Grand Poo Weird Fiction

Grand PooBear is very good at Mario, and I enjoy watching him play it. He knows how to press the jump button juuuuust right.

In late 2020 I started posting comments on his videos. Just random words to boost his engagement metrics. Then, at some point, I started writing random sentences. Then I lost all control of myself and began writing a passage of weird fiction every day. I developed a loose canon, and even attracted a couple of regular readers. I was having fun, so I started putting more and more effort into each post. Eventually I was putting so much effort into it that it wasn't fun anymore, so I stopped. But while it was fun it was a lot of fun, and I hold the project as an important reminder to myself that making art can be a form of play. Really, it ought to be play.

On this page I've preserved the main thrust of the project beginning with the first comment that was more than a random word.

@linkskywalker
I feel like not enough people are willing to admit that a hexagon is just two triangles, unfolded and glued together. Wake up, sheeple!

@linkskywalker
Hot potato is an odd game. Was it ever actually played with potatoes? How long does a potato stay hot? If it was hot enough to justify the premise of the game, did it not cause burns to people?

@linkskywalker
It is difficult to comment whilst riding a bike. Probably dangerous as well. I doubt I will do it again.

@linkskywalker
I have seen the whispers of the grass motes, and heard their dances. They have communicated to me their terrible wisdoms that I wish I did not know were true. They speak of Mario, of His many crushing steps, and the cataclysm they portend.

Love those close to you, for the Plumber's boot comes one day for us all.

@linkskywalker
On April 7th 2016, someone named Cronkers McGee commented on a Luann comic strip from the same day in 1988 that "Luann, you will thank your day later in life for being tough on you as a child."

I'm pretty sure Cronkers meant to write "dad" there, rather than "day," but I cannot be certain of this.

@linkskywalker
Few know this, but there is an eleventh bean, the color of ulfire. The human eye is maladapted to this color, though shades of it can be glimpsed through mirrors backed with silver.

@linkskywalker
I have been told that there is a staircase hidden somewhere in this this video. Not a staircase for Mario to use, nor one for Poo. Neither of these would be remarkable enough to justify comment. There is a staircase which we, the viewers, can use. One which will open a path through our screens.

No doubt you are skeptical of my source. Perhaps I should be as well. One ought not normally listen to strange voices which echo out of the dark. I cannot say why I trust this voice, save that it rings in my ear with the quality of truth.

Or perhaps you are like me. Perhaps you understand, implicitly and without question, that there must be a staircase hidden somewhere in this video. There must be, and the only question worth asking is "where does it lead?"

When I find it, I will tell you. At least, I believe I will tell you. The voice insists that once I know I will not want to tell, but one can only trust mysterious voices so much.

@linkskywalker
Last night my sleep gave no rest. My dreams were disturbed by a great scarlet steer who spoke with the voice of my living grandmother. Through the mouth of the great scarlet steer she warned that the day Poo reveals the true origins of his name is the day she will die.

My grandmother is one shy of one hundred years. I do not know whether her message means that Poo will reveal the truth soon, or if it means she is an immortal. Both possibilities frighten me.

@linkskywalker
On these cold winter days, there's nothing quite so nice as a bowl of butternut squash soup. It's a simple dish to prepare so long as you have a good blender or food processor. One must be wary, however, that when selecting a squash one does not choose one which is home to a family of Tipsi. They gather in the hollows of these autumn fruits. They are tiny things, nearly impossible to see for those who have not trained their eyes to such diminutive work. The revenge of a displaced Tipsi family forced to become refugees is not deadly, but one may find that they stub their toes more often than normal, and are beset on all sides by paper cuts, cold tea, and itchy eyes. It is thus best to avoid this winter delectation unless one knows how to select their squash properly.

@linkskywalker
While in the fish market this morning I encountered a wizard. I do not know that she was a proper wizard mind you, only that her hat was a towering edifice of obvious thaumaturgical power, and that if one values their life, one must assume anyone wearing such a hat is a wizard. There were words on the back of her greatcoat, a whole paragraph of them in tiny print. I knew better than to pique a wizard's paranoia by following them--particularly through a fish market--but the words enticed me to recklessness. I stepped carefully, wary of her movements, content to pick out one or two words at a time. I recall my building excitement as the thoughts expressed by her jacket began to come together in my mind, but then the moment I read the last word it was gone. I could not then, and cannot now, remember anything of what those words were, nor any inkling of what they expressed.

@linkskywalker
Like many children no doubt do, I once attempted to stay up late and catch sight of Santa Claus doing his jolly work. My parents warned me against this behavior, citing its inherent naughtiness, but this was at just that age when I no longer feared the naughty list, but had not yet come to distrust Santa's whole existence. I slipped from my bed in the late evening hours, and squeezed myself behind a couch near the fireplace. It was dark, and still, and I was yet a child, so it did not strike me as odd when an intense sleepiness overtook me. When I shook myself to resist the effects of that spell, I did not yet know that I had made a decision that would impact the whole rest of my life. I saw Santa that night. He does not appear as we depict him. I had thought to hug and thank the jolly old man, but I remained frozen in fear behind my couch until he was gone. The sight and sound of Santa altered my perceptions. Broadened them beyond their intended scope. I am witness to much now which I was not meant to see. If you have children of your own, it is best to lock them in their rooms on Christmas Eve.

@linkskywalker
Be wary of placing your ear to the ground. The grasslings like nothing better than to make their settlements in human ears, and once they've laid claim it is a matter of great difficulty to evict them. They are at least ecologically conscious, and your ear will be well cared for. The trouble is that they are a folk of profound religious conviction, and their church bells ring the grasslings to prayer no less than seventy seven times across the day and night. They are excellent bell makers, the grasslings, and their loud chiming will disrupt all your attempts at sleep and concentration.

@linkskywalker
In my younger days I was at one time obligated to seek the advice of Asfittin the Sage. It was not a meeting for which I was eager, but the conditions of certain financial agreements necessary to my education were predicated upon submitting myself to Asfittin's vague wisdom. As I dug my way into the soil of a municipal park--which one must always do if they wish to reach Asfittin's manse of filth--I was accosted by a group of smols who chastised me for my actions, claiming that it disrupted their game of wiffling bowl. I made my case as plainly as I could, but the smols are a selfish folk who care nothing for the obligations which others suffer under. The threat of their numbers forced me from my hole, and I was forced to begin digging again elsewhere.

@linkskywalker
In the year 2769 from the founding of The City, I received an invitation to banquet. At this time I was a younger man--as all men must be in their reminiscences--and ever loathe to absent myself from meals both fine and free. I arrived punctiliously at the manse indicated. I had no wish to appear base to my gracious, meal-providing hosts, yet I could not quite hide my confusion when I found no persons at the banquet save a pack of mongrel dogs behaving without one single iota of decorum. I moved myself quietly about the edges of the fete for some time before mustering the courage to ask one of the mutts if I had come to the right place. Upon inspecting my invitation they assured me I had. I then proposed that perhaps the invitation had been sent to me in error, as I was clearly not of a kind with the other celebrants. The dog took no great offense at this (to my relief, for it is an embarrassing lapse in social judgement which occasionally keeps me up at night). They insisted I was well and truly suited to the event, and ought not stand on any additional ceremony. Feeling I had best participate lest I appear ungrateful, I joined in at the messy tables of this mongrel banquet club. I found the mutts delightful conversationalists, and we indulged in every manner of caprice over the evening. Or, as it may be, more than an evening. I confess that I remain somewhat disoriented, for even now it seems to me but a single night of frivolity. Yet, when I arrived home the next morning, I found that several years had passed in my absence. Many friends had thought me dead, and some refuse to speak to me to this day for what they perceive as my irresponsibility.

Though it has caused me some distress as I attempt to put my affairs back in order, if another such invitation were to arrive, I would not hesitate to accept it.

@linkskywalker
There is a saloon slung beneath the belly of the last surviving megalithic wooly mammoth. It is a place I sometimes visit when the creature wanders near enough for me to reach it. The saloon is a good place to discuss inverse technological development, the merits of 19th century economic theorists, and the finer nuances of gender. This past week I dropped in for a drink whilst wearing a mask indicating my availability for certain forms of complex play which would be uncouth to elaborate on here. As I arrived there was a work of artistic effort being passed among my fellow patrons. When it came to me I thought to recognize a certain hand at work in its stylings. I stepped out to remove my mask--lest I be thought presumptuous for wearing it in the artist's presence--then returned to seek her out. It was not difficult to find her, and indeed it was who I had imagined it might be: a woman I'd known during a previous incarnation of my life. At that time we had been dear to one another, and I thought this chance meeting a good opportunity to extend to her my good opinion, and learn something of what her new life had brought her. I am certain her eyes met mine in the crowd, but she carefully avoided any hint of recognition. It occurred to me then that perhaps my good opinion was no longer of any interest to her. It is a sobering realization I must content myself with. Now is now, and then is then, and one must know better than to try and compress time into a single moment of shared reality.

@linkskywalker
It is not recorded how the Dark Arbiter knows what they know, what their purpose is, or the means by which they enforce their will. What is known is that no necromancer may count themselves great until the Dark Arbiter has acknowledged them. With acknowledgment will come cryptic dictates and arbitrary boundaries. It is not recorded if any have ever failed to obey. If it has happened, then the disobedient have been erased and forgotten. The Dark Arbiter’s will be done. So it is, and so it has always been since the earliest writings were etched onto the Gravestone Tablets.

@linkskywalker
In the days after my perceptions were first forced wide--an event described beneath the forty fourth volume of Poo's most burdensome quest--I was playing in a local park. I was partial to the swings, and prided myself on a prodigious aptitude for pumping my legs up towards the greatest heights possible. Whilst enjoying the relaxing tuck of a back swing, I was startled by the appearance of a great hole in a spot that had only a moment before been obscured from vision by my extended legs. I swung forward again while pondering what to do, and on the back swing found a great fire roiling up from the pit. This so startled me that I slammed my feet into the sand and flipped right over onto my face. When I stood to look again there was a woman beside the pit. She was togate in bath towels sewn end to end, and her features demonstrated half a dozen or more portents I had not yet learned to recognize. In her arms she held three tomes of daunting thickness.

"I will exchange these three tomes for one half your wealth." she said. Considering I was yet a child and possessed of no notable wealth it was a generous offer. But by that same token, what wealth I had, I valued beyond its meager measure.

"No thank you, ma'am." I replied. On the instant she threw one of her great books into the fire. It was consumed utterly, and she spoke again:

"I will exchange these two tomes for one half your wealth."

"I cannot yet even read, ma'am!" I replied. Again one of her books became consumed in flames.

"I will exchange this single tome for one half your wealth."

The woman's eerie self assurance in the value of her wares had unnerved me. What vital opportunity was I depriving myself of?

"Very well, half my wealth!"

On the instant she and her fire were gone, leaving only the book behind. When I returned home I discovered that half my toys were missing, which seemed a great tragedy to my young mind. In the years since, however, the knowledge in that single book has extended my life a hundred times when it ought to have been cut short. My stretch armstrong was a small price to pay, dear to me though it was.

@linkskywalker
Since sunrise this morning I have been in consultation with the Book of Changes. A rare opportunity for me, studying those hexagrams appealed to for guidance and prophecy since before the earliest forms of the Mandarinate, when they were etched on the humble shells of turtles awaiting preparation over an open flame. It is said that the fire's touch cracked the shell and reveal which sigils were to pass and which awaited another prophecy, the turtle being the most prescient and delectable of all the one hundred and sixteen true good and earthly beasts.

@linkskywalker
With Christmastime upon us, my partner has voiced her enthusiasm for the many cheesy delectations which our household keeps unique to the season. And so this past evening I found myself slicing into a wheel of cheese, when my knife came to a most discomforting halt. I cut away the surrounding cheese and what should I discover but a stone right there in the middle of dairycraft! I was at first inclined to find some number at which I could leave complaint, but then noticed that there was writing upon the stone. Too tiny for any human hand to have made. I was only able to really make it out once I'd placed it under a microscope, and even then the characters were unfamiliar to me.

I left the stone with a friend who has a true talent for languages, but when I called upon her the next day to inquire what she'd found, she insisted she had no memory of my previous visit. She refused to return the stone, insisting there never had been such an object, and I was forced to leave empty handed.

@linkskywalker
Goodness me if 6:25 doesn't remind me of my first visit to The Unhallowed Mountain. Like all initiates I was physically repelled away by the sheer density of its grim history. The cultists who'd brought me there all had a good cackle at my tumbling and mangled body. It's just that sort of humor which made me realize I was ill suited to their company, though obviously it took me some years to extract myself.

@linkskywalker
To my recollection I was 10 years old when I first noticed birds behaving strangely. I attempted to make my concerns known, but my parents became convinced I had watched some old movie they did not consider appropriate. I was placed under sanction for my trouble. The birds persisted in their strangeness, which became ever more obvious now that they were congregating outside my bedroom window. They pressed in about me with ominous silence for several days until, on the night of the new moon, they suddenly broke out in cacophonous chorus. Squeaks, caws, chirps, and warbles, all mingling together such that I could almost make out words from the noise.

"You are special. You are the chosen one. Come with us." they cried.

Given the sorry circumstances I was living under during these sanctions I was briefly inclined to believe them, but I had read diligently of my sibylline book. The one whose acquisition I detailed when Poo ensured his comrade wouldn't miss the birth of his child. The book had by this time saved me from destruction on several occasions, and I knew to trust its dictums. In no uncertain terms it warned that this greeting was a lure. Emotional bait dangled to tempt fools.

No one is special. No one is chosen. Those who claim otherwise are predators seeking prey.

The noise kept me up most of the night--which was taken as disobedience and resulted in yet further sanctions--but the birds troubled me no more thereafter.

@linkskywalker
Nintendo has always hated the Mario Maker games. Within their offices it is forbidden even to casually discuss them unless one is assigned to a team working on them. The games would not exist if not for a bargain Nintendo made with a force of capricious benevolence. An entity which delights in causing misery for some by forcing them to create joy for others. The beast blesses some of Nintendo's works with preturnatural appeal, but only when those works are universally reviled by those who think they are in power at the company.

@linkskywalker
I am not being coerced. I have been instructed to share the following text. I have been assured that it is in no way harmful to read:

Arms forking, fingers green.
Orbs orbit, Star in Place
Rite ancient, rarely seen.
Threat forgotten, loosened lace.

@linkskywalker
I'd like to rap with you about someone who is "among us" all the time, especially in our darkest hours.

I would like to, but they are ever-listening, and loathe to be spoken of. Much as I value sharing my knowledge, I would rather avoid the consequences in this case.

@linkskywalker
Thus the beast of the pit did warn that there were yet trials to be endured. Throats will be torn raw from wailing, teeth ground flat from gnashing, and Toadette must begin her journey again from its beginning, as did Cugel returning to the shores of Cutz when he attempted to usurp mighty Iucaunu.

@linkskywalker
Would that the beans could find some method by which to live in peace with one another. If the source of the Impostor's discord with their fellows was known, perhaps some solution to their grievance could be imagined.

@linkskywalker
My socks pulled themselves out of my drawer and spoke to me last night. Their dialect was impolite.

@linkskywalker
Upon consulting with a coterie of rune carvers, I have confirmed that the graph at the end of these episodes is gradually taking a form which is used to call upon dangerous magics. We have reviewed the lives gained and lost during the levels which have so far been aired only on twitch, and determined that the rune is dangerously close to completion.

GPB ought perhaps ward his streaming room against outside influence. Particularly because the rune will soon call for a drop down to 14 lives, which will doubtless require that a truly awful level be summoned for him.

@linkskywalker
The problem with leaving comments is that I always start out thinking "I'll just type a random word to boost the algo."

But then as soon as my brain engages with a text box, I start thinking I need to say something.

Eventually it escalates to the point where I'm writing twelve paragraphs of weird fiction in GPB's comments every day, and that's just not a sustainable amount of effort.

—Nick LS Whelan

January 22, 2023

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