Today's reviews are a little different in that you're getting three - these scenarios all come from White Dwarf Magazine and their Call of Cthulhu Omnibus. While most of this Omnibus is helpful articles, some are scenarios, and it's from two article sources, Trio of Terror and Ghost Jackal Kill, that I draw the reviews here. Think of them as rapid-fire mini-reviews, meant to showcase what I thought was some interesting creativity from the CoC community long before the Miskatonic Repository was a gleam in Chaosium's eye. Join me after the jump, won't you?
Okay, that title's a bit of a stretch, but I really wanted the alliterative title. The W is silent. Do not dwell upon its presence, for doing so will bring forth an unholy W-based form of the Unspeakable One. The W is silent, silent as the grave...
Today's reviews are a little different in that you're getting three - these scenarios all come from White Dwarf Magazine and their Call of Cthulhu Omnibus. While most of this Omnibus is helpful articles, some are scenarios, and it's from two article sources, Trio of Terror and Ghost Jackal Kill, that I draw the reviews here. Think of them as rapid-fire mini-reviews, meant to showcase what I thought was some interesting creativity from the CoC community long before the Miskatonic Repository was a gleam in Chaosium's eye. Join me after the jump, won't you?
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Welcome to another entry in the Dark Thoughts series, my Call of Cthulhu review series where I look at supplements great and small for the RPG. This time, boy do I have a doozy for you guys, because my God, never has a game given me nightmares like the one I have for you today... You know what I don't like? Things preying on me without my knowledge. You know what I really don't like? Unremitting horror that is something out of a nightmare. Guess what my Keeper friend Rob decided to do to everyone in Miskatonic Valley at one point, and how many nightmares I had from it?
If you guessed "He ran Stygian Fox's Forget Me Not from their recent The Things We Leave Behind", you're either actually a Yithian and come from the future, or you have played this ungodly hell-spawn of a scenario before. In any case, if any game can give you the shivers, if any scenario can make you want to bathe in bleach, this is it. Those of you who've played it know why. Those of you that aren't familiar with it, but wanna run it... well, read on, but know that I warned you... Welcome to a new segment on my blog, a review series I'm calling Dark Thoughts. In this segment, I will be reviewing Call of Cthulhu scenarios I have played in or run for my immediate group of IRL friends, Miskatonic Valley. This is intended to be an extension of RotOO Review, and as a result chronicles my experiences with various scenarios for the game. Because all of these are opinion-based, it basically is gonna be subjective. Also, it may have spoilers for people who have not played the scenario yet, which is why I'm using the jump. That way, nobody gets spoiled, even if the scenario is some 20-30 years old now and really has no reason for it. Better safe than sorry, after all...
Each one of these I do is going to cover mostly supplements that are traditional publications. That means no 'zine scenarios like Fear of Flying, nothing that is from the Miskatonic Repository, and nothing that isn't otherwise put out by a well-known publisher, new or otherwise. If the publisher's defunct or not prominent, they're also not getting reviewed due to scenario rarity. So that means stuff like the Games Workshop or Stygian Fox are game, but stuff like scenarios from The Unspeakable Oath or those published by T.O.M.E are generally not allowed. Only if it came out as a book or PDF is it viable, otherwise we'd be here all eternity. The only exception here is if the scenario itself really is worth some decent merit to warrant its own review. If I have a strong opinion about a scenario, it's gonna be heard regardless of the publishing format, so for all I know a MULA supplement may be reviewed here. It just depends what I'm feeling. To kick this off, here's a review of Mister Corbitt, one of the first scenarios I actually got the chance to play, a well known and beloved scenario by many from Chaosium's Mansions of Madness publication. I've already reviewed a scenario, The Plantation, in that supplement once before, however this is the first time I've gotten to review a scenario from the other side of the Keeper screen. So, here's what I thought about Mister Corbitt and its take on a Hitchcock classic. Does it hold up today? Read on to find out more. Closing Time - every new beginning
Comes from some other beginning's end. - "Closing Time", Semisonic All good things must come to an end, sadly. Then again, since we were all exhausted by the end of Masks of Nyarlathotep, perhaps that's a good thing after all...
Insert only marginally clever joke about Australian accents, shrimp on the barbie, and dingoes eating babies here. Australia was a bit strange for me to work with, mostly because I didn't at all intend to run it at first... but hey, that's the way it goes sometimes. The sky is blue, Nyarlathotep has at least 1000 forms, and sometimes you do scenarios you didn't expect to do all because a friend heard "Yithian mind-swapping" in your description of it and demanded you had to do it. I love you too, Kat.
Anything goes when
You're seeking ancient secrets - The Black Fan flutters. A thousand clues masked By lies and innuendo - It's not as it seems. Know this, those seeking The truth: it lies in madness. The Black Fan, fallen. "Arabian Nights, like Arabian days,
More often than not are hotter than hot In a lot of good ways." - "Arabian Nights", Disney's Aladdin Forget about God Saving the Queen, He'll need to save the Investigators from the mad machinations of the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh!
There's no place like Broadway - the sights, the sounds... the scares. Who ever said starting a campaign of MoN's scope was hard?
I probably have some of the best players in the world as a Keeper, and I'm damned fortunate for that. I also have some of the most intelligent, outside the box thinkers in the world, and that means that I'm always having to stay just one step ahead of them.
Masks of Nyarlathotep is such a complex campaign with so many moving parts, the biggest question is often where to begin. My answer, as well as the Companion's answer, to that? Pre-planning out the ass.
This has been one hell of a ride.
When I started running this campaign, I had no idea how incredibly tough a game it was going to end up being, or how rewarding it would be. The Companion said the game would last a whole year or more, but foolishly, I didn't believe it. Starting in the beginning of January 2017 and ending at the end of October 2017, I didn't believe it would go so far or be so long. I should have known better, for the amount of content in it. Let me reiterate. I ran a single four-hour-long session almost every week, including a few multi-week sessions, and it still took me a year to run Masks of Nyarlathotep. It's a monster. It's massive. And I made it more massive by including even more material to it as supplementary stuff, including my own homebrew content, because I knew at some point some people would be missing. As a newly minted veteran Masks Keeper, I think I can say it has been something special for me and my group. A culmination and ultimate goal, a feather in my cap. I was so worried at the start, so worried it wouldn't come off. And yeah, sometimes it didn't come off. But when it did, oh Lord. Oh, Sweet Thousand Masks of Nyarlathotep, did it ever come off. Masks was my dream campaign, and it was not easy, but it was fun. I think my Thousand Masks Saga entries have proven that well enough. What I want to do with this next mini-segment is discuss each chapter of MoN, in detail, as well as my thoughts as a Keeper on how I ran it, how my players went through it, where things got tough or derailed, and other such things. Prop-making, cult action decisions, etc. will be in their own separate pre-planning entry. This mini-segment will function a lot like a behind-the-scenes and will be linked on the Thousand Masks Saga page. It will be tagged with the "Horror's Art" tag and functions as a means of giving some feedback to other Keepers planning to run the MoNster for the first time. I hope you will find it as useful as I found the journals of other Keepers/players who ran this game, the Companion, and others' input and feedback. In retrospect, I don't know if I'll do a blog of the same scope as the Thousand Masks Saga again. It was a lot of extra work, and while it was fun to keep people up to date with my group's run and useful for keeping my players on track, it's just too much with my crazy schedule due to my job. For shorter campaigns, I certainly won't be doing it again, but for longer ones I may. If something epic in length happens that calls for an IC blog, I will do it, otherwise things around here will return to the standard "Horror's Art" style review posts and Keeping tips. Hope that makes sense, and I hope you enjoy this behind the scenes series on MoN, as played by the Miskatonic Valley Players and run by myself. Thanks again to everyone who supported me in this project, especially my players - I put you guys through Hell, and for that I'm not sorry. My only regret is that I took myself too seriously, and this game too hard. Without you, I wouldn't have had a game or a means of creative outlet for all this energy inside me waiting to explode in vivid detail and description. Your characters were, are, and always will be awesome, funny, charming, lovable, tragic, and all around heroes of the highest caliber for facing down the threats of the Mythos, and even laying their lives down to stop them. What greater heroes could there be than that? You're like my second family (and some of you are actual blood family), and I don't know where I'd be without you. See you 'round the globe for the first true Unmasking Nyarlathotep entry - pre-planning and props, wherein I'll explain my thought process for creating the props for the game, my thinking behind the tweaks I made to the storyline, and how I chose various other aspects of the game for my players', and my own, pleasure. Sick and Twisted: The Most Disturbing Call of Cthulhu Scenarios Chaosium Has Ever Licensed11/1/2017 FAIR WARNING WHERE IT IS DUE: This blog entry discusses truly disturbing scenarios for CoC. The details within get pretty disturbing, downright gross, and more than a little potentially distressing to certain people. Reader discretion is strongly advised.
Grotesque, gruesome, gory, gooey, glistening, gross. These are all lovely G words that can describe a certain type of horror. Not just body horror, but the kind of horror that sits in your stomach and turns it in knots. The kind of horror that gels in you and makes you shudder at the same time that it makes you want to vomit. It's disgust in its purest and most vile of all forms, and I don't just mean of death, slimy and squamous rugose terrors, or things with too many eyes and teeth and tentacles, either. Psst. Hey kid, wanna learn about Decadent Literature, The King in Yellow, and the story collection that helped launch Lovecraft's own writing and weird fiction as a genre?
It's good to be a fan of Call of Cthulhu if you're also a fan of horror art. There are some seriously great pieces in the lineup of all the myriad supplements Chaosium has produced. Curious to learn my favorites? Read on...
Welp, it's time to be both biased and incredibly nerdy with my opinion again, and to also completely shirk the fact I have three more blog entries for the Thousand Masks Saga to write that I have not yet finished OH GOD SAVE ME CRAWLING CHAOS.
So, it's not often I get to be candid about Keeping recently, what with the MoNster keeping me busy, graduation season having run its course (B. S. in Cell and Molecular Biology/Applied Stats Minor, baby!), and assorted planning for upcoming campaigns. This is especially true when I look at my lined-up docket of work for SCHH and IRD, and then my brain decides to take a detour into Carcosa and plan about twenty slowly-shifting-in-design-but-not-quite Yellow Sign designs for RfC. Azathoth damn you, Hastur, why can't you ever leave me alone when I have more important shit to do? Yes, tiny shoulder muses, I know you want me to work on stuff, but I need a break. I deserve a break. I have been running all semester and I am tired as fuck. I think I have earned the right to sleep in all day, not write Thousand Masks Saga blog entries despite being woefully behind on them, and maybe get some Qdoba.
Okay, so you knew this was coming.
Lately this Slenderfan has come out of the woods, camera in hand and a pack full of journals with delirious scrawlings on my back, to discover something fairly disturbing. Something I'm sure everyone by now knows is obvious and which honestly makes me feel as though I'm missing a few pages somewhere. When did the Slenderman stop being frightening? It's a strange feeling, seeing this change that's gradually happened since 2012, when I first put on this fandom's mask and allowed all its dark mystery to take me hostage. He scared me then. He scared everyone then. He had a strangeness to him, an otherworldliness that couldn't really be matched by anything except something out of a Lovecraft novel. It wasn't so much his appearance - he is, after all, just a faceless, tall man in a black suit - but more or less what exactly he did to you. Following, haunting, terrorizing, slowly driving out all sanity within you, until finally your clock ran out and he came for you, taking you away someplace unknown, to do something unimaginable, for a reason that was unfathomable. And of course, as the horror cliche goes, "they were never heard from again". This was, and still is, the impression I have of the Slim Gentleman, and to be frankly honest, it still spooks me and drives a good part of my interest in psychological and Lovecraftian horror. So then imagine my surprise when, devoted Slenderacolyte that I was, I crept from the shadows of the forest, saw what had become of such a fascinating being, and lifted my mask to yell, "What in the fuck happened here?!" Or, tl;dr - Slenderman has ceased to be scary for the majority of the public. Why? Is it because of that game that came out a few years ago, and was so recently updated to include a story befitting an episode of Marble Hornets (as well as two new levels which are quite frankly as awesome as they are horrific)? Was it the memetic status this emaciated boogeyman so quickly gained afterwards? Was it the fact that nothing new had been done with the Mythos, and that his growing fanbase continued to demand more and more material that never came to be, or worse, was not up to their high expectations? Or was it simply that everyone simultaneously became bored, and moved on to greener woods, resulting in things like the awesome TheWestRecords, the currently ailing WhisperedFaith (which really isn't as good as it once was), and the Fear Mythos community? Well... maybe none of those. No, I blame a different source for the Operator's downfall, a much more insidious poison that has destroyed the once fertile, dark, and intriguing forest of epileptic trees that is the Slenderman Mythos. I blame shitty writing. Now before any of you get up in arms, yes I have heard of the recent Tumblr Slenderverse Fiasco involving a group of certain creators (which I won't name here) having a "bad series night" in a private tinychat, where they streamed series they felt were awful. I'm aware of the damage their careless bantering about it has caused, and while I do believe they've been pretty damn callous (and some have even bullied others) and irresponsible about sharing the details of the event towards certain people in particular and should apologize for that, I also believe they absolutely have a right to roast series they don't like. Good taste is subjective, creators are people, and people can mock anything they feel like - it's absolutely their right because they live in a country where free speech is a thing. And unfortunately, that mocking can get downright nasty, and should not be shared with the public (which it was, and shame on said creators for that). My opinion on the event itself is ambivalent, but I personally feel, as a creator myself, that if you put out a piece of creative material, you do not get to have a say in what people say about that work. If people mock it, then they mock it, and you need to accept that as it comes. If people think it's killing their fandom, then they do, and you need to learn to roll with that. And if your heroes and idols mock it, well, maybe it should serve as a reminder that they too are people, and people are inherently flawed. Just because someone's a celebrity does not mean they're necessarily a nice person, or even that they like you all that much. Was some of what they did a shitty thing to do? Yes, absolutely, and I 100% sympathize with the people that actually were emotionally and mentally hurt by those callous actions, but come on, people - that does not excuse your behavior here. You getting your feelings hurt and feeling like you've been betrayed by someone you never even really knew that well is pretty damn sad, and if that did describe you, then you really need to grow up, move past that shit, and get your priorities straight, because trust me - the world is not nice, your idols don't owe you a damn thing, and it's quite frankly childish and selfish to think that they do. That said, this whole thing does bring up another very serious problem, aside from some creators getting high off their successes and many fans childishly assuming these creators admire them as much as they admire the creators, then feeling betrayed and hurt when said creators do not live up to their expectations or beliefs. That issue is, as I've pointed out before, that there is too much bad writing in the Slenderverse right now, too much excess clogging the system, and that's why the 'verse is in a downswing right now. There is just too much glut in the system, too much detritus of the same concept reapplied and rehashed over and over. There is no denying that plenty of people still want, and still want to produce, Slenderman media, but half of them are simply not doing it right, copying the same stuff everyone else does. You can argue that the games did it or creator cruelty did it or Marble Hornets ending did it or insert bullshit excuse here, but the fact remains: we need to end this plague if we want our old Slendy back. We need to focus on what really makes him frightening and fascinating, and that means applying some logic here. "But Sugary!" you cry, tugging feebly at the fringes of my tawny, Timasky-inspired jacket I always wear on chilly fall afternoons like this one, "I want to write a slenderblog/creepypasta, or film a slendervlog/short film! I want to see more Slenderman! I want to write him and I promise I'll do it really good and really cool and everyone will love it!" First of all, why are you grovelling on my jacket, because that's pretty weird and I'm not Herr GroBmann's maker. Second, you think you can do it, write him. You don't need to ask permission to do that, he's pretty much open-source anyway (even if that open-sourceness is disputed) since he's sunken into the pop culture miasma. But if you're going to write him, take a few tips from this Slenderauthor, and try to remember them:
Note: This is edited from a discussion a friend of mine and I had on Skype. Nothing has been edited except names for privacy, and a few other things for readability.
[3:25:47 AM] DarkShadows: I think the Operator is a metaphor for mental illness. Look what happens in MH. It's basically the story of four young men who suffer from crippling mental disorders. The symptoms the Operator causes for people hearken back to this (except the coughing). The fact that people slowly lose their mind through the story also goes back to this. In the end, Alex succumbs to his mental illness. He refuses to "take the medicine" so to speak and ends up harming himself and others, and eventually dying. Jay fights it for much longer, but also does not succeed and ends up dead simply because he does not listen to the advice of his friend Tim, who tries to warn him that if he doesn't get help then the problem will get worse (as mental diseases do). Brian and Tim were already suffering from mental illnesses, but Brian never overcame his. Tim snapped out of it just long enough to realize his actions were not sane, and they were hurting people. So, he got help. He got better. He relapsed because Jay pulled him into confronting his actual issue again instead of letting it fall by the wayside, but even then Tim held on strong enough to prevent a complete relapse. Tim succeeded in the end because he held onto the idea that there is hope, there is a way of getting better, there is a way out. Marble Hornets therefore is a story about mental illness and how to deal with it - first by showing how someone who falls into it should NOT deal with it, and then by also showing how someone already in it SHOULD deal with it. That said, what have we learned from MH about this?
[3:27:35 AM] DarkShadows: I just felt there was a very, very strong theme of mental illness and learning to cope with it in MH. Maybe it's because I've basically been in and out of therapy my whole life, IDK. But that's what I read it as. Tim is easily also one of the best examples of a mentally ill character who is relatable, sympathetic, and a genuine person. Too many things in the media do not portray mentally ill people favorably. Tim fucks up, Tim has his issues, and Tim eventually learns to deal with them however scary or horrible they are. [3:29:09 AM | Edited 3:29:14 AM] AIDAN : What about that time he kept Jessica secret from J for two years? [3:29:20 AM] DarkShadows: Think about it this way. Jessica was an enabler. [3:29:43 AM] A: Maybe...but it was also a major cause of Jay's breakdown - the grief. [3:30:12 AM] A: I understand Tim's reasoning but disagree with his choice. [3:30:29 AM] DarkShadows: Jessica was essentially a human form of a delusion for Jay. She was never something attainable. Tim knew that if Jay found that out, it would ruin him. He basically did what anyone would do - he tried to hide it. He couldn't. I disagree with his choice as well. [3:30:40 AM] DarkShadows: I'm not saying what he did was good, I'm saying as a character he's relateable. [3:30:50 AM] A: oh definitely. [3:30:57 AM] DarkShadows: Everyone in MH did some really, really morally questionable things actually. [3:31:37 AM | Edited 3:31:49 AM] A: I actually think [Tim]Masky was the most morally white character. [3:32:28 AM] DarkShadows: Nobody in that series was sane, at all. I think Tim had an upper hand though because he's been dealing with this shit since childhood. He basically already had some coping skills to deal with the whole Operator thing, which IS his mental illness as we have established. [3:32:49 AM] DarkShadows: Why do we ask for help? because we realize we've fallen down. [3:32:54 AM] A: What you're saying is his acceptance gave him an advantage. [3:32:57 AM] DarkShadows: Yes. So while everyone else continued to decline, Tim essentially got a bit better. When Tim tries to throw the mask away at the end and then goes back for it, that shows that despite what he tries, his mental illness is part of him. He can't get rid of it so he might as well as embrace it. [3:34:07 AM] DarkShadows: Every character had their own story arc. That was Tim's. [3:34:20 AM] A: I don't think embrace it, I think more like "become reliant on". [3:34:30 AM] DarkShadows: I disagree. [3:35:07 AM] DarkShadows: Notice Masky never does come back. My theory is that Tim keeps the mask as a reminder of why he tried so hard to get better in the first place. He doesn't wanna be in that dark place he was ever again. [3:35:21 AM] A: A mental crutch of sorts, he didn't ask for it. It became him. Once you are part of something like that you shape yourself around it. [3:35:26 AM] DarkShadows: Yes. [3:35:39 AM] DarkShadows: A painful piece of yourself, but a piece of yourself nonetheless. [3:35:52 AM] A: He, unfortunately, was as much Masky as Masky was Tim. [3:36:04 AM] DarkShadows: Is that unfortunate though? [3:36:16 AM] A: Yes, he didn't want it. He was forced into a state of near insanity. [3:36:31 AM] DarkShadows: Nobody wants to be mentally ill, dude... [3:36:32 AM] A: he almost killed two people. Why would he want that? And its unfortunate that he was put in that position [to start with]. [3:37:47 AM] DarkShadows: you're not getting at what I am. I'm saying that at first, Tim hated the fact he had this awful side to him. Because he nearly killed two people. Because he hurt a lot more. Because he's never really been sane. That tortured him. By the end of the series though, Tim has learned to realize that, as painful as it is, Masky and all he did as Masky is part of him. Masky is another representation of Tim's mental illness, the part Tim does not want to face and hates, but by the end of the series, he's learned to accept. [3:38:51 AM] A: and what I am saying is that it is unfortunate he was put into a position where that was part of him to begin with. Yes, he had to accept it, but no one should have that kind of mental stress put on them. [3:38:58 AM] DarkShadows: Yes, I agree. [3:39:21 AM] DarkShadows: But you're also assuming that the Operator is not a metaphor. I am speaking from the POV of the Operator being a symbol. XD [3:39:31 AM] DarkShadows: I'm doing some literature dissection. That's all. [3:39:38 AM] A: I do tend to think more in the literal. [3:39:50 AM] DarkShadows: Yeah and I think more symbolically. XD [3:40:22 AM] DarkShadows: LITERALLY speaking, you are right. Tim's hands were tied. everyone's hands were tied. Why? Well probably because the Operator had some agenda. What that agenda is, we just dunno and we never will. It's possible he just wanted everyone dead. It's also possible he was just seeing what would happen. It's even possible that he only really cared about Tim's end of the story this whole time, and all these other people got wrapped up in it. [3:41:58 AM] DarkShadows: I'm of the opinion, speaking literally, that the Operator really just wanted to see what would happen. he took an interest in Tim at a young age. He Proxified Tim at a young age. Therefore, of course he's gonna keep an eye on Tim. He's interested in seeing what Tim does with this new status. [3:42:13 AM] A: Well I do also mean from a mental perspective of the unfortunate thing that is mental illness, and with rare schizophrenia like that, dual personalities is one of the worst things, that thought that the one thing that is truly yours, your mind, is host to something you loathe. [3:42:24 AM] DarkShadows: yes,you're right. [3:43:01 AM] A: It would terrifying, to think that if he ever couldn't afford his meds, he wouldn't get to own his body. Something ruthless and cold would take it over, and [he] wouldn't remember who saw [his] face staring them down in horror. [3:44:06 AM] DarkShadows: Which is another reason I think the ending is about Tim finding a way of accepting that part of himself. Instead of running from it like Jay did, or just accepting it like Brian and Alex did and losing himself entirely, he found a balance. Yes he does have to worry about the meds thing, and that was brought up. [3:44:27 AM] DarkShadows: So really... the pill bottle is a symbol of control. Which... think about this. Pill. Pills sometimes are round, especially many anti-psychotics. X through a circular pill... Operator symbol. The symbolic lack of control. The nullification of control. Over yourself, over your state of mind, over everything. [3:45:41 AM] A: And that would explain Brian using it. He accepted the loss of control [3:45:50 AM] DarkShadows: Yes. So did Alex. [3:46:30 AM] A: And Masky, since he wanted Tim to lose control, not entirely i don't think... but just enough. [3:46:38 AM] DarkShadows: Masky is Tim, though. Masky is Tim without any control. [3:47:21 AM] A: That's a maybe, is he though? Is he Tim or is he another sentient being? He thinks different; acts different. [3:47:35 AM] DarkShadows: I dunno if it's ever exactly clarified *what* disorder Tim suffers from. Some say schizophrenia, some say DID. [3:47:48 AM] DarkShadows: People do think and act different when they're mentally ill. Their brains don't operate normally. That doesn't mean who they are when they're not under control is someone/something else. [3:48:36 AM] A: True, and I suppose we never get to know. That's something only Tim really knows. [3:49:13 AM] DarkShadows: It depends what exactly Tim's diagnosis is. So, decide for yourself. If it's Schizophrenia or an anxiety disorder of some kind, I'm likely right. If it's DID, you're probably right. [3:50:11 AM] A: It's funny, even the channel had another side to its illness, ToTheArk. [3:50:42 AM] DarkShadows: Even Tim yelling at Alex in the penultimate episode, "Stop, this is what it wants". Meaning, this is what Alex's illness wants in a sense. Tim was literally pleading with Alex to control his illness and get help. Tim was trying to help him. Because Tim went through that, he lost his friend to that, he lost Jay to that. [3:51:23 AM] A: He lost everyone [to that]. [3:51:28 AM] DarkShadows: Pretty damn much. It's watching you right now. Watching and waiting. Run away. Now. It's your only hope. Run and never look back. You might still be able to save yourself. And for God's sake, whatever you do, don't look out the window... ... Now that I have made all the Marble Hornets fans in the audience collectively wet themselves, on to the actual discussion. But first, I have a brief addendum. I previously stated some incorrect facts concerning Slendy's origin and creation at SomethingAwful, as well as some incorrect information concerning its appearance. Those mistakes have since been corrected and I apologize for that. No really, I'm sorry about the mistakes. It's not because I have a creepy guy in a mask holding me at knifepoint or anything... So guys, let's talk about the Slenderman Mythos. Anonymous, creepy, and absolutely everywhere, there is not a single more genuinely symbolic entity of what the internet is than the tall, skinny, faceless humanoid abomination for which this series of blogs, vlogs, fanfics, creepypasta entries, and various other tales (including a video game now, called Slender, and several spinoff games of it) are named. And there is probably nothing more frightening than a being created online that some people are now convinced is real. What is the Slenderman? Simply put, an eldritch abomination older than humankind, known mostly for spiriting away young children and causing horrific tragedy to follow in its wake. It stands anywhere from 9-12 feet tall, and is impossibly skinny (which is where its moniker comes from). It has many names - the Tall Man, The Operator, The Thin Man, etc. It commonly is seen to be wearing a gentleman's business suit, complete with a usually black or red tie, its arms are far too long for its body's proportions, and it is completely faceless. It has no eyes, no mouth, no ears, and only a vague concept of what we'd consider a nose to be - and sometimes, not even that. It is commonly shown to have tentacle-like appendages which it can expand and retract at will, used for snagging hapless victims. It dwells in forests mostly, moving through the trees with supernatural speed and agility when you can't see it, and standing eerily still or slowly closing in when you can. It can teleport and be in multiple places at once. It seems to have some form of psionic ability, and some say it can even induce madness and hallucinatory images. Some say it kills its victims and leaves their organs replaced haphazardly in their body cavities or the bodies horribly mutilated. Others say if it captures you, it warps your mind and body until you become a being fully willing to work for its own agenda. What is this agenda? Nobody knows. If you think about it too long, it will find and begin to haunt you. If you research it, it begins to follow you, and the more you research it, the more it will appear to you... and you will be the only one able to see it. You will be stalked and eventually disappear... unless you can avoid it. If you believe too strongly in it, or become too obsessed with figuring out this enigmatic being that tails you, then you slowly go insane. If you stare at it for too long, it will pull you into some sort of trance, leaving you entirely helpless to its attack. Encountering it is said to cause sickness, including headaches, nausea, vomiting, coughing, and other indicators of illness. If captured on film, either motion or still, it causes strange distortions, including static, audiovisual problems, and other issues. Its true nature is shrouded in mystery and fear, and seems to see humans as something foreign to observe... or possibly destroy. It seems to be connected to a strange symbol, pictured above - a circle with an X drawn through it, known as the Operator symbol - and it is unknown if this symbol protects a person from its influence... or summons the being. Some say it is waging war against humanity, taking some of our kind and turning them into servents called Proxies. Some say it is neutral, and the tragedy attributed to it is merely coincidental. Some say it is a magical being or a fae. Some believe it is an alien or other foreign being. All agree that it is most certainly not human, and it is very, very dangerous... How did it come to be? The Slenderman was born from a forum competition back in 2009 on the infamous and always interesting SomethingAwful forums, in a contest meant to involve creating a photograph of a monster or manufactured urban legend. It was here that the first few images of the Slenderman were formed, painting it as distinctly malevolent. These images won the competition, and soon became memetic, spreading throughout the internet. Eventually, the manufactured legend outgrew its home territorry when two SA forum Goons created the Youtube series Marble Hornets (presumably a reference to the black and white static caused by the entity and the buzzing noise associated with said static). This video series, now up to 60 episodes and counting, essentially codified and confirmed much of the canon surrounding the Slenderman, and now is considered the codifier of many aspects of the Mythos. From it sprang two other video series called EverymanHYBRID and TribeTwelve, the other two of the "Big Three" Slenderman Mythos web series, and from them have sprung blogs, vlogs, video series, films, and more, and the legend shows no signs of dying yet. The series that began all this madness even has a spinoff series called totheark, which focuses on a recurring and mysterious character that is present in several of the Marble Hornets videos. Today, the Slenderman and its mythos continue to flourish and thrive, generating paranoia and fear in generations of internet users and inspiring horror afficionados everywhere. But why is the Slenderman such a potent source of fear? What about it jangles us to the core? Even someone unaware of what Slenderman is would no doubt be frightened by it, but why? That is what I set out to discuss and hopefully answer here today. For those Slenderfans in the audience, no, this won't become another Slenderblog (hopefully) - I don't think I could even begin to keep up with half of the blogs because they're so damn tangled together and every single one out there has crossed over with at least five other blogs at some point, some of them doing so multiple times. Plus, I just don't have the time to sit down and construct the kind of elaborate tale that so many of those blogs weave, and I'm not sure what, if any, new ideas I could contribute to the Slenderman Mythos. If you did come here looking for another Testing123 or Just Another Fool, I'm sorry to disappoint you. If you came here looking for another Marble Hornets, then I'm really sorry to disappoint you. This is just an out-of-canon look at the entity this Mythos is based around, and nothing more. Hopefully it will give some insight into those looking for a more basic interpretation or just some interesting discussion - you know me, I love horror, and I love talking about horror even more. I was recently engaged in conversation with a relatively newish author on FFN named Zaikia, who has apparently become interested in the Slenderman Mythos. She is currently working on a Slenderman Mythos fic based in the same universe as the series Marble Hornets (many Slendy stories depict this series as genuinely fictional in their own in-story universe, although many still borrow elements from it), and I've been giving her a little bit of feedback on improving the story from a characterization and writing standpoint. Admittedly, it's difficult to pin a personality on a character that isn't human and literally is a blank slate, but that is ultimately the beauty of it - because the Slenderman has no one interpretation, any interpretation is correct. Its story is ongoing and its origin is multiple choice, somewhat like how the Joker's origin is multiple choice. This increases author flexibility and has resulted in myriad discriptions of the being's motives, personality, abilities, powers, and even some slight variations in its appearance. It's the reason some people, when drawing the being, give it a mouth with teeth, and others leave it blank. As new ideas fall into place from various blogs, vlogs, films, and other sources, old ideas fall away. It used to be commonly thought in the fandom that the being's face appeared differently for every person that saw it. Now, it is believed that it has no face and never did, always appearing blank to every person that sees it. During the course of the conversation I had with Zaikia about her story, the discussion turned to theorization on the being's abilities and powers as well as why he watched humans so much. Later, the discussion turned to the topic of why the Slenderman is such a frightening figure in general, without any of the trimmings of legend attached to it. Below is an excerpt from this discussion. As always, it's been edited only where necessary to clarify things and add in more information. Notably, the masuline pronoun (He/His/Him) is used to refer to this being, although it should be noted that this being is more properly an it, and generally considered to be genderless. The masculine pronoun is used for clarification only. "I think it is very likely that he (Slendy) is an observer. The same way we observe animals at a zoo with interest, he observes us. It is likely he has existed since the beginning of time and will continue to exist for as long as humanity does. My theory is that he so happens to feed upon human fear, and that is why simply being around him when he's in the area causes such paranoia - something about whatever he is, I think. I don't know if he intentionally causes it for his amusement/sustainance, or if it's an aftereffect - but I do agree that belief in him makes him real, and the more you believe in him (sort of like the boogeyman) the more power he has and the more he could potentially come after you. Perhaps he is a protector of the forests or a forest spirit of some sort; perhaps he simply adapts whenever humans do and is highly evolved to be some sort of predator to the apex predator - man. Whatever he actually is, I'm not exactly convinced that he's completely evil - or if he is, then he is only evil by human standards of evil and might not even think of himself as evil. We believe him to be evil because he hunts us - what prey does not think of their predator as an evil pursuer? And think about it - when have we ever seen Slendy, in any tale about him, physically harming a human being with clearly malicious intent? It's just too blurred a line to say for certain what side of the fence he is on. "It is possible that the tendrils are there as feelers of sorts - they sense motion, currents of air, the presence of other beings, etc. They are basically his means of gathering information about his surroundings. Since he doesn't have any visible eyes that we know of, he may "see" in heat vision or some form of inaudible-to-humans echolocation, or perhaps he hunts by sound waves or vibrations, which could also be felt not only through the ground but also through his tendrils. He may even hunt telepathically, pinpointing his prey by reading where they mentally are or tracking them through their growing paranoia, which would lend credence to the idea that he is a phobovore (fear-eater). If he does have actual vision, it is probably nothing like our vision. For example, he may see in fuzzy, black-and-white vision, and he probably can see incredibly well in the dark. It is even likely that he is blind, but not completely, and can sense changes in light and darkness only. Or he could have some sort of vision that is even more foreign to humans than this. It would seem as though, if he does actually eat humans, he may do it to scare them even more and said human is actually warped somewhere, not devoured, since in recent interpretations, no bodies from any of Slendy's victims are ever found. I wouldn't be entirely surprised if he was somewhat like the Weeping Angels in Doctor Who - those creatures are motionless when you look at them, incredibly fast if you turn your back, and if they catch you, they will warp you to another time entirely and feed upon the time-space that you left unoccupied. Maybe Slendy does something like that to his victims, with the exception that he certainly can move if you can see him, and is incredibly fast if you can't. We may never know, and as long as this character is speculated on and written/drawn/has videos made of him, we'll have lots of possibilities to discuss." At this point, Zaikia pointed out that she believed the paranoia surrounding the Slenderman came from its lack of any visible facial features. I agreed, bringing up the idea of the Uncanny Valley as well as some interesting implications behind why the Mythos is so frightening: "I agree. Nothing is scarier than nothingness, and what is Slenderman but the ultimate example of anonymity? He lives in forests. It is unknown what his mission is or where his victims are taken. He has no face. He wears a suit, and anyone who wears a suit is clearly very serious or on business duty, and is either untrustworthy or considered to be less approachable. Anonymous, an internet trolling group, uses the image of a faceless man in a business suit as their mascot, and for very good reason - they do not have any set identity, which makes them rather frightening and unknowable. There being a concept of nothing there in the woods while you're wandering about at night is far scarier than the idea of there being something there, because at least you know there is something out there. You can pin a name and face to a monster like the Rake, another Creepypasta entity (or Creepybeast as I collectively refer to them). No so with Slendy. "Why is this? Because the Slenderman is literally unknowable and unknown, precisely because he lacks the one thing humans use to understand who and what a person is - a face. Humans attach a LOT of identity, personality, and knowability to a face, to the point that we even see faces in inanimate objects like clouds, cars, chairs, and more. This effect, when taken to the extreme, is called Pareidolia, and is a type of psychological phenomenon called apophina, the seeing of meaningful patterns in meaningless information. That is why we see faces where there aren't any, and why we give personalities to inanimate objects. Now, think about what this means in terms of a human being or humanoid that lacks these features. If someone or something lacks a face, we become instantly uneasy and frightened, because there is nothing to attribute any sort of personality or familiarity to. We don't know what the person is thinking, we don't even know if they're human. So really, Slendy having no face is playing to our fears of the uncanny and unfamiliar. Slenderman came from the internet, from collective speculation that willed him into being, and he sprung from our subconscious fears of strangers, foreign things, being lost, loneliness, etc. He continues to exist in our minds because all humans, to some degree, exhibit fears of those things, even if we will not admit it. If given a phobia to represent, Slenderman would represent xenophobia, the fear of strangers or foreign things, things we don't and can't understand. He operates on the same fear that most eldritch abominations, from Lovecraft's Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep to the alien geometries of the house in House of Leaves, operate on. In other words, Slenderman is literally the embodiment of a very common human fear, one passed down from ancient ages innumerable. And that fear is the fear of the unknown. "Why does the Slenderman inspire this fear of the unknown, exactly? Because of the Uncanny Valley effect. This term comes from the world of robotics and engineering, and was coined by a Japanese robotics professor named Masahiro Mori. In layman's terms, the Uncanny Valley is a theoretical graph of familiarity versus how human-like something is, usually a robot. When a human being comes into contact with something human or human-like, they feel a sense of familiarity with that thing. If something is clearly not human, like a teddy bear, we feel alright with it in the room so long as it is clearly not supposed to be human-like. However, the more human that thing acts and the less human-like it looks, the more uncomfortable the person becomes with it. Our brains think it should be a person, but it's just... not, because it doesn't act like a normal, healthy human. It's a person to our brains, but it is a person that isn't quite right. In a graph of familiarity and how human-like something is, as we get more towards something looking like a human but not acting quite like a real human, the more uncomfortable we get, creating a dip in the graph. This dip is the "uncanny valley", where the human-like thing seems human but we know it isn't human - it's not human enough, or it's too human for what we know it should be. This creates strong revulsion, fear, nervousness, and general dislike of something, and the valley is deeper if an entity is moving rather than if it is still. At the bottom of the valley is the zombie, or a human corpse. This is likely why so many people dislike dolls, clowns, and very human-like robots - they act human, but don't look it, or they act human, but not quite human enough. Here is a graph of the Uncanny Valley to help explain my point: "I believe the Uncanny Valley is something that the Slenderman, as a concept, deliberately invokes. He looks human. But he's not human. He acts almost human, but he's not human. He moves, but his motions aren't human. That creates a strong feeling of wrongness and results in paranoia, and that is where the frightening aspect of the Slenderman comes in. He doesn't look quite human, doesn't act quite human, and doesn't have a face. He's too tall to be human. His proportions are wrong for a human being. He watches people constantly, and that spooks people. Think of any very human-like robot - gives you a weird feeling seeing it move, right? That's the Uncanny Valley in effect, sending chills down your spine and making you shiver until you get a bad case of the goosebumps. In other words, the Slenderman is just human-like enough as to make us feel like he looks uncannily familiar to a human... but he is not human. And that is why this being is such a potent example of nightmare fuel, and why he induces paranoia in those who read, watch, or discuss tales about him." So, there you have it, a little bit of discourse concerning one of the most fascinating, quickly growing, and downright terrifying memes the internet has ever spawned. Now, do be careful out in the woods on those last-minute camping trips, I've heard there's been some unexplained disappearances reported recently. And for those currently blogging about their encounters with this entity, those still running from it, I will say this: 01001001 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01101110 01101011 00100000 01101001 01110100 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110000 01101100 01100001 01101110 01101110 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110011 01101111 01101101 01100101 01110100 01101000 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01100010 01101001 01100111 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101001 01101101 01100101 00101110 00100000 01000111 01101111 01101111 01100100 00100000 01101100 01110101 01100011 01101011 00101100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110111 01101001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01101110 01100101 01100101 01100100 00100000 01101001 01110100 00101110 ----- That's where the original article I wrote ends, made up of discussion about how Slendy invokes the Uncanny Valley to great effect, and why so many find him frightening even if they aren't aware of any of the stories within the mythos. However, that's not the end of the discussion, as I've since talked with some other Slenderfans about the topic of horror tropes, the psychology of horror, and Mr. Tall-And-Faceless in general. What follows is a series of excerpts from those discussions, speaking a bit more about the subject of horror in the Slenderman Mythos. As always, the discussions are edited for brevity, clarity, and better readability. -----
"It is highly unusual in Lovecraft-style stories, and even seen as Jumping the Shark to some, to go into the idea of the abomination in the story (whatever it is) having some sort of sentience. Usually they are mindless beings that don't even know humanity's there, really, although a few are sentient and do purposefully toy with humans, such as with the Lovecraftian being Nyarlathotep. Slendy is different in this regard. It offers human beings odds, odds stacked in its favor, and if it feels you are not worth the gamble, it can either kill you, or let you go. The idea of Slendy being sentient and purposefully choosing its victims like a human serial killer would is, to me, far scarier than the characterization some have of him as being an aimless, hungry hunter, because it implies that Slendy is purposefully tormenting humanity and actively enjoys messing with his targets. It makes it less of a passive abomination and more of something that will chase you down relentlessly and torment you without any sort of remorse whatsoever. And that very idea is chilling enough to send shivers all through your spinal cord. "I also find it fascinating that this particular entity, because it has seen so much fandom evolution, can be written as anything from almost neutral to pure evil, as sentient or aimless, as genuinely liking children in a friendly manner and not truly intending them any harm or as actively hating children and intending great harm to them indeed. It can be written as being fascinated by humanity, or disgusted by it. It can be written as being curious and therefore seeing us as specimens to dissect, experiment with, and observe. It can be written as hungry for our flesh and blood, or as merely hungering for our fear. That type of fluidity with a character is only possible through an amalgamation of many, many different traits and takes on them, and what's unique here is that Slendy is never explicitly given a canonical motive for what it does. That makes it unique from other mercurial characters like, for example, the Joker from Batman - he's also a fluid character with a great deal of interpretation to him, but he differs from Slendy as a villain because he does have a motive, and we sort of do know exactly why he does what he does, but we can still write him in several ways and several flavors because his whims literally change with the tides. The Joker can be anything from a prankster to a monster clown to a flat-out killer and anything in between, because that character's basic trait is that he changes his motives, methods, and ways to fit every particular scenario. Much like a real clown, the Joker puts on facades and acts to get what he wants - he does what gets under peoples' skin, but because people are different, the Joker must differ his methods. And he actively enjoys doing so, because everything is a joke to him. "With Slendy, we don't get that kind of clear-cut motive and we don't get a resolution. We have a character that is literally without an identity, without a face even, and represents anonymity and the fear of the unknown. So in a way, all these stories are really our human attempts to "pin a face" on the Slenderman so we can either confirm or deny those fears of what it really wants. So really, Slendy is even more fluid than any other fluid character could ever be - not only does it not have a clearly set reason for existing or doing what it does, it doesn't even have its own identity, symbolized by its lack of any facial features. Humans attribute a LOT about identity and knowability to a face, and when something is literally devoid of that, not only do we panic, we also begin to wonder just what that faceless being's real plans are... and that anonymity and mystery often makes us spin a blank-faced being as malevolent. That's also why I have a love-hate relationship with the idea of some people giving Slendy a mouth with really sharp, awful teeth that he can conceal and reveal at will. That's a really cool, creepy concept, but I feel it somewhat ruins the horror of there being nothing there for a person to identify with on any level. It somewhat ruins his anonymous, unknown and unknowable feel, I think, even if it is really damn scary. And what is the Slenderman but the ultimate personification of anonymity and the unknown made real? What is it we can say is one of the most primary human fears but the unknown? There's so many ways you can spin that fear, so many things you can do with something that has no clear motive... it's very versatile for an author, because it leaves things open to interpretation. "That's a good reason why I love the Slenderman Mythos actually - versatility. Because the antagonist's motive is not clear, you can pretty much tell whatever story you want to tell, and that's a level of flexibility not really reached with characters that have a specified goal. Even in fanfiction, which I also write, you're pretty much restricted to what and who the character is - for instance, it'd make no sense for someone like Batman, who is supposed to be the good guy, to suddenly start attacking random civilians, unless there was a specific reason he would do so (for example, the people we think are innocent civilians are actually criminals in hiding). With a character like Slenderman, you really don't have that problem, and I think that's why its mythos has grown so quickly. What, it's been like since 2004 since Slendy was first introduced on SomethingAwful as part of a random contest there? That's only about 8 years. It's not even a decade old in fandom terms, and Slenderman already has almost as many stories about it as any of Lovecraft's monsters and beasts. That's not just impressive, that's formidable, and it comes from a fandom that is very open about its main antagonist, which is why there ARE so many different interpretations. It's not really about how you happen to like your Slenderman. It's about how you feel it should act in a given situation, and what you feel is creepiest/worst/best/most unique about it. "On that note, I do have to wonder just how many of the legends concerning Slendy are actually true in-canon, and how many of them are misunderstandings. If you dig deep enough into the Creepypasta lore behind this being, some of the first supposed "folklore" tales about it show it not so much as a child-killer, but as something that scares naughty kids straight in the most frightening possible way - by stalking them until they agree to obey their parents, and then kidnapping them if they refuse to behave. In some adaptations no bodies from its victims are ever found (this seems to be a recent thing; the implication is that the bodies are either somehow absorbed or eaten by Slendy, or the victims are made into Proxies). Of course, it doesn't help that it has freaking tentacles and moves so fast that it could be twenty feet away from you one second and right behind you the next. I am personally of the opinion (in-canon only, of course) that Slendy doesn't really care all that much about humanity (because it just isn't human and therefore we're just another animal to it), but does view us as a curiosity and something to test the limits of. That is, we're an experiment to it, although it's also equally likely that we could be a food source - but then again, nothing from the mainstream canon purposefully supports the theory that it eats humans, if it even has to eat at all. As for the organs in bags and mutilated bodies so prevalent in the original tales about the being, my theory still holds water - do you have any sort of attachment to or care for a frog you'd dissect in Biology? Probably not. Same case with Slendy, except there's no human dissection store that it can just go to and obtain dead humans for, and it really doesn't need to steal bodies when it can so easily capture them for itself. Then again, the canon for this mythos changes so much you have to be willing to accept different canonical interpretations, depending on which webshows you watch, which blogs you read, which fanfics, etc. It's why I like sticking outside of those tales and spinning my own interpretation, because that leaves things so, so much more open in terms of a story-telling viewpoint. And the nice thing is, since the canon is ever-changing and always open to new ideas about Slendy, there's really no right or wrong way to tell a Slenderman Mythos story."
"I'd LOVE to see [Slenderman] and its mythos enter the mainstream; there's certainly an audience for it amongst those who like Lovecraftian Horror, Supernatural Horror, or even just a good monster story every now and again. Maybe some books, maybe some feature films... but to be honest, I almost want it to stay exclusively an internet thing, because really, the concept of this being is probably something best told in whispers and legends, best thought possibly real, best disseminated through the internet like an urban legend, since it is already a fabricated urban legend to begin with. That's part of where the horror with Slenderman comes from. It's an urban legend... so who knows? It could be real. People do really disappear in forests and end up dead. People have ended up being stalked by strangers - just look at any celebrity who's had an obsessed, crazy fan follow them to and from work, to their houses, even breaking in to get at them in some cases. People do indeed sometimes see things that look unearthly at night and think they're shadows. What if they're not? It appeals to the Little Us, that little kid who timidly believes there really is a monster under the bed - but now, that Little Us is in a big body, and all the Little Us wants is to be scared and have fun with it. "I think ultimately, Slenderman and his mythos could NOT have been created anywhere other than on the internet. Not really, and even if he were, then he would not be the same being we know and love (to fear?). Note that Slenderman is at his core, a being that represents everything we do NOT know. In a word, anonymity. Now what is the greatest and worst thing about the internet? The fact that you are anonymous. You can have any identity you want. You can have hundreds of identities. You can throw away identities with things like throw-away email addresses. Or you could have no identity at all. Now what is your biggest fear as an internet user? That someone will harm you and you will never know who did it? That someone could disappear, or watch you, or take something from you, and you wouldn't even have a name, let alone a face, to go on? I'd say that's probably exactly it, if not for you, then for a lot of people online. The kind of fear borne of the concept of someone unknown harming us, someone we can't even read (because we can't see their face), is unique to an environment that cherishes anonymity and considers identities to be something that you can dispose of if the need arises. The internet IS that environment. So if that's the case, and it is, and Slendy was born on an internet forum, and he was, then doesn't it seem apt that a being that perfectly encapsulates the fear of the unknown, the fear of people and things we don't know wishing us ill, came from the internet? Something interesting to think about."
"Slendy is just an amazing, beautiful, dangerous, deadly, and fascinating creature of self-made urban legend and Lovecraft-flavored lore. Leave it to the internet, a place where anonymity is praised and seen as a virtue, an ally, and a tool to be used and exploited, to create a boogeyman that is essentially a personification of the dark side and fear of too much anonymity. Plus, tentacles. The internet has seen enough hentai to know where that is going. Slenderman is essentially a boogeyman for what internet users fear - being found out, being watched, a lack of privacy, too MUCH privacy, the loss of identity, etc. It's also a strong symbol of things humans have feared for a very long time - anything uncanny valley, anything that hunts us, anything that we do not and cannot comprehend. There's a strong, strong existential terror aspect to the Slenderman mythos, not just because this being hunts us, but because everything about its behavior implies that we are far more insignificant and weak, far more vulnerable, than we ever want to know is possible. And should something come along that puts us in our place, something that takes us someplace where we're never seen again... we would never be able to deal with it. Not in a million years. Slenderman isn't scary because he's a Lovecraft-flavored monster that stalks people. Slenderman is scary because we only ever see him for short periods, get small glimpses of him, see him shrouded by static, see him in blurred camera shots, see little hints of him, etc. And when he does show up in the flesh, 100% visible? He doesn't really do much more than stand there and watch... unless he does so happen to feel like attacking you. And by then, it's far, far too late to run or even scream, because he's always watching... "What people should realize when they're writing horror, be it a Slenderman Mythos tale, a Creepypasta, or even just a short ghost story or psychological thriller, is this: it's very important to not only feel what exactly a story's mood and tone is, but also to put yourself in a character's shoes to really, really understand them. Some authors never learn how to do that, and their work is sub-par as a result. You really need to be able to do this in order to have any chance of really drawing your audience in, especially in a horror story, because if you don't, then even your scariest scares will come off as cheesy, cliche, and cheap at worst, and merely creepy at best. By putting yourself into a character's shoes, you not only begin to understand the motives, methods to their madness, quirks, and personality better, but you also basically have put yourself into that scenario. It no longer is about what another person feels - it's now about what you feel, and you are a far better gauge of your own emotions than those of another person's, real or fictional. It's easier to do this with something like the Slenderman Mythos - who hasn't felt watched at night, or felt true terror at some point in their lives? In fact, if you have never been afraid of the dark, afraid of the unknown, paranoid you are being watched, or terrified of that monster in your closet, then check for circuitry and odd wires sticking out of your body, because you're clearly a robot of some sort. It's easy to take those fears and transplant them onto a character in the Slenderman Mythos in particular because you can actually understand what the character would be going through - the worst terror of their lives, constantly being tormented into mental instability by their own fear, their loneliness and paranoia eating at them so badly that they eventually can and do lose their mind. "The goal of any author is to essentially act as though the events are real to them, because doing so helps translate just what those emotions are to the reader. Good authors do this so well that they can move their audience to tears, make them despise a certain character just as much as the author's protagonist does, and terrify them with nightmares that seem all too real to wake up from. This requires a very good understanding of your own emotions first, especially painful ones, because those are some of the strongest emotions a person can feel. I believe that out of strong emotion comes some of the world's greatest prose and poetry, because like with anything, the more energy you put into something, the more you get out of it as a result. Fear is a very powerful emotion, and any writer with a strong grasp on how to make it feel real and raw can really make their audience fear even things that they normally would not. That is, after all, how Slendy got to be the popular, infamous monster we know him as today - because a couple of people from SomethingAwful saw some scary pictures made by a fellow SA member, and decided to make a video series about the scariness of the unknown, the primal fear of being hunted and possibly killed, the horror of things that humans can't understand, and the idea that more often than not, what we don't see is oftentimes far, far scarier than what we actually do." Throughout the more than 8 decades that the Joker has been present in the Batman Mythos, the changes to the character have been uncanny, often making one version indistinguishable from another in character alone. He's been everything from a true clown to a mass murderer, a terrorist to a gang leader with a grin, a minor nuisance to the Dark Knight to a full blown arch nemesis. Even his personality has changed, from being a guy who just likes pulling off crazy crimes to being a complete psychopath with absolutely no empathy that kills for fun. However, over the course of the many, many, many years he's been a driving force in the Batman universe, the Joker always has a set of constant traits - he always has some sort of rivalry or preoccupation/ obsession with Batman, he's usually funny even especially if it is in a morbid way, and he's almost never seen without that trademark purple suit of his.
"But Sugary," I hear you cry, "What about that version that wore the black and white tux? Or the version from The Batman; he wore a straitjacket!" Well, you're absolutely correct, sir or madam, the Joker has indeed worn other items of clothing in the past (including, to much snickering from Joker fans and many cries of "OMG SO WRONG!" from Bat-fans, wearing Jason Todd's ripped up Robin costume in an issue taking place in a virtual reality world. I'm fed ducking serious about that, and here's a picture from one of my favorite blogs Joker In Ink to prove it). However, the outcry over the Joker's non-traditional garb in The Batman was so great from fans that Warner Bros. eventually put him back in the trademark Joker suit (although he was still barefoot), which looked... well, it looked really weird to see monkey-lookin' Joker in a suit, but okay. And sure, plenty of Jokers have their own look - Ledger's has more of a scraggly look and that blue hexagon shirt, Nicholson's has the checkerboard pants instead of the traditional pinstripe, and Batman: Arkham Asylum/Arkham City's Joker looks like a hodge-podge of Ledger, Romero, and Comic, sounds like Hamill's Joker, and has the demeanor and some of the look of Nicholson's Joker. All in all, every Joker seems to have his own style when it comes to the suit, but the basics still remain, and even today if you ask a random stranger on the street what the Joker looks like, they'll basically give you the same story: a tall, thin, very pale man with green hair and an enormous grin wearing a purple suit, pinstriped pants, an orange or green undershirt, gentleman's shoes with white spats (usually), and that dastardly trick flower in the jacket's lapel. Depending on who you ask, they may embellish with ideas from their own image of what the Joker should be like, or if they're veteran Joker fans, they may add details like his green eyes and nails, a dandy cane with a jester's head as the handle, or a trenchcoat and hat. However, every version still has that purple suit present at least somewhere, and although that's not true for all Jokers, I'll be using the classic image of the Joker to analyze his attire and appearance. For you see, an awful lot can be determined about his personality, motives, and how evil his is just by looking at him. We all know he's bad, and even going back to our first memories of when we saw the Joker we knew immediately he was probably a really crazy bad guy, but why? Well, that's what I'm gonna look at today - how the Joker's appearance in general imples who he is and what he does, and what tricks the artist (or the character himself) might use to obtain that image. First up, let's look away from the creepy clown face and grin a moment and check out his suit. As ZZ Top once famously put to song, "Every girl's crazy 'bout a sharp-dressed man", and it really does seem like the Joker subscribes to a similar belief. Look at the man's personality - he's vain, he's egocentric, he absolutely loves himself. The idea of putting the guy in a suit perfectly fits that idea, especially since it's a business suit look. Furthermore, it has elements of a ringmaster's attire to it as well - showy, but professional. Clearly this is the suit of a man who wants to say that he's serious about his work, which is crime, but also is in it to be a show-stopper, because crime is "fun" to him. Interesting enough, the suit changes with how serious or fun-loving the Joker wearing it is. Ledger!Joker's suit, for example, is a lot more businessy, indicating a certain professionalism to the spread of chaos, a method to the madness. That suit is the suit of a criminal who takes his view of anarchy seriously, believing it to be a rational idea. It's almost like a politician's or businessman's suit in that way, blending a sense of "I have a message to tell you" with the same Jokery irrationality we all know and love. Meanwhile, the traditional suit of the Silver to Bronze Age Joker is much more flamboyant, with more flair to it. It's much more ringmaster than businessman, with coattails and lapels and gloves and everything. It's the suit of someone who is in crime because it's fun, the more boistrous and flamboyant, the better. This Joker clearly wants to show you what "fun" is, even especially if it's causing danger, death, and destruction (all the better to rope the Batman into chasing him). Another interesting implication behind the suit is that since it is more professional-looking and actually well-kept, perhaps the Joker takes his personal appearance seriously - notice that he is almost always clean-shaven, and tends to wear shorter haircuts even if his hair is messily styled. That type of attention to detail is not something the average psychopath would go for, which to me either indicates that it's part of the Joker's rampant narcissism (and therefore part of his insanity), or intriguingly, that he may not be as crazy as he lets on, which leads to the implication that the Joker may very well be pretending, at least partially, to be crazier than he actually is. Whether that itself indicates a delusional mind or not is a discussion for another time and highly subjective to personal opinion, so I'll move on from it since we have more things to discuss. Next up, the colors of the Joker's suit. Despite what else changes about his design, the colors always remain - purple, orange, and green. To further explore the meaning behind these color choices from both an artist's standpoint and the Joker's, I did some research on the symbolism behind common colors. The sites I found on the subject seemed to all concur the same ideas. Orange, for example, represents flamboyance, a need for attention, creativity, determination, and sometimes humor. Green represents luck, vigor, freedom, and misfortune amongst the obvious symbols such as nature and fertility. And purple, easily the dominant color in the Joker's wardrobe, can indicate royalty, arrogance, cruelty (which I find very interesting), individualism, wit, creativity, and vanity. All of these seem to be traits the Joker has, or at least feels he possesses. Okay some are a bit of a stretch, but the guy constantly cheats death (luck), his origin involves a chemical accident (misfortune), and he's not called the Clown Prince of Crime for nothing (royalty). It doesn't seem like an accident that the Joker was given these colors, nor does it seem all that unreasonable for the Joker to have some idea of the symbolic nature of these colors and thus choose them for his wardrobe based on them. He is, after all, a villain with a carnival/playing card theme, using bright colors like these would be essential. The brightness, suggesting the chaotic and madcap nature of a carnival, makes it appear that he's stepped out of that world and into the streets of Gotham, that is, it makes him stand out, which is precisely what the Joker strives to do in every crime he commits. Furthermore, the chaotic nature of carnival colors and of carnivals in general can be symbolic of the Joker's twisted, mad psyche, especially abandoned ones - think about that flaking paint, the fading colors, the broken down rides, all the life and joy sucked out of a place of happiness to make it a lifeless, eerie husk of what it once was. Color and the idea of carnivals representing the Joker's mind were used to great effect in Batman: The Killing Joke - in that GN, Jim Gordon wasn't just trapped in a carnival turned into the Joker's lair, but a living representation of the Joker's fractured, insane mind, a terrifying place where logic no longer rules and chaos reigns. Both colorings (original and recoloring) represent this idea in different ways, with the original's heinous neons representing the frenzy and chaos of the Joker's mind, and the recoloring's muted tones lending a sense of emptiness to everything, almost implying that (assuming the Joker's recollection about Jeannie is true) with the losses the Joker endured, everything in his life faded, broke down, and lost meaning for him. But that's a discussion for another time; back to the suit. Clearly the Joker wants to represent himself as not a man, but a force of nature with these colors, a symbol, something more (or maybe less) than human, something dangerously primal, and it seems that this is something that both the character and the artist drawing him agree upon. Speaking of primal things, let's talk about animals for a second. Ever wonder why so many animals have fur and markings in the colors of their natural habitat? Well, it makes good sense for prey, because it keeps them from getting eaten if they can blend in, and predators can use it to hide from their targets while they hunt them. Insects do it, too - stick insects, for example, camouflage themselves as sticks, and the Orchid Mantis camouflages itself as a petal on orchid flowers to better catch its prey. However, some animals don't have camouflage and instead bear bright, eye-catching colors like yellow, red, blue, purple, and orange. Why would an animal do this? Well, just ask the Poison Dart Frog, a brightly-colored tree frog from South America that gets its name from its poisonous skin, which secretes a neurotoxin so potent that tribal peoples use it on the tips of their darts when hunting. This isn't exactly uncommon in nature - from Honeybees' black and yellow stripes to the Black Widow Spider's red hourglass, from the poisonous orange feathers of Pitohui to the bright blue rings of the venomous Blue Ringed Octopus, bright colors in the natural world scream the same message to potential predators - "I'm dangerous and potentially fatal, so you'd better stay away!" Some creatures even combine warning signal types, such as the Velvet Ant (actually a species of wingless wasp) - its bright red coloring and high-pitched alarm squeaks give a clear warning alarm about its nasty, incredibly painful sting, which is so damn bad that they are often called "Cow Killers" because their sting is rumored to be so heinously painful that it can kill a cow. This technique of warning predators of a painful bite, sting, or even just a bitter taste or something else unpleasant is so effective that many animals have evolved to mimic their poisonous cousins. A famous example is the Coral Snake, which is very venomous, and the Scarlet King Snake, which is entirely harmless. The only way to tell is by the similar, but very distinct, patterns of red, black and yellow bands. Their patterns are so close that us humans had to make up a rhyme ("Red on yellow, you're dead, fellow; red on black, you're okay, Jack") just to remember the difference. This works on humans, too - it's why caution signs are in bright eye-catching colors like yellow, red, and orange. Is it any wonder then why an artist would choose to include orange in the Joker's wardrobe? Sure, our brains know that it's just an orange shirt, but somewhere in the more primal part of our minds, those bright colors scream to us "This is deadly, maybe even toxic! Do not approach!". And speaking of toxins, green can be symbolic of something toxic - just think of how many non-specific poisons and witches' brews in pop culture are depicted as green; even things like radioactive waste, toxic sludge, and more are shown as being sickly green sludge. It could be that by adding the color green, the artist is nodding to the Joker's chemical origins, which is pertinant because he definitely does have toxic blood and is definitely dangerous in that sense as well as in a physical harm sense. So in terms of color, it would seem the artist uses it both to identify the character's personality and to denote his dangerous nature, whereas the character himself uses colorful clothing to signify who he feels he is, a sort of way of advertising to the world that he is unique and very dangerous. However, there's a lot more to the Joker than just his clothing, and a lot can be said about how the artist draws him as well. The final piece of the puzzle, the final bit of unmasking to do regarding how the Joker is symbolized as villainous and vile in the comics even before he does a single wicked deed, is to observe how the artists use subtler techniques to explore the character, things like pinstripes on the clothes and the angles used, things like how his build is drawn. After all, one look at Batman's powerful (as Alan Moore once put it, "Muscle on top of muscle") and blockily, sturdily drawn physique could tell anyone that a scrawny, almost emaciated guy like the Joker shouldn't be able to stand up to him in a fight for five seconds, and in fact, often doesn't. So why pit a skinny dude against this massive superhero? To answer that, we'll have to look at the implications behind a thin-looking villain. One of my all-time favorite websites, as many of my readers know, is TVTropes. Of specific importance to how the Joker is drawn are the tropes "Lean and Mean" and "Looks Like Cesare" (read those links so you know what I'm talking about. Seriously, go do it now). Both tropes spring from the idea that a lot of villains, especially if they're meant to be foils of a hero, tend to look very scrawny and sleepless because evil not only drains the soul, but also affects the body. This is stupid, of course, but in the animated world, there's no better way to make your villain look more creepy or your lunatic look more crazy than to use these tropes. I think the reason why so many artists give the Joker that scrawny build is both to set him up as a foil to Batman (skinny vs. bulky) and to imply that he's all about the wit, so much so that he's almost neglected his body. Furthermore, a skinnier physique would make it easier for the Joker to move more quickly with greater agility, since he doesn't have as large a mass to drag around, and could also make it easier to hide in tight spaces that someone of a larger build couldn't get into. The height combined with the skinny build I believe is meant to make the Joker appear more absurd, either that or the Joker purposefully cultivates this image to further distance himself from reality. Another interesting explanation for the skinniness could be that the Joker just gets so wrapped up in his own delusions that he forgets to eat (which coincidentally is another trope) at points, but I somehow doubt a guy who fights Batman constantly would make that mistake. More likely, the height and skinny physique is just a cue to the audience that the Joker is a villain, and a pretty damn insane villain at that. That is, it's supposed to make him look creepier and more jester-like, just like his pointed chin is intended to make him look creepier and more jester-like. I think there is probably also a similar reason to the above for the pinstripes - because pinstripes provide the illusion that a person is taller and thinner than they really are by keeping the eye moving up and down, the artist and possibly the Joker himself is using this illusion to make him look more absurd and more frail. However, that's part of the trick - a person might foolishly look at the Joker and assume he's a lot wimpier than he looks, but then end up getting their asses handed to them simply because the Joker is actually a lot stronger than he appears to be at first glance, either through deception or through a "Strength Born of Madness". He's strong enough to hold his own in a fight, and in fact is probably a very formidible street fighter with all of his weapons, tricks, sleight of hand, and agility, but he's just not strong enough to defeat Batman in hand-to-hand combat and will in fact lose every single time. Such illusions as using pinstripes to make himself look less deadly and using bright colors to intimidate the opponent goes well with the Joker's mercurial "Joke's-Always-On-You" nature. He's a trickster archetype. It makes good sense to use tricks like this, and even refers to his gimmick as a playing card/carnival themed villain. It all points to a villain focused on using wit and trickery to trip up his opponents before delivering a killing blow, which alludes to his wildcard nature as well as lends credence to the idea that the Joker is definitely a threat that isn't to be taken lightly. It makes him more intimidating because we know that this is a character that isn't afraid to fight dirty if it'll give him an edge, and in fact will do just about anything to get one over on his target. His angular build further implies danger - look at these pictures, look at the sharpness of those angles and the prominance of the cheek bones and temple hollows. That screams "Villain" to us because it implies sharpness - the more angular a villain is, the more knife-like he seems to look, the sharper he looks, and the more deadly. It implies there is either a crazy so deep that it's deadly, or a mind so sharp that it's deadly. In the case of the Joker, it's both - and that angular build is deceptive, since it implies that the Joker is actually far weaker (potentially because he looks like he's starving or otherwise wasting away) than he actually is. It's yet another bit of deception that just works so well for the character and makes him that much more threatening and difficult to pin down. Furthermore, note how Batman is drawn with a blockier build, and the Joker is always more about triangles and sharp angles. This is yet another way of artistically rendering the idea that Batman and the Joker are perfect foils of each other, opposites even down to the very bodies they reside in, as opposed as two poles on a magnet and every bit as flipside as the heads and tails of a coin. All of these things show why so very many artists use angles with the Joker, and indeed why so many of them draw him as tall and thin - the contrast to Batman is not only visually appealing, but symbolically appealing, catching the eye as well as catching the feel of a Batman vs. Joker scene well. Of course, eye-catching visuals and symbolism aren't all it takes to make a good Batman vs. Joker scene work, but it does go a long way in setting the mood and making the tension between one of the most famous arch-nemesis pairs in comics history all that more enthralling. Well, that concludes this little episode of Jokerology 101! Tune in next time for more hellish hilarity and interesting insights into one of the most prominant comic book villains of all time. And please remember to check your pockets for any missing articles before you leave Arkham Asylum's restricted ward, as the last possible thing we need right now is the Joker escaping and causing more havoc... Note: This transcript comes from a Skype conversation between some friends and I. The subject was the viral video Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared (hereafter referred to as DHMIS), a rather interesting video that parodies Sesame Street. Information and quotes were taken from Wikipedia's entry on the video, and usernames have been removed for privacy's sake. Be aware this is only my interpretation of the video, and may not necessarily follow what you've interpreted it as. And no, before you ask, as of writing this blog entry I have not watched DHMIS 2 yet.
------------------------------ [1:09:56 AM] DarkShadows: So apparently "Don't Hug Me I'm Scared" is a political satire about stupid ideas of what the US education system thinks creativity is. ... I... don't think I got that from that video when I first watched it. However, here's some info from Wikipedia about it: "The videos parody children's television shows such as Sesame Street by ironically juxtaposing puppetry and musical numbers against psychedelic content and disturbing imagery. Both videos begin with a light-hearted song about the subject at hand before slowly exploring darker themes and ideas such as conformity, mortality, and death. "Despite the unexpected evolution of the video’s mood, it intends to spread a message of the frivolity of creativity in the contemporary way that we define it." "Joseph Pelling, when asked about how the film came about, said that the purpose was, ironically, “how not to teach something” and “how an abstract concept like creativity is kind of stupid when people try to teach it in a limited way that [they] do.” In addition, Pelling comments on how the video is open for interpretation, and how, when different people reach different conclusions about the video, they may all be valid in their own right." [1:14:41 AM] DarkShadows: Think about it. The creepy stuff the puppets do with the internal organs and stuff is pretty creative. It's just disturbing. But that's not the kind of creativity the Notepad wanted to spread. That interpretation makes total sense. [1:16:25 AM] A. R. : The Notepad bent the puppets own natural creativity to her own idea so at that point they weren't actually being creative they were doing what she, the higher power, told them to do. [1:19:55 AM] DarkShadows: Yes. I think the video's message is this: "Creativity comes in more forms than just one, but there's a limited range of what society finds acceptable for creativity." And that's exactly what we teach our kids. We teach them that "creative" is doing pointless things with pointless objects, and then when they *really* get creative we find it frightening. We teach kids that "getting creative" means drawing art or drawing or playing pretend. But when kids draw creepy pictures or play pretend about creepy stuff, we say "no, that's bad". So how are kids supposed to be creative if we tell them to get creative, then stifle their creativity because we don't like their way of being creative? Therefore... we stifle kids' creativity by telling them that it's okay to be creative... but only in a certain way. As a kid, I remember playing horrifying games where people died brutally, where there were monsters that wanted to eat us, where scary shit happened. Anyone would look at that and think "this child's disturbed", but i wasn't. I was just a normal kid being creative. [1:28:24 AM] S. J. : Pffft. I was disturbing as a kid. I shot things and killed bugs and painted with their blood. And my mom wasn't around to stop me, sooo... Yeah. [1:29:42 AM] DarkShadows: Yeah. I remember when I was a kid, I had plastic dinos. I would take my plastic dinos and give them lives and families... and then brutally murder them. Dinos ate each other. Dinos got smothered in clay and buried alive. Then I would play paleontologist and dig up their "perfectly preserved fossils". I would make them scream when they died, too. I would draw creepy pictures, I would make traps with legos and trap lego people and they'd never, ever get out. I played villain often, and had gullible, too-innocent characters be killed or hurt for being too gullible or innocent. Even as a kid I knew the world wasn't a super-nice place. I think most kids do. I remember playing Jurassic Park as a kid, and I'd be a velociraptor that ate people. I'd pretend to lick the blood off my "jaws" and "claws" and everything. [1:32:39 AM | Edited 1:32:55 AM] K. M. : child you was a psychopath [1:32:46 AM] DarkShadows: It gets better. I had a stuffed t-rex named Alice that I dressed up and had tea with. She still ate other dinosaurs though, because she's a carnivore, you see. [1:33:19 AM] S. J. : I'm sorry, but that's pretty cool in my honest opinion. Even as a kid, I would've been amazed at the creativity and honesty of that. [1:33:21 AM] DarkShadows: I mounted a beetle carcass on a piece of bark once, I still have it somewhere I think. I also collected dead wasps when I was in middle school. [1:33:31 AM] K. M. : that's an odd hobby... [1:33:50 AM] S. J. : I shaved Barbie dolls and buried them in my yard in various spots. [1:34:02 AM] DarkShadows: And I had a skeleton I named "Skully" that I dragged around as a doll. It was a plastic skeleton, I believe I still have him somewhere. Flexible rubber... My little sister had a rubber fake coral snake, and my little brother collected everything bat in his younger days. [1:35:22 AM] DarkShadows: I once even scared my mom by fake-limping so well she thought I was actually hurt. I was a messed up little kid in some of my play, but I don't think anyone thought I was an abnormal kid. I had a good childhood and I don't remember anyone ever questioning my play as being odd. [1:24:38 AM] DarkShadows: Now let's bring this back to DHMIS. In the video, the Notepad tells the puppets "Let's get creative!" over and over, and showing them how to be creative... but then also tells them things like "Green is not a creative color" and "Woah there, friend, you might need to slow down" when one of them decides to actually be creative (by drawing a picture of a clown). At the end, after the puppets get creative in their own unique way, the Notepad is horrified at what their idea of creativity is actually like, and says "Now let's all agree to never be creative again". In essence... the Notepad wants these puppets to color in the lines, but the second they color outside those lines (that is, behave like normal kids), she's disturbed. But the thing is this: kids are disturbing! When kids get creative, they sometimes do so in disturbing ways! And outside of just children, some of the best creative works of art, literature, film and media are disturbing. Applying the same logic to great authors as we do to our children, that means that people like H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allen Poe, and H. R. Giger aren't creative, because their work deals with disturbing, horrific things. By this logic, Mary Shelly's classic novel "Frankenstein" should not be a classic, Salvador Dali's eerie and surreal paintings are not art, and "Halloween" is not a classic of the Slasher Horror genre. [1:26:20 AM] DarkShadows: Of course, nobody in their right mind would say that any of these things are bad or unacceptable, or even uncreative (whether or not the themes used later became cliched is irrelevant here), because that would be ridiculous. Somehow though, we've decided as a society that kids being creative in ways that might cause unpleasant emotional responses in ourselves is not acceptable. We're totally okay with adults creating things that disturb us, but kids can only ever be nice and happyhappyhappy when they get creative, or we think there's something very, deeply wrong with them. And that's what DHMIS is about - the fact that we don't actually let kids be kids anymore. We don't let them explore things that they're naturally curious about as human beings (the body, death, etc.) because, well, they're kids. We see them as perfect little innocent happy angels that can never, ever grow up and never, ever should be tarnished or soiled by unpleasent aspects of life, even when they know those aspects exist. So now, here's the big take-away question: There's no doubt that kids have enough confidence to explore the disturbing and scary... so then how come we, as adults, are now so afraid of it that we won't let our children even explore it? Why do we hold our children to a standard that even we, as adults, can never obtain? |
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Welcome to Musings 2.0, my personal blog here on WordFlow! Here, you can find out what I'm doing now and where I'm going next, as well as get my thoughts on the Cthulhu Mythos, assorted sundry writing topics, and various scientific topics. Archives
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