Digital Mythology and the Internet's Monster by Vivian Asimos

Author:Vivian Asimos [Asimos, Vivian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Folklore & Mythology, Philosophy, Movements, Structuralism, Media Studies
ISBN: 9781350181458
Google: BakMEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2021-01-28T05:34:53+00:00

7

Loving the horror, romancing Slender

As the narrative of the Slender Man grew to various locations online and in a variety of virtual spaces, the different influences of various writers and contributors shifted the appearance of narratives. The popularity of the video game and web series, for example, exposed new units to the mythos. Several more writers took the mythology to another perspective, shifting the narrative from horror to romance, and combined the two into a form of horror–romance. The shift came with a new focus on female protagonists who find a more misunderstood Slender Man, and who grow to love a monster.

This chapter represents the transition of both the narrative and us, as mythographers, to potentially a second community which shares and tells the Slender Man’s story. Each of our chapters in some respect demonstrates this – the way the narrative spread to different group of people on the virtual geography of the internet. Each time we see a different kind of narrative, told more or less by different people, we have to question where the boundaries of the Slender Man’s narrative lies, or if there are boundaries at all. The greater question will be addressed at the end of this study (Chapter 11). But to test these points, and thus know what kind of structural purpose the Slender Man is providing for the fanfiction and romantic narratives, we must give them a full study, which we shall do in the following chapter.

This chapter focuses on these narratives. All were found on fanfiction.net. The first, and one which will receive more attention in this chapter due to both size and content, is a romance story between the primary female protagonist and Slender. The others are more erotic takes on the Slender Man, which depict him both as a misunderstood carer and just as vicious as previous narratives. First, however, we must explore the realm of fanfiction writing.

7.1 Fanfiction

Due to where these stories were found, as well as their treatment from both audience and writer, the narratives discussed in this chapter are frequently considered ‘fanfiction’, a form of online storytelling yet to be explored in this work. This is primarily due to how fanfiction fits into more of a traditional model of writer and audience, rather than mass communal storytelling which has formed much of the processes and narratives we have studied up until now. Despite this difference, there are a few interesting notes regarding fanfiction’s connection to the Slender Man which is important to note before our analysis of these narratives.

A historical overview of the history of fanfiction is too detailed and unnecessary for this section, and has been done much more effectively than would be possible here by Henry Jenkins (1992). For fanfiction, narratives stand in contrast, or in comparison, to a canonical work, such as a television show or novel – a major difference to the starkly non-canonical nature of mass communal storytelling. Despite this, there are more fundamental similarities. For one, as Jenkins (1992) illustrates, fanfiction also demonstrates

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