The Rise and Fall of PBP Chapter 4: PBP's Legacy

By far, one of the worst things about working on PBP during “the Dark Ages” was that Arthur almost eliminated any creative control Seanathan and I had. In late 2014, Arthur wrote out concepts for 50 seasons, with five or six episodes in each season (we divided the seasons based on what they were about). In total, Arthur planned 209 episodes of PBP.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, he then decided that PBP needed not one, but two spinoff series.

One was called PBP: Future, which had no difference from the original PBP, so it was pretty pointless. The other was known as Varilum. Varilum took a more “fantasy” approach to PBP. It had some pretty decent concepts. In total, there were 70 five-to-six episode seasons of PBP and PBP-related stuff. And as if THAT wasn’t enough, Arthur came up with ideas for PBP merchandise. Even though he had some cool ideas for merch (which he called “morch” for some reason), Seanathan and I were burned out on PBP.

In February of 2015, Arthur began a short story blog. You’ve probably seen it if you’re reading this blog, but just in case, click here (link). In its early days, the blog was far removed from what it is now. It was mostly LEGO fan fiction stories, along with some old Electroshock stories. In a February 10, 2016 blog post, shortly before the blog’s one-year anniversary, Arthur described his blog in its early days as “a simple thing with (an) atrocious orange background”

However, this is a story about PBP, not Abe’s blog. In March 2015, Arthur decided to chronicle the events of PBP in a short story format, with the first story debuting on March 4, 2015. We found it recently, and it’s pretty cringe-worthy. Who knows, maybe I’ll post it someday.

I should probably point out at this point, PBP had become a convoluted mess. We didn’t really have much knowledge of the Half-Life/Portal universe when we started PBP, but Arthur wanted it to remain part of the universe, and constantly came up with ridiculous and stupid ideas to keep PBP in the games’ canon. At one point, he declared that the universe “reset” in the 2020s, because Arthur built a “Reset Bomb”, whatever that was.

Arthur’s 7th grade year ended in June 2015. He quickly became a much less awful person, and, for the first time in a long time, I was actually enjoying doing PBP.

In the Summer of 2015, the vestiges of the Dark Ages quickly vanished. Our obsession with PBP soon followed. The last episode we played out was the Final Battle: Part 1. It was the penultimate episode of Season 11, where an evil scientist reanimated dinosaurs, because. . . I guess he was EVIL. The last PBP-related thing we did was a play-out of PBP Season 1.5, a shameless X-Files ripoff that he had written for his blog in late 2015. The main reason for PBPs neglect was because Arthur was busy creating a roleplaying game by the name of Zephyrquest II. I’m sure Arthur has posted quite a bit about ZQ’s origins, but to make a long story short, the original Zephyrquest was a LARP that Abe and his friends had played in Summer 2014, shortly before PBP took over everything.

The PBP stories continued on Arthur’s blog until finally, even he became fed up with the series. He attempted to reinvent the series in July 2016, with no success. In the end, he fully vanquished the series from his blog on October 3, 2016. The almost-three year saga had ended. None of us even wanted to think about PBP, as it was associated with so many bad memories.

Until October 2016. I rediscovered the old PBP stories around then, and happily classified them as “so bad they’re good” At my request, Arthur shared the document that he had put the episode descriptions so long ago, and he, Seanathan, and I had a good laugh over them. As we read, we discovered a few diamonds in the rough, and realized that pouring our hearts into PBP over the course of two years had made some amazing concepts, such as the Lonely Ones.

Thus, we decided to make PBP as it should have been, a goofy, creative series of stories. Today, this is known as the New Adventures of Arthur Borglestein.

So there you have it. The entire history of PBP. Hopefully, Arthur can write a conclusion. Also, Seanathan and I are writing a script of PBP. We’re currently debating how to adapt this script, I’m thinking of drawing a comic about it.

~Astatinius