0.0: A/N

Well, Fillies and Gentlecolts, here it is.  The place where I'm starting work on yet another of my Grand Follies, which will hopefully progress farther than my ill-fated Legacy of Kain (which made it roughly one-third of the way into the epic storyline before I kinda got distracted by everything in existence that wasn't Final Fantasy IV.).

The Dark Star Saga originally started as, of all things, my entry for the February Writing Contest on this very site!  As it's currently December, you can kinda guess how well that worked out.  At any rate, with the help of a dear friend of mine, the seeds of that idea (which will be kicking off... Act 2-ish, if I remember correctly) mutated and interbred with about....

Uhm....

Five of my other pre-existing story ideas?

At any rate, those stories will be making appearances throughout the course of what I call the Dark Star Saga.

What is the Dark Star Saga?  it's a story that I've wanted to tell since before I had a fandom to put it into.  I'm not going to go into thematic elements and such, but I am going to say that things are gonna get dark.  Not Cupcakes dark, not Rainbow Factory dark, or anything like that.  But starting fairly early on, more adult elements than would ever be seen in the show will come up.

And yet, not the entire story is going to be mature-rated.  I'm still trying to figure out how to structure this in the FimFiction system, but at the moment, here's what I'm going for.

These Author's Notes are Chapter 0, and have been noted as such.  I'm going to go ahead like that, with each "story" being treated as a separate chapter, and each chapter within a story as a sub-chapter.

So, immediately following this, you should be finding Chapter 1.0:  Shadows of the Past.  That's a very short interlude, taking place immediately after Season 3, Episode 2.  The rest of the stories will be taking place later on, and I'll be building a timeline of what all has happened in these notes (that'll be "0.1").  Also, since I expect this to get up to at least 15 "chapters," with several actual chapters to each of *those*, I'm going to be relatively kind and keep a summary of what happened, for folks who either don't want to read what's come before so they can catch up, or for folks who want to skip a story because of content and come back later.

Yeah... content.  That's gonna be a nasty one to manage, I'm afraid.  As a whole, Dark Star Saga is a story that will contain pretty much everything you can imagine.  It's rated Mature, and I've got it tagged as Romance, Dark, Adventure, and Alternate Universe because those are the 4 elements that make up most of the story.

Characters will have sex in this story, some of those encounters actually kinda important to the plot and such (you there, snickering in the back row because I said 'plot'!  Shaddup!)  I thought long and hard (I'm watching you!) about whether or not I should write the scenes out, but eventually I decided... I'm hitting on enough other stuff in this thing eventually that, altogether, it's already going to be Mature, so why the buck not?  Not all the scenes are going to be detailed, because frankly, I'm not looking to write that kinda story.  But if I think it makes the story better I'm gonna do it.  Note that 'hotter' is also a subset of 'better' sometimes.  If you don't like it... gloss over it.

Characters will fight, be injured, and even die in this story.  Some of them rather messily, and I'm not planning on holding much back if I think it makes the story better to include the details.  Note that 'gorier' doesn't necessarily mean 'better,' but if I'm looking to get an emotional reaction out of my readers, sometimes I'm gonna go for the kidneys.

So how about this - if I'm going to include anything gory in a segment, I'll tag it with a "G".  If I'm going to include anything smutty in it, I'll take it with an "S."  It's sorta like the tags we already have, but I can tag individual chapters rather than having to tag the whole story (which I already did, but... YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN, DAMMIT!)

At any rate, as always, feedback is greatly appreciated, and may even influence tiny little details of the plot.  Sadly, I do not want to promise a schedule for these things, as I know myself better than that.  While I'm doing my damnedest not to fade out on this one, it is distinctly possible that some new shiny thing (or year end at work) may suddenly demand my attention, and then I have no clue how long it'll take me to get back to it.  Sorry, folks, it's just the way my brain works.  I'd rather delay the next chapter for some time than write a bad one, y'know?

I hope you enjoy, and until then, zis has been Shrinky Frod, and I vill be seeink all of you... later.