unforum

[DJ Rozwell]

Death Of a Slenderman

[bracko81]

A literal death of Slendy, I believe, would be shut down and neglected by the community. And if it were to happen in a good one, lets say one of the Big 3, I think many would disregard them as canon or retcon their own. But it would have to be done right to keep their viewers respect. Not a bullet to the head, as you described, but also not (IMO) something using all that Core Theory mumbo jumbo that a lot of people can't keep track of.

However, a "figurative" one, for lack of a better word, I'd be fine with. What I mean is, the characters triumphing over Slendy and him leaving them alone....but not without hints that he's still around. (like him in the background of the last shot of the series.) Hell, personally, that's how I see EMH ending, that's just my gut feeling though.

[Demongel]

Have you ever read any of H.P. Lovecraft's work? The protagonists regularly fend off the great evil that is hunting them, but at the end of the day that's only one threat among a myriad of them. As far as Slender Man goes, killing Him would suggest to me that there are more than one of Them.

[NoMoreGaems]

[SolDL]

Depends on how it was written. Give Breaker a search sometime; that's what happens if it's not done well.

[anerisinaction]

I like Slenderman as cosmic horror, ie, very Lovecraftian and inescapable by nature. That is what terrifies me so, and why I love him.

However, I feel like the right to kill him would have to be earned. If some blog--as there have been a few--goes from "lol wat is this tall guy following me" to "i hit him with axe he dead now", it's a bit worthless, and everyone blows him off. In fiction or.. unficiton, it's easy to do the impossible. It's like when beginning role-players on a MMORPG or free form forum grow wings and kill God because they can. The fact that Slenderman is unkillable is just so, so good for me.

With a communal story, though, the mythos bleeds into each other. See the operator symbol, the idea that little kids get stalked later in life, Slendy being a time jumper, Arks, and all that crap. (In before someone corrects me to say that they aren't shared or whatever, I'm just trying to give an example). I'm not saying he shouldn't or can't be killed, but the mythoses do bleed a bit, and if he does die.. well.. other people may try to kill him in the same way. A canonical weak spot. Even if the stories remain separate and no one ever kills SM ever again.. And a lot of the horror goes out of it, at least for me.

However, there are other ways of ending a series. SM could be banished, temporarily or somehow warded away from the cast. He could be inflicted upon someone else which would pass the slendfection. He could want some form of appeasement and get sated and leave them alone (I can't think of any real way this could happen, but still, maybe a group murdering of a best friend). Maybe someone else replaces him, leaving SM to go off and do his own thing while NewSM stalks new victims.

There are lots of ways to beat him without destroying him entirely, and that is what I would love to see. Cosmic horror slightly avoided for this small cast, and the rest of us remain fucked, even if we do manage to repeat the hard, heartbreaking, soul-rending and difficult ways the first group managed to avoid him.

[Ryuujin Dracos]

If it was well written I guess it would probably be okay but I still don't think that killing Slender Man would really be a good idea I mean if he could be hurt if he could die why would you be scared of him? Plus that would kind of contradict the whole cosmic horror aspect of Slender Man wouldn't it? Well that's just my opinion anyway.

[shoeler]

to get to KILLING it we'd have to get to understanding him more, and once he's more understood, he starts losing his creepy. to even get to the point where he could be killed would be an insanely difficult challenge. People would probably lose interest in the series before it even got to it.

[ArkyMcArkArk]

Short answer: No, it wouldn't work for the series and there'd be a huge backlash.


Long answer: Okay, MAAAYBE you could do it, but it would mean doing a lot of things differently. For one, nobody is going to accept that just a shotgun killed him. What you're doing there is depowering Slendy, and thats not what anyone wants. HOWEVER, if you set it up to make it clear that YOUR Slendy was in some way limited, that he was not the seemingly all-powerful horror that many view him as, that he was instead perhaps an extension of the main character, an abstract thought, or tied to a specific character, object, or location than you could "kill" him, just not in the mortal sense.
But if you go Resident Evil, or even Mystic-Internet Tiemz on us, very few would accept it.

[Feltorn]

If I saw that, here is what I would do.

Start a new slenderblog, an unofficial continuation of the slenderdeath project. The plot?

Slendy is pissed that someone bested him, and now he's taking it out on someone. This would not be the typical stand in the corner watching you slendy, this would be a whole new side of Mr. Slim, an angry, vengeful, frustrated side.

In other words, I would take one persons attempt to kill the story, and buld it into an extension of it.

[Cougar Draven]

I think that people who assume that they have the innate right to rewrite the story written by someone else, even in their own head, are trying to control the fandom.

I think that if someone were to kill off Mr. Thin, the only measure of quality should be the quality of writing. And by that I don't mean "OMG YOU CAN'T KILL SLENDY THAT WAY!!!!!!11!!1!!!one!!ELEVEN", I mean the quality of the writing, and the story. Like, at the end of Seeking Truth Season Whatever, if Zeke Strahm manages to kill Slenderman? I'll believe him. Because it's good writing.

People who think that they own the character, and have absolute authority to judge how that character is written, are part of the problem, not the solution. And more of us here are like that than we might realize.

[qaqa]

You could also potentially take the Phantasm approach, which I think the SM Mythos often subconsciously draws more from than many realize. In some of the Phantasm films, I believe it is suggested that the "Tall Man" is but one of many, sent from his dimension to do his devilish business. There are many, but they are all perhaps the same being.

If you really want to go out there, you could also say that the Slender Man refracts and recurs across billions of realities, and that killing a single one means nothing for another story or series. EMH could potentially be toying with multiple dimensions right now, we don't know.

[Cougar Draven]