Misery Always Knows: Mr Willis's review

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This Could Be Heaven: DJay's review

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RedRockingHood Analyzes Vincent (Pyre for the Heart)

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

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

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

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

Lacuna Urbis: DJay's review

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes from the Condemned: DJay's review

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LITTLE SLICES: THE INSOMNOBLOG: DJay's review

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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