Last semester, I started writing this zombie apocalypse story starring my friends. I do this a lot, whenever I watch a new show or read a new book (ie Walking Dead or Lost) I get itching to write my own, using the same premise. It's not original, but it's what I like to write so I don't mind. Sometimes I use fanfic, other times I use characters form other series, the ones I know the best, the ones I can write anywhere, like Ellie and Homer from the Tomorrow Series. I use them a majority of the time, I realised a while back, because the way I write them, is the same dynamic I use when I write about you-know-who and I. The general 'I hate you but you're my best friend and I love you too even if you drive me insane and I'll do anything to protect you even if I'm stubborn as hell and refuse to admit it'. That's my favourite dynamic in any story. I was slightly shocked when I recognised the general idea from my real life romantic drama. Not that I didn't know that was what I approve of and like, but I hadn't realised the similarities until I thought about how I wrote it.

Anyway, for this zombie apocalypse story, I found a fun exercise that would help me with relationship dynamics. I wanted to think about my priorities, but also I wanted to consider each of the other characters and their relationships with each other. I considered a practical problem- how we would divide into two groups.

This was the situation. Two cars, 10 people. 5 per car. 5 girls, 5 boys.

Firstly, I considered it myself. I considered my own wants, which friends I wanted to stay close too, who I chose over whom. I weighed up my loyalties towards best friends, boyfriends, who I needed and who needed me.

Then I considered practicalities. Sure, it made sense that I would want to surround myself with the strong, capable guys and my best friend, but would it ever work out like that? Surely the other group would protest? What would they ask for? What was I willing to give up? What about other skills like driving ability? Who were the drivers? Could they all be in the same car?

Finally, after a lot of thought, I realised there was no way I could be in a car with both my best friend and you know who. So for my story, I separated us. Though that was frustrating, I wanted it to be logically rationed out.

Then I asked my friends for their thoughts. How would their perspectives differ from mine?

First, I asked my best friend. Similar to me, she chose my original plan. The two of us, and the three strongest guys. I was pleased, but frustrated, because I'd dismissed this structure. Just because selfishly it favours us two, doesn't mean it's would happen.

I asked my next best girl friend for her opinion. Similar to ours, only one name was changed. Where I had put her name and my best friend had put you know who's, she had put my ex. That was a fair judgement call that I hadn't considered.

My best friends boyfriend chose a similar group to his girlfriends, only switching one of the guys. I just didn't think this was reasonable. I was firmly of the opinion that the skills of the strongest members of the group would have to be equally split between the cars. No one listened to me on this.

The next four opinions totally changed, because they put me in the other group, away from my best friend and her boyfriend, who until this point, I had always been grouped with. Realistically, I thought that this was never going to happen. When I need to be, I'm much more stubborn and loudmouthed than most of my group. I can't imagine being convinced to split up from the girl I'd always felt obliged to protect.

But I did get some interesting results. While so far I've focused on how the group selected in relation to me mostly, I had some surprising responses concerning other friends that had problems with people, that I hadn't ever really realised. Some I factored in, old relationships etc, and decided whether they would lead to avoidance or an urge to protect, but others I didn't see coming.

I was a little hurt that you-know-who split he and I up in his model, but to be fair, I split us up too. Even if I know I did it with a lot of angst and he told me it was because I annoy him.

That really frustrated me, because it's not true, I know it isn't. I know he cares and I don't annoy him half as much as he says (he's told me this, I know for sure- especially at the time frame of this story) but because he answered the way he did, I have to count his vote as it is. My best friend and 4 of the 5 guys and me and the rest of the girls with one guy.

It just seemed unrealistic to me but maybe not. It's a combo that I think makes sense without the apocalypse story-- in fact I think it was close to the real way we travelled home, but with the zombie danger added, I think it is a bit weird.

I don't mean this to be sexist, of course not. Girls are tough too, obviously, but I was considered my own friends, our own strengths.

Which of my girl friends knows how to fight? Who has muscle? Who knows how to use weapons? Sadly we don't exactly measure up in those areas at this point, so I think it makes sense to split the 'skills' between cars. In my opinion, we had two especially strong players and they needed to be split, one in each car.

We also had 4 drivers, two who could drive manual and two who could drive automatic. We had one couple, we had a girl who only knew one person on the trip- they were obviously going to ride together. Once those considerations were taken, I think I came up with the rest solution, even if no one agreed with me.

I'm still glad I asked for people's input, even if it was annoying and not consistent with my own views but that's the risk you take.

I think I may end up using a few of the different combinations. It was good to have different things pointed out to me that I wouldn't have considered myself.

I was also super methodical, pulling out all the data I could. I made a table, calculated the patterns-- who was most regularly paired together, which combinations worked, what didn't. I tried to use that to see who each person scored most highly with. That kind of worked, but for example, in my case, I ended up scoring 7/8 with a male friend of mine and 5/8 with you-know-who, so logically I should be paired with both of them, but they don't like each other much so it couldn't work that way.

Sooooo complicated. Clearly I'll just have to write the story and make lots of different scenarios which break everyone up differently so I can test the dynamics. An excuse to write more haha.