Don’t be an idiot: read first the short story this post-mortem is about: The Municipal Aid Registry.

This new short isn’t a one-off. Over the years, as I thought back on what writing of mine brought me the most genuine joy during its production, the answer was troubling: likely the most fun I’ve ever had writing fiction was during that wild time I wrote my two-novels-long fanfiction of Re:Zero, the Japanese series of light novels slash anime. Even though I was mostly constrained by the existing characters and general plot of the original narrative, I felt creatively freer than ever before or since.

When I tried to understand why, I think it had to do with the same reason I’ve mostly only been engaged by manga in these last ten years of my life. The combination of colorful, larger-than-life characters engaged in creative endeavors, characters don’t behave with each other in the constantly cynical, conflicting manner than most Western fiction does it, was intoxicating for me. I wanted that feeling of returning to a story, whether to read or write it, merely to hang out with that ensemble of characters again. To see how they interact with each other in peculiar ways. I experience that again whenever I reread the chapters of that fanfiction (for example, part 52 and part 55).

Somehow, writing those stories always allowed me to be as funny, silly and ridiculous as I felt like it, and the story would accommodate it. There were some genuinely poignant moments too, like a sequence when the protagonist fucks up when trying to kill himself to trigger his “return by death” ability, only to end up with the lower half of his body missing, and all the people in his life either disappointed in him or despairing by his constant attempts to keep killing himself. Recently, someone from Serbia read through most of the latter half of my fanfiction, so thanks for that. Knowing that someone out there, someone whose stupid face I will never have to see, deliberately sought my writing, that warms my black, rotting heart.

Anyway, at this point of my life, so burdened by everything mentally that often I don’t know how I can keep going, I don’t feel like I can commit to any creative project long-term, but I want to do this: a cycle of short stories that each push the boundary of the same fantasy world further. It will involve possibly repeating characters that are peculiar, larger than life, and play off well against each other. Sometimes, a short story may lead into another, either immediately after the previous one or some time down the line. Maybe I will want to develop another aspect of that world. Maybe some short story will see me gathering main characters from previous stories for a collaborative endeavor. My goal is to write something joyful and silly in the way I prefer it, that will make me want to write more of it or reread the existing parts if only to hang out with those characters again. So I’m doing the whole Re:Zero thing again, but with original characters and in a likely plotless manner, at least when it comes to grand, overarching plots, which never were quite my cup of tea anyway, whether some dead witch poured her saliva in it or not.

To produce this short I’m doing the post-mortem about, I relied on the Living Narrative Engine, my mature Javascript app that allows me to play through fictional scenarios. Every time I come up with a scenario, I’m partly prompted by the desire to add a new system to the app. Over time, I’ve developed systems to move from place to place, to interact with other characters, to pick up objects, to read readable objects, to consume the contents of consumable objects, etc. Although I don’t want to commit to much, I must say that the next short story is going to follow Vespera Nightwhisper’s efforts against demonic poultry, which will involve me finally implementing proper weapon-wielding (in a way that requires grabbing with one or more hands, and prevents illogical actions when your appendages are occupied), weapon attacks depending on the type of weapon, and possibly also skill-based successes (so that the characters don’t insta-hit poultry, or get insta-hit by them). I don’t know how the story is going to play out, but that’s part of the fun.

In recent posts, I wrote that I was developing a complex GOAP system (Goal-Oriented Action Planning) to involve autonomous, non-LLM intelligences in my scenarios. I’m on my way there, but I realized that I need a much wider array of actions to be implemented in order for GOAP to fully make sense, so I’m parking that for now. Also, I’m mostly focusing on what the scenarios actually require; when I saw myself introducing hunger mechanics even though no scenario would use them for now, that was the point I realized that I had to step back and focus on what actually brought me joy. And I need a lot of it.

This morning, the moment I finished editing this new short story titled “The Municipal Aid Registry,” my brain was already buzzing with ideas for the next one. That’s the proper state of affairs.

Anyway, as usual, I hope you enjoyed this new short story about a bunch of weird fantasy people. If not, go fuck yourself.