Wholesome innocence, dark abyss

I don't know what to call this genre, but I love it so much. The contrast between the playful and light, with existential horror just beyond safe comfort. I find too few explore this, and I wish it was more popular.

Wholesome innocence

My favourite books of all time are "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", and "Through the Looking-Glass".

The narrative is simple, elegant, whimsical, and wanders from topic to topic. I find it is like a series of short stories sewn together. Each story exploring absurd situations through the eyes of the semi-reasonable Alice.

It is always silly and light-hearted. Like the caucus-race with no clear rules, where Alice is forced to give prizes even though everybody won. Or being asked by the caterpillar to eat the other side of a mushroom to grow larger (mushrooms of course famous for having two sides).

The world might be absurd, but it isn't scary or dangerous. Even when Alice is under the imminent threat of losing her head.

I love the joyous playful nature of it. A world with no real danger, just weird and strange things happening.

Dark abyss

But what lies just beyond the horizon? Just beyond the comfort of this silly playground?

Just like the paper thin atmosphere of Earth, our safe blanket under which we can live and breathe. Past it lies a world so incompatible with life you'd lose consciousness in seconds, and die in mere moments more. A place where, even if you're in a ship shielded from radiation, you'd still be bombarded by all manner of particles and waves.

And even beyond our own local playground lies things so incomprehensibly powerful they might as well be Lovecraftian beings: Black holes the size of our solar system, extremely powerful cosmic gamma-ray bursts, enormous supernovae, and all manner of lesser and greater threats to life.

The immense power of a supernova would light up as a beacon in the sky. Utterly terrifying if you were close to it, but if you were many light years away it would just be a pretty light in the sky. The same thing having two vastly distinct experiences, one of beauty, one of terror.

A black hole could be heading towards our solar system right now, nearly invisible. If large enough, or it hits the right location, it could completely mix up the solar system and cause indescribable chaos. Ending all life in the process. Being afraid of it doesn't help, because we're entirely powerless to stop it.

An aimless universe, with no ill intent, that it could destroy so much so fast. The terror of seeing something ever threatening in the distance makes the fertile Earth look so much more safe and comfortable.

Wholesome innocence, dark abyss

When I write fiction I find this combination, and contrast, so interesting.

The planet my fictional world is set on (which I for historical reasons call the Danmaku universe) has a serious and grounded character, with all manner of playful and whimsical locations and creatures.

Like the forest clearing with a patch of talking grass. They act as a chorus of voices speaking like an entire civilization, yet completely oblivious to their own lack of ability to do anything but rustle in the wind.

Or Siorei the treetop girl, a lesser god who is responsible for leaves falling from trees in autumn. She is furious at her believers for creating such a pointless god, but can't do anything about it as it would threaten her own existence.

All of this harmless and fun.

But there is a cosmic backdrop that makes the entire world bathe in a sea of otherworldly features. The horrible creatures from the realm of organics. A realm purely consisting of living flesh, indescribable in form and purpose. When someone looks at something from this realm they can't really understand what they're seeing, as if their vision gets blurred when looking at it.

Locations such as the vast void, where a flat membrane lines an infinite ground. In the sky are pitch black floating islands, only visible as they obscure the starry sky beyond. A place seemingly safe, unless one accidentally ends up on the islands by thinking the wrong thing.

But not everything is dangerous, just foreign and unknown. Like the Skotadi, a creature who appears extremely terrifying. It seemingly makes clones of itself, enlarges itself to appear like a terrifying monster, and attacks with immense power. Yet its only goal is to escape, and its illusions are just a defense mechanism. Someone attacked by it would only realize afterwards that their injuries are superficial.

All of this is an ever present threat. Being at the wrong place at the wrong time can force you to deal with something very foreign, and potentially very dangerous. But for most of the time it is something just beyond the lived world, that makes one appreciate the comfort of safety.

I really enjoy exploring this through the role-playing campaign I'm running. I want to write more posts about this universe in the future, as I've grown very fond of what it has become. And whatever this combination of genres could be called, lies at the heart of it.