...What if he failed?

[Tom]

We've been assuming Adell was successful.

What if he wasn't?

This is not canonically Cthulhu. It's just cool.

[JackAlsworth]

Dawww, but they're such cute planet-eating cosmic terrors!

That are about a tenth of a millimeter long.

[The Wild West Pyro]

The world would be destroyed, and Adell and all of us would be dead. The wall would be broken, and fictional characters would stream out. Mr. A would be dead too, along with all his instantiations. The Universe would now be only made of fictionals, and the human race would be now extinct.

And Cthulhu would have wrecked everything and eaten us all.

[narrativedilettante]

They're just paving the path for Cthulhu's eventual awakening. It turns out we've been in the Lovecraft 'verse all along, and the Cthulhu that tried to come through was just one of the many fictionalized versions of the real thing.

[JRPictures]

So TWWF was a Cosmic Horror Story all along...

Might as well prepare for the worst.

But seriously that is both strange and interesting.

Cthulhu will never truly leave our minds anyway

[Qara-Xuan Zenith]

Hang on, was his objective to turn Cthulhu back from the breach or just, since it turns out that the world CAN survive with fictionals on this side, neutralize the threat? Because I'd say shrinking Cthulhu down to harmless-and-adorable size does not count as failure. Just an unanticipated success.

[The Wild West Pyro]

Hang on, was his objective to turn Cthulhu back from the breach or just, since it turns out that the world CAN survive with fictionals on this side, neutralize the threat? Because I'd say shrinking Cthulhu down to harmless-and-adorable size does not count as failure. Just an unanticipated success.

SELL HIM AS PETS OR HAVE HIM BECOME THE METAGUARD MASCOT! We need a mascot.

[Endless Sea]

I'm still waiting for the part where Azathoth wakes up. :D

[Blurred_9L]

Hang on, was his objective to turn Cthulhu back from the breach or just, since it turns out that the world CAN survive with fictionals on this side, neutralize the threat? Because I'd say shrinking Cthulhu down to harmless-and-adorable size does not count as failure. Just an unanticipated success.

I don't really see the adorable part of this, honestly

...Unless we're talking about those cthulhu dolls (those were a thing right?)

[Guyshane]

Hang on, was his objective to turn Cthulhu back from the breach or just, since it turns out that the world CAN survive with fictionals on this side, neutralize the threat? Because I'd say shrinking Cthulhu down to harmless-and-adorable size does not count as failure. Just an unanticipated success.

I don't really see the adorable part of this, honestly

...Unless we're talking about those cthulhu dolls (those were a thing right?)

I checked

The answer is yes Cthulhu dolls are in fact a thing

[Scarab]

The answer is yes Cthulhu dolls are in fact a thing

OH GOD SO VERY ADORABLE WHERE CAN I GET ONE?

[Guyshane]

The answer is yes Cthulhu dolls are in fact a thing

OH GOD SO VERY ADORABLE WHERE CAN I GET ONE?

I don't know I just searched Cthulhu dolls in google images

[Rick Healey]

That Cthulhu doll is much different than the one on my desk.

Yes, I have a Cthulhu doll. I imagine this surprises nobody.

In all seriousness, this is leading me to wonder, now that I'm not a part of a team trying to make a satisfying ARG ending under a vicious time restraint, if there would have been a "complete failure" option that would have at least tied things together and made sense. I hesitate to use the term "satisfying," because it would have been a case of you guys failing to stop Cthulhu, and that wouldn't have been satisfying for you guys at all (and, to be honest, not so much for us either). But making sense and at least seeming fair... I wonder if that was possible.

[Qara-Xuan Zenith]

Well, in terms of seeming fair, if we'd done absolutely nothing to stop Cthulhu-- if no one had responded when Mr. A called for volunteers, and no one had bothered to write C!fics, and no one had filked songs... that would be super depressing. Wait, that's a valid end-of-sentence but not the one I'd intended. That is, if that were the case, a "complete failure" ending would certainly have seemed fair. Of course, making sense is a completely different matter...

[Rick Healey]

Well, in terms of making sense, the best I can think of, which would have needed a ton to build on it, would have been to explore the nature of a dream and what it means for reality.

In short, if a dream ends, does that destroy an entire world?

If you look at the puppetmasters as the dreamers in this situation, you were able to share in that dream. If you all had said "screw this" and did nothing, Cthulhu would have torn down that dream. It would consume everything in it, and we could have locked everything out. That world would be dead, and there'd only be broken artifacts of it remaining. That, and the memories you would have had of that dream before you were kicked out, left with the question of how much the reality was there, and just how safe you are from the further crumbling of that dream.

We can all be Cthulhu, when we wake and that destroys the worlds of our dreams. But what effects are there when someone that isn't the dreamers wake to destroy the dream? What remains?

[The Wild West Pyro]

Well, in terms of making sense, the best I can think of, which would have needed a ton to build on it, would have been to explore the nature of a dream and what it means for reality.

In short, if a dream ends, does that destroy an entire world?

If you look at the puppetmasters as the dreamers in this situation, you were able to share in that dream. If you all had said "screw this" and did nothing, Cthulhu would have torn down that dream. It would consume everything in it, and we could have locked everything out. That world would be dead, and there'd only be broken artifacts of it remaining. That, and the memories you would have had of that dream before you were kicked out, left with the question of how much the reality was there, and just how safe you are from the further crumbling of that dream.

We can all be Cthulhu, when we wake and that destroys the worlds of our dreams. But what effects are there when someone that isn't the dreamers wake to destroy the dream? What remains?

Nothing.

[Qara-Xuan Zenith]

Well, yeah, I was going to comment that completely deleting the forums, the WTF site, and all the character blogs, videos, and twitter accounts would be the closest "making sense" version of a "complete failure" ending, but I hesitated to mention it because the idea was so depressing, and already having detailed my criteria for the "fairness" of "complete failure", I figured I'd used up my depressing quota for the post.

[Scarab]

Well, yeah, I was going to comment that completely deleting the forums, the WTF site, and all the character blogs, videos, and twitter accounts would be the closest "making sense" version of a "complete failure" ending, but I hesitated to mention it because the idea was so depressing, and already having detailed my criteria for the "fairness" of "complete failure", I figured I'd used up my depressing quota for the post.

Also it would've made catching up with some of you really awkward 8(

I always figured that they could perhaps do... something to the site. Like make it look run down, or as if the web was cutting out or something, but I have no idea exactly whether or not that's even doable on a forum, I dunno how internets work. Still I think it would've been nice to see some visual manifestations of, say the cracks in the Wall coming through, evidence of real world chaos that may or may NOT have been to do with the walls coming down, we're never quite sure... But I guess that would've been the solid 'proof' of damage that the GM's were trying to avoid giving us, in order to make sure it remained a morally challenging game. We didn't have any real proof of the threat to reality until Cthulhu came through, and if we'd waited that long without doing anything it would've been too late.

Man, I can still remember the pressure of those moments... good times, but tense times, too.

[Sophira]

In short, if a dream ends, does that destroy an entire world?

Rick, you need to play Link's Awakening if you haven't already.

[Rick Healey]

In short, if a dream ends, does that destroy an entire world?

Rick, you need to play Link's Awakening if you haven't already.

You mean, I should replay my absolute favorite entry in the Legend of Zelda series?

For that matter, you could also say that I should replay Mother 1, where ending the dream that is Magicant is an important scene near the denouement of the game (players may note that this isn't the first time I've referenced this game in the context of the ARG).

If this keeps up, I could see players trying to pick my brain about other all-time favorite games to see if they can get other insights to how I approach certain storytelling aspects. Let's see... to pick out some other favorites for mentioning, Radiant Historia is my favorite game that handles time travel story-wise (Chrono Trigger is a superior game overall, but it has some major issues regarding causality), Final Fantasy Tactics handles political intrigue the best, Disgaea: Hour of Darkness probably has the best use of Chekhov's Gun, Tales of Symphonia does the best plot twist, and Tales of Vesperia has perhaps the single most well-written character in video gaming history (Yuri Lowell, of course).

Oh, and I still think Final Fantasy IV is the best game ever.

Note that several of the games above give hints as to how I would have handled the question posed in the thread topic.