The coelary manifesto
Part 1: Why Bugs?
To answer this, we need to unpack the concept of cognitive baggage.
1: Introducing Cognitive Baggage
Most human and anthropomorphic characters in fiction often fall into two types of cognitive roles: affirming, and defying. An affirming role is when a character looks muscular, and their character development arc hinges upon on them exploring their strength. A defying role is when a character looks muscular, but their character development arc hinges upon them exploring traits that are not defined by strength.
For example, in Disney’s 3D animated Wreck-It Ralph, Ralph falls into a defying role: he looks like a villain, but defies villainous actions and is recognized as a hero. In Disney’s 2D animated “Robin Hood”, Robin Hood is portrayed by a fox - foxes have entered the cultural consciousness as being sneaky characters, therefore his role is an affirming one - we expect him to be sneaky, and he fulfills that role by being the folk hero of the thief who steals from the rich and gives to the poor.
Meek as a mouse. Strong as an ox. Stubborn as a mule. Humanity has anthropomorphized traits from animals to create cognitive shortcuts which describe human behavior, and we have done this for all of human history.
In Disney’s 3D animated Zootopia, the idea of affirming or denying the cognitive role expected of each of the anthropomorphic characters is the keystone to their personalities - Judy Hopps has to defy the limitations of being a small rabbit, Nick Wilde has to defy the expectations of being a sneaky fox. Their entire personalities are defined when we see them because of cognitive baggage - a form of prejudice we have carried into the piece of fiction from the social consciousness. Even with Zootopia’s secondary characters, whether it’s a serious character development or just a single joke, it depends entirely on the prejudice carried into the piece of fiction.
This is not meant to be a condemnation (nor an endorsement) of this type of writing - it’s merely a storytelling shortcut for using the character actors to embody ideals, and set the story into play when we see those ideals contrasted against one another.
This kind of writing can bring with it other types of character design, one that often embodies character archetype tropes, some of which are harmful, such as:
Fat people are clumsy, or stupid
Deformed people are villains
Women are helpless
Women are sexualized
It’s not that the story is stating these things outright; it’s just that many characters with physical deformity are also villains; it’s that many helpless characters are women, and that many sexualized characters are women. It’s that many of the clumsy and stupid characters are designed as fat. These character tropes rose out of prejudicial concepts from life inserted into character designs, which carried cultural baggage into the collective social consciousness until these concepts were (and occasionally, still are) accepted as common character design standbys.
These types of character design ideas are dangerous, because fiction is powerful. The cognitive baggage does not stay, constrained, within the piece of fiction, but is carried back out again into the real world.
2: The Purpose of Fiction
Fiction is lies used to convey abstract truths. These truths can be big or small - truths about one’s own character or morals, truths about family, truths about one’s country, truths about humanity, truths about the earth. Every story advocates for a truth that resonates with humanity, or else there is no purpose to the story. It is not true to say that every story requires conflict, or a protagonist, but it is true to say that every story advocates for some sort of truth.
The mythologies of Aesop’s fables, greek mythology, and religious texts are particular types of stories used to convey big truths about morality in particular. Jesus Christ used parables - fictions - as analogies to convey big truths to his followers. Zootopia uses a secular concept of nature - predator vs. prey - as an analogy to convey moral big truths about racism and xenophobia. Every story, including every piece of fiction, advocates for some sort of truth.
Character design is a type of fiction that advocates for some type of truth - a truth about one’s character. If a character designer is not deliberately setting out to convey a truth with their character design, then it is very easy for some cognitive baggage to slip into the design unintentionally. It is not that a character designer is setting out to say “everyone with freckles and glasses is a nerd”; it’s just that when they want to design a nerd, they often jump straight towards a freckled kid with glasses.
Character design can be empowering or damaging based on the truths it conveys. If someone with a physical deformity or a facial scar sees that the only characters in movies with facial scars are villains, the big truth they’ll accept from that is the conclusion that they are a villain. If the only confident people in movies are the handsome people, then anyone who sees themselves as ugly will find it very difficult to be confident. That is the truth they will accept. Fiction is the heartbeat of culture, and culture reflects the character of the people living in it. Fiction has the power to uplift or tear down anyone reflected within it.
If you’re wondering what is being carried around inside that cognitive baggage… it is truth.
3: So... why bugs?
Bugs are a source of design inspiration from the natural world that has very little cultural “cognitive baggage” attached to it. If I tell you that a character is based off of the threadwing antlion, you would probably not know what to expect from them. There are no cultural truths attached to the idea of threadwing antlions.
(Of course, there are a few bugs with cultural baggage - things like “ants and bees work hard”, “flies are filthy”, “grasshoppers are lazy”, “butterflies are graceful”, and, if you want to get really exciting, why not make a male ladybug character with gender identity issues? Yawn.)
The purpose of bugs as design inspiration is to be able to design characters with as few preconceived notions about who they are as possible. A human girl character who is skinny, blonde, and wearing a cheerleader outfit will be expected to either affirm or deny your expectations that she’ll be obnoxiously optimistic, maybe a bit bratty, maybe a bit ditzy. But put that cheerleader outfit onto an anthropomorphized anoplius nigerrimus, and nobody will know what to expect.
Part 2: Realism in Fiction
It is not possible to completely escape all cultural preconceived notions when you design a character (or else you’re creating an alien race in Star Trek that has a very difficult time communicating with the crew of the Enterprise). If you try, that character might not be good for much else other than serving as some sort of philosophical thought exercise; since it’s impossible for most of your audience to relate to them, your success in relating truths to your audience will be low. The choice to use bug-human characters is a compromise between alien design and human recognizability to provide as much actionable truth with as little cognitive baggage as possible.
1: The Value of Realism
In real life, it is very common to meet someone for the first time and instantly have your mind filled with ideas about who they are and what they believe - it’s a human instinct. However, it’s also very common for that first impression to be very wrong - only after getting to know a person, and when they are comfortable being around you, will you find out who they truly are, and what they truly believe. The instinct to judge someone immediately upon seeing them can cause prejudices against them to manifest, based on nothing more than your limited perspective. How often have you been driving, and thought unkind thoughts about someone who was driving recklessly nearby? How often were you hoping that other people would accommodate your reckless driving when you were in a hurry or having an emergency? There is a human tendency to judge others by their actions, and to demand others judge us by our intentions. The way to temper these first impressions and judgemental attitudes is by empathy, which is the most important aspect of writing realism. With empathy, you become more aware of how your actions affect others, and you become more understanding of the intentions of others.
In fiction, characters are often good or bad. Your side or mine. In real life, there really aren’t any truly purely evil people, at least by the standards of character archetypes found in fiction. Similarly, there are no purely good people. There is no He-Man, and there is no Skeletor. There are just people, their values, and the actions they carry out. While there are certainly people who do evil things, nobody in real life is an archetype. Nobody is above redemption, or corruption.
There is value in the use of character archetypes in fiction; they represent idealistic purity - an unfiltered, unfettered idea or moral. However, the simplification of diluting characters into archetypes does an injustice to the complexity of real life. People who make terrible mistakes can still do good things, and bad things can happen to good people with no meaning or purpose. You might be blessed or cursed for no reason at all - and events that happen for no reason at all do not often occur in fiction, because it is considered unnecessary to the story.
People deserve stories that represent the truth of the complexity and nuance of their real lives.
Maybe you or someone you know has met a hero or role model. A celebrity you look up to or admire, perhaps. Maybe once you read a news article about them... and you were shocked to find out that they were actually quite rude to a fan, or that they were very impatient or cruel in real life! Essentially, you were let down by a fiction. You had an idea of this person - an archetype - in your head, based on their public image, and the reality of their actions was incongruous with the idea. Archetypes do not exist in real life, and holding people to a standard higher than humanly possible will always lead to disappointment.
The purpose of realism in fiction is to advocate for the ebb and flow of one’s character - to reflect the reality of growth over time, of changes of mood or circumstance which affect the depth of who you are, and what you do. In real life, there are no Sunday comic-strip people who wear the same outfit and are in the same mood and have the same morals for their whole life - the reality of life is that change is inevitable. Change in one’s character, environment, experience, circumstances, and morals. Life is predicated upon change. The only stasis is in death (and even that is not guaranteed). If a person is not controlling the change in their life, then their environment around them is changing them instead. Change is inherent to life.
When Pixar writes a story for a new film, they very carefully choose each set of events to steer the characters exactly into the developments they desire. The “Hero’s Journey” is the set formula for making a novice into a champion, through carefully crafted trials and successes. While this can make for entertaining fiction, it is disingenuous to the realities of life. Now, by no means does this mean that realistic fiction must always end badly, or that nothing important can happen, or that the story shouldn’t make any sense - but rather, realism in fiction advocates for the fact that outstanding things don’t always happen - they might never happen, and it’s not because you’re living life incorrectly. Good things don’t always happen. Good things sometimes happen because of hard work, but sometimes they don’t. Sometimes good things happen for no reason.
Realism in fiction is advocacy for real people. It is very easy to fall into the mindset that one is not living enough, or doing enough, or accomplishing enough. By writing realistic characters who live similar lives to the reader, the reader is empowered and validated in the way they are living. It builds compassion and empathy for the people living in the reality around you.
Advocacy and empathy is a key design element for Coelary in one important aspect: uplifting the under-represented. It is utterly universal for characters in fiction to be a member of the most common demographic of the country of publication - this is done for many reasons, but generally it is done for marketability. Underrepresented minority groups feel ostracized when they do not see themselves in fiction - they feel like the aspirations of the character in the story do not apply to them. This ties into what was mentioned above about people garnering truths about what characters they see on screen - if a black person never sees black people in fiction, they can’t help but feel like their existence is a mistake. Realism in fiction must strive to be inclusive of real identities. If an identity exists, it must be advocated for. Those with queer identities, those who are disabled or mentally ill, and anybody else who feels ostracized in real life needs to understand that they are not living their life wrong, and realism in fiction can lift them up without tearing anyone else down.
Wes Anderson’s films are constructed using a particular type of realism - his characters are known for their strong personalities, their quirky habits and dialogue, and the non-sequitur way they react to situations. His characters stand apart by reacting in ways you wouldn’t expect - at least, as far as your expectations of movie characters go. His characters often react in the awkward, anxious, uncertain way that people in real life tend to do - people preoccupied by their own thoughts or feelings. Their actions don’t always make sense or follow any logic, because instead of the characters following the story of the film, Wes Anderson’s characters follow the story of their own life, and the film is merely a window into the way their lives interact with each other. None of his characters are good, and none are bad - they’re just living their own story. Whether this “works” as a story or not depends on how much you connect with the events of their life, and the growth of their character - or lack thereof.
Coelary’s realism takes an important lesson from Wes Anderson’s works, and an important lesson from life in general: who you are affects your relationships. Probably the most important cornerstone of the characters and story in Coelary is that your moral center controls the outcome of your relationships with other people, and that your relationships with other people should challenge and grow your moral center. One’s moral center is not only defined by what one believes, but more importantly is defined by how they turn what they believe into action. You are what you do. Characters struggling to rationalize the way their actions affect other people, and their relationships with them, is something that every person can identify with and relate to. People tend to focus on the way other people’s actions affect them, but understanding the way one’s own actions affect others is the core of empathy.
Realism in fiction advocates for the true nature every aspect of life - life as-is. No censoring for a certain rating, no good vs, evil. Realism in Coelary advocates for the full breadth of life as you are living it.
Part 3: The Purpose of Coelary
1: Temet Nosce
Temet nosce is latin for “know thyself”. In Coelary, the plot is advanced by how the characters get to know and understand themselves - or how they don’t understand themselves - and how it affects other people. A character with a bad habit will find that it is affecting their relationship with others. They might be unintentionally hurting others. Finally, being confronted by another character will bring the habit to awareness, and the character will have to confront themselves. Confronting one’s self is an important lesson to be repeatedly addressed in Coelary, in as many ways as there are in life. It is a lesson for every age and every demographic of person to be constantly trying to understand one’s own character, not only for the sake of relationships with others, but for self-esteem and confidence with oneself.
The journey of knowing oneself is tied into the journey of improving oneself - now that I know I’m an asshole, how do I become less of one? This is defined entirely in their interactions with others, as relationships are the grounds upon which one’s morals become actions, and where actions hurt - or help - other people. Self-improvement is one of those highly relative concepts - anyone, of any character, can improve in some way. Building a sense of vigilance about one’s own thoughts and the way they become actions is a fundamental theme of Coelary.
Of course, this is easy to say, but is difficult in practice - it’s a long journey to know oneself, one that can take an entire lifetime. Therefore, it’s necessary to break it down into a case-by-case basis for the sake of the story to address particular aspects, traumas, illnesses, or relationships which affect or are affected by the nature of oneself. Childhood trauma can take decades to understand and work through - mental illness can cause setbacks in behavior in such a way that progress seems to move at a glacial pace. This is where advocating for real life is so important, because these are troubles faced by real people that sometimes feel fake or unique, and make people feel ostracized from others because their experiences feel so unusual.
Of course, Coelary doesn’t always have to be written about success stories - it’s very important to advocate for the nature of failure. Fiction is saturated with success, and popular media can make people feel terribly isolated when they feel like they fail so often. Failing often, and learning from failure, is a powerfully compelling and relatable character development. You don’t necessarily have to make a character succeed at all in order to make their journey relatable or entertaining.
2: A Familiar Scenario
Sometimes we have been asked “How could I write a story for Coelary?” Look to your experiences, or the experiences of your friends or family. Did you have a falling out with someone? Is there a family member you don’t get along with, and why? Is it their fault? Is it maybe a little bit your fault? Have you or someone you know been fired from a job, or arrested, or just sent to timeout for some reason? That would make a great story. If it has happened to you, it has very likely happened to someone else, too, and will advocate for their experiences. Relating your experiences is a fantastic way to take advantage of the collective consciousness - it shines a lot of light on real issues, and who knows? Maybe writing your experiences into a character will help you understand your own experiences a bit more. In fact, it’s a guarantee.
Family issues in Coelary are a particularly important one - after all, the way one is raised often dictates the way the rest of their life will turn out, one way or another. One’s primary moral core is inherited by the actions of their parents or guardians, and one will in turn impart their morals onto their children someday. Even if you’re not writing a story about a character’s relationship with their family, understand how their family relationships would affect their relationships with their friends, and their friends’ families.
Relationships with friends is a particularly important subject when writing stories for Coelary - our friends are the people we choose to be with, and the way they encourage our personality - or the way they challenge our beliefs - can make for many kinds of story. Difficulty within friendships is universal.
Most importantly, romantic relationships are an opportunity to explore the most difficult situations faced in real life - in romantic relationships we find the deepest introspection of one’s character, because while it’s extremely common to have different beliefs than one’s family, and it’s not unusual to not agree entirely with your friends, it is a terrible challenge when someone you love doesn’t believe the same things as you. Movies and TV shows rely on tired tropes of miscommunication and shallow affection to explore romantic relationships, instead of the enthralling concepts of one’s moral core being challenged to improve for the compelling purpose of being a better person - the best person - for someone you love.
3: The Intention of the Bug World
The world of Coelary and the stories told therein are not told merely to tell interesting stories (or to tell stories about bug people) but with overarching purposes:
The inheritance of sin
Introspection of one’s character
Relationships
How one’s character affects one’s relationships
Empathy
Representing the experiences of the underrepresented and underprivileged
Halting the advancement of harmful character and media tropes
Advocating truly about human experiences
Being careful not to use shocking or explicit imagery just for the sake of a reaction; only if it serves one of the above purposes
These are the guidelines for crafting the stories and characters within Coelary.
This manifesto is a short excerpt from an internal document at Foxfaer Studio called “The Coelary Design Bible.”