Hi there to anyone who continues to follow this old story, and to those just finding out about it now. My name is MaximusTheMad, formerly known as gale1243. This is a formal announcement from me, and it's perhaps one of the hardest things I've ever had to write. However, it's better to formally announce it on my own terms and leave it without any doubts.
I will no longer update this story, and effective immediately I will be cancelling it. It will still be here for anyone to read, but I will no longer update. It's hard to say goodbye to a story I first started all the way back in my Sophomore year in high school, and even if I haven't updated it since about my first year of community college it still feels so hard to say goodbye.
Life really got in the way of my writing, preventing me from doing anything. Between graduating high school, graduating community college, suffering a mental breakdown, and then moving on to a 4 year college where I'm currently attempting to get a Computer Science degree while balancing a job at a local food place on campus, it's just hard to find time to write.
It doesn't help that when I look back on this story I can't help but cringe at some of the things it included, between the horrible pop culture references to the forced backstories to some overall problems I had with it.
So that's that then…or is it? To tell anyone who's reading this the truth, I don't think I'll ever revisit this version of the story, and since the series has moved on to other pastures (I've yet to play Mass Effect: Andromeda myself as I feel the need to wait for bugs and glitches to be ironed out and the inevitable DLC to come out as well) I don't really know if anyone even wants to read this type of story anymore.
But if, and I do mean if, I ever decide to come back to this idea, here's a rundown of some of the changes that I would make:
1. Make John an actual interesting character to write. One of my main issues throughout the story is that John is simply not a good character (bordering on…okay I guess meeting the criteria of a Gary Stu character). So in a possible remake of the fic, John would be a lot different to the character now. For one, he'd have no clue about how guns or future technology works. For two, that idiotic backstory I wrote for him would be gone. For three, he'd have a lot harder time adjusting to the future in general and alien life in particular. It'd be a lot more realistic for a person who has gone from a time where alien life is a myth to one where there are tons of alien species to be almost anxiety inducing for that person. Especially in his first contact scenario that would go a lot differently than what happened in this story(I already have a few ideas)
2. Stop making Lia Tali 2.0. When I first started off Tali was my favorite character in the entire series and I'd only played Mass Effect 2 at the point where I first started this story(I only owned a PS3 so I didn't get to play Mass Effect 1 till much later). Naturally, I characterized Lia's personality as what I viewed to be somewhat similar to Tali. That changes if I remake this fic. Lia is a quarian on pilgrimage who has already faced some of the levels of prejudice that comes with it. The Lia I wrote would never get into the confrontation that she did in Mass Effect 2, it wouldn't fit with the characterization(or lack-therof) that I gave her. So in a possible remake, Lia would be a little more colder to those around her, and a little more hot-tempered when she feels she is being mistreated. She'll still have a few eccentricities but she won't be the shy schoolgirl that I made her be. Instead she'll be acting more or less like a mentor figure for John since he has no idea how to survive being stranded in the future with no way to get back home. He's not the most important person in the universe anymore, not everyone is going to want to be his friend, and he's going to need a lot of help to survive.
3. Setting this during the events of Mass Effect 2 was a huge mistake, as it made rewriting the events of Mass Effect 2 more fun than writing the characters I should have been writing about. Also John becoming pals with everyone on the Normandy super quickly just makes me want to claw my eyes out with how badly I wrote first starting off. So, instead I would set the remake roughly one year after the events of Mass Effect 1. Shepard is being reconstructed, his team is broken up, Citadel is still being reconstructed but at least portions of the reconstruction are completed. This is perfect because it gives me a free playground of exploration in terms of story plotlines without worrying about following established canon too much.
4. Looking too far into the future was another mistake I made. I had a general idea for a sequel and was developing it before even finishing this story. A few ideas I had included the introduction of male asari and the dark history associated with the asari race(which was what John's flashback in the last chapter was setting up). Another was something based on an interview about Mass Effect 3's ending, in the interview Haestrom and dark matter infecting stars was brought up. I felt that this would've been a better explanation for what the Reapers did, as it would've still fit with their original programmed purpose which is the preservation of organic life. With the idea that the destruction of the galaxy is on the horizon and not knowing any way to stop it, the harvest and turning of other races into Reapers would make sense as the Reapers can survive for thousands of years in dark space. Why they would continue allowing the use of the mass relays despite the probability of them accelerating the problem would require an explanation that I would need to jump through hoops to fully come up with though so who knows. Another was Cerberus expanding their horizons in terms of who'd they work with, leading to story twists such as a betrayal by Admiral Xen(which I kept constantly expecting in the game) and the revelation that Tali's father was alive(at least for a little while longer before being killed off by Xen again_. 2 more squadmates would be added to Shepard's team, first of which being Balak as a stipulation of letting the batarians join the war effort even though his race is on the brink of extinction leading to a grudging need for cooperation between the two. The other would've been Kal'Reegar who develops a much stronger immune system due to Xen's twisted experiments. I admit this would've been hard to balance but it was just a general idea.
And that's about it. Thanks to all who have read, reviewed, followed and favorited my story and I'm sorry it has to end this way. It was a fun ride for a first story but now it's time to bring it to a close. After I get a few other projects off the ground and get resituated back at school I might bring this story back, who knows.
Goodbye and good luck from the man formerly known as gale1243 ;-(.