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.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Monday, August 27, 2012
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.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
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.
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.
Saturday, August 25, 2012
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.
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.
Friday, August 24, 2012
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.
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.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
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!
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!
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
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.
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.
Monday, August 20, 2012
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.
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.
Sunday, August 19, 2012
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.
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.
Author: Pullingoffmasks
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!
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!!!”
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.
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.
---
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.
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.
Author: DJay32
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.
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.
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.
Author: AmeliaTanaka Status: Ongoing Fear(s): Plague Doctor; the Quiet; Cold Boy; the Choir; the Eye; Will probably have a few more
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.
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.
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.
---
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.
Author: TheSomnambulist
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.
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.
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.
Mister Malus Reviews: Terrific
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.
Author: Visitor
Another blogella. This one is a bit… odd, but you find out what’s going on after the first few posts. It’s very, very short and because of this I won’t talk about it too much, but I did like it. It’s about a dancer who has trouble with... someone in her life, leading to complications and later finding the Nightlanders.
If you’re looking for a nice, short read, I’d go ahead and take a look at this. Character does have a specific voice, which I like, but characterization of other characters was kind of bland. I do recommend that you try and… look within the blank spaces in order to appreciate the whole story.
Terrific
Author: Visitor
Status: Finished
Fear(s): Nightlanders, Empty City
Another blogella. This one is a bit… odd, but you find out what’s going on after the first few posts. It’s very, very short and because of this I won’t talk about it too much, but I did like it. It’s about a dancer who has trouble with... someone in her life, leading to complications and later finding the Nightlanders.
If you’re looking for a nice, short read, I’d go ahead and take a look at this. Character does have a specific voice, which I like, but characterization of other characters was kind of bland. I do recommend that you try and… look within the blank spaces in order to appreciate the whole story.
Mister Malus Reviews: And When The Sky Was Opened
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.
Author: Alliterator
Though it’s rather short, the story is quite effective in making the reader feel despair and a sense of impending doom. As things go from bad to worse, you can’t help but wonder what you’d do in that type of situation (probably nothing – ahaha, bad joke). One thing I realized later in the story was how terrifying the situation must be – the world around you is disappearing, almost like nothing in human history had never happened, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. And within the next few seconds, you could disappear, as well… Fading into nothing.
I liked the environment the protagonist was in at the end, but I felt the ending itself was kind of cheap. If it had been an abrupt stop instead of a sentence about to say “And maybe I’ll disappear, too”, I think it would have been much more effective. In the alternate reality, I felt it was kind of creepy that the journal had disappeared, implying that the Quiet was coming, but… *shrugs* It might have been better to have it end on a “Hmm, I can’t remember what I was doing” way, a subtle nod to the fact that the Quiet might be there, rather than an “Oh Crap” moment.
Characters:
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All in all, I liked this blogella. It was a bit short, true, but it only took me a few minutes to read and provided some great takes on the Quiet. If someone wants to read up about the Quiet, this is probably where you should sta
And When The Sky Was Opened
Author: Alliterator
Status: Finished
Fear(s): The Quiet
Plot:
Though it’s rather short, the story is quite effective in making the reader feel despair and a sense of impending doom. As things go from bad to worse, you can’t help but wonder what you’d do in that type of situation (probably nothing – ahaha, bad joke). One thing I realized later in the story was how terrifying the situation must be – the world around you is disappearing, almost like nothing in human history had never happened, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. And within the next few seconds, you could disappear, as well… Fading into nothing.
I liked the environment the protagonist was in at the end, but I felt the ending itself was kind of cheap. If it had been an abrupt stop instead of a sentence about to say “And maybe I’ll disappear, too”, I think it would have been much more effective. In the alternate reality, I felt it was kind of creepy that the journal had disappeared, implying that the Quiet was coming, but… *shrugs* It might have been better to have it end on a “Hmm, I can’t remember what I was doing” way, a subtle nod to the fact that the Quiet might be there, rather than an “Oh Crap” moment.
Characters:
It’s odd to feel for a character when the blog is this short, but I think it works because the character is kind of an audience surrogate (which is perfect in this case). Sure, we get to know about him and how he cares for his family, coworkers, and friends, his thoughts about the end of the world, but it never goes into too much detail. This encourages the reader to fill in the gaps, and in some cases people will unintentionally put themselves in that kind of situation. These “What if?” situations are what get me, and I know a few friends who are the same way.
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All in all, I liked this blogella. It was a bit short, true, but it only took me a few minutes to read and provided some great takes on the Quiet. If someone wants to read up about the Quiet, this is probably where you should sta
The End of Sorrow Lies: DJay's review
For reference, The End of Sorrow Lies was written by alliterator and can be found here.
alliterator is arguably the most prolific writer in the Fear Mythos, having been responsible for upwards of thirty-plus blogs alone. The End of Sorrow Lies is one of his shorter blogs, a blogpasta with only thirteen posts. It's about a man named Adam who posts about dreams he's been having.
The first half of the blog consists of regular posts describing a few dreams, with the occasional picture drawn in MSPaint illustrating an element of a mentioned dream. These posts, to be honest, don't really get me into the story. The pictures offer potential for immersion into the story, but they're used so sparingly and about such trivial details (such as mountains and a dancing skeleton, which never come up in the story again) that they really don't do much for me.
The second half of the blog talks about a recurring dream Adam has been having, involving wolves chasing him and tearing into him. Between certain posts are posts with a cryptic message written in, and really, these cryptic messages don't have much place in the story. I'm pretty sure the point of the messages is to convey that there's more to the dreams and that Adam may be descending into madness, but the dreams' significance is obvious because they're the focus of the story and Adam's descent into madness never comes up again. As it stands, they just feel arbitrary.
The actual wolf dreams are certainly described well, though the scariest element of them is that the number of wolves increases with each dream, and that detail isn't mentioned until the very end anyway where it all changes. The final post hints at personal insecurities of Adam's (he dreams of teachers being disappointed in him and his loved ones dying because of him), but he had received so little characterization for the bulk of the blogpasta that this seems to come without precedent, and the story ends shortly after they're mentioned. The final post does reprise the circus dream mentioned earlier, and this was a great choice and really helped the story feel like it was being tied together.
One thing I feel noteworthy is the blog's layout. The background is custom and of a cartoon thought bubble, the blog's colour scheme is creative and pleasant, and the blog's description is surreal and contemplative. It's clear alliterator had put effort into making the blog presentable, and for that I must commend him. The pictures he had drawn for the blog were also a nice touch, with a big sense of minimalism, not that much detail put in.
Another detail worth mentioning is that this blog is one of the first to feature the Fear known as The Grotesque, who is represented by Adam's dreams which lead to his tragic suicide. The blog does fairly well at keeping subtle about The Grotesque's influence, although I'm left with the question of "If the last post really happened, who killed Adam's parents?" It's possible, even probable, that the interpretation of The Grotesque here is one that can have influence on the outside world as well as its subjects' dreams. But still, that's not evident; alliterator could have been a bit clearer about it.
All in all, The End of Sorrow Lies is a pretty blog with some nice experimentation in surrealism and minimalism. But the story itself falls short of its potential, with Adam getting very little characterization until it's too late and the story feeling almost nonexistent until the last post. It feels like this blog existed solely to introduce The Grotesque, who was going to appear in other stories anyway so even that purpose is rather redundant.
Not one of alliterator's better blogs, I'm sorry to say.
alliterator is arguably the most prolific writer in the Fear Mythos, having been responsible for upwards of thirty-plus blogs alone. The End of Sorrow Lies is one of his shorter blogs, a blogpasta with only thirteen posts. It's about a man named Adam who posts about dreams he's been having.
The first half of the blog consists of regular posts describing a few dreams, with the occasional picture drawn in MSPaint illustrating an element of a mentioned dream. These posts, to be honest, don't really get me into the story. The pictures offer potential for immersion into the story, but they're used so sparingly and about such trivial details (such as mountains and a dancing skeleton, which never come up in the story again) that they really don't do much for me.
The second half of the blog talks about a recurring dream Adam has been having, involving wolves chasing him and tearing into him. Between certain posts are posts with a cryptic message written in, and really, these cryptic messages don't have much place in the story. I'm pretty sure the point of the messages is to convey that there's more to the dreams and that Adam may be descending into madness, but the dreams' significance is obvious because they're the focus of the story and Adam's descent into madness never comes up again. As it stands, they just feel arbitrary.
The actual wolf dreams are certainly described well, though the scariest element of them is that the number of wolves increases with each dream, and that detail isn't mentioned until the very end anyway where it all changes. The final post hints at personal insecurities of Adam's (he dreams of teachers being disappointed in him and his loved ones dying because of him), but he had received so little characterization for the bulk of the blogpasta that this seems to come without precedent, and the story ends shortly after they're mentioned. The final post does reprise the circus dream mentioned earlier, and this was a great choice and really helped the story feel like it was being tied together.
One thing I feel noteworthy is the blog's layout. The background is custom and of a cartoon thought bubble, the blog's colour scheme is creative and pleasant, and the blog's description is surreal and contemplative. It's clear alliterator had put effort into making the blog presentable, and for that I must commend him. The pictures he had drawn for the blog were also a nice touch, with a big sense of minimalism, not that much detail put in.
Another detail worth mentioning is that this blog is one of the first to feature the Fear known as The Grotesque, who is represented by Adam's dreams which lead to his tragic suicide. The blog does fairly well at keeping subtle about The Grotesque's influence, although I'm left with the question of "If the last post really happened, who killed Adam's parents?" It's possible, even probable, that the interpretation of The Grotesque here is one that can have influence on the outside world as well as its subjects' dreams. But still, that's not evident; alliterator could have been a bit clearer about it.
All in all, The End of Sorrow Lies is a pretty blog with some nice experimentation in surrealism and minimalism. But the story itself falls short of its potential, with Adam getting very little characterization until it's too late and the story feeling almost nonexistent until the last post. It feels like this blog existed solely to introduce The Grotesque, who was going to appear in other stories anyway so even that purpose is rather redundant.
Not one of alliterator's better blogs, I'm sorry to say.
To Light a Candle: DJay's criticism
Ed. note: I was asked to give criticism on this blog for the author, so the "review" consists mostly of constructive criticism and is addressed to the author.
For reference, To Light a Candle was written by proxiehunter and can be found here.
During the first 'act,' your posts where you watched Candle Cove and described the episodes? The descriptions were laying it on a little thick. Very long text dumps that a lot of people out there just don't have the patience to read. This was the same problem I had with famous slenderblog The Tutorial; I just don't give a shit when I go to a new post and it's several paragraphs long, only to go to the next one and have that several paragraphs. One or two posts every now and then, like.. Wham Episodes and plot twists that come every now and then? Perfect as super long. But readers like little posts.
But readers don't like little boring posts, like during the Omega arc, when you'd leave a post saying "I'm gonna go do this thing now," and that's it. If you have anything important in those like.. place names or what you're actually doing, readers tend to skim over them because they're just filler to the common eye.
During the Beakman arc, which was admirably well done for the most part, all the posts with the codes were no doubt awesome at the time, but to the reader reading through-- that is, most of your readerbase? It's just more text that looks like filler. One of my biggest beefs with blog stories is that people tend to put info in the comments, and I don't really like that. If you're gonna put important info-- like the translations of the codes-- in the comments, put it on the actual blog again. "But wait, that defeats the purpose of the whole 'Doctor Beakman reads this blog and cannot know' aspect!" Yes. But that's where we reach the fork in the road of writing blogs: You come to a point eventually where it's choosing between immersion/realism and a balanced finished product with good flow. Look at, say, Marble Hornets. Look at "Entry 21," with the red tower. That was a terrifying entry when it first came out and all the suspense was placed greatly because it made it feel realistic, like Jay was just posting the contents of his video tape. But to an outsider, it's kinda suspenseful, but it's.. just.. boring for the most part. The same applies muchmore to, say, Dark Harvest or Tribe Twelve or any series that puts a focus on being "boring because it's realism."
Finally, it.. ah. I appreciate what you were trying to do with the whole "Hide the Wooden Girl until the end" bit, but it didn't really work. At least, you didn't built it up enough. You hid too much until the end, and then you didn't focus on all of it enough. The flow was pretty off. Like, the Screaming Tower. Great stuff in the final post, but then we see the Wooden Girl for the only time in the story and it's fascinating, but it's just.. it's all in the same post, as well as having the climax and the ending all in one post, and the flow is just way off.
SPECIFICALLY, you had a really good flow going for the first half of the story, building up on all the Candle Cove aspects and the Wooden Girl, and I really couldn't wait to see where those story parts went. But then you focused on Omega and kinda took the focus away-- that felt almost arbitrary-- and then you entered the.. really bizarre place. I loved the bizarre place, but there really was no build-up to it, and it wound up being a significant part of the story. But there was no build-up. And it lasted a long time! You introduced all-new elements like The Eye, which I did like, but it felt arbitrary, like you just pulled a way for Janice to be freed out of thin air, no build-up at all. You should have at least gone back to earlier posts and retconned in hints about it. And then we came to Doctor Beakman, and that part was brilliant, but it really didn't have much to do with the Candle Cove or really that much that had been built-up. You just seemed like you were adding whatever seemed scary. And then, after an extended time there, we finally saw hints of the Candle Cove arc and it looked like it was getting really good again! ....but then it all just hit the end like a brick wall. We needed more time to slip back into the Candle Cove arc, maybe some entries of reaching the Screaming Tower and sneaking around, trying to get to the recording room. Entries building on the Wooden Girl's presence being just around that corner, entries reminding us of everything Carlson set out to do, entries showing how the Screaming Tower was, like.. vitally connected to The Eye and Doctor Beakman and all this other insanity.
But there was none/little of that. It wound up feeling like reading one story-- the Candle Cove arc-- and then suddenly a different story starts halfway through starring the same protagonist, and we learn that one, and then that one just abruptly stops and we're thrown right at the end of the first story, feeling as if we missed some crucial rising action or climaxes.
During the first 'act,' your posts where you watched Candle Cove and described the episodes? The descriptions were laying it on a little thick. Very long text dumps that a lot of people out there just don't have the patience to read. This was the same problem I had with famous slenderblog The Tutorial; I just don't give a shit when I go to a new post and it's several paragraphs long, only to go to the next one and have that several paragraphs. One or two posts every now and then, like.. Wham Episodes and plot twists that come every now and then? Perfect as super long. But readers like little posts.
But readers don't like little boring posts, like during the Omega arc, when you'd leave a post saying "I'm gonna go do this thing now," and that's it. If you have anything important in those like.. place names or what you're actually doing, readers tend to skim over them because they're just filler to the common eye.
During the Beakman arc, which was admirably well done for the most part, all the posts with the codes were no doubt awesome at the time, but to the reader reading through-- that is, most of your readerbase? It's just more text that looks like filler. One of my biggest beefs with blog stories is that people tend to put info in the comments, and I don't really like that. If you're gonna put important info-- like the translations of the codes-- in the comments, put it on the actual blog again. "But wait, that defeats the purpose of the whole 'Doctor Beakman reads this blog and cannot know' aspect!" Yes. But that's where we reach the fork in the road of writing blogs: You come to a point eventually where it's choosing between immersion/realism and a balanced finished product with good flow. Look at, say, Marble Hornets. Look at "Entry 21," with the red tower. That was a terrifying entry when it first came out and all the suspense was placed greatly because it made it feel realistic, like Jay was just posting the contents of his video tape. But to an outsider, it's kinda suspenseful, but it's.. just.. boring for the most part. The same applies muchmore to, say, Dark Harvest or Tribe Twelve or any series that puts a focus on being "boring because it's realism."
Finally, it.. ah. I appreciate what you were trying to do with the whole "Hide the Wooden Girl until the end" bit, but it didn't really work. At least, you didn't built it up enough. You hid too much until the end, and then you didn't focus on all of it enough. The flow was pretty off. Like, the Screaming Tower. Great stuff in the final post, but then we see the Wooden Girl for the only time in the story and it's fascinating, but it's just.. it's all in the same post, as well as having the climax and the ending all in one post, and the flow is just way off.
SPECIFICALLY, you had a really good flow going for the first half of the story, building up on all the Candle Cove aspects and the Wooden Girl, and I really couldn't wait to see where those story parts went. But then you focused on Omega and kinda took the focus away-- that felt almost arbitrary-- and then you entered the.. really bizarre place. I loved the bizarre place, but there really was no build-up to it, and it wound up being a significant part of the story. But there was no build-up. And it lasted a long time! You introduced all-new elements like The Eye, which I did like, but it felt arbitrary, like you just pulled a way for Janice to be freed out of thin air, no build-up at all. You should have at least gone back to earlier posts and retconned in hints about it. And then we came to Doctor Beakman, and that part was brilliant, but it really didn't have much to do with the Candle Cove or really that much that had been built-up. You just seemed like you were adding whatever seemed scary. And then, after an extended time there, we finally saw hints of the Candle Cove arc and it looked like it was getting really good again! ....but then it all just hit the end like a brick wall. We needed more time to slip back into the Candle Cove arc, maybe some entries of reaching the Screaming Tower and sneaking around, trying to get to the recording room. Entries building on the Wooden Girl's presence being just around that corner, entries reminding us of everything Carlson set out to do, entries showing how the Screaming Tower was, like.. vitally connected to The Eye and Doctor Beakman and all this other insanity.
But there was none/little of that. It wound up feeling like reading one story-- the Candle Cove arc-- and then suddenly a different story starts halfway through starring the same protagonist, and we learn that one, and then that one just abruptly stops and we're thrown right at the end of the first story, feeling as if we missed some crucial rising action or climaxes.
Snowball in Hell: DJay's review
For reference, Snowball in Hell was written by alliterator and can be found here.
Pros: Claire was a really brilliant character and I loved her yes. I love how, in the end, she was right all along. The French nursery rhymes were a nice touch, and the cold is always a great topic for horror. The reveal of the true Cold Boy was.. well, I really liked that a lot. John was a very likable narrator, I felt like I could really empathize with him. I sensed a lot of wordplay throughout this, and god, do I love wordplay. All these individual characters were all done so well. I loved how you could tell each person had a detailed life to them, even though you didn't really spend much time focusing on each one. The meeting with Houdin, towards the end, was particularly memorable. A great job, I loved his explanation of simply "Make yourself not a target."
Cons: I couldn't really tell what alliterator was trying to do with the Cold Boy reveal at the end. Like, was he saying the whole thing was just a metaphor for the cold isolation in our hearts? If so, what was the point of Holly and Henry who threw molotovs into a building? Was it supposed to be entirely literal? If it was, then the actual reveal was a little disappointing. I mean, yeah, I get that it's supposed to be eldritch, we can't possibly understand it, but from a reader's point-of-view, it's not very satisfying to have all this build-up only to say "Oh, it's too much information." I know Stephen King was quoted as saying that the reader's gonna be disappointed with your monster because of their own imagination, but still, if you're gonna leave it all up to their imagination, give them some clues as to what to imagine. "A boy with no body," for instance, conjures up more of a mental image than "something I can't describe," even though both can describe the same thing. Drop words to spark trains of thought in the reader's head!
Conclusion: Definitely one of the better Fearblogs out there, had some very memorable moments to it even if it had the occasional low point. alliterator's blogs have always been favourites of mine, though this one doesn't quite reach as high as some of his others might. It was a great basic horror story, but I felt like it was lacking some sort of extra je ne sais quoi.
Pros: Claire was a really brilliant character and I loved her yes. I love how, in the end, she was right all along. The French nursery rhymes were a nice touch, and the cold is always a great topic for horror. The reveal of the true Cold Boy was.. well, I really liked that a lot. John was a very likable narrator, I felt like I could really empathize with him. I sensed a lot of wordplay throughout this, and god, do I love wordplay. All these individual characters were all done so well. I loved how you could tell each person had a detailed life to them, even though you didn't really spend much time focusing on each one. The meeting with Houdin, towards the end, was particularly memorable. A great job, I loved his explanation of simply "Make yourself not a target."
Cons: I couldn't really tell what alliterator was trying to do with the Cold Boy reveal at the end. Like, was he saying the whole thing was just a metaphor for the cold isolation in our hearts? If so, what was the point of Holly and Henry who threw molotovs into a building? Was it supposed to be entirely literal? If it was, then the actual reveal was a little disappointing. I mean, yeah, I get that it's supposed to be eldritch, we can't possibly understand it, but from a reader's point-of-view, it's not very satisfying to have all this build-up only to say "Oh, it's too much information." I know Stephen King was quoted as saying that the reader's gonna be disappointed with your monster because of their own imagination, but still, if you're gonna leave it all up to their imagination, give them some clues as to what to imagine. "A boy with no body," for instance, conjures up more of a mental image than "something I can't describe," even though both can describe the same thing. Drop words to spark trains of thought in the reader's head!
Conclusion: Definitely one of the better Fearblogs out there, had some very memorable moments to it even if it had the occasional low point. alliterator's blogs have always been favourites of mine, though this one doesn't quite reach as high as some of his others might. It was a great basic horror story, but I felt like it was lacking some sort of extra je ne sais quoi.
The Hunter: DJay's review
For reference, The Hunter was written by CuteWithoutThe and can be found here.
Pros: It was a wild ride, pretty damn interesting, and it wound up having a pretty intense cast of characters. I am being completely honest here in saying that there were a lot of parts that have inspired great ideas for my stories (if The Manufactured Newborn ever shows up in Rapture, this blog will have been the reason). Your depiction of The Rake was simply.. iconic, completely memorable. From the beginning, you had me thinking the Fears were what they normally are (The Rake was just a creature of sheer ferocity), but towards the final acts, you had my brain speeding around, figuring out what all the true intentions were (The Rake was pulling a million Xanatos Gambits a second in order to counter/play along with everyone else's! Holy shit!). The ultimate climax of this story, the turning point where the Hunter has his entire life forced into his consciousness at once on the giant Blind Man's book, setting him up for the revelation that he was wrong all this time? That was legitimately breathtaking. I almost wanted to cry when everyone in his life told him they were sorry for everything, and your depiction of The Blind Man's attacks were very much creepy. Finally, "Everything to nothing" were excellent Arc Words, and you gave me goosebumps some of the times you used them.
Cons: Narm city sometimes, man. The Hunter's typing was a little too.. immature, I dunno. It's the same complaint I have with Peter Rivers; it's obvious that it was written by a teenager. The time travel was fitting to the story, but I can't say I really liked it. The fact that The Wooden Girl helped him made me roll my eyes, too. At times, The Blind Man sounded less like a well-knowledged eldritch being and more like a James Bond villain. Finally, on a note unrelated to narm, it did get confusing a lot, all throughout the story.
My conclusion: CuteWithoutThe's The Hunter is a tale of heartbreak, betrayal, confusing timelines, antagonists eldritch and mundane. It starts off as a story of the ultimate chase, and as the story reaches its Tomato In The Mirror climax, it becomes an emotional tale of redemption. You learn to sympathize and empathize with James, and the various plot twists will take the air in your lungs from everything to nothing in ten seconds flat. If you can stick with the blog through the odd plot, you'll find a bona fide Fearblog by the esteemed founder of The Fear Mythos.
Pros: It was a wild ride, pretty damn interesting, and it wound up having a pretty intense cast of characters. I am being completely honest here in saying that there were a lot of parts that have inspired great ideas for my stories (if The Manufactured Newborn ever shows up in Rapture, this blog will have been the reason). Your depiction of The Rake was simply.. iconic, completely memorable. From the beginning, you had me thinking the Fears were what they normally are (The Rake was just a creature of sheer ferocity), but towards the final acts, you had my brain speeding around, figuring out what all the true intentions were (The Rake was pulling a million Xanatos Gambits a second in order to counter/play along with everyone else's! Holy shit!). The ultimate climax of this story, the turning point where the Hunter has his entire life forced into his consciousness at once on the giant Blind Man's book, setting him up for the revelation that he was wrong all this time? That was legitimately breathtaking. I almost wanted to cry when everyone in his life told him they were sorry for everything, and your depiction of The Blind Man's attacks were very much creepy. Finally, "Everything to nothing" were excellent Arc Words, and you gave me goosebumps some of the times you used them.
Cons: Narm city sometimes, man. The Hunter's typing was a little too.. immature, I dunno. It's the same complaint I have with Peter Rivers; it's obvious that it was written by a teenager. The time travel was fitting to the story, but I can't say I really liked it. The fact that The Wooden Girl helped him made me roll my eyes, too. At times, The Blind Man sounded less like a well-knowledged eldritch being and more like a James Bond villain. Finally, on a note unrelated to narm, it did get confusing a lot, all throughout the story.
My conclusion: CuteWithoutThe's The Hunter is a tale of heartbreak, betrayal, confusing timelines, antagonists eldritch and mundane. It starts off as a story of the ultimate chase, and as the story reaches its Tomato In The Mirror climax, it becomes an emotional tale of redemption. You learn to sympathize and empathize with James, and the various plot twists will take the air in your lungs from everything to nothing in ten seconds flat. If you can stick with the blog through the odd plot, you'll find a bona fide Fearblog by the esteemed founder of The Fear Mythos.
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