mcity

The gods on
high do not like when stuff like this comes out, because...they would
rather you be entertained by the dancing monkey on the glowing box, or
knowing what snookie wore that night then what your "elected" officials
are doing with your money.

Maybe they would, but they're not forcing you to watch TV, or update your Facebook, or--and this is extremely unlikely--watch Jersey Shore because you care about the protagonists beyond being something to laugh at. The Man does not make people apathetic.

This is from the end of the start of a chain letter someone on my flist posted, and while it is shameful veterans aren't compensated, it does no one any good to doublespeak The Man into being responsible for people not caring. It's a rhetorical trick to redirect everyone's anger at The System, and admittedly a pretty clever one. People read "government doing something bad" and "indifference" and their brain shorthands it as "the government is responsible for your indifference". Now you're mad at them for forcing--forcing--you to care about American Idol, and screwing over vets, the fiends. And if you're the sort that turns up their nose at the entertainments of the common, vulgar, weak, licentious crowd, it contributes to your feelings of superiority; you don't want to be one of that sort, do you? You care about the vets, doncha? Our boys in uniform, doncha? Doncha? Doncha?

From the lauded pen of scribe Scott Lynch
Came a post on Hamlet's Father
Days later, while I, still abed
Espied Hamlet upon my shelf
And, between those covers, I found that
The pages now bought laughter to my lips.
A sharp contrast, to be sure
With the listless, lifeless words that I recalled
Reading in my memory's school-hall
And I thence reflect'd on
The way in which time ran.
On how I, once a callow youth
Had changed with time into a man

He had been nearly at the end of the training course when everything started to go wrong.

So he walked into the final room. Unlike its predecessors, it was mixed. Guns, stealth, hacking, a little bit of everything. He had seen the robot at the far end of the room, picked up a few boxes and threw them into the canal crossing the room, then picked up a box full of explosives, which promptly slipped out of his hands and exploded.

Butterfingers.

In addition to that pain, there was the emotional pain of Reyes informing him about a second after he nearly blows himself to Kingdom Come to be careful with the TNT boxes. (Quite the joker, that Jaime. Ha ha.) Then there was the sentry bot noticing him and stomping over to have a look-see. And then a shoot-see. And suddenly, Denton was in more pain than he had ever imagined. Luckily, the robot had apparently been programmed to start firing rubber bullets when he reached a certain pain threshold, so he was only in agonizing pain instead of, y'know, dead. Ironically, he really, really wanted to be dead all of a sudden.

Somehow, he managed to gather up the multitool and pistol someone had oh-so-cleverly stashed behind columns, and lower the bridge across the canal. He had managed to do so despite not being able to feel his arms and legs, but exactly how was a question he would leave to greater, less-concussed minds than his. He opened the exit door and slumped out.

Denton was proud of himself for not crying out in the room, beyond a grunt or two. Then he imagined what his brother would say, and groaned. Paul was never going to shut up about this.

To this day, I cannot recall my thought process. It was probably an early onset of adolescent hormones. When they fully tripped, several years later, my reaction to my sudden, limbic awareness or the swelling chests and coltish limbs around me was largely to think "huh, that's interesting" and to go about my business. Even today, some would argue that the part of my internal engine responsible for such matters has never been shifted out of "park".

BECAUSE I REALLY NEEDED ANOTHER PROJECT

Well.

Here we go.

If anyone knows anyone who might be interested in this sort of thing, please refer it to them. Thanks.

Random Spartan has to help ODSTs and regular soldiers fight a guerilla war against the Covenant after their ship crashes. Their MJOLNIR armour may or may not be too badly damaged in the crash to remain operational, depending on the writer's preference. Since the Covvies' ship was damaged too, they can't leave or signal for help, and are waiting for backup to arrive.

Anyway, the good guys have to train the citizens to defend themselves, make the hard choices, occasionally sacrifice citizens as a distraction so they can succeed elsewhere. Neither side is exactly happy about this. The Spartan grows closer to the regular soldiers, so it actually hurts him/her when they die.

Incidentally, Jackals eat the flesh of fallen enemies and live prisoners, as one might expect from the name. So defeated humans might kill themselves to avoid capture.

I'm not sure if the Covvies would have the one city on the planet or what, but the whole thing would be like the New Caprica arc on Battlestar Galactica, or The Enemy of my Enemy fic. Something like that. Actually, that wouldn't be too different from the original Halo, if the Pillar of Autumn had somehow come out of Slipspace near an occupied planet instead of Halo.

Blah blah, IEDs and last-resort suicide vests, blah blah, gritty realism, blah blah.

inFamous/Prototype mashup.

A man wakes up on a morgue slab with no idea who he is. His toe tag says "Alex J. Cole", there are strange men after him, and he was apparently at ground zero during a terrorist attack. Naturally, the military has sealed the island where the attack took place, as well as the two adjacent islands. Cut off from the world, the people of this part of Empire city are going to have to fend for themselves against feral gangs, strange creatures, an army of transients, and some of the military themselves. What they need is a hero. What Cole needs is to find who he was and what happened.

This is a really bad idea. Not because I don't like writing--I do--or because I don't think I'm up for it--I am--or because the idea itself is flawed, it's just that I have a lot of crap to write. I have a fics dating back to 2005 I've yet to finish, and that's not to mention all the actual original stories I have ideas for, including a book I've been working on in one form or another since 2001, or my art, or my schoolwork(not necessarily in that order). To do the concept it justice, I'd basically have to write an entire novel.

...Chapters one and two are mostly done.

Crap.

Chapter 2: Checksum

Spoilers, of course.

Ollie Queen is a man who decided to fight crime as the totally-not a Batman-ripoff superhero Green Arrow. Who shoots things. With a bow. And dresses in green. There have been a few attempts to make a film, and the last one we heard of was helmed by David Goyer. Do you think it involves

His origin: millionaire washes up on a desert island, makes a bow and arrow, learns how to use it, fights drug dealers on the island and turns them in to the cops before returning home and becoming GA.
You haven't done this sort of thing in a while.
Ollie trying to break out a prison full of bad guys no one cares about after being framed for murder.

Seriously, David Goyer, just use Year One. Millionaire with no purpose in life finds himself a natural bowman and feels actually happy Ramboing around taking out bad guys? If handled right, it could be like Iron Man, except more hardcore. Go for gritty Bourne-style realism-have Ollie get roughed up some-but throttle back on the shakycam and throw in some social commentary and you have something the critics wouldn't be afraid to admit they like. Do it.

Do eeet.