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What the... where am I? Who are you?

You're in post-apocalyptic fiction. I'm...

the protagonist.

Oh jeez, post-apocalyptic? What happened?

It doesn't matter what happened, the only thing that matters is...

Survival.

...

What are you doing?

Oh, I'm just thinking about how you remind me of my dead wife in order to excuse my overprotective, controlling behavior over you, and foreshadow our inevitable sexual relationship.

Or, I'm thinking that you remind me of my dead daughter, in order to excuse my overprotective, patronizing, controlling behaviour over you. Doesn't mean the sexual relationship isn't off the table though. We'll see how things go.

Gross. Ok, well, I'm neither of those people. I'm going to go look for my family.

You can't go out there!

Why not.

To the west are the roaming rape gangs. That's pretty much all they do.

To the north is the forced polygamy cult, where you will be captured and required to service the leader.

To the east are two rival wargangs. They talk with bullets and their currency is women.

South is that one guy who seems pretty nice but is also kind of vaguely creepy and you tentatively start sharing food and space with him because he seems harmless and then next thing you know he has you chained in his basement with 4 other women.

That's insane. How long has it been?

Like, 2 months. Turns out, humanity is the monst -

Yeah, I get the message.

Well, I'm going to go look for food.

I guess I'll come with you -

No! It's too dangerous. You stay here.

....What did you do before this all happened?

I worked in sales. But I did like, a lot of Crossfit in the last year. I was built for this. You wouldn't understand.

But don't worry, there's like a 50% chance I'll find a small child wandering alone in the wasteland and I'll bring her back to you. Then you'll have lots to do! You seem like a natural caregiver.

Is this honestly the best you could come up with?

The Survivening
Dark and gritty!
Harrowingly realistic!
Incredibly realistic characters!