So, I was writing to mess around with Groff typesetting, and I ended up with a potential story idea, that I find really amusing. It is much more comedic than The Festival of Red, I liken it more to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which I dearly love. Of course, I’m nowhere near as good as that writer, but I like how it started off. I’ve copied the first bit below.

Once upon a time, the universe was born.

This event will not be relevant to the story at hand, however, except for that it happened and the universe does still exist. In fact, despite how long the universe has existed, it is still not close to the point where it will eventually cease. This other event, the eventual ceasing of the universe, is also not relevant to this story; in fact, it is even less relevant than its birth, because it has no bearing at all, and it is barely a thought in any of the character’s minds.

What is relevant to this story is a small, insignificant planet, which just so happens to be at the exact center of its own smaller universe. The citizens of this planet remain divided on the topic of being the only sentience in the universe, with many claiming to have seen or interacted with “aliens”, despite the “aliens” going out of their way to avoid the entire system due to the planet’s insufferably pervasive radio emissions.

There are some good tunes, but the closer to the planet one gets, the more garbage one finds. Interplanetary scientists have yet to identify this phenomenon, mostly because they get migraines when getting close to the planet in question.

This planet is called Zorf, and it is currently (at the time of this story) in the “Holy Heck Just Shut Up Already” phase of civilization. This phase usually happens shortly after the discovery of radio, and continues (typically) until the discovery of extraplanetary sentient life. However, Zorf is unique in that even though its inhabitants claim to have discovered such life, they continue to make inane amounts of radio noise, showing a complete disregard for their celestial neighbors.

The inhabitants (Zorfles) have a peculiar way of talking as if they are listening, when in reality they just want to talk into the ether. Well, the ether is about to tell them to shut up and go to bed already.

But first, we must go to our main character.

All stories have at least one main character. This statement is self-evident; a main character is simply a character that is central to the story, so really it is impossible for a story to not center around someone. Perhaps a more daring philosopher might say each story has exactly one main character, who is most important; the fact that this story only has one should not be taken as the author taking a stance on this more risque perspective, but rather that it is hard, when writing, to focus on a lot of people, and I am very lazy.

Moving on, the main character is Arvlxpfbt. Believe me, this name is harder to pronounce correctly than it is to spell. As such, I will be reducing it to simply “Arv”. This name is based on the Xodian tradition of combining all of the consonants from the parents’ favorite fruits (Iorvolox and Pafbite), and sticking a random vowel at the beginning. Trust me, it would be best to leave out Arv’s parents names.