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The Multiverse™
Scope
The motivation behind building The Multiverse™
I want to create a vast world that is utterly bizarre, but beautful and more than a little existentially horrifying all at the same time; a world very different and yet parallel to our own that the audience can get lost in.
The goal of the project
I just want people to get something out of it: for my creation to inspire people to make their own creations, just like I was inspired by creations before me. Or for them to learn something from it. Or to just let people take a peek inside my head and find it at least a little entertaining.
The Multiverse™'s Unique Selling point
Psssh, you're trying to tell me that different realities have to exist on completely separate layers? With the super thin, shitty fabric that reality is made of in my multiverse, dimensions can bleed into each other, and interdimensional travel has never been easier! (Though it is not always or even usually intentional.) Just try to avoid falling into any reaching eldritch horrors while you're at it.
Theme
Genre
My world is urban fantasy, with lots of eldritch and absurdist horror sprinkled in for flavor. I would also call it a dark comedy, but no one seems to know what that actually means; it's a dark comedy in the same way Welcome to Night Vale could be described as a dark comedy.
The technology level is more or less the same as our own, but perhaps more advanced in some areas because of science we simply cannot comprehend (aka magic).
Reader Experience
The world is beautiful in a strange, surreal way at its surface, but it becomes clear over time that it is also dark and hugely dangerous (though the characters do not always treat it as such). I want the audience to feel bemused at the utter absurdity of it one moment and full of cosmic awe and terror the next.
Reader Tone
Darkish? It's a bit hard to pinpoint because I would personally describe this universe as terrifying, but it's not generally treated as such unless things get really messed up. It's dark in the same way our own world is dark; we all know our world is completely fucked, but hey, whatever, we'll just live with it. This is where the WTNV dark comedy vibes come in. People are sick of ritualistic cult sacrifices the same way they're sick of capitalism.
Recurring Themes
1. Things seeming just completely bonkers on the surface, just some good absurdist fun, but A Bit Fucked Up, Actually, underneath
2. Turtles all the way down. It doesn't matter if you're some joe on Earth or the tightest-bound puppet to the biggest eldritch being out there; no one knows what the hell's going on and if they say they do, they're lying.
3. The inevitabilty of the death of all things. Beyond the horror of our own mortality and into the terror of the impermanence of the entire multiverse.
Bonus 4th motif: Umbrellas! I will not elaborate further.
Character Agency
I mean, the end goal of the protagonists is to save the multiverse from oblivion, and they do potentially have the power to do that, but other than that, entities do not have much power over the world, not even incomprehensible eldritch powers. Only in incrediby extreme cicumstances would someone be able to greatly impact how the world works. Things just are in this world and there's little anyone can do about it.
In short, the protagonists might be able to save the world, but they cannot enact any great change on it, only divert a great change that is coming.
Focus
Drama
Larger holes in reality, dubbed "dead zones", are beginning to crop up around Earth and some other dimensions, bringing monsters and hungry Lovecraftian beings with them. To everyone's annoyance, some of these dead zones are enveloping entire towns and many appear to be growing in size. Governments are stringing up "Do Not Enter" tape around them and running away. Some particularly pessimistic scientists hypothesize that the fabric of reality is wearing down to nothing and soon all dimensions will collapse into each other, leaving everyone in a nonsensical hellscape as eldritch horrors fight for dominance in this absolute dimension. Other scientists encourage citizens to walk into these exciting, likely lethal new additions to the multiverse as we know it, "just to see what happens".
The United Nations is attempting to implement stricter regulations regarding interdimensional travel. However, considering that once someone is in another dimension they are completely out of their government's control, and that people accidentally end up in other realities all the time, among infinite other complications, it has proven very difficult to enforce any of these new rules or to criminally charge anyone who breaks them.
Find your way!
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