I posted a blog for every letter in the Alphabet...

And now I guess I'll have to think of some other way to liven things up. A number of multiples, and a number of times when I've gone off-topic, but not a bad month, really.

Oh, and silly, pointless Tales of the Conservancy poem-

Whither the Ranger Trike?

He/She isn't here, anymore.

There was trouble, before,

Which is no trouble, no more,

And no more Trike, either.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/46440951/Geronimo

Z is for Zeke, of course!

(The best part of this exercise 8-)

            Zeke is what the soldiers in 'World War Z' call individual zombies, like Charlie for VC, Ivan or Johny Reb in wars past. I think Mort and Morticia are winners, too, but Zeke is a name, even a slightly funny name, and since it comes from Ezekiel, it has a certain biblical connotation, which, I wonder, does that explain some of my stories?

            As has already been pointed out, Zombie stories are not about zombies. Of course they aren't, you might say- Zombies aren't real. But the fears and uncertainties we hang on them are very real; pandemic, panic, un-civil unrest, martial law... Thinking about your Zombie Plan is a fun way to take a step back from some very scary manure, and talk about preparedness and security.

            You can't prepare for the unexpected; disasters will happen that we maybe should have thought about (the prospect of a new New Madrid earthquake is the one that I think about after Japan), and the only thing which will carry you through is luck, a little foresight, and a mental attitude. Survivors are all alike in this respect; they have survived, and in doing so, they found the inner resources to act to save themselves and others. Of course, some of the rat-bastards didn't worry about others, but they are surprisingly rare. In a disaster, taking care of others is itself a survival mechanism, tried and true, repeated again and again, and we call these magnificent people, simply, heroes.

Y is for You and Yours

            We are very fragile creatures (I assume that we are all human- any aliens reading this, feel free to let us know? 8-). We can die if we lose more than half of our blood, or are exposed to temperatures, pressures or humidity outside of a rather small range, given the conditions on much of our homeworld. We kill each other over even less variation. Sometimes simply being different, being other, is enough to turn a crowd into a killing mob. We are creatures of fear and of hope; of hate and of love. All very kumbayah, I suppose, and as cynical as I am, I don't expect human nature to miraculously change to 'humane' overnight, although one can have hope, and work for something better, always...

            I am a bit of a hypocrite. I know, at the end of the day, that all I really care about are me and mine. You and yours are your family and tribe, related to you by blood or by spirit. If you understand these... limitations to the human design envelope, if you will, then per-maybe-haps you can short-circuit the bad, enhance and increase the good.

            I know that I am capable of killing, and probably of murder, too. I've lived on a farm, I have on occasion seen to the Thanksgiving turkey (generally called T-bird and Christmas, BTW, and no, I never got very attached to those pea-brains!), or rabbits, ducks and chickens. I eat plenty of meat, and I know how it is an industrial product, wherein a lot of things best left unsaid and un-thought-of happen, including, at some point, somebody killing a poor dumb animal whose purpose was always to have been food. So, getting finally to the point, I can and I would kill, for me and mine, for our table, or to protect our home.

            At some point everybody needs to stop, take a minute, and think about exactly how far you would go, in the extreme, for you and yours. Answer yourself honestly and be prepared to someday live with that answer.

X is for Xander, on Buffy

            I came very late to the party with Buffy. I'd liked it, but my introduction to all things Whedon was Firefly, and I'm a Browncoat. So Xander, the one human being among the Scoobies, was the guy I rooted for. Sure, he had a thing for demons, and eventually ended up with Anya, but he was a construction-guy, a very normal sort, and he held his own, kinda, with the witches and werewolves, the slayers and potentials, hell, the vampires (alright, so he got his butt handed to him on a regular basis, and was kind of the cowardly lion of the Scoobies 8-).

            What he had going for him was heart; he didn't let the fact that he was SOL 99% of the time stop him from saving the world on occasion. Yeah, exactly once, when Willow completely over-dosed on the magics and called up all of her power, tapped into it, and let it tap into her rage and grief. Xander talked her down, and Xander saved the world.

            Kinda begs the question- what are you capable of, and what will you do, at the end of the world?

W is for Wednesday, April 27th; W is also for Work and is the 23rd Letter of the Alphabet

            (I've played fast and loose with the rules of this little endeavor, and I do apologize, but it has been more fun this way, so I am happy to say that I'd do this all the same way again. Now, on with the blog!)

            Work is another one of those 4-letter words. Do you like it? Are you one of those workaholics who get high on hard work, and take pride in a job well done? I tend to be proud of the work after it's done; I appreciate it much better then. I'm just not one to see it in a positive light until it's done; it keeps me busy, that's the long and short of it. Pays the bills and my taxes... When I'm doing something boring like chasing the mower around the yard, I'm usually working on a story or daydreaming (same thing, really 8-). I have strange thoughts behind a push mower, and it's pretty much the only exercise I ever get, so hurray for mowing the grass!

            W is the 23rd letter of the Alphabet, and has no other connection to the 23rd Psalm; but it is my very favorite one. It and Ecclesiastes are the best parts of the Bible, IMHO-

23rd Psalm- The LORD Is My Shepherd

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies:

Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life:

And I will dwell in the house of the Lord, forever.

            There's a bit in 'V for Vendetta' where that silly old queen shows Evie (?) his Koran and she is shocked- 'What, are you a Muslim?' And he says, 'Heavens no, I'm in television.' He says something else, to the effect that it is beautiful; that he's moved by it, and he is not afraid (You should live your life unafraid, even if (no, especially if!) you do have enemies and troubles- the things I learn in escapist movies...).

            The words of the psalm above speak to me; they're an artifact of my people, and of a religion and a God with which I have my own personal issues. Which is as it should be; your relationship, or lack thereof, with a God or Gods, is personal and private. Bear witness to what you believe and what you are proud to represent.

V is for Vanilla and Villain

V is for Vincent, too, but not Victory for Micheal Vick and the B'eagles, all of whom are scumbags...

            Vanilla and Vanilla Fudge are my favorite flavors; I'm just like that, not much with the fancy, although strawberries, for some reason I can't put my finger on, I think that I should like them...

            Villains are a central pre-occupation of a GM and writer. They are the foil, the bad guy that opposes our heroes, and I cannot abide plain-Vanilla Villains. Mine must be more complicated, not dastardly dog-fighting ex-cons or baby-scalping alien invaders, although true evil has it's place (in a story, and 'Evil has It's Place' sounds like a winner...). But for verisimilitude, that sweet semblance of reality that I crave for my stories, we need shades of gray; complicated villains and the heroes who were made to stop them!

            Which leads into 'Villains and Vigilantes', one of those old school RPGs based on tried and true comic-book tropes; you rolled on charts of them, like 'bit by radioactive spider', or just selected something, and it all had a sort of thrown-together feel that I miss in certain modern games. Often too polished, the lot of them, as if the designers have been doing this sort of thing literally for years, which they have...

            In long ago times, lost in the mists of 1977, or there abouts, people didn't necessarily know what they were doing, and didn't let the rules boss them around. I was a kid, with a vague exposure to RPGs, but my cousins weren't interested, so the idea of making a dungeon, or building a world, lay dormant until college. Then I discovered D&D, but more importantly, Star Trek and later blessedly simple WEG D6 Star Wars and Ghostbusters, International and later TORG, the wellspring of Possibilities (literally; 'Possibilities', the player-influencing-the-environment-power in all of my games, whether or not a similar concept was already there, which it often was)! I GMed FASA Trek with a new alien species every week. The system had simple and agreeable world-building rules which I promptly mangled and mutilated, adding stuff from Traveller and from great world-building SF writers like Poul Anderson and Larry Niven.

            V is for... sometimes I brainstorm a little, and sometimes I know what I'm going to write. This is what I came up with for 'V'

Vengeance

Vendetta

Vexing

Vixen

'Lead them to Victory!' (the motto on the ToWWZ t-shirt 8-)

Virtue

Vile

Vote

Vole

Votive

Volt

Voltaire

Vor, Vorkosigan and Vorkosiverse (GB Lois McMaster Bujold! W,L,W!)

Visionary

Valence

Valentine

Valor

Vader, Darth

Vital

Veteran

Vetinarian

Villain

Vanilla

Viper

Victim

Volk

Valium

Vandal

Vinland

Vine

Varley, John

Voldemort

Valley

Vanna

Vance

Vector

Victor

Velocity

Velociraptor

Vellum

Vault

Vicar

Vogel

Vogel-perspektiv

View

U is for Uplift, the process of

Yet another SF concept for the blog...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uplift_(science_fiction)

Uplift is the fictional process of making a smart animal sentient (self-aware) or sapient (wise). One could argue that, if humanity self-domesticated, we uplifted ourselves...

David Brin's Uplift Universe and the cultures of the Five Galaxies come immediately to mind, and I swiped the idea for my Tales of the Conservancy (http://www.scribd.com/doc/46440905/Old-Complications), but it goes back a ways, to H.G. Well's 'The island of Dr. Moreau' and to Cordwainer Smith's Human Instrumentality. If there are no alien sapients, then we can always make some...

 

This brings up that old stand-by of 'getting-to-know-you' roleplay- what kind of animal would you be? 8-P

 

I'd kinda like to be a dragon; magical, and of the land...