Dear █████,
It’s really cold in here. I know it’s supposed to be this thing that if you’re a New Yorker you’re really good at handling cold weather, but I don’t think that’s me. Winters were tough back home, and winters are tough back here too. It’s not like I moved states. Not really, anyway. I guess I technically did. But whatever. Out of all the details, the ones that matter and the ones that don’t (but maybe they all matter and I’m being unfair), the unforgiving winds of winter stayed the same. Just my luck, right?
But I guess with every winter wind comes a dream of spring, as they say. Do they say that? I’m pretty sure only George R. R. Martin says that. But hey, what do I know about A Song Of Ice And Fire anyway? I only know that it’s very good and very… not age-appropriate. According to somepeople. Mom. Wow, I miss her cooking. I feel like you’d miss her cooking too if you were here with me. I mean, you definitely would. It’s just not the same, you know? It’s just not the same at all.
I remember I talked about the routine earlier. About how there were all those things that I did every day, and every week. All those things I’d come to expect of my life, and how it worked on a regular basis. And how all those things have become completely upended and there’s essentially nothing I can do about it. How there’s so much stuff I’ll never get to do; stuff that I’d been expecting that I’d be able to do anyway. Stuff I was certain I’d be able to do. Okay, this... this one might be a tangent, but just, bear with me.
Seven days after I fell here, someone with my name shot up an elementary school over in Connecticut. Can you imagine that? An elementary school. It was all over the news, all the news, and of course it sparked a debate on gun control and a debate on mental illness and a debate on violence in video games, as it always does. But the entire time I was thinking about it, I was thinking… Well, a lot of things. Of course I was thinking about how horrible it was that people died, let alone that children died. What type of person do you have to be to go to an elementary school and...
...What really did it for me was this idea that these children had absolutely no idea that anything like this could happen. I can’t speak for all of them, really; maybe some of them were at least a little aware. But by this I mean, like. The idea that you can die at any moment isn’t really factored in, I guess. That’s what I’m getting at. When you’re a kid, you’re just focused on living. On living with your parents, on watching your favorite shows, hanging out with your favorite friends, going through school, going through sleep. But it’s so much different. There’s a lot to be said about that whole childhood innocence and naivety where anything can be whatever you want it to be, and how powerful imagination is, and I get that a lot. I really do. We both get that.
Death, though. Death never comes in. Maybe some of them already experienced the loss of a family member, or someone else close to them, and that would probably get them to realize. But usually when you’re a kid death never comes in, and you think that it won’t come in, not for you. Sure these people died in a horrible, untimely fashion, but you won’t. Because there’s so much you have left to do! Because it would never happen like that! Kids dying makes no sense in the grand scheme of things, young people aren’t supposed to die, let alone be killed.
But they did, and their entire world fell out from under them. And it just hurts that much more, knowing that there were so many potential futures that were just... robbed. Silenced. By one person. How does anyone remotely close to that incident even begin to live with that? I don’t know how I’d be able to, if I was them. ...I don’t know how I’d be able to at all.
Stay tuned,
Adam
2/14/13
Dear █████,
So, like, I was thinking. And I know this might eat up into all the time you don’t have, or whatever, since as always you’ll never read any of these little idiot pieces of paper that I keep insisting on writing, but hear me out for a second. I hope this isn’t an issue in a few years, but… I don’t think I’ve ever been annoyed at something as much as I am at the film industry’s trend of shooting, and sometimes converting, their movies — even their old, classic animated movies — into 3D. Though wow, I really should say “3D,” huh? Because it’s such an atrocious effect, give me a break. How insidiously boring can you get? Not to mention that they’re also being released in IMAX, which, okay, I have less problems with. IMAX could be really cool. It’s huge, it’s flashy, it’s a spectacle — but it’s not for me. I don’t want to be strapped into a cinema wind tunnel and blown against the wall at full force while my ears bleed.
But really, though, the 3D. Can we talk about the 3D? How you have to sit still for dozens of minutes, and sometimes hours on end, and strain your eyes so that flashy images can pop out of your head? And as more and more movies are being made for direct-to-3D, or whatever kind of funny phrase you wanna give it, so that studios like Disney can cash in on the idiot gravy train, they make it so… obvious? You’ll have scenes dedicated to images flashing by, even in front of the letterboxing, for the explicit purpose of screaming “I’M 3D! I’M 3D! I’M 3D!” at the top of their lungs. Give it a rest. Please! Do us a favor and give it a rest.
Will they, though? Really, will they? What are you kidding me, of course they won’t. It’s pretty obvious that companies like Disney only care about making money. Every corporation possible only cares about making money! Capitalism as a system is designed to only care about making money. And maybe I’m just a teenager talking out of my ass in a fictional plane of existence that has absolutely no bearing on your sweet, dear precious life up there. But as a wise disembodied voice once said to kick off a cinematic epic dedicated to defiling the graves of every fairy tale ever told, “My world’s on fire / How ’bout yours?” Because it’s as obvious, to me, that this happening to you, too, and to any other possible world I could have gone to, and to all worlds, everywhere. The iron machine keeps clanking, and the train keeps running. It does! This is probably a searingly hot take, or more like a code that’s been burned into my metaphysically twig-like bones, but I’m kind of antithetically opposed to the idea of creating art with the chief purpose of turning a profit?
I know this is probably incredibly idealistic of me, and you can feel free to laugh at me whenever you read this. You can get all up in my face and cackle and chortle and guffaw, if you really want to. And I won’t blame you. I’ll feel upset, but I won’t blame you. But I just always worry that focusing on money first rather than art first will severely limit the potential and capability that your art has. And I know the counterargument is that you need to be marketable to be successful and that it’s a child’s endeavor to think that your raw, unfiltered creative output could ever hope to speak to the masses in a way that a corporate, syndicate product could, but isn’t the internal rebellion against that what keeps you going as an artist? Maybe even as a person? I just don’t want to see the world that I grew up in, a world with Sonic the Hedgehog and his immortal legion of fans, with Aang, the last airbender, the blue people of the highest-grossing film in human history, with four kids who played a game and ended their universe and toyed with the shackles binding an author to his own creation, fall victim to the latest act of a play meant to siphon any meaning from artistic expression and replace it with nothingness.
But the worst part — they already have. You remember Avatar. The aforementioned blue people. The aforementioned highest-grossing film of all time. Yes, I will admit, the spectacle was a lot to get worked up over. Very visually impressive. But that’s it, really. That’s it! It was the first huge 3D film, serving as a gigantic, glorified tech demo for what an extra level of space could really do, and it worked way, way way too well. And of course, since you have to be marketable to be successful and we live in the above society, everyone followed the leader. And you definitely remember The Last Airbender. Which, among its many faults, stood tall as one of the film with the worst uses of 3D, and, well, CGI in general, ever. The film that Roger Ebert himself claimed “puts a nail in the coffin of low-rent 3D, but it will need a lot more coffins than that.” So you see? People agree. They AGREE with my incessant ramblings. I have my fingers on the pulse of the world, the zeitgeist, that accursed spirit of the times, and I am living for it!
...The bottom line is that art inspires me more than anything else in this world. It’s not a very hard decision to make, since in this world, there really isn’t very much to inspire me. I want to tell a story that I think no one else can tell, and I’ve fully accepted the fundamental law that everyone always takes ideas from everyone else and nothing is original, but I firmly believe that that doesn’t matter. It’s all about rearranging the pieces, the tropes, the cliches, into an assortment that is uniquely you. By making a story, you itself have put a piece of you inside of it. You’ve made it a part of yourself. And you’ve made yourself a part of it. And as such, any time anyone tells a story, they’re telling a story only they can tell. And if anyone else retells it, fundamentally, it just wouldn’t be the same.
To drag this back to some semblance of reality, I guess this is a part of why this universe is… well, frankly, terrifying and awful and dark and somewhat inherently malicious, but also interesting. This idea, this nagging grand unified theory in my head that stories can become real here, with the proof unfolding before my eyes and consuming my thoughts. Storytelling really is the most powerful thing. I can make my ideas real. If I make a story here, maybe... Maybe it could really exist, too. This question keeps repeating in my head of how easy is it, really, to tell a story. What do you have to do? I could probably do it, I’m a creative person, I love making comics and bouncing ideas around in my head. I could probably do it. I could totally do it, even!
But if only I had a chance. A chance to just… really let loose. To seize on the one good thing that this place has given me thus far, and to grab the laws of this world by the neck and twist it in every direction at once and shatter any sense of malaise that Metatron thought he could make creep up on me. If only I had the chance to be significant, to show that I matter, to tear down all these rules and unrules and orders and disorders, and to peel everything bare and lay waste to it all.
If only.
Stay tuned,
Adam
7/14/13
Dear █████,
I still don’t know how time works for you. I don’t think I ever will. I don’t think I ever can. But it’s our birthday here, for me. So now I’m twelve. Twelve whole years old. And for the record, I started writing this at 10:06 AM, so yes, I am actually twelve. Which means I get to relish in the obligatory period of six minutes per year where I’m a whole year older than you! FINALLY! I’ve been waiting for this for… a year! You know, back when I was your age, I was still waiting for this moment to arrive. But now it’s here. It’s been so long!
...This would be a lot funnier if I was actually saying it out loud, and more importantly slash relevantly, if I was saying it to you. But I... can’t. For clear reasons. I was... I won’t lie, I was really dreading this day. Out of all the days I’ve spent here, the days spent under a sky that’s just a bit too blue, under clouds that are a bit too wispy and long, surrounded by buildings that warp in odd perspectives and flicker in odd colors, this one’s been the worst. And I’ve only been awake for, I dunno, an hour? It’s just that this day, above all others, reminds me of what I’ve lost. Which I know is really easy for me to say, and is probably a foregone conclusion, but that doesn’t stop it from hurting.
A lot of these feelings are the feelings I wrote about last Christmas. So I guess I don’t have to go down and write them again, but part of me feels like I’d be doing this whole thing a disservice if I didn’t. This whole impromptu diary letters time capsule project has been… I don’t know, refreshing, in a way? Cathartic? It makes me feel like there’s actually someone I can talk to, even if that someone is a million billion miles away from me and potentially has no idea of my current situation whatsoever.
These feelings are a lot worse today, though, since this was, y’know. Our day. I don’t even know why I’m spelling this out, I just feel like I should? Maybe that way someone can respond? Maybe someone will see me writing this, see these words, and I’ll feel a pat on the shoulder and a hug and I’ll hear it’s okay and it won’t make everything feel better but… maybe it would help. I started this whole thing… kinda out of that same misguided hope. That hope against hope. When you believe in something so hard that it stretches all your other perceptions of reality taut, and they threaten to strain and snap and break, but you keep on believing and pushing, to the detriment of everything else.
That’s... basically an accurate description of my mental state, I guess. I’m just constantly torn between feeling hopeless and worthless — a little tiny speck of nothing, really — and having this raging, burning desire to do something about it, and to get my cut of the action, and to be involved. The only thing that can overcome feelings of insignificant is striving to be somebody, I guess. Be somebody that people talk about. Be somebody that people remember. And even if people aren’t fully capable of remembering me right now, they will. They’d better.
...Happy birthday, man. I’m not going to stop fighting, even if I’m fighting myself at points. And I’m doing it for you, for Mom and Dad, and for everyone back home. I’m gonna make it here. I can promise you that. That’s my birthday present for you.
Stay tuned,
Adam
3/27/13
Dear █████,
It’s wearing off. The whole impermanence thing. The whole “people don’t even know I exist” thing. Reality’s almost caught up, and things are feeling… well, I don’t even want to say real, so I guess… “grounded?” Everything around me still looks like this shifting haze of color and form and shade, but even that’s getting much more stable. Like. I was walking through town, and I noticed that as I approached people, they were... looking at me. And it’s always this same look they give; I’ve talked about it before, you know what I mean. That glare that cuts through anything in its path until it meets your eyes. It’s as though I wasn’t there, and as soon as I got close, I was. Then they’d walk around me, or do whatever, and I’d turn around to look and they’d be walking off normally again.
I... even went back to Mom and Dad, for a bit, to test things out, and sure enough, they actually answered the doorbell. They actually said hello. Of course, they remembered me as... Adam Mason. Or at least, as what Adam Mason was twenty years ago. So I had to explain it over to them again, but I’ve explained it enough that they’re getting the picture easier. I could get them their actual memories back — of their lives up there, their real lives — but it’s more trouble than it’s worth, and they’ll just fade away as soon as I leave. So I don’t see a point.
Still, though. It’s progress. Actual progress. Progress for what, I’m not totally sure. Evidently it’s making me a “real boy,” and... I guess I want that. To be treated normally. But I, you know, want to be treated normally in a normal world. This is only solving one of my problems, but not the root cause of all of my problems. I’m living life on my own, turning to people when I can, helping to destroy the Godmodder as always, but I’m no closer to finding my way home. And I don’t really see that changing any time soon. I mean, it’s not as though I have many leads on that whole front anyway.
My glasses? My red glasses that flicker with starlight even at high noon and make my head hurt whenever I wear them for too long? My red glasses that I can scratch and pop out and break and crush whenever I want, but always end up back on my head, perfectly reformed, without fail? My red glasses that can choose at any moment to be indestructible for no reason? My red glasses that make my brain scream whenever I have them on for too long? I don’t even know what to do about those. They’re how I got here, yeah. But I have absolutely no clue how to use them to get back. Which leaves only two other options, at present.
There’s my Far Lands powers. Which, despite me getting realer, have actually been getting stronger as time goes on. I’m going to assume that you’re familiar with the Far Lands; I can’t exactly remember but I’m pretty sure we went on that Minecraft Wiki rabbit hole before I disappeared. In case you aren’t, though, let me lay it down. Essentially, if you get far enough from spawn in a Minecraft world the engines start to break down. The game’ll start lagging out, items won’t render correctly, and at a far enough level, terrain will malfunction entirely, creating these hulking monoliths of land that look like a cross between static and Swiss cheese. I think at a certain point you can’t walk into them, you can only just observe, which has connotations all its own.
I’ve never actually been to the Far Lands in a Minecraft world, for the simple reason that they got patched out a while back. A lot of the buggy effects when you hit those levels are still there, but the physical landmasses are gone. Which is unfortunate. And also kinda fortunate, not gonna lie. There’s something so unwholesome about them. This idea that you’re staring at the end of the world. It’s that same sense of awe and terror that I feel you’d get if the world really was flat and there was an edge and you could just look off it into the unknown depths below.
So I call them Far Lands powers because that’s... essentially what they are. Any time I use them everything around me stutters and corrupts itself exactly like the Far Lands. It all turns into worse, low-budget, exponentially glitching mimicries. When I use it on anyone, or anything, it’s like... I gain the ability to control them? Kind of? I can tell people to act a certain way, or to do a certain thing, and they will. But it goes deeper than that. It’s not like I’m mind-controlling them. It’s like I’m... rewriting things. If we use Minecraft as a metaphor still, it’s as though I’m changing their code. Making pieces of the universe operate on different levels.
Which means I could use these for much, much greater things than just mind-control. I could rewrite people. I could make people not exist. I could make things not exist. Heck, I could probably make things not not exist, either — creating something from nothing. The possibilities are endless! But there’s some major draws. I can’t use it over and over, and tapping into the Far Lands requires very serious effort and a lot of concentration. And I haven’t been able to use it for anything incredibly huge yet. Zapping a person here and there works out, but changing something as huge as letting me go home... I think that would take a lot more power than I have.
And that leaves one other option. Destroy the Godmodder itself.
I know this is probably a very far-out idea, but you have to hear me out on it. If the players of Destroy the Godmodder can control their own stories, provided that TT2000 is the interpreter, then... Theoretically, I could control my own story. I’d just be doing it in here, and not out there, but... I could somehow game the system so that by the end, I’d be home. I don’t know how well it would work, though. The game’s wrapping up, and I doubt TT2000 would be receptive to me just... taking control like that.
...
...
...I just got an idea.
Stay tuned. You aren’t going to want to miss this.
Adam
7/6/13
TwinBuilder — Posted Jul 12, 2013
When (If) the Destroy the Godmodder thread is finished and the godmodder himself rage quits, would you give me permission to make a Destroy the Godmodder 2 thread? It would be around the same, but with a few differences.
I am only asking this because I really like the Destroy the Godmodder thread, and when it’s done, I’d like there to be another thread where you have to defeat a near-invincible player. If you don’t let me, though, I understand. 🙂
Thanks,
TwinBuilder
TT2000 — Posted Jul 13, 2013
Once this thread is finished(it may be a while, but it will end eventually), go ahead. Just so long as it isn’t a carbon copy and you give me some credit.
TwinBuilder — Posted Jul 14, 2013
OK! Thank you so much! I’ll try not to make it an exact carbon copy (any tips for that, maybe?) and I will give you credit in the OP. 🙂
TT2000 — Posted Jul 14, 2013
Now that I think about it, it might be hard NOT to make it a carbon copy… I’ll tell you if it turns out to be one, but since what happens in DTG is decided more by what the players post than most forum games, it probably won’t be a problem.
TwinBuilder — Posted Jul 14, 2013
Well, I have some idea in mind.
Instead of terrors, the godmodder would create mechs that are like terrors. The mechs have shields and HP, and do some things mobs would do.
The godmodder can one-turn summon any characters from the previous game to work on his side, like Saxton Hale or the Relic.
Every so often, (read: once or twice) the godmodder gains a karma system. The players try to influence it to the light side, and the godmodder fights back. If he goes to the dark side, the godmodder severely damages all antis in the game. If he goes to the light side, he calms down. Once he realizes that he got calmed down, he gets 1 damage.
I was considering giving the godmodder 125 HP, but I’m not sure about that yet.
So those are my ideas so far.
TT2000 — Posted Jul 14, 2013
Sounds interesting! The ideas all sound fine.
< 1.3: SEE THE RAINBOW DANCE | 1.4: ZEITGEIST | 1.5: HE LEFT >