ANTI-COLLAB
By Jonathan "KnightMysterio" Spires

I work at Epic Games. Specifically, I work on Fortnite. To be even more specific, I work in the division that's responsible for arranging the various collab characters. So if you've been missing Jinx and Vi... look, I'm doing my best, okay? Riot's being cagey about letting us sell them again.

I'm choosing to relay this story through a third party to protect myself from any potential retaliation.

At any rate, for the most part, my job is a good one. I get to meet some amazing people at the companies I visit to arrange the use of the collab characters, and since I have a dev account, I have every item in the game. The thing is? Not everyone's happy the game has collab characters. There's one guy in particular... he would send me and other people on my letters that practically begged us to take all of the collab characters out. Saying that it 'ruined the purity' of the game. That we didn't need to have these characters in here, blah blah blah. Obsessed fanboy stuff. Something to ignore, right?

We thought so, anyway.

The letters got more intense over the years, especially after Chapter 2 season 4, our first Marvel-themed season. The language became cruder and more insulting, more deranged. We blocked the guy's email, and started throwing away his snail mail letters. Things came to a head when we announced our Star Wars themed season, with characters like Wookie Team Leader, and Darth Jar Jar.

We started getting angry calls from WWE, Capcom, Netherrealm Studios, and other companies that provided collab characters for us. They were angry about a particular Creative map. The support team had been contacted repeatedly over this map as well. I contacted the Creative team, and they claimed that the map was different starting out, that the guy who made it must have edited it after it was approved.

They sent me the code for the map, and I logged on, picking Mecha Cuddle Master, one of my favorite skins.

The thing about Creative? Is that you can do almost anything with them. You can create any kind of game, using any assets you want. Tycoon games, death runs, escape rooms, roguelikes... your imagination is all that limits you. We provide the resources, you provide the creativity.

I could tell immediately that this was the creation of our crazy, collab-hating fanboy. Mainly due to how fucked up it was.

It was a horror map/escape room hybrid. To escape each room, you had to reveal a hidden part of the room. And in it, a collaboration character was having something horrible happen to them at the hands of one of Fortnite's original characters. It started out simply enough. Superman being turned to gold by Midas, one of our major lore characters, and then melted down into a blob of goo in a smelter. The next room had Tomatohead, a pizza mascot with, well, a mustached tomato for a head, stirring a giant pot. I didn't see who the collab characters were until I noticed the masks of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the wall of that twisted kitchen.

The worst part of each scene is that you had to interact with each one, triggering the cutscene and forced to watch it, to open the door to the next room.

Things got significantly worse. Some of the scenes were themed, such as Obi-Wan Kenobi being 'Force choked' until his neck snapped, or Anakin Skywalker being forcibly shoved into lava and horrifically burning to death, or Omni Man being beaten to death by one of the superhero skins in the same way he beat up his son in the show, or Mortal Kombat's Sub-Zero being slowly lowered into the acid of the Deadpool. But mostly? It was just graphic scenes of torture, with rape being added in for the female characters. And not the overly sexualized kind you'd seen in porn fanart. Just flat out brutality.

You'll forgive me if I decline to go into any detail beyond that for those scenes.

Suffice to say that it was bad enough that it made the Hostel series, or some of the more graphic kills from the Terrifier series, look almost campy. Seriously, the effort he put into the details on those scenes would have been stunning if it weren't so blatantly psychotic.

Due to memory limits, he obviously couldn't put every collab character in, but as soon as I finished that horrific display, I saw a cheeky 'Check Out These Maps - Coming Soon!' display, with... disgusting things happening to female Icon characters.

As you can imagine, the map was taken down, and I made assurances to all our collaboration partners that we'd make sure these other planned maps never saw the light of day, and that the creator responsible would lose his account.

This is where things got worse.

Somehow, he found out that I was the one who was the primary person behind the collaborations. He started sending me emails demanding his account back. After I blocked every email account he tried to use, he started sending me snail mail letters demanding his account back. One of the letters had a white powder in it, but thankfully the police identified it as just powdered sugar.

I thought that would be the end of it. That the police would catch this maniac and he'd leave me alone. But I was wrong.

One night, while going home from work after preparing for the last week before the Star Wars season started, I had a weird feeling, like I was being followed. I dismissed it at first, getting into my car and heading home. I got home... and was promptly shot when I got out of my car. I was in agony. It was just a shot to the leg, but damn it, it still fucking hurt. Seriously, action movies where the guy shrugs off pain from bullet wounds to keep fighting are BULLSHIT. The guy who shot me got out of his car, revealing that he was wearing cosplay of Daigo, one of our current (as of this writing) primary villains. He came up to me as I was struggling to get back to my feet and clubbed me with the butt of his pistol.

When I woke up, I saw that he'd dragged me inside and tied me to a chair. My leg was still bleeding and I was dizzy, the freak having only bandaged it. To my shock, I saw that he'd set up a stalker shrine to Cuddle Team Leader and her variants, toys and pictures and everything. The only variants that weren't being honored on the shrine were Cuddlepool, the Deadpool-fusion, and Wookie Team Leader. Cuddlepool's picture had BLASPHEMY scribbled on it, while Wookie Team Leader's picture had NO NO NO scribbled on it.

The psychopath smiled when he noticed I was looking at his shrine, saying that he 'carried his love' with him wherever he went. He kissed the Cuddle Team Leader plush at the top of the shrine, and came over to me. I saw, to my horror, that he had a knife in his hand, a large serrated hunting knife.

"You're going to give me back my account, and let me be with my love again," he told me, putting the knife at my throat.

I was disgusted. This nutbar, this INCEL thought he was in love with an animated character!? That she loved him back!? ...I mean, I may have had dreams involving Brite Bomber now and then but this was just crazy! I don't think Brite's going to come out of the screen and give me a smooch! I've heard of fans like this, but actually seeing one? Holy fucking shit!

"It's not my decision to do that," I told him. The wrong answer, apparently, as he slapped me across the face.

"You got those filthy collaborations in the game. Bad enough that you've contaminated Fortnite with the Battle Royale. I got to enjoy that despite my guilt at disrespecting 'Save the World,'" the lunatic said. "But then you had to start letting characters that don't belong in my paradise. The only thing that makes me happy anymore!"

"...For fuck's sake, its a GAME!" I shouted, both terrified and just flat out done with this guy's shit. "Touch some grass, meet a REAL girl, oh my god!"

"SHUT UP!" the psychopath screamed. "You don't know what its like! To have something good and pure, and then have it become more twisted, with intruders who don't belong there! And SYD IS REAL! You make her more real with every new iteration of her!" He got a dreamy smile on her face. "And when she becomes completely real... When she's freed of the Loop... I'll be there for her."

I realize that this guy sounds silly to some of you, but damn it, I was the one tied up and alone in my house with a knife-wielding psychopath and a bullet in my leg. The blood loss was starting to get to me, as I lost more and more of my filter. "Do you really think Cuddles would want ANYTHING to do with you? After doing this to me?!"

"Shut up... I am the only one who understands her!" the psychopath said, visibly unraveling.

"Buddy we've barely given her a PERSONALITY. She has less relevance to the storyline than fuckin' PEELY!" I said. I think. I was dizzy with blood loss at this point.

He snarled, grabbing my face, and put a deep vertical gash in it, starting from my eyebrow, cutting through my eye, blinding me permanently in that eye, and down my cheek. The agony was indescribable, blood running down my face. I'm not ashamed to admit I pissed myself in fear and pain at that point.

Fortunately, luck was on my side that night. The garage attendant had seen the man stalking me, and called the police. They took their sweet fuckin' time getting here, but before he could do more than that, they took the bastard down and hauled him off to jail. I told him I would burn his shrine and pictures, and sell off all the merch he put on it. (I didn't get a chance. It was put into evidence and eventually sold off after the case was closed.) Apparently I also screamed about putting My Little Pony in the game, which enraged the psychopath further, but I was completely delirious by that point, the officer interviewing me telling me what I said after I woke up in the hospital.

I have to walk with a cane now. There was permanent nerve damage in my leg from the gunshot. And of course, I'm blind in one eye with an admittedly bitchin' scar on my face. Doesn't really mitigate the blindness, but at least its ONE positive about this experience.

The psychopath was jailed, put in a maximum security mental health facility. Hopefully their security isn't Arkham Asylum-level incompetent. I really don't think I'd survive a second encounter with him.

I'm doubling down on my job, working to bring collaborations into the game. But I... don't really like meeting with fans anymore. Or dealing with them in general. I've removed all my social media and am submitting this through a third party, some rando fanfic author that I'm paying to do this. It may mean that my story gets disregarded as fake, but... well, I accept that. I just want to get it out there.

For anyone in the gaming industry, just... be careful. Watch for stalkers. You don't want to end up the same way I did...

THE END