#also i hope this doesnt come off as ableist. its just something funny and cursed | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

tumblunni · 5 years

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OKAY JUST TO GIVE ERROL AS AN EXAMPLE

His story just...?? Does not have?? "The call"?? At all??

Ive really tried stretching but just no, sorry.

The plot starts with our duo already off on the quest to climb the mountain, and figuring out why they wanna do it and what happened to them in the past is a gradual mystery that gets unwravelled throughout the story. So if you interpret "the call" as just "the start to the adventure" then already we dont really have that.

Tho again cos of anxiety about being weird i did end up writing a potential more call-ish intro scene but seriously its just like five seconds of "hmm i will try to cilmbe dis mountaine" "BUFF FRIEND WILL HELP U"

Like there was really no damn thing that "forced" either of them to "take up the hero's mantle" and they dont even really do anything "heroic". There's no destiny reason, its just a dude making a kind of dumb decision to risk his life on an adventure to try and settle some personal anxieties he has about something he hates about his personality. And his good friend coming along to protect him, and try and help heal the hurt. Theres really no damn reason why they had to start their adventure on that day as opposed to any other, it was just coincidence that this was the one time in a million that his "god i am filled with self hate and i have this stupid idea that The Magical Local Legend can solve my problems" anxiety attacks actually won out and he decided to really do it.

Also LOL in retrospect he's flipping the cliche even more?? Cos i was just thinking "well i guess the only reason he picked now is because he's had years of practise and planning for this thing." Like seriously he not only isnt "thrust into adventure" but he's already gone through a training montage before it even started!

And like i suppose i GUESS you could say that the stuff that happened to him years ago was an "inciting incident" but it really wasnt a "refusal of the call". It was a tragic backstory event that led to our duo becoming friends and also becoming hella depressed, but it really isnt the reason why they do this adventure. Errol's idea that he was "cursed" on that day and has to do this dangerous quest to "break the curse" is supposed to be a complete misinterpretation due to his trauma. the whole point of this story is that sometimes bad stuff happens to you and its not "for a reason" or "part of god's great plan" or "you can make it go away if you just try hard enough". He doesnt really discover that his destined enemy is at the top of the mountain and they caused everything wrong in his life. He just discovers that the guy who was right next to him wants to help him through these tough times and together they can cope with the darkness, even if there's no easy solution to banish it forever.

So yeah you'd think "sad thing happens in the backstory and then over a decade later he does this thing" would be a "refusal od the call" but really the sad thing was just a sad thing and it was never calling him anywhere. Less "refusal of the call" and more "doing the rational thing and not giving in to paranoia and self doubt", with honestly the start of the story being a BAD THING for him! Like at the start you think that Beau forcing himself into Errol's "quest" is just "lol funny comic relief man" but really its a guy seeing his best friend make a potentially self destructive choice and being REALLY WORRIED so he has to come along. And just putting on this funny comic reliefy persona extra hard because he's trying to keep his buddy's spirits up, while also hiding that he also has his own personal anxieties that are a reason for him to wanna climb the mountain too. I hope i have the writing skill necessary to pull off that foreshadowing, haha...

Oh and also lol there IS technically a real curse just cos i felt like itd be lame to tease people with the idea of the supernatural and have literally none of it. But also its not a "curse" as in how Errol sees it, with a culprit and a journey and a solution.

Going into spoilers a bit when discussing this

Woop woop

Spoilers incoming

Okay...

I haven't exactly decided yet but Errol is either a vampire or a ghost, depending on whichever i can create a cooler design for. He actually didnt survive the accident in his childhood, and this whole time he's been some sort of supernatural creature trying his best to hide the signs he isnt human anymore. He thinks that there must be some sort of greater plot behind all this because he's desperate to find any way he can cure it. But really there isn't a cure, and there wasnt an evil cause for it, it was actually kind of a good stroke of luck that saved his life! So its all kinda more of a metaphor for how its easy to feel "broken" or "not human anymore" when you suffer a great trauma, or become mentally or physically disabled. And how thats not really true, you're still you and its just that society exerts stigma upon people who "can't ever be fixed" into being "normal". The message is kinda gonna be that even if you have something in your life that left its scars on you, even if it'll never go away, it doesnt make you any less of yourself and any less deserving of love. So this would be shown by Errol fearing that he'll become a mindless beast while showing no signs of it being true, getting obssessed with finding this "cure" even when it'll hurt himself in the process, and trying to find some sort of villain or cause or way to personify the illness as separate from himself as something evil. (I.e those "i am autism i will make it impossible to talk to your child, uwu u can defeat me by feeding your child bleach" ableist commercials...) And then in the end his worst fears are realized, there is no magical solution at the top of the mountain and the person he cares about the most has found out about his secret. But really none of his fears came true, because Beau accepts him, confesses his feelings and the two of them start piecing their life back together again and finding new hope for the future. Even if that future still happens to contain things like having secret bat wings!

(Oh and also Beau isnt completely a sattelite character he has his own different traumas and life problems and ways they get brought out into the open and counteracted by the power of love and acceptance. Its just that since errol's side of the thing is slightly supernatural it was easier to talk about in the hero's journey framework)

(Oh and also at some point they adopt a talking crow)

#melting words

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