An Exercise in Self-Critique 3

This is the third post in the series where I critique the beginnings of my own stories, written long ago, and try to make them better. Here are the first and second posts. Today I’ll look at one of my favorite flawed creations, The Candidate.

A New Mass Effect Fic: Let’s Keep Going

Inspired by this lovely artwork by Gladius, I wrote a short AU story about Saren and Nihlus as old men. Here it is. Hope you’ll enjoy!

Teardrop

CONTENT WARNING

This story includes explicit depictions of sex between two male characters. It is intended for adult audiences only.

Previously: The Candidate

Garrus was getting restless. Frustrated, even. He had gone through another long, completely useless transcript from a staff meeting of Saren’s Virmire science team. They had salvaged only scraps of the vast amounts of data stored in the building-sized servers in the base: as much as they could take on their omni-tools and what Tali managed to upload directly to the Normandy. Mostly it was rubbish, but someone had to go through it and make sure there weren’t any gems of usable intel among the piles of files regarding various mundane details of running such a massive operation.

A New Mass Effect Fic: Teardrop

In which Garrus makes a disturbing and embarrassing discovery while sifting through data recovered from Saren’s base on Virmire.

Teardrop is actually anything but new. It’s one of my oldest Saren/Nihlus stories, written shortly after The Candidate and initially posted on Mass Effect Kink Meme in reply to some long forgotten prompt. It’s also one of my not-so-many Saren/Nihlus stories that feature an explicit sex scene between them. Heed the content warning.

I gave it a well-deserved revamp now, with changes both to overall tone (to make it a little less emo) and specific character actions (to clarify the nature of the power exchange). While I wouldn’t call it an outright rewrite (probably less than 1/4 of all the words has changed), this is a new and, hopefully, improved version. Enjoy!

Read the story here or on AO3!

Mood: Teardrop by Massive Attack

Image: “Unity”, by a dear friend who gifted me this unfinished work of art a long time ago.

Fanart (!) for Ghost in the Machine, and Announcement

My friend Gladius created this phenomenal illustration for the Virmire chapters of Ghost in the Machine. The joy of seeing an offscreen moment such as this, that would otherwise exist only as a vague idea in my imagination, would be hard to overstate. Perhaps more importantly, this is hugely motivating and invigorating as a token of interest. I am honored and deeply grateful.