I had a bit of free time today so I decided to read all the stories in DBO Fan Fiction Archive. It was a lot of fun! I came away from the day with a few impressions:

1. The mixture of inspiring themes, diverse locations, interesting backstory, and oh so moldable main character archetypes Bungie has already provided us is pretty amazing. Even strictly adhering to Destiny's canon you can write just about anything you want! Want to write about planetary colonization? Go right ahead! Want to write about a losing high tech war? Humanity seems to have fought one. How about a dark, gritty tale of post-apocalyptic Earth? Yep. A tale of rebuilding and hope? Definitely! And of course Destiny supports adventure and exploration. In particular, I think the three Guardian classes, the knight in armor Titans, the rogue-like Hunters, and the knowledge and magic minded Warlocks provide such a wide permutation of possible characters that it's actually hard not to find something to write about. The enemy races, too, allow and provide for an interesting diversity of possible stories. Bungie talks about providing players with places they want to go back to. I think they've also provided us an unusually great universe to write in!

2. So far, at least, there are no bad stories in the DBO archive. Sure, the grammar varies a bit, but each and every story has good ideas behind it. That's pretty impressive considering that there's almost 40 stories up there now. Four that I enjoyed a lot in this read through were:

A Hunter's Journey - Either the longest or one of the longest stories in the Archive, this one how Destiny can support big stories with quite a bit of character. There's battles and sneaking and discoveries and flashbacks.

Destiny: Birthright - This story saw the formation of a large force of Guardians getting set to go on some sort of big mission beyond the walls of The City. What made it great were all the fantastic characters. The two main characters got a lot of attention, but as the other Guardians roll in several of them got these really nice bits of description. I was excited to read about each new Guardian who appeared. Unfortunately, this story has no sequel so it kinda just leaves off as things seem about to get really good. I'd really like for that to change.

Dream For Me - This story was fairly small and contained, but was very touching. An Exo who was rescued generations ago by a family asks a young daughter of that family to keep him updated on her dreams as he ventures outside The City's walls since he cannot dream for himself.

The Guardian and the Archive - All the Traxis stories are good but I like this one best. It's got some great description, especially in the beginning, has a great fight scene in the middle, and ends with an intriguing mystery. It's a terrific example of how Destiny can effortlessly support small scale adventure and exploration stories.

And that's just the four that struck my fancy this time. There's a fair number more standalone stories and ongoing series that are well worth reading.

3. 40 odd stories is not nearly enough! Yeah, it's kinda a bad time to encouraging more stories since anything written might get invalidated by Destiny in a little over a month, but there are some great topics going unaddressed! There's currently, I think, three stories that even mention Ghosts. Nobody has really taken a stab at life during the Golden age. The dark age after the collapse and the formation of The City both are ripe for some good story telling!

Personally, I want to do a longer story about the "time of great evil" after the collapse with refugee columns and Ghosts starting to resurrect Guardians and unprotected cities trying to hold off alien invasion, and those humans, awoken, and exos not actively doing evil trying to cling to hope and make their way to The Traveler in the face of a great many manmade and alien obstacles. I look forward to writing this once I make sure nothing within Destiny contradicts it.

Beyond that, what would help you write more? Monthly writing prompts? The offer of proofreading and sanity checking? The promise of serious and timely feedback? It just seems to me that Destiny's universe is too cool of a place to leave unfilled.

2. So far, at least, there are no bad stories in the DBO archive. Sure, the grammar varies a bit, but each and every story has good ideas behind it.

That's because I've actually rejected a couple of stories that were pretty horrendous, and by 'horrendous' I really mean 'completely inappropriate.' Overall, though, I've been pretty pleased with the quality of the contributions we've received so far. I'm looking forward to and hoping that we'll see an increase in fan fiction content once the game launches.

The Guardian and the Archive

I'm always happy when people enjoy my writing, so I'm chuffed this one made your Top 4. It and Godshaker are the two Destiny fan fics I've written so far that I'm most proud of.

There's currently, I think, three stories that even mention Ghosts. Nobody has really taken a stab at life during the Golden age. The dark age after the collapse and the formation of The City both are ripe for some good story telling!

To be fair, I don't think anyone really had much of an idea of the relationship of Ghosts to their Guardians until the Beta. There were some hints from the Grimoire in the Alpha that became more firm ideas in the Beta. Now that I know more about them, I intend to incorporate them more into my future stories and am even considering retconning them into my previous ones, given how integral their relationship is to the Guardians.

As far as Golden Age and origins stories are concerned, I don't feel like I know enough about the pre-Collapse era and the immediate aftermath to confidently tackle those topics. We know next to nothing about what happened, which makes anything that gets written about that period at high risk of being invalidated. With the current era of Guardians, at least, we know enough to write some stories and make some educated guesses about things. Again, I think once the game actually launches, that's going to open up a much wider scope of topics for writers to safely dip their toes into.

Beyond that, what would help you write more? Monthly writing prompts? The offer of proofreading and sanity checking? The promise of serious and timely feedback? It just seems to me that Destiny's universe is too cool of a place to leave unfilled.

For me, the biggest hindrance right now is simply time. I don't have enough of it. Between a full-time job, a farm to run, a family to raise and take care of, plus taking classes, I'm swamped. That'll change somewhat after this fall semester when I'll be done with classes (hopefully for good this time). That said, I'd really enjoy regular writing prompts -- would even be willing to contribute some -- as well as having a core group of writers willing to basically be a writing group for critiques and constructive criticism. I'd certainly be willing to provide what expertise I have in that area.

I would love to see a community of Destiny writers spring up around here. I realize there's already the Black Garden over at Bungie.net that has a sizable membership, but for several reasons I don't have any great desire to spend time there. We clearly have writers here -- the fan fiction archive attests to that -- and it's fun to talk shop. The only problem with the archive is that once stories get submitted, it seems like they get forgotten, so there's little, if any, discussion about the stories, either about the mechanics of the writing or of the plots.

So yeah, basically, if you have ideas, I for one am all ears. :)

Beyond that, what would help you write more? Monthly writing prompts? The offer of proofreading and sanity checking? The promise of serious and timely feedback? It just seems to me that Destiny's universe is too cool of a place to leave unfilled.

While 343 has all but killed my decade-long love of and interest in the Halo universe, PostMortem's writing and art prompts always pull me back in for a little bit, if only because the community consistently proves how awesome it is (and how much better it is at Halo lore than 343 is).

I've not seen enough of Destiny to really flesh out any ideas (although others clearly have), but writing prompts definitely help inspire...