[Editor's note: This piece was not written for Mythos Review, but the author has submitted it to us all the same.]
This week, on The Feart Critic, we will take a look at the blog Slender Won’t Back Down. This blog is still ongoing, but of the existing posts we think there’s a substantial possibility for critical exegesis once textual deconstruction is applied.
Slender Won’t Back Down, on the surface, is the blog of Christopher Lloyd, a thirteen-year-old boy who attempts to answer questions about the Slender Man Mythos but finds his life distraught by a coalition of proxies working for the Slender Man. His girlfriend is threatened, his friends’ lives fall apart, and the proxies on multiple occasions succeed in kidnapping him, though they have yet to successfully convert him into a proxy. The writing style is fluid, brief, occasionally informative but usually rather stream-of-conscious. However, there are recurring moments in the blog that seem to suggest a deeper interpretation.
Chris at one point posts a history of the Slender Man’s relationship with proxies. A very recent era is titled “The Deconstruction of Proxies.” Now, understand that deconstruction is strictly a post-structuralist linguistic and philosophical concept– it is a method of approaching texts, of approaching the concept of meaning. Deconstruction argues, through differance, that a text by definition conveys its own intended meaning as well as multiple simultaneousopposing meanings– a text is its own contrary evidence. There is no other definition for “deconstruction,” so by bringing up such a clear philosophy in this post, Christopher is pointing us in the direction of approaching his text in this manner. He wants us to interpret it, to break it down and see what it is saying. And that is precisely what we do.
So. According to that post, it is not just any deconstruction but the deconstruction of proxies. In the blog, the proxies are a constant opposing force for Chris, but a key element to post-structuralism is that opposing forces serve a sort of symbiotic relationship. You cannot have “good” without “bad” (and vice versa), you cannot have “meaning” without “nonsense” (and vice versa), you cannot have “proxies” without “Chris” (and vice versa). That is the conclusion drawn by breaking down his use of words– all that just in “The Deconstruction of Proxies” (placed in a central location, drawing attention to itself, begging for analysis, insisting importance). So we have established that: Chris and the proxies are opposing forces, and so they need each other to survive. There are many ways to interpret this, but we will call for more textual evidence first.
Early on in the blog, Chris gives a list of his accounts, with a consistent number in a lot of them being “111.” When he discovers the blog of Proxy, the url given is “legendary111.” The two characters share the same number. If we go on legendary111, we will find among its posts this telling quote: “WE HAVE CHRIS HES IN STASIS FOR HIS SHIFT AS PROXY WHICH IS ME”
His shift as proxy which is me. It’s almost as if Chris and Proxy are two conflicting Parts of the same Whole– perhaps fragments of the same psyche, battling for control (their “shift,” as it were) over the body.
Further support: A recent update shows photographs of the coalition of proxies. Aside from a couple of images taken from copyrighted material, the majority of proxies are clearly played by the same actor as Christopher himself. We don’t believe this is a coincidence. We believe this is a deliberate ploy: Christopher is all of the proxies. They are all battling for their “shift.”
Aside from the proxies, there is also the question of other characters– namely, Chris’s friends. The most important is his girlfriend Sierra. A blog is linked to early on, described as hers, but the blog is empty. As Sierra’s presence inSlender Won’t Back Down rarely becomes apparent, we can deduce that Sierra might not exist either, that perhaps she too is another fragment of Chris’s psyche– a missing one, his mythical “goal” to protect, his “baby girl” (a telling description). What this implies, who can tell? For now we’re only giving the evidence.
In fact, very few characters in the blog get much presence. Some of them might be real people, marginalized in the theatre of singular experience. We think it’s more likely, and bear with us here, that all characters are Chris. This blog is the pained story of one blogger’s wrestle with unity, with mind.
Then what of the Slender Man? Of all characters, his presence is the most often felt. Chris describes him as an ancient entity originating in 2300 BCE, whose “Golden Age,” back when “he knew what he was doing,” consisted of the moment the Slender Man sought cults for himself, but whose reign has died down in recent years for reasons never truly stated but implied to be related to proxies. If we recall that “proxies” are fragments of Chris’s psyche, this can be read as Chris attaching a nostalgic significance to a past before his was a mind torn. To connect this with the Slender Man almost seems a red herring, but clearly at some point he ceased to know “what he was doing.” If the Slender Man is the one who instigates, who recruits proxies, he must have some connection.
A constant question on the reader’s mind while reading this tour de force is “Does the Slender Man truly exist as a character, or is this meant to be a running commentary on mythos conventions?” This question is first raised in an early post, where Chris introduces himself as “knowing his away [sic] around The Slender Man Mythos, The Fear Mythos, The Willow Mythos, and The Cthulhu Mythos.” All four are known and established communities of fiction, so if Chris knows his way around them, he must be aware of this. But now that we have begun approaching the text with the psyche interpretation in mind, a third option opens up: The Slender Man is also a fragment of the same psyche. This early post, this mark of awareness of the four separate mythoi, seems almost.. an acknowledgement, a poignant cry for help. “I exist in four mythoi. I am fact and fiction. I am a mind torn,” it seems to say.
One last motif of conflict is this strange association of geography with terms of feminine appearance. Cleveland, Ohio, is described as “beautiful.” Hollywood is associated with “Whore.” A character named Bailey who moves from “beautiful” Ohio to California turns out to be a proxy named “Deformity.” Coincidence? You decide.
So. To recap: Everyone in Slender Won’t Back Down is the same person. The conflict is one of a boy’s mind at war with itself, possibly suppressing memory of some past event. The plot, then, opens up immensely. Proxy, once an obvious beacon of evil, now looks morally ambiguous. Chris, once a blatant source of good, now comes into question. In one post, Proxy posts the famously cryptic “BOOP BOOP BOOOOP” followed by an admission that he will listen and be good now. Chris denies him his chance of redemption– Chris knows the two must oppose, that (to use an analogy) if Shem were to become Shaun, Shaun must then become Shem. A profound philosophical subject covered so subtly in a Slenderblog, affixed so iconically to a series of boops. Archangard had to cover his face at this point in the reading, he had tears in his eyes.
We have obviously only covered a portion of the text, and we have only introduced this interpretation; we have not gone far. That is left up to you. You have all the tools. We will leave you with this: While the question of what split Chris’s psyche has yet to be answered, a fairly recent post gives these dark and telling implications: “Murder and me don’t go together well.”
Breathtaking. Where Slender Won’t Back Down is going, only its author can know, but Archangard and I await future posts with baited breath and recommend its psychological turmoil to all.
See you on the other side, Fear Mythos.
