Story of Keshen

How to Analyze These Stories

These stories are meant to both educate and entertain. If you just want to read them for their entertainment value, please go ahead. I don’t want you to feel pressured when reading this, as it is more intended for entertainment than education, and I only ask that you do the following things: read, enjoy and give me advice or ask questions. If you choose to read this analytically, however, I would like to ask that you keep a few things in mind.

First, I want to give you a disclaimer: I am a human, and I refuse to incorporate AI into my work. You will also likely be among the first to read my stories once I publish them. I will try to give myself as much time to write and edit my stories as I need to, so hopefully my work will be understandable and meaningful. If not, I would like to ask you to write to me about any questions or comments you may have. A lot of what you tell me will be unintended, so I thank you in advance for letting me know, but I also want you to know that I will be purposefully writing some inconsistencies into the stories as time progresses. I say this because I want you to understand that my responses might be vague or frustrating if that is the case, so I want you to have a guidebook for what to do if you have questions.

I hope that my stories are both subtle enough to leave room for interpretation and clear enough for there not to be too many questions, but I do have some things I want you to consider when reading them:

  1. Who is the author? I am the only writer for this project, but part of its purpose is to get you to think about perspectives on different events. Because of this, I will be writing using different POVs. Sometimes the stories will be folktales, sometimes they will be written in the voice of a person within the world and sometimes it will be something else. I want you to ask yourself who is speaking and how that affects your interpretation of the story, if at all.
  2. How does this affect other stories? As an anthology, this series will be written in the form of multiple stories covering different topics, themes and messages. Each story will therefore have additions to the canon, sometimes revealing more information that affects previous stories, sometimes laying out information that will be relevant in future ones. With each story that comes out, try to remember the events of the previous stories to see how your understanding of the featured world is affected, if at all.
  3. How are things different? Covering several centuries of history, this series will show a lot of societal and cultural change. Think about what characters from one period of history might think about events from another. Ask if the changes you see happening are good or bad, and for whom.
  4. What if they’re wrong? The narration of this series will be unreliable, so instead of just taking everyone at their word, think about what it would mean if the things you are reading are wrong. Analyze what characters are saying and look through other stories to see if they are right. Think about whether the ways characters or events are depicted are accurate or biased, and try to think about the perspectives different people and groups might have on the same events.

I hope that these questions are already obvious to you, but in a world where leaders and politicians are advocating for the loss of critical thinking and disinterest in learning, I want to make sure that I can cultivate an audience that can both think critically and enjoy learning. I do not want this to feel like homework, but I do want to encourage you to think about the content you engage with. Because of this, I want you to apply these same questions to everything you see in the real world as well.

I do not want you to take these questions and assume everything is wrong or a lie, however. I want you to think and do research with an open mind whenever you engage with any new information you come across in the world. I hope that you can get in touch with other readers and have discussions with them while you read my works, as I believe all learning is best done in groups. However, I understand if you just want a story to escape into instead of worrying about the modern world, so I hope that at the very least my work can provide such a refuge.