How I Met Your Monster #31

Zaq

Profile:

Zaq, 31

Author

Likes: . Let's see. Big fan of movies and music. Also huge on reading. Don't like writing as much, but eh. I spend a lot of time at my full time job, and the rest of the time with my family. I like lizards and chickens as pets over cats and dogs. I watch a lot of true crime and cooking shows. I listen to a ton of podcasts. Most are dungeons and dragons actual plays, but overall it's comedy or puzzle centric. My favorite book is Battle Royale because of how it explores different character point of views. I like my kids. They're all pretty great. My wife is perfect. Not even going to play on that one. Reading and reviewing fictions and getting achievements.

Dislikes: When people chew with their mouths open. Friends having imposter syndrome. One of the four shifts at my job. Money. Life would be so much chiller if there wasn't money. Having to basically use filler to bump up my word count. But at least I'm not just saying the same two words over and over again.

Bio:

In a happy, committed relationship with my beautiful wife. Have 3 kids with a 4th due any day now. Just on this app because it's time to meet Silas. Mostly due to the fact that from my point of view, this app is a fictional plot device, and a loose one at that.

AD

Well, seeing as how I have fully taken over, go read my other fiction on here. It's not satire, so the genres don't really mesh well, but I think it's pretty good for what it is. It's called The Traitors Saga. Or don't. I'm an author, not a cop.

Also don't be afraid to follow or review. Both immensely help out authors, and since most of us are amateurs, any little bit of success give us that sweet endorphin rush that gets us to keep going.

I also really love comments, even just the grammar correction ones. Though I will say I rush it a lot because of writeathon, but hey. Corrections help on the future edit, yeah?

There was a knock on my apartment door, which these days never means anything good. It woke me up, and I was pretty tempted to ignore it. However, my body moved on its own, and I soon found myself walking toward my door and opening it. Before me stood a fairly tall man. He was wearing jeans and a blank tee shirt, and supported light brown hair and a light brown beard with just a little bit of gray here and there. He wore semi-rimmed glasses and smirked at me like he knew something I didn't know.

"Can I help you?" I asked.

"Absolutely you can. I'm Zaq. I created you."

I was suddenly awake as the oracle turned web designer's words came crashing down on me. My maker was finally here. But this guy didn't seem like much. I was expecting some bigger than life creature. But this guy

"You look like any other human."

"And in a way, I am. But not in your world. I created your world. Badly, I must say, but I did."

"Ah, I see what's going on here. You read the blog and wanted to mess with me, but didn't think it all the way out. Better luck next time, pal."

"Close. Very close," he said. "I created the blog. I created you. I created the world you live in."

I sighed. I was quickly getting tired of this, "Can you give me an example or change something?"

"Didn't the oracle warn you about pissing me off? I could have sworn I added that."

"Added that?"

"Yeah, what I say kind of goes. It makes it canon. I mean, I speed write these because it's the writeathon, so I'm bound to mess up. Plus I don't really take it too seriously about seventy percent of the time, but I'm sure it is. But hey, you asked for an example. Let me give you one. What all have you written articles about?"

The feeling of external dizziness hit me again, "I wrote that article about the Vampire town."

He nodded, "Very good. What else?"

I thought for a second. I remember that I've written for businesses and freelance. I remember the article on the Vampire town, but nothing else was coming to me. "I don't remember."

"That's because I haven't come up with anything else and made it canon. That's my powers. What color is the door you opened to greet me?"

Another wave. I looked right at the door, "I don't know."

"That's because I never described it beyond the fact that it's a door. Which is canonically white now. I mean, it's an apartment, let's not get too fancy."

I continued staring at the door, which I could clearly see was white.

"I'm tired of standing here. I made you like the park. Let's go there."

I was baffled, "Okay, let me just get changed."

"No need." A wave of dizziness felt and between one millisecond of time and the next, we were standing in the park I often visited and I was no longer in my pajamas. I was wearing a near identical outfit to Zaq, but my shirt was gray while his was orange. I noted the fact that I didn't know what color it was back at my apartment.

"I don't understand," I said. "So what you say goes?"

"Pretty much, yeah. Don't think of it like you don't have agency here though. I don't really plan writing. I just start typing and kind of hope for the best. What I believe you would do in any given situation is like you utilizing your free will to do it. So, I try to stay true to you as much as possible."

It started raining dogs of all breeds. They disappeared before they hit the ground. Which made me realize that the grass was tiny snakes wriggling. I jumped in shock, but soon realized that they weren't doing anything to attack me.

"What's all this about then?"

"Oh, I just wanted to screw around. Kind of doubly works for an example though, you know?"

"Yeah, I guess. So, what are you doing on Unhinged?"

He laughed at that, "Nothing. I'm not on Unhinged. I made a little bio to include at the top of the entry for both consistency and word count, but it's not real. At least, in my world. It's real in your world. It's kind of the whole premise of your life."

"My life?"

"Think of your life as a story. Well, that may be giving it too much credit. Think of your life as a series of blog posts. The blog posts you have written so far, in fact. I have written each and every one of those. I've also written some other stuff within your world that you know about, but has only really been hinted at on the website that I publish your story. Mostly the sexy stuff."

"Okay . . ."

'There's a thing on the site I use called writeathon where you attempt to write 55,555 words in five weeks. I thought that the easiest way for me to do that without burning out would be to do short self-contained chapters like a blog. I regret it sometimes, because as I continued, I felt like I could have made something a little more narrative, but once again, any sort of plot structure would have probably burned me out in the long term."

"So only the things that have been written about in the blog actually exist in my world."

"Yeah, pretty much. I also wrote a few narrative pieces that only the characters involved know about. Like your adventuring stuff, or Daywen's kind of day to day since she left your place."

"How's she doing? Are we allowed to mention her?"

"Sure. I'll make it canon that her sister and the kingdom won't be able to read this blog when you post it. And she's been doing great. Adapting well to life."

"That's really good to hear."

"Agreed. But yeah, turns out that the short chapter turn around is actually fairly difficult. I added ads to try and fill it out a bit, but then I had to think of new ads every time. Some of these entries have been incredibly lazy. I mean, I'm almost at 1200 words now, but I still have so much more to say to you. At least I think I do. I may end this earlier than I expected, but I hope not."

"Why's that?"

"I came into this interview or chapter with only 2, 918 words needed to win writeathon. My original plan was to show up for the last three thousand or so, and make it an extra long chapter. If I have to force another one after this, I may lose my mind."

"Fair enough. So what do you want?"

"That's the thing. It is not about what I want. It's about what you want. I couldn't think of a way that fit your character to give you the things you want or need. And I really didn't want to do more of the LitRPG stuff just to give you something basic. Those work as their own little side thing. Plus, it kind of robs the readers of these blogs being the main focus."

"There are readers?"

"Yeah, actually. This little trashfic I decided to throw together for writeathon actually blew past my other story in popularity. A decent amount of people actually seem to enjoy it. Honestly, I was a bit annoyed at first. But once I thought about it, I realized that it actually works out for me. I prefer writing shorter things. Novellas, short stories, poetry. I just don't have that thing in me that allows me to plan well."

"But this is self contained blog posts."

"So, since there's a little bit of success with it, you're going to make my world more real?"

"Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you've got your own bit of drama. I mean, how long have you been dating Felsya?"

"I mean, we're still getting to know each other. No labels, but for about . . .Shit, I don't know."

"Right. I've been so lazy to not even have a solid time frame going. I want to double down the effort of this story once the whole writing challenge thing is over. And then a little time after that. The next two months are pretty busy, but I think since I'm most likely going to beat it with this entry, I'll be able to get some backlog of either rewrites or new chapters up for the couple months I probably won't be on much."

"Why did you want me to know about all of this?"

"Like I said, I wanted you to be able to ask for some stuff within the narrative. It seemed the best way."

"If you're my creator, then what does it matter? You know what I want. Even better than I do. You know the things that would help my life. Hell, I'm just happy that you might be doing something to make the story that is my life more entertaining."

"I do know what you want, but I can't just hand that over to you. I need the drama aspect. Your story works best as a sitcom, and the will/they won't they aspect is very central to character based programming."

"I guess it would also kind of derail some of the more interesting aspects of the blog as well."

"That it would. I was pitched this idea as monster tinder, but wanted to make it less 'main character has sex with every creature'. Some of those would have been awful to have to think up. But if I shift it a bit and make it more education and intellect driven, or even switch up the premise a little, I could probably find a solid balance somewhere."

"So, you wanted me to ask for what I wanted, but won't give it to me."

"I will. Eventually. If it's still what you want by then. But there's a path of living you must take to get there. I can make you forget this whole conversation if you'd like. I could also just only bring it up when need be. But you have to do more. Live more, date more, experience more."

"That's kind of your call, Zaq."

He nodded, "This is true. Man, this is taking way too long. I really should add more action to dialogue. Besides nodding. I have people nod way too much. People don't nod this frigging much."

"I'm just going to pretend to know what you're talking about."

"Let's see. Want to look at a gorgon? Too simple a solution. Might as well end the story there. But you can earn it over time. Want to gain stats? Then technically not a human, so Unhinged as a premise is kind of moot. I do want to start integrating humans into the app soon, so your blog will need a pivot. Even so, the adventuring thing is overall separate unless I need a reason to do it."

"You've basically offered me nothing that I actually want. Minus the fact that my world will feel real."

"Yeah and even that's kind of a letdown. As far as you knew, your world felt real. The details were filled in enough to get by. Sure you couldn't tell me anything about your apartment really, but it didn't matter."

"So what are you offering me, really?"

He sat and thought about it. Maybe a bit too long to really hit that word count. Two thousand, nine hundred, and eighteen words were too much for an unplanned meta chapter, and the knowledge that he still had like five hundred to go seemed to be weighing heavy on him. If I looked closely, I could almost see a separate version of him, typing away on his computer, a livewire mountain dew near him. He kept stopping to check his phone on the desk, but then he would begin typing again. I wonder how much he put into action on his dialogue. He seemed to not like the amount he put into them.

I shook it off. I realized what he was doing. He was having me see that so he could keep typing words. I tried to fight it and even though I thought I was successful, I started running around the park. Gabi popped up and opened her mouth to say something, but then didn't and disappeared. I looked back at Zaq, who was smirking at me. I was surprised he wasn't nodding, but on recollection, smirking was probably a close second.

"Can you stop?"

"Look, man. All I want to tell you is to keep going on. I know the repetitive nature of all of this is weighing down on you. You've been thinking of quitting the blog. Felsya agrees that if it's not bringing you happiness, not to do it. That's because I often feel like quitting writing. And as much as I don't know what's canon or not in my life, or where any of this writing is going to go, I'm still going to try and hold on. As much as it doesn't always bring me joy, something about it resonates with something deep in my soul. And I made you to feel the same way about your project."

His words rang true with something in me. Whether or not I was the one experiencing that or if it was just him writing that way, my life is what it is. I could be written to mope about it or I could be written to do something more with it. He smiled at me as he faded from existence, and when I blinked, I was back in my apartment with my pajamas on. The black sleep pants with the gingerbread men on it were a gift from my mom and always fit comfortably. I internally laughed as I realized that there was more detail in my life now.

Dear readers, a lot of people wax poetic about the potential of our actions not truly being our own. That there's something up there that controls us and moves us around like a marionette. But even if that's true, we don't fully know it. So instead of just freaking out about our own self awareness, we can instead take the hurdles for what they are. We can live and grow and change and adapt and survive on the ways that we experience our own lives. And if your creator is as cool as mine is, then maybe they'll let you take the reigns every now and then. Maybe they'll follow your agency rather than forcing you to theirs. Until next time.

-Silas D.