| abstract
| - In the beginning, I was going to call this special "Our Brotherhood". Now, that is the name of the never-written Guva special. I came up with this special not long after I decided to get rid of the Guva special and thought, at first, that it would be wise to use the same story title for both of them. Verlate was a male character at that point, and I had very little of the plot of the story worked out. Shortly after that, I decided to make Verlate a female, as I realized there weren't enough female characters in The Forgotten. Once I did that, the story required a different name. The name itself is a rather famous meme and it didn't take me long to come up with it. I remember being very excited when I came up with it because there's a bit of cheeky humor in it mingled with the seriousness of Verlate's confinement - and of course, all of that is tied to a meme reference. So overall, I was very happy with the name of the story. I originally wrote this story after Verlate's introduction in the first version of the Fulfillment Saga. Indeed, in that version she was only in one chapter or so - her role was quite diminished. However, I had had the idea for Verlate and her backstory being told in a TF special long before her introduction in the story. I didn't actually get around to writing Forever Alone until July 21, 2011. At that time, every chapter of TF, aside from the very last chapter, was written. I wanted to write that chapter last out of all things in TF, so I decided to quickly write this special before finishing TF. It didn't take me long - I finished the first draft by July 30, 2011, meaning I finished the Forever Alone in ten days. Once that was done, I continued on with the Fulfillment Saga and soon after finished the entire first draft of TF. So Forever Alone was one of the last things completed for the first draft of TF. The plot of Forever Alone was mostly improvised, though it was somewhat based on the backstory of a Rakatan in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. I got the mind prison idea from that game, and Verlate's race looks very much like the Rakatans in general, which is my nod to that great game and its influence on my writing. Still, much of the plot, such as what is seen on the Kais' original homeworld and in the courtroom on Krakatan, was completely improvised on the spot. For the most part, this plot remains the same to this day, though some of it has been modified and updated during my final edits and my edits not long after Destructivedisk reviewed this story (to fix some of the cons he found). I remember being much happier with Forever Alone, upon its completion, than I was when I completed Outbreak: Paved In Blood. As such, this one was never re-written, although it did have plenty of small updates to it in the coming years. I specifically put in fixes to problems that Destructivedisk had with the story in his review of it in the months afterwards. I didn't actually update this story in 2012, like I did with much of the rest of TF, for I didn't think that it had any problems at the time. As such, there are only two real drafts of Forever Alone - the first draft, and the final draft. I began working on the final draft of this story the day after I completed the final edits of the Reunion Saga, on October 27, 2013. I finished with my final edits on October 31, though occasional minor edits continued in the years to come. I didn't do a tremendous amount of editing during the final edits of this story, which I find quite odd now that I think back on it, since both sagas on either side of it required massive editing during that process. The second chapter had the most changes during the final edits process, but even then, I didn't change the overall plot or anything like that. It was mostly just re-wording sentences and dialogue and whatnot. The above picture is the tagline for this special. This was one of the first taglines I came up with for the 8 TF sagas and specials, and it may have been the very first, but I don't remember and have no way to confirm that. Anyways, this was a very easy tagline for me to come up with. It's a twist on the phrase "a mind is a terrible thing to waste". The phrase speaks about the horrible torment Verlate is put through by being put in the mind prison. Her mind - what has made her who she is - is the ultimate betrayer in this regard, for had she not been sentient, she would not have been contained in that prison. It was her mind that got her to where she was, and the punishment she was given for indirectly causing the Kais to nearly die off was directly tied to her mind. A big theme in this story, as will soon become apparent, is this idea that being intelligent and being in a position of power is perhaps more of a burden than being stupid and barely sentient. At least stupid people are happy. As well, Verlate persists - she is forgotten, but lives on as a shadow of herself and her species, and it's all because of the mind prison. The themes of TF and this special are all tied to that fact. The poem at the top of the story section was added to the story very late - indeed, it was the last part of the final edits I did on this story. I added it on October 31, 2013. On November 1, 2013, I re-arranged the lines of the poem so that it would be 8 lines long instead of six (this kept the pattern of the lengths of all of the TF sagas and specials poems going). The poem itself just brings attention to the fact that much of this story was influenced by KOTOR, and it certainly would not have been written had I never played that game. Indeed, I'm not sure how I would have resolved the TB/Ledas conflict without the mind prison, so TF would be a whole lot different had I never played KOTOR long before joining this site.
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