unforum

[Comeau]

New slender blog.

[Mitternacht]

Except it's not new. It's the same White Elephant stuff by the same person/people, just on different blogs.

And I am actually more displeased by the lack of Megaman than the lack of Slenderman.

[Das Omega]

I really doubt it's by the same person that did White Elephants. There's too great a difference in quality. He's using Robert's Core Theory from White Elephants as Slendy's backstory, but lots of blogs are doing that now, so that really doesn't prove much of anything.

[Mitternacht]

Actually, the fact that they're all doing the same thing would seem to suggest that they are at least the same group of people. There's no difference in quality - they are all blogspot blogs. There is a difference in running time, but a growing number of them are recent and connected.

It rings very artificial when the same people are consistent commenters, even speaking similarly in the comments. It's actually pretty obvious who has just stumbled upon this in the comments by how they're naturally confused in the terminology, rather than accepting it as given.

[Das Omega]

By quality I meant writing quality, not whether or not they were blogspot blogs. White Elephants had a more experienced writing style than Borderline. Same for the other blogs which use the White Elephants terminology; there's a great variance in style and quality between all of them.

And of course people are consistent commenters. They're following a blog, so they'll comment on it frequently. The reason these people all use the same terminology is that they all met on the White Elephants blog; one of the better ways to find new Slenderblogs is to check out the profiles of all the people commenting on the blogs you're reading, and go to whatever blog they're writing. Thus, the people who read and comment on White Elephants end up reading and commenting on each others blogs. And because they're all fans of White Elephants, they all understand the terminology from the start.
Hell, I sometimes use White Elephants terminology, because I like the sound of it, not because I'm connected in any way. And I doubt that the three new sages blogs are a connected group of people either; Zerombr had never heard of Madiun until he was told about the blog.

What's happening isn't the people from White Elephants trying to extend their continuity, but people on the internet spontaneously extending the continuity themselves.

[Atomyk]

It's not unheard of for someone to like a blog's mythos and attempt to add to it.

[Mitternacht]

No, it's not unheard of - that's true. Over a very long period of time, that's what happened to Victor Surge's original work.

However, if you look at this particular network of blogs, you see a majority of the same comments, from people doing the same work. Honestly, I don't necessarily see the quality you do - I see his posts were longer, on the whole.

There is a heavy taste of artificial link about it, and that this appears artificially linked on the forum is suspect, indeed.

[Das Omega]

I'm curious which ones you think contain this artificial link, because if we list out every single ARG that is linked to White Elephants, either directly or by some number of degrees, then we have:

White Elephants
Anomalous Data
Testing 1, 2, 3
Road to the Heavens
A Really Bad Joke
A Hint of Serendipity
What Now?
Borderline
The World That Never Was
Enter Light


Ten blogs seem pretty hard to pull off. Anomalous Data is ended, and White Elephants is semi-ended, so leaves only eight, but that's still too large an amount to be done.

[Gentleman Caller]

[Das Omega]

Road to the Heavens: September 17
A Really Bad Joke: October 19 (Author began commenting at least as early as September 29. Which is kinda odd, as her account says it was created in October)
A Hint of Serendipity: October 13
What Now?: October 7 (Author has been commenting for a while; had lots of arguments with A on multiple other blogs)
Borderline: October 23
The World That Never Was: October 17
Enter Light: November 8

Alright, I'll give you that most appeared in October. However, based on when the accounts were actually created, it's a fairly decent spread.
The three that would most likely be connected would be Road to the Heavens, A Really Bad Joke, and A Hint of Serendipity, if there is an artificial link. I've considered that possibility at times, but I feel that the way they act seems contrary to that. My most obvious point of evidence is still that zerombr hadn't heard of Maduin beforehand. If they were linked, there would be absolutely no reason for him to need to ask the audience for assistance finding out who the third sage was. Even if they were aiming for realism, they still could have have zerombr know about the blog ahead of time, as they did have a perfectly legitimate excuse for it (he'd read White Elephants, therefore he could have seen Maduin's comments and gone to the blog).
Also, those three blogs, especially immediately after becoming sage blogs, have a tendency to clash a bit. The previous three sage blogs left each other mostly alone, which allowed them to really do whatever they wanted to in their story, but these new ones have been aiming for greater cohesion amongst them. There's occasional moments where the three create some confusion amongst each other.

I really can't see much of a case for any of the other blogs having an artificial link; Anomalous and Testing were independent until White Elephants brought them in with the Core Theory. With the newer ones, What Now? and Never Was were going their own way until zerombr began to comment on them, and started drawing them into the continuity. Excluding the sage blogs, only Borderline and Enter Light started out connected.

And if need be, I can bring up an argument analyzing the different writing styles (because who needs to study for school when you can study for Slender Man? ) That wouldn't necessarily prove that there's no artificial link, but it would at least make it less likely that they're all being written by the same person.

(Just watch. After writing this entire post in defense of them being separate, Robert's gonna come out and say, "Yeah, um.... Those are all my blogs. I really have too much free time....")

[Atomyk]

Beyond the terminology they use, I don't find the authors act that similar. Of course you don't have to be different people to pull that off...

I'm sure a few might be... But definitely not all.

[Gentleman Caller]

Yeah, they were independent, weren't they? Kind of like how canyouseethewords was separate from everymanhybrid until it, you know, started talking about Everymanhybrid.

You also say there's no reason for him to ask for assistance finding the Third Sage. Again, to use the Everymanhybrid example, there's no reason for them to ask us to find Jessa, right? I mean, they know where she is. They write the story, after all.

You see, when writing fiction, it's easy to say the characters don't know each other. If it is someone who is running this level of Slender-Scheme, I would expect he(or she, as it might turn out to be) wouldn't just come out and say "The characters already knew each other and just happened meet over these blogs durp de durp." I don't mean to be caustic with that phrase, but from a planning stand point that's the level of intelligence it would communicate to me. Slip-shod, ill-constructed, and foolish.

There also seems to be an assumption that the same project means only one person. That's not necessarily true: Marble Hornets had multiple people, as did Everymanhybrid. This could very well be a blog form of that sort of meeting-of-the-minds. But it's still the same project, and it's still the same story, and it's still choking up the forums with this massive release. I will admit there are parts of the White Elephants mythos that caught my fancy, but I don't have the time or the patience to search 10 different blogs to stay updated on a single story. That's like asking me to read 10 different books to get the same novel, and then mixing up the chapters so I'm not really sure what goes where. It's a matter of courtesy that if you run something this massive, that you would at least keep it to a manageable state. But he/she/they hasn't, and won't, and it's killed my interest in the story. Just my two cents.

[123]

Yo. Testing's author, here. I don't usually enjoy breaking character like this, but I figured I'd defend the stories in question before things get out of hand.

The blogs related to White Elephants and buying into the Core Theory are in no way connected other than their equal agreement on what the established 'canon' is, and their usage of similar terminology. To my knowledge, there is no outside coordination by any of them except in the way they interact as characters.

So the blogs are linked in a way, but the actual stories are doing their own thing and staying individual.

That said, I've grown to dislike my decision to involve Testing in the Core Theory and the general oings on of White Elephants. The characters involved all have a very hive mentality and work within a very limited story structive that greatly disadvantages any story-telling I may want to do i nthe future. So I'm kind of trying to distance myself from that and just do my own thing, come what may.

No hard feelings o nthe Core Theory guys-- I liek what's going on! But with all the respect I can give, I'm trying to tell my story here. Nobody elses.

[Atomyk]

[Das Omega]