Let’s start out with A SHAMELESS PLUG!!!!
Cause we all like that sort of thing.
I’ve recently been given a position at the Examiner to write articles about zombies. So in case you ever wanted to know what Omega’s opinions on zombies are, you should check it out. And then follow it religiously.
Would you believe that I had been planning on making a post about The Tutorial since December? Just goes to show how incredibly on top of things I am.
The Tutorial
I’ve already mentioned The Tutorial several times, as it has been a huge part in establishing some of the foundations of the Mythos. Here we follow M, the original Runner, the man who decided to make a blog about giving survival tips to those hunted by Slender Man. Being the first blog in this style, The Tutorial created or codified many of the ideas we see present in the Mythos today.
Plot
The Tutorial is scarce on plot most of the time; most of the posts are either M doling out advice, or explaining his current situation. We know M had a brother, who was killed by Slender Man (along with the rest of his family), and we sometimes are given a flashback to an event in M’s past, when he was less experienced at running, but this is mostly the extent of the backstory. For a while, there were hints of a plot appearing, through M’s dreams of a forest and a feeling he had that things would change soon, but schedule slip caused those plot threads to die off.
M the Runner
The Tutorial practically invented the concept of a Runner in the Mythos. We had seen hints of it in Marble Hornets, as Alex appeared to have temporarily escaped the Operator by running away. But The Tutorial was the first time we had a story which focused on someone surviving Slender Man through running; most stories at the time were fairly static in their location. And apart from Seeking Truth, most focused far more on the protagonist going insane than they did on survival. The Tutorial changed the setting for both the authors and the characters. Those writing Slenderblogs were given a new way to handle their characters, which spread rapidly. Writing Runner characters was popular for a long time (before Fighter characters replaced them): a Runner protagonist allows the author to create a character who manages to be genre savvy and proactive about their survival, as opposed to those who just quietly break down at home, while also retaining the sense of helplessness which is useful in horror.
For the characters, it created a common trait of genre savviness. With M’s Tutorial, there was now a place where characters could learn the basics of this creature who was hunting them, and how to stay alive. For some time, commentors would often post a link to The Tutorial whenever a character realized they were being stalked. Barring the “Why are you posting a broken link?” excuse, it would be hard for the character to continue to act in such a confused manner after being introduced to the Tutorial.
M the Codifier
If you look back through this blog, you’ll notice that I have brought up M and The Tutorial a lot. That’s because he was the one who laid down much of the foundation which the current blogs use. Much of what M posted was based on what was seen in Marble Hornets, but with an explanation behind it, instead of leaving it a mystery. The Operator Symbol was given a purpose, Slender Man’s teleportation was discussed, and proxies were given their first real definition.
M’s thoughts on proxies may be one of the most long lasting effects; prior to The Tutorial, stories had existed where Slender Man had human servants, but it was M who first gave them a name and rules. M created the title “Hallowed”, which was the name most used before “Proxy” overtook it in popularity.
Not everything that M said has been taken as gospel truth. The getting up high rule was never very popular, and using masks as protection never took off (until Maduin made his own version of that concept). And as more time passes, more bloggers move further away from M’s ideas. Not as an intentional rebellion against him, but because people are starting to find new ways to look at the things he posted, or explore his ideas from new perspectives.
M the Unkillable
M cannot die. I am convinced of that fact. Time after time, he has vanished for months, until people began to claim he must be dead, only for him to suddenly return and make a comment on someone’s blog. His last post may have been in December, but M made a sudden return in March within the comments section, only to vanish once more. M represents one of the few characters who have managed to stay completely sane and alive during his entire time stalked onscreen (other characters, such as Tony or Sandra, have been involved with Slendy for a longer time, but most of it was before they started their blogs). M is one of the only two surviving protagonists from the earlier times in the Slenderblogs (Zeke being the second), and as such his blog stands out. If you ever want to see firsthand how the Mythos has changed stylistically over time, all you need to do is compare The Tutorial with any currently active Slenderblog. Both will be a story about someone who is at this time being stalked by Slendy, but the environment, tone, and events in them will be markedly different.
It’s almost been a month now since M’s last interaction, so I’m guessing we’ll soon start to see people claiming that he’s either dead or gone. But after seeing M go through so much, I’m starting to think that I’ll only believe he’s dead once I see the body. And maybe not even then.
Useful Links
The Tutorial: http://getuphigh.blogspot.com/
The Tutorial TVTropes Page: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheTutorial
The Tutorial Unfiction Thread: http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=29853
Showing posts with label ARGs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ARGs. Show all posts
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Lack of Horror
First off, I want to thank Setoth for his extremely in depth post over the Crowley Tulpa hypothesis that was in my last post. It covers pretty much everything you need to know, plus a bit more, about Crowley, the Babylon Working, and the authenticity of the Slender Man Chronicle’s claims. Check it out here.
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One of the complaints I hear about modern slenderblogs is the lack of scariness in them. When this point was first raised on Unfiction several months ago, I attributed it to a transition in writing style from cosmic horror to conventional horror. But with the current blogs that are being written/made, I’ve noticed yet another shift, this time away from horror entirely.
Moving away from horror is not necessarily a bad thing (The Tutorial, for example, is in no way a horror story, but I still enjoy it. Even if M never updates). It’s possible to write good stories in the Mythos without them needing to be horror. However, the main draw of Slender Man is horror. Marble Hornets, Just Another Fool, and all the other gateway series are all horror series. People become interested in Slender Man because he frightens them, and the expectation is for him to continue to do so. With this in mind, one would expect that the majority of stories would be horror, with only a few exceptions where the authors explore other genres. That isn’t what’s happening; only a small amount of blogs are actually horror, while the rest are all over the genre spectrum. This wouldn’t be a problem if it were intentional, but I often get the feeling that it’s not: in many of the blogs I’m reading, it’s painfully obvious to me that the author was trying to write horror, but kept missing and hitting dark thriller/dark action/sitcom/whatever genre instead. While I suppose you could accidentally write an amazing romance while trying to scare your readers, it would never be as good a story as it would if you were trying to write romance (or had been correctly writing horror from the start).
I don’t claim to be the authoritative expert on how to write horror, but these are some of the basic mistakes/assumptions I’ve seen people make while trying to make their story scary, which need to be fixed for effective writing.
1. Having a monster does not create horror.
The horror monster is a staple of the genre, be it vampires, werewolves, zombies, or for us, Slender Man. The monster is supposed to be the focus of our fears; from it flows all the creepiness of the story.
However, the horror monster trope has led to a mistaken assumption that is found all too often. That is, A) Slender Man is scary. B) Therefore, if I put Slender Man in my story, it will become scary.
This belief shows a misunderstanding of the tropes basic concepts. It is not the existence of the monster which causes the reader to be scared, but the actions which the monster does. And unfortunately, we’ve seen quite a bit of badass decay in the actions of Slender Man. In too many stories, all he ever does is quietly stalk the character. Stalking on its own isn’t scary; what makes it so frightening is the implied threat in it, that the stalker may at any moment choose to cease quietly observing and become much more malevolent. All too often, we see heavy focus on the stalking, but little on the threat.
What’s the solution? Simple: have Slendy do something besides chill in the background. The stalking suddenly becomes much more threatening when the reader knows that at any moment, he may decide to become violent. Having an active Slendy does carry its own risks, however. If you rush too quickly into Slendy’s violence, escalate his attacks at too rapid a pace, you run out of tension and suspense early on. This was the biggest problem in Hiking Fiend: right off the bat, Slender Man was using life threatening force on the protagonist. After you’ve put the risk of Slender Man killing the protagonist out there, it’s hard to figure out where else to go. If you keep drawing the story out without pulling back on the action, the audience begins to wonder why Slendy doesn’t just kill the character; why does such a powerful being keep failing to catch his target?
A note here: when I saw Slendy needs to take action, this does not mean sending proxies out to attack. Proxies have their uses in horror, but being a substitute for Slender Man is not one of them. If you want Slender Man to be scary, it needs to be Slender Man who poses the biggest threat to the protagonist, not generic mook #247.
This point leads very nicely to the next, which is…
2. “A headcrab hiding in every vent is boring. A headcrab hiding in every third vent is terrifying.”
That’s a quote I read on a discussion on how to make good horror levels in Half Life 2, but it also applies to all other forms of horror media. If the monster is always around, it becomes boring, status quo, and predictable. However, what if you never know when the monster will appear? It’s not the monster chilling in your front yard which creates suspense, it’s the possibility that he might be there which creates it. Oftentimes, the monster’s actual appearance acts more as a relief: all the tension which had been building up in the audiences from the growing suspense is released in that moment.
Sadly, all too many writers (even some professional ones, to be honest) don’t understand how to build suspense. Slender Man appears, and then he’s always there. No build up or tension is created, and the audience never has to ask, “When’s he going to appear next?” He’s always standing around, like another detail in the background. Look at some of the successful blogs, such as Just Another Fool or Seeking Truth. Slender Man rarely makes appearances in them; most of the time, he’s in the background. Whenever he does make an appearance, it’s a major event, not just him doing his usual thing.
This is where proxies can be used. Putting too much attention on Slender Man makes him less mysterious, creates less suspense, and therefore lessens the fear. What the proxies can do is enable to author to keep the tension and risk in the story present without putting too bright a spotlight on Slendy. Through effective use of proxies, Slender Man can be saved for the moments with the greatest importance. Think of how Marble Hornets used Masky: he isn’t as big a threat as Slender Man, but he’s enough of one to create suspense and fear. Masky is used to keep the threat present, and then when they really need something major, that’s when they pull out Slender Man. Because we haven’t been constantly seeing Slender Man around the place, his appearance is a much bigger deal than it would have been otherwise.
Proxies have the same risks of overexposure as Slender Man. While they can be used more frequently than Slender Man, if used too frequently they also stop being scary or threatening. It’s a hard balance to find, but when found, is very effective.
3. The character being scared does not equal the audience being scared.
This is aimed at both the people who are writing the blogs and the people who are complaining about them. First, for those writing: just because you tell us your character is scared does not mean that any of us should be scared. Writing a post about how terrified you are because Slender Man is outside your window is nice and all, but Slender Man outside someone’s window on its own isn’t going to scare many people. You need atmosphere, suspense, and empathy from the audience. Without those things, your character can scream all they want, and no one’s going to care much.
For the complainers: a lot of people seem to think that the biggest problem with the current blogs is how no one is scared of Slender Man anymore. I’ll admit, that can be a problem: it’s hard to be frightened when the narrator is acting all upbeat and confident. However, making the characters scared of Slender Man on its own will not solve all the problems in the stories and make everything frightening again. It can be used as a first step towards a solution, but it isn’t the solution in itself. And I think it even could be possible to write genuine horror while still having a confident character; it would just be really, really hard.
4. The need to lose
This…. This is mostly for horror, but it applies to EVERYONE making a blog right now. The most important aspect of storytelling is conflict. If you have a good conflict, the chances of having a good story increase tremendously.
We don’t have many good conflicts anymore.
You see, stories tend to follow a pattern. There’s the rising action, where the story builds up, culminating in the climax. In horror, the climax usually ends with either the protagonists losing, or their victory being put in doubt. More positive genres tend to have protagonist victory in the climax. Along the way to the climax, there can be small, mini-climaxes, with their own rising action and subsequent relaxation and releasing of tension, but the trend is supposed to continue in a generally upward manner.
Why does this matter? Because too many people are misunderstanding how to use the rising action period. It’s supposed to be a time where the story builds up its suspense, gradually building it up until it’s let loose in the climax. Where the mistakes are being made is during the mini-climaxes that occur during the rising action: having too many wins for the protagonists during that time destroys the suspense. If through the entire story, the characters have won every encounter they’ve had with the antagonists, the audience isn’t going to wonder whether or not they’ll win in the end; they’ll just assume a protagonist victory, like every time before.
A good story is not supposed to be a tale about a person experiencing a series of victories until one final victory. It’s supposed to be about a struggle, where they have to work hard and overcome challenges before the end. At the start of the story, you can get away with some easy wins; the antagonist isn’t fully committed yet, and there’s little tension that has been created thus far. But the further into the story you go, the harder things should become for the protagonist. This is where losing is needed. Now, when I say “losing”, I don’t mean a total protagonist defeat. That would defeat the purpose of the rest of the story. And it actually is possible to have the protagonists achieve their goal during a mini-climax and still “lose”. What I mean by losing can be many things, such as having to sacrifice something, experiencing psychological/moral defeats, the antagonist defeating their plan A so they have to go to the riskier plan B, etc. The purpose of these losses is so that the protagonist winning is never a certainty; every success they achieve is harder than the last, every time they face the antagonist they come closer to being defeated. At the climax, the final outcome should be in doubt. Will the protagonists win? Things have been getting harder for them, but they’re still fighting, and they might be able to pull out a win. Or will the antagonists finally triumph completely?
Now for those of you writing horror, don’t overemphasize the protagonists losing. When the climax comes, there still needs to be some hope that the protagonists might win. If everyone knows the monster is going to win, there’s no reason to read the ending. That doubt is the essential part of making the climax exciting.
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One of the complaints I hear about modern slenderblogs is the lack of scariness in them. When this point was first raised on Unfiction several months ago, I attributed it to a transition in writing style from cosmic horror to conventional horror. But with the current blogs that are being written/made, I’ve noticed yet another shift, this time away from horror entirely.
Moving away from horror is not necessarily a bad thing (The Tutorial, for example, is in no way a horror story, but I still enjoy it. Even if M never updates). It’s possible to write good stories in the Mythos without them needing to be horror. However, the main draw of Slender Man is horror. Marble Hornets, Just Another Fool, and all the other gateway series are all horror series. People become interested in Slender Man because he frightens them, and the expectation is for him to continue to do so. With this in mind, one would expect that the majority of stories would be horror, with only a few exceptions where the authors explore other genres. That isn’t what’s happening; only a small amount of blogs are actually horror, while the rest are all over the genre spectrum. This wouldn’t be a problem if it were intentional, but I often get the feeling that it’s not: in many of the blogs I’m reading, it’s painfully obvious to me that the author was trying to write horror, but kept missing and hitting dark thriller/dark action/sitcom/whatever genre instead. While I suppose you could accidentally write an amazing romance while trying to scare your readers, it would never be as good a story as it would if you were trying to write romance (or had been correctly writing horror from the start).
I don’t claim to be the authoritative expert on how to write horror, but these are some of the basic mistakes/assumptions I’ve seen people make while trying to make their story scary, which need to be fixed for effective writing.
1. Having a monster does not create horror.
The horror monster is a staple of the genre, be it vampires, werewolves, zombies, or for us, Slender Man. The monster is supposed to be the focus of our fears; from it flows all the creepiness of the story.
However, the horror monster trope has led to a mistaken assumption that is found all too often. That is, A) Slender Man is scary. B) Therefore, if I put Slender Man in my story, it will become scary.
This belief shows a misunderstanding of the tropes basic concepts. It is not the existence of the monster which causes the reader to be scared, but the actions which the monster does. And unfortunately, we’ve seen quite a bit of badass decay in the actions of Slender Man. In too many stories, all he ever does is quietly stalk the character. Stalking on its own isn’t scary; what makes it so frightening is the implied threat in it, that the stalker may at any moment choose to cease quietly observing and become much more malevolent. All too often, we see heavy focus on the stalking, but little on the threat.
What’s the solution? Simple: have Slendy do something besides chill in the background. The stalking suddenly becomes much more threatening when the reader knows that at any moment, he may decide to become violent. Having an active Slendy does carry its own risks, however. If you rush too quickly into Slendy’s violence, escalate his attacks at too rapid a pace, you run out of tension and suspense early on. This was the biggest problem in Hiking Fiend: right off the bat, Slender Man was using life threatening force on the protagonist. After you’ve put the risk of Slender Man killing the protagonist out there, it’s hard to figure out where else to go. If you keep drawing the story out without pulling back on the action, the audience begins to wonder why Slendy doesn’t just kill the character; why does such a powerful being keep failing to catch his target?
A note here: when I saw Slendy needs to take action, this does not mean sending proxies out to attack. Proxies have their uses in horror, but being a substitute for Slender Man is not one of them. If you want Slender Man to be scary, it needs to be Slender Man who poses the biggest threat to the protagonist, not generic mook #247.
This point leads very nicely to the next, which is…
2. “A headcrab hiding in every vent is boring. A headcrab hiding in every third vent is terrifying.”
That’s a quote I read on a discussion on how to make good horror levels in Half Life 2, but it also applies to all other forms of horror media. If the monster is always around, it becomes boring, status quo, and predictable. However, what if you never know when the monster will appear? It’s not the monster chilling in your front yard which creates suspense, it’s the possibility that he might be there which creates it. Oftentimes, the monster’s actual appearance acts more as a relief: all the tension which had been building up in the audiences from the growing suspense is released in that moment.
Sadly, all too many writers (even some professional ones, to be honest) don’t understand how to build suspense. Slender Man appears, and then he’s always there. No build up or tension is created, and the audience never has to ask, “When’s he going to appear next?” He’s always standing around, like another detail in the background. Look at some of the successful blogs, such as Just Another Fool or Seeking Truth. Slender Man rarely makes appearances in them; most of the time, he’s in the background. Whenever he does make an appearance, it’s a major event, not just him doing his usual thing.
This is where proxies can be used. Putting too much attention on Slender Man makes him less mysterious, creates less suspense, and therefore lessens the fear. What the proxies can do is enable to author to keep the tension and risk in the story present without putting too bright a spotlight on Slendy. Through effective use of proxies, Slender Man can be saved for the moments with the greatest importance. Think of how Marble Hornets used Masky: he isn’t as big a threat as Slender Man, but he’s enough of one to create suspense and fear. Masky is used to keep the threat present, and then when they really need something major, that’s when they pull out Slender Man. Because we haven’t been constantly seeing Slender Man around the place, his appearance is a much bigger deal than it would have been otherwise.
Proxies have the same risks of overexposure as Slender Man. While they can be used more frequently than Slender Man, if used too frequently they also stop being scary or threatening. It’s a hard balance to find, but when found, is very effective.
3. The character being scared does not equal the audience being scared.
This is aimed at both the people who are writing the blogs and the people who are complaining about them. First, for those writing: just because you tell us your character is scared does not mean that any of us should be scared. Writing a post about how terrified you are because Slender Man is outside your window is nice and all, but Slender Man outside someone’s window on its own isn’t going to scare many people. You need atmosphere, suspense, and empathy from the audience. Without those things, your character can scream all they want, and no one’s going to care much.
For the complainers: a lot of people seem to think that the biggest problem with the current blogs is how no one is scared of Slender Man anymore. I’ll admit, that can be a problem: it’s hard to be frightened when the narrator is acting all upbeat and confident. However, making the characters scared of Slender Man on its own will not solve all the problems in the stories and make everything frightening again. It can be used as a first step towards a solution, but it isn’t the solution in itself. And I think it even could be possible to write genuine horror while still having a confident character; it would just be really, really hard.
4. The need to lose
This…. This is mostly for horror, but it applies to EVERYONE making a blog right now. The most important aspect of storytelling is conflict. If you have a good conflict, the chances of having a good story increase tremendously.
We don’t have many good conflicts anymore.
You see, stories tend to follow a pattern. There’s the rising action, where the story builds up, culminating in the climax. In horror, the climax usually ends with either the protagonists losing, or their victory being put in doubt. More positive genres tend to have protagonist victory in the climax. Along the way to the climax, there can be small, mini-climaxes, with their own rising action and subsequent relaxation and releasing of tension, but the trend is supposed to continue in a generally upward manner.
Why does this matter? Because too many people are misunderstanding how to use the rising action period. It’s supposed to be a time where the story builds up its suspense, gradually building it up until it’s let loose in the climax. Where the mistakes are being made is during the mini-climaxes that occur during the rising action: having too many wins for the protagonists during that time destroys the suspense. If through the entire story, the characters have won every encounter they’ve had with the antagonists, the audience isn’t going to wonder whether or not they’ll win in the end; they’ll just assume a protagonist victory, like every time before.
A good story is not supposed to be a tale about a person experiencing a series of victories until one final victory. It’s supposed to be about a struggle, where they have to work hard and overcome challenges before the end. At the start of the story, you can get away with some easy wins; the antagonist isn’t fully committed yet, and there’s little tension that has been created thus far. But the further into the story you go, the harder things should become for the protagonist. This is where losing is needed. Now, when I say “losing”, I don’t mean a total protagonist defeat. That would defeat the purpose of the rest of the story. And it actually is possible to have the protagonists achieve their goal during a mini-climax and still “lose”. What I mean by losing can be many things, such as having to sacrifice something, experiencing psychological/moral defeats, the antagonist defeating their plan A so they have to go to the riskier plan B, etc. The purpose of these losses is so that the protagonist winning is never a certainty; every success they achieve is harder than the last, every time they face the antagonist they come closer to being defeated. At the climax, the final outcome should be in doubt. Will the protagonists win? Things have been getting harder for them, but they’re still fighting, and they might be able to pull out a win. Or will the antagonists finally triumph completely?
Now for those of you writing horror, don’t overemphasize the protagonists losing. When the climax comes, there still needs to be some hope that the protagonists might win. If everyone knows the monster is going to win, there’s no reason to read the ending. That doubt is the essential part of making the climax exciting.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Seeking Truth
Wow. It’s been a long time since I actually posted something (a long while in internet time, at least). I had intended to just take a week, maybe two off…. And then I went and took nearly the entire break off. My bad. I blame the holidays, and all the distractions that come with them.
So, a very late Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Hanukah, Beethoven’s Birthday, Boxing Day, Kwanzaa, and Capitalism Day.
I've been having to do a lot of catching up lately, since I haven't been keeping up to date like I should. Hopefully I'll be fully informed of all them happenings around these parts quickly.
Here we’ll cover Seeking Truth, one of the classics of Slenderblogs (I find it strange that we live in a time where a story not even a year old can be called a classic).
Seeking Truth
Plot
Seeking Truth is a blog by Ezekiel Strahm (who goes by the name Zeke), a loose cannon cop who plays by his own rules. He admits that he isn’t the sort who would usually start a blog, but his partner Lizzie made it for him, so he gets to posting on it.
The first part of the blog deals with Zeke investigating the disappearance of a teenage girl. At first, it appeared as though the girl just ran away from home, but after the discovery of a notebook filled with Slender Man imagery, Zeke began to suspect kidnapping. The primary suspect of the case is Albert Conaghan, a rather unpleasant individual, who had been accused of raping young girls before. More children went missing (one even while under police surveillance), commenters screamed “It is teh Slendoorman!” (While Zeke screamed “Shut the hell up!” back at them, but louder), a romantic subplot develops between Zeke and Lizzie, and eventually, Conaghan was apprehended.
Predictably, capturing Conaghan does not put their troubles to rest, as Zeke discovered that Lizzie was being followed by Slender Man (another victim was an officer named Eric, who was working with the two protagonists). Zeke continued to remain skeptic, but doing so became harder as more things piled up on top of each other.
Then Slendy went and busts Conaghan out of prison, and the hunt resumed. Conaghan was tracked down to a warehouse, where alien geometries abounded, and where Zeke confronted (and shot at) Slender Man.
While in the warehouse, Lizzie was killed by Conaghan. This caused Zeke considerable emotional distress, and after being put on suspension by the chief, he spent most of his time isolated in his home. Slender Man began to haunt him there, and we learn from Zeke that he had been haunted as a child, and that the events thus far were part of a plan by Slender Man to capture this victim who had escaped him.
Eventually, Zeke got over his misery, and replaced it with resolve to fight against Slender Man. After gathering information on his opponent, Zeke returned to the warehouse for a final confrontation.
We never have found out just what happened at that warehouse, and Zeke still hasn’t said anything. What we do know comes from another source, namely Agent Fisk. After cracking into the blog, Fisk reported that the FBI was hunting Zeke Strahm for arson and multiple homicides. The warehouse that Zeke had gone to had been burned down, with two bodies (Conaghan and Eric) found inside. Following that, Zeke has posted a few more short posts, the first few cryptic and vague, but then commenting on events in other stories.
Zeke has continued to comment on other Slenderblogs, and now has another active blog, The Mystic.
Impact on the Mythos
Fighting Back
Zeke was, and still is, a very unique character amongst the Slenderblogs. Where most stories feature college students as their protagonists, here we have a hardboiled detective. Even more distinctive was how Zeke responded to Slender Man. At the time, the only other story which even considered a possibility other than Slendy killing everything within a ten mile radius was Tutorial, which focused on running. Seeking Truth was the first time a major story had its character attempt to fight back against Slender Man. From what we know, the fighting back wasn’t entirely successful, as Slendy’s still here, but Zeke has managed to be one of the few people to survive this long.
Since Seeking Truth, the idea of fighting back has really taken off. We’ve had tons of blogs where the protagonists act aggressively in response to Slender Man, instead of passively letting him drive them insane. Sometimes this isn’t a good thing, as a fair share of blogs have dropped all pretense of horror to focus on fighting back. Apart from those examples, I think this is a positive thing; while confusion and inactivity were good in the original stories, nowadays such characters often seem ridiculously genre blind.
Haunted as Children
Here, Seeking Truth tried to explain one of the consistently strange things in the Slenderstories: If Slender Man targets children…. Why do all his victims in these stories seem to be adults? ST’s justification was that many of the adults being targeted were childhood victims who somehow managed to avoid being taken by Slendy. Not many current blogs use the explanation (instead they tend to just say “Tulpa Effect did it”), but it is a good explanation, which helps address the fridge logic in Slendy’s victim choices.
Useful Links
Seeking Truth: http://openthedoorandyouwillfindme.blogspot.com/
TVTropes Entry: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeekingTruth
The Mystic: http://helpingthosehelpthemselves.blogspot.com/
So, a very late Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Hanukah, Beethoven’s Birthday, Boxing Day, Kwanzaa, and Capitalism Day.
I've been having to do a lot of catching up lately, since I haven't been keeping up to date like I should. Hopefully I'll be fully informed of all them happenings around these parts quickly.
Here we’ll cover Seeking Truth, one of the classics of Slenderblogs (I find it strange that we live in a time where a story not even a year old can be called a classic).
Seeking Truth
Plot
Seeking Truth is a blog by Ezekiel Strahm (who goes by the name Zeke), a loose cannon cop who plays by his own rules. He admits that he isn’t the sort who would usually start a blog, but his partner Lizzie made it for him, so he gets to posting on it.
The first part of the blog deals with Zeke investigating the disappearance of a teenage girl. At first, it appeared as though the girl just ran away from home, but after the discovery of a notebook filled with Slender Man imagery, Zeke began to suspect kidnapping. The primary suspect of the case is Albert Conaghan, a rather unpleasant individual, who had been accused of raping young girls before. More children went missing (one even while under police surveillance), commenters screamed “It is teh Slendoorman!” (While Zeke screamed “Shut the hell up!” back at them, but louder), a romantic subplot develops between Zeke and Lizzie, and eventually, Conaghan was apprehended.
Predictably, capturing Conaghan does not put their troubles to rest, as Zeke discovered that Lizzie was being followed by Slender Man (another victim was an officer named Eric, who was working with the two protagonists). Zeke continued to remain skeptic, but doing so became harder as more things piled up on top of each other.
Then Slendy went and busts Conaghan out of prison, and the hunt resumed. Conaghan was tracked down to a warehouse, where alien geometries abounded, and where Zeke confronted (and shot at) Slender Man.
While in the warehouse, Lizzie was killed by Conaghan. This caused Zeke considerable emotional distress, and after being put on suspension by the chief, he spent most of his time isolated in his home. Slender Man began to haunt him there, and we learn from Zeke that he had been haunted as a child, and that the events thus far were part of a plan by Slender Man to capture this victim who had escaped him.
Eventually, Zeke got over his misery, and replaced it with resolve to fight against Slender Man. After gathering information on his opponent, Zeke returned to the warehouse for a final confrontation.
We never have found out just what happened at that warehouse, and Zeke still hasn’t said anything. What we do know comes from another source, namely Agent Fisk. After cracking into the blog, Fisk reported that the FBI was hunting Zeke Strahm for arson and multiple homicides. The warehouse that Zeke had gone to had been burned down, with two bodies (Conaghan and Eric) found inside. Following that, Zeke has posted a few more short posts, the first few cryptic and vague, but then commenting on events in other stories.
Zeke has continued to comment on other Slenderblogs, and now has another active blog, The Mystic.
Impact on the Mythos
Fighting Back
Zeke was, and still is, a very unique character amongst the Slenderblogs. Where most stories feature college students as their protagonists, here we have a hardboiled detective. Even more distinctive was how Zeke responded to Slender Man. At the time, the only other story which even considered a possibility other than Slendy killing everything within a ten mile radius was Tutorial, which focused on running. Seeking Truth was the first time a major story had its character attempt to fight back against Slender Man. From what we know, the fighting back wasn’t entirely successful, as Slendy’s still here, but Zeke has managed to be one of the few people to survive this long.
Since Seeking Truth, the idea of fighting back has really taken off. We’ve had tons of blogs where the protagonists act aggressively in response to Slender Man, instead of passively letting him drive them insane. Sometimes this isn’t a good thing, as a fair share of blogs have dropped all pretense of horror to focus on fighting back. Apart from those examples, I think this is a positive thing; while confusion and inactivity were good in the original stories, nowadays such characters often seem ridiculously genre blind.
Haunted as Children
Here, Seeking Truth tried to explain one of the consistently strange things in the Slenderstories: If Slender Man targets children…. Why do all his victims in these stories seem to be adults? ST’s justification was that many of the adults being targeted were childhood victims who somehow managed to avoid being taken by Slendy. Not many current blogs use the explanation (instead they tend to just say “Tulpa Effect did it”), but it is a good explanation, which helps address the fridge logic in Slendy’s victim choices.
Useful Links
Seeking Truth: http://openthedoorandyouwillfindme.blogspot.com/
TVTropes Entry: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeekingTruth
The Mystic: http://helpingthosehelpthemselves.blogspot.com/
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Generations
I would like to start off by satisfying my desire for attention and acknowledgement by saying that today is my birthday. My depression over becoming an old man (20 years old. Next thing I know, I’ll be having grey hair and going senile) is being countered by the fact that everyone who’s given me gifts so far has given me something Terry Pratchett related. It wasn’t coordinated; they just all seemed to think, “Hey, you know what would be a great thing to give Omega? That new Discworld book.” (the UK version, of course. Because having extra u’s in words is great fun) or “a Discworld calendar” or “that one Discworld picture book”, etc. Fun times.
But that’s not what we’re here to talk about. A while ago, Zero mentioned the idea of blogs being in generations; kinda groupings based on when they were written, but also how they were written. That got me thinking, and for a long time I was considering making a full post about it.
Cept then Zero beat me to it.
Which leaves me with only one path open to me. If I am to win (yes, WIN! This is totally a contest!) then I need to make a LONGER post than he did! Because that makes complete and total sense!
*Ahem*
Anyways.
Generations
I’ve divided the blogs into three generations. The divisions are based more on content than time, as there is some overlap at points where one generation began and another ended; or the occasional blog that has an earlier generations style.
Generation 1
The earliest Slenderblogs; a golden age, when men were sissies and codespeak was still stylish. Examples of blogs in this generation include Just Another Fool and In My Head.
The features of this generation are a more interactive ARG style, an undefined Slender Man, and a tone closer to House of Leaves than Lovecraft.
The first generation of Slenderblogs is the most unique of the three. While later blogs would be more story focused, these ones were closer to a traditional ARG, with lots of puzzle solving for the readers. When something was posted which looked like a bunch of random letters or meaningless phrases with the shift key used a few times too many, it was usually a hidden message, not a way of conveying insanity or general scariness. The largest difference between this and later generations was the actions of Slender Man. Barely anything was known about him, so he was treated like a force instead of a character; he barely even appears in JAF. The focus of the story was more on the effect Slender Man was having on the characters, and their attempts to uncover the mystery surrounding them. It’s also the reason for the “Everyone dies/goes insane in the end” cliché; fighting back wasn’t seriously considered at this stage.
Generation 1 was short lived, with only a few blogs in it before Gen 2 began. The actual transition wasn’t very clear cut; while the blogs which caused the transition are obvious, those blogs retained some of their Gen 1 influence in their style.
Generation 2
The one which came after Generation 1 (Hooray, I can count!)
Defined by setting up canon rules for Slender Man, introduction of proxies, and making Slender Man an antagonist figure.
The two blogs which got the ball rolling on Gen 2 were Seeking Truth and Tutorial. Stylistically, Seeking Truth would be a Gen 1 blog, except for the character Zeke Strahm. For the first time, a character willing to act aggressively against Slender Man was introduced into the Mythos, which would lead to even more blogs taking up arms against Slendy.
Tutorial, unlike ST, is very much a Gen 2 blog, with little connection to Gen 1 beyond taking place in the same mythos. Rules were established for Slender Man’s actions, the possibility of survival by running was made, and proxies were introduced not just as Masky/totheark rip-offs, but actually having their own rules guiding them.
Puzzles were almost entirely dropped in Gen 2; while they still occasionally popped up from time to time, they were rarely a large part of the story. More often than not, codes were in the comments, not the story, and tended to be from trolls/gamejackers.
The most important change from generations was how Slender Man was treated in the story. Now that he had been given rules, and been made into something to fight against, he was no longer an unstoppable force, but an actual antagonist. The conflict of the stories became less about the terrible affects Slender Man had on people, and more on a conflict against Slender Man.
This was also the time when crossover between blogs began. Instead of staying on their blogs, characters started to comment on each other’s blogs. The blogs were no longer self contained universes, but all taking place within a single setting.
Many of the Gen 2 blogs are still ongoing today, even as Generation 3 is picking up, which makes it difficult to claim that it has ended entirely.
Generation 3
Since Gen 2 hasn’t totally come to a close yet, it’s hard to say when the exact moment where we transitioned to the third generation happened. The time I find most likely is when Robert passed on the Sage titles.
The third generation of Slenderblogs is defined by large amounts of crossover between blogs, high amounts of proxy involvement, and Slender Man assuming a more passive, sitting back on his throne role.
The crossover thing if pretty obvious now; even on blogs with a much more Gen 2 style, you’ll still find more comments from other bloggers than you did in the past. And now, instead of being self contained stories, it’s often necessary to follow multiple blogs at once to understand the full story. This is an extension of Gen 2 practices, just taken to a further degree. It started with M, Zeke, Shaun, Jay, and Robert commenting on each other’s blogs, and occasionally mentioning them in a post. But their stories still remained mostly independent from each other, just with some character interaction. What we’ve got in Gen 3 is stories actually affecting each other, and not just in minor ways. What happens in one story can cause a character from another story to take a different course of action than they would have otherwise. It also means the occasional 100+ comment post.
And proxies. Gen 3 has way more proxies than the previous ones. Previously, blogs would have a handful of proxies in the story, who tended to just be minor distractions from the main Big Bad, Slendy. What’s happened in Gen 3 is a higher priority put onto the proxies, making it not uncommon for characters to face multiple proxies over the course of the story. What this does is turn the threat into more of a physical one than a mental one; the characters’ main worry is being stabbed by a crazy knife nut, not staying sane. When overdone, this can turn the story into something out of a zombie apocalypse movie, though instances of that happening have decreased lately.
Slender Man’s less involved behavior in Gen 3 is related to the increase in proxy attacks. Instead of tormenting individuals personally, his proxies do it for him, while he stays in the background. He tends to be reserved for more dramatic or dangerous moments.
One last note about Generation 3: I’ve seen most people put the start of Gen 3 at Zero’s “Real” post, and Redlight’s posts on White Elephants. I’d disagree with that (which should be obvious, because I did disagree with that up at the start of the Gen 3 section), for a few reasons. First off, the elements that I consider important to Generation 3 began appearing after the Sage titles were passed on, and have continued through the Real and Redlight posts. Secondly, the change in writing after those posts was not in style, but in tone. We went from “Yeah, let’s go kill that Slender Guy!” back to paranoia and insanity. All the things which are currently in Gen 3 existed before those posts; what they did was cut off a lot of the deadwood which was holding them down. Finally, I don’t like the implication that White Elephants was part of the super hero stories just because they all used Core Theory. There is a massive difference between Core Theory as was presented in WE and the Core Theory which so many people started using after the Sage transfer. WE didn’t have supernatural which couldn’t be explained away with “Slendy didn’t” (which is basically the Mythos’s equivalent of a Wizard Did It), individual proxies were a legitimate threat instead of mooks to be defeated by the dozen (the only time Robert encountered a large group of proxies, he called the police on them instead of confronting them), titles were symbols describing roles instead of grants of power, and until the Sage transfer, the tone was still dark and pessimistic. Original Core Theory was a logical conclusion of the idea that Slender Man came from the Tulpa effect, based on the nature of myths and stories in our culture. The Core Theory post WE was something else entirely.
But enough ranting. There’s been speculation on what the next generation of blogs would be like. Most guesses seem to be based on the gradual increase in optimism from the blogs. The next generation is likely to be filled with positive outlooks, and characters who are just plain awesome.
My hope is that the next generation looks something like this.
But that’s not what we’re here to talk about. A while ago, Zero mentioned the idea of blogs being in generations; kinda groupings based on when they were written, but also how they were written. That got me thinking, and for a long time I was considering making a full post about it.
Cept then Zero beat me to it.
Which leaves me with only one path open to me. If I am to win (yes, WIN! This is totally a contest!) then I need to make a LONGER post than he did! Because that makes complete and total sense!
*Ahem*
Anyways.
Generations
I’ve divided the blogs into three generations. The divisions are based more on content than time, as there is some overlap at points where one generation began and another ended; or the occasional blog that has an earlier generations style.
Generation 1
The earliest Slenderblogs; a golden age, when men were sissies and codespeak was still stylish. Examples of blogs in this generation include Just Another Fool and In My Head.
The features of this generation are a more interactive ARG style, an undefined Slender Man, and a tone closer to House of Leaves than Lovecraft.
The first generation of Slenderblogs is the most unique of the three. While later blogs would be more story focused, these ones were closer to a traditional ARG, with lots of puzzle solving for the readers. When something was posted which looked like a bunch of random letters or meaningless phrases with the shift key used a few times too many, it was usually a hidden message, not a way of conveying insanity or general scariness. The largest difference between this and later generations was the actions of Slender Man. Barely anything was known about him, so he was treated like a force instead of a character; he barely even appears in JAF. The focus of the story was more on the effect Slender Man was having on the characters, and their attempts to uncover the mystery surrounding them. It’s also the reason for the “Everyone dies/goes insane in the end” cliché; fighting back wasn’t seriously considered at this stage.
Generation 1 was short lived, with only a few blogs in it before Gen 2 began. The actual transition wasn’t very clear cut; while the blogs which caused the transition are obvious, those blogs retained some of their Gen 1 influence in their style.
Generation 2
The one which came after Generation 1 (Hooray, I can count!)
Defined by setting up canon rules for Slender Man, introduction of proxies, and making Slender Man an antagonist figure.
The two blogs which got the ball rolling on Gen 2 were Seeking Truth and Tutorial. Stylistically, Seeking Truth would be a Gen 1 blog, except for the character Zeke Strahm. For the first time, a character willing to act aggressively against Slender Man was introduced into the Mythos, which would lead to even more blogs taking up arms against Slendy.
Tutorial, unlike ST, is very much a Gen 2 blog, with little connection to Gen 1 beyond taking place in the same mythos. Rules were established for Slender Man’s actions, the possibility of survival by running was made, and proxies were introduced not just as Masky/totheark rip-offs, but actually having their own rules guiding them.
Puzzles were almost entirely dropped in Gen 2; while they still occasionally popped up from time to time, they were rarely a large part of the story. More often than not, codes were in the comments, not the story, and tended to be from trolls/gamejackers.
The most important change from generations was how Slender Man was treated in the story. Now that he had been given rules, and been made into something to fight against, he was no longer an unstoppable force, but an actual antagonist. The conflict of the stories became less about the terrible affects Slender Man had on people, and more on a conflict against Slender Man.
This was also the time when crossover between blogs began. Instead of staying on their blogs, characters started to comment on each other’s blogs. The blogs were no longer self contained universes, but all taking place within a single setting.
Many of the Gen 2 blogs are still ongoing today, even as Generation 3 is picking up, which makes it difficult to claim that it has ended entirely.
Generation 3
Since Gen 2 hasn’t totally come to a close yet, it’s hard to say when the exact moment where we transitioned to the third generation happened. The time I find most likely is when Robert passed on the Sage titles.
The third generation of Slenderblogs is defined by large amounts of crossover between blogs, high amounts of proxy involvement, and Slender Man assuming a more passive, sitting back on his throne role.
The crossover thing if pretty obvious now; even on blogs with a much more Gen 2 style, you’ll still find more comments from other bloggers than you did in the past. And now, instead of being self contained stories, it’s often necessary to follow multiple blogs at once to understand the full story. This is an extension of Gen 2 practices, just taken to a further degree. It started with M, Zeke, Shaun, Jay, and Robert commenting on each other’s blogs, and occasionally mentioning them in a post. But their stories still remained mostly independent from each other, just with some character interaction. What we’ve got in Gen 3 is stories actually affecting each other, and not just in minor ways. What happens in one story can cause a character from another story to take a different course of action than they would have otherwise. It also means the occasional 100+ comment post.
And proxies. Gen 3 has way more proxies than the previous ones. Previously, blogs would have a handful of proxies in the story, who tended to just be minor distractions from the main Big Bad, Slendy. What’s happened in Gen 3 is a higher priority put onto the proxies, making it not uncommon for characters to face multiple proxies over the course of the story. What this does is turn the threat into more of a physical one than a mental one; the characters’ main worry is being stabbed by a crazy knife nut, not staying sane. When overdone, this can turn the story into something out of a zombie apocalypse movie, though instances of that happening have decreased lately.
Slender Man’s less involved behavior in Gen 3 is related to the increase in proxy attacks. Instead of tormenting individuals personally, his proxies do it for him, while he stays in the background. He tends to be reserved for more dramatic or dangerous moments.
One last note about Generation 3: I’ve seen most people put the start of Gen 3 at Zero’s “Real” post, and Redlight’s posts on White Elephants. I’d disagree with that (which should be obvious, because I did disagree with that up at the start of the Gen 3 section), for a few reasons. First off, the elements that I consider important to Generation 3 began appearing after the Sage titles were passed on, and have continued through the Real and Redlight posts. Secondly, the change in writing after those posts was not in style, but in tone. We went from “Yeah, let’s go kill that Slender Guy!” back to paranoia and insanity. All the things which are currently in Gen 3 existed before those posts; what they did was cut off a lot of the deadwood which was holding them down. Finally, I don’t like the implication that White Elephants was part of the super hero stories just because they all used Core Theory. There is a massive difference between Core Theory as was presented in WE and the Core Theory which so many people started using after the Sage transfer. WE didn’t have supernatural which couldn’t be explained away with “Slendy didn’t” (which is basically the Mythos’s equivalent of a Wizard Did It), individual proxies were a legitimate threat instead of mooks to be defeated by the dozen (the only time Robert encountered a large group of proxies, he called the police on them instead of confronting them), titles were symbols describing roles instead of grants of power, and until the Sage transfer, the tone was still dark and pessimistic. Original Core Theory was a logical conclusion of the idea that Slender Man came from the Tulpa effect, based on the nature of myths and stories in our culture. The Core Theory post WE was something else entirely.
But enough ranting. There’s been speculation on what the next generation of blogs would be like. Most guesses seem to be based on the gradual increase in optimism from the blogs. The next generation is likely to be filled with positive outlooks, and characters who are just plain awesome.
My hope is that the next generation looks something like this.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
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.)
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.)
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Dreams In Darkness
On Sunday, as I was driving along the interstate, I came up behind a car with an operator symbol on its back bumper. As any other rational person would do in such a situation, I calmly flicked on my turning signal, slowly moved into the left lane, and then slammed on the accelerator until I couldn’t see the car in my rearview mirror anymore. I was hoping to at least get a few more posts in before weirdness started to happen around me.
Think that excuse would work on Slender Man?
“Hey, Slendy, it’s great you finally decided to show up and all, but my blog isn’t ready for your introduction yet. See, I need to get some more regular posting in, establish everything first, set up sympathy with the audience, you know. The usual stuff. We can’t just rush into this like some overeager blogger who starts posting about weird dreams or being stalked by tall people three posts in!”
Little would Slendy realize, as this is an informative blog instead of a personal one, there would never be a time when I had built up enough audience sympathy for his appearance to have a major impact! My plan is foolproof!
On a slightly more on topic note, I’ve finished reading Dare 2 Die, and caught up with H(a)unting, Something Awful, Watched, A Lost One, NoWheretoHyde, The Stopping Lights, Road to Heavens, As the Clock Turns, Consuming Insanity, Strange Occurrences, Finding the Darkness, and Breaker. That’s the majority of the ARGs; just a handful more, and I’ll have read/watched every single one I could find.
Dreams In Darkness
With Marble Hornets and Just Another Fool finished, I’ve covered the two most basic ARGs, which are both essential viewing/reading for the Mythos. Now we’re traveling into what is essentially the expanded universe of those two stories; these are the stories which built up from, and occasionally improve upon, the foundation which had been established.
In terms of best reading order, it would probably be better to read Seeking Truth after finishing JAF and MH, as it serves as an excellent gateway into multiple other ARGs. However, in my previous post, I had to make multiple references to Dreams In Darkness, each time needing to qualify the reference with a statement about how it doesn’t really count. This post is so I can get that out of the way, and mention it without needing any explanation.
Dreams In Darkness is an ARG which ran from May 4, 2010, until September 3, 2010. It also had a companion blog, Watch This City Burn, which ran in parallel to it for a while.
Plot
If you intend on actually reading Dreams In Darkness, right now I recommend that you stop reading this post, scroll down to the links at the bottom (without reading any text), read through the both Dreams in Darkness and Watch This City Burn, and then come back. Because there be major, major spoiler alerts here. The ending is of the “What a TWEEEST!” variety, so if you want to actually be surprised by it, best not read this post.
This is a pretty detailed plot description; Dreams In Darkness goes for more intricacy than the usual formula of someone just being followed by Slender Man.
The main character of Dreams in Darkness is Damien, who describes himself as “an arrogant bastard of a nerd, and I have a bad habit of thinking I'm always right. I obsess over stupid things. Greatly appreciate intelligent thought. Overimaginitive... Self-loathing.”
Damien starts out his blog for mundane reasons. He talks about his retail job, his roommate/friend Ted, his crush/love interest Amelia, etc. Ted discovered the Slender Man Mythos via Marble Hornets, and recruited Damien into the fandom. Damien decided to start his own Slenderblog under the alias TheArsonist, which became “Watch This City Burn”. Apart from his (sub-par) Slenderblog, and a new psychological medicine Damien started taking, things remained grounded in normalcy.
But as it always does, insanity starts happening around Damien. First he received a package containing a totheark mask, along with an anagram which, when decoded, read “"For when you face the faceless". This was followed by vaguely threatening message on the answering machine, Damien’s home being broken into, and Slendy style creepy fun.
When things look like they’re coming to some form of confrontation, Ted disappeared. It’s at this point where Damien admitted that the entire stalker thing was fake; it started out as an elaborate prank Ted was pulling on Damien. After seeing Damien freak out over it, Ted told him the truth, and the two decided to keep the story going on the blog, as a way to advertise Watch This City Burn. However, Ted’s disappearance wasn’t part of the plan.
Ted’s body was found by the police, having been very brutally murdered. Damien decided to drop his blog. This decision was reversed when he learns that Watch This City Burn had been hacked, leaving many odd edits and cryptic messages. It’s apparent from the messages that someone else was in danger, but both Damien and the audience were unable to figure out whom. The next victim ended up being an old friend of Damien’s, Emily, and her husband, Vincent.
It’s at this point that Damien realized that the person who has been posting on Watch This City Burn (who was named TheArsonist, after the username Damien had on that blog) was actually a split personality of his. Damien’s first reaction was that the reason TheArsonist knew about Emily and Vincent’s deaths ahead of time was because he was the one who murdered them. This conclusion led to Damien deciding to commit suicide, but before he could do so, he received a text message from Amelia about a weird tall guy watching her. For Damien, this confirmed the existence of Slender Man, and he immediately told Amelia everything he could. But before Amelia could make it back to him, she died in a car accident, with her last words to him being “He's here. I love you. Oh god."
Having lost all those close to him, Damien began to investigate his own past, following Zeke Strahm’s (of Seeking Truth) theory that Slender Man targets adults who escaped him as children. Partially assisted by TheArsonist, he discovered that his parents were part of a Slender Man cult, which sacrificed children to Slendy. The deeper Damien dug into his past, the more control TheArsonist gained, growing from an insane, unintelligible chaos into an intelligent and manipulative personality, capable of controlling Damien’s body for extended periods of time, and with the singular goal of destroying Slender Man. TheArsonist killed Matthew Wilcox, the leader of the Slender Man cult, and discovered the existence of an item which could repel Slender Man.
Damien then went inside an old building in the forest, which had been the center of the Slender Man cult. Inside, he/TheArsonist encountered Slender Man. They escaped, successfully stealing the item which would protect them from Slendy (a bone with some sort of engravings on it). Afterwards, Slender Man began following Damien. The bone successfully warded Slendy off when initially used, but later Slender Man would appear inside Damien’s room, and not only examine the bone, but pick it up. Realizing how impossible it is to try and understand Slender Man’s constantly changing behavior and abilities, Damien fell into despair. In his last post he is barely holding onto sanity, claiming that Slender Man is coming, and that death would be preferably to the fait which awaits him.
Scroll down a bit to the comments section. In it, Rick O’Connor (Damien’s brother), informed the audience that Damien had killed himself, and that the majority of the blog’s contents are fictional. Not fictional as in, “It’s an ARG, of course it’s fiction”, but fictional in-universe. Amelia had left Damien, and was getting groceries, not returning to him, when she died. Much of Damien’s past which he had told the readers was completely fictional, and the childhood drawings he had posted on the blog were recently made. The red building which Damien claimed to be the cult’s center was in a park, not in the woods. Among Damien’s possessions which Rick found were many notes, planning out how the blog’s story would have gone.
Rick decides to hand over all of Damien’s notebook, as well as computer files, over to the police, to assist their investigation of Matthew Wilcox’s murder.
Relation to the Mythos
It’s nearly impossible to determine what exactly DiD contributes to the Mythos, as we can’t tell what parts of it where fact or fiction. Was it all Damien’s insanity, or was Slender Man actually involved? If Slendy was involved, to what a degree was his involvement? The story changes radically depending on how you answer those questions.
No Slender Man Involvement
Damien admitted early on that he had psychological issues, and had experienced hallucinations before starting the blog. His dive into the Slender Man Mythos may have screwed with his already fragile psyche, resulting in him trying to turn his life into an ARG. If this interpretation is accepted, than the blog and Rick’s comments imply that Ted, Emily, and Vincent may have all been killed by Damien. Whether or not that is true depends on exactly when Damien began trying to create this real-life ARG; if it was before Ted’s death, then Damien is likely the killer. If Ted’s death was what caused the slippage of sanity, then we have the unanswered question of who killed Ted. Either way, this interpretation turns the blog almost into a “Take That!” against ARG players. Everyone who participated in this game supported and egged on Damien in his fantasy, thinking it was all a game, when in reality Damien was a mentally unstable person who had killed at least one innocent man solely for the purpose of making his blog more realistic.
Slight Slender Man Involvement
According to Rick, it was the gruesome death of Ted which probably caused Damien to take the dive off the deep end. But then, who was it that killed Ted? At the time of his death, Ted was dressed in a Slender Man costume. He was then killed, and his organs removed, in similar style to how Slender Man likes to murder many of his victims. There is a strong possibility here that the one who killed Ted was Slender Man himself. This in itself doesn’t mean that the rest of Damien’s story is true; Slendy may have just killed Ted, and then left. That TheArsonist knew about Emily and Vincent’s deaths ahead of time still means that he can’t be completely exonerated of suspicion, but Slendy’s involvement does weaken the possible case for Damien being the killer.
Even if Slender Man killed all three, it is still not necessary for him to be involved at all later on in the story. Damien had already snapped enough from Ted’s death, that it is very possible that he would create the entire fantasy without any outside assistance. The existence of notes planning out how the blog would go is the most damning evidence to ruling out Slender Man’s involvement; it’s not as though you can plan out how Slender Man will treat you.
The implication of this is that the common trend of Slender Man going after everyone close to his victims doesn’t always hold true. He killed Ted, and possibly Emily and Vincent, without harming anyone else. Not that he needed to; Damien took care of that for him. It may be that Slender Man intentionally killed Ted, for the purpose of driving Damien insane enough to commit suicide. If that is true, this is the most manipulative and intelligent version of Slender Man to appear in an ARG thus far.
Major Slender Man Involvement
This is the idea that Slender Man actively was hunting Damien, and was the cause of the majority of the things which happened to Damien. This isn’t a belief that Damien’s claims on what happened in his past were true, or that the blog was unplanned; Rick’s testimony puts those ideas to rest. Instead, it’s the interpretation that Slender Man was really screwing with Damien’s head, as he oft does to his victims. Instead of Ted’s death being the cause of Damien’s fragile mental state, Slender Man’s negative effect on his victim’s sanity was the cause. This interpretation is a very passive Slender Man, who sits in the background while his victim goes insane. Due to Damien’s planning of the blog’s future events, we still have to accept that much of the blog was his fictitious story. The difficulty is trying to figure out which parts were his story, which were his hallucinations, and which were actual Slender Man involvement.
This interpretation also has the possibility that Damien’s last post was in response to Slender Man actually coming for him, instead of being a result of insanity.
Total Slender Man Involvement
Everything that Damien said in his blog was true. His parents were part of a Slender Man cult, he had a split personality named TheArsonist, there is a bone/artifact/thing which may be able to help one against Slendy, Slender Man was hunting Damien, and Damien even saved that kid in the store from Slendy. After all, we have no more reason to believe Rick’s comment than any of Damien’s posts. This Rick could be a Slenderproxy posting under the name of Damien’s brother, or if it really is Rick, he could be under the mental affects of Slender Man. While it is rare for Slendy to cover his tracks to such a degree, it isn’t unheard of for him to cause people to not see things which are there/see things which aren’t there (EverymanHYRBID being one example), and messing up computer files is status quo for him. Considering Damien’s discovery of the bone which supposedly offered protection, Slender Man may have used this overly elaborate cover up as a way of preventing people from finding too much information which could harm him.
If this interpretation is true, than it opens up all sorts of questions. What was the bone which repelled Slendy? Are there still Slender Man cults out there? What was that bone?! What knowledge did Damien/TheArsonist take to the grave with them? What was the bloody bone?!?!?!
Whatever interpretation is accepted, Dreams In Darkness still had what is, in my opinion, one of the best lines to describe the Slender Man:
“Nothing about this thing is consistent. One minute he's passive, the next aggressive. Last night, he flung himself at my house trying to get in. Today, he simply appears inside. The bone warded him off previously. This time, he just casually inspected it. Watching him previously stopped him from pulling his disappearing act. I just saw him vanish before my eyes.
He's constantly changing. It's as though, with every encounter, he's never quite the same being twice. It's like there aren't any rules with him - he simply is.
How the hell do you fight that? How do you resist chaos?” (August 30, 2010)
DiD was also one of the best examples of an ARG which put in the effort of appearing real. The first signs of things not being all they appear to be weren’t until a full month after the blog started. That’s 18 posts of non-ARG material. This is really something many other ARGs could learn from; while it’s fun to just go straight into the Slender Man stuff, by giving a period of real life-esque postings, it builds a greater connection between the audience and the characters. In addition, it makes the entire story seem more realistic. Someone start up a blog, and then three days later talk about being stalked by Slender Man? That makes it too obvious that the blog was started for the sole purpose of being an ARG about Slendy. The mundane events at the beginning add legitimacy to the blog, which does a better job of drawing the audience in when the Slender Man events start to happen.
Useful Links
Dreams In Darkness Blog: http://dreamsindarkness91.blogspot.com/
Watch This City Burn Blog: http://tonightitallburns.blogspot.com/
TVTropes Entry: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DreamsInDarkness
Think that excuse would work on Slender Man?
“Hey, Slendy, it’s great you finally decided to show up and all, but my blog isn’t ready for your introduction yet. See, I need to get some more regular posting in, establish everything first, set up sympathy with the audience, you know. The usual stuff. We can’t just rush into this like some overeager blogger who starts posting about weird dreams or being stalked by tall people three posts in!”
Little would Slendy realize, as this is an informative blog instead of a personal one, there would never be a time when I had built up enough audience sympathy for his appearance to have a major impact! My plan is foolproof!
On a slightly more on topic note, I’ve finished reading Dare 2 Die, and caught up with H(a)unting, Something Awful, Watched, A Lost One, NoWheretoHyde, The Stopping Lights, Road to Heavens, As the Clock Turns, Consuming Insanity, Strange Occurrences, Finding the Darkness, and Breaker. That’s the majority of the ARGs; just a handful more, and I’ll have read/watched every single one I could find.
Dreams In Darkness
With Marble Hornets and Just Another Fool finished, I’ve covered the two most basic ARGs, which are both essential viewing/reading for the Mythos. Now we’re traveling into what is essentially the expanded universe of those two stories; these are the stories which built up from, and occasionally improve upon, the foundation which had been established.
In terms of best reading order, it would probably be better to read Seeking Truth after finishing JAF and MH, as it serves as an excellent gateway into multiple other ARGs. However, in my previous post, I had to make multiple references to Dreams In Darkness, each time needing to qualify the reference with a statement about how it doesn’t really count. This post is so I can get that out of the way, and mention it without needing any explanation.
Dreams In Darkness is an ARG which ran from May 4, 2010, until September 3, 2010. It also had a companion blog, Watch This City Burn, which ran in parallel to it for a while.
Plot
If you intend on actually reading Dreams In Darkness, right now I recommend that you stop reading this post, scroll down to the links at the bottom (without reading any text), read through the both Dreams in Darkness and Watch This City Burn, and then come back. Because there be major, major spoiler alerts here. The ending is of the “What a TWEEEST!” variety, so if you want to actually be surprised by it, best not read this post.
This is a pretty detailed plot description; Dreams In Darkness goes for more intricacy than the usual formula of someone just being followed by Slender Man.
The main character of Dreams in Darkness is Damien, who describes himself as “an arrogant bastard of a nerd, and I have a bad habit of thinking I'm always right. I obsess over stupid things. Greatly appreciate intelligent thought. Overimaginitive... Self-loathing.”
Damien starts out his blog for mundane reasons. He talks about his retail job, his roommate/friend Ted, his crush/love interest Amelia, etc. Ted discovered the Slender Man Mythos via Marble Hornets, and recruited Damien into the fandom. Damien decided to start his own Slenderblog under the alias TheArsonist, which became “Watch This City Burn”. Apart from his (sub-par) Slenderblog, and a new psychological medicine Damien started taking, things remained grounded in normalcy.
But as it always does, insanity starts happening around Damien. First he received a package containing a totheark mask, along with an anagram which, when decoded, read “"For when you face the faceless". This was followed by vaguely threatening message on the answering machine, Damien’s home being broken into, and Slendy style creepy fun.
When things look like they’re coming to some form of confrontation, Ted disappeared. It’s at this point where Damien admitted that the entire stalker thing was fake; it started out as an elaborate prank Ted was pulling on Damien. After seeing Damien freak out over it, Ted told him the truth, and the two decided to keep the story going on the blog, as a way to advertise Watch This City Burn. However, Ted’s disappearance wasn’t part of the plan.
Ted’s body was found by the police, having been very brutally murdered. Damien decided to drop his blog. This decision was reversed when he learns that Watch This City Burn had been hacked, leaving many odd edits and cryptic messages. It’s apparent from the messages that someone else was in danger, but both Damien and the audience were unable to figure out whom. The next victim ended up being an old friend of Damien’s, Emily, and her husband, Vincent.
It’s at this point that Damien realized that the person who has been posting on Watch This City Burn (who was named TheArsonist, after the username Damien had on that blog) was actually a split personality of his. Damien’s first reaction was that the reason TheArsonist knew about Emily and Vincent’s deaths ahead of time was because he was the one who murdered them. This conclusion led to Damien deciding to commit suicide, but before he could do so, he received a text message from Amelia about a weird tall guy watching her. For Damien, this confirmed the existence of Slender Man, and he immediately told Amelia everything he could. But before Amelia could make it back to him, she died in a car accident, with her last words to him being “He's here. I love you. Oh god."
Having lost all those close to him, Damien began to investigate his own past, following Zeke Strahm’s (of Seeking Truth) theory that Slender Man targets adults who escaped him as children. Partially assisted by TheArsonist, he discovered that his parents were part of a Slender Man cult, which sacrificed children to Slendy. The deeper Damien dug into his past, the more control TheArsonist gained, growing from an insane, unintelligible chaos into an intelligent and manipulative personality, capable of controlling Damien’s body for extended periods of time, and with the singular goal of destroying Slender Man. TheArsonist killed Matthew Wilcox, the leader of the Slender Man cult, and discovered the existence of an item which could repel Slender Man.
Damien then went inside an old building in the forest, which had been the center of the Slender Man cult. Inside, he/TheArsonist encountered Slender Man. They escaped, successfully stealing the item which would protect them from Slendy (a bone with some sort of engravings on it). Afterwards, Slender Man began following Damien. The bone successfully warded Slendy off when initially used, but later Slender Man would appear inside Damien’s room, and not only examine the bone, but pick it up. Realizing how impossible it is to try and understand Slender Man’s constantly changing behavior and abilities, Damien fell into despair. In his last post he is barely holding onto sanity, claiming that Slender Man is coming, and that death would be preferably to the fait which awaits him.
Scroll down a bit to the comments section. In it, Rick O’Connor (Damien’s brother), informed the audience that Damien had killed himself, and that the majority of the blog’s contents are fictional. Not fictional as in, “It’s an ARG, of course it’s fiction”, but fictional in-universe. Amelia had left Damien, and was getting groceries, not returning to him, when she died. Much of Damien’s past which he had told the readers was completely fictional, and the childhood drawings he had posted on the blog were recently made. The red building which Damien claimed to be the cult’s center was in a park, not in the woods. Among Damien’s possessions which Rick found were many notes, planning out how the blog’s story would have gone.
Rick decides to hand over all of Damien’s notebook, as well as computer files, over to the police, to assist their investigation of Matthew Wilcox’s murder.
Relation to the Mythos
It’s nearly impossible to determine what exactly DiD contributes to the Mythos, as we can’t tell what parts of it where fact or fiction. Was it all Damien’s insanity, or was Slender Man actually involved? If Slendy was involved, to what a degree was his involvement? The story changes radically depending on how you answer those questions.
No Slender Man Involvement
Damien admitted early on that he had psychological issues, and had experienced hallucinations before starting the blog. His dive into the Slender Man Mythos may have screwed with his already fragile psyche, resulting in him trying to turn his life into an ARG. If this interpretation is accepted, than the blog and Rick’s comments imply that Ted, Emily, and Vincent may have all been killed by Damien. Whether or not that is true depends on exactly when Damien began trying to create this real-life ARG; if it was before Ted’s death, then Damien is likely the killer. If Ted’s death was what caused the slippage of sanity, then we have the unanswered question of who killed Ted. Either way, this interpretation turns the blog almost into a “Take That!” against ARG players. Everyone who participated in this game supported and egged on Damien in his fantasy, thinking it was all a game, when in reality Damien was a mentally unstable person who had killed at least one innocent man solely for the purpose of making his blog more realistic.
Slight Slender Man Involvement
According to Rick, it was the gruesome death of Ted which probably caused Damien to take the dive off the deep end. But then, who was it that killed Ted? At the time of his death, Ted was dressed in a Slender Man costume. He was then killed, and his organs removed, in similar style to how Slender Man likes to murder many of his victims. There is a strong possibility here that the one who killed Ted was Slender Man himself. This in itself doesn’t mean that the rest of Damien’s story is true; Slendy may have just killed Ted, and then left. That TheArsonist knew about Emily and Vincent’s deaths ahead of time still means that he can’t be completely exonerated of suspicion, but Slendy’s involvement does weaken the possible case for Damien being the killer.
Even if Slender Man killed all three, it is still not necessary for him to be involved at all later on in the story. Damien had already snapped enough from Ted’s death, that it is very possible that he would create the entire fantasy without any outside assistance. The existence of notes planning out how the blog would go is the most damning evidence to ruling out Slender Man’s involvement; it’s not as though you can plan out how Slender Man will treat you.
The implication of this is that the common trend of Slender Man going after everyone close to his victims doesn’t always hold true. He killed Ted, and possibly Emily and Vincent, without harming anyone else. Not that he needed to; Damien took care of that for him. It may be that Slender Man intentionally killed Ted, for the purpose of driving Damien insane enough to commit suicide. If that is true, this is the most manipulative and intelligent version of Slender Man to appear in an ARG thus far.
Major Slender Man Involvement
This is the idea that Slender Man actively was hunting Damien, and was the cause of the majority of the things which happened to Damien. This isn’t a belief that Damien’s claims on what happened in his past were true, or that the blog was unplanned; Rick’s testimony puts those ideas to rest. Instead, it’s the interpretation that Slender Man was really screwing with Damien’s head, as he oft does to his victims. Instead of Ted’s death being the cause of Damien’s fragile mental state, Slender Man’s negative effect on his victim’s sanity was the cause. This interpretation is a very passive Slender Man, who sits in the background while his victim goes insane. Due to Damien’s planning of the blog’s future events, we still have to accept that much of the blog was his fictitious story. The difficulty is trying to figure out which parts were his story, which were his hallucinations, and which were actual Slender Man involvement.
This interpretation also has the possibility that Damien’s last post was in response to Slender Man actually coming for him, instead of being a result of insanity.
Total Slender Man Involvement
Everything that Damien said in his blog was true. His parents were part of a Slender Man cult, he had a split personality named TheArsonist, there is a bone/artifact/thing which may be able to help one against Slendy, Slender Man was hunting Damien, and Damien even saved that kid in the store from Slendy. After all, we have no more reason to believe Rick’s comment than any of Damien’s posts. This Rick could be a Slenderproxy posting under the name of Damien’s brother, or if it really is Rick, he could be under the mental affects of Slender Man. While it is rare for Slendy to cover his tracks to such a degree, it isn’t unheard of for him to cause people to not see things which are there/see things which aren’t there (EverymanHYRBID being one example), and messing up computer files is status quo for him. Considering Damien’s discovery of the bone which supposedly offered protection, Slender Man may have used this overly elaborate cover up as a way of preventing people from finding too much information which could harm him.
If this interpretation is true, than it opens up all sorts of questions. What was the bone which repelled Slendy? Are there still Slender Man cults out there? What was that bone?! What knowledge did Damien/TheArsonist take to the grave with them? What was the bloody bone?!?!?!
Whatever interpretation is accepted, Dreams In Darkness still had what is, in my opinion, one of the best lines to describe the Slender Man:
“Nothing about this thing is consistent. One minute he's passive, the next aggressive. Last night, he flung himself at my house trying to get in. Today, he simply appears inside. The bone warded him off previously. This time, he just casually inspected it. Watching him previously stopped him from pulling his disappearing act. I just saw him vanish before my eyes.
He's constantly changing. It's as though, with every encounter, he's never quite the same being twice. It's like there aren't any rules with him - he simply is.
How the hell do you fight that? How do you resist chaos?” (August 30, 2010)
DiD was also one of the best examples of an ARG which put in the effort of appearing real. The first signs of things not being all they appear to be weren’t until a full month after the blog started. That’s 18 posts of non-ARG material. This is really something many other ARGs could learn from; while it’s fun to just go straight into the Slender Man stuff, by giving a period of real life-esque postings, it builds a greater connection between the audience and the characters. In addition, it makes the entire story seem more realistic. Someone start up a blog, and then three days later talk about being stalked by Slender Man? That makes it too obvious that the blog was started for the sole purpose of being an ARG about Slendy. The mundane events at the beginning add legitimacy to the blog, which does a better job of drawing the audience in when the Slender Man events start to happen.
Useful Links
Dreams In Darkness Blog: http://dreamsindarkness91.blogspot.com/
Watch This City Burn Blog: http://tonightitallburns.blogspot.com/
TVTropes Entry: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DreamsInDarkness
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Just Another Fool
See, I told you I was going to get around to making a post about Just Another Fool! It is a few days later than I’d hoped; blame it all on Slender Man. He’s the reason behind everything.
Just Another Fool was the first major blog based Slender Man ARG, and along with Marble Hornets, is one of the stories which really established the current Mythos. However, while MH defined many of the in-universe concepts, most of JAF’s influence is technical and stylistic concepts.
Plot
The plot of JAF is surprisingly simple for such an influential work; it’s far shorter than the majority of other Slenderblogs online right now. The creator of the blog is Logan, whose friend Matt just died recently after struggling with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from his tour in Iraq. Following Matt’s death, Logan received a notebook which Matt had drawn/written in during his hospital stay. Logan began to post the contents of the notebook online, while also investigating Matt’s death and what happened to him in Iraq. According to the official story, Matt’s squad was killed by a child suicide bomber. According to Matt, they were attacked by Slender Man.
While doing this investigation, Logan goes crazy and disappears. His friend Joshua picks up the blog, although Logan occasionally posts crazy cryptic messages/warnings on it. Eventually deciding that finding out the truth behind the notebook isn’t worth it, Joshua gives the notebook to Dav Flamerock, who posts it on YouTube. Then Logan is found dead; Joshua leaves to identify the body, and there the blog ends, with the implication that Joshua was killed by Slender Man.
Relation to the Mythos
In terms of in-universe content, JAF adds surprisingly little. There isn’t much that wasn’t already covered in Marble Hornets. What it did instead was set up a framework which many other ARGs would follow. To quote TVTropes, ”If there's a written blog that gradually takes on a more insane tone after Slendy gets involved, culminating in the current blogging character being replaced by a friend who is not so deeply entrenched in the madness, you can thank Just Another Fool for that.”, and ”This blog pretty much started the trend of having ARG blogs about Slender Man screwing with people.” Many blogs just skip the second part (the replaced by a friend bit), and end with just the current character going insane, but the influences are still apparent. Many ARGs follow a similar style of descending into madness that JAF did; even the codes used by insane characters in other blogs are similar (such as forming a sentence from the capitalized letters in a seemingly nonsensical phrase). The prominence of Notebooks can also be attributed to JAF, and it’s almost unheard of for someone being stalked by Slender Man to not get a notebook to draw cryptic stuff in (there is now an in-universe explanation for this; those that are being stalked by Slender Man feel a compulsion to write or blog about their experiences, as a side effect of Slendy’s presence.)
Interestingly enough, unlike in many of its imitators, Slender Man has only an implied role in JAF. He’s mentioned, but none of the characters talk about seeing him, which is very different from the “Slender Man is right outside my window!” that you usually get from ARGs. In fact, if you wanted to, it’s possible to interpret the entire story without any involvement from Slendy. Matt was already a fan of the Mythos before the attack in Iraq, so his mind formed the story about Slender Man attacking them as part of his PTSD. Logan got too involved in what Matt believed, until he believed it as well, went insane, and gouged out his eye. Joshua died in a regular motorcycle accident. But that’s not an interpretation many people are likely going to take from it, as it’s far less entertaining than “Slender Man killed them all!”
In-Universe Implications
While there isn’t as much here as there was for MH, some things still need to be mentioned.
First off, the implication of Matt’s death is that Slendy single handedly killed an entire squad of U.S. soldiers. It’s interesting that he would engage in such a violent, confrontational act; while Slendy being physically aggressive isn’t unheard of, it is very rare. It also proves beyond a doubt that bullets don’t mean nothing to Slendy. Slender Man also reportedly gouges Logan’s eye out after his disappearance, making the Slender Man in JAF a much more physically aggressive Slendy than is the norm.
Slender Man has always had a strong association with trees (there are even some theories that he is some kind of sentient, malevolent tree), but this is very strong in JAF. When Matt claimed that Slender Man threw the bodies of his squad mates into a tree, despite the complete lack of a tree in the area where the attack took place. In addition, is a lot of tree-like imagery within the notebook. Most interesting is one of the codes Logan posts after going insane (codes posted below). When you take the capital letters, it creates HEIGDRUASILL. IGDRAUSILL is phonetic for Yggdrasil, so it becomes He Yggdrasil. Now, this could just be a shout out to House of Leaves. However, if it’s actually meaningful, it causes one to think; Slender Man is somehow related to trees. Yggdrasil is the world tree in Norse Mythology, which exists at the center of the cosmology. Little more information on it is given, and sadly, few ARGs have followed up on the Yggdrasil connection.
One final minor detail: Slendy is shown wearing a hat in one of Matt’s drawings. The only other time I have ever seen/heard of him wearing a hat was in someone’s avatar on a forum. It makes him look like the Question, or possibly the hat guy from XKCD, so I’m glad it isn’t commonly used.
Codes
Entry: KEY (November 2, 2009)
“you HAve come upon a door.
stop trying the haNDle if it’S not working.
if A dooR is locked, surEly you must first find THE KEY?”
Message: “HANDS ARE THE KEY”
No idea what it means. Doors play a prominent role in other Slenderblogs, especially Seeking Truth. However, these doors tend not to be very good things, so I can’t imagine wanting to open them, even if hands are keys.
Entry: Untitled 1 (December 4, 2009)
“HE dIGs and digs and digs and digs and digs and digs and Digs and digs and digs
the Rain pours and pours and pours and pours and pours and pours and pours and pours and pours
i am crumbling joshUA
staring at the world through this foggy glass
nothing can be [un]made while I lean upon this windowsill”
Message: “HEIGDRUASILL”
Related to Yggdrasil. Unsure about rain and digging imagery. Need to do more research into Norse Mythology before I can write more on this; may do an entire post if I can find enough connections to the Mythos.
Useful Links
Just Another Fool: http://jafool.wordpress.com/
Notebook Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWqdfDbZHnk
TVTropes Entry: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JustAnotherFool
That’s all for Just Another Fool. On a closing note, I’ve caught up with Discuss the Findings. Yeah, just one blog; nowhere near my usual huge list of stuff I’ve read. I’ve been busy.
And I contributed to White Elephants (The rc car was my idea). I feel so proud of myself. Now I just need to wait for an angry Slendy to come after me as a result.
Just Another Fool was the first major blog based Slender Man ARG, and along with Marble Hornets, is one of the stories which really established the current Mythos. However, while MH defined many of the in-universe concepts, most of JAF’s influence is technical and stylistic concepts.
Plot
The plot of JAF is surprisingly simple for such an influential work; it’s far shorter than the majority of other Slenderblogs online right now. The creator of the blog is Logan, whose friend Matt just died recently after struggling with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from his tour in Iraq. Following Matt’s death, Logan received a notebook which Matt had drawn/written in during his hospital stay. Logan began to post the contents of the notebook online, while also investigating Matt’s death and what happened to him in Iraq. According to the official story, Matt’s squad was killed by a child suicide bomber. According to Matt, they were attacked by Slender Man.
While doing this investigation, Logan goes crazy and disappears. His friend Joshua picks up the blog, although Logan occasionally posts crazy cryptic messages/warnings on it. Eventually deciding that finding out the truth behind the notebook isn’t worth it, Joshua gives the notebook to Dav Flamerock, who posts it on YouTube. Then Logan is found dead; Joshua leaves to identify the body, and there the blog ends, with the implication that Joshua was killed by Slender Man.
Relation to the Mythos
In terms of in-universe content, JAF adds surprisingly little. There isn’t much that wasn’t already covered in Marble Hornets. What it did instead was set up a framework which many other ARGs would follow. To quote TVTropes, ”If there's a written blog that gradually takes on a more insane tone after Slendy gets involved, culminating in the current blogging character being replaced by a friend who is not so deeply entrenched in the madness, you can thank Just Another Fool for that.”, and ”This blog pretty much started the trend of having ARG blogs about Slender Man screwing with people.” Many blogs just skip the second part (the replaced by a friend bit), and end with just the current character going insane, but the influences are still apparent. Many ARGs follow a similar style of descending into madness that JAF did; even the codes used by insane characters in other blogs are similar (such as forming a sentence from the capitalized letters in a seemingly nonsensical phrase). The prominence of Notebooks can also be attributed to JAF, and it’s almost unheard of for someone being stalked by Slender Man to not get a notebook to draw cryptic stuff in (there is now an in-universe explanation for this; those that are being stalked by Slender Man feel a compulsion to write or blog about their experiences, as a side effect of Slendy’s presence.)
Interestingly enough, unlike in many of its imitators, Slender Man has only an implied role in JAF. He’s mentioned, but none of the characters talk about seeing him, which is very different from the “Slender Man is right outside my window!” that you usually get from ARGs. In fact, if you wanted to, it’s possible to interpret the entire story without any involvement from Slendy. Matt was already a fan of the Mythos before the attack in Iraq, so his mind formed the story about Slender Man attacking them as part of his PTSD. Logan got too involved in what Matt believed, until he believed it as well, went insane, and gouged out his eye. Joshua died in a regular motorcycle accident. But that’s not an interpretation many people are likely going to take from it, as it’s far less entertaining than “Slender Man killed them all!”
In-Universe Implications
While there isn’t as much here as there was for MH, some things still need to be mentioned.
First off, the implication of Matt’s death is that Slendy single handedly killed an entire squad of U.S. soldiers. It’s interesting that he would engage in such a violent, confrontational act; while Slendy being physically aggressive isn’t unheard of, it is very rare. It also proves beyond a doubt that bullets don’t mean nothing to Slendy. Slender Man also reportedly gouges Logan’s eye out after his disappearance, making the Slender Man in JAF a much more physically aggressive Slendy than is the norm.
Slender Man has always had a strong association with trees (there are even some theories that he is some kind of sentient, malevolent tree), but this is very strong in JAF. When Matt claimed that Slender Man threw the bodies of his squad mates into a tree, despite the complete lack of a tree in the area where the attack took place. In addition, is a lot of tree-like imagery within the notebook. Most interesting is one of the codes Logan posts after going insane (codes posted below). When you take the capital letters, it creates HEIGDRUASILL. IGDRAUSILL is phonetic for Yggdrasil, so it becomes He Yggdrasil. Now, this could just be a shout out to House of Leaves. However, if it’s actually meaningful, it causes one to think; Slender Man is somehow related to trees. Yggdrasil is the world tree in Norse Mythology, which exists at the center of the cosmology. Little more information on it is given, and sadly, few ARGs have followed up on the Yggdrasil connection.
One final minor detail: Slendy is shown wearing a hat in one of Matt’s drawings. The only other time I have ever seen/heard of him wearing a hat was in someone’s avatar on a forum. It makes him look like the Question, or possibly the hat guy from XKCD, so I’m glad it isn’t commonly used.
Codes
Entry: KEY (November 2, 2009)
“you HAve come upon a door.
stop trying the haNDle if it’S not working.
if A dooR is locked, surEly you must first find THE KEY?”
Message: “HANDS ARE THE KEY”
No idea what it means. Doors play a prominent role in other Slenderblogs, especially Seeking Truth. However, these doors tend not to be very good things, so I can’t imagine wanting to open them, even if hands are keys.
Entry: Untitled 1 (December 4, 2009)
“HE dIGs and digs and digs and digs and digs and digs and Digs and digs and digs
the Rain pours and pours and pours and pours and pours and pours and pours and pours and pours
i am crumbling joshUA
staring at the world through this foggy glass
nothing can be [un]made while I lean upon this windowsill”
Message: “HEIGDRUASILL”
Related to Yggdrasil. Unsure about rain and digging imagery. Need to do more research into Norse Mythology before I can write more on this; may do an entire post if I can find enough connections to the Mythos.
Useful Links
Just Another Fool: http://jafool.wordpress.com/
Notebook Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWqdfDbZHnk
TVTropes Entry: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JustAnotherFool
That’s all for Just Another Fool. On a closing note, I’ve caught up with Discuss the Findings. Yeah, just one blog; nowhere near my usual huge list of stuff I’ve read. I’ve been busy.
And I contributed to White Elephants (The rc car was my idea). I feel so proud of myself. Now I just need to wait for an angry Slendy to come after me as a result.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Marble Hornets
It would almost be a sin to not start with Marble Hornets, the series which really got the ball rolling on Slender Man’s popularity. So it’ll be the first item I explore on this blog.
I’ve caught up with Defining?, While Elephants, and EverymanHYBRID since my last post. I’ve also read all of Where the Rivers Join and Curious Little Girl, but those blogs appears to be inactive now.Obviously they were taken by Slender Man.
On another note, I’m starting to see why it’s generally a bad idea to just throw yourself into the Mythos. Walking home last night, saw three signs on the side of the road. Two black ones, with a white one on top. In the shadows, the black signs looked like a suit, and the white sign looked like a face. I totally freaked out there; scared the hell out of a couple walking next to me. Awesome stuff. Thankfully, when I got back home I found that I’d gotten Gurren Lagann: TV Series Complete Collection in the mail. Watching it is the best way to cure yourself of being afraid of Slender Man that I know of.
But, we’re not here to discuss me being scared of speed limit signs. No, we’re here to talk about hornets which are marble.
(Warning: There be spoilers below)
What is it?
Marble Hornets is a series of videos posted on YouTube taking place in the Slender Man Mythos. In the setting, a student by name of Alex Kralie was working on a student film, titled “Marble Hornets”. After two months of filming, he dropped the project completely, claiming “unworkable conditions”. A friend of his, named J (either that is a very strange nickname, or his parents just didn’t love him) asked Alex what he was planning to do with the tapes.
“Burn them.”
Not wanting to let so much work go to waste, J convinces Alex to let him have the tapes, on the condition that they never speak of it again. J filed the tapes away, but at the time was too unnerved by Alex’s reaction to look through them. About two to three years later, he decided to go back through the tapes.
Judging by the contents, our favorite abomination was trying to get into the film business.
To put the plot in the simplest way possible, while making “Marble Hornets”, Slender Man began to follow Alex. Like most victims, Alex started to fall deeper into paranoia and fear as a result. Things became increasingly worse, and Alex claims in one of the tapes that some people have even disappeared.
While watching these videos, J begins to record his own research into what was going on. As often results from people investigating these things, weird shit starts to go down pretty quickly. Standard Slender Man fare: black outs, waking up in different places, loss of memory, electronic distortions, etc.
In addition to Slender Man, J often encounters an individual who the viewers have nicknamed “Masky”, a mysterious person wearing a mask who is likely a Slenderproxy. There’s a good chance that Masky is also totheark, a YouTube user who posted cryptic, and sometimes downright creepy, video responses to J.
The series ended on a slightly ambiguous note. After the downward spiral really started to hit J, he called quits on the whole thing, and leaves. After staying on the move for a while, his mental health began to return, and he no longer had any involvement with Slender Man. When you’re starting to think that the whole series may just on a bittersweet tone, J receives a tape, with the instructions “WATCH THIS”. The tape shows that Alex has also found a normal life via the cunning strategy of running away from Slender Man like a girl. This ends when his girlfriend finds his old video recorder. Alex gets uncomfortable with her filming around the house, and then BAM, Slendy appears, and the video ends with the words “HELP”. J decides to be a hero, and goes to the rescue. That’s it.
There is a season 2 being planned out, which will provide an actual ending to the series, though work has not yet started on it.
Marble Hornets is what brings many people into the Mythos. As it is a visual medium, it’s easier to be drawn into it, instead of having to read through text (a feat which our society seems sadly averse to). MH makes no assumptions about the viewers’ awareness of the Mythos, unlike many other stories, and is accessible to people who have never even heard of Slender Man. The series also has a tendency of being spread around, especially on forums or in emails. Through this, it acts as a gateway series into the Mythos. Those that enjoy it often will search for more information, and in the process, discover the other blogs/videos related to Slender Man.
It’s also quite good; Marble Hornets scared me more than any big budget Hollywood horror film I’ve seen in my life. No, it’s not a top of the line masterpiece, but the fact that they were able to put together something so good on such a limited budget is pretty impressive. Even if you don’t find the horror in it scary, you do have to admit that the quality is very good, even when compared to professional works.
Relation to the Mythos
As MH is one of the main factors behind the popularization of Slender Man, it’s the thing which everyone else imitates. MH may not have created the Mythos, but it codified it. Many things which are now standard Slender Man fare were created by, or inspired by, them. The idea of Slender Man slowly hunting victims over an extended period of time, the operator symbol, Slendersickness, blackouts, electronic distortions, and Slenderproxies were all started or inspired by MH.
Which makes it hilarious how many ARGs don’t consider MH real, or part of the factual Slender Man canon. This is especially true amongst the ones which support the theory that Slender Man came into existence through collective belief/fear of him. According to them, Marble Hornets was not an effect of Slender Man, it was a cause. The reason everything else relating to Slender Man resembles Marble Hornets isn’t because MH was accurate, it is because everyone believes that Slender Man will act as he does in MH. This belief is not universal; in most of the ARGs which claim Slender Man has origins before his appearance on SomethingAwful, Marble Hornets is at least given the benefit of the doubt. Still, it is very common for the author of an ARG to claim that their first taste of Slender Man was through Marble Hornets. And it’s well established in the Mythos that interest in Slender Man often leads to the interested party becoming a victim. You can see where this is going.
The Operator Symbol
I’m just going to briefly touch on this here, as this is where (X) originated. MH gives very little information on what the symbol is. All we learn from it is that it is associated with Slender Man. Alex is seen drawing it at some points, and it makes the occasional appearance in the videos. What is means remains a mystery, however. The three main camps on what (X) means are 1) It’s Slendy Repellant, 2) It either draws Slendy towards you, or somehow is used by him for his gain, and 3) it neither helps nor interferes with Slendy, it’s just something that his victims feel compelled to draw. Option 1 seems to make sense with Alex drawing so many of the symbols; after all, he is being hunted by Slender Man, and likely wants some kind of protection. However, totheark also uses the symbol occasionally, and if he is a Slenderproxy (which seems like the most likely possibility), it would be strange for him to use them. For 1 to be correct in the context of MH, either totheark isn’t actually a Slenderproxy, or he is horrible at being a Slenderproxy. Then there’s the question of just how exactly Alex learned about the symbol and its protective properties. Option 2 resolves totheark’s use of the symbol, but then we have to deal with Alex constantly drawing them. It seems a bit illogical to be constantly drawing something that would either strengthen Slender Man, or draw him towards you. It could be possible that he was either hypnotized at the time, or so crazy that he wasn’t aware of what he was doing, but that seems unlikely. While drawing the symbols, we don’t see enough video tearing or distortions to symbol that Slender Man is very near, which is usually needed for hypnotism. And the idea of him being crazy doesn’t match with how he acts in the videos. He’s extremely paranoid, and not entirely there in the head, but he’s never shown as so far gone that he’ll draw something that puts his life at risk. Option 3 doesn’t have any of these problems, because it ignores all the problems. He’s drawing the symbol because it’s related to Slender Man, and that’s what you do when you’re hunted by him. You draw lots of (X)s. This isn’t that popular a theory amongst the more proactive or scientifically focused ARGs, because in those they’re trying to find explanations. In ARGs not worried about discovery or science, it can still make appearances, since the author doesn’t need to explain anything. Just show the symbol appearing somewhere, and you know that Slendy’s involved. Don’t need to know whether it’s pro or con, just that he’s involved.
totheark/Masky
The two of them get one section, as it’s heavily implied that they are the same person. There are theories that totheark is Alex, however, that would require Alex to travel back to the town (from a different state), and then film footage of J and Slender Man while J was hypnotized. Not exactly in character for someone who should be trying to help J, and certainly not likely for Alex. It’s far more likely that totheark is Masky than anyone else.
The vast majority of the fans believe that Masky is Tim. And I really can see where they’re coming from; Tim displayed Slendersickness in some footage, was shown taking pills which J found in the house/which Masky stole back, wore the same jacket as Masky, and has the same hair as him. Unless season 2 decides to throw some kind of curveball at us, it’s pretty much canon that Masky is Tim.
Now this gives Tim the wonderful honor of being the first Slenderproxy. There are some theories that Masky was actually trying to help J, but these never sat well with me. Masky acts in too threatening a manner for me to be willing to say, “Oh yeah, he’s just trying to help.” It’s never stated outright that Masky is helping Slender Man, but at this time, claiming otherwise is just speculation.
What’s interesting is how many ARGs have taken from both the concept of Slenderproxies, and the idea that Masky was somehow anti-Slendy. The Tutorial talks about Slenderproxies, but also makes the claim that wearing a mask can help protect you from Slender Man. Also, a number of ARGs take the cryptic writings that totheark did, but attribute them to the protagonist, not a Slenderproxy. Proxy or not, whenever the protagonist of a story does start writing like totheark, it’s never a very good sign.
Slendersickness
A brief one here. When J investigates the House (I feel like I’m writing about House of Leaves, what with me capitalizing the word House so often), he breaks into a coughing fit. Tim is also shown coughing at one point, with the implication that he’s been affected by Slender Man. One theory is that the pills Tim and Masky have are to lessen the side effects of the Slendersickness, although I’m not sure what type of medicine you’d need to do that.
In MH, being around Slender Man also causes the target to experience feelings of coldness, but this is less focused on by other ARGs.
Useful Links
Marble Hornets Channel: http://www.youtube.com/marblehornets
totheark's Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/totheark?blend=2&ob=4
Marble Hornets Wiki: http://marblehornets.wikidot.com/
TVTropes Entry: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarbleHornets
If there’s anything you think I didn’t discuss in depth enough about Marble Hornets, or anything you think I missed, go ahead and tell me. I’ll either cover it in the comments section, or if I feel the need to write a long post about it, I’ll make another entry.
Next time, I plan to discuss Just Another Fool.
I’ve caught up with Defining?, While Elephants, and EverymanHYBRID since my last post. I’ve also read all of Where the Rivers Join and Curious Little Girl, but those blogs appears to be inactive now.
On another note, I’m starting to see why it’s generally a bad idea to just throw yourself into the Mythos. Walking home last night, saw three signs on the side of the road. Two black ones, with a white one on top. In the shadows, the black signs looked like a suit, and the white sign looked like a face. I totally freaked out there; scared the hell out of a couple walking next to me. Awesome stuff. Thankfully, when I got back home I found that I’d gotten Gurren Lagann: TV Series Complete Collection in the mail. Watching it is the best way to cure yourself of being afraid of Slender Man that I know of.
But, we’re not here to discuss me being scared of speed limit signs. No, we’re here to talk about hornets which are marble.
(Warning: There be spoilers below)
What is it?
Marble Hornets is a series of videos posted on YouTube taking place in the Slender Man Mythos. In the setting, a student by name of Alex Kralie was working on a student film, titled “Marble Hornets”. After two months of filming, he dropped the project completely, claiming “unworkable conditions”. A friend of his, named J (either that is a very strange nickname, or his parents just didn’t love him) asked Alex what he was planning to do with the tapes.
“Burn them.”
Not wanting to let so much work go to waste, J convinces Alex to let him have the tapes, on the condition that they never speak of it again. J filed the tapes away, but at the time was too unnerved by Alex’s reaction to look through them. About two to three years later, he decided to go back through the tapes.
Judging by the contents, our favorite abomination was trying to get into the film business.
To put the plot in the simplest way possible, while making “Marble Hornets”, Slender Man began to follow Alex. Like most victims, Alex started to fall deeper into paranoia and fear as a result. Things became increasingly worse, and Alex claims in one of the tapes that some people have even disappeared.
While watching these videos, J begins to record his own research into what was going on. As often results from people investigating these things, weird shit starts to go down pretty quickly. Standard Slender Man fare: black outs, waking up in different places, loss of memory, electronic distortions, etc.
In addition to Slender Man, J often encounters an individual who the viewers have nicknamed “Masky”, a mysterious person wearing a mask who is likely a Slenderproxy. There’s a good chance that Masky is also totheark, a YouTube user who posted cryptic, and sometimes downright creepy, video responses to J.
The series ended on a slightly ambiguous note. After the downward spiral really started to hit J, he called quits on the whole thing, and leaves. After staying on the move for a while, his mental health began to return, and he no longer had any involvement with Slender Man. When you’re starting to think that the whole series may just on a bittersweet tone, J receives a tape, with the instructions “WATCH THIS”. The tape shows that Alex has also found a normal life via the cunning strategy of running away from Slender Man like a girl. This ends when his girlfriend finds his old video recorder. Alex gets uncomfortable with her filming around the house, and then BAM, Slendy appears, and the video ends with the words “HELP”. J decides to be a hero, and goes to the rescue. That’s it.
There is a season 2 being planned out, which will provide an actual ending to the series, though work has not yet started on it.
Marble Hornets is what brings many people into the Mythos. As it is a visual medium, it’s easier to be drawn into it, instead of having to read through text (a feat which our society seems sadly averse to). MH makes no assumptions about the viewers’ awareness of the Mythos, unlike many other stories, and is accessible to people who have never even heard of Slender Man. The series also has a tendency of being spread around, especially on forums or in emails. Through this, it acts as a gateway series into the Mythos. Those that enjoy it often will search for more information, and in the process, discover the other blogs/videos related to Slender Man.
It’s also quite good; Marble Hornets scared me more than any big budget Hollywood horror film I’ve seen in my life. No, it’s not a top of the line masterpiece, but the fact that they were able to put together something so good on such a limited budget is pretty impressive. Even if you don’t find the horror in it scary, you do have to admit that the quality is very good, even when compared to professional works.
Relation to the Mythos
As MH is one of the main factors behind the popularization of Slender Man, it’s the thing which everyone else imitates. MH may not have created the Mythos, but it codified it. Many things which are now standard Slender Man fare were created by, or inspired by, them. The idea of Slender Man slowly hunting victims over an extended period of time, the operator symbol, Slendersickness, blackouts, electronic distortions, and Slenderproxies were all started or inspired by MH.
Which makes it hilarious how many ARGs don’t consider MH real, or part of the factual Slender Man canon. This is especially true amongst the ones which support the theory that Slender Man came into existence through collective belief/fear of him. According to them, Marble Hornets was not an effect of Slender Man, it was a cause. The reason everything else relating to Slender Man resembles Marble Hornets isn’t because MH was accurate, it is because everyone believes that Slender Man will act as he does in MH. This belief is not universal; in most of the ARGs which claim Slender Man has origins before his appearance on SomethingAwful, Marble Hornets is at least given the benefit of the doubt. Still, it is very common for the author of an ARG to claim that their first taste of Slender Man was through Marble Hornets. And it’s well established in the Mythos that interest in Slender Man often leads to the interested party becoming a victim. You can see where this is going.
The Operator Symbol
I’m just going to briefly touch on this here, as this is where (X) originated. MH gives very little information on what the symbol is. All we learn from it is that it is associated with Slender Man. Alex is seen drawing it at some points, and it makes the occasional appearance in the videos. What is means remains a mystery, however. The three main camps on what (X) means are 1) It’s Slendy Repellant, 2) It either draws Slendy towards you, or somehow is used by him for his gain, and 3) it neither helps nor interferes with Slendy, it’s just something that his victims feel compelled to draw. Option 1 seems to make sense with Alex drawing so many of the symbols; after all, he is being hunted by Slender Man, and likely wants some kind of protection. However, totheark also uses the symbol occasionally, and if he is a Slenderproxy (which seems like the most likely possibility), it would be strange for him to use them. For 1 to be correct in the context of MH, either totheark isn’t actually a Slenderproxy, or he is horrible at being a Slenderproxy. Then there’s the question of just how exactly Alex learned about the symbol and its protective properties. Option 2 resolves totheark’s use of the symbol, but then we have to deal with Alex constantly drawing them. It seems a bit illogical to be constantly drawing something that would either strengthen Slender Man, or draw him towards you. It could be possible that he was either hypnotized at the time, or so crazy that he wasn’t aware of what he was doing, but that seems unlikely. While drawing the symbols, we don’t see enough video tearing or distortions to symbol that Slender Man is very near, which is usually needed for hypnotism. And the idea of him being crazy doesn’t match with how he acts in the videos. He’s extremely paranoid, and not entirely there in the head, but he’s never shown as so far gone that he’ll draw something that puts his life at risk. Option 3 doesn’t have any of these problems, because it ignores all the problems. He’s drawing the symbol because it’s related to Slender Man, and that’s what you do when you’re hunted by him. You draw lots of (X)s. This isn’t that popular a theory amongst the more proactive or scientifically focused ARGs, because in those they’re trying to find explanations. In ARGs not worried about discovery or science, it can still make appearances, since the author doesn’t need to explain anything. Just show the symbol appearing somewhere, and you know that Slendy’s involved. Don’t need to know whether it’s pro or con, just that he’s involved.
totheark/Masky
The two of them get one section, as it’s heavily implied that they are the same person. There are theories that totheark is Alex, however, that would require Alex to travel back to the town (from a different state), and then film footage of J and Slender Man while J was hypnotized. Not exactly in character for someone who should be trying to help J, and certainly not likely for Alex. It’s far more likely that totheark is Masky than anyone else.
The vast majority of the fans believe that Masky is Tim. And I really can see where they’re coming from; Tim displayed Slendersickness in some footage, was shown taking pills which J found in the house/which Masky stole back, wore the same jacket as Masky, and has the same hair as him. Unless season 2 decides to throw some kind of curveball at us, it’s pretty much canon that Masky is Tim.
Now this gives Tim the wonderful honor of being the first Slenderproxy. There are some theories that Masky was actually trying to help J, but these never sat well with me. Masky acts in too threatening a manner for me to be willing to say, “Oh yeah, he’s just trying to help.” It’s never stated outright that Masky is helping Slender Man, but at this time, claiming otherwise is just speculation.
What’s interesting is how many ARGs have taken from both the concept of Slenderproxies, and the idea that Masky was somehow anti-Slendy. The Tutorial talks about Slenderproxies, but also makes the claim that wearing a mask can help protect you from Slender Man. Also, a number of ARGs take the cryptic writings that totheark did, but attribute them to the protagonist, not a Slenderproxy. Proxy or not, whenever the protagonist of a story does start writing like totheark, it’s never a very good sign.
Slendersickness
A brief one here. When J investigates the House (I feel like I’m writing about House of Leaves, what with me capitalizing the word House so often), he breaks into a coughing fit. Tim is also shown coughing at one point, with the implication that he’s been affected by Slender Man. One theory is that the pills Tim and Masky have are to lessen the side effects of the Slendersickness, although I’m not sure what type of medicine you’d need to do that.
In MH, being around Slender Man also causes the target to experience feelings of coldness, but this is less focused on by other ARGs.
Marble Hornets left many questions unanswered, which is one of the reasons it was so creepy. You knew things were happening to these people, but you couldn’t figure out why, and that was terrifying. How much of it gets answered in season 2 is unknown; as MH is the most well known part of the Mythos, practically whatever it says will become canon. Which will be hilarious if it contradicts the ARGs being made in the meantime. It’ll almost be like the Star Wars EU; all the authors go through all this trouble detailing every last aspect of something, writing several books worth of description…. And then George Lucas makes an offhand comment that completely invalidates everything they’ve done. It’ll be great to watch that if it happens to the Slender Man Mythos; hopefully I’ll still be blogging to do some sort of damage control if it does.
Useful Links
Marble Hornets Channel: http://www.youtube.com/marblehornets
totheark's Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/totheark?blend=2&ob=4
Marble Hornets Wiki: http://marblehornets.wikidot.com/
TVTropes Entry: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarbleHornets
If there’s anything you think I didn’t discuss in depth enough about Marble Hornets, or anything you think I missed, go ahead and tell me. I’ll either cover it in the comments section, or if I feel the need to write a long post about it, I’ll make another entry.
Next time, I plan to discuss Just Another Fool.
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