General notes for Lost Logia Halo

Lost Logia Incident Report: Halo Array.

This story is the first fanfiction that I have ever taken seriously, although not the first that I have ever written. It is the first (full-length) story of mine to be openly posted, and currently the longest of my stories that can be found online. Although it doesn't have a whole lot of competition in that field.

My favorite anime series is Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, a series that's interesting in a number of ways. Among other things, it tends to be more action-oriented than most magical girl shows, especially in the later incarnations, but not nearly as action-oriented as a first-person shooter like Halo. I admit the first thought of combining the two came in reading the (at the time) only other crossover fanfic that combined the two. (There have been two more since then, I have discovered just now.)

That crossover essentially took the position that the Time-Space Administration Bureau of the Nanoha universe was far inferior to the United Nations Space Command of the Halo universe, or at least it did in the short time I managed to read it. I ended up disliking it for a number of reasons (that one among them), although that is probably somewhat unfair of me to say considering I never did read it all the way through.

However, it did inspire me to write my own story. Foremost among my goals in creating Lost Logia Incident Report: Halo Array (as you may have noticed, Lost Logia Halo for short) was to truly set the Bureau and the UNSC next to one another and see each come out the better for it in the end. I felt that the Bureau's magical technology put it at least on par with the UNSC on a one-for-one basis, and it's not like the Nanoha canon offers any idea of just how extensive the Bureau is. And as I did not and still do not have any intentions of sparking a war between the Bureau and the UNSC, I suspect the question of "which one is truly better" will remain unanswered (by me at least) throughout the story. While I am more of a Nanoha fan, I am trying to ensure that that's a question which could be argued either way from the story that I'm writing.

The first question that needed an answer, though, was the simple one: how to bring the two worlds together? Nanoha canon is very kind to crossovers, really, because its universe specifies multiple worlds to begin with, and there's nothing stopping one of those worlds being the world from another game or anime series. Add in the idea that the UNSC's slipspace drives could be seen and misinterpreted by the Bureau (the big threat at the end of the first season is the possibility of a dimensional rift, and I decided that I would make the Slipspace drives create what appeared to be one), and I had the makings of a first encounter.

I also had to decide when in each continuity to set this story. For Nanoha, I chose the period immediately after the second season because I felt it was the easiest chance to put "young" Nanoha into the story; she has only minimal contact with the Bureau throughout the six-month gap between the first two seasons, and then becomes an instructor a short time after the second. Having the Arthra fall into another situation, with Nanoha and Fate aboard, before any of the major changes at the end of the second season could take effect felt most reasonable to me.

For Halo, I was certain from the beginning that I would have the Bureau walk in on the battle over the first Halo. Out of all of the moments in the Halo canon that I'm familiar with, it felt like the easiest pivot point which could bring the Bureau and the UNSC together for an extended period of time. Also, there were a few ideas I had for scenes that I wanted to put in which worked best with the original Halo storyline.

But that's getting ahead of myself, and I'm probably putting way too much thought into this already. That's how this all got started. I'll discuss my thoughts on chapter 1 in the next note.