In 2012, I had an urge to write something silly.

Over on the Fear Mythos forum, it had become a trend to create sockpuppet accounts, extra accounts pretending to be our own fictional characters, as a joke. This was marginally funny, but it was starting to get out of hand, with some users referring to it as an "infestation" or an "invasion." Now that, I found funny. It got my brain going.

The many sockpuppets my fellow Fearbloggers had made gave me a list to work with. There was a "Slenderman" account. Other Fears like "The Wooden Girl," "The Quiet," "The Cold Boy," "The Archangel." So I could write with the Fears, that was a safe bet. "Malkator," a key character in Acelegin's Fearblogs. "Grey," the name of the Dying Man in CuteWithoutThe's blogs. "I-330," Doctor Who-like protagonist of Omega's epic Mephi. Some forum members jokingly claimed they, themselves, were sockpuppets, and so I could straight-up write with "ExorcistGamer." "LizardBite's Supreme Hat" was our oldest sockpuppet, a mythologization of one of our founders' joking authority. And then we also had the forum bots, "GoogleBot," "Bing," and "Yahoo," which I didn't have to work with, but I wanted to. You get the idea. My cast of Sockpuppets came from that kind of forum in-joke.

I didn't exactly want to just write a series of in-jokes, though. One of the sockpuppet accounts was named "Doctor Cloud," and so I could write something in the Topography Genera canon. There were Rapture characters too, and so I could also write something in the Rapture canon. And someone had made an account titled "DJay31." I could do something with that, too. So I decided. This would be a crossover blog, about the extracanonical interference of an entity known as DJay31. Multiple stories go off the rails, an ensemble cast of characters meet the Sockpuppets and try to unravel the yarn and fix things. And so the project began with the comedy I wrote in three rapid days:

PLAN 31: CLOSE ENCOUNTER OF THE SOCK KIND

Written in 2012, edited in 2016. Come and read it.

Featuring the canons of: TOPOGRAPHY GENERA (and JORDAN EATS NORMALLY NOW), OH GOD THE RAPTURE IS BURNING (post-Disc 1, pre-Disc 2), and DARK CHAO ADVENTURES (post-Season 8, pre-Season 9). DCA is not necessary to be familiar with.

26 posts across 7 chapters.

_____________________

CLOSE ENCOUNTER introduced some characters I ended up really attached to, namely Frank Slenderman (ace attorney) and his buddy Archie Angelo (plumber, prosecutor on weekends). And then, a year or two later, I began a sequel dedicated to the wacky Ace Attorney trials of Frank Slenderman. I got nine posts in and then scrapped it. I just wasn't feeling it, and by that time in my life I was reading a ton of books and evolving my sense of Story, and. Yeah, I just wasn't feeling it!

But over the next couple years, I still kept the PLAN 31 project on my mind. I saw potential in the zany crossover. It had strengths: 1) I could explore the interaction between my stories, the things they had in common, the juxtaposition of Themes. 2) I was allowed to be silly with it. The horror of the individual stories was a quality of their filters, their actual.. Stories. And to explore their worlds outside of the bounds of those Stories meant I was free to focus on other emotions. And 3) It was kinda like DCA. DCA took many ideas from many franchises and threw them all together, in a silly presentation. PLAN 31 was like a super-DCA.

So, after enough time, I started brainstorming a retake of the second instalment. I had a chance, this time, to incorporate even more stories, and one of those was the meta-character of Christoph Magreat. I got to thinking, "What would PLAN 31 look like if it was made by Magreat?" One thing led to another. I took sheaves of paper and wrote a lot more notes on them than you would expect. I wrote about the fictional city this would take place in, I plotted out the different Industries that made it up, and different symbolical systems that these industries represented. I plotted the city of Dekan as an abstract body with organs, and I found eerie similarities with unexpected things in the process. I will not spoil those, as PLAN 31 is not done. And I also came up with the idea of Sally Magreat, Christoph's (adopted?) daughter. Christoph will not make PLAN 31. Sally will.

Anyway, so I tried again, and now we have the ongoing:

PLAN 31: RISE OF MCFEAR

Started 2016, Episode 1 finished in 2017. Come and read it.

Featuring the canons of: TOPOGRAPHY GENERA (THE BOOK NOW), OH GOD THE RAPTURE IS BURNING (post-Disc 2), DARK CHAO ADVENTURES (pre-Season 9), I AM EVERYBLOGGER (pre-TVD), ARCHANGARD & MAGREAT (post-Graab).

With each new instalment, the stakes of "stories to be aware of" rises.

Also featuring original music. Check out the Official Soundtrack here.

It is here that I will clarify what the heck "McFear" is. CLOSE ENCOUNTER elevated the in-joke of sockpuppet accounts, and RISE OF MCFEAR also elevates an in-joke: Joke Fears. In the Fear Mythos, not everyone made serious scary horror monsters; some people came up with joke monsters. And over the years, I grew to really love them. So I took note of the Joke Fears people had made-- namely made by Writerer, who was also responsible for a lion's share of the sockpuppets in the first place-- and I drafted a bigger story where these Joke Fears are on the rise. McFear is their king. That's all you need to know right now.

Many posts across multiple episodes, In Progress. Episode 1 is done, I have not started Episode 2 yet.

• EPISODE 1: Turnabout Visitors
• INTERMISSION
• EPISODE 2: ???