For reference, LITTLE SLICES: THE INSOMNOBLOG was written by Buliwif and can be found here.
LITTLE SLICES was a 39-post blog about Thomas Jameson, a man with insomnia who chronicles his attempts to get a full night's sleep as well as the strange events of his town. He goes through various different sleep techniques, and homeopathic pills seem to work until he begins getting dreams of a faceless man. His local news gives reports of missing children, and Thomas even sees what he thinks are the ghosts of two missing children from fifteen years prior. He also hooks up with a girl he'd been eyeing for a while, and the two of them try to help a friend when her husband disappears entirely, only for the friend to disappear as well. Thomas finds their bodies strung up in the woods and calls the police, only for his girlfriend to disappear as well, whereupon Thomas crafts two makeshift explosives and follows the beast into the woods, where he watches his love interest be dissected. He pulls the pin and sets the forest ablaze, only to survive and post in his blog that the faceless man is still alive and waiting outside his door. The blog ends.
The story's fairly standard Slender Man blog conventions, though it's written creatively enough to stand alone well. Thomas is a believable character with good merits and bad merits, the plot points that happen all happen with precedent, and the Slender Man is written with enough surreal nature to give me goosebumps. The side characters, whenever they come up, are minor enough not to annoy, but still likable enough to care when they disappear. And for what it's worth, this story is just the right length before it starts to get boring! Really, this story checks out on all the elements of a solid blog.
But then the ending is kinda really unnecessary. If the blog had ended on the previous post, it would have been clear that Thomas had died trying to save Steph from the Slender Man, and it would have been subtle enough to give chills. But instead we get a detailed action post with a dissection and with hints of the Slender Man having some inner appearance that the faceless man is just a facade for. There's no hint of what this is, so this claim is utterly meaningless and only served as narm for me. We also get a full shot of tentacles, tentacles which had had no precedent in the story and again only served as narm. Without this last post, the Slender Man is a mysterious horror creature. With the last post, he's a tentacled eldritch abomination who I can rather easily predict the conventions to. Plus, the last post expects us to believe Thomas survived an explosion of 4,000 degrees, only for the entire post to be rendered pointless anyway by the fact that the Slender Man survives. The blog still ends on a faux-ambiguous note of Thomas going out to the Slender Man with a grenade, except now there's no mystery left to any of the plot points.
Now, don't get me wrong. There are blogs that can pull off detailed action posts with the Slender Man well. But they don't do it on the final post after a full blog of realistic horror. The action posts go in the middle so they don't come out of left field.
While I'm criticizing things, I feel the need to bring up the post titled "SLENDER MAN." In this post, Thomas comes back from finding Cynthia and Steve's bodies in the woods, and he decides to look up this faceless being on the internet. He then finds out all the stories of the fictional Slender Man as well as its Something Awful creation. I.. yes, I found this narmy as well. Incredibly. The idea that the protagonist is being pursued by a fictional creature can work, but not when it's only suddenly brought up right at the end of a blog. This reveal needs clues and hints, established motifs! As it stands, it feels more like the blog arbitrarily decided to link itself to the rest of the mythos rather than staying standalone like it had been setting up all this time.
One more criticism, though this one is far more minor! The characters Wednesday and Pugsley were also the source of much narm for me, but I fully admit that this one is entirely just my opinion. Their introduction actually made sense (as much as that's possible with surreal ghost children), and their actions bordered on creepy. They were good characters to include; I just personally hate kids.
Finally, there's the point of the blog's layout. It's a default look, standard, nothing special. But the background provides an unnecessary dissonance from the content. The background is that of a snowy mountain seen through condensated lenses, which of course has nothing to do with the story itself. Yes, this is just a default background, so I suppose it works with Thomas' "Average Guy" personality. But he's not even an average guy; he has distinct quirks and even speaks to the blog as if it's a separate character. I feel the customization was a missed opportunity in this case. Doesn't take any points away, but still missed.
LITTLE SLICES: THE INSOMNOBLOG is a good first blog. Buliwif shows clear understanding of the art of making a story realistic while maintaining creepiness, and even the controversial action bits themselves were written very well. I think he needs to work on his representation of eldritch antagonists, but things like that come with practice. I have much hopes for him, and I can say I enjoyed reading this blog.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Monday, August 27, 2012
OH GOD THE RAPTURE IS BURNING (draft 1, Act 1), reviewed by Madinrei
[Editor's note: The Rapture logs reviewed here were in their first draft at the time and have since been heavily edited and revised. This review is kept solely for posterity, as Madinrei is the one who first began Mythos Review.]
I said it before and I’ll say it again: Rapture is extraordinarily long. And yet, despite its length, Rapture has succeeded in both capturing and keeping my interest, which can be rare with a story so obviously complex.
I said it before and I’ll say it again: Rapture is extraordinarily long. And yet, despite its length, Rapture has succeeded in both capturing and keeping my interest, which can be rare with a story so obviously complex.
I’ve often heard from DJay that Act 1 was not his finest ‘Act’, and I would like to immediately throw out there that I disagree. There is a very unique feel that is generated in the first Act that gave me more of a chilled, horror-filled ambience than, say, the second Act did. It can be best described with Jordan’s starting innocence as a character. He hasn’t been filled in with many of the details of hows and whys of the apocalyptic events, and at times in the beginning of the Act, it feels as though the coming Rapture hasn’t quite sunken in for him yet, which contrasts terrifically well with the direness of the whole situation. The reader knows that darker things lay on the horizon for Jordan, and as Jordan stumbles, sometimes blissfully, into these darker situations, one can’t help but feel both terrified and sympathetic for him.
Jordan also goes through intriguing development through this Act, and I would even go so far as to say that his encounters with the Wooden Girl could be considered a sort of ‘rite of manhood’, seeing as Jordan appears to go through some drastic maturity growth once he’s free of the Wooden Girl’s influence. Before, when the Wooden Girl practically had her strings in him, Jordan is a helpless character, constantly pondering about the morality of his deeds and yet powerless to change them with Donnie’s life on the line. Yet once opportunity arises, and once Jordan takes that opportunity to temporarily eliminate the Wooden Girl, Jordan regains some control in his life and begins to use it, in my opinion, a bit more wisely. Instead of simply trudging about looking for answers, Jordan begins to look for a safe haven for him and Donnie, and throughout the rest of the Act he becomes more of a conscious protector than simply dragging around a guitar and haphazardly hitting things as they come. This development pleases me, because as much as it was humorous to watch the adventures of poor Jordan as Rapture continually spews shit in his general direction, it is more gratifying to see a character that may or may not become an integral part of humanity’s fight to survive.
The semi-arc of the Exodus was also a pleasing thriller for me to read, vaguely reminiscent of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None via the inescapable setting and the slow murdering of pretty much everyone on board. (With the exception of the Campers) The suspense is what makes that part of Rapture, and with the culmination of the zombie army awaiting Jordan and Donnie on the shore of America, the suspense truly did not disappoint.
This does not go to say that Act 1 was perfect, of course. There were a few parts that dragged on, especially when Jordan is on his own ‘converting’ for the Mistress. It is understandable that Jordan’s ramblings are to fill in for thought and time as he traverses Europe alone, but to the reader I can see it becoming that one part of the story that you want to get through really fast so you can get to the better parts. There were a few ‘WTF’ moments for me, more revolving around ‘how can a crowbar possibly decapitate someone in one stroke when it’s for the most part a blunt object’ than the thankfully left out Wooden Girl rape scenes, but perhaps that’s just me being anal.
Overall, though, Act 1 was a pleasant read. Enough suspense, horror, and humor to please my reading fancy, and a truly good wrap up at the end. (Thank you DJay for not giving us a horrific cliffhanger between Acts)
Coming up next, of course, will be the review of Act 2.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Penny Dropped, reviewed by PandorasParadox
If I would say one thing about Penny Dropped I would say that it's certainly fresh. By that I mean it's a bit of a fresh take on the Plague Doctor story coming from the point of view of a mysophobic ex-convict. I enjoyed Penny Dropped, even though I must say that it isn't without flaws, there are some moments that make me cringe. I think that mostly were those mad mantra posts where a sentence is repeated over and over again. I really hate seeing those in a fear blog because it has been done to death and doesn't really work without proper writing, I don't think TGecko used the mantras well, it felt corny. The whole blog has an odd pace to it, it feels a bit rushed. I also counted a few other problems such as the description of things sounding a bit off and like with the mantras sounded corny at times.
HOWEVER....I must not neglect that Penny Dropped is all in all a good story. The things that work, really work. The Oathbreaker in the story really seemed like the typical oathbreaker and the Plague Doctor is introduced well and I must say the ending is one of the most well written things I've read this year. The ending is the greatest, packing a vast amount of emotion into it. Penny Dropped is a nice piece of internet literature.
HOWEVER....I must not neglect that Penny Dropped is all in all a good story. The things that work, really work. The Oathbreaker in the story really seemed like the typical oathbreaker and the Plague Doctor is introduced well and I must say the ending is one of the most well written things I've read this year. The ending is the greatest, packing a vast amount of emotion into it. Penny Dropped is a nice piece of internet literature.
Continuity Glue [3/9: N.A.P.T.], reviewed by DJay32
Read the previous Continuity Glue review here.
For reference, Continuity Glue is both the name of an epic and of the first blog in the epic. It was written by The Nameless One, and its order is as follows: Continuity Glue, I Am Not Insane,N.A.P.T., The All-Seeing Eye, The Sound of Silence, The 12 Days of Christmas, Reality Falls Apart. There are more blogs involved, but I can only link to what has been deemed ready to link. There are also a lot of creepypasta which will come up in my reviews. I will go back and organize this disclaimer when things are more clear. This review is for the third blog, New Amateur Paranormal Taskforce.
Before I begin the blog review, I must review some creepypasta that are a part of the greater Continuity Glue narrative. They go between I Am Not Insane and N.A.P.T.
"A Great Man, Dying"
A good-sized creepypasta about a dying man and the peculiar events that led up to his death. In the context of the Fear Mythos, this is a nicely written though predictable Dying Man story, but taken out of that context and read with just the knowledge of Continuity Glue, this is a mysterious and frightening piece that will no doubt only become creepier as its relevance is made clear in the following blog.
"The Man in Gray"
A creepypasta about a mysterious omen of disasters. ..honestly, this story didn't scare me or really do anything at all. It wasn't about any Fear, so at least I didn't know what to expect, I'll give it that. But one guy seeing a man in gray before horrible disasters doesn't, a horror story, make. This is more the kind of plot for an analytical psychological tale; there's nothing particularly scary about it. And since this is a creepypasta, there wasn't enough time to ponder on the psychological significance of the events, so we were just left with a bit of a boring story.
New Amateur Paranormal Taskforce
Here's a 52-post blog about the unpleasant and ever-paranoid mind of Omar Friedman. He starts the eponymous New Amateur Paranormal Taskforce and posts a lot about various supernatural casefiles he's heard about, but then his sister is kidnapped and he coerces his taskforce to help him find and rescue her. Over the course of the story, Omar gets involved with Candle Cove characters, a being calling himself "Judgement," an organization called STAB, and a few run-ins with the SCP Foundation. We see a lot of paranormal things and the people researching them, and Omar descends into madness and winds up killing almost every protagonist in the story to suit his conspiracy theories. That's pretty much the whole plot, with him showing a little remorse towards the end but then it ends on a cliffhanger.
I.. really don't like the cliffhanger. I want Omar to either redeem himself for all his atrocities or to just die. But like with I Am Not Insane, there is no catharsis; the sociopaths get away with it and the blogs end before their emotional tensions culminate. I can only hope that their storylines will receive some sort of closure by Continuity Glue's end, but at this point the will to keep reading is fading. The Nameless One is writing a peculiar story, and to be able to pull it off will take talent. I suspect he might be able to, but every critic must have his doubts.
If there's anything more tangible I must criticize N.A.P.T. for, it's the flow. The blog starts off with a simple "Blogger posts records" plot, then halfway through switches to a "This is the blogger's daily life" plot, and then switches to an espionage rescue plot, and then it becomes a psychological character study on the descension of Omar Friedman into madness before ending with no closure to any of the four plots. Admittedly, the character study arc was well-written for what it was worth, but I must discuss the espionage plot. There were frequent action scenes during these posts, with Fears and other paranormal entities coming up, and none of it felt engaging. I felt like I was reading a "This happened and then that happened and then this happened" but with actions so supernatural that they were unrelatable, so it felt more like gibberish. The supernatural entities needed more build-up and explanation so that we would be more familiar with their actions when they happened, rather than just feeling like a long stream of confusion.
Another bit I didn't quite like about the blog (though I fully admit this one was minor) was the blog's design. It used a default layout with a background that had very little to do with the story. The default meant N.A.P.T. looked monotonously identical to a good number of other blogs, and the dissonance in background meant I felt even more detached to the actual story. If a writer is going to have a background that is a picture, I feel it best that the picture be relevant to the story.
Now, on the good side of things, there were some great parts to this blog! As I said, the character study was well-written. The early posts with casefiles were fun to read simply for their creepypasta nature. The location during the espionage arc where everything that happened soon reverted was disturbing, with some subtleties in it that gave me goosebumps. The character Ralph was pleasant and likable, as well, and Lina's death affected me in all the right ways. I'm sure The Nameless One knew what he was doing with this blog, and so I definitely don't think this was a bad blog. It will make sense in the greater narrative; of this, I am sure. It just definitely left a lot of bad tastes in my mouth.
Wherever the Continuity Glue plot goes next, I'm curious to find out.
[Editor's note: The All-Seeing Eye has since been released and will be reviewed soon.]
For reference, Continuity Glue is both the name of an epic and of the first blog in the epic. It was written by The Nameless One, and its order is as follows: Continuity Glue, I Am Not Insane,N.A.P.T., The All-Seeing Eye, The Sound of Silence, The 12 Days of Christmas, Reality Falls Apart. There are more blogs involved, but I can only link to what has been deemed ready to link. There are also a lot of creepypasta which will come up in my reviews. I will go back and organize this disclaimer when things are more clear. This review is for the third blog, New Amateur Paranormal Taskforce.
Before I begin the blog review, I must review some creepypasta that are a part of the greater Continuity Glue narrative. They go between I Am Not Insane and N.A.P.T.
"A Great Man, Dying"
A good-sized creepypasta about a dying man and the peculiar events that led up to his death. In the context of the Fear Mythos, this is a nicely written though predictable Dying Man story, but taken out of that context and read with just the knowledge of Continuity Glue, this is a mysterious and frightening piece that will no doubt only become creepier as its relevance is made clear in the following blog.
"The Man in Gray"
A creepypasta about a mysterious omen of disasters. ..honestly, this story didn't scare me or really do anything at all. It wasn't about any Fear, so at least I didn't know what to expect, I'll give it that. But one guy seeing a man in gray before horrible disasters doesn't, a horror story, make. This is more the kind of plot for an analytical psychological tale; there's nothing particularly scary about it. And since this is a creepypasta, there wasn't enough time to ponder on the psychological significance of the events, so we were just left with a bit of a boring story.
New Amateur Paranormal Taskforce
Here's a 52-post blog about the unpleasant and ever-paranoid mind of Omar Friedman. He starts the eponymous New Amateur Paranormal Taskforce and posts a lot about various supernatural casefiles he's heard about, but then his sister is kidnapped and he coerces his taskforce to help him find and rescue her. Over the course of the story, Omar gets involved with Candle Cove characters, a being calling himself "Judgement," an organization called STAB, and a few run-ins with the SCP Foundation. We see a lot of paranormal things and the people researching them, and Omar descends into madness and winds up killing almost every protagonist in the story to suit his conspiracy theories. That's pretty much the whole plot, with him showing a little remorse towards the end but then it ends on a cliffhanger.
I.. really don't like the cliffhanger. I want Omar to either redeem himself for all his atrocities or to just die. But like with I Am Not Insane, there is no catharsis; the sociopaths get away with it and the blogs end before their emotional tensions culminate. I can only hope that their storylines will receive some sort of closure by Continuity Glue's end, but at this point the will to keep reading is fading. The Nameless One is writing a peculiar story, and to be able to pull it off will take talent. I suspect he might be able to, but every critic must have his doubts.
If there's anything more tangible I must criticize N.A.P.T. for, it's the flow. The blog starts off with a simple "Blogger posts records" plot, then halfway through switches to a "This is the blogger's daily life" plot, and then switches to an espionage rescue plot, and then it becomes a psychological character study on the descension of Omar Friedman into madness before ending with no closure to any of the four plots. Admittedly, the character study arc was well-written for what it was worth, but I must discuss the espionage plot. There were frequent action scenes during these posts, with Fears and other paranormal entities coming up, and none of it felt engaging. I felt like I was reading a "This happened and then that happened and then this happened" but with actions so supernatural that they were unrelatable, so it felt more like gibberish. The supernatural entities needed more build-up and explanation so that we would be more familiar with their actions when they happened, rather than just feeling like a long stream of confusion.
Another bit I didn't quite like about the blog (though I fully admit this one was minor) was the blog's design. It used a default layout with a background that had very little to do with the story. The default meant N.A.P.T. looked monotonously identical to a good number of other blogs, and the dissonance in background meant I felt even more detached to the actual story. If a writer is going to have a background that is a picture, I feel it best that the picture be relevant to the story.
Now, on the good side of things, there were some great parts to this blog! As I said, the character study was well-written. The early posts with casefiles were fun to read simply for their creepypasta nature. The location during the espionage arc where everything that happened soon reverted was disturbing, with some subtleties in it that gave me goosebumps. The character Ralph was pleasant and likable, as well, and Lina's death affected me in all the right ways. I'm sure The Nameless One knew what he was doing with this blog, and so I definitely don't think this was a bad blog. It will make sense in the greater narrative; of this, I am sure. It just definitely left a lot of bad tastes in my mouth.
Wherever the Continuity Glue plot goes next, I'm curious to find out.
[Editor's note: The All-Seeing Eye has since been released and will be reviewed soon.]
Friday, August 24, 2012
Continuity Glue [2/9: I Am Not Insane]
Read the first Continuity Glue review here.
For reference, Continuity Glue is both the name of an epic and of the first blog in the epic. It was written by The Nameless One, and its order is as follows: Continuity Glue, I Am Not Insane, N.A.P.T., The All-Seeing Eye, The Sound of Silence, The 12 Days of Christmas, Reality Falls Apart. There are more blogs involved, but I can only link to what has been deemed ready to link. There are also a lot of creepypasta which will come up in my reviews. I will go back and organize this disclaimer when things are more clear. This review is for the second blog, I Am Not Insane.
Before I begin the blog review, I must review some creepypasta that are a part of the greaterContinuity Glue narrative. They go between the Continuity Glue blog and I Am Not Insane.
"The Land of Make-Believe"
A memory of going to an amusement park with a brother and going on a Candle Cove ride. It's a short creepypasta, and I recommend reading it. It made my skin crawl, and I loved even more that this was expanding upon the very subtle Candle Cove reference in Continuity Glue. I am definitely looking forward to seeing where this narrative goes.
"Hunger"
A very short soliloquy of a dying man in a cell. Again, I recommend reading it. It wasn't as blatantly alarming as "The Land of Make-Believe;" "Hunger" establishes a much more subtle and unnerving atmosphere. I am very excited to see where this narrative goes; the Nameless One is clearly talented at subtle moods.
I Am Not Insane
Time for the feature presentation. I Am Not Insane is the 25-post blogella of Evan Marsden, the boy who lost his brother during "The Land of Make-Believe." He is thirteen at the point of this blog, and he is a cold and selfish boy who is approached by a wooden Queen to become her new "general" for an ambiguous goal. She makes him kill his parents and shows him the many grotesque ways she's preparing an army for her goals. He slowly realizes that this is all a mistake and that he's been acting selfishly, so he betrays her and does all he can to resist her wills, but she tortures him and keeps him in check while recruiting his own classmates and corrupting his life. In a bout of desperation, Evan is able to acquire the "Eye of Fate," an object allowing him to see time simultaneously. With this new power, he escapes and goes on the run, opting out of blogging.
The story is fairly short and disturbing, with the descriptions of the Queen's torturous methods often making me wince. But Evan's own selfish and sociopathic personality works just as well with the antagonist's corruption; he doesn't care about anyone but himself and feels no remorse at killing people, and he slowly realizes this over the course of the story in an arc I must commend the Nameless One for writing. He actually made a protagonist I wanted to see die. It would have been fitting, but it didn't happen, instead lending itself to possible continuation further down in the greater Continuity Glue narrative. This choice is certainly also promising. Plus, Evan did havesome redeemable qualities; he knew he was a horrible person because he still maintained a firm knowledge of morals, and even he found the Queen and Candle Cove's methods unquestionably disturbing. Evan was a complex character, one of the more memorable protagonists I've read in a blog.
The arc with the Eye of Fate seemed a little odd to me, though. It seemed to exist purely to avoid Evan's death, suggesting a subversion of the themes of tragedy established throughout the blog in light of possible greater themes to be shown throughout the overall epic. Because of this, I cannot pass any judgement on it until the whole story has been told. I have to see where I Am Not Insane stands in the overall piece.
The tying-in of the previous two creepypastas was fantastic, helping the sense of Continuity Glue being a larger and complex tale. Evan's sociopathic portrayal in I Am Not Insane is definitely a clever subversion of the sympathy a reader would naturally feel for him after "The Land of Make-Believe," and the ambiguous hinting nature of the Choir's place in the narrative is more than appropriate considering "Hunger's" just-as-ambiguous subtle feel.
The blog layout is almost a let-down after Continuity Glue's complicated and customized appearance, instead giving us a very simple default blog look. I suppose this works well, considering Evan's age. It certainly emphasized the feeling of a stark tragedy, a bleak and pictureless background for the downfall of a child fate never liked. This only strengthened my lack of catharsis over the ending.
I Am Not Insane was well-written and a classic horror blogella, showing much promise for the Nameless One's progression of writing talent and for, naturally, the future of Continuity Glue. The ending is a bit of a major oddity, but knowing there's much left to be told is enough to subdue the bad taste in my mouth. Only time will tell.
Read the next Continuity Glue review, New Amateur Paranormal Taskforce, here.
For reference, Continuity Glue is both the name of an epic and of the first blog in the epic. It was written by The Nameless One, and its order is as follows: Continuity Glue, I Am Not Insane, N.A.P.T., The All-Seeing Eye, The Sound of Silence, The 12 Days of Christmas, Reality Falls Apart. There are more blogs involved, but I can only link to what has been deemed ready to link. There are also a lot of creepypasta which will come up in my reviews. I will go back and organize this disclaimer when things are more clear. This review is for the second blog, I Am Not Insane.
Before I begin the blog review, I must review some creepypasta that are a part of the greaterContinuity Glue narrative. They go between the Continuity Glue blog and I Am Not Insane.
"The Land of Make-Believe"
A memory of going to an amusement park with a brother and going on a Candle Cove ride. It's a short creepypasta, and I recommend reading it. It made my skin crawl, and I loved even more that this was expanding upon the very subtle Candle Cove reference in Continuity Glue. I am definitely looking forward to seeing where this narrative goes.
"Hunger"
A very short soliloquy of a dying man in a cell. Again, I recommend reading it. It wasn't as blatantly alarming as "The Land of Make-Believe;" "Hunger" establishes a much more subtle and unnerving atmosphere. I am very excited to see where this narrative goes; the Nameless One is clearly talented at subtle moods.
I Am Not Insane
Time for the feature presentation. I Am Not Insane is the 25-post blogella of Evan Marsden, the boy who lost his brother during "The Land of Make-Believe." He is thirteen at the point of this blog, and he is a cold and selfish boy who is approached by a wooden Queen to become her new "general" for an ambiguous goal. She makes him kill his parents and shows him the many grotesque ways she's preparing an army for her goals. He slowly realizes that this is all a mistake and that he's been acting selfishly, so he betrays her and does all he can to resist her wills, but she tortures him and keeps him in check while recruiting his own classmates and corrupting his life. In a bout of desperation, Evan is able to acquire the "Eye of Fate," an object allowing him to see time simultaneously. With this new power, he escapes and goes on the run, opting out of blogging.
The story is fairly short and disturbing, with the descriptions of the Queen's torturous methods often making me wince. But Evan's own selfish and sociopathic personality works just as well with the antagonist's corruption; he doesn't care about anyone but himself and feels no remorse at killing people, and he slowly realizes this over the course of the story in an arc I must commend the Nameless One for writing. He actually made a protagonist I wanted to see die. It would have been fitting, but it didn't happen, instead lending itself to possible continuation further down in the greater Continuity Glue narrative. This choice is certainly also promising. Plus, Evan did havesome redeemable qualities; he knew he was a horrible person because he still maintained a firm knowledge of morals, and even he found the Queen and Candle Cove's methods unquestionably disturbing. Evan was a complex character, one of the more memorable protagonists I've read in a blog.
The arc with the Eye of Fate seemed a little odd to me, though. It seemed to exist purely to avoid Evan's death, suggesting a subversion of the themes of tragedy established throughout the blog in light of possible greater themes to be shown throughout the overall epic. Because of this, I cannot pass any judgement on it until the whole story has been told. I have to see where I Am Not Insane stands in the overall piece.
The tying-in of the previous two creepypastas was fantastic, helping the sense of Continuity Glue being a larger and complex tale. Evan's sociopathic portrayal in I Am Not Insane is definitely a clever subversion of the sympathy a reader would naturally feel for him after "The Land of Make-Believe," and the ambiguous hinting nature of the Choir's place in the narrative is more than appropriate considering "Hunger's" just-as-ambiguous subtle feel.
The blog layout is almost a let-down after Continuity Glue's complicated and customized appearance, instead giving us a very simple default blog look. I suppose this works well, considering Evan's age. It certainly emphasized the feeling of a stark tragedy, a bleak and pictureless background for the downfall of a child fate never liked. This only strengthened my lack of catharsis over the ending.
I Am Not Insane was well-written and a classic horror blogella, showing much promise for the Nameless One's progression of writing talent and for, naturally, the future of Continuity Glue. The ending is a bit of a major oddity, but knowing there's much left to be told is enough to subdue the bad taste in my mouth. Only time will tell.
Read the next Continuity Glue review, New Amateur Paranormal Taskforce, here.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Continuity Glue [1/9: Continuity Glue], reviewed by DJay32
For reference, Continuity Glue is both the name of an epic and of the first blog in the epic. It was written by The Nameless One, and its order is as follows: Continuity Glue, I Am Not Insane,N.A.P.T., The All-Seeing Eye, The Sound of Silence, The 12 Days of Christmas, Reality Falls Apart. There are more blogs involved, but I can only link to what has been deemed ready to link. There are also a lot of creepypasta which will come up in my reviews. I will go back and organize this disclaimer when things are more clear. This review is for the first blog, Continuity Glue.
Continuity Glue is a 68-post blog about Christopher Niven, "the Nameless One." The blog starts off with the Nameless One reviewing several books and films, using metaphorical glue to make their continuities make sense. This is all cut short as his OCD tendencies increase and he starts to see shadows in the light of day. The shadows speak to him, try to coerce him to obey, only to prove themselves to be hostile as they kill his sister. Thinking he's insane, Nameless goes to a doctor for help. Doctor Beakman gives him ample medication and convinces him he's insane and that any comments on his blog are just himself under different personas.
Eventually, Nameless realizes Doctor Beakman is lying and tries to escape, being caught and put through electroshock therapy. The shadows from earlier attempt to save him, only for a door to appear for Nameless to escape through. He wanders through an eldritch city and finds himself back in his bedroom, and here he decides to look into the strange things in his life. He finds out about the Fear Mythos and sees that his own blog is labelled as fiction, putting him through an existential crisis. A little girl who is indescribably "wrong," going by the moniker The Unnamed Child, enters his life and entices him to adopt and pamper her, slowly driving him even more insane. In a final bout of desperation, Nameless attacks her and is then cornered by a variety of Fears, only to be saved by a Door one last time. He enters, dying.
As a plot, Continuity Glue holds together admirably well (pun not intended). Minor mentions in earlier posts become relevant later on, and the Fears that attack Nameless are all appropriate whether thematically or simply through foreshadowing. The blog also maintains a firm sense of realism, with Nameless referencing comments on posts and the comments even driving the story at times. This comment-driven idea is established fairly early on, so I have no complaints with it.
But really, there's not that much I can find to say about this. Continuity Glue takes various conventions of blogging that I have long since grown tired of (realism, comment-driven posts, having a protagonist be fully aware of the Fears, Door Ex Machinas, hidden text) and makes them work, but aside from that, it's not particularly notable. The characters are all fairly standard Fear Mythos fare; anyone who's already aware of Doctor Beakman and the Fears can predict how things will happen once their names are mentioned. The blog works, but the overall plot is predictable. Of course, it's only the beginning of a multi-blog saga, so I don't know where things will go from here.
That brings me to another point. Continuity Glue is, of course, the start of the eponymous 25-entry saga. But it doesn't feel like this whatsoever. It just feels like a standalone blog. Which, I suppose, is actually a very good thing! I love that the story stands very well on its own. But I don't know if this is what the Nameless One was going for, so he can take this how he wants. There just aren't any loose ends or anything lending themselves to further elaboration, other than perhaps a surreal nightmare that doesn't get any follow-up, but that's assumed to have just been a nightmare.
Finally, the blog's appearance and layout. I must say that the layout is customized and creative; it definitely gives off a sense of being its own entity, something Nameless has made into his own creation. It's very pretty. But at the same time, it's very cluttered. There are links everywhere, and most of them aren't even all that relevant; the only links I used were the blog archive halfway down the page. In order to continue to the next post, I had to go out of my way to look for the link; it's hardly convenient. Of course, this isn't a determining factor in anything. I'm just stating it here.
So the Continuity Glue saga begins with a standalone realistic story about a man who may or may not be insane and may or may not be fictional. We still have a lot of blogs to go, so only time will tell what my final opinion on this blog will be. For now, I liked it.
Read the review of the next blog in the saga, I Am Not Insane, here!
Continuity Glue is a 68-post blog about Christopher Niven, "the Nameless One." The blog starts off with the Nameless One reviewing several books and films, using metaphorical glue to make their continuities make sense. This is all cut short as his OCD tendencies increase and he starts to see shadows in the light of day. The shadows speak to him, try to coerce him to obey, only to prove themselves to be hostile as they kill his sister. Thinking he's insane, Nameless goes to a doctor for help. Doctor Beakman gives him ample medication and convinces him he's insane and that any comments on his blog are just himself under different personas.
Eventually, Nameless realizes Doctor Beakman is lying and tries to escape, being caught and put through electroshock therapy. The shadows from earlier attempt to save him, only for a door to appear for Nameless to escape through. He wanders through an eldritch city and finds himself back in his bedroom, and here he decides to look into the strange things in his life. He finds out about the Fear Mythos and sees that his own blog is labelled as fiction, putting him through an existential crisis. A little girl who is indescribably "wrong," going by the moniker The Unnamed Child, enters his life and entices him to adopt and pamper her, slowly driving him even more insane. In a final bout of desperation, Nameless attacks her and is then cornered by a variety of Fears, only to be saved by a Door one last time. He enters, dying.
As a plot, Continuity Glue holds together admirably well (pun not intended). Minor mentions in earlier posts become relevant later on, and the Fears that attack Nameless are all appropriate whether thematically or simply through foreshadowing. The blog also maintains a firm sense of realism, with Nameless referencing comments on posts and the comments even driving the story at times. This comment-driven idea is established fairly early on, so I have no complaints with it.
But really, there's not that much I can find to say about this. Continuity Glue takes various conventions of blogging that I have long since grown tired of (realism, comment-driven posts, having a protagonist be fully aware of the Fears, Door Ex Machinas, hidden text) and makes them work, but aside from that, it's not particularly notable. The characters are all fairly standard Fear Mythos fare; anyone who's already aware of Doctor Beakman and the Fears can predict how things will happen once their names are mentioned. The blog works, but the overall plot is predictable. Of course, it's only the beginning of a multi-blog saga, so I don't know where things will go from here.
That brings me to another point. Continuity Glue is, of course, the start of the eponymous 25-entry saga. But it doesn't feel like this whatsoever. It just feels like a standalone blog. Which, I suppose, is actually a very good thing! I love that the story stands very well on its own. But I don't know if this is what the Nameless One was going for, so he can take this how he wants. There just aren't any loose ends or anything lending themselves to further elaboration, other than perhaps a surreal nightmare that doesn't get any follow-up, but that's assumed to have just been a nightmare.
Finally, the blog's appearance and layout. I must say that the layout is customized and creative; it definitely gives off a sense of being its own entity, something Nameless has made into his own creation. It's very pretty. But at the same time, it's very cluttered. There are links everywhere, and most of them aren't even all that relevant; the only links I used were the blog archive halfway down the page. In order to continue to the next post, I had to go out of my way to look for the link; it's hardly convenient. Of course, this isn't a determining factor in anything. I'm just stating it here.
So the Continuity Glue saga begins with a standalone realistic story about a man who may or may not be insane and may or may not be fictional. We still have a lot of blogs to go, so only time will tell what my final opinion on this blog will be. For now, I liked it.
Read the review of the next blog in the saga, I Am Not Insane, here!
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
The Amalgam Saga, reviewed by DJay32
For reference, the Amalgam saga is a series of seven blogs written by TheSomnambulist. They have a set order: Prestidigitation, Urban Malefic, The World Through These Eyeholes, Cold and Lonely Days, Metaphysical Fiction (plus companion blog Dawghouse), and No Gods No Masters. This post contains the first four.
Prestidigitation
Prestidigitation is a 23-post blogpasta about Marcinius Trowess, a student who hears things in his sleep. Over the course of the story, the things he hears are analyzed and looked into, dismissed as hallucinations caused by sleep paralysis, and then revealed to be something malevolent that controls him and drives him to homicide.
The story is simple, and the presentation is easy on the eyes and quick to read. Marcinius is presented as an apathetic teenager, his blog set up only for a school assignment, and so TheSomnambulist chose a generic blog template to better get this across. He did a good job with this.
Really, Prestidigitation isn't much. It takes a few minutes to read, the story's really easy to follow, and.. there's nothing wrong with it. There's a lack of punctuation here and there, but that works with Marcinius' nature. What I do particularly like about the story, though, is that it can easily work even outside of the Fear Mythos. There's no explicit mention of Fears (though the forces Marcinius listens to are most likely The Choir); the story is simple enough that anyone could read it. It works very well. It's just.. really simple. But hey, we're just getting started with this saga.
Urban Malefic
At 42 posts, Urban Malefic is much bigger than the first blog, this one being more of a blogella, and the story has a lot more going on. The posts are considerably longer on average, though there's so few line breaks that it can feel like constant walls of text.
The story's about a man named Portnoy Augustus who wakes up trapped in "the City" (The Empty City of the Fear Mythos). Thanks to a bit of science fiction, his thoughts are transcribed onto the blog in a stream-of-consciousness format. Throughout the course of the story, Portnoy explores a large variety of increasingly surreal locations that don't run on the conventional laws of physics. It's revealed to him that he's going through some sort of test that won't be explained (as this would influence the course of the test), and he goes through personal trials involving his past and his issues with isolation. Towards the end, he develops a firm understanding of the physics of the City, even an ability to manipulate his environment, only to find out through a parallel self (it makes sense in the story) that the test the City was coaxing him towards would result in the entire Earth being absorbed into the hellish surreal environments of The Empty City. With this knowledge in mind, Portnoy refuses to comply with further testing, and uses his environment-manipulating abilities to end the blog.
Really, it's a cohesive narrative with a very entertaining narrator. Portnoy's commentary is amusing as hell, which is exactly what the story needs to keep the reader going through the constant walls of text and confusing events. Because as interesting as the plot is, the actual story can be difficult to trudge through. Most of the posts are labelled as nothing more than numbers, and most posts are a big wall with no line breaks, leaving a rather monotonous reading experience. But if you stick to it and focus on reading, Urban Malefic provides a quirky and mind-bending tale.
The World Through These Eyeholes
Even bigger than the last, The World Through These Eyeholes has 98 posts to its name, presenting us with not a blogella but the Amalgam saga's first proper blog. It's about the Faceless Bastard, a man who wears a mask at all times to cover the remains of where his face once was, a man who lives with a flock of birds nesting inside him at all times. The birds (The Convocation of the Fear Mythos) are sentient and give Faceless jobs to do, often jobs that other twisted creatures need doing (the Fears). As Faceless does his jobs, he uncovers a Fear named The Brute who is dormant and trying to rise again, and with the help of The Convocation, Faceless is able to subdue it again.
During this lengthy story, we get to know and learn to love the Faceless Bastard and find out how he got to be this strange figure he is. Honestly, he's one of the most memorable protagonists I've seen in a Fearblog. He has a wit about him that I can only assume means TheSomnambulist has a knack for observational comedy, especially when coupled with Urban Malefic. ThoughEyeholes falls into a similar problem as the previous blog, in that there are an awful lot of walls of text making it daunting to read on. Luckily, this problem appears considerably less as the story goes on.
I don't have many complaints; the story's really well put together for what it's worth. The characters are memorable (The Faceless Bastard appeared in the Fear Mythos RPG, and The Brute's legacy is still being discussed to this day), the way the story connects to Urban Malefic isn't too blatant but is still greatly written, and the story itself is filled with addictive twists and turns to keep you reading.
Cold and Lonely Days
Cold and Lonely Days has 39 posts, presenting a blogella about twelve-year-old Megan Jilees, a girl who becomes a servant to The Cold Boy and whose brother has sharp claws. The story consists of her being taken through a confusing and not-often-explained journey featuring a lot of Fears that hunt her without outright harming her and a mysterious figure named the Muffin Man who helps her find answers.
The thing is, not many answers are given. It's rather frustrating, especially considering the story is told through such an unreliable lens that even simple details are obfuscated. But towards the end, Megan makes the comment that she doesn't want to know the answers because they're unimportant, and this.. well, I feel like that was a great comment to make. It made it clear that this was supposed to be a confusing experience, just like it will have been for Megan. And when viewed like that, I definitely enjoyed this story. Again, TheSomnambulist gives us a memorable character with the Muffin Man. And if the cliffhanger ending is anything to consider, he'll probably see more use in the upcoming blogs.
But I have to be honest, I didn't enjoy this story as much as the last two. Honestly, reading it gave me a bit of a headache. The confusing nature was great when it was over and I looked back on it, but the actual experience was just.. frustrating. I felt like the posts I was reading didn't matter, since they were told through a perspective I couldn't connect to or often understand. And the blog's colour scheme was fairly monotonous, just blue and white.
So what we have is an interesting story with some details explained and others kept a mystery. It's not perfect, but it gets the job done.
Metaphysical Fiction
Dawghouse
No Gods No Masters
For convenience purposes, I feel it's best to tackle all three in one single review.
Metaphysical Fiction, at 64 posts, is about a man loosely related to the protagonist ofPrestidigitation. This man, Doctor Maless Peyn, is thrusted into a game where he has to defend himself from a majority of Fears. He is able to win, only for The Cold Boy to kill him and then only for The Manufactured Newborn to make him a Thoughtborn, a creature of pure information. He learns how to map his information onto a human brain, thus taking over a body, and he uses his new abilities to help Portnoy (the protagonist of Urban Malefic) avoid the Fears. ..sorta. The plot gets confusing.
Meanwhile, Dawghouse, at 40 posts, is about the Muffin Man from Cold and Lonely Days. He spends the first act of the blog talking about himself and what actually happened in the aforementioned blog, and then he saves his sister and has to go on a series of missions loosely connected to The World Through These Eyeholes. Over the course of these missions, the Muffin Man is introduced to a collection of four eldritch creatures (The Herald, The Envoy, The Emissary, and The End) collectively called The Amalgam. They're a sort of universal.. parasite phenomenon, and they bring with them the end of the world. He is joined by The Dying Man as well as Harold from The World Through These Eyeholes, and as the plot progresses he's joined by Doctor Peyn and Portnoy. Around this point, both these blogs stop and move onto the final one.
Finally, No Gods No Masters, at 27 posts, marks the end of the Amalgam saga. It starts off detailing the Muffin Man's plan to use The Quiet to kill the slender man and weaken the Fears, and then this adapts to become the collective protagonists' new plan to prevent The Amalgam from ending their universe. To put it bluntly, the plan doesn't work (well, it kills the slender man and weakens the Fears, making the situation even worse), and the protagonists run out of ideas only to be confronted by the ambiguous character Jack of All at the last minute who strikes a deal with them. He saves the world, only to then announce he's only saved the world in other timelines; the protagonists are doomed. The saga ends with this.
It's.. a really complicated story. I don't think I can review these blogs without speaking of the Amalgam saga as a whole, so before I do that, let me get a quick complaint out of the way.
Personally, I don't like that these blogs don't stand too well on their own. Dawghouse ends arbitrarily and switches to No Gods No Masters (and hey, let's assume the blog system is meant to be even remotely realistic, how were the first several No Gods posts on Da Dawg's account as early as 2011 when the Da Dawg account was proven, at the start of Dawghouse, to be some random person in 2012?), and there's no reason for Doctor Peyn to stop blogging on Metaphysical Fiction when he does; he's still a part of the story afterward. As individual blogs, these three blogs don't do well. And I don't like that.
Now then! The Amalgam saga is basically a series of blogs about people who are pawns in the Fears' endless games, people who are used as devices in furthering various schemes, people who are played with and tortured for who knows what reasons. Even the people who are able to beat the system and rise above their gods and masters are either pulled back down into the game or, as that ending shows, killed somehow anyway. Everyone dies, nothing matters, life is hell and death is hell. The Amalgam saga, quite simply, is cosmic horror with a witty comedic shell. A sense of "life sucks, so why not enjoy it?"
As for the blogs' appearances, Metaphysical Fiction had a nice white background with a light-blue theme to make it pretty. Dawghouse and No Gods No Masters both shared the same appearance, making me wonder even more what the point of breaking them up into separate blogs was. But all throughout the Amalgam saga, the general consensus on blog appearance seems to be just going with the simplest options. So I don't really feel much to comment on here. There wasn't much to set the blogs apart from every other blog appearance-wise, but I think the stories do that task well enough to compensate.
It's admirably written, for sure. Amusingly complex, affably entertaining, with some really awesome portrayals of Fears. But on the lower side, the blogs suffer from a need for proofreading. Maybe it's just the grammar nazi in me, but reading that much text without all the necessary punctuation starts to give me a headache. And I don't think the blog had enough mileage to match the plot. That is, the pacing was really good for the first few blogs, but around the time ofDawghouse, the plot seemed to move ten times faster than the posts did. Events happened and there wasn't enough pacing to let the reader contemplate the effects of this and feel for the characters. The characters needed more soliloquys, more monologues, more discussion of the plot to break up the constant pace and to make it feel even remotely relatable. Hell, in different ways, the earlier blogs needed more action and less empty posts; the progression from "not enough action" to "more action than one can even focus on" happened much too suddenly.
All in all, TheSomnambulist might want to consider this saga his magnum opus in the Fear Mythos, but I'd love to see him top himself.
[Editor's note: Since the time of this review, TheSomnambulist has published extra material continuing the saga: The Unlikely World, The Abominable Act, and Epilogic (as well as a lot of preliminary material which can be found here). Reviewer DJay recommends all three, in roughly that order, as they provide a satisfying conclusion.]
Prestidigitation
Prestidigitation is a 23-post blogpasta about Marcinius Trowess, a student who hears things in his sleep. Over the course of the story, the things he hears are analyzed and looked into, dismissed as hallucinations caused by sleep paralysis, and then revealed to be something malevolent that controls him and drives him to homicide.
The story is simple, and the presentation is easy on the eyes and quick to read. Marcinius is presented as an apathetic teenager, his blog set up only for a school assignment, and so TheSomnambulist chose a generic blog template to better get this across. He did a good job with this.
Really, Prestidigitation isn't much. It takes a few minutes to read, the story's really easy to follow, and.. there's nothing wrong with it. There's a lack of punctuation here and there, but that works with Marcinius' nature. What I do particularly like about the story, though, is that it can easily work even outside of the Fear Mythos. There's no explicit mention of Fears (though the forces Marcinius listens to are most likely The Choir); the story is simple enough that anyone could read it. It works very well. It's just.. really simple. But hey, we're just getting started with this saga.
Urban Malefic
At 42 posts, Urban Malefic is much bigger than the first blog, this one being more of a blogella, and the story has a lot more going on. The posts are considerably longer on average, though there's so few line breaks that it can feel like constant walls of text.
The story's about a man named Portnoy Augustus who wakes up trapped in "the City" (The Empty City of the Fear Mythos). Thanks to a bit of science fiction, his thoughts are transcribed onto the blog in a stream-of-consciousness format. Throughout the course of the story, Portnoy explores a large variety of increasingly surreal locations that don't run on the conventional laws of physics. It's revealed to him that he's going through some sort of test that won't be explained (as this would influence the course of the test), and he goes through personal trials involving his past and his issues with isolation. Towards the end, he develops a firm understanding of the physics of the City, even an ability to manipulate his environment, only to find out through a parallel self (it makes sense in the story) that the test the City was coaxing him towards would result in the entire Earth being absorbed into the hellish surreal environments of The Empty City. With this knowledge in mind, Portnoy refuses to comply with further testing, and uses his environment-manipulating abilities to end the blog.
Really, it's a cohesive narrative with a very entertaining narrator. Portnoy's commentary is amusing as hell, which is exactly what the story needs to keep the reader going through the constant walls of text and confusing events. Because as interesting as the plot is, the actual story can be difficult to trudge through. Most of the posts are labelled as nothing more than numbers, and most posts are a big wall with no line breaks, leaving a rather monotonous reading experience. But if you stick to it and focus on reading, Urban Malefic provides a quirky and mind-bending tale.
The World Through These Eyeholes
Even bigger than the last, The World Through These Eyeholes has 98 posts to its name, presenting us with not a blogella but the Amalgam saga's first proper blog. It's about the Faceless Bastard, a man who wears a mask at all times to cover the remains of where his face once was, a man who lives with a flock of birds nesting inside him at all times. The birds (The Convocation of the Fear Mythos) are sentient and give Faceless jobs to do, often jobs that other twisted creatures need doing (the Fears). As Faceless does his jobs, he uncovers a Fear named The Brute who is dormant and trying to rise again, and with the help of The Convocation, Faceless is able to subdue it again.
During this lengthy story, we get to know and learn to love the Faceless Bastard and find out how he got to be this strange figure he is. Honestly, he's one of the most memorable protagonists I've seen in a Fearblog. He has a wit about him that I can only assume means TheSomnambulist has a knack for observational comedy, especially when coupled with Urban Malefic. ThoughEyeholes falls into a similar problem as the previous blog, in that there are an awful lot of walls of text making it daunting to read on. Luckily, this problem appears considerably less as the story goes on.
I don't have many complaints; the story's really well put together for what it's worth. The characters are memorable (The Faceless Bastard appeared in the Fear Mythos RPG, and The Brute's legacy is still being discussed to this day), the way the story connects to Urban Malefic isn't too blatant but is still greatly written, and the story itself is filled with addictive twists and turns to keep you reading.
Cold and Lonely Days
Cold and Lonely Days has 39 posts, presenting a blogella about twelve-year-old Megan Jilees, a girl who becomes a servant to The Cold Boy and whose brother has sharp claws. The story consists of her being taken through a confusing and not-often-explained journey featuring a lot of Fears that hunt her without outright harming her and a mysterious figure named the Muffin Man who helps her find answers.
The thing is, not many answers are given. It's rather frustrating, especially considering the story is told through such an unreliable lens that even simple details are obfuscated. But towards the end, Megan makes the comment that she doesn't want to know the answers because they're unimportant, and this.. well, I feel like that was a great comment to make. It made it clear that this was supposed to be a confusing experience, just like it will have been for Megan. And when viewed like that, I definitely enjoyed this story. Again, TheSomnambulist gives us a memorable character with the Muffin Man. And if the cliffhanger ending is anything to consider, he'll probably see more use in the upcoming blogs.
But I have to be honest, I didn't enjoy this story as much as the last two. Honestly, reading it gave me a bit of a headache. The confusing nature was great when it was over and I looked back on it, but the actual experience was just.. frustrating. I felt like the posts I was reading didn't matter, since they were told through a perspective I couldn't connect to or often understand. And the blog's colour scheme was fairly monotonous, just blue and white.
So what we have is an interesting story with some details explained and others kept a mystery. It's not perfect, but it gets the job done.
Metaphysical Fiction
Dawghouse
No Gods No Masters
For convenience purposes, I feel it's best to tackle all three in one single review.
Metaphysical Fiction, at 64 posts, is about a man loosely related to the protagonist ofPrestidigitation. This man, Doctor Maless Peyn, is thrusted into a game where he has to defend himself from a majority of Fears. He is able to win, only for The Cold Boy to kill him and then only for The Manufactured Newborn to make him a Thoughtborn, a creature of pure information. He learns how to map his information onto a human brain, thus taking over a body, and he uses his new abilities to help Portnoy (the protagonist of Urban Malefic) avoid the Fears. ..sorta. The plot gets confusing.
Meanwhile, Dawghouse, at 40 posts, is about the Muffin Man from Cold and Lonely Days. He spends the first act of the blog talking about himself and what actually happened in the aforementioned blog, and then he saves his sister and has to go on a series of missions loosely connected to The World Through These Eyeholes. Over the course of these missions, the Muffin Man is introduced to a collection of four eldritch creatures (The Herald, The Envoy, The Emissary, and The End) collectively called The Amalgam. They're a sort of universal.. parasite phenomenon, and they bring with them the end of the world. He is joined by The Dying Man as well as Harold from The World Through These Eyeholes, and as the plot progresses he's joined by Doctor Peyn and Portnoy. Around this point, both these blogs stop and move onto the final one.
Finally, No Gods No Masters, at 27 posts, marks the end of the Amalgam saga. It starts off detailing the Muffin Man's plan to use The Quiet to kill the slender man and weaken the Fears, and then this adapts to become the collective protagonists' new plan to prevent The Amalgam from ending their universe. To put it bluntly, the plan doesn't work (well, it kills the slender man and weakens the Fears, making the situation even worse), and the protagonists run out of ideas only to be confronted by the ambiguous character Jack of All at the last minute who strikes a deal with them. He saves the world, only to then announce he's only saved the world in other timelines; the protagonists are doomed. The saga ends with this.
It's.. a really complicated story. I don't think I can review these blogs without speaking of the Amalgam saga as a whole, so before I do that, let me get a quick complaint out of the way.
Personally, I don't like that these blogs don't stand too well on their own. Dawghouse ends arbitrarily and switches to No Gods No Masters (and hey, let's assume the blog system is meant to be even remotely realistic, how were the first several No Gods posts on Da Dawg's account as early as 2011 when the Da Dawg account was proven, at the start of Dawghouse, to be some random person in 2012?), and there's no reason for Doctor Peyn to stop blogging on Metaphysical Fiction when he does; he's still a part of the story afterward. As individual blogs, these three blogs don't do well. And I don't like that.
Now then! The Amalgam saga is basically a series of blogs about people who are pawns in the Fears' endless games, people who are used as devices in furthering various schemes, people who are played with and tortured for who knows what reasons. Even the people who are able to beat the system and rise above their gods and masters are either pulled back down into the game or, as that ending shows, killed somehow anyway. Everyone dies, nothing matters, life is hell and death is hell. The Amalgam saga, quite simply, is cosmic horror with a witty comedic shell. A sense of "life sucks, so why not enjoy it?"
As for the blogs' appearances, Metaphysical Fiction had a nice white background with a light-blue theme to make it pretty. Dawghouse and No Gods No Masters both shared the same appearance, making me wonder even more what the point of breaking them up into separate blogs was. But all throughout the Amalgam saga, the general consensus on blog appearance seems to be just going with the simplest options. So I don't really feel much to comment on here. There wasn't much to set the blogs apart from every other blog appearance-wise, but I think the stories do that task well enough to compensate.
It's admirably written, for sure. Amusingly complex, affably entertaining, with some really awesome portrayals of Fears. But on the lower side, the blogs suffer from a need for proofreading. Maybe it's just the grammar nazi in me, but reading that much text without all the necessary punctuation starts to give me a headache. And I don't think the blog had enough mileage to match the plot. That is, the pacing was really good for the first few blogs, but around the time ofDawghouse, the plot seemed to move ten times faster than the posts did. Events happened and there wasn't enough pacing to let the reader contemplate the effects of this and feel for the characters. The characters needed more soliloquys, more monologues, more discussion of the plot to break up the constant pace and to make it feel even remotely relatable. Hell, in different ways, the earlier blogs needed more action and less empty posts; the progression from "not enough action" to "more action than one can even focus on" happened much too suddenly.
All in all, TheSomnambulist might want to consider this saga his magnum opus in the Fear Mythos, but I'd love to see him top himself.
[Editor's note: Since the time of this review, TheSomnambulist has published extra material continuing the saga: The Unlikely World, The Abominable Act, and Epilogic (as well as a lot of preliminary material which can be found here). Reviewer DJay recommends all three, in roughly that order, as they provide a satisfying conclusion.]
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