91-552: The Slender Man (also spelled Slenderman ) is a fictional supernatural character that originated as a creepypasta Internet meme created by Something Awful forum user Eric Knudsen (also known as "Victor Surge") in 2009. He is depicted as a thin, unnaturally tall humanoid with a featureless white head and face, wearing a black suit. Stories of the Slender Man commonly feature his stalking, abducting, or traumatizing people, particularly children. The Slender Man has become
182-619: A DC Comics superhero with a blank face, whose secret identity is "Victor Sage", a name similar to Knudsen's alias "Victor Surge". In her book, Folklore, Horror Stories, and the Slender Man: The Development of an Internet Mythology , Professor Shira Chess of the University of Georgia connected the Slender Man to ancient folklore about fairies . Like fairies, the Slender Man is otherworldly, with motives that are often difficult to grasp; like fairies, his appearance
273-612: A Slender Man film into theatres, with the title character portrayed by Javier Botet . The film generated considerable controversy soon after it was announced, with many accusing the filmmakers of trying to capitalize off the Waukesha stabbing. Bill Weier, the father of Anissa Weier, stated, "It's absurd they want to make a movie like this... All we're doing is extending the pain all three of these families have gone through." The progressive advocacy group Care2 created an online petition, which received over 19,000 signatures, demanding that
364-513: A box-office bomb and receiving both little marketing and overwhelmingly negative reviews from critics, went on to gross several times its $ 10 million budget worldwide. David Ehrlich of IndieWire gave the film a D, writing "a tasteless and inedibly undercooked serving of the Internet's stalest creepypasta, Slender Man aspires to be for the YouTube era what The Ring was to the last gasps of
455-481: A pop culture icon , although he is not confined to a single narrative but appears in many disparate works of fiction, typically composed online. Fiction relating to the Slender Man encompasses many media, including literature, art and video series such as Marble Hornets (2009–2014), wherein he is known as The Operator . The character has appeared in the video game Slender: The Eight Pages (2012) and its successor Slender: The Arrival (2013), as well as inspiring
546-760: A 1990 series of short stories about the Vietnam War . Fictional works that explicitly involve supernatural, magical, or scientifically impossible elements are often classified under the genre of fantasy , including Lewis Carroll 's 1865 novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland , J. R. R. Tolkien 's The Lord of the Rings , and J. K. Rowling 's Harry Potter series. Creators of fantasy sometimes introduce imaginary creatures and beings such as dragons and fairies. Types of written fiction in prose are distinguished by relative length and include: Fiction writing
637-483: A benevolent Slender Man may be a reaction by fans of the character to the violence of the stabbing. Despite the decline in popular interest in Slender Man, commercial adaptations of the character continued. In 2015, the film adaptation of Marble Hornets , titled Always Watching: A Marble Hornets Story , was released on VOD , where the character was portrayed by Doug Jones . In 2016, Sony Pictures subsidiary Screen Gems partnered with Mythology Entertainment to bring
728-448: A body of "traditional" narratives, modeled on existing folklore (but not wholly indebted to any specific tradition). Professor Thomas Pettitt of the University of Southern Denmark has described the Slender Man as being an exemplar of the modern age's closing of the " Gutenberg Parenthesis "; the time period from the invention of the printing press to the spread of the web in which stories and information were codified in discrete media, to
819-404: A certain point of view. The distinction between the two may be best defined from the viewpoint of the audience, according to whom a work is non-fiction if its people, settings, and plot are perceived entirely as historically or factually real, while a work is regarded as fiction if it deviates from reality in any of those areas. The distinction is further obscured by a philosophical understanding, on
910-447: A completely imaginary way or been followed by major new events that are completely imaginary (the genre of alternative history ). Or, it depicts impossible technology or technology that defies current scientific understandings or capabilities (the genre of science fiction ). Contrarily, realistic fiction involves a story whose basic setting (time and location in the world) is, in fact, real and whose events could believably happen in
1001-562: A dangerous precedent and should be 'nipped in the bud ' ", but no motions regarding changing the name were carried. The meeting was attended by over 100 people, an unusually high number. Shortly afterwards, Western Australian senators called for a broader review of Western Australian "place names, such as Stirling Range , linked to colonial figures with known racist histories ... such as William Dampier , John Forrest and John Septimus Roe ." The city has been divided into seven wards, each of two councillors. Each councillor serves
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#17327728614091092-418: A digital legend cycle that combines the generic conventions and emergent qualities of oral and visual performance with the collaborative potential of networked communication. Jeff Tolbert also accepts the Slender Man as folkloric and suggests it represents a process he calls "reverse ostension". Ostension in folkloristics is the process of acting out a folk narrative. According to Tolbert, the Slender Man does
1183-475: A figure from history, Bonnie Prince Charlie , and takes part in the Battle of Prestonpans . Some works of fiction are slightly or greatly re-imagined based on some originally true story, or a reconstructed biography. Often, even when the fictional story is based on fact, there may be additions and subtractions from the true story to make it more interesting. An example is Tim O'Brien 's The Things They Carried ,
1274-644: A major impact on the creation and distribution of fiction, calling into question the feasibility of copyright as a means to ensure royalties are paid to copyright holders. Also, digital libraries such as Project Gutenberg make public domain texts more readily available. The combination of inexpensive home computers, the Internet, and the creativity of its users has also led to new forms of fiction, such as interactive computer games or computer-generated comics. Countless forums for fan fiction can be found online, where loyal followers of specific fictional realms create and distribute derivative stories. The Internet
1365-497: A murder as a first step to becoming proxies for the Slender Man, having read about it online. They also stated that they were afraid that Slender Man would kill their families if they did not commit the murder. After the perpetrators left the scene, the victim crawled out of the woods to a roadway. A passing cyclist alerted authorities, and the victim survived the attack. Both attackers were diagnosed with mental illnesses but were charged as adults and faced up to 65 years in prison. One of
1456-503: A nationwide moral panic over Slender Man across the United States. Parents nationwide became worried about the potential dangers that stories about Slender Man might pose to their children's safety. Russell Jack, the police chief of Waukesha, warned that the Slender Man stabbing "should be a wake-up call for all parents" that "the internet is full of dark and wicked things." Many media outlets publicized Jack's warning. After hearing
1547-778: A population of over 223,000, making it the largest local government area by population in Western Australia. Stirling was established on 24 January 1871 as the Perth Road District under the District Roads Act 1871 . The district at that time included what are now the Cities of Wanneroo , Joondalup , Bayswater and Belmont . With the passage of the Local Government Act 1960 , which reformed all road districts into shires, it became
1638-591: A radio call-in show devoted to the paranormal and conspiracy theories, began receiving callers asking about the Slender Man. Two years later, an article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune described his origins as "difficult to pinpoint." Eric Knudsen has commented that many people, despite understanding that the Slender Man was created on the Something Awful forums, still entertain the possibility that he might be real. Shira Chess describes
1729-426: A return to the older, more primal forms of storytelling, exemplified by oral tradition and campfire tales, in which the same story can be retold, reinterpreted and recast by different tellers, allowing the lore to expand and evolve with time. Despite his folkloric qualities, the Slender Man is not in the public domain . Several for-profit ventures involving the Slender Man have unequivocally acknowledged Knudsen as
1820-570: A subset (written fiction that aligns to a particular genre ), or its opposite: an evaluative label for written fiction that comprises popular culture , as artistically or intellectually inferior to high culture . Regardless, fiction is commonly broken down into a variety of genres: categories of fiction, each differentiated by a particular unifying tone or style ; set of narrative techniques , archetypes , or other tropes; media content ; or other popularly defined criterion. Science fiction predicts or supposes technologies that are not realities at
1911-501: A university or a similar institution, and with the continuation of such positions determined not by book sales but by critical acclaim by other established literary authors and critics. On the other hand, he suggests, genre fiction writers tend to support themselves by book sales. However, in an interview, John Updike lamented that "the category of 'literary fiction' has sprung up recently to torment people like me who just set out to write books, and if anybody wanted to read them, terrific,
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#17327728614092002-434: A written work of fiction that: Literary fiction is often used as a synonym for literature , in the narrow sense of writings specifically considered to be an art form. While literary fiction is sometimes regarded as superior to genre fiction, the two are not mutually exclusive, and major literary figures have employed the genres of science fiction, crime fiction , romance , etc., to create works of literature. Furthermore,
2093-508: Is a part of media studies. Examples of prominent fictionalization in the creative arts include those in the general context of World War II in popular culture and specifically Nazi German leaders such as Adolf Hitler in popular culture and Reinhard Heydrich in popular culture . For instance, American actor and comedian Charlie Chaplin portrayed the eccentric despot Adenoid Hynkel in the 1940 satirical film The Great Dictator . The unhinged, unintelligent figure fictionalized real events from
2184-446: Is also used for the development of blog fiction , where a story is delivered through a blog either as flash fiction or serial blog, and collaborative fiction , where a story is written sequentially by different authors, or the entire text can be revised by anyone using a wiki . The definition of literary fiction is controversial. It may refer to any work of fiction in a written form. However, various other definitions exist, including
2275-439: Is characterized by a lesser degree of adherence to realistic or plausible individuals, events, or places, while the umbrella genre of realistic fiction is characterized by a greater degree. For instance, speculative fiction may depict an entirely imaginary universe or one in which the laws of nature do not strictly apply (often, the sub-genre of fantasy ). Or, it depicts true historical moments, except that they have concluded in
2366-539: Is created by a collective, rather than a single individual), variability (meaning that the story changes depending on the teller), and performance (meaning that the storyteller's narrative changes to reflect the audience's response). Media scholar and folklorist Andrew Peck attributes the success of the Slender Man to its highly collaborative nature. Because the character and its motives are shrouded in mystery, users can easily adapt existing Slender Man tropes and imagery to create new stories. This ability for users to tap into
2457-496: Is known as fictionalization . The opposite circumstance, in which the physical world or a real turn of events seem influenced by past fiction, is commonly described by the phrase " life imitating art ". The latter phrase is popularity associated with the Anglo-Irish fiction writer Oscar Wilde . The alteration of actual happenings into a fictional format, with this involving a dramatic representation of real events or people,
2548-446: Is known as both fictionalization , or, more narrowly for visual performance works like in theatre and film, dramatization . According to the academic publication Oxford Reference , a work set up this way will have a "narrative based partly or wholly on fact but written as if it were fiction" such that "[f]ilms and broadcast dramas of this kind often bear the label 'based on a true story'." In intellectual research, evaluating this process
2639-492: Is most long-established in the realm of literature (written narrative fiction), the broad study of the nature, function, and meaning of fiction is called literary theory , and the narrower interpretation of specific fictional texts is called literary criticism (with subsets like film criticism and theatre criticism also now long-established). Aside from real-world connections, some fictional works may depict characters and events within their own context, entirely separate from
2730-427: Is often described as "elegantly written, lyrical, and ... layered". The tone of literary fiction can be darker than genre fiction, while the pacing of literary fiction may be slower than popular fiction. As Terrence Rafferty notes, "literary fiction, by its nature, allows itself to dawdle, to linger on stray beauties even at the risk of losing its way". Based on how literary fiction is defined, genre fiction may be
2821-407: Is the process by which an author or creator produces a fictional work. Some elements of the writing process may be planned in advance, while others may come about spontaneously. Fiction writers use different writing styles and have distinct writers' voices when writing fictional stories. The use of real events or real individuals as direct inspiration for imaginary events or imaginary individuals
Slender Man - Misplaced Pages Continue
2912-433: Is vague and often shifts to reflect what the viewer wants or fears to see, and, like fairies, the Slender Man lives in the woods and wild places and kidnaps children . The Slender Man soon went viral , spawning numerous works of fanart , cosplay , and online fiction known as " creepypasta "—horror stories told in short snatches of easily copyable text that spread from site to site. Divorced from its original creator,
3003-571: Is white and featureless, but occasionally his face appears differently to anyone who sees it. He appears to be wearing a dark suit and tie. The Slender Man is often associated with the forest and/or abandoned locations and has the ability to teleport . Proximity to the Slender Man is often said to trigger a "Slender sickness"; a rapid onset of paranoia , nightmares and delusions accompanied by nosebleeds . Early stories featured him targeting children or young adults. Some featured young adults driven insane or influenced to act on his behalf. Others included
3094-624: The Enderman in Minecraft . He has also appeared in a 2015 film adaptation of Marble Hornets , where he was portrayed by Doug Jones , and an eponymous 2018 film , where he was portrayed by Javier Botet . Beginning in 2014, a moral panic occurred over the Slender Man after readers of his fiction were connected to several violent acts, particularly a near-fatal stabbing of a 12-year-old girl in Waukesha , Wisconsin . The stabbing inspired
3185-646: The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation , Slender Man was cited as an influence; the Oglala Sioux tribe president noted that many Native Americans traditionally believe in a "suicide spirit" similar to the Slender Man. Other Sioux describe the " Big Man " as a messenger or sign, warning that society is developing in a dangerous direction. A documentary film on the incident called Beware the Slenderman , directed by Irene Taylor Brodsky ,
3276-553: The Shire of Perth on 1 July 1961. The Shire of Perth had a population of 84,000 in 1961. It was declared a city and renamed Stirling on 24 January 1971. At a meeting of electors in May 2021, electors passed a motion that the City of Stirling be renamed, causing it to be considered at the next council meeting. The rationale for the name change is the personal involvement of James Stirling ,
3367-422: The human condition . In general, it focuses on "introspective, in-depth character studies" of "interesting, complex and developed" characters. This contrasts with genre fiction where plot is the central concern. Usually in literary fiction the focus is on the "inner story" of the characters who drive the plot, with detailed motivations to elicit "emotional involvement" in the reader. The style of literary fiction
3458-478: The "Slender Man symbol", ⦻, which became a common trope of Slender fiction. Graphic violence and body horror are uncommon in the Slender Man mythos, with many narratives choosing to leave the fate of his victims obscure. Shira Chess notes that "It is important to note that few of the retellings identify exactly what kind of monster the Slender Man might be, and what his specific intentions are- these points all remain mysteriously and usefully vague." The Slender Man
3549-521: The 18th and 19th centuries. They were often associated with Enlightenment ideas such as empiricism and agnosticism . Realism developed as a literary style at this time. New forms of mass media developed in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, including popular-fiction magazines and early film. Interactive fiction was developed in the late-20th century through video games. Certain basic elements define all works of narrative , including all works of narrative fiction. Namely, all narratives include
3640-513: The Pinjarra massacre was on the historical record, and "there's no ambiguity in it any more, Stirling set out to punish the Noongar tribe down there for blocking expansion of the colony. He told everyone what he was going to do, went down there, did it and reported on it." The motion made national news, and sparked a barrage of hateful messages towards the City of Stirling. Among suggestions
3731-534: The Slender Man as a metaphor for "helplessness, power differentials, and anonymous forces." Peck sees parallels between the Slender Man and common anxieties about the digital age, such as feelings of constant connectedness and unknown third-party observation. Similarly, Tye Van Horn, a writer for The Elm , has suggested that the Slender Man represents modern fear of the unknown; in an age flooded with information , people have become so unaccustomed to ignorance that they now fear what they cannot understand. Troy Wagner,
Slender Man - Misplaced Pages Continue
3822-426: The Slender Man became the subject of myriad stories by multiple authors within an overarching mythos. Many aspects of the Slender Man mythos first appeared on the original Something Awful thread. One of the earliest additions was added by a forum user named "Thoreau-Up", who created a folklore story set in 16th-century Germany involving a character called Der Großman, which was, the writer implied, an early reference to
3913-436: The Slender Man exemplifies the similarities between traditional folklore and the open source ethos of the Internet, and that, unlike those of traditional monsters such as vampires and werewolves, the fact that the Slender Man's mythos can be tracked and signposted offers a powerful insight into how myth and folklore form. Chess identifies three aspects of the Slender Man mythos that tie it to folklore: collectivity (meaning that it
4004-450: The Slender Man have been released or are in development, including Entity and The Slender Man , released free online after a $ 10,000 Kickstarter campaign. In 2013, it was announced that Marble Hornets would become a feature film. On May 31, 2014, two 12-year-old girls in Waukesha , Wisconsin held down and stabbed a 12-year-old classmate 19 times. When questioned later by authorities, they reportedly claimed that they wished to commit
4095-466: The Slender Man is not real, they suspend that disbelief in order to become more engrossed when telling or listening to stories. This adds a sense of authenticity to Slender Man legend performances and blurs the lines between legend and reality, keeping the creature as an object of legend dialectic . This ambiguity has led some to some confusion over the character's origin and purpose. Only five months after his creation, George Noory 's Coast to Coast AM ,
4186-881: The Slender Man stabbings. In 2018, Slender Man appeared in the episode "The Planned Parenthood Show" in Big Mouth . Fiction Fiction is any creative work , chiefly any narrative work, portraying individuals , events, or places that are imaginary or in ways that are imaginary. Fictional portrayals are thus inconsistent with history , fact , or plausibility. In a traditional narrow sense, "fiction" refers to written narratives in prose – often referring specifically to novels , novellas , and short stories . More broadly, however, fiction encompasses imaginary narratives expressed in any medium , including not just writings but also live theatrical performances , films , television programs , radio dramas , comics , role-playing games , and video games . Typically,
4277-421: The Slender Man. The first video series involving the Slender Man evolved from a post on the Something Awful thread by user "ce gars". It tells of a fictional film school friend named Alex Kralie, who had stumbled upon something troubling while shooting his first feature-length project, Marble Hornets . The video series, published in found footage style on YouTube , forms an alternate reality game describing
4368-488: The VHS generation. But... there's one fundamental difference that sets the two movies apart: The Ring is good, and Slender Man is terrible." Writing for The Verge , Carli Velocci called the Slender Man movie "a nail in the coffin of a dying fandom". Several scholars have argued that, despite being a fictional work with an identifiable origin point, the Slender Man represents a form of digital folklore. Shira Chess argues that
4459-501: The abductions of the groups of children and giving the character the name "The Slender Man": The quote under the first photograph read: We didn't want to go, we didn't want to kill them, but its persistent silence and outstretched arms horrified and comforted us at the same time… The quote under the second photograph read: One of two recovered photographs from the Stirling City Library blaze. Notable for being taken
4550-527: The attack. On December 21, Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren sentenced Anissa Weier, then 16 years old, to be hospitalized for 25 years from the date of the crime, which would keep her institutionalized until age 37. In a statement to the media on June 4, 2014, Eric Knudsen said, "I am deeply saddened by the tragedy in Wisconsin and my heart goes out to the families of those affected by this terrible act." He stated he would not be giving interviews on
4641-604: The audience's willing suspension of disbelief . The effects of experiencing fiction, and the way the audience is changed by the new information they discover, has been studied for centuries. Also, infinite fictional possibilities themselves signal the impossibility of fully knowing reality, provocatively demonstrating philosophical notions, such as there potentially being no criterion to measure constructs of reality. In contrast to fiction, creators of non-fiction assume responsibility for presenting information (and sometimes opinion) based only in historical and factual reality. Despite
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#17327728614094732-415: The audience, including elements such as romance , piracy , and religious ceremonies . Heroic romance was developed in medieval Europe , incorporating elements associated with fantasy , including supernatural elements and chivalry . The structure of the modern novel was developed by Miguel de Cervantes with Don Quixote in the early-17th century. The novel became a primary medium of fiction in
4823-581: The context of the real world. One realistic fiction sub-genre is historical fiction , centered around true major events and time periods in the past. The attempt to make stories feel faithful to reality or to more objectively describe details, and the 19th-century artistic movement that began to vigorously promote this approach, is called literary realism , which incorporates some works of both fiction and non-fiction. Storytelling has existed in all human cultures, and each culture incorporates different elements of truth and fiction into storytelling. Early fiction
4914-542: The creator of Marble Hornets , ascribes the terror of the Slender Man to its malleability; people can shape it into whatever frightens them most. Tina Marie Boyer noted that "The Slender man is a prohibitive monster, but the cultural boundaries he guards are not clear. Victims do not know when they have violated or crossed them." Andrew Peck also considers the Slender Man to be an authentic form of folklore and notes its similarity to emergent forms of offline legend performance. Peck suggests that digital folklore performance extends
5005-909: The creator of this fictional character, while others were civilly blocked from distribution (including the Kickstarter-funded film) after legal complaints from Knudsen and other sources. Though Knudsen himself has given his personal blessing to a number of Slender Man-related projects, the issue is complicated by the fact that, while he is the character's creator, a third party holds the options to any adaptations into other media, including film and television. The identity of this option holder has not been made public. Knudsen himself has argued that his enforcement of copyright has less to do with money than with artistic integrity: "I just want something amazing to come off it... something that's scary and disturbing and kinda different. I would hate for something to come out and just be kinda conventional." In May 2016,
5096-411: The day which fourteen children vanished and for what is referred to as "The Slender Man". Deformities cited as film defects by officials. Fire at library occurred one week later. Actual photograph confiscated as evidence. These additions effectively transformed the photographs into a work of fiction. Subsequent posters expanded upon the character, adding their own visual or textual contributions. Knudsen
5187-471: The documentary Beware the Slenderman , which was released in 2016. Because the Slender Man's fictional "mythology" has evolved without an official "canon" for reference, his appearance, motives, habits, and abilities are not fixed but change depending on the storyteller. He is most commonly described as very tall and thin with unnaturally long, tentacle -like arms (or mere tentacles), which he can extend to intimidate or capture prey. In most stories, his face
5278-418: The dynamics of face-to-face performance in several notable ways, such as by occurring asynchronously, encouraging imitation and personalization while also allowing perfect replication, combining elements of oral, written, and visual communication, and generating shared expectations for performance that enact group identity despite the lack of a physically present group. He concludes that the Slender Man represents
5369-442: The elements of character , conflict , narrative mode , plot , setting , and theme . Characters are individuals inside a work of story, conflicts are the tension or problem that drives characters' thoughts and actions, narrative modes are the ways in which a story is communicated, plots are the sequence of events in a story, settings are the story's locations in time and space, and themes are deeper messages or interpretations about
5460-474: The fictionality of a work is publicly expressed, so the audience expects the work to deviate to a greater or lesser degree from the real world rather than presenting, for instance, only factually accurate portrayals or characters who are actual people. Because fiction is generally understood as not adhering to the real world, the themes and context of a work, such as if and how it relates to real-world issues or events, are open to interpretation . Since fiction
5551-467: The film not be released, labelling the film "crass commercialism at its worst" and "a naked cash grab built on the exploitation of a deeply traumatic event and the people who lived it." Sony representatives insisted that the film was based on the fictional character that had become popular online and not on the Waukesha stabbing. Upon its release in August 2018, the film Slender Man , despite being declared
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#17327728614095642-407: The filmers' fictional experiences with the Slender Man. The ARG also incorporates a Twitter feed and an alternate YouTube channel created by a user named "totheark". As of 2013, Marble Hornets had over 250,000 subscribers around the world and had received 55 million views. Other Slender Man-themed YouTube serials followed, including EverymanHYBRID and TribeTwelve . In 2012, the Slender Man
5733-590: The first governor of Western Australia and the namesake of the city, in the Pinjarra Massacre on 28 October 1834. Following the well-conceived ambush and subsequent massacre of 15 to 80 Binjareb Noongar men, women, and children lasting at least one hour that Stirling led personally, Stirling threatened the Noongar people with genocide should they continue to resist colonisation. Historian Chris Owen has argued that James Stirling's involvement in
5824-525: The girls reportedly said Slender Man watches her, could read minds and could teleport. Experts testified in court that she also said she conversed with Lord Voldemort and one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles . On August 1, 2014, she was found incompetent to stand trial and her prosecution was suspended until her condition improved. On December 19, 2014, the judge ruled that both girls were competent to stand trial. In August 2015,
5915-420: The idea that investigating the Slender Man will draw his attention. The web series Marble Hornets established the idea of proxies, who were humans who fall under the Slender Man's influence. Initially depicted as simply violently insane, they came to be portrayed as puppets of the Slender Man. Marble Hornets also introduced the idea that the Slender Man could interfere with video and audio recordings, as well as
6006-538: The ideas of others while also supplying their own helped inspire the collaborative culture that arose surrounding the Slender Man. Instead of privileging the choices of certain creators as canonical, this collaborative culture informally locates ownership of the creature across the community. In these respects, the Slender Man is similar to campfire stories or urban legends , and the character's success comes from enabling both social interaction and personal acts of creative expression. Although nearly all users understand that
6097-574: The imperial period. Plasmatic narrative, following entirely invented characters and events, was developed through ancient drama and New Comedy . One common structure among early fiction is a series of strange and fantastic adventures as early writers test the limits of fiction writing. Milesian tales were an early example of fiction writing in Ancient Greece and Italy. As fiction writing developed in Ancient Greece, relatable characters and plausible scenarios were emphasized to better connect with
6188-441: The known physical universe: an independent fictional universe . The creative art of constructing such an imaginary world is known as worldbuilding . Literary critic James Wood argues that "fiction is both artifice and verisimilitude ", meaning that it requires both creative inventions as well as some acceptable degree of believability among its audience, a notion often encapsulated in the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge 's idea of
6279-436: The late 2010s, he has a daughter named Skinny Sally, who is portrayed as a young girl covered in cuts and bruises. Slender Man sometimes is portrayed carrying Skinny Sally on his shoulders protectively. Lynn McNeill, assistant professor of folklore at Utah State University, observes that the increase in benevolent portrayals of Slender Man seems to have begun shortly after the stabbing in Waukesha and states that this trend towards
6370-473: The matter. On September 25, 2017, it was reported that Morgan Geyser, then 15, had agreed to plead guilty to attempting to commit first-degree homicide in an arrangement that would allow her to avoid jail time. On February 1, 2018, the Associated Press reported that Geyser had been sentenced to 40 years in the Wisconsin mental hospital, the maximum sentence allowed. The stabbing in Waukesha spawned
6461-399: The media rights to Slender Man were sold to production company Mythology Entertainment , but the company split up in 2019, leaving the ownership of the character's rights in question. In 2011, Markus "Notch" Persson , creator of the sandbox indie game Minecraft , added a new hostile mob to the game, which he named the "Enderman" when multiple users on Reddit and Google+ commented on
6552-508: The more the merrier. ... I'm a genre writer of a sort. I write literary fiction, which is like spy fiction or chick lit". Likewise, on The Charlie Rose Show , he argued that this term, when applied to his work, greatly limited him and his expectations of what might come of his writing, so he does not really like it. He suggested that all his works are literary, simply because "they are written in words". Literary fiction often involves social commentary , political criticism , or reflection on
6643-493: The one hand, that the truth can be presented through imaginary channels and constructions, while, on the other hand, works of the imagination can just as well bring about significant new perspectives on, or conclusions about, truth and reality. All types of fiction invite their audience to explore real ideas, issues, or possibilities using an otherwise imaginary setting or using something similar to reality, though still distinct from it. The umbrella genre of speculative fiction
6734-417: The opposite by creating a set of folklore-like narratives where none existed before. It is an iconic figure produced through a collective effort and deliberately modeled after an existing and familiar folklore genre. According to Tolbert, this represents two processes in one: it involves the creation of new objects and new disconnected examples of experience, and it involves the combination of these elements into
6825-411: The presiding judge ruled that the girls would be tried as adults. They were tried separately. On August 21, 2017, one of the girls, now 15, pleaded guilty to being a party to attempted second-degree homicide, but claimed she was not responsible for her actions on grounds of insanity. Although prosecutors alleged that she knew what she was doing was wrong, the jury determined that she was mentally ill during
6916-606: The same time, the Slender Man character had lost much of his original popularity. Most of the original blogs that had once been devoted to Slender Man either shut down completely or became less popular. Slender Man's presence in mainstream popular culture also contributed to a decline in how frightening he seemed to many people. The late 2010s also saw an increase in benevolent portrayals of Slender Man, with many depictions of him from this period portraying him as an antihero who protects victimized children from bullies, although often by violent means. In some portrayals of Slender Man from
7007-668: The similarity to the Slender Man. In 2013, the Slender Man appeared as the antagonist of the season 3 Lost Girl episode "SubterrFaenean", in which the Slender Man was said to be the basis for the Pied Piper legend. In 2014, the TV series Supernatural parodied Slender Man as "Thinman" in the Season 9 episode of the same name. That same year, the sixteenth season of the crime drama TV series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit featured an episode, " Glasgowman's Wrath ", inspired by
7098-541: The story that its audience is left to discuss and reflect upon. Traditionally, fiction includes novels, short stories, fables , legends , myths , fairy tales , epic and narrative poetry , plays (including operas , musicals , dramas, puppet plays , and various kinds of theatrical dances ). However, fiction may also encompass comic books , and many animated cartoons , stop motions , anime , manga , films , video games , radio programs , television programs ( comedies and dramas ), etc. The Internet has had
7189-566: The story, an unidentified woman from Cincinnati , Ohio , told a WLWT TV reporter in June 2014 that her 13-year-old daughter had attacked her with a knife, and had written macabre fiction, some involving the Slender Man, who the mother said motivated the attack. On September 4, 2014, a 14-year-old girl in Port Richey , Florida , allegedly set her family's house on fire while her mother and nine-year-old brother were inside. Police reported that
7280-448: The study of genre fiction has developed within academia in recent decades. The term is sometimes used such as to equate literary fiction to literature. The accuracy of this is debated. Neal Stephenson has suggested that, while any definition will be simplistic, there is today a general cultural difference between literary and genre fiction. On the one hand literary authors nowadays are frequently supported by patronage, with employment at
7371-486: The teenager had been reading online stories about Slender Man, as well as Atsushi Ōkubo 's manga Soul Eater . Eddie Daniels of the Pasco County Sheriff's Office said the girl "had visited the website that contains a lot of the Slender Man information and stories [...] It would be safe to say there is a connection to that." During an early 2015 epidemic of suicide attempts by young people ages 12 to 24 on
7462-643: The then ongoing Second World War in a way that presented fascist individuals as humorously irrational and pathetic. Many other villains take direct inspiration from real people while having fictional accents, appearances, backgrounds, names, and so on. City of Stirling The City of Stirling is a local government area in the northern suburbs of the Western Australian capital city of Perth about 10 kilometres (6 mi) north of Perth's central business district . The City covers an area of 105.2 square kilometres (40.6 sq mi) and has
7553-509: The time of the work's creation: Jules Verne 's novel From the Earth to the Moon was published in 1865, but only in 1969 did astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first humans to land on the Moon. Historical fiction places imaginary characters into real historical events. In the 1814 historical novel Waverley , Sir Walter Scott 's fictional character Edward Waverley meets
7644-535: The traditional view that fiction and non-fiction are opposites, some works (particularly in the modern era) blur this boundary, particularly works that fall under certain experimental storytelling genres—including some postmodern fiction , autofiction , or creative nonfiction like non-fiction novels and docudramas —as well as the deliberate literary fraud of falsely marketing fiction as nonfiction. Furthermore, even most works of fiction usually have elements of, or grounding in, truth of some kind, or truth from
7735-648: Was "to formulate something whose motivations can barely be comprehended, and [which caused] unease and terror in a general population." Other pre-existing fictional or legendary creatures which are similar to the Slender Man include: the Gentlemen, black-suited, pale, bald demons from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode " Hush "; men in black , many accounts of which grant them an uncanny appearance with an unnatural walk and "oriental" features; and The Question ,
7826-432: Was adapted into a video game titled Slender: The Eight Pages ; and the official website crashed after too many people tried to download the game. Several popular variants of the game followed, including Slenderman's Shadow and Slender Man for iOS , which became the second most-popular app download. The sequel to Slender: The Eight Pages , Slender: The Arrival , was released in 2013. Several independent films about
7917-472: Was closely associated with history and myth . Greek poets such as Homer , Hesiod , and Aesop developed fictional stories that were told first through oral storytelling and then in writing. Prose fiction was developed in Ancient Greece , influenced by the storytelling traditions of Asia and Egypt. Distinctly fictional work was not recognized as separate from historical or mythological stories until
8008-611: Was created on June 10, 2009, on a thread in the Something Awful Internet forum . The thread was a Photoshop contest in which users were challenged to "create paranormal images." Forum poster Eric Knudsen, under the pseudonym "Victor Surge", contributed two black-and-white images of groups of children to which he added a tall, thin, spectral figure wearing a black suit. Although previous entries had consisted solely of photographs, Surge supplemented his submission with snatches of text—supposedly from witnesses—describing
8099-435: Was for a dual name to be adopted, involving a Noongar name. A report released by the city two weeks later stated that the name change was not a priority, and that there were significant costs associated with any name change. At the council meeting on 8 June 2021, arguments were put forth either way, with one councillor saying "while nobody condoned historical atrocities, a name change would cost 'millions of dollars', would set
8190-560: Was inspired to create the Slender Man primarily by Zack Parsons ' "That Insidious Beast", Stephen King 's The Mist , reports of shadow people , Mothman and the Mad Gasser of Mattoon . Other inspirations for the character were the Tall Man from the 1979 film Phantasm , H. P. Lovecraft , the surrealist work of William S. Burroughs , and the survival horror video games Silent Hill and Resident Evil . Knudsen's intention
8281-473: Was released by HBO Films in March 2016, and was broadcast on HBO on January 23, 2017. The Waukesha stabbing and the negative media attention it generated irreversibly altered the Slender Man legend and the online community surrounding it. What had previously just been a creepy horror meme to most people suddenly acquired a new level of reality that most fans of Slender Man found horrifying. Meanwhile, by around
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