The Slender Man Review

Saturday is wonderful, especially at the end of the school year.  Can't wait for Tuesday, I'm finally going to head home and be done with this semester of classes (only a couple more years and then I get to be a homless person who wasted five years in college!)

Anyway, I had the day off from most stuff, studying included.  Usually when I get a day off like this, I'll play some video games or something fun like that, but yesterday my mom came down to take all of the bigger things in my room home so she wouldn't have the car packed to the brim on Tuesday.  So instead of playing some Skyrim or Borderlands, I was stuck trying to find some way to waste time on my computer.

Then I got the brilliant idea to do an archive binge of a couple Slender Man stories.  Now I don't think I'll be sleeping tonight.  Hopefully my roommate doesn't decide to pull a prank by going out onto the balcony while I'm sleeping.  I hate it when he does that, and now I'm feeling especially jumpy so I don't really know how my half-asleep mind would react.

Anyway, I got the brilliant idea to come on here and list off some of my favorite Slender Man series to you guys (all zero of you that read this blog...) so you too can share my current jitteriness.

Let's start with the beginning, shall we?  Slender Man is a memetic horror figure originating from the Something Awful forums in a discussion having to do with making normal pictures scary and/or supernatural.  After a couple of decent pages of discussion, up popped Victor Surge with two photos of the Slender Man.  People latched onto the idea quickly, and the thread soon became dominated with more photos of the tall faceless figure in the black suit, sometimes playing up his tentacles and sometimes keeping him more humanlike.  No matter what you feared, be it supernatural or more paranoia or more down-to-earth, Slender Man could represent it.

Then came Marble Hornets, the first real Slender Man video series on YouTube.  Some people call this an Alternate Reality Game, but it's really more of a student film series since hardly any fan interaction actually influences anything plotwise.  Marble Hornets uses all of the aspects of fear listed above to give the atmosphere of true terror.  It introduced many aspects of Slender Man stories that are still present today, like the concept of a secondary antagonist possibly working alongside Slender Man (although Marble Hornets casts doubt as to whether Masky, Totheark, Slendy, Alex, the other Masked guy, or anyone else is actually working with anyone else).

Around the same time, the first notable Slender Man blog popped up.  Just Another Fool was to the Slender Blog what Marble Hornets was to the Slender Series.  It was the originator for many of the ideas and storytelling elements for its medium, like the photos of hastily scribbled drawings, the primary protagonist disappearing for another protagonist to step in and take over his blog, and the downer ending.  Just Another Fool is also one of the first real Alternate Reality Games in the Slender Man genre.  It sent out notes and journals to its readers to analyze and just to creep people out.  Just Another Fool is also notable as being one of the few popular Slender Blogs to kill the main character permanately.  Most others bring them back for another round with the tall one often with mixed results and poorer storylines than their original blogs.

After that came a flood of impersonators.  In the video medium, many point at EverymanHybrid being the next best (or possibly better than Marble Hornets).  I do admit that I enjoyed this series quite a bit.  Instead of the single storyteller of Marble Hornets, EverymanHybrid focuses around a group of three (to five or so) people who encounter Slender Man.  They start off looking like a cheap knockoff of Marble Hornets with their Slender Man hiding in obvious areas as they give gimmicky health advice.  Then everything gets real.  The real Slendy shows up, pissed at them for some reason, and they have to deal with it.  EverymanHybrid's strongest feature is their group dynamic.  The characters can play off each other very well, often resulting in humorous moments that help to keep the audience interested.  Their main downfall is that their story gets very complicated pretty quickly.  When they extended their reach from just Slender Man to HABIT, the Rake, and other popular Creepypasta, they caused a lot of cluttering of big bads.  Now I'm not sure what creature is doing what or what the motivations are or which characters are being attacked, or anything like that.

Tribe Twelve is the other major Slender Man video series.  It follows Noah, the pottymouthed man living alone in a huge house in Florida who caught the Slender Sickness from his cousin Milo.  I don't really have that much to say about this series.  It's not bad.  If you want to watch something that's basically Marble Hornets with more interaction with the main character, watch this one.  I do commend it for its special effects -- Tribe Twelve's Slender Man is one of the few who actually comes off as a very terrifying and realistic being with hundreds of tentacles spawning from his torso.  I do, however, have two major complaints about the series.  The first is the lack of sympathy for the main character.  I don't know if it's just me, but Noah comes off as more annoying and stupid than likable in the series, and many times during the first parts of the series his (and other actors') acting is pretty flat and boring.  The second complaint I have is that this series is pretty much just Marble Hornets with better special effects.  If it happened in Marble Hornets, expect something similar to happen here (although I suppose that's true of most Slender Series after Marble Hornets).

I've seen a couple other video series that I'll also brush over here, but I haven't really been able to get into any of them.  If you want to, check out the TV Tropes page for Slender Man Stories -- they have a more complete list than I have here.

TJA Projects is about two girls who, for some reason I didn't get to or didn't understand, are being stalked by Slender Man.  I actually got a little ways into this series about half a year ago, but I honestly can't remember a lot of it.  There's a baby, a very hairy hippie chick stalking the girls, and a large man wearing a plague doctor mask who I suppose is probably a bird creature or something.  I stopped watching around the time of the birdman since it was really just heading down the same road as EverymanHybrid when it comes to introducing more and more big bads.  If you nonexistent readers ever feel the need to make a Slender Man story, keep it simple.

I also tried to watch Apple of my Eye (if I'm remembering the title correctly), which is about a group of friends who are just filming their everyday lives and messing around when Slendy shows up.  I got bored very quickly due to the length of each of the first few entries where nothing at all happens, and I got confused by the large cast of characters.  It's hard to keep a lot of people straight if you introduce them all at once.  Try to keep your cast simple for a while, and if you need to you can expand it later.

There's also one that I tried watching about a guy with a Ouiji board and the Necricromiconicromiconnicon who summons Slender Man while doing a random ritual.  This one's pretty bad.  It does the usual "filming myself at all times", but anytime anything important happens in the first thirty entries (which is how far I got), the main character happens to be sitting in front of his TV (although this may just be a sign that he doesn't do much but watch TV, it still seems pretty odd).  Also, although he's doing the "filming myself at all times" thing, he doesn't get footage of his wife being dragged out of bed by a ghost at night.  One entry is a recording of a conversation the main character has with his wife over the phone where he very conveniently delivers a lot of exposition.  The entire time, I was trying to talk along with the conversation to guess his wife's part, but it was hard to get anything in since the pauses in his speech were only about a second long.  The series also doesn't have much subtlety to it since each of the early entries where he's just seeing ghosts have other entries released afterwards to point out every single time a ghost is in the frame.

Sorry, I went on for quite a bit about that last one.  I just kept on thinking of new things to complain about.

Anyway, I think I have seen a couple of other Slender Man video series, but I just can't remember them.  I seem to remember there being a pretty good one taking place during the wintertime, but for the life of me I can't remember what it's called or what happens in it.  I suppose I could look it up, but I'm too lazy.

There are also numerous Slender Blogs out there, which I'm not quite as fluent with since I don't have the attention span to read through them all.  I've read through most of the one with the guy in the rabbit mask pulling pranks on Slender Man, but I stopped when it seemed like it was getting a little more serious than funny.  It being funny was what made it stand out.  I also read Seeking Truth, which is a phenominal story with the most badass main character in the Slender Man universe.  It is a little hard to buy into the fact that a police officer is posting ongoing case information online, though.  I also just today got around to reading Dreams in Darkness, another great story telling the tale of a guy around my age dealing with depression, insanity, paranoia, and Slender Man.  It's got wonderful characterization.  That's about all I want to say about it since I want you to go and read it yourself.

Oh, and there's also Compile Truth, Dr. Cairo's channel on YouTube.  It's a series in itself, but it's not a very remarkable one (at least to me).  What's great about the channel is that it's archived tons of Slender Man video series and has summarized several important blogs.

And that's the extend of my knowledge of the Slender Man universe.  If you were to ask for my favorites, I'd have to say that Marble Hornets is my favorite video series and Dreams in Darkness is my favorite blog, but feel free to reccommend your own favorites to me in the comments (if anyone reads this...)

Let me leave you with one final thought.  The more you read about him and the more you know about him, the more likely you are to be stalked by him.  Have fun now that I've sparked your curiosity.

Keep telling yourself he's not real.  Tim ejrm oy yitmd piy jr od/

When I find myself in times of boredom...

...I post several unrelated things to my blog.

I really want to take a break from studying, but I have very little to do.  I haven't been posting here in a while, so I figured I could use the blog to complain and alleviate my boredom a bit.

I'm all caught up on the show "Sherlock" now.  Hooray for British television being so awesome.  The only show I watch regularly here in the U.S. is "The Walking Dead", which has been going downhill for some time (I came to watch the zombies, so why is there only about one zombie per episode?).  My roommate has the TV on most of the time, though.  I don't really pay attention to what he watches, but it looks pretty trippy.  I would probably enjoy it if I gave it a chance.

My computer was dead for a week starting about two weeks ago.  That setback caused me to more or less forget about this blog until, in my infinite boredom, I decided to post (as I am doing now).  Of course, eventually if I talk too much about this, I'll get into this big rambling thought about how this blog is pointless since no one reads it anyway, and it's just a way to get my thoughts organized and keep myself out of a slump... but I'm not going to talk about that... anymore.

I had the strangest dream a few nights ago.  I was in a high school that was also some sort of zoo and museum that was situated at the top of a cliff.  There was a crocodile involved, but other than that I have no clue what happened.

Time seems to be getting away from me.  It seems like it should still be February, if that.  Sometimes it seems like it should still be first semester.  At the same time, though, it seems like I should be done with this year and already getting ready to come back to college in the fall.  I don't really know what's happened to my sense of time.  Sometimes I wake up in the morning and think it's a Wednesday when it's really a Sunday.  It's 3:00 in the afternoon, then it's 9:00 at night.  I just feel like it's wrong, but it's probably just me losing track of time.

My lack of a sense of time may be contributing to my inability to keep a regular sleep schedule.  I'm tired right now, maybe I'll go to bed.

Jr;[ ,r@  JR od jrtr@

All play and no work makes 2270 an exciting blogger

Ah, procrastination.  The wonderful act that sucks my time away.  Today I sat around not writing a paper that's due tomorrow.  Tomorrow I'll sit around until about 4:00 when I'll start writing.  I've got a very busy schedule.  I don't know how all of my classes expect me to be able to write a paper while I'm watching Doctor Who all day or wasting time on TV Tropes.  Am I just supposed to set aside all of those ever-so-important activities to work on my homework?

Speaking of Doctor Who, I'm curious to know what people think of the new series.  Which are your favorite episodes?  Who is your favorite doctor out of 9, 10, and 11?  Russel T. Davies or Stephen Moffat?  Is anyone even going to read these questions anyway?  No one reads this blog, so I suppose I'll never get answers here anyway.

I suppose I could post my answers to those questions, though.  My favorite doctor (keep in mind that I've only seen the TV movie and new series) would have to be the ninth, I like the Russel T. Davies-produced episodes more than the Moffat-produced episodes, but my favorite episodes are the Moffat-written episodes from the Davies era.  I enjoy The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances and Blink in particular.

Anyway, nothing particularly exciting happened today.  I'm mostly just posting here to justify putting off that paper longer, but I'm finding myself unable to think of anything to say at the moment anyway.

It didn't work.

Well, if you haven't noticed from my title, my plan to keep my mind from wandering by organizing my day before going to bed didn't work.  I still didn't get to sleep until about 3 in the morning.

On completely unrelated notes, I found out today that the girlfriend of one of my floormates can't say certain words right (deer=der; boil, bull, and bowl all are boll; and oil is oll apparently) and his roommate apparently didn't know where he was or what he was doing yesterday.  Justified, though, in the fact that he has ADHD and was just too scatterbrained to remember; plus, he remembered after thinking about it for a while.

Anyway, now I'm waiting for my laundry to get done so I can get ready to go to bed.  It'll take another hour and a half though, so on to TV Tropes!

That's okay, I didn't need to sleep anyway...

It seems that I haven't been doing so well with this whole sleeping thing lately.  It's been a "good night" for me when I can get to sleep before 3 in the morning.  Add to that the fact that I have to get up for class every day and you've got one grumpy and tired 2270.

That nightmare from the last post seems to have been a one time thing.  Nothing unusual has been happening lately with the sole exception of me imagining a woman screaming the night after I wrote about the nightmare.  It was an odd sensation, like the noise was right next to my ear yet sounded very distant.  I'm crediting that one to my fan, which I have running 24/7 to drown out the noise from the hall and nearby rooms.

Anyway, I figure if I get all of my thoughts in order, I might be able to get to sleep earlier than normal, and what better way to get my thoughts in order than by telling them to all of the no one who reads this blog.

The weekends keep seeming to get shorter and shorter.  Then again, time just seems to be cruising for me lately ever since Spring Break.  I guess it might be the sudden increase in workload for just about all of my classes, but even when I'm not working, time flies.  That makes it especially obvious during the weekends, which brings me back to the first sentence I just wrote in this paragraph.  It's kind of a bad thing since I had a lot of work to get done today that I didn't do.  Instead, I watched Fight Club with a few guys from my dorm.  I knew the twist in the middle, but the ending was more ambiguous than I though it was, and without spoiling anything, I interpreted it differently than the other people in the room.  Then I came back to my room and went online to see if there were any sites or anything that interpreted it the same way.  Of course, knowing that it was only 7:00 in the evening and that I had lots of time to work on my homework, I went to TV Tropes and looked through the page for the movie.  Nothing was on there about my interpretation, but a few hours later I realized that I had opened about twenty tabs on TV Tropes and was somehow on the page for Disney Theme Parks...

It was about that time that I realized how much my head hurt.  It was just a massive headache like the kind you get just before a migrane (if you get migranes; if not, I have no clue how to describe this headache).  I'm not planning on taking anything for it since all of my migrane... stuff... has caffene, and I can't sleep well with caffene in my system.  That brings us to now, with me sitting on my bed with my computer typing up a summary of my day in my blog and my roommate gone off to who-knows-where.

Here's to this working so I can get some sleep.

Eh...

I've begun to feel like I'm in quite a bit of a slump.  Mom says I'm depressed.  She's probably right.  I think I can deal with it.  I'm probably wrong.

One of the ways I plan on dealing with this is to start this blog, where I rant and ramble about whatever, just to get my feelings out.  Here goes nothing.

I suppose I should start with a bit of an introduction.  I'm a 20 year old college student at a public university in the midwest.  That's about as specific as I'm going to get: I've always been taught to keep my identity off the internet for fear of someone hunting me down and killing me or something... of course, in this day and age, that's a load of crap.  I guess it's just one of those things that was ingrained into my head, like brushing your teeth twice a day or eating at regular intervals.  Ever since I was a kid, I was taught to stay vague on the internet and never give out personal information.

Anyway, I live in the dorms on campus with one roommate and something like 48 housemates, although I don't know them all.  I'm not from around here, so I was pretty much the only person I knew when I got here.  I didn't really connect with anyone over the first two years I've lived here, so last fall I planned on getting into a single room on my floor.  Of course, the school decided to screw me over and gave me a new assignment with a new roommate...

I'm not complaining about the guy, he's friendly enough.  I just find it hard to focus on anything with him around.  He's not loud or disruptive or anything.  He's just... there.  He keeps to himself when he knows I want him to and he's pretty sociable when I need to rant to someone.

Anyway, I think that ranting to him has helped me out quite a bit.  I've cheered up and started to clean up my academics, which up to this point were steadily getting worse and worse.  So I figured, why not rant to the world instead?  I'm probably not going to get any followers since I'm just kind of improvising by doing this without telling anyone, but who knows?  Maybe this will help.  Or maybe I'll get bored of this and stop after today.  Only time will tell.

With my identity fairly hidden, I feel like I can be more open with you guys than my roommate.  So let's get into my first rambling.

Last night I had a nightmare.  It was different than most.  I don't usually dream, but when I do I either can figure out that I'm dreaming partway through the dream or I, upon looking back on the dream see major flaws in the story.  I've even had dreams that retconned themselves partway through, but I didn't notice until I woke up.  This dream, though... I just felt like it was happening.  I've never had a dream more vivid... and I've never smelt anything in a dream before.

I was in the woods near the house where I grew up back when my parents were still together.  It was night.  There was no wind, no sound, and very little to see other than the trees, which had strange black cocoons hanging from them.  These cocoons were huge, about the size of me.  As I looked at them, they began to make noise and crack open, and you wouldn't believe the smell coming out.  The cocoons opened to reveal terrible skeletal butterflies, dripping in blood and guts, that flew away into the night.  It was then that I woke up.

I've probably been looking through too many creepypastas or something.  Damn my time wasted on the internet.