The Blind Pig

The Blind Pig (TBP for short) is a fictional setting for writers in transformation fandom, originally created by Mark van Sciver. The total number of TBP stories is not known, and new ones are continually being written, but as of 12 August 2005, the largest known TBP archive contains at least 238 stories.

Synopsis
The TBP setting diverges from the Real World in 2001, when a probe sent to Mars brought back an alien virus, the so-called 'Martian Flu', which was inadvertently released into the wild, causing widespread deaths (up to 30% in some areas). There are few TBP stories which directly deal with events before 2020 or so; the majority are set somewhere in the period 2030-2040.

Roughly 2/3 of all Flu victims suffer nothing more than cold/flu symptoms of varying degrees of severity. Approximately 8% of Flu victims suffer a complication called SCABS (short for "Stein's Chronic Accelerated Biomorphic Syndrome"), which results in their bodies being physically transformed in some way - sometimes comic, often tragic. The most common term for a SCABS victim is "SCAB" or "Scab". Most TBP stories are about how a newly-changed SCAB deals with what the disease has done to him. Many TBP stories center around The Blind Pig Gin Mill, a tavern in a large city somewhere in the Northeast quadrant of the USA, of which most regulars are affected by SCABS in one way or another; a few TBP authors have written about other parts of the post-Martian Flu world.