Shadowstone Park
is an animated web series created by Jason Steele of FilmCow that has run since 2018 with an initial batch of three episodes.
This story follows a cat named Lark who can see ghosts and who uses this to solve murders around Shadowstone Park with the help of his friend Pecan the Pelican. The first episode is about a horse whose identity is wearing gloves and his murderer who is losing her identity and becoming a wild animal.
The show went on hiatus for years after episode 3, finally being revived in 2022 as The Fall of Shadowstone Park.
Shadowstone Park examples of:
- After the End: We see only a brief glimpse of the world outside Shadowstone Park, and it's a modern city in ruins.
- Benevolent Alien Invasion: Nil comes from a species that never evolved a killer instinct, as they can metabolise whatever nutrients they need from eating non-living substances. They travel the galaxy and share this gift with any species they encounter, believing that they can create worlds free of violence, hunger and unnecessary suffering by doing so.
- Body Horror: Gloves' attempt to manifest new gloves ends this way in Fall episode 4. In short, he accidentally turns himself into a big glove.
- Brick Joke: In episode 1, Gloves the horse claims that he doesn't trust birds since they spend all day looking at his butt. In episode 3, Darius the owl says that he's been looking at all the butts in his kingdom.
- In the final episode of the original run, and throughout most episodes of Fall, Darius's obsession with collecting skulls is something of a Running Gag. However, it only truly pays off in Episode 8: it turns out Darius's skull obsession (and possibly fetish) is the only reason Shadowstone Park is still standing, since his ongoing request to the Shadowstone's AI is causing it to spend 90% of its energy resources on mass-producing skulls for him, preventing it from fully waking up.
- Crapsack World: Everything outside of Shadowstone Park (and similar parks) is full of ruins and murderous lunatics.
- Doing In the Wizard: The ghosts that Lark has been seeing are the records of that person's consciousness being projected down from an orbiting spaceship. Them "passing on" is the recording being deleted; Lark's recording (Lark having been encouraging the ghosts to pass on) is horrified to learn this.
- Dying as Yourself: Downplayed with Crush. She knows she's turning insane, so she agrees to leave Shadowstone Park before she can hurt anyone else. She doesn't make it out in time.
- The Exile: Being banished is the punishment for murder in Shadowstone Park.
- A Good Name for a Rock Band: When Gloves learns that ghosts forget the last 5 to 10 minutes of their lives (for reasons unknown), he decides "The Forgetful Dead" would be a good band name.
- Ghostly Glide: The ghosts, naturally. Nil doesn't even appear to have legs.
- Handy Helper: Pecan carries Lark around, since his legs do not work.
- Healthy in Heaven: The ghosts who have been mutilated take on a healthy form, and after his death Darius gains the ability to see.
- Humans Are Bastards: Present in the backstory, despite no humans appearing in the story proper: apparently the reason why the animals became uplifted was because humans refused to stop killing them for food even after their biology was altered to no longer require doing so. In a memory, Nil explains that they hope that giving animals the ability to communicate will cause humans to stop killing them; the AI responds by asking if humans have even stopped killing humans, visibly giving Nil pause. It's even implied that humans are the only species not to have accepted a nonviolent lifestyle, since the speech in Episode 7 implies that even fully carnivorous species like lions and birds of prey have stopped hunting en masse.
- Becomes even more clear in Episodes 9 and 10, with the reveal that the apocalypse which caused most animals to lose their newfound sapience and revert to feral beasts wasn't caused by an evil deity at all, but by humans- specifically the American government- who refused to accept the idea that they were no longer supreme rulers of Earth and hijacked the aliens' ships in order to put down the "insurrection".
- Humans Are Cthulhu: it is eventually revealed that the "evil Gaia" Ava mentioned is actually a virus created by the CIA (misread by Ava as Kia).
- "Knock Knock" Joke: Darius tells a variation in episode 1, much to Pecan's distaste.Darius: Knock-knock.
Lark: Who's there?
Darius: Hmm, yes. "Hoo," indeed. - Meaningful Name: Broom is named after the item he caries. Also Punches.
- Meaningful Rename: Pocket becomes Leaf after he loses his pouch.
- Monochrome Apparition: All of the ghosts in the series appear this way.
- Otherworldly and Sexually Ambiguous: Nil, a ghost of indeterminate species, is consistently referred to as "they" by other characters. Given The Reveal that Nil is actually an alien, it's possible that their species doesn't actually have a concept of gender.
- Ragnarök Proofing: Something about the large stone protrusion in Shadowstone Park protects it from whatever has driven the world mad. The trouble is, it seems to be breaking down.
- Punches says there are other places like Shadowstone, and they have similar rocks, except theirs don't stick up into the sky.
- Seemingly averted, as Ava later reveals that the stone itself is what is causing everyone to lose their minds.
- Religion of Evil: Nil, an ancient ghost, proclaims themself a God. In their new religion, they proclaim that everyone's shape is wrong and needs to be changed, and that life is a sin. Lark declines Nil's offer to be their prophet.
- The Reveal: According to Ava in How It Starts, the enormous stone overlooking the park isn't protecting people from the Sanity Slippage that is infecting the animals, but in fact the stone itself is what is causing it. Lark is understandably horrified by this.
- An even bigger one split across Episodes 7 and 8: the Shadowstones are actually ships created by an alien race- one member of which is Nil- designed to bring peace across the universe by granting all other species their creators' ability to take sustenance from nonliving matter, thereby eliminating any need to kill to survive. However, after succeeding in doing so on many planets, the ships encountered trouble on Earth, where humans refused to change their behavior even as their biology was altered to no longer require predation. In an attempt to fix this, the aliens granted sapience to all of the animals, explaining their ability to talk in the series. However, the ships were somehow infected by the "evil Gaia" that opposes life; the only way to stop it from taking over was to discharge all of the Shadowstone's power, killing all of the crew aboard (thereby explaining how Nil died).
- Ruins of the Modern Age: Lark lands in some in episode 3, implying that the series takes place After the End.
- Sanity Slippage: Some of the animals in Shadowstone Park commit their murder because of this, Crush being the most obvious instance.
- I See Dead People: Lark's ability. Ava turns out to have it too, and Pecan gains a similar ability after being exposed to the technology inside the Shadowstone.
- Silly Spook: Many ghosts fit this trope, particularly Gloves, Darius (at least at first), and Punches.
- Species-Specific Afterlife: The animals in the park seem to believe in this, with Gloves wondering if he'll be sent to Horse Hell for stealing oats and Darius being afraid of going to Owl Hell due to his skull obsession.
- Sssssnake Talk: Chalice, a snake character, talks like this.
- Undeath Always Ends: Averted. Ghosts can cross over at any time by focusing on letting go of the world, but can stay as long or short as they want. Three ghosts - Darius, Nil, and Punches - choose not to cross over for their own reasons (Darius because he fears he will go to hell for his sins, Punches because he likes exploring, and Nil for unexplained reasons).
- Uplifted Animal: The animals on Earth were given the ability to think and talk by Nil and their crew, as part of their attempt to convince humans to stop killing and embrace a peaceful existence with the lifeforms around them. It failed pretty spectacularly.
- Wham Shot: A pretty significant one in Fall episode 9. Ava had previously mentioned an "evil Gaia" being responsible for what's happening to the animals, and at the end of the episode, she refers to it as "Kaia", before a screen lights up with text which says CIA.
- You Are Number 6: Nil's species have a quirk of naming themselves after the number of other lives they are directly responsible for - Nil was once a ship captain named Two Thousand One Hundred and Forty Nine, who was forced to change their name to Two Thousand One Hundred and Forty Seven when 2 of the ship's crew died on their watch as a mark of shame. They're now called Nil because all of their crew are presumed dead.
