I wrote my first Halo fan fiction in April of 2001.

Back then, things were different. Fan fiction was a neglected sidenote at HBO, on par with Misc. Art and Banners—hell, the entire site operated on a much smaller scale; it was homey, rather than the key centerpiece of a sprawling community. You’d write your piece, in Word or RTF or just about whatever format you wanted, and email it to the staff; Louis would personally check it for appropriateness, HTML-ize it, add it to the database, and post a notice about it on the front page, telling the title, author, a few remarks, and even quoting a bit of your work.

It was wonderful.

If publication is what all writers long for, then fan fiction was free lunch. You didn’t have to be good, you didn’t have to be persistent; you just had to write, and you were guaranteed readership.

If there’s one thing that fan fiction is wonderful at, that’s it: it gives you everything you need except words on the paper. You’ve still got to write, of course. But if you want, you’ve got readers, feedback, characters, backstory, and even storyline to borrow from.

I started in April 2001, as my first real connection to the Halo/Bungie community; I wrote for what seems like forever, but in retrospect was little more than a year. My last piece was published at HBO in August of 2002; my last piece that I consider a really serious work was published in July. You can page through the material I posted over that year and literally, like watching an animated flip-book stutter forward, see my ability as a writer develop and progress. It becomes smoother, more comfortable; my plots become more complex and interconnected, and my characters (perhaps most of all) take leaps and bounds toward believability.

I played many roles in the fan fiction community: I’ve written, I’ve critiqued, I’ve helped create (and watched fade) what was probably the only Halo fan fiction “clan” to ever take shape; I’ve been a real brat to Louis, which is a job that stretched considerably beyond writing. But whatever I’ve given to fan fiction, it can’t match what it’s given me, and if I ever doubt it, I just go back and look at the flip-book. I don’t doubt that, without the crutch it gave me, I wouldn’t, couldn’t have progressed so far so fast, certainly not at age 14.

I’m indebted to HBO FF, and to Louis Wu for making it possible, and for everyone who wrote with me and read my work and created the atmosphere of “someone gives a damn” that’s so instrumental in getting you to the end of the page. That’s why I’ve been so adamant with regards to the importance of the fiction section. It doesn’t really matter how many people read the stories, or if they’re any good—what matters is that it’s there.

I wanted to write this story for three reasons. First, I wanted to provide a suitable ending point to bring closure to a period that was so important to my life; I’d dropped out of the fan fiction community simply by writing less and less, and while I’d moved on in many respects, I wasn’t comfortable with how that chapter ended. Second, I wanted to give a little reminder to the current crop of writers of the way things used to be—I’m not one of the “oh remember ye olde days” people, who swear things have gone downhill, but I do think that a little blast from the past wouldn’t hurt anyone.

Lastly, I wanted to give something back.

So this is a story that I started a long time ago, a couple of years at least; it’s one of the ones that I began and gave up on several pages in, having “written myself into a hole” that I wasn’t sure how to escape from. Now and then, I’d pick it up again, poke it a bit, then let it go.

When I made the decision to release one last story as my “official” swan song, I picked this one, because I’d always thought it seemed promising, and because I felt I didn’t have the imagination anymore to seed and kick-start an entirely new concept. So I start cutting pieces out until I felt the plot take shape again, and ran—and it started to happen.

It’s long, because it has a degree of plot and character development that I’ve never attempted before. I think it’s the best I’ve done, all things considered; it may not be as “entertaining” as some, in the sense of an arcade game or a comic book, but it’s much more human, and more real.

It follows the same orientation vis-à-vis the Halo game as most of my stories have done: Existing in the same universe, but only skimming the shared points, preferring to explore worlds and events that never happened in the official story and probably never will. I mostly respect what’s known so far of the universe, but don’t adhere to it religiously. Remember that Halo is yours; you are not Halo’s.

Finally, it’s not finished. At best guess, it’s maybe halfway done, lengthwise. Perhaps a little more. And what’s here is pretty polished, but needs a little work, if nothing more than tying together elements of a story that’s been pieced together over the course of multiple years.

I’m releasing it now because I’ve realized that if I wait until it’s completely done and perfect, it may never see the light of day; I’m up to my neck already in the rest of my life, and sinking deeper by the moment. I’d rather that this hit the net in a partial form than never to get past my hard drive at all. If and when it really is finished, I’ll give you that, too.

Right now, I’m just glad this happened, and exceedingly grateful to all of you, all of this, for what it’s given me and what it continues to give the writers of HBO.

It’s a pretty big goddamned deal, whether you realize it or not. So thank you.

Thanks for everything.

— Brandon “vector40” Oto