Fans have wanted this forever, even with some of the current controversy. Some are concerned about the $60 price tag for the PDF. Others are a little confused by some of the changes, and still others are unimpressed with the final result. Does MoN for 7e hold up now, and more importantly, are the changes justified? Is it truly all that Chaosium said it would be, or is it a flop? To quote the ineffable Dan Bell, "I really do want to find out", so let's dive in and see how things have changed, shall we? Along the way, I'll be giving my own opinions on the changes per chapter, and how well or poorly I feel they fit. Plus, I'll give insights on the new Peru prologue, bringing things full circle. We'll take this piece by piece, first with an overview and then some pointers on each individual chapter. Let's get started with the overview right below the jump.
I swear to God I might just need to get a restraining order on Nyarlathotep if this keeps up, because this campaign just will not leave me alone. Of course I couldn't resist signing up for the prerelease list, slamming down my $60 on July 1st, 2018, and reading through the re-imagined re-release of Chaosium's perennial classic, Masks of Nyarlathotep. It's been almost exactly two years since I ended my first run of the game, and with the advent of this updated version of the campaign I've once more been drawn back into the Strange Dark One's black web of intrigue and conspiracy. It's a siren's song that is hard for any Keeper to resist, and a classic of roleplaying gaming.
Fans have wanted this forever, even with some of the current controversy. Some are concerned about the $60 price tag for the PDF. Others are a little confused by some of the changes, and still others are unimpressed with the final result. Does MoN for 7e hold up now, and more importantly, are the changes justified? Is it truly all that Chaosium said it would be, or is it a flop? To quote the ineffable Dan Bell, "I really do want to find out", so let's dive in and see how things have changed, shall we? Along the way, I'll be giving my own opinions on the changes per chapter, and how well or poorly I feel they fit. Plus, I'll give insights on the new Peru prologue, bringing things full circle. We'll take this piece by piece, first with an overview and then some pointers on each individual chapter. Let's get started with the overview right below the jump.
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Okay, that title's a bit of a stretch, but I really wanted the alliterative title. The W is silent. Do not dwell upon its presence, for doing so will bring forth an unholy W-based form of the Unspeakable One. The W is silent, silent as the grave...
Today's reviews are a little different in that you're getting three - these scenarios all come from White Dwarf Magazine and their Call of Cthulhu Omnibus. While most of this Omnibus is helpful articles, some are scenarios, and it's from two article sources, Trio of Terror and Ghost Jackal Kill, that I draw the reviews here. Think of them as rapid-fire mini-reviews, meant to showcase what I thought was some interesting creativity from the CoC community long before the Miskatonic Repository was a gleam in Chaosium's eye. Join me after the jump, won't you? Welcome to another entry in the Dark Thoughts series, my Call of Cthulhu review series where I look at supplements great and small for the RPG. This time, boy do I have a doozy for you guys, because my God, never has a game given me nightmares like the one I have for you today... You know what I don't like? Things preying on me without my knowledge. You know what I really don't like? Unremitting horror that is something out of a nightmare. Guess what my Keeper friend Rob decided to do to everyone in Miskatonic Valley at one point, and how many nightmares I had from it?
If you guessed "He ran Stygian Fox's Forget Me Not from their recent The Things We Leave Behind", you're either actually a Yithian and come from the future, or you have played this ungodly hell-spawn of a scenario before. In any case, if any game can give you the shivers, if any scenario can make you want to bathe in bleach, this is it. Those of you who've played it know why. Those of you that aren't familiar with it, but wanna run it... well, read on, but know that I warned you... Welcome to a new segment on my blog, a review series I'm calling Dark Thoughts. In this segment, I will be reviewing Call of Cthulhu scenarios I have played in or run for my immediate group of IRL friends, Miskatonic Valley. This is intended to be an extension of RotOO Review, and as a result chronicles my experiences with various scenarios for the game. Because all of these are opinion-based, it basically is gonna be subjective. Also, it may have spoilers for people who have not played the scenario yet, which is why I'm using the jump. That way, nobody gets spoiled, even if the scenario is some 20-30 years old now and really has no reason for it. Better safe than sorry, after all...
Each one of these I do is going to cover mostly supplements that are traditional publications. That means no 'zine scenarios like Fear of Flying, nothing that is from the Miskatonic Repository, and nothing that isn't otherwise put out by a well-known publisher, new or otherwise. If the publisher's defunct or not prominent, they're also not getting reviewed due to scenario rarity. So that means stuff like the Games Workshop or Stygian Fox are game, but stuff like scenarios from The Unspeakable Oath or those published by T.O.M.E are generally not allowed. Only if it came out as a book or PDF is it viable, otherwise we'd be here all eternity. The only exception here is if the scenario itself really is worth some decent merit to warrant its own review. If I have a strong opinion about a scenario, it's gonna be heard regardless of the publishing format, so for all I know a MULA supplement may be reviewed here. It just depends what I'm feeling. To kick this off, here's a review of Mister Corbitt, one of the first scenarios I actually got the chance to play, a well known and beloved scenario by many from Chaosium's Mansions of Madness publication. I've already reviewed a scenario, The Plantation, in that supplement once before, however this is the first time I've gotten to review a scenario from the other side of the Keeper screen. So, here's what I thought about Mister Corbitt and its take on a Hitchcock classic. Does it hold up today? Read on to find out more. Or, "Gen started playing Pokemon again and remembered how awesome Pokemon Platinum's story was before the Fifth Generation games complicated everything."
Recently, I began watching a bunch of the Pokemon-related channels on Youtube solely out of interest in the myriad of glitches in the Pokemon games. Because my god, are there so many damned glitches, especially in Generation One. Just so many. It was on one of these channels I saw a video where every single Pokemon was evaluated for what the channel creator thought of their designs. So, I thought about it myself and decided to list my thoughts on every single one of these little critters you can fit in your pocket. Yes, all 800+ of them. Now, this will include games I haven't played before or played yet, so some of my list may be biased towards Generations I-IV because those are the ones I love the most as the "Classic" Pokemon games before the shift towards animated battles in Generation V. If my opinion has changed, I'll say what I used to think about them. Some notes will be based on childhood memories, and some will be short entries. I'll try to be giving my first impression of each Pokemon as I go, unless I don't remember them, in which case I'll give my main impression. I'm working my way slowly through the NationalDex as presented on Bulbapedia. If the Pokemon has a special form or two, I'll give my impression of each form, or of all the forms as a whole. If the Pokemon has a Mega-Evolution or a regional variant, I'll explain how it made me feel to see older Pokemon get updated. To start things off, follow me after the jump. Sick and Twisted: The Most Disturbing Call of Cthulhu Scenarios Chaosium Has Ever Licensed11/1/2017 FAIR WARNING WHERE IT IS DUE: This blog entry discusses truly disturbing scenarios for CoC. The details within get pretty disturbing, downright gross, and more than a little potentially distressing to certain people. Reader discretion is strongly advised.
Grotesque, gruesome, gory, gooey, glistening, gross. These are all lovely G words that can describe a certain type of horror. Not just body horror, but the kind of horror that sits in your stomach and turns it in knots. The kind of horror that gels in you and makes you shudder at the same time that it makes you want to vomit. It's disgust in its purest and most vile of all forms, and I don't just mean of death, slimy and squamous rugose terrors, or things with too many eyes and teeth and tentacles, either. It's good to be a fan of Call of Cthulhu if you're also a fan of horror art. There are some seriously great pieces in the lineup of all the myriad supplements Chaosium has produced. Curious to learn my favorites? Read on...
Welp, it's time to be both biased and incredibly nerdy with my opinion again, and to also completely shirk the fact I have three more blog entries for the Thousand Masks Saga to write that I have not yet finished OH GOD SAVE ME CRAWLING CHAOS.
Trigger Warning in case you can't read the big, bold title up top: This journal entry will discuss rape and sexual abuse. Reader discretion is advised; you have been warned.
Okay, okay, I know. I've been talking about feminism and sexism a lot on this blog lately, but bear with me. Musings 2.0 is not turning into a radical feminist blog, I promise, nor is it going to start bashing half of the binary gender spectrum because bashing whole genders is gross. I just feel the need to make specific things clear in regards to how I feel about certain topics in social justice, particularly because my views on it have changed some since Tumblr and because I've been seeing an awful lot of sexism towards both men and women recently in the news. Particularly, the rape issue on my college campus, and on all college campuses. I feel the need to talk about it openly, so that people understand what a real feminist is worried about. tl;dr, I am displaying what real feminists say and do, so that badfems are made an example of. And today, I want to point out that a real feminist talks openly about issues that affect everyone in society, and the double-standards that everyone faces in different ways - whereas a bad feminist talks only about issues that harm women and demonize men. So, guys, let's openly talk about rape for a second. Specifically, let's openly talk about it in regards to sexism in society. Rape is currently, in layman's terms, defined as: "The penetration of any orifice by any object". Notice how that does not blame either men or women for raping or being raped, that is, it supposedly doesn't victim-shame. Everyone knows that supposedly, men rape and women are raped, but is that really the case here? Short answer, "No", long answer, "No, you complete and utter sexist jerk, how could you even think in terms of such vague absolutes?" But why is the statement "men rape, women are raped" false? Well go ask any male person who has been raped or sexually assaulted how it felt, and how badly it scars them, and you'll quickly come to a realization: It scars them just as badly as a female victim, and oftentimes even scars them worse. You see, society tells men a lot of bullshit, just like it tells women a lot of bullshit: "Be a man", guys are told. Don't cry. Don't be a wimp. Don't show emotion, grow a pair, man up, be uber-masculine. If you like feminine interests, you're not a man. If you don't like aggressive and destructive things, you're not a man. If you don't dress masculine, you're not a man. Why is it okay for women to dress masculine, but not okay for men to dress feminine? Why do we allow women to be in touch with their masculine side, but men have to be masculine no matter what? Why do women want a variety of things for Christmas in the commercials, but men always want beer, power tools, and sports/grill stuff? Because society says this is what being a man is. Just like in society, being a woman is wearing girly stuff, being feminine, and being sexy/attractive. Being raped is not manly. Being a victim is not manly, and society openly shames men who are victimized in this way. This directly contributes to a culture of victim-blaming, rape culture as it were. Society is openly accepting of female rape victims, but male rape victims are objects of ridicule at worst or at best do not exist. Look at it this way: Society's totally okay with jokes about a man being raped by a woman, or hell, another man... but not with jokes about a woman being raped. Women are sacrosanct, women are not to be harmed, because society still views women as weak and needing protection. Women should be able to do whatever they want, but men must still obey the same bullshit societal double-standards they always have. Still not seeing it? Let me break this down for you, then. If you're a woman who was raped, everyone around you sympathizes, society sympathizes. "Look at this poor women who was victimized and taken advantage of by a big ugly man, look at how scarred and broken she is, we must help her! Lord knows she can't help herself! We must empower her!" As if she's not already trying to pick up the pieces and move on from her trauma, you're calling her weak as well. And not only that, you're assuming a man raped her, as if lesbians can't rape or take advantage of other lesbians. Now if you're a man, society laughs and says, "Wait, you were raped? Really? We don't believe you, in fact, YOU must have actually raped HER." Nobody believes a man who says he was raped, especially not by a woman. Remember, the current definition of rape says it's an act of penetration. All that despite the fact that women have fingers, women can use objects, and women can and often are just as big of disgusting pigs as men can be. Anything a man can do, ladies and gents, a woman can do as well, remember. This extends all the way down to sexual assault. A man who grabs a woman's ass is berated and her friends are sympathetic, whereas a woman who does the exact same to a man has the man's friends telling him how "lucky" he is to have been sexually assaulted, and how he should have taken advantage of her right back. The same thing exists with rape: men are told they're lucky to have been assaulted by an attractive woman (and she is always considered attractive), men are told not to complain, or worse, prove it if they're raped. Victim-blamed, in the same exact manner we don't do to women. This double-standard of rape not being rape if it's a woman doing it to a man is sexism. Hands down. Just like the double-standard of non-masculine men not being considered men, just like the double-standard of all men being expected to be aggressive pricks, and just like the double-standard of all men being told they are rapists waiting to happen. So for anyone who says "you can't be sexist towards a man", way to be sexist towards men, you sexist pig, because yes, you can in fact be sexist towards men, and society does it every fucking day with double-standards like the ones I just pointed out. But do badfems want to talk about this? Absolutely not. It goes against their basic belief system, the belief system that ironically is imposed upon them by society since birth. They're programmed to believe that women are in need of protection and cannot stand up for themselves, and that men are aggressors, hands down. This stems to their beliefs on abuse of any kind, their beliefs about sexism, and their beliefs in general about social justice. Badfems are not fighting for feminism. Badfems are fighting to make women dominant to men, and no gender should ever be dominant to any other gender. Badfems are fighting for a matriarchy, not gender equality. I have a friend who is sadly, not a good feminist. She honestly believes you cannot be sexist towards a man, despite societal proof to the contrary. She actually told me, when I brought up this same topic of rape and sexism, that I shouldn't have brought it up. I believe her exact words were, "Don't you dare bring up rape". Wow. "Don't you dare" bring up a topic that shows how sexist society is towards men and women as a whole. "Don't you dare" discuss the double-standards men face. "Don't you dare" discuss a serious societal issue that impacts everyone of every gender, an issue that directly contributes to victim-blaming and oppression. You heard the gal, folks. Don't you dare be a caring, non-victim-blaming human being that cares about the way sexism impacts everyone in society. Lord knows what would happen if gender equality became a thing. It's that time of year again, the time when half the radio stations are clogged with yuletide tunes and the malls are clogged with people getting their gifts for family members early. Colored strings of lights are going up, Menorahs and Christmas Trees are getting erected, and families are anticipating the holiday break. We even had our first taste of the chilling effects of winter around my neck of the woods! That's right, the holiday rush is in full effect, and whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Yule, Kwanzaa, or something else in between you knew it was coming before Halloween ended. And poor Thanksgiving, it can't catch a break at all, can it? You'd think peoples' love of food (second only to their love of sex and violence as we all know) would give it more precedence in the holiday canon... then again, Thanksgiving is definitely about family, and nobody really likes their entire family, do they?
Nah, for reals though, in the context of holidays I would have to say Christmas and the holiday season itself is probably my second favorite time of year. Sure, it's not Halloween, but who can complain about free stuff given by people who get you, the parties with food and drink, the festivities, and the general pleasantness in the social miasma around this time of year? It's the one time of year people just decide "hey, let's all collectively not be assholes for a few months." It's grand, religious trappings or not, and I actually do enjoy it (I'm not a total Scrooge after all). But getting back to the topic at hand, Christmas songs. They're everywhere now. You literally cannot flip channels on the radio without hearing them. There's at least two stations that I have near my area that play non-stop Christmas music from the end of October to about January 1st. Which... why? Isn't one station enough? Just like everyone else, I get sick and fucking tired of Christmas music over those three or so months. I just don't need to hear "Frosty the Snow Man" for the hundredth time in a single sitting, especially when the same damn shit was played last year (I kid, Frosty - I still have a soft-spot for you. No hard feelings, right?). And of course, that naturally means I have my favorite and least favorite Christmas songs too. So, I decided to make a list. Here's my top six worst and top five best Christmas songs ever. Before we get into this list, I realize this is probably going to make me a few... enemies so to speak. A lot of people have a lot of Christmas songs they love that I happen to hate. I realize there's songs on this list that are classics and not songs on this list that are more deserving, such as "Daddy Don't Get Drunk for Christmas" - don't get me wrong, I hate that song too, but there's way more annoying songs than that one out there. You all know which ones I'm talking about. Just be aware that this is my top eleven best and worst, not the top eleven best and worst. tl;dr - it's just, like, my opinion, man. Now then, let's start with the top five least favorites of mine, shall we?
And that basically does it for the least favorites, let's go to something more pleasant, shall we? These will only be my top five absolute favorites, because there's only so many I can put on this list otherwise it would be waaaaaay too long.
Okay, so you knew this was coming.
Lately this Slenderfan has come out of the woods, camera in hand and a pack full of journals with delirious scrawlings on my back, to discover something fairly disturbing. Something I'm sure everyone by now knows is obvious and which honestly makes me feel as though I'm missing a few pages somewhere. When did the Slenderman stop being frightening? It's a strange feeling, seeing this change that's gradually happened since 2012, when I first put on this fandom's mask and allowed all its dark mystery to take me hostage. He scared me then. He scared everyone then. He had a strangeness to him, an otherworldliness that couldn't really be matched by anything except something out of a Lovecraft novel. It wasn't so much his appearance - he is, after all, just a faceless, tall man in a black suit - but more or less what exactly he did to you. Following, haunting, terrorizing, slowly driving out all sanity within you, until finally your clock ran out and he came for you, taking you away someplace unknown, to do something unimaginable, for a reason that was unfathomable. And of course, as the horror cliche goes, "they were never heard from again". This was, and still is, the impression I have of the Slim Gentleman, and to be frankly honest, it still spooks me and drives a good part of my interest in psychological and Lovecraftian horror. So then imagine my surprise when, devoted Slenderacolyte that I was, I crept from the shadows of the forest, saw what had become of such a fascinating being, and lifted my mask to yell, "What in the fuck happened here?!" Or, tl;dr - Slenderman has ceased to be scary for the majority of the public. Why? Is it because of that game that came out a few years ago, and was so recently updated to include a story befitting an episode of Marble Hornets (as well as two new levels which are quite frankly as awesome as they are horrific)? Was it the memetic status this emaciated boogeyman so quickly gained afterwards? Was it the fact that nothing new had been done with the Mythos, and that his growing fanbase continued to demand more and more material that never came to be, or worse, was not up to their high expectations? Or was it simply that everyone simultaneously became bored, and moved on to greener woods, resulting in things like the awesome TheWestRecords, the currently ailing WhisperedFaith (which really isn't as good as it once was), and the Fear Mythos community? Well... maybe none of those. No, I blame a different source for the Operator's downfall, a much more insidious poison that has destroyed the once fertile, dark, and intriguing forest of epileptic trees that is the Slenderman Mythos. I blame shitty writing. Now before any of you get up in arms, yes I have heard of the recent Tumblr Slenderverse Fiasco involving a group of certain creators (which I won't name here) having a "bad series night" in a private tinychat, where they streamed series they felt were awful. I'm aware of the damage their careless bantering about it has caused, and while I do believe they've been pretty damn callous (and some have even bullied others) and irresponsible about sharing the details of the event towards certain people in particular and should apologize for that, I also believe they absolutely have a right to roast series they don't like. Good taste is subjective, creators are people, and people can mock anything they feel like - it's absolutely their right because they live in a country where free speech is a thing. And unfortunately, that mocking can get downright nasty, and should not be shared with the public (which it was, and shame on said creators for that). My opinion on the event itself is ambivalent, but I personally feel, as a creator myself, that if you put out a piece of creative material, you do not get to have a say in what people say about that work. If people mock it, then they mock it, and you need to accept that as it comes. If people think it's killing their fandom, then they do, and you need to learn to roll with that. And if your heroes and idols mock it, well, maybe it should serve as a reminder that they too are people, and people are inherently flawed. Just because someone's a celebrity does not mean they're necessarily a nice person, or even that they like you all that much. Was some of what they did a shitty thing to do? Yes, absolutely, and I 100% sympathize with the people that actually were emotionally and mentally hurt by those callous actions, but come on, people - that does not excuse your behavior here. You getting your feelings hurt and feeling like you've been betrayed by someone you never even really knew that well is pretty damn sad, and if that did describe you, then you really need to grow up, move past that shit, and get your priorities straight, because trust me - the world is not nice, your idols don't owe you a damn thing, and it's quite frankly childish and selfish to think that they do. That said, this whole thing does bring up another very serious problem, aside from some creators getting high off their successes and many fans childishly assuming these creators admire them as much as they admire the creators, then feeling betrayed and hurt when said creators do not live up to their expectations or beliefs. That issue is, as I've pointed out before, that there is too much bad writing in the Slenderverse right now, too much excess clogging the system, and that's why the 'verse is in a downswing right now. There is just too much glut in the system, too much detritus of the same concept reapplied and rehashed over and over. There is no denying that plenty of people still want, and still want to produce, Slenderman media, but half of them are simply not doing it right, copying the same stuff everyone else does. You can argue that the games did it or creator cruelty did it or Marble Hornets ending did it or insert bullshit excuse here, but the fact remains: we need to end this plague if we want our old Slendy back. We need to focus on what really makes him frightening and fascinating, and that means applying some logic here. "But Sugary!" you cry, tugging feebly at the fringes of my tawny, Timasky-inspired jacket I always wear on chilly fall afternoons like this one, "I want to write a slenderblog/creepypasta, or film a slendervlog/short film! I want to see more Slenderman! I want to write him and I promise I'll do it really good and really cool and everyone will love it!" First of all, why are you grovelling on my jacket, because that's pretty weird and I'm not Herr GroBmann's maker. Second, you think you can do it, write him. You don't need to ask permission to do that, he's pretty much open-source anyway (even if that open-sourceness is disputed) since he's sunken into the pop culture miasma. But if you're going to write him, take a few tips from this Slenderauthor, and try to remember them:
If you are a Tumblrite, you know this to be true. You've seen them, you all have - those people who post "Friendly reminder that X", where X is some form of self-affirming sentence, perceived factoid, or social justice statement. It's absolutely not the first or second parts I am referring to by the title - after all, it's always nice to hear "Friendly reminder that yes, someone DOES love you" after you've had a really shitty day. No, I'm exclusively referring to the last bit - and let's be honest, you all saw this coming. If you've spent any time on this blog at all, you know how important I find social justice issues to be, and know how I feel about people who use it as an excuse to be assholes to others. For those who tl;dr'ed, I hate extremists because they ruin otherwise beneficial, great things, regardless of whether that thing is a religion, a fandom, or a social movement.
And thus, my issue with "Friendly Reminders". As stated above, they're generally not friendly when done with the intent of slamming others, nor are they just 'reminders' because using them passive-aggressively is a form of attacking that person. And as I think we all can agree, walking up to and punching a person you disagree with does nothing to make them change their attitudes, and everything to make them punch you back or worse, avoid you rather than learn from whatever mistake you perceive them to have made. Furthermore, it's this passive-aggressive attitude that turns people away from Social Justice to start with - the more vehement and bigot-like your statements against bigots are, the more you yourself look prejudiced, and the social divide between minority and majority only deepens. Even if it's just an inch, it does deepen, and over time those inches become miles. We need, as I have stated time and again, to stop looking at differences (whether those be in privileges and oppression or otherwise) and start looking at how injustice affects everyone badly - men and women, straight and LGBT, cis and trans, white and non-white. Everyone is hurt when people are oppressed, not just the oppressed party. I think the current unfortunate trend of the media being very, very Islamophobic with regards to the current ISIS/ISIL issue is clear proof of that. Furthermore, when we use the idea of privilege as a means to push people away or disregard their opinions and statements, we do two very, very bad things: 1) We push people away from the social justice movement and cause them to reinforce their bigoted beliefs as a result, and 2) we are doing the same exact thing that bigots do to minorities on a daily basis. And I think we can all agree that's the absolute opposite of what social justice aims to do, right? So then why in the hell is there this trend of blaming one specific group for literally everything wrong with the world in the social justice sphere? Specifically, why in the holy mother of God are we fighting oppression by being total dicks to, and talking complete shit about, straight cishet males? Why is that a thing? When did we become so damn prejudiced against this one group of people that just so happens to be the social majority and just so happens to have quite a bit of privilege because of that? Okay, dumb question, let me rephrase that - why is it that, just because someone happens to have some or multiple instances of privilege, it's somehow okay to attack, invalidate, and demonize them as a whole? "Oh but it's not all of them, just the bad ones!" As if they are not people, too. "They have oppressed us for decades!" As if that makes being complete assholes to them okay. "But every single one I have ever met has been a bad person, so that makes all of them bad people!" Look at what you're saying - if you said these things about a minority individual, it would be bigoted, and it still is if you're talking about a majority person. Always beware of the fallacy of substituting your experiences for someone else's - I've personally met some very nasty, cruel, callous and outright disgusting minorities, and some kind-hearted, sweet-natured, wonderful majorities. I am Caucasian and I am not a horrible person - in fact I more than most understand where privilege comes from and how nasty oppression can be, because I am part of certain other minorities where yes, I do deal with oppression and me being a white person has no meaning whatsoever. Having privilege is not a free pass to never being discriminated against. That just is not how privilege works, and if you think that's how it works, you are extremely ignorant of reality and social justice in general and are probably the kind of person who posts those passive-aggressive "friendly reminders" on Tumblr. So, here's five friendly reminders of my own for everyone, regardless of experience or privilege, to remember about social justice. Particularly, when discussing the majority or talking with someone who has privilege in one or multiple spheres. I present this for the sake of fostering more open communication, because it's necessary. We need to stop the passive-aggressive nastiness in the social justice world, because you catch way, way more flies with honey - especially when the alternative is vinegar poured into old, chafing wounds on both sides of the debate. This should not be a war, this should be something we all can agree on and work towards. Let's start with these:
Just like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once so famously said, "Darkness does not drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate does not drive out hate, only love can do that." It's time to take that message to heart. It's time to move past "Us vs. Them", and to start focusing on how we can make things better for all of us. Are you up to the challenge? You all knew that as big a fan of Lovecraftian Horror as I am, that this was coming.
First up, a quick warning. This blog entry discusses a very... notorious and controversial and heavy topic in Sci-fi and horror literature, as you can probably see from the title. There will be some unfortunate language used in quotes as a result in this entry. Be aware that the opinions expressed in this piece are not intended to belittle or in any way cause offense to anyone, of any race, color, or creed. I am aware my own privilege may play into what I am about to say here today, and I am aware of how serious this issue is. But as a female horror author with mental illness, I would be stupid not to comment on this very, very serious issue that, to my knowledge, I wasn't aware that people didn't know about and were still very troubled by. So, here goes nothing. This is your final chance to leave if you think this entry might be problematic for you, or if you just don't want to get involved. So guys, H. P. Lovecraft was a Jazz Era (20's-30's) Horror and Sci-fi author who wrote a great number of stories and poems. In many of his stories, the pervasive themes of human insignificance in the universe and the fear of the unknown and other are prominant. They speak to a paranoid place in our minds, the part that wonders if something... evil and other isn't watching us as we speak, something dangerous and disastrous and beyond our mortal ken. What do we really know about the universe, even with all our scientific advances? What can we really hope to achieve when humankind itself is so primitive, backwards, and pointless compared to the rest of what's lurking out there? How much knowledge do we really have on the earth's history, or hell, even our own family history? No, better to remain blissfully ignorant, for ignorance is bliss. Anyhow, Lovecraft's legacy left a huge impact on science fiction and horror as a whole, and introduced the Cthulhu Mythos (which Lovecraft himself actually referred to as "Yog-Sothothory" due to Yog-Sothoth being a more important figure in his work than Cthulhu himself) to the world. Vast, abyssal cosmos of monstrous creatures, blind idiot gods at the center of time and space dancing to the beat of blasphemous drums and flutes, Pharaohs that embodied a crawling chaos and black goats of the woods that spawned thousands of monsters... This and more Lovecraft brought to the imagination of hundreds, and eventually, millions. There are RPGs, video games, movies, and all sorts of other cool as fuck things based on his works. He's part of the reason giant monsters are so damn awesome. And not only that, but his (admittedly purple prosy) literary works have inspired today's horror authors, names like Neil Gaiman and Brian Lumley, and, of course, yours truly. Lovecraft was also a racist dumbfuck. Like, really a racist dumbfuck. Like, more so than most people in the 20's, a racist dumbfuck. He basically believed Hitler was "too optimistic" in his genocidal plans, he felt that people of color, immigrants, and non-city-dwellers were moronic and subhuman, and he was anti-Semitic as fuck. The man literally wrote a poem called "On the Origin of Niggers" and his cat was named "Niggerman". I swear to Azathoth I am not making this up, because I couldn't if I tried. There is simply no two ways of getting around it - Lovecraft had some very, very nasty, venomous views, and these nasty and venomous views are intricately woven into his work. If you're a Lovecraftian like I am, and that paragraph up there made you twinge, or made you angry, or made you burn inside... Good. Absolutely, positively good. Because it should make you angry, it should upset you, and it should horrify you to know that the very author you idolize was a bigot. That means that you, on the inside, know those same bigoted beliefs are 100% wrong, and it means you are a much better person for it. It's also completely okay to feel that way. It's okay. Really. I promise. It's also okay, then, to do what Nnedi Okorafor, a sci-fi and fantasy author of color, did and express concern about a notoriously and overtly racist person like Lovecraft being used on an award for fantasy works. She was apparently not aware, until a close friend of hers showed her a particularly... virulent poem written by Lovecraft, that Howard was very much not fond of non-whites. This, understandably, gave her a lot of reservations about her recent awarding of the "Howard" (as it's come to be known) for her novel. And to be honest? I 110% do not blame her for that - hell, I'd be a bit offended too, even if my own privilege shields me from the kind of vicious racism people of color face. Is it any wonder she and others feel it's time to change the World Fantasy Award design from something other than a guy who believed that people of color were "Filled with vice"? But then again, here's the question - should this award's design be changed at all? Obviously, yes, the design itself is ugly as fuck - I mean, have you seen what this award looks like? It looks like Lovecraft and a Deep One mated and had an unholy abortion. Yes, it's that ugly-looking, as Goomi pointed out in his hilarious Cthulhu Mythos webcomic Unspeakable Vault of Doom. But of course, that's not what I'm talking about - I mean, should we keep the award's design or not, however ugly its implications may be, based on what it says about the past? Let me explain this another way - yes, Lovecraft was racist, extremely so, and anti-Semitic. He also was damn imaginative and damn creative, as even one look at any of his works shows. The fact that his bigotry played a huge part in his work, especially his early work (by the 30's, even he realized how ass-backwards a lot of his views were, mostly because he had since gone out into the world and realized they were wrong), is undeniable - come on, the man made one of his primary big bads, Nyarlathotep (my favorite of his creations), have avatars in the form of dark-skinned men, and basically dehumanized the cultures of Africa as backwards worshippers of things that should not be. That's pretty damn blatant. But does it change the fact that this same work is considered to be part of classic horror literature, or that this same work inspires many, many people to write? Does it change the fact that, in many people's opinion, the man's work was some of the best horror authorship and creativity of all time? In the end, I am ambivalent to the changing of the award, although I do hope they make it something less hideous-looking if they go for changing it. I am, however, with Miss Okorafor on one thing - how to deal with the beliefs of who the award was modeled after, and how to deal with the fact that our idols often are flawed and fallen in ways we can't help but be disgusted by. On that, I'll just close this by quoting her own words, because I feel she says it better than I can: "This is something people of color, women, minorities must deal with more than most when striving to be the greatest that they can be in the arts: The fact that many of The Elders we honor and need to learn from hate or hated us. Do I want “The Howard” (the nickname for the World Fantasy Award statuette. Lovecraft’s full name is “Howard Phillips Lovecraft”) replaced with the head of some other great writer? Maybe. Maybe it’s about that time. Maybe not. What I know I want it to face the history of this leg of literature rather than put it aside or bury it. If this is how some of the great minds of speculative fiction felt, then let’s deal with that... as opposed to never mention it or explain it away. If Lovecraft’s likeness and name are to be used in connection to the World Fantasy Award, I think there should be some discourse about what it means to honor a talented racist." I couldn't agree more, Nnedi. I couldn't agree more. Note: This is edited from a discussion a friend of mine and I had on Skype. Nothing has been edited except names for privacy, and a few other things for readability.
[3:25:47 AM] DarkShadows: I think the Operator is a metaphor for mental illness. Look what happens in MH. It's basically the story of four young men who suffer from crippling mental disorders. The symptoms the Operator causes for people hearken back to this (except the coughing). The fact that people slowly lose their mind through the story also goes back to this. In the end, Alex succumbs to his mental illness. He refuses to "take the medicine" so to speak and ends up harming himself and others, and eventually dying. Jay fights it for much longer, but also does not succeed and ends up dead simply because he does not listen to the advice of his friend Tim, who tries to warn him that if he doesn't get help then the problem will get worse (as mental diseases do). Brian and Tim were already suffering from mental illnesses, but Brian never overcame his. Tim snapped out of it just long enough to realize his actions were not sane, and they were hurting people. So, he got help. He got better. He relapsed because Jay pulled him into confronting his actual issue again instead of letting it fall by the wayside, but even then Tim held on strong enough to prevent a complete relapse. Tim succeeded in the end because he held onto the idea that there is hope, there is a way of getting better, there is a way out. Marble Hornets therefore is a story about mental illness and how to deal with it - first by showing how someone who falls into it should NOT deal with it, and then by also showing how someone already in it SHOULD deal with it. That said, what have we learned from MH about this?
[3:27:35 AM] DarkShadows: I just felt there was a very, very strong theme of mental illness and learning to cope with it in MH. Maybe it's because I've basically been in and out of therapy my whole life, IDK. But that's what I read it as. Tim is easily also one of the best examples of a mentally ill character who is relatable, sympathetic, and a genuine person. Too many things in the media do not portray mentally ill people favorably. Tim fucks up, Tim has his issues, and Tim eventually learns to deal with them however scary or horrible they are. [3:29:09 AM | Edited 3:29:14 AM] AIDAN : What about that time he kept Jessica secret from J for two years? [3:29:20 AM] DarkShadows: Think about it this way. Jessica was an enabler. [3:29:43 AM] A: Maybe...but it was also a major cause of Jay's breakdown - the grief. [3:30:12 AM] A: I understand Tim's reasoning but disagree with his choice. [3:30:29 AM] DarkShadows: Jessica was essentially a human form of a delusion for Jay. She was never something attainable. Tim knew that if Jay found that out, it would ruin him. He basically did what anyone would do - he tried to hide it. He couldn't. I disagree with his choice as well. [3:30:40 AM] DarkShadows: I'm not saying what he did was good, I'm saying as a character he's relateable. [3:30:50 AM] A: oh definitely. [3:30:57 AM] DarkShadows: Everyone in MH did some really, really morally questionable things actually. [3:31:37 AM | Edited 3:31:49 AM] A: I actually think [Tim]Masky was the most morally white character. [3:32:28 AM] DarkShadows: Nobody in that series was sane, at all. I think Tim had an upper hand though because he's been dealing with this shit since childhood. He basically already had some coping skills to deal with the whole Operator thing, which IS his mental illness as we have established. [3:32:49 AM] DarkShadows: Why do we ask for help? because we realize we've fallen down. [3:32:54 AM] A: What you're saying is his acceptance gave him an advantage. [3:32:57 AM] DarkShadows: Yes. So while everyone else continued to decline, Tim essentially got a bit better. When Tim tries to throw the mask away at the end and then goes back for it, that shows that despite what he tries, his mental illness is part of him. He can't get rid of it so he might as well as embrace it. [3:34:07 AM] DarkShadows: Every character had their own story arc. That was Tim's. [3:34:20 AM] A: I don't think embrace it, I think more like "become reliant on". [3:34:30 AM] DarkShadows: I disagree. [3:35:07 AM] DarkShadows: Notice Masky never does come back. My theory is that Tim keeps the mask as a reminder of why he tried so hard to get better in the first place. He doesn't wanna be in that dark place he was ever again. [3:35:21 AM] A: A mental crutch of sorts, he didn't ask for it. It became him. Once you are part of something like that you shape yourself around it. [3:35:26 AM] DarkShadows: Yes. [3:35:39 AM] DarkShadows: A painful piece of yourself, but a piece of yourself nonetheless. [3:35:52 AM] A: He, unfortunately, was as much Masky as Masky was Tim. [3:36:04 AM] DarkShadows: Is that unfortunate though? [3:36:16 AM] A: Yes, he didn't want it. He was forced into a state of near insanity. [3:36:31 AM] DarkShadows: Nobody wants to be mentally ill, dude... [3:36:32 AM] A: he almost killed two people. Why would he want that? And its unfortunate that he was put in that position [to start with]. [3:37:47 AM] DarkShadows: you're not getting at what I am. I'm saying that at first, Tim hated the fact he had this awful side to him. Because he nearly killed two people. Because he hurt a lot more. Because he's never really been sane. That tortured him. By the end of the series though, Tim has learned to realize that, as painful as it is, Masky and all he did as Masky is part of him. Masky is another representation of Tim's mental illness, the part Tim does not want to face and hates, but by the end of the series, he's learned to accept. [3:38:51 AM] A: and what I am saying is that it is unfortunate he was put into a position where that was part of him to begin with. Yes, he had to accept it, but no one should have that kind of mental stress put on them. [3:38:58 AM] DarkShadows: Yes, I agree. [3:39:21 AM] DarkShadows: But you're also assuming that the Operator is not a metaphor. I am speaking from the POV of the Operator being a symbol. XD [3:39:31 AM] DarkShadows: I'm doing some literature dissection. That's all. [3:39:38 AM] A: I do tend to think more in the literal. [3:39:50 AM] DarkShadows: Yeah and I think more symbolically. XD [3:40:22 AM] DarkShadows: LITERALLY speaking, you are right. Tim's hands were tied. everyone's hands were tied. Why? Well probably because the Operator had some agenda. What that agenda is, we just dunno and we never will. It's possible he just wanted everyone dead. It's also possible he was just seeing what would happen. It's even possible that he only really cared about Tim's end of the story this whole time, and all these other people got wrapped up in it. [3:41:58 AM] DarkShadows: I'm of the opinion, speaking literally, that the Operator really just wanted to see what would happen. he took an interest in Tim at a young age. He Proxified Tim at a young age. Therefore, of course he's gonna keep an eye on Tim. He's interested in seeing what Tim does with this new status. [3:42:13 AM] A: Well I do also mean from a mental perspective of the unfortunate thing that is mental illness, and with rare schizophrenia like that, dual personalities is one of the worst things, that thought that the one thing that is truly yours, your mind, is host to something you loathe. [3:42:24 AM] DarkShadows: yes,you're right. [3:43:01 AM] A: It would terrifying, to think that if he ever couldn't afford his meds, he wouldn't get to own his body. Something ruthless and cold would take it over, and [he] wouldn't remember who saw [his] face staring them down in horror. [3:44:06 AM] DarkShadows: Which is another reason I think the ending is about Tim finding a way of accepting that part of himself. Instead of running from it like Jay did, or just accepting it like Brian and Alex did and losing himself entirely, he found a balance. Yes he does have to worry about the meds thing, and that was brought up. [3:44:27 AM] DarkShadows: So really... the pill bottle is a symbol of control. Which... think about this. Pill. Pills sometimes are round, especially many anti-psychotics. X through a circular pill... Operator symbol. The symbolic lack of control. The nullification of control. Over yourself, over your state of mind, over everything. [3:45:41 AM] A: And that would explain Brian using it. He accepted the loss of control [3:45:50 AM] DarkShadows: Yes. So did Alex. [3:46:30 AM] A: And Masky, since he wanted Tim to lose control, not entirely i don't think... but just enough. [3:46:38 AM] DarkShadows: Masky is Tim, though. Masky is Tim without any control. [3:47:21 AM] A: That's a maybe, is he though? Is he Tim or is he another sentient being? He thinks different; acts different. [3:47:35 AM] DarkShadows: I dunno if it's ever exactly clarified *what* disorder Tim suffers from. Some say schizophrenia, some say DID. [3:47:48 AM] DarkShadows: People do think and act different when they're mentally ill. Their brains don't operate normally. That doesn't mean who they are when they're not under control is someone/something else. [3:48:36 AM] A: True, and I suppose we never get to know. That's something only Tim really knows. [3:49:13 AM] DarkShadows: It depends what exactly Tim's diagnosis is. So, decide for yourself. If it's Schizophrenia or an anxiety disorder of some kind, I'm likely right. If it's DID, you're probably right. [3:50:11 AM] A: It's funny, even the channel had another side to its illness, ToTheArk. [3:50:42 AM] DarkShadows: Even Tim yelling at Alex in the penultimate episode, "Stop, this is what it wants". Meaning, this is what Alex's illness wants in a sense. Tim was literally pleading with Alex to control his illness and get help. Tim was trying to help him. Because Tim went through that, he lost his friend to that, he lost Jay to that. [3:51:23 AM] A: He lost everyone [to that]. [3:51:28 AM] DarkShadows: Pretty damn much. Let's get this ugly thing out of the way first - I absolutely, 110% support women's rights, gender equality, and the basic ethos of feminism as a movement. I'm a woman and I'm directly affected by feminist things, so I'd be a huge hypocrite if I didn't support it. I suppose if you wanted, you could even call me a feminist, although I dislike applying that label to myself because too much unfortunate stigma about feminists being "man-haters" comes with the term, and because of that nobody would take me seriously if I said I was. So if you're reading the title and you're about to type an angry comment about how I'm "anti-feminist", please re-read the above statement over and over, aloud if necessary, until you get my point. That point being that I absolutely am a feminist in that I respect what my foremothers and forefathers did for women's rights, and I believe women should have equal standing to men, women's issues and rights should be respected and addressed appropriately, etc.
That all said, modern, third-wave feminism has some serious, serious issues that need to be addressed - including some issues that directly contradict what feminism is supposed to be about: equality, particularly in terms of gender. And I believe the direct cause is that my generation of women and their children have forgotten what feminism is supposed to be, and why women's rights was fought for in the first place. I was up late last night (against my own best interest since I had to drive my grandfather to a doctor's appointment the next morning) and had been kind of strolling the web looking at some various news sources. I came across one article that, while I disagreed with the variant of feminism it was promoting, had an African-American lady (her description, not mine) who commented that she felt modern feminism addressed the concerns of middle-class white women more than ethnic women. She felt this was unfair, since white women, aside from the obvious gender identity, generally are not as oppressed in society as African-American, Hispanic, Latina, Native American, and Asian-American women are. She also brought up that she did not like calling herself a feminist due to this, and felt that until feminism itself changed there would continue to be an issue for her identifying as a feminist. And, being a white woman from a middle-class family myself who has faced a lot of stigma for other reasons than just being of the female gender, this comment made me think. There's no denying that women of other ethnic backgrounds to my own often face more stigma for their race than I would - I mean, could you imagine if I was Latina as well as aneurotypical, female, and secular (particularly that last one, considering how much religion factors into Latin American culture)? All this thinking led me to realize that I agreed with what this woman had said - current feminism in general seems to have issues regarding ethnic women, and worse yet, that might not be the only thing feminism has issues with. Is it any wonder, then, that sites like "Women Against Feminism" (for however much criticism they get and however hypocritical they may be) exist, when things like the following issues occur with feminism as a whole? Feminism does indeed, as a whole, appear to be tailored mostly towards white, middle-class women rather than women of other ethnic groups. Think about the way white women are portrayed in media versus how African-American women are treated in media. Yes, both are sexualized, but which ethnicity is sexualized and therefore fetishized more? How many commercials featuring smart, confident black businesswomen or positive portrayals of black females in general have you seen lately compared to positive portrayals of white women? How many models have you seen in newspaper ads that are African-American as opposed to white? How about dating sites or porn sites - how many sites have you seen advertised that say "meet sexy, single Asian/African-American/Hispanic women in your area today!" as opposed to sites that advertise meeting "sexy, single white women"? Chances are, you've seen a lot more commercials, music videos, movies, etc. where women who are ethnic are treated more like exotic fetish symbols than women. Look at the way a Beyonce video is filmed versus the way a Taylor Swift video is filmed. Both female artists do pop songs, but Beyonce's are much more heavily sexualized than Taylor's. Hell, I can't remember the last time I saw a film that had a Hispanic or black female protagonist in any way, but I can name plenty that have a white female protagonist and maybe one or two with an Oriental female protagonist. Of all the woman (and there were more women than men!) I have worked with in my career as a Chemistry Technician, only one of them was a black woman, and none of them were Hispanic/Latina or Asian-American. It's definitely the case in society I think that women of other ethnicities to my own get a lot more sexism directed towards them than me. Hell, even on the dance floor I have personally seen many more ethnic women being groped or uncomfortably hit on by people than me (not that I have never experienced any sexism or unwanted sexual advances at a party; I have, but that is not the issue at hand here). Let's be honest, ladies - if you are a straight, cissexual, white female, how often have you been catcalled, wolf-whistled at, groped, told you're lesser by someone else because of your gender, etc. Now, if you're a straight, cissexual, ethnic female, how many times have you gotten this? My guess is the ethnic ladies in the audience have gotten it way more, because let's face it, ethnic women are seen as "exotic" and "looser" than white women. Hispanic/Latina and African-American women in particular are expected to wear skimpier clothes, heavier make-up, to dance "sexier" on the dance floor, to be "party animals". Make no mistake, people - this is fetishizing women, this is sexism, this is 100% wrong... and I, as a white woman, simply don't get as much of this because I'm white. Society says I have more of a right not to be harassed than a black woman, simply because I was born with less melanin in my skin. And feminism fails to even remotely focus on this idea. Out of all the most vocal feminists I have ever met, most of them were white girls my age. Some of the nastiest sides of feminism as a movement that I have seen involve white women talking over ethnic women about what they feel ethnic women need. I have seen white women tell Muslim, ethnically Arabian women that they are being oppressed because of a religious choice that these women themselves made. Who am I as a white woman to tell someone else what is or is not oppressive? If I want to sew, cook, and be a stay-at-home mother while my husband does the work, am I really oppressed if I chose that life for myself? How many white feminists have you met that have mentioned, openly and vocally, their disgust at the way ethnic women are treated in particular in the media? Does it seem in any way equal to you that Tumblr, which is statistically frequented by around 85% white females between the ages of 15 and 25, is one of the biggest, most vocal groups when it comes to feminism, or that when rape statistics are published, women are treated as one group instead of as different ethnic groups so we can see where the problem lies in particular and focus on changing that area? I personally don't think it's fair or equal at all, and until white feminists learn to stick up for their ethnic sisters without talking over them, it's not going to change. Another issue, and I know this is going to get a collective groan from the majority of feminists out there, is that feminism does not consider issues that only men face. Yes, I said that, and yes, I am serious. If you can't handle that, then leave, but this needs to be discussed and needs to be addressed. Why is it, ladies (and fellas), that we have made men out to be the enemy when statistically speaking, there are plenty of oppressive situations men go through (albeit not involving their gender)? Can we talk for a second about how only 30% of young men who apply to college graduate with a degree while close to 60% of young women do? Were you aware that, while more women suffer from depression, men that are depressed are nearly twice as likely to commit suicide because of it, and that in general, aneurotypical/mentally ill women are portrayed more sympathetically in media than aneurotypical/mentally ill men? How about the fact that more often than not, if a woman decides to terminate a pregnancy, she can do so without discussing it with her partner first, even if the man wants to be a father and was equally as responsible in making the child? How about the stats on battered men, being manipulated by female abusers into staying in abusive relationships because the woman (as a woman) is generally the one who will be ruled in court as getting the children if a divorce happens even if the father is the better parent, and in general are believed to be victims more than abusers? How about the fact that in society today, it's acceptable to laugh at jokes about a man being raped, but not a woman being raped, or that circumcision is considered legal for little boys but female genital mutilation is banned for little girls? And let's not forget about how rape culture affects men, who are expected to "always want it" and told to "consider themselves lucky" to be raped by an attractive woman. Or the macho culture espoused by both men and women, the culture that expects little boys to "man up" when they get hurt and "grow some balls" instead of expressing emotions, because a sensitive man is viewed as weak or inferior somehow even by women. How come all of this is considered okay when, were it a man doing it to a woman, it would be considered sexism? Now, you can argue "Power + Prejudice = BIGOTRY" all day until the cows come home, but here's the thing, ladies - when it comes to reproductive rights and bearing children, we have a lot more say than men do about it because we carry the child to term. That gives us automatic power over what happens to a child, and over the man who helps us make that child. So, there's your power part of the equation. Now, combine that with the prejudice of the assumption that men are considered lazy slackers who will get a girl pregnant and then run off without paying child support, will abuse the child they didn't want, are just doing it to get their dicks wet without any regard for the child that was made in the process, etc. This prejudice directly contributes to the masculine idea that marriage and fatherhood is a trap, a pair of shackles, an 18-year prison that can leave men who don't want to be fathers feeling trapped, just like women in the past who were trapped by being expected to bear children when they married. So, huh. Look at that - you have the power of women over men in deciding the fate of the unborn child, and a general prejudice against men saying that they will likely run off and leave the woman a single mother if they're not forced, legally, to pay child support. And as you said before, Power + Prejudice is what again, ladies? Uh-huh. I thought so. And that's just one example. One. So then, is it fair that we hold men to ridiculously high standards regarding child support when women aren't? Is it okay that a woman can hit a man, but if a man hits a woman it's considered abuse? Absolutely not, because not only does that imply that women are weak and inferior, it also implies that men are always aggressive and dangerous man-children - and that makes all of these men's rights issues absolutely 100% feminist issues. If we want gender equality, we need to solve inequalities that pertain to all gender identities, not just our own. We cannot ignore one group simply because that group is favored in society and has oppressed us in the past. If we want there to be true gender equality, we need to solve gender inequality in all spheres, not just our own. You can call that anti-feminist if you want, but that doesn't change the fact that behaving towards men as some men behave towards women is still sexism. And, that brings me to yet another disturbing trend I have noticed. Many, many feminists apparently have no problem being openly transphobic, biphobic, or homophobic. There are feminists out there that think transwomen are not real women, simply because they were born with a penis. There are so-called feminists out there than think bisexual women like my little sister and pansexual women like myself are "gender traitors" because they might date and have (and enjoy!) sex with a man. There are feminists out there that honest to god believe that lesbians cannot rape other lesbians, or that all sex aside from lesbian sex is rape. There are people out there right now that believe these disgusting, backwards, bigoted ideas and promote them in the name of gender equality and women's equality, despite these beliefs being at odds with either of them. I have personally seen a feminist tell my bigender friend that she is a bad person and a "gender traitor" because he identifies as both male and female despite being born in a female body. One of my best transfemale friends from high school not only faces stigma for being transgender, but also faces stigma from women because she is "not a real women" in their eyes. My own mother saw a supposedly feminist meet-up advertised as saying that it would not accept transwomen attending the festivities, simply because they were born in a male body. I have been called a "gender traitor" simply because of my sexual orientation. None of this is fair, okay, equal, or even remotely feminist in concept, but people using the term "feminist" have espoused these ideas time and again. Never mind that there are already a lot of dangers a transgender or non-binary individual might face (of which rape is just one), never mind that transmen are treated just as horribly by these people and also considered "gender traitors". This is what a good chunk of feminism is considered to be now, and that makes me very upset and ashamed to be considered as a feminist in any way, shape, or form. This, ladies and gents, is a humongous problem, because when feminism says it's for gender equality, that means it should be gender equality for all genders on the goddamn spectrum. Not just some. Not just one. All. Oh, and by the way, on the term "gender traitor"... you know where that phrase comes from? It comes from the Neo-Nazi/white supremicist term "race traitor", meaning a white person who supports the rights of other ethnic groups. When you call someone a "gender traitor", you are essentially saying that you subscribe to feminism in the same way a Neo-Nazi subscribes to white supremicy. You are aligning yourself with and declaring yourself to be part of a hate group, which I think we can all agree is decidedly not okay. One more thing that, as a secular woman, disturbs me - secular women, that is, women who are agnostic, atheist, or both, are depicted more cruelly than secular men or religious women. I have not seen one positive portrayal in the media of a secular person, and I haven't seen secular women represented at all. I have been treated as evil, lesser, and a terrible person in general just because I'm Agnostic and female - I have had people who asked about what secularism is turn and walk away from me dismissively or even outright tell me I'm going to Hell simply for what I believe. I've gotten nasty looks, sneers, and other such dismissive treatment from people when I explained my beliefs to them, and I am the butt of frequent jokes simply because of my beliefs. There is a rather crude joke about secular women that goes something like, "I can convert any woman to Christianity - once I get her home, she'll be screaming 'Oh Lord, I'm coming'." Not once have I heard any jokes about secular men in this vein. I once ran a Center for Inquiry booth with my CFI group on campus at a community college I went to, and 9 out of 10 people turned away when I uttered the dreaded "A" word. One woman outright told us her daughter "wasn't interested" and steered her away from the booth even though the girl expressed interest in joining the group. Why? Because I am secular, I support secular values, and secular people are evil in the eyes of a Christian, God-fearing society. And guess what? My male peers did not experience nearly that much stigma when they ran the booth themselves later, in fact they got more people interested in the group. It's solely because I am secular, and a woman, that people turned away. Has any sort of feminist group spoken about any of this? Did the college campus chapter of NOW protest about any of this? Absolutely not, because I can guarantee you the majority of feminists are Christians, simply because Christianity is one of the most widely practices religions world-wide. And in general, most Christians do not believe secular women are a thing. They scarcely believe secular men are a thing. I am automatically labeled as even more of a whore, more of a heathen, and more of a loose, evil woman when I screw up simply because of my beliefs. Not one secular man I have talked to has ever gotten that treatment. Not one. And worse yet, there are plenty of feminists that are telling me I deserve this simply because I am not Christian. Not one feminist I know of has ever told another feminist off for this sort of behavior. Ever. I have never seen a feminist crusade for religious freedom; in fact I have seen feminists crusade for the opposite, telling Muslim women that their religion is fundamentally oppressive and they are "slaves" for believing something other than Good Ol' American Christianity. It just does not appear that other religions are tolerated in certain circles of feminist beliefs, and that's an issue. Is it any wonder then that so many people have declared themselves "anti-feminists" or "egalitarians" rather than feminists, particularly when this sort of nastiness and stigma is associated with the term? When men, ethnic women, bi- and pansexuals, and transgender/non-binary individuals feel like they are excluded, what else can the conclusion be other than that feminism is a girls-only clique full of bullies whining about how they aren't being treated fairly when they, too, have privilege? Do you all see now why I don't want to call myself a feminist? Why the hell would I when I do not feel safe and welcomed amongst other feminists? If it's not the stigma about men my little brother has to deal with, it's the stigma against secular women, or pansexual women, or my transgender friends, or women who are mentally ill being given a lot more understanding of their issues when my little brother (who is also anxious) gets less of it. Shouldn't feminism bond women and men closer together instead of driving a wedge between them? Yes, I believe it should, because feminism should be about equality and understanding. But right now, with the way many feminists silence dissenters and fail to dismiss nasty bigots who identify as 'feminists', we're not upholding that ideal. No, we are not, we are absolutely not, and no amount of justification you give will remove that horrid, festering, putrid stain on feminism as a movement. Bottom line, there is too much bad feminism and not enough good, and the more and more I see of it the more and more I believe this is the case. I will only say this once, badfems: I do not support bullies and bigots, and real feminists shouldn't, either. I don't support hatred, nasty speech, privileged people talking over the oppressed about what's 'best' for them, and being told I am lesser by the very people who love telling me how much they are "liberating" me. I do not support being told by other women that my love of sewing, having a crush on a guy, or wearing skimpy, sexy dressed and low-cut tops is oppressive, and that whenever I dress up nice to impress a guy, I'm playing to gender roles and being a slave. I don't support telling other women they are "brainwashed" just because they disagree with something you say or do stereotypically feminine things like cooking, cleaning the house, having children and being a stay-at-home mom. Because the point of feminism is choice. A woman's choice, specifically to have the same autonomy as a man does, about what she does in life, what she believes, what she wants. The point of feminism is to make the genders equal, not to make women more powerful than men are as revenge for centuries of oppression. But right now, that's what I feel feminists as a whole are saying and doing, because too damn many of the ones like myself, the ones who want gender equality, the egalitarians, are being silenced and drowned out by the extremists, decried as bigots and monsters. I think Frederick Neitszche said it best, ladies - One must take care nwhen you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes long also into you. Hey you, yeah you behind the computer screen! Nerd! >8D Oh well, at least you're not a freak, like I am...
Ah, self-deprication. How I did miss thee. As all of my long-time readers should know by now, I'm a nerd. A pretty damn big nerd. I adore Batman and Doctor Who, I read and loved Harry Potter, I generally get pretty good grades, I'm abit of a Grammar Nazi, I love to learn about stuff, I write fanfic, I play Pokemon and am pretty in-touch with what new video games are coming out for modern consoles, I'm a Chemistry Tech major, I'm so comfortable with the internet that it's like I have a second life online, I have a blog, and I love Statistics. I am also a weirdo - I read Creepypasta and then go to sleep without any trouble whatsoever, I think bats and snakes are cute, I actually really like spiders, I write horror stories, and I am a huge Edgar Allen Poe and H. P. Lovecraft fan. If you're new to Musings, first of all, welcome, and second of all, I'm sorry you had to find out from this entry that I'm a freak (If it helps, I am also a bitch, a lover, a child, a mother, a sinner, and a saint; I do not feel ashamed). But really, I just tend to think of myself as having some very myriad, nerdy interests. So it should come as no shock to any of you that I also have some serious nerdy pet peeves. Those little things about my fandoms and interests that just stick in my craw and never seem to be things that I can get over, no matter what I do. Being a nerd's in my blood, along with being snarky and a little bit of ethanol on any given night when I'm not working - and there's just some things, because of that, that I cannot let go of. I'll normally let them pass if it's a joke, or if someone's being a troll on purpose. I'll also normally let them pass if it's an honest mistake. But when I keep coming across these little annoyances, then something begins to ever so slightly fray in Sugary's silly little brain, something that really makes me want to grow claws and fangs and bite your head off. Usually, these annoyances are caused by severe stupidity or ignorance of the fandom from which they come, and if it's one thing I can't stand, it's stupid for the sake of being stupid. Usually these annoyances come from fandom newcomers as well - and when people are new, I do try to be nice. We were all noobs of our respective fandoms once; we can all be forgiven for little sins like thinking that the Joker was played best by Jack Nicholson or Heath Ledger (false, the correct answer is Mark Hamill), or foolishly believing David Tennant to be anything other than the best Doctor of all time. But not knowing a character's name when you get into a fandom, or doing dumb things just because you feel bad that someone doesn't like your fandom? Bitch, please. And if you commit any of the five grievous annoyances below? Lord have mercy upon your soul, foolish mortal, for your actions were bad and you should feel bad. In no particular order, here are my five biggest nerdy pet peeves. Granted, the aren't all nerdy, but they all do revolve around fandom of something, so there you go. My logic is superior. You know it to be true.
It's watching you right now. Watching and waiting. Run away. Now. It's your only hope. Run and never look back. You might still be able to save yourself. And for God's sake, whatever you do, don't look out the window... ... Now that I have made all the Marble Hornets fans in the audience collectively wet themselves, on to the actual discussion. But first, I have a brief addendum. I previously stated some incorrect facts concerning Slendy's origin and creation at SomethingAwful, as well as some incorrect information concerning its appearance. Those mistakes have since been corrected and I apologize for that. No really, I'm sorry about the mistakes. It's not because I have a creepy guy in a mask holding me at knifepoint or anything... So guys, let's talk about the Slenderman Mythos. Anonymous, creepy, and absolutely everywhere, there is not a single more genuinely symbolic entity of what the internet is than the tall, skinny, faceless humanoid abomination for which this series of blogs, vlogs, fanfics, creepypasta entries, and various other tales (including a video game now, called Slender, and several spinoff games of it) are named. And there is probably nothing more frightening than a being created online that some people are now convinced is real. What is the Slenderman? Simply put, an eldritch abomination older than humankind, known mostly for spiriting away young children and causing horrific tragedy to follow in its wake. It stands anywhere from 9-12 feet tall, and is impossibly skinny (which is where its moniker comes from). It has many names - the Tall Man, The Operator, The Thin Man, etc. It commonly is seen to be wearing a gentleman's business suit, complete with a usually black or red tie, its arms are far too long for its body's proportions, and it is completely faceless. It has no eyes, no mouth, no ears, and only a vague concept of what we'd consider a nose to be - and sometimes, not even that. It is commonly shown to have tentacle-like appendages which it can expand and retract at will, used for snagging hapless victims. It dwells in forests mostly, moving through the trees with supernatural speed and agility when you can't see it, and standing eerily still or slowly closing in when you can. It can teleport and be in multiple places at once. It seems to have some form of psionic ability, and some say it can even induce madness and hallucinatory images. Some say it kills its victims and leaves their organs replaced haphazardly in their body cavities or the bodies horribly mutilated. Others say if it captures you, it warps your mind and body until you become a being fully willing to work for its own agenda. What is this agenda? Nobody knows. If you think about it too long, it will find and begin to haunt you. If you research it, it begins to follow you, and the more you research it, the more it will appear to you... and you will be the only one able to see it. You will be stalked and eventually disappear... unless you can avoid it. If you believe too strongly in it, or become too obsessed with figuring out this enigmatic being that tails you, then you slowly go insane. If you stare at it for too long, it will pull you into some sort of trance, leaving you entirely helpless to its attack. Encountering it is said to cause sickness, including headaches, nausea, vomiting, coughing, and other indicators of illness. If captured on film, either motion or still, it causes strange distortions, including static, audiovisual problems, and other issues. Its true nature is shrouded in mystery and fear, and seems to see humans as something foreign to observe... or possibly destroy. It seems to be connected to a strange symbol, pictured above - a circle with an X drawn through it, known as the Operator symbol - and it is unknown if this symbol protects a person from its influence... or summons the being. Some say it is waging war against humanity, taking some of our kind and turning them into servents called Proxies. Some say it is neutral, and the tragedy attributed to it is merely coincidental. Some say it is a magical being or a fae. Some believe it is an alien or other foreign being. All agree that it is most certainly not human, and it is very, very dangerous... How did it come to be? The Slenderman was born from a forum competition back in 2009 on the infamous and always interesting SomethingAwful forums, in a contest meant to involve creating a photograph of a monster or manufactured urban legend. It was here that the first few images of the Slenderman were formed, painting it as distinctly malevolent. These images won the competition, and soon became memetic, spreading throughout the internet. Eventually, the manufactured legend outgrew its home territorry when two SA forum Goons created the Youtube series Marble Hornets (presumably a reference to the black and white static caused by the entity and the buzzing noise associated with said static). This video series, now up to 60 episodes and counting, essentially codified and confirmed much of the canon surrounding the Slenderman, and now is considered the codifier of many aspects of the Mythos. From it sprang two other video series called EverymanHYBRID and TribeTwelve, the other two of the "Big Three" Slenderman Mythos web series, and from them have sprung blogs, vlogs, video series, films, and more, and the legend shows no signs of dying yet. The series that began all this madness even has a spinoff series called totheark, which focuses on a recurring and mysterious character that is present in several of the Marble Hornets videos. Today, the Slenderman and its mythos continue to flourish and thrive, generating paranoia and fear in generations of internet users and inspiring horror afficionados everywhere. But why is the Slenderman such a potent source of fear? What about it jangles us to the core? Even someone unaware of what Slenderman is would no doubt be frightened by it, but why? That is what I set out to discuss and hopefully answer here today. For those Slenderfans in the audience, no, this won't become another Slenderblog (hopefully) - I don't think I could even begin to keep up with half of the blogs because they're so damn tangled together and every single one out there has crossed over with at least five other blogs at some point, some of them doing so multiple times. Plus, I just don't have the time to sit down and construct the kind of elaborate tale that so many of those blogs weave, and I'm not sure what, if any, new ideas I could contribute to the Slenderman Mythos. If you did come here looking for another Testing123 or Just Another Fool, I'm sorry to disappoint you. If you came here looking for another Marble Hornets, then I'm really sorry to disappoint you. This is just an out-of-canon look at the entity this Mythos is based around, and nothing more. Hopefully it will give some insight into those looking for a more basic interpretation or just some interesting discussion - you know me, I love horror, and I love talking about horror even more. I was recently engaged in conversation with a relatively newish author on FFN named Zaikia, who has apparently become interested in the Slenderman Mythos. She is currently working on a Slenderman Mythos fic based in the same universe as the series Marble Hornets (many Slendy stories depict this series as genuinely fictional in their own in-story universe, although many still borrow elements from it), and I've been giving her a little bit of feedback on improving the story from a characterization and writing standpoint. Admittedly, it's difficult to pin a personality on a character that isn't human and literally is a blank slate, but that is ultimately the beauty of it - because the Slenderman has no one interpretation, any interpretation is correct. Its story is ongoing and its origin is multiple choice, somewhat like how the Joker's origin is multiple choice. This increases author flexibility and has resulted in myriad discriptions of the being's motives, personality, abilities, powers, and even some slight variations in its appearance. It's the reason some people, when drawing the being, give it a mouth with teeth, and others leave it blank. As new ideas fall into place from various blogs, vlogs, films, and other sources, old ideas fall away. It used to be commonly thought in the fandom that the being's face appeared differently for every person that saw it. Now, it is believed that it has no face and never did, always appearing blank to every person that sees it. During the course of the conversation I had with Zaikia about her story, the discussion turned to theorization on the being's abilities and powers as well as why he watched humans so much. Later, the discussion turned to the topic of why the Slenderman is such a frightening figure in general, without any of the trimmings of legend attached to it. Below is an excerpt from this discussion. As always, it's been edited only where necessary to clarify things and add in more information. Notably, the masuline pronoun (He/His/Him) is used to refer to this being, although it should be noted that this being is more properly an it, and generally considered to be genderless. The masculine pronoun is used for clarification only. "I think it is very likely that he (Slendy) is an observer. The same way we observe animals at a zoo with interest, he observes us. It is likely he has existed since the beginning of time and will continue to exist for as long as humanity does. My theory is that he so happens to feed upon human fear, and that is why simply being around him when he's in the area causes such paranoia - something about whatever he is, I think. I don't know if he intentionally causes it for his amusement/sustainance, or if it's an aftereffect - but I do agree that belief in him makes him real, and the more you believe in him (sort of like the boogeyman) the more power he has and the more he could potentially come after you. Perhaps he is a protector of the forests or a forest spirit of some sort; perhaps he simply adapts whenever humans do and is highly evolved to be some sort of predator to the apex predator - man. Whatever he actually is, I'm not exactly convinced that he's completely evil - or if he is, then he is only evil by human standards of evil and might not even think of himself as evil. We believe him to be evil because he hunts us - what prey does not think of their predator as an evil pursuer? And think about it - when have we ever seen Slendy, in any tale about him, physically harming a human being with clearly malicious intent? It's just too blurred a line to say for certain what side of the fence he is on. "It is possible that the tendrils are there as feelers of sorts - they sense motion, currents of air, the presence of other beings, etc. They are basically his means of gathering information about his surroundings. Since he doesn't have any visible eyes that we know of, he may "see" in heat vision or some form of inaudible-to-humans echolocation, or perhaps he hunts by sound waves or vibrations, which could also be felt not only through the ground but also through his tendrils. He may even hunt telepathically, pinpointing his prey by reading where they mentally are or tracking them through their growing paranoia, which would lend credence to the idea that he is a phobovore (fear-eater). If he does have actual vision, it is probably nothing like our vision. For example, he may see in fuzzy, black-and-white vision, and he probably can see incredibly well in the dark. It is even likely that he is blind, but not completely, and can sense changes in light and darkness only. Or he could have some sort of vision that is even more foreign to humans than this. It would seem as though, if he does actually eat humans, he may do it to scare them even more and said human is actually warped somewhere, not devoured, since in recent interpretations, no bodies from any of Slendy's victims are ever found. I wouldn't be entirely surprised if he was somewhat like the Weeping Angels in Doctor Who - those creatures are motionless when you look at them, incredibly fast if you turn your back, and if they catch you, they will warp you to another time entirely and feed upon the time-space that you left unoccupied. Maybe Slendy does something like that to his victims, with the exception that he certainly can move if you can see him, and is incredibly fast if you can't. We may never know, and as long as this character is speculated on and written/drawn/has videos made of him, we'll have lots of possibilities to discuss." At this point, Zaikia pointed out that she believed the paranoia surrounding the Slenderman came from its lack of any visible facial features. I agreed, bringing up the idea of the Uncanny Valley as well as some interesting implications behind why the Mythos is so frightening: "I agree. Nothing is scarier than nothingness, and what is Slenderman but the ultimate example of anonymity? He lives in forests. It is unknown what his mission is or where his victims are taken. He has no face. He wears a suit, and anyone who wears a suit is clearly very serious or on business duty, and is either untrustworthy or considered to be less approachable. Anonymous, an internet trolling group, uses the image of a faceless man in a business suit as their mascot, and for very good reason - they do not have any set identity, which makes them rather frightening and unknowable. There being a concept of nothing there in the woods while you're wandering about at night is far scarier than the idea of there being something there, because at least you know there is something out there. You can pin a name and face to a monster like the Rake, another Creepypasta entity (or Creepybeast as I collectively refer to them). No so with Slendy. "Why is this? Because the Slenderman is literally unknowable and unknown, precisely because he lacks the one thing humans use to understand who and what a person is - a face. Humans attach a LOT of identity, personality, and knowability to a face, to the point that we even see faces in inanimate objects like clouds, cars, chairs, and more. This effect, when taken to the extreme, is called Pareidolia, and is a type of psychological phenomenon called apophina, the seeing of meaningful patterns in meaningless information. That is why we see faces where there aren't any, and why we give personalities to inanimate objects. Now, think about what this means in terms of a human being or humanoid that lacks these features. If someone or something lacks a face, we become instantly uneasy and frightened, because there is nothing to attribute any sort of personality or familiarity to. We don't know what the person is thinking, we don't even know if they're human. So really, Slendy having no face is playing to our fears of the uncanny and unfamiliar. Slenderman came from the internet, from collective speculation that willed him into being, and he sprung from our subconscious fears of strangers, foreign things, being lost, loneliness, etc. He continues to exist in our minds because all humans, to some degree, exhibit fears of those things, even if we will not admit it. If given a phobia to represent, Slenderman would represent xenophobia, the fear of strangers or foreign things, things we don't and can't understand. He operates on the same fear that most eldritch abominations, from Lovecraft's Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep to the alien geometries of the house in House of Leaves, operate on. In other words, Slenderman is literally the embodiment of a very common human fear, one passed down from ancient ages innumerable. And that fear is the fear of the unknown. "Why does the Slenderman inspire this fear of the unknown, exactly? Because of the Uncanny Valley effect. This term comes from the world of robotics and engineering, and was coined by a Japanese robotics professor named Masahiro Mori. In layman's terms, the Uncanny Valley is a theoretical graph of familiarity versus how human-like something is, usually a robot. When a human being comes into contact with something human or human-like, they feel a sense of familiarity with that thing. If something is clearly not human, like a teddy bear, we feel alright with it in the room so long as it is clearly not supposed to be human-like. However, the more human that thing acts and the less human-like it looks, the more uncomfortable the person becomes with it. Our brains think it should be a person, but it's just... not, because it doesn't act like a normal, healthy human. It's a person to our brains, but it is a person that isn't quite right. In a graph of familiarity and how human-like something is, as we get more towards something looking like a human but not acting quite like a real human, the more uncomfortable we get, creating a dip in the graph. This dip is the "uncanny valley", where the human-like thing seems human but we know it isn't human - it's not human enough, or it's too human for what we know it should be. This creates strong revulsion, fear, nervousness, and general dislike of something, and the valley is deeper if an entity is moving rather than if it is still. At the bottom of the valley is the zombie, or a human corpse. This is likely why so many people dislike dolls, clowns, and very human-like robots - they act human, but don't look it, or they act human, but not quite human enough. Here is a graph of the Uncanny Valley to help explain my point: "I believe the Uncanny Valley is something that the Slenderman, as a concept, deliberately invokes. He looks human. But he's not human. He acts almost human, but he's not human. He moves, but his motions aren't human. That creates a strong feeling of wrongness and results in paranoia, and that is where the frightening aspect of the Slenderman comes in. He doesn't look quite human, doesn't act quite human, and doesn't have a face. He's too tall to be human. His proportions are wrong for a human being. He watches people constantly, and that spooks people. Think of any very human-like robot - gives you a weird feeling seeing it move, right? That's the Uncanny Valley in effect, sending chills down your spine and making you shiver until you get a bad case of the goosebumps. In other words, the Slenderman is just human-like enough as to make us feel like he looks uncannily familiar to a human... but he is not human. And that is why this being is such a potent example of nightmare fuel, and why he induces paranoia in those who read, watch, or discuss tales about him." So, there you have it, a little bit of discourse concerning one of the most fascinating, quickly growing, and downright terrifying memes the internet has ever spawned. Now, do be careful out in the woods on those last-minute camping trips, I've heard there's been some unexplained disappearances reported recently. And for those currently blogging about their encounters with this entity, those still running from it, I will say this: 01001001 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01101110 01101011 00100000 01101001 01110100 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110000 01101100 01100001 01101110 01101110 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110011 01101111 01101101 01100101 01110100 01101000 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01100010 01101001 01100111 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101001 01101101 01100101 00101110 00100000 01000111 01101111 01101111 01100100 00100000 01101100 01110101 01100011 01101011 00101100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110111 01101001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01101110 01100101 01100101 01100100 00100000 01101001 01110100 00101110 ----- That's where the original article I wrote ends, made up of discussion about how Slendy invokes the Uncanny Valley to great effect, and why so many find him frightening even if they aren't aware of any of the stories within the mythos. However, that's not the end of the discussion, as I've since talked with some other Slenderfans about the topic of horror tropes, the psychology of horror, and Mr. Tall-And-Faceless in general. What follows is a series of excerpts from those discussions, speaking a bit more about the subject of horror in the Slenderman Mythos. As always, the discussions are edited for brevity, clarity, and better readability. -----
"It is highly unusual in Lovecraft-style stories, and even seen as Jumping the Shark to some, to go into the idea of the abomination in the story (whatever it is) having some sort of sentience. Usually they are mindless beings that don't even know humanity's there, really, although a few are sentient and do purposefully toy with humans, such as with the Lovecraftian being Nyarlathotep. Slendy is different in this regard. It offers human beings odds, odds stacked in its favor, and if it feels you are not worth the gamble, it can either kill you, or let you go. The idea of Slendy being sentient and purposefully choosing its victims like a human serial killer would is, to me, far scarier than the characterization some have of him as being an aimless, hungry hunter, because it implies that Slendy is purposefully tormenting humanity and actively enjoys messing with his targets. It makes it less of a passive abomination and more of something that will chase you down relentlessly and torment you without any sort of remorse whatsoever. And that very idea is chilling enough to send shivers all through your spinal cord. "I also find it fascinating that this particular entity, because it has seen so much fandom evolution, can be written as anything from almost neutral to pure evil, as sentient or aimless, as genuinely liking children in a friendly manner and not truly intending them any harm or as actively hating children and intending great harm to them indeed. It can be written as being fascinated by humanity, or disgusted by it. It can be written as being curious and therefore seeing us as specimens to dissect, experiment with, and observe. It can be written as hungry for our flesh and blood, or as merely hungering for our fear. That type of fluidity with a character is only possible through an amalgamation of many, many different traits and takes on them, and what's unique here is that Slendy is never explicitly given a canonical motive for what it does. That makes it unique from other mercurial characters like, for example, the Joker from Batman - he's also a fluid character with a great deal of interpretation to him, but he differs from Slendy as a villain because he does have a motive, and we sort of do know exactly why he does what he does, but we can still write him in several ways and several flavors because his whims literally change with the tides. The Joker can be anything from a prankster to a monster clown to a flat-out killer and anything in between, because that character's basic trait is that he changes his motives, methods, and ways to fit every particular scenario. Much like a real clown, the Joker puts on facades and acts to get what he wants - he does what gets under peoples' skin, but because people are different, the Joker must differ his methods. And he actively enjoys doing so, because everything is a joke to him. "With Slendy, we don't get that kind of clear-cut motive and we don't get a resolution. We have a character that is literally without an identity, without a face even, and represents anonymity and the fear of the unknown. So in a way, all these stories are really our human attempts to "pin a face" on the Slenderman so we can either confirm or deny those fears of what it really wants. So really, Slendy is even more fluid than any other fluid character could ever be - not only does it not have a clearly set reason for existing or doing what it does, it doesn't even have its own identity, symbolized by its lack of any facial features. Humans attribute a LOT about identity and knowability to a face, and when something is literally devoid of that, not only do we panic, we also begin to wonder just what that faceless being's real plans are... and that anonymity and mystery often makes us spin a blank-faced being as malevolent. That's also why I have a love-hate relationship with the idea of some people giving Slendy a mouth with really sharp, awful teeth that he can conceal and reveal at will. That's a really cool, creepy concept, but I feel it somewhat ruins the horror of there being nothing there for a person to identify with on any level. It somewhat ruins his anonymous, unknown and unknowable feel, I think, even if it is really damn scary. And what is the Slenderman but the ultimate personification of anonymity and the unknown made real? What is it we can say is one of the most primary human fears but the unknown? There's so many ways you can spin that fear, so many things you can do with something that has no clear motive... it's very versatile for an author, because it leaves things open to interpretation. "That's a good reason why I love the Slenderman Mythos actually - versatility. Because the antagonist's motive is not clear, you can pretty much tell whatever story you want to tell, and that's a level of flexibility not really reached with characters that have a specified goal. Even in fanfiction, which I also write, you're pretty much restricted to what and who the character is - for instance, it'd make no sense for someone like Batman, who is supposed to be the good guy, to suddenly start attacking random civilians, unless there was a specific reason he would do so (for example, the people we think are innocent civilians are actually criminals in hiding). With a character like Slenderman, you really don't have that problem, and I think that's why its mythos has grown so quickly. What, it's been like since 2004 since Slendy was first introduced on SomethingAwful as part of a random contest there? That's only about 8 years. It's not even a decade old in fandom terms, and Slenderman already has almost as many stories about it as any of Lovecraft's monsters and beasts. That's not just impressive, that's formidable, and it comes from a fandom that is very open about its main antagonist, which is why there ARE so many different interpretations. It's not really about how you happen to like your Slenderman. It's about how you feel it should act in a given situation, and what you feel is creepiest/worst/best/most unique about it. "On that note, I do have to wonder just how many of the legends concerning Slendy are actually true in-canon, and how many of them are misunderstandings. If you dig deep enough into the Creepypasta lore behind this being, some of the first supposed "folklore" tales about it show it not so much as a child-killer, but as something that scares naughty kids straight in the most frightening possible way - by stalking them until they agree to obey their parents, and then kidnapping them if they refuse to behave. In some adaptations no bodies from its victims are ever found (this seems to be a recent thing; the implication is that the bodies are either somehow absorbed or eaten by Slendy, or the victims are made into Proxies). Of course, it doesn't help that it has freaking tentacles and moves so fast that it could be twenty feet away from you one second and right behind you the next. I am personally of the opinion (in-canon only, of course) that Slendy doesn't really care all that much about humanity (because it just isn't human and therefore we're just another animal to it), but does view us as a curiosity and something to test the limits of. That is, we're an experiment to it, although it's also equally likely that we could be a food source - but then again, nothing from the mainstream canon purposefully supports the theory that it eats humans, if it even has to eat at all. As for the organs in bags and mutilated bodies so prevalent in the original tales about the being, my theory still holds water - do you have any sort of attachment to or care for a frog you'd dissect in Biology? Probably not. Same case with Slendy, except there's no human dissection store that it can just go to and obtain dead humans for, and it really doesn't need to steal bodies when it can so easily capture them for itself. Then again, the canon for this mythos changes so much you have to be willing to accept different canonical interpretations, depending on which webshows you watch, which blogs you read, which fanfics, etc. It's why I like sticking outside of those tales and spinning my own interpretation, because that leaves things so, so much more open in terms of a story-telling viewpoint. And the nice thing is, since the canon is ever-changing and always open to new ideas about Slendy, there's really no right or wrong way to tell a Slenderman Mythos story."
"I'd LOVE to see [Slenderman] and its mythos enter the mainstream; there's certainly an audience for it amongst those who like Lovecraftian Horror, Supernatural Horror, or even just a good monster story every now and again. Maybe some books, maybe some feature films... but to be honest, I almost want it to stay exclusively an internet thing, because really, the concept of this being is probably something best told in whispers and legends, best thought possibly real, best disseminated through the internet like an urban legend, since it is already a fabricated urban legend to begin with. That's part of where the horror with Slenderman comes from. It's an urban legend... so who knows? It could be real. People do really disappear in forests and end up dead. People have ended up being stalked by strangers - just look at any celebrity who's had an obsessed, crazy fan follow them to and from work, to their houses, even breaking in to get at them in some cases. People do indeed sometimes see things that look unearthly at night and think they're shadows. What if they're not? It appeals to the Little Us, that little kid who timidly believes there really is a monster under the bed - but now, that Little Us is in a big body, and all the Little Us wants is to be scared and have fun with it. "I think ultimately, Slenderman and his mythos could NOT have been created anywhere other than on the internet. Not really, and even if he were, then he would not be the same being we know and love (to fear?). Note that Slenderman is at his core, a being that represents everything we do NOT know. In a word, anonymity. Now what is the greatest and worst thing about the internet? The fact that you are anonymous. You can have any identity you want. You can have hundreds of identities. You can throw away identities with things like throw-away email addresses. Or you could have no identity at all. Now what is your biggest fear as an internet user? That someone will harm you and you will never know who did it? That someone could disappear, or watch you, or take something from you, and you wouldn't even have a name, let alone a face, to go on? I'd say that's probably exactly it, if not for you, then for a lot of people online. The kind of fear borne of the concept of someone unknown harming us, someone we can't even read (because we can't see their face), is unique to an environment that cherishes anonymity and considers identities to be something that you can dispose of if the need arises. The internet IS that environment. So if that's the case, and it is, and Slendy was born on an internet forum, and he was, then doesn't it seem apt that a being that perfectly encapsulates the fear of the unknown, the fear of people and things we don't know wishing us ill, came from the internet? Something interesting to think about."
"Slendy is just an amazing, beautiful, dangerous, deadly, and fascinating creature of self-made urban legend and Lovecraft-flavored lore. Leave it to the internet, a place where anonymity is praised and seen as a virtue, an ally, and a tool to be used and exploited, to create a boogeyman that is essentially a personification of the dark side and fear of too much anonymity. Plus, tentacles. The internet has seen enough hentai to know where that is going. Slenderman is essentially a boogeyman for what internet users fear - being found out, being watched, a lack of privacy, too MUCH privacy, the loss of identity, etc. It's also a strong symbol of things humans have feared for a very long time - anything uncanny valley, anything that hunts us, anything that we do not and cannot comprehend. There's a strong, strong existential terror aspect to the Slenderman mythos, not just because this being hunts us, but because everything about its behavior implies that we are far more insignificant and weak, far more vulnerable, than we ever want to know is possible. And should something come along that puts us in our place, something that takes us someplace where we're never seen again... we would never be able to deal with it. Not in a million years. Slenderman isn't scary because he's a Lovecraft-flavored monster that stalks people. Slenderman is scary because we only ever see him for short periods, get small glimpses of him, see him shrouded by static, see him in blurred camera shots, see little hints of him, etc. And when he does show up in the flesh, 100% visible? He doesn't really do much more than stand there and watch... unless he does so happen to feel like attacking you. And by then, it's far, far too late to run or even scream, because he's always watching... "What people should realize when they're writing horror, be it a Slenderman Mythos tale, a Creepypasta, or even just a short ghost story or psychological thriller, is this: it's very important to not only feel what exactly a story's mood and tone is, but also to put yourself in a character's shoes to really, really understand them. Some authors never learn how to do that, and their work is sub-par as a result. You really need to be able to do this in order to have any chance of really drawing your audience in, especially in a horror story, because if you don't, then even your scariest scares will come off as cheesy, cliche, and cheap at worst, and merely creepy at best. By putting yourself into a character's shoes, you not only begin to understand the motives, methods to their madness, quirks, and personality better, but you also basically have put yourself into that scenario. It no longer is about what another person feels - it's now about what you feel, and you are a far better gauge of your own emotions than those of another person's, real or fictional. It's easier to do this with something like the Slenderman Mythos - who hasn't felt watched at night, or felt true terror at some point in their lives? In fact, if you have never been afraid of the dark, afraid of the unknown, paranoid you are being watched, or terrified of that monster in your closet, then check for circuitry and odd wires sticking out of your body, because you're clearly a robot of some sort. It's easy to take those fears and transplant them onto a character in the Slenderman Mythos in particular because you can actually understand what the character would be going through - the worst terror of their lives, constantly being tormented into mental instability by their own fear, their loneliness and paranoia eating at them so badly that they eventually can and do lose their mind. "The goal of any author is to essentially act as though the events are real to them, because doing so helps translate just what those emotions are to the reader. Good authors do this so well that they can move their audience to tears, make them despise a certain character just as much as the author's protagonist does, and terrify them with nightmares that seem all too real to wake up from. This requires a very good understanding of your own emotions first, especially painful ones, because those are some of the strongest emotions a person can feel. I believe that out of strong emotion comes some of the world's greatest prose and poetry, because like with anything, the more energy you put into something, the more you get out of it as a result. Fear is a very powerful emotion, and any writer with a strong grasp on how to make it feel real and raw can really make their audience fear even things that they normally would not. That is, after all, how Slendy got to be the popular, infamous monster we know him as today - because a couple of people from SomethingAwful saw some scary pictures made by a fellow SA member, and decided to make a video series about the scariness of the unknown, the primal fear of being hunted and possibly killed, the horror of things that humans can't understand, and the idea that more often than not, what we don't see is oftentimes far, far scarier than what we actually do." Okay, okay, so this isn't so much of a beef with something as it is a disappointment with and slight disapproval of. It's not really a rant, just something that I'm rather annoyed with. Don't expect anything too angry, but do expect a lot of disappointment. Just a slight disclaimer before we get into the real discussion so you don't prepare for me to lampoon and snark a whole bunch, and then become disappointed there isn't that much lampooning or snarking.
I live in a part of my home state that is known to be borderline religiously-oriented because it is sandwiched between a larger and more eclectic city area and a small, highly God-fearing town. My hometown isn't as blatantly theistic as some other nearby towns, and we don't have a church on every corner or anything, but it is there. You don't see the average person from my town being an extreme religious zealot, and you don't even necessarily see us out spreading the gospel wherever we go like we think our religion's shit doesn't stink (except at some churches...), but there are certainly a few of us that do. All in all, we're religious mostly, but not SUPER religious. We're like that kid that shows up to Church whenever he feels like it's necessary, or doesn't go to church but still studies the Bible - religious, but not that heavily so. We don't even have a specifically Christian/Catholic school system in our town; that's the next town over. Being in a town that does have a bit of a religious side, and having grown up seeing more than a few churches in my life (There's about three or four different ones for different sects of Judeochristianity within a mile of my house alone), I've learned to be very religiously open-minded. I have Catholic friends, I've had Jewish friends, I have Christian and Muslim friends, I have Atheist friends. I have friends that are very religious, and I have friends that have faith, but are not heavily religious. I am perfectly okay with politely discussing religion with others even if they don't agree with me, so long as they do not try to convert me or condemn my non-theistic world view. I don't shove my lack of a particular religion down anyone's throat, and I've even said "God Bless" to a few of those who are highly religious even though I don't personally believe I will ever be able to prove there is or is not a God. It's about respect and understanding theism of all types, something I feel everyone should have a little understanding about. After all, what is faith about save for exploring what you believe is the answer to what does and does not exist? And of course, you can be Agnostic or Atheistic while still having faith - there are plenty of Buddhist sects that do not believe in a higher power, but still believe in some faith-based things such as the concept of Karma and Nirvanha. It does exist and is a thing even if it's not personally something I believe in 100%. I do believe that Christ's message of acceptance is just as valid as the Buddha's message of learning from suffering while causing nobody else suffering, I believe that the Wiccan message of communing with and caring for Gaia, the original Mother Earth, is just as valid as the belief that God put us humans here to care for our world. I am happy in the knowledge that I am as good and moral a person as I can be, at least most of the time, and if that's not following the message of morality that almost all major religions put down, I don't know what it. I may not know if there's a higher power or not, but there is one thing that I know for certain is real - I only have one life, and if I can use it to do good and to educate others and myself about what the world is, with all its pleasures and dangers, then that is the best I can hope to be. So, when I heard there was a group out there called The 99 putting on a big show, I became intrigued. I had heard good things about it from freinds in high school about how scary and life-changing it was when it came to town during my sophomore year, and after doing a little research, I learned that The 99 is a walkthrough, interactive theater experience that gets its name from the CDC statistic that every day, 99 young men and women in America aged 12-25 years old die from preventable causes stemming from poor decisions. According to the press release and the group itself, it's basically a haunted house for the real monstrosities and tragedies teenagers can face. Drunk driving, drugs, alcohol, teen pregnancies and the complications that arise from them, suicide, texting while driving... all these and more are leading causes of teen mortality and morbidity, and these things are what The 99 supposedly shows the consequences of in gory, disturbing detail. It's billed as an eye-opener for teens and young adults about how their poor, ill thought out choices can have devastating and deadly consequences on their lives and the lives of their friends and family. The 99 uses secrecy and word of mouth to generate buzz about it, and those intrigued by the big reddish tent that appears overnight in the parking lots of movie theaters, shopping malls, and other teen hangout spots like some less carnival-centered, modernized version of Something Wicked This Way Comes can go to The 99's website to learn more about the show. Now, I have never been to this show, mostly because I already know what could happen if I'm stupid enough to down a kegger and then drive home, but I have heard from other people and various news articles that there is a religious component involved. According to these accounts, The 99 has 13 rooms in the tent, with the first room being a waiting area where a volunteer dressed as the Grim Reaper awaits to guide your small group of 20 people through the attraction. In five of the rooms, you will see the five leading causes of death for young adults and teenagers - a teen who never made it to prom because of a car accident tells you how she died, a crazed meth addict screams "Where are my drugs?!" in your face as you squirm uncomfortably, a troubled teen commits suicide with a gunshot. The scenes are gripping, realistic, and raw, evoking the Scared Straight program used by some school districts to teach about the dangers of drunk driving and texting while driving by using students from your year group to demonstrate the loss and senseless tragedy these poor decisions cause. The idea is that you never really understand how awful and horrific a nightmare losing someone to drugs or suicide or a car accident can be until you experience it, as my little brother unfortunately did when a girl he knew from Geometry class decided to go to a college student party, get drunk, and hitch a ride with her drunk Senior friend. The car was going over 100 mph before it hit the sharp turn, couldn't make the turn, and slammed into a tree. The vehicle wasn't even recognizable as a car, and neither were what was left of the mangled victims. The Senior friend would have graduated in three weeks. I remember my brother telling me how weird it felt having a kid he knew, even barely, there one day and gone the next; how silent the classroom was. It evoked my own "Woah, wait, what? OMG..." feelings when a classmate of mine committed suicide in my Junior year. He was only 17. It's still kind of a spooky feeling now, as he used to bully me in middle school and then seemed to grow up, then slowly fade off into the aether. Programs like Scared Straight and the first half of The 99 perfectly capture this, and make these types of tragedy feel very, very real and very, very close to home. I know that between the experience I had and the experience my brother had, I have become much more thankful for my own life and much more careful about drinking before I have to drive somewhere. In fact, I wish more schools would adopt programs like these, because they are important - what makes a teen listen more? Words? Those go over their head. But an experience, now that is what hits home better. I know. I was a teenager once. And where that feeling starts is where the commendable aspect of The 99 ends. I'm serious. After these crushing, raw, and very real scenes, the tone of The 99 stops being realistic and starts being preachy. One of the very next rooms after the final real-life vignette (about teen suicide) is Hell. No, I'm not kidding. There is a room with a Fire and Brimstone Hell in The 99, complete with Satan on a pedistal and demon-women screeching in cages and eternal damnation and everything. The room after that depicts the crucifixion and death of Christ, in detail. Extreme detail. Like literally, there are non-believers stoning Christ and bloody nail wounds in his hands and feet real. When did I pay to go see the world's most gruesome version of Jesus Christ, Superstar? And the room after this one is a chapel where a priest discusses how real all the events of the Bible are and how everything in the Bible is 100% true, and then leads everyone in a prayer... despite the fact that there may be non-Christians in the crowd that would be uncomfortable praying. Even worse, the Priest asks a loaded question of the group in the form of asking how many people want to accept Christ as their personal saviour. Of course everyone's going to raise their hand, because to NOT do so would make you feel awkward and subject you to the scorn of 19 other people who are raising their hand. And what if you already have accepted Christ as your personal saviour? Do you raise your hand, or do you sit quietly, content with the knowledge that you already believe in all of what came before despite the scorn others may give you? What if you don't believe Christ is the son of God? What if you're Muslim, or Jewish, or God forbid (pun somewhat intended) Atheist? Then finally, your group is lead into a small room, where there are Evangelical Christian counselors ready to ask you how you felt about the production and if you are ready to accept Christ. You can refuse, of course, but nobody's going to do that - a good chunk of people are going to feel obliged to do it, because they paid to get into the show. So, you sit with your counselor, he asks you heavy-handed questions about what you think would happen after death, and your mind, primed with gore and disturbing imagery like dead teenagers through car windshields and a guy suffering on a cross, for God's sake (pun not intended that time; no, really), answers with the obvious, honest answer - "I don't know." Who on earth is going to be ready to discuss life, death, and life after death when they're still jarred from a screaming druggie several rooms back? Are you really thinking about Heaven and Hell five minutes after you've gone through scenes from a horror film? Chances are, no. And of course, the counselor will wonder how on earth you could have literally gone through Hell without accepting Christ, and believe you are without God, and therefore pray for you condiscendingly. If you answer with your own religious beliefs, they'll say it's wrong and pray for you condiscendingly. It's only if you answer with the good, Evangelical Christian answer (because as we all know, Evangelism is the ONLY acceptable form of Christianity that a deity that knows every possible interpretation of His Word could possibly accept) that the counselor will let you go on your way. Now, I accept the Evangelical gospel message at the end of The 99. I may not believe it, but it's alright for it to be there. There's nothing wrong with inserting it as filler if you really feel it's that important, and obviously the people in charge of The 99 feel it is. My disappointment with The 99 isn't about the Christian message at the end. My disappointment with The 99 stems from one thing, and one thing only. Nowhere on the site, in the press release, on the tickets, or anywhere else does the group behind The 99 ever state there is a Christian message attached to the show. Nowhere. Seriously, scroll up to the link and go look at the site for yourself. Maybe you think it's on the tickets? Nope, not there, just some dude with a red R-for-Restricted (or "R for Reality", as The 99 so egregiously claims) logo in his eye. There is absolutely no indication that The 99 is an Evangelical Christian production until you get to the big red tent and are told to sign a waiver that states there is a "brief gospel message" at the end of the show. Bullshit, it's a brief message. For proof, let's look at the breakdown of the rooms in The 99. In the whole production, there seems to be about 13 rooms. Assuming that's true, then out of those 13 rooms:
Look, The 99. I appreciate what you are trying to do here. It's good to educate teens about poor decision-making. But to then accuse them of going to Hell for making a poor decison? That seems terribly against what a loving deity would do, a deity that knows human beings are flawed creatures given the power to make their own, sometimes very stupid, choices. God shouldn't be something a person fears in my opinion; He should be something that a person loves with all their heart and soul. You don't call a being that punshes your human mistakes with torture for eternity a loving father, you call that being a tyrant - but your God is just that, and is a deity, and I guess being a deity makes it all okay (?). See, that is my biggest issue with many of the teachings of Evangelist Christianity: the idea that God cannot and does not change His views and remains a young (for a god), immature Old Testament god rather than taking what He learned from being incarnated as Christ and using it to understand why humans, which He created according to the Bible, make poor, "sinful" choices. If God truly exists and he truly did walk amongst us mortals in human form as Jesus Christ, then why can't God change his beliefs like human beings do? Seems to me that is what a truly wise being would do when He realizes there is something he had not previously considered about the complex creatures that are human beings. Does that mean we should never change our views either, since we're supposedly made in God's image and should follow in His foosteps? I don't personally believe your religion is fact because I have no proof that it is either fact or fiction, I can't possibly make that determination without taking a huge grain of salt and making an enormous assumption. There is not enough info there for me to answer that question in any way, shape, or form. I can't know any of that because I am not God, and if there really is a God, surely He knows better than I about whether all this is real or not. Will I say that your views are false? No. Am I annoyed you are presenting your views as truth? Slightly, but that is my personal opinion. Once again, my problem with The 99 isn't that you have a religious message. My problem with The 99 is that you fail to tell anyone there is a religious message until they get to the front of the line and have to sign a waiver, and that to me feels like a skeevy tactic to hook people into coming to the show. In sales, this type of technique is called Foot-In-The-Door, and the idea is that if you interest people enough by keeping your true motives a secret, people will be more likely to listen to you and see what all the hubub is about. So what if there's a catch? So what if we don't know it's a sales ploy? It's not a fib perse, but it is lying by omission, and lying is not a very Christian thing to do. What you are doing, The 99, is getting people hyped by keeping the show a secret, then when they have already spent the time and effort to get there, and are about to spend the money too, and have a ticket and everything, you show them a waiver that says, "Oh by the way, this is a religious thing." The customer isn't gonna turn around and leave then even if they're mad you didn't say a word, because your foot is already in their door - "So what if there's a short gospel message and I'm Jewish?" they ask themselves. "I already spent the gas, money, time, and effort to get here and I have a ticket, so what's the point in leaving now? Besides, they said the gospel part was short; surely it can't be more than maybe five minutes of the show's 45-minute experience time." And yet your "short gospel message" is 1/3 of the show, and 1/3 of 45 is 15 minutes, not counting wait time. If the show runs a bit long after the wait time, approaching about an hour, that's right around 20 minutes give or take a few, which is slightly less than a half-hour of "short gospel message". Sorry, but 15-20 minutes is when a message stops being short and starts being a lecture. That is why I will not be paying to see your show, and I will be instructing my siblings not to pay to see your show, and why I will be sharing your show with all of my atheist and agnostic friends who will come and laugh at how underhanded and hypocritical your tactics are when you all but shame the attendee into thinking that if they don't accept "Good Christian Values" like yours, they're going to Hell. That is why I am disappointed with The 99, because they took a very important message that was easily made accessable to all faiths by keeping it secular and tagged on an extra 15-20 minutes of religious content that had nothing to do with the show, thus making it about God when it didn't need to be made about God. The 99 should not be a show about accepting or not accepting God. That belongs in the current Christian tradition of the Hell House, an alternative to the haunted house that springs up around Halloween and goes on to show the visitor what Good Christians don't do if they don't want to end up in some layer of the Inferno. The 99 should be a show about the idea that, hey, people my age actually die from making poor decisions, and said people have to think about their choices and whether or not they're actually smart, because doing so can save their life. Not only that, but it could save others' lives. Sorry if this offends, but you just don't need God to spread that message, especially when 20% of Americans do not identify as Christians at all, and only 26.3% of those that do are Evangelical Christians in the first place. Out of the 80% of Americans that identify as Christians, you are the minority, not the majority. That's right - there are just as many of us heathans who "need Christ" as there are of you, and far more if you count the non-Evangelical Christians and Catholics. There was no reason to make The 99 an excuse to preach, and furthermore, there's no need to hand out tickets to The 99 or comics that are basically modernized Jack Chick tracts at the end of your more secularly-oriented school presentation, "Arrive Alive". Yes, the people behind The 99 are the same people that you've probably seen at a high school assembly if you're of a certain age. How do I know the comics are like Jack Chick tracts? Because my friend picked up one, and I read it, and it reads exactly like one. It's even endorsed by the loathable Mr. Chick, an individual so closed-minded in his religious beliefs that it's almost tragically hysterical. I like to read them and laugh at how blind they are, how unaccepting, how blatantly ignorant. I also like to troll people who hand them out to me by standing in front of them, smiling gently, tearing the tract in a very specific way, and then slowly playing Loves-Me-Loves-Me-Not with the pieces. Okay, that's not true - nobody in or around my neighborhood actually hands those tracts out on Halloween; all the devout Evangelicals in my neighborhood have long gone to bed before then, but that's mostly because they're all ancient and can't stay up past five-o-clock anyway. But still, there's no reason to hand out religious pamphlets at the school. In fact, you're better off handing out nothing at all, and that way nobody gets offended. You wanna convert? Do it outside of school grounds. I wouldn't bring my homework to a church lecture, so don't bring your pamphlets about how great Evangelism is and how evil every other religion is to public schools. Religious schools, fine. But not public schools. Speaking of schools, I don't like that you have The 99 set up near schools and distributed tickets to The 99 to schools for them to give to their students without explaining the show's religious nature. That seems underhanded to me, because it looks like you are trying to sneak religion into a public institute that even the Founding Fathers thought should remain secular unless it is specifically a religiously-founded school. What ever happened to the separation of church and state? It just doesn't set right with me. I don't preach my lack of belief at school. I don't even talk about it unless someone asks first. Therefore, I find it really annoying, a little iffy, and more than a little asinine to set up a religious show near a school without telling anyone on the tickets you hand out that the show is religious. You shouldn't be distributing them there period. You know the show is religious; those students don't. It is your choice to distribute them to schools, and therefore it's your moral responsibility to tell the truth about the show, not to lie by omission by saying nothing about its religious content. So yes, The 99, I do appreciate what you're trying to do, and I do understand. I feel what you're doing is very good, although I wish you would either lessen the amount of religious content in the show (since the show's message doesn't really have anything to do with God) or give attendees the option to skip it entirely. But I am highly disappointed that you think you need to use underhanded tactics to sneak religion down peoples' throats, like you're trying to shove a bitter-tasting cough syrup into a whiny infant's mouth. If you came out and said that your show had a religious component before people arrived and you were honest about it, I would have a much higher opinion of The 99. But as it is now, all I see is a bunch of liars by omission so ashamed of their faith that they think the only way they can get people to convert is by using gore to do it and priming them with Christ imagery. And that's the way a coward spreads his message, not a real, honest Christian. Note: This article contains some sexual content and some description of the human sexual anatomy that could be considered crude or inappropriate for some audiences. If you are of a young age or are a complete prude, I would recommend that you find another article to read. You have been warned!
As most everyone here should hopefully know by now, I was a fanfic author. I have been proudly writing fanfiction for about nine years now, soon to be ten, and I have always defended this medium from people who would claim that all of it is pure crap (that's nowhere near the truth - only about 95% of it is crap, and the remaining 5% is worth dying for). I got into the Batman fandom back in 2008, and now I'm wondering why I waited so long. I've met some great people through this fandom and enjoyed some good stories (and loathed some not-so-good ones) because of it. That said, I am also a Joker fangirl and am very aware of this fact. I have my moments, none of which will be discussed here, other than the fact that if I could feasibly do it and get out alive and unscathed, I would totally go have tea and a discussion with the Joker, just because he's so damn fascinating. I definitely am no angel when writing Batman fanfic, just go ask anyone who's read a few of my darker Joker-centric stories. I don't claim my work is any better than any other Joker fan's is, but I like to think that it's definitely in the top twenty. I also have nothing against young fanfic authors - everyone has to start somewhere, and I have my own set of "dirty undies" stories that I'm not proud of. Seeing newer authors continue to write fanfic and helping them get better through critique is my reward for being good at writing fanfic and for being around the fanfiction community for years. Sure, I don't get to write as much anymore, but there's always someone better at writing willing to have fun writing for my favorite Caped Crusader and his colorful rogues gallery, and at the end of the day that's the best part of writing and reading fanfiction for me. Now, we all know my feelings on young authors writing romance fics, because romance can quickly turn into porn in the wrong hands. I have long claimed that young authors should not write romance fics until they themselves have had some experience with love, dating, and relationships firsthand, because it's painfully obvious when they do not. I can't tell you how painfully boring and unsexy an IKEA Erotica fic is - nothing titillating, no passion, no emotion, it's just bland as all get-out and really just leaves the reader disappointed. You see, fellas in the audience, a female reader likes to insert herself into the role of the female protagonist in a romance story. We gals tend to get off on imagining the act and fantasizing about it, where as you guys can get excited over just looking at a sexy someone of your chosen sexual preference. So when an author writes a passionless romance fic, it's about as fun for us as it is for you to start making out with someone, with the potential for bedroom funtimes later, and then said someone saying, "You know that was fun, but I think I'm gonna go over there for a while", then never coming back. If that didn't grab you, then does the phrase "blue balls" ring a bell? Yeah, it's disappointing in THAT way as well as disappointing because the story has no meat to it. Another common problem I see in romance fics is that young authors often confuse "romance" with "sex", failing to realize that romance is not just sex, and vise versa, probably from the same inexperience. Sex can be very unromantic and very unsexy, and sexual fantasies can easily become horrific if you take them literally. For example, think about what a bondage fantasy is at its core, and then take away all of the sex, mutual agreement, and love from it. It's just gone from kinky, consensual fun to a disturbing kidnapping scenario (possibly with rape undertones), and that's not just unsexy, it's terrifying. There is a thousand and one ways that titillation can become terror, and that's not really something that a person learns until they mature into sexual beings themselves and begin to understand that, for example, a rape fantasy is not the same thing as actual rape, and that one cannot and does not segue into the other in the same way in reality that it would in a porno. The unintentional effect is that iffy or incorrect information about sex, relationships, and sexual fantasies get passed down from young author to young author (these fics are VERY popular for obvious reasons), and because nobody is willing to discuss this (let alone the often teenaged authors themselves), that incorrect information becomes so overdone as to become a trope. On the other side of the spectrum, you have authors that put way too much detail into things. Let's face it, people - the external reproductive organs are not pretty. The only possible exception here is the female breasts, which are fun for both sexes (come on, ladies, you know it's fun to drive your other half crazy by wearing cleavage-exposing t-shirts) and safe for all ages in very different ways, but breasts aren't exclusively sexual anyway so they don't really count. But even if you're of the right orientation to be turned on by breasts, that probably doesn't mean that you want every single detail of the hairs around the areola and the veins of said bosom pointed out to you. You also probably don't want to be reminded that your manhood looks like a veiny alien maggot or that your ladyhood looks like a sarlaac pit minus the teeth and with a lot more fur because, while that is pretty true, it's also really, really gross. Well, people who read pornographic stories feel the same way, and for very good reason - just because it feels good when you smoosh them together does not mean that said organs are sexy in and of themselves, and it definitely does not mean that they need to be described in severe detail. In fact, if you put too much detail into a sex story, then you end up wrapping it right around from sexy to very, very unsexy, very fast. Just like actual sex, writing a good porn story requires skill, experience, and a sensitive handling of the subject, and that's yet another thing that young authors just don't always understand. These several reasons are also why it pains me in particular when I see younger Bat-fans, new to the fandom and perhaps of the age where libido takes over, write romance fics with the rogues gallery. Oftentimes, these fics, like other romance fics, are poorly written, describe things in FAR too much or FAR too little detail, or otherwise fail to engage the reader, all of which are hallmarks of an author that is either inexperienced or just is not cut out for writing in general. It's not that these fics are any worse than romance fics in other fandoms, it's that when you write a sex story about a Batman rogue, you have to also take into account who that rogue is, what they look like, etc. Now, this isn't so bad when you're doing something like Catwoman/Batman (which I happen to ship) - it's not hard to sex up Catsy, because she basically IS walking sex appeal. It's also not hard to play up the authority, power, and closedness of Batman, because he definitely has all three. Look, I just made up a Catwoman/Batman romance fanfic - Batman has just spent three weeks trying to escape some rogue that captured and proceeded to torture him, which has made him closed off to even Catwoman, whom he still won't admit he has feelings for, so Selena has to make Brucie feel all better. It's not a terribly good Batman/Catwoman story, it's cliched, and it's probably not all that true to the characters, but it's a story that could work as a feasible romance fic as well as a Hurt/Comfort fic. That storyline, however, could easily be destroyed if the author chose to focus on the sex instead of the characters' relationship, and put too much detail into describing the erotic portions rather than building on the characters themselves. And that is what I see in most bad Batman romance fanfics - not enough focus on the relationship between characters. I understand if you're writing a PWP (Porn Without Plot) or Lemon fanfic with Bruce and Selena, and I'll give it a pass if you put that in your description because I wanna know what I'm getting into. But if you don't put anything, I'm going to assume that the fic is about the relationship between Batman and Catwoman and exploring that relationship in more detail, since that is what the tag "Romance" means when you choose it to describe your fanfic. Romance is NOT just about the sex, and if you're making it about just the sex, then you're writing it wrong, especially when you have two characters that have a long, long history with each other and have that sexual tension between them already, literally begging NOT for a story about sex, but for a story that explores the emotions those two characters feel for each other, the dedication to their alter egos, the idea that Bruce could very well truly want to get to know Selena and may even actually love her, but can't risk losing his identity to her or giving up on his mission to keep Gotham a bit safer. There's SO much emotion with Bat/Cat alone that anything less than exploring that emotion is a copout, at least to me. And I doubt I'm the only Bat/Cat shipper or Batman fan that feels this way. Even the DCU, both pre- and post-reboot, has explored this several times in one way or another; at one point they even gave another earth's Selena and Bruce a daughter named Helena who eventually becomes a vigilante named Huntress. If that's not enough for you, does the line "And most of the costumes stayed on" ring any bells? I could fill a whole post with just examples of why the relationship between Batman and Catwoman should be treated with respect both in-canon and out-of-canon, but that's not what this post is about, so I'll leave it at that. The same issue applies to relationships like Joker/Harley, which is abusive and needs to be written at least partially as such, but I've discussed that relationship already as well and therefore won't rant about it here. Besides there being actual in-canon relationships that need to be treated seriously when written, there is also an issue with how some authors write the other rogues in romance fics. I have no problem with writing rogues, even rogues that have no empathy and therefore wouldn't engage in a relationship, in fanfic. Hell, I don't even care if it's a Crack!pairing like Riddler/Ivy or (God forbid) Croc/Scarecrow (Seriously, I saw a Croc/Scarecrow slashfic once. I didn't read it, but I have to imagine that it was... um... well, it was interesting to say the least). I like many Bat-fans have my own set of pairings for Batman fic (Bat/Cat = OTP, one-sided Joker/Bat = OTSlash!P, and Joker/Cat = OTCrack!P. OTP means "One True Pairing"), and I will be extremely disappointed if those relationships are not written correctly or are written a little TOO well. To add onto all that, some of the rogues are extremely hideous, extremely dangerous, or both. Let's take the Joker for example - the guy is NOT handsome by any stretch of the imagination, then again that also depends on how he's drawn or how the reader imagnies him to look, sound, and act. My ideal Joker, for example, looks a lot like how Brian Bolland drew him in Batman: The Killing Joke, sounds somewhere between Mark Hamill's BtAS Joker and his Batman: Arkham Asylum Joker, has both a witty slapstick/pun sense of humor as well as a disturbed black comedy style of humor, and acts an awful lot like a mix of Ledger and Nicholson Joker in how he plans things and carries them out. He's calculating, cruel, dangerous, disturbed, and just goddamn hilarious for people like me who LOVE gallows humor. I also often write him as being somewhat sardonic, almost as if he believes he's the Only Sane Man in a world full of lunatics that just doesn't get the joke, but that's just my thing. And he is an ugly motherfucker, externally and internally. You could not look at the guy, even if you didn't know who he was, and tell me he is good-looking - there's just nothing sexy about Looking Like Cesare and a clown all at once. Yet, despite all this, the Joker has his fangirls and shippers, and I blame that on his charmingness and his silver tongue. The Joker could probably literally talk your pants off just as easily as he could convince you to kill yourself over a phonecall to order some pizza. Just like a real life serial killer in hiding, that charisma and almost-likeability draws people in - he's just that good at twisting words and manipulating people. I do understand the appeal in watching him try and fail/succeed at getting people to do what he wants, particularly in a relationship sense, but the problem with the Joker in these fics happens when people forget that he is a psychopathic killer that does not feel emotions for anyone other than himself. He does NOT share equally in a relationship, he does NOT care what you want or need, and he does NOT treat others with respect. One needs only to look at how he treats Harley in the comics to get an idea of what the Joker's idea of a relationship is, and that idea NEEDS to be at the forefront when authors write sex or romance fics with the Joker in them. You can theorize all you want about his sexual prowess, you can write fluff fics where he is out of character, you can soften him a bit and have there be this one psychopath of a woman (or man depending how you like your Joker) that just gets to him and makes him obsessively chase said person because he just doesn't understand what the words "loving relationship" mean, but you can't have him be some lovey-dovey soft-serve ice cream cone, because that is not what the character is. That is what Harley is, at least in part and at least around her Mista J, but that's a discussion I've already covered. And you definitely would not want to go into more detail about his anatomy, because nobody wants to see that for the same reason that nobody wants to see your (wo)manhood out in the open. It's not necessary and a lot of people would find it downright gross. Would the Joker flash someone for teh LULZ? Maybe, because the Joker will do anything as long as it's funny enough. But that doesn't mean I or any other readers necessarily wanna see it. One of the biggest problems I see happens to be with people who slash-ship Joker/Bat. I myself ship a very one-sided version of this since it's canon. The Joker definitely does hit on Batman; whether he truly means it, is just doing it to psych Batman out, or does it because he is obsessed with the man is completely up to you to decide. But I as a reader often avoid Joker/Bat slashfics because they go into WAY too much detail, again because many authors confuse romance with sex. I have nothing against slashfic in any way and I have nothing against people who slash-ship (that'd be awful hypocritical of me since I'm a huge fan of the Foe Yay between Bats and J, wouldn't it?). I also have no problem with sex fics where the Joker is dominant as long as he's in character and the story makes sense. What I don't want is to walk into a fic expecting Foe Yay style flirting from Joker towards Bats, or expecting the Joker to end up trying to actually get to Batman sexually, and then end up with graphically detailed sex. That to me is not sexy, that is too much information and not even canon to begin with. For one, as I've said before, rape is not the Joker's style; for another, Batman would NEVER let his archnemesis get that far. For yet another, even if you believe it's sincere, the Joker's flirting is designed to be creepy, not sexy from Batman's point of view even if he were gay - think of your girlfriend or boyfriend calling you "darling", and then think of a big, burly guy standing with you in the prison shower calling you "darling". Its's not quite the same, is it? And while my desire not to see actual sex occurring between Batman and the Joker is more a personal preference, I think we can all agree that nobody really finds it terribly sexy to read about the intimate details of either party's little troopers beyond how large they are. Sometimes this detail gets so out of hand that you begin to wonder if you're being trolled, and sometimes it's really better to assume that you are indeed the victim of a prank. There was this one humor fic I read once where Batman discovers that someone is writing terribly graphic sex fanfics about the Joker basically banging everybody in Gotham City with an alter ego and sending them to various rogues and Batman himself (It turns out to be a prank that the Joker himself is pulling on everyone). That fic has a scene in it where Oracle and Robin are trying to get to the bottom of where the fics are coming from, and both are disturbed to find a Joker/Bat fic involving the words "turgid ivory manhood" to describe the former's member. Both Oracle and Robin then react with extreme disgust because TMI. And that scene always plays out in my head every time I come across (I swear that no pun was intended there) a fic where sex and the organs involved is described very graphically, whether it be in the Batman fandom or any other fandom. It's like automatic brain bleach and it helps me every single time, because I just laugh so damn hard when I imagine that discussion. I highly recommend that if you're like me and just don't want to read the graphic details of a fic, you look up this fic and read it, because it will seriously save your brain from thinking too much about the squick. Bottom line is, if you're going to write a romance fic, you need to be careful HOW you write it. Relationships and sex in fanfic is a delicate subject that needs to be handled well, and needs to be handled with care. If written wrong you've turned off your whole audience, and if written too raunchily, you're only going to attract people who want to read porn. Romance fics take skill and practice - and that is why they are not the best fics for the new fanfic author to write. If you're a young author bent on writing romance, I suggest you look at the way professional authors write romance and take cues from them. Blindly writing without understanding how a certain type of fic works is akin to writing a Creepypasta and then ending it with "And then a skeleton popped out LOL The End". It's not scary, and it can in no way be construed as a good Creepypasta. In the same way, you must understand the nature of your genre, or else you are doomed to fail. You can tell a lot about a person by how they treat service personnel like waitstaff, bellhops, fast food drive-thru cashiers, and assorted other low-paying menial jobs that college students like yours truly take in the summer to earn a little cash for themselves and built up a resume. What I mean by that in particular is that if someone tips poorly or worse, doesn't tip at all, they are a terrible, greedy person and you should cut ties with them immediately. Yes, even if they are the most Christian, God-fearing person in the world, if they do not tip their waiter/waitress at an eating establishment that isn't fast food or a buffet, then they are incredible bastards in this blogger's eyes.
You see, when a person doesn't tip, it tells the waitperson that they are not doing a good enough job, and since many of these people working this job ARE my age, the tips are how they supplement their already meager income. In fact, I work as a tutor and I make barely more than most waitstaff do (that is, minimum wage), and I make about $100 every two weeks if I'm lucky. That means I'm actually pretty dirt poor after gas for my car, parking fees, food, and other expenses - and even I know it's terrible manners not to tip someone during the rare times I actually get to sit down in a restaurant and eat. I always try to tip pretty fair for what I ate, even if it's not a large amount of money spent. This is because Dear Mrs. Momma Snicket always told Lil' Sugary Snicket that if one doesn't have enough money to tip properly, one doesn't have any business going out to eat at all - sound advice that I really wish more people would follow, since there's just not enough kindness in the world in general, unfortunately, so I always feel like I need to be extra kind to the people whose job it is to serve me in some way. I mean, you're nice to your car repairman, you're nice to the bus driver, and you're nice to your professor - all these people do you a service of some kind, and you'd be considered horrifically rude to act anything other than genial towards them. So why is it that so many people, in particular religious zealots, seem to believe that this is okay? Ladies and gentlemen, that article from The Consumerist shows images a fake $10 religious "tip" left for a waiter trying to save money for a game he wanted (likely because he didn't really have disposible income and tips ARE his disposible income). Okay, so the fact that the waiter was saving up for a game and not for college textbooks sounds bad, but the fact that the person doing the tipping even thought that faking the waiter out with that kind of trick is just cruel. I may be a Godless heathen, but I respect Christianity as a religion and I believe that Jesus Christ really did have good messages to tell (and it's a shame that people twisted his teachings so badly in the present day to reflect what THEY want to believe). However, I have never approved of this type of "holy-roller" religious preaching, and I definitely don't approve of it being done in this manner - and you shouldn't either, regardless of your religious background. The fact is that this is morally wrong, and there are at least five good reasons why it is morally wrong. For starters...
Jesus H. Christ, Mr. J, what happened to you?
No, really man. You've become a mass-murdering psychotic Mr. Zsasz clone with less tally marks and more giggling. You've lost your sense of dangerous charm, and with it, your appeal as a character. Is it any wonder so many comic fans want to see your head on a pike outside Arkham Asylum's gates when your kill count has exceeded your funny moments? Joker, consider this an intervention. You have a murder addiction, one so powerful you aren't even the same character anymore. And the most tragic part about it? It wasn't even your fault. It was the fault, entirely and wholeheartedly, of the people who wrote your more recent tales. Anyone who doubts me on this needs to look no further than recent Batman comics, both before and after the Great Reboot of 2011 (which I take no real umbrage with and won't even begin to debate here). Multiple stories from the modern era feature the Clown killing not for the sake of pissing Batman off, or for the sake of a joke, but simply because he can. Pull out almost any recent Batman storyline featuring the Joker; they are almost all about seeing how many people he can kill in one shot (there are exceptions to this - the excellent Joker's Asylum miniseries, for example). He's a different character from what he was, and I and many other Joker fans do not like the way he's going. Now, I've touched on this issue before in a previous blog entry, the one about Harley and the Joker's relationship being abusive and not in any way sexy. Near the end of that one, I quoted another Joker fan, Sharkie, from her Harley Quinn Manifesto entry on her own blog, Joker's Psycho Circus, on the issue of the Joker's continuing spiral into (dare I say, Madness?) complete uninteresting sociopath with a clown gimmick. I also pointed out that many authors nowadays who take on this character, one with such a rich, demented legacy behind him, tend to write him as this serial killing lunatic first and a chaotic, deranged, thoroughly insane clown with a sick sense of humor last. Also slowly ebbing away is the Joker's strange sense of charm, his deceptive and mercurial manner of getting under your skin and into your head, only to mutilate everything there and then casually stroll away as if you'd only had a discussion over tea with him. His quirkiness is leaving, his to-the-extreme gallows humor doesn't make me laugh anymore... in short, he is losing what makes him the Joker, and gaining status as a gimmick killer. Or, as Sharkie so aptly put it, "DC seems to whore out the Joker as [someone] who has a higher body count than [all] world dictators [...] and serial killers combined." And she couldn't be more apt. Ladies and Gentlemen, this is absolutely NOT what the Joker is as a character, and absolutely NOT what he should be as a character. This trend should disturb you, especially if you are a Joker fan. Yes, the Joker is a serial killer; yes, he is a complete monster; and yes, he does rack up high body counts wherever he goes because he is an incredibly dangerous villain, but that isn't what made him Batman's nemasis. The Joker being a homicidal maniac is not what allowed him to survive his first appearance in Batman #1 when he was slated to be killed (and wasn't at the last moment), and it is not what made him one of the most popular, enduring, and easily recognized supervillains ever created. It is not why I and many other Bat-fans count him my favorite villain of all time. If the Joker's appeal simply stemmed from his high body count and creative methods of offing people, then he'd be another Victor Zsasz or Calender Man. Both of those characters are good in their own ways, but they are not interesting in the same way that the Joker is. Why? I've long felt that the Joker, to work effectively as a character, has a trifecta of traits that must all be in equal balance for him to work properly as a villain. If even one of these traits is out of balance, his character at best is poorly written (or acted) and at the very worst is just not him at all. These three traits are as follows:
I honestly think a lot of this problem has to do with young authors at DC seeing The Dark Knight's success and deciding to cash in on it. I find this unfortunate because Ledger's Joker, much like Nicholson's Joker and Romero's Joker, is not the Joker from the comics. The two are very different Jokers, very different beasts - and adding Ledger Joker traits to the Comic's Joker, while excising others, ruins what Comic!Joker is. This is why we have the Joker killing more for the fun of it and doing fewer completely batshit things like taking over Arkham Asylum to manufacture a drug that will eventually bring Gotham to its knees or sneaking a puppy into Arkham just to relate a story about Harley to it and call it an ugly little mutt. Hell, you don't know what Joker's gonna do with that poor puppy. He could eat the puppy, he could throw the puppy at a wall, he could kick it, he could use it to smuggle explosives and tools to escape... or he could inevitably declare it adorable after it kills and eats a robin. The point is, the Joker is not unpredicatable when you know all he's gonna do is kill you. The Joker is not scary as a serial killer - not as much as when he is a manipulating monster. So if this is the case, then why do authors cut out bits and pieces? Why the shift towards serial killing and not more psychological danger, when a story about the Joker stalking and psychologically tormenting someone can be so much more compelling than him stalking to kill (and which would also end the cry for his blood from so many jaded Bat-fans if stories such as these were produced in large enough quantaties)? Simple - writing the Joker is hard. He is not a tradtitional type of crazy; he's actually so hard to define from a logical, sane point of view that it's nearly impossible to paint a full picture of him. But he is understandable enough to have patterns, patterns that an adept author, such as Paul Dini, can read and work with. That's why Batman: Arkham Asylum and its sequel, Arkham City, worked - the author of those storylines understood the characters because he bothered to do the research first (that and he's worked with them before). Honestly, the whole Titan plan thing sounds insane, almost like fanfiction - but the brilliance of it is that it's something that the Joker would actually do, just because he's insane enough to say, "You know what would be the most kick-ass thing ever? Taking this new drug this random doctor created, working it a bit, and then making an army of monsters out of it to do my bidding." It works because it's crazy enough to work - remember, this is the same man who said, "You know what would be the most kick-ass thing ever? If I injected a bunch of fish with my toxin so they're grinning, then patented them so I could get a cut of the profits from their sale." This is also the man who thinks using the powers of a reality warper to reshape the world into Jokertopia, kidnapping babies so he can kill them all at midnight to destroy Gotham's sense of hope, and paralyzing the commissioner's daughter only to take him hostage in a twisted carnival and torture him are all similarly kick-ass ideas. My point is, writing the Joker is hard, but authors continue to make it even harder by stripping out pieces of what he is to add quick drama to a story where he's the antagonist, and that stripping is like ripping out chunks of the Joker's flesh and leaving him half the character he used to be. It's like gutting the oil valves and muffler out of a car, or removing the CMOS and the hard drive from a computer. Sure, it may work somewhat and on the outside it looks fine, but in the end, it doesn't really work at all. Whoo, so finally I'm done with finals, with college classes, and with Organic Chemistry for the Winter (well until January 6th when I go back for more punishment), and that means I have Christmas to look forward to! PresentsPresentsPresents! Oh and food and family but MOSTLY PRESENTS! :3 But aside from thinking about presents when I should have been studying for my Anthropology final, I've been taking my Anthropology professor's cue to people-watch and have been casually evaluating my professors' behavior over the past semester. What, you don't do that? Freak. You're a freak. Go cry in the corner like a baby, freak.
Now, first thing you need to know about my schedule this past Fall semester. I took four classes - Anthropology (transfer credit), Organic Chemistry I (which is Hell in a nutshell), Self Defense (for I am small and puny), and Moral Choices (a philosophy class, also for transfer credit). My Anthropology professor, whom I will call Professor D, was a recent hire and this semester was his first year teaching. He's a pretty nice, laid-back guy and his class reflects his attitude that the best way to get people learning is to get them involved in group activities. I hate group activities, but at least he used them to good effect. Overall, a nice guy, I liked him - he got me interested in a subject I really had little interest in, and I would certainly take a class he taught again. You're off to a great start, Professor D! The Orgo Chem professor, whom I'll call Dr. J, is kindly but firm and doesn't believe in curving tests. She came from a military family and in her opinion, if you can't work up to PCAT or MCAT level knowledge, you're just not good enough, maggot - try harder. Her class is quite tough, and she is also a tough woman - if she were a chemical compound she'd be a non-reactive, non-chiral, non-polar saturated alkane; nothing phases her. She's picky about arrows in mechanisms and she often half-explains what the textbook explains far better, but you can tell she really wants to see her students succeed and she's passionate about the subject she teaches. I had her for lecture and lab, and despite her tough attitude and difficult subject matter, I'd have to say Organic Chem I was my favorite class this semester. So much so that I'm going back for more punishment from Dr. J this Winter for Organic Chem II. Oh yes, multi-step synthesis problems, hurt me more. The Self Defense teacher, a lively older black gentleman whom I'll call Coach W, was probably the other favorite professor of mine. He's got a great sense of humor and knows how to pep you up for warmup where you have to do ten five-minute sets of twenty pullups which I still for the life of me can't do. He's a far cry from High School coaches, understanding when a person just cannot physically do something, and never takes things too seriously. He cannot pronounce my name, but he's such a fun guy I forgive him for it. Coach W is also very, very patient, to the point that when I had to ask him for the fifteenth time how to do an inside-out wrist takedown he remained as calm as if it were the first. Seriously, the guy just never loses his cool, he's like Batman without the Caucasian-ness, money, anger management issues, and cowl. I do definitely feel a lot more confident about wandering downtown alone too with the skills I learned from this class. My Moral Choices Professor was an Asian guy who reminded me of a younger Mr. Miyagi, so I guess he gets to be Professor Miyagi since his first name starts with J and I already gave J to my Orgo Chem professor, and too many J's will be too confusing. Professor Miyagi likes to discuss things a lot, and he's fascinating to talk to. He was born in China and moved to America later (guess he liked either the freedom, the food, or both). Unfortunately, he also really, really, REALLY liked papers. Reflection papers, research papers, papers papers papers. We had precisely one test the whole semester, over Ethical Theories, and that was at the start of the semester. Conversely, we had two damn research papers and a reflection paper based on the reading that was due every week (we only met on Tuesdays). Criminy, Professor Miyagi, you think that's enough damn papers? I understand meeting once a week and I understand having a research paper or a test, but two papers, a test, and reflection papers every week? I realize that's not a lot compared to some teachers at some colleges, but God Damn, I haven't taken a class that required this much writing since my senior AP English class in High School, and even that had less writing and one research paper! Seriously. I go to a Community College and even the English classes here don't have their students write this much. Anyway, Professor Miyagi was a pretty chill guy and not overbearing to listen to since he started discussions that became heated debates. His class was easily one of the more interesting ones I took, but all the same it is not a subject I would take again if I could help it. Anyway, that's not what this blog entry's about, is it? No, no. For you see, while on the shuttle to the main campus from my Anthropology class one day, I realized that there were more than a few common things professors do that just piss me the Hell off. It's to the point that some of the oldest ones (and the most set in their ways) have ridiculously picky specifications for things or horrendously annoying habits. I have had professors that, like my AP English teacher in High School, would NOT accept anything turned in on 'fuzzy paper', just because it annoys them. Or anything written in blue pen. Or anything that didn't conform to some other bizzare convention they held fast to. I even had a completely batshit insane Spanish 2 Teacher who was, of all things, Greek in origin, and just made class ridiculous (helpful, since the class in question was at 9:00 AM on a Saturday - this was when I started abusing caffeine; thank you caffeine, you are my God and Saviour). In fact there were so many things that professors commonly do that bugged me that I narrowed it down to my Top Five worst habits. It's not that I don't get why professors do some of these things, I do. I understand the logic behind them; for example, Dr. J is so picky about arrows because Organic Chemistry mechanisms are just LOUSY with planera. That still doesn't make it any less annoying to recieve a test back only to find out that Dr. J had removed half a point from a question for using the wrong type of arrow in a radical bromination reaction or for the back-attack in an SN2 reaction looking too messy or confusing. So without further ado, here's the 5 most annoying habits college professors have, my issues with them, and a possible reason why they do it.
Nope, you can't. I promise you, you really can't. You cannot.
I'm sorry, I know I said I wouldn't post any more Creepypasta related stuff for a while and I know I've sort of discussed this before, but I just have to get this off of my chest again or I'll explode into a million pieces. That, and when I wrote that entry, I wasn't as knowledgeable about the Mythos and about the Slenderfans in general, although I have been getting more into it and am starting to understand why some of them react the way they do. Look guys, I know you see this Mythos as your baby, and really, it is. I greatly admire the work you guys do and appreciate the amazing world you have built around something that began as little more than a few pictures on a SomethingAwful thread. I know some of you are very upset about certain things that are "Ruining the Mythos" and therefore some of you believe that these things are not valuable to anyone, ever, either inside or outside of the Mythos. But when you say that something is "ruining the Mythos", you're forgetting something, something very important. You cannot ruin the Mythos. Do you know why you cannot ruin the Mythos? Because the Slenderman Mythos, being a collective, open-source horror story that literally anyone can add to and discuss, changes so much that you can consider anything canon or not. Just because one blog's Slendy has it impaling people on trees doesn't mean another blog will; the other blog might have it as a harbinger of doom or just quietly stalking someone into insanity. We're all adults or almost adults here (and I'd urge parents of very young Slenderfans to read/watch the story first before they let their child view it because seriously people get torn apart and impaled on trees and shit), and we can all make our own choices in this Mythos as to what we consider canon or not. We can choose to ignore stuff that doesn't make sense to us, because everyone's interpretation of the Tall Guy himself is different. Hell, I even have multiple interpretations for different scenarios, and it's that multi-faceted beauty of the Mythos that makes anything possible and nothing set in stone. Your blog/vlog is kind of like Schrodinger's Cat - although, instead of being both alive and dead, it's both in and out of canon, depending on what fan you ask and which interpretation of Slendy you subscribe to. Therefore, doesn't it make sense to count every story as valuable in its own way since every story is literally a different universe playing with different concepts of the same communal character? There's no continuity, only a handful of constants about the central antagonist, and those things are that it's tall, it's insanely skinny, it's faceless and it's in a suit. So what is all of this bullshit about some stories and fans "Ruining the Mythos?" Look, I know you guys like things a certain way in the Mythos, I understand, really, I do. I like my Slendy a specific way too. Like everything, your first impressions of the Mythos color your perception of it as a fan pretty much forever. If you start on a very serious, very gory Slenderblog with a very evil and aggressive Slendy, you're going to probably prefer that interpretation. As for me, I started on a silly little video game, then progressed to Creepypasta and fanfilms, and then got into the blogs and vlogs. Because of that, my ideal Slendy doesn't necessarily kill people and isn't necessarily even evil, to me it's best portrayed as an alien being that has its own rationale for why it does what it does to humans, a rationale the human mind can't ever comprehend. See, I find the interpretation of "Slendy = EVUL!" far too limiting. It takes this incredibly fascinating being that is horrifying in multiple ways and boxes it up into a prepackaged set of plots and motives, and no offense to you if you like this interpretation, but I find it stale and boring. If I want to read about a villain that does what he does Foar Teh Evulz, I'll read a story about the Joker. XD Now granted, I still have a lot to learn and I am nowhere near as well-versed in this Mythos as some of you, but where I've been as a fan in the past is part of who I am as a fan now, and I can't change that. So, sorry, but if you really don't like me as a Slenderfan just because I got my start through some stupid little horror flash game (that was made by a Mythos fan, for the record, as a quote-unquote "Love letter to Marble Hornets"), then put on your big person undies and deal with it. My experiences with this Mythos do NOT make me any less of a fan than you just because I view Slendy differently from you, and it sure as Hell does not give you the right to make me feel unwelcome. My interpretations have changed, and my introspection on the character has changed, but I am NOT any less of a fan. Do NOT lump me in with these people who call Tall and Faceless "Slender" and harp on about Wifin' in the Club and $20 just because I once started out that way. That's not fair to me and it's not fair to any other newer Slenderfan who got into this Mythos recently. I will fall, I will stumble, and I will find my place as I discover what does and does not work in this Mythos. But do NOT harass me when I do mess up or make a joke I didn't know was overplayed, or when don't know a reference to some vlog or ARG I haven't started watching yet. Point me in the right direction and say why I messed up so I can learn from it. The only thing anyone learns from being shamed or bashed is that they are unwelcome in that community, and that is not an okay lesson for us to teach newer Slenderfans because, like it or not, the newer folks in the audience are the people who will support this Mythos in the future. They're future vlog actors, blog writers, and creepypasta tellers. They're future guiders of future generations of Slenderman fans. This Mythos is for EVERYONE to share and add to; you don't get to use your seniority to harass newer users just because they know less about the Mythos, and you sure as hell don't get to be a jerk to people just because you've been around the Mythos longer than they have. Just because you don't like something someone says does not mean you get to be a dick about it. It just means you're an asshole. If you're still not convinced, allow me to tell you a story. Aside from being a Slenderfan, I'm a Batman fan, and I got into that Mythos around 2008 when The Dark Knight came out. I went and saw the film, and I was blown away by Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker so much that I started to delve a bit deeper into Batman - the animated series, the comics, the graphic novels, everything. My first graphic novel was Joker, and my first serious foray into comics was The Killing Joke. I slowly grew to prefer a more comic-style Joker, and I slowly became a more well-rounded Batman fan, although the Joker is still who I focus on and prefer reading about. And I never would have become a fan of such a fascinating character and the superhero he battles with if it hadn't been for The Dark Knight. But do you know what happened to me for the longest time before I started reading the comics more? Blame-gaming. Being ignored or trolled by more serious fans and being called a "Ledger Fangirl". Being told I "wasn't a true fan" because of where I started out and what I had read. Being made to feel unwelcome. All because I didn't start in the right spot for these people. And now I am seeing the same damn thing in the Slenderfandom, all because a silly little game got popular and some extremely serious Slenderfans got all butthurt that their Mythos went mainstream. It wasn't cool back then in that fandom, and it's not cool now in this fandom, either. I see it every single time someone yells at a person because they called Slenderman "Slender" instead of politely correcting them. I see it every time someone makes a fanfilm that doesn't perfectly include all these little minutiae about the history and origins of the character. No, if it's not perfectly perfect in every way, and if it's not up to THESE peoples' high-ass standards of the fandom, it's not something any Slenderfan should look at seriously and the person who made it is not a true Slenderfan. Look guys, I understand. I have berserk buttons too, and sometimes, the fairweather fans press them. I understand the rage that comes from hearing someone call Tall and Faceless "Slender" instead of one of the many, many more proper names for it. I understand the irritation at ignorant fairweather fans who played Slender: The Eight Pages and now think they know everything about Slenderman. I understand and I feel your annoyance and pain. But two wrongs don't make a right, it just makes you fucking wrong. Man up (yes, even if you're a woman) and be the bigger person. Those people will eventually move to the next big thing and leave the Mythos alone, forgetting all about it. It's the people that become interested and stay that will help the Mythos thrive. But it's these people you're hurting when you bash them for not knowing enough about the Mythos or harp on them for making a joke they didn't know was played out. It's not okay to bully new people just brcause they didn't start out the way you did. There is a line between snarking and being a jerk, and far too many people cross it, either with or without realizing it. You might not realize that you're hurting someone over the internet, but if and when those barbs are pointed at you, it really does hurt. We should be welcoming more people into the Mythos and turning the influx of new people from Slender: The Eight Pages into gold, not shutting people out because of it! If you let more people in and allow them to learn from their past mistakes, then they will bring more interpretations and new ideas to it, and the fandom will flourish. But when you harshly criticize (NOT critique, that's different) a newcomer's starter, barely-informed Slenderblog just because it's not what YOU want to see and not what YOU feel the Mythos is about, it both makes that person feel like they will never be welcomed in the fandom (so they may give up as a result) and makes you look terribly closed-minded. Just because a film says it's based on the game "Slender: The Eight Pages" does NOT make it bad by default. What makes a Slenderfilm (or any film) bad is poor acting, poor script-writing, poor pacing, poor attention to detail, poor effects, etc. And just because there aren't a billion little references to the Mythos or a film is very basic in interpretation doesn't make it bad, either. What it does make it is "Slenderman for Dummies". Everything in this Mythos has at least a little good to it, even a shitty Slenderfilm. If anything, it can serve as an example of what NOT to do to make your own film good. Even that horrible awful porno Slenderblog that I will not name gave us a goofy Slenderfan meme in the form of "periwinkle blue", and even shitty Slendershipping 'fanart' can provide LOLz at how terrible it is. To further drive home my point, I've compiled a list of common complaints I've heard in and around the Mythos, from creators, fans, and others, and I've explained why these things are NOT ruining the Mythos and really should just be ignored if you don't like them.
Okay, I think I'm done now. This has been literally bugging me for days now and I just had to get it off of my chest. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some woods to film in... Slenderfans, you ever get that weird feeling? No, not like you're being watched when you're walking in the woods at night, the other one. No, not like there's some message hiding in a random bit of binary, either. The other other one. The "Outside the Mythos" one. The one where you're reading a blog, or watching some new web series set within the Slenderverse, and you see someone break character just long enough to say to the effect of, "This doesn't feel like Slenderman", and then several other fans follow suit. First of all, I'd love to know how that character got close enough to Slendy to touch it and know what it feels like, and still live to tell the tale, but I digress. My real question would be "When did we decide there was a specific canon to the story of an internet-borne eldritch abomination that never had any constants to start with?" And the answer to that would be, "When enough Slenderbloggers decided to use the same formula."
Now let me explain a second for those who don't really know what's going on. See, there's a lot more to the Slenderman than just Marble Hornets and the game Slender, so much so that I tend to see the whole fandom as having two parts. The first part, which is pretty much restricted to ongoing blogs, vlogs in the same vein as Marble Hornets, and various other things that take place in that continuity (including some fanfics), is known as the Slenderverse (hereafter called just "The 'Verse" for simplicity's sake) and is pretty much a setting in which a very specific story is being played out. In that universe, Slendy is apparently waging some sort of war on humans, a war that only those under its control or able to stay alive long enough after encountering it are aware of. People die, people disappear, people suffer and are used. Humans, both with and against their common antagonist, share their stories and connect and try to stay alive together, determined either not to suffer alone in the dark, or determined to destroy all hope those who fight it have. The result is essentially an ongoing, massive Slenderman-themed RPG that occurs entirely on its own in a specific area of the blogosphere. It is a very dark story, and the atmosphere is very different within the collective story. Blogs frequently cross over with each other, to the point that a reader might have to follow five or six different blogs at once in order to get the full story of what's going on - and in a world where entries go missing, anyone can go insane, and anyone can be an unreliable narrator, even then it may be impossible to know what is truly going on. The 'Verse, which is truly an amazing (if confusing) universe, is just one of the many, many areas within the Slenderman Mythos. The Mythos, being a collection of everything ever written, filmed, or created pertaining to Slendy, is absolutely massive for something that was only created in the past four years or so. It has undergone so much change and mutation that you can tell how early on in the Mythos a story was written just by looking at what traits Slendy is given in it. The Mythos encompasses all the legends ever written and all the stories ever told about it, and the constant change it undergoes is essentially encouraged by the creator of the meme, an SA goon named Victor Surge. Because of the changing traits and landscape of the Mythos, the antagonist these stories surround can be anything from entirely malevolent to occasionally beneficial, a dreaded bogeyman to a protector of children, a mindless predator to an intelligent killer, a fear eater to a human eater, and everything in between. This provides a certain degree of flexibility but also a degree of uncertainty, in that since everything here technically goes, there's no way to keep things consistant. It's no wonder, then, that most bloggers and vloggers stick within the Slenderverse particularly, kind of like how a Batman fan could prefer writing for the DCAU to the Nolanverse. The important thing to note here is that while the 'Verse is a specific setting with specific rules and specific ways things should be done to keep consistancy going between blogs, the Mythos is flexible and really doesn't have any rules - if it's scary, then go with it. Wanna say Slendy's just trying to prevent humans from suffering a worse fate than death by it? Go for it. Want Slendy to be able to literally puppeteer people with his tendrils? Tha's cool, brah. Want to speculate on just what the ever-loving crudbuckets of static is up with Slendy skewering people on tree branches? You are most certainly welcome to anytime, thank you and come again. Theories can grow and change more readily in the overarching Mythos, so it's no wonder that those fans that want some sort of consistancy in the stories (or who just really want to get balls-deep in some conspiracy theory, scary ARG fun) tend to gravitate towards the 'Verse. Now, if you've spent any amount of time at all actually getting into the Mythos, chances are you've looked at some blogs and vlogs. And if you actually follow any of those blogs or vlogs, you've surely noticed a formula to them by now: Human goes about life or does something trivial, Slendy shows up to say hi, human starts being stalked, human starts going insane/is killed/becomes Hallowed/etc. There's usually Proxies involved, or at least some sort of mysterious possibly on Slendy's side character around providing cryptic clues and taunts, and the format is usually that of an apocalyptic log. There may be more than one person involved, and if so, one may or may not have some tragic happening in their past or have been visited by Slendy as a child and gotten away. Depending on the story, the protagonist might die and leave the blog/vlog unfinished as a result, might end up walking over to the dark side and shift the tone and focus as a result, or just continue on until things reach some sort of non-resolution. Rarely does a blog or vlog ever deviate from this formula, and that's okay - these stories are creepy reads, they make sense in the context of the Mythos, and they follow the guidelines and general feel of what the 'Verse should be. They are as interesting and addictive as they are scary, and that is the draw here. Unfortunately, the tendancy to criss-cross blogs with each other, along with the constantly changing story inside of the 'Verse, tends to lead to what TVTropes calls Continuity Lockout. This is what happens when there are so many little storylines and minutiae to a series that, while old fans really have fun with it, newcomers become easily confused and frightened away. I know that, as a relatively recent fan of this Mythos, that I personally find the blogs a bit too convoluted for my own personal tastes. It's not that I dislike any of them, but there's so much going on at once that I can't really get any idea of the overarching story, even if I follow five blogs at once. For me, I feel left out in the cold somewhat because I can't find a good jump-on point without getting confused. It's not like with comics, where you can reboot things every two decades or so and start over fresh. You can't reboot a blog, it doesn't work that way on the internet. The only way that anyone could ever possibly 'reboot' the 'Verse is if all the bloggers went, "Well this is all just getting way too complex, let's start over" - and even then, they wouldn't do that because 1) Complex, insane theories and confusion is part of the collective story, and 2) It wouldn't be the same story if it were all rebooted. This is all really great, it's just not for me. I do not really do work within the confines of the 'Verse. I write for the Mythos, not because I find the 'Verse incorrect or inflexible or anything, but because the Mythos is just so much more open to newcomers like me. That, and I don't write fanfiction for the 'Verse - I write it to fit in anywhere, and I can't do that kind of fitting in anywhere if I did write for the 'Verse. And that is part of why I prefer to call myself a fan of the Mythos proper, rather than of the 'Verse. Now note I said "part of the reason". That's because the other reason why I'm not super involved with the 'Verse (although I have considered it just for funsies) and why this blog is NOT a Slenderblog is because of some of the attitudes towards new things in the 'Verse. See, because there's a specific canon created there, there's a specific expectation of what should happen in your Slenderstory. That means that anything new becomes either shot down, or is ignored. Sometimes, even if you follow the formula, your blog pretty much languishes. It's very hard to break into the Slenderverse as a recurring character, but it's very easy to get hooked. And therein lies the rub. Let me recount an example of what I've seen reading some of these blogs. There's an interesting, if rather Sue-ish, Slenderblog out there called H(a)unting, about a girl who has been Slenderstalked for ten years, and yet has never been killed by her stalker. The mysteries continue to mount when a new being named //It//, a being very similar to Slendy, starts attacking humans in the area. So basically, Slendy ends up rooming with this girl. It's quite the clever commentary on some of the differences and tropes involved in Slenderblogs, and there's quite a bit of humor involved. It manages to do something very different with the antagonist character while still making sense within the 'Verse's canon, and for the most part the fans seemed to like it. However, this changed when the author of the blog decided she wanted to introduce the Rake, another Creepypasta monster, as a recurring character, and she happened to give it traits similar to a very, very scary version of a dog. At one point the Rake gets very badly hurt by //It//-Proxies, and in the entries that follow the protagonist (the aforementioned Sue-ish character) mentions she doesn't want it to die. This apparently was seen as "jumping the shark" and "too Mary Sue" even for that blog by several fans, whom loudly rebelled and started to troll the blog's comments by posting pedophilic fiction copy-pasted from God only knows where. No, I'm really not kidding, but I really wish I was. The story posted in multiple parts was very much pedophilic, very graphic, and disgusting, done in a purposeful attempt to scare people away from the blog or bring unwanted attention from disgusting perverts. It was enough to scare me away from reading any more of the blog and pretty much ended my desire to read any more Slenderblogs for a long, long time. And honestly, could you really blame me? Why would I want to read anything set in a fandom where people think it's okay to post this kind of content when they don't like something someone is doing? People, this author tried to do something different in the 'Verse and got horrendously flamed and trolled for it. This kind of behavior is not okay. It's backwards, unfair, and cruel, and it looks pretty damn terrible to someone who's new to the fandom. Not only that, but it sends a clear message to fans like me who might have even wanted to start their own Slenderblog - do what we say you should, or you will never be accepted here. We don't want your kind here if you're going to try to do anything different, new, or unique. And that is not any sort of environment I would ever want to be involved in. Is this really the kind of message we want to send to new fans? Why can't we accept newcomers and people who do different things as equally as we accept older members? We're all bound by our love of a creepypasta monster, why should we treat someone who is trying to be different any less equal than someone who is following the formula? How is that respectful to any blogger that puts in their time and effort into making a story, or to the characters involved in the 'Verse? And that brings me to another subject that seems to perturb older Slenderfans - newcomers. There are an awful lot of older fans out there who will look at newcomers and wonder if they have the wrong idea about the fandom, and I know why they have such scorn. You see, because the indie game Slender was so popular, many people (myself included) got more interested in the Mythos proper. Some of us newcomers decided to do the research, others... well, others, not so much. Those others are the problem - these are the idiots who think the name of the antagonist is "Slender", who are fangirling and squeeing and saying things that amount to, as TVTropes would put it, "Slendy In Leather Pants", and people who are misunderstanding the Mythos entirely. I hate to break it to you guys, but if the Slenderman and everything related to it that you have ever seen is not making you shiver in paranoia and look twice at the nearby treeline for at least a week, you are doing it wrong. I will say the same thing here I have said so many damn times about the Joker: Slendy is not a bishie. Slendy is not a good guy. Slendy is not "just misunderstood." Slendy is not sexy. Slendy is not going to give you hugs, and no, it very probably doesn't just want $20. Slendy is a scary, awful, terrifying thing that stalks you because we don't know why, and never stops stalking you or watching you. It doesn't stop, it can't be stopped, and you will end up either dead or insane by the time it's through tormenting you. It chases humans. It preys on humans. I know every girl's crazy 'bout a sharp-dressed man, but Slendy isn't even human to begin with, let alone an actual man. None of these make for qualities of a good fangirling item, and you are still fangirling over it. And when I say "fangirling", I don't just mean being a spaz and calling it adorable or whatever, I mean actively wanting to have sex with it. I have called this out before and it is still disturbing. What you people are doing is the equivolent of saying Cthulhu is "just a little hungry". You should be terrified of running into the Slenderman, not ecstatic. Let me tell you about how I got into the Slenderman Mythos. I, like so many of you, played Slender when it came out last August. I had freaky fun with it, partially because I sort of knew about the Slenderman already. However, that same night I decided to go watch as many short films and read as many Creepypastas as possible about the being in question. One of the short films I watched was called Windigo, and I heavily recommend it to all you Slenderfans out there because it is awesome. Through the powerful combo of Creepypasta and films, I quickly became very paranoid, but the worst part was I just couldn't stop reading. It was all so very fascinating and so terrifying and I was already becoming ever more entangled in the Mythos. So much speculation, so many mysteries, and so much fear. This lasted for several weeks, to the point I saw the Slenderman in every little tiny thing - a guy walking to work in a black suit, a set of crossed trees that kind of looked like the Operator Symbol, static noises on the radio in the morning, sign posts, etc. I quickly began to dread that the stories might just be real, even if I knew they weren't, to the point I actually had a nightmare about the Slenderman chasing my boyfriend and I in the forest. And every single second of it was so damn awesome. Of course, I'm still looking for new Mythos stuff, so every so often I still, even now, have flashbacks to that panic and paranoia that got me so interested in Slendy in the first place. I still get just ever so slightly nervous around forested areas when it's dark. I once freaked out when my computer visually glitched while I was listening to the creepiest Slendy-related song ever (those brave enough to take a listen should look up "The Slender Stalker" on Youtube to understand what I mean). That is what the Slenderman should do to you, people. That is what your experience should be like. It should give you trouble sleeping at night, it should make you dread that maybe, just maybe, it could all be real. It should make you so scared of static that you shudder just a little bit every time you're adjusting the radio and accidentally hit a non-channel. What some of these newcomers don't get is that this is a horror series, a horror Mythos in a similar vein to H. P. Lovecraft's work - and they refuse to get it. I have little tolerance for these people, and you can almost always tell them from the serious fans because they call the Slenderman "Slender" after the game. This behavior is annoying and I've already ranted on it once, so I won't do it again. But at the same time, you have all these older fans, particularly in the 'Verse, who are looking now at any newcomer and acting as if they're unacceptable people to have in the fandom, just because the newcomer mentioned they got into the fandom through Slender. People, that game is not to blame for idiotic behavior. The people who don't do the research are. If you're going to blame anything for the influx of idiot fans, which by the way, happens in every fandom that gains some modicum of mainstream popularity, then blame the actual idiot fans. Not the game, not the newcomers who are looking for more Mythos stuff, the idiot fans. They are part of the problem, whereas newcomers like me are part of the solution. I hate being lumped in with the fangirls and fad-seekers, and always have. I feel very hurt when you guys compare me to those people, because when I get into a new fandom, I actually take it seriously. I would never have gotten into the Mythos if it didn't scare me enough and fascinate me enough at the same time to take it seriously as something enjoyable. When I joke, it's because I care and am kidding with you guys, not because it's serious. I want to be part of your community, but so many of you are so slow to trust me, and I don't mean when you're acting in character because then it makes sense in context. How come you're so afraid I'm going to "taint" your fandom when I take it just as seriously as you do, or would like to in the context of the story? Why do you want to make me feel so unwelcome? I just don't get it. Slenderfans, can't we all just get along? We shouldn't be hating newcomers because they're new, or shunning new ideas about the Mythos just because we don't like the idea of them in our little corner of the canon. We shouldn't make it seem, to use the obvious metaphor, like so many of us can't look at the forest for a single damn tree (if anything, we should be looking to see if Slendy is nearby, not at trees). We need to start connecting more and being more accepting of newcomers, and then maybe, just maybe, we can start walking arm in arm (or in Slendy's case, arm in arm in arm in arm in arm...) together without thinking anyone is going to ruin anything. Because, I promise you, they really aren't. Let's save the conspiracy theories and paranoia for the actual stories, mmkay? :3 I am sick of Tech Writing class.
Granted, a lot of my irritation is near-graduation fatigue (yes, I'll finally be graduating with my A.A.A.S. soon! ^0^), but really. REALLY. FUCKING REALLY, you just don't even know. You really don't even know about this particular Tech Writing class. Now, to be clear with you guys, I have zero issue with Technical Writing itself. Tech Writing is an important tool for anyone going into any field. You just need to know how to write professional-sounding, decent letters, resumes, emails, reports, documents, and all sorts of other sundry things that need to go into a business or scholarly setting. For me, going into one of the sciences, I need to know how to write up a good scientific report on findings from experiments, tests, and quality control things. I'm gonna be going into a field where accuracy and detail is everything, because me being anal about some pill being tested could mean the difference between retail and recall, or between a proper dose and going over the LD-50. For others, it could mean the difference between a profit and a loss, whether a product sells or doesn't, or how well the end user understands the instructions they've been given. All that EULA bullshit you've probably skipped over? Yup, someone was paid to write that. Tech Writing is basically everything creative writing isn't, and that's a hell of a lot of important stuff. In the world, you need your creative stuff, and then you need the real stuff, the stuff that actually makes the real world tick. Both things are very, very important in world literature, and far be it from me to decry the importance of writing a resume just because at the moment my mind is more focused on writing a scary story or a poem about willow trees. That all said, Tech Writing classes? They're bullshit. You heard me. Tech Writing classes, as required college classes necessary to get a degree, are bullshit. They don't need to exist. They don't need to be a thing. The skills one learns in a Tech Writing class are skills you should have learned in another English class or throughout your college education. Do you know how I learned to write a Resume? Through my Intro to Chem Tech class, from a professor I enjoyed having. Do you know how I learned to write a decent scientific report? From my AP Bio teacher, and my tough-as-nails Orgo Chem professor. Do you know how I learned how to write a report properly to begin with? Four years of AP English in high school. I know how to do half this shit already, I don't need to learn it again. I respect the fact that some people haven't learned this stuff, and that's fine - but when a good chunk of people in a class have their laptops out and aren't even taking notes because they know the material already, shouldn't there be a way to test out of the damn class and not have to take it, because yes, you do in fact know it already? I shouldn't have to pay for a class I don't really need just to prove to others I don't need it. I shouldn't have to waste my time, gas, and money on stuff that could be implemented into other classes as part of the curriculum without any trouble whatsoever. And I'm sorry about this, but I am about to brag, a lot (Is it technically bragging if it's all true stuff?). I swear on my life I'm not trying to be an Insufferable Genius, but it's important you know exactly where some of my irritation is coming from here. Chances are, if you're also good at English, then you probably share a lot of my same frustration with English classes as well. I actually took two AP English tests in High School my senior year - English Language and Comp (grammar and word use and stuff), and English Lit and Comp (which is more like story analysis) - and I passed both of them with 5's, which is the highest you can get on an AP test (at least in my home state. I was one of just two people to take both tests, and one of maybe five or six people who got 5's on the Lit and Comp exam. Not only that, but I have always been good at English - I regularly get A's and B's on anything I write and put together even if I'm barely trying - I once wrote some shitty little timed writing thing over lunch because I forgot to do it the night before, and I got high marks on it from my flamboyant and picky AP English teacher, even after I admitted that I half-assed it. Even when I think I do a shitty job on a story, most people seem to think the exact opposite, which honestly confuses me some of the time. I taught myself to read when I was four, and was reading at a college level by the second grade. I am fed ducking serious on that last part, I was reading Harry Potter in the second grade with extreme ease and had to bring my own reading material to class, because the material in school was way too simple for me. And yes, really, I taught myself how to read when I was in preschool - my mom once walked in on me doing what she thought was me pretending to read a picture book aloud, and was shocked to realize I actually was reading the words out loud. I even remember her pointing to words in the picture book and asking what the word was, and then me saying what the word was. I dunno what clicked in my mind to make that shit happen (maybe I was relating the pictures to what the words said and forming connections that way?), but to this day I am still excellent at seeing new words, relating them to images in my mind, and using that as a way to add to my vocabulary. To the point that I rarely find a word I don't know the meaning of or can't extrapolate the meaning from on my own, and most of the words I'm unfamilar with or just learned are rare and exotic words like defenestrate (to throw something out of a window), floccinaucinihilipilification (the categorization of something trivial or unimportant), and psithurism (the sound of leaves rustling in the wind). Those are just some of my favorite weird words by the way; guess which one is the name of an actual story in a certain fandom of mine and you get bonus points. ^_~ But anyway, back to what you really care about, the angry rant about Tech Writing classes. Let me tell you a few things about my Tech Writing professor, and a little about what spurred this blog entry. My Tech Writing professor is literally a dowdy old English professor (as many of them are) who has never married, has been in the boring, boring world of business her whole life, and actually once seriously, I shit you not, corrected someone at a movie theater box office for misusing an apostrophe on a movie poster, something the theater had no control over anyway (seriously lady, it's not like they print the posters). She likes to ramble on and on about her business stories, which various members of the class have complained about and which really don't add to the learning at all; in fact, I think she does it under the misguided assumption that she's helping us make connections, when really all she's doing is making us wish that the class was over with for the day already. People have complained to her about the relevancy of her silly little business stories before and she just refuses to listen, because she's set in her ways. Her voice is this awful drone that's so easy to tune out. I swear she doesn't have a life outside of the college. She has the most arbitrary lateness rules I have ever seen and she grades based on her opinion of a piece, not based on whether the writing actually fucking holds up, which newsflash, you mooing moron, is what you're SUPPOSED to fucking grade on in an English class. She once blatantly looked me in the face, gave me a 0 on a document because it was late, and it was only one day late and I had asked nicely for an extension prior to that which she said she would give to me. She teaches out of the book and reads along with it like she thinks we can't do it for ourselves - hey wait a minute, isn't book-reading something the student is supposed to do, you know, on their own, at home on their own time? Not in class with the teacher lecturing right out of the book and teaching us nothing as a result? Just... she is not a good professor, and every little thing she does irks the shit out of me. Everything. I've blatantly skipped class twice (we have a 2-skip limit before attendance starts to get affected) just because I can't deal with her bullshit sometimes, and normally I am ace-straight on my attendance and never miss a class unless I get really, really sick. Her class is a chore to me, and it's pretty blatantly a chore to everyone else too, because half the class is on their laptops during the course of the lecture, doing everything but taking notes on her incessant rambling. So what triggered me to write this shit out and get it off my chest? Well I have a speech I have to make in that class soon (which seriously, holy fruitless endeavors, Batman) about a website I've analyzed. I've already done a full report on it, the first part of the assignment, and now for whatever arbitrary reason I also have to make a speech on it. Not too tough, I'm taking Public Speaking right now and I've done just fine on it. But the way she wants me to do it... she won't let me use notecards, she wants a damn outline, which just encourages people to stare at the damn page. She wants me to have visual cues (if I want), like what the fuck would I even do with a visual cue? I don't need that shit, it's just extraneous words on the page, and I already know I need to smile, pause, and make eye contact. Oh, and she wants the fucking outline and draft? To be in 14-point fucking font. This. Is. 14. Point. Font. That is how big she wants the words on the page. To compare, the text in this paragraph right now is about 10-point font. What the shit would I even need 14-point font for? I'm not 80. I'm not blind. Yes, I wear glasses, because I am nearsighted, not farsighted; that doesn't mean I need 14-point fucking font, lady. In fact I can see my normal 10- to 12-point Calibri font on my little note cards just fucking fine, why on earth would I ever want to use 14-point font and double-spacing on an outline? Do you have any fucking idea how damn expanded that would make my outline? I would have to have five pages just to get my details across properly! 14-point font is WAY too big, why would you ever type anything that size for any reason? When I read that shit in the assignment breifing, I just. Exploded. I couldn't believe that shit. In fact, I got so pissed I went to complain on Skype about it, to a Skype group I'm in, when nobody else was online just so I could get that shit off my chest. Here's the actual word for word, verbatim rant I posted, which is a lot angrier than the above stuff and a lot less well thought out. But it basically hits on everything I just said, and why Tech Writing classes are a problem. [8:54:03 AM] DarkShadows: Okay tech writing professor. I have put up with your BS all damn semester, but this is fucking it. 14. point. font. for a speech. [8:54:12 AM] DarkShadows: I'm not 80. I can read 12 point font. [8:54:37 AM] DarkShadows: 14 point font. *for a speech outline*. Do you *know* how fucking long that will make my speech outline? You know I type long. [8:54:42 AM] DarkShadows: you're an english professor. [8:54:46 AM] DarkShadows: you know this shit about me. [8:54:56 AM] DarkShadows: why 14 point font? I can see 12 point just fine. [8:55:21 AM | Edited 8:55:26 AM] DarkShadows: Even my actual public speaking professor would be appalled. [8:55:58 AM] DarkShadows: You already wouldn't fucking take my one assignment for the, oh woop-dee-doo, GRAND HEINOUS SIN OF BEING ONE DAY LATE. [8:56:31 AM] DarkShadows: So that's 10 fucking points down the drain. Maybe you'd get the point if you'd notice the fact that your students *do not give a shit about your class*, and are doing it to get a damn degree. [8:56:58 AM] DarkShadows: *I know how to do half the shit you taught me already*. I learned more about how to write a decent scientific report through my *chemistry professor* than through you. [8:57:04 AM] DarkShadows: You are a terrible fucking professor. Get fired. [8:57:52 AM] DarkShadows: You talk all the fucking time. You never teach us anything. You sit there in your little swivel chair and go through every point of the fucking book verbatim; wait, aren't WE supposed to be reading that shit? because I fucking guarantee that *nobody is*, and they're all still getting A's. [8:58:06 AM] DarkShadows: Because you are a terrible fucking professor and you do a shit job of actually teaching us anything. [8:58:11 AM] DarkShadows: You're more like a guide than a teacher. [8:58:56 AM] DarkShadows: Half of us bring our laptops to class everyday and surf online while you're blathering about business stories and stuff we already fucking know how to do from other classes, and you do not. even. fucking. notice. [8:59:21 AM] DarkShadows: The Observer could appear behind your damn swivel chair, and you wouldn't even know until he fucked with your computer, fucked with the book, and fucked with half of the students. [9:00:21 AM] DarkShadows: There is literaly nothing. to be learned. from your class. That most of us haven't learned already. Okay, half of us are business majors, but the other half of us are a hodgepodge of students from various areas of academia, and that half *have done labs where we write shit up in the most formal way possible*. [9:00:55 AM] DarkShadows: I got fucking fives on both my AP english exams in high school. I *skipped out of English in college because I am already beyond a college reading level and have been since I was seven years old.* [9:01:57 AM] DarkShadows: I was taught how to write a decent scientific report in AP Bio. I have continued to do so in college and I have never gotten less than a B on a paper of mine. Even you give me B's and A's on my paper and you are a *picky fucking English professor*. [9:02:30 AM] DarkShadows: So don't talk down to me, don't talk down to half the class who needed decent college-level english to get this far, this is a 200 level class. [9:02:34 AM] DarkShadows: God. Damn. [9:02:47 AM] DarkShadows: I would NOT recommend you as a professor to fucking anyone, ever, because *you are awful at it.* [9:03:21 AM] DarkShadows: Find another job, maybe go be someone's editor. it's clear you don't wanna be here, and you have no life otherwise. And I think I've made it pretty clear that *I* don't wanna be here, because I actually *have* a life. [9:03:59 AM] DarkShadows: Fuck you, fuck your word limits, fuck your PAGE limits, and fuck your arbitrary lateness rules when I *sent you a goddamn email explaining I forgot and needed a fucking extension, because MY LIFE IS FUCKING BUSY.* [9:04:47 AM] DarkShadows: Maybe YOU have all the time in the world and no life, but I? I actually have a fucking life. I have two jobs. I have family obligations. I have *school* obligations that come before your stupid petty little BS tech writing class. In the future this class? Will mean *nothing to me* because I have already done this shit. [9:05:16 AM] DarkShadows: I'm a good enough writer to actually pass this class while *barely* doing the minimum amount of work. Why the hell can't I *test out of this shit*? [9:05:44 AM] DarkShadows: And by "pass the class", I mean I can type some BS thing in one night, turn it in, and still get a B or better on it. [9:06:23 AM] DarkShadows: English is my strongpoint, I'm a fucking author. And I fucking know how to work words in such a way that it sounds however the hell you want. Give me. Some damn. Credit. [9:06:44 AM] DarkShadows: I learned maybe one thing: how to be less wordy. That's it. It was NOT worth the money I paid for this class. [9:07:02 AM] DarkShadows: This class is not worth it, I don't care if it's necessary. A BETTER PROFESSOR IS NEEDED. [9:07:58 AM] DarkShadows: Or an ONLINE version of the class so I don't have to waste time, gas, and money going to school twice a week just to hear your stupid ass ramble on about past business ventures. I didn't pay for story hour, I *paid to be fucking taught something*. [9:08:11 AM] DarkShadows: This class is bull. [9:08:13 AM] DarkShadows: fuck. [9:08:15 AM] DarkShadows: damn. [9:08:16 AM] DarkShadows: shit. [9:08:18 AM] DarkShadows: urgh. [9:08:21 AM] DarkShadows: rant over. Yeah, I was NOT happy. Also, my real Skype username isn't "DarkShadows", it's just what I chose for the visible username, so no - you do not now have my Skype username, sorry, have a nice day ya creeper. Now excuse me, I have to go get lunch because I'm hungry and I need something to get me through that excuse of a worthwhile class. |
About The Blog
Welcome to Musings 2.0, my personal blog here on WordFlow! Here, you can find out what I'm doing now and where I'm going next, as well as get my thoughts on the Cthulhu Mythos, assorted sundry writing topics, and various scientific topics. Archives
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