HBO Fan Fiction

[hboff]

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Tachyon
Posted by Ad Infinitum (spiraldream@gmail.com)
23 February 2005, 6:44 PM

http://halosn.bungie.org/fanfic/?story=ad_infinitum.0223051844461.html

[monitor101]

Long yet...terrible. Welcome to HBO, get used to it, noob!

[monitor101]

I'm just kidding, it was pretty good. 9/10.

[thedarkfire]

First: CODE. Man do I love that code. Indents, italics, bolds (not so much), and horizontal rules really make a story look professional.

Your descriptions were descent but could have used work. More of an atmosphere description and emotion would have served justice to the rest of the work.

Now onto plausibility. I highly doubt Elites and Grunts would be able to keep up with a moving Warthog. Duel wield MA5Bs? Sorry, no. Rifles are two handed for a reason.

Also watch out with how you present your story. Thing like "smart move" should be avoided as it takes away from the flow.

Overall, it was pretty good and I look foward to the next one.

[Aoxuan]

The Chief has an IQ of over 200? The MCC must be smart then

Nice.

[MC's Cousin]

We already knew that . But just think about it. They were hand-picked for exceptional traits, then were educated extremely heavily, and then they had bodily alterations that increased their cognitive capability. 200 sounds about right.


The Code. Easy to use, and it makes a notable difference. So, use it for us. With it, like has been mentioned, you can bold stuff like headings, italicise stuff like radio transmissions, ship names, and thoughts, add a horizontal rule to add to a transition, and impliment indentation.
I'll focus on the last one. Indentation - the use of indents - is just a good thing to do. Thankfully, you separated your paragraphs, and so things were not hard to read. However, indention can still give it that professional feel.

Watch that flow. You had some wonderful run-on sentenses in there that just took away from the read a bit. Grammar is an important thing to get right. Make sure you do.

Your descriptions were actually pretty good. But in places you started to get cliche - like the repetition of things mentioned in the books and just general information that should have been included as something other than an explenation - and that doesn't look right. Also, you had little in the way of setting details. I could barely picture what this place looked like; or what condition the Marines were in. Make sure you get those kinds of details across.

Always spell out those numbers. Unless it is one of the few exceptions, which I will point out if I see, spell out minor numbers. Reads a lot better when they're in text instead of digits.

Make sure to keep things realistic. No dual wielding ARs. Like thedarkfire said, there is a reason they are two-handed waepons.

A Hunter's FRC less powerful than a Banshee's ? Not any more. Now it is a stream of FR goodness. I'de say that could do an equal amount of damage.


Overall, this was actually pretty good. But, it does need to be smoothed over in a few places. So do that for us- use the advice you are given to improve your writing. Good luck.
_________________
-MCC

[Wiley K.]

How about Elites dual-weilding Carbines/BR's? Weapons look light enough that an Elite could probably pull it off.

I liked it. Just watch the flow and use the Code and you'll do well

[MC's Cousin]

I actually had a discussion about this with a friend of mine (he was thirteen) the other day. He was saying how cool it would be to duel-wield this and that.
Well, it's all about practicality. Sure, you could have an Elite or Spartan hold a two-handed weapon in each hand, but the accuracy would be pretty crappy. A pistol or a SMG isn't long or cumbersome, and some can be easily held with one hand - at least for a Spartan (other than Miranda, we don't see humans dual-wielding).
Now, this friend of mine was getting way too excited over how great dual Swords, or Shotguns, or Rocket Launchers would be. Now, while it is fully possible to hold two swords, and would be good to see at the right time in a story, that would just be uneven gameplay.

Now, I could see an Elite or Spartan dual wielding them, but only for a short amount of time. Regular humans . . . only if they had them propped up against something, and then what good would it do anyway?
_________________
-MCC

[Ad Infinitum]

Howdy all.

Thanks a lot for your comments Much appreciated.

I'm new to this place, mind. So I didn't know the code at all...I wasn't even registered when I wrote it, or when I posted it. I'll make a mental note to give the code a whiz.

Also, I wrote this story a long time ago just for my own personal amusement. Although I included gauss 'Hogs, I actually hadn't played H2 at this point. I'd just seen one of those action figures of a 'hog with a gauss strapped to the back instead of the chaingun, heh. Hence the inconsistency of the Hunter gun (also remember I upgraded the Banshee to include a shield, though I notice nobody picked up on that little tweak )

H2 rumours also provoked me giving a couple of the 'rines twin guns. I said it screwed their aim, except for one, who got wasted anyways

Also, there might be a few errors in there because I had to strip it down to meet the filesize limit That disappointed me. I had to cut out about 3 paragraphs and more...so much cutting for time.

Might I ask MC's Cousin for a clarification as to what he meant by 'run-on sentences'...I'm not sure I quite followed what you were saying.


All in all thanks for the comments. I write for hobby (and possibly future dollar value heh), and I'll try and take this on board. Hopefully I'll find time and/or inspiration to write more Halo FF (and hopefully make it short enough to all fit in the submissionbox this time! ).
I'll head off to read some other stuff now. Thought I'd just say hi and thanks.

~Infinitum

[thedarkfire]

Your banchee shields were accpetable to me because you made the Marines suprised by their presence.

Have you seen the size of some of these stories? You definatly could have added those other three paragraphs.

[MC's Cousin]

The limit is a solid 32k. And not by what your word processor tells you either. MS Word, and other suchs WPs, add all sorts of stuff to the file that inflate its size on your computer - it's less when stripped down.
And hey; if you have trouble fitting it in, just split it up and expand each piece. You don't have to stuff everything into one chapter. If it won't fit, break it up so you keep all of your material. And mistakes don't really have anything to do with that. Just proofread and make the quality the best it can be.

Actually, in First Strike, when Fred, Kelly, and Joshua are in their Banshees headed towards the Covie encampment, the books does make reference to a "improvised shield."
In this case, I, too, accepted it because you had your Marines un-used to it, acting in surprise with a line like "They didn't use to have those." I was thinking about posting about that when I read that line, actually.

As for not knowing about the Code - your excuse if not worth much. It is clearly linked at the top of the submission form itself. Says "Read this or else!" in bold letters. Yeah. That's where the Code is explained. But, since I'm so nice, I have it in my signature for your instance access. Check it out.

Run-ons? By that, I meant sentenses that did not flow well: went on without a punctuation break, or carrried out an idea too long, or included too much information in one phrase, or just had too many different parts/phrases in it. Make sense? -

- If not, just ask more. That is what I am here for.
_________________
-MCC