My What Spindly Tentacles You Have

All the better to abduct small children with, I guess.

Bit of a cop-out today, albeit early. On the plus side I found a notebook I wrote in to stave off boredom at the haunted house last year, which is epic since I've had two entries I've wanted to post since I even started this blog.

 Edit: So, should I be unnerved that this doodle comes out with fucking distortion on it then?

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A Sense of Darkness

Hell, why not, this is why people keep journals, right?

Tonight is Saturday night. I leave work the same as I always do, a little later than most everyone else, but not terribly so. There's a woman waiting for a ride, so I briefly chat with her. I've been given a kind of honorary ... thing which grants me better parking spaces than most of my coworkers, so I look for the allotted parking space before I leave.

As I reach my car, I am nearly overwhelmed with the sense that I should not take the Interstate. As I mentioned, I tend to listen to my instincts, even if they make no sense. The weather isn't bad; there's no reason to take the other route, but I feel like I should. Pulling out, I turn right, and am torn between two options. For no discernable reason, I turn right, taking the slightly longer path out of the lot, past a stand of trees. Everything looks like the stray limbs of some eldritch horror, but if something was watching me, I could not say. Night driving takes a toll on me, not because it is so dark, but because of the brief flashes of intense light.

There is something off. I am on edge the entire trip home.

When I cross the train tracks, near to my work, I am confronted with a red light, and there is a man in the center of it all, directing traffic. This is unusual. To my right, along the side of the road, there is a vehicle with lights flashing, though I can see no cause for this disruption. It does not hinder me terribly.

It is hard not to see the Tall Man in the many stands of trees, though truly I doubt He was there.

He is after all so busy elsewhere, is He not?

When I enter town proper, there are more flashing lights, and a siren. As I pull up to a red light, a fire truck speeds through, going from right to left across my field of vision.

There is not much else to report; my sense of dread seems to have been unfounded.

Of course, when I finally arrived home, there was a wild, swinging party going on at my neighbor's house, and no parking to be found the entire block. This was unusual only in that their gathering made any noise at all; in months prior, it had been deathly silent in the house located at the epicenter of the lost parking, and only the leaving visitors were any indication of where to lay blame. Tonight I had to use a back alley, and come through the back fence. Every shape seemed ominous until identified. Even the large tree was vaguely threatening.

I have no tolerance for gatherings, even at the best of times. I am not invited to such parties because I have no interest in such parties. I must confess I do not like people very much, and I have grown very tired of having to solve their problems over the course of my employment. Except that I am still in need of revenue, I cannot say that I will be displeased to become free from my tether.

Every day I am forced to think because another person refuses to, I find the façade cracks a little bit more, and I care a little bit less.

I am just so tired of people.

Surprisingly Not Dead

Still late, though. Sorry 'bout that. Look up and it's 6PM and realized I hadn't yet posted this.

AND THEN IT WAS TOMORROW.

Sooooo.

I'm a child of the modern, fear-mongering media. You know, the one that's happy to remind you, constantly, that not only are psychopaths real, but they look like anybody else, right up until they cut your skin off and wear it as a suit, all the while pretending to BE you.

At which point, they'll look kind of like YOU, not anybody else.

So, right, where was I going with this?

Ah, yes, the Mythos, because my brain has latched onto that like a starving man might latch onto a stripper covered in delicious cake.

Being, as I am, conditioned toward a certain level of mistrust for my fellow man (and wo-man), it should come as no surprise that the High Octane Nightmare and/or Paranoia Fuel that is the Slender Man has a special place in hell my heart, even if I dismiss the Man Himself as false.

Proxies.

Casual bystanders (read: the people who came here to find out how to leave Gilneas before the plot says you can (protip: you can't)) are probably going, "double-you-tea-eff, mate, what's a proxy?"

And I am an endless font of exposition.

Proxies are average (or not) people who've been brainwashed by Slendy to act for him - willingly or otherwise. In a sense, they are Slendy ... By proxy, hence the name.

See, even if there IS no Slender Man, that's terrifying to me.

For instance, say somebody takes the whole thing even a little bit more seriously than I do, and decides that not only are they being stalked, they're being Hallowed or whatever, and now they're brainwashed and crazy.

So of course the only logical thing to do is hunt down other Runners with a knife.

A) They succeed at the stabbing and the killing and the murder, and continue doing so until either they kill themselves or get arrested.

Or:

B) They fail, getting killed/injured by a Runner who takes it just as seriously as they do. Legal/moral/my god what have I done to follow. Same deal if it's just a prank getting out of hand, honestly, with even more "My God What Have I Done." Seasoned to taste, with just a hint of vanilla to cover up the stench. OF DEATH.

Horrifying, innit?

Hell, you could be a proxy.

I could be a proxy. I'm not, but you certainly don't know that.

Also I come off as creepy, I think.

Sometimes.

Black Leaves

In which I attempt to draw something I have no means of experiencing personally, nor any real desire to do so. I uh ... I don't recommend staring at it too long. I've actually lost time just looking at it.

So, transcribe, because that's a Friday tradition:

A PATH NO FEET WERE EVER MEANT TO TREAD, NOR EYES TO SEE. IT IS THE BEGINNING AND THE END

YGGDRASIL IS ALL AROUND.

IT IS ALL PLACES AND ALL TIMES.
EVERYWHERE
NOWHERE.


IT IS BUT A BLACKENED PAPER CUT-OUT OF WORLDS ENTIRE WHICH HAVE NEVER BEEN - COULD NEVER BE - YET ARE


EVEN A GLIMPSE OF TOTAL PERSPECTIVE LEADS TO MADNESS


OF COURSE IT WOULD BE BLACK.
BLACK IS A MIX OF ALL COLORS.


HOW COULD ONE BE SATISFIED WITH THEIR INCONSEQUENTIAL LIFE THEREAFTER?


IT DOES NOT REFLECT LIGHT. IT CONSUMES.

I guess now would be a good time to mention that I don't ... really think a lot when I draw. It's part of the reason I draw so infrequently. Pretty much, I decide what I want the structure of it to look like, and then extrapolate subconsciously. So, more or less, don't blame me, I don't really remember drawing half of this. And no, I don't really know why I wrote that up there. It just ... seemed like a good idea I guess.

Or do blame me. You know, whichever.

I get the feeling some of the imagery was influenced by this here comic I read now.

Bonus points if you can tell me what the hell it means, 'coz I really can't.

Reality

I want to get this off my metaphorical chest before anyone comes here for the wrong reasons:

I started this blog on a whim, with the off hope that I might scrounge up some additional cashflow while writing it. Hence the ads (which have become increasingly more depressing, I might add), and the donate button, especially.

This is not another ARG.

This is not a blog specifically started up to document the Slender Man wandering around my house being all spooky and demanding my twenty dollars (I don't even carry around cash ffs).

This is just me writing about whatever happens to be in my head, and yeah, the Mythos has kind of a way of embedding it in peoples' subconscious minds, but I am not writing about it because I want to be ... I don't know, linked somehow to it, leech off its fame, whatever. I'm writing about it because it happens to be there, and I can't really tell my subconscious mind to stop fucking with me.

I don't plan to lie to you about anything. There aren't any secret clues or mysteries to be found here. Sure, I'll omit things - leaving my exact location/name for privacy/security reasons, for example - but I'm not going to lie about anything and then pass it off as reality.

Even the backwards writing and the coughing is easily explained rationally: I've been able to write like that for ages, and it just struck me as the thing to do for that post. And, well, I'm allergic to this entire fucking state. I've always got a minor sinus infection of some sort going on.

This is just me writing about my boring life.

Now, that doesn't mean I plan on, I dunno, going out and telling other people to stop having fun with their ARG, or even to point out that it IS an ARG anywhere else. Hell, for all I know, having never met the people out there or the Man himself, it might well not be, which is a good thought for never sleeping again, now isn't it? Believe me when I say the uncertainty of that has ....

huh. I kind of got distracted reading comics and stuff and completely forgot where I was going with this.

I actually don't think any of that really needed to be said, but since I've got massive writer's block due to not ... really having a ton of stuff going on in my head, this'll have to do.

'Til Friday.

Being sick is really leeching my brainpower.

Irrational

Can someone be said to be suffering from a crisis of (absence of) faith?

I think I have diagnosed a key problem with my psyche: I have significant difficulty with belief.

I have been raised as I think most Americans have, with an odd duality. At once we are told to believe only in the rational and quantifiable and logical, the hard data and concrete proofs in the world, yet then also we are told of Santa Claus, God, the Devil, tarot cards and Slender Men, and we are supposed to sort which of these are fiction from the facts.

I don't believe in God. Not really. I don't believe in God or Jesus, Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, Slender Man or the Devil himself.

But I also cannot so blithely discount myths and legends, magical and unquantifiable lines of reasoning, just because I have not personally experienced anything that counts as hard, logical proof. There is an incredibly large chunk of my mind that simply wants to believe in something ... more. Something beyond the dull mundane world of phone calls and little handheld computer-phones and sleeping peacefully in my blissful island of ignorance. Some part of me wants to get the chance to talk to Cthulhu, no matter how much it would shatter my mind. I think there's a very real desire to be special or important, and I think most humans experience it, and I think that's part of why we devise our little religions with us as the center point.

This inability to decide leads to an ... unease, we will go with unease. There is a schism in my personality, a hard line between a very serious, stony side which believes only in that which I can see and feel and touch, research and prove, and a more ... childlike innocence, a willingness to believe and an enchantment with the fantastic.

I love the idea of magic.

I hate the idea of magic.

No, I really don't want you to try and convert me to your religion. What really makes you think it's all that much better and more true than any of the hundreds of other lines of illogical thought? What makes you think that believing in an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent deity (who actually still gives a damn about humanity, not to say a reality that, being omniscient, he/she/it knows inside and out, from start to finish) that rules over everything is any more reasonable than believing in an omniscient, omnipresent deity that gives out material wealth to small children over the course of a given holiday season (be it the Easter Bunny's chocolate Cadbury Eggs or Santa Claus's gaily wrapped presents)?

Yes, I really do want you to try and convert me to your religion. There's a certain ... comfort ... to belief. There's a joy in feeling as though you are a small part of something larger than yourself. The idea of being a large part of that selfsame entity is intoxicating, if foolish. There's a wonderful relief to the idea that a man with a gun might not completely and utterly end your consciousness just because your brain - and all of your chemical, emotional responses - have been shut down. I only ask for the one thing no religion seems able to provide: proof that cannot be explained by any other means. Proof that does not rely upon confirmation bias and self-delusion.

There's a reason I identify as Agnostic but actually don't try to think about it too hard.

My head hurts.

Now excuse me while I go sleep with the lights still burning because I can't disbelieve in the Slender Man just because He's probably fake.

Sleepy Freewrite

21 Jan 2011
Sleepy Freewrite

I need more sleep than I'm getting
I am having so many problems focusing I need to make the computer read it to me while I read it with my eyes. LOLOLOLOLOL

Slendy ruins techno and makes the TV antenna's loss of signal more worrisome than it should ever be.

He hit me with his ||||||||.
That's cool  ._.

There is a numb spot on my leg. It itches.

I am running out of paper

An if ye harm none
ABOVE ALL ELSE HARM NONE

Tappa tappa tappa 40k songs guy has music in his mind and it is hard to ignore when it escapes

ONE BY ONE HIS SPOTS FELL OFF
( X )
Splendorman -> Slenderman

I wonder if you can see the Slender Man in any other way than film if you are not his intended victim.

If the Slender Man was real and he abducts children and he always appears on film why is He not in more proud parents' home videos?

IT'S SPLENDOR MAN!!! :D

I can hear the music someone else is listening to at the other end of the table and only just cannot make out the words; it is very LOUD.

Wanna sleep. By the time this is read I will have moved to an easier work schedule and my brain will be less mushy. I am so tired and it is hard to keep my eyes open.

I can see the reflection of the overhead lights and my hair in my glasses which is cool. I watch shadows and reflections as much as the real world.

Burning eyes are burning. TIRED AND COLD my eyes burn

Mtn. Dew: Because we as a society have become too lazy to spell out "Mountain." WTF.

"I before E except after C."
"Well, what about 'leisure' and 'seizure'?"
"Ah, |||| it."
English is the language that beats up other languages and takes their loose grammar.

Germ-X smells like dying germs.

THIS IS DRY READING.

So very bored in the brain I am so tired.

|||| you SLabs. Only one Labyrinth, but everybody calls it SLabs. Why is that? Because SLabs is a subsection of HELL where bad tanks go to DIE. |||| you SLabs.

"Where were you when the world stopped turnin'
on that September day?"
America is self-important.

I can smell food because someone has food and I am hungry ANGRY SIMLISH AND ARM WAVING MY MOODS ARE RED-LINING I HATE YOU SELF.

Mood swings, of a sort.

I want a nap.
I want a nap.
I want a nap.
I want a nap.
I want a nap.
I want a nap.
I want a nap.
I want a nap.
I want a nap.
I want a nap.
I am not allowed to sleep.

My hand has fallen asleep and when I twitch my fingers I can feel fizzy blood tingling in my wrist and palm and fingertips all the way up to my elbow. I punched my wall on accident and my finger started bleeding it still hurts I think I have a minor infection.

TRUE ART IS ANGSTY.  I CAN'T SLEEP JUST WANT A NAP TO SLEEP IS THAT SO BAD?

Isn't it nice to have a computer that will talk to you?

TRUE ART IS INCOMPREHENSIBLE AS IS THIS READING MY EYES HAVE GLAZED OVER IT ISN'T VERY HARD I JUST CAN'T FOCUS RIGHT NOW AT ALL.
There are still things to do
And it is important that I do them
The channel keeps changing in my head and I have no control over the remote I can't focus I can't focus I can't think I'm so tired I don't know anything why am I so tired?

I am also sick.

Less than three, OMG LOVE COMPUTER FANTASY
Out of space now KTHXBYE

Paranoid Freewrite

And a Friday Freewrite!

I'm actually considering, with the sheer volume of writing I'm doing right now, to change it back to at least M-F, every day.

Ah well, who knows anyway. ON WITH THE POST!

Paranoid
Freewrite!                      See you.                            Rar tentacles!

I have something on my mind, is it obvious?

You know, I really don't think the whole Slenderman thing is/is not real. Skepticism is extant but still causes paranoia. Go figure. Very suggestible with an already-present tendency toward obsessive thought. lolol.

Scars on an eye                     eyePhone                               water                     Out of
may not cause                    How is                                      damage                  warranty
blindness, just                       time found                            to be                       _
(less complete)                 to blargh and                              killing                    |  \ ET
vision loss.                                 POAST?                            phone                 |_/ AH
                                        smrtfone.                                                                  OMG(s?)
People             How is money supplied by presumably jobless people
Pinatas 4 more  for food and sufficient gas to continue running?  MY WHOLE MEAL COST
personable                                                  $20!                               FIFTEEEN CENTS
portrayals                Snow is very wet                                      If Slendy
                              and also snowy and in addition cold.     turned up it would        FAIL
Blarghing                                                                              be INSTANT hypothermia
in tha                                                                                  death. So cold.
rainz,                SO IF YOU GET OBSESSED
'm blargh     WITH (SLENDERMAN) AND THEN YOU
ing                   LOSE                   SLEEP AND                          Achoo!
in tha              THEN                  YOU HAVE A
rain             DIMINISHED IMMUNE SYSTEM                              COUGH
                     IS IT PARANOIA, SLENDY-SICKNESS,                      OF
                    OR ABJECT STUPIDITY WHEN YOU                        DEATH
                    CATCH A COLD?

Ramen Noodles: The official
foodstuff of runners.

Buy a bike: Ramen is cheaper than gas.
L( X )L 
     ___
|---|_|_
_|_|---|        <---- ((That's a symbol I like. It basically reads HI four times.))

Obsession

Since right now I have an unhealthy fascination with someone tall, dark, and faceless (with tentacles), I figure now's as good a time as any to post my thoughts on it.

Sure.

Who says there's just one Operator/Slender Man?


Sure, he/it/they can bend reality around one slender appendage or another, but given how widely spread his/its/their activities are becoming, as well as the variance in his/its/their behavior between blogs, vlogs, etc., it's not unreasonable to suggest there might be more than one of these abominations wandering about. This can also explain differences in Slendy's stated abilities. Hell, H(a)unting all-but states it outright.

Alternatively, there is just one Slender Man, and he's just messing with us.

Most depictions are downright malevolent, though.


It's like Cthulhu or a feral, man-eating lion or something. Killing people and abducting kids seems to be more or less what Slendy does. The vlogs and blogs from people who survive seem to be as much about Slendy observing them as the other way around - it's like he/it/they is/are just too alien to call him/it/them "evil" - who says he/it/they ascribe to any morality, much less a human-centric one? Which isn't to say he/it/they are harmless, or that sane people with any regard whatsoever for their own wellbeing should seek him/it/them out: see also feral, man-eating lion.


Incidentally, I don't know if this ever came up, but I write in a notebook before posting. I've always had a habit of decorating the margins, but now in addition to the random eyeballs and emoticons I normally doodle, I'm making notes of relevant Tropes and sketching Slender Men and Operator symbols.

Comforting Thoughts for Restful Sleep

Even if the Slender Man were to turn up, I'd never know it: I get sick a lot anyway, it is balls cold up here all the time in the winter, and I tend to avoid cameras of any shape, size, or description (I'm not precisely proud of my appearance).

I'm also a very boring person in real life. Seriously. I go to work, I come home, I play World of Warcraft, and sometimes I watch movies and listen to music. I'd probably bore the hell out of any real-life stalker, supernatural or not.

Also, after getting over the initial shock of someone with no face and tentacles getting into my house past the locks and burglar alarm, and after possibly attempting to bludgeon it to death, I'd likely be more curious than afraid, and more interested in opening some kind of dialogue than fleeing for my life. (How does his/its Alien Geometries work? How does it see without a face? How does it laugh without a mouth - or does it? Can I learn to be a supernatural ninja?)

Finally, I am a very oblivious person, so I'd totally end up not noticing I was being stalked, anyway.

Despite all this, it's probably apparent that paranoia is a persistent problem for me.

And I'm developing a bit of a cough ....

Slender Chess!

Eh, I'm not doing anything else, and this idea struck me as awesome and/or amusing while I was waking up around noonish today, so have a non-standard update!

Slenderman Chess

Pieces

Black starts with only one piece, representing Slendy - the queen.

White starts with the normal selection of pieces, and goes first always.

You will want surplus pawns of both colors.

Goals

The goal of the black player is to eliminate all white pieces from the playing field, while the goal of the white player is to prevent the black queen from being able to move (I'm not sure this is actually possible and would require playtesting, which I don't have the patience to attempt I think this might actually be only possible if you fill up the entire board a la Reversi with the amended pawn rules).

Rules 

This game is played with a standard chess board, (with as many pawns of either color as necessary: use pennies or something if you run out of pawns) and all rules not explicitly outlined here are borrowed directly from Chess (the, uh, non-Slendyful version).

The game does not end if the king is captured; black does not even start with a king.

The black queen (and only the black queen) can, at any time, teleport to any location on the playing field not currently under attack by a white piece (Slendy cannot move into check; it's called Offscreen Teleportation for a reason.) However, the black queen is not required to move out of check, and is allowed to capture white pieces that are not currently in a place that would otherwise be under attack.

When the black player takes a piece, remove the white piece from the playing field and replace it with a corresponding black piece (exceptions noted below), then move the new black piece to a new location of the black player's choosing that is not currently occupied.

When the white player takes a piece, remove the black piece from the playing field and replace it with a corresponding white piece (exceptions noted below), then move the new white piece to a new location of the white player's choosing that is not currently occupied.

If the black queen is captured, do not replace it with a white queen, but instead move it back to its starting point, instantly capturing any white piece occupying that space. Any black piece occupying that space will move instantly to a place of the black player's choosing.

Since the white player can't regenerate the white queen via normal methods, if the white queen is captured, instead replace it with a black pawn. The white queen can only be regenerated by a white pawn making it to the other end of the playing field. This feat can only be performed if the white queen is no longer on the playing field.





Soooo ... what do you think? I think it sounds like it might be amusing anyway - a cross between Chess and Reversi with a dash of Cosmic Horror. Feel free to adopt it and apply your own house rules!

I__See__You

I did not piss off a creepy camera deity.

I slept with my light on last night, and it kept me awake a bit - but I couldn't have gotten to sleep at all without it.

This morning, I am thoroughly exhausted. I kept drifting off, only to jerk awake long enough to make sure I was really alone in my room, seriously. I remember groaning because I saw the alarm clock at 4am.

I want to take a nap.

So, what I've learned from this. I should not watch Paranoia Fuel videos before bed.

Like ever.