A year ago, on 1 April 2025, I wrote and published the short story ‘The Next Justice’, officially kickstarting the Crimson Justice Stories series of short stories and novels that I hope to materialise for the next several years. Despite the short story being, in retrospect, rather unpolished, I still consider it a significant milestone as far as realising Crimson Justice as a proper fictional entity is concerned. The character itself was first conceptualised as the ‘Crimson Crusader’ in 2014, its initial design inspired by the Japanese animation series Samurai Flamenco and the Japanese live-action series Kamen Rider. For several years throughout my notes and drafts, Crimson Crusader—who would later get renamed into ‘Crimson Crusader Justice’, followed by ‘Crimson Justice Exceed’ and now ‘Crimson Justice’ in general—was a ‘Heroic’, a Helmeted Empowered Revolutionary Of Internationalist Communism, a magical masked warrior fighting for communist justice.

However, as can be deduced from both the Crimson Justice artwork shown on my website and the short story itself, Crimson Justice is no longer a masked hero of justice, but instead a magical and literally red-coloured variation of the Chinese Red Guards. This critical design change was made a little over three years ago due to three reasons: the first being that the character being masked made no sense with regards to the ‘magic system’ in my stories; the second being that the idea of communists wearing face-covering helmets goes against the idea that Communists are themselves part of the masses and not some anonymous force divorced from them—which is not the same thing as masking up during a protest or demonstration, mind you, but I digress; and the third being that it would be easier to cosplay as a Crimson Justice that wears a hat and shirt instead of a helmet and body armour. On the second reason, again, I believe it was about how the helmet made Crimson Justice seem less human, or personable. It also felt less ‘Communist-y’ to me, whereas the current design of Crimson Justice clearly evokes the Maoist-era of Chinese revolutionary aesthetics.

While conceptualising and adjusting the character, I have also made numerous attempts in writing novels and short stories concerning Crimson Justice and the world of the Crimson Justice Stories, which for a long time was referred to as either Communist Phantasia Chronicles or Crimson Phantasia Chronicles (CPC). While Crimson Phantasia remains the name I would give to the overall world in which the Crimson Justice Stories series of stories take place, the CPC has become more of a spin-off in the making in favour of focusing all my efforts on writing stories directly revolving around and focusing on Crimson Justice and the many other Crimson Justices out there, whereas beforehand Crimson Justice did not necessarily play a central role—or rather, it played a different role within the world and its stories. It is only very recently that actual written material on and about Crimson Justice has become available to the public, so a lot of this background information might not matter a lot, but to me Crimson Justice and its world have undergone many changes over the last twelve years, and I can only hope it will take me less than twelve years to write and publish the definitive stories about Crimson Justice—nay, about the Crimson Justices, because the multiverse is too small for a single figure to do all the heavy lifting and evil-slaying.

Anyhow, that was some Crimson Justice-related trivia I wanted to share before this day comes to a close. Unfortunately, I was unable to publish a story as a way to both continue the series and commemorate the first anniversary of the Crimson Justice Stories. Blame it on a combination of personal issues, extenuating circumstances, and good ol’ procrastination. That being said, I do hope to publish some new stories in the near future. While I am still proud of myself for writing and publishing ‘The Next Justice’, I also want to give it a proper remake, or rewrite it in a way that recontextualises the initial way this story was written. In case anyone has noticed, I have been working on the layout of the Red Spectre Writings website. I hope to officially launch this website soon.

Justice signing off.

Until victory, always!