Prepper Fiction

I’m an Indie-Author who focuses on Post-Apocalyptic fiction, but one that finds himself at odds with the broader Post-Apocalyptic Indie Author/Audience scene. Most successful Indies who write Post-Apocalyptic fiction actually only write within a very narrow bandwidth of the genre, focusing on what should be it’s own sub-genre of Preper Fiction. It’s fine if you want to do that, but it’s really not something I want to do. I’ve known I don’t mesh well with the broader PA-Indie Author scene for a while now, but it’s always been hard to nail down why. But I just got into a brief, but revelatory, discussion with an Indie who is far more successful than I am - and now I think I know why.

Prepper Fiction, as the name suggests, focuses on Preppers - which also reveals their protagonist’s key aspect - they’re prepared. The implications of this were only made crystal clear to me during this discussion with the other, far more successful (I cannot stress that enough) Indie. To summarise his rather long point, he basically said -

“My character was a good guy, smart, popular, successful, helped out in the community and church. He almost did everything right… but he never asked ‘what if’? and so his unperparedness for a tomorrow that wasn’t like today lead to his downfall. I want people to think about this character, and not be like him.”

To which my reply was -

“So, basically, what you’re saying is - “Jack was a really great guy, but he wasn’t a Prepper… so he died.”

The conversation jackknifed and he denied my synopsis of his longwinded post and suggested I read his book, which I kindly refused. But it did get me thinking about his argument, and where I’d heard it countless times before.

Back in the good old days, where the biggest concern in society was how annoying the Christians could be, they always had this weird argument about heaven. It was basically that it didn’t matter how good a person you were, if you didn’t follow Christ then you’d go to hell. You could house the poor, care for the sick, donate blood and save puppies, but if you didn’t adopt this one particular lifestyle, then all that was in vain and you’d suffer the consequences.

It’s the same argument…

It’s no suprise that the biggest readers of Prepper Ficiton are American Christians, they’ve been freaking out about doomsday forever. They spend their entire lives preparing for the Day of Judgment, when all the non-believers who didn’t think like them will finally understand that they were fools and ohhh if only they’d listened to the ever so wise and saintly Christi-I mean, Preppers.

It’s the exact… same… argument.

I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to figure it out, but this throw-away discussion with one of my betters has laid out exactly why I hate Prepper Fiction. Imagine having the audacity to think you could prepare for the end of the world? Imagine staring down zombies, nuclear war, EMP, coronal mass ejection or an actual pandemic (because those are the only scenarioes they deal with) and thinking, “yeah, I got this.” It’s the exact same audacity that allows people to walk around thinking, “anyone and everyone who doesn’t follow my way of life will burn for eternity, but I’m going to be rewarded for eternity.”

For the most part, beyond the inciting incident, the apocalypse doesn’t even play a role in Prepper Fiction - it’s just there to kick things off and break the world order we’re currently stuck with. This is because Prepper Fiction is simple wish-fulfilment - of a world where everyone who doesn’t think like the reader dies and the slate is wiped clean. Any antagonists who manages to survive the end of the world in Prepper Fiction are either evil “heathens” to be killed or unprepared “atheists” who should’ve listened and prepared while they had the chance. Prepper Fiction isn’t about people surviving the end of the world, it’s about people prepared for the end of the world surviving, and being proven right.

But the thing is - the apocalypse is the end-of-the-fucking-world, it doesn’t take sides and it doesn’t give a shit how prepared you are. A meteor is going to kill millions, the resulting tsunamis will kill millions more and the subsequent famines will kill billions after that. Fuck your little cabin in the woods and collections of bullets and beans. You’re not going to be rebuilding shit after that, certainly not your little utopian light of civilization you think you’re carrying. You’re gonna hide out in your cabin in the woods for a few weeks and then wonder why you’re suddenly getting sick. As you start firing blood from both ends you’ll remember that there’s nobody to run the nuclear powerplants and so they’ve all gone into meltdown and they’re spewing radiation all over the country side. The last thing you see, as you die scared and alone, is your bug-out-bag full of expensive gear.

I was never a Christian, and I’m not a Prepper, and even though people can and do make bank by catering to this audience, it’s just not something I’m interested in… but fuck me if this link between the two wasn’t a massive reveal for me.

The Land of Long Shadows - Released!

Well, after a whole lot of fucking around… The Land of Long Shadows is finally published.

Thanks to everyone that helped out along the way. I had a whole lot of help from people who put up with crackhead brainstorming sessions and an endless stream of strange queries that raised more than a few eyebrows. Writing this book was a challenge, but if early reports are anything to go by then it’s all been worth it.

If you’re into Post-Apocalyptic ficiton, or just something a little outside the norm, then you can check out The Land of Long Shadows - here.

Finally… I can move onto something else.

New Post-Apocalyptic Novel - The Land of Long Shadows

It took me much longer than expected, but I’m finally releasing my next post-apocalyptic novel!

Just look at that cover. You know some crazy shit is about to go down.

The basic gist of it is that I drunkenly set things in motion that rippled out like a cascading cluserfuck and consumed most of my creative energies for the past few years. But, it’s finally complete and ready to be ejected out into the world… like a stinking turd, or a demonically possessed stillborn.

“Why would he phrase it like that?!”

Because, my nonexistant interlocutor, I want to set your hypothetical expectations in order. The Land of Long Shadows, to put it mildly, is not a nice story. It is a story about the worst of the worst that humanity has to offer, stuck in a crapsack world without any hope in sight. There are no heroes in The Land of Long Shadows, and the day cannot be saved.

Just as it isn’t a short read (coming in at 142,000 words), it’s not a straight-forward read, either. The literal world has ended on a fundamental level, and there’s some reality warping, timey-whimey shenanigans going on. Just when you think you soul can’t take the strain from all the horrible characters, your mind will start to crumble from trying to get a grasp on the plot and setting. Transgressive Ficiton really can be a certain kind of fun, sometimes… from the right angle… under the proper lighting… at the exact time of year.

Anyway, I’m aiming to release The Land of Long Shadows on August 12th, 2023, just two weeks away from the time of writing this. With all this prep for release going on, I’m already hard at work on the sequel as well as a few other post-apocalyptic projects. So, stay tuned for all that.

Immune Female Protagonists

This is going to be a rough one, but stick with me and I promise that we’ll get there in the end.

A Chosen One is a character that has been chosen by fate or destiny to save the world. It’s a great set up for a story protagonist because it allows for unconventional characters to be the centre of the narrative. Why is Luke Skywalker from the original Star Wars trilogy going to be the one to bring down The Empire? Because the Force chose him. Why is the Dark Lord going to be defeated by Harry Potter in the Harry Potter series? Because He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named heard a prophecy of a child that would kill him. Why is the Dragonborn suddenly shouting in the Dragon-Tongue? Because they were blessed by Akatosh.

You get the idea.

There’s another type of Chosen One, specifically for stories that are more realistic or based around science rather than magic, someone who is biologically chosen – The Immune. Typically these characters are the protagonist of a story because they are biologically immune to some threat that is ravaging the world. Why is Dr. Robert Neville immune to the vampire virus in I Am Legend? He was just born that way, kind of lucky when you think about it, right? Why didn’t Alice turn into an Infected in 28 Weeks Later? Not sure, it's possibly got something to do with her heterchromatic eyes… pity it didn’t protect her from being killed by her husband whom she just infected. Why is Mitch Emhoff immune to the outbreak in Contagion? He’s just lucky.

You get the idea.

Being biologically chosen is mechanically the same as being chosen by fate or some god, just without the mystically woo-woo. It allows you to have unconventional characters be the heroes of the story, because they’re the only ones who *can* be the heroes. It’d be great if we had some SAS guy going after the zombie cure… but all we’ve got to rely on is this high school drop-out slacker, because he’s immune for some reason. The Immune is a great trope, but it does come with a pretty serious storytelling issue that a few notable stories have bumped into.

Ellie from The Last of Us is a primary character in the series because she is biologically immune to the Cordyceps Brain Infection. While she can still be killed by the Infected, she can’t be infected with the virus they carry. Haniwa from See is born into a world of the blind, as one of the few people that is actually able to see. While the apocalypse that ended the world and left the survivors blind is centuries past, the world has moved on without sight and Haniwa has to learn how to navigate a world not designed for her.

In stories about saving the world, the characters need to be both strong and brave, and able to take on danger at every turn in service of humanity. Both Ellie and Haniwa are fierce warriors who have adapted to a violent world that wants to kill them at every turn, it’s why they make great protagonists. As uncomfortable as it is, the key issue is the fact that they’re both women. This is because the problem with The Immune, as opposed to The Chosen One, is that a biological problem is going to have a biological solution.

In a world where immunity is the only thing that’s going to save humanity from the virus that’s threatening to wipe them out, then logically the best thing the hero can do is spread that immunity. Characters in both The Last of Us and See tackle this in their own way. In The Last of Us, a group of freedom fighters/terrorists plans to harvest Ellie’s brain so they can generate a cure for the virus. In See, a sighted man named Jerlamarel is going around knocking up as many women as he can, to sire children who can see.

The problem with female characters who are protagonists simply because they are Immune, is that the most logical thing they can do to save the world is stay at home and have babies. Realistically, if you wanted to save the world and you had access to one of these Immune females then you’d do everything in your power to make sure they’re passing on this immunity. Now, the Fireflies in The Last of Us had a stupid plan. If they were going to go full on supervillain and sacrifice a child, why harvest her brain when they could harvest her eggs? If you’ve got the capability to do brain surgery in a post-apocalyptic world, like they do in The Last of Us, then just get a hundred women and artificially inseminate them with Ellie’s fertilized eggs. Boom, instant population of Immune and things only get easier when you’ve got Immune who are men. If humanity has taken more of a tumble and isn’t as advanced anymore, like in See, then just find a woman who’s Immune and move heaven and earth to make her as comfortable as possible as she pumps out Immune kids for as long as she can.

Despite the fact that this course will save the world, it’s not glamorous, it’s not action packed and it’s not viewed as good story telling. Thanks to biology, an Immune male protagonist could spawn hundreds of Immune children in a year and still go on all sorts of story-worthy adventures. But an Immune female protagonist? Nobody wants to play a video game about a woman who stays in a zombie-surrounded compound having kids for all her child bearing years. Beyond that, could you imagine the uproar that’d result from a modern story that revolves around a woman staying at home and having kids?

In an age of stories where men are being told to grow up, stop going on carefree adventures, shoulder some responsibility and settle down with a family, women are being told to go out and live their best lives, initiate boss-bitch mode and take on the world. Immune female protagonists only seem heroic, because the real heroic thing to do (for any Immune, male or female) would be to put aside their ambitions and adventures in service of humanity… because that’s what an actual hero does.   

So, what do storytellers do to avoid this plot hole? How do they justify the Immune female protagonist, cradling the salvation of humanity in her womb, rushing off into danger and putting herself and the future of humanity at risk?

It's simple, they make her a lesbian.

The Immune female protagonist isn’t interested in having Immune children with a man because she’s not interested in men. Being a lesbian isn’t enough to get them around the whole egg-harvesting scenario, but it’s enough to insure they can stay out in the world and maintain their status as protagonist of an action story. Not that any woman would ever really aspire to being a baby factory, but it would be particular abhorrent for a lesbian in a world where artificial insemination isn’t an option. Passing on their Immunity through procreation just isn’t an option for them, so they don’t even bother with it. Writing Immune female protagonists as lesbians is justifiably enough of an excuse to allow them to get out of taking the most obvious course of action to save the world.

So, if you were ever wondering why Ellie from The Last of Us and Haniwa from See are both Immune while also both being lesbians, it might have less to do with representation and more to do with writers trying to escape a gaping plot hole they’ve created for themselves.

Setting the Record Straight

So I haven’t updated this blog in a while, despite everything I’ve said in previous posts. Plans change, boo-hoo. Despite this though, the blog has still been getting a bit of attention, although not in a manner that I’m all too happy with.

A while back I started watched the Van Helsing series, and I began writing a few blog posts about the show. I didn’t like how they handled a lot of things, but it’s Post-Apocalyptic so I kept watching and I kept writing. The problem is that these posts gained a lot of attention with the wrong sort of crowd, and even though I haven’t been here in a while - they’re still the main source of traffic to the site. So a TV show that I’m not even that fond of, is bringing the majority of people to my site.

Not happy.

The worst part, though, is that due to the nature of my critique I seem to be getting a lot of angry guys who hate the show. I can only assume they Googled the show after watching and thanks to the metrics my blog posts came up first… and so instead of taking their rage to a forum, or something, they just dumped it on my blog. This has happened a few times now and along with not being the sort of constructive discussion I’m interested in, these comments are a constant reminder of my lapsed obligations as a blogger.

So, to set the record straight - this is not an anti-Van Helsing site. This is a site for all things Post-Apocalyptic and more broadly, stories in general. I’m not going to play the SEO game with Google and start pumping out rage bait to try and capitalize on one post that became popular for all the wrong reasons. If all you’re bringing to my blog is a hatred for a TV show, kindly fuck off.

I’ve got nothing against strong female protagonists, as long as they’re handled fairly, realistically and consistently. I actually want them, because having well rounded characters makes any story better. Just do it in a way that doesn’t involve dragging guys down, and I’m as happy as a pig in shit.

Scarlett Johansson was a literal tank in Ghost in the Shell.

Sigourney Weaver was a Xeno-killing machine in Aliens.

Gina Carano was a beast in Deadpool… along with anything else she’s in.

Jennifer Garner is an absolute badass.

Charlize Theron was historic on the Fury Road….

Do I need to keep going?

Chances are that if you came toe-to-toe with any of these ladies - they would royally fuck your shit up. Deal with it.

A few episodes of Van Helsing were trashy due to mishandling a message, big deal. Overall the show is actually pretty decent, and it’s kept me watching and I’m keen to see how it ends. It’s not that great, but then how many shows these days are? I’m watching it to learn about the crafts of writing and storytelling, learning what works and what doesn’t. If you don’t like it, and you’re not getting anything else from it, then why are you still watching?

Don’t go full swing in the other direction here, either. I’m not some SJW cuck looking to virtue signal…. but I’m not some Alt-Right Incel nutjob either. Just make great stories, with well-written characters. Because if you don’t, then I’m going to learn from your mistakes.

To close, here’re some women being badasses in quarantine.

Return to Form... and an Old Post-Apocalyptic Book!

Hey folks, sorry for the massive hiatus, literally three months since my last update, life has been sort of hectic of late. Living overseas is never easy, and some days are a lot more stressful than others. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about, I’m here to talk about updating the Post-Apocalyptic Writing Guide!

It’s been a year since I released the guide, and it’s garnered some great comments and reviews… but the things with guides is that they have to stay current. With that in mind, I’m going to update and re-release the guide. A version 2.0, if you will.

Because of this, I’m opening the floor to my Post-Apocalyptic tribe - if you’ve got something you think should, or shouldn’t, be in there, then let me know! I’ve got my own changes that I want to make, sure, but I’m happy to listen and take on board any thoughts or criticisms that Post-Apocalyptic creators and fans have. I want this to be the quintessential guide, and for that I need all of you. There’s already a long list of names in the front, people who’ve helped out, and I’m more than happy to have yours in there too.

If you’ve already got a copy, then flip through it and take some notes. If you haven’t got a copy, then just email me at JJShurte@Gmail.com and I’ll send you one for free. One of the tribe, S.T. Campitelli, has already written up a five page document that’s full of some really helpful stuff, I’m seriously impressed and doubly grateful. But I don’t care who you are, as long as your a fan of the genre, I’m open to any and all input.

Thanks in advance, and best of luck out there!

PS - Yes, I’ll try to update more.
PPS - Yes, I’m still working on my fiction… when I can.

Captain Marvel - Feminism Done Right

I figured I’d wait until all the hubbub around Captain Marvel died down before I threw my two cents at the matter. I’m only coming at this from a storytelling perspective, since it’s not a Post-Apocalyptic film, but I’ve done enough posts on times when feminism has been done poorly that it felt warranted. While I think Captain Marvel was a good film, the main point here is that it delivered its message in a perfectly palatable, and inoffensive, manner.

I’ve made plenty of posts about shows like Van Helsing, Wynonna Earp and Orange is the New Black, about how they’re posing as vehicles of social change when in reality they’re just riding the wave of popular opinion to make some cash. The first two are female power fantasies, where women are given super natural strength to dominate the world around them, while the later is a character drama where all women are victims and men are ineffective losers at best and tyrannical oppressors at worst. They’re feminism done wrong, because they preach to the already converted. They’re made for people who already hold the views they’re purporting to push, which in turn makes them unpalatable to anyone they’d seek to change the opinion of. Making content for a target audience is fine, we all do it, but these shows are catering to the current populist trend of social justice and victimhood. So while they’re appealing to certain peoples sensibilities, they’re not actually contributing anything to their cause beyond “Muh Representation!” and they’re resorting to shit storytelling to do it.

So basically, that whole paragraph was to show that I’m not a fanboy, I’m not a soyboy and I’m not an ally or anything of the sort. Chicks are cool, gays are cool, I don’t even care about any of that shit, I just want well crafted stories that are water tight. All this pandering to extremists tends to create characters that are two dimensional Mary Sue’s, and narratives that are contrived and cliched. It’s boggled my fucking brain from the get go, because such hamfisted storytelling doesn’t help anyone beyond the creators who can make a quick buck off the moronic herd-minded tribalism that’s so popular these days. I put that last paragraph there to show that I’m not the sort of person who’ll just blindly swallow a cheesy moralizing feminist flick, and that I’ve written enough about such flicks that the following endorsement should carry some weight.

Captain Marvel was actually pretty good, and there wasn’t anything in the film that had me rolling me eyes or wanting to leave. There’s been a lot of negative press and controversy around the film, primarily surrounding the lead actress Brie Larson and her outspoken views on straight white men… but I don’t care about any of that external stuff. Chris Evans says some pretty on-the-nose stuff that’s in a similar vein, and while I haven’t seen any of the Captain America films, I do enjoy his work in the Avengers films. People are allowed to do and say some stupid shit and it doesn’t have to seep into the film. Tom Cruise is a bit of a dick but I watched him in Oblivion and thought “god damn, that man can act!”

I’ll admit that I agreed with people’s initial assessment from the trailers, Brie Larson did look bored. But as someone with Blunted Affect, I get how fucking irritating it is when you’re told to smile all the time. In the movie though she’s actually quite emotive, so maybe the trailers just focused on the scenes where it’s more serious. There’s a decent amount of humor in the story too, and I found myself laughing with my friends. (Yes, I have friends IRL.) There were several well written female characters, with strengths and flaws, but there were also multiple well written male characters who weren’t nerfed into cuckoldom just to make Captain Marvel look good. This is something that other aspiring feminist films could learn from - making your male characters weak doesn’t make the female lead look stronger, it' just makes her surrounded by a bunch of ineffectual losers and undercuts any achievements she might accomplish. What’s more impressive, a woman playing Rugby against the All Blacks and winning, or a woman competing against the Under-7’s Special Needs division and winning?

I know there’s one scene where her friend says something along the lines of “Let’s go show these boys how it’s done!” But you’ve got to ask yourself, what else was she going to say? They were the only two female pilots, they were surrounded by men and “Let’s go show our coworkers how it’s done!” just doesn’t have the same ring to it. Also, as a guy who works with just one other male, at a certain point you do start spending a lot of time with that person simply based on their gender. Along with this, there’s this montage where there’s a bunch of men in her life telling her that she can’t do things because she’s a girl. Her dad freaks out because she was in a go-kart crash, which is understandable, and her fellow trainees in boot camp are heckling her. I never got to join the military, but it’s a pretty dude-centric institution… and the film is set in the 90’s, so again - what else where her fellow cadets going to say?

But none of it really seemed on the nose or forced, none of it rubbed me the wrong way - it was all just adversity that she’d had to overcome to reach that point in her career. And it worked too, because they had to show that she was pretty formidable before she got her powers, not just someone who went from zero to hero - like Shazam. The cat seemed a bit weird, but they managed to tie it into the humor of the film. Honestly, the only part of the film that sort of jarred me was the reveal about the Skrulls. I read the Secret Invasion comic arc when it came out a few years back, and I don’t know how this is going to mesh with that. They sort of seem at odds with one another, but maybe Marvel don’t plan to explore that story line in which case it’s not even an issue.

So yeah, despite what people may have assumed - I went and saw Captain Marvel and I actually enjoyed it. I think most of the hate for this film has been spurred on by the lead actress’ comments, combined with people just wanting to hate it because it’s got a female lead. But just like Den of Thieves needs to be recognized for it’s accurate exploration of Toxic Masculinity, Captain Marvel needs to be accepted for doing a female lead in an action film the right way. Captain Marvel is strong and capable in her own right and she doesn’t drag men down to build herself up - that’s all I’ve ever wanted. If we can’t even acknowledge when honest and earnest attempts to bridge the gap from the other side are being made, then we’re never going to get anywhere.

I’m pretty stoked to see how they’ll include her in Avengers Endgame, since she’s on the same level as Thor and Hulk in terms of power. I get the concerns about having such a powerful late-game addition to the roster seeming like a deus ex machina moment, but she seems to be on par with characters that’re already present. I’m hoping at best she’ll be just enough to tip the scales in their favor, rather than have her win the day outright. An addition of someone like Wolverine isn’t going to do shit against Thanos, but someone like Captain Marvel most certainly will. Along with this, we’ve already got two super powered dudes, so why not mix it up and make the third a chick? I’ll admit that it can go sideways in a lot of ways, but after the masterful stroke that Marvel pulled with Black Panther (wherein it was basically Trump vs Hitler) I’m pretty hopeful of what they’ll do with Avengers Endgame.

They’ve been building up to this for over a decade, they can do almost anything with it… the only thing they’re certainly not going to do is fuck it up.

Van Helsing - Really That Bad

So, I sat down and watched season 3 of Van Helsing and despite what I said in my last blog post on the subject - it’s doubled down on the man-hating social justice rhetoric and become a clusterfuck of a show. Along with the ridiculous propaganda it’s peddling, the storytelling of the show has devolved into absolute absurdity. It’s not trying to appeal to a broad audience anymore, it’s not even pretending to appeal to a wider audience, it’s purely a radical feminist girl-power romp through the post apocalypse.

Vanessa Van Helsing is a fucking joke of a protagonist - she snarls and stomps her way through this season. I guess they’re trying to show her devolution into a vampire-like being, but she’s just an absolute arsehole. As an example - Axel, the marine with multiple tours of combat duty before the vampire outbreak, is trying to enter a building with some form of tactical awareness, but Vanessa just gives him the finger and waltzes inside. I get that they’re trying to portray her as an experienced combatant who is also superhuman, but this “badassery” would be described as “toxic masculinity” if it were in a male character. She literally kills an innocent man, just to drink his blood, and then forgives herself in the next episode and it’s never brought up again. She even admits that she killed a guy in the first season despite knowing he wasn’t the murderer in their group, simply because she wanted too. To put it as bluntly - she’s just a cunt of a human being.

And the show has totally reverted to it’s original anti-male narrative, where if something bad is happening then it’s typically a man’s fault. A male nurse hits on a side character, who rebuffs him because she’s a lesbian, and he ends up attacking her in a psychotic rage. Both those things already happened in the first episode of season one, but they decided to reuse it for some bizarre reason? If the leader of a group is male then they tend to be evil, or they’re gay and get killed, or they’re female. It’s a female prisoner, who is chained to a really weak and effeminate male, who stages a riot on a prison bus which allows everyone to break free. Axel finds his long lost sister, just like Vanessa found her long lost sister… just like Mohammad found his long lost sister… and it turns out she was kidnapped and used as a sex slave by some guy who ends up having memory loss.

And the worst example, the one that nearly had me evacuating my bowels out of sheer outrage, was the castration. There’s this twitchy vampire that’s been awkwardly convulsing his way through the series and in this season he’s decided that he wants to join this sisterhood of badass vampires… and they decide to let him join, but only if he has his nuts taken off. As ridiculous as that is, the worst part is that he actually fucking begs them for it…

“Yes, do it. Make me like you. Make me a sister.”

Sorry to break it to you, but having your nuts taken off doesn’t make you a woman - it just makes you a shitty male. And not only does he have his nuts chopped off to join an all-female order of vampires, they go ahead a lop off the sacks of a whole bunch of other male vampires they force to join their ranks. They’re fucking undead, they don’t even procreate. I guess there’s the symbolic gesture of it, but what’s the point of the castration in terms of the story beyond some appeal to a batshit insane form of feminist extremism? How about I write a story about women being forced to get hysterectomies in order to join a gang… let’s see how long I survive after writing that.

Beyond this inane pandering to an ideology of victimhood, the storytelling itself has completely gone to shit. All the main cast of characters are either immortal or immune to the vampire plague, even though there’s multiple strains of it now. Someone is even healed from near death by being bitten by a vampire, despite also being immune to the virus. The vampires can’t figure out if they’re burning in the sunlight or if the clouds provide enough cover for them to walk around without protection… but it doesn’t even matter anymore because there are “Daywalkers” now. And no, despite making a joke about the shows similarities to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, they couldn’t even give a nod to the fact that they stole the term from Blade. I guess Buffy gets a nod because that had a chick lead, but since Blade was a dude then he can get fucked.

The secret organisation Blak Tek also plays a bigger role in this season but they’re just as stupid and just as mustache-twistingly evil. They’ve set up a safe zone in Denver but it’s all about experiments on unwilling human test subjects and forced labor in prison camps. There’s a bunch of elder vampires who are two dimensional and a prophecy being told by some literal hag who just appeared this season, and it all ends with an ascended Sam standing off against Vanessa and her newly resurrected Van Helsing ancestor. And you just know that the fight isn’t going to happen at the start of season 4 because it’ll be forestalled somehow and dragged out for the entire bloody season.

Van Helsing at least appeared to be correcting it’s course by the end of season 2, but it totally reverted in season 3. It’s shit storytelling combined with a failed attempt to pander to ideologues that’s created this absolute abortion of a show. Vanessa Van Helsing isn’t a strong female character, she’s a shitty male character being played by a woman. There’s still a few half decent characters in this show, but they’re few and far between… it’s like wading through an ocean of shit to find a dime or two.

I’m sure I’ll see season 4 at some point, because it got renewed for some reason, simply for closure more than any interest in seeing where the story goes. It’s clearly not written for people like me, it’s a show that preaches to the already converted under the guise of trying to illicit social change… and it can’t even tell a half decent story. But for some bizarre reason these Van Helsing posts are some of my most popular content - which both perplexes and irritates me to no end. Gotta give the readers what they want though, even if it’s a crazed rant about a lame-ass show. I’m just glad I haven’t had to pay to watch this tripe…

The Ultimate Career Goal

So I’m sitting here thinking about all the different apocalypses that I want to bring upon fictional versions of Earth, or some other human-inhabited planet, and I got to thinking about my long term career goals. What do I actually want to do in terms of being an author, especially one that focuses so heavily on the post-apocalyptic genre?

Well, I wrote a writing guide for the genre (which can be found here), so that’s one milestone already done. But something else I can do, is put my time/money/sanity where my mouth (or fingers?) are and actually write a story for each and every post-apocalyptic scenario that I listed in the guide. That’s a grand total of 36 different possible scenarios to work with. Now, planning to write 36 books is a hell of a lot easier than actually writing 36 books, but as the saying goes - anything worth doing is going to be bloody hard work.

Or maybe that was just my old man’s version of it?

Anyway, as I’ve said before in various locations - you rarely get just one single type of post-apocalyptic scenario at a time, there’s a cascading effect that tends to ripple through the system. For instance, you’re always going to get an Economic Collapse and Social Decay scenarios when you end the world… that’s just a natural byproduct of everything going to shit. Now, I can try to tap into this and use those ripples to get ticks in multiple boxes from a single story, but that’s not really what I’m going for.

With that in mind, although it’d certainly be easier, I’m looking at the long term achievement of having a story written in every single scenario. By the time I’m done, I’m hoping to have a catalog of post-apocalyptic stories that cover every possible scenario imaginable. I don’t want to write EMP or Zombie Apocalypse stories over and over - I want what variety I can get while also staying within the genre.

And to be honest, each of those 36 scenarios has some serious fucking wiggle room. That’s a lot of different ways for the world to end, and I’m confident that I can bring something unique to each and every scenario there is. As always, the only real issue is time. It’s not gonna happen overnight, but it will happen.

Why a House Can't Always be a Home After the Apocalypse

You see it in Post-Apocalyptic stories all the time, people living in anything and everything except houses after the world has ended. It’s not just for shits and giggles, though the reasons are not always readily apparent either. Why would people choose to live in a baseball stadium, a hotel, an office building, subway stations, military bases, shopping malls, prisons, casinos or a dam? Why not just live in a house like a normal person?

Well, the answer is because Post-Apocalyptic times aren’t normal, and neither are the people who live in them… and they certainly don’t have the same needs that we do in a pre-apocalyptic world.

The thing with Post-Apocalyptic times is that there’s generally something out there that wants to kill you. If it’s not radiation, zombies or mutants then it’s other people. For that reason, a simple house just won’t cut it as a base of operations. You need something that you can easily defend and most modern houses aren’t built to protect you against determined assailants, let alone radiation. Windows are a massive weak point, and even a dead-bolted door isn’t going to save you. And this is all assuming the house is still relatively new as well, add a few years before the apocalypse, let alone after, and you’ve got a seriously insufficient structure on your hands.

Next, you’ve got resources to consider. Chances are that running water is going to be a serious concern for your survivors… primarily because they’d like to continue being survivors. Most modern houses, oftentimes whole towns or sometimes even cities, aren’t build close to fresh water. With our modern water network, people can live in the middle of a desert and still have fresh, clean water at the turn of a tap. That kind of luxury generally dries up once the apocalypse kicks in. Once the taps stop working and all the bottled water runs out, you discover why towns were historically founded on river banks.

Now, it’s entirely possible that you live in a remote town with a river running through it - the zombies don’t know where you are and you’ve still got a reliable source of fresh drinking water. Good for you, you get to keep living in your home. Maybe you can shore up your defenses; board the windows and make some kind of wall… but whatever is out there will likely get through eventually. Why not just move into the local super market? It’s a lot closer to the river, it’s packed full of food and it’s a massive building made from steel and concrete. Besides not having that “homey” feel to it, it’s got everything you’ll ever need.

There’re a lot of things to consider when choosing where to live after the world ends; space, resources, defenses. You’ve got to weight each of these things against the others, because each site will have it’s own pro’s and con’s, and their viability will depend on what sort of apocalypse you went through. What’s good in a Zombie Apocalypse won’t be as effective in a Nuclear War scenario, and vice-versa.

You’ve just got to find the best place you can, then settle in. The primary paradoxical problem is that the better the location is, the more likely it is to be a target for other survivors. Which is just another factor to take into account when choosing your Post-Apocalyptic housing.