The Explanation

So it occurs to me that maybe I should explain the RPG from Hell.

Here's what happened - in the Epiphany series there's a story called It Depends, which is written by me and Meredith. We wrote it over the course of a weekend and we thought we finished it as of late Saturday evening. However we were wrong. We were wrong because when we woke up Sunday morning Mer turned to me and uttered the fatal words "I think Wesley and Spike should kiss."

Now I had nothing against this concept because, well, pretty. But also I did think the two boys had bonded enough in the story that a kiss didn't seem out of left field, particularly since Spike is such a flirt and you just know he wouldn't mind getting under Angel's skin by planting one on the new boyfriend.

However the idea didn't work for the series as a whole. Pretty though it was, it was just too big a can of worms that on top of everything else that was going on in both series, two of the main characters decide to cheat a little. A valid storyline to be certain, but not one we could do justice to in our current arcs.

But the bunny remained. Both Mer and I just felt like there was Spike and Wes smoochies that needed to happen (and based on the feedback I got for ID which said "Thanks for the W/S story!" it looks like we weren't the only ones) and we just had to write them.

So to satisfy the bunnies we sketched out the alt. ending to It Depends - Wes stays a few hours longer and more than smoochies ensue. End of discussion, right?

Oh how little we knew then.

You see once we did that all these other plot bunnies opened up - what would Angel think? What would Buffy think? How would everyone react? Etc. So, just for shits and giggles, I uttered the fatal words to Mer "Why don't we try writing out emails between the characters just to see where the conversations go?"

Ah, memories.

Over a year later here we are, with the RPG from Hell (tm). Does anybody out there remember Dagger of the Mind? You remember how much of a bed-hopping, angsty soap opera that was? Okay, imagine that but moreso. Believe me, Tom/Brad as a pairing has nothing on some of the stuff that the RPG from Hell (tm) has cooked up.

The thing of it is, though, that it is totally unpostable. In 20/20 hindsight I wish that Mer and I (and the others who have joined in and left it over the course of the year) had started up a Yahoogroup for it where we posted everything there and let YG archive it. That way anyone who might have wanted to read it could come in at any time and have an easy way to catch up. Now? That's totally impossible. There's email, there's IRC sessions, there's stuff we've plotted out over the phone - you name it.

We keep doing it though because A) it's seriously fun and B) it's actually useful for our writing. If I've got an idea about Angel/Wes I can try it out in the RPG first to see how it plays before I try putting it into the series. Vice versa for Mer and Strange Bedfellows. There's some Epiphany plotlines coming up which I'm cribbing right from the RPG.

But there's other stuff that's just not going to happen - like Wes/Spike, so there in the RPG archives it languishes.

However (I'm saying that a lot, aren't I?) some of it, if you ask me, is really good. So what I've decided is that from time to time I'm going to take little posts and ficlets from the RPG from Hell (tm) and post them over here and in my Live Journal. Some will be stand-alones, others will be sneak previews of things to come in Epiphany, but hopefully all of it will be fun, angsty and interesting. Either that or y'all will think I'm insane, but then again I don't think that's much of a change in the overall public opinion anyway.

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