Hello everybody! Digital Riot here, and I have some meh news.

I am going to pause this story, I'm sorry. I am so sorry. But hear me out, alright?

I've been reading through the story to try and see what else I could add for later chapters and try to understand more of what I want to accomplish with the plot. But I realized that my writing was very, not so great. It was sub-par. And I don't want it to be sub-par I want it to be amazing! So, I've been thinking it through and decided a few weeks ago that I would pause this story and rewrite it on my computer so that it actually is of a higher grade and then publish that new story. I'm not canceling this story per se, I'm just gonna re-write it so that it will be a little bit less cringe.

I don't think I have to list all of the reasons I think my story isn't that great, but I will anyway because Self-Depreciation is a good thing. A very good thing.

For one, my story didn't really have a coherent plot. I mean it does, but it's very loose. When I wrote this out I was hoping to discover the plot as I went along, and I did towards the end. But in the middle of the story, there is just a lot of filler that doesn't need to be there, a lot of characters you never hear from, and a lot of things that probably should have happened that didn't. Now I understand the plot a little bit more, and I think I'm gonna do a better job trying to stay towards the plot arch. Like the part of Misfit squadron getting imprisoned in a Chinese prison, is a scene I literally took from Battlefield 4 for no reason. It was random and did nothing to advance the plot other than I guess to show that Flint is kind of a pervert and that Brian and Hezekiah are good friends. But other than that, it was useless.

Also, the whole backstory of Hezekiah and Flint aren't that well explored, like it is told that the two were deployed into Afghanistan to fight while the Korean War was going on (that Bubba was a part of), but that's all. I intend to include a scene of the two in Afghanistan in the beginning scenes of the story to highlight that more clearly, that Hezekiah and Flint are veterans and are experienced (Something the actual Gate anime failed to do miserably with its own main characters).

Second, my grammar wasn't that great. It wasn't terrible, but not great. It's coherent, but it isn't perfect. And I want it to be perfect. Or at least as good as possible. I'm going to fix my grammar in the new story because that's what I should do and that's my responsibility. So there's that.

Third, I could've done a lot better with the World Building. Creating an entirely new world is hard to do, but it's not that hard. I could've done a little bit better to try and explain the backstory of the Iscariot Empire and the other empires on the continent, try to use more creativity in the place names, etc, etc. Like there is some history hinted at in the story like you get that the Iscariots have a lot of vassals all over the continent, you get there are numerous tribes on the continent, that they hate the Falkand Empire-You know, the basics. But I wanted to go a lot harder on the Worldbuilding and lore, so it would be more interesting and not flat like the actual Gate anime was. Like in Gate you get only a tiny little bit of history, and then they just forget it to focus on how sexy Rory Mercury is, and I will never forgive Gate for that. I want my story to be, not that-if that makes any sense?

Fourth, there are parts where I feel like I didn't go hard enough on certain things. Like the Falklands Empire, for instance, could have been a very major component in all of this, but instead they kind of just faded into the background. I planned to make them more significant later on but by that time it wouldn't really make much sense. A lot of other characters should have been more major but they plateaued out in terms of potential and actual intrigue value they held. The Battle of Villers Bocage, for example, was supposed to highlight the growth of Hezekiah in his career and show that Cathy was a good administrator and could effectively command units in the joint NATO-Ithacan armed forces. But instead, neither of that really happened and it was just an okay battle scene. I also wanted to use Kovic's decline in prestige after having so many fuck-ups to fuel a rivalry between him and Hezekiah that would become much more significant later on, but Kovic kinda just got brushed to the side to make way to focus on how glorious the M1a2 Abrams tank is (I will never forgive myself for that). Like a lot, more could've been done but didn't actually happen (Which is exactly my opinion about Gate as an anime, it was executed terribly and I actually resent most of the characters. Except for Hitoshi, he was cool).

I don't want to belittle myself anymore, so I'm just gonna leave off with this. I'm gonna aim for the best no matter what, and I will rewrite this so if you really enjoyed the story don't be scared or anything. I re-upload another story that you can go ahead and read. And I'm not being peer pressured into this either, nobody has actually told me to do this or that my writing sucks I just decided that on my own. And with that, I guess I'll see you all in the next story. Digital Riot saying goodbye!