For convenience, (and because the former profile was a bloody eyesore) I'm cleaning up my profile. It is in the following format. (Work in progress as of 12-26-07)

Updates
Biography
Writing
Stories
Musings
HaloVerse info
Projects

(01-27-13): Down with the flu. Can barely keep from sleeping. Nausea doing what it can to keep me awake. Throat feels like I tried to sword-swallow a spike grenade.

Not sure if I'm going to make it. Ugh...

(12-27-12): Yet another year without something being posted around Christmas. And it's been seven months since I last updated this profile.

That doesn't mean that I haven't been doing anything. Hope to have something up soon.

(04-29-12): Five years ago, I posted the first chapter of Isolation. When I posted it, I updated almost monthly and expected to finish it within the year.
Yeah. There's been some serious schedule slip.

I'd hoped to get the last two chapters written and posted by the fifth anniversary so I could move on to something else, but there's been a lot going on in my life that's made the process of satisfactorily wrapping the story up difficult.
And I have a huge procrastination problem, as my longtime readers will attest. It's been the cause of some of those real-life difficulties I mentioned, and I'm only barely getting a handle on it.

I would like to apologize to my loyal readers for the delay. The next chapter should be up sometime this week. As for anybody else who stumbled across my profile and hasn't read Isolation, I recommend you do so. By the time you finish, the next chapter might be up.

(03-13-12): Just finished Mass Effect 3. It was absolutely sublime.

There's never been a franchise that's had me more emotionally invested in the characters. There's never been a game that has portrayed the effects of war so well.
And there's never been an ending that has so thoroughly betrayed the audience.

I dunno. I have a journal with outlines for Mass Effect fanfiction, but I think I'll give it a rest for a while.

(03-08-12): Ugh. Came down with a terrible cold during midterms. Then 343i dropped a bunch of Halo 4 info... and the Cyclops is back, ten times as large, though it thankfully doesn't seem to be anything more than multiplayer decoration.

Terrible week overall, but the weather's nice.

(01-27-12): For the time being, hotlinks are disabled in my profile. Hopefully, this will be cleared up soon.

(01-17-12): Lessee here...

Six centimeters of snow last night, two more this afternoon, and we're slated for more.
I'm driving a four-wheel-drive Jeep Cherokee with studded tires all the way around, so I don't fear the snow. What I do fear are the idiots in front-wheel drive rice rockets who don't know what the white stuff falling from the sky is, much less how to drive in it.

In other news, I recently won an XBL Avatar Sword Prop in a comic contest over at HBO. Here is the winning entry.

(01-13-12): So, I guess I have some big plans this year.

-This year will see the end to Isolation, and the start of the prequel, even if it kills me. Given that I've really only got to write one more chapter, it should be doable.
-Didn't get around to writing "Match Made In Hell" last year, but I might take a crack at it this time around.
-If I get particularly ambitious and daring, I'll take a stab at "As Our Fathers Were", a fic dealing with the state Humans were in when the Forerunner defeated us and exiled us back to Earth. Projected to be about three chapters long.
-"Breaking Taboos", a Mass Effect oneshot that's already been written, just needs to be typed and polished. I'll let your imaginations wander a bit on that title...
-I've been writing something pretty big under the working title of "Kvetch As Kvetch Can", mostly as therapy for my extreme disappointment with Halo Wars. I'm thinking about turning it into an article and seeing if Forward Unto Dawn will publish it.
-As always, work on "The TTP Project" continues.

(01-04-11): I'm a very traditional sort of person, always deferring toward the way things used to be done. I've always found old technology and old styling to be fascinating, and I've always found it sad to see the old things go. For example, a wooden-frame windmill that was erected in the 1920s and spent much of its life in the parking lot of a bowling alley was dismantled in my hometown, and a steam engine (The last steam engine to operate in Alaska) that has been parked where the railroad crosses Broadway was recently shipped back home. These were landmarks, things I drove past on my way to school and rarely noticed. And yet, because of their historicity, I am sorry to see them go.

So, now that I've established my bona-fides as a stick-in-the-mud, I imagine you guys will realize how much it pains me to announce that I'm breaking a tradition; this year's Christmas special isn't getting posted.

I started writing them for various reasons, but those reasons have faded away over time, and I am finding it harder to write a Christmas-themed oneshot every year. Very likely, the only person who is disappointed that I'm discontinuing this is probably me, but when writing something seems more like an obligation, that's when it's time to throw in the towel.

(12-28-11): Well, I really ought to have this year's Christmas Special up by now, but I scratched my right eye with a screwdriver early today, so I'm going to take my own sweet time updating..

(12-25-11): Well, here's a little thing I found over at HBO. Props to Pete the Duck.
Aside from that, merry Christmas to all my friends, and readers.

(09-17-11): You know, I'm just one page away from completing the next chapter of Isolation...
And now it's being held hostage by writer's block.

Still working on that story with EmF. Looking at some of the material he's come up with, he hasn't lost his touch.
And yeah, The TTP Project is going alright, I guess. Having some problems with the programs, but I'll get it figured out.
Finally, new musing down below.

(08-06-11): Started up the Musings section, which I've been promising for a while. It's a recommended read for anybody who is new to the whole Fanfiction business, or maybe people who wonder why I'm bothering with fanfiction when I'm good enough to come up with my own ideas.
I'm not that good, by the way.

In addition, I posted a new section a while back. Basically, it's commentaries on the stories I've written and possibly stories I won't write. A lot of it will be factoids that would bog down the Author's Notes at the end of each short story or chapter I post.

Crikey, I need a blog.

(07-17-11): So, over the past four and a half years, I have been saving correspondences. E-mails, PMs, reviews, review replies...

And, in that time, a total of 1,000 plus E-mails were stored in my Hotmail account. All of them saved for posterity, because I haven't the heart to throw them away. It was worrisome, because a single bug on the Hotmail servers could wipe them all out, and Outlook Express is incompatible with Hotmail.
Fortunately, I have downloaded Mozilla Thunderbird. LET THE BACKUPS BEGIN!

Well, aside from that, I guess I also did some cleaning on this profile.

(06-28-11): So, I've been going through a Timothy Zahn binge, buying and reading all his Star Wars books. I've read the Thrawn Trilogy, Hand of Thrawn Duology, and Allegiance. Just as awesome as I remembered, though 'awesome is a criminal understatement. Hell, even knowing the twist ending to the Hand of Thrawn Duology didn't take away its punch. And reading Allegiance for the first time was a blast!

And so, the last two books (Outbound Flight and Survivor's Quest) arrived in the mail today, meaning I'll be caught up for Choices of One this July!
In other news, that Dead Winter book I ordered a year and a third ago arrived in the mail alongside the Zahn books! Late, maybe, but worth the wait. It's even got a little doodle of Lizzie and her cat on the first page! It took so long because Mr. Shabet was updating the art (Kinda like Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary) and tweaking a few things around. I've seen a few typographical mistakes on the part of the printer, and a line of dialog was changed for something that doesn't quite pack the same punch.* The art in the beginning, though, is a definite improvement.

Again, worth the wait.

Finally, I was browsing through the local bookstore and noticed that K. J. Parker has a new novel out... YES!!!

*For the curious, the second-to-last dialog box in page 66 was changed to "Oh, God Bloody..."
But if you are going to look it up, read the comic from the beginning. Otherwise, it isn't nearly as funny.

(06-17-11): Haven't updated in two months. Guess I got to make up for that. Time for a big darn update.
First news first, some people may have heard from the horse's other mouth* that I'm working on a collaboration with Electromotive Force. I can't quite go into details at the moment, but it's a Halo fic, and it's new territory for me, and may be familiar territory to him. We're still in the planning stages, but it's going to be a oneshot that will hopefully be packaged with Revolutions Volume II. I'm working on multiple projects, though, and Electromotive Force is in the process of moving to Italy, so we're working kinda slow here. If we can't make the deadline for the collection, I've got something else that could make it. A little something inspired by Halo: ODST.

Others are asking what has become of Isolation. Rest assured, I'm getting somewhat close to completing the next chapter. It's been kinda difficult because of finals and preparing to transfer to a new school. I never intended this chapter to take four months to write, but I guess stuff happens. Stuff like rewrites, omissions, and being called back to the drawing board to re-evaluate the mission statement.
It's getting difficult, because Isolation is being wrapped up, and all the side plots have to be wrapped up or turned into prequel hooks. Two more chapters, a finale, and maybe an epilogue.
Two suns in the sunset... Could be the Human Race has run...

As for other fics, Occupational Hazard is sidelined. It's one of those times when you have a great idea for a story, but you don't know how to wrap it up. Maybe one of these days, when I'm older and wiser, I'll know what to do with it.

As for my dad, he is back at work, on light duty. He was supposed to be reinstated this week, but the doc wasn't in town.
Heh. After a month of light duty, he's put a full coat of paint on the food plant where we work. And the machinery. And the barriers around the parking lot...

In other news... could the upcoming Karen Traviss novel be titled "Halo: Glasslands"?

*Guess that makes us a Pushmi-Pullyu

(4-13-11): I haven't updated in half a month. Shame on me. Truly, shame on me.
Well, my dad is feeling much better. He can lift up to ten pounds, as per the doctor's orders, but my mom still banned him from picking up tools. He finds his way, though; I went down to his shop two weeks ago, and he was instructing my mom on how to remove the hood star from a Mercedes, so he could compare ornament bases. That's probably the first time I've seen my mom work on a car. Push it, yes, when we have to get one up a hill. But never anyplace near the grease.

Of course, he's getting bored. Can't do much around the home, none of the big projects he's been planning. And the workplace won't take him back anytime soon.
You know, I can understand being antsy about hiring a guy who just had open heart surgery a month ago. But saying you'll find work for him, inviting him in, and then letting the HR lady ask him, point blank, "What can you do?" That's just tactless.

(3-24-11): Dad's home. For the next three months, the battle is going to be keeping him OUT of the hospital.

(3-21-11): Well, my dad is up, walking, talking. Now starts the real long battle: for three months, he can't pick anything up, twist, extend arms, pull himself out of a chair. Tomorrow he comes home. In three months, I pray to God that things will be back to normal.

(3-14-11): My dad's operation is over, and the doctors think he's got a good chance of full recovery. He won't be awake enough to receive visitors until tomorrow, so that's when I'll see him. In the meantime, considering how much he's shaped my taste in music, I guess my avatar will be cycling through album art, mostly Pink Floyd. Mark Knopfler is good too, but his albums aren't quite as catchy...

Thanks to all who have sent their condolences. Truly, thank you.

(3-13-11): Some people, I am given to understand, have a difficult relationship with their fathers. I've never counted myself among them. Despite the difficulties he grew up with, my father has always been understanding, full of advice, a good person.

And just today, he's been admitted to the hospital for heart failure. I don't know how threatening it is yet, and I don't really think it's going to affect my update... er... 'schedule'.
I really just don't know what to say.

Update: My dad is suffering from a leaking valve and two blockages of the blood vessels in the heart. Through the miracle of modern medicine, the clots have been removed, and he will undergo open heart surgery tomorrow morning. I'm at home, ready to take my finals, and... I don't know. I've got the dog right by my bed. She doesn't know what's wrong, but she knows something isn't right. Daddy isn't home to share a lap, take her out at night, sneak her a bowl of milk, spoil her rotten...

I guess it has yet to hit home for both of us.

(3-05-11): There's a lake near my house. It provided for plenty of fun when I was a kid. And right now, it looks like there's a pair of Bald Eagles fighting a pair of Red-Tailed Hawks for territory. AWESOME!

(1-11-11): I had to do an update for today. I just had to.

So, to begin, I guess I should clarify my Christmas update. Of course, the mistake is easy to make, as I have yet to do any serious fiction outside of Halo, but the webcomic I am working on is not based on Halo. Yes, boo and hiss, but I rather like what I'm writing down.

In compensation for not being part of a Halo webcomic, let me link to a comic in progress over at the HBO forum. The author/artist, Leviathan, bleeds talent when you cut him. He's the kind of artist other artists beg not to be compared to, lest their egos shatter. He is probably the best Halo fan artist I've come across, and he is doing A Fistful of Arrows.

So, some might ask, just what the Hell are you doing then? You can't honestly expect to keep doing Halo fanfiction here forever.
The answer is... The TTP Project.

(12-31-10): Happy New Year!

Mentioned a webcomic in the last update, but I'm not allowed to elaborate upon it too much.
However, since the last time I mentioned webcomics here, I've changed what I've been reading. LFG is really dragging on, and it's not funny anymore. More of a generic fantasy setting now, and I only liked that when they were making fun of it.
So, for humor, 8 Bit Theater and Order of the Stick replaced LFG, since they actually managed to tell a story and not become a pileup of cliches.

In addition, "Dead Winter" is a stylized zombie comic. Except it's really well-written, and it focuses on the survivors more than their predicament, how the various factions left over in the Zombie apocalypse are more dangerous than the zombies themselves. Check it out!

(12-25-10): Well, Merry Christmas.

Lets see here... I guess this year has been a good year, though not without a few low points. School's gone great, and my writing has gone better. I found out that I can write up a storm almost at will, and I've had a lot of ideas for oneshots this year. Even a few ideas for original fiction.
On the other hand, a lot of the ideas I had for oneshots tanked. Holiday Spirit was postponed another year because I couldn't get it written and be satisfied with the result. "Oh Christmas Tree" started out weakly, and died several pages into the notebook. Maybe next time.

Meanwhile, a story that a fellow author has been polishing since his first year here has finally been released (Again) and appears to be updating regularly. Can't wait to finally read the conclusion to Shadows of Hope.
On the flip side, it seems like Electromotive Force, one of the best authors in the Halo section, has taken an indefinite hiatus. I hope he returns, but I hope even more that he finds his happy place.

So, I mentioned other fiction. I'm working on outlining a webcomic with a fellow TCF member. Like so many other potential webcomics, it will probably come to naught. But I can hope. I can always hope.
"Conscientious Objection" is going to be a oneshot, perhaps the only Halo fanfic to take place entirely on a Slipspace Probe station.
"Occupational Hazard" is another oneshot, following the only casualty of the MJOLNIR project during the development phase.
"Match Made In Hell" is an older oneshot, going to get more attention.
And, well... I could always finish up those reviews of Halo: Legends.

(11-19-10): Know when to hold them, when to fold them.
Although I did promise I'd have "Holiday Spirit" done, I'm putting it on the back burner for now. Over the years, I've put several fics to paper, only to wonder if they'll really be worth reading. Or, writers block will rear its ugly head before I could tie disparate events together into a cohesive tale.

That said, it's sidelined for next year (Yet again) and I guess I'll get started on the Christmas special...

(09-14-10): Finally broke down and bought an XBox, along with Halo Reach. So far, so good!

(08-20-10): Got the re-issue of The Fall of Reach, and I am fairly disappointed. Looks like they devoted the same effort to cleaning up the mistakes as they devoted to "the Halo Encyclopedia". The new content, which will probably tie into Reach, makes up for some of it. But how 343i could screw up like this TWICE is just beyond me.

(07-27-10): Hey, wasn't I supposed to get a certain oneshot up by now?
Anymore, I wonder why I even bother with deadlines.

(07-06-10) Hmm... somebody who turned twenty today shares a birthday with George W. Bush. I'm honored.
Got what promises to be a very good book, a sort of real-life Catch-22, Australian/ersatz sheepskin seat covers for the Mercedes, and a gift card to Hastings. Got a beard trimmer from my sister, but since I had to become the Facially-Hairless Boy Wonder to work at the food plant, it's not going to get used for a while.
Anyhow, plenty of time for working on the CoH Mod, and finishing up the next chapter of Isolation.

(05-29-10): Well, the StarCraft II Beta is drawing to a close. A massive thanks to Hawki for the invite, I had a lot of fun. Hopefully, the region lock in multiplayer won't last.

(05-18-10): Well, feel like I should post something...

The bugs in the profile system are fixed! I can toggle bold and italics by pressing ctrl-b and ctrl-i again! Yay!

More seriously, the Avatar Oneshot (tentatively named "Icarus") highlighted the problems I have with writing Canon Characters. Namely, I'm not satisfied with merely getting them "Close", and I loathe changing their characters for the sake of the Plot. So, getting Augustine with the right levels of "Wiseass" and "Bitchiness" is harder work than I thought. I guess I'll concentrate on Nightmare and Isolation for now, and work on my reviews of the rest of Halo: Legends.

Anyhow, Calculus and Physics are drawing to a close, and I'm looking into returning to the Food Plant for a job, fourth year in a row. Making peas safe for the world...
Protip: Do not, under any circumstances whatsoever, buy organic. "Organic" just means "Below-grade food we had to run it through the blanchers twice to get rid of all the bugs and dirt."

(04-29-10): This day marks the third year of writing Isolation. God willing, it won't run into the fourth year.

(04-24-10): Heh, edited out a mistake in my profile. Can't say how it happened, but some text from an argument I had on the TCF about "Halo: Legends" got pasted at the very bottom of my profile.

(03-16-10): Well, oddly enough, it seems that the majority of the viewers of my profile over the past six months have been from Down Under. I can't account for them outnumbering the guys from up here, but hi Aussies!

... I severely hope I didn't commit an inter-cultural faux pas.

(03-04-10): It appears that Greg Bear's "Forerunner Trilogy" won't be published until 2011... But Frankie mentioned that they are talking with Nylund about a potential sequel to Ghosts of Onyx...

HOLY FREAKIN' YES!

(03-02-10): Yeah, remember "Nightmare"?
Na, I decided to switch projects temporarily to an 'extended oneshot' in the Avatar section. This puts a fic that is running along nicely in the development stages at the forefront, and allows me to devote more time to refining the characters to Nightmare, making it a little deeper than the traditional "Here be Monsters" fic.

This does not mean I'll be browsing the Avatar section, save for authors I'm already familiar with. I'm a little too savvy for that, as the 'weirdness potential' of that particular universe is a little too high for me...

Ah, still talking when there's science to do... But more important than the science itself... results!

(02-16-10): Eh. Well, the next chapter of Isolation is 29 notebook pages long, which translates into about 18-19 pages on Word.
I haven't been working as hard as I should on the fanfics, but I haven't been working as hard as I should in Calculus and Physics at college, so yeah...

(02-14-10): Sigh. Saw a few trailers for Terminator: Salvation. Felt some stirrings of what I felt about a year ago, when I was eagerly anticipating it.

Why the HELL do they put so much money into CGI, and hire stock writers to write a second-rate story? GAH!

(01-28-10): Wow. I don't know what to say.
J. D. Salinger died yesterday.
The truth is, I've only ever read one of his books, Catcher in the Rye, but it really... resonated with me. I've heard people deride it as 'emo' and unnecessarily depressing, but it seemed like a mirror image of what I was going through at the time.

So, I guess this is a hats off to an author who managed to capture life, once in a while.

(01-20-10): Sehr unmoglich! One year ago today, I was in Washington DC, freezing my nether regions solid and watching you-know-who get sworn into office.
He's only had a year in office, and I still think he's overrated. But overall, I accept that he's only human (Indeed, I remember telling a lot of Obama fans that he was only human, over a year ago) and that I don't have an understanding of all that is happening in the world, but I still am unsatisfied with the way this country has been going for the past twenty years or so.

(01-14-10): Just got around to finishing Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: The Second Gig. I thought that, in some respects, the ending was rather similar to the end of the original season, and the symbolism got a little heavy (What was with the apples, anyways?) but overall, a good anime.

This is the kind of writing and art I was hoping for in the Halo animes. Alas...

(01-10-10): Right. Well, I have to say that Avatar was my favorite movie of 2009, having not seen Moon or The Hurt Locker. It beat out District Nine through a lack of gore, immersive visuals, and a universe that was fine-tuned to an amazing degree. It loses to District Nine on the originality of the plot, but that's what I'm here to address.

Don't get me wrong. I love originality when I can get it, and I can understand that people expected a lot more from three hundred million, but I'll also settle for 'Old idea, done well', and Avatar was done very well indeed.

But hey, my Magnum Opus is about a psychotic sniper on Alpha Halo. How original is that?

(01-05-10): I beat Portal, and my hand's mended enough to do some serious typing. But I think I'll be adding an extra scene to the new Nightmare chapter. In the meantime, I've got material for a few new Oneshots, and a debate between Montag and Major Sherman is taking a while to write...

Look at me still talking
when there's Science to do.
When I look out there, it makes me GLaD I'm not you.
I've experiments to run.
There is research to be done.
On the people who are still alive.
And believe me I am still alive.
I'm doing Science and I'm still alive.
I feel FANTASTIC and I'm still alive.
While you're dying I'll be still alive.
And when you're dead I will be still alive.
STILL ALIVE!

(01-02-10): Writing of the next chapter of "Nightmare" is complete, but I sliced open my left hand, in the fleshy bit between the thumb and forefinger. So, no extensive typing at 70 words per minute for a few days.

In the meantime... I just picked up Portal and Company of Heroes for a total of fifteen bucks! I LOVE YOU, STEAM!

(12-31-09): Well, a new year and a new decade is upon us. I recommend renting 2010: The Year We Make Contact to see how short we fell behind our expectations, and what we've done that would have surprised the visionaries of yesteryear. Just think: By now, we were supposed to have mastered cyrogenic sleep and have sent manned missions to Jupiter... twice! But nobody, nobody, predicted the cell phone. Not even Gene Roddenberry, trekkies!
The following times are from my time zone, so have fun with the conversions!

5:00 AM- Happy New Year to Hawki, enjoying warm weather and low pollution levels down in Australia!
9:00 AM- Happy New Year to Imsi Avery Lim in Singapore, although I guess her New Year would come on January 26.
1:00 PM- A hearty Happy New Year to our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as to Electromotive Force, currently deployed as a contractor in Iraq.
2:00 PM- Happy New Year to L0dx, formerly of the HWF, and a pretty good Halo: CE modder.
4:00 PM- Happy New Year to Velo (Bontakum) and Overlord Jebus, of the Halo Homefront mod!
9:00 PM- Happy New Year to KrAzY and Vigil, over at the Crimson Flame Forums... It's kind of a country club for exiled HWF members... And happy New Year to Hellstorm 88. I'll take you up on that StarCraft challenge, man, I promise!
10:00 PM- Happy New Year to Recontoaster and CPO Pieman, of the TCF... Who, I am sure, are less than happy to share the same time zone.
12:00 PM- Happy New Year to Rotaretilbo, down in Pheonix Arizona! If anyone is wondering how to make a Halo MMOFPS, this guy figured out how to do it!

I'm sorry, as there are reviewers and friends whose time zones I could not infer from my communications with them, so a happy New Year to all of you! If you're reading this, you probably know who you are! And now, back to the celebration, back to scoring 88 points on a single word at Scrabble.

(12-15-09): Guess who just won a free copy of Halo: Evolution for writing "Oh No, Not Again"!

http://halopen.net/forums/showthread.php?t=88

(12-04-09): Sigh... Ja, ich have just watched "The Duel," and I wanted to do a ZeroPuncutation styled review of it, but I don't have the energy.

On the good news, Frankie stated that these are the most anime-tropic episodes... but looking at "Homecoming", I severely doubt it.

(12-03-09): Well, I got Halo: Evolutions, and I must say this...
Best thing to happen to the Haloverse since GoO. Maybe the Believe Campaign...

Anyhow, the highs and the lows of the book are as follows:
A kickass story by Eric Nylund, detailing the life of Preston Cole, and giving us a unique look at the colonial laws and conflicts leading up to Operation Trebuchet.
The single most effective horror story (with the possible exception of Apt Pupil) that I have ever read, written jointly by Tessa Kum and Jeff VanderMeet.
A story written by Frankie, not only stays close to established canon, but has the best ending of any of the stories in the book.
A new story by Tobias Buckell, who somehow manages to pull off a better job than he did in the Halo Encyclopedia or "The Cole Protocol." (Here's a hint, bucko. It's called 'the Metric System'.)

And so, I say thanks to 343 Industries for not screwing this one up, and hope they start managing the Halo Franchise as well as they did here.

(11-13-09): Heh, a documentary about the making of Babysitter will be aired Saturday. Don't have a friend's Xbox this time around, so I will be depending on my friends at TCF for information.

Hopefully, it will be a lot more informative than Frankie was here.

Anyhow... WILL the mysteries of Babysitter be unraveled? WILL HTML give me the power to remake my profile as I see fit? WILL I finally get around to updating Nightmare and Isolation?
Find out next time, on Updates!

(11-09-09): Well, I hate to sound pessimistic and anal, but "Babysitter" really deserves it. This'll take the form of an open letter, so be forewarned...

There were two problems with this OVA, and I'll start with the one specific to this extension of the Halo Franchise.
This is not a Japanese franchise. This is an American franchise. If an American animation studio was doing a season of Naruto episodes or Gundam, I'd expect them to use Japanese tropes and memes. But if you're going to brag about anime being more cinematic than western animation, and a perfect fit for Halo, then get the art right. Drop the Anime tropes. If you can give me one straight reason why ODSTs shouldn't be close cropped, and why a Spartan should have long, flowing hair that wouldn't fit in a helmet, then go ahead and give it. Otherwise, please go play in traffic.

In short, the Anime hair, the decaying Japanese structures, and the Samurai Elites should not have made it into Babysitter, regardless of the origin.

The next problem is more general: You are not worth a ret-con.
The definition of a retcon is retroactive continuity. If a novel contradicts itself, or a novel contradicts a game, a retcon is used to fix the discrepancy, inevitable when multiple writers are working in the same universe. A retcon is not "Aw, Hell, we're too lazy to think of something, let's just make it easy for ourselves and ignore the older crap". Killing off a Spartan doesn't make your story awesome or poignant, it just makes for a headache to the people who actually care about the backstory to Halo.

The whole point behind Spartans is that they are invulnerable tincans that have survived to the end of the war, taking only three known casualties. The whole point of ODSTs is that they are elite stormtroopers that know how to assault a position without elephantine footsteps and twig snapping. So, if this is representative of how the other OVAs are going to turn out, I will be severely disappointed.

I sincerely hope it gets better from here on out.

(11-07-09): Heh, the bees in my house are dying out. They aren't honeybees, but some breed of hairy wasp...

My mother, by the way, hates me. She told me to get a screwdriver and come to her bathroom, where she's heard some funny scratching sounds from behind the wall outlet...
I figured that there might be two wasps in there, at the most. What we found was a whole hive, and the sudden influx of light got them a little excited...

So, sorry about the content-less post, but I'll be posting what I think of "Babysitter" soon.

(11-05-09): Well, something called the "Halo Encyclopedia" has been released, and I have browsed through it at Hastings.
To be honest, I was rather disappointed. It is really an "Art of Halo" book, but there is no new art in there. Just reprints of art from the other Halo games, and at least one fanon project. In addition, there is little to nothing new in the weapons and vehicles section, and they seem to have been edited by someone with little to no imagination. Al-Cygni's pistol is simply named that: al-Cygni's pistol. No elaboration, no nothing. The Battle Rifle, which is a DMR, is stated to have a range LESS than that of the MA5 series, and only incrementally better than that of an AK-74. Clearly a mistake.

So, I'd wait for another re-issue done by people who actually care.

On the positive side, not a single mention of the Fanwankatron 9000, also known as 'Teh CYCLOPZ!"

(10-30-09): Cold weather is rolling in, and my living room is being invaded by... honey bees? Neat little critters, but I prefer wasps.

So, I went down to Hastings and saw three books. The first one was "And Another Thing," the next book in the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, written by Eion Colfer. Then, I saw "The Company", by K. J. Parker, my favorite author. And then there was the Halo Encyclopedia, newly released.

For various reasons (Not sure of Eion Colfer's writing style/abilities, Halo Encyclopedia would draw comments from my brother) I ended up buying "The Company", and look forward to a very good read... after I finish "Catcher in the Rye".

(10-27-09): Heh. Just finished Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex Season One. Pretty darn good for anime, and I'd recommend it to anyone with an interest in science fiction. I might even hunt down the mangas.
I'm going to miss those Tachikomas though. They were the weirdest part of the series in the beginning of the season, but they sure grow on you.

(10-19-09): And so, Quirel gets out of his cage, to free-roam around my room again. Unlike usual, where he ends up in the upper parts of my closet, he's used me as a boost to get onto my shelves and then onto my windowsill.
What's up with that guy and high places? California kingsnakes aren't arboreal.

(10-13-09): Just watched RvB: Reconstruction for the first time.
It's... well, I've always liked RvB, but Reconstruction had a much deeper plot than I expected. I loved it.
It offered a fresh take on artificial intelligence, memory, and humanity that resonated with me. Hats off to the guys at Rooster Teeth.

Aw, hell. It's just funny. Go see it!

(10-07-09): Doing some research in preparation for the upcoming Halo anime...
I watched Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury a while back, and if anyone could instruct me on how to burn a section off a DVD so I never have to look at it again, I'd be much obliged.

"Ghost in the Shell", despite a ton of nudity on the part of the main character, turned out to be pretty good. And GitS: Stand Alone Complex episodes are free on the interwebs...

(10-04-09): 'Twas reading comments on a certain Pink song, "Dear Mr. President", where she attacks Bush for his policies. The general reaction was "Pink is so great, Bush is so bad" and "If Bush heard this, Pink would be out of a job/I hope Bush hears this and thinks".

The truth is, I hate protest songs. Some of them are funny as hell, like "Vietnam" by Country Joe (And the Fish). But the ones that take themselves seriously, like "Dear Mr. President" and "Sold as Freedom", are just a waste of time. Little punk rockers of questionable sexual orientation singing about the USA being a police state, how the American flag brainwashes people...

Makes me wish that the US was fascist, sometimes. Just for the satisfaction of seeing these wanabe protesters abandon their guitars and step back in line as soon as they realize that their lives really are in danger...

(10-02-09): Hmm, found a new addiction. In addition to XKCD and CAD, a certain comic called "Looking For Group" has turned out to be pretty good. Check it out.

(9-16-09): WHOO! First day of college was a blast!
I'm attending the local community college, thirty minutes from my home. Three classes, starting at nine thirty in the morning.
Next quarters will be spent with a more demanding schedule, but I'm still getting used to everything.

(9-12-09): I will be splitting the next chapter of Isolation up, in order to keep it at a readable length. The last chapter was, apparently, way to long.

(8-25-09): Well, the next chapter of Isolation is going to be delayed for an extra day. While typing up a fight scene, my pet snake Quirel (My username is named after him, not the other way around) got a little antsy. When I tried to pick him up and put him back into his cage, he bit my finger.
What followed was an epic thirty-minute battle to get him to release and untie himself from my hand. Now, how many of you would be willing to do that if your dog or cat bit you and wouldn't let go?

He's alright, but he's now on double rations, if only temporarily. In addition, he apparently tied himself into a knot called a "Constructor Hitch," around my hand...

(8-19-09): I saw District Nine.
Inspirational. Awesome, in the old definition. Breathtaking. The first movie I've seen in theater that hasn't let me down, in the past two years.

What are you waiting for! Go see it!

(7-22-09): Was convinced to try out the Men of War demo. It's nice enough for an RPG, but I don't really like it. Especially since it's supposed to be an RTS.

(7-10-09): Company of Heroes. I just got the demo, and I LOVE IT. You can play as the German Wehrmarcht...
Nebelwerfers and Stuka zu Fuss und das Flammenwerfer... Panther tanks and Tiger tanks and Puma scouts (Oh my!) and Volksturm and even the @#@ing V-1 rocket! I'm in love.

Oh, yeah, you can also play as the Allies. Eh, go Allies.

(7-4-09): Well, I found what I was looking for in the Cole Protocol. A date. A way to find out when it took place.
It took place nine years after Harvest, so that will help me so much when I get around to writing another fanfic... aside from the Isolation series and Nightmare.

(6-25-09): NOW I remember why I hated the Cole Protocol. The way the Aliens are written makes you want to tear their scenes out of the book.

(6-24-09): Decided to start re-reading The Cole Protocol, as research for a future fic. It's better than I remember, although Tobias really skimped on the characterization of Delgado and Diego.

(6-21-09): I can take my laptop to Hastings, giving me free access to wireless internet. Anybody up to beating and humiliating one of your favorite authors on Halo 2 Vista, give me a PM.

(6-17-09): Halo 2 Vista. It's actually pretty good. I went in with very low expectations, and they were exceeded. Story is good, visuals were very good, but the combat system leaves something to be desired. I realize that the Halo: CE handgun is gone now, unable to exist in the world of plasma pistols and dual-wielding. But... the shotgun... was nixed very bad. And dual-wielding SMGs and Plasma Rifles just cut down on what you can do...

(6-06-09): Remember what I said about not being lucky, but being blessed? Despite the current state of American lifestyle, I have two loving parents, a functional family, and an extended family that actually cares.

So, they all came for the graduation party at my house. I got my family from all over, sending me cards and coming by to say hello, we knew you'd make it. My Grandmother even got me a laptop... with Windows Vista! It's actually not all that bad. Way better than the Apple OS.

So, I can lie in bed at night, typing away, updating Isolation... when I'm not playing Oblivion or Halo 2 Vista. Sad face.

(6-05-09): Graduation today. I am now a free man, except I need to write thank-you letters to scholarships, keep a job (easy) and get enrolled in the local community college. I went to the Senior Frolic afterwards, which was a party thrown by parents who want to keep the kids off the street and off the booze for that night. They were giving away a Wii (Eugh) a laptop, a microwave, one thousand dollars in cash, and a Hell of a lot of Arizona tea. Drawings were held every fifteen minutes. I don't count myself lucky, but I know I'm blessed. There's a difference, so I was very surprised to get drawn for 50, fifteen minutes before the 1000 dollar grand prize. Held at two thirty in the morning.

It's a great day for freedom. Which was a pretty good song, IMO.

(4-24-09): Early this month, I had to face a rather ugly truth.
Recently, I have been procrastinating more and falling behind. This has been compounded by the demands of the last semester of High School. I've just said yes to too many projects, and now I'm trying to keep up.

So, it is with a heavy heart that I am announcing that Isolation and Nightmare will be postponed for a month or two, long enough for me to get things sorted out. I repeat, this is postponed, not discontinued.

Thanks for the understanding. Expect something on the twenty second of May...

(4-08-09): One quick trip to the school's high-speed internet connection, and my computer is right as rain. The mouse is having hardware problems, but the keyboard is BACK!

(4-03-09): A virus has taken out my keyboard. Fics and correspondences will be delayed, as I refuse to type more than one paragraph at a time using the on-screen keyboard.

(03-10-09): Updated, check out "Projects" as well as "Writing".

(12-28-08): Browsing through the books section... Harry Potter has 383,618 fics written... Twilight has 52,840 stories written for it... More than the rest of Fanfiction.net COMBINED, or so it seems... Does anybody else see anything wrong with this?

(5-24-08): Progress has been made. Still an eyesore, but the font tools I DON'T have to work with is kind of a hindrance. Have been 'borrowing' some formatting ideas from some of the better profiles I've seen... Curiously enough, these generally belong to the better authors I've read.

Biography

Hmm... What to tell you, and what not to tell you...

I live in the Pacific Northwest, in the U.S. of A. That should be general enough. You'll occasionally hear me refer to farmland and corn on the various forums I participate in, but let's not get too specific.

My future... I'm in college right now. After that, it's on to a career as a mechanical engineer, hopefully working for a defense contractor. I might write, and I might join the Air Force or Navy, but I might end up designing their "toys". But more recently, I've been thinking about other applications of my education. Irrigation, perhaps?

My politics... we don't want to go there. Not getting too specific, I alternate between moderate and extreme conservatism. My ironic sense of humor does not complement this situation, and I've been called everything from Communist to Anarchist to Fascist. Currently, I probably best fit into the category of "bitterly libertarian", due to Barrack Obama's sad mishandling of the economy and the Republican's sad mishandling of everything else.

Favorites? Well, when it comes to the media I follow, I don't really have favorites. Ask me what my favorite movie is, or what my favorite book is, and I'll shrug and say that I'm not really interested in picking one movie out of the dozens I love and placing it above all the rest.

So, I'm not really going to post a list of favorites here, because that's one of the things that irk me when I'm browsing other people's profiles. I call it the "Myspace-ification", where somebody's profile is just a list of favorite movies or songs or song lyrics. Or perhaps there'll be pages of quotes.
If that's what you want for your profile, that's your prerogative. But it doesn't tell me much about you as a person, author, or reader.

And then there's the 'bumper stickers'. Don't get me wrong, I can't help but stop and read a bumper sticker in a parking lot, and if it's humorous, I'll crack a smile. But I can't stand the political stickers. I thin that a lot of the division in modern politics comes from people hacking down policies and positions until they can be expressed on a 4"x10" patch, or a picket sign. And when you've removed all the reasoning from that position, a bumper sticker will make it worse. It's a statement that can't be argued with. It doesn't promote discussion or spread ideals.

OK, now that I've got that out of my system, I guess the favorites lists and song lyrics aren't as bad as an empty profile atop a favorite stories list that numbers in the hundreds or thousands. If somebody wants to be anonymous save for the name and the profile picture, go for it. But the favorites spam, I think, comes from mistaking the "Add to favorites" button for a facebook "Like" button.

For me, if I like a story, I'll leave a review. If I like a story enough to make it recommended reading for everyone who visits my profile, I'll add it to the favorites list. And if an author makes it to my favorite authors list, then they usually produce fics of good quality, and are pretty cool guys or gals in the first place.

Writing

Origin: I've always been an imaginative person. I loved stories, and I loved being in them. That is, I would imagine myself as being in Star Wars, Indiana Jones, or as a Cowboy in the Wild West. I'd be a main character, THE main character. Inventor, tinkerer, crack shot, hero, villain, whatever. That's how all authors start out, I guess. Anyone creative enough to imagine new stories and egotistic enough to publish them for other people to read is going to start out by imagining themselves in the place of one of the characters. They're going to want all the cool powers, they're going to want the attention and admiration of the characters they think are 'cool'. It's human nature.

However, as I got older, I would actually imagine my own stories, with characters who weren't me or the main characters in the books/movie. In essence, stories based on a universe like Harry Potter (Sadly) and Star Wars, but with their own plot.

Fanfiction.

Arguably, the actual writing all began because of Runescape.

I was a member, back in 2005, and I often stayed up till three o'clock while playing. While playing, I would either browse the Runescape Forums, or I would go on an 'information trawl' through Wikipedia. One night, in August if I remember correctly, I stumbled across a thread where you were supposed to take two characters out of popular fiction and write out a fight between them. People were coming up with crap like 'Freddy vs It' and 'Batman vs Spiderman,' but they were just saying who would win, and the thread was degenerating into a fight over whether the Green Goblin could take on Optimus Prime.

I spent thirty minutes writing out an actual fight between Predator and Anaconda, and blew everybody out of the water. It was primitive, and not very well written, but it was better than anything else people had posted. The point was, that was the first story I'd ever written that was worth the pixels it was displayed on.

After that, I was still thinking of stories like before, but I was wondering if I would ever get around to typing them out. And then I discovered Fanfiction.net.

I can't remember HOW I got here, but the most likely reason is that I was looking up Harry Potter on Wikipedia. It was just a laugh, but then I read about the copious amount of Harry Potter Fanon floating around. I always knew those fanboys were nutters, with the death threats and pilfering of the soon-to-be-released books, but a FF.net section with 200,000 stories is simply mind-boggling.

In any case, I'm sure there was a link to Fanfiction.net, and I'm sure that I clicked it around October of 2006. I checked the Aliens section and left disappointed. I learned for the first time that 99 percent of fanfiction is crap, arguably because 99 percent of everything is crap..

I must have come back about a month later and checked out the Halo and StarCraft sections. I can't really remember the stuff I read first, but I can find it by checking the reviews section. Early on, without a profile, I posted reviews under my actual name. Not that you'll be able to find said name from the swarm of unsigned reviews.

I do believe that actually writing "Isolation" started in December of '06, but I know for a fact that planning the story had been going on for months beforehand. It would have been a few chapters about a Marine sniper (More like a SC Terran Ghost ripoff) and several fights he fought on Alpha Halo. Not nearly canon, not nearly worth reading. But by the time I started typing it out, it was shaped up into something with potential.

Then after four months of writing out "Isolation", I finally decide to post it. I go to Fanfiction.net, upload the first chapter, read it five times to weed out as many mistakes as possible, and try to post it as a story. Only to find out that I don't have a title for it. I wanted to name it after the main character's main feature; that he was a loner, that he'd built up a wall around himself. I came up with the title "Alone", only to find out that some other bugger had taken the title already. (Turned out to be a pretty good story written by a very good author)

Perhaps the only reason I called "Isolation" that is because I was listening to Pink Floyd at the time... Whether it was "The Wall" or "Division Bell", I can't remember. And yes, that would make a difference.

The Writing Process

Brainstorming:
I never was much of a writer. In fact, I never really intended to write. However, when I'm working or driving (really scary, trust me), I think of these stories which get more and more complex, usually centered around Halo and Starcraft. These stories are fed by the books I read, mostly SciFi, with some fantasy thrown in. I take plot ideas or observations about a given universe and let them bounce off each other. Characters, half formed and without context, are left to roam free.

During this phase, many plots are generated, but many also get the ax, usually due to plot holes or inconsistency with established Canon. The worst thing that can happen to a story at this point is that it could pass the 'Plot Thickness Event Horizon', where the whole story gets too complicated, too overblown, or just tries to suspend too much belief, and therefore undergoes a structural collapse. In other words, the plot thickens... and then it congeals. This has happened quite a few times, actually, and some of those stories were interesting to begin with.

At the other end of the spectrum, plot ideas I like (Such as an ONI Section Two campaign to 'win the hearts and minds of the civilians' in a insurrectionist-heavy area, which results in Scorpions being painted a light, friendly shade of blue, and a 'cash for clunkers' campaign set up to replace civilian cars damaged in Innie-UNSC shootouts getting abused by Marines and Innies alike) fail to gather enough substance (Read: Story) around them to get anywhere, and are shelved in the back of my mind. Maybe these will get resurrected sometime later, with a flash of inspiration or combining with elements from another failed story.

Should they get past Scylla and Charybdis, as it were, the stories will still get radically changed by the time I start typing them out. For example, Isolation started out as a collection of stories about a certain sniper's engagements on Halo. The sniper was closer to a Terran Ghost than to the current Gui Montag, and the story barely followed canon. Slowly, the story morphed into what it is now, and items are being revised even in the later chapters, despite being on my mind for four years.

Scribbling:
The second step, I write them out in a journal, usually in pen for readability. At this point, I'm more concerned about grammar, story flow, and spelling. The margins can fill with notes for later, reminding myself to swap one paragraph for another, or check canon/Wikipedia for certain facts. I've only been doing this since the spring of '09, and I've been doing it in earnest ever since I got a laptop. Previously, everything was typed out on the computer first, and I was hampered by what is admittedly an addiction to online forums. This way is much faster.
The notes in the margin help out when it comes to smaller plot points, as I occasionally forget some rather interesting things. For example, in the first few chapters of Isolation, Montag was 'chewing something'. He was supposed to be chewing on a rubber band, so he doesn't chip a tooth when he clenches his teeth in a shootout, but I forgot about it and just edited it out later. Sometimes, this is a good thing, like how Montag had a garrote in an early draft in Isolation...

Transcribing:
This is where stuff usually slows down, is typing the stories onto the computer. This is the one reason it takes me so long to update. If I'm on the computer, I'm usually on a forum or E-mailing people. It's embarrassing, but after the HWF went the same way as the Titanic, the Hindenburg, and New Orleans, I'm going to be spending that much more time writing.
But here's the kicker: Ever since I got the laptop for graduation, I've been able to type in my bedroom before going to sleep, where the lack of an internet connection or a mouse prevents me from wasting time on the Crimson Flames forum or playing Halo 2.
I was stymied for a while, since lying down, holding a journal upright, and typing on a laptop is very uncomfortable. After a few days, I used the scanner to scan the pages of the journal and transfer the pictures to my laptop. There, I can reduce the window of the Microsoft Word application and type while looking at the scan of the journal. Modern technology to the rescue!

Nitpicking:
Final step, I go back over the story in at least two sweeps (Remember my CDO?). I check for accuracy to canon, and I also try and keep it realistic. Most of the info on guns, ballistics, physics, medical, etc, either comes from my science classes, from the science magazines I read, or from Wikipedia. I occasionally give something a little leeway towards guns and such, so Gui Montag is able to fire a .50 cal. handgun that has more power behind it than the S&W 500. I blame that on the availability of future tech in recoil reduction.
This is the stage where most characters get their name. Gui Montag, Beatty Demarest, and Mortumas 'Kandonomee all had their names before I started typing, but Kanoff, Major Williams, and Major Nathan Sherman had to wait until this stage. It's not easy for me to come up with good names, and the way I come up with them is rather haphazard. For example, Sergeant Morris was named because I had just watched that RVB episode where they talked about 'Morris Code', and Da Vega is a misspelling of De Vaca, from the book Mount Dragon, and is rather fitting as Vega is a constellation in the sky... Like I said, it's pretty haphazard, but it works so far.

Finally, the chapter is uploaded onto FF.net, edited one last time, and then added to the story.

Miscellania:

-As I pointed out earlier, most of the work is done in my head. For example, Gui Montag was originally an (American) StarCraft Ghost-like character who led a small band of troops on Alpha Halo. When I started writing the story, he had his present armor and HMD, and was angsty and despondent from all the death he had seen. He was from the colony of Haven, which was American. By the third chapter, he had been changed again to a Russian from Siberia Prime, numbed by the death that surrounded him, and imbued with a burning hatred for the Covenant. Again, this was changed during later chapters, so his motives were more... refined.

-In a PM with Xeno Major, he mentioned the use of a Chekov's gun. In short, this is a device that is mentioned in the story, and becomes important later. Strictly speaking, Chekov meant that ANY prop on the stage had to become useful later. If a gun was hanging on the wall, it had better be used in a later act. I take an opposite policy. If something is important at some point in time, then it had better be mentioned earlier in the story. Montag's Pyromania? Check. Jonesy talking about the reactor on the Pillar of Autumn? Check. The second entrance into Beta Base? Check.
Not everything that is mentioned must be important later. A lot of stuff is needed for characterization and setting the scene. I guess that is the difference between theater and writing.

-As Hawki noted in "To Sell a War", most of my fics in a given universe are connected in some way. Sometimes the same fanon planet is mentioned, sometimes a secondary character from one story will pop up in another. It's kind of an easter egg hunt, although I intend to branch out by making some secondary characters leads in their own fics.

Of course, whether humor like "Match Made In Hell" or "Oh No, Not Again" fits into the chronology is rather hazy.

Canon Policy:

As a fanfiction writer who is interested in staying somewhat close to the established canon, I guess a policy on what I consider to be canon is in order. The truth is, though, I don't really have such a policy. Although I do have three 'tiers' of personal canon, there's not really a pattern as to which entries into a franchise go where.

I suppose the best way to sum up my approach to canon is that I'm pretty opinionated on what makes for a good story, but I'm rarely willing to completely go against established canon in my fanfiction. If I can just avoid an issue altogether, I will.

-Canon: Exactly what it says on the tin.

-Apocryphal Canon: This is where I say "Yeah, it probably happened, but not like that."
Stuff happens. Sub-par stories are told, writers forget minor (or major) details. This allows me to simply ignore the stuff I don't like, which is probably a good thing. Otherwise, I'd probably feel obligated to go out of my way to overwrite or justify canon conflicts and idiot plots.

-Non-canon: Again, self-explanatory. What usually ends up here is fluff that was produced for marketing, or entries into a franchise which piss me off to the point where I'm perfectly happy pretending that they don't exist. It doesn't happen as often as one might expect, and I don't necessarily hate what I consider to be non-canon. iluvbees, the ARG used to promote Halo 2, is not something I consider canon. I'm merely indifferent towards it, as opposed to Halo Wars, which I consider to be apocryphal even though... well, the less said about it, the better.

Review Policy:

When I read, I review each chapter and try to give constructive criticism, a habit I picked up from Hawki.
When I get reviews, I try to reply to each one (Signed review that is) and thank the people for their time, while answering any questions or concerns they have. Long reviews get long replies. One-sentence "It's great" or "I like your story" reviews get a simple "Thanks for the review" in return.

As for review requests, go ahead. If you think that your story is in a universe I might be interested in, shoot me a PM and ask for constructive criticism. I'd be happy to oblige.

Request Policy:

I haven't quite received any story requests as of yet, but I feel that I should probably put this up in my profile.
On Fanfiction.net, a really good oneshot will result in at least one reviewer asking for more, much in the same way people shout 'Encore' after a band is through with their gig. I won't knock this practice, because one of my favorite stories was expanded from a single oneshot. The truth is, though, that it feels rather unrewarding to tread old ground by writing a version of "Isn't this where/We came in?" from the Terran point-of-view. Even if I want to, it is hard to do the original justice; I've set out to write a second part of "Oh No, Not Again" several times, and I always end up resolving to quit while I'm ahead.

The other side of requests, namely being PMed and asked to do a oneshot about such-and-such a subject with the possible reward of a nice Bavarian chocolate cake with fudge frosting, is much more likely to succeed. Some of my best ideas have been honed from discussions with other people, and if you can get the gears grinding, you never know what might come out.

Just be prepared to wait, oh... half a year. XD

Stories

These are going to be notes, reflections, and insights about the stories I have written and posted. More in-depth than the Authors Notes that go with every short and every chapter, more like the DVD commentary that comes with the director's cuts of your favorite movies.

This section might even get its own sub-section dealing with the fics that didn't quite run the whole distance. Oddly enough, there's about as much to be learned from the failures as there is to learn from the successes. Or maybe not oddly enough. There is, after all, an entire branch of engineering called 'Failure Analysis'.

-Conscientious Objection: One of the worst defenses a fan or an author can resort to is "Let's see you do better!" Not only is it a signal of desperation, but it's not a valid argument in the first place. I do not need to artistic talent with the paintbrush to say that I think the Mona Lisa is overrated. I don't need to build a better sculpture to say that I don't see anything particularly special about the Statue of David. Some critics are good at criticizing, some critics need a proctologist and a team of professional spelunkers to recover their heads, and most zigzag between the two camps. But their ability to create the kind of art they critique has zero correlation with their ability to point out the strengths and weaknesses of another person's art.

I can draft, but I can't draw. Making an anime is beyond my abilities. But I am still qualified to say that Halo: Legends was terrible as an anime, terrible as stand-alone stories, and terrible as entries into the Haloverse. When an acquaintance challenged me to 'do better', I decided to focus on the last two points.

While busy at work, processing frozen peas (or corn, maybe) I tried to create a story that would succeed as a stand-alone Halo anime short. Since the anime episodes seemed to be aimed at newcomers, I wanted to do something you couldn't find in the games. I wanted to touch on the Insurrectionist problem.

The first attempt grew out of an attempt to make fun of some Japanese tropes I really can't stand. A man would be approached by ONI after an industrial accident, grafted into a 'suit' that was really more of an exoskeleton or mech, and turned loose to find the Innies who had bombed the factory he worked at. In increasingly paranoiac revelations, he would trace the Innie activity to his co-workers, then his friends, and eventually turn upon the ONI agents when he realized that the bombing was a red-flag operation. And at the end of the story, it would be revealed that these were the daydreams of a crippled factory worker, his way of escaping the fact that he'd been severely injured in an accident, and likely wouldn't ever live outside of a wheelchair with life support.

Yeah. It was episode two of GitS:SAC:2nd GIG, with three additional shots of Phillip K. Dick.

As I recall, the planning for that story took place in the first quarter of my shift at the food plant, which started at 7:00 AM. By the time I got back from my first break, I was completely awake and decided to start from scratch. I still wanted to focus on the Insurrectionist problem. Whats more, I wanted to make this a 'good Halo stand-alone story', which meant that it had to introduce a new aspect to the backstory of Halo. When planning Isolation: A Space Odyssey, I planned to touch upon a plot to deliver a Nav database to the Covenant. This would contain directions to a number of Insurrectionist and URF hideouts and get the Covenant to deal with the 'Backdoor Problem'.

So, how would a similar plot, perhaps orchestrated by the same group ten years prior, be carried out? Well, it made sense to stage it on a deep-space station, where contact is limited...
Two hours later, the basic plot was done. Very little was changed in writing; A sub-plot concerning Camilla getting shot was dropped, the exterior of the Sagan was rearranged, but it really shouldn't have taken nine months to type up.

Just to stay true to its origins, I went back and added a few terms from GitS:SAC, such as the reference to the frigate running in "autistic mode".

-The StarCraft Trilogy: Surprisingly, I find Real Time Strategies to be the hardest genre to write fanfiction for. With FPSs, it's somewhat easy to read into the universe, delve into the backstory and craft side stories. RTSs are an abstract representation of a universe (and some will always be more abstract than others) where the problems of supply, logistics, navigation, etc are simplified into game mechanics. I mean, taken at face value, a battle between the UED and a Terran/Zerg/Protoss alliance on Korhol took place in an area perhaps three square kilometers in area.

So, when I write a StarCraft story, I have to decide how to work around those mechanics. If I drop them completely, there's a strange sort of disconnect between the fic and the game, because I have to journey through completely new territory. If I try to keep the mechanics, then the story devolved into pure cheese, as Kevin J. Anderson so thoroughly proved.

Similarly, the little details that helps immerse me in the writing and the reader in the story are few and far between. It's hard to determine what the kick on a C-14 is, or what the spray pattern of a Hydralisk's needles are, or what the soldiers eat in between firefights with aliens. The tie-in novels fill in details, as do the cenimatics, but the information is paltry compared to what a rich FPS can offer.

While I would like to write a more serious StarCraft fic, my solution so far has been to take the game mechanics and play them as straight as possible. Instant humor.

Musings

Fairly long updates that really don't center upon what's been happening to me. More like my opinion on recent events, or on writing. Hopefully, I can tidy up this section with some hyperlinking...

-Why Fanfiction?

In light of a recent article in Time Magazine, which is recommended reading for every single fanfiction author and reader, I thought I'd post some of my own reactions.
There's a stack of magazines in the break room at work, most of which are related to guns and hunting, but occasionally Good Housekeeping and news magazines make it into the stack. One day, while hunting for an article on the 1911 Browning's 100th birthday, I stumbled across a month-old Time Magazine, and saw "Fanfiction" on the cover. I read the whole article. Then I read it again.
It's kind of weird. Fanfiction is a fact of life on the internet. In college, surrounded by fellow nerds and nerdettes, you can hardly throw a rock without hitting a fanfiction author or reader. The thing is, I've never admitted to someone from an older generation (Or hell, most of the people in my current generation) that I write fanfiction. People know that I write, and I've gotten a few condescending smiles over that. But mostly, people ask if I plan on getting it published, or what it's about.

And I hesitate.

Fanfiction isn't something you can get published, unless it's good and the original work is Public Domain. Or if you can find a particularly sleazy Vanity Publisher. So, admitting that I'm writing something that has no chance of getting published is hard. It's like admitting that I'm polishing and prepping a car for a coat of paint it will never recieve, or... well, just doing work that won't pay off. Except it's not work. If it's fun, and nobody is paying you, it's a hobby.
And hey, when people ask what it's about, it's awkward as hell saying "It's based on Halo."
Halo? That violent video game (Older generation) with zero plot? (Newer generation)
Convincing people that Halo is a deep universe with plenty of room for exploration and experimentation is a task that, frankly, takes too much time that, more often than not, has a meager payoff. Besides which, I suck at summaries. And it's not possible to just show someone what I'm writing. My dad has asked me, several times, if he can read the novel I'm writing when I'm finished with it. But if I just hand him the manuscript, he won't get it. Isolation is primarily character driven, and relies exclusively on Halo: Combat Evolved to set the background. Without the game, Isolation is an average story that touches upon some interesting ideas like orbiting Ringworlds, but does not sufficiently explore the setting nor explain why the Humans and the Aliens are fighting each other. And there's a lame plot twist in the last few chapters, where zombies come out of nowhere to terrorize the main cast. Evidentally, the author lost his way between postings and came up with the most contrived of plot devices to introduce tension and a climax.

So, if I'm spending hundreds of hours writing stuff that only people I've never met will read, why bother?

It's fun. Ask a guitar player why he strums away with Jimi Hendrix songs instead of writing his own material. Ask an artist why she draws characters from her favorite anime instead of making her own characters.
Oh, wait, that's acceptable while fanfiction isn't?*

But there's a deeper reason. It's like boot camp.
Before you can become the next David Guilmor, you gotta practice with somebody else's material. Before you can make your own comic, you're best off doing fanart of Marvel or Code Geass or whatever floats your boat.
Before I can write a bestseller, I need practice. I need to figure out how character development works. I need to learn how to build worlds and outline stories. I need to work on pacing, expand my vocabulary and strengthen sentence flow. Fanfiction gives me a universe people are familiar with and an update format that lets me plan ahead and stay flexible. I can focus on one aspect of writing, and I can get feedback as I practice.

I'd like to write for Halo, yes. I'd like to write for StarCraft and Star Wars as well. Maybe, someday I will. But that will be a bonus.
I'm here to learn, have fun, and tell stories.

Yeah, there's a story there. No, I'm not going to elaborate.

-Purity of Essence And Purity of Form

Fellow StarCraft fans will recognize those terms from the first game, where "Purity of Form" referred to psionic potential and "Purity of Essence" referred to genetic mutability. I'm not even sure if it was explained in-game, or if you had to look for the definitions in the manual. Alas, my version of StarCraft shipped without one.

Anyhow, a few years back, I was discussing what makes a 'good' alien race and, lacking pre-existing terms, appropriated the ones used in StarCraft.
The discussion stemmed from some old DC comics a friend of mine uncovered. To his dismay, they weren't anything he could get rich off of, but there were some old Green Lantern comics, and some oneshots or more obscure heroes, I don't know which. We had a good laugh about how corny the old stuff was, and we happened to notice that, basically, all the aliens were humans with colored skin, huge foreheads, and glowing eyes. Telepathy was optional, but no good Martian left home without it.

Later, I noted that nothing had changed. Sure, telepathy isn't such a big deal, but Marvel and DC are still pushing out rubber-forehead aliens, when even Star Trek has moved on to expensive prosthetics. To me, it was a complete failure of the imagination.
One of my friends looked at me and asked "Wait, what's wrong with that?"

There was a lot wrong with it, but I was hard pressed to explain it at the time. To me, a good alien is alien. Where Marvel and DC and bad science fiction writers failed is where they took a human culture, selected a trait from a list (Telepathy, super strength, super speed, x-ray vision, super intelligence, burning desire to lord their superiority over Humanity, all of the above...) and called it a day. Those aliens were still human, because the writers and artists had started with a human culture, and because they had not thought about how that trait would affect the alien culture and make them fundamentally different from Humans. They might as well have written humans to begin with.

John W. Campbell, before he went off the deep end (I mean, seriously. Dianetics? The Dean Drive?) formulated what has been known as the Campbell Dictum.
"Show me an alien that thinks as well as a human or better, but doesn't think like a human."
That right there, is what I've taken to calling "Purity of Essence". If I can flip open a science fiction novel and read it without thinking "Yeah, pyramids and sun gods. Egyptian rip-offs" or "Roman Empire with the serial numbers filed off" or, worst of all, "Fuedal Japanese in SPACE!" then the author has done a good job capturing a race's Purity of Essence.
The best author for this I can think of, off the top of my head, would be C.J. Cherryh. The Golden Sun Trilogy didn't just have two distinct alien cultures, but it seemed to increasingly be written from the mind of an alien as the novels progressed.

Purity of Form is drawn from my other beef with comic book aliens: They all look like humans.
Sure, noses are optional. Ears are optional. Chins are optional. Bulging foreheads are optional, but may as well be a standard feature.. At the end of the day, it's pure laziness by artists who are disinclined to expand their horizons (or venture beyond tracing over pictures of porn stars). Maybe they'll go out on a limb, and make their aliens into bugs. Or apes. Or lizards.

The Humanoid form is one that people have trouble venturing beyond, and it's one I have trouble arguing against. Hell, some of the best aliens are humanoid: Chirpsithra, Xenomorphs, Yautja, Sangheili, all the major Mass Effect races, and those are just the ones that came to mind at one o'clock in the morning.
So, yeah, there's sinners and there's saints when it comes to Purity of Essence. Xenomorphs may be humanoid (When they hatch out of humanoids) but they still have a life cycle designed in Hell. Klingons may be humanoid but they're... yeah, they're humans covered in stage makeup and prosthetics.

So, I can't say that the humanoid aliens trope is bad, but I'd like to see more diversity. Look at the Pierson's Puppeteers: Quadrupedal, with two heads/arms, one eye per head, and a brain stuck all the way back under the 'shoulders'. Look at the Hunters: a gestalt of eels forming a collective consciousness, given shape by their armor, forced into a humanoid (and other) forms by outsiders. Look at the Forhilnor, a race of horseshoe-shaped octopedes with multiple mouths and two brains that need to work in conjunction.
Surely, there's room to experiment. And I'd love to see more of it.

But there's one thing I will hold as inexcusable. Can we, for the love of God Almighty, PLEASE STOP TACKING BREASTS ONTO FEMALE ALIENS?!

Haloverse Info

Yeah, you know all those little things that carry on from story to story, but there's never enough time to get in-depth with them? Expect to see them here, with notes on Siberian shorthand, factory sign language, and musings on the UNSC's R&D policies.

Projects

Isolation- a multi-chaptered fic in the Halo section, taking place on Alpha Halo. Follows OCs, with a prequel planned.
Status: Writing/Updating

Nightmare- My next multi-chaptered Halo fic, currently in release. Will be written alongside Isolation. Interestingly enough, it was supposed to be a part of the prequel to Isolation, using the same main character, but I dropped it when I decided to make Isolation conform to canon as closely as possible.
Status: Scribbling, want to get as much of it done as possible before resuming the updates. I have not abandoned it.

Match Made In Hell- A oneshot, mostly a humorous crossover, but still within the boundaries of one of the universes. Will involve Halo.
Status: Scribbling

Occupational Hazard- What happens to your soul when everything is taken away from you? What happens when you are bound to a wheelchair, your life dependent upon nurses and medication? Are you destined to become an old man, dying alone, unable to come to terms with the fate that was decided for you?
Status: On hold. It's one of those stories where you have a good beginning, but nowhere to go with it.

Take A Breath- Oneshot, to be released when Blizzard releases Heart of the Swarm.

Isolation: A Space Odyssey- Planned prequel to Isolation. Name is final, story is mostly in the first stage of writing.
Status: on-and-off scribbling.

The TTP Project- Halo fanon, as it were. I'm broadening my horizons.
Status: Online. Gathering teammates, beginning construction.