Nope, I'm not done posting the story yet, but we HAVE finished the outline, at least.
Things that we'd have liked to do, but the story didn't leave us room for:
In "Strategos Concludes" we batted the idea of showing off more of Gio's material. His life intervened and I sometimes bull and blunder forward WAY too fast.
This left a few things off the table we'd have liked to have done, and maybe a separate story covering one or more events in the main "Novel" might still give us. In particular, Noriko Murakami's drone army, which includes some fun stuff like Drone Land-air-mechs.
Lots of them.
The problem ended up being that I was trying to keep it relatively tight, so we didn't get the chance to actually SHOW their scenes. It would've been nice. aS it is, the 'conventional' battle of Churchstone got very little direct attention, but be assured It did happen.
There WERE Stawmpy 'mech actions going on, I just didn't have any POV characters in the right place to SHOW it.
Deeper detail on how AI Johnny Morgan took down the SLS Belleau wood-this one was more or less because I kept to schedule and had already overrun my word count, while Gio's life was presenting strong dis-incentives to even trying to keep up with my output-thus, what really ought to have been an epic battle and boarding action was given a shorter shrift than it deserved.
2nd ACR's SaRi/Thazi faction didn't get the word-count I wanted for them, but again, real lives take precedence and I'm not fully comfortable with writing his characters without him right there to say "no, you got that wrong, see? this is how you do it..."
again, better was deserved, but I under-served.
I threw in 'scenarios' here and there where I couldn't quite work out in my head how something should go, or where I figured bored readers might enjoy seeing if they get the same outcome I wrote.
I'd love to get feedback on those, find out if I screwed the pooch beyond redemption or got it mostly right.
My villains: didn't get nearly enough development.
My heroes: didn't get nearly enough foils or development. Borrowed heroes got less than they deserved as well.
Clan Snow Raven: I overused Alberto Crowe and didn't even KNOW about Dierdre McKenna. He probably lived past his sell-by date in this because of that.
the Other Clans: looking back, mostly unnecessary, and I should've considered cutting them out entirely before it went to the forum, or given them more to do-this couples with the ground battles I skipped over, and would probably represent around twelve or thirteen separate stories by themselves.
Anyone who feels up to taking that on, go ahead, I THINK I gave enough detail that someone creative can extrapolate.
Now the general notes:
If it's easy, it isn't heroic. I tried to not make the mooks too...mooky, and I hope I handed out enough pain and suffering to the main characters to make their triumphs and victories feel meaningful.
I think the middle story showing Devlin Stone worked out really well-instead of my usual 'make him a tool' I actually tried to make him one of the good guys for real. NOT sure how well that worked given the reveal we gave him, BUT I at least tried to make it feel like he was on the side of the angels, and not some Megalomaniac who got lucky, nor a puppet of the Word of Blake and their Master. I found I'm not really comfortable writing the guy, even like this. It's just so EASY to make him a snidely.
On the same vein, I tried to make Daoshen not a complete douche, while still sticking to the base concept of the character. I feel less successful with that one, though it was fun to revisit the Kali Cult.
and of course, tear up my main character because that's part-and-parcel of heroes-they get ****** up.
There's been more surprises writing this for me-Amanda's growth curve, begun back in "Ridiculously Overboard", has been surprising to me. she's really changed quite a bit and I can't explain how or why except that the wounded, insane child has grown into a reasonably effective young woman, a Lifetime in ten years, I guess.
I underused Elizabeth Cameron and glossed over a lot of her actions that are key to the setting. Kinda feel bad about that one, given what I did to her, she deserved better.
Cecil Halford's ending was not in my original plan-I'd planned to have him survive, but a Heroic Death fit the character better in the end-and by 'heroic' I refer back to the rule I stated earlier; "It isn't heroic if it's easy." He was fighting for a nation he loved, if not particularly liked, supporting an ideal (however twisted in practice it became). He did not go down like a Punk, and I guess that's good enough. Others may disagree.
