Towards A Greater Understanding Of Strip Games

When I posted the rules for Strip Rock Band yesterday, I had many people saying, “Why worry about shy people?  Shy people don’t play strip games.”
This is fundamentally untrue.  If a crowd was composed of all bold people, there would be but one strip game ever, and it would be called “Let’s take our clothes off!”, and it would be played at every opportunity.
No, the bold folks are the ones suggesting Strip Halo…. but they are not the majority, else everyone’s underwear would already be scattered across the rug.  The purpose of a strip game is to encourage a bunch of shy(er) people, who wish they were bold, to doff their clothes one bit at a time.  They wouldn’t do it if there wasn’t that delicious combination of:
a)  Peer pressure;
b)  A slow pace of removal, so they can adjust to their topless status before moving on to a bottomless status;
c)  A feeling of some control, since by playing well they can at least hope to stave off their own nakedness;
d)  A deep, deep desire to see the other people naked.
This is why strip games work.  If you make it fast, then all the shy people get immediately self-conscious, leaving a bunch of bold people running around starkers and the shy ones feeling ashamed, shunned, and stupid.  If you remove the control element, then shy people feel like they’re just doffing clothes at random, at which point they feel like slo-mo strippers.
This is not to say that the strip game necessarily requires deep skill… Just the illusion of skill.  I’ve played Strip Candyland, and I’m pretty sure the most skilled of professional Candyland players don’t have much of an edge on me.  But I felt like rolling the dice was some form of control to stop me from flopping Little Elvis out prematurely, and so I was more comfortable when the King put in his inevitable appearance.
But to think that no shy people play strip games is to misunderstand the whole reason behind Strip Settlers of Catan. The strip game is specifically done to lure in the folks who are reluctant but eager, to allow them to show off the bits that they normally would uncover.
Then the bold ones try to talk them into an orgy. Alas, there’s no camouflage game for that.

Boy Stories And Girl Stories And, Oh Yeah, Sales

The good news is, I sold the audio rights for my story “A Window, Clear As A Mirror” to PodCastle.  This is awesome, because a) if you’ll recall, it’s my favorite story ever, and b) PodCastle did such a great job on my story “As Below, So Above” I that I can’t wait to see what they do with the more-humorous-but-more-melancholy tone of “Window.”
But their choice of narrator threw me. I wanted a woman to read this; they said it should be a male.
Which is odd, because to me, “A Window” reads very clearly as a female story, even though the lead character is a male.  In fact, when I read it, I read it in a woman’s voice – I have a high voice to begin with, and I spent years working at a receptionist agency where the patients yelled less if you presented as female, so I have a very good female voice.  And both times I’ve read it, I find my vocal tones rising, me adopting a female slant.
Whereas Dave then told me that if I ever sold “‘Run,’ Bakri Says,” then that would need a female narrator.  And to me, “Bakri” reads so strongly as masculine that I can’t envision what it would sound like with a woman’s voice reading it… Even though the protagonist is a teenaged girl.
I dunno.  On the one hand, he has a point about readers expecting a male protagonist to be read by a male voice, and considering that he’s co-editing an insanely great podcast, I defer to his experience about creating an awesome production. Yet on the other hand, I think about how Neil Gaiman said that he wrote gendered stories; American Gods is a boy book, whereas Stardust is a girl book.  And to me, “Bakri” is a boy story, and “Window” is a girl story, and having opposite-gendered readers feels vaguely like indulging in transgenderism.  (Which is not a bad thing – as noted, I love dressing in high heels and stockings – but it is a little odd at first.)
Gini pointed out that perhaps I was being stereotypical – “Window” is a girl-story because the lead character is dissecting a broken romance, and “Bakri” is a military, “let’s-solve-this-problem” kinda tale.  And there’s an element of that in there, even as “Sauerkraut Station” – which is at least ostensibly about a war – is extremely feminine (though that could be because the inspiration that story is derived wholly from “Little House On The Prairie”).  “iTime,” a problem-solver story if ever there was one, is feminine, whereas “The Backdated Romance” is masculine.  “Camera Obscured” is feminine, “My Father’s Wounds” is masculine.
(On a side note, you know how awesome it is to have so many published stories that I can link to them like this? It’s totally awesome.)
I don’t know. In my head, there’s some trigger where a story is female or male, and it has little to do with the protagonist.  Nor is it necessarily that the story is about problem-solving or relationships, although it does stereotypically tilt slightly that way.  It’s just that to me, certain stories are boy stories and others are girl stories – neither better nor worse, but just flavored in a way that I’ve been drawing this distinction all along, and it only comes up now that I see my girl story putting on a mustache and Don Draper’s suit.
I dunno.  If you write, are your stories gendered at all?  If you read, or have at least read some of the stories here, do you think of them as boy or girl stories now that your attention is drawn to it?

Strip Rock Band

I like naked people, and I like Rock Band.  And for years, I’ve been caught in this awful Scylla and Charybdis conundrum: Gee, I’m having fun being naked with these people, but I’d really like to be playing Rock Band. Or This Rock Band sure is entertaining, but all these clothes are too restrictive.
Hence, the need for official rules for Strip Rock Band.
Now, I have some friends in other locales who are famed for their strip Rock Band parties, but the local scuttlebutt is that the stripping proceeds asynchronously – some people have all of their clothes on, if they are not playing Rock Band.  This shall not do for me.  (And besides, it was more entertaining to try to devise them on my own.) Plus, there may be large numbers of people who’d want to attend a strip Rock Band party, and since the main goal of a strip game is to get everyone naked, doing it through the narrow gateway of one person every song seemed unduly laggardly.
In addition, some people wanted a punitive measure to allow the losers to catch up – if you were a great Rock Band player, you might never remove an item of clothing.  Some suggested that every winner should be forced to do a shot, but I’ve had bad experiences with drinking games – I turn into a real asshole if I don’t monitor my drinking carefully.  So I wanted to have an optional way where a) people who wanted to do it as a drinking game could, but b) those who chose not to drink would be forced to doff clothing.
Hence: The Official Beta-Rules Of Strip Rock Band.
1) Every person entering the house is assigned semi-randomly to one of four teams: tentatively called Paul, John, George, and Ringo.
2)  When you join a team, you must a) choose a difficulty setting (“Easy” to “Expert”), which you will play at all night, and b) decide whether you are in the “official drinkers” or not.
3) Each song must be manned by people from at least three different groups.  (So at least Paul, John, and Ringo must be playing on the song to count for strip purposes.)
4)  You “win” a song by achieving the highest percentage on the song.  If you “win,” all members of the team who are listed as “official drinkers” must do a shot.
5) You “lose” a song by achieving the lowest percentage on the song.  If you “lose,” all members of the team must remove an item of clothing.
6)  If two or more groups tie for a percentage, the wins or losses are spread across all groups.  (So if Paul and George both get 67% in a song, bottoming out, all members of Paul and George must lose an item of clothing.)
7)  You gotta at least try.  No bullshit dropping the controller to make everybody strip.  If I’m not allowing “NO FAIL” mode at my house, I’m not allowing auto-fail mode either.  🙂
The only problem we have thus far is the problem of late arrivers.  I’m still not sure whether they should just be forced to strip down on arrival, which is potentially humiliating but fair, or whether we force them to play repeatedly until they doff one at a time.  Or perhaps some other mechanism.  Certainly we’ll have an good idea of which team is the most losing team, so it should be easy to slot them on.
Also, it feels like this system is gamed fairly easily. If y’all have any improvements, I’m listening.

ABriefApology

YesterdaymyiPadDecidedToStripAllOfTheQuoteMarksFromMyEntry.
ManyPeopleCommented. TheyWonderedIfSomethingWasWrongWithMe. IEvenGotTexts. ButNoItWasJustSomeWeirdSettingOnTheIpadWordpressApp.
FortunatelyIFixedIt. AllFutureEntriesShouldAppearTotallyNormal. ItLooksLikeWe’reGoodToGo!

New Story! "Sauerkraut Station," Live At Giganotosaurus!

I bet you’ve been wondering what it would be like if Ferrett wrote a version of “Little House on the Prairie” set in space. I wouldn’t blame you.  After all, I did, so much so that I actually had to write the story.
In any case, what emerged was a long-ass story, and I think it’s the closest I’ve ever come to writing what I’d call “comfort reading.”  Lizzie’s life out on Sauerkraut Station isn’t comfortable, but there’s something about the rhythm of her existence that just made me read this one over and over again.  I like it.  I hope you do, too.

“The sauerkraut is what makes us special,” Lizzie explained as she opened up the plastic door to show Themba the hydroponic units.  She scooped a pale green head of cabbage from the moist sand and placed it gently into Themba’s cupped hands.
She held her breath as Themba cradled it in his palm, hoping: Please.  Please don’t tell me that stuff grows everywhere at home.
Themba ran a dark brown finger along the cabbage’s veins, then let loose a sigh of wonder.  “That’s marvelous,” he said.
Lizzie puffed out her chest.  Themba had passed her final test.  At ten years old, Themba was two years younger, six inches shorter, and eight shades darker than Lizzie was, and she’d known him for a record three days and nine hours.  That made him her best friend ever.

It’s available at Giganotosaurus, and is not only available in regular web page format, but in ePub format for those of you who wish to download and devour at leisure later.  (And I wouldn’t blame you – as a novella, this story takes a while to digest.)
In any case, it’s a departure from my usual writings, if I can be said to have usual writings.  Go take a look, kick the tires, lemme know what you think.

Adjusting The Algorithm

I talk to at least fifty people every day – texting with my sweeties, answering comments in my blog, solving tickets at work, social networking with editors and fellow writers.
At the end of the day, I have to summarize that in a report for my wife.
Its not an official report, of course, though that would have the satisfying ring of a blue folder being dropped on her desk, perhaps stamped with the words CONFIDENTIAL. But at some point, I have to summarize the interesting things that have happened to me, lest we have these awkward conversations like When did you become bisexual? or I rather thought youd tell me your family was killed in a chemical accident.
Which means at some point, theres an algorithm that runs through my head that separates my daily events into rough categories: SHOULD CALL RIGHT AWAY, AMUSING ANECDOTE TO BE TOLD OVER DINNER, JUICY GOSSIP, SLOW MUTATIONS IN MY THOUGHT PATTERNS. And in this algorithm, certain events are discarded as not worth mentioning, else I might as well sit down with Gini and read off every Tweet Ive sent that day.
The trick to a successful relationship, Ive decided, is in fine-tuning those algorithms.
See, a bad filtering algorithm will discard events that would be danger signals to your partner: maybe you dont think much of the fact that Cassie squeezed your ass at the Halloween party, but your partner probably wants to know. The issue is that your algorithm had written that butt-squeeze off as a drunken lark, whereas your partners been noting the way that Cassies been hanging close to you at parties, laughing a bit too loudly at every joke. To her, Cassies a step in an escalating attraction that will need to be handled one way or the other; to you, its nothing.
Hence, theres going to be a bit of a clash when this fact is revealed to her later.
Likewise, bad filtering algorithms dont necessarily take into event the little day-to-day slides in attitude that often kayo a relationship. We all know some couple where the one partner just got more and more dissatisfied with her life, quashing it all down because hey, I have a good home and a decent job and this should make me happy even though it doesnt – and then one day they explode into a flusterstorm of rebellion and run off to Indonesia to tend llamas.
Thats a bad filtering algorithm because it didnt convey the daily frustration in an effective way.
I think the reason Gini and I have thrived for so long is that weve established a set of pretty good algorithms. As a flirty poly guy, I text and email a lot of people… But I also relate any significant incidents that I think might be leading to either a ramping up or a damping down of affections. And Ginis fine-tuned her algorithms to let me know about her overall moods, so that I can monitor her to make sure shes doing well.
The end result isnt perfect, of course; if she did read through all of my mails Im sure shed find a few surprises, and shell occasionally forget to mention that something happened to our daughters today. But mostly, weve gotten a good handle on providing a daily snapshot to each other that lets us know how were feeling.
Thats the danger I worry about as I move towards more experimentation with BDSM; its a new situation the algorithm has to deal with. Since Im a novice at this sort of thing, I dont necessarily know what is significant in my evolution, leading to a weekend where I just sort of exploded at Gini about a bunch of incoherent feelings I had that she had to walk me through. Its hard for me to summarize things like top drop and the intense spillage of emotions that arise after a scene when I cant even really process them myself… And that concerns me, because Im worried I may do something that to me is insignificant, yet to Gini would be a huge billboard of NO NO DO NOT PASS, and dont let her know because my algorithm erroneously filed as DISCARD.
Yet I think that if youre gonna make it work in the long-term, you need to make sure your compacting algorithm is stable, efficient, and open. The alternative is to not translate the significant events in your day-to-day life so that your partner knows and can deal with them… and that never ends well.