Destroy the Godmodder 2 ended one year ago today. I’m being honest, I didn’t exactly grasp the full weight behind that sentence until I typed it out right now. Maybe I still don’t. The point I’m trying to make here is that it’s once again September 1st, a date steeped in the niche of meme numbers. The only reason I elevated 901 to such high significance was Homestuck’s (over)use of its own start date, 413, which I guess shows that though I try to not affiliate this game with Homestuck anymore, things still have a way of seeping through the cracks. Hell, the name of this epilogue, One Year Older, is a direct reference to the name of a Homestuck album.
Anyway, the epilogue. Let’s talk about it. If you’ve been active in the DTG chat rooms at all — formerly Pesterchum, and now, Discord — then the existence of an epilogue shouldn’t exactly come as a surprise. It’s something I’ve talked about at length, but only fairly recently. Indeed, I started work on the epilogue basically a month ago, on July 30th, if memory serves me right. So what happened in between last year’s September 1st and now? Why did I decide to make a new ending for a story that already had an end? Well, I’ll tell you.
One of the reasons was the previous ending’s ambiguity. As I said last year, the ending of DTG2 was designed so that if DTG2 was the last game, the ending would be final enough to stick, and if it wasn’t, the ending would be open enough to leave room for another game. That was all fine and good, but there was a problem. It became increasingly clear as DTG0 went on that there wouldn’t be a DTG3, so I had all these unresolved plot threads with no way to resolve them. The solution was to tell them in other games. DTG0 would tell some of them, and DTG: Terraria would tell some others. I mean, Bill Cipher and Split are both in the Terraria session right now!
However, there was another reason. Shortly before Act 5 released a year ago, I started work on the Probect Pinary ARG, which was told entirely through the DTG chat rooms. The ARG was cool because it involved the community, but it was bad because it involved a specific portion of it. The ARG discussed matters very relevant to the canon of DTG, and the big problem was that not everyone would be able to see them until I actually revealed the matters at hand in DTG itself, which would be a long period of time down the line. The problem was exacerbated further when Pinary began to interfere with things going on ‘after’ DTG2, resulting in segments outlined in the epilogue, with the players calling various DTG characters. And then I made [7×7], a short but sweet memo game wherein reality was annihilated and the players had to pick up the pieces.
It was pretty clear that I needed a convenient way to tell all of these stories in DTG itself – and I couldn’t exactly tell them in DTG0, either. Though Tazz works very hard, updates to the game sometimes come at a slow pace. Which is why I decided to tell all these details through this – an epilogue. There were still other reasons, though, with one of the main ones being that I wanted to show what the Godmodder would do next. (Because come on, he was pretty obviously alive at the end of DTG2. I even italicized the “Or had he?”) I had always planned to leave what was next up to the future GM, but the same problem arose — there was no future GM, which meant that the responsibility was on me.
The final piece of the puzzle came in the form of the reboot. Yes, there actually will be a Destroy the Godmodder reboot. The entire idea was brainstormed by pionoplayer, who suggested it as an alternate continuity to simplify the game’s existing canon and reintroduce the game’s simplicity to a newer audience. Everyone rolled with the idea, and he developed an entire universe off of it. What wasn’t exactly clear, though, was how the new universe would be created. The Epilogue was really kicked off when I came up with the reveal at its end: the Godmodder would be the one to cause it. After extensive conversations to make sure piono was okay with the idea, I got to work.
And the above three posts are the end result. There you have it. The end of ends. If I’m being honest, I’m actually very proud with this. It might be the greatest storypost I’ve ever made for DTG2. I’m certainly happy with it, and I know everyone reading along on the Discord was, too. The epilogue really existed as a way to tie DTG2 together with the games that came after it — whether those games were DTG0, DTG: Terraria, or the reboot. After DTG2 ended and I lost the power to control the canon of the game, things sort of got messy, with spinoffs running concurrently and player plots tangling up into a ball. That’s pretty much the reason why the reboot was made, but it was also, to some extent, why the epilogue was made. There were so many things I felt the need to discuss — what character X did, how object Y tied into everything, why is thing Z such a horrible W, and so on.
Some of this stuff just came together fortuitously; the idea of ВИСЦЕC had been around for a while, but the concept of it being an escape mechanism for the reboot was new. Others had already been stated in memo games, but needed to be told in the actual story — pretty much every time the players used Binary’s terminal to view things. The epilogue was meant to clear up things for those in the know, and to let those not in the know be in the know. Hopefully, I’ve succeeded. But as a fair warning,the Pinary shenanigans aren’t over yet. If you want to learn about them, you’d better hop onto the Discord! (And if you want a link to that, feel free to PM me on either here, the Terraria Forums, or Steam.)
And really, this is a goodbye in more ways than one. Because DTG0 has left the Minecraft Forums, this epilogue is likely to be the last major DTG-centric event ever put up here. So… Thanks for giving us a home for nearly four years, MCF. It means a lot. [2020 edit: Ended up not being true, since Infamy was released since.]
A year ago, I’d said DTG2 wasn’t finished. I’m slightly ashamed to say that it still isn’t. Though I’ve finished some of the criteria — I typed up Crusher’s Comb Rave, I edited the lost turn in Act 3, and I’ve gotten major work done on the chapters list — I haven’t finished everything I’d intended. The turns with bad formatting haven’t been fixed (at least, not all of them), the chapters list isn’t officially up yet, and, most importantly, DTG2 isn’t backed up via an Internet archive, and I don’t have the BBCode on hand. Which means that if this site ever goes down… So does the past three years. [2020 edit: Thankfully, this is no longer the case.]
I know what you’re thinking. Twin, you’re thinking to yourself, I thought you said you’d make a Flash animation today, not an epilogue! What gives?? Rest assured, I haven’t forgotten about [S] Arrive. It’s just that making a Flash takes time. I mean, a lot of time. Expect it to be out by November 26th, the two-year anniversary of the Arrival, the event depicted in the Flash. If it isn’t complete by then, I’ll most likely just post what’s finished and leave it at that. In addition, expect the official chapters list to be up soon – definitely by the end of the month. And in case you were somehow convinced Trifecta could still be a thing – it isn’t. Don’t get your hopes up. [2020 edit: Read about the fate of [S] Arrive HERE.]
As I said before, I have a few projects in the works unrelated to DTG. Pie Quest, which I started in the form of an MSPFA… has kinda died. Turns out an MSPFA is hard to maintain, and harder to draw for. I don’t know if I’ll ever get back around to doing it, but I really hope I will. As for The Tingleheads… We’ll see when that happens. Oh, and I have another name for you: Chosen. Hopefully, that’ll be my first webcomic. But hey, that’s purely a hypothetical.
Well, I’ve once again run out of things to talk about. All I can give you is my thanks. Thanks to everyone for reading this and for supplying me with positive feedback! Thanks to Curse and the staff for maintaining the Minecraft Forums! Thanks to the Council of Fifteen for providing me with feedback for their dialogue! Special thanks to TT2000 for creating Destroy the Godmodder, and all the other GMs for creating their own games! Very special thanks to pionoplayer, for telling me what to do with regards to writing the Reboot into the story and the Piono segment, The_Nonexistent_Tazz, for clearing the idea that the Godmodder would be the cause and helping me with the Dark Carnival segment, and TheLordErelye, for going over my initial outline of the epilogue and helping me with the ВИСЦЕC segments!
I’m TwinBuilder! And as always,
Stay tuned.