I posted in an earlier post that I had been working on a bit of Mortal Kombat fan fiction called “Dracula Killer”. I had written a scene and thought that would be enough, but Jennifer and others convinced me that there had to be more to the story. So, from there, I brainstormed, came up with an expanded plotline. However, the story mode in the new game clarified some previously missing information from Mortal Kombat 3 that ended up being counter to my own assumptions in the story. So, I ended up giving up, and I posted the original onto the fan submission system on Mortal Kombat Online.

What I didn’t expect was pretty much everyone who commented also asking for more, despite the continuity problem. So, I went ahead and decided to finish the story.

As a bit of background, I had thought about a couple of different “scenarios” involving Mortal Kombat characters, and one I kept coming back to was the character of Kurtis Stryker meeting up with a vampire. (Vampires were introduced to the series in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance.) A while ago, I had discussed story concepts with my friend Becky, and she told me I should put some of them down in writing. While I wanted to, I wanted to warm up with something else. So, I wrote the “Dracula Killer” story out, not expecting people to want more out of it.

I really should thank Jennifer for helping me flesh out the expanded storyline and for supporting me in this endeavor. Crow and Becky were also very supportive as well, and I’m thankful to them, too. :-)

As for the story itself, you can read it on MK Online (link goes to the first part), or if you like, you can read the whole story in a PDF file (formatted to MLA short story guidelines).

• Mortal Kombat – Dracula Killer

I had never actually been one for decorating my work area. For the longest time, the only decoration I had in my cubicle was a Pessimism desktopper from Despair, Inc. Some months back, though, I was trying to decide what to do with a couple of items Jennifer got for me. One was a small Transformers Megatron figure, and the other was a Pez dispenser shaped like the Riddler. Then, after buying a diecast Recognizer from Tron: Legacy, it suddenly occurred to me what to do with them.

I started putting them on my cubicle wall. As for how it looks now…

The figures are usually the first thing someone notices when they come to my cubicle. At least one person has since commented that it helps make my cube look like a “geek paradise” or something similar. Jennifer doesn’t understand why I don’t remove them from the packaging; I really don’t have a good reason myself, other than it’s easier to keep them on the wall and also makes it easier to keep everything together.

Also, it’s amusing that some of the figures are actually gifts. One of my coworkers bought me the Yoda figure after lamenting the fact that I didn’t have any Star Wars figures up. Jennifer bought me the diecast Batmobile when we went to an arcade expo back in October. The Rubik’s Cube was a prize for getting the high score in Ms. Pac-Man at one of my friend Eric’s game nights.

I definitely intend on expanding the collection, but I’m a bit choosy as to what to put up there. I’m waiting until Transformers: Dark of the Moon toys start becoming widely available before expanding the Transformers section, for example, as I want to put a Shockwave figure up there. In addition, I’d like to put a Mortal Kombat figure or two up, provided they’re not too expensive and the plans for new action figures actually do go ahead. Otherwise, I’m not sure what else I’d put up there.

We’ll see what becomes of it. :-)

It’s kind of funny, in a way.

When I started blogging, I did so using LiveJournal. I mainly set it up to keep up with a friend’s LiveJournal (which was pretty locked down), and eventually started using it myself. Then, back in 2005, my friend Sean introduced me to WordPress and I started using that on my own site for blogging purposes. I still kept my LiveJournal, and used it as a mirror for my site blog. Most of my friends still used LJ and would comment on the LJ mirror as opposed to on my site itself.

As anything, though, things changed. There’s really only one active person on my LiveJournal friends list, and almost everything she posts is mirrored elsewhere, like her Twitter and Facebook. Also, almost everyone who is friends with me on LiveJournal follows me on Twitter or is a friend on Facebook, so they get notifications whenever I post a blog entry. So, really, there’s no point in keeping the LiveJournal active anymore.

So, this will be the last blog entry cross-posted to LiveJournal. As soon as this posts, I’ll be deleting the plugin that allows my site to post blog entries over to my LiveJournal. If I use LiveJournal at all, it’ll be to read the aforementioned friends’ posts when she has something to say that doesn’t fit in a Twitter or Facebook post. There’s no need for me to mirror my blog to it anymore.

It’s a shame, really. I used to really like LiveJournal. Still, its time has come and gone, and I really don’t need it anymore.