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Comments for 'ES02 - Eternal Sunder (part 02): First Encounter'



gruntkiller
2:02 am | March 30, 2003
i was late reading this but it was awsome
TheRedFaction
2:57 am | March 29, 2003
Man, did we get kicked to Page two fast. So much for the comments I was hoping for...I have fallen short of what my inner self has required...

(Sorry, I just felt like saying something really random and kinda idiotic.)

TheRedFaction
Wado
3:20 am | March 27, 2003
The macro I built myself but it only works in MS Word.

Basically if you have your story in Word, do the following to indent:

1) Edit, Replace
2) For the string to replace, enter "^p" without the quotes. The ^p is interpreted by Word's search and replace as a paragraph mark.
3) For the string to replace this with, enter "^p[indent]" without the quotes. This will add back the paragraph mark and the next paragraph will start with an indent.
4) Replace all and save the file.
5) Select all and copy into the Fan Fiction form.
6) Click on Preview in the form to see what it looks like. You will probably have to do some clean up work and the beginning and end of the story.
7) Repeat step 6 as many times as necessary before submitting the story. (I also like to copy all the story back into word from the form when I am done previewing to have a local backup of the finished story).

There you have it. Note that I use the search string "^p" but I replace with "^p^p[indent]" to get the extra line break.

Wordperfect might have similar replace options. Wordpad doesn't seem to support this.
Dspraiser
3:00 am | March 27, 2003
WHere did you get the indent Macro? I hate indenting my fanfics...
monitor101
11:15 pm | March 24, 2003
Damn a lot of long comments. Another great chapter of an epic story look forward to more.
Wado
12:38 pm | March 24, 2003
Oh and to all, I'm trying to incorporate many of your comments into each future story I write. Even if I choose not to make some changes, I'll still try to take the comments to heart.
Wado
11:46 pm | March 23, 2003
Hey, thanks all.

Two things:

One, Steele, thanks for the comment. The switching tense thing I spotted too but wasn't quite sure if I should have changed it, so I let it slide. There's also a few more typos and things in the story that I caught after submitting it. My basic rule about tense is that if it happens before the speech I use saying, if it happens after then I use said. i.e., John looked at Cortana saying, "Something tells me I'm not going to like this." Opposed to "Something tells me I'm not going to like this," John said while looking at Cortana. I guess this style I got from reading Lord of the Rings a while back. I've seen other ways to do it also, all just as good, I just like the way JRR did it.

Two, the Stargate technology is not from any particular TV or movie series. In each conflict technology plays some role, but only really if the technology is different. One part about Halo is that each side has something the other doesn't. Humans have better AI technology and the Covenant have better Slip-space engines and ships. In this series the conflicts will rely much on the good old action and tactics, but technology will be an important background element. What I mean is that the Elder races have Stargate technology but the Biomechs don't (well they do but they are way far behind the Elder races) and the Biomechs have nano-viruses and AI technology far surpassing the Elder races. There are many other technologies also. This means that I can write about spies and prisoners will have to worry about giving information away. I can also write about the tactics used to try to defeat an enemy that has superior technology in certain areas or how technology advantages can help the good guys. Many writers here do a good job with this, why should I be different? Now it's not just winning or losing the battle but also what is the cost? A thousand Biomech ships could be destroyed but if they manage to get away with Stargate technology, despite the losses, they will have a strategic victory. If characters from the story like the Lady get captured, they won't be rescued because the Biomechs WILL get the information from her. She most definitely must be destroyed before capture and she knows this. The stakes are much higher. I hope I'm making sense here. It's not Stargate, it's Science Fiction.
Steele
6:42 pm | March 23, 2003
Good. I never really knew much about stargate, but anyway, that was good.

I have only one thing to say. In one paragraph you used the present sense of stuff, for example. You said something about the Princess's voice silences everyone in the room.

IN the next paragraph you used the standard stuff like: He said, she said, not He says.
I think switching of tenses should be done only aftr chapters or with a big space in between.

Anyway, Keep it up.
TheRedFaction
5:06 pm | March 23, 2003
343 GS isn't all that weird. In one of my later stories there will be a "343 Guily Spark Correspondence, which is an 'opposite probe', or 343 GS's not so evil twin. It's been programmed to serve us, but that story is long from finished...

TheRedFaction
Traumatised Marine
4:18 pm | March 23, 2003
Heh heh, has anyone spotted a pattern here?
Arthur Wellesly
1:43 pm | March 23, 2003
Very good Wado. I am relatively new here, so I have not read much of your work before now, but I must say I am impressed.

I, too, like and approve of your use of indents and "white space" and I found your use of dialogue for GS funny, clever, and quite effective. It does capture his personality quite well.

I must also say, however, that I have never watched/read "Stargate" in my life, so much of this story makes little to no sense to me, which is highly unfortunate because I enjoyed much of the material that did make sense to me. Luckily you explained everything and told the story in such a way where my total and complete understanding of the whole plot became unnecessary.

It is along those same lines, however, that I base my main complaint: it is in my opinion that you strayed a little too far from the story of Halo and stuck mainly with this other plot. Now again my understanding of this Stargate thing is minimal, so perhaps this comment is an incorrect assumption, but until someone explains to me otherwise, I am afraid I must take this stance. From my viewpoint I saw that only some characters' names from Halo was the only tie with the plot you had.

However, despite this, it was an excellent piece of Fan Fiction. Forgive my recent absence and apparent hesitation for commenting on the latest stories, I have been busy for the past week ever since getting back from my much needed vacation to Italy.

Again, great story! 9/10
TheRedFaction
12:18 pm | March 23, 2003
Back to the whole reason why Wado seemes material for the next Stephen King. King's best quality is his imagination, which he most indefinetly shares with Wado. So far, his stories have built the foundation for more ideas; the "stairway to a new era" (ugh, I sound like an aritist or something).

My ideas aren't as good, but they do sound interesting ( in one way or another ).

Wado, keep it up, because this page is half dead without you.

TheRedFaction

( Now I sound like priest or therapist!! )
Berconius
4:59 am | March 23, 2003
It is difficult for me to find a fault in this post. I think that this story has a base that allows it to surpass the Archon series... or come close at least.

I say this because the battle against the biomechs is revealed early, giving time to unravel details like origins, motives, society, etc. In the Archon series, you put the Characters in a battle against flood, albeit a more dangerous strain.

You have this menace all to yourself to mold, good luck to ya, I have to wonder HOW the heck you plan on wrapping this up without setting a new record for the length of a series. Not counting potetial sub-plots, this story has enough potential plot to span the approximate length of the Archon series. That is of course under the assumption that you plan on developing all the aspects of plot and don't stream line anything.

That last point is another point that you should keep in mind. I have seen that all your stories are well developed in all fields. It is my hope that you do not fail in doing so in this series for readership sake. If you do run intoa dead end as far as plot is concerned, your fan base can stand to wait a few days or weeks longer for a good addition to the story. What I mean by that is, obviously, that you should NOT rush ANY part of this series if you are shooting for sheer quality. Haste makes waste, after all.

Now that I have added ANOTHER long review, I'm going to study for my Biology test now-zzzzzzzzzzzzzz *snore* zzzzzzzzzz *drool*

Don't let stress happen to you! (Thats part of the review too, don't write unless you feel like it... then agin, you probably hold that and other aspects of my review so I should probably keep my mouth shut, bye bye!)
el_halo_diablo
3:27 am | March 23, 2003
why is everyones comments so big :\\ I'm feeling intimidated...

Ok Wado, it's good to see that you are back. I'll get to reading this immediatly.
Dispraiser
11:42 pm | March 22, 2003
Also, taht is a compliment to Wado, not an insult to others like me... Though there are some comments of no use. Example Mazor in 6way war two.
Dispraiser
11:41 pm | March 22, 2003
"To Dispraiser: There was cerainly some venom aimed at other readers in that comment. You shouldn't assume every other person is going to be some FPS neanderthal who has just half-read a story and decided to stick in a comment. Sometimes people don't want to write movie critic summaries of stories, and I know I would hate to have to read through ten comments this size.
Well, anyway, I hope it was of a satisfactory level of 'intelligence.' "

Wow... That was pretty long... But you came pretty close to describing me with that FPS neanderthal thing...
Wado
11:28 pm | March 22, 2003
Thanks for the comments. It's good to see the old server back up and running (*knocks on wood*).

Hey Dispraiser, about 343 GS being a good guy. Well that probably is strange. Almost all of SOA2 he was a bad guy and then he was captured by the Praetor. He was successfully reprogrammed and went to work for the Insane Forerunners (but he really was an undercover agent for the Praetor since his reprogramming). In the very end of SOA2 he and his Sentinels helped to save John's butt. Ever since then John and Sparky have been sort of friends although by ES (this series) they hadn't seen each other in more than a hundred years. There's still that possibility that Sparky's curiousity and other attributes might end up causing trouble.

TheRedFaction thanks for the support.

Traumatised Marine thanks for comments. Dispraiser's comment wasn't intended to spite anyone else, we have a sort of inside joke going between us about useful comments. One day Dispraiser is going to blow me away with a thesis on my stories or something and I might do the same for him -- Anyway something like that.

Oh yeah, besides writing these long comments, I do like indent and white space. It is a bit redundant, the work is no big deal, I have a macro that spaces out the paragraphs and adds the [indent] tags, so it only takes a few seconds for me to do that. (I think of it like back in school when I would have 1 page of stuff and I would make the font size bigger and double space to make it a 3 page paper...lol)

And one more thing about 343 GS's dialog -- I do purposely have him repeat the same lines a lot as a sort of quirk for him. He's not very multi-dimensional in my stories. He's very much a sidekick to the MC, more or less. Maybe I might have a story with him as the lead character to give him some more depth but otherwise count on him being a productive member of the team that occassionally gets everyone in trouble. He's the classic straight man (err... straight AI).

Nice comments all. Thanks.
Traumatised Marine
9:02 pm | March 22, 2003
Well, 'intelligent, useful comments' is it?
Right, let's see what hasn't been said...
OK; as always your grammer and use of punctuation is impeccable, but if I was rabidly desiring to penalise you I'd probably say that indenting is a bit redundant considering the generous (but certainly a good thing in terms of flowing readability) single-line seperations throughout.
I don't think anyone could mind that, but it probably would be less trouble for you.

One curious note that I have noticed in other fictions as well as this one is the 'semi-quoting' of Guilty Spark (in this case the; "More or less, technically..."Du-dah-du-dah-du-dah)
I don't know if it's because people have difficulty empathising with an artificial intellect, pumped full of English mannerisms and without a qualm to wiping out a galaxy-ful of sentient life.Or they would assume an AI's seemingly organic-based linguistic patterns would be pre-determined and there would be some generic factor in such artificial language implementation that would result in the repetition of certain phrases without any variation of wording.

Which is it for you, Wado? Do you find it hard to imagine what Guilty Spark would say, so you quote?
(Personally I doubt that.) Or did you do it for the latter option.

Or maybe even I'm looking into things far too much, but hey, I need to find something to talk 'intelligently' about! (So you could assume that my rambling on about something so insignificant is testimony to the excellence of your stories.)

Yes, the liason between Halo and Stargate is well done, and could surely have only been done so with a fair knowledge of Stargate, (that I lack.)
And although this may be a personal opinion, although I think this is brilliantly written, the fiction feels like a whole other Sci-Fi story with a few Halo references bolted in. (But that is just a shallow assumption formed on this single chapter, have no doubt I will watch all your work. And because of your reputation, I'm going to also assume that this series will shape up to be quite copacetic with your excellent standards.)

To Dispraiser: There was cerainly some venom aimed at other readers in that comment. You shouldn't assume every other person is going to be some FPS neanderthal who has just half-read a story and decided to stick in a comment. Sometimes people don't want to write movie critic summaries of stories, and I know I would hate to have to read through ten comments this size.
Well, anyway, I hope it was of a satisfactory level of 'intelligence.'
TheRedFaction
8:50 pm | March 22, 2003
Very good, Wado, I've been waiting for this one.
Interesting.

TheRedFaction
Dispraiser
8:26 pm | March 22, 2003
I doubt taht you will ever recieve any intelligent comments to this being that the most useful comment giver wrote this one... THis is another good one... You successfully merged the worlds of Stargate and Halo in an effective, believeable manner and the dialogue is among the finest on HBO. Characters would actually say that kind of stuff... I could never align with GS though after his whole, you know, trying to kill you and the rest of the universe... Oh well, in any case, for the excellent merger of the two series you get the first A I have given today, and probably the last of today... Until next part man...


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