So, Gravers. That’s where we’re at. In the beginning, they were fans of Victor and Gloriana Graves’ Minecraft, then of their YouTube channel, and then fans of the music, and fans of their music videos. Currently, just average fans. The same kind of fans that anyone popular has. A few hardcore ones, plenty of normal ones, and a lot of fair-weather fans who just like Victor And Gloriana’s vibe and check in every now and then. Once the Kanye West Famous video is released, though, that changes things. That’s a premium music video. That one is considered a triumph of art. It went viral, to say the least. And, again, if I didn’t paint a good enough picture of it in my last entry, just know that the people of this fantasy world really like what they saw in it. They wanted more. And they’re going to get it, too.

  Victor and Gloriana Graves put out the call for help. They release a video essay detailing their plans with the movie industry. They want to show music videos of the kind the world had just seen, but in movie theaters, for people to be able to watch them on the big screen. They also didn’t want to be taken advantage of by Hollywood film distributors, whom they accused of being corrupt and slimy. Instead, the distribution of the films will be handled by Victor and Gloriana Graves personally, but there’s a problem.

  They don’t have a distribution network. They will have to build one and build it quickly.

  As an aside, what you’re about to read is how I originally envisioned it, back in the 2010s. I don’t know if, since then, film distribution has gotten simpler. Maybe movie theaters are able to simply connect to the internet and download a film to play at their location. At the time I was originally doing it, with millennial V and G, I had it that distribution was still something that had to be done physically, as in, bringing the films to a movie theater directly. We’ll keep it that way for the time being, as it’s more interesting in my opinion.

  We might be getting a bit ahead of ourselves at this point. Let me step back and say that they had a film ready, “Victor and Gloriana Graves’ Music Video Extravaganza.” Around an hour of straight music videos, about a half hour of unique content with each video played twice since the videos were so busy and jampacked with visuals, along with some brief video essays and a short pilot for a show they made added on as a double feature as a bonus. But in some versions of the Gravesverse, it’s just the music videos for this first one.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  This had all been filmed by now and had been manufactured and ready to send out to the movie theaters. There are over 2000 movie theaters in the United States, and they each needed to get copies of the film to play. Could they have sent them by UPS? I suppose, but that’d be costly and it’d take a lot of time to package and print out a label and send out, and Victor and Gloriana Graves were always trying to save money, being savvy businesspeople. And in truth, at this time, they didn’t have much liquid cash reserves, having spent most of it on the music videos and the pilot for the tv show. That and they were purposefully setting themselves up to weaponize their fan base, as you’ll see.

  They put out a call to their fans. V and G wanted the fans to meet up with each other in person at their most local movie theater on a certain day at a certain time and to bring their phones. It should also be noted that by this time they had gotten an email list together of the fans.

  On the chosen hour of the chosen day, across the country, V&G’s fans met up at every single movie theater. They were told to meet in the parking lot and to try not to get kicked out, as some movie theaters would have had more Gravers at them than others. Once they were there, everyone received an email directing them to a link to twitch, the live streaming service. There was a static image of a skull with a crown being broadcast on the live feed along with a message to turn their volume up and wait.

  The fans were a bit bemused by this, being in a group with each other in person and having their phones all in sync and broadcasting the same audio, which at the time was a prerecorded message to please stand by, done up in a dramatic and over-the-top way. After a few minutes to allow everyone to get connected, Victor came over and started broadcasting his voice. The screen was still the static image of their emblem, with Victor not wanting people to be looking at their phones, but rather each other, and just listening.

  “Welcome, welcome! And thank you again for coming,” Victor said, his voice being transmitted to thousands of people across the country, the fans were once more bemused when they heard the effect of Victor’s voice being piped out of each of their phones. “This is officially the first broadcast to you fans like this, and we have a lot to talk…-“

  Victor talked. And he talked. And he talked. But he did so with his characteristic charm and in an overly bombastic way, his speech having been written and rewritten and carefully edited over the preceding weeks, trying to keep it as entertaining as possible so people wouldn’t get bored.

  He spoke about his goals in life, then. What he wanted to do. And he needed help to meet those goals. But he wasn’t expecting to get help and offer nothing in return.

  That’s about a thousand here, so we’ll continue it in the next entry.