Intro to 'The Paths Not Taken'
(no resemblance to 'the path not taken', the names are close only by one of the weird little coincidences that make up life.)
Nothing that follows is intended as a copyright infringement. I'm not making a cent on this. If anyone official, e.g. jms, wants me to stop posting this, I will. Comments, suggestions, flames, questions (especially those!), and minbari grey council members with european accents are all welcome. Feedback to h_raelynn@hotmail.com will be passed along to the author (who no longer has email access, or even a computer of her own), except flames.
There's lots of danger involved with reading the Lurker's guide . . . like this excerpt from 'Phoenix Rising', jms speaks section.
"How would the Byron story have been different if Claudia Christian hadn't left?
It's no secret that I would've had Ivanova becoming somewhat linked to Byron romantically
(she would see him as a character like Marcus, which is why there are certain similarities, and
she would take a chance only to find it wrong this time, underlining that she'd missed her one
major opportunity thus far for a good relationship). This was expressed to Claudia toward the
last part of S4, so she knew at that time that her latent ability would be coming out, and that
she'd have a big part in S5.
In this scenario, Lyta would have become a devoted follower of Byron's, much as she has, but it would have been more love from afar: protective, somewhat unrequited but hoping for more...so that when he met his fate, Lyta would end up right where she is now, just by a different road."
The danger is, this thought got stuck on my brain: 'so what might the alternative be like?'
And once my brain gets going, it don't stop. But let me say now that my own imagination is nothing next to jms's. His version of the story will be better. It will also not match mine at various places. Some of the conversations between characters will have differences. This just has some of the scenes, parts relating to this thread of the arc. If you haven't seen the 5th season up to a comparative point, you'll likely be totally lost. Although, if you read the synopses from the Spoilers page and the Lurker's Guide, you might do just fine. :) I didn't include much of the Centauri/Alliance problems. I plan to get MEAN, just to warn you in advance. . . If you want things to be fixed, they have to be broken in the first place!
But, Lochley WILL appear towards the very end. Her character simply grates with Garibaldi's too well to NOT have her do a cameo. :) There's also references to Thirdspace in here. I wrote this before the second novel in the Psi Corps trilogy came out, but fiddled with a few tinsy bits afterwards to make things match up more.
This started out as an 'Ivanova after Marcus' story, with other bits (Lyta and Zack were an obvious change) added in. But the other bits grew, and grew, and grew. So, this won't be a pure Ivanova tale, you'll have to check out the alternate universe site or the RS archive for those. Great ones there, too.
A final set of apologies. No, nobody will have graphic sex in this story. Yeesh. Any body parts (I had all sorts of them) that *could* be hacked off by my the beta (Bad Gok!), were hacked. So it's suitable for those under 18 now. Sorry to disappoint all the chatters out there who think 'it' should happen (but there is a bunch of kissing). So slush/slash fans will be disappointed. Anton Christov, Tyler, some of the others, they just sort of wrote themselves . . . and I decided to keep them. The Day of Terror is an informal nickname for one of the test days that security recruits had to undergo, it's not meant to replace the episode 'Day of the Dead'. I went out and bought the B5 security manual in an attempt to write the chapter better. Dunno how well it worked but the book itself is really nifty, everyone go cough up the 30 bucks to get a copy.
If anyone out there wants to use my characters in a story, sure, go ahead, just 1)ask me, and 2)don't kill 'em. I've got further plans for them . . . :)
I have nothing against RAD, he seems to be a nice fellow (and Morann is such a cutie), but his character Byron has all the makings of a Cult leader. So I will be portraying him in some of this light. But he's not totally evil. Heck, Robin might like (*might*. . . I dunno) what I do to his um - 'social calendar'.
The Paths Not Taken (PG 13 rating, mostly)
No Compromises
The Paragon of Animals (three parts)
The Day of Terror (this little bit . . . just . . . came.) (two parts)
Secrets of the Soul (seven parts, I really messed with things here!)
In the Kingdom of the Blind (three parts)
Phoenix Rising
Epilogue: First Corinthians 13:13 (three parts)
THE END!
(until the sequel. . . )
You'll notice there's episodes missing . . . and/or greatly expanded. But I like to add lots of 'missing scenes', and I skipped over the not-totally-relevant-to-this-arc stuff, since this story is took up many many months of my time.
I started this beast Sept. 20th of last year, sending out the basic premise by email to various ppl who said they'd read it for me. And now I think it's done . . . June 18! Woo hoo!
P.S. The "Beer Mug" comment in 'kingdom' wasn't from me. Gok did that bit of twisted mindwork . . . the bad part is . . . she's right! All the 'transferring' idea is hers.