Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Renee Kilburn -> Natalie Klein

Alright, this is a decision I'm leaving entirely up to you, so cast your votes on my profile on FF.net.



The REASON: When I had originally created LOAS, I used the name Renee (which is my middle name). I've always been horrible when it comes to creating names - but the more I look at it the more unprofessional it seems (although most of you probably wouldn't know my middle name). People have asked me before if Renee is a self-insert, which she isn't. I'm not even half that cool.

I finally decided upon a name that works: Natalie Klein. It still allows for a nickname to work "Nattie" in place of "RenRen" for Renee.

Her name would be the only thing that would change. I would simply go back over the chapters for both stories and change her name. There would be no changes whatsoever to her character's personality. It's the same character, just with a different name.

So vote. As I said, it's entirely up to you.

3 comments:

  1. 23, male, Victoria, BC. Love your writing. I do have opinions though, like all your readers :) FYI I'm halfway through LOAS and it's the only thing of yours I've read to date.

    Opinion #1: you should learn the difference between magazines and clips and stop saying clip when you mean mag.

    #2: you should find a military or paramilitary consultant. That scene where you had the colonel eating at the same table as Troy and his friends? "You Cannot Do That, The Military Does Not Work That Way!"

    Well, the UNSC might, but everything we've seen so far has shown us that the U.S. won the "culture war" as my friends Aaron and Richard put it. And in America - not to mention most of the planet outside possibly very irregular guerrilla units - colonels don't eat with junior officers. (Though everyone fights from the colonel down.)

    In a space navy, an army, marine or air force colonel would probably eat with the captain and ship's senior officers at the captain's table. (A navy captain is equal to an army colonel and a navy lieutenant is equal to an army captain. Oh, and it gets worse.)

    Up to that point in LOAS I saw a number of things that could be called mistakes or seemed slightly off from a military perspective but I was prepared to be all "No, I really like this story and this author and I'm just going to shut my mouth for once and let this be" but then I was like "No, no way is a colonel eating with a junior looey".

    Sorry. <3

    3. I can't actually remember what my original #3 was, which shows you that I don't actually feel very strongly about any of this - I'd rather you wrote, period, than that you didn't write because "Ohmigawd, I can't handle the BS the fans throw my way" - but I do wonder why when SPARTAN-117 and RenRen went ballistic he decided to light on his feet with her on his back.

    That would concentrate the KE of impact on the surface area of his feet and distribute it to RenRen in a way that exposed her inferior internal organs (i.e. those not covered by the ribcage), face and crotch. It's a little-known but valuable fact that women as well as men can be completely disabled and even permanently damaged if they get hit in the crotch hard enough, to say nothing of the other two areas.

    Coming up to that passage, I fully expected him to land flat on his back, much like Venom landed underneath Spider-Man when Spidey pulled him off the top of a parkade. The only difference I thought would happen is that Renners would be on her back as well.

    That would distribute KE across way more surface area, not only in terms of their body surface but all the neato layers of MJOLNIR (including energy shields) that keep 117 in fighting form. Of course I know 117 winds up fine because obviously he survives to the end of 3, but he's just such a sense-making guy I can't imagine him doing anything else.

    Okay, that's it. Have you read the Uglies quadrilogy by Scott Westerfeld?

    Allrighty, have a bandit day :)

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  2. Oh, and you know what else I'd do if I were you? Wait for me to tell you I'm done reading LOAS ;) and then get it and anything else Halo-related you might ever want to publish offline. That way Bungie or whoever can't notice it until you want them to - until you're in a position for a book deal. Or even just a book, if you're one of those not-in-it-for-the-money-types.

    =D Just a thought. A cease-and-desist letter would suck for an author like you.

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  3. Gunfire cannot set off nuclear warheads, they do not work that way. Similar to how you can set fire to C4 and it doesn't explode, it just slowly burns. Combustion versus explosion. Destruction versus fission (or fusion).

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