2016

12th December

An explanation is probably in order. "Probably" because 4th December could only be a big deal to me. Dunno. But first I should say the third Games Matrix episode appeared on the 4th with no fanfare whatsoever, it was only mentioned on this page. The link for it is in the usual places now. If you're not interested in my usual long winded TMI explanation, skip the second paragraph.

Perhaps I'll try to sum it up first, then at least then you know what the hell happened. I'm extremely stressed with everything life's throwing at me; re-occuring back pain because of an accident 7 years ago, hectic home and work life/no peace at all, a hard episode I had little interest in was 1 of 2 anniversary episodes (GM Saga: Fourboding), having to live with/take care of a parent - who has let me down a lot in recent years -who's suffering from dementia. To top that off, writing has always been my escape, and because I couldn't do it I snapped. Snapped as in full blown hysterical breakdown which left me numb for a few days. So yeah. I'll keep the rest to the ramblings page.

Really, episode 4 of the Games Matrix Saga shouldn't have been a linchpin in all of this. It is the weakest of the saga, which is based on/parodying ReBoot's third quarter of its third season; 16 episodes divided into four "sagas" or parts. Fourboding covers the part of the season that goes a little like this:

Episode 1 jailbreak and exposition.
Episode 2 girl flirts with idiot, boyfriend gets jealous, she goes in a huff because he's jealous and stares at an alien egg sack like a gormless twit and is surprised to have her energy sucked out, crew start to chase the creature after they go into the Web.
Episode 3, more creature chase and jealous shenanigans, until finally something happens and the person they're looking for finds them.
Episode 4, try to go back to place that they should remember was locked, because that's how the mess started, but are shocked it is. Bob Ex Machina. On their way home.

It's tedious, it bleeds together. I've only seen these episodes a couple times, and because I currently have no region free players at all I can't watch the DVDs (it's on youtube, not something I can do at work, heh). I knew all of this when I decided to have the Games Matrix saga rebooted into five episodes, so got no one to blame but me.

I figured I'd try to write episode 5, now titled Diminished Fifth, since the story has a lot more to work with. If I get back into Games Matrix I might be able to finish Fourboding. It's not like there's much left to do in it once all the "airheaded female MC doing something stupid, everyone mopes over her cos she's soooo prett... er I mean great" story has been removed.

Edited Episodes

Because of a plot point in S3 being in the MI parodies and so now no longer canon, some of Friday the Thirteenth has been edited to fix it.

Site Updates

Coming Soon is up to date.

"Holo Q" has been added to "Marill Re-Reads Season One".

Alone And Three's been added to the Episode Archive, Homepage, Release Log and Episode Sizes in History.

Episode Log's up to date with the latest episode, has been edited with the new S3 numbers, and has altered the links to the above five episodes.

Games Matrix Episode 1 and 2 (Single Crossing and Two Far) are no longer referred to as Parts 1 and 2 underneath the original episode. They're now labelled like above with their new numbers and titles. The original episode is now linked underneath the reboots.

As stated above, Season Three's order for episodes 8-23 have been changed; file names have been renamed to suit, previous and next episodes links have been fixed, page titles. You get the idea. If you discover any errors, please let me know from any of the options in Contact.

The original Monkey Island parodies have been evicted from Season Three's section in Episode Archive and (possibly temporarily) moved to the bottom of the Episode Archive instead. I don't like them there right after Back To Normal but I don't want to completely delete them. I need to have a good think about where to put them. They'll either end up in History or like all the other replaced episodes, linked under their reboots despite being in different seasons.

Original Games Matrix, Secret of Malain, The Revenge, Curse of the Ring, and Escape From Hell Itself have been moved out of the Episode Sizes Ranking, and into the deleted/replaced table at the bottom.

Reboot Season Three has been added to the Episode Trivia section in History. There's not much there though.

 

4th December

New Episodes

Reboot Season Three, Episode 15: Alone And Three

20th November

Hey, hey progress update today. I've been on holiday for a week and have many, many Games Matrix pages to type up. I'll update the Coming Soon page routinely until I'm done. I did finish Part 3 and was a quarter or so way through Part 4 (which I had already started before my trip but had accidentally classed it as Part 3 in my previous updates).

Coming Soon as mentioned already.

Since GM Part 2/Two Far was typed up rather quickly, not because I was in a hurry for once, but because I really was getting into the second half of the story and when I type stupidly quickly typo's happen. These have been fixed, nothing too major. The major one was Dark Clouds Part 1 had a missing word near the beginning, not impressed with myself there considering how many times I checked it. Sigh.

10th November

Today's the deadline. Why? This day 14 years ago The Games Matrix was apparently completed, despite its stated release date of 3rd November in the Episode Archive. In those days it's likely part 1 and maybe 2 was released then, but part 3 was not finished in time and released later. Unfortunately my archived news pages don't mention when it showed up, only that it was one of many episodes at the time that was a victim of the 56k didn't upload properly and wouldn't overwrite/delete glitch. Ah memories! So in a nut shell, 10th November seemed like a more accurate and fitting date to release its much needed reboot.

If you missed the news/info in earlier updates; ex Season Three special The Games Matrix is to be turned into a five episode saga, to replace the Monkey Island parodies that were moved into Reboot Season One. However as I expected I didn't finish in time for the deadline. There's still enough there to release, BUT the saga wasn't the only thing that was to be done. Season Three would need rearranging since the MI episodes were in slots 8, 15, 20 & 23 and the saga would need to be all together. Also Secret and Escape both contain events in the series revolving around two regular characters that need to be edited into other episodes.

I'd prefer not to do all of that work when The Games Matrix saga is not yet finished. It'll make things a tad confusing. Until it is, and I doubt it'll be any later than this year's anniversary update, the episodes that are ready will be displayed as parts in Games Matrix's current slot.

I'm a little disappointed that I couldn't finish Part 3 in time since I was doing well with it. Most of my time was sunk by part 2 needing to be mostly rewritten from scratch since it was so, so, so bad. Part 3 mostly needed it too but at least I already knew what to do with it, since it's been planned for a while now. Part 2's only new plans until I went to write it was to include a certain plot element from Games Matrix's "inspiration" that never happened in the originals. A lot of new stuff when into this one, making it the largest solo episode of the season (and a hundred words shy of the original episode's overall total). Sigh. This is why I'm behind, right there.

On a completely unrelated note, scouring my old news archive I discovered 3rd November, or a date roughly around it, was when the site got its .net address. I think it was still using free website hosting (Freeservers it looks like), which I think does explain the issues revolving around episodes like The Games Matrix. The more you know ;) Anyway...

New Material

Reboot Season Three, Episode 13: Single Crossing

Reboot Season Three, Episode 14: Two Far

Site Updates

Coming Soon has been updated.

The usual History pages are up to date. Even though they're temporarily displayed as parts in the Episode Archive and here in Updates, the GM episodes are labelled as what they will be in Log/Sizes; episodes with their new titles.

5th November

God, the original Games Matrix has some unsalvageable terribad attempts at fourth wall humor in it. I didn't want to have to rewrite part 2 as well. Redoing part 3 and writing two brand new episode sized parts was a big project already. It will be a miracle if all of this is ready for my deadline, but there should be two out of five at least, so it's not that big of a disaster. Anyway!

Site Updates

Coming Soon has been updated.

"Collective Instinct" has been added to "Marill Re-Reads Season One"

28th October

Site Updates

Coming Soon has been updated.

Despite fixing the old one (well contrast/brightness tweaking anyway) I fancied making a brand new banner for The Games Matrix saga. You can view it on the homepage.

25th October

Today was going to be a little progress update with a boring review no one probably reads. I ended up finishing Caretaker tonight so FINALLY, the over a year long safety net that is Piece of Conspiracy can finally be unleashed. I badly wanted to clean up the mess that the Monkey Island parodies left, and I figured these two episodes together would be a better trick than on different days/weeks.

My next task I've already got a head start on. I still don't fancy revealing the deadline date for it, I'm sure it's obvious by now that it's somewhere in November. That doesn't matter now, today is about these two:

New Episodes

Reboot Season One, Episode 19: Fugitives

Reboot Season One, Episode 21: Piece of Conspiracy

Please Note that episode 20 is already online and has been since 2013. If you wanted to only read this season in order, you've got three episodes to dig into instead of two.

Site Updates

Coming Soon has been updated. The Games Matrix's five episodes are the big changes there.

The usual History pages when an episode is released are updated; Episode Log and Size Rankings.

"Worse Case Scenario 2" has been added to "Marill Re-Reads Season One"

13th October

These Reboot episodes are getting a touch too long for my liking. Fugitives shouldn't be the largest solo episode of Reboot One. As usual I got a bit carried away with a few scenes. It did mean a lot of the original ones couldn't be used, which would've made it even bigger. The next episode to do for Season One is Upendi so yeah, a bit worried now.

In the previous update I waffled on about fixing some problems with the reboot and the convoluted plan to do so. I was thinking about it yesterday and I came to the conclusion that Plan A wasn't necessary. Basically it put into account that The Games Matrix would take a while to be done, but completely forgot that I wanted it done for a certain pre-4th December date anyway. Caretaker isn't needed to tie things over if the gap between Fugitives/Piece and The Games Matrix is shorter than the usual gap between Reboot One episodes. Basically all I need is Plan B:

Finish Fugitives (check), write a new backup to take Piece of Conspiracy's place (doing now), release Fugitives and Piece of Conspiracy together, start work on The Games Matrix, release whatever's ready on the planned date, work on Upendi and rest of Season One once all of that's out of the way.

It's more than good enough. Not only will Caretaker finally be finished before its eighth birthday (yeah and I thought Death of the Soul took a long time!), I'll have no gaps in Season One anymore with only a few episodes to go, Piece of Conspiracy will no longer be gathering dust in the backup folder, Season Three won't have 4 episode sized gaps in it, the Monkey Island episodes won't be there twice. Best of all even if things don't go entirely to plan, there will still be three new episodes released in a space of a few weeks. Best case scenario it'll be seven.

Site Updates

Coming Soon once more up to date.

"Mirror Universes" has been added to "Marill Re-Reads Season One" page. Spoiler Alert: FANFIC DIMENSIONS

In History the Episode Size Rankings page has been updated with Fugitives' numbers.

4th October

Site Updates

Coming Soon once more up to date.

Fugitives is coming along quite nicely. I only have vague memories based on its title as to what I wanted to do with the original, instead of copying Pokémon 2000's love triangle jokes. It's hard. I doubt I'll ever remember what my 2000/2001 self had in mind that gave it the name Fugitives. It's gone like the memory of the James & Jessie-less version of Collective Instinct. It's not THAT bad of course. I still have the base story to work from, I can assume based on that. I really doubt 15 year old me had anything deep in mind for this, it's probably what I've decided to do with the reboot. Ah well.

Warning TL:DR, a "little" news to keep anyone who comes here in the loop. It helps to order my chaotic thoughts too.

Basically there are three problems with the Reboot, well four but that one is pretty minor in comparison. I need to fix them and very soon. That is my goal at the moment. There's little point in keeping it a secret, especially when I try to keep the coming soon page up to date. So, what are the problems?

1) Dark Frontier's release has meant the gap before Secret of the Revenge is now finally closed, but the one between it and Escape is far more annoying. Why? The gap episode is Fugitives, which in the original Season One layout was based before Dark Frontier. Basically the next episode suggestion for the last few reboots, and now Secret of the Revenge, is The Voyager Conspiracy which was ALSO before Dark Frontier. I think it'll be a little awkward to recommend reading one episode that's due to be released very soon anyway (Piece of Conspiracy) which is immediately followed by two episodes you've already read.

Basically anyone new to the series who's reading in order is currently getting this suggestion:

Dark Frontier, Secret of the Revenge, (Escape From The Curse optional), The Voyager Conspiracy, Fugitives, Dark Frontier

When Fugitives is released next the order will look like this until the next episode is written:

Dark Frontier, Secret of the Revenge, Fugitives, Escape From The Curse, The Voyager Conspiracy, Fugitives, Dark Frontier

See the problem? It's a daft mess. The best way to fix it is to unleash the backup from its prison, and all will be well:

Dark Frontier, Secret of the Revenge, Fugitives, Escape From The Curse, Piece of Conspiracy

Which leads me to...

2) Piece of Conspiracy has been a backup episode since early 2015. The point of the backup system was for the safety net episode to be an episode that could be released anytime. At the time I put an episode 16-21 (it moved around the list a lot!) in there when I was only up to 9. Yep. It'd be fine to release for a long time reader who's read Season One and the original Voyager Conspiracy. Not so good for newbies. It's bad enough having the Monkey Island parodies online. Basically something else should have gone in the backup pot but never did.

I've almost caught up. What's the problem? Upendi follows Piece of Conspiracy, which means for it to be released another two parter needs editing, and that's after Fugitives is done. A one I know needs more work than Dark Frontier needed.

3) Thanks to Secret of the Revenge and Escape From The Curse being Season Three refugees/rejects, there's a bit of a mess in that season too, far worse than the gaps in Reboot One. Currently the four originals are still there in the listings, with please note's telling you to skip them for no longer being canon. My plan to fix that was to not make up four brand new episodes, but reboot Worse Episode Winner/Contender; The Games Matrix (I know it battled with Hunters in the polls in the olden days) into a saga like Resolutions and the Season Four finale. The Games Matrix was a rushed mess, forgetting what it had done in Part 1. I figured if I rebooted it, it would be huge for a Season Three episode. Splitting it into five reasonably sized episodes (1 for replacing original, 4 to fill MI slots) seemed like the smartest choice.

This does mean a few episode numbers need changing since the MI episodes were not together, but that's nothing, merely a ten minute job. It's been 4 years since I ruined S3 (further) by taking those four episodes out, so I want to sort this out ASAP. However writing a 5 part saga isn't going to be a short job, it couldn't really be the backup choice either. It'd be worse than Conspiracy being one. I still need something else.

There's the problems. I need that backup released so the Season One originals recommendations are less confusing. However what needs to replace it needs to be a quick job. The Games Matrix reboot is not that and isn't backup material since it should've been done years ago anyway. Then there's problem 4, Caretaker's still unfinished. I guess you can say 5 with Outside of Time Part 2 still waiting but I never considered that urgent whatsoever.

Here's my current plan for the moment, which should deal with most if not all of the problems I've got:

1) Write Fugitives but do not release it once it is finished

2) Complete Caretaker. Not only Part 6, all of it. It's not ideal, but that will be the backup for the time being.

2b) OR Reboot Outside of Time Part 2 and use that as a backup instead. That's less appealing to me because it's the only episode left in B4FV2's reboot and god, I want to label that as finished. AND like Conspiracy, it's easy enough to exploit as a permanent backup episode. More so in fact, as it's not in the way of anything elses release, at least until B4FV Season One's reboot is done and HAHA that's a long way away. Caretaker should be out first.

Also I'm never in the mood for it. Sad but true.

3) Release Fugitives and Piece of Conspiracy. Then change the recommendations for any new readers to follow them with original Upendi.

4) This all depends on when I get to this point. The timing is the most important part, I'm not even kidding. Yep I foresee carnage and disappointment, with a side helping of rants. At least I warn in advance.

Basically I want The Games Matrix Saga ready for a certain date. I'm willing to settle for only Part 1 on that date, as long as some of its there I'm happy. It's not 4th December though. It's sooner.

I know though that this 5 piece saga isn't going to be a weekend/week job. It'll take a while. That's where Caretaker comes in handy. However, I don't want Caretaker to be a backup for the sole reasons of getting Conspiracy online and to be an intentional dry spell moisturiser. I'd feel much better if I have another episode to back that up.

So yeah it's all complicated, but step 4 can be summed up into two:

a) Reboot Upendi, place into backup folder but release Caretaker Part 6 only. Then begin rebooting The Games Matrix. Periodically release Parts 7 & 8 whilst doing so (for example once episode 2 is done, release Caretaker Part 7, then with episode 4 release Part 8). When GM is finished do all the rearranging of Season Three and release the entire saga on the preferred date.

or

b) Start work on The Games Matrix. Once each part is finished and checked, release but don't rearrange Season Three, keep it like Caretaker's episode archive entry:

14. Original Games Matrix
Episode Synopsis: blah blah
Reboot Version: Part One || Part Two

Once completed, release final part on preferred date and obviously reorganise then. With Caretaker Parts 6 - 8 still in the backup folder, Upendi reboot can start. Once finished, all of Caretaker will be released at once.

Considering how much work there is to pull Plan A off in time, I'd have to have no more writing dry spells that I had recently with Dark Frontier and Timeline. It's do-able, as long as I don't go bonkers with adding new scenes into Games Matrix. I'd prefer Plan A but Plan B is far more realistic and achievable.

The worst case scenario of Part 1 only isn't there I know, it's only if even plan B falls short. It all depends on how long it takes to complete Fugitives and Caretaker. If they're done quickly, I'll give Plan A a go. Then if Upendi starts taking a while, I'll abandon it and move on to Plan B.

What's the date? I'm not confident enough to share it, yet. I will tell you this though, I'd much rather see Upendi grace the 4th December update than Caretaker.

So that's about it. Let's see if any of this comes to pass.

25th September

I've been so tempted to upload the first part to Dark Frontier for a few weeks now, since it had been a while since Test of Time was released. I don't want to do that sorta thing anymore. The exception was Death of the Soul and Back To Normal, which both had good reasons. The last time I released a part of an episode before it was finished I stopped writing for years. Death of the Soul 1 (aka Queuing Forever) and Caretaker 1 were left unfinished for years. I really don't want to risk that happening again. With my turbulent mood and health lately, which had already delayed Dark Frontier quite a bit, the odds weren't in its favour.

I'm annoyed. I was doing well enough. With my plan I expected to be working on Muse or World Domination by the end of the year. Now, I fear I'll still be editing Upendi. It's not a big deal I guess, I did say with S5 and the series being technically over, things should be casual. I however didn't expect this year's reboots to be so much bigger and need a lot of work done to them. Night, Timeless, Timeline, Test of Time (interesting 3/4 have time in the title lol). These hit hard. My plan was to have Reboot FV on the side of my finally writing my novel, but nope, FV's still taking up my whole writing time. Maybe I should pull a Fifty Shades of Grey style name change job after all and get it over with ^_^ Only I start with Aggression and not Caretaker. What should I rename the Borg? lol

New Episodes

Reboot Season One, Episode 17: Dark Frontier

Please Note that episode 18 is already online and has been since 2012. If you wanted to only read this season in order, you've got two episodes to dig into instead of one.

Site Updates

Coming Soon once more up to date.

Contact page has a quick link to the Support forum that guests can reply in. If there's a problem on the site that isn't well, a matter of opinion shall I say, you can tell me about it in there without having to sign up.

"The Fight" has been added to the new "Marill Re-Reads Season One" page. Like everything else, I've put this section into History. It's reviewing FV's early history soooo it fits, at least it fits to me.

Speaking of History, the usual pages when an episode is released are updated (Log and Size Rankings). Also the Season Trivia page is nearly complete, so hopefully by the next update I'll finally add it.

8th September

Hi anyone who's here. The last three weeks have been very stressful and painful, I haven't gotten much work done over that period. I prepared this update I think before it all escalated further and all that's changed is Dark Frontier has a tad bit more done, and a few more reviews were done to distract me when I wasn't feeling that creative. I did remove the part of the text that said I was still on schedule, because at the time I was and now, not so much. If I can finish DF and what work I wanted doing to get Fugitives online too within three weeks then I'll be back on it. I shouldn't go into the why's this has happened, I bore you enough, just know it's difficult to write/edit anything when your only current goal in life is to find a simple way to off yourself. Said too much. But hey, not too bothered about people knowing anymore, says the girl who asked for help on a forum and deleted the message before anyone could reply. Blahblah, moving onto the original update I wrote out a fortnight ago:

The gap between Test of Time and Dark Frontier will be short, I said. Haha. DF isn't progressing as fast as I'd like. It's no biggie. The episode is another two parter and I've stupidly expanded it further than I planned. I was right that the episode didn't need much doing to it, you can tell it was a late Season One entry as it's a huge improvement over the previous ones I've been looking at. The new scenes are only there because I wanted them to be. It doesn't help that I've been off my "game" for weeks, I'm falling to bits it seems, one thing after another.

Once Dark Frontier's done the work to close the gap the Monkey Island parodies created should be well under way with very little left to do.

Site Updates

Coming Soon once more up to date.

"Timeless" has been added to the new "Marill Re-Reads Season One" page. Spoiler Warning; it's bad, so bad. I'm currently up to Timeline in these, as again I do them as a distraction. However once I reach the point I'm rebooting, I plan to stop. At least I'll slow down anyway once I get to The Voyager Conspiracy, as I'll want to wait a bit before tackling Dark Frontier and Fugitives after rebooting them recently. Then it'll be a while before I'm ready for Upendi (yet another two parter waiting for the 'boot) and the crap that follows it - oh god Muse, at least the next few after Upendi are short.

17th August

Site Updates

Coming Soon once more up to date.

The new banner for Dark Frontier has been uploaded. You can see it on the homepage.

The recent addition to Reboot Season One "Test of Time" has had a few typing errors fixed.

"Once Upon A Time" has been added to the new "Marill Re-Reads Season One" page.

A new poll for Test of Time's been added to the polls forum.

12th August

Site Updates

Coming Soon is up to date

"Unforgettable" has been added to the new "Marill Re-Reads Season One" page. Five more are already ready to go up. I figured one at a time. Though that wasn't the Season One way at all.

 

1st August

New Episodes

Reboot Season One, Episode 16: Test of Time

Site Updates

Coming Soon is up to date

Both "Hunters" and "Test of Time" have been added to the new "Marill Re-Reads Season One" page. This section was just for fun, but these two definitely inspired a little anger and too much rambling. The next one should be Unforgettable so that shouldn't be as bad. Ahem.

The History section has had the usual pages updated; Episode Sizes, Log and both Season One Trivia.

18th July

Work is continuing on Test of Time as well as Dark Frontier now that my arm's better. The pair are two parters, which for some reason I didn't consider when putting them side by side. The more work I do on Dark Frontier, shortens the gap between releases. You could argue that it widens the gap between Spirts and Test of Time instead, but it's really not. Dark Frontier so far is a nice, easy edit. The original isn't that bad, and when it copies the original Voyager version word for word it's very easy to fix. Test of Time though is another episode I thought wasn't all bad, only to find that it is Hunters/Aggressions level of bad.

In a nut shell, Test of Time requires a lot more work than Dark Frontier; new scenes, a new setup (that was planned anyway before I read the original thankfully) and many revised lines. This is something that I'm not always in the mood to do. Some days I feel more up to editing Dark Frontier than writing brand new scenes for Test of Time. So yeah, Dark Frontier isn't taking any time away from Test. Its release isn't going to be delayed for Dark, but Dark's release is going to be sooner thanks to this. Then I can finally start closing the gaps around the Monkey Island parodies. It's been far too long.

Site Updates

Coming Soon is up to date with the progress made to both Test of Time and Dark Frontier.

"Year of Hell" has been added to the new "Marill Re-Reads Season One" page. Remember, this is just for fun. I mean yeah I tend to get a little annoyed with these oldies in places, but at the same time it's good to be reminded that I'm not as bad a writer as I used to be. It helps. It also gives me something to do when my bad arm plays up and it doesn't let me type too much.

Season Five's Within Reach has had a few errors fixed. I'm only mentioning this, I usually don't, because I should've spotted the damn things sooner and since its an episode I'm fiercely proud of, it annoyed me more than I like to admit. They were the usual missing a word since I've typed a sentence too fast, typo errors, only minor. Still annoying though.

13th July

Site Updates

Coming Soon is up to date.

The recommended episode for continuing old Season One after Spirits has been changed to The Voyager Conspiracy. After going through only the first few scenes of Test of Time for its reboot, I can't abide recommending it. All you'd miss out on is some character backstory, and the important parts of that are developed and talked about in later episodes FAR better. Skip at all costs.

On that note, a few really, really bad mistakes in Aggressions and Mental Illness have been fixed. It's only been 15 and half years. You can tell I never proofread anything back then, yeesh. Some mistakes deserve to remain to keep the badness/old feel to it, but wrong character names is embarrassing.

Polls has been recently moved to the forums. I've also added what I tried to make with the free online polls but couldn't, Original VS Reboot for each Season One that's been done. Guests can vote, or they should be able to anyway. FYI anyone who votes for original in Aggressions and Hunters, you're dead to me ;)

My arm's playing up once again occasionally, which is always fun. Those times I'm limited to my left, which makes my typing slower and more prone to mistakes. I tend to do other stuff that requires a mouse more and limited typing. Since I was already suffering from old Season One crap and feeling very embarrassed by it, I decided to review it in a goofy "quote and comment/make jokes" style. I know, it's very sad to review your own work. The thing is, FV started 15 years ago, half a lifetime ago for me. Yes I'm still nuts and whiny, as well as a terrible writer with delusions of grandeur, but even after reading through Aggressions and recently Test of Time (well Part 1 anyway. I gave up before the actual flashbacks) I feel like they were written by a completely different person. It's like I'm criticising someone elses fanfiction... of FV. It's hard to explain any better than that. I dunno where to put this on the site and it'll probably disappear into the ether anyway once I get bored of it, or my brain melts into a puddle from all the stupid writer cameos and exclaimed's, so for now it's here. Enjoy and hopefully laugh at my expense :)

7th July

New Episodes

Reboot Season One, Episode 15: Spirits

Site Updates

Coming Soon is up to date.

History: Episode Log, Sizes and some trivia to both Original and Reboot Season One updated.

30th June

New Material

Reboot B4FV Season One, Episode 01: Caretaker Parts 4 & 5

Site Updates

Coming Soon has been updated with mainly Spirits' progress. I'm quite close to the end.

History's been updated with the Episode Size ranking page. I have a feeling I've done it wrong, Caretaker is not finished, it's nothing special and yet it's a tad longer than fellow Reboot premiere episode Aggression. Eeek. Will there be a non Season Five episode in the top ten someday? It doesn't seem so unrealistic now.

28th June
Well, my clean up Reboot Season One plan didn't go well. It's not all bad though as instead of it, I've been more in the mood for Reboot Caretaker and a side project I've been itching to do for a while. For now Caretaker has trailed off, typically not far from the end. Usually I write just enough for a part, and a bit, split them off appropriately and come back a year or so later. This time I've kept on writing in part 4's file, so I have no idea how much of it there is and what's going to be released yet. I estimate there's at least two parts worth there that can go online immediately after another proof read and spell check.

Reboot Caretaker, or technically Part 1 of it, will be eight years old this December so I'm relieved it's finally get a move on. The episode rarely gets my interest (I never really liked thee original, which doesn't help), and it's why it needs rebooting at all since my first attempt at FV'ing it was so lazy (well, lazier). So basically once it does get my interest, I'm not going to chase it away because I wanted Reboot Season One worked on first. For all I know, Caretaker won't get my interest for another year or two.

Okay, explanation/excuses (delete as appropriate) over. I don't feel like Caretaker's completely fizzled out, I'm just on a scene I have no idea what to do with. Once I'm by it, the following one's mostly done already so it should be good to go. In the meantime I've gone back to editing Spirits. All of the new scenes for it are complete, unless I think of another while editing, so it's just the cleanup I need to finish doing. Shouldn't be long. If all goes well I'd like for it to appear alongside the new entries to Caretaker very soon. Worst case, the latter will go up alone before this week is up.

8th June
Okay, I've got a week or so off from work starting tomorrow. I'm planning to spend a lot of that time trying to narrow my Coming Soon list down, instead of adding to it like I've been doing the last few weeks.

The list's only huge as I badly want to close the gap between the current Reboot One episodes and Secret of the Revenge, as well as fill the one episode gap in between that and its sequel. Luckily now that Timeline's done, all but one of these should be edit jobs and shouldn't take too long. Test of Time's the biggest task out of the lot of them, with its premise being slightly altered. The majority of it though is still an edit, so it still will be relatively simple.

All should work well in theory, if my almost yearly Caretaker itch hadn't come up after finishing Spirits' new scenes. At least it's something to tide things over in the meantime.

Coming Soon has the bare basics of what's happening. I'll still tell you here what I'm doing and what's been done. I'll write them after the updates if you're curious. If you're not, I don't want it to get in the way.

New Material

Reboot B4FV Season One, Episode 01: Caretaker Part 3

Site Updates

Coming Soon has been updated with the progress I've made over the last week or so.

 

The plan basically is to write or edit anything from Spirits to Fugitives, whatever strikes my fancy at the time, so the release gap between these episodes are narrower. Once Spirits is done, I should have gotten a bigger head start on Test of Time. When that's done, I'll already have a good chunk of Dark Frontier ready, more so if I do further work on it after this update. You get the idea. I'll keep going this way until Upendi has been rebooted, which will finally bring the Voyager Conspiracy edit out of the backup folder. Season One should then have no gaps, and the rest of it will be released consecutively. As it should be. Anyway, let's have a closer look at the Coming Soon list.

Spirits: The original episode began with a Pokémon battle which lead to some terrible exposition for things that had nothing to do with Spirits. It was only there since it was related to Morgan's future character arc, and she was new. Since that particular part doesn't start till Season Two, there's no reason for it to be there. It's pure cringe. One part of it may have remained, but instead I rewrote it and chucked it into Timeline (Tani's immediate infatuation with James). Also the episode had a lot of material ripped off from other fanfics, word for word as well. All gone.

Unlike many Season One's, Spirits story was told from beginning to end, without straying too much or being distracted by something else. It's brief but it's a complete story. After skimming it, I figured there wasn't much to add to it. So I decided to replace these deleted scenes with something else entirely, a storyline/subplot that was originally going to be Timeline's subplot (replacing James/Jessie's friendship "drama" in the original) or maybe cramped into Test of Time. The new stuff always takes up more time than edits, unless a scene is truly horrendous (then I rewrite it anyway), so I decided to delay editing Spirits so I could write all the new stuff first. That is done. All that's left is to edit the old scenes.

Test of Time: I can't say much without spoiling it. Test's style is going to be a little different to the original. The reason for that is related to what's been happening for the last few episodes, mainly the 2016 ones. Original Test of Time was pretty much filler, something that could be skipped and wasn't a part of Season One's original plan in the beginning. My aim was to integrate it into the season, use it to explore one of Reboot One's new storylines in a way that can still keep the flashback/storyteller element of the original. I've said too much so I'll move on. Like with Spirits, I've mostly just done the new scenes. I haven't touched it as much as the others since it's the one that requires the most work. I only wrote what I did since I was out that day, I had ran out of new Spirits to do and was already finished with Caretaker Part 3.

Dark Frontier: The episode's work mostly lies on changing Morgan's lines and what she does, which should hopefully make the episode less of a copycat version. The work that's been done so far is the opening scene has been expanded on, a certain scene in Part 2 related to it's been altered. I've started small. I think DF doesn't need as much work as the others.

Fugitives: Unlike the others, I've saved the new scenes till last since the majority of them will give the episode the finale it never had. Not much has been done here. Some deletion or things edited here and there. Mainly prep work.

Caretaker Part 4: As you'll see from Part 3, it was very easy to continue into Part 4 with little pause. I did run into trouble with Part 3 since a lot of the original's material had been rebooted into 1 & 2, so there was little left. Part 2 I intentionally ended it in the same place as the original did, and I wanted to do that with the rest of them. I doubt that'll happen now. I'm aiming to keep the size of the parts as close to each other as possible. Part 4 should end where Voyager's Part 1 (and my 4) did.

Outside of Time Part 2: This'll probably still not be touched till after my week off. It's difficult to know what's best for it. Part 2 was originally rushed, likely because my much younger self lost interest in it once the "good" stuff from 1 was done. The issue is I don't remember what's actually missing from it. Why it was so much shorter than 1. I won't really know what to do until I read through the whole episode, instead of just Part 1 when I rebooted that. I have a feeling a lot of its problems are character based (the mutiny, James' part in connection with the villain etc...) so it should be an easy fix. It's not top priority, and I think it should be since it's stopping me from officially saying B4FV Season Two's reboot is complete. Though I'm still toying with diving into Broken Wreck's ending for the first time in a decade and fixing that. Stay tuned.

Tales of Voyager: I doubt I'll touch this now for a while. I don't want anymore gaps in the season. Once I close up the current ones, I won't want to make another. So I think Tales won't be continued and finished until Memories of Fury is written, and that's probably a 2017 episode.

30th May

New Episodes

Reboot Season One, Episode 14: Timeline

Site Updates

Coming Soon is up to date. The usual History pages are also up to date.

18th May
It's been a little quiet for the last few weeks. It may seem like I'm in a repeating time loop, though it does feel that way sometimes, but the reason for that is an injured right arm and hand. Basically there was a fall, I landed sideways on said arm. I'm not sure exactly how my hand was hurt as there were no signs of pain or bruises there until a few days later.

My arm and hand still hurt and feel tender, especially the hand, but at least the bruises are fading. Always a good sign. Now sometimes I can get away with writing with a bad arm, albeit slowly. It depends on the pain and where. The where was what made using a computer a little annoying but not impossible. If my hand hadn't joined in, I'd probably have been okay though.

It's not even been two weeks, I know, but I had hoped to continue and release another reboot episode this month. The May curse strikes again.

Site Updates

Coming Soon is up to date. Since I haven't been in writing mode, and the majority of the reboot before and in between the already released Monkey Island parodies are simple edits, I thought I'd make a start on them. It's easier on my weakened right side since it can be done with the left with little issue.

The cancelled reboot of The Killing Game (aka We Play The Game) has been added to Deleted Scenes in the History section.

I forgot to mention this on the last update, but the Episode Trivia for Reboot Season One was updated when the new episode was released.

7th May

New Episodes

Reboot Season One, Episode 13: The Seven of Nine Show

Site Updates

Coming Soon is up to date. The usual history pages are also up to date.

27th April

Site Updates

Coming Soon is up to date. Both The Seven of Nine Show and Timeline are coming along nicely.

24th April

Site Updates

Coming Soon is up to date with progress for two episodes.

Timeline now also has a new banner, with a larger version added to the desktops collection in Multimedia. For both I'd like to credit the artist called Nuvean who drew the character image for me back in November. Once I re-find the Tumblr link they posted it on, I'll edit this with it.

Reboot Season One's page has been updated with hopefully a better explaination of what's planned for the remaining season. I found the "rewrite" tag was far too generic, as it could mean anything from an old episode with twice as many new scenes, to completley rewritten from scratch. Fingers crossed the new "redo" tag helps clear that up a tad.

The forum's bugs have been repaired.

I've kept this below the update, as I don't want it in anyone's face. A few days ago I had a good old ramble after a thankfully briefer than usual depression episode. Airing out a few thoughts during this helped ease it slightly. I don't want to delete it and pretend it never happened. I've archived it in here, where I hope most of my other ramblings will go instead of here. I doubt anyone will want to read it but hey, it's my site and posting it could only harm me *shrug*. It's out of the way and doesn't clutter the update page with (as much) whining and I still get to write crap, so win win ^_^

17th April
You may have noticed but I've decided what to do with episode 13 now. The next reboot entry has a new banner, a very painful synopsis and is in working progress. I'm hoping this one won't take too long once I get properly into it.

12th April
Happy belated 15th birthday FV-Timeless*, here's a reboot that removes almost everything "original" you did. You're welcome.
*and Once Upon A Time.

In other news, happy 15th birthday to FV-The Fight as well. My gift to it is still not rebooting it... yet? Timeless did end up pretty long considering, and as I said yesterday quite the headache. Most of the work that's gone into it was to make sure it made sense. Whether or not it does, well only you can decide that. The Fight itself I'm still torn over including at all. There's only one episode slot left between this and Timeline (yes I realise I've got similar titles close together, it could be worse, see early Season Two), and that slot is allocated to newbie The Seven of Nine Show. I have to be honest, this wasn't developed at all. It's a basic idea that wasn't to be taken seriously in any way shape or form, its only point was to make fun of Seven and her overexposure on the original series.

In a nut shell, I'm considering rebooting The Fight as a separate episode again. I've decided to give it a go with the option of once again cancelling it if I can't fix it.

Episode 13 could still end up as The Seven of Nine Show. It could be The Fight. Or it could be not-literally The Seven of Nine Fight ^_^ I'll let you know when I figure it out. Neither episodes are truly important (though The Fight had some not so sneaky foreshadowing even in 2001) and won't be missed if I get rid of them. It's one or the other though. There's no way in hell I'm bringing back the original episode 13. Demon² cannot be saved.

New Episodes

Reboot Season One, Episode 12: Timeless

Site Updates

You know the routine... the History section is up to date because of the new release. Episode Sizes Ranking and Release Log. Reboot Season One has also been updated with Timeless info updated.

Coming Soon is also up to date in some fashion. I mentioned above I started Seven Show before considering The Fight reboot as a separate entity.

11th April
The next episode is almost ready. I think. It's quite a headache, so... fingers crossed.

Site Updates

Coming Soon updated.

28th March

Site Updates

I forgot to mention this. The trivia page for Reboot Season One in History has also been reformatted like One and Five (partially) has.

Coming Soon updated.

14th March

Site Updates

While I was working on formatting the Episode Trivia file for Reboot One, I thought I should make a slight edit to Hunters Again itself. It does a good job of tearing apart Hunters, but it kinda defeats the point if it keeps referencing it as if everyone's read the original. The edit is a small silly prologue that I hope helps a little.

13th March
Okay, it's been a month since the series ended. Break's over.

Extreme Night was a slow burner. It had the unfortunate issue of being written after a multitude of long Season Five episodes. It's long, but I guess with the basic idea for it, it was always going to be that way. On the side I've been trying to clean up the history page, primarily the Episode Trivia sections. Usually by March I get back into the full swing of things. I'm hoping my late finish last month won't push episode releases further back. We can only see.

New Episodes

Reboot Season One, Episode 11: Extreme Night

Site Updates

History: Episode Trivia for Season One has been reformatted to a similar style to Season Five's, but slightly more organised (it's similar to the format I'm using for the still WIP Season Trivia page), and it has some new information to go with it.

The forum's gone, again, so I reopened an older one. There's an odd glitch on the top I can't fix but it doesn't interfere with the way the forum works, it just makes the text super big. If you're still interested, you'll find the link in the Contact page.

The usual stuff that gets updated on episode release days are up to date; Episode Sizes, Log, Coming Soon.

Polls has been added to the menu.

25th February

Site Updates

Coming Soon is up to date with my progress at the moment.

A new page with a Season Five poll has been added to the site. For the moment you can reach it here or via the home page. I'll figure out where to put it on both menus another time. I'm not sure if it works, I can't test it myself, so please let me know in the forums if you have any trouble.

History: Episode Trivia for Seasons Two, Three, Five, Reboot One and B4FV Three have been updated. Some with only a few little things. Five's is probably the only one with a major update, and that's trivia for the finale.

4th February
It still hasn't hit me that the final episode of Fifth Voyager was finished over the weekend. I thought I'd be more excited or even sadder than this. I don't think I can still give the "I'm just tired" excuse. Meh, it should happen sooner than later.

Anyway, the plan of action is to give myself a little time to recover in February, hopefully not let it leak over into March, and dive right back into the reboot. With Season Five over, the priority has shifted to Reboot Season One, but that doesn't mean that'll be the only new material for the rest of the year. If you have a quick peek in Coming Soon, you'll see far too much that's been written but not finished, and my goal right now will be to shorten this list. Unfortunately the temptation to add to it (The Games Matrix reboots, B4FV1 in general, Disconnected in Season Two, to name a few) is quite strong. No matter what I decide to start with, the intention will be to finish it, not leave it in the coming soon table for years.

Edited Episodes

As I did a lot of the final scenes while I was sleep deprived at god knows what time o'clock in the Sunday morning, I feel that Back To Normal Part 10 needed a few tiny edits made to it. Making small edits to new episodes almost always happens, mainly when I do a 2nd/3rd full proofread later, but they're never big enough to mention here. The still tiny edits made here are slightly bigger and should be mentioned. As I've already said, they're confined to the later scenes. The edits themselves are not errors, typos or grammar mistakes (not to say there aren't any of those, there always is), but are "artistic" issues only. My opinion of the ending wasn't perfect, and a few choice lines already written in one of many documents I had for the episode were not added to the final piece, which is odd, but not that odd if you consider my 26 hour day at that point, haha.

I don't like that I had to do this in February, right at the beginning of my recovery time that I usually have in Dec/Jan. It's better than leaving a finale I wasn't satisfied with the way it was.

Site Updates

I forgot or was too tired to do it on the day, but now the word count and file size for the series finale have been added to the Episode Sizes table. Typically thanks to the above, I had to check if it needed moving to another row. It shouldn't but hey, you never know. It's a bittersweet update, as my only noughties/pre-writers block episode in the top ten, the one that held the largest title for so damn long, has been demoted to eleventh place (word count wise anyway). Now all that's there are Season Five entries. I doubt any reboots will challenge them, they shouldn't, so that's that.

31st January
I'll make it quick. It's late, I've got work tomorrow and a deadline steadily approaching.

New Material

Season Five, Episode 29: Back To Normal (Part 10)

Site Updates

History Section: Release Log.

Today is a special day. It's a one of celebration for most, or more than likely all. Today's the day the series technically ends. Back To Normal is now complete, marking the end of a huge chapter in my life. That doesn't mean the site's left to die, no way. You're not rid of me yet. From today the reboots take over the show, quite literally.

To remind you on, the reboots are what's been happening to primarily Season One and has already (mostly) been done to B4FV Season Two. Season One was obviously my first, I was a silly kid and so it is nowhere near perfect. The reboot is there to make it a passable first season. It is there to get people to continue reading up until Season Five, which I'm very proud of. No good having a starting point filled with no endings, shouting characters, disappearing plots and writer's Team Rocket motto's, if its fifth season doesn't do any of these things. No. You can argue that it isn't the fault of the first season but the fifth for changing so much, but the later seasons were what I had in mind in the first place. Oh well.

26th January
I really, really can't stand this time of year. There's something about January that's so damn draining. Some of it has to do with the 4th December pressures being reset for the year, and I relax for some time. If I do so too long, I get used to it.

I can't really say that today. Because of some really long, tough episodes last year, I fell behind. I wanted the entirety of Back To Normal online in 2015. Instead I settled for uploading the first few little parts as a teaser on the anniversary with Untitled, with a promise at least to myself that I'd keep adding to it in December. I did just that. I gave myself a few days to relax, especially because one of my favourite game series' decided to pick the 4th to release their latest game (still bitter about that). I think by the 8th I was back on the job, writing the small prologue chapters that lead to the main event. Unfortunately while FV usually settles down during December, it's my busiest month at work. The majority of the time I'd get nothing FV related done, come home exhausted and continue doing nothing. Then there's Christmas.

You know how this ended. I didn't manage to complete the episode in time. It was a miracle I got Part 9 exactly how I wanted on New Years Eve.

So I can't blame my usual habit of doing nothing for a week to wind down, only for it to turn into month(s). I did try to keep my FV side of my life active, I really did. I think that's the problem here. I haven't given myself enough time to recover, and I had one of my most productive years so far. Also I hate the cold weather and dark days. It drains the life out of me, putting it simply. As I mentioned in the last update, I haven't been that well either. I've tried to write through it, but the illness has left my head so fuzzy, or fuzzier than usual. It's hard to explain it. That's the problem. I'd try to write an important scene that explains a few things, and it looks like jibberish to me. You know me, I'm not that coherent on a good day.

When it comes down to it, FV is a hobby. There shouldn't be any pressure at all. It shouldn't make me feel bad. However it's tied to my self esteem. If I don't update in a while or get something done when I want it, or like today when I start a scene from scratch a third time because it's such a mess, then I feel pretty crappy. If there's anyone reading this and are a little disappointed that we're in 2016 and FV is still not finished, I do apologise. The end's in sight, I can almost taste it. Because I'm so close to finally settling down to a nice normal pace with only the reboots to do, I'm all the more bitter than I'm not there. That doesn't help. I didn't want to have my usual resting time until I finished, and I think that's part of the reason I'm struggling now. That's the rub.

I have a new deadline right now, which I won't share, added public pressure and all doesn't work for me, ever. I'm hoping I'll get better sometime before then. That'd be nice, 'cause this episode doesn't have that much to do.

17th January
Happy new year everyone! As you can see the Updates page is looking a lot less cluttered and long. I thought it was about time to have separate pages for each (recent) year. You can reach them at the top and bottom of the page. I do have the 2001 to 2008 ones archived on my laptop, they'll probably stay there to be honest.

This update is a little later than I had hoped. I haven't been well since the 7th. As I write this I'm still not my version of 100% (which is probably 50 for most people lol). Not a good start to the year.

Edited Episodes

B4FV Season Two, Episode 05: Do's and Don'ts (a few scenes have had a few lines revised)

Site Updates

Coming Soon.

History Section: Episode Sizes Ranking and Release Log. The latter's been cleaned up and "renewed" for the new year.

Reboot Season Three's page has had a few things fixed. I clearly typed that in a hurry.