Ecology and Media: Keep an Open Mind by Gavin Embley

Ecology, the relationship between an organism and its environment, is not something the average person pays much mind to when they’re sitting down for a movie or playing a video game. You don’t think about the social structures of the giant monster chasing our weirdly beautiful protagonists, nor what month their breeding season is in.

…Okay, maybe some of you are thinking about the breeding season thing…

But the fact is that the ecology of the creatures in your stories is not a hindrance, but instead something that is fascinating and can drive the creation of even more compelling stories. 

One of the best examples is the Monster Hunter series of video games by Capcom. The series follows an unnamed player character, who travels throughout the world fighting massive monsters with similarly massive weapons. But what makes the game unique from any other monster fighting games is that this series prides itself on the ecology of the monsters, treating them as fantastical but still very much real animals. Any abilities we see from the monsters have some explanation through diet, behavior, adaptation, etc. For example, there is the monster called zinogre, who’s a large, wolf-like beast with the ability to attack with electricity.

In any other piece of media, the zinogre could just control the weather and summon lightning at will. But Monster Hunter chooses to not do that—in the this world, zinogre cannot produce electricity on its own and instead gets all of its power from colonies of small insects known as thunderbugs, which are bugs that can produce their own electricity. These insects nest in the fur of the zinogre, donating their electricity, while the large zinogre will protect the vulnerable thunderbugs from insectivorous predators.

To play devil’s advocate, some might say, “Okay, but what’s the point? It’s cool lore. Something interesting to read in a novella or to hear from an NPC. If this was in a book, maybe some character can mention it. But it doesn’t change the plot.”

Except it can.

You see, when you fight the zinogre in game, the fact that its electricity comes from the thunderbugs becomes a huge factor in your success. The zinogre must take several pauses within the fight to call its scattered colony of thunderbugs to it, which gives the player a choice: try to heal, reposition, or run in to interrupt the zinogre. It is possible to prevent it from calling the thunderbugs so it can’t charge up, making its electrical attacks much weaker and less varied. So now, there is a choice being made that previously would not have existed without the ecology of this monster.

And knowing the fact that zinogre gains its power from bugs gives yet another new opportunity—if you know it’s weaker without the thunderbugs that give it energy, you might think to bring a bug net, since bug catching is a notable element of the game’s loop. Then you can catch the thunderbugs off of the back of the zinogre when you knock it over, stealing its own power source.

That is what ecology can do for media, both in writing and other forms. If the zinogre did not get their power from thunderbugs, then there would not be an opportunity for the player to take advantage of that symbiotic relationship to weaken the monster. And the same can be done in your writing; if you know the ecology of the creatures within your setting, you get new choices to make and opportunities to grab. Maybe, if faced with a zinogre, a protagonist might be able to defeat the creature another way—perhaps spraying it with pesticides will cause the monster to retreat to protect its swarm. Or, maybe just by knowing that a zinogre may not venture into a frigid area since its thunderbugs cannot tolerate lower temperatures, it can be avoided altogether.

It does not have to be grandiose. Simply knowing some common behaviors of the creatures within your story can do so much. What if the dragons of your world mate for life and return to each other every mating season to raise another clutch of eggs, so in a given culture, a dragon is used to symbolize love and loyalty? If the image of two dragons becomes part of a culture’s marriage traditions, requiring the one who proposes to get the scale of a dragon to officiate their vow?

What happens if you can’t get the scale? How does one even get a dragon scale? What happens if the local dragon loses its mate and suddenly everyone in the nearby village believes all love has been cursed? Just one sentence of ecology suddenly opens new possibilities to you that you wouldn’t have had before.

And that is the power of ecology. Even if you, as a writer, don’t want to go into detail, just giving some flavor to the different animal/monster/creature species of your world can open it up, even in small ways. I may have used high fantasy for examples, but it can easily work in science fiction with more grounded creatures. And this is not even considering plants and fungi that also exist in nature.

There is even an entire separate genre known as ‘speculative evolution’ that explores this very thought process to its peak.

Just keep an open mind. The natural world can easily be another tool in your belt for writing that can enhance your storytelling, whether it's through being a set piece, an element of symbolic meaning, or an active participant in your story.