So, our modern day Caesars, our Victor and Gloriana, are currently children. They plot and scheme together all the time, thinking about how they’ll become great (great =/= good) one day, thinking about how they’ll come to conquer the world. What should they be doing to prepare? They needed to make money. A lot of it and in a short time frame. They needed to become, at minimum, billionaires. How do they go about this? What’s their strategy?

  The Gravesverse was first formulated in the early 2010s. The news at that time was full of talk about killer apps and indie video games. The smartphone was still a relatively new phenomenon. YouTube and Twitter were approaching their zenith. But let’s take a step back and recall that there are two versions of Victor: a millennial and a gen-z, born in 1990 and 2000, respectively. Millenial Victor Graves is far more realistic, and that’s the one I originally envisioned when I first came up with the Gravesverse, me being a millennial myself. But, with that said, I have a certain affinity for the gen-z one right now. He has more potential than the millennial version, who would, in our time, currently be president. Yes, I think we’ll stick with the gen-z Victor Graves for now, although we will probably flip and flop between the two based on the needs of our lore.

  It was in childhood when gen-z V&G decided that, in order to become billionaires, they’d need to understand technology. They’d need to become programmers. Victor understood how important a historical force technology is. Like Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and everything else. They didn’t want to just be another tech corporation, though, they wanted to make a real name for themselves with people. That and they needed to be able to work fast, so they needed something that was more creative than scientific. They needed to be billionaires as well as celebrities as well as artists. What is the intersection of technology and entertainment and art? Video games.

  Here we need to have a chat about originality. Back when I was creating these fantasies, they were only for my own private consumption. They were still artistic endeavors, but with an audience size of one. I needed inspiration to fuel them, as all artists do. So, in V&Gs later childhood and early adulthood, they’d be doing things that I had seen happen in reality. I’d be stealing ideas from the real world and using them as fodder to fuel my fantasies. That would make things more relatable and realistic, and realism is something I craved for their story. Remember, I made up a daydream about a human being, not a superhero.

  So, Victor and Gloriana’s first video game was Minecraft.

  And Minecraft was a perfect choice for them to create from a story perspective. If you aren’t familiar with how Minecraft came about, it was started by one guy who made a very simple and straightforward game and added to it gradually. That guy’s name was Notch. It later became a humongous success, allowing Notch to sell the game to Microsoft in 2014 for two and a half billion dollars. He had started it in 2009, I think? That’s what, five years? That and it was a creative endeavor, one that shook up the video game industry, one that was truly unique. Minecraft is the perfect inspiration to rip off for my fantasy world. And so, Notch doesn’t exist in the Gravesverse. The game was made by Victor and Gloriana themselves.

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  The game itself dovetails nicely with V&G’s story, too. Minecraft is a game about starting with nothing and shaping the world around you however you see fit. This is what Victor and Gloriana aimed to do in their reality. Have I mentioned yet that Victor became an orphan? He started with the deck stacked against him. What’s important to keep in mind though, is that there were differences between the real-world Minecraft and the one that V&G made in the Gravesverse.

  The game V&G made was Gravesian. What do I mean by Gravesian? Victor and Gloriana had created their own aesthetic, their own artistic philosophy, their own way of viewing the world. The actions they took in life were applications of that underlying philosophy. You can notice it even with the names I’ve chosen for them: Victor, Gloriana, Graves. Those names were chosen for a reason. They’re making a statement. No matter what glory you achieve in life, no matter how many victories you win, no matter what riches you gather up, you are, in the end, dead. Dead as dead can be. Our destiny is oblivion.

  The Graves’ emblem, their symbol, is a skull with a crown on it. Memento mori. Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair! A dead god-king. A golden sarcophagus. The crowned skull will be amended and added to as V&G journey through life, adding new philosophical axioms.

  Victory and Death. Victor Graves.

  Death and horror is at the heart of Victor and Gloriana Graves’ aesthetic, their Geist (used in the sense of Zeitgeist). Maybe Geist isn’t the right word, but it will do for now. My own personal philosophy is that meanings and words should be loosey goosey. Everything should have synonyms, even proper nouns.

  So, a Minecraft focused around the real world concept of death. A Minecraft that focuses on showing the world in all its splendor, with all of its tastes and aromas and things to touch and be captivated by and enamored with, but a world that will ultimately end one day.

  I think this dovetails nicely with the early days of Minecraft, where updates to it meant losing your save, losing the world you spent so much time creating. It’s like how Buddhists create those mandalas in colored sand and then, at the end, they tip the canvas and let it all fall away. (Note: Victor and Gloriana Graves are most certainly not Buddhists, but they draw inspiration from everything in the world for their personal Geist.)

  Gold is at the heart of that Minecraft. Gold and diamonds. Riches, extravagance. I don’t know how much I should go into talking about ‘the way I’d’ve done Minecraft,’ as that can be pretty boring, but I’ll talk about it a little bit.

  The art, for one, was different but still simplistic and pixely. There was a more horrific quality to it. And it was darker, with more contrasting colors. That and there was an emphasis upon building up your own empire, with family dynamics and people you could recruit for you. The nougat of the game is still the same, though. Blocks. Mining and crafting. Minecraft.

  Even the name Minecraft dovetails well with Victor’s past. Victor and Gloriana’s parents (recall, they were best friends) were avid fans of Blizzard games. Starcraft and Diablo and particularly World of Warcraft, when it first came out.

  Victor and Gloriana fell in love with their parents’ virtual world, playing it in the limited capacity a four or five year old could, enchanted by all the lore and the art and everything else. World of Warcraft was big about its community driven spirit, and that’s something that always stuck with V and G, ‘til the end of their days. They even thought to themselves that if conquering the world didn’t work, making their own fantasy world would do as a fine substitute, which is another reason they gravitated toward the video game industry.

  That’s about another thousand words or so, so we’ll end this here. More to come.