I recommend you to open and take a look at the Fragments (from the Memories tab on the official GhostsProject website) when reading this content.
Story behind Fragments
The story suddenly unfolds from the perspective of an unknown man in a random city.
Let’s call this man Misang(means unknown in Korean) as his name is unknown. The ‘Misang’ when someone’s identity is unknown. The man had been feeling empty in his life for a long time. He did not like being himself and wanted to be a different being.
What kind of being did he want to become specifically? He had no clue. So the man made some rather poorly finished clothes to realize those images that couldn't be grasped. At those moments he felt a bit alright. However, he has been regretful and in despair every night, fully aware that all these were vain attempts. 'I want to be something different, but I can't'.
A small mushroom came flying in his room. The man smelled the mushroom instinctively. It caused a very strong hallucination right away. The man experienced himself turning into a different being through this hallucination. The man fell in love with the mushroom. He kept himself in the house and spent most of the time hallucinated by the mushroom. In the hallucination, not only did the man become a different being, but he experienced his identity expand into multiple egos. Fun Fact I: The beings that were created through the hallucination were skulls — The skull trait in GhostsProject.
After spending several days entrapped in hallucination, the mushroom had grown quite a lot. It looked very tasty, and the man thought it would be alright to have a portion of it. There was a great anticipation from the scent alone, so what if he were to taste it?
As the man approached the mushroom to have a bite of it, the mushroom suddenly grew legs and jumped out of the pot, escaping the man’s room. It was hit by a car and broke into pieces. This incident could be an accident, a suicidal act, or done deliberately for reproduction. The mushroom that broke into thousands of pieces went in people’s bodies. The man was in deep despair and had a vision of the mushroom engulfing the city in the future. He probably knew this as he spent a very long time with the mushroom. The man felt a sense of guilt and responsible for resolving the matter, as he was the one who caused it. Therefore he started a research to get rid of the mushroom.
After some time, mushrooms started sprouting in people’s bodies across the city. At first, it was just a small scale. However, symptoms started gradually spreading like a pandemic and one day cases started to rise where mushrooms dominated the host’s body. The infected people started turning into ‘mushroom humans’. Fun Fact II: If you take a look at one of my previous work JoC(Jack of Clubs) of PlayingArts Project after looking at Fragment #082, a scene about ‘mushroom humans’, it will be a little different.
Bizarre ‘mushroom humans’ started to appear across the city. Mushroom humans started to swallow each other and other people to increase in size. Soon, they dominated the entire city. A giant mushroom stalk formed in the middle of the city. Finally, the door of the protagonist (who’s identity is unknown and kept himself in the house) opened.
Fun Fact III: The costume the man is wearing is a basic version, which is the original version before it’s prefabricated into bizarre clothes from the early part of the Fragments.
As the man stepped out, he encountered the wrecked city and giant mushroom stalk and realized he was too late. But he still had things he had to finish so he started climbing the giant mushroom like ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. It seemed like he succeeded in eradicating the mushroom through an unknown method. However, the mushroom tried blowing itself up and it seems like the world has come to an end…
All of a sudden MrMisang, a figure wearing a yellow jacket, appeared and snapped his finger. It seems like everything is being reset? He hands over a magic wand to the protagonist and disappears all of a sudden. The protagonist learns that he could create a universe with this magic wand. So he starts building a city. If there is a city, there must be people who live in them, right? But the man did not have the creativity to create diverse humans, as he was empty inside. Therefore, he fills the world with copies of himself, this universe he builds is the background for Modern Life is Rubbish.
In this small and peaceful universe, every day goes by the same. The man feels happy looking into his poorly built toy. However, as these days repeat infinitely, bugs occur from various places which causes distortion. The figure that experiences this bug is Franken Aje, the protagonist of Modern Life is Rubbish. MrMisang, the man dressed in the yellow jacket enters Aje’s dream through a bug. This is the start of the 1st episode of Modern Life is Rubbish, ‘Odd Dream’. I know most of you have seen it, but take another look at Modern Life is Rubbish series after going through the Fragments, it will definitely feel different. If you have not seen the series, please go watch it. It will be fun!
Modern Life is Rubbish unfolds as everyone has just witnessed. The mushroom reappears and goes through the hole MrMisang created to invade the universe. An odd man wearing a gas mask picks up this mushroom, just like the protagonist did, this man grows this mushroom in a pot. This is the start of the ‘Masked Workers’ from Niftygateway.
In Masked Workers there is a card called ‘Nothing’ that is not part of the number collections. This was the protagonist’s alter ego sent in order to warn about the mushroom. However, people did not take it serious, and the universe of Modern Life is Rubbish also comes to an end due to the mushroom infection.
MrMisang gifts a magic goggle to the despaired man. He suddenly gets in a car accident, and falls to the ground, and lands in the Crypto Voxels. This is the starting scene of the 12th episode of Modern Life is Rubbish ‘MrMisang and Crypto World’.
The man, who was gifted the magic goggle, realized that the place that seemed completely empty was filled with discs where countless people(ghosts) were backed-up. He also realized, by opening a portal through the magic wand, he could bring life to these ghosts in another dimension. The dimension we are currently in. This was the minting page we saw during the sales period.
The man who brought lives to ghosts opens another portal with the magic wand. Though it remains uncertain, it is thought that the man would build a utopia of his imagination.
However, the mushroom appears once again behind the man and the mushroom follows the man into the portal. This is the story before the reveal of the 187th Fragment, the story after this would be shown through the Special Fragment. The ending has been decided ‘evil’ by the community vote(memories selection). If you look at the current sketch, it seems like the man is about to be infected by the mushroom. You will see the details once the final version of the Special Fragment is completed.
This is the end to the Fragments story.
Special Fragments
Read more about the story of Special Fragments, which was later decided to have an "evil" ending based on community choice, here.
Epilogue
Fragments are stories that go beyond PFP NFTs and the concept of what avatars, alter egos are. What does a desire to be a different being mean?
There were a lot of strange things that happened to the protagonist. He was a strange person himself. He had hallucinations, built a universe, made copies of himself, revived ghosts, opened a portal, etc.. He had abilities like God, but the one thing he was not able to achieve was the desire of becoming a different being. The only time it happened was through the hallucination with the mushroom. In the Special Fragment(which is the ending cut) it seems like the man is about to be infected by the mushroom. I would like you to imagine what would happen to the man.
A lot of events could have taken place in between the comic cuts(Fragments). I am also clueless about the things that are not explained in the comic.
For example, what happened before the start of the comic? I don’t know. The reason why the man specifically felt emptiness, why he constantly wanted to be a different being? I don’t know the answers to these too. As I've mentioned skulls are limited to the protagonist's hallucinations, but could they have turned into real beings in the world where the ghosts were living? If you take a look at Fragment 67, a skull with horns can be seen, at the very least we can imagine that the skulls can appear in the collective unconsciousness of people. Of course there is a chance that they could have become real beings. Was the protagonist the only man that experienced hallucination through the mushroom? Are there no possibilities of other ghosts outside the camera frame enjoying the hallucinations too? Was the guilt the man feels unnecessary as the mushroom infection incident was inevitable from the start? In the comics it seems like the mushrooms took control of the city very quickly, and people were helplessly conquered. But was this really the case? Wouldn’t they have put up a fight by sending an army to fight against the mushroom humans and such? I definitely think that there would have been a group that worshipped mushrooms. This could have been a cult. Or there could also have been a person who became an influencer with a mushroom sprouting out of one’s body.
The city the ghosts lived in looks ordinary. What were other cities like?
The origins of mushrooms? Who made them? or Were they made from nature?
Is there a chance of other CC0 project avatars existing in this universe? For example, were mfers the ones who made the mushroom in a laboratory?
What happened inside the discs where the souls of the ghosts were trapped in? Was there another universe inside it? or not?
I do not know in which space or time in the story your ghosts lived in. But one thing they all have in common is that they definitely existed, collapsed due to the mushroom and came back to life through GhostsProject. For me personally, I picture a scene where someone is playing a guitar in a collapsing city.