vovat | A Galaxy of Fun (Reply)

In fourth grade, my class did a project where we created our own imaginary countries, each with its own theme. Mine was "Computerland," where the roads included Disk Drive and Memory Lane. In the following year, we had the project of designing our own galaxies. As you might expect, hardly anyone's was really much of a galaxy. I might have been the only person to even include more than one solar system, and I only had somewhere in the vicinity of twenty, not billions. Still, it did give me a chance to be creative. My galaxy was called simply "The Great Galaxy," and the main inhabitants were simply called Aliens, with a capital A. They were tall creatures with red, green, or blue skin, and antennae on their heads, who dressed in jeweled robes. There were several things I never quite decided about these creatures, including how they reproduced. I once had the idea that each one had two offspring that started off as spores, but I sometimes figured that were both males and females. The whole galaxy was ruled from the planet Tweeadadot by a being known as the Alienking (all one word), which I derived from Tolkien's Elvenking in The Hobbit, a book I'd recently finished reading. The Tolkien influence could also be seen in the planet inhabited by dwarves, with names like Ackin and Snackin. I also had influence from The Cowardly Lion of Oz, in my figure of the galactic population as some big number that was probably still way too small to be the population of an entire galaxy "and a half," like the lions in Mudge. My explanation was that one of the blue dragons (yes, this galaxy also had dragons) had gotten into a fight with Minnephraphtolopolar, the guardian of the galaxy, which had resulted in the dragon's being cut in half, and the guard's having to have one arm replaced with a laser cannon. Minnephraphtolopolar was a Mookasookadookalooker (with the double O's pronounced as in "loop," rather than "look," despite the K's after them), a creature that looked like a shorter, squatter version of the Aliens. I think their appearance was largely inspired by one of the pictures of monsters in the Dungeon! board game. This particular Mookasookadookalooker guarded the gate in the wall that surrounded the whole galaxy, which I probably realized even at the age of eleven didn't really make sense, but I thought it was kind of a neat idea.

I created other sorts of animals for this galaxy, and even a few plants. The main example of the latter that I can remember is the Kannavoosk, which tears arms out of the sockets of passersby and eats them. (Yes, I had a quite disturbed mind sometimes.) As far as animals go, there was the Foof, a furry creature with a forked tongue that inhabited the planet Oonafoof, which could be reached by Tweeadadot on foot. See, Tweeadadot and Oonafoof were in the Smooshed System, where all of the planets had gotten mashed together in some way I never explained. I got the idea from a sloppy watercolor picture I made, which looked like, well, several planets stuck together. Anyway, while it was possible to walk from Tweeadadot to Oonafoof, the only explorer who ever tried it ended up being eaten by the Foofs (Fooves?). I can also recall writing about the Kookans, human-sized crow-like birds who were experts at spaceship creation.

I made a poster of several different kinds of spaceships for this project. I remember one was shaped like a shark, and another like a snake. There were also arrow taxis, which could be shot through space by giant bows. I don't think this would actually work, but I'm still rather fond of the idea. It's sort of like the cannon transport service in The Secret of Mana, I suppose.

Before I end this post, I'd like to mention two other locations in this galaxy. One is the Floating Ocean Nebula, which was used as a swimming pool by celestial giants. The other is the Pizza Planet, the surface of which is made entirely of pizza, and which is home to nymphs known as Pepperonids.

I think that's enough to start with. In a week or so, I'll introduce you to some other aspects of the Great Galaxy.