Author's Notes
Hi all. This is Sergeant Conley with a bit of shameless story bumping.
When I first wrote this story, I had delusions of grandeur in which people would actually read it, and then there'd be more than a few readers who would have questions or two about the fic or its origins that I could answer in a sort of author Q&A. God I was naïve.
Well, recently Obsidian Productions (formerly Obsidian Thirteen, the originator of the Multiplayer Chronicles) has started adding "Author Commentary" chapters to his completed fics. They serve the same purpose of an author's notes section in a short story collection, and it was actually such author's notes sections that inspired my delusional hopes of the author Q&A. Inspired, I've decided to hop on the bandwagon and add author's notes of my own. Hopefully we'll get a full-blown trend started, 'cause in all honesty I love author's notes that explain fun trivia, how the story unfolded or was formed, its origins, etc.
First up is how I got roped into it: while reading through Halo fanfiction about two years ago, I found Obsidian Thirteen's story High Ground, which was about a squad of Marines at the installation featured in the Halo 3 multiplayer map High Ground trying to outlast a horde of zombies, a la Dawn of the Dead. It was an amazing read, and Thirteen almost instantly became my favorite Halo fic writer, especially after I read through his other stuff. Sometime later I learned that any volunteer writers could contribute to his Multiplayer Chronicles, and after reading Valhalla I tried to sign on instantly. You see, he'd made a reference in that story to an incident at Standoff, and I wanted to write those events. Well, he'd already started on that, but he welcomed me to do whatever other available map/s I wanted.
I had the crazy idea of mixing two maps into one, and he gave me the green light.
The maps in question were both Halo 2 maps: Headlong (my favorite of that game) and Turf. Both maps are set in an African supercity briefly featured in the campaign, Headlong in New Mombasa, and Turf in the outlying and decrepit Old Mombasa.
If there's one kind of environment I love to see in shooting games or war movies, it's urban. There's just something about bands of soldiers fighting through a city, adapting its surroundings to their needs, I just can't really describe it. The only situation I love more than urban combat is the "surrounded in a fort" scenario.
So, using the creative liberties that only comes in fanfiction, I molded the two maps into a path, a path down which we the readers would follow our squad of Marines as they tried to overcome their challenge.
So I had my setting. Next step: the challenge, the conflict.
My answer came to me in the form of the movie Cloverfield. Towards the end of the movie, the Army National Guard, after seeing that everything they've used so far hasn't done a damn thing to the monster ravaging New York City, resorts to the Hammerdown Protocol, in which they carpet bomb the entire area the monster's in to rubble in a last ditch effort to kill it. Interestingly enough, there is such a protocol in the US military's repertoire, though the name "Hammerdown Protocol" is fictional. It's used in case an enemy force overwhelms a location which contains materials that we just absolutely cannot let them get their hands on. So we bomb the shit out of it to do two things: get as many of the enemy as we can, and destroy whatever it is we don't want them getting.
I took the liberty of just using it to kill a bunch of genocidal aliens.
So we have a setting (the city) and a challenge (getting the fuck outta Dodge), but who's doing the GTFOing? A squad of Marines who, in all honesty, have no bit of originality to them whatsoever. In fact, almost every single name in this fic is a shout out or reference of some kind, some more vague than others.
First up is the squad leader. When I tried to picture this sergeant and assign him a name, I thought of actor David Morse in UNSC Marine armor with a patrol cap on his head. I'd recently seen and read The Green Mile, so the name Brutus "Brutal" Howell (played by Morse in the movie version) came right to me. I threw the name and image in as a shout out to the book and movie and made sure to include him in the disclaimer, but really he's nothing like the real Brutal. For that, you're better off reading the book.
Next was the guy who I intended to be the main character but who isn't due to my very obvious lack of talent (hopefully that's gotten better over the past year/two years). Again, no originality, just a name, Joseph Carson, specifically the name of the protagonist in my first idea for a video game (I plan on becoming a video game designer by profession).
His best friend is the required-by-law squad joker, Alton Foley. His surname is a mini-shout out to a Battlefield 2 fic written by my friend and occasional beta-reader TheSpazzo, who used the name for his own squad smartass. Plus I just like the name Foley, my personal favorite example being professional wrestler Mick Foley. His entrance music never fails to make me smile and/or cheer. His given name of Alton/"Alt", however, is a more "legit" shout out. You see, my favorite writer is Stephen King, and in 1998 he wrote an original screenplay for a two-part TV mini-series that aired on ABC called Storm of the Century (I highly recommend it). In the series, the protagonist's best friend and deputy is a man named Alton "Alt/Hatch" Hatcher.
Yes, that's where David Hatcher's surname and nickname come from. "David" is just a common name I pulled out.
Kelly "Legs" Leggard is one of my (very, very) few attempts at disguising a shout out. The surname and nickname come from the radio telephone operator in the Brothers in Arms game series, Kevin Leggett. I just decided to try and come up with a new name that could be shortened to "Legs". By the way, that scene in the diner? That came from a bad idea I had at the time to try and include a sex scene, or a mention of one. Common sense bitch-slapped me though and instead I threw in this humorous moment. Less humorous than that though is the moment during the dust-off scene when Foley steps on her intestines and she starts screaming "SOMETHING PULLED, SOMETHING JUST FUCKING PULLED!" That's a reference to the novel The Running Man, written by Stephen King and published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman.
Marsha Valance's surname is a shout out to the western film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, of course. Marsha's just another common name I dredged up. Recently, I found a trope on TV Tropes(dot)org called "Vasquez Always Dies", which says that in a story involving a military force of some kind and a pretty female lead who may or may not be part of that same military force, there'll more often than not be a less attractive woman in that military force who's a strong supporting character. But no matter how skilled she is or how well she's armed or trained, she'll die while the beautiful female lead survives. I was glad that I at least partially subverted it by killing off Legs as well.
I've only played one Resident Evil game and read the book based on the first one, but anyone even partially familiar with zombies and games should figure out who Wesker's name is a reference to.
Copeland's name comes from a forum-based RPG I'm a part of based on the Colonial Marines from the movie Aliens (who served as inspiration for the design of the UNSC Marines). Copeland is the name of our company medical officer.
Cotton is the name of Hank Hill's dad in the animated series King of the Hill.
Lieutenant Morgan's name is the other disguised shout out, but it's disguised because I didn't want people to get it immediately and figure out he was gonna snap (although my bad foreshadowing probably made that obvious anyway). "Morgan" is an anagram of "Gorman", the name of the Colonial Marine officer in Aliens who freezes up in combat. Unlike Morgan though, Gorman redeems himself in the end, though he and Vasquez take out several Xenomorphs with them by way of a grenade.
The two-bit wonder Corporal Lantermann is named after my US History teacher. I really just couldn't think of anything else.
Valdez is probably the only name in this whole fanfiction that doesn't have an origin to it.
For anyone curious enough, the card game they're playing at the beginning is a game called "Bullshit". It comes from a crappy romantic comedy movie (How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, I think), but it's a damn fun game to play.
I forgot something and am now editing it in: the "surfer guy". In the book Black Hawk Down, there's a moment where, while pinned down around the first crash site, a couple of Rangers keep getting harassed by a heavy weapon of some kind. From the window of the building they're using as an HQ, this "stereotypical surfer" voice asks them where the fire's coming from. It's an unnamed Delta Force Operator who coolly tells them that he'll take care of it, and blasts the fire's origin with an under-barrel grenade launcher. This was my version of such a moment, and a little shout out to that D-Boy, wherever he is.
And that's all for that. The Multiplayer Chronicles kinda shut down because Obsidian took down all his stories to repost them in an organized manner involving chronology and series and stuff, so right now all you can find is mine and one based on Ghost Town, but I recommend it. You'll have to change the rating thing in the community page because it's an M-rated story. If Obsidian gets the others reposted, I suggest checking them out too.
And so today, two years to the day since posting this story and one year to the day since finishing it, I say farewell to this story for the last time.
