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