The afterthoughts for “Yuen”, found at this link.

Afterthoughts
This used to be a flashback sequence from the main story of Yuen, but I now relegate it to a side-story because the story is so simple there’s no need to actually relate it in the main story. Also, the art has changed a far bit.

When I first finished this story, I didn’t like it all that much because the message is rather overt. I don’t particularly like it when the “point” of the story has to be told to the audiences via anything written, be it dialogue or narrative voice (as Nezha does near the end). I prefer my messages subtle; to prompt the readers to think about whatever themes I bring up in my stories – but unfortunately I’m beginning to wonder about the merits of such subtlety. Sure, no one gets preached at, but disguising a story with a message as typical genre fare may mean people won’t bother looking beneath the surface because they feel they won’t find anything. I have the feeling the other short story I’m doing now, Blood of Snow, would fall into that category.

And then, there are other points of subtlety that may not make it across to the reader. For example, on page 13, the story tells you Nezha was once a human. What the story doesn’t tell you, is that if Nezha was once mortal, then he would most certainly have had a human mother too. When Nezha considers Lu-wha’s request, he was actually remembering his own mortal mother – and his decision to help Lu-wha was strongly influenced by that. But because I didn’t spell it out in a story when lots of things are spelled out, I wonder if that point just flew over people’s heads.

All in all, I’ll probably keep the same tone of voice when I write the main story of Yuen. Yuen is a rather philosophical story and it will be difficult to help people understand its points if I be too subtle about it.

I decided to add some of my afterthoughts to my short stories (those where I HAD afterthoughts, that is). I’ve been meaning to do this some time, and finally here’s the one for “A Girl Called Marian”, which is more necessary than you’ll think because it’s a prologue to a longer story. The link to the 16-page prologue is here.

Afterthoughts
After this section, the story launches straight into Chapter 1 of N.S.E.W., the main body of the story. I believe this prologue sets the right tone for the actual body of the story, since it deals strongly with loss and regret – themes that are not only central to the main story, but also to the Classic Western. Marian may be full of regret at the end of this story, but that doesn’t mean her life would have been fantastic had she chose to wait for East to come back instead. Women in Westerns have limited choices and career paths. If Marian hadn’t hooked up with the local rich guy for at least a more luxurious and stable lifestyle, the alternative would be to wait as a milkmaid for whenever East decides to come back. She can either fulfil the romantic Western ideal of waiting for the man she loves to return, or she can be more materialistic and choose the man she doesn’t love; but has lots of money. In the end, it seems a choice between love and money, but is really a choice between idealism and realism. The world of N.S.E.W. is not a fairy-tale one.

When I consider Marian (and other women characters in N.S.E.W.), their plight is an important part of the story, something conventional Westerns never address much. Lurking beneath every bounty-huntin’, gun-totin’, frontier-exploring Western story is the fact that women were an oppressed lot in that kind of society. Their problems are usually considered in afterthought, if at all, after the smoke has cleared and heroics has been demonstrated (by the men). I guess this story was written as a rebuke to the typical romantic view of the Wild Wild West, where the good guy shoots the bad buy, saves the girl, ride off into the sunset and live happy ever after.