Exchange of Realities

Yesterday we dealt with near-human Others. Today, we’re going to move a little farther from what we’d consider the norm. These kinds of entities are a challenge to write, because all their differences magnify each other, creating a mindset that can in no way be described as familiar.

The next group out are different, but comprehensible; they can be used as allies as easily as antagonists, and in the hands of a good writer can even carry a story on their own without losing the empathy of their audience. They can still look human, but that doesn’t always mean all that much, if anything. More often, the similarities end at two arms, two legs, two eyes, a nose and a mouth, if they even go that far. There’s a wide variety of these: animal, sometimes vegetable, occasionally mineral; spirits of things that belong to the world, spirits of things that merely touch the world, elementals, personifications of metaphysical forces; things that were once human but are no longer, both physically and mentally, and often have forgotten how to be such in the first place; you name it. Their differences are minor enough that the entities themselves can still be identified with, but balancing them and integrating them into a culture can involve a lot of record-keeping. Moreover, if one of the differences is physiology, that could lead to an entirely new field of body language, and getting that across in the beginning is a challenge in and of itself. On the plus side, it’s very easy to ensure that they don’t come off as humans with cosmetic differences.

A subset of the above is the animal in its own setting. This isn’t the oft-disdained animals in fur coats story, mind you; this is the creature in its natural habitat, with its natural tendencies, taking the spotlight, with the human as a distant Other if it even makes an appearance. For this—or to get an idea what kinds of mindsets different creatures can have in general, even if you don’t want to focus on an animal yourself—I recommend Richard Adams’ Watership Down or Tad Williams’ Tailchaser’s Song. Or if you need a quick example, James Tiptree Jr. (or Alice Sheldon if you want to give credit were credit is due)’s “Love is the Plan the Plan is Death” is a good quick read.

The catch with the animal in its own setting is that you have to do your homework. Watership Down worked because Adams knew his rabbits, including the herbivore mentality and some of the little personal habits. Don’t look into it carefully enough, and you risk seeming like you’re doing it to bandwagon off of the big authors, particularly if your plot shows derivation. (*cough Fire Bringer cough*)

Last, of course, is the truly alien, the incomprehensible, the creature whose presence alone inflicts Sanity damage on all who experience it. These are best used offstage; I’m hard put to it to think of even once or twice I’ve seen one of these take center stage and not lose the effect in the process, and of course none of them were my work. Interactions involving them are, needless to say, next to impossible to carry of. This does not, however, mean we shouldn’t try. It just means we should expect to fail. Repeatedly.

Along with boasting mindsets that give us migraines to wrap our heads around, understanding of concepts that usually require Ph.Ds in physics to even grasp the rudiments of, and a lack of many concepts that we take for granted (needless to say, this last is the easiest part to get across), these—things—often have physical forms that go far beyond the limits of our ability to describe. When conceptualizing them, I highly recommend drawing from inanimate objects, forces of nature, and other generally varied elements. After all, combining animal parts can work for a little while, but there’s only so long that you can add species until it stops being incomprehensible and starts just being silly. (Exalted players may remember the carp-deer-thing of dreams and doom from Dreaming Pearl? Yeah. Like that.) And go easy on the tentacles. Earlier writers could get away with them, but they have so many associations these days…

If you’re going to try messing with these things anyway, there are several tricks that might help. One is getting yourself into the proper mindset and mood. There are people who swear by mind-altering substances for this effect, but I’m not one of them by any stretch of the imagination. Or does half an hour spent reading equal parts H. P. Lovecraft and R. S. Borgstrom count? I certainly find it gives me the appropriate mixture of the incomprehensible and the random. Another is planning ahead: make sure you know what concepts it can’t comprehend, have some idea which ones it can, and write yourself a physical description and a decent pile of stock phases you can sprinkle whatever dialogue it engages in (if applicable) with. If you’re gaming, you’ve got a few more options—trippy background music, perhaps, or visuals. One of my favorite tricks, when my group found themselves mind to mind with an entity beyond their comprehension, was linking them to short version of The Inner Life of a Cell and telling them “This is what you see and here before you black out…” (The catch to that one is that it doesn’t seem near as weird and random to a molecular biology student, but at the same time, an Incomprehensible creature of the appropriate mindset might be able to pull it off.)

But enough theory. Tomorrow, let’s get into the practice.