The Near & Far Horizon | January 2025

Oh boy. I fucked up.

So let me just rip the band-aid off right now and own to my mistake: I am going to be deleting everything I’ve written for Episode Four of The DOOM Chronicles, and I am very sorry. Also, to be clear, this does not mean that I’m abandoning The DOOM Chronicles. I just need to make a course correction.

My mind cannot be changed on this, and it was a terrible decision I was forced to make. One of two terrible decisions.

Here’s the second one: I am deleting my Half-Life stories. Also very sorry.

This is probably one of the biggest fuckups of my ‘career’, such as it is. If you have decided not to just throw up your hands and walk away from me because this was the last straw, then please keep reading and I will explain what happened.

A few different factors went into these decisions, but the part where I fucked up was twice over. In the beginning, I originally intended for there to be three protagonists for The DOOM Chronicles. Ultimately, I opted to axe the third, but went back on that decision. That was my first fuckup. The second was that I very much wanted to novelize The Callisto Protocol, but decided against it, and then decided to make Episode Four have the same energy The Callisto Protocol was going to have…and then I began novelizing The Callisto Protocol anyway. And now I’ve got two stories that have the same energy and atmosphere and I don’t even have enough time for one.

Those are my fuckups and I am sorry.

As for the rest, I would say the biggest driving factor behind this decision is that…I think I want to tell different stories now. I’m 36 now, and while I would have gladly, even gratefully continued to freak out over kickass action and horror games, books, and movies to the end of my days, that is not what happened. StarCraft - Survival showed me I wanted to do something different nowadays, something more character-driven. But also just a different vibe, a different universe. It’s hard to describe.

With regards specifically to Half-Life and why I have opted to just dismantle and abandon the series, and IP, completely, is because something hit me recently. I saw that there were supposedly credible rumors that Half-Life 3 was going to be announced in December, and…I wasn’t excited. I didn’t care. And I honestly kind of wanted to. But I didn’t. And I still don’t. Which told me that I’m done with the Half-Life universe. I’m really sorry if you were enjoying it. In truth, I wanted to finish it, but the cost was too great. That sounds dramatic, but I do have some kind of problem with focus and motivation. Trying to make myself write books I really don’t want to essentially fucks up my entire life until it’s done. It is self-perpetuating torment.

With this in mind, how about I go over what was going to happen? Scroll down to the bottom and I’ll give an outline of the broader points of what was going to happen in the series now that I’m not going to write it.

Okay, we’ve gotten that out of the way, much as I still feel guilty about it. How about we have ourselves a little State of Union?

I can’t say that I’m finished with fan fiction, and not merely out of a sense of responsibility. I still feel the urges, the yearning, especially for newer games. And a few older ones I never got around to. Here’s where I’m at with everything:

• THE DOOM CHRONICLES: So what’s actually going to happen? Well, I’ll be taking down the chapters written from both FFNet and WattPad, add in an explanation for WTF happened, and then I think I’m going to just let it sit for a time. Maybe I’ll come back at the beginning of 2026 or maybe when the new DOOM comes out or maybe it’ll be random. But when I do come back, here’s what will happen: I will be picking up the narrative six months after the end of Episode Three, and it will be from Jack’s perspective. I’m not going to say anything else, because God alone knows what might change in my head between now and whenever I get back to it, but at least rest assured that I do still have a solid idea in mind for this series. Where it’s going, what’s left, and how it ends. Like, we will get there. Just with Jack and Kyra, much as I loved Eric.

• STARCRAFT - SURVIVAL: This one is probably going to be my main for awhile. Like, man, this one slapped me in the face with inspiration once I finally got them off Mar Sara. To be honest, there’s still a LOT to go. I just really love this idea and I love these characters and I love the ideas yet to come. And I love StarCraft. Expect more of this.

• THE CALLISTO PROTOCOL: I am going to be making an effort to continue with this one, since it’s technically the ‘easiest’, in that I can just sit down, play the video game, and write what comes to me. I got plans for this one. I’ve known what I’m going to do for this novelization and I know what I’m going to do for the sequel, and I’ve got a very rough idea of what I want to do for another sequel. After that? Dunno. But I feel good about this. Even if this IP was a flop, and we’ll never get another scrap of new story or lore ever again, I like what we got, and I like the ideas it gave me.

• HALO: Time for the big question. I still technically have two loose ends and a lot of promised stories. Right now, here is what it’s looking like from my perspective. I still want to write at least three sequels to Gathering Darkness. I have three solid ideas for Kane. I feel the opposite about Greg and Izzy. They’re going to appear in future stories, but they won’t have their own stories anymore. I’m sorry if you were looking forward to that, but it’s just so much easier to write about Kane than it is Greg. I do intend to have another series staring a new protagonist (or, strictly speaking, old), and will take place during and then after the original Halo Trilogy. I want to have a big focus on Action/Horror, with an emphasis on horror. I don’t know how long it’s going to be, but even now, this idea still holds much appeal to me.

• KOTOR: My last loose thread presently open. I still want to write KOTOR 3, and I still intend to. I doubt I’ll write anything else Star Wars related besides that. This being said, though, Seth will definitely be a part of my KOTOR 3. Nova, Seri, Yex, and Maya, too. No question.

• WHAT ELSE?: That’s it. That’s everything I currently have. Which leaves the obvious question of, what else? I’m less certain than ever, but here’s a few things I can say.

  • FAR CRY PRIMAL: I fucking love this game and that love seems to be enduring. I began work on a fan fiction set in this game last year and I really like what I wrote and thought of. If I were going to select a new fan fic to do next, it would be this, no question.

  • STARFOX: I’ll do something for this eventually, I know I will. I know that I one idea FOR SURE I want to do, because I got permission to rewrite my most favorite StarFox fan fic of all time by the creator herself, and I am absolutely doing that.

  • RED FACTION: I’ll admit that this one still speaks to me. If I do a story, it’ll be about another miner during the original rebellion and his struggle for survival.

  • QUAKE 4: I don’t know why, genuinely, but this game still rattles around when I go shaking my ‘fan fic ideas’ can.

  • ORIGINAL FICTION: I still intend to write more fiction similar to The Shadow Wars. I’ve got some ideas tucked away still, and I’ll get to them at some point. It’s definitely going to be heavy on the Sci-Fi/Horror.

And that’s it.

Man, that’s not much. I’m probably missing something, but given what I had to do with The DOOM Chronicles, it’s probably a good thing. Now, if you want to talk about Half-Life…

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Let’s do something I’ve never really done before: let’s spoil a series I was going to write. But hey, given what happened with Epistle Three, it feels appropriate.

I’m writing this with the assumption that you’ve read Bishop’s War and what was written of Bishop’s Lament. I’ll list the pertinent facts. I’ll be showing, shall we say, the most ambitious version.

• BISHOP’S LAMENT

  • Eric and friends would have made it to the coastal rebel site Alpha Labs and spent a time working with Radek and other Citizens completing a series of missions helping pave the way for the upcoming rebellion. This would also be done to prove himself to his superiors again, namely Lara’s father, as he left on less than reasonable terms. This would be the third part, GRUNT WORK.

  • The final part of this book would have been REVOLUTION RISING, in which Freeman disappears for a week and the revolution comes to City 17. Eric and the others would pretty much just have been running around in the chaos, attacking the Combine, rescuing the Citizens, cracking a few Headcrab shelling centers, a Combine HQ, and some other unique encounters. Ultimately it would have ended the same place HL2 ends.

  • Eric’s big secret of what happened to him that caused him to walk away from the Rebellion was that he had managed to very successfully infiltrate the Combine and get some crucial intel, but at the cost of getting promotions and being forced to commit atrocities against the Citizenry. Eric had also fallen in love with a fellow freedom fighter, Kira. These two facts ultimately culminated in Eric performing a raid on a Combine facility that had extremely crucial intelligence, getting the intel but then getting caught before escaping, and Eric being forced to convince those who caught them that he was in fact a double agent, due to just how crucial it was to get the intel. He was then forced to prove his loyalty to the Combine by executing everyone there with him, including Kira. Naturally, this fucked him up. This would have been revealed when Lara finally pushed him on a serious relationship and then they would have agreed to a relationship. It would be symbolic of Eric essentially stepping back from the ledge of suicide and having some hope again.

• PIECES OF DYSTOPIA

  • This would have picked up immediately after Bishop’s Lament. It would basically cover Eric’s, Lara’s, and Radek’s escape from City 17. It would have focused on them overcoming obstacles, fighting zombies and wildlife and Combine, and rescuing Citizens. Mostly it would have emphasized the rescues and getting people out of the City 17 to the White Forest.

  • There was to be a mission in a ‘power plant’ rescuing a bunch of Vortigaunts from the VortiCells, which are chambers the Combine use to forcefully and painfully use Vortigaunts as living batteries.

  • I was going to incorporate cut content in the form of weapons, locations, events, and hostiles.

  • There was one scene I know I was going to write. It would have been the climax, an escape through the canals on several hoverboats as the City came down around them and the Combine tried to kill them, as Eric would have on him that crucial piece of tech he helped get to Alpha Lab. There was definitely going to be a scene where they had to drive through a forest of Barnacles hanging from an overpass.

• KNIGHT’S RUN

  • So this is where things diverge. This was going to feature a brand new protagonist named Greg Knight. He is a man in a desperate situation who agreed to be a research subject…for Aperture Science. Yes, basically, it was going to be Portal, with a different protagonist. I actually began writing this, originally named PORTALS, in 2008. Unfortunately, I ended up losing everything I’d written to an extremely rare glitch and gave up on it.

  • Greg would have found a malfunctioning turret at one point and, out of loneliness, would have rigged up something to carry it around on his back and talk to it.

  • He would also have eventually found another test subject, a woman, Jena, and romance would have ensued.

  • It kind of sounds stupid to type out, because (God I hope) it would have come out a lot better actually writing it, but I wanted to have him have a really antagonistic and vocal relationship with GLaDOS. And at one point he’d call out “Hey computer bitch, you still there?” To which she would have responded “Hey Greg, are you still dead?”, which would have planted a paranoid seed of doubt in his head that he might be comatose or in purgatory or something. Hopefully that doesn’t sound stupid.

  • This last part WILL sound stupid but that’s because it kind of was supposed to be. I remember from the game GLaDOS rattling off information about the portal gun, and she says to never get the gun wet, but gets cut off before explaining why. And it sounded like the consequences would be really bad or intense. So that gave me an idea that culminated in them being at basically a dead end, and deciding to throw the gun into water to see what happens. They do and it glitches and creates a portal that swallows them up and spits them out elsewhere, ending the story. So basically exactly the same ending as Portal 1.

• BLACK MESA IN THE WHITE FOREST

  • Eric and crew get to White Forest. The primary focus of this narrative would have been twofold. It would have focused on Eric, Lara, and Radek teaming up with Sheckley and Griggs to hunt Advisors. The second would have been Greg getting spit out somewhere in the more abandoned parts of White Forest, him wandering around, looking for his lover, who did not get spit out in the same place as him, and fighting Combine.

  • I admittedly went back and forth on how to handle this one. At one point I was going to write a completely separate story featuring Sheckley & Griggs. The original version didn’t have Greg and focused more on the defense of White Forest. Mostly I waffled about Greg because I wanted his reveal to be stronger, and it comes in the next book.

• OUTPOST 23

  • This one would have been a defense story. I got the idea from the part in Episode Two where you drive around looking for caches and come to that junkyard. I thought it’d be pretty cool to write a story about a small group of rebels tasked with coming to a similar type of place that had been converted into a rebel outpost and then lost in the chaos, and their task was to take it back.

  • The core plot I settled on was Eric, Lara, Radek, and a few others would be tasked with retaking Outpost 23, which is an important staging area in the war. However, as they begin bringing it back online, the Combine start trying to take it. And they get increasingly desperate, to the point where it becomes ridiculous. They eventually realize there’s something beneath the outpost the Combine is desperate to get at. The big reveal is that it’s Greg, who is trying to survive in a big underground mine, and they’re desperate to get him because he has something they’ve been looking for for a long time now: nanotechnology.

  • So I imagine that seems kind of random, but this was a plot point I’d decided on awhile ago. I asked myself, how do those medical boxes on the wall heal you in Half-Life? How does Chell heal after getting shot? The answer is nanotech. Black Mesa and Aperture Science both had very rudimentary forms of nanotech unlocked, and the nanotech Black Mesa utilized degraded to the point where there would exist no traces of it within like an hour. Aperture Science on the other hand had gotten a bit further, and the Combine had since learned about this. And they would be desperately seeking it, in both Greg and Jena.

  • It was also about this time that creatures from Race X (featured in Half-Life: Opposing Force) would begin appearing and fighting both the Combine and the Rebels.

• ABSOLUTE ZERO/TERMINUS

  • About here is where it gets a lot less certain. See, the idea I had for this series at its core was: one game - one story. So Bishop’s War covered Half-Life 1, Bishop’s Lament was HL2, Pieces of Dystopia was HL2:E1, you get it. Obviously, this ran out after Episode Two. I always intended to take my cues from Episode Three and, possibly, HL3. But, clearly, that never manifested. So I didn’t think as much about this one as the others.

  • Originally, the concept was called Absolute Zero. Eric and his crew, now including Greg, would have flown out to somewhere in the frozen northern polar regions to find something very important to the war effort.

  • In its final incarnation, Terminus, the plot would have been: Eric and his crew, now including Greg, are finally brought into the fold of the endgame plan the Rebels have been cooking up for years now. Satellites. The satellite you launched in HL1 and HL2 would have factored into this. Essentially, there was secret research being run parallel to Black Mesa, anti-teleportation technology. My memory is bad now, but I think this was even spoken of in HL: Decay. The crucial piece of tech Eric protects in Bishop’s Lament was the last piece of tech they needed to finalize their weapon: an anti-teleportation satellite network. Essentially, it would encase the Earth in a field that would make it impossible for the Combine to teleport in, meaning they might actually get a shot at winning the war. Some specific highlights from this would have been:

    • Battling and then temporarily cutting a deal with Race X, as they are on Earth looking for something the Combine stole. They help them get it back, and Race X helps them with their own mission. It would have been really cool to write about working alongside these aliens.

    • A search and rescue operation for Adrian Shepard, and Adrian becoming a main character.

    • Gina and/or Colette from Decay would have featured in this story in some capacity.

    • Traveling the globe to repair and launch three key satellites needed to finish the network.

    • Greg looking for and finding Jena.

  • Ultimately, they would have launched the satellites, taken out some massive Combine HQ on Earth to throw them into disarray, celebrate, and then prepare to retake their world. Freeman and Alyx would be missing, but they were supposed to do that anyway.

It feels strange to type all this out. I’m sure I’m missing things, this is an idea I began seriously pondering in 2004. I am genuinely sorry to abandon it, but I need to stop pretending that I can finish this series. The love and the drive just aren’t there anymore. I’m hearing even more rumors that supposedly HL3 is in production at Valve. I imagine I will play it, for the sake of completion, but…maybe not. Maybe it’s been too long. Maybe they should have just made the motherfucking Episode Three and then HL3 and we’d be sitting pretty on Half-Life 5 right now. Obviously I’m still a little bitter, but not really that much anymore. In truth, I’m sure there were legitimate reasons to do what they did, and then not to do what they did. Even if I think they were not great reasons…I’m sure I could understand some of them.

In the end, I guess the last thing I’ll say is that I’m grateful to Valve and everyone who made the Half-Life games, the Portal games, Left 4 Dead, too, those were fun. I’m grateful I got to play those games and that they made me feel what they did.

Hopefully you can think something similar of me.

8 Years of DOOM & Updates

Well, here we are again.

It feels weird to be here. I used to update once a month, but now it’s twice yearly if I’m lucky. I just have a lot less to say these days, I guess.

The primary thing I want to say is: Sorry for being so terrible about updates. I mentioned in my last update that I was going into 2024 a very busy person. That was true, and it remains true. I basically started the year with a pile of books that needed to get written, and that’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve made noticeable progress, but I’m still drowning, even now, six months in. So that’s a big part of the reason why I’m so radio silent.

The good news that I’m able to dredge up is that I’m finally finding myself moving into a position to where I can work on other things. I really want to get back to writing original sci-fi/horror. I have ideas and I would fucking love to have some more novels that I can admit to writing publicly. And it’s been a solid decade since I began The Shadow Wars, so I’ve had a lot of practice and become a better writer. I’m excited. It’s still a little ways off, though. Definitely not this year, perhaps next year.

Now, to talk about my fan fiction stuff…

• THE DOOM CHRONICLES: Still hoping to get this one written by the end of the year, despite everything. Part of the problem I’m having with this one is that I originally conceived of it as a way of utilizing the creative juice The Callisto Protocol was giving me, since I had originally decided against novelizing the game…and then I started novelizing the game. So suddenly I find myself writing about two sci-fi/horror stories set in a prison with a nightmare outbreak happening.

• STARCRAFT - SURVIVAL: Sometimes, I lose 100% of my motivation to write something. This happened with Survival. When this happens, I usually hold back on taking it down, because sometimes I’m just burned out on idea, and I just need to step back for a bit. Then the passion will return. Survival is one of those situations. I actually came close to taking this down after a year of not updating it, but something stayed my hand, and I’m really glad now. I’ve managed to get a few more chapters out and I have more that I intend to push out this year. I’m feeling this one again.

• HALF-LIFE - BISHOP’S LAMENT: Sometimes I lose 100% motivation in a project and it goes the other direction. I believe this is what’s happening with Half-Life. Unfortunately, since my last update, I’ve felt literally zero motivation to even attempt to write it. I don’t think I even opened the document one time in the last six months. I’m still kind of reluctant to actually give up on the series, but I can’t deny that with each passing day, it becomes more tempting to just let it die. I’ve decided to let some more time play out. If we hit 2025 and I haven’t felt anything for it, I’ll take it down and lay it to rest.

• THE CALLISTO PROTOCOL: This one hasn’t been updated much, but I still am into it. I’ve been implementing new ideas into the narrative so far, stuff I thought should’ve been in the game, and I have more of that I want to get to. Mostly, though, I really want to get to the sequel. I have a lot of ideas for the sequel. That being said, while The Callisto Protocol isn’t a particularly long game, I am apparently a particularly long-winded author, so I wouldn’t be surprised if my novelization clears 150,000 words easily. I don’t really plan for it to be this way, I just write what makes sense and increasingly ‘what makes sense’ apparently is shitloads of words.

• OTHER FICTION: This is sort of a ‘where I’m at with other ideas I’ve talked about over the years’, in case anyone was looking for something specific.

  • HALO: Should probably talk about this first. So I have two open-ended series that I began, one in The Will To Live and another with Gathering Darkness. I intended these to be side series lashed onto a primary series following Alex Steele. Ideas have come and gone since I began Nerves of Steele in 2019 again and ultimately killed it. For 20 years I’ve had notions of my ultimate Halo series, but this year I think I finally had a turning point. I’m not willing to give up completely on my Halo series, but I have finally admitted to myself that the bulk of my ideas have passed on, I guess you could say. 343i really fucked up Halo as a franchise, and my interest in the series began dying with Halo 4, and that’s a solid decade of decay. The main takeaway from this is that I’ve always loved mixing horror into Halo, and the way my ideal series was set up would require a lot of action in my action-to-horror ratio of narrative, before finally getting to the horror. So basically, what this boils down to is: I still want to write a big Halo series, it’s just going to be a lot more horror than action.

  • KOTOR III: Still want to do this. It’s also still not impossible that I might write another And There Was Another, I have ideas that come and bother me sometimes.

  • STARFOX: I still want to do something with StarFox, but I’m wrestling with how that’ll manifest.

And that’s it. Everything else drifts in the ether. I don’t want to say the other ideas are gone, because what is gone? All of the IPs I write for or wanted to write for still exist, and sometimes they make strange, seemingly impossible comebacks. Just last month one of my favorite games, The Thing 2002, just got announced as being remade. This is, by far, one of the unlikeliest games to get a remake ever, in my eyes at least. The Suffering finally got released on GOG after thirteen years. Red Faction 1 got ported to PS4 and Red Faction 3 got a full remaster. DOOM and Gears of War are both getting what look to be kickass new games next year. There’s rumors that they’re remastering Halo 1 YET AGAIN. (Which I’m actually cool with). Quake 1 & 2 got full remasters, Quake 4 still might at least get ported. Dead Space got a mindblowing remake.

I suppose what I’m trying to convey is that I’m not giving up hope. I’m still sorting things out, but I’m also still pretty messed up. I’d say even now, in my better times, I still feel utter, hopeless despair at least three or four times an average week. I’ve learned I’m broken in some fundamental, emotional way, and that while I can definitely do things to make it better, it’s a thing that you don’t cure, you live with. And living with it…can get exceptionally, sometimes monumentally, difficult. Fan fiction used to bring unfettered joy, but not anymore. I still feel the good feelings, but they’re a lot rarer now, and I already struggle a lot to write my original fiction. The idea of struggling intensely to produce what is supposed to be my leisure activity? It’s rough. It’s a very rough thing to struggle with.

I’m not so much defending myself as explaining myself. In truth, my readers have always been pretty damned good to me. I try to reward that, but I know I’ve fallen off very hard over the past half decade. It sucks, but I’m basically grappling with my own existence on a semi-regular basis. It’s stupid, honestly. I wish I could just shove it all aside and go back to how I was when I was sixteen. Yeah I was a lot more prone to depression and rage, but I felt things so strongly so often. I was a lot more motivated. Or maybe that’s just nostalgia and rose-tinted glasses. I’m 36 now. In some ways I do actually still feel 16, but in other ways I sometimes feel 56. And some days I feel 96.

I suppose what I’m really trying to get across is…it isn’t all being ignored on a whim. I do still care. I just…struggle. With a lot of things. But I do still care, I still like doing this, I still believe in the core idea of writing for dead fandoms that I give a shit about and providing a unique kind of entertainment for some people. It’s clearly pretty difficult to find anyone writing about The Callisto Protocol, so some people have gotta be happy about my novelization. Anyway, I’m kind of rambling at this point.

What I want to leave off with is I’m still glad to be here, doing this, and I’m still glad that you’re here, reading what I’m doing. I hope things go well for you, whoever might be reading this. Wish me luck.

-Obsidian

The Far Horizon | Going Into 2024

I originally had considered waiting to do this until January 1st, but things are almost certainly going to be the same then as they are now, so here we go.

Um, 2023 was a busy year.

The situation that abruptly cropped up over summer was finally resolved, and positively, so that was nice. That being said, I now find myself in a position where me making my writing work, in terms of paying my bills, is more important than ever before. On the whole, I’m good, at this point it’s now more that I want to maintain that goodness. Recent world and economic realities have made me more nervous about the future as opposed to less. Which means continued hard work unrelated to my fan fictions, unfortunately.

I just read over my post from the beginning of 2023 and I’m kind of depressed by how little has changed in these eleven months. Most of it I could have just copy/pasted.

Clearly, I’m still rather distant from my fan fiction. I barely managed to update Bishop’s Lament and I literally haven’t updated Survival once this year. That being said, I don’t have nothing for you, I’ve thankfully got something.

Firstly, I’m launching Episode Four of The DOOM Chronicles on December 10th instead of January 1st. The reason for this is because it occurred to me that the 30th anniversary for the original release of the original DOOM is nearly upon us! So yeah, keep on the lookout for that. I think some people are going to be really happy with the new protagonist, Eric Crowe, because he’s a lot closer to the modern Doomslayer, and it’s going to be a lot darker and more brutal. I very much hope to have Episode Four finished during 2024. When and if I manage that, we shall see what happens. I’m almost certain that there won’t be another big break because the next two Episodes after this one also focus on Eric and also aren’t particularly long. They’ll be closer in length to Episode Two.

Secondly, I am going to try hard to finish Bishop’s Lament in 2024. I feel bad for not having it done by now, but honestly, besides the problems I ran into earlier this year and general business, I am just bottoming out on motivation to finish it. I don’t really know what happened, but that’s the current reality. I’m concerned that I might just finally have moved past Half-Life and I no longer care about it, but…I also thought that back in 2014. And yet I wrote Bishop’s War when the urge came back hard. Will that happen again? I truly can’t say, so I’m reluctant to tear it down and give up, but I’m also reluctant to leave it up in its unfinished state knowing it might take a really, really long time to finish. So basically, I will be trying to recapture the spark and at the very least finish Bishop’s Lament.

I’m still really flip-flopping on StarCraft - Survival. It’s kind of the same situation as with Bishop’s Lament, reluctant to leave it up because my interest might be finished, but reluctant to take it down because I still care about it in some capacity, and may care a lot more in the future. There are parts of the story I still very much look forward to writing, but whenever I’ve sat down to work on it, nothing has come for a long time.

The conclusion that I came to in 2022, about being depressed and it sucking away my caring for fan fiction ideas, still seems very true. I’m beginning to think that perhaps I should try to lean into newer ideas, try writing something new instead of old. It’s hard to piece it together, honestly. Being inside my head is…confusing.

I’m more stable nowadays than I was a few years ago, but it’s obvious that I still have some serious depression and anxiety problems. I’ve been struggling with just kind of…not caring? That’s my biggest problem, it’s hard to care about things these days, and I know to some people that sounds really fantastic, but I assure you, it’s not. That old notion of I’d rather feel pain than nothing at all? It’s mostly true. Depression can seriously just suck the joy out of everything, even the most basic things, and I’m operating under the hope that at some point, I’ll have some kind of massive reversal. That my caring will come back, and I’ll want to write fan fiction as desperately as I used to.

I don’t know if this is a permanent change. I sure hope not. For now, almost all of my focus on writing has to go into my bill-paying writing.

For now, I hope you all have good holidays and a good 2024. I’ll start posting Episode Four - Prison is Hell on December 10th and try to keep up with it, and also try to get more done on Bishop’s Lament.

The final thing I want to say is that, in the vein of leaning more into pursuing new fan fiction ideas, The Callisto Protocol has really been calling to me for the past few months. For obvious reasons, I’m reluctant to promise anything, but I have some (I think) cool ideas for a novelization and for a sequel (since we’re obviously never getting a sequel). I’ll let it marinate some more and see what happens, but if you’re a fan of that game, let me know what you’d think of me taking a shot at writing it.

-Obsidian

7 Years of DOOM & An Update

Here we are once again, at the anniversary of The DOOM Chronicles launching way back in 2016.

It really bothers me how 2016 is now seven years ago and it truly does not feel that long ago, but at the same time it also feels like two decades ago?

I don’t understand time anymore.

Anyway, 2023 has been a weird year.

I began the year in a weird place and decided to step back from everything for awhile, and I did do that. I just put fan fiction away and didn’t think about it for a good three months. And then, finally, in April, I one day thought to myself, “It would be really nice to write some Bishop’s Lament”.

And I did. Managed to get a few chapters up. And in April, going into May, I found myself thinking that I could pick back up Bishop’s Lament and StarCraft, and that perhaps I could even start working on Episode Four of The DOOM Chronicles in time for, well, this very day.

I actually did some work, planning out the entire fourth episode and making some cover art. Here, check it out.

I know, it’s not the best, but it was the best I could do given the circumstances and it really captured what I will be going for in the fourth episode, which I’ll expand on more below.

Now comes the ‘but’ part. I was gearing up to get back into fan fiction, but…then I found myself in a situation last month, very suddenly, where the other parts of my life abruptly were calling for my attention. You ever prepare yourself to do something at the start of the day, something fun, because although you know you’ve got plans elsewhere in the day, you know there’s time for something fun? And then, suddenly, an emergency comes crashing in, and all at once you know there’s just absolutely no way you can squeeze that fun thing in anymore? It’s just 100% out of the question to make it happen during that day.

Well, that day is 2023 for me, and that fun thing was ‘writing literally any fan fiction’.

Those plans I was toying with abruptly became more or less impossible. There’s just too much to do and the mental workload became too much. Which really fucking sucks, because it’s obvious to me that I still really want to write fan fiction. I get some kind of urge to write something related to fan fiction at least once a day, sometimes just a flash, sometimes strong enough that I consider derailing the day and just working on it.

So, where does that actually leave me for present fan fictions?

For Bishop’s Lament, I can say that I will at least attempt to piece together some time here or there to get a chapter out. Part of the problem there is that I have admittedly lost a LOT of steam for Half-Life. I’m hoping to get it back at some point, given I went through like a three year phase of not caring about Half-Life at all anymore, then I wrote Bishop’s War.

For StarCraft - Survival? I came very close to just giving up on this in May. I sat down at one point and reread everything I’d written so far with the intent to get back into it, and I just…couldn’t. It’s weird because I still look forward to writing certain parts in the future narrative, but when I actually go to do it I just blank out. I don’t know. I guess for this story’s sake it’s probably good that I’m basically tapped out for writing time for the rest of the year.

For The DOOM Chronicles…

I covered a lot of this in last year’s post about the story. I’ll get a little more in detail. I want Episode Four, which will be titled PRISON IS HELL, to introduce Marine Eric Crowe. He’s brutal, savage, and maybe a little sadistic. Like both Jack and Kyra, he was booted out of the Marines for doing the right thing, but unlike them, he really got the shit end of the stick and got imprisoned on an asteroid-based penal colony owned by the UAC where, you guessed it, they do illegal experiments on the prisoners.

This one takes place narratively during Episode One, but it’s a self-contained story and won’t complicate things. Basically, it’s Eric’s origin story. If I had stuck with my original plan, this actually would have been Episode Three, but we are where we are. It’s essentially going to be about Eric escaping the prison as it’s overrun by demons. Pretty straightforward plot.

So far, the games that I’ve played that have taken place in a prison, The Suffering, Escape From Butcher Bay, The Callisto Protocol, have all been really good. Well…The Callisto Protocol was at least decent. I’d say it’s the closest in terms of atmosphere for what I’ll be going for with this episode, and that’s why the cover art is an altered promotional still from the game.

As much as it pains me to say so, I’ll have to indeed wait until 2024 to start posting this one. I’m hoping that I can start writing it in December, and then have at least the first few chapters ready to go, so I can post the first chapter on 01.01.2024, just like I did with Episode Three back in 2020.

Sorry I don’t have better news for you, life’s just busy and I’m also ill-equipped to handle it.

The Far Horizon | January 2023

Entering 2023, I find myself in an unenviable position with regards to my fan fiction, and how I feel about it.

For me, writing exists on something of a spectrum. Why I write falls in between two extremes. I write for my readers, and I write for myself. Sometimes I’ll write largely for my readers, and sometimes I will write largely for myself. But over the past year, as time has passed and I have approached my fan fiction again and again, I find myself asking the same question: who am I writing this for?

Several of my ideas are for dying, dead, or even stillborn fandoms, meaning that there is not much of an audience to write for. For the most part, this no longer bothers me as much as it used to. And, in truth, if I cared enough about what I was writing about, then it would be worth it. Gone Home has a tiny fandom and even now, five years later, a mere 90 people have reached the end of the story. However, it was completely worth writing. Novelizing Gone Home is one of my favorite writing experiences.

Earlier this year I made the assertion that I still cared about my fan fiction ideas, it was just that I was depressed, thus making it seem like I no longer cared about them. This is still likely the truth, but as time has continued to pass, I’ve had to face the reality that not only am I busy with my life and with my job, but I am extremely burned out on, well, everything. But especially writing.

When I finally started writing Bishop’s Lament and took a shot on StarCraft - Survival, I felt really good about those stories in the beginning. But then I hit the wall that I always hit, the one where I get tired of writing them, and where, unless really specific and, frankly, esoteric and unpredictable conditions arise, updating them becomes a godforsaken chore.

So where does that actually leave us?

I’m not sure, admittedly. Practically speaking, I think it leaves us with: I am going to step back for awhile, and update when I can. So, essentially, what I’ve been doing, just more honestly.

The thing is, I still care about my work, and about the people who want to read it.

So this takes us to the question of: So what am I actually going to do going forward, in a broader sense?

From where I’m standing now, this is what I want.

I view my internal creative landscape like islands in a sea. As time passes, islands rise and islands fall. Some of them are persistent, remaining no matter what. These islands are fairly large, and revisiting them, I discover there’s a lot left to find in most cases. Some of these islands are smaller, but there’s still something there worth finding. Some of these islands only appear stable, but as soon as I set foot on them and begin investigating, they crumble into nothing beneath me.

For me, there are five big, solid islands that are here even still today: Halo, Doom, KOTOR, Half-Life, and StarFox. All other islands are of questionable stability. Some, like Quake 4 and Red Faction, still look very stable, but I won’t know until I actually start writing. I may find that there just isn’t enough there to sustain them.

Here’s what I have to say specifically about them, and how I want to approach things from now on.

I still wish to finish The DOOM Chronicles in its entirety. That has both an audience and I still give a shit about it. We’re good there.

I want to finish Half-Life out. While I originally envisioned a larger, longer series, exploring Bishop’s Lament again has made me realize that not only is there not nearly as much of an audience for it as I originally thought there might be, but my own personal interest has dwindled considerably. As it stands, I want to finish out Bishop’s Lament, write stories covering the events of Episodes 1 & 2, and then write one final story to cap the series off. I have what I believe to be a good ending in mind.

My main goal for KOTOR is to write KOTOR III - Heroes of the Old Republic. And There Was Another was a bit of a surprise. I am flip-flopping on whether or not I want to write the sequels to it. Honestly, they aren’t incredibly important to my KOTOR III idea. Ultimately, we shall see.

StarFox. I no longer know how this will manifest. I’ve had several ideas come and go. I know I’ve got to write something but I just don’t know what.

And, finally, Halo. This is the big one. However I approach Halo, I know that it will be a monumental undertaking. Given my failure last time, I’m reluctant to try again soon. I know that it’s going to require a lot of planning and work. Personally, I’d like to clear a few things off the table first. I’d like to wrap up Half-Life and KOTOR, and make some more progress on DOOM, before even attempting Halo.

Also, StarCraft - Survival, given I started it. I’ve run into trouble with it recently, as evidenced by the lack of updates. I still have several ideas for it, but my faith is faltering. I will try to keep it going. This is precisely why I am reluctant to start new ideas at random.

What about the rest?

I was recently thinking to myself: Why do I write fan fiction? Yes, I believe in the journey, but I also believe in the destination. Or, if not the ultimate destination, which is always death, then larger destinations. Where am I going with these plans I have been making for years and years now? The answer, I know, is that I want to be caught up. I would like to finally finish out all of my old ideas, so that when new ideas come to me, I can examine them without hesitation, because I have a responsibility to the older ideas.

Someday, I would like to have everything finished, and then get a fresh new idea, and jump onto it.

Admittedly, given the scope of my Halo project alone, I’m not sure how long it will take me to get there and I believe that, for a long time at least, I will ultimately have to settle for eventually only having my Halo universe be ongoing, and then working on something new on the side.

And so there we are. For now, I’m stepping back to focus on my life, and I’ll update when I can.

It’s a miserable place to be, in regards to how I feel about my fan fiction. I wish that I felt better, and that my brain was less broken. I still have hope that my life will get better, and that I will manage to be healthier overall. But that time is not now.

6 Years of DOOM & A General Update

This post will be divided into three portions, the first being about The DOOM Chronicles, the second being about where I’m at with fan fiction in general, and the third being an examination of my fan fic ideas.

Let’s talk DOOM.

It was on this day, July 3rd, six decades ago, way back in 2016, that I began writing what will (ideally) be my final incarnation of DOOM, and my final fan fiction in the DOOM fandom.

I found DOOM a really long time ago, back in the late ‘90s, on a friend’s computer. Specifically, it was DOOM II. I remember playing the first level and getting too close to an Imp and some real kind of horror sinking into me as I realized that the wretched sound I was hearing when it attacked was my character’s flesh ripping open. That left an impression. I played the game here and there until my fan fiction craze hit in 2004 and, of course, I took a stab at writing a story for DOOM II. It was Liberate Tutemae ex Inferis, Latin for Save Yourself From Hell, taken directly from Event Horizon. It was a simple story about a group of Marines who land just outside the main Starport that the first episode of DOOM II takes place in. Their goal is basic: get to the center of the Starport where an evac is occurring.

I have an extremely clear memory of laying on a couch in my friend’s basement with a spiral notebook in hand (I used to write everything down in those spiral notebooks because high school bored the shit out of me and I was always dreaming of fan fiction) and planning the characters and chapters of this story with a mechanical pencil.

I began posting the story August 22nd, 2004, and I finished October 8th. It was roughly 13,000 words long. Barely three or four chapters in modern DOOM length.

More DOOM ideas came and went. I wrote a Halo/DOOM crossover called Resurrection. I was going to write a few others, but they never got off the ground. And finally, after experiencing both the original games in their full glory, DOOM 3, Resurrection of Evil, the film (for better or for worse), and finally the four novels (again, for better or for worse), I began writing what would be the original incarnation of what we have now. It was just called Doom and I began posting it on August 10th, 2006, almost two years to the day after that first story. It featured Jack Ward basically as he is now, perhaps a little more religious (he carried a silver cross on a chain throughout the entire trilogy), and largely followed Episode One of what we have now. It took awhile, but I finally finished it up at roughly 70,000 words on March 5th, 2007.

For a long time, I intended to write a trilogy, but it was a rough time, and I kept getting drawn away by other things. There were a few failed attempts to write some DOOM 3 specific fan fictions, but finally, in late 2009, I rebooted my profile, posted a freshly edited DOOM, and began writing DOOM ][: Hell on Earth. I wrote it in a month and then launched right into Final DOOM and…that one didn’t go so well. I forced myself to finish both stories back to back and the work definitely suffered for it. But I finished it and then for awhile just didn’t touch Doom.

There were a few more attempts to get something going, but finally, in July 2016, presumably inspired by DOOM 2016, I got back on it and, well, here we are.

Six years later, uh…I’m obviously pretty burned out on DOOM right now. Which I feel guilty about. As I write this, I’m within sight of finishing Episode Three, or the portion of the novelization covering DOOM II. I definitely made it more complicated for myself by introducing multiple protagonists, but I also wanted to go all out for this one, because like I said, this is it: this is the last DOOM fan fiction I’m gonna do.

Obviously, I can’t be sure of that, (and at some point I intend to do another crossover of Halo/DOOM because of course I want to do that), but the more time goes on, the more sure I become. Although I actually really like the new DOOM games, and I intend to keep playing them, it’s clear they’re going in a direction, narratively, that I’m just not interested in reproducing or mimicking at all. And that’s sort of my thing. 90% of my motivation as a fan fiction author is: Wow this game is so cool to play! I want to translate that feeling into words and share it with other people! There are some exceptions, but this isn’t one of them. It’s controversial, but my favorite DOOM will always be DOOM 3 apparently. It’s just the one that spoke to me the most.

So what’s going to happen when I wrap Episode Three? Well, the first thing is that I’m going on hiatus for, at the very least, a year. And probably until early 2024. I need like a really long break from DOOM. But what about after that?

This next part has some SPOILERS, so, you know, beware.

I waffled for a bit, and some of you may remember I originally intended to have three protagonists for The DOOM Chronicles. The third one was a guy named Eric and he was supposed to represent the terrifying, nihilistic side of DOOM, a side that isn’t really captured in the games, but is entirely hinted at if you were to look at them through a realistic point of view. In some aspects, DOOM is really bleak and hopeless. I wanted a character that was mentally unstable and riding the razor’s edge between ‘I’m too pissed to die’ and ‘just kill me already and get it over with’. After Episode Two proved to be really difficult to write, I ultimately decided to cut the character. But now I’ve come back around to him after talking with a few others and getting some ideas.

When I do come back, it’ll be with a trilogy of shorter episodes focusing on Eric. Jack more represents the kickass action and Kyra more represents the more objective-focused narration. Eric will represent the darker, grittier, punching demons in the skull and tearing off limbs with your bare hands, drenched in gallons of blood aspect of DOOM. He will not be a happy character.

Once his arc is established, we’ll get back to Jack and Kyra and enter the final phase of the Chronicles, which will take a few more episodes. As it stands right now, I’m looking at a total of eleven Episodes (this includes Zero). All of them save for the last, Episode Ten, will focus on being shorter and more manageable. Hopefully. I’ve gotten really long-winded as time has gone on. I’ll be lucky if I can finish this series up before I’m 40.

Now, about the general state of things.

Uh, they’re not good.

At the beginning of the year, I was optimistic about starting a new original sci-fi/horror series and just to be honest right now: that’s off the table. At least for the near future.

As I mentioned in my January update, I’ve grown more pensive with sharing stuff related to my life. It’s probably due to my anxiety, which, for some reason, has gotten worse over the past several years. Some people have pointed out we’re suffering through an ongoing global pandemic, and they’re right, I’m sure it hasn’t helped, but my anxiety became a genuine problem starting a couple of years before then. I’ve always had anxiety, for as long as I can remember, but it was way more manageable before my 30s. I’m not sure what happened, it just…got worse. Like a lot worse. So did my depression.

My life is busy in the sense that the thing I do as a job takes up a lot of time. I don’t really want to talk about it because it’s…complicated. Yeah, let’s just say it’s complicated, but the thing I can say for sure is I’m really happy doing it and it’s related to writing. But it takes up a lot of my time. That, combined with my mental health issues, and other ordinary, regular, everyday life stuff means that there are just a lot of days where I run out of time and/or motivation, and something needs to go on the chopping block in terms of not getting done. It’s basically always fan fiction.

Part of it is burnout, too, and getting older…I think. I don’t know, it’s really hard to tell. That’s the biggest problem, I think. It’s really hard for me to give a shit about…anything some days. I am burned out on DOOM, I know that much, but it’s more than that. I sit down to write it when I have time and most of the time I just…don’t want to. Like I really don’t want to. And then sometimes I do want to, and I squeeze a chapter out.

This is becoming true for most of my fan fiction. I began and quit Iron Lung 2 in like a week. I actually began work on Bishop’s Lament sometime last year, and then put it away again. I took down Nerves of Steele after 2 and a half years of stalled production. And There Was Another and The Will To Live became absolutely hellish to finish.

Sometimes I think to myself, maybe I’m just sick of writing fan fiction? Maybe I should just step away, maybe forever. The thought scares me, so I turn away from it more often than not.

The most recent development in this particular line of thought is that it might not be true. Which may sound like denial, but let me explain.

I try to look at things as logically as I can. I’m the kind of person who can admit it when I fucked up, or change my mind when someone proves that I’m wrong. It doesn’t always work, obviously, and I have a lot of emotional problems thanks to my depression and anxiety, but I’m still capable of detached, largely unbiased perspective.

As this mindset of ‘maybe I’m just sick of writing fan fiction, maybe I’m done with it’ has settled in over the past year or so, and I truly began to grapple with this being a reality, something sort of hit me.

Every year or so, I sit down and look through my entire database of ideas. Sometimes I throw things out, or relegate them to the ‘maybe’ pile. This is normal. It has happened since the beginning. I had an idea I was really, really into, but time has passed, and now I just don’t care anymore, or the focal point of the idea ended up getting transplanted into a different story, and has now been satisfied.

The most recent time I did this, I found myself throwing out almost everything. I would think ‘I don’t really care about this anymore, guess it’s gone’. And when I suddenly realized I was doing it for seriously nearly everything, it hit me that I still care about a lot of these, it’s just that the caring is masked by intense depression. And this idea only strengthened as, over the next several months, I’d remember one of those ideas and be hit with motivation and the thought of ‘Actually, I really want to write that story, even now, years later’.

Now, this particular pattern has happened before, but not in this way, not with this intensity. So I don’t want to convince myself that I’m done with writing fan fiction when in reality I’m just depressed. I can (ideally) fix depression. There are still paths not yet walked. And fan fiction, honestly, is a really core part of who I am. I don’t want to give it up. Even when I struggle to write it, even when months go by without doing it, I still want to want to write fan fiction, if that makes sense. I want to care.

To put it in more specific terms, there are times, a lot of them, when I go to write fan fiction and just do not give a shit about it, but it isn’t the fan fiction I don’t give a shit about, it’s that I don’t give a shit about anything during these times. Whatever else it is I settle on doing (sometimes I’ll do nothing, just sit there and do literally nothing, suffering in silence, waiting for the depression to pass and feeling locked in), it’s not really that I wanted to do it more, it’s just that it took less effort.

In 2013, I walked away from fan fiction because I thought I was well and truly burned out on it. And at the time, I was. I also needed to start my career in writing that could pay my bills. I’ve done that now. I know I still want to write fan fiction, and I know I can get better, emotionally speaking, because I have before, and I know it’s possible to both write professionally and write fan fiction for fun. So I still want to pursue that.

The problem is, I don’t know how long this depression is going to affect me.

And there are other problems, too. I can no longer just write a simple story. When I sit down to write a project, it goes from being perhaps a novel to a massive, 150,000 word novel that is now the beginning of an epic series. I began writing And There Was Another on a whim. It turned into 150,000+ words and 15 months of work, and the beginning of a trilogy that I still intend to write.

And the truth of the matter is that I like it this way. I like writing huge, epic sagas. But I also hate it, because it takes forever. On the one hand, I’ve suffered through a lot to get The DOOM Chronicles to where it is today. And I know that to finish it, I’ll definitely have to suffer more, for years into the future. On the other hand, it’s about 400,000 words of content that clearly people like and have enjoyed reading. As far as I know, it’s the longest DOOM fan fiction ever written. And I’ve definitely had good times writing portions of it. Some of it’s a slog but some of it isn’t, but that’s true of just about every project. There comes a point where I get sick of it no matter how mentally sound I am because that’s just human nature.

So basically yeah, that’s a big thing holding me back from starting up new projects. I know that even the relatively simple ones will likely be over 100,000 words and take a lot of time and it’ll get at least some readers and they’ll be disappointed when I inevitably put it on hiatus or maybe even give up on it. I really don’t want to become that fan fiction writer who cancels project after project.

Where does this actually leave us though, as writer and reader? In essence: I’m not completely sure. For the moment, my only goal now, fan fiction-wise, is to wrap up Episode Three of The DOOM Chronicles. We’re about seven chapters out from the end. After that?

I plan on letting some time pass, maybe a few days, maybe a week or two, essentially just letting the dust settle. I would say that potentially, the likeliest thing that’s going to happen is I may just step back and take the rest of the year off and away from fan fiction. It’s not sure, but it’s definitely possible.

The other option is starting another fan fiction. Obviously, it’d be a new project, given I don’t have anything else in progress.

With that being said, let’s take a look at my actual fan fiction ideas that are still around.

This final portion will be divided up into two parts. The first part is stuff I’m still doing for sure, the second is stuff I may do.

I went on a bit of a tangent last week and suddenly decided: you know what? I want to know how many words I’ve written. I spent six straight hours looking through old documents, ancient files, and online resources trying to cobble this information together and it was quite the fucking nostalgia trip. I looked through everything I had ever written, or started writing, and also things I had just planned, or had the barest idea of. This isn’t the first time I’ve done something like this, but this is definitely the most in-depth look and analysis I’ve done.

Fun Fact: Since 2003, I’ve written approximately 4.4M words of fan fiction. Yes, million. Which, given that was almost twenty years ago now, isn’t that impressive. That’s roughly 225,000 words per year. Although it gets a bit better if you chop out 2003, since I only wrote about 20,000 words that year, and also chop out 2014, the year I basically didn’t do any fan fic. Though that’s still only around a quarter million words per year. And most of it isn’t even available anymore.

But anyway, let’s have a look.

First, here’s the stuff I’m going to do FOR SURE.

The DOOM Chronicles: Like I said, I’ve sunk 6 years and 400,000 words into this motherfucker. I don’t care how long it takes, I’m finishing it.

My Half-Life Series: It might be hard to believe, but I still actually really care about this series. I’ve got the next three books planned out pretty solidly, and a rough idea of what I want to happen up through the end. Much like DOOM, I want to write one definitive series for Half-Life and then be done with it forever.

And There Was Another/KOTOR III: I’m for sure doing this. I might compromise on the pair of And There Was Another stories, maybe pare it down to just one, or two shorter ones, but I am for damn sure doing KOTOR III. I’ve got way, way, way too many ideas not to.

Halo: Oh boy. Yeah, I shit the bed on this one. Never should’ve started Nerves of Steele. But taking it down made me realize that I now have an opportunity: a reworking. Back in 2013, I began envisioning an epic Halo series following my three old school protagonists: Alex Steele, Owen Frost, and John Miller (To Be A Marine, most of you probably don’t remember that). I had a whole awesome narrative worked out, with huge crossovers with other games. By the time I finally got around to Nerves of Steele, though, I settled for having mainly just Alex Steele, and then the protagonists from Gathering Darkness & The Will To Live being part of this shared universe. Now I’m wondering if maybe I should go back to that original idea? Because I really like it. Regardless, I’m doing this. The problem is, this will be, by far, the most massive undertaking I’ve ever attempted, and will take a really, really, really long time to actually finish. Because of this, I’m hesitating on starting it up again, especially after fucking up my last attempt. So for now, I’m just sticking it in the background.

And those are the ones that I’m 100% positive about. Yeah, quite the whittled down list compared to what I used to talk about. So what’s left? What are the maybes?

I did kind of a ‘does this spark joy?’ examination of every idea I’ve ever had, planned, attempted, or finished, and then every game I’ve ever played and remembered, and from that, I made a list ideas that I still give a shit about. Here’s a look at that list.

An Untitled Halo Horror Fan Fiction: As I mentioned on my Facebook earlier, I was shot in the brain with this kickass Halo horror fan fic idea a few weeks ago and I’ve been wanting to write it ever since. Might just say fuck it and do this.

Rock Raiders: Back in 2017, I began planning an epic retelling of Lego Rock Raiders, because I loved this game. I still do, and I still plan on giving this one a shot.

Red Faction: So I still really, really want to do a rewrite of Hunter’s War, my Red Faction 1 fan fiction that was the story of a miner just trying to survive the chaos. I even began working on it several years back and I loved what I had, I just didn’t have the time to keep going. I’m almost certainly going to do this one. It has a good, definitive end. I get sparks of wanting to do something for Red Faction 3 & 4, but I’m not sure there’s enough there to sustain the fire of a whole story.

StarFox: THIS FUCKING GAME. If you really know me or have followed my fan fic history at all, you know that StarFox left a deep, deep scar on my psyche. I’ve written so many stories for StarFox that I’ve then abandoned. The ironic thing is I don’t actually care that much about the characters or the series, but for some reason I really want to write something set around StarFox 64. I recently came up with an idea for a dark, emotional action-horror story following, of all people, Wolf O’Donnell, and I may yet do it. And I have a secret project that I’m still unwilling to discuss, but enough time has passed that I wonder if I should even try it. If, instead, I should just put all my ideas, all my wants for a StarFox narrative, into this one Wolf story. Sometimes I feel positive I’ll do it, I even began writing it earlier this year and I really like what I wrote, but then I stopped, wondering if it was a mistake. I just don’t know.

Quake 4: I’ve got an idea that’s over a decade old, like 2006 old. Basically it’s: Quake 4 but in the snow. Yeah, I know, super original. Lately I’ve been wondering if it’ll just end up kind of like The Will To Live but Quake 4 flavored, and that made me hesitate. Would people want that? I don’t know, but even to this day I look at that idea and think ‘fuck yes I want to write this’. I also feel like Quake 4 gets no love, and there should be at least one serious fan fiction dedicated to it, for all the fans of, specifically, Quake 4. So I’m almost surely gonna do this.

Wolfenstein 2009: In much the same manner as Quake 4 and DOOM 3, I love Wolfenstein 2009 the most. Yeah, I guess I just love the least popular games of a franchise the most for some reason. (Infinite Warfare is my favorite Call of Duty, lol). This one is less certain, but I replay Wolf2009 every year or so, and think to myself, “Man, I really want to write something set in or after this game.” I even made a kickass cover for it and began thinking of ideas and how it’d work. So who knows? I think it needs love, too.

Far Cry - Primal: I fucking love this game. Seriously, why the hell aren’t there other games where you play a caveman? I go back and forth on this one. I’ve got an idea for a story, nothing special, just capturing the feel of the game following another Wenja trying to survive and ultimately joining Takkar’s tribe and helping throughout the campaign.

Terminator: Yeah, the idea of a story set in the Future War seriously appeals to me. Especially after playing Terminator - Resistance. Got an idea and it probably will be a one off…probably. Maybe. It might be. Could be a trilogy, though? This is one of those: On a long enough timeline, I will write a terminator fan fiction kind of situations.

Area 51: The idea of writing a loose adaptation of the Area 51 games (the arcades and the original Xbox game, NOT Blacksite, damn that game sucked so hard), still appeals to me.

Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: I know, what?! But I started writing a story back in 2006 of a darker, grittier narrative set in that universe, and it still kinda appeals to me.

TES - Oblivion: I dabbled in Oblivion fan fiction a lot in the late 2000s. I though the universe had totally died for me, but playing through Oblivion again this year and looking back over my old fan fics…you know, maybe not. It appeals again.

StarCraft: I also dabbled in StarCraft fan fiction, my most massive dabbling being an utterly huge crossover of Halo and StarCraft written back in 2005. But for some reason, the idea of writing a survival/romance about some Marines trying to make it through the original campaigns, fighting Zerg and Protoss and other asshole humans, it endures. Somehow, this idea endures in its appeal. I still really love it.

The Long Dark: This is something I go back and forth on. The idea of doing a character-driven survival narrative set in the sandbox is really appealing. I even thought up a protagonist and some ideas. I also really want to do a horror-themed story. But…I don’t know. I’m less sure about this one.

AVP: Yeah, I still get a spark when I think about Aliens vs. Predator. Just Marines surviving, fighting for their lives on some godforsaken planet, fighting Xenos and Predators…sounds cool.

Majesty: Ha ha, has anyone here even heard of that game? I used to play the SHIT out of it, and way back in 2004 I had an epic trilogy planned. But it never even got to the planning stages. I still think about it though.

The Suffering: I was originally planning on novelizing both games, and adapting a third to finish out a trilogy. Now I’m less sure. But I still think those games are kickass. Maybe when my ideas boil down a lot more and there’s less left on the table I’ll give it another shot.

F.E.A.R.: Like The Suffering, I was once planning on novelizing the first game and the two DLC expansions, and then finishing it out my own way, but my ‘give a shit’ about F.E.A.R. has diminished so much over time. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a classic, its appeal though has dimmed. That being said, I began writing a crossover of F.E.A.R. and Cold Fear a long time ago and that idea still managed to get one hook into my brain when I glanced over it again. So maybe.

Mario: Oh man. In 2007 I began working on an insane gritty retelling of Super Mario 64. Basically, imagine Super Mario 64, but if it were thrown into a blender with Sin City and Chuck Palahnuik (the guy that wrote Fight Club). I still like this idea, but I dunno. Might be too ‘teen edgy’ for me nowadays to truly pull off or even want to pull off.

Dead Space: I had huge, epic plans for Dead Space fan fiction. It’s one of my favorite games of all time. But now I’m a lot less sure. It’d be a huge undertaking, and I only have so many huge undertakings in me.

The Callisto Protocol: I wrote one theoretical fan fiction for it, and now the game has an actual release date. I thought for sure I’d love it, but…I don’t know. I’m less sure now. No idea why. I still intend to play it, but maybe I’ll just play it and leave it at that.

Iron Lung: I started writing that sequel to Iron Lung, and then really fast I hit the ‘I’m having trouble caring about this anymore’ wall, which I feel really bad about. This is why I try not to jump into things. Maybe it’ll come back, though. Sorry if you were reading this, I genuinely feel bad and might finish it out of guilt someday.

The Thing: As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve felt the urge to take another crack at my The Thing series idea. It’d basically be a reboot. But, once more, huge undertaking, only so many of those left for me.

State of Decay: Basically the exact same as The Thing. I’m still playing SoD2 and am looking forward to the third game, and it makes me want to write a sweeping series for it, but it would be huge and I don’t know if I could manage the interest for that long. Zombies are cool but…they’re not that cool.

MineCraft: I know, what? But back in 2009, I secretly began writing a fan fiction and never really told anyone about it. I had actually totally forgotten about it until I looked back through my documents again last week. The idea still appeals. But I don’t know, MineCraft is so massive and complex nowadays, and the story didn’t really have an ending in sight, just more exploration and building. Really unsure about this one.

Gears of War: For a long time I was kind of sure I was going to write something in this universe, now I’m almost sure I’m not. I finally played the new Gears games and although 4 felt like a massive dud, 5 blew me away. It was amazing. I hope 6 will, too. But I don’t know, I think I’m just tired of Gears, writing-wise.

Turok 2008: The last on the list. This one is probably a huge head-scratcher, right? Because I’ve never mentioned it before. But every now and then I think about that game. There I go again, liking the oddball in the series. I actually played Turok back in the day, like a lot, and I played and beat Turok 2008 and although I thought it was not a good game, I liked the setting and the general atmosphere. Mercenaries vs dinosaurs in space. I mean come on, that’s kickass. I began working on a fan fic for it, but it never got anywhere. I still think about it sometimes, though. What I imagine will happen, though, is that I’ll fire up the game again and start playing through it and just quit, realizing it’s a shit idea. But maybe not? Maybe I’ll think “You know what? It’s got some flaws, but I still like it! Let’s do a fan fic.” It seems unlikely though.

And that’s it. That’s all my ideas that are left that I give even something of a shit about. Unless I’ve forgotten something, which is entirely possible. Lifelong depression and anxiety causes memory problems.

Out of all these, which one might I select next? Nothing is for sure, but here’s my answer.

If I’m feeling particularly responsible, I’ll finally write the next Half Life story, Bishop’s Lament. But I haven’t been feeling very responsible for awhile now.

If I’m feeling less responsible, I’ll likely get going on that Halo horror story. Or I may take a real stab at my depressing StarFox story. The Quake 4 story has also been speaking to me strongly lately. And finally, maybe that StarCraft story. I don’t know why, but it reached out and grabbed me hard when I recalled it. Like, I’ve got StarCraft on the brain. It just keeps interrupting my day. I think of my Marine protagonist, fighting desperately for his life on the baked-earth plains of Mar Sara, barely escaping as the Protoss burn the planet, then investigating a derelict space station, all while falling in love with a fellow Marine, or maybe a crazed Firebat? Or shit, maybe a Ghost? Point is: I would choose one of these stories.

If I’m feeling absolutely reckless, maybe I’ll fire up like all of these one after the other, bouncing back and forth between them as it pleases me.

Right now, I’ve got no idea.

The last thing I’ll say is this: If you’re reading this, then thanks. A lot. From the bottom of my heart, my readers mean a lot to me. It’s why I keep going with this fan fiction thing. I want to write cool things that make people happy to read. I’ve wanted that since I was 15 years old, writing on a brand new Dell desktop in my mom’s kitchen, and I still want to do it as a 34 year old married professional author with my own house and stomach problems.

All of my fan fics are dedicated to you, the readers.

-Obsidian

The Near & Far Horizon | January 2022

So 2021 was clearly a shitshow for me.

Looking back over my Far Horizon post a year ago just…hurts.

I didn’t do almost anything I laid out for myself.

Normally I like to go in depth with what’s going on in my life, but as time has gone on I’ve found myself a little more reluctant to. I’m not completely sure why, just a gut instinct. I think part of it is people are probably tired of hearing about it, those few who actually read this. So as for why so little got done in 2021? Basically, I got extremely busy with things not related to fan fiction, and my mental health kamikazed. I also just really, really got burned out on DOOM and Halo, but felt too guilty to fire up any new projects. Which is probably for the best, since I wouldn’t have finished those, either.

The good news is that my mental health seems to be on the rebound. The bad news is that the busyness isn’t going to go away. If anything, it’s just going to increase. The other good news about that is that part of the busyness, hopefully, is that I intend to start writing more Sci-Fi/Horror and Action-Horror original novels. This will not be related to The Shadow Wars. I want to go back to my old idea of starting up a new pen name.

I have the name picked out and a lot of ideas ready to go. I’ve decided I’m going to post first novels for free over on WattPad, under a brand new profile that has my new pen name. I will also publish them over on the Kindle and make paperbacks available. I hope to get this started this year.

So what does this mean for fan fiction? Basically, anytime I’m working on fan fiction, it will be related to The DOOM Chronicles until Episode Three is complete. After that, I will shift focus to finishing Episode One of Nerves of Steele. I have no idea how long this will take. I will be attempting to make time for it whenever I can, but obviously that hasn’t panned out well at all over the last year.

That’s about all I got: I will try to work on DOOM, and I will be trying to get some original Sci-Fi/Horror written.

Also, I decided to go old school. Changed up the design of the site and relabeled myself Obsidian Thirteen. It just felt right.

I hope this year goes well for you, and if you’re still here putting up with my bullshit, I really appreciate it and will try to minimize the bullshit as much as I can.

The Near Horizon | June 2021

So May didn’t suck as much as April, but it still wasn’t great.

Things have definitely calmed down emotionally since April. On the whole, I’m way more evened out now. Unfortunately, I didn’t really do anything last month. I got the tiniest bit of work done on Not Alone 3, and I did plan out the next part of The DOOM Chronicles, but that’s about it.

I’m in a weird place again at the moment. Part of it is I’m just burned the fuck out on The DOOM Chronicles. After two years, I’m just burned out on DOOM and Halo. I want to do something else. Something like Half-Life or StarFox or basically anything else. I don’t know if this is a good idea or not. I’ve been here before and usually if I wait long enough it passes, but it’s been getting worse lately. I’ve taken several long breaks from DOOM during this Episode. Although to be fair to me, it is by far the longest episode of the series.

For reference, upon completion, Episode One measured approximately 158,000 words. Episode Three presently sits at 116,000 words and it’s only halfway done. So…yeah. Massive undertaking.

So I’m very strongly considering taking a longer break now that we’re at the halfway mark. Which I’d feel really bad about, but I’m beginning to get the impression that it’s going to need a long break regardless and I’m just lying to myself that I can go back to it right now.

I’m currently eyeing a few projects in place of DOOM. Nerves of Steele would be my number one candidate. I know I said I was tired of Halo, but I NEED to make some progress there, and it’s been long enough that I’m wanting to. And I believe that my brain registers enough of a distinction between The Will To Live and Nerves of Steele for the burnout of The Will To Live not to apply to Nerves of Steele. I’m also strongly considering firing up the sequel to Bishop’s War, Bishop’s Lament. I’m also very strongly considering taking a crack at my ultimate StarFox fan fiction, Obsidian Sun Rising. Last on the list of strong considerations is basically CoD: Infinite Warfare zombies. I’ve got a really cool idea that would be so awesome, but it’s more of a gamble than the other three.

I don’t know, I’m just fucking DYING to write something new. It’s not that I hate DOOM now, DOOM’s still a classic and I love it, I just…am tired of it. Too much DOOM recently.

We’ll see. I need more time to let my mind settle and heal up a bit, and then I can make a decision. Sorry about all this.

The Near Horizon | May 2021

So April sucked too. Honestly, I wish I had something to sort of latch onto. Like some actual reason why it sucked. Or shit, maybe I don’t. That’d probably be worse.

In a way, it kind of feels like a situation I’ve often described in my action/horror stories. The scenes where the characters are headed somewhere, usually to do something important, and it’s eerily silent, but it shouldn’t be. They know monsters are around, but they can’t see them. And they know they could pop out at any second, and yet they don’t.

If the monsters would just come out, they could shoot them. That’s a threat that’s obvious and can be faced head-on in a fashion they already know how to do. Sure it’s dangerous, but it’s something they’ve done before and know they can replicate.

It’s the waiting that sucks, and the not knowing if something terrible is waiting around the corner…or if all the monsters have gone home and you’re just jumping at shadows.

I had another COVID scare last month, but thankfully, again, it turned out to be nothing. I’m scheduled to get my first shot within the next week.

I got my dental work done…only to learn I’ve developed MORE cavities that need to be filled in. So that’s gotta be tackled. I fucking hate dental work, even though it’s honestly not that bad.

In general, there was just a lot of anxiety problems and mood swings in April. Also insomnia and pain and, at times, anhedonia. If you don’t know what that is, in short it means “People who experience anhedonia have lost interest in activities they used to enjoy and have a decreased ability to feel pleasure.”

It’s really, really fucking difficult to set any kind of routine or make any kind of progress when you don’t give a single shit about basically anything half the time and you’re absolutely fucking desperately to just BE INTERESTED IN SOMETHING. You leap from thing to thing, hoping it sparks even a TINY bit of joy.

I’m trying to fight it and keep it away but it’s a very difficult battle.

Anyway, I hope to actually try and get some work done on Not Alone 3 this month, and I have been feeling the flickers of inspiration to actually start working on DOOM again, so that’s been nice. I’ll likely pick it back up this month, but barring that, I’ll make myself do it in June. I have so many ideas and the only way they’re going to get done is to do them, on way or another.

The Near Horizon | April 2021

I’m posting this a little early just so there’s no confusion about April Fool’s Day. I don’t know, I get paranoid about that, anything I say on April 1st won’t be taken seriously because of our stupid fucking prank culture.

March was problematic for my mental health. I’m not too sure why, it just was. Nothing really happened, my brain just decided ‘fuck you’ and caused a lot of problems.

Despite that, I managed to finish The Will To Live. It’s done. So that’s cool. I also managed to write a speculative short story for an upcoming sci-fi/horror game called The Callisto Protocol. Given we only have a single trailer right now, I obviously know very little about the game. But I knew enough to apparently get inspired and write a short story meant to feed into the eventual campaign. It’s called There Isn’t A Word For It, it’s about 8,000 words. Check it out.

I know I said I was going back to DOOM after this, but I’ve decided to instead take April off, and maybe May. A few things are coming up in my real life that I need to deal with and real-life stuff tends to derail me more nowadays than in past times. On top of that, I feel like I need some time with less stuff on my plate. And finally, I want to take the opportunity to actually try and get at least something done for my machinima Not Alone 3.

I’ve also decided to just put Dark Places away for now. It’s just a lot of editing and I don’t feel like dealing with it, nor do I think I’m going to feel like dealing with it for awhile. Sorry, honestly I probably shouldn’t have mentioned it.

So that’s basically it. You probably won’t hear from me much for April, maybe even for May. Sorry.