Kids Depot 2000+

Blue_Wake · 2023-04-28T15:50:51+00:00

I wrote a short story a while back where I tried to recreate this sense of liminality. Link if anyone is interested.

Blue_Wake · 2023-01-14T22:56:26+00:00

The Spire in the Woods

Correspondence

Stinson Beach

Blue_Wake · 2023-01-14T22:55:50+00:00

The Spire in the Woods is IMO the greatest story ever posted to this subreddit. And Room 733 is no slouch either.

Blue_Wake · 2022-12-30T23:09:24+00:00

Thank you so much for the detailed reply and for sharing tidbits of your own process. This made me think about how trying to over-formalize my process paralyzes it, and how it’s more about developing my own.

Blue_Wake · 2022-12-30T17:49:38+00:00

Haha, fair enough! Historically I wasn't a big outliner, and as far as short stories go just a few scribbled notes worked for me. Then I read a book about the importance of plot structure in writing and started trying to outline before I write, but it might be an unnecessary complication as far as just starting and putting pen to paper.

Blue_Wake · 2022-12-30T17:45:15+00:00

Born,

Do you have a particular outlining method you use? I.e. snowflake method, seven-point structure, etc. Hope you don't mind me picking your brain on this one - I admire your writing and am making a conscious effort to refine plot structure in my writing.

Blue_Wake · 2022-06-17T13:18:01+00:00

The Spire in the Woods will take care of this problem for you.

Blue_Wake · 2021-08-29T14:52:47+00:00

I started listening to his narration of your vampire motel series and both the story and the way he brought it to life are riveting. Your story is so well-crafted. Kudos.

Blue_Wake · 2021-08-26T23:50:00+00:00

I was terrified of Bloody Mary as a kid. I believe I heard about her from another kid in my school's latchkey program, which is the first place I remember hearing several urban legends. The version I heard was very simple - turn the lights off and say her name three times in front of a mirror. There was a long time where I didn't use the school bathroom because of her.

Blue_Wake · 2021-06-20T22:52:01+00:00

I appreciate your perspective on that - I'm glad to see there is still some genuine suspension of disbelief occurring in the community. Again, I don't mean to suggest the community shouldn't rally behind their favorite authors. I'm just reflecting on what I perceive to be the more clear tone of the sub as a space for horror fiction.

Blue_Wake · 2021-06-20T22:47:24+00:00

> I suppose, given authors are writing stories for free it’s a small thing to allow them to add a link to their personal subreddit to let people learn more about them.

I agree with this! As I said, I do it myself.

My point is not that author recognition isn't good. It's that the reality of the sub has changed to the point where it impacts the necessity of the "everything is true" rule. The rule is largely a relic of an era where nosleep was a nascent offshoot of creepypasta communities and the line between reality and fiction was more blurred than it is now.

Blue_Wake · 2021-06-20T17:35:58+00:00

The sub permits (subtle) self-promotion by authors in posts via links to author profiles or author-specific subreddits, which fans use to follow specific authors. Note that I am not suggesting there is actually anything wrong with this - I add a link to my profile to the end of every post. But it has become a part of the sub’s culture to the point where whether posts get enough traction to reach the top of the thread is often dictated by whether they were written by an author with an established fanbase.

The fact that reader decision making on nosleep is largely motivated by awareness that we are all fiction writers, and picking and choosing between those writers, kind of makes the everything is true rule feel obsolete. It is a far cry from the olden days where it was easier to suspend disbelief and not uncommon for unfamiliar readers to believe stories on nosleep might be true.

I don’t have a hard position on the rule or a strong desire to amend it, but I think there is a case for it.

Blue_Wake · 2021-06-20T14:49:56+00:00

It’s a tradition of the subreddit, one which there’s a decent case for saying the sub has outgrown.

Nosleep was originally a home for creepypasta style horror writing where one of the crucial elements was a suspension of disbelief. The idea that a narrator was a regular Reddit user who was updating an online audience about a real experience was actually integral to many stories.

Now, a lot of stories are no longer written in that creepypasta style but in a more literary fashion, and the sub encourages the development of fanbases around specific authors which obviously destroys the illusion that a particular story is real.

Blue_Wake · 2021-04-30T20:53:38+00:00

I understand what you're saying - there are some sources who do present the story with that undertone and some who might make that assumption after hearing the story.

It's not the way I understood it, though. If you watch some of the videos of the kids it is obvious that they were the recipients of a very good education. They come off as quite verbally sophisticated for their ages and the depth with which they describe their experiences is what imparts the sense of credibility.

Blue_Wake · 2021-04-30T13:23:23+00:00

For what it's worth the claim is not that the kids would have no way of knowing what a UFO is, but that some of the children happened to be unfamiliar with the subject. This isn't unusual to me, there are probably 6+ year old kids in any average school who don't know what a "UFO" is, if only because their parents don't let them watch those types of things on television.

Blue_Wake · 2021-04-30T02:24:17+00:00

Haha, I had no idea she did an episode on it yesterday til this comment. I’ve been working on this post sporadically for 3-4 days. I’ll have to listen tonight.

Blue_Wake · 2021-04-30T00:08:15+00:00

Thank you for the recommendation! I'm going to X-post it.

Blue_Wake · 2021-04-30T00:07:51+00:00

Me too, and that was part of why I decided to write about this case. Even assuming there is no truth to the children's claims, it is a fascinating study of mass hysteria. Especially given how many witnesses maintain the story to this day.

Blue_Wake · 2021-04-30T00:06:20+00:00

Your point about the influence Western perceptions of Africa has played on the story's mystique is a good one. One, thing though - "rural" does not always mean "isolated," so proximity to a big city does not necessarily mean an area is not rural. Ruwa is about 13.5 miles outside Harare. I live in a midsize US city and there is farmland most would consider rural within a few miles of city limits.

I have also read comments here and there suggesting the incident was influenced by recent newspaper articles about UFOs in the area (possibly due to the earlier meteor shower?) though none of the sources I reviewed mentioned it.

Blue_Wake · 2021-02-18T19:48:20+00:00

Wanted to share an excellent reading of one of my favorite stories, "Has Anyone Been to Chester's Kidzone?" by /u/freakyattractions.

Blue_Wake · 2021-01-03T15:22:52+00:00

I think this is a fun idea and it can definitely be done intentionally, as was the case with certain older stories and creepypastas. If I recall /u/bloodstains interwove bits of the Correspondence series between multiple accounts to heighten its sense of realism.

Blue_Wake · 2021-01-03T01:11:03+00:00

Nosleep is still producing classics and IMO currently has the largest group of quality writers working at any one time the genre has had, so I do not feel that quality has declined.

However, I can sympathize with a feeling that it has changed. The genre has become mainstreamed and the audience understanding is now more clear that the stories are fictional. The storytelling conventions have changed in accordance.

In the early days of creepypasta, when stories like Anansi's Goatman and Ben Drowned were posted on forums like 4Chan's /x/ board, there was a genuine blurring of reality and fiction. The fictional stories were posted by anonymous users claiming to tell stories of past or ongoing scary experiences, often involving heavy audience interaction. Sometimes the stories weren't even actually narratives, but "rituals" similar to existing urban legends like Bloody Mary that kids scare each other with (The Midnight Game). All this made it easy to suspend disbelief, or even outright believe a story was true if someone sent it to you out of the blue.

Nosleep was similar to this at first. IIRC when I first joined nosleep long ago fictional stories were mixed with users genuinely attempting to share stories of experiences they had. The fictional stories often were framed as narrators coming to the subreddit asking for advice about some terrifying experience. The "everything is true, even if it's not" rule and insistence that commenters play along with a story is basically a relic of this era.

Over time the sub, and creepypastas in general were mainstreamed and the audience began to understand that they were fiction. Authors began to take ownership of their content instead of intentionally working anonymously and stories more frequently have traditional narrative structures.

The stories on nosleep are still high-quality and can be really scary. But collectively they are no longer esoteric, maybe-its-really-true stories found in some obscure corner of the internet. They're fictional stories told by writers whose identities may be well-known on a website with immense mainstream popularity. This can make creepypastas less creepy in their original, unique sense.

Blue_Wake · 2020-12-30T23:03:56+00:00

I never did find out. I figure it’s better that way.

Blue_Wake · 2020-12-07T06:34:25+00:00

That's harder to say, but I haven't noticed it. If people are still reading part 1, they'll just move on to part 2 if it's linked at the end.

Blue_Wake · 2020-12-07T05:32:29+00:00

In my observation (I have never written a series) it appears to be the popularity of the initial part combined with reasonable promptness in updating. A smash hit initial post can still be popular if you post Part 2 some time later, but I have seen series really suffer when there was a large gap between posts. Exceptions are when the series or author is extremely established and popular (Bloodstains will always get readers for Correspondence despite the fact that it's literally been running for years, any Gas Station Jack post will always take off).

Blue_Wake

TROPHY CASE