Misery Always Knows: Mr Willis's review

Collen has written a blogpasta called Misery Always Knows. The story is of a girl called Misery who finds out that the Burning Bride has taken a keen interest of her.

And that is greatest bits of the story for me, as we slowly began to realize (and affirm) that who this mysterious entity called Eris is called. From the very beginning you can sense who Eris is, or if you’re new she is seriously faking that smug smile she has, yet Collen builds up the tension through each one of the post along until the big reveal of who Eris is and what she has in store for Misery.

After that point my personal opinion and objective opinion diverse, so I will give my objective opinion instead.

After the Caves of Luminescence, the rebuild up of the tension starts, with Misery frantically trying to figure out on how to stop Eris, since her options are pretty shitty with them being either join her and be a mindless slave or die, as the decision point is coming near. At this part I wish Collen could’ve once again made more post to build the tension up a little more since it didn’t have same feeling as the first one however that ran the risk of blogpasta becoming redundant so I forgive that.

Next we have the climax, we Decision Point which is one big blog post cut into smaller pieces for the reader’s pleasure. Here the final confrontation between Misery and the Burning Bride is a logical and reasonable discourse that is lackluster because the tension wasn’t nearly as big leading up to it when compared to the reveal and the fact that it felt uneventful with Part I being a sign off, Part II a set up phase. Part III and Part IV are a recapping of why Misery was chosen, how the events leading up to this point were set in place by the Burning Bride, then Misery retorting back to Eris how she is wrong about her. Decision Point Part V is where the actually conflict comes a point, Misery grabs the ring, knocks Eris off the roof and that’s it. There is one more blog post of what happened afterwards and it is done.

As you can see the conflict point doesn't get touched until part V where…well…it is anti-climactic. Not saying it doesn't make sense or that it seems like a deus ex machina because it isn't. The reasoning behind the post are quite sound. It just doesn’t come off as a superb, even though I want it to.

Conclusion

Here is my final overview. Misery knows all is overall a well done piece that has no illogical inconsistencies; everything makes sense. It for the most part is well-handled in the built up of tension and dramatics. The only gripe I have it the ending felt rushed for the lack of a better term.

That being said, great short series, worth the ten or twenty minutes of time you’ll need to finish it.

A Fly On the Wall (Ongoing): Review by Funden

For reference, I am reviewing A Fly on the Wall, by AmeliaTanaka.

I like this blog. The atmosphere about it is... hard to describe, but I like it. I like how it started as someone who already knew the Fears, but wasn't some pretentious jerk who thought they could discover exactly what they are or how to beat them. Silent just wanted to research them and see if he could help. This is one of the major selling points of this blog, for me, anyways. Too many blogs have been made recently with people attempting to study the Fears and have all the answers.

The plot progression went pretty well, though I think the plot with the Quiet and Silent's friend committing suicide were kind of... abrupt, is the only word I can think of. The Quiet plot was dropped a little to quickly, in my opinion, and the question of why his blog was never affected was never really answered.

Secondly, I saw a lot of relationship tease between Silent and Tallie, so the sudden death was sort of jarring. I feel like a lot more could have been done between the two.

But I digress. The rest of the plot has been moving at a good pace, and very smoothly. Yuki was a nice addition, as well. The character has some interesting motivations, most of which I'm sure haven't come to light yet. I'm looking forward to the next act as well. I'm sure that all of the questions being asked, plus is eye (the hell is with that, anyways) lead to a significant plot point.

Anyways, I'd definitely recommend this to others, though. A great blog, all in all.

*Note that I recognize this blog is ongoing and the contents of this review are subject to change

This Could Be Heaven: DJay's review

For reference, This Could Be Heaven was written by RedRockingHood and can be found here.

RedRockingHood wrote another short blogpasta, this time it's eight-post This Could Be Heaven. It tells the story of The Captive, a homeless woman who wakes up in an empty and surreal copy of the city she's used to. She observes life in this strange city, noting shadows wandering around, hearing a distinct breathing-esque rhythm under the ground, sees streets change and weather behave as temper tantrums. She eventually sees a younger girl and murders her, content in living alone. The blog ends with her declaring her happiness and refusing to leave the city.

Throughout the story, The Captive refers to the city as a "She," often using metaphors to personify the city's actions (a cafe floor is compared to a scarf, for instance). This gives the story a sort of surreal love feel as the narrator grows more and more content with her location, which I find was a nice touch.

The blog can be much commended for its brevity; eight posts is more than enough time to convey the characterization of The Captive and the city. It can also be commended for its layout, very simple with a black and yellow colour scheme, with a cityscape background being appropriate to the content.

Really, the only thing I wasn't sure of was how quickly and lightly the murder of the girl was played, but even that isn't a legitimate criticism; it's characterization of The Captive, helping to foreshadow her being content to stay at the end.

With a fascinatingly surreal story, a simple length and blog display, and no actual criticisms of mine, This Could Be Heaven was well-written and speaks highly for RedRockingHood's writing talent. This is definitely a story I'd recommend reading; it can be read in a matter of ten minutes or less.

(Edit: Turns out the gender of The Captive was actually never given within the context of the story. Or out of it. My bad, I suppose I assumed Captive was a female.)

RedRockingHood Analyzes Vincent (Pyre for the Heart)

I've chosen to analyse the infamous main character, Vincent, from 'Pyre for the Heart', written by Fearblogger Malus. To give some background, Pyre is an not-yet-complete blog of our villain protagonist, who is putting a girl's diary up for the world to see after she scorns him. And they say women are the ones to beware, come the whole scorning-thing...
As he types up this girl's diary and he gives up glimpses into his own life, we start seeing some recognisable faces - hey there, Red Cap and Brute! - so it's shaping up to be an intriguing Fearblog. My focus, though, is on Vincent himself.

(Note: this analysis/review will be as spoiler-free as possible.)

From the get-go, we see a lot of evidence that Vincent isn't a character that we're meant to be cheering for. He's hurt, he's angry, and he's being quite petty about it. Vincent was spurned by a girl named Lois last semester, and to get revenge he starts putting her personal journal online for their entire school (and the rest of the Internet) to read. Already, I have to give kudos to Malus - there is a very distinct shift in the way both characters write.
Vincent will throw in his input as we read about Lois's accounts, and we get to see a bit more of his jerkass side. He's hypocritical, saying things out of spite that are completely contrary to the his initial self-portrayal; he claims he's on the high ground and ignoring the fact that he's wrestling through the mud.
As his posts continue to go online, he attracts the attention of some of our well-known (and lesser-known) Fearblog commenters, who proceed to leave cryptic comments (the way any good commenter would). There are two options the writer has, when this occurs: to ignore the comments for the sake of the plot, or have the character respond and let the plot proceed naturally.
Malus avoided the trap of having comments shape the plot by having the events Vincent/Lois documented occur last semester - that leaves Vincent plenty of room to talk to his commenters, and he does so in the style of any anonymous guy sniping back at the people seemingly trolling him. In fact, he takes an entire comedically-done post to snark at them.
The last bit of fact taken from the blog is this: one of the girls Lois writes about, Vivian, turns up in a post that's entirely Vincent's. Here's where I avoid the spoilers. The conclusion is - we see a glimpse into Vincent's life that doesn't involve him sniping at a would-be girlfriend or people who disapprove of him. Vincent has friends. He's liked by a group of people, in his life away from his keyboard.

So, my conclusions about this character?
I love that I don't love Vincent. When I say 'his life away from his keyboard', I mean that I can believe he has one. Vincent is flawed; an emotional, spiteful teenager who lashes out and hurts people in the way so many teenagers do. Over the Internet.
A guy like Vincent is believable. His actions aren't so monstrous that you recoil, and they never go beyond the capability of an angry teen - considering we've got Fear influence at play, any overpowered acts of spite could be hand-waved away. The way Vincent is written, though, such a thing isn't necessary.
He's a bully online, he has friends in real life, and he gets in trouble for his actions. He's a hormonal jerk - and weren't we all in high school? I, personally, can compare Vincent's attitude to my own when I was in ninth grade.
Boiling it all down, Vincent is horribly and beautifully human, and I look forward to reading more about him.

Lacuna Urbis: DJay's review

For reference, Lacuna Urbis was written by Funden and can be found here.

Lacuna Urbis was a 43-post blog(ella?) about "Benzene," a character who sets up an idle blog to talk about life and Team Fortress 2 only to shortly wind up in the hospital, where the story takes a significant turn down the rabbit hole, becoming a mystery/adventure story about exploring this strange new empty city and learning about a medical conspiracy. Benzene is a subject in what seems to be an experiment with "Herr Doctor's" eldritch medicine and an organization focusing on him. The blog ends as Benzene finds an exit to the city and uncovers information about the organization before being apprehended.

Admittedly, I don't know all there is to know about this plot. The medical experiments were detailed in textdumps throughout the latter half of the blog, and definitive answers were rarely given. This, coupled with Benzene's capture at the end of the story, leads me to suspect Lacuna Urbis to be either incomplete or to be expanded upon in a later blog. The current story is.. well, it works for what it's worth, but it's not particularly compelling. Personally, I found the most interesting and memorable part of the story to be the former half of the story, wherein Benzene explores the surreal and empty city. The idea of exploring an odd location, never sure of what or who you'll find, appeals to me. But I feel this section of the story didn't last long enough before switching to a lot of letters and documents with deliberately vague and cryptic messages.

There was a subplot regarding Benzene entering the city with a group of other travelers, but he leaves them early on and finds them dead later. This could have worked with a bit more effort; the story didn't give us much reason to care for these characters, especially not considering Benzene was so quick to leave them. Their deaths had no significant impact on the story, which doesn't say much when they're the only characters who aren't antagonists or the narrator.

Regarding the antagonists, there was a "Beakman" character who was seen from time to time and actually provided a nice antagonist for the early posts. He seemed just ambiguous enough to pose a threat to the group of protagonists, but then Benzene left and the threat of being in close quarters with an ambiguous menace was dropped. The rest of the story didn't even have much of an impact, as the antagonists were almost entirely conveyed through letters and documents left behind.

There wasn't that much of a conflict here, I suppose is what I'm trying to say. Benzene is lost in a strange city, but we find out that the city he's in isn't even much of a threat; it's the doctors experimenting on him who are. But he doesn't seem that threatened by them for most of the story; the focus is on exploring and reading documents that have been left behind. The ending of the story, where Benzene finds himself in a facility of the antagonist doctors, probably has the most suspense of the whole story, as he is legitimately threatened and in enemy territory there. But he's apprehended in a matter of a few posts, ending the entire blog.

This sort of exploration-focused story can definitely work, but Lacuna Urbis didn't feel as if it was written to work that way. I think it needed to be longer, to spend more time on the exploration and the antagonists. Where there's no conflict, spend some time using descriptive imagery to immerse the reader in the mysterious environment. Where there's a conflict, keep it going.

On the positive side, the blog's design is very easy to follow and the background is creative enough to make the blog stand out on its own. I felt almost compelled to keep reading simply because it looked original and accessible! Funden did a great job with that.

I did not dislike Lacuna Urbis. Funden seemed to have been trying for some interesting things that he simply fell short on. Writing isn't the kind of thing you get perfectly every time; it takes patience and persistence, so I have faith in him as a writer. Hopefully we can see more from him in the future, and hell, I'd love to see him work more with the "exploring mysterious locales" concept, where the focus of the story is on the location rather than anything else.

Notes from the Condemned: DJay's review

For reference, Notes from the Condemned was written by MesserTod and can be found here.

Notes from the Condemned is the 79-post tragedy of Thomas Blake, a man with a confusing life. He starts the blog out complaining about hearing noises in his home, only to discover evidence of an eldritch horror known as The Choir affecting his perception. Posts are spent performing tests to document the pattern and behaviour of the phenomenon, to better help Thomas remain sane as his senses are obfuscated, and many posts later on are commented on by the enigmatic figure "The Advisor," who does not give much information about himself but claims to have methods to help Thomas out.

Over the course of the blog, Thomas descends into insanity, comes back out of it, uncovers hints of a link between The Plague Doctor and The Archangel, and is hunted by The Eye before going on the run and killing himself, thinking The Archangel's afterlife would be the best choice. The Advisor takes over the blog for the final stretch, vowing to avenge Thomas by staging several assaults on The Archangel's cults while posting documents from The Plague Doctor's servants in keeping with the blog's focus on research and few kept secrets. The blog ends with a eulogy for the late Thomas Blake, as given by the Advisor.

As a Fearblog, Notes from the Condemned has some interesting plot points. The complexity of the Plague Doctor/Archangel alliance is fascinating, and the way that the blog is told means that the majority of confusing questions given earlier on get satisfying answers by the end. Though the details of the Advisor are not part of the answers, it feels like that fits well; this blog is about Thomas, and thus it ends when he is avenged properly. The revelations given by the documents in the endgame are all relevant to him and him alone, giving an appropriate catharsis to the mystery-filled story.

On another note, the character of Thomas's girlfriend was incredibly likable. She was an admirably generous woman, often supporting Thomas even when he was at his lowest point and listening to him and assisting with his tests. As a result, her death felt like one of the most significant turning points for the story. By that point, it just made sense for the blog to end with Thomas's death. So this was well done on that part.

But now we come to my criticisms. I will allow this blog's heavy focus on comments, as that was established as early as the first post and remained fairly consistent throughout. But as a result, the progression of the story felt awkward. Thomas learned of The Choir alarmingly fast, between two single posts early on. I feel there could have been a better introduction to them rather than just a link in a comment. And a lot of the comments directly lampshaded hidden text during the more confusing bits, which is all well and good, but Thomas's replies often bordered on narm. I know it's more realistic to have a blogger reply to a comment if he doesn't remember writing a post or a passage, but I really think it would have been more effective simply to not have Thomas respond at all. At the very least, to the ones regarding the hidden text. The writing, itself, made it fairly clear that Thomas did not consciously write it; lampshading that is spoonfeeding it to us.

Furthermore, the subplot featuring The Eye towards the end felt, frankly, like it had no place in the story. It just came out of nowhere; there was no mention of The Eye in the blog before this, no hint that The Eye might possibly want to observe and punish Thomas, and it really just came out of nowhere. It lasted for such a lengthy period of time and featured, from what I recall, the death of Thomas's girlfriend, so it was clearly a significant plot point, but it came out of nowhere! There was no precedent! It was, as it were, anticlimactic.

Then there's the issue of the blog's design. A default layout, not exactly giving the blog bonus points, but at the same time I can easily forgive this, considering Thomas doesn't strike as the sort of character to put that much effort into designing his blog. So it's.. a design. Neither good nor bad.

Notes from the Condemned was far from a bad blog, I stress. It had some great points to it, some well-written characters and some events that I found thematically excellent. But it still had too much of the "average blog" feel to it, by which I mean there was such a clear focus on realism and comments that often stood dissonant to the plot itself. As this was MesserTod's first Fearblog, this doesn't speak anything bad for him! Notes provided a good read overall, and if he should choose to release further blogs, I'll be glad to read them.

LITTLE SLICES: THE INSOMNOBLOG: DJay's review

For reference, LITTLE SLICES: THE INSOMNOBLOG was written by Buliwif and can be found here.

LITTLE SLICES was a 39-post blog about Thomas Jameson, a man with insomnia who chronicles his attempts to get a full night's sleep as well as the strange events of his town. He goes through various different sleep techniques, and homeopathic pills seem to work until he begins getting dreams of a faceless man. His local news gives reports of missing children, and Thomas even sees what he thinks are the ghosts of two missing children from fifteen years prior. He also hooks up with a girl he'd been eyeing for a while, and the two of them try to help a friend when her husband disappears entirely, only for the friend to disappear as well. Thomas finds their bodies strung up in the woods and calls the police, only for his girlfriend to disappear as well, whereupon Thomas crafts two makeshift explosives and follows the beast into the woods, where he watches his love interest be dissected. He pulls the pin and sets the forest ablaze, only to survive and post in his blog that the faceless man is still alive and waiting outside his door. The blog ends.

The story's fairly standard Slender Man blog conventions, though it's written creatively enough to stand alone well. Thomas is a believable character with good merits and bad merits, the plot points that happen all happen with precedent, and the Slender Man is written with enough surreal nature to give me goosebumps. The side characters, whenever they come up, are minor enough not to annoy, but still likable enough to care when they disappear. And for what it's worth, this story is just the right length before it starts to get boring! Really, this story checks out on all the elements of a solid blog.

But then the ending is kinda really unnecessary. If the blog had ended on the previous post, it would have been clear that Thomas had died trying to save Steph from the Slender Man, and it would have been subtle enough to give chills. But instead we get a detailed action post with a dissection and with hints of the Slender Man having some inner appearance that the faceless man is just a facade for. There's no hint of what this is, so this claim is utterly meaningless and only served as narm for me. We also get a full shot of tentacles, tentacles which had had no precedent in the story and again only served as narm. Without this last post, the Slender Man is a mysterious horror creature. With the last post, he's a tentacled eldritch abomination who I can rather easily predict the conventions to. Plus, the last post expects us to believe Thomas survived an explosion of 4,000 degrees, only for the entire post to be rendered pointless anyway by the fact that the Slender Man survives. The blog still ends on a faux-ambiguous note of Thomas going out to the Slender Man with a grenade, except now there's no mystery left to any of the plot points.

Now, don't get me wrong. There are blogs that can pull off detailed action posts with the Slender Man well. But they don't do it on the final post after a full blog of realistic horror. The action posts go in the middle so they don't come out of left field.

While I'm criticizing things, I feel the need to bring up the post titled "SLENDER MAN." In this post, Thomas comes back from finding Cynthia and Steve's bodies in the woods, and he decides to look up this faceless being on the internet. He then finds out all the stories of the fictional Slender Man as well as its Something Awful creation. I.. yes, I found this narmy as well. Incredibly. The idea that the protagonist is being pursued by a fictional creature can work, but not when it's only suddenly brought up right at the end of a blog. This reveal needs clues and hints, established motifs! As it stands, it feels more like the blog arbitrarily decided to link itself to the rest of the mythos rather than staying standalone like it had been setting up all this time.

One more criticism, though this one is far more minor! The characters Wednesday and Pugsley were also the source of much narm for me, but I fully admit that this one is entirely just my opinion. Their introduction actually made sense (as much as that's possible with surreal ghost children), and their actions bordered on creepy. They were good characters to include; I just personally hate kids.

Finally, there's the point of the blog's layout. It's a default look, standard, nothing special. But the background provides an unnecessary dissonance from the content. The background is that of a snowy mountain seen through condensated lenses, which of course has nothing to do with the story itself. Yes, this is just a default background, so I suppose it works with Thomas' "Average Guy" personality. But he's not even an average guy; he has distinct quirks and even speaks to the blog as if it's a separate character. I feel the customization was a missed opportunity in this case. Doesn't take any points away, but still missed.

LITTLE SLICES: THE INSOMNOBLOG is a good first blog. Buliwif shows clear understanding of the art of making a story realistic while maintaining creepiness, and even the controversial action bits themselves were written very well. I think he needs to work on his representation of eldritch antagonists, but things like that come with practice. I have much hopes for him, and I can say I enjoyed reading this blog.

OH GOD THE RAPTURE IS BURNING: Madinrei's Act 1 Review

I said it before and I’ll say it again: Rapture is extraordinarily long. And yet, despite its length, Rapture has succeeded in both capturing and keeping my interest, which can be rare with a story so obviously complex.

I’ve often heard from DJay that Act 1 was not his finest ‘Act’, and I would like to immediately throw out there that I disagree. There is a very unique feel that is generated in the first Act that gave me more of a chilled, horror-filled ambience than, say, the second Act did. It can be best described with Jordan’s starting innocence as a character. He hasn’t been filled in with many of the details of hows and whys of the apocalyptic events, and at times in the beginning of the Act, it feels as though the coming Rapture hasn’t quite sunken in for him yet, which contrasts terrifically well with the direness of the whole situation. The reader knows that darker things lay on the horizon for Jordan, and as Jordan stumbles, sometimes blissfully, into these darker situations, one can’t help but feel both terrified and sympathetic for him.

Jordan also goes through intriguing development through this Act, and I would even go so far as to say that his encounters with the Wooden Girl could be considered a sort of ‘rite of manhood’, seeing as Jordan appears to go through some drastic maturity growth once he’s free of the Wooden Girl’s influence. Before, when the Wooden Girl practically had her strings in him, Jordan is a helpless character, constantly pondering about the morality of his deeds and yet powerless to change them with Donnie’s life on the line. Yet once opportunity arises, and once Jordan takes that opportunity to temporarily eliminate the Wooden Girl, Jordan regains some control in his life and begins to use it, in my opinion, a bit more wisely. Instead of simply trudging about looking for answers, Jordan begins to look for a safe haven for him and Donnie, and throughout the rest of the Act he becomes more of a conscious protector than simply dragging around a guitar and haphazardly hitting things as they come. This development pleases me, because as much as it was humorous to watch the adventures of poor Jordan as Rapture continually spews shit in his general direction, it is more gratifying to see a character that may or may not become an integral part of humanity’s fight to survive.

The semi-arc of the Exodus was also a pleasing thriller for me to read, vaguely reminiscent of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None via the inescapable setting and the slow murdering of pretty much everyone on board. (With the exception of the Campers) The suspense is what makes that part of Rapture, and with the culmination of the zombie army awaiting Jordan and Donnie on the shore of America, the suspense truly did not disappoint.

This does not go to say that Act 1 was perfect, of course. There were a few parts that dragged on, especially when Jordan is on his own ‘converting’ for the Mistress. It is understandable that Jordan’s ramblings are to fill in for thought and time as he traverses Europe alone, but to the reader I can see it becoming that one part of the story that you want to get through really fast so you can get to the better parts. There were a few ‘WTF’ moments for me, more revolving around ‘how can a crowbar possibly decapitate someone in one stroke when it’s for the most part a blunt object’ than the thankfully left out Wooden Girl rape scenes, but perhaps that’s just me being anal.

Overall, though, Act 1 was a pleasant read. Enough suspense, horror, and humor to please my reading fancy, and a truly good wrap up at the end. (Thank you DJay for not giving us a horrific cliffhanger between Acts)

Coming up next, of course, will be the review of Act 2.

Continuity Glue [3/9: N.A.P.T.]: DJay's review

Read the previous Continuity Glue review here.

For reference, Continuity Glue is both the name of an epic and of the first blog in the epic. It was written by The Nameless One, and its order is as follows: Continuity Glue, I Am Not Insane, N.A.P.T., The All-Seeing Eye, The Sound of Silence, The 12 Days of Christmas, Reality Falls Apart. There are more blogs involved, but I can only link to what has been deemed ready to link. There are also a lot of creepypasta which will come up in my reviews. I will go back and organize this disclaimer when things are more clear. This review is for the third blog, New Amateur Paranormal Taskforce.

Before I begin the blog review, I must review some creepypasta that are a part of the greater Continuity Glue narrative. They go between I Am Not Insane and N.A.P.T.

"A Great Man, Dying"

A good-sized creepypasta about a dying man and the peculiar events that led up to his death. In the context of the Fear Mythos, this is a nicely written though predictable Dying Man story, but taken out of that context and read with just the knowledge of Continuity Glue, this is a mysterious and frightening piece that will no doubt only become creepier as its relevance is made clear in the following blog.

"The Man in Gray"

A creepypasta about a mysterious omen of disasters. ..honestly, this story didn't scare me or really do anything at all. It wasn't about any Fear, so at least I didn't know what to expect, I'll give it that. But one guy seeing a man in gray before horrible disasters doesn't, a horror story, make. This is more the kind of plot for an analytical psychological tale; there's nothing particularly scary about it. And since this is a creepypasta, there wasn't enough time to ponder on the psychological significance of the events, so we were just left with a bit of a boring story.

New Amateur Paranormal Taskforce

Here's a 52-post blog about the unpleasant and ever-paranoid mind of Omar Friedman. He starts the eponymous New Amateur Paranormal Taskforce and posts a lot about various supernatural casefiles he's heard about, but then his sister is kidnapped and he coerces his taskforce to help him find and rescue her. Over the course of the story, Omar gets involved with Candle Cove characters, a being calling himself "Judgement," an organization called STAB, and a few run-ins with the SCP Foundation. We see a lot of paranormal things and the people researching them, and Omar descends into madness and winds up killing almost every protagonist in the story to suit his conspiracy theories. That's pretty much the whole plot, with him showing a little remorse towards the end but then it ends on a cliffhanger.

I.. really don't like the cliffhanger. I want Omar to either redeem himself for all his atrocities or to just die. But like with I Am Not Insane, there is no catharsis; the sociopaths get away with it and the blogs end before their emotional tensions culminate. I can only hope that their storylines will receive some sort of closure by Continuity Glue's end, but at this point the will to keep reading is fading. The Nameless One is writing a peculiar story, and to be able to pull it off will take talent. I suspect he might be able to, but every critic must have his doubts.

If there's anything more tangible I must criticize N.A.P.T. for, it's the flow. The blog starts off with a simple "Blogger posts records" plot, then halfway through switches to a "This is the blogger's daily life" plot, and then switches to an espionage rescue plot, and then it becomes a psychological character study on the descension of Omar Friedman into madness before ending with no closure to any of the four plots. Admittedly, the character study arc was well-written for what it was worth, but I must discuss the espionage plot. There were frequent action scenes during these posts, with Fears and other paranormal entities coming up, and none of it felt engaging. I felt like I was reading a "This happened and then that happened and then this happened" but with actions so supernatural that they were unrelatable, so it felt more like gibberish. The supernatural entities needed more build-up and explanation so that we would be more familiar with their actions when they happened, rather than just feeling like a long stream of confusion.

Another bit I didn't quite like about the blog (though I fully admit this one was minor) was the blog's design. It used a default layout with a background that had very little to do with the story. The default meant N.A.P.T. looked monotonously identical to a good number of other blogs, and the dissonance in background meant I felt even more detached to the actual story. If a writer is going to have a background that is a picture, I feel it best that the picture be relevant to the story.

Now, on the good side of things, there were some great parts to this blog! As I said, the character study was well-written. The early posts with casefiles were fun to read simply for their creepypasta nature. The location during the espionage arc where everything that happened soon reverted was disturbing, with some subtleties in it that gave me goosebumps. The character Ralph was pleasant and likable, as well, and Lina's death affected me in all the right ways. I'm sure The Nameless One knew what he was doing with this blog, and so I definitely don't think this was a bad blog. It will make sense in the greater narrative; of this, I am sure. It just definitely left a lot of bad tastes in my mouth.

Wherever the Continuity Glue plot goes next, I'm curious to find out.

PandoraParadox's Review of TGecko's Penny Dropped

If I would say one thing about Penny Dropped I would say that it's certainly fresh. By that I mean it's a bit of a fresh take on the Plague Doctor story coming from the point of view of a mysophobic ex-convict. I enjoyed Penny Dropped, even though I must say that it isn't without flaws, there are some moments that make me cringe. I think that mostly were those mad mantra posts where a sentence is repeated over and over again. I really hate seeing those in a fear blog because it has been done to death and doesn't really work without proper writing, I don't think TGecko used the mantras well, it felt corny. The whole blog has an odd pace to it, it feels a bit rushed. I also counted a few other problems such as the description of things sounding a bit off and like with the mantras sounded corny at times.

HOWEVER....I must not neglect that Penny Dropped is all in all a good story. The things that work, really work. The Oathbreaker in the story really seemed like the typical oathbreaker and the Plague Doctor is introduced well and I must say the ending is one of the most well written things I've read this year. The ending is the greatest, packing a vast amount of emotion into it. Penny Dropped is a nice piece of internet literature.

Continuity Glue [2/9: I Am Not Insane]: DJay's review

Read the first Continuity Glue review here.

For reference, Continuity Glue is both the name of an epic and of the first blog in the epic. It was written by The Nameless One, and its order is as follows: Continuity Glue, I Am Not Insane, N.A.P.T., The All-Seeing Eye, The Sound of Silence, The 12 Days of Christmas, Reality Falls Apart. There are more blogs involved, but I can only link to what has been deemed ready to link. There are also a lot of creepypasta which will come up in my reviews. I will go back and organize this disclaimer when things are more clear. This review is for the second blog, I Am Not Insane.

Before I begin the blog review, I must review some creepypasta that are a part of the greater Continuity Glue narrative. They go between the Continuity Glue blog and I Am Not Insane.

"The Land of Make-Believe"

A memory of going to an amusement park with a brother and going on a Candle Cove ride. It's a short creepypasta, and I recommend reading it. It made my skin crawl, and I loved even more that this was expanding upon the very subtle Candle Cove reference in Continuity Glue. I am definitely looking forward to seeing where this narrative goes.

"Hunger"

A very short soliloquy of a dying man in a cell. Again, I recommend reading it. It wasn't as blatantly alarming as "The Land of Make-Believe;" "Hunger" establishes a much more subtle and unnerving atmosphere. I am very excited to see where this narrative goes; the Nameless One is clearly talented at subtle moods.

I Am Not Insane

Time for the feature presentation. I Am Not Insane is the 25-post blogella of Evan Marsden, the boy who lost his brother during "The Land of Make-Believe." He is thirteen at the point of this blog, and he is a cold and selfish boy who is approached by a wooden Queen to become her new "general" for an ambiguous goal. She makes him kill his parents and shows him the many grotesque ways she's preparing an army for her goals. He slowly realizes that this is all a mistake and that he's been acting selfishly, so he betrays her and does all he can to resist her wills, but she tortures him and keeps him in check while recruiting his own classmates and corrupting his life. In a bout of desperation, Evan is able to acquire the "Eye of Fate," an object allowing him to see time simultaneously. With this new power, he escapes and goes on the run, opting out of blogging.

The story is fairly short and disturbing, with the descriptions of the Queen's torturous methods often making me wince. But Evan's own selfish and sociopathic personality works just as well with the antagonist's corruption; he doesn't care about anyone but himself and feels no remorse at killing people, and he slowly realizes this over the course of the story in an arc I must commend the Nameless One for writing. He actually made a protagonist I wanted to see die. It would have been fitting, but it didn't happen, instead lending itself to possible continuation further down in the greater Continuity Glue narrative. This choice is certainly also promising. Plus, Evan did have some redeemable qualities; he knew he was a horrible person because he still maintained a firm knowledge of morals, and even he found the Queen and Candle Cove's methods unquestionably disturbing. Evan was a complex character, one of the more memorable protagonists I've read in a blog.

The arc with the Eye of Fate seemed a little odd to me, though. It seemed to exist purely to avoid Evan's death, suggesting a subversion of the themes of tragedy established throughout the blog in light of possible greater themes to be shown throughout the overall epic. Because of this, I cannot pass any judgement on it until the whole story has been told. I have to see where I Am Not Insane stands in the overall piece.

The tying-in of the previous two creepypastas was fantastic, helping the sense of Continuity Glue being a larger and complex tale. Evan's sociopathic portrayal in I Am Not Insane is definitely a clever subversion of the sympathy a reader would naturally feel for him after "The Land of Make-Believe," and the ambiguous hinting nature of the Choir's place in the narrative is more than appropriate considering "Hunger's" just-as-ambiguous subtle feel.

The blog layout is almost a let-down after Continuity Glue's complicated and customized appearance, instead giving us a very simple default blog look. I suppose this works well, considering Evan's age. It certainly emphasized the feeling of a stark tragedy, a bleak and pictureless background for the downfall of a child fate never liked. This only strengthened my lack of catharsis over the ending.

I Am Not Insane was well-written and a classic horror blogella, showing much promise for the Nameless One's progression of writing talent and for, naturally, the future of Continuity Glue. The ending is a bit of a major oddity, but knowing there's much left to be told is enough to subdue the bad taste in my mouth. Only time will tell.

Read the next Continuity Glue review, New Amateur Paranormal Taskforce, here.

Continuity Glue [1/9: Continuity Glue]: DJay's review

For reference, Continuity Glue is both the name of an epic and of the first blog in the epic. It was written by The Nameless One, and its order is as follows: Continuity Glue, I Am Not Insane, N.A.P.T., The All-Seeing Eye, The Sound of Silence, The 12 Days of Christmas, Reality Falls Apart. There are more blogs involved, but I can only link to what has been deemed ready to link. There are also a lot of creepypasta which will come up in my reviews. I will go back and organize this disclaimer when things are more clear. This review is for the first blog, Continuity Glue.

Continuity Glue is a 68-post blog about Christopher Niven, "the Nameless One." The blog starts off with the Nameless One reviewing several books and films, using metaphorical glue to make their continuities make sense. This is all cut short as his OCD tendencies increase and he starts to see shadows in the light of day. The shadows speak to him, try to coerce him to obey, only to prove themselves to be hostile as they kill his sister. Thinking he's insane, Nameless goes to a doctor for help. Doctor Beakman gives him ample medication and convinces him he's insane and that any comments on his blog are just himself under different personas.

Eventually, Nameless realizes Doctor Beakman is lying and tries to escape, being caught and put through electroshock therapy. The shadows from earlier attempt to save him, only for a door to appear for Nameless to escape through. He wanders through an eldritch city and finds himself back in his bedroom, and here he decides to look into the strange things in his life. He finds out about the Fear Mythos and sees that his own blog is labelled as fiction, putting him through an existential crisis. A little girl who is indescribably "wrong," going by the moniker The Unnamed Child, enters his life and entices him to adopt and pamper her, slowly driving him even more insane. In a final bout of desperation, Nameless attacks her and is then cornered by a variety of Fears, only to be saved by a Door one last time. He enters, dying.

As a plot, Continuity Glue holds together admirably well (pun not intended). Minor mentions in earlier posts become relevant later on, and the Fears that attack Nameless are all appropriate whether thematically or simply through foreshadowing. The blog also maintains a firm sense of realism, with Nameless referencing comments on posts and the comments even driving the story at times. This comment-driven idea is established fairly early on, so I have no complaints with it.

But really, there's not that much I can find to say about this. Continuity Glue takes various conventions of blogging that I have long since grown tired of (realism, comment-driven posts, having a protagonist be fully aware of the Fears, Door Ex Machinas, hidden text) and makes them work, but aside from that, it's not particularly notable. The characters are all fairly standard Fear Mythos fare; anyone who's already aware of Doctor Beakman and the Fears can predict how things will happen once their names are mentioned. The blog works, but the overall plot is predictable. Of course, it's only the beginning of a multi-blog saga, so I don't know where things will go from here.

That brings me to another point. Continuity Glue is, of course, the start of the eponymous 25-entry saga. But it doesn't feel like this whatsoever. It just feels like a standalone blog. Which, I suppose, is actually a very good thing! I love that the story stands very well on its own. But I don't know if this is what the Nameless One was going for, so he can take this how he wants. There just aren't any loose ends or anything lending themselves to further elaboration, other than perhaps a surreal nightmare that doesn't get any follow-up, but that's assumed to have just been a nightmare.

Finally, the blog's appearance and layout. I must say that the layout is customized and creative; it definitely gives off a sense of being its own entity, something Nameless has made into his own creation. It's very pretty. But at the same time, it's very cluttered. There are links everywhere, and most of them aren't even all that relevant; the only links I used were the blog archive halfway down the page. In order to continue to the next post, I had to go out of my way to look for the link; it's hardly convenient. Of course, this isn't a determining factor in anything. I'm just stating it here.

So the Continuity Glue saga begins with a standalone realistic story about a man who may or may not be insane and may or may not be fictional. We still have a lot of blogs to go, so only time will tell what my final opinion on this blog will be. For now, I liked it.

Read the review of the next blog in the saga, I Am Not Insane, here!

The Amalgam Saga: DJay's review [2/2]

Read the first part of this review here.

For reference, the Amalgam saga is a series of seven blogs written by TheSomnambulist. They have a set order: Prestidigitation, Urban Malefic, The World Through These Eyeholes, Cold and Lonely Days, Metaphysical Fiction (plus companion blog Dawghouse), and No Gods No Masters. This post contains the last three.

Metaphysical Fiction
Dawghouse
No Gods No Masters

For convenience purposes, I feel it's best to tackle all three in one single review.

Metaphysical Fiction, at 64 posts, is about a man loosely related to the protagonist of Prestidigitation. This man, Doctor Maless Peyn, is thrusted into a game where he has to defend himself from a majority of Fears. He is able to win, only for The Cold Boy to kill him and then only for The Manufactured Newborn to make him a Thoughtborn, a creature of pure information. He learns how to map his information onto a human brain, thus taking over a body, and he uses his new abilities to help Portnoy (the protagonist of Urban Malefic) avoid the Fears. ..sorta. The plot gets confusing.

Meanwhile, Dawghouse, at 40 posts, is about the Muffin Man from Cold and Lonely Days. He spends the first act of the blog talking about himself and what actually happened in the aforementioned blog, and then he saves his sister and has to go on a series of missions loosely connected to The World Through These Eyeholes. Over the course of these missions, the Muffin Man is introduced to a collection of four eldritch creatures (The Herald, The Envoy, The Emissary, and The End) collectively called The Amalgam. They're a sort of universal.. parasite phenomenon, and they bring with them the end of the world. He is joined by The Dying Man as well as Harold from The World Through These Eyeholes, and as the plot progresses he's joined by Doctor Peyn and Portnoy. Around this point, both these blogs stop and move onto the final one.

Finally, No Gods No Masters, at 27 posts, marks the end of the Amalgam saga. It starts off detailing the Muffin Man's plan to use The Quiet to kill the slender man and weaken the Fears, and then this adapts to become the collective protagonists' new plan to prevent The Amalgam from ending their universe. To put it bluntly, the plan doesn't work (well, it kills the slender man and weakens the Fears, making the situation even worse), and the protagonists run out of ideas only to be confronted by the ambiguous character Jack of All at the last minute who strikes a deal with them. He saves the world, only to then announce he's only saved the world in other timelines; the protagonists are doomed. The saga ends with this.

It's.. a really complicated story. I don't think I can review these blogs without speaking of the Amalgam saga as a whole, so before I do that, let me get a quick complaint out of the way.

Personally, I don't like that these blogs don't stand too well on their own. Dawghouse ends arbitrarily and switches to No Gods No Masters (and hey, let's assume the blog system is meant to be even remotely realistic, how were the first several No Gods posts on Da Dawg's account as early as 2011 when the Da Dawg account was proven, at the start of Dawghouse, to be some random person in 2012?), and there's no reason for Doctor Peyn to stop blogging on Metaphysical Fiction when he does; he's still a part of the story afterward. As individual blogs, these three blogs don't do well. And I don't like that.

Now then! The Amalgam saga is basically a series of blogs about people who are pawns in the Fears' endless games, people who are used as devices in furthering various schemes, people who are played with and tortured for who knows what reasons. Even the people who are able to beat the system and rise above their gods and masters are either pulled back down into the game or, as that ending shows, killed somehow anyway. Everyone dies, nothing matters, life is hell and death is hell. The Amalgam saga, quite simply, is cosmic horror with a witty comedic shell. A sense of "life sucks, so why not enjoy it?"

As for the blogs' appearances, Metaphysical Fiction had a nice white background with a light-blue theme to make it pretty. Dawghouse and No Gods No Masters both shared the same appearance, making me wonder even more what the point of breaking them up into separate blogs was. But all throughout the Amalgam saga, the general consensus on blog appearance seems to be just going with the simplest options. So I don't really feel much to comment on here. There wasn't much to set the blogs apart from every other blog appearance-wise, but I think the stories do that task well enough to compensate.

It's admirably written, for sure. Amusingly complex, affably entertaining, with some really awesome portrayals of Fears. But on the lower side, the blogs suffer from a need for proofreading. Maybe it's just the grammar nazi in me, but reading that much text without all the necessary punctuation starts to give me a headache. And I don't think the blog had enough mileage to match the plot. That is, the pacing was really good for the first few blogs, but around the time of Dawghouse, the plot seemed to move ten times faster than the posts did. Events happened and there wasn't enough pacing to let the reader contemplate the effects of this and feel for the characters. The characters needed more soliloquys, more monologues, more discussion of the plot to break up the constant pace and to make it feel even remotely relatable. Hell, in different ways, the earlier blogs needed more action and less empty posts; the progression from "not enough action" to "more action than one can even focus on" happened much too suddenly.

All in all, TheSomnambulist might want to consider this saga his magnum opus in the Fear Mythos, but I'd love to see him top himself.

The Amalgam Saga: DJay's review [1/2]

For reference, the Amalgam saga is a series of seven blogs written by TheSomnambulist. They have a set order: Prestidigitation, Urban Malefic, The World Through These Eyeholes, Cold and Lonely Days, Metaphysical Fiction (plus companion blog Dawghouse), and No Gods No Masters. This post contains the first four.

Prestidigitation

Prestidigitation is a 23-post blogpasta about Marcinius Trowess, a student who hears things in his sleep. Over the course of the story, the things he hears are analyzed and looked into, dismissed as hallucinations caused by sleep paralysis, and then revealed to be something malevolent that controls him and drives him to homicide.

The story is simple, and the presentation is easy on the eyes and quick to read. Marcinius is presented as an apathetic teenager, his blog set up only for a school assignment, and so TheSomnambulist chose a generic blog template to better get this across. He did a good job with this.

Really, Prestidigitation isn't much. It takes a few minutes to read, the story's really easy to follow, and.. there's nothing wrong with it. There's a lack of punctuation here and there, but that works with Marcinius' nature. What I do particularly like about the story, though, is that it can easily work even outside of the Fear Mythos. There's no explicit mention of Fears (though the forces Marcinius listens to are most likely The Choir); the story is simple enough that anyone could read it. It works very well. It's just.. really simple. But hey, we're just getting started with this saga.

Urban Malefic

At 42 posts, Urban Malefic is much bigger than the first blog, this one being more of a blogella, and the story has a lot more going on. The posts are considerably longer on average, though there's so few line breaks that it can feel like constant walls of text.

The story's about a man named Portnoy Augustus who wakes up trapped in "the City" (The Empty City of the Fear Mythos). Thanks to a bit of science fiction, his thoughts are transcribed onto the blog in a stream-of-consciousness format. Throughout the course of the story, Portnoy explores a large variety of increasingly surreal locations that don't run on the conventional laws of physics. It's revealed to him that he's going through some sort of test that won't be explained (as this would influence the course of the test), and he goes through personal trials involving his past and his issues with isolation. Towards the end, he develops a firm understanding of the physics of the City, even an ability to manipulate his environment, only to find out through a parallel self (it makes sense in the story) that the test the City was coaxing him towards would result in the entire Earth being absorbed into the hellish surreal environments of The Empty City. With this knowledge in mind, Portnoy refuses to comply with further testing, and uses his environment-manipulating abilities to end the blog.

Really, it's a cohesive narrative with a very entertaining narrator. Portnoy's commentary is amusing as hell, which is exactly what the story needs to keep the reader going through the constant walls of text and confusing events. Because as interesting as the plot is, the actual story can be difficult to trudge through. Most of the posts are labelled as nothing more than numbers, and most posts are a big wall with no line breaks, leaving a rather monotonous reading experience. But if you stick to it and focus on reading, Urban Malefic provides a quirky and mind-bending tale.

The World Through These Eyeholes

Even bigger than the last, The World Through These Eyeholes has 98 posts to its name, presenting us with not a blogella but the Amalgam saga's first proper blog. It's about the Faceless Bastard, a man who wears a mask at all times to cover the remains of where his face once was, a man who lives with a flock of birds nesting inside him at all times. The birds (The Convocation of the Fear Mythos) are sentient and give Faceless jobs to do, often jobs that other twisted creatures need doing (the Fears). As Faceless does his jobs, he uncovers a Fear named The Brute who is dormant and trying to rise again, and with the help of The Convocation, Faceless is able to subdue it again.

During this lengthy story, we get to know and learn to love the Faceless Bastard and find out how he got to be this strange figure he is. Honestly, he's one of the most memorable protagonists I've seen in a Fearblog. He has a wit about him that I can only assume means TheSomnambulist has a knack for observational comedy, especially when coupled with Urban Malefic. Though Eyeholes falls into a similar problem as the previous blog, in that there are an awful lot of walls of text making it daunting to read on. Luckily, this problem appears considerably less as the story goes on.

I don't have many complaints; the story's really well put together for what it's worth. The characters are memorable (The Faceless Bastard appeared in the Fear Mythos RPG, and The Brute's legacy is still being discussed to this day), the way the story connects to Urban Malefic isn't too blatant but is still greatly written, and the story itself is filled with addictive twists and turns to keep you reading.

Cold and Lonely Days

Cold and Lonely Days has 39 posts, presenting a blogella about twelve-year-old Megan Jilees, a girl who becomes a servant to The Cold Boy and whose brother has sharp claws. The story consists of her being taken through a confusing and not-often-explained journey featuring a lot of Fears that hunt her without outright harming her and a mysterious figure named the Muffin Man who helps her find answers.

The thing is, not many answers are given. It's rather frustrating, especially considering the story is told through such an unreliable lens that even simple details are obfuscated. But towards the end, Megan makes the comment that she doesn't want to know the answers because they're unimportant, and this.. well, I feel like that was a great comment to make. It made it clear that this was supposed to be a confusing experience, just like it will have been for Megan. And when viewed like that, I definitely enjoyed this story. Again, TheSomnambulist gives us a memorable character with the Muffin Man. And if the cliffhanger ending is anything to consider, he'll probably see more use in the upcoming blogs.

But I have to be honest, I didn't enjoy this story as much as the last two. Honestly, reading it gave me a bit of a headache. The confusing nature was great when it was over and I looked back on it, but the actual experience was just.. frustrating. I felt like the posts I was reading didn't matter, since they were told through a perspective I couldn't connect to or often understand. And the blog's colour scheme was fairly monotonous, just blue and white.

So what we have is an interesting story with some details explained and others kept a mystery. It's not perfect, but it gets the job done.

Read the second half of the Amalgam saga review here.

Over the River: DJay's review

For reference, Over the River was written by RedRockingHood and can be found here.

RedRockingHood has been a member of the Fear Mythos community for quite some time, though she hasn't written many stories, so when I saw she'd written a short blogpasta, I jumped at the chance to get to review it.

Over the River consists of 15 posts from the perspective of Ash, an abused and jaded son who tries his best to take care of his little sister Crystal. Throughout the first half of the story, Ash details his oppressive life under his abusive mother who takes every opportunity to restrict and belittle her children. The story is kept realistic, with the abuse not going too far to blatantly warrant police intervention though with Ash often talking of wanting to buy a tape recorder to catch his mother saying something particularly questionable. Honestly, I can say from personal experience that that's.. definitely realistic!

But Crystal is clearly where the story's focus shines. She remains quiet, being picked up from school by her older brother every day, getting the brunt of her mother's emotional abuse, saying very little but frequently crying. Throughout the course of the story, she makes a friend (eventually nicknamed "the blue fairy") and starts to progress into various stages of hypothermia, much to her brother's surprise and horror. At the climax of the story, Ash takes Crystal and runs off, hoping to make it through the local woods to their grandmother's house.

From here, the story undergoes a quick descent into its conclusion. The blue fairy finds Crystal and peels her skin off, revealing a wooden girl who reveals strings forcing Ash to continue writing as the two surreal monsters run off into the newly-formed forest snow. Admittedly, when I finished reading this ending, I got goosebumps. This was an altogether unexpected and chilling ending that put the entire story under a far more tragic light. From this, we can see that Crystal had been the one pulling the strings and manipulating Ash from the start, remaining silent until she needed something. Ash would do anything for his little sister, and this was bitterly exploited. This even calls into question the legitimacy of their mother's abuse.

The story had been setting up a focus on the Fear known as The Cold Boy, but it brilliantly subverted it with a reveal of The Wooden Girl, and this is truly commendable. It makes sense thematically, and it provides an excellent reason to read the story a second time. Even ignoring this story's basis in the Fear Mythos, Over the River feels like a classic grim fairy tale, the mental image of a cold blue fairy and a girl made of wood running off into a snowy forest as the abused protagonist types to his death being one that will probably stay fresh in my mind for a while now.

But there's one area where Over the River falls short, and that is that of the subplot of the tape recorder. Throughout the first half of the story, Ash makes a number of mentions of saving up money to purchase a recording device to catch his mother in the act of verbal abuse. Shortly before the climax, Ash posts a link to an audio recording of his mother (voiced by tgecko). Now, this was set up very well, and there being only one recording was perfect considering the story's short length. But the actual recording left a lot to be desired. The dialogue was fairly tame, almost something I'd expect even a functional mother to say in anger, and since by this point in the story the focus was more and more on Crystal and the blue fairy, to be pulled out of that to hear a bit of a tame (though well acted on tgecko's part) audio sequence that was supposed to serve as the conclusion to a significant subplot is.. well, it didn't feel effective.

Finally, on the matter of the blog's appearance, RedRockingHood certainly picked an appropriate and simple design. The background is that of a snowy forest, which seems simply aesthetically pleasing at first but is, of course, definitely an appropriate background to see as the story progresses. But the blog's gadgets (the Blog Archive and the About Me boxes) take up so much of the space that the actual posts feel squished. This isn't a serious problem or anything, but I feel like it made the reading experience a little more annoying.

So Over the River is a short and very effective horror story, appropriate in many aspects. It has a few lesser points to the delivery and the layout, but the story stands so well on its own and the ending leaves such an impression that these can be easily forgiven.

RedRockingHood really outdid herself.

Mister Malus Reviews: Pulling off Masks

This reflects only my individual opinions and should not be taken as fact. I do not ask you to agree or disagree with me, and I definitely encourage you to form your own opinions about the blog.

Pulling off Masks

Author: Pullingoffmasks
Status: Ongoing
Fear(s): Plague Doctor; the Grotesque (?)

Plot:

What happens when you take a person who is majoring in anthropology and analytical in nature, sit them down in front of a computer, and proceed to tell them about the Slender Man and Fear Mythos? This blog, my friends… this is what happens.

It starts off with the character (I believe her name is Mara?) talking about getting into the mythos, but first making sure that if any weird stuff starts to go down, she’ll handle it. Yeaaaah… Well, that doesn’t necessarily work out (this is a Fear blog). Anyway, after each Fear/Slenderblog she reads, Mara makes a list of rules that the protagonist within that story abides by. Quite clever, and I love that particular aspect about this blog.

Events take a turn for the worst when Mara begins seeing the Plague Doctor, and dear lord this interpretation is creepy. Okay, so I haven’t read all of the blogs out there, but the Plague Doctor is pretty enigmatic to me and seeing it portrayed as the main antagonist in this story is awesome. The way it follows the protagonist, appearing to be there but maybe it’s not… Skimming what’s real, what’s hallucinations… Yeah…

That’s another thing I’d like to bring up. Okay, spoilers, but can I just say that the whole “Maybe Mara is crazy” angle is what is making me love this blog so much? I honestly don’t know whether or not Mara is actually being stalked by the Plague Doctor, or if she’s just having delusions. I’m leaning more towards “The Plague Doctor is real and he’s giving her mental illnesses to screw her up”, but I think it can go either way. The “going crazy” posts are well done, too.

I’m still wondering what the character is going to do in the future (this is addressed in the blog, actually), but Mara is just so interesting that I think that her blogging from her phone could keep me glued to this blog for a while. It does look like we’ll be seeing some more plot-ish stuff considering recent events and I’m pumped! Keep ‘em coming!

Characters:

Mara: I love her. She’s one interesting coo-coo. She starts off by being genre-savvy (yes), reading through all of the blogs/watching vlogs, making rules, stuff like that. But the thing is, she’s not actually being stalked, so it makes this portion of the blog realistic! In fact, almost all the posts in which a Fear doesn’t show up are realistic because you actually feel like Mara’s a real person.

Let’s see… Oh, she’s very, very analytical in nature (like me!). It was probably a good idea to establish this early on since we start to see that side of her slipping up (she’s still analytical, but I think she’s missing a few things…). She has a very good sense of humor (except when she’s angry, and even then she can produce something hilarious) and the references she makes are very, very good (she mentioned Kender. I love Kender. Yesyesyesyesyes).

And again, she feels like a real person writing this blog because not every post is “weird eldritch crap” that she deals with. In fact, I’ve come to enjoy the little filler posts that have to do with people on bus rides being annoying, or updates on her personal life (especially comments about her little sister, ahaha). To add on to this is that she has to deal with real life issues that affect the course of the story.

The Plague Doctor: I don’t normally do character reviews for Fears, but when I do it’s because the Fear is one of the driving forces behind that blog and it essentially becomes a character in itself. Ah… that might be a little confusing, but oh well.

So, the Plague Doctor. Screw this guy, I mean, holy crap. The stuff he puts Mara through is just… blah, screw this guy! But I love him, or this interpretation of him. He isn’t something that goes around spreading diseases like a flower girl spreading daisies at a wedding. No, in this blog his methods are much more insidious. I’m fairly certain that he’s causing Mara to develop the mental illnesses which just screw up her life even more… and allowing him to grow closer to her. That’s the scariest aspect about this blog, people; maybe Mara is just hallucinating, or the Good Doctor is doing it to her. We don’t know.

With that said, I do love the stalker-ish bits about the Good Doctor (like how he appears behind her when she looks at her reflection in a window), as well as the hallucination bits (particularly the part about the cages). The “writing this down because he is telling me I need to” is reminiscent of the first act of RAPTURE, but it fits with this blog. I can’t put my thumb on it, actually… Hrmm…

---

All in all, this blog is extremely well done. When the creator first told me it had over two hundred posts, I was skeptical about reviewing it, but I found that in the end it was worth it. It was a pleasant surprise to find the Good Doctor showing up as the antagonist and I think the way he’s treated within as genius. I was kind of bored with the poems around the beginning of the story, but the rules/theories make up for that. I wish we could see a little more of Mara’s family and how her conditions are starting to affect them. We’ve seen a few hints of this, so I’m thinking that later on it’ll be addressed in proper form. Finally, the character is just great. I feel really bad for her because of the situation she’s in, and people, this is great. Empathy for characters… Blah, just, good job. Really good job. I think this is probably my favorite blog I’ve read over the past few days.

And now onto the Wild Mass Guessings!

It's All In Mara's Head

Possible, and I’m not ruling it out.

Mara Will End Up Killing Herself

Due to some incident regarding friends/family, or because the Plague Doctor starts to get closer to her, or… well, just being done with the hallucinations, not wanting to deal with the crap anymore. I hope this isn’t what happens, but… *shrugs*

The Wooden Girl Will Come For Mara’s Sister

Just a hunch that I developed over the course of the story. We’ve seen the Wooden Girl appear in the dreams/hallucinations, so…

This Plague Doctor Is A Combination Of… Err, Itself and the Grotesque
Something Alliterator said on the thread, and it makes a bit of sense when I think about it. Maybe the Plague Doctor is the cause of “Grotesque” dreams in this universe (As well as Choir fungus and Intrusion nests?)?

Doctor Beeke Is A Red Herring

This guy is too freaking obvious to be an Oathbreaker, and I’m not saying that because of his name. Okay, yeah, so he prescribes Mara her medication and starts to up the dosage… Well, alright, but from my experience with therapists, there’s two doctors you have to see. One is how it’s portrayed in the story, the guy who asks you questions about how you’re doing and stuff. The other guy is the medicine dude, the one who takes the other doctor’s notes into consideration before deciding to cut the dosage in half or up it.

Now, that’s assuming that every therapist place is like the one I’ve been to, which it may very well not. Still, until proven otherwise, I’m guessing that either this universe’s medicine dude is screwing with Mara’s medicine, or it’s being drugged from an outside source and not by Doctor Beeke.

Another Intern Will Be Punched

Probably while Mara is yelling “I’m Batman!!!”

Mister Malus Reviews: Daniel and Friends

This reflects only my individual opinions and should not be taken as fact. I do not ask you to agree or disagree with me, and I definitely encourage you to form your own opinions about the blog.

Daniel and Friends

Author: Acelegin
Status: Ongoing
Fear(s): Several

Plot:

The title is actually a fair summary of the plot. It’s about Daniel and his friends living within a world where eldritch abominations are after them. The reason why is still a mystery, but it has something to do with Daniel being special. Oh, and there’s something going on… some sort of Fear returning, and a Game Master. I haven’t read the other parts of the “Daniel-verse”, so I don’t know much about the Game Master.

The plot kicks off when Daniel and his friend, Tony (who has some sort of skill that allows him to find people), go off to find a missing kid… Yep, you know where this is going. They arrive at a house where this strong, creepy dude is hanging about. Daniel fights with him and eventually lures him off while Tony calls the police, they find the kid in the house, and Daniel comes back to tell them that the suspect just dropped dead. Well. Okay, interesting start. Oh, and later in that same post Daniel says that he saw a tall guy with a bald head dressed in black… Uh-oh. D:

And that’s when everything goes downhill for the characters. They start getting stalked by a lot of the Fears. I mean, holy crap. Daniel has the Archangel come after him, the Blind Man giving him some sort of sword, the Plague Doctor taking an interest in him, a Dying Man fragment being placed within him, the Smiling Man leaving flowers on Daniel’s bed, the Cold Boy meeting Daniel at least once, the Wooden Girl appearing at random points, the Slender Man stalking him, and finally there’s the Fear called Vision, some sort of dead or dormant Fear that appears to Daniel at points of the story. There's also the shenanigans that Tony gets up to later in the blog...

Pretty much, this entire –verse is cluttered with Fears.

I’ve mentioned this before during my Fable of Fears review; if you’re going to have a lot of Fears in your blog, have them stand out, to actually affect the plot in a certain way. If they’re there solely to be a minor antagonist to the character, or to provide him an obstacle on his way to face the main antagonist, the Fears will quickly lose some of that terror that’s about them.

In fact, I’m not even sure if the blog is meant to be a horror blog. It’s like… Well, an action Fearblog. You’d think that with the Fears it’d retain some form of horror within it, but to me all I could see was epic fighting against the Fears and their servants. There was nothing that made me feel scared, or made me feel worried for the protagonists. If it doesn’t affect the character, if there isn’t some form of harm the antagonist can do to him, then it makes the Fear less scary and makes me start to get bored with the story. Another thing is that almost all of the Fears are made more… human. It’s just that vibe I got whenever a Fear appeared; they didn’t seem like some eldritch being that came to terrorize people. They seemed like comic book villains that show up every now and then to remind the protagonist that they're still there.

Another thing I noticed (very quickly, as a matter of fact) was the dialogue. It’s… strange. It doesn’t feel like people are actually talking to each other in a realistic manner. I also don't think that all of the conversations would have been remembered quite down to those details (which could be considered nitpicking, but I had the same gripe with The Mystic, as well).

The plot itself… Well, I know that something with a guy called the Game Master is going down, but that’s because of a few mentions of him within the blog and some posts on the forums. I honestly don’t know what all this is headed towards, or what goal Daniel has… Well, I guess there’s “Kill The Fears”? I don’t know. :| Blah, I'm so confused...

Characters:

The main criticism I have with almost all of the characters is that nothing happens with them. Almost at the very beginning we’re introduced to an Archive guy called Collector Tsu… and after a while, he just sort of fades into the background. I don’t know if he has his own blog or not, but it seems like he’s there for plot convenience when Daniel needs information on a new Fear (I’m looking at the HELLFIRE Wal-Mart segment on this one). Another character is Jane, who is… Well, I have no idea who she is. The only information given to us is that she’s stalked by the Cold Boy. Does she have her own blog?... If so, I guess it’s a nice cameo.

Daniel: He’s the main character of the blog and is somehow “special” to the Fears… So, pretty much every one of them is after him. The thing that irks me most about this character is that he’s very, very over-powered. I started to get a hint of it during the first few posts (where Daniel’s character pretty much says “I know martial arts, so I know how to fight”, which is strange, ‘cause I thought martial arts was more defense. Could be wrong, though). Then there was the fight with the Archangel, which was… Well… Not very believable. There has to be a certain level of build-up, something that makes people go “Yeah, I think this guy has a chance on killing the Fear!” – instead, it’s more like “Okay, I’ve got a week to prepare myself for a fight with an eldritch abomination.” I think the term I’m looking for here is “Marty Stu”, and this is probably the main reason why I don’t find the blog to be scary at all. We know Daniel isn’t going to be killed, much less majorly wounded, by one of the Fears and knowing that makes us less worried about him.

Tony: I’m guessing he’s Daniel’s best friend; he’s an amateur private detective that is able to sense where things are at.

… Okay. How does he do that? I don’t believe it’s explained within Daniel’s own blog, and since Tony was using that I doubt he has his own blog. So, how does he have this sixth sense? Why is it not brought up again later in the story?

Other than this, I can’t really say much more about him. I don’t know a lot about his character.

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Right. I hope I wasn’t too critical of the blog. I’m not saying Daniel and Friends is bad, either; the grammar and spelling are good for the most part and the other Fears like Vision are really cool (in fact, I plan on introducing Vision within my own blog sometime next month). As a Fearblog, it’s not very scary… But it does have a lot of action in it, and if the action genre is what you like, I think you’ll find this one enjoyable. It pulls it off well, aside from the Marty Stu-ish traits that the main protagonist has about him. I hope that in the coming months the characters are fleshed out a bit more ‘cause I’d like to know a little more about them and their stories. Since the blog is ongoing, I’ll reserve judgment and give my best wishes to the creator.

Mister Malus Reviews: Built for Two

This reflects only my individual opinions and should not be taken as fact. I do not ask you to agree or disagree with me, and I definitely encourage you to form your own opinions about the blog.

Built for Two

Author: DJay32
Status: Finished
Fear(s): The Archangel, the Blind Man; the Empty City (?); Several Fears mentioned in passing

Plot:

A bit of a mind-screwy plot (which you find out more towards the end), but it follows a teacher/professor during the holidays/throughout January. He’s a bit of a loner because his wife and parents have died, but he seems to have some sort of specter that hangs about him. After listening to DJay’s commentary on Built for Two, I now know what it is and I think it’s pretty good, though I’m not sure how one could see in-universe that explanation.

The story really starts to pick up when the protagonist returns to work after Christmas and talks to his class about “Boxing-Day”, wherein one of his students give an alternate take on the Christmas tale. As you might have guessed, it turns out to be disturbing and unsettles the rest of the class. The student disappears a few days later and it has an effect on the teacher, leading to one event after the other.

The main theme of the plot seems to be paradoxes, and they’re examined in-depth within the blog. One of the characters – another professor, actually – gives several presentations on stuff like this, which I found very intriguing. In fact, all of his seminars are very interesting to read about, especially the one about the Hands and the Pieces. I also love the mindscrew of an ending the audience gets.

The Fears… Well. They could have been portrayed better. They acted too… human, I guess. There wasn’t anything uncanny about them, nothing to really make them… terrifying. I guess a better way to put this is that it didn’t feel like the protagonist was in any danger from the Fears, aside from the one assault that was caused by the Wooden Girl. The Empty City was the one that came closest to it, and even then it didn’t seem as frightening as it could have been.

Characters:

The main protagonist is pretty uninteresting… at first. His writing is, well, good. It’s nice to read. But he’s pretty boring for quite a while. Occasionally he’ll say some things that catch your notice (“I want to live in the ultimate paradox”, anyone?), but up until the second half of the blog does he start to become better. I think the most interesting thing about him is that we learn that the other professor, Julian Dupire (I hope I’m spelling that right), is either a future version of him or they’re parallels. That… Well. That was just really cool.

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If you like a good dose of mindscrew complete with some fascinating concepts and takes on the “Game” that the Fears MIGHT play, check out this blog. Fair warning, though: You will likely be confused at the very end, and if you aren’t, well, you cheated.

Mister Malus Reviews: A Fly On The Wall

This reflects only my individual opinions and should not be taken as fact. I do not ask you to agree or disagree with me, and I definitely encourage you to form your own opinions about the blog.

A Fly on the Wall

Author: AmeliaTanaka Status: Ongoing Fear(s): Plague Doctor; the Quiet; Cold Boy; the Choir; the Eye; Will probably have a few more
Plot:

It started as a way of telling the stories of those haunted by the Fears and went downhill from there (in-universe, I mean).

The Silent Observer is a “researcher” who begins looking around for some of the Fears that might be active around the college she attends. She looks for signs of their appearance, investigates the urban legends that might involve some Fears, and watches for any peculiar actions, especially with those having to do with her schoolmates.

So, it’s a matter of luck that right off the bat she finds a person who might be stalked by a certain doctor…

This has been a very enjoyable read so far. The pacing is pretty good for a realistic-type blog like this one, though some of the posts mentioning that there’s nothing going on can be kind of dull. They’re short enough to where it’s easy enough to get past them and occasionally they’ll give the reader some tidbits of information.

The Fears are very good in this. Whenever one is introduced, they get enough time to show what’s special about them rather than becoming a gimmick (I believe that’s the word). I can’t really pick from them to see which one I like so far, though I think the Eye has caught my attention with the way it’s currently being handled.

I would have liked to see more of the researcher side to the blog before it went into a personal account. It seems that while it does try to lean into that kind of genre, the main character doesn’t get a whole lot done and ends up spending most of their time trying to figure out what Fear is haunting the current person. More of the urban legends would have been interesting to read about, too, though more ambiguity would have been a plus.

Characters:

The Silent Observer: The main character of the blog. She’s kind of a researcher and looking into Fear hauntings that may be taking place around her college campus. She lets you know right off the bat that she doesn’t want to tell her story because it’s not important, and that she knows she’s more than likely going to die. This tells me that 1.) She might be suicidal, especially if she’s investigating the Fears on her own free will, and 2.) She doesn’t have a lot of self-esteem if she doesn’t consider her story worth telling.

It’s really interesting to see this character go through the blog. She acts like how you’d think a normal person would, but over time I can tell she becomes increasingly stressed out. People die (or disappear) and Silent reacts like you’d imagine; at first vowing to keep a better eye on people, and when she doesn’t she starts to feel guilty about it and slips up. All of this is probably resulting in why the Eye’s now after her (feeding off her guilt, I imagine?). In other words, very good character development. Really liking the character.

Nessa: The girl from the first chapter. I read through “Loch Nessa” and I swear, I can see someone from my school making a blog exactly like it. Very realistic, and I like how it started before the main blog. Did you backdate the posts, or plan this out? Either way, it’s very good and gives a bit more characterization to Nessa. Made me kind of sad when I found out she died.

Neil: Not sure how I feel about him. He doesn’t appear much, but most of the second chapter revolves around the information he gives Silent about his sister, Marianne, getting killed (or DID she?!). I didn’t really feel anything when we later learn that the Quiet must have taken him, so it seemed like he was there just to introduce that plotline. However, I do love the conflict that goes on between him and his parents and the mystery surrounding Marianne. Is she real or did Neil make her up? Did her parents forget her, or is Neil crazy? Very nicely done in that regard.

Tallie: This was another character that I felt existed solely to introduce another plotline. When the end of her story comes, like Neil I didn’t feel anything. I know there were some mentions to her character beforehand, but it didn’t give us a very good glimpse of what she was really like. Perhaps having Silent interact with her more and writing about it would have given Tallie some better characterization.

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This has been a pretty good blog so far and I’m going to keep an eye on it. It’s a very good story with a well-developed protagonist and I’m anxious to see how this ends. Will the Fears catch Silent, or something else…?

Speaking of mysteries, lets open up some Wild Mass Guessings.

Silent Will Commit Suicide

I think that either the Fears will catch her or she’ll do this due to a combination of loneliness and guilt over what’s happened over the past few months. She has said in a hidden post-ish thing that she hopes she dies, soooo…

The Quiet Will Return

Due to a recent post that references Neil disappearing while Silent watches AND because there wasn’t any kind of real resolution to this plotline, I’m thinking the Quiet is going to return eventually. I’m not sure what will happen from there, though.

The Black Dog Might Show Up

Sudden thought, but perhaps Silent has some buried secrets she doesn’t want to share with us and she’ll get another Fear stalking her. HRMM. I doubt it, but who knows?

The Choir Is Responsible For Andrew’s Death

That… really says it all, I think.

The Fears Are Working Together

This is pretty much said within the blog. I don’t know why they’d do this, though, especially for just one person… Or maybe it’s just a person doesn’t have to be afraid of just one thing, which is very, very good. I like it.

Silent Will Be Swatted Like The Fly She Is

And said swatter will become a Fear of Extermination. DUN-DUN-DUN.

Mister Malus Reviews: Urban Malefic

This reflects only my individual opinions and should not be taken as fact. I do not ask you to agree or disagree with me, and I definitely encourage you to form your own opinions about the blog.

Urban Malefic

Author: TheSomnambulist
Status: Finished
Fear(s): Quite a few, with the most notable being The Empty City, Nightlanders, the Rake, and the Cold Boy

 Plot:

The blog follows a guy called Portnoy Augustus who has been brought to the city for “testing”. Instead of the regular post-by-post account that we normally get, though, Portnoy has a device called a “PsiMe” implanted within his brain that uploads his thoughts to a blog. Inside the city, he is subjected to attacks from various monsters, finding alternate versions of himself, and falling. Lots and lots of falling.

The PsiMe device is a great idea and I really like its execution. It did tend to clutter up space with random thoughts, but that’s kind of the premise, isn’t it? Anyway, the way Portnoy’s thoughts kept getting off-track was pretty funny at times and quite true for some people whose minds work that way.

I wish we had seen more of the alternate Portnoys, or at least one who got more screentime. Granted, they played a big part in the end when it’s revealed that the City is making the Portnoys create a “key”, but I think it could have been interesting to see interactions with Story Portnoy and an Alternate Portnoy over the course of a few posts.

The Fears were pretty well done, too, especially the City. Holy crap, the City. Pretty much, the City screws with Portnoy in the weirdest ways imaginable. At one point he’s walking on the sun, and at another he’s on a beach. The Nightlanders and the Rake were good as servants to the City, too, though I wonder why the Rake was there… At first, I didn’t even know it was the Rake. Anyway, the most terrifying Fear for me was probably the Cold Boy. Very good portrayal of Frosty, even if it only appeared for a few posts. I also love the way it was brought into the story.

On the ending, I kind of guessed at it because I read The World Through These Eyeholes, but to think of the City taking over an entire universe is just… Well, terrifying. With the mindscrew it put Portnoy through, I can only imagine what would happen if it was set loose within the world. I also like the idea of Portnoy being able to fight back against the City; it gives one a kind of hope.

Characters:

Portnoy Augustus: I really, really like him for some reason that I can’t put my thumb on. I think it’s because we really get to see how his character goes through the story because we’re looking directly into his mind. So, nothing is secret… NOTHING. BAHAHAHA.

Ahem. Anyway, he’s just your average kind of guy who gets dragged into the middle of things. It seems kind of bland when I say it like that, but it makes the ending a whole lot better when you realize that this guy is taking on an entire Fear by using its own powers against itself. Portnoy also seems smart, at least in some cases. He’s good at problem-solving, I guess, but it takes him some time to learn the correct method of solving… stuff.

Also, that name… Portnoy. Pretty awesome, I have to say.

The Empty City: Though technically not a person, the Fear still counts as a character because it does its best in manipulating Portnoy throughout the story. It also puts him through a living Hell, and the things Portnoy goes through… Blegh. Needless to say, I was cheering for Portnoy near the end when the City started to get its own power turned on itself.

I think I mentioned this before, but I like the idea of the City trying to… expand. Almost like it’s a corruption, a disease on reality, and it’s trying to infect other universes. I don’t know if this is what Somnam intended, but that’s how I saw the Fear in this story.

I wish there had been more realistic environments that went on to screw with Portnoy, though. It was cool seeing the beach and the moon, but rooms (like the one Portnoy began in, for instance) that have something wrong with them brings the horror aspect in it a lot more, making one think “Oh, crap, what if…?” or something like that. Then again, the fact that the City can take any environment and turn it into a nightmare makes the statement “Nothing is sacred!” come into effect, so…

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Well, I enjoyed this blog and I’d say it’s worth reading if you’ve got the time. It shouldn’t take you too terribly long to get through this one unless you have issues with one-paragraph blog posts. The concepts are nice, the take on the Empty City was pretty cool (reminded me in some places of the Rabbit Holes in RAPTURE, actually), and I love the way the Cold Boy was portrayed. If you have the time, go ahead and give this blog a try. And Somnam, good job once again.