So let’s talk about the Gravers. The word fan and fanatic are related to one another. And there are all sorts of fans out there. Fair weather fans, hardcore fans, and everything in between. There are fanbases and fan conventions. Fans organize on their own, of course. It is as natural as moss growing on a tree.

  Victor and Gloriana have seen the power of fans. They’ve seen fan conventions, fan forums, fan Twitter, and everything else. They also knew how powerful people could be when organized and put together. They already had fans. Fans of their video game, fans of their YouTube videos, and later fans of their music and music videos. They decided early on that they were going to need to weaponize their fanbase.

  They needed to turn them into a machine.

  We spoke a bit before about People Power. This is that. How do you get People Power? You’ve got to get people to work for you. Money is the easiest way to do that, but not the only way. If someone likes you, they can usually be convinced to help you out in some ways. Of course, if you lean into that too much they’re going to get tired of it eventually, depending on how much they actually do like you. But if you make it an “I’ll help you and you’ll help me” kind of situation, then you can reliably work that back and forth for eternity with most people. Tit for tat.

  “And, so, today we announce we want to take our YouTube videos to the next level! And we need your help to do that!”

  Victor and Gloriana Graves wanted people to be able to watch their YouTube videos in movie theaters.

  And they had gotten quite popular at this time, them having already sold Minecraft and having started using the billions of dollars they got from it to make even greater YouTube videos. They had started making a name for themselves in online music and also music videos. They used their considerable wealth to work up enough songs to make a full music album. What songs were on there? Gotye’s Somebody I Used to Know, of course, as in this universe it was theirs and Gotye didn’t exist. There were other poppy hits, too.

  Sometimes I like to imagine what it would be like if they were talented enough to be their own songwriters, making legitimately loved pop songs that was dripping with Victor and Gloriana’s Geist. That’s a bit too much, though. They’re Mary Sues enough as it is, aren’t they? We’ll have them just keep paying to make songs, now giving general directions to the song writers they hired about what the song should be about. And it wouldn’t be the Gravesverse if we didn’t steal ideas from the real world. So maybe they had songs that were like Rihanna’s Umbrella, Katy Perry’s Dark Horse, Lana Del Rey’s Young and Beautiful. We’ll just say those songs never got made by the original artist in the Gravesverse, they were made by V&G

  They were pop hits, but not some technical masterpieces. Just radio friendly hits to help their celebrity.

  They also made music videos, and this was the big key for them. The videos they made for their own music were somewhat simplistic compared to what I’m about to describe, not much different than music videos for pop songs today, except maybe with a little bit of V and G’s personal style added in there.

  The music videos they made of talented artists, though, were getting to be really something to behold. They really threw their money and time and energy into those. Utilizing everything they knew about movie making and cinematography and camera tricks and everything else.

  And, my God, were they actually original ideas?

  In the Gravesverse?

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  They were.

  I remember making the music videos myself, prior to my first psychosis. They were stunning and beautiful and unlike anything you’d ever seen. They were truly different.

  And here I’ll need to talk a bit about myself. I was having incredibly vivid daydreams at the time, as I was (unbeknownst to me then) descending into legitimate mental illness. They were like dreaming while awake, except I was able to control them in ways you can’t control your dreams. I was controlling the finest details about them.

  I’d listen to a piece of music over and over and over again and just have imagery play out in my brain. I always tried to keep it tied to realism, of course. It was all within possibility, all filmable, even if the odds of capturing what I was envisioning on camera was incredibly low. I wish I could show you what I made, I really, sincerely do. Because it’d make me fucking rich.

  I could take the time to describe it for you, but the music videos were very, very elaborate. They were very ‘sensory overload’. I could take a thousand words to describe half of a scene over the course of half a second, and you wouldn’t be able to hold it all in your brain anyway. Not that you’re dumb, of course, but just it’s too much to write. That and you’re not galloping towards the cliff at the edge of sanity.

  Instead, I’ll give you the broadstrokes. And I’ll give you an example. Come back to that video we mentioned before, Power by Kanye West. It’s all done in one shot and its very busy. It’s made using mainly computers instead of trick photography. But, the music video never really got all that popular.

  Imagine, instead, a similar camera movement, of slowly panning out from a subject except its done in real time. And listen to Famous by Kanye West for this one. It’s Victor and Gloriana Graves sitting at their desk again, and the camera slowly pans out from them. Very slowly. Very, very slowly. Victor and Gloriana had both been talking during a rather humdrum video. They were outside. But now they were quiet and just staring at the camera. And they continued to stare at it as it slowly pans back. There’s a record player on the table before them with a crowned skull on it spinning around at the speed a record player normally does. There’s also an old fashioned clock there, too. Or maybe a grandfather clock is behind them. As the camera continues to pan back, Kanye West’s Famous begins to play, and then something curious happens. Suddenly, when Kanye West’s Famous’s beat breaks, after the part with Rihanna singing, the record player and clock speed up, but Victor and Gloriana are still stuck like statues staring at the camera.

  The video speed picks up, you see, its playing in fast forward, faster and faster, but still Victor and Gloriana Graves are just sitting there not moving and just looking at the camera. The sun begins to set behind them. And the camera still pans out, a little, little bit faster this time. As it pans out more, you discover that there are lights on the ground around it, like lamps, and they’re spinning around slowly as well. And still Victor and Gloriana Graves sit and stare at the camera. The sun is really setting now and its getting dark, the light from the spinning lamps takes over the outside scene. The light plays on the pair’s faces, and still they don’t move. And then, after the second ‘I made that bitch famous,’ where the beat breaks again, they suddenly stand up.

  They start walking towards the camera, except the video is still being played back at a super sonic speed, but they look like they’re walking normally, meaning in reality, they’re walking incredibly, incredibly slowly. And they’re walking towards the camera. And they’re coming up on it, and still the camera pans back, and you notice the camera is on a track and being moved by automation.

  Does that paint a picture for you? I’m reading back through this and I’m not sure if I’m conveying my ideas clearly or not, it may just all be nonsense you’re reading right now. The music video lasts the entire length of the song, and it gets more and more busy and more and more strange as time goes on, increasing in stakes. We’ve gone well past our thousand words, so I’m going to have to wrap this up for now. If you want, though, I can (try) to further explain what happens in the video on a later post if you can imagine what I’m trying to convey and are interested in seeing its rising action, climax, and final scene. It really was beautiful when I made it, I assure you of that. And if it doesn’t seem that way when you’re reading it, just know it’s that way for the people of the fantasy world I’ve made. It makes them famous. Really famous. Psy’s Gangnam Style doesn’t hold a candle to it in term of virality. That’s 1400 words. We’ll talk a bit more about the Gravers next time, too, as we kind of got sidetracked. Time to go.