I’ve spoken a bit about the Oscar ceremony where our young Genghis Khans declared war on Hollywood. What’s your opinion of Hollywood? I mean the industry itself. Do you believe it to be benevolent? I always thought the reputation was that it was kind of a meat grinder. It takes people and exploits their dreams. This is how it was in the Gravesverse, anyway. I think during the early to mid-2010s Hollywood was a slight bit more irritating than it was today, what with celebrities just having got on social media and trying to first figure it out.

  It was true that Victor and Gloriana Graves had gone outside of the traditional system of Hollywood to produce their first movie. They had used a production company, to be sure. They had paid out the nose to use one. But they had ultimately marketed and distributed the movie on their own. In some instances of the Gravesverse, this is enough to draw the ire of Hollywood itself, meaning that Hollywood effectively fires the first shot, so to speak. As of right now, though, my view of Victor and Gloriana Graves is a bit hungrier than it normally is. I want them to be more like conquerors than just innocent little babies that conquered the world defensively. So, I had them take the first shot.

  Recall, the Oscar ceremony is prior to the Gravesverse Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein incident. We went a little out of order in these past posts, but that’s ok. The only aggression Victor and Gloriana had shown against Hollywood so far in the chronology had been accusing them in an off-hand way of being scummy, back when they first announced they were building their own distribution network. Most people would’ve agreed with that, though, so it wasn’t like a big deal or anything. They also had a movie ready every month of the year, which definitely did irritate the industry, but they let it slide. The industry insides thought that V&G could only keep up that pace for so long before they’d have to stop to replenish their backlog. Generally speaking, people liked Victor and Gloriana and were willing to give them some space to operate. They were endearing.

  Would you roll your eyes if I told you they swept virtually every Oscar category? At the time of the awards ceremony, a thing called Graves Fever had gripped the nation, including gripping the people who vote for the Oscars. They were just doing so much all at once and so well and so affably that the country was absolutely enchanted by them. Not that they didn’t have haters, of course. There were plenty of people who were tired of hearing about them lol, and they’d only be able to pull their hair out as time marched forward and V&G’s stars rose ever higher. That and there was a contingent of people who didn’t like their reliance on horror elements in Minecraft and in Fatebook. They thought it was inappropriate, but not overly so. But for right now, for the majority of people, they were enjoying watching these newcomers on the scene come in and shake things up.

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  With Graves Fever in full swing, they went to the Oscars and start winning awards. Oscar after Oscar after Oscar. They were quite pleased by this and very appreciative, although a bit reserved, a bit overly polite. It was noted during them coming into the Oscars that Victor Graves had arrived with a lot of women. Emphasis on ‘a lot.’ They were all the women who had helped him make the movie, they supposed. Up until this time, most of the media that V&G produced had been on themselves rather than their immediate organization. There was, I think, a community manager for Minecraft that was a girl, who had an interesting name, probably that was one that was made up, one to match Gloriana. But other than that, there hadn’t been much media of their employees.

  They had a camera person everywhere they went. They were female, too. In instances of the Gravesverse where Victor has a sister, that’s who the camera person was, at least in the beginning. Victor Graves knew from a young age that he was an historical person, and so he wanted to record everything about himself. This would get him in trouble later, but for now it was just one of eccentricities. He had even brought out the camera person a few times back when they were on their talk show circuit, recording himself as he did the interview. So she was at the Oscars ceremony, too, at first with a video camera on the red carpet, but she had to put that away. The women Graves arrived with were all wearing hidden cameras in their dresses, though. This was an historic night, you see.

  What Victor did was a gamble. He had his speech ready and wanted to speak it during the acceptance of the last award, the one for best picture. There was a time back when I was in the process of creating all of this that I knew specifically which year the Oscar’s ceremony happened on, but I don’t remember now. I can’t tell you what his competition was, but he was fairly certain he’d complete his sweep. He couldn’t know for certain, though. And if he decided to make a video of himself reading the speech after the award show after he had lost the final Oscar, he’d look bitter. It would’ve been a PR disaster, so he was a little nervous when they finally got to the final Oscar.

  He won, though.

  Cheers and congratulations all around. He had swept the Oscar ceremony, joining film history. He had already smashed box office records, once he finally worked out an international distribution plan (he went a more traditional route for that, he only had Gravers in the USA and sometimes Canada, depending on the version of the Gravesverse we’re in).

  So he won, unfortunately, we don’t have time for his speech right now, the one where he announces war on Hollywood, as we’re at our one thousand word limit.