"I understand your attempts at humor. I just don't find them entertaining."

This is Mr Light Chicken Bulbs here! Welcome to my glorious profile where you'll get to know a little about me.

For everyone who's been waiting for updates for a while, I'm trying, but school is taking up a lot of time right now. Words are flowing, I shall never give up!

External Links

See updates and progress at https://twitter.com/#!/MrChillyW

And here's Group of Weirdos on TV Tropes. It's quite amusing. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/FanFic/GroupOfWeirdos

This is a duck. Isn't it cute? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck

Personal Crap

I signed up on this site on May 22, 2005. Go me.

I'm not one of those paranoid people who are afraid to give out any personal information . I am currently 19 years of age. I live in Ontario, Canada.

I am play games and write, two hobbies you will see mashing together in the content I write, thus the reason I'm on this site to begin with.

The Name

Mr. Light Chicken Bulbs is a very strange name, isn't it? There are several factors contributing to that name.

First of all, I am a male. That is the Mr.

I had chicken for dinner the night I registered on this site, about ten minutes prior actually. This is the chicken.

I was staring at the light bulb above my head while thinking. That is the light bulbs.

Mix it up and you get Mr. Light Chicken Bulbs.

Update Rate

I have recently started to write when each chapter has been put up on my updates. Those should tell you my regular rate up uploading new chapters, but for those who don't feel like checking I update whenever I get inspiration.

Generally, Group of Weirdos is written when I have time to sit down and play the game for a few hours and is 2000-4000 words. Very specific range, eh? Class is in Session is updated whenever I think of something good or manage to get a plan down and is around 1500 words per chapter - it's short and sweet. Space Pirate Confederation is the hardest to write so takes longer than the others (I WILL update it no matter how long I take; writing Kraid is too fun) and is around 2000 words. Anything else is either something new that I haven't gotten around to typing up here or very infrequent in updates.

And because everyone else likes doing them, here's a list of...

Me and Gaming

Favourite Video Games:
1. Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
2. Tales of Symphonia
3. Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker
4. Disgaea: Hour of Darkness
5. Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
6. TimeSplitters: Future Perfect
7. Dark Souls
8. Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World
9. Vanquish

It's a fun hobby. I own an N64, a PS2, a Gamecube, a Wii, a PS3, a Gameboy Pocket and Colour, and a DS. That's actually very little compared to what I've seen some people owning. I saw someone with THREE NES's, and they all worked! Why would you ever need that many of those? Sell them! Why do you need three of one thing?!

My current focuses are Metal Gear Rising, Pokemon White 2, and Pandora's Tower. If anyone wants to play online PM me with your PSN name or friend code for a Wii or (3)DS game. I'm lonely :(

My online games have grown far too numerous to list. So bleh.

My Writing Philosophy

I firmly believe that a story is about the characters and the plot. More importantly, it's about a healthy balance between the two factions. If the plot overpowers the characters they will be underdeveloped and boring. If we don't care about the characters, there won't be any tension when they get in sticky situations and we won't care when they're in trouble.

On the flip side, if there is not enough plot nothing will be happening, it will just be characters. The plot is needed to drive the characters, to push them forward and forge development in their personalities. The plot is what gives them the depth they need to be interesting, to make us care... not to mention it will bore us if nothing happens.

This is why balance is important. Characters drive the plot, and plot develops the characters. I keep using these words to drive them into the deepest sanctum of your mind.

I am also completely aware of how strange this statement is coming from a writer of comedy with cartoonish characters and situations. I take my writing seriously, even if I don't take the content seriously. There's a difference.

Advice for New Writers

Having been doing this gig for several years (yet I still have nothing better to do), I've developed a few pointers to pass on to the youngins. If these don't work for you then by all means do what's best for you. These are just somethings I like to do.

Set goals
Instead of saying "the next chapter will be 2000 words" say something like "the next chapter will go until they discover where their son's diamond head is buried." Don't get caught up in how long something is. As cliche as it is, quality over quantity. I tend to plan what my chapter will cover and go from there. If it's too short for your liking, add a bit. If it's too long, split it at a logical point of separation. Don't just chose somewhere random.

Proofread
Once you've finished, wait an hour or so and read your chapter again. If you see a mistake, fix it. If you see something you want to change, do so. That's about all there is to it. I tend to wait overnight due to my tendency to write during the late hours, but sleeping on it is not required. I know there's a beta feature now, but really it's easier to just do it yourself. If you have any reading comprehension skills you should be able to get it done.

A chapter means a chapter
I see this all the time. What a chapter is is the covering of a certain portion of your story, an event. This means they must have a logical conclusion point. Do NOT go "that's enough for now, it'll end here" and just leave the chapter in the middle of an event. Either end it with a conclusion, a development, a logical cliffhanger, an event, or anything! Don't just post it because that's all you've done today, make it a real chapter.

Accept negative criticism
See that title? Read it again. Did you do that? Good. Now read it again. I find that the work "criticism" has developed a nasty connotation on this website. It simply means analyzing the work, looking at the good and the bad. But it's become something that some inexperienced writers (and sadly a small handful of experienced ones) can't seem to take, assuming the negative words that are just that demographic's opinion on what they didn't quite like is an insult. Just be mature and you'll be fine.

More to come. For now, I sleep. Refer to proofreading for a reason.

My FanFiction Pet Peeves/Rants

Badly written stories
This is probably the biggest thing I hate on the website. Stories with bad grammar, punctuation, spelling, and whatnot, it just makes things unreadable. What I hate even more are how popular some stories like this are, I've seen loved stories where the author doesn't even do speech right. You use a comma at the end of speech if it's leading into "Blah said" and never a period! The stories I wrote when I was 13 may have been bland, but at least they were well written.

"You haven't wrote any stories so you can't say mine is bad"
I've seen this plenty of times in response to criticism, and every one makes me laugh. That's like saying that since I've never created a video game, I can't say that ET was a bad game. You don't need to have done something to be able to criticize it, you just need to know what's good and what isn't.

Story Guiding Polls
Ugh, I hate polls that let the reader choose where the story goes. I add this to not conflict with the completely random polls I put up. Sure, it appeases the majority, but personally I like it when I'm in control of my own story. This one is more of a personal preference, I'm not saying polls are bad, I just don't like them myself.

Unconfident authors
"My first story, please be nice." If the author says in their summary or anywhere else that even they aren't confident in the story that they've posted then I'm not bothering to read it. Why should I be confident in something that even the person who made it isn't fully supporting? You should be fully confident in what you've written. If you don't think that the chapter is to the best of your abilities, make revisions before you post it. Work out plot holes, character interactions, etc until this is the best you can make it.

The FanFiction clichés
How I hate these so... These are concepts that are so overused and so bland that just having them can ruin a story. You've seen them in at least thirty stories this month, but some people still think they're good to drive the plot. Yes, Naruto had a sucky childhood, but he didn't have blind-drunk lynch mobs trying to gore him with rusty pitchforks and hang him from a flagpole by his intestines on a nightly basis! The clichés are things that started off as okay plot points at best, but now so many stories find the need to have these unrealistic things as devices pushing the story. If you've ever seen one, you know what I mean.

Random Japanese in English stories
This is very common in the anime section. I wonder why. For some reason, people decide to put random Japanese words into characters sentences or even entire phrases for no reason, even though the story has been completely English up to this point. WHY?! It doesn't make you look smart, it doesn't make the story better, it is annoying. Is it to show off the fact that you can find google translator? Because I highly doubt everyone who does this can speak the language. They're almost always translated in brackets or at the bottom of the chapter, so what's the point when you could have just as easily said it in English? It's distracting, especially if you have to scroll to the bottom of the chapter because a character decided to say an entire sentence in Japanese... WHY?! Forunately, this one seems to have died off over the last few years. But in its prime... Ugh.

Bland, unrealistic characters
Otherwise known as one dimensional characters with forced dialogue. This ties in with badly written stories. This is when characters an situations are so flat and boring and forced that it makes you hate the story. I've seen a story where someone had to kill their spouse (Kratos related story in Tales of Symphonia for those who desire context), what should be a heart-wrenching bullet through the heart to the reader when well done, and next paragraph his reaction was on par with, "How sad."

Every story must have a romance!
As you may have likely guessed, the title of this one has been deep-fried in liquid sarcasm. I like a good romance as much as the next gu... Let me rephrase that. I like a well written romantic plot. However, not every story requires a romance! If it fits it should have it, but sometimes not only are romantic relationships completely out of place and unnecessary, but they seem like they were thrown in at the last moment. I have seen very good stories where the relationship is so sudden in the last few chapters and completely out of place. It just seems to happen because the author wanted it despite the lack of effect on the rest of the story. Sometimes the characters had only had one or two interactions even! Besides, whatever happened to a male and female being simple friends? A person generally has more friends of the opposite gender than romantic interests, just saying.

Authors who don't care about the readers
I get really confused when this happens. Every so often, I see an author's note that tries to solidfy their complete control over the story by saying they don't give a crap what the readers think. I fully support authors who stick to the fact that it's their story, but this is not the way to go about doing this. Most of the time this is to discourage the flamers some people seem to think run rampant on this site (spoilers: they don't). No matter what your intentions are, you can't make the readers hate you! The point of stories are to entertain the reader! If you were writing purely for yourself, you wouldn't post this online, would you? If I had ended this a few sentences earlier it would have perfectly segwayed into my next point, but it doesn't. Tragic.

Criticism=Flaming
This is when a writer receives criticism and, instead of taking it into consideration or even just making any form of polite reply, they go over the top and talk as though they were just flamed or insult the critic. I see this so much, and it really pisses me off. No one is perfect, so if someone gives advice don't flip out on them and make a multiple paragraph author note making this person seem like the worst person on the planet while ignoring the things they pointed out.

Lack of proofreading
I swear, if I see another typo in a fucking TITLE or SUMMARY I will create a weapon that powered by hate, designed to track down these people and eviscerate them. How the hell do you not notice a typo in the words you see EVERY TIME YOU LOOK AT THE STORY?! I personally read over every chapter I write and if I ever see an error while re-reading any published story I'll fix it as quick as possible. And I'm not a perfectionist, I just want my published work to be free of error. You may have noticed by this point that I'm starting to sound angry. I am.

The Strawman Nutjob
So, sometimes when people hate a character they'll end up making them an irredeemable jackass with no positive qualities, going completely off the wall and overemphasizing negative qualities that might not even exist in the original character just so they can vent their intense hatred. And I roll my eyes every time it happens. Letting immature anger write the story is never a good idea because in the end, it looks whiny. There are few ways to kill my interest in a well written story as quickly as one of these.

Way Too Long Action Scene
It's fun to write two or more people beating the crap out of each other. It's a good climax for a sitation that can be full of tension, especially if it's well written and the main character isn't completely dominating. Then the fight goes on for three chapters and eight thousand words, hell maybe even a full ten-oh-oh-oh. Wow. This is no longer a climax, this is a war segment. Extra points if they receive so much bodily harm that they should have been out a long time ago but the author doesn't know what punishment the human body can take. I feel the need for a comparison: the Frieza fight in Dragonball Z. Everyone knows that fight was unbelievably long, but here's the thing: there was downtime, a definite climactic moment and escalation. The last one is very important, so I shall write it again: ESCALATION. If you have an extended fight scene, it can't just be the same thing all the way through or it'll get boring fast. Try to have roughly three acts to a fight if it's going to be that lengthy, because three is a number that works.

Tales of Symphonia Section
I love Tales of Symphonia. If you look up a bit you'll notice it's one of my favourite games. I like to read/write things on my favourite games. However, 3/4 of the regularly updated stories are either self inserts or another retelling of the game with a twist or two. Let's have some original stories people! Self inserts are generally only good these days if they're comedic, and I've read the Journey of Regeneration part of the game with a different dialogue so many times that it's losing meaning. In fact, retellings with one or two changes in general are getting annoying. You get tired of reading the same thing over and over after a while. Make some original stuff!

Summaries that don't tell a thing about the story
It's kind of self explanatory but since I love to hear my own voice (even if it's in my head) I'll explain further. Have you ever read a summary and learned absolutely nothing about the story's it's meant to be summarizing? How about one that can't even be considered a summary? To those of you who have problems writing summaries: A summary (how many times have I said summary so far?) is meant to, for lack of a better word, sum up the story, to tell the reader what it is about and why they should read it. It needs to be eye grabbing (not capitals so if you make a cap-lock summary I swear to Beelzebub...) and make the reader say, "I want to read this. It sounds like an interesting concept." Also, please make sure things are spelled right. I'm not going to read a story that has a summary filled with typos. Also...

Summary Inside!
Ha ha, no. I'm scanning for interesting summaries, not hopping from link to link until I've found the eighteenth two hundred word paragraph that fails to draw me in. A summary is a compressed synopsis that conveys mood and what the events of the plot will be generally based around. It doesn't need to be back story, or characters, those are going to be inside, it's just... a summation.

Legend of Zelda: Insert Real Title of Story
Roughly half of the Legend of Zelda stories start with "Legend of Zelda" or "The Legend of Zelda" and then follow with the story's real title. Why do you feel the need to do this? It isn't part of the main series and putting the series' name in front of your title won't change that. It would be like putting "Pokemon" in front of a story in the Pokemon section. We know what it is. We know where it is. We know what universe it takes place in. We don't need it.

Awkward Dialogue
Two or more characters having a realistic sounding conversation is something that takes practice to get right. This means try. You've been interacting with people for your whole life; think about having a conversation with a friend and try to imitate the authenticity. "Hello John." "Hello Stan." "How are you today John?" "I am fine. How are you?" is bad. "'Ello Johnny." "Hey there. I'm going to beat you with a bar of soap." "Sounds like fun. Let's get this party started!" is completely realistic dialogue. It's true.

What if...
This one gets to be low because it's a personal pet peeve, one that cannot measure a story's quality but instantly drives me away the moment I see it. If a summary contains a sentence beginning with "what if" (extra points if they're the first words) then I'll want to read it about as much as I'd want to see a person shove a lawnmower up a pig's ass... I feel the need to simplify that: I WILL NOT READ IT. Use different words! ALL these are what if's unless you're directly copying the source material in which case that's plagiarism and that's no good.

AU
The tag AU, or "alternate universe" has basically become null at this point. We should be able to tell by the summary that it takes place in the real world or some parallel universe where nothing is the same (in most of which cases it doesn't even pertain to the category anymore and just shares names, so you were better off using fictionpress) or, if we still don't catch on by the time we click the link, I'm sure the ten seconds it will take to notice won't be the end of the world. If it's used for anything less than this it's technically incorrect; a few changes to the core mechanics isn't so much an alternate universe as it is taking creative liberty in the FAN FICTION, something you are rightfully entitled to do on this site. To sum it up: kinda pointless.

It is time to get into a few things that I hate to see in reviews. But first, I want to tell everyone that reviews my story that I love you all.

"Update!"
The one word I hate to see in reviews is "Update!" It just... ugh. Please let me tell you something right now: I know that I should update the story. I have plans on updating the story (99% of the time), especially if it's one of my regularly updated stories. I will update the story, I don't need to be reminded to do something I've been doing for six years, nor do other authors. Remember, I love you all.

Don't be afraid of being mean
If a story sucks or needs drastic improvement, don't be afraid to be mean as long as you're constructive in your criticism. "It's good, could use a bit of work" does not help. "It has a good concept but would be better in execution if you were to (insert criticism here)" does help. Or, in some cases, "My god this is bad. Please, for your own sake and the sake of my sanity (insert criticism)" is necessary. Remember that.

Point Out Errors
It might just be me, but I'd rather have the first person notice and compile any errors they see so that I can correct them, so they're fixed and aren't seen by the next person, and the next and the next and the next and you get it. I want it error free as fast as possible. Hell, I've had people point out typos in stories from three years ago and my only thought is: "oh god, that's been spelled that way for three years and everyone saw it!" So be a nice person. Tell me where I suck. Tell anyone where they suck.

Remember that this is my personal list, on my personal profile. I'm just venting rage on these hated subjects so if I somehow angered someone I don't apologize because I wasn't even targeting you to begin with _

And yes, I'm not making up most of the unnamed example stories mentioned. I have read one or more stories like those mentioned.

To Do List

-Finish 'things I hate' list
-Same with favourites list