The Girls’ Guide to Surviving the Apocalypse is a blogging collective filled with good advice on how to survive the coming apocalypse. Zombies, plague, robot takeover, these girls have got you covered! Mostly tongue in cheek and always great fun to read, there are articles on everything from weapons advice to dating, to what music to listen to when the end of the world comes along. We especially like their Know Your Idols series, with survival tips picked up from brilliant women such as Sarah Connor, Ellen Ripley and Tank Girl.

You know us. We’re the ones who’ll appear out of nowhere in the middle of the apocalypse and shout “Come with us if you want to live,” while looking fabulous.

– Lou Morgan

THAT New Trailer

Mass Effect 3 is coming out in March. My love of the series is no secret, and this new trailer increased my fannish glee to dangerous levels. *glances nervously at the calandar to see how many more days there are until March 6th*

One of the best things about Mass Effect is how much flexibility there is to create the main character, Commander Shepard, any way you want, from her appearence to her choices and actions in the game. Until now Bioware had only used a male version of Shepard in their marketing (affectionately termed ‘BroShep’ by the fans) but in what’s been called the first official story trailer for the new game, Bioware have released their first trailer to ever show Commander Shepard as a woman (now often termed ‘FemShep’).

It’s The New Planking/Owling…

Last month, author and now official BadRep-designated ‘all-round-good-sport’ Jim C Hines attempted, with the help of his wife, to recreate some of the poses of the women on the covers of books written by him and other SFF authors. He was the one striking the poses, and his wife took the pictures.The results were hilarious.

This reminded me of this Spiderman cover showing Mary Jane, um, ‘relaxing’ and drinking coffee, and the ways fans on 4chan and tumblr decided to mock the pose by recreating it themselves.

The Hines post was itself a response to a post by professional martial artist ‘Ils’, who experimented to see whether she could recreate a very common pose which superheroines are drawn in. She couldn’t, and posted the photographic evidence.

Just seriously. People. I understand artist license. I understand exaggeration. I understand suspending disbelief. But if a martial artist who is also a contortionist can’t mimic a pose you use constantly for female fighters, there might be a problem in, you know, your choices on basic anatomy.
– Ils

Are we seeing the start of a new trend? I kind of hope so… personally I think the works of a certain Mr Rob Liefield are past due for some real world parody. Don’t, er, break your back though.

If you decide to try any of this at home, don’t forget to a) send @BadRepUK the photographic evidence and b) make sure you’ve got a good friend nearby who can stop laughing long enough to help you limp to your local physiotherapist.