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.]

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.

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!