Assorted notes for the AU novel-length work Serenity: Dreaming a Brave New ’Verse,from the Star Wars series work in progress You Became to Me.

Standard Disclaimer:
Act 1, Scene 1:

The stage is dark. Cue spotlight to the center of the stage. Cue the Operative (a generically handsome and therefore nondescript dark-skinned man wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a pale steel-blue velvet suit that looks as if it were almost a uniform, but for its lack of insignia) to walk to the center of the stage.

“Ahem. The author would like you to note that George Lucas and Joss Whedon own all rights to the majority of these characters.”

Cue River Tam, dressed in a green fairy costume, giggling most provocatively as she swings by on a trapeze, performing several acrobatic flips as she launches herself into space, to eventually be effortlessly caught by Asajj Ventress, dressed in full battle regalia and riding on a chandelier, à la Errol Flynn.

Cue Anvil Drop while the attention of the Operative is otherwise occupied.

“AHHHHHHH!!!!!”

Cue spotlight on Malcolm “Mal” Reynolds, Zoë Alleyne Washburne, Hoban “Wash” Washburne, Jayne Cobb, Kaywinnit Lee “Kaylee” Frye, Simon Tam, Inara Serra, and Shepherd Derrial Book, arms slung casually around each other’s waists and/or across each other’s shoulders and/or tucked through the crooks of each other’s arms, all blinking rather innocently and studiously standing so that the hems of Inara’s elaborate skirts are draped mostly over a rather large knife with a sharp serrated edge, while River and Asajj (both now laughing heartily) salute them with a stolen sword and a lightsaber and soar off together into the darkness, the empty trapeze swinging back out above the anvil and the rather smashed-in stage (above the even more broken form of the Operative) and thumping quite squarely into an obviously flabbergasted and horrified Alliance noble and politician, knocking him sideways and rumpling his richly tailored suit badly and apparently angering him enough to make him charge off after them blindly, waving his arms about wildly, rather like a windmill trying to invite a jousting match.

STORY NOTES:

*Title: Serenity: Dreaming a Brave New ’Verse (*working title only, though it may become the permanent title by default, since I can’t think of anything better, as I am terrible at titles).

Pairing: This work revolves around several couples and strong relationships, though it is far less about any specific romantic pairing than about the ties of friendship and family (and friends who have become as a family). A great deal of this story will focus on or revolve around the following bonds: the ties between Malcolm Reynolds and the crew and passengers (and former passengers) of his ship; the ties between the Tam siblings and the other crew members/passengers/former passengers of Serenity; the familial ties binding Simon and River Tam together; and the strengthening of such bonds by the appearance of Asajj Ventress in the lives of those aboard Serenity. Though romantic love, as such, will be largely incidental to this story, there will be some romantic partnering of characters referred to, alluded to, and/or essentially accomplished before either the end of either this story or else during the course of this work in progress AU series, some of which have been drawn directly from or extrapolated from the Firefly/Serenity ’verse – as with Zoë/Wash and Simon/Kaylee – though others are primarily based on my attempts to logically expand on the material of Firefly/Serenity ’verse (given certain patterns that often crop up in Joss Whedon’s other work [Buffy, Angel, Dollhouse, etc.]) and of the SW ’verse, as planned for or already touched on in other parts of my AU series (as with Mal/River, Obi-Wan/Anakin and Asajj Ventress’ fascination with Obi-Wan Kenobi, etc.). Since most of the pairings will be drawn from the Firefly/Serenity ’verse and from the SW ’verse (as interpreted by my AU series), most of them are going to be het; however, it is, quite frankly, my opinion that readers who are put off by the notion of same-sex or cross-species pairings should mostly likely not read this story (or some of the SW EU material, for that matter!) or the series that this story is set in, are they are likely to eventually find their, ahem, “delicate sensibilities” offended by certain less heteronormative and speciesistic elements of the GFFA. Readers should consider themselves warned, please, and refrain from complaining about any non-het or cross-species pairings or elements in the story and/or series!

Rating: Uhm, probably a borderline R (?), though I suppose that’s debatable . . .

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the lovely characters from either the Star Wars ’verse or the Firefly/Serenity ’verse (or, for that matter – for those who’re in the know and paying attention – the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica/Caprica ’verse), more’s the pity! What I do have is an extremely contrary muse that refuses to shut up and leave me alone . . .

Summary: It is said that there is nothing the Force is not willing to forgive, for those who truly seek redemption and are willing to try to balance the scales. For Asajj Ventress – former Dark Jedi apprentice to a Sith’s apprentice (and member of the Lost Twenty), the sickness in her soul healed by the touch of a beloved enemy, the darkness in her eyes lifted by his ineffable light, given a second chance not only at life but at a life of meaning, a life lived well – redemption lies not only in the Force but in the forgiveness and acceptance of Obi-Wan Kenobi, and she is more than willing to fight to the death for the chance to prove herself worthy of such forgiveness and acceptance. In pursuit of this goal, she has turned her back on former allies out not only for her blood but her very spirit, on the chaos and destruction of the Clone Wars, and sought beyond the bounds of the Galactic Republic for a cause she can embrace, a chance she can take, a feat of courage and selflessness capable of allowing her to return to Obi-Wan with her hands open in offering and her eyes lifted in hope, rather than lowered in shame. And perhaps, just perhaps, if she can find the strength and the courage and the wisdom to fulfill the will of the Force and help the humans who populate the area of space controlled/claimed by the Alliance (or Union of Allied Planets), she will be able to reach her goal . . . if she can manage to win enough of the trust of Captain Malcolm “Mal” Reynolds, of the Firefly-class transport ship Serenity, to let her help him and the family of his crew and passengers survive the threat posed by the Alliance and the ruthlessly, devoutly obedient Operative sent after them, protect the life and freedom of one River Tam, and uncover and reveal to the greater galaxy both the secret behind the existence of the cannibalistic savages known as the Reavers and the truth behind the experiments conducted on innocents such as River, in an attempt to fashion weapons capable of sustaining the power of a ruling body that, for over a hundred years, has been keeping secrets far darker and even more potentially explosive than those surrounding the creation of the Reavers, secrets capable of rocking the whole of the galaxy to its foundations, and more . . .

AUTHOR’S NOTES:

1). For those who are confused about if and how this story fits in with the AU SW ’verse of my series You Became to Me, well, the short answer is that it runs concurrently with most of the last book of the Thwarting the Revenge of the Sith trilogy. This story was originally conceived of half as a one-shot AU fix-it sort of a thing, in response to the author’s discontent with certain events of Serenity (or The Big Damn Movie, as fans often refer to it), and half as an introduction to the concept that, logically, not only could the greater galaxy of the GFFA (outside of the bounds of the old Republic and other political bodies introduced in the EU, such as the Chiss Ascendancy) contain the area of space claimed by the Alliance of Joss Whedon’s Firefly/Serenity ’verse, but that the Earth-That-Was referred to in the Firefly/Serenity ’verse could be the same planet as the second Earth of the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica series, the eventual home for the allied human and human-seeming Cylon survivors of the Caprica/Battlestar Galactica ’verse . . . and that the same thing responsible for originally bringing humans to those parts of the GFFA that would be claimed by or known to the Republic (in all of its many incarnations) in the SW ’verse (especially the EU) might also be responsible for the arrival of humans in that corner of the galaxy that would be claimed by the Alliance.

In the process of mentally planning/mapping the story out, though, it quickly became obvious that there’s far more story here than could possibly be contained in a single novel-length work – especially a novel-length work meant for NaNo – so there are aspects of this concept combining/linking three seemingly distinct sci-fi ’verses into one much larger ’verse that will not be addressed until later works in this AU series, especially when it comes to linking the history of Earth-That-Was (and, thus, the Alliance, or Union of Allied Planets) and the history of the allied survivors of the Caprica/Battlestar Galactica ’verse and to explaining/elaborating on what the presence of the literal space of the Alliance within the greater GFFA has to do with the presence of humans in the GFFA in the first place.

2). For the record, I do not consider this (or any other story set within my AU series of You Became to Me [or any other SW AU series I have written in, for that matter!]) to be a crossover. I am not randomly plucking up characters from one ’verse and plunking them down in the literal space of another ’verse. I am combining the spaces and histories of ’verses that, at first glance, seem to be distinctly separate, which is a far different thing, especially given the fact that the authors/creators of the ’verses in question have supplied within each of the ’verses in question certain tangible details that support the notion that, somehow, these seemingly disparate ’verses are indeed meant to be thought of as a part of one much larger ’verse.

See, the 03-K64 Firefly-class mid-bulk transport with standard radion accelerator core can be found in three seemingly quite distinctly different ’verses – Joss Whedon’s Firefly/Serenity; the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica series (and, thus, the ’verse of Caprica/Battlestar Galactica); and Star Wars (in the EU) – as noted/referenced/documented in the following places: http:// en. wiki pedia. org/wiki/Serenity_%28Firefly_vessel%29 and http:// star wars. wikia. com/wiki/Firefly-class_mid-bulk_transport and http:// en .battle starw iki. org/wiki/References_in_the_Re-imagined_Series and .org/wiki/Miniseries,_Analysis and http:// en .battle starw iki. org/wiki/Miniseries,_Analysis and .org/wiki/Fleet_(RDM and http:// en .battle starwiki. org/wiki/Fleet_(RDM)www .fire flywiki) and, for the ship herself in Joss Whedon’s creations, on .org/Firefly/HomePage and, for the ship herself in Joss Whedon’s ’verse, on http:// www .fire flyw iki. org/Firefly/HomePage and, more specifically, on .org/Firefly/Serenity and http:// fire fly. wikia.c om/wiki/Main_Page as well as, more specifically, on http:// www .fire flyw iki. org/Firefly/Serenity I know that most people will probably think I’m over-reacting to that and write it all off as just another instance of insider jokes or a series creator making a nod to a source of inspiration, but the way I look at it, the Firefly-class transport ship is just as much a part of Joss Whedon’s Firefly/Serenity ’verse as the Millenium Falcon is a part of Lucas’ GFFA, and having that ship show up in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica series and the SW Expanded Universe is like having Lucas admit that Whedon’s specific Earth-That-Was is also the near-mythical birthplace of humanity for the GFFA and like having Whedon also admit that the ships that left Earth-That-Was didn’t all necessarily end up in the same place and that the planet that would become known as Earth-That-Was is the second Earth, the Earth that the survivors of the Twelve Colonies of Battlestar Galactica and the offspring of the old Thirteenth Colony (the original Earth, the world of the first Cylons) eventually came to call their home. It just - it makes everything having to do with SW so much bigger, for me, because it’s like Lucas is finally saying it’s okay to assume that the humanity of his GFFA not only came from Earth at some point and that it’s okay to expand the history of SW back to include more about Earth, but that this history of Earth branches out not only to the GFFA but to the whole of the Serenity/Firefly ’verse (Reavers and terraforming and all) and the whole of the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica ’verse (Cylons and genocide and maybe mythical but maybe all too real and not precisely godly deities and all). and http:// fire fly. wikia. com/wiki/Serenity_(ship) and http:// fire fly. wikia. com/wiki/Firefly-class#.2703_Firefly_Model

While I know that some people will probably think I’m over-reacting to that and write it all off as just another instance of insider jokes or a couple of series creators/developers making nods to a source of inspiration, the way I look at it, the Firefly-class transport ship is just as much a part of Joss Whedon’s Firefly/Serenity ’verse as the Millenium Falcon is a part of Lucas’ GFFA, and having that ship show up in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica series and the SW Expanded Universe is like having Lucas admit that Whedon’s specific Earth-That-Was is also the near-mythical birthplace of humanity for the GFFA and like having Whedon also tacitly admit that the ships that left Earth-That-Was didn’t all necessarily end up in the same place and that the planet that would become known as Earth-That-Was in Firefly/Serenity is also the second Earth, the Earth that the allied survivors of the Twelve Colonies and the seemingly human descendants of the supposedly “lost” Thirteenth Colony (the original Earth, the world of the first Cylons) eventually came to call their home, at the end of the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica series.

It just – it makes everything having to do with SW so much bigger, for me, because it’s like Lucas (the Flanneled One himself!) is finally saying that it’s okay to assume that the humans of his GFFA not only came from our Earth at some point and that it’s okay to expand the history of SW and humans in the GFFA back to include more about Earth, but that this history of Earth and of humanity branches out not only to the GFFA but to the whole of the Firefly/Serenity ’verse (Reavers and terraforming and all) and the whole of the Caprica/Battlestar Galactica ’verse (Cylons and multiple attempts at genocide and maybe mythical but maybe all too real and not precisely godly deities and all).

It’s so easy to imagine that the galaxy of Earth-That-Was (our galaxy, the Milky Way) and the galaxy and/or galaxies of the re-imagined BSG and Caprica could either be next door neighbors or else one and the same (depending on whether or not one believes that the final jump, the jump to the planet that would also be known as Earth to the allied survivors of the re-imagined BSG, took them to a different galaxy or not) and either close to or even (in the case of one or the other) essentially next to the GFFA (in the opposite direction as the neighboring galaxy from which the Yuuzhan Vong hail, perhaps) and that the physical space of the Firefly/Serenity ’verse could be tucked away in some out of the way corner of the GFFA, like the Rishi Maze – the so-called dwarf galaxy or spiral nebula/satellite galaxy that’s somewhere out from Wild Space, off one of the spiral arms of the GFFA, kind of in between the GFFA and its nearest neighbor (and there’s actually at least two of these weird little orbiting satellite dwarf galaxy things attached to the GFFA, according to SW EU. Scientifically speaking, given that our own Milky Way has over a dozen dwarf galaxies in orbit around it – acting as satellite galaxies, in other words – and that it is believed by some that at least one such dwarf galaxy is in the process of merging with the Milky Way, odds are that the GFFA has more than two of these dwarf galaxies in orbit around it) – that, to me, it makes more sense than not to simply accept the fact that these three ’verses are meant to be viewed (at least from a distance) as one larger ’verse.

Given the somewhat odd lay-out and composition of the stretch of space home to the Alliance (a seemingly relatively small cluster of stars with dozens of planets and hundreds of moons suitable for terraforming in their orbits, all close enough together for sub-light travel to and from these planets and moons to be practical, but with a large area of space known as the Black acting as the majority of its border, keeping it from being practical to attempt to push further out into space), it seems practical to assume that this is a very small dwarf galaxy in orbit around a much larger galaxy, at a distance great enough to make reaching that greater galaxy highly problematic for ships travelling at sub-light speeds.

Given that the events of SW canon (the movies) are supposed to happen “a long time ago” and “in a galaxy far, far away” from the point of view of folks here on our modern-day Earth (who often have such difficulty thinking in terms beyond our own lifetimes, and to whom the distances between the planets in our own solar system still seem incredibly vast, given the current limits of our technology) and yet that the GFFA has somehow had humans in it for a long, long time, it also seems practical to me to link the mythology and actual history of Earth-That-Was, the “all of this has happened before, and all of this has happened again” cycles of the re-imagined BSG, and the events responsible for the arrival of humans in the GFFA (events that I interpret as having a time element to them), and to tie it all to the Force and to the existence of various entities of the Force (Force ghosts, Force spirits, etc.), especially given the mysterious, powerful nature of some of the characters in the re-imagined BSG series (characters who behave in an oddly similar manner both to Force ghosts and to my own concept of Force spirits or pure entities of the Force, characters who are referred to or alluded to as gods and also as angels and as harbingers/avatars of some greater universal power).

Thus, my reasoning behind literally placing the Firefly/Serenity ’verse within a far-flung corner of the GFFA, and, thus, my logic for tying the existence of various entities of the Force, the original bringing of humans to the GFFA, the arrival of the humans whose descendants would eventually make up the Alliance in that area of space, and the presence and nature of several mysterious beings within the Caprica/Battlestar Galactica ’verse together (though, again, some of the latter won’t be fully revealed/explained until later works in this AU series). Readers who are confused by this – who may not be overly familiar with the Caprica/Battlestar Galactica ’verse (which, by the way, is still in process, given that the prequel series to the re-imagined BSG series, Caprica, only has a pilot episode, as of yet) or with the ’verse of Joss Whedon’s Firefly series and the movie Serenity and various comics and such also set in the same ’verse – may want to seriously consider renting and watching the various tv shows, miniseries, made for tv movies, and movies that make up those ’verses, as well as finding copies of (or at least looking up and reading about) the comics. As a sci-fi fanatic, I heartily recommend both ’verses!!!

3). For those who are wondering, the Anglo-Sino Alliance that precedes the Union of Allied Planets (or Alliance, as it is more often simply called) is meant to have been the result of a world where the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China first gradually branched out to their neighbors and historical allies, essentially absorbing them into them (with the US enfolding Great Britain, Europe, New Zealand and Australia, the rest of North America, South America, etc., and China doing the same with Japan, Korea, other Asian countries, and possibly Russia, etc.), and then joining forces to become a sort of hyperpower, two superpowers united to share essentially all the power of the world between them.

Thus, most citizens of the Alliance speak/write/understand at least one variant of Chinese as well as American-style English, with one language often peppering or bleeding into the other, in much the same way as will occur in the populace of a truly bilingual or multilingual country. Hanyu pinyin being China’s official Romanized alphabetic spelling (and I not being familiar with more than a smattering of Chinese, mostly gained from being a fan of this ’verse), that is what will be found in the text of this story. The majority of the time, only phrases used in the texts of the Firefly/Serenity ’verse (as spoken by the characters in the show or movie or as written in the comics or novelization of the movie, etc.) will be included in this story, given that the Chinese in the show is something of a goulash of Mandarin and Cantonese, with some Taiwanese pronunciation and some just plain made up slang and cursing that sounds good and is strung together from real enough words but isn’t necessarily authentic to any cultural group.

In addition to there being a glossary of such terms in the book Finding Serenity: Anti-Heroes, Lost Shepherds and Space Hookers in Joss Whedon’s Firefly (which I recommend, for fans of the ’verse, as several of the essays are excellent), there are also several online resources for translations – http:// fireflychinese. /andhttp:// www .browncoats.c ?ContentID=42e83b412a309 and http:// www .fire flywiki. org/Firefly/ChinesePhrases are some, though readers should be careful of mistaking the actual spelling for the pronunciation of certain phrases! – if anything is unclear from context! In the exceedingly rare case of a Chinese term not used somewhere in the various texts of the Firefly/Serenity ’verse, odds are that I looked up the term online, myself, in an English-Chinese dictionary, and, if the meaning of any such term is unclear by context, readers can either do the same, or else ask me what something means, okay? If anyone more familiar with the language(s) in question than I am finds any glaring errors, please, by all means, feel free to contact me about it!

4). Please note: I try to keep the basic details and backstory for my SW AU series as consistent as possible, when it comes to ancient (and even a certain amount of more recent) history, certain cultural types and languages associated with specific planets and populations, etc. Thus, Alpha (and Asajj, having been in rather close proximity to Alpha and other clone soldiers since she chose to turn her back on her former life and flee her former Masters and the Clone Wars) might come out with a thing or three in Mando’a; it can be assumed that the non-Basic languages spoken by humans on Alderaan, Chandrila, Grizmallt, and Naboo are still all variants of various Gaelic languages (and that certain settlers in Alliance space are going to be at least partially familiar with older versions of those tongues, their ancestors having hailed from Gaelic-speaking countries); the Chiss are linked with events surrounding the dissolution of the Rakatan Infinite Empire and Cheunh, though an EU language, has also been expanded beyond the bare few words recorded in the EU, to (hopefully!) make the language seem more authentic; Olys Corellisi essentially is to Basic as Old English is to modern English, as well as being largely Germanic/Scandinavian in nature (and therefore likely at least somewhat familiar to settlers in Alliance space whose ancestors hailed from Germanic/Scandinavian countries); and etc.!

5). Please note that several resources (in addition to the actual materials of the ’verse, from the episodes of the show and the movie to the comics and the novelization of the film, by Keith R. A. DeCandido) were used, both when constructing the history of the Alliance for this story and creating the tone for the characters, including the following: the fan film documentary Done the Impossible; Finding Serenity: Anti-Heroes, Lost Shepherds and Space Hookers in Joss Whedon’s Firefly, edited by Jane Espenson; Serenity Found: More Unauthorized Essays on Joss Whedon’s Firefly Universe, edited by Jane Espenson; the book for the Serenity Role Playing Game, by Jamie Chambers; Firefly: The Official Companion: Volume I and also Volume II; Serenity: The Official Visual Companion; the somewhat unofficial Firefly novel, My Own Kind of Freedom, by Steven Brust (which can be found for free download at http:// dreamcafe. co m/firefly.h tml for anyone interested, and which I recommend, as it’s a good read!); the “Firefly Timeline” by Edgar Governo (which can be found at http:// ww . ne t~arphaxad/ firefly.h tml for those who’re interested); and various articles found on the Firefly Wiki .org database (which, again, can be found at http:// flywi ki.o rg/ for those who’re interested) and on The Firefly and Serenity Database (which, again, can be found at http:// firefly. wikia. com/wiki/Main_Page for those who’re interested).

In a way, some of the historical articles and informative/critical essays from the book for the Serenity Role Playing Game, Serenity: The Official Visual Companion, and the books of essays edited by Jane Espenson as much form the backbone of and basic framework for this story as the actual novelization of the film, so if anything sounds familiar to folks who are familiar with these texts, odds are that they were adapted straight from those sources into the story, especially when it comes to the files surveyed and recorded by Asajj!

6). Technically, the myth recounted for plumeria (frangipani) trees is based on a combination of stories and legends associated with the tree and its flower in Hawaii, Vietnam and China, India, Laos, Mexico, Polynesia, the Carribean, etc. Cunningham’s Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs states that plumeria is associated with the feminine, with water, and with love, but I already knew (from reading about it in a book on vampires, the title of which I unfortunately cannot verify, as I believe I borrowed it from a college library several years ago) that it’s also associated with death and vampires in Malay folklore (the scent is tied to the pontianak, a kind of vampiric ghost, as they’re believed to lurk around plumeria trees and cemeteries, the plumeria often being a funeral flower, if the blooms are white, white being associated with death in some Asiatic cultures), and the two things sparked in my head, so originally that’s how I got the idea to combine the whole symbol of life/death/resurrection (tree of life) and gateway to the goddess (gateway to the underworld) thing into a Companion meditative guide/teaching story . . .

Then, though, when I plugged “plumeria” into my search engine to double-check the spelling for “frangipani,” I accidentally stumbled on A. A. Attanasio’s “The Mystery of Death” (which can be found, with illustrative pictures, at http:// attanasio. blogspot. co m/2008/03/mystery-of-death.h tml for those who’re interested!), and what he’d written was just so damned perfect and fit what I had in my head for the meditative/teaching piece that I just said hell with it and borrowed it wholesale. In the context of this ’verse and of Earth-That-Was, I’m considering his story to have passed into local lore, gotten tangled up with the Asian (and Hindi, etc.) legends already associated with plumeria, preserved in this fashion, and eventually passed on into Companion lore when the Guild was first created.

7). Because of the way in which I was initially introduced to the GFFA (as a young child, given a VHS copy of what would come to be known as A New Hope to watch), I usually tend to visualize and/or hear a lot of what I’m imagining when I’m writing, and that means that most of the SW characters I write about – be they canon characters from one of the six saga films, EU characters from the books, comics, television shows, etc., or original characters specifically created to help populate the background of my stories – tend to be modelled in some way on individuals who actually exist in real life. So I have a rather extensive list of various real world individuals I have essentially “cast” as specific EU and original characters (which I am constantly having to add to and/or modify, as more EU materials are released and I write more in the GFFA and as I come across folks in other medium who strike me as being deserving in some way of being included in my SW works). Some of these casting decisions are, for me, basically set in stone, given the amount of time that the characters have already spent parading about in the back of my brain, prattling on and telling me about what they’ve done or are planning to do, in various stories. Others are more flexible and could still be modified before all is said and done.

For readers who’re interested in knowing what some of the characters look like, specifically, to me, I’d highly recommend perusing these lists, which are up on my LJ and are, conveniently, labelled such things as “my reupdated cast of SW characters (EU, original, and otherwise), part one” through “part seven” (currently). (The “revamped list of handmaiden characters cast and other notable Nabooians” parts one and two are really more applicable for other parts of the You Became to Me SW AU series than this one, though I’d also recommend that folks who’re interested in knowing how I visualize my characters take a look at them.) In the case of folks who may have obviously been cast as older adults (or vice versa) than they are going to be for the majority of this story, please, just use your imagination! Anyone with any questions or suggestions about specific casting choices can feel free to email me at Polgarawolf and/or simply leave a comment for the story or the casting lists! As of right now, the most current versions of the basic casting list can be found at http:// polgarawolf. livejournal. com/100200.h tml http:// polgarawolf. livejournal. com/100519.h tml http:// polgarawolf. livejournal. com/111485.h tml http:// polgarawolf. livejournal. com/140183.h tml http:// polgarawolf. livejournal. com/141147.h tmlhttp:// polgarawolf. livejournal. com/144796.h tml http:// polgarawolf. livejournal. com/157091.h tml

8). The epigraphs at the beginnings of the various parts/chapters of this story are more inspired by my reading of Frank Herbert’s classic (and quite brilliant) sci-fi series Dune at a rather impressionable age than the rather recent tendency of various EU authors to include informative epigraphs (mainly in the form of epigrams/quotations) in the chapter headers of their novels. If folks think that the epigraphs sound familiar, then odds are that’s because many of them are going to be largely based on either famous quotations and sayings/proverbs from the real world or else on dialogue or important passages from either the SW ’verse or the Firefly/Srenity ’verse (most likely one of the episodes of Firefly, though I suppose one might end up coming from an earlier part of Serenity or one of the comics before all’s said and done). And logically, for a ’verse with the sheer scope of the GFFA, with as much history and as many sentient species spread out across such vast distances, odds are that someone, somewhere in the GFFA would, at some point, write or say or otherwise communicate virtually anything we mere humans could ever come up with on our little Earth, so please don’t fuss about whether or not it’s realistic to imagine someone from the SW ’verse expressing a belief very like that of a fictional character or historical personage here on Earth, especially given that I’m trying to use this story as a way to help expand the history of the GFFA (and humans in it) back to our Earth!

9). The format of this story is probably going to strike people as . . . somewhat odd/confusing. In truth, this is three stories (more, if you count the family/crew of Serenity as individuals, rather than as one united entity) wrapped up in one – the story of Asajj Ventress seeking redemption; the story of River Tam attempting to banish the worst of her “ghosts” by exposing Miranda; and the story of Serenity’s crew/family attempting to do the right thing by River while going about their lives aboard the ship and, eventually, to take a stand against the tyranny and corruption of the Alliance – and that’s why I decided on this particular type of arrangement, for the various different parts of the story. Since River was a dancer (and still dances, despite what was done to her), it made sense to use musical nomenclature for the headers. I’m not a musician or even all that well-versed in classical music, though, so the use of that nomenclature may strike those who are well-versed in such fields as . . . slightly irregular. For those unfamiliar with introductions, toccatas and fugues, and preludes or préludes, the Wikipedia has some informative articles that might be worth checking out: http:// pedia. org/wiki/Introduction_(music) http:// pedia. org/wiki/Toccata http:// en. wiki pedia. org/wiki/Fugue and http:// pedia. org/wiki/Prelude_(music)

It should be noted that, specifically, titles to the pieces of the story that are not included among either the regular introductory (preface and prologue, as well as this section) and closing material (epilogue and afterword) and the chaptered sections of the main story are somewhat inspired by the following famous pieces of classical and impressionist music: Johann Sebastian Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier; Frédéric Chopin’s 24 Preludes, Op. 28; and Achille-Claude Debussy’s Préludes. For those interested in more information on the pieces in question, the Wikipedia also has some informative articles that might be worth checking out: http:// en. wiki pedia. org/wiki/Well-Tempered_Clavier http:// en. wiki pedia. org/wiki/Preludes_Op._28_(Chopin) and http:// en. wiki pedia. org/wiki/Preludes_(Debussy)

In addition to being somewhat inspired by music, it should also be noted that at least a couple of the nonchaptered sections that revolve most closely around River are inspired by literary works, especially some of the poems of T. S. Eliot (The Waste Land, The Hollow Men, and Four Quartets, especially). Again, for those interested in more information on Eliot and the pieces question, the Wikipedia also has information that might be worth checking out: http:// en. wiki /wiki/T._S._Eliot includes links to articles on the poems in question!

10). It should be noted that the dates in this story are approximates, given that the Galactic Standard Calendar of the GFFA has 368 days (and there is some disagreement as to whether or not the Winter Fete week-long holiday marks the beginning or the end of the year, with some areas of the Republic subscribing to one view and other areas to the opposite), while the Core standard years of the Alliance only has 365 days!

11). Jayne’s “feedin’ the flame” method of focusing, when taking aim to shoot, has been deliberately based on a focusing method described and used by characters in Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series of books. I’ve only read about half of this series, myself, but this focusing technique, as initially used in the first book by Rand, has always struck me as being an eminently practical way of teaching somebody to focus without formally teaching them how to meditate, and I think it’s something both simple and useful enough that somebody like Jaynecould have learned how to use it so well that it would be second nature, in any kind of a fight or any sort of target practice session, etc.