Saber-Scorpion's Lair
is the personal website (and microcosm) of Justin R. "Saber-Scorpion"
Stebbins. This place is my own little personal pillar of information,
standing firm and lonely amidst the grimy, raging sea of Web 2.0
interactive blogs and wikis, overshadowed by the greater temples and
castles of large corporate websites, content unto itself and its own
individual musings. Welcome to my world.
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| Bio: I was born in a small town in
south-central Virginia and schooled at home for most of my life. I
have always enjoyed drawing and writing, and home schooling has given
me more free time to develop these talents. I began building with LEGO when I was about 5 years old, when I got my first LEGO set in
a cereal box. Since then I have been collecting and building LEGO
non-stop. I probably started my first website when I was around 10
years old, and soon I began
posting my LEGO creations on the Internet, using the name "Scorpion"
or "Red Scorpion." I began online gaming not too long after that, and
my brother and I opened our own gaming clan for Star Wars: Jedi
Knight: Dark Forces II when I was around 12. Since all
members of "The Saber Clan" had to add the prefix "Saber" to their
name, that is when my name changed to "Saber-Scorpion." This name
quickly became the new codename of the main character of a series of
stories I have been working on pretty much since I learned how to
write. These stories have now become my own science fiction universe
called "Nova
Refuge," for which I am currently writing the first full novel. Now my
primary goal in life is to take my hobbies of writing, artwork, and
even LEGO building, and turn them into a career. I have already
printed one novel, G4M3:
Shattered Reality, which was published in 2006. My next will be
Nova Refuge: Warrior Born, set to be published some time this year
(2008). |
| Real name: Justin R. Stebbins |
| Internet handle:
Saber-Scorpion |
| Gender: Male |
| Race: Caucasian
("Anglo-American" of English descent) |
| Hair Color:
Dark brown |
| Eye Color: Blue-grey |
| Height: 6' 1" |
| Weight: About the same as a box of
toothpicks |
| Location: the middle of nowhere, southern Virginia,
USA |
| Date of Birth: January 10th, 1987 |
| E-mail:
Please see the Contact Me page |
| Websites:
http://www.saber-scorpion.com and
http://www.novarefuge.com |
| Favorite Gaming
Genre: RPG (Role-Playing Games) |
| Favorite Games: Baldur's Gate series
(the PC one, not Dark Alliance), Mechwarrior 4 (except for
Black
Knight), Metal Gear
Solid (only the first one), Halo (again, the first one), Age of
Empires II, Star Wars: Jedi Knight, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old
Republic |
| Favorite Movies:
Star Wars classic trilogy (not the Prequels),
The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Man With No Name trilogy
(The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, etc.), and Jurassic Park (just the
first one) |
| Favorite Music: Pretty much just
movie and video game soundtracks |
| Favorite Author: Michael Crichton,
probably |
| Favorite Color: Red
(Didn't you notice?) |
| Lucky Number: Three |
| Things I Love: The stuff you see on
this website, and not much else. |
| Things I Hate: The Star
Wars "Prequels", anything anime or manga, modern art,
sports, politics, popular music, cigarettes, and much, much more. |
The history of Saber-Scorpion's Lair started when I created my first
website called "Justin's Beast Wars Page." This was
probably around 1998 or earlier. The page was located in a sub-domain of
my father's website,
www.usaeast.com, and it consisted of pretty much one single page
where I talked about my favorite TV show at that time, Beast Wars:
Transformers. Ah, Beast Wars... I still have nearly all of the toys.
Things changed considerably when LEGO came out with their official
Star Wars line, around 1999, and I immediately bought all of them. As
the Beast Wars show died away into the horrible "Beast Machines," my
interest shifted entirely to Star Wars, and Justin's Beast Wars Page
became "Boba Fett's Bricks," a site devoted to my Star Wars LEGO
creations, under my extremely uninteresting nickname, "Boba Fett," who
was easily my favorite Star Wars character at the time. Boba Fett's
Bricks featured a forum made using the EZBoard system, which I enjoyed
editing, but unfortunately rarely got to use since no one came
there. It was utterly devoid of life, except for the occasional visitor
posting just to point out how devoid of life it was. This was
somewhat discouraging, but I was determined to keep a forum around
anyway.
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When I started playing the game Star Wars: Jedi
Knight: Dark Forces II online, I found the name Boba Fett was far
too common and unoriginal, so I started going by the name "Scorpion"
or "Red Scorpion." Ryan and I loved playing JK online (via the MSN
Gaming Zone), so we started our own clan called Clash of Sabers
(COS), which required that all members attach "COS_" before their
username. However, there was another clan already using the COS
acronym, so we quickly changed the name to The Saber Clan, requiring
that every member's user name begin with "Saber_". This, as you
may have gathered, is how I became Saber-Scorpion. Ryan and I
led the clan for a number of years and went through several website
designs before closing it down not long after the release of Jedi
Knight II: Jedi Outcast, which we were dissatisfied with. You can
still visit the dead clan's website here:
http://www.usaeast.com/scorpion/cos |
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During the peak of my Star Wars-related enthusiasm,
but before I became "Saber-Scorpion," my website was Scorpion's Star
Wars Site. It featured sections about Star Wars fan art, fan
fiction, video games, and of course my LEGO creations. This was when I really started taking
my website seriously, so I like to consider 1/1/2000 the true
opening of Saber-Scorpion's Lair. It's a nice date. Anyway, the
website stayed "Scorp's Star Wars Site" until about 2003, at
which point I had begun making my video game-based creations (MGS
and
Halo), and I was beginning to move away from Star Wars. |
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My original Scorpion's Star Wars Site ran for at
least two years, and I began working on various new designs for it
as I grew tired of the original one (also, I wanted to switch to
using the name "Saber-Scorpion" on everything). Both of the designs
at the left actually never saw the light of day. The one to the far
left is a redesign I was making for my Star Wars site, but I never
finished it because I was growing too tired of Star Wars. The design
to the right is one I began based on video gaming only, but it
didn't work out because there were too many other things I was
interested in. |
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Finally, I settled upon this: the original
"Saber-Scorpion's Lair" by that exact name. I tried to design the
site to look like a holographic projection coming from a group of
devices around the edges. This always seemed like a good idea for a
website design to me, so I've stuck with it pretty much ever since,
though I occasionally find myself slipping back to the old "Scorpion
tail" design seen in the scrapped gaming page above. This appearance
for Saber-Scorpion's Lair ran for only about a year before I started
growing interested in working with Macromedia Flash... |
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Here are two of the older Flash banners I created
for my website, which was redesigned in 2003 for the new domain name
I had just purchased:
www.saber-scorpion.com. The basic design I created that year was
the one I stuck with for about 4 years after that, making it the
longest-running design of the Lair so far. The only changes made to it
were when I updated the banners, as seen on the left. Around this time, I switched
my forum to Invision Power Board, which I downloaded for free and
installed on my new server myself (this was before "Invisionfree"
was created and Invision Power Board stopped letting users download
the full version without paying). As my LEGO Halo creations grew in popularity, these
forums grew beyond my imagination. It still amazes me to see how popular
they are today. |
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This was the Saber-Scorpion's Lair look I started
using in 2006-2007, before switching to the appearance you see now.
This design was really the same one I started using in 2003, only
with new Flash menus and banner to override the old ones. Animations
included lightning flashing behind Saber-Scorpion and the venom
dripping from the end of the stinger design behind the banner. A lot
of people found this design creepy and/or disgusting, but I consider
it one of my favorites. To see an archive of old news posts over
the course of most of my site's lifespan (2003-2007),
CLICK HERE. |
My younger brother and sister are the biggest supporters of my website and help me
in many areas. Everything you see here, they probably contributed to.
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| Bio: Ryan is my brother (three
years younger than me). We often work together on LEGO projects, Flash
animation, and web editing around this site and Nova Refuge. He enjoys music, gaming, and really enjoys
working on his website. I'd highly recommend
paying him a visit there. |
Bio: Maegan is my sister (six
years younger than me). She enjoys listening to music, watching
movies, playing games, writing stories, and chatting online. She
mostly helps me maintain my forums and is probably the most active
administrator there. If you're a member, try to stay on her good side! |
| Name: Ryan C. Stebbins |
Name: Maegan A. Stebbins |
| Forum name: _R__Y__A__N_ |
Forum Name: Werewolf (sometimes goes
by "Jade") |
| Gender: Male |
Gender: Female |
| Date of Birth: April 15th, 1990 |
Date of Birth: November 16th, 1993 |
| E-mail:
ryan@rycast.com |
E-mail:
maegan@saber-scorpion.com |
| Personal Website:
http://www.rycast.com |
Personal Website:
http://jade.saber-scorpion.com |
| Favorite Video
Games: Jedi Knight, Mechwarrior 4, Age of Empires
II, Rainbow Six games, and Metal
Gear games. |
Favorite Movies: Back to the Future
trilogy, Lord of the Rings trilogy, and most of all... anything to do
with Tom Cruise |
| Favorite Color: Blue |
Favorite Color: Green |
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