Read Firefly Darkness :: Q+A Session 1

Hey guys! Welcome to the first Q & A session! I'll answer any reader questions first, and then go over somethings I find interesting/fun about the characters and story, too. :)

DelythThomasArt asks: Favorite drinks?

Momoko: Huh, like alcohol or normal drink? (Legal drinking age is 18 in 328 AC New York)

I don’t drink alcohol much, I like to stick to a good health regiment. Occasional wine is good, I guess-- Grisla once got me something that tasted kinda like cake at first, but then burned. It was weird and I don’t think I’d order it again. I really enjoy smoothies and juices, though—right now my favorite is called “watermelon rush”, I order it all the time at the juice bar around the corner. It’s got watermelon, and uh… I think pineapple. I forget what else is in it, but it is absolutely delicious and you should try it.

Lucas: Cream soda is amazing. Have you ever had it? A vending machine once accidently popped out a can with the drink I had wanted to buy—and I couldn’t believe it. Free soda, and it was the most delicious—like dessert in a can! But, a drink…. If that makes sense…

Hey, there’s a vending machine over there! Do they have it? Want one?

Nick: I’m a gin gimlet man, myself.

Yes, that’s it… What, why would I need a longer answer? You asked me what my favorite drink was.

Flere: How dare you interrupt nap time for such a puerile question. The tears of my enemies is my favorite drink. Now go away.

Fun Stuff

The Prolouge: 13 years before the events of the book, the prolouge may not seem to fit, and to be honest, I'm not sure I will include it in the final manuscript-- but what it establishes, is that the world as we know it had drastically changed in a very short amount of time. This is mostly thanks to the cataclysm the gentleman in the projection is talking about.

Luke and Poe, in my mind, are very clueless small time criminals who wind up in the wrong abandoned complex trying to make a quick buck. What they unleashed will be revealed soon in the story, though-- so it is a relevant event.

New York, 328 AC: Not going to lie, I spent a lot of time-- way more than any human should, thinking about how to craft this metropolis and its name. I can't imagine when people post-cataclysm were rebuilding, they'd pull a british colonial move and call it "New New York", and we're too close in history that everyone would have completely forgotten the US and everything about it to redstribute everything like in the hunger games-- but there are some key differences to the society we come to know, and is being highlighted by Momoko's travels. New York is a bustling, multi-tiered dome-plex with near-future (to us) technology. In contrast, Arc City is like a run-down mall on the edge of the wild west. There's a level of wildness and lawlessness our protaganists aren't used to. With the prolouge as well, highlighting the very wild Arizona jungle along with mentions of Vada and the waste, hopefully it really conveys a sense of territorial areas and a lack of centralized rule.

The Continent: The American Continent does have a seat of govenrment-- in New York City. However, It's little more than a hold-over from olden times as a over-arching judicial system, military, and works to regulate trade, currency, and the economy so that "credits", the digital currency favored by people living in more urban areas, is the official legal tender. More rural areas, especially further out west, use physical currency (which if sanctioned by local government, is standardized to a credit rate and exchangable) or a bartering system. Mostly the terrorities run themselves with representatives sitting on the federal level, and somehting like a parliament keeps everyone playing nice, so there's no regional wars like before a central government was re-established.

Midnight and Sylvia: They're both characters from other stories, old stories that never really made it past character doodles in my sketchbooks.

Midnight is a old demon from a Crossfire spin-off. Old demon, meaning one of the first children of Lilith who fell with Lucifer-- in the rebellion she chose her friend's side and her twin sister sided with the angels and was killed by their brother, Balthazaar. Tragically, Midnight's pretty much been trying to find a way to get back to bring her sister back for eternity.

Sylvia is a mage from a world where only certain magic is allowed, and she didn't think that was right. She scoured the world for knowledge and practiced any kind of magic she found, until her secret was revealed and boutny hunters constantly starting pursuing her. She found a quiet place to hide for a little while, finding an ancient creature to be an ally and falling in love-- but that came crashing down, and in a desparate attempt to save those she loved, she used forbidden to escape-- the consequences of which, where they were thrown to the far corners of existence, and she would up on our mundane earth before the cataclysm. (For those of you counting-- yes, that would make her very old :P )