Dear Jeff,
Hey. It’s your brother. I know you’ll never read this. It’s not like anyone I write these letters to will ever read them. And I know I keep saying that a lot. It’s something I do. I just talk myself into circles, running around in them, like a hamster or something. It’s just, me writing to an imaginary you. The you I think exists. Even though I’ve never known you, and the you I’ve really known is a million billion miles away, somewhere I can never reach him, you’re… Ugh. This feels so dumb to write out. You’re not necessarily dead?
I mean, it’s true! It’s true, technically, really. GLaDOS, She, was… kind of a pathological liar? Or not even that, more like, really stubborn. She clung to this certain view of the world and was absolutely incapable of viewing it in a different way. She just wouldn’t accept it. She wouldn’t accept anything that She couldn’t test Herself, that She couldn’t prove. Deep down She was scared about being wrong. She basically told me as much. So… When She said that you were dead… I’m not really totally inclined to believe Her?
I’m more inclined to believe that computer terminal that said you were missing or… Or. I mean. I know what it said, like, the other thing it said, but I really don’t want to believe that part? It’s just easier to accept it when I know it’s in some crevice that She’d probably have a hard time reaching and screwing around with, you know? It’s like, there’s some glimmer of hope. The possibility that you’re there. And I really don’t want to give up on that hope yet. I need to hope against hope.
I’m just saying this to say to the universe, or… M, or whoever controls it, that if you’re really out there, could you just, I dunno, give me a sign? Give me something? Anything? I know it’s really cliche, but you’re the only piece of family I’ve got here that I’m actually interested in reconnecting with. My parents are just... I mean... I could. But I really don’t want to. It’s you I need to see.
Stay tuned,
Adam
4/17/13
Dear █████,
It’s me. You know me. I know me! I sure hope I know me, it feels like it’s really hard to at times! Everything’s changing around me and sometimes it’s like I’m changing too and I don’t even know it. Hey, hey. Remember the end of Avatar: The Last Airbender? You know what I’m saying you totally remember the end of Avatar, who doesn’t, it was the greatest thing to ever happen in the history of media. So like there was that whole struggle, with the comet. With Aang not knowing what to do about anything. The whole conflict between his pacifist ideals and his very real need to neutralize Ozai. And what does he do about it? How does he reconcile this? It’s a struggle that breaks down to the core of his character, down to who he really is. It’s tough. It’s really tough.
You ever have a conflict like that? Something that you absolutely, seriously have to do, something that the entire world is screaming at you that you’ve gotta get done, or else everything is going to be terrible forever? But it’s something that goes against every moral that you have, that goes against the way you were raised from birth, that goes against anything you view as decent or right, even if you understand how important it is that you do it? You ever have a struggle that makes or breaks you? That tears you apart from the inside out?
Because I do. And I know how edgy this is going to sound, alright? I know I know I know. But I go through it every day. I know that I have to join in that battle, that war. That war against the Godmodder, that fight on that Minecraft server, that game on that forum. It’s piled on top of itself, a twisted array of meta-abstractions and I can feel its power even as I talk about it, I know how dangerous it is, and I need a piece. I need to get in on it. I need to be there for when it happens. But I can’t help but feel like if I was to do it it’d be the worst idea of my life.
Not like I’ve had much of a life in this hell, I know, right? Not much of a life to have! But this could be it. This could be my shot. My one shot to do something that gives me some sense of value, some sense of worth. Something that I can say I did. Something I can be proud of. Some way that I can last in this insipid nightmare of a place. I don’t even know why I’m obsessed with it so much, I mean I do know and it’s killing me inside but it just feels so, irrational?? Is it irrational to want to do something so badly that you’ll put everything aside just to focus on it, ignoring literally anything else in your life? Do I even have a life?
...Never mind. This does just sound edgy. Forget I said anything. Forget Destroy the Godmodder. I don’t even know why I’m thinking about it so much, never mind. NEVER MIND.
Stay tuned,
Adam
2/30/13
Dear █████,
So, you ever just, like. Shit, I don’t know. Stalk someone? Stalk a bunch of people? I know this sounds crazy while I’m typing it but I kind of think maybe I am going crazy a little bit, you know? (No, you don’t know, you never could know, but I need you to know because no one else in the entire damn world can understand what I’m going through and I need to vent.) But yeah you ever just... Follow people’s Internet presences without actually interacting with them and you’re filled with the biggest desire to join them in their wacky zany life-or-death escapades because doing anything would be better than doing nothing?
I must know all of their names. Their usernames, I mean. I’ve been secretly following their thread for a long time. And I know in my earlier letter I was like “aaaah I’m so edgy what am I even doing I shouldn’t be thinking about this so much” but hey. Look. What else am I gonna think about? There has to be a connection. There has to be a connection. December 7, 2012. December. Seventh. Twenty. Twelve. The literal DAY I crash-land into this faux Earth. TT2000 creates Destroy the Godmodder in the Forum Games section of the Minecraft Forums. And it’s still going. It’s still going! He’s going down, things are happening! It’s not even that he created on the forums, he, he created it in the actual game. There is an actual goddamn perfectly generic plugin filled server that is being terrorized by the Godmodder right now and I know it.
You wanna know how I know it? You wanna see the proof? You can’t see the proof man, GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE. You know you can’t see the proof. You can’t see shit because I’m here and you’re not and you’re over there and I’m in here and you’re out in the world in some cold December day freezing your balls off and I’m in here and I’m somehow in a house alone and nobody knows me but it feels like. It kind of feels like. Nah. Never mind. I was going to say something but I lost it.
The proof is that, like. People are talking about it online. Not the thread but the actual occurrence of the Godmodder. I’ve seen it. People on the Minecraft Forums have been making a bunch of scattered references to him. This mythical player that goes on random servers and he can’t be banned, he can’t be reasoned with, he can’t be killed. He goes into the game and terrorizes anyone and everyone he sees. It’s like it isn’t even a game to him. He’s doing things that no one else can. Interfering with plugins that shouldn’t even exist.
It’s not just that he’s flying and he has invisible armor that’s supposedly stacked to the nines with infinite effects and he must have every potion effect known to man and he can summon any mob and manipulate command blocks without even placing command blocks. It’s not just that as time goes on people swear his account name changes, or he swaps to a new one, even though his account was always in the same place. It’s not just that he can reduce servers to ash and fire and dust and rubble with what looks like the most minimal of effort and everyone cries about it.
It’s that, like. Normally with these types of people. You know how they do it. There’s LMAOBox or some super-cracked client or something. And they love bragging about it. Hackers like to brag. They love to troll. They’ll ruin everything for you and make you watch and you know that they’re doing it. They love spamming shit in the most obvious way so you know that that’s what they’re doing. But this guy. The Godmodder. He treats it like his job. Like his life. He’s either the most dedicated role-player that I’ve ever seen.
Or he’s being serious.
Stay tuned,
Adam
3/5/13
Dear █████,
At some point when I come back I’m going to have mentioned Homestuck to you. This is objective fact. I’m going to have mentioned Homestuck to you because there’s very little that has had such an impact on me as Homestuck has. You need to read Homestuck. Let me tell you about Homestuck. Just, preemptively, I guess. I’ll try not to bore you with the details.
So this kid, John Egbert, downloads a game called SBURB that lets him interact with the world via a computer game. Like. One of his internet friends — her name is Rose — downloads the game in tandem with John, and so Rose can interfere with John’s house and environment, while John can act simultaneously and react to those interferences. She’ll place constructions in John’s house that can be used with his inventory to create items through some weird data-structure punch-card alchemical process, and it ends up transporting him into an alternate dimension. The actual game world.
And the story keeps expanding in scope from there, more or less. John’s game has four players, and Earth is being besieged by meteors as a direct result of the game, so Earth is pretty much screwed and there’s not much they can do. And there’s a set of weird alien exile creatures that are stuck on what I’m assuming has to be Earth from the future, directing the kids’ actions themselves? But, okay, here’s the thing.
Homestuck is a choose your own adventure user submitted type thing. And I know what you’re thinking. How are you supposed to make a story out of that? How do you direct the chaos of some random mob that’s yelling for everything to go the way they want it to and make a narrative out of that? I don’t know! But it works! And it’s so interesting to see, too, they’re making a whole world out of it and everything! There’s animations, with music, and interactive games! And the exiles are some sort of weird commentary on it. Like the “players” are kind of being represented in the story itself, and it sort of blurs the line on who’s really doing the storytelling.
At one point. That line sort of just erases itself from existence. There’s this turning point in the story where an NPC goes rogue and hijacks the game’s intended story, becoming a bigger bad than the actual big bad. And right after that the perspective cuts to the literal author of the story. His name is Andrew Hussie, and he’s here to make your day just a little more awesome. But. Like. It’s not literally Andrew Hussie. It’s Andrew Hussie drawing himself. Obviously the real Andrew Hussie is on Earth, here, writing this shit out. And I assume he’s there, really there, with you, writing this shit out too, in tandem. But in the story, the story of Homestuck, there’s this entirely separate entity. This fictional recreation. This self-insert, of Hussie.
He jokes around with it and recaps the story and shifts the perspective back to John and it’s all just a little jokey weird interlude. But Homestuck... doesn’t really do little jokey weird interludes. It had an intermission earlier that made you think it was just a random sidequest and at the very end it loops right back into the main story in the craziest way. I’m telling you. It just builds and builds. So, my question is. How does Hussie’s self-insert loop back in? Where will it go from here? Where will he go with this idea of him writing himself into his own story?
I’m just enraptured by the idea in a way that I can’t put into words.
Stay tuned,
Adam
8/18/13
Dear █████,
I’m sorry. I caved. I’m in now. I joined it. I’m in the forum game and I made a post and I hopped into the Void Expedition they had planned. And I joined the Minecraft server, the perfectly generic plugin-filled server. I tracked down the IP and joined it and talked about how I’d been following along and just inserted myself right in. I’m in. I’m actually in.
And whatever move I take in the server echoes whatever move I post on the forum game. And whatever move I post on the forum game echoes whatever move I take on the server. They’re connected. The actual game and the forum game. I don’t even know how to describe it. It’s something that really shouldn’t be possible. But after watching my world melt and being cast into this nightmare by God and honing my Far Land powers and actually taking a trip to Aperture Science I think I’m beginning to realize something. Like, something big. A fundamental truth type of deal.
I need more time to think about it, but Destroy the Godmodder’s importance to me wasn’t just some byproduct of me going stir-crazy cooped up in this place I barely even know. I’d like to think it isn’t, anyway. I’d like to think it’s not just my mind screaming about being significant until I get my way, raging against the heavens. I think it’s seriously important. I think it has something to say about the way this world works. About how people can just create a story and it actually happens. About how people can actually do something and it creates a story.
How easy is it to make a narrative? Can anyone do it? How much intent do you need to have to actually set out and make something, for it to actually happen? These people are just typing in a game and they don’t even know the repercussions of their actions. Do they? The versions of themselves that are up there, with you, probably don’t. But the ones in here, the characters they create? They know. They’re here, with me. I’m here, with them.
How easy is it really to make an narrative? Can I? Should I? ...Will I?
Stay tuned,
Adam
5/8/13
< 1.1: THIS WHOLE ORDEAL | 1.2: FORUM GAME ECHOES | 1.3: SEE THE RAINBOW DANCE >