Okay, so if you’ve followed this fiction over the years then you know it is now effectively a finished story.
In fact, it was finished in April. Written by SquirrelKing, the original Full Life Consequences was epically scrambled. According to SquirrelKing’s profile and forum posts when it first appeared at FanFiction.net he was learning English and used the writing to help. He also demonstrated some more simple concepts in writing and imagination, which would lead some of us to the conclusion that he was also very young.
Originally, topics about the series were posted in forums such as the fan fiction forum on PHL. The story was ridiculed and people such as myself often defended him by pointing out the likely age and ESL issues. The story was also picked up for a rather famous YTMND “epic reading of an epic fan-fiction”.
This story was amusing and the reading made it great. A second story appeared as well and then the story remained “to be continued?” for years.
But in the past couple of years, YouTube has brought even more attention to SquirrelKing and his fictions. There have been several flash animations, gmod videos, and even hand drawn animations depicting the first two stories and some of the other works including Halo: Halos in Space, and Metal Gear Solid: Fight of Metal Gears.
Most notably, Icton Entertainment (creators of the Idiots of Garry’s Mod videos) made an adaptation of both stories. These adaptations were fairly amusing and worked quite well.
Now, by this time SquirrelKing had been inactive for years. Halo: Halos in Space 2: Aliens attack was his last story which was published in August of 2007. Suddenly, a new chapter in the Full Life Consequences saga appeared in February of this year (2009). Do the math.
Most notable about the later 2 chapters of Full Life Consequences is the recognizably deliberate effort to make them “so bad its funny”. It is possible that someone may have obtained the account and finished the story. But I think it is more likely that SquirrelKing was responding to his internet fame.
Basically, there are too possibilities. Either SquirrelKing was a less successful artificial character, like Peter Chimera, or he was legitimately a kid trying to write and practice his writing that has since turned into a “sock puppet” or fake writer due to internet fame.
I happen to think that he falls into that second possibility. Why? Mainly because if this was always a fake writer, he did a terrible job setting up the character. Using Peter Chimaera as an example, the author created a character that could not grasp the English language and didn’t know much about his subject matter. Sounds a lot like SquirrelKing right? The difference is that Chimaera is supposed to speak English as a primary language and not have spent much time reading or understanding the plot of his subject matter. In short, he’s a newbie, a llama, and a childish writer all rolled into one.
Conversely, SquirrelKing started out as a kid who was learning the English language and seemed to have at least some understanding of his subject matter. He was believable as an author. That is, believable at first. With his latter stories, such as the Halos in Space tales, he seemed to be trying to make bad stories. And since he suddenly reappeared his two latest stories feel even more forced.
Irregardless, the stories of John Freeman, and eventually his son Henry, are funny. And the Icton videos are fairly popular, well made adaptations that have undoubtedly been the reason for SquirrelKing’s reappearance.
In fact, these are popular enough that many YouTube patrons have been trying to beat them to the cliched punch by making adaptations as soon as a new chapters are ready.
I won’t bother you with these wannabe-Icton videos… instead I’ll just link you to the real thing.
The complete saga:
Half-Life: Full Life Consequences
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHxyZaZlaOs
Half-Life: Full Life Consequences 2 – What has to be Done
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8yHguvYYyQ
Half-Life: Hero Begining
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NiCYPrAoB8
Half-Life Full Life Consequences: Free Man
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULWgEnnmcv4
