I really need to keep up with the conversations in here. Keep letting myself get distracted by shiny objects....
And when Saints Row IV releases in a few days, I'm expecting to be absolutely useless for at least the next week or two, and get absolutely nothing done, due to playing through it several times. I'll do my best to control myself, but I don't have a good track record for staying focused.
I did, however, manage to get two chapters of Freelancers done pretty much back-to-back.
I expected it to be just one chapter, but because of a little arc with Lia and an "escort" Dakka set her up with, I ended up with three long scenes of the two characters just walking through a park and talking, in addition to Dakka having her lung reinflated and the rest of the crew going on a rescue mission. So I had to divide that bit among three chapters (at least).
I've been having a
hell of a lot of fun with another subplot, though, which is probably why it seemed to almost write itself. Without going into spoilery detail...Dakka's just gotten out of surgery and finds out that a squad of Eclipse mercs is in C-Sec, trying to get to one of the prisoners. Dakka's armor is being kept at C-Sec, and the rest of her clothes are on her ship, which is halfway across the galaxy. If the Eclipse see her wearing a hospital gown, they'll know she's injured. So she decides, screw it, and takes it off before running to C-Sec. Upon arrival, she realizes that attempting to fight them will only get everyone killed...which leads to the bizarre sight of a naked krogan trying to reason with hostile mercs instead of attacking them.
I figure I can milk that subplot for a while. Might give me an excuse to bring Emily Wong in, since she'd naturally smell a hell of a story as soon as she hears about it.
Which brings me to a question. After I posted this chapter on FanStory, one of the readers asked about Dakka's Omni-Tool (which played a small but important role in that scene)--if she's naked, where was she keeping the Tool? This started me wondering...the Mass Effect Wiki says the Omni-Tool is a handheld device, yet I don't remember ever seeing anyone in the games holding one. Don't think I've ever seen one just sitting on a shelf or a table, either. All I've seen is the interface that appears around the user's arm, which led me to believe the Tool is actually an implanted device. That's what I've been going with the whole time, but I'm probably wrong.
So is the Omni-Tool handheld or implanted?
Oh well...my story is already going forward as if Mass Effect 3 never happened, so I suppose I can get away with any small discrepancies by saying it's an alternate universe....
Also, eighteen chapters in, I
finally remembered to throw some husks at my characters. Cerberus research base, naturally. (Aside from the Lazarus Project, did Cerberus ever do anything that
didn't blow up in their faces? Seriously...from bean to cup, Cerberus ****s up.) But on a really disturbing note...this particular base was meant only for research--looking up information, crunching numbers, that sort of thing. The researchers planned to be there for a long time, so many of them brought their families...including children. Then, apparently, a few of the researchers came across a few dozen Dragon's Teeth....
Well...on to a more upbeat topic...
Seracen wrote...
Haha, just saw this amusing piece over at deviant art, it's a random name generator for various ME races...
http://lordess-alici...rator-367877785
I found that recently, and it's been
awesome. I've used it to come up with names for several characters, including a science team studying some ancient artifacts and vid records (one of which shows how the Great Rift on Klendagon happened). I often have trouble thinking up names for characters, so something like this will be invaluable for the long haul until Freelancers finally comes to an end.
And speaking of ends...
Efvie wrote...
Seracen wrote...
Figured I'd bump the thread.
Also, I can't believe I've stalled out ONLY 2 FREAKING CHAPTERS from the end of my darn story. I suppose I could force myself to write SOMETHING, seeing as how it isn't actually writer's block. I KNOW how the story is supposed to go.
Most likely, the life drama is driving out of me the desire/mood to get writing done. Blargh...
Or it could be the very fact that you’re two chapters from the end? Letting go is hard, even when planned…
Seracen wrote...
Efvie wrote...
Or it could be the very fact that you’re two chapters from the end? Letting go is hard, even when planned…
Oh hell yes. I totally agree. Having the work live on and persist, like a world I am still living in, is certainly something that comes into play. This affects me more often in gaming and movies.
Conversely, I couldn't wait to get my ME3 Ending fic done. Of course, there were some other motivations going on over there (angst over the original ending, etc).
Writing the ending of previous works hasn't been as stressful, although I DID take a year hiatus on one of them.
I think it's just as much a fear that I won't be ABLE to properly wrap up all the various threads I created in my fic. I think this is my most ambitious work thus far, what with all the plots to wrap up from the original trilogy as well.
It just galls me to be so close, yet still so far away...
Same here. With my novels, it's not quite as hard because I know there are more novels with these characters to write, but once the overall story comes to a close...
I know it'll be hard to let go. I'm kind of thinking of keeping my novels somewhat open-ended so I'll always be able to write another
if I come up with a good idea for one. But with Freelancers, while I don't have an outline for everything, I do have the overall story plotted out in broad strokes, and have a pretty good idea of what happens along the way, but I'm fleshing out the details as I go. But once I get through the Reaper war and the story comes to a close...it'll be hard to deal with. Hard to let go. With my novels, those characters have been in my mind since 2002, and with Freelancers, the characters and story ideas started coming together in 2010--so in both cases, I've had these characters in my head for a long time. And when that goes on long enough, as you work out the details of their backgrounds and personalities and think up new experiences for them and new battles to put them through...in a way, at some point, it's almost like they become real people. You know them very well.
And once you put the period on the last sentence at the end of the final chapter and type, THE END...and you know you very likely won't ever write anything featuring them again...it's almost like saying goodbye to old friends.
In the case of Freelancers, one of the things that definitely keeps me going, is ME3's original ending...and for some of us, the EC fixed absolutely
nothing, and in fact made the whole thing
worse in many ways...there's a need to write the story of the Reaper invasion and war and do it
right. To end it in a way that makes sense and actually
fits the world of Mass Effect, and doesn't shaft all the characters and leave readers feeling like they've suddenly found themselves reading a completely different story from the one they started.
And of course, there's the worry about being able to pull it off. Like, what if I go down the wrong path and don't realize it until it's too late to fix it? Or simply, what if the whole thing just kind of fizzles out by the time I get to the end? I worry about that all the time...but the only thing I can think of to do is keep writing and see what happens.
Seracen wrote...
Oh I agree. I personally saw him as a comrade. BW did an amazing job with little time to do it in, as far as Legion was concerned.
However, in terms of a single playthrough, as a stand alone story, his character needed more time to truly shine.
Case in point, while Legion is loyal in all my games, I have yet to reach the end of his conversation line, in ANY playthrough.
I have seen the dialogues on YT of course, but I'd have loved to see Legion's reactions to earlier missions WITHOUT having to hack the darn game to do it.
Legion on Haestrom and at the Citadel are particularly hilarious.
Same here. Legion almost instantly became one of my favorite characters, and I ended up taking him and Tali almost everywhere I went. And that's also why I use the Gibbed editor to add him into each playthrough, and get Tali early as well. Something about the idea of them interacting put a huge grin on my face. We didn't have enough time with Legion in ME2, and after how things went in ME3...I have to headcanon the way Tali's relationship with Legion develops. From not trusting the geth at all, to working with them grudgingly, to gradually beginning to trust and respect them and consider them allies. I wish the situation with the quarians and geth had taken a completely different direction in ME3, but all I can do is come up with my own ideas and work them into my writing.
MrStoob wrote...
And of course, Rannoch... [smilie]http://social.bioware.com/images/forum/emoticons/crying.png[/smilie]
My FF Tali was not wholly convinced the geth were worthy of a chance, but Liara gave her the Shadow Broker info on Legion and all the 'human' stuff he was up to and she had a bit of an epiphany about what they were before even the Reaper code.
I love that idea, and wish ME3 had taken that road with these two characters.
And I should stop here, before this becomes even more tl;dr than it already is.
I've got to check in more frequently, so I can keep my replies much shorter....
Retour en haut
That way, she can just keep it on during the surgery. In fact, she was using it during surgery because they didn't use enough sedatives to knock her out, so she started playing a video game because she got bored. 
