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Mentions of suicide, lack of free will, death, death of a loved one, mentions of God

This is a sort of overview of the world, the story, and the way it progressed over the time I've worked it.
You will only get the full picture of what is and isn't canon by the end.

The original original idea was, like, I had an idea for a TTRPG campaign or some other story that was, like, somebody made a wish, and it either changed the world so much that nobody realises it was ever different, or it was something really minor. You'd then have to run around and piece it together, which turned into "A girl made a wish to bring her dead brother back", which then turned into "you're a little guy in dream world running around that girls dreams trying to piece things together". It has become significantly more complicated since then.

(Note: "The Terror" is nightmare-land)

I also had the idea for like. A game about rocket jumping "but what if you're a wizard". And, as with a LOT of my story writing/worldbuilding, I just combined a few cool ideas together into one thing. The story sort of became like: "You are a little creature from the nightmare side of dreamland and are supposed to go to the dream part of dreamland". My logic was, like... A "dream" can also be a goal/wish/hope, so naturally the girl's wish would be found over there. There was some stuff in there as well about it like... Being more dangerous up there because the little guy is a nightmare guy and dreamland would be dangerous because of that or something...? I eventually ended up calling him Worrywart (I don't remember why), and the girl's name became June (because that's when I created the UnityTM project). Thinking about what sort of things would live in "dreamland" I ended up thinking like: "Well, I imagine the Terror would be very inert and stony, so I feel like gargoyles would be a thing."

I don't really remember everything exactly but I eventually got to like "Dreams" are the inhabitants of dreamland. "Gargoyle" just means anything built by a dream ➜ Gargoyles are unfeeling machines ➜ Worrywart can feel afraid despite living in the Terror, and as such is called "The Broken Gargoyle" because of that. An idea I had since very early on was that Worrywart would like. Unlock new emotions as the story progressed. Sort of like in the way of "Oh that's a new feeling. What the fuck?"

I originally described this like the feeling of... Discovering something about yourself, like — having a gay thought for the first time. The denial, the confusion, all of that.

Worrywart, the broken gargoyle, is special because he has no idea what created him.
"Gargoyles were all made by a 'Dream' but he doesn't know what made him"
An early idea I had was that like, the "not knowing what made him" thing would be what "broke" him initially. (But that doesn't really make sense anymore and I have a better explanation. More on that later.)

Here's June by the way.

June Elise Blackwell. She has tan dark skin and blonde hair and looks generally unamused. She's wearing a thick leather apron covered in oily stains.

The Arabesque

So like early on i had the idea of "The Arabesque" (which is a direct Avantasia reference)

a little image of the Arabesque

This is a little image of the Arabesque. It was this GIGANTIC area between the Dream and the Terror. Specifically, the Arabesque was the cube in the middle. The idea was that like, there's no gravity? You'd just fall towards the arabesque — Which was how I justified the gravity mechanics originally.

The Machine

Also, a big part of the game's story then and even now is that, like, pretty much everything in existence originated in Dreamland and just made its way there. "Dreams" can like, teleport around so to speak (I call this "apparating". Not a Harry PotterTM reference, just where I heard it), though Gargoyles cannot do this. And so I figured "well what's stopping them just teleporting to Earth?" At some point as well I had the idea (Inspired by Avantasia) to have a God Machine.

Originally it was some... Blacksmith guy? And he was over on one of the sides of the Arabesque Which developed into just like a more omnipresent God Machine.

Eventually, the idea of the god machine became very very fixed in my head. It is God, the creator of all things, existence itself. A machine — the machine. Its body made up from every machine in existence, and every new machine created in reality just serves to build the machine. Eventually that turned into "the point of existence itself is to build the machine", but more on that later.

    Alongside that came two things:
  1. The God machine built Worrywart, and, because it doesn't really know how to build things, it made him imperfectly (Sort of canon.)
  2. The Avantasia song The Watchmaker's Dream inspired me to make June a watchmaker originally, which eventually developed into her just being a machinist, engineer, whatever. Think of her as an unknowing servant of God.

Aaron Elliot Blackwell

Aaron is June's aforementioned dead brother. He's dead. That's one of the main things that drives the plot forward, and is directly tied to one of the final things that happens in the story as a whole.

Aaron Elliot Blackwell. It's a cuter more chibi depiction. He has dark skin and bright blue eyes with white 4 pointed stars instead of pupils. His hair is blond and messy and has blue streaks in it.

The way he died was something I mulled over for very long. I, originally, and for the longest time, wanted it to be by suicide, because I wanted it to be as intentional as possible, and that way it was also very emotional and in no way an accident. And, while I do really like that idea, I'm... Not confident in the fact that I can write that properly? I love happy endings, and like I feel like it's just really insensitive for him to come back from that, you know? It just sort of... Glorifies it? I eventually figured out a sort of potentially better way for it:

    I knew two things
  1. It had to be related to the Machine (And the original idea also had a very direct connection to it. Will get to that.)
  2. Why does June want to bring him back that badly?

What if he died in some mechanical accident and June blames herself for it? That might be what'll happen in the end. I do think I want Aaron to have wanted it, though. To have been unhappy because of something I'll touch on later. As a TL;DR, it being an accident invalidates a big part of his character and how his character progresses/what he learns.

The Machine's Mind

Initially, I wanted it to sort of serve as a guide for Worrywart. It would work with him and help him do what he needs to do. What does it get in return? More machines get built. The idea was that eventually like, Worrywart would learn that he was built by the God Machine, and eventually would be brought to Earth. With the help of the Machine, June and Worrywart would bring Aaron back.

The machine has ended up being a completely nonsentient thing it has a "will" as much as the wind has a will. It's... a machine!

Another really big twist reveal that would have happened is like:
The wish would have worked. She would have brought Aaron back — but like... Where was Aaron when she did that? Oh yeah. IN A GRAVE. So he'd just die again and it would have been, like, a really deep moment, seeing as June sort of killed her brother accidentally. That developed into another idea, but in and of itself is not canon anymore.

— WHEN THINGS START TO GET CANON —
THE MAIN WRINKLE

This story has ended up becoming a story about generalization. About how we draw imaginary lines around things that cannot be defined. About how we create distinctions between objects in the natural world to pretend like we have any amount of control or understanding over it.

The "Terror" and the "Dream" are one thing. There is no separation. "Dreamland" is now called Fantasia and "Dreams" are called Fantasms.

And, primarily...

Gargoyles are Fantasms

And...

Everything that is real (such as Earth) is a fantasm (because they're all gargoyles)

To put it differently, "gargoyles" are all things "real". Worrywart is a real thing in Fantasia.
That was the biggest discovery/revelation I'd ever had. Along with that, The difference between gargoyles and fantasms is simple:

A fantasm is something made up of many intertwined possibilities, realities, existences, natures, et cetera, called "fantasmal fragments" or just "fragments". Fantasms embody many possible outcomes and have something resembling free will because of that. Once they make a choice, all of those fragments momentarily collapse into one. Like Schrödingers cat! A fantasm's many fragments do not have to occupy the same space. Fantasms can have any number of these fragments, and this number can change. These fragments can take on many different forms and shapes. Gargoyles are not like that — they have one truth. This kind of... opened up EVERYTHING. Worrywart was never a gargoyle. He's always been a fantasm. The God Machine is an endless, shifting thing. A multiversal machine of creation. How can something so uncertain create something concrete? It could never. It has never. Worrywart was a Fantasm from the start. Fantasia, as well, is a fantasm Along with that — humans are gargoyles, since they're real, BUT... Their minds are fantasmal!

The Fantasmal mind of Man.

As an example, take "The Plane of Solitude", also known as Ashes — the dream of Echo.

Concept art for the plane of solitude

The minds afraid of solitude, of their own loneliness, of isolation, abandonment, etc., will end up here.

The trees are minds. But that sort of always caused me issues, like, what if they're afraid of multiple things? What if they dream? What happens to their mind in Fantasia? If people's minds are fantasmal, why are they not aware and in control? Why are they not themselves when other Fantasms, such as Worrywart are?

Those thousands of possibilities, fantasmal fragments, for Fantasms like Worrywart are all contained in one spot. They form the greater whole that is the fantasm, but for the fantasmal mind, they are separate. They all exist, and are all present in Fantasia, but they're spread around.

Those trees are not minds, they are only parts of them. If a mind was to, however, somehow coalesce into one spot, it would be a perfectly functioning Fantasm like the rest, which will come up in a second.

Regardless, Worrywart would start off as a Fantasm, but would only really have a couple of these separate worlds within him. He only feels two things: Solitude and Fear/Anxiety/Unease/Distrust. As it goes on, he breaks a little more. Cracks in the stonework. Pieces of him separating out. I've always wanted him to break completely — "Worrywart, the Shattered Gargoyle" has a real ring to it.

Otherworld, and the dead Blackwell

"Turn 'round slowly, and tell us what you see..."

The idea of "Aaron comes back to life but then he doesn't" stuck with me

I got inspired by the song Otherworld, by Dio.

Basically, in the world of Magica, there are some evil wizards, and they send people to the Otherworld. Their bodies turn to stone and their souls go to the Otherworld where they're turned into pure energy to fuel Evilsyde (yes that's the name of the faction). And that idea really stuck with me So, as I do, I combined two cool ideas together!

Mild Diversion: The God Machine

The God Machine is a machine that does one thing, and one thing only: It creates the world. That world will then eventually build the machine, and the machine will create another world. And in that world, the cycle carries on.

At the end of the world, once the machine is built, it sets into motion.

The bodies of all those alive are turned to inert stone as the energy is ripped from them. Their fantasmal minds coalesce into one singular form (along with their body), and those minds are sent to the Otherworld — a burning white void where minds are melted into energy. That energy is then used to create the new world.

When June's wish "brought Aaron back", it actually just triggered this process for him early. His mind coalseced and was sent to the Otherworld. It tried to melt him down, but it couldn't. Think of it as a sort of failsafe - the world isn't ready, and there is no machine to build the world.

So he's not really dead dead. He's just in an unthinkably hot white nothing, suffering nightmares for the rest of the world's lifespan (until Worrywart has something to do with it). He is actually brought back to life at the end, which is also why Aaron wears winter clothing all the time — he's always shivering because he got used to the blistering heat of the Otherworld.

RUST

The Immortal Stand.

An early idea that's still managed to somehow stick it out is that people's dreams are places. "The Plane of Solitude" (A.K.A. Ashes) is actually Echo's dream, for example. I eventually sort of came to the conclusion that, that sort of thing, along with "the God machine's mind", had to exist. And with that, Rust was born. Rust is an infinite plane of just... Rust. It is the machine as much as you are your own mind. Fundamentally — it is the machine, but it also is only part of it.

Here's the first sketch of it.

A sketchy drawing of Worrywart in Rust.

That black hole/eclipse looking thing in the back is the Pinnacle of Creation. The Otherworld is in there.

Rust represents creation and destruction both. Everything there ever was was initially created by the Machine. If not, its creation was instigated by the Machine. Some things are, in fact, created from Rust directly.

Concept art of Worrywart holding a Rust-made lamp.

Like this lamp. Worrywart's clothes are also purposefully rusty. His clothes were made from rust, as was the lamp. I sort of think it a very fitting thing that like — It's not cyclical per se, it's just... Creation and destruction at the same time. Everything decays, just as metal rusts, and lands right back into the lap of Creation itself. I think that, when Aaron would be brought back (He's on a cycle of Try to get melted ➜ Refuse ➜ Nightmares for a bit ➜ Repeat) At one of these steps, he would be flung into Rust, probably after attempting to be melted. The machine sort of already assumes him melted down so it brings him to itself, and worrywart would meet him there.

Rust is omnipresent. Every part of existence, Fantasia or Reality, is within Rust. It's within and without everything, beside and inside everything.

Determinism

"Can I call you John? I’m going to call you John."

At some point, in early 2024, I went through a week of absolute terror and torment thinking about how I don't really believe in free will. We're completely deterministic machines. We take things in, process them, and act.

This realization was what I wanted to initially drive Aaron to suicide (And it still might). It is a horrible thought if you're not in the right space and if you're the wrong person.

I think, eventually, that James and Aaron would like, talk about that ? (by the way Worrywart's name is James. Aaron names him that eventually.)
The few times they see each other, James would eventually come to the conclusion that like... That's not a bad thing?

Because "If everything is deterministic, I can find comfort in the idea that I am right where I need to be. I don't have to second guess my decisions because they weren't really mine to begin with". Which actually is a bit of a problematic idea because, like... it just excuses bad actions? Which I think Aaron would catch onto. Though, actually. it's not really problematic because, like, being deterministic just means that you can better moderate that. If you already know that you're deterministic, that means that you can drive to change the machine that is your mind to NOT DO BAD THINGS. Our actions are like water flowing down a slope. Pour water in the same spot in the same way, and it'll flow down the same path each time. So, what if you just carve out a different channel? And I think that really works as part of the story because of the whole God machine thing.

Mother Moon and the First Gargoyle

This song inspired an idea in me.

"Waking up to the Moon"

Since James eventually makes his way down to Earth, what if the Moon is actually exclusively a thing in reality and doesn't exist in any form in Fantasia? He would eventually wake up to the Moon, for the first time. Which has developed even more! "Mother Moon" is a very prominent figure in Azaron - another one of my worlds that's tied together with Fantasia in some ways. Celestial bodies are Gods in Azaron, and the Moon is no exception. Mother Moon here and Mother Moon in Azaron are very different, but that was a point of inspiration.

Mild Diversion: Mythology

A relatively big part of the game focuses on mythological characters and places, such as Lucifer, the Tower of Babel, Echo, etc. My idea was like- what if all of those things do exist, and people just saw them while dreaming? They didn't invent those stories, they just hazily remembered them when they woke up.

I was inspired by the album cover of the album Enlightening the World, by Undercode.

" Big thing climbs down mountain with torch to enlighten the world "

So...

That's Prometheus!

So...

What if prometheus is in my story?

My original concept for Prometheus was that he would have been the first "dream" (this is before I figured out the fantasm thing) to create a gargoyle. The "enlightening" that would parallel Prometheus bringing fire down to humanity would be the gift of creation, which I ended up scrapping. But! As you know by now, I take cool ideas and mash them together!

"The moon is exclusively real" + "Everything that is real is a gargoyle" + "Prometheus created the first gargoyle"

Becomes:

Mother Moon was the first Gargoyle — The first thing that ever was real — An inert, cold, gray rock.

A final diversion: Multiverses

An idea that kept cropping up in my head was: What if Fantasia isn't just tied to this reality? What if every story I ever write is tied to Fantasia? Azaron, too.
What if there are many other universes that dream the same dreams? And so Mother Moon's many fantasmal fragments split — each one became a single, real moon (For the record: gargoyles really do not have any free will whatsoever. They're just machines). With this as well, I think it would be really cool if Azaron was special, in the way that the entire country of Azaron, and all of its people, would be perfectly replicated in Fantasia. People who've never been to Azaron before know about it, because they've dreamt of it. But that's not related to borrowed time

Here's a little exchange between Mother Moon and James about this very fact.