Am I the only one...

Am I the only one who really loves the core ideas of the Slenderman mythos, but actually doesn't like a lot of the media attached to it these days? I'm not gonna state any names with regards to stuff I dislike right now, don't want to hurt any feelings or start a flame war. I just want to ask if anyone else feels like the mythos is starting to suffer from essentially being a universe where fans make 'official' content so to speak.

Most IPs have fans, some of whom will make fan fiction. Sadly a lot of fan fiction has no real meat to it, because the writers of fan fiction often don't have a story they want to tell, they just want to insert their work into their favourite fictional universe. There's nothing wrong with this, per se. But when you have such an open mythos as the Slenderman does, it leads us to a situation where there is no fan fiction. Everything is 'official'. This means a story - with an intriguing plot, excellent characters, and thought-provoking ideas - is viewed from the same angle as a story with nothing to it but an apparent desire for the creators to be inserted into the mythos.

And I feel like there are a lot of stories out there that aren't much more than authors who wanted to have their name in the mythos somewhere. I can understand the desire - but when that's all they want, they don't aspire to give us something worth really looking at.

There are a lot of video series and blogs that are full of bad acting, bad editing, bad effects, dull or flimsy plots, mary-sue characters, or just plain 2-dimensional characters. Not every one of them has all of these, and many have one or two redeeming features. But I find it real hard to force myself to watch or read these when I know people with basically no resources are making stuff like Dark Harvest, Tribe Twelve, EMH, CaughtNotSleeping and MLAndersen. Sure none of them are perfect, but their flaws are usually few compared to their strong points. One or two good aspects in an otherwise dull or downright bad series/blog does not make it worth looking at in my opinion.

I don't want to discourage anyone from putting content into the mythos, but maybe the creators out there could look at what they're doing, and question it a bit more. What am I bringing to the mythos? Is that new? Am I doing it well? Is what I'm doing good for the mythos? Will people really be entertained/scared by what I am doing? I feel like the best creators are probably already asking themselves these sort of questions. And hopefully those who start to do it will improve. I don't want people to stop making stuff, I want them to start making it better.

Phew, that turned into a long one. So, anyone who feels the same way? Got something to add, or do you want to argue against my opinions as they are presented in this post? Don't be shy.

You're totally right and I agree with you. What I hate most is seeing 13-year-olds like me making vlogs or blogs without previously making a plot, thinking everything out, buying a good camera etc (weird to hear this from a person who did this all with a blog, I know). People don't make anything new these days, they just add a ton of proxies, a Slendy, and maybe a Rake and think it's something. What I thought of is adding some kind of creatures who could actually fight off or even hurt the Slender Man. Like, a neutral creature protecting itself, not like a guardian angel.

Much as I want to see more creature-crossovers, you do start to drag the whole fanboy issue into things. People are going to be mad if their favourite monster gets made to look like a punk by some other creature they've never heard of before.

Most likely effect of an anti-Slendy is of course a Slenderfan backlash. You get hate for creating a creature that can one-up Slenderman. Guaranteed to raise hackles.

I always thought some kind of SCP can somehow be incorporated, unfortunately I lack time and materials to do a series.

I really don't like SCP personally. It's like they had a cool creepy idea and then a bunch of guys got carried away with it and made loads of stuff that broke with that atmosphere. More than half the SCPs now are total rubbish. And more than half of the ones that are supposed to be scary just aren't.

They all trade out being terrifying for 'I am invincible and/or all-powerful, you are boned'. Which is only scary if you are in their line of fire. Since they're fictional - you never will be.

timeobserver2013 wrote:

I always thought some kind of SCP can somehow be incorporated, unfortunately I lack time and materials to do a series.

The Slender-Series "EntityInfinity" involves the SCP. I'd recommend checking it out.

I must say, I have always loved the original idea of The Slender Man. When I did an interview with Victor Surge, he had talked about some images that he had made. So I went to have a look, and it gave me a pretty solid idea of how he intended The Slender Man to be portrayed: As something of an SCP-ish creature that escaped containment. Now, I also have a very big place in my hearts for the content that makes up the fandom, no bout a doubt that. Though, if I'm being completely honest, I would love nothing more than to find a series that takes that side of the mythos and makes a great series out of it, blog or vlog.