14 Nov 2013

Lethal Ladies #14 - Commentary

As always, please read the chapter first.

The first scene refers back to the bit of fanservice in Chapter 12.  Amber isn't taking what happened well. Allison probably should have asked first. Amber's freak out allowed me to add many a word. Padding is perfectly acceptable during NaNoWriMo.  There's also another bit of time passing, the PDA, or Personal Data Assistant. They were all the rage up until RIM merged a PDA with a cell phone to create the Blackberry.

Amber's descent into Hell continues the next day. The amount of coffee that she has enjoyed has let her discover many a flavour. Instant coffee is not one of those flavours. As for what was on Allison's laptop, that would be her Thursday nights. I left it to the reader to fill in the blanks there. Rose's agency does, indeed, have a substance abuse policy, as many businesses do. No one ever thinks about the one person who is addicted to caffeine like Amber.

Sexton isn't up on his computer use. Most people by now do know about their browser's history cache and how to clean it. Word processors, spreadsheets, the entire office suite plus a few programs no one expects also have a history of sorts, remembering the last few previously opened files. Handy for many. Secure, not so much. Especially if default file names are used; Word uses the first sentence as a file name, unless changed.

Allison did find the info about the Halifax-class ships online. At the time, a few of the vessels of the fleet had homepages accessable through the Canadian Forces home page. The HMCS Ottawa has since moved to a Facebook page. Another element of the Shadowrun origins of the story came out; the tail-chaser job is common enough in game play. The idea is that the unnamed employer sends a team out for find evidence that was previously planted in the hope that the discovery will make the planted evidence believed as true. Usually at that point in a shadowrun, the unnamed employer decides that the PCs know too much and need to be killed. Guns and magic blaze and the players escape yet again. Not so much for the Ladies, but Rose is now taking steps to turn the tide.

The Sarajevo mission would have made a decent flashback, showing the mess Rose and Elena found themselves in. It didn't occur to me at the time. The end, though, is Rose coming up with a plan on the fly. She's thought enough about it, but, in a story, if you detail the plan ahead of time, it never works.

Next time, Rose calls out Sexton and Elena goes shopping.
Saturday, over at MuseHack, the November round up of adaptational news.
Coming soon, more NaNo updates as I keep on keeping on.

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