Working on both The Disengaged and The Reengaged was an interesting experiment for me: to see if I could take all of the elements of the Mass Effect universe and use that information to create separate stories using a few of the characters but implement them in a radically different scenario. In some aspects, they succeeded. In others, they failed. Both do have their fair share of problems, I will admit, but I enjoyed writing them nonetheless.

Perhaps the bulk of the issues that stemmed from several of the situations in The Reengaged was the large gap in between the two stories. Now, had I adhered to my three story outline instead of two, then I would probably be mired in a host of new problems due to multiple issues compounding and what not. In short, I guess I was trapped either way with my outlines which meant that a little more time at the drawing board could have helped. (Shows how far pride can get you, huh?)

Goal-wise, I achieved what I set out to do with regards to the characters. I got to give them all one last mission in a way that I wanted it to be memorable (somewhat). Ten stories down in total, a whole year of writing, and I have no qualms about moving on to other prospects. I believe I've said all I wanted to say concerning Shepard and Tali, and I feel that further continuation would just be rather repetitive on my end. It's time to let others do the storytelling, because I'm done for now.

As I'm writing this, I'm also glancing at my original outline for The Reengaged, and it might be laziness talking for me, but there's not much that I can elaborate on for each individual chapter, as they didn't deviate much from my first draft of notes. As mentioned before, I had to bloat the story a bit more after I nixed the idea of a third installment that would have taken place between the two stories that I would later write. Some of these concepts worked their way into both stories and others were simply dropped, most likely resulting in a time disconnect between a few scenes that I had written. It's kind of ironic that I like to compare stories to movies and that, as an analogy, this story suffered from rather sloppy editing that left some readers confused. Perhaps I should make a note of that for the future so that I can look out for it.

Perhaps one of the reasons why I did not write the so-called "second installment" was the fact that Grevel was barely in my outline at all. Now, Grevel was the reason why I started these stories in the first place and my mind was already on this portion even before I had finished the first one. She's probably the most complex OC that I've created and I enjoyed writing her and her villainy, so that meant cruising on ahead and cutting out the second story to streamline the experience a bit more (it would have been kind of predictable, in my opinion). I liked the idea of an unstoppable bad guy that was emotionally scarred underneath, and a female to boot. People really seemed to respond warmly to that idea and I was happy for the chance to subvert audience expectations.

On the other hand, I think it's not hard to assume that the real hero of The Reengaged is, without a doubt, Tali herself. It had occurred to me that, while prominent in many of my stories, I didn't think that I gave her a significant amount of time in the spotlight when compared to Shepard. Now Shepard is the main character, so it makes sense for him to have more "screen time" but the chance for Tali to exert revenge on Grevel in a completely brutal way was tantalizing to me. That meant that I had to shunt Shepard aside and give Tali all the glory by having her do battle with the turian. Those few scenes were the highlight for me as I wanted to exhibit Tali's courage and skill against a significantly more powerful foe and have her come out victorious. We probably all know that Tali is one determined woman and that when something comes between her and her human, then all hell will break loose. Long story short: don't ever cross Tali'Zorah.

I'm blanking out on what to say at the moment so I apologize for how flimsy this last part is compared to the other notes I've made in the past. If you have any specific questions about the story, feel free to ask me (preferably in PMs, for I am terrible with replying back to reviews). My brain got frazzled when I was traveling these past few days and it severely affected my ability to write without succumbing to bouts of laziness. Perhaps it was a good thing that I finished this story up when I did.

As to when my next story in a new universe will see the light of day, I'd say somewhere in the realm of "soon." Admittedly, it's going to be in a much less popular subsection of the site than Mass Effect, but I see it as an opportunity to shine, despite the potentially lapsed feedback. Feel free to hop on over any time you want so that you can follow my interpretation about the origin of the galaxy's most notorious bounty hunter: Samus Aran. A boost in views will most likely do wonders for my occasionally inflated sense of self-worth.

I'm looking at my word counter and it says that I only need a hundred more if I'm going to hit a thousand words, so I better think of something to say quickly so that I can make this into the quadruple digits. Maybe a closing could do right about now…

So with that being said, I bid you all a fond farewell and I do hope you enjoyed reading The Reengaged, despite some of the flaws mentioned. To me, it was worth it just so that you guys could get access to one more ShepxTali story. It seems that we rarely are satiated when it comes to those two. Unfortunate, that.

Thank you all for your attention, and I hope that some of you will pay my next story a quick visit when I eventually get to it. Who knows, you might even get a kick out of it? Metroid ain't too far off from Mass Effect, in any case. I can't think of anything else to say at the moment so I'll just end with a rousing Keelah se'lai!

All the best.

-Rob Sears