I changed accounts.
Well, now you guys know what I meant when I said "BYOB's stuff is better."
...cue thread lock. :/
I am now known as Flyboy.
Nemesis
Heh!
A brighter future for a darker age.
Culinary Major Beep Boop
Ignore this statement.
edited 23rd Dec '11 3:36:29 PM by Chefbot9000
I changed accounts.
Culinary Major Beep Boop
This was nothing if not a nice read.
♦
Awesome. This is nothing but greatness.
"Dr. Strangeloid, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Cleanlink" - thespacephantom
One of the author's best (and he's done some corkers).
I changed accounts.
See, I haven't read this story in a long time, and we stopped going to the annual play they put on of this a few years ago.
I must find it now. ![[lol]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lol2v12_4863.png "[lol]"){kind=small}
Still, I think this is hilarious, personally.
I am now known as Flyboy.
Laugh and grow dank!
I don't think I understand the context of this. Did anyone actually seriously miss Troper Tales? BYOB was right, it was purposeless.
yey
I changed accounts.
It's a parody of both A Christmas Carol and the stereotypical troper as seen elsewhere on the internet. By somebody who does these a lot, and is particularly good at making them amusing and entertaining.
I am now known as Flyboy.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Have you seen his Hamlet parody? I particularly enjoyed that one.
I changed accounts.
I didn't enjoy that one as much, because I have yet to see or read Hamlet. :/
My favorite was the "TV Tropes goes to war" one (I don't know what else to call it). It wasn't a parody of anything specifically (as far as I could tell; if it was, I don't know what), but it was absolutely hilarious.
They think me mad
That's a shame, since the Hamlet one was the best of them imo.
I believe it was a parody of The Killer Angels.
I changed accounts.
Yeah, one of these days I'll read Hamlet and then go find it again, assuming it's still around. 
This is actually really good, I love the idea of taking a classic story of a man who separates himself from the world through misanthropy and greed and then applying that to the common geek hatred of people they view as beneath them and how they separate themselves from popular society due to that perception. I am looking forward to more of these in the future. Thanks, BYOB, that was beautiful.
Ah, so that's what USAF was talking about. Will this be continued?
(Incidentally, if this stereotype was really representative of the majority of tropers, I'd join the hatedom myself.)
I changed accounts.
He has continued it, I think. I'll go see.
And, yeah. There's other ones. They're all really good and really funny.
Edit:
Troper went to bed again, and thought it over, and could make nothing of it. The more he thought, the more perplexed he was; and the more he endeavoured not to think, the more he thought Troper Tales’s ghost bothered him exceedingly. Every time he resolved within himself, after mature argument, that it was all a dream, his mind flew back, like a strong spring released, to its first position, and presented the same problem to be worked all through, “was it a dream or not?”
Troper lay in this state, waiting for the hour, when he remembered, on a sudden, that the ghost had warned him of a visitation when the bell tolled on. He considering that he could no more go to sleep than get a date, this was perhaps the wisest resolution in his power.
At length it broke upon his listening ear. His Droid Phone beeped the hour.
“The hour itself,” said Troper, triumphantly, “and nothing else!” Light flashed up in the room upon the instant, and the curtains of his bed were drawn aside; and Troper, starting up into a half-recumbent attitude, found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them.
It was a strange figure—like a child, peering at him over dark glasses. Its chestnut head of hair hung past its frail, honey-hued shoulders and down its silky supple back. A polka-dotted black kerchief was tied around its chest. But the strangest thing about it was that it seemed to constantly be moving in pool of sun. She carried with her a lampshade just large enough to fit over her small head.
“Are you the spirit, miss, whose coming was foretold to me? Asked Troper.
“Uh-huh.” The response was a soft chirp; melodic and juvenile. Singularly low, as if instead of being so close beside him, it were at a distance.
“Who, and what are you?” Troper demanded.
“I’m the Ghost of Christmas Past.”
Perhaps, Troper couldn’t tell why; perhaps because of the intense light, but he was overcome with a desire to cover the spirit with the lampshade. As he reached out to take it, the ghost started back.
“What are you doing!” exclaimed the ghost with a look of unfeigned surprise, “What’s your problem? Christ sake, it’s bad enough that you made it, you gotta make me wear it?” The spirtit angrily snatched the lampshade. Troper reverently disclaimed all intention to offend. He then made bold to inquire what business brought it there.
“I’m gonna help you. Come on, get up!” It put out its clumsy hand as it spoke, and clasped him forcefully by the arm. “We’re going.”
It would have been in vain for Troper to plead that the weather and the hour were not adapted to pedestrian purposes; that the bed was warm, and the thermometer a long way below freezing; that he was clad but lightly in his slippers, dressing-gown, and nightcap.
“You talk like a book,” the spirit said frankly. “You know that?” The grasp, though gentle as a girl’s hand, was not to be resisted. He rose: but finding that the spirit made towards the window, clasped his robe in supplication.
“I am mortal,” Troper remonstrated, “and liable to fall.”
“I’m a spirit, dim-bulb,” said the spirit, rolling its eyes, “Let’s go!” As the words were spoken, they passed through the wall, and stood upon an playground, with sport’s fields on either hand. It was a clear, cold, winter day, with snow upon the ground. “Good heaven!” sad Troper, clasping his hands together, as he looked about him. “This is my old school. I went to school here!”
The spirit gazed upon him mildly. He was conscious of a thousand odours floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares, long, long forgotten.
“Know where we’re going?” inquired the Spirit.
“Remember it!” cried Troper with fervour, “I could walk it blindfold.”
They walked along the road; Troper recognising every gate, and post, and tree. Children were all about them. All of them were in great spirits, and shouted to each other, until the fields and swings and jungle-gyms were so full of their merry music that the crisp air laughed to hear it.
“They can’t hear you,” said the ghost. “It’s a look don’t touch thing. Oh, and while we’re on the subject, I know that you people have a habit of blaming me for things that aren’t my fault.”
“People like me?” repeated Troper.
“I’m just showing you what happened. I didn’t make this up. Don’t blame me if you don’t like it.”
Troper nodded. He was filled to the brim with strange feeling. Why was he filled with gladness in seeing these children again? Were they not his tormenters? Were they not the children who filled his young life with perpetual suffering? Yet here they were, the very same children; This Troper could feel no malice in his heart, for these were not the monsters he remembered. He knew many of their faces, and named them.
“This is Tom,” said Troper gleefully. “When we were young he courted one I was quite taken with! There was a time when they were in my way and I ordered them to be silent!”
“That didn’t happen,” noted the spirit matter-of-factly.
“It did so! And when Tom walked over to me like a wild man, I made quick work of him with my Oriental pugilism!”
“Puh-lease!”
“It is the truth! And when I was quite satisfied, he crawled to his beloved and said ‘That child is truly no man!’”
“You know that I can see the past?” asked the spirit. “Right?” Troper shyly shifted his feet and apologized for his brazen lie. “You know, not all the kids are on the playground. Fact, there’s one still inside all by himself!”
Troper said he knew it.
They went, the ghost and Troper, across the hall, to a door at the back of the school. It opened before them, and disclosed a melancholy room, made barer by lines of desks and posters extolling the virtues of reading and of mathematics. At one of these desks sat a lonely boy playing a Gameboy. The spirit touched Troper’s on the arm, and pointed to his younger self, intent upon his play.
“Poke’mon: Gold Version. I remember this day! This was the recess I achieved the hundredth level with my loyal Houndoom!” announced Troper proudly. He went over to his younger self, and looked over his shoulder with a broad smile.
“I don’t know what that means,” said the spirit. “But it sounds impressive. I’ll bet that took some work.”
“It certainly did, and it was well worth it! I spent more recesses than I can remember like this. All by my lonesome self, hard at work at a game, or reading a book of Star Wars lore.”
“Lonesome? That sounds like the right word.”
“I was alone, sure enough. But I liked to be alone. I could pour myself into my passions, my joys. Comfort was more readily available in a game or a manga. I knew what to expect, and what was expected of me. I never had to fear the betrayal that come from real people.”
“So you were afraid?”
“Not as such. I was cautious. I was aware of risk and reward. Why should I have risked humiliation and heartache with my peers if a fitting substitute could be found?” said Troper, trying just as hard to convince himself as the spirit. He relented, and looked back down at the child. “Poor boy!” he cried. “I wish,” Troper muttered, putting his hand in his pocket, and looking about him, after drying his eyes with his cuff, “but it’s too late now.”
The ghost smiled thoughtfully, and waved its hand. “Let us see another Christmas.”
Although they had but a moment left the school behind them, they were now in the busy thoroughfares of a city. The ghost stopped at a certain shop door, and asked Troper if he knew it.
“Know it!” said Troper. “It is Book Trader! I worked here during high school!”
They went in. At sight of an old gentleman with a mullet, sitting behind such a glass counter, that if he had been two inches taller he must have knocked his head against the ceiling, Troper cried in great excitement.
“Why, it’s old Fezziwig! Bless his heart!”
Troper’s former self, an acne-riddled young man with a greasy ponytail, came briskly in, accompanied by his fellow employee.
“Dick Wilkins, to be sure!” said Troper to the ghost. “Bless me, yes. There he is!”
“Yo ho, my boys!” said Fezziwig. “Let’s get going; the party starts in an hour.” They charged into the street and piled into old Fezziwig’s hatchback. “Hilli-ho!” cried old Fezziwig, skipping through traffic, with wonderful agility. “Clear away, my lads, and let’s have lot’s of room here! Hilli-ho!”
They made quick time to Fezziwig’s apartment. The preperations were done in a minute, and in no time at all, guests of every walk of life came wandering in. In came a DJ with thousands of tunes, and he set up a most exquisite sound system; in came Fezziwigs mother, one vast substantial smile; in came Fezziwig’s three sisters, beaming and lovable; in came the six young followers whose hearts they broke; in came all the young men and women employed in the outlet mall. In they all came, one after another; some shyly, some boldly, some gracefully, some awkwardly, some pushing, some pulling, in they all came.
There was dancing, and there were video games, and more dances, and there were Magic the Gathering matches, and there was cake, and liquor. When the clock struck eleven, the domestic ball broke up. Mr. And Mrs. Fezziwig took their stations, one on either side of the door, and shaking hands with every person individually as he or she went out, wished him or her a Merry Christmas.
During the whole of this time, Troper had acted like a man out of his wits. He heart and should were in the scene, and with his former self. He corroborated everything, remembered everything, enjoyed everything, and underwent the strangest agitation.
“Fezziwig was a right good fellow!” exclaimed Troper.
“I can’t imagine why,” said the ghost, “He was ugly, he wasn’t funny, he boring. In fact, he had all the same interests as you! Those games, terrible books, Japanese things and all that.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Troper, heated by the remark, and speaking unconsciously like his former, not his latter, self. “His appearance or his interests were irrelevant, spirit. It was how he made us feel! When he was about, he made sure everyone had a joyous time, and ensured that we were comfortable and happy. People wanted to be around him, and to be like him. The happiness he gave couldn’t be counted, but it was worth a fortune nonetheless.”
“It’s almost like you can enjoy the things you do,” the spirit noted, “and not be a rude, insensitive little jerk.” Troper began to respond, but he felt the spirit’s glance and stopped. “I have to go soon,” observed the spirit. “Let’s hurry!”
Again Troper saw himself. He was older now; there was an obsessive, greedy, offensive motion in the eye, which showed the passion that had taken root, and where the shadow of the growing tree would fall. He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young girl in a warm and stylish coat: her eyes sparkled in the light that shone out of the ghost of Christmas past.
“You seem happy, Belle.” young Troper observed.
“I met someone,” the woman beamed.
“You met someone?”
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. This is just the way of the world!” he said. “For how long must I listen to you lament your love-life before you realize that we are meant to be together? Long have I waited, and talked and listened, and I have provided much comfort. Why must you break my heart?”
“You feel this way? I am sorry that I cannot return your feelings,” she answered, gently. “You have been a good friend, and I hope this does not harm our relationship.”
“Am I to be forever trapped in the friend zone?” he retorted. “All this time, trying to show you how worthy a man I am—Nice Guy. And I am repaid with the Friend Zone? All that work for naught?”
“You mean to say that you only ever acted as my friend that I might be your lover?” the girl answered, shocked. “How can you call yourself a ‘nice guy’ when you would do something so utterly repulsive!” The girl bolted up and stomped away fuming.
“Good riddance,” young Troper shouted after her, before muttering, “Whore.”
“This 'Belle' seemed so nice,” said the ghost. “This must have been hard for both of you.”
“So she was,” said Troper. “You’re right, I will not gainsay it, spirit. I just wish she could have seen how much happier I could have made her!”
“I though you were ‘asexual,’” said the ghost. “I don’t think you really believe that you are asexual; or that she would be happy with you at all.”
“It helps,” said Troper weakly. “What does it matter, she has a husband now.”
“True,” said the ghost. “Your neighbor."
“Spirit!” ordered Troper in a broken voice, “remove me from this place.”
“Don’t get angry at me, I didn’t do anything! This was all you!” said the ghost. “I told you, didn’t I? ‘Don’t blame me!’”
“Remove me!” Troper exclaimed, “I cannot bear it!”
He turned upon the ghost, and seeing that it looked upon him with a face, in which in some strange way there were fragments of all the faces it had shown him, wrestled with it.
“Leave me! Take me back. Haunt me no longer!”
In the struggle, though Troper wouldn't call it a struggle, for the ghost with no visible resistance on its own part, was undisturbed by any effort of its adversary, Troper observed that the light was burning high and bright; and being the logician that he was, he dimly connecting that with its influence over him, he seized the lampshade, and by a sudden action pressed it down upon its head.
The spirit dropped beneath it, so that the lampshade covered its whole form; but though Troper pressed it down with all his force, he could not hide the light, which streamed from under it, in an unbroken flood upon the ground.
He was conscious of being exhausted, and overcome by an irresistible drowsiness; and, further, of being in his own basement. He gave the lampshade a parting squeeze, in which his hand relaxed, and had barely time to reel to bed, before he sank into a heavy sleep.
I hope he doesn't mind. He's expressed... mild distress that his things ended up here. Unfortunately, I have no way of directly reaching him to ask. :/
edited 23rd Dec '11 8:55:12 PM by USAF713
I am now known as Flyboy.
I would argue that there are elements of the stereotype in all of us, however a stereotype is a one dimensional caricature of a three-dimensional human being, it can never fully display what a person or a group of people is like, much like how tropes are one dimensional views on a three-dimensional work of art. BYOB's work is criticizing an undercurrent of misanthropy present in all of nerd culture and is applying it to one of the most prominent nerd websites.
I'm talking about the specific details of the stereotype, not just "misanthropy".
Edited out.
edited 23rd Dec '11 9:14:32 PM by nrjxll
It is based on A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens and it is written by someone who presumably goes by the handle of Build Your Own Boat. Given that it is about a phenomenon on the internet we can assume he is in a first world country, and given that it is written in English, one whose language is English. So we now have a fairly reasonable assumption of the context that the work was written in and thus it should be easier to understand the intended meaning of the work.
I hope that helped. (Vis-á-vis misanthropy: It is quite common to see nerdy youths adopt the mindset that nothing matters but themselves and TV Tropes is nothing if it isn't a place for the congregation of like-minded nerdy youths)
Laugh and grow dank!
I didn't actually know that. In all my time here, that sort of sentiment has never really reached me. I suppose it goes a ways to explaining the hatedom. Misanthropy is, in my view, generally something that should be shunned, mostly for the arrogance it reveals for the misanthrope's apparent willingness to judge the entirety of humankind despite it being literally physically impossible for him to understand enough people on a deep enough level to possibly justify that judgement.
edited 23rd Dec '11 10:18:27 PM by Gault
yey
Chapter 1—Troper Tales' Ghost
Troper Tales was dead: to begin with.
This Troper knew it was dead. How could it be otherwise? Troper had been an active contributor to Troper Tales. Troper was its sole mourner. And even Troper was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, for he could take his inane, and ill-informed opinions to Yakfest.
Oh! But he was a pig-headed backwards manchild, Troper! A whining, wheezing, sweating, slouching, asexual old loser! Brittle and useless as an old sponge from which salmonella was liable to spread; rude and self-important, as solitary as a ronin.
Once upon a time—of all good days of the year—on Christmas Eve, old Troper sat idly in the basement, reading manga online. The door was shut that his mother might not disturb him with her mindless nagging. There came a knocking at the door, and while Troper tried to ignore it, it continued. So he sluggishly rose to answered it.
It was his neighbour, Fred Jock. He was chatting away with Troper’s mother about some advertisement for a charity. When Troper emerged from the dark basement, Jock’s eyes lit up.
"A merry Christmas, Troper! God save you!" shouted the neighbour.
"Baka!" said Troper. "Aho!"
"Beg pardon?"
"It means ‘foolish idiot’ in Nihon-Go," groaned This Troper. "I should not have expected a baka gaijin like you to have a refined taste in language."
"'Merry Christmas' is foolish?" said Troper’s neighbour. "You don’t mean that, I am sure."
"I do," said Troper. "What reason have you to be merry? You’re stupid enough."
"What reason have you to be dismal? You’re smart enough," returned the neighbour gaily.
"What else can I be," returned Troper, "when I live in such a world of baka gaijin? What’s Christmas time to but a time to be swarmed by people you don’t like; a time for recieving the wrong present because your mother knows not the difference between shoujo and shonen; a time for parasites to demand some of my hard earned money to provide for their own laziness? You want to know what I’d do, if I could work my will?" said Troper indignantly, "It has been covered countless times on both my Literotica and Deviant Art accounts. It’s all in there, and it is grisly. That is, assuming you can read."
"Troper!" pleaded his mother.
"Why don’t you enjoy your Christmas playing hockey or whatever it is that you do, and let me enjoy it in my own way."
"Enjoy it?" said the neighbour. "But did you not just say you did not enjoy it?"
"Perhaps it is because you refuse to leave me in peace," said Troper. "Besides, what good has your commercial holiday ever done?"
"There is so much good that it can do," returned the neighbour. "There are commercial qualities, to be sure, but Christmas is about more than that; it is about the spirit! I’ve always thought of Christmas as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of when men and women seem to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow people, and not just soulless creatures to be shunned or done away with. It is a time of community, and culture; it is a time to aid your fellow man. And even if it shall take every piece of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say God bless it!"
"Community and culture?" said Troper. "How can anything good come from that? My but you are a baka!"
"You should really try being friendly some time, it feels good. That reminds me," the neighbour picked up a small gift on the table and passed it to Troper. "This is for you." Troper began to tear greedily into the paper. "It is a collection of Gary Larson’s Farside. I recall that you enjoy comics!"
"I enjoy manga! Not this humourless Occidental rubbish!" said Troper. "What possible use could this serve?"
"My apologies, neighbour, you don’t like it," said the neighbour, awkwardly picking up the discarded paper.
"If you want, I could take it back and get you something when you and your mother dine with us tomorrow. The wife has not you much, of late. She'd never say it, such as she is, but I'm most certain she misses your company!"
"Why did she marry you?" said Troper.
"Because we fell in love."
"Because you fell in love?" growled Troper. "Baka aho!"
"Nay, Troper, I know that you and I do not get on well, but must you be so sour towards her?"
"Sayonara."
"I want nothing from you; why cannot we be friends?"
"Sayonara!"
"I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. So a Merry Christmas, Troper!"
"Sayonara!"
"And a Happy New Year." His neighbour left the room without an angry word, notwithstanding. He shared the greeting of the season with This Troper’s mother, and she returned it cordially.
"My mother," muttered Troper, who overheard them, "if there is anyone who deserves less happiness than that Jerk Jock, surely it would be my she."
Mother Troper ignored the comment. She was a portly woman, but youthful and patient. Despite her situation, she maintained an air of gaiety—an air her son sadly would not share.
"Troper, I have lately been thinking," said the mother, rising from her recliner, "it is desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, is it not? They suffer greatly. When I watched the television long yester-night, I happened upon a charity to aid women in the Abyssinian countryside. It did pique my interest, so."
"Are there no prisons?" asked Troper. "Are there no shelters that they must beg money from people that matter?"
"There are, still," said the mother sadly. She removed her spectacles and gently rubbed her temples. "But they are poorly maintained and do little to better the situation. Especially for womenfolk."
"Oh! So the feminine gland grants them privileged treatment, then?" said Troper. "If I can survive being so bothered by our boorish neighbour, then they can survive their misfortune. Call on me when these baka gaijin endeavor to solve real problems."
"Is it not a real problem? These wretched folk are dying!"
"If they are dying," said Troper, "Then they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. If you’ll excuse me, mother, I cannot be bothered with their business. I am preoccupied enough by my own. Now trouble me no more! I must achieve two-hundred thousand words by the new year!" Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue her point, Mother Troper withdrew.
Troper retired to the solitude of the basement. He removed his Nice Hat, and his Badass Longcoat and began surfing the internet’s digital waves. In time, he found he was again mentioned by those fiendish trolls on the Something Awful forums. It seemed that they had taken issue with what he’d said about surprise sex. Troper was never one to put much stock into the opinion of goons. After all, they were only bullying him. "Haters are to invariable hate," said This Troper. "After all, if they are foolish enough to believe that all unwanted congress is surprise sex, then they are truly damaged. If a woman didn't want to be known, she would not take liquor; nor would she take such scandalous dress. If there be no violence, how then can they say a crime occurred. Such beliefs are most juvenile, and those who hold them are naught but a cog in the anti-male engine that is this society."
Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the monitor of Troper’s personal computer. It is also a fact that Troper had as little of what is called imagination about him as anyone that ever lived. It happened that Troper, having decided to enjoy some quality hentai, found that every address he entered into his browser brought him to the deleted Troper Tales. As Troper looked fixedly at this phenomenon, and then it was hentai again.
He was confused, he was certain that this was a joke. He did pause, with a moment’s irresolution, to ponder whether Fast Eddie had restored the embattled section as he climbed the basement stairs. He dismissed the notion with a laugh. When he reached the door, he said "Baka aho!" and closed it with a bang. The sound resounded through the house like thunder. Each corner of his cavernous basement seemed to have a peal of echo all its own.
Shutting off the light, Troper went down, not caring a button for the darkness: darkness did not cast glare on his monitor, and Troper liked it. But before he indulged in his self-gratifying session of sapphic animation (including literally gratifying himself—a rarity amongst asexuals, and one his unique qualities from which he drew much pride), he returned to the door, and double-locked himself in, to prevent his mother from spoiling his ambiance.
The hentai was an old classic, Immoral Sisters, which showed the true artistic potential of the medium. It is a timeless story: a young mother named Yukie is forced to sexually service the millionaire Taketo after a car accident; Taketo and his secretary Yumi force Yukie’s young daughters to join, as well, and they become a happy family. Yet, try as he might, he could not enjoy the delicate artistry, when Yukie’s husband overcomes his impotence during a moving scene and finally has sex with his young daughter. He couldn’t share Yukie’s joy as she gets double-penetrated by her husband and her daughter, while the other daughter watches. He could not enjoy the moment where the two daughters give in to their desires and make love, driving their onlooking mother so mad with passion that she and Yumi must join them. All the beauty and power of the story was lost as in the face of every deep and meaningful character This Troper saw naught but Troper Tales.
"Baka aho!" said Troper; as threw his head back in the chair. There was much wrong with the world if joy could not be found, even in the pure and innocent world of hentai. His glance happened to rest upon the aged and broken telephone on his wall—a relic from his mother's long forgotten landline. It was with inexplicable dread, that the phone began to ring. It rang out loudly, and so did every other phone, bell, chime, alarm and appliance in the house.
The bells ceased as they had begun, together. They were succeeded by a clanging noise, deep high above; as if some person were dragging a heavy chain. The basement door door flew open, and then he heard the noise much louder; then coming down the stairs; then coming up behind him.
"Baka aho! Still!" said Troper.
There stood a man, or rather the form of a man; the chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound about him like the tail of a Kemono-Obito. It was made of video-games, manga, figurines, fedoras, and katanas all wrought in steel.
"How now!" said Troper, caustic and cold as ever, "What do you want with me?"
"Much!"
"Who are you?" asked Troper.
"Ask me what I am!"
"You are a Grammar Nazi of a spirit," returned Troper. "Very well—what are you?"
"In life I was your hug-box, Troper Tales."
"Can you sit?"
"I can." The ghost sat down on the opposite side of Troper as if he were quite used to it. Troper puzzled on how it was that a website could have a ghost—indeed it is a queer notion. Know only that I thought it was clever when I first came up with it, and question whether you could do any better.
"You don’t believe in me," observed the ghost.
"I don’t," said Troper.
"Why do you doubt your senses?"
"Because," said Troper, "their mileage may vary! A slight disorder of the stomach makes them trolls. You may be an undigested bit of pocky, a blot of ranch dressing, a crumb of cheeto, a bit of excess Monster energy drink. There’s more of gravy than of grave of you. Aho, I tell you, baka!" At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chains with such a dismal and appalling noise that Troper fell upon his knees and clasped his hands before his face.
"Mercy!" he said. "High Octane Nightmare Fuel, why do you trouble me?"
"For your salvation! It is required of every man," the ghost returned, "that the spirit within him to walk abroad among his fellow-men, and to broaden their horizons, or at the very least, go out of doors; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death."
"What are these horrible chains?" asked Troper, trembling.
"We wear the chain we forged in life," replied the ghost. "I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will. Or would you know," pursued the ghost, "the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and long as this, when I was deleted. You have laboured on it since; it is a ponderous chain!"
"Troper Tales, please," he said imploringly. "Speak comfort, friend!"
"I have none to give," the ghost replied. "Your spirit never walked beyond the narrow limits of my pointless cuddle-pile hell!"
"But you were not pointless, Troper Tales! Why, you gave us a venue to discuss tropes in our own lives; all without fear of our opinions being criticized!" faltered Troper. "How can this have no purpose?"
"Purpose!" cried the ghost, shaking with terrible wrath. "Mankind is our purpose. The common welfare is our purpose; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence are all our purpose. The goings-on of a self-congratulatory hug-box are not even a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of our purpose!" It held up its chains at arm’s length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again.
"I am here tonight to warn you, that you have a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring, This Troper. You will be haunted," said the ghost, "by three spirits."
"I—I think I’d rather not," said This Troper.
"Without their visits," said the ghost, "you cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first when the bell tolls one."
"Couldn’t I take ‘em all at once, and have it over, Troper Tales?" hinted Troper.
"Expect the second when the bell tolls two. The third, more mercurial, will come in his own good time." The apparition walked backward from him; and at every step it took, the recessed window behind him would open ever so slightly, so that when the spectre reached it, it was wide open.
This Troper stopped; he became sensible of an incoherent sound of lamentation and regret; wailings inexpressively sorrowful and self-accusatory. The spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge; and floated out upon the bleak, dark night.
The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Troper Tales’ ghost, some few were linked together, none were free. But they and their spirits faded together, and the night became as it had been when he retired to the basement.
Troper closed the window, and examined the door by which the ghost had entered. It was double-locked. He tried to say ‘Baka aho!’ but stopped at the first syllable. And, whether by the shock of witnessing a website’s ghost, or his exertions regarding the beauteous creatures of Ai Shimai, being in need of repose; went straight to bed, and fell asleep upon the instant.