One Big Dysfunctional Family

[Lordxana0]

Eh maybe I have a little leftover sappiness from writing a particularly heartwarming sidestory today but I have a few things I would like to say.

When I first joined the ARG I had literally no idea what I was getting into. This was my first time with any of this interactive game stuff and I was lost. On top of that I was just moving away from my hometown to live with my aunt so I could do the whole college thing. I was very much freaking the fuck out about it and I have to say the game was a very welcome distraction. Now I expected a lot of things out of the ARG. Puzzles, mind screws, and of course copious amounts of tropes. Have to say one thing I had no chance of expecting was something I feel has become an almost unspoken thing between us.

Family.

Our time getting to hang out and do all the crazy stuff we do has brought us all a bit closer then I feel any of us expected entering the game. We went through hell and came out the other end laughing about it and still hanging out. The ARG ended and yet the people who were always in the chat continued being in the chat, the people who were part of the RP's kept RPing. And things kept going as normal. Even without a game going on to keep us all busy we found our fun with each other. Inventing in jokes, playing our pranks, and just enjoying hanging out with one another.

We have all had our disagreements in the past, but I want to know I consider each of my friends on the forum to be like an extended family, and although we might never meet I would be proud for any of you to consider me a brother and friend.

Anyway that is my sappy two cents out of the way. No reason to respond to this, or even say anything about it, but I wanted to let you all know that I enjoy every moment we get to hang out, even when we are arguing about the stupid shit. I couldn't imagine a time where we weren't all hanging out and shooting the shit in the chatroom. And although one day that might come to pass I won't forget about you guys, because as I said, we are a family, and one does not forget family.

[The Wild West Pyro]

Eh maybe I have a little leftover sappiness from writing a particularly heartwarming sidestory today but I have a few things I would like to say.

When I first joined the ARG I had literally no idea what I was getting into. This was my first time with any of this interactive game stuff and I was lost. On top of that I was just moving away from my hometown to live with my aunt so I could do the whole college thing. I was very much freaking the fuck out about it and I have to say the game was a very welcome distraction. Now I expected a lot of things out of the ARG. Puzzles, mind screws, and of course copious amounts of tropes. Have to say one thing I had no chance of expecting was something I feel has become an almost unspoken thing between us.

Family.

Our time getting to hang out and do all the crazy stuff we do has brought us all a bit closer then I feel any of us expected entering the game. We went through hell and came out the other end laughing about it and still hanging out. The ARG ended and yet the people who were always in the chat continued being in the chat, the people who were part of the RP's kept RPing. And things kept going as normal. Even without a game going on to keep us all busy we found our fun with each other. Inventing in jokes, playing our pranks, and just enjoying hanging out with one another.

We have all had our disagreements in the past, but I want to know I consider each of my friends on the forum to be like an extended family, and although we might never meet I would be proud for any of you to consider me a brother and friend.

Anyway that is my sappy two cents out of the way. No reason to respond to this, or even say anything about it, but I wanted to let you all know that I enjoy every moment we get to hang out, even when we are arguing about the stupid shit. I couldn't imagine a time where we weren't all hanging out and shooting the shit in the chatroom. And although one day that might come to pass I won't forget about you guys, because as I said, we are a family, and one does not forget family.

Beautiful speech, sir. It warms the heart, makes me feel happy that I am truly not alone, and is as motivational and inspiring as the end speech of The Great Dictator.

I applaud you.

( Massive round of applause.)

[Scarab]

I’ve been thinking about Xana’s post here for a few days now, knowing I wanted to respond but not sure how. Because I want to be honest with you, yes, but I’m a private person. Before joining the ARG I would never have thought about sharing such aspects of myself with people on the internet. It's hard to feel as if I won't be judged, even when I know it's YOU guys I'm talking to. So... yeah, call this exorcism if you want. If I delete it later don't be surprised.

For many years and reasons, I’ve suffered from anxiety and depression. This is something that’s easier to understand if you’ve experienced it, but in short, depression is a nasty monster, and it turned me into a monster too, while anxiety is like having a pair of metaphorical tight hands wrapped around your ribcage. It’s been fluxing and falling all my life but never entirely went away.

I felt like a failure. Even with so many degrees under my belt, I felt worthless. I know that probably sounds silly, but it was if I had only ONE job and I failed at it. I stopped caring about research and analysing things. I stopped caring full stop. And then I went to TV tropes, saw that worryingly auspicious link at the top of the page, and found my way to the Watch the Footage forums.

I’d be lying if I said it magically fixed over a decade’s worth of problems. I’m still dealing. I was one of the earliest to sign up, but I never thought anything would come of it. But eventually it dawned on me that this was FUN, that I had friends who cared about stories as much as I did. I remember how much I loved writing and what it once meant to me. I remembered who I wanted to be, who I had ALWAYS wanted to be deep down, and let myself be convinced I wasn’t. I owe that to you, and the GMs who ran this game, and the actors who performed in it.

If you want something, you have to fight for it. Maybe that's what I'd been missing all along. I'd be waiting for something to come along and make it right when that was never going to happen without my input.

Xana, you’re more accurate than I think you realise when you call us family, because the thing about family is, they don’t always get along. They fight, complain, and sometimes can’t see eye to eye, but they will always be there for each other no matter what.

I always felt that “The Fourth Wall” is only partly the right word for it. Because walls are rigid, whereas our relationship with fiction varies. Our Fourth Wall exists inside of us: every time we analyse a trope, every time we call a TV show out on some stereotypical bull***. Every time we burst into tears at a story without quite understanding why until a few hours later, whereupon we realised that the monster was inside of us all along, and by killing it, the heroes had as good as killed themselves.

Maybe that’s why we cared so much. Even while knowing there weren’t really fictional characters wandering around in Australia and Mexico. Even though we knew that there wasn’t really an Elder God ready to destroy our world, starting with one of our own, we still fought like hell to save him, and ourselves along with him.

Has anyone here ever seen the ending of Doctor Who season five? Where the Cracks in Time were eating everything, wiping out human history, and yet humanity managed to survive long after reality should have ended? They survived by making up stories to fill the gaps where all that lost history had been. They conceived of Nile Penguins and Dalek effigies in their desperation to try and make the world make sense, even as it fell apart around them. We do the very same thing now. The things which survived best? Were the Myths. The Myth of the Lone Centurion who fought to guard the one he loved. In all of that destruction, the part of us that survived was stories.

That’s how important stories are. That was what we ran the risk of losing. I don't think we made all the right choices, there are things I regret about the ARG, but I'm glad we fought.

In a way there really was a fictional monster threatening everything we were. Our history books, our fairytales, our family trees... they all take the form of stories. Every since we first dabbed out fingers in blood and placed our prints on a cave wall. Stories grow from our fears, our darkest moments, and our brightest. We called Cthulhu, but he was always there. So was Peter Pan and Din Quixote. So were Romeo and Juliet.

Yes, that includes Mister Administrator, we’re not getting off that easy folks.

We are the Wall. If it had broken, we would’ve lost something more important than I think we even realised: without the boundaries to keep reality and fiction separate, there would have been nothing for us to cling to in the darkness.

Maybe we all knew this, deep down. Maybe that’s what held us together right to the end. Because a story had to be told and we were granted the privilege of being a part of it.

Thanks, guys.

[Krika]

*grins*

I have no words. Just feels. Awesome, happy, feels.

Glad to have helped someone, to whatever extend I helped.

[Sophira]

Big warm fuzzies!

Seriously, I think I can speak for all of us GMs when I say that we're so happy to have had - and continue to have - such an awesome tram. <3

[Scarab]

Big warm fuzzies!

Seriously, I think I can speak for all of us GMs when I say that we're so happy to have had - and continue to have - such an awesome tram. <3

*TACKLEGLOMPS SOPHIRA*

..Actually, thinking on it, not sure it's all that nice, being glomped by a high speed vehicle o_o