Commission: JBB Presents (Patreon)

Just go read it. Then the rambling below will make more sense. I recommend the pdf format, because the font shifts will show up more readily, which help with the flow.

***SPOILERS BELOW***

So, back in September, the drawing winner gave me a prompt with a whole lot of freedom. Basically, the idea was that somebody had a script that showed what everyone was going to say/do, like a movie script, and that they could edit it at their leisure. I loved the idea of it - reminded me of an old John Candy movie I'd seen as a kid, Delirious, where he's a writer for a soap opera and suddenly winds up in his show but his typewriter still lets him edit scripts, only the other writers still out in the real world frustrate some of his efforts.

The struggle came because I was having a brutally hard time coming up with an implementation. It kept coming down to that Master PC problem of sure, it's a neat fantasy to have godlike power over reality, but it's not usually fun reading. (For me, at least - don't let me buzzkill your enjoyment.) After all, anybody who stumbled upon such power is definitely going to abuse it in really obvious ways pretty much immediately, and it becomes a story with no conflict (because the first time something gets in the way, anyone with half a brain writes it out of the script). The exception is someone who's had the script all along and is just using it to amuse themselves, in which case we're left with a story about people's lives inexplicably being altered by Some Dude, which then isn't really a story about the script any more.

The only out I could see was someone editing the script who didn't realize the effects their actions would have, because if they did, they're back to square one. So as I was trying to imagine who edits a reality script without noticing they're doing so... I dunno what to say. JBB Presents popped in there almost fully formed in the span of about ten seconds.

I giggled myself half to death over this, folks. This is such a dumb story, but for my part, I enjoyed the hell out of writing it and found the dumbness of it more amusing than I probably should. Hopefully you get a kick out of it, too. Have a great weekend, everybody!