NekoMizu - What's my story about? I figured eventually someone would have to bring on the tough question. I guess it could be considered light novel-ish, but only in the sense that I considered the story to be way too large and complicated to possibly be written in one or two novels, so instead I basically have it written as if it was cut up into "episodes" of sorts, so each novel would basically contain several of these "episodes", almost like you were watching an anime DVD or reading a manga series. I actually have every segment of the storyline dated, so even when the story jumps back and forth around the timeline, it's not too hard for people to put the jigsaw together by using the dates.

As for what the plot itself is about, it's largely rooted in my own philosophy and experiences, and my world view in general, hence why I refer to it as more like my soul rather than just my story. I've never found a work of fiction that I could completely use as a good comparison to it, but it's got a combination of a lot of different types of fiction. I would probably define its genre most closely as contemporary fantasy, but it's way too complex and overarching to be summed up, going into numerous other genres such as psychological, romance, mystery, horror, action, thriller, philosophical, and supernatural/paranormal, to name just a few. There's some elements that would likely be viewed as sci-fi as well, but without spoiling anything a lot of this is sort of an illusion/deconstruction.

There's many real life elements, in the sense that the characters are generally quite believable as people and several of my contacts have noted how a lot of my story is actually believable and doesn't feel entirely fictitious; even the fictional elements are created in a way that makes them feel frighteningly possible and as a result the world is heavily rooted in reality and feels very similar to our own. I wouldn't really consider the story like the slice of life genre at all beyond that though, since there's no way of comparing my project to a TV Sitcom or something like that, so I really wouldn't count slice of life as one of its genres at all and I personally have no real interest in writing an entirely slice of life plot. There's too many elements from other genres in my project for it to possibly work like that, regardless of its realistic elements.

When I say my project is rooted in reality, I mean the actual plotline isn't heavily reliant on the fictional elements and could have been told without them, and the characters generally work without them, but I chose to include these elements because entirely "realistic" stories usually bore me, especially during fight scenes, and because I delve heavily into a lot of philosophy, psychology, metaphysics, esoteric thought, and the human condition in general. These things can be presented far more effectively with a less conventional setting while still giving a message and premise that's entirely relevant to the real world. There's only one story I've ever actually enjoyed that took a mostly 100% realistic approach to how it was presented, which is the anime called "Naoki Urasawa's Monster". I only watched it a few weeks ago, with it easily becoming one of my top shows of all time, and if I did choose to take my work down a 100% realistic direction it would likely be something like this, but it's not a path I'm pursuing because there's clever ways I can use fictional elements to make the plot more interesting while still completely maintaining the same type of relevant story that anime had.

Honestly, just taking one look at the genre options available in the RP topics here makes me question how I would even register my work.

I also do a lot of deconstruction and reconstruction in it, and it's definitely got a lot of social commentary and political criticism in it as well. I really struggle to find a good way to summarize my project without giving someone content from it, particularly when I have to put it into a genre. I believe the most appropriate term for it would probably be "literary fiction", but it's hard to say for sure since defining a piece of writing under that is always controversial, but the story definitely feels more serious and mature in nature as opposed to just being a piece of fiction.

My fiancé actually has, in her own words, "a hell of a time explaining it" whenever her friends ask about it.

Given that you seem to be into anime, I think you'd potentially like my work at least from a visual perspective. Hard to say beyond that. My story does have elements that would feel like an anime or manga (though to some extent also like a JRPG, as well), there's some elements that I personally don't think I've ever seen anime touch on, though I haven't technically seen/read 'anything' go in some of its places. I'd say that anime/manga/JRPGs/etc inspired some of the "aesthetic" of my work, while I don't really feel like the story itself was directly inspired by anything other than my personal expression.

The heavy-handedness of the narrative and setting is one of the reasons I usually avoid role-playing it on a more public forum. One of the reasons it's difficult to translate my characters over to other topics, on the other hand, is largely caused by the setting having a lot of unique concepts which my characters sort of don't work without. There's probably ways to water down some elements of those concepts for the sake of fitting into some other topic, but how much I have an interest in doing so can be tricky.