Web Video / The Shadow Reader

The Shadow Reader is a horror story narrator and writer who is well-known for narrating Creepypasta stories. He had also taken onto making rants about stories that had failed for numerous reasons, and he also tackles current internet trends. He has also written a Continuity Reboot of The Backyardigans entitled, "The Backyardigans: Backyard Adventures" (or mostly called as "the Unaired Reboot).

His channel can be found here and he currently stands at around 18,000 subscribers.

Tropes About Himself

The Shadow Reader provides examples of:

• Berserk Button: Has a few:
  • In most of his rants, he points out the instances where the author had employed lower case "I's."
  • He makes it clear that he values original works and chews out authors for deciding to rip off already established Creepypastas solely to go with the trend.
• Brutal Honesty: The Shadow Reader makes no ifs or buts when it comes to declaring a story terrible. He does lampshade this by stating continually that he is only harsh because he wants the anonymous writer to improve.
  • Mentioning other Creepypastas in a story sets him off as well.
• Cluster F-Bomb: He swears quite frequently.
• Catchphrase: "Like always, roll the outro, cause I'm out."
• Chaos of the Bells: One of tracks he uses during readings is an eerie rendition of Carol of the Bells.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: He gives this to many writers, but one in particular is when he reviewed Sweet Apple Massacre and called the author out for its disgusting premise.
  • His Creepypasta Fails series, which has him reading extremely awful creepypastas with him interrupting the story regularly to either criticize the story or to give one of these to the authors (especially near the end). His "SML Movie Mario's Breakup" episode is especially something to behold.

Tropes In His Own Creepypastas

His Creepypastas provides examples of:

• Abusive Parents: The narrator’s parents in The Great Awakening Western Animation/Veggietales creepypasta. As they heavily enforce religious beliefs on him, even going so far as to beat him if he says or does anything against their religion, or even if he’s seen anything that doesn’t have to do with it. It gets worse when they discover the DVD and satanic bible he’d been hiding, and they not only beat him so badly they end up breaking his arm, but they take him to a ruthless priest who doses him in olive oil to “exorcise” him for hours.
  • Boris and Doris in "Caillou's Secret".
• Adaptational Jerkass: Ruby in both “The Animated Project” and “The Bogeyman” is much more short tempered with Max to the point of unfairly punishing him.
• Balloon Belly: In the The Amazing World of Gumball creepypasta "The Restaurant", Richard is described as having one after coming back from his 3rd meal of the day (4th in total) at the Fat Rabbit Resturant.
• Break Them by Talking: In "Caillou's Secret", the narrator's daughter Emily does this to her father, calling him a big, stupid monster and saying that she hates him and that everyone, including him, is stupid. This results in him crying in the bathroom for at least an hour.
• Does Not Like Men: The narrator's abusive wife in "Caillou's Secret" certainly qualifies.
• The Dog Bites Back: After Ruby cuts him and sends him to bed without food, Max ends up killing (though it was an accident) and cannibalizing her.
• Domestic Abuse: "Caillou's Secret" features the protagonist having a misandrstic wife who both physically and mentally abused him for years. And he put up with it every single time because he knew if he tried to get help, he'd lose his daughter Emily.
• Driven to Suicide: In his The Loud House lost episode “Abc Catastrophe”, Lisa is driven to suicide after she is bullied by a college dean.
• "Everybody Dies" Ending: "The Rage" ends with Nicole's titular fury wiping out all of Elmore, including herself.
• Fate Worse than Death: One of his The Amazing World of Gumball creepypastas "The Rage" features a device called "The Eraser". True to its name, anyone hit by it's beams of energy will cease to exist, and once it's done, there's not going back.
• Karmic Death: Demetri ends up dying at the hands of Nicole in "The Restaurant" after presumably killing Richard and planning to use his fat and organs to feed his next customers.
  • In another Gumball creepypasta "The Rage", a plethora of Elmore citizens willingly help erase Richard, Darwin, and Anais from existence and Rob ends up killing Gumball via bow and arrow. After Nicole's titular rage, they, along with the rest of the town end up experiencing the same fate as the former three.
• Kick the Dog: Ruby does this to Max in not 1, but 2 of his Max and Ruby creepypastas.
  • In The Animated Project, she goes as far as to hit Max so hard that he begins bleeding after he drives in on her tea party when she denies him asking for food, not even telling him to get a snack. If that wasn’t enough, she then sends him to his room for the rest of the night with no food (including telling him to forget about having dinner) despite him being genuinely hungry. She later appears remorseful for her actions, but the damage had already been done.
  • In The Bogeyman, she cruelly berates Max for being afraid of the bogeyman for the 7th night in a row and at one point even threatens to take away all of his toys. All because she did the same thing when she was younger and her parents had no problem letting her sleep with them. While she does try to make amends for this when the morning comes, Max is already dead by that point.
  • All and we truly mean ALL of Boris and Doris' behavior towards Caillou in "Caillou's Secret". Doris smashes "dirty" dishes in front of Caillou that he cleaned that weren't even that dirty. After he says he didn't mean to, she slaps him, accuses him of talking back to her, and threatens to smash more dishes if he didn't clean them "properly". Boris later proceeds to cruelly force Caillou to clean the basement. And after he gets a bad spider bite, she tells him to go back to work in the basement, and he two then proceed to refuse to feed him til he's finished throughout the episode. And when he doesn't reach his expectations in cleaning the basement, Boris pushes him down the stairs, breaks his leg, and blackmails to deprive him of dinner. When Caillou's done, his parents berate him some more, and quite literally throw him into his room, where he proceeds to outright die from the seemingly poisonous spider bite.
  • The parents in "The Great Awakening", at one point, break his arm by beating him and take him to a church where he's dosed in olive oil for 4 hours, completely ignoring his injuries, and locking him in his room, all for owning non-religious objects.
• Laser-Guided Karma: The parents of the narrator in “The Great Awakening” had practically enforced their beliefs on him for all his life, even going as so far as to become physical when he didn’t comply with their religion. Near the end of the story, they get sentenced to a lifetime behind bars.
  • The protagonist's wife in "Caillou's Secret" was an abusive misandrist who treated him absolutely HORRIBLY for years without any escape for him, damaging him both physically and mentally. She ends up in jail for life and her family turns against her near the end.
• Mutagenic Food: His The Loud House creepypasta, "ABC Catastrope" has this trope. During a science fair, Lisa has invented a machine called the Hunger Crusher 6000, that can make whatever food you like, she wins and everything goes fine... Until one of the judges started to morph into the molten chocolate lava cake she had gotten from the machine, followed by another one of the judges melting down into the mashed potatoes with chunks of his body morphing into the fried chicken chunks. It doesn't stop there. Teachers and students who have at least taken a bite of the food started morphing into various food items they had gotten from the machine, such as fish sticks and even a shredded pulled pork sandwich. The reason why is because Lisa's machine has a thing where the molecules from it's food get scrambled with the molecules of the people, thus turning them into the food they had eaten. And there isn't a reverse for it all. After that, Lisa is approached by the Dean of the college and he says Lisa's machine not only managed to create chaos in the gym but took the lives of nearly half their teachers and students as well and not only that but now they're being sued by nearly half the audience for mental and emotional damages as well and that right there is already going to cost the school millions all because of Lisa's machine and the Dean calls Lisa's machine pathetic. He then says the Board of Education is willing to forgive Lisa and not press charges at what's been done as it wasn't entirely Lisa's fault and it was only a accident. However, they're only willing to do that if Lisa does one thing, and that is she must give up her awards and forfeit her scholarship to the school forever, and on top of that Lisa is forever barred from coming to the school as a student yet Lisa is allowed to come and visit any and all family members with permission by him and the other staff, or Lisa could keep what she has but get hit with many lawsuits and juvie until Lisa reaches the age of 18, or when Lisa becomes a adult and says it's her choice. Lisa ends up losing her scholarship, and she's guilty that she killed many innocent people with her device and the effects can't be reversed, causing Lisa to become depressed and suffer from clinical depression and become broken spirited, and the family drives home. After that, the scene fades for a final time, to show what appears to be the very next day. And Lincoln had already gotten up from the point and makes his way over towards where Lisa's room is obviously trying to talk with Lisa and cheer her up in any way and Lisa doesn't answer. Before Lincoln can open the door, a loud blast erupts into blue light that flashes under the door. Lily's crying is heard from inside the door wich immediately alerts the parents and other siblings. After a few failed attempts of opening the door, Lynn Jr breaks the door down with the hardest kick that she can muster. Upon coming in the room, everyone immediately make their way over to Lily who is crying up a storm. Lincoln on the other hand stares in horror what he is staring at off screen.
• Revenge: The main character of "The Squillum Squeak" is determined to sabotage Nickelodeon after seeing his daughter's sadness over not being able to spend her Birthday with her family due to her two fathers' jobs their keeping them from having the time to. But after submitting a homemade, ultra-violent Spongebob episode, it ending up getting aired instead of just messing with the company like he wanted. If that weren't enough, he ends up getting nearly a plethora of innocent people fired and blacklisted, and when he did confess, he ended up getting threatened with legal actions, getting a fine and having to work overtime and unpaid. Worse, his family started struggling with bills, he started having more fights with and growing more distant from his husband, Dan.
• Straight Gay: Austin, the protagonist of "The Squillum Squeak" has a husband named Dan.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: The narrator's daughter in "Caillou's Secret", but, as it turns out, it wasn't the Caillou episode.