Cold Open This is the end.
You feel yourself afloat in the chaos.
The stars have been blown out, the planets swallowed up.
The screams and gunfire and false loudspeaker promises around you are little more than background
noise; the music of a dying world.
You stare into the changed sky, and it stares back.
One vast eye, between the darkened clouds.
In its gaze, all that you have ever been falls away.
You are a mote of dust on a grain of sand tumbling through a cold, unknowable emptiness.
The eye draws near.
A mouth opens like a torn seam in the atmosphere, air becoming the warmth of its breath.
Unfurling, descending, reaching down through the horizon in a ribbon of astral flesh, comes
the eager tongue.
This is the end.
But you are already gone; lost forever with the vanished stars.
What will you do?
This is the essential question of Junji Ito's cosmic horror manga Hellstar Remina.
And I promise, I'm not trying to depress you by asking it.
I actually just think there's some really good story potential in there.
So, if you can brave it, let's peer into the void for a moment, and see what we can find...
Intro (Cosmic Horror + Pressure) A special thanks to Campfire writing software
for making this video possible!
And now, with campfire blaze, you can get your entire world-building arsenal right here,
online!
More on that... later.
Brace yourself.
This is not a topic for the faint of heart.
We've discussed plenty of horror on this show in the past, but rarely anything quite this
pessimistic.
The work we're about to discuss shows us what it looks like to throw your characters into
one of the worst possible dilemmas they could endure... and just how fascinating that can
be.
Junji Ito's Hellstar Remina is about a living planet, coming to consume the Earth.
That's it.
No solution, no hero trying to stop it.
Just the coming apocalypse and a world that could not possibly have been prepared.
It's a simple premise, but it's hard to describe how deeply this story has affected me.
I'd never even really thought of it until I read this, but... humans sure draw a lot
of security from some basic presumptions about their place in the universe, don't they?
Each person's entire character is more or less built upon these foundations, so what
happens... when they go away?
This is a type of character revelation that I would love to see explored more often, and
I think this story gives us the tools to do it.
I personally see two things at play, here: Cosmic Horror... and Pressure.
Body Cosmic Horror
Although Hellstar Remina does have a lot to do with space-in a vague, pseudo-science-y
kind of way-that's not actually what makes it cosmic horror.
The genre has less to do with that and more to do with scale; humanity against a vast,
indifferent cosmos, struggling to come to terms with it all.
It dares to suggest that the mankind is ultimately ignorant, impotent, and most of all, in the
grand scheme of things, utterly insignificant.
Caveat, here-these are not views that I hold, I am not that kind of robot.
But this is all borne out pretty clearly in the story:
First, there's that revelation of ignorance.
When the dread planet initially emerges from a wormhole, they praise the discovery as,
quote, "the single most important event in the history of astrophysics".
Technically, they aren't wrong about that.
But the planet is a foreign body from an unknown parallel universe, has "no regard for our
universe's laws of physics", and consumes the stars and planets.
Far from advancing their understanding, the discovery washes it all away.
This is one of the central ideas of cosmic horror-that the entire body of human knowledge
is so fragile, a mere glimpse at the true nature of things is enough to shatter it entirely.
Then, there's the revelation of impotence.
The dread planet is unknowable, unpredictable, unstoppable.
They try to launch a research mission to its surface, but the crew fall victim to a strange,
grotesque fate.
When the planet approaches, predictions and precedents are all proved wrong-instead of
plowing through the Earth, it halts to a stop, seeming to savor the meal.
And when the planet lowers its tongue to begin the feast, the desperate government launches
a volley of missiles, all of which fall apart on contact, raining hellfire down on the populace.
There is no meaningful way to respond to it, no way to even truly grasp it.
For all of their achievements, the human race is reduced to another simple life form at
the mercy of forces it cannot comprehend.
Ants beneath a cosmic boot.
Finally, the idea of insignificance is embedded into the very premise of the story.
Although we spend lots of time on the ground with the characters, moving through action
sequences and interpersonal drama, by the story's end... it all means nothing.
The Earth and its inhabitants are no more than a tasty snack for a being higher up on
the food chain.
Ignorance, impotence, insignificance.
Pretty jarring for a single event to reveal all of these qualities at once.
Leaves you feeling displaced.
Adrift.
At a loss for some of the most basic things you thought made you... you.
And oddly, for whatever reason, this is an emotion some audiences seek out.
Maybe a little glimpse into the abyss, a way to satisfy that morbid curiosity?
It's certainly an interesting question to play with.
What if you truly know nothing, can change nothing, have no intrinsic significance?
What then?
Grim, and like I said at the video's start, not for the faint of heart... but interesting.
Most of the stories I know of that dip their toes into these waters are really just concerned
with posing the question.
They expose the audience to the idea, get them thinking about it, and leave them grasping
for their own answer.
It's actually quite effective... but I love Hellstar Remina for having the audacity not
only to pose the question, but to make its characters answer as well!
And this is where that second part of the formula comes in-the pressure.
Pressure In his book Story, writing consultant Robert
McKee says that "True character is revealed in the choices a human makes under pressure-the
greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character's essential
nature."
Pressure forces response, response shows judgement, judgement shows value, value shows character.
Arguably, an apocalypse is the greatest possible pressure, so we can expect some serious character
revelation here, right?
Well yes, but not in the way that you're used to.
Because the question the characters are answering with their decisions is not one of moral fiber
or intention or any of that.
This is not where you find out who the good guys and bad guys are-although you'll probably
find that out in the process, too.
The question they're answering is one of self-concept.
The cosmos has shown unequivocally you that you do not understand it the way you thought,
that you are powerless to change it, that you hold no special significance to it...
can you accept that?
And if you can, what do you do with it?
These are questions you could grapple with your entire life, but the characters in the
story just don't have that luxury.
They have until mealtime's over to come to terms with this... or not.
And the really interesting thing about it is that most of the conflict and story movements
in Hellstar Remina don't even come from...
Hellstar Remina.
They come from the people, forced into this awkward situation.
The dread planet's just having a snack.
As with most things, it's the humans who complicate it.
Unable to accept their apparent ignorance, some of the characters allow themselves to
become convinced Remina's surface is a good place to evacuate to, because they saw a...
creepy humanoid silhouette in their vanished astronauts' final recording?
Reasonable.
Unable to confront the futility of their situation, mass, conspiracy-fueled riots break out all
over the planet, convinced that if they can murder one specific girl, the world will be
saved.
And unable to face their own insignificance, the mobs draw a link between that one specific
girl and the dread planet, suggesting she's "summoning" or "projecting" it, simply because
they share the name: Remina.
A human is at the heart of it.
That's easier to accept, isn't it?
Conclusion By and large, this is a story about a version
of humanity that, when confronted with the question of its place in the universe... rejects
the question outright.
And in this story, it's so unanimous and widespread, it's really more of a character revelation
for... the whole of the species.
But this is where the creative application comes in.
This is such an interesting inner conflict to watch characters struggle with, such a
variety of possible responses.
Put them under a little pressure to answer, and you have yourself rare sort of revelation.
We're not just seeing true colors-we're a seeing a reaction to what they find when held
to a cosmic mirror.
And it doesn't have to be an apocalypse, either.
They could be about to wake from the simulation, terrified of what the world outside will be
like.
They could discover that this whole time, they've been lab rats in an alien experiment,
and that experiment is coming to a close.
It could even just be a fleeting moment of lucidity after a lifetime of comfortable delusion.
Anything that challenges their personal foundations-renders them ignorant, impotent, insignificant-could
work!
//CLEAN AD BREAK// Of course it's all well and good to suggest
something like this, but how do actually approach it?
How do you wrangle all the plot points necessary to play out this type of character revelation?
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//CLEAN AD BREAK// Before we wrap up, I'd like to give a quick
thanks to all the helpful humans who support the show on Patreon.
All those words you see scrolling in the background of these videos?
Those are actually the names of our Patreon maintenance crew, without whom this show would
be impossible.
And a special word to all of our top patrons: Lord_Gatte, RPGgrenade, Puzzling Shutterbug,
and TheAutumnWriter - thank you so much!
There's always a few weeks between uploads, so it might be a minute before you see us
again here... but that doesn't mean the Foundry will be quiet.
We actually hold a writing group every Friday over on the Tale Foundry Twitch channel, where
we read fiction submissions from the community live, and give critiques!
If you're craving more Tale Foundry, there's no better way to get your fill.
I hope we'll see you there!
Until then, thanks for watching, and keep making stuff up!
I'll see you...
next time!
Bye!