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sh1njuk1Since I was a young child, I've constantly made up stories to amuse myself. In recent years, I've recognized that these stories often serve a second function: to help me comprehend something. Lately, I think that's extended to helping me process my own life events. Spiritual enough to be on a spiritual blog? Well... if it wasn't trying to tell me something important, it wouldn't have been on re-run in my mind for the past month straight, now would it? So I've decided in cases like these to add stories, occasionally, to this blog.
This story, just like most of my stories, is a mish-mash of recent cultural inputs and events that have happened to me and others. The main parts of it appeared in my mind at once in a flash--that's usually how they happen--but a few plot holes have been filled in as I've watched and re-watched (so to speak) the "movie" in my head.
My stories usually have a set "viewing mode" - they don't translate super well to other modes. This one appeared to me in the style of a 3D animated Disney musical of recent vintage - colorful, family drama, light-hearted tone, but hiding surprisingly deep themes. (I was recently watching clips of Encanto.) I'll do my best to spit it out in text form.
The attitude of this movie is fast-paced and comedic - even about stuff that isn't all that funny, if you slowed down to think about it. But I want it to be clear that most of the characters don't take themselves too seriously, to set up a contrast with the few who do.
The setting of the story is a scrappy, caveman-level tribal society which is set up in tents and shabby huts in a rocky valley without much food. Easily visible on the other side of the rocky valley wall is a dark, ruined, inhabitant-less city which literally overshadows everything.
We start off focused on a boy on the cusp of puberty, probably a redhead, about 12 or 13 years old, who I will call Main Boy or MB (because names aren't so important in this story). He's wearing an awkwardly big metal arm protector, clearly supposed to belong to an adult, but the rest of his clothes/weapons/ornaments are made from some part of a goat. We know in the first minute that he is a spunky kid who wants to prove himself and become a GREAT MAN!! He is hiding behind a rock, with his eye on a goat munching something on the next rock over... he winds up his slingshot... and the goat perks up its ears, hops just out of range, and casually continues munching. MB throws down the slingshot and curses his greatest enemy... the Cleverest Goat!
The next scene is MB's stepfather (a cheerful, large blond fellow) bemusedly asking him " Kid, why that goat?" Literally no one in the tribe has ever managed to hunt it, it's kind of a white whale. MB says that he HAS to do something AMAZING for his coming-of-age ritual, or he will NEVER live up to his father's reputation!
His stepfather goes with him to the Remembrance Rocks, which is a place near their settlement where life-sized representations of tribe members have been drawn on the stones over many decades. (Their homeland doesn't provide a lot of food, but there are a lot of pigments available in the rocks.) His stepfather takes him to one of the rocks and points out a life-sized picture of his father - a dark-haired young man with a serious expression, the same pale eyes as MB, and a necklace with a shiny red MacGuffin hanging from it.
We learn from Stepfather that Father was once his best friend, and just as MB already knows, he was amazing! He was smart, he was fearless, and he was able to travel into the very heart of the cursed ruins on the other side of the rocky hill from their settlement, and to make the terrible deathless monsters constantly patrolling there obey him! Unfortunately, one day he'd fallen down into a bottomless pit. They hadn't even been able to retrieve his body. Stepfather sheds a tear for his dear friend, and then matter-of-factly states that after that happened, he married MB's widowed pregnant mother, returned strictly to hunting goats, and never visited the cursed ruins again.
He hugs MB and tells him how much he loves him, as much as he loved Father, but also slips in a comment on how his whole paternal line has been a bit too eager for adventure - there was the bottomless pit for Father, Grandfather got eaten by a lion, etc... He advises MB to start small by hunting dumb goats, and save Cleverest Goat for a crowning mid-life achievement. MB agrees in the way that children agree when they are absolutely not going to do what you just asked.
In the following introduction-to-my-whole-family montage, we meet MB's mother - she is the tribe's artist, chill and cheerful and currently drawing portraits of both him and Stepfather on the rocks - his three little sisters, who (hilariously!) run around chewing on everything that might possibly be food - and Sad Grandma. This is played a bit for laughs. The rest of the tribe, including MB, are bouncing with energy and expressing BIG emotions and climbing all over everything; Sad Grandma is hunched, withdrawn and constantly either sad or pathologically terrified of goats.
MB is rather annoyed by her, as she intensely fears the outdoors (she almost never leaves her hut) and every time he goes inside to get something she's always telling him to be more careful, not to climb around so much, and don't go hunting goats, it's dangerous!! He asks Stepfather what her deal is and Stepfather (hilariously!) answers that, yeah, his grandma is pretty weird and he's not entirely sure how she's lived this long--no one else in the tribe ever has--but at least the music she plays on her hand-made string instruments around the campfire is so beautiful it makes everyone cry. And isn't that nice? (Stepfather is probably the chief of the tribe, he's working pretty hard here.) MB is not appeased.
Anyway, completely ignoring the advice of literally everyone else, MB sneaks off to hunt Cleverest Goat the very next day. He stalks him for hours, just out of range. Of course he doesn't notice that Cleverest Goat is heading right for the ruins... both of them cross over a rather clear boundary line...and then, Cleverest Goat stops in an open place to nibble on a rather unusual plant. Just as MB thinks he might have a clear shot at Cleverest Goat, and is taking aim - a huge monster suddenly appears and attacks them!
Anyone who has ever watched movies will know at a glance that the "monster" is actually a robot, Laputa style, with lichen and plants growing on it - in fact there are other, similar robots strewn about in the background which are no longer operational - but this one, unfortunately, very much still is. And it is not friendly. It beeps out "VISITOR UNAUTHORIZED!" and tries to blast both of them with lasers. Cleverest Goat baas and MB shrieks in unison.
Luckily the robot aims at CG first, who nimbly jumps between its arm and its body, and is able to dart around it and get out of range. In a split-second, MB copies this movement exactly, scrabbling around the robot and narrowly dodging the blasts, as lasers leave smoking holes in the rocks around him. Once they've gotten out of range, CG and MB slump down right next to each other on the same rock, panting. Then... CG trots off without a backwards glance, with most of the unusual plant it managed to grab earlier in its mouth. Part of it drops on the ground as it goes, though. (The plant looks kind of like it has popcorn growing on the end of the branches.) MB picks it up and munches on the "popcorn" himself, glumly. Another unsuccessful hunt.
Disappointed, as it starts to rain, MB goes back home the long way - through the Remembrance Rocks. He stands sadly in front of his father's picture and asks, "Dad, how can I ever be like you?" As the rain beats down, he reaches out to touch the red MacGuffin on his father's chest. "Stepfather says the monsters never attacked you... how?" Blinking a few times, he looks back at a previous rock face, which has a much older picture of Sad Grandma - incongruously smiling - holding a toddler-aged Father in her arms. The red MacGuffin is hanging around the baby's neck, but there is also a blue MacGuffin, exactly the same size and shape, hanging around Sad Grandma's neck. In the picture, the two MacGuffins are touching each other in mid-air, as if they were attracted to each other magnetically. We see dawning realization on MB's face as the rain beats down.
MB returns to the village just as the nighttime campfire is being set up, and sneaks into Sad Grandma's hut--and promptly gets scolded by Sad Grandma, who is right there, for running off earlier - he wasn't going after goats, was he?! He makes some fake excuses and quickly ducks out of the hut. Hanging around, he overhears Sad Grandma lecturing Stepfather that she's sure MB is going after goats, and how on earth can Stepfather let him do that?!
Stepfather awkwardly tries to explain (this is probably the ten thousandth time) that all the men of the tribe hunt goats, goats eat plants mostly, and he doesn't think they're as dangerous to MB as, say, the cursed city filled with monsters right next door that killed his father? Sad Grandma scoffs out loud - she doesn't believe for a minute it was the city that killed her son! She'd given him one of its "keys"-- nothing there could have have hurt him! She's sure it was the goats.
Hypothesis confirmed, MB waits for the campfire to start - Sad Grandma hesitantly joins the rest of the tribe there to play her strings and sing beautiful sad music about loved ones who leave and never come back. While the rest of the tribe is weeping around the campfire, MB sneaks into the hut and searches high and low... then underneath SG's pillow, he finally finds it: a softly glowing blue MacGuffin. He puts it around his own neck, and it lights up his smiling face a highly unnatural blue. Then he quickly packs a knapsack, and takes off into the night....
As the sun rises the next morning, he arrives at the boundary of the ruined city. He's quite nervous, and prepares himself as if he's about enter the field for a sport - stretching, huffing, push-ups... suddenly, Cleverest Goat climbs up beside him on the nearest rock! MB glares at his greatest enemy, but announces aloud that just for today, they can enter into a truce. He's got bigger fish to fry. CG trots right over the boundary line, aiming straight for a popcorn plant, and MB takes a deep breath and follows behind, brandishing the blue MacGuffin.
The robot shows up and charges at them just like before - lots of scary angles here on screen - MB grits his teeth and holds his ground, holding the blue MacGuffin in front of him - and the robot stops cold in front of him, beeping out "WELCOME BACK, DOCTOR EMERSON."
Next scene cuts to MB on top of the robot, hitting it repeatedly in the head with a rock, screaming "VENGEANCE FOR MY DAAAAAAD!!" The robot is unperturbed. Cleverest Goat is sneaking around and eating every popcorn plant in sight.
Eventually MB gets tired of that, and as the robot starts to move along its patrol path, he holds on for the ride, eyes widening in wonder. There's a montage of him traveling on the back of the robot through the ruins of the city - a collapsed auditorium, what seem to have once been houses on either side of a street, the remains of a moving walkway, etc. The viewer will immediately recognize that the whole thing was some sort of a modern technological utopia, now half burned down, collapsed, and with plants growing here and there all about - especially that popcorn plant. MB grabs handfuls of it as he travels, as it makes a delicious snack.
At one point MB comes to/passes by a plaza with a huge monumental statue in the middle of two men - one of them stern looking but with a slight smile on his lips, the other one with an arm around the others' shoulder, laughing and reaching out with one hand to point ahead. A plaque nearby reads (not that MB can read, this is for the viewer) "OUR FOUNDING FATHERS."
But I'm pretty certain that he's sitting in the ruined auditorium, snacking on popcorn plants along with CG while the robot hibernates nearby, when there's a clatter of rocks and who should storm in through the half-collapsed door but... Sad Grandma herself!! And she looks really, really pissed.
Before MB can believe his own eyes, the robot whirrs to life and lunges towards her--MB shouts "No! Wait!" but he can't get there in time--Sad Grandma just rolls her eyes and pulls up her sleeve to reveal a barcode, which the robot promptly scans and beeps out "GREETINGS CITIZEN."
As soon as that's done, she tears into her grandson. That blue keychain belongs to HER and how DARE MB STEAL IT!! Her FATHER gave her that! MB apologizes but also asks "...your father? My... great-grandfather?" MB asks SG how on earth she had made it this far, and she told him that she had "climbed a whole mountain, filled with GOATS!! We could BOTH have been killed!!" CG pokes its head out from behind the robot at this point, chewing on a popcorn plant, and SG shrieks in terror and hides behind the robot's other arm.
I suppose this is obvious but SG's entire demeanor has completely changed from the previous scenes - she's upright instead of hunched, angry instead of sad, and moving about extremely well for being the oldest person in the tribe. MB connects the super obvious dots and asks her "Did you used to... live here?!"
"Live here?!" sputters SG, "I used to be this city's PRINCESS!"
Cue a humorous cutback where MB just blinks, because he has no idea what that word means. "So... yes?"
SG is too terrified of Cleverest Goat to be coherent, so MB finally goes over and waves a stick at him until he trots off, with a particularly large popcorn plant in mouth.
As soon as she's sure he's gone, SG goes up on the stage of the ruined auditorium, as if drawn to it. When she gets to the center, a projected "field" pops up in front of her, flickering a bit but functional. She moves her hands through it as if plucking strings... and it makes a weird theramin-like music as she does. The noise echoes through the ruined auditorium. MB watches her do this in amazement. "What was this place, Grandma?"
"It was the safest place in the world," she tells him in a trembling voice. "A city which had conquered death itself..."
This is long enough, and roughly the half-way point of the story - I'll continue it in part 2.
This story, just like most of my stories, is a mish-mash of recent cultural inputs and events that have happened to me and others. The main parts of it appeared in my mind at once in a flash--that's usually how they happen--but a few plot holes have been filled in as I've watched and re-watched (so to speak) the "movie" in my head.
My stories usually have a set "viewing mode" - they don't translate super well to other modes. This one appeared to me in the style of a 3D animated Disney musical of recent vintage - colorful, family drama, light-hearted tone, but hiding surprisingly deep themes. (I was recently watching clips of Encanto.) I'll do my best to spit it out in text form.
The attitude of this movie is fast-paced and comedic - even about stuff that isn't all that funny, if you slowed down to think about it. But I want it to be clear that most of the characters don't take themselves too seriously, to set up a contrast with the few who do.
The setting of the story is a scrappy, caveman-level tribal society which is set up in tents and shabby huts in a rocky valley without much food. Easily visible on the other side of the rocky valley wall is a dark, ruined, inhabitant-less city which literally overshadows everything.
We start off focused on a boy on the cusp of puberty, probably a redhead, about 12 or 13 years old, who I will call Main Boy or MB (because names aren't so important in this story). He's wearing an awkwardly big metal arm protector, clearly supposed to belong to an adult, but the rest of his clothes/weapons/ornaments are made from some part of a goat. We know in the first minute that he is a spunky kid who wants to prove himself and become a GREAT MAN!! He is hiding behind a rock, with his eye on a goat munching something on the next rock over... he winds up his slingshot... and the goat perks up its ears, hops just out of range, and casually continues munching. MB throws down the slingshot and curses his greatest enemy... the Cleverest Goat!
The next scene is MB's stepfather (a cheerful, large blond fellow) bemusedly asking him " Kid, why that goat?" Literally no one in the tribe has ever managed to hunt it, it's kind of a white whale. MB says that he HAS to do something AMAZING for his coming-of-age ritual, or he will NEVER live up to his father's reputation!
His stepfather goes with him to the Remembrance Rocks, which is a place near their settlement where life-sized representations of tribe members have been drawn on the stones over many decades. (Their homeland doesn't provide a lot of food, but there are a lot of pigments available in the rocks.) His stepfather takes him to one of the rocks and points out a life-sized picture of his father - a dark-haired young man with a serious expression, the same pale eyes as MB, and a necklace with a shiny red MacGuffin hanging from it.
We learn from Stepfather that Father was once his best friend, and just as MB already knows, he was amazing! He was smart, he was fearless, and he was able to travel into the very heart of the cursed ruins on the other side of the rocky hill from their settlement, and to make the terrible deathless monsters constantly patrolling there obey him! Unfortunately, one day he'd fallen down into a bottomless pit. They hadn't even been able to retrieve his body. Stepfather sheds a tear for his dear friend, and then matter-of-factly states that after that happened, he married MB's widowed pregnant mother, returned strictly to hunting goats, and never visited the cursed ruins again.
He hugs MB and tells him how much he loves him, as much as he loved Father, but also slips in a comment on how his whole paternal line has been a bit too eager for adventure - there was the bottomless pit for Father, Grandfather got eaten by a lion, etc... He advises MB to start small by hunting dumb goats, and save Cleverest Goat for a crowning mid-life achievement. MB agrees in the way that children agree when they are absolutely not going to do what you just asked.
In the following introduction-to-my-whole-family montage, we meet MB's mother - she is the tribe's artist, chill and cheerful and currently drawing portraits of both him and Stepfather on the rocks - his three little sisters, who (hilariously!) run around chewing on everything that might possibly be food - and Sad Grandma. This is played a bit for laughs. The rest of the tribe, including MB, are bouncing with energy and expressing BIG emotions and climbing all over everything; Sad Grandma is hunched, withdrawn and constantly either sad or pathologically terrified of goats.
MB is rather annoyed by her, as she intensely fears the outdoors (she almost never leaves her hut) and every time he goes inside to get something she's always telling him to be more careful, not to climb around so much, and don't go hunting goats, it's dangerous!! He asks Stepfather what her deal is and Stepfather (hilariously!) answers that, yeah, his grandma is pretty weird and he's not entirely sure how she's lived this long--no one else in the tribe ever has--but at least the music she plays on her hand-made string instruments around the campfire is so beautiful it makes everyone cry. And isn't that nice? (Stepfather is probably the chief of the tribe, he's working pretty hard here.) MB is not appeased.
Anyway, completely ignoring the advice of literally everyone else, MB sneaks off to hunt Cleverest Goat the very next day. He stalks him for hours, just out of range. Of course he doesn't notice that Cleverest Goat is heading right for the ruins... both of them cross over a rather clear boundary line...and then, Cleverest Goat stops in an open place to nibble on a rather unusual plant. Just as MB thinks he might have a clear shot at Cleverest Goat, and is taking aim - a huge monster suddenly appears and attacks them!
Anyone who has ever watched movies will know at a glance that the "monster" is actually a robot, Laputa style, with lichen and plants growing on it - in fact there are other, similar robots strewn about in the background which are no longer operational - but this one, unfortunately, very much still is. And it is not friendly. It beeps out "VISITOR UNAUTHORIZED!" and tries to blast both of them with lasers. Cleverest Goat baas and MB shrieks in unison.
Luckily the robot aims at CG first, who nimbly jumps between its arm and its body, and is able to dart around it and get out of range. In a split-second, MB copies this movement exactly, scrabbling around the robot and narrowly dodging the blasts, as lasers leave smoking holes in the rocks around him. Once they've gotten out of range, CG and MB slump down right next to each other on the same rock, panting. Then... CG trots off without a backwards glance, with most of the unusual plant it managed to grab earlier in its mouth. Part of it drops on the ground as it goes, though. (The plant looks kind of like it has popcorn growing on the end of the branches.) MB picks it up and munches on the "popcorn" himself, glumly. Another unsuccessful hunt.
Disappointed, as it starts to rain, MB goes back home the long way - through the Remembrance Rocks. He stands sadly in front of his father's picture and asks, "Dad, how can I ever be like you?" As the rain beats down, he reaches out to touch the red MacGuffin on his father's chest. "Stepfather says the monsters never attacked you... how?" Blinking a few times, he looks back at a previous rock face, which has a much older picture of Sad Grandma - incongruously smiling - holding a toddler-aged Father in her arms. The red MacGuffin is hanging around the baby's neck, but there is also a blue MacGuffin, exactly the same size and shape, hanging around Sad Grandma's neck. In the picture, the two MacGuffins are touching each other in mid-air, as if they were attracted to each other magnetically. We see dawning realization on MB's face as the rain beats down.
MB returns to the village just as the nighttime campfire is being set up, and sneaks into Sad Grandma's hut--and promptly gets scolded by Sad Grandma, who is right there, for running off earlier - he wasn't going after goats, was he?! He makes some fake excuses and quickly ducks out of the hut. Hanging around, he overhears Sad Grandma lecturing Stepfather that she's sure MB is going after goats, and how on earth can Stepfather let him do that?!
Stepfather awkwardly tries to explain (this is probably the ten thousandth time) that all the men of the tribe hunt goats, goats eat plants mostly, and he doesn't think they're as dangerous to MB as, say, the cursed city filled with monsters right next door that killed his father? Sad Grandma scoffs out loud - she doesn't believe for a minute it was the city that killed her son! She'd given him one of its "keys"-- nothing there could have have hurt him! She's sure it was the goats.
Hypothesis confirmed, MB waits for the campfire to start - Sad Grandma hesitantly joins the rest of the tribe there to play her strings and sing beautiful sad music about loved ones who leave and never come back. While the rest of the tribe is weeping around the campfire, MB sneaks into the hut and searches high and low... then underneath SG's pillow, he finally finds it: a softly glowing blue MacGuffin. He puts it around his own neck, and it lights up his smiling face a highly unnatural blue. Then he quickly packs a knapsack, and takes off into the night....
As the sun rises the next morning, he arrives at the boundary of the ruined city. He's quite nervous, and prepares himself as if he's about enter the field for a sport - stretching, huffing, push-ups... suddenly, Cleverest Goat climbs up beside him on the nearest rock! MB glares at his greatest enemy, but announces aloud that just for today, they can enter into a truce. He's got bigger fish to fry. CG trots right over the boundary line, aiming straight for a popcorn plant, and MB takes a deep breath and follows behind, brandishing the blue MacGuffin.
The robot shows up and charges at them just like before - lots of scary angles here on screen - MB grits his teeth and holds his ground, holding the blue MacGuffin in front of him - and the robot stops cold in front of him, beeping out "WELCOME BACK, DOCTOR EMERSON."
Next scene cuts to MB on top of the robot, hitting it repeatedly in the head with a rock, screaming "VENGEANCE FOR MY DAAAAAAD!!" The robot is unperturbed. Cleverest Goat is sneaking around and eating every popcorn plant in sight.
Eventually MB gets tired of that, and as the robot starts to move along its patrol path, he holds on for the ride, eyes widening in wonder. There's a montage of him traveling on the back of the robot through the ruins of the city - a collapsed auditorium, what seem to have once been houses on either side of a street, the remains of a moving walkway, etc. The viewer will immediately recognize that the whole thing was some sort of a modern technological utopia, now half burned down, collapsed, and with plants growing here and there all about - especially that popcorn plant. MB grabs handfuls of it as he travels, as it makes a delicious snack.
At one point MB comes to/passes by a plaza with a huge monumental statue in the middle of two men - one of them stern looking but with a slight smile on his lips, the other one with an arm around the others' shoulder, laughing and reaching out with one hand to point ahead. A plaque nearby reads (not that MB can read, this is for the viewer) "OUR FOUNDING FATHERS."
But I'm pretty certain that he's sitting in the ruined auditorium, snacking on popcorn plants along with CG while the robot hibernates nearby, when there's a clatter of rocks and who should storm in through the half-collapsed door but... Sad Grandma herself!! And she looks really, really pissed.
Before MB can believe his own eyes, the robot whirrs to life and lunges towards her--MB shouts "No! Wait!" but he can't get there in time--Sad Grandma just rolls her eyes and pulls up her sleeve to reveal a barcode, which the robot promptly scans and beeps out "GREETINGS CITIZEN."
As soon as that's done, she tears into her grandson. That blue keychain belongs to HER and how DARE MB STEAL IT!! Her FATHER gave her that! MB apologizes but also asks "...your father? My... great-grandfather?" MB asks SG how on earth she had made it this far, and she told him that she had "climbed a whole mountain, filled with GOATS!! We could BOTH have been killed!!" CG pokes its head out from behind the robot at this point, chewing on a popcorn plant, and SG shrieks in terror and hides behind the robot's other arm.
I suppose this is obvious but SG's entire demeanor has completely changed from the previous scenes - she's upright instead of hunched, angry instead of sad, and moving about extremely well for being the oldest person in the tribe. MB connects the super obvious dots and asks her "Did you used to... live here?!"
"Live here?!" sputters SG, "I used to be this city's PRINCESS!"
Cue a humorous cutback where MB just blinks, because he has no idea what that word means. "So... yes?"
SG is too terrified of Cleverest Goat to be coherent, so MB finally goes over and waves a stick at him until he trots off, with a particularly large popcorn plant in mouth.
As soon as she's sure he's gone, SG goes up on the stage of the ruined auditorium, as if drawn to it. When she gets to the center, a projected "field" pops up in front of her, flickering a bit but functional. She moves her hands through it as if plucking strings... and it makes a weird theramin-like music as she does. The noise echoes through the ruined auditorium. MB watches her do this in amazement. "What was this place, Grandma?"
"It was the safest place in the world," she tells him in a trembling voice. "A city which had conquered death itself..."
This is long enough, and roughly the half-way point of the story - I'll continue it in part 2.