unforum

[ChildOfAtom]

Can I be the first voice in the room to say that what I'd really like to see is... no more Slenderman?

We've had half a dozen good SM ARGs, and dozens of awful ones... it just feels played to me. This is starting to feel like vampires or zombies from the Hollywood perspective, variation after variation with no one really adding anything. EMH is the first to really bring anything new to the table in a while, and they had to bring in a different monster to really achieve it.

Unless you really feel like you have some compelling new variation on it... find a different monster. Or make up a new one.

Can I really be the only one that feels this way?

[grieck]

Yes and no, first my own comment:

I think the audience has to stop assuming every series will have their own type of Masky, and hope no series try to have them. That was MH's thing. Unless you can make it your own thing, individual and such.

Slendy does feel overdoen, but hopefully that gives more motivation for NEW IDEAS!

[NoMoreGaems]

Exactly, it seems like every series is following largely the same plot, the same derivation of the Slendermythos. What ever happened to the Slenderman that was more a mass of tentacles than a person, or who turned people into mist, or, hey, who had a face?
When was the last time you saw that in a Slender Man story?

[chizuru]

Some of the series are still starting off. So someone might do a throw back to the older tentacle stories.

[Mattwan]

I know I'm in the minority, but I've never cared for the tentacles. I somehow missed them when I was first introduced to the early Slender Man pictures, so I guess it's partially that I didn't associate tentacles with SM initially. Still, they somehow make him seem less alien and preternatural to me and more like, well, a made-up monster.

I can definitely see where ChildOfAtom is coming from, but I guess I live in hope that people can find something new and different to do with the character. I have no idea what that might be, of course, but it's good to dream.

I think that any future storytellers need to minimize or even eliminate the "fleeing from Slendy" and "investigating Slendy" aspects, since those have been pretty thoroughly done. It's hard to imagine what's left when those are taken out, though.

[Das Omega]

Regarding the idea that stories shouldn't be connected with other Slender Man stories: I don't think such a thing is possible anymore. As soon as you mention Slendy on your blog; briefly show him in your video, you'll start getting comments/messages from other people saying "Hey, check out Marble Hornets/EverymanHYBRID/The Tutorial/etc." and unless you go by what EMH did and make the character unable to see the videos you don't want them seeing, it becomes unrealistic to just ignore it.
What I do want to see from that is genre savvy characters actually being genre savvy. Sometimes you can excuse them carrying the idiot ball as part of a breakdown of their sanity, but do it too many times and we start to wonder whether these characters actually know what they're doing.

[Mattwan]

[Mira]

I could do this all day

[Mattwan]

Re: I could do this all day

[Mira]

Re: I could do this all day

[Mattwan]

Re: I could do this all day

[Das Omega]

I would pay to watch a Slender Man musical. Large, ridiculous sums of money.
I imagine Slendy having a very deep, bass singing voice.

[5_pak]

Want:
More effects derived from the community of stories. It's obvious to anyone with two-thirds of a brain that the Slender Man stories are building off each other in momentum, each trying to top the last with the ones that manage growing and the ones that don't dying. Whether you liked Zeke Strahm's archive dump of every Slendy article ever or not, this is a community story. Slendy is an urban legend growing as it's told. And I'd like to see this more acknowledged in-game.
I don't mean "I saw Marble Hornets and that totally happened to me!" I mean subtly and, more importantly, without narration but through action. Slendy changes as the game goes on because he's pulling out new tricks with each new incarnation. The people "fighting" him should be aware that sitting in the dark going crazy doesn't work so they should clearly divert from what others did and try new tactics.

That can be summed up with my next desire: more intelligence on the protagonist end. The Slendy stories exist in their world. Know why I know this? I can send a link to their email/comments/house and make them watch/read them. They should know what works and what doesn't, they should, by the end of the game, have as good an idea of what's going on as their readers. Slendy protagonists from now on should not be spending the last half of their story in woods at night unless they have really really good excuses for going there.

New stuff from Slendy (but believable actions too). The less we see of him the scarier he is, yes, but seriously, I doubt there exists a being who's sole activity is standing by trees making people freak out. It has to go to the bathroom sometime and I'm sure it's tie gets stifling.


Less of:

Anything that starts off with Slendy in any manner that I can look at the first entry alone and say "Slendy blog/video" isn't doing it right. Tribe Twelve did this and it was pretty much crap until later videos. Everyman Hybrids didn't do it despite they even had an excuse for it (since their Slendy was originally a fake), and they're doing well. Even MH had an intro that was Slendy-less. Point is, if you start with Slendy, that means you probably have zero care for the story Slendy's going to be ruining, which will make it bland, stupid, and boring.

The same ending. Slendy wins, hero dead/insane, mystery eternally unsolved, and a thousand angels cried. That's boring. I get it, Slendy is a community-character, no one has the right to kill him. But we all have the right to outsmart him, even in just a tiny way. We have the right to wound him, even if only a paper cut. We have the right to escape and even to forget. Try new endings so we can't see it coming from two thousands yards away, waving it's finely dressed tentacles in the air.

Distortion that relies on loudness to scare. It isn't scary. It's annoying. Stop.

[Mira]

Re: I could do this all day

[grieck]

Re: I could do this all day