Stranger Than Fiction

I thought I'd update my current writing progress here, since I haven't done much of anything in terms of updating on this blog of late. I suck.

A few things happened that sort of put a halt to my fanfiction writing:

1) School started up. Nothing puts the kibosh on writing faster than learning about frescoes and the Vitruvian Man.

2) Whatever spare time I've had between school, schoolwork, work, and traveling, I've given over to the writing of my second novel. I'm really excited about it for a few reasons. For the first time, I'm writing something that 100% belongs to me. When I was writing fantasy, I had to borrow concepts from other authors to progress the story along, but now I'm borrowing from my own life. My love of religion, exploration, and dissection of identity. It's all gonna be in there.

Hoping it doesn't suck, but I don't think that's the case so far. It might be boring, but it probably doesn't suck. And here's my progress so far, BAM:



3) Finally, I'm sort of burned out on most of the things I've been writing for. Mass Effect and Star Wars have been kind to me, but it's been hard to even think about either of them lately. This will probably put a hold on All Along The Watchtower, at least until I'm able to get a quick edit in.

So, that's all why people probably won't be seeing anything from me, beside the occasional quick chapter of Darth Bane or The GNR Transcripts, which I can usually write within an hour if I'm motivated.

Until then, I'll probably post my thoughts on writing here, but it probably won't relate to fanfiction a super lot. We shall seeeeee.

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.

---

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.

New Story: The Poetic Fanfic Blog

Behold, our many readers! I've started writing a new story. It should be updating fairly sporadically, but the first chapter is up now and I have some of the second down.

Here is the link - The Poetic Fanfic Blog, by Quarter-Bl00d Prince

In the last year or so I've become immersed in the world of fanfic, and it's involved some interesting adventures. Now, I'm trying to move out of fanfic and write more original stories.

Don't get me wrong - I love the FF and I wouldn't be surprised if I end up always writing it. But I'm trying to get into original stories now. I like the freedom, and I want to get published so I've got to practice.

To ease the transition, and because I wanted to honour all the stuff I've learned and experienced in my fanfiction year, I thought I'd write an original fic about fanfic. So I had an idea today for a fake blog by a fanfic writer, about his daily life, and entirely in poetry.

It's basically going to be a series of poems about fanfic and mundane details of life, but there is an overall story arc than I got worked out.
Basically, he's a sad and puffed-up young man who's writing a blog in the form of a series of poems, in order to best his fanfic-writing rival and impress a girl author he likes.

Yes, parts of this are based on real life. After all, I do write a blog about fanfiction and a few people will recognise the origins of the rivalry story.

And of course, as the picture on this post suggests, there is another very heavy inspiration. In the first chapter I put in a couple of references to that other fake blog about a proud guy with a rival and a love interest, just to ackowledge that I realise the premise is very similar. I mean to distance it as much as possible though. Don't worry - I'll make it my own as it progresses.

Anyway I think I've garbled about my own story long enough now. I might start putting some fanfic reviews on this site - or a 'Buch Recommends' for fanfic I like. Or something.

--

In fact let me balance out this big plug with some links to other and better stories that are actually fanfic, and that you should read instead of mine.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5028195/1/Harvest

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4006051/1/Staying_Behind

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5307018/1/One_stop_gone

--

Now I'm signing off. Captain Hammer... threw a car... at my head.