100 words - October 2010

Knightfall and I finished our first 'batches' of entries at 100Words.com!

It's been a really interesting writing game, which we were both playing along with a bunch of others from the Mass Effect Fanfic forums. I think writing alongside four friends makes it much more enjoyable! Espescially when it's something tricky and fun like this.

If you missed our earlier blog about it, it's a simple but surprisingly hard challenge. Once you sign-up you have to write a 100-word piece (any subject, any style, fiction or non-fiction) every day for a month. If you're too late writing, you're out. If it's not exactly 100, you're out.

So we had a lot of fun! Knight wrote a series of hilarious skits, impressive poems and little prose vignettes that were like something Joss Whedon took out of his new show because they were too good for it. I wrote... mainly about Frankenstein and superheroes.
Regardless, we both full enjoyed it! here's Knight's October batch, and here's mine.

And here are our final entries:

As he began to fall, the elf's life flashed before his eyes; and given the density of his lifespan, that flash seemed like a very long time.

He saw the Kastarn Spire as it glowed bright with energy just beyond the Nightwisp Hills. Then came the Breaking of the Clan, where he received his weapon and the one direction he would follow for three years.

He saw the Edge of the World.

The last thing he saw, before everything got crazy, was a single arrow flying across his periphery. The rope around his neck went taut - then severed.

------

Mister Laurie crept up the stairs, swaying from side to side, eating smarties. Up the spiral staircase of Castle Frankenstein. When he reached Peter's door he peered into the thin strip of black, widening it by half-inches and giggling. In his hand he clutched three Brandon Routh 'Superman Returns' action figures, painted green.

Peter is wearing his Ben 10 pyjamas. This does not make him any less of a genius.

Laurie creeeeeaaks open the door and steps through. The moonlight is weak but the atomic supermen glow in the dark.

'Mah-ster,' she whispers, 'the first batch is finished!'

----

I've decided to have a stab at the November challenge too! that's 30 days instead of 31, so it should be easier. This might be the beginning of a beautiful hobby. Expect another post about it in a month ;)

All right, stop. I quit.

In one of my favourite novels, So Long and Thanks For All The Fish by Douglas Adams (the fourth in the 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' series) there's a minor character named Wonko the Sane.

I absolutely love this book, much more so than the other four. The few pages with Wonko in them are one of the best bits - they really stuck with me and I've always thought of him when the world seems too much.

He's a man on a beach in California who one day looks at a packet of toothpicks and reads:

Hold stick near center of its length.
Moisten pointed end in mouth.
Insert in tooth space, blunt end next to gum.
Use gentle in-and-out motion.

Appalled by the realisation that he now lives in a world where people might require instructions to open a can of toothpicks, he builds four walls around himself, designed to look like the outside of a house. He decides to remain in his asylum, never daring to re-enter the civilisation that allowed the toothpick instructions.

I'd like to print off that 'Candwich' thing and paste it on the door to the outside world!

--

Apologies to I-mockery.com for stealing their news item!

Odd little things about Return of the Jedi

Well, I have the day off work, and it's an absolutely beautiful day. I've just got back from some leisurely stuff I had to do in the morning, and I have the whle day ahead of me! I could go for a swim to get some exercise, prepare my finances and arrangements for my upcoming University course, or just read one of the many classics I've collected for the summer.

I'm watching 'Return of the Jedi' again. And I've managed to justify it to myself as 'research' for a Star Wars fanfiction I'm writing.

As I watch, I thought I'd point out strange little things that make me laugh every time I watch it. To me (and so many people in my generation) the 'Star Wars' trilogy is like an old lover you've become completely comfortable with. You've stared lovingly at its sleeping face so many times that now, you know every beautiful detail, and cherish each one. And there are some strange little pocks and blemishes, that although you find them enchanting, you like to poke at them in the mornings, knowing that the movie won't mind. It's 'Return of the Jedi', after all! It'll just lazily brush its hair, blink, and smile contentedly at you. It's comfortable with you looking at its innermost soul.

(I'll admit I'm totally stealing this idea from Protoclown on I-Mockery.com, but I'll at least point out different oddities!) Like I said, these are things I've noticed, over and over, and which really tickle me for some reason.


1) C-3P0 clearly doesn't speak Huttese

I always liked the scene right at the beginning (after Darth Vader has done freaking out the Imperial SS Officer) where See Threepio and Artoo Deetoo are outside the massive sandy gate to Jabba the Hutt's crazy palace. Lucas and the director seem to be bringing the trilogy full-circle, mirroring the opening of the original film, and once again using C-3P0 and R2-D2 as the audience's eye to the epic story - again honouring 'The Hidden Fortress'. So once again our lovable, bickering peasants are trying to help out the Princess' rebellion, this time by breaking into a giant slug gangster's underground cave lair. Threepio is being a massive wuss about it of course, coming up with excuses why they should just run away and leave Han Solo to die. And then the little eye-robot guardsman comes out of the wall (not unlike the extended version of Return of the King... got my eye on you, Jackson...) and yells urgent gibberish at them.
'Huttese', when you see aliens speak it in the SW films, has always been nonsense made up on the spot. But sometimes the actors really don't seem to be putting any effort into the making-up process, and Anthony Daniels as Threepio cracks me up here every time I see him!

"Artoo.... Deto-ah..." he says to the eye, "Bo... Say... Three Pay Oo-ah..." And already I'm loving his questionable 'translation' of their names. It sounds more like pig-Latin than a mysterious alien language at this point. But then! Then he starts adding the questioning, raised intonations at the end of phrases - and you just KNOW Threepio is making this up as he goes along! "Uhh... too-ta... mishka...? Jabba Du Hutt?"

After this, the eye retreats back into the wall, no-doubt hugely offended by Threepio's semi-racist attempt to impersonate their language by simply speaking English with a silly accent.
It's like that episode of Family Guy where Peter tries to speak Italian - "Ahhh, bibbidy, bobbity!" I bet he doesn't speak the binary language of moisture vaporators, either!

2) Chortle at Threepio's boner

Just a few minutes after C-3P0 has made a fool of himself as a translator, he does it again surrounded by all of Jabba's wierdo friends. When Jabba subtly reminds the audience that he has Han frozen in a block of ice (by pointing at it), Threepio yells out, "Look, Artoo! It's Captain Solo, and he's still frozen in carbonite!!" At this point all the aliens and crooks in the room start laughing for some reason - I can only assume they're laughing at Threepio's terrible attempt at exposition.

3) Skipping droid

Still in Jabba's Palace... I'm always amused by the creepy droid who runs the foundry/droid torture chamber underneath Jabba's happenin' Night Club Cave. It's the way he talks - every time I hear it I laugh because I'm reminded of schoolgirls skipping a rope. "How. Many. Languages. Do. You. Speak!" One! Two! Three! Four!

4) Luke's diabolical smack-talk

Luke Skywalker is one of those heroes who lets his actions speak for him. He was just a wet-eared, geeky moisture farmer, but he was a good enough pilot to take down the Death Star with no training. He has been a Jedi apprentice for about a week, but he dared to take on Darth Vader in a swordfight just to save his buddies. At the beginning of this film he does all sorts, including redeeming his Sith Lord father, defeating the Emperor and killing a giant monster armed only with a rock and a bone. But... before that, he attempts to frighten Jabba by staring him down and issuing very meek threats. I really love how he apparently thinks he can intimidate a gint slug, surrounded by guards, just by walking into his base in a black hood and muttering quietly about what a badass Jedi knight he is, in his whiny, whiny, high pitched voice. His broken-voiced, "This is the last mistake you'll ever make!!" (as he's being led away in handcuffs) makes him sound a lot like a teenager who's just been dumped at the prom. And I love when he glances diagonally toward the camera with his eyes thin like Clint Eastwood, and tries to reassure Han by breathing, "Just stick close to Chewie and Lando. I'm taking take care of everything..." which makes Han roll his eyes sarcastically, and makes the audience wonder if perhaps Luke has been drinking.

But my favourite moment is easily when he dramatically reveals himself to Jabba. The small, black-hooded man in centre-stage steps forward, accompanied by a swell of suspenseful music, looks up, and removes the hood to reveal..... Mark Hamill, in his early twenties, with a fashionable, floppy brown fringe. Whoooah, Jabba, you and your small army of mercenaries had better think twice! You don't wanna mess with this!
Of course, when push comes to shove, and when he and his posse are in the most exposed, dangerous position imaginable, he does kick everyone's arses and single-handedly save the day with his Jedi powers. But absolutely nobody was expecting it! Maybe he's smarter than I thought...

5) Jedi sexism

When Yoda dies, his last words, his very last effort, are "There is another Skywalker", referring to Luke's twin sister, friend, colleage and occasional make-out buddy, Princess Leia. When the ghost of Ben Kenobi hears Luke's doubts (and by doubts I mean lack of bloodlust), he throws his hands in the air, insisting, "You are our only hope!" and that without his efforts, "The Emperor has already won!" It's only when Luke presses the matter that he admits that Leia is his sister - and thus just as suitable to save the Universe as he is.

But then... why didn't they train Leia too? She's clearly just as powerful, and has already demonstrated psychic clairvoyance in the last film. Not to mention that unlike Luke, she is already an accomplished leader of men, strategist and gunfighter! A few scenes later we learn that she's also an incrediblly-skilled motorcyclist, who shows absolutely no fear (or any kind of acting, really) in the face of danger! So now she's equalled Luke's feat at the Death Star, too. Throughout all three movies, she repeatedly demonstrates that she's more experienced, calmer, and much more emoionally detached than Luke. Plus, she's already a senior figure in the Rebellion - so there's no need to coax her into it!

And yet the all-male Jedi leadership seems very reluctant to hire her...

6) Listen with Threepio

I know I'm mentioning C-3P0 a lot... I suppose I just feel that he has no place on Endor. But the movie specially engineers a place for him, by having him use his brilliant translation skills (see above) stop the lovable cutesy Ewoks from butchering and eating Luke, Han and Chewie, and.... God only knows what they had planned for Leia.
For reasons we can only guess at, the Ewoks assume that Threepio is a God, and carry him home on a chair. One odd line from Threepio here is, "But it's against my programming to impersonate a deity!" Who the hell programmed him with such bizarre, specific instructions?! (No, I don't accept it was young Anakin.)

But it's later, when he starts trying to get the (astoundingly impressionable) Ewoks to lay down their lives for him, when I really get confused. To win them over, Threepio decides to have all the Ewoks gather round his chair, and then tell them the entire Star Wars trilogy up to this point. To bring it to life, he waves his hands around as if he had action figues in them, and plays sound effect clips directly from the films. Which is fine (if a bit odd) except for the fact that the enitre story takes him about thirty seconds to tell. Surely that's not enough for them to understand! If I were lsitening, I'd be constantly raising my hand and asking questions, like, "Yes, okay, but what IS a Death Star?" "Is he a bad guy, or what? I understand that he breathes heavily, but what does he do?" and "Can you please go over this 'Millennium Falcon' bit in more detail? We eat raw meat and hunt with stone spears."
There are frequent reaction shots during the story, often of young Ewoks recoiling in fear and awe. But we also see Luke, Han, Chewie and this one Ewok with a pipe, staring at Threepio like he's gone mad. I love those shots! Luke in particular is frowning quite a bit, as if he's about to call 'bullshit!' on the whole story. But Leia, for some reason, is loving it. At one point we see her, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, cosying up to Han and following Threepio's every move with her eyes. Maybe she wouldn't make such a good Jedi after all.

Also about Threepio on Endor:
I notice that everyone is wearing jungle camauflage, except for Han (who is too damn cool for that crap) and Threepio, who is painted bright gold.

7) Watch that officer, he's going places

When Luke hands himself over to the Empire, he's picked up by some stormtroopers and an SS guy with four medals. They decide to put Luke in handcuffs and transport him to Darth Vader, who has just landed. So they take a massive, armoured walking tank through the dense forest and deliver him. And then the SS guy says, "This is a rebel that surrendered to us. Although he denies it, I believe there may be more of them!" Well, gosh darn, that's a smart officer. He's sticking with his gut feeling that the rebels would send more than one guy, EVEN THOUGH the enemy soldier denies it. He's a goddamn visionary.

----

And after that, there really is nothing to make fun of, except the silliness of the Ewok battle. Which surely has been done to death on the internet!

The bits on Endor that don't involve Ewoks as much are truly thrilling. The full-on space battle (featuring Lando and Wedge, both personal favourites) absolutely astounds me. And as for Luke's dramatic confrontation with Darth Vader, the Emperor, and the darkness within himself and his dad... I have nothing negative to say about it. The music in that scene, in particular, really is amazing.

----

One last one:

8) Lando's sad dancing

Video here.

This is something I never noticed until an old friend at University pointed it out to me, years ago. Right at the end, in the very last seconds of the film, all the main cast strike a pose, Street Fighter style, for the camera. Everyone tries to look cool, and sum-up their characters and how they're feeling at the end of this long, incredible, intergalactic civil war.

Except for Lando 'Hey buddy, relax, try this: Colt Malt Liquor' Calrissian, who stands at the back, grinning, and clapping to himself. And throughout the whole ending / celebration scene, he's still doing it. During the famous moment when Luke smiles at the ghosts of the dead Jedi, you can even see Lando there! Clapping and swaying by himself, in the background, completely oblivious to the apparition of Darth Vader a few feet to his left, because he's too busy dancing and trying to get random strangers to shake his hand.

This wouldn't be so funny were it not for the fact that Lando (as played by super smooth Billy Dee Williams in a cape) is easily the coolest character in the movie. It's so strange to see him, right in the second before the credits roll, looking like a big nerd, at the back, dancing like your dad while everyone else is mingling, geting close with their significant others and chatting with ghosts.

--

And if that's not a very funny note to end on, check out this video clip, by someone far, far funnier than me:

Please, Mister Lucas, please incorporate this edit into your next revised version of Return of the Jedi!

(Still) remembering Red Dwarf

I felt like writing something personal, so I thought I would talk about the huge impact Red Dwarf had on me, as a writer and in general.

If you're not familiar with the franchise, it's a British sitcom (and four comedy novels) set in space. It's a simple sitcom set-up about 'four or five people who don't get on having to live together' but which also satirises and/or pays loving tribute to all manner of space operas and science-fiction classics. The premise is simple - an amiable slob awakes after three million years of suspended animation in the middle of black, empty space. There are no aliens and no advanced civilisation. For company he has a hologram resurrection of the crewman he hated most, a creature who has evolved from cats, a senile old computer and a fussy, subservient robot.

From 1989 to 2000 they had a series of sitcom-style misadventures, and Star Trek-style adventures, all with perfect characterisation, a wonderfully dark and witty sense of humour, and fascinating storylines. I always think of it as 'Blackadder in space'. And I could spend the day writing an introduction to it!

I'm a big fan, and I'm amazed it's never come up on this blog until now. As a teenager, I watched my carefully-collected videos of this show religiously, believing every line to be flawless and the actors to be the finest comic talents on Earth. When I got older I started to see the flaws and grow tired of the well-worn tapes, but I can still remember most of the lines in the first seven series!

But one part of the franchise that remains at the highest in my estimation is the books. Beginning quite early on in the show's run, the two writers, Rob Grant and Doug Naylor (this was back in the day when British TV shows ran for six episodes a year and were written by only two people) began working on a series of Red Dwarf novels. Rather than write a spin-off or simply novelise the shows, Grant and Naylor (using the pen-name Grant Naylor) decided to begin anew, so that they were writing two seperate versions of the story at once - the TV version focused on jokes and brief adventures, and the novels' version was more dramatic and epic.

The novels Red Dwarf (AKA Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers) and Better Than Life are genuinely brilliant sci-fi comedy. Much like Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams, but... maybe this is me... so much better! So much deeper, funnier and more engaging.

Then came the great divide, where my heroes Grant and Naylor had a personal argument of some sort, and split for good. It was like watching my parents divorce. Grant went on to write excellent comedy novels and Naylor continued Red Dwarf, but not very well. Despite bold new ideas and characters, the show never quite recovered. It teetered away and ended on a whimper and a false 'to be continued' (well there was the recent 'Back to Earth' special, but that's another story.)

And it killed me that the show never had an ending. Now I would never know - does Lister find his way home? Do Lister and Kochanski finally fall in love? What becomes of Rimmer after his brave departure? It sounds very silly, but it took years for me to accept that I'd never know.

---

But, I distinctly remember a wonderful moment, when I was reading the last chapter of Last Human by Doug Naylor.

---

See, after the split, both authors wrote one more Red Dwarf book - each of them contradicting and disregarding the other, and each a direct sequel to Better Than Life. Now my divorced parents were asking me to choose which one I loved most. At high school I wrote a novel-length fanfiction which feebly attempted to bring the storylines into one.

Grant wrote Backwards, which took a very dark turn, but evolved to become extremely witty and with deeper characters than ever before. As well, it was a thrilling, scary adventure with brilliant science fiction in the first half (on 'Backwards Earth'). Best of all it included a massive, dramatic expansion of my favourite side-character, 'Ace Rimmer' - the dashing alter-ego of Rimmer with his legendary catchphrase, 'Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast!'

And Naylor wrote Last Human - much more the traditional style, but with a tight, excellent space opera plot, great gags and...

... an ending.

In the final chapters of the book, Lister and Kochanski are in love, together and perfectly happy. They never made it to Earth (well they kinda did) but that's all part of the climax. All of the transformations and journeys that began in Red Dwarf and the first episode of the series come to an action-packed and fantastic conclusion, and there is nary a joke in sight. The third act of Last Human is what dreams are made of.
And though there is no Ace Rimmer, the real Rimmer brings his story arc to a close, by fathering a son and becoming the hero we'd wanted him to be since we grew to love him in episode 6.
And as he sacrifices himself to save his son and his crewmates, Rimmer sends a message in Morse code - S.M.A.K.I.B.B.F.B. Get it? It's an allusion to a character who never even appeared in this book's time-line, but that's what makes it so powerful.

I cried! I cried tears of joy that the dearest fictional character I'd ever read had finally become what I wanted him to be. I'm not saying that I prefer the Naylor book to the Grant book (don't make me choose, mum and dad!), but it left a powerful emotional effect on me.

And I re-read that book over, and over, and over again. I remember the third or fourth time I reached that ending, that perfect last chapter, and thinking, "This is what I want to do. I want to write stories with jokes and rich characters, and I want people to feel like I do now, just because of printed words. And I want to keep trying to write a book as good as this, but never make it! That'll keep me trying"

I've been through various odd phases in my life since then, but I'm never happier than when I write fiction, hear great comedy or find myself unexpectedly moved by something. Red Dwarf taught me 75% of what I know about writing, and completely shaped my sense of humour. Rimmer gave me an attitude, The Cat gave me a sense of childlike wonder, Kryten gave me too much self-deprication, and all of them have effected my strange accent. Lister gave me a laugh, some ideals, some beliefs and a hopelessly romantic soul.

Now I even like to imagine parallels between 'Buch and Knight' and Grant and Naylor!
Last year I got a tattoo of the Morse code for 'SMAKIBBFB' on my left arm. I'm not a tattoo kind of guy, but it's to remind me of my goal as I write. I can see it in the corner of my eye when I type. Like those books and some of the classic episodes, it never fails to inspire me.

The final line of Last Human never left my head. I keep wondering about featuring the line at the very beginning of one of my own stories. It would have to be a special one!

Slowly, gently, almost impercebtibly, the grass began to sway.

This is why I write fanfiction

Because when you write original stories, people don't send you messages that say this-


Dear Mister Buch, I do belive that you should consider professionally writing material. Your denying yourself a chance to spread this level of writing to everyone else. Simple, virtually flawless, belivable and charmingly addictive. Its a rare thing, even amoung the top quality gems to be found on FFN, to see concise writing like this, I think the best word for it is succinct. In all honesty, this is superlative work, so much so that I actually feel a little guilty because I did not pay for it. I will look forward to reading your other works, and would like you to know you have my respect.

--

I had to post here specifically to boast childishly about that. It's probably the best review I've ever had, from a stranger anyway. Even if he did mis-spell 'you're', it's an incredibly nice thing for him to have said, and a massive ego boost for me.

F Zero X Character roster

Lately, I've been playing a lot of F Zero X for Nintendo 64.

It's a grand old racing game, with a massive cast of thirty wierd-looking comic-book-style chaacters. In most cases I don't know their real names, and I don't believe any kind of biographies are given in the game.

All I do know is - a lot of them look silly. And when I'm trying to race I find it impossible not to stare at the little portraits in the top 5 and come up with nicknames for them.

So, without further ado...

Buch's guide to the characters of F Zero X!

1 ) Dr Zoidberg
Dr Zoidberg, formally a local MD based in interplanetary deliveries, has fallen on hard times recently. He now races the F Zero circuit in an attempt to afford an operation to remove the cucumber from his nose.


2) Those Guys From The Star Wars Cantina Scene
One of them doesn't like you, and the other one doesn't like you either. They're wanted men! They have the death sentence on twelve systems! And so on.



3) Angry Father Christmas
This year nobody left him a glass of sherry on the mantelpiece. A life long alcoholic, Santa is now forced to go cold turkey, and he takes out his frustrations on his fellow F Zero racers.


4) Captain Falcon
A former crowd favourite, the Captain is doing poorly of late. His driving is fine, but every single race, without fail, one of the other racers will knock him off the side of the track, crying "Falcon Kick!" and laughing as they speed away. Every single time.


5) Captain Palette-Swap
Push the button, Max!



6) Temuera Morrison
After so many years stuck in the role, New Zealand-born actor Temuera is now convinced he IS Jango Fett. With this in mind, he races around F Zero in a replica Slave 1. Nobody minds him.

7) Jodie Summer AKA Brunette Samus
My favourite character. I have nothing mean to say about her. Curiously, she normally has brown hair.



8) The Most Boring Character
I dunno. He smiles, he wears a red helmet. Be honest - you haven't got anything either.



9) The Cruel Wizard Wrath-Amon
That's more like it! Wrath-Amon is the leader of the Evil Serpent Men, who are from another dimension and will reveal their true form if you attack them with Star Metal.



10) Mister Hyde
Mister Hyde likes to tell people that he is the famous literary character of the same name and alter-ego to Doctor Jekyll. In fact he's just a very ugly man with the surname Hyde.


11) Badly-Disguised Cylon
This unfortunate double agent still thinks nobody has noticed his infiltration into the F Zero ranks.


12) E Honda
Us Japanese fighters gotta stick together. CUZ WE'RE BROTHERS! HA HA HA HA!


13) Utahraptor
Most famous for his appearances in Dinosaur Comics - Utahraptor is seen here in panel 5.



14) I Have No Idea
I originally had a dirty joke here, but I decided it was too crude. Make up your own story for this fella.


15) The Cat
It's Danny John Jules from Tv's Red Dwarf, now racing in a desperate effort to regain the credibility he lost in the recent three part special.



16) Female, Black Character
That ought to mollify that demographic. Next!



17) The Noid
Avoid him. Or better yet, knock his car over the edge of the track, just killing him once and for all. Should the opportunity present itself, please finish what Adam West started.


18) Super Arrow
After Jodie Summer (#7), easily my favourite character. I just love the completely serious expression on his face despite the hat, and the even more serious expression on the bird. God, I wish the bird was also wearing a hat with huge wings, and maybe a letter B. In the game, his suit is bright red, which makes him even funnier looking.
I love this guy.


19) Doctor Smugman
The good doctor is a leading light in the field of centre-partings, and tirelessly seeks to perfect a cure for hereditary smugness.


20) Foetoid
Remember Foetoid? From the game Forsaken?
Sure you do. Foetoid, ladies and gentlemen.



21) Mister Creosote
Hercule Poirot, the great Belgian detective, stretches all his little grey cells as part of his continuing investigation at the F Zero tracks. Finally after sifting all the evidence, he gathers all the other racers together in the drawing room to... oh shit, it's Mister Creosote.


22) The Troll
The Troll lives underneath the Rainbow Road track and, when not racing, demands tolls from other racers trying to practice. He is sick of people calling him 'Krang' and he does not know what they are giggling about.

23) Mrs Arrow
This attractive young lady has the extraordinary misfortune of being married to Super Arrow (#18). She is never seen without her signature sunglasses, onto the backs of which she has glued a photograph of a less ridiculous-looking man.


24) Fake Cosplay Fox McCloud
FCFMcC likes to pretend he is Fox McCloud from the Starfox games. To this end he has modelled his car to look like an Arwing and dresses like his hero at all times. At the end of each race he calls, "All aircraft report!" while the others either ignore him or loudly insist that he do a barrel roll.


25) Lobotomised Starwolf
After being trounced by arch nemeses Starfox too many times, Starwolf needed serious brain surgery to recover his injuries. Unfortunately he came out rather less intelligent, but he continues to spend his life behind the wheel, albeit the wheel of an F Zero car. Fake Cosplay Fox McCloud (#24) likes to hang around and provoke him between races.

26) The Cryptkeeper
Hello boys and ghouls! Tonight's terrifying tale concerns F Zero racing! He he he he he! I call this nauseating number... Driven... to DEATH!!
In recent years the Cryptkeeper has lost his hair.


27) Handsome Jack AKA Not Tom Paris
This handsome young chap spends so much time preening himself in the rear-view mirror that he has yet to actually start an F Zero race. He seems happy enough.



28) Michael Chain
Michael Chain is only a part time racer. During the week he teaches Art History at Stanford University, and campaigns tirelessly against racial stereotyping. Also - Michael's car looks like a big orange toast rack.


29) Captain Picard
Nobody knows what this gentleman's real name is because everyone is so used to calling him 'Captain Picard'. He hates it, and even got a tattoo on his head, just to make him look less like the famous TV character. The irony is that if he didn't get so annoyed every time, they'd stop calling him that. After hours, he likes to hang around with Handsome Jack (#27) so they can discuss how they are totally NOT Captain Picard and Tom Paris, respectively.



30) Doc Brown
F Zero tracks? Where we're going we don't need... F Zero tracks...

15 Fun Fanfic Facts

This evening I have set myself the task of educating you with a select fifteen titbits of my fanfiction-related knowledge!

Sit back, dear reader, and prepare to be educated.

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1) Fanfic is short for 'Fan Fiction' - often inaccurately written as 'Fanfiction', for instance in the title of this blog, and on Fanfiction.net.

2) The term 'fan fiction' itself derives from the Greek fanaticum fictatas, which translates literally to 'Writing yourself into Wrath of Khan'.

3) In the famous fic 'Doom: Repercussions of Evil', many people miss the famous, deceptive and subtle twist. It's that John is the demons.

4) There are currently 78 fanfics in the world. Over 50 are about Twilight.

5) To qualify as 'fanfic', a story must contain at least three spelling errors.

6) Successful, published fanfic authors include Dan Brown, who for several years has been writing excellent Dan Brown fics.

7) 99% of fanfiction stories are written on Microsoft Word.

8) Fanfic writers are unnaturally attached to reviews. In some cases, they have been known to slip into comas after prolonged periods without any reviews. It is possible to revive these cases by repeatedly saying "I LOL'd" in a reassuring voice.

9) The earliest known fanfiction was a drawing of two antelope found on a cave wall in Argentina. It bears a striking similarity to another, more famous image on a nearby cave, but in this one the antelope are having sex.

10) Famous, secret fanfic writers include Mike Tyson, Germaine Greer and Abraham Lincoln, who wrote a short Silk Spectre II/Rorschach piece on the back of the Gettysburg Address.

11) A recent study found that crossover fics are all rubbish.

12) The Oxford English Dictionary defines 'Fanfiction' as, "Absolutely not. No. Tell Charles there is no way in Hell I'm allowing a contraction of a made-up phrase beginning with a seperate contraction - and used to describe something that my own nerdy cousin, who still lives with his parents at 42, finds uncool and beneath him - into the Oxford English Fucking Dictionary. - Ed."

13) Fanfic was often written on long sea voyages to pass time. During the Napoleonic Wars, there was a slew of Nelson/Hardy slash, inspired by the rumours.

14) The popular fanfic term 'Mary Sue', meaning an unrealistically wonderful protagonist, is named after Mary Sue Jonsson, a nurse who travelled across the United States rewarding skilled and underappreciated fanfic authors with cookies and thank-you cards during the 1950's. To this day she is revered almost as a patron saint.

15) Writing and reading fanfiction is really good fun, and not nearly as nerdy as people think. It's creative and it helps writers improve. There are hundreds of wonderful stories online for free. Have a look at FF.net.

Depressingly good books

I justy got done reading Ender's Game, which Knightfall Eleven Thirty-Eight sent me as a present in July.

Maybe it's because I've just come off from reading Twilight and the Star Wars: Darth Bane books - but I'm just overwhelmed by how good the book is. Espescially after the fantastic last two chapters - loaded with so much fantastic payoff it's like a great mystery novel.

This past year and a half (or so) I've been reading a lot of classic novels in with my usual whatever-takes-my-occasional-fancy and fanfiction. This is one of two sci-fi classics I checked out, and I'm really glad I did.

I was indifferent at the first - even put off by the extraordinarily grim tone of what I assumed to be a book for teens - but grew more and more fascinated as the story became more and more complex and wound around itself. I love the realism and complete lack of a grand quest or a clear antagonist. The scope and detail and characterisation grow at the same rate as the protagonist and the chapter lengths. The way events from earlier chapters are repeatedly cast in a new light by developments and revelations makes me want to start reading again right away. With my ever-growing 'reading list' it won't be right away, but it will be read many more times.

But the point of this blog - besides gushing with praise - is to highlight that feeling that I imagine all writers (and all artists and film-makers and... I dunno... chefs) get - the frustrated ambivalence when you read a fantastic book and enjoy it completely - but then realise that it's miles better than anything you've ever written. (Or cooked.)

It's like someone has pushed the goalposts a little closer together. I learned some great tricks and got some real inspiration, but now I'm aiming for a higher quality. Now even science fiction is not safe for the lazy or contented writer, because I just read an outstanding book that has aliens and space-stations.

It genuinely does limit my enjoyment of the book. It makes me yearn for the simple, easy life of the mediocre amateur writer reading Stephanie Meyer and making sarcastic comments throughout the whole, slightly-below-mediocre experience.

However, according to 1138- a long term fan of the book - only the first two novels in the Ender saga are worth reading.

Good.

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