Prologue: The Making Of 5000 Miles

I sat on the couch, an old iPad 1 in my lap and my art kit nearby. I wanted to write a fanfic desperately, but inspiration had eluded me for over a month. Damn writer's block.

"Ecch, I can't think of anything to write! At this point, anything would work!" I said, irritated. I switched on the tv. The movie RV was on. I watched it, finding it hilarious and a bit meaningful at times.

And that's when it hit me. Yugi, Yami, Abridged!Marik, Abridged!Bakura, and myself. In an RV. Traveling around America. Usually I would have denounced this as nonsense, but I wasn't about to denounce my first idea in a month.

I grabbed my art kit and started sketching scenes. First, what would the RV look like? I Google imaged some RVs and found one that suited my tastes: A Moturis 28 ft RV, repainted to look like the ultimate con visiting motor home.

Now came one of the harder questions. Why was all this happening? I thought for a long while and came up with this: One of Bakura's Shadow Antics caused a rift in their universe and catapulted them into my dimension. The rift also caused Yami to gain his own body. And just when I was about to take a vacation cross country. Unable to leave them at home due to their antics, I prep to take four additional people with me across the country and back.

Another hard question to answer was setting up conflict to drive the story. To do this, I had to delve deep into MY character as well as my animated companions. I thought this process would help me discover meaningful things about myself, but it turns out I'm just a sociopath with an obsession with anime. But I digress.

For conflict, I drew from the fact that I would most likely have a hard time dealing with Bakura, Abridged or not. My habits to fangirl over Yugi and Yami would also prove to be a conflict. Hitting a substantial amount of landmarks and sites, making sure things don't get repetitive, lack of Shadow Powers in the real world, avoiding fangirl hordes, and making sure I don't become a Mary Sue in my own fanfic are all conflicts my little troop and I face in this story, along with a lot more.

Next I worked out a route for the RV to take and a destination. Said destination is the fictional anime convention known as X-Con in LA. I want to get there to cosplay and have a great time. However, four other people, each of which have a substantial fan base of their own, can make getting around unnoticed a bit troublesome.

Finally, I worked out dialogue for specific situations and rounded out the rough edges.

I hope you enjoy 5000 Miles.