Alpha Dog Diary #1

(transcribed from video log)

I wasn’t supposed to do these. Ever. I’m the leader. The backer updates counted as my diaries so I could maintain the suave stony thing I had going. Only I don’t do the updates any more. They’ve been telling me I haven’t been much of a leader. What sucks the most is that they’re right.

From the beginning this has been about me. Hostage was only half the reason I left Nance behind. By doing that I created a super villain before I’d even shoved my handful of heroes into the Barn. She was souring into an angrier more selfish person before I even got the first coat of primer on the dogs. Pawn might be dead because of me. Any day now Monkey Girl is going to move his arm from the container I gave her and put it in an urn.

Orb was supposed to straighten things out. He was my ace in the hole, proof I could still recruit and manage the big guns. He had more conspiracy theories floating around the internet than a video of bigfoot strolling through Benghazi. Getting him on the team was supposed to put me back on the pedestal. The problem is I was thinking I’d been clawed off it rather than what actually happened. I stumbled off it like a drunk and tried to catch myself on some underage girl’s strapless dress. That’s what it feels like now anyway.

I bet you want to know what convinced me I was in the wrong. Most people would have been convinced earlier, but apparently it takes things only slightly smaller than a blow to the head for a dunce like me. After Impala, Archive, and Golden Boy shouted my head off that night I locked myself in the dark workshop and had my IT dog Dialup project some forums up on the wall for me. I scoured them with a fine-toothed comb looking for people’s thoughts about me. People mostly talked about the rest of the team because of their diaries but I figured there had to be some stuff covering me. I did do all the crowdfunding before they even got here.

I stayed in there all night and skipped breakfast. I had Crispy fetch me a sandwich so I wouldn’t have to look anyone in the eye until I had a counterargument. Until I found a contingent somewhere in all our backers who thought I was the greatest. Be careful what you wish for.

It turns out I did have some fans. Mostly guys. Mostly teenagers. Mostly the kind of person who speeds through puddles to splash people on the street. Since I wasn’t doing diaries, they had plenty of opportunities to construct their own narrative around me. Dress me up in their uniform.

Here’s how their narrative goes. I, Eben Erenthall, bravely liberated my pack of robotic hounds from MFU because I couldn’t stand their oversight and the thought of my dogs being part of some big government project. That is largely true, except for the subtheory that developed saying my dogs were going to be used to discreetly track and maul conservative activists so that liberals could blame it on wild animal attacks caused by said animals’ shrinking habitats. If you think I’m making this up you can check the links at the bottom of this post. There are multiple tributaries of this sewage.

The narrative goes on to say Nance Pilton, worried she might lose her ability to sleep her way to the top when one of her underlings betrayed MFU, tried to stop me, failed, and became disgraced. From there she stole the hard work of true scientists in order to fashion a giant pair of hands to counter her natural physical inferiority. (Again, not my words)

This warped Randian version of me then uses his smarts to build a base the government can’t find. Then he starts a crowdfunding campaign for superheroes, but is forced to include inferior people in the team to satisfy the internet’s arbitrary political correctness checklist. There’s a couple guys floating around out there like turds on the current insisting they were on the short list to be included but they were pushed out to make room for a woman or a black person or a lesbian. This is unequivocally untrue. Everyone on this team belongs here, except for me maybe.

The story continues. The barbaric me fights many heroic battles, all the while covering for the shortcomings of his team. Then one day after some totally appropriate light teasing, Monkey Girl, who is usually referred to as either Monkey Bitch or ape tits, throws a tantrum and starts insisting that I violated her and need to be removed from my own team.

It pains me to admit how close my viewpoint was to this myth the Neanderthals of the net have coughed up and celebrated. It’s like having a long conversation with a distant relative, thinking you have a lot more in common than you thought, and then they suddenly say something about the Mexican lack of work ethic. It takes the wind out of you and makes you realize you’re being less of a cloth sail and more of a plastic bag covered in hash brown grease. I don’t want to be a hero to those people. I want to see TI/alphadog drift much closer to the rest of the Backers’ dedicated forums. That means it’s time for a few changes.

I’ve already performed one of the key actions. I had already apologized to Monkey Girl once after I uploaded the video of me shaving her. (Obviously the video has been removed.) At the time it was not an honest apology. I was actually scared she might rat me out to the cops, but I should have known she would never do something like that. I went back and I gave her a real apology. At first I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to make it real. You can say the words but you can’t force the feelings. Or maybe you can. I looked her in the eye and just started rattling off every little dumb reason I had for tricking her and taking advantage of her trust. About halfway through, I started to cry. So I managed to make it real.

Impala is going to keep doing the updates for a while, but I think there are some big changes coming. It might not turn out well for me, but I’m confident that my team has everyone’s best interest in mind. It’ll turn out amicable. We’ll get to all that once we fix my mistakes. Once we find Pawn and stop Woman’s Touch.

If you want to thank anyone in particular for preventing the dissolution of the team you can send a message to the human venereal disease named Swagglerock69. Without his cronies grandstanding at every turn I might not have realized what an ass I was being. We live in a world of many moral gray areas, but TI/backerbusters is a cesspit of infinite darkness. They wouldn’t know a shade of gray if someone stuffed that porn novel down their pants. Thanks to them I’ve migrated back to the nest-like warmth of the gray areas between law, responsibility, passion, and internet fame. The home of the Justice Backers.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Now that I’ve admitted my many errors, the team has agreed to let me keep running the fundraisers. You guys know the drill. I can stand up here on my box and shout about how brave and powerful we are, but it doesn’t mean anything if you don’t buy us a box. We rely on your charity so we can then dispense it to the truly needy. I’ve decided that instead of doing the kind of stretch goals that landed me in hot water, we could just do a little extra for the people we’re protecting. This month ten percent of every dollar raised will go to the families of the various guards and employees Woman’s Touch assaulted and injured over the course of her robberies. One of them has had to be back to the hospital twice for corrective surgery and they’re struggling with the medical bills. If you’d like to give to that cause in particular you can find the links below.

We’re heading into the home stretch of our first adventure backers. No matter what happens I know I’ll come out the other side a better person. Maybe even a hero.

Archive’s Tips #1

This is Archive’s Tips number one. Hello everyone. You may have noticed this is not the normal video format. This series will not be replacing my personal diaries; I simply wanted to make another set of videos offering insight into various topics and creating a few lectures to help pass on my computer and mind comprehension skills to you.

That will all start with entry number two. For this first entry I am pleased to bring you something that I think will help many of you through your daily lives. As you likely know, Orb has recently joined our team. Some people doubt the man has reached enlightenment; they think he was simply born with his abilities. All I can tell you is that I don’t see lies in him. I see the brightest clearest mind I’ve ever seen. It’s like silken strands of moonlight. It’s like the twinkling of stars that have never considered they might one day go out.

He doesn’t do diaries because he’s afraid of bestowing an incomplete form of clarity onto his listeners. That being said, I argued that some details of his ordered life could surely help people in need of structure. He conceded; he has allowed me to post his daily schedule for everyone to learn from. I’ve adopted several steps of it already. It may be the placebo effect, but I think the clarity of my powers has already improved slightly. I give it to you now in the hopes that its beauty and simplicity can bring some order to your life:

6:00 A.M. – Orb wakens. (He sleeps in a seated position on a large cushion.)

6:10 A.M. – Orb emerges from a cool shower set to low pressure. (The pressure could be to mimic the flow of natural water or simply because he has no hair he needs to wash.)

6:30 A.M. – Orb eats a small breakfast consisting of fresh fruit, warmed flatbread infused with vegetables, and a very large glass of water.

6:45 A.M. – Orb performs a lengthy series of calisthenic exercises; see the diagrams below for a full breakdown.

7:30 A.M. – Orb sits under a tree outside the Barn and begins his first meditation session of the day. (He would not reveal to me the contents of his thoughts during this time and in the spirit of his wishes I will not reveal what I witnessed under his skull.)

12:00 P.M. – Orb moves inside to eat a light lunch of couscous and goat cheese with honey. He drinks another large glass of water.

12:15 P.M. – Orb socializes. (His activities during this block vary depending on whoever seems to be milling about the kitchen at the time. He seems willing to participate in almost any activity. I’ve personally witnessed him train in the fields with us, cook with Golden Boy, write poetry with Transplant, watch television with Monkey Girl to help her perfect her English, and even play a one on one match of the infuriatingly nonsensical Beach Detective board game with Alpha Dog.)

4:00 P.M. – Orb returns to his spot under the tree and meditates again. (Curiously, the pattern in his mind has changed. I won’t say how. It has definitely changed though, shockingly so.)

8:00 P.M. – Orb returns inside for another light meal: usually a mixture of vegetables in rice or in mushrooms. He drinks his third glass of water. (He has not relieved himself once the entire day.)

8:15 P.M. – Orb relaxes with a book. None of them were published less than sixty years ago and the genre varies.

10:00 P.M. – Orb retires to his room to sleep.

I only have one thing to share as an addition to the above schedule. I eventually decided that the curiosity was too much and that I had to ask Orb about his lack of bathroom breaks. He gave me a cryptic answer. At that point he was already aware I would be writing this, so I assume that when he gave me his answer he was implicitly giving me permission to share his answer with you.

“People assume they can change themselves. I do not pierce their delusions because it would create more problems than it would solve, but they are wrong. People do not change; they transform. A shift in thought is a shift in one’s essence. You become a separate person. Each day when I meditate my mind shifts like the sea. I feel as if I have been magically transported from one island to another, but I understand that I have simply transformed. I am not the man I was that morning. He has died. If I try to hold onto him I will lose the already short life I am living. This understanding, coupled with my enlightenment, allows my body to shift with my perspective. I do not need the restroom because the food and water consumed earlier was not consumed by me. It was consumed by a man who is no more.”

His answer stunned me. He had a sly hint of a smile while he shared it with me, so there’s a chance he was merely having some fun with my admiration and just relieved himself whenever I was away doing the same. If he lies his mind hides it very well. For what it is worth, when I shared his answer with Wallflower she simply nodded as if she already knew. Long have I admired her ability to absorb human truths from quiet observation.

I am inclined to believe his answer, at least in part. Alpha Dog’s transformation seems to be a testament to it. While his personality and flaws are intact, it is clear he has given up a toxic part of himself. If we believe Orb completely, Alpha Dog has removed a toxic self from the team entirely. It fills me with hope that we will succeed in our upcoming missions.

I hope these details of the ticking and tocking of a powerful mind will help all of you in your struggles as much as they are helping me. This is Archive of the Justice Backers, signing off for the evening.