So work was annoyingly busy today, particularly since I was working off of practically two hours of sleep: 3-5 am, and I didn't sleep very well in that time. This was slightly mitigated by the nap I took, but said nap was nullified by every. single. member. of. the. family. disturbing it at some point, when I had scheduled an entire hour for it. (Helpful hint: naps are only a fraction as effective when they're interrupted!)

Understandably, this left me rather tired. I spent some time hashing out details for my story at work, which also went into nap time, so that was not a pleasant experience. I managed, though, and when home, rushed immediately to round dancing, which I got some measly practice on my technique in. (It still needs a ton of work.) Then, from there, it was to square dancing. Plenty of interesting stuff there, but most interesting was the line dance Cotton-Eye(d) Joe, which is really fast...and the caller who put it on decided to speed it up even more.

'Twas a fun night.

...Buuuuuuuuuuut, my night's not finished yet. Not even close, unfortunately. Because guess what? The dyadic encounter paper for my Interpersonal Communications class is due tomorrow...and I haven't written a single word. Oh, and unlike other assignments, it must be a hard copy. (Said assignment is worth a significant portion of our grade, btw.) And has, understandably, a bunch of requirements that need to be filled.

...When, as you might be able to tell from this blog, I'm not exactly the best at recalling details of communications and encounters I've had with others, some of which are required. Even though I wrote notes immediately after each encounter, they're all a hazy blur to me in essence, especially since distractions prevented effective memory-forming each time.

I've also got other stuff to attend to, like preparing for the physical lab/exam in kickboxing, also due (well, doing) tomorrow, other homework for the Interpersonal Communications class also due tomorrow (hey, I'm a college student), and obligations that I've neglected to attend to.

...I am oh so screwed.

Tonight was movie night for my CF friends, which (having missed last week) I was careful enough to attend at the beginning. I needed to eat, so I missed most of the first movie (it didn't seem particularly interesting to me anyway), but caught basically the entirety of the second film they showed: Dodgeball. Now, mind you, there's nothing particularly special about the movie; it's basically a mindless comedy following the most cliched of formulas that could be followed.

...But if you've read this blog long enough, you'll have realized that, sometimes, I like that sort of thing. And I did. The movie made me smile. I also got to see an episode of Impractical Jokers, and I love that show very, very much.

So yesterday, I found some time to work on my story. Which one, you might ask? Disease, maybe? Perhaps that vamp-wolf-zomb one? That one I need to check if I've named in here?

Nope! I mean I did some work on the story that I'm actually supposed to be working on! Surprising, right? It's the same novel I've been working on the last five years, and is the novel I decided to commit to writing, start to finish. I got most of the way there with NaNoWriMo in 2009, and ended up finishing the story at...oh, somewhere around either March or May. For the first draft. I've been writing the second draft ever since then.

Now, mind you. I didn't actually get to write that much. It couldn't have been more than a couple of pages. But dang, did it feel good. Particularly since what I'm mainly doing isn't so much writing right now as it is editing. (Trust me, I'll need to do a lot of writing later to add in things that weren't there originally, but right now for the current section of the book it's mainly editing what's there for the second draft to be better.)

Why is the editing so thrilling? Because I'm reading what I'm writing, referencing both past writing and future writing, and realizing...it's good. Oh, it's far from perfect. Perfect is unattainable, and even so, it can be better than it is. I'll need a third draft to fix the mistakes my second draft is creating. (Inconsistent writing among them. On-again, off-again writing for five years tends to have that effect.) But while it's far from being in publishing condition...oh, is it good.

I'd link to it, but, well, y'know. I have an aversion to that sort of thing. (Especially since publishers hate it when you have your work online, even if it's an older draft.) So you'll just have to take my word for it that my writing doesn't suck and that it is actually really, really powerful at times. (Granted, it has its weaknesses, being that it's right now a conglomeration of various stuff over the years and could use some refining, but still...I think that if I can pull it off, people will love my book.)

One particular reason that I'm writing about it today, though, is that I realized something. See, I started the current draft before I started my current quarter at college. One of the goals of the current draft was to prevent walls of dialog. You know,
"Talk."
"Response."
"Response to response."
"More talk."

And so on and so forth. Just characters talking. I had a bit of a problem with that. Especially since I wanted to keep the sections I was having that in "unbiased": third person past tense, with neutral wording. Actions being done, without a mindset behind them to give perspective. To keep a long story short (ha), I don't think I've succeeded for the current draft, yet I don't think I mind all too much--a little bias here and there is okay.

Especially since the ways I've been breaking up dialog is mainly by giving descriptions of how the dialog is happening: the tone of voice that the person is using, the quickness or slowness in their reply, and also their body language when they are speaking. These are little details that add a whole lot of realism to the dialogs, something of a specialty of mine. Yet it was only yesterday that I thought about something. I've been doing this for months and even years. Yet only yesterday did I make the connection to my college class on Interpersonal Communications (that I've taken for the last ten or so weeks) that what I was doing above is mainly adding nonverbal communicators to my dialog. I'm actually learning useful stuff from my class!

Put a huge smile on my face when I realized it. My writing's not likely to get stronger as a result of the class itself, but my mindset behind the writing will have had its appreciation increased. For instance, one of the HUGE things my book relies on is perspective. (There's even a chapter titled, "Rashomone Perspective": first told in a neutral third-person present tense, then retold multiple times in first person past tense throughout the book, with the descriptors changed to match the new characters.) 

I had plenty enough appreciation for the idea, given how much of my book weaves these perspectives on the events, but it's only now, thinking about it from my class, that I have the full degree of appreciation for it, since my book covered much the same: perspective is in the eye of the beholder, with each person picking up different things. (There's basically huge sections of our textbook on it, and the lecture was very memorable: our teacher used a clip from Everyone Loves Ray about the "can opener". We never see the third person unbiased view, but see both of the biased first person views, illustrating the concept I'm more or less aiming for in my book perfectly.)

Understandably, my urge to continue writing has been reinvigorated by this new high. Probably won't, at least not for a while, since I'm busy with other stuff, but I certainly have the desire to!

So fun fact about my life at home: there are certain sites that are blocked, owing to back in my past, my obsession with them destroying my life and my parents knowing this, trying to stop it and eventually putting in these permanent blocks. You might note that this hasn't stopped me down the line from having obsessions nearly destroying my life anyway, and in many cases, those same things, which I found workarounds to. Particularly, using those sites at school/college rather than at home. (I did stay away from a site for a year, though.)

I later received a tip to use a proxy, and I've used a proxy to visit the site needing it. I changed proxies to an overall-better one down the line, but annoyingly enough, that proxy isn't working for me today, meaning to do mafia stuff (since it's the mafia site I need it for), I require that inferior proxy. Which simply isn't worth the pain. I checked in and that'll be likely all I do today, while I wait for my PREFERRED proxy to get back up and running.

On another note, the soreness in my body is, TODAY, feeling mostly gone...except in my left arm/shoulder, where I definitely feel like I might have done some sort of damage last week, so I'm probably not going to get a workout done today. Which means I have free time that I'll likely waste doing nothing!

...But as long as we're here, might as well talk about my (chronologically) last blog post a little bit more, the story idea about vampires-werewolves-zombies. I basically laid out all the details of base-zombies (I didn't cover mutated zombies), but I didn't go into detail about vampires or werewolves. So I thought I might as well:

Vampires are powered by the night, and lose their power during the day, thanks to the sunlight--which they're free to move around in. They maintain minor hypnotic abilities, able to briefly trick a person, yet this will wear off quickly. (It also does not work on werewolves or zombies.) They're not superhumanly fast nor strong nor durable during this time as well, but they are at peak human levels, meaning they're still capable of putting up a decent fight. They also maintain superhuman hearing, though they lack superhuman sight.

Now, during the night, this is a different story. Vampires have such strong hypnotic abilities that they are essentially masters of illusion: this is where ideas of them turning into mist, bats, rats, and so on and so forth come from: the vampire isn't actually transforming, but like any good stage-trick magician, makes you believe they have. With training, you can gain resistance to this, but you are never fully immune to it. Werewolves and zombies aren't immune, either, though they hold resistance to it as well. It should be noted this hypnosis is useful for more than just illusions; it can bend humans to their will. This (combined with illusions to enhance their appearance) is how they draw in their victims, and erase their memory of the encounter after dining. 

(Vampires, when feeding, are capable of sucking out the blood without their saliva entering into the bloodstream of their victim. They do apply just enough saliva to heal up the wound as to prevent their victim from bleeding out/getting a normal infection, yet it is in such a small quantity that the victim will not be infected by the vampire virus. However, there is the risk that the victim will either build up a resistance to the vampire virus or build up a surplus of it, making them immune to turning or triggering a turn, but this can only occur if the victim suffers from frequent feedings, thus, why vampires typically do not go to the same human twice. The risk of accidents is also why many modern vampires prefer not to use their fangs to feed, either relying on blood banks or using instruments to leave an open wound they suck from. Or they simply drain it all and kill the human, if they're a particularly brutal vampire.)

Their illusionary abilities are enhanced by the fact that they possess superhumanly-fast speed: when a vampire runs at full speed, humans can only see a blur of movement. Add in an about-equal level of superhuman strength, and vampires are a force to be reckoned with during the night...especially since they hold superhuman sight as well, having perfect clarity and able to see much further. It's during the day when they are little more than humans that they are vulnerable. A third weakness is that vampires do require rest, and like any being, you are at your most vulnerable when sleeping, which for them takes 2-4 hours of a day, which they typically take some time during the day.

They don't need to sleep in a coffin with ground from their native land, by the way. They have, however, developed a habit of sleeping in obscure locations, as to help prevent finding them. They also prefer cooler beds, since they are not fond of heat. (It doesn't have any adverse effects on them; they simply don't like it.)


Werewolves are similarly limited during the day: they're superhumanly strong, and maintain their superhuman sense of smell, yet lack their superhuman sense of touch and sight. They cannot transform in daylight, either, to gain access to the full array of abilities a wolf possesses. Their enhanced speed is gone, meaning they're only at about average human speeds. (Vampires can outrun them during the day, albeit only just.) They also lack any mental link to other werewolves, and thus, must communicate using human methods. (That is, cell phones.) Which is one thing that pack wolves do plenty of. (Keep in mind, the factions are at war. Though lone wolves might do hunting, the majority of werewolves belong to packs, and the majority of packs actively hunt their prey down to kill them.)

During the night, though, this is different. Their superhuman strength even untransformed is raised to vampiric levels (with it being noticeably below vampiric-night-levels during the day), and they gain superhuman speed that allows them to move at about half the speed of a vampire. They gain superhuman instincts, though, allowing them to almost-predict the movements of others, be them friend or foe.

This, all before transforming. When transformed, they are twice as strong as a vampire. They're not quite as fast as a vampire, but their regeneration is elevated to above-vampiric levels, giving them higher endurance. They have perfect night vision, hear everything, smell everything, and feel everything. They establish a bit of a mental link with other wolves, too: they're capable of communicating basic thoughts to one another, allowing for instantaneous coordination.

These abilities are magnified to be twice as strong during full moons, in which a werewolf is basically an unstoppable killing machine. (However, note that werewolves lose all control during the full moon, meaning they operate purely on instinct. Their natural instinct will generally follow their trends as a human outside of the full moon, but not necessarily if there are things they're forcing themselves to suppress. Thus, a hunter werewolf might continue hunting. A peaceful werewolf might spend the night simply wandering around having fun. But an otherwise-peaceful werewolf who is feeling stressed during the day might 'let it out' and suddenly become a hunter.)

Overall, it can be said that in a wolf-vampire fight, on a night other than the full moon, the vampire is more likely to win, but it's only a 55/45 divide. (The vampire's speed and illusion advantage give them slightly more opportunities to land lethal strikes. Also, these stats become 65/35 if the wolf can't transform, which they often cannot in a city environment.) In a wolves-vampire fight, the wolves are more likely to win. (Again, they hunt in packs for a reason.) HOWEVER, in a wolves-vampires fight, the results are widely dependent on the vampiric force's organization: if they're trained soldiers, 75/25 vampire/wolves. If they're average vampires banded together, 55/45 wolves/vampires. (Wolf packs hold better natural coordination, even though each individual vampire is capable of more.) In any case, a full-on brawl between vampires and werewolves is an absolute bloodbath, and both sides take heavy casualties each time they clash.

This is one reason why hit-and-run tactics are preferred for both sides (but particularly wolves): they know that attacking smaller forces and retreating before they have had a chance to counter is the best way to save the lives of their own troops.


You might notice this leaves out zombies. The above are the dynamics that have been in place for hundreds of years. Zombies generally prefer to attack during the day, since they know that both wolves and vamps are at their weakest during the day. However, when forced into a night conflict, the zombies use mutated zombies as hit-and-run attackers, while their unmutated brethren provide cover.

Most mutated zombies operate at about twice peak human condition, so fast, but not as fast as vampires or werewolves. The mutated zombies that don't go that fast make up for it in raw power, being at about transformed-wolf-levels. (Think like a tank in L4D.) They're still fast, though! (Think sort-of like Juggernaut: get momentum going, and nothing can stop him as he plows through obstacles.) In general, it depends on the abilities of a mutated zombie. Mutations can manifest in virtually any form. (Think a combination of L4D and Resident Evil in the variance they create. It can be as simple as bladed hands to as complex as tentacles grabbing someone.)

The result of zombies swarming individual vampires or werewolves are not hard to predict: the zombies will probably lose some of their walkers/runners, but take down the vampire/wolf with minimal casualties all things considered. (Something like 3%.) However, if the zombies are facing off against a whole group, the fight is going to be much, much higher in casualties, thus, why they typically avoid it. A werewolf-zombie brawl will have the wolves shredding walkers, though runners provide more of a challenge. If the strike isn't coordinated, assuming the zombies have the required numbers to win, they'll lose about 80% of their walkers, 60% of their runners, and 40% of their mutated zombies. A vampire-zombie brawl inversely has the vampires shred runners, while having difficulty dealing with walkers. The results end up at being around the same 80/60/40 divide assuming an untrained group of vampires; zombies require more than just numbers to beat a trained group of vampires.

Understandably, then, zombies tend to plan out their assaults in advance. While their mutated zombies typically will still dodge in and out of combat, zombie tactics are explicitly not hit-and-run. Rather the opposite, zombies anticipate where their opponents are going to be moving, and set up their zombies to be positioned such as to ambush their opponents in a trap: something set up in advance, which they simply wait to spring. (If there's one advantage zombies have over the other races, it's patience of time. Werewolves are impatient, and vampires tend to regulate their time carefully. Zombies have patience, and have no concern about timing, allowing them to begin plans.)

The result of this is that while vampires/werewolves leave survivors with their planned attacks, zombies usually leave none; wolves and vampires are entirely eliminated by this utter-annihilation-inducing tactic. The disadvantage, though, is that while vampires/werewolves using hit-and-run usually sustain no casualties, zombies will sustain casualties no matter what: about 20% of their weaker force (runners against vampires, walkers against werewolves), 10% of their stronger force (walkers-vampires; runners-werewolves), and 5% of their mutated zombies. 

This is why the masquerade is beginning to crack: every single battle fought leaves a bloody massacre. Suspension of disbelief carries humanity far, yet they've begun to catch on. Vampires are trying to work their way into the government, though some are trying to work their way into corporations. Zombies are trying to work their way into corporations, though some are trying to work their way into the government. (In both cases, trying to convince them of the benefits their faction could have for humanity. Or in some cases, giving offers to leave humanity.)

Werewolves, being the overall-best at hiding their creature status (albeit only slightly--the monthly transformation mostly negates their advantage over vampires' bloodlust and fair complexion), are mainly focusing on sabotaging the efforts of vampires and zombies, also in part thanks to their own beliefs which I mentioned last time.

It's an all-around ugly situation, but the three are approximately equal: no faction has gained a distinct advantage.

...As for the weaknesses of vampires/werewolves, like the logistics of zombies, I haven't quite worked out that aspect of them. For the time being, just know that the most common kill method used on all three is to separate head from body; it kills vampires, it kills werewolves, and it kills all but the most mutated of zombies. (And if facing a mutated zombie that it doesn't kill, well, there's only so many places that the body can continue functioning from, so removing the heart--the most common hiding spot--is a good guess. If that doesn't do the trick, burning the zombie to a crisp is recommended. Keep in mind, though, less than 8% of mutated zombies have this adaptation, and those that do typically show signs of it, like their head not moving in the normal zombie way.)


...Yep. I just wasted about an hour or two rambling here.

I don't know what I want to do in order to pull it off, but I definitely want this blog to be more than what it is. It's an alright blog right now, and when I set out to make a blog, I knew rather explicitly that there'd be nothing special about it, but that doesn't mean I don't want it to be more than what it currently is. Maybe I'll go into the details of stuff I've been promising, maybe something else, but I should be doing SOMETHING.

That's how I'm mainly feeling right now, anyway.

Edit: I have no clue why, but this was my first entry for the day, not the second. Weebly's previously been fairly good at getting my posts in the right order, so I don't know why this one's showing up after the "not exactly more" post, when this one is chronologically older (as evident by the title which the "not exactly more" references), but it did, so I needed to make this edit informing you.

Today, I had round dancing. The teacher (who, having had surgery, cannot come every time) was there. Now, I was a bit concerned about my back, thanks to the soreness that's still there, and that it may interfere with my technique. To my pleasant surprise, it didn't; I was using my more or less normal technique, leading as I always do, and I was fine...

...Until the end, when she critiqued said technique and bombarded me with things I could improve upon. That hurt, really, really fast, but it felt better in my partner and I could tell that it'd create a stronger, easier lead...if we could actually do it in a dance; when we tried, I failed absolutely miserably, and that's not because of the back. I just sucked.

Ah, well. It's a GOOD thing to have something to think about improving on!


Anyway, on the way home, I thought some more about one of my story ideas. The idea is nothing unique: urban fantasy. Specifically, vampires vs. werewolves...versus zombies. (I'm sure it's been done before, but hey! I'd like to think I added my own twists to it.) A three-way secret war between factions that infect humans and turn them.

I even mapped out some of the details a while ago, though I've slightly tweaked them. Werewolves and vampires have been at war for centuries; zombies are relatively recent to the public scene: outbreaks have existed throughout history, but none were anything more than isolated cases until the 1900s. Even after then, said outbreaks died out and were forgotten. Yet now, within the last 20 years, some zombies have been surviving, gathering their strength, and within the last few years, have become a force to be reckoned with, and now vampires/werewolves are considering them a legitimate threat, equal to their own warring factions.

Humanity as a whole has begun to catch glimpses of the masquerade breaking, yet being humans, they simply find these fantastical creatures hard to believe, mostly writing off said proof. Governments are beginning to take the factions seriously as a potential threat, and corporations are beginning to entertain the idea of research for opportunity.

At their core, each of the three factions holds a different goal. Vampires, requiring human blood, seek to exist in a world where they would not be persecuted if they became fully-public. The majority of vampires--be it thanks to cynicism, greed, or similar--believe that this is only feasible with vampires ruling over humanity, and with causes of break in this peace (e.g. werewolves, zombies, rebellion) to be eliminated.

Werewolves seek a similar basic desire, to be in a world where they won't be persecuted, yet their reasoning is entirely different and their overall ideology is different as a result. Since they lack control of themselves during the full moon, and even without a full moon their impulse control is weaker, they desire a world where inhibitions are removed: everyone acts the way they want to. This free-spirited belief can loosely be called a desire for the more idealistic versions of Anarchy as a governing system: no rules delegating action, with people doing what comes naturally. (I'm not going to bother researching the full, actual ideology of true anarchists. Seems like a lot of work when I can just say that it's "loosely" and people understand that to mean "takes some basic ideas of.) This would allow them to be free and not restrict themselves. Of course, there's more cynical aspects of it. Mainly, that many don't know the difference between Anarchy and Chaos, with some werewolves seeking the latter. There's also the fact that if everyone acted as they felt like acting all the time, werewolves would in a sense become dominant, simply because that's the environment they thrive in and overwhelm competition in.

Zombies essentially seek to unify the whole world as zombies. They seek the assimilation of those they can convert, and the elimination of those they cannot. (E.g. vampires, werewolves.) However, they are not conquerors. To them, this is the natural course of action, because they see it as the path to true harmony. If everyone is a zombie, there would exist no conflict. No wars. No suffering, no misery, nothing bad. It would unify the whole world, because zombies have a bit of a hive mind, so to speak. So as far as they're concerned, they're doing the world a favor. Death would be at a minimum, because it's hard to kill a zombie.

Now, their belief is obviously not perfect, either. Because zombies aren't mindless and some zombies mutate to gain special powers, it's not like they're truly going to equalize all of life. Certain zombies are going to be more important, by simple virtue of being able to more effectively coordinate the takeover of the world. Plus, were they entirely successful in converting humanity, there would be almost no children: having the right zombie father and the right zombie mother might allow for the genetics of sperm that enters into the womb, and is allowed to grow, and has enough life to grow, and produces offspring that maintains the ability to grow, going from infant to adult, yet such cases would be such a rarity that without new zombies, life would in fact stagnate overall. (Their population simply wouldn't be viable. You might get ten or so children born across the globe in a year, but you'd likely lose hundreds of zombies since "hard to kill" is not 'immortal'.) So in a sense, to ensure that zombies continue to exist hundreds or even thousands of years from now, they'd need to keep humans alive, like vampires would.

Anyway, some of the things I worked out on the drive home was the nature of their interaction. Infection is spread through all bodily fluids for all three, particularly saliva. There's a rock-paper-scissors interaction with their infections: someone bitten by a zombie and a werewolf will become a zombie, because the zombie genetics work faster at 'killing' the host than the wolf genes transform them. Someone bitten by a zombie and a vampire will become a vampire, because the vampire gene works in a similar manner to the zombie virus yet is much more resilient and capable of killing competition. However, someone bitten by a werewolf and a vampire will become a werewolf, because of how the vampire virus doesn't cause the decay the zombie virus does, and the decay is what stops the lycanthropy virus from transforming, thus, the werewolf virus is capable of taking control faster.

...Someone bitten by all three will not have their effects cancel out, by the way. If you're bitten by all three, you're doomed to die an agonizing, painful death, in which you'll constantly feel all the negatives of all three, yet none of the positives. Ultimately, the only upside from this death is that it's the only way aside from severe damage to the body that someone can be killed and not become revivable as a zombie.

Note, though, that this only applies to incomplete transformations. A zombie bitten by a vampire won't become a vampire or a vamp-zombie. A vampire bitten by a werewolf won't become a werewolf or a werepyre. A werewolf bitten by a zombie won't become a zombie or a were-zombie. Nor will they suffer any negative/lethal effects. Their bodies simply fight the new infection off.

I'd like to point out that human-creature interactions are therefore impossible, since any human exposed to bodily fluids is going to become what they're exposed to. (That doesn't stop them from becoming couples anyway, though, with the understanding that human-creature will eventually morph into creature-creature.) Yet I'd like to also point out...it's not impossible for creatures of different types to have relationships. In fact, they can produce offspring. These relationships are the rarest of the rare, because all three factions hate each other and have near-mutually-exclusive ideologies, but there is some room for overlap, and said outliers recognize this and can have a fruitful relationship as a result.

As for why they can have children...see above. There's nothing about the nature of the viruses that makes it so that they're lethal to the child hosting them. Keep in mind, all three races are transformed humans; the father and mother are at their core, base level still human beings. (Even if they're born-vampires or born-werewolves, rather than converted, this holds true.) There will be one gene that is dominant over the other, following the pattern, and the child will be born with the traits strongest to the parent with that affiliation. For instance, a zombie-werewolf will produce a child who has a lot of properties of the zombie, yet has some werewolf traits in their genes. A vampire-werewolf will produce a child that is mostly a werewolf, yet has some more vampiric traits. A vampire-zombie will produce a mostly-vampiric child who happens to have some zombie qualities.

Anyway, that was all thought up on the way home.
I didn't bother to go into wolf and vamp abilities in the original writing notes for the story, but I did go into zombies a bit. Simply put, zombies have a single strain, yet it acts in different ways:

-A dead body bitten by a zombie (be it walker or runner) will become a walker. ANY dead body that is fairly-recently-dead will do, which is why some zombies have taken to grave-robbing: they gain fresh recruits that way. Living bitten by zombies, though, typically instead become runners, fast zombies capable of chasing prey. My original notes say this is divided into partial/most intelligence, but I want to revise that--

-Fast zombies have a far stronger hive mentality, as to best coordinate their efforts. They hold only minimal intelligence when they are swarming foes. However, a zombie that is away from other zombies has no choice but to become smart, thus, they maintain the majority of their intelligence, but it's in a bit of an animalistic way unless they're a mutated zombie. (Mind you, mutated zombies are not that uncommon--every runner has the potential to become a mutated zombie if given the appropriate stimulus.) Runners are also where mutated zombies come from, because the genes of a partially-living person are more mutable than those of a revived-undead person.

I haven't quite worked out the logistics for how they survive long-term, though.

-Slow zombies will have a hive mentality when they amass enough numbers to form a swarm, using numbers to overwhelm their foes. Their intelligence is lowered when in this swarm, as to prevent emotions from potentially interfering (for instance, zombies can feel fear of re-death), but they actually are capable of doing more than runners can in a swarm. (Runners swarming can basically only grab. Walkers swarming can climb.) When they are not gathered together in numbers, walkers will have their intelligence be reduced from when they were alive, to varying different degrees. At their best, they're capable of being near-functional human beings. At their worst, they're like a pet. It mainly depends on how recently they were deceased and how smart they were in life. Though there's always exceptions, the general trend is smarter+fresher = smarter zombie. The average intelligence of a walker is lower than that of a runner...but the average humanity of a walker is actually higher. They hold a much better capacity to think like humans, and feel human emotions, all except for pain. (Runners feel more pain than walkers.) In fact, the average walker, when not in a group, is individual enough to function like a mentally-handicapped human being. Not all of them can speak (only about 10% of walkers can), but they can live lives outside of being just a zombie.

Like with runners, I haven't fully worked out the logistics behind them, though.

Soyeah, the setting's obviously not yet fleshed out, but getting this all out and said felt good.

The soreness in my body which I thought was getting better...really isn't getting better. If anything, it's getting worse. In spite of the activities I'm doing being less strenuous and in some cases not even possibly working the muscles that are feeling the pain...I'm feeling soreness in muscles. Heck! Some muscles are feeling sore that weren't feeling sore originally!

More than that, I'm legitimately exhausted. Things right now are severely tiring. I don't know why. They just are.

On the bright side, I had a nice conversation with my dyadic encounter partner and got to show off some of my art (albeit admittedly just doodles), which mentally put me in a good mood. It's just...that I'm absolutely exhausted. I was a zombie in square dancing. I was literally falling asleep on my feet: off-balance, nearly falling over, eyes drooping down, sluggish, making mistakes that I'd never make if I was awake, walking dead. I had moments of lucidity, moments which increased in frequency as the night went on, but...I simply wasn't there, and it was clear.

Frankly, I wouldn't have danced if I had a choice, but I was needed. So the dancers had to deal with someone who was very visibly not themselves.

Yeah...not a great place to be right now.

Yeah, today's gonna be busy, so you're not going to hear much from me. Basically, yesterday, I was dead-tired, so turned in a bit early. (Well, relatively speaking--1:30 is early for me!) Which cut off a fair amount of activities I should be doing. When I woke up, I ate breakfast and instead of using the rest of the time to do stuff, slept, because I was still tired even then.

Speaking of tiredness, I'm beginning to get worried that the soreness of my left arm is worse than that, since it was really acting up in kickboxing class, today. It's not something I'll worry about unless it continues, though.

Also, random piece of trivia, it is cold, here. So cold, that the frost on the ground is thick enough that you'd swear it was snow if you didn't know any better. So I'm typing under two blankets, and sleep with my letterman jacket on for warmth. Winter's here, sad as that may be. (Nothing against winter; I love the season. It's just that Fall's my favorite season, so it's a tough act to follow.)

Soyeah, this is probably gonna be it as far as blog posts go for today.

I'm really terrible at this whole blogging thing. I don't have much to report. This morning, just as I was going to leave, my main browser, Chrome, crashed. So I suppose that "fun" experience is a noteworthy experience from my day, and about the highlight from it. (What was I doing, using the internet five minutes before I was to leave? Why, what else? Games. I was attempting to do HotR, but the whole crash thing put a dampener on that.)

That forced me to use Firefox at the college in order to not have to go through the pain of sorting through chrome on a painfully-slow internet...especially when the main browser I use to establish a connection is Chrome. Using Firefox was at first a huge pain since I couldn't get through by trying Google; it took me visiting the site I wanted to go to anyway to trigger the wifi login.

I suppose also noteworthy is that I forgot my cell phone today, which would have been helpful for getting into contact with my dyadic encounter partner, who texted me. I'm reasonably certain we didn't agree to meet today, but she was under the impression we did. We decided on a future date when we met, though.

Hmm...what else? Oh, yeah. I suppose I should mention that I skipped out on a workout today, in large part because I could feel my body still being alarmingly sore from the Friday workout, but there may be an opportunity to make it up tomorrow. (We'll have to see.) I discovered that in kickboxing, which if there's one thing it's good at, it's at finding out how my body is doing.

Another thing I'd like to bring up is a minor concern my pills aren't working, since while I'm taking them every night, they seem to have lost their edge: I'm not getting to sleep very easily, not sleeping so well, and my mind is extremely prone to wandering. It'll only be something to be concerned about if it continues.

...Oh, and speaking of which, my dog is going to the vet because there's noticeably something wrong with him, too.

That's really it, aside from HotR and some Clicker Heroes. To talk a bit about Heroes of the Realm, I'm in an interesting Arena setup. I'm consistently at spot number two...yet spots number one and three seem to have shifted on the second day. Number one took a dive to third by losing to me today, and number three shot up by winning against me today, with the inverse having happened yesterday. I should also tell you that right now, I'm hanging steadily around the 3,000s. I'm mainly focusing on building up my infrastructure, maxing out my buildings for my level. (21.) Right now, I've got everything except the Oracle (working on that--I think I'm in the middle of a final upgrade, if the Oracle is anything like the Wall), Party Portal, Portal, Market, and resources (with some housing not there) fully upgraded. I'm upgrading the Oracle and Party Portal, I'm not upgrading my Portal until my army is strong enough to 3-star clear Curitelia (this will take a while, seeing as how getting a SSS-rank on Difficult--my personal requirement before trying Heroic--isn't even finished for the second zone, yet alone, Curitelia), either.

So right now, my main fixture is that once the Oracle and Party Portal max out, to go with upgrading the Market and housing. Since there is an XP-gain event going on right now, though, I'm doing a fair amount of adventuring with my army so that they can get that, even though I don't need the items (I mostly buy my items since what I buy is better than what I find), gems (what I get is mostly optional at this point), or really even the XP.

Steady as she goes.

So while I've basically done nothing the entire day, I've done productive nothingness! By which, I mean, stuff. I obviously had work today, and I also knew I'd have to drive myself to dance today, forcing me to take a nap. (I overslept by 45 minutes, and my parents insisted I eat before leaving, making me rather late, given the long drive.) But while at work, I worked out a new character for the story I'm still not sure if I've referenced by name. (I should really begin reading the archives of my own blog to figure out what I have and haven't said, since I legitimately have no clue over half the time if what I say is new information or not, and whether it was personal information I was reluctant to divulge or not.)

I also began writing a new song, though I didn't finish it.

At dance, I managed to doodle out all the guys in my webcomic save Davos and Argus who I did doodles of on Wednesday. (I mentioned that, right? Pretty sure that should have been mentioned, how I went to draw to show that I could, and that I do more than just sleep.) Some looked fairly decent, albeit with some obvious flaws. Others I absolutely butchered. But I feel like it was a learning experience for me as an artist all the same, so time well-spent.

And since I was awake the entire drive, I'd say the nap was time well spent as well, though given how dry my eyes felt the entire drive (not heaviness like tired, and my mind wasn't wandering off like tired, just dry and, frankly, dim making it hard to see), that might be a bit debatable.

So, not nearly the day I was hoping for, but at least a semi-productive one. And, hey! I got this entry in before midnight!