Why Was There No Truck? (Patreon)

Hey everyone! So, I know I mentioned a couple of times that there might be a bit of an extra this month, due to me getting writer's block working on Pokémon Adventure. In truth, there's a bit more to it than that! So...where in the imminently smackable buttocks of superheroines everywhere did this monstrosity really come from, you might ask? You know, aside from Novus's deranged mind. In truth, it actually has its roots as a solution to a problem with another possible new story.

So. No shit. There I was. It was early February of this year, and I had to itch to write something new despite being on a time crunch. Sacrificing some sleep over a few days to deal with a writing bug was nothing new, and I knocked out around 8,000 words of a potential My Hero Academia/Cyberpunk 2077 crossover. Yeah, weird combination, I know. But aren't most of my fics?

Anway, it was at that point that I realized I'd made an tactical error. Looking back over my attempt to create a fusion reality...I realized that what I'd written didn't resemble either source material. There was only a single character, not even the MC in this case, that had come from MHA. While Cyberpunk 2077 had mostly just donated a lot of slang terms and a few basics of aesthetics. At that point I was presented with two paths. One, keep writing and integrate more content from one world or the other. This had actually been the original plan. The MC was going to attend a fusion version of UA, where a number of familiar faces would have been present.

OR

Or...I could pivot and turn what I had into a fully original work. (Not this one! I'll get to that in a bit). Almost nothing, even from the one character I was using, was the same. A few corp names and specific cyber-augments from Cyberpunk 2077. A knock off UA and a single named character (who was radically different from MHA canon) from MHA. I'm not afraid of writing original works. I'm actually better at it, in my opnion, than I am at fanfiction. So, I had a choice and I puzzled over it for hours.

It may or may not have finally resulted in decision via coin toss.

However I decided, I made the call to turn it into an original work. I did the conversions needed and wrote a bit more, only to realize I had another problem. Yep, we're looping back to my opening statements here about this fic. The problem? Two fold. One, I've never written a grim setting. Not ever. Mind you, even what I planned wasn't actually all that grim. I hate grimdark stuff. The world I was building was/is actually a little bit lighter than the Cyberpunk series. Still very dystopian, but a bit less dark. Even so, it's definitely the 'grimmest' world I've ever created, and I've never made one like it before.

Two? If you haven't clued in on it yet, all of my fanfiction stories start as experimental ideas I want to play with. Each of them has something a little different I want to play with the concept of. From attempting a lighthearted version of the 'What is human?' question with 2B in A Very Confused Pokémon Adventure, to attempting a Gamer/Gamelit style story in One Piece: Halfway Broken. In the case of the tentatively named Cyberpunk Hero, I'd decided to toy with more than just a slightly grimmer setting. I'd picked up an old, old thought of mine about what 'identity' would mean to someone born with shapeshifting powers. Someone who's body is very fluid and basically always was from birth.

It's not too shocking that I ended up making the character a Futa-by-choice. It was a way to help explore that concept, even if Futa's aren't actually really a major interest of mine. They are popular enough on the vastness of the internet, and it was one vehicle I could use to explore the character concept. All well and good with an experimental fanfiction story! But, uh...a bit less good when I'm doing an original work? Because I've never written a serious go at a futa character. I've written some erotica content with them, but I've never written such a character in a serious way.

Between these two issues, the project ended up stalling out through all of March. Which frustrated the heck out of me.

So, when I had a bit of an issue where I needed to get the itch for something less fluffy that Pokémon Adventure out of my system this month? I picked up one of the many random ass challenge ideas I frequently come up with but never really use. They're thought experiments for me that help me refine how things like a Gamer System could be made less horribly broken. This one...well, I'll let you read about it in the fic.

Regardless, it gave me an easy starting point for a quick dive into a story that would be doubly useful. First, to get on track with Pokémon Adventure by getting rid of the itch to write something darker. Second, to address the problems I'd run into with Cyberpunk Hero. A quick-and-dirty story that would let me grind some proverbial XP in a grimmish setting with a futa character.

Then...it sort of got away from me?

Oops?

Somehow, I ended up with a Quasi-SI flung into an interesting-in-the-way-a-train-wreck-is amalgam world. So...that's where this story came from. I ended up with enough of it that I figured I could toss it out as an extra. But I have no idea if I'll keep working on it, and probably won't publish it outside the Patreon Page for a fair while, if ever.

A couple of other Quick Notes:

1) When I said Quasi-SI, I wasn't kidding. While the character in this story is based on me to an extent, the template of things I applied to them so I could grind that writing XP I mentioned drags them pretty far from a true SI. They think a lot like I do, have a similar background and skillset. Yet, there's as much different as there is the same. I wouldn't handle the world transfer nearly as well as they did, I just didn't want to get hung up on the drama. The power set they chose is not the one I would have gone with.

I'm a mastermind personality at heart, not someone whose idea of solving problems is to throw hands with a supervillain. (I honestly get more than a little annoyed when people assume Luffy from Halfway Broken is an insert, as I still consider him an idiot that chose the fun solution instead of the smart one). I needed a more action-oriented character, so there's a bit of a radical departure there. The Futa template was added to experiment for Cyberpunk Hero, so on, and so on. Someone who knows me really well might be able to look at the character, squint really hard, and see me in it. But...well...at best he/she is a Quasi-SI. In reality, by the time you get halfway through Chapter 2, he/she is really an OC who just shares some of my thought processes.

2) There isn't a grand plan for this story. The writing Quality might well not be quite what you're used to from me as a result. If it keeps going at all it will jump from conflict to conflict rather than weaving the huge and properly connected narrative I normally focus on. Part of the reason I made it an amalgam universe is so I can handwave away mistakes and randomly insert whatever bits I need rather than doing strict lore dives and research. Understand, this is a quick-and-dirty story, rather than the much more refined ones you've seen from be until now.

3) The method that was used for the character to create his new powerset? I actually did that. That was the challenge I'd thought up and decided to use. This comment won't make much sense until you read through the character creation chapter. Once you do, you'll see what I meant. I have, in fact, a compilation of the images the MC used to pick things from. The only additional things I did beyond exactly what it says? I removed a few characters that I literally couldn't ID from the images, and I weeded out maybe a half dozen images of 2B. I knew I'd be tempted to use her for her crazy powerset if she was an option, but she's already being explored in two other fics of mine. So...yeah. Removed those.

Anyway...have a hopefully fun read of this 27k starter for an unholy Amalgam of DC/Marvel/MHA/Worm/ProbablyOthersI'mForgetting! Yes, you read that right. I said it was a possibly-unholy amalgam, didn't I? I'll create some commentary for it in a bit...