When stranded in an impossible world, there is no shame in seeking what you need in other worlds instead.
Alienated and traumatised even before the COVID-19 pandemic, that has been my only recourse through this horrendous period. And today, at the time of the year when the boundaries between worlds are at their thinnest...
...I bring back something to share.
A Story.
Paths Across the Sea is the tale a hyperactive fluffy pink-haired cat girl, a tiny explorer, and their journey together on a rabbit-shaped ship across a vast sea of Stories. Join Mikoro and Dari on their wholesome and heartwarming quest through a wide range of worlds, some of which you might well recognise from literature, mythology and video games. You never know – you might just find yourself on an exploration into the very nature of stories, journeys, and reality itself.
I have launched a new website to host this story, with more of my large written works set to appear there in the months ahead. Paths Across the Sea is now available to everyone, free of charge at the following link:
https://www.aichaobang.com/ This story is the first of its kind I have published and very unlike my typical writings. So for those who might be curious, here is a little more about how it came about.
On Mikoroand Dari
Dari, Mikoro, and those around them are the original characters of a handful of independent writers and artists I am today very pleased to call my friends. I first came across them in a series of chance encounters during the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, and was shocked to find myself inspired by them on a scale I have only very rarely experienced.
My involvement began with a short story starring Dari the shrunken explorer, which I plan to add to the website at a later date. After that one thing led to another, such that in the late autumn of 2020 I was kindly invited, indeed encouraged, to write a little more for Dari, Mikoro and their friends. It appeared the universe wished me to as well, for over the following months this prospect took on a life of its own. And now, exactly one year later, Paths Across the Sea is the result.
The individuals responsible for Mikoro, Dari and their friends are remarkable artists and upstanding characters in themselves, and I am deeply thankful to them for their constant encouragement and support throughout this project. Full credit is afforded to them in the Acknowledgements within the text itself.
On the Voyage
Paths Across the Sea is a mythic journey. My role in writing of it was less one of creation, more one of connection; less a productive process, more a shamanic exercise; less a matter of coming up with stuff to call my own, more a matter of faithfully expressing what the realities wanted to be written. And that is all I shall say on my part in bringing it forth.
Paths is a story about stories. Some of Mikoro’s and Dari’s encounters might be familiar to you depending on your own encounters: in myths, from the Irish Táin Bó Cúailnge to the Japanese creation cycle; in literature, from Swift to Bulgakov; in video games, from The Legend of Zelda to World of Warcraft; or in philosophy, from the Chinese classics to the rulesets of modern academia. These, along with so many other stories, together constitute the mythosphere or narrative seas in which the humans of this world swim, and whose archetypes and assumptions, whether they are aware of them or not, shape their realities and are shaped by their actions in turn.
Stories matter. The present crisis of humankind on Earth can be read as a crisis in humans’ sense of themselves as narrative beings. Fluid, contingent, created stories are taken for absolute truths; those who live in only a single story are too easily trapped in it just as a fish has no concept of water. And when captured by those who would wield them to manipulate and abuse, stories offer nigh-limitless destructive power.
What would happen if all people had the chance to swim in healthier stories than those of a superior us and inferior them, or of dominion over nature, or of rigid categories of humans each behaving in fixed ways? What are the stories, ancient or recent, that have shaped how you imagine such vitally important things as home or family, work, nature, freedom, history, knowledge, sex, or morality? Do those stories work for you? Are you at home in them? What other understandings might be possible?
You might be happy with your current understandings, or you might feel something’s not right with them. But whether you choose one or another is not the point. Rather, it is surely only by coming to know different stories, by journeying through them, that you can meaningfully be said to have a choice at all – can your story, that is, truly be your story.
If that’s all a bit much for you then don’t worry. You’ll find plenty of cake, cows, stars, ships, battles, cuddles and Mario Kart in this adventure too.
Paths Across the Sea now available here: https://www.aichaobang.com/
