NOTE: I'm currently in the process of revamping my profile due to my former inactivity. This first old section is being left temporarily while I figure out what to do with it. I'm only choosing not to erase it outright because it's still a relevant issue, albeit less than it used to be, but eventually it's going to be trimmed down a bit, if not replaced entirely.

--OLD SECTION--

Okay, so... cleared my profile out a while back since I had pretty much gone inactive in writing fanfics, but now that I'm back I should probably add something here. Too bad I have no idea what to put in. .;

Well, I guess I'll start with me. My name is Jonathan and I've been an on and off fanfic writer for about... 12 years or so, though my works on this site only go back about 10. My main reading/writing interests have been RPGs and anime, though more the latter lately due to me not playing so many video games recently. Which brings me to another important note about me... I've regularly tried to write novel-length stories, but I've yet to finish any. This is mostly due to a chronic video game addiction that I only recently got out of. (Not exaggerating here. I was literally addicted to video games and couldn't stop myself from playing them to do other stuff)

EXTRA NOTE: For those people reading my Digital Hazard series... I'll make this short and simple. The issue mentioned at the end of the previous paragraph is the primary reason for my recent disappearance. Before, I had been using most of my free time to write stories and such, and occasionally playing video games during breaks. After all, nothing bad about playing games for just a few minutes, right? Well, those few minutes became a half hour, which became an hour, two hours, and eventually came to consume all of my leisure time, hence the reason for lack of updates for a while.

Now, I would like to make this very clear... I am not trying to make an excuse for my lack of activity on this site. This is an issue I take very seriously. If you don't really think playing video games are that much of an issue, well... good for you. Means you're probably not an addict. (or you're just delusional like I used to be and don't want to admit you have a problem. Meh...) However, for anyone whose skeptical about the idea that someone can become addicted to video games, let me make it clear right now that they most definitely CAN. It's not an exaggeration and it's not something I'm proud of, anymore than an alcoholic or any other kind of addict would be proud of their issue.

The fact that so few take the issue seriously is a large part of my problem, because it's difficult to get help that would be more readily available to people with other addictions. I have a good family and plenty of friends, all of which (er... well, MOST of which) care about me, but with few to none of them taking the issue seriously, nobody is really willing to commit to helping me and keeping me on track and off the games. That being said, if any of you notice the delays between future chapters getting longer, feel free to send me a message and tell me to quit playing the dang games. Even if it's not the reason for that particular delay... heck, even if I haven't touched them in months, just getting a general reminder would still be appreciated.

And as an Extra, EXTRA note... I'm putting a technical description here of the primary factors of video game addiction, at least in my case. For those of you who don't care about the science, ignore this part. For those that are skeptical and need evidence to back up the claim, or those just want to know more, this is for you:

Most people who refer to the issue of spending an unusually large amount of time playing video games relative to doing other things refer to it as video game "compulsion" rather than "addiction." One of the main reasons behind this is that addictions have a chemical factor which alter the brain's behavior, while compulsions are more driven by attitude or habit or the like. However, the chemical factor is definitely present, for reasons I will explain in a moment.

The nature of video games is that they usually implement an actionreward system designed to encourage the player to keep playing to the end, and in some cases even beyond. This is especially true ever since achievements became a major component of many games. These systems simulate the feelings of accomplishment and success, often by defining the boundaries of success or failure in much more clear-cut terms than one could ever find in the real world. Subsequently, they can trigger a feeling of happiness from the simulated feeling of success, and can do so with FAR greater regularity than any normal job could do in real life. This is where the chemical factor comes in.

Biologically speaking, these systems trigger a release of endorphins in the brain. Endorphins are essentially 'happy chemicals,' the things your brain releases to let you know something good happened. I don't actually know enough of the technicalities of biochemistry to go into greater detail, but I understand enough to be able to lay out a clear series of progression regarding chemical addiction:

As someone plays games more often for whatever reason (in my case, I've played them ever since I was a child. I just never hit that point of critical mass until I was in my mid-teens) to the point that they become mentally immersed in the world of the games, the heightened endorphin release triggers a "rush," which then compels the person to play more in the future. With enough play, the brain eventually becomes accustomed to this heightened level of endorphins, which cannot be sustained through normal daily activity, thus the person is compelled to keep playing video games in order to maintain that heightened chemical level. To make matters worse, as with all chemical addictions, once the body becomes acclimated to a given endorphin level, that level is no longer longer able to provide the same rush, thus requiring an even HIGHER level of endorphins to maintain it, which leads to yet more time spent playing video games. At that point, you've entered the standard downward spiral of progression common to all addictions.

So there it is... not so short and simple if you read the whole thing, but... well, at least the summary in the first paragraph is, right?

--END OLD SECTION--

Random fact about myself: Saturday is my weekly writing sabbath. I only write Sunday-Friday, so don't expect much from me in terms of updates during the weekends.

Fics I love to read: Pretty much anything that doesn't fall into the 'hate' category. =P

Fics I hate to read: Stories with terrible spelling/grammar. Stories that reinvent a character's personality, unless there's a good in-story explanation or it's AU. Self-insert stories (I'm sorry, I know there are some that are fairly well-written, but... no. Just no.) and random shipping fics.

To clarify on that last one: Shipping fics are fine, but stories that just throw two characters together or massively change character relationships without any explanation and then demonizes all the characters that are 'competition' or 'a threat' to the pairing... those are just too shallow in my opinion. Those are what I refer to as 'random' shipping fics; fics where completely random events occur to force together the couple that the author wants. If it's a ship that with decent characterization that can change relationships and such through character development and not just author-intervention, then I don't mind it.

What to expect from my stories: Action, romance, drama, angst, and lots of emotional torture for the characters. Period. If I ever write a story that doesn't have all of these, I'll make sure to change my profile, but it hasn't happened yet... also, a level of epic proportionately equal to the length of the story.

Main tropes I use:

http:///pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CrapsackWorld (About half of the time)

http:///pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EarnYourHappyEnding (Most of the time)

http:///pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SerialEscalation (All the time, except for one-shots, obviously)

What NOT to expect from my stories: Comedy, at least deliberately. Fluff (Post-2006. Some of my one-shots before that have a bit of fluff in them.) Yaoi, Yuri, or anything that makes canonically straight characters gay, or vice-versa. Also, if you spot any sort of Mary Sue/Marty Stu in any of my stories, please shoot me immediately.

Current stories and projects:

Project- Digital Hazard: REBUILD

I'm currently in the middle of a bottom-up rewrite of my entire Digital Hazard series. There's a lot to say about it, so let's go over the high points. If you're familiar with the Digital Hazard books, here's what you can expect from the rewrite:

1. Better Writing Quality!
2. Fewer Plot Holes, and Improved Plot Consistency!
3. More Relevancy for Side-Characters!
4. Less Marty-Stu-ishness from Takeru and others!
5. Yamato and Takeru's Father Actually Having the Correct Name!

Okay, so let's start from the top:

1. The Digital Hazard series originally started as something of a writing exercise to just get myself back into the writing game, as I hadn't been for a while prior. That said, my form was a bit... lacking in places, and that became more and more apparent to me in the second book, where that particular 'style' (which I have currently dubbed my 'lazy' style) was actually hindering my ability to write things the way I wanted to. That was part of the reason I stopped in the first place, and it's also the first thing to get fixed.

2. The second issue was that the story itself was evolving as I wrote it, with new ideas being plugged in regularly. Consequent of this, there were a lot of minor and major plot holes sitting around, many of which I managed to cover up by hiding them in the background, but they were still there. This was the second major issue that caused a halt on my original story. I noticed a couple of major contradictions in the plot and ended up getting stuck more or less turning the entire next chapter into an attempted plot-hole filling session. This was, understandably, hella frustrating. It was also discouraging when pondering the future of the story, as it made me wonder how many other major issues I'd have to fix before the end.

To contrast, this time I'm writing and planning the full background for EVERYTHING this time around. I don't necessarily have a point-by-point plot progression plan, (yay for alliteration!) but at least with the background developed, I'll have something to reference back to as the story progresses so that I'll be able to keep everything internally consistent.

3. On the note of things added as the story progressed, most of my original or original-to-digimon characters, such as Kaiba (Not the same as Seto Kaiba, but named after him), Nakamoto, and the Director of the Digimon Hunters, who I developed during the previously mentioned, unposted, plot-hole filling chapter, were all interesting characters in my mind, but never able to achieve their full potential because they were first created to fill a particular role and then only slowly fleshed out later as necessary. Commander Nakamoto, in particular, because he didn't appear at all until the flashback Book Zero, was basically Doomed By Canon, and that kind of wasted his character in my opinion. That said, with all the background planning I'm doing, all these characters are going to have fully developed histories, motives, and personalities right from the start, and will be far more actively involved in the main plot than previously.

4. Now, regarding characters... there were a few characters in my old version that had slight-to-major Mary-Sue/Marty-Stu tendencies that are a bit ick in retrospect. The worst offenders for this were Takeru and Demidevimon, (Note, the latter wasn't directly visible most of the time, but he was still there in the background) both of which only managed to stay tolerable because they were borderline heroes/villains whose morally gray motives and reactionary behavior didn't overtly dominate the entire plot. Note that I said overtly there. In reality, those two characters were controlling, narratively speaking, at least 90% of the plot of the original story. Not to say they were directly in control of all of the events in the story, but rather their actions dictated the direction of most everything that happened.

Additionally, both characters were hyper-competent at nearly everything they did, which was wasn't really deliberate, but more a necessity of their plot-control. I tried numerous times to write them as more balanced, and while I managed to clarify a few things about their characters and show off some of their personality flaws, the overarching issue of their hyper-competence remained, and simply couldn't be removed due to them being too well established in those roles. This time, things will be different.

Consequently, Hikari ended up developing a slightly hyper-competent streak due to her role as a narrative counter-balance to Takeru, which was part of the reason I was able to identify the issues with Takeru in the first place. That will also be fixed this time around.

5. This one was just... well, it wasn't an issue that demanded a fix, but it always bugged me ever since I realized I was using the wrong name, and I've wanted to fix it for a while now. Nothing else to really say about it... it was just an obvious issue that's gonna be done right this time around.

With ALL that being said, now the question is... what will be the same as before? Well, in short, nothing and everything. The core plot and ultimate destination isn't going to deviate immensely from the original, but the way things get there definitely will. Due to everything being re-written, there will be minor changes to just about everything, as well as major changes to several of the core cast, as already mentioned. Still, in practical terms, the general path that most of the story follows will remain the same, with the biggest change being the removal of the Mary-Sue-ness, resulting in a lot more chaos along the way since the main characters won't have a solution to everything they face now.

Now, one of the final and most important notes about this rewrite is regarding the layout of the books. I originally planned this as a five-book series, with Book Zero having been added after the end of Book One. This time, Book Zero is being integrated into Book One, and Takeru will not be filling a mysterious background role as he was before. This time around, we'll be seeing the world through his eyes as much as Hikari's. This means that a few of the mysteries in the original plot simply won't exist this time around, which... will be a little disappointing for me, as I really liked having a bit of mystery involving Takeru's character. However, in order to keep the plot and characters balanced, Takeru has to be more transparent as a character.

That's all for now. More to be added later, maybe, but that's the gist of things. Currently working overtime to get everything ready so I can get this story underway, so hopefully I'll be able to get the first chapters posted up soon. :D