TheMarshal wrote...
Xilizhra wrote...
Bleh. I've run into a rather ironic problem with my planned fanfic: Liara's ME2 romance is too well-written. There's not much for me to change, which leaves me with either rehashing the in-game events or glossing over them, even if it's AU.
Though I'm not quite ready to write about the LotSB events, I can see much of the same problem in my future. The one upside is that the dialogue was written to be generic. Some lines were meant to be delivered to both friends and romance partners, so there's some leeway there. You could also go into more detail about your Shepard and Liara's relationship, talking about specific events that were unique to them, and didn't necessarily happen in ME1.
As for events, I haven't figured out what to do there. I imagine I'd want to touch one SOME of the key points (going to the apartment, Vasir, Vasir's betrayal, etc.) but wouldn't want to simply give a play-by-play of the game. You could go with drwells' route and create your own set of events. Personally, I don't think I have the creativity for that.
I was about to suggest driving right through the guard rails and heading off into AU land. As just one example, Liara could decide that she's so broken by losing Shepard and then Feron that, rather than be consumed in a quest for vengeance, she tries to go back to a more peaceful life, such as teaching Prothean archaeology at the University of Serrice. Shepard looks her up and convinces her that she's meant to do more than that, and that she should rejoin Shepard's crew. Now you get all kinds of interesting new situations: Liara on Horizon, or on the Collector ship when Shepard learns the Collectors are Protheans, or talking to Mordin, etc.
The benefit of this is, it's the same character, but you get to ask "how would she react to X happening?" Everybody has asked a question like that about their favorite characters at some point. And I'll bet they've all answered it, too. Look at how many people ask "What if you could heal Tela Vasir instead of letting her bleed out?" It doesn't even have to be a big change. A lot of the fun is looking at how a very small decision, made differently, can lead to huge unintended consequences.
If you don't like going AU, another route is to do what
Interstitium does and look at all the things that are in-universe but that the game never has time for. How do Shepard's friends react to his/her death? What's it like working with Miranda on the Lazarus project? (Not fun.) How do Grunt and Garrus get along? (Poorly.) What about Zaeed and Kasumi? (Quite well in an 'odd couple' kind of way: they burglarize Nyxeris' house together, bickering hilariously the whole time.) How does Jacob react to Miranda getting shot up by a Praetorian on Horizon? (It's heartbreaking.)
BTW, I didn't think I had the creativity to do this either. I made it up to a first draft of Liara's first meeting with Feron (I had Chakwas with her instead of Garrus), said "this doesn't work, and this is NOT my area of expertise - I should stick to more fluffy material", and nearly just ended the story there.
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