Hello everybody, and welcome to Odyssey: The Fall of Fargo.
I decided to do a proper prologue into this story just to explain to you all where I am coming from, and what this story is mainly about, and some background on it. So Odyssey is mostly a thought experiment I've had in my head for at least two years ago. And over the course of several different re-writings, it has evolved. My last story, Gate: The Iscariot Kingdom (I took that one down because it was horrendous), is essentially a Beta version of Odyssey. And even then the Iscariot Kingdom was another rewrite of an idea I had, that would essentially put the United States in the Saderan continent to fight alongside Japan.
Obviously, this story is radically different from the Iscariot Kingdom, and the Iscariot Kingdom is much in the same way extremely different from the first draft.
The reason I decided to write this story was because of frustration at GATE, as an anime. When I first watched the anime, I thought it was cool. I was being introduced for the first time, and I was still learning about the world GATE took place in. But then the anime ended and I realized that I never really learned anything about the world at all. When I watched the anime a second time, I realized how badly the writers for the show did at creating interesting and in-depth worldbuilding, and the third time how terrible the characters in GATE were. So, when I set to write the Iscariot Kingdom, I had it in my mind to make a version of GATE that is better than what was originally presented.
And I failed at that task. The plot was all over the place, the characters were stupid, things weren't as explained as much as they should've been, it was almost as bad as the thing I wanted to improve on. So that sucked. Towards the final chapters of the Iscariot Kingdom, I began realizing how uninspired the fic was and how badly I executed it, despite overwhelmingly positive feedback (Which still confuses me). And as such, I began playing around with different things in my mind, different scenarios, different ideas- anything- that would work to make a great story.
And out of that, Odyssey was born. Set in the same literary- universe as GATE (Like the Iscariot Kingdom was) but also not really. I wouldn't consider it fanfiction, more than I would consider it to be an original story that borrows heavily from GATE. And in creating what was essentially a completely new story, I was forced to rework and re-design virtually everything that GATE did, and then transplant that into a new universe. Not only on the worldbuilding side of things, but also on the storytelling, the prose, the characterization, the pacing, everything that the Iscariot Kingdom didn't do right, I aimed to correct in Odyssey.
To do this, I borrow heavily from other forms of media. Seeing what I liked and didn't like, seeing what they did right and didn't do right. Studying the best ways to write literature by watching real authors talk about it (I watched sooooo many worldbuilding and creative writing videos online, but it was definitely worth it), all of it to craft a story that was supposed to represent (to me at least) watch GATE should've or could've been.
All of that was to be compounded into Odyssey, which I hope (one day in the future) to turn into a original and published work. Who knows? And as such, I really wish to aim for the absolute best for this story as to me, this represents how far I have come as an author and what the best for myself is. So without further ado I present to you all:
Odyssey: The Fall of Fargo.
A Digital Riot Production