I dreamed I was one of them not too long ago. I could stand on two legs without getting tired, I had hands with those horrible, spindly digits. Thinking was easier. My brain was like a supercomputer. Best of all, I could speak! But… I didn't know how. My mouth would move in the motions I recognized, but no words would come. Silence.
Lots of them were walking by outside. But I was behind a set of bars. I'd move my digits along the bars and try so hard to pry them away - but my body simply wasn't capable. I tried getting their attention with my words, but they didn't exist. I tried to scream for them, but that didn't exist either. They kept walking. Nobody stopped to look at me. They just walked on those same two legs I'd possessed.
When I woke up, it took a moment to adapt again. Four legs, four paws, hardly opposable fingers. That's what was comfortable. But it felt lacking then, after feeling what they all had. The Doctor took me for my evaluation of the day. He was surprised that I'd dreamed at all. Even more so when he learned what of. They gave me a lot more food that night for those findings. It was nice.
And then I dreamed of it again. They'd called it an evaluator when they heard that. I didn't know her, but she asked me so many questions. It was hard to find the words for it on my communication tablet. Questions about some 'human condition?' I just wanted to stop thinking about it. But 'no' wasn't an answer.
They gave me even more food that night. It felt like cardboard against my tongue after that. And it was never the same, especially not after I had the same dream again. They brought the evaluator back, and soon enough I wasn't seeing the Doctor anymore. I don't know where he went. Sometimes I'd see him walk past my cage in the morning. But he wouldn't look at me anymore. It felt like I was in the dream again. Only the evaluator saw me after that. She never even told me her name. All she did was ask questions I couldn't answer.
An Architect of Hubris // Crashing Amongst the Stars
[word count: 301]
A ship takes off. There’s five, ten, maybe fifteen tops to cheer it on. Smoke puffs follow in its wake. It’s not long before it’s nothing but a speck in the sky, too small to be made out beyond an ever-shrinking tail of puffy gray. Soon enough, it’s gone. The crowd dissipates. Back to secure mundanity they go.
Climbing out of the atmosphere - an action requiring decades of engineering. This ship was only given three years. Ascension through the clouds goes as planned. Smooth, stable. It climbs and climbs and climbs, sight long lost on those who urged it up. Then, the barrier is broken. Vast emptiness stretches off for infinity in every direction but down.
It hungers.
The ship no longer propels itself, it’s being pulled. Pulled further from home. Pulled by the lack of a pull. Home is a dot fading into the distance, another amongst the twinkling sea of nothing at all. Its controls don't permit turning back. Return is not in the spirit of exploration.
The pilots stare into an expanse that suffocates them. It would stare back, if it cared enough. Instead, they are constricted under its emptiness. Helpless prey snared without so much as a conscious thought from its captor. They bang on the controls, the controls beep in defiance. They call to their superiors, their call is met with nothing but static. Escape is not in the spirit of exploration.
The vessel drifts. Fuel supplies run low, and then vanish. Rations run low, and then vanish.
One pilot prays. The other wishes they’d committed more to memory in life. The vessel drifts on until it too is a dot fading into the distance. Uncountable time passes before the tendrils of a star’s gravitational pull find it. It is swallowed whole. Nothing is spat out.
Upon his deathbed, my mentor had this to say; "Apprentice, come close. Listen to my words. As conclusion sets upon my time in this world, I've no regrets. Life has given me gifts aplenty. The passions you wield within, take great pride in them just as I have mine. Though sun may seem to set upon them, know you've potential as-of-yet unseen. Glide along its path, follow it wherever it may take you. Know that its conclusion - like that of mine - will bring fulfillment in its wake. And know, it all means something in the end."
I loved him, though I can’t help but wish he had something more concrete to say.
Words scrawled upon notebook paper. December 15th, reads their date. Below them, their successor - dated December 27th. Its contents lie empty.
Lamplight. Textbooks piled miles high. Jittering in a paw; a pencil. The other holds a wand. Connected to these paws, a rabbit. Patterns and ideas they scribble from their books find themselves brought to life by wrist flicks and dancing motions of their wand - which target a wooden box, sealed shut with an enchanted padlock. A simple object. Concept easy to grasp, interaction spells easy to engage. Twinges of magic energy fire up in little flashes around the lock. The Apprentice’s motions grow frantic. The sparks vanish.
They thrust their pencil down upon the paper. The graphite shatters. Frustrated huffs carry them from their chair across the room. Magician's robes trail their every step, drooping inches off their frame.
Books clutter the room. Shelves filled with them, accented with little magic trinkets. Crystals of all shapes, glowing in all colors. In the corner, a pile of them - colors desaturated and glow snuffed out.
They slump down on their bed. Squeals from its frame protest their arrival. Moonlight speckles down upon them from a bedside window. Streams of light - particles of dust dancing within them - urge drained eyes to gaze out the glass pane. And they cannot find it in themselves to resist the call of looking out.
Out into the world. A world of sprawling industry. Like an infection, it grows over the land. Columns of smoke spew into the sky, suffocating the moon’s embrace. Roadways carve them apart like veins pulsing with the yellow and red glow of car lights.
Somewhere distant, farmland. The Apprentice sees it within their mind. Farmers tending to it with enchanted tools. Their lives, simple. Their tools, effective. That is, until the industry comes. It sweeps them aside. It devours their fertile lands and feeds them back great metal constructs which channel basic magic to tend to what little is left. The farmers take their tools and the crystals that power them, and they dispose of them.
Further still, a great pit dug into the earth. Trucks pulling to it, great baskets on their backs filled with crystals - both drained and active. And they dump them. The pit fills quickly. Mere moments and it's full. They bury it, replace earth on top of it and build over it with yet more factories. Then they leave it and start again elsewhere.
The home of a family, displaced from their farm. Warm sunshine, the chirping of birds. Plants rustle with the breeze. Their child comes home from school, bearing a fresh wand. It is unpolished, its surface threatens to inflict splinters and it is shaped closer to a curve than a straight line. Yet the child manages to levitate a cookie from the cookie jar when their parents aren’t looking. When they see what has been done, they scold the child. They take the child’s wand and sit them down with schoolwork and a pen. The wand is buried and lost somewhere in the woods.
The child ages years in the blink of an eye. Day after day they sit beside a conveyer belt. An artificial wand sits in their grasp. They need not move their arm for it to do its job; assembling more wands just like it. One after another. All the same. Cold, shiny metal. Fluorescent lights reflect off the surfaces of that which they assemble and burn a hole into their eyes.
Erosion.
Work days fade by, and again and again they return to their outer city home. But they don’t rest, no. They eat a meal and they leave home. Off away from the city they drive. Through fields speckled with growth & harvesting channelers. Into the woods. They keep going, deeper and deeper until they settle upon a cabin of wood and stone.
Inside is an old hare. He greets them with warmth and offers them a warm bowl of soup. But they are far too eager. They insist upon his collection of books. Chuckles cross his lips as he lets them at it. And there they stay, nights spent with their nose twitching at their favorite book - Wizarding; History & Purpose Through Time.
One day, the old hare presents them with a gift. A box, sealed behind an enchanted lock. Breaking it would require the fabrication of a spell, he explains. Quite simple. They dive back to the books.
The Apprentice lifts their head. Wood weighs heavy in their paw, wood which they lift once again. A basic learner’s wand. They stare back over at their desk, at the box sitting upon it. Floorboards creak under their steps as they come back to it. Pages upon pages of notes lie in wait, but they direct their eyes back to the top.
It all means something in the end.
They close the notebook. All attention falls upon the box. Arm lifting, the apprentice allows their eyes to shut. They let their mind free. Boundaries crack and crumble and they explore back through the lands they’d opened before. They soar right over them this time. They soar right over and past them and pay only their end any mind. The smell of warm soup welcomes them to a place oh-so familiar.
Flurries of motion produce a flood of crackling energy. Freeform are their thoughts and their movements. Though thought is given, it takes a second seat to feeling. The feeling of that magical energy in the air that permeates all, the pumping of the blood through their body. The life they are granted the blessing of feeling.
Click!
The Apprentice’s ears twitch. Silence consumes the air, and still their eyes hesitate to open. They breathe, in and out. And then, they open their eyes.
The lock has come off, the chest popped open. And what lies within?
A wand. Aged lightly. It is unpolished, its surface threatens to inflict splinters and it is closer to a curve than a straight line. The Apprentice takes hold of it - and tears well up in eyes above a smiling pair of lips.
thingy i whipped up at 4am to act as a cover to my new worldbuilding playlist. partially inspired by the themes & setting of the novel i'm working on, partially just its own thing. i'd like to make more of these if i take more pictures like it, but it's not an active focus of mine
Mundanity serves my favorite role in worldbuilding. Beyond fictional politics, cultures or races sits the - often overlooked - role of the mundane. The things we do in our day-to-day lives. Where we keep our keys, our routines before going out for the day, the junk we may leave lying around. It’s part of a tiny picture that lingers in the shadows of the vast worlds we build and stories we weave. Yet from that snapshot blossoms a viewpoint dripping with relatability, one that places you into the shoes of a character living in that world to a capacity far beyond that which anything else could even hope to achieve.
When I’m writing a character introduction, it’s about more than just the character’s current position and desires. It’s about integrating the world into their life. If space travel is a commonplace fixture of their world and they own a spaceship, what’s the role of that ship to them? Is it like a car, a mobile home, a flying armory? If it’s like a car, have they left it stock, or have they modified and tuned the way a car lover would in real life? If it’s like a home, what furniture do they deem priority, do they keep it clean, is there any decoration? If an armory, what’s the weaponry of this universe like, what kinds of weapons do they want to keep loaded, how organized is it? (check out the first chapter of my story 501-b, also on this blog, if you wanna see where that though process brought me ;3)
Opportunities for both character and worldbuilding are already pouring out from that simple hypothetical. So many things can be said right away with the mundane relationship between a character and their mode of transport. To them, that’s just how it is, nothing special. The same way you’d look at a car. To the reader, though? That’s a nuclear bomb of information you just detonated in their face and they probably didn’t even realize. If you get how a character views their ship, you already start to understand their personality and the role of space travel in that world right off the bat.
It’s always been alluring to me, an element my mind would hook its foxy paws onto right away. While the lack of it wouldn’t bug me much, I’d always start to wonder about it later. Where does this character live, what’s their home look like? By no means am I arguing that this is an absolute necessity to make a good story. Every story has its own unique needs that can be filled however the creator sees fit. But for me, what I want to see and make more of, is something more down-to-earth. And while a good chunk of that is - admittedly - just me being a neurodivergent nerd, I feel like there’s something more to it. Forgive me for getting a little pretentious from here on out, but-
Mundanity in sci-fi is optimistic. It’s this tinge of reassurance that, no matter what happens, no matter how bad things get or how far we make it away from our home planet, we’re still individuals. Whether its huge, bombastic threats like scary evil aliens, or depressingly real ones like corporate overreach and profit motives, we will persist. There’s comfort in that.
When I get to see a character doing their morning routine in a world separated from our own by anything between decades to centuries, it feels good. Like the artist/writer is patting me on the head and saying “there there, things may be shit, but life isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.” And maybe there’s a nihilistic twist on it, like propaganda on a television or corporate products lining a comfy home’s shelves, but that’s still a television or a home. They may come home from the Sub-Minimum Wage Employee Pulper 9,000™, and that will inherently be sympathetic, but when we get to see them toss their coat aside and go to the kitchen to make a lazy, unhealthy meal and slouch on their sofa and pick up a television remote to flip to their favorite channel, the connection that forms is irreplaceable.
And I feel that it’s severely underutilized. When I watched Andor for the first time (amazing show btw, check it out even if you aren’t the biggest fan of starred wars) and we got to see a character return to their mother’s apartment and eat space cereal with space milk, it was somehow one of the most jarring moments I’ve seen in a Star Wars thing. Living situations are oftentimes such an understated part of popular sci-fi media that I actually felt jarred upon seeing one. And I loved it.
That’s just how uncommon they can be. And I hate that. I hate that sci-fi loves to dismiss the mundanities of life, because those are when I feel the most at-home in a universe. I can immediately feel a character’s vibe if I see them kick their feet up in a messy impromptu living room in their spaceship. While you can put in the work to make me feel that same thing through dialogue and actions, it’s arguably even more work.
So next time you’re making a story, why not save yourself some trouble and show your audience a little snippet of day-to-day life in your world? Show us what a character’s phone looks like and how they use it, or maybe if they have a wallpaper (if applicable) or any stickers on the back of it? Or give us some tiny details about how they get from place to place. Is public transport a thing, do they own their own vehicle of some kind, or do they just walk? Hopefully these thoughts conjure the same kind of inspiration in you as the ones that run around wreaking havoc in my little fox brain.
“With the introduction of the brand-new line of Fysi-Apomi hyper-resilient plant life, even those of you out in the most remote corners of the galaxy may create your own little garden! Stuffed with all the nutrients one could need and capable of producing up to quadruple the fresh oxygen of regular plants, our new line of greenery can help improve your life on any industrialized planet.”
A holo-television. A simple piece of technology, light suspended in the air between two strips of projectors. Colors of such depth and motion of such smoothness to suggest reality unfolding right there before oneself. Upon this particular holo-TV, the visage of a well-dressed human woman in a lush greenhouse. Flowing blonde hair and a silky suit to build the impression of one to be trusted.
“As you can see here-” She took hold of a pot. From it grew a little berry bush. “Our wonderful plantlife is capable of sprouting all the food one could need!”
The view panned outwards into a wide shot of the greenhouse. There were trees bearing fruit and bushes bearing berries and sprouts from the ground bearing vegetables. The woman walked backwards to follow the camera panning.
“With Fysi-Apomi, you can-”
Ring-ring. There was a shrill sound across the room. A remote was picked up and pointed at the holo-TV. With a press of the power button, its display dissipated into thin air. A few floating particles of light lingered for seconds. Ring-ring. The remote was tossed down onto a coffee table dotted with empty soda cans, cups of microwave noodles and the disassembled mess of a gadget or two. From the couch arose a bipedal vulpine. He pulled a hood over his face, obscuring all but the end of his snout. Ring-ring.
Dusty boots clacked against metallic flooring as he made his way across the room. It was enclosed, made of metal all around. Piping and exposed wiring ran in bundles along the ceiling and walls. Opposing ends of the room terminated in doors, one of regular size and one of a cargo bay.
Ring-ring. The fox stood before the source of the ringing. A phone mounted to the wall. On its ID screen were the words “CALL FROM: MR. B.” He pulled the phone from its terminal and held it to his ear.
“Where in the name of the gods are you, Cade?!” squawked a shrill voice. “My contact is waiting for you!”
“None’a your business, man,” Cade bit back. “You’ll get everything you need, don’t you worry.”
“Scrapbots could be encroaching upon that ship as we speak-”
“Off my back, B, goddamn. I’m just about there.”
“Define ‘just about.’”
“Close enough that I’ve gotta hang up and get ready for entry now now. Byeeee!”
“We need that part, Cade! Don’t let this end up like-”
Cade slotted the phone back into its terminal. It was followed right up by another call from Mr. B. He removed the phone, slammed it back into place and then shut the terminal off completely. Both the terminal and holo-TV having gone blank, the only sound to accompany the room was a slight, electronic droning. Cade strode off back towards his TV.
Between the TV and the wall was an empty space. Just about enough to house a person. Cade stepped into it. He pulled up his sleeve, revealing a watch underneath. Upon lifting it towards the wall, a small chime of approval sounded off. The wall creaked for a moment, hissed out a puff of air and then slid open. Its movement was staggered and jittery, but upon completion a roomy compartment was revealed within.
Green. Lots of green. Plants lined the back of the compartment, blossoming vines spread up the walls and around the corners. There was a row of synthetic sunlight strips above them, flanked on either side by watering pipes. Droplets of water dripped from the nozzles. Cade reached in and began shuffling around the plants. His clawed paws tended to the plants with gentle grace. Branches were nudged back into place, dying leaves were snipped off.
On the compartment’s floor sat multiple leather pads. They were a dark shade of brown that mirrored Cade’s own fur. Next to them laid a handgun - contained in a leather holster. Five spare magazines were scattered around it. And off in the corner was a backpack propped up against the wall. Cade took a hold of it and set it down on the floor outside before continuing on tending to his garden.
Centralized amidst all the plants was a single flower, sat in a pot of its very own. Its pedals burned a bright red, a standout look amongst the green surrounding it. Cade investigated it with movements gentle enough not to wake a sleeping mouse. He pushed it around with as much ease as his paws could muster until finding a single wilting leaf on its stem. With a grumble, he snipped the leaf off. It fluttered down into a pile of dead plant matter gathering on the compartment’s floor.
Cade swiped a few bits of debris off the leather padding. A sigh escaped his lips as he took hold of the largest piece. It was a set of straps, ones that he fastened over his torso. They made up a belt around his waist and a slash that crossed his body diagonally. Another piece - surface marked with a burn - affixed onto the strap over his left shoulder. Cade stretched and flexed his body around, allowing the upper armor to slide into place.
The handgun and its holster clipped right onto Cade’s belt. Pockets stitched on the opposite end served as perfect housing for the magazines. And with that, Cade removed the last leather plate and hit a button on the compartment’s wall. Its door came hissing shut as it returned to an airtight seal with a satisfying little click, all the while Cade began on his way across the room.
The smaller of the doors opened as Cade approached it. Beyond it was a small cockpit. A whole array of windows lined the walls. Through them a planet could be seen straight ahead. Trailing wisps and puffy blots of gray filled the atmosphere and shadowed out the surface. A central chair swiveled itself around just as the door had finished opening.
Cade tossed himself into it, setting the chair off to turn back around and present its pilot with the ship’s controls. Display panels ignited with green light in response to the fox’s presence. Each screen was pure black with nothing but green text displayed on them. A central terminal beckoned Cade to begin inputting commands, but the fox instead opted to lift his right leg and rest it on the dashboard. The final leather pad fit snugly around his thigh. He gave it a little pat, lowered his leg and sat back up.
A keyboard was situated below the central terminal. Cade reached around the ship’s control stick and typed a command. A list appeared, a long one. Each entry was a string of random letters and numbers. Cade deliberated over the long list until settling upon one of the latter choices with a click of the enter key. 076-RDMPTN24.
The control stick’s position allowed Cade’s paws to slide right off the keyboard and take hold of it. Its ergonomic design slipped into one of his paws with ease. He flicked a switch on the base of it and then began tilting it forward. One of his feet applied light pressure to the rightmost of two pedals beneath the dashboard. His free paw reached off to the side of the cabin and flicked a handful of switches. The ship angled forward, ramping up the speed of its descent.
A small crackling sounded off beside Cade, prompting an ear to perk up and nearly push his hood off. He took his paw to a dial above him and began to twist it ever so slightly. The crackling came in and out, pulsing between loud and quiet. His movements became finer and finer until the sound had plateaued out into a consistent buzz. A voice was peeking through the haze, small glimpses given of something resembling words. Syllables struggling to coagulate into complete statements.
“W..elcome to…” A robotic twang drenched the voice. “BZZT… an industrial outpost… Now welcoming trad- BZZZZT… Quality index of- BZZT… Safety equipment… nearest arrival station- bzt…”
Silence. The signal died off with one last whimper of a beep. Cade attempted to twist the dial further, but got nothing but varying degrees of static in response. A small beep here and there maybe, but nothing of substance. A lost cause, he reasoned to himself as he gave his attention back to that which awaited outside the window.
Speed was building from Cade’s planetary approach. The white-speckled blackness of space vanished from the corners of his view, replaced by writhing clouds of gray. They only seemed to darken as his approach pressed on. Cade gave a check to the gauge cluster. Dials were increasing across the board, all except for planetary surface distance.
BOOM!
A crack of lightning caused Cade to jump in his seat. Storms announced their presence with great booms and thuds. Cade tightened his grip on the steering stick and allowed himself a deep breath. As if in response, turbulence jutted itself into the equation. Cade reached for his central dashboard and turned up a slider that was jury rigged into the wall and labeled “compartment stabilizer.” with a piece of tape. The ship was putting up its best attempt to level out, though even its best could generously be described as rocky.
Rain began speckling the glass. Cade flipped a lever and a pair of wipers began swiping in vertical motions. Almost like it was fighting back, the rain grew stronger. It grew stronger to the point that the default wiper speed failed to keep up. Cade clicked the speed up a notch. Not enough. Two notches, getting there. Three notches - as high as it would go - and they were hardly keeping the windows clear, though they offered just enough downtime to see through. Not that there was much to see beyond the whirling gray abyss of storm clouds.
Cade reached across his seat, grabbed the seat belt, and clicked it into place. His ship rattled and creaked, its computer systems beeping and crying in distress. The control stick was jolting around, necessitating Cade wrap his other paw around it. Yet even the strength of both his arms wasn’t enough to keep the ship under control. A particularly close arc of lightning sent his ship careening to the side. Cade yelped, the seatbelt barely managing to keep the fox from being flung across the cockpit. It was more than enough to break his grip on the control stick, though.
The ship was sent into a spiral. Even a hearty set of internal gravity generators couldn’t save Cade from growing dizzy. He struggled to reach out with his body being wretched in circles over and over. His eyes put up a fight to stay open, the contents of his skull feeling more akin to a stew than a solid brain. And - as if matters couldn’t get any worse - the clouds began to thin…
Cade’s mind struggled to register the fact that he had broken the cloud layer. A spinning mass of gray had been replaced with a spinning mass of green. His head was caving in, a pounding headache giving way to his eyes shutting. One last desperate bid to grab the stick, one last strained reach of an arm, one last chance…
Synthetic leather, in his paw. A rejuvenating burst of energy pulsed through the fox. Through a scrambled mind he managed to wrangle the stick back into some semblance of control. Enough to thrust his other paw onto it. What little strength he had left was invested right into yanking the stick into place, opposing the terminal roll his ship had been sent into.
Spinning colors of the planet’s surface slowed. Hazy green and obscured blots of dark brown. Cade yanked harder, hard enough to have instilled fear of breaking the steering system in any other situation. The death spin began to slow. Cade’s eyes managed to pry themselves open and the pure adrenaline pumping through his veins gave him the final sliver of energy required to bring the ship out of its spin. Relief poured into Cade’s clouded mind.
And relief was blown away nigh instantaneously. Saving himself from the spin hadn’t changed a thing about the fact that Cade was hurtling towards the surface at a speed so high that the dials of his gauge cluster went beyond their highest numbers. The surface was close. Too close, so much closer than it should’ve been. With the same hold that managed to save himself from the spin, Cade tugged the stick back towards him hard enough to slam it into his chest.
There was a near-deafening screech. Both the ship’s engines and frame screamed in protest to the sudden motion. Cade clenched his sharp teeth. A metallic tearing sounded off somewhere from the rear of his ship. His foot came slamming down onto a pedal and he yelled at the top of his lungs.
Mere moments to spare, the ship managed to straighten itself out. The whole thing rattled as its bottom side clipped a rusty smokestack. Cade almost fell out of his seat again. Industrial structures flew by in a blur around him. Whatever was left of the ship’s momentum had been sent to hurtling it forward instead. It grazed between smokestacks and long catwalks, missing some by mere inches.
Adrenaline flowing like water through his veins, Cade’s sweat-laden hands struggled to keep hold as he weaved between metal structures. With his attention darting from side to side, he hardly managed to notice the wall of piping he was hurtling towards. But when he did, he screamed out a curse and instead directed his arms to pulling back up once more.
A metal plate flung off the ship and slammed into the wall of pipes as Cade managed to pull the ship up into clear sky. Or, as Cade would come to realize as he collapsed back in his seat, an especially cloudy sky.
Stretching for miles in front of him was a vast expanse of metal and haze. The air was thick, tainted sickly green. Rain poured down and ran through the fog as if carrying it down to the surface - where it coagulated into a thicker mist. Old factories expanded into a horizon rendered near by fog, a complex dwarfing all else in scale. Cade’s weary eyes danced across it all. Not a single smokestack seemed to be in operation - some had even broken and collapsed. Everything was packed so dense as to disallow any comfortable ship landings.
Ring-ring. A screen off to the side lit up. CALL FROM: MR. B. Cade groaned and hit the accept call button.
“Our contact saw that pathetic entry of yours, Cade. You’re making an awful first impression.”
“As if they could’ve done any better,” Cade grumbled.
“You’ll be meeting them at clearing J-11,” Mr. B chugged on without skipping a beat. “It’s taken you long enough to arrive already. Get there quick, lest you taint the reputation of this organization even further. And clean yourself up, you look and sound like a mess.”
“Because our reputation is spotless as is.”
“Maybe it would be without inconsiderate units such as you.”
“Ouch, that burns,” Cade sneered. “Get your ass out here and enter an unregulated atmosphere through a pollution storm. Shouldn’t be a problem for a bird brain like you, yeah?”
“My job here-”
“Is to get me my money after I get this done for you.”
The hang up button received a hearty press. Bzt. Cade glanced around the area. From the edge of the fog, an abrupt cutoff in all the industry revealed itself. A big red sign jutted out from it, J-11. He directed his ship towards it.
It expanded down several stories. Down and down it went until terminating in a lengthy parking lot. Almost all of its spots went unfilled, minus the select few which held the corpses of long abandoned cars at rest. Coffins lined with faded white paint.
In the furthest corner stood out one vehicle in particular. A ship in pristine condition. Comparatively pristine, at the very least. Its design was sharp and bulky. A fighter. Wing-mounted cannons larger than a person and paint bearing its fair share of scorches and chips. There was a figure standing outside of it, doing some kind of work made unrecognizable by distance.
Cade reached to the side of his cockpit and flipped a lever down. With some loud cracks of opposition, the ship’s engines rotated to face upwards. “Hover mode engaged, landing gear deployed” was printed on the center console. A press of the left pedal ensued and the ship began to lower as Cade maneuvered it to hover a few spaces away from the fighter. He depressed the pedal with as much ease as he could, but then the ship’s engines sputtered a few feet from the ground.
The ship jolted and hit the ground. One of the legs of its landing gear failed to deploy. Cade grunted and stumbled out of the cockpit, his legs taking their precious time growing steady once more. He ran a double check over himself as he entered the main room. Gun, check. Ammo, check. Armor, check. Bag… Unchecked. Cade took a small detour across the living room, over to the holo-TV. His backpack wasn’t in the space he left it, instead having been tossed into the nearest corner.
He stepped over and kneeled in front of it. Inside was an array of little devices, gadgets and rations that he shuffled through. Though their arrangement had been scattered, none of them had broken. Cade breathed a sigh of relief, shut the bag and slung it over his back. But as he stood, a sudden flash of panic lit upon his face. He turned to the wall compartment and its door, flush with the surface around it. A step was taken towards it when-
Clang-clang!
Knocking on the ship’s cargo bay door. Cade looked back at the compartment only for the knocking to sound off again. Clang-clang-clang! Even harder that time. He bit his lip, cursed under his breath and took off towards the cargo door. An empty noodle cup caught itself under his foot and put him into a stumble, one he only stopped by reaching out and catching himself on the wall. One of his paws had hit a panel next to the cargo door, causing it to begin lowering.
A rush of noxious air came flooding in. Its presence spurred a cough out of the vulpine the instant it came in contact with his windpipe. His lungs were made ten times heavier in the blink of an eye. He fell forward against the wall and propped himself up with an arm. Tears welled up in his eyes. There was a knock on the outside of his door that only barely registered to his ears.
“You’re late.” A gruff voice, clouded behind a digital filter. “Didn’t even listen to the arrival broadcast, did you?”
Cade looked up through tear-filled eyes and bore witness to a tall, human man. Face concealed behind a bulky gas mask and body clad in heavy metal armor, he was near double the size of the small fox. Another gas mask hung from one of the man’s hands. It wasn’t as bulky, seemingly a standard model lacking in any advanced additions.
“Boss didn’t-” Cade tried to speak, but was wracked by another coughing fit. “...Didn’t warn me about this air, fuck!”
“Your eyes should’ve.” The man tossed the mask over to Cade, who fumbled and nearly dropped it. “Call me Steel.”
With shaky hands, Cade shoved the mask over his face. A deep breath through its filters allowed a wave of relief to wash over his lungs. The mask was loose on his face, though a seal around its edges adhered to his fur. Fresh air gave Cade the energy needed to regain his posture and step out from his ship. Rain pelted against the top of his hood as he did so.
“One hell of a name,” the fox said. “Real subtle.”
“Codename, smartass. What’s yours?”
“Cade. Something that sticks to the whole ‘normalcy’ shtick. Not tryin’ too hard to sound all tough-”
“Shut it.”
“Pfft. Struck a nerve there, huh? Noted.”
Steel gave nothing more than a growl before facing himself towards the open space beyond the lot. A train station stood a short distance away. Holes in its walls revealed that a passenger train - though rusted - remained idle within. Perpendicular to the tracks stretched a vast expanse of what used to be roadway, now reduced to mere fractured chunks of color-bleached concrete.
Alongside the road was a whole forest of dead trees, their colors muted to a similar degree. A good lot of them had been felled. Those that remained standing were either stripped bare or covered with dead branches like veins that clawed towards the sky. Deeper and deeper into the fog the road winded, the only sense of termination provided by a large structure obscured in fog.
“Ship’s out there,” Steel said. “According to my trackers.”
Cade nodded. “And is there any particular reason we had to land all the way out here, or was it just to get your steps in for the day?”
“Locals.”
“People live on this shithole?”
Steel let out a sigh. “The fuck did I just say?”
“It was a rhetorical question. Hell, you really are what it says on the tin.”
“That being..?”
“Dense.”
Though the lenses of his mask were tinted to the point of acting as shiny black walls, Steel’s glare burnt a hole into Cade. The fox opted to laugh it off. Steel, though unamused, directed the fox to follow him. Cade bent over to grab the door of his ship and slid it shut. It hissed as it sealed itself.
The duo set out on their way down the road. Steel drew a weapon from his back, a lever action laser rifle. Cade’s eager eyes affixed right onto it and he fell a pace or two behind. Slick black metal ending in sharp corners, its form invaded with duct tape and bundles of wires. An ejection port and feeding tube were present, though the latter had a charge package taped and welded into it. A rack holding three extra charge packs had been affixed to the side of the weapon.
Cade glanced down at the handgun on his hip and grumbled to himself. Instead of letting his eyes lock onto the other weapon once more, he forced himself to take a gander at the scenery. What little of it there was, at the very least…
Every now and then a road would splinter off and venture off into parts unknown. Or there’d be a road sign, or a billboard. Cade gave the billboards particular attention. Most had been worn by the elements to the point of illegibility. There were a select few that managed to stay just barely on the cusp of being comprehensible, though.
NixCo Cybernetically Enhanced Lungs!
Breathe better, live better with NixCo!
Ask about your local installation clinic today!
Bright colors - though dimmed by the elements - and a peppy cartoon human taking a nice, deep breath of air drawn so fresh Cade could almost feel it in his lungs. The pulsing inhales and exhales of the fox’s gas mask grounded him right back into reality, out of the ad’s own imitation of it. The reality where even reading the ad’s fine print was somewhat difficult from the noxious fog in the air. A shiver tickled his spine…
Miles dragged by. Steps faded into each other and became a blur of forward movement into swirling clouds of death. Steel hadn’t a word to say, and Cade’s head was still throbbing just enough to dismantle the idea of casual conversation. All their ears had was the booming of thunder overhead and the steady drone of rainfall. Their boots splashed in cloudy puddles of water. The monotony of it all kept Cade’s mind just as fogged as the planet he had found himself on.
“Snap out of it,” Steel barked, his voice shattering the glass of Cade’s focus like a hammer. “We’re just about there.”
The fox blinked and shook himself awake again. His paw pads were sore and his mouth yearned for a drink from within the confines of his mask. But one sign of tangible progress crammed itself into the forefront of his mind, pushing all else aside in the process.
Great walls of scrap metal. They were fashioned around something, but were tall enough to obscure vision inside. Light emanated from behind them and peeked through unsealed holes in the aged metal. Dotted along the walls were a handful of watchtowers. Spotlights shone down from them, swaying from side to side in rhythmic fashion. Banners had been hung atop each of the towers. They were tattered near the bottom, colored in a faded purple. Some royal-looking golden star was planted in the middle. There were stitches across each of the stars, the pattern of them uniform across every banner.
Cade stopped in his tracks. Steel kept walking a few paces forward before taking notice - at which point he too stopped. The man gave Cade an annoyed grunt. Cade grunted right back, only in an exaggerated mock fashion.
“Hold your horses, jackass,” Cade said. “How about we don’t walk right up to their front door?”
“Are you tired or something, wanna set up a picnic back here? Make the boss wait even longer for this godforsaken job to get done?” Steel bit back. “Hope you packed some sandwiches then, because I didn’t pack for a pleasant afternoon getaway.”
“No, I wanna make sure we know what we’re getting into before we go storming in.”
Steel huffed, but stayed in place. Cade shook his head and removed his backpack, placing it on the ground in front of him. He rummaged through it for a moment and took a pair of binoculars out. They were a bit awkward to press against his mask and didn’t provide the best view of things, but he made it work just enough to observe the towers ahead.
Within each tower was an armed individual. All of them carried aged bolt-action rifles. Too old to be laser weapons, Cade reasoned. Scrap metal armor adorned their bodies, painted a knightly shade of silver. They weren’t operating the spotlights, those moved on their own. Cade trailed the binoculars downward with the beam of one, down to the base of the walls. The main entrance was hard to miss. A large set of double doors. About as ornate as scrap possibly could be. Guards stood post outside it, armed with… swords?
Cade removed the binoculars from his eyes. “Lots of guards.”
“Lots? Let me be the judge of that.” Steel snatched the binoculars from Cade’s paw and began examining the place. “Hmphf, odd choice of weapons this lot uses.”
“Old ones, doesn’t seem like they get out much.”
Steel held the binoculars down, but didn’t gesture them out towards Cade. The fox took it upon himself to swipe the pair back for himself, tucking them in his bag right away. Steel responded by drawing his rifle and aiming it towards a tower.
“I’ll take out the guys in the towers, you move in and-”
“That’s stupid,” Cade interrupted. “Are you stupid? Shoot one of ‘em and the rest can trail that laser back here and shoot us both, bonehead.”
“Not if we take them out fast enough.”
“Okay, yeah. You’re stupid.” Cade sighed. “How about this; you stay here and cover me. Just - get behind a tree or something. I’ll head in and talk to those guys at the gate, see what’s goin’ on. And then, if they shoot me, you can do all the blasting your little heart desires, yeah?”
Steel groaned. “Gotta make a problem out of everything… Fine. But let it be known I’m not risking myself to save you if you get in over your head, fox.”
“Trust me, big guy,” Cade teased. “I got this~”
[Stay tuned for Chapter 2, hopefully coming within the next few weeks. Feedback is welcome & encouraged, this is my first time ever posting an original story I've written :3]
This isn’t an ask, but I read your post about optimistic nihilism in Night in the Woods, and I never get to talk about it so I thought I’d do it here with someone who actually likes analysing media lmao. Another thing I think is pretty cool is like the way that the cult kind of flips this ideology. How the cult caters to ‘the universe’ and doesn’t care about the people they have to hurt to do it. I just think it’s an interesting. I don’t use tumblr that often and I don’t really know how to use it ngl but I just get so excited about nitw
obvious spoiler warning here. don’t click read more if you haven’t completed nitw and care about spoilers. also try to not read the question. if you already read it just pretend you didn’t
oh trust me when i say that i am just as unfamiliar with tumblr lol. other than that thanks for the thought, funnily enough i was planning on exploring more about this specific topic in the second part of my previous post, but i just hadn’t been able to arrange my thoughts yet. so look out for that i guess. i agree that it’s an interesting topic, it pretty much makes them the perfect “antagonists” to the game as they act as a representation of the kinds of things that can happen when you submit to seeing the people around you as just shapes
Night in the Woods & Optimistic Nihilism, Pt. 1: Constellations
“So I believe in a universe that doesn’t care and people who do.”
Night in the Woods manages to create one of the most realistic narratives I’ve ever seen crafted in a video game. And that’s a bold statement, one that shouldn’t be tossed around lightly. Yet I feel entirely concrete in saying it. It’s quite the diverse game, dealing with a range of topics so wide that it’d be hard to cover all of them in one single post. I hope to cover more of them someday, but today I’ll be narrowing in on one specific point that resonated especially well with me personally: finding purpose in an existence that is inherently devoid of it.
And it’s here that I’m going to say that, to anyone who hasn’t played NITW yet, stop reading this right now and go pick it up. It’s only $20 and with it comes an experience that remains consistently enjoyable and impactful throughout its entire runtime. I won’t be holding back from relevant spoilers for the rest of this post, so now’s your only chance. Go away. But come back once you’ve played the game. That’d be pretty cool I think.
Now that the uninitiated are gone, it’s finally time to wrap back around to that quote at the beginning of this post. A universe that doesn’t care, and people who do. It perfectly aligns with the definition of optimistic nihilism, a term seemingly dubbed by a youtube channel in 2017. For those who are unaware, optimistic nihilism is exactly what it says on the tin. It’s the philosophy that the universe is inherently uncaring, that there’s no concrete meaning to life that we can grasp onto, yet we as human beings are uniquely capable of creating our own meaning without requiring some higher power or order to do it for us. We can choose to pursue what we wish for out of our lives, free to choose our own individualized path through the blank slate that is existence and draw whatever patterns we may choose from it.
As you read through that brief summary you may have already begun to understand exactly why I consider Night in the Woods to align particularly well with optimistic nihilism. The game is not exactly lacking in the theme of finding meaning within things that may be meaningless in the most literal sense. It’s been there since the very beginning, with NITW’s first supplemental game Longest Night. It’s a simple little game featuring Mae, Bea, Gregg and Angus identifying various constellations and making characteristically entertaining quips about each of them. Despite the game’s relative simplicity it acts as an early (over 3 years before NITW itself released!) establishment of NITW’s ever-present theme of establishing meaning in things that don’t have meaning by themselves by using one simple thing: constellations.
Constellations are a perfect medium to establish the philosophy of optimistic nihilism and it is evident that Infinite Fall were acutely aware of that from a very early point in the development of NITW. All constellations really are just patterns of stars we may see in the sky at night that people have assigned their own patterns and meanings to. Most stars sit so far away from the Earth that the human brain struggles to even comprehend how far away they truly are beyond a simple “Wow! That’s pretty far!” They’re balls of gas, unable to care about or even recognize whatever we humans see within them. Most of them have existed for longer than we have and will continue to persist long after we die. Yet the human race has taken it upon themselves to assign patterns to them and continue recognizing said patterns long after we’ve obtained knowledge about what the stars that form them truly are. In nature they hold no inherent meaning and have no rhyme nor reason to their locations relative to each other from our perspective, yet we have used our minds to instill meaning into them and draw patterns that can only be drawn from where we stand. The universe did not care about how it put them there nor how any living being may interpret them, but people cared enough to give them meaning.
Years after the release of Longest Night, Night in the Woods proper came out. And in it the usage of stars was far from ditched. Their function as being one of the elements perpetuating NITW’s optimistic nihilism was only expanded. Every two days in the game you are offered the opportunity to choose to hunt for dusk stars with a character named Mr. Chazokov. The interactions with him themselves don’t offer much in the ways of adding upon the pre-established theme of finding meaning within none, though their mere inclusion does help cement the theme as an important part of the game. The true point in which the theme is finally brought front and center is when the player can choose to go ghost hunting with Angus at Possum Jump. After some uneventful ghost hunting, Mae and Angus decide to rest at the top of a hill and do some stargazing. At this point the game essentially retraces (literally and figuratively) all the ground covered in Longest Night. Mae connects constellations together and Angus names them and gives a brief explanation for each of them. It’s a charming little moment that eventually evolves into Angus explaining the abuse he endured throughout his childhood to Mae. But what’s relevant to this specific analysis is Angus’s attitude throughout. He continually stays true to and loops back upon the fact that, while the stars themselves are very real and the stories given to them do very much exist, the stars really don’t mean anything by themselves. It all culminates with Angus explaining his tragic childhood to Mae. But what’s important to the overall narrative of this essay is Angus’s response when Mae asks him if he believes in anything.
It’s at this point that the game gives its most obvious addressal to its philosophy of optimistic nihilism. It’s like the pot finally boils over and it says “alright, time to finally talk about this.” As a response to being prompted about his beliefs, Angus explains his thoughts by using the constellations recently outlined as a convenient example. It’s here that the quote that spurred this whole essay on shows its head. “So I believe in a universe that doesn’t care and people who do,” is the final quote summarizing Angus’s philosophy on meaning in the universe. And if that isn’t the clearest possible representation of optimistic nihilism in NITW then I don’t know what is. It’s a simple little quote, yet it manages to single handedly encapsulate what optimistic nihilism is. Of course, it’s framed as the view of one character in the game, and a character thinking something doesn’t immediately mean that the entire work subscribes to that philosophy, but as you think about NITW and its various elements more and more it becomes increasingly apparent that it is indeed representative of the philosophy of optimistic nihilism.
And with that vague statement I’ll be leaving off the first part of this little mini-project for the time being. I do intend to come back to it at some point in the (hopefully near) future, as I feel that there’s a lot more that could be said about the themes of finding meaning in Night in the Woods. Currently I’m planning on writing about why I enjoy Mae Borowski as a character so much and see her as one of my favorite video game protagonists, so that’ll probably be done before any other parts to this essay come out. Keep an eye out if you enjoy what I’m posting and want to see more, and don’t be afraid to offer any feedback you may have. There’s a contact section on my profile if you’d like the most effective ways to get in touch.
as you can probably assume, i’ll be using this blog as a way to express and log the Many Thoughts about fictional media that i tend to have
i hope reading my various ramblings helps give you new perspectives on things you may like or things you may not have heard of otherwise. it’s a satisfying feeling to know your words helped inspire a change in someone, no matter how minor it may be
my interests tend to shift wildly at random intervals, so be prepared for some 180s in the kind of content i cover and talk about. i will try my best to keep the style of my posts fairly consistent to a degree that they remain interesting even to outsiders of whatever random interest i am obsessed with at the time (currently the game night in the woods)
that’s about all. it’s 11am and i’m incredibly tired typing this up so sorry if it kinda sucks ass. hoping to get some real posts out soon lol
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