| abstract
| - The concept for this story came from a list of "unresolved issues" I had listed on one of my pages (which I had created to start working through all of the last bits of information in my universe that I wanted to). One of the unresolved issues was what happens to Elijah from Spindlerun: The Tale of Yajirobe, as well as all of the great samurai swords. Any reader of Spindlerun knows that Elijah's fate is left unclear at the end of that story, so I wanted to show a bit more of what he does afterwards. This story is an atypical take on a Spindlerun epilogue. This should come as no surprise to those who have read the collection, but it wasn't something I actively wanted to do when I created this story - coming up with epilogues for Spindlerun, Dragon Ball Z: In Requiem, and Dragon Ball Z: The Forgotten (three of my biggest, most expansive stories) - it's just how things turned out. This story was set from a very early point. I believe as early as August 15, 2015, I had the idea for this story. I didn't do too much work on this one-shot until I'm a Candy Man was completed. For April 2016, I resolved to only do the first binary in The Heels of the Unknown, which was the spring binary. The next binary, the summer binary, is the one that Down the Well-Worn Road is a part of, and I focused entirely on that binary for May 2016. Cool Cat is of course the other story in the summer binary. However, I didn't even settle on Cool Cat being story #4 until January 11-12, 2016. That meant that I had to wait a while longer to develop some of the summer binary themes and cross-story references, whereas with both spring and winter, I didn't change any of those stories from August 15, 2015 to publication, so I had a firmer idea of where those binaries were going, tonally, thematically, and prose-wise (I won't get into the oft-changed, difficult autumn binary here, but that one was even harder to create than the summer binary). So while I had this story set from an early point, a lot about it was unknown until I started thinking about writing it after I'm a Candy Man was completed. Despite those unknowns, the idea for this story was set from a pretty early point. The description I wrote for this one-shot on August 15, 2015 reads: "3. Elijah - Elijah looks for Makare's blade, noting what happened to the other 5 legendary tamahagane katanas that existed as well. He finds the blade in a bandit hideout being wielded by a bandit chief. Colonel Violet is present during this. Elijah meets several people with black eyes who spook him." So the second half of this story was the original concept (sans the black-eyed people part that I discarded). The first scene with Jakuto Masamune was added in to really allow Elijah to reflect on his past and on the Masamune Brothers' role in his development and his samurai school (which we only get a taste of in Spindlerun), as well as to allow me to delve into some mono no aware style prose. I was also able to expand on the history of samurai in the Dragon Ball universe in this story a lot. A subplot with them, the Makyans, and rest of society, is one of the most important cross-story bits of lore in The Heels of the Unknown, and it really is started in this story, as Down the Well-Worn Road is the first one-shot in this collection to take place on Earth. Aspects of the samurai history, their slow fall and fading into irrelevancy, is one of the major themes of this binary in general, as is the concept of this "forgotten race" being on Earth too - the Makyans. I will note both things in the below endnotes, but do know that when I was conceptualizing this story in late April and early May 2016, I had these things in mind. The Makyan idea wasn't developed too much in this story, but I was at least aware of what I wanted to do with Cool Cat before I wrote this story, so there are a few passing references to them in the text below. Because I had all of May 2016 to work on the summer binary, I made sure to make sure these stories were tonally similar and dealt with similar issues. They are more plot-related with one another than A Shadow on the Wind and I'm a Candy Man are, for the spring binary. Structurally, both Down the Well-Worn Road and Cool Cat have two scenes apiece, just like the first two one-shots. Their two scenes are more balanced than those in the spring binary (the spring binary stories start with a shorter scene and end with a longer scene - the two summer stories don't do that - they both have longer opening scenes than the two spring one-shots). This was not something I planned while writing them - it's just how it turned out. I also was able to focus on more of the actual tea ceremony stuff in this story, since this is the first one to take place on Earth. So the stuff with green tea, the way Jakuto's room is structured, and all that stuff was me having fun with some Japanese-style aesthetics of this collection. 寂 (jaku, or tranquility) is the tea ceremony virtue reserved primarily for the summer binary of The Heels of the Unknown. This idea of tranquility and trying to reach it is a big part of this story, not just for Elijah, but for Jakuto and the Samurai Bandit as well. I deal with this theme in this story, as well as in Cool Cat, more subtly than I dealt with harmony in A Shadow on the Wind. What became apparent to me by this story is that I liked dealing with these themes more subtly, so I followed what I started in I'm a Candy Man and continued on with that for the remainder of this one-shot collection. I wrote the first scene of this story from 11:50 pm on May 15, 2016 until 1:19 am on May 16, 2016. I then edited the first scene from 1:58 pm on May 16, 2016 until 2:45 pm of the same day. I began working on the second scene at 4:27 pm of the same day, and finished it at 6:22 pm. I started editing the second scene at 8:04 pm, and I finished editing (and finished the entire story) at 9:23 pm, posting it to this wiki soon afterwards. I don't really remember writing this story, aside from the fact that the writing went relatively slowly, and this story was harder to write than the last one. But that's always the case with the serious stories - the comedies are far easier for me to write. I took some significant breaks between scenes and editing, just to gain a little distance from the story so that I could analyze what I was writing and make sure that it was what I wanted to not only spend my time creating, but something worthy of being put in my universe. As with A Shadow on the Wind, this story does tie into various aspects of my universe, most notably with the Makyan/Samurai strife and stuff related to the Masamune Brothers and Colonel Violet. Indeed, this story had a chance to be my second story to not feature a canon character (Were It So Easy is, as of writing this commentary, the only story of mine to not feature any canon Dragon Ball characters), so adding in Colonel Violet and her stuff was something very important to me. I'll get into specifics in the below endnotes, related to that stuff. This is the only story in The Heels of the Unknown that kept its original theme song. Along the Road (live) by Radical Face is an interesting song, and it alone was the reason for many of the song choices I made for this one-shot collection. By itself, it works really well for this pensive, "along the road" walk that Elijah goes down at the start of the second scene. It's a good song about isolation, the beauty of humanity, and the ghosts in one's mind. In essence, it's the perfect song for this story. It works on multiple levels with Elijah and the story as a whole, and very well could have been cued at the start of the second scene. This song being live is also important. I like this version of the song more than the studio version, so I decided to use it. In the early formation of the theme songs for the eight stories, I decided that half of the songs should be live and half should be studio versions. My original goal was to make all of the serious stories have live theme songs and all of the comedies have studio songs. This of course changed when I changed both theme songs for the spring binary one-shots. I still tried to maintain half of the songs being live and half being studio versions, but I did not split them by serious or comedy stories. For example, I'm a Candy Man is the comedy story in the spring binary, and it has a live theme song, whereas this one is the serious story for the summer binary. As it turns out, three of the four live theme songs ended up with serious stories anyways, though. Still, I do think it's interesting that "Along the Road" is the only theme song that survived to final publication. I think it says a lot about how "right" this song was from the beginning, and it also shows how I had a good idea of what this story would be about, thematically and tonally, months and months before I wrote it, which perhaps was not the case with any other story in The Heels of the Unknown. Anyways, that's all I can think to share for this opening monologue, so onto the endnotes!
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)