Alright. Abolish won round 3 of the tournament, so. As promised, here’s basically all my notes on his ARG. Unfortunately, I’ve posted a great deal of them before; however, this can be a masterpost of sorts. A collection of all my rambles.
ARG Notes
So.
The basics.
AbolishRegret is some kind of world-hopping elder god or whatever who will carefully select universes and possess the different instances of him for content.
It is implied that he gained the power to travel dimensions through his own efforts.
Portals = require a structure, an artifact, the likes.
Rifts = freestanding and can open anywhere. LIKE GRIAN’S!!! (still screaming) (Hermitcraft and Empires mentioned)
Rifts can be opened by people. Including AR. This is presumably how he “possesses” people and does the challenges and whatnot.
AR says he is doing everything for entertainment.
Whether his or ours, we do not know. (Probably his, tho)
Side note: Amethyst has some kind of magical power that makes it grow and corrupt obsidian.
He emphasizes the importance of creativity and mentions how not everyone will like everything you do. Villain monologue?
Talks about fear being a construct of our own minds. Uh-oh. Gettin’ existential here
Building world ends when hourglass ends. What’s the thing he said that it’s based on? Oh, yeah. Unus annus. One year.
Mentioned balance between shadows and light. Also talked about elemental magic being different from light/dark magic. Lemme guess. He uses dark.
Oh, stars, what is going on
AR said that OUR goal is to find out what he is. Um.
I have some wild guesses:
Not Real (a figment of our imagination)
A god. Easiest answer
Some kind of… shadow? Only existing bc of the light of creativity, or something? Idk. Just seems like that’d be something he’d do.
Or just. Some kind of Brandon Sanderson protagonist-type. Or antagonist. Definitely not good; that’s for sure. A god without feelings?
OK. Just saw another video. Is he a glitch?? That was one of the implied conclusions. Also seems pretty plausible. But… what would his goal be, then? Because I doubt a glitch only wants entertainment. What power does he seek…?
See, if I were writing a character like this, his goal would be to open as many rifts as possible, find a bunch of sources of magic power, and slowly grow ever stronger.
Or maybe he’s just like a Watcher and lives off of suffering.
Ok yeah it’s for his entertainment. Not ours. Alright then.
So I take back what I said regarding Abolish’s ARG and AR being some kind of god without feelings. Because THIS ONE.
THIS. ONE.
There’s no way that this entity doesn’t care.
Perhaps I’m naive.
Perhaps I’m seeing emotion when it’s merely manipulation.
But in all honesty…
I love this man too much to believe he doesn’t.
Oh gosh the. The that. “Believe in me, who believes in you.” Ow
He claims he’s neutral? So like. Doing good and bad things for entertainment’s sake.
Alright it seems he might not have been controlling Veylocke at all. Just watching.
Interesting.
Oh my gosh this guy is 100% some kind of god.
He can manipulate reality itself to form rifts and CARES about people and
Guys what if Abolish is Mr. Lopee
IS AR A WATCHER???
He legit might be. Like he is very much aware of Grian’s lore and has already incorporated the Rift into his own. Honestly, it seems quite likely that he should weave himself into it.
We know that AR claims to do everything for the sake of entertainment, which is essentially what the Watchers were doing:
And he often encourages his viewers, saying he believes in us, which seems to be an action repeated by the Watchers.
And he discussed how rifts are different from portals. Something I found interesting was the fact that the Watchers seemed to exclusively use portals. In fact, it appears that the only rift that Grian ever encounters is the one between Hermitcraft and Empires.
I’m pretty sure that it was revealed that the Watchers were not behind the Rift. And I find it curious that they seemed to use portals only.
In one of the shorts, AR said that rifts can only form through natural causes OR by someone with incredible magic power. It is heavily implied that he is one of these people, a fact that is confirmed in his video where “he” beats the Wither without leaving the Nether - he creates a rift to let the version of him who completed the challenge leave, although I seem to recall him saying he could technically leave at any time. But I think that was a quirk of his ability to choose the universe, the strand, where the objective is always met.
Anyways.
In another of the shorts, he says something about “Travelers.” People who can travel between dimensions and times. I think he is NOT one of these people. That seems too… simple. Too easy. Too weak.
AR is definitely more than a simple dimensional traveler - he has admitted to influencing the actions of certain individuals within the dimensions he goes to. Although it could simply be another effect of having complete knowledge of a strand’s timeline.
AAAUUUGHHHH, ABOLISH. WHY MUST YOU MAKE ME QUESTION FREE WILL??
I DO THAT ENOUGH ALREADYYYYYY.
Y’know what. AR is not just a Watcher. If he is one, it’d be a much more powerful version. The Watchers exclusively made portals, likely lacking the power for rifts. This is a weakness that AR doesn’t seem to have.
(If anything, I’d think Grian is a Traveler, going off of vibes alone.)
One of the implied conclusions for AR’s identity is a glitch. This is interesting, because that is quite vague. It would be easy to just call him a glitch in the game and be done with it.
But I say AR is a glitched Watcher.
Like the Absolute Solver, perhaps - an existing program, a known entity, that evolved through some unknown force to acquire greater power.
In the short regarding Travelers, there seemed to be broken test tubes in the background. He could be an experiment gone wrong, Mewtwo-style. Or maybe he found something, an exploit, a power source.
I don’t think we have enough data yet to know conclusively what he is. But I think a Watcher of some form is a pretty good guess for now.
Well, what are the Watchers?
Well, one theory I saw is that they are actually the viewers.
WHAT IF AR IS ONE OF US.
It kinda makes sense, actually.
He does seem to watch a lot of other videos. Like, I know he used a Shulkercraft tutorial in Cowboys, and he got involved with POW because he watched Owen’s streams.
Perhaps this is a commentary on producing versus consuming??
I’ve thought about this a lot, actually.
AR is ultimately creating content. But he is consuming it as well. He comes up with these challenges, andcompletes them (though technically it’s his doppelgängers).
Since he is both making and watching his own content, I bet this is about how art and entertainment can be made just for yourself. This matches with something he said in one of the shorts, about how not everyone will love everything you make.
(This theme was also covered in Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, btw. AMAZING book; highly recommend.)
And this is just my own thoughts, but I believe that we must balance how much content we consume and create to keep a healthy mind.
In addition, AR (and, more notably, Abolish himself) often seem to prioritize self care.
And then there’s the “believe in me, who believes in you” quote. I LOVE it. And it definitely seems like AR is trying to inspire confidence in us. Along with the fact that Abolish pays so much attention to his chat, his community. It’s likely that he wants us to know our worth.
To summarize this ramble, I think that Abolish’s ARG is about creating for the sake of it, about not basing your worth on others’ opinions, about being happy with yourself. And knowing you can make changes, that you are strong, that you’re enough. Of course, this is a lesson that I’ve been trying to learn for a long time, so I could just be projecting. But I feel that, even if this is not the intended conclusion, it is one that we should know anyway.
