Narratives and the MSE

Wow @bcbishop…that’s a LOT to take in. Things are definitely not what they seem, in many ways.

Thanks for the recap of your very personal experience. I know the word “selfish” has been thrown around, but you have certainly never been selfish with your experiences and I really appreciate that. Some may disagree with your actions, but you have always been fully transparent about them and the reasons behind them.

If the MSE was all another fiction, does that mean that all the Anoch/Honoring/Anointed pieces were fiction? That Sabrina is not pregnant (attention again or part of a script)? That the Stephanie piece was indeed to lure BOS out into the open, and particularly with the encouraging folks to stand/leave with them, to show who is a traitor to the OSDM? Is it all a front for something larger, whether or not Tim Granik, DLB, Clint are in charge of it?

I’m thinking a bit of a fictional podcast I listened to on my drive yesterday, that has a similar sort of war between two sides, only to reveal to us that those sides, that whole war, is a fiction created to distract and manipulate others, to keep us, the general population, in line. Reading your account, @bcbishop , I’m inclined to agree that things are absolutely not what they seem, and something bigger is going on. Something that we’re meant to learn eventually maybe, but that they didn’t want us to see.

Can confirm that Darren was in the skull mask, and Gordon was in the Bauta mask. They both had friends in my group. Gordon revealed himself to his friends as we exited the building, and Darren’s friend recognized him immediately while were were in the dressing room, even with the mask on.

From a production standpoint, what a brilliant way to keep tabs on such a complex show! Literally hiding in plain sight.

In regards to some other weirdness, and I read into this what you will, but our tickets specifically said:
Mutual privacy and respect for everyone involved is our strongest imperative and,as such, no cameras or cell phones will be permitted on the property and will be grounds for immediate removal.

As Morgan prepped us in the parking lot for the event, he made sure that everyone in our group had their phone with them. Seemed a bit odd at the time, but he did explain that we weren’t going to the actual ticketed event. Once inside, the only time our phones were mentioned was when they were utilized by OSDM to have various people call their loved ones. Then they were immediately taken away. Maybe not indicative of anything on it’s own, but I did find it strange that most people wouldn’t have had their phones on them until Morgan asked.

Another oddity, and one that could totally make sense with a short explanation. The driver selected by Morgan was the same one the OOA used last year. Could be that he never knew what he was doing with the OOA last year, or Morgan knew he knew how to drive a big van, or he was BOS all along, but it did seem a little odd.

As for the script part. All of this hinges on Anna (she truly is The Beast and I don’t think I’ll ever forget her or her name). When I first encountered her, she made a number of references to this being an act, whether she was working off a script, had memorized lines, or was doing it off the top of her head. Truthfully, I don’t remember the specifics there because her reading of me was intense as hell. There was one thing I do remember exactly though. As we were leaving The Honoring, she turns to Cecilia and goes, “We’re getting paid for this anyways though, right?”

I wasn’t sure if she had been fucking with my head before, but at that point, I’m not even sure if she realized any participants were even paying attention to her.

One last bit of ‘all a performance weirdness’ too. As BOS passed through the lounge area on the way out, there was an actress/crew member in street clothes just chowing down on a slice of pizza.

@bcbishop First off, sorry for being a dick on slack. You have some VERY good points here. You know I’m not your biggest fan, but this is really important info that would’ve helped tremendously last night. You did say some really inspiring things last night, but I rue that fact that you didn’t use the platform given to you in the parking lot to alert us to these seemingly important revelations instead of acting so smug about snitching to Timbo.

Yes, Morgan was a bit sloppy. @rizzzoooooo and I had a chat with him just before the van pulled up (which we’ll get a brief topic up about soon) and he admitted he was surprised that even after sending 50+ groups through – a total of 500-600 people – nobody had done anything to stop him. He’d still send a signal, they’d come pick the group up, and he’d go back to hanging out around the corner until the next group. And this somehow continued until our 11:30 group last night, when the signal was dropped. He knew something was up, but it’s either fight or admit defeat. As much as I love Morgan, we know he’s a stubborn motherfucker that’s will go down with the ship.

Yes, it was irresponsible to put everyone in that position, even the unwilling or those that didn’t know or understand the gravity of what it meant to be there. To be honest, I shot him a text immediately after leaving on Friday night/Saturday morning, sharing a lot of the same concerns you outlined, letting him know that he had been compromised – specifically that they knew we had our phones, despite being told that there were no phones allowed, and no phones were found during the patdowns. So they’d have no reason to believe we had our phones on us. He thought someone in our group had alerted someone inside, or that there was a spy in the parking lot, as there were so many people coming and going throughout the night. Yeah, that sounds like bullshit, but at least it’s bullshit with some colorful sprinkles on it, versus the raw sewage they’re pumping over at the OSDM.

I’m not going to defend Morgan. He can defend himself. I’m sure he WILL defend himself. But I will say that Morgan is not the sole member of the BOS, and his beliefs aren’t the official beliefs of the resistance. But he is the face of the resistance, and seems to have more access due to his connections.

I was thinking about one specific scenario over the weekend, once it became clear how pieces were falling into place. If I was handed a gun and told that I needed to kill Morgan, but that his death would strengthen and energize the resistance would I do it? And with the information I had going into our evening last night, I think I would’ve (sorry bud). And I think he’d understand. We’ve pledged desire for their sacrifice and freedom? How about sacrificing one of your greatest friends for the freedom of those who have had their lives ruined by the OSDM.

But here’s something I’d love for you to think about, Bryan. You say this whole thing was a show because you saw a script. The whole idea of opening your ears and eyes means you have to look at what others are saying.. Mason told me that EVERYTHING is manipulation, and that they lie and lie and lie so when they tell one truth you start doubting things, and start wondering if those lies were actually truths. You got fucking played, dude.

You saw what you wanted to see when you spotted that script – another lie that they wanted you to take as truth, which you did. Same with “accidentally” seeing Darren and Clint. Yes, those masks were obviously Darren, Clint, and Gordon. I tried to get in Gordon’s face last night but got the cold shoulder. But you say Darren had a headset on.. Idk about you, but he was very obviously whispering to people with earpieces as I was speaking to them last night. I don’t think that headset was active, and I think we need to consider the idea that they may not have been there under their own volition.

I feel like we have very different points of view with all of this. You seem cynical of everything, and you have every right to be. They have given you no reason to trust you. I choose to be hopeful. I know that hope in this case is dangerous, but if I go down with hope, at least I’ll have died for something I believed in. And if I’m putting my trust and hope in the wrong people, then that’s on me and I accept all consequences, and instead hope that I can make things right. Maybe the ideals of helping and saving lives via this resistance is my Anoch. But with these stakes, I guess I’d rather believe in the possibility of making a change.

I’m going to add something about “The Master” (DLB).

Last night I was roaming down the hallway looking in all the rooms. I saw Zane in the bathroom cleaning and looking distraught. This is the bathroom where the male is anointed for the offering.

My time in the bathroom with Zane was interesting and maybe if anyone spent time with him in there last night could share if they had a similar reveal of information.

When I went in the door was closed by someone one. Zane asked me to sit with him. I asked him why he seemed so distraught. He asked me if I knew Mason Silver. I am really good friends with @coryphell which means I know all about Mason. Was it a coincidence he was bringing Mason up to me of all people? Megan and I are really close.

I explained to Zane how I knew of him. He told me that Mason is a horrible person and my friend needs to get away from him. Sorry, Megan for this, I explained that she won’t.. she’s under his spell. And, as her friend, I know that Mason will destroy her. He told me his story about how he got there and it’s Mason’s fault. I can’t remember if he told me how long he has been there. Sorry about that. He did share that he never leaves. I asked if he’s allowed to and he said if he does they will find him.

His story is this.. His brother was hit by drunk driver. He’s fine but has leg problems from the accident which, I assume, has resulted in a lot of medical bills. He also said his dad was diagnosed with (I think) ALS. It’s been a horrible two years for him and he wanted to help his family out. He thought by acting he could make some good money to help them. He had been told he had what it took to be a great actor. Mason was a big influence on him trying out for “this role.” The trailer version of his story… He tried out and got a call back. He got three call backs. Mason was the one behind it all and very encouraging at the time. Mason called and said he got the job. He thought he was coming to film a movie and was instead given different duties.

While he was telling me this story, The Master walked in and, without speaking and what I presumed to be a warning, told him to be quiet. He pointed to him and did the “shhh” finger gesture. When he left, he got close to me and asked me if I have interacted with The Master. I said “no.” He explained to me that no one knows who he is but when he’s there really bad things happen. Bad things always happen when he’s there and warned me to stay away from him.

He asked me to help him escape. He said another man there was going to bring him a mask but never came back. I told him I would see what I could do. And, then, I asked his name. He said it was Zane…and then he said, “Zane… like insane.” Then, he started laughing hysterically.

In stories, there is often an unreliable narrator. How do we even know that some of these stories are even true? That these people are being held against their will. With the reveal of the men behind the masks, how do we not know that this isn’t just theater? I noticed that Gordon was there on my 1st run through. He was walking around in the bar when we first mingled with people.

It was a bit of a reveal when he spoke about The Master. And, yes, we know it’s DLB. So, is DLB really a driving force behind all of this and was never kicked out. Is he really the actually puppet master pulling all the strings? Is it theater or is he maniacal like Zane made him out to be?

Zane could be an unreliable narrator with his last personality reveal to me; or, he could be just an actor.

What I do know is that I am now on Mason’s shit list because I told Megan everything Zane said to me. lol Oh well, I don’t trust Mason at fucking all.

THANK YOU, @bcbishop, for bringing this particular set of personal experiences to light. I wanted to wait until everything was done and I could see what particular ‘plot points’ were being added to the overall narrative before I said anything–but I had the EXACT same questions about whether or not what we saw was real as you do when I went on Friday.

When Morgan realized none of us had gotten the hand signals email, his comment was “We’ve intercepted enough of theirs–I guess I should only expect the same in return.” I was immediately on guard about the possibility that we might be walking into some trap/fake scenario.

When we first got to the location, Mason’s (who was our guide) first words were, “I don’t recognize any of you.” Which A) seemed unlikely given that we had at least one well-known individual in our group and B) confused the hell out of me, because if Mason was supposedly sent in there by Noah to help handle things, WHY in the world would he risk outing everyone at once at the beginning?

During the time we were there, my roommate Thea had private conversations with both Mason and Noah, and was told multiple times that “we know you don’t belong” and “don’t fuck it up.” I tried to give that a pass in my head, because they were both part of the plan as far as I understood it–but again, why call attention to her by dragging my roommate through the entire building and multiple groups experiencing the same event if you’re trying to have us ‘infiltrate and report back’? Doesn’t that just draw attention TO her instead?

Moreover, at least for Thea and I, the theme of the night was rebooting. She had a conversation with the older gentleman at the bar and he asked her about herself, told her about his daughter and his father’s ‘buggering’ a woman to death and then suddenly started asking her the same questions again–as though he was a video game NPC that was rebooting to the top of the conversation. I had the same experience with the lounge singer from Oklahoma–she asked me questions and then asked them again. And I had a similar experience with Stephanie in the ritual room, where she seemed to be rebooting in some fashion–multiple times, it looked like. I couldn’t shake the idea throughout that we were seeing people either having a set number of lines/questions they could ask OR people who were mind-screwed in some fashion and we were seeing the effects of that as glitches.

Stephanie at one point persuaded me to lie down on a bed on the floor in that room. She then pretended to be flirting with me while having a strange conversation. She stated I didn’t have any children–which is true–and when I acknowledged that, she told me I didn’t look the type. Trying to remain within my ‘role’ of infiltrator, I said that for the OSDM I would gladly make an exception, provided I didn’t have to be a part of raising the child. That was when she rebooted the first time, reverting back to earlier questions for a moment before seeming to find her thread again. She then told me about how she’d once been asked by a friend to pick up a child from a park. When she got there, the child refused to come, having a massive tantrum. So she called her friend, who came over and said it was time to go and asked the child whether he wanted to play video games or watch tv when he got home. The child immediately announced he wanted to watch tv and THEN play video games and leaped into the car. Stephanie said the mother had then told Stephanie the moral of the story:

She didn’t actually care WHAT choice her child made–either, one or both. All that mattered was that he get into the car. In other words, it didn’t matter what choice we made, because the only thing that mattered was that we do what they wanted. There was the strong implication that what we were doing was something they had planned for, too.

By the time we got to the actual ritual, I was nearly convinced that everything was a show–that the OSDM had learned of Morgan’s plan and had staged a special event for us that would allow us to feel as though we’d succeeded at ‘infiltrating’ something. But when Noah interrupted everything, I was no longer certain WHAT I was seeing–because that interruption appeared to either legitimize this place as being the ‘real’ event or delegitimize Noah (and essentially everyone else on the BOS/Morgan side) OR suggest that everyone–including them–had been fooled into believing this was the real event.

Now there’s at least one person who was part of the OSDM’s event who apparently doesn’t remember what she was doing when texted about it. Your experience adds even more layers of questions in my head. I’m not declaring the scenario true or false, but I certainly had similar questions. It’s why I’ve begun to try and reach out to some of the people within the narrative to see if I can make a determination once and for all as to what I believe is happening.

I teach about how to create stories for my job. I write and direct stories constantly, and it makes me watch the world around me and attempt to create sense out of it through story. If nothing else, Lust has persuaded me that the real narrative here–whatever it turns out to be–is something worth seeking out.

Going to just spit this out there and, if it turns out to be OOG, I trust the mods will delete. But, at this point, I’m 99.9% convinced it’s IG, so…

Darren’s wife was in my group on Thursday. I didn’t recognize her, until @shaun confirmed in the parking lot after the show. As we were returning to our cars, a man who was supposedly headed into the next show (9:30 slot?) walked up and mentioned that he had accidentally parked in the wrong lot and his car had gotten locked in. Darren’s wife told him she could help him get his car out and commented, “It’s ok… I know the director”. If she was attending OOG, it surprised me that she’d say that within earshot, being that DLB had supposedly been removed from the project.

So…
1) If what we saw was real, why was Darren’s wife at an OSDM event?
2) If what we overheard her say is true, then it supports the “DLB is an evil director mastermind” theory and the suggestion that everything we saw is more theatre.

And, yes @kevin, I also wondered why Morgan was using that same driver.

• This reply was modified 7 years ago by superstar. Reason: typo

I’m a bit confused by the attack on @bcbishop. And, yes, Addison, especially the stuff on Slack. It was surprising to me. I don’t think Bryan deserved that.

What I am confused by is the whole “You got played.” How do we even know if there is anyone who isn’t being played? I think all of us are to some extent even BOS. We have no idea what the whole end game is. Not one single person in this community can answer that question with absolute certainty. But, because BOS thinks this is an actual cult and maybe not theater, those who disagree are the ones who are getting played?

I’m sorry you believe that Bryan is selfish and self-centered @wintermute. You obviously do not know him or you would never say he is. He’s on his own path just as you have said. He doesn’t need to think about anyone else even if his choices have a greater impact on the community. He held information and shared information with people he trusted.

He knew he was going to get flack for the email he sent to Granik. But, as we spoke after our first run through, we both were a bit upset that Morgan assumed we would be the eyes and ears for BOS. We weren’t going in as agents of BOS. We had no plans to disclose to them anything we learned or saw that night. He made a play. Anyone could have emailed Granik. Bryan thought of it and did it. He didn’t want to walk in last night with anyone in the OSDM thinking he was pro-BOS.

Bryan also struggled with revealing that he knew DLB was there during our first run-through. We spoke about it at length both after Friday’s event and last night. He still wasn’t sure if he should reveal it last night. And, not because he wanted to hold information from the community but because he wasn’t sure if he should.

People hold information all the time in this community. The last people Bryan is going to run to with anything is BOS. He doesn’t agree with their agenda. I’m sure there’s a lot of information that isn’t shared by BOS and is only shared with it’s loyal members.

And, I’m just going to put this out there. I’ve not been as active as I was during Tension. Part of it is personal but also part of it is because there are some shitty things that have occurred this season. Calling people names, being out right cruel isn’t cool and it makes the game suck. We aren’t in high school. I’ve lost a lot of respect for the way a few people have played the game this season. And, real friendships have been ruined by it. It’s sad. Grow the fuck up. Stop being bullies because there are a few in the yard this year.

Certainly much remains willfully foggy and unclear.

Not an active ARG participant, I wonder if those who are active have fully plundered the connections between the ARG and the live event?

Curious where our Registration friends are right now. And interested in applying the “Shadow” personalities on this forum to things like the suddenly much-nicer van driver.

There’s also a level of super-saturated “theatricality” in everything we’ve seen I don’t totally trust.

I was thinking it would be the same thing, all data mining, until she gave my reading.

What Anna said to me I did not disclose in my ticket answers, or in Slack, or the forums, or publicly on Facebook. It’s something I talk about a lot with friends, but not publicly.

@bcbishop this is…wow. Have we pointed out here that Stephanie screamed for Darren as she was being forced to undress?

I’m concerned by how disturbingly this may fit in with your information.

Building on Bryan’s point about the event being fiction –

I do believe it was fiction. But I don’t believe that Morgan knew it was fiction beforehand. And I believe that it may have been *forced* fiction: that actors with sides may still have been there under duress.

For what it’s worth, as we stood in the parking lot after the events of the finale, Mason told Morgan that he believed that it may all have been an act. They intercepted Morgan’s “hand signal” email – that could have contained enough detail to let them know we were coming.

I think he was probably right. That would explain why the drugs were fake, and why they continued on with the show even after recognizing us. It could also explain why Noah interrupted the show night after night, and nobody stopped him – he had a role to play.

(This is why I don’t trust Noah. I think he was playing a part: I think he knew it was all staged, and didn’t tell Morgan.)

@daela if we are saying that every night was canon (as we should, since that’s the same for tension last year), would you also not trust Mason? Mason played the part just as anyone else, easily being able to tell Morgan every night was fiction rather than just saying he thought it was fiction last minute.

I certainly don’t trust Mason in this context.

@rizzzoooooo I’m not sure. Mason’s role repeated in a way that made sense for an actual social mixer: guide people through, watch new groups come in, etc. Noah’s role repeated in a way that didn’t make sense for anything but a theatrical performance. I also get the (perhaps false) impression that Mason is someone who keeps to himself, while Noah knows the ins and outs of the business. So I find myself cutting Mason much more slack when it comes to what he should have known and when.

@daela
I do quite enjoy mason and am always hoping for him to not be in on it all BUT he did watch Noah so the same thing over and over? Wouldn’t he tell Morgan after the first night that Noah has been giving the exact same speech, down to the blocking, every hour? Or did they figure it was fake and decide to continue on so we participants always had a safety net on the inside (mason) for the rest of the weekend?