Thoughts on the Solstice

First things first, the Slender Nation forum has started an in game wiki page for Slender Man, which can be found here. It’s just starting up, so it doesn’t have much information in it. If you want to contribute, go ahead, but remember that it is in game, so none of this nonsense about Slender Man not actually being real. Also, you should check the basic formatting style they’re using before making anything new, since we want things to look nice there.


The reason for this post is a comment by Mr. Azare, asking about the Solstice. While his questioned was answered by other commentators, it made me realize that I probably should say something about the solstice. It was kinda a big deal after all.

In case anyone isn’t aware of the importance of the winter solstice, a brief recap. The Winter Solstice was an important day in Robert Sage’s Core Theory (If you didn’t get a chance to read White Elephants before it was taken down, Slender Nation saves the day, as they have found the cached version of the blog. Here ya go). According to Robert Sage, Slender Man would be weakest during the Winter Solstice. Seems a bit counter intuitive at first, since the solstice is the longest night of the year, but the length of the night wasn’t the important part in weakening Slender Man. The solstice may be the darkest night, but it also represented the return of the light. Every day after the solstice (at least, until the summer solstice, but that’s a different story) would be growing longer. So it’s a metaphor one about darkness weakening and light returning, but one with real repercussions.

After Core Theory fell out of favor, the idea that Slender Man would be weaker on the Solstice also fell to the wayside. However, Zero still kept his plans to launch some kind of attack against Slender Man on that Solstice, as the day could still be used as a symbol.
Zero’s plan was not to defeat Slender Man, but to possibly weaken him. The plan of attack was dependent on the Tulpa Effect, and the idea that Slender Man could be weakened if we believed him to be weakened. Essentially, Zero and Amelia would confront Slender Man on the night of the solstice. Then, he wanted his readers to write stories about what they thought happened that night. It was hoped that the combined belief and discussion of stories where Slender Man lost would weaken him, even if only a little.

If Slender Man really was created and powered by the Tulpa Effect, the plan makes sense (unless we’re going with A’s hypothesis, and Slendy gets to pick and choose which beliefs affect him), and should have had some kind of impact. If the reason for Slender Man’s invulnerability is because we say he’s invulnerable in our stories, then we just need to write new stories, ones where the protagonists don’t always die horribly, then Slender Man would become weakened.

While such a change could work (if Tulpa Theory is correct), it couldn’t be permanent. Why? Because of you people. Yes, this is all your fault. Feel guilt pouring down upon you.
The audience reading the Slender Man stories don’t want him to be defeated. Most of us are here for the horror, and it’s hard to be scared of something which we can beat. Then there’s the problem with him being a public domain character; no one can really “kill” Slender Man, since anyone else can just bring him back. It’s hard to permanently defeat something when the next author can completely invalidate your victory (plus, you’d have to be a bit of a jerk to say, “Okay, I’ve killed the Slender Man, the Mythos is over now! You can all stop writing about him, because he’s dead now!”)

But that’s starting to get into the conflict between the characters’ desires and the audience’s desires, which will be saved for another post.

So now y’all know what the solstice is. And knowing is half the battle.
The other half is paranoia, gore, blurry camera footage, binary, and trees.

Useful Links
A Hint of Serendipity-Zero Hour: http://despairpalesbeforeme.blogspot.com/2010/12/zero-hour.html
An Index of Solstice Stories: http://slendermanmustdie.blogspot.com/2010/12/solstice-story-index.html