As I write this, the presidential inauguration of 2025 had just occurred the day before, so I have that on my mind with the Gravesverse. Victor Graves becomes president in it, and I have an instinct to tell you how that happens, but we’d be missing a whole lot of context, so I’m not sure if I should go into that yet or not.
This entry will be a little wild, I think. We retcon history a bit here, and talk about real people that exist/have existed in our world. I’m not sure how I feel about posting that. I know there’s some rules when writing about real figures, but there are still ways to do it. South Park comes to mind, them using real people all the time.
This is a work fiction, first and foremost. Its purpose is to entertain. And these aren’t the actual people I’m talking about here, I’m talking about my version of them. I’m sticking with the same names, though, because that’s how this happened when I originally was conceiving the Gravesverse. I used reality at the basis for my fantasy world, remember.
That and I think it would lessen the impact of the work if I made up a name and simply described their position in the world. It should feel real. With that said, this bit of the story may or may not cause you issues with the suspension of your disbelief. Or it may even be offensive. It’s kind of out there.
We’ll get back to the chronology, soon, though, and we’ll build back up to this moment in Victor’s history. Hopefully by then things will make it a bit more sense. Until then, though, buckle up, because it’s about to get weird.
By the time Victor is of presidential age (not that he hadn’t requested the age requirement to be lowered prior to then) he’d amassed quite a popularity. He had brought home Osama Bin Laden, who in this timeline was still at large and still intimately connected with terrorist organizations over in the middle east. I have to admit here that my knowledge of the inner politics of the Middle Eastern world is a bit out of my repertoire, but I know there’s different organizations with different goals in mind. I assume the leadership is all cordial with one another, no? A little bit? No? There’s certainly an alignment of interests there. So, let’s assume that’s how that works.
A world famous pop star, a singer, the most famous one, think of Taylor Swift, had been kidnapped by a terrorist organization. The details of that are a bit hazy right now. I had an idea that she received an offer to play somewhere in the Middle East that was too lucrative to refuse. Or that she go to some budding city over there that was looking to make a name for themselves as a tourist destination. Maybe Dubai? Is that too offensive?
I have a notion that this is about to get very offensive indeed. My apologies for that if that’s the case, I was just trying to get good fodder for an interesting storyline, I don’t mean to offend anyone.
Anyway, this pop star of the Gravesverse is captured and it comes to light that she’s being raped. Victor and Gloriana Graves have history with her, they know her, are friends with her. Know her fairly well, actually. Victor, in his good graces, suggests on social media that a trade be organized between the United States and the terrorist organization. Trade the pop star for himself, who by that time is a superstar in his own right.
“Worst trade ever,” one commenter says on X/Twitter.
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Is it completely selfless? Not quite. Victor Graves is a bit conceited, and he knows that going down like this would be a good way to die, for legacy’s sake. But he doesn’t think he’s going to die. He’s convinced he has a destiny. And it’s true, he does. I am the God of the Gravesverse, and I shine my light down upon him. And in addition to destiny, he knows a few facts. He’s popular the world over. And he knows from the CIA (FBI?) that some of the children of high ranking terrorists, Osama Bin Laden being one of them, are big, big fans of his work. They want to be Gravers, in fact, and maybe one of them is, if they’re over in America studying (Gravership being open only to Americans and Canadians at the time).
This is a reference to Osama Bin Laden being found in the real world with anime on his computer, I think for his kids. So Victor knows he’s liked by some of them as a fact, and he knows he wouldn’t be raped like Popstar is, he knows he’d probably be treated with some modicum of respect if he went over there.
It does have a selfless angle, too, though. He genuinely likes Pop Star, even so much as having asked her in the past to be one of his concubines, which she had declined. He makes the trade.
He’s over there for some time while Gloriana runs the family business for him. It’s at this time that they announce Victor Graves has been collecting his own sperm for distribution. Never let a tragedy go to waste, after all.
Anyway, he’s over there for some time before he gets out, which in and of itself is a very big to-do. There’s an explosion in the secret facility he’s being kept at. Local reporters and concerned local citizenry rush over to investigate and discover Victor Graves with an old nude man with a bag over his head and taped wrists. Victor is bedecked in golden jewelry that would put Mr. T to shame, and he has a gold AK-47 on his back and a golden pistol that he’s pointing at the head of his captive. He’s also wearing the late Gaddafi’s white dictator hat.
The people begin to film him and it quickly circulates on social media, a live showing of him in a random city in the Middle East with a captive with a bag over his head and taped wrists. Victor speaks some of the local language at this point, he talks with one of the local citizens who got there first, making sure he’s broadcasting online. The man asks him if he’s ever going to finish filming Fatebook, a series from them that had been on hiatus now for some years. Victor can only sigh.
He announces to the world that he needs an extraction and goes down and sits against a wall with his hostage and waits. At some point, he takes off the bag.
“That… that’s Osama bin Laden!” a news reporter exclaims aghast as the television feed displays in the newsroom.
The local police are there now, but they’ve been ordered to simply contain the area, knowing that this is a big deal on the world stage and not wanting to muck it up. The citizenry and local reporters have been ushered out, but one still broadcasts the scene from a high rise apartment building balcony, it just far away now, Victor can’t be heard.
Not too long after he’s extracted by the U.S. military, who had a base located… oh… a medium distance away. 100 miles. 50 maybe. They go to fly Victor home and Victor, being Victor, commandeers the airplane and locks himself in the cockpit. He’ll fly himself home, as a matter of fact. Over the radio, speaking with a member of the press, he announces his love for Gloriana and tells her to execute order 66.
And what’s order 66? Nobody in the Gravesverse knows except Victor and Gloriana themselves. But, spoiler alert, it involves them taking over the city of New York, bringing every Graver in the country, and there are quite a few at this point, to the city. Something big is about to go down. Something huge. A happening.
Anyway, he uses that as well as his popularity and auctoritas as fuel to become president. But that’s all the time we have for now, we’ve passed our thousand words.
One last thing before I go, a P.S., remember that I said this was a story about a Mary Sue. If you found yourself rolling your eyes while reading this entry, just know that Victor has his faults, too, they just hadn’t been on as big of a display for this particular entry.
