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.
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