Yes, this mission was very difficult to hold together in many ways. I have never had so many people with so many issues going on. We had to try and work around so many LOA needs at one point that we technically should have taken a break of some kind, but I don't like doing that. When there are some writers that like doing some creative stuff, I don't like putting them on hold. We then found ourselves trying to bounce between who was around for a while and then having to change it up.

I'm sorry that you felt you had to come and hunt down some action, but we welcomed your interaction. This was originally going to be more of a mild mission with some strange happenings, but then we had to justify the many changes in direction. I finally thought of a way to integrate all of the parts into a bigger picture.

We had our CNS in and out during the mission and now he is going to be placed inactive by his request. We will NPC his character as needed to make a transition, but he is gone. Our CMO is back, yet we have had only minor posting from him, more off than on, but we are hoping he is going to get back into the groove. The CTO has been on and off as well. Her record has been very solid for a long time, so I am forgiving there, but the timing could not have been worse. Just about everyone, for what ever reason, was barely making posting requirements, if they were even making them (some weeks we had terrible records). Even the XO has had some rough patches with her health and the posting reports are lacking like never before. We lost our CSO that was writing his way into the position. I even suffered from some very busy real life issues and found it difficult during a few weeks to keep pace with what I wanted to get on the threads.

This mission, though not the hardest for writing, has been the toughest to get through since I began writing on the ship. I confess that there are likely a few things I could have done to jump start it and get it going again, but you'll have to forgive me this time around.

The ship was seriously damaged in the attack (no shields). The pilots and their interactions have faded into the background now, but there was stuff to play with there. The BOP that hit us was only one of the ships we spotted, but they figure into what happens next. We go directly from one mission into the next. I am simply allowing people to catch their breath before I hit them with the next wave of stuff. The delays in posting made me slow down the pace a bit from my normal feverish pace.

As for scripting, I do set up specific events and characteristics for the mission, but what people do decides how much to learn or how things can be changed. I try to limit the concrete things in a mission. The stuff with our killer was hard to follow as I deliberately wrote it hard and fast. If you wanted to keep up, you had to be willing to dive in head first and do some risky posting. It was also meant to reflect that he was not just a punk with a knife, but a real nightmare and was skilled. In reality, encountering a killer that is that cunning and methodical, almost the perfect killer, is a VERY rare thing. In real life, we tend to encounter only a couple in the world every few decades. Profiling was a hobby of mine for a while and to this day I hang onto some of what I learned. For example, the Unabomber was extremely intelligent, a certifiable genius, but was done in by a the human factor. I recall reading his manifesto and was actually very impressed by it, even if he was a bit crazy.

I try real hard to imagine what I am writing and keeping it in terms that could be put on TV. I insinuate a great deal and say things that you would have to not get entirely on camera. People loosing their lunch from the sight of the gore or the smell is one way I play with that. Keeping the facts unspoken about what happened to Lisa leaves the mind to wander, even though I have deliberately written it that it can be allowed to go in either direction. Alfred Hitchcock was famous for making people scream and twitch in their seats for what he didn't show them. Vincent Price was great for getting the guys to feel uneasy with some of the simple things like walking into a cobweb. It is what you make the reader imagine that makes it strong stuff more often than not. Case in point, Lisa was never seen naked in this mission, but knwoing that the guy had changed her clothing meant that he had her naked "off camera" at some point, but we have nothign more to go on. There was blood on her uniform and the only real injury was a busted lip, the rest was left unsaid and is meant to be unknown with her good friend not even letting Lisa know the details.

One thing I had set up, but we didn't have to use was the energy things being used to cure the CMO. He came up with his own reasoning, but we could have used them to cure him. I left that open and ran with his reaction. I loved the CAG jumping into the shuttle and going ballistic out the door with it. A couple of times the CTO zigged when I had intended him to zag, but we rolled with it. I can roll with it and improvise like crazy and love it when people get creative and try to get involved with the plot. I just hope I don't have to spin things nearly so much in the future, handing off plot segments to different people the way we did with this one.

OK, this post turned out to be far longer than I had intended. I will close here and leave it at that.

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XO LtCmdr Samantha Waters
Lone Wolf
lonewolfdagaz@hotmail.com