Prof. Hagan's wife

[Crash]

I hope everyone's had a Merry Christmas, here's hoping for a good 2015...Assuming that Prof Hagan had a wife, what happened to her? This is never gone into in the series.Has anyone any idea what she was supposed to be called? If not, has anyone made up a name for the purposes of any fan writing?The reason that this question comes up is that, in the story I'm doing requires Prof Hagan to have his own ship, which I happen to have designed.Although it packs quite a punch, I thought I'd give it a more sentimental name.In various Thunderbirds publications, Jeff Tracy has a yacht called Lucille after his late wife.I thought that'd be a good place to start.

[Vanessa]

Hi Crash, Merry Christmas to you and everyone In my fanfic, Prof. Hagen's wife was called Annalee.I also gave him a ship and wrote a bit about it.It's cool that you are writing as well, this site has been pretty quiet of late.I look forward to reading it.

[Crash]

Excellent name, thanksI'm reading the story now. It's really good, really really good.I don't know if I plan on writing anything up. I have a story. I haven't written any story since I was at school.I haven't got as far as this ship in your story yet.All I know is that this ship is less powerful than WingBlade but easier to fly; more in line with MainBody and LegTrax but a little more powerful than those (since it's newer).You can see it on the front page of my site. I think it got swayed by the Thunderbolt from FireStorm.It's got more guns than Manchester.

[Vanessa]

You're free to use the name, or make up one of your own, no worries. Thanks for the compliments about my story. I was going to write another one, back in the days when there was a lot of fanfic activity on this site. Shane was quite prolific with his writing, and we were going to write more stuff, but never got round to it.The bit where Prof. Hagen's ship appears is later on, and quite brief.Is your ship the XDF-005? There's a Dai-X style to it, and what looks like a lot of gun pods. Nice design!It'd be great if there were more Star Fleet stories to read, hope you decide to take the plunge and write one.I hope the new Firestorm project on Kickstarter is a success.

[Crash]

I did that drawing at work. I was so bored. I'll do a proper version on A4/A3 when I get time.Reading into your story over lunch really made the day worthwhile. Infact, it's more-and-more full of good stuff the further I get into it, like the origins of the Thalians.---I might see about a story myself - one with lots of illustrations... and ships and guns and explosions. I have some stuff to write about. - The various planets that you come across in the game, like Simetra; the idyllic earth colony and how it's held out against the Alliance for decades. - Ensign Natasha 'Rain' Kostitsyn's background and why she gets to fly the WingBlade ship and no-one else.- What her actions are during the course of the game while X-Bomber and crew are busy saving everything.- There's quite a lot to say about the EDF space carrier(s) and the extinct beings whose artifacts you encounter in Missions 9 and 10. They have some relation to the 'red-ship' aliens in Mission 12. In Mission 13, the science outpost is excavating the remains of an settlment of theirs on the planet below.---I must have been the only person to watch the original, Japanese FireStorm and think "what, if anything, was wrong with that?".I downloaded some rips through bittorrent and I started watching it last year when I got married and it wasn't until recently that I finished. But that gap wasn't because I was bored of the series.Anyone that figured I'd watch it for the character development or a clever critique on society is wrong.It had a huge, f***-off submarine and some really cool planes with lots of missiles that were kept busy shooting down UFOs.I mean, what's not to like?Even the characters were likeable and, in some cases, bad-ass; especially Captain McAllister when he punched the alien chief unconscious in his own underground lair, or whatever happened.You felt yourself caring about them after a while and they looked cool (especially the blonde piloting the Tornado) and were quite well illustrated.What surprised me was how similar the kickstarter seems to want to be to the show that the Japanese *actually already produced*.All the ships are identical to how they appear in the existing cartoon.So, all they're doing is to change the genre of the series; puppets rather than animation.I'm happy to see more of the show presented in a different way. It'll be like a continuation. When I got to the end of FireStorm, I was left wanting more.I was very, very happy with what I'd watched. I just wanted to see more of it.Now, this way, I can but it puzzles how they can say that the Japanese screwed the series up originally when: - A) They're doing everything the same (apparently), apart from with puppets. - B) There was nothing at all wrong with the original that I could see.

[Vanessa]

So glad you like my story, you are most kind with your comments I like your idea about adding illustrations to your story. I wish I had the skills to illustrate some of my story, but I don't.You see your points about your story have gone and whetted my appetite to read/see more of it. The brief snippets you've mentioned sound great! Moar I say!Very interesting what you say about the new Firestorm vs the old one. I didn't know any of what you wrote, the Kickstarter info seemed to suggest something much more different to the Japanese animation. I've not seen it so can't comment, but I'd have thought the new show would differ more from the old, otherwise like you say, what's the point? Maybe it's in the stories/scripts where the difference lies? Rubbishing something you are actually copying doesn't sound like a good idea to me. Also didn't realise that all the fanfare about reaching funding milestones is totally meaningless when the pledges don't turn into actual cash. What they got in the end wasn't enough to do what we were led to believe was possible. Not sure now what is actually going to be produced, and can't be bothered to keep checking their backers blog...

[Crash]

Well, I've got 6 pages now. I think everyone has the skill to draw better than I can. We have a guy at work who draws the most amazing things in biro actually at work. I told him to set up on deviantArt. The original version of Firestorm is hard to get. I'm not even sure where I found the torrent. It's all in Japanese with some dreadful English subtitles.I think I had to install a client other than utorrent since the tracker that ran the torrent was so ... retentive about which client you used.All the kickstarter stuff is pointless - just another content farm for generating publicity. The difference between it and Twitter is only theoretical.We'll just have to sit back and see. It'll be nice to see the Thunderbolt ships in action as well as everything else.They had a ground vehicle, which was a bit like an IFV or a personnel carrier. It looked like the SPV from Captain Scarlet but without any of the styling, charm or chunkiness.That was one vehicle that could have stood some improvement.I'd be interested to know who actually designed all that kit. Was it someone in the West or in Japan, since there's absolutely no deviation or variation in the designs of the ships shown on Kickstarter for the new series.They are literally 1:1 exact replicas of what's in the original.

[Vanessa]

6 pages is good. Well done that man! You can always post it here, I'm sure you'd find a receptive audience.I used to be a technical illustrator, those line drawings of parts for automotive spare parts catalogues. But that skill doesn't translate into me being able to illustrate scenes from a fanfic in a more comic style. Unless Prof. Hagen is perusing a car parts catalogue, and spots a nice alternator he needs, I'm pretty much out of luck, lol!I always learn new phrases from your posts. I remember you using the term "sheeple" in the past, which was new to me (and i use it occasionally now). Today's new phrase is "content farm", gonna remember that one as well.I take it you are not a fan of Kickstarter then I must admit the only online social media I use is LinkedIn, and then only for finding work. That's it's main use (and only use really, despite it's owners efforts otherwise).Jamie Anderson constantly refers to the short written concept from his father as the sole inspiration for the show. If the ships are the same as the Japanese animation, then clearly that is not true. I am now wondering where the original designs came from for the vehicles... I guess they are hoping that not many are familiar with the Japanese show.We'll see what transpires I guess.

[Crash]

I suppose 'content farm' is a bit uncharitable. But it is just one of those sites that showcases the content of its users.Every successful site is the same; deviantArt, Google, FaceBook, LinkedIn - you name it. The most popular sites always have no content on them produced by the people who made the site itself.To my mind, content farms are those dreadful sites full of '100 best superheroines' or '50 best moments in online gaming' shared articles where you get drawn down the rabbit hole and you end up in a maze with millions of tabs open and the whole idea is to serve you with adverts.I have nothing against Kickstarter but if it doesn't generate the income that it promises, which it seems not to... then...One problem is that you hardly find anything about the original Firestorm online.I did find some DVDs (in Japanese) on Rinkya but they were 2 separate items with only the first 5 episodes between them.It didn't seem like a very economical way of watching the show.

[Crash]

I totally forgot to go into this ...I don't think illustration has to be like a cartoon style like the Star Fleet ones by that guy Steve Kyte.Everybody has their own style. I'm not very good at drawing people. Figures, I can do but faces are very subtle and tricky things.I mean, reading your story (I'm gonna get back to reading that over lunch), I'd love to see an illustration of the Thalian home planet. The way that was described was gold.