Baha! There's actually quite a bit that got cut from that, or didn't directly make it to the story. So much to choose... but, hrm...
I wound up cutting about 2500 words that went in a completely different direction of the team banding together and "going Sun Tzu on Lupin's ass". It got extremely complicated, but Rodney basically wound up acting as a General and the team came up with several defense strategies that where randomized so Lupin couldn't figure out how to get past them, and so Rodney would have time to fix the machine. Sadly, the more I wrote in this direction, the more it became apparent that the team is practically unstoppable when they work together in that manner, and Rodney got all of the moral and mental support he would need to finish... and it would be nigh impossible to get him to snap like he did.
...and I really wanted him to snap.
And that was also about the time I became addicted to the idea of the "story scratchpad", so I felt far less guilty about cutting eight pages of snark and action if I could always go find it later.
no subject
"Wit's End"!
Baha! There's actually quite a bit that got cut from that, or didn't directly make it to the story. So much to choose... but, hrm...
I wound up cutting about 2500 words that went in a completely different direction of the team banding together and "going Sun Tzu on Lupin's ass". It got extremely complicated, but Rodney basically wound up acting as a General and the team came up with several defense strategies that where randomized so Lupin couldn't figure out how to get past them, and so Rodney would have time to fix the machine. Sadly, the more I wrote in this direction, the more it became apparent that the team is practically unstoppable when they work together in that manner, and Rodney got all of the moral and mental support he would need to finish... and it would be nigh impossible to get him to snap like he did.
...and I really wanted him to snap.
And that was also about the time I became addicted to the idea of the "story scratchpad", so I felt far less guilty about cutting eight pages of snark and action if I could always go find it later.