#uninanimates

Just a few characters in this verse I’ve developed since creating it.  I’ve wrote some drabbles for most, but also I’m kind of too picky to like them.  I’m still not sure where this project is going, but I think I would like to make these characters interact.

Reginald

Has existed, passed down in the same family for years.  Quite obnoxious.  Keeps bragging about his war stories.  A hit with the kids in the family but the adults get tired of it.  They love him, though, and no one would dream of getting him exorcised.  Also a huge liar.  Never even fought in the revolutionary war.  Wasn’t even killed in a duel.  Was robbed, and bashed in the back of the head with his own unused dueling pistol.  

Inferno

Once went by Fern.  A little girl shoved into the fire by a frankly desperate and cold hearted mother in the early part of the 20th century.  Now they’re- a monster.  A thing that runs the streets punishing those who hurt children.  They also have a gang of child uninanimates under their protection.  Inferno, too, is protected.  The priests sort of have an agreement to stand back and let them do their job.  Anyone who tries to stand in their way may find themselves having to contend with the mob.

Otis

Otis was always an aspiring actor.  He might have had a decent career with his pleasant face and grasp of emotions- if not for that freak accident.  Now he has steady work- in Canada, selling cereal.  He’s part of a commercial campaign with a CGI spoon- something involving him being mad that the spoon gets to taste the cereal and not him.  And, it’s pretty much the only work he can get, as a living fork.  At least in Canada he can have his own bank account and apartment.

Antonia

More of a cryptid, really.  There’s this legend about this pilot with terminal cancer who was found dead in her hangar with injuries from being crushed under an airplane wheel.  The offending vehicle was itself gone.  The popular story is that she rigged the thing to roll on top of her and then became it.  But others say that it was just stolen by a murderer.  If Antonina is the plane, it would be nice to ask her about it, but no one’s been able to talk to her for years.  It’s said Antonia’s gone all over the world, and sightings of a bright orange biplane are a popular talking point.

Donna Flynn

They thought Flynn was dead.  The low level mob henchwoman was poisoned so that she had no chance of coming back.  They chucked her body unceremoniously in a river bound up in an old rug.  But at the bottom of the river, Flynn regained consciousness- just long enough to drown.  When she came back, it was with murder on her mind.  She cut a swash through the ranks of the mob, creating her own crew of loyal followers.  These days, Flynn is the boss.  She’s a complicated lady, pulling the strings of the mob, the cops and the clergy.  She also works in step with Inferno and their child gang.

Rick

A victim of several systems.  Rick’s car became his tomb and then his prison.  His family were hit both with the cost of insuring a vehicle uninanimate, and fixing him so he wasn’t in so much constant pain.  That’s when they contacted a transportation company with a charitable program.  They would pay for Rick’s repairs, in exchange to the ownership of Rick’s vessel- and therefore Rick himself.  They fixed him all up and gave him a paint job and then sent him to a far off city to work as a taxi.  Rick is paid in only the promise that he won’t be exorcised so long as he behaves, and a small fraction of his fares which, he’s told, goes to support his family.

Windsor Pratt

A rare case in which uninanimate testimony did no good in his own murder.  Pratt was found alone in his hotel room, strangled with the tie that now contained his consciousness, in a fairly compromising position.  As much as Pratt tried to protest that his death was neither a suicide or an accident, the investigators just assumed that he was lying out of embarrassment.  Pratt hadn’t seen his attacker’s face anyway, and CSI could find no signs of struggle.  Despite being a powerful CEO, Pratt was born and did most of his business outside of the magic bean.  He hadn’t willed himself to anyone, and his family hated him, so he became an unclaimed uninanimate without his company or a penny to his name.  Having lost literally everything, he’s just about driven to madness, determined to catch his killer.

Benjamin

Maguffins had more fleshed out characters but I could never make the worldbuilding work

The fun thing with uninanimates is no one knows why it happens and it gives no clues.  Bc, it’s not a story about why, anyway.

Maguffins have magic powers so I’m sure I can recycle them for the other verse.

I wrote that in 2017 btb...I was dealing with a lot of depression right then.

But I guess it just show’s to go you what uninanimates has been for me

It’s kind of been a thing I can only write when I’m depressed, and when I’m depressed, very few prose comes out.  

I’ve started a bunch of times but never really got far with them.

Maybe that’ll change in the future, bc, I actually do like this concept, and would like to work on it more.

But I need to tweak the tone, tho, bc right now it likes to fluctuate between depressing and absurd, and I want to find something in the middle.  

“Grunkle Rej!  Come on!”  Heath calls from the couch, just as the center character wanders into a lawnmower with teeth, keels over, and explodes.  “Great, now I lost a life,” Heath mutters.  

“Video games  certainly do make people talk about mortality weirdly,” Reginald says, floating next to the boy.  He’s sitting cross-legged on the rug rather than taking the empty couch.  

Heath is long faced, with brown eyes that fill with excitement when he’s possessed of it.  At the moment, he just looks annoyed.  “I wanted to make it to level five without losing any lives,” he mutters.  

Heath presses a button and his character goes from standing in a void next to the lives count to standing in front of a shadow-drenched Cathedral under a purple sky.  The character starts to move, and creatures fly down from the rafters to attack them.  Heath’s ready though, puppeting the poor slave to fire at the creatures with his automatic sword.  Or is it a lightsaber?  The character moves deeper into the level, leaving the church and stepping into a graveyard where he’s attacked by even more creatures.  They looks like crawling chairs, flying pitchforks, bouncing tires.

“I haven’t seen this game, yet,” Reginald says.

“It’s a rental.  It’s called Exorcizer.”

“So the man in the game- he’s working out?”

“She’s.  And not exerciser.  Exorcizer.  Uh- it’s a translation, from Japanese.  See, you play as a Resurgam priest, going around exorcising uninanimates.”

“Uninanimates?  So, you’re playing a game about killing people?”

Heath snorted, “They’re already dead, Grunkle!  Or didn’t you know that?”  A new tone played on the screen.

“What was that?”  Reginald asked.

“I just picked up a key.  I can go back to the tomb and pick up an upgrade for my killer-cross.”

“Cross?  That’s not a lightsaber?”

“Haha, no, Grunkle.  It’s a cross.  It emits holy light when I press A.”

Reginald just watches the lady priest send more uninanimates to hell with her sword, silent.  He’s seen the process done- heard the sobbing and pleading and crosses were put against uninanimates and the words spoken to make them no longer.  Saw the burns, too, left on the sides of some of their vessels after.

“So, this is a game about burning the very souls out of people.”

“Well, uninanimates.”

Reginald turns his muzzle on Heath, disappointed.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that, Grunkle!  It’s just a game.  And it’s fun!  Besides, the uninanimates in this game aren’t like you.”

“Oh?  How so?”

“They’re evil.  They’re trying to kill me.”

“They’re probably trying to kill you because you’re trying to kill them.”

Heath doesn’t answer.  His character has entered a small room and is now slashing through a rush of flying knives and self-shutting wardrobes.  Finally she dispatches them all and a small podium appears in the middle of the room.  She picks up the item from it.  “Look at this, Grunkle,” Heath says, and presses A.  The lightsaber comes back on, but this time red, and snaps like a fiery whip.

Heath moves his character back to the door and says, “Nah, Grunkle.  It explains it all in the opening text crawl.  These uninanimates have taken over a town and now they’re killing all the people in it with knives and stuff to try to make new uninanimates.”

“Video games are moronic,” Reginald says.

“Pfft.  Whatever.  OK fine- they’re not really evil- they’ve just been brainwashed by the big bad, U2.”

“So you’re killing innocents?”

“Jeeeeez,” Heath presses one of the center buttons and turns on Reginald, “why are you being like this, Grunkle Rej?  It’s a game.  The motivations don’t matter- all that matters is that you have fun with it.”

“Well, excuse me, guns don’t have hands to play games, to we like media with proper narratives.”

“You mean like the Epic of Gilgamesh?  Oh wait, you were there for that, weren’t you?”

Reginald cocks his trigger, “Watch it, kid,” but it’s a literal empty threat.  He hasn’t been loaded for centuries.

Heath sticks his tongue out, “Just a few days ago I was playing Contra.  I was killing brainwashed people then, too, and you didn’t say anything.”

“Oh, that was ridiculous, though!  They were just-”

“Just what?  People?”

Just what, really, Reginald thinks to himself?  What makes the act of killing an uninanimate more heinous than killing a muscle bound living man?  Is it only that he’s himself uninanimate?  Is it some bias on his part?  

As Heath said, Uninanimates are already dead.  Reginald’s never been exorcised, but he is aware every day that he’s only lucky.  It was a reality that cools his steel.  He may have died before, but he doesn’t want to go through it again.

Is his discomfort at some unjust thing- taking someone, who’d had a terrible experience already, and boiling their whole existence down to a joke, or a violent act?  Even a fictional one.

“They’re just- not as attractive as me,” he angles his muzzle to the ceiling in a cocksure matter, “you understand.”

gosh, tho, i have this like, obsession, i guess, with turning people into household objects.  not sure really what it’s about, though i seem to have more interest in it when i’m depressed and more aware of capitalism.  i do like how, capitalism, as an antagonist, isn’t content to take everything from you- it wants to, somehow, fused you into itself as part of you and demand you give what little you have left.  for some reason the idea of being a lamp one day really follows my idea of capitalism.

the uninanimates universe sort of spawned the maguffins universe, bc i wanted uninanimates to do things that the setting wouldn’t allow them to do.  maguffins is- less depressing, but more of a horror vibe as you don’t become an object bc you died- you bc one because some jerk decided to tuck your body inside something impossible, which became your new body

uninanimates float and speak and think for themselves.  maguffins do all this but each one has a magic power as well.  and the rp happened and somehow maguffins became changelings(or changethings?).  personally, i find changethings to be a little more interesting than maguffins, because they’re children.  there is just, another layer of horror there.