So our little conquerors have made Minecraft, a unique and totally original video game that had never been done before (at least not in the Gravesverse lol. Notch, as a reminder, does not exist there). This let them sell out and become the youngest self-made billionaires the world had ever seen. Now, let’s talk about YouTube. The video hosting site was in its zenith when V&G were making their little game. This was how they marketed themselves.

  You can’t be a great (great=/=good) man of history, an Alexander or a Genghis or a Caesar, without a marketing arm. You’ve got to be able to sell yourself to your troops, your people, to those that you conquer. All leadership is marketing. It’s propaganda. That used to be a neutral term. It’s only in recent history where it’s gotten the negative connotation.

  Victor and Gloriana started a YouTube channel, first to simply market their video game. It started out basic, with them sitting at a desk facing the camera and talking back and forth, charismatically and affably, almost as if they were of one mind. This will be the way they present themselves when they have a message they want to send to people from now until they are euthanized: sitting down and talking from behind a table. This will be important to keep in mind when we get to Victor and Gloriana Graves’ first movie. Also, they add decorations and props later, both on the table and in the background. They are starting an artistic movement, remember. They’re big on decorations.

  As I said, affable and charismatic. All smiles. Funny, too. That and the level of comfort and chemistry they had with one another was something to behold. The two teenagers enamored people who came across them on YouTube while they talked about their ugly little video game. The game became an overnight sensation. Nothing like it had ever been made before, after all. (In the real world, there’s something about Minecraft being inspired by a game called Infiniminer and one called Dwarf Fortress. We’ll eliminate the existence of these in the Gravesverse, making their version of Minecraft all the more impressive.)

  They come out with the game publicly around the mid-2010s. That’s about as early as we can start it for our gen-z V&G without compromising the suspension of disbelief. Having them be millennials makes a bit more sense here, as having them born in 1990 lets them be 19 in 2009, when Minecraft is released in our world, and 24 in 2014, when it was sold to Microsoft. I will stick with them being gen-z for now though, we’ll just call them gifted children. They started working on the game privately when they were, what? 10? 11 or 12? 13? They started experimenting with coding at a young age. The details don’t matter so much here, just choose whatever age makes you roll your eyes the least.

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  There’s a difference between Hollywood Giftedness and Actual Giftedness. Let’s think of the two types as opposite ends of the spectrum. Generally speaking, I like to stick to the more realistic end, but not all the time. It depends on my mood and the needs of the story. Besides, truth is stranger than fiction, eh?

  Regardless of age, they started work on Minecraft and they became a legitimate YouTube sensation. They spoke a lot about being inspired by their future children, wanting a game to have them all play together one day. A game where you can build anything and be anything. A game that was good wholesome fun. Even at this early part of their career, they always had a mind for political optics.

  It’s not too long before they’re brought on talk shows and radio broadcasts as something of a bit of a novelty. A ‘look at these fuggen’ kids over here! Ain’t they sweet? Ain’t they smaht?’ kind of thing.

  The game becomes quickly popular. Extremely popular.

  How are they hosting this game? Don’t they need money? They do. They get a little start up cash from Victor’s dear old dead parents. They left him maybe around 50,000 dollars, or something along those lines. The pair’s parents were either working class or lower middle class. I want the rags to riches trope to be there, but not in an over-the-top way. In another version of the story, I simply have them rob banks. Realistically, of course, the method where you go in and hand a teller a note demanding cash from their drawer and then you get out of there. But we’re not in that version of the Gravesverse right now.

  That story of being an orphan only added to the novelty. They did the talk show circuit once a year. This was to bring people to the game. Once those people were brought in, their primary method of engaging with them was on YouTube.

  While on the talk show circuit, they’d speak about their goals in life, but not too much. Victor wasn’t at a point where he was proclaiming himself Alexander or Genghis reborn yet. Although, if you asked him who his favorite historical figures were, he’d be honest with you, although he’d likely try to steer the conversation elsewhere.

  They made regular videos on YouTube, talking about the updates to the game and what they were doing. It was here they started to experiment, too. They practiced cinematography and fancy camera work. They practiced writing little skits. There’s a small scene I have in mind right now, where V&G are speaking on camera about this or that update or whatever and Gloriana picks up a wand from the desk before her and starts waving it around. It’s got a strobing light on it, which picks up in intensity and brightness, but still they’re talking like nothing is amiss. At its brightest strobe, it appears to teleport the pair to a different location, still in the same seats they were in, still behind the same desk. And they keep talking about the point they were making. The wand was just a misdirection to attract the eyes of the audience for a moment.

  That’s our 1000 words. See you next time.