What Is The Setting Of 'Call Me Jester'?

The setting of 'Call Me Jester' is a gritty, neon-lit metropolis where the underground rules. Picture towering skyscrapers hiding back-alley speakeasies, where the protagonist, a rogue comedian by night and vigilante by later night, navigates crime syndicates with punchlines sharper than knives. The city's divided into districts—the opulent Gold Quarter where elites turn blind eyes, the slums of Dusk Hollow where deals go sour by moonlight, and the neutral Zone, a lawless entertainment district where our jester holds court. The tech level's retro-futuristic: holographic billboards flash next to analog surveillance, and the mob uses AI to predict stand-up routines while cops still carry revolvers. It's a world where laughter's the deadliest weapon.

'Call Me Jester' unfolds in a dystopian circus of a city, blending noir aesthetics with absurdist chaos. The primary location is New Babel, a vertical urban sprawl where social classes are literally stacked—the wealthy live in floating sky-pods, the middle class cram into mid-level hive apartments, and the impoverished scrape by in the toxic 'Basement,' a subterranean layer where sunlight's a myth. Time operates strangely here; the elite buy extra hours through a black-market time economy, while street clocks run backward to disorient the poor. The protagonist's comedy club, The Last Laugh, sits on a decaying pier that shifts locations nightly due to tidal algorithms.

What makes the setting unique is its rule of irony: the more outrageous a lie you tell, the more likely it manifests physically. The mob boss rides a unicorn made of tax documents, and the police chief's mustache actually grows when he lies. The Jester's jokes warp reality—a quip about 'raining knives' might spawn actual blades—but only if the audience laughs. It creates this tension where humor is both survival tactic and societal destabilizer. The author brilliantly mirrors our world's media circus through this surreal lens.

Imagine if Vegas and Gotham had a baby raised by TikTok—that's 'Call Me Jester.' The story bounces between three main locales: the glitzy Carnival District where casinos use emotion-reading algorithms to rig games, the crumbling Theatre District where sentient AI playwrights rewrite history nightly, and the Sewer Labyrinth where exiled clowns run a black market for stolen jokes. The entire city's powered by 'mirth energy' harvested from forced laughter, which explains the dystopian vibe beneath the glitter.

Seasons don't exist; instead, the city cycles through 'comedy genres' like a mood ring. One week it's slapstick—gravity fluctuates, pies materialize out of nowhere. Next week shifts to dark satire, where politicians literally stab each other in the back during debates. The Jester's power comes from manipulating these genre shifts, weaponizing tropes like laugh tracks or punchline timing. It's less about physical location and more about the psychological space comedy creates. The setting evolves as the protagonist's act does, going from open-mic dive bars to viral holographic stages where audiences vote with emojis that alter reality.