Er. G-Force. No, really. I watched Battle of the Planets when it aired back in Malaysia when I was something like four years old, and when they started airing G-Force when I was ten, it brought back some very, very, very vague baby-memories. Because some distant 4-year-old part of me was asking, "Didn't there used to be a talking robot in this show?" G-Force was wonderful to the 10-year-old me. I loved it.
Now, of course, I'd be embarrassed to admit it thank to adult common sense. But there's still a tiny part of me that loves it for its sheer cheesiness. I suppose thanks to the ridiculously bad voice-acting and plot holes large enough to fly a mecha through, I ended up spending time rewriting whole episodes just to fill in the blanks.

Then I found Gatchaman. I was sold. Even though till today, Ken in my head sounds like Ace Goodheart if the voice-actor was an Oscar-winner, Gatchaman remains the universe I write in, barring one or two things that annoys my Muse too much. And in spite of the other Japanese anime that have influenced my most major arc, Gatchaman: Legends, I can't seem to want to write anything other than Gatch. I'm thankful for that only because I don't really have as much time as I would like to have.

I'm an Eagle fan, I admit. So the honor goes to Ken, with Jinpei following very close behind. The kid got good spotlights every now and again, and he was the only character to get cooler as Gatchaman II and F went by. I just wish I wrote Jinpei more often.

Fair enough, I don't remember enough Battle of the Planets, but Zark is wrong. Well, in a way, he is my favorite. My favorite archery target. With explosive heads instead of normal ones attached to the arrows. When he's through being shot and blown up, next in line would have to be OAV Joe. There is nothing good-looking about that man, 1-Rover-1 has more character than him, and remember that 1-Rover-1 is a no more than a bolt-crunching Dustbuster� with feet.

When I was about 11, trying to fill in the gaps in episodes of G-Force. I'm glad I threw those notebooks away, because I can actually remember some of the early crap that I wrote and I wouldn't ever want to read them again. On the other hand, I think I always wrote, anyway: short silly kid's stuff and such. G-Force just gave me a focus. And Gatchaman gave me an addiction.

In no order in particular: Jane Lebak, Wendy Dinsmore, Lori McDonald, Ebonbird, Katharine Foust-Martin, Jacque Koh, and Alara Rogers.

Wendy's stuff is wonderful: because she writes canon, she gives so much life to characters who otherwise appear only as we see them onscreen - personal favorites: The Stakes, Happily Ever After. Jane is beautifully and brutally honest and she writes the best dialogue - personal favorites: It Ain't Over Till It's Over, the Father Joe series. Lori writes just about anything and everything and somehow none of it comes off wrong - personal favorites: If We Kissed, Suddenly Brothers. And Katharine, well, she had people worried about my gasping for air from long painful bouts of laughter with Pythonian Gatch. 'Nuff said.

The last one I wrote for the BotP mailing list's Valentine's Day Fanfic Challenge, Words, is my favorite, almost entirely because it was born out of pure inspiration. Even after a clean-up, it still seems to tingle with that rabbit-out-of-the-hat magic. There's only one line of external dialogue, one line of internal thought, and the rest is, well, words. And it's probably the one and only fanfic I've done that's so short but feels so effective. I still like it. I probably will still like it whenever it is I look back at it again.

Collision Course was hard. Comedy is hard to do, hard to get away with, and on top of it all, I didn't really know how the BotP characters really behaved, so I may not have represented them as well as I could have. It was written quickly, though, with help, but it was still hard to come up with the right words and the right gags. The truly inspired bits, I got help. And of course, the fanfics I never finished, the ones that died on the table, they were hard, too.

Maybe it's true that as you keep doing it, sometimes it gets easier. The most recent two I've written, Performers and Words, were extremely easy-going compared to some of the other things I've done and all the things that are on the drawing board. But then again, it might have had a lot to do with my state of mind at the time. *grin*

I am planning on cleaning up Collision Course, and trying to bury some of my older fanfics that are now part of a defunct universe. The Alternate series is quite dead. I do want to sit down and clean up Biorhythm as well, because I have a feeling it didn't quite come up to its full potential. And it has holes the size of walruses. September Changes needs to be updated since I changed details of that particular universe.

I love good dialogue, I love originality, I love faithfulness to the spirit of the series. You have to be a good writer to get away with alternate universes or extra characters or alternative pairings. And I mean really, really good. I love good set-ups, good twists, by-the-seat-of-your-pants action.

What I can't deal with, on the other hand, is gratuitousness, pointless disrespect and the inability to spend two seconds clicking on a spellchecker. It may be a small-ish matter, but sometimes people don't realize how things as simple as structuring, spelling and diction can really annoy readers.

Ken and Joe. I want to see how their dynamics work. They were the first two, and somehow I get the feeling they could potentially be the last two of the team.

I'd want to be Jinpei. He gets to have the most fun while learning how to be an adult at the same time. He gets to be brave and gets cuddles at the end of it all, too.

I think the only difference would have been that I would not be writing as much as I am now. My love for anime has always been there, but I sincerely doubt I'd be writing as much - and as well - as I do now.

Yikes.
I love Rurouni Kenshin - such an ultra-cool series. I'm a certified X-Files fan, and I take guilty pleasure in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, I'm sad to say. Oh. And I love martial arts movies. Lots of them. Good ones, mind.

When I started writing, I almost stopped reading altogether because in my mind, I could potentially end up copying other authors. So I read very little, and I regret it now. As of now, though, my Harry Potter books cheer me up a great deal when I'm depressed. They've been very good company. I've gained a massive reading list not just from friends but also from my course, so I'm going to have to find time to slog through these recommendations at some point�

I only recently found my calling: martial arts. God knows, I train harder now than I've ever done anything in my life. I still write when I can, or when the challenge arises, or when the Muse is available. I sing in the church choir, I do photography, I'll be taking up archery as of next year. But in spite of all that, I think my main thing will always be martial arts now. I'm hooked, and I'm all the happier and better for it.

I'm an undergraduate in English and Film Studies at the University of Southampton. There's an MA in store after this, and the possibility of the New York Film Academy just for kicks for a year, but the rest is up in the air.

That they need to be patient with me because I've only just achieved the highest degree of happiness and contentment in my life so far, and therefore I can't help but think that the other shoe just might drop when it probably isn't going to at all. I can't help but be a little suspicious of the goodness in my life now because I've never really known any.

My FanFiction
I consider the Alternate series defunct now, so people shouldn't bother with it anymore. But in any case, those stories are:

G-Force: Alternate
Sins of the Father
The River Casts Shadows
Streets of Seclusion

G-Force: Legends has now been replaced by Gatchaman: Legends, but the story Prelude is still relevant, if only unfinished. And under the Gatchaman: Legends umbrella:
September Changes
Two Steps Forward
Performers
Words

The stand-alones:
Collision Course
Collision Course II
Biorhythm

And the dead, possibly needing resurrection:
Reconstruction Blues
Six Pieces

Gatch Fanfic Archive