The gender war on my elementary school playground, for control of the playset in the middle, inspired a series of daydreams (and one real dream) about an actual full-scale war of the sexes, with guns and everything. Many details changed, but the main girl villain was always Emma Watson whom I had a serious crush on, and the male protagonists were shamelessly plagiarized from myself and my friends in real life. In eighth grade I actually started writing a book of it with the free time that I had available in school. I realized by then how ridiculous the concept was but still thought it was cool, so I tried desperately to come up with a realistic premise for it.
The result: in the future, girls, or women as I should have called them by then, have much more power in society than men as a result of affirmative action, though I didn't know it by that name. The Emma Watson villainess, under the ridiculous futuristic moniker of Kayynar Laverge, was extremely upset after a breakup and rose to power by encouraging women to exploit their rights for a while before reaching an equality for the sexes. The main characters, a bunch of homeless bums, stumble into a meeting of girls who panic and shoot at them, which escalates into a full-scale war.
Because I had realized by this time that girls were not evil, I tried to portray Kayynar as simply being a nut job. Instead the story became a not-so-subtle commentary on what I saw as the world's problems. I imagined all people outside The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as drunkards and druggies who didn't care about homeless people or anyone but themselves. The project also worked as a sort of stress relief; every time I was in a foul mood the story got more violence and more swearing. Eventually I edited the swearing out but the book never got much farther after that. Even though the odds of it being completed are about zero, I made several revisions to what exists in the hope of making it slightly less painful to read. The key word is "slightly". I recommend you don't read it.
The result: in the future, girls, or women as I should have called them by then, have much more power in society than men as a result of affirmative action, though I didn't know it by that name. The Emma Watson villainess, under the ridiculous futuristic moniker of Kayynar Laverge, was extremely upset after a breakup and rose to power by encouraging women to exploit their rights for a while before reaching an equality for the sexes. The main characters, a bunch of homeless bums, stumble into a meeting of girls who panic and shoot at them, which escalates into a full-scale war.
Because I had realized by this time that girls were not evil, I tried to portray Kayynar as simply being a nut job. Instead the story became a not-so-subtle commentary on what I saw as the world's problems. I imagined all people outside The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as drunkards and druggies who didn't care about homeless people or anyone but themselves. The project also worked as a sort of stress relief; every time I was in a foul mood the story got more violence and more swearing. Eventually I edited the swearing out but the book never got much farther after that. Even though the odds of it being completed are about zero, I made several revisions to what exists in the hope of making it slightly less painful to read. The key word is "slightly". I recommend you don't read it.
Boys vs. Girls Book 1: The Conflict (Unfinished)
By C. Randall Nicholson
Characters
Introduction
Prologue
Chapter I: In Which the Primary Characters are Introduced
Chapter II: In Which Things Get Weirder (Unfinished)
Introduction
Prologue
Chapter I: In Which the Primary Characters are Introduced
Chapter II: In Which Things Get Weirder (Unfinished)
I still think it's an awesome concept and tried to completely rewrite it in eleventh grade. I revised the character descriptions and finished two whole paragraphs:
Characters
The Boys
Main:
Christopher: Enjoys life to the fullest, yet sees disturbing societal problems where no one else does. Going steady with Beth.
Derek: Losing a father and brother to war without compensation by the government has left him hurting inside, which he expresses by being rude and sarcastic. Lives below the poverty line with Sammy. Sees the others when he is out begging. They have all given him donations but he spends it all on alcohol.
Matt: A college student who knows the others only superficially. Despite some experimentation with drugs he is the most even-keeled among them and keeps conflicts from escalating.
Thomas: Mentally warped but in a “good” way. He would have been disposed of by society if he were not rescued by Kayla McConnor. Lives with Dana.
Tyler: C.E.O. of a large company who is forced to let others do the thinking for him. Married to Louise.
Secondary:
Lorson Nells: The leader, though also a complete geek.
Rusty: Lorson’s brave, intelligent and loyal canine companion.
The Girls:
Main:
Bethany: The sweetest and kindest of them all.
Dana: Thomas’s significant other and strange like him. She was also rescued by Kayla McConnor, who keeps an eye on them both. Lives with Thomas.
Kayla McConnor: Fine upstanding citizen
Louise: A ditzy debutante who thinks she speaks Français.
Sammy: Mean-spirited like her significant other Derek but for reasons that are unclear.
Secondary:
Serge: Kayla’s brunette but blonde-at-heart aide-de-camp.
The sun rose on Buckitoo Falls as it did and would continue to do every day, unaware that its rays illuminated events in that town that would change the planet Earth forever. Well, after all, how could one expect it to be aware of that? It’s just a giant ball of burning hydrogen. In fact one may recall that it’s so-called “rising” is an illusion perpetuated by the Earth’s rotation. All right, let’s just be blunt, the sun really has nothing to do with this story aside from the fact that without the heat and light given off by its fusion reactions every moment of the day everyone on planet Earth would be dead and incapable of participating in the events which will be depicted; and its mention here was only a sort of narrative device that in retrospect doesn’t seem to have worked.
To clarify: the sun’s rising has nothing further to do with the story other than to establish the fact that it was the break of dawn. Please turn your attention instead to the words “Buckitoo Falls”. Buckitoo Falls was a relatively small suburb located in an undisclosed New England State of the U.S.A. The falls for which it was named had long since been dammed up but no one felt particularly inclined to rename it.
[End of excerpt]
In late 2011, of course, I discovered "Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender" and was intrigued by the similar concept. In that game, as you may recall, we learn of the Great Gender War on Terra Androgena, in which the women of the planet invented a virus that wiped out virtually all of the men. If I ever do finish this story idea it will probably be as a fan fiction prequel to that game. It's full of intriguing possibilities if only I weren't so lazy.
Characters
The Boys
Main:
Christopher: Enjoys life to the fullest, yet sees disturbing societal problems where no one else does. Going steady with Beth.
Derek: Losing a father and brother to war without compensation by the government has left him hurting inside, which he expresses by being rude and sarcastic. Lives below the poverty line with Sammy. Sees the others when he is out begging. They have all given him donations but he spends it all on alcohol.
Matt: A college student who knows the others only superficially. Despite some experimentation with drugs he is the most even-keeled among them and keeps conflicts from escalating.
Thomas: Mentally warped but in a “good” way. He would have been disposed of by society if he were not rescued by Kayla McConnor. Lives with Dana.
Tyler: C.E.O. of a large company who is forced to let others do the thinking for him. Married to Louise.
Secondary:
Lorson Nells: The leader, though also a complete geek.
Rusty: Lorson’s brave, intelligent and loyal canine companion.
The Girls:
Main:
Bethany: The sweetest and kindest of them all.
Dana: Thomas’s significant other and strange like him. She was also rescued by Kayla McConnor, who keeps an eye on them both. Lives with Thomas.
Kayla McConnor: Fine upstanding citizen
Louise: A ditzy debutante who thinks she speaks Français.
Sammy: Mean-spirited like her significant other Derek but for reasons that are unclear.
Secondary:
Serge: Kayla’s brunette but blonde-at-heart aide-de-camp.
The sun rose on Buckitoo Falls as it did and would continue to do every day, unaware that its rays illuminated events in that town that would change the planet Earth forever. Well, after all, how could one expect it to be aware of that? It’s just a giant ball of burning hydrogen. In fact one may recall that it’s so-called “rising” is an illusion perpetuated by the Earth’s rotation. All right, let’s just be blunt, the sun really has nothing to do with this story aside from the fact that without the heat and light given off by its fusion reactions every moment of the day everyone on planet Earth would be dead and incapable of participating in the events which will be depicted; and its mention here was only a sort of narrative device that in retrospect doesn’t seem to have worked.
To clarify: the sun’s rising has nothing further to do with the story other than to establish the fact that it was the break of dawn. Please turn your attention instead to the words “Buckitoo Falls”. Buckitoo Falls was a relatively small suburb located in an undisclosed New England State of the U.S.A. The falls for which it was named had long since been dammed up but no one felt particularly inclined to rename it.
[End of excerpt]
In late 2011, of course, I discovered "Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender" and was intrigued by the similar concept. In that game, as you may recall, we learn of the Great Gender War on Terra Androgena, in which the women of the planet invented a virus that wiped out virtually all of the men. If I ever do finish this story idea it will probably be as a fan fiction prequel to that game. It's full of intriguing possibilities if only I weren't so lazy.