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| - When I looked over The Heels of the Unknown after completing the first four stories, I realized that there hadn't been many battles, and I wanted to focus one story at least around a lot of action in the classic spirit of DBZ. This story was the one I chose to do that with (although a lot of fighting ended up happening in the succeeding two stories as well - but more on that later!). I had settled on a Bojack story by January 11, 2016 - much later than the stories for Spring and Winter - and it was shortly after its conceptualization that I settled on having my story about Bojack be action-focused more so than character-based. Starfall is a story that I originally wanted to write in Dragon Ball: Legacies. You can see the original title of the story still on that page, under season 3, called "He's a Pirate". That was going to be a backstory story about Bojack; even though I had it listed for only one episode, I was prepared to expand it into two or three episodes if need be. As it so happened, Legacies was abandoned long before I could think much about my Bojack story. But it's important to note that from close to the time I joined this wiki, I had a desire to write a story about Bojack. Bojack is a beast. He's really cool, and his movie is among the best in DBZ history. I believe it has the fewest/least significant canon problems of any DBZ movie. I had ideas to write about Bojack in The Brady Patrick Collection, but never got around to it. He was also a finalist for a spot on Things Were Better Then, but, alas, every other position was filled more readily by other characters (Piccolo ultimately came in 11th place for TWBT, and Launch came in 12th - Bojack was my 13th choice, but of course, there were only ten slots). More recently (I believe in late 2015), I discussed writing a Bojack story with TUNboy, but nothing ever came of that. It would've been a multi-chapter story, probably five or so chapters, and would have been a more expansive origin story for the character than Starfall is. There were a lot of opportunities for me to write Bojack stories, but I just kept putting it off year after year until 2016. My original list of 8 stories for this collection was first "finalized" on August 15, 2015. Bojack's story was not amongst them. In the fifth slot was instead a story about a True Majin - one not mentioned in From Magic to Monsters, but one who would have survived into modern times. That story would've been primarily a tool for me to explore a villainous demonic character who kills a lot of people without regret. It was also going to be tied into my universe by settling a few unanswered questions in some of my already-completed stories. The original description for story #5 was: "5. True Majin - Story about True Majins and why they almost went extinct. Perhaps this one will deal with a True Majin who survived to present times to meet the Priests of Amoon and Majin Nikto." By December 22, 2015, I had become unhappy with this story idea and thought about replacing it with a story about Sertung. On December 28, 2015, I did just that. This was in part due to a page on this wiki that was nominated for a 2015 award, Kaioshin Orion. I thought that page was unique, and it roused a literary interest in me that got me thinking about writing about Sertung. It was a good idea, I think (even now), because Sertung's journey in my universe, especially after Verlate is imprisoned, is shrouded in mystery. So my desire to expand on that was well-intentioned, I think. The story description for the Sertung story was: "5. Sertung - Sertung drifts through life, dying a slow death as the universe is thriving around him, watching the Daman empire crumble and the Kais rise; he is alone with Verlate's mind prison and eventually runs into Vados and Champa, and he gives them Verlate's mind prison before succumbing to his disease. During his meeting with Vados, a Supreme Kai appears and attacks Vados with a spirit bomb but is killed." As can be seen by the description, incorporating elements of Dragon Ball Super in this story would have been a major point, and it was something I was excited to attempt, even though, at the time, I had very little knowledge of Vados' and Champa's actual personalities. It really wasn't long after I started exploring this story idea that I grew bored of it. On January 11, less than a week after doing extensive research in preparation for the Sertung story, I changed the story in this slot from a Sertung one to a Bojack one. For once, Bojack was not being ignored. I knew that since The Heels of the Unknown could be my last one-shot collection, I should go out with a bang and write all the stories I had been meaning to write. Bojack's story was one I had been meaning to write for a long time. Now, as I began preparing for this story, I realized that I was completely uninterested in showing a full origin story for Bojack. To do that properly, it would take a lot of time, a lot of words, and maybe a one-shot is not the best vehicle to attempt such a thing. I knew that. Before I started writing even A Shadow on the Wind, I had listed my two biggest worries as being Cool Cat and Starfall (although I considered Cool Cat to be a much more imposing story to write at the time). While I could've done an origin story for Bojack, I just wasn't interested enough for that. I wanted to get a momentary burst of him, a concentrated focus on what makes Bojack so cool, and why I like him so much. This was a story of calculated restraint in that regard, something that I would not have done in years past. General weariness with writing long, seemingly-unending stories and so much Dragon Ball Fanon experience led me to this conclusion. To this day, I consider this the right decision for this collection and for me personally. By January 18, 2016, I had come up with the name for this story. It was amongst the easiest for me to name out of all of the stories in The Heels of the Unknown. In fact, I believe it was the first one I actually named. Aside from that though, I didn't do much pre-planning. I researched timeline stuff, personality stuff, and all stuff related to Bojack in canon, but I didn't really think too much about the actual plot of the story. I spent most of my time in preparation for this story making sure that I was 100% clear on what is canon in regards to Bojack so I could then work with that. My original "blurb" for this story was: "5. Bojack - A story about Bojack as he genocides through space just before being confronted by the four lesser Kais, who of course imprison him in a star, but that occurs off-screen." The ending to the above summary is very important. I never wanted to show him being imprisoned by the Kais. I had this idea from the beginning of my conceptualization of Starfall that I could end the story ominously with the Kais stepping forward and confronting him. I had an image of their eyes burning in the dark, staring him down in horrible judgement. This idea was mostly possible because King Kai has stated in canon what happened to Bojack - his story is known. There's no suspense. We all know the Kais imprison him for being a serial genocider. I often like to do stuff like this - combining canon and fanon elements to try to tell a cohesive tale and/or character arc. In this story, the canon elements are the endpoint. I had a creative opportunity to get to that point. So my goal with this story was mostly to show Bojack's last moments of freedom before being imprisoned. It's not an origin story, it's a story of butchery and excess and Dragon Ball style emotions that gives context to where, how, and why Bojack was imprisoned by the four Kais. So I finally got around to writing this story first on June 4, 2016 in the very early morning. I was at a friend's house, and my friend had gone to sleep. I then watched the Bojack movie again to set my mind right tonally. It was good to get a fresh sense of his character, his mannerisms, his way of speaking, as well as how his crew acts, looks, and performs in fights. All of this was highly useful for writing Starfall accurately. I wrote from 3:07 am to 4:05 am. I remember vividly that the writing this night was slow and deliberate. I wrote and re-wrote sentences, was very careful to maintain a certain tone, and I used specific words and phrases to color the section exactly how I wanted to. I remember being very proud of this section after I completed it (I went to bed right after), and to this day, I consider it one of my most inspired bits of writing. I polished up the first section of Starfall to an obsessive degree, and I think that was for the better, or I wouldn't have done it. I got up later that day, and found some time to edit in the evening. I edited the first section on June 4 from 6:29 pm to 7:57 pm. I was heavily distracted by my friend and his family while doing this, so the editing went slowly. It would've probably taken me 1/3 of that time had I been in seclusion while editing. Either way, by 7:27 pm on June 4, 2016, the first section of Starfall had been finalized, polished to my satisfaction. I started the second section later that night at 9:28 pm. I wrote all of the first sentence before being distracted. Then, I continued writing at 10:49 pm to 11:17 pm off and on, finishing only two sentences of the second section in that time. When my friend fell asleep, I put my full effort back into completing this story. I wrote from 1:05 am on June 5 to 2:45 am. At that point, I had gotten up to the lines: "Jaku’s face was covered in uncertainty for a fraction of a second, and then he decided to heed his captain’s words and break away from the Nyarin warrior. The Nyarin stuck his pike in the sand and leaned up against it, breah". However, my friend's wifi was acting up at that point, and the lag was killing my momentum (good internet is very crucial for writing in google docs), so I switched over to writing in a Microsoft Word document, because I was motivated to finish the first draft of the story that night. It had been a while since I'd written in Microsoft Word; that was the program I used to write all of my stories up until I wrote Brave, so it was a trip down memory lane in a way to write this story in that word processor. No other The Heels of the Unknown story was written in Word. It took me another hour to finish the story after I switched over to Word. I pasted the completed first draft into my google doc for Starfall on 3:46 am on June 5. I did a bit of minor editing for a few minutes thereafter (until 3:48 am) and then went to bed. When I woke up the next day, I did some stuff with my friend (gardening, mostly), and then edited from 4:30 pm to 5:51 pm (which, astute readers will note is a few minutes after I actually posted this story on this site - yes, I got a bit impatient, and posted it before I had fully completed it). Starfall turned out a bit different than I had expected. It was longer than I had thought it would be, for one thing. The connections between it and the rest of my universe were also rather subtle in comparison to the past few stories in THOTU. This was the most professional story in the collection at its creation, and I was very proud of it, I remember. It has a great image at the top of the page. I remember being very happy with how I weaved the extended fight scenes, thematic build up, and characterization together. I remember thinking this story turned out better than I had hoped when I originally released it, which isn't something that happens often with me. I usually am not so optimistic about one of my stories immediately after releasing it. Starfall didn't end up as I had expected it to - and it's not how I would have imagined "my Bojack story" to look when I think about my past. If the me who existed way back when Legacies was still going to be written could have seen this story... well, I'm sure I would have been quite surprised that I managed to write something like this. I specifically made the tea ceremony aesthetic of "敬" (translated to mean "respect") the one for Starfall, as well as the one for Crushing Blue, because neither Bojack nor Super Handel respect anyone. They are savage, ruthless alpha males. Both of them are humbled in their stories. It was fun for me to work in this idea of respect into these two stories to a greater degree than in the others (though 敬 is a major part of other THOTU one-shots too) because of the inherent irony of it, as well as the cheekiness and boldness of such actions. The Kais imprisoning Bojack and Mercenary Tao seemingly killing Super Handel were two ways I dealt with this theme, and I think in both stories, the theme of respect is something that the protagonists are trying to rebel against - they are trying to be individuals, rebels, warriors with total agency and autonomy to do whatever they want. The consequences of such a philosophy is seen with how "evil" the two are, how they have become corrupted by their own lusts and desires. They are slaves to their hedonistic/self-above-all-else perspectives, and I think lacking any sort of respect for other beings is a part of why they are like that. That is certainly something I explored in both Autumn stories in this collection. The theme song for Starfall was originally Hrafntinna by Sigur Rós. Indeed, I did not expect to change this theme song, because that song is awesome. However, as I got closer and closer to writing and completing this story, I became more enamored with Kveikur, which is also by Sigur Rós. I think that's just what happens when a theme song is set for months. I had "Hrafntinna" set as Starfall's theme song for like 6 months before I wrote it. Because of that, I listened to "Hrafntinna" extensively, and the song grew a bit stale to my ears. "Kveikur" is a more raw song, and it excited me, and I thought that since I had that emotional response to it in relation to this story, it would end up working better. I also think that the sound of "Kveikur" conjures up images of a sandstorm and pandemonium, which is better, tonally, for this story than the sound of "Hrafntinna" (even though that's a great song too). However, "Kveikur" doesn't have as good a live version as "Hrafntinna" does. As a consequence of me choosing to have 4 live songs and 4 studio songs for the 8 one-shots in this collection, I was sort of forced to give Starfall a live theme song. I would have preferred to give it the studio version of "Kveikur" - and I almost did, just to spite the rules I had set up - but in the end, I decided to just go with the best live version I could find, since even the worst live version of "Kveikur" is still great. Indeed, finding live songs was a struggle overall. The theme song for Crushing Blue has rarely been performed live (and every time, it was either a lip-sync version or an awful version), and the theme song for The Great Sushi-Eating Contest has not ever been performed live, to my knowledge. This is also true for the theme song of A Shadow on the Wind. And the only live version of the theme song of Cool Cat was just not of acceptable quality for me to use it over the studio version. As can be seen, that gave me the four studio version theme songs right there. As a result, I was force to make every other theme song live, and it worked out for the most part, but I do think that the effects of being forced to do that were most apparently seen with the theme song for this story. Anyways, this has been a surprisingly long commentary, much like Starfall itself, so I think it's time to move onto the endnotes!
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