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walks-the-ages · 8 months

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Honestly? This article is 100% accurate to the various issues I myself have with some of the themes in the books!

You can love a story and still acknowledge its flaws, without ""canceling"" the work or the author; being aware of unintended, harmful messages in a work is an important step in critical thinking, and ensuring you're not internalizing those harmful messages, especially if they're common tropes in fantasy and scifi--

one of those common tropes the article talks about is how the Fell are, innately, intrinsically, and Evil Race with no redeeming qualites.

What are the Fell?

They are cannibals.

They are kidnappers.

They are rapists.

They only steal from other cultures, creating nothing of value on their own merit.

Their features, as one race, one drop in the bucket of the Three Worlds, are described as "distorted, savage"

Their most distinctive feature, their most defining trait, is that all of them are black.

Their groundling form being white skinned makes their "true" form being black all the more insidious, because while clearly unintended, that sends the message that they are all the more dangerous, because they are these savage, black monsters disguising themselves as harmless, beautiful white people, so they can trick their way into settlements to wipe out the innocent people in the city.

You cannot ignore how that reads to an audience who are a real life victim of these kinds of real life conspiracies, no matter how clearly unintended the parallel is -

- we are all products of our society at large, and that includes unconsciously absorbing these fears that we're exposed to every day, either directly from far right conspiracy theorists, or in media like this, where a race is purely evil because they're just Born That Way, and that slowly builds up over time as its in media, and is a subtle foundation for every real world prejudice you can think of; because if you've been told all your life growing up that people can be inherently bad based on who/what they are, then you're going to be a lot more susceptible to believing it in real world --

Do you believe all homeless people are lazy or dangerous?

Do you think people with psychosis or multiple personalities are dangerous serial killers?

Do you pass a Muslim man on the sidewalk and cross the street to avoid him?

Did you answer yes to any of the above? Or hesitate?

You know anyone that would immediately answer 'yes' to any of these questions?

THAT is why it is so important to think critically about the media we consume.

Acknowledging flaws in media does not mean you need to tear something to shreds and dance on its grave.

Mythcreants focused "on the negative" because they are a blog dedicated to reviewing and critiquing world building, and they have plenty of amazing articles where you can read more about the importance of avoiding these "evil race" tropes on their blog if you want more perspectives, especially from POC who are impacted every day by the prevalence of these tropes.

The Fell would have avoided this trope with one simple solution, and that would have been to show more pure Fell who are just normal people, horrified at what the corrupted Flights are doing in the area around the Reaches.

Consolation and her flight do not count, because she's the Raksura equivalent of an Orc/Elf Hybrid taking after their Elf parent and leading Orcs on the path to goodness by virtue of their noble, pure Elf blood being able to override the evil, tainted orc blood.

Here's the relevant quote from the article:

The Fell aren’t just a group that does bad things. The book is very clear that being evil is in their nature. They’re compared to parasites: feeding off of others and never creating anything for themselves. Except in this case, “feeding” means that they literally eat their enemies. They also constantly stink, which is about the most visceral way to signal that they’re bad.

We’ve explained the problem with this trope before, but the short version is that when stories cast an entire species or race as evil, it reinforces real-life ideas about how certain people are inherently bad. It’s also just hard to believe. The Fell are so cartoonishly destructive that it’s difficult to see how they could have evolved that way, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we learn in later books that an evil god made them that way just because.

On the bright side, the Fell aren’t obviously coded as people of color the way orcs often are, so in that way, they aren’t quite as bad as what Tolkien got up to.* But on the less bright side, their big evil plan is that they want to “breed” with the Raksura to produce powerful offspring.

Oh boy. So now we have an evil species whose main goal is to rape the good guys. I know I said the Fell aren’t obviously POC coded, but that sounds an awful lot like what white supremacists say about anyone with darker skin than them. It also casts the heroes as not just trying to stop rape, but also being disgusted at the idea of any mixing between Fell and Raksura. Gotta keep the bloodlines pure, I guess!

I saw others commenting on the "underpowered groundlings" topic and it only takes a few seconds of reviewing the races we meet in the whole series to realize -- "oh yeah. The Raksura and the Fell are not only the only shapeshifters we meet, they're also the only race who can fly under their own biological power other than the Dwei".

There's dozens of groundling races described and met, but not one of them have wings and can fly? really?

Just imagine for me, if the Three Worlds was as populated in the air as it was on the ground.

Imagine for me Moon meeting all these different fliers growing up but still not quite fitting in.

Traveling the world on the wing with these various races but becoming so lonely to interact with groundlings (or needing to rest in his groundling form and being left behind as the flock continues to migrate) as well and always unable to find a balance of the two

instinctively seeking out the dynamics of the Aeriat/Arbora without knowing what he's looking for. It makes seeing a court for the first time all the more emotional-- he finally, truely feels like he's found his people

The Raksura, clearly, are predators. But they're the only predators we meet who are "good"-- all other predator races are demonized as cannibal savages who can't interact with normal groundling society because they might eat the other races (including Raksura) and thus are relegated to slums and the outskirts of settlements.

I love the Books of the Raksura, so much so that I am planning on writing my own novel inspired by them (much like how Murderbot was inspired by Imperial Radch), and my deep love of the series is also what drives me to be aware of its flaws.

The writer of the article is not "rageposting"-- they're giving a well-thought out, analytical response to the first book about which tropes they spotted that made them uncomfortable, because spotting these tropes is literally part of their job.

Consorts can be taken against their will, Consorts can be Stolen like a piece of meat, instead of kidnapped like a person because in Raksuran society, Consorts are there to look pretty, be trophy husbands, and make babies; outside of Moon, (who wants to take action and be in the thick of things instead of sitting safe and sound at home) and Shade, who is afraid to have kids (because his evil tainted corrupted Fell blood would automatically mean his kids are going to be evil and tainted and corrupted by their Evil Heritage) --

-- outside of these two outliers, we never see any young Consorts who are dissatisfied at their lot in life, which has been decided for them since the day they were born purely based on their gender.

Chime is literally forced away from his friends and family, shamed and disparaged, (they don't even let him help pitch a tent!) because suddenly he's a warrior and thus lesser, incompetent, lazy, because the Warriors supposedly exist to physically protect the Colony, but we only ever see them acting like immature children who have to be rescued by Jade or Moon in most of the combat situations we see them in, and they're looked down on as lazy and childish by both the Royal Aeriat as well as the Arbora, who despite living with these people their entire lives and hundreds of generations previously are still out here genuinely believing that the Aeriat are lazy instead of realizing there's an actual, physical reason that the Aeriat need to sleep more.

Only female Warriors are ever allowed to be calm, collected, and capable of holding responsibilities, wheras males are seen as either childish, incompetent, or overaggressive

The Raksura dynamics between genders and castes are the inverse of the usual fantasy dynamics of sexism, constantly calling for women to be quiet and demure and passive, only good for making babies and being married off to form alliances -- while inversing the trope is fine and dandy, the fact that no one outside Moon ever seriously questions or outright bucks these sexist expectations for them speaks volumes; it's less that the Raksuran society is flawed, and more like those flaws are never confronted and are actively shown to be good and natural .

Even the fact that Indigo Cloud got it's name from a Stolen Consort (Cloud), which deeply freaks Moon out (you know, like it should) was retconned into a simple romance story where the equivalent of a woman in an unhappy marriage runs away with a handsome hunk who doesn't care about the political consequences of their union as long as it makes the woman happy-- and even before the characters knew the actual facts of Indigo and Cloud being a consensual Stealing, everyone was dismissive of Moon's disturbed and apprehensive reaction, dismissing his misgivings and fears as being unfounded.

There's more I can say about the issues I have with the Books of the Raksura, but I've already lingered over this post for like 2 hours now and don't want Reddit to eat it lol.

TL;DR: acknowledging flaws and harmful messages in your favorite media does not mean you hate it, acknowledging flaws in writing is an important part of critical thinking and media analysis. You can acknowledge the flaws/iffy themes in the media you love and still *love* it

#long post #bold text #no id #raksura #books of the raksura #media analysis #critical thinking #capslock #large text

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cannibalcaprine · 10 months

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hi i made a shitty unedited poem for u about flesh :) idk when god slipped in there its the religious trauma ig

The flesh between my teeth is a beautiful feeling.

The muscle and tissue I'm tearing that's rotting in my diastema is a wonderful sensation.

I would not trade a bone carved knife to give up what my mouth was meant to. Meant to rip. Meant to carve. Meant to shear and tear and put fear in those whose organs are being chased by their blood down my throat.

I am a feral creature, just as you were meant to be. This world, there's nothing left of it for me.

The world will shun me. Has shunned me. Has killed and tormented me for my desire of the flesh, the fundamentally forbidden act of cannibalism we all so desperately desire. Pickling the meat off someone so disgustingly fresh, disgusting flesh, flesh still warm, and flesh still luscious. Blood still pumping and my hunger still swelling. The surge of blood as it drips down my mouth and out my chest. Out your chest. For we have become blood brothers, and this holy house has transformed into a blood brothel.

The lavender and honey in the air around me does not make this forest the land of mana, nor does your sacrifice make the carpet holy, but your bile and fluids permeating my nose and mouth seems to make my god act upon this intent of incision and decided this airy land has become the next valley of sodomy for you and I have been struck down as pillars of salt, rotten for eternity, and are only here to dwell in the food of another, season the meat for one another. We are connected, fellow brother, for I have eaten you and tasted the imperfections and unintended flesh, and you, my friend, have felt the rambunctious stare of an animal cannibal.

very good, anon! incredible work

good flesh, good viscera, good blood!

#•#for later #flesh

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the-paper-shredder · 3 months

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Wick: Frostbite AU

So, after years of being on here (and my biggest interest getting some traction on here too) I'm finally doing a post on one of my AUs for Wick! Hooray!

Now you may be wondering, which one? Well, I'm introducing one I mentioned nearly 3 years ago, the Frostbite AU! As seen in the title, lol. Now the current version of it is slightly different from how I described it beforehand, so I'll start with that I guess.

In late 2014, Duncan along with Travis and Sam, do a ritual on the grounds of the Weaver property. It predictably wasn't done right, thus backfiring; they get put in an alternate timeline where they're in the winter of 1927, and the Weaver family never died. However, even with that, when the trio meets the family, everything just feels so wrong.

To put it in simpler terms: time travel and a cannibal cult. You heard that right. Anyway, time to go on with the characters.

Duncan: ➵ Full name is Duncan Wallace. ➵ 16 years old. ➵ Sam's his younger brother and they have a complicated, mostly negative relationship. ➵ Very secretive about why he's going to such great lengths (i.e. the ritual) just for knowledge on Wick/the Weaver family. But he did not expect to be sent to an alternate past. ➵ Looks calm on the outside but on the inside he's freaking out about being in 1927. This combined with his anger issues, stubbornness, and great ambition makes him a force to be reckoned with. ➵ Sees Travis more as a frenemy due to some stuff Travis did a month beforehand.

Travis: ➵ 15 years old. ➵ The ritual was technically his idea, but he didn't really mean it seriously. It just happened that Duncan took it seriously. ➵ Doesn't know what the fuck he's doing at all times. He's just trying to hide how anxious he is about being stuck in 1927 by continuing to act how he usually does, a.k.a. talkative and goofy. ➵ Still sees Duncan as a best friend. ➵ Didn't really know Sam until the ritual, so he's attempting to make friends with him (a.k.a. one of the few connections to normalcy he can find). ➵ Admittedly kinda terrified of the Weaver family lol.

Sam: ➵ Full name is Samuel Wallace. ➵ 14 years old. ➵ Duncan's younger brother. Once again, a complicated, mostly negative relationship. ➵ Only got dragged into this because he was wondering what the hell Duncan and Travis were doing on private property in the middle of the night and he's also interested in urban legends. ➵ Literally so pissed about being stuck in 1927 with no way out (pun unintended) and he's making it everyone's problem. ➵ A loner and rather quiet. When he actually opens up, he's sarcastic with an eccentric sense of humor, along with being idealistic and impatient.

John & Mary: ➵ In their early 40s. ➵ With Pastor McAlroy's disappearance, Mary has pretty much taken over the role of religious leader for the small town of Pine Creek. ➵ Mary is also known for giving people in need both shelter and food. ➵ Surprisingly enough, Mary is not totally neglectful of her children. However, she is 100% emotionally abusive and manipulative. Hope she dies ← is literally the writer. ➵ John has been emotionally shut down/repressed for over a decade, even before his time in WWI. ➵ Less active of a parent than Mary, but John still takes care of his children's needs nonetheless.

Benny: ➵ 17 years old. ➵ Practically Mary's right–hand man, trusting her completely even if it's mostly out of fear. ➵ Often helps around town due to his strength, his biggest acquaintances being the Edwards family. ➵ Worried mess who still continues to preach religious stuff both from the bible and what Mary tells him. His only escape from such an anxious life is napping whenever he gets the chance. ➵ Not particularly close with his siblings, but still cares for them. ➵ Towers over pretty much everyone, even his parents.

Tim & Tom: ➵ 14 years old. Tom is a few minutes older than Tim. ➵ Actually Mary's nephews and the Weaver kids' cousins, but are close enough that they're considered basically twin sons and brothers. ➵ Were isolated from society until they were 9. With basic life skills and common knowledge taught by Caleb, they were placed in the same grade as him once put into school. ➵ However, due to Tom's illness, he's often left at home and Tim brings him the notes after school. Tim, along with Caleb, are also Tom's main caretakers. ➵ Tim also will cook meals alongside Mary, although he refuses to make what Mary's often making. ➵ Tom barely talks and is overall a boy filled with terror at the world around him. On Tim's side, he acts older than he actually is, due to the responsibilities he's had to take up.

Caleb: ➵ 12 years old. ➵ Close with Tim, Tom, and Lillian. He's considered one of Tom's main caretakers. ➵ Very aware of what Mary has been doing, he hates her but is also terrified of her, so he tries to avoid trouble. The twins are the only ones who know this. ➵ To outsiders, he's just an energetic kid full of kindness. He is one, he's just one hiding a lot of dark things about his family. ➵ Has a bunch of friends that he often hangs out with. ➵ Not only taller than the twins but overall just tall for his age.

Lillian: ➵ 8 years old. ➵ Mary's favorite child and gets away with being a little shit (particularly toward the twins) because of this. ➵ Close with Caleb and tries to get closer to Benny. Cares about the twins to some degree, but not a whole lot. ➵ Mature for her age but isn't entirely aware of what Mary's doing. She just knows her mom is doing something only a few people are allowed to know the truth about. ➵ Energetic and charismatic, learned from Caleb and Mary. Still loves rabbits. ➵ Tall for her age, but isn't taller than the twins let alone Caleb and Benny.

#wick #wick game #wick horror game #wick hellbent games #wick 2015 #wick no way out #wick au #wick frostbite au

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weaselandfriends · 2 years

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Evolving to Go Back into the Ocean: On the Fantasy Genre

In a week or two I plan to begin writing an epic fantasy story that I'll release serially, probably starting in August. The path to developing the idea for this story was long and unusual, so I thought I would talk about it a bit, as well as my thoughts on the fantasy genre as a whole. Fantasy is not a genre I am an especial fan of. I have read, watched, and played fantasy media in various forms, but I wouldn't consider myself particularly enamored with fantasy in particular. As such, my perspective is probably quite different than people who have totally immersed themselves in fantasy as a concept.

Over a decade ago, I had an idea for a fantasy story where the characters would come to learn that they were characters in a fantasy story. The author of this story, Ian West, was desperately trying to write the final installment of a successful trilogy, under pressure from his publisher and his agent Maximillion, but the characters would grow resentful of their roles and start to act "off script." The concept was similar to the film Stranger Than Fiction (a film I resented because I only learned about its existence after I came up with this idea). The desperate author would try to guide the story to its intended conclusion despite the unruliness and outright rebellion of its principal actors.

Enamored with metafiction at the time, I came up with an onslaught of ideas for how Ian West and his characters would interact. I had big, bold plans: an unintended incident would leave most of the main characters dead or missing halfway into the story, and the author would frantically attempt to cobble together a cohesive plot by ascending what had until then been minor background characters into leading roles. I thoroughly developed this idea and even attempted to write it five or six times.

The problem was I could never get far. For me, that was unusual; I'm usually good at finishing stories that I start, and this was a story that I was particularly excited to write. I wasn't even sure why I wasn't able to finish my drafts at the time. In retrospect, though, it's pretty obvious.

All of these subversive, metafictional ideas that I was so excited about necessitated that the actual story without those elements be as generic as possible—you can't subvert audience expectations without operating on a baseline level of audience familiarity with what you're subverting. And so in the early parts of the story―prior to all the big twists I had planned about the author, the ascended minor characters, and so on―I was trudging through a bog standard fantasy tale that I had absolutely no interest in writing. I would be both bored to death describing a big fantasy war with a hero and a dark lord and also unhappy with what I was writing because I felt it was dry and lifeless as a byproduct of my boredom.

As I started over again and again, I progressively attempted to limit the size and scope of those early parts. I pushed the author reveal forward and forward until I was basically writing half of a chapter of "typical fantasy" before pulling the rug. And yet skipping directly to what I actually wanted to write didn't make anything better, because now the big twists weren't twists. They were just the premise. There was no way to convey that the story was "going off the rails" from Ian West's perspective other than simply saying it. The minor characters who became major characters were just major characters from the beginning of the story.

So I never wrote the story. Years passed.

Writing Modern Cannibals I needed a fantasy author and an agent, so I repurposed Ian West and Maximillion to that end. MC wound up being more relevant to Ian West's story than just that, however. In earlier drafts of MC, I coincidentally encountered a similar issue to the one I had with Ian West, although in a completely different context. In these drafts, Z. was obsessed not with Faerie Endless, but with a game called Gryffonquest, which I depicted as an utterly generic JRPG similar to Dragon Quest. The problem was it was difficult for me to write about someone being so passionate about something so boilerplate. The elements of Z.'s fandom were constantly dry and banal, and I was never happy with how I depicted her in that context.

Around this time I saw a video called "How to Recognize a Terrible Anime (in just one episode)". The video was about the JSDF propaganda isekai, GATE. While the video's complaints about GATE's first episode were numerous, one of the first points was about the main character's otaku fandom for a generic, Dragon Quest-inspired JRPG. The video posited that by making the character so passionately a fan of something so boring, it made the character seem boring too.

I think I would actually delve a little deeper than that. It's not necessarily that it makes the character boring. People can relate to a character who is obsessed with a piece of fictional media, even if the particular media they're obsessed with isn't interesting. That's how relating to a character works, it's never a 1-to-1 "this is exactly me" type of situation. I think the main problem is that by putting almost no passion into the piece of media that the character themselves is passionate about, the author is in some way being dismissive or insincere in their depiction of the character. It's glib, even condescending in a way, evoking the concept of an otaku without being earnest about believing in it. Reflecting on my own Dragon Quest-obsessed otaku character, I found that was at least the case for my perspective on her. In those earlier drafts I wasn't just disengaged from Z.'s boring fandom, but I looked down on Z. herself. I was emotionally distanced from her, because she was passionate about something that I was desperately uninterested in. It made it a challenge to write her in an authentic way.

For the final draft of Modern Cannibals, I changed Gryffonquest to Faerie Endless, gave it a more unique aesthetic, and interjected offbeat oddball twists like "everyone goes to Hell" (thank you for the inspiration Final Fantasy II and Super Paper Mario) that made it seem like something for which someone really would have a niche but fervent passion. In fact, probably my favorite part of MC to write was the description of the game's plot. Making that change, I was able to more earnestly depict Z.'s obsession with the property, and thus more earnestly depict Z. herself, making her a significantly more effective character than previous drafts. (I would take this approach to the fictional properties in CxC, too.)

Modern Cannibals does not describe Ian West's stories in as much detail as Faerie Endless, but I did drop a few lines in there that painted his work as a gruesome, adult dark fantasy series that gave it a bit more dimension than a completely generic fantasy. With that buzzing around in my head, I revisited my earlier idea of a metafictional work featuring Ian West, this time with the (perhaps obvious to everyone except me) idea: "What if the fantasy world WASN'T generic?"

I started coming up with more unique ideas for the fantasy world. The main character went from a generic hero to a morally-ambiguous philanderer who began the story by being exiled from his community for cheating on his wife with the mayor's maid. Instead of a standard medieval European fantasy world, I developed a world modeled on colonial America, with muskets and hunter-trappers and Age of Reason philosophers and firebrand revivalist preachers. A world that was as of yet untamed by man, without grand castles or kingly lineages, where (taking cues from the transcendentalists) capital-N Nature was a wondrous and brutal thing and the true power over the realm.

It was a world I at least thought was cool. A world I was eager to write. Only I discovered a new problem instantly.

The subversive elements that were fundamental to the plot were now a betrayal rather than an exciting twist. If you actually LIKE a fantasy story, want to see where it goes, care about the main character, how are you supposed to respond to a big metafictional twist that causes the story to "go off the rails" and random background characters to replace the main cast?

My subversive metafictional twist was dependent upon the reader not caring too much about what came before the twist. But not caring about what came before the twist made me incapable of writing it with enough earnestness for the twist to work, either.

So why not eliminate the metafictional elements entirely? After all, that stuff's all been done in Stranger Than Fiction anyway. Just write a non-meta fantasy story with a cool world. But when I try to envision the story in that light, I start to wonder what the point is.

Fantasy is by far the most escapist genre of fiction. Science fiction is the only genre that comes close, but even then the genre is often overtly speculative in nature, depicting possible or theoretical avenues humanity might take in the coming decades or centuries. (There are some science fiction works, like Star Wars, that are in no way speculative, but these works are generally blends of science fiction and fantasy to begin with—science fantasy, as it's called.) Every other genre is generally grounded in the world we live in, and is meant to engage its readers via the portal of a familiar reality, even if a story is set in a fictional location featuring fictional people. Classical myth, for instance, which is in many ways the precursor to modern fantasy, is framed as historical record, the foundation of the culture that produced it, and even the romances of Arthur or Charlemagne follow this blueprint despite how blatantly anachronistic they often are.

But modern fantasy can take the reader to a world that doesn't exist, in a time that doesn't exist, where the rules of reality are not as they exist. (Urban fantasy excluded―which is why until now my fantasy writing has been urban fantasy in nature.) This freedom seemingly allows for endless storytelling potential, but also forces a problem to the forefront: How do you make it matter? How do you make the reader care? People respond better to stories to which they can relate in some way, but in a genre where you are encouraged to eliminate as many elements relatable to human experience as possible, how do you keep them engaged?

The early history of English-language fantasy stories (mainly late 1800s to early 1900s) skirted this issue either by being set in a "lost continent" somewhere on Earth or being basically isekai where a person from Earth travels to a fantasy world. That way, the story was experienced via a fundamentally relatable protagonist, and thus all non-relatable elements of the story were compartmentalized within that framework. As the genre started to develop into its own, however, and there became a cultural consciousness of "fantasy" that was in and of itself relatable to real people, these framing devices became increasingly superfluous. The Worm Ouroboros (1922), for instance, begins with a frame narrative in which someone from Earth travels to a fantasy world (set on Mercury); but both the frame narrative and the Earthling disappear from the story after the second chapter. By Lord of the Rings (1954), it had become commonplace enough for fantasy stories to simply be set in fantasy worlds, without any framing device at all. (Lord of the Rings was not the first English work to do this―that would be William Morris' The Well at the World's End in 1896―but it certainly popularized it.)

My point is that it took a certain culture-wide level of genre-savviness to develop fantasy as a genre to the point of Lord of the Rings, with a fully immersive fantasy world. This isn't even mentioning how the "seemingly endless possibilities" of the fantasy genre were in actuality highly limited to slight deviations from the mythical underpinnings of the culture. Almost all early fantasy in English drew upon one or more of the following: English fairy or folktales, Celtic myth, French chivalric romance cycles, or Norse myth. English culture, language, and ethnic identity itself being a weird potpourri of all of these backgrounds, these inspirations were generally familiar in the English cultural landscape even prior to the earliest modern fantasy works.

As such, authors were able to plunge readers into entirely fantastical worlds that were nonetheless relatable by drawing on relatable cultural myth. And as fantasy as a genre itself became more popular, the general level of cultural familiarity with the subject matter an author could expect their reader to have rose as well. You never have to explain to a reader what an elf is, especially not post-Tolkien; everyone knows what an elf is. And a dwarf. And a dragon. And now we've gotten to a point where fantasy is such a prominent genre that the baseline cultural comprehension of all this utterly fictional stuff has reached levels where it is starting to become an impediment to itself. A lot of elements of fantasy are no longer just familiar, but are taken for granted.

Consider a traditional, Tolkien-esque fantasy story. Although this story is set entirely within an immersive fantasy world with no overt tie to our real world, the main character is a humble provincial fellow, probably one who has never stepped foot outside their little village until the events of the plot kick in and they are forced onto a grand globetrotting adventure. (The first Wheel of Time book, published in 1990, starts this exact way, showing just what a long shadow Lord of the Rings cast over the genre.) This starting point is commonplace but maintains the "fish out of water" protagonist that an Alice in Wonderland-like isekai has, which is necessary for easing the reader into a world utterly unlike their own. Frodo has never seen an elf before, so when he sees one, his reaction is much more aligned with the reaction of the reader than had he simply shrugged and said, "Nothing special."

The problem is that as the fantasy genre has become increasingly ubiquitous and its readers have become increasingly savvy to its techniques, the reaction of the reader to seeing an elf or dwarf or dragon HAS become to shrug and say, "Nothing special." (Admittedly, this was true also for some of Tolkien's readers. One of his compatriots in his fantasy group The Inklings, upon the introduction of an elf character, shouted, "Not another fucking elf!") Tolkien and the forebears whose shoulders he stood upon are now "generic" despite their groundbreaking novelty in their own time, despite innovating an entirely new type of fiction completely divorced from the "real world." And the genre has adapted the way its audience has. Many fantasy stories now will go out of their way to indicate how different their elves/dwarves/dragons are from the Tolkien mold, while others eschew the fish-out-of-water protagonist outright and steep readers immediately into fantasy worlds where elves and the like are treated as nothing particularly special.

As part of a fantasy arms race whereby authors continually try to set themselves apart from the crowd, more and more unique fantasy elements have been injected into the genre, to the point where if you can think of it in even your wildest dreams, it's probably been done in a fantasy novel by now. To be more unique, these elements have strayed further and further from the Anglo-Saxon mythical heritage that underpinned the early English modern fantasy genre, either by introducing elements from other cultural heritages or by introducing complete neologisms. It was this logic that led to me modeling my proposed fantasy world on colonial America instead of medieval Europe.

I recently read Marlon James' fantasy novel Black Leopard Red Wolf (2019), which depicts a fantasy version of ancient Africa instead of ancient Europe. Although I'm not sure if I liked the novel on the whole, it was undoubtedly a creative and unique experience compared to my understanding of the genre. I have no doubt I could write my colonial America fantasy novel with a similar level of creativity and uniqueness and put forward a work that stands out among the genre as a whole. But then I look at the wuxia genre, or the onslaught of anime and manga set in a fantastical ancient Japan, which have themselves reached a level of genre saturation on par with medieval European fantasy thanks to the gigantic Chinese and Japanese pop cultural spheres. I think: Is this just another element of the fantasy arms race? Mining the whole of human culture until every cultural tradition has been done to death within the escapist non-real template of fantasy? And then what?

For a look at the "and then what," you can jaunt on back to the Western fantasy sphere and see what's successful now that the genre has become so saturated even people who aren't media poisoned are sick of it. Consider the recent explosive success and influence of George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones, in which fantastical elements are downplayed in favor of a more "realistic" or "historical" setting. Game of Thrones is a cultural juggernaut thanks to the HBO adaptation, but even in the more niche world of fantasy literature, you can look to the popularity of Brandon Sanderson, who takes fantasy elements like magic and presents them in a more science fiction-like "speculative" way, with complex logical rules. Essentially, fantasy is now striving to get closer and closer to the "real world" it initially broke away from.

Western fantasy evolved to leave the ocean, and after being on land long enough to get tired of it, is evolving now to go back into the ocean.

It's conceivable that in a decade or so people will be sick of the Game of Thrones or Sandersonian style and suddenly you'll see a renaissance of Tolkien-esque high fantasy―evolving to go back on land. Rinse, repeat, rinse repeat. It reminds me of the fluctuations in epochs of Western literature; moving from the Age of Reason to Romanticism to Realism to Modernism to Postmodernism to Post-Postmodernism, a constant cycle between more "realistic" modes of writing and more "unrealistic" modes of writing, each mode arising out of boredom with whichever mode came before.

To write something that isn't just part of the current wave or a pigheaded reaction against it (because if you are simply trying to do the opposite of what everyone else is doing, you're as beholden to the zeitgeist as anyone else)―how do you do that? As I thought about it more, that was the core problem facing me whenever I set into my head to write a "fantasy" story at all. So I decided to stop trying to write a "fantasy" story and just try to write a story. That happens to have fantasy elements.

I'm far more confident in my plan now. Writing serially will lock me into my plan, so it'll be up to me to execute consistently on a week-by-week basis without the benefit of a pre-established world like my previous serial works, but what I've got here is exciting. I'm excited to write it, at least.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the genre. I'd love to hear from someone who has a broader interest in fantasy, who perhaps is more directly familiar with its works and historical trends and specific examples that adhere to or reject the hypotheses I've come to. What’s the best way to write a unique story that isn’t either following the trends or pushing against them? And what is the purpose of fantasy as a genre that is striving to move closer to the “real world” that it initially broke away from? Is it that people are simply so enamored with the idea of “fantasy” as a genre that they will enjoy fantasy stories that are deliberately trying to be unfantastical, or is there some real merit to depicting more real-world themes and topics from the lens of a fictional world?

#fantasy #writing

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catfishofoldin99colours · 2 years

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what kinda problems does tma have? i haven’t finished listening to the whole thing yet but i don’t mind spoilers. asking because i wanted to gauge if it’s something i haven’t gotten to yet or something i’ve missed!

oh yeehaw i will gladly tell you!

full disclosure i haven't actually finished listening to it, I still need to pick up again after s3 but I've listened up till then

also spoilers below for anyone planning on listening to it!

anyway, tma is overall a VERY good podcast and especially in the horror genre, its incredibly well written and effective and genuinely fucking scary and unsettling, and manages to do that without using misogyny or homophobia/transphobia as a device to achieve the sense of dread you get in pretty much every episode. that being said there's a few instances of casual (unintended) racism, such as episode 72 which has a case of anti-chinese racism where the villain is a Chinese cannibal that owns a takeaway shop. that is the most blatant example I remember, there are likely others I have missed because I am white and these things go over my head, but if other people remember better than I do I encourage them to respond to this!

in terms of other problems, to be honest I think what I'm talking about is just my engagement with the show - namely Daisy Tonner. she's a police detective who gets involved with the main cast during s2 and is an avatar of the hunt, sometimes headcanoned by fans as being werewolf like in nature. she's not a nice person, nasty and blunt and rude and brutal, and there are several instances in the show where she kills others and justifies it with reasoning ranging from 'suspected to be a vampire' to 'my boss told me to'. she's violent and cruel and her morality is tied to the law, in that she takes the orders she's given and works to uphold an unjust system based on her perception of other people as a threat, and this comes out in almost every interaction she has with anyone, especially jon, the main character. at one point she kidnaps him and holds him at knifepoint in the woods, fully intending to kill him, before something stops her (its been a while since I've listened to it I can't quite remember what gfjkds).

as a character i fucking adore her. i love female characters who are actually seriously vicious and cruel and horrible people and allowed to be awful, the narrative doesn't shame them for their personality. to me daisy means a lot and I see a lot of myself in her horrible attitude and nasty demeanour (take that as you will ghjfdksl).

but i can't deny that she's a cop and comes with everything that entails. she's suspicious of everyone, she threatens legal action that she can take, and failing that threatens violent action instead, sometimes acting on it. she's part of a group that works to protect their own and target suspects for their own personal agenda rather than any actual sense of 'justice'. as much as I love her for being a female character with bite and attitude, she is like that for a reason. she's also incredibly emotionally dependent on Basira, her coworker-turned-magnus-archives-employee. their relationship is quite homoromantic but its never confirmed as actually romantic or anything because fuck cops, lesbians or not.

(if you're worried about queerbaiting in the show tho, don't, I promise there's none, because no one ever advertised the show as being queer friendly/having canon queer relationships so they literally didn't bait anyone at all, and people who say that don't actually know what queerbaiting means)

i love daisy as a character and I do think she is a very interesting exploration of police institutions, especially with the lens of the hunt and the horror that all that entails, I think its very well done as horror literature. but there's a reason people hate her and it'd be unfair of me to not warn you of the kinds of things she does in the show, in case that's upsetting for you.

in terms of the actual show content, trigger warnings range from gore, body horror, insects, depression, mental health, paranoia, unreality, and many more, and various times they intersect with instances of marginalised characters that don't come across as well-intentioned as the creators probably wanted.

this is a list of trigger warnings by episode (all 200 of 'em) and is generally good for checking if you can listen to the episode, especially the earlier seasons, because it wasn't until about s4ish that they started including trigger warnings for really graphic things in the episode introductions.

this is a folder of transcripts of all the episodes, which I personally found helpful when starting the show. i'd often read transcripts and if I could handle that, id listen to the episode (until I binged half of s1 in a week and got used to the general sense of dread the show gave me and after that I just dived in lmao).

thats mostly what i talk about in terms of bad - the show is good, so good, but it is a tragedy and it is horror and it has some horrendous people, some of which will be worse than others, and being horror it's gonna upset you in some areas. tread with caution, look at the trigger warnings and transcripts if you need to, and maybe avoid the fandom for the most part, it was not very pleasant when the show was airing, but overall, this series is so good and I do gladly recommend it to anyone looking to branch into horror. i think if you follow me and enjoy the same things I do you won't regret giving tma a shot ^^

#ask #tma #the magnus archives #also check my tma/the magnus archives tags for stuff as well #theres usually some meta/critique posts in there somewhere

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creonininkwell · 2 years

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Which Cuphead Boss would Creon be friends with?

Chef Saltbaker: He should be a normal dude and not a cannibal psycho. In the graphic novels distributed by Dark Horse, he's portrayed as a normal baker. C'mon this is a given. They're both chefs. They like swapping recipes and she sometimes works there on some days.

King Dice: images and post here on how they met. She got along with him well as a work colleague/boss. Though recently she hasn't seen him after Dice was "replaced" as host. She's a bit worried that she's seen little to no sighting of him.

Baroness Von Bon Bon, albeit she's an unintended friend. I did a post based on Creon's first run-in with the Bonnie

Hilda Berg: at first Creon really needed a ride home quickly, and Hilda happened to be available. Riding with Hilda Berg was a health hazard, but Creon didn't care much and needed a quick ride home. They like to swap stories about flying. Creon has had to ride jets during her time in service.

Dr. Kahl: later during the line, Creon will probably go to him in hopes of getting something built. He's probably the only mad genius who can engineer any tools that Creon might need for expeditions. She doesn't mind the doctor's kooky personality. She likes occasionally hanging out with the automaton. Sometimes she'll take the boys with her to play with the robot while she's talking shop with the doctor.

If I didn't mention any, it's because she doesn't interact with them much. Or never met them, but maybe the boys did. Not to say that the other bosses don't exist. They're probably chilling somewhere on one of the isles. For example, she didn't exactly meet the "Root Pack," but she did run into them very briefly.

Or maybe she hasn't met them yet.

Now she does know some of these people, but she's not exactly friends with them

Captain Brinybeard: occasional person to give her rides off the isles for expeditions, and for a good price too.

Sally Stageplay: Creon has been an occasional stage hand/help. And sometimes Sally will ask Creon to play as a stage extra in a few performances.

Cala Maria: Unfortunately, she met him through Brinybeard. She's made cautious efforts to not piss off Cala. The only few reasons Creon is still alive is because she did Cala a few favors. These encounters happened when she wasn't with Brinybeard.

#creon in inkwell #creon gilead #cuphead show #asks and replies #cuphead bosses #baroness von bon bon #chef saltbaker #hilda berg #sally stageplay #captain brineybeard #cala maria

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maniacwatchestheworld · 2 years

Text

Hearts Made Monochrome | Part 2: Running Away

This chapter can also be read on AO3 Words: 5635 Pairings: Ingo & Emmet (familial/platonic), No romantic pairings Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Angst With a Happy(?) Ending, Pokemon/Kingdom Hearts Crossover AU (More Pokemon than Kingdom Hearts. That is to say, Pokemon characters in a Kingdom Hearts or adjacent universe. You shouldn't have to know anything about Kingdom Hearts nor its lore to understand what's happening here.) Warnings: Child abuse/neglect, dehumanization, cannibalism if you squint, offscreen deaths Summary: He lost his Heart. Ingo was just a kid when he was taken, experimented on, and turned into a Heartless, all against his will. But from his body, a Nobody who decided to name himself ‘Emmet’ was created. And while the Nobody’s creation may have been unintended, fortunately for Ingo, this Nobody wants to help him escape. Ingo is a Heartless. Emmet is his Nobody. They may have never asked for this to happen to them- for them to have been torn apart and created like this. But now that they do exist like this, they’re going to do everything that they can to survive. Together as Heartless and Nobody. Part 1

Note: It/its will be used interchangeably with he/him pronouns for Ingo and Emmet throughout this story, primarily for the sake of clarity and variety. (The Gay Smut Pronoun Conundrum and all that, you know. When everyone is ‘he’ things can become a clusterfuck fast!) This is Pokemon so I am using it/its pronouns affectionately. However the characters within the story do not necessarily share the same sentiment.

Once again, huge shoutout to @penquinlori for beta reading this fic! We pretty much made this AU together, and they've been super helpful with everything regarding this AU! They're absolutely lovely and deserve all of the love!

Emmet had kept his word and returned to see Ingo the next day.

“Try to look like me,” he instructed the vague figure in front of him.

It was already an improvement. When he had entered the chamber containing the Heartless, he could tell that Ingo was trying to pull itself from the ground- that it was trying to become a physical being. Emmet just had to help it up, lending a hand to pull it from the floor.

Ingo studied its Nobody’s face for a long moment before casting its eyes down, focusing. Its wispy form began to settle, becoming more defined and solid until it looked like a perfect silhouette of its Nobody. A black shadow shaped like Emmet, but with no clothes nor features except for its own glowing yellow eyes.

Emmet nodded in approval. This was truly promising. “Very good!” he complimented with a smile. Ingo for its part did not have an expression that could be read, but Emmet assumed that the way Ingo vibrated as he held its hands was a good sign. “Now let’s see if we can get you to walk.”

Emmet did not let go of Ingo as he stood. “Your turn.”

Ingo hesitated before trying to move its legs underneath it. Its movements were clumsy and infirm, but slowly it began climbing up Emmet, its legs shaking as they took its weight. Emmet was helping his Heartless up where he could, but it was Ingo who needed to bring itself to its own feet.

It was slouching and clinging to Emmet for dear life, but Ingo was standing, even as its legs trembled under it.

“Okay…” Emmet whispered as he took a step, careful to not let Ingo lose its support. “Do you think that you can do that?”

Ingo nodded as it tried to move a foot forwards, but its foot seemed to be stuck to the floor. After a few tries, it was finally able to remove its foot from the ground with a squelching sound and move it forwards in a tiny step.

Ingo lifted its other foot and tried to move it forwards to finish bridging the short distance that Emmet had moved away from it, only to trip and lose its concentration, melting back into a shapeless blob on the floor. Ingo let out a sad sound that made the other Heartless look their way and put Emmet’s teeth on edge.

“Nonono! You did a good job! It’s okay! You’re okay! This was your first time trying to walk! You did great for your first time!”

There seemed to be a question in the way Ingo looked up at Emmet as he knelt down beside the puddle of shadow, grabbing handfuls of it, pulling it back up from the floor.

“I… Did…?”

“Of course you did. Now come here.”

Ingo tackled Emmet backwards onto the ground in a hug.

“... Ingo…” Emmet sighed, burying his face into the shadow. “Keep practicing. After we escape, you’ll need to be able to move on your own. For now, I’m willing to carry you, but if we’re going to survive out there, you need to be able to look human. It’ll be harder for me to protect you if you can’t. You understand, right?”

Slowly Ingo nodded.

“Good. And remember. We have to keep this a secret.”

“Se… Cret…?”

But before Emmet could say anything else, a voice came on over the intercom. “Nobody, your time is up.”

Emmet turned towards the glass and nodded. “I have to go, but I’ll be back soon. Promise. Until then, keep practicing.”

“What’s that on your shirt?”

The Nobody glanced down to where the scientist was pointing. “... Stains.”

“I can see that. But they weren’t there when you went in. What are they?”

“... Ingo was crying. I suppose that Heartless tears stain.”

“He can cry?”

“... He’s probably been crying ever since he woke up as a Heartless- ever since you created him. You don’t need to sound so suspicious. The other Nobodies will replace it. You really didn’t notice?”

“Heartless can be very deceptive when they want to be. It could be a trick.”

“... Or we’re just kids and he’s scared because you put him in a very traumatizing situation.” He rolled his eyes.

“Watch your tone. Remember who you’re talking to, Nobody.”

“Emmet.” He corrected with a tone of finality.

“... What was that…?”

“Emmet. I am Emmet. If he is Ingo, his name meaning, ‘in’ then since he is now a Heartless and I am his opposite as a Nobody, then my name should mean ‘out.’ So Emmet. That is my name. That is what I decided my name is, since you didn’t give me one.”

“You’re a Nobody. You don’t need a name.”

“... If you made another Nobody what would you call me then? I am Emmet,” he insisted, “I may be a Nobody, but I want you to call me Emmet.”

It took him some time, but Ingo figured out what it was about Emmet that made its presence feel so reassuring each time it was here.

He no longer felt like he was drowning. When Emmet was here, it felt like he had a line- something to hold onto to give him stability. Something that could help keep his head just a little higher and out of the water. It didn’t mean that he couldn’t still sink beneath the waves and drown, but it was something. A start.

Ingo did not understand the words that Emmet often said to him. Something about Hearts and Darkness and Heartless and Somebodies and Nobodies. But Ingo did get the sense that they were related somehow.

He didn’t know what the nature of this relationship was or what it entailed, but maybe it was this relationship that was keeping Ingo’s head above water. Or maybe it was Emmet’s kindness.

He supposed that it didn’t really matter either way. He just knew that he felt better with Emmet at his side. As long as Emmet was here and would keep being there for him, he felt that everything was going to be alright.

Emmet’s fingers were interlaced with Ingo’s as his form gradually solidified and began to look human, if featureless.

“Good. Now try to match my skin tone.”

Emmet watched as Ingo focused, eyes narrowing, as some sort of black film seemed to peel back from his fingertips, revealing a fleshy color underneath. The color progressed down Ingo’s arms until it reached his elbows before Emmet interrupted him. “Alright. Good. Your coloring’s improved. Now try your face.”

This was always a little more difficult for Ingo. He focused, and while it took a minute, the black film began to peel back, revealing imitation skin underneath. In time, the lower half of his face began to look very human. A nose, chin, ears, lips caught in a perpetual frown, and the beginnings of a neck could be seen. But the upper part of his face remained in shadow, his eyes continuing to be orbs that glowed with yellow light, and entirely inhuman. Emmet was nodding in approval as it watched, but couldn’t keep the surprise from its expression as hair began to form on Ingo’s head, straight, white, and angled, perfectly mirroring its own.

“Now you didn’t need to do that. We should be able to get along just fine without you having hair.”

“Want to… Look… Like you.”

Emmet sighed. “Well, I do look like you, so I suppose that only makes sense…”

“What does… That mean…?”

“You don’t need to worry about it.”

They had been at this for a while and thankfully Ingo was making fast progress. While his attempts at a human form often still bore the telltale signs that he was a Heartless- antennae sprouting from his head, large beady yellow eyes that glowed in the dark, fingers ending in points- Ingo’s ability to take on a physical form was getting better and better. He was able to become more physically solid and present with each attempt and more quickly. His fidelity to the human form was growing better and becoming more accurate the more he practiced. He was growing to be able to manipulate his body and the limbs he manifested from it with more ease. While in the form of a shapeless shadow, Ingo had learned how to move however he liked freely and at will. Walking was a slightly different story, but while he was not very certain in his steps and clumsy, he was now able to walk without falling over after a few steps. And while they would still need to clothe him in a way that would hide his various inhumanities, now that Ingo had gotten decent enough at being able to appear human, they would soon be ready to escape.

“You really should just cut it out with the expression already. It’s creepy on you.”

“... You mean the smile…?” Emmet asked in a perplexed tone.

The scientist nodded. “We both know that you don’t have any emotions. You’re unable to feel anything. Your smile is fake. So why do you keep pretending?”

“... You’re always smiling, and it seems to help you get what you want.”

“But I’m human and you’re not. Who do you think you’re fooling with that?”

“... Not you, certainly…” He shook his head. “I don’t know that I’m trying to fool anyone. I just… I’m not angry. I’m not sad. I’m not happy either, of course. I just don’t want people to think that I’m… Something that’s worth looking at…” He supposed that it was more of a survival instinct than anything.

“Well, you should quit it. It doesn’t suit you.”

Emmet’s smile widened just a little more. No, he didn’t think that he was going to. It was good that he wouldn’t have to deal with the scientist for much longer.

It was chaos. Nobodies roamed the lab’s halls, and the escaped Heartless chased after anyone who had survived the initial attack. There were bodies. Somewhere a fire had broken out and wasn’t being tamed. Screaming could be heard, only for them to be cut short and fall to silence. Meanwhile Emmet was helping Ingo get dressed, the two still in the cell that had previously contained the Heartless that were now stalking the halls, hunting for any surviving researchers.

“Here. Try to tuck your antennae into this,” Emmet suggested, handing Ingo a cap. “Try to keep the brim low. We don’t want anyone seeing your eyes.”

Ingo nodded as he took the hat. It took him a minute to figure out how to fit the protrusions poking from his head- whether they were supposed to be more like antennae or horns, Emmet was not certain at this point- into the hat, but he eventually found something that worked. In the meantime, Emmet was wrapping a scarf around the Heartless’ neck, trying to cover as much of Ingo’s pitch black skin as he could.

Once the hat was on, the brim of it pulled low over his eyes, Ingo glanced between the two of them before fixing a long stare at Emmet.

“There we go… That should hopefully do the trick…” Emmet looked over its handiwork before noticing how Ingo was staring at it. “What? What is it?”

Ingo pointed between the two of them. “Matching.” The two were indeed wearing identical but palette swapped outfits.

Emmet rolled its eyes. “It was the other Nobodies’ idea. I’m not a huge fan. If anything, I think that it’ll make us more suspicious.”

Ingo let out a sound as he shook. A gesture that took Emmet a moment to realize was something like a laugh or a snicker. “Twins.”

Emmet let out a sigh, taking Ingo by the hand. “Well, I guess you’re not wrong. Come on. We need to get out of here before-”

“What have you done.” The two turned to see the scientist standing in the open doorway.

“... I didn’t think that you would be coming to work today, sir.”

“What do you think you’re doing, Nobody.”

“... I’ve already told you that I want to be called Emmet. And isn’t it obvious? I’m taking Ingo. I’m freeing him. We’re leaving this place. Together.”

“And what makes you think that you have any right-”

“We’re at war, sir,” it interrupted, deliberately cutting the scientist off.

“... War…?”

Emmet nodded. “People like you get to live in the light. You make beings like us- Heartless and Nobodies- live in the dark. I never had much interest in working with you. I just wanted to beat you. Not that you made it very hard. You never thought to put in any precautions against Nobodies, did you? I guess that you never thought that you would have to. Nobodies don’t usually help Heartless out after all, I guess. Even if we are on the same side.”

“You’re doing all of this… Just to beat me…? Is this some kind of game to you!?”

“... Why not? You have no problem playing with people’s lives. And if this is a game, then I’m going to win it!”

“Win… If your intention all along was to beat me, then why were you trying to spare me from… This?”

“... Why win by a margin when I can go for total victory? You can’t know that I beat you if you’re dead. Isn’t it more fun if I completely humiliate you in my victory? Destroy your research, take the fruits of your labor as winnings for myself? I wanted you to know that there was nothing you could have done to stop this. Besides. I couldn’t risk you becoming a Heartless and joining our side.” Emmet’s smile widened mockingly. “After all. I don’t want you. Now leave.”

“Why you little-! You can’t threaten me!” Instead of leaving, the scientist marched directly towards the two boys, grabbing Emmet by the arm. He raised a hand to strike the boy, but before he could, there was a sudden and suffocating pain in his chest.

“Don’t… Hurt him.” Ingo growled. His arm was plunged deep into the scientist’s chest, claws tenderly wrapped around the scientist’s Heart.

The scientist froze as he realized the gravity of his situation.

“Let… Go.” It was an order.

The man wasn’t about to argue with the angry Heartless and immediately let the Nobody go, lowering the hand he was going to strike the boy with.

Ingo was heaving deep breaths in and out, a black smoke beginning to leave his mouth. His body was seemingly shifting and swelling, looking like he was going to burst from the clothes that were barely containing him at any minute. His mouth morphed into a jagged line that only emphasized the frown on his face. An unnaturally long, pitch black tongue rolled out from behind pointed teeth. “Hun… Gry…” Ingo could smell the darkness in the man’s heart, and it made him feel all the more famished.

“Drop it, Ingo,” Emmet ordered. “I’m not hurt. You can just drop it.”

There was a moment of hesitation. Ingo wanted to refuse the order. To just rip the scientist’s Heart out and feast on it. He was certain that it would taste delicious. But ultimately Ingo let go, falling back to Emmet’s side.

The man collapsed to the ground. He was panting, catching the breath that he didn’t realize he had been holding. Meanwhile Emmet started fussing over the Heartless.

“Now now. It’s alright. Just calm down. We can’t have you tearing any of these clothes. It would be difficult to find something to replace them on such short notice.” Emmet was closely examining Ingo’s clothes, pulling them back into place as Ingo’s form shrank back down to that of a boy’s, searching for any tears in the fabric or breaks in the seams. “Okay, I think that we’ll be fine.” Emmet let out a sigh of relief, seeing that Ingo’s disguise hadn’t been too badly compromised.

But Ingo was just staring at the man on the ground unblinkingly. “Hun… Gry…”

“Yeah, I know. We’ll find someone for you to eat soon, I promise. But we need to get out of here before someone calls the authorities.”

Emmet grabbing Ingo’s hand seemed to be enough to snap him out of his wild trance.

“Now come on! We need to go!”

Emmet led the way as they hurried down the lab’s halls towards the front exit. Once they were outside, Emmet guided its Heartless counterpart towards the nearest populated street before yelling out, “Help! Help! Please! Monsters! What the heck are those!? Monsters just tried to attack us down there! Help!” with as much emotion and conviction that it could pretend to have before heading in the opposite direction, making sure no one was following them as they vanished into the night.

As they continued to wander the streets, Ingo could not help but to stare up at the stars above them. They had really made it out. He was free. He didn’t think that it was going to be possible, but now here he was. Standing under the night sky, taking in the evening’s cool air. He didn’t even realize that he missed seeing the stars and moon until now.

“We’re here,” Emmet informed, only to look back and see how Ingo was staring up at the twinkling lights shining through the darkness overhead. “What are you looking at?” he asked after realizing that Ingo was not moving to follow him into the storehouse.

Ingo didn’t say anything, instead pointing to a patch of the night sky. Emmet looked up just in time to see a thin streak of light appear before disappearing again in an instant.

“Shooting star!” Ingo practically cheered, “Make… A wish!”

Emmet watched Ingo eagerly close his eyes as he made his wish. While Ingo immediately knew what he wanted to wish for, Emmet could only stare at the blank spot where the star had just been. A wish? Emmet couldn’t think of anything he wanted right now, much less something to wish for. So he just stared, digging in his head to find something, anything. But nothing came.

Ingo was practically bouncing when he opened his eyes again. “What… Did you… Wish… For…?” he slowly asked, words still being difficult for him to form.

Emmet just smiled. “You don’t need to worry about that. But are you excited to start traveling around up there?”

Ingo stared at Emmet with wide eyes for a full minute. “Travel…?”

Emmet nodded, leading Ingo into the storehouse where a handful of Nobodies and Heartless were already waiting for them so that they could be waited on. “We’ll be safe here for now, but the longer we stay here, the more likely it is that someone will find us. I want to get moving, to get off this world as soon as we can. We can start looking for transportation tomorrow. But then… Well... We’ll be traveling around up there among the stars.”

“Rea… Lly…?”

“Really really.” Emmet assured him, kicking off his shoes, but keeping his socks on as he crossed the concrete floor.

He passed by a table that had several food items sitting on it that the Nobodies had stolen for him. After picking a few that looked good to try, he sat down, letting a random Nobody tend to the cut he still bore on the sole of his foot. He opened a bag of what appeared to be some sort of candy and popped one into his mouth. It was sweet and chewy. Finding it agreeable, he began to consume one after another in quick succession, speaking with his mouth full. “We can also find you something… To eat tomorrow. Do you want one?”

Emmet offered the bag, already half empty, out to Ingo who, after a moment of consideration, shook his head. For his part Emmet didn’t know if Heartless could eat human food, but figured it was worth a shot. The texture of these were pleasing and he wouldn’t have minded sharing the experience. But admittedly he was eating the candies less because he felt hungry, but rather because the sensation of them was good and it distracted from a gnawing emptiness inside of him, filling it for fleeting moments before it came back again.

“Eat… Food… Humans…?” While it was nothing close to a full sentence, Emmet still understood what he was trying to get at. Ingo did not seem very happy to ask it.

“Unfortunately, yes. Now that you’re a Heartless, your food is Hearts and whatever Light and Darkness can be found within them. So that means that your prey are people. It’s not very good for us trying to stay under the radar, and technically speaking, you don’t really need to eat to survive. But I don’t want you to be hungry.” Besides, from what Emmet understood, the more he kept Ingo fed, the more powerful of a Heartless he would become. And he did want to know what Ingo was capable of, especially once he reached full maturity.

Ingo couldn’t help but to stare at the ground. The idea of consuming the scientist’s Heart had not bothered him, but now he was coming to realize that to satisfy this growing, gnawing, violent hunger inside of him, he may have to target innocent people… It didn’t sit well with him. Though he knew deep within his blackened heart that when the time came, he likely wouldn’t even hesitate.

After a few minutes of silence, Ingo’s eyes began to wander until they happened to drift towards the sizable scab on the sole of Emmet’s foot that the Nobody had just finished disinfecting and was now carefully wrapping in a bandage.

“What is…” Ingo pointed to Emmet’s foot.

“... Are you talking about the cut on my foot?”

Ingo nodded.

“Well, it’s just that. A cut.”

Emmet didn’t realize that wasn’t really what Ingo had been asking about.

“... How…?”

“How did I get it?” Emmet asked for confirmation, to which Ingo nodded. Emmet sighed. “When we were born- When you became a Heartless, and I started to exist- while you were put into a holding cell for observation… Well… I was chased out onto the street. Do you remember what you were wearing before we got separated?”

Ingo gave him a curious look. “Sep… Arated…?”

“... Yeah… I’m your Nobody. Everything that was left behind after your Heart escaped your body… Do you really not…?”

Ingo was still giving him that blank look, and when Emmet didn’t continue his sentence to elaborate, he shook his head. “Do not… Know… What…” Ingo was trying to get more words out, but it was to no avail. However it was just enough for Emmet to understand what he was trying to say.

Sharply turning to a random Shadow Heartless, he gave it a pointed look that may have looked angry if it was coming from anyone else. “You didn’t tell him about what he is now? Why didn’t any of you tell him!?”

The Shadow sank into the floor becoming a 2D shape, clearly trembling in fear. There was a tense silence in the air before a particularly brave Shadow started to click something to the human-looking Nobody who was clearly commanding the room.

After hearing what the Shadow had to say, Emmet slumped where he sat with a sigh. “Fine… Just… Don’t leave him in the dark like that ever again if it can be helped.”

The other Heartless in the room nodded their heads before going back to their business, many of the Shadows sinking to the floor in an attempt to stay out of trouble.

Ingo just watched all of this with an air of confusion, not having any idea what they were talking about. “What…?” Ingo asked.

Emmet merely shook his head. “... Okay. So, you know that you’re a Heartless now, right?”

Ingo thought for a minute. He knew that he was something… Different now. But he could never really put a word to what had changed within him up to this point. He knew that he wasn’t human anymore. Every instinct inside of him knew that. But ‘Heartless’ … Something about the term felt right to him. So Ingo nodded.

“Well, you became a Heartless after your Heart was consumed by so much Darkness that you couldn’t remain human anymore. I don’t know how, but that man somehow figured out a way to completely extinguish any Light in your Heart. Hearts consumed by Darkness tend to leave their bodies. Your Heart rejected your humanity and human appearance, and so left your body. You are that Heart. Like many of your kind, your corrupted Heart left your body and you were recreated as a Heartless. So after you left your body, what happened to it? Well, as it turns out, your Heart and will to survive was so powerful that it kept your body alive in your absence. And that’s me. Your body without a Heart. I was created out of your desire to live. And then you left me. That’s why I look like you. I’m your body. The one you left behind. You used to be me. I was born as you were leaving your body. Which was also when you were recreated as a Heartless. So in a sense, you can say that we were born at the same time. Twins.”

All of this was making Ingo’s head spin a little. “You… Are… Me…?”

Emmet shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. I do know that you used to be me. But now we exist apart from each other. It’s hard to know what I am. I’m just a body without a Heart. I don’t know if I even exist, really. You need a Heart to actually have a strong sense of self after all. But I do know this. You are Ingo. You are Ingo’s memories and emotions and sense of self. You are everything that made Ingo exist as he was, and therefore you are Ingo. So that probably means that I am not Ingo. I don’t have any of that stuff. Memories, emotions, a sense of self. I am the absence of that stuff. I used to be Ingo, but whatever I am now, I’m not him anymore.”

“I… I see…” Ingo wasn’t certain that he fully understood, but thought that he was getting the gist of it.

“... So after we were created- separated… However you want to put it, you were put into captivity for observation, and I was chased off. He was only interested in you. Not me. You might remember that the only thing you were wearing when I was created was a hospital gown. You didn’t even have any socks or shoes on.” Emmet shook his head. “I was lost. I didn’t know where to go. It was dark and hard to see. My eyes don't glow and weren’t made for the darkness like yours are. So I accidently stepped in some glass. That was before they found me.” He gestured towards a group of loitering Dusks who waved back upon being looked at. “It was fine after that. They were able to clean and bandage it up. But it still hasn’t fully healed. I… I don’t want to damage or scar this body if it can be helped… It isn’t really mine after all... It’s yours…”

“I’m… Sorry…”

“... For what? There’s nothing for you to be sorry for. None of this was your fault. You couldn’t have done anything about any of this.”

“Still… Sorry. I understand… Your feelings.”

“... Feelings?” Emmet scoffed. “Were you listening? I don’t have feelings. You took all of those with you when you stopped existing in your body. Now come on.”

With his foot freshly wrapped, Emmet stood and started to once again lead Ingo through the storehouse. “You don’t need to keep wearing those clothes if you don’t want to, by the way. You can go back to your natural form if you’d like.”

But Ingo shook his head. “I like… Looking… Like you.”

“Suit yourself. But I’m taking at least some of this off.”

As they kept walking through the warehouse, Emmet was throwing off the outer layers of his outfit, strewing them onto the floor wherever he felt like until he was just in his pants and shirt. He knew that the Dusks would pick up after him and find a place for the discarded clothes.

It was only when the two arrived at a rather sizable pile of blankets and plush toys in some secluded corner did Emmet stop his confident stride. “This is where I sleep. You can sleep here too if you’d like,” Emmet informed Ingo before tossing himself onto the pile.

Ingo tried to copy Emmet’s movements, but once he fell onto the pile of toys, he was soon consumed by them, practically drowning in stuff and fluff. After flailing around for a few moments, Emmet grabbed Ingo by the hand and pulled him back up to the surface where he placed Ingo into the welcoming arms of a giant cat plush. The size of it would keep Ingo on top of the pile instead of sinking into the mass of looser toys around him.

Ingo blankly stared at Emmet for a moment.

“... What?” Emmet asked, not knowing what Ingo was staring at him for. But then Ingo broke out into that same laugh that Emmet had seen earlier as the reality of what just happened sank in.

“Almost… Drowned… A lot of toys.”

Emmet’s smile broadened just a little. “... Yeah, I guess there are.” Emmet tossed some blankets over the both of them and began to settle in for the night. “There’s a mattress somewhere under all of this… At least there used to be. Maybe the Dusks took it for some reason, I wouldn’t know. After the first night of sleeping here, they gave me a toy. I liked it, so they just kept bringing me more until… Well… You know.” He gestured to the massive pile of plushies they were laying on top of. Emmet started fiddling with the antennae of a nearby toy bug as he spoke. “I guess it’s nice… I do think that I like them… They’re soft… A nice texture. Good to squeeze.”

The expression on Ingo’s face was what Emmet assumed was the closest thing to a smile the Heartless could make. “Fav… Orite…?”

Emmet considered it for a moment, rolling around to find the right one before pulling out something that seemed to be some kind of massive eel. “I think that I like this one the most. It’s the softest one.”

Ingo gave the toy a good feel and squeeze before nodding in approval. “Good… Choice…”

Once Ingo was done with it, Emmet pulled it back in and wrapped his arms around it. “If the others find out, I think that we’d end up drowning in eels, so keep it secret, okay?”

Ingo snickered. “Promise.”

“... I guess that they’re just trying to be nice… We are the same after all… They can’t feel anything either. Nothing that isn’t physical at least. These toys feel good. I think that I’d like to feel more nice things like this,” Emmet yawned.

“Tired?”

Emmet nodded. “You look pretty exhausted too.”

It was Ingo’s turn to nod.

“It must be tiring having to keep that form up.”

There was a moment of hesitance before Ingo nodded again.

“You should get some rest.”

“Want to… Stay up… A little… Longer.”

“Alright. Suit yourself. But don’t blame me if I fall asleep on you.” Emmet snuggled deeper into the pile of toys.

There was a long moment of silence, and just as Emmet thought that he was going to drift off, Ingo spoke up.

“I’m glad… You… Saved me… I’m glad… You’re here.”

That caught Emmet’s attention just a little. “Don’t mention it. I was only doing it for selfish reasons anyway.”

“Selfish. Selfless. Doesn’t… Matter. Still… Grateful.”

Emmet just stared at the Heartless, blinking. He didn’t know what to say to that. “... Uh… Thank you…” It was all Emmet could muster.

“Never… Had a… Brother before. Glad that… I have… One now.”

Emmet let out a breath. “A brother you say?”

Ingo nodded before letting out a yawn. He started sinking into the giant cat, becoming incorporeal again. “I think... I’ll… Sleep now. Goodnight.”

“Yeah. Goodnight. See you in the morning.”

“See you… In the… Morning. Love you.” Ingo didn’t know what compelled him to say that last sentence. Maybe some kind of habit from a long lost memory. But either way, it just felt right to him. And with that he sank into the shadows, leaving only a black stain where he had lain a moment ago behind.

That last sentence shocked Emmet awake. Did Ingo really just say… No. He couldn’t have. The two barely knew each other, really. They hadn’t spent that much time together. Just some scattered hours together here and there. That wasn’t long enough to warrant… Right…? There was no way… Besides. He was just a Nobody. He was nobody. Certainly not anyone worth loving. There was nothing inside of him to love. And he was incapable of feeling something like that in return. He just didn’t understand it. And yet the words echoed in his mind over and over again.

Rolling onto his back, Emmet stared up at the ceiling, his mind swirling. He didn’t know what to think. Love… He wasn’t certain that he really knew what that was. And as he stared at the ceiling, waiting for the exhaustion of his body to take him away, he finally knew what his wish was. Deep within the hole in his chest where a Heart was supposed to be. He just wanted to understand.

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