#parafiction

Has there ever been a piece of media, be it a book, movie, videogame, etc. that was made using extra normal methods that ended up going mainstream?

Gibbons are parafictional.

Messed up but true.

This is kind of a roundabout thing and not strictly in the way you're asking, but I've mentioned before that some famous science fiction stories were sponsored in part by His Majesty's Esoteric Services, in an effort to obfuscate rumors about actual extranormal events. As far as I know they don't do it anymore - jury's out on whether it was successful at its original goal, but you've probably heard of War of the Worlds or The Island of Doctor Moreau.

I remember grandpa saying War of the Worlds was 'propaganda' or something

Attending: 

[Redacted] Walker, OPN Director

Orson Knight, Security

Wren, Holistic Theology

Ann Tiope, Applied Mythology

Hugo Razorstrop, Parafiction

Patty Cakes, Toyetics

Subject: Königsratte Medical Emergency

Transcript begins below:

[Hugo Razorstrop] Crowded in here. 

[Wren] This was the only room we could find on short notice.

[Patty Cakes] I’m used to working in a closet. 

[Dir. Walker] Would you like to send a grant proposal to move into a larger office, Miss Cakes?

[Patty] No ma’am.

[Dir. Walker] Would you like a stack of books?

[Patty] Yes ma’am.

[Dir. Walker] Hugo, please help Miss Cakes reach the table.

[Hugo] You got it, toots. 

[Wren] We talked about gendered language, Hugo. 

[Hugo] S’ the way I’m written, sweetheart. You can’t fight it an’ neither can I.

[Dir. Walker] This discussion can wait until we don’t have an ongoing crisis. Wren, you may begin. 

[Wren] As you all know, Herr Königsratte is experiencing an acute medical emergency. We’re not sure of the cause, but parafictional individuals have….unique medical needs. We believe Herr Königsratte’s ontology is becoming unstable. He’s–

[Hugo] He’s going toon.

[Dir. Walker] Pardon?

[Hugo] Going Toon, ma’am. Parafictionals like me an’ the Rat King are mostly stable. Rare breed, us. Y’might know, when fictionals from animation manifest, they’re all….sludgy. Big puddles a’ ink, can’t stay in a solid form for long. Has to do with the animation cells, tens of thousands of ‘em, all making the individuals in question….splintered. Usually that don’t happen with non-toons, but I’ve seen it before. Hell of a thing to happen to someone, and I think our German visitor is experiencin’ it. Makes a man’s blood run cold.

[Dir. Walker] Isn’t there at least one stable “toon”? 

[Hugo] Vance Valiant, ma’am. But he’s busy. An’ a little bit of a coward, if I’m bein’ honest. 

[Dir. Walker] Spare me the editorial.

[Hugo] Beggin’ your pardon. I’m on edge. Seein’ the King in this position is like watchin’ someone melt. 

[Dir. Walker] Königsratte is under the Yule umbrella, is he not? Can we ask Kringle for his help?

[Wren] Ahh. Mr Allfather has made his…displeasure with one of our staff members politely but firmly known. I don’t think it would be advisable for us to contact him while the wounds are still fresh. As an aside, Mr Allfather has also challenged Ms Cold to single combat should she ever attempt to enter Valhalla. I would…advise Ms Cold to not attempt to enter Valhalla. 

[Dir. Walker] If I had a dime. Ann?

[Ann Tiope] Thank you, Director. After conferring with Wren, Applied Mythology has a theory. Many extranormal entities subsist wholly or in part on, for lack of a better term, belief. A sort of…stabilizing influence of the noosphere could help Königsratte’s ontology. We just need something to anchor that psychic flow. A physical object related to his origin, and the holiday zeitgeist. That’s where Toyetics comes in. Patty?

[Patty] Thank you for the books, Hugo. So, um. I left my notes on the floor, but basically - nutcrackers. 

[Dir. Walker] Go on.

[Patty] We think of them as kitschy decorations now, but when The Nutcracker and the Mouse King was originally written, they were toys. Objects of joy and affection! A lot of them were modeled as soldiers, like in the story. Or kings. They meant something. They’re inextricably tied to the Rat King’s origin, and an integral part of many cultures’ celebrations this time of year, even if a lot of people overlook them.

[Dir. Walker] What is your proposal?

[Patty] We can use the social media outreach of the Office to ask for nutcrackers. Physical donations, but even pictures or artwork will work. It just has to have a story attached. The story is important. I’ve already asked social media’s AI to help me intake and collate everything we get. We’ll print them out, 3D print copies, set the physical models we receive up around Herr Königsratte, and….

[Dir. Walker] And?

[Patty] ….hopefully that’ll work. 

[Dir. Walker] I’ve heard more ridiculous plans, but not by much. Do you have any input, Director Knight?

I want to continue, and most of these I feel like I can implement within the story, but what exactly happened? And if this becomes a series, will he continue to pop up, or was it one of those “one in a blue moon scenarios”?

And what do I do if it isn’t?

Hey Norm...

Hmm? Didn't you do a PSA about this exact subject in the nineties?

Oh, uh, sure. When I first started. Around '99. It's waaay outdated, now, you know, with the internet and everything, it's better to not even look it up. I don't think it was even digitized, really. I have no idea what happened to it.

Oh, Norm, don't worry! If there's one person who knows your filing system better than you, it's me! Let's see...H for Holmes, S for Sherlock...cross reference to P for Parafictional, 90s...HERE WE GO! "Dear Watson: That's Not Holmes, That's A Lure!"

Oh good, they put it on a disc so that a tech savvy person could find it, uh, twenty five years later. I wouldn't play it, I can't guarantee--

<An old, color degraded video begins playing. It's clearly shot on VHS, with a minimal budget, and had degraded somewhat before being transferred to digital. A man stands in a small, cinderblock room in front of a backdrop depicting a victorian study. He is wearing a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows and a pair of smart slacks. A deerstalker hat sits conspicuously on a stack of actual books, Sherlock Holmes novels. The man himself looks sort of like what you'd get if you focus-group-tested the only type of man Don Bluth knew how to draw, and has curtain bangs with frosted tips. The whole ensemble has the energy of a store-brand Milo Thatch. As he speaks, his eyes don't leave a fixed point behind the camera.>

So. You have encountered an entity from a fictional property. You're excited - maybe you wanted to talk to your favorite book character. Or. Maybe you are a writer and you are excited to talk to your protagonist. But...is that entity real?

<There's an extremely awkward camera change, and the man looks to it, his eyes following a point again.>

....or a lure?

<He leans back and there is a too-long pause before he continues.>

When encountering a parafictional manifestation, remember the three S's.

<The visuals change to a grainy blue background, white text appearing as the man's voiceover continues.>

Solidity: are you are this entity is physical and not all in your head?

Subjective: if it's real, are other people seeing the same thing?

Sentience: is this entity sentient, or merely approximating sentience? Is it answering questions like a sentient entity, or like how it would be expected to answer?

<It cuts back to the man, standing behind the chair with his hands on the back. There is a too-long pause again.>

If...uh.

If this entity doesn't pass any of these easy-to-remember checks, that's a red flag. Any number of malicious extranormal entities can exploit the human capacity for creativity in order to feed on our psychic energy, creating a non-sentient construct we call a "Chinese Room" in order to keep YOU from asking questions.

Remember next time you see Darth Vader, Spider-man, or Tarzan - are you so incredibly lucky to experience such a rare phenomena as true parafictional manifestation?

<He awkwardly puts a pipe in his mouth and blows a few bubbles.>

Or are you being lured?

<The video ends.>

Question - is there an inky black spot nearby? Are you noticing gurgling chuckles just out of clear earshot? Noticing odd shadows moving at 24 frames a second?

Because this sounds like toon behavior. Toons operate on what they think is funny, and what they think is funny is still classic physical comedy that the average human couldn’t survive.

I want you to listen carefully. Remain calm. Get underneath something very sturdy, just in case, and do not look up. It won’t release the anvil until you’re visibly aware of the situation. The problem is that eventually it’ll lose interest and wander off, so if you can go on a long drive on some empty roads, so much the better.

If you feel comfortable, you can get some turpentine and soak the ground in a circle, and then step into it. It’s not good for the plants, of course, but it might block its influence enough for it to drop the anvil.

Remember that toons can be dangerous. Their reality has been shredded across tens of thousands of cels and it drives them insane. There’s a single-digit number of them that have their faculties intact. Be aware that they might still be all there, but they probably aren’t.

What are they, and what can I do to stop them from gimbling holes all over my soil?

Did they show up around 4pm? Because if so, you've got Toves! That's amazing, there have been rumors for years that there's a breeding population in the US, but no one has been able to confirm it since sundials have gotten scarce on the ground.

Toves are a quasi-real, mostly nocturnal cryptid with parafictional origins, just like our office pet Frumie here. Ow, ow, Frumie, no claws!

They're pretty ow harmless, aside from the holes in your lawn, and you probably don't need to worry about a bandersnatch showing up and eating them, because you don't get bandersnatches in most of the US; the climate is ow wrong for them. Like I said earlier, the Slithy subspecies in Europe is the only confirmed one, but if we have evidence of a North American subspecies...

Be glad they’re not mome raths. I saw some when I visited HMES sites in London. God they’re loud.

I can only imagine! Norm, can you distract him while I get his claws that catch out of my sweater?

More to the point, if the gyring and gimbaling is becoming a significant problem, we can have someone come and relocate them, but as long as you've got a wabe in your garden, they're gonna come back. Why not make it a more inviting place for them; maybe set up a specific pit for them to do their gimbaling, rather than having them do it all over the yard? Leave out some nice soft toys for them to chew on, if you can. The same basic strategies you'd use to redirect a cat's attention are gonna work on these little guys.

Genuinely I'm floored, this is huge for the cryptozoological community; can you send us the footage?

Our local conservationist.

Not…exactly. Let me start with a quick primer on parafiction.

Parafiction refers to any phenomena that appears in realspace but had its origins in a work of fiction that was not inherently intended to propagate parafictional phenomena. It refers to the effects, not the origin - parafictional phenomena can occur due to thaumaturgical intervention, Outsider influence, curses, demonic empowerment, and most commonly group psychic influence or a noospheric “dent”. It doesn't have to be an entity, but most people associate it with an entity manifesting.

Let's take, for example, Sherlock Holmes. Say Holmes appears in your town one day attempting to solve a mystery. We'll quickly go over how he'll appear and why that could be.

It is likely he will not be truly sentient - often, parafictional "entities" are a psychic construct, acting in accordance to the gestalt noospheric consensus on how that person should act. Holmes in this case will act confident, clever, snippy, and smoke a pipe - all things that are expected of him. But it'll be a Chinese Room, basically an extranormal learning model, a lowercase ai.

It is likely he will dissipate in days if not hours - these sorts of things are ripples in the noosphere. Unless something is actively keeping it active, it'll probably run out of energy fairly soon.

It is likely he will act confused - if this Holmes is acting mostly like the cultural consensus on Sherlock, but a little confused, this is actually a sign he might be self aware, and thus more serious. We hypothesize this is because the existing sources of media regarding that entity. Every book, every movie, comic, or video game, no matter how dedicated to the source material, is slightly (or radically) different, and each has an effect on the entity. Eventually, self-sustaining parafictional entities will sort out which influences they take from most strongly, but that could take months.

That brings us to "toons." For reasons that are not totally clear, entities that originated primarily from traditional animation have a different path to manifestation and resulting existence. They are, almost to a fault, inherently inimical to human life and realspace in general. We have theories, again regarding the source material.

Think about it this way: traditional animation is typically drawn at 24 frames a second. That's 1440 frames per minute, and even many short cartoons were 3-5 minutes. That's potentially tens of thousands of frames of animation for multiple shorts, compared to....what, in the low hundreds for someone like Sherlock? Something about the individual frames of animation is different, from our tests, than pages or even live action film frames.