Dominion’s End Volume 1: Raining Stars at World’s End
Original novel in Chinese by: 御 我 (Yu Wo)
Epilogue: Afterword—translated by Elkin (proofread by Arcedemius; C/E edited by Doza & lucathia)
The appearance of Dominion’s End was as shocking as the end of the world for me. When I first got struck by inspiration, I immediately started tapping away (sound of typing) and wrote feverishly every day until ungodly hours like I was nuts. But I had almost finished writing 70–80% of an entire book after a week, so it was no different from being crazy.
Even the various names came up smoothly. In the past, I’ve had to open up a Chinese name generator and spend half the day just choosing surnames and given names, but I hardly had to use it this time. Even the title just popped into my mind.
Dominion’s End [Zhong Jiang, 終疆]: “zhong/終” means “end,” while “jiang/疆” means “territory.” In this context, I used it to mean the world, so “Dominion’s End” actually just means “The End of the World.” Using simplistic titles like “I Am a Knight”1 would cause the author to be ridiculed for being uneducated, so I end up having to twist the titles around to pretend like I’ve got some semblance of sophistication.
When I came up with the title, I took the opportunity to look up the meaning of “jiang” and discovered it could be used as a surname. So that’s the story behind the surname of the three Jiang siblings. Come to think of it, the name of the male protagonist—er, sort-of-male protagonist—Jiang Shuyu (疆書宇), sprung to mind just as quickly.
With “Shuyu” as a base, the big brother’s and little sister’s names were easy as well. The big brother is the family’s pillar of strength holding up the sky, so naturally he became “Shutian” [書天, with “tian” meaning sky]. For the younger sister, I used “jun/君” from “Guan Weijun” [關薇君] to make Jiang Shuyu reminisce about the past. That is how the Jiang siblings were named.
It didn’t stop there, either. I had accumulated bits and pieces of plot, to the point where I had almost finished planning out the entire series, and it was just waiting to be written.
This all went so smoothly I was really kind of freaked out, but I had the feeling that I definitely had to write this book, Dominion’s End, and the Jiang siblings were going to be born no matter what.
Rain will fall when the heavens dictate, and your mother will marry when she wants to; some things are just meant to be. There was no helping it, so I let them be born. That was how this baby of mine, Dominion’s End, appeared. Fortunately, it was a very easy delivery for the author. It had its entire life planned out ahead of it from the moment it was born, so all that was left was for the parents to foot the bill for school fees.
My only worry was that there were rather a lot of combat scenes. Because I write out fights by first thinking out the movements in my head, then describing them, writing those scenes was like having a battle fought out in my brain. This really gave me headaches to no end.
But when I was posting the story online, the readers really enjoyed the fight scenes, which was totally unexpected for me. I even got comments like “Jiang Shuyu is the coolest protagonist,” so I could only keep fighting on.
Because this series is in first person, to allow everyone to see the stories of characters besides Shuyu, each volume will have side stories. This volume’s side story, “The Journey Home,” is about Dàgē.
The side stories’ length or number of parts is all up in the air, and it’s possible that one volume will have quite a few side stories. Everything will depend on when and where different characters clamor for an appearance. Alternatively, if you have a character you’re fond of, feel free to leave a comment on my website as inspiration for the side stories.
Originally, I wanted to have the entire “The Journey Home” in the first volume, but I realized I couldn’t stop writing. So I ended up splitting it into halves. Fingers crossed that there won’t be a third part, because while Dàgē is plenty cool, other characters want their turn in the spotlight too.
“One Day in the Apocalypse” was a bolt out of the blue, but you can more or less guess where the story is going from it (actually, not at all) and the true nature of various characters (this one’s more believable). But because this was a spontaneous idea, how many parts there’ll be or whether there’ll even be a second part are all unknown.
Aside from that, this is a serial story, which means none of the volumes will have its own ending other than the final one. And the overall series will be quite long, at least seven or eight volumes.
Sigh, I don’t know if I’ve missed anything. But if you have any questions, please feel free to ask on my website.
Hope everyone enjoys Dominion’s End!
By Yu Wo
Website: http://blog.xuite.net/kim1984429/yuwo
Plurk: http://www.plurk.com/pinkcorpse
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/iamYuwo
Are [Character Introductions] like these really okay?
Jiang Shuyu
18 years old. A beautiful young man. The middle child of the three siblings. Because he was hit on the head by a falling tile, his inside was switched to a female soul. His body is a sis-con, while his soul is a bro-con. He likes both women with hot figures and handsome, muscular men. He is frequently troubled by his own queer tastes and lack of shame.
Jiang Shujun
15 years old. A pretty girl. The youngest of the three siblings. She is gentle, cute, wise, forgiving, lively, and adorable (to Shuyu). She loves Èrgē the most. She looks gentle and frail on the outside, but she dares to challenge Dàgē and fights to protect her Èrgē, to prevent him from being teased to tears by Dàgē.
Jiang Shutian
27 years old. The mighty Dàgē. The eldest of the three siblings. There’s no need to describe all the many ways he is awesome and mighty. There’s no need to describe the various ways he could take over the world. He’s a complete boss-level character. He is extremely biased toward his own people and extremely merciless toward outsiders. His dìdi and mèimei are his heaven and earth respectively. Not someone you want to mess with.
Footnotes
1 “I am a Knight”: The intended meaning behind The Legend of Sun Knight’s Chinese title, Wuming Qishi (吾命騎士), which was worded to sound more sophisticated.