This reflects only my individual opinions and should not be taken as fact. I do not ask you to agree or disagree with me, and I definitely encourage you to form your own opinions about the blog.
Author: Alliterator
Status: Finished
Fear(s): The Quiet
Plot:
Though it’s rather short, the story is quite effective in making the reader feel despair and a sense of impending doom. As things go from bad to worse, you can’t help but wonder what you’d do in that type of situation (probably nothing – ahaha, bad joke). One thing I realized later in the story was how terrifying the situation must be – the world around you is disappearing, almost like nothing in human history had never happened, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. And within the next few seconds, you could disappear, as well… Fading into nothing.I liked the environment the protagonist was in at the end, but I felt the ending itself was kind of cheap. If it had been an abrupt stop instead of a sentence about to say “And maybe I’ll disappear, too”, I think it would have been much more effective. In the alternate reality, I felt it was kind of creepy that the journal had disappeared, implying that the Quiet was coming, but… *shrugs* It might have been better to have it end on a “Hmm, I can’t remember what I was doing” way, a subtle nod to the fact that the Quiet might be there, rather than an “Oh Crap” moment.Characters:
It’s odd to feel for a character when the blog is this short, but I think it works because the character is kind of an audience surrogate (which is perfect in this case). Sure, we get to know about him and how he cares for his family, coworkers, and friends, his thoughts about the end of the world, but it never goes into too much detail. This encourages the reader to fill in the gaps, and in some cases people will unintentionally put themselves in that kind of situation. These “What if?” situations are what get me, and I know a few friends who are the same way.
---All in all, I liked this blogella. It was a bit short, true, but it only took me a few minutes to read and provided some great takes on the Quiet. If someone wants to read up about the Quiet, this is probably where you should start.
For reference, The End of Sorrow Lies was written by alliterator and can be found here.alliterator is arguably the most prolific writer in the Fear Mythos, having been responsible for upwards of thirty-plus blogs alone. The End of Sorrow Lies is one of his shorter blogs, a blogpasta with only thirteen posts. It's about a man named Adam who posts about dreams he's been having.The first half of the blog consists of regular posts describing a few dreams, with the occasional picture drawn in MSPaint illustrating an element of a mentioned dream. These posts, to be honest, don't really get me into the story. The pictures offer potential for immersion into the story, but they're used so sparingly and about such trivial details (such as mountains and a dancing skeleton, which never come up in the story again) that they really don't do much for me.The second half of the blog talks about a recurring dream Adam has been having, involving wolves chasing him and tearing into him. Between certain posts are posts with a cryptic message written in, and really, these cryptic messages don't have much place in the story. I'm pretty sure the point of the messages is to convey that there's more to the dreams and that Adam may be descending into madness, but the dreams' significance is obvious because they're the focus of the story and Adam's descent into madness never comes up again. As it stands, they just feel arbitrary.The actual wolf dreams are certainly described well, though the scariest element of them is that the number of wolves increases with each dream, and that detail isn't mentioned until the very end anyway where it all changes. The final post hints at personal insecurities of Adam's (he dreams of teachers being disappointed in him and his loved ones dying because of him), but he had received so little characterization for the bulk of the blogpasta that this seems to come without precedent, and the story ends shortly after they're mentioned. The final post does reprise the circus dream mentioned earlier, and this was a great choice and really helped the story feel like it was being tied together.One thing I feel noteworthy is the blog's layout. The background is custom and of a cartoon thought bubble, the blog's colour scheme is creative and pleasant, and the blog's description is surreal and contemplative. It's clear alliterator had put effort into making the blog presentable, and for that I must commend him. The pictures he had drawn for the blog were also a nice touch, with a big sense of minimalism, not that much detail put in.Another detail worth mentioning is that this blog is one of the first to feature the Fear known as The Grotesque, who is represented by Adam's dreams which lead to his tragic suicide. The blog does fairly well at keeping subtle about The Grotesque's influence, although I'm left with the question of "If the last post really happened, who killed Adam's parents?" It's possible, even probable, that the interpretation of The Grotesque here is one that can have influence on the outside world as well as its subjects' dreams. But still, that's not evident; alliterator could have been a bit clearer about it.All in all, The End of Sorrow Lies is a pretty blog with some nice experimentation in surrealism and minimalism. But the story itself falls short of its potential, with Adam getting very little characterization until it's too late and the story feeling almost nonexistent until the last post. It feels like this blog existed solely to introduce The Grotesque, who was going to appear in other stories anyway so even that purpose is rather redundant.Not one of alliterator's better blogs, I'm sorry to say.
