Let’s get back to the Gravers with this entry. Victor and Gloriana Graves’ troops. They, for the most part, felt like they were a part of something, something cool. They had really gone and done something in the world, them becoming V&G’s distribution network for their movies. They also, generally, were establishing a good relationship with a local business, the movie theater they were assigned to. It was also neat how now there were even more people who wanted to become Gravers. They had a bit of a status, being a Graver.

  Again, they were mostly young people who had spare time and an interest in popular culture. They didn’t have much money to speak of, but, due to the raw scale of the movement, they were able to throw together enough cash to mortgage a Chapterhouse, a Graver’s Den, a Guildhall. It was just a house at first, a rather cheap one, but they could say it was theirs.

  Well, technically, it was Victor Graves’ house, seeing as how the majority of them accepted his deal and put the house in his name. Which, let me reiterate, meant that the Gravers paid for it but Victor owned it outright. They were still by and large skeptical about this arrangement but, again, the scale of the movement made it cheap for the individual Gravers. They’d try out the deal. And, if they didn’t like it, they could always stop paying.

  This got V&G some skepticism in the press as well, and the pair had to take to the news in several instances to try and explain what they were doing. “It’s completely voluntary! They can stop paying at any time! Think of it just as a membership due, is all. It’s cheap enough for the individual Gravers, the average payment is only $x.xx per month!”

  So now there was a clubhouse in the vicinity of every movie theater in the country. Some of the Gravers, particularly the ones from more well-to-do areas, wanted bigger or more houses, but Victor convinced most of them to just get the one house per movie theater, a small house. They would expand as time went on.

  Their first goal was to socialize and get to know one another, and so they were expected to gather at the house when they could and talk with each other, exchange numbers, all that sort of thing. An online forum was set up for Gravers, an old school style one that had a spot for each greater geographical region to allow somewhat local Gravers to communicate with one another on a geographic basis. Also a subreddit and a 4chan style website to get together. In some Gravesverses, V&G goes to 4chan directly and asks for a specific board for Gravers to have and use that’s only open to members. V&G didn’t know which social site style would be the best, so they’d try a couple different versions, you see.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  There was also the Graver app, that linked them together, that allowed V&G to send out announcements, that had good Graver news on it, links to budding Graver YouTubers. The app is very important to remember, so keep it in mind as we go forward.

  The next thing they needed was a leader to represent each movie theater team, someone to be the Graves’ local mouthpiece. In keeping with the spirit of experimentation that we mentioned earlier, there were a number of methods to obtain a leader. In some cases, it was a simple vote by the Gravers themselves. In other cases, the leader was chosen directly by Victor and Gloriana Graves, which, given the fact that they didn’t really know any of them yet, was done randomly. That randomly chosen leader could then either appoint a replacement or try out the spot themselves. In some instances of the Gravesverse, this latter style of choosing was the main method for everybody.

  Victor and Gloriana pleaded with the Gravers to give them time to grow as an institution. They knew that there would be a lot of drama associated with selecting a leader and there’d be a lot of hiccups along the way, there may be bickering at some of the Dens. There may be some questions arising about why the leader was part of the orange/purple/green team but not the other two teams. There may have been some resentment that the leader was chosen directly by Victor and Gloriana Graves themselves.

  V&G talked to them about the nature of the Gundam he was building with them, of the machine, of the ability enhancer. How it needed to be streamlined and responsive. At this time in their lives, they had been making philosophical videos, related to the nature of what they wanted to accomplish and how they wanted to do it. I remember feverishly engaging in these arguments in my head back when I was experiencing the maladaptive daydreams in full, but, again, since my medication, the dreams are not as powerful. I don’t know how captivating I can make these philosophical conversations as of right now. I don’t want this work to get bogged down in theorizing about things, I want it to keep being engaging.

  I’ll mention what I think is necessary or interesting but understand that Victor and Gloriana Graves spent a considerable amount of time thinking about the Gravesian Philosophy. They knew not all of the Gravers would be interested in hearing about it, but they still needed to get them to listen to the broad strokes, at any rate.

  And so V&G published videos. They rated the videos on a one to seven star system, in order of importance. The idea being that every Graver would be compelled to watch a seven star video or listen to a seven star decree, but seven was only really for emergencies. It was all one through five at the beginning. Victor and Gloriana Graves understood that Gravers liked them, generally, but weren’t going to be willing to invest 100% of their time to becoming Gravers. They had lives after all.

  We’ll talk a bit more in the next entry. It’s been a thousand words now.