9962 réponses à ce sujet

[Efvie]

I should also mention, re: DA and AO3, that I’m grateful for readers wherever they find the story. It’s just that if it takes me 20 minutes or more per chapter to get it uploaded to both and it’s read by <10 people put together as opposed to 500 or however many on FFN… the cost/effort isn’t great (considering those 10 can read it on FFN too).


Edit: oh, let me try… I don’t have that much fluffy stuff that I can quote out of context, but:

"Yes, well…" Lidanya said, trailing off.

"Oh come on, Lidanya, admit it. You need me," Aethyta said in return, and just when Lidanya opened her mouth to acquiesce, grinned hugely. "…And I could help with the war, too."

Lidanya snorted indignantly but, curiously enough, Ami thought she saw just a bit of softness in the captain's expression when she spoke. "Fine. But you are stationed on the Ascension. We will assign you some commando units."

Modifié par Efvie, 25 août 2013 - 12:43 .

[MrStoob]

Efvie wrote...

MrStoob wrote...

On a general writing note, it's been a bit of an eye opener on 'how not to write fiction' for me, revising and updating stuff before posting onto AO3. Really, the work I have uploaded to FF.net could be viewed as drafts. Normally, a writer will do their drafts, then re-write X times, then once happy, publish. Whereas with the ease of access with the internet, the temptation is just to upload after stage one for feedback on how it's going or whatever (and general impatience). But yea, I'm much happier with the work this time around. Seems odd to have two version floating about though, and as I said above, things might be a bit different in the current re-write, which hopefully won't confuse things too much.

Dunno if others have this 'problem' too.

I don’t really see it as  a big problem, given two conditions:

1. It’s above the bar even as a first draft. You will always—always—find something to revise later on. Being able to publish early shouldn’t be an excuse to publish crap, not fix typos or grammar, etc.

2. You don’t change events.

1.  While I do find the occasional typo or grammatical error (don't we all!), generally the quality on first publish is okay.

2.  Hmmm.  I'd thought this was the chance to do just that.  I suppose that's what I mean about 'drafts', the plots/events as much as the writing itself.  As an 'on the fly' kind of writer, there's all kinds of tweaks I'd like to make that I've thought of in hindsight to make if flow better.  As I said above, there is one particular OC I'd like to not kill off.  It wouldn't particularly change the dynamics of the Normandy and co, but it would certainly make that part of the story not just end for no good reason as it did in my stupidity at the time.  Broad outline: bigoted childhood 'nemesis' of Shep from Mindoir, who ends up in Cerberus but kills himself when he fails TIM and is faced with being indoctrinated.  Meh, see?  I'd rather he just buggered off from Cerberus instead to consider his lot and appeared later, either enlightened and Shep having to accept it or maybe him seeking revenge on her for messing up his life.  Either would be better lol.

Oh, and I'm also taking some of my relevant oneshots to include in the revised version.  They should have been there in the first place really but I wasn't writing linearly at the time.

Modifié par MrStoob, 25 août 2013 - 08:12 .

[Efvie]

MrStoob wrote...
 As an 'on the fly' kind of writer,

I am too, definitely…

there's all kinds of tweaks I'd like to make that I've thought of in hindsight to make if flow better.  As I said above, there is one particular OC I'd like to not kill off.  It wouldn't particularly change the dynamics of the Normandy and co, but it would certainly make that part of the story not just end for no good reason as it did in my stupidity at the time.  Broad outline: bigoted childhood 'nemesis' of Shep from Mindoir, who ends up in Cerberus but kills himself when he fails TIM and is faced with being indoctrinated.  Meh, see?  I'd rather he just buggered off from Cerberus instead to consider his lot and appeared later, either enlightened and Shep having to accept it or maybe him seeking revenge on her for messing up his life.  Either would be better lol.

Why meh? Things happen, it’s life!

Concrit: to me, it seems there’s significant risk of just falling to cliché with either of those two options. How many times have you seen one or the other? The grateful affected, the vendetta… it seems like you might have done it just fine the first time. The story part, anyway:

Perhaps the sense of failure with this character has more to do with the execution than the actual story point? You may and probably have tried that approach already.

I’m personally not a fan of the ‘everything and everyone in a story must serve the story’ doctrine (if I’m an adherent, it’s by accident). I also love defusing or skipping dramatic tension, because that, too, happens in life. I (like to think I) know my characters well enough to know how they’ll react to events—and how events themselves unfold—that I can get it right just on that basis. They do what they do.

And that said, I’ll repeat that these are just my personal views… I may well be a very insignificant minority, and others have no qualms at all with reading such a revised version.

[MrStoob]

It was probably more in the build up. Throughout my trilogy, every now and again, his name would pop up, suggesting but never outright saying that he was in with Cerberus pretty much from day one. Liara even stops herself from looking when she sees a thread to him in the SB banks because she doesn't want to become a voyeur. Then, once the Reaper war was in full flow, he came out more as a key military advisor for TIM's new army (he was former Alliance military too, hence being part of the 'black ops' group that became Cerberus), I had Miranda aware of him, citing him as one of the reasons people are right to be worried about Cerberus, one of his drives being the attack on Mindoir. He'd vote Terra Firma, to put it mildly.

But anyway, with all that you'd think I'd do more than, "got ass kicked, TIM threatens recall to be conditioned, kills self".

[fluffywalrus]

Efvie wrote...

Why meh? Things happen, it’s life!

Concrit: to me, it seems there’s significant risk of just falling to cliché with either of those two options. How many times have you seen one or the other? The grateful affected, the vendetta… it seems like you might have done it just fine the first time. The story part, anyway:

Perhaps the sense of failure with this character has more to do with the execution than the actual story point? You may and probably have tried that approach already.

I’m personally not a fan of the ‘everything and everyone in a story must serve the story’ doctrine (if I’m an adherent, it’s by accident). I also love defusing or skipping dramatic tension, because that, too, happens in life. I (like to think I) know my characters well enough to know how they’ll react to events—and how events themselves unfold—that I can get it right just on that basis. They do what they do.

And that said, I’ll repeat that these are just my personal views… I may well be a very insignificant minority, and others have no qualms at all with reading such a revised version.

Haha, I inadvertetly ****** off some of the people in my pen and paper RP group by creating a big living town for them to operate within that's filled with all sorts of junk and dead ends. Thankfully, I'm good at improv, because they always chase dead ends and meaningless stuff, so I usually try to give some some opportunities to chase real stuff along the way
It's just good to not have everything link up, otherwise it's a small world situation, and on a settign with a galactic scale, that simply doesn't make a lot of sense. It wouldn't keep me from suspending disbelief but it's not something I particularly enjoy.
And it's also good to skip past conversations that readers might assume would happen, or simply skipping tension, because you're right, it could happen depending on how the character would react to a situation. The only important part is for every main arc, event, or conversation to have a point. So long as that's adhered to, it's all good in my books.

In terms of revising a story...I'm of the mind that if someone publishes something, they should own that and commit to it, at least on a narrative level. Fix grammar and spelling, along with formatting if need be, but events? IMO keep it minor. I'm not going to look back a few chapters to see what was changed, and if that makes the story unreadable going forward, I'll very likely stop reading. It's one of the things I'm pretty inflexible about. I see so many authors bullied by readers who lash out at them over some event in one of their chapters that they re-write it, and that's just bull. Tell your story, tell it well, and if you think up something later, work it into the story somehow, but don't rewrite it. Or, well, go ahead, but as a reader, I won't care. If it's a change while a story is being written (on-going), I'll stop if what I read doesn't line up well with new chapters andimportant ongoing content, and if I'm re-reading and there's important new content, I'll probably stop reading, because I don't have the energy to read a moderately modified version of a story I already know anymore (I've tried before, it's tiresome and frustrating...I can endure only very minor edits). I mean, I love my prequel fic, but if I had the heart to, I'd revise it by another 6 or 7 additional chapters of into and character development, but I can't do it. I wrote it, and was too impatient to cover things I wanted to, and it made for a weaker story. So next time, I wrote a better one. But some people like revising their stories, and some readers don't mind re-reading stories to learn the author's new vision. I'm just not a member of either group

I mean, I just don't really get it, but that's just me. I've had people PM me about how X character should have done this or that, and at times I've agreed with them and thought "Huh...I messed up there." And if it was a major mix-up, I worked a fix into my next chapter. If it was minor, I just moved on. If it revolved around the quality of how I wrote a character, I'd spend extra time getting to know the character better so it wouldn't happen before I wrote more of the story. Some of my stories got hundreds of views within the initial time day or two, and I'm not about to change the story under the noses of my readers. I'm not going to force them to re-read a chapter to catch-up or anything because I missed something or made a mistake. Hell, I'm dealing with that exact situation right now with my major ME fic, where I forgot an entire plot line that I was supposed to introduce between Ch25 and Ch 32. if I want to do an ME2 arc, I need that stuff in my story, and I'm dealing with the problem of working it in now. But I'm not going to re-write the last 10 chapters to fix my mistake and have my readers endure that. Lots of people read on their lunch breaks, or on their sparse periods of free time, and I feel that making someone re-read something for it to make sense or to adhere to some revision you added is kind of disrespectful. Just release the chapter when you're happy with it, and move onto the next one. And if you screw stuff up, make it right later on.

At least, that's my take. Like Efvie said, I may be in a tiny minority, and I'm certainly not representative.

Modifié par fluffywalrus, 26 août 2013 - 05:47 .

[Fatiguesdualism]

AustereLemur799 wrote...

I'm leaving the BSN for good shortly, but anyone who wants an invite to AO3; just let me know.

*snip*

Sorry to hear you're leaving, hope I didn't miss you. I feel strangely like there should be...cake?

Anyway if either yourself or MrStoob could furnish me with an invite to AO3, I would be grateful. (Please note grateful does not equate into cake, sorry!)

As for editing the events of your story, I really want to be with FluffyWalrus & Efvie on this one - but. But the start of (my) Stuck in the Middle just grates at me, the 'potted recap' of my version of the Arrival DLC is kind-of important (to me, character-wise) and I think it needs to be mentioned - but I (still) feel it's out of place. I think it would be better as a separate 'prologue' chapter (ideally a complete separate story - but hey, future project. If I ever get SitM finished ) rather than it's current location right at the start of chapter one. If it wasn't for that Charlie-Foxtrot then I would be on board with the 'Publish and be Damned' ethos!

Finally a quick question about Aria T'Loak - I've a question about how long has she ruled Omega. Just how long has she ruled Omega? Only I've a couple of sentences I kind of like, but I'm not sure if others would find them plausible. Anyway the first is:

Aria T’Loak, the ruler of Omega –an asari crime boss that had seized the largest pirate haven in the Terminus Systems and then ruthlessly ruled it for longer than the Systems Alliance had been present on the Citadel– and currently the last asari Shepard wanted to see.

Then later when putting down Shepard:

...there is no-one better than me. Not in this room, or on this station, or in the entire Terminus. I have ruled here since before your species ever left its planet.

Modifié par Fatiguesdualism, 26 août 2013 - 04:46 .

[MrStoob]

Fatiguesdualism wrote...

Finally a quick question about Aria T'Loak - I've a question about how long has she ruled Omega. Just how long has she ruled Omega? Only I've a couple of sentences I kind of like, but I'm not sure if others would find them plausible. 

I can't recall exactly, but I'm sure it's mentioned that the fight with Patriarch took place around a century before.  I'd have to re-check properly.

EDIT:
Reviewed the Aria and Patriarch footage.
When quzzing Aria about her life before Omega, she only says to Shep, "You're reaching back centuries."
Patriarch only states that, "A few centuries ago, Omega was my rock."
That's all I can find so far.

On a completely different point...

Dunno if you've seen the 'name that butt' thread.  Been amusing.  Anyway, I had to load up ME1 to check which a particular character was and blow me, after around seven years now, ME1 actually runs properly smooth with my new GTX 660 2GB lol.  Even in the Presidium Tower!  Place of notorious frame rate droppage with the high res ini tweaks coz of the trees.  Pleased me anyway.  Almost started a new campaign.  Almost.

Modifié par MrStoob, 26 août 2013 - 07:16 .

[Seracen]

Hah, now if only they had an ENB Graphics Mod for ME1...oh man...

[Efvie]

Fatiguesdualism wrote...

Finally a quick question about Aria T'Loak - I've a question about how long has she ruled Omega.

A few centuries isn’t out of the question; while I haven’t elaborated on it, I personally marked it at least as long as her daughters have been alive—daughter, if you go strictly by canon. I figured she would have waited for her plan to come to fruition before that.



(I’ll insert my favorite peeve here, which is that Aria doesn’t actually have millennia of experience, which limits the timeline somewhat, even aside from boredom of ruling the place for centuries and centuries… per codex, asari live up to a thousand

[MrStoob]

Efvie wrote...

(I’ll insert my favorite peeve here, which is that Aria doesn’t actually have millennia of experience, which limits the timeline somewhat, even aside from boredom of ruling the place for centuries and centuries… per codex, asari live up to a thousand

Isn't there some similar quote from Samara?  That she has a millennia to suffer her lot, when in reality, she's near the end of her lot.

Modifié par MrStoob, 26 août 2013 - 10:34 .

[MrStoob]

Seracen wrote...

Hah, now if only they had an ENB Graphics Mod for ME1...oh man...

Indeedly.  Been upping my ENB shenanegans in Skyrim since getting the new card:

[Fatiguesdualism]

So on the Aria question, does a couple of centuries (couple meaning two here) sound plausible? That would mean she's been running Omega since about 1985? (2185-200) Which would be after the moon-landings - but before the discovery of the Prothean ruins on Mars. I think that might emphasise/explain the point that the Pirate Queen of Omega isn't overly impressed by Shepard or Cerberus.

Idle musing. Just how long does an asari have to work before qualifying for a pension?   Or a bus pass?

Modifié par Fatiguesdualism, 26 août 2013 - 10:43 .

[MrStoob]

And just how many telegrams from the queen has she had?

[Seracen]

MrStoob wrote...

Efvie wrote...

(I’ll insert my favorite peeve here, which is that Aria doesn’t actually have millennia of experience, which limits the timeline somewhat, even aside from boredom of ruling the place for centuries and centuries… per codex, asari live up to a thousand

Isn't there some similar quote from Samara?  That she has a millennia to suffer her lot, when in reality, she's near the end of her lot.

She actually said "centuries to live with that [choice]."  However, I think the practical use of the long lives as a writer's tool ebbs and flows as needed.

I DO like Liara's idea that Humanity accomplishes its ambitions (as if someone lit a fire under them) DUE to the shorter lifespans.

********

Fatiguesdualism wrote...

So on the Aria question, does a couple of centuries (couple meaning two here) sound plausible? That would mean she's been running Omega since about 1985? (2185-200) Which would be after the moon-landings - but before the discovery of the Prothean ruins on Mars. I think that might emphasise/explain the point that the Pirate Queen of Omega isn't overly impressed by Shepard or Cerberus.

Idle musing. Just how long does an asari have to work before qualifying for a pension?   Or a bus pass? 

Hah, I remember us having a similar question about legal drinking ages, etc.  Although I must say, what does this mean for the inherent value of someone's life?

Life imprisonment would be different for an asari, for example.  However, would the deaths of all those Eclipse merc from ME2 be more sorely felt for the CENTURIES they wouldn't live, or would it lessen the punch BECAUSE they'd already lived a few centures?

I posit that it's all relative, therefore a century for an asari is as good as a year for a human.

**************

MrStoob wrote...

Seracen wrote...

Hah, now if only they had an ENB Graphics Mod for ME1...oh man...

Indeedly.  Been upping my ENB shenanegans in Skyrim since getting the new card:

Nice!  I finally got the full performance out of my new card with Metro: Last Light.  I ended up frying my power supply, as it wasn't strong enough for my card.

An easy enough fix.  Suddenly, Skyrim runs a lot smoother on ENB settings as well!

Off topic, but what's your fave ENB?  I dislike a lot of them b/c of the blurring effect while moving, or the shadows under certain circumstances which darken too much of the screen (esp at night).

I know it's supposed to be more real, but the Witcher 2 did nighttime just fine without blinding me!

Modifié par Seracen, 28 août 2013 - 02:51 .

[Efvie]

Seracen wrote...

I DO like Liara's idea that Humanity accomplishes its ambitions (as if someone lit a fire under them) DUE to the shorter lifespans.

I thought it sounded like Stockholm Syndrome for the writers… trying to come up with something good about premature death

Off topic, but what's your fave ENB?  I dislike a lot of them b/c of the blurring effect while moving, or the shadows under certain circumstances which darken too much of the screen (esp at night).

I know it's supposed to be more real, but the Witcher 2 did nighttime just fine without blinding me!

Well, the Witcher 2 renders the night itself, so it can exactly control all the parameters. ENB is a post processor and its dynamism is somewhat limited so that it can’t properly reduce its highlighting at night, for example… I guess some are trying to make them more game specific to help with that, but most of the “different ENBs” are just different configuration settings for the same shader logic.

I tried Skyrim again a bit ago, and there’s a new postprocessor called SweetFX that does some things better than the ENBs, and needs a bit less processing power too. That combined with the various realistic lighting fixes yields a better overall result than any of the ENBs I tried.

[MrStoob]

Sorry chaps for us being somewhat off-topic here.

I've used all and sundry ENB settings, that vid I think used a mix of RealVision and Wintertide. Still looking for a good balance of natural colour/light, sensible DOF, and less OTT eye adjusting.  I think the main thing with Boris' ENB is the shadow correction, getting rid of striping, softening the outline of a shadow, and making the shadows cast correctly; that makes a huge difference on the quality of an image.  Here's some (IMHO) nice stuff I've accumulated recently, some of a questionable saucy nature... but nothing adult rated.

http://steamcommunit...26/screenshots/

Modifié par MrStoob, 28 août 2013 - 09:27 .

[Drussius]

Efvie wrote...

Seracen wrote...

I DO like Liara's idea that Humanity accomplishes its ambitions (as if someone lit a fire under them) DUE to the shorter lifespans.

I thought it sounded like Stockholm Syndrome for the writers… trying to come up with something good about premature death

Actually, I used this same thing many times in fantasy stories when dealing with elves or self-created races with extremely long lifespans. Because we have such a limited lifespan, humans are very driven creatures. And desire is very much a part of our lives. We all want things, and we typically want them now. That's human nature, and we tend to ascribe it to every race in literature, but I don't think that's actually very realistic. A much longer-lived race would, I think, be much more patient and less driven to accomplish things now that could be done better with added time.

If you think about it, suppose you were going to live a thousand years... or a hundred thousand. There would be absolutely no reason to rush into anything. Unless it was a matter of life or death. Why hurry and try to finish something in one day when you can spend a year on it and make sure everything is perfect? Why spend four years studying for a profession when you could spend forty and become a real expert? I just think once you have so much longer to live, time is less of a concern.

A race I created for my original fantasy setting lives for tens of thousands of years, and I wrote them as having practically no concern for time. They will spend hours enjoying a single meal or conversation, days sleeping after days awake, weeks completing the simplest of projects, or decades perfecting a single work of art. They have no comprehension of "urgency". Even in emergencies, they fall back on plans carefully prepared as contingencies way in advance. But they don't respond well when forced to improvise on the fly because they just aren't forced to live moment to moment. They are a race of patient, careful planners and detail-oriented artisans.

Modifié par Drussius, 28 août 2013 - 01:44 .

[Efvie]

Drussius wrote...

Efvie wrote...

Seracen wrote...

I DO like Liara's idea that Humanity accomplishes its ambitions (as if someone lit a fire under them) DUE to the shorter lifespans.

I thought it sounded like Stockholm Syndrome for the writers… trying to come up with something good about premature death

Actually, I used this same thing many times in fantasy stories when dealing with elves or self-created races with extremely long lifespans. Because we have such a limited lifespan, humans are very driven creatures.

[snip good points]

That’s all well and good if you could choose your approach to life, but that’s not what it’s really about in my opinion. It’s more to do with biology. If humans suddenly started living for a thousand years, it would take a long time for the possibly desirable—and that’s debateable—trait of very long-term planning to become dominant (i.e., for humans to evolve into such beings). Especially given that one of the first consequences or manifestations of such a trait would likely be delaying offspring, which would further delay the propagation thereof.

Without being able to predict the actual effect of such traits, it’s equally reasonable to posit a very long-lived species that is very impulsive, or a very short-lived species that is very deliberate and slow.

So, I don’t think it’s entirely sufficient to say that humans are driven because of short lifespan. You could argue that the trait of acting quickly is prominent because it has been an evolutionary advantage given the short life span, but I think the connotation is quite different when it’s elaborated.

ETA: just to be clear, I think what you have described is perfectly plausible; perhaps even likely. It is not, however, self-evidently or unavoidably so.

Modifié par Efvie, 28 août 2013 - 02:42 .

[Drussius]

^ No, I agree. It's not the only way it could work out. I was just saying that I don't think that Liara's statement about humanity's advantage of being so driven because of a limited lifespan was just a way to turn a short lifespan into a positive on behalf of the writers. There is actually some logic to it. That was really the only point I was making.

[MeredithvL]

Well, I've been busy with a few things I had to do in real life and I still have three pages of this thread to check, I'm sure I'll have things to say or reply to the discussions you people where having.

For now, just a quick question: should you include more characters in a story for diversity, or keep a cast with a low number of characters so you can focus more time with each?

This is my problem: in my fanfic, post ME3, the Normandy is back again traveling, this time searching resources for Earth's rebuilding efforts. The thing is, she rescued a stranded batarian officer, who is quite a honorable guy and a good soldier. Should I have this batarian request to join the Normandy's crew permanently, or should I lose the character once Shepard safely deposits him on Earth? I already have Garrus, Tali, Grunt, Javik, one of the sisters of Ashley (Sarah) and a quarian OC on the Normandy, as squad, plus EDI because my story is IT and the starchild lied about the death of synthetics with the destroy option.

[MrStoob]

Drussius wrote...If you think about it, suppose you were going to live a thousand years... or a hundred thousand. There would be absolutely no reason to rush into anything. Unless it was a matter of life or death. Why hurry and try to finish something in one day when you can spend a year on it and make sure everything is perfect? Why spend four years studying for a profession when you could spend forty and become a real expert? I just think once you have so much longer to live, time is less of a concern.

Regardless of longevity, people are going to want/need food now, sanitation now, medical care now, and mistakes will be made along the way.  Necessity is the mother of invention and all that.  By all means, study should continue, and great minds able to process a problem over the span of centuries rather than decades would/should prove fruitful, but while people want 'stuff', people will strive to provide it even if imperfect.

[Seracen]

MeredithvL wrote...

Well, I've been busy with a few things I had to do in real life and I still have three pages of this thread to check, I'm sure I'll have things to say or reply to the discussions you people where having.

For now, just a quick question: should you include more characters in a story for diversity, or keep a cast with a low number of characters so you can focus more time with each?

This is my problem: in my fanfic, post ME3, the Normandy is back again traveling, this time searching resources for Earth's rebuilding efforts. The thing is, she rescued a stranded batarian officer, who is quite a honorable guy and a good soldier. Should I have this batarian request to join the Normandy's crew permanently, or should I lose the character once Shepard safely deposits him on Earth? I already have Garrus, Tali, Grunt, Javik, one of the sisters of Ashley (Sarah) and a quarian OC on the Normandy, as squad, plus EDI because my story is IT and the starchild lied about the death of synthetics with the destroy option.

I'm of the opinion that if you have something for them to do, go ahead.

The only reason I cut back on a few characters was that it was getting too crowded.  However, I totally added characters that added to the plot, or had some fom of arc.  As long as these characters weren't wasted, I didn't mind adding them to the roster.

Conversely, there are still characters around who are pretty much window dressing.  However, as these people have been established in the games already, I don't have to worry about them fading into the background.  They simply serve the purpose of fleshing out the crew.

So, in the end, it's up to you.  Do you have anything to do with the character after the fact, or does he exist for one scene before fading into obscurity?

Also, there's also the fun debate.  If you enjoy it, do it, so long as it doesn't throw a wrench in the rest of your flow.

[Drussius]

MrStoob wrote...

Drussius wrote...

If you think about it, suppose you were going to live a thousand years... or a hundred thousand. There would be absolutely no reason to rush into anything. Unless it was a matter of life or death. Why hurry and try to finish something in one day when you can spend a year on it and make sure everything is perfect? Why spend four years studying for a profession when you could spend forty and become a real expert? I just think once you have so much longer to live, time is less of a concern.

Regardless of longevity, people are going to want/need food now, sanitation now, medical care now, and mistakes will be made along the way.  Necessity is the mother of invention and all that.  By all means, study should continue, and great minds able to process a problem over the span of centuries rather than decades would/should prove fruitful, but while people want 'stuff', people will strive to provide it even if imperfect.

I have to disagree. I mean, yes, people need food, sanitation, and medical care, but even I will put off food until it's convenient to prepare/eat it, and if I had all the time in the world to do things, I'd definitely be more willing to take the time to cook and enjoy better meals than the simple and efficient crap I cook now just because I don't have the extra hour to really prep something great.

I just think that this is a symptom of what I was talking about. We, as humans, want everything now. Humans don't like to wait. It's in our nature to acquire things, and the faster the better. And so most authors seem to put that same mindset into every other race as well. But a race with significantly greater longevity I think would be more willing to wait and put in more time and effort to providing themselves with higher quality/more pleasing end results. It would be less about speed and more about end result.

And medical care I think falls under the "matter of life or death" exception.

But of course, you can't take my comments about the possible mindset too literally. That's just argumentativeness for the sake of being contrary. I'm just talking about a general mindset. It can't apply to every situation. Because whether we're talking about a human or something that lives a hundred thousand years, getting out of a burning building, for example, is probably going to fall under the umbrella of "to be done immediately and with haste".

[Seracen]

I might add the case of the salarians to this debate. They seem to be savant in comparison to humans due to a shortened lifespan, one could say.

However, I never got the sense that they were any more morbid due to the shortened lifespan.

[MrStoob]

Hmm, mortality is mortality. Whether living to three score and ten, or fifty thousand, fear of death is the same and makes all things more immediate.