#also: canonically Jadusable The Character was MISSING

[sage-nebula]

I actually followed the ARG and this is not how I remember it happening. Granted, it was over ten years ago now, but . . .

Those of us in the fandom knew it was an ARG. There was never any idea that it was real, at least not on the Moon Children website or the Within Hubris forums. The YouTube videos and the blog posts were the start of it, yes; but shortly after the final video was posted we found a URL for the Moon Children site, which was believed* to be the cult that was potentially behind Ben's drowning.

(*Believed as in, this is all a story, we are playing along with it.)

There was a running chat on the site. I remember some Vampire the Masquerade videos on Jadusable's account were thought to be clues. I also remember that at one point the anagrams / ciphers / clues were given to us that said we had a deadline to save someone . . . I think her name was from the VtM videos? God it's been so long. Anyway I was an active theorizer at the time and I remember we discussed using the ocarina songs from the game to act on the clues, the two big ones being Song of Time and Oath to Order. IIRC, Song of Time did work to reset things, but Oath to Order did not and the girl (character) ended up being sacrificed to the demonic entity. Whoops. I remember the next coded message was like "YOU DIDN'T SAVE HER" and it was like damn dude . . . no need to yell about it.

Anyway, sometime after that the website went down, I think due to server costs? But we received a new link to a forum called Within Hubris which I think was also (in the story) meant to be a forum for the cult. The demonic entity was Hubris, but there was also another name for it . . . Kelbris, I think? There was a part of the forum we could see but not access normally, and then when we DID get in there was just a coded message telling us to "GET OUT." Again, no need to yell, damn.

Anyway everything really hit a lull at this point. Alex (a.k.a. Jadusable — his real name is Alex Hall) said that Part 3 was going to be a PC game that would be a really immersive experience, but it was taking more time than he thought to develop. Then he released a book (I think?) about how to be successful or something like that, I didn't pay too close attention so I couldn't say specifically what it was about . . . anyway years were passing with no news on the game, and seeming effort on Alex's end to distance himself from it to start his new brand, so I lost interest and just figured it would never be completed. The forum died too, so I feel like most folks reached that same conclusion.

So yeah, while I can't speak for everyone, as someone who actively participated in the ARG I think most of us knew it was just a game and had fun playing along, as you do. Deciphering the codes and uploading videos of our own as our moves—which the Jadusable videos would then respond to—was a lot of fun. People made fan songs and fanart and stuff too, it was a fun time. And while some people got fussy that KingKong.wmv was released instead of a real update (this was not "years later" btw I remember it being middle-ish of Part 2), most just laughed at the April Fool's joke. We all knew the only significant day in April was the 23rd anyway.

Anyway. As someone who was SUPER into it in its heydey, I just remember it differently.

Ben Drowned is hands-down one of the funniest creepypastas ever because like. it singlehandedly cemented the setup of "woah guys i found this N64 game at a garage sale and it's HAUNTED!!!!" as a cliche. this guy named Jadusable kept posting videos showing his copy of Majora's Mask with fucked up glitches, like Link being constantly on fire and screaming, or having his upper body rotated 90 degrees, or having NPCs say ominous shit to him, etc. you really need to watch the original video for the full experience (assuming you havent already), but if you haven't, at least watch this one starting around 2:30:

so Jadusable posts the "final" update to his story and his forum account goes dark. in the canon of his creepypasta, he's straight up dead (killed by the haunted game cartridge), and he seems to be sticking to it by not posting anything. theories ran wild - was it an elaborate scam? could it have all been true?

years later, on April 1st 2012, with no announcement or fanfare, Jadusable posts the following video, "king kong.wmv", following the naming scheme of his previous videos. skip to 1:30ish.

when i tell you the people who took the creepypasta seriously for years were MAD mad