New Chapter: Revan's Shadow

Yeah, yeah, I know it's only been a week or so (if that) since the last update, but here's the next chapter for the story: right hmeah.

The reason it came so quickly is because this was one of the few scenes that I had actually written all those years ago...in a way. It was already in my mind, I should say. 80% of the dialogue that I used for HK-47 was stuff I ripped from my old mini-novel that I had started to write after I played both KotOR games.

It also came rather quickly because it was the one day I wasn't stressing over how I was going to write the Battle of Malachor V. I realize that I shouldn't be stressing so much over fanfiction, but it's important to me that I have something that I'm proud of on my account. I would never publish every idea I've had for the story; I still want a large chunk of the novel to remain in my head for possible official use in the future. Again, I realize I shouldn't be stressing over that either, but the story is very important to me...very important to me.

But! I'm still gonna go all-out with what I'm willing to put online. The Battle of Malachor V will be a while in the making, but I have an idea of how I'm going to handle it. After that, I only have maybe five chapters left to go...maybe. Then the ending that I've already written. And after that: I think I shall rest.

Aside from the projects that I've already started, by myself and with Buch, I'll probably take some time off from fanfiction for a while. I really want to get serious about my second novel, get it done, and send it off to some agents before the end of the year. The reason I want it done by year's end is because both Mass Effect 2 and Fallout: New Vegas will be coming out in 2010, and I don't think I'll be able to resist the urge to write stories about them. Just can't help it! xD

Collaboration, Crumpets, and English Muffins

Three months ago, Buch and I finished publishing our respective Mass Effect fanfics: New Friends and Broken Angels. It was a fun process and we were both pretty happy with the results. Then, we decided to push our luck.

One day, maybe a few weeks afterward, we decided that we would make a collaborative fanfiction story. Sounded like a fantastic idea: to put our awesome mastery over all that is prose to the ultimate test and see if we could crank out a satisfying story without either of us clawing each other's throats out...from across the ocean....I don't know.

We tossed around ideas and we rather quickly decided to write another Mass Effect story while we were still riding the hype and had all the information about the universe in mind. That way, we wouldn't have to do much refreshing. We got started rather quickly with the ideas and discussed what we wanted this story to open with. We decided it would be a Joker and Kaidan story, but not in the way everyone on FF.net wanted it to be. >=O

It was then that we realized that our takes on various scenes were likely to differ, due to our geographical placement in the world:

Me: "Despite their misfortune, the two o' them decided right thar on that stoop that they'd be hoopin' and hollarin' about it later. They'd bring the terr'ists' war to their homeplanet."

Buch: 'Despite all their bally rotten luck, he was certain that the pair of jolly gadabouts would both laugh about it later, over a nice cup of tea and the coverage of the Test match on BBC 2.'

Startling! No?

But we got through it fairly easily and cranked out two prequel stories before we got into the thick of the project. Our approach to it differed in a way, though. Because there was only a small window of time we could discuss the story, and we were both usually busy during that window, we resorted to dividing the chapters of the story equally, writing our respective chapters, and then trading them to edit, add, and put our personal mark on it. This worked very well, despite us constantly rethinking where the story could go.

Not too far into the project, it was becoming clear that the American way of writing and the British way were not as similar as we once thought. There were a great many differences, in fact! And this went beyond simple grammar differences like their underutilization of the letter "Z" (they would spell it, 'underutilisation.' Weird!).

We took some time to discuss a few of these differences, when I was fed up with not knowing what a crumpet was. Buch was kind enough to explain, and though I had a hard time placing it, we discovered that crumpets in America are called by a different name: Thomas' English Muffins. Weird!

The consensus between us was: The fuck?

Then he tells me that's not what a muffin looks like. I respond with a, "Oh, do tell, what's a muffin over there, then?" (Although, not as snarky). And he links me a picture of this, what looks like some sort of puffy bread thing. I tell him that's not a damn muffin, that's a damn biscuit! He refutes the very idea, and I link him a picture of the most scrumptious-looking American muffins, doused in a thick layer of country gravy: biscuits and gravy like so.

Blasphemy! he says. And besides, those aren't even goddamn biscuits.

Like hell, they aren't, I reply. And he shows me a picture of what biscuits are in England! I'm like, those are damn cookies!

Cookies?!

Yeah, cookies!

And we just sat there, both of us pissed off royal at each other's cultures (him more justifyably so, since his country did come first xD). Then we started discussing the finer points of the asari gender debate, and suddenly all of that massive anger went away.

(Just kidding about all the language! Spiced it up for the sake of storytelling, but I'll be damned if that conversation didn't happen.)

And that was just the first time! =O

Edit: Wrote this when I was a bit tired, and I was juggling a lot of links at once. Apologies, Buch, if I pulled the wrong pictures. Was going from memory, which was...deflated...at the time. xD

Sparkly Vampires: Communists?

So, I've been following this debate around, and it concerns vampires of the sparkly sort. These days, I can't swing my walking cane around without striking someone who has some emotional connection to Twilight, good or bad. I've known some people who absolutely love it and some who absolutely hate it. So, I couldn't help but wonder: Why's that?

I've read the book myself, you see. When it started rising in popularity, noticeably that is, about a few months before the forth book came out, everyone I knew was reading it. I felt like the odd man out for not even knowing what it was. So, my friend's parents, who had both read the books, took me aside and explained it to me very honestly.

"It's an interesting book," they claimed. "Very mushy and overwritten, but it's enjoyable."

"What's this interesting book about?" says I.

"Sparkly vampires."

Okay...

They didn't have the first book themselves, as they had gotten it from the library, so I used my vast amounts of wealth to buy it myself. At that point, the only reason I was going out of my way to read it is because it sounded like good conversation could come of it. There's nothing better than discussing, positively or negatively, a movie or book that you and your friends have read.

So, I read it. Reading Twilight in its entirety took all but a couple casual afternoons. I finish it. I set it aside. Think about it for awhile and come to the decision: It wasn't half-bad.

Go over to my friend's house and we talk about it for a while. At the time, I got my ex to read it as well, and she finished all four books in a few days. Then I pushed it on my cousin, who got more of our family to read it.

Everyone read it! No one seemed particularly angry that they had done so, and most of them even went to go see the movie when it came out (me included). Even then, nothing negative.

Lately, though, there's been a disturbance in the sparkly Force. With the sudden and epic popularity of the Twilight movies/books (which is probably more focused on the movie's lead actor more than anything else) has come this division. A wise young man named Romper Stomper once said that there are two kinds of people in this world: those who like Animaniacs, and those who don't like Animaniacs. Nowadays, I think that division has blurred some.

It's an enigma to me. The book is not good enough to be loved so ravenously the way it is, yet, it's not bad enough to deserve the hate centered toward it. Twilight just IS. It's that book that you find crammed into the same section that holds Harry Potter books, that's there simply as a means to an alternative. But this year, one of every seven books sold in the United States was a book by Stephenie Meyer. Did it deserve it? I'm tempted to say no, purely because Watchmen should never be topped by sparkly vampires. But...

It's one of those books that just got everyone and their mother reading again. Kids were falling head over heels for it, and parents were reading it to see what caused such a clumsy reaction. Emo kids finally found characters to relate to (I've seen this first hand. Boyfriends fell into two categories: Edward-like or Jacob-like). Teenage girls finally found a new idol, and the Jonas Brothers lost their fanbase...heh.

I'm typically always against blaming the work itself for a reaction in popular culture. It's like blaming the radioactive spider for the atrocities that occurred in Spiderman 3. That spider was just being a spider. That book was just being a book. If it bothers you so much, do your part to ensure that something like this doesn't happen again. Spread the word about books that actually have substance, and start reading more yourself to find those particular selections.

Go forth and conquer, Blog Reader.

Sequels, Remakes, Reimaginings and Adaptations

And reboots



The other day when I saw the latest "Harry Potter" flick there was an advert for a new film and it blew my mind - I simultaneously loved and hated it. It's just called Sherlock Holmes. The movie looks like a LOT of fun... but.... watch it...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUQbmFAE5WI

Now I don't know very much about Sherlock Holmes. I've seen and enjoyed a couple of films with Peter Cushing (You may fire when ready) or Christopher Lee (Qui-Gon was once my apprentice or something) but I've never gotten around to reading any of the stories. They're on my list.

But I think I know enough about Holmes to find this trailer terrifying. In it, Robert Downey Jr plays Holmes as a wisecracking, irresponsible, musclular playboy manchil..... Iron Man. He plays him as frickin' Iron Man. Now I love Iron Man, but I don't want every fictional character to just become Iron Man!

I know Holmes knew how to fight and I know he was eccentric. But come on!

Also I love the part where the genuinely English, relatively unknown actor says to Downey, "This may be a hobby to you but I do this for a living."

--

I'm looking at the top five movies at the box office on Rotten Tomatoes. I was hoping there would be a majority of remakes and sequels so I could look clever on the blog here.

1) Harry Potter and the Oh My God Ron is Totally In Love With Hermoine Oh My God
(fifth sequel and adaptation)
2) Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
(second sequel)
(The 'dawn' of the dnosaurs? During the Ice Age? What?)
3) Bruno
(You know it counts as a sequel)
4) The Hangover
(Completely original)
5) Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
(Sequel to a remake)

Right now Tim Burton is finishing up Alice In Wonderland. (Second adaptation.) The biggest and most successful franchise now is Batman (reboot of a remake of a remake of an adaptation). They've now run out of Marvel Superheroes to make movie reboots of, but DC are yet to get around to Wonder Woman (I guess because no-one in Hollywood looks like her) and the Flash (because the Flash sucks).

--

I just wrote 'why?' and deleted it - I guess they do this because they make more money than when they make films that tell an independent, singular story with characters unique to it and created for it. Or maybe it's too much work. Maybe in Hollywood they just sit around with twenty or thirty people in suits and trainers around a huge, solid gold desk and they drink coca-cola and say, "You know what I like? Sherlock Holmes. Dude was badass. Let's make a movie about that."

Meanwhile, around the globe, millions of talented writers with things to say and facinating new concepts and characters just waiting for someone to read about them continue to eat cans of sweetcorn for lunch to save money (meeeeeeeeee).

Bane of the Sith: A Most-Kindly Retort

Thought I'd throw in my thoughts on the this Karpyshyn talk we've had, because this author is one of two really noticeable enigmas that I've kept my eyes on; the other being Orson Scott Card.

Karpyshyn's impact on my life, and I can only assume on Buch's as well, is indisputable and, possibly, unmatchable. As the lead writer for two of Bioware's most renowned products, Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect, I assume he was responsible for the genesis of both Darth Revan and Commander Shepard. Both of these characters, as ambiguous as they might be, are most certainly two rather big inspirations to my writing. Therefore, it's so damn hard for me to reconcile those senses of wonder, horror, amazement, fear, anxiety that I felt through playing these games with what I read in books like Star Wars colon Darth Bane colon Path of Destruction.

He's obviously a talented writer, and deserved every inch of success his games have received, but I have no idea how he could go from writing KOTOR to The Marvelous Misadventures of Darth Bane. I realize this is the title of our fanfic, but come on, that's what I was thinking the entire time I read it.

I hated the fact that the majority of the story takes place in a SUPER SITH ACADEMY, yet, we learn almost nothing about the Sith, besides the fact that they're real pricks of Malfoy-like proportions.

I mean, come on (again!), Darth Bane was supposed to be a major influence on the likes of awesome Sith Lords like Darth Sideous and Darth Vader, because I haven't read an EU book in that time period where Bane isn't mentioned. But Bane is the worst goddamn Sith I've ever read about. Not to say the book completely sucked or anything, but Bane himself is just a shitty kind of Sith. I've yet to see him win a lightsaber duel. The last one I saw, he was fighting with his old weaponsmaster, and Bane very nearly lost, but managed to use the Force to collapse a temple on the poor man's head.

Sure, this can be justified: the Sith are just a bunch of cheaters, anyway. They must win by any means possible. But that doesn't mean you have to be a bitch about it. If you can't win a lightsaber duel with an old master, then what right do you think you have becoming the Sith Master?

Much sense, this does not make.

To wrap this up here before I make my way down to a rant about airline food, Karpyshyn needs to start taking his novel career seriously, or not do it at all. I'm tired of reading his introductions in which he pretty much apologizes for any mistakes therein, since he's burdened with so many deadlines. I have no doubt this is seriously the case, but there's gotta be a time when he can take a step back and seriously crank out an original novel of his own.

It's only because I worry.

Bane of the Sith

I'd like to announce the newest fanfiction Knight and I will be working on together. It's going to be a parody of Drew Karpyshyn's 'Darth Bane' book/s. The title is 'The Marvellous Misadventures of Darth Bane'.

This post will likely double as a little review for the books and a discussion of Karpyshyn in general. He's the head writer at Bioware, the games studio who made our beloved Mass Effect and our even more beloved Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. As such he is a genius. Both of those games utterly sucked us in and turned me into a videogame fan and a Star Wars fan all over again after I had successfully given both up. Really, the quality of the writing in those games is superb. It's a popular saying among fans that the Star Wars game is better-written than the newer movies, and I agree.

On the sucess of these, the giant machine that makes the decisions at Lucas Arts commissioned Karpyshyn to write a Star Wars novel set in the distant past, like his game. And so we at last have a fully fleshed-out biography of Darth Bane, the Sith Lord who introduced the idea that there should only ever be two Sith at any one time. Personally I find this 'Rule of Two' idiotic - what if one of them dies? What if both of them die? And how much of a massive drain on the master's time must this apprentice be?

Anyway, if you suspend your disbelief about that, then Bane is kind of a legend in the SW lore. He has a silly name, too. You have to suspend your disbelief a lot when it comes to Star Wars novels.

The first book was good, but perhaps took too long to get going. The second book was also good, but was clearly rushed. The structure is all over the place - it's more like a series of short stories than a novel - and certain characters (including Bane, who is almost relegated to a supporting role in his own book) are a little two-dimensional. Both were great fun, though - epic and exciting and full of unique and imaginitive new lore. Better than a lot of Star Wars titles.

But! The problem we both had with the first book is that the legendary Darth Bane comes across as a bit of a stooge. The first book starts with his unhappy childhood then goes onto his sucky life in a mining colony, his prowess in cheating at cards, his accidental manslaughter of some guy and subsequent freakout... he is a lot less driven and dominating than one would think. When the other characters almost force him into the Sith, he spends the next 100 pages at school - he's the new student at the evil wizards academy, and as such gets picked on by everyone and keeps getting beaten up and losing his nerve. After this a new girl starts - and she makes a fool of him too. In the third act he finally gets his act together by studying really hard and kissing the girl - then he kills aaaaall the other Sith so that he can rebuild them with this whole 'two people' thing. Again, this sounds a like a very silly plan to me, espescially since he's still brand new and has barely learned anything... but you know.

The second book - I won't spoil it but suffice to say, he comes across as an utter idiot. During many of the chapters about him, I was laughing out loud at his neverending incompetence. In one chapter he crashes his own spaceship because he was too busy yelling at hallucinations to drive. In another he spends five years building a holocron then smashes it by mistake (I was howling with laughter when Drew described his reaction).

(I should point out that most of the ridiculous episodes are not really Drew's fault. The book is apparently based on the aptly named short story 'Bane of the Sith' by Kevin J Anderson - and the majority of Bane's greatest failures can be attributed to this. Similarly, I think the stupid name 'Bane' is the fault of Terry Brooks, who wrote the dodgy Episode 1 novelisation.)

The guy achieves literally nothing in this book, except training a more useful apprentice during the 'Ten Years Later' period. All we see him do is bugger things up over and over again while she picks up the pieces and furthers the plot.

So - yeah. Darth Bane was apparently a bumbling fool who only rebuilt the Sith order by pure luck and with great help from more sensible people, like a bartender and his own apprentice.

Hence the parody. Although we love Drew Karpyshyn deeply, we're going to make fun of these books. Should be a laugh for anyone who has read the books. This is one that Knight is already working on and I've just joined in with some ideas. I've read what he has so far and it's very funny.

Coming soon!

Heroes Die

So, I just got through talking with my friend, whom I had lent all three of my Matthew Stover books to. I had my hands full with my Star Wars books and The Lies of Locke Lamora, so I sent them all his way.

Basically, he returned Shatterpoint and Revenge of the Sith and said: while they were well-written, they just weren't his thing--Star Wars hasn't been his thing for a while, apparently (although I did get him all hyped up for The Old Republic mmo, so that's a point for me).

But I got in the car with him tonight for a quick cruise and a smoke, and he told me, before anything else, Heroes Die is now on his top ten list.

This is of some significance, because my friend is very particular about the fantasy stories he likes, and he's practically read them all to find those handful. From Robert Jordan to George R. R. Martin, from Brandon Sanderson to R.A. Salvatore, this guy has read thousands of books.

And Heroes Die made it into his top ten, even though he still has a hundred pages left in it.

Not that it surprised me: Matthew "Fucking" Stover is a brilliant author. I brought up this list that mentioned Heroes Die in the same breath as The Song of Ice and Fire by GRRM. My friend whirls on me, smoke fuming from his nose and hate spewing from his mouth in regards to Martin's work, and lays out a long ass case proving how much better Stover's work was in his opinion (though, he would claim that anyone who didn't share his opinion was someone less-than-human).

Jubilations! Can't wait for him to finish it now. Although, I am almost hesitant to get excited. If I like Heroes Die, I know I'll have to buy the second book, Blade of Tyshalle; which, if you look at the Amazon page, costs about thirty wing-wangs used (and $100 new!). So that might be difficult to do. It might be cheaper to step up my harassment game and get Stover to send me one.

Makes me wish his publisher would re-release those damn books. He's mentioned an omnibus of some kind before. Here's hoping that happens. xD

New Chapter: Revan's Shadow

Got a new chapter for my Knights of the Old Republic fanfic up now. You can find the story here!

It's by far the longest chapter of the story at four thousand, two hundred words. Was up till 3 AM writing the bastard. What took the longest was thinking up the most dramatic way for Revan to succumb to the dark side...which had to be dramatic. Dunno if I succeeded, but...you know, whatever.

We're sorta nearing the end of it. I'm estimating that it might be near 80,000 words by the time its completed: just 10k words short of novel-length. Which is good, I guess. If someone wants the whole novel, they know were to find me!

*waits patiently*

Anyway, yeah, I'm really excited for the story to be over; mostly because I just can't wait to write the ending. I have all sorts of elements lined up that I was excited just to get done. That's why I've kicked the writing habits into overdrive. Plus, I got a nice sense of fulfillment going on. It's been four years since this story started taking shape. To see it come together in some form has been exciting.

Gotta get the next chapter going. Later!

Star Wars: The Rekindling

My first memory of Star Wars was plugging in my old, dirt-encrusted copy of A New Hope into my VCR and wondering, "Why the heck do they call it Episode Four, when there's no One, Two, or Three?" I want to say this was just before the Special Editions were released in theaters, so I must have been seven or eight years old at the time.

From there, my love for it casually heightened. I remember renting Empire Strikes Back and watching it happily, even though the famous twist had been ruined for me long before then. I remember playing with my Han Solo action figure, complete with carbonite prison. And, I remember experiencing Star Wars' glorious return in 1999 and its effect on pretty much everything.

But, even through all of this, I was still just a casual fan. Someone who watched the movies because they were good, but who couldn't tell you who Salacious B. Crumb was or his monumental contribution to the galaxy.

That all changed, as well as many things in my life, when I played Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic on my Xbox for the first time. Maybe it was because I had been devoid from good storytelling for so long, thanks for my then-aversion to books of any kind, or maybe it was because I had never experienced a story that I genuinely felt a part of. Either way, I had made up my mind about two things that day: I wanted to be writer, and I really, really liked Star Wars.

Thanks to my obsession with KoTOR, I was able to get a lot done. Since then, I've written tons of short stories, many fanfiction stories, and even completed my first novel. But, after the games became near-antiquities by console standards, and after the hype of the last Star Wars movie had effectively worn off, I found that I didn't have a love for the universe anymore. My love for Darth Revan's story was still there, but on the whole, Star Wars fell to the backseat, so to speak.

As per the title of this post, this "rekindling" of my love for Star Wars happened the second Buch suggested an Expanded Universe book called Shatterpoint by Matthew Stover.

I picked up the book on my following trip to Borders and sat down to read it when I got home. I was...wary, at first. I had tried to read many Star Wars books in the past, and I had never been able to get into them at all. Nothing took me out of the illusion quicker than a misplaced line by Luke Skywalker or Han Solo, a couple of dudes that even the most casual of fans usually knows front to back.

So here comes Mace Windu following in Marlow's footprints. I was intrigued by this: that the book was essentially a mix between Heart of Darkness and Star Wars. HoD was a book that I cherished, but not because of its writing. On the contrary, I remember having to force myself to get through that book, but when all was said and done, I genuinely liked the story it had put in my head and the theme of social/moral decay that it communicated.

When I finished Shatterpoint, I was monumentally pleased for a few reasons. One, I found it fantastic that someone actually had the balls to incorporate some philosophical thought into a Star Wars story: something I hadn't seen since KotOR, and before that, the Original Trilogy. Two, it expanded the role of Mace Windu to an extent that he's one of my favorite characters now. I hardly see Sam "Bad Mother Fucker" Jackson in the role anymore. And three, there was violence! Yay! Why do I care? Because sometimes violence can bring a concept that's so up in the air, crashing back down to reality. So, for the first time since KotOR all those years ago, Star Wars felt alive again: it was a living, breathing world that I wanted to throw myself back into for the second time.

To make a long story semi-short, my love of Star Wars was saved by Matthew Stover. His musings on the Force and how to tell a story that, at some times, dives into the spiritual has inspired my writing as well as two fanfics here and here. I'll talk more about the latter story at a different time but, just to put it simply:

Thank you, Matthew "Fucking" Stover for the inspiration. I'll make sure I pick up Shadows of Mindor ASAP. Please, please, please come back to Star Wars soon and/or tell me your new pen name so's I can buy your book when it's released!

*taps foot impatiently while waiting for friend to return Heroes Die*

Introduction 2: Us (and Them)

Hi,

I thought I'd give some introduction to both of us. I'm Buch (pronounced 'Buck') from England and he's Knight (as in Rider) from California. We're both aspiring writers who are just getting started.

We started writing fan fiction around the same time, then got in contact when we both started writing fanfic for the role-playing videogame Mass Effect. Since then we've been commenting a lot on each other's work, discussing ideas with each other and collaborating on a story. It led to a transatlantic friendship, too, and now this blog. I'm taller and older but Knight grows better facial hair.

I don't know very much about blogs, so I'm not sure what we'll be posting up here. But it will be largely thoughts on writing, fiction and fanfiction. Occasionally I will hijack the blog and rant endlessly about some movie that is annoying me, but we'll try to keep this thing professional.

It's very hard writing as myself here - I'm very concerned all of a sudden about how I appear to anyone reading this. Really- I keep wondering if I sound pretentious or the jokes are too cocky. This may be part of the reason I like to write fiction - I'm quite awkward socially so it's a way to express myself without actually communicating with people. At least this is one sided.

The links to the right are links to our writing on the internet - I highly reccommend Knightfall's stuff. (It's not self-promotion if I promote him and he's forced into doing the same for me.) The last link is to the blog of Matt 'Fucking' Stover, a sci-fi author we both admire. He writes Star Wars books - and this is why we love him. His tie-in Shatterpoint and his novelisation of Revenge of the Sith really, really impressed us and inspired us both. I think we'll be talking about him in more detail soonish as we've recently been discovering / rediscovering him through his Star Wars stuff. And Knight was recently mentioned in Stover's blog.

For now, that was our introduction. I hope you like what we write here, and please do comment.

Introduction: An Introduction

Hi, there! And welcome to the newly-emerging blog of Mister Buch and Knightfall1138 (therein referred to as Buch and Knight, if we were mentioned again therein).

We're not creating this thing with any sort of pretentious motive in mind or to drum up traffic to our Fanfiction profiles *audible cough* but to simply discuss writing, our processes, and the bits of media that inspire us.

And, since the both of us are from either side of the Atlantic Ocean (USofA and grand ol' England), this could give us a good outlet to rant or review at all times of the day from our respective timezones. Best of all, we won't be filling up each other's inboxes to do this (jk).

Anyway, there you are. Have fun. Keep in touch. And...yeah! :D