First, I want to apologize to the people who saw this and opened it and went, "This isn't a chapter! Intezil,
you bastard!"

THIS IS NOT A HIATUS OR AN ABANDONMENT.

If you stick around, there will be some bonus features at the end of the...briefing, including some sneak peeks of scenes
I haven't posted yet.

I figured I should get off my butt and let the people who've taken the time to read this story know what's going on and why I haven't updated in so long. Actually I should have done that like two months ago, but here we are.

It's a number of factors. It's certainly not that I'm out of ideas. I've got a whole file of future chapters and notes.

1. Other interests, games, other tv shows I've been watching lately and getting into their fandoms have sapped away some of my time.

2. I'm very dissatisfied with some of the chapters of Flesh and Gears, especially the early ones. To the extent that I'm thinking of re-writing them. This dissatisfaction mightily dampers my enthusiasm to continue writing the story as it is.

3. I contacted another author about using an idea that was very similar to theirs, but never received a reply, either positive or negative, which means I can't proceed on that front until I decide what to do about that; continue waiting, contact them again, forget that idea, or say 'screw it, my idea's different enough'.

4. I'm deeply regretting the structure I chose for the story. You know that feeling when you're trying to make a line in a poem rhyme, and the resulting line is so empty of anything except that it rhymes that it's outright painful to you as a writer? That's how I feel about some of the 'connective tissue' of Flesh and Gears. A lot of the vignettes are fine I think, and only require some polishing, but the mechanical bits that connect vignette A to vignette B to vignette C, in a linear narrative are bad, and do nothing for me. Lines of poetry that rhyme and only rhyme.

I'm considering redoing the story as a series of hypertime vignettes, instead of a straight narrative. This would also give me the advantage of being able to post them in not necessarily a straight order (that is, I could post a scene that I have planned out now, then go back later and fill in a scene that narratively happened before that but that I haven't written yet).

I'd like to hear reader thoughts on this subject (notably points 2, 3, and 5). A reader response to point 1 should probably just be something along the lines of 'quit playing Bravely Default and get back to work!'

Now, I thought I'd post some of my author notes and such that I'd considered posting once or twice before, but never really got around to. This seems as good a time as any to give the audience some insight into the story and its construction.

I'm not really a big fan of detailed author's notes, since I kind of see it as a failure of the author, if whatever needed to be said isn't actually said in the work itself. But that being that, there are a number of metatextual ideas that I thought I'd take the time to go into.

First, I'm a big believer in Chekhov's guns. If I have a character say or do something, then it's relevant, and it's almost certainly going to be expanded upon at some future point, however innocuous it might seem at the time.

One thing I want to get out of the way, because if anyone has problems or complaints with the story, I think they come, directly or indirectly, from one overall issue; I call it the 'Princess Cameron' concept. I'm not being derogatory there, despite how it might sound. There are a lot of good, great stories that are written within that concept. Troll99's Wintertale is a fantastic story, that's a pretty firm member of that sub-genre. TheWizardOfOsbourne's Override Fate, is another one that I really enjoyed. I'm certainly not criticizing those kinds of stories. It's just that Flesh and Gears is not one of them.

What I mean by that is, that a lot of people write John/Cameron as Prince Charming and Cinderella.

I...just don't write that way. My inspirations are more like The dude from Return of the Living Dead part 3/The Zombie girlfriend from Return of the Living Dead part 3 who keeps trying to eat people.

I'm not making fun of lighter stories. I'm really not. If it seems I am, then it's just the way I am.

I'm certainly not going to claim my way is more realistic or grittier or whatever. It's just a difference in tone, and I'm sure some people won't know exactly what to do with that, and that's okay.

I mean, I started this by describing it as 'light-hearted'...and then I had Chapter 12. Apparently I'm just a very dark person.

I really don't have much control over the story. The pieces come to me as fully realized dialogue chunks, and all I can do is find the best way to fit them together. That...thing about Sarah in Chapter 12- you know what I'm talking about- actually came to me when I was thinking about something that had nothing to do with Riley at all, and it wasn't an idea, so much as it was a realization that once I'd pieced it together, essentially became a canon fact to me. Even if Sarah hadn't told Riley about it, it still would have been something that 'happened'. *Points at what I said before about Chekhov's guns* About three or four (or six) chapters from now, I think, we'll be coming back to that very sad story.

The character of Cameron; in an earlier note, I described her as 'a ruthless sociopath'. Some people probably took that as a figure of speech. Nope. I meant it literally. She is, if a human psychological term is entirely valid to her, a completely amoral sociopath who has no practical concern for others (except for John), and will do absolutely anything to accomplish her goals. A lot of people have trouble writing her like that, so they try to humanize her or have her spontaneously develop feelings that she never displayed in canon; if I had a nickel for every fic where Cameron had a case of the guilts for killing Allison Young, I'd be...like...several dollars richer, at least. Again, I'm not criticizing the way other people write the character- I'm just a smart-ass who has trouble using a phrase as innocent as 'happy birthday' without putting at least a little sarcasm in it.

Anyway, I'm...just not going to write her that way. Honestly, I have more trouble writing the admittedly more likeable and more human Cameron than I do the coldly self-centered machine one. Not sure what that says about me, really.

I hate the word deconstruction, and I hate literary analysis, because I think it kills something about what makes a story enjoyable, but there is definitely something deconstructionist in the way I write/think. If, as you're reading Flesh and Gears, you ever think to yourself, 'Wow. Cameron's not actually very likeable as a person (unless you're John)' then maybe I've partially succeeded.

Also, if you ever think either 'wow, Cameron's kind of a creepy stalker' or 'John has only the vaguest Something He Saw On TV idea of how to relate to people'...again, mission accomplished.

Note this comes from someone who's a strong supporter of the John/Cameron relationship; I just think that to really get it, you need to move beyond thinking of Cameron as a human being with human morality and feelings.

Contrary to popular belief, sociopaths are capable of love...of a kind. But it's a shallow, selfish love. Again, I know a lot of readers won't know what to do with the implications of that idea. It's not a comfortable idea, I know. Is someone who's idea of love is selfish and shallow themself worthy of being loved? I don't have a good answer to that. John's answer, in the story, is yes. Sarah's answer is maybe. Cameron's answer is yes, because it benefits her.

Commentary on specific chapters;

1. Connection
Connection is where this story started ('Well, yeah, it's chapter 1' 'Shut up'), in that, as I said, scenes appear to me as fully formed chunks of dialogue, and this was the first one I got; the scene where John wakes up and finds Cameron creepily laying next to him watching him sleep.

2. Decision
Decision remains the shortest chapter, as I really had...nothing for it. Metatextually speaking, it is a completely empty chapter that needs to exist in order to link part A to part B, but serves no function outside the narrative. I really don't like this chapter, and if I ever go back and do a 'special edition' of this story, it's probably the first thing I'll try and change.

3. Understanding
There's some navel-gazing in this chapter about my own views about the mechanical nature of thought and consciousness, as well as the first bit of my harping on the 'sociopath' issue, with this pair of paragraphs;

'Cameron hadn't considered things from that point of view. She had assumed that her feelings for John meant that he was hers and Riley was encroaching on her territory. The idea that Riley was being hurt as well hadn't occurred to her.

On the other hand, Cameron still didn't like Riley, and found that she didn't actually care if Riley had been hurt. After all, she'd contemplated hurting Riley herself in more direct ways numerous times. But she hadn't acted on that impulse because it would have hurt John. Cameron came to the conclusion that John hurting Riley had itself hurt John, and for John's sake she was willing to do whatever John thought necessary to settle his relationship with Riley, so long as she retained possession of John and his love.'

Cameron lacks the slightest twinge of empathy, and regards Riley as an obstacle, not a person.

4. Discussion
Looking back on this chapter, I sometimes think that I made Sarah too gushy and sentimental.

5. Inquisition
For some reason, I think this is my favorite chapter.
It's also the beginning of a running gag, in which Cameron uses a word, someone is surprised at her saying it, and so Cameron assumes the person doesn't know what the word means and goes to explain it. It...it's something that happens a lot in my notes for coming chapters.

6. Tragedy
As some of you may notice, I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about exactly how time travel works in this story and how it influences things (I have some plans for another unrelated story that requires even more convoluted juggling of time travel), including keeping a running count in my head of who comes from which timeline and where and when (i.e., Derek, Cameron, Jesse, Riley, Catherine Weaver, Kyle, Uncle Bob) and how those interact with each other. My current working model is that Future John who sent Cameron (and Derek) back is either John Connor from Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (because if I could use time travel to wipe that movie from existence, I'd do it) or John Connor from Terminator: Salvation (the two John Connors who are married to Kate Brewster), but can't be both, for reasons neither here nor there. I lean more towards the latter.
There's a glaring plot-hole in the last episode of T:SSC, Born to Run, that led me to a lot of this thinking; there's no particular reason that 'our' Cameron could or should know the passphrase "Will you join us?" Why? Because we know that Jesse and Cameron can't come from the same future, and Jesse's future is the only place where we've heard that phrase used. And if you've worked this out far enough to say, 'Well, maybe it's a pure time loop, and Future John had a Cameron when he was a teenager too, and John Connor's always had a Cameron', nope, doesn't work. Cameron can't be a time loop like Kyle Reese is for one simple reason- if the 'previous' John Connor had jumped forward eight years with Cameron, then Cameron couldn't know that Sarah would have died of cancer in 2005. Which may lead you to wonder, if lil Kyle Reese dies and can't grow up to go back in time and father John Connor, does present John just fade away, or does the fact that a Kyle Reese has already arrived in this timeline and fathered John prevent that? Since Derek was able to kill Andy Goode, and still remembers Billy Wisher, we can assume that it doesn't work that way. Also, exactly how many Catherine Weavers are running around, anyway?
Hmmm, I'm going to be very surprised if everyone understands what I've just typed and how it interlocks.

7. Manipulation
I'm gonna 'fess up to something. There's a certain amount of what TvTropes calls 'Take That' in this chapter directed at other 'ships, especially Cameron/Not!John ships. I don't comprehend them, and I don't think they're mechanically feasible. For Cameron's part, I don't actually believe that it's psychologically possible for her to really care about someone other than John, without rewriting her character to the point that she simply becomes another character with the same name. Too much of who Cameron is is interwoven with and defined by her relationship to John. Or to put it another way, here's the intrinsic problem with Cameron/Not!John ships;

Derek: "I wuv you Cameron."
Cameron: "I wuv you Derek."
Sarah: "Hey, did you hear that Derek has, through no fault of his own, became a danger to John?"
Derek: "Wait. What?"
Cameron: "On it." *Stabby stabby stabby*
Derek: "Blarg. I am dead."

I don't think that's fixable without rewriting character relationships from the ground up. That's to say nothing of the issues Derek or Sarah would have about Cameron or machines in general; I think either one of them would see it as a betrayal of Kyle. *Shrugs* I'm not the Mayor of Fanfiction, and it's not up to me what people should write, but that's my take on that, and honestly, part of why I won't read those fics.

This is also why I explicitly spelled out that Cameron can't get pregnant, because that would require getting into the issue of 'is it possible for Cameron to actually care about a child?'

8. Guilty
Everyone hates chapter 8. I know.
I'm not sure how many readers are aware of this, but despite her popular perception as a feminine hero, both James Cameron and Linda Hamilton regard Sarah Connor as a dangerously unstable and abusive psychopath. One thing I liked about TSCC was that it explored the idea that John is deeply emotionally damaged by the life he's had to live. One of the most charged scenes in the series, in my opinion, is the very uncomfortable 'no one is ever safe' rant in the first episode, where Sarah looks like she's about a millimeter from hitting John. Add to this Cameron, who, whatever else you may say about her, is a manipulator.
In the argument between John and Sarah in chapter 8, Cameron comes to discover that she can use completely honest words, technically keeping her promise to John not to lie to him anymore, while still lying through her teeth. Despite her acting contrite about her lack of morality, it's not an inability to understand morality that's Cameron's problem- she understands the concept perfectly fine. She simply has no use for morals and doesn't desire any.
I understand why people don't like Chapter 8, as it is the darker side of each character on display.

Never forget that Cameron is not a good person. She is, technically speaking, an evil person who is fanatically devoted to serving a good person. Her sense of right and wrong doesn't really stray beyond 'Right is what protects, helps, or pleases John, and wrong is what threatens, hinders, or angers him.' There are going to be times when John is going to have to face the awesome responsibility that he isn't only her boyfriend- he's her boyfriend, the only friend she's actually capable of caring about, her commander, and her master, and her god. And believe me he is not ready for that.

I hope that won't turn some people off about the story. Don't worry I'm not going to have Cameron start cynically manipulating John's feelings, or murdering kindergarteners because it somehow helps him indirectly. I'm just waxing philosophical about the nature of morality and motivation. But she totally would waste a kindergarten class if it came to it. :)

Further, I'm well aware that Cameron often becomes...prop-ish because of her taciturn nature, especially when dealing with interactions between two other characters, with other characters getting significantly more dialogue than her, and often more significant dialogue as well. I just haven't yet found an ideal solution beyond forcing additional dialogue down her throat, and jumping occasionally to her point of view.

9. Confrontation
Something bugs me about Chapter 9. Sarah's joke about 'Marry her. Marry her now'. It's something that she would never actually say. But I thought it was funny in context, so I went with it. I am such a hypocrite.

10. Relationship
This entire chapter is one long brick joke set-up for the screen saver joke at the end. It does nothing else.

11. Orders
Another metatextual moment; you may be wondering why Sarah's so adamant about keeping Cameron's hands off Riley, given that Sarah had no problem beating that guy in episode 3, and she's not exactly known for her restraint in general; the key is about what she's arguing against. She's not protecting Riley, and if it comes to it, she's perfectly willing to beat it out of Riley herself. But she's not letting Cameron do it, because she's protecting John. If Cameron tortures Riley, Sarah knows John will assume all the blame for it. While it's true John will blame himself either way, the fact remains that Sarah can act independently in a way Cameron can't.

12. Five
I know some people might think that Jesse fell for Cameron's trick too easy. I disagree. I think she fell for it exactly easily enough.
I find that Jesse is a character whose level of capability has been greatly exaggerated by the fandom. She was a soldier and a submarine...something or other, not a spy master, and her plan, as near as I can figure, was
1. Find an easily manipulated blonde with large secondary sexual characteristics
2. Time travel
3. ?
4. Profit!

I understand why the temptation to do that is so strong, because Jesse is usually cast as an outright villain, in most fics, and
it makes the heroes look ineffectual if the villains aren't competent. Just so we're all aware of that process, you know?

The only reason her plan (if you can even call it that) worked as well as it did was because she had the blind luck to strike right as John was primed both to rebel against Sarah, and to reject Cameron, because of the events of Samson and Delilah, and, much as I hate to say it, because of the sheer incompetence of the heroes (it's called a background check, Cameron. Use that time when you're not sleeping to find out that Riley's never attended school anywhere, has no vaccination record, has no record with child protective services- how the hell did Jesse get her into foster care, anyway?- etc. The fact that she let John go off alone with Riley, repeatedly, without doing enough research on her to realize how fishy her history was is nothing short of insane. Maybe Cromartie had a point about her making mistakes).

13. High
Something that might seem like bad writing on my part, but is actually an intentional choice; Cameron's 'mood-swings' for lack of a better word. Cameron's emotions don't flow naturally from one to another. Instead, one mood abruptly ends and the next begins. We saw this in chapter 11, when her patience ran out and the result was instant fury, without a gradual escalation from annoyance to anger to rage. Here she switches from objective discussion to romantic without any particular reason between the two. It makes her a bit of an emotional hot potato that John's going to have to learn to read.

14. Robots
One thing I'm aware of that this chapter represents perhaps more than any other, is my tendency, as a writer, to abuse turns of phrase; once I have the idea of a character saying something funny or clever or poignant (e.g., "one right-sized box away from reenacting the ending of the movie Seven with Riley's head"), I just can't resist putting in all of them. This is why so many of the things I write tend to be very, very heavy on dialogue (well, that and I have little to no idea how to write an action scene, so I tend to avoid them). I know I have a problem!

15. Waiting
See? She's a creeper! It's also not an accident that John doesn't quite realize how creepy she is, at least not as much as the audience. Think about that.

16. Shame
'Hey everybody! Look how awkward and poorly developed John's sense of humor and social skills are!', he said while abandoning all concept of subtlety.

And now, have some funny, context-less bits from future chapters...you know...to prove that I'm totally not lying about the whole 'still having ideas' thing.

"It's not good to know too much about your own future," Sarah said.
The former FBI agent considered for that, "As a man of faith I can understand that. As an investigator it's difficult to reconcile that viewpoint to practical concerns."
"In Cameron's timeline, I was shacked up with some guy named Rossbach right now."
Ellison couldn't help chuckling at the strangeness of listening to Sarah Connor's alternate reality love life. "Not your type?" he asked with light amusement.
"I just can't believe I married a spook." At Ellison's off look, Sarah groaned in annoyance, "Rossbach was a CIA agent," she clarified."
"Oh," he laughed embarrassed, "that kind of spook."
She grumbled, "I may be a terrorist and an escaped mental patient, but I'm not a racist."

"I'm not afraid of your mother."
At John's sideways glance, Weaver clarified, "I'm not inordinately afraid of your mother."

"Thank...you," Cameron put an unusual amount of stress on the word 'thank', before muttering, just loud enough for everyone to hear her, "...and the horse you rode in on."
"'Ay!" Jesse objected, "I'm the horse she rode in on!"

"That's Plan A, Plan B is a shallow grave in the desert"

"Remember the time she spent two days investigating how anyone could have us under surveillance?"
"At the time, I was not aware Santa Claus was a fictional entity," Cameron pouted.

"I don't like you, and I don't think I ever will, and I don't trust you. I can't trust you."
"I know," Cameron stopped her, "I don't like you either."

"I'm not talking about Jesse. Do you know why Derek hates me?" Cameron asked.
Sarah didn't understand what Cameron's point was, "Because you're a machine."
"Yes," Cameron agreed, "Derek hates machines. But that's not why he hates me." With that, Cameron turned around and walked off, apparently done with the conversation, leaving a confused Sarah with more questions.

"Your mom's got a mean right."
John looked doubtfully at Derek's face, "I don't see a mark on you."
"Didn't say she hit me in the face. I think there was a subtext involved."
"Oh," John grimaced as he realized what Derek meant, "Ow. Sorry. You okay?"
"Yeah, I've had worse. Getting shot was pretty painful. This is a close second though. I'm just going to sit here awhile."

"John's mother told people we were brother and sister. We were horny teenagers and she wanted to prevent us from fucking."
John sputtered, "'F-fucking'?"
"It is a slang term for sexual intercourse," she explained helpfully.

Sure enough, she was waving at him. "Huh. My girlfriend thinks she's hilarious. Also, she seems to be thirty feet tall now," John deadpanned. The soldier next to him snickered, "does she have a sister?"