novelraw Afterword
Afterword
So, this is the end.
This might be a bit of a ramble, but I’m just going to voice my thoughts and feelings toward This Young Master is not Cannon Fodder.
This Young Master was actually my second serious NovelBin. The first was more of a slice of life story I started on NovelBin, but I kind of burned myself out writing seventy thousand words in three to four weeks.
Like Adelheid, This Young Master was something I started as a break from my first story. This was during COVID, and I started writing just to find something to do.
I was consuming a lot of cultivation stories and liked one story. I can’t recall the exact name, but it was something like Young Master Template something. Many of you likely read it, but it was a hilarious parody that gave me a lot of laughs. But there was one aspect that I didn’t like. It made light of the many tropes and expressed contempt, in my opinion at least.
It felt like someone who didn’t understand the genre just read through the general tropes and just made fun of them. Nothing against the author, and I could be wrong, but those were my feelings at the time.
So, I started This Young Master is not Cannon Fodder story!
Yep, I originally wrote this Young Master as a parody. I’m sure those who stayed from the beginning knew about this. Honestly, I failed at this objective. Although I poked fun at the tropes and played with them, it became a straight cultivation story as more chapters were released.
Part of it was because I had a schedule, and I needed to keep writing, and I was not skilled or creative to continue the parody aspects of the genre. I still tried to twist some tropes, but it became less prominent and prominent.
I don’t think I’ll hard-veer into the parody aspect if I write another cultivation story.
Parodies heavily rely on comedy, and I don’t think I can main the comedy genre. Maybe a few laughs here and there are fine for me, or comedy of irony, but I don’t think I’m suited for gut-busting laughs.
Comedy wasn’t the only aspect, but the romance in the story could be a lot better.
I had grown tired of those romances where the protagonist had to destroy sects or go against the heaven/world just to get into a relationship, so I wanted to do none of that.
Not to say such romances are impossible in the cultivation genre, but I did not execute them well enough. I am well aware that many readers do not like Daoyi as a love interest, but I’m a bit of a stubborn bastard and got trucking through the story. Part of it was that I had already written so much after the establishment, and another part was that I did not want to change my decision.
Those are the two biggest weaknesses and problems of my story that I can think of. Well, aside from the deteriorating quality of the story as it progressed.
To be honest, I thought I would only write a maximum of four hundred chapters before the end. I kept raising the number as it became clear to me that my initial goals were untenable.
And so, This Young Master is not Cannon Fodder ended with over seven hundred chapters!
I had a clear idea for the first half of the story and for the end. When Tianyi reached the emperor and sovereign level, I had less of an idea of what to do.
Remember the murals depicting other religions when Tianyi wandered into the ruins of the Immortal Court in one of the first arcs? I had planned to do an inter-mythology war? That didn’t pan out.
I shifted that particular aspect to my Tongtian NovelBin. I haven’t written it yet, but it’s planned.
There’s also the six-eared monkey in the Demon Cage Realm. I originally planned for him to be the Six-Eared Macque that impersonated Sun Wukong in Journey to the West, but I never used him. He should have been prominent in the final Divine Beast-Human War.
I sprinkled many plot points throughout the story that I ended not using.
Even the penultiamte arc regarding Yinian differed from my original plans. It was suppose to follow Yinian, but I ended focusing on Longyu instead. When I adapt this to a volume for Amazon, I definitely plan on writing Yinian’s point of view. There might be a dedicated volume just for his POV, or maybe it’ll be his and Longyu’s POV.
That brings me to the ending.
I never planned for a perfect ending. I grew tired of all the cultivation stories where the protagonist reaches the height of his cultivation system and fixes eveerything. I mean, that is in line with the genre, but I always such endings weren’t impactful enough and less me feeling disatisfied. Such endings feel hollow and makes me think less of the story, or I won’t think of the story as much as the one with imperfect endings.
Tianyi accomplished his goal, but he doesn’t get to enjoy. At least not with his memories. I’ll leave it up to the reader whether or not they think Tianyi’s reincarnation remembers or he lives a new life with new memories.
And that brings me to my closing thoughts. It wasn’t perfect, and it was riddled with problems, but I’m still proud of the story and myself. I wrote over seven hundred chapters and well over a million words! It may be common for NovelBin authors, but for me, it’s a giant milestone.