Starbucket

Starbucket was a phenomenon that grew out of the BBS system utilized by Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges. It was an interesting hybrid of fan-fiction and original characters and storylines, starting in 1986 and running until the BBS system was decommissioned somewhere in the early 90s. The main writers had graduated by that time and a lot of the stories were lost. Theoretically there exists a printout (9-pin dot matrix on green lined paper format) of everything. Somewhere. There was a shortlived Starbucket fanzine (paper format), and then Thessily set up the site linked above, with some of her her stories, and new stories by some of the primary Starbucket writers.

Due to the vagaries of love and lust, I ended up having access to a BMC account and was able to read and post, and wrote some stuff as part of this project. Due again to the vagaries of love and lust, I lost access to that account. When the BBS was decommissioned, Steve Anderson forwarded the stories I'd written or been involved in to me (though I think he missed some of them - I remember there being some frags involving Nick (who was a Time Lord and also either Death or Dream (ala Sandman)) and Anakata (Alis's characters) and Brian (my character) - I think this because Nick was actually nice to Brian, and when he died and regenerated as Arden, Brian was horrified).

The basic gist of this is that Starbucket is a TARDIS (see Dr. Who), within which a number of different people live. Some are Time Lords (see Dr. Who), some are humans or aliens or characters from books, TV series, movies, comics, or other pop culture entities (for example, Freddie Mercury and Queen are recurring characters). Typically the authors would write an original character and team her/him up with some fanfic type character, and send them off on adventures. My character, Brian, was something of a departure. First, he wasn't some idealized version of myself if I was cool and had powers and fabulous adventures - he was a schizophrenic who heard the "Voice of God" and became a seriously obnoxious preacher.

Brian is based on Bob Norwicki's D&D character from a game we'd been playing - he was a cleric who worshipped a fictitious god, a creation of Brian's own dementia, with such fervor that the spells actually worked. This is based on the old joke about the woman who complains that her husband thinks he's a chicken. We can cure that with hypnosis, suggests a doctor. Are you kidding? She exclaims. We need the eggs!

Most of this stuff is unfinished, and it's all a good 13 or 14 years old. Please forgive any awkward prose.

Brian's Run

Starring: Brian, Old Sooty, Dr. Kerry Kay

The Mission

Starring: Brian, with special guests Neil and Anakata

Musings on "The Benefits of a Classical Education

Starring: Brian, Anakata and Arden

The Plan / In the Flat Field

Starring: Brian, Neil, Arden, G-John and A-John

A Very Blue Moon -- new

Starring: Old Sooty

Reluctant Prophet -- new

Starring: Brian, Cheom

Story by Steve Anderson with Brian in it

Starring: Macgyver

Here are some character descriptions for some of the people introduced above. I have no idea how to get in touch with Alis to get character descriptions for Kata and Arden.

Back one level