Sunday, August 19, 2012

Mister Malus Reviews: Pulling off Masks

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

Pulling off Masks


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

Plot:


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

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

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

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

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

Characters:


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

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

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

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

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

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

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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!!!”

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