End Notes

Author's notes:

Okay guys that's it, at least for now. I want to thank you for your encouragement and support as I wrote this thing, I have to admit that this was not an easy story. I know the end may seem a bit abrupt, for anyone who is wondering where that came from, I'd suggest you go back to Chapter 7. This situation was going to be fully explained in the first of two sequels, unfortunately right now both of those sequels are looking more than a little iffy.

The first sequel got scrapped, at least temporarily, because it had too little to do with the slayers themselves and I felt there was not enough material in the show to fully develop a coherent portrait of Ethan. He was shaping up to be a major player in that particular story and that turned into a major obstacle. In addition to that there was the fact that while the plot had some twists I felt were interesting, the outcome itself was too predictable.

The second sequel was supposed to take place during the fifth season of the show and it was going to deal with Joyce's illness and death. My main problem with that one was that I kept getting annoyed with the whole Glory storyline and pushing it aside... which led to something that was reading too much like a soap for my liking because the fact that Buffy and Faith were slayers was reduced to being little more than a footnote. Another problem was that, unlike what happened with this story, I couldn't really avoid the whole issue of Buffy's love life and truth be told I'm not too fond of the idea of having to deal with rabid shippers. I know that's a big part of this particular fandom but I admit it is one that bothers me sometimes and that was a serious deterrent as far as I was concerned when the time came for me to sit down and write part three of this thing.

I haven't entirely ruled out the possibility of writing either one of those stories but the truth is that right now they don't really seem particularly likely, at least not in the short term (if there is an interest I may reconsider though, I do have them planned after all).

A more viable scenario to keep this universe alive would be a series of parallel scenes dealing with the situation between Buffy and the Scoobies. I've had some people complaining that those scenes were missing, but this was not done because I think the Scoobies don't matter but rather because the friendship between Buffy and the Scoobies was not all that relevant to this particular plotline. In addition to that there was the fact that, seeing how the story was told primarily from Giles's POV, there was no real way for me to incorporate that aspect of things without breaking the rhythm. Simply put, those stories had to be told from the POV of Buffy, Xander and Willow. If I do decide to write these side stories, I have to admit that I don't have a clear time frame for when they'd be posted. Unlike what was the case with the two major sequels these short scenes have never been fully planned... of course, since those stories would be mostly a series of standalone ficlets the absence of a defined project doesn't really mean that much.

For the time being I am probably going to take a short break from this universe --in fact my next project is to go torture the characters of a different fandom altogether-- but that doesn't mean I won't be back eventually... and as I said, short fics remain a strong possibility.