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[Dray]

It's difficult; this genre is more fluid and I think more difficult to pin down than ancient texts and folk lore. There's a sharing aspect that is more akin to tales passed down from one generation to another, except that it's happening all at once. And it's not happening to a hero who we know is not necessarily real, but is an embodiment of one particular aspiration or another, but in an ARG format where the heroes are typical, everyday peers, is a big old twist.

Speaking within the bounds of the story, Slender Man is showing up to others and he is causing more to investigate and dig deeper as they begin to perceive him. It could be that he's a demiurgic force who destroys as he creates. He is a force that is pushing people into motion beyond apathy by pushing all of their buttons. Brings a higher awareness to reality, pushes people to look beyond the fragmentary moment and into the face of eternity.

Which, it'd seem, is blank. And scary.

[5_pak]

[Dray]

Exactly! Slender Man is not just an antagonist, he's an embodiment of half the field that the protagonists are playing on. That's why these vlogs get stale so quickly when a character and Slender Man are the only two characters available: that's why the TotheArk's and Rakes and Damsels and Connaghan's etc. come out of the woodworks. Slender Man parades as the dragon that has to be slain in order to make the descent, but it's a facade for his greater power as the embodiment of (oh god I can't believe I'm actually saying this) the void beyond creation. (JKat I'm sorry for realz)

Taking Marble Hornets as one of the few examples of escape from the void, Alex seemed like he wasn't in the best place when the Operator showed up. (And I realize that they're trying to make a distinction between their Slender Man and the one that we're familiar with from other videos, however for the sake of getting hoity toity I'm going to lump them back together. The minor distinctions -- tentacles, height, etc -- are really not the important points here.) Jay can tell us all that he wants that Alex was a laid back, cool guy, but he was filming a depressing college film about coming back to ones home town after school and finding that things have changed and that it sucks. The Operator practically chased Alex down the rabbit hole and out the other side; once he had gotten it into his head to get the hell up and leave forever, his life seems to have gotten better. At least in the bit that we saw, anyways. Sometimes a character just has to break down before he can be built back up again; seems like the Operator just wasn't finished with him, yet.

The same destructive force left Damsel in a bad place and will probably leave her scarred for the rest of her life, however, that change needed to happen before she could be introduced to the EH trio's lives. Speaking of which, the three of them are currently in the process of being broken down; if they're strong enough to survive, they'll be able to escape and bring these changes with them throughout their lives, for better or for worse.

Anyways, the old Slender Man is the destructive face (if you'll pardon the pun) of the old destruction/creation duality. And our reaction to that is definitely going to be fear. Because he's the unknown, and the change (and the change for the worse, 100% of the time) he's a nightmare. However, I don't think that he causes that fear on purpose, nor can his presence be intended as malice; Slendy's nature shouldn't be mistaken as his intent. (This is why, despite him only standing about, we still see Evan goob up blood and Jay wake up the next day two towns over with a massive headache. Why children straight up disappear and buildings burn with no witnesses. Slendy's the pure distilled form of Bad Things Happenin'.)

[5_pak]

Hmmm, very interesting idea. I do wonder, "what sort of person can survive Slenderman and what is needed of them to do in order to live"? I'm thinking this because you bring up Alex and the fact that we see he'd managed to, for even a short time, escape Slender. His life, from what we can infer on the cam, looks like it was pretty normal until someone or something planted an MH camera in his closet.

If Slendy is indeed more a symbol for the destructive half of the cycle than the antagonist within that half itself, there is one odd quality about him and that is that, in the majority of forms, he incites the story rather than the characters. Most stories begin with a character desiring something (Campbell's elixir) which must be pursued. But a lot of Slenderblogs don't have that.

MH began when Slenderman appeared, not when Alex started shooting his video (even if the shooting of the video was the catalyst that started Slendy up). Tribe Twelve had Slendy starting this crap long before Milo went to Noah's house. Everyman Hybrid's is the only one of the big three that seems to break the mold a little in that it's the Slender prank that seems to attract the tall daddy himself. But, two out of three, rather than something that (to quote Janet Burroway) the characters want and want intensely, the driving force of the story is Slender himself, which does give us that problem you mentioned about the story being boring if its just Slender and the main character. It'd be sort of like having Lord of the Rings with just Frodo and Sauron, or, better example, Frodo and Mordor.

If it is so that Slender actually makes up the driving force that both begins and obstructs the story, then he is a wonderfully interesting paradox. Because he is what John Gardner calls the one thing fiction cannot abide: a repeating cycle, a story that could happen again under the same circumstances. But it's a repeating cycle that works.

Mark Danielewski is somewhere having kittens I think. . .

[AxMxK]

I had some more thoughts on my theory of "the embodiment of fear," though they're somewhat obvious.

Slender Man wears a suit, a formal outfit that usually symbolizes authority, something the common person respects or fears. This is a minor point, but it's one nonetheless.

Slender Man is tall, taller than any human alive, perhaps. We has a people are more likely to fear another human that is taller than us.

Of course these are rather minor/obvious points.

As to Dray's idea, it seems to make sense... Let me get this clear, you believe him to be a representation of destruction and/or the unknown void? Which is it, exactly?

[Guest]

[Dray]

I'm not sure that I was clear for any of that; I really was just typing my thoughts as I went along. After Campbell I've been going through Christopher Voegler's 'A Writers Journey' (I'm really into this stuff at the moment, hah!) and I think that he's got a way of writing up the archetypes in a more succinct fashion. Following those, Slendy seems to be the shadow... but not so much in the generic evil villain fashion.

Well, he can be that, too.

I just think that as the shadow, Slendy is playing the part of a physical embodiment of the psychological aspect, the need for the characters to change. Maybe he's a force that is requiring people to grow up, 'man up', I don't really know for sure. To move on, for sure. It's as though Slendy is there to require people to make decisions under stress or even duress; he's adding this quantifiable element of suspense that continues to ramp up and test the protagonists of the story. It shows, I think, that most of the characters collapse under that burden, that they go crazy, or that they disappear. He seems to reflect an underlying fear or at least idea that we, as a cross-section of the current culture, aren't ready or suited for dealing with a personal crisis, and feel that we can't reach out for help with others.

When I said that he was an embodiment of this void thing, I think what I meant to say was that he was this unknowable quantity that the characters are somehow reaching for. He's instigating a change and forcing characters to bone up or get disappeared (or worse). Without him, they would just be your average, internet-nerdy crowd without much in the way of aspirations...

Mentally muddling my way through that, I'd suggest that Slendy's function is to strip away the mundanities of real life, the worries and troubles that a character experiences as a natural matter of course, and returns them to the base instinct of survival, which of course is a particularly strong goal when you take the other crap away. I think that, though he has been bastardized by those on, for example, Deviant Art and that Gaia place (You know who you are!) he's taken the place of the other bigbads that produce the same fear. Werewolves and vampires, but without the weird underlying sexual/rape themes that the former have had snowballed into them...

Ugh, I can't believe I just made that pun. D: I'm so sorry.

Anyways, that's my two billion cents.