Slender post

Bonus Post: Much of what we have read this semester can help to explain this game and the phenomenon it is part of. Using at least two readings from the semester, describe your reactions while playing Slender and how the mythos does or does not affect the gameplay.

So, I'm going to go ahead and make an effort to work my way through at least one of the bonus posts. It's truly a shame that I haven't done any of this yet, and have procrastinated just about everything all semester long. I might as well give a crack at at least one of these, so I'll take a look at the one I'm more familiar with. A response to the game "Slender"

I think that in order to understand the phenomenon of Slenderman, one has to keep in mind its history. One of the biggest and most important things about Slenderman is that no one owns him. The idea of Slenderman belongs to just about anyone in a way that goes farther than every story in history that isn't a religion. Just about every concept of a race or creature has a specific origin, and a specific author that can be pointed out as the one who first came up with the idea. Urban myths and legends are a bit harder to find the origins of, and they may be lost in time, but at some point a single author, or a very small group of authors created the idea. Most fairy tales can be traced back the Grimm Brothers. Many of the mythical creatures that Tolkien and others like him used can be traced back to various mythologies across the world. Slenderman has an origin, but does not have an original author. Its existence is a paragon of what Roland Barthes was getting at in his work "The Death of the Author."

I believe that what "The Death of the Author" was getting at was not just that all trends in literature are becoming recycled inspiration, but that as a result of this, we will see the rise of more and more collective and collaborative efforts, and an ever-expanding list of authors to our literary stories. This is not necessarily a bad thing. In some ways, it has already happened. In both the film and game industries we often see credits that go on for miles. Most of them consist of actors, and background work, but even the list of directors, writers, and similar roles is often drawn out to a dozen or more people. In the film industry, the actors are even authorial, in that they develop the character that they're playing just as much as the writers and the directors.

Another key element in the Slenderman lore is where its ideas come from. There is no specific reason to any of it other than "it's creepy." The list of possible inspirations for Slenderman goes on and on, and in that way, Slenderman is also superflat. Slenderman is, as his name suggests, a tall, slender man. He wears a suit, no reason, he just does. He has no face, also no real reason. He has tentacles or tendrils, depending on which version your reading about, and those, likewise, serve no real purpose (except perhaps to make him blend in better with his natural habitat, a forest, which also doesn't have any reason).

One of the earliest psychologists, Carl Jung, talked about something called "Archetypes." Its almost a universally known word now, but basically, it refers to something that fits into a certain category. Slenderman, I think, is an archetype of human fear: 1st, that the human presence itself is daunting (scarecrows, statues, etc.); 2nd, that the lack of expression, or perhaps identity itself, signifies the lack of a soul (and that which does not have a soul is of course inhuman by its very nature); and 3rd, basic fears of the dark, and the unknown.

Even though Slenderman is as much mine as it is anyone else's, there is still a very basic "canon" to what makes Slenderman Slenderman, and those are the things that I've already stated. He's a tall, thin man who has no face, wears a suit, is often adorned with black, stalky tendrils/tentacles, causing memory loss/amnesia, and lastly, the appearance of Slenderman leads to distorted audio and video recording. So... that being said, of course the mythos affects the game. It wouldn't be Slenderman without it. With no author, no complex canon to speak of, and no official storyline, the mythos is all Slenderman has. Nothing else matters. Some other things are a common occurrence, though: Slenderman appearing a forest, the circle with an x over it, appearing in abandoned buildings. Those things are in the game, and the game also includes a few landmarks that were seen in various Slenderman stories- the tunnel from Marble Hornets for example. There is another thing that the game captures very well, that is hard to imitate in any other mediums, that feeling of being watched, seeing something follow you, often there when you turn around, and more often something you see off in the distance, right out of the corner of your eye (which is another superflat aspect, reminiscent particularly of Doctor Who).

Other superflat things I've noticed:
-The main character: unknown, unnamed. Is it meant to be the player's voice and footsteps? Is the player the main character? Lost, doesn't know what's going on.
-Slenderman stories even reference back to itself and to each other in a way that could be considered somewhat superflat. They more or less acknowledge other writers' presence and validity.
-The bathroom could have been inspired by things like the original Saw movie.
-The entire game is reminiscent of Most Dangerous Game.
-Strange rock and tree formations seem to be inspired by real life formations like Stonehenge.
-While there's nothing particularly scary about it, suits can be seen as a representation of power or wealth. Height can also be seen this way. The Egyptians, for example, drew more important figures bigger in their hieroglyphs.
-There are some myths involving faceless creatures, or creatures that steal human faces. Doctor Who has an episode about a face eating alien.
-Doctor Who seems to reference Slenderman with the Silence, a religious order consisting primarily of these odd, stalky aliens whom you forget all about unless you're looking at them. Guess what else, they all wear suits. Aside from that, everything about the Silence is super creepy.