#lwls

Petra Shepard and Liara T'Soni portraits for Like Water, Like Stone Book II, Beneath Our Darkened Skies.

Somewhere in Earth's Cascadia, in a future that would never exist, Eris pressed paint-dipped hands against her bedroom walls in an expression of pure childhood creativity. After a week, a whole garden of handprints bloomed cheerily, stems and leaves and all. Neither of her parents expressly forbade it; everyone's hands were stained with paint.

I wish I were better at promoting, but at this point I think SAtS is just inherently unmarketable. How do you promote literary fanfic that's not supposed to be easy reading? How do you advertise a story that's a deliberately uncomfortable, disorienting, immersive deep-dive into trauma? How do you make a textual and metatextual analysis of Liara's tragic character arc accessible to those who are unwilling to see her canon behavior as unhinged (and her writing as misogynistic)? How can I speak freely about how much I love maximalist prose when so many have told me this type of writing doesn't belong in fandom?

I'd like to believe that all the effort I put into this work shows. From the bottom of my cold dead heart, I think what I did to bridge the gaps in Liara's canon writing is goddamn slick. SAtS says exactly what I wanted it to say.

It's been brought to my attention that there's an error in SAtS caused by my not having played the ending of ME3 since 2018: Cortez canonically gets left behind on Earth. He seems to be the only named NPC who does.

I completely fucking forgot.

I'm torn about how to remedy this for my canon-compliant narrative. On the surface I could just replace mentions of him with someone suitable on a case-by-case basis---since I made an executive decision that only female characters are important in my works, this should be easy to do. SAtS does not pass the reverse Bechdel test.

But removing his limited screentime won't be so simple: I have to address his absence. This wouldn't be as much of a problem if I'd had the foresight to, idk, talk about other Normandy casualties (keeping in mind that SAtS is from the perspective of a Liara who only cares about maintaining her little mind palace, so I never intended objectivity. Also, in the scene where the post-crash-landing debrief does happen, Liara is zoning tf out).

And not only do I have to rewrite for continuity, but Normandy no longer has a shuttle, since Cortez gets shot down in it. Unfortunately I use the shuttle for some sideplot stuff that I could scratch...maybe...then rework---but again, we're getting into major revision territory since my style heavily favors immersion. And I worked hard on my immersive shuttle scenes.

I am, to put it mildly, pissed off at myself.

If it were solely up to me, it'd be rewrite time. No question. I find it personally important to own up to my mistakes, no matter how minor; take accountability; and actively do better. I'm not particularly concerned about my own comfort or happiness when my kudos count is so low; Tears of the Kingdom can wait. But god does making odd!SAtS Cortezless sound like drudgery.

So, readers, I'm asking you: would you prefer that our shuttle pilot stay (he does not get shot down by Harby), or should I edit for canon-compliance?

𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗺𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘀 ✦ 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗽𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝟭𝟵/𝟮𝟱 ✦ 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗯𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴

In the aftermath of the Reaper War, the Normandy and her crew find themselves stranded on an uncharted world, uncertain about the fate of the rest of the galaxy they've left behind… including Shepard. For Liara T'Soni, leaving Petra Shepard behind means being burdened with a grief she thought she'd never have to endure again, when the future is so full of unknowns and the only comfort she can find, for now, is in the memories of her bondmate.