Sword Art Online II just finished airing on Toonami and I just wanted a place where I could talk about the experience that I went through because of it. I haven’t really ever posted here on Reddit so I hope that this is an appropriate place to put this. Anyway there is going to be a lot of spoilers in this post so I figured I would put that in the title. Doesn’t that mean I don’t have to tag them in my post? I hope so, but tell me if I am wrong so I can fix it please. Also (this part was written right after I finished) I hope that I didn’t jump around on the topic too much, but I just have a lot going through my head right now so I hope that it is acceptable and thank you to anyone who has read or will read the whole thing! I also left out exact dates, names, places, etc. for anonymity sake as the story was lightly covered by local news.So a few episodes ago we had this character named Yuuki introduced and we just got to see how her time that she spent living came to a close. This whole stretch of episodes have put me in a place that is extremely hard to describe. Every Sunday (I couldn’t resist watching the finale live tonight) I would wake up, go to my show recordings, watch the next episode, and spend the day in a state of reflection mourning the loss of my brother. It’s been so surreal seeing a topic like this covered in a fictional world and I really wanted to say thank you to everyone in this community that, if nothing else, just took the time to experience it.I am currently in my twenties and I used to have a brother that was one year younger than me. He died half a decade ago due to brain cancer. It is very hard to lose someone you were so close to, and even now as I write this I’m getting emotional. I think he would’ve been very happy to have seen this or even just know that a huge group of people have been given some perspective on the situation that he was in.Has anyone ever heard of a game called RuneScape? Well almost 10 years ago this was our life. Me, my brother, and all of our friends. We would play this game nonstop. I actually mean nonstop like the stories that I have, the memories that I have made on that game are amazing. We would all get home from school and go straight to the computer to play. We always hung out together on there too. We would do quests, level up skills, make a sort of production line where everyone would do one part then hand the materials off to the next guy, and towards the end of our days playing, we really got into killing monsters together.I remember one day we all orchestrated a “sick day” and I remember the entire thing like it was yesterday. All of us stayed home playing sick to get on RuneScape while our parents went to work. We had the day planned out too. We would do these specific quests then go to a certain place to use our new training method to train together. Even after our parents got home we continued the charade to squeeze out all the time we could. We were probably logged on for 14 hours that day! What cemented this as one of my favorite days though was when we were training my brother got this drop called a clue scroll and it’s basically like a scavenger hunt. You would go around doing small tasks or finding items then get a reward at the end of it. So he goes and does it and his reward? An item called a Robin Hood Hat. This thing was expensive! Buying one would cost me about half of my entire wealth. I so clearly remember him opening the casket to get it. He jumps and screams, “Oh my god! Robin Hood!!!!” Everyone is freaking out as we tell them, but as everything dies down he looks over to me and says, “Bro, I want you to keep this.” I was in awe. He basically doubled his money just to say that I should have it. I was so happy and honored to take it.All of us started to get to a pretty high level so we thought about going to chase some big drops that were worth a lot of money. Our first few trips were disastrous. We couldn’t even get a single kill! But as we learned new things and got some better gear we started doing better and better. Anyway we all had our roles when we went on these trips. Some people would focus on damage while someone else had to worry about defence. They would take almost all of the damage so that everyone else could serve the damage back. This was always my brother. He wouldn’t have any of it if someone tried to switch the roles. The “tank” is what we called it and and no matter what he would tank. The tank never got any drops though as he didn’t do much damage but my brother was fine with that. We split the items up fairly but he still never got to be the one to get the actual drop so I kinda felt bad for him. That was him though, he always put others first.As you can imagine my brother started getting sick though. The whole ordeal seems like it happened so fast now whenever I look back at it. I don’t know if it’s me not wanting to remember or if it just really was. About a year definitely doesn’t sound like a short amount of time, but it always seems like a huge blur with copious amounts of tears and arguments and heartbreak and sadness and everything that I hope no one else goes through. While he was sick everyone tried doing anything they could for him. He had spent enough time giving and it was his time to receive. I don’t have nearly as many stories about his time being sick and I feel really bad about that. There was no real upsets or miracles. Just a constantly worsening condition. It was depressingly real. He never had his day of relief where he got his last chance to get out of bed. He never had a huge sudden drop in his condition. It was just down, down, down small bits at a time.We were all playing RuneScape less and less, and he kept losing his grip on the world as the days went by. The last month was extremely hard. Deciding on all of those things that nobody wants to be a part of. Is he going to be buried or cremated? Organ donor or not? (This one he specifically decided early on) Tombstone or not? Which cemetery if so? All these things just made it worse and worse. As we continued to hope for some sort of miracle or breakthrough in science the day kept creeping closer. As with all realistic endings, he eventually died. No last minute miracle, no awe inspiring or motivational last words, nothing profound for my family. He actually didn’t even recognize us really, but that was okay. He was dealing with too much so I don’t blame him. I think he did as best he could, but no one could stop the inevitable.After he died we went through all of those formalities and we all had a down period in our lives. I left school for a bit. My parents stopped working for awhile too. My life was very somber. I don’t recall doing all too much during this time and only have one real memory. One day completely out of the blue, it wasn’t an anniversary date or some event day or anything like that just a random day, one of my friends called me to log onto RuneScape. By this point we had all quit and our membership ran out, but you can log on a free world if you aren’t paying anything with less stuff to do. So, I log on and see almost everyone on. Like fifteen of my and my brothers friends. The one that called me told me to come to one of the places we would go whenever we were just hanging out and everyone was there. It was ridiculous and felt so corny, but my god did I start crying so hard. They all took turns talking about my brother and it was one of the most amazing things anyone has ever done for me. Everyone stayed on the whole time and waited patiently to speak. We were there just talking for probably two hours and they even got one of their parents to come drop off a card at my house signed by everyone when we were done online.I know that this was a lot about me rather than Sword Art Online II but just having something out there that people pay attention to and gives some perspective on what I went through is amazing. Thank you to everyone who has watched Sword Art Online II and thank you to everyone who has read this post. I find it amazing just how much of an affect and impact a fictional story can have on our lives and I am so glad that this one exists. I hope that you all can enjoy a series as profound as this one that fits your life just as much as this did mine. http://ift.tt/1MR6Z91
