Hybrid Theory

[Vialeh]

This might be a bit redundant as Blade and Epsilon have been very regular with their updates, but chapter 21 of Hybrid Theory has been released...

edit: craptastic; I managed to misplace this post, could some admin be so kind as to relocate to update thread? I would be much obliged...
<cynic is="is" just="just" an="an" idealist="idealist" who="who" has="has" given="given"></cynic>

[Bob Schroeck]

I'm afraid we can't move individual messages, sorry...

-- Bob
---------
For Jor-El so loved the Earth, he sent his only begotten son...

[robkelk]

---

chapter 21 of Hybrid Theory has been released...

---

Are you sure? I was at Blade's apartment two hours after you posted that, and he told me they was still writing Chapter 21. It was almost finished, but he wasn't ready to let me see it...
-Rob Kelk
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[HoagieOfDoom]

It's definitely up.*********
Touched By His Noodly Appendage
www.venganza.org

[robkelk]

Sorry, my bad. They're almost finished chapter 22 to the point where it'll be ready for pre-readers. They're also working on something quite completely crazy for April Fool's...
-Rob Kelk
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[aeroprime]

While I think that this is a well writen story I just can't read it anymore. Its gotten to dark and dpressing for my tastes.
-aeroprime
---------
"I did NOT escape! They gave me a day pass."

[classicdrogn]

Er... gotten? I kind of figured it was too dark when one of them kept killing people and possessing their corpses in, like, ch2 or so... could you (or someone) provide a short summary, perhaps?
- CDSERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
Dr. Akagi will recover. Observe, Rei smiled. Shinji-kun, are these your clothes?
Ritsuko shot up like a spring loaded meerkat. What? Shinji-kun is naked?
See, Anata? Dr. Hentai is alive and well. - Innortal's _I Do_
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Crescend]

The galaxy is at war, monsters battle for supremacy across the globe, beings of terrible purpose walk across the world in service to their incomprehensible masters, humanity is fighting a losing battle to survive, the dead feed on the living, the living envy the dead, and the future promises to be even worse.
That would be as of Tuesday.

[classicdrogn]

...riiiiiiiiight. Gotten a bit far from the Ranma/SM/SI roots, then. I think I'm more confused now than before, but only 1/3 curious:2/3 let's-not-go-there where beforew I was fraught with indecision.
- CDSERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
Dr. Akagi will recover. Observe, Rei smiled. Shinji-kun, are these your clothes?
Ritsuko shot up like a spring loaded meerkat. What? Shinji-kun is naked?
See, Anata? Dr. Hentai is alive and well. - Innortal's _I Do_
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Crescend]

Oh, not that far. It's basically what happens when the villains of every universe (I think the current count is 10?) all get tapped simultaneously, and act more-or-less intelligently.
So some (the ones that want wordly power) fight amongst themselves for their spheres of influence, some (that want to destroy the world) send their avatars around doing avatar-y things, etc. The good guys are just a bit thin on the ground - powers/skills that are good for one type of villain will get them creamed by someone completely different.
As of the last chapter, the United States is turtled, having detonated several nukes on its own territory to keep the enemy at bay, Japan and South America are Chronos territory, Southeast Asia is Shadowloo territory, Europe is Millenium (I believe a cross between Sailor V's vampires and Hellsing's vampires) territory, and all the factions fight it out on their borders. In the galaxy at large, Sailor Galaxia is destroying worlds by the bucketload, while Jurai is being reduced. In adjacent dimensions, Tethys has completed her takeover of the Dark Kingdom and sent a diplomatic mission to Jurai. Her governing philosophy: "Don't be Stupid". She has a detente with the major Earth powers.
Most of the Senshi are hiding out in Ohtori Academy, shielded by Akio's illusions and dreams, while going slowly insane because of the same. Akane is leading an anti-Chronos insurgency in Japan, while Ranma is doing something similar with Minako Aino against Millenium in Europe.
Hotaru has been posessed by the Silence completely, and is now spreading the faith of Oblivion across Asia.
You also have the various minor factions that, while not really capable of doing anything globally, can keep the major forces at bay on their home turf (like Akio and Saffron). Likewise, there are free agents moving around, doing work for several factions simultaneously.
And on top of it all, Ukyo/Aaron and Chris are pursuing their own agendas for what the post-post-Apocalyptic world should be.
It's a massive clusterfuck all around, but in a fun way. I like it.

[Vialeh]

What 'e said <cynic is="is" just="just" an="an" idealist="idealist" who="who" has="has" given="given"></cynic>

[Rieverre]

I'm thinking, Chris actually got the better deal there. Why?
Simple, he may be forced into possessing dead bodies, and all that goes with that, but at least he's not stuck as a semi-prisoner in a body whose original occupant hates his guts and ... well, you know.
Also, Pluto is a moron. Or an idealist.
-Griever
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm

[Crescend]

It gets less clear-cut on all mentioned fronts as the story goes on. There is quite a bit of character development.
But yeah, Pluto's a moron. Well, mostly. There is that matter of the Apocalypse-to-come, but well, when you're up to your ass in alligators, you have better things to do than bother the guy throwing you the rope.

[robkelk]

I've let Blade know about this discussion, so he might join in... maybe. Until then, I'll go with what I remember he's told me about the story...
Premise: Blade and Epsilon are seriously/fatally (Blade's being coy about that, but I suspect it's the latter) injured in a car wreck (my car, and they didn't ask ahead of time - I'd complain if they weren't "dead"), and end up as self-insert characters in a crossover fanfic. Epsilon is self-inserted into Ukyo, while Blade self-inserts into any random (or chosen) recently-dead body, gaining its skills.
Real Premise: Show how badly out-of-control a crossover fanfic really should get if the writer doesn't impose a lot of artificial limitations on characters' actions. Oh, and use some of the ideas that were too nasty for their Pencils chapters (and if anyone else has read those, you'll know how nasty they were...)
With a very few exceptions, there's only one or two important characters appearing from each series or console-game. Not every series they've seen is included in Hybrid Theory - for example, Ah My Goddess is definitely not included (leading to my jokes that the entity that put them into the story was Belldandy, getting even with them for all the nasty things that Epsilon said and Blade agreed with about the Goddess Relief Office).
Story roles: Epsilon/Ukyo is the Reluctant Misunderstood Hero. (Considering what he/she is going to do by Chapter 30, this is a bit of a stretch, but...) Blade is the active villain. (He kills characters just for a temporary benefit; that isn't a "nice" thing to do in anyone's books. It's amazing how many readers think he's a good guy, or a nice guy...)
Current events: Crescend summed them up nicely.
Future events: I only know what anybody should be able to puzzle out by paying attention while reading, except for one spoiler which I won't share... However, this is where the story is supposed to kick into high gear.

---

Also, Pluto is a moron. Or an idealist.

---

Actually, Pluto wants to stay alive. All of the precogs are acting the same way that she is...
-Rob Kelk
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Necratoid]

You forgot that that some charicters have noticed that Earth has a hoard of radically conflicting backstorys going on at once. Other random charicters have questioned how the hell entire populations of powerful people have spontaniously popped up resently. Link for instance has decided that staying near a person that can prove they came from something that actually exists is her best chance for survival.
You have to remember that some people are noticing that existance is FUBAR.

[Epsilon]

Well, as the author I feel I might want to step in to answer any questions and clear up a few misunderstandings here. Rob and the others got it almost right but missed a few details:
First off, Chris and Aaron are "dead". At least in the "real world". There is a flashback in Chapter 3 which pretty explicitly shows Chris dying and shows Aaron dying shortly thereafter. Of course, the manner of their death is NOT an important plot point at ALL. ;p
There are actually several premises running through Hyrbid Theory. Basically if you want to look at it for meaning its a deconstructionist fanfic. The first arc (chapters 1-10) deconstructs the typical self-insert scenario. Both by showing how it wouldn't work out the way most people think it would and how the crass manipulations used by the protagonists of certain self-inserts are rather... I won't use the word evil, but certainly not nice when you really think about them.
The second arc (chapter 11-20) is about deconstructing crossovers. It basically shows that the concept of the crossover doesn't really work unless, like Rob said, you place some pretty aritificial limitations on the actions of those involved. Plus, most anime series have incompatible universes.
The third arc isn't about either of those things. Basically by this point we've set up everything we needed to and "said" all the stuff we want to so this arc is basically about wrapping up the story and doing a satisfying conclusions. So many series fall apart at the end or just wander off into perpetuity and never get finished that ending Hyrbid Theory, conclusively and in a satisfying manner is a big important thing for us.
We did receive complaints about the size of the cast and the number of plot threads (especially in chapters 19-20) but there really wasn't much we could do about it. Thankfully the next ten chapters are going to remain more centrally focused with a small (if dynamic) cast of characters throughout.
As for Pluto. Well... she's a person stuck in a bad situation. She knows that Ukyou is going to destroy all creation. She knows that the only way to stop her is to kill her. She wants there to be another solution but doesn't see one.
That being said... she DID choose to save her friend's life instead of finishing off Ukyou when she had the chance...
----------------
Epsilon
Willing to answer any other questions which aren't direct spoilers

[Necratoid]

---

The second arc (chapter 11-20) is about deconstructing crossovers. It basically shows that the concept of the crossover doesn't really work unless, like Rob said, you place some pretty aritificial limitations on the actions of those involved. Plus, most anime series have incompatible universes.

---

Isn't that self fulfilling prophecy? Any crossover that takes place with series that don't already take place in the same universe are automatically artificially melded, by definition. So any alteration made are artificial limitations via the fact the crossing is artificial.
I'm not saying I don't get part of what your saying, tossing umpteen series together and ignoring radically different back stories is often handled rather poorly. Too much, 'Because: We your great and mighty Writer have claimed it works for no readily apparent reason... so it does. There are no plot holes... only Zuel!'
Also, many series don't take place on the same planet or take place in different time periods. Two series may require different physics. Or some series have a no lethal or permanent physical harm may happen to people in this area, others have most of the cast will end up very dead, very messily with a few pages of being introduced... if not sooner. We are also talking about artificial universes being meshed, by default and regardless of how good the story is and how seamless the details meshing them together are artificially limiting the series.
So are you commenting: Crossovers are an extremely stupid idea to do at all? That most crossovers are handled in a 'sledgehammer used to put the square peg through the round hole' level of competence? That virtually all crossovers should end with the gory death of many involved, on general principle? Are you playing on the idea that all limitations placed when combining two separate systems are by default/definition 'artificial limitations'?
I get the first 10 parts are what happens when a SI acts like a badly integrated SI and their Aura of Smooth suffers a General Protection Fault. Its just the idea behind the crossover section (good as 'Hybrid Theory' is) seems to involve all series being the result of an axe strike to the creator deitys head... much springing forth from the head fully mature is involved. Its like tossing a bunch of live bugs in a jar, shaking it up and expecting the bugs to get along.
Granted, I realize that the two SIs involved are angsty and the universe involved has a feel of 'set up as a test of what the two would do given their own universe to control', a test of character these two are failing. Kind of a dead people judge thy selves way of determining which afterlife they belong in. In this case... the Trainwreck T.V. of the gods that took those noninterference oaths.

[Bob Schroeck]

---

Well, as the author I feel I might want to step in to answer any questions and clear up a few misunderstandings here.

---

Thanks for taking the time to do so, Epsilon, and welcome to the forums. I hope you'll have the time to hang out on a more or less regular basis once this thread expires on its own, but even if you don't we're grateful you've joined in on this one topic at least.
Let me say that I've been greatly enjoying Hybrid Theory (even as I grow more and more aghast at what is actually happening therein), and I'm looking forward to whatever blockbuster of a conclusion you guys have in mind. The explication of your intentions with the arcs is of particular interest to me, as it validates the gut feelings I developed while reading. I suppose you can count that as at least a limited success.
In regards to your goals with arc 1, I'd be curious to find out if you've read the extant Drunkard's Walk material, and what opinion either or both of you had of my own attempts to subvert/twist the "insert phenomenon".

-- Bob
---------
For Jor-El so loved the Earth, he sent his only begotten son...

[Bob Schroeck]

---

the universe involved has a feel of 'set up as a test of what the two would do given their own universe to control', a test of character these two are failing.

---

Hmm. You may be right there, Necratoid. I know I was starting to think that the implication that this universe simply hadn't existed previous to Aaron and Chris' insertion was actually the case, but I didn't have an explanation how/why. The possibility that it is a test makes a certain amount of (scary) sense.

-- Bob
---------
For Jor-El so loved the Earth, he sent his only begotten son...

[classicdrogn]

So... they're dead, and someone else's lives are flashing in front of their eyes, then?
- CD now I'm just being snarky...SERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
Dr. Akagi will recover. Observe, Rei smiled. Shinji-kun, are these your clothes?
Ritsuko shot up like a spring loaded meerkat. What? Shinji-kun is naked?
See, Anata? Dr. Hentai is alive and well. - Innortal's _I Do_
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Ayiekie]

Wow, we're famous! This is Blade/Chris, dusting off his almost-forgotten EZboard account. Rob told me about the thread as he said; I just needed to wait until I had time to post, primarily because what time I had has been sucked up like a vacuum by Civilization.
I must admit, I'm totally tickled pink that you read the fanfic, Bob, as all the members of my gaming group read yours. Now I can tell them: "the Drunkard's Walk guy reads Hybrid Theory: clearly you all should too!". In response to your question, I believe Aaron's read DW, but I must confess I haven't, mostly because I rarely read fanfiction except as favors these days, and while I've heard much about DW, from my understanding it's a pretty massive undertaking to start reading at this point.
Of course, uh, so is Hybrid Theory. ^^;; So now I feel bad and may try to take time out to read it! In either case, thanks very much for reading it, and I'm thrilled you enjoyed it.
Insofar as some of the other comments go...
In response to your comment, Bob, that you're aghast at what's actually happening, I'll merely say only that Hybrid Theory is a trilogy, and the darkest part of a trilogy is always the middle book/movie/story. Thus, while I'm not saying everything is sweetness and light from here on in, I will say that Chapter 20 was deliberately the nadir of events, and for many people the only way to go from there is up. That being said, yeah, Hybrid Theory has dark themes and events, and people who can't stand that sort of thing probably wouldn't like it. It's not all dark - even the darkest chapters have humour and light points. We very much wanted to avoid the trap some dark/serious fics have fallen into of becoming so dark and serious that the cast of an originally-humorous series like Ranma no longer really resemble themselves. Events can change your outlook, but rarely are going to alter the core of your being: that's the watchword we went by. Ranma's been through a lot, and it has changed him, but he's still instantly recognisable as Ranma, we think, and that's what we tried to keep with many characters. Of course, some people are more altered than others because a lot of what is familiar to us about them stemmed from events that never happened (the most recent and obvious example being Angel in Chapter 21), but even there we tried to isolate the core of what they were as a person and work from that.
In response to Necratoid, I'm going to couch my reply carefully. ;p It was the plan all along to include a lot of deconstructionist themes and metatextual commentary on fanfiction in HT, based on our ten years of writing and reading it. It was also the plan all along not to make a big deal about this until the fanfic was over, because the primary purpose of the fanfic is to be a good story first, and our commentary decidedly second. Not to say that we won't eventually get around to pointing out "We did THIS as a take on common fanfic cliche X", but we don't plan to do so until the story proper is complete.
That being said, our issue with crossovers in the "shared world" vein that Hybrid Theory occupies is primarily, yes, that they sometimes do not make sense and are ill-thought out. To wit, many authors (and I will SO not name names, because that's not the point) take only the parts from each series they want, and as you say, hammer the square peg of the rest into the round hole of what they want to deal with. For example, take that most common of crossovers, the Ranma/Sailor Moon crossover. Even something as simple as the answer to "What was the entire martial artist population of Tokyo doing when Jadeite appeared in the sky to the entire city and threatened to destroy it and told everybody exactly where he was?" is often not given if the setting is post-series (as it frequently is). Nor is there any reason beyond "coincidence" that there's never a martial artist around when weird stuff happens, despite the fact that in the Ranmaverse superhuman martial arts death machines seem to average one per high school. For the former, the explanation could be as simple as "a bunch of them showed up, but were knocked unconscious like the police were", but this leads to the ramification: Ranma and friends are completely helpless against even the weakest (comparatively) sort of magics that the Dark Generals wield, which then probably needs to be reflected in the fanfic proper, and so on. The suspension of disbelief in the fanfic and that the two series' can share a world is strained by people ignoring these kind of things for the story to want to tell, and the problem is, there's stuff like this that needs to be explained away in most crossovers. When it becomes a multicrossover like Hybrid Theory, the suspension of disbelief becomes hard to support with a serious look at everything involved.
"Just how many Orochis were there in your myth, anyway?"
So that was one of the things we had in mind from the beginning, and of course is intimately tied up with the world as it is. This is not to say the Hybrid Theory way is the only way to do a multicrossover that's supposed to make sense! Obviously, it isn't. For our own part, we had two unreleased precursors to Hybrid Theory where we examined multicrossovers and self-inserts and developed the ideas that eventually coalesced into Hybrid Theory; one of which, Rumik World, had a completely different take on how a multicrossover could work utilising the Oh My Goddess cast as a fulcrum. I'm sure there's a thousand other ways to do it: one of course is simply not for it to be a shared universe ala Hybrid Theory, but a multiverse setup (as I believe Drunkard's Walk has) where the universes all exist simultaneously but separately.
But, our observation was that many multicrossovers do just jam all the series together and don't try too hard to explain away the inconsistancies - thus, we deliberately addressed that, particularly in Book II. I guess you can say it's our response to the classic criticism of bitching about a problem: "Well, I'd like to see you do better." Whether we did better isn't our place to decide, but we did try to do something. ;p

[Ayiekie]

I wanted to give a direct reply to ClassicDrogn, but since my last post was already quite long, I wanted to break it up a bit. ;p
You already know a bit from other replies, of course, but here's a concise summary:
The two authors are Chris (hi!) and Aaron (the other guy). Basically, yes, we both got killed in a (somewhat mysterious) car accident, whilst my girlfriend and Rob were not (but it's worth noting that I died instantly, and Aaron was only fatally wounded and passed out). Aaron then ended up somehow sharing a mind and body with Ukyou Kuonji from Ranma 1/2, a situation that both of them were very unhappy with and did not understand. I ended up in a different situation: I woke up in the body of a recently deceased street person in America, and soon afterwards found out that the body I was in began rapidly decaying (a process that was unbearably uncomfortable for me) but that I could allieviate it by jumping from one corpse to another. Morally, this could be called a difficult situation, particularly because I can also gain the skills that the deceased person by accessing the memories in their brains... doubly so because a body like that of a superhuman martial artist takes a lot longer to rot.
Neither of us, at first, knew about the other. We both ended up in Japan, interacting separately with characters we knew (at first primarily Ranma), then met each other in an unfriendly fashion, then went our separate ways and dealt with different issues. My driving motivation was to deal with the rotting problem that kept "forcing" me to kill people; Aaron/Ukyou had their own problem forced upon them when Sailor Pluto tried to kill them, because she had been sent a message by her future self stating that Ukyou would inevitably destroy the universe. Ukyou/Aaron, who would have left to their own devices mostly agonised over Ranma and tried to find a way to separate themselves, were thus forced into contact with the Sailor Moon cast, which went badly, and then things spiralled entirely out of her control and forced her into doing more and more things and taking more and more responsibility which she did not always deal well with.
In the background of all of this, and increasingly as time went on, where the various powers of the world from the different series' involved, who were startled to learn about all the things they had somehow missed up until now (like Guyver's world-spanning conspiracy Chronos not knowing about Ranma-style martial artists, or the Sailor Moon villains not knowing about powerful opposition on Earth that wasn't the Sailor Senshi). The ramifications of this were that carefully balanced timelines like Sailor Moon's rapidly altered beyond recognition as people who EXISTED from the beginning but were otherwise occupied (such as the Deathbusters) started reacting to the increasing chaos of the world (all of this forms a lot of what happens in Book II, and leads to the world situation in Book III that other people have been referring to).
One theme that comes out from all this is the wondering many characters have on what is real. Ukyou, for instance, has to deal with the fact that she shares Aaron's memories, and knows that Aaron read about a large chunk of her life (that for her hadn't happened yet!) in a comic book. But she never read the comic book about Aaron's life: it doesn't exist. What does that MEAN? How do you deal with it?
Questions of morality are raised, too, for instance by my situation: is it okay to kill people to survive? Probably not, really. But what if they're evil people? What if somebody else killed them and your hands are clean? What if they were people who were going to die anyway if left to their own devices? If you WANT to do good things, does that mitigate the fact that you really aren't doing them? So yeah, there's that. I am not a heroic character in the fanfic, but I'm not as flat-out a villain as, say, Jadeite. What I am is primarily left up to the reader to decide: it's worth noting that for a good chunk of the fanfic, reader reaction was that they found the Chris character more sensible and protagonist-like than the Ukyou/Aaron-character (which we thought was a very interesting reaction, and influenced how certain events went).
If you're expecting a fanfic where the self-inserts are the only people of consequence, that isn't here. Indeed, one key theme of Book II was how much bigger the world was than Ukyou or Chris, and how events they had nothing to do with (in England, for instance) were still spiralling out of control. Moreover, some readers have praised us (and a few complained) about how important and standing on their own many of the characters are. Of course that's for you to decide whether you agree with, but I will say that it was our intention from the beginning to balance the necessities of Ukyou in particular being the main character against the fact that other people should not be mere sidekicks to the self-inserts.
You've seen to an extent our explanations how Hybrid Theory is deconstructionist and full of commentary or ironic references to fanfiction and all that, and it is. You've also seen that it is primarily intended to be a good story with a interesting and often unpredictable (but still foreshadowed) plot, as well as fresh takes on a lot of characters and deep characterisation, and hopefully we succeeded at that too. But there's something else almost as important as that.
The original tagline to Hybrid Theory was "So I asked myself: what if someone wrote a self-insert with a point?" We changed that for a number of reasons, mostly because of the fact we found a cooler tagline, also because a few people took offence. But it was true, in this sense: many self-insertion fanfics, even well-written self-insertion fanfics (and no I'm not going to name names, because it's beside the point), contain themes, ideas, and characterisation that did NOT require a self-insertion to explore. Someone even accused us of this once, saying we could remove the self-inserts, give a certain character knowledge of the future, and have a more interesting story (in our defence, said person had only read about half of Chapter 10 and none of the rest of the fanfic before making this complaint) while doing the same things. At the very least, many self-inserts never answer the question "Why you, fanboy? Why you and not Bob Schroeck?"
We didn't want to do that. From the conception, Hybrid Theory was designed to be a story told through being a multicrossover and self-insert, a story that could ONLY be told through a multicrossover self-insert, a story where the concept of "people from our world go to anime world" has a real plot-based reason rather than being a handwaved kickoff to the story, and a story were there are real reasons for "Why us?" as opposed to "Why not Rob Kelk?".
So there's that. Whether any of that makes you interested, I don't know. But without getting into any spoilers (beyond the stuff you'd seen in Chapters 1-3), that's the best synopsis I can give of the setup of Hybrid Theory and why we wrote it.
(And all of this goes to prove, once again, that the only thing worse than asking a mother about her child is asking a writer about their story. ;p)

[Rieverre]

I've been working my way throught HT over the last few days - usually, I would have taken less to over the whole thing, but this stuff takes a while to digest. Not saying it's bad, just saying I need to be in the proper sort of mood before starting on another batch of it. It's sort of like cookie dough like that. Only not as sweet.
I'd like to speak objectively, but I'd likely just devolve into subjective opinions anyway, so let me just say - it's good.
And yeah, I'm more keen on following the Chris-character related storyline. I'm thinking it's going to stay like that unless and until he starts wearing leather pants and gelling his hair in every body he jumps into. Maybe it's because 'I'm actually the essence of a once alive fanfic author animating this corpse, and not the person I look like right now' is something I haven't seen done before, whereas the 'sharing space' has been done - though, I admit, never in quite this way. Yay for psychosis.
Aheh.
Anyway, keep with it, guys. I'm thinking I'm going to try and work my way through to the end of this, given a sufficiently ample supply of happy-pills being present (mental note, need to go shopping again soon).
What can I say, I just like seeing a good crossover SNAFU in progress.
-Griever
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm

[Epsilon]

---

Thanks for taking the time to do so, Epsilon, and welcome to the forums. I hope you'll have the time to hang out on a more or less regular basis once this thread expires on its own, but even if you don't we're grateful you've joined in on this one topic at least.

---

Thank you for welcoming me. I might just stick around. If nothing else this place has more lively discussion than the anifics board. ;p

---

Let me say that I've been greatly enjoying Hybrid Theory (even as I grow more and more aghast at what is actually happening therein), and I'm looking forward to whatever blockbuster of a conclusion you guys have in mind. The explication of your intentions with the arcs is of particular interest to me, as it validates the gut feelings I developed while reading. I suppose you can count that as at least a limited success.

---

Thanks a lot. Feedback, positive and negative, is always appreciated.

---

In regards to your goals with arc 1, I'd be curious to find out if you've read the extant Drunkard's Walk material, and what opinion either or both of you had of my own attempts to subvert/twist the "insert phenomenon".

---

*embarassed grin* I've never actually read Drunkard's Walk. Mainly this was because I wasn't aware of it. I mean, I devoured just about everything else out there, even Skysaber's stuff. For some reason, it just slipped below my radar. I tell you what, I'll give it a read soon and post a review on these boards. Though likely in a more appropriate sub-forum.
Oh, and to ClassicDrogn, hello again. At least if you're the ClassicDrogn from the gMCA project that never got off the ground. Heh. He's one of the few people who knows any details about the aborted project I was working on before Hybrid Theory that contains many of the same concepts. ;p
---------------
Epsilon

[classicdrogn]

Yup, it's me, Mr. Aardly Slacker. I'm not so fond of darkfic, so I probably won't read HT judging by what's been said - well, not until its complete and the darkest bits resolved, at least - but know enoguh about both of your writing to know I'm missing out by doing so.
- CD is the only ___Drogn anywhere online, so far as he knows, discounting dictionary entries and the use of the word spelled the same that means... name or clan, I don't remember... rather than having originated as a typo for 'dragon'SERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
Dr. Akagi will recover. Observe, Rei smiled. Shinji-kun, are these your clothes?
Ritsuko shot up like a spring loaded meerkat. What? Shinji-kun is naked?
See, Anata? Dr. Hentai is alive and well. - Innortal's _I Do_
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows