Afterword

This is the 11th Hour Bastard.

You might have a lot of question, but first things first—this story was a bit of a remake from the old version, also with the same title. You might find it was hosted on a different site and you could know my Nationality from it.

Don't worry, the gag of smoking the president obviously did not refer to the ones from my country—he's a good man.

Before starting a brand new writing project, I decided to remake my old ones, including this one. The only ones present from the old version was the first chapter, Deathly Stench. The other chapters were from a bunch of other same 'compilation' stories that I didn't really remember much.

In the past, I really just wrote however I want without actually having much fulfillment of it. That's why, aside from the first chapter, I didn't feel much about anything else. My next project The Scenery of Tranquil Places was another one of the sorts and I think it would be the last one.

Compared to the Empty Valley, who still had a few random entries, for The Scenery of Tranquil Places, I'll try to keep it in order so the loose narrative would bring some cohesion towards the end.

After that, I'll try to focus on writing my first actual story.

Now, you might think this story was rather Autobiographical. While it's true there's a lot of elements in it that's inspired by real life, my own life had nothing sad or depressing—it's a pretty normal one. Let's just say, I had this muse when I wrote, which made me felt pain. Like, there's an inspiration that brought me feelings of hurt and loneliness, until I decide to write it the best I could.

The main theme about the Empty Valley was Insanity (or Absurdism) and Alienation. If I remember correctly, it's the same element which made Franz Kafka's works a literary classic. To be honest, I wasn't that much of Kafka fan. I read Metamorphosis, which was one of the few classical works of literature which made me cry. I also read the bits from The Castle, but generally, I found them a bit hard to read at times, the same with much classical literature out there. That's how I tend to prefer Light / Web novels because it's easier to understand the contents.

I didn't remember how absurdism affects my work. I didn't really read much of that stuff. There's Slaughterhouse Five and Breakfast of Champions by Vonnegut. I read Cosmicomics, Invisible Cities and Italian Folktales by Italo Calvino—couldn't really get into If on a winter's night a traveler though.

After a while, I kinda got off the classical literature and went back to anime. My chapters generally had an anime-like theme. I'm a fukken weeab.

I was also inspired by Monty Python and the game Planescape; Torment. After finishing PS; T, all the concept for The Scenery of Tranquil Places just came to mind. Now I just have to flesh it out.

Eh, I don't know what to talk again.

Oh right.

The main highlight of this story was about coming in terms with your Insanity and Loneliness. Rather than holding it in and taking medications, the main character decides to embrace his madness, even if it would result in him breaking apart.

He was lonely because of his insanity and that no person out there could accept him.

The root of his problem happens to be the insanity himself, how he came in terms with it gave me a quote from this story that I really like.

"What he received was 'Insanity'. The kind which once torn him apart and leaving him damaged, would heal and make him whole again. It's simply the matter of how you use it."

It was that same Insanity which started his journey, gave him a purpose and left him with a satisfying outcome.

He also took care of his loneliness by realizing, what he sought wasn't appreciation from people but him acknowledging his own efforts. He used to think, that only the praise from others did matter.

Even when the denizens of multiverse supported him, he still felt empty. That's how he kept on searching to think, the solution was inside him all this time. Through the mirror which was his stories, he accepted the things he abandoned and wished the best for them.

In the end, this was just a simple story with nothing philosophical going on. A simple experiment on how I wish to move my writing on the completely random absurdism to form a loose narrative which builds itself up in the end.

It might either be a success or failure for the others, but for me, I'm very satisfied as I was able to achieve something I couldn't in the last version.

I finally wrote the perfect ending befitting for the concept which built itself from my own random writings.

Well, I'm a bit discouraged sometimes since the views were getting low as the chapter counts went by, but I guess it couldn't be helped. This kind of writing wasn't popular in the first place anyway and judging it with the number of views I got, I say I did pretty well, I guess?

Different from the other Authors out there, I wasn't especially talented in writing. I had to spend so many years and so many 'failed' attempts at writing and posting shitload of stories before I finally notice what I truly want to write.

I built my own foundation from the scratch by writing the random stuff again and I based my writings around it. The things involving surrealism, absurdism, and stuff, simply because I find reading all the things to give more realism too bothersome.

For example, if I wrote Isekai stories and wrote about gun stuff just for the fun, what if I wasn't interested in the mechanism of guns in the first place? If I wrote them, it most likely wouldn't involve a realistic another world, but something with a distorted internal logic, like, you could just create the gun with your mind and the mental image was what gave it power.

I pick something surrealistic and played with 'unreliable narrator' tropes pretty often so I could just say, maybe he just didn't notice anything etc or the world was just absurd; it was made that way.

Well, this story didn't get that popular someone managed to point that stuff out.

Probably the absurd/surreal theme might continue on until I manage to get a good grasp on the standard ones. Well, don't blame me for this, I had a full-time job and have no time to read on stuff I find boring and difficult to understand just so my stories could appease you. Please understand, my IQ wasn't that high.

That to be said, I welcome criticisms and reviews as usual, although I didn't hope much for this story. Know that my writing style was very rigid and inflexible as I found writing your usual stuff harder than your general Author. So the best I could do was taking it as a suggestion and let it sink bit by bit rather than adapting right away.

As an end note, many thanks to all of you who actually come this far, even if you just skip all the way through the end.

I couldn't say how much, but I like to check the views once in a while and even if it were just numbers, it was still a good morale boost for me to keep writing and ending the story the best I could.

Thanks for the kind person who left me comments. It finally gave me the last push I need to write the closure chapters.

Well, that would be all. See you later on my next story, I hope I could write and end it just as well or hopefully even better.