My thoughts now that it is over:

This has been quite a long journey, and story. I scarcely believed that I would even complete the story, let alone write the abundance of words I have written, which in itself is mindboggling. I'm not making any promises, but I've been thinking about continuing in the post-war galaxy, it is a scenario I'd like to explore. There's also room for shorter stories both before the war, even early parts of Shepard's career for instance, and after the war. I have scattered ideas about at least one post-war story, and this story wouldn't even be close to the size of this story, it would be much, much shorter.

But this has been a long journey which began in June 2012. I am exhausted in lack of better words after having written this story, so I'm not going to promise any new stories right now.

But the galaxy has changed considerably. The political landscape has changed. How would the galaxy view the asari and salarian leadership and their actions? What happens to the once indoctrinated and still augmented Cerberus troops out there? What about the surviving indoctrinated? What about all those angered colonists that were left behind on planets ravaged by Reapers while the military forces fought elsewhere or sacrificed some planets for other territory? What will happen to the krogan? What will happen to the batarians? And the quarians? And let's not forget the Terminus pirates and mercenaries. What about the Leviathan?

There is a lot of intrigue in a post-war galaxy, and a post-war future may not be very rosy considering there is a wealth of potential for conflicts. My writing as of late is intended to push these scenarios a bit and not necessarily do fan service story telling where everyone survives and everyone are friends. There are a lot of these effects from the war that's intriguing to explore which was only hinted at in these final chapters.

Why did I write this story? Well, I missed Miranda in Mass Effect 3. Primarily I did want to expand and make new characterizations on Shepard and Miranda and develop their relationship. Those scenes were the most fun for me to write. I wanted to add more of a backstory to my Shepard even if I was limited to the third entry in the series, I imagine if I had done a trilogy, or even written stories from his life before Mass Effect, that I could have made a much more detailed and fleshed out character.

I wasn't keen on the endings of Mass Effect 3, they were rather lackluster, and I'm not saying that mine is better, I did after all go the easy route with excluding the star brat and the Crucible had only one function, but my goal was always to have Shepard survive and be with Miranda. I'm sure some reading this story take offense regarding EDI and the geth, but as I wrote in the author's notes of chapter 97 even before I used my alternate (current) version, I felt uncomfortable letting them live considering the effects the Crucible blast had on technology, yet I had written no adverse effects on AI/VI that's also technology. I felt like I was glossing over the devastating effects of the Crucible just so I could let EDI and the geth survive. My story writing muse that want things to be explained in detail just kept nagging that it didn't make any sense. I didn't want to kill them, but I had to. Not every Mass Effect fanfiction story will be a rosy fan service story.

Acknowledgements:

This story could not have been made any better without the beta reading, support and contributions from the following individuals (in alphabetical order):

EbabahCussiEnoImreh, Mastermind4892 and xXserialkillerXx.

I wish to thank these three individuals for their participation, I'm immensely grateful. Some very crafty ideas, characterization, plots and so much more was created with these three and I can't thank three of you enough and don't know how better to convey my gratitude, but you have my thanks. Individual credits in the chapters.

Finally, I want to give EbabahCussiEnoImreh a big shout out and an immense grateful thank you, he's been such a help since the summer of 2013. Thank you, friend, for sticking around.

I also want to thank those who read, followed, subscribed, favorited and reviewed my story. Thank you very much for your participation and reading this magnum opus.