15168 réponses à ce sujet

[Mr Plow]

Oh and don't get me started on Bastila

Bastila, Morrigan, Miranda...what is it about dark haired ice queens that makes me go all

Modifié par Mr Plow, 16 septembre 2010 - 08:10 .

[Ieldra]

fongiel24 wrote...

Ieldra2 wrote...
BTW: Writing sex scenes is a b*tch. One day of work and three pages to show for it.

A three-page sex scene is a very long sex scene . I don't think I've seen anything like that outside of actual erotica.

That includes the dialogue around it, not just the action. Also it isn't that long - I just read one of about that length in a thriller, and it didn't feel long. No, it wasn't fanfic.

[mosor]

Mr Plow wrote...

LOTSB really boosted Liara in my eyes - was tempted think about going back and taking her on as my LI. (actually picked Ashley in ME1 - must be a brunette thing)

Miranda is still number one for me but Ithink Liara is up there with Miranda as equals now rather than being subordinate to Shepard. In fact maybe moreso than Miranda

LOTSB did boost Liara. Then again, I'm sure they'll put out some future DLC that will boost Ashley or Kaiden too. Looks like bioware listened a little and added more depth to LI's judging by shadow broker DLC. I really don't romance in my canon playthoughs. My canon is a renegade and runs the ship military.

As others have said, friendship is a very satisfying conclusion, and if you did wander your eyes to someone else, she has angry words just before you fight Tela Vasir, and nothing but kind words at cabin discussion regardless of who you romanced.

[Ieldra]

For a little change...

[LuxDragon]

I'm with you on that Plow. You hit all 3 of my favorite LIs in 3 different games.

[Jebel Krong]

fongiel24 wrote...

Elyvern wrote...

Goddamnit....my comp died on me and ate up the fic file, so all I have are the two excerpts I (thankfully) posted here. Really pissed off right now, bloody hell!

Ouch! I feel your pain. Something like that's happened to me twice this year - once to four chapters of a fic I was working on (actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise because what I lost wasn't all that great) and a term paper (that one really hurt). Since the second incident I've started backing up all my work by uploading it to my gmail account. 

does nobody have autosave turned on? if you use a relatively recent version of word that generally auto-recovers documents after any crash, too. still backing up to gmail or usb would be sensible as well (unless you lose the usb sticks like i did...).

[Caihn]

Yannkee wrote...

 Found on deviant art :




http://velvetrue.dev...awson-179371121

The finished version :



Amazing :wub:

http://velvetrue.dev...awson-179534931

[Jebel Krong]

prefer the pencils myself...  oh and i reviewed LoSB on my blog.

Modifié par Jebel Krong, 17 septembre 2010 - 01:52 .

[Ieldra]

@Elyvern:
The story you were referring to, the one that made reference to The Tempest, could it have been this one:

The Runaway, by KoKoTheBunga

(BTW, I'm getting a lot of timeouts accessing FFN. Almost as if they're being attacked)

Modifié par Ieldra2, 17 septembre 2010 - 02:07 .

[Elyvern]

Ieldra2 wrote...

@Elyvern:
The story you were referring to, the one that made reference to The Tempest, could it have been this one:

The Runaway, by KoKoTheBunga

(BTW, I'm getting a lot of timeouts accessing FFN. Almost as if they're being attacked)

No, it's not. It was a series of interstitials that goes back to explore every character's childhood. The first chapter was a male Shep watching his family being butchered by Batarian raiders while he hid under the bed.  Another involved Garrus arguing with his father about how he was a turian anomaly. The one on Miranda had her living in Melbourne, and included a pretty well-written scene where she offers Niket sexual favours in return for aiding her to escape. I actually took the trouble to filter and search through the FFN, but was still unable to find it.

Also, some status update: I'm going overseas for a week starting on Sunday morning, I will absolutely not have internet access or time to do any writing.

Here's a question: i've been wondering what generation of biotic implants would Miranda have. She seems too old to be equipped with L3s, but she doesn't seem to suffer from the side effects of L2s. What do you guys think?

Modifié par Elyvern, 17 septembre 2010 - 05:10 .

[jtav]

I've always assumed that she was an L2 retrofitted with an L4. Pre-LotSB I had her suffering from chronic pain for years. I wanted her perfection to be incomplete. I've discarded that on the grounds that her infertility serves the same function and there's such a thing as too much misery. Now I'm inclined to believe she was one of the lucky L2s with no side effects.

Modifié par jtav, 17 septembre 2010 - 05:24 .

[Ieldra]

Elyvern wrote...
No, it's not. It was a series of interstitials that goes back to explore every character's childhood. The first chapter was a male Shep watching his family being butchered by Batarian raiders while he hid under the bed.

I've run across that.... heh, this is annoying. We both recall it and can't find it again.

Here's a question: i've been wondering what generation of biotic implants would Miranda have. She seems too old to be equipped with L3s, but she doesn't seem to suffer from the side effects of L2s. What do you guys think?

I never found that detail particularly important. The two scenarios jtav posted seem the most likely, but I also wouldn't rule it out that her implants are retrofitted, non-standardized Cerberus versions. 

Modifié par Ieldra2, 17 septembre 2010 - 05:47 .

[fongiel24]

Elyvern wrote...

Ieldra2 wrote...

@Elyvern:
The story you were referring to, the one that made reference to The Tempest, could it have been this one:

The Runaway, by KoKoTheBunga

(BTW, I'm getting a lot of timeouts accessing FFN. Almost as if they're being attacked)

No, it's not. It was a series of interstitials that goes back to explore every character's childhood. The first chapter was a male Shep watching his family being butchered by Batarian raiders while he hid under the bed.  Another involved Garrus arguing with his father about how he was a turian anomaly. The one on Miranda had her living in Melbourne, and included a pretty well-written scene where she offers Niket sexual favours in return for aiding her to escape. I actually took the trouble to filter and search through the FFN, but was still unable to find it.

I remember that fic too... it had little prologue shots of several characters - I remember Thane specifically and possibly Samara as well. I've tried searching for it a few times, but I think the author took it down. Sometimes I really wish it was easier to find things on FF.net. Having only the criteria of "Update Date" and "Publish Date" makes it a pain in the a** sometimes. If there was the option of sorting by "Favourites" and "Alerts" it would make it a lot easier to sort.

Here's a question: i've been wondering what generation of biotic
implants would Miranda have. She seems too old to be equipped with L3s,
but she doesn't seem to suffer from the side effects of L2s. What do you
guys think?

Given her age Miranda was almost definitely originally a L2, but whether or not she's upgraded since then is pure speculation. I suspect that given how important her job and purpose is to her, she'd be willing to take the risk of regularly upgrading whenever significant advances were made in biotic implant technology. She'd probably skip the L3 generation because they're less powerful, but she probably wouldn't have had time to upgrade to an L5 if the L5 generation was developed during her time on Lazarus. My guess would be that Miranda is fitted with some sort of L4 implant, like jtav said.

Modifié par fongiel24, 17 septembre 2010 - 06:43 .

[LuxDragon]

Elyvern wrote...

Ieldra2 wrote...

@Elyvern:
The story you were referring to, the one that made reference to The Tempest, could it have been this one:

The Runaway, by KoKoTheBunga

(BTW, I'm getting a lot of timeouts accessing FFN. Almost as if they're being attacked)

No, it's not. It was a series of interstitials that goes back to explore every character's childhood. The first chapter was a male Shep watching his family being butchered by Batarian raiders while he hid under the bed.  Another involved Garrus arguing with his father about how he was a turian anomaly. The one on Miranda had her living in Melbourne, and included a pretty well-written scene where she offers Niket sexual favours in return for aiding her to escape. I actually took the trouble to filter and search through the FFN, but was still unable to find it.

Also, some status update: I'm going overseas for a week starting on Sunday morning, I will absolutely not have internet access or time to do any writing.

Here's a question: i've been wondering what generation of biotic implants would Miranda have. She seems too old to be equipped with L3s, but she doesn't seem to suffer from the side effects of L2s. What do you guys think?

Would it happen to be Immortality by Ronnie James Dio?

[Ieldra]

LuxDragon wrote...
Would it happen to be Immortality by Ronnie James Dio?

Just skimmed that. Isn't the one.

[jtav]

OT, but I need a little help brainstorming for my story. I'm thinking of giving Miranda a greybox in my story. What would be the functional difference between that and drell memory, other than the ability for things to go disastrously wrong because of a malfunction?

[Ieldra]

jtav wrote...
OT, but I need a little help brainstorming for my story. I'm thinking of giving Miranda a greybox in my story. What would be the functional difference between that and drell memory, other than the ability for things to go disastrously wrong because of a malfunction?

Hmm. Let's see...

(1) The content of a grey box can't come upon you by itself, unlike drell memory.
(2) You can enter another's grey box, but not another's photographic memory.
(3) You can select what goes into a grey box (at least I suppose so: it's a gadget, you can turn it off), but not what you remember. Edit: greyboxes of either variety may exist.
(4) You can become lost in drell memory and forget it's not real. In the greybox, you always know.
(5) unclear: while a grey box is recording, can you replay other memories? Drell memory replays but should also remember the act of replaying.

That should be the most important ones. I'll add more if anything else occurs to me.

Edit (after reading fongiel's post below):
Question: can you have a grey box that's always on and records all your memories - and you don't not know it? I suppose it's possible. 

Modifié par Ieldra2, 17 septembre 2010 - 08:56 .

[fongiel24]

jtav wrote...

OT, but I need a little help brainstorming for my story. I'm thinking of giving Miranda a greybox in my story. What would be the functional difference between that and drell memory, other than the ability for things to go disastrously wrong because of a malfunction?

I imagine having a greybox implanted would be like just having a thought-activated harddrive put in your head, with your brain acting as the computer. You'd probably be very aware of the difference between it and your "real" memory. It'd probably be hooked up directly into the sensory input centres of the brain, possibly with some sort of GUI allowing the user to find and catalogue information. I think it would basically be like turning on your PC, only you'd be navigating its file system with your thoughts and you'd have full sensory immersion.

In my mind, drell eidetic memory probably works very differently from a greybox. There's no separate "harddrive", thus making it very easy to lose touch with reality - the "solipsism" Thane mentions. It'd be like remembering last New Year's, except in perfect detail. What I'm curious about is whether drell memory has more than one "mode" - the super detailed eidetic memory mode and a less detailed mode somwhat like ours that prevents them from wandering through life in a permanent dream-like trance.

Modifié par fongiel24, 17 septembre 2010 - 08:48 .

[jtav]

Remember that excerpt I promised? Here it is. Unedited and italics have been stripped out because Word and forum formatting don't mix. Apologies for length, but I wanted something that could stand reasonably well on its own.

She turned, and Miranda got her first good look at Liara T'Soni in months.

There was no mistaking it now; she was paler, her flesh a sickly teal. Her freckles stood out prominently against her skin. Her pupils seemed larger as well. Dilated. She's been taking stims, and recently. The emerald green dress she wore was modest by human standards, and downright prudish by Illium's. Everything from her throat downwards had been carefully covered up. Miranda frowned. Liara had always seemed the type to be more comfortable in her labcoat or armor than in a dress. She belonged at a dig site somewhere, poking through ruins light years away from civilization, not playing at being an information broker. It would've been easier to believe that the woman before her was a different person entirely.

Her eyes, though, were the same brilliant blue that Miranda remembered. Her fingers were still long and thin, almost delicate, though the small calluses tell of decades spent exploring and excavating. An old lust raced through Miranda, and she inhaled sharply. Liara had not changed quite enough. She was still beautiful. Miranda had hoped that time or distance would cure her of her inconvenient attraction. Obviously not. She shoved the feeling back down among all the other half-buried emotions she had no time for. Securing Liara's cooperation was critical to the success of the Lazarus Project. Now wasn't the time to fantasize about things she would never have. She nodded at Liara. "Good to see you again."

Liara simply stared at her, as if she were the one who had risen from the dead. She opened her mouth. Nothing came out. Not precisely the warm welcome that her secretary had implied that better than being thrown out on sight. Miranda tried again. "Mind if I sit down?"

The utter banality of the request was enough to galvanize Liara into speech. "I—yes, of course. She sat behind the desk, while Miranda perched on the edge of the chair opposite. She watched as Liara arranged her features into something Miranda supposed was supposed to be friendliness but looked like anxiety. "How are you?" How's Shepard? Have you brought him back? remained unspoken, but Miranda heard it all the same.

"Well enough. We've confirmed Shepard is salvageable, though there have been complications. I need your help."

That got Liara's attention. She went very still. "Are you insane?" she whispered. You can't talk about Shepard here. This is Illium. Everything we say is recorded."

Miranda smiled. "Really?" The omni-tool she normally used on covert missions was less powerful and more specialized than the one she used on Lazarus Station, no different from the ones used by thousands of techs every day in Nos Astra and therefore far less likely to attract attention than a military-grade model. Still, it would do the job. She pressed a button. "For the next ten minutes, any listening devices within two blocks are going to be assailed with so much junk data that we'll go unnoticed. Fortunately, there are about a hundred people in this building alone who would dearly love to have a conversation without anyone listening in and have the skills to pull it off. I just bought you ten minutes worth of Nos Astra's most precious commodity: privacy."

Liara blinked. "Just like that? Though I suppose you must be skilled at foiling surveillance devices in your line of work."

"Among other things." The truth was she had always been skilled at using and subverting computers, omni-tools, and similar devices. How could she not be? It was in her blood. Her father was the President and CEO of Synthetic Insights, Ltd. and he had expected his designated heir to understand the devices they made. That her studies had made her even more useful as a Cerberus operative was a delicious irony. "I'll tell you all about it later. Right now, I need your help." She leaned forward slightly, careful not to overbalance. "Shepard needs your help."

Liara picked up a datapad and glanced at it. She did not look at Miranda. "I killed people to get Shepard back. I let Feron be captured so I could get Shepard back." Her voice was soft and monotone. "I let Cerberus have him even after I knew what you would do with him. Tell me, what else do you need me to do?"

Miranda steepled her fingers and thought. There was no way to make what she was asking less enormous that it was. She doubted Liara was the sort to appreciate some pretty lie. No tricks, then. "Shepard's nervous system was in worse shape than we thought. There was significant decay of the medulla oblongata, among other areas. We're able to offload some of the functions of the brain stem into a VI but—"

Liara went even paler, if that were possible. She clutched the edge of her desk with both hands. You're turning him into some cyborg?"

Miranda felt the skin on the back of her arms prickle. Not this again. "His higher brain functions—memory, personality, and such—will still be controlled by his brain. And what would it matter if we had to upload some of those higher brain functions? He would still be Shepard. My job is to bring him back exactly as he was on the day the Normandy was destroyed. I refuse to let that mission fail because we're limiting ourselves to organic means."

Liara pushed back her chair and stood up. "Are you certain? I'm beginning to believe I was right the first time. We should have let the dead rest. I was too blinded by grief to see that. It feels unnatural somehow."

Miranda bristled. Unnatural. Freak of nature. Inhuman. Insults used by those who feared change. She'd heard them all her life and done stupid things before she'd learned that nothing she could do would ever prove a thing to those Luddite fools. The wound was old and well-healed. Mostly. "No more 'unnatural' than a greybox or biotic implant." I'm as human as anyone. Shepard will be human, too. Please, be as intelligent as I think you are. Please.

Liara turned back to the window. "I know," she whispered. "You didn't come here for my permission. What do you really want?"

Miranda stood and followed her to the window. She owed it to Liara to at least look at her when she asked. Outside, aircars zipped by. The trading floor spread out below them like a cross between a fairytale kingdom and a bazaar that sold everything from designer clothing to red sand. The late afternoon sun bathed everything in a reddish-gold glow. Asari, volus, and humans blurred together in an indistinct mass dots no bigger than her thumb. Oriana might be down there now buying her parents an anniversary gift. This was when she was fighting for. All these people—Oriana, Niket, everyone she had ever known and loved—would die if the Reapers were not defeated. Liara would die. Miranda's throat tightened. No, none of them would die. Not if she had her way.

"As I was saying, we're able to transfer some functions to VI, but it makes a simple before-and-after brain scan useless. I need an alternate comparison method." She placed a hand on Liara's shoulder, just as she had months ago when they'd first seen Shepard's corpse. Her dress was thinner than the lab coat and this time she could feel the warmth of her skin beneath the material. "I know he was your lover. I know you melded with him. You've touched his mind. That means you know him better than anyone." She took a deep breath. "And that means you're the only one who can help me. I need your memories of Shepard."

Liara's eyes widened, but she remained silent. Miranda glanced at her crono. Four minutes gone already. "I know it's a lot to ask..."

Liara laughed at that. It wasn't an ordinary laugh. It was slightly hysterical laugh of someone who was about to either burst into tears were go insane. "You want me to share these personal, private things just so Cerberus can use him for Goddess-knows-what? Even if I wanted to, the only way I could share those memories would be to pass them into your mind. Human brains aren't built to withstand that kind of stress." She turned. Miranda let her hand fall away. They were looking at each other now. She could see herself reflected in Liara's eyes. "I'd kill you, Miranda. I have too many deaths on my conscience already. I won't add yours."

I've tried to keep as close to canon as I can, though the reason for Miranda's infertility has been changed into something more obviously incurable and some details have been changed. We're never told SI is a human company, but they did develop greyboxes to combat Alzheimer's very soon after first contact, so it seems reasonable.

[fongiel24]

@jtav - There aren't very many non-Shepard pairings I would follow or even finish, but this one is shaping up very nicely. Very interesting how you set up Liara as being integral to Shepard's reconstruction - the mind meld isn't something I've ever thought of. I also like how Liara still seems a bit uneasy and ill-suited to life as an information broker - it shows that her transition from archeologist in ME1 to powerful information broker in ME2 didn't come overnight. The one thing I'm not sure about though is Synthetic Insights. Miranda's father is supposed to be very pro-human, yet in ME1 and ME2 they seem to have aliens occupying some fairly senior positions. There's also the problem of the asari in ME2 mentioning that SI is undergoing some financial problems related to suspicion of AI/VI technology (you find this out with the indentured servant quest). The final problem I have with SI is that it doesn't really seem like the huge commercial empire that I picture Miranda's father heading. I might try picking another technology company or coming up with my own.

Modifié par fongiel24, 18 septembre 2010 - 06:19 .

[VivaLaNES]

Wow.. That has got to be one of the most enjoyable excerpts I have ever read.

[Ieldra]

@jtav:
You're making me very curious about this will go on. I like the way you portray Miranda, it's very convincing. Liara, too, I can almost hear her speak. One point of criticism: the reach of the omnitool - two blocks - seems a bit much. Listening devices wouldn't have that reach either. Maybe in open air, but not through walls.

Modifié par Ieldra2, 18 septembre 2010 - 06:29 .

[Arijharn]

Strangely enough, I never thought of Miranda actually having implants on the account that she's genetically engineered. I thought she was 'al natural.'



As far as I recall, implants are to 'short cut' activate biotic abilities based on the nerve firings of their user. Presumably this means that the motions and activation patterns that trigger Throw are different from the motions and activation patterns of Warp. For arguments sake, if the motion to activate Throw would usually take 5 seconds, then the implant would force fire the nervous system after say 2 seconds because it recognises the pattern of Throw.

[LuxDragon]

Implants actually sync up the nervous system so you can channel electricity through the eezo modules properly. The reason for the motions is to train your brain to manipulate your nervous system to use the proper amount of electricity through the right eezo modules.

The implants mean the difference between levitating a tissue and levitating an krogan.

[jtav]

Thanks for the comments. I've replaced SI with an invented company and drastically narrowed the range of the omni-tool.



And Miranda has implants. She's a powerful biotic, but it would be virtually impossible to "code in" biotics because humans don't naturally have the ability.