Wtf: Rolled a 1 on my Intelligence check...

[black_sluggard]

Okay, so, here's the set up for the epic mental fail that I am about to describe...

I'm trying to put together a tabletop game for my sister and her boyfriend (who is a pain in the ass in a I'd-like-him-if-he-wasn't-dating-my-sister-but-I-have-to-hold-him-to-standards kind of way). I'm using the d20 Modern rules system, and I'm going to run a semi-supernatural apocalypse for them. If you don't know much about RPGs, d20 Modern is basically the exact same game as D&D, rules-wise, just with a few minor tweaks to make it better suited to modern settings. The similar minor tweaks can be made to use Modern for futuristic and post-apocalypitc settings as well. This basically means that you can take just about any D&D character, and with only a small amount of work, change it to be used in a Modern Apocalyptic or Future campaign.

So, I was going through my rulebooks yesterday, looking for creatures that would fit the setting, and as I was rolling through one of them I ran across something...well. Have you ever read, or seen, or heard something (from a movie or a book or whatever) and then completely forgotten about it, only to find it years later and realize that you'd unconsciously copied an idea from that source?

Apparently, I unintentionally plagiarized the way Javier's alien species functions in Sui Generis from a monster entry in d20 Future. Yes, that's right, there are D&D stats for alien!Javi. I'm not going to say which monster, because even the name of the creature in the book is kind of spoilery for a plot twist that is revealed in the next chapter of that fic, but I'll probably end up putting it in the author's notes once that chapter is finished.

Moving on...

A long time ago (like seven years or so), I got involved in this MUD. For those who aren't familiar with MU*s, a MUD, MUSH, or MUX is a text-based online game, sort of the precursor to all those MMOs out there like World of Warcraft and Star Wars: The Old Republic. This game was called BuffyMUD, and it was meant to be a roleplaying environment for those wanting to play around in the Jossverse. I won't go into the game much more than to say that, while I had several shitty experiences with the staff, the playerbase on there was awesome. The roleplay I did on there taught me a lot about what I enjoy in a dramatic scene, and has informed my writing a lot. It's also where I met two of my very best friends (including "Zeretal" of some of the AIM log posts), and where I discovered the love of sentient zombies that eventually went into Quality of Life (in a lot of ways, post-vital!Javi is a ripoff of one of my characters there).

I came out of the game with two characters I deeply loved: Joseph "Tinker" Garrett and Lohengrin Krieg.

Now, at some point after rage-quitting the game, Zeretal and I began working together to create a storyline using these characters, and some of his, and others loosely based off of other people's characters to adapt the events we "lived" on the MUD into a storyline. Eventually, the intent became to turn the whole thing into a comic. But, as always happens with my writing, I threw way too much energy into planning, almost none into structuring, and then found myself burned out and got distracted by something. But every now and then I'll bring the notes out, play with the characters a bit, draw them a bit, figure out some further things happening in their life, then put them away again and go do something else...

Mostly fanfic.

Now, I've been in a mindset to get back into working on the comic again, but I'm kind of stuck. And by "stuck" I mean "I can't take off my fic writer's hat". One possible solution that occurred to me was to write a crossover. Write some pre-storyline interaction between the fan characters I've been writing (Kevin and Javier) with my original characters (Lohengrin, Santos, Frenandez, Mila, et al.) as a way of reintroducing myself to them. So I guess the question is, would anybody actually read a story about Javier and Kevin getting stranded in a small city in Nowhere, Northern California (the city of Tres Cruces, which I totally made up, but which is almost exactly like Sacramento and Elk Grove where I grew up in a lot of ways...) and bumming around with a bunch of weird OCs in a story where almost nothing supernatural happens? If so, what would you see in terms of plot for the boys? I have an idea for how I'm going to get them there, and I have a couple encounters in mind, but other than that I have nothing...

So yeah...

Also, I thought some of you might be amused by the creative license I took with a word problem in my algebra notes last Monday:
Formula: distance = rate x time (d=RT)
Problem: Javier and Kevin are 833 miles apart and are heading toward each other to meet for dinner. Javier is traveling at 54 mph and Kevin is traveling at 65 mph. How long before they meet?

The answer, as we all know, is "Too long!" ;D