January Story Reward

Okay! Sorry again that this is late, folks. It took me a couple hours longer than I wanted, even today, since I had to stop and fix a major bug with the Chastity Quest Release that I put out yesterday. At 6,400 words it's actually a touch shorter than I'd hoped as well. Though, surprisingly, that has nothing to do with the delay. Rather than that, it was actually a case of needing to pause and sort out a few future details. As you'll see, this is where things really start going off the rails from cannon, and I need to work through a few details for how that's going to change things. I already know what I want to do, mind you, I just need to figure out how best to do it without it seeming forced at any point.

Anyway, the story is in an attached PDF as usual. It's a combined file, against as usual, and also as usual you can read just the new stuff by searching 'End of Part 1,' if you want to. Now...I'm going to make a couple more comments after a big old SPOILER label, but I'd encourage you to read the new part FIRST, then come back to read the extra comments only if you want to. 

Oh yes, and it should be obvious to anyone that bothered checking the relevant poll, but FemShep won by a landslide :-p, so Femshep is here to stay! I wasn't too shocked by that, as it seems every single time I have lesbian anything offered in a poll, that option wins O.O. Admittedly, lesbians are hot, but the sheer consistency of that result, since the very earliest days of Eros Academy, always leaves me a little surprised....


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Okay, if you're still here, I'm going to assume you've already read the new part, or else don't care for stuff being spoiled beforehand. I just wanted to do the whole author's note thing that a lot of fanfictions do....whatttt it seems fun?

So, yes, MAJOR changes from the original timeline have now been introduced. Sovereign was badly damaged, Saren never got to use this particular beacon, and LIARA is the one that got mind-whammied by the Prothean artifact. Not to mention that Nihlus is alive and able to confirm Saren's presence. I've been planning all of this right along, but I figured I'd do a little reassuring as well as cool pontificating.

Aethyta, awesome as she is, won't be staying with the Normandy. She's basically running the Eden's Dawn company and will be busy making bank off how well the defense grid did against a dreadnaught of unprecedented size and strength. And, of course, making politic capital out of that that she can spin to farther prepare the galaxy for war.

Oriana WILL be staying with the Normandy crew. I figure that's obvious, but I'll say it anyway.

The thing that stopped me from writing more, that I mentioned earlier, was Nihlus. His survival is going to mess with things more than literally every other single change I've made thus far, for various reasons. I know what I want to do regarding that but I need to sort out how best to do it...

Lastly, I'm kinda curious how everyone liked the bit with Jenkins? I'm still feeling my way through Oriana's personality. Writing for an existing character, even one with little shaping in cannon is weird for me. And then there's the side-effects of her working with Aethyta for so long...and the odd side effects from her time travel. I'm still iffy on if those were a good idea or not. I felt she might need the extra oompf and they also help push the sexy time angle that I assume people want to see if they're voting for an adult content creator to make it, but they're also a bit of a mary sue risk....