The fear of taxes dates long from immemorable times, and people fled their hometown trying to avoid the tax-collectors, tall beings with spindly limbs as to catch the peasants faster, equipped with tendrils and said to drag the laggards into the hellish maws of 20% consumption tax and the 30% tax on wages. Unfortunaly for them, not even the woods were safe...
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| "The limbs were long and inhumanly awkward, with bulky joints branching off into several arms, not unlike the branches of a tree." |
OK, enough with the tax joke. While the fact that Slenderman wears a suit is a bit off-putting and not in the horror sense of the word, this particular character has over ten different classic Pastas, inspire a sub-genre of horror videogames (page collect), and even has his own movie.
What makes Slendy so fearsome? Well, nothing really. As the description on the wiki says "(...) A mixture between Mr. Fantastic, Dr. Octopus and the notorious Men in Black", coupled with his expressionless figure makes him a good candidate for popular media, rather easy to portrait compared to other monsters, grander in scale such as the one from "The horror from the Vault" or one that'd appear bland without significant effort such as the one from "Creeping Crimson".
Following, I'll be reading a few of the Pastas where Slendy features and assesing not only the quality of each pasta, but also the viability and potential of Slendy as a character.
The Blank Face, author unknown. (Basic Slendy Experience)
PR: Some (little?) girl wakes in the middle of the night and finds default Slendy, trying to eat her or something. Where did Slendy came from or what his intentions are remains unknown, the only thing we know is that she's rather scared, although the descriptions fall rather short in the scary department: "The creature was draped in a black suit, somehow making the thing more nightmarish to her.".
She hides in a room while waiting for the black goo that composes Slendy to go away, but gets knocked out by crashing into a wall. Lame...
She wakes up in the hospital and sees her sister, who wasn't mentioned earlier, with her eyes and ears injured. The doctors like in every Creepypasta ever are rather stupid and can't tell whether the injuries were self-inflicted or inflicted upon. The end? There's a mini-scene of Slendy watching from the window, floating because it's a third floor.
Rather bland story, we don't get much of neither Slendy nor the protagonists and everything seems rather random. 2.5/10
PR: Adolf Hitler is about to commit suicide in his bunker (?), and he has both a cyanide pill and a handgun, in case the cyanide has expired or the handgun jams. With his wife's body on the ground, he reflects on his failures, only to lift his eyes and find Slendy standing there.
Slendy has some strange dialogues, in which it's presumed he assisted the rise and fall of Nazi Germany, though his intentions remain unclear. He also refers to Hitler as "the messiah," a "prophecy," and a "master," which suggests this was supposed to be a much larger story. However, the author may have realized that portraying Hitler as a messiah might not be well-received.
Slendy then turns Hitler's pill and handgun into mist and the story concludes.
There were some ludicrous comments rating this two-liner high scores, like it's the first time they'd heard of an alternate history (uchronia).
To me, the story makes no sense, as Slendy is randomly inserted without justification, and it's ultimately a fragment of a discontinued story. 1/10
Tall, Thin and Faceless (You mean lanky? Sounds like a comedy movie)
To me, the story makes no sense, as Slendy is randomly inserted without justification, and it's ultimately a fragment of a discontinued story. 1/10
Tall, Thin and Faceless (You mean lanky? Sounds like a comedy movie)
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| "I am certifiably insane. Hallucinations, paranoia, schizophrenia, multiple-personality disorders, the list goes on and on." Wow, don't leave anything out, author-san. Also, "Disorders"? Plural? |
Coming back home, narrator have nightmares about Slendy, or in the author's words "Just standing there, unnaturally tall, unnaturally thin. (...) Faceless, without identity, just a 'slender' man" and one day he finds him standing over the bed of his son.
He gets beat up, cracks a couple ribs in the lamest tentacle-vs-fist fight I've ever seen, and even blacks out, which seems to happen a lot in this story.
MC calls the coppers but doesn't even check his own house before, so when they find his son inside the his suit, beaten to death, let's just say it don't look too good. Eventually they release him for lack of evidence.
The family moves to a hotel for the time being, afraid that the "slender man" will continue to target them, but MC slips and goes into the forest in the persuit of Slendy. A copper catches him, I don't know how, and MC shows him some drawing his son had made of Slendy he found on the forest (eight pages?) trying to point that his family was in danger.
The cop goes like "Yeah, yeah." and tell him it's time to return to the hotel, narrator has a moment of hesitation "Should I concede? Should I resist?" hits the copper in the nutter, steal his patrol car and... Goes to the hotel. If you were going to the hotel anyways, why knock out the policeman?
When he arrives, he finds his family murdered and a bunch of evidence pointing towards him. There's an ending that could be summarized as: Was he Slender? Was he possessed by the suit? Did the suit summoned Slender somehow? Is Slenderman just a representation of the human violence?
Better structured and more stuff happens than in the previous two, yet the events also appear disjointed and this is by far the worst, dullest Slendy description I've read. 5/10
The Tall Man (Who's the real bad guy? Slendy, just vibing in woods or crazy mother that provides undemanded human sacrifices?)
PR: A folklore tale that goes about two little russian girls that eat concertina wire and piss napalm, can take Mike Tyson any day of the week and don't shy from putting a round on Slendy happen to meet him at the woods.
The Tall Man (Who's the real bad guy? Slendy, just vibing in woods or crazy mother that provides undemanded human sacrifices?)
PR: A folklore tale that goes about two little russian girls that eat concertina wire and piss napalm, can take Mike Tyson any day of the week and don't shy from putting a round on Slendy happen to meet him at the woods.
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| Slendy: "Got any sugar, Susan?" |
The mother gives a series of instruction that lead to sacrifice one of the daughters.
Daughter 1 refuses and Usain Bolt the hell out of there, but Momma comes back and she's killed daughter 2 and Daddy for some reason, and now wants to kill her. She even spews fire and all!
Slendy? Nowhere to be seen. 3.5/10
CONCLUSION
Slender-man, as a not-very-horrifying creature that's basically just a mannequin for a tailor shop has only potential as a mind-affecting entity that somehow induces people to commit crimes or one that creates havoc and pins the fault on other people, as shown in the last two Pastas. Compare with the first two, that are clearly worse.
Rather bland as a character, considering that practically any other could fit that role probably even better than him, and his only redeeming feature is his lack of features which gives him an air of mystery.
CONCLUSION
Slender-man, as a not-very-horrifying creature that's basically just a mannequin for a tailor shop has only potential as a mind-affecting entity that somehow induces people to commit crimes or one that creates havoc and pins the fault on other people, as shown in the last two Pastas. Compare with the first two, that are clearly worse.
Rather bland as a character, considering that practically any other could fit that role probably even better than him, and his only redeeming feature is his lack of features which gives him an air of mystery.
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