This is absolutely insane and looking back now I can’t believe it myself that I actually believed this.

I was a super socially awkward kid growing up and I really didn’t have any friends up until I was 8. That’s when my dad started dating this other kid’s mom. We’ll call him Derrick. Derrick was in my class, which was incredibly small at 28 kids. We lived out in a tiny town. As a kid who was already leaning towards videogames as a hobby, it was shocking to me that Derrick was also into videogames and fantasy books. So we quickly became best friends.

But here’s where the problems begin; Derrick was a narcissist. I mean inherently a narcissist, like even at the young age of 8 or 9 would always try to lord his intelligence over the other kids, including me. I just thought at the time that that’s just how friendships work, and didn’t see anything wrong with it. The truth is, looking back, that I had basically gotten myself into an abusive relationship, even though it was entirely platonic.

A couple years go by, and though Derrick treats me like shit, he’s my only friend and I don’t know any better. But here’s where shit just gets weird, (and this is how this story relates to OP’s post) Derrick tells me that magic is real. He explains that there’s a veil called “The Myst” that hides magical stuff from the mundane, and that you need to be trained to see through the Myst in order to see the magical shit that’s going on.

Now, naturally, I didn’t believe him at first, but Derrick was so persistent about this, that after a few months I actually started to believe him. I think wanting to believe that I could have a fantastical adventure like what OP is talking about played a MAJOR role in getting me to believe him. But the point is, I believed him. Later I would realize that this was just a manipulation tactic, meant to give me another reason to stay his friend, as at that point I started having problems with the way he was treating me, and we had started to grow apart.

Our friendship evolved from that point on to purely talking about the magical side of things, with him telling me about the incredible stories he would have as he claimed he could pass through the Myst along with most of the class. He also claimed that most of the class was capable of magic and that he was in the middle of a variety of power struggles with the rest of the class. Naturally there was healing magic, and any damage done on the other side would not have shown very much on our side. For example, an intense fight where a kids arm got blown off with magic would translate into a broken arm in sports on our end. He always had a wild explanation for any injuries that any kid in the class had. He would get into actual IRL fights, just with fists, and claim that it was an epic battle on the other side, and that the fist fight was just the way the Myst made it appear to the muggles of the would.

It was all bullshit, but I gotta hand it to him, dude was creative, and if he had gone the route of turning this into a YA book series it would have done well imo. Eventually of course, I realized what was going on as I grew up, ditched him because he was the biggest asshole and I’ve been happier ever since. But I gotta say, he kept that imagination alive for me for a lot longer than if I hadn’t met him. Also there is literally so much content that he came up with some part of me still doesn’t believe he’s capable of coming up with that on his own. I mean there was thousands of hours over the course of roughly 8 years of him just explaining this shit to me. It’s a bit incredible in hindsight. Dude came up with a system of magic that could be done like a math problem to generate specific effects based upon the color of magical energies you used. I don’t remember much of the details of that system but it made sense in its own way and I’d love to see anything nearly as complex applied to a videogame. He did this all to manipulate me into putting up with him, establish a power mechanic in our friendship, and to explore his own fantasies about magic. It’s insane. AMA