The time: Just after the end of Sailor Moon R.

The place: Tokyo, Japan. (Mostly)

I thought it would be easier just to put all of this together on one page. Those who are easily bored by the sort of ramblings authors put at the beginning of their stories should skip straight to the story.

First things first. Sailor Moon and its various characters do not belong to me, they belong to Takeuchi Naoko, plus a number of other people and companies. Don’t sue me. You’d be wasting your time, anyway. My scholarship is barely paying the rent. Original characters and situations are mine, and may not be borrowed without my permission.

Wars of Light and Shadow is rated PG-13, due to a certain amount of violence.

The setting details (for purists): I’ve only seen the North American version of Sailor Moon, so that’s what I’m basing this on--with a few exceptions . . .

- Zoisite, Nephrite, and Jadeite got their original names/spellings back. The other names (including "Malachite", "Negaforce") are taken from the dub.

- Zoisite got his original gender back (which isn’t really a contradiction--let’s face it, there is no way a grown woman is going to have a chest that flat when all the fourteen-year-olds in the show have figures like Serena’s. So why was he speaking in falsetto and allowing himself to be addressed as Madame Zoisite? I guess you’ll just have to read and find out.)

- I’ve adopted one or two names (chiefly "youma", "Prince Endymion") back from the Japanese for things that I felt were fudged/inadequate in the NA version.

- Oh, and I’ve gotten rid of Molly’s accent. :)

I’m also completely ignoring what might be called the Conventional History of the Silver Millenium, which has the Four Generals as Prince Endymion’s guardians, and has them romantically involved with the Sailor Scouts. And I’m ignoring a great deal of what I know about the end of the first series and assuming that people’s memories were selectively fudged to cover up the existence of the Negaverse. Thus Molly, having known that Maxfield Stanton was really Nephrite, doesn’t remember him, but her mother does.

There are reasons for all of this. Really.

About colors (especially of hair and eyes)--I call ‘em as I see ‘em. A lot of them seem to vary from episode to episode anyway.

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Any resemblance between this story and anyone else's Sailor Moon fanfic are purely coincidential. Honestly. I hadn't even read most of the Dark Kingdom fanfic that's out there before I'd completed the first eight chapters.

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For those curious about me: I’m a graduate student of Computer Science at Dalhousie University, in Halifax, N.S., Canada, and way too old to be writing this stuff.

Dr. Sedgwick, in the unlikely event that you’re reading this, no, I did not take time away from marking for your course to write this.

This isn't my first attempt at fanfic. Although I've never written for Sailor Moon before, I have written and posted a fanfic series based on Disney's Gargoyles.

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Comments on the story may be sent to eliddell@dark-kingdom.de. Be warned that although I do eventually answer all my mail, I have four different accounts, and the frequency with which I check each one varies, so a week or so of lag time isn't uncommon. I don’t mind constructive criticism. Flames will either be ignored or sent back with something nasty attached, depending on the kind of day I’ve been having.