I started out with Battle of the Planets, which I caught in Saudi Arabia between '82 and '86 (though I know that it was still running as of '91 for I succeeded in caging a tape from a friend who was still living there then). Truth be told, I found it incomprehensible and not particularly interesting until '84, when I had an argument with a couple of friends. They claimed that the Phoenix was a better machine than the jet in Izenborg (if you don't know the anime Izenborg, I don't advise you to look it up -- but I loved it) and a highly annoyed me sat down before the TV hoping to find it (for it showed at random moments) so I could get enough ammunition to prove them wrong. And got caught.

Now, believe me, I knew anime and I knew better-told series, more violent series, more artistic series, series with more emotional oomph than BotP, but I'm yet to really come across series that have inspired me more. Once it caught me, I realized that it *lived* : it felt less like a story being told and more like shooting a documentary of a whole world out there where you could only see small glimpses at a time and needed to analyze to see how it fit with what you already knew and often got three questions for every question you got answered. It's not a show that you can sit down and passively watch: you need to bring something of yourself to it and it rewards you for the effort. It's the only series that made me look in a dictionary. And the ideas: in his unintentional way, Jameson Brewer succeeded in raising some concepts that really have stuck with me.

Having seen at least some of most of the versions, I have to say that my favorite character is Jason for being as much a person as he is a hero.

It's hard to have a least favorite character, but someone's got to be the runt of the litter. Leaving aside the Eagle Riders (for I don't know them well enough to judge them), I have to vote for OAV Joe. An empty shell of a man.

To be honest: Because I couldn't sleep one night and this idea was rattling around the place. I honestly didn't think very much of it, but I got nice letters back and some advice on how to fix things and I got into the habit... :)
...and then I discovered that I actually *liked* to write...
When? Shortly before the first snow fell in 1997, a few weeks before I got my first Gatch and BotP tapes.

In no particular order, my favorite writers would be Heather Graves, Jamie Randall (Imajiru), Jane Lebak, Jason Meador, Nancy Ford, Alara Rogers and Ennien Ashbrook.

"The Girl You Remember", "Mind Games", "Aite", "Kagaku Ninja Tai Gatchayan", "Phoenix Rising", "In a Small Room" are memorable as being stories that I not only had to reread (a few times), but also changed the way I viewed things.

At this very moment, my favorite story has been N'explique Jamais. In this story, I tried experimenting with the language while telling a story and it worked. The feedback I got for that story I keep in a very special place. ^_^ Increasingly, I've realized that I'm not content with just saying that A happened and then B happened and then C happened and so on to the end. I've come to feel that a really good work is one that also hints at stories not told and also tells its story so well that you love the journey as much as the destination. I'm not there yet with any of my work, but some days I realize that I'm taking baby steps in that direction.

Of my finished works, Mischief was by far the hardest to work with for it touched on so many different things and I didn't want to be half-baked on any of them.

Typically, what I call my throwaway fics: those short works that I write quickly for the sake of writing. If there's one that I have to choose, it'd be "On the Art of Telling Jokes": just a very simple idea (what goes into a good joke) that I sketched a story around.

All the time, but the one I wish to redo most is "Mischief," because I wrote it over such a long time that there are several things that I would love to be able to rewrite and fix. It's not a coinicidence that the notes I'd leave at the bottom of each chapter would get shorter and shorter: I became better at fitting things into the body of the story with time.

Things that I love: I love originality. People with the boldness to go out there and pick up an idea that hasn't been really looked at are always interesting -- for that, I usually overlook a lot of technical flaws the work may have. So there's a special prize from me waiting for the first person who writes a good Eagle Riders fanfic.
Technique: Alara Rogers said once that there is no such thing as a story told too many times, but there are stories that have been told so many times that they need to be handled with care and I agree completely with it. I love to see a well-told story. In fact, I love to see a good story.
Humor: from slapstick to subtle, it always pleases me.
The Stretch: when I see someone who clearly knows something of what they're writing, or else has put thought into the implications of their writing, their work acquires a depth that I just love to see.
Detail: I'm notoriously sparse on detail when I write (for it tends to bog me down), so when I see work that uses detail well, ahh...
Canon: Especially for people who work with BotP, it is not easy to work with what the series hands us so the more accuracy I see with respect to canon, the greater my respect for the person writing. I know how hard it can be.

Things that I may or may not like:
Alternate worlds: This really depends on two things: why it was done and how good a case is made for it. Why: the alternate fics I tend to like best are those that start from the premise of 'what if?' I really like seeing how those stories play out, even if their premises are a little outlandish or outrageous. Those I tend not to like are those that go 'I can do it better than those series writers' -- unless they're really well-written, I tend to tune out. Indeed, alternate worlds need to make it worth my while to read: they need to be self- consistent, well-thought-out, have good detail, characters need to be well-handled and the stories told need to be good -- I don't like to see a so-so story told just to highlight the world that it's set in. That said, I've read some Great alternate fics within the Gatch fandom.

Extra characters. This really, really depends. There are extra characters out there that I really like. Easiest to accept are support staff, friends of main characters and the like, so long as they don't try to grab center stage.
Less easy are those who end up in the KNT or to be related to them but then what I like to see then are well-developed and plausible characters who do not leach strength from the canon ones.
A particular note: Even if they don't technically qualify as Mary Sues, female characters who somehow end up with G-2's position will never *not* be treated with suspicion.

Things that I don't like. In increasing order of pettiness they are:
Disrespect: No version of Gatchaman is about folks having a good time while being occasionally inconvenienced, but I strongly believe that if you're not prepared to treat whoever you write about with respect, then don't pick up the pen.
Copying: Now I won't use the p-word, but I like to see credit given where due. There is nothing that I write that I don't want anyone else to use, else I wouldn't put it up and I'm rather flattered whenever anyone says that they were inspired to write something because of something I wrote, but what I hate is to see are ideas taken (and yes, a writer knows what they wrote. No one should kid themselves that because they changed the idea round a bit or it's not the main focus of their work that it's unrecognizable) and not credited.
Laziness: I love it when someone has taken the time to spell- check, proof-read, to care about what they write and who they're writing about and at least have some basic background research if that's applicable. The lack of it is a let-down for me.
Songs: Now I'm not talking about bits and pieces quoted from at the beginning or end of a fanfic and I make exceptions for songs composed from scratch (that earns my respect for originality, imaginativeness and talent), but I almost always skip extant music that the character is supposed to be listening to. I skip it even faster if the character is supposed to be taking their mood from it or means it for a message. And if they happen to be songs that the writer also likes, well, I see it as a form of self-insertion that I do not like at all. However I don't feel quite so strongly about honest-to- goodness poetry, although if it gets extensive...

Hard to say but one pair I've always been curious about are Mark and Jason. Those two form one of the most unusual G-1 and G-2 relationships that I've seen, both very close and intertwined and yet with that possibility of real adversity.

Believe it or not, Keyop. Given his circumstances, I would love to be able to see the world as he does for a little while.

Probably. At the very least, I wouldn't have met all the people who love Gatchaman and that would have changed things quite a bit.

Personal adage: one obsession at a time. :) There's a lot of other stuff that I like, such as Tintin, Asterix, Spiderman.

My favorite writers tend to be those whose use of language is as powerful as the stories they use that language to tell (although Jack London and James Herriot are exceptions to that). They include Terry Pratchett, Mary Doria Russell, Stanislaw Lem, Doris Lessing, Ernest Hemmingway, Ben Okri and Richard Adams.

Dogs, working dogs particularly (it's my not-so-secret ambition to train part-time), cats, riding horses (when I can) playing the piano, rambling unhurriedly through countryside and I can entertain myself for hours if I get to writing or doodling (still bad as an artist, but I'm improving). I'm still working towards the day I can afford to learn how to fly. Other interests would be astronomy, arm-chair rabble- rousing, ethics, languages (the feeling you get when you learn a new language and a whole new world opens up to you is absolute magic) and travel.

As of now, I'm still an undergrad in Materials Science and Engineering. And the future is murkily bright, like lighted fog, but work of some sort and graduate study in biomaterials figures into things at some point in time.

Eh *scratch head* There isn't that much to me but if there's one thing I love, it's correspondence with folks over email. I take a while to reply sometimes, but I do eventually get around to it.