Tearing Paper

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Tearing Paper was a series of four custom levels created on the level designer in Super Mario 63 (2009), an unofficial fan-made Super Mario flash game, by user ~MP3 Amplifier~ in January 2011. She used the levels to tell a story, with the dialogue and narration conveyed through text boxes that popped up when Mario interacted with signs. Kerry played through the first level, "Tearing Paper: Blue City", and part of the second level, "Tearing Paper: China's Dream Pt 1", in 2014. He then wrote his own fiction, also called Tearing Paper, that started with ~MP3 Amplifier~'s story and characters but took them in a different direction. He later merged his Tearing Paper fanfic into the Oburron and Jenner paracosm, integrating both the first half of ~MP3 Amplifier~'s work and his own distinctive additions into his interpretation of BHH, creating the Tearing Paper arc of the paracosm.

The Tearing Paper arc had been created by at least 22 September 2014, when it was referenced in an unfinished written story. Given that Kerry remembers writing his Tearing Paper story on his home computer, this was almost certainly before he went to secondary school, which would accord with Super Mario 63 having been popular at his primary school. This means the content that Kerry added to ~MP3 Amplifier~'s story is almost certainly the oldest original material in the paracosm not inherited directly from "the game".

~MP3 Amplifier~'s protagonists were Lily Jacobs and her boyfriend Keiran Hunt. Lily was trapped in relatively pleasant dreams that she could not easily distinguish from reality; in each dream, she began compulsively tearing paper, cutting her hands in the process, and the environment in the dream became sinister. Kerry's first set of additions explained that her false reality was created by a 'dream machine' being operated by a scientist (who appeared in that reality as a wizard); he then tried to trap her and Keiran inside her mind, using nostalgia as a way to control them. The Tearing Paper arc of the Oburron and Jenner paracosm centered on Lily's dreams being prophetic—the compulsive paper-tearing represented the universe being ripped apart or separated into two discrete worlds.