 weeks plus drawings for it at follower intervals. We have 560 followers for that blog.

So yea, things are going good here. Everything is gorgeous with lots of parks and city and lake front beach. I have visited the aquarium and been driven around downtown in a convertible. I have seen Despicable Me 2 and gone dancing (briefly as I was not prepared). I am trying to eat healthy (still need to work on cooking more) and looking into buying a bike because wow it is flatter than Florida up here.

It's good. I'm happy. And things look bright.

Thanks for sticking around. I promise to have a quick story idea that I don't want to lose up tomorrow.

Earplugs

So my new job requires me to wear ear plugs when I go out onto the floor. Usually I'll keep them around my neck when I am in the quiet areas and just roll them up and stick them in my ears when I head out. Then there is that moment where they fill out and block the sound. It's a slow quieting of the world. They don't block out everything but just enough to protect me from going deaf early.

But the quiet of the world out there is balanced by the loudness of my own head. I can hear my breath better, my humming echos through my skull, I am trapped in my head. It's kinda terrifying actually to be in one of the quieter places with my ear plugs in. I almost get claustrophobic because of the lack of sound and amplification of sound. It's disconcerting at the least. Horrifying at the worst.

I say horrifying because I should not be scared of my own mind, but being trapped in such close proximity with it. Says something about me, doesn't it?

Women V Zombies

So there is a post on tumblr going around that has women in cute 50's style dresses, mostly neck to knee shots. This alone is pretty. But the artist makes it better. They are all carrying weapons of some sort. Chainsaw, crow bar, kitchen knife, lead pipe. Now the last three items could be from Clue or something but the chainsaw makes it change direction. In the comments below the picture there is a discussion of a zombie survival game set in the 50's where only the women survived. They even gave it a little background of a super serum fitted to the male gene overloads the human body and turns men into primal needs incarnate, aka zombies.

The video game premise is interesting as one of the commenters brought up the idea that you should be able to design your own 50's dress and style and it would be interesting to see what male gamers would do. The play style would be interesting as well but more than that, the story you could write into such a premise would be fantastic.

Talk about having a variety of characters set into a perfect setting. The removal of men in the harsh 50's environment would create a power fluctuation and show case the strength of women. But you wouldn't just have strong bad ass women, you'd also have the range to have weak female characters. The range you could get out of a female only cast would be incredible. You get the strong characters protecting the weak but the weak ones could find their roles as the caretakers for the ones on the front line.

But you could also have story lines in which the weak character steps up temporarily for the strong character who breaks down from the stress of handling the zombies. Maybe the fighter comes face to face with a zombie who was once her husband and freezes. You could throw such emotion into the characters' actions that aren't usually showcased when the protagonist is male. You could portray women as humans with depth and character beyond their usual side kick or damsel in distress role while still including those roles. And the relationships that could be explored in a female heavy group would be fantastic. When have you ever seen the depth of female relationships between friends explored in detail? I know I really haven't because it is so complicated (and that is a gross understatement). You could explore the subtleties and nuances between women that stem from a social hierarchy unique to each woman in the network. The platonic relationships and entanglements would be fascinated to see played out especially in such stressful times.

There is also a gender reversal that could be showcased. Usually women are treated as precious commodities. You know, women and children first. But with this situation, you'd have an over abundance of women compared to the number of uninfected men. Suddenly men who are used to being the defenders and protectors are now the valuable resource and are seen as too precious to be on the front lines. They would be tucked safely away as the key to future generations. (This especially works when set in the 50's where they wouldn't have the technology or idea of in vitro fertilization using the genetic material from another egg instead of sperm.) The men's reaction to such restrictions would be so much fun to play with.

This would be an epic piece no matter what format it was presented in, game, story, comic, movie. Unfortunately it definitely wouldn't be made into a game with the way the gaming industry is horrendously gender biased from game creation to marketing to fans and gamers. You wouldn't be able to get the depth of story that this scenario offered in just a movie. A TV show might work if it was done correctly and if the public gave it a chance. A story would be perfect, I'm not sure if I could do it justice but I'd love to work with someone who could. Same thing with comic. Sigh. It's nice to think about though.

Character Classes

Class	Female Weapon	Male Weapon	Stamina	Strength	Defense	Armor	Weapon	Agility	Dexterity	Magic	Skill	Range	Skill Type
Warrior	Sword	Bo Staff	8	10	7	2	8	9	5	1	7	3	Strike
Mage	Fire/Water	Earth/Wind	8	2	4	4	1	7	7	10	7	10	Magic
Rogue	Long Knives	Throwing Knives	6	4	5	3	4	7	10	4	10	7	Sneaky
Archer	Cross Bow	Long Bow	5	7	5	1	7	5	9	3	8	10	Support
Martial Artist	Legs	Fists	10	9	8	5	1	8	5	2	8	4	Strike
Barbarian	Club	Claw	10	8	10	1	7	8	5	1	6	4	Beserk
Knight	Pole Arm	Bastard Sword	8	8	10	10	8	2	2	2	7	3	Military
Ninja	Chain Sythe	Large Shiruken	6	6	7	2	7	8	10	2	7	5	Kill
Dark Armor	Epee	Claymore	6	10	5	10	8	2	3	9	4	3	Dark
Paladin	Knuckles	Shield	10	5	6	10	8	2	3	7	6	3	Heal
Ranger	Slingshot	Falcon	8	4	4	5	7	10	7	1	8	6	Survival
Sorcerer	Hammer	Axe	5	10	5	8	10	1	3	9	6	3	Enchant
Engineer	Shotgun	Sniper	5	3	3	9	10	3	8	1	10	8	Tool
Healer	Tonfa	Mace	9	1	7	3	3	7	8	10	10	2	Heal
Summoner	Shadow	Light	6	6	5	6	1	5	6	10	7	8	Creature
Bard	Chain	Dagger	5	5	7	7	2	8	10	6	7	3	Support
Beast Master	Whip	Flail	7	10	6	6	5	3	5	4	9	5	Creature
Dancer	Katana	Chinese Sword	5	10	5	0	7	10	7	5	6	5	Strike
Gambler	Dice	Cards	6	5	5	6	4	5	10	5	10	4	Money

So this is a chart that I came up with a while ago because I was absolutely bored out of my mind one day. It's set up very much like a D&D information sheet or video game character class sheet. I worked very hard to come up with two weapons per class, and a skill the class would be extremely proficient in (pretty much to the exclusion of another class having that level of skill themselves). Then I distributed points across the typical stat categories found in traditional games. Using a lot of math and balancing I think I managed to get a pretty good array of stats across the different classes. There would be no difference between male or female and hopefully there won't be a class that outperforms another. Let me know if you see anything that would indicate that. I also began a series of drawings using these classes and weapons but I have no idea where that is right now.

And for interaction between reader and I, let me know if there is a particular role you'd see yourself as.