Inconsistent Behavior: Scared and H(a)unting

Bleh, I’d wanted to get this posted earlier, but I got punched in the face by schoolwork (on the plus side, I somehow ended up writing a Slender Man-ish story for my creative writing class, despite starting the paper with no intention of doing so. I might post is here after I’ve polished it up a bit.)

Currently, both the blogs Scared and H(a)unting have been seeing Slendy acting far more inconsistent than usual. If things keep going on as they are, we may end up seeing Slender Man fighting an epic battle against…. Slender Man. Which would look cool, but also be very messy.

Here’s what you need to know:
On the blog Scared, Drew, the cousin of the main author (Jack), was turned into a Slenderproxy. Also, Sandra, of the blog H(a)unting, has been in frequent contact with Jack of Scared. Now, Sandra is in an interesting situation; technically, she is being followed by Slender Man. However, Slender Man has made no attempts on her life, and actually has acted to protect her in the past. Now, at some point, Drew got it into his head to act in a vaguely threatening manner towards Sandra. Slender Man didn’t take too kindly to that idea.
This is where things start getting interesting. According to Slender Man on H(a)unting, he never physically harmed Drew. According to Drew himself, Slender Man did physically assault him as punishment.
Drew would continue to act in a manner not fitting with H(a)unting’s Slender Man, leading to more confusion. Then, Jack saw Drew with, and being attacked by, a Slender Man he claimed to be different than the Slender Man they had encountered before. Upon learning of the possibility of another Slender Man, H(a)unting’s got a bit aggressive, and seems to have declared a turf war with the other Slendy.

This here is me trying to make sense of what exactly is going on, using what I know of the Mythos. I am not making the claim that one of these hypotheses is THE TRUTH on the matter; in fact, I am open to the possibility that they may all be false (I’m also open to the possibility of one being true, only for the truth to change to a completely different one sometime later. Because that’s the sort of thing Slender Man loves doing). I’m not the one with the direct experience of what’s going on; I’m just the guy reading the blogs and trying to get all the pieces to fit together. Nor am I forcing my ideas on the writers of Scared or H(a)unting. They can choose whether or not they will accept any of these hypotheses; this is merely to be a collection of my thoughts on the matter. The purpose is to hopefully set up a foundation for Scared or H(a)unting to try and learn more on the matter, not to act as a conclusion for it.


Multiple Monster Hypothesis

This seems to be the direction which Scared is assuming; that they are dealing with a completely different Slender Man. After all, who’s to say that there aren’t multiple Slender Men? It would explain a lot about the changes in abilities and method Slendy’s shown across various stories. At least two Slender Men would explain all the inconsistencies between the two blogs, and also why the Slender Man Scared is dealing with now is so different than before.
Based entirely on Scared and H(a)unting, this is the theory I’d go with. It fixes all the problems, with minimum fuss, and no need for any in depth analysis or queries. However, it doesn’t seem to stand up to the evidence of other blogs. Not that it’s false; it would be very difficult to prove or disprove that in my current situation (Step 1, find Slender Man. Step 2, ask Slender Man if there are more than one of him. Step 3, go crazy and die). But the only recent blog to claim that multiple Slender Men exist was Breaker, and that’s already admitted to being fake. This hypothesis also goes against Robert (Sage)’s theory on White Elephants, and at the moment, he probably has the best understanding of just what Slender Man is. According to him, each nation has their own monster; Slender Man just happens to be ours. There is only one monster per nation, and the monsters do not overlap; they hunt only the victims from the culture which created them. Unless we learn that one of the writers on Scared or H(a)unting is actually an immigrant, or that America somehow has gained multiple monsters, this creates problems with there being multiple Slender Men.

Connection to Curious Little Girl?

However, I feel that there is something else which very much needs to be addressed before we completely disregard the idea of multiple Slender Men. There is a little known (and no longer active) Slenderblog called Curious Little Girl, which featured a situation that bears some resemblance to that of H(a)unting. While Gretel (the author) was followed by a Slender Man like creature, she also reportedly had another, different entity which acted as a protective force. She named this protective being Visokiy, while only referring to the malevolent one as HIM. Strangely enough, as far as appearances went, Visokiy bore a much greater resemblance to our current vision of Slender Man than her other stalker. When I began reading H(a)unting, I immediately noticed a similarity between Slender Man’s attitude towards Sandra and Visokiy’s towards Gretel (although H(a)unting’s Slender Man has shown violence towards people other than Sandra, something Visokiy never did), but initially just treated it as another quirk in Slendy’s behavior. However, the possible appearance of another, more violent Slender Man like creature has made the connection stronger, as we now have something to fill in HIM’s role as well as Visokiy’s.
There is little conclusion which I can draw from this, as Curious Little Girl ended in what I can only assume to be a tragic manner before Gretel could tell us much about Visokiy or HIM. All I can say is that some parallels exist, and they are a bit creepy.

And Sandra, if you are reading this, keep this one thing in mind. Don’t let the fact that Slender Man bears no ill will towards you at the moment put you too much at ease. Gretel too had a Slender Man like protector, but in the end, it didn’t help her. Don’t become too complacent, and above all, stay safe.


Time Travel Hypothesis

In my Slenderwalking post, I discussed Slender Man’s ability to move through spacetime. Right now, we’re going to focus on that time part. As it has been demonstrated that time has little hold over Slender Man, we need to drop the concept of linear time while discussing him. For Slendy, going to last Tuesday is no different than going across the block. Just because he seems to act in a sequential manner to us doesn’t mean that he is from his perspective.
To illustrate, imagine this hypothetical scenario. First, Slendy goes over to the EverymanHYBRID folks and stalks them for a day. Then, he goes forward to October 2, and chills at Alice’s (Bright Asylum) library. Then he goes into December of 2011 to ruin some kid’s Christmas. Then he goes back to October 7, and kills Jay (Anomalous Data). Then he goes to September 25, where he attacks Jay.
For us, the order of events would have gone EverymanHYBRID, attack Jay, show up at the library, kill Jay, ruin Christmas, because we view time in a linear fashion. But since Slender Man can move freely through time, such things don’t apply. From Slendy’s perspective, in this scenario he attacked Jay after he had killed him.

In this way, it’s perfectly possible for Slender Man to hit Drew in Scared, and then go on H(a)unting to claim he hasn’t done such a thing while being truthful. He’s telling the truth, because from his perspective, he hasn’t done it yet. From his perspective, it could be years between being with Sandra and going after Drew.
However, this creates some oddities in that H(a)unting’s Slender Man seems to be treating the Slendy which attacked Drew as a separate creature. Which leads us to….

Hive Mind?

Before his death, Jay was able to successfully rescue a Slenderproxy, from which he gained a great deal of information concerning Slender Man. From what I’ve learned, there are two (possibly three) types of Slenderproxies: those that retain their consciousness, and are serving Slender Man semi-willingly (Drew would fall into this category), and those that are completely, and totally insane (such as most Masky expies, and possibly totheark). The second type of Slenderproxy is the type which Jay rescued, and after helping her regain memories of her time as a Slenderproxy, Jay discovered an interesting fact about them: they are connected in a hive mind to Slender Man.

Something which made me think more about was a comment Sandra made while trying to interview Slender Man, “I swear if I ever meet the proxy, or agent, or WHOEVER THE FUCK TAUGHT HIM TO HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR...”

Key word is taught. Ever since Jay’s discovery that the second type of Slenderproxy has a direct mental connection to Slender Man, I’ve wondered if it’s possible that the connection goes both ways. Slender Man does seem capable of learning and adapting from humans; perhaps after making so many mental links, he started to learn more than just how to kill us effectively. It may also explain the strangeness behind Slendy’s behavior towards Sandra; the Slender Man she’s dealing with would be an older one, who has been connected with so many human minds, that he’s now starting to develop more humanlike traits, such as curiosity. Where before he would have used Slenderproxies to eliminate someone mentally immune to his powers (Jay), now he wants to observe such a person. It also explains Slendy’s technical skills and knowledge he’s shown in H(a)unting; I can think of no other instance where Slender Man has shown knowledge of how to type, or read. Such skills may have been gained later for Slender Man, as he continued to adapt to humans.
If this is the case, than what we are seeing is a conflict between the younger, more monstrous Slender Man, and the older, more human Slender Man. I can barely comprehend the time paradoxes which may come about were the older Slender Man to somehow kill the younger one, but perhaps he already knows what the outcome of such an encounter would be. Or maybe he’s willing to risk it. It seems to fit the narrative structure which Slender Man owes his existence to nicely; the hunter gradually grows more connected and respectful of his prey, until finally he almost becomes protective of them against other threats. Time for an obligatory TVTropes link: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheOnlyOneAllowedToDefeatYou


Schizophrenia Hypothesis

It’s been shown time and time again that Slender Man can switch between the rules which govern how he acts, his abilities, and even how he looks.

“Our /Construct/ has options.

Hundreds of them. Eventually thousands at the rate this is going. You(Hunted) play against Him using M's(Hermit) Rules and then suddenly the /Construct/ starts using the Rules from Marble Hornets or Twelve Tribes, and M's advice becomes crap. So you swap over to following those new rules, but then someone else writes up a new blog with new rules for Him or the /Agents/ and voila! You're back to square one, with no time to recover and you never know when He will change. It's fighting water...or smoke. It's impossible to get a hand on it.” (Robert Sage-White Elephants, October 12, 2010)

Most seem to think that Slender Man keeps his thought processes and mindset whenever he shifts rules; the shifting is done consciously to gain an advantage while hunting prey. But when you actually look at how he acts under each rule set, you realize this isn’t entirely true. His behavior can change radically depending on what rules he’s following at the moment. By changing rules, he may not only be changing abilities and weaknesses, but also how he thinks.

It’s very possible that our thin fellow has some odd multiple personality disorder going on.

While dealing with the writers at H(a)unting, Slender Man would use a ruleset which gives him a much more human, and less aggressive behavior. Then at Scared, he uses a completely different ruleset, one which was originally closer to the standard Slender Man formula. Jack’s (Scared) claim that the Slender Man he saw attacking Drew, and who they are now facing, is different may be due to Slender Man shifting rules once more, thus changing his appearance slightly, but most importantly how he acts towards them. Then when he goes back to the H(a)unting home, he shifts rules again.

If this were true in the context of Slendy’s actions on those blogs, then the implications are staggering: It means that Slender Man doesn’t realize he shifts rules. Thus far, Slender Man’s attitude on H(a)unting towards the Slendy now appearing on Scared has been aggressive, treating it as a different entity. If they are in fact the same entity, just following different rules, such actions make no sense unless Slender Man isn’t aware of himself being the other Slendy. This makes a confrontation between the two impossible (unless we start dealing with a Battle in the Center of the Mind sorta thing); but most importantly, it changes how we’ve been looking at Slender Man in the Mythos. Slender Man may be shifting between hundreds of personalities every time he hunts someone, with more personalities being added as the stories about him grow. Kinda weird to think about, really.


Incomprehensible Hypothesis

We’re going to be dealing with some serious Lovecraft shit in this theory.
It’s a short theory, with little need for explanation. Essentially, Slender Man is such an alien being, that our human minds are not capable of understanding his actions. For him, the seemingly contradictory actions between Scared and H(a)unting could be perfectly rational, even if to us, they seem to make no sense at all. We can’t even hope to understand his actions, or the reasons behind them, so to us, they appear completely random and without any basis in logic.


Slender Man is a Lying Bastard Hypothesis

Name of the theory says it all. The only support for the fact that H(a)unting’s Slender Man never touched Drew is Slender Man’s word. Sandra trusts him on this matter, and she is the expert in dealing with that incarnation of Slendy. However, I think we still should consider it as a possibility. He has been known to do things for no reason other than to just screw with peoples’ heads before.



That’s all I’ve got now. If I really wanted to confirm any of these, I’d probably either have to ask Slender Man himself through H(a)unting, or ask Michiru. Except I’m not sure I entirely trust Slendy’s word (3 of the 5 theories make him out to be an unreliable narrator), and Michiru doesn’t seem to be going through the best of times right now.
On the topic of Michiru…. Slendy, I expected better of you. Treating your own servants in such a way? For someone as well dressed as you are, I had been hoping you would act in a more civil manner. I am sorry, but if such behavior is to continue, then I shall be forced to challenge you to a duel in defense of her honor.

Because fighting an immortal abomination with sabers in defense of an insane servant of said abomination is close to the top on my list of “Ways I Want to Die After I Grow Bored With This Earth”.

Useful Links
Scared: http://ihavetorun.blogspot.com/
H(a)unting: http://wwwrunningwonthelp-lya.blogspot.com/
Curious Little Girl: http://clgretel.wordpress.com/
Anomalous Data-Progress: http://anomalousdata.blogspot.com/2010/10/progress.html
White Elephants-Airport Again: http://fighthimuntiltheend.blogspot.com/2010/10/airport-again.html

(One final note: I never noticed until now, but when you put the html for Scared next to H(a)unting’s, it goes “I have to run”, “Running won’t help.” Irony.)