When I first moved to New Orleans when I was 9, I was just a kid with an overactive imagination who had problems focusing in class. Luckily, I wasn’t the only kid with an overactive imagination. I had two friends named Ruben and Aaron. To kill time in class, we would make up stories about aliens, secret spy agents, gods, creatures, and random things that only made sense to a child. We would draw stick figure comics and make little figures out of school utensils. It has been a long time since I’ve thought about those days, but even now, I still remember so many things so clearly. 

I recently talked with Ruben again and that had me feeling nostalgic. I wanted to write down some of the things we came up with back then. Preserve it somehow. I’m not getting any younger and I’d like some sort of symbolic immortality for my youth. Besides, I think some of the stories we made up were genuinely interesting. The way a kid’s mind works is straight up weird, and that’s definitely reflected in the stories we made up. I’m writing down things mostly from my perspective, based on what I remember. Ruben’s probably gonna read this later and be like “wtf he got that wrong” so if you’re reading this, Ruben, sorry in advance. 

The catalyst for a lot of the stories we made up were oftentimes just things we had laying around. School utensils weren’t just for writing and schoolwork; pencil sharpeners became spaceships, erasers became little creatures, pens became missiles.Our favorite pastimes was drawing faces on things and making them into sentient creatures. One of Ruben’s earliest creations was the Smug, which was just the eraser from the end of a pencil with eyes and a mouth drawn on it. You had red Smugs from regular pencils, white Smugs from mechanical pencils, and ever so often you’d get colorful ones from novelty pencils. But they were actually just a sub species of the larger eraser community known as Bungies. Late 2009, cap erasers became all the rage. I dunno if cap erasers are still popular today, as I think most people moved on to mechanical erasers and pens. But these pointy little colorful erasers were everywhere back in my school. But to my friends and I, these were the mighty Bungies. A proud race of eraser people. Being slightly larger, they were easier to draw faces on. Thus leading to the era of personalized Bungies. I remember we started a whole thing where we would decorate the Bungies into different people. People made Iron Man Bungies, Pirate Bungies, Mario Bungies, Mr. T Bungies, all many many more. There was also a race to collect every color variant of the cap erasers. They came in some pretty common colors like pink, green or yellow. But every once in a while someone would show up with a purple one and it was just the biggest flex. But I was one of the lucky few who ended up finding a white Bungy. I remember showing it off at school that day. I don’t think I ever ended up drawing a face on that one, twas too hesitant. 

But regular erasers weren’t the only thing we had access to. You see, Ruben and I were “art kids”. You know, one of those kids who got to skip foreign language class or band to instead go make LEGO stop animation projects with our crazy art teacher Mrs. J. I can probably write an entire other post just about Mrs. J, what a wonderful woman. She was an amazing artist and great inspiration for creativity. But most importantly, she owned a large quantity of art erasers: specifically, kneaded erasers. These things are extremely malleable grey blobs that are supposed to be used in pencil art to help with blending and shading. They have a consistency kinda like clay, super easy to mold into different shapes. Needless to say, we were obsessed with them. We called them blobs of course. They were a distant relative to Bungies but way more powerful due to their ability to shapeshift. Around this time we also started to come up with a hierarchy of creatures and made up some history behind Bungies and Blobs. We also made up a third species called the Triangles, which were just sentient triangles. Real creative, I know. But the idea was that they were like the sharp point graphite tips of pencils and were the natural enemies of Bungies. Which makes sense, you know, pencils vs erasers. So we made up LORE. The triangles were evil and only wanted to destroy. Bungies were the good guys and only wanted to create. Blobs were neutral and did not want to interfere. In retrospect… this made no sense since pencils usually are used to draw things (create) while erasers erase things (destroy) so shouldn’t it be the other way around? Well we must’ve fucking hated triangles back them because we all agreed “yeah triangles are dickheads”. Around this time we started to create this sort of color coated trifecta. Kind of a coincidence really, but it just so happened my favorite color was blue, Ruben’s favorite color was green, and Aaron’s favorite color was red. And each of these colors got associated with one of the three species. I also made up shape coordination for each species. The Triangle’s shape was… well… triangle. The Blobs were circle, and Bungies were square. and they came from the planets Triangus, Bungus, and Blobeth respectively. Each planet in the shape of their symbol. 

Kids are very impressionable. So a lot of our obsessions and hyperfixations were directly inspired by the media we consumed (you should have seen what recess was like that year Dragon Ball Z Kai came out on Nickelodeon. Everyone was running around making energy beam noises at each other). Gravity Falls was on TV during 2012 and one of the coolest things was the concept of a secret journal full of mysteries and secrets. A few years prior, the Spiderwick Chronicles was also pretty popular and so was the TV show Adventure Time. If you’re familiar with those things, you might remember the field journal and necronomicon respectively. Both also being books that contain mystic knowledge about creatures and magic artifacts. Which inspired me to make something similar to contain all the lore that we had created over the years. The first thing I made was The Book of Bungy. It was a blatant copy of some of the fictional journals I mentioned before. Full of diagrams on Bungies, their culture, their technology, their world, etc. It was a fun project. I made the book out of paper and cardboard so it wasn’t super impressive or anything. But it felt cool. I wish I still had it, I don’t actually remember where I put it. If I manage to find it I’ll post some pictures.

But it was also around this time I started to get interested in creating a consistent lore. Over the past couple years Aaron, Ruben, and I had made stories about secret agents fighting bad guys in space, weird creatures that looked like sentient benches, super sapiens (it’s like super saiyans from dragon ball except they’re human hence sapiens instead of saiyans… look we kinda all went through a dragon ball phase ok? Aaron got us into it and it was a weird year), and mystical enchanted weapons (we also read a lot of Percy Jackson). But it was all kinda all over the place. No consistency between anything, all very random. So now you’re probably wondering how this all ties in with the title of the post. What is the “Fish”? 

At some point, I think Ruben drew a simple picture of a fish and I was looking at it from the side and thought he was drawing a sack. Which if you’re just going off of the basic shape, yeah that does kinda look like a sack. This became a running joke overtime I think and eventually we assigned it some sort of cosmic importance. We came up with the idea that the entire universe is contained within a giant sack. Called The Sac. But it was actually also a giant cosmic fish that looks like a sack. “Fish” became our messiah in a way. The cosmic fish is the ultimate deity that swims through the ether, forever traveling through 5th dimensional spacetime. At the same time, the Sac was also just an actual literal sack in our world. And if you looked inside, you would see the entire universe. And this got us into the idea of making a sort of creation myth for the universe. We came up with four Great Ancient Weapons that were used to forge the universe (actually universes, we had the idea that there were nine main universes within the Sac). There once was a being known as Uni-Man, a Veridian being, who was the first to exist. Through the power of sheer will, he created the first great weapon, a hammer that could create and destroy matter. Thus came the birth of the Hammer of Creation. Using this hammer, Uni-Man then created a spear composed of pure energy and force, now called the Spear of Power. With the two weapons, Uni-Man had control over all matter and energy. But reality was not stable, spatial dimensions flickered and events occurred without causation. So to create a stable canvas to paint the world in, a chain whip was made to control the flow of space and time, aptly named the Chain of Space and Time. Finally, Uni-Man created one last weapon: a sword. This sword contained the powers of all three weapons before it. It was all powerful, the original source of magic. This was the Sword of Reality. Its power was too great, too dangerous to be given to any one person, so Uni-Man hid it away and made it so that only someone who is worthy enough to find the other three weapons will be able to wield it. (I remember Ruben actually fighting me on the chain thing and said it should instead by a bow and arrow because bows and arrows are cooler. But personally I think a chain fits better thematically. We could compromise and meet in the middle and say that the chain could be used as the bow string of a bow. I dunno about the logistics of that but oh well)

Uni-Man was not the only of his kind, for he was one of three. Uni-Man had two brothers, the Crimson being and the Azure being. These three brothers of green, red, and blue maintained the early milenia of the 9 universes. The rest of the three Great Weapons were split among them. Uni-Man, the Veridian being, held on to the hammer of creation. The Azure being was given the Spear of Power. And the Crimson Being was given the Chain of Space Time. Neither Blue or Red were happy about this. For Blue wanted the power of creation for himself while Red wanted the power of the Sword of Reality. Being devious, Blue convinced Red to overthrow Green and handed him the Spear of Power. A great war was waged between Green and Red. But even with the power of two of the Great Weapons, Red could not defeat Green. Red was stripped of his power and banished off into a place outside of time. Treacherous Blue managed to steal two of the Great Weapons during the conflict and went into hiding. Trillions of years later, the Red one now resides outside the timeline and has become a sort of temporal deity known as the Time Watcher, being able to see into the past and future, and across every dimension and reality, cursed to only observe but never interfere. Blue is still hiding to this day, plotting and scheming, in hopes of one day getting his hands on the Hammer of Creation and thus obtaining the Sword of Reality for himself. 

In terms of Hierarchy, these three are at the top. Omnipotent beings with control over reality. But there exists many other gods. There are three universes within the Sac that sit in the very center. This is where the planets of the Bungus, Triangus, and Blobeth reside. The Triangles worshipped the Crimson Being, the Bungies worshipped the Veridian Being, and the Blobs worshipped the Azure being. What all three races don’t realize, is that three great beings have changed over time. The once powerful and great Uni-Man, who was so interested in creation and maintaining order has grown jaded and apathetic. Uncaring and indifferent. His light now glows more blue. The once evil Crimson Being now having an infinite time for self reflection having become the Time Watcher, glows green with hopes of redemption and a better future. The once neutral Azure being that stayed neutral during the first great war, glows a bright red for his treachery and malicious desires. The dynamic shifted. 

While these three were the main gods, there are lesser immortal beings that were scattered throughout the 9 universes. Terrestrial deities inhabit planets and form religions such as the Olympians or the Asgardians did on Earth. Entire cultures of Gods spread throughout the universes creating a massive diverse ecosystem. To restrict their powers of magic, there are the elder Gods. Giant celestial beings the size of solar systems. These beings are called Celestial Movers and have the power to move stars and change the course of space. They stop lesser gods from becoming too powerful and altering the course of reality. There also exists a race of immortals called the archivists. They are immortal scholars who travel from world to world with the only intention of recording knowledge. 

But there was also a far more sinister force lurking in the depths of darkness.There exists a race of gods called the Downfalls of Civilization. They move from planet to planet and seek to bring the downfall of all intelligent life and the societies they formed. They represent intrinsic sins such as Greed and Malice. Each god of Downfall is a manifestation of a certain phenomenon that can destroy a civilization. But these downfalls are all internal, so it’s not stuff like famine or natural disasters. Instead, these gods represent stuff like Ignorance, Pride, Corruption, Deception, etc. The strongest of the bunch, the leader of the Downfalls, is Apathy. He exists as a form of constant entropy, the root of all evil. Apathy has destroyed many worlds and is responsible for the death of trillions. For he does not act, but instead he instills apathy in others. When a civilization stops caring, and loses the capability for empathy, it dies. Apathy cannot be killed. And he will not rest until the Downfalls wipe out all life in the Fish. The Downfalls of civilization are a very interesting concept so I might write another article on them specifically at some point. 

Another thing that we made up but never really connected to the larger lore of the Fish is a race of creatures called bugs, along with certain bugs called super bugs and bug fighters. In lieu of being able to bring actual toys to school, we used whatever we had to act as toys. In this case, it was our own hands. If you place your hands down on a table with four fingers touching the surface but with your middle finger sticking up, you get a giraffe looking thing with a long neck and four legs. We called these bugs. The origin story for the bugs was apparently from Ruben’s grandfather, who would cover his face with both hands, only for the hands to pop off and turn into bugs. Or something like that, I dunno, my memory is pretty shite. 

Anyways, this so far has just been only a fraction of the stuff I can actually remember from the stories we made up back then. There’s also many more that I failed to actually bring up here as I couldn’t find a place to talk about them such as the great stick figure war, the cosmic artifacts, or the ISP (inter-universal space police). I’ll probably write more about it over time. But that’s it for now.