"Us Against The World" working title

[thesurvivor]

oops. finger slipped.

[Neil]

Do I detect you encountered a problem? What happened?

[thesurvivor]

Wow, i didn't actually expect any help from anyone, thanks for your concern. I put a rough draft up here while using my phone, i got to my computer and began editing and after i was done i tried to update. It told me i didn't have permission and it deleted my work. since i really want other people opinions on my idea, ill re-post it, and forget this ever happened if you read and give me your honest opinion on it.

[jdwohlers]

when can we expect the the re-post? I'm really looking forward to seeing it.

[thesurvivor]

now! sorry that its not finnished and a little sloppy. its late at night and my back hurts from being on my laptop so long lol. but please tell me what you think and ask questions!

[Neil]

Wow, i didn't actually expect any help from anyone, thanks for your concern. I put a rough draft up here while using my phone, i got to my computer and began editing and after i was done i tried to update. It told me i didn't have permission and it deleted my work. since i really want other people opinions on my idea, ill re-post it, and forget this ever happened if you read and give me your honest opinion on it. Could it have been you were in the EDIT for sometime? eg: 30 or minutes? I believe VBulletin can cause an issue in that scenario. I know it's not ideal, but in the future maybe consider doing a quick CTRL-A, CTRL-C to copy and all your text maybe into your cut'n'paste buffer.... just in case Sorry you had the hassle... ps: Please don't post anything tooooo huge here!

[jdwohlers]

The story you have starts out with Chris being a central figure so he should be fleshed out a bit more as a main character. Also you'll need background info to flesh in what has gone on, what are the infected who long ago was the event that kicked it all off You've got kids that are 19 running around as the main character so we need a better understanding of how they grew up. I like what your doing but folks go with the grizzled old guy in these kinds of stories because his back story is our normal life. When dealing with children raised in this unknown environment we as an audiance need to know what they went through to get were they are so that we can better understand them as characters and make better since of their actions and motives. What were the early days like? Were they small children or were they born to survivors after the fact, what were the early settlements like? were there even safe settlements formed in the early years or was it chaos for a decade before folks started forming permanent settlements? These are things we need to know up front or have shown to us as the story progresses because we cannot just imagine how life was for kids growing up in this environment. With adults we can imagine how horrible events would change us or affect us but when it comes to a kid growing up with this we have to be walked through it, the concept is alien to us. Like I said I love the concept because it is knew and fresh but you will need to make sure you flesh out the players in this drama a lot more. For example with Alex, why does he feel that looking out for others will get you killed? Is that how he was left alone? Did someone sacrifice themselves to keep him alive and he was so angry and resentful for this and for being left alone afterwards that he closed himself off? His fear of leaving someone else in the same situation he was left keeps him from really forming close bonds with anyone. Will his disdain for what his friend Chris is doing with seeking redemption make Chris seem weak and thus a liability? Got a lot of holes right now but it's got a lot of potential. I'd love to see this develop further.

[thesurvivor]

these are the questions i wanted people to ask, so thanks, i didnt answer all these in the post to prevent bogging it down (because most people wont read a long post) chris does affect the story in a major way, especially since he aids so much in travis's character arch. chris is 22 years old. here is his bio chris was born in new Orleans, he lived there with his parents and grandfather, until he was 18. his parents were loving people, they did everything they could to give him a happy childhood. they had to leave when a hurricane blew in. they decided to head for dallas because that is the last know location of his sister whom he never met. the lived there on the last day. they had to walk the entire way. his grandfather died of exaustion on the way, they could not stop to bury him, they were being hunted down by a road gang of cannibals. one night his mother was taken while they slept. chris was left alone while his father searched for her, but he never came back so chris moved on. he walked the final stretch to dallas alone. he came across a relatively large camp and there he got into fights and eventually made friends with the toughest kid he could find, travis. they became best friends, fighting other kids, and sneaking out to brutally kill infected that they could incapacitate and beat to death. that lasted a few years but eventually the camp fell, like most. they watched each others backs while they walked aimlessly threw dallas. they found the camp they start the show in and its there he meets a girl named kate. they fell in love and he didnt feel so angery anymore. he found a bible (as you know) and he began to think about his life, since then he decided to dedicate himself tofamily (kate and unborn baby) and seek redemption for the things he did during his angry years. now here is how travis was raised when he was young. you will probably understand why he is the way he is after this. warning, thins is kind of depressing lol. travis had his parents when he was very young, he barely remembers them. he was 6 when his mother was bitten and his father had to put her down. he must have been out of bullets because he hung himself after. travis discovered the bodies and ran to his uncle, sobbing. his uncle scolded for crying about it and told his to suck it. his uncle was a cruel heartless son of a b*tch who refused to do anything to comfort travis or care for him. travis had to get his own food, and since he couldnt hunt he had to steal. one day he got cought. the punishment for stealing at this camp was having your hand chopped off. when they were about to take his hand his uncle steped in and safed him but they had to flee the camp. this was the only time his uncle ever did anything for him. but his was pissed. his uncle beat his and gave him a scar on his right eyebrow from it. since that day whenever travis cried he was beaten, so he learned to hide his emotions. while on the road he was forced to fight and steal, if he lost a fight he was once again beaten and told how big of a disappointment he was, his uncle kept telling his that he would get killed trying to take care of his [travis] sorry ass. hence the believe that travis has "having to take care of others will get you killed." when travis was 10 his uncle was bitten. travis had to put him down (the term used for killing infected people) but he did not cry. he laughed and popped a few more rounds into him. now being free of his uncle he happily walked across the wasteland until he was taken in by another group. also alex is a girl and she doesnt believe taking care of others will get you killed, its travis. the first camps were established by the military and were under their protection. almost all of those zones are gone. hopefully i provided the info you needed. let me know if you have other questions! also the environments of the world look somewhat like "i am legend, or the last of us" with nature taking over the cities. and sorry i didnt talk about the infected today. ill post it tomorrow!

[jdwohlers]

I like what you have added to your story. The metamorphic progression of your disease is great. A few functional issues with the progression of the disease, how do they produce food if they can't hunt? I mean I know it's fictional and all but producing their own food without any need for ingesting food...why would they be predatory. I would drop the last stage and get rid of the puss sack thingy it just doesn't make much sense. So they lose higher processes in the brain but retain basic motor skills and bodily functions in stage one. Lets say it's due to intense fever and brain swelling, the higher brain functions are basically squeezed and boiled out of their head leaving them howling crazy wild men incapable of thought or reason just hunger and aggression. Their brains can't regulate things like adrenalin and endorphin release so they also basically are stronger and faster due to the constant doping from the adrenalin and don't respond to pain from the endorphins and dopamine released in huge amounts into their bodies. This leads to them being able to literally run themselves to death in order to catch you. With no pain response and the massive amounts of various chemicals coursing through their body they would also be highly resistant to normal damage, we've seen it during actual combat in the real world, enemy combatants would be juiced up on a nice little cocktail of heroin and artificial adrenalin and you could shoot them in the heart and they wouldn't go down. Essentially the body keeps going because it doesn't know it should be dead, but a head shot drops them in their tracks. Second phase there you have the massive skeletal changes going on so yeah intense pain in a regular functioning person but we've got some brain dead crazy folks here with pain receptors that are probably just as fried as their brains. this phase I'm pretty good with, I think they would be more aggressive at this point, it is stage two that they would begin migrating around looking for food to fuel the transformation. Now stage three I would give them a little cunning back, maybe pack hunter level intelligence now that what's left of their brains is no longer being squeezed, stretched, or boiled with fever. they are dangerous because not only can they think but they are armored, you can limit how many of these things there are by having them also prey on the other two stages of infected because they are essentially competition for food for the newly organized pack of predatory creatures your new infection has birthed

[thesurvivor]

sorry i havent been on in a while i started a new job and i'm working nights I like what you have added to your story. The metamorphic progression of your disease is great. A few functional issues with the progression of the disease, how do they produce food if they can't hunt? I mean I know it's fictional and all but producing their own food without any need for ingesting food...why would they be predatory. i added the puss sacks so it would be more believable as to how the infected stay alive so long without starving to death. i made the puss sacks smaller in the first 3 stages, so they act kind of like snacks, and the humans are like a 3 course meal. and the sacks could store nutrition from the people they ate in stage green. im not a biologist lol. "I would drop the last stage" i added this stage to kind of have a shock factor for the audience when they first see one, but it will probably make like 1 or 2 appearances through out the entire series. my goal for this infection was to be as scary as possible, because zombies aren't scary anymore. "Now stage three I would give them a little cunning back, maybe pack hunter level intelligence now that what's left of their brains is no longer being squeezed, stretched, or boiled with fever. they are dangerous because not only can they think but they are armored, you can limit how many of these things there are by having them also prey on the other two stages of infected because they are essentially competition for food for the newly organized pack of predatory creatures your new infection has birthed" by stage 3 the infected host is probably taller than they were before, or deformed somehow, plus they are weighed down by the armor and physical groth they they probably wouldn't be able to be very stealthy. i do like the idea of them feeding on the lower stages, since they kind of do this with the last stage, that would be pretty cool. as far as behavior goes, i would make them a little more restless than zombies. what i mean is that in most fiction zombies stand dormant until disturbed. what i would have these do is maybe chew on things like tires, chain-link fences, and whatever they can get their hands on. its like they cant stand still and are all ways trying to find food. they will also be very edgy in stage green, like they would maybe bump into a wall when walking and just start attacking the wall. i saw you're vote so i will try to update with as many major characters as i can. some are more developed than others so bear with me please. and thanks for the reply and vote!