The Slender Man Mythos

We have a thread for Marble Hornets, but none for the rest of the Slender Man blogs/vlogs.

So: which blogs are you reading/vlogs are you watching? Which are good, which are creepy, which are funny? (And yes, this is partially to pimp my own Slenderblog which needs more readers.)

The ones I'm currently reading are H(a)unting (I know some people don't like its version of Slender Man, but I find it an interesting and original concept within the 'verse), A Study in Purple (from the perspective of a psychology student), Dare 2 Die (because, let's face it, Zalgo), and, of course, Encyclopedia Slenderia.

I still have to catch up on the rest of the Slender Man canon, but so far I can say that Just Another Fool remains a personal favorite of mine, if only because it was one of the first Slendy-related series I finished, not counting the Something Awful threads.

I, uh, still need to finish my live-blog of Everyman HYBRID, and I remember there was this short-lived blog called "Cut!" that was a comedic but still consistent take on the mythos. (I'm also a lurker on the Unfiction forums, where they maintain a pretty dedicated Slender Man mini-fandom.)

I read the page and I liked the "oh shit, I've suddenly got the feeling I shouldn't turn around" I got.

Can anyone recommend a good starting point?

My recommendation is the original Something Awful thread where he was created. It started out as a simple "create your own paranormal image" photoshop thread until he took it over.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3150591&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=3

First post from Victor Surge.

I gave up on everyman hydrid, the multimedia storyline lost me.

What annoys me about Slender Man as a whole is that every work in the mythos is always about humanity's powerlessness against him, with everyone not accomplishing any more than sort of finding out more about him and otherwise just perpetually losing and dying and running away and whatnot. I guess that's the point, and things would get a lot less interesting if there were heroes in the mythos who could fight Slendy on equal terms. I suppose if that could happen, it would just be lot of tracking and hunting and fighting and saving a whole assortment of ordinary people from him; it would be still be somewhat scary, but less so, because an appearance by Slender Man would be less of an outright, nothing-you-can-do-about-it Oh, Crap! moment.

I kind of already have a concept for a story of a powerful secret agency battling Slender Man...I guess it's sort of set in the Marble Hornets version of things, where he's known as The Operator and has all those masked followers or whoever they are. But I won't talk about that here.

I just don't like Cosmic Horror as a subgenre in general. I'm generally an optimist with a pretty good life and I don't get anything out of feeling scared or powerless or both. I can sort of see the appeal, but for me I'm always trying to imagine new stories to subvert such things.

What annoys me about Slender Man as a whole is that every work in the mythos is always about humanity's powerlessness against him, with everyone not accomplishing any more than sort of finding out more about him and otherwise just perpetually losing and dying and running away and whatnot. I guess that's the point, and things would get a lot less interesting if there were heroes in the mythos who could fight Slendy on equal terms. I suppose if that could happen, it would just be lot of tracking and hunting and fighting and saving a whole assortment of ordinary people from him; it would be still be somewhat scary, but less so, because an appearance by Slender Man would be less of an outright, nothing-you-can-do-about-it Oh Crap moment.

Zeke in Seeking Truth actually makes some progress. Of course, then it got worse.

So, uh, is anybody actually reading my Slenderblog? Or am I writing for myself? Which is fine. I was just wondering if anyone was reading it.

I'm trying to keep Slendy off-screen for as long as possible; not even referring to him by name.

I'd like Everyman HYBRID more if their plots (all seventeen of them!) meant something rather than the whole series being CREEPY VIDEO FOOTAGE OF COLLEGE KIDS WATCHING VIDEOS ~SCARY~.mp4 and HABIT RABBIT HABIT.

Whole thing seems abominably silly to me.

Theres too much shit going on. Plus the really confusing thing about their series is how it splits into different forms of media.

Par the course for most professional alternate reality games, though at least they have the initiative to plan this shit out, add to the story and get a fucking editor.

I'm finally doing an archive-binge of Everyman HYBRID and I have to say that I love it. Especially "Damsel" and Evan.

it gets worse.

e: Okay, to be fair to EMH, we do know that Corenthal is linked to everyone now. That's moving the plot an angstrom forward.

edited 29th Jan '11 9:07:14 PM by HarryMiste

Shove off, mate. I'm in it for the atmosphere.

Hmm...trying to decide which blog/vlog to look through now. I've seen Marble Hornets, Dreams Into Darkness, The Tutorial, and The London Librarian. Think I might take a look through Seeking Truth and then move onto White Elephants.

I've been out of the SM expanded universe loop a bit and I was actually surprised to see the Core Theory blogs multiply so fast. Must have gone completely under my radar.

Anyone care to share their (hopefully spoiler-free) 2 cents on them? I just started reading White Elephants and I'm still trying to wrap my head around how the general concept caught on.

Whole thing seems abominably silly to me.

Consider the source.

I could not, for the life of me, understand what was happenning in White elephants....

someone care to explain/ summarize?

Just watched up to date of Marble Hornets and read through the first 20 or so pages of the forum topic that spawned the Mythos. Where should I go from here?

Also, this may be something I'd want to get into. Any tip or guidelines on writing these?

^Watch the two other video series; EVERYMAN Hybrid and Tribe Twelve.

Also read the blogs.

In the stuff I'm planning, btw, I'm going to paint Slenderman as a sympathetic guardian.

Are there any blogs that do that?

Sympathetic Slender Man? I haven't heard of any. In Haunting, he is a guardian of sorts, but he's definitely not sympathetic, what with the continuing-to-kill-and-hollow-people-in-horrible-ways thing.

edited 5th Feb '11 6:32:12 AM by Accela

Well, errrm, thats a bit easier said than done because there are a lot of blogs, many of which are multimedia. Which ones are recommended reading?

If I started a blog, it would probably not so much be an ARG (Cause I don't have the time, money, or talent to make it multimedia) as much as a story told through blogposts. Give me a chance to stretch my creative muscles.

That's what I'm trying to do now with brighter than a spoon. /Shameless Plug

edited 5th Feb '11 1:32:39 PM by alliterator

*reads*

Hmm. Not bad. Not bad at all.

I tried Everyman HYBRID but trying to figure out the right order to read everything in was too confusing.

edited 5th Feb '11 1:48:57 PM by Zudak