New year new me! You can find me on fiction sites under the name Claude the Author from now on. It's a bit of an in-joke about how many Claudes were showing up in my stories.

Some years ago, I began writing a silly story on a forum for Super Smash Bros. - I eventually came to realize that what I wrote was part a world known as fanfiction...and I was hooked. Not long afterwards, I made an account here to share my stuff with even more people. I now know that I love to weave tales (both original and based on other work), for my own enjoyment and for those that love to read.

My style or writing mostly encompasses action and adventure, with lots of humor sprinkled about and maybe a little romance here and there too. My Kirby Smash Brothers stories are what I consider my primary series, but lately I've been expanding my stories, and I'm even doing a joint project with some other people!

This collaboration project, called the New Testaments series, will cover the Seiken Densetsu/Secret of Mana series. You can check that out here right now.

I am a fan of constructive criticism - I like to write and receive it. If you see me point out some flaws in your work, don't be offended. It's not a personal attack and I don't hate your story. That goes for me as well; as much as I scour my stories for perfection, there's nothing like another pair of eyes to see what you didn't.

Some stuff about me:

I'm a freelance writer living in America...my interests are Games, literature, some sports, music, writing (a little obvious, right?), drawing, etc.

My favorite game series are, in order: Star Ocean, Seiken Densetsu (Mana), and Metroid. After that, there's too many to list properly. I like all kinds of video games, though I prefer Action RPGs.

I've started putting more time into original fiction in hopes of getting it published. As such, my activity here will probably decrease. I have no plans of abandoning the site, but if things turn out all right, there's no telling what the future holds...

Current Updates:

New Years '20 edition!

1. Soul of a Smasher: Nocturne of Samus will start seeing updates again.
2. Wings to Another Time and Legacy of Evermore updates will be sporadic.
3. "New Testaments DX: Secret of Mana" is a pet-name for a movement to revamp the old NTSoM story here. NTSoM was my very first story written in prose and the first time I took storytelling seriously. It is also the first time I collaborated with other people on the same story; as such, it is riddled with amateurish mistakes and growing pains (lack of details, stilted dialogue, etc.) We are all much better writers now and are going to give NTSoM the polish it deserves. The first half of what was posted here will be undergoing heavy revisions: rewrites, retconning, revamping; the chapters further along will be improved/altered as needed. This is pretty much a soft reboot and will be posted as a separate story when it's ready.
4. Eliza the Witch: Seasons Change will be undergoing a New Testaments DX-esque rewrite and revision, and will be posted under the new title Changing of the Seasons. Changing of the Seasons is complete!
5. Dreamweavers: Kirby's Insane Halloween III is the final KIJ Halloween special and will be back for Halloween season.
6. Kirby's Heartfelt Christmas is a KIJ Christmas anthology that should pop up around Christmas season.
7. Kirby's Insane Journey 5 is not a priority, and probably won't happen until after the holiday specials are done. I may rewrite KIJ1-3 to be less juvenile and embarrassing in the meantime, and do some revising on KIJ4.
8. I have a Kingdom Hearts story gestating. We'll see if that actually gets posted.
9. Any other story I didn't mention here is currently on the backburner and won't be seen for awhile. However, that doesn't mean that I don't have spontaneous fits of writing...

Upcoming works and progress:

Continuations of my Kirby's Insane Journey series (KIJ4 is complete, KIJ5 has already started)
Soul of a Smasher Vol. II: Nocturne of Samus (Chapters 6)
Star Ocean Zero, an original Star Ocean prequel
Farce Ocean, a Star Ocean series (Wings to Another Time)
New Testaments series based on the Mana/Seiken Densetsu games (collaboration effort, New Testaments: Secret of Mana is up now and in progress)
New Testaments Side stories

My three main fanfiction series are the Kirby's Insane Journey series, Soul of a Smasher and the New Testaments series. The stories are as follows:
Kirby's Insane Journey:

KIJ1 - Kirby's Insane Journey to Learn How to Wall Jump!
KIJ2 - Kirby's Insane Journey to Learn How to Wall Jump 2/Again*
KIJ3 - Kirby's Insane Journey to Find the Two Amulets!
I Like Cars - A poem by Captain Falcon
KIJ4 - Kirby's Insane Journey to End the DWAM's Abuse!
KIH - Kirby's Insane Halloween
KIH2 - Kirby's Insane Halloween II: The Cursed Word
KIH3 - Dreamweavers
KIC - Kirby's Heartfelt Christmas
KIJ5 - Kirby's Insane Journey to Have a Decent Vacation! (Coming Very Soon)

Kirby's Insane Journey is a series of humorous, adventurous Super Smash Brothers stories. The first three can be pretty random, but starting with KIJ4 the series changed direction with a real storyline and better writing that reflected my maturation from a teen with no real writing experience to a young adult. They usually don't deal with tournaments, "smash mansions" and the overdone likes but rather life outside of battles, and whatever threatens the Nintendo universe today. The first and third Kirby's Insane Journey stories have been removed from FFdotnet, however, you can still read them by clicking the links above.

I Like Cars is a poem written by Captain Falcon about his two loves in life: cars and Samus Aran.

Kirby's Insane Halloween is a holiday themed sidestory. While enjoying the Halloween-esque Poe Festival in Hyrule, the Smashers come across a real haunted house believing it to be fake, and get caught between ghosts, pranks, redead, and a fifty year old murder mystery. Kirby's Insane Halloween II: The Cursed Word features the Smashers going to Earth to experience a genuine Halloween, but Yoshi's antagonistic behavior gets him cursed, which has ramifications for the group on their night out when saying the word "Shadoink" (IT'S A REAL WORD) transforms victims into their costume. Dreamweavers - Kirby's Insane Halloween III is the final entry in the Halloween trilogy; the Smashers find their dreams and nightmares seeping into the waking world, jeopardizing their well-being, their mental health, and their worlds. Obscure entities known as Dreamweavers may have something to do with that - as does a malevolent force thought long dead.

Kirby's Heartfelt Christmas is a Christmas anthology featuring stories curated by yours truly about the Smashers incorporating the values of Christmas into their lives after learning about the holiday.

-*FFdotnet's everchanging formatting rules have retroactively wrought havoc on KIJ2, making it hard to read here for some people. I suggest those looking to read it click the link above for an unaltered, cleanly formatted version. There may not be much I can do for the one hosted here.

New Testaments:

New Testaments: Secret of Mana (defunct)
New Testaments DX: Secret of Mana
Eliza the Witch: Seasons Change (defunct)
Changing of the Seasons
Two Tribes, Two Souls - Serin & Graw story (in planning stages)
Successor - Dae-centered oneshot

New Testaments: Seiken Densetsu 3 (Planning stages)

New Testaments series follows up after each Mana games ends, and tells a new tale involving both new and old characters. Each New Testament is organized as an umbrella of projects related to each game.

New Testaments: Secret of Mana takes place 10 years after SoM, when mana is mysteriously returning. Luka and the Elemental Spirits bestow a gathering of people from around the world with the sacred power of the elements in order to combat a rising threat from the recent past that wants Randi and his Sword of Mana. Changing of the Seasons, an NTSoM side story, is a sort of prequel that takes place 1 year before NTSoM. It spins the tale of Elinee's niece, who comes to stay with her in her castle, and a teen wolf named Garr that is separated from his pack. The story leads up and into NTSoM, where both characters will have a role. There is also a planned sidestory, Two Tribes, Two Souls featuring Serin and Graw McGraw. Serin is the father of the hero of Secret of Mana and his tale remained untold...until now. Graw McGraw is an old, powerful wolf featured in New Testaments and some of its gaidens. Similarly, his background was a mystery.

Star Ocean:

Star Ocean Zero (Coming soon)
Farce Ocean 3: Wings to Another Time

Star Ocean Zero is an original story in the Star Ocean universe that takes place in 2011 - approximately 86 years before Star Ocean 4. It marks an (believed to be) unrecorded encounter between man and alien as two Earthlings are caught in an interplanetary feud that just may be related to Earth's immediate survival.

Farce Ocean is a the name of a line of alternate novelizations for the Star Ocean series. They tackle 'what if' scenarios that alter the course of the original storyline through various means. Wings to Another Time is a SO3 Farce Ocean adaptation, exploring a scenario where Sophia Esteed and Fayt Leingod trade places early in the game's storyline, a switch that may have occurred when I was haphazardly dumped into the plot by the Ethereal Queen for her own mysterious reasons.

Soul of a Smasher:

Vol. I - Minuet of Link
Vol. II - Nocturne of Samus
Vol. III - ???

Soul of a Smasher is a new Smash Brothers series I'm writing. It is not related to Kirby's Insane Journey. In this series, self-contained worlds exist in a cold, empty space known as The Void, and several of those worlds orbit and rely on the main world, Centropolis. A dark god only known as Azazel threatens to consume Centropolis and its surroundings. Lucario leads a struggling band of warriors in a war against him, only to find the pool shrinking with heroes tragically cut down in separate battles. But the soul cannot be destroyed, and rebirth is the first step to awakening and ascending into a stronger force!

Minuet of Link is the first installment. The Hylian hero meets an untimely death after a brutal battle with Azazel's spawn, a wraith-like demon named Kneph. Reborn in Centropolis, Link leads the simple life of a teenager in high school with vague memories of his past life and the loved ones left behind, but his ignorance is soon dispelled when Lucario confronts him and attempts to unlock his old memories in order to reawaken his soul. Link returns to Hyrule with Lucario, attempting to pick up the pieces of his broken life while preparing for a rematch with the demon that still terrorizes the land's denizens, and it is here where he meets the Smash Brotherhood, a small collection of strange people from many worlds all with the same goal in mind - destroying the coming darkness. Even with the Brotherhood by his side, can Link harness his elemental abilities and save Hyrule from Kneph's indiscriminate massacres?

Nocturne of Samus is the second volume of the series. Samus Crowe is a cop in Centropolis that experiences visceral dreams of another life as a legendary spacefaring bounty hunter, including a particularly chilling encounter with a demon woman calling herself Avira. She soon learns that her dreams may be more real than she realized when she encounters Lucario and the Smash Brotherhood. Meanwhile, Dark Link descends on Hyrule while the Brotherhood is away.

Other Stories:
Final Fantasy Claudus XIII
Final Fantasy Claudus XIII International
Tales of Frue Destruction
Legacy of Evermore

Final Fantasy Claudus XIII is a parody I wrote based on the short FFXIII E3 2006 trailer. I wrote it in the middle of the night after reading too much of the idiotic bashing on the GameFAQ's forum. I needed to vent somehow, so...there's plenty of not-so-subtle potshots at GameFAQs and the stereotypical users that attacked the game based on the trailer. The "Claudus" between FF and XIII is just a parodical way to distinguish it based on the latin fetish SE has displayed with the titles of the other FFXIII games (Final Fantasy Versus XIII, Agito XIII, etc.) It has little to no continuity and plenty of nonsense. Trust me, it's fun and therapeutic to write something like this once in awhile. A parody of the actual full game is in the planning stages and will bear the International label.

Tales of Frue Destruction is a one-shot humor story based off of the Lufia series and details the events immediately after a theoretical third resurrection of the Sinistral of Destruction, Gades. The sinistral attacks a nearby town and seeks to harass a class of school children but gets more than he bargained for.

Legacy of Evermore is a follow up to the underrated game, Secret of Evermore, taking place twenty years later. Elizabeth Ruffleberg returns to the Ruffleberg manor after the death of her grandfather to learn the fate of Evermore, and her students Luke and Krista, and their cat Domino, also get pulled into the investigation. Together, they learn that a lot has changed in twenty years, and it may be connected to the secret origins of Evermore, a secret Professor Ruffeberg never dared whisper near even his own kin.

I've seen people doing them for awhile, and now I think it's time that I also list My Fanfiction Likes and Dislikes:

Likes:
- Good self insertions : one of the first really good fanfics I read was a self insert, despite the warnings to avoid them like the plague
- Humorous stories : Humor is my specialty, and one of my favorite genres to read
- Originality : Something that hasn't been done before, or at least hasn't been done to death
- Helpful reviews : Constructive criticism and real feedback, not just "luv it" or "ur story sux"
- Good Dialogue : This is underrated. Good dialogue makes the characters that much better when they feel so real. I'm working on improving dialogue in my own stories.

Dislikes:
- Mary Sues & Gary Stus : I dislike these with a passion. I don't want to read a story where your character continually bends the universe at their will, accomplishes something the protagonists have been trying to do for as long as who knows what in a matter of chapters, makes all the characters want and love them like bestest friends EVAR within a matter of minutes, etc. This is poor writing in its most blatant form.
- Clueless Sue tantrums : people who do not take kindly to any kind of constructive criticism, especially when involving Sues)
- Flamers : People who are simply here not to write and share their stories with others, but to attack and flame a select few who have the audacity to write something they didn't like
- Praising bad stories : Something most people here have problems with. An absolutely terrible story getting reviews telling them that their story is great, the best thing ever, etc. Come on people, you don't have to lie to them. Telling them that their story needs work and giving suggestions isn't a crime. They aren't going to hang themselves if you don't worship their story in your review. You're not helping them write any better by telling them lies. I believe in helping people improve.)
- Author's Notes that are longer than the chapter : It might sound ridiculous or exaggerated to people that haven't seen it, but I've encountered more than one story where the author has his/her little skits with the characters/muses in the story at the beginning and end of the chapter, only for both parts combined to be longer than the chapter itself.
- Don't like don't read!!! : Terrible mantra. You want as many perspectives on your writing as possible. It's better to learn why people dislike your work rather than insinuating that they aren't allowed to have that negative opinion. On top of that, it's a stupid, juvenile phrase. How does one know that they dislike it...if they don't read it?

All of these dislikes makes me seem like an easily annoyed person...

--
Claude's recommendations for friends and other authors' stories:
Here's a list of stories I recommend, written by other authors on this site (or not) I do or don't know. The suspense!

A Star Ocean 2 Parody
A hilarious parody of Star Ocean: The Second Story, from GameFAQs and written by MetalGearSolidBoy. It follows the events of SO2 as if it were a film, complete with the cast as "actors," a director, and...mishaps on the set.

Star Ocean 3: To Another Space
A Star Ocean: Till the End of Time sequel fanfic written by K-19. Follows everyone's favorite disgruntled androgynous alien anti-hero, Albel Nox, in a serious story that gives insight on his past.

An Author's Nightmare 3: Enter Knothole
The third story in a multi-authored series of self-insert Sonic fanfics, this time written by LittleTiger488. The Author's Nightmare series has a "no mary sue" motto. This is my favorite in the series, and features the authoress' character April getting sucked into her favorite Sonicverse, the SatAM universe, where she quickly learns that it's not all fun and games, and that more goes on behind the scenes than just what she knew from the episodes of the tv show. I recommend the rest of the series (sans AAN 2) as well.

My Name is Fox and I am an Addict
Niko was inspired by my first SSB fic, and wrote this shortly afterward. Niko has worshipped the ground Fox McCloud walks on since the release of the original Star Fox. When he is pulled into the Nintendo universe and gets the opportunity to meet his idol, he learns that life doesn't end when the game is beaten, and Fox's life in particular has deteriorated with substance abuse. What do you do when the person you idolize doesn't live up to the dream?